Virtual Simulations, Engineering Innovation, and the Power of People (with Eric Miller of PADT)
In this episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour, host Rosaria Cain sits down with Eric Miller, founder, principal, and co-owner of PADT Inc., one of Arizona’s most prominent technology leaders and engineering visionaries.
Starting PADT 32 years ago in Tempe after taking a layoff from a corporate aerospace job where engineers were infamously labeled “fungible assets,” Eric set out to build a business around a simple guiding principle: creating a workplace where founders and employees genuinely want to come to work every morning. Today, PADT has grown into an 86-person operation with offices in Tempe, Denver, and Albuquerque, serving as the Southwest’s largest provider of engineering simulation software, 3D printing technology, and specialized consulting for physical products ranging from dog toys to space satellites.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- The Power of Virtual Simulation: How computer-based simulation allows companies—from electric vehicle manufacturers conducting $2 million crash tests to aerospace firms launching rockets—to virtually model physical stress and physics, saving immense time and capital before final physical certification.
- Navigating Market Chaos and Risk Aversion: Why current market unpredictability is causing corporations and startups alike to delay decision-making, extending average sales cycles by two to three times even when capital is readily available.
- AI as an Engineering Force Multiplier: How artificial intelligence is streamlining workflow processing and model verification without replacing fundamental physics, making engineers far more efficient and capable.
- A Candid Look at Arizona’s Innovation Ecosystem: Eric’s perspective as head of a Tech Council leadership roundtable on why Arizona needs greater investor risk-taking and university spin-outs, alongside the region’s rich, under-appreciated legacy in semiconductors and aerospace.
- Rethinking Water and Sustainability in the Desert: Why 70% of Arizona’s water supply goes toward traditional agriculture like alfalfa and cotton rather than data centers or tech facilities, and how consumer choices and indoor farming can drive real environmental change.
- From Disdaining Sales to Building a 16-Person Team: The crucial lessons PADT learned while transitioning from technical engineers who disdained sales into developing a consultative sales team that engineering clients actually trust and rely upon.
- High School Cheerleading and Family Influences: Eric’s surprising background as a high school cheerleader in Sacramento to skip PE class, and how his fighter pilot father and pathologist-inventor grandfather shaped his unique, consultative leadership style.
Tech executives, entrepreneurs navigating uncertain market conditions, and anyone interested in the intersection of advanced engineering, artificial intelligence, and workplace culture will gain immense value from Eric’s four decades of industry experience.
Listen to the full episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour podcast to hear Eric’s engaging insights on building a resilient engineering firm and driving technological progress.
Full Transcript
Announcer 0:02
Welcome to the Knoodle Founders Hour, where we go founder to founder with host Rosaria Cain. Today, our special guest is Eric Miller, founder, principal, and co-owner of PADT Inc. one of Arizona’s most recognizable technology leaders and entrepreneurs. Please welcome Eric Miller.
Rosaria Cain 0:19
Welcome, Eric Miller of PADT. Tell us what you do. Give us your elevator speech.
Eric Miller 0:25
Elevator pitch is that we are the Southwest’s largest provider of engineering products and services. So what we do is we either sell software or provide consulting to people who make things, and we’ve been doing that for 32 years, based in Tempe, Arizona. And if you’re an engineer, what we do is like the funnest thing to do in the world, and we love it. And we, like I said, we’re about we just added three people last week, so we’re 86 people now.
Rosaria Cain 0:52
Congratulations! And you’re in three different markets.
Eric Miller 0:56
We’re in we’re based in Tempe.
Rosaria Cain 0:57
Okay.
Eric Miller 0:57
And then we’ve got offices in Denver and in Albuquerque, mainly because we have an office in Denver because of employees who either they or their spouse said I can’t take this heat anymore, and it’s where they go to so they go move to Colorado. So that’s why we have an office there for some of our engineers, and then it’s we have a sales and support office in Albuquerque because two of our largest customers are the national labs in Mexico, so we’re there to support them.
Rosaria Cain 1:23
Well, what in other industries are you are you most interested in now?
Eric Miller 1:27
Almost every industry. I’m really happy to say that this year we worked on a dog toy and we worked on satellites and everything in between. So we do if it’s a physical product that has difficult engineering, that’s where we add value. That’s why people come to us to either the products we represent or for the services we offer, and we’re really really good at it. And our employees really love it, and that’s why we’re we’re around and we keep to grow and be successful is providing real value to people that are solving hard problems.
Rosaria Cain 2:00
How is the market right now?
Eric Miller 2:02
It is chaos.
Rosaria Cain 2:04
Yes, it is.
Eric Miller 2:04
And unpredictable. And the biggest issue that we face, and I think a lot of, I talk to a lot of small business owners, and I head up a group for the Tech Council that’s like a leadership roundtable. And what we talk about a lot is the unpredictability and the lack of risk taking today, whether it’s a large corporation or a mom and pop shop, everybody’s kind of waiting for everybody else to go first and waiting to the last minute to make decisions just in case.
Eric Miller 2:31
And so there’s a lot of money out there, there’s a lot of capital out there, there’s a lot of desire to do new innovation, but nobody wants to stick their toes too far out in front of anybody else because they’re just there’s unpredictability in the market and so we’re doing fine we’re having a good year especially on the software sales side because some of our larger enterprise customers are getting so much value from the tools we sell for simulation that they’re growing that but even with small company startups and things we’re seeing people they can’t wait any longer.
Eric Miller 3:01
They’ve got to move forward. They got to grow, and so they are taking chances and very slowly. It’s you know I would say that our average sale takes probably two to three times longer than it used to.
Rosaria Cain 3:13
You know I’ve heard that from the the last few people I’ve talked to.
Eric Miller 3:16
Yeah, yeah, and we do it too. Sometimes I feel guilty because I’m holding off a vendor.
Rosaria Cain 3:20
Right.
Eric Miller 3:21
And I’m like, oh wait, I’m doing the same thing my customers do to me. So well.
Rosaria Cain 3:25
Probably partly because they’re doing that too.
Eric Miller 3:27
It rolls downhill, and we’re near the bottom of that hill. So yeah.
Rosaria Cain 3:30
I understand. Well, how are you positioning the company?
Eric Miller 3:35
You know, I think the way we always have, which is partnerships and expertise. So you know we deal with people that know what they’re doing. They might be able to do what we do without us, or they need, they know what they need to do. So what we’re often doing is helping them understand where the best value is. With for say we’re selling, so we sell software and 3d printers, and we also so the software we sell is to do physical testing instead of doing physical testing, doing virtual testing on computers. It’s called simulation, and that’s the bulk of our business. Then we sell 3d printers as well, and then we do consulting around all that technology as well. So it’s really where we position ourselves is as their trusted advisors to understand where the value is, what the needs are, and then maximize their investment-not just when they buy it, but then after they buy it. Whether they’re buying consulting from us or a tool, we’re there with them for the rest of that engagement.
Eric Miller 4:36
So we’re best known for is our technical support, and that’s a huge value add. It’s not an 800 number the way you put it into a ticket system. When you call us for support, you talk to an engineer that does what you do and speaks your language, and that’s the big value add. That’s that’s why enterprise customers that can choose from a variety of sources to get their service come to us, a relatively small company.
Rosaria Cain 5:03
It’s a great position.
Eric Miller 5:04
It’s a good position. Yes.
Rosaria Cain 5:05
So you develop virtual prototypes before they get into it too deep, and then they take that to a manufacturer.
Eric Miller 5:14
Yeah. So so think of it this way: like one of our customers is one of the larger electric vehicle manufacturers, right? And so, one of the things they have to do is crash test.
Rosaria Cain 5:22
Makes sense.
Eric Miller 5:22
And all these companies we work with in the automotive space have to do crash testing. Well, we sell software that allows them to do a virtual crash test, and it’s really really hard to do. It’s kind of the the pinnacle of simulation to do that kind of simulation, and we’re really good at it, and we help them get really good at it. And so, a test that might cost one to $2 million to run this very expensive prototype vehicle into a wall right they can do for a fraction of that maybe a 10th or even less in the virtual environment, and then make sure everything’s going to be right so that that final physical test that’s required. And this is not just crash testing. This is say you’re going to launch something on a rocket or you’re going to ship something across the country, right? And you need to test it to make sure it’ll survive that shipping. You have to do a final test to certify it. We just want to make sure that test is a verification that you did the simulation right. You know it’s going to work because you did the simulation, and that’s why simulation has grown to something that just aerospace companies used when we started the company to something that almost every industry uses.
Rosaria Cain 6:09
So it really stands up.
Eric Miller 6:19
It really works. It’s nice to sell something that works. It’s so much easier.
Rosaria Cain 6:28
Simulation seems like almost more of a theory that we hope it will work. No, it actually really does.
Eric Miller 6:34
It’s physics. It’s an equation. You know, it’s… I almost said the equation, and that’s really nerdy. I’m not going to say it, but there are like five equations, and we just write these giant versions of those equations, and it’s it’s 100% accurate. You put in the right question, you get the right answer.
Rosaria Cain 6:48
Okay, has it ever not worked?
Eric Miller 6:50
It doesn’t work when you ask the wrong question.
Rosaria Cain 6:53
Okay.
Eric Miller 6:53
Or you get an input wrong, like the material isn’t the same material, or you didn’t put the right load in, or the temperature wasn’t correct, or you built that equation wrong. You can do that sometimes, but it gives you the answer you ask for. You didn’t ask the right question if it’s wrong.
Rosaria Cain 7:12
Does AI affect what you do?
Eric Miller 7:14
AI affects everything.
Rosaria Cain 7:16
Yeah, it does.
Eric Miller 7:16
It affects everything. Yeah, and it’s very interesting. I just had this conversation with some people in the industry, it’s going to. We’ve always used so when we say AI today, we’re talking about generative AI, right? Large language models. Well, I’ve been using AI for gosh since college, so 40 years now, and that’s usually machine learning or expert systems AI, which is a very different approach, and we’ve always used that in simulation, especially machine learning is very important part of simulation. Oftentimes, we use simulation to train those models. These large language models, I don’t know where they’re going to play a role because they’re not accurate, and we can’t deal with that. It has to be accurate, right? And so they’re guessing at the next word, right?
Rosaria Cain 8:00
Based on whatever else is on the internet.
Eric Miller 8:02
Yeah. So what we do in simulation is, let’s say we’ve got a pickup truck manufacturer, and what I’ll do is is run simulations on 1000 different pickup trucks. In the future, I can put any pickup truck design in there, and it’ll tell me what the force of wind on that truck’s going to be. It’s 90% accurate. That’s not good enough. So what we’re really looking at is how can we use it to make the process of doing simulation efficient.
Rosaria Cain 8:30
Right.
Eric Miller 8:30
That’s where the value add is going to be. We’ll continue to use so I can get an accurate answer with machine learning. Right. And I’ll continue to do that, but I don’t know about the large language models and the generative. That’s going to be more in guiding me through the workflow, right? And maybe checking my model before I hit run.
Rosaria Cain 8:46
Process.
Eric Miller 8:47
Processing, making sure the results are correct. These are areas that we’re really working on quite heavily. And the company we work with, Ansys, which is owned by Synopsys now, this is where they’re putting their effort. Is really making using AI to make the engineer more efficient, and it’s a it’s a force multiplier rather than replacing the physics solutions. And who knows? I didn’t think that AI would be generative AI would be as good as it is. So I could be wrong. In 10 years, we may be using it, but right now we’re kind of in a good spot, just working on process and efficiency.
Rosaria Cain 9:20
Well, simulation requires engineers, though, so it actually requires people.
Eric Miller 9:24
It requires people over the years. This is a good example of how technology changes. You know, I when I first started my career 40 years ago, I got an award because I built this one particular model in two weeks, and it used to take a month, right? And everybody was super excited. That takes about I don’t know 20 minutes now.
Rosaria Cain 9:45
Wow!
Eric Miller 9:45
Without AI.
Rosaria Cain 9:46
Right
Eric Miller 9:47
With AI, I bet it’ll get down to gosh five minutes. So we just continue to not necessarily need fewer engineers, but make the engineers we have more capable, and so that. That engineer that spent like my beginning my career, I would have spent all day every day doing simulation. That engineer does simulation. They do tests. They do project management. They do requirements documents. So that engineer becomes much more powerful and much more cost effective.
Rosaria Cain 10:15
Where do you find engineers like this? How do you have that body of language?
Eric Miller 10:20
Like everything else that works in the world, well, people.
Rosaria Cain 10:24
Right.
Eric Miller 10:24
Right. I mean, yes, do we put it out on Indeed, and do we get a lot of resumes, and but where we find our good engineers, our people we know recommend them, or was people we know that say, hey, someday I’d like to work for you, and it’s been great. We love hiring interns and trying them out because the kinds of engineering we do, there’s a lot of different kinds of engineering. It may not be your jam, right? When you’re college, no, right. And sometimes we get somebody that’s just like, I want to do this rest of my career, and they’ve been great, yeah. So, yeah, people, people, people, and sometimes in some of these specialties, we’ve got to go out and just kind of start looking at resumes and interviewing people and and getting references and stuff, but yeah, we’ve gotten pretty good at it. We’re getting pretty good at it.
Rosaria Cain 11:05
That’s good. Well, and you have a robust staff.
Eric Miller 11:08
We have our staff is why we’re successful, right? I mean, the tools we sell and use are amazing, but it’s one of the big lessons I’ve learned is as an engineer, I didn’t think that people were that important, right? I didn’t want to think about emotions and people and relationships, and boy, was I wrong! It’s the people and how they work together.
Rosaria Cain 11:09
Well, you’ve really put it together as and with a lot of wisdom as you’ve gone on.
Eric Miller 11:33
Yeah, really the right environment. We started the company with the idea that at least my big driver for starting the company was, I worked for a really amazing from a technical standpoint company. I loved the work we did, but it was a large corporation, and I didn’t want to go to work in the morning, and that’s not good, right? And so I wanted to create a place with my partners that we wanted to go to work in the morning, and that when we had employees, which took a little while. They wanted to go to work in the morning, and that’s still my guiding principle. When when employees don’t want to come to work.
Rosaria Cain 12:07
Right.
Eric Miller 12:08
We’re doing something wrong. It’s an easy measure, yeah.
Rosaria Cain 12:12
Yeah.
Eric Miller 12:12
And so we get really smart people because they like working there.
Rosaria Cain 12:15
That’s great. Now you’re part of the Arizona startup community.
Eric Miller 12:19
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 12:20
What’s the temperature on innovation right now in in Arizona?
Eric Miller 12:24
Innovation is great. We’re great at innovating. Commercialization and raising money, we have to work on. I’ll be honest, we’re in our our ugly teenage years right now. We’re not the Bay Area. We’re not Boston, right?
Rosaria Cain 12:38
Right.
Eric Miller 12:39
We’re not Minnesota for for medical devices, we don’t have. I always and I’ve written about this. I don’t mind saying it. We don’t have stupid money here.
Rosaria Cain 12:48
Right.
Eric Miller 12:49
We have people with money, right? But they’re they have money because they’re smart.
Rosaria Cain 12:52
Right.
Eric Miller 12:53
In those other markets, you kind of in the right place at the right time. You can get really rich, right? And they’re good at throwing money at problems. They don’t really think about it. We don’t have that, so we’re real. If you’ve got a really good idea that has a lot of potential and is kind of almost a sure thing, you can do very well. And this is not just Arizona; this is any secondary market, right? We need to be better at risk taking from an investor community standpoint and from a corporate standpoint, and then the startups-they got to be more innovative. I have a column in the Phoenix, a monthly column in the Phoenix Business Journal. My last article was on this. Is I haven’t seen any game-changing innovation come out of Arizona in a very long time.
Rosaria Cain 13:38
Really?
Eric Miller 13:38
Yeah, we haven’t really like. Oh my gosh! This is an entirely new market, or this is going to change everything. I’m going to use right now. It’s I’m going to use AI to make this better.
Eric Miller 13:47
I’m going to use this new material to make this better. We need…
Rosaria Cain 13:51
Kind of tweaks within that.
Eric Miller 13:53
Med device is probably the only exception to that. I’ve seen some really innovative things in medical devices, but that’s a whole different problem that our medical system doesn’t reward innovation and doesn’t encourage innovation, so they’re not growing as fast as they should because of that. But it’s tough out there right now, and I would like to see our universities do a better job of spinning things out. ASU is number one in patents, right?
Rosaria Cain 14:21
Right.
Eric Miller 14:21
But..
Rosaria Cain 14:22
Ira Fulton School of Engineering, yeah.
Eric Miller 14:24
Amazing school. Really good engineers. We hire a lot of people from there. Not so good at spinning out companies, and we need to get better at that. We got so much great innovation here.
Rosaria Cain 14:35
Where does that start?
Eric Miller 14:36
It starts with accepting it.
Rosaria Cain 14:39
Okay.
Eric Miller 14:39
I think the biggest mistake our ecosystem made. Again, these are my opinions.
Rosaria Cain 14:44
Well, that’s what podcasts are for.
Eric Miller 14:46
Right? Is that we were a new ecosystem when we were children. We wanted to support our children regardless. You know, it’s we wanted to encourage them. We didn’t know where they’re going to go, so we just encouraged everybody. We need more tough love. We need more people to recognize the fact that we’re not the Bay Area. We’re not Austin. We’re not, you know. I think that everybody wants Austin’s like the top of the secondary market.
Rosaria Cain 15:10
Right.
Eric Miller 15:10
We’re not them, right? We we need to be more proactive about identifying winners or who we think are going to be winners. It’s hard to pick them.
Rosaria Cain 15:19
Right.
Eric Miller 15:19
And really, really, as a community, focus on making them successful, and then have more wins. And with more wins, will come more capital, and more momentum, and more success. And so that’s kind of where the ecosystem is. We’re kind of we’re like a battleship, and we’re kind of turning slowly, but we’re getting there.
Rosaria Cain 15:37
Do you think Arizona has a bad name?
Eric Miller 15:40
No.
Rosaria Cain 15:40
No?
Eric Miller 15:41
The opposite.
Rosaria Cain 15:41
It’s the opposite. Okay.
Eric Miller 15:42
We have a really…
Rosaria Cain 15:43
I mean, politically, we’ve taken some knocks. You know, a little bit.
Rosaria Cain 15:47
We’re the butt of many jokes.
Eric Miller 15:50
Yeah. I’m constantly explaining to people that you know they’re making you click by putting out these crazy people.
Rosaria Cain 15:55
And that too.
Eric Miller 15:56
I live here for a reason. I I think this is a very much a live and let live. My neighbors, my friends, or even when we disagree about politics, it’s live and let live. Right? We’re not those crazy people you see on TV. This is a very good place to start a business and grow a business. And not because we’re like Texas with no regulation and your power is going to go out because it’s the wild west out there, or your neighbor is going to put a put a fricking chemical plant next to your hotel. We have smart regulation here that protects people and keeps things kind of within some guardrails, but is not like California where it’s burdensome.
Rosaria Cain 16:37
Right.
Eric Miller 16:38
And so I work a lot with companies, our customers as well as through the startup community and through some economic development work I do, trying to help companies move here, and they find it so refreshing. And the other thing we have a reputation for, which a lot of people deserve credit for, is people here help other people in business. We are. Are we competitive? Yeah, we are. We’re not lazy, but we don’t. We’re not win lose. If you are win lose here, you’re not going to survive very long.
Rosaria Cain 17:10
That’s not a scarcity economy.
Eric Miller 17:13
Economy, and there’s plenty of business to go around. Maybe it’s because we’re always growing, but we do work together and we do help each other. Even competitors will work together and help each other. And this is the number one comment I get from people from overseas or from California or back east that come here. And I’ll show them around, introduce them to people like everybody wants to help me, and they’re not just saying it because they want to sell me something. They actually make introductions, tell them about opportunities. It is unique, and I have to be reminded because I just that’s kind of the way I think. So I think everybody does that. But there’s one company I’m working with that’s looking between here and another state, and he’s pretty much decided to move his company here from the UK for his US launch because of that environment.
Rosaria Cain 17:55
That’s exciting.
Eric Miller 17:56
Yeah, and then all the stuff: cost of living’s good, low regulation, or reasonable…
Rosaria Cain 18:01
Generally speaking…
Eric Miller 18:02
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 18:02
Cost of living’s a little tough, isn’t it? Well, housing’s kind of a problem.
Eric Miller 18:02
People complain about California, and the reason why California is so expensive is because it’s so incredibly successful.
Rosaria Cain 18:13
It is.
Eric Miller 18:13
Fourth largest economy in the world.
Rosaria Cain 18:15
And the weather’s perfect.
Eric Miller 18:16
We can’t complain about the weather.
Rosaria Cain 18:17
And they have an ocean.
Eric Miller 18:18
They have an ocean, and they have weather, and they have amazing universities.
Rosaria Cain 18:21
Great diversity in terms of landscape. Yeah, there’s a lot in California.
Eric Miller 18:26
Right. We do a lot of business in California from here, but we do a lot of business in California, and I think we like to poo-poo them, and I will poo-poo them on their overregulation. And I’m a Berkeley educated liberal, so if I think they’re over regulating. They’re over regulating.
Rosaria Cain 18:51
Right.
Eric Miller 18:44
They really are successful in what they do, and that’s why it’s so expensive.
Rosaria Cain 18:52
Right.
Eric Miller 18:52
And so we’re going to get there, right? And Denver is a good example as well. That’s gotten to be really almost prohibitively expensive in Denver. We have a lot of customers up there that are moving away from Denver because of that it’s a sign of success. You can’t stop it, right? So we just have to keep making it value added.
Rosaria Cain 19:10
Right.
Eric Miller 19:11
And maybe at some point we’ll reach equilibrium.
Rosaria Cain 19:14
Maybe.
Eric Miller 19:15
We’ll be fine.
Rosaria Cain 19:16
Do you see some industries in particular that are more prone to innovation?
Eric Miller 19:23
Yeah. I think that what we’re seeing-it’s always been a part of our ecosystem, but not as vocal, visible right now is semiconductor.
Rosaria Cain 19:30
Oh yeah.
Eric Miller 19:31
Kind of focused on the manufacturing side now because TSM stand it though, and they’ve been here. I mean, Intel’s been here forever.
Rosaria Cain 19:36
Right.
Eric Miller 19:38
But innovation in terms of, like a lot of people don’t know that you know Motorola did a lot of their cell phone innovation here, satellite cell phone communication here, how chips are packaged and put together and fit into these tiny little packages here.
Eric Miller 19:54
There’s so much innovation around chips and how to make chips that’s here in Arizona that we don’t really talk about. And that’s the legacy of really Motorola and Intel moving here decades ago. That’s huge. The other one that we don’t really talk about enough is aerospace. One of the problems Arizona faces is headquarters aren’t often here.
Rosaria Cain 20:15
It’s interesting. We don’t have many headquarters.
Eric Miller 20:17
We don’t have many headquarters, right?
Rosaria Cain 20:18
We used to.
Eric Miller 20:19
We used to.
Rosaria Cain 20:19
Like in the 80s, we used to.
Eric Miller 20:21
Yeah, we had a lot, right? So aerospace-they’re in Maryland and Virginia for a reason. The customer is in Russian DC, right? A lot of companies are headquartered in lower tax states like Texas and North Carolina, et cetera, et cetera. With South Carolina, I always get them confused, but we’re getting more coming here. But the work is being done here, right? So you know everybody talks about SpaceX, but their number one competitor, Northrop Grumman, is here in Chandler, right? And the company that got acquired, you know, was born and it was called Orbital Sciences, was started here, right? And ex Motorola people. So Honeywell is still a very strong presence. They moved their aerospace headquarters here. When they split off from their corporate overlords, they decided to put aerospace here, and we’re very excited about that. That’s great.
Rosaria Cain 21:07
That’s great.
Eric Miller 21:09
And hope other things follow.
Rosaria Cain 21:10
What are you investing in? What are you What are you looking at?
Eric Miller 21:14
I’m not.
Rosaria Cain 21:15
No, not at all?
Eric Miller 21:16
Because I don’t see anything that’s changing an industry right now.
Rosaria Cain 21:22
Okay.
Eric Miller 21:22
I’m looking for it. I see a lot of stuff that’s probably a good base hit or third base. I’m not a baseball guy, so I get the analogy wrong.
Rosaria Cain 21:30
Base hit, not homerun.
Eric Miller 21:32
On a home run, right? And so I know that the angel group that I belong to is investing in a lot of med device investing in AI the solutions that more focused on things that make AI successful rather than applications that use AI. It’s hard to pick those winners yet. We don’t know where that’s going. So I think, but everybody needs tools to do AI. So those are doing well, but I’m kind of holding back, waiting for some investments to pay off, as well as looking for that thing that’s like this is a game changer.
Rosaria Cain 22:10
Kind of a really big insightful.
Unknown Speaker 22:13
Yeah, something…
Rosaria Cain 22:14
Juicy, yeah.
Eric Miller 22:16
I’m big into sustainability, and because the funding has changed from the government around that. That’s where I’d like to be investing more is in some nice climate abatement.
Rosaria Cain 22:29
Climate change. Do we have a problem?
Eric Miller 22:31
I think we do. I think we do.
Rosaria Cain 22:33
Warm this week. It’s a little warm this week.
Eric Miller 22:35
There’s a recording outside. It looks like Mars out there. That’s not normal.
Rosaria Cain 22:40
It’s hot.
Eric Miller 22:40
It’s hot, and it’s weird, and it’s been a concern of mine and a passion of mine my whole career. And there’s a lot of things we can do. And as both a company and as an individual, we’re really waiting for things to change from a government funding standpoint, and then really look at how can we make a big impact. Who who can we help, or what can we do on our own to make a big impact? So that’s what we want to invest in.
Rosaria Cain 23:08
What can we do? What can we do with that? I know that when I go to Europe, they have a very different point of view on climate, and they actually do.
Eric Miller 23:17
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 23:18
It’s a lot. Yeah, and maybe because they’re more in the epicenter of it, I think they get. I think that it’s changing more rapidly there.
Eric Miller 23:26
We could come back and have another podcast about my worldview on oligarchies, but yeah, well, that’s and how they’ve changed the way that information changed in the U.S. But I think that what we need to do is really focus on littler things. We, I mean, those that care in the U.S. want to do big things, then they give up. But if everybody drove a hybrid, don’t buy. Not not everybody needs an electric car, right? If you can afford electric car and you can you can deal with the constraints of electric car, get electric car. But what’s better is if we all drove hybrids and we reduced our carbon emissions by half by all driving hybrids. That would make a huge impact if we decided that we should no longer subsidize significant agriculture in Arizona. 70% of our water goes to agriculture in the state. We’re worried about these silly things, you know, that data centers use less than 1% of our water, right?
Rosaria Cain 24:24
I’ve heard the new ones in particular are really efficient.
Eric Miller 24:27
They’re actually they do offsets, so they’re actually negative,
Rosaria Cain 24:30
Right.
Eric Miller 24:30
So we’re all upset about that. Yet we’re subsidizing.
Rosaria Cain 24:35
It’s where the press is spending its time.
Eric Miller 24:37
Well, and people get excited and they click.
Rosaria Cain 24:38
Right. Yep.
Eric Miller 24:39
So we should be looking at why why is 70% of our water going to agriculture in the state? Can we make that agriculture more efficient? Yes. Should we be growing alfalfa in the desert?
Rosaria Cain 24:51
No. Takes a lot of water.
Eric Miller 24:53
Yeah, lettuce in Yuma. Yeah, that’s a good one, right? That’s a really good one. We’ve got some other stuff in Yuma that’s going really well, but. In you know, I grew up half my life here, and I remember cotton fields and orange orchards everywhere. Those are not efficient crops to grow.
Rosaria Cain 25:09
Right.
Eric Miller 25:09
We don’t do a lot of it anymore, and we should probably continue to really scale back.
Rosaria Cain 25:15
So, wouldn’t you think there’d be some innovation there?
Eric Miller 25:17
There’s a lot. Unfortunately, with cotton, we kind of saw we. I think we got cotton water consumption down to a third of what it used to be through some. I know people don’t like this, but genetic engineering of the cotton plant, and that’s the sort of stuff we can do. Hot house suite. We’re we’re pioneering a lot of of hydroponic and and indoor farming. So maybe some of the stuff that we want to grow locally, we should be growing that way more efficiently.
Eric Miller 25:45
Here’s to answer your question of what can we do. We as consumers need to be willing to pay more for things that help sustainability and climate change, and we’re not. We go for the cheapest thing, and if we would pay more for these hot house grown vegetables or these sustainably grown vegetables, we’d be growing. Nobody can make money doing it because nobody wants to pay. It’s maybe 50% more, right? So paying 50% more for your lettuce would make a huge difference. That’s what Europeans will do. Europeans will pay more.
Rosaria Cain 26:19
Europeans are interesting.
Eric Miller 26:20
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 26:21
They have a different perspective. So I have a place in Italy, in Sicily, which is very hot, right? Hot, but not as hot as here. But they have five different bins for garbage. Yes, it’s like a not a full time job, but it’s at least a part time job to organize.
Eric Miller 26:38
We’re too busy to do two.
Rosaria Cain 26:40
We don’t even do two. I mean, most people don’t even do two, but there is, and it’s only paper, yeah, which is just one thing.
Eric Miller 26:49
Yeah, yeah. I think that we’re very big about somebody should do something about this, and what we need to do is, it’s the same thing for domestic manufacturing, which is another issue that’s significant for this country is, we would manufacture in the U.S. if people would just pay more for things made in the U.S. Europeans will pay more for things made in the EU, and they don’t have a problem with that.
Rosaria Cain 27:09
Right.
Eric Miller 27:10
So, yeah, that’s a whole other discussion about it.
Rosaria Cain 27:14
It is, and and there’s and and looking at the spirit of innovation too, and also what you do at PADT, and also what you do with startups, it seems like the current political climate too may be a factor in stifling some innovation.
Eric Miller 27:33
You know, if I put my politics aside, and I’ve already admitted I used to say I’m a Prius driving Berkeley liberal, but I now have a Hyundai, but some Hyundai driving Berkeley Liberal might want to put that all aside, right? It’s the uncertainty that’s the problem. It is the unpredictability about both Congress and the administrator that is the problem. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. They pass a law; it’s unconstitutional. It gets thrown out. Oh, this other judge brings it back in. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, right? We don’t know what’s going to happen in Iran, right? We don’t know what’s going to happen, and with some of these regulations that come and go, right? The CHIPS Act was a very important piece of legislation, whether you agree with it or not, companies made decisions based upon the CHIPS Act. That’s coming and going, and some of it’s not happening. Some of it’s getting funded. Some of it’s not getting funding. That uncertainty is the problem. Politics aside.
Rosaria Cain 28:33
Right.
Eric Miller 28:33
Yeah, business loves predictability.
Rosaria Cain 28:36
Right. Right.
Eric Miller 28:38
And so that’s what we have to deal with.
Rosaria Cain 28:39
And innovation as well.
Eric Miller 28:40
Innovation needs it as well, right? Should I really invest in this new ASU’s got some amazing technology around material science? It’s one of their strengths, and there’s some really cool things we can do with that technology. But I don’t know who’s going to fund it in the future. I don’t know if the Department of Defense could use some of it, Department of Energy could use some of it. Corporations could use some of it. No one wants to fund innovation because they don’t know if that’s going to pay off, because they don’t know what the future is. So yeah, boring consistency is what we want.
Rosaria Cain 29:12
I know, but there are bigger responsibilities.
Eric Miller 29:15
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 29:15
When we are looking at our planet potentially waning.
Eric Miller 29:19
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s gonna it’s gonna have the price will be paid. Nature again, getting into this. My opinion, not my company’s. Nature doesn’t care about us, right? Nature cares about the ecosystem, its ecology, and we’re part of it right now. If we become a negative in that ecosystem, we’re gone, right? And you know, I think we have to be honest and forthright about that, and realize there’s some self sacrifice to get us out of the hole that we’re in, and yeah, we need to stop being so selfish.
Rosaria Cain 30:03
It’s hard to justify that with the pocketbook, though.
Eric Miller 30:06
It is very difficult to justify it with our pocketbook in the day to day of our lives, and the wealth transfer that’s going on is a significant part of that, right? We don’t we don’t have the the amount of income we used to have as an average person to make those unselfish decisions, right? Because the that wealth is being held by such a few number of people now. So, yeah, these are these are bigger problems.
Rosaria Cain 30:32
Well, they’re weighty, but they’re they’re certainly great places for innovation to step in and save the day, or at least help the cause.
Eric Miller 30:41
I think that AI is going to help with that. I think we can look back at the web as a significant change to almost democratization of commerce. We unfortunately let some large companies own retail, and you know, I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if that’s a monopoly or not a monopoly. But when it was early, we saw that anybody can open up a store and sell, right? Right, and that’s still true to some extent. You can still make a living doing that. I think that AI is going to make give people power to do things that they wouldn’t be able to do before. One of my favorite things to do, and I’ll put a plug in for it, is on Thursday nights. Every Thursday night, there’s something called Venture Cafe Phoenix.
Rosaria Cain 31:29
Oh, I’ve been there.
Eric Miller 31:30
Have you been?
Rosaria Cain 31:30
I’ve been there twice.
Eric Miller 31:31
Oh, really? I’ve not seen you. Oh, great. Well, we’ll have to say hi.
Rosaria Cain 31:33
It’s really awesome.
Eric Miller 31:35
It’s amazing. It is. It is where everybody..
Rosaria Cain 31:37
It’s at ASU.
Eric Miller 31:38
At the PBC.
Rosaria Cain 31:40
Yeah.
Eric Miller 31:40
The downtown medical center there.
Rosaria Cain 31:42
Yeah.
Eric Miller 31:42
And it’s free, two free drinks, free parking every Thursday. Every top every Thursday is a different topic, and it is where everybody from the innovation system, when they’re available, will come and hang out.
Rosaria Cain 31:53
Right.
Eric Miller 31:54
And I’m seeing people talk about it there.
Rosaria Cain 31:57
That’s good. So it’s kind of like a pseudo think tank, really?
Eric Miller 32:01
It’s turned into that, right? They’re smart people that care.
Rosaria Cain 32:03
Very intellectual.
Eric Miller 32:04
I remember I was. It was. I’ve met these wonderful people that know their industry inside and out, or their cause, their personal cause inside and out, and there was no way for them to start to create an app, say, on the phone to solve that problem because they didn’t have the money to pay somebody to do that. They’re going into an AI tool and say, “Make me an app, and over a period of two weeks, tweaking that app, and they have good apps.
Rosaria Cain 32:34
It’s amazing, and it may not be perfect because it won’t be perfect.
Eric Miller 32:38
It’s in some ways it’s better because they know what they want.
Rosaria Cain 32:42
Right.
Eric Miller 32:42
And by iterating with the AI tool, they can get there. Iterating with the developers kind of hard because they want to do it their way. And so this democratization that’s allowing people to solve some of these problems is going to be there. And I think we’re going to be surprised at who does it. It’s not going to be who we think, and there may the AI is going to enable because it’s such a force multiplier. Some people that wouldn’t have just had great ideas and never done anything with them to do them, and that may be the world changing thing.
Rosaria Cain 33:12
Certainly, a non traditional innovator.
Eric Miller 33:15
Yes, exactly. That understands the problem that can use AI to find the solution, and one of the problems with engineering is we’re trained to look for the problem and what’s not going to work, and that stops us from innovating.
Rosaria Cain 33:27
Yeah, but you make a perfect product.
Eric Miller 33:29
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 33:29
Or you’re 100%.
Eric Miller 33:32
And we’ll get involved at the end, right? Whether it’s software development or whether it’s hardware, we’ll get involved at the end to make sure it’s manufacturable and that it won’t hurt anybody, that it won’t break, right? That’s our job, but maybe that innovation step by doing it yourself with AI is going to create some amazing inspirations and ideas. Yeah
Rosaria Cain 33:50
Maybe imperfect.
Eric Miller 33:53
You know, I’ll go back to the light bulb. Right, I forget what the number is, but how many times did Edison make light bulbs work?
Rosaria Cain 33:59
Yeah,
Eric Miller 34:00
And so I made the one that did.
Rosaria Cain 34:01
Yep. And here we are. Yep. Well, how did you get here? So you’ve been around for a while. Your company’s been around. Yeah. 32 years.
Eric Miller 34:11
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 34:12
How did you get to be the co-founder?
Eric Miller 34:16
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 34:16
Of the company.
Eric Miller 34:17
So we worked for a large aerospace company here in town.
Rosaria Cain 34:20
Okay.
Eric Miller 34:20
Oh, it’s now Honeywell. Okay. Yeah, they’re
Rosaria Cain 34:22
Okay. Yeah, they’re pretty big.
Eric Miller 34:23
Yeah. So they were Garrett when I started there. Then now they’re Signal. That’s when we decided during the 90s there was a lot of layoffs in the aerospace industry, and we got a memo from the VP of Engineering that’s famous now in the Chronicles of Engineering World, aerospace engineering world that said you need to work uncompensated overtime. We already were. You are a fungible asset. Engineers are fungible asset. That was a quote. I’d look up what fungible meant. I did not know what it meant.
Rosaria Cain 34:52
My husband is in healthcare revenue cycle management, and so I have a generalized and is money’s fungible.
Eric Miller 35:00
Yes, money’s fungible. He basically said you are a replaceable asset. There’s nothing. One engineer is no different from another engineer. So we started a plan.
Rosaria Cain 35:09
But I would think some are better than others. That’s for sure.
Eric Miller 35:12
That is not a way to motivate your workers, especially to work extra time. So we started planning our exit at that point and took a layoff. So we took a layoff to help fund it, and we figured it’s cyclical, right? So if this whole consulting thing didn’t work out, we could go back, and so it worked out. So we took what we were doing there. We were doing simulation design and what we now call 3d printing as kind of internal consulting team there, and we took it and thought it would go grow beyond aerospace, and it did. Computers got cheaper. The software got better. The hardware got better, and that’s what we did 32 years ago, and that’s what we still do today. The thing that we didn’t expect to happen is becoming salespeople. We were going to be consultants. We’re going to be, you know…
Rosaria Cain 35:57
And business would just find its way to you.
Eric Miller 35:59
Just business. We’re engineers. We’re really good at what we do. People know that. All they need to do is talk to us, and they will hire us. It doesn’t work that way.
Rosaria Cain 36:07
Not even for you.
Eric Miller 36:08
No, not even for me. No, and so we used to make fun of salespeople because we were the people that the salespeople were trying to sell to, and we worked for the corporation. We were the ones that decided what tools to use. Right. So we started the company. We used these tools, and we had to start selling consulting, and we did okay with that by ourselves enough to not go out of business. But what happened that surprised us is that these companies that made the tools came to us and said, “We want you to be a value added reseller because you can add the value because your engineering expertise”, we said, “Great, we’ll be value-added resellers. We do know these tools better than most people, right?” Excellent.
Eric Miller 36:48
The existing customers loved us. New customers, we can never get convinced them to buy anything because we’d show up and say, “Aren’t we wonderful? Isn’t this tool wonderful? Buy it.” Finally, we realized we need salespeople, and so we hired salespeople. But the companies do most of the marketing, but we also did marketing for our own brand and things like that. And we didn’t know what kind of salespeople to hire. We hired people we liked. That’s not necessarily the thing to do. You need people that are just aggressive enough. What we learned selling to engineers is you need a salesperson that’s just aggressive enough to not make you angry, but that you will actually respond to, because we’ll ignore them otherwise, and that will become a trusted advisor. I mean, all joking aside, you need a salesperson that may not know engineering, but is smart enough to understand what the customer’s problem is and explain that to an engineer, and so now we have an amazing sales team we have for a very long time.
Rosaria Cain 37:46
How many people on your team?
Eric Miller 37:47
There’s, I think about. I have to count it. We got to be close to 16 on the sales team.
Rosaria Cain 37:51
That’s that’s a significant robust team.
Eric Miller 37:53
Different departments and things, and some people are part time sales, and some people do other things. Yeah, I think it’s that big. It’s maybe 12, maybe 12. Yeah, I need to count that up. The thing is that our customers like our salespeople personally, and also they trust them, and that’s the thing we had to learn. And some of them are engineers that turned into sales, which some of them have no engineering background whatsoever, but they know that, and they know that they’re just there to connect the right engineer to our customers, and it’s been a great experience. Having good sales management is another thing we learned. We thought, oh, we’re good, we’re really good at everything. We can be sales managers. We’re okay. We were okay at it. You need somebody dedicated to it. You need somebody that that’s kind of there.
Rosaria Cain 38:40
Really, building systems applies to sales too.
Eric Miller 38:43
Systems applies, process applies. Doing your homework, having sage sales managers that can say, “This is how you solve this problem with this customer”, or “Don’t waste your time with this customer.” Right. That’s one of the big things you learn in sales is this customer is not going to buy from me, so I’m just going to talk to them every six months until they’re ready, and I’m going to move on to something else, right? And so, we’ve learned a lot. We have a my other partner, one of one of my two partners, really runs a sales organization. He has over the years gotten really good at it. He’s a very good enterprise salesperson, and has really helped grow that part of our business, and then we have sales managers as well. And so, yeah, it’s been a great experience, and that’s one of the things we had to learn is, yeah, we should probably hire professionals.
Rosaria Cain 39:33
It is helpful. No, I’ve been there. What characteristics make a good leader? So you’ve got so talk about how your company is structured.
Eric Miller 39:42
Yeah, so we’re a little unusual in that we have three equal owners, and we basically have assigned responsibilities from the company. Like I head up the consulting team, HR, IT, facilities, and corporate marketing. One of my partners heads up the simulation sales, and services, and sales and support part of the business, not the consulting. That’s me. And then we have another. My third partner does all the manufacturing, and then the guy that does sales also does accounting and legal. And by dividing it up like that, we get along, and you know we make group decisions as group decisions. Try to do it by consensus. It’s worked for us. It has been synergistic over the years, and has led us to grow and and be have a really successful business. All of our leadership styles are different, and that’s something I’ve learned as well. One of our corporate or company Philosophies is it doesn’t matter which tool you use, just learn it really well and use it well, and that’s true for leadership as well. Leadership’s a tool, so it doesn’t matter what your leadership style is. Have a style that works for you and get really good at that style, and that’s what’s worked for us. And I’m a consultative leader. I like to hear input, and then I make a decision, and that’s the way I like to do it.
Rosaria Cain 41:08
Were you born an entrepreneur, or did you develop into one? Like after after what happened at your corporate position, that made you an entrepreneur.
Eric Miller 41:17
I was born a lot of things. I have a weird family. My mother’s side of the family. My grandfather was a doctor and an entrepreneur. He started with became Sacramento Clinical Labs. So, as a pathologist, he never thought he’d be running a business, but he ended up running a business. And I think that’s where it comes from. As an engineer, I never thought I’d be running a business. I ended up running a business.
Rosaria Cain 41:40
How old were you when your father did that?
Eric Miller 41:42
My grandfather.
Rosaria Cain 41:42
Your grandfather.
Eric Miller 41:43
Yeah, I wasn’t alive.
Rosaria Cain 41:44
Oh, okay.
Eric Miller 41:44
My grandfather.
Rosaria Cain 41:45
I just wondered if you saw that.
Eric Miller 41:46
The other side of me is my father was a fighter pilot and a NATO officer, and so that’s where the leadership stuff comes from. Yeah. So I’m quite a conflicted human.
Rosaria Cain 41:56
I bet. That’s exciting though, and a risk taker.
Eric Miller 42:00
And a risk taker as well, right? And so, yeah, it’s been an interesting. You don’t realize when you’re growing up how these things are going to affect you, but I see it. I see sometimes people say that knew my dad will say, “I see your dad and you, and then sometimes people say, “I see your mom and you, or “I see your granddad.” People that aren’t so many around anymore. But people who knew my grandfather, like, “I see your grandfather and you,” which makes me feel really good. My grandfather was an inventor, a business owner, and a community leader. I didn’t realize how much I patterned myself after him because it wasn’t intentional. But he also belonged all these boards. Clinical California Society of Pathologists. He was the chair board for that, yeah. Board chair for that, just like I was for the tech council, right? And so I followed a lot of it.
Rosaria Cain 42:24
Isn’t that interesting.
Eric Miller 42:46
Yeah, yeah, unintentionally, but I guess I saw that as a path that I could do.
Rosaria Cain 42:50
Sometimes these things are genetics.
Eric Miller 42:51
It’s a model. I mean, he was also model. I could see myself doing it because I saw him do it.
Rosaria Cain 42:57
Yeah.
Eric Miller 42:57
And we were so much alike. I didn’t want to be a doctor, which he never forgave me for, but yes.
Rosaria Cain 43:02
Well, you know, got to go your own way.
Eric Miller 43:04
But he didn’t want to be a doctor. He wanted to be an engineer.
Rosaria Cain 43:07
Well, there you go. And see, you follow that.
Eric Miller 43:09
Follow that one. Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 43:10
What do you do for fun when you’re not changing the world?
Eric Miller 43:15
What I did for fun was my kids. The best part was raising kids and they’re gone now, and so I had to find something else to do with my time for fun. I write, I love writing, and sometimes just for work, but because I do get paid to do it sometimes. But I do lots what I do for fun. But what I’ve really leaned into recently, maybe after I turned 60, was friends. You know, I’m not a hobby guy. I tried. I’m not a hobby guy. Just hanging out with people. I really enjoy that. Whatever we’re doing, yeah. I was just sitting around talking, or going to vacation together, or helping each other. You know, yeah.
Rosaria Cain 43:55
Will you be doing what you’re doing now in terms of the business 10 years from now, or do you see a what’s next around the corner?
Eric Miller 44:04
Yeah, I don’t know. I I definitely want to do more writing. I definitely want to do more community stuff. Whether I’m also doing the business at the same time or not is again we have to make that decision as consensus, right? When we’re all ready. So when we’re all ready, I don’t see that on the horizon right now. We’re having a lot of fun.
Rosaria Cain 44:22
That’s good.
Eric Miller 44:23
And it’s AI is tiring me out a little bit. It’s the first time I’m like, I don’t really want to have to learn this. Yeah. But I am. What my team is. I mean, more importantly, as the engineers are really, really leaning into it. The sales team is really leaning into it. So we’ll get over it. But yeah, we’re having a lot of fun. We’re doing well. Our employees still want to come to work in the morning, and so when they stop wanting to come to work in the morning, we can’t fix that. Maybe that’s the time we have to sit down and talk about it. But right now, yeah, we just we’re just playing how to grow and be more successful.
Rosaria Cain 44:55
Okay, final question.
Eric Miller 44:56
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 44:57
What one thing about you would surprise people?
Eric Miller 45:03
My go-to is I was a cheerleader in high school.
Rosaria Cain 45:06
Oh, that’s awesome!
Eric Miller 45:07
Yeah. Now the story there.
Rosaria Cain 45:09
Now, do you want to do one?
Eric Miller 45:11
I can’t anymore. The story is why I was a cheerleader, sitting at lunch in the computer lab at C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento, California. The PE coach comes in and goes, “Do you guys want to get out of PE?” And we said, “Yes, we hate PE.” And she said, “Do you want to hang out with girls?” And we said, “Yeah, we want to hang out with girls. Well, then sign up as a cheerleader.” And we said, “What do you mean?” she says, “Well, it’s PE credit, and I want to bring to be not make fun of it? Our school used to have like California state champion male cheerleaders, and they dropped that in the 70s, right? And this is the early 80s, and she’s like,”I want to bring that back, and I can’t get anybody in the gymnastic school or any of the guys that are athletes to do it. So I thought you guys would do it because you get out of, and let’s just get it started. You know, I realize you guys are computer nerds, but you’ll get out of. You want to give up PE, and it’s a win win.” So we did it, and I learned how to do all those cheers, and I learned how to carry people around on my shoulders and do pyramids and things like that. And we were actually pretty athletic once we got into it, and we had a blast. We didn’t take it too seriously. We were all headed off to college at that point, and you know the different wins.
Rosaria Cain 46:24
I wish you’d do a cheer.
Eric Miller 46:26
I don’t remember them anymore. Mostly, I just carried people around because I was the tallest. Yeah, got carried people.
Rosaria Cain 46:32
That’s good.
Eric Miller 46:33
Yeah, and yeah, and I think it helped me actually. I mean, we can. I like to make fun of him and go, “Ooh, Eric cheerleader”, but it helped me understand because I was firmly implanted in that kind of computer technical world.
Rosaria Cain 46:49
Right. So you’re a little on the geeky side.
Eric Miller 46:51
I was very much on the geeky side, but I was also in speech and debate. So..
Rosaria Cain 46:54
Okay, that kind of rounds it. That kind of rounds it out, sure.
Eric Miller 46:58
But hanging out with athletes, not just the cheerleaders, but honestly, we spent just so much time with the with the football players, really helped me kind of broaden my horizons and look at why do we stereotype? Why can’t I be a cheerleader, right?
Rosaria Cain 47:11
It is a great question.
Eric Miller 47:12
Writing basic code in the computer lab doesn’t mean I can’t go out and you know yell on the sidelines for the football season. So it was a lot of fun, and yeah, my mom was a cheerleader too, so I kind of felt like it was fun.
Rosaria Cain 47:23
It’s all related.
Eric Miller 47:24
For the rival school in Sacramento, so I felt very special.
Rosaria Cain 47:28
I’m sure there’s were some interesting family conversations.
Eric Miller 47:32
She was very proud of me. Yeah, I did a lot of good things in high school, but I think that was the thing she was most because it was out of my comfort zone.
Rosaria Cain 47:39
Oh, that’s great! And now you’re still pushing the envelope.
Eric Miller 47:42
I try to push the envelope and do things that put me out of my comfort zone. Yeah, my friends help me with that. They’ll call me out. I like people that call me out. So yeah.
Rosaria Cain 47:49
Well, on that on that note,
Eric Miller 47:51
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 47:51
It was great having you. You were amazing at all the conversation topics we had, and I hope you come back again.
Eric Miller 47:57
Yeah, anytime.
Rosaria Cain 47:58
All right.
Eric Miller 47:59
Thanks.
Rosaria Cain 47:59
Thank you.