We recently interviewed Nick DeSilvio, our managing director, to take a little look into his mind and share more about who we are, what we do, and what our employees find important about their jobs. Enjoy!
How long have you been with ePropelled?
Since the beginning of U.S. operations. So January 2019.
What did you study?
I minored in aviation management and majored in business management. And I trained for two years as an air traffic controller. It was something that I always wanted to do, but it unfortunately didn’t work out. But I still love aviation. It’s one of my hobbies.
So how did you end up working with pumps motors?
Out of college I got hired by the predecessor to BAE in the defense industry. They would build system level product. So that’s what I did. I then I worked my way all the way down to sub-systems. And then eventually, I was making chips. Billions of them. Then I worked my way back up again into the sub systems and then system-level stuff. Then I got into software.
For about 12 years, I actually owned my own company, building products for defense and security companies. Most of the stuff we did was clearance-type, very unique products. We were contracted for the United States Army. That’s where I came from to ePropelled.
My expertise was in management. I just ran divisions for different companies. It never mattered what the product was. I can make motors or I can make pizza. Whatever you want. It’s all about the process, putting the right things in place so that you can deliver the right quality products.
I am not an engineer by trade. Even though I can probably fake it. I could probably sit down with most engineers and understand exactly what they’re saying because I’ve been exposed to it my entire career.
What made you choose your profession?
My love of planes and flying made me choose my education courses. I took private pilot, commercial, ground school, instrument ground school, airframe and power plant. I took some engineering courses just to learn about the technology. I even took two years in Air Force ROTC, but in the big scheme, it wasn’t for me. It just didn’t work out. So I ended up on the business side of management.
The challenge in life for me is managing people. You want to treat people the way you want to be treated. If you treat them well, if you treat them with respect, they’ll do anything for you. That’s why I’ve been successful. My success is not based on myself, but it’s based on the people around me. I learned that a long time ago. I’m not afraid to hire people that are smarter than me. I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. If I’m the smartest guy in the room, we’re very limited.
Which part of your career do you think about with the most fondness?
What I’m doing now is probably the most interesting job. Whenever I’m learning, I’m excited. That’s the fun thing.
The previous job I had, working for a defense contractor, I had an opportunity to do a lot of traveling. In Europe and the U.S. And that was fun for me. I wouldn’t go just for a day; I would go for three weeks at a time. I got to meet some very interesting people. Military people are a different breed from the ordinary person. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but in a good way. They’re very dedicated to what they do, they’re very focused on what they’re doing. It’s fun working with people like that. And they tell some amazing stories about what they’ve been through. And I’m not talking about fighting. I’m talking about what they’ve been through in their life, the places they’ve been, stationed at... It was fun and it was interesting. And, again, it all came down to learning. The more you learn about people, the better you can manage them.
But I really enjoy being here because I’m learning. Every day I learn. Nick (ePropelled CEO and founder) said to me the very first day I started: “We’re gonna have fun.” And every couple of months he says to me: “Are you having fun?” And my answer’s been ‘yes’. That’s the good thing. I am having fun. That’s the most important thing. Otherwise, it’s just a job. You don’t want just a job. You want to have fun doing what you’re doing.
What do you do in any given week?
First of all, everything I do is based on priority. I have two masters: Nick and the shareholders of the company are one. My customers are my other master. So I have to spend a lot of time making sure that my customer is satisfied, whoever they are. And then I also need to be responsible to the shareholders of the company. So whatever actions I make, whatever decisions I make, even the way I treat people, I need to make sure that there are no obstacles in people’s way to do their job.
I always go back to sports analogies. My job is to knock obstacles over so that my team can score touchdowns. That’s my job. Any given day, because my position is unique, it’s not like a software engineer, coding all day. For me, it’s something different every day. It’s a new obstacle, a new person to help, a new problem to try and solve... And that’s how my week goes.
There is always something to do.
Are your challenges mainly managerial or do you have any mechanical, manual challenges that you sometimes have to deal with?
I like to get my hands dirty. The majority of my challenges today are managerial. I’m not responsible only for the AV group (our aerial vehicles group) and the pump motor group, I’m also responsible for the hangar. I have two facilities. I don’t even count the amount of people that are on the team. I always say that my ideal organization is me. Because you’re responsible for those people, they’re your responsibility. You’re responsible for their happiness, their safety, for ensuring that they’re enjoying their job. That’s your responsibility as a manager. If you take care of all of those things, the rest will take care of itself.
So the majority of my challenges are managerial at this point, but I love getting my hands dirty. Nick will yell at me sometimes: “Why did you go to the hangar?” Because I wanted to. Not because I had to. I want to get up there, you want to see what’s going on, you want to lend a hand. I am somewhat mechanically inclined. And I try to learn.
When I came here, I knew nothing about motors. I knew the basics. But nothing really about motors and how they function. I tried to learn as much as I could. About the market, the product, the competition. If you don’t know all those things, you can’t come up with the right answers. Which leads me to a very important point about your employees.
You need to share as much information about the project, the objectives, and the company as possible. If you expect your employees to make the right decisions, you need to give them all the information. If you give them 50% of information they need do their job, there is a 50/50 shot they’ll get it wrong. So you have to give them all the information for them to make the right decisions.
Is it a safe assumption that the favorite part of your job is working with people?
I love working with people. And the people that know me and the people that have worked for me over the years know that I... It’s not that I bring my personal life into the company, but I like to tell stories about my wife and my kids because this is my family away from home. I have my home family and I have my work family.
I’ve said this to Nick. “Like it or not, we’re family. You’re going to have to disown me because we’re family.” I’d do anything for family. If anybody calls, if anybody here calls in the middle of the night and says: “My car broke down” or something happened, I’m there. Not because I have to. But because I want to, you’re family. You do what you have to do. It’s very important. And it goes back to people. If they see that and appreciate that, I don’t have to ask twice if they can do something for me or for the company. They'll just do it. Because they know they have support.
You’re working on our pump motors. Can you say what interests or excites you most about them?
We’ve been trying to release this product for a while, but we’ve been learning more about what’s needed in the industry. We’ve had an opportunity to talk to some customers. And that, combined with speaking to sales, means that I am excited. Because when this product is released, I honestly believe that it’s going to be an industry leader in very efficient motors.
We all talk about moving away from fossil fuels and it’s nice to say it but, in reality, can we do that right away? Probably not. But if we could reduce our energy usage by 10% that would give so much capability from a resource standpoint, reduce costs of crude oil, make an impact on the environment. So the sustainability side is very important. And the more I’ve learned about that and the more I understand that this is truly a green product, it really excites me.
Because we are not just making an impact to make sales. We will be able to impact the environment in a positive way. And to do it with just a product and not using draconian methods, it’s a winner. You can’t beat that. Replace this motor with this motor and it’s going to be better for the planet.
And the team has done a really good job developing this really efficient motor with its drive.
How long have you been working on them?
We started with the AV product here, in the US. One of my first tasks was to take the AV engineering technology and move it into a manufacturing environment. Eventually, we had someone approach us and ask if we could do something in the pool market. And we did.
We actually took an air motor and attached it to a wet end, a pump, and shipped it back to the customer. It was efficient, but it was an outside spinning rotor, so from a safety standpoint it was a little hokey. But we sent it out there and they liked it. They liked the efficiency, the liked how small the unit was, but it was loud. We’re talking about using a starter generator from an aerial vehicle used as a water pump motor! It was also fixed speed. We set it up as a variable speed, but it was just proof of concept.
So the customer said: “This is great. If you can do this, meet this standard, and all that, we’ll buy 80,000 to 100,000 units a year.” What do you think happened at that point? We immediately launched a product. That was about a year after we started the company. So that was probably in 2020.
And the one mistake that we made was that we actually embarked on a project and really tailored it towards one customer. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the correct approach. We should have done a market survey and seen what the entire market needed. If we had done that from the very beginning, we probably would have saved time in the long run. But that’s hindsight. You get excited, you’re off and running.
We tried to develop what I call an outrunner, an outside spinning rotor but then you have safety issues, qualification issues, temperature issues, all sorts of things that you learn. And then you have to attach a drive to it. Eventually we got into the pool side of the product and we really learned a lot.
We realized that we can serve three industries: pool, spa, and industrial. And we use the same motor technology for them all. So we can kill three birds with one stone instead of having different products for each industry. If you look at them, they look different, but they’re exactly the same. The one minor difference is the top cover. Some have additional capabilities, some have different capabilities, but it’s all the same. And I think, in the long run, that’s going to serve us well.
How many types will be released?
The majority of the product that we’ve been working on is the 3 hp motor for the three industries. We’re also releasing a 1.65 hp motor using the same drive (the 3hp drive). Eventually, we will redesign that drive to be a 1.65 hp drive. But there is a need for that motor. Our customers need a full portfolio.
Some of the pool businesses are playing in the, what I call, mid-range power. It’s 1.5 hp to 5 hp. Then you get the high-power stuff, which is the big pools. And then you get the lower power pumps: 1.5 hp down to 1/8th. ePropelled is not going to play in that area. Not because we can’t, but because it’s not cost effective to put a variable speed drive on a half horsepower motor. When people want a half hp motor, they don’t want to spend a lot of money. And a drive is expensive.
So right now, it’s 1.65 hp and 3 hp. We already have designed and released for build our 5 hp, but we have not completed the 5 hp drive designs. That’s in process right now. And there is a side project that we’re working on, where we’re taking our drive and wall mounting it separately from our motor. We can use that in different applications and one of them would be taking our drive, which is about 97-98% efficient, and hooking it up to an induction motor to make that induction motor more efficient. But that’s a side project to give us another opportunity to take current motors in the marketplace and make them more efficient.
How many people are involved in the pump motor team?
Only four people. And they’re great. Two of them are seasoned veterans in the industry. And we also have two very young people, who are very intelligent, hard-working, and capable. Cainwyn is even a welder! How do you find a 25-year-old mechanical engineer who can also weld?
My new challenge has been to get my arms around the AV product team. But I’ve known some of them for a long time because I was involved in the AV product early on. But when Nick asked me to run the pump motor team, I moved over away from manufacturing to the pump motor division. Going back to AV is not totally unfamiliar. And I have an opportunity to work a little bit more with the India team because there are a couple of members there.
How do you enjoy your position?
Usually, when someone is going to be a manager, they have to lead and take charge. And then they have to ‘go do’. You can do by yourself or with a team. I’ve always been the kind of person who says: “Get out of the way. Let me do that.” But sometimes it’s a bad decision because you don’t want me doing it. So I quickly try to learn the best in people, what they do best. And I like to give them responsibility that can work in their wheelhouse.
But I also like to find out what else they like to do. Something they want to learn, something they think they’re going to be good at but they’re not sure, and I like to let them try that. Because I think that’s important. I make people stretch. I take them out of their comfort zone.
Considering what you studied, is your job what you expected it to be when you were younger?
Not even close. The stuff that I learned in college was great. It taught me certain things that were very unique, but in practical applications it didn’t help that much. When I was a production supervisor, I took a class from the American Management Association. It was Supervisory 101. And it was a one-week class. I learned more in that one week than I did in four years of college.
I worked on my master’s for a while—I was working on my MBA—and I took my first four courses... And I’m not saying this to brag, but I had a 4.0 in all of those classes and I personally though that it was a total waste of time because I already did everything they were trying to teach me. And in some of those cases, the professors had never worked in a real business environment. They didn’t even make sense in some of the things they were talking about.
I would never tell a kid not to go to college, but I always tell them to find out what their love is and what they want to do. And then they can find the right university that’s going to excite and teach them something that’s going to help them in their future. Don’t do stuff because “it’s a great party school” or because it’s in Florida. I visited a school in Florida when I was looking at universities and it was a top-notch aviation school. I went there, I sat down, and I was listening to this professor, and I looked out the window and I saw that the school was right on Daytona Beach. The beach was right in view there. And I said to myself: “I will never go to class.” It wasn’t the right environment. So I ended up going to school in New Hampshire, where it’s cold and snowy and it’s all I looked at.
Is there anything you would still like to achieve in your job?
Nick has been very successful in his career. I love to look at people like that and learn. It's the same with people that work for me. I like to listen to people and learn more. Because, the more I know, the better business decisions I can make for future products and also think of possible ways of making the environment better.
If there is an opportunity in the future, I just want to continue to learn and continue to be happy. I think you know that I like to joke around, I like to laugh, I like to have fun. That’s life, if you don’t have fun, you’re in the wrong business. Go do something else and have fun.
Technology-wise, is there something you always felt should be invented or improved or, the opposite, made disappear?
Cell phones should not exist. I hate cell phones. Cell phones have destroyed society. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. They're a great tool but many people are obsessed with their phone. Obsessed with it. A phone is a phone. Use it as a tool. But people get so obsessed, it’s painful. When we go to dinner with my family, no phones are allowed. If you pick up that phone, I’m throwing it out the window.
From a technology standpoint though, the sky is the limit. When I was a little kid, I used to have a subscription for Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. I used to read those magazines all the time, looking at that stuff and thinking: “Wow. That’s really, really cool.” And today, some of those things have come true. You look at those magazines, you hear about pilotless flying taxis, flying cars... We’re right on the edge. We’re this close and we’re in the middle of it at this company. We don’t get to just see it but we get to help build it and develop it.
Those are the things that excite me when I hear stories like that. Possibilities for the future. Those are the things that are exciting and fun.