Weekly Impact by Lay of The Land

Hello, everyone.

is uh Lay the Land Weekly Impact.

I'm Jim Haviland.

And the conversation you're about to see is with a gentleman uh who started Ace
Laboratories.

His name is Erick Sharp.

there's a couple of themes, actually, that have emerged from these conversations.

Almost all the people in these stories are uh humble.

You know, they don't really talk about their extraordinary business skills, but they've
and they've leaned into mentors.

They've all have mentors.

When I ask about the mentors, you can see they come back with someone right away or a list
of people.

And they tend to have a focus on people, making sure they have the right people in the
right seats, as we like to say, Jim Collins.

Thank you for that.

And and you'll hear this conversation.

They have operating systems.

So they've intentionally taken on a set of rules.

in our structure anyway for how they're building a business around their capability set.

know, we say all the time, there's so many people who have great skills in a subject
matter area, but how do you actually wrap a resilient, growing, healthy business around

that and the operating systems that are out there are all helpful for that.

And in this instance, we get to hear about uh Erick and the mentorship of Jim Jelinek,
who's an EOS implementer here in Cleveland.

So enjoy my conversation with Erick Sharp.

Well, welcome, everybody.

This is the Lady of the Land weekly impact, the smart.

50 2025 edition.

I'm Jim Havlund and I'm sitting here with Erick Sharp.

Erick, how you doing today?

good.

So you've already been through some of the rigmarole today.

I just got judged down by the by the judges, you know how to stand in front of there, give
my best pitch.

right.

Very good.

OK, well, got a couple of questions um I have for you.

So first off, give me a brief story of you.

So like, you know, the one minute version of.

Are you local Clevelander?

What got you to where you are right now?

So I live down in the Akron area.

So I live right outside of Akron Canton Airport in Uniontown.

And then our business is up in Ravenna.

So all around the greater Akron area.

I'm in the South Akron business and the uh East Akron side of things, but always playing
around the Akron area.

I lived there a little bit as a kid, but moved back up as an adult back in 2013.

Oh, got it.

OK, great.

So tell me what makes ACE Laboratories a smart business.

Yeah, so at ACE, we play in the polymer space.

And so we test and help with R &D development into polymer aspects and applications.

We, I've been in the polymer industry personally for 23 years and always use laboratories
like what ACE is.

But there was always a gap there and the ability to scale technology fast, work with
companies that are trying to scale technology fast and to get approvals in timely fashion

and really be a part of that actual scale process.

And so 2015, I launched ACE and we've continued on a growth projectory from there.

with the whole mindset being that we're going to focus on being able to scale at the rate
of our customers and being able to support them in innovating new technologies as well as

being able to get them quickly approved into applications.

So your customers are the people that are making polymer products?

Making polymer products is our primary base of our customers.

Some of them are people that are making components to help make polymer components.

product.

It all comes back to Polymers So you've got target market fit.

That's the thing.

So you saw the gap in the market.

You found the gap in the market.

That's always considered pretty smart.

So tell me what lessons have you learned to make you the leader that you are?

is it just been dumb luck or do you have lessons you pull from when you're a Yeah.

mean, the first part was actually listening to customers and understand what kind of
support that they're actually looking for to fill that gap.

Because in our industry, have a depleting uh resource of technical people.

The median age for technical people in our industry is 61 years old.

So we've got a lot retiring out, and there's a big gap that's forming.

And those that are coming in, we kind of skipped the whole generation.

And so those that are coming in are coming in very fresh.

We don't have this bridge generation, ah which is where we need technical companies to
step in and fill that gap.

build, bring that type of knowledge.

And so doing it in an independent way like we do allows us to build support multiple
companies.

Because a lot of these companies developing and innovating are smaller companies.

That's where most of your innovation comes from, is smaller companies.

And so they can't afford to have a stable full of horses, technical resources.

push that through.

So that allows us to be able to support them as needed in these to advance the kind of the
fractional R &D department for folks.

Yes, precisely.

I love that.

Yeah.

The scale.

And that's the fun part.

And I mentioned you there's I mean a lot of there's so much understanding about polymers
here that you know, then the schools here are supporting that, right?

Yes.

Yeah, they're supporting it.

More supports needed.

OK.

I think the thing about polymers and

specifically rubber, is a big portion of our polymers being in the Akron area, ah is there
is a lasting perception of what rubber is in the industry.

People are thinking back to their grandpa coming home looking like a coal miner coming out
of the tire factory.

That's not really what rubber is anymore.

We're actually sexy now.

We make cool stuff.

We have nice products.

have automation.

uh But I think that scared an entire generation away from

really is the perception that's there.

So we've been working among some boards of some associations within the industry of trying
to help change the perception of the industry as a whole.

So we're drawing more young people in.

And that's been a big piece of our company too.

And so on that note, mean, there's so many innovations going on and what the material
types going into what we traditionally called the polymer space.

Are you playing in all of that as well?

Yeah.

Non-polymer.

Yeah, yeah.

So as innovations have continued now, they're like, yeah, you're fragmenting down polymers
as a component within a bigger, bigger type of material structure and so yeah, it does

continue to to expand.

And that's how we started with rubber.

We got into polymers and we got into construction materials.

We got into analytical and coatings and adhesives and tapes.

And because it all just kind of branches.

It's a continuum.

Yeah.

Well, tell me about your team.

So who's

Is it mostly you or do you have a team that's around you that's a leadership team?

Yeah, so we have a team of 21 people back at our lab in Ravenna.

We got a leadership team that's part of that as well.

We trademark the term rubber nerds.

Okay.

That's what we call ourselves.

So we are a very technical business, so we got a lot of nerdy people that work for us.

But we got a great senior leadership team too that brings a lot of experience both in lab
testing.

as well as lab application or elastomer polymer application, and then just scaling
businesses.

Okay, great.

This was a startup prior to that.

I've done turnarounds.

Startup is a whole different game.

It's different thing.

Yeah.

It's something to be good at.

You have nothing.

You have zero when you start.

How do we do this?

No one knows.

There's not even a document to tell you how to make a document.

So you have a mistake you go to or mentors you go to.

as far as learning experience, earned wisdom, anything that comes along?

yeah.

So earned wisdom is the biggest part.

So that's been part of the advantage is, you know, when scaling this, got tied in early
with some great mentors that have been advisors, mentors, even some, you know, investors

into.

Can you give a shout out to anybody?

Definitely want to give a shout out to the gentleman that brought me up in this industry,
which is Doug Hartley.

He's also invested in our business.

spent a lot of years with him and Jim Jelenek's been great as well.

yeah, Jim.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so he's actually- So you're an EOS company?

We are using EOS with Jim Jelenek and I talk to Jim every Saturday.

He's mentored me for many years.

brilliant.

Okay.

It's been a great resource for us.

fantastic.

And then anyone else we need to thank for this recognition that you're getting?

Well, definitely the full team at Ace.

I I'm the one that-

comes out to these things, but they're the ones that are actually making it happen and
they bought into the vision.

That's the biggest thing.

You can have the best vision in the world, but without a team that buys into it and
executes it.

Well, you got to communicate it, right?

And then you got to the people that align to it.

That's the gig, right?

I'm sure Jim would tell you that.

Yes, That's what Jim says.

So how are you going to share uh the accolades when you get back to the office?

Yeah, I think we're going to have a party.

uh

We also just recently got named one of the best places to work.

Congratulations, that's great.

Our fourth year in a row.

And so we got a couple things to celebrate.

It need to be a big party.

Nothing like an operating system to help you get those kind of things.

It clears everything up, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Well, thanks so much, man.

I really appreciate your time today and I look forward to seeing you in November, November
6th at the event.

Sounds great.

All right.

man.

uh