Director's Message: Good Things Take Time

In our present world of instant gratification, patience is in short supply. I know I am not telling you anything you don’t already know, but let’s think about it. Payday loans, same-day deliveries, five-day degrees (that’s a good one!), and high-speed Internet connections take us down a path where we are all too often leaving patience out of the picture altogether.

I’m not saying that speed is a bad thing, but good things take time. Take the time to learn and invest your energy wisely over the long haul to reap the rewards. There is no doubt you have heard of someone in this industry who decided to use YouTube for their powder coating education. After all, being a powder coater is easy, right? How many of those stories have a successful outcome? Often, we hear about the novice who watched an amateur video to train, and instead the result was more of a train wreck, thus marring the reputation of our industry. Just like any good education, training in the powder coating field is better left to the pros—and that’s where the Powder Coating Institute (PCI) comes in.

I like to think of PCI as the powder industry’s inner circle, providing access to outstanding education and key industry experts. We offer many opportunities to not only experience personal professional growth, but to also bring value to one’s own organization. I remember reading a column here in Powder Coated Tough a number of years back written by one of our past PCI presidents, Bob Cregg. He compared joining an industry association like PCI to joining a gym, saying that you can’t write a check and expect to improve your health without breaking a sweat. He explained that the more his company got involved, the more value they gained from their membership. Thankfully, we have a good number of member company volunteers who continue to give back to this industry with time and a passion for their work.

Many of our member company volunteers help us provide education through various avenues, such as developing technical sessions for our events, writing articles for this magazine, leading webinars or by instructing our Powder Coating 101 and 202 Training Workshops. We are fortunate to work in an industry where so many give so much! And our many Workshop instructors continue to get great evaluations from the attendees. Visit www. powdercoating.org/events to sign up for training from the professionals. The connections you and your team will make will be a great contribution to the overall education of your staff and will hopefully be just the beginning of your contributions within our industry

All the opportunities that PCI provides to the industry have taken time to develop, revise, improve and rework. We take our education mission seriously, and as I said at the outset of this message, good things take time. Don’t think you can operate a great powder system overnight. Take the time to learn, constantly improve and ensure that you are producing quality powder coated parts. Remember, PCI is here to help!

Trena Benson, Executive Director
832-367-5173
trena@powdercoating.org