Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Villalobos.
Hi Michelle, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Honestly, I never set out to be a welder. In the summer of 1999 I left a job at Citicorp. Good job on paper, but it just wasn’t me, and I couldn’t tell you exactly why — it just wasn’t. I took a seasonal maintenance job out at Smithville Lake, mostly because I loved being outside. A man named Ken took a chance and hired me, and my whole story still starts with him, because he had no idea what he set in motion.
Toward the end of that season, a couple of guys were out there welding deer stands. I got curious and asked what they were doing. A few days later I was looking up welding schools. Found an ad for Missouri Welding Institute in one of those penny-saver papers, called for a tour, and that was it. I went to learn for fun. I walked in with zero plans of making a career out of it — and I fell in love with the whole thing.
From there I just kept chasing what I loved. My first jobs were at power plants; I loved being around construction and watching something get built. Early on, I got pulled toward quality control — I was at a new power plant build and kept asking the QC manager about his job until he told me they needed help and put me through the test. Years later, my last job as an employee was at a valve shop, where I went from a welder to a QC manager and helped us get ISO-certified. Over the years, I’ve done pipe, structural, architectural handrail, breweries, a hemp extraction plant — a little bit of everything.
I started The Industrious Company in 2014. Along the way, I taught hobby classes, did make-and-take nights, started an all-girls class I called Weld Like a Girl, taught kids, and even went back to my own school to hand out shirts to the girls coming up. And over and over, people started asking me to help with their businesses — and I kept seeing the same problems everywhere I went. Everything’s in the owner’s head. No systems, no processes, nobody set them up to succeed from day one.
Today I’m building software for steel and welding fab shops.
I decided to start building tools specifically for the shops that often get overlooked — the small and midsize shops just starting out. I’m taking 26 years of experience and plugging it right into software, so those shops have something built with them in mind. That’s why it’s called Industrious Seeds by The Industrious Company. Each piece of software is a seed — you plant it as you grow. Future tools won’t be one-size-fits-all; the idea is a solid foundation that can possibly be modified to fit each shop’s environment. And once they all come together, you get Industrious Yield: everything you need to run and grow your company with real systems and processes in place from day one, instead of figuring it out the hard way.
A lot of it was inspired by the mistakes I see all the time — the same confusion and miscommunication, shop after shop. I’ve watched it, I’ve lived it, and now I’m building the thing that fixes it. That’s what gets me up in the morning. I’ve done a lot, and I’ve got a lot more I want to do.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No — but I’m grateful for every bump, because that’s where all of this came from.
The biggest struggle was honestly just finding my path. I’m a curious person; I love to learn, and I chased a lot of things trying to figure out where I fit. From the outside, it probably looked like I jumped around a lot. But every one of those turns taught me something I’m using right now to build these tools.
Getting work at the start was hard, too. When I went out on my own, it was word of mouth and me searching the internet for anything I could find. It was a grind. But I kept at it, kept learning, kept building.
Looking back, none of it was wasted. I needed every hard thing to put together what I’m making now. The struggle was the education.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
The Industrious Company is about one thing: giving steel and welding fab shops the tools and know-how to run right — especially the small and midsize shops just starting out. I build software under the name Industrious Seeds, because each tool is a seed you plant as your business grows.
My first tool is the Industrious Optimizer. If you’ve ever built a material list by hand, you know it eats hours, and it’s easy to over-buy or under-buy when you’re doing it that way. The Optimizer gives you that time back — you send it your material list, and it returns a clean buy-and-cut sheet, catching over- and under-buying before you ever place your order. It saves you the labor of manual entry and money on materials. There’s more built into it, and more tools on the way.
So much of what I build comes straight from 26 years in the trade — as a welder, in quality control, assisting with ISO certification, and running my own shop. It comes from the headaches I’ve lived and watched other shops live too: the confusion, the miscommunication, the things nobody warns you about when you’re starting out. I build from the shop floor, because that’s where I’ve spent my life.
What I’m most proud of is the heart behind it — “the structure behind the steel.” I don’t just want to sell software. I want to see people win. I want a brand-new shop to have systems and processes in place from day one, instead of learning everything the hard way as I did. The bigger vision is Industrious Yield: all the tools coming together in one place to help you run and grow your company from start to finish. And down the road, teaching people how to use these tools — and their own know-how — to build something that lasts.
If there’s one thing I’d want your readers to know, it’s this: there’s real value in the people who’ve done the work and want to lift up the next ones coming. That’s what I’m building. And I’m just getting started.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
Honestly? I’m a researcher. That’s my resource. When I want to learn something, I go dig it all up myself — I don’t have one book or one podcast I lean on. I’ll chase down whatever I need to know, whether that’s a new Microsoft tool, something about AI, or how another industry solves a problem, and I’ll keep pulling the thread until I actually understand it. That habit is probably the single biggest reason I’m able to build software now. I never wait for someone to hand me the answer. I go find it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/industriousseeds/
- Youtube: @theindustriousseeds
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@industriousseed_s
