One of the first things he did when taking over the company was fire everyone in the human resources department.

By concentrating, instead, on how to make every employee the best employee they can be, that commitment and loyalty are given in return to the company, says Christopher Belle, CEO of Tri Tool Technologies, a firm that, according to him, makes “the most boring things you never hear about and don’t care about, but which are absolutely critical to modern life.”

Belle called HR a dirty word at his firm. “But we do have a people-and-culture team. I found if we eliminated HR, we change that mindset of beating people over the head with policies.” By instead “recognizing people for who they are and where are in life, we can change that mindset.”

Learn some element of manufacturing, Belle believes, and the world is your oyster. “One thing I like about manufacturing is it takes all the jobs. Whatever job you have in the world, you can find that with a manufacturing organization. We [Tri Tool] got a production team, a sales team, an engineering team.”

One member of every employer’s business team, however, is not performing so well—the state of California. “We’ve got arguably the nation’s best engineering schools, we’ve got a healthy flow of engineers, and so the question is can you build it here as well as design it, or are we really just a design-only type state. What I would like to see is us building more things here.”

Belle called on state policymakers “to think long and hard about the requirements we’re putting businesses owners,” and topping his list of advice is for them to get out and actually visit a business.

Click the arrow below to listen to Tri Tool Technologies CEO Christopher Belle discuss business and doing business in California with NFIB State Director John Kabateck. And, click here to list to all past NFIB California Podcasts.