Danielle Inglis

I attribute my success to my mom. She started her business as a tax preparer and accountant literally in her bedroom with 50 tax clients coming to sit on her bed while she did their taxes. She moved from her bedroom to the laundry room, and eventually built it into an incredibly successful business that gave us an amazing life. She came from nothing, they only had meat once a week when she was growing up and ate beans the rest of the time. She built her business from the ground up and was able to retire and sell it all at a young age. She's definitely my inspiration. I also remember telling my best friend at dinner one time, I'm not gonna be broke anymore. I'm gonna go back and finish college, and I'm gonna knock it out the park, and I'm never gonna be broke again. And I haven't been since.

The best career advice I've ever been given is to stay humble, stay confident, and that knowledge is power. No one can take your knowledge away from you. That is one thing that I have strived to do, is get all the knowledge that I can and continue education any opportunity that I get.

I would say be quick to think, slow to speak. But when you walk into a room, walk in with confidence enough like you belong there. If people believe that you belong in every room, then they don't try to talk over you, they give you respect, but you have to give the respect to yourself and carry yourself confidently. In order for men, mainly, or in order for everyone to respect you, you have to carry yourself in a way where it's confident, you're humble, but you know what you're talking about. You just have to be assertive and walk in there like you own the place. Be slow to speak, because whenever you know what you're talking about, then you start blowing people out the water. You have to be confident in yourself, because you're gonna bring out other people's insecurities, and that's something I battle every day.

The biggest challenge is that this is a very much male-predominantly world, in this field. It's very, very male-predominantly owned for machinists. I don't know any other female machinists. So whenever I walk into a room and we're talking about rotating equipment, it's automatically, like, she's a girl, she doesn't really know what she's talking about. That's why I say be slow to speak, because whenever you know what you're talking about, then you start blowing people out the water. The biggest thing is just being a female in a male-predominant industry. And it is 2026, and it is still very much a problem. And then whenever you know more than some of the men, because not everyone is a machinist, they start getting a little insecure, so be prepared. You have to be confident in yourself, because you're gonna bring out other people's insecurities, and that's something I battle every day.

One of the characteristics of a machinist is honesty and integrity, and to always do the right thing. If you are rebuilding a pump and you notice that on the very first steps you did not do something right, or it's cocked, or whatever the case may be, a good machinist is gonna tear it all the way down and put it on correctly, because if you don't, it's gonna show in the long run. And that's what I bring home to my kids. Always do the right thing. If you do the right thing, then you always succeed. These things spin at 3600 RPM, so if you've got something wrong, you can cause a fire, you can cause it to crash, and that's all money. If you don't put it right together, it shows. It comes out in the long run, whether it's fast or slow. It's gonna come, so they're always like, always do the right thing, even if it means starting over from scratch. That's what I tell my kids, do the right thing.