From Frustration to Empowerment | A Positively Riveting Story

When I tell people I started a company devoted entirely to blind riveting — and it doesn’t involve selling tools or fasteners — the reaction is usually the same: a look of confusion, sometimes paired with a dubious smile. But if you’ve ever dealt with unreliable tools, recurring rework, or been pulled into a meeting full of finger-pointing when a pop rivet continually fails, then you already understand why Positively Riveting needs to exist.

For over 20 years, I worked in technical sales, training teams across North America on blind rivet tooling and applications. And no matter the plant, the product, or the people — the same problems surfaced again and again: no one truly owned the process. Most were simply going through the motions. Blind rivets were part of daily operations, yet almost no one understood how they actually worked. So when failures happened, the blame game began.

I watched talented engineers, maintenance techs, and individual contributors at all levels of the process get caught in the same cycle.

Bad rivets blamed on good tools.

Good tools trashed because no one knew why they were failing.

Delays. Rework. Frustration.

And worse — spending time and money in vain.

So, I did something about it.

I launched Positively Riveting to bring unbiased, solution-neutral training and consulting to the industry. Unlike vendor-led sessions that focus on selling product, our training is tool and fastener agnostic. We don’t sell tools or fasteners. That’s by design. Instead, we focus on how rivets work so you can understand better when they fail.

Whether you’re a manufacturer, vendor partner, or part of the support team, our goal is to help you:

– Troubleshoot with confidence

– Identify root causes instead of guessing

– Speak a common language about your processes

– Build trust by sharing knowledge

I’ve built training that’s technical and approachable, shaped by real-world applications and a whole lot of time in the field — adjusting stroke, modifying nosepieces, and chasing problems that turned out to have nothing to do with the tools I sold. It was only when I started asking why — not just what — that I began solving the right problems. And that changed everything.

Maybe it’s the tool.

Maybe it’s the rivet.

Maybe it’s a deeper issue no one’s been able to trace.

But one thing is certain: rework, frustration, and blame don’t have to be part of your process.

Things happen. Problems arise. At Positively Riveting, we give you the insight, language, and confidence to truly understand your processes — so you can keep moving forward, even when things go wrong. This is more than training. It’s a shift in how you think about fasteners, failure, and fixing what matters.

That’s why I started this company. Because with the right training and insight, your team stops reacting and starts resolving.

Until next time... M