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Business of Machining - Episode 48
204 Plays7 years ago
Dreaming of Air Bearings
Air bearings do what? Keep Grimsmo up all night, apparently!
Every Minute Counts
Customer service inefficiencies suck away time and get Saunders into a funk. While some things are out of your control; one thing is certain: you do have the ability to make your own happiness.
Accounting - KNOW YOUR TICKS AND BOBS!
Saunders and Grimsmo discuss pros and cons of accounting software such as Chase, Xero, Wave, and QuickBooks. Software is definitely not "one size fits all."
“Any process only works as good as you use it.” - Grimsmo
Looking Back
You might know your goals but do you know what they aren’t? Grimsmo and Saunders reflect on how success has impacted their work/life balance.
Getting FIRED = better leadership?
Grimsmo contemplates batching parts to free up the lathe for exciting new products. Finally, if you'd like to become a patron, visit the Business of Machining Podcast Patreon!
Coming Soon:
Guest series - Once a month, a guest from the machining industry will hop on board!
Flashlight Fridays!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 48 and welcome to a new year 2018. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. Good morning. Good morning. Good year. Happy Christmas.
Sleeping Troubles and Product Excitement
00:00:15
Speaker
Yeah. How are you? I'm doing really good. I'm feeling really pumped up even though I slept in until 645 and I texted you the second I woke up and I'm like, oh crap, I'm going to be late. Why are you not sleeping? That's not good.
00:00:29
Speaker
So two nights ago clara stayed up until four thirty and she just was wired and could not sleep and last night was my version of that she gets it from me no but i was thinking of this product idea yesterday and i actually emailed frank and tom at mari tool and i'm like
Cost Concerns with New Product
00:00:48
Speaker
I sent them a little video and I'm like, dude, you guys got to make this thing. I'm going to keep it secret for now, but, um, you guys got to make this thing. I think it'd be awesome. I would totally buy one and they come back to me and they're like, sweet. I love it. First impression. It'll be very expensive. Just do the way we have to make it. And I'm like, Oh, that's more than I was thinking of paying. Um, but I still, I still support it. Like go ahead. Then I was thinking about it and thinking about it last night. And I'm like, Hmm,
Understanding Air Bearings
00:01:10
Speaker
air bearings.
00:01:13
Speaker
Like your video from a week or two ago with your mittatoyo base has an air bearing, move it around, right? Well, I don't think that's technically an air bearing. I think it is. Air pressure lifts it up and makes it float, right? Yeah, but that thing is, sorry, you're probably right. Like air bearing's on a CMM, but I guess. Yeah, it's the version of an air bearing. Yeah, fair enough.
00:01:36
Speaker
There's like flat ones like that, and then radial ones, and all this. I stayed up on my phone researching. See, I think an air bearing that's active, so like there's air bearings in really high end or higher end than my machine's CNC spindles. So the spindle can rotate, which is crazy to think that there's actually not metal on metal contact.
00:01:57
Speaker
rotating a spindle as it's hogging out material or cutting. There's actually a film gap of air precisely maintaining tolerances and concentricity. Also like CMMs when they move on air bearings. My midget toy you I know is not quote unquote accurate and precise when you're using the air hockey table feature of it.
00:02:18
Speaker
So I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think it's more like the air hockey table air bearing. Just move it around. You're not supposed to measure with it while you're moving it. That makes sense. OK. And that wasn't my impression. You lift it up, you move it, you let go. Right, right, right. And then it's stuck again. And yeah, that's what I figured yours does, too. Well, I guess CMM is measuring accurately while the air bearing is moving. That's cool. OK, OK. Which is cool.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's just a higher and higher quality version of the same thing. I don't know. But yeah, so I did some research last night and watched a bunch of YouTube videos and I'm like, these things are awesome. Anyway, yeah, so that's that's why I was up way late last night. My brain was just turned on and I was totally nerding out on Wikipedia, on YouTube, on websites and just so much so much should make an air bearing version of a harmonic drive.
00:03:12
Speaker
Because those are like harmonic drives are like my favorite mechanical thing ever. And there's something ironic because making an air-bearing version, I'm going to say is it possible, but then you get never say anything's possible. Yeah. There's probably no point to doing it, but it's nerd out. Well, yeah. Anyway. Sweet. OK, so you're OK, though? Oh, yeah, all good. OK. Not sleeping is not a good thing, really.
00:03:41
Speaker
No, so it's I had a man. I'm proud of having snapped out of it, but I got just kind of unmotivated and a little frustrated and whatever
Customer Service Frustrations with Chase Bank
00:03:53
Speaker
all that stuff. I don't want to dwell on it and I don't want to be a downer about it. But I think it's like I told you, it's not fun to ignore it and pretend that it doesn't happen. And then I kind of had a low point yesterday when we are moving a big update on moving accounting systems.
00:04:11
Speaker
we are not going to wave. I'll come back to that. But I was trying to disconnect my Chase Bank direct access, which is a $10 a month functionality that allows QuickBooks to talk to Chase. And that's kind of
00:04:27
Speaker
None of the online accounting systems require that paid connectivity from your bank's side, which the fee itself isn't a big deal in the sense that we'll incur other fees for new functionality we're getting, but it's emblematic of how out of date QuickBooks is and how
00:04:44
Speaker
frustrating that whole thing is. Anyway, I was able to enable this service online, but to disable it, they make you call customer service. And I was transferred three different times, each time required to go through extensive account validation. And I lost it. It's funny because losing it with a customer service agent never
00:05:05
Speaker
helps you because it's not their fault. They're literally just following their rules. What is unacceptable is Chase is basically pushing all of the effort onto their customer because they have zero appetite for building a system that handles this well in the terms of better staffing or better skill or labor or systems. They just say, well, we're pushing you completely out of this call center over to another call center where you're going to take the brunt of all this revalidation
00:05:31
Speaker
And it's a waste of time. It took me 13 minutes to uncheck a box, basically. And I lost it and I know better. And I just realized I can't do this as an entrepreneur because there's going to be things like this all the time that come up. And the type A person of me that has hustled to get where I am and felt like I've had to deliver good value to products and people and treat them well, all that, can't stand. I feel like by not
00:06:00
Speaker
getting upset about it, I'm condoning it. But in the reality, you just got to let it go, which is hard for me. It really is. Yeah. I mean, don't sweat the small stuff kind of things, but it's the small stuff that makes a small business. It's a million small stuff. Yeah. And it's like you can't, sorry, good.
00:06:21
Speaker
No, yeah, at any one time, there's always something, there's always a fire to put out. And it's all how you look at it and treat it. And kind of the mood you're at going into it will affect the mood you're at coming out of it.
00:06:33
Speaker
Right. It's just like you've got to smile and you've got to say, this is going to be a terrible experience where they're going to, I'm going to get treated poorly. And every person is like, we're so happy to offer you great service with Chase. How can we help you today? Or what's your name? It's like, I've given you my names. I've given you all the information about my life three times in the past five minutes. You can't, you can't have somebody else do this because, because of the whole, it's got to be you anyway. Um,
00:06:55
Speaker
I've been having ongoing tendinitis pain and I was talking to somebody about it and they were kind of like man up. It was kind of a good thing. And I wasn't complaining so much as I was like, I want to treat it if possible. I want to voice the discomfort because I want it solved, not because I'm going to gripe about it. But I think there was a lot to be said for the message of like, hey, you know what? A lot of us have a lot of little things, especially as you get older.
00:07:25
Speaker
You can keep talking about it or you can just recognize that we live a great life. We get to do what we love to do and don't let that stuff take over. So is that what helped kind of snap you out of it or move you back back into the happy go lucky John Saunders that we all know? Yeah, I mean, it's like you can say make your own happiness, but it's like I knew with that chase person, I could have kept just giving them the information that they asked for. Like I knew I could have doing that, but I let myself
00:07:54
Speaker
I let myself go to the dark side. Just don't. Literally, I feel like people will ... I feel like if I fight it, I'll send a message or prove to message or again. By fighting it, I'm not condoning how bad of a system it is. It doesn't matter. It's the system. Just move along.
00:08:19
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Your frustration is not going to change the system whatsoever. It's just it's like you're going to wallow in your misery for a few minutes, which kind of sometimes feels good, but it also is like super destructive. Right. Right. Yeah. Do you do a case study on it? Like what did what did Saunders actually approve and accomplish? Well, what he did do was roll in the next hour of productivity and thinking, no, seriously. Right. Yep.
00:08:44
Speaker
But there's that tough guy or entrepreneurship. You have to do it right. I think that you got to let go of sometimes. And just accept it.
Comparing Accounting Systems
00:08:53
Speaker
On a much more awesome note, so we were going to move to wave. Wave happens to be free. That was not the main driver of it. In other words, I had no problem paying. It just looked like a great system. A lot of the work
00:09:10
Speaker
in setting up Wave was also the idea of kind of phasing down QuickBooks. So we started, we had to create a couple of custom accounts, like chart of accounts in Wave for how we do our accounting with expenses. And then we set up our bank feeds, which is awesome. It's so much easier. It's great. And then I started looking at some of the integrations with other software and it was lacking. And I was, I can't remember whether I felt like they did have it and just didn't or what, but regardless,
00:09:40
Speaker
XeRO was the other really big platform that I've heard a lot of momentum behind good things about. So I went over and looked, it's not free. That's totally fine. I was initially disappointed because they don't make it clear that they limit the free trial and
00:09:59
Speaker
At first, I signed up for a free trial and I thought, well, this is terrible, but I emailed customer service and they were like, no, no, no, this is silly in my opinion, but nevertheless, they limit the free trial functionality, but they don't seem to tell you that or I missed it. Anyways, I immediately signed up for the paid account. So here's what's also about zero is
00:10:17
Speaker
And we're still three days into this, but automatic integration with our bank and credit card, that's great. Integration with PayPal, great. Integration with Shopify, that's great. Integration with Gesto and Deputy, who we do our payroll with, that's great. So this is what I want. It's not an ERP system by any means, but you and I love technology. We love computers. We love being smart about how we run our business. So a software that's going to let me
00:10:44
Speaker
have these web, you know, this web services 2.0 that we so rely on and need talk to each other. That's awesome. So QuickBooks wasn't talking to all the people, all the platforms that you needed it to. That's one of your grapes with it or? Yeah, I have a lot of grapes with QuickBooks. It's basically legacy software that they've kind of continued to update, but it's very,
00:11:09
Speaker
It's very old. I won't get into it. You never did move into the QuickBooks online platform. Correct. That was one of the things I was considering. For sure, Intuit or QuickBooks has a check mark against it because they're not a great company.
00:11:26
Speaker
they have made it clear that they want you to use their overpriced services for things like payroll or credit card processing. And they're not modern. They're not in any way, like, I don't mean to say hip and cool, like I'm looking for the most popular people, but a company like zero, they're happy to embrace
00:11:44
Speaker
working with other companies and other people. And they're happy to let you choose. Intuit and QuickBooks, I find very poor software design, very poor platforms, very bad fee structure. It doesn't play nicely with others. On that note, we're about two months into our QuickBooks Online subscription.
00:12:05
Speaker
Sorry, not sorry? Yeah, exactly. How is it? It's going well for us. I mean, we haven't tried Zero or even hardly looked into it, but I've heard other people suggest it. Barry, being the basically lifelong accountant, is like a pig in a pigsty, just kind of loving it. He's like, oh, it's so cool. Because he remembers QuickBooks from 10 years ago.
00:12:28
Speaker
So to him, it's like the coolest thing in the world, because it is all integrated. We've got PayPal. We've got our bank accounts linked in directly. Do we have credit cards linked in? I forget. I don't think so. I don't think so. And we don't do gusto and deputy at this stage. So we don't have to link to that. But so far, so good. And I guess the big thing for us is just getting on a accounting platform, period, which we didn't have before, and doing our books.
00:12:58
Speaker
We would just do bookkeeping. Like at the end of the year, we had a bookkeeper for many years kind of do stuff for us. Um, it was not proper. So literally you were like the box of receipts that you didn't even process. Yeah. Okay. No, that's fine. Yeah, exactly. And there might be a lot of people out there listening that are like, yeah, that's me too.
00:13:19
Speaker
That's what I love about software like Xero. QuickBooks Online, I'm sure, is world's better than the desktop version. That's what QuickBooks is trying to push people to because they want that recurring fee stream as well. The connectivity of just being cloud-based, everything's there and connected and live. Although it's not live, I find that the bank account numbers are about a day behind.
00:13:45
Speaker
which is weird. So like from our regular bank account, if I make some purchases or some payments or whatever, then QuickBooks doesn't actually see it till the next day. Even though in online banking through my bank account, I can see it immediately, basically. There's some pretty, this'll get boring quickly, but like with Chase, even on some of our ACH, which is the US online
00:14:10
Speaker
how money is moved between banks and the Federal Reserve and stuff. There's a weird thing where it will post as a temporary transaction is basically a way of checking if the advance available, but then it gets pulled away from our online and then it clears overnight. That may be your back. I find that with credit card payments too, that takes two or three days to process kind of thing.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. So we're going to do a video on NYC CNC showing zero. Some of the things that are already phenomenal. We are trying to get rid of writing checks. We were writing 10 to 15 checks a week. It's a lot of work. I got to do check runs or print checks, sign checks, stuff them in envelopes, stamp them. It's a lot of work. Checks cost money. We're now doing online bill pay.
00:15:00
Speaker
which is great because most of our checks go to the same people. So that's super, super awesome. And with Xero, everything is live in the sense that you don't have to sit there and do manual imports or wait for it to, there may be a lag, but we can set up accounting rules and it's gonna be, the whole point is lean. The whole point is having good information. We're doing online invoicing, which has been super awesome already. We've sent out a couple, it's great.
00:15:30
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, just yesterday, we got QuickBooks Online to print checks for us on the fancy check, printer, paper kind of thing, which is big for us. And then we can pay our landlord with properly printed, professional-looking checks. So this kind of makes it easier for us. So we're not just handwriting everything every time. But I would love to move to online bill pay for everybody, or automatic withdrawals kind of.
00:15:56
Speaker
especially for things like rent or when we buy our coolant, I have to send them a check. I'm like, this is so old. How do we still have this system? No, we did the same progression. We hand wrote checks. It was a nightmare because of the work involved. And there's no continuity. When you do the QuickBooks checks, there's much better record keeping with your accounting system and so forth. But looking to bill pay, I would highly recommend
00:16:24
Speaker
that I am willing to set up my own recurring bill pay for things like my rent. I do not usually ever fill out someone else's auto debit ACH, which gives them permission to debit your account for the bill. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'll pay you. I'll pay you on time. But I'm not signing a certificate that lets you kind of access my, they don't have access to your account. Again, they can credit you at any time. They can, exactly, which I'm not a fan of.
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, I have that for my local tool vendor. They're signed up. My credit card is on file, basically, and they just charge it at the end of every month. That I'm more OK with, because you have more in the US. You have a lot more consumer protection mechanisms behind a credit card than you do with a bank account. Sure. Yeah, OK. Yeah.
00:17:12
Speaker
I feel like that wraps up the accounting portion of the business of machining. No, but it is really fun. It's real. It's business. Knowing your numbers is huge and getting to a point to manage cash and understanding if you're making money. For me, I used to hate it. I used to do in 2015. Oh, no. You've always been decent at it. I used to hate it up until this year. I would just almost ignore all accounting knowledge
00:17:41
Speaker
And now I'm kind of sucking it up like a sponge and I'm like, this is actually really cool. And yeah, that's what I think is exciting about whether it's QuickBooks or zero online is it makes it makes it more fun to do it because you're not like with old versions of QuickBooks.
Keeping Accurate Financial Records
00:17:55
Speaker
It was so defeating where you had to redo all this manual stuff and there was no search functionality. The list goes on. So now I'm not having this
00:18:05
Speaker
It's like calling Chase. You know you're going to be on hold for 10 minutes. It's really hard to get excited about doing that. So I would say for folks that are looking for a low cost solution, do check out Wave. I'm going to use Wave for my little real estate company because it's pretty small and we don't do a lot and I don't need the pay version. So Wave still looks awesome for that and again is free.
00:18:30
Speaker
Nice. But yeah, knowing your books, knowing your numbers, having an actual grasp on your income and spending. And these are numbers that I never really followed closely until Barry came on and saved us in that aspect and absolutely helped explain things that I was ignoring that were crippling the business and suffering. Do you know, Barry probably does this now, but what a monthly bank reconciliation is? Yeah, basically.
00:19:00
Speaker
So if you're good, meaning...
00:19:06
Speaker
Just what do you call it? He calls it ticks and bobs. Making everything line up, making sure everything is up to date and accounted for. Yeah. Without doing a bad job. That's right, but it's not proactive, it's reactive. All accounting softwares will have a reconciliation functionality. I just did mine this morning before our podcast. Super quick now because
00:19:33
Speaker
We do the online syncing, so all of your transactions should be there. Then you download your PDF bank statement and then you go through it and you just basically match the checks to make sure your deposits match your deposits, your expenses match your expenses. It will then show you, like for instance, we have six people that we wrote checks to in December that didn't cash the checks yet. That's actually helpful to know.
00:19:58
Speaker
And what's most important is if you do bank reconciliations, it is like 99.99% certain that your books are good, which is really important when it comes to not having nightmares at the end of the year. And if you get audited, you're going to be way ahead of the rest of the game because your books match. Yes, yes.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, so he definitely takes care of that. He tries to bring me in to follow along, just to make sure that I'm understanding what he's working on. Because his goal is, at the end, to have me know as much about my business as he does, from an accounting standpoint. I need to be able to run this myself, if anything ever happens to him, or et cetera. That's good.
00:20:43
Speaker
That's great. Should we really end the accounting conversation? No, so I brought up the whatever that was because in my little Excel file that I keep track of for stuff in my life, I jotted down 2017 goals back a year ago. It's funny because when I wrote those goals, they were goals. They were like things that I was hoping to do. I went through them last night and they were all like
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah, I did that. Yeah, I did that. It was almost offensive how I had done them all and almost not with excitement. I don't know if I have it pulled up right now, but it was like the partnership with Clickspring. That was a crazy hurdle. How are we going to do this in source parts and products and ship and accounting and a new relationship with somebody? Now that is smooth, smooth sailing.
00:21:40
Speaker
And then it was like revenue for the business or products that we want to release and places like all this stuff. And it's also goes back to what we've talked about before, which is one of the things that's tough about an entrepreneur is recognizing your own kind of victories.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, your own progress and success. So yeah, I can imagine just you sitting there looking at that coin. That was my goal, really? That was easy. I did that, and it's done. And now it's off the list, and I have much bigger things in mind. Higher video editor. Oh my goodness. But think about it. Think about what you, I mean, it was more recent for you with Aaron. That's a crazy. Absolutely. That is staring into the abyss. And now it's there.
00:22:23
Speaker
Absolutely. Julie is just such a part of your business life now that I can't imagine time before her, but I can't believe that was just a year ago. Do a better job managing John as the entrepreneur versus John as the machinist versus John as the shop foreman. Not quite perfect, but ... Oh, but you made big progress on that.
00:22:46
Speaker
So you got, if you don't, if you don't close the loop on these things, they're sort of worthless. Like, you know, like I've never been good at goal setting. Um, and it's something I'm starting to learn more about this year, just hearing what other, how, how they structure their, um, their goals and how they go through them.
00:23:10
Speaker
And like, do you check those throughout the year? Absolutely not. No, you just write it. And that's your that's your theory is write it down. You know, you state your intentions basically and then and then reconcile. You need to stay on track with what you're trying to do for sure. Like it's not that it's not that I hide it, but to me, it's kind of a count the cards when you're done playing type of thing. Right. Yeah.
00:23:37
Speaker
I think for me, I just end up kind of like you did, but it doesn't work. You write a list, you get all excited, and then you put the list away, and then you don't forget about the things, but you're not pumped up about them throughout the year. I think for me, I would need regular accountability, both from somebody else. For example, if I shared my list with you,
00:24:00
Speaker
and you checked in on me every week or every month or something like that, just be like, how's this all coming? Or I set up reminders for myself monthly, like calendar reminder. These are big picture goals. They're not like little tasks. Like by March, I need to release version two of this product. It's not like that. So these are more goals where it's like,
00:24:20
Speaker
that needs to be my whole mindset. And I shouldn't have to be reminded of them because if I didn't, if I didn't achieve them, I either went really far astray or priorities and priorities do change. Oh my gosh, you go look back to old goals. It is hilarious. That's what I think is so rewarding about, you know, like just what defines you as a person is what was important to you five years ago versus what's important to you now. Yeah.
00:24:47
Speaker
And you have those goals, you keep them in your one. Yeah, so that's what I think is helpful is I would, I mean, it works for me. So I feel like I want to recommend it, which is kind of, I have this master file that is, has notes, diary journal, track stuff. And it's a little bit of a dump bag, which is both good and bad. But the thought is,
00:25:09
Speaker
if I'm looking for something, I nine times out of 10 put it in that Excel file. So at least I'm not, I used to have notepad files and text files and scratch papers all over the place. That doesn't work.
00:25:21
Speaker
There's also, it's funny, I never thought about this way, but I have a really good process sheet. I never thought of it as a process sheet, but I have a monthly, month-end Excel in that same file, Excel list, and at the end of every month, right now it's only got 24 things on it, but it's everything
00:25:40
Speaker
is every month, every quarter, every year. But it makes sure I remember to do, as a small business owner in the US, I have to pay quarterly taxes, or I have to pay prospective quarterly taxes, checking sales tax on a quirky website that we run, all this little stuff. And then it even has, at the end of the year, my year in review thing. I just check it. So it's a good example of, I just obey that list. And it makes it much lower stress to know what I have to do. The process is the expert, you say.
00:26:11
Speaker
Interesting. Like any, any process only works as good as you use it. You know, like, like somebody having an actual physical notebook with all this same stuff in it would work just as well if they use it as much as you use that. And I find that I mix and match and, you know, some stuff's on Trello and some stuff's on paper and some stuff's on a notepad and like,
00:26:33
Speaker
You need cognitively to ... Yeah. This Excel file literally has ... It probably has ... You can have different sheets inside of Excel. It probably has 30 or 40 sheets. Nice. Sort of. Yeah.
00:26:49
Speaker
Is it cloud-based at all, or is it stuck on your computer? If your computer catches fire, you're hooped. For 10 years, I've used either SugarSync or Dropbox or Google Drive. Yes, you do have it backed up. That's good grief. That's the single worst thing in the world is trying to think about, oh my gosh, it's the end of the month. Do I have to go log into the Bureau of Workers comp site to check
00:27:16
Speaker
if I've paid my accrual for unemployment, uh, miserable. Yep. The fun stuff of hiring people. Yeah. So what do you do for payroll? If I can ask by hand, uh, it's been, it's been by hand up until two weeks ago when we're having QuickBooks do payroll now, um, which is, it's been good. Uh, it's still seems very manual. Um,
00:27:43
Speaker
which I was just hoping it would be more automated. I mean, Barry is taking care of it, but it seems like he's explaining and spending a lot of time on it. And it's like, this is not the point. Like it was easier to just do it by hand. But I think the goal is to get this is just a faster and, um,
00:27:58
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. Good. So now that we have our podcasts on Wednesdays instead of on Fridays, like our recording dates, what else are you up to for the rest of Wednesday? Good question. I am filming a Wednesday widget. I did it last night. I got to go finish it up right now. We did a video on Cutter Comp, which I actually really enjoyed doing.
00:28:24
Speaker
Yes. There's been some good amounts of chatter and I would say trolling at the risk of using that word. And one of the things that kind of baby realized this kind of ties in with last week being a little bit frustrated or down. I was like, you know, what's funny is I don't want I don't I like having friends that are really good machinists and really good experts and all that. But like I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I don't I'm not aspiring to roll with them. Like in some respects,
00:28:52
Speaker
goes back to what's your long-term end goal. If money were no object, we would all have shops full of Hermes and microns and whatever. But that doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is usually making parts. And I'm much a bigger fan of... It goes back to I would rather hang out with... I'd rather learn from the really good machinists, but I'd rather hang out a lot of times with
00:29:14
Speaker
scrappy entrepreneurs who are more at the hobby or medium level. This is what gets me going with some of the YouTube comments. It's like, dude, bro, I'm not trying to be a NASA JPL machinist, nor am I ever trying to represent that I am. But it was a good feeling because it made me remember back to what I love doing and what I'm doing and who's your audience, that kind of thing.
00:29:40
Speaker
Exactly. Sometimes when I talk to very high-end machinists or guys that are basically just collecting a paycheck, but they have the skills to back it up, they're not as creative sometimes. They're not as scrappy, like you said. They won't fix it at any cost. They'll be like, I'll just wait for the part to come in next month, next week. And it's like, no, I want to fix it now. I want the solution. I want to figure this out. This is a gnawing challenge for me to figure out.
00:30:08
Speaker
I'm not going to accept defeat and just wait for the new one to come in. Come on. Right. All that being said, that doesn't mean I'm accepting any form of mediocrity that we can't make excellent, excellent, excellent parts. It just means I'm okay, not. Of course. You and I have a friend who will absolutely remain anonymous, who we were both talking to recently, who was like, when you have all of these machines in real estate or overhead or payroll or obligations,
00:30:37
Speaker
Sometimes I miss the days where it was just easy and fun and low key. And that's, everybody who, to be specific, everyone who owns a Torbok,
00:30:49
Speaker
may think, oh my gosh, it'd be awesome to have one of these big expensive, crazy machines. And the reality is, it is pretty cool. I'm not going to lie about that. On the flip side, it was really refreshing to hear the honest feedback of somebody who's gone down that path, who was like, I kind of missed it. I kind of missed those old days. It was actually, we were still able to do a lot, blah, blah, blah.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think my wife certainly misses those days when I was around a lot more. I was in the garage. Our monthly burn, our overhead was way less. And now I'm away seven to 12 hours a day. And it's a lot different than working at home in the garage. And she's at home most of the time. And I don't see her like we used to see her. So she certainly misses that. I'm so in it here that when I'm at the shop, I'm on.
00:31:39
Speaker
I'm having fun, I'm doing what I love. I almost don't have time to miss her because I'm so active in what I'm doing, right? That was one of my, to guess what I'm doing this today. Two things, one, continuing to fire myself, which has been freaking amazing. But also what was interesting to me was when I jotted down my 2017 goals and my 2018 sort of thoughts and plans and all that, just a hair too much of,
00:32:08
Speaker
my life is wrapped up in my business. Now I'm not saying that to say I've made a huge mistake and blah, blah, blah, but I'm just saying like, make sure, and this ties in well with firing yourself.
Balancing Personal Life and Business
00:32:21
Speaker
I did a really good job in the second half of this year of doing a lot more picking up my kids at school, hanging out, soccer games, all that stuff, but like making sure I take time to myself and your life isn't just your business.
00:32:34
Speaker
It's pretty darn close for me and I love it. It's just like you. It's hard to turn off and in some respects that's a good thing. That's what makes us effective and strive to be more effective.
00:32:52
Speaker
But boy, it is nice to be able to turn off and actually be there with your kids and listen to them, not just think about end mills. Every single time I left the state of Ohio in 2017, it was for a work trip. And I loved every single one of them, going to California, going to Chicago. They were all phenomenal. But it's OK to travel and do something that doesn't have to be. That's OK.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah. And boy, for the past seven years, maybe two of those trips have been with family. And then all my other trips have been for work. So yeah, this year I definitely want to travel with the family more. Hopefully there's a tiny bit more financial freedom to be able to do that on a personal side than we've ever had before.
00:33:46
Speaker
I was going to ask, how do you feel being the owner of the business and you're hiring employees who are basically on the clock? Are you personally on the clock? Do you track your own hours? Do I track my own hours just to know how much I worked or do I track my own hours for payroll? No.
00:34:06
Speaker
Funny enough, I didn't actually pay myself until this week. I always reinvested the money back in the business. In the US, you can't do that forever. My understanding from my conversations with my accountant is the IRS will eventually require that you pay yourself a salary because the IRS or the government expects that you contribute to things like FICA, Social Security, et cetera.
00:34:32
Speaker
But when businesses are growing, you can argue, I believe, is my account's advice, that we're pouring all that money back into the business. We're buying machines, equipment, improving real estate. This is the first year where I'm actually paying myself. Again, we did pay ourselves the last year and a half in the form of rent, but that's a longer conversation. Kind of ties into last week's podcast about the building. But I don't track. I used to when I was in New York, and I don't know why.
00:35:04
Speaker
I'm a pretty consistent schedule and that's going to be one of my things when we write an article on how to succeed, how to get where you are. You've got to have a baseline level of intelligence and you've got to have a baseline level of passion and drive. But for everyone I've met and talked to,
00:35:24
Speaker
it's also a Herculean amount of work. And so I'm 34, but I can, between my New York days and now in Ohio, so that's, I've been 13 years in the workforce. I've worked on average two to, I've worked 70 to a hundred hours a week for 10 years or more. So you've done double or two and a half times
00:35:47
Speaker
what it would have been to have a 2000 hour a year job. So that's, I mean, in some respects that makes what I've done less impressive because of course you should, no, but seriously, right? You should have a lot more to look for it if you've worked that many hours. Right, right. The base of my question, which will lead into this is,
00:36:11
Speaker
Like being the owner, you obviously have the option to go pick up your kids and just leave and let everybody else work. Is there any guilt involved with that? I don't know. You know what I mean? It's weird to phrase it. I can't answer from the other people's perspective. I will say that I'm often, Jared gets here at six on the dot. I usually get to the shop about 6.20 or 6.25 in the morning, so I'm not the first person here.
00:36:36
Speaker
most other people roll in a little bit. It's not about, I'm not into FaceTime, so it's not, I don't even wanna make some passive aggressive comment that is implied as such. But usually I'm here just about as early and usually I'm the last one to leave. Now, yeah, I go to a lot of lunch meetings, I have a lot of meetings off out of the site. I don't feel bad about any of that stuff, but I don't think anybody who knows me, especially here, thinks, oh, he's just coasting or he's an absentee owner, you know what I mean?
00:37:08
Speaker
And I mean, as you and I both know, like there's so much behind the scenes work involved, whether you're staying up late thinking about something or working on the weekends or, you know, up at the crack of dawn, kind of planning things out, or there's so much backend work that's not on the clock. That's not even in the shop.
00:37:25
Speaker
It is more, it's become a more poignant concept to me in the last two weeks because I've literally, I have gotten a complete, I've gotten more rejuvenated, more excited about the idea of firing myself or quitting.
00:37:42
Speaker
because I want to do less, but because it's the right thing to do. It's the only way the business will succeed and grow. And now I start looking at it and I'm like, little things like we don't do a good job of organizing. You're going to laugh. We don't do a good job of organizing our torque wrenches and the inserts for the different size fittings on a torque wrench, your hex heads and adapters and all that.
00:38:04
Speaker
And yeah, we can I can have somebody else do that. But Ed's working on really good stuff. And Jared, Jared will do it. But I'm the one that should do that. And that's OK, because it's a that's a Kaizen kind of one time. Like that's kind of stuff. I don't consider that I'm not fumbling my words, but I want to fire myself so that I can bounce around and do stuff like that. And
00:38:29
Speaker
Because that is all the micro stuff that adds up to be macro changes in the business. And it's your job to see that potential. Everywhere you look, there's potential, and there's waste, and there's all this stuff. And you'd hope you'd train everybody else to start to see it as well. But it's your job to drive the charge, lead the herd kind of thing. That is.
00:38:51
Speaker
creative process. It's an organization process. It's a culture process. And maybe what I do is just sketch it out and have Alex cut the foam and put it together or something. You know what I mean? But I've got to have the free mind to think about that. And that's been unbelievably exciting to the point where I've like, you know, when I look at
00:39:12
Speaker
I love making the videos, but I'm like, do I pull back on videos for three months? It would be, I don't want to, but what you want is not always what the business needs and are you in a better place in the end for that or what's the, I want to make sure in 2018 what we do, we do incredibly well.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, yesterday, I had the lathe running, I had the mill running, and I went upstairs and I talked with Aaron for like an hour about video ideas. And halfway through, I'm thinking, man, this isn't work. I should go get back to work. And I'm like, no, actually, both machines are running.
00:39:49
Speaker
I don't want to just waste time on my computer. This is productive planning. This is work. A big part of my job is to be able to sit here and plan and brainstorm and chat with our media producer. It was great. I felt guilty halfway through. I'm like, I should get back to work. No, this is work. This is great. This is exactly what I want to do. It's freeing yourself. A lot of times it's knowing that you don't have to do something means you're
00:40:16
Speaker
more able and willing to do it because it's no longer this burdensome repetition chore. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I got a message from somebody who was sort of like, I don't know how, and he actually mentioned, I think both of us because he listens to the podcast, but don't know how you guys do it. Run a small business. There's just no time for anything. There's just no time for anything.
00:40:42
Speaker
And look, I've been in that shoes too, but I think that attitude of, I'm convinced that I'm right, that there's no other way to do this because I'm out of time. It reminds me of that, actually it was February of 2017 when Jay Pearson stood in his, actually we were sitting next to his Pearson boards. It was a very, very visual moment for me. I remember it well, vivid memory of, yeah, I've been stressed about,
00:41:08
Speaker
about two times a year. So my goal is to be stressed no more, like super stressed, anxiety, frustrated, don't know what to do, no more than two times a month. That's my goal. And I think we'll get there. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I know we'll get there actually. But it's kind of having that open attitude about not letting it get too far. Yeah. Being aware of it. Yeah.
00:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that moment because you got it on video on his. Right. Oh, man, I've never rewatched. I never rewatch. Right. Except when I forget how to do some confusion. Exactly. Yeah, I should go rewatch that. Anyways, what are you up to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? I'm at a point with the lathe right now where the lathe is going to be critical for the new products that I want to make.
00:42:06
Speaker
which will be the custom titanium pens and flashlights coming up. So I'm super duper excited, and I'm going to allow myself some time over the coming few months to dive right into that. As long as the knife production stays steady and constant and busy, then I'm good to play as much as need be.
00:42:30
Speaker
release the idea, or I asked the idea on Instagram of the idea of flashlight Fridays to pay tribute to the knife making Tuesdays that we used to do. This is a brand new product. There's a lot to learn. There's a lot to ask. So I won't start that this Friday, but soon will be really fun. But my point is to get the lathe. I know how to make all the knife parts that we make on the lathe, the screws, the bearings, the pivots, and everything like that.
00:42:56
Speaker
I'm tempted to batch it to batch work the parts and make a lot like six months worth. That's what Pearson does too. So that I can just not make knife stuff and I can turn the lathe into a flashlight pen making machine. I mean, I have to just simple measure the cost. Be willing to be willing to do the right thing, which is at this point, you're not you're not iterating the Norseman. You're not deciding to change from five holes by six holes in a part. So it's unlikely.
00:43:26
Speaker
I would think the only reason you would scrap parts would be because of a QC issue. Exactly. Tolerance issues. These parts never change. As long as they're QC'd properly and regularly so that I'm not making bad parts, then I don't see a problem making hundreds or thousands of them and we're good for six months to a year because the lathe honestly sits quiet most of the time.
00:43:52
Speaker
If you actually looked at the power logs, and that's kind of ridiculous. If I run it hard this month and make all of the knife parts we're going to need for 2018, even at extravagant goals, then man, I have 11 months of free lathe to do whatever the heck I want. Let's wind you back in a little bit here. Just do it for a month or two months.
00:44:13
Speaker
Even if you lost $500 due to scrapped parts, that's a good win because it's giving you new access to a machine on your floor that costs a lot of money. The trick will be also making sure you catch the $500 in bad parts and not a customer. That's where some people don't always anticipate the stress. But yeah, absolutely.
00:44:37
Speaker
Well, the system you're proposing is basically what I've been doing. I'll make a few months of parts at a time of this one thing, not necessarily of everything. We have kind of our Kanban system where if we're low on that part, I'll start making that part. I don't need to know how many there are as long as we have enough. But basically, my idea is to go through all of our parts and make sure that we have
00:45:01
Speaker
you know, a thousand of everything basically or a thousand knives of everything. And that way the lathe is free. It's a resource allocation spindle. I mean, it's all the awesome stuff, right? Totally. That's the, I mean, I think what you just said, it may not realize it is like, what do, what does John Grimsma want out of life? What do you, you know,
00:45:25
Speaker
I want to play. I know, right? Like, I need I need to think more about this myself. But like, ultimately, I love this idea of having a business that makes products that we're proud of that we use that inspire other people, but also afford us the ability to have this like think tank, R&D fun, fun slash serious, you know, where we make stuff.
Building a Self-Sustaining Business
00:45:44
Speaker
And that's frickin cool.
00:45:47
Speaker
It's like we've built our businesses and we're continuing to build. We're not there yet, but built our businesses to be almost self-sustaining or at least at a holdable level without our direct involvement.
00:46:02
Speaker
Like in my mind, I've got some more fixtures to make for the Norseman, just copies of what I've already made. And then once I have that done, like the mill will just make Norseman parts nonstop all day, loading fixtures, changing out tools. And then Eric's making knives and we've got the machine is coming on. And then all that's kind of.
00:46:20
Speaker
Autopilot, get that to a steady level, manage it. I'm not going to turn my back on it, but manage it so that it's steady. And then I can pull back. I want to learn more about macro programming, which I already know at least amount. But I was reading my FANUC programming book last night. And I'm like, this is so nerdy. It's so much fun. I don't believe you. There's no way you were reading a FANUC programming book last night. And you couldn't fall asleep.
00:46:49
Speaker
not, not actually calling you a liar right here on air. Wow. That is a, that's a funny thing because you don't have a forklift. I don't know how you would have gotten the book out of your shop and into your trunk. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a monster.
00:47:06
Speaker
I actually carried my backpack every day back and forth from home to work. I do. I don't use it that often, but I like having it. It's your. Oh, my God. I'm just going to just go to a Starbucks and whip open the yellow fanic macro book. No girls. I'm talk to you. Yep. Good. So speaking of sort of having the time to play and do different stuff and do new stuff, can I share our thoughts and news on some upcoming changes? Absolutely.
00:47:36
Speaker
And then we should wrap up here after that. So John and I have been chewing on this for a while, but we have two things coming.
Guest Series and Patreon Launch Announcement
00:47:42
Speaker
First is we're going to start.
00:47:44
Speaker
doing a guest series. It won't change the business of machining podcasts. That will continue to air every Friday. But for now, once a month, we're going to be inviting another entrepreneur or person on to do an additional conversation. And that's super, super, super exciting. Yeah, I can't wait. We've been thinking about this for a long time, kind of putting it off, I guess. But we've got some really cool people interested that some of which we've been friends with for a long time.
00:48:12
Speaker
it'll add a really interesting perspective to what we talk about from another lens, another point of view, like how we always talk about Jay Pearson.
00:48:20
Speaker
just another view on the kind of business that we do. And we're thinking of a decent list of questions that we can ask, a short list of questions, but we can ask the same people. But John and I want to hear their inputs. We want to hear what they say. Some of these friends have actually been the ones emailing us being like, I've been through that too. I've had that issue. But we also want to share that with you. And so this is, we think, the great way to
00:48:45
Speaker
bring that level of content to the folks that subscribe to the Business of Machine, but also keep what I hope is this kind of raw, intimate, no BS conversation that John and I have that I don't want to become. It's not a third, it's not a conversation I want to have with a third person every Friday morning, right? It needs to be just you and me, for me at least, I think. The second thing is we are launching a Patreon.
00:49:10
Speaker
So we'll have a link in the video description. If you want to support what we're doing, you can throw us a few bucks a month. We're not asking for it. We're going to keep the podcast open. So why are we starting a Patreon? Well, we have a few ideas. And our thought would be the beauty of Patreon is it lets the folks that are really interested,
00:49:29
Speaker
contribute and perhaps receive something back for it. So we're going to share what we're thinking about with that for the folks that are over on Patreon and we'll see where it goes. So again, no need to, you don't require to contribute, you don't have to contribute, but if you do enjoy what you're doing, you want to help support this.
00:49:45
Speaker
Head over there, take a look, and we'll start posting some of our thoughts and ideas for what we will do for the Patreon folks, and we'll see where it goes. Yeah. And then we can make this a bit more collaborative, hopefully. That's the question. How do we have that? How do we have the Patreon element to become something where we can potentially interact more? That's the thought, some thought of that. Yeah. So it's an experiment. This process will be R&D, and it'll be fun, and hopefully you guys can be a part of it. Yeah. You fired up? Yeah.
00:50:14
Speaker
No, it's good. I'm super excited for today. New year, it's going to be great. Awesome. Good. Crush it, bud. See you. Take care. All right, you too. Have a great day.