Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Business of Machining - Episode 47
207 Plays7 years ago
Have a holly, jolly--uh, happy...Merry Christmas! No matter how you say it, it's a time of reflection, peace, joy, and hope. Today's episode comes with a gift: NO MORE CRAZY LAG TIME. Sometimes you gotta go old-school. Saunders uses sheets of paper to get ideas in order. Those little pieces of paper summon ideas to improve project organization. TACTILE INSTAGRAM POST Is Grimsmo on the verge of a huge decision or is it a case of "LIFE-STYLE CREEPING?" When the ball is in your court, the thought of taking a giant leap in growth is seductive. Click HERE for NYCCNC's recommended reading list. LLCs, sub chapter S, loans, reinvesting capital--intricate components of a business entity can be very "TAXING" to say the least. Saunders and Grimsmo discuss financial discipline. "Money can't buy you happiness but it does buy you options." - Saunders Coming Soon: A new shop tour video from Grimsmo! Saunders struggles to decide whether or not to sub-out the job for creating a fixture plate for the VM3... While you finish laps in the parking lot and get ready to watch new videos from Grimsmo Knives, the end of this podcast might leave you with a lump in your throat! This is a private conversation between Saunders and Grimsmo ONLY but this time, they break the 4th wall. Happy Holidays from everyone at Grimsmo Knives and NYCCNC! From the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank you for being a part of this community. 2017 was a year of challenge, change, and growth; a year chock-full of ups and downs, twists and turns-- and it's been great. 2018? BRING IT ON!
Recommended
Transcript
Holiday Greetings & Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, folks. Welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 47. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Good morning and happy holidays. Happy Christmas. Yeah. Do you guys say Merry Christmas or Happy Christmas? It makes us happy Christmas. It doesn't sound right to me. I know. My wife and I are watching that Netflix, The Queen, and she said Happy Christmas. And I had no idea that was like a British thing. It's very strange.
00:00:29
Speaker
Nice. How was it? Yes, it's December 27th right now. And this is the start of our new upload by Friday, kind of. Yes, the no lag bomb. Right. So we have, what, a two day lag now. We're Wednesday to Friday. Right. But I think that's much more tenable. So folks listening to this on Friday will hear Merry Christmas and won't think why is this why is it January 15th? And you're telling me Merry Christmas. Exactly. It's perfect. I love it. How
Christmas Experiences & Balancing Work
00:00:57
Speaker
was it?
00:00:58
Speaker
Uh, Christmas was really good. Um, you know, busy with all the families running around and all the different events and things like that, but, uh, really nice, nice time. And the kids had an awesome time and, uh, it was a really good Christmas. Awesome. Our four year old or about to be four, it was his first really into it. You know, put cookies out for Santa, uh, just, you know, pure elation. I mean, I just absolute pure joy. Uh, my wife's family came into town.
00:01:27
Speaker
but relatively quiet, which I enjoy. We don't do the run around of two or six house things, which I very much love that we get to kind of just veg out and chill out and spend time together.
00:01:38
Speaker
I took off effectively Monday, expectedly Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I did a little bit of work and popped in here and there, but that was unusual for me and really nice actually. It really was. Right? Yeah, it's weird, eh? Yeah, I took off then Friday night to Tuesday, like now it's Wednesday and it's first day I'm back.
00:01:59
Speaker
And I just turned off. I mean, I probably turned my brain down to about 20% of what it normally is work-wise. And I didn't accomplish much, except for in my head. But it was really nice. Just be with the family, veg out, recharge. I think the fact that, for me, the fact that the rest of the world also quiets down. It was really nice. I had been doing less social media,
Organizing Video Ideas: From Paper to Digital
00:02:28
Speaker
but I noticed on that
00:02:29
Speaker
holiday, there was actually very little and I thought, you know, maybe it's selective perception, but I thought that's really nice. Like people aren't in the rat race of this unless fewer orders and everyone, no one was here. So it was, it was, uh, I didn't feel it was, I truly disconnected. I wasn't where I felt anxious because I was away. Yeah, exactly. Like if you go on, on a trip or something like that, you're anxious the whole time because
00:02:54
Speaker
The world is still happening, right? Yep, yep. And I actually so I need I need help. But before I ask for what I need help with, I'm holding up. I posted on Instagram, but a picture of I just take these printer paper and I cut them in half to not be so wasteful. And the long strips, these little bowling alley strips work really well on those restaurant ticket date boards that we used to use. We actually stopped using them because I'll come back to that. But
00:03:23
Speaker
There's like 75 of these pieces of paper and they're all video ideas. So this is my, and it's everything from like Tormach maintenance to Haas maintenance to, you know, really cool, interesting projects. And some are very long-term projects or involve a lot of prep and work and planning. And so on actually Christmas day when everyone else was like just vegging out on the couch and I was
00:03:47
Speaker
Like, you know what? I actually feel super energized. I want to go and just laid them all out and I put them into these buckets of like, yes, but requires a lot of work or yes, but, you know, not too much or you know what? That's not the most exciting video. So push it to the end and see if I want to do it later. That's fine. Otherwise don't do it. You know, so that was super that for me is that's my drug. Like if I'm in a indifferent mood or I'm not sure about
00:04:16
Speaker
you know, self-confidence or energy or whatever. I look at some of these major confidence or these major product things I think about. Holy cow. That video is going to make me smile. It's going to make other people smile. That is why I do this. So that gets me fired up. Did you find it very helpful to do it in a physical tactile way with paper in hand?
00:04:37
Speaker
Yes, I think there's something about this doesn't work for me. So I have my master for all this stuff is Excel because it's easy to do the list and it's how I plan the next like three or four videos. And then the ideas for videos end up bouncing between all these different places. Excel, little starred emails in Gmail, Asana, scratch pads, notepads.
00:05:04
Speaker
And I say I need a better system. The truth is I'm not sure I do. I'd like a better system, but I don't know if I need one. So I like having the paper to touch and move around. Yeah.
00:05:16
Speaker
But now that I'm done with the paper and kind of organizing it's now in these different buckets what I want And this is my request to the viewers The best way I prefer email but instead of spelling out email addresses, you know Instagram you can DM or Facebook you can message me or you can go on our website and there's a contact us but I want a
00:05:42
Speaker
you can go buy a 50 inch or whatever sized TV relatively inexpensive. So I want that to have effectively what is like Asana or some other thing where now I can take, it'll take a little bit of time, but I can put all these videos up as little digital note cards and I need to be able to see them, but I want them to be digital. So this would be very similar to how you would digitize a Pearson board, I think.
00:06:08
Speaker
It would be nice to have it be a touch screen so I could move stuff around.
Task Prioritization & Business Management
00:06:13
Speaker
I think that's probably a much bigger investment or hurdle, so keep it simple.
00:06:19
Speaker
And maybe we just start with a regular TV and if it needs to be turned into a touchscreen later, we'll do it. So what do I do? Is it just get a little, one of those little cube computers and hook it up to a TV and we're done? Or is there a more elegant solution or software? I don't even know what software I'd use. Asana doesn't really do what I'm thinking.
00:06:40
Speaker
But that's kind of how we use Trello to do that because you can have categories, you can have cards for each one. And we're using that for video ideas. So Aaron and I have a shared board. So any video idea just goes into this kind of random dump category. And then we have, you know, next video to do and upcoming and more time consuming ones. And it's a start, right? Like it's a place to start putting everything. And then you can go from there.
00:07:08
Speaker
No, that sounds perfect. I guess I'm probably over-analyzing that I think I have this idea in my head of this literally color-coded note card system or something where I can walk up and drag it around. A mouse, isn't that me? Maybe we get a space mouse for it.
00:07:25
Speaker
I should just do that, so maybe I will. Just start with Trello, because I think you can color code them. OK. And just see how it feels. It'll take you two minutes to play with it. And you can do it on the computer and on your phone just as easily.
00:07:39
Speaker
The other thing that we want to extend the same technology for is kind of like a roving computer out on the shop floor. When I say that, I mean, I don't want it to be a computer that appears to be in a sitting desk where you can do work. And I want that to be the Asana shop computer that helps prioritize the work to do tasks to do. And then this idea, not this idea, but having Asana handle our maintenance processes is just going to be so, so easy and awesome.
00:08:09
Speaker
Nice. Yeah.
00:08:13
Speaker
OK, so you can set it up as kind of a calendar reminder system.
Business Expansion & Financial Strategy
00:08:16
Speaker
You can just do it again, assuming it's similar to Trello, where you create an event or project or something. What you can do in Asana is have those created on a calendar. So every second Tuesday, a new task automatically create pops up that is pull power or pull grease handle on or way oil handle on all tormox or something. And I think I can probably have that automatically assigned to a person.
00:08:42
Speaker
Then the question is how to handle the fact that we have a relatively dynamic workforce. So like some people have different hours depending on, you know, we have interns. And so the idea is that like, let's say I got assigned to Zach, but Zach's not in today. So Jared needs to see that and then be able to step in and do it in his absence.
00:09:02
Speaker
What if it's just assigned to everybody or certain people and then the first person that does it and finishes finishes like closes the task and then there'll be no overlap because. The problem with that is it creates a decision making process. So when Jared's busy and Jared to be blunt has more valuable things to do generally than
00:09:26
Speaker
pull maintenance away oil handles. That's something Zach should do. So I don't want Jared to stop setting up a fixture or running a machine to do that exact here. So I would prefer it to be assigned to him. The truth is that probably gets too complicated because to some extent, humans just have to make decisions. So Jared just has to know if it comes, well, schedule it so that it
00:09:49
Speaker
is generally occurs when everyone's here. This is boring stuff. I think everybody understands the point at hand. The answer is to go back to what Jay Pearson has said, which is that we work for the process. So make sure that system doesn't involve decisions. It's just when it pops up, it's done.
00:10:06
Speaker
I don't think it can always be done immediately the second it pops up, but soon thereafter. If it's kind of a pending thing to do and there will always be things like that and some bigger things too that maybe anybody could do, but it's going to take an hour. You've got to schedule that in. That's a good thing. What have you been up to? I've been thinking a lot.
00:10:36
Speaker
You know, like I said, kind of my brain went down to 20 percent, but that 20 percent was pretty accurate because I wasn't, you know, I told myself I wasn't going to work really, like, you know, spend eight hours on my computer kind of thing during Christmas. So I'm, you know, sitting there, I watched a lot of movies, which was nice. It's kind of my it's my my escapism. It's just movies. That's great.
00:10:59
Speaker
But you know i just i got to think a lot about what i want twenty eighteen to look like about you know appreciate twenty seventeen in previous years and where i want to take this and i'm actually i met a.
00:11:11
Speaker
I don't need to make a decision right now, but I feel like I've got a big decision coming up. Do I, do I stay small and stay lean? You know, we're going to have five people now in a nice shop with lots of machines. Right. And we could stay there. We can stay in this shop. We could stay with this workforce. We could get small, we could get lean, and we can just crush what we have right now. Or we could go nuts, get a bigger shop, get more machines and hire more people.
00:11:39
Speaker
And I honestly don't know which way I want to go, because I can see both scenarios working out great or failing, but I don't think so. You know what I mean?
00:11:47
Speaker
I think everyone that would weigh in would say the obvious, which is don't grow yet. The five employee thing is so funny because the exact same thing happened to me where all of a sudden you're like, for me it was like someone's really part time or for you it's kind of like your brother and your dad or Barry are kind of like
00:12:09
Speaker
family or quasi family. So it's like, they're not really payroll employees, what you think of it. But then all of a sudden you turn around, you're like, wow, we really are feeding. We're really, you know, gainfully employing five people. Where did that have families? Where did that happen? Exactly. Yeah, so and to compound on what you said, I'm very cautious about, I don't want to spend all my money.
00:12:34
Speaker
As we grow, as we make more money, it's easy to be like, Oh, we get more machines. Oh, we got a bigger shop. I don't want to burn all the money that comes in because I actually want to make a lot of money this coming year. And it's, it's my nature to like lifestyle creep, you know, to grow with it in the business anyway. Right. And I gotta be so careful of that because otherwise there'll be nothing left at the end of 2018 and except bigger shop and more employees, but you know, the zero in everybody's bank account. And that's not what I want.
00:13:04
Speaker
Well, for sure. Keep in mind what makes you happy, John. Like that's a key thing. And I think you already have taken a huge step in the right direction, which is admitting, frankly, what is a weakness of yours, which is everybody is so easy to I love that word. Would you say lifestyle creep? Yes. Yeah, exactly. Perfect word phrase. And it's actually quite timely. So.
00:13:29
Speaker
We had a very good year. There's just no way to put it. Do I want to do better? Yes. So I think we can do better. Yes. But we did so.
00:13:39
Speaker
I have always believed it's very difficult to, financial discipline is just difficult period. Lifestyle creep, what you just said. So I've always felt, my wife and I have done this for the, geez, almost 10 years we've been together. We always like kind of feeling poor. So if we ever, we have automatic savings plans. We used to be ING direct. Now it's capital one 360 in the US, but we automatically pull money out of our joint checking account where our paychecks go.
00:14:08
Speaker
We try to keep that balance low. That way it never looks like, oh, you've got a bunch of, you're sitting in cash, good for you, whatever. And so I'm trying to save up for a new machine. I don't know what that machine is. I don't have a need for one today. You and I have obviously talked about
00:14:24
Speaker
There's the possibility of that machine that starts with the L word, drill mills, but I just yesterday took a check and moved it out of the business. So that would be to get technical. That would be a, we're an LLC pass through entity. So it's not really, there's no tax of consequence to that being a distribution, but nevertheless, it is a distribution out of the business.
00:14:48
Speaker
to myself, we put it in our sort of Tuckaway Savings account so I don't see it. I made a note to my wife that because that's kind of co-mingled with our personal savings. I said made a note that, hey, I'm earmarking this money to move it back into the business at my discretion. But if we do that, a good piece of advice is to usually to do that as a loan back to your business and not as a reinjection of capital.
00:15:15
Speaker
There's a couple, there's a couple of more, which are probably worth an article to write on the NYC CNC website about why you should do that perfectly legal, perfectly ethical, but has some benefits to that and protection mechanisms and so forth. So that money does not get taxed by the corporation or by you personally until somebody touches it, right?
00:15:34
Speaker
the money we just moved out. Yeah, so we're in the, I'm in the US, this gets so complicated. And I think a lot of people think they understand this and they don't. And the truth is the details aren't that important, but I am a multi-member LLC that has elected sub S chapter status. The book, it's on our website, we'll put a card in on recommended business books, but small time operator starts to get into the details of this.
00:16:03
Speaker
I have that an LLC, multi-member LLC is common and not a big deal. What that means versus a regular LLC, a regular LLC would be on the US, a Schedule E, I believe. I am not an accountant. I'm not a lawyer, blah, blah, blah, but you don't file a separate return. Being a multi-member LLC, we file
00:16:24
Speaker
a what's called a partnership return, which is a 1065. And the earnings of that business are then passed through via a K1 to my personal tax return. So Saunders Machine Works as an LLC does not pay taxes. Its owners pay their percentage of Saunders tax. That makes sense? Interesting. Yeah, it does make sense.
00:16:43
Speaker
Now, we're a sub-chapter S because Saunders in the building that we're in rents this shop from Mound Realty, which is my little real estate company that owns the real estate. Another longer conversation, the short answer is it's my belief that
00:17:04
Speaker
Saunders is not in the business of real estate. It's in the business of machining stuff and so forth. If we were to expand or grow, then we shouldn't own this building. That's not what it does. We would sell this or rent this out or something like that. The other thing is it's a very common technique, again, totally legal and totally ethical to where
00:17:27
Speaker
Saunders pays rent to Mound, and that is a very efficient way to pay effect. It's not paying myself because it's paying Mound, but Mound is a different legal entity, so it's a way of sort of paying me, but not putting me on payroll, if that makes sense. That's a really fascinating way to look at it.
00:17:51
Speaker
I guess ours is kind of halfway structured towards that and you've just taken it kind of four steps further, which is really interesting. None of it's particularly complicated by the way, but it's stuff that I really discourage you from, don't spend 20 minutes on legal zoom and start making these decisions. You really should talk to an attorney or accountant. Yeah, that's interesting. Sorry, I don't know why we brought that up.
00:18:19
Speaker
It evolved. That's cool. Oh, sorry. We were saying savings. So yeah, I commend you on that. Money does not buy you happiness. It does buy you options. So if you guys are starting to make some cash and so forth, that good, get it out of sight.
00:18:35
Speaker
talk it away. And for me, I'm still paying down debt. And that's super important. I'm sorry, saying super important to me makes it sound like it's not super important to you. I know it's super important to you. But I'm like, why would I pay down debt if I need a machine, I can justify that machine, and I could pay cash for that machine. So what I'm doing is, let's say you spend so much time to put
00:18:58
Speaker
away amount of money. Let's say you get up to 50 grand or you get up to a hundred grand. Well, at that point you can pay cash for a machine, which means you're not paying down debt. I'm okay with that if you have a direct reason to use that machine to make profits. Or at that point I can say, you know what? We don't need that machine for another six months. So let's take all that money or half that money and let's make one big debt pay down and then we'll save up again. It's just, it's staying hungry, staying on that hustle.
Machinery Ownership & Financial Planning
00:19:26
Speaker
So I guess you don't have to answer this if you don't want, but does Saunders own the machine that you paid cash for or does you personally? Saunders, machine works. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. There wouldn't be anything I own personally in that sense. Except the building, right? Or the mound realty owns. Correct. Mound realty owns the building.
00:19:52
Speaker
You're right. Right. Which is like, is that an LLC too? It is an LC. So don't, I don't know. It is. I don't remember. What's important is it has to have a different election status than Saunders for in order for Saunders to pay mound rent and have it not be considered a wash. Right.
00:20:15
Speaker
That's interesting. The Saunders loses money or has a legitimate expense paying rent to Mound. Mound then books income in the form of that rent. Right, right. Yeah, it's good perspective to think how we're going to grow this business if
00:20:34
Speaker
We're not going to buy a building this year for the shop. We might rent another space if we go bigger. But going forward in the future, there's so many options. Right. Right. I think you certainly will be quickly able to warrant and justify more space. But that's friction cost. I mean, boy, moving and settling and getting settled in is how big do you go? Right.
00:21:02
Speaker
From what I understand, real estate around here is priced per square foot, kind of irregardless of size. And there's location aspects to it. But what is it here? I think it's like
00:21:18
Speaker
a dollar per square foot a month or whatever we're paying, we're paying like 1100 bucks for something like nine or a thousand square feet. So if we want a 5,000 square foot shop, it's going to be five times our monthly rent, which is, it's a significant increase. So I don't know Toronto at all. I don't know Canada at all, but that is,
00:21:40
Speaker
That is expensive. Now you pay a premium for smaller spaces. And of course, there's super expensive markets within the US for obvious reasons, New York City or San Francisco. But generally speaking, real estate of this caliber. So this is like industrial. It's not super improved. Building out offices is really expensive or lots of bathrooms or stuff like that. Space like yours in the US should be three to six bucks per year.
00:22:10
Speaker
So a quarter to half of what you're paying. Really? It's like my lease, my lease, which is a market rate lease, is $3.65 a square foot, I think. Annually. Well, yes. OK. Sorry. Not monthly. $3.75 versus? No, monthly. Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
Okay, losing my mind here. And how big is your shop? I forget 10,000. I wasn't sure if it was five or 10,000. That's amazing. Sorry. Yeah, that's annual.
00:22:49
Speaker
Okay, sorry. Two square foot it is, it is like a quarter or half of whatever we're paying here. Right. And that's very common again, except for super crazy markets in the US. That's a very common rate. And it's really simple. It all drives back to how much does it cost to build a building? Generally speaking, you can build a building for
00:23:10
Speaker
$100 to $150 a square foot. So what is a real estate person willing to earn on that return or investment? And I know Toronto is an expensive market. There's a lot of demand for industrial space, so forth. So you may have to pay a little bit more. But as you get to bigger space, you should be able to get a little bit better rate. Yeah. And I mean, land around here is just crazy expensive in whatever form. Right. Right. Yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
Interesting. That's a really good, I would highly encourage folks to learn some very, very basics. In fact, I think they're either draft articles or I may have them published, but we're trying to give a real basic primer on getting into a lease or what a lot of people want to think about buying. I'd say that's probably not a good idea, but at least educate yourself to help weigh those decisions yourself. Is it a good use of capital or what's your long-term goal?
00:24:06
Speaker
And also when you do a lease, being smart about knowing what your kind of lease rights are and how to structure a lease and not to make mistakes with a lease and what are normal rates and all that good stuff. Yep. Yeah. When we came into this place, I mean, we were in our garage at home before and have, you know, we've, we've tried to get into real estate personally, but it would happen actually.
00:24:30
Speaker
accomplished anything. So the lease here for the shop was I guess our first real, outside of renting a house, real thing. And we had a commercial real estate broker kind of help us out and hold our hand through the whole thing and help us find the shop and worked out really well.
00:24:48
Speaker
And that's a really good point to remember. These real estate brokers, they will help you, and they're really important. They also probably will get a lot of window shoppers. So it's important to try to get to know them and sell them on you being serious. And they'll help you more if you are serious. But case in point, I am very guilty. And when we were starting Strikemark and I was in New York City trying to keep my job,
00:25:15
Speaker
I found a real estate broker in Southern, I think it was Southern Connecticut. And I was like, we want 5,000 square feet. We want an overhead crane. We want a loading dock. We want parking. I had like all these requirements and I didn't know what I was really doing or I wasn't, of course I wanted that. The difference is that doesn't exist. So even just knowing what's realistic is good to get comfortable with.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And maybe being flexible with what you want versus what's actually out there. Right. Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean, it is difficult. There's two shops within a mile from here with signs listed 5,000 square feet, 4,000 square feet available now. And every time we drive by, we're just like, Oh no, just.
00:26:00
Speaker
Just go to work. But I would say, go look. I think that's a very mature and appropriate thing for your business to get smart on, not because you should.
Exploring New Business Opportunities
00:26:12
Speaker
As our businesses grow, it's easier to be more calculated in our decisions. That first time I bought that VMC, it was like, this is so cool. This is so cool. This is cool. And then when we bought the VF2, it's kind of like, yeah, I think it's coming Thursday.
00:26:24
Speaker
Go get to know that real estate broker. Go get to know the space. And honestly, that also is going to be the way if you ever do cut a deal. Landlords want people in their space. If they know you're interested in hanging around the hoop, it's not uncommon to ask for things like free rent or better lease terms. Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point.
00:26:46
Speaker
I just, I want to be very conscious and cautious about the lifestyle creep that I talked about. If we move from a thousand square feet to 5,000 square feet and we've got empty shop and empty offices and empty corners everywhere.
00:27:02
Speaker
And all the room in the world to grow and the moving costs and the renovating is going to cost a significant amount of money. I just don't want it to eat up all the cash. And before I even make any of those decisions, I want to have actual cash in hand, like $100,000 in the bank kind of thing. Just to make any decision, oh, we're going to have somebody paint the floors done. And we're not going to do any of the work renovation-wise just because that would be stupid. We have a business to run.
00:27:29
Speaker
So that's another point. First of all, I would encourage you to consider wearing your bootstrapper hat when it comes to minimizing the renovations that are expensive and going frankly going into somebody else's property. The other thing is, depending on how competitive your market is in your favor, and depending on the term of the lease, most landlords will allocate some form of a tenant improvement allowance.
00:27:58
Speaker
Now, again, if it's a super competitive market in the landlord's favor, and they can get a tenant with snapping their fingers, then they may not have to do that. But I will tell you, when Coca-Cola wants to lease a new distribution facility in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, a landlord is willing to give them an allowance to improve the space. So that sign has been up for a while, listing 5,000 square feet. I bet you $1 to donuts if the landlord would be willing to do some things
00:28:28
Speaker
like epoxy floors, which are going to improve their space even if John Groom's own knives leaves.
00:28:34
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, that's like what happened here. I mean, the place was a dump before we moved in. Eric and I spent the better part of a month cleaning and renovating ourselves. We made maybe a few knives at home in the garage in that month, but it was very slow month work-wise. And we were just here full-time cleaning and painting basically for a month. And the shop is beautiful now. But like you said, you can't take it with you. However, it's been a joy to work in.
00:29:00
Speaker
right in a not dump for two and a half years totally agree and that's that's super important for us you know morale wise and everything no no that that's totally fair and it goes back to what kind of company you are you know the guy who makes grenzo knives doesn't work in a place that's just laden with dust and messes yeah um exactly you you need to go in those spaces and just see what they are and you need to learn how to be disciplined enough to to learn and get smart just like you should be
00:29:28
Speaker
discipline enough to go look at an EDM machine, but recognize that doesn't mean I'm going to let myself creep into buying one. Which I did last week. Not to buy one, but I looked at one. I looked at one. For a second, I thought, oh my God. Yeah, I know.
00:29:41
Speaker
No, it was cool. Last week, I went to a really big shop around here that I didn't even know existed, but I drive by it every single day. I was always like, oh, what's in that big, beautiful white building? And oh my gosh, like 50 plus CNC machines, big mazacs and OKKs. And they had five or six EDM machines, some older ones, and some brand newer ones. And they're just kind of pushing the older ones to the side and squeezing in new ones. That's awesome.
00:30:09
Speaker
It was amazing to walk in. But they had a bunch of FANUC wire EDM machines. And for a really good price, and they're a bit older, but they seem fully capable. And almost a tenth what it costs to buy a brand new one.
00:30:26
Speaker
And I'm not anywhere near the position to get one, but it was certainly great to see them, talk to them. I got to talk to the VP of operations. So he's like in charge of the whole shop. So that was really cool. Just turning his ear for half an hour. And it was just a wonderful experience. These are wire EDMs? Yes. Do you ever have a reason to buy a sinker?
00:30:50
Speaker
No, I saw one at the show and I'm like, nope, not, I don't think so. Okay. I guess you don't need, you can machine everything better than a sinker can, or you don't need square corners or features like that, I guess, or tolerances. Right. Dare I challenge you on not needing that level of tolerances.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, but even the purchase of a wire, we've got some ideas that could prove profitable, but even still, we don't need it today. We don't need it right now. It's a weird allocation of funds that is much better elsewhere, right? That's the other thing. Look, I'm not at this point yet either, but I want to get there to where you're not making
00:31:30
Speaker
you're not playing this catch-up game where you save up 10 grand, then you buy what you need with it, and then you save up another. You get to the point where, I wanna get to the point at least, and I think I can, where you have 100 grand or even more in the bank, and then you decide, okay, instead of spending X to sub this out or have others do this or whatever, we can choose to purchase that machine and bring that in-house, and it's a choice in your, that's really cool.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, and it's exactly where I want to get this year sooner rather than later in the year. And so that the decisions are actual conscious choices, and you're cool and clear, and you're comfortable with it. It's not like, oh, I have $20,000 in the bank. Let's spend $15,000 of it to buy this new machine. And then we're back to ground zero. It's also easier to say no when you know you could change that decision and say yes later.
00:32:27
Speaker
Like I seen people when they decide like these big shops and needs to decide how to buy these, you know, like the Matsura 30 pallet pool systems. Then they're like, you know, do we buy two or three or do we change the brand or do we like it's it's a very like there's no eagerness or getting, you know, like I would be like, giddy, like a girl excited. You know what I mean?
00:32:50
Speaker
Are we, are we over that? I mean, we're never going to be over that, but is it different than like buying the first machine where it's like, Oh my gosh, this is the biggest thing I've ever done in my entire life. Um, it changed. Now it's, it's, it's more calculated. The pro and it changes. Right. That's fascinating to be, to be clear for the record. I still get very, very excited.
00:33:11
Speaker
Oh, me too. I hope that never goes away because that's part of who I am and I know it's part of who you are. Actually, it's funny. Almost a year ago when we picked up the Okamoto surface grinder, that shop had two of your Dura verticals. They were like, oh yeah, we found this. I don't remember the exact story, but they found the second one
00:33:33
Speaker
as a dealer showroom type thing or whatever. And they were just like, oh, that's a no brainer. They like literally like the guy was like told somebody else by that and make sure and just go put it next to this one. It was like a not event. Yeah, we have one. We love it. Here's another one. It's an opportunity. Let's just jump on it. Yeah, exactly. I was thinking about
Challenges of Growth & Workforce Expansion
00:33:53
Speaker
that. Like at some point, John, you will get
00:33:56
Speaker
you will get to the point where you own machines in your shop, like CNC machines, not like a little tiny machine, where you have a legit 15,000 pound CNC machine that you have never operated.
00:34:09
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you and I'm scared of that. I thought about that. If we grow, if we hire, if we expand, there will absolutely be a point where I can't touch everything and I can't be in charge of and be the expert at everything and I need to trust my guys or girls to
00:34:29
Speaker
to operate it. Even little things like we got Aaron a subscription of Adobe Premiere Pro to do the editing, just like Julie does. And I've never used the program. I used to be the editor, right? And now I wouldn't even know what to do if I open that software. And that's a minor thing. It's scary, right?
00:34:50
Speaker
But we're still in a good place. I think when you do grow, we talked about this maybe the, oh, it might have been a discussion we had last week, which was our emergency episode that we will use if we ever running the shorter lag time. If we ever have a hiccup, we can use the emergency episode to keep up the consistency.
00:35:09
Speaker
you know, when you get too big, then I think things will get sour or start sour south where you've got to have like HR people in this whole another layer. I like what I do now, even though it has a lot less machining. I like being the guy who goes and solves problems. I like being able to think and plan and come up with these videos and do products and makes me feel
00:35:29
Speaker
Valued and important and good at what I do Now what I don't like is when I don't have a chance time to do my own stuff because I'm so busy putting out fires or There's some or too much paperwork, but but I don't I guess I want to be Careful to point out I don't I am as much if not happier even though I'm not the one Trami and vices even though I'm not the one hitting cycle start most of the time now and
00:35:55
Speaker
100%, I totally agree with that. And going forward, I see that getting better or worse, depending on how you phrase it, for both of us. It's just going to be more of that. And I want to be more higher level. I want to sit back and think for 20 minutes while everybody else can work. And then I want to come up with new ideas. And I want to help people. I want to stand beside people and kind of hand on their shoulder sort of thing and guide them and get them to do great things and give them every opportunity they could ever need.
00:36:24
Speaker
to be able to accomplish everything. But I think both you and I just need to be able to stand back and let them run. We should talk more about this because I don't want to name names, but so many of our friends from
Automation & Efficiency in Business
00:36:38
Speaker
Instagram and Autodesk University and IMTS that I know of that are buying more machines, have growth issues, have real estate size issues, have HR,
00:36:47
Speaker
and labor issues, and frankly, are rightfully mortified of creating what is sort of the worst form of debt, which is a payroll that you may not be able to afford if things change for the worst. And I tell you, it drives me to put such a huge emphasis on taking advantage of technology because it's who we are. Robots, pallet pools, automation, automatic parts loaders, this is, to me, so important.
00:37:18
Speaker
Absolutely. It's kind of why we're in business is the cool technology geeky. I mean, you and I were both kind of computer nerds growing up and this is, this is our, it's taking the digital and turning it into the physical and it's both always at the same time. Yep. Like.
00:37:37
Speaker
I caught up on some people I was supposed to phone call over Christmas. It was super fun, again, to finally catch up. And one of the guys was a Midwest US robotic integrator company. And he was like, we can really help you, help you, help you. It was more just of a sales pitch in the end. It wasn't so much that he had an idea to help us specifically. But nevertheless, he was talking about a
00:38:01
Speaker
FANUC RoboMate. So that's the smaller one. I think it was like list prices, $37,000, and maybe you can get a discount. But on the flip side, you've got integration costs. You've got to buy or build end effectors. There's various different light curtains or situational awareness sensors that can help change the robot's behavior if someone's near it. And it was a good
00:38:26
Speaker
conversation to have to just start getting the data points out there. Okay. What does a pallet changer cost? What does a pallet pool cost? What does a universal robot cost? What does a fan of RoboMate cost? Can it load the parts or can it load a whole vice? Meaning lift up and swap out what weight capacity is starting to think.
00:38:48
Speaker
It's a, it's a deep rabbit hole. You're going down there, but it's going to be fun. It's like the EDM or the real estate. Like you got to start arming yourself and just, you know, uh, even so much as like, even when I was at emo and watching.
00:39:02
Speaker
Rob Block would talk to vendors and talk with us about how certain Japanese and German machines have certain types of integrated pallet systems. Okay, I didn't even know what the words meant or lingo. So you can't go up to a sales guy and have him take you seriously when you're fumbling over what's that called. So now arm yourself gets smarter and then you just keep rolling with that.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah, and in every aspect of the business, that's your job and my job. Basically, nobody else in the business is going to do that kind of research. Because we love to do that. I mean, we do that in our fun times, seriously. Like, it's Christmas Day, you're sitting in the bathroom, and we're learning about new machines, or whatever it is. And that's just who we are, right? And that's why we can be the captain of this ship and do it properly. Awesome. What do you do today?
Shop Tour Plans & Year-End Reflections
00:39:55
Speaker
Today, Erin and I decided to do a shop tour video. So she's going to bring in her boyfriend and I'm going to give her boyfriend a tour of the shop. So it'll be an actual, not just me talking, but it'll be me showing someone who's never been here before. And she can follow along with the camera and it'll be really good. That is super exciting.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So that's our morning plan. Um, we're kind of taking it easy. This the next three days, like we had yesterday off as a Canadian holiday boxing day. And then today I can leave by noon to help mega out at home. And then tomorrow and Friday, uh, there'll be light days, but we'll get some knives done. And then we can come back. Um, I guess Tuesday, cause January 1st is a Monday. We'll see. I might come into the first, but, but yeah, next week we can hit the ground running. We're all ready to go. We got all the materials we need. Finally. Awesome. That debacle finally is over. Good.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yeah. We actually got a video to put up. I'll talk to Aaron today. I think it's ready to go of last week's progress, basically a little Shop Life video from last week. So that'd be good. I found out what happened. We moved our YouTube channel from a regular YouTube channel to what's called a brand channel, which nobody would see. It's not a public event. It's just a YouTube back ends thing. It's quite complicated, quite annoying. And what that does is it allows me to delegate
00:41:14
Speaker
management. In other words, Julie can now upload and publish and edit and so forth, but she doesn't have my login info. It's the right way to do it. Right. I think that's how we do it too. Oh, good for you. Maybe it was harder for us because we were siloed in this other form. Right. I think ours was always a branded channel or it became that at some point. Maybe that is what it is. When I moved my account to a brand channel, it's effectively
00:41:43
Speaker
that it's a new channel. I lost all my subscriptions. What? So I didn't, I wasn't, NYC CNC wasn't subscribed to Grimsmo Knives. Interesting. I was like, oh, OK. That's why I'm not getting notices that John Grimsmo is putting up YouTube videos. Did everybody hear me? John Grimsmo is publishing YouTube videos. So you're now circling a parking lot waiting for us to finish, only to go into work to open up YouTube and watch John Grimsmo.
00:42:13
Speaker
We've got a lot of big stuff. Awesome. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. So that's what we're up to this week. What are you up to this week? I am going to machine a mold. Awesome workflow. This is seriously how we roll. We machined the first one on the Tormach. It worked great. We're now ready to make a... You'll see when we do a video series on it. I don't want to give too much away. We're now making them on the Haas.
00:42:38
Speaker
The reason is only for size. Anyways, we're going to make one on the hos, test it, and then if that's the case, we're going to be making like 10 or 15. They're going to be actually sandwiched together like a vertical cracker, and so we can do multi-pours at the same time. It's a new product, most likely. It's like a support product, though. It's not that exciting. It's exciting, but not crazy.
00:43:04
Speaker
got to go do that. I got to edit Wednesday widget. And then I got to figure out how to like kind of start thinking about these cards. I've got some housekeeping to do for the year end. And then I guess that's kind of it. Yeah, I had something else. Oh,
Fixture Plates & Reflecting on Personal Growth
00:43:23
Speaker
It's way too much way too much of a conversation to start right now, but I Tying in with automation and lean and low stress and being nimble. We need No fun fact. We love fixture plates
00:43:39
Speaker
We're going to make one for our VF2, which is easy to do because we have the VM3. I also need one for the VM3. So it's kind of like, do I pay someone else to make it? Do I have somebody else just grind it and then I can index machine it? But we need to be able to pull our orange vices on and off. We've got new, those new modular vice clamps that we make and work. We want to use them on the VM3. Drop, drop, and a trunnion on. So,
00:44:04
Speaker
That's not a small decision. It's not something that's easy to fail fast and fail cheap at because it's going to be, you know, two grand for the material if it's steel and it's heavy and big and freight shipped in. So I need to, we should talk about it next week. I actually really like your opinion.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, I could see a lot of ways to go, or you just save the time and spend the money and have somebody else do it. Hopefully it's right. Well, we can, let's talk about it next week. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole now. I'm making a note right now. Well, I said this to you in a WhatsApp message, and I think it's really good as an entrepreneur to 99.9% of the time, just stay focused and look, challenge yourself and so forth. But I got to say, John, publicly, I'm so proud of you and where you
00:44:51
Speaker
have developed and how you carry yourself and how you inspire me and inspire others. So thank you for doing what you do. Well, thank you so much. It means a lot. And obviously right back at you too. I mean, your videos are probably the only ones I watch religiously.
00:45:06
Speaker
on, you know, everybody else is kind of pick and choose, but you know, awesome. Just put up a video. I gotta watch it. No, thank you. So no more bromance. That's it back to work. But to everyone out there, we hope you had a very Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and obviously a great new year.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yep. And a heartfelt thank you from both of us to all of our listeners for just listening to us rant and talk and just kind of vent to each other. It's our therapy session. And it's nice to know that maybe we're helping a few people out there or just entertaining you guys. And we will never be breaking this. What is it called in the cinematic world? Like the third wall or something where we acknowledge that we're actually talking to people other than me and you. That will never happen again.
00:45:48
Speaker
Never ever happen. Look for it. It's just a conversation, a very private conversation between me and John. Yeah. Okay. Bye guys. Okay. Take care. Bye.