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Business of Machining - Episode 43
195 Plays7 years ago
"Everything you do is a representation of who you are, even down to how you wash the dishes." - Grimsmo Saunders returns from his 3rd round of AutoDesk University feeling refreshed. His perception of AU has evolved from one of pomp and circumstance to one of understanding and appreciation. Plus, if your're a FUSION ULTIMATE customer, GENERATIVE DESIGN access has been granted. If you didn't make it this year don't fret. Catch the keynotes, livestreams, and more for free here! Stop! Hey! What's that sound? Production and quality are full steam ahead at Grimsmo Knives but the earsplitting sound of the tumbler is driving everyone nuts. With new equipment on the way and a media person to tackle branding and YouTube, John's bursting at the seams with ideas! Check out the CMTS Video to see the Vibra Tumbler here. Vibra Website Leica A60 Microscope Insize Microscope Growing, Growing, Gone? Adding people means increasing payroll. An accountant can show you the numbers but what story does it tell? According to a U.S. Bank study, 82% of businesses fail because of cash flow problems. Budgeting Video Machine Shop ROI Generalized Business Assessment NYCCNC struggles with demand while Grimsmo Knives struggles with supply. The guys discuss a direction for the podcast and desire to allow people to connect in a more personal way. How many circles the parking lot does it take to finish a Saunders and Grimsmo podcast? The fact that people tune in leave both Johns awestruck--even after all this time.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 43
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, folks. Welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 43. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmill. Good morning. Good morning, my friend.
Highlights from Vegas Trip
00:00:12
Speaker
I just got back from Vegas actually last night, and life is good. Yeah. Yeah.
00:00:20
Speaker
You and Yvonne had a really good trip. We did. It was a long, I don't know anybody in Vegas who's gone to Vegas and said after five days, they wish they had stayed longer or however long we were there. But nevertheless, yeah, we had a, she ran a half marathon, which she's run many of them and she's run some full marathons, which I think is super impressive. And that was great. And that's the thing, if you're not a runner, it's hard to appreciate how important and special like races and events are.
00:00:49
Speaker
It was this rock and roll marathon. So they go all out and there's this bands and music and energy. So that was really cool. Nice. That's excellent. Yeah. So you've got to talk about Vegas and I've got a lot to talk about this week too, but how about you start us out with Vegas?
Insights from Autodesk University
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'll keep it short because otherwise I could go on for a long time. Autodesk University or AU was just awesome. It's my third year. Just to be blunt, when I first got invited and started learning about it three years ago, AU seemed like a very incompatible event with Fusion 360 in the sense that it felt very
00:01:27
Speaker
Corporaty and trade show or like that and frankly expensive and I didn't really get it and now it's my third year I think oh my gosh, I get it like There's such an awesome now user base and energy there and it's so focused on manufacturing and I really dislike the word networking because it sounds like I think as a negative connotation of people that are trying to
00:01:49
Speaker
falsely climb up some ladder or be weird about it. But it really is just so awesome to hang out with these other like-minded people and in a framework that really promotes intelligence and sharing knowledge and paying it forward. Taking classes on advanced post-processor editing, taking classes on fifth axis work holding, on integrating robots with CNC,
00:02:14
Speaker
tips and tricks in Fusion that like blew me away. And I feel like I'm a tips and tricks Fusion guy. Just awesome. Again, I could go on forever.
Exploring Generative Design
00:02:25
Speaker
They announced that they are, actually I left early to get back home, but so I missed this sort of a big announcement, but they are allowing Fusion Ultimate customers access to, I believe, don't quote me on this, but I believe it's access to
00:02:42
Speaker
Autodesk's, they call it the generative design, but I believe it's Dreamcatcher. So basically the idea is, or the demo I saw on this a while back was you can give it a framework or parameters. In fact, in the example I got, they had an algorithm that read through the Formula One rule book, which is insane. So it actually intelligently digested legal and layman's writing to create a new
00:03:10
Speaker
cockpit for a safety cockpit roll bar across the head opening cavity of an F1 car. And it came up with like 7.2 million designs. And then you had these slider bars between sheet metal and 5-axis and 3-axis and 3D printing and additive and stamping and forging. And you could slide these slider bars left to right to emphasize which process you had access to. Or you could remove it completely, obviously, if you didn't have access to it.
00:03:40
Speaker
And then there are other parameters like safety and build time and longevity. And they've done the same thing now with like designing urban planning where like what's more important solar or access or walkways or green space or backyards. And it gives you all of these permutations and you can literally just toggle through these parts and it's just, it's insane.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I went to the AU last year and I remember like the keynotes where they're talking about this kind of stuff and it just absolutely blew me away and now we're a year later and it must be a lot farther.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, that was actually a big thing of theirs when they were talking about a lot of these different technologies and processes. We're not we're not sitting here talking about a five or 10 year plan we're talking about today. They gave this example of this residential development in the Netherlands where this contractor today is using generative design to go through these iterations of how they lay out
00:04:33
Speaker
The example I just gave with the apartments, making sure they were solar, making sure they optimized the density. And it's cool because it's what you and I have talked about before on the podcast, which is I think you and I both enjoy reacting to designs rather than just always starting from a blank piece of paper. And that's what this can give you.
00:04:55
Speaker
Wow, that's fantastic. So I know that the Autodesk office in Toronto, they designed the office using generative design. So like to have the most window light coming in and ease of access and access to the bathrooms and things like that. So I've always wanted to take a tour of the local place just to kind of understand the process of that. And maybe actually if we ever design a new shop, I can talk to them and see if we can use a generative to design our new shop. That'd be awesome.
00:05:24
Speaker
Yes. So the whole AU exhibit hall floor where they have vendors and booths and five access machines and Torbok was there and all these different things, it looked totally different this year and I didn't even think about it. But someone had mentioned, yeah, they completely generatively designed the layout. No way.
00:05:43
Speaker
Now there's a whole other creepy element, which is this is all big data driven. So if you go to a trade show and you don't realize it, there are bajillions of hidden sensors that are tracking your every single motion. Literally, they know exactly where you are at all times. So that's what they did to figure out the flow and the space and the layout and so forth.
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah, because I remember last year when we got those little tags, you know, with your name tag on it, I cracked it open and there's an RFID chip inside and there's sensors everywhere. Right. So it does track your every movement, which whatever. I don't really care. But did you crack it open before the show started or after it was over? After. Yeah, after, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't there doesn't bother me either in the in the context of just being a show. Right. Right. Yeah.
00:06:30
Speaker
Awesome. So anything else that kind of blew your mind or new to you that's applicable kind of thing?
Impact of Social Media on Manufacturing
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, tons of stuff. I took a bunch of notes. I'm going to try to wrap that stuff into upcoming videos because that seems to be a much better way to help share the knowledge. So I don't want to sit here and try to explain it.
00:06:53
Speaker
Rob Lockwood gave one of the, and I'm not saying this because I like him or he's a friend, he gave one of the best presentations I've ever seen talking not only about creating optimal toolpaths in CAM, but really about how to think about product. Actually, you are going to love this because I think it's going to actually help rein you in in a good way on
00:07:15
Speaker
And Rob, I think it was great because I respect Rob a lot and he's a lot of experience. He's working with a team of people that have designed things like Apple products and Microsoft Xbox type products. So it's a pretty cutting edge design team. And I'm paraphrasing at the risk of misstating what Rob said a little, but basically Rob used to go bananas from day one or part one. And sometimes the goal is just to get a part machined or made, to feel it, to touch it, to pass it around.
00:07:44
Speaker
and then literally it is going into the trash bin because that's part of the process. And so when that happens, you'd want to have toolpaths that can get you 98 or 99% of the way there. But what's kind of cool is that once you then go to the 100%, you basically start completely from scratch with a completely different strategy and toolpaths to solve that last 1% of the shortcomings of the prior toolpaths. But don't do that until you're there.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, no use putting in all that extra effort for the first iteration that's going to go in the trash. Right. But it was cool because Rob on his own pulled up these things kind of like fail fast and fail cheap and recognize the task at hand. And it was a very entrepreneurial process to something that most people view as a very mechanical or technical process. And most of these presentations will eventually be available online as audio or video things.
00:08:41
Speaker
I am pretty certain that that's true, and I also believe they're all free and open. I don't think there's any threshold. I don't think you have to have registered or paid to get access, which is insane. Yeah, yep. Awesome. How did your talk go? Oh, great. I did a talk on social media and modern manufacturing, trying to talk about how
00:09:04
Speaker
a entrepreneur, a job shop, a Kickstarter campaign, or even a medium or large sized manufacturing company or a machine tool builder can and should use social media, talking about some best practices, but mostly talking about, you know, less about the mechanics or skills behind using a particular app, but rather talking about how to think about a posting schedule, the kind of content you want to create, engaging with your audience, being part of a community, trying to
00:09:34
Speaker
talk about, again, the methodology and the thought process behind social media and some of the little ticks and trips you've got to do to build a successful campaign. Nice.
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's all. OK. What's been going on?
Overcoming Production Challenges
00:09:51
Speaker
So we've had one of the biggest, best, awesomest weeks ever. Just everything seemed to flow really nicely. It did huge production numbers in a consistent basis, which has been really good.
00:10:06
Speaker
consistent heavy production in a row and we're holding it. And it's like mind blowing to actually see it happening. It's just perfect. It's like, it's all coming together. It's all actually working. You said this last week too. So I can't help but think or feel like it's, I feel like it's accelerated even beyond last week.
00:10:26
Speaker
Right. I'd like to think it's here to stay, this new flow, this new schedule. And we have a lot of improvements to make. I feel like right now, we're kind of maxed out with the way we're doing things right now. And that's OK. And we know what we need to change. We know some things, some different processes that will help speed us up. You just mean you have limitations of labor and equipment? Basically, yeah. And methodologies.
00:10:55
Speaker
Okay. Like we're making, you know, so many a day consistently for the past three weeks. And we can't significantly increase that without making some good changes, which we're going to ease into over the next few weeks and improve from there. But yeah, I mean, man, things are going just, just really, really well.
00:11:12
Speaker
Even though in the beginning of the week, we made a lot of mistakes, made a lot of bad parts. And I don't know why. Really? It's like all these different problems just started popping up out of nowhere. Things that have never been an issue before just all of a sudden started cutting really weird and making scrap parts. And I'm like, what the heck? So I had to change some methodologies and some toolpaths to kind of get rid of that troubleshoot, which I love to troubleshoot. That is odd.
00:11:38
Speaker
Is it just because you're producing at a higher rate? I guess. And it's like everything's more immediate and more real and more of a problem when you're trying to make, you only have so many hours in the day and the machines running for most of that.
00:11:55
Speaker
And so a little problem kind of sets you back so you work harder to try to make your quota basically, right? But even still, even with those mistakes, then we're still holding our standard, our average. So that's going super well. What else? Like you were talking about last week about you feel like you're spending a lot of money. Yeah.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah. And as of last week, I wasn't. But this week, I feel like we spent a lot of money. Yeah.
Enhancing Production with New Equipment
00:12:27
Speaker
It's just stuff we've been waiting for for a long time. We got a new grinder for Eric, which was not cheap. And belt grinder? Yeah, a belt grinder, like a knife grinding tool. So you added a second one? Or did you replace your homemade one?
00:12:45
Speaker
we will be adding the second one. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So I placed the order early at last week. Um, it'll take a few weeks to get here. So that's, that's fine. But something we've been looking forward to for a long time. Very legitimate for what you're doing. Right. Exactly. Right. Like we need it. And it's got a bunch of features that should save Eric time, um, and, and make, make better parts. So that's awesome. I mean, total price, that was 8,000 us, something like that. So that was,
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah. For a 2x72? Yeah, and some fancy attachments. So we got the, for those knife makers out there, we got the wertz grinder and the mowen rotary flat platen attachment, which should be a killer combination to second, well, to replace our current grinder that I made, and then that'll be the backup. Like, we'll use that for maybe just sharpening or something.
00:13:40
Speaker
But yeah, so that's going to be awesome. And then just last night, we ordered a new Tumblr, which we're super excited about. Oh, you did? Yeah, the same one that we saw at the CMTS trade show. That's like insulated, quiet, and awesome. I remember this. Yeah, so that was not cheap either, but. So you went with the, remind me what the details brand, and there was a technology name to that? I think it was something else. It's the brand. It's just a library thing.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's a tub-style tumbler, kind of like yours, but bigger. So it's a Vibra Finish tumbler, vibra.com. They don't have this one on the website, which is stupid. But the one we got is slightly bigger than the one we showed in the CMTS video. It's actually a double tub with a divider down the middle. So we can have two separate different kinds of media at the same time, so we could have like a rougher and then a polishing media or something like that.
00:14:34
Speaker
Same soap or different soaps? Same, I guess. Yeah, I guess I'll talk with them once we finalize the order for media and the compound. That's a big deal, I would say. Yeah. I would really think you would want, if you're going to really run separate, I mean, you're basically sharing the motor or the vibratory inducer. I would think if you're going to really run different medias, you want the ability to run different soaps. Maybe. I don't know. I'll talk to them about it.
00:15:03
Speaker
Um, or, or you just take the divider out and you have one big tub, but either way, the option is there, which is super cool. And it's got this insulated lid and it's like sound deadening all around the outsides. When you close it, it's so, so quiet. And you know, our, our shop is kind of small and tight and we're becoming more people now. And Eric's running the tumbler, you know, many, many hours a day. And it's just like driving us all crazy. Cause we can't hear anything. Um, and the machines are running and everything's just humming. So it's.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That's like quality of life, capability, product quality. That's awesome. That's all great. Yeah. We kind of figured out like Barry came up with this, this criteria. You know, we've got three things we look at when we buy something new. Does it increase the quality of the product? Does it reduce the time it takes to make the product? And then the money aspect is the third thing. Like does it cost a lot or can we afford it? Whatever. But if it, if it,
00:15:58
Speaker
If it makes the product better and it makes it faster, that's like two out of three. You can almost justify the cost if it makes sense at that point. So that's the method we're looking at for some of these purchases. It's kind of a no-brainer. If Eric can make one knife a day faster with these things, they pay for themselves very quickly. It's just nice to be at that point in business where we can make those financial decisions that make sense. Right.
00:16:26
Speaker
I think I know what I have to do because we have similar-ish desires like that. It is so easy to get obsessed or caught up. I think I give you a lot of credit. You go to CMTS, you fall in love with this machine, you understand its potential, and then you wait a little while to
00:16:46
Speaker
to go through this process, you kind of let yourself emotionally detach from the love infatuation of it and you become more methodical like you just did with it about looking at it. But then what I have to do is sit down and look over like the next six months, say, come up with a list of everything you could buy if you kind of won the lottery scenario. Just don't think about the limitations and just think, oh boy, I would buy this machine or this machine.
00:17:10
Speaker
And then you look through that list and you think, how much does that change what you're thinking about, about this tumbler? And in your case, I'm sure you were like, no, this thing is still so, so much what I want. Yep. And you're absolutely right. Like, like on my wish list, I would put, you know, a second mill, a Swiss lay, all this crazy stuff. But what's actually going to impact our production today for not a crazy amount of money?
00:17:36
Speaker
And so yeah, you phrased it very well. It's been two months since the CMTS show. So yeah, we kind of lost the infatuation with it, but we still remembered it.
Strategic Decision-Making in Purchases
00:17:47
Speaker
But it was like you kind of fall back into your normal routine. Exactly. We could have easily ordered it the day of, but we didn't quite have the money for it. And it was tight.
00:17:56
Speaker
you know, two months ago, it's just not the right time. Let's, let's just cool it. But now it's a little bit better. So we're like, like, we weren't even thinking about it until yesterday morning when one of my friends was like, Oh, I saw your video and I want to get that tumbler or I want to look into it anyway. And I was like, Oh yeah, that tumbler. So I brought it up with Eric and Barry and we're like, it's time, isn't it guys? Like, yeah, let's anybody opposed? Nope. Okay, we'll get a ton.
00:18:19
Speaker
But sometimes the conversation goes the other way. Sometimes let's say that I'm making this up, but let's say that tumbler costs $9,000. Sometimes you're like, wait a minute here. But for nine grand, both of, you know, John and Eric could have new laptops and we could buy this smaller machine and we could buy this and two more, you know, two more vices and two more of this. And you're all of a sudden like, wow, the sum of the parts of all those other things is worth way more. Let's buy the tumbler. Let's kick the can down the road for two or three months on that.
00:18:48
Speaker
Because holy cow, all these other things would be sweet. True. True. But in this scenario, that's not how it worked out. Oh, totally. I've just said. No, but you're absolutely right in some scenarios. It's easy to be like, oh, I want this big one thing, and it's going to change everything. But yeah, some of the small parts could be better.
00:19:09
Speaker
Um, yeah. So, so the dad did that. Uh, yeah. Eric has just been on fire with finishing the knives. You know, he's literally taking parts as fast as we're making them. Um, which is almost like in a funny way. It's kind of offensive. Like we're, you know, we're laying out parts, finished knives here, and then we turn around and they're gone. And I'm like, Hey, I just, I made parts. Like where are they? Right.
00:19:35
Speaker
It's got to be different too because you are, you are, when you, like I know this from making products here, sometimes it's kind of weird, but sometimes when you have a part that gives you difficulty, you have, this is going to sound really weird, but you develop a little bit of a relationship with that one individual part. Like, oh, we thought that one or we fixed this one. And now it's like everything's going well and it's more just kind of in and out.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yep. And any of those parts that I do get that attachment with and they disappear towards Eric, they go into his pool of parts. So I've kind of lost it. Like that one part just becomes one of the knives. But we're holding the quality standard and we're always communicating and we're always doing little tweaks here and there. It's not like we're reducing any quality standards at all, which is nice, even as we're ramping up production. And that's something I want to hold very firm as we grow.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah. That was another good takeaway from talking to people at AU. People I had already known, but I also had the chance to meet some new people. It was just everyone who's doing stuff that is successful or respectable is doing so with just an absolute uncompromised tone of quality. I don't mean to say that everybody is John Grosveau, because I think you are still special there in the fact that it's part of your message.
00:20:55
Speaker
whether it's the product design, whether it's the parts you're making, job shop work, production work, just all that stuff. It reminds me back to a kind of hard lesson I learned in high school, which was I used to kind of write papers to get them done. And then I had a friend where I finally, for whatever reason, it just clicked, which is basically like, hey, you know, I don't necessarily care about this subject or English or papers, but
00:21:19
Speaker
You should care because it's what you're doing. It's a representation of your work. So, you know, you may just want to get this over and done, but write it and then read it and then rewrite it and then edit it and then rewrite it because that's that's what life's all about. Do great work. Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
Everything you do is a representation of who you are and how you work, even down to how you wash the dishes. I like to think about it like that. I wash a good dish. It's clean when it's done. Oh my god. I'm only laughing because I love you. And I got to share one of the best anecdotes I heard from AU was, again, that people are
00:22:01
Speaker
people are just like, yeah, of course we listen to the podcast, which is again, continues to baffle me. But I heard about one guy, a really awesome guy. Do you know Dr. Phil, the Butterworth, the Dr. Phil experience on Instagram? A little bit, yeah. He's in Canada, right? He's like in Alberta or something. Calgary, which is actually Alberta, right? Super nice guy, makes some, go ahead.
00:22:25
Speaker
No, I was just going to say that's where I was born in Calgary. Yeah, very cool. I thought you were born. Oh, no, you lived in the Seattle area, right, for some time. You were definitely Canadian. Anyways, he's got a Herco 5-axis, you know, awesome kind of backstory and making pretty, not pretty awesome, like the most awesome dialed-in, high-end Harley Davidson aftermarket parts. I think it's MJK Performance, maybe, isn't it, company name?
00:22:54
Speaker
And I was just it was just just caught me off guard because he was talking about the podcast. He's like, yeah, so I have a 20 minute commute. So it's really awkward because the longer you guys go, the more laps I have to drive around the parking lot at the industrial complex. So, yeah, it was that was cool.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah, we started out with like a 20 minute goal. And now we're kind of once we had 40, we're like, OK, we should we should cut it out. Go get to work. Yeah. What is OK? You can I can I ask you about the picture, though, last night of the. Yeah. Yeah. I've sent you several pictures over the week. Some some really cool stuff. But yeah, go ahead. What's what? So I'm super, super jealous. You have a microscope as well now.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yes, just yesterday came in the mail. We got a Leica A60. So one of our good friends, a listener of the podcast, actually, that we've been emailing out a lot for a couple of months. He's helping me develop the flashlight electronics. And he's had this for a couple of years. And he just upgraded to the TV screen version with the
00:24:04
Speaker
you know, the camera integrated into it. And yeah, so he offered me a deal that I literally couldn't refuse on this one. And I'm like, OK, fine. Yeah, I'd love it. Let's make this deal happen. And I just got it yesterday, got it installed and set up. And it's super weird working with it because it's a stereo microscope. So it gives you like, I don't know, different images with your left and right eye and your brain has to put them together or something like that. And looking through it, I've never looked through one.
00:24:33
Speaker
I think I saw the exact same microscope at CMTS, and I couldn't quite get it to work. So you look through it, and my left and right eyes are like alternating. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. And it's so trippy. And apparently, your brain just has to get used to it. Just work with it for a little bit, and then you get used to it. And then it's like you see the shining light, and it just works. And I saw that moment briefly yesterday where the two round images just kind of like overlapped.
00:24:59
Speaker
You know, I heard the angels singing and I was like, and it worked. And then I lost it and I was going left, right, left, right, left, right. It's weird. But I mean, the quality and the color rendering and the crispness of the image is like a million times better than the little hand loop that I've been using for so long. So I'm really looking forward to using it.
00:25:20
Speaker
A friend of mine has a pair of Swarovski binoculars, and we've been out with them doing some hiking and adventures and whatnot. And when you look through them in the middle of a field,
00:25:35
Speaker
It somehow is almost as if you are watching your whole life in high definition and all of a sudden you pick these up and the world is in 4K. How does this amazing glass actually make it more richer and better? And I'm just talking about buying equipment and what you just did with the tumbler.
00:25:58
Speaker
I don't regret buying the microscope that we did. And part of the reason I pulled the trigger was the fact that it was relatively inexpensive for its capability and it has been useful. But darn it, I wanted to really I've never used a stereo microscope. And that was the alternative. And it's so different. I know it's so different than what I bought, but I haven't been able to look through one. Wasn't going to be easy to do. And this was not a big enough purchase to warrant, you know, all the
00:26:24
Speaker
I'll do it at IMTS still, or I'll come up and see you and look through yours, because I really want to compare them. Which one did you get? I got the insize, and I don't remember the model number, but it was about $800, I think it was $812 shipped. And it is only a digital, so it only outputs to HDMI signal. And it's not. Yeah, this one I...
00:26:50
Speaker
Okay, I think this one retails for $1,800, $1,700. That's not that bad for a market product. Yeah, it's not that bad. Yeah, exactly. And then the TV one is like $3,000 or something like that. I talked to Robin Renzetti.
00:27:05
Speaker
extensively. He has a post on, actually it's really funny. He is an incredible machinist, tool maker, et cetera. But he got into the sort of the online world with what ended up becoming his Instagram and YouTube because he was posting on the EEV blog, you know, the crazy Australian guy.
00:27:25
Speaker
Dave I don't ever say was oh, oh my gosh, he's got the most annoying voice but it's so annoying that I like it. He has. He has a blog or a YouTube channel on electronics like embedded circuits and stuff and his has become super popular.
00:27:43
Speaker
Robin was posting on his forum about all the microscope stuff. Pages of information of what to buy and modifications that he has made. He really recommended this one from Amscope. With all the stuff you needed for that one, the stand, the lighting, the right
00:28:04
Speaker
there's like these multiplexer, so I'm not using the right word, but like these rings that you screw in to unscrew it to change the multiple of the focus, which has your focus ranges, throw distance and the TV option, it was going to be, I think it was going to be like 1800 or something.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yep, yep. Yeah, one of the super cool features of this Leica one is it's got this super huge depth of field range. So there's like an up and down adjustment. So once you get it all in focus, you can move the whole thing up and down, and you can zoom like four inch range or something like that without losing any focus. See, that's what I want now. So it's really tricky to be able to like fully zoom in, and the focus stays completely crisp.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, that makes me think I made the wrong decision, because the struggle with mine is that when it's zoomed in any reasonable amount of usefulness, like 40 times, I mean, it goes up to 200, but, you know, use it at 30, 40 times X. And you're looking at the flute of an end mill, you really only have like 20,000, 30,000 range that's in focus, which is so it makes it difficult to use. Holding it by hand.
00:29:15
Speaker
It doesn't matter how you hold it. The focus band is so shallow. Yeah, I haven't looked at Nan Mill with this one yet. I'll have to see how tight. I just put some handles under there and zoomed in on the honeycomb pattern. And I'm like, man, there's a nasty burr on that thing at 60 times magnification. Right, right. It's funny. Even though it's fine. Right. That's awesome. Yeah.
New Hire for Media and Content Creation
00:29:40
Speaker
Okay, so the other thing, big thing that I texted you about earlier was, so for what, eight months now or whatever, you've had Julie working with you. She is your video editor, your film or your everything. She edits this podcast. She's amazing. I've been super jealous this whole time. Like I needed Julie. I found a Julie. Her name is Erin. My wife has been working with her at the, they volunteered a museum together.
00:30:07
Speaker
And she's amazing. Just a couple of days ago, Meg suggested, yeah, what about Erin? She's looking for work. And she went to school for new media. And she wants to make documentaries eventually. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. I have to talk to her. And she's super gung-ho. And she's super into it. And she wants to do this. She doesn't have the most experience with everything yet. But she has a baseline knowledge of everything. And I'm like, as long as you're interested, I'll teach you whatever you need to know.
00:30:35
Speaker
I just need somebody who wants to be here. So we had a meeting at our house with Meg and Erin and talked for like two hours, all these crazy videos ideas that I want to do. And she got a real good handle on the business and she's got the right mindset. And she's like, so your website is kind of...
00:30:55
Speaker
Simple? And I'm like, yeah, there's no information on the website. It's just like, yeah, we need the About Us page. We need bio videos of everybody. We need information about the products, not just what they are, but why they are and all this stuff. And it's just like, oh my goodness, I've been wanting someone like you for so long that can just kind of tell me what to do. We need these videos. We need this content. We need this. And handle it. So it's going to be awesome. So she came in yesterday.
00:31:23
Speaker
to help photograph and upload pictures to the website of all of the knives that we have finished, ready to go. But it takes time to clean them, photograph them, put them on the website. And so she came in for just two hours yesterday to kind of suss it out and picked it up pretty quickly. And she'll be coming back next week. So we're kind of doing a freelance thing upfront and then
00:31:48
Speaker
once everybody's more comfortable will either go to part-time or full-time whatever she wants and I'm just so excited like I couldn't sleep that night cuz I'm just crazy with ideas all the videos I want to do and because I've just been ignoring YouTube like completely while I focus on the business and we grow and we make more parts and stuff but with this kind of leverage it's
00:32:10
Speaker
It's going to be fun. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, John. Well done. I mean, this is it, folks. When you understand how to get people on your team, it's very difficult. Will we ever hire somebody with a recruiter or Craigslist or something? Maybe. I'm not saying no.
00:32:29
Speaker
boy, this is how you do it. And it takes time and it sometimes feels awkward because as younger people or as, I don't know for a millennial, I don't think I'm a millennial, but as a younger person, we tend to think like, hey, if I want something, I can use money to solve that problem and get that what I want right now. Staff, building your team doesn't work that way, it just doesn't. So good for you for that. But then also, you're in love with the position right now.
00:32:59
Speaker
I sound like she's gonna be a great fit. And I'm not here to play devil's advocate, but just make sure if for some reason you don't think she's a good fit, just be willing to say that. And maybe it's something that can be kind of figured out. I'm picking on you here, but if you don't want an about us page, then that's your decision too. You know what I mean? But yeah, dude, awesome.
00:33:23
Speaker
awesome. No, and very good advice. Like I need that kind of checks and balances advice because like you said, I'm in love with the position and it sounds like she's a good fit. So my mind is going crazy. Like she'll be perfect, right? But if she, you know, starts showing up late every time and she's unreliable and she takes forever and she's not good, then
00:33:42
Speaker
These are things I have to be willing to see for face value and accept and deal with. And maybe we can work together and improve any faults. Of course, I don't expect everything to be perfect off the bat. I'm all about try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, succeed.
00:33:59
Speaker
So, yeah, but it's just like Julie was a technician at first. She was responding to my specific requests of videos to do of things to do, which is appropriate. And now even only a relatively short, you know, six, seven, eight months later, I'm basically giving Julie footage and she's using her own personality because she now understands us a lot, too. So she's adding.
00:34:24
Speaker
the humorous things, knowing when to put text pop ups, how to tweak the tone of it. She writes the descriptions for these podcasts, which are insanely good, in my opinion. They're awesome. Right. But that took us some time. It wouldn't have made sense for her to jump in with Julie's style of day one. Yep.
00:34:45
Speaker
Dude, exactly right. Oh, my God. So cool. It's the frog in the water, man. Like you are. It's a good thing. It does. I will warn you. It creates pressure. Like this week, we had a tough day because I was gone. My wife is having a really tough time with.
00:35:03
Speaker
life, like we had a sick kid and there were travel logistics at home issues. And then one of our employees, children was sick. And then one of our other employees was out for a recruiting thing for other stuff. And all of a sudden we had this perfect storm of basically nobody at the shop and two forklift deliveries were coming and other people, a vendor was coming to do a service check on something. And it's just like,
00:35:28
Speaker
you will create this system, this, this thing, which is awesome and it's great. But when things go hiccupy, it gets stressful. It's like a delicate balance. Yeah, it sort. Yeah.
00:35:42
Speaker
It's fine. There's no other way about it. I'm just, it's different when you've got, I mean, look at it. You're not gonna, you're not going to shrink. I'll put it that way. No, exactly. I mean, it's crazy to think that probably within a month, if Aaron comes on and if Angelo the machinist does work out, like within a month, we're at five employees already. And it's like,
00:36:03
Speaker
What? I originally thought this was just going to be me. This was just a John Grimsmo enterprise forever in my garage. And now, two, three, six years later, we've got five people. And it could grow more than that. It's just nuts.
00:36:19
Speaker
No, and it's not I hesitate because neither you nor I are growing for the sake of growing. And in some respects, it's not like we're growing with like, oh, major expansions and blah, blah, blah. Like it's more just you can honestly say some of it is right sizing where you're basically not working as much.
00:36:41
Speaker
over insane amounts, which is awesome because it's a good thing to do, you know, kind of bite off more than you can chew, then chew and then help get people on your team to help take that off your plate. What's tough about that is that that means payroll is going to go up, but your revenue may not go up. You're a little depending like, like Julie is sorry, I keep calling her Julie because you have a Julie. I don't have a Julie.
00:37:10
Speaker
I know, but just, but I just hope I don't call Erin Julie accidentally. And if I do, I'm going to have to apologize for a few. She'll get it.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, she'll get it. I've already explained to her the situation. But it's like she won't directly bring in more revenue unless we get more subscribers on YouTube and ads go up or something like that. But her job is not to bring in revenue. You know what I mean? It's to strengthen the brand. It's to improvise the web, do the website better, and just make what we're doing more clear to everybody, to our customers, to our fans, and all that. And I want that. That's very, very valuable to me. Oh, no. Yeah, exactly.
00:37:49
Speaker
But she's not gonna bring in more cash. Exactly. But that's what's tough. That's what I'm saying. You're as an entrepreneur, you could use an Aaron, you could use an Angelo and you could use probably some sort of a shop manager administrative type person. And all three of those people could really just end up taking work off your plate and honestly doing a better job or doing stuff that wasn't getting done. But that's probably the three of those people for certain would probably be six figures of total payroll that all of a sudden didn't exist a year, two months ago.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yep, exactly, right? So you got to cash flow that in.
Cash Flow Planning with Barry
00:38:23
Speaker
So Barry, the lifelong accountant, has been slowly working on this cash flow forecasting for our business. And when he just throws a ton of numbers on the page, and I look at it, and I'm like, I see all the numbers, but I don't really understand what's going on here. There's no structure. There's no organization. It's just all numbers. And in his mind, it's perfect because he made it, right?
00:38:46
Speaker
So we worked together and we color coded stuff and I watched your budgeting video from like last year and super helpful. And so I started to get them to like color code things and add a couple different formulas and now I'm starting to get it. And now I'm starting to like, okay, okay. And since most of our income is in US dollars and most of our outflow is in Canadian dollars, we've got these two columns for everything and it's like confusing.
00:39:09
Speaker
So we added some kind of guesstimate math. I just need to know how much cash I have now and I will have next month and next month and next month and next month, assuming all these expenses and all these income, you know, stays the same. So this cashflow thing has been really, really helpful the past few weeks. And it allows me to look at things like the Tumblr purchase and like the, you know, hiring these people.
00:39:30
Speaker
We can do that even if we stay at the same production levels. We can make this happen and ideally, especially with Angelo coming on, we should be able to increase our production levels.
00:39:43
Speaker
Okay, so we should do this. I'm serious. I talked last week briefly about what are our 2018 goals. I also mentioned that you and I have now hit a point where our businesses have continued to be similar, but also are incredibly different, which is to be blunt.
00:40:02
Speaker
I have a demand problem and you have a supply problem, which is that we don't really have people that want. We don't have people that want our products at the levels that I want to have that be the case. Whereas you have, I think, and again, super generalizations, you have plenty of people that want your products. It's just a trick of getting them produced to satisfy that and to make sure that there continues to be demand as supply, right sizes.
00:40:29
Speaker
Right. That's exactly true. So what we should do is you and I should come up with kind of a list of things. I certainly have my opinions and inputs on infrastructure and mechanics and processes so that as we go through 2018, now is the time. It was just like why I basically passed
00:40:50
Speaker
on an ERP system. It's because it doesn't make sense to start that now because we've already gone too far down the line of bad and insufficient processes, which we are fixing literally today. I came back last night to the shop, got back from Vegas, and came into the shop real quick.
00:41:10
Speaker
the guys have completely removed and relocated the shipping table and the racks, which may be so happy. They're figuring this stuff out. But when I think about as you start going to this number of people, it's payroll and it's automating stuff and it's not becoming, you know, you're going to find that it really stinks if Angelo and Aaron come on board and then all of a sudden you realize that employees actually take vacation.
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah, because that's one of the conversations we had. We're like, oh, yeah, they have to get like two or three weeks. Like, how are we going to do that? We don't do that.
00:41:47
Speaker
And as much as you may find awesome people to be on your team, they're not you. They're not the business owner. They don't. A great employee, a great team member can be somebody who is willing to completely forget about this business when they walk out the door because they have a family, they have a life, they have other things. That's OK. That's healthy. They're not the person who's going to be interested on their vacation thinking about, oh, I wonder if I change this process. So it's tough.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah. And that is a different mindset because I expect that of Eric, but I don't think he gets that. He's an owner in the business, but I don't think he thinks about this business one-tenth the amount that I do offline. And it's tough. And you're right. With a more regular employee, that needs to be expected, and I need to be OK with that. I've got to run here a few minutes. What are you up to today?
00:42:44
Speaker
Sure, sure. Today, running more production. I've got the lathe running, making more titanium screws. And the other thing we did this week is I signed up for QuickBooks Online, which has been magical. Awesome. It's like super cool. OK, yeah. Yeah.
00:43:01
Speaker
That's too funny because I was going to mention at some point that's going to be one of our, because we're not doing an ERP right now, I am going to force the migration from QuickBooks desktop over to that online and that is easy to do.
00:43:18
Speaker
Don't do that like January 23rd. Do either do that on January 1st of the beginning of the year or do it right before the year starts so that you have effectively as much of a full year going into like as 18 as possible. Did you finish the- Yeah, so we're loving it so far. Sorry. Go ahead. Finish. Norseman pallets.
00:43:41
Speaker
Not yet. I'm picking away at it as I get time. Worked on it a bit this morning. Man, I would love to just come in for like a Saturday and a Sunday and make them done. And I'll see if I can squeak some time this week.
00:43:54
Speaker
I like pick away at the cam for it and what I don't have is machine time because the machines are making knife parts all day. Yeah, that's going to get worse. But the words second machine are like I'm trying to keep them out of my head because it's like you a few months ago, like you told me with a sad voice, you're like, I think we need a second machine.
00:44:17
Speaker
And it wasn't the excitement of the first machine. It's like, we need the second machine. And that's where I feel right now. I've been excited about the thought of a second machine for many months. But now that it's real, it's like, oh, man, I could really use one. Build up a sales pitch. And that sales pitch is going to be to yourself and to your wife and to your teammates or to me.
00:44:43
Speaker
That's not as much of a financial problem as it is a cash flow problem, meaning you have the potential return on investment. You have the potential long-term ability to justify it. You have space constraints and you have logistical constraints about them. Honestly, you need to be focused on, you're not going to like this, but you're going to need to be focused on getting out of your shop.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I've thought a lot about it. I have these kind of benchmarks in my mind, like we know it's going to
Future Shop Relocation Plans
00:45:13
Speaker
take a few months. We know we're going to want to renovate the new shop. We know we're not going to want to do it ourselves, because we need to work while we pay people, just like you did. You paid contractors to do all the work, and I'm sure you were hands-on with the organization of it, but you didn't put up drywall and paint and all that stuff.
00:45:31
Speaker
And we did for this shop, but we were down for like a month while we painted the floors and the walls. And that's just stupid. We cannot do that. So I want to have a certain cash reserve in the bank account. And I want to be in a certain comfortable position. And then at that point, I'm like, then we'll look for a shop. So this will be kind of
00:45:50
Speaker
A cool time to bring this up, which is that I think a lot of people know that when I graduated from Babson College, which was the number one school in the US for entrepreneurship, I went to work in New York finance. So it's kind of like, wait a minute here. Why finance? I went into finance because there's a statistic that's driven home through the Babson entrepreneurial program, which is that an incredibly high percentage. I don't know what percentage. I'm sure it's changing. But something like 80% of businesses fail.
00:46:19
Speaker
not because of profitability, but because of cashflow. I wanted to learn and I wanted to master the idea of how to manage a business from a financial standpoint, knowing that that would be a tool. Just like I love building computers.
00:46:34
Speaker
just like you in high school. I bought a computer company and built computers and stuff. And I didn't want to have computers be what I did. I wanted them to be an incredibly valuable tool to support what I did.
Importance of Cash Flow Management
00:46:46
Speaker
But that's where you are right now. I love you and I think you are going to make it.
00:46:51
Speaker
To remove the affiliation to you, you're at a point where all of a sudden you could be out of space, out of ability to have people come do work. You need one or more machines. You need to pay double rent for two rents to have a contractor come in and renovate the new space. You've got real hurdles in front of you, which is tough because the world is coming together. You are crushing it, and that's awesome.
00:47:14
Speaker
Exactly. Well, and not very many months ago, cash flow was our biggest problem. And we could have gone out of business if a few tides turned the wrong way. And that was a very painful time in my life. But I feel like we're past it. And if we're very smart and we're very conscious of the choices we make, that should not happen again.
00:47:38
Speaker
So, yeah, learn from your mistakes kind of. Hey guys, listening, learn from my mistakes. No, that's what it's all about. Like, I'm not gonna, good grief. Yeah, I'm not picking on you in that sense. I'm just, this is the real world. I mean, there's no, yeah. Absolutely. Let's think about some stuff for 2000, actually that'll be good timing. Let's think about some stuff for 2018 that we wanna kind of push ourselves on. And maybe, I'm trying to think if there's a way that you and I can maybe create,
00:48:07
Speaker
some Britain lists or something we can share with people that's more than just listening to the podcast about what that is and some account. So are you thinking it's like an accountability, like a challenge, a public thing? Cause I know Tim Ferriss talks about that a lot. He's like, if you want to lose 50 pounds, tell your entire follower that you're going to lose 50 pounds and then they're going to, you know, or put a hundred dollar bet on it or something like that. And once you make it real, then it,
00:48:33
Speaker
you're more likely to do it. But you and I are going to do it either way. Because that's, I think, kind of who we are. I mean more like I want people to feel like they're along for the journey. And I love the podcast. But a lot of times it's kind of like, what are they going to talk about today? You know, whereas I want to tell people, you know, it's it's I want to work on the website, I want to work on my third party fulfillment or my ERP or selling through some different channels or
00:48:56
Speaker
or refining the purpose of Saunders Machine Works and helping people understand what it is we do and why we do it. Let's create that list and that way we can kind of let people see that and then follow along throughout the year on my end with those things. And on your end, let's talk about the machines and the expansion and the bringing people on and the payroll and the frustration and the accounting, all that stuff. Yeah, it's more than just goals. It's like a task list that has a start and a finish. It's telling the story.
00:49:26
Speaker
Right, right. That's a really interesting thing. And if Erin works out and I have some leverage with her, then we can actually tell that story. Yeah, no, exactly. Right. And if she doesn't work out, we still have a story. And that's OK. That's part of what it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Excellent. Sweet. Are we? Is next Thanksgiving, or is next Friday, the US Thanksgiving?
00:49:47
Speaker
I don't even remember. I have no idea. We have a Canada thing in October. It's obviously not because it's a Friday. Silly. Yeah. Awesome. I will see you next Friday morning. Sounds great. Have an awesome day. OK, take care.