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Business of Machining - Episode 37
211 Plays8 years ago
Saunders says 'tis the season with an Uberchuck commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lncrr_7aJE
Saunders visits EMO in Germany while Grimsmo uploads his first YouTube video in months: CMTS!
Grimsmo debates the future of producing videos: in-house or enlist outside help?
McMaster University partners up with Grimsmo knives for a marketing class project!
Saunders speaks on Social Media at a local Machinery Dealer open house What can YOU get out of an Open House Sales Event? Will a Royal Chuck get Saunders over the Lathe hurdle? Bar Feeder Secrets that Machine Dealers won't tell you! The key to buying a new machine? Play the market!
UpWork FTW! Grimsmo implements a great solution to their maker's choice system via some custom code written by an UpWork expert.
Finally, Saunders and Grimsmo are both due for new computers! What to buy?!
Recommended
Transcript
Energetic Morning & Procurement Delegation
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode number 37. My name is John Grimsmough.
00:00:06
Speaker
My name is John Saunders. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm feeling really great this morning, and I can't exactly explain why. I'm just like, I'm pumped. Yeah? Yeah. Dude, awesome. Yeah, life is just great. I'm excited for today. I woke up at 4.50 AM, and I was like, you know what? I'm awake. I just, let's go to work. So I've been on, you know, crushing email and ordering a bunch of stuff for the past two hours.
00:00:33
Speaker
Isn't it funny how I think we talked about this before but ordering stuff Procurement is now a legitimate job. Oh, yeah I we just so we do the Kanban cards kind of we're getting there and I just Started sharing. This is like super awkward. This is the business stuff. Nobody tells you about but like I have Amazon
00:00:56
Speaker
actually eBay oddly, and then McMaster, we buy some stuff like electronic stuff off of eBay, that's really good. I just sort of delegated some of that to Ed and Noah. And of course I trust them, it's not that, it's more just, it's awkward because it's like, what's gonna be coming in, who is it addressed to? I'm not gonna recognize the charges when I do our daily accounting.
Procurement Policies Inspired by Tim Ferriss
00:01:21
Speaker
It's just that, and then it's like, what is that next, like is that, does that lead, you know,
00:01:25
Speaker
Certainly over time, there could be problems. What are those problems? It's just weird about all of a sudden now, do I create second accounts for all of them? Do I get them corporate credit cards? It's interesting. Yep. You're going to need your own purchasing department soon. No, no, no.
00:01:42
Speaker
But yeah, having packages come in the door that you didn't order or authorize directly, like, yeah, I can imagine that'd be weird. Well, it's still small here. And I said, look, if it's under 100 bucks, and it's something we've kind of done before, you don't have to grab me. And if it's more than that, and that's what Tim Ferriss talks about in a four-hour work week. Exactly, yeah. He's like, don't bother me on customer service issues that are able to be resolved for less than $100 of cost.
Tracking Deliveries & Inventory Management
00:02:10
Speaker
Yep, totally agree with that. Yeah, Eric does that too now. We've got our local distributor, Imprecise, and I'm like, if you need something that they have, just call them. Don't talk to me. I don't need to know. Just call them and order it. It's all on credit card and you just do it. Yeah, right. What do you do or anything for things that are to be received? Like when you order stuff and it has, do you track what's supposed to be inbound?
00:02:38
Speaker
only on really big stuff like our $10,000 order of material, even water jet stuff coming in. Just because we're curious how long it takes, how many weeks delay we have. It's a big purchase for us and time is critical. Anything other than that, most of the time I forget that I've ordered it until it comes in and I go, oh yeah, sweet. Unless I really need it, but nothing fancy, nothing fancy.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, we don't do it for Amazon, of course I don't do it, or even like Maratool, because I know how reliable they are. But when I order from eBay, or when I order from one of those random websites, I do make a note. It's actually funny, it's like the one text file over the last eight years that has continued to actually work, like it hasn't been ignored or hasn't grown into something unwieldy.
00:03:26
Speaker
And it's literally just called receive.txt. And like right now, it's payment from two customers. We use it QuickBooks for accounts receivable, but I don't like writing reports. So I just track customers that have a tendency to sometimes need following up on.
Holiday Marketing & Creative Advertising
00:03:42
Speaker
We bought some door strips off Amazon and some stamps. What was I going to say about that? But I can't remember. Sorry.
00:03:54
Speaker
I feel like it has something significant to say about that. I do sometimes update our Pearson boards on the wall. Right. Like I'll write a little magnetic label that says, you know, ordered August 14th, not received yet. And then once it comes in, we have a quick, easy, like right there label of how long it took. Right. You're just trying to figure out lead time and what exactly. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And historical lead time, too, for that will be really handy for us.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's something I'd love to do. I've been proud. It's October 6th. One of my goals for this year was to start really rolling out products. And I'm proud of what we've done. I think there's a lot more to do. But where we definitely are not is we don't have enough
00:04:41
Speaker
consistent sales and length of sales to do like what Jay Pearson did, which is they're actually able to predict based on historical sales, not only basically when they're going to need more. So they don't overstock, but they keep enough on hand. That's cool. That's very cool.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, for us it's more of a weekly production schedule based on our own production abilities, right? Right. So we know we're going to need X many per week, per month, and then this is our minimum basically based on that. We want one to two weeks of minimum in stock all the time. Right. Yep.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think we do what most people do, which is we probably overstuff the inventory of hair. My argument or justification is it's been forcing us to make product and go through those processes. And it actually is good to do that when you don't have the pressure of sales, if that makes sense. But on the flip side, if you want to change something, you've got inventory that is stale in some form. And it's kind of created my own internal pressure where
00:05:48
Speaker
We're sort of thinking about it, okay, we're starting on the holiday seasons. Let's start actually marketing the products, which we still haven't really done much of, and is that recipe gonna all come together? I don't know, we'll see. Yeah, I hadn't even thought about the holiday season yet. That's funny. Oh, dude, yeah. I posted the Albrecht Uber Chuck commercial on Facebook yesterday, and it's like it's never too soon to be merry.
YouTube Content Creation & Editing Efficiency
00:06:11
Speaker
Yep.
00:06:13
Speaker
We'll put a link to that YouTube video in the description. It is hilarious because they did it. They did the most, it's not obscene in the sense that it's graphic. But it's definitely not like PG. And it's literally a German, Germans have no sense of humor, a German milling chuck company figured out how to make a funny commercial. Did you see the emo video when I hugged the person wearing the Uber chuck costume?
00:06:42
Speaker
Yes, I did. Yeah, they didn't think it was very funny. Yeah. Yeah. I'm about 15 minutes into your emo video. I watched it this morning and there's, you know, that means that means there's another hour left to watch, which is perfect. Um, but big news. I uploaded a YouTube video last night. Really? Yeah. First time in like three months. What is it? Uh, CMTs. Oh, awesome.
00:07:10
Speaker
I figured if I uploaded now, it would be timely because it was just last week. It wasn't a ton of footage to bust through. I'm pretty happy with myself about that. Good for you. Awesome. Did you edit it? Can I ask? Yep. I didn't know if you, I know a long time ago you were using the remote editing, but I just figured maybe that hadn't been something you did anymore.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, and it's one of those Catch-22s. I kind of like the process of editing just because I've done it for so many years and I'm kind of good at it, but not great. It's not my expertise. It's just this kind of familiarity to go through it and be like, cut the clips and shorten it and do exactly what I want. But long-term, man, it's not for me. I have so much better stuff that I want to do with my time.
00:07:58
Speaker
But I still want to crank out videos. So editing myself and actually getting some videos out is probably going to force me to move forward and probably hire a remote editor unless I decide to have some of these locally.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, remote can be fine. Yeah, exactly. So obviously, much longer lead time. The key is to get a relationship with somebody where effectively you can delegate full control because what I found was if you have to watch the video two or three times to get there back and forth, then, oh my gosh, then all of a sudden, when we used to edit ourselves, I mean, I edited really quickly. Basically, I watched the video once, and as I watched it, I edited it. I
Marketing Class Case Study & Networking
00:08:40
Speaker
usually then just directly uploaded it to YouTube.
00:08:42
Speaker
And then on YouTube I could watch it at 2X, make sure there weren't any problems or glitches and just kind of roll with it. But yeah, it's fun now to have Julie who can actually pour her skill and talent into editing better videos. Right, right.
00:08:59
Speaker
So a couple weeks ago, I got an email from McMaster University, which is one of the local big, big universities here in Toronto area. And that's where you go if you want to become an expert buyer of McMaster car products? Exactly. Sorry. But they've got their own gigantic hospital on facility. It's a really big university, right? Yeah, exactly.
00:09:26
Speaker
So, one of their classes contacted me, one of the students, and they're in a marketing program, and they wanted to do a case study of Grimsman Ives from a marketing perspective. Yeah. That's awesome. So, I get this email that says, marketing analysis offer or something, and I'm like, this is spam. What is this? So, I delayed it for a day or two, and then I finally read it, and I'm like, wait, wait.
00:09:47
Speaker
This is like a young hustling kid that wants to bring his class to the shop and not only learn and review how we do our marketing, but also offer every tip that they've ever learned to improve our marketing style at no cost because it's for their class. And yeah, so today, 4 p.m., there's up to five students coming here to open up conversation with that. So I'm super excited. Awesome. Good for you. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome.
00:10:18
Speaker
What's the deliverable or output? Are they doing a report or a summary type of thing? I guess so. Yeah, it's for a class project. It'll be over a few months. So there'll be some back and forth. Probably they'll suggest some stuff. And if I can implement it, then they can see growth or changes or anything like that.
00:10:34
Speaker
Okay. Cool. Yeah. That'll be interesting to see. Yeah, exactly. I'm super excited to watch your CMTS video now. Yeah, it's about 18 minutes, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I even said in the video, I'm like, we're not here to film the event. We're here to learn some things. We're going to bring you guys along. We might film some stuff, you know? Right, right.
00:10:57
Speaker
Well, my last trip was this week, which is awesome, because now it's like a runway through the rest of the year, sort of. But we went over to Dayton to a friend that runs Reynolds Machinery. They're a dealer for Okamoto, OKK, Samsung, Herco, kind of a smorgasbord of brands.
00:11:16
Speaker
It was their open house. So these are machinery dealer open houses. Don't confuse it in any way. It's a sales event. So it has that kind of feeling of a sales event, which has good things and has kind of drawbacks. But I had a great time. We did a talk on social media, which was great. But one of the things I kind of learned and realized is these events are not quite as well attended as a trade show because they're a little bit more niche and specific and so forth.
00:11:46
Speaker
take advantage of that. They had representatives from every machine tool that they sell there from the company. They had a rep from Shunk, they had a rep from Iscar, they had a rep from not only the wire EDM, but like the EDM consumable supplier. And they had all these little guys who are pretty darn smart and sharp, and that's your chance to go
00:12:07
Speaker
ask questions, get really into the weeds with them. And that's one of those times where they can sit there for an hour with you and there's not that trade show churn where they're just trying to get people in and out of the booth and it's a very much more chaotic environment.
Lathe Tooling Systems & Machinery Challenges
00:12:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:12:21
Speaker
So what'd you learn? I almost don't want to say that loud. I learned some good things about lathes. I don't need a lathe right now, but actually the day before that I swung by my buddy's shop in Dayton who, that's where I posted that picture of the Okuma M5. Yeah, exactly. They've also got the Okuma sister lathe, which is like the Genos 300, L300 lathe or something like that.
00:12:50
Speaker
It's their 10-inch or 8-inch late sub-spital Y, all that good stuff. They have, and you know I'd seen this before, but it didn't really click in the same way it did now, but it's a royal chuck system, or collet system, excuse me, that's probably like 3 inches in diameter.
00:13:09
Speaker
I'm sure you're familiar with it, but you have this tool that looks like a big wire cutter type tool that's got this big face on it that you can stick that tool in, that removes the collet. And you have collet sizes from quarter inch up to, I think you said like two and, I don't know, two and a three eighths or something?
00:13:29
Speaker
And I'm sure they're expensive, but that was one of the big things for me with the lathe was, I don't want to, if you haven't used a modern CNC lathe before, they don't have traditional scroll chucks on them. They have hydraulic chucks and you effectively have to bore soft jaws for just about every diameter or every job.
00:13:52
Speaker
I suppose you could use hard jaws, but it's going to mark your part up. It's not something I generally see as a workflow. So that royal system looked pretty darn slick for being able to work with a variety of diameters quickly. Absolutely. Yeah. It's called a C system or something like that.
00:14:10
Speaker
I forget exactly what the term is, but I know exactly what you mean. These three inch diameter collets and a big trigger gun system, they've got rubber between all the movable parts of the collet and then the gun compresses it and you pull the collet out. The collets themselves are like one or two hundred dollars each, which is a lot.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, but not really. An ER32 for coolant through is 40 bucks, and that thing is the size of your thumb. Exactly. Yeah, it just depends if you need every size on the market, then you're dropping thousands of dollars on collets. Right, right.
00:14:48
Speaker
So, so I've got the Royal 5C collets and the only drawback to that is that it only goes up to one inch or one and one sixteenth or whatever. Whereas my lathe could go up to two and a half. Right. So I'm, you know, I don't make big things, I make small things, but having this one inch ceiling kind of bugs me a little bit because I got this gigantic lathe and I can only go up to one inch. It's not permanent, I mean you could. No, exactly. I could easily get that collet system, you know, it's five or ten grand or whatever it is. If I need it, it's there to get. Right, right.
00:15:18
Speaker
It's actually funny, you'll see it in the emo video at like, I don't know, 30 or 40 minutes in. We go to the Nakamura booth and they have your laid there and it's turning. It's like live milling on this pretty large, like two or three inch diameter shaft that's like 18 inches long. And I'm like, oh, it's a Norseman part. Yeah.
00:15:36
Speaker
The world's biggest Norseman. Right, right. No, and it's funny, because the other thing I learned, and this is really frustrating, is my buddy Adam was showing off his accumulate, and he was like, yeah.
00:15:49
Speaker
We were looking at the bar feeder on it, and the bar feeder sticks, the bar sections that he had going into it were really short. They were like 36 inches, and I'm like, what's up with that? If I buy a bar feeder, it's to feed in uncut bars. And he was like, yeah, so we didn't know this until after we bought it, but the Akuma, and I don't know whether it's the mill, or excuse me, the lathe, or the bar feeder, but I'm 90% sure it's the actual lathe, won't support
00:16:18
Speaker
In any condition or situation, it will not support effectively a bar that sticks out past the machine footprint. So that happens to be 42 inches. They cut them down to 36 to get even increments out of a bar.
00:16:34
Speaker
I like being a positive person, I don't like being too cynical, but darn it, that's the kind of thing that if I was an entrepreneur and I was buying my first machine, it kind of ticks me off that a machine tool salesman is gonna kinda, he knows that, but he's not gonna share that, because he doesn't wanna risk jeopardizing a sale. And I'm not trying to throw them under the bus, but what I'm saying is, all the more reason, your machine tool dealer that's selling you that machine isn't gonna tell you that. But if you go to a competitor and you're like, hey,
00:17:04
Speaker
I'm going to be honest, I'm really liking this machine. Walk me through why yours is better. That's when someone's going to say, hey, you should think about whether that machine can do this. And all of a sudden, now you start learning good information. And it's only until that competition that all the good information comes out, or the bad information. Yeah.
00:17:22
Speaker
So, my lathe is, I believe, the same story. I looked into bar feeders at CMTS, and I have 70 inches between my lathe and the wall, so I need a very small bar feeder. I can't fit a 12-foot bar feeder in this shop anyway.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I want one in this shop. I want a bar feeder, so I looked at this one and Edge Technologies has it and it's for it's for up to 48 inch bars Which is kind of perfect for me, but he said the same thing It's like my spindle is 42 inches long and right now I cut all my bars to 42 inches and I would then have to load 42 inch bars into the lay into this the feeder and then do like that now I'm not sure if it's
00:18:07
Speaker
If you got a 12-foot bar feeder, it has all the interface stuff for the Laid that allows you to run continuous bars. I don't know if it's a Laid thing or a bar feeder thing. That needs more information. I'd be surprised if it's a Laid lockout feature because that would be kind of stupid.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what it was. I don't think it was a software thing. I think it was a more mechanical design on the width of the bar or something. But again, I would assume I've got this six bolt arrangement out the back of my lathe.
Building Relationships with Distributors
00:18:38
Speaker
I would assume that would have to directly tie into the bar feeder somehow, so that they're mechanically linked. I don't know.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah, but it was cool though. Reynolds is the open house I was at. They put on a great show. It was really nice. And that was the other thing that had never really occurred to me about a benefit of going to one of these is guess, think about this.
00:19:00
Speaker
I want an event where I can talk to all of the other customers that have done two things. One, bought this brand of machine, and two, dealt with the service and the problems with that machine and that service department. Because I was joking, I was like, I almost want to hear about somebody who has had a problem with a Samsung lathe, because I want to know how it got fixed. That actually would be super, I mean, it would be silly to say, oh, these machines don't have problems.
00:19:30
Speaker
So, if you're thinking about an open house like that, think about what you can get out of it. There were so many people there who, they're a big Herco shop, so they were talking about all these guys who have had Herco's for five years or 20 years, and that's really good information.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, I've been going to the joint open house here, the one Elliot Matsura puts on for a good seven or eight years now, almost every single year. Man, even from eight years ago before or as I had my little Grizzly X2, the ability to go to these things and, as you said, talk to all the vendors who aren't crazy busy and be able to pick their brain for
00:20:08
Speaker
an hour or two and ask them anything and learn and digest information, it's so valuable. You don't realize that these events exist until you start looking for them. When I used to think about them as a kind of a, not like it's going for free food, but I thought it more of as a soft event, just a pow wow or whatever, not as this really good information digestion really gets stuff out of it.
00:20:34
Speaker
Do you have another, is Elliott Matsura, I know you have a great relationship with them and they're so big, are there other equivalents in the Toronto area? Yeah, there's tons. And the joint open house is actually five different distributors that all, you know, we bus around to all of them. Yeah, there's the Makino guys, there's the Okuma guys, there's the, what else? There was a laser cutting, the laser machine ones. There's something else I'm forgetting, but yeah.
00:21:00
Speaker
But that's the other thing, you got to get to know them as well, even if you're not a customer, even if you're not buying their machines now or even anytime soon, because you don't want to have that proverbial first cup of tea when you all of a sudden need information.
00:21:17
Speaker
and just build a little relationship with them. I'm thinking right now, again, I'm not really in the market for a drill mill, but what a good example. Explain to me why the Brother is different than the FANUC, which is different than the Haas or whatever. Yeah, exactly. And what are those problems that no one wants to talk about that think about that matter greatly to how you tool that machine up?
00:21:42
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, we're actually extremely fortunate to be in this area because we've got probably almost every major machine tool player has a facility here. Haas has one, Mazak has one, but it's kind of an hour in the other direction that I never go to. That's funny. So I've never ever talked to the Mazak guys and they're just like completely off my radar, which is funny, but you know, they're there. Right.
Financial Planning & New Fixtures
00:22:07
Speaker
A bunch of Swiss lathe shops, like, yeah, like.
00:22:11
Speaker
And if you actually wanted to jump in your car and drive from place to place to place on the same day, then it's all there to be had, right? Yeah, which is huge. Speaking of machines, I was thinking about something this weekend. I've got to say it because I have to say it, which is, you've got to think about that EDM machine. Not so much what brand and so forth, but what kind of
00:22:40
Speaker
I'm super proud of what you've built. It's amazing and you've turned this hurdle and you guys have this amazing product and this amazing opportunity. I don't want to have this conversation though in three years and have you guys still, I want to have this conversation with you in a year or two or three and have you guys be machine debt free, not four times more than you have now. True. That's all. Fair enough.
00:23:04
Speaker
I don't want to harp on it, I'm not trying to be that guy, but that's the problem with debt is people just get so used to it and then they just keep buying more and they don't get out of it.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I definitely want to get to a positive level so that we're not always chasing our tail and we're not always growing just out of reach so that this financial freedom and et cetera, et cetera, these levels that I want to hit, they're not just getting farther and farther away. I actually want to catch the carrot and hold it for a while and then move forward. Yeah, so that's an excellent point. Excellent point.
00:23:41
Speaker
On a awesome note, I am excited to announce that Nathan from N8, maybe that's Nate Machine, is the winner of our contest. So we asked folks to leave iTunes reviews, which apparently is a pretty critical part of a podcast sort of building its audience. And we had a number of folks leave some awesome reviews. So thank you. So we did a random number generator. And Nate, you are the winner. So we'll figure out a way to get in touch with you and look forward to having a conversation with you about whatever you want to talk about.
00:24:11
Speaker
Sounds great, can't wait. What are you up to today? Today, well tonight the McMaster guys are coming. Today I'm working on my new Norseman fixtures, which I'm super excited about because I just ran through all of our inventory of Norseman parts, the old way, the hard way, the batch work way, the piecemeal way, and I'm
00:24:35
Speaker
Really looking forward, now that I have no more inventory and we're waiting for the new stuff to come in, hopefully next week, I've got a couple days to bust out these hot swappable pallets. Nice. Yeah, I can't wait, super excited. So I've been making little clamps and fixtures here over the past few weeks, but now it's time for the big one. Dude, I saw one of the Maker's Choice photos, it was like whatever, four knives, I think they had black inlays, does that sound right?
00:25:00
Speaker
Carbon fiber. Yeah, there you go. Yep. John those things are beautiful. Thank you beautiful God just amazing Yeah, the I talked a couple weeks ago about hypothetically getting an Excel system made up like a program basically to pick names randomly for this makers choice list that we have going on and
00:25:29
Speaker
It's funny, because the podcast is two weeks delayed, I went ahead and did that the very next week, and then I get an email from somebody who listened to the podcast, and they're like, oh, I can help you out and do this and do this, and I'll be like, sorry, dude, I already did it. Yeah, right. But anyway, man, the system that I implemented and that I got made by a programmer is
00:25:50
Speaker
Near flawless there's one tiny little hiccup that I'm not super happy with you know basically if It's automatic right so if if your name gets pulled you get emailed with a link a special link that nobody else can see basically and then if 24 hours later another name gets pulled if you John Saunders by at hour 25 because the link still works for you and
00:26:13
Speaker
So you buy it and then the second person Basically sees sold out and they're like, oh I thought this was unique and etc. So that's happened once or twice So you need that lit that first link to basically go dead after an hour 24 I don't know how to do that and maybe that's I don't need to know how to do it I just need to ask the right people right go ask you that's a good point. Go ask the upward guy. I
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, okay. That's a good point. I'll do that. You're probably going to have to delete the first link and page, and then the second guy gets a new link. Yeah. I don't know how to do that automatically. And you're not going to. That guy's going to do it. Seriously, this is not a skill set you need to have. Good point. Good point. I like to talk myself out of it when I don't know how to do it.
00:27:00
Speaker
No, we gave this presentation on social media in a job shop and manufacturing, how that can help you externally and internally, in support of both marketing but also internal operations, and it went really well. We're actually going to give that a similar version of that at AU this year in Las Vegas. I think it went really well. People really enjoyed it.
00:27:22
Speaker
And it's actually, I will say this, it's a really nice PowerPoint. I've given hundreds of PowerPoint presentations over the last 10 years. And I feel like I have a pretty good barometer of keeping it interesting and how to make a good PowerPoint. And it looks really nice. It's a very visually pleasing presentation. And the punch line at the very end, the
Tech Upgrades & Business Operations Efficiency
00:27:42
Speaker
last slide, I sort of end with talking about
00:27:46
Speaker
the various websites and services that you can use as force multipliers within a small business or even a medium sized business. And I talk a lot about Upwork as it relates to a machine shop and so forth. And the last slide is this picture of the presentation and I just tell the audience, I didn't even make this presentation. Someone else made it for me on Upwork. And I gave the speech twice and both times there was actually a little in the audience.
00:28:14
Speaker
Nice. It was kind of fun. Good for you. What was I going to say? Oh, hey, I got to ask you. Well, my laptop, actually, trying to give that presentation, one of the USP ports is dead, and now the HDMI out is dead, which was a problem giving a presentation. I think I'm going to stick with my Apple, not because I am a fan boy, but it's been reliable, and I use some of the Apple-specific apps, like Final Cut and Photos. But you're also in the market now for a new laptop?
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, I just posted a thing on Instagram last night. I haven't read any of the comments yet, but I'll turn through them after our podcast here. My HP Windows-based laptop, it's just been slowing down, and Fusion's slow, and video editing's slow, and even Chrome will crash, and it frees up the whole computer.
00:29:05
Speaker
It's two and a half years old and it was refurbished when I got it, so it's time to spend some money and get something nice because this is the future of our business. Literally, if I'm not standing in front of my machine, I'm standing in front of my computer all day long. I actually feel guilty because Eric's upstairs working, making knives, putting things together, never touches his computer, and I'm standing in front of my computer all day long, but that's working. That's just how we work.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I want to get something nice. I mean, it's time. So I don't know what I'm going to get yet. But I'm not an Apple guy. I've just never had an Apple. Oh, yeah. And I don't think I could switch right now. Oh, yeah. I have no interest in that whole drama there. It's a tool to me. The tool works pretty darn well. And that was my question, too.
00:29:49
Speaker
the guy that helps us here in the shop with our training, Kevin, who knows the computer stuff pretty well. I was like, hey, what is a good PC equivalent to a MacBook? You know, aluminum, rugged, things like I can close the lid and open it and it doesn't like hibernate and take 17 minutes to wake up.
00:30:07
Speaker
And there are some pretty nice PC laptops out there. I had to laugh because I saw the Instagram post that you made. I was like, oh, I'll go read this. And there were 86 comments already. And I'm like, I don't have time to read. No, there's literally 100 now.
00:30:21
Speaker
Whoa. That's good. That's good for me. Yeah, no, it's not. It's too much. That's true. Yeah. I'm thinking about replacing my desktop, which is also old, with one of those HP Z2s or 2Zs. Yeah, that mini one that Amish got, right? Yeah, Amish says he really likes it.
00:30:43
Speaker
I think you can get one for like 900 bucks or you can get one that's like screaming for 1400 bucks, which I honestly don't even know if that's expensive in the computer world. I don't really care relative to, I mean, it is the tool I use the most every single day. And when you're buying a hundred dollars with the tools every day for the machine, I don't really care about whether I'm saving $200 on a computer or not.
00:31:05
Speaker
I think Amish said his was 1700 US. Oh really? Maybe he got super decked out one. But yeah, he loves it. He says all the little legs and holds up some fusion that are normal with his old laptop are just non-existent in the new one. And generating code and et cetera, it's just faster.
00:31:27
Speaker
Julia's computer is like a totally tricked out gaming rig for video editing, though. And I've run... Oh yeah, totally. It's like liquid cooled in bananas specs. And even it was only two grand, I think. And I ran Fusion out a few times and I'm like, I gotta stop doing this, because otherwise I'm never gonna go back.
00:31:49
Speaker
You're gonna steal her computer.
NYC Site Development Progress
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean I've got a kind of a station here at my at my shop where I always put my laptop but so I thought about getting a desktop for right here but man I do love the portability of just having you know most of my stuff is on the cloud but I just like having my laptop I can bring home use the kitchen table and then bring back here and everything's still
00:32:09
Speaker
But why not buy a more modest laptop? The PC laptop that I was going to get was like $1,000, $1,100, which is not that much. And then get a good desktop, which is going to smoke a laptop, leave that at the shop, and you can do both. Easy. That's a consideration for sure.
00:32:33
Speaker
Here's the other reason to do that is you're not going to be at that desktop over the next three years. Someone else is going to be at that desktop and having that there and in place and then what we do is all remote into that if I need to help somebody out with something on the road or from home or whatever. Yeah, I've thought about that too, about the long term. Once we bring in more people then they're going to need their own computers too basically.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, I've got some stuff to think about. So what are you up to today? We are knee deep in final tweaks and content for the NYC site. Like the whole structure is basically done, which is super exciting. I mean, again, this has been like a year in the works. So one of the things I struggled with was creating a lot of content before I could see it on the site, because it's all about how the content is presented.
00:33:27
Speaker
And digest it so right now we've got I mean I probably got 15 videos that are Either in progress or being edited or being revised Three people making videos I'm actually picking up some editing myself today, and I am super super excited like I'm super excited. It's all about
00:33:48
Speaker
It's just everything. It's about manufacturing entrepreneurship, learning Fusion 360, learning how to run CNC machines. We can't put everything out in the beginning, so it's more about, hey, let's get some sample content out when we launch the site that is going to be representative of what's to come. But there's so much more I'm excited about to come.
00:34:09
Speaker
Nice. So out of curiosity, are you hiring a lot of Upwork talent to put together the site or are you and Julie and others internally putting it together? Yeah, right now it's me, Julie and Kevin for sure. I've been using Upwork on some of the layout stuff.
00:34:27
Speaker
in some of the, I'm not very good and I don't have the time to do some of the like detailed, it's all WordPress, but there's some plugins that are some pretty specific knowledge base. So I've used a couple guys for that. It actually was a mediocre Upwork experience. So it's not mission critical today. So that's kind of on the get the site launched and then we're going to go back and revise some of that. Yep. Cool. Is there an ADA for the site?
00:34:59
Speaker
For sure we could we could go probably like next Wednesday Part of it is is some of this Julie's doing such a good job of editing these fusion videos. I think they're gonna be Like she's doing a really good job of drawing things attention putting in mouse Representatives of what you're clicking and all that that takes time But for sure in the next two weeks, maybe we'll probably we'll probably email beta people at the end of next week Perfect. Yeah, that's awesome. That's real soon. Yeah, that's good. Yeah
00:35:29
Speaker
Awesome. I'm excited. I'm really good for you. Really excited. So I'm going to go work on that. Yeah. Good stuff, dude. Have fun with the marketing, guys. I'm curious to see what they kind of come up with. Yeah, absolutely. Push them to make a, in my limited experience, it's been a while working with kind of students, make sure they know it's real. I'm not here yet. They're going to get a lot out of it. But push them for a deliverable recommendation or challenge them. Yep.
00:35:59
Speaker
Cool. I love it. Awesome. Take care, bud. All right. Have a great day. Crush it. Crush it. All right. Bye. Bye.