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Business of Machining - Episode 59
201 Plays7 years ago
If winter is over, how can Saunders get chilled out? By CHILLING OUT in Australia, of course. Saunders is back from his 12 day vacation with his wife, and is totally mellowed out, dude, but ready to get back to work.
What was the hardest part for Saunders about being away from the business? Taking a vacation from Social Media Town.
Challenge accepted: how long can you go without using YOUR cell phone? Saunders went 3 days in Australia on a desert island.
Grimsmo on social media:
“Instagram is there for you to enjoy, you’re not there for it to be consumed. It’s there for you, you’re not there for it” - Grimsmo
Can news be spam?
“Not willing to pay the price of the daily noise [of daily newsletters and surveys] just for the possible benefit” - Saunders
Besides, the Johns can agree that if it’s important, they’ll hear about it from someone else.
Adapting your business to the country in which you’re running it
Saunders speaking about the Australian mindset on productivity:
“That’s the great thing about travelling and seeing other cultures; you don’t have to accept it, you don’t have to like it, but you need to see it.” So, should he cut back on his hustle?
How might one succeed in a place like Australia? Or succeed in another country in general that might not have access to the same resources as America?
Ask where the demand is, and do a SWOT analysis.
Sometimes it’s just about asking the question...“How do I take this disadvantage and turn it into an advantage?” - Saunders
Grimsmo on changes to the business:
“The one change you make is not solo by itself” - Grimsmo
If you make one change, other things have to change to suit that change.
Pierson Shop Tour video on the Grimsmo YouTube channel!
“Jay does a good job at showing the results, not just the things that you’re planning on doing” - Saunders
Question: if you had to set an expiry date on how long something could sit in your shop without you using it, how long would it be?
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 59
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 59. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning. Good morning. And how are
Challenges of Scheduling and Travel
00:00:12
Speaker
you doing? Great.
00:00:14
Speaker
Let me tell you, that was an amazing trip. Wow. Yeah. So you're home now. I got home last night. Sorry, we were supposed to record. It's funny, I try to take, it's a partnership, right? So you try to, you're very respectful and I was not a good friend of John.
00:00:30
Speaker
Um, we had scheduled, we had, what was it like? First we had a miscommunic, it was this boring stuff. We had a miscommunication about Monday night scheduling. Then I didn't know that the place that we were at had no internet or cell phone, which ended up being really nice, but obviously didn't lend itself to partnership communications.
Risk-Taking and Planning in Business
00:00:51
Speaker
Um, and then our flights got screwed up yesterday, which is not, we got help, which is, which is great. So, um, yeah, it was a really good trip.
00:01:00
Speaker
Wonderful. Yeah, I mistakenly thought that I knew that 6am my time was 10pm your time, but I mistakenly thought it was the next day, not the day behind. Oh, that's funny. No, it is. So we agree. Monday. Well, we read Monday to do the podcast, which was I'm here Monday, but it was Sunday for you, I think.
00:01:22
Speaker
OK, got it. It's a good lesson of and it's probably something of like to take it away from the podcast and more like life. Like I was heard somebody say something last night on Facebook or something about like, oh, I'll just change this up when I machine this part. And I'm like, I'm a very I think what makes me a very I don't want to say unique, but a different entrepreneur is I kind of want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don't want to take that risk. I'm not that.
00:01:52
Speaker
throw it all out. So I'm a very risk-conscious person.
Risk-Consciousness in Machining
00:01:56
Speaker
And that doesn't mean I won't take risk. I'm just trying to be very conscious of measuring risk-reward. And it sounds silly, but it's that one little thing. Actually, a great example would be
00:02:07
Speaker
when we recorded the podcast from Sydney like a week ago, and I had my headset with me. It was a different headset. We're in a different environment, the hotel Wi-Fi. One little thing, the hotel Wi-Fi was giving us was really slow. I thought that was the problem. It ends up that we ran that audio software. We used the diagnostics, which actually said it was the headphones. My point is that
00:02:30
Speaker
When one little thing goes wrong, you also cascade, like you pull the backup. Well, the backup wasn't good because you weren't paying attention to it like you normally do. And it's a good little lesson about how precarious sometimes things really are, ironically, when you have a well-oiled machine on the normal run rate.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Cause during the podcast, we're not used to variability. Like it's same every time that it works. Never been a problem. But I suspect, you know, with the opportunities you've had and I think what some of the stuff we may do this year, um, it's probably something I need to get better at doing on communication and equipment because, um, it's been nice to have the stability over the last year and a half of kind of doing it. Whatever Thursday morning now from our office, but that may not be as common going forward. Hmm.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, we've got a lot of busyness happening in our future. But that's OK.
Consistency and Adaptation in Podcasting
00:03:20
Speaker
Like, I was thinking, I didn't know if you were coming home now or in a couple of days or whatever. And I'm like, should we just accept the reality of life and maybe just skip a week or like have it be three days late or something? Like, we're busy people. I was going to. Yeah, right. No, I was going to throw out like it is kind of strange, but like you should just do it on your own or vice versa. Like I wondered, but it felt weird to even think about. Right. What I would have.
00:03:43
Speaker
I would never have wanted to do it myself unless you had said like, don't do this on or just do it because that's weird. It's cool. But yeah, there's something awesome about the consistency of what we do. And I think that's important. But on the flip side, if there's one thing I took away from this trip, it was
00:04:08
Speaker
It was perfect timing with getting ready for the trip in terms of stepping away from the business for 12 days and making sure that the systems were in place, but then also literally just being on vacation, being in a different culture, being in a culture where they value productivity, but not in the same hustle manner that we do. I think that's the great thing about traveling and seeing other cultures. You don't have to accept it. You don't have to like it, but
Work-Life Balance Reflection
00:04:34
Speaker
you need to see it.
00:04:36
Speaker
kind of juxtaposes. That's something I should think about. For me, it felt like a little bit of a closure to the almost four-year period since I moved to Ohio of this kind of nonstop hustle, which I won't apologize for and I wouldn't do it any different.
00:04:52
Speaker
I think it's a good way to think about how do I want to handle work-life balance and priorities and ongoing daily, just how much I do every day. I think I'm ready to back that down a little. Interesting. This is like residual vacation, John. Talk to me in a week. There you go.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, next week we'll see what the Real John's like.
Shop Management During Vacation
00:05:20
Speaker
So what was it like, obviously I want to hear about the trip, but what was it like having the shop operate? I assume everybody came into work and did their stuff.
00:05:28
Speaker
without you there. And I bet you weren't micromanaging email all day either, right? Yeah, I actually don't know. I'll head in here in an hour. But we had one problem, which I'm not going to go into, but we had an offset error that didn't crash the machine, but crashed a tool, which was a bummer. I got to go dig into that. But it's also something that probably would have happened even if I was there. My absence didn't change that.
00:05:56
Speaker
Right. I mean, I do that more often than I'd like to admit. OK, fair enough. Maybe I should have that attitude, too. It's embarrassing. And it ended up being, it was actually by far the most expensive crash just because of the tooling involved. But on the flip side, OK, even the vendor I was talking to, you know what's funny? When you email the vendors, I think because I'm a self-taught machinist and because I still feel like an outsider or something, when I emailed the vendor, I was honest. I was like, look, we screwed up an offset.
00:06:26
Speaker
We damaged these two parts of the tool. We're going to need to have them replaced. And he just kind of wrote back. And he's like, hey, look, it happens. No one's perfect. Goes exactly back to what I just said two seconds ago about it was a
00:06:43
Speaker
custom modification to one of our products. So it's that as soon as you step out of your box, as soon as you make one change to anything like that, then all of a sudden you've got to just completely change your mentality. It's no longer a production part where you're just making a little tweak. It's really, to me, a totally custom job where you've got to have that mentality of I've got to wash my offsets, my Z heights, my work quality, my fixture, everything where clamps are.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yep. That's a good point. So the one change you make is not solo by itself. You have to step back and you have to look at it all from, not from scratch, but you have to see the whole picture. You just got to treat it like you don't know this part. You don't know this job. Yep. Yep. That makes sense. But I think knock on wood, everything went pretty well.
Social Media and Relevance
00:07:35
Speaker
You know, the biggest takeaway for me also was, um,
00:07:39
Speaker
was dialing back the social media rat race. It was actually wonderful to basically stay off of it. I'll just throw it out there. Social media does a good job of building a sense of community. When you don't post or you don't consume, you feel like maybe you're the one getting left out. I think
00:08:02
Speaker
I certainly always enjoy, like you feel like you're part of the conversation, you're relevant and you're there and people are talking about you and so forth. So it's a little bit hard to not go through your Instagram feed and all that. I think you probably do a little bit better job than I do on a regular basis of this, but for this trip, for me, it was like, just, you know what? I enjoy it, but I'm not going to be, I'm going to try, I'm going to try to like keep that going of not
00:08:25
Speaker
being honest so much. Yep. Nice. Yeah. The past six months, I don't know why, but I have been able to step away from Instagram more where I used to feel like I'd have to catch up on my feed every day or else I'd miss something. Right. And now I'm just, if I miss days or weeks, then, you know, if I come across your page and I'll be like, Oh, I'll look at your page and see what I've missed from you or from my friends or anything like that, everything else I'm like,
00:08:51
Speaker
You know, I'm never going to watch every movie. I'm never going to watch every TV show. I'm never going to see every Instagram post from everybody. Like you just have to realize it's good. You're good. It's OK. Like it's not. It's there for you. You're not there for it. You know, say it again.
00:09:09
Speaker
Instagram is there for you to enjoy. You're not there for it to be consumed. No, but that's a really ... I feel guilty sometimes. I'm like, ah, man, these people follow me. I should try to look through the feed. What if Amish and Lockwood are mentioning something and you chime in and I missed it, but get over it. It's okay. Frankly, social media has done an incredibly good job of
00:09:36
Speaker
manipulating our lives into thinking you've got to see it all. You hear about the news today about people who actually are trying to, what do you say, remove or deactivate your Facebook account and how they basically, sorry, Rob, but they basically don't let you. It's like, okay, no, we're going to do this. Let me just slow down a little. Good. Which is good. That's awesome. Just from the mindset of being able to not have to
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah, just it's okay. Yep. Right. The world goes on. Right. I had a point to say, but now I can't recall. How was your week? What's going on? It was really good. I actually took yesterday off. I took a legitimate personal vacation day. I took my family to Toronto. We went to the aquarium, rode the train, just, it was super nice. I didn't even... What do you think kids? Everything? Yeah. Awesome. It was awesome. That's cool. Good aquarium.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, it was really good. It was a Ripley's aquarium. So there was all the normal stuff and
Machining Resources in Australia
00:10:37
Speaker
then there was some cool, weird Ripley's kind of. Oh, really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So it was really enjoyable and nice to spend time midweek with the family and it's just great. And the shop still continued without me. Oh yeah? Okay. So that's good, right? Yeah.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah. Like we drove by, you know, on the highway, we drove by the shop on the way to the aquarium. It's funny. And I told the kids, I'm like, wave to the shop. There's four people that are working and we don't have to. Right. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. So that was great.
00:11:09
Speaker
It's good. I didn't even feel what I often feel when I get back from even a shorter trip, which is the stress of diving back in. I think part of that was because things were in place. It's not like I got home and had to fill a bunch of orders that were a day or two delayed or something.
00:11:34
Speaker
Generally speaking, caught up on most emails. I've got to do some stuff this morning, but no big deal. What was I going to say about that? I'm not focused right now and I'm okay with it. That's perfect. Yeah. I don't know what I was going to say. Sorry. That's awesome. We also didn't have, did I say this? Didn't have internet or cell phone the last three days?
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm picturing you were on some deserted island in the middle of the Bahamas, not Bahamas obviously, nowhere. Yeah, so I didn't really appreciate the Australian geography that much, but it ends up that the Great Barrier Reef is sort of in the middle of nowhere.
00:12:15
Speaker
And there's definitely some sort of larger cities that are on the southern end that it's based out of, or you can base that up for it. But we ended up going up a little bit further north. And it was great because it's just quiet. And I didn't really expect it, but the hotel we were at, no cell phone service period. And they had Wi-Fi in the lobby, but nobody used it. And Yvonne and I just put our phones away. And you know what? It was great.
00:12:45
Speaker
That's, that's funny. It's like nowadays we have a, you know, kind of unspoken competition about who can go on the most days without their phone. Like Amish was saying 10 days and you're like four days. And I'm like, that's, that's a competition. We're so tied to them. It's so bad. But the withdrawal wasn't hard. Um, I remember what I was going to say a second ago, the withdrawal wasn't hard. As soon as you
00:13:09
Speaker
I just realized, it's okay. I'm going to miss stuff and not really. Oh, I remember both things I was going to say. One thing was, it's funny because I have this attitude about email lists and I find it a little bit of frustrating or overbearing where when you sign up for certain things, they automatically put you onto their email list. There's no opt-in or opt-out. You get a hotel and I'm going to sound a little bit, I'm going to probably sound a little bit like a
00:13:39
Speaker
not a nice person here, but whatever. The fact that I stayed at your hotel does not give you the right to email me a survey. The fact that I did this doesn't give you the right to put me on your email list. I basically had this attitude where the second I get anything like that, the second it comes through, I immediately hit unsubscribe. Gmail does a nice job at putting the unsubscribe link right at the top if you've ever noticed that.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah. The Google platform basically sifts through the email and gives you a direct little Google link at the top to effectuate the unsubscribe. Because it's like, no, you don't have the right to clever my inbox. It's different if I actually said, hey, I'd like to hear from you. I'd like to sign up for this email list.
00:14:23
Speaker
And Yvonne literally had 600 of those morning email, blog email, newsletter email, J-crew, whatever things in her inbox. I'm like, no, go away. No way.
00:14:40
Speaker
Um, so it's easy to, you know, like same thing, like, yeah, maybe because I unsubscribed from whatever the Sandvik newsletter, maybe I'm going to miss some new tool from them, but I'll hear about it from somebody else. And I'm not willing to pay the price of the daily noise just for that possible benefit. Yep.
00:14:58
Speaker
And honestly, I don't watch the news. I don't follow news, events, anything. If it's important, I guarantee I will hear about it within two days. Right. Yeah, that was funny too, how much the media does do a good job of making us think it's important. Honestly, all the stuff that's going on in American politics, I care about it. I care about it in the sense that I have pride of
00:15:19
Speaker
of nationality and humanity. Generally, I'd like to think that we are a good human race and so forth. There's certainly some stuff that's not cool, but you know what? Not going to affect what I do on a daily basis. Not going to affect my mood today. Not going to affect my productivity today. Probably not going to affect the outcome of my life. Ignore it. Yep. There you go.
00:15:43
Speaker
Um, yo, that's, that's what I was going to say too. So I was happy. I think knock on wood with how the trip went without me being at the shop, but, um, sitting in the airport yesterday, when we were delayed, uh, watching your Pearson tour video, which I want to hear more about. Um, it.
00:16:02
Speaker
From the rat race game of, are you caught up? Are you the latest and greatest? We're definitely not at Jay's level with the system of the reorder cards and the system of the assembly. I wanted to ask Jay, does he use Upwork or how does he make those assembly cards? I could laminate things, but from a graphic design. Right. I get the impression, I'm not positive, but that he just does it all himself.
00:16:31
Speaker
that he edits their videos. He manages his website. He does the cards himself. Maybe I'm not exactly true, but that's the impression I get from him that he's removed himself from day to day production so that he has the time now to do that kind of stuff. Yeah. See, but I don't want to even do that.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah. And that's okay. You're different. No, no, no. But I don't think Jay wants to either. I can't talk for it. But if you have the time to do that, then I think that's a win. That's a sign of success on the flip side.
00:17:06
Speaker
I want the systems in place so that those get created. I want a workflow so that Jared or Julia or Ed can hand sketch the flow, take some pictures, and then dump it into a folder that gets sent to the Upwork designer. And then I review. I've always believed that you reviewing something brings out the best in your skill, John Grimsimoth, not you creating it and having the burden and the time and the hassle and the skill. Like what were the three D's, do, delay, delegate, or whatever.
00:17:34
Speaker
No, no. You take a look at it and offer your critical insight to how it can be better or whether it's good for now, constant improvement. That's what needs to happen.
00:17:45
Speaker
I like that. And that's not even that hard, right? But that's what we need to work on. It's the forethought. And I think Jay has gotten really good at having the forethought of like, well, what do I really want out of this? And how do I want it to work? And how do I simplify the process so that I can write it down with four pictures and three words kind of thing? Right.
00:18:06
Speaker
So he's had the freedom of mind to be able to just like step back, you know, just one foot back and like look at things and slow down and organize it properly.
00:18:19
Speaker
And he has more products now, but I think for a while, it was really the Pro Palette system in the vacuums.
Efficiency and Delegation in the Shop
00:18:27
Speaker
So that's what I think about, like, okay, it's actually really nice to kind of cull down the product list, focus on a few things, get those systems in place, get the recipe there.
00:18:37
Speaker
And like we were saying on a previous podcast, I'm never a fan of waste, but I would rather one of our interns or other employees spends a little bit more time than maybe is ideal, but whatever, doing something than the other alternative of we'll all just handle it every time rather than worry about teaching them, which there's obviously a learning curve to that process.
00:19:01
Speaker
And they have to learn that process as well. Because if you just jump in and be like, well, I'll do it because I'll be faster. It's slower long term because it's taking your time and they're not getting better. Yeah. And people can do it. Julie emailed me. She had a problem with the NYC CNC site. And she emailed me. I was like, you know what? I'll deal with this when I get back. This is not a stop your vacation to fix it thing. And then the next day, she's like, oh, Alex, I actually figured it out.
00:19:30
Speaker
Nice. Yes, that is great. Right. Nice job, Julie. Yes. Nice job, Julie. I wanted to share something about Australia and machining, but is there? Not for it. So it was a really good sort of question or comment that I wasn't prepared for, which is,
00:19:53
Speaker
basically, how do you succeed in a place like Australia, or frankly, at the risk of generalizing it like most many other parts of the world. We take for granted in America, in the US, how common it is to have machine tools, use machine tools, access to suppliers, materials, tooling, McMaster car. And I think you probably have
00:20:19
Speaker
a bit more of a frustrating time or cost of shipping and so forth than I probably appreciate on a regular basis. Right. I mean, we're good here, but we have to justify the extra, the taxes, the import fees, the shipping times, the delays, things like that. Right. So what's it like in Australia?
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, so it's different than you because for all intents and purposes, they just can't get it. There is no such thing as a Bridgeport in Australia. Very rare. You'll never find a Bridgeport on Craigslist in Australia, right? And talking to some folks at the Autodesk meetup as well as having the chance to spend the afternoon with Chris from Clickspring.
00:20:58
Speaker
That stuff just doesn't exist. We were talking to some people that were involved in machine tools from some more successful business standpoint and buying an orange vice or a curt vice or whatever. You're talking maybe $600 to $800 or something for the product and then $800 maybe a loan just to ship it.
00:21:22
Speaker
So, to some extent, it's possible, but it's cost prohibitive in a true sense of the word, not in a, oh, this is annoying for shipping, like literally- Right doubles something. Yeah. And there's a risk of it being damaged and delays and so forth. So here's my thought, and I'd like to think more about this and maybe turn this into more of a proper
00:21:45
Speaker
article or content. So the question is, how do you succeed? How do you get into the hobby? How do you get into the industry? How do you make money? How are you happy? Whether it's a job shop, machine shop product. And I think what I would do is kind of turn the question around and sort of say, okay, I'm in this country, Australia.
00:22:02
Speaker
You cannot buy, other than some Asian import machines, there's very limited access to materials. They're expensive. Workholding is expensive. Tooling is expensive. So OK, how do I do this? And I think the answer is, again, to look at it from the other way, to say, where is their demand? If I want to do this, what does the home run scenario look like? And if the reality is that what would be a $600 Grizzly type lathe cost you $2,000 there,
00:22:31
Speaker
Think about that from just your competitive standpoint. There's this thing in a, it's kind of like a business school thing called a SWOT analysis. It's not hard to do though. It's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And so if those sound like they're duplicative, strengths and weaknesses relate to your internal capabilities and your internal organization and opportunities and threats, the last two relate to the outside world, the market that you're competing in and so forth.
00:22:59
Speaker
you know, your strengths and, and strengths and weaknesses would relate to john grins or john Saunders and our ability and our shop and our equipment and all that whereas opportunities and threats is the outside world that you're competing in the knife making and so forth. So in Australia, in some respects, yes, it's quite hard. But on the flip side, you know, you have the exact opposite problem of a machine shop in Chicago, which is
00:23:21
Speaker
either a machine shop in Chicago every 20 feet and a really good machine shop that's been around for three generations and has ample access to the latest and greatest and so forth. From one standpoint in Australia, if you're able to get started, you may have a massively competitive edge.
00:23:40
Speaker
So think about how do you take that to your advantage? Does it mean you just got higher upfront startup costs? And is that okay? Because you got to follow the money. If there is demand for the product or the service, then think about what that could be. And just to figure out if that justifies the input of what it takes to get there. So in other words, it's going to be some nosebleed capital. It's going to cost a little bit more, but maybe it's worth it.
00:24:10
Speaker
And then it's all about being crafty. We talk to people who build relationships with larger machine shops to co-purchase materials or buy their drops or handle bulk orders. And so some of that stuff's tough. But again, don't look at it as I can't do it. Look at it as, OK, how do I take this disadvantage and turn it into an advantage?
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, you just got to think a little bit more upfront, like it sounds like in the US, especially you can get started much easier, you can buy kind of the cheapest machine in your garage, drive within your town to get the tools and materials that you need. And then you can start with nothing. I mean, that's how I got started, basically.
00:24:53
Speaker
There's some metal supermarkets here and there's my tooling supplier and McMaster and Lakeshore Carbide and everything, they shipped me easily. So in a place like that or even more remote, small countries in Africa or something. I've heard of friends and customers and fans all over the world that have little machine shops and the weirdest of places.
00:25:16
Speaker
It just takes a little bit more forethought, a little bit more reason and more planning to get it done effectively. Nobody had this attitude, but don't victimize yourself. The facts are what they are. If it doesn't make sense, don't do it. That's the important thing is what you don't want to do in a place like that is
00:25:39
Speaker
is spend a bunch of money and then not, you have to be more thoughtful and more deliberate about your upfront actions because it's going to cost more. You can't do what you and I have done, which is the fail, fast fail, cheat mentality of, you start with the grizzly lathe while you have other sources of income and no big deal. It may be the case here that you have to be more planned out with it.
00:26:06
Speaker
but the opportunity should be there. And if it's not there, be willing to say, okay, you know what, this doesn't make sense. But I'll tell you, even though Australia is...
00:26:15
Speaker
a relatively small country in terms of population, there's still 25 or 30 million people there. There's still a massive need for industry. It doesn't have the manufacturing base that Europe has or America has, or maybe even Asia has, but I get the sense that there should be demand. And if there isn't, again, then you've got to do the research to say, okay, you know what? There's not demand. I don't want to become a job shop here, or it doesn't make sense to be a product-based manufacturer here.
00:26:41
Speaker
Interesting. That's roughly the size of Canada. I think Canada has 30 something million people. So is that right? Yeah. We're like a 10th of what the US is. Right. But we are centrally located enough that we can supply to the US. We can supply to other countries. Australia might be a little trickier like that. They can't possibly supply to the world. But there must be a huge local demographic being so difficult to get into the manufacturing industry.
00:27:09
Speaker
If you can, you could do really well.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting. I think they were the victims of globalization in the sense that they don't refine oil there anymore. This was like tourism talk, so I could be mistaken on my facts. But they don't refine oil there anymore, and so they import that, and they no longer produce autos there. So some of those big industry stuff would have a rippling effect through tertiary manufacturing and support facilities. On the flip side, there's a boatload of energy work, a boatload of mining work.
00:27:43
Speaker
Obviously, that comes with it. It's an interesting thing where there's this social aspect. Actually, you were saying it on your video with the Pearson video at the end where you were like, look, at the end of the day, I want to be a good contributor to the world. It's weird to build a business around that. Imagine that dilemma where
00:28:04
Speaker
you wanted to do that and be that person, but part of the key of your success for your business was basically riding off the coattails of a strip mining company that does some stuff that maybe you aren't a big fan of. I don't know. That's a tough one. It is for sure, but it's an opportunity still. Right. Yeah. How was, how was Pearson? Yeah. And the video showed most of what I filmed and, um,
00:28:31
Speaker
It was just eye-opening. I've talked with him a little bit since, and I still think about everything that he said. And I look around here and I'm like, man, I've got a long ways to go just to be where he's at. And I know he would probably admit that he can go much further as well. It's never ending, which is great. But it gets you to rethink just how you're doing everything and step back
Shop Tours: Processes vs. Plans
00:28:55
Speaker
and set the process in place so that anybody can just jump in and do it. Right.
00:29:00
Speaker
I think it's tough because in my head, I think I'm a little further along in the sense that like, oh, we've got some of this stuff in place and so forth. But if I had to do a video tour like you did with Jay, it would be a lot more of me telling you the stuff in my head, not showing you, oh, I know QR codes. Well, I've never actually really made a QR code. We've laminated a few things, but actually we have done that.
00:29:42
Speaker
think a lot. We research and think and then we think we know it and we can do it, but it hasn't been done yet. He's really good about just like, no, this is what we're doing. This is the process we have. Here I can show you proof and the process will explain itself basically. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a good thing for us to do focus on, I guess.
00:29:52
Speaker
Jay does a good job of showing you the results, not the what I'm planning on doing.
00:30:08
Speaker
And I've heard about other people giving shop tours or facility tours. You know, when I give people tours here, I kind of walk them around and be like, this is this and this is that and here's where we do this and here's where we do that. And then I've heard other people when they give tours, they have a lot more people, but they mostly talk about the people and the people's backstories and what the people do. And it's not just the thing, it's the energy, the people behind the brand and
00:30:33
Speaker
you know, everybody that makes it happen. And as we're growing here, I have more people to talk about, which is great. When it's just me and Eric, I'm like, well, I do this and he does that. And here's this and this and this and this and this. So it's cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's my my goal. My goal for today is to go obviously get a little bit caught up and so forth. But I think the next thing is to take advantage of
00:30:59
Speaker
this sort of forced pause and instead of just diving right back into videos and other stuff is to like pull out a couple racks. Like we did that something sort of separate a month or so ago, which is like we emptied an inventory rack and that gives you the chance to kind of put everything back on in a more deliberate manner, take the time to build those combine cards. And I'd like to do a little bit of it in an unnatural way. I think of like, hey, let's really spend a day or two
00:31:27
Speaker
rebuilding it, but I think the better run rate way to do it is for me to spend, it's so funny, John, a half an hour each day. That's almost offensively little, but the reality is, number one, I don't do it. And number two, if you did that a half an hour every day for a month,
00:31:45
Speaker
it would be, I think mind blowing how much you actually accomplish from that. Taking the next step, like adding a lean card, adding a Kaizen card, finding out how to do a QR code. Does that make sense? Making a video on showing how to do something to like, yes, all that stuff. Just quick and dirty and fail fast, fail cheap, right? That's your whole model. Process of a process.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yep, exactly. What do you do? Yeah. Well, just to follow up on that was, you know, something in lean methodologies kind of remove everything like for us remove everything that doesn't make a knife, especially from your immediate working area. And you know, I've got my desk here. And I've got all kinds of crap and like stuff that's just been here for a long time. And I've been thinking about about doing that.
Decluttering for Efficiency
00:32:32
Speaker
There we go thinking not actually doing it. But
00:32:36
Speaker
But like, what if I just kind of did a blitz and removed everything that we don't use on a daily basis and store it, you know, out of the way, but still available, still accessible and see if I miss it. And if I do miss it, it comes back. If I don't win, you know, we now have a less cluttered working area with only what we need and et cetera.
00:32:54
Speaker
It's like Jay's, I actually do love this. It was Jay's junk room or whatever you called it, not to be a friend. And it's amazing how little you use things. And then all of a sudden you realize there's some lean or Kaizen process that I've never been able to do where when you put something away like that, you write the date on it or whatever, and then you realize, oh my gosh, it's been 18 months and I'm now looking for once or even never. I've never,
00:33:23
Speaker
Heck, I just threw away clothes. We donated them, but it was actually legitimately hard for me to do, and then I realized, oh my gosh, I haven't worn some of this stuff since we lived in Manhattan. This is like eight years ago, and I don't want it right. Yeah, I've been there too. Awkward. Because I don't buy clothes. I don't go out and be like, oh, I need some new jeans. My wife's like, you need to go buy jeans because
00:33:50
Speaker
Because I don't want to see those ones anymore. I'm like, OK, honey. No, she actually bought Bee Gees the other day, which was super nice. Thanks, Matt. And she's like, this weekend, you need to go buy shoes. We're going. Claire's going to help her pick out shoes. But yeah, so in the throwing away things, like at the shop especially, some people, they put it on the junk shelf. And if they don't touch it in six months, it gets sold or donated. And I'm like, six months? Wow, that's not that much. And then Angela was actually saying they did that at some of their aerospace shops.
00:34:19
Speaker
And after six months, they got rid of it. And then 12 months later, they're like, we need that thing. That was a custom die that we made. That recurring job comes back. Why did you throw that away? That's not cool. Yeah. Right? On the flip side, people say, well, what if you have to rebuy? And it's like, OK, well, let's say I threw away 20 things. And I needed three of them again. And that cost me $100.
00:34:44
Speaker
to rebuy them for $100. Some people would say, you wasted $100. I would say, I don't know. I'm making this up. I think you probably may still be ahead there because you got that noise and clutter out and you learn you may get better at that process over time. There's a cost to storing stuff. There's a cost to keeping stuff.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah. Like I look around here and there's junk and there's clutter everywhere. And you know, I, I was seriously thinking about jumping into that huge facility a couple of weeks ago and just kind of planning it out. And I'm like, man, we'd have so much space. Then I'm like, okay, that didn't work out. So if we're here for,
Workspace Size vs. Productivity
00:35:21
Speaker
until something nice comes up, let's hunker down, keep our eyes open, but let's hunker down, let's clean up, let's organize, let's find space, let's find clarity, and let's do the absolute best we can here while we're here, instead of just waiting for something bigger. And there's so much space and junk to be moved around that room here. I'd love to talk more about
00:35:47
Speaker
cloud day with click spring next next podcast but um did you see the post of his shop size john john it's less it's like a bathroom it is less probably less standing room than your bathroom
00:36:03
Speaker
So now you have a different problem. You have real large machinery and equipment. I get that. But do not think this idea that we just now all of a sudden need huge amounts of space to spread out and waste space in. What is our end goal? Does it make you happy? Does it make you money? Does it help perpetuate what you're trying to do? Or is it just lifestyle creep in a way that I don't even like to talk about because it frustrates me
00:36:30
Speaker
to think that maybe I'm wrong, but you don't need it, right? We're actually short a car, so I got to run here to take the kids to school in a few minutes. What do you have to do today, though? Aside from regular knife production, we just crossed number 1,000 on the Norseman.
Milestone: 1,000 Norseman Knives
00:36:47
Speaker
Oh, congrats. Yeah, huge. I'm going to do an Instagram post today showing that. Number 1,000, the knife is going to be a little special, so we're going to auction off the knife. Wow.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yes. We're on cloud nine. I'm looking at my table here and I see one oh two, three, four, and five or one thousand, two, three, four, and five. And I'm not even used to saying a thousand, like even in the engraving program, I had to add a digit. That's hilarious. Oh my God. Yep.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, so that's good, and I'm working on our custom pens. Angelo and I have been cranking away at those. We so far have, and I'll show you on the video, we have the tip and the body, the barrel, mostly done, and everything else is designed. We've got this sweet mechanism that you're going to love, and it's awesome. Can I apply to be a beta tester?
00:37:45
Speaker
Because I like the pen I carry
Development of Custom Pens
00:37:50
Speaker
now. And it's a good guy, a good dude, good product. But I kind of want something different. So maybe that'll be. That's the cool thing with a pen. It's not a $1,000 knife that you buy candy. It'll be a cheaper item. This won't be that cheap. It'll be still Grimsmo-style pricing. But it's going to be awesome. That's cool.
00:38:10
Speaker
We're going to talk, okay, so next week we're going to talk about ClickSpring. We're going to talk about Nicholas Hacko watches that we toured, which is just mind-blowing. And we filmed there. Yeah, we got a lot to get jumping. Yeah. I think you mentioned it briefly on the podcast last week. Oh, sorry. Yeah. You filmed there. I can't wait to see it. All right. I got to run. I'll see you then. Take care. Sounds good. Bye. Have an awesome day. Bye.