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Business of Machining - Episode 46
203 Plays7 years ago
“Share 90% of what you do, and charge like heck for the last 10%” - Grimsmo’s dad
Employer Vs. the employee. With businesses expanding, they research employee rights, benefits, and how to implement that into employment processes, agreements, and online business tools.
Choosing software is daunting but when it comes to accounting, WAVE might give QuickBooks a run for its money.
SHARING IS CARING.
Get insight into the internal workings of NYCCNC here.
Coming Soon: Saunders will share the start-to-finish process of the Imperializer in upcoming videos.
Dedicated hardware devices. We need them. Sure, you own a calculator or a phone but who wants to get their pockets wet trying to convert inches to millimeters??
Click here to cure “wet pocket syndrome.”
When bringing a product or service to market, you might be headed for a shark-infested ocean! Steer clear and head for the big blue instead.
Get your copy of The Blue Ocean Shift here.
Grimsmo shares his freight troubles and the necessity of hiring an agent becomes imperative.
Those Linda Wheels THOUGH!
Saunders and Grimsmo discuss problems and solutions for grits and thread-mills. Some problems aren’t worth the time and money to be solved.
If you haven't HEARD, Grimsmo's got a new Tumbler Video!
New Year, New You?
Although hesitant to make New Year’s Resolutions, the Johns agree that the New Year is coming at a fitting time.
“I need to quit” - Saunders
Saunders relays the importance of keeping stress levels down while still maintaining productivity by delegating tasks.
Inspirational ending note...
“We need to strengthen our blind faith in what we do” - Grimsmo
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Winter Season
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, episode number 46. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:08
Speaker
Good morning, dude. Good morning. Winter is here. Yeah, I've got like half a foot of snow outside, and it was awesome. Yeah, that's always fun. I like it. I know people don't, but it makes me happy. The four seasons make me happy. I really never mind shoveling snow. It's great. I like it when I'm ready. I just got new snow tires last
Discovering Remote Start Feature
00:00:31
Speaker
week, and it's like, yes, I'm ready.
00:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, Cole, I will admit that I do enjoy, I bought my truck used and I had it for a year before I knew that it had remote start from the factory. I had no idea. And so now I'm like, yeah, that's awesome. Remote start, getting a little warmed up before I get in. That's awesome.
00:00:52
Speaker
Sweet, so how are you doing today? Great, great. Yeah, not me too. I feel like the end of the year is really coming together well.
Switch to Gusto Payroll Service
00:01:02
Speaker
I started, so we saw like the fun stuff we have, we use Gusto for our payroll. So I ran payroll myself for about two years where every two weeks I would get hand, it was really just Jared. I think we had some part-time help.
00:01:18
Speaker
would hand me a piece of paper with their hours written down, which is totally fine from an honor system standpoint, especially back in those days where the people here were people I knew. And then I would go through and calculate all the withholdings by state and federal. And it was a lot of work. I had an Excel sheet, but you had like different thresholds and minimums. It was a pain in the butt dependence. And then you had to do, hmm,
00:01:44
Speaker
quarterly semi-annual and annual forms for different government agencies workers comp and FICA and Social Security and benefits and all this stuff and anyways using a payroll service is a complete no-brainer and it's not even that expensive and they Handle it all it integrates with our time clock which is called deputy which is the what we just did the Wednesday widget on and
00:02:10
Speaker
That is great. The one thing that is obvious from the Wednesday widget is it requires people to take a picture. We're not the kind of company where that's important to me. I'm not worried about Person A fake, you know, fake signing in Person B because Person B texted and said, hey, how late will you just check me in? I can see that if you're a coffee shop. But you can't turn that thing off. So that was super fun.
Switch from QuickBooks to WAVE
00:02:34
Speaker
Anyways, long winded way of saying one of the things I needed to do is also set up some of the things for 2018 when it comes to
00:02:40
Speaker
managing more of our system like benefits and time off and all that so that people can like actually go in and coordinate. Because right now somebody takes a day off, I have to note that and then I have to override the payroll. And it's just one more thing that I have to do, which stinks. So that was my one big thing. And then the rest is this week to start the transition away from QuickBooks.
00:03:05
Speaker
And we're
Hiring and Employee Management
00:03:06
Speaker
going to try WAVE. It is similar to ZERO, which is X-E-R-O, not Z-E-R-O, and a couple of the other cloud or online accounting services. The big catchphrase with
00:03:21
Speaker
Wave is, it's free. So what's the catch? The catch is they charge you for some of the up services like I think online bill pay or check printing or stuff like that. I don't really care about some of those. I suspect and hope this is still a transitional move because hopefully we'll think about something more integrated like an ERP at some point down the road. I was going to move to QuickBooks online. That's who we got.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm torn because I'm interested in solutions for my business, not trolling companies, but QuickBooks and Intuit is a terrible company. No, but seriously, their business practices, how they treat people, their customer service, the quality of the product, they've benefited from a long monopoly and I'm excited to give somebody else a chance. I'll say it that way. Sweet. Sorry, that's my next big thing. But it feels good. I'm actually excited about all this stuff.
00:04:16
Speaker
Good, and I'm kind of in the same boat because now as of Monday, Aaron has now hired full-time officially signed documents and everything. Congratulations. For the past few weeks, I've been diving into all the same exact stuff you just talked about with the not only benefits, but also like taxes and workers comp and all this stuff for each employee.
00:04:37
Speaker
I had to think about things like, oh yeah, people get vacation pay. I never got vacation pay. I'm an entrepreneur. I just work New Years. Yeah, of course. But yes, all these things are kind of new to me, but also exciting because the fact that I can skim a 67-page document on employment standards Ontario and not gouge my eyes at it. I'm kind of interested in it. It's like, yes, this is good. I have the mental freedom to be the entrepreneur and to actually do this.
00:05:06
Speaker
I would say for you and for anyone listening, you have, I mean, online resources like Gusto, Deputy QuickBooks, whatever are great. If you go read the fine print, none of those companies will actually assume responsibility for mistakes. Like if you, I was super
Labor Laws and Employment Costs
00:05:23
Speaker
paranoid with Gusto to make sure that they were paying Zanesville City tax. I was like, how are they paying Zanesville City? This is crazy. And I wanted to make sure that the checks went through.
00:05:32
Speaker
You've got to get still an accountant. You obviously benefit from having Barry, but you need to get somebody who can help you. For instance, I didn't know, and I can't even speak to it eloquently here now anymore, but I can't even pay people. You can't pay people on a salary unless they have a certain
00:05:49
Speaker
earning threshold or a certain job sort of position. Basically, you can't take someone who would be a $10 an hour worker and just pay them the equivalent of that as a salary. It's actually not legal in the US. So little things like that. The point is to protect them because the idea is if you pay them on a salary, they're not going to benefit from overtime. You're going to work them out or something like that. It's a protection for them.
00:06:16
Speaker
So we had some interesting comments on the YouTube video about people thinking, you should just pay your people, you know, why are you time clocking? And I'm like, well, okay, not necessarily my choice. That's how the world works. And it's as much for them as it is for the company. So anyways, how different is,
00:06:35
Speaker
I wonder how different the labor laws are in Canada. I don't know about the salary thing. Eric and I are paid on salary just because we've always been. At the end of the year, you just kind of make it work accounting wise. But that's kind of changing this year.
00:06:52
Speaker
I don't know. You have workers comp, you have social security. Canada pension plan. Man, it's expensive to pay into that stuff. I know what you're complaining about with the cost of employees now. It's their salary. Today, actually, I want to calculate the extra percentage that has to go out of the business's pocket.
00:07:15
Speaker
above their salary, just to have them on board. You know, you got to match their their kind of pension plan contribution, workers comp benefits, etc. Like, it's a big deal. And we're ready for it. It's just kind of shocking, but not in a bad way. You know, it's just like, whoa, there's a big disconnect.
00:07:35
Speaker
I mean, I was an employee for 11 years and I never once thought about or certainly didn't value what my employer had to pay for the above and beyond. You just think about what your paycheck is when it clears. And now you're starting to see the other side of that. So there's a big disconnect between those two. Yep. And I've never actually had a real job in my life, nor have I hired people until now. So all this stuff is like brand new to me. It's awesome though.
00:08:03
Speaker
It's exciting. I'll do a plug for the NYCCNC site. There's a page called How We Operate Saunders Machine Works, where we're doing our best to just throw it all out there. Every little app and resource and tip that we've come across and seen, because boy, it's been some rough lessons learned on this kind of stuff. Like how do you do payroll? Who is, you know, we in the US have to have a workers comp,
00:08:28
Speaker
representative, which is a private company that is between, I think they represent you. So technically they work for you, but you don't interface then directly with BWC. They're your person. They're who you call if you have an accident. And they're the people that can help you with safety. So I didn't know any of this. I thought this was another one of these scams that someone's trying to get in between me on, that kind of thing.
00:08:50
Speaker
So it's a private organization, not a government? No, BWC is government, but we have a company called CareWorks that I believe the correct term is they manage our workers comp plan. Interesting. And it's actually not that much. I honestly think I pay them maybe a couple hundred bucks a year and I actually have a person and a rep. Yeah. Okay.
00:09:13
Speaker
Yeah, because I guess I'm not that far along. I know we have to pay into workers comp. But I don't know if there's a middleman or if we just deal directly with the government or what. I guess we'll find out. Ask Barry. He might know. Yeah. Yeah, maybe I'm just not familiar enough with it yet. Yeah.
Imperializer Product Success
00:09:29
Speaker
So I have a funny story about your Imperializer product.
00:09:35
Speaker
First of all, a couple days ago, like Amish texted us with a 0.2 millimeter hole and I'm like, I go to my phone, I open up the calculator, I'm like 0.2 millimeters. What is that an inch? Oh, it's eight thou. But it took me like a few seconds. And then you posted a picture of your Imperializer with the same numbers on it. I'm like, Oh, that's so cool.
00:09:52
Speaker
Anyway, so I showed that to Erin yesterday and she's relatively new to the industry and I showed it to her on the phone and I explained it to her and she's like, wait, so he made that whole thing? Like everything. I'm like, yeah, he designed the circuit board. Him and Ed got together and they laser engraved the thing and they machine the housing and everything. She's like, holy cow, that thing looks like a real product. It looks like a legitimate thing.
00:10:17
Speaker
That's what's cool. And I didn't expect the amount of pushback from folks that thought it was stupid. I don't care. People think it's stupid. It's not stupid. It's a great tool. It's a dedicated hardware device that does one thing. It does it really well.
00:10:32
Speaker
So many people are touting the smartphones. I don't have any interest in having my smartphone out when my hands have coolant on them or I'm near the machine or I risk dropping it or I've got to unlock it, switch apps, I get distracted because there's a text message alert. This thing has the Magnus on it.
00:10:50
Speaker
I have been we have sold way more than I thought, which is super, super, super cool. And I now have even more energy to just now the original idea with this product was we'll make it a product.
00:11:06
Speaker
but also have it be a silly of enough product where we'll share everything. I don't. This isn't the secret sauce of my success. Now that it's
Challenges with Unassembled Kits
00:11:17
Speaker
sold even better than I thought, it's exciting because now we're doing the Rev2 order and we can now get into a more... If you only sell 35 of something, it's hard to really talk about the processes behind it.
00:11:32
Speaker
Like as you're continuing production of it, if you only sold 35 and never make any again, there's kind of no point talking about it again. But as you continue production, but I mean, you knew going into it, it was kind of a goofy idea. Like I remember the first time you told me like, I want to do this thing. And I'm like,
00:11:48
Speaker
That sounds really cool. But especially since you're free to share the process, the whole thing, the story, everything. So it's like customers are not only buying the thing, they're buying the story, they're buying the possibility. They're supporting you to do more crazy things.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, exactly. It's this little model of, and now I've got a couple more ideas that are in the same vein of this idea where we can sell with these projects that you can follow along at your own level of participation.
00:12:20
Speaker
We've had a lot of people ask for the solid model for this. We've had a lot of people ask for the circuit board. And so clearly, we need to rethink and that's going to be part of the video series is being very deliberate about what it would be like you selling the Norseman handles, but not the but then the raw material for the blade and then somebody rolls their own plate. Well, you might want to do some things you might not the other.
00:12:41
Speaker
None of it's out of greed, it's more out of being deliberate about making sure it's a good experience. Like one of the best, our biggest recommendations or requests that we have had is selling a complete kit unassembled. The problem
Business Sharing Philosophy
00:12:56
Speaker
with that is we have had some problems with individual components that don't work. We are not set up, nor are the profit margins here sufficient to warrant
00:13:08
Speaker
a full-blown tech support, customer service, RMA, return. But I also don't want to tell somebody that spent money to pound sand or go buy, you know, like, so did they just fry a circuit board when they soldered it? Was it really bad? Did they miss a wire? I'm not set up to do that, which is tough, but it is what it is. So trying to be deliberate about what you, making sure it's a good experience for folks and so forth. Interesting.
00:13:32
Speaker
Yes, some of my dad's told me for the past 20 years is share 90% of what you do and then charge like heck for the last 10%.
00:13:44
Speaker
Taking in your
Exploring Blue Ocean Strategy
00:13:45
Speaker
own context, whoever's listening to that, it's something I guess I've been doing naturally. I share a lot of what I do, not everything, probably not nearly 90%, but you can't be afraid to share because it promotes you. It gets your name out there, just opening your mouth and talking like you know what you're doing, whether or not you do.
00:14:05
Speaker
So the other great tie into this, have you heard, excuse me, I'm gonna pull my phone to look at if I can see the name of it. The blue, is it called the Blue Ocean Strategy? The book. Okay, you've heard of it. Yeah, there's two. There's the new one and then the old one. And Tim Ferriss keeps talking about the new one that I actually just added to my shopping cart. Have you read the first one? No, I haven't read it either. But I think I'll start with the second one. It sounds more timely.
00:14:33
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you what, Blue Ocean Shift, right? Sorry, yes, Blue Ocean Shift. So I just listened to a podcast by, called Ryan Hawk, The Learning Leaders, which I'm guessing is popular of you. Buddy sent it in to me. It's a half an hour podcast. And it summarizes, frankly, in a very,
00:14:55
Speaker
I mean, you certainly get it after you listen to it. And we'll put it again in the podcast description. The short version is blue ocean, red ocean. Red ocean is filled with sharks and blood. And most people think they are going to try to compete at a level that outperforms their competition in a red ocean. So the example would be, I'm going to become a knife maker. I'm going to become a firearms manufacturer. These are markets that are, frankly, saturated. And you, John, have done a phenomenal job.
00:15:23
Speaker
It would be hard to sell somebody on becoming a news from scratch knife maker that's going to have immediate results of certainty and so forth. Very tough market. Blue Ocean is
00:15:33
Speaker
find markets that don't exist. There's so many good examples. The one he mentions is Tony Robbins who created the self-help kind of personal development world. I would argue that the iPad is an example. I can vividly remember being in my office with a really smart guy who was like, the iPad is ridiculous. We all have iPhones. We all have laptops. Why would you need, you know, the iPad was this crazy concept of this like in between tweener, awkward size and like, I mean, they're ubiquitous now.
00:16:01
Speaker
and tablets are everywhere.
Freight Logistics Challenges
00:16:03
Speaker
The Imperializer, I wouldn't go so far as to say is a Bluetooth. But it is this idea, I think there could be a renaissance of hardware specific devices that are either customizable or homemade or 3D printed, where it helps you do something as a tool really well.
00:16:16
Speaker
Yep, yep. And simply too, because it's a big thing, what you said, you pull out your smartphone and you get distracted. You try to do one little math calculation and instead you're reading four texts and 72 Instagram pictures. Yeah, and I've got my pants wet because I stuck coolant hands into my pockets.
00:16:35
Speaker
Welcome to my life, dude. No, it's just funny. And it's got this awesome giant tactile button. Show me a device that's got this like, metal flip switch and these big crisp, you know, it's like when you walk up, when you're pumping gas and the gas, I will drive out of my way to go to a gas station that has actual keypad buttons versus those darn plastic things that you have, what do they call them, bubble buttons or something? Okay, yeah.
00:17:03
Speaker
Anyways, that's awesome. Yeah, it's the little things. It's all about the little things. Yeah. So what do you have to this week?
00:17:13
Speaker
I've been dealing with a brokerage company to get our new batch of material in across the border, which has been a giant pain in the butt. Most of the time we get things, USPS, which turns into Canada Post or UPS or FedEx, and they clear all the packages through the customs and tax and everything and just kind of do it for me. And the package shows up and a bill comes later and is automatically charged to my car. And I never think about it.
00:17:39
Speaker
And then when somebody sends a freight package like on a truck, on a pallet or something like that, then I get a phone call from one person, the shipping company and they're like, you got to call this brokerage house. And I've talked to probably seven different companies trying to understand this and then printed out forms, signed them, printed them back. Why is this so difficult nowadays? You know what I mean? To order a package on Amazon, you click once and you don't think about it until it shows up.
00:18:07
Speaker
And then, but freight is like, Oh my gosh, this is so difficult. And we don't, we don't do enough volume to warrant like an account and a person and things like that. You know, the last one was a year and a half ago, but it was just as difficult. So you gotta get a, you gotta get an agent though.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, we had to do this for strike mark. We made the mistake. We had to source our motors from Taiwan, long story, but we couldn't get a US way that worked. And so we always air freighted the motors over.
00:18:41
Speaker
It was like an 80 pound parcel. So it was expensive. It was maybe 500 bucks to freight those motors over. So one time we had enough lead time where we were like, okay, we're going to send them by boat. And it was like $200 by boat. So I was like, Oh, that's great. We say $300. They got to the New Jersey port, you know, six weeks later or something. And same thing happened.
00:19:01
Speaker
The first company was a $100 strip fee. I'm like, what's a strip fee? It's to strip it off the container. The next guy was a process fee. The next guy was an unpackaged fee. The next guy was a customs fee. The next thing was a duty review fee. And I was like, oh my God, it costs us like $980 in the end. And the worst thing was these people were all not good people. It's like what you think about when you deal with like a
00:19:24
Speaker
not fun person, like scummy per people. And they had you over a barrel. They're like, what do you mean you don't like our strip fee? Like I have your, I bid on this container. I want the rights to strip this whole container. The complaint department is you hanging up and not getting your parcel. Like it was, there's no recourse.
00:19:43
Speaker
So long story short, we got a guy called Domingo Logistics out of New Hampshire, who was then our point person who handled all of that. And then he all of a sudden is this guy who knows the lingo, knows how to deal with these people. And you got to get that guy.
00:20:00
Speaker
I just don't think we have enough. We don't do it enough. It doesn't matter. You still need one. Honestly, you could call that guy. I don't know if he can help you, but he was so great. He was my wife's uncle owned a freight company and had been like a help. I think he would either help this guy get started or maybe been a little investor. And I think they do it all over the...
00:20:23
Speaker
I suspect that he could help you even if you're in Canada. It's not like he only works with US companies, but it was such a sigh of relief. Absolutely.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, I even told the shipping, you know, my source who shipped the package. I was like, next time we're just doing UPS and then shouldn't have this problem again. But I think to have a brokerage account, it's like an annual fee, just to have their service like on hand, basically. And I just don't foresee us needing that.
00:20:53
Speaker
That's not what we did. We just had this guy, like when we went to order the motors, he dictated all the terms of the logistics to the shipper. So he just took it over.
Grinding Wheels Improvement
00:21:05
Speaker
So we didn't pay him like on retainer or have a quote unquote, I mean, we had an account in the sense that he built us, but it wasn't, I think you can do what you need to do there. Cool.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, so with any luck, we get the package today, hopefully. Is it that much? I don't know. And it's not even the full batch. I just had them ship what they had ready early to get it started. So we've got another package coming probably next week whenever they're finished with it. So yeah, fun times. From the US. Yeah. I could drive across the border and pick it up.
00:21:46
Speaker
It's just I'd rather work instead of spend that time traveling. Sure, but that's not when it's right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Sorry, dude. But anyway, we've been.
00:21:59
Speaker
We've been making rasks and I'm laughing because I read a comment somewhere that was like, I love the Linda grinding wheel saga on the podcast. Anyway, so two, three days ago, I got a new set of grinding wheels and some backups and then a newer, we were using 500 grit and I got an 800 grit to give us a better finish. So I'm still not super happy with the 500 grit.
00:22:21
Speaker
And so the method that I used to true up the wheel, like when you put it on the arbor, it's not concentric and I have to dress it like you do on a surface grinder. My method of dressing it for the 500 grit destroyed the 800 grit wheel first try. No. The bottom of it just cracked right off.
00:22:42
Speaker
These are Lynda wheels or new? These are Lynda wheels for sure. $200, four to six week lead time. But I have a bunch of 500 grits that work. They're just not this kind of higher level that I was hoping for.
00:22:57
Speaker
So I was able to put the old one back on, and it works fine. But it's just kind of like, come on. Like, this is not going to get any better, is it? Have you talked to her? Like, did you? No, I haven't yet. I'm kind of cooling off. I'm sorry, dude. That's brutal. Yeah. I mean, on one hand, like, I was disappointed, but I wasn't as crushed as, like, the first time I broke one, you know, eight months ago, whatever. Pun intended. Nice.
00:23:24
Speaker
But I was just like disappointed. Like, come on, really? I was hoping for this, whatever. Let's try to move on. But I was still down for the day, mentally. But other than that, I need to know why. Why what? It's a diamond dresser? No, it looks like a carbide end mill, like a quarter inch carbide end mill, except it's made of just tungsten and some other stuff, not tungsten carbide. So it's softer.
00:23:52
Speaker
So basically the wheel rubs up against it and grinds both the wheel and the the grinding wheel and the stick. Yeah, exactly. It's meant to knock the diamond particles off of it. And I think I don't know if my step over was too much. It's the same program I use for the 500 grit. It was just too much like it loaded up the 800 grit or something and
New YouTube Content Plans
00:24:13
Speaker
then just caused too much load. I don't know.
00:24:15
Speaker
How much run-out do you think there was pre-dressing? Probably a few thou, but I started super light. Okay, it was still not that much. It wasn't 20 thou or anything crazy wobbly. Right, right.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah, so that was fun. So I'm basically giving up on a higher grid idea just because I don't want to spend the time on R&D figuring this out even more. We're just going to stick with the 500 grit. We've got a new knife grinder, like a belt grinder coming in, hopefully in the next few weeks or so. It's almost done, he says, for Eric, which will help him polish these out better, faster kind of thing. So it'll reduce my need to make it prettier on the machine.
00:24:58
Speaker
But anyway, once we get Norseman material, then we can kind of put Rask's a bit on the back burner. Right. And just crunch on Norseman, because they don't have this problem. That's right, because you're totally out of Norseman material right now, right? Yes. Sorry, dude. I've got a couple of old Norseman blades here if you want me to send them back to you. I still haven't hard built those. I got to do something with them. You said, yeah.
00:25:22
Speaker
Mitsubishi, the tooling rep who I, we bought Facebook from them, but not much else, but he's a good dude. He has been asking me if we would do a hard milling video and I'm like, yeah, like let's do it. So he has another shot that had a drop. It's, I love that drops are different to different people. This was a drop of hardened D2 that's like 10 by six by four inches. It must weigh like 40 pounds and it's 62 Rockwell or something.
00:25:50
Speaker
And so he dropped it off and he's bringing the tools in and we're going to hard mill. We're going to like pocket it out. We're going to do some surfacing and then I can't believe this is going to happen. We're going to thread mill it. And I've asked him this to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding it. And if I am misunderstanding, I'm going to kick myself because it just sounds too good to be true. The thread mill does not need to be pre-drilled.
00:26:16
Speaker
Really? Which I've heard about, but not for, I mean, I guess it's not that different. It's just tool life and coatings, but we're going to literally take one tool into a blind, a non-existing hole, not a blind hole, a non-existing hole, and one operation with one tool and one Z negative move. We're going to create the hole and come out with threads.
00:26:39
Speaker
So with a single point thread mill, I believe it's multi flute. And here's the ringer I just learned, because we've been emailing about how to cam. I'm like, I'm going to need some help camming this up. He said that the threads require counterclockwise spindle rotation.
00:26:56
Speaker
I was going to say because the tool would have to be cut differently, like meant for backwards. Anyway, because when I thread mill a hole, I drill a hole and then I start at the bottom of the hole and I work my way up. Sure. So the counterclockwise makes sense. Maybe it's a backwards cutting tool, left hand flute, whatever. Or is the end mill portion of it right hand and then you reverse spindle at the bottom come up to thread mill on your way up?
00:27:25
Speaker
Unless I would assume he's cutting threads on the way down too, just to make it more impressive. I can't wait. Either outcome is excellent because we either end up with thread milled parts or we break a tool and either are happening on video. Right, and it's not your tool. Right, right. Now I'm super excited. That's awesome. Yeah, why did I bring that up? I don't know. So we uploaded a YouTube video finally after like three months.
00:27:53
Speaker
And we've got lots more in the queue. Erin and I actually just went through my folder of footage. And I've got it relatively organized. And there's probably 15 different video ideas, like with actual footage that I filmed over the past two years. And she's like, oh my gosh, there's so much footage. There's so many projects. But yeah, so we're starting to crunch through that. We got a new Tumblr a couple of weeks ago that I told you about. We've got a video just
00:28:20
Speaker
We just finished filming it yesterday, and she's almost done editing it. So that'll go up soon. And then Dave's dinosaur knife that I think I told you about. And we got all these videos just coming out soon. And it's like so nice to be back in the videos and have the resources, her, to make it that fun, right? Will you please do have her edit the IMTS video? I know. I really want to see it.
00:28:44
Speaker
I really want to be at IMTS right now. I'm like, I need to learn. I've got tooling
Improving Machining Efficiency
00:28:50
Speaker
questions. I've got fixturing questions. I want to look at, I'm just going to say, I want to look at five axis machines. I can't afford one, but it's just, I'm now completely intoxicated with, we took our training off the other day and I'm bummed because I want to, it's so frustrating to own this tool that is incredible and capable.
00:29:11
Speaker
that has this big hurdle or burden to get up and running each time. Because you have to load it on the machine and set it up and dial it in and all that. This is where you want to tell Paul Akers he's wrong.
00:29:29
Speaker
So we're going to do everything. We're building a custom stand that's going to hold it. We're going to do some like turquited rails that you can then just pull that onto the machine safely, super quick. Then you got to plug everything in, but it all adds up. You've got to reboot the machine at least once, if not twice. You've got to run a probing cycle. You've got to strap clamp it down. A great example. I need to buy all the dedicated strap clamps and leave them with the trunnion instead of having to go back to our strap clamp drawer and finding which ones I used last time.
00:29:56
Speaker
just quit doing that Saunders. And then put the vice on it. It's all those little things that, you know, even if you were, you know, Formula One pit crew efficiency is like a half an hour, probably an hour. And it took me three and a half hours the other day. So the other thing we're going to do is we're going to build a giant sub plate for our orange vices.
00:30:22
Speaker
Because for us, with some of our fixturing, we like having them, we need to have them trammed into each other at a specific distance to each other. And so trimming individual vices in is quite easy, but putting them all exactly three inches off from each other is very difficult because you above it one way and you've lost the other. So we're going to use the orange ball lock system
00:30:48
Speaker
which will let us, I mean, if I'm understanding it correctly and I'm a little skeptical that it's going to hold true, here's the problem. We built those tramming bars and they're good to like a thou or two. And part of me wants to say that that's good enough, but- You want better.
00:31:03
Speaker
Yeah, I do. And Jared and the guys were saying that they're just, it's not a, it's, it could be a good system and it's not. And so we can talk about it, why it's not, or you can realize it's not. So move on.
End-of-Year Reflections
00:31:15
Speaker
And the sub plate should work really well. And that may also let us have ability to then pin. If we could pin the trunnion in, that would save a lot of time. True. So it's too heavy to lift, right? The trunnion? 500 pounds.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah. Way too heavy. Do you use your forklift to get it in? Right now we know we use an engine hoist. Yeah, OK. But again, what we're doing now is building a table that will be bolted into the ground. And the table will hold it at the exact same Z plane as the machine table.
00:31:47
Speaker
And then we're having a couple of these Turkite rails that will extend out and they'll lock into the T slots of the table. Then we've got this permanent or semi-permanent ramp. And we've got a little winch system that we can just drag it across because you can move it by hand on a smooth surface. Does that mean the thing's going to be bolted to the floor right in front of the machine kind of permanently? Right door. Oh, out the side. Okay. So that doesn't matter. Right. I don't have a Japanese machine. So I actually have windows to see into mine.
00:32:15
Speaker
Hey, my side panel does come off window. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, so the answer is also just, it's not the, you know, I lose so much Z travel. Um, boy, I have like 12 inches of Z or something with that trunnions on there. Um, so, um, sell it eventually. And let's get a real five axis machine. Let's make that a goal. Nice. I love it. Yeah. 2018 is going to be,
00:32:44
Speaker
I mean, I'm not really huge on kind of New Year's resolutions and I'm gonna change everything and do this, but...
00:32:50
Speaker
But I think us especially, we're coming into this new era of the pre-orders finally finished. We're finally catching up. We caught up orders-wise. Now we're catching up financially. And then going into 2018, it's going to be a whole new game. And we're empowering employees. And so it's like the timing of a New Year's resolution kind of works just with the flow of the business because everything is happening now. So it's super exciting.
00:33:21
Speaker
I couldn't agree more on everything like this idea that I have an abnormal amount of dedication about resolve just because it's the end of the year is silly. I have that every time I talk to you every week. But it is good to think about
00:33:38
Speaker
No, because we talked about this a long time ago. I think it's one of the hard things about being an entrepreneur is nobody really tells you. So we've grown, our revenue has basically doubled, if not a little more than since over last year.
00:33:54
Speaker
the business expenses to basically not consciously grow with that, but that's just what they do. We invest more in R&D, we have more payroll, and that's all healthy. It's not contrived. I didn't think, okay, we're earning a little more, let me spend a little more. And as a side note to that, one of the ways I would encourage anyone listening to get to where John and I are is in your personal life, you have to spend less than you earn. And as your earnings go up,
00:34:19
Speaker
Don't allow your cost of living to go up. That's the easiest way to get ahead in life. Yes, just don't. Now in the business I do and that's okay because it's an investment. But you've got to tell yourself at the end of the end of the year is a good time. Like John, look back. If you could have started when you started in 2017 and you look at where you are today, tell me you wouldn't be proud of yourself.
00:34:42
Speaker
That's a good way to phrase it. You should be proud of yourself. Yeah. That's a very good way to phrase it. And you're right. I mean, I am. You don't want to relish in your own pride too much, but you're allowed to look back and be like, wow.
00:34:55
Speaker
But if I'm going to say this to you, and it's not like you're going to take the day off because of it, but like John, you've got the Maury so dialed in, you've got your Nakamura so dialed in, you completed that pre-order. You're bringing in more revenue a day now than you were a week or one sometimes less. You've started to expand your team with people that make sense, and you've started to understand how to shape that team, build that culture. We've done, I think, a great job with this podcast. I mean, good for you, dude.
00:35:21
Speaker
Yeah, man, it's so hard. It's like you get stuck into the moment into your own head. You forget about the perspective of everything you just said and you as an outsider can look in and give me the highlight reel and be like, wow, I did do that. But it's so easy to just be stuck in today's problems. Right. You know, as the entrepreneur to just let it crush you sometimes.
Delegating for Business Growth
00:35:42
Speaker
Because it doesn't feel... Yeah, totally agree. Because the fruits of success, they don't last forever. You get a new fancy thing and it's just like a kid. You and I are just giant kids here in our shop. The Nakamura and the Mori, they don't excite me as much as they did before I bought them. You know what I mean? If that makes sense. You were very serious. You started to retrofit your old lathe.
00:36:11
Speaker
You thought that was the answer. And I was very conflicted because I didn't think it was smart for you to spend the money you did and borrow the money on the Nakamura, just being honest about it. Clearly, I was wrong, not my fit, not how I would want to roll. And you're crushing it. But as much as I was wrong, trying to retrofit the Tormach lathe to do what you need to do was also not the right decision. Yeah, and I remember you questioning my desire to do that back in the day and certainly influenced my decision.
00:36:41
Speaker
We should keep that in mind because obviously this podcast is a lot more public than it used to be or this conversation is a lot more public but I love, I have no, I will with pride give you accolades on the job well done but I don't think we should, the whole point of this was to keep it real and raw and I'm gonna criticize you if I think you're making a mistake or thinking that you're doing something stupid like that's what we got to do to each other to keep that perspective. Totally agree.
00:37:10
Speaker
All right, so what are you doing? No, you're doing pretty good. Well, so here's my, I actually did have kind of one of these Eureka moments. I've done a really good job in the last few weeks of slowing down and not getting stressed. It's the single biggest, it is the single biggest
00:37:30
Speaker
moment I've had this year was in February. First time I toured Jay Pearson's shop, I think it was in February, and he was like, I don't get stressed anymore. He's like three or four days a year maybe. And that only means something to me because I knew enough about what Jay does and how he runs his shop and what he does that he probably did have those once a week as he said he did, where they were. I feel like he can relate. And I've done a much better job
00:37:58
Speaker
of that, but then I started to take it to the next level and just sort of say, well, okay, I'm controlling that, which is phenomenal. But why is that situation even presenting itself? Why am I even having to control the amount of stress that I could be allowing myself to be subjected to? And the Eureka moment that I had, and this is going to sound extreme, but hear me out, I have to quit.
00:38:22
Speaker
No, I'm serious. I have to quit just about everything I do here. I have a full-time job.
00:38:30
Speaker
doing nothing. And what I mean by that is everything that has to get done on a regular recurring basis needs to be done by somebody else. My full-time job is helping lead and steer the ships, jumping in to solve those problems, answering those questions, planning, leading, strategizing, doing the R&D. And then also for me, the big thing, which may be different than other companies is also
00:38:59
Speaker
having enough time to put out phenomenal video content. And right now I'm bouncing between, like this morning before the podcast, I was running the VM3. That's not my job anymore. And I'm okay with that. Now, I'm still going to spend a ton of time at that machine helping others, developing these processes.
00:39:17
Speaker
you know our shipping we've made so much progress with our shipping on our orders but guess what our ship station system still stinks because there's all these little quirky exceptions well we it says this but we actually do priority for this type of order and this is the box that we use for this one and when it does this you need to move it and not ship it because i don't want it to go out to the next it's a nightmare and it's only going to get worse i need i need to be doing nothing
00:39:40
Speaker
so that I can actually stop and spend a day talking to Shiptation support, creating the recipes, creating process sheets, fixing it. I have to do this. It's a very powerful decision because you said you're six employees now or six total.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, so it's easy to think, oh, all the work's getting done, but I'm sure you're still doing everything as well as them doing it, right? But that's one of the reasons why I want to hire Aaron for sure, and I've given Barry a lot of responsibility. He is handling the shipping completely now.
00:40:20
Speaker
Eric needs help as well, but I'm the one driving the bus exactly as you just said, and I'm the one that needs to do kind of the higher level work that just runs everything else. Aside from running the business, operating it, doing payroll and government stuff, and just making sure we have a profitable business, ordering materials even, I do not need to do the work. And I'm removing myself mentally and physically from the work.
00:40:51
Speaker
And I want to get there too, throughout 2018 for
Organizing for Better Workflow
00:40:53
Speaker
sure. I mean, you and I should be able to go, I mean, we should be able to go to Germany for a month to show and business still is just as. Yes, absolutely. But it's also not about that. I will work.
00:41:07
Speaker
I will have as just as much FaceTime here. Honestly, what I would be doing, if everything else were being done by everyone else today, what would I do? I would clean. I would do some organizations of cleaning. I would go through our inventory racks. It's that same question of when I look at something, when I look at our shipping software, when I look at my inventory rack, if I spent four hours on that,
00:41:30
Speaker
Would it be better? And when I was done with that four hours, would I regret doing it? Absolutely not. But I'm not going to do that because right now I've got some tools set up. I want to do a test video on and I've got a fixture plate that we need to ship and that's going to happen for the rest of my life.
00:41:46
Speaker
I totally agree. It's easy for anyone to kind of look at that kind of work like, oh, why would you clean? You're worth more than that. And it's like, no, no, that's not the point. I would clean because it'll increase the entire atmosphere and workflow and everything of this shop. And because my guys and girls are dedicated to what they're doing, they need to be doing that, not taking their valuable time producing, you know,
00:42:12
Speaker
content for the company and then you can organize, lean it out, implement all this stuff that you know you should be doing, you want to do and you can't delegate that kind of stuff because it's your vision. It's you that knows the path, you need to go down and me too.
00:42:27
Speaker
You'll, I'm excited for you. I think you'll have an easier time because you're more focused than we are. Like, your shipping is more, I mean, fewer products, fewer quirks. But hey, I'm not, you know, I'm well aware what, you know, I'm okay with the decisions we made to get where we are. It's a little bit more of an untamed beast there. But it's exciting. It's very exciting. Yeah. All right, what's up for today?
00:42:56
Speaker
Today, I'm going to make more bearings on the lathe. I actually haven't turned the lathe on in far too long because we had stuff and we haven't been making a lot of knives. We're going to make these little plastic bearings, which last time I did, I actually wrote this sweet process sheet because there's a lot of fine tuning things to get them working right. It could take me like three hours to set it up. So I'm trying to get that setup time down to half an hour or less, whatever. So it'll be interesting to see how long it takes me this time to set it up.
00:43:24
Speaker
working with
Maintaining Product Quality
00:43:25
Speaker
Aaron to get a couple videos out. And what am I making on the Maury today? We do have Norseman blades in stock. We just have no handles or clips or anything like that. So we can't finish knives. But yeah, so I'm just crunching out more blades. It's batch work. It's getting ahead. I don't want to get too ahead without having handles to assemble and all that. But we know the stuff's coming in. So without getting too far ahead, I can definitely stock up some inventory. Sweet.
00:43:50
Speaker
Can I commiserate on one story? Yeah, this was gut wrenching but luckily not that financially devastating we sell those mini pallets
00:44:01
Speaker
the like six by eight inch or whatever they are by one inch things. We had maybe 20 or 30 left out of the last run of 200 and a customer emailed me and said, hey, just so you know that this is really badly stained. And it's a good customer. And I was like, you know, I knew he wasn't, you know, fibbing or whatever. And I was like, what? And so I came back to the shop and I cut one open and I still don't know why. Actually, I would love any viewer input on this.
00:44:29
Speaker
They're aluminum, they are not coated or anodized. We use quality chem 250, which we've used for years. And I think it was the new bubble wrap that we just randomly bought and didn't realize it, but we wrapped them in bubble wrap and they were sitting there and the bubble wrapping has stained the aluminum and it's into the aluminum. I mean, no cleaner, even scotch brite scrubbing. You'll have to re-machine them or deck them down. So I've got,
00:44:57
Speaker
And they look terrible because it's just this splotchy, it looks like coffee stains in the form of bubble wrap. And it goes back to, I thought that we were doing the right thing, a good deed. We've got inventory on the shelf ready to ship. It's actually packaged. It's literally ready to drop into an envelope. And now I'm sitting on 30 and we'll be able to probably sell them as blends. They're certainly functional, but that's scary because I lost confidence in my recipe.
00:45:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You had all this confidence of inventory on the shelf thinking it's perfect, but it's actually not. I wonder if the plastic off gas onto the material or if it's kind of like this has this oily film on it or something. I don't know. I don't know. Don't you use that paper with the oil in it, like the butcher paper? We use that for our steel products. And that's what we're going to use now for
00:45:49
Speaker
I've never seen that in my life. I've never received a product like that. Anyway, again, luckily, it's not like the end of the world for us. It just was a, that was my Linda wheel moment this week where I was like, are you serious? Yeah, wow. And earlier
Handling Customer Feedback
00:46:05
Speaker
this week, I had a sort of similar situation. So without getting into too much detail, but a customer that I've talked to a lot lately, got a knife through the website and got it.
00:46:19
Speaker
Instead of, it had one legitimate small defect that we were aware of recently. I didn't know his went out like that, but we knew of the issue. And then one, just an observational thing, I wouldn't even call it a thing, right? But anyway, instead of contacting us, he has my email, we emailed 50 times in the past few weeks. He posted on Facebook as a problem with complaints and slander and all this stuff. And I'm like, oh my God.
00:46:46
Speaker
I don't want to say this, but you're like, you're dead to me now. Like, like, don't pull that on me. Like, send me an email first. I don't mind you sharing your frustrations online, but don't do it first. Like, let me give me a chance, you know? Right, right, right. Like, I'd be happy to send it back. I'll pay for the return shipping. I'll fix it. I'll make it better. I'll make you a new one. Like, like, give me a chance, but don't just throw it up online as annoying. That got me really down.
00:47:11
Speaker
You know, John, honestly, it's almost a challenge. It's almost a game. People are maybe jealous of you. It may be his own insecurity. He may be looking for attention to say, I found the upside down Jenny of the Grimsmough knife world. I have found a knife that came out. And it sounds like he was a little bit more of a unpleasant person about it on social media. Oh, that goes back to the whole point of the blue shift. What's it called again? Blue listen shift?
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, the biggest point of that book. The one big point is find businesses that compete in new oceans. So you're not competing at all. The bigger point is, which is the by far the best one for me and you is
00:47:50
Speaker
is ignoring, how do you say it? You gotta listen to the podcast, or I guess read the book, which I have not done yet, but ignoring your competition, ignoring the noise. So maybe we'll talk about it next week, because we're kind of out of time, but how do I, I like being part of this community of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I enjoy being a part of it. I liked giving back. I don't ever want to become too big for that. I know a lot of people look up to us, and I think that's cool. I still feel very young and very new and very much like I have a lot left to do. On the flip side,
00:48:19
Speaker
I don't enjoy, it's the same thing we talked about before. So how do you be part of this community without getting pulled into the lows of it? And the benefit and the beauty of ignoring, like, I don't care what you say about my iPad hype machine or what you say about my Imperializer. We are, I wake up every morning, I get to do what I do, I smile, I love, I inspire, you do the same. And if you,
Staying Confident Amid Criticism
00:48:41
Speaker
you know, Steve Jobs or Tesla guy, whatever, listen to all the critics, you'd never do anything. Exactly. That's a gift.
00:48:49
Speaker
I think we need to strengthen our blind faith in what we do. And it is tough being part of the community, not only as a machinist community, but as from a customer standpoint, I love interacting with my customers. Like people have my direct email. They don't have a person that works here. And I get to, you know, somebody sends a testimonial back and I get to reply directly to them. I get to comment on their Instagram pictures. But because I'm so engaged, I also see the crap, the small amount of it, but it hurts.
00:49:19
Speaker
What you just said there, I just wrote down. That's great. Strengthening our blind faith in what we do. Because as the funny thing, John, I actually have no lack of faith or self-confidence on what I do. When I close my eyes, when I go into the shop and I work, I know we're doing awesome stuff. I know we're inspiring people and I know that I enjoy it. It's when I go read and see and get involved in all the other people's opinions that I start to change and that's not a good thing. That's not a good thing.
00:49:48
Speaker
I mean, I'm an insecure person in a lot of ways. And this just, it digs that, you know? It's like, I can suppress it and not feel too insecure and not show it too much, but then that, it just kind of grabs it and pulls it to the surface. And then I'm like, wow, I'm really, I suck. Like, you let it dig you for a while, but man, we gotta.
00:50:05
Speaker
I know. There's a fine line too on my end where I don't want to ever pander to that and like accept that as okay because you shouldn't. By the flip side dude call me if you ever need that talk, pep talk because I continue to have moments and I think it's important for people to realize I'm not fake on my videos but I tend to be happy on my videos because it's doing part of what I love but I also have a lot of moments of self
00:50:29
Speaker
and doubting my own confidence in what I do. And I think that's pretty normal. It goes back to that thing I saw this summer at someone's house that was like, I hope your real life is as happy as you make your Facebook life seem. Yes.
00:50:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm learning lately that people have this kind of core emotion, whether it's anger, sadness, insecure, etc. Angry people get more angry. It's like when you make a lot of money.
00:51:01
Speaker
like greedy people get more greedy and philanthropic people get more giving and all this stuff. So when bad stuff happens, it just amplify intensifies or amplifies, amplifies, you know, our core emotion.
00:51:17
Speaker
kind of thing. So like Tony Robbins says that he's got, like he gets angry when something bad happens. That's his natural reaction. But he gives himself now a 90 second rule and he has 90 seconds to be as angry as he can. And then he has like, he's trained himself to cut it out. He's like, this is over now. And he's like, it used to be like a 90 hour rule. Cause I used to just take, you know, I'd sink in the anger for so long, but you can't perform like you and I want to perform.
00:51:44
Speaker
when we're stuck in our insecure, sad, depressed kind of moment. And you know we're doing good stuff. And we have blind faith in what we do, but we can't dwell in the crap. Otherwise, we're just not going to do anything. So let's go do it. Dude, we
Conclusion and Farewell
00:52:01
Speaker
have people driving around parking lots right now waiting for us to finish the podcast. All right. Crush your butt. I'll see you. Sounds great. Have a great day. Take care. Bye.