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00:00:01
How Small Businesses Need To Think About Growth!
180 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Podcast Feedback & Developing a Consistent Opening Statment - Strategy: Learning Your Customer Base & SEO - Email from Brewery | ERP VS Wiki - Covid Hits Close to Home at SMW - Staffing A Growing Business & The Concert Mindset - Recycling Chips: The Need for a Compactor
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Transcript
Introduction to Business and Machining Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode two hundred and two my name is john saunters. And my name is john grimsmo and in this podcast we talk about business entrepreneurship machining people projects all kinds of cool things.
00:00:16
Speaker
That actually might be pretty close to what I want to do based on some feedback. There's the analytical approach to how you market. What I love about this podcast is there's no ulterior motive. It's a private conversation
Podcast's Role in Business Marketing
00:00:35
Speaker
that we do record.
00:00:36
Speaker
And there's no subtleties. I mean, sure, you mentioned your knives. I mentioned my fixture plates. But really, this isn't like our businesses wouldn't fall apart if it weren't for this podcast in terms of marketing revenue. But that's not to say that there isn't a reason that we should be putting our best foot forward on telling listeners, especially new listeners, why they should listen. And the critique was we do this kind of off the cuff intro. Sometimes it's pretty good. Sometimes it's not great. Yeah, exactly.
00:01:02
Speaker
But it's not consistent. And so somebody may jump in an episode one or 101 and we really need a hook. We need a call line. We need a call to action that can help somebody identify with why. I mean, seriously, like a podcast is very much a, uh, it costs something because it costs their time to listen to it. And we have.
00:01:19
Speaker
I would say we have great content. I mean, I guess it's self-fulfilling because if you don't like it, you don't listen. And so if you're still listening, you think it's good content. And you and I have both gotten feedback that kind of confirms, look, what we're going through is the everyday realities of what it's like to run a business. And so we've got to come up with a consistent hook or catch line that gives somebody that information to know, hey, this is a real genuine insight. And we could say it every time. I kind of like saying it every time versus the audio snippet that's just cut and pasted in by the editors.
00:01:49
Speaker
What do you think? I like it, and I think both of us over the past few months, six months maybe, have been trying to nail down. You kind of say the similar thing, and I kind of say the similar thing, but we're also making it up every week, and you're like, what was that good one from a couple weeks ago? I'm a fan of nailing down.
00:02:10
Speaker
shoot some ideas across over the next few weeks and kind of nail down a hook, a tagline. I like it because I look into not a lot of podcasts, but the few that I do listen to have a very consistent intro and I like it actually. It's like, oh yeah, it's like...
Hiring for Marketing Strategy
00:02:25
Speaker
It's the same experience. There's actually so many subtle but excellent takeaways here, because first off, it's don't reinvent the wheel. Look at what other successful things are doing, podcasts or knife makers or machining product folks. And we've got a guy starting next week who's our in-house digital marketing. Actually, I keep saying digital marketing. Really, it's a marketing strategy. But part of his job, which I'll come back to, is thinking about who our customers are and how we target them.
00:02:52
Speaker
and how we create and craft a message because we've all been there. If you're really thinking about, I don't know, picking up a new magnetic spin tumbler and all of a sudden you see one and some of the key words are clean or quiet or speedy or whatever, subconsciously use those words, reaffirm this process in your head that tells me, yes. You know what I mean? It reaffirms what you want to believe about it and you actually don't realize those words are selling you. They were put their own purpose.
00:03:22
Speaker
Absolutely. To get you in the feels, to make you think, yeah, I do want it speedy. I do want it quiet. OK, that's exactly what I want. All the price is good. OK, sold. Done. But the next sentence may say something, not contradictory, but different. But it's like selective perception where you follow that path of what you want. And certainly, it's true that the greener you are, the more impressionable you are, you are a
00:03:46
Speaker
relative newcomer to the magnetic tumbling world, right? So you're impressionable and it all has this hint of, is it sophisticated and good or is it, I hate to use a word, but manipulative. And I don't think it's ever manipulative when you're following through, when you're genuine, when you're, you know what I mean? Yeah, manipulating is bending the truth, is faking it, is like,
00:04:09
Speaker
you know, twisting it in such a way that it convinces you. And with the products we make and the products we buy, I don't think there's a lot of convincing, like selling going on in a pushy way. You know, it's like we want... Our customers want our stuff. We're not trying to convince them to buy it.
00:04:31
Speaker
Right. It's not the buy this six pack of alcohol and all of a sudden you'll have a party that rivals none other. You know what I mean? Yes, exactly. Wear Axe Body Spray and you'll have all the women. Right. But it is true because obviously anyone and anyone could listen to this podcast. But if I had to choose who is listening to it, it's that person that's
00:04:53
Speaker
not struggling, because I don't wish struggle on people, but it's someone who's trying to who has a desire to get better is looking for mentors or is fascinated with success stories that they can apply like the doer, not just the thinker, like somebody who's actually in the you know, it makes sense.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And we do have a lot of not entrepreneurs listen to the podcast, employees or people in the machine or whatever you want to call it, people who are part of a system and who listen to the podcast that I know and really enjoy the content because it gives them a perspective that maybe they don't have in their daily life.
Podcast Value for Entrepreneurs and Employees
00:05:30
Speaker
We're talking to the entrepreneurs. We're talking to each other. But it's a perspective, as I've heard from other people, it's a perspective that employees don't get.
00:05:40
Speaker
I got a great, I don't know if I can find it, um, a great unsolicited feedback from, here we go. Yes. Uh, head of production, elementary brewing company, a beer brewery in New Jersey, and it's all forwarded to you. Oh, actually, I think it meant to you, Grimsmell. Yeah.
00:05:58
Speaker
Anyway, awesome email that was shedding nice light on how the podcast has helped them and then some really insightful information on ERPs and how the advice was be careful about putting things like production notes and
00:06:14
Speaker
Other large bodies of unstructured data aren't a good fit long-term. I totally, totally get it. It's not a dump all that can have stale or even harmful information. Rather set up, and I love this. I love this. I wanted to high five the guy. Set up an internal Wiki.
00:06:32
Speaker
We use media wiki, which is what runs Wikipedia. And if you don't know what a wiki is, I believe the term is just like a crowd edited resource like Wikipedia. But inadvertently, we've done that with a lot of our own stuff where we have
00:06:47
Speaker
tooling notes and production notes, not like specific file stuff, but more like, hey, if you're setting this up, is we created Google Sheets and Google Word docs that are shared, but a wiki so much better because a wiki changes the way you think about it as like, if I make this change, I'm memorializing it in a document that's important, not just a Word file where you may just type brain dump notes.
00:07:07
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, I was talking with another machinist about ERP systems. And he said, Yeah, we're making a wiki. And I was like, what do you mean? Like, you're making a Wikipedia, I had no idea, like, I know what Wikipedia is. But I never thought of an end user, you know, consumer business making their own wiki. Never thought about it. Awesome, right? This was just last week. And I was like, huh?
00:07:30
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of what an ERP is. It's a place to consolidate your information and everybody can tweak and edit and create the standard, but you're saying it's a different way to look at it? An ERP is like a bidirectional database that has inputs and outputs and status and so on. A Wikipedia is just a one-way kind of resource. I mean, it's two-way in the sense that we add to it and build it, but ultimately it's
00:07:54
Speaker
The intent is to more to be consumed by a group. That makes sense. It's a resource, whereas an ERP is a system. I don't know if I see the difference from an ERP useful standpoint.
00:08:08
Speaker
Either way, you're adding and reading information. You're creating a central source. I think the key takeaway here is you write stuff down. ERP is quantitative. It's numbers and data. Okay. Wiki is qualitative. It's descriptions. It's context. It's ... Sure. That's what I want in my ERP as well. You want a Wiki. Yeah. What would you put into GURP that's potentially a Wikiable thing?
00:08:38
Speaker
Uh, information, you know, set up notes to a life like to. To a life I'd say ERP, but like, if you have a, we have a Saunders guide to shipping or a Grinsville guide to packaging or, you know, post post Eric finishing a rask, like maybe some stuff, a new interns are going to come in. That's Wiki stuff, not ERP stuff. Yeah. I, I guess I have struggled with that and how to integrate that into the ERP. Um, I do want that in there or at least accessible through there or something. ERP can have a link to the Wiki.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:09
Speaker
Like check this, like if you really created a checklist-style status, that could be ERP like order fulfillment stages. But the actual content I think of Wiki is, I remember seeing this back from the earlier 3D printer days where some of these kind of high-growth companies that had a lot of customer service and technical support issues were creating Wikis that allowed the crowd, the MakerBot users to kind of go in and refine their own troubleshooting customer service, almost like Reddit-ish in a good way though. Okay.
00:09:39
Speaker
Hmm. Interesting.
Benefits of Internal Wikis
00:09:43
Speaker
We've maybe perhaps gotten a bit off topic, but I do think it's, I think internal- It's our podcast. I know, but internal wikis are underutilized. I think their potential. Yeah. As I said, it's new to me as of last week. That's interesting. I guess I'd like to see an example or see it implemented or something, like to wrap my head around it fully. Yeah, it's fair. That would be interesting. You may have actually consumed a wiki from a company and not even realized it.
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah, I know I definitely have. As you said, with 3D printing, people will throw together a wiki about the Monoprice Mini S2 printer, which I've looked at. And I'm like, yeah, this is a good little repository of information. Yeah. I like it. It clicked with me because we have had the problem of, oh, well, is that piece of information in Asana? Is it an email? Is it in John's Excel files? Is it in the team's shared
00:10:37
Speaker
Google Drive? Well, which Google Drive file? Wiki is kind of like, oh, it's the Wiki. It's quite searchable. You can link in and out a little bit more elegantly than I think you can in a traditional Word Docker spreadsheet. Oh my gosh, we could include Lex links. Yeah, I'm liking this. Yeah, right. Thinking through it.
00:10:56
Speaker
Dude, Lex is like 11 out of 10 working. It's so good to hear. We've hit the point now where I'm looking back on two, three, four week old things and I have no memory of them both because our volumes have gone up so much, but also because we're now distance from it in a good way. We'll have three or four or five different outstanding PO's on things like material where
00:11:20
Speaker
It's all of a sudden nobody understands it except Lex and it's phenomenal. You do the thing, you do the PO and then you forget about it because it's in, you trust it.
00:11:32
Speaker
It's working. We barely even do the PO. I'm still clicking send. We ran into a little bit of a bug where auto sending PO's was going to be difficult because of where the information is based on its server side or host side or local side. We had this idea of for aluminum, it would just always send the PO every 72 hours regardless of
00:11:55
Speaker
whether there's enough, like, okay, I like to batch it up because you'll get a better price. But yeah, we can still do it. But it's what we've been doing now is a simple manual review process. We had somebody else doing it, it came back to me for a brief period of time, but it'll, it'll go off my plate. And it's not, it's something I'd like to improve. But I mean, we're it's, if we wanted to be at 100, this took us to 90. Huge wind, right?
00:12:24
Speaker
That's great. So other than purchase orders, where else is it used a lot? It's just POs, RFQs, inventory items, internal work orders, maintenance. I'd be fibbing if I said it's actively being used. But it will be. It's just part of the process of us getting through. We got hit pretty hard with COVID last week. And luckily, everybody's OK, but it's been
00:12:51
Speaker
It's different when it hits close to home, but again, we as in Saunders machine or Ohio. Our company and our 100 mile radius area has just gotten slammed with it.
00:13:05
Speaker
Obviously, it's Christmas in two days. Christmas, if you're listening to this on Christmas, go hang out with your family. Hang up on the podcast right now and it'll be here when you get back. We took one step backward on our recent hiring and that's probably one area I probably have to call it to not talk too much about it on the podcast because I just don't think it's appropriate.
00:13:26
Speaker
Uh, we will refill that position and that will be a good thing because in the short period of time we had a person in that role. It was very clear that that was a mature role. Like that role immediately, it was basically a bunch of people doing that role. And as soon as they focused on that one person, we were like, Oh yes, this is great. So we'll get, it's hard to.
00:13:47
Speaker
We would hire somebody this afternoon, but obviously, it's a little bit tricky this time of year. So I think in the next few weeks, we'll probably find that person. And that will also be the key to what I just said about maintenance and the person handling some of the Lex POs and advanced stuff, et cetera. Next phase of growth. Isn't it kind of crazy when all of a sudden, things come together and become clear? And you put that role together in your head, and you're like, oh, yes, baby. We need this. That makes sense. Yeah.
00:14:15
Speaker
Absolutely. The one thing I will say, I was talking with a peer who I look up to a bit and bounce ideas off every once in a while. It was a piece of information that I've always
00:14:27
Speaker
used, but when I said it, this person really liked it. So I thought maybe that makes it worth resharing, which is it's not always clear how to make certain decisions around operations in the staffing and HR and personnel. And one of the things I always go back to is if you're, especially when you're on the fence or there's a question there is would you hire that person again?
00:14:48
Speaker
The answer to that is not necessarily the answer of what to do next, but it also helps make you stay honest about the way to extrapolate out, which is that if it's not going to work out, you need to be willing as a leader to make that decision now and not have it cost
00:15:04
Speaker
I wish I could read that book. They were criticizing the company. There's a specific company that they call it out, and I don't recall what it is, who's basically like, we never fire somebody. We always figure out how to make it work with that person, which I think is absurd. I think there's absolutely reasons why somebody is either not a fit, which is a tough call, but not a fit, or simply
00:15:25
Speaker
It fails to perform their duties, show up to work, et cetera, which is not as difficult of a call. Their point was if you are not able and willing to make that decision, it's not fair to you as the leader. It's not fair to your company. It's not fair to your colleagues, the other employees. It's a fail all around when you start looking at it that way and not looking at it as the more personal level. Certainly in those situations, it's clear, okay, I would not hire this person again. Okay, good.
00:15:50
Speaker
Which you mentioned a book. Do you remember which book? I don't, John. Sorry about it. OK. Yeah. But no, I have definitely heard similar things from other books or speeches or whatever about what's that line of working with the person and making it work? What are the actual things that bug you, things that are wrong? Are they fixable? Are they personality? Are they capability problems like performing, like you said?
00:16:19
Speaker
Or if it's just little simple fixable things, that's just a perspective change. You know, it could be super easy that changes everything. Yeah, you just gotta be willing to pull that thread and figure out what, what's actually going on, and not just being stuck in your head and, you know, blaming or, or, you know, mentally yelling at someone. Oh, and it's, man, it's hard to talk about this stuff. But you know, we do have processes in ways where you want to teach people and show people and lead people. And it's not just, you expect
00:16:48
Speaker
immediate fit and skill sets off. Of course, you've got to nurture all that. But there's also, again, the flip side of that, which is when it isn't working or isn't going to work. I had this wonderful moment. I'm not sure it's going to come off across as well when I explain it. I hope it does. Trying it always sounds so great in your head. Right? No, really. But I'm trying to think about
00:17:09
Speaker
as our business grows and it becomes more decentralized, it's not just you or me in the know and everything. I
Scaling Business Operations with Analogies
00:17:16
Speaker
think a lot about either being at a crowded airport or at like a concert. When you look around and there's countless people, hundreds of people, thousands of people, and this is just the way my head works and perhaps I'm strange, perhaps others think the same way, but I think about things like airport security and how, oh, if you see somebody, it's fairly easy to say, I need to figure out if that person has something in their bag or on their body that they shouldn't.
00:17:38
Speaker
Bring on of the through the security not not like particularly difficult But then when you look at a crowd of a thousand people and you say you have you know 11 minutes to build a system that gets people through and so forth you start to think holy cow that's that's crazy that's a that's a system or process and equipment and machines and resources and
00:17:56
Speaker
It rules. Yeah. How do you handle these things and how do you stop bottlenecks? To me, that's a wonderful analogy to starting to think about our business as it moves beyond the whack-a-mole approach that so many of us are guilty of as growing entrepreneurs of like, well, I'll just solve everything myself.
00:18:12
Speaker
Because if you look at a crowd at a concert and you look around and you say, okay, let's say everybody in the next two weeks is going to buy one of my products. Great. You have a thousand people buying something of yours. That's great. But now all of a sudden, how are you marketing to them? How are you following up? How are you handling customer service? How are you handling tracking? How are you handling all these things that are not remotely feasible to handle on the whackable individual basis?
00:18:35
Speaker
We're starting to think about, do we need something like Zendesk? It does not look like Slack is the right answer as a follow up to last week's where we don't have that many inbound customer service or tech support issues. And we actually proudly have very few issues where we need like a refund. But I want a system in place so that it can be tackled and assigned and tracked and not drop the ball on. And what's that scalable system there? How do you handle a thousand people at the concert?
00:19:03
Speaker
That is such a fantastic analogy. I guess what you're doing is you're looking at your business times 10 tomorrow. How would you deal with the flow? It's this thought exercise of if things went nuts tomorrow, are we ready for that? And building for that readiness so that as you naturally grow, you've got these systems in place already, like Lex or whatever, so that you don't have these bottlenecks, these silos of information.
00:19:31
Speaker
these old-timer experts that are the only person who knows how to run this one machine. I'm actually visualizing that airport security or concert security. I haven't been to a lot of concerts, but when we're at IMTS and we go to the baseball game or whatever and everybody's like, you have to go through security to get to the stadium.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah. How do you feed so much stuff through the checkpoint and make sure you don't miss anything? It doesn't even have to be security. It could be selling souvenirs. Like, okay, so if a thousand people might come, do I have, how much, how far ahead of time do I need to order the wooden baseball bat souvenirs and then get them logo engraved and then get them packaged? And then how am I having people handle the POS point of service or sale to, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's, I love it because it just, it forces you to control all delete
00:20:20
Speaker
the I'm going to just work extra this weekend to handle it myself. You know what I mean? Exactly. Because it's so far removed from today that it's not even like tomorrow. It's like, yeah, that could happen in 10 years. But what if it did happen next week? Yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
Well, and like Zendesk, I don't know how much it costs, but I'm guessing that they have a low cost, perhaps even free plan for small places like us. So it's kind of like, wait a minute here, or you're implementing a solution that could let you grow 10 fold. But the reality is it might cost 40 bucks a month. So who cares if you're not like.
00:20:52
Speaker
you're the smallest Zendesk user in Zendesk history. If it actually helps, even if you're a solopreneur, if it gives you a framework and a system, I would love to high-five the person that's working out of their garage on their nights, still has a day job, and he's using Zendesk plus Upwork to handle. Absolutely. You win, dude. That's awesome. Yeah, I've dealt with one that I can think of, a company that used Zendesk, and you can see it in the email tags or whatever it is. That's probably a free version.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then how many times has it come across my desk that I didn't know about it? Because they're doing the paid version. Yeah, I don't know anything about it, really, to be honest. But those kind of things need to be talked about, need to be looked into, need to be addressed. Yeah. Anyway, that's my, I know I've been talking a little bit. Oh, that's fantastic. More than my fair share this morning, but how are you doing?
00:21:43
Speaker
I was just thinking last night. I was here late and I kept like yelling at myself. I'm like, you're not going in one direction. You're going in many directions. It's like I know I have certain work that needs to get done, but I'm doing this thing and I'm letting it, you know, stretch and I'm doing this thing. And I'm like, I feel like I'm just doing too many at once. And I just need to like clear my list and like just just flow this way. I feel like I need to flow in one direction. I was just kind of frustrated last night, but
00:22:13
Speaker
No, be specific. It looks like on Insta, you were running the current in Rask, which is freaking solid. Which is the goal, but I was playing with the magnetic pin finisher that I got yesterday for a long time, which was cool and part of the plan. And then a bunch of other little stuff around the shop, right? And it's just like, I feel like Rask should be the only thing that I'm doing, so I'm kind of beating myself up by doing anything else, which is not always realistic.
00:22:37
Speaker
Do you just feel a subconscious pressure to put on a thousand fires? Sometimes. Or new ideas, new projects, new fixtures, new plans, all kinds of stuff. It's always rolling over my brain, but which do I focus on first? It's a constant fun battle that I... Sometimes I'm okay with it, sometimes I'm struggling with it.
00:23:00
Speaker
You're like that fire that wants more fuel and you got to be willing to give it fuel, John. Whether that's hiring somebody or really, you're there. You got to let it grow. Exactly. Distributing the work is going to be a huge part of relieving my brain of that. We have so many friends out there that could easily handle many of the projects that I want to do right now.
00:23:25
Speaker
whether it's a one-off thing. I know the guys with the right machines that could pull this off. Here's $500, go, or whatever. We have the kind of money that's not a problem anymore. You shouldn't even be involved in that, though. You should have Sky or Angelo or somebody say, hey, there's a Fusion file. We've had three people do job shop workforce before, work with them on the tolerances. Because it's actually a pain in the butt to convey tolerances and prints and all that. Exactly. But you shouldn't be doing that, John. Quit it, dude.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, I'm working. I'm doing that for some things that I need to work towards it on other things. And there's just so much I want to do. And I'm still holding on to too much of it, because there's like there's more and more. And it's all fun stuff. But some is more important than others. And I have to be careful about what I'm tackling first. And then I still find myself, man, for like 10 years, I've noticed some things I get to like the 90% point, give or take. And I'm like, OK, I'm losing interest.
00:24:21
Speaker
Oh. Onto the next thing. Like fun projects where it just kind of peters out? Or selling rasks for that matter. Oh, to an extent. Obviously, I'm going to finish and I want to get them out. But I can feel my brain is already losing interest.
00:24:38
Speaker
because it's to that point. Some of that, John, is also the way we're wired as humans to... You and I are both a bit introverted. It's funny because I'm actually incredibly quiet in the shop and I think that probably may come off as unusual to people who know me through this or the YouTube channel, but you got to come through as a team. It's a lot of good grief, John. You're developing a whole product with
00:24:59
Speaker
multiple 5x workflows and fixturing. It's a lot and it's great to have, there's a social element and a two is one, one is done element to going through that and not going through it alone. Carrying a lot of weight on your shorts.
00:25:14
Speaker
And that's, I'm cool with it. Sometimes it gets to me, sometimes I'm great with it. And then I definitely do, I don't know if we spread the work around, but I definitely get advice from others. And I chat about ideas and I'm like, yeah, I'm struggling with this. And you know, how would we do that, whatever. But I still do a lot of the things that are on my plate, like, because they're my things. Some of the easy things, I'm like, yeah, you guys can handle that.
00:25:38
Speaker
But go back to the whole notion of, would I hire that person again? If you had a person who was able, and I think you just need another person because of capacity constraints. I think you had people on your team right now, but they're probably busy. But if you could then spend the day alternating back and forth or brainstorming back and forth or say, hey, I'll work on it for a few hours. You work on it. You handle the fixture and I'll handle this.
00:26:00
Speaker
If you did that and it worked well and you had that contemporary with you and person with you, I don't think you would look back on that and say, ah, man, I should have just done that on my own. Right. 100%.
Expanding Workforce for Business Growth
00:26:12
Speaker
I could see in not the very too long a future, more than one person being in that role. And like you said, I do have people here that could handle that, but they're also full-time busy. Right. You're running our production and it's hard to pull them away for a day to play, work play on cool new projects.
00:26:29
Speaker
Are you at a point where you could justify another role? I mean, justify is a weird word. Okay, afford? Yeah, afford probably, justify maybe. Oh, John, no, no, no. Respectfully, you're totally wrong. You probably can't afford not to, and the justification was months ago. Yeah. Ed did that to me yesterday. I loved it. He's like, hey, I have a new thing I want made.
00:26:55
Speaker
it's infusion. And, you know, for lack of a better word, I have more free time now, like, and the guys are cranking, which is great. And I'm doing my job as the shop person that runs the shop making decisions and thinking. And, you know, it's funny, because it was a part that was well suited for the dual spend a lay that's actually kind of a tricky part. And it was great. He asked me for them. What's today, Wednesday, he asked me for the Monday night, Tuesday by lunch, I had the first one on his desk.
00:27:23
Speaker
Because of our dual spindle lathe templates, actually what makes it tricky is it's a really shallow or short thread length. I actually thread milled in the lathe to avoid the issue of needing a thread relief from a traditional OD turning thread tool.
00:27:38
Speaker
But what was funny about it was like, I'm having to ask my own team members about tolerances design, I don't know what the parts for, you know, what's what's, what's critical, where can I do this? How do you how do you want it D bird or chamfered or blah, blah, blah. And very similar to what you're thinking of, but it was that is a good thing, you know,
00:27:57
Speaker
puts you on the other end of the, you're receiving a quote from somebody. Kind of, yeah. RFQ and you're like, okay, I don't know what it is, but I'm going to make it. Yeah. And that's cool. It was good. I mean, look, I don't know your details and daily operations, but if I put on that investor hat, one of the first things I would do is not necessarily get you more spindles or square footage, but good grief, you need a second.
00:28:24
Speaker
an R&D and person. I agree. I need to spread the work out. We talk about that here in the company. We're doing great things, but there is still a lot that just isn't getting done. We don't have capacity to do right now that we could be doing.
00:28:43
Speaker
it kind of makes you feel bad about it but on the other hand you're like no we're cranking like things things are great it's just our our eyes are bigger than our mouth like yeah it's awesome you know we build towards that but it still kind of makes you feel bad because you're like there's so much like we could be doing right now right
00:28:59
Speaker
But look, we have the same similar-ish struggles. I was just talking this week about, OK, are we at that point yet again? Which seems crazy, because we've brought on new people recently. And we actually might be looking at another machine. And we might be looking at adding another person.
00:29:16
Speaker
conversation we have is, okay, why should we not do that today? We break down those reasons and we say, okay, look, there's some real macro concerns about what's going to happen once COVID changes and once the election changes and stuff that you can't control and I'm not going to lose sleep over. But it's been a good 10, 12 year run and there are cycles and the government's done a lot to avoid pain, but perhaps to a hazard. And that scares me as a business owner about over-investing and over-committing at the wrong time, but you also
00:29:46
Speaker
You have to, you know, when the music's playing, you got to dance. I know you're making money, John. You got to feed the fire, you know?
00:29:54
Speaker
Oh, we are for sure. But there's things, you know, we're making certain choices and we're not making certain choices, you know, like we're very careful in our hiring and definitely a verge of slow. But I mean, we just we've got one new person on now. Next person starts in like a week and a half or something. And those are great decisions. But it's been over a year since we hired somebody else, like since we hired the last two. Got it. Yeah.
00:30:22
Speaker
like we're slow and diligent. And I think the speed of that has definitely got to change throughout 2021 and 22 and stuff.
00:30:30
Speaker
And there's a confidence, this is not my default mentality, but there's a confidence factor behind it of like, I need a person, I'm gonna hire that person. And you know what, I know how to make great products, we will sell them, we will justify, like, I will make this work. I have the ability to do that. And you do, right? You do, John. I have that confidence. I don't question that whatsoever. I guess the things I question are, you know, the right person, having the right work for them. You have the right work for them.
00:31:00
Speaker
I'm trying to think of weak excuses right now. Yeah. I mean, by far, my biggest fear is finding the wrong person. So we've done our best to vet the person and talk to them because it's not fair to anybody to start and not work out. But I like what Simon Gladwell said in that revisionist history
00:31:21
Speaker
this year, which is like, much in the same way, politicians are different when they're candidates versus when they're in office, you know, everyone's a little different when they interview, it doesn't make them a bad person, and it takes time to figure stuff out, but you got to just do it. And you know, John, what to look for, what makes people
00:31:38
Speaker
I think I was taking, look, not everyone's, we're not looking for a homogenous culture or like, we're not looking for everyone to be the exact same. That's not it. But you got to have that, like, you got to kind of want to learn or want a machine or be curious or, you know, my whole thing was like, you got to be the kind of person that always is willing to say, Oh, there's a piece of trash on the floor. Like I'll pick it up. Like not a big deal. And some of that you can lead, inspire and train. Some of it is just got to be in the person.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And then how do you vet that out as quickly as possible so you're not feeding fuel into the wrong fire kind of thing for too long? It's good though. It's good. I thought of what I forgot last week. Remember when I was like, we were talking about something about WhatsApp and it was really interesting recycling chips.
00:32:22
Speaker
Oh yeah. So we're at this awkward stage where we produce maybe somewhere between two and four, they're called Gaylord totes. So they're about the size of a pallet square. So I think that's probably one or two, probably one cubic yard, 40 inches by 40 inches or a thousand millimeters by a thousand millimeters by a thousand millimeters. And look, it's a decent amount. When that's steel, it can be somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds in it.
00:32:51
Speaker
And it's awkward because you have to generate, and for our area at least, probably about 14, I think it is 12 or 14 cubic yards a month for the recycler to actually take it, auto process it for you.
00:33:06
Speaker
And that may just be something quirky to our area. But look, the scrap metal business is a pretty ferocious world. And so even though at that point, it's quote unquote free, the reality is that's probably somehow being factored into the price per pound that you're getting and so forth. And they'll do it if you produce less, but then they start charging you a kind of rental fee on the container. And look,
00:33:24
Speaker
It's a 14 yard container, which I don't really want here either. So the best answer is to continue doing the kind of Gaylord thing. The thing I wish is that we could compact our chips because you get a better scrap value extracts the coolant out, which could either be
00:33:39
Speaker
could potentially be cleaned and recycled, which would be a good thing. It also reduces the amount of coolant you're sending to the scrapyard. It just solves all kinds of problems, but everything I've looked up or talked to for compactors, or they call them brickette machines, you got to be 100 times our size. It's machines that you would think they would cost
00:34:00
Speaker
five, 10 grand and they're 10 times that. And to Dennis's point, it's like, just be careful. That's another machine that takes up space that has to be maintained. They can have problems that, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's just, we don't even come close to justify it because, but man, I would, I still want like to put in a five, five gallon bucket and have it pop out like a hockey puck of chips, you know?
00:34:24
Speaker
I love the concept of it. Like you said, it seems not that complicated. I mean, hydraulic cylinder, you got a hopper, whatever.
00:34:36
Speaker
Have you looked up YouTube like somebody doing a DIY? I have not seen any DIYs. I talked to a guy who runs a solid shop like a 50 Makinos in Arizona who has prints for a one they built, but I would be hesitant to DIY one of those and you're talking about 100 tons, 200 tons cylinder and my thought was could you do like an injection screw has a machines have variable pitched
00:34:57
Speaker
augers. So basically, as the ships move down the auger, it gets tighter to compact them. I don't need it to turn into like a solid coke can I just want a five gallon bucket to get squished down like you can do it with you took a weight in a 10 pound sledge and just banged on it for a bit. You don't need 100 tons of pressure, you just need like some hydraulic cylinder with whatever 2000 psi, I don't know. Well, if anybody if anybody has any tips, I'm all ears. What do you guys have a container?
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, we have a container out back. I don't know. I mean, it's probably four, five feet wide and 10 feet long or something and like four feet tall. It's a big boy. And yeah, they dropped that off when we moved here. And our local places have no problem picking up whatever. We don't need 14 containers a month kind of thing. From my perspective, if they can take it away and it doesn't cost me anything, I'm good to go. But even I think we're going to get a little bit back from this one.
00:35:53
Speaker
But we've been here a year and we've been making more chips. We've ever made before. And the thing is like a third full or something. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think you said you mix metals, which look, John, I totally get it. You don't care. But when you mix metals, the scrap yards basically drive your price down to nothing. No, when I drive in, I mean, we can get anywhere from 400 bucks to two grand. So it's not really not something that I want to just say, wow, I'm just going to give it away or something. Yeah.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah, and like I was saying in WhatsApp, we water jet almost everything, so our chip load is not a lot. We're not hogging anything. And since we have blades and handles and steel and titanium in the same fixture, the same pallet, of course we're mixing chips. I lost caring about that like eight years ago.
00:36:40
Speaker
I remember in the tormac, I'd scrape out all the titanium and I'd put it into a little five gallon bucket. I'd be like, okay, I'm running stainless now. Then you go to the scrapyard and you'd be like, yeah, it's $72 for three years of chips. I'm like, I lost interest. Right. That is the correct decision. Cool. What's going on with your today?
00:37:00
Speaker
I'm running Rask production-ish. December 23rd, 2020, or 25th for the listeners. Well done. Things are good. That's great. When we make a change on the blade, I have to machine it soft, and then it has to be heat treated, and then it has to be lapped, and then I have to grind the bevels, and then we can assemble it in a knife and test it.
00:37:23
Speaker
So it's like at least a two or three day process before I can actually test this change. So I've been going through a couple different revisions on the blade to make the lock. The lock is sticky right now. So when the knife opens, it's got this click to unlock it, which is gross and unacceptable. So I'm fine tuning that. I made four blades a couple of days ago that should work.
00:37:43
Speaker
I'll be able to test them today. Those are production blades. If they work like they should work, then we're golden. We're good to go. Do you know what needs adjusted? The contact angle of the lock bar on the lock face of the blade. Okay. At the risk of stating the obvious, if you have a long lead time with a lot of downstream services and so forth, why don't you make 10 blades and adjust each one by 0.1 units
00:38:07
Speaker
True, I could. This is a feature I've never changed on the Rask or the Norseman for years and years and years, but I decided I think I need it for the Rask now. So if it starts at zero, I change this one by four thou in one direction, and then I feels great. No stick whatsoever, but the lock will fail if you
00:38:24
Speaker
We call it spine wreck. Open knife and you smack it against a piece of wood and try to make the lock fail. It did fail like one out of every five hits. I went too far, so the fourth hour was too much. I thought about this for a couple days. I'm like, one and a half should be perfect. It should get rid of the stick and it shouldn't fail and it should be dead nuts. I made the four blades at one and a half.
00:38:45
Speaker
It should work. It should be fine. And I've been playing with the magnetic finisher, which came yesterday. Results are not as impressive as I hoped. It is cool. I just don't know if it's going to do exactly what I want. How so? So we're making these lock bar inserts out of AEBL stainless, and we're heat treating them to be 55 to 60 Rockwell. The 304 stainless pins that are in the pin tumbler, I don't think they're hard.
00:39:10
Speaker
Probably not. So they will beat up a soft steel, but they don't even touch a heat-treated steel. Nor will they ever. They won't even take the color off of a heat-treated steel. Right. Like we had a brown one come out of a heat treat, and I'm like, oh, let's throw in the pin tumbler, and the brown should come off. Not even close. Right. So I'm mildly disappointed about that. But if I do machine the inserts soft and then put them in the tumbler, they work great. And then we heat treat them individually, just kind of a pain in the butt. We're trying to fine tune that process right now.
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm getting there. Cool. I can't wait to see the, like, what material could you machine that creates like a cookie tray for the heat treat oven that has all of the space so that you don't have hotspots in the oven and like, or, you know. Yeah. Like we talked about it, like Inconel works in the oven, but it can still warp and cause problems and stuff, but can you use like graphite or carbon or something?
00:40:01
Speaker
I don't know. It's a good point. Hashtag you lock. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Sweet, wouldn't you? Yeah, things are good. I am guilty of the exact same thing you are, which is before this podcast, I was trying to do two things at once, which never works, which is reformatting one of the computers here to give it a fresh install, which is a great thing to do.
00:40:23
Speaker
also trying to run more of those dual spindle lathe parts that I want to do a tweak on. And my thought had been, well, if I get that fixed first, then those could be running while I'm working on the computer. But the computer, it's one of these that has the disk image already on it on a separate drive. But I can't get the recovery thing to come up. And I'm just getting frustrated. And then I'm like, well, the lathe needs me because it's on option stop. And you're bouncing back and forth. And please fail. Like, John, you know better than this. Be a surgeon. Pick one.
00:40:51
Speaker
and do it, and do it well, and it's okay. You'll end of the day with both of them probably done, quit bouncing back and forth. Oh, true. That is me, not every day, but some days for sure. Especially with a machine like a lathe, and you're making a complicated part, it needs you, as you said. Yeah. Lathe needs me right now. Yeah. That's what I love, too. I'm going to go back, and I'm going to ... I think I'm going to work on the computer first, because I have an idea, and it's going to get terrible. Just focus and get it done. Yeah. We'll be good, though.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah. Merry Christmas, bud. Merry Christmas to you too. Good. Take some days off. We're not working Friday. I mean, no. Yeah. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. I'll see you.