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Business of Machining - Episode 49
208 Plays7 years ago
"If we don't have fun, we die." - Grimsmo A lack of fun and creativity could send you spiraling downward; away from the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs--a.k.a. the food pyramid of humanity. For the 2018 Open House, Saunders Machine Works joins forces with MHUB to bring The Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit (MES) to Chicago, IL! PERFECT TIMING The Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit will be held on Sunday, September 9th, 2018--the day before IMTS (America's Largest Manufacturing Show) begins. Two awesome events--- same place, same week, same trip! Yes, please! NYC CNC Event: MES Registration (Free!) IMTS Registration (only $45!) Do you come from a land down under? Next Generation Manufacturing with John Saunders & Autodesk CAM will be held on Tuesday, March 13th, 2018 in Sydney, Australia! Register here! For growth's sake? You might think you're clear on the mission and direction of your business until "Hollywood" knocks at your door. Grimsmo struggles to be a careful yes man. Operator Error - It's not only at your CNC machine Thinking errors are REAL and they're muddying your brain. All-Or-Nothing thinking is detrimental to perceptions of success and failure. Saunders finds himself in the midst of irony: His perceived failure of the LESS STRESS goal is adding MORE stress. How do I sharpen thee? Let me count the ways. Obviously, everyone that owns a GK has a super expensive belt grinder and Erik standing by to take care of it, right? Grimsmo plans to make videos for knife sharpening at different price points AND maintenance! Saunders faces his irrational fear about his Norseman after watching the new Dino Digging Video. ITERATION Fixture Plate Protectors + Laser Cutting = Mold Not Needed? Saunders is on the hunt for a Laser Cutter. Machining a Mold - Fixture Plate Protectors Video Grimsmo shares cliff notes about the Hedgehog Concept from Good to Great by Jim Collins. Get your copy here. Bye, Bye Bridgeport Saunders sends some machines packing while Grimsmo defends purchases he hasn't used by coining a NEW TERM. Someone call the machinist's version of Webster's! You CAN touch this! Saunders shares an idea for bringing maintenance reminders back into the physical world, where digital alerts can't be ignored. Speaking of physical reminders, he STILL has this beat-up list of rules to live by on his desk after 10 years.
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Transcript
Excitement for M Hub Open House
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 49. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, my friend. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing awesome. Yeah? Yeah, just feeling really good. Good. Really pumped up. Good. I have been blown away that so many people have been reaching out to us about our open house this year.
00:00:27
Speaker
which is cool and crazy. It also has put some pressure on me to figure this all out. So we have a big announcement to share with everybody. This is the first formal announcement of it, but we're gonna actually head up to Chicago next week to do kind of the formal video side of it. But we have partnered with a place called M Hub, which is like this 50,000 square foot maker space in Chicago. And we are going to do our event there this year.
00:00:57
Speaker
No way. So I'm super excited about this for the folks that came last year. Yeah. This is going to give us a place to see. There's so much machinery there. If you've not been to a large maker space that also incubates businesses where they actually have entrepreneurs, they're working. There's an energy to it that's just amazing.
00:01:17
Speaker
But what I'm excited about is it gives us a chance to come to our fans. So our plan is going to be, we're going to alternate one year on the road and then one year back, the next year back in Zanesville at our shop. Because obviously, if it's an open house, it should be at our shop. So we're going to call this the Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit at
Event Schedule and Format
00:01:35
Speaker
mHub.
00:01:35
Speaker
similar format where we're going to have workshops, seminars, open houses, that kind of thing. So I'm super excited. It's going to be Sunday, September 9th. And the reason we picked that date is that a lot of the folks that we know are going to be in town for IMTS, which starts the next day. And even if you're a hobbyist, IMTS is
00:01:57
Speaker
45 bucks to get into and you might even be able to find a deal, but IMTS is this amazing trade show where again, even if you're just getting started, I would say encourage you to go, but it's also in Chicago. So again, it's a chance for us to come to you and for us to kind of change it up every other year. I'm super pumped. I will absolutely be there because even if you're just starting out in manufacturing, IMTS is the place to be.
00:02:23
Speaker
any chance you can get to go to these shows is highly beneficial. And then if we can team up with the, uh, the Saunders open house or what would you call it? The manufacturing summit manufacturing entrepreneurship summit is the, it's a lot, right? Right. A lot of syllables.
00:02:36
Speaker
Oh, that's going to be such a crazy week. I can't wait. But that was awesome. We're going to have this place has dedicated classroom. So I already have you mark down to do another seminar on, you know, either knife making or small business or or whatever you want to make sense. We've got some other people.
00:02:53
Speaker
And it's so cool if you go to, we'll put a link in the description. I think we have a link now to sign up already. We'll end up probably having to cap the number of attendees, but it'll be a super high number.
00:03:07
Speaker
But M Hub Chicago is insane. It's exactly what I would want to be part of. And it's the one thing that I do find can be a little bit lonely about being here in Zanesville sometimes is that energy of being around a bunch of other people that are working on projects. You probably, at the risk of putting words in your mouth, have the same feeling sometimes where
00:03:27
Speaker
Well, like we are in an industry heavy area outside Toronto and there's mold making machine shops and aerospace shops like everywhere. But it's all this higher level stuff that you can't even walk in the door without signing paperwork and all this stuff. So yeah, there is probably like a entrepreneur vibe around here, but I'm not into it yet. And I've actually never stepped foot into a makerspace.
00:03:50
Speaker
So that's what you just said is exactly right. You're talking about the old industry, the existing industry. I'm talking about folks that are much more interested in, they may be building legitimate businesses, they may be building them for a profit, but they're still more interested in sharing and collaborating. They're people that we would get along with. They're not the people that are going to tell you no. You can't buy that machine. It's awesome. It's really cool. Yeah. Sounds awesome.
Upcoming Sydney Event with Autodesk
00:04:19
Speaker
The other event we're having real quick is if you happen to live in Australia, we are going to go to Australia for the first time, which I am really, really, really excited for. I'm so jealous. It's partly a personal trip, me and my wife, but we're going to do an event on Tuesday, March 13th. We're actually partnering with Autodesk to help just put the event on because they have an office in Sydney, so they know
00:04:41
Speaker
Sydney, and we should be able to have a link in the video description. That's obviously much in the podcast description rather. That's obviously a much sooner event, but Tuesday, March 13th, Sydney, Australia. That's awesome. Maybe I should ask my wife if we can make a trip to Sydney. I'm nervous. I've never gone anything close to that far away.
00:05:01
Speaker
Well, you've gone to Europe a lot, but. Yeah, but Europe is only six hours time difference. So it's kind of like you just man up. This is literally, I don't even know the time difference. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. Awesome. I'm excited. Yeah. Cool. So cool.
Hollywood Offers: Authenticity vs. Exposure
00:05:21
Speaker
You must get this a lot. I don't want to go into too many details, but I'm starting to get interesting offers from, let's just call it Hollywood.
00:05:30
Speaker
for show ideas and pitches and things like that. And I'm unclear, I'm unsure about how I want to. You'd be talking about like the Discovery Channel show type stuff? Things like that, yeah. And like I understand from their perspective, they're just kind of
00:05:50
Speaker
struggling as hard as they can for ideas and pitch into whoever sounds interesting. But it's also interesting from my perspective too and it kind of just makes me question where I want to take this going in the future and how I want to approach things like that as they come up more and more. You want my honest feedback?
00:06:11
Speaker
Yes and no. So I've I've heard of one person I actually know that went through it. I don't know one other person that went down the path but didn't end up going to they need drama. They need. Yeah, I know. Right. Story. And then most of it's fabricated. Yeah.
00:06:29
Speaker
That was the story that upset by the guy I know, which is that it was a show where he was going to keep doing what he was doing, like finding stuff and making stuff out of it. And they're like, no, we're going to just go buy it all, plant it, make it look like you found it. Yeah. And that's how I mean, maybe that's not everything, but I think that's much more true.
00:06:49
Speaker
Yeah, and one of the guys I've known him for about two years now, and we've gone back and forth a lot about this. And he understands that they often want drama. And he's like, I don't want that for you guys. And you guys don't want that either. So maybe there's still something there. But yes, I'm super conscious of that going into it for sure. It's obviously super flattering to get those sort of invitations. But what do you want out of it? What does it satisfy that
Personal and Business Growth Reflections
00:07:15
Speaker
you don't already have? John, you already have your own TV show. You already have. I know, right?
00:07:20
Speaker
Exactly. I obviously want to build that. I want to get the message out more and I don't exactly have that message in a sentence yet, you know what I mean? But it's something I've been thinking about a lot the past weekend actually is like, what is the quote unquote mission statement of Grimsmo knives and John Grimsmo personally, you know, what do I want to pursue and share and
00:07:42
Speaker
grow and learn. So the more I define that, the more helpful I think it'll be in answering these questions, what direction we want to go. But I want to get the word out there. I do want to grow the business. I do want
00:07:57
Speaker
I just want to do it all. No, exactly. You're playing along, somebody's going to know this topic subject matter better than I do, but there's like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs or something like that, where as you start building foundations within your life and business, you start reaching for more things that matter. And there's another example of it, which is like the first thing you do is provide for food and family and shelter, and then you provide for
00:08:22
Speaker
nice things and then eventually you start giving to charity and buying artwork and all that. You're doing that subconsciously right now. But it goes back to what we were talking about on text message earlier this week, which is that, and I'm always careful to not sound like a preacher instead of a doer here, but more sales, more revenue, more product ship isn't really what makes you happy. Money buys you options and it's a key part of it, but
00:08:51
Speaker
What makes you happy is being happy and feeling like you're leading a rewarding life. And there's something in you, maybe you know it better than I do, that wants to just, I think, keep inspiring people.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I mean, you just said it like, like having options, having the freedom, being able to explore my own, uh, creativity in all aspects, you know, like I'm, I'm not the guy that's going to stand behind a machine 18 hours a day for the rest of my life. Um, because I want to grow and I want to create something that's kind of self-perpetuating and create these careers for the people around me. And I'm seeing it already. Like I was just thinking about it this morning as I was texting someone and like the,
00:09:29
Speaker
My role is now different than it was a year ago before I had Barry, before I had Aaron, before I had Angelo coming on.
00:09:39
Speaker
My direct involvement in many things now is not direct anymore. I'm not doing the shipping. I'm not loading pallets like I was before. And once a machinist comes on, I won't be operating the machine nearly as much as I ever was before.
Business Evolution and Team Expansion
00:09:54
Speaker
And now I can focus on the higher level stuff that I love to do. And then I can manage everybody else. And it's really fun, but it's a completely different business than it was for me a year ago, even. And that's what I want. I want to pursue that. And then I want to pursue
00:10:08
Speaker
interesting ideas as they come up too, which is awesome. Which that I agree with you on. I do wholeheartedly think you're right. I think what I always urge you to do is the devil's advocate of why do I always want something else? Even as stressful as the times were, as cash strapped as you were, would you trade the last year or two for anything?
00:10:34
Speaker
It was pretty stressful in cash strapped. But that strike built you into who you are. Totally agree. Trust fund John Grimsmo is not a fun. It's not. No, you're right. That's a good way to think of it. Yeah. If I grew up with money, I would not be this person. Yeah. It's just kind of like, to be clear, this has not happened. But it's kind of sort of been close to happening, which is some cool machine tool companies were kind of sort of like, hey, we'll put a five axis on your floor.
00:11:03
Speaker
But I'm kind of like, I mean, yeah, don't get me wrong. In some respects, that's freaking awesome. And we could have fun with it and teach people and learn, but then it's like, but it's not, but then it's not, I didn't earn it and it's not natural. And I don't know. No, you know? Right. Yeah. Right.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's tough to say no to fun things because the inner John and both of us just wants to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the smart, realistic John in us has to go like, well, is that really going to get me closer to whatever my mission statement is or should be? And does it satisfy me in all aspects of what I think it should?
00:11:44
Speaker
Well, and there's a there's a level of people. People can follow our stories like right now. I highly discourage you from doing this. You can go look at John Grimsbo, not understanding how to put a dalpin into a fixture from like 2011 or something, right? Like you do not know. It may have been the first time you ever touched a reamer and a dalpin.
00:12:05
Speaker
Uh, and try to flip a knife handle fixture to op two or something. Same thing for me. You can go watch me run my two inch fly cutter to my tag at 8,000 RPMs. Cause I have with the tool mounted sideways, no clue. Um, so if our story be, you know, so you get these opportunities that are awesome, but to me, I want to try my best to show people.
00:12:26
Speaker
a path to kind of getting where we are. And to be clear, no, we didn't get to where we were with just job shop work. It's been job shop work has been products. For now, we focus on our training and we do the YouTube business. But for you, it's an easier, simpler story because you're now crushing it with this knife story. And it's going to grow from there.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yep. And I don't want just growth for growth's sake. I want to have a goal, a mission that we're working towards.
Tech Tools for Business Efficiency
00:12:55
Speaker
Cause otherwise we're just constantly striving and never happy. You know what I mean? It's, it's a lifestyle creep, but both in business and in, you know, personal too. And I don't just want to keep.
00:13:06
Speaker
You know, I want to stay hungry, but I don't want to just never be satisfied with what we've done and where we are, you know, because then we're just never there. I literally my wife said this to me this morning in the bathroom because I was I got some frustrations and this week and she you got to remind yourself like, again, this is ironically, my frustrations are that I am not meeting my goal. I'm in fact failing wonderfully at my goal of not being stressed out this year.
00:13:35
Speaker
But the irony is that like yesterday the stress was because we have a problem with ship station creating automation so that I'm not stressed about shipping. So I had to have a tech support call and then I had to have a tech support call with my accountant and then I had to have a tech support call with somebody else. So it's all these, it's like the stress around avoiding stress.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah. The stress around streamlining and making it easier is difficult. So I'm going to give it, what else do you do? You kind of be patient and you get that stuff and systems in place. And then I've got to remind myself, like that's freaking awesome. Like there are people out there who are starting small businesses who don't know about Shopify and ShipStation, which
00:14:15
Speaker
I have no affiliation with other than being a proud proud user as I know you are too, right? That is I used to literally Download JPEGs bring them into Photoshop crop them and print them and then tape them onto boxes. Oh, we used to hand write everything
00:14:31
Speaker
Right? And then once we figured out Shopify first and then ShipStation, I'm like, holy cow, it can print out paid labels and you just stick it on. This is mind blowing. Like there was an investment, you got to buy the Dymo printer and all that stuff. So when you're cash strapped, you're like, I don't want to spend 500 bucks and invest in all this stuff. But boy, it was like one of the greatest things we did. And I should probably do a YouTube video about it because now it's like,
00:14:54
Speaker
It's so easy now. I don't even think about it. It's just what we do, right? It's not. I forget that we came from a harder place. Even just two days ago, I saw a lot of times we ship out stickers or extra screws or something just in envelopes, right? And ShipStation can't print out an envelope sticker postage. I do it all the time. I can't hear. I just print it first class USPS and I stick an oversized label on an envelope and we're folded over the edge.
00:15:25
Speaker
What? Never been returned. I looked into it, and they said it wasn't possible. Anyway, maybe I should look into it. Either way, we figured out how to roll envelopes through the printer to print out addresses, because I saw Barry handwriting not only our address, but the customer's address every time. And it's just taken forever. So I'm like, let's just run that through the printer. OK, let's look into it.
00:15:50
Speaker
Just fun time savings, right? Like obvious. I'll see that and I'll raise you a printing story, which is by a second hundred dollar. We buy these Brother printers for our shop by a second one hundred bucks. Only have labels in it and then figure out a way to set your default so that when you print an envelope, it goes to that one, which already has the envelopes in it so you don't have to tear the paper out or put it in the auto feeder. Boom.
00:16:14
Speaker
Nice. I will do the same that we actually quit writing checks, which is amazing. But if you do, if you do print checks, same thing, have either you can buy fancier laser printers that have separate feet, feed trays. But so, you know, checks are in one feature and blips are in the other. But a separate printer that just has checks in it. And that way you don't have to keep swapping.
00:16:34
Speaker
Are the checks different size, or it's just a different paper, so it's unique? Yeah, we buy pre-printed checks. I'll hold one up for you. So it has all this, the check is the top third, and then the bottom two are like, I can copy things anyway. Yeah, we just got into that a couple weeks ago as well. And we're just starting to print the first few checks now.
00:16:53
Speaker
Sweet. So I refuse to talk more about accounting for fear of dwindling our business sub-machining listener audience, but we're going to do a video.
Improving Accounting with Xero
00:17:03
Speaker
We've moved from QuickBooks temporarily to WAVE for a day, but really to Xero. We've had some growing pains, but also seeing account transactions come in with PayPal, Shopify,
00:17:16
Speaker
our Chase account and Stripe, everything else talking to each other on the accounting side is amazing, very cool. What was the last thing I was gonna mention? Oh, and then we are using Chase Bill Pay, which is free, where we just set up vendors in our chase.com account. And I just type in the amount and I type in the invoice number because I like the continuity, click submit payment and Chase for free, sends them the payment.
00:17:43
Speaker
Nice. So I haven't written a single check this year. That saves me the time of signing the check, of printing the check, of making a mistake, of the postage stamp, of walking over with the envelope to the thing. I can pay bills on the road. Amazing. Nice. That's perfect. Ask your bank if they have it. Yeah, I will. I mean, it's RBC in Canada. It's the biggest bank here, so it's got to have something. OK, interesting.
00:18:12
Speaker
OK, what else you got going on? I actually have a kind of silly, silly, exciting story to share, which yes, I. Was really.
00:18:23
Speaker
embarrassed to watch your brother-in-law's video on the dinosaur paleontologist Norseman. No, it was an awesome video. It was really cool. I really enjoyed it. And it made me realize that I had made a mistake. I bought a Norseman from you two years ago.
00:18:43
Speaker
and I have always carried an exacto blade knife and that I've always kind of said hey that's kind of guy I'm not expensive knife guy blah blah blah and you're right I'm not an expensive knife guy I'll probably never buy any other knife in the world that's more than 30 bucks but
00:18:59
Speaker
But I mean, I'd be an expensive knife guy, but I'm a huge fan of Grimsmo knives and John Grimsmo. And so what was I thinking? My fear of losing it is irrational. My fear of damaging it is also irrational because I could fix it or I know a guy if worse comes to worse. And then I thought, well, you know what? It is pretty large compared to my little box cutter knife. But I put it in my pocket and I've been carrying it for six days now, John.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's amazing. So yes, sorry, I have a cut on my finger, which makes it hard to activate it. But yeah. So it's just great. And I am frustrated. The more I grow in life, the more upset I get when I made a decision being closed minded in the past. Does that make sense?
00:19:42
Speaker
It does, but you just got to get over it and be like, okay, that was the past. I'm smarter now and I've learned from that mistake, I guess. Let's try not to do that again. It's a dangerous thing to be closed-minded for some things. Some of the people around me can be closed-minded for a lot of things. I'm like, dude, that's not always true. Just think the opposite. What's wrong?
Knife Maintenance and Instructional Content
00:20:06
Speaker
I mean, again, I would be a bummer to lose the knife, but it would be a bummer to break it. But that's life. I mean, again, so what? And now I get you're not going to. What's that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was the other thing. I was like, holy cow. This guy can literally chisel away part of the Sahara Desert with his. I think I think I can handle a few boxes. Have you done a video on how customers can sharpen their knives?
00:20:34
Speaker
Not sharpen. We're working on a maintenance video where it will explain how you can take it apart and lubricate it and like get it back to snuff because they do get kind of filled up with pocket lint every now and then.
00:20:47
Speaker
But for sharpening, no, we should do a good sharpening video. That's my biggest thing is I love the box cutters because a sharp knife is just a wonderful thing. And we cut a lot of cardboard, which is brutal for knives. So I'd love to know how I can, again, assume I have no skill or experience. I've got some tools, but would very much appreciate your advice on that.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we sharpen knives on the belt grinder that Eric does. And I've actually never sharpened one of our production knives ever. It's Eric's job. And yeah. But I'd be curious to put out like a poll to maybe my Instagram followers or whatever, and they're like, how do you sharpen your Grimsmo knives? Just to find kind of the common thread. There's a few cheaper tools out there, like $30 to $50 for a good sharpening system. I'm just curious what most people are using. So maybe I'll do that kind of poll.
00:21:36
Speaker
But it's one of those, I mean, I want your opinion because it's like topics of cleaning the guns or Yankees versus Red Sox. Like, holy cow, you know, go with the grain, go against the grain, use this tool. Don't use this tool. Like, oh, my gosh, it's very opinionated. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I honestly, I have very little experience.
00:21:56
Speaker
You know, cheaply sharpening our knives because I just have Eric and I just give it to him. He does it our way. But, you know, I can't expect people to go out and buy a hundred or several hundred or thousand dollar grinder just to.
00:22:07
Speaker
just to sharpen their knives. It would be awesome. Give people the $20 option, the $100 option, and then, hey, having access to a belt grinder isn't crazy for Norseman owners. Maybe their friend has one. I would totally buy a $10 belt if I could take it over to my friend's belt grinder. We have one, but that's not a big deal, especially if that's the better way to do it.
00:22:32
Speaker
That's a good idea. So it should be like a two or three tiered video. Like this is the cheap way to do it, you know, quick and dirty, get it done. This is the medium price, you've been a hundred bucks or something. And then here, if you have access to a belt grinder, here's how we do it on our belt grinder. That'd be perfect. Yeah, I like that. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. So you saw our video on casting those fixture plate covers. Yes, I loved it. The mold making one from Christmas or whatever, New Year's, whenever you put it up.
00:23:01
Speaker
And there's something like super just fun about casting and molding. Like it's just a very rewarding process. You're building this tool. You're making something. You're turning liquid into not liquid. It's very cool.
00:23:12
Speaker
But we were struggling to think, okay, how do we make these cheap? Because remember, Entrepreneurship Lesson 101, a product is not worth what it costs you to make. It is worth what the market will pay for it. No, serious, right? These are fixture plate covers. These are not an investment piece. People don't want to spend a lot of money on these, but they need to look nice and be awesome.
00:23:32
Speaker
I think I was the one that kind of steered the ship in terms of hey let's cast them here some ideas here's how we can make them in higher volume you can put heat you could put a heating element around the molds and you can get them with an accelerant so they cure in an hour then you break it apart so we're thinking about how you improve the workflow behind casting and then Ed was like let's just laser cut them
00:23:56
Speaker
And I was like, wait, really? So we have access to a laser at the local maker space. We bought some rubber sheets on McMaster. And then the whole trick is, is we have to, and I'm holding up the, an example, we have to have the feet on there. So we've been experimenting with different rubber feet with some different adhesives and some sort of, I don't want to call it proprietary, but you know, some, some tricks on how you fixture and how you put the adhesive on and what doses and what style and knock on wood.
Laser Cutting for Fixture Plates
00:24:24
Speaker
I think we got it.
00:24:25
Speaker
Wow. I mean, I really liked the molded ones that you did in the video, but I can see that they would take forever and be very time consuming. So that's the laser one? That's the laser one. And John, I mean, I know you are scrupulous when it comes to product quality and so forth. And I'm sure that this would pass your muster test.
00:24:48
Speaker
Nice. And like you said, it's a cheap, basically throwaway item that you don't want to invest a lot in. You don't want a customer to pay a lot. Right. And now, because it's a laser, we buy sheets of it. We can cut it to different sizes easily, whereas we don't have to make the investment of a mold, which is worth a lot when it comes to being able to stay nimble. So long story short,
00:25:10
Speaker
We already use the laser to anodize, mark certain products like the Imperializer. Tyson Lamb, Jay Pearson, other guys have lasers in their shops. They use them to cut acrylic for fixtures, for all kinds of creative uses. And then this came out and I'm like, we gotta buy a laser.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah. And it's expensive, but not that expensive relative to the non-product, non-revenue generating uses in the shop. It'll be helpful. But then when we can start turning it into ways to help produce revenue, now we have an ROI model. I'm on board. Well, yeah. And sometimes that's what it takes to push you over the edge. A lot of the guys in our industry have
00:25:52
Speaker
I guess they're called fiber lasers, or they CO2. Fiber laser. To mark metal. Yeah, to mark metal. And I've seen them from $1,000 to $80,000. And Keybar Mic has probably four or five of them. And they're all $50,000 to $70,000. And they're awesome. And they're super hardcore. So I've kind of been dreaming about a laser for about two years now. But I'm like, man, I just can't justify it. I don't need it that much. I want it, right? Right.
00:26:20
Speaker
But that's where you go back to we've had this conversation a lot. I mean, there's a couple other kind of capital items on our list that I've been thinking about. So when the laser came up, it's weird because it's it's it's kind of came out of nowhere and it feels like a irrational desire. And then you start looking at the the empirical facts. What can this do for us?
00:26:39
Speaker
to date, and I actually know there's something about a laser that actually, similar to like a 3D printer, it helps us fail fast, helps us fail cheap. There was a part I was working on where we would have lasered out an acrylic template that would have slid over the part, and that would have served as a reference when we flipped it to locate off of, and that alone, I'm like, okay, that's freaking awesome. And laser's going from idea to part in your hand is literally minutes, or not, it's very quick. It's a 2D sketch, and then you hit print, basically. Right.
00:27:09
Speaker
So that I'm excited about. It's like we've been using our 3D printer that we got four or five months ago. We've been using it a lot. I've been using it a lot. It is so cool. Like a $220 printer that's like one of the coolest $220 I've ever spent. We've got a video coming up of all the little projects I've made with it and like 20 things, 30 things around the shop that's like so much fun. Right.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, so what caliber of laser are you looking at, like price range kind of thing? Ballpark, $12,000, looking at it. Yeah. I struggle. We have a friend who has a Chinese version. The price was super attractive, but we need a larger size to do some of the
00:27:55
Speaker
going to make sense to do the larger volume work. And I just can't get around saving 50% or more, but no support, no option when it goes down. I mean, this is now a tool for us that's going to generate revenue. And that's the end of it. So there's a company called Boss Laser, which has come highly recommended. We're looking at it
00:28:19
Speaker
We're looking at rabbit laser, which is actually here in Ohio. For some reason, I'm probably not going to look at an epilogue. I've just heard they're a little bit too expensive and still similar quality. But I don't know. I should actually talk to Keybar Mike to see if he were buying a CO2 laser. So it may not be anything he has anymore. Yeah, I think his are all fiber lasers. And it's like a totally different kind of machine. I don't even know if that conversation would be beneficial to you.
00:28:49
Speaker
So you'd use it for marking metal as well, right? CO2 lasers basically can't mark metal. They could remove coatings. They do a great job on anodizing aluminum markings. But you would need to step up, practically speaking, to a fiber laser to do much on metal. And that's not what we need to do.
00:29:07
Speaker
Right. And that's what I would be getting if I were to ever get a laser would be a fiber laser because I'd want to mark metal with it, but I'm a big fan of engraving like hard engraved in the metal.
3D Printing in the Workshop
00:29:18
Speaker
You know, that's, yeah, that's, that's what we like to do. Totally. Um, but seeing Tyson land, he's been posting some stuff on Instagram of his laser. Like he made.
00:29:26
Speaker
these acrylic cutouts for his vices to keep chips out of jaws. All these little things, they're not actually Chotskis. They're not silly. They're real. Custom organizing Kanban, Kaizen, template layouts. We are going to use this thing a ton.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah. That's what I've been using my 3d printer for is like, I thought it would be a toy. And I was like, okay, my daughter Clara convinced me to get this 3d printer. And I've been, you know, on the fence about it, but man, it almost lives at the shop now, not at home, but it's so light. I could bring it back and forth. Right. Right. That's awesome. Yup. Yup. Um, so what are you up to this week?
Celebrating Production Success
00:30:03
Speaker
Uh, this week we have been crushing it with production. Um,
00:30:08
Speaker
Things are going really good. Last week we had, I think our best week ever, and it was a four day week. Really? Oh, good for you. And the Tuesday was like a half day. And it was like, and the Friday was a half day too, because we did a bunch of filming in the morning. We brought the kids and Megan and did a bunch of, so like Eric was able to finish
00:30:32
Speaker
Basically, our best week ever in three and a half days. And it's like, oh my goodness. We're on fire now. Just because you've got processes down, systems down? Yeah. Dude. Yep. Dude.
00:30:43
Speaker
Good for you. Everybody's motivated. Everybody's on point. Eric is outstripping my production capability at the moment. Really? What's the word for that? It's ego crushing kind of thing. Right, right, right. That's great. That's a fun little dynamic of keeping it healthy, of course, but having kind of each other.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a little challenge between each other. And the second I put a kit of knives, clip handles blade in a box on my desk, he sees it. And his little dinger goes off in his head, and he comes down and takes them. And I turn around, and they're gone. And I'm like, I just finished these, and they're gone already.
00:31:20
Speaker
That's a good thing. The irony here is that the better a job you do, though, the less downstream work there is. Right. So there's kind of a funny incentive. Obviously, this is all in fun. It's a good thing that net net. But the better, you know, are you you're not making rasks right now. So there is no window wheel to discuss. Right.
00:31:39
Speaker
Correct. Have you? Go ahead. So we have a good standard with the Linda wheel. If you listen to episodes many, many ago, this was an ongoing saga. But yeah, so I tried to get a higher grid wheel, and I broke it immediately, and it just loaded up, and it cracked. So that sucked.
00:32:00
Speaker
We're using a 500 grit wheel and we've got a good recipe. It's just working right now. But the finish of the blades is not what I want it to be. However, just yesterday, our new grinder came in. We got a grinder from Travis Wertz, a knife grinder maker.
00:32:16
Speaker
We've been friends with him for five years, six years, and we've always wanted one of his grinders. We finally just got it. It took two months to get in. It was not a cheap investment, but definitely the right choice for us. Then we got this attachment for it called the Moen Rotary Platen.
00:32:33
Speaker
which will allow us to grind the Rask blades much easier, much faster, hopefully. And it just came in yesterday, so Eric's going to play with it on Rask blades to polish out this Linda Wheel finish much better than ever before. So the machine that you bought is a belt grinder? Yeah. But it has a, I'm thinking it's like an oscillating orbital attachment thing or something? Sort of. It would need a picture to really explain. Are you willing to throw one up on Instagram today?
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah, once we get it up for sure, we'll have lots of pictures. It's really cool. You would still want to Linda grind them if that keeps working, but or no, you would eventually skip Linda and just do this new machine.
00:33:19
Speaker
Both. We still need the linda wheel. And it just gets to like an okay finish. And then Eric was polishing it before on a disc sander, which took him anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour per blade. Whoa. Oh my gosh. So hopefully this new thing will be more like five minutes. Wow. But aren't your linda wheels, you cracked the new ones and your old ones are actually also semi compromised, right?
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, they still work fine. And I got two replacement of the 500-grit one. So I'm good for a while. OK, gotcha.
00:33:51
Speaker
That's good. Yeah. So we're, we're good there. And I'm super excited for the grinder. We filmed a bunch of unboxing YouTube video yesterday and we'll get Eric's first thoughts on it too. Can't wait. Awesome. That's really cool. Yeah. So that's, I mean, in the past two, three months, Eric got a new anodizing setup. He got the new tumbler and his new grinders like he said, that's, that's everything he needs, right? Those are his babies.
00:34:15
Speaker
And those were all, sounds like they were all very planned, deliberate, like, yeah. Things we've wanted for many years. And we've been putting off like the anodizer was 800 bucks by itself. And, you know, the tumbler was 10 grand and the grinder and thing was 10 grand. And what is your like,
00:34:33
Speaker
But I had somebody email me yesterday being like, hey, I found a really good deal on a used machine. My opinion was that it's not a machine he actually needs, but everyone loves a deal. And I wrote back sort of saying, focus on what you need.
Wise Purchasing Decisions
00:34:47
Speaker
What's your advice on how you think about allocating money and capital and looking forward about buying machines? I guess it's something I think about a lot, but I don't really have a recipe to follow.
00:35:03
Speaker
We've been very good about being frugal and poor and cheap for so many years that when we want something we know we really want.
00:35:13
Speaker
And we've probably wanted it for a long time. When I learn about something new, I get super excited about it. I dive fully in. I want it immediately right now. But of course, I can't right now because it costs money and I don't have money. So my past 10 years of existence was that phrase. I want it now, but I have no money. So then I want it and I think about it. And then it kind of fades for a while. But then when I'm in a position to get it, I've already done all the research. I already know what I want.
00:35:40
Speaker
And then I'm in a position and I'm like, yes, now it makes sense. Now we'll just get it. And then it's kind of a no brainer. Like we did that with the Tumblr, you know, we've known about it for two years and we wanted it. Then all of a sudden cash was flowing, production was up and we needed it and we wanted it. And we're like, yeah, now's the time. Let's just do it. That's what I, I love that. Um, and I, I couldn't, I don't think I would ever just, when you talk about culture and fit and style, like I couldn't.
00:36:08
Speaker
relate to working at one of these well-funded places where it's just like, and it's tough because I get that model, it's just not me, where it's just like, hey, yeah, you have a budget this year, you can spend whatever, or we're kind of flush with cash, get whatever, because it creates this unnatural flow of you're not buying at a real need. I will also chime in and say that
00:36:32
Speaker
One of the awesome things about if you're able and willing, especially as you're small, is to avoid debt. As Grimto is realizing, once you hit this hurdle where you generate cash and you're not burdened with payments and debt, all of a sudden, the world gets a lot more fun. I want us to do better than we're doing, but buying a laser is not something I need to wait for six months on to save up for. And that's nice to be able to act on. Yep. Yep. Yep.
00:37:03
Speaker
Conversely, you don't want to spend all your eggs. Just because you have a few eggs doesn't mean they need to be spent. Right, right. Actually, we got an email from a guy who literally got a large settlement from an accident. He was a victim of an accident. And he's like, I want to buy all this stuff. And I'm like, dude, pay off debt and then go learn. Go take your time. You can always spend this money later.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, good point. I could see the need, like the desire to be like go from having no money to having a lot of money and be like, okay, I want a mill, I want a laser, I want a big 3D printer, I want all this stuff. But then like you and I have done this before, you get this cool new thing and you have no time to play with it and it sits on the shelf and it's like, I feel sick when I look at things like I bought a soldering iron that was
00:37:48
Speaker
I don't know, 200 bucks? I forget. But I haven't touched it yet. I want it for flashlights and it's coming. And it was a preparatory thing. But I'm like, it was a preparatory thing. That's the best way I've ever heard defending a purchase that you shouldn't have made, but you did. And I am just as guilty, but that's a good one. It was a preparatory purchase. God forbid I needed to solder something and I didn't have, you know, it's hilarious.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah. And my crappy old soldering iron wasn't good enough. Right. No, but I mean, it's cool. Like to have the right tools to get stuff done is awesome. But usually you can buy, I mean, very rarely is it.
00:38:28
Speaker
You can usually buy it later when you really need it. Basically, can I wait another day to buy this? Can I wait another day to buy this? Do my needs change? That's the tough thing too. Yeah. When we were tooling up the Maury, I got a slitting saw, like a four-inch diameter insert Sandvik slitting saw. I don't even remember how much it was.
00:38:49
Speaker
almost a thousand bucks or whatever and I got it with the tooling credit and I'm like, preparatory purchase, right? Like I need this to make the integral knife that I want to make, which is two and a half years ago that we got that tool. I still haven't touched it. I was just talking with a knife maker friend of mine yesterday that's like, and I'm like, I haven't even used that tool yet, man. It's like, it's wasted investment really. I should have used that money elsewhere.
00:39:11
Speaker
So yeah, word to the wise, let's be conscious of where your money's going and how you'll actually use it and when you'll use it, you know? No, seriously. Goodbye. I have been thinking about as I look around our shop at some of the stuff and I'm like, it doesn't produce revenue for our shop and it doesn't make me happy. We're going to sell it. And we did that. We sold a hydraulic punch press. We sold an old bridge port a couple of weeks ago. Some of the old equipment we don't use is not part of like
00:39:38
Speaker
And I was guilty of, hey, it's a deal. It's local. It's cheap. Blah, blah. It needs to go today. It's exciting. No, dude. Focus down. So that ties exactly into it.
Focusing on Core Strengths
00:39:49
Speaker
So I've been reading this book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. And Pearson said that he read it. It was actually on his bookshelf in his shop when he did the shop tour, he told me. And a bunch of people had mentioned it to me before. So I got a used copy on Amazon for $5 or something.
00:40:05
Speaker
It's been great. It's heavy to get into and the beginning is like super boring and just talks about companies from the 70s and I'm like, I don't care about this. And then I finally started skipping around, not caring about the order. And that's when it got interesting. That's when I fell in love with the idea of the book. But so he's got this one concept in the book that he calls the hedgehog concept.
00:40:25
Speaker
And he's like, there's this old Greek story about a fox and a hedgehog. And the fox is like super sly and smart and has all these tricks and all these skills. And the hedgehog is super simple and just does a few things really, really, really well.
00:40:38
Speaker
And the second the Fox light goes through all this planning and pounces on the hedgehog, he just rolls up into a ball and says, really this guy again? Okay. And then the spikes come out and then that Fox just runs away. So the concept is, you know, if you as a business want to be the Fox and want to do everything and have all these products and do a million things and suck at them all or be okay at them all, you're never going to succeed. But the hedgehog is a company who knows what they're best at and knows what they love to do and goes forward. So he,
00:41:06
Speaker
He comes up with what he calls the hedgehog concept, which is like three overlapping circles. The top one is passion. What are you super passionate about? And then the second one is, what can you be the best in the world at? And then the third one is, what drives your economic engine? So it's almost exactly like what you talked about with the pneumatic press, hydraulic press thing. I'm not super passionate about it. It doesn't bring in money.
00:41:31
Speaker
And it doesn't make you the best in the world. It's like those three things. Once you understand the core of the concept, and I was reading the book more and thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, you know, it could be easy for us as Grimsmo Knives to branch out into all these mini products. Like we tried to do the tops and the spinners and all this stuff. And then I think we could never be the best in the world at those things. Cause we really don't care that much. Yep.
00:41:54
Speaker
We can be the best in the world at making knives. We are super passionate about it. It drives our economic engine. I think we can do that with flashlights as well. I don't think we'll be the best pen maker in the world, but I think we could sell a butt load of pens. So it's like, sure. And it's fun. And it brings in all these things just really got me thinking a lot this weekend about
00:42:13
Speaker
you know, what our mission statement is, what we want to do, what we want to focus on, right? I give you a lot of credit for saying that out loud. I think there are some things I feel like it's easy to want to censor because we now share this conversation. But the truth is, we I will never apologize for
00:42:30
Speaker
test. And that's kind of my strategy of we'll try out products and see how they go. You know what I mean? But that doesn't always work because sometimes you really got to have conviction and be in it for the long haul, push it for a year, believe in it for a year. Right. And so that's hard to do. Yeah, but you have to. So like, literally, I am in the process of shutting down
00:42:49
Speaker
things like those old Saunders machine works clamps. I don't care about them anymore. The Bridgeport Power Draw Bar is actually a successful product, very useful, not who I am. I'll probably give away the CAD file on the NYC CNC website so folks can make their own, but I don't care anymore. That's a win. Yeah, exactly. Like quit it, Saunders. I'm hesitant to be too critical because some of that stuff has helped us get to where we are. But when I think about
00:43:15
Speaker
That what you just said is awesome because I actually need to hang up on this podcast and go go do some meditating and thinking I didn't do that yesterday because of all those meetings I had which was annoying, but I think about
00:43:28
Speaker
I want to sell enough products to help us support this kind of like YouTube awesome like experimental think tank R&D like if we want to make like my thing right now is I want to I don't know if I want to share it. Hey, why not? I want to have a automated maintenance thing that I have an idea how to do it more specifically, I'm going to say share right now. But I want to have an automatic printer like a thermal printer.
00:43:55
Speaker
out in the shop that automatically prints out maintenance and to do things. So that like, I think, I believe you are, when an email pops up or an Outlook reminder pops up or a phone thing pops up, it's so easy to ignore it or come back to it. But if there's a physical piece of paper sticking out of the, you know, it's like at a restaurant in an order, you have to like walk up, you have to tear it off and you have to kind of hold it in your hand and it tells you what to do.
00:44:20
Speaker
So this is very much obeying the processor. The process is the boss. And I like that point it back into this physical world. And I want to make that and that's a cool product. And that's something that I think you could even use, right? Yeah. Yeah. But but that doesn't necessarily pay the bills. So it's kind of like, okay, we build enough products and sell enough products to pay the bills and let us do the fun stuff.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yep. I was talking with somebody else that was kind of making fun of us for, you know, in a fun, in a gentle way of, of pursuing all these fun projects and not just like buckling down on the profit, on the money, on the work and all that stuff. And I'm like, you and I have to have fun. If we don't have fun, we die.
00:44:59
Speaker
We have to follow our instincts and our fun gene. I made a crazy cool little thing that I showed you on WhatsApp a couple of days ago. I stayed up all night working on it. That was fun for me. I was going to laugh and say, if I'm not having fun, I end up making preemptive purchases to try to make myself feel, what is it? The girls call it retail therapy.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, that is probably true. Are you willing to share that thing you made? No, not yet. Okay. Okay. It's coming. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. I was, uh, that made me remember. No, I hope don't take this as an insult. That made me remember the old John Graham smell.
00:45:39
Speaker
And I hope you can push me there too, is that we have to keep that fun creativity. I need to fire myself to have the time to play with stuff like that and not be so scared that if I don't finish the project with a deliverable, that that's a failure because sometimes it's not gonna work. That's okay. Yep.
00:45:58
Speaker
Tied into that, obviously we need to run successful self-sustaining businesses that allow us to do that. You can't do one, not the other. We can't just have fun and let the business cripple. That's a- It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's just us being irresponsible. Yeah, totally, right?
00:46:14
Speaker
Right. And this is no longer a hobby for us, but it can still be fun. Yeah, absolutely. They're not mutually exclusive. I got to get that book, but what you just said there is absolutely awesome. It's got that list I've got up on my, maybe I'll read Instagram today because it's a good list of 10 things. And I'm not always, there's a lot of those lists of 10 things. It's fun to just share them, but not believe them. But this list I keep up on my
00:46:39
Speaker
Right next to my desk, I'm going to peel it off right now. It's got this kind of gnarly tear because it's been moved around to all my different offices and desks. But some good stuff there about what you said, which is I know what you're passionate about. It goes back to Mike Rowe. Find out what you're passionate about. What can you do better than anybody else? And then make sure that ties into you said economic engine. I like to sort of say it has to justify the lifestyle you want to live.
00:47:04
Speaker
So it doesn't have to create crazy, huge profits so long as, uh, so long as it lets you, you know, for me, I want to make enough money so I can buy the laser. Um, no serious, right? That's, that's fun. What do you have to do today? Today, uh, running the lathe, making, what am I making on the lathe?
00:47:25
Speaker
I forget pivots, Norseman pivots, more handles. I got to get, I got to move clips. We're doing clips separately now. I got to move them onto the new Norseman fixture, which involves me making a few little things. And I got to take time to do that. But like the Maury is busy all day, basically making stuff. So I got to squeak time in there to go make a couple of different adapters. So not just rinse and repeat. Things are good. Aaron and I are working on some fun videos today. Awesome. That's cool.
00:47:52
Speaker
Yeah, you. We're going to ship out the first of these fixture plate beta covers things. I've got to start thinking about how we track lead time on our fixture plates. We're starting to sell more. That's awesome. And so the steel ones are really nice because we can machine them in-house. I can control that process when they're ready to ship. But there's about a month lead time to get the material.
00:48:19
Speaker
And the anodized ones, I get the material quickly, but then it takes about a month to get them anodized. So trying not to have too much inventory. It's funny, I didn't sympathize with this problem until I started to live it.
00:48:33
Speaker
When there's lead time, like for us to order material, it's eight to 10 weeks before it hits my shop floor. And that sucks. Well, and it's easier when you nail things down, but just like an example of the fixture plate covers, you think you get better at this. Hey, I ordered material for the mold. I spent $346 to get aluminum in to make these molds. We're not going to mold them anymore.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah. That was a flat out mistake. I thought I was being responsible. I thought I had conviction, but it's so much nicer to stay nimble. So I don't want to sit on a bunch of inventory if we want to make a change for some reason. I don't know. Your Norsemen are pretty nailed down though, right? Pretty tough. Yeah. Like nothing major is changing anymore. It's all minor stuff. Sweet. Awesome. That's right. Good. Crush it, bud.
00:49:25
Speaker
You too. Have an awesome day. Take care. Take care. Bye.