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Business of Machining - Episode 44
230 Plays7 years ago
“The business is becoming its own entity, and we all work for that business” - Grimsmo quoting Pierson
Saunders and Grimsmo reunite after missing one of their weekly chats and they have much to discuss. As their businesses grow at a fast pace, having a great team and managing stress are becoming more important. The guys work to advance the skills of their teams as well as their own.
Jonathan Lewis is back to teach another Tig Welding class.
Get your pro-membership for NYCCNC here.
“Find great people, get them on your team, and let them do great things” - Saunders
Both of them have taken on a new team member in the past week; Saunders hired an intern from an award winning high school robotics team with a passion for engineering. Over in Canada, Grimsmo’s new Media Producer (and first hire), Erin Kelly, is taking on full time duties and crushing it. Grimsmo can’t stop generating ideas for his team to accomplish together and getting more excited about his work. By the time the new machinist arrives in January, it will be as if he’s “split himself into four people”.
Anything else? Yeah, lots!
Saunders reminds Grimsmo to get excited about what you do, and John talks about how this can reduce stress levels.
Having trouble with thread mills? Saunders offers advice.
Engineering students from McMaster do a presentation on Grimsmo Knives. Stay tuned to Grimsmo’s YouTube channel to watch the presentation and the chat afterwards between the students, Grimsmo, and Erin. More videos coming soon!
Saunders talks about custom vacuum plates.
Grimsmo combats his supply problem by making Rasks instead of Norseman knives. He declares he will never run out of material again.
Review of new Vibra Tumbler (spoiler: it’s great!). Video of unboxing and review coming on Grimsmo’s YouTube channel soon!
There is a lot of power in communication, especially if you’re a supplier. As Grimsmo says, “the human empathizes with personal problems, but the business doesn’t’ care at all.”
Get ready to hear the podcast with less and less of a lag between taping and publication. With two media people, “The Business of Machining” will be much closer to real time.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Scheduling
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 44. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders Two weeks is too long. I know yeah, so we skipped last week you were sick obviously and We're trying to eat this two-week buffer, right? So now we're one week behind which is a good thing. Yeah Yeah, I'm torn because Julie and maybe your as Erica
00:00:27
Speaker
Erin. Erin, excuse me. Maybe they could take turns. They do such a good job. Julie has done such a good job writing descriptions, which I really like, which means she's got to listen to it. But I do have this romantic idea that somehow we can have this conversation and like just publish it, you know, two hours later. Maybe a crazy thought. Maybe we move it to like a Thursday morning. It's edited during the day Thursday and then it still stays on a Friday morning launch.
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, we've got to keep our Friday morning launch because I think all the listeners are used to it. Right. Right. Right. TGIF.
Erin's Role and Business Evolution
00:01:00
Speaker
How you been? It's been a crazy busy two weeks. Things are really, really good. Good. Tell me more.
00:01:10
Speaker
So we have, Erin has been working full time now. Stop. She is our, yep. She is our media producer and she's been really crushing it here. You guys, we do a video feed and you can't see the smirk and smile on John's face right now. It is crazy.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, so she's been working on the website. We're starting to get into video editing and things like that. And we've filmed some good video. And it's like all of my crazy ideas that I want to do are actually going to happen now. You are a freight train. This is what I told you. It's like this idea where you can just say, find
00:01:58
Speaker
Great people get them on your team and let them do great things and it's like I can say to Ed go spend two days just like having fun with this idea and let's figure out if it's something real or something not and Go edit this and oh dude awesome. It's awesome Yeah, so she's just kind of rounding out the you know unofficial two-week introductory period and then we're finalizing the employment agreement that you and I talked about and then
00:02:23
Speaker
And then we'll hire her full time, probably hopefully next week. Good for you. Officially, yeah. If it feels good, she gets what you do. Yep. She likes being here. I'm super communicative with her and just make sure she's happy and comfortable here too, right? And yeah, she's great. And dude.
00:02:40
Speaker
I think I told you how we're kind of backlogged on, we have knives finished, but they take time to take pictures and get them on the website. So that's been her first priority. And she has gotten through tons of knives and they're almost all of them on the website. I think I just approved the last one like yesterday of the backlog and they're all on the site. They're all selling. Everything's great.
00:03:04
Speaker
It's just awesome. This is entrepreneurship. It's not just making a knife. It's building the framework around it. You have the website. You have the equipment. You have the know-how. That's awesome. Congrats, buddy.
00:03:17
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. And, and having her come on as an official, you know, uh, employee in the business has changed my perception of the business itself because it was me and then it was Eric and me, my brother, and then Barry, my father-in-law came on and it was, you know, inching closer towards being a business bigger than myself, but it was still like me, you know, not to be selfish or anything, but you know what I mean? Sure. It was a solo apprenticeship. It was John Green. So exactly.
00:03:48
Speaker
And then Aaron comes on and all of a sudden my mind is clicking towards all these books and podcasts and other things that I listen to and read and hear about. And it's like the business is its own entity. It's becoming its own entity, right? And then we all work for the business, like Pearson says.
00:04:05
Speaker
It's cool. It's cool. I ran out at like 445 yesterday. I had to pick up the kids today or yesterday and we're doing a TIG training class.
Team Dynamics and Productivity
00:04:14
Speaker
So Jonathan Lewis was here teaching people on TIG welding. Ed was running. Julie was running. Jared was running. We hired a new intern last week and it was the same sort of, and look, I had a really
00:04:26
Speaker
I had a really tough couple weeks. I thought about even calling you, but look, that's entrepreneurship. I've used the rollercoaster word in the past, but this was more extreme than I prefer. But it was this moment of holy cow, I'm leaving, yet this building is thriving with energy and work and productivity and awesomeness. It's cool.
00:04:49
Speaker
Oh, so cool. I saw your Instagram post this morning. That was a, first of all, that was a beautiful knife, but I assumed that that maybe was then an Aaron photo. The one that you wanted to keep. Yeah, absolutely.
Product Photography and Hiring Practices
00:05:01
Speaker
No, actually, I took those pictures. Yeah. Okay. Got it. But she's been doing more like pictures for the website, product pictures. Note to self, modify headphone set so it does not have a mute button on it. Can you hear me? Yes.
00:05:17
Speaker
Geez. Sorry about that, boss. OK, our headsets. Yeah, our headsets have this stupid button that I keep bumping. You know what? Seriously, I'll give mine to Ed. We have the same headsets. I'll give mine to Ed after this and see if he can just cut the cable and then take that button out. Because I don't need the volume or mute or anything. Definitely. And if he can do it, we'll show you how to do it. We should leave this in the podcast. Because I actually zip tied mine up higher, closer to my body. But I still bump it anyway. It's funny. It's awesome.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, so anything else from your past two weeks that you want to talk about? Yeah, too much. But on the note of hiring, I get this question a lot. It's a fun question about how do you hire as an employer and then how do you find work as an employee or someone who's interested.
00:06:07
Speaker
And I'll just throw out an example of what happened, which is I wasn't actively looking for anybody at the moment. We do have two of our interns that will be moving on and going into the service over the next six months. So it's on my mind of picking up another person. And we actually do have some roles to fill. But this person,
00:06:33
Speaker
is a younger individual, still in high school, but taking engineering classes, and he was on a award-winning, not VEX, first VEX, I can't remember, robotics, high school robotics team. I mean, they've done really well. I got to meet him a year ago when we support that team, we help pay for the travel expenses, and I went to their lab and saw their machine and saw what they were getting into and saw his energy and what he was doing.
00:07:02
Speaker
and then he just shot me an email and it was a really well written email and it was sort of a uh... i can't report exactly said that you know
00:07:10
Speaker
Is there any way I can get an internship with you? This is what I love. This is what I'm passionate about. I'd love to learn more about it. Or it was just basically very, I'm hungry. I'd like to know. It wasn't one of these letters that we so often get that frankly annoy me from the, actually a lot of them are from the first teams where they ask for fundraising. They literally just copy and paste and they imply that they've researched your business. Like we think you would be a great fit for our business.
00:07:34
Speaker
you know, we're the Omaha, Nebraska first team and we'd love to have your company advertise on our car or that robot. Anyways, so it was kind of this one, two punch where I was like, this is an individual who I know is passionate about Arduino and machining or mechanical stuff. And he's demonstrated his own
00:07:51
Speaker
Passion through his successful robotics participation and that's what I want I want you know He's choosing to do that kind of stuff in his free time awesome, and I said hey come on in Come on in this week. He came on in we talked for 20 minutes And he was at an unpaid internship at another local company where he was didn't have anything to do and he was bringing homework and I said are you able to
00:08:18
Speaker
You want to start tomorrow? And he's here now. Nice. Oh, that's awesome. So do you have a role in mind for him? Like things you want him to tackle or people you want him to shadow under kind of thing? Yeah. So that's kind of the question. What is when you get somebody on board, what are they great at? Obviously, if you're hiring a dedicated machinist, they have to be
00:08:42
Speaker
have skill sets that either they know that or can learn it likewise on media side. I don't know with some of the younger individuals, what are they good at? Is it going to be more of a fusion CAD or CAM side? Is it going to be more helping us with media or
00:08:58
Speaker
Content for the new NYC CNC is it gonna be filling orders a little bit of everything? So we're kind of figuring that out But I mean he's gone through and helped us with our training computers getting them Tuned up lately. He's been working on some really cool thread milling calculations. We're gonna be doing a really comprehensive video I figured out something I'd never known before you're probably gonna tell me you knew this but
00:09:21
Speaker
The reason that nobody ever gets thread mills working correctly, and I think the same thing may apply to single point turning on a lathe, is that when you buy a generic sized thread mill that could thread mill multiple pitch diameters, the problem is that the thread mill effectively comes to a sharp point, whereas your thread has a crest and a root flat area.
00:09:42
Speaker
And so when you look at the height of the thread, the height of the thread is the flat bottom of the flat top where your thread mill comes to a sharp point. So you actually have to go specifically a specific diameter beyond the thread height with a sharp pointed thread mill because otherwise your triangle of your thread would be too small. Interesting.
00:10:07
Speaker
So on that note, just yesterday, I looked at my thread mill under the new microscope. And it does not come to a sharp point. It does have a crest on the top of the.
Marketing Strategy and Merchandise
00:10:19
Speaker
And I think that the crest relates to what the range of most thread mills will say they can thread mill a six to a quarter or whatever. This one happened to be a multi-flute 440 specific thread mill. So if it's a 440 specific, you shouldn't have to do this.
00:10:37
Speaker
Okay, interesting. Yeah, this wasn't a single point, um, thread mill. Okay. But that's interesting. Yeah. Um, yeah, and actually thread fit has been a problem for us lately. And it turns out my thread mill, even though it looks great under the microscope, it is wearing and it's not cutting a proper thread. Interesting. So the threads like tighter, the deeper down it goes and it's causing some broken screws and weird, weird things like that. Hmm.
00:11:03
Speaker
So I replaced it, and hey, it works. I mean, it looks great. Sometimes that's the, it's kind of funny, sometimes that's just the, as much as I want to know and I want to understand, sometimes it's just easier to replace it and move on. But it is nice to know that I've been using that thread mill for two and a half months, which I have a record of that now, right? Yeah, that's right. That's awesome. Yeah. So what else has been, what's going on? What else do we want to do? So last Friday,
00:11:31
Speaker
Erin and I went to McMaster University and did, sat in on the class with the students that kind of did the marketing research study on our company. And we filmed the whole thing and she's going through the footage right now. That'll be her first video edit. And it was really awesome sitting in the back of the classroom, watching these five kids, four kids, pitch to the teacher and to the rest of the class and to us, kind of their marketing strategy, their ideas and their, you know, their,
00:11:58
Speaker
thoughts on our business, which was great. So literally it's like Grimsville Knives front and center and they're just, they're talking about your business. Yeah, it was, it was surreal. And then afterwards, you know, they had the option to sit in on all the other presentations from the students and I'm like, Hey, you guys want to go get some coffee and continue chatting? Yes. Awesome. So we did another 20 minutes at the coffee shop on campus and we filmed that as well. So it's going to be really, really cool. And it was, uh,
00:12:25
Speaker
It was insightful and really interesting to hear these maybe 20-year-old guys share their thoughts and their ideas. Yeah. Because it's almost a different generation than you and I at 34. No, it is, John. It is. I know. It's weird. It is. That's weird. Did I tell you about being at AU with a group of like 10 guys? Oh, yeah, yeah. And I thought I was the fourth oldest, which, whatever, not a big deal. But for a second, I thought I was the third oldest. And I was like, what? No.
00:12:53
Speaker
Well, so did you, I'm sure that the students learned, which is obviously important to what it's all about, but are you better off? Did you learn? Was it insightful?
00:13:01
Speaker
It was for sure. It was especially interesting because I've met with them several times over the past few months and our business has changed dramatically over the past few months. So their initial observations and impressions compared to the goals that I was spitting out were like, yeah, I don't know if this is possible. Like they were coming back to me saying, you might have to like, like not do flashlights because you don't have time because et cetera, et cetera. And, uh,
00:13:26
Speaker
And I was like, no, no, no, these are the new numbers. And they're like, oh, oh my goodness. Right. Oh, that makes a lot more sense, right? Right. Yeah. So it's something they brought up, which we've been kind of avoiding for the longest time, is merchandise, t-shirt, hats, things like that, and making it a real product line for us.
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, so they kind of rekindled my interest in that. And Aaron can help tremendously with that too, both on the graphic side, but also just getting it done, like finding the right supplier and getting nice shirts made. Right.
Business Growth and Culture Shift
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, so that was part of it. It's funny on that stuff because when you're starting out, it's such an important thing. It's so exciting to get your first t-shirts made, your stickers made. It's exciting when people buy them and it's money. It helps raise some money in retail and it's good. But then all of a sudden you reach the stage, or at least I have, where you're just like,
00:14:18
Speaker
I don't want to deal with this, it's silly, it's not that much money relative to what else we're doing. So you kind of push it away and then you get to this third stage where the wheels are moving and you want people to be able to participate in your brand and it's just something you should do, so you kind of bring it back.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah. And like in the beginning, you want to have inventory. You want to get 100 t-shirts made or whatever, but it's expensive. It's a lot of money upfront, right? And I remember us doing that for sure. And then we'd have 100 with a bunch of 4XL t-shirts that we sit on for forever because some guys want them, but et cetera. So you got the sitting inventory. And now we're at the point where it was like,
00:14:58
Speaker
I have to make a conscious decision. Do we inventory 100 shirts that we can send them with a package, which would be super nice? Or when people come by the shop, we can give them a shirt or sell them a shirt or whatever. Or do we do it all online, kind of the cafe press scenario sort of thing where they fulfill everything online? I don't know yet.
00:15:17
Speaker
If folks are listening who've never done this, I've never heard of Cafe Press. We've used Team Blaster before. They will send you your own shirts as a company that you can inventory, but they will also do these batch runs where people can go order the color and size that they want and then as soon as the cumulative orders reach 10 or 15 or some amount, the company like Team Blaster will print them all and send them directly to the purchaser and then they just send you a check for the difference between the cost and the price.
00:15:47
Speaker
So they deal with all the money then? They do, yeah. So I guess it would make it harder to implement on your website. Yes, because it's more of a Kickstarter kind of campaign. Like people sign up, you have maybe a one month or two week timeline. Yeah, and I like your t-shirts. I wear your shirts all the time. So maybe we should look into that for sure. I should get more made. Right. Speaking of t-shirts and flashlights, I had a random question. What is your everyday carry?
00:16:18
Speaker
I should do a pocket dump picture on Instagram. The new flashlight that I got, the Prometheus dark sucks dot com flashlight. I love that. A pen from tactile turn, my Norseman or my rask, currently my Norseman. A key bar for my keys and a lip balm, panky, wallet, phone. Okay, that's fair. I'm just curious.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's something I've never shared, but actually, it's funny. Erin said to me two days ago, and she's like, so I read this term. I keep reading it. I don't know what it means. What is EDC? That's awesome. That's awesome. Every day carry. Right. So I had to kind of school her on that, which was funny.
00:16:58
Speaker
But it's super interesting having her, you know, she's not in the knife industry and manufacturing anything. So she's asking really good questions. And we're both conscious of wanting to share these answers online, whether we do a quick little video, or whether we, you know, put it in the FAQ on the website, because every question she has a potential customer or new follower could have. Right, right.
00:17:18
Speaker
I had the same wonderful six weeks with Julie when we were doing some really good intro to Fusion 360 videos that are now up on the NYCCNC site, where Julie was editing them, and I was like, Julie, if you don't understand it, we either need to refilm it or we need to add call-outs on some people. And of course, now that's all gone, because she can program in Fusion 360 just by virtue of having edited all these videos. That's hilarious. But yeah.
00:17:47
Speaker
take advantage of Aaron's innocence and lack of knowledge now. It's actually a very peculiar and expiring asset.
00:17:59
Speaker
Very true. Very good point. Yeah. And then something I brought up to her just yesterday is, you know, every now and then we'll have family or friends or the odd customer come by the shop that either knows all about us or knows nothing about us. And we give them a little shop tour, right? And they always ask interesting questions that I don't normally say out of my head, right? So I told Aaron yesterday, I'm like,
00:18:21
Speaker
Next time we give a little shop tour to somebody, maybe you could just follow us around with the camera and we can film this experience because it could be really insightful. It's like a shop tour, but not just me leading you guys around. It's me leading somebody and having them dictate the conversations, right? Yes, that's awesome.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah. So, uh, we'll do that. But I mean, the, just the capacity is totally different now. Like, like we can do videos and I'm not afraid to film because I used to be afraid to edit. I don't have time, right? So it's like, I'm filming more now and, and she's busy. Like I was worried that she would have a full-time job and now I'm like,
00:18:58
Speaker
You're going to easily have a full temp job. Isn't that insane? I guess it's something you have to go through to really experience it, but it's like the frog boiling in the pot thing, because you did everything, John, and some things didn't get done, like videos. But you just kind of do it all. And then all of a sudden, you're going to start pulling people into your team and being part of the John Grinsville knife story. And then all of a sudden, you're going to look back and be like,
00:19:24
Speaker
oh my gosh, yes, I couldn't possibly, we would be in a very stressful and difficult situation if we lost some of our key people now because they have so much, they're such a big part of what we do here, which is great.
00:19:41
Speaker
And I guess that's the reason why you kind of make the process the expert and hopefully try to track the process of what everybody does so that they could be somewhat replaced when necessary. But they become integral, right? Like Julie is your person. You need her to produce your content.
00:20:02
Speaker
If she left tomorrow, it'd be a decent training curve finding the replacement. Right. And people aren't robots. I mean, people have personalities. Exactly, right? They have things that they like and don't like, and it takes time to learn. We should invest process in our inventory system and how we fulfill orders so that it can be replicated by just about anybody. But you don't invest money in the training program to learn how to become an editor for Saunders Machine Works, a film editor. That's not logical.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah, and you don't ever want your people to feel like they're replaceable in that respect because everybody is valuable, right? Oh, yeah, totally. Totally.
00:20:40
Speaker
Speak. But yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say, it is a crazy thought that, you know, in January 1st, Angelo, our machinist, is gonna come on. Okay. Which is a month from today. And so I have essentially, by then I will have split myself into four people. Right. You know, Barry is now doing a lot of my tasks. Aaron, Angelo, and then I still have a full-time job. And it's like, it's insane to think that I used to be there.
00:21:10
Speaker
and now we're so much bigger. And Eric has run off his feet busy too. Real quick, we just finished our biggest month ever in November. And yet again.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yet again, I think we've had four or is it five weeks of consistent, I think it's five weeks of consistent top performance output consistently. Every week is almost exactly the same and it's at our peak level and we're basically maxed out at this level, but there's things we're going to implement to make it faster.
00:21:41
Speaker
It's awesome. That is one of the, that makes me happy. And we got this, some interesting comments lately on some of our stuff that we've been posting about. It kind of brings up this question, why do you do what you do? And it goes back to the wonderful anecdote about the Brazilian fisherman who is really good at fishing and some conglomerate comes and says, we want to bring you onto our team so that we can, you can teach us your ways and we're going to build this into a multi-million dollar fishing empire. There's some wonderfully poetic version of this story.
00:22:10
Speaker
And he's basically like, so we can make a bunch of money so that when I have a bunch of money, I can go on my own in my little boat and fish. I'm already doing that.
00:22:19
Speaker
Exactly. For me, it's the beauty of building a business. Money is a simple measuring tool, not in the sense of measuring your own worth, but just you need money as the way your business succeeds and doesn't succeed. One part of it, I should say. But also just being able to do what you love. And for you, it's now this implementing and executing on this process around it. That's really cool. That's really impressive.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really now having fun with the process of building this business and actually thinking of it as a leader, as a boss, as a mentor to these new people coming on. And that's what I was just telling Eric and Barry, both with each other, but also with new people, like think of it as a mentor, mentee relationship, not as a
00:23:04
Speaker
teacher or as a lackey or as anything like that. Take them under your wing and teach them in a nice, kind, helpful way so that you succeed and they succeed and everybody's happy, right? It's not just like, hey, go do that. It's not just delegating it and forgetting all about it.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yes. But yeah, totally agree. The process of building this business is becoming fun now. And as we've talked over the past six months, I mean, it's been a roller coaster. And we've had some very stressful times, some very scary and sad times, too, in our business. And we're finally able to relish in our success a little bit because it's becoming consistent. And the future looks very bright. And we made it past the hump. It's finally good now.
00:23:51
Speaker
So when it comes to so much good stuff to talk about, we're going to put shameless plug for the pro membership on the NYC CMC website, but we've started creating
00:24:06
Speaker
a employment agreement, as well as a welcome to Saunders Machine Works, and this is the same thing I just sent to John for Grimstone Knives, but when you bring somebody into your team, it's so important, we take for granted, these people don't know, like I laugh, these interns are new people, they don't know that I was in a basement garage for nine years, or that I was in this, that this is like, they look into the shop and they just see this, they don't see my whole story, so you've gotta be conscious of that and bring them into the culture,
00:24:36
Speaker
So we have this document now, which I think is really good. It's a breath of fresh air that I, what I started, I didn't think I needed this. And then once I started writing it, I realized, oh my gosh, this
Stress Management and Work-Life Balance
00:24:45
Speaker
is great. So it talks about welcome to Saunders. Here's what we do. Here's the things I care about or we care about, which means, you know, I want you to learn. I want you to, we talk about safety. Here's generally how we handle mistakes, meaning we generally don't get mad, but you have to be
00:25:02
Speaker
devastatingly honest so that we can understand why did this happen or was it a process thing or was it a training issue? And then I've been talking to more people about this and adding things like being clear about the only reason you could, and I need to,
00:25:17
Speaker
Chew on this more because you've got to be careful with what you say But the only reason you would be fired immediately would be for theft or deliberately damaging or Deliberately doing harm in terms of you know deliberate sabotage an order or something like that Otherwise just about everything is hey, let's let's figure it out now if you do the same thing twice that's different, but I
00:25:37
Speaker
What is the culture? Why are you here? And giving the chance to talk that through. You've gotta be focused on that now. How do people, fostering competition because there's this focus on excellence but not competition in the sense that people are trying to outdo each other and it becomes harmful, right? Sharing ideas, just so much stuff like that. It is interesting to think about that because
00:26:08
Speaker
the people we've brought on, Barry and stuff, it's been a slow, like super slow process. But to have somebody like you, like you're doing right now, like an intern come in and just kind of expect them to perform on day one, you need this orientation, this guidebook so that they at least have a bit of a feeling towards what the culture is and how to interact with people and all that. And making them feel enabled.
00:26:31
Speaker
Right. That takes some forethought. Like I'm sure you sat down and really like, oh yeah, we should really talk about this and talk about this and talk about this and all the things you take for granted, right? Yeah. It's almost a lot to come at somebody with because it's kind of like, whoa, you're covering a lot of topics. But I have no, this is where I become almost.
00:26:51
Speaker
It reminds me of when you see somebody, when you interact with somebody who has autism and they don't necessarily care what you think because they are feeling dispassionate about something, and I mean that in a serious way. I become like that, like I don't care at all what somebody thinks when I start talking about this because it's so core to what I believe in that that's simply how it is here and it makes me smile and happy and it just is. Yeah. Okay, so. It's funny. Go ahead, go.
00:27:20
Speaker
One more thing. It's funny what you mentioned about your past 10 years and the new people not knowing. So I've known Erin for two weeks now, just about two weeks, which it feels like a lot because we've done a lot together already. But still, she knows very little about her actual backstory other than what I've told her. So I told her yesterday, I'm like, yeah, I'm historically a super cheap skate. I don't like spending money. I like doing it myself. And she's like, really?
00:27:47
Speaker
Because you just seem like it now. You just bought me a subscription for Adobe Premiere to do the video editing. And it's like $20 a month. And I'm like, yeah, no big deal. That's pennies. That's nothing these days. It's so funny. We just bought a Tumblr that was $10,000. And we're like, of course. Now it's time to do that. That was a big decision.
00:28:06
Speaker
So it seems like I'm just a total baller thrown around money, but this has been a 10 year process, right? And now we can kind of relish in this and actually get what we need. So for an outsider coming in, it's a bit of a weird perspective.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yesterday, we need one extra backup computer for our training classroom because I stole the backup for the shop. And then Alex, the new guy, needs a computer. So I called my local computer guy. And I was like, we do these refurbs that they soup up with SSDs and graphics card. And I was like, hey, Don, can you build up two more of those refurbs? And it was, I don't know, it was $700 or $900 or something. And I just literally, it's a question of getting this.
00:28:47
Speaker
That's a really good example of entrepreneurship that people don't think about. Having an extended team of people like a local computer guy that can just help you with solutions. So it's certainty of success. He will kind of support them. If it's out of direct warranty, he'll support them because he cares about his business brand. Somebody can go pick them up. Alex can install them. And all of a sudden, I've spent 800 bucks, but I've done nothing. I've got this solution. That's part of the wheels of motion.
00:29:15
Speaker
Right. You spent about eight minutes figuring that out. Right. And then moving on. Other than you've built custom computers in the past, you know how much time it takes to research all the RAM chips and all this crap you want to put on the computer. But yeah, just to have a guy to be like, get it done. Thank you. Send me the bill.
00:29:34
Speaker
The people in your shop thing tied in though with, or having other people in your shop tied in with my kind of low point, which is I don't strive for stress. I've worked in stressful jobs and situations before. I don't, some people like that. Some people think that being busy makes them feel productive, successful, or important. I do understand that. I do try to now feel,
00:30:02
Speaker
I find that I enjoy life and I'm more productive when I'm happy and relaxed. So I guess I'd say that because I don't seek out stress, but I continue to get myself stressed way too often. And I've not, I have failed to solve this. It is just to be point blank when I met.
00:30:19
Speaker
when we did the first Pearson tour, I think that was in like February, so almost a year ago, and Jay was talking about the Pearson boards and how he's gone from being stressed once a week to three or four times a year. And I am working on it, I have a kind of a plan, but this week a couple things happened that just...
00:30:39
Speaker
I find it's easier to try to stop the buildup of stress. Once you get too stressed, I can't recover. I just can't. You kind of fade out of it. I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of like the only analogy I can think of is drinking, where if you don't want to get drunk, you have to stop drinking beer. You can't get drunk and then hope to get undrunk right away.
00:31:05
Speaker
So the point I wanted to bring up was talking to somebody who I respect and who's done a really good job in our industry. And he was mentioning that he has a person in his shop who was kind of getting stressed and sort of all of a sudden being like, I got to come in earlier, I got to work harder, I got to work later. And he was
00:31:25
Speaker
And I'm thinking, I'm like, where's the story going to go? Like that may be a good thing or why is that employee feel that way? And he was just like, he was just like, no, you got to stop, dude. Like we don't have this problem. If we do have this problem, we need to figure out how to solve it. But what's unacceptable is for you to bring that tension and that stress. And that I think this employee was somebody who thought
00:31:47
Speaker
and from an old job that this idea that like being super stressed and super focused and I need to get in an hour earlier, I need to get that machine running and more stuff and more parts. He's like, no, that's not, and it's so, it was phenomenal to hear him say this because it's just like, that's not acceptable here.
00:32:04
Speaker
And I am I was raised in a very strict house My parents were very hard on me in terms of productivity and my I think I would say my parents are certainly my dad is a very stressful individual So it's kind of my that's my go-to It's like if I'm not sure I just work harder and be stressed because I think it's the answer. You know what I mean? Yep. Yep. Sorry. I know that was a lot but that's kind of something. No, it's something I'm focused on a lot Yeah, cuz
00:32:29
Speaker
Like the past two weeks, I had about one and a half weeks of bliss, of things were going great, everybody was happy, it was smooth. And then the past three days, me personally, it started to tank and things are good, but a couple of things going on that do bring a lot of stress. And I talked to my wife about it yesterday and she's like, yeah, I can tell like just past two days, like you're not smiling as much and happy as much. And you sound, you seem shorter.
00:32:57
Speaker
And yeah, it's, it's, it's something you, you know, that kind of comes on quickly, but then you kind of eventually fade out of and bring happiness back in and they kind of fade, you know, blend together, hopefully. But yeah, it's not like you said, it's not like you can be undrunk in the snap of your fingers.
00:33:15
Speaker
much more conscious about my attitude and how I find, I hate this, I find I would wake up. I don't look at my phone anymore before the shower, because I don't want to, if there's a problem in an email, I don't want to be thinking about it in the shower. And then I try to have, I try to get excited. Sorry, this sounds terrible. It sounds like I'm like, hate what I, I love what I do. Oh my God. And I- Of course, but you need this. And this is how I spend my mornings too. Right. Right. But it's that part, no, it's just, it's just, it's,
00:33:45
Speaker
I hate people that fake who they are, so I will never do that. But it matters. You are what you eat. You are what you think. I'm like, wait, I'm excited to make that part today. Let yourself get excited about it. I'm excited to do that video. That's a good thing. Yeah, there's some stress. We've got to do orders. We're behind on this. And you're conscious of that.
00:34:04
Speaker
Clinching up is not and getting angry or mad or rushing and I walk too fast. I'm trying to walk slower I share this not because I want criticism for people on it But because it's this is I feel like what entrepreneurs do is you you take on a lot and it gets to you sometimes
00:34:20
Speaker
No, this is real business stuff. And I bet you a lot of entrepreneurs are going to resonate with this listening to it and be like, yeah, nobody talks about that. I get it. But that is a serious
Technical Challenges and Supply Issues
00:34:30
Speaker
reason why I like to have my morning routine so that I can kind of reset myself and pump myself up in the mornings and then come in totally fired up. Whereas this morning, you know, my son woke me up and I was groggy. He woke me up at five 30, which was late for him. And and he woke me up and I was kind of sour mood because I was not ready to wake up or whatever.
00:34:50
Speaker
And I told myself this morning, I'm like, do not let one small thing like your beautiful son waking you up ruin your day. It's just because I can't do my routine this morning should not alter the happiness of my day. And letting all the stress from before pile on. I'm excited for the podcast. I can't wait to talk to my friend and we're gonna have an awesome day today, right? Right, right, right. And that's not Paul Aker's fake happiness, whatever. It's like, no, this is awesome.
00:35:20
Speaker
Right. I literally walked in this morning and Jared was, we're doing, it's actually super exciting. Like this is awesome. We're doing the first, the first time ever we are.
00:35:31
Speaker
using custom machined vacuum plates, fixtures for OP-2. So we have these parts that have all these holes, they're flat, they're thin flat plates, so they're pretty big. So they screen vacuum. It's the perfect way to hold them for OP-1, which is easy, but OP-2 is tricky because now they have a bunch of holes in them. And so we machined for the first time custom vacuum plates. We put the gasketing in and we isolate out all the holes.
00:35:55
Speaker
I've never done it but I know enough about everything involved that I wasn't worried about the execution risk of making that fixture. The problem was they've got some relatively big countersinks and if you've machined before you know that countersinks in my experience can be easy to
00:36:11
Speaker
dial in right in terms of the chatter and how they're loading up the tool in the work piece. Your straight flute sort of 82 or 90 degree chamfer or tools often can be chattery. And the really nice curved ones that have a, I think probably a better rake or cutting action are great, but you can actually get some upward lift out of that, I think. And all those are things that can affect how you use a vacuum fixture.
00:36:37
Speaker
So Jared, we had a problem which I think actually related to how we chamfered a corner that was a lot causing a little bit of a gasket leak if the part moved.
00:36:48
Speaker
less than it should be sensitive to. So we fixed that. But Jared was kind of like, hey, what do I do about this? I was like, hey, let's just take a look. And we opened up our chamfer tool drawer, which is organized with shallower bins and we know where it is. And I was like, hey, so we've got these two or three different tools and I'm looking at them and I was like, let's go down to a two flute, better sharing action. Let's just run at 100 surface feet. We only have to run 50 of these parts. The timing is not a big deal. And I was like, I think that'll work. And it just kind of like,
00:37:15
Speaker
keep calm, have a positive attitude, nothing went wrong, really, like no big picture. Whereas it would be easy for me to be like, oh, I'm getting nagged, I'm just walking in the door, we've got problems, I don't know what to do, blah, blah, blah. Yep. It's perspective. And you as the leader, as the boss, needs to be able to rein in this perspective across the whole shop and keep everybody on point, you know? Yeah. Keep everybody slow and steady. It is a good thing.
00:37:44
Speaker
How, what do you, I'm sorry, how's your day? What are you up to today? Today, I feel like I've said this to you far too many times. Do not say Norseman fixtures. I will hang up the phone. That's not actually what I was going to say. I was going to say we're out of material. Oh, really? Yeah.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah, last last batch we had 120 made which came in and then we were just finished it yesterday and our new batch of 300 was supposed to be done yesterday but they pushed it off by a week.
00:38:19
Speaker
So we now have this kind of week of middle ground. I mean, we have like Norseman materials, what I'm talking about. We do have rask materials, so we'll just be making rasks, which take longer and are not as good for our workflow as Norsemen are. Got it. Because we're getting so good at them. But yeah, so we're going to rasks now.
00:38:38
Speaker
So that's good. The new tumblr that we got is utterly insane. It is. It came in last Friday. I was going to say, I don't think I knew this. OK. Yeah, I don't think we've posted anything about it. Oh my gosh. If you're standing next to it, you almost can't tell that it's on. Oh my gosh.
00:38:56
Speaker
It's... I gotta... Maybe I'll... You know what's funny is I think I drove up to you around Christmas last year. Two years ago. No. Yeah. Stop. February is two years ago. Yep. No. We didn't have the new lathe yet. I know. I've never seen your lathe. Maybe I'll come up in a month or so. You are welcome anytime. Holy cow. That's awesome on the Tumblr. Where did you put it?
00:39:21
Speaker
Is it outside? No, it's probably like three feet by three feet by four feet tall. And it's on wheels. So it's just right next to the other one. So we already filmed a little bit of video of the unboxing. And now that we've used it for a week, Eric's getting comfortable with it and getting the media broken in and stuff. So we'll continue doing updates of that.
00:39:44
Speaker
But yeah, so today I'm figuring out Rask, how to integrate back into that, and then crush out some Rasks, and then yeah, have the suppliers on my material, make sure it comes in time. So here, like, can you ship it with a parachute attached? Because that might be fast enough. So here's a good one for you.
00:40:03
Speaker
Do you go sort of the Jay Pearson lean just in time where I'm going to call my supplier, bid out two different companies to deliver on price and delivery terms, saw cut material, that when we receive it, it basically goes straight to the machine and gets processed and sold, and we kind of have this continuous loop where we're not over-investing working capital and raw material or staying nimble.
00:40:28
Speaker
and so forth, or I had the chance in 2003, so 14 years ago, I had the chance to tour the Glock factory in Fairlock, Austria, which was super crazy because it's impossible to get in there. I had a friend who knew the plant manager. We were over there. And so I had a chance to go through the Glock tour plant. It was amazing. I knew nothing about CNC back then. So I wish I could do it again, which I won't be able to, but we went back into the back of their plant.
00:40:53
Speaker
And they had all the steel and raw material, which isn't that exciting relative to the thousands of CNC machines you had just seen, or hundreds. And he didn't speak great English, so he was sort of trying to explain in this broken English, you know, I don't care what you MBA people say. I think he thought we were MBA students. He's like, I don't care what you MBA people say. I keep two years of raw material in my factory. Sort of like, he was sort of like saying, screw,
00:41:18
Speaker
screw the screw vendors, screw the metals markets, screw everything I control. And it's a privately owned company. They can do what they want. They obviously have a product that's not going to change. They know the material is good. And it's kind of like, hey, I'm in the same boat you are right now, John. My supplier just pushed out our steel fixture plates by another week and a half.
00:41:39
Speaker
And I love the quality they're producing. I don't like how they've treated us customer service-wise. But to go find somebody else is going to be brutal right now. So you can tell me you should go find somebody else, but it's not that easy.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, there's relationships involved. And doing it this way, I have one, two, three, there's four suppliers that I have to go through before the material hits my door. And it's an eight to 10 week lead time from the first thing I order to when it comes to my shop. And so a week plus or minus is not a big percentage really, but it's critical for us if we're pushing the timeline.
00:42:17
Speaker
So like eight to 10 weeks ago when I ordered it, I'm like, yeah, this will be enough. Like it'll come in just in time. I feel like I'm ordering super early, right? But no, like we're, because we're getting faster, right? So our projections are wrong from what, from when they were back then. So like the new stuff's coming in next week, but today I'm ordering more. Exactly. And it's jumping the lead time, which is awkward.
00:42:39
Speaker
I mean, the cost is staggered, but it's like $20,000 of cash that needs to go out. So I need to project this and I need to make sure we have, you know, it's a lot of money. But it's super important and we cannot be without material. This can't happen again. So being too lean and too cheap is hurting us. Yep. Yep. Good.
00:43:06
Speaker
Well, at this point, if we don't make knives for a day, because we're finishing knives every single day now, if we're down for a day, that costs us legitimate money.
Productivity and Customer Service
00:43:15
Speaker
Right. That's great. Somebody else just told me, actually the same person, great idea of 100 things to do in the shop. So I'm starting this list now of just what are
00:43:25
Speaker
things that anybody can do because people get idle and a lot of the people that we're going to bring onto our team here don't like being idle. That's just kind of a byproduct of the people we want. So it's kind of like, hey, if you're not sure what to do, here's a list of a hundred things that we can do around the shop. And I honestly probably could use a day of myself. In fact, my wife and I, we posted this on Instagram. We literally
00:43:45
Speaker
got a babysitter Saturday night and my wife and I came in for honestly only two and a half hours but two people with two and a half hours can get an insane amount of work done you know no phones no computers and we cleaned and it felt really good and uh and it's probably something i'm too cheap to hire a cleaning person every like week so
00:44:04
Speaker
every two or three months we'll have to come do that and then hopefully maybe in a while we'll be able to afford, justify I should say, we can afford it but I'm too frugal to have somebody come to clean upon a regular basis. Right, right. Yeah, and then there's the shops that refuse to hire cleaning people and do it all themselves on schedule, rotate through everybody and just keep everything clean themselves.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm torn on that. I mean, everyone here cleans and keeps up their sweeps up and all that. But, you know, I have no problem myself pushing a broom or scrubbing the floor. I mean, I literally do. On the flip side, I don't find that that sort of thing is I don't need to see my employees do that to build character or prove anything. You know, if we spill something, do it. But like, you know, scrub in the bathroom, I don't.
00:44:51
Speaker
I don't need my interns to do that to prove that they're good. And frankly, right now, I'd rather have my intern working on a Fusion 360 model showing thread pitch diameter offsets between major and minor diameter. That, to me, is awesome. Yeah, you can hire a janitor to do that. Right, just so. Anyways, what I wanted to say is, for the folks out there that are trying to get started, especially from a service business, when you're providing a service, whether that's a product service or
00:45:18
Speaker
But anything, it's so easy to perform in the top 1% I'm making up. 87.6% of statistics are made up on the spot. But all you have to do is communicate with your customers and ship or deliver on time.
00:45:40
Speaker
Nobody does, and nobody does, and it makes it so easy. You will stand out with an exceptional rating by communicating and shipping on time. I am so tired of hearing excuses, and it's tough because those excuses sometimes are legitimate. I had a guy yesterday who's way behind who's like, unfortunately, I'm at a family funeral. I'm human, I'm sorry for your loss, like that is devastating, but the fact is you have been
00:46:07
Speaker
crummy this whole time, and now you always have an excuse. You always have an excuse. That funeral example, I know, sounds out of context, but my point is, don't make your personal problems. Sorry, again, sorry, I'm not trying to mix in funerals with personal problems.
00:46:26
Speaker
That's not, if that happens to me, we have extra systems in place to make sure that that doesn't, my customer isn't responsible for that. They still want their service, they prefer it on time. Obviously if I'm in a car accident myself, that's different or something. But like, you know what I mean? Just don't. John Saunders, the human, empathizes with that. But Saunders Machine Works, the business, doesn't care at all. Thank you, well said. Thank you, sorry.
00:46:50
Speaker
I do not always say things as well as I should. But yeah, it's like, boom. Anyways. And then if you can perform above and beyond and do little things to set yourself apart, that's the icing on the cake. That will set you head and shoulders above the competition. Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:10
Speaker
It's like we just did the video on the Pearson filter system, and Jay posted the photo on Instagram of his filter system, which we basically totally redid, mostly because the Haas filters are different on our machines.
00:47:27
Speaker
Jay's picture had all these part numbers from McMaster. And mostly as a joke, I text message, you can text message McMaster-Carr, which is also amazing. They respond right away. I text message them the picture.
00:47:41
Speaker
And it bounced because I think their text messages go to some sort of a computer system that can't accept pictures. It can only accept ASCII characters. And so I was like, oh hey, sorry, no worries, it generated an error. I'll shoot you an email. So I just emailed the photo to them. And I said, could I place this order? Just a picture with a bunch of both. And so you can't type, it's a picture with the part numbers written on it. You can't copy and paste those in. Within an hour,
00:48:07
Speaker
they wrote back, not saying yes or no, but literally with a quote attached with all of the items in it with the correct quantities. And they noticed that one part number was wrong or had been updated. They fixed it and they made a note of that. And they mentioned, you only needed one foot of hose in your picture. The minimum we sell is five feet. Just wanted to let you know.
00:48:31
Speaker
That's amazing. Customer service. Why would I go shop it? Why would I go to another price check that with somebody else when they do that? I don't care. That made me happy. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:48:47
Speaker
Excellent. Good. Well, I cannot wait to see more videos, dude. This is awesome. I know. Yeah, you and everybody else. I'm excited. Like I'm super pumped. So yeah, she's been working a lot on the website. We're going to transition into videos here soon. Awesome. And so what's the website is, is the Grimsman knives website? Yep. Grimsman knives.com. You know, we're realizing more and more that
00:49:12
Speaker
If somebody goes there, all it really says is the knives are sold out. It doesn't tell you what a Norseman is. It doesn't tell you anything about our company. It doesn't, there's no contact form, which I kind of secretly enjoy because I get too many emails already. But I want more information. I want more company culture, history. I want descriptions of the Norseman. I want, you know, sexy pictures of the Norseman and the Rask and stop and all this stuff. I want private videos on the website that are only on the website.
00:49:40
Speaker
So people, we thought about doing kind of a weekly update video that only gets posted on the website. So people have to continually go to the website to see this new content. All these things are possible now.
00:49:51
Speaker
And so do that and cross-promote it with merchandise or things that people can act on. The McMaster example there was great because they reduced the hurdle and the burden and the decision-making process for me to give them money. All I had to do was respond to that by clicking buy. If you get somebody at grimsmanives.com, that is the website, right, grimsmanives.com?
00:50:14
Speaker
And they want to give you money, but they can't buy a knife because it's either out of the price range or it's out of stock. Allow them to buy something else. Boom. Yep. Excellent. Awesome. Dude, we can't wait no more skipping two weeks. Yeah. All right. I got to go. Good. I'll see you, bud. Crush it. Yeah, it's good talking to you. Crush it. All right.