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Business of Machining - Episode 99
236 Plays7 years ago
Last podcast episode of the year!
BUT how important is the calendar year anyway when you’re constantly trying to achieve your goals?
“I’m already living in 2019” - Saunders
2018 THEME OF THE YEAR: STRESS (and how to cope)
Saunders went through some of the older episodes, and apparently the Johns talked about this a lot.
“I’m okay stressing about the future. I’m not okay stressing about the present” - Saunders
GRIMSMO AGREES
“If you’re stressing about the present, it means you’re doing something wrong or you need to do something” - Grimsmo
Are you ever satisfied when you’re committed to continual growth?
Saunders debates between a vertical spindle or a CMM, but there’s always another thing that will make your business more effective. Just remember that the things you really really wanted last year have now become a part of the regular process flow.
2018 Quote of the Year! (from a previous episode that Saunders dug up)
“Did we have fun? If not, we die” - Grimsmo
Should work be fun?
Thanks Eleanor, but fun sure makes it easier!
“There is something to be said for diving into your work, but loving your work makes it that much easier” - Grimsmo
Check out the book Saunders mentions!
Shifting Pens to Priority at the Grimsmo Shop
Knives have been a priority for a long time, Grimsmo struggles with taking the time he needs to get pens MOVING! At least there’s no doubt that the pen needs to be a staple product.
Saunders: “Dude, you NEED a Swiss Lathe!”
Grimsmo needs a Swiss Lathe for pen parts.
THE E-MYTH REVISITED (Revisited by Grimsmo, that is)
Going 100 PERCENT into the new year!
Episode 100 will come out then. For now, what’s your legacy?
Recommended
Transcript
Reflecting on the Past and Future
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 99. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. Good morning. Merry belated Christmas. Yes. Last podcast of the year. Did you have a good day? Yeah, we did. Well, that's funny. I don't think about it that way. Are you? Yeah, it's almost last everything of the year.
00:00:27
Speaker
No, that yeah, that is true. Yeah, and it's funny, I was thinking about next year, I guess as I get older, I feel like the calendar year and stuff is less important. And I guess I'm, I'm already so like I'm already living in 2019 today.
00:00:45
Speaker
Interesting. That sounds much more substantial than it really is, but like I'm already thinking about I'm in the future. Well, we can talk about it later in the podcast, but it's kind of actually a really substantial takeaway I had. Where did I find this? It came up, I wrote it down when I was reviewing the 2018 episodes of Bomb.
00:01:16
Speaker
And I realized when we talked a lot about stress this year, that's awesome, I think. And I had this somewhat prophetic conclusion that I'm okay stressing about the future. I'm not okay stressing about the present. Oh, that's interesting.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah. Well, with the future, hopefully you can work towards a solution. If you're stressing about the present, that means you're doing something wrong or something needs to be done immediately.
00:01:49
Speaker
Right. It's not a controlled state and you're often not going to make better decisions and it can affect your mood. This is a bunch of bad things about it.
Business Decisions and Financial Planning
00:02:00
Speaker
It's contagious. It's funny, I don't want to necessarily admit that I'm stressed, but when I actually think about, oh my gosh, if that future problem was solved or the
00:02:15
Speaker
the solution presented itself and I could at least work toward it. Oh my gosh, I would feel so much relieved. And when you fake, when you kind of fake as if it is as if the future was solved, boy,
00:02:29
Speaker
It's like this weight of relief, weight off your shoulders. And so that's what makes you realize, OK. And it's simple stuff, really. It's just thinking about, again, I don't want to, we can talk about it later, but do I buy a CMM versus another spindle? And how do we market fixture plates? Not necessarily better, because we're not doing a bad job now, but how do we keep growing that and build a momentum and processing critical mass?
00:02:56
Speaker
It really just comes down to, if I'm being honest, money and capital as it relates to planning the business. So it sounds like it's like you're thinking about future stressful problems and you're almost taking the power away from the stress by kind of mock solving it in your head just so that you already put yourself in that state, in that place. And then, uh, we,
00:03:26
Speaker
What do you think? I'm trying to figure out if it's irrational or irrational. If it's a real problem, is it really stressing me? So it's like in that specific example, if you just kind of like, hey, if we had the exact CMM that I think I want,
00:03:42
Speaker
in place and working with training and programs and a process sheet or database that stored the values with serial numbers and that whole thing was solved. So it's more than just a PO. It's paying for the machine, getting the machine, picking the right machine, what probing had, all this sort of stuff. The process, it's like,
00:04:00
Speaker
It's like anything, you don't just buy a machine and all of a sudden you're making spectacular parts, just like the CMM, there's a process to how you measure parts. So all of that stress, if that was all behind me, that would feel really good. Like I would be, we would be in a better place.
Quality Assurance and Equipment Purchases
00:04:18
Speaker
Well, I can imagine two years from now, if you've had a CMM for a long time,
00:04:26
Speaker
you'd never look back. Right. You know, like it might be one of those things like, Oh, of course, it's just part of our process. Like, that's not exciting anymore. That's just another thing in our shop. Right. Was cool for a while, but now it's just a tool that we use every day. Right. You know, it would become totally normal. Whereas now it's one of those looking forward things. It's like, man, I think it would really do a lot for what we need. It's actually a funny way of
00:04:51
Speaker
putting it because when I was making again the list of 2018 business of machining topics, you ready for this?
00:05:00
Speaker
Zero accounting software PayPal auto sweep skyhook parts handling energy recovery ventilator big-ass fan thermostats in the shop AirPods, those are just Seven or whatever of the little things where at one point I was staring into the abyss I was like, how do we get zero to work or is it the right software? How do I get our parts handled? Do I buy a jib crane or bridge crane or blah blah blah and all of those things in hindsight are
00:05:28
Speaker
easy, working great, weren't that big a deal. It all works out. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you hardly think about them now because they're so normal in your day to day. Isn't that funny? But is that the process we have, we have to go through, we have to agonize like you and I are kind of planning, researching, make the right decision kind of guys. And it's, it's painful, but it's part of the fun sometimes is like,
00:05:55
Speaker
Even buying $150 AirPods, like I did all my research and I looked at the alternatives and I thought about it and I weighed it and Meg got them for me for Christmas last year and they're one of the greatest things of the year. It's like... Right. Quality of life. Yeah, yeah.
00:06:14
Speaker
It is funny how sometimes it's like why the small machine shop buying its first VMC is the worst customer from a machine tool salesman's perspective because they're going to have all these questions and they're going to be annoying and they're going to want to negotiate and they're going to want to handhold and questions. And like when, when Jay Pearson bought his like seventh Haas, he's like, Hey, I'm emailing you a PO get, just let me know when it's going to show up so I can have the air and electric already ready to go. Like,
00:06:44
Speaker
end of conversation. Right. Oh, that's crazy. No, I don't know. I wish I didn't. And that's not that I wish I didn't. I don't, this doesn't stress me out on a daily basis in a bad way, really, John, but I think part of it just comes back to I really, I'm more okay
00:07:07
Speaker
than I have ever
Financing Business Growth
00:07:08
Speaker
been with the idea of potentially financing a machine because it would be more of a means of just working capital versus overextending yourself, but I don't want to. If I don't want to, how do you not do that? I think the two big capital items I'd like to really look at
00:07:25
Speaker
for 2019 as it relates to Saunders machine works are a CMM and another vertical spindle from the, I want to just keep doing what I do and love. I also really want to get a fifth axis and probably a turning center and all that stuff now adds up to quite a bit of money. So money doesn't make you happy, but I don't care about the need to possess these things. I just don't like debt. And I want to have these tools here to play with and have fun and do what I love. So got to figure that out. Yeah. So it's a balance between.
00:07:56
Speaker
holding on to what you personally find dear, which is basically being debt free and growing and being able to do what a business needs to do leverage wise in order to grow or to have the kind of fun that you want to. Right. Tough.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's okay. It's it's not I don't need any sympathy or it's not a sorrowful thing. It's a good thing. It's a fun thing, you know Yeah, the cmm versus spindle i've been thinking a lot about because
00:08:37
Speaker
Another spindle massively increases productivity because of setup time being eradicated. And I would argue probably increases quality in the sense that you're not having that risk and hassle factor of changeovers and just tooling. When your things are more stable, you can make better parts. And it's a good thing for some other reasons like that. On the flip side,
00:09:03
Speaker
A CMM is the end all be all of ensuring quality remains absolute perfect and paramount. Now, the irony is that we can already do a lot of the things the CMM can do. It's just a lot more difficult, time consuming, subject to human skill sets, labor, time. And we can't quite do everything that CMM can do. But it's tough because I think we need both of them. So it's more of a which one should you get first. I think the CMM wins because
00:09:32
Speaker
the spindle will come but I'd rather have the CMM first because that's just
00:09:39
Speaker
I, we've never had a single, I can think of a single fixture plate problem that surprised us or resulted in a bad experience for the customer. We've had a couple little returns or hiccups for sure, but nothing where we didn't make it right and so forth. But I care so much about quality there that I want to make sure it's just, it's an insurance policy.
Optimizing Workflow and Environment
00:09:58
Speaker
It's absolute perfect data, understanding how we make them with regard to certain specific tolerances that just makes us have an exceptionally good product period.
00:10:09
Speaker
Are you thinking about one that kind of needs its own room or more of a shop floor type environment, CMM?
00:10:18
Speaker
My understanding is the accuracy that you can get out of the shop floor once these days is probably good enough for us. You know, I don't need sub micron or micron type level stuff. And, um, we are already doing a lot more climate controlled stuff in our shop floor and we'll continue to. So like there's vertical gradients of temperature in a room that can affect the CMM. I don't think we're at that level on the flip side. Remember that room where Julie is an ed used to be in all that.
00:10:48
Speaker
in the shop and moved his desk out to the shop floor. So that room is, which has a roll up door might end up just becoming the metrology room, which I kind of liked that idea. Hmm. And I guess, I mean, you still have your office, but you've mainly moved out of it. So are you guys walking through those doors a hundred times a day?
00:11:12
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, that would be a clear, good place for the CMM. Yeah. You got to think about workflow wise, like how the material moves through that zone as well, but. Yeah, it's not a great, you're right. It's not a great workflow, but I mean, if we're checking, if we're shipping so many plates, you know, a day that the workflow is a problem, then we can solve that problem other means, you know, getting one or two plates through their days is not too bad. No, not at all.
00:11:41
Speaker
But you are right, but I don't I don't really want to build a room inside the shop floor and I don't really want to have the CMM exposed to If a roll-up door is up because we're you know have to have a machine getting rigged in or some maintenance done or The dust and debris and and forklifts, you know driving by it. I think it'd be nice to put it in a room Yeah, you've always kind of kept those doors with the
00:12:09
Speaker
The automatic flappy window thingies. What do you call that? Say again? You know the curtain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The art store. Like you've always been. Automatic rubber strip egress. Why couldn't you remember that, John? Nice. It's always just been open though. Like you guys can just walk up and down. Closing the roll up door every time you want to get in and out sounds like a huge pain in the butt.
00:12:40
Speaker
Say again? If you're going to put the CMM in that room, are you going to keep the roll-up door kind of closed most of the time and use that for an entrance? We'd probably keep the rubber strips. Maybe we'd turn off the automatic side. The rubber strips are really nice if you've got a lot of people going in between them or if you're carrying stuff like tripods or whatever. But that's not as much of an issue. So maybe we just switch it to having a button
00:13:07
Speaker
Because if you're walking through the rubber strips, you can just walk through them. No big deal. But if you're pushing a plate through on a cart or something, you'd want to have the rubber strips out of the way. But I'm not a CMM expert, nor a room temperature expert, but I would think
00:13:23
Speaker
If we keep the shop at 66 and that CMM room at say 68 or something, and a man door size flaps thing is open for one or two minutes, I can't imagine that that's going to blow tolerance. No, it's fine. Yeah, and that'll keep any dust and debris.
00:13:44
Speaker
cool and mist and things like that, mostly away from that room as well. Yeah, that's a good point, which I hadn't thought of actually, which is that we could easily put in some sort of a filter system in that little room to keep that air free of dust, I would think. You almost want that room to be a positive pressure room, just so that
00:14:04
Speaker
Nothing comes in, you know? Right. That's a good idea. Yeah, I know that in our shop, maybe it's because we do a lot more grinding and sanding and polishing than you guys do. But there's a lot of dust in there. Impositive. There's some things. And it just kind of just kind of settles everywhere, like even on my computer. And
00:14:28
Speaker
I wouldn't, a shop floor CMM here just sounds dirty.
Personal and Business Growth Reflections
00:14:33
Speaker
Right. There's also such something so satisfying about a positive pressure room. Like this idea that like the idea that I'm like, no, I'm all good. We're actually not going to allow dust in here right now, but you can come back later and try again where I will also not allow you to come in the room. So buy, buy, buy dust.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Goodbye. I like that. Now you could do, well, you'll get, you're going to be in a new shop, John. And when you do that, you'll have a lot more easy ways of segmenting stuff, but also that's what I'm kind of excited about is we've done a really good job. Again, that was on my kind of list of things I stressed about this year.
00:15:07
Speaker
balancing the air quality and filters and heating and cooling and thermostats and all that stuff that was this again staring into the abyss of what do I do? And ironically, most of that stuff was inexpensive to solve. Yeah. Yeah, you look back on it and just becomes a no brainer. Like if you were talking to yourself a year ago,
00:15:32
Speaker
And seeing yourself agonize over these small decisions, you know, you would have kind of slapped you on the shoulder and say, just do it. Get it done. It's, you're not going to look back. It's not a big deal. It's a couple grand and you'll move on. You have bigger fish to fry. Well, and that's the, the mindset I was trying to walk through, uh, earlier in this conversation is this idea of like, if that stuff was all solved,
00:15:58
Speaker
Would you be happy would that make you smile? Would you be excited? I am when I know that we're not heating the shop? Unnecessarily at one in the morning. That's a good thing. At least right now we run lights out that'll change but And when filter systems are worked that makes me happy where sometimes if you're like, oh if I had this You know, I'll be honest and this is kind of a kind of a joke but like buying a turning center doesn't really make me that happy I'd like to have one to be useful, but like it's not
00:16:26
Speaker
Chord fundamentally key to stopping us from some of what we're doing right now and I'd much much rather have a five axis or the CMM or another spindle and so forth Mm-hmm. Well, it's good to be able to prioritize those major wants in kind of a you know, a hierarchy of
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah. Cause you don't have a lot of turned components. I mean, you're not outsourcing, you know, thousands of dollars a month of turned components that, that you'd rather do in house or, you know, I'm sure you can come up with some sweet products that are turned, but for the most part, you know, your stuff's mill. Right.
00:17:05
Speaker
When like we're now really, really cranking away on Johnny five, which is awesome. But, um, some parts aren't going to be that exciting to make. I think Ed was specking out from the CAD model, a one inch shaft with a key slot in it. And they were 25 bucks a piece. We need two of them. They were 25 bucks on McMaster. And it's kind of like, just buy them. Like that's not that exciting of a thing to make, let alone film. Um, so.
00:17:31
Speaker
But I'm not, I'm not, I know we joke about meat disliking lathes, which is really most of a joke. Although I, at some point in my life, I will set one on fire. Um, but I want one, but I don't need one slash again. Great quote, John. I wonder if you even remember this great quote from you earlier this year on a bomb. Did we have fun? If not, comma, we die. Remember saying that.
00:18:01
Speaker
I know. It's funny because it's true. Why are we doing all of this? There's a lot of reasons why in terms of Maslow's hierarchy and just why we live life and do what we do, but there's got to be some element that puts a smile on your face.
00:18:21
Speaker
Absolutely. The smile drives us forward and allows us to deal with all of the stress and all of the problems and all of the crap. And man, if I didn't have fun doing this business, it would not outweigh the pain, I don't know, the stress, the weight of what we have to do.
00:18:48
Speaker
Absolutely. But as somewhat of an outsider to your business, I feel like your stress level is at a 2 out of 10 versus a year ago where it was an 11 out of 10. Yeah, even a year and a half ago when we were still doing the rest pre-order, it was more like 11 or 12 out of 10. But maybe is it more than a 2 out of 10 now? Look, I love you. I don't think you ever put on a false representation of
00:19:16
Speaker
of anything, but I think maybe maybe are you are you? Well, where's your stress level right now? John, would you like to share? Well, tell you. And my father wasn't very nice to me as a kid. Okay. Yeah, no, no, my parents are awesome.
00:19:41
Speaker
especially with the holiday season now being over. And I had a lot of time to just kind of be sick and relax and, uh, and
Cultural Perspectives on Happiness and Work
00:19:50
Speaker
chill. I'd say my stress level is, is at an all time low, which is amazing. Um, and I can look forward with anticipation and eagerness, um, for the coming years. And there's not a lot.
00:20:03
Speaker
I'm stressing me out right now. There's little things here and there, but no. That's great. And I don't think about it. I don't like sit back and go, you know, I am not stressed right now. How often do you say that? I kind of like stress. Part of me, I can't remember that we talked about this, but I saw the absolute
00:20:25
Speaker
unapologetically chick-flicky movie Crazy Rich Asians with my wife. And it's a very interesting cultural look into just that culture as it comes to family and marriage and Chinese Americans and real Chinese people and so forth.
00:20:46
Speaker
There's this interesting dialogue from the mother in the family who seems to have gone through a lot of struggle and strife in her life, albeit incredibly wealthy, but nevertheless has a very like what I would
00:21:00
Speaker
sort of view as my grandfather who was on Okinawa and went through the tail end of or being raised at least or born into the Great Depression, a real different perspective in life. Anytime I need a sanity check in life, I think about the fact that I'm 35, which meant when I was my grandfather's age, he had been back from World War II for 13 years or something. That's humbling, right? Oh my goodness.
00:21:29
Speaker
Anyways, she makes this comment in the movie, and again, it's a chick flick, so sometimes it's hard to take seriously. But nevertheless, her comment is like, why do you Americans have such this obsession with being happy and happiness? Like, just go work. Like, shut up and go work. And I kind of like that.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it's a complete opposite of the wonderful Tony, uh, Oh, shoot. I can never think of his last name. The Zappos guys say again. Oh, no. Thank you. Delivering happiness, which I highly recommend you read and frankly embrace. Um, but it is the exact opposite. It is like, we only do all of this for happiness and that has to be the end driver. And it's so important. Whereas this other woman is saying like, man up, go do some work. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:21
Speaker
Well, there's certainly something to be said for diving into your work and allowing it to consume you and focus you into forward momentum and progress. I just think you and I happen to love what we do so much that it makes that much easier. I mean, imagine if you were, I don't know, trying to think of some terrible example without being offensive to that listener who's doing that job. Well, but like think if, John, if you were still doing websites or technology work
00:22:50
Speaker
right? You wouldn't your heart wouldn't be in that. Yeah, it doesn't. No, it doesn't suit me. But I don't know, it feels kind of like high horse to say, Oh, that that work is below me. That doesn't suit me. I'm going to choose to do this what I do here. But that's what an entrepreneur is allowed to do. They're allowed to say, like, no, this is what I'm going to do with my life. And
00:23:11
Speaker
it's going to bring me a lot of joy and happiness and it's going to be very difficult, but I'm up for the challenge. I got that takeaway. It's funny because I'm talking about books like I read a lot. I've read like no books this year, but in the past when I used to read the Warren Buffett official biography called Snowball, he kind of talks about how he has this
00:23:34
Speaker
Attitude about him where he doesn't it's not that he doesn't deserve his wealth But it's a complete coincidental byproduct of the fact that when he was an incredibly young person he enjoyed pouring through these financial statements and filings and documents that nobody
00:23:50
Speaker
Generally speaking likes to do like nobody like if you have an investment advisor, there's one thing I guarantee about them They have not read a 10k Um and warren at a young age loved to do that and then all of a sudden realized not only do I love to do this But nobody else does and this makes it incredibly easy to find opportunity And just kind of went from there It's he kind of makes this joke in the book like if I had that same passion for something about you know, the fine arts
00:24:15
Speaker
I'd be really good at those things, but it wouldn't have made me any money
Podcasting Journey and Business Strategy
00:24:19
Speaker
in the end. And he didn't, it's just sort of a, it is what it is.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yep. And wasn't it? I think it was him. Maybe I'm thinking of somebody else didn't didn't reach, you know, massive wealth until his fifties or something. Oh, no, that definitely definitely was not worn. I don't know who that was, though. Okay. Maybe I'm thinking a Ray Kroc guy and just confused that might be got another if anyone's like vegging out over the holidays and wants to watch a great movie, go watch the founder. Yes, totally concur.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah. So what do you, uh, did you go through the 2018 bombs and to have any funny laughs, takeaways, shuttering in embarrassment moments?
00:25:03
Speaker
I did indeed, for sure. It is funny to look back and think of what stressed you out from last year and where we were at that point. I've hired three employees this year. Like Christmas last year, we just got our new Tumblr, which we
00:25:25
Speaker
you know, agonized over for months and months and months, years actually, I wanted that one. And now it's just like, oh, it's just over there, part of the part of the shop. We're actually using our old Tumblr equally as much as the new fancy one. And just little things. It's like, you worried about that back then? Right. It's like no big deal. Tumblr was a big deal. You went to the show for it and you pick out the model and it was
00:25:53
Speaker
I feel like that was one of your first big non-tool, machine tool purchase type things. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, 10 grand for a thing that just vibrates and shakes rocks around. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. I feel.
00:26:16
Speaker
very good about the initial desire to quote unquote fire myself and really push the systems processes, you know, in sourcing the outsourcing, you know, of my time type of thing into that went really well on the flip side, it's been
00:26:35
Speaker
awesome to be like I will never I can't no never say never um I love being out on the shop floor like it was um it's I've been running machines again a lot in the past week or two and um I'm a machinist at heart like that's what I enjoy doing and I'm actually pretty good at it I don't think I'm a good machinist necessarily compared to you know the Robin Red Cities of the world but I'm able to make great parts I'm able to understand it and break it down and evaluate and make critical decisions and set parts up and think things through and
00:27:04
Speaker
Just like when some people see foreign languages or paintings or other things and it just clicks to them. This stuff just clicks to me and I, and I, I love that. Yeah. I got to say I've relaxed so much over the past few days. I'm having trouble getting my brain back. Sorry. Oh, that's okay. That's okay. It's good. It's good to,
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, I was, uh, I was, when I was going through some of the old bombs, I was actually enjoying as much the self-reflection of what I said, as well as looking at some of your stuff. And I, I couldn't help but laugh when the first thing I saw was, I think back in January or February, you were saying that you were hoping to free up lathe time for pen development.
00:27:59
Speaker
And at first I thought, Oh man, he really should have done more of that now. And then I realized, no, no, you did. You did a ton. I mean, you built that product from nothing to not any prototypes, but actually like dozens of actual high quality functional sold to customer units. But, but then it's gone backward, right? Or it's gotten to take not, it's just taken a second shelf. Yep. Yep. Totally took a backseat. Um, back to like,
00:28:27
Speaker
knife production being the hierarchy. And I mean, that's, it's kind of been the same. We're in the same. I don't want to say we're in the same boat now. But as far as the pen is concerned, it's always been like a backseat driver kind of thing. Now we're still at that point, but but even more so trying to turn the tides and bring it up to a
00:28:49
Speaker
an equal playing field, you know, so that we make both, both products streamlined at the same time. Um, and I think now we're ready. I think, I think it's time. I don't know if we have to be like, we're ready, but, um, we've been planning and we've been preparing for the past few months. I mean, lay has been running nonstop almost, um, getting us stockpiled with month and months of, of knife parts so that we have time.
00:29:14
Speaker
to give the pen the time that it deserves and that it needs in order to be produced properly. Here's the time to think about though is when we were making the strike mark targets, we were a target company. It was my baby and we loved it and we thought it was the best thing ever. And we sold some and we sold some to some really cool customers, which makes you even more in love with it and blah, blah, blah. And then the GoPro mounts happened and
00:29:39
Speaker
It didn't happen overnight, but pretty darn quickly we realized we're a camera mount company now. That's okay. It definitely makes you think through some stuff.
Product Development and Market Expansion
00:29:50
Speaker
One of the things I would say to you is you've been hem hawing a lot over growth and capital as well. What if you were selling 150 pens a day, John?
00:30:03
Speaker
I mean, you can still do brasses and horseman's, but oh my God, you would look back and realize, holy cow, I shouldn't have taken nine months of balancing the two. And like, and I don't know if that's necessarily a realistic out expectation, but it's certainly, sure. You got it. You got to do it, man. You got to figure out how to get those pens into people's hands. Yep. Yeah. I had somebody else tell me the same thing. Um,
00:30:33
Speaker
you know, saying that they have one and they would buy like several more and everybody, like the concept of the size of the pen market is just easily larger than the size of the high end custom knife market. And we've got no problem for knife customers.
00:30:51
Speaker
But just the scale, the magnitude of an item that has basically no legalities all over the world. Nobody's getting arrested for having one. Nobody's getting them seized in customs. You can carry it anywhere, anytime. And it's useful all day long. Yes. No, seriously. And it's just a cool item, a cool product that I'm really proud of, which is
00:31:19
Speaker
which is good. I just need to make lots of them. But that's my point is let the potential of that solve a lot of other problems. When I think back to, I don't want to name names because it's potentially like personal type stuff, but when I think to some of our peers who had businesses that are
00:31:36
Speaker
just generating unbelievable amounts of cashflow. Another, I've mentioned on the podcast, totally different industry, but a guy I know from prior school, prior life, whose business, which has major overhead employees, but nevertheless, he's younger than me and he's a good person. In other words, he's not doing a scummy business, ripping people off or anything like that. And their business is generating 50,000 in cash a day.
00:32:05
Speaker
Like all of a sudden now, that hit me in the pants because it's like, okay, now all of a sudden, and you wouldn't know it, he's got some nice things, but like he's still, or that sort of, like you can still be, it doesn't change who you are, but all of a sudden getting those extra machines, that extra shop that you want is, you make the right, it's like all of a sudden now you get to put that investor hat on and say, okay,
00:32:27
Speaker
where in the greater Toronto area do we want to look for a 10,000 square foot shop and have it retrofitted and up improved and built out and then we're going to rig these machines in and we're going to pour those pads and like that's all just stuff you get to do.
00:32:41
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And it's all just a clear yes, a clear decision. Um, I mean, there'll be, there'll be minor stress and pain over it. But when you have the kind of revenue that I know we could have the kind of cashflow that I know we could have letting these products kind of flourish, um, those kinds of decisions are nothing. They'll be like, of course, just make that happen. Yeah. You make that happen. I don't have time to do that. So you're going to do that. Um,
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah. Like when Eric and I moved into this shop three years ago, three and a half years ago, you know, we did everything ourselves. We blasted and painted the floors and the walls ourselves. And I'm like, that's not going to happen again. You know, maybe I'll do some things, but probably not. Um, because the, the value of any one of us needs to be here generating revenue. And then let the other people like let contractors do the contracting. Think about your, the bootstrapping days are over.
00:33:44
Speaker
Famous last words from me, but yeah, but that's what I want to push you to John in 2019 and at the risk of sort of giving relatively arbitrary, you know, calendar year type goals, you know, is why I think
00:33:59
Speaker
I really want, and I don't know your business well enough, you have to make this decision, but I really think the idea of a second lathe and probably a Swiss lathe and maybe a used one, minimize capital, minimize space. You're going to have to run it in your current shop.
00:34:14
Speaker
give it a go. Help make stack the deck in your favor. Make that next decision about where you're moving, which is probably the next big constraint in Grimsman eyes because of space. Help make that decision with the most confidence about your cash flow, your financial situation, your needs, your growth, your ability, the machines, all that.
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to spend some time. I want to put my brain, you know, three to six months in the future before we move to a different shop.
00:34:46
Speaker
And what's it going to take from here to get to that point and pens in a Swiss lathe are probably the solution to that. They are. Look, I overthink things. They are. And so I don't want to let you do that and make that mistake. So look, I'll just put it out there. Someone's listening here has a used Swiss lathe for sale, and it's the right fit for John. We need to figure out how to get him a used Swiss lathe. It could be new, but I just think used is going to be
00:35:15
Speaker
a better chance of minimizing the capital and let's get it running. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk to our friend Christian about that because he has many, many Swiss lathes and he often buys them used, or maybe he buys used NU, but he certainly does buy used machinery. Yeah. I talked to him at AU a couple of months ago and he said, anything you need regarding Swiss lathes, just let me know. Ask me.
00:35:46
Speaker
So I have to do that or look go to, um, I don't know, go to, uh, Elliot and say, will you, I don't know if it would rent me a machine or, um, I don't know if I want to, how far I want to go down this rabbit hole, but this idea of like.
00:36:01
Speaker
I want a Swiss machine in my shop. I'm not willing to sign papers that, I don't know, just, is there a demo machine or an old machine? Um, you want to let me try one out for six months and then I'll make a decision about buying it or in payment, you know, maybe I'd make rental payments between now and then that could go toward the purchase price. I know this could get complicated quickly, but, um, you got to get yourself a machine. But those are all.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, those are all possibilities and some shops, you know, they look at their cash flow, they have this product to make or this job to run and they're like, I need a machine on my shop floor tomorrow. But, you know, I'm willing to commit to it, I'm willing to sign all the paperwork, but I want to defer payments for six months or even a year sometimes. Those are things that happen.
00:36:45
Speaker
you know, if the financing could approve it and if the plan makes sense and everything. Yeah, absolutely. But you got to do this. Like you have to.
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah, this product is definitely, uh, about to break the surface and I'm looking forward to making a lot of. Yeah, which is awesome. John, seriously, uh, you know, that was the saga pen was part of the saga of this year of like, you going through the drawings and, and, um, you creating the CAD model and really bringing Angelo into the story, at least from, from a public or my standpoint. And, you know, turning your lathe into a mill, which I highly encourage. I loved hearing that and seeing that. No, seriously, it was cool.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, it has been almost a year. I think in February is when I started working on the pen. Man, that's too long. And it's not that it took a year, it's that it took a hard month in May. And it took a lot of hard weekends from February to May.
00:37:53
Speaker
And then nothing, which is, but that's still why it's, it's repulsive when you hear, see a product and you're like, Oh yeah, it took me, uh, about a year and a half to bring this to market. And you want to look at the person and be like, go do some work, man. Like that's two weeks or something. And some of that's wrong. It just takes longer, but some of it's also the fact that you don't live in a vacuum. You have other stuff to do and machines are tied up and so forth.
00:38:18
Speaker
Yep, for sure. Yeah, machines and time and focus and priority. I struggle with the thought of
00:38:29
Speaker
The amount of tight tolerance parts in the pen is a lot. And it takes some, especially on this lathe, it takes a lot of management to be able to make the quantity and the quality of parts that we need to make a lot of pens. And then there's all the cleaning and tumbling and anodizing and packaging and assembly and shipping.
00:38:52
Speaker
that are all jobs that will increase from our current workload in order to sell a lot more pens without reducing the amount of knives. And sometimes I just wonder where all that time is going to come from. Yeah. I mean, that's all real on the flip side. You got to just do it. I mean, that's the difference between an idea and executing as a business. I think you probably have enough man hours with Sky and Johan. Was his name Johan?
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah. And you and so forth. So I would let that psych yourself out. Um, and you're doing the pen period. Like that's not, that was never, you're not, I don't get the sense that the saga is a, we'll see if it's something we want to bring to market or not. No, exactly. It was originally, um, you know, let's try it out with, let's see if I can pull this off. Um, it's been in my head for two years and,
00:39:46
Speaker
I'm super glad that we were able to do it. And then once we launched it and sold a bunch, then it's like, oh, everybody really enjoys this. Everybody that we show it to thinks it's the coolest thing ever. So there's no fear in my mind, no doubt at all that it needs to be a staple product of ours almost as much as the knives to a point. But I like what you said about psyching, psyching myself out because that's all it is really is I'm not trying to talk myself out of it. I'm not trying to, um,
00:40:17
Speaker
you know, make it more stressful than it actually is. But maybe I'm just kind of psyching myself out being like, ah, now's not the right time. You know, just talking myself out of it when I need to be talking myself into it. And when I do that, then things happen. Like
00:40:32
Speaker
When all companies change, all people change. I didn't understand this in college, but there's a reason why usually the CEO or the leader is not the right or the same person when it's a startup versus when it's a very small business versus when it's growing. The idea of taking nothing or an idea and turning it into a business is very different than getting
00:40:53
Speaker
who's leading it when it makes a million dollars a year versus who's going to take that million dollars a year to 50 million a year, arbitrary numbers, but nevertheless. And the John Grimsmo that made the Norseman and even the Rask was a hustling garage-based guy with no overhead, all the passion and energy in the world.
00:41:11
Speaker
And you've still got huge passion and energy, but the reality is you're also now tasked with a lot of responsibility when it comes to managing a shop and employees and overhead and payroll and decisions and planning. And you've now become this person who's probably going to overanalyze things when you should keep those things in your head for sure, but also
00:41:33
Speaker
You know, it's one reason why I want you less on the lathe and less making fixtures and tweaks and cycle starts and so forth and more that you just like get out of
Achievements and Goals for Independence
00:41:44
Speaker
my way. I am getting this saga brought to market. Like that's what I do. And that's what I am darn good at. Yep. And this is what we have to do. These are the steps. Let's just do it. Yep. Yep. That's going to be a.
00:42:02
Speaker
Next few weeks and months. Absolutely. Yes. I love it. What else? I had a good year. I had a great year. I love like, I think we were a little bit on, not on the fence, but the buying the boss laser was proved to be in hindsight, a phenomenal investment. That thing is done. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It's phenomenal.
00:42:27
Speaker
the chance to go to Australia, not only to do that, to speak and meet people and see shops, but as a vacation and as a way of bookmarking that, I know we talked about this a lot, that like change in our business to where it's gonna start changing it from a solo preneurship to a real company was awesome, just absolutely awesome. Definitely a big takeaway.
00:42:56
Speaker
Yeah. To the point where you and Yvonne could actually take a vacation. Like, like first in forever. First since I ever started working for myself. Yeah. It wasn't. Yep. And I'm the same. Meg and I have never really taken a vacation. Now we've got two kids that either come with us or, you know, we need to find somewhere. But this year I definitely, definitely want to take a vacation with Meg. I want to take her somewhere for, you know,
00:43:24
Speaker
a week or two weeks or something and without the kids and set up the home life to be like the business life where that still works. Oh my god, that would solve, you know, my itching desires to get you away from the like cycle starts the stuff you shouldn't be doing is go away for two weeks. Two weeks, not a week, a week, you can hold your breath. And that's
00:43:49
Speaker
That's what Tim Ferriss says too. And he highly encourages people to do this. He's like, plan a six weeks, six week vacation and take it by like halfway through or the end of the year or whatever and set everything else up so that you can not be notified for six weeks and your business still happens. That's right. I love
00:44:11
Speaker
I love Tim Ferriss because it's a great example of what an entrepreneur has to be, which is somebody who seeks out advice from other people, reads, absorbs, learns, but ultimately makes your own decision, including the ability to call BS on people like Tim Ferriss on a lot of stuff, which is good. That's fine. Six weeks is absurd. And it goes back to...
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah. The point is, put yourself in that mindset. You don't have to take six weeks, but if you set things up in a way that you could take six weeks, or if something terrible happened and you had to, then your business doesn't die. Actually, it's a great point. What we need to do is build a panic room, lock you in it with a Swiss lathe for six weeks, and the key to unlock the panic room door is a bunch of saga pins.
00:45:02
Speaker
Do you know how much money I would make if I actually did that? No, but that's my point. You do need a six-week vacation from Crimson Eyes. It's not going to be a holiday. It's going to be you in front of a new machine. And don't over... You know a lot more about tolerances and machining now. Don't overbuild the darn pen, John.
00:45:23
Speaker
Just don't work yourself into a headache. You know, we've, we've learned this with fixture plates where don't fight the wrong fight, just like the, uh, grinding process. Don't be dumb and over constraints, things over tolerance, things try to over, over manufacture things. When in reality you were solving the problem the wrong way. That's not actually an admirable thing.
00:45:48
Speaker
Keeping in mind value to the customer in the product that you're making. I'm such a guilty person of, you know, well I could do this and I could do this and I could do this and I could make that a tighter tolerance or I could make this look better or that chamfer better.
00:46:04
Speaker
I think holistically, like it all brings up the level of the product, but, um, individually they usually don't. They're more like just, I'm wasting time for myself in order to chase the rabbit hole that, uh, you don't have a product today. That's the problem. You can always add and tweak those things down the road, but you're, you're probably letting some of that paralyze your ability to actually sell the pen.
00:46:34
Speaker
True. Very true. I mean, I know exactly how to make all the parts that I need. I'm just having a little bit of tolerancing and reliability issues, the sizing wise that Angela might need to nail down so that we can make, there's like three or four parts that just have to be bang on in order for everything to assemble properly. But that's also, you know, you solve that problem?
00:46:58
Speaker
Don't make them on the knock. You know, the knock does this. Like it's not a, it's not a problem. It's not a criticism of the machine. Generally speaking, it's just not the right machine for those parts. You don't want to make really, really, really small parts, really, really, really accurately and really, really high quantities, Swiss machines. But yeah.
00:47:26
Speaker
Good. All right. Good. I'm excited for the year. Absolutely. Am I nervous about anything? Not really. I'm I'm nervous about the potential. That's good. It does. It does kind of scare me a little bit. Like, I feel like we're we've got some good momentum now we're running. We've got a great team and everybody kind of knows what they're doing, which is amazing that.
00:47:57
Speaker
And it's, it's my job to kind of lead that and guide that forward in a way that's, you know, good for everybody, profitable, happy for the customers, um, provides value in every aspect.
00:48:12
Speaker
And that was my last note was looking at your business again from an outside perspective was the fact that you've really completed that transition through business puberty. It's not just John and Eric now as a solopreneur type thing. It's now a truly independent business. I actually think you could
00:48:38
Speaker
And nothing to do with you wanting to sell the business, but I think Grimstone Knives is now a business that probably could be sold. Yeah, and I realized that throughout this year as well.
00:48:52
Speaker
Again, not that I would or want to or anything like that, but as an e-myth thought experiment, build the business into something that could be sold, streamlines the business like crazy. I actually want to read the e-myth again just to like ground myself and like, well, how am I doing? That'd be fun.
00:49:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's the same thing. It's building a business to sell or building a business that you could leave for a week or three weeks or six weeks. They're the same direction of thought, you know, having systems in place and processes and everybody knows what they're doing and everything's written down so that everybody knows what to do and when to do it. It's not, it's hard, but it's not
00:49:39
Speaker
Difficult like you know, it's it's it's the difference between a goal and What was that? God? I love that when we were talking about that Why goals are horrible things because most people focus on what the goal is and not the steps to get between now and the goal Yeah, it's so easy just to set a big crazy goal and yeah, that's it
00:50:02
Speaker
But you break it down into steps, and you're like, well, that's not that hard, actually. I just got to do these 20 steps in order. Isn't that funny? I mean, in some respects, very few things in life are hard.
Legacy and Future Collaborations
00:50:13
Speaker
Right? I think there's a difference between hard and complicated. Hard is hard work, and anybody can do hard work. Complicated takes brain power and effort and thought and critical thinking.
00:50:28
Speaker
But it's so easy to confuse the two. It's like when Pearson said the difference between purchasing and procurement, that really hit a big home to me. It's like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Buying the same thing over and over and over again is just purchasing. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time. But we can make it hard. Remember your source. Oh, we always make it hard. Yeah.
00:50:52
Speaker
The other thing I gotta say, putting my John Saunders hat on here, is anytime somebody says,
00:50:59
Speaker
An unabashed awesome looking forward to the future and the growth and the potential. You always got to just make sure, okay, what's the downside hedge? What's the downside protection? And that's again, why I bring up pens in a totally different perspective. But look, we've had a 10 year run in our US economy at least. I can't speak to the global economy, but it's been a good run. And cyclically over the last 50 years, 10 years has been about an average time for that to go.
00:51:27
Speaker
I would think, not knowing the knife industry that well, that many of the knife buyers are in a position where they don't care about things like that because they have the money. Nevertheless, it feels to me like a much lower price point pen.
00:51:41
Speaker
uh, not only has a larger audience in a more stable customer base, but it's also something where it's kind of funny. It's like fast food restaurants and even, even fast casual restaurants tend to do really well in economic downturns because it's one of those things that people actually enjoy splurging on to make themselves feel better. And the pen could be a great way of if, if the economy were to really
00:52:03
Speaker
Soften more than you last week in the markets was pretty turbulent But if the market were to really soften boy, what a great time to have a pen That's you know one-fifth the price or something of a knife As a way to make sure you have money coming in the door Yep Yeah, definitely on our radar for thought process wise Well episode 99, huh
00:52:33
Speaker
99. Holy cow. Perfect timing. We'll start 100 in the new year. Awesome. On to another 100 episodes. Should we keep doing this? I'm having fun doing it. It's been awesome. Good.
00:52:56
Speaker
I think that is the litmus test. As we said earlier, we're having fun doing the podcast. We're going to keep doing the podcast. When it stops becoming fun, we don't have to keep doing it, but for now, it's great. The last thing I'll say on this episode that I had to take away from with the 2018 reflection, and I was debating whether or not to mention it because it feels
00:53:21
Speaker
a little bit peculiar to me, but this question of what is your legacy? And it feels peculiar to me because I feel too young to worry about that right now. On the flip side, I think I care a lot about that. What do you know? It's the campsite rules. How are you leaving the world a better place than when you came here? What are you doing for people, your family, your employees, the consumers, customers, everyone around you? And when I think about,
00:53:47
Speaker
my legacy and your legacy and what we do separately and together and so forth. I actually decided it's a little weird because I feel conflicted because it almost feels a little bit arrogant, but I started a binder of all of the emails and letters that people have sent in like explicitly saying thank you for something like thank you for the YouTube channel or the videos or the content or the help or the podcast.
00:54:11
Speaker
And I've always kind of enjoyed reading them and then I just, you know, move on, but I've realized that may be part of our legacy or my legacy or whatever. And so I thought, Hey, I'm going to start printing those out and putting them in a binder. And it doesn't have to be any more than that, at least for now, but, um, it makes me proud. And I know we, I think I have a pretty good size audience that are, that get a lot out of this podcast. Some of the emails that we get, uh, are pretty impactful. Uh, and that's cool. Yeah.
00:54:41
Speaker
What a brilliant idea. I love it. You should do the same, dude. I should. Yeah, I'm looking at the wall. We got some Christmas cards and some handwritten letters, and we put them up on the wall as well.
00:54:55
Speaker
It is really nice. And it's a sort of thank you to the folks that have written in because I know sometimes it takes some of the letters are borderline emotional. So I'm sure it takes some effort to write those. And I always try to write back. But it goes without saying that I appreciate that. And it's a very strange situation because I do the podcast for me. It's actually a very selfish endeavor, right? It's for both of us.
00:55:21
Speaker
Um, but the fact that it has this byproduct of helping so many other people is, is like, it's like phenomenal. How does that happen? Yeah, I know. But that's almost why it works in a way. It's because that's, that's how social marketing works these days is you actually provide value in a way that's beneficial to everybody, yourself included. Then, uh, it works. Awesome. Well, dude, thank you. Awesome.
00:55:49
Speaker
And thank you. Yeah. Thanks for being a great friend and a good, uh, co-host and, uh, just a good dude. And we got to, I got to come to your shop this year. You got to come down to mine. Maybe, uh, maybe in 2019 we do one, both, or maybe we, you and I go somewhere third party together, like, or somewhere else together. That would be cool. Right.
00:56:11
Speaker
I guess we did that too in Chicago and Las Vegas now that I think about it. Something just for us would be really cool, not as a vacation, but like when you went to Sandvik or something like that. Maybe you and I will go somewhere as a team and film something. Meg may kill you if you don't also do her vacation though.
00:56:35
Speaker
Cause you and I don't, I don't think you and I can take a bromance vacation without the wife vacation happening first. That's funny. All right. Um, happy new year, but I'll see you. I'll see you next week. You too. All right. Take care. Bye.