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Business of Machining - Episode 60
189 Plays7 years ago
GOOOOD MORNING GRIMSMO!
Lego Batman and Knife #1000 make for an awesome start to the day. Between us, this knife is gonna be a MOTHER!
Saunders decreases his RPM, which goes hand in hand with meeting his goal for less stress.
ALLERGIC TO LEAN Maybe you've had a bad experience or maybe it's got too much hype--Lean may not sound sexy to some but when it's under the franchise lens, you might do a double take.
Morning Meetings, Meh? Saunders and Grimsmo discuss COMPANY CULTURE and how to improve it. How do you do it when you're at that awkward stage? Bubble Wrap Mount on IG
SOCIAL MEDIA MONSTER - Admit it. You're sick of it too! Saunders posits that we're living in the "Social Media Bubble" but when will it burst? Find out how they tackle comments and different social media platforms. The NYCCNC website forum is behind the paywall to create a troll-free interaction zone.
We want to thank those who offer constructive criticism and helpful advice. You are part of this supportive community that makes all the difference!
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Transcript
Introduction and Energizing Start
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning, folks. Welcome to the business of machining episode 60. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Great morning. Good? Oh, dude. Awesome. I'm feeling killer today. It's just good. Just a great, great day.
00:00:21
Speaker
Um, I actually am as well. Um, good shoot.
Morning Routine and Business Challenges
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. Isn't it nice just to like, you know, business is not easy. There's, there's ups and downs and stresses and it always on our shoulders. Um, but I woke up today, just woke up easy at my alarm, five o'clock happy. Did a workout.
00:00:41
Speaker
Watched a bunch of lean videos while doing my workout, you know, had a shower, got to watch a few minutes of Lego Batman with my son when he got up. Dude, it's like seven a.m. right now. How did you get it? Just hilarious. Just now. That's awesome. Yeah. It's funny because everybody says or it's often that you hear statements like business is hard.
Business Focus and Personal Growth
00:01:06
Speaker
And I, I'd be nitpicky. I dislike general categorizations like that. Cause it's like, well, most things in life that are, you know, many things are difficult and take effort to achieve them. But it's kind of like, why is it hard? Like what makes it hard? And I'm in a great mood today, but we have had a lot of.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's kind of like what we talked about last week and the I'll show you a trip has really gave me that chance to kind of look at it. It seriously is. It's like such a fascinating thing to me, but like literally the last four years of my life have now just become a chapter and it's like literally now it's that next chapter.
00:01:43
Speaker
And I've been doing a lot of thinking and soul searching probably too much. In fact, I know based on just being honest with myself and from feedback from my old business partner, especially as we had our falling out, I do tend to overthink or overanalyze or I will spend a lot of time analyzing. And there's something to be said sometimes for just doing stuff. But
00:02:09
Speaker
still spending a lot of time to just stop and think. And what's exciting to me is, I've got a bunch of stuff that's exciting, but really it's actually, like I said, I think I mentioned it a little last week, but it's kind of slowing it down and focusing on what we're doing. We did four things, job shop work, training, NYC, YouTube, and then Saunders products. And now
00:02:33
Speaker
I'm basically now thinking, okay, we do Saunders Machine Works products and that's a manufacturing company that we make and sell our products. And then we do NYC CNC, which is the website and the YouTube and training and so forth. And that's kind of the two things that we do. And that makes a lot of sense, right?
Business Structure and Delegation Challenges
00:02:49
Speaker
It does.
00:02:51
Speaker
NYC CNC is just like technology education type company and Saunders is your traditional product company. Yep. Well, and that that focuses it down. It lets you think of just two categories instead of, you know, four. Right. Right. And for now, though, there are one legal company, there's one set of books, all that there's no
00:03:12
Speaker
reason now to separate them. There actually could be a reason in the future. But the key thing, and I've actually sort of inadvertently picked up, I don't want to call him a mentor. I don't think he listens to the podcast, but like you have that awkward feeling when someone's like, well, I mean, I was helping you, but I wouldn't call myself your mentor. Right, right. But he and I have been talking and I think one of the key things, and this is something that's probably a good for you is it's very awkward to say, but is making sure
00:03:41
Speaker
Uh, Grimsmough knives isn't just John Grimsmough. Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. Right. It's in. It's a little, I could argue it's, we've got a even equally to harder hurdle because, um, so much of what I've done is my.
00:03:58
Speaker
face on the YouTube videos or me on the Wednesday widgets or stuff like that. But we have been doing it, which is good. Right. It's sort of the same with me. I'm the public face of the company too. I'm the one who answers all the emails. I talk to all the customers.
00:04:14
Speaker
So to stretch outside of that will become really interesting. And it's something I'm hesitant, but also sort of excited about. And it's not going to happen anytime soon, but I'm thinking about it. Like, what's it going to be like when I have somebody else that deals with all the customer support or like answers questions or, you know. But the thing is, John, it'll be fine because that's still going to be
00:04:39
Speaker
done in the spirit of John Grimsmo. Once I define the process. Exactly. And it's not set and forget. It's an ongoing living thing.
00:04:53
Speaker
It's kind of like what I always used to think when you looked at a product in the example that always comes to mind is firearms for no good reason other than just they're easy to think about being made. Like what makes a Beretta rifle or shotgun a Beretta? Is it the fact that this Italian company issued the PO for the machine? Is it the fact that it's in Italy? Is it the fact that it's
00:05:14
Speaker
operated by somebody that was employed by them? No, it has to do with, because anybody, you could contract that out or send them, people will even send other people their own code in more complex or advanced manufacturing standpoint. You can rent machine time where somebody says, okay, you've got a DMU 50, we're going to send you the posted code and we're just going to rent your spindle. But what makes it that part, what makes the Grimsman knives is it was all done under the auspices of
00:05:42
Speaker
your ethos, your culture, your company, your quality, right? Even if it wasn't you touching every step of the way. Exactly. And coincidentally, it has been us touching every step of the way. But going forward, it won't be John Grimsmough and Eric Grimsmough, you know, making and touching and holding and
00:06:01
Speaker
grinding every single part. And that's okay, because we can still like we've set our quality standards for the past six plus years, we know exactly what we're doing now. And we can it's it's dialed in enough that you can start writing process manuals. And,
Lean Principles and Business Growth
00:06:15
Speaker
you know, you're already doing it though, right? I mean, yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker
We're starting to like, yeah, because Eric is starting to finally share some of his work with Angelo, which has been awesome. And of course, he picks it up right away. It's it's Eric's hesitation, just like my hesitation to like, I'm the only one that can do it. Yeah, that's such a scary. Oh, there's there's instances where that's still true. It's not a complete fallacy of like decision making or like little annoying details. But boy, it's
00:06:49
Speaker
It's you got to do it. Right. Well, like if you left today and had somebody else run your company, it would no longer be Saunders Machine Works because it would be it would be run by them. But if you spent the next few years, you know, defining how you do it and training, you know, it is possible. But of course, it takes work and effort. And then the same thing here. And so this is all like just had one of those like
00:07:14
Speaker
the jokes on me like just I just literally I think I was in the car with Yvonne and I just started laughing and she's like what are you laughing about and I think this is maybe a difference between me and my wife is that like we're just driving down the street and I'm like I'm like 40 seconds deep into a thought about something and and she's like what life do what world do you live in?
00:07:34
Speaker
So I went to Babson College, which is known for being at the top entrepreneurship school in the country. And there was a professor there named Professor Spinelli. He was one of the co-founders of Jiffy Lube, the Jiffy Lube. Yeah. And so it's the moment that made me laugh is that I feel like the things like Lean and Kaizen and process improvement are very
00:07:59
Speaker
new terms. They're very in vogue now. And maybe that's convenient just because it's where you and I are in our adult lives and business lives. But I think there is like a general thing in the world where there's this focus on the word lean that maybe didn't exist.
00:08:14
Speaker
as commonly. I know Lean isn't new, but nevertheless, Jiffy Lube and Spinelli's whole thing was you have to build it like a franchise. Like the E-Math. I see it on your bookshelf right behind you. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny because that's when I laughed and I was like, God, you can spin this so many different ways. But here's the difference, John. This is not a subtle difference in my opinion.
00:08:37
Speaker
When you talk about lean and improvements in Kaizen, I like them because I'm a nerd and I enjoy it and I like the conversations with you or I like the stuff with Jay Pearson and it gets me excited. But nevertheless, lean has that feeling of it's still inward looking or cost center ish or operational. It's not directly related to outward growth and profit and you know what I mean?
00:09:02
Speaker
It's not as sexy because it's more operational and internal stuff. Flip that around, and if you look at it under the eyes of, we're doing this because of the franchise opportunity, that whole same concept, all of the same processes of this idea of documenting it in manuals and processing and inspections and self-checks, all that's done under the guise of
00:09:27
Speaker
the growth and the opportunity. And I think spinning it that way sometimes makes it feel a lot more motivating and invigorating. OK, maybe that's how I've been looking at it the whole time, because I see your point and I see some people, yourself included, who look at it kind of like how you were describing like, oh, it's it's tricks and tactics and cool stuff, but it's not this whole overarching
00:09:56
Speaker
strategy to just make everything better, continuous improvement, and grow the business into something that could one day be sold, or could one day be passed on, or you could be, what do you call it, a removed owner, where you have another guy come in and run the business, but you still own it. And then there's so many different ways to spin it. But lean, or whatever you call it, is the center of that. It's just making everybody better, making the process better. The process is the expert, and all this stuff.
00:10:25
Speaker
You know, some of the people that I know seem to be allergic to the term lean because they've had bad experiences or, you know, or they just don't see it. But the way I see it, I'm like, it's I want lean everywhere. Like I just want to do better at everything I do. And lean is sort of the buzzword, the tactic to be able to like pull that off. So.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yes. What I think, though, is you've got to sometimes you've got to remember not everybody's John Grimsmough. Yeah. Like you have this energy and this enthusiasm. You're the owner. And so one of the things I do. You mean everybody doesn't care as much as the owner does? So how do you put this? It's almost like how do you lean, lean? Yeah. How do you put the systems in place to encourage people to want to put systems in place? Yep. You've got to start, right?
00:11:19
Speaker
Right. And so I was involved. We are not perfect. I was frustrated yesterday because I was walking around doing some stuff out in the shop. And our rock star Kaizen foam machine tops, which I love. I love, love, love, love, love. There was a wrench missing in one. And there was a pen missing in the other. There's the two things that are missing. And guess what? Those are the two things I wanted. Now, maybe there's a correlation that they were missing because they're the most commonly used as well.
00:11:50
Speaker
I don't care that they were missing, so this is a subtle difference. I don't care that they were missing so much as I care that they had been missing and nobody did anything about it. That's something I'm not doing a good job at is like when that happens, I need to tell people like, hey, that's kind of a not big, big deal, right?
00:12:11
Speaker
You don't want to make a stink of it. Right. That needs to just not be acceptable. And the reason is that it's not just always going to be me, the group of us here. It's going to grow. And as you grow, it's scary because it's like that behavior and that culture percolates. And other people assume it's OK. And then the person now that may be lower on the totem pole may not be lower on the totem pole. And then they're going to get
00:12:36
Speaker
they're going to get annoyed when they want a tool and the person, whether they're above or below or whatever, like, no, the answer is no, right? So how do I fix that? That's, it's exactly what I'm thinking about too, because do you have like a morning meeting every day, like some sort of team get together?
00:12:56
Speaker
No, I will share more why because it's on my it's actually dude. This is crazy It was on my came up with my conversation with my new pseudo mentor nice. I We try to
00:13:11
Speaker
And realistically, we get about one a week in. I would like it to be every day. You know, everybody comes in at different times. Barry likes to come in early. I come in about nine usually. Eric comes in about 1030 and stays later than everybody else. And it's like, well, when do we do we all stop when Eric comes in? Do we break in the middle of the day? And that maybe that's just my excuse of like,
00:13:33
Speaker
why I haven't done it yet, because that's the one thing I can cling to. But I would like to get everybody together. And I would like to teach everybody lean tactics, like learn how to be a leader and teach everybody kind of how to do better as a team. Because I think I think learning as a team is going to be really beneficial for us. I just don't know how to enact it without sounding like a I don't know.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yeah. Too structured. Exactly. Don't do stuff. Don't set the goal as something that works and then decide, I would much rather you do three months of having a meeting once a week that's kind of rigid and structured and then say,
00:14:11
Speaker
Um, you know, and you're still the boss, but there should be some sort of a feeling of consensus of, Hey, let's do this twice a week. But like, it goes back to like speeds and feeds. I'd much rather start with a recipe that works and then bump the speed, speed up and kind of keep flailing it. Well, we, we, we, we failed four days this week to get together, but let's try for Friday.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah. And the other thing is I want to write down not a rigid, like, what do you call it, topic list for a meeting, but just some pointers, like just something I need to bring up every time. Because otherwise it's just like we just kind of get together. I'm like, are everybody good? OK, we're working on this. Any questions? And then I don't I have no direction, you know?
00:14:53
Speaker
Right. So I do the same thing in a bad way, I think, which is what I'll basically do is walk around and talk to people like, Hey, Jared, you okay? Julie, you okay? What's going on? I do that too.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm not sure that's bad, but it does. I do, I know, again, crazy weird that I was thinking about this yesterday. I know that I don't, what's going on in my head isn't obviously shared across everyone else because it's in my head. Right. And if you tell one person, it doesn't mean everybody else knows the same thing. And then you got to remember, well, who would I tell this to? And
00:15:30
Speaker
On the flip side, the idea of a daily meeting when we're our size or your size seems a little bit tough, especially if we're the same problem. Everyone comes in at different times, basically, and I don't know, maybe, but it wouldn't be that hard to do. It's only going to get harder the bigger you get.
00:15:52
Speaker
Well, not necessarily. I think one of the, we're actually at an awkward stage right now because if we grew, I hate when you say percentages, but if we grew 30% more or something, it's actually not that much. And when I say it's not that much, we could grow 30% in revenue without more equipment, meaningfully or anything big changes, right? Right, if we got people probably.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, we wouldn't necessarily need more people, but what it would let me do, we're at that awkward stage where whoever's doing orders, which is good grief, me, Ed, Alex, or Jared. They may spend 20 minutes a day, or they may spend two, three hours. I mean, it can actually take two, three hours sometimes to pack up. It's fine.
00:16:43
Speaker
We posted that thing on Instagram yesterday about the laser cut bubble wrap dispenser. And people were joking about like, who would have thought four years into my own business, I would have not understood how complex and time consuming it is to safely secure an item suspended inside a corrugated cardboard box for parcel service delivery or something funny like that.
00:17:07
Speaker
My point is if we grew a little bit more, it would allow us to start doing a little bit better job of dedicating roles, which does make, which I actually do think makes stuff a little bit easier. And to some extent, the flexibility of time will, it's not that bad for us. And honestly, it'll probably have to change a little, not everybody
00:17:31
Speaker
For us to be efficient, not everybody can have flex hours to be totally open. We've got to have people here at certain times to do stuff. Yeah. I think it's actually kind of cool that you have four people that can fill orders. I used to do all the order filling here, and then Barry eventually took it over. And then now he's packaging and shipping and printing out labels for all the orders, and I haven't done it in months. And then he didn't come in yesterday because he had a thing to go to. And we had a couple orders, and I'm like,
00:18:01
Speaker
Should I ship him out or should I just wait till tomorrow? I don't know, maybe I'll just leave it for him till tomorrow and I feel kind of bad about that because normally we ship every day. So I waited till today and it'll be fine but it kind of got me thinking like if something happens then that has to be taken up and we don't really have like a rigid process yet. He's got his way and I had my way before.
00:18:26
Speaker
But you could still do it, right? I could, ultimately, yeah. Right. That's like, gosh, we need to have a third microphone that is a surrogate, Jay Pearson. He's not actually going to be on the podcast, but it's going to be as if he was every day. It goes back to his thing about major and minoring, right? Right. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:18:46
Speaker
And look, in that case, you made the I think I didn't ask my opinion, but I think you made the right call. You're not you're not somebody like Pearson where somebody orders a pallet. They may need it right away. And you you promote same day shipping because it's a consumable style good and they need it. You know, it sounds weird to say it, but a Grimsman knife purchaser isn't going to notice a one day delay in that sense. Right. No, but they're eager and, you know, antsy. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
00:19:14
Speaker
The urgency is different. It's from a personal standpoint, not from a business. Broadly speaking, it's good to be able and willing to step away from that and let the system take care of it. That's what it is. If you step in and break the system, that's not sustainable. Exactly.
Managing Digital Presence and Fatigue
00:19:36
Speaker
Yep. Yep. So on this note, I was talking with Adam Booth, who is asking me for some advice on or us actually on the podcast. How do we handle email, social media, communications, you know, all that stuff? I want to ask you the same thing. OK, first, I want to ask you, how do you deal with YouTube comments? Like, like, how do you what platform do you enter age and engage with them?
00:20:05
Speaker
Are you ready for this? Yeah. So I love what I do. I'm proud of what I built. I've never knowingly ever tried to misrepresent who I am or what I am or my capabilities. YouTube has become more toxic. It's moved towards the world of Reddit. And at the end of the day, guess what? I love what I do. And if you only had five or 10 years left or two years left to do this, I wouldn't spend my time
00:20:35
Speaker
someone who has simply satisfied the credentials of creating a YouTube account doesn't have the right to tear me down based on what we've built up. And the comments are unbelievable. So basically, I'm long winded way of saying I no longer read them in any way, shape or form. And coincidentally, I went on last night for some reason,
00:20:59
Speaker
I haven't looked at them in a month. And we did a Fusion Friday on a pretty cool 3D loft shape across this complex shape. And it was a good video. I will say that. It was a good video. There's things I could have done better, but that's always going to be the case. And one of the comments was a guy who's like, I'm pretty surprised to see this guy making a video when he doesn't even know how to use the software.
00:21:25
Speaker
And it's not that I can't take those in terms of being thick skinned, but they do annoy me. But it's also just like I'm not spending my time on you, dude. And that's kind of one reason why we've created the NYC CNC website and put that the forum is only behind the paywall is it's kind of a troll free zone. It's a chance for us to interact and not have to deal with people that are keyboard heroes. Brad Pitt doesn't go on to IMDB and respond to I'm not analogizing myself to what I mean, like the whole idea that I
00:21:55
Speaker
I don't know. That's my feelings for now. Interesting. I know over the past 60 episodes, both public and private on the podcast, you've gone back and forth like, oh, I checked them. I leave them alone. I don't check them. So it's good to hear where you stand right now. There is a positive level of commenting guys, you know, providing good suggestions and interacting back and forth. And I get it. I'm the same way. I haven't checked the YouTube comment in
00:22:23
Speaker
weeks if not a month. And I feel kind of bad about it because I know there's some good interaction that I could possibly have. And maybe I'll go back and binge through them all.
00:22:34
Speaker
Okay, but if you were to interact with the comments, how do you do it? Do you do it from a computer on the YouTube comments page where you see everything in order for all your videos? Or do you go to each video or do you do it from your phone for the app? What do you do? Good grief, not the phone. I couldn't contemplate typing that slowly. Exactly.
00:22:56
Speaker
So I do prefer it to go to the actual video page. That way I'm reading all the comments in the context of that video. Right. And you get a feel for it. Yeah, I'm sure of our video last night where we had some pretty major lathe deflection and actually somebody emailed me with a great suggestion, which I'm kicking myself. We made this little audio adapter, basically a plastic MRI audio adapter, and it's super thin and it had major lathe deflection. It looks so much worse on the camera.
00:23:26
Speaker
But where I made a controversial-ish statement is that it doesn't matter because the part worked great. And that is true. On the flip side, I do recognize our duty to make sure we put out good content that shares the right practices. And we talk a lot about in the video about, hey, we should have done positive rate tooling.
00:23:49
Speaker
I was just going to say, is that a product you're going to sell? Are you going to invest another five hours into making it perfect? No. You've got a functional prototype out of it, and you're done. Yeah. I'm torn though because, gosh, this guy's idea was stupidly brilliant, which was
00:24:05
Speaker
drill at first, which weakens it and then just shove the part over a mandrel that's shaped to the drill. It's a step drill like that would have been easy. And then now you've got secure rigid, like that would have been, that's one of those videos where if I watched it, I would walk away and say,
00:24:21
Speaker
I feel better off. I'm smarter because of that. And that's what I want people to who take the time to watch our videos to feel not that we just chuck something up and hit go and then we'll talk. So there's some fair points to the criticism there. But look, it's representative of who we are. I didn't actually make the part. That's not an excuse. But somebody else in the shop made it. And so guess what? We're all learning there. Anyway.
00:24:49
Speaker
Back on to communications stuff. Yeah, I would do it from the video page. What do you do? How do you do it? I go back and forth. I use the app sometimes, but I feel like it's not good at all because it's chronological. So the YouTube Studio, Creator Studio app. So it'll listen all the comments for all your videos as they happen.
00:25:11
Speaker
Which, you know, I've got three plus hundred videos and there's a lot of comments. Not so much on older videos, but they happen and they trickle in. But if I comment to somebody and then they reply, their reply is now hidden way down the chronological radius. A reply needs to go to the top.
00:25:28
Speaker
so that I see it again. So to interact on the YouTube platform, it's terrible when you have so many videos, because I don't see replies. The other way is to use the email service. Like in Gmail, you get comments emailed to you. And I don't do that, though, because there's too many. Here's my other take. And it's kind of one of those funny things where I think everybody's feeling it, but nobody wants to say it.
00:25:53
Speaker
I've had the pleasure of having some pretty good conversations with some other YouTube guys that are at our level or even above. Right. And everyone's sick of it. Everyone is sick of it. Heck, even some of our friends are posting this stuff. Well, I'll just say like Adam and Stan have both posted stuff on Facebook showing the level of trolling and ridiculousness of it. So I will speculate that this is going to change in the next year. I think people are getting fed up about it.
00:26:23
Speaker
and I enjoy what I'm doing and I don't care if somebody, it's kind of like,
00:26:29
Speaker
I was talking with a content creator about it and he was upset and I was like, look, you know, we were driving down the street. I was like, if that guy in that car across there thought you were super, super ugly, would you care? He's like, well, no. I'm like, yeah, so who cares? Like, you know, I don't even want, I'm not even dealing with this. Because it's like somebody walking into your house and telling you that you're ugly. You know, YouTube is, YouTube is your house. Your video is your house, right? So it's like, yeah, but it's, it makes it personal when,
00:26:57
Speaker
You know, when someone steps into your house or onto your video and you're like, no, this is my video. You can't say that here, but they can because it's a public world and whatever. So what the the in general communications, two of the things I do that have that I've done that are different, that are I think maybe of interest. One is that I'm trying to massively move away from the Gmail star system, which I've used for 10 plus years.
00:27:26
Speaker
And the star system is great because it does create that obligation to follow back up on it. But, um, it's like we talked about last week, I'm trying to quit to do lists. I'm trying to quit living in the future by delaying, like, you know, to me, like if I need to reply to something, it gets replied to or in dealt with. Um, so that just that attitude of.
00:27:48
Speaker
not sitting on a start email for six days because I'm like, I'm not sure what I want to say, blah, blah, blah. The other thing I do that's super different is we have an NYC page on this. If you just Google how we film, this will come up, but we use Screencast-O-Matic to do quick audio responses.
00:28:09
Speaker
Okay, sometimes the question is too much for I don't have the time or it doesn't deserve like a full blown response. But I really try to answer a lot of people. So like, we get a student or a retired vet or somebody who's like, Hey, I really, really want to know if you think I should do this.
00:28:25
Speaker
you would be amazed at how much information you can convey in 90 seconds of talking. I don't want to type that out. So a lot of times what I'll do is give a verbal response and send that link to them. And usually they're almost always incredibly appreciative because good grief, that's great. And that's a real
00:28:45
Speaker
It's a win all around, exactly. Yeah, I've heard Paul Akers does the same thing, or he'll send a video reply. But I'm like, sending a video, you got to upload it. And that's like, that's not good. But audio would be nice and quick, small file size. Do you find that you can convey your points cleanly in an audio? Because when you write an email, you're like, duh, duh, duh, duh. And then you think for a little bit, and then you backspace, and then you do, duh, duh, duh.
00:29:08
Speaker
I feel like if I did an audio, it wouldn't be smooth. I'd be like, um, well, you know, I don't know. No, yes, it would. It would be smooth. All right. It's just like our puck. It's like when you're talking to somebody on the phone, basically, right?
00:29:22
Speaker
Right. But ultimately, I was laughing because I was explaining to somebody, sorry, I keep bringing this up, but why we created the NYC CNC website. And I was like, part of the reason was to quit answering emails. So when somebody asks me a question, if it's super specific, I'll try to either answer it or say, look, that's not something we can help with, or I'll create a page on the NYC CNC website that answers that question for that person and everybody. It's like your best FAQ ever.
00:29:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Okay. Instagram. How do you tackle Instagram?
00:29:58
Speaker
Oh, Instagram is actually still fun for me. It's actually totally troll free and it's a sense of community. But I don't know, it's just fun. I don't think of that as a job. Sorry. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like it is work to keep up with, not keep up with everybody else, but keep up with the comments and make sure you get back to people when they need it and make sure you don't miss stuff. So I try to stay up to date with Instagram as far as
00:30:27
Speaker
commenting on my posts, not with what everybody else is posting. I tend to miss a lot of stuff, actually. And then I go to your page, and I'm like, oh, I never saw that, or I never saw that. Oh, I guess I missed those. Well, they've actually just announced they're rejiggering, again, their algorithm, because it's not always, it's quite frustrating. It's not always the case that you see everything in your feed, or however, which whatever. It used to be that it was just literally a push feed of all your followers in chronological order.
00:30:56
Speaker
which was nice. But even still, you might have too many people you're following that you can't keep up with them all the time. So I haven't been investing. I consider Instagram browsing as my getaway time, my personal time. So I'll do it or not do it depending on the situation. But as far as
00:31:17
Speaker
answering people's questions, commenting. When people tag me in a picture, I like to be able to see that and give it a like or a comment back or something like that because it's really important to do that. And actually just last night had like a really great back and forth conversation. One of our big fans and YouTube reviewers, Nick Shabazz, puts out these hilarious
00:31:36
Speaker
videos about knife reviews and all that stuff. And he's got a nice big following. And yeah, we had a lot of back and forth comments last night. And it was it was really cool. And some other people got in and they're like, Oh, my two favorite people on the internet, John and Nick are like going back and forth in my feed. This is awesome. Yeah, that's that's awesome. That's fun. Yeah.
00:31:57
Speaker
I've been thinking about this a lot. You and I are about the same age. We've lived through two bubbles. We were a bit young for the true tech bubble back in 2000, but we certainly lived through whatever they call it, the financial crisis, which was now 10 years ago. If you look at
00:32:13
Speaker
general economic cyclicality across the U.S. and even other, you know, first world countries. We've had a long, good run. And I think I've always intellectually been fascinated by, well, when the next bubble breaks, everyone's going to say that it was so obvious. But I'll tell you, it's not always obvious.
00:32:33
Speaker
And so my sort of thought is this is going to be called the social media bubble. And you and I are living in it, which is that even I, if I don't want to admit it, have been very consumed by the need to create content and engage in it. And here's the funny thing. YouTube doesn't pay the bills. YouTube does not come close to justifying the input that we give to it. Now, it's been phenomenal for us because I love it and it's sharing it. And the reality is we built our business off of the derivative of that. That's the reason.
00:33:04
Speaker
right so I'm not don't get me wrong I'm and you know I think everyone forgets that YouTube costs a lot of money on the Google side of thing as well but it has this kind of feeling now of unsustainability
Social Media Trends and Engagement
00:33:14
Speaker
as you look at how toxic it's become and how manipulative some of its become and blah blah blah politics stuff but
00:33:21
Speaker
and Instagram and this obligation. And it's funny because everyone smiles about it. And I like it too. But then when you talk to all these people privately, we're all we're all sick of we're all sick of like I had a call with YouTube, my account manager. And it was a joke about people are stealing our we actually hired a law firm and took filed a legal notice on copyright violation. And YouTube YouTube was a joke at how poorly they handled it. And I told my account rep that and they
00:33:51
Speaker
but didn't have a good answer and I could go on. But it just feels like a little bit of a monster. Well, it is. I mean, it's gigantic and everybody's involved. And it's certainly grown, I wouldn't say out of control, but it's a huge beast to manage. Right.
00:34:10
Speaker
Which goes back to just smile and enjoy it. Like you are an awesome knife maker and a machinist. And I love doing what I do. And we're just I'm just trying to ignore that stuff and just just live in the present. Just do what we do. You know, it's going to change. Things will change. That's OK. Yeah. And I mean, social media is there for us to consume, not for it to be consumed by us or you know what I'm trying to say? I don't know.
00:34:36
Speaker
That was the best Michael Scott butchering. You nailed that, though, the other day. Yeah. I don't know. I forget. It's for us to consume that, for it to consume us. There you go. But you said it the best a minute ago, which is the same point we gave in that, when we gave that talk on social media in modern manufacturing. Social media is social. If somebody is going to engage you, generally, you should engage them back. You should interact.
00:35:06
Speaker
Um, which is, so yeah, we definitely try to, um, say hi to folks. So like when people repost the business of machining or saunters, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, absolutely pop in and say thanks or whatever. Even just to see that you've noticed it, you know, give them a little win for the day kind of thing. Um, cause it's important and that's, that's what builds a good community. I mean, both of our businesses are built on community. We're not just big business, lowly little customer.
00:35:32
Speaker
and no interaction. We want the interaction. We want people to admire the business for what it is. I don't know. We met a guy who really saw a dude in Australia named Jeremy, who's a machinist and just had a good time catching up. He actually gave us a ride back to the hotel. And I followed him on Instagram. And I was just scrolling through his feed, looking at some. He's got these Okuma horizontals at work.
00:35:57
Speaker
I scrolled to like, I don't know, 20, 30 photos deep. And there's a tag that said, you know, John Saunders and John Grimsmough, blah, blah, blah, huge influential. Can't thank them enough. Fat chance they'll ever see this post in the bottom. And it was, you know, six months old. And then in the comments, I just wrote fat chance, huh? Question mark. And like, it was awesome. Right. Especially when you can see someone so old and like there's no way you would have found it under normal circumstances. Right. Right. But you did.
00:36:26
Speaker
That's awesome. Cool. Nice. What's going on today? Today. Today is knife number 1000 day. Oh, I saw your Instagram post on 999 and one thousand one. That was my most liked post ever.
00:36:45
Speaker
interesting. Yeah, that was really cool. I got over 2000 likes on that, which I've never done. Holy cow. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah. So that was cool. Yeah, so we have been non stop crushing it on knife production, holding our standard
Current Projects and Future Plans
00:37:02
Speaker
every single day, run in the mill, eight to 14 hours a day, making good parts, and we are way ahead of Eric. We're like 20 plus knives ahead of where he's at right now, which is good, but it's bad because if there's any worn end mills or defects or little things, he needs the feedback to give us back, but he's like a week away now.
00:37:27
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. Think about that loop. Bad. And that's where the lean principles of just in time and making what he needs, he's our customer, make just what the customer needs. That would work really well for us. So we're going to transition to that.
00:37:47
Speaker
I feel awkward, but we're going to not produce regular knives today. I'm going to turn off the production schedule so that I can focus on number 1000, so I can focus on a couple other tiny little projects that I need the mill for. Why is that awkward? Because we've been going so good. I just want to keep going.
00:38:08
Speaker
But at the risk of feeding the beast, John, you've earned it. Yeah, exactly. So we've proven that we can hold the schedule, which is good. And there's still improvements and efficiencies to be made on the machining side that we'll get to eventually. But now is the time to work on them.
00:38:24
Speaker
now that we're ahead, we're good. So yeah, I have these mother of pearl pieces of material that I've had for a couple of years and it's like, yeah, let's incorporate them into number 1000. I was looking at it under the microscope and it's delicate stuff. Like it looks like it doesn't. I was just going to say, have fun with the speeds of these and that stuff. I know. And the only reason- Is it real? Yeah.
00:38:49
Speaker
So what is that? Sorry, that's a dumb question. What is mother of pearl? Really? It's this pearlescent. No, no, no, I know what it is. Like, I've got a I've got a knife handle for my grandfather, actually. But like, is it is it synthetic or is it an ocean creature or? I feel like it's an ocean creature, like an oyster, the inside of an oyster that has been shaved into square chunks. OK. And we watch some YouTube videos like how they do it.
00:39:15
Speaker
animal veneer. Exactly, right? And I looked at it under the microscope and it's just got, it's millions of layers, not that many, but of like slate, you know, just like crazy, just like layers. And as we cut into it, I'm worried it's just going to all fall apart. But the only research I can find online is like, oh, just use woodworking tools and don't go that hard. Not like real CNC stuff, but
00:39:40
Speaker
I'm guessing that you know this because you're this guy, you're a knife maker and you're a machinist. But the first thing I do with a mystery metal is I just take a sharp knife on the corner and I just see, can I cut? Can I make a chip? Can I shear this or cut this material? And that tells me a lot. Is it going to crack or chip or flake or is it going to actually form a little chip? Interesting. I've heard you say that before, but I don't actually do that. But it's a really good place. Yeah. So every day I carry a knife with me, it's called a Norseman. And I use that. Never heard of it.
00:40:09
Speaker
Never heard of it. Yeah, it needs sharpened. Yeah. I have I have oftentimes actually deburred things with my knife like metal. When I say it needs sharpened, that's my passive aggressive way of saying I really want you and Aaron and Eric to make that video. Yes, I was just thinking about that this morning. Can I interrupt you? Yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
I actually have to run because I am taking my son to the dentist. Sorry. Nice. Yeah, it's actually super fun. Parenting is awesome. The kids are great. I've got to set up for Wednesday widget. The laser has been one of the best things we've ever bought in our life. You'll see. I'll throw the photo up on Insta later today.
00:40:52
Speaker
making jigs, templates, layouts, everything is just phenomenal. So we're making a casting mold for a customer on the Torvakte, which is super cool. And then we are making fixture plates, like they're going great. So that's what I meant, started in the beginning, is now it's like, okay, putting a hold on everything,
00:41:13
Speaker
Let's take the time now because otherwise you'll never do it to really build out those processes, the systems, like, you know, because it's so easy to ignore that because we're making it happen. But no, you've got to be willing to say, OK, I like where we're at. Now let's go rework that process. Yep. Yep. You figured out all the bugs for now. So you can. Right. Exactly. Sounds great. Dude, crush it. I'll see you next week. Will do. All right. Take care, bud. Bye.