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#373 Great, good, and important companies
4k Plays6 months ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo pulling late nights to get his new knife done for Blade Show
- Purchases that are important or not.
- How to lead others and push them
- Great, good, and important companies
- Does anybody actually use PVA support?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Health Update
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning and welcome back to the business of machining, episode 373. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And sorry, I was gone last week. I was just sick. Didn't want to do the podcast. Felt like crap. That's all there is. You OK? You good now? Doing good now. Still got a bit of a cough. If you hear it in my voice, it maybe sounds a bit more sultry than normal. That's all that is.
Late Nights and Social Media Presence
00:00:31
Speaker
Yeah, this is the podcast where we talk about our manufacturing journey and
00:00:36
Speaker
all the incredibly late nights I've been spending lately. I was just going to say it's funny because whether it's looking at when you're posting on Instagram or we just WhatsApp chat with a group of us there all over different time zones across, frankly, US and Europe. And then hearing from you at like some 2, 3, 4 AM shenanigans. So I'm all yours. What's going on?
Blade Show Preparations and Pressure
00:01:01
Speaker
I mean, we're leaving for Blade Show tomorrow.
00:01:04
Speaker
Okay. And the pressure is real. And I've been, I mean, I worked all through being sick, probably shouldn't have might have delayed the, you know, recovery a little bit. Yeah, just trying to get this new knife, the integral done to bring the blade show. We're working on nine of them. One for me, one for Eric, and then seven to sell at the show. And holy cow, John, John.
00:01:34
Speaker
John, but it's a lot of work. Sure. And much of it is on my
Role in Prototyping and Team Dynamics
00:01:43
Speaker
plate. I mean, the rest of the team has helped out tremendously where they can, but because I'm in full prototyping mode, you know, machining parts on the Kern, um, testing things on the Wilhelmin, making production clips on the Wilhelmin kind of thing. This is kind of where I'm at right now is figuring it all out as much as I can. And the rest of the team has figured out some things too.
00:02:04
Speaker
Um, and then once the dust settles, we get back, then I can start to, you know, distribute a production process to, to the rest of the team. They kind of can take it from there. So this is definitely my heavy zone of like maximum effort, you know, a hundred percent John involvement. Um, and it's, it's a lot like I'm traditionally terrible at, at, um, estimating how long something's going to take.
00:02:32
Speaker
And I know, we know this, we know this, I'm in the thick of it right now. And even knowing this, I'm still way off. But we know that we know that we know this. Exactly. So I was like, I was thinking last night, I'm like, I'm not surprised by this, but wow. But there's lots of there's awesome stuff talking about here. Nine, nine, Sean, I'm thinking like three. No, we're uh, yeah, we're doing good. And what was it?
00:03:00
Speaker
I forget what it was that defined what the nine was. I think we surfaced ground nine blades or something. At some point there were nine parts available to me and I was like, all right, that's the number. It's five times the original number that we discuss of three. Exactly.
Precision in Machining Parts
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, so it's going good. It's been a lot the past two weeks. I mean, so many good things. They all blend together. Yeah.
00:03:30
Speaker
I've posted little Instagram things here and there, but it's really fun, especially with the equipment that we have, which is repeatable and tool life is pretty good. Even though some of these parts like the handle takes an hour, 15 to machine, but each tool is only like 10 seconds of use or 10 minutes for some tools. It's not like you're expiring a tool making one handle. I was able to make.
00:03:58
Speaker
10 handles in a row. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and the tools didn't, you know, some of them saw two minutes of life. Like, yes, I wasn't too worried about them. Um, a couple of the tools I was really paying attention to because some of the features I use this custom, um, key seat cutter that I had Harvey tool make that goes in through the side of the pivot hole on one side and cuts out where the bearing sits. Um, so you're literally in a hole around the outside and then back out the hole.
00:04:28
Speaker
without no lead in, no lead out, like lead to center every time and then spiral it. And the depth of that is fairly critical, I noticed. Um, and then you flip the handle over to the other side. So the, the combined width of that inside pocket where it's basically taken up by the blade and then a bearing on each side, that stack up thickness. This is the meat in the sandwich, right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Where the salami goes.
00:04:57
Speaker
If the blade is the salami, then the two bearings are your mayo on both sides. Yeah, right.
Assembly Challenges and Measurements
00:05:03
Speaker
And the thickness there is probably pretty critical to a thou. So what I did is I put a bearing in each side of the handle and then a gauge block slide in between. So I can see if it's 125, 126, 127.
00:05:18
Speaker
and I started to see a bit of drift. So then I put together a knife with a 127 width and I could feel the two ears of the handle as you're tightening the pivot, they bend in to tighten and then they're not parallel anymore and a 2000 width difference. Like you really feel it, it's not as smooth. Whereas when it's bang on 125, then your 125 blade goes in there and everything snugs up good. So I was like, okay, that one's gonna be a little annoying to hold.
00:05:48
Speaker
And once I dialed in the first two, then the rest, like the other eight, I didn't change it. I just ran it and they all come out about one, two, six, which is fine. And it's like, you're developing what the range is here. I don't even know, you know.
00:06:03
Speaker
I have so many questions. When you tighten, what do you call the screw, the pivot screw? Pivot screw, yep. When you tighten that, you obviously could or will collapse the integral blade pocket. You're pushing the, you're crushing the salami inside the sandwich. But does that screw have a stop such that you can't over-tighten it? No.
00:06:26
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a feel thing. And there's no torque. It's basically like for our other knives, Norseman, Rask, whatever. We basically go till it contacts. You kind of feel it touching. That's about as tight as you need. You don't need to go much tighter. You don't need to go too loose. Otherwise, you get blade play if it's too loose. But a little bit of Loctite and you just kind of go till the screw kind of makes contact, maybe a hair more. And then that's the right tightness. You know, it's a feel thing for sure.
00:06:55
Speaker
And it doesn't back out? Not with a Loctite, no. Oh, sorry. You said Loctite. Got it. Okay. Yes. So it's not like the screw is creating stretch, torque, whatever. Right. Right. Because any more and you're, um, you're digging the bearings into the handle and into the blade. And, uh, as Renzetti would call it, um, Hersey and stress points or something like that, like the, the super hard ceramic ball is literally digging into the somewhat softer metal.
00:07:24
Speaker
And which is fine to a point, but there's a yield point where if you tighten too much, they're going to dent the titanium first and then the blade. And then you get all
Bearing Assembly Process
00:07:34
Speaker
these bumps in the blade. So that's no fun either. So what we do is we actually, as we assemble every knife, we slowly tighten the pivot, rotate the blade through its whole revolution or more if we can, and then tighten a little bit more. And then we call that rolling in the bearings.
00:07:52
Speaker
for the production knives, the guys will take out the stop pins and put a scrap blade in there and literally flop the blade back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and then tighten it more and flop, flop, flop, flop, flop, flop, flop. And that literally wears a race of bearing contact. Yeah, sure. Groove into the into the handle specifically because tie is softer. So for this knife, the same thing, but more delicate because you just
00:08:19
Speaker
you just got to be careful with denting both sides, the handle at the same time. And oh, okay, maybe it's no different. But it's not the kind of thing where you can flop it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, like they do on the other knives. So we just kind of sounds like a good little Arduino clear path. You know, breaking rig. It's not an idea. I fully endorse that as a DIY project. Yeah.
00:08:46
Speaker
actually the cool, sorry, off topic, but this reminds me of the strike mark days when we did build an Arduino thing that would automatically knock down and reset the target and count it. And that was slow enough to where you could just have it knock it down with a motor and then the target itself would reset. But for your application, the whole beauty of like, have you ever seen that little pamphlet booklet, like a pocket Bible that's the hundred genius mechanical devices or whatever?
00:09:11
Speaker
I don't know. But like a ClearPath motor, or ClearPath motor, any motor, it could be a DC motor that's built with a, like a, I don't know the engineering term, but like a, um, the way a locomotive train track works where you convert rotary motion into this, this motion that could cause the blade to cycle in and out with the motor always rotating the same way. And then you could be 3D printed, like could be fun. You don't even need Arduino, just. Yeah. Clamp the blade in place and let it go. Yeah.
00:09:42
Speaker
I kind of like that. When you held up the stack of integral, have you released the name yet? No. Okay. Tomorrow, Play Show. Yesterday, you mean. So you could tell me because it's yesterday. Yeah.
00:09:58
Speaker
Um, when you held up the stack of blade handles that I believe came off the Kern on Instagram, it looked, do you know what it looked like? I got so many DMS that it looked like I made them all together as one hilarious. I'm like, Oh my God, this guy's office rocker. And then I realized that they
Machining Innovations and Challenges
00:10:16
Speaker
were, I'm like, that's actually genius. And I'm like, no, there's no way he did that. And then I saw that they were all. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's funny.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah. A lot of the, uh, the, the machine is out there. They're like, I wait, wait, no. Oh, you got me. And then the clip dude, you did it all. You get the clip. The clip is done. Um, the clip turned out really good, like impressively good. Um, I'm still kind of surprised that it was able to pull it off with no vice, no support. Um, and you know, eventually I'll probably integrate the vice, um, to be able to auto load it and drop it into the thing and whatever. But.
00:10:52
Speaker
because right now it's just one at a time and then I pull the bar out so much. But yeah, it's really fun to be able to use the remaining stock as your support. And then strategically figure out how to get as much rigidity until the very end as possible and then how to get rid of that rigidity at the end without losing your part or, you know, it was cool. Don't forget, you could pull the part out.
00:11:21
Speaker
assume that clips two inches, you could pull it out under half an inch or one inch, do a bunch of the work on the tip, and then go in with the jaw or a stopper and pull it out even more. That's a good point. Yeah, and I used a 20,000 slitting saw, 20,000 thick, half inch diameter carbide slitting saw, I had to make an arbor for it.
00:11:49
Speaker
And not only like the, that's the kind of tool that has to go into the cut and come clear out of the cut before it retracts up in Z or else you're going to smash it. And when it does two passes or two separate things, it does one from the outside of the bar, you know, into the front of it. And then there's a channel that I cut out. So it's like going into this little nested pocket. Oh, interesting. And my lead in lead outs were tight, like too tight. And the first time I ran it.
00:12:19
Speaker
The tool goes in, it comes out, and it doesn't retract away from the part enough, so then it retracted out and it lost three teeth. I was like, dang it, no. I looked at it as missing three out of 14 teeth or whatever, and I'm like, I have one more, but you know what? I'm still prototyping. Let's just keep running it. It doesn't care. I've never used little slitting cells before, and I can't believe that it doesn't care.
00:12:44
Speaker
We have a Sandvik 327, which is a modular, it's more like a woodruff cutter than it is a saw, but it's the same, you get the same thing. And it only has, we actually use a bunch of these now. This was the largest diameter one we have, which is probably just under inch and a half, maybe like 30 millimeters. And it has four teeth. And the first time I ran it, this is months ago, similar problem. Like I goofed.
00:13:12
Speaker
I think I didn't even go on the retract. I think I goofed on how it clicked part of the fixture and it knocked one of the teeth off. But these are four teeth on a one and a half inch cutter. So they kind of look like individual fingers coming out. Unlike a saw blade that just looks like little teeth at the very tip of the end of it. So it knocked one of them off. I'm like, well, that's toast for $100 plus.
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah. And I was like, well, I'm still prototyping. I'm just making test parts. Like just don't worry about it. And it's still in the machine to this day, making incredibly good. It takes a 1000 pass on a critical data. Right. It's kind of funny. Yeah, yeah, who cares. But I know in Willamons, some people use a bigger slitting size, their part off tool or as their whatever. I've never done that. But now that I've actually used it, I'm like,
00:13:59
Speaker
It cuts clean. It cuts silent. It's beautiful. It's faster than I thought it would be, too. It's just like zip, zip, zip. Is it a Zagaro? No, the wheel, it's a Maritool, I think. Oh, yeah. They're carbide saws? Awesome. Yeah. It's just one of those flat saws, right?
00:14:16
Speaker
So that's been on my mind, happy to talk about this again, or on today's call, but tooling up the UMC 350 as a five axis R&D prototype machine.
Tooling and Cost Considerations
00:14:25
Speaker
I want to have a saw in there for all these patients. And I'm not sure, to be honest, I pulled up the Mari tool site because we have
00:14:33
Speaker
We have one of the arbors. I don't know why we don't seem to have the saw blades. I must have. I don't know what I did with them, but I can't find them. So I was like, I'll just buy another one. I'm like, Oh man, 250 bucks. Like they're not cheap. Um, so I kind of put that on hold because I don't.
00:14:50
Speaker
you know, cash growth, these cash for breakfast. I don't need to solve for any of the parts that I have on my short-term radar for that machine. So I'm like, let me just figure out, you know, cause the diameter matters of what are you trying to do? Most of the time we're going to be trying to do is, is that fifth side of a part with a relatively clean backside. But, um, bigger is probably better because it gives you obviously more ability to thickness the, the wide depth of the part on the flip side. That's also more money. And, um, the trick is the half inch diameter ones are only about 20 bucks.
00:15:20
Speaker
Wait, serious? I think so. They're stupid cheap, maybe 40. Interesting. What arbor is it on? I made an arbor out of a three-eighths bar. Okay, so you only have like .12, no, 60 thou of? Yeah, something like that. Drill depth beyond the arbor. See, I need like an inch and a half of. If you really want to chop something off, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I know Dennis loves those mimetic saws.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, I was trying to think what he said. Yeah, so it was mimetic. And I've looked at them, they look awesome. It looks like many, many hundreds of dollars I don't need to spend right now. But for part off on even a three axis machine, he said, it's like, great. Yeah.
00:16:03
Speaker
Well, if I'm being honest, we're balancing. It's a theme that is not new to Saunders Machine Works or me, but it's also, I would say, more front and center than ever, which is ensuring that we're spending money in the right places where we are. Yeah, me too. Trying to invest without hesitation when it's something you need, but when it's not, stop. Just stop. And I think that's a reaction to just having gone through the purge.
00:16:30
Speaker
Um, you know, including the culmination of you guys coming down in that sale and that was great. Uh, so it's like at the last thing I want to do is be like, I need to solve it. Let me go spend $300 because that's justified. And then to be like, Oh, actually that wasn't really the blade diameter I wanted or the thickness I wanted or, you know, I don't use it for six months because ends up as a bunch of parts we're going to make without using it. So just similar, similar.
Investment Strategies
00:16:55
Speaker
I'm seeing more of those tools around the shop, you know, that I was all hot about and I haven't used in six months or more.
00:17:00
Speaker
And it's starting to sink in. It's like, cool your jets there, John. Do you really need that? Sometimes you do, for sure. But sometimes a great idea becomes something you don't... I think about that with my to-do list, too. Things written down that I like, oh, I got to get that done. And then it never happens. And then six months later, I see it on some old list.
00:17:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, I did want to do that. The world hasn't exploded. Interesting. Isn't that funny how that works? It is funny how that works. And I'm really starting to pay attention to that. So many things, I'm like, you know what, that is still a great idea. I still want that done. That's going to help us. But we haven't burned down because of it. It's not the end of the world. It would just add niceness to the life or to the work or whatever. But yeah, I definitely get all hot on ideas.
00:17:51
Speaker
and projects and upgrades and tools and things like that. And I've found a lot of times if they never happen and I kind of forget about them, then life goes on. And I think about, I've learned that buying something so that it's in my physical presence, like on my desk actually has no correlation to me doing it.
00:18:14
Speaker
If that makes sense. Interesting. Like if I wanted to, it's hard to pick on myself, but I actually don't have anything on my desk right now that's guilty of that. But like pick the saw, like if that's, oh, I'm so hot on this, I want this idea. Buying it and putting it on my desk doesn't really change my likelihood of tackling that project. And so it's kind of goes back to like a days off in the shop idea or frankly the same struggle you and I both have had about like, we're not doing a good enough job.
00:18:44
Speaker
not spreading ourselves too thin. I'll pick on you. If you want to buy a new acid filter for $6 or $600, that's fine. But if it comes, are you going to spend three hours, eight hours uninterrupted to actually evaluate it, review it, implement it, teach people on it?
00:19:07
Speaker
dig the knife deeper why don't you it's exactly what happened because I did I buy this for hundreds of dollars and all this stuff and I haven't spent the time to implement it to
00:19:18
Speaker
teacher to teach arrest the guys like it's still a great idea still gonna happen one day but I got it out of my system you know that that I bought it that's not good like this I know I agree and I'm not in a position to tell you what to do like I'm not but if we had if you were sitting down with the board of directors or an advisor or mentor or a bank like we're doing the budget kind of thing some point somebody could be like this is what leads to somebody being like you are
Delegation for Business Efficiency
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Did you really need to do that? Yeah. But more importantly, instead of just commiserating on our own flaws, I've started to realize you made a comment
00:20:01
Speaker
you made a comment earlier in this call that I would have agreed with and I now disagree with. So the idea of we're bringing a new process online, we're bringing a new part online, and it makes sense for you or me to help lead that effort, get it fixture tooled up, document the drawings, and then hand it off. I still find that to be,
00:20:27
Speaker
a logical path for a variety of reasons that include me wanting to be involved and that include me thinking whether I want to admit it or not that I'm going to do a great job because I care, I own the company, blah, blah, blah. I flipped on that to realize
00:20:44
Speaker
that if we're going to make these, there's some of the leaps to like the next level are not going to be comfortable. They're going to be awkward. And the better way to do it is to realize if we want a new, I'll take the example, we're doing our fixture palettes are getting moved off the horizontal onto the EF2. I am not involved in that.
00:21:03
Speaker
Alex designed the fixture. I did sit down and participate as a reactionary member to the fixture review. Comment on a few things. He then edited it and he got with Grant. Grant looked at how we were going to make it. Then somebody else set up the puck jucks, somebody set up the initial fixturing part of it. And I
00:21:27
Speaker
We did another thing yesterday, earlier this week, where we needed to have something with our blog story, wood crate redesign. And I totally like, oh, it's not worth my time to have somebody else do it. No, I shot a two minute video, send it over to somebody else. It's like, you take the lead on this. I'm here. Ask me if you have questions. Otherwise XYZ person can get us this material. XYZ person should be able to bid on doing the work for us. We could do it, but like we need to stop doing this. It ends up.
00:21:51
Speaker
that the, I'm keeping this anonymous, but the person that's gonna do XYZ work, I'm thinking like, okay, just spend three, four, $500 on this because we've got enough going on right here. They came back and they're like, yeah, I'll do all that for a hundred bucks.
00:22:05
Speaker
John, what a wonderful eye-opening experience. So we need to push each other. By the way, everybody listening should put this on you. This is a private part of it. You gotta do more of that, John. Yep. And I honestly, I have been doing more and more of that than I ever have in the past. And it's because of that freedom that I'm able to dive in so deep now.
00:22:32
Speaker
like the last two, three weeks I've had, let's call it zero responsibilities in the company other than doing this.
00:22:41
Speaker
But what I'm saying is that even more. Yeah, of course. Look, this is a major product of them. I'm not trying to. This might be the exception, except the problem is that we keep making exceptions.
Sustainability in Work Methods
00:22:51
Speaker
Like tell somebody else design. This is why I want you come up with a couple of fixture ideas. Let's see them review them. Then you make those fixtures. Even throughout this process, there's been so many sub projects and so many tasks that I have delegated a lot of stuff within people's skill sets.
00:23:09
Speaker
for example, like heat treat, like, I need these part, I need this material figured out new heat treat recipe, go. I don't want to think about it, just and then I come back, it's too soft to figure it out. Or, you know, Jeff's been designing and prototyping and making production of some of the turn parts without me like, is awesome. Like, yeah, that's awesome. I need this part done. And he comes back tomorrow. And he's like, how's this? I'm like, wait, you didn't ask any questions. Like, great.
00:23:37
Speaker
It's oh, holy cow. Like, yes. Yeah. So you're absolutely right. And I'm getting a taste of it and I want more of it. And, uh, the big thing that's kind of hard for me to swallow, even talk about is what I've been doing lately is completely not sustainable and completely not scalable. Oh, well, the amount of like, I've been working double shifts almost every day for, you know, go home for dinner, hang out with the kids, take them out.
00:24:07
Speaker
you know, go for a bike ride, eat dinner, clean up the kitchen, 10 o'clock, back to work for as long as I'm able to stay, you know, a lot of three a.m., some seven a.m. It's not, I can't do this. Like, obviously, there's a deadline. I'm trying to get it done. But that is not the way to grow the business and to release new products and things like that. I don't want to do that. That's not, that's not who I want to be. I love it. But I'm, I don't know.
00:24:36
Speaker
So the way to grow Grimsman, I've seen want to double our revenue or something like that. Like it's not me working twice as hard. Yes. So I'm, I'm, you know, wading through that river of, um, well get it done. You got a deadline and nobody's going to come save you right now, but looking forward, what's, how does this look different? Because I want to release new products and I have a million ideas and.
00:25:02
Speaker
I do not have a million me's to get it done. We've got a great team of people, but to grow a lot more, we will need more. Will you? I don't know. I don't know. Again, this is maybe a better off for truly a private conversation, but I've told you this, I think on the podcast, but a year ago, some arbitrary amount of time, I was like, okay.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's the same conversation you just had. Granted, I was not pulling double shifts like you do. I give you a lot of credit for that. I don't know if I deserve the credit. You look great for giving that you said you woke up at like, or went to bed three hours ago and woke up. Yeah, I got three hours of sleep last night. Got home at 6.30 and fell right asleep.
00:25:53
Speaker
It was kind of in that same vein of if you could go earn X just being a quote, unquote employee or a remote CAD program. Like there's all sorts of points of what the job is. The point is you could do that and your business and this isn't about you or me. It's just a generalization of where you're at as a small business.
00:26:13
Speaker
And if you're continuing to either not pay yourself or the business isn't offering a reasonable ROI to the stakeholders, blah, blah, blah, then at some point, I think somebody has to push the hard question of what are you doing and why are you doing it? If you love it and it is, like you said, sustainable, that's fine. But if it's not sustainable and it's not scalable to the extent that it needs to be to hit a profitability of whatever.
00:26:41
Speaker
I kind of had the whole, like, this is going to work or else, like, or else. It's just done. Like, to the point of me being like, if I was in your shoes, it's like, it's not a big deal. I mean, of course it's huge deal, but like, kind of like, okay, so curves and curves and eyes folds up shop and I go do something else. Like it's, it is what it is. Um, which of course that's not going to happen anymore. Great. But it forces you to realize. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
going back to like the whole, like, Al Wattmo doesn't write code. He, you know, John Crimson, John Saunders don't actually operate the machines that paved the roads. Yeah. But we do, but like, we do too much that. Yep, exactly. And how do we find the the sustainable, scalable growth to that, while still ticking our boxes and enjoying our lives and enjoying our work and, you know, getting what we want out of it, like,
00:27:31
Speaker
There is absolutely a selfish part of this business that brings me joy and happiness. Totally. I have a sense of pride and duty and responsibility to do my actual best here and to be a good influence and leader for my team and those around me and you and our fans and followers. I love that part of it and I want to grow that part of it. But how do I maximize my capability
00:28:00
Speaker
without draining every ounce of life out of me and possibly taking years off my life. If you really think about it, working too hard and working through being sick, because some of this is, I guess I'd be careful to not confuse two issues. One of it is,
00:28:22
Speaker
you respond well to deadlines in a bad way. If you worked with somebody, it can't be me because again, I'm not your boss, but if you'd worked with somebody four months ago, because you knew Bellagio was tomorrow, you knew that. You could have been more rigid and structured because at the risk of sounding like a turd, if you had spent less time on acid and more time on more sturd maybe- Three months ago, yeah. Yeah, right. Hindsight's my point.
00:28:46
Speaker
But the point is looking forward, how do you avoid that? Then go alone or with your kids up to the lake that I know you guys go to, grab a piece of paper or a saga journal and just how would the parts that were made and the work that happened over the past three months, what would have been the absolute dream scenario?
Vision for Sustainable Growth
00:29:09
Speaker
I know you're absolutely awesome in saying like, Hey, no, Jeff, maybe these parts of the sky did this heat treat on the, but the reality is you probably still did more than in your dream. And you don't have to show me or anybody else, but like, no, go look through that and then start thinking out, well, how does that happen? I'm glad you asked that and phrased it because that, that thought has definitely tickled my brain in the past month or two.
00:29:33
Speaker
But I think you probably spend more time phrasing it than I've spent fully thinking it through. What does that dream scenario look like? How do I accomplish what we just accomplished in the past three months, but in a sustainable daily, you know. Basically where you're the reviewer, not the doer. Like I would love to, I'm great at, don't know the right word for it. I don't want to say I'm great at direction, but I'm great at vision and having an idea and wanting to see it through.
00:30:04
Speaker
Because I have a lot of ideas and I have new product ideas and I have things, I want it to be done this way and I know that this will work and I know that this will sell and I know that, you know, things like that. And to be able to offload that to people who maybe have less of that and more drive, more ability to execute than I do, would be the win, right?
00:30:27
Speaker
be like, I got all the ideas. I just need all the people to get it done. Bingo. That's what you do. You find that is the dream and continue to foster that within our culture and to grow that as our culture is is what I want. There's, there's two points I'd love to bring up. One is just a regurgitation of somebody else's quote, come back to that. The second point is what I think will be tragic,
00:30:55
Speaker
and a real risk for both you and me is we'll look back on our careers and realize we didn't do a good enough job pushing other people to the most that they can do. You're right. Because I'm a little bit of a selfish person in a bad way where I just think about what can I do to help this company today? What can I do to days off in the shop or programming this or teaching this or learning this? But I don't do a good enough. I don't know.
00:31:24
Speaker
excusing myself or making excuses. That's one reason why I really look up to Al and want to continue to try to learn more from how he works because he, I think, this is totally me making this up. He thinks more about, okay, Joe Smith is going to do a great job at bringing this to market and Neil Jones is going to do a great job at this front-end code development.
00:31:49
Speaker
I mean, we're a smaller team with resources, then the comparables here. But nevertheless, I think about if we're bringing the puck chuck to market, we actually kind of did this. I haven't been involved and we've got the team and the people and equipment.
00:32:04
Speaker
Like for the, go right on your scenario for the integral. It's like, okay, I'm just going to quarterback it. I'm staying out of the weeds. Um, Joe is going to handle the Wilhelmin. Steve is going to handle the Kern. Um, Brian is going to handle the grinding, like whatever some of that I know you already have, but a lot of sure. Exactly. Because clearly the, you know, so many hours I've been spending lately proves that I don't have it all in place. I'm still the one doing it. And it's fine for now, but, um, no, you're absolutely right. And, uh,
00:32:35
Speaker
It's you're right. I'm not great at pushing, driving and growing those around me to their true potential, but that is where I want to be. And it is something I think about a lot is, um, you know, leading myself and those around me towards our true potential. And that's that phrase is something I say to myself quite a lot. And I want you to grow to be the person that does that, that, you know, fosters growth and encourages it and allows it. And like.
00:33:03
Speaker
I've built this, you've built this, we built a company that could allow people to grow and flourish in their careers. And if that's not happening for each individual, that's on you, that's on me. And the vehicle is here. We just got a asset. You know, it's like, you and I have both built incredible businesses. And if they're not flourishing, it's on us. If they're not
00:33:29
Speaker
you know, growing the people within it, like Paul Akers fast cap is his motto is I grow people. Yeah, right. And that's he's taken this to heart. He's older than us. And he's figured this out. And he's it's his job not to do, but to lead, to grow, to inspire, to watch these people flourish. And he's hired enough people to have enough experiences that he's seen it happen. And he's, you know, addicted to it now. And it's like, that's what I want.
00:33:58
Speaker
And I think we're, you know, we have a little taste of it and we're like, that'd be cool.
Operational Changes by Choice
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah. I just think it's, it will take, it's not a, um, it's not a transition. It's not a phasing thing. It's a abrupt, like that's what it was for me at least. I know you well enough to know it's frankly, like you're, I don't forgive me if this is rude. You're not going to do this. You're not going to get there because.
00:34:27
Speaker
because you need some other thing to make it happen. And to that point, like, for example, say if I got real sick, like, like, permanently or something. Yeah, sure, sure. That would be a moment. In a terrible way, yes. Like, if, if, if Grimmswood Eyes is going to continue, and we're going to keep making payroll, this is the line, this is, I'm in a wheelchair, I can't do this, like, whatever. Sure.
00:34:54
Speaker
That would be an example of a hard line. Yeah, totally. So how do I do it by choice, not by force? I don't know. Yeah. And I'm getting there, and I'm pasting it now, and I want more, which is fantastic. And I'm trying to do it without hiring. In my head, I'm like, dude, I could hire five people right now, and it'd be great. I'm trying to do it without doing that immediately. Sure.
00:35:21
Speaker
So that's the segue to my other quote. And this, did you end up watching the, sorry, you've been slammed, but they're the, I did watch the, I didn't watch the car bass one, but I did listen to the, I'll watch my one and his quote. I've actually seen other people use it since then. It's his strong convictions, loosely held. Yes. I even, I told that to Meg yesterday, my wife and, uh,
00:35:44
Speaker
Cause she was talking about something and she was like, yeah, being flexible, but, but confident, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, Al Wattmo, who she follows on Instagram and she knows Al a little bit. Um, and she loves his little family posts and farm and all that stuff. And I'm like, Al had this quote, I think you're going to love. And she paused and she thought about it and she goes, strong convictions, loosely held. Yes. That's exactly what it is. Cause you can be arrogant and confident and have your strong conviction, but be willing to change it and open-minded and tweak it. Like, yes, that's exactly, that's perfect.
00:36:15
Speaker
The other thing, watch it if you've got downtime, when you have downtime, is the formal ad interview with Karl Bass. And Karl reiterated something that he has said before, and I'll read it verbatim. When I first became CEO at Autodesk, people asked how I wanted to define Autodesk, and I often answered somewhat cryptically, great, good, and important.
00:36:46
Speaker
In my mind, great companies are defined first and foremost by their financial performance. Good companies are defined by their values and culture and how they treat their employees, their customers, and the communities in which they do business. And important companies make a real difference in the world. Oh, that's good. And I think you and I, for obvious reasons, don't talk a lot about what makes us great from a financial performance standpoint. And there's obvious reasons we don't necessarily share that publicly. Private companies, yeah. Yeah, but I do think it's
00:37:15
Speaker
I've had it because of what a different way I came into this business, having worked in different industry in the past.
00:37:24
Speaker
super wired toward never giving myself a hall pass for anything other than good financial performance. Cause it's kind of that same litmus test of like, then I should go do something else, John. Sure. Yeah. I'm not here to lose money. Yeah. And it's funny because money's a really funny thing. I'm a big believer that it doesn't make you happy and I don't, it's not by the measure by which I value just about anything on the flip side gives you a lot of options and it's a by-product that says you're going something right.
00:37:52
Speaker
And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be involved with that. So I know you've talked about this a little bit privately, but like I make sure that we're earning, I have some internal tests I look at to make sure that what we do here justifies a appropriate and real like realized return on the time and the investment full stop.
00:38:17
Speaker
What I like about it too, and frankly, this came from you and your acquaintance at the mic. You just shared it publicly. I think I probably got more out of it than you realized, but by saying, okay, as long as Sauner's MachineWorks earns
00:38:33
Speaker
X amount ROI on what we've got and all that, then that gives me a very good comforting hall pass to just plow every other penny back into the business without thinking, am I sustaining? Am I subsidizing something that's otherwise not sustainable? Am I not quote unquote taking some chips off the table, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's funny this being a private public podcast, because we don't talk about money that much, because obviously there's the privacy issues.
00:39:03
Speaker
Um, and in my, like you have a financial background. I don't, um, I've up until recent years, kind of money's that taboo thing. So yeah, you don't always talk about money. You don't really like, yeah, it's weird to want money and.
00:39:19
Speaker
I want to be successful, but it's greedy to want to be rich or whatever. But the past few years, I've wanted to talk more about money, especially with peers like you who are doing what I'm doing and Mike and other people. I'm finding myself opening up more in a good way. It hurts sometimes too because you hear the advice you don't want to hear.
00:39:43
Speaker
I get shut off really quickly when I have friends who they may be, some of them are probably true and honest. I think a lot, some of them are also frankly pulling my point, like making sure to be making out. But I'll hear about quickens. They're like, Oh, yeah, we're pulling in like
00:39:59
Speaker
making up a number 10,000 a day profit or 50,000 a month cash profit. I don't care. I don't know. You're claiming that you have this unicorn of a business that's just insanely profitable, but where's your price? I don't really care. That's not how I want to measure myself. I want to look at what we're doing. It makes sense.
00:40:19
Speaker
And I do think about this because, you know, Blade Show, we're leaving tomorrow.
Networking at Blade Show
00:40:24
Speaker
And what's really interesting about Blade Show, especially with us and even your involvement, like my mom asked, is John coming? And I was like, John's not really a knife guy. Like, yeah, he is. I did get an invite. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, what's really cool about how we've positioned ourselves and our company and me specifically is
00:40:44
Speaker
we are kind of the manufacturer's knife maker, because we talk so much about manufacturing and other knife makers are watching us and learning from us and you know, watching the story and love what we do and all that stuff. So like going to a show like blade show, which I haven't been to in five years. It's not just our customers that are there. It's like other manufacturers, other knife makers, other business owners of all different kinds. Like I know there will be podcast listeners,
00:41:10
Speaker
even just two of them that like will want to talk business, right? Which is super cool. But so I have to kind of get myself in that mode of like, I'm just not just talking about like, yeah, this is the new knife I made. People are going to ask like, they want to get into it about business, about money, about, you know, am I doing the right thing? Should I quit my job? Should I do this? Absolutely. You know exactly how it goes. And I love it. I think it's fantastic.
00:41:39
Speaker
But I am very scared to give advice. I can give perspective. That's that I can do. But, you know, anyway. But I think something I've admired from mentors is that the more successful and experienced you are,
00:41:54
Speaker
put you in a position where you are more qualified to offer advice, yet for some reason you're increasingly more hesitant. Yeah, exactly. I think I'm at the worst point in my life to give advice to a 20-year-old because it's so much further removed from it and I've lost appreciation for what that was like and I don't know the world belay the land these days. That's a good point.
00:42:15
Speaker
I think it's a bit awkward for me to say this out loud, but I am the success story. I'm the guy who had a tag and figured out and rolled it into this. Yup. And even us, our company is in a completely different environment than we were five years ago last time we went to the show. Yeah, right. We tripled our revenues. We've got current. We've got all this cool stuff. We're busy. We've got big staff. We're doing pretty good.
00:42:45
Speaker
So yeah, it'll be a great show. You talk, I'm picking on you for no reason or it means you, but you talk about revenue a lot. I don't care about revenue. I mean, it has to do with, well, that's a whole can of work. That's one of my good. I mean, there's revenue, there's profit, there's
00:43:08
Speaker
Is there a different number, like word that makes more sense to you that you care
Financial Performance and Business Validation
00:43:13
Speaker
about? Yeah. I mean, look, this is something that was kind of beaten into my, my, my grandfather more talking about like salaries and all that. Like I don't care what you earn. I care about you take home. What can you say? How does that, how does that, relative to your,
00:43:26
Speaker
own overhead, your personal overhead, your cost of living, because you can earn, you look at some numbers, it's like people that earn like $500,000 in New York City aren't saving a dime. That's a big difference than earn living in lower cost living bubble. Yeah, no, exactly.
00:43:42
Speaker
I don't care about revenue. I do care about revenue to be clear, but that's the biggest thing that keeps me up at night about my business is we don't do any marketing. We rely solely on some things like word of mouth and Google SEO. These are wonderful things that I think a lot of people would kill for and that's great. I don't mean to downplay the significance of that.
00:44:04
Speaker
Existential changes like Google losing to open AI for search, which seems crazy, but I grew up in the 90s. How many of us are using AOL keywords these days? I look for stuff. It's probably a little bit naive to think that Google will dominate in 20 years.
00:44:25
Speaker
And maybe Saunders will still be okay because we don't do paid ads, we don't do other stuff. But nevertheless, the punchline to this is I don't do anything to control our revenue, which is terrible. Like some days, and it's been a good ride and we're fine. I've kind of insulated against that in other ways, but I don't like that. But that's another current revenue. But really, I don't care about revenue because it's not cash flow and it's not a sign of
00:44:48
Speaker
what, how we handle, I mean, profit's the bad word because profit can be such a dirty word with how you look at non-recurrent stuff, how you look at depreciation. If you have significant machines financed, how do you think about ROA versus ROI? But these are things that I
00:45:11
Speaker
I'm very proud of how we've managed to put ourselves today on these things. If that makes sense, I'll leave it at that. It's wonderful. But I want you to be, you're way better at financing you. I've built that, I've grown it, that skill, that desire. I have no interest in being a finance guy, but I need to be able to run my company. I need to be able to understand what's going on. And I've worked with my accountants very closely and very bluntly to be like,
00:45:41
Speaker
Tell me the meat and potatoes, do the Warren Buffet, give me your whole business plan on one piece of paper and crayon. Explain it to me like I'm a four-year-old because I need to understand this. But yeah, I still have aspirations to understand it even deeper and use the right words here and there and know what I'm getting into before I get into it kind of thing.
00:46:05
Speaker
Yeah. Cause you're right. Revenue is, is a number, but it's not everything. Your expenses could be through the roof. Your salaries could be too high. You could be making no money and be making so many millions of dollars, but have no money, nothing to show for it, you know? Yeah. And, uh, and that's not fun. That's not the goal.
Travel Logistics for Blade Show
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was a good talk. That was a great talk. Good. Yeah. Uh, you drive or flying down?
00:46:34
Speaker
We're flying down. We drove down in 2012 and okay 18 hours. Yeah, right. So no we're flying down. Yeah, it's great. We're taking six of us We've got a biggest booth we've had two boots by 20 For the entire show I was like Eric you're in charge you're getting flights you're getting your baby rental car You're dealing with all the blade show booth prep banner all I don't want to think about it
00:47:01
Speaker
Yes, that's been awesome. And I just kind of put that line in the sand. I was like, guys, I got a knife to make. I'm not dealing with any of this. Just figure it out. And it was great. Awesome. I wanted to ask one question of you, but also our audience, which is,
00:47:22
Speaker
Does anybody actually use PVA, the Elmer's glue material, dissolvable support on bamboo or similar printers? I have a role, I know other people have a role. It seems like, it's kind of one of those things where everybody says it's really cool and nobody seems to use it. Sure. I could just go try it myself. So it's not like a big, I'm not nervous about it. I'm just more curious. Is it one of the things that lots of people are actually doing, but just not talking about? Am I just misreading the room? I agree with you, yeah.
00:47:50
Speaker
No, we bought that bamboo separation layer one, but it's not the dissolvable one. I didn't know bamboo had that. Good grief. I forget what it's called. It's like really expensive and it comes in a quarter roll.
00:48:03
Speaker
I don't know. It worked okay, but I think the mismatching material, PETG to PLA works better, it's cheaper, easier. I'll talk about that next week since we're quote unquote out of time, but I've been printing a bunch of stuff for Johnny Five. Cool. A lot of it's super complicated, including supports that it's very easy to break the part. Shout out to Rob Lockwood for the
00:48:31
Speaker
sharing the PETG as an interface layer, but that hasn't worked perfect on a lot of prints. Interesting. It's led to more failures or...
00:48:41
Speaker
It's not ideal to have, I guess this PVA wouldn't really solve this unless you printed the, well, it would still wouldn't solve this, but on parts that are, have a lot of surfacing to them, you could end up with 75 material changes on what otherwise would be a one or two hour print. So that's not great. I guess, could you print the whole, well, I don't want to keep rambling. I'm interested in learning better practices around that. Cool.
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah. Dude, have a good time. Take travels. Have a great time. Play show. Thank you. Yeah. Well, are you taking so people, some people will be able to potentially buy and take home with them the new knife? We will find out in the next few hours. Okay. That's fair enough. I am sleeping tonight. That is my hard line in the sand is I'm going to, I'm going home early tonight. So.
00:49:34
Speaker
Um, I just have a couple more stop-ins left to make and then help the guys, um, final assembly and last few things, but that's it. Like, yeah, we're hoping to bring seven to sell. Good. You should be proud. That's awesome. And then, I mean, as I said in the, my Instagram posts is like, the process is relatively there when we get back and dust settles and we take all the feedback and we make any tweaks, like it's going into production. So let's go.
00:50:03
Speaker
Good. Cool, mate. I'll see you next week. Sounds good. Take care. All right. Take care, everybody.