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Manufacturing Business Memory Lane
246 Plays5 years ago
Business of Machining has now reached it's 200th episode! That's 3.84 years of "private" conversations about manufacturing and growing small businesses.
A sincere thank you to the listeners out there--or as we've lovingly dubbed them, "parking lot circlers." In the past 4 years, this podcast has been downloaded over 1 million times!
TOPICS:
- The importance of authenticity
- Detailed trips down memory lane for both Grimsmo Knives and Saunders Machine Works.
- Mental Health & Tony Hseih
Recommended
Transcript
Celebrating 200 Episodes
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 200 my name is John Saunders and my name is John Grimsmo and 200 holy cow like for the past 200 weeks which according to math that's three point eight four years yeah Saunders and I have been getting together religiously every week and
00:00:23
Speaker
in the morning and just discussing all kinds of stuff. Tips, tricks, tactics, experiences and aptly the name of the show is all we talk about is business or machining and it works great.
00:00:42
Speaker
Correct. And it's not even by choice. It's just what we want to talk about. It's business and machining. And that's what we can benefit each other from. And then offline, we talk about family stuff or whatever. But yeah, I love it. And 200 episodes is crazy. So I looked up the stats. Now normally, John and I do not care about these stats. We don't look. We don't watch them. But there have been a million downloads to this podcast in the past four years.
00:01:12
Speaker
I don't even know how to contemplate that. Yeah. And I don't care how to quantify it. Is that a lot? I don't know. It sounds like a lot to me. That's fantastic. And you and I started this for us. We probably did it for six months at least. Just you and I getting together Friday mornings.
00:01:33
Speaker
We're like, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Let's help each other out. And I remember our boys, our kids would come on the video chat and say hi to each other. Remember that? Yeah. And yeah, Liv was always like, my friend, Will, William, he's got to say hi to him. And then we started recording, and the kids were used to it. So the first few episodes, I'm sure they'd come on and be like, hi. It's good times, man.
00:01:59
Speaker
It's an interesting bookmark too because, uh, and I'm digging deep here, you know, like you said, we had talked for a while. Um, and we should, we should figure out if we can, why
Origin Story: Meeting at Tormach
00:02:09
Speaker
did we start this? But you have a pre-recorded, I think I have an idea. Lockwood told us to.
00:02:14
Speaker
No, he told us to record it. Oh, sorry. Before that? Yeah. Well, I remember, let's see. So that was December 2016. When did, we met at Tormach at that open house thing, I think like June 2015. It's a whole year before that. Right. And that's the first time we met in person. Um, right. But we knew, I mean, we weren't, yeah, we knew, we knew of each other, but we weren't like buddies yet. Exactly. Right. And then, yeah. So we met, we hung out, we shared a hotel room and, uh,
00:02:45
Speaker
It's just like friendship after that. It's like, wow, you're really cool. We can really help each other out. But I remember us talking about, even at that Tormic event,
00:02:55
Speaker
that we should probably like it's nice to have a sounding board, you know, it's nice to have somebody who's on
Accountability Through Podcasting
00:03:01
Speaker
a similar path to like discuss. And I recommend that for like anybody listening, this, this scheduled, the fact that we record or not is irrelevant. This scheduled conversation, it makes me accountable to you. It makes you accountable to me. I want to bring good news to you. Every Wednesday morning, you know, I think about that.
00:03:22
Speaker
you're me, you're my accountability. Right. And and that's, it's been helpful the past four years. And if I have a problem, I'll either save it for the podcast, you know, to talk to you about it, or I'll just text you about it. But it's, it's developing this. It's like a friendship slash mentorship role.
00:03:42
Speaker
It's a weird combination. It's not one or the other, it's both. Yeah. It's also cutting through the BS. And I don't have all the answers. There's a balance in life of having the conviction and the confidence and the thick-skinned, not a word, thick-skinned-ness, being thick-skinned enough to shake off the stuff that's not super important. And that's not always easy. There's a bit of a learn out of that. And then there's the element of, look, be real. Don't always sweep it under.
00:04:10
Speaker
I actually have
Authenticity in Social Media
00:04:11
Speaker
a really raw point to come back to on that regarding Tony Shea. It's interesting as the world changes, as we grew up in this, social media grows, but also changes. I've seen the difference on Instagram and on YouTube and it's something I don't worry about because I'm not going to change
00:04:30
Speaker
who I am, but I'm sure there are people that enjoy the positive sides of our stories of growth, of happiness. You're attracted to stuff that's happy, but people are also attracted to car accidents, rubbernecking. They like seeing the bad stuff. I don't look at it that way. I look at it as I don't want to change what I need to talk to you about just because we're
00:04:56
Speaker
curating some message. And I think that's where I've grown less. It's interesting now, the more stuff you see on YouTube, the more you see people just being like, well, obviously you're saying this because you're
00:05:07
Speaker
like the word influencer, all that stuff. The more you can move away from that, I think the better it is, but perhaps it's inevitable. Just like AOL grew out of its thing and Facebook will grow out of its thing and YouTube will, at some point, YouTube is already now where you can watch NFL sports and cable TV shows and Hollywood movies. It's not less so much because it's just growing, the pie is growing, but
00:05:33
Speaker
Sorry, long-winded way of saying I want to make sure we keep I enjoy keeping it real about what is the highs and the lows of what this journey's been.
00:05:41
Speaker
I'm a deeply private person. I don't like to talk about the bad stuff, even privately to anybody really. I do tend to guard things pretty closely, but over my YouTube career, the past 10 years, just posting videos, sharing problems, sharing mistakes and stories, that has built up my immunity.
00:06:03
Speaker
to putting myself out there a little bit and this podcast as well. So I definitely share more than I would naturally do had it not been for the experience I've built over the past time.
Learning Through Mistakes
00:06:13
Speaker
And I tell this to a lot of people, something I noticed with the early YouTube videos is I'd share a mistake and holy cow, four people would comment with the answer. And I'd be like, that's awesome. If I didn't share that, I'd still be struggling six months later. It's a fast way to learn and to crowdsource information
00:06:33
Speaker
Absolutely. It's super good. Yeah.
Business Growth Reflections
00:06:37
Speaker
So I wanted to real quick talk about like a four year in review, like where we were in our businesses and lives four years ago. And you know, it's four years. It's not that long ago, but holy cow. I think both of us have gone through tremendous business change in the past four years.
00:06:57
Speaker
I was thinking about it, December 2016, it was just Eric and I, still just the two of us. We were in our new shop for about a year and a bit, and we were in a thousand square feet. This was just Eric and I, and now here we have a team of eight people. We did, in 2016, I think we did about 150,000 in sales, and this year that's a bad month.
00:07:26
Speaker
We're at 1,000 square feet. Now we're in 9,000 square feet. At the time we were buried in the Rask pre-order, which is like nightmares for me thinking back on just because we were so slow to fulfill. That was four years ago.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, five when we started. I took the order in the summer of 2015. Wow. Wow. I think that's a memory for me, because maybe that's part of what got us clicking was, and I'm putting words into your mouth here, but you didn't like that situation. I don't know. I don't want to. You were desperate. You were frustrated. You were struggling. You were in the garage. You wanted the VMC. You didn't like that. I think that's part of what we started talking about.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, I was in a very, especially 2015, 16, 17 was a very dark, stressful growth period for me that thankfully I got through, I pushed through, the team helped me for sure.
00:08:26
Speaker
we only have what we have today because of those few years of pain, you know, of growth of struggle. And I didn't talk much about it. I didn't do a lot of YouTube videos those years. And, you know, we got into it a little bit on the podcast for sure, but not all of it. Yeah, but but yeah, it's I'm glad it happened. And I'm glad we're here. Let's put it that way. Totally. Yep.
00:08:50
Speaker
Sometimes you don't know what's good and what you like until you live through some pain. I think a lot as a parent that some strife and struggle is pretty darn good. It builds character, coddling and everything done for you and easy going.
00:09:11
Speaker
isn't the way you succeed in life, build independence, build confidence, build decision-making power. On the flip side, you got to enjoy life. There's no point in thinking that stress every day, you and I have an acquaintance. I'll leave it at that so that people don't try to figure out who it is, but who just thinks every day needs to be
00:09:32
Speaker
super stressed and super crazy. And how do I deal with this? And oh my gosh. And I believe this person is incredibly successful. And it's kind of like, I mean, look, dude, you need to, number one, you need to realize that that's a choice and you don't think it's a choice. It's a choice. Yeah, exactly.
00:09:47
Speaker
And whether it's parenting your kids or being a leader for your team or whatever group, Boy Scout troop, whatever you're leading, I'm certainly Mr. Nice Guy. I want to be friendly to everybody. But I'm building that muscle of like, no, no, stuff's got to get done. No, I'm not going to let you get by with that. That's not acceptable.
00:10:09
Speaker
and building that hard edge that needs to come out every now and then so that everybody remembers like, oh yeah, this is a real, this is serious. This is a real thing, whether it's my kids or my team. Right. Four years ago. So you were in, were you in, did you have the Maury?
00:10:26
Speaker
We had the Maury, had it for about a year and we just got the Nakamura at that time. Wow. Okay. That's right. Because you had actually signed, I think you might've like signed the PO when we were like in the hotel room or something crazy or like the day before, I don't know.
00:10:41
Speaker
We were actually, this is way too much information, but we were actually laying in separate beds in the hotel room and you were like, I have to tell you something. We were at a Tormach event. He's like, I bought a DMG. That's right. I forgot I said that. Yep. Yeah. Oh man.
00:10:57
Speaker
Which is just surreal to think in hindsight. I remember the first time, OK, here's my deep backstory. Trying to bring this automated rifle target business
Inspiration from Machine Shop Experiences
00:11:09
Speaker
product, really. Actually, that's a great nuance. We were trying to develop a product. We didn't really understand how to develop a business, ironically, even though I went to business school. I think it gives a lot of credence to what you learn in the school of hard knocks and just doing stuff.
00:11:26
Speaker
flew out to Colorado Springs because the engineer that we had hired, lived there, had developed this prototype with the assistance of his network of, I think it was mostly machining and fabrication, and those vendors were in the Colorado Springs area. So I hopped on a flight out there, met my business partner, and that was the first time
00:11:46
Speaker
to my knowledge, I'd ever walked into a machine shop and I didn't know or understand anything that they had. But I have a couple of pictures which are just like this super cool treat to look back on because they had a Fadal probably a 30, 16 or 40, 20. But the classic, you know, like the Jeff Tiedecan shirt that has the Fadal, cool power, red, white and blue coloring.
00:12:08
Speaker
And you know, I'm thinking that this thing is like state of the art, like multi-million, like I don't know, like what I thought, but it was just freaking cool. And they also had an EDM, which a wire EDM, which is a bit odd for this side of a job shop, but
00:12:22
Speaker
It's so funny. In like 2008, I had the exact same experience at a job shop. The first big machine shop I went to, they had a bunch of hosses, they had a fedal, and they were just cranking farts. And the guys were programming at the control, the lathes. It's nuts. Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. There's no like cam. Well, look, that's 12 years. Well, 10 years ago, probably.
00:12:41
Speaker
11 years ago. No, no, no. That would have been 2006, 14 years ago. I just thought that was all unattainable. That was a different world. That was not. No. It was two things that really triggered my desire to try this out. Number one was
00:12:57
Speaker
they had a part for that target that was this huge block of A2 that probably had 60% material removal, which is just stupid. And I had it back at my home shooting range in Ohio, and I showed it to somebody all proud, like, hey, this is what we're working on. I didn't know. I mean, I knew it was A2. I didn't know what A2 was. I didn't know the tool steel. And the guy was like, why did they slot that there and create a stress riser? And I remember thinking,
00:13:24
Speaker
I need to be able to ask those questions. I don't even know what he means. Why did he cut it? I didn't understand how an end mill would go in and cut that way and square shoulder would leave a stress riser at this point where it's going to cause a fatigue or crack, which ironically with the guy who was right, it did crack there.
00:13:39
Speaker
And then the second thing was more of the designer's fault, which is overcomplicating a roller cam that had four different planes was really a fourth axis part, complicated, just work holding complicated second op. And I ended up redesigning it about a year later out of this piece of half inch aluminum extrusion with one hole in the side and one hole in the bottom. So it's still two ops, but like a joke.
00:14:04
Speaker
It worked. If there's one thing that I absolutely can say, absolutely was true, I had this realization that I need to learn how to do this. Sorry, this isn't really business and machining, but it is because it's- It's fine. It's a good story. These are the stories we don't talk about that a 15 minute YouTube video telling that story would be loved by people. Yeah, maybe I should. You know what I mean? Feels too narcissistic though. I know, but yeah, I agree.
00:14:27
Speaker
People love that. I need to learn so when a machinist hands me apart, I can say why or ask the designer why or think why and be able to help and do it. That's what started it all. Then I freaking loved it because I got a tank in my apartment. I'm like, wait a minute here. I can make stuff? Holy cow. I'm a big boy now. I can cut metal next to my pillow. Oh, yeah.
00:14:50
Speaker
Absolutely. I went to Home Depot on 59th Street in New York City, bought a piece of strip steel, God knows what it is, like mystery metal. And there's a video still up on our YouTube of me using like a quarter inch Chinese high speed steel end mill being like first cuts in steel on the tag. That's it. That's what led me down this path. And like I said, maybe two episodes ago, I was like for the first time in really 10 to 12 years, like literally the first time maybe this past month, I feel like I can
00:15:18
Speaker
take a deep breath. And that's maybe a good parallel when people talk about how hard it can be to run a business is I feel like I've been trying to prove it to myself and my family and build this team and build this framework and just getting the over the shop overhaul, which itself was really triggered out of a bad part we sent out that really caused us to rethink a lot of things from changing our team and staffing to the machines, the processes to investing to now realize, okay,
00:15:47
Speaker
You know, this is going to work. That's crazy. So four years ago, late 2016, where were you? I was in this shop. I actually had to look that up. So we, I think some people on the internet kind of know the story, but with my grandfather's absolute unrequested welcoming, like he is idea. He said, well, if you move back to Ohio to start to grow this company or start this company, you should move into the shop on the farm with me. And I was
00:16:15
Speaker
Not naive, but rather thought that that was a warming and welcoming idea. In hindsight, it's a classic example of the perils of any sort of partnership that involves close friends or family. After a year or two, he had sort of subconsciously realized, and this is my opinion, but he missed having his own shop, his own autonomy. I think a lot of people can understand how that could come to be. He just got frustrated at me and just said some stuff that made me realize it's time to move on.
00:16:45
Speaker
That was a super hard lesson on a personal level, but ultimately, going back to strife and struggle, I'm better off for it.
Moving Out of Grandfather's Shop
00:16:53
Speaker
You put yourself in his shoes and you realize, you know what? Was he in the wrong? I think he was, but ultimately, I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same thing. As you said a couple weeks ago, he was in business sense. He's not always a nice person. Yeah, that's true. This scenario with you started to mix business and grandfatherly relations. That's true.
00:17:15
Speaker
Right? Yeah, you're right. So moved up to a shop on the north end of town, like last minute, like fires, fires. I remember watching that happen as like, Oh, you just got out of there. Yeah. And that was a basically moving from a, I was in a thousand square foot basement or not even that, like 700 square feet in New York, my New York house. And then that was where I got my tormach then about a thousand square feet ish
00:17:39
Speaker
It was a 3,000 square foot shop. A third was probably storage. A third was his and maybe a third was mine, but shared space. It didn't have any heat, so we had a wood stove. There was no bathroom. It was like a bar than a barn, but yeah, it was a farm storage shed. You showed me a couple of years ago when I came to visit. Excellent origin story place, but not the place you want to really grow a company in.
00:18:07
Speaker
So moved up to this place on the other end of town and then coincidentally was there for six months and realized the building next door was for lease. And I knew I'd want to do things like the improvements, the lighting floors, build out some stuff. And so I looked up the family, didn't know them, but knew friends of friends and just sort of said, Hey, would you put me in touch? I want to see if they'd, um,
00:18:29
Speaker
I pitched them. I said, hey, a small business moving back here, growing, and wondering if you guys would be willing to sell the building. And they just said, make us an offer. And so I'd been in this building for under a year at that point, which I mean, moving from 1,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet seemed like you were just in an endless abyss. Yep. And now, how does it feel? We're out of space.
00:18:55
Speaker
No, we're not. We have room for more machines, and we're in the process of getting organized. The person that started last week, who's kind of in charge of all that, is actually just solely focused on the order. I don't know what it is, whether it's the holiday sales or people using budgets by the end of the year. But we've seen a huge uptick, which is a great problem to have. But it's only frustrating because the thought was that this new person coming on board could help get some of the stuff tackled in their
00:19:24
Speaker
part of their duty would be filling orders there a whole time right now is filling orders. So it is what it is. Yeah. And I don't like that answer. It is what it is. Well, same way. We're slammed. We're busy. We could, we could keep more people busy. You know what I mean?
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, so you're right. I shouldn't casually just say this is what it is. What I mean is by no means does it make sense to add yet another person today. And I do fully expect come like January things will slow down. What I don't like is that I keep thinking that we'll kind of get ahead of the curve and we've just had some growth and stuff pick up and people coming on board and it takes time. So you want to make sure you're honest with yourself about putting those resources to work and making all that stuff work.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yep. And when those resources do come online, new machine, new person, whatever, making sure that it's a good investment, that it works. I find it's kind of easy to spread one person's workload over two people and sometimes still produce the same results. It's just more relaxed. And that's goods and bads to that. That's not really growth. That's just spreading it out and hiring somebody in. Right.
00:20:44
Speaker
hopefully it leaves room for more growth. But yeah, that's things we're working on right now is obviously we want to make more product and we want to sustain that in a way that doesn't drive everybody crazy or make them work too hard or whatever. But it's either more time or more optimization and it's both really. But it seems
00:21:06
Speaker
Like when I think about what you've said, you know, hey, the rasks on the current, the palettes proving out the code, automation, the aroa, the Swiss, the knock, like it seems like that's not an idea. That's actually an idea that you're in the middle of executing and frankly executing pretty well on, right? And maybe it's just one of those things that hasn't
00:21:26
Speaker
realized its potential yet, you know, especially with the current, um, and once, once like you said, once we're all caught up, once we have inventory, like for us, it's like once everything's flowing and once everything's running. And, um, it's pretty awesome. The other day I had five CNC machines running at one moment unattended. Nobody was standing in front of them whatsoever. And I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. Thank you very much. Yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
That was awesome. So where were you four years ago? You had to have been in the shop because you had the Maury. Yeah, we were in the thousand square foot shop that we were in for the past four and a half years. Five years? I don't know. 2015 is when we got it. But yeah, different place. We were at the point where it's like we're buried in the Rask pre-order and we needed to make
00:22:20
Speaker
more parts, like we needed more time in the day. So to hire somebody, we're not really making much money to hire someone. A month later, January 2017, I helped Barry, my father-in-law, move. He was moving buildings. I helped him move and we had a long chat over dinner.
00:22:44
Speaker
Within weeks after that, he's like, I want to help you guys. I want to come on. I've got the time right now. I want to do whatever. I'll sweep the floors. I'll load pallets. I'll ship packages. I'll do whatever. That's four years later, he's still here cranking away, doing awesome. He's part of the team, part of the family. He wants to be here forever.
00:23:05
Speaker
But that was our first employee. That was like soft sell. It was like family. It was a really good scenario, really good deal, really good timing. He was extremely generous to us. And I want to say, at least at the time, that's the only way we could have hired someone. Yeah. I see that.
00:23:26
Speaker
I couldn't, we didn't have the money to just be like, yeah, I'll pay you whatever an hour and you'll have a paycheck every week or two weeks. I don't think I could have committed to that. But then nine months after that is when we hired Aaron, our first media producer to help us. That was your first outside hire? Yeah. Interesting. Other than Barry. And it's an interesting role to hire first. It wasn't production. It wasn't anything.
00:23:53
Speaker
I'm still shipping all the packages. I'm still taking all the photos. I'm still managing the website. I'm still managing email. And I'm still editing all the YouTube videos. Yeah, that can't happen anymore. Yeah. So it was great to have her on board. And then three months later, we hired Angelo. He's our aerospace machinist, production genius kind of guy. And then a few months after that, we hired Sky. He was a student at Mohawk.
00:24:21
Speaker
which is like two block, like half a block away from our shop, the little community college here. And he's like, yeah, I go to school right around the corner. Can I come by one day? Yeah. Just say hi. So yeah. All right. Him. And then it just kept growing. And now we've got an awesome team of eight people and, uh, it'll be nine in December.
Future Expansion Plans
00:24:44
Speaker
This is our January next one. Next. Yeah, we committed to hiring another finishing technician for Eric's side of the shop. Awesome. So between new machinist and new finishing guy, and then we're going to need another office person, and then we're going to need another machinist, and then we're going to need another current, and then we're going to need another Swiss. Yes. And then we're going to need a bigger shop. That's okay. That means the conviction to make those decisions is fine once you know
00:25:12
Speaker
It's far easier to know, hey, we need another Toros with this feature set, this and this.
00:25:18
Speaker
We converted, we used to use the TM3 for sort of some things and we just realized, wait here, nobody can fit this different role. And it took about seven seconds to realize, uh, yes. And then it's funny cause you're like, okay, well that's fine, but really it should be this. And like, I could see, you start to realize how I, you could, you could issue a PO for a machine like that in the matter of an app. Like you could wake up and not have you thought about it and go back, go to lunch and have already bought a machine. Cause you're like, Oh no, completely. Yes.
00:25:46
Speaker
That's almost what happened. I don't say that casually, even though it sounds crazy. Once your business gets to a critical point, those decisions both financially and logically make very quick sense. Four years ago, you and I would spend six months thinking about a machine purchase. When I was still in the garage, I remember I had printed off a color picture of a Haas Super Mini Mill.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I put it on my wall in my office next to my computer. And when I was working out doing jumping jacks or whatever, I would stare at that picture. And I was like, one day, I'm going to have a big machine, a big boy machine. And yeah, that's, what else was I going to say? Yeah, with the quickness, that's what happened with buying the Surface Grinder, which arrives a week from today. Awesome.
00:26:37
Speaker
Like, I don't know, three weeks ago, four probably three weeks ago, this wasn't even a consideration in my brain. And it, you know, Angela and I brought it up over the years for sure, but it just clicked. It just made sense. I was like, how much is it? Okay. Yeah, we could probably, yeah, we need it. We need it for this and this and this and this. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Holy cow. How soon could we get it? Okay.
00:27:02
Speaker
So yeah, it shows up next Wednesday. So probably while we're doing the podcast, I'll hear the backup beeping of a forklift. It should be here and I don't need to be a part of that. The guys can absolutely deliver it. I'm not going to learn how it works. Yeah, that's going to be a machine you never hit the start on. I want to because holy cow, surface grinding is amazing. But I want them to teach me how to play with it so that I can like dick around and like surface something that
00:27:30
Speaker
Nope. I might have a need just for, but not for production. Absolutely. Not here to be your friend, bud. Nope. This is the guy who just did an Okamoto surface grinder a couple of years ago. Yeah, and like, okay, that's as close to a mistake. I don't know if it's a mistake, probably as close to a mistake as you could. It wasn't a financial mistake. We actually made money on the sale. Nice. But yeah, I mean, you go through, look, they taught us something in school that
00:27:58
Speaker
clicks more and more each day, which is this is more about a general startup or business sort of thing that the founder is often not the right person to grow or lead a company and as it changes and I really do see that because I do think I do think I'm at the not at the end, but like you've gone from from nothing to something and so it's all this
00:28:22
Speaker
It's just, it feels like you're always staring out into the future. And that would be very different if you had somebody come in at this point, who say brought a company from, from one to 10 or whatever the number, make up a number, you know, who's like, okay, I'm picking up at the beginning. This is the start, not the end. I'm not, I don't, I don't use the end. Cause it's not like I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, okay.
00:28:43
Speaker
So I could totally, it's actually kind of fun to play because you're like, you don't know what you don't know. But I could see if you hired some seasoned exec to come in and be like, okay, we're going to take Saunders or Grimso knives and we're going to, okay, hold on. We're finishing this ERP system. We're bringing in consultants or software developer whose full-time job is going to be that. And then we're doing the power. I mean, I'm thinking about the stress points on our business.
00:29:03
Speaker
We're getting rid of these two machines, we're bringing three more in, we're doing racking on here, we're bringing an HR person in, there's like all that stuff that for them would just be like the first morning of the first day, this is all happy. Whereas for us, it's like, oh, like it's different. Yeah, it's big deal. They're lingering thoughts for sure. But they're just as valuable as every other lingering thought like, buy another hex driver for the more like, yeah, you could make one.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And then we fall down the rabbit hole of these stupid ideas, whereas, as you said, you put your seasoned exec hat on, or if you actually did hire one, come in. Who could see things with just such a different clarity without the emotion, without the attachment, without the, that's the first machine that I got. You'd be like, no, it's not making any money or whatever.
00:29:52
Speaker
Why do you have that? What are you doing? They're very exact. It's sort of the lead concept as well of everything in the entire shop in the working area needs to be valuable for production. Otherwise, get it out of here. Yeah, exactly. No, totally. That's what we're... I'm in my office, which I don't even use anymore because my office is out on the shop floor. I actually might
00:30:12
Speaker
change that again. I've been thinking about that, but my office is an absolute pigsty mess because it's become the room of stuff that we need to sell. If it weren't for COVID, I would do a little mini event like, hey, come say hi, and we're selling a bunch of stuff.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure I have people who want to come and participate in it and get a good deal. I don't want to put every single individual thing up on eBay or what. It seems like people use Facebook now more than eBay, but you know what I mean? But stuff that has to go, period. I'm looking at a six foot, six foot, actually, hold on, John, this is great. Let me see if I can do this without hanging up on it. Things that I don't need. Oh, okay. What are we looking at? A caliber instead of 60 inch calipers.
00:30:56
Speaker
It's like a size of a boom mic you'd see on a TV set. That's correct. I could not swing this like a baseball bat if I tried. I'm not strong enough. Yeah. That is gigantic. Yeah. So we can use that to measure some of your saga parts. Yeah, exactly. Right. No, they're quite accurate. I think they even have a Vernier. Nice. Things I don't need.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yep. I remember 2008-09, starting out with machining. My wife and I would go to garage sales at the time to find little knickknacks or whatever, wishing I would find the one garage sale that the old machinist is just clearing out his garage and has some old World War II lathe or something with a box of tooling. I remember wanting to come across that. I never did, but I was like, yeah, it's got to be out there somewhere.
00:31:48
Speaker
But that's you getting rid of your junk right now, is some young fresh juice coming up and like fine. He's like, I could actually really use that to be also. Oh my God, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's funny. I remember not that long ago, maybe when we started this podcast, I remember almost buying a used Cat40 tool on eBay. I didn't have a VMC. I just thought Cat40 tools were so cool and I wanted to hold one and I wanted to own one and they're like 30 bucks.
00:32:16
Speaker
And thank God I didn't, because that's like the exact whatever. But on the flip side, it's just like, you know, that it's that way we're wired. I don't know if this is how I think I'm wired. A lot of people are wired. We're like, what you don't have, you want to covet because it's so cool. Same way, I'm like, man, it'd be cool to have an HSK. I don't even have an HSK machine. You do, right? The current is HSK? And the two UMAX. Oh, that's right. Right. I have the one UMAX. I'm going to take the chance to goad you a little on that. No, I'm just kidding. That was a win.
00:32:46
Speaker
Angela was looking through our toolbox and we found a Cat40 holder that had a crack in the taper. It's just been labeled crack. This was two, three years ago, we found this. It's still sitting around. I don't know why we still have it. Throw it. Please throw it away when we hang up. No. Steven asked,
00:33:03
Speaker
I forget. One of our two newer guys, if they just want it for their, you know, tool bench at home or whatever to make a beer cake handle from it or whatever. And they're like, yeah, that'd be cool. You know, it's really cool. So yeah, it is out of the shop now, which is good.
00:33:18
Speaker
somewhat of a rough transition here, but I got to bring this Tony Shea thing full circle.
Reflecting on Tony Hsieh's Death
00:33:23
Speaker
It's frankly pretty darn somber, but let's take a somber thing and turn it into a good lesson. Last week was the recap of Tony Shea, awesome guys, Zappos, culture, delivering happiness, solid, solid, solid, recommended, tragic, house fire. Have you read
00:33:43
Speaker
Any more sense? That's all I know. Yeah. Unfortunately, it doesn't get any more tragic than the story that's unfolded. It's unfortunately not so much about the house fire, but it's about the fact that he effectively appears to have gone into a downward mental spiral over the last six months.
00:34:00
Speaker
This was like Wall Street Journal, New York Times articles, so certainly credible resources. Somewhat of a self-imposed substance abuse, fueled, isolation, struggling, COVID, because he was a guy that craved life and events and media, so certainly that happened. But just super sad, started paying people to be
00:34:24
Speaker
his literally paying people to come hang out with him and then got super sad. Had hired a singer to come out and the singer who's a jewel was like, you're not right. Something's wrong. You need help and you need to stop. Actually, this is a great lesson. He had literally been paying people double their prior salaries to come live with him to do this stuff or whatever it was. Those people become
00:34:48
Speaker
They become enablers. They're not going to tell you, dude, you're in a downward spiral. You're going to kill yourself or overdose. I think it's tough because it's like you never want to meet your heroes. We've talked about this before in the podcast, like mental health and people like Kate Spade and who's the comedian? Robin Williams and the chef guy, Place is Unknown, Bourdain.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, all of these people who you think of yeah, I'm successful like could basically have anything they want right now I don't believe Tony died of suicide, but it does sound like he may have locked himself in this room and
00:35:32
Speaker
It doesn't mean it's suicide, but it's absolutely tragic. First off, you and I have had some struggles and low points. It's not been anything ever like that, but you need people. You need a support group. You need to be honest. I've heard, especially for the past six, eight months through COVID, apparently the suicide rate is a lot higher than normal and especially among entrepreneurs. Oh, really?
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah. I don't like to think about it because I like to be Mr. Happy Guy. I know, I know. It's fact and it's real. Yeah. And it's nobody talks about it. Yeah. And in a weird way, I mean, we've had this grounding moment every week, the two of us for this podcast that I don't know if that, you know, I'm sure it helps. You know, it lets us be like, Oh, I'm not the only one. You know, I'm not the only one struggling here or
00:36:26
Speaker
You're worried about that too? Yeah, so am I. It just makes you feel not alone. That's what ticks me off about Tony Hsieh is darn it, dude, you don't deserve what you had in the end because you can't represent yourself to be the story of happiness and all that and values and then do that. That's not a fair period. It's one thing if you're struggling and you should get help, but man,
00:36:54
Speaker
I don't know, which makes me think about that a lot. It makes me think about, hey, look, what are you doing? At the end of the day, it makes me think back. Actually, a friend and I were talking about this, went for a hike. It actually was a thing that blew my mind. He said, oh, if I had the lottery scenario, he's like, I would politely and cordially coordinate an immediate transition of my job responsibilities. I'd be out. I'd do what I do at the daytime to facilitate my hobbies or life.
00:37:20
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my gosh, like I've never, I had a job in a different industry prior to this, but like, I still, I never thought of it that way. And I certainly love what even on bad days, I certainly like you when we hit record this morning, you're like, I think I hear some machines coming in the background. Like, yeah, you did. Right? Like, I love this.
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think about that lottery scenario every now and then. And I've come to the conclusion, maybe it's my perspective now, but I don't want to win the lottery, because that's why I don't play. But having a pile of money that I didn't earn or deserve would not work well. OK, you're letting that
00:37:57
Speaker
like unfairness, you know, that kind of like winners, what do they call it? Like Victor survivor syndrome, like I won and everyone else didn't forget about that. Like, let's say, um, let's say you had a business that started throwing the generating $50,000 of cash a day, some crazy number, like where, okay, quickly you realize this is, even if I hire people, even if I'm on machines, it's going to, the growth will outpace any, any reasonable business spending. I mean, what does drone hives need right now?
00:38:27
Speaker
Well, a business generating massive profit is not the same as winning the lottery. Sorry, but that's my point. I try to think about that with that clear head of, okay, I mean, things like the locomotive circuit for energy. You're not ready for the second current because the first one's not really humming. Why isn't it humming? Well, the machine is. Go, run. This is you.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, I need to be better at delegating my personal responsibilities. And I think back on it, I'm like, I actually have. I don't do it a lot here at the shop, like work, work, task stuff. So as much as I beat myself up about it in my own head, I actually have distributed an insane amount of my workload. But I still need to do more. And having Pierre here to work on the Swiss, he's probably 50-50 with me on the Swiss now. And that's quickly turning to like 80-20.
00:39:15
Speaker
And that's fantastic. And that just gives me more time to do the critical things I need to do on the current. But then I realized at the end of the day, I can't be on the current, especially once it's running production.
00:39:28
Speaker
I heard Jay Pearson say something that I absolutely loved. He goes, in my business right now, I only work on things that are new or things that are broken. I was like, yes, that's what I want to be. That is my dream goal, new or broken, that's it. Maybe you're there though, John. The current and the Rask is new. You've done a better job of outsourcing the tombstones of work holding. You're hiring people to run that.
00:39:55
Speaker
Yep. I enjoyed challenging you and I'm not, maybe you're further than you think. I probably am, but I still struggle and I still take too long and I still have too much on my plate that's not getting done. And I hate the phrase like I'm too busy. I use it, everybody uses it, but it's dumb. But at the end of the day, I realized there's just too much not getting done both on my plate and in the company. Is it recurring stuff?
00:40:25
Speaker
Or one-off stuff? Ooh, good question. Both, for sure. Okay, we'll separate them. More new stuff that's not getting done, but I will try to separate them as I think about that going forward. It could be recurring stuff. If every few months we have to make different part on the Swiss, we're out of screws or we're out of pivots or bearings or whatever.
00:40:49
Speaker
And I'll push that a little bit too late and then we'll be out. And then we're like, not make it matter for a couple days. Because there's too much on my plate. That's bad. That's unacceptable. That's for scheduling. That's like red flag. Doesn't happen a lot. But yeah.
00:41:06
Speaker
But like, I mean, like, I mean, look, we're stressed right now, because we're trying to make sure we keep orders cooking. But that would be a system failure at a level that I knock on wood, don't anticipate us getting back to like, like, no.
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah, especially once you get over that, it needs to not happen again. Establish a company culture that's like, these things are not acceptable. And maybe it's oddly acceptable because I, the owner of the company, I'm the one doing it, which is bad, but you know what I mean?
00:41:38
Speaker
Some of that's okay, but I think- I do get these for it for sure. The guys all poke me for it. How do those bearings come in? You make them yet? Right, right. Do you want bearings or do you want rasks? I know you want bearings. Okay, fine. I'll go make bearings.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah, you'd be surprised. I mean, we said it before, but you know, I had a grant run DeWalt bushings. I think they were on the diamond pins, a bunch of stuff on the lathe and you, you want to own it. You want to be like, Oh, there's so many little things. And you just realized, wait a minute. He's a smart guy. He knows fusion and he knows how to use a mic. So he knows how to check if something's bad. And you know, if service finish stinks, you can start looking at, well, what's different? Is it the bar in the, in the liner or different material or insert or like, okay, like
00:42:23
Speaker
This is a machinist. It's okay. And sure enough, guess what? I come back and there's a bunch of them made. That's so rewarding. And all these mental, this tempest in the teapot that's going on in your head is unfounded. There's a huge difference between figuring out the process and developing it over years in my case. And therefore it's a huge giant cluster of information.
00:42:49
Speaker
Then you teach it to somebody and they're like, yeah, I got it. It's pretty easy. You're like, no, it's not. It's hard. I spent four years figuring this out. Don't tell me it's easy. That's rude. When you hire Gary to become the new CEO, a seasoned executive, he's going to start and he's going to be like, we need more pivots. Pierre, you're a machinist. Can you run more pivots? He doesn't give an S about your sob story about how hard they were to make, to make more.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I have to like divorce that side of my brain that's like, no, no, you know, running the job and creating the job are two completely different things and do not don't think of them the same thing.
00:43:25
Speaker
I was, I mean, this morning, we have Brad who's doing maintenance, order fulfilling, receiving material, and that's going pretty well so far. But then this morning, I'm checking the RO water and the membrane and I'm putting a bag filter in the shop vac and that's a new item. We just were trying these, have you ever seen these bag filters for shop vacs? It's a shop vac that still has the
00:43:48
Speaker
according filter, but then you put a bag in it and it makes it like when you need to change the filter saves proceeding. And then when you need to enter the shot back, instead of having to like lug it over and tip it, you just pull the bag out, throw it away. So it's quote unquote new, but it's something I, if we weren't so busy with orders, I would have had him do, but then it's the question of, well, maybe I still should have just said to do it because it's going to delay.
00:44:09
Speaker
A cumulative days worth of orders is going to get delayed by about 14 minutes and it starts that process of the right person doing it who needs to do it. It builds that muscle of you delegating big tasks and little tasks. Yeah, I do that too.
00:44:27
Speaker
I'm going to wrap up my segment of this, which is I just want to give a big thank you to everyone in the business of machining community and your audience and my audience.
Gratitude and Impact of the Podcast
00:44:37
Speaker
A sincere thank you. I'm grateful to be one of the people that has found a passion in life. As Tom Lipton has said, the trades have been good to me. Machining has been a great thing for me.
00:44:48
Speaker
And I know that you and I and the work we've done from YouTube and sharing our stories and helping people has left the world or at least the little machine community that we are in a better place. And we've helped inspire some people and give some people direction and hopefully be realistic about what you can and can't do and sort of steer people as best we can. So to the extent that we've left the world a better place, it makes me feel good. But again, a sincere thank you to everyone that's followed along for the story.
00:45:17
Speaker
Absolutely very well said. Yeah. Thanks everybody. It's awesome. Like this is a basically private conversation between John and I. In the back of our mind, we realize people are listening, but... I don't know if that makes people listen. Yeah. Should we get back to work? Sounds good. We got lots to do, man. I'll see you next week. Good stuff. Take care.