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Business of Machining - Episode 5
465 Plays9 years ago
Welcome to the John Grimsmo & John Saunders Business of Machining Podcast! We (John and John) have talked every Friday morning for the past year and we realized how helpful it has been to share our successes, struggles and stories with each other! So helpful that we have decided to record our conversations and share as this podcast!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Family Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Good morning. This is John Grimsmough. And John Saunders. Bringing you the business of machining. In the spirit of keeping these raw 7 a.m. Fridays and sometimes that means we've got peace and quiet. Sometimes it means we're wearing our fatherhood hats. Yeah, I got Leif down here. I went to the basement. I was trying to get some peace and quiet, but Leif found me. So you might hear him. That's all right.
00:00:20
Speaker
It is fun. Our daughter is just starting to really react more and smile. She's five months old and it's like, it's the best. Yeah. Five, six months is right when they become like people. Right.
Open House Event Planning and Internet Setup
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm excited. That's awesome. And I got to say, my kids are super excited to come down to the open house and meet your kids. Awesome. Yeah. I was actually thinking about a couple of projects I need to get done for that. And that was not that far away. Yeah. Are you okay hosting some sort of like a little talk on knife making, fixturing, that kind of stuff again?
00:00:48
Speaker
I don't really like talking in front of a crowd. Of course, of course. Awesome. Well, that's what we're going to do this year because I didn't really like the whole try to get two or 300 people listening to one person for too much time at least. So we're going to do a bunch of little like clinics workshop type things. So in low key, I want to manage expectations because I don't, it's the first time we're doing it and it's, you know, these are sort of free all in the spirit of having fun and learning.
00:01:11
Speaker
Someone's going to talk about scraping class. Someone's going to talk about knife making. That's you. Adam Booth's going to do a four jaw talk or lathe talk and I'm going to do, I don't know, whatever something. There's going to be a fusion 360 talk. Just a bunch of little things. Obviously the downside is they may be overlapping. So you may not be able to take two that you like, but I still think that's going to be a good way to go. Yeah, because the two to 300 people, it worked really cool because it was neat to have all of us on stage get to go, but it takes a lot of time.
00:01:37
Speaker
I think everyone's pretty cool about doing two or three of the same, so you can just sort of rotate through, we'll put together a schedule, that kind of thing. Do you think it'd be cool to record all the events and have it available? Yes, we will definitely be
Financial Management and Entrepreneurial Insights
00:01:49
Speaker
videotaping the event, and I've got a girl now who just started, so we'll see how that works out, but potentially she could be somebody that comes on more formally and does editing and filming. Also, we just upgraded our internet, so I think we can finally support live streaming.
00:02:04
Speaker
That would be cool. Yeah, I was just thinking kind of like how Autodesk University now has every class or many classes, you know, available online. Yeah. There's actually a really good webinar today that I would like to watch. It's on advanced work holding. It's one of those free HSM ones. They put them up on YouTube. So I'm actually thinking I'll watch it on YouTube because then I can go double speed or jump ahead. But nevertheless, I'm excited for that. That's awesome. I still got to try watching things at double speed. I keep forgetting.
00:02:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's phenomenal. I know who I can watch in 2X. I know who I can watch in one and a half. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk to you about accounting because this morning I watched your chip break on business accounting and very helpful stuff. Before I saw that, I wanted to come to you and talk about accounting anyway, because I don't think I've said this publicly yet, but you know.
00:02:47
Speaker
we now have our third employee like our first other employee which is my father-in-law and he is an accountant as well as a woodworker as well as good with his hands and he brings a lot to the table which is fantastic so he's got this used to teach accounting he's got this vast knowledge of accounting and he's been with us for three weeks now and like as a business and I finally opened up to him and like started sharing some real numbers you know so that he could use his mental accounting brain and formulate what a real picture of what's going on because truth be told I'm not
00:03:16
Speaker
very good at accounting. You have a financial background and I don't and you know within 20 minutes he sat down and started writing down on graph paper sort of a picture of where we're at. Like I know all these numbers separately but I don't know them together and that's been a big big problem you know long term for us and I'm the only one who knows and is in charge of the numbers in our business so it's like
00:03:36
Speaker
I just don't have this picture in my head. And to be able to open up and share with somebody I trust who's completely invested emotionally in the business because I married his daughter. So he wants success for all of us. It's been really helpful. That's great. Yeah. So a couple of things. I think people who aren't accountants or financial experts or gurus, they often will put people like accountants up on a pedestal. Right.
00:03:59
Speaker
And I guess what I want to say is you're like, you know, when you go to a doctor, you basically take their advice. You don't challenge them. You don't know really anything about your situation. If you break your leg, they know everything. You know nothing. It's not true when you work with an accountant accountant. You know, you might be lucky, John, because this guy's around you a lot. He understands your business. He's related to you. He's vested in you. But most accountants are really more task oriented. They're just going to kind of garbage in garbage out. That's why what that
00:04:24
Speaker
budget I put up, I guess I want to emphasize that that's not accounting. That's kind of a picture of your company and performance and budget. So yeah, they're related, but don't get overwhelmed and you need to be the one that kind of runs that. Yeah, it can tie in with your account and you can talk to your accountant about it.
00:04:41
Speaker
And no disrespect if there's accountants listening to this. Most accountants I talk to agree with this, which is that they're not entrepreneurs. They're not necessarily business people. They're not even always forward looking. Most accountants are doing either tax or audit
Business Growth and Partner Transparency
00:04:54
Speaker
work, which is historical analysis stuff. So it's been helpful. You guys have put together kind of a one page thing.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think the key point to tie both theories together is that the spreadsheet you put up on your chip break is something that everybody should be doing naturally by themselves. They don't need an accountant to fill that out. Exactly. And I don't have that roadmap. I don't have that Excel spreadsheet. I can't list off my big numbers, my calculations. I know every single, I know what my rent is, I know what my bills are, I know what this. I've just never put it all together into a package. I don't know what my monthly expenses are, and it's horrible for a business owner to say that.
00:05:30
Speaker
That's just the reality of, you know, I have to be honest with my own truth and that I need to get better at that kind of stuff. So I'm actually, I'm very excited. Thank you for admitting that. Cause I think one of the things I dislike would be when you talk to somebody and they're smug about it and they're like, you have never done that. Folks that are listening to this, most people don't do this. Most people don't have that thing. So don't be embarrassed. Don't be ashamed. Start, start just putting pencils down to paper. This should be something you can do on one eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper, one little Excel file. This is not complex.
00:05:59
Speaker
And I think one of the reasons people may start this and stop it is they don't like the answer. And that's a recipe for long-term failure. Right. You have to know, you have to have a pulse on what your actual expenses are, what your income is, and you have to know it. And I've been failing at that because I'm just so busy.
00:06:16
Speaker
Well, you've also moved from a product based thing to a real company, you know, you've got overhead, and you've got multiple products, and you've got payroll, and you've got long term, you know, you're obviously are budgeting now for you're thinking about how you want to run this business looking forward and so forth. Yep. And like you mentioned in the chip break, I mean, we've essentially got a six figure company now, and I want to grow it to a seven figure company. And the time of playing around in your basement and garage is over.
00:06:41
Speaker
And your bank account doesn't really mean you're successful or failing. It's just one of the many data points. Right. That's funny because not that I hide my numbers, but I don't really share them openly with Eric. He's my business partner and brother, and we do this together, but I'm in charge of everything basically. So my father-in-law suggested that basically every morning we share account balances so that everybody's got a picture of a pulse on the business.
00:07:06
Speaker
And I'm a little nervous of that. We're going to do it this morning. I'm a little nervous because on one hand, it might look like there's some decent money in the accounts, but as you said in your chip break, it's all going somewhere within two weeks. It means nothing.
00:07:20
Speaker
Well, but I'll throw in another great entrepreneurship tip, which is even somebody like your father-in-law, your job as an entrepreneur is to listen to people who you respect, but ultimately make your own decision. If you don't want to have a meeting like that, that's your decision. I'm not saying to be bullheaded about it. And you know, sometimes you need to be pushed outside your comfort zone, but you know what's best.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, but you also know when somebody comes in that you trust and suggests things and you're like, yeah, I know that needs to be done, but I didn't have the wherewithal to get it done myself. He's pushing me in a gentle way to do things that I know need to be done and it's time. It's time.
Morning Routines and Meditation
00:07:55
Speaker
So it's been very good.
00:07:55
Speaker
Good. Are you feeling better or are you feeling a little bit of a sense of oral alarm urgency after having done it? No, I'm actually feeling very positive about it. Good. Awesome. I mean, there is alarm. There are red flags that need to be addressed within the next three months. Yep. Otherwise, horrible things are going to happen.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah. Business-wise. But now that we see them, we can figure out a real plan to take care of them and get everybody on the same page because I think that's been one of our big things. Since Eric doesn't know the numbers, he doesn't know how urgent things actually are. So he can just come in whenever he wants and like do the work and not make a big deal out of it.
00:08:29
Speaker
Well, the nice thing too about this is it makes it a lot more objective. So it's no longer a personal thing. So when you take a small business that's succeeding or failing or deciding to buy a piece of equipment or do a new product line, it's not whether my opinion about or one person's opinion about it. It's like, hey, we have the money or we don't have the money in it. You know, something I always try to say, like I was talking to my wife about it and you know, it's not John's business anymore. The business is its own thing, right?
00:08:55
Speaker
That's a good point. And I also, I gotta throw this out there because it was one of those few life changing moments for me that I owe you a thank you for. We were in the car somewhere, maybe we were in Wisconsin together, something. You told me about how, is it Elon Musk, when he sold PayPal, he received eight or nine figures, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it was $150 million.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, he put every penny he had, like, of the $150 million, he put a certain amount into SpaceX and a certain amount into Tesla, and he had to borrow money for rent. Now, that's retarded. Do not do that, folks. No, I know. But he's Elon Musk, and I mean, look at him now, 10, 15 years later. Right. And yeah, he's successfully created $3 billion companies, which almost nobody gets to do.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, so and I'm not Elon Musk of no district like you're not Elon Musk, but what I find inspiration from being all in on something having that vision and having that dedication Amazing. It's fantastic. Well, so I gotta ask you I had a crummy day yesterday
00:09:58
Speaker
Actually, this is funny because I was going through the podcast filters and it's like, is your podcast clean or not clean? And I was like, I don't think we swear. So I, we need to not, we need to not make sure, not that I swear a lot, but we need to make sure we keep it clean for that filter. But I just, I, I had a tough day. I won't get into it, but just cause it's silly stuff. It's always silly stuff. But what I guess I wanted to ask you is.
00:10:21
Speaker
How, when I wake up in the morning, by first I'm like, awesome, fresh day. Like I get excited. You know, I love what I do. And then I remember kind of how I ended my day or yesterday. And it seems easy to fall back into that trap. But I know doing that does me no good. You have to acknowledge the past, but on the flip side, you got to look forward, right? How do I enjoy today? How do I be happy? I'm not saying like it's a struggle to be happy, but you know, I have actually been spending the past, I'll say three years actively working on that.
00:10:48
Speaker
figure out what I have to do in the mornings to make my day the best that it can be. Because it's so easy to wake up and think of that first negative thought and just ruin the day. I have purposely been waking up at 5am so that I can have two hours of quiet time before my wife and kids wake up. Lately the kids are waking up at 5.30 so it's not really working for me.
00:11:10
Speaker
But ideally, I'm up at five, I get two hours of John time. And I've been reading a lot of books, a lot of podcasts, figuring out what other people do. I've done everything from journaling to exercise has been very, very important for me. Really? And I listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos, motivational stuff during my workouts, business, a lot of Tim Ferriss, a lot of Tony Robbins, things like that.
00:11:34
Speaker
makes me feel good and upbeat because i'm working out its exercise so i'm feeling good about it and i'm also learning active tips that i can use for my business so whenever i work out and listen to like tony robbins i'm on fire for the day which is fantastic and then just recently i'm on day 11 of meditation
00:11:51
Speaker
Really? So that's something I'm really excited to see through for at least a few weeks. And already it's paid off pretty noticeably in clarity of mind and in not getting stuck in those ruts, in those mind patterns of just chatter. You can kind of clear the weeds a little bit.
00:12:07
Speaker
see things for how they really are as opposed to just being lost in mindless chatter in your brain. How'd you get into that? So you know Tim Ferriss? Yes. He came out with a new book called Tools of Titans. Okay. Which is a phenomenal book and it's basically excerpts from the 200 plus podcasts that he's done with world-famous experts, you know Tony Robbins, Arnold Schwarzenegger, all kinds of stuff. He has found through interviewing 200 of the top performers in the world that 80 plus percent of them meditate.
00:12:35
Speaker
And there's no secret when you see numbers like that, that it's a big deal. And it's something I've been aware of for a couple of years now. I haven't really tried seriously. I've given it the odd college try every now and then, but never stuck with it. So now I want to stick with it. I want to see what it's like.
00:12:50
Speaker
What is it? Well, there's a bunch of different kinds. And the easiest one that I found is one that he recommended for a lot of people is an app on your phone called Headspace. So download it, you get 10 days for free. And it's, it's called a guided meditation. So it's this guy with a British voice, just for 10 minutes, guiding you through, you know, like sit down, feel the weight of your body on the chair, listen to your breathing, listen to the sounds around you and just get present state awareness. And this mindfulness technique is really important for clarity of mind.
00:13:19
Speaker
I will share, just in case anybody's listening, they think they're too macho for this. Not that I would consider myself a macho guy, but when I was still in New York and I was getting pretty stressed about some stuff, trying to balance my day job and the business I was running at the night, I started going to yoga with my wife. And I will tell you, I think there are meditative aspects to yoga and it was phenomenal. So don't be too proud, folks.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, I've thought that a lot. I don't do yoga, but I do exercise. And there's a lot of meditative practices to both. No, and that was the thing with yoga is it was I had to go somewhere I had to pay. So this idea of being able to do that on my own actually sounds really nice.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yeah, so the Headspace has 10 free days, and then after that, it's $16 a month for every day of guided meditation. I'm OK paying that. Yeah, so I'm on day 11, and I want to keep going. And you do it every day? At what time? In the morning? In the mornings, before everybody wakes up. Because I mean, you could lock yourself in the bathroom and have 10 minutes of quiet time if you need, or go to the shop or whatever. But yeah, and then as you progress through these programs, they train you more and more with how to snap out of it at any moment.
00:14:23
Speaker
This is so funny. You were talking about going into the shop. How is that grinding
Problem-solving in Manufacturing
00:14:27
Speaker
working in the morning? Sorry for totally changing the subject, but is that disc cup wheel working any better? I'm getting 50, 60% good results and I'm still getting bad burns every now and then. So I think I need a different kind of wheel. I talked to this expert and she's going to hook me up with a better kind of wheel.
00:14:42
Speaker
When you burn them, is it ruling the blade? I think so. But we're trying to treat them. And I think that might actually re-stabilize all the molecules inside. Seems to work pretty good. So obviously, it's not ideal. Yeah, no, right. That's tough. We're actually filming our first job shop job on the Haas, which I'm excited that customers let this is the one where we can film it.
00:15:00
Speaker
Instead of doing four ops, we have four stations. Instead of doing four at once and then building up all of op one, we're doing two op one, two op two. So every time we open the doors, two parts that are completed come off, which is totally like a lean, like be smart, don't build bad parts thing. Absolutely. And it's probably slower. In fact, I'm sure it's a little bit slower overall, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Yeah. I don't know. Paul Acres would say it's faster.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see. That's the good news. I don't have to answer to Paul Acres or anybody else. We're doing it this way, either way. Exactly. Yeah. That's the beauty of running your own business. You take all the advice you want, but you do exactly what you think you need to do. What's on tap for today? Today. I mean, we've been in production mode for quite a long time now, which is great. Morning meeting. Go over a bunch of stuff with everybody.
00:15:43
Speaker
We're growing a real business here. It's awesome. I kind of step back sometimes and I laugh at it, but it's true. So yeah, more production. And I think I need to take some more jobs off of Eric's plate so that we can actually get more knives out the door. Oh, he's busy doing his finishing stuff.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, I'm quite a bit of him on the machining side of things. You know, I've got 20, 30 knives made that need to be put together. So I think it's time for me to step up and do a bunch of assembly too. Awesome. That's great, though. Good problems. I saw the I saw what was it? Number 100. It was on Instagram of the Rask. Yep. That's awesome. Very excited. Very proud of that. So let's hope that I'll show a picture of number 200 in no time flat.
00:16:38
Speaker
They're not going to sell 100 a day, not even one a day sometimes. And it's like, OK, it's time to put some work in and market this thing. But it's funny. I think about that a lot. We've almost built our business backwards, where we've got the infrastructure, assets,
00:16:44
Speaker
how are tops
Execution in Business and Future Plans
00:16:52
Speaker
equipment, know-how, all that stuff in place. And we lack. I think in a year, two, or three, or five, I'll look back.
00:17:00
Speaker
We will have something that we're more focused on, but I still enjoy the job shop stuff. We've actually been doing a much better job at a lot of that. I know I've said for a while where we were going to stop that, but I should talk about that in another podcast. And then it's kind of like once we get a product that we love or something we stand behind, yes, you have to market it, but we'll be ready to execute. And entrepreneurship to me, it's not about an idea. It's about execution on that idea. I stink at ideas.
00:17:23
Speaker
But something will come up, whether it's from me or somebody else, that we can work with on and we'll crush it. That's exactly the thing I think about a lot is not so much nowadays, but we used to share a lot of the knife making tips and tricks on our knife making Tuesday videos. And I wasn't really afraid of sharing my secrets because you know, it's all about execution. It's all about skill. I can tell you exactly everything. I know how to build a knife, but maybe you won't be able to build a knife. You know what I mean?
00:17:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, totally. I could spend a week in your shop and still not. Yes, no way. And it's about the building the brand of what you do. You have to market it. People have to see it. And that's not easy. The by far biggest question that we've been getting for our chip break videos on business entrepreneurship is how do I get work as a job shop or how do I get started? And so I'm excited to I want to I want to do those videos
00:18:10
Speaker
with a little bit more planning rather than the chip break sort of off the cuff, just me talking, because I think it's really, the content deserves that preparation, but it is the essence of business and life for folks that love this stuff. So shall we call it? Let's do it, I got a lot of work to do today. Crush it bud, I'll see ya. Take care, bye. Bye.