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00:00:01
"How To Win Friends & Influence People"
237 Plays5 years ago
A very important message this week by Dale Carnegie on "How To Win Friends & Influence People". Saunders is also spending some valuable time getting ready for his two new VF6 machines. The boys talk about to do lists and being able to follow through and dealing with stress this week which is very important in not only in business but in life in general. They also dive into sales techniques and being in a leadership role. Grimsmo has been diving head first into learning tabbing on 5 axis parts.
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Transcript
Introduction to Business of Machining
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 173. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. This is the podcast where we talk about CAM and programming CNC machines, buying CNC machines, and ultimately trying to run them to make parts. Love it. Yeah. I'm enjoying this podcast. Good.
00:00:24
Speaker
It's like a nice stable place in our life. Like a weekly check-in. How's my bro doing? And yeah. No, we're doing well. The world continues to be a crazy place. But yeah, we're doing okay. Wonderful. On that note, is there anything? I don't want to phrase this. I don't know. Any challenges this week?
Balancing Machining and Management
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, we're getting ready for those two machines. In fact, I think they will leave the factory today. Epic, the two VF6s? Yeah. And if that happens, I'm guessing, I assume they wouldn't leave till the end of the day, which is just an assumption. But I don't think they'll be here Friday. I don't want them here Friday. So hopefully that means Monday, plenty of time then.
00:01:23
Speaker
So we're getting ready for them and as part of that, I think if you ask about struggling, it's the classic, classic entrepreneur's dilemma of balancing the roles of being, I love machining, but then also managing the business, managing the team.
00:01:41
Speaker
And then something that's just been continuing to come well to the surface on my end is kind of managing tasks and to-do lists. And I have found myself too willing to just say, OK, yep, that's on my list, but I'll rewrite it down on the new list, and I'll do it later. And I try to push myself outside of my comfort zone by telling myself, like, John, no, you're failing yourself. You're letting yourself down. Just go do it.
Task Management Strategies
00:02:10
Speaker
And it's like classic example of when you, when you start doing it, it's totally, almost rarely is it bad. Like I don't mind doing it. Um, and it actually felt really good. So yesterday I had written down 15 minute clean and all I wanted to do was clean. And sometimes you convince yourself to do it by just saying, well, I'm only going to do 15 minutes. Good, good grief. We can all find 15 minutes. Um, and, and, you know, as usual, that leads to like 90 minutes. Um.
00:02:37
Speaker
But it was great because we're also just going to keep doing this purge, um, of, of stuff that needs cleaned or sorted or recycled, et cetera. And that was a, I would, uh, I want to pay that forward. If anybody is even remotely close to being on the fence, pick some number of minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever works for you to go do something. It doesn't have to be cleaning. Although I think few people would say, Nope, I don't need to clean. I'm good on that. I've been keeping up with it. Yeah.
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, I've also been continually improving my to-do list ability, especially in the past few weeks. And right now I've got actually a paper notebook, like a field notes in my back pocket that I've had for a couple months. One of the guys here gave it to me.
00:03:26
Speaker
And so in it, I'm writing down daily. These are the five to eight things that I want to do every single day, no matter what. They don't have to be big things. They should be small things, actually, so that I can actually accomplish them. Some of them are bigger. And I really struggle to get through it, whether I don't look at it enough or whether I just kind of get them like a
00:03:48
Speaker
chasing a squirrel kind of thing at work, just trying to do a bit of everything always. But it's really nice when I do have good days and I can focus on that list and just crank them off.
00:04:03
Speaker
Whatever system you put into place, you will gain confidence if you follow that system. Right. Just be able to pull it off. Otherwise, you're like, oh, I tried that thing and it didn't work. And you're just shooting yourself in the foot every time. But yeah, I find that I'm building my confidence by thinking the night before, okay, what are the tasks I want to accomplish tomorrow? They don't have to take me forever. But if I get them done, I know I will progress forward. And crossing them off the list is satisfying. Yes. And good. It's good. I'm growing.
00:04:34
Speaker
If you don't want to do something Then don't do it. So I mean obviously Somebody needs to do it or perhaps the task just wasn't necessary But if you don't want to do it, that's fine. What I would say is is unacceptable and and a your
Managing Stress and Perceptions
00:04:49
Speaker
doing yourself a disservice is to keep writing yourself writing something down keep telling yourself you're gonna do it and look I'm not trying to be too much of a hard tush person like we all procrastinate a little bit or smile enjoy your business but it was it was that moment I'll never forget it my in my working life standing in front of Jay Pearson's dishwasher in his old shop that he used to clean parts and he was just sort of saying that you know I
00:05:13
Speaker
I was stressed about three days last year. And we talked about that. And this is a mansplaining way of saying this. I don't mean it to be, but you choose to be stressed. It's a choice. And we all know people like that. And I'm not saying I don't still succumb to it.
00:05:38
Speaker
But there is more of a choice than I think many people realize. And sometimes you need that holy cow perspective of having somebody who's got a great business like Pearson who's successful and happy and growing.
00:05:58
Speaker
challenging not only his own business, but the industry as well. And when someone like him who's clearly dealing with challenges every day can say I wasn't stressed more than three days last year and actually has a number to tell you, it kind of makes you wake up and you go, Oh man, there's, there's a lot to learn still.
00:06:16
Speaker
But I don't aspire to be the person who comes off as being important because they're so busy or frantic. In fact, it's quite the opposite that I think is it's, hey, that ability to have a cup of coffee in the morning and consume or do what you want and then lead in control, right? Not haphazard. And I tend to move around really quick when I'm doing little things in the shop, which I think about a lot.
00:06:42
Speaker
it's it's also very just it's good to be it's why we do what we do right is to be thorough and uh calculating and um it's easy to say that um i continue to strive to do that yeah i find that i'm a very um uh like i'm i'm a chill person normally i don't i don't show my my stress too much i'm sure it is visible to the people who know me well but um
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, I don't go crazy when I'm stressed out. I actually go quiet and I just, you know, put my head down and try to get stuff done. Um, but internally I'm like, you know, ripping in half or whatever, but, and I still so come to that, but I'm getting certainly getting better and being more aware of it. And just, I found that open communication is a huge contributor to reducing stress.
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, actually, can you share more on that? Because I think I'm the opposite. So I think it feels weird to say this or admit this. But I think I probably don't internalize. I probably vocalize it or let it visibly affect me more. So for somebody like you, if you tend to seem chill, remain calm, are you raging and walking through a bad day? Are you raging inside? Is there a trip wire? Do you take it out? Is it hard for you to separate home life, work life? I'm just curious.
00:08:01
Speaker
That's really good questions. I definitely rage inside. I feel like we all have the internal yelling match in our head and for the fake conversations and what you would say to somebody when they're not standing in front of you.
00:08:24
Speaker
I don't have the direct confrontationalness that you do, and I'm trying to grow that, but I'm okay with who I am and where I'm at. The problem becomes when I'm raging inside and it never comes out, and the problem never gets fixed.
00:08:39
Speaker
it's that that's not healthy for anybody or the business. So I'm trying to find ways to squeeze it out. Or the sooner the better I've found to because otherwise you just you rage so long that it fades away and then nothing ever gets solved.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that's not good either. So in a sense, I admire personality types like yourself that can get over it quickly and solve it. And even if it hurts whoever, you know what I mean. Sitting on it never helps.
00:09:11
Speaker
I am comfortable telling you, John, that you are certainly not a bad person or manager, and I would go so far as to say that you have been a good leader. I don't mean to say that to puff you up or your ego up, but rather to say you've got to develop that self-confidence of
00:09:27
Speaker
comfort in knowing almost certainly when you if you were to critique somebody or criticize or or be Frustrated it would be rooted in good cause and about something that relates to the the business and the quality and the products and the mission or safety and not A nitpicking personal thing, you know about somebody's personal beliefs that you don't agree You know something nothing like like you're so far inside the lines that I
00:09:54
Speaker
My confrontation is... A little bit of outside the lens. It's not going to be... Even if it comes across as out of character, it might come across as out of character, but it would at least be rooted in just reasons. And if I'm able to explain the reasons and the cause and the why and the mission and how it relates and all that and where we're going and why it needs to change or whatever, then that's excellent. And I'm doing it more and more and I feel it and it's working.
00:10:24
Speaker
And yeah, and I'm actually reading an amazing book right now. I remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Jocko Willink, the Navy SEAL.
00:10:33
Speaker
So he's got the book, Extreme Ownership, which I haven't read yet. Dichotomy of Leadership, which is fantastic. And I'm reading his newest book, Leadership, Strategy, and Tactics. And I'm actually reading it for the second time in a row now. I've never read a book twice in a row, but this one required it. So I finished it a week or two ago, and now I'm reading it the second time. I recommend it for anybody who's a
Leadership and Learning
00:10:55
Speaker
leader. You too. We'll put it in the description, but can you cover that name again? Yeah, Leadership, Strategy, and Tactics.
00:11:06
Speaker
Thanks. Is that Jocko Williams or somebody else? Yeah, Jocko Williams. It's just fantastic. I think extreme ownership has the war stories and gets you hooked. The concept of extreme ownership is everything is the leader's fault and take ownership of that so that it can be solved. Don't just cast blame. And then dichotomy leadership talks about the balance and the force kind of thing.
00:11:35
Speaker
where it's like, don't be too hard, but don't be too soft. And sometimes you have to be too hard, and blah, blah, blah. So everything is a middle point. And then this one is less stories and more just strategies and tactics. It's a fantastically written book that I've underlined more things in this book than any other book I've ever read. And I've been chewing through a lot of books lately. And this is just stunning.
00:12:02
Speaker
So definitely pick up a copy for yourself. Yeah, I will. Where I'm struggling or conscious is there's kind of this like bubble, if you picture this bubble or Venn diagram of like, okay,
00:12:18
Speaker
So reading, learning, whether it's about tooling or speeds and feeds or machine terminology, how you mount linear scales on castings the correct way, or leadership strategies, there's that kind of knowledge bubble. And then there's the ongoing minute by minute daily life. And I'm finding that I've kind of put the brakes on to where if I can't overlap those, then I need to stop
00:12:43
Speaker
trying to consume and learn just for the sake of learning, because it's not so much. I actually love learning. I very much like I would love to go back to school just for like, because it's learning is fun. But um, like I would love to go I no joke would like go sign up as an apprentice to be like apprentice at a engineering program or go to go back and get a mechanical engineering degree if that's what yeah. I actually have zero interest in that. Oh, really? Interesting.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a personal preference. I like learning on my own. I never went to university or school or anything. And it's kind of the only way I know how to learn. But it's good that we have different perspectives. Well, no, that's a fair point. I don't really care about doing it in the academic environment, certainly not paying for an expensive degree. But if somebody, I don't know other ways, I don't know how to do basic static load tests.
00:13:33
Speaker
You know, mechanical analysis of metallurgy, like if there was a way to go through an internship style program, like Adam, the machinist did it at his employer, I believe, and got his kind of quote unquote, got his card and all that. And those are very like, you graduate from that sort of an internship two, three year program. That is very respectable skill set and so forth. We're off topic. Absolutely. I think there's a lot. There is no off topic. Well, fair point.
00:14:03
Speaker
making sure I revisit that stuff enough to apply it is my is my ultimate. Well, that's the other thing is learning without the ability or intention to apply to apply it is is not beneficial to us either. Like sometimes it's just nice to learn about crazy stuff. But I've become I'm trying to become so practical in our business that
00:14:27
Speaker
I have to be able to apply the things that I learned. Otherwise I've basically wasted the time. Like if it's enjoyable and it's like truly fun, it's, it's almost considered your personal time. Like, you know, the watching a movie kind of time. If you want to learn all about, uh, whatever, I don't know, anything that you're not going to apply, um, then that's fine. But from a business sense, like I need to focus and I am focusing on, on applicable things.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't even have to be that calculated. Like I don't sit down and think, will this be something that will better my life on a daily basis? It's just like when it is something like that, you've got to figure out a way to capture that and then re contemplate it and apply it if you want to. Yeah.
00:15:12
Speaker
I think I'm super aware of now of the rabbit holes that I fall into, which is kind of a theme throughout my life. These learning deep dive rabbit holes, I start a project. I'm like, oh, how does T-Treat or metallurgy or stress analysis or some of these things are applicable, but some are totally not. And I find that sometimes I end up reverse engineering something you could just go out and buy.
00:15:38
Speaker
and wasting all the time figuring out exactly how to do it or make it better than they did. And usually at the end, I realized, well, I should have just bought the thing. But sometimes it pays out. Sometimes it works. Did we talk about rereading Dale Carnegie last week? No. I still haven't read that yet. Wait, which one?
00:16:03
Speaker
how to win friends and influence people. Yeah, I haven't read that yet. I'll read it. So top five blew my mind moments in my adult life. You ready for this? Yeah.
00:16:15
Speaker
read the book in, I believe, college or shortly thereafter. It didn't do anything for me. Read it maybe five years later, which is the timeline is only relevant because I had started and maybe had some stress through my first kind of business partnership and all that and was out in the working world just to give the context. And that point, the book totally
00:16:36
Speaker
put my professional life on its head like thinking about negotiating and strategy and partnerships and leaderships and how to work with people and how to really put make sure you think about it from their point of view and not just yours there's a lot of really really good stuff I think I will say was was key to
00:16:57
Speaker
Well, I would have said key to my success. Uh, so I started to rereading the book two week or two ago and I keep going through the chapters and I keep call, like literally saying out loud to myself, this is BS. And I can't believe I'm having this inverse like reaction where I don't like it now. Um, so three weeks ago,
00:17:25
Speaker
Up until three weeks ago, you've been touting it. You bring it up every few months or whatever.
00:17:30
Speaker
Right. And I don't regret that. And I haven't yet distilled this down to a conclusion, but I think there's two things that have immediately jumped out. Number one, books will affect you differently at different points in your life. That is a huge takeaway. And then the second thing is, even if I now disagree with some of it, I still know I was much better off for having seen it and understood when it was. It's a tool. There are times when you apply it and there's times
00:17:59
Speaker
when you actually specifically go against it, and that's okay. Right, yes. That's interesting. Yeah, and I don't want to, well, in fact, the third sort of takeaway is form your own opinions. Don't embrace something or believe it just because Grimsmower Saunders says that you've got to think for yourself, and this is a key lesson for everything in life, just because either one of us has some level of success or
00:18:27
Speaker
anything of the sorts doesn't mean it's right for you. So have that conviction to form your own opinions. So when it was bothering me last week about all these things I was seeing in Dale Carnegie that I just didn't see before, it really upset me. I went online and I found some Goodreads reviews. I was looking for negative reviews because I was like somebody else
00:18:48
Speaker
must have these reaction as well that I didn't have the first time. And so sure enough, there's some really well-written responses. Well-written meaning it's a person that put thought into it that wasn't just having a visceral bad day. Like they really said it. And it talks about where instances where selflessness can be bad. You need to be a little bit selfish or you need to stick out for yourself or don't surround yourself by people. You know, one of the big themes of Dale took and I'm, and I'm paraphrasing is kind of like,
00:19:16
Speaker
You know, always let other people talk and let them, you know, there's a funny anecdote where he sits down at a dinner table with somebody and the guy, the other guy talks for like an hour and Dale says nothing. And at the end, the guy says, man, Dale, it was your great conversations. I really enjoyed talking with you. And it wasn't that it was him talking at him. Well, and Dale kind of gives it like this example of that's a win. And the reality is, yes, there's times where it is helpful to, and you should always be considerate enough to think, Hey, I need to make sure I respect the other person. I asked them questions.
00:19:46
Speaker
genuinely engaged, not engaged for the sake of checking a box. But on the flip side, no, I don't want to have a group of friends who just want to talk to themselves about themselves all the time and never ask, that's not, that's no, that's not a way to live life. Because you're perpetuating that, that friendship, that that's how it is. And if you're unhappy with that, then that's, that's, that's an untrue friendship, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of like the other person needs to have some obligation to do it too.
00:20:12
Speaker
But look, there's a great, it's a great, I still would recommend reading it, pick what you like, don't like. And I'll tell you, I still have so many sales folks that come in and sell the ISA pitch to us. And they would do so much and be so much better off if they would think about, hey, how is this shop going to think about it? Or what can it do for them? Or how can I earn their business? And this is a direct
00:20:33
Speaker
This is a direct commercial relationship, not a true friendship. It's like, well, hey, I've got something to sell, but not about me. It should be about you. I think there is a lot of powerful takeaways there.
00:20:44
Speaker
Absolutely. And on that point, there's so much I've learned about business that there's so much of business is relationships, whether it's with your vendors, with your customers, with your staff, with your bankers, with anything.
Business Relationships and Operations
00:20:58
Speaker
It's developing these relationships where just everybody's on the same team. Everybody's winning. And
00:21:05
Speaker
when that happens, when that genuinely happens, then people are happy to the odd time some one side has to bend over backwards to help the other side. It's it just happens. So you almost don't even have to ask for it. And we've run into that a couple of times in a good way. And, you know, we're good to our vendors and our vendors are great to us and
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah, it just works. It's a symbiotic relationship. And it's just, it's nice when it happens and you can see it and you sit back and you go it's that happened because we've developed a good relationship over the past four years, you know, and it's working. Exactly. It makes you happy, right? Yeah. Good.
00:21:42
Speaker
Well, so here's something we're struggling with, and I'm not sure what the answer is, if there is an answer, but I'll throw it out to see if you have any advice. We have had, along with an uptick in orders, which is awesome, and I still think it's the fact that we have improved our website and added some of those marketing kind of calls to action about the product line, the fixture plates, and the mod vise, which, again, good, awesome. Executing on the business, that's what it's all about.
00:22:12
Speaker
a disproportionate increase in the number of second add-on orders within like an hour, like a shocking number of them. And it's really difficult because what happens is what would be a clean order that comes through one transaction, one packing slip, invoice, et cetera, now results in two orders, usually a question from the customer,
00:22:37
Speaker
Maybe about the order or an explanation then also a hey will you waive the shipping charges and then on the back end? We've got to make sure It's a lot more onus and stress on us right and we've gotten better at it. We've learned and ship station you can merge orders But still it's it's a bad It shouldn't be happening and in my initial thought is well, it's happening because we're not doing a good enough job Getting their order in the first or way, but I don't
00:23:05
Speaker
So what you're saying is somebody will somebody will buy a fixture plate and then 45 minutes later they'll be like actually I need all the screws and the clamps and the bolts for it to yeah something like that usually it'll be like a fixture plate and two mod vices and then they'll come back later like an hour later and be like well let me pick up soft jaws in the top plate and all this stuff which is funny because like when I order I like place the order on a site and then I close it like I don't browse after I've ordered
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you've I do too. I put in all my browsing up front, I click order and I leave. Yeah, gone. I like go do something else. I'm like, okay, I'm done with this task.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah. But that's okay. We are not our customer, and that's something I have to remind myself all the time. And the customer sees things differently, and they want things differently than you and I do, because we are wired to grow a business and do what we do. And some of your customers, for sure, too, because you sell almost directly to entrepreneurs and business folk, shop people.
00:24:01
Speaker
But yeah, you do have to think about it from the customer's perspective. And the proof is in the pudding. I know you've put a lot of work into the add-on cart system.
00:24:13
Speaker
And it must feel weird when it needs more work. I don't know how you fix it, but I don't know if you need more warnings or something. Be like, take your time. There's no rush. Make sure you have everything in your cart. Because you just try to avoid that having to refund the one shipping charge and the manual input and the extra emails back and forth, if you can solve it upfront.
00:24:39
Speaker
This is that Jocko Williams extreme ownership. This is 100% my problem. This is not the customer's problem. For me, we thought initially about some sort of a message like, we unfortunately cannot ship one of those Amazon-esque things where it's like, we ship orders so fast that as soon as you place it, do not expect us to do anything to change your order. But nobody wins there. We don't ship orders like Amazon does within 20 seconds of the order coming through.
00:25:07
Speaker
We ultimately are going to strive to look, we have done an awesome job on customer service and we will continue to do so. So we have to accommodate these things. That just means I got to figure out why that's happened, period. Yep. And it might, might involve talking to customers directly, like those few and just from an, an objective standpoint, like, look, we're trying to improve the website. Is there something we can do to help the way you did it be smoother or something? And it might just be, you know, I,
00:25:36
Speaker
I just got thinking about an hour later, I placed the one order and I was like, Oh yeah, I actually do want something else. Like I hadn't made up my mind yet. You know, it's funny, John, I never thought about just reaching out to those customers.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, I've done that for sure. You get so ingrained in like overcomplicating it. It's like good grief. These are all people that clearly are are interested in what we do. Many of them know us through YouTube and so forth. So it's like, most of them would be more than happy to answer a question. Hey, well, this is what happened or why happened. Good grief, John.
00:26:08
Speaker
And that puts the humility on your end, be like, look, I know we can improve a lot. I would like your opinion. I would like your advice. You as the customer, as the person sending me money, how do you think we should do it?
00:26:23
Speaker
I'm with you on this because I definitely internalize like, okay, there's a problem. I got to fix it. Let me, let me sit under a tree and try to figure this out. Um, but I'm, I'm, I'm learning a lot that whether it's to the customer, to everybody else in the company or to my wife or to my kids or whatever, like, what would you do? Speaking of, of products, it looks like you are expand, you're doing accessories or what was it on your Instagram?
00:26:50
Speaker
So we have, in the Norseman, there's the one thumb stud on the one side.
Innovative Sales Strategies
00:26:54
Speaker
We've been asked for years to make a dual thumb stud, to have the thumb axis on both sides for all the lefties out there, all the left-handed guys. And so I made a bunch a couple months ago, and we just had been sitting on them. So the guys got together and said, we're going to finish these, and we're going to post them up on the site, and we're going to figure out a way to do it. And I was like, great, go.
00:27:16
Speaker
Some of the guys anodized them and did product photos. What's interesting is we're going to try a new selling system on the website that our guys and our customers have been asking for for years, but I've been hesitant because of little challenges. But do you know how a lot of companies will do a drop system? They'll be like, okay, we got five products or 50 products or 100 products. They're going to launch at noon. Go nuts.
00:27:40
Speaker
and you hype it up for weeks and weeks ahead of time or whatever and everybody gets excited and they go to the website and they refresh at noon. It's like concert tickets sort of thing.
00:27:52
Speaker
It has its upsides and it has its major downsides too. So I've hesitated against it. That's why we've gone to a random drawing Maker's Choice system for so many years, which has been fantastic. But it's time to try something new and to add something to the system and see if we can add something new. Because the customer right now, they sign up for the Maker's Choice list and it's literally
00:28:12
Speaker
an unknown. They have zero clue if they will get picked tomorrow or in 10 years or never. And it's frustrating to them because they just feel like it's futile. Some are fine with it, but some are annoyed with it. And I'm listening to the feedback and almost everybody in the shop here is connected to the knife industry as well. So they're all chatting with customers on Instagram and DM and stuff too. So it's nice that everybody here kind of has that
00:28:38
Speaker
that connection and that input, and then we talk about it in the meetings. So we're going to try, Fraser's been working hard to come up with a drop system that solves these challenges, one of which being, so imagine if there's high demand for our products and there's low supply, because even though we're making as many as we can, the demand is thankfully much, much higher. But if we put, say, five knives on the website,
00:29:04
Speaker
just live and told everybody it was at noon. We'd have lots of people on the website refreshing at noon. You'd have a bunch of people put in their shopping cart at the same time, and then it's literally who can check out the fastest. And they all take the time to type in their information and their credit card and everything, and then only the first person gets it, but everybody else has already put in the time and the hope, and they're like, oh, it's in my card, okay. And then just to get to the end to say inventory problem or something. And that system sucks because it just makes a lot of people unhappy, and it makes one person happy.
00:29:33
Speaker
Can I chime in? Yeah, please. So I have a very, I would echo everything you just said, which you don't need to hear because you know that. What blew me away was, and this has been a year old conversation, so I hope what I'm saying continues to be true, was talking to Tyson Lamb, who I think has done similar things with Lambcrafted in the past. And apparently there are like legit apps and services
00:30:01
Speaker
But there are ways that people cheat the system. So it's like, not only is it not a way that offers any form of meritocracy to people that have been passionate followers or dedicated people or true fans, not only is it subject to the whims of internet speed and mouse click checkouts, but there's actually a rigged system where people are scraping or apping, sniping.
00:30:24
Speaker
They're writing bots to be able to pull everything and then sell it on eBay for later, for more for later. And that's something that Tyson has struggled with. We've talked about it a lot. And he says, I like the drop system because everybody gets all excited for it. But when one dude buys 50 products, he has to manually go through every single order and confirm if it's a real person.
00:30:47
Speaker
like a legit customer and things like that. And he refunds the people that aren't unabashedly. And he's like, it's, it sucks because it's so manual and it's so annoying for everybody. So he's, he's actually in love with our maker's choice system and he wanted to use it for a little while, but I don't know how he's solved it since. However, there's
00:31:11
Speaker
I'm not sure about the bots thing because people can definitely write scripts and do some crazy stuff, but we've implemented some clever things. Fraser has figured out some very clever things to our Shopify cart.
00:31:25
Speaker
to allow, there's a reserve system now. If 50 people see the product at the same time, literally the first person that clicks the reserve button gets it reserved for five minutes, and then it turns into a five-minute timer. Awesome. For everybody else, it shows out of stock.
00:31:42
Speaker
It is speed to click, but that's sort of the fun about it too. And we'll have another drop next week and another drop the week after and we'll do it. You have your chances. I can't fix the supply and demand problem magically. Not in any way more than what we're trying to do by increasing production anyway. But this kind of reduces the multiple people in checkout scenario and then there's something else too that we...
00:32:06
Speaker
tried to figure out. But yeah, anyway, Fraser's been killing it, doing all the little hacks to solve the problems that we're having. And we're going to test the drop system out in a couple of days with those double thumb studs that we made. And people have been asking for those, so they're going to sell well. But it's like a low stress way to test out the drop system.
00:32:27
Speaker
Can I throw out some ideas unsolicited? I feel like there's also maybe some folks that would be like, you want to think, look, you can't please everybody, but what if there's some people that may not be able to get through the first click, mouse click, all that stuff, but say they've been long passionate fans. What if there was like once a month, a
00:32:46
Speaker
like a Grimsmo trivia contest where like it has to be fair game where like somebody could find it by going through your website or looking through Instagram posts or whatever and then the winner of the trivia gets the chance to buy something that's a little bit more pays it to the right person but then also and I know if this exists in the knife world of like kind of buying spots like buying the right to buy a knife which
00:33:10
Speaker
I think I've heard you say you didn't love before, I don't want to put words in your mouth. And it does feel kind of, well, to use the word scummy. But what if there was something, because there's some people who don't really, who may be less price sensitive and would like a knife. What if you did something where the person has to do, I recognize we're saying this on air, so I don't mean to hold you to this idea. But like, what if you did something where it's like, hey, we're going to do kind of an auction where whoever donates, whoever
00:33:38
Speaker
but is willing to donate the most money to a charity or a good cause or something, then gets the right to buy endorsement. It's like, so it's a financially driven thing, but you're not, it's not a greed driven, exactly.
00:33:52
Speaker
A lot of companies, especially lower volume companies that make a great product, they do try to auction everything or often. Once a year, something is fine, especially if you make something fancy. We did an auction for a knife 1000, a knife 3000. Actually, 3000 wasn't an auction. We sold it for normal price, but it was like an entry system.
00:34:14
Speaker
And it's just too easy, too greedy, too many auctions. And you lose the specialness of it too, and that's not fun.
00:34:25
Speaker
But yeah, we are thinking, we did this series of pandemic knives with a special pattern, numbered one out of 60. And people are going nuts over them, which is fantastic. We still have a good handful of them. And we're going to do some Instagram little contests or name draws or something. I like the trivia idea. We might do that for some of them too, because we've held some of them. And we want to do some creative
00:34:51
Speaker
creative selling methods because we can and because we're flexible and we're nimble and we're still a small company and we can do whatever we want. But I want to do what's in the best interest of the customer, not just from a, why can't I buy one right now at any moment, but from a fairness standpoint. And random is fair, but it's not, it doesn't make people happy necessarily, you know? Sure. I like the trivia. That's good. Yeah, we should do that. Cool. I like it.
00:35:19
Speaker
How's the, uh, one more thing on that. So what we've been doing for years is the maker's choice system where we basically make the knife that we want, whatever color pattern, whatever. And then we put it into the system. People get emailed one at a time until somebody buys it. And it's, it's been an amazing system because it just turns until it sells.
00:35:39
Speaker
and it's relatively private and directly emailed to one person at a time. There's a couple little bugs, but for the most part it's been great. The problem is somebody gets pulled, like say you get pulled for a hot pink knife with purple hardware and you're like, ugh, I've been waiting for five years for this. You know, where somebody else might be like, yeah, pink, I love it.
00:36:00
Speaker
So it's not perfect, because you get the random knife. But over the past, I think, six months, we've been using a buyer's choice system, where the same type of email goes out. But instead of a knife, a finished knife, a form goes out and says, these are the options available. You can choose between honeycomb, diamond, plain, whatever handles. You can choose these colors. You can choose this hardware color, this blade finish. Hit Submit, and we'll make it within a week or two. And then you'll get a private link to buy it. That system has been phenomenal.
00:36:30
Speaker
No money down until it's finished. And we definitely have people that don't follow through and don't buy it. But at that point, after seven days of not buying it, it just goes in our inventory and then it sells in a couple days. So the buyer's choice has been, it's great. So at this point, we're thinking buyer's choice, keep that going, and then drops for everything else if we can make the drop system work really well.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, and then even flakes on a buyer's choice, it could just become like sort of a maker's choice or a drop. Exactly. And that's what we're doing. And it's, yeah, so we're, Fraser's been awesome about, you know, shooting these ideas with me and coming up with his own ideas. And we run it by the team through the meetings too, and that's helped evolve the ideas too.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's like having a team that's willing to deal through the problems and solve the challenges that I'm throwing at them. And I don't have to do it. It's kind of amazing. Absolutely.
00:37:26
Speaker
That's what it's all about.
Empowering Teams and Collaborations
00:37:28
Speaker
It's, you know, hiring a team and building a team isn't about, uh, isn't about barking orders or just creating to do this for them. It's about them. You know, I love like Alex is writing our custom software. I don't really know how it works. We've talked about the direction of it and the goals and so forth. And that's great. And Jared is building new fixtures for the DF sixes. And I'm not going to be, you know, I'll help out, but like he's doing that work. And Ed is doing work on the, he's, he asked for Plato yesterday to test out something on the Datron vacuum. And I'm just like,
00:37:56
Speaker
I don't even want to know, but if you want Play-Doh, you got it. Did you have to ask William really nice? William does not wish this podcast so he will not know that I scooped some of his blue Play-Doh out of the kids tub last night. Yeah, it's good. It's awesome.
00:38:14
Speaker
As much as I don't always enjoy some of the overwhelming day-to-day obligations of running a business, I'll be very candid about that because I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not honest. It can be a lot. I will say I love machining parts and I do love building the overall business and system. I am passionate about that.
00:38:37
Speaker
which I don't know if that makes sense, because I don't like some of it, but I love them. That's one reason why I know sometimes it's uncomfortable, but darn it, that's the point of this podcast. It's not supposed to be just cushy. I've been trying to push you to offload more and let other people shine. Not that you aren't, but because once those things start clicking, people are discovering stuff you didn't even know about, pushing it further, doing more with it, because you're just going to do it to get it done, because you've got so much on your plate.
00:39:06
Speaker
That's that growth. You're suffocating the business. Let it flourish. You're absolutely right. That's what I'm seeing now by doing it. It's like lip service, knowing it beforehand. You're like, yeah, I've heard that before and I get it. But until you actually do it, you literally don't get it. Now that I'm doing it, especially the past few weeks, I've been doing it harder and I'm seeing the benefits of it. Everything's flourishing and people are happier.
00:39:34
Speaker
I have, not that I have more time, but I certainly have more ability to see things. As this Jocko book, The Leadership Strategy and Tactics, he says it's the leader's job to look up and out, not down and in. Because when you've got your head focused down on a project, looking down and in, you literally can't see what's going on. So it's the leader's job to
00:39:55
Speaker
like literally stand up, put your head up shoulders back and look around and have that 20,000 foot view of everything that's going on and let the team look down and in because that's their job. Yeah. Awesome. What is, uh, what's on tap for today? Oh, so today we are prepping. Um, I've got an exciting day tomorrow. Oh yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker
Have you heard of Peter McKinnon, a YouTuber? No. He's got a quite large YouTube channel, and he's been doing not only vlogs, but also video teaching tutorials. I wouldn't be surprised if Julie watches a lot of his stuff, because both my video editors said, follow everything he says and does, and learned everything they know from him. Cool. But anyway, he's from Toronto, so he's super close. And we've been chatting a lot the past few months. And he's a super big knife guy.
00:40:51
Speaker
So he's got some opportunities and some excellent video ideas. So he's going to come by the shop tomorrow. And we're going to film all day. And it's going to be big. So we've been cleaning the shop and prepping and getting some new toolboxes and rearranging things. Angelo's been leading that charge of he's like, this is a really big deal, guys. Let's make the shop more nice. Let's do a really good job here.
00:41:16
Speaker
That's been awesome. So yeah, he's like, okay, we need these toolboxes. We need these tables, these buckets, these benches. Let's get rid of the yogurt tubs for anodizing and do some actual nice buckets and lots of little stuff. So yeah, the shop's improving quite a bit and everybody's excited.
00:41:34
Speaker
I'll be playing on the current today. I still don't fully understand tabbing. I understand it. I just need to do more of it before I feel comfortable about parts not flying off and still getting half decent finishes. It finishes on the tabbed area? Yeah.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah, that will be... Well, I'm not sure if you're asking. I don't really care, but I want it to be nice, you know? Yeah. If you look at some of the larger aerospace parts, the tabs either have to be thick enough to support the part in and of themselves when the tabs are along a single plane or you do...
00:42:11
Speaker
three tabs on two separate planes exactly the tripod approach. But most of the time those are also then using a surfacing toolpath or a like a barrel cutter or a bullnose cutter to then surface in that bottom you're not able to take a full blown like full radial engagement or axial engagement
00:42:31
Speaker
tool, traditional side cutting, which I think that's what I was trying to do. The like the two things I've tried to tab so far, um, trying to do a finished pass like, like normal, you know, full depth or whatever. And it just chatters or falls off or whatever. And I'm like, Oh, what am I doing wrong? But yeah, I think I just needed you to say that or anybody to say that to me of it's not, you can't do a normal cut. You can't do a full depth finished pass, like play with it differently or, or step it down.
00:42:59
Speaker
The tabbing is awesome, but it doesn't defy physics. I mean, the part has to be, unless you're able to do, like we said, talked about a few weeks ago, some sort of a bolt-on mechanical clamp, which can make sense. But the other thing is don't overlook slitting saws. You can get excellent finishes and run a tab. The cut forces are different and you could run a, leave a 30 thou tab down the center, but the finish on the rest of the part often looks excellent.
00:43:31
Speaker
Really? Dennis has been talking about the millmatic, minimatic, micromatic. Mimmatic, I think it was. Yeah, that sounds right. Some Italian or Swiss company. That's like a carbide slitting saw that he really, really likes.
00:43:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, there's we've used the ones from our tool. I think Dennis was saying he's had better luck with the solid carbide blades than the insert insert style. I can't confirm that because we've really only used the solid carbide, but they're a little bit expensive. But in the world of current, it's it's not not that big of a couple of bucks for a decent saw.
00:44:13
Speaker
You're talking about a solid carbide disc of slitting. It looks like a miniature table saw blade. Right. We actually bought ours from Maritool and had good luck with them. Yeah, maybe I'll pick one of those up. And I also owe Dennis an apology for forgetting his name last week.
00:44:31
Speaker
in the who's who in the WhatsApp chat. Yeah, for those who don't know, Dennis is an AI bot that was written, we don't know by whom, to interject. Surprisingly lifelike, but yes. No one has actually met him. No, he's a ghost. Dennis runs an amazing shop in, I think, the Bay Area in Northern California with some pretty impressive machines.
00:44:55
Speaker
It's pretty cool. Awesome example of somebody who's not a bootstrapper, but you can draw a lot of inspiration from. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. Talk to you next week. Sounds good, buddy. Take care. Bye.