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Business of Machining - Episode 68
194 Plays7 years ago
GOOD OL' TUG AND PULL Grimsmo's laser focus on the SAGA means that attention to other business areas may be lacking a teensy bit.
Machinist Woes The pieces and parts of your business are running like clock-work but something's missing.
Easy Answer: Get a dose of SPINDLE THERAPY!
Following the SAGA of the SAGA? If you listen closely, you'll hear the sound of awesome!
Blade Show is fast approaching AND the SAGA's in the 5% tweak stage! Grimsmo's on a quest for honest feedback from those around him. If you're going to Blade Show, make sure to stop and say, "Hi!"
TIME TO TROUBLESHOOT Grimsmo's trying to drill a 1/4" hole--2" deep but the drills are EXPLODING! Speaking of time, how long do the set-ups take? Touching off each tool = Confusion
"You're reinvigorating my hate (for lathes)!" - Saunders
SAGA SATURDAY EPISODE 1 Saunders gushes over the mechanism but wants to see more about the lead up!
Sharing the PROCESS Showing mistakes takes guts when you have a reputation for excellence but that's HOW EXCELLENCE is made! Excellence in itself IS a process rather than a fugue state.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP & BUSINESS TOPICS Minimum Product Viability (ARTICLE) Actionable Items Legitimate Scarcity
"Your mama was a snow blower!" SMW team embarks on making the Johnny-5 from Short Circuit and Grimsmo's got only ONE REQUEST. EDuino makes a cameo for a nano second.
THE STRUGGLE IS REAL Saunders grapples with a big decision. "This might be the last one I have in me."
CALLING BUSINESS OF MACHINING PATRONS: What should the Johns should do while they're visiting together?
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode number 68. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm fantastic today. You? Good. Good. What's going on? Genuinely like really, really solid mood this morning, you know, not just making it up for the podcast.
00:00:18
Speaker
So what does cause, I mean, okay, so there's been a clear change actually. So I've been living life less in the rear view mirror lately, trying to, like I used to keep, I still do kind of keep a journal and I very much think about the past and somebody else sent me a really good thing about stress and entrepreneurship and how there's a triad of stability of trying to keep
00:00:42
Speaker
family life stable where you live stable so that you can fall back on those things, a happy marriage.
Balancing Business Risks and Family Life
00:00:48
Speaker
That way you can take risks in your business and so forth. But one of the things that they came up in was like how often Tim Ferriss and his co-hosts have failed at things and that's okay and so forth. Regardless, I'm trying to look future more and look less in the rearview mirror, which I think if you and I went back and listened to these podcasts a year ago, we'd probably hear a different tone or mood. Right?
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. So what causes you anxiety and stress now? Well, going back on something you just said, like taking risks in your business, I wouldn't want to take risks in my family at this point in any way. If we have these two or three things that encompass our lives, family, work, and that's about it, I'm willing to take risks in my business. I'm not willing to take risks with my wife and kids. What do you mean by that?
00:01:40
Speaker
I don't know. But it's good at home. I don't want to fall back on that and enjoy it and know that it's always there and I can be aggressive at work and I can come back and enjoy family life.
00:01:56
Speaker
You've always been someone I think that has done a better job than certainly than I had in the past of of balancing that. On the other hand, I will say we're more on paper, more productive than we've ever been. But I've also been spending more time like going to soccer games at night or stuff like I don't really work on the weekends anymore, which is mind blowing.
00:02:20
Speaker
For the last, actually, my whole adult life, since I graduated college, I worked every Saturday and most Sundays. The last three weekends, I haven't done anything on the weekends. Nice. Yeah, that's a huge change for you. It's mind boggling that you can still be super productive on
Research and Development Focus
00:02:39
Speaker
paper. Right. It's awesome. Right.
00:02:44
Speaker
Let's see, so what, you asked me what causes me anxiety or what makes me in a great mood.
00:02:52
Speaker
It's been really interesting. I actually wanted to talk to you about this. So the past week or two, I've been diving deep, deep, deep into these pens and giving it a lot of attention and a lot of effort and thought. And it's sort of that R&D process that I love. This is what I was built to do kind of thing. But I don't want to say it's coming at the expense of other things, but I definitely notice that my attention is
00:03:21
Speaker
focused on this, and a lot of other balls are dropping. Nothing crazy major, but the past few months, as we're hiring more people, I've been on top of it as an entrepreneur. I talk to everybody. I do planning. I come up with new ideas and help and train and teach and all that stuff. And the past week or two, I've kind of been dropping most of that to focus on this pen thing. It feels weird. I'm a different person now.
00:03:50
Speaker
I don't want to say I'm a rooter, but I'm a little bit shorter because I'm so focused. It's just fascinating to think about that and be like, what do I want to
Handling Business Mistakes and Feedback
00:04:00
Speaker
be? Do I want to be the high-level CEO that just organizes and manages everything, or do I want to be able to fall back and do this R&D stuff that I love so much? The answer is both, of course.
00:04:11
Speaker
finding a kind of balance between that I'm not at all the time while I'm like in it, loving it, and being super frustrated at the same time. Because yesterday I broke $400 of tools in about 30 seconds. Did you crash the lathe? Yeah, well, a drill bit, through coolant drill bit broke, boring bar went in that hole that wasn't there, broke, and then the probe goes in and says, hey, there's not a hole here anymore. Didn't break the probe though.
00:04:38
Speaker
Nope. Okay, that's fine. So not really a, you didn't crash. Yeah, not a huge thing, but no, the tool broke and then the next tool broke, but it's still like, you know, five 30 at night. And I wanted to get this part done and problems and all this stuff. Um, but it doesn't make me.
00:04:57
Speaker
sad or mad or really maybe a little bit of stress. It's just like one of those annoying things that's part of the process of you just go through it and you get over it and you'll get past it. Like it doesn't, I don't dwell on that anymore. It used to crush me in the past, right? Breaking tools. Yeah, no, I hear exactly. Things like that, right? Yeah.
00:05:21
Speaker
I struggle with that. I'm always conscious of the balance of what's fair. We've had a couple of mishaps. It's weird. I actually feel awkward about talking about it on the podcast now because I don't ever want it to be the case of throwing anybody under the bus. That's not what it is. But nevertheless, we had a
00:05:40
Speaker
a person. I think I don't even know what happened. I think a dead blow hammer kind of bounced the wrong way and it smacked an indicator face dial indicator. So worst dial is you just spider it up the bezel. And then we had a another order shipping mistake after we had kind of a huddle on how we're going to get better. Same thing like I wouldn't say that we're bad at it or have had problems, but like
00:06:07
Speaker
just too many little like, oh, I got two, is it a one? Little things, it's difficult. And both those times there were...
00:06:18
Speaker
It was I wanted to make it clear after after a question from the when it happened, like, guys, that's that's normal business stuff like you. You do not. I appreciate some gesture of being the thought of saying, hey, do I need to kind of come out of pocket? But no, absolutely not. That's normal business stuff. Now, if you break something because you're you show that, you know what I mean? No. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, exactly. Yeah, I don't think we have
00:06:49
Speaker
had any major issues like expensive issues that other people have done but I'm ready for it to happen because like you said it's business stuff and honestly like when it happens or even beforehand I'm gonna be like look guys I break more tools than anybody and it's not because I'm you know foolish it's just because I'm kind of quick and aggressive and
00:07:09
Speaker
you know, I try things that are kind of crazy. And everybody else is a lot more conservative than that. But when it happens, as long as they didn't, you know, come in drunk or something like that, which nobody would. But but then
00:07:23
Speaker
You know, nobody would do that. But then that's like grounds for being stupid. But other than that, it's just normal business stuff. Like, oh, man, I messed up. I wasn't thinking. Or this happened. Or I didn't expect that. Or whatever. I don't think you and I would. I don't think. I certainly hope we wouldn't have a situation involving alcohol. But I will tell you, we've had one thing that comes to mind in the past where I think somebody here was
00:07:46
Speaker
actually the opposite, trying to be a great employee by working a little bit longer. Eventually, it became clear that the right call was good grief. We're done. Go home. There's nothing heroic about working to the point of being tired and making
00:08:02
Speaker
I was talking to somebody else about time management and how depending on my mood or what's on my plate, a lot of times I'll try to do my fresh stuff in the morning and at the end of the day, I'll just bang out mindlessly kind of stuff that I could either get checked or I could check late. You know what I mean? Just recognize that you perform at different levels depending on your mood and your tiredness. I've always continued to believe you could only make so many decisions in the day.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. Just a thing about how your brain works. Yep. Yep. I like that. And I find by the end of the day, it depends on what I do throughout the day, I guess.
00:08:43
Speaker
but I always want to do so much. And if I haven't done so much by the end of the day, then I'm like in push mode at the end, even when my brain might not be at a hundred percent capacity, but I don't quite realize it until maybe it's too late or whatever. And then eventually I'm just like, I'm done. Like, wow. Sometimes you can catch that second window, you know?
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's true. But it's
Product Quality and Honest Criticism
00:09:04
Speaker
yeah, I'd rather do it like right now. First thing in the morning, I'm pumped and I'm like, I actually got in a little bit early and I set up some tools on the lathe after crashing them yesterday. So that right after the podcast, I can fire up the lathe and just make some more parts. Yeah. Be careful, though, about the sort of people will follow the leader and lead by example. I think it's tough because I kind of want to have the same.
00:09:30
Speaker
Um, if i'm being honest, you know, I like this idea that like, well, I don't have to dial in a tool or I don't have to clean up my Paper towel that I was using to wipe with or I can I can break a tool because i'm The owner of the company or i'm john or i'm busy or my time is important and that doesn't work. It just doesn't like Um, you're right in in you're right. I mean you should be able to do rnd that john grimsmo is different than the
00:09:54
Speaker
person, Sky or Angela or whomever who's doing production or dialing in process reliability, that's very different. But nevertheless, you got to be careful about that, I think, about what it says. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, I needed to be told that I like that. Yeah, so it's a balance, right? And just being able to do both.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, slow is fast. It's funny. I felt like I had the same thing of You were mentioning where I have been spending more and more time in my office and it's generally good like there's nothing wrong but
00:10:30
Speaker
I wish I was out in the shop more. And so the past few days I have been and it's actually been really good setting up stuff, running stuff, you know, helping. It's a good thing. And it's that same tug and pull, right? Right. But I had somebody call it spindle therapy. That's good. Yeah, I like that. So how is saga?
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, the saga, the pen is, it's so cool. We're in like this last 5% tweak stage where I could stay for the next five months if I wanted to. It's like, you know, on one hand, I'm like, get it out. It's, you know, we're going to get better over time. But on the other hand, I'm like, we've developed a brand and a culture of excellence with continuous improvement as well. But like,
00:11:18
Speaker
What we put out, it has to be really good at first and it can get slightly better over time and it will. I have the ability now to fix and tweak almost anything, so I don't want to put out something that I know could be better. Have you thought about a framework that's more empirical or more
00:11:38
Speaker
third party-ish, like perhaps you have a group of, you know, maybe it's employees within your company, or maybe it's other people that you could say, no, I'm not attaching my opinion, I'm not giving you more information, but does, you know, at the point of continuous improvement, does this, do you think this meets the quality standards you would expect from our brand?
00:11:59
Speaker
That's a really good way to put it. I've certainly been showing it around to everybody and I see the hesitancy from people to like say the truth. And once I finally tease it out, then they're like, okay, I'm glad you saw that too. And I'm like, yeah, I think I've seen everything, but I just want to know what you're noticing.
00:12:15
Speaker
I'm looking at this under a microscope, literally. But what stands out to you? And they're like, oh, maybe it's a little too hard on this spring, or this edge hurts my finger, or something like that. And what's this little tool path right there? Things like that. And it's neat to see how people interact with it. And everybody holds it differently. It's funny to see that everybody holds a pen different. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Sure. Where we put the grip at the tip,
00:12:45
Speaker
is kind of different. You know, it's generally good, but some people are like, don't even touch it. They hold it way up high. And I'm like, interesting. That's cool.
00:12:53
Speaker
You will be a victim of your own success, which is as you become more successful, you become a role model to people, you become their hero. People want to have generally positive interactions that they want to be liked or they want people to like them and so forth. So it makes it more difficult to get candid feedback out of people, even though that's all you want. That's the best thing you can do is be honest, but it's very difficult to do that.
00:13:20
Speaker
Absolutely. And then this is actually the time of year that I think about that a lot because in a week from tomorrow, we're all going down to blade show. Super excited for that. This is like our sixth year, I think. Um, and I get to meet
00:13:36
Speaker
hundreds of people or more directly in person to spend time with. And a lot of knife makers come up to me and they show me their first knife or their hundredth knife or whatever their thousands knife. And, you know, they want advice or whatever. And I have to balance that thing where I'm like, oh, yeah, all of the truth.
00:13:53
Speaker
Or do it and be like, wow, this is really nice. You're making really good progress. And I have to gauge feedback going to they want me to tear into it. Because when I was young as a knife maker, then I would give my knife to this Todd Begg Supreme knife maker guy. And he was like, well, he gave me the truth. And he's like, I would do it like this, and I would do it like that. And that kind of advice, man, it's like you can't pay for that. So do that. I mean, that's easy. But keep it to two things or something.
00:14:23
Speaker
being nice, but honest about it. And I can do that. So every year I try to get better and better about that, not just like brush things off, like, wow, I would really fix this, but.
00:14:35
Speaker
You know, because I want to I want to train people's critical eye for their own work as well to make sure that they notice what I know. Yeah, right. The the this conversation in two ways reminds me of I have a call later this morning with our web guys on the NYC CNC site, which as much as I'm proud of it, I want it to be better. So this idea of continuous improvement and in using your own product and I don't like
00:15:00
Speaker
we've got this business section that has starting your own business and then growing your business. And that was kind of my thought was, those are very different stages in your life. And so many people are just getting started and that content is very different.
00:15:16
Speaker
I'm not sure those are the right two ways to break that down, but for now I'm okay with that. But what I'm not okay with is when you click on those pages, you just have 30 thumbnails of articles. And a lot of those articles I would say are actually pretty darn good stuff for manufacturing entrepreneurs, but they need
00:15:33
Speaker
to be better organized. So we have a call to help change. It's like the annoying WordPress templates, style sheets, all that back end stuff that I am very proud to say I don't get involved in anymore. But one of the articles that I think is a great article that I'd like to drive more attention to is this idea of minimum product viability and how do you determine if something is a good idea, a good product, a good market.
00:16:00
Speaker
And one of the good takeaways from that article is, you know, don't talk to your friends about it. Don't ask your mom about it because these people are going to want to encourage your entrepreneurial spirits. They're going to want to say, you know, rah, rah, rah, you're doing great. Look at you. You're really hustler. You need to show it to go ahead or not at all. What do you mean?
00:16:21
Speaker
They might be completely good. Don't quit your job. Stay safe. That's a fair point, too. But I think the single best test that I have ever heard for either a service or product-based entrepreneurial pursuit is if you tell somebody who knows who you are but isn't
00:16:43
Speaker
biased by their love or friendship with you. If you tell them and their reaction would be exciting enough or interested enough to either tell somebody else or sort of immediately act on it, so the best way to say this is to frame it in kind of a, you don't say, I'm thinking about launching this product, but rather to say, hey, I saw this, I'm wondering, is that interesting? Or what if this existed? And then all of a sudden, if it's like, yes,
00:17:10
Speaker
then okay. I see what you're saying. Right. You're removing, removing the personal friendship relationship out of the conversation and you're making it objective towards the thing. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
That's true. That would be a good way to get an honest feedback. Like if, and I've done this, other people actually, you know, when I'm a blade show, if somebody hands me a knife and they say, what do you think about this? I don't know if they made it or if they bought it or whatever. So I have to look at it and be like, well, you probably spent, you know, five to a hundred thousand or five to a thousand dollars on this. And, uh,
00:17:45
Speaker
I don't want to insult you by saying that your spent money is bad. And then if the guy says, I made it, then I have more empathy. I have more compassion. Like, wow, I see you worked really hard on this. It's different. But the real world is tough. I know.
00:18:01
Speaker
but I don't have that backbone to be like, wow, this could be a lot better. I'm never going to say something sucks, but I want to help people see what I see. Everybody I talk to, maybe this is the self-feeding, fulfilling prophecy of the same symptom where nobody wants to be honest, but everybody I talk to
00:18:22
Speaker
sort of agrees and shares the sentiment that we're too soft on people in this world and it's the everybody gets a trophy and you know everyone needs to have positive reinforcement and you know think how different that is from
00:18:36
Speaker
our grandparents' generation, our parents' generation, or frankly, even my generation. I mean, my parents were tough on me.
Technical Challenges in Production
00:18:43
Speaker
I couldn't be more grateful for my upbringing, especially as I now have kids that are of four and two where you start to be more conscious of discipline and how you handle situations. But darn it, they were hard on me.
00:18:57
Speaker
my parents were not there to be my friend. They were there to be my parents. And now you hear, so I've seen some funny memes about like, my mom is my best friend. And like, you know, everyone just wants to be soft. And I don't, I'm not excited to live in that world. Yep. Anyway, so what's next? You're, you're dialing in the last few bits on saga.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, I've made 10 clips. I'm having trouble drilling a hole two inches deep, a quarter inch hole eight times deep. It's not too bad. I threw coolant and everything. I made 10, and then the drill just exploded. And I'm like, what the crap? And then I put new drill in, and it exploded. And I'm like, oh, man. And then I checked for alignment.
00:19:40
Speaker
not concentricity, but the drill has to go straight into the hole, not have a tool offset be wrong. I indicated the tool in X and Y to make sure it's on center with the spindle. It's due to thermal growth and just tool offsets and all that stuff. It was like 5,000X and 9,000Y or something, which is pretty- It was off that part.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, it was pretty not, not dead center. Well, let's assume that that's it. And then I've got new drills coming in today and we'll be able to do that titanium, but the, yeah. Yeah.
00:20:15
Speaker
So the clip being the hardest and most time-consuming part, I have to make a certain amount, I don't know how many yet, ideally a million, but I have to make a certain amount and be like, that's enough, move on to the other parts, and then make all those to be able to bring pens to Blade Show. Ah, got it, got it, got it. And are you still, I know I've asked you this before, but now that you've expanding the product line of Grimsma products, how much tool swapping do you have to do on the lathe?
00:20:46
Speaker
It was relatively set up for almost every job. I might have to change an end mill or something like that. And now, to make the clips, I had to pull out two live tools and install three and change some stuff. And I'm like, oh, this is getting more set up than I wanted. But as I take it apart, I'm going to document where everything goes and what tool and what stick out and all that stuff, because I don't want to forget. Your turret, is it that base mount style?
00:21:15
Speaker
Is it BMT or is that only like a Haas-Doussaint? Yeah, that's a Haas thing. I don't know what you call it. Are they repeat? Are they relatively repeatable? You mean you still have to touch them off, but... Sort of. You're not taking a... Okay, so lathe tooling, there's the actual cutting insert, then there's the holder that the insert goes in, then there's the holder that the holder goes into, right? Yeah, exactly. So there's three major parts. Is that a fair way to describe it?
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, most of the most of the turning tools are fine. I have general I have a rougher, I have a finisher, I have a sub spindle finisher, and then I have some boring bars and things like that that go in drill holders. But do you say do you take the whole block off and leave the leave the whole tool set up in a block that can get bolted to the turret or do you take bars out of holders?
00:22:06
Speaker
Typically, I'll leave the blocks in the turret, and I'll take the boring bar holder thingy out. And then the live tool, if it has to, it comes completely out. Because I'm changing from a left and right live tool to an in and out live tool, axial, radial kind of thing. But yeah, so as long as we're documented,
00:22:30
Speaker
Most of the stuff doesn't really repeat. You still want to touch it off. You still want to check for runout or concentricity on everything that matters, basically. Yeah, that's a fair point. I guess I was thinking, especially in the half joke, and again, folks, my hate of lathes is generally a joke, but tool stick out matters for rigidity and for clearances and collisions and so forth.
Social Media and Time Management
00:22:53
Speaker
It would seem nice if you could, it seems like you could quickly get to a logical point of investing in additional turret holders because then you're just swapping out a setup tool that still needs to touch off but is generally going to be correct. Yep. I want to do that although it gets more complicated as you have multiple tools per station because then you could have four tools in one block.
00:23:20
Speaker
You know, especially me, I want to maximize. I use small tools. So I'm like, I want as many tools in one spot as possible, but it's confusing touching off multiple tools because you touch off the first one with the probe and it writes the offset to the first one. And then you touch off the second one and it writes the offset to the first one. Right. You're it overrated. So I'm, I'm, I'm literally taking, taking a picture with my phone of one step.
00:23:45
Speaker
and then I touch it, and then I take a picture again, and then I go back and I retype. It's... You're reinvigorating my hate.
00:23:52
Speaker
So actually, do you know that social, like the sort of Instagram famous or internet famous picture of, I think it's a Maury Lay that has like 280 tools on it. So that picture or one very similar was on the cover of, it's, this is confusing, it's MD tool, you know the girl Sarah from Raptor, or used to be, so she moved from Raptor to, I think it's called MD tooling in the US and they,
00:24:19
Speaker
The import MT is in Tom, which is Italian tool holder stuff. So that was their photo. And yes, and I knew that. Yeah. When he was on their catalog and I was like, come on, is this real? Right. I've seen that picture before. Yeah, it was a funny conversation.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny how those those kind of epic pictures float around. Like there's a local machining company around here that has an orange vice picture on their website as one of their product, like, you know, cool pictures. And I'm like, that's not your picture. Really? Yeah, it's like like one of Eric Saul's pictures. I've seen that on his website before. It's like they just stole it and put it on their site. It's whatever. Does it bother you? Do you have people steal your Instagram stuff?
00:25:11
Speaker
stuff that I know of. We have a couple accounts that repost our stuff, and then they either don't tag you in it, or they'll tag other people that they care about, but then they'll credit you without the at tag, and it's kind of like, I want, you know, whatever, like, I've got, live a happy life. But then it's also kind of annoying that it continues to happen, and you're kind of like, well, at what point do you, it's actually tough, Instagram won't do anything because you're,
00:25:41
Speaker
They just won't do anything. Don't worry about it. You're right. It's a non worry. It's going to happen. It's a world of sharing now. It's so easy to steal someone's content and repost it. And you just got to be not only the bigger man about it, but just keep going forward. Just keep posting, keep posting, keep posting. Know it's going to get reused. Yeah, that's a fair point.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah. It's like that picture that you were talking about of the turret with, you know, 300 tools on it. If you post that on your channel, which you might have, I forget. Oh, sure. I didn't attribute it. I had no idea. Of course. Exactly. Like we just don't know at some point because it goes around too many times. Right. So whatever. Yeah. Right. No harm intended. Exactly. What are you up to today? I was just going to ask you today. I got it.
00:26:34
Speaker
By the end of today, I'm done making clips for Blade Show. Let's put it that way. OK. Because I have to. It's Wednesday. I have Thursday, Friday, and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, next week, plus weekend time if I want to take it to finish pens. So I'll have clips done, but then I have seven other components that I need to put revisions into and produce, and then assemble, and then anodize and tumble, and all that work.
00:27:01
Speaker
at least 20 pens to bring to Blade Show. And even at that number, that's not a lot. They'll be gone in 20 minutes, dude. I know. And we're all going to want to keep one in our pocket just to be able to show people. So that's really only 15 left.
00:27:15
Speaker
You know, so that's why I want to bring 50 a hundred, but obviously it's not going to happen at this point, but that's fine. Whatever. As long as people get to see them and hopefully they're received well and we get to, you know, get the word out there, then our time will come. Time is the keyword there. I'm reminding, I set myself up, I set up some, um, goals and it's
00:27:37
Speaker
It's great. Another awesome article is this idea that goals stink and they're terrible things and they're worthless because people place so much value on the goal as some sort of an outcome and then put almost zero effort or disregard the systems and processes and steps that they have to take on a daily basis to achieve those goals because that's what matters.
00:28:02
Speaker
But a goal can lead to that. Like, you know, like before the podcast, you were telling me this goal that you have and.
00:28:11
Speaker
it's such an audacious goal that even just having it and taking it seriously and believing that you're going to do it will change your decisions every day. Right. But it's that. So it's almost like the goal serves as the inspiration.
Engaging the Audience and Sustaining Interest
00:28:23
Speaker
It's no different than entrepreneurship where lots of people have these awesome ideas and it's the execution that matters. Absolutely. Absolutely. So
00:28:34
Speaker
What was I saying? Oh, time. Just reminding yourself that with saga, you've got to remember, John, no one has seen a saga. Other than a couple of Instagram teachers, I've never held one, and I would love to think that I'll hold one before some of the rest of the world. You know what I mean? No one else. This has been something that you've gone through
00:28:56
Speaker
It's birth, it's adolescence, it's childhood and raising it up and coming of age and none of the rest of the world has a clue about this thing yet. You've been consumed in it every day and it takes time and you've got to let it, you've got to just get it out there. Yeah, exactly.
00:29:16
Speaker
And it's funny because I'm taking it very seriously. This is a serious product for us. And I'm giving it all the attention it deserves to raise and nurture and cuddle and all that stuff.
00:29:32
Speaker
And I'm super excited. This could be a new staple in our business, and that's the goal, right? So we're setting up processes in place, and I'm dreaming about machine purchases in the future that will help sustain this kind of thing.
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah, taken seriously basically. Another good tip is a friend is trying to launch his first product and he's put out some teasers. Actually, I'd love your opinion on this because I think it's a huge asset to start feeling at your community, start building some awareness, bring people along for the ride versus the shock and awe of radio silence, no idea. Then you all of a sudden just launch something and people are like, wait a minute here.
00:30:13
Speaker
Obviously, you've done a great job. We're all following your saga of the saga. Right. Nice. That's not the last time that's going to happen. I know. I love it. But I think Radio Silence and then Launch can work if you have an audience or if you're somehow super magically good at Kickstarter and can send it to all the viewers and all that. Those are the anomalies. That's not normal. Exactly.
00:30:42
Speaker
So to think that every day Joe in his basement garage can just radio silence and then put up a post on Instagram with 12 followers and expect it's going to go viral, it's naive, honestly.
00:30:57
Speaker
And I think as we've talked about before, I'm kind of falling into that trap too, where like, well, let me just, you know, I don't want to, you know, I have a reputation to uphold now. I don't want to show so many mistakes, but that's stupid. Like I want to share the process. So last Saturday we were, we released a saga Saturday episode one and we'll do episode two this Saturday. And then I was telling Aaron, we'll be at blade show next Saturday. Let's film a blade show edition of saga Saturday where we show it to people. And I'm like, yes, that'd be awesome. Um,
00:31:27
Speaker
Yeah. So I want to be, uh, more upfront and transparent with the process and the, you know, banging my head against the lady. Even that's their saga Saturday, which was awesome. But if we're, if we go back to the, you know, let's, let's make sure we're balancing for friendship with honesty, you
00:31:45
Speaker
I rewind it. Give me, give me some, like, I don't, I was going to ask you how many parts are in this saga. I'm like, I'm like five. Yeah. I'm like five months into this process and I really haven't filmed very much and I feel kind of guilty about that. So I can, yeah, I can rewind and I can like explain things and uh, the fact that you kept those clips done, like we're good. Like that's awesome. You know what I mean?
00:32:12
Speaker
Yep. You got me excited. The mechanism just looks freaking awesome. Yes. That's great. Yeah, I love it. Love it. Okay, so here's my question that I want your opinion on.
00:32:33
Speaker
My comment was, if you're going to start garnering interest at some point, you want to give people actionable things. And if you can't, okay, so there's the extreme of you can purchase it. Well, if it's purchased and not ready to ship, that gets into credit card laws and ethical laws. Okay, so then you could do a pre-order. Some people don't like pre-orders, totally get that.
00:32:56
Speaker
Then you could just at least try to do a mailing list and then you could do a mailing list with an incentive. Say, hey, if you sign up now, you get a five. There is something to be said at some point for trying to create action items for people to act on. As we found out, I don't talk about this much, but we probably should. We stopped completely taking pre-orders like a long time ago, a year or more ago.
00:33:24
Speaker
And now we just do our maker's choice list, which is basically like an actionable mailing list. Like you sign up specifically saying you're ready to buy whenever. So now we have a mailing list, like a specific interest list for the Rask and a separate one for the Norseman. And now, man, I have a number in my, like I have a physical number of how many people say they'll buy one right now. Nobody else has that. Like no other knife maker. They have a mailing list where they're like, yeah, I'd take updates and stuff. But no, like I have a list of so many people that claim they will purchase on the spot.
00:33:54
Speaker
And it's really comforting knowing the number of that list, like the size of that list. Are you willing to share how many people pass when actually presented with the opportunity to buy, percentage-wise? Yes. I'd say, I think the most I've seen is 10 passes in a row of different people. But honestly, it happens in one to four people. Because it's 20%, 25% will pass.
00:34:24
Speaker
Something like that. Yeah, sure. Which, if that. But yeah, like whatever. I don't care. The system is automated and the next guy's waiting in line. Right. The difference is you've done a phenomenal job of
00:34:39
Speaker
creating a brand that involves a legitimate element of scarcity because you're a craftsman in quality behind it. That's different. The example that I don't want to give it away because he's not coming to market yet, but it's a more commodity based improvement to a motor vehicle style product where it's kind of like there's no, you can't pitch it as a limited edition thing because they get banged out, which is a different, you don't have, I think,
00:35:09
Speaker
scarcity sells, I'll put it that way. People, I see this in comments, people legitimately think that we're putting
00:35:19
Speaker
that we're holding back. I assure you from everything I know about John, he's not, and in fact, I've got a, I think we agreed on a date. I'm going to head up in a, I don't know, a month, a year and a half or so, and I will give a full audit of Grimsman knives to ensure that this is not a, you know, they're not, they're not sandbagging us.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yep. Love it. Can we do something? I don't know. Maybe we just do like a live video podcast or live video YouTube. I don't know. I think Meg was suggesting we could do a Q and a together. Uh, although I think she said we could do a podcast Q and a, um, which could be interesting. People submit questions and we just answer them on the podcast. So, so it's asynchronous. Like people will have to submit questions ahead of time. Okay. Yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
We could do it on the Patriots. Oh, that's a good idea. But, but yeah, when you come up, let's, we should do something, uh, together for sure. Like obviously you'll be part of day to day production, but maybe you and I could come in on a Saturday or something and we can make something or play or yeah.
Business Growth and Future Ventures
00:36:28
Speaker
Sweet. Sweet. So what are you up to today? Uh, what am I to? I'm working on a couple of little videos. Um, and I,
00:36:38
Speaker
I have been. I struggle with. Am I should I? Should I? Should I stop every I'm going to take this to the extreme? Should I stop everything I'm doing to focus on what I think is a new opportunity for us? And it's not it's not a radical shift, but. And it comes back to if you're not willing to do that, are you not willing to do that because
00:37:07
Speaker
of it's outside your comfort zone or because you've got other things in place that you have to leave in place. And I think a lot of that goes back to
00:37:19
Speaker
Two really important lessons I've learned in life. One is things take time. So if you're trying to make it happen quicker, that's actually not always a good thing. Sometimes you actually need to let things take time. And then the second thing is by far one of the best lessons I learned in life, which is the value of what I call an option. So the option value of like, what do you do with something?
00:37:42
Speaker
You know, a great option is, a great thing is your email list. That's a form of optionality. You can kind of choose what you, I mean, I know people want a knife out of it, but your YouTube channel is an asset that gives you the option to sort of choose, hey, where do you go with this, right? Like, what do you do with it? And so,
00:38:02
Speaker
I just need to make sure I I've had been doing a good job of time management just making sure I focus on on that and I also I said to my wife I was like, I don't know if I I don't know if I like that I said this but I was like, I think this is the last I mean, I'm freaking 35 I'm young but I was like, I think this is the last
00:38:24
Speaker
If I do run with this, it's the last one I got in me, like I'm tired in a good way, like I'm happy. But it takes a tremendous amount of effort to really if I build this new thing, I want it to be something that isn't it's not going to we will promote it, but it's not going to be part of my story in the way that Saunders and NYC have been. My business is my YouTube channel like this will be something that's
00:38:54
Speaker
If it goes, you know, hopefully everyone that listens to this podcast will see it and they may know it. We have an affiliation with it, but it's not our thing. It's a standalone kind of thing. Very much so. That's bigger than yourself. Yeah. That's admirable. Yeah, but it's a lot of work. Yeah. I think you've got room in your life for both to grow Saunders and to do something crazy big. And I'm kind of,
00:39:20
Speaker
I'm expecting that in my future, even though I don't, I don't have it yet. I don't see it. No, you, you've got your thing. No, but to create something bigger than myself. I mean, yeah, grim smoke could as a company could, uh, could go bigger, but there's, there's more in there. I'm just waiting for the opportunity, which is fine. So I can, I can put all my effort into this right now and create into something.
00:39:43
Speaker
huge as big as I want, basically. It's good to hear you thinking about something like that. I'm curious to hear it eventually. It's exciting. We're doing a good job of ... I love it. It's about the team. This thing has had everything from
00:40:02
Speaker
API, PHP call scripts to metrology stuff involved in it already, which is kind of cool. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. So we'll see. But yeah, filming some stuff.
00:40:16
Speaker
I don't know what else is going on. Um, someone asked me that last night. I just kind of was like, I don't really know what I'm doing, which is kind of was, I've kind of laughed. I was like, geez. Um, but it's good. Yep. So yeah. Awesome. Good. Do you find that the business is becoming more of an organism, more self-sustaining? Um, cause you've got employees and interns and people doing all kinds of stuff. I mean, they don't come in and you tell them, okay, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this.
00:40:46
Speaker
I assume we don't have a morning. So like right now, I don't know. But I think Julie wouldn't quite be in yet. She'll be here in a few minutes. Jared's here. Alex might be here. Ed is here. Zach is here. And I probably won't need to have a conversation with anybody. Actually, I wouldn't need to all day. I mean, I will. But like the stuff is just happening. Yeah, for sure. That's awesome.
00:41:17
Speaker
I think you and I are in the same boat. Like we have meetings with Aaron and Julie and, you know, to like review videos and film videos and things like that. But but it's not like you're doing this today. It's like they just know what they got to do. You know, Sky comes in. He knows what he's got to do now. It's great. And Angelo is good. And Eric's good. And Barry knows what everybody just knows. I have the time now to focus on the saga pen. So it's almost like I'm abusing it. Yeah. But it's actually, you know what I mean? Actually, it's
00:41:38
Speaker
I think we're getting there too.
00:41:45
Speaker
So we are edited yesterday, this was in St. John, we edited Wednesday widget 200. For 200 straight Wednesdays, we've made a video, which is, I have never missed a Wednesday. Yeah, never once. And I would even, yeah, which is awesome.
00:42:10
Speaker
And we have more videos in the pipe already either recorded or planned beyond that. So we're not going to change things up yet. But it was a really good, it's all coming together. Like I was talking about with that Australia trip and the four years and having employees here and now that like, it's like the businesses really matured in that sense.
Exciting New Projects and Collaborations
00:42:30
Speaker
But I do want to change things up a little. And I think we've earned the right to do that. And I think
00:42:39
Speaker
I want to make sure the YouTube channel is something I want to do. And one of the things I want to do is really build cool stuff.
00:42:47
Speaker
We've been planning the longest time to do an R2-D2 build and R2-D2 is a peculiar thing for a bunch of different reasons. There's actually not a lot of good machined parts on the exterior at least. It's a really a different style robot and a lot of people have done it and there's actually a pretty, there is this huge emphasis on what you call mold making perfection or replication.
00:43:11
Speaker
Don't get me wrong, I would still love to do one, but I just kind of like it just hasn't clicked. And so what has clicked is Johnny Five from Short Circuit. You ever see a movie? OK, I remember that. Oh, yeah, I love that movie. Yes. I mean, I think everyone on this podcast can probably fight for the rights of who liked Johnny. You know, you know, no disassemble and need input and your mother was a snowblower.
00:43:38
Speaker
So the cool thing about it is it does lend itself much better to some machine parts. So what would be better? What's more interesting to me and what's more interesting to our audience? Another hundred Wednesday widgets where we just bounce around and make random parts about like, what can we do? And how do we do this? And what's this thing for? And it doesn't go anywhere. It's just a part or something or, or let's, let's say for the next hundred Wednesday widgets or whatever,
00:44:05
Speaker
Yes, long, long term long term long term bill. And we may fail and we may struggle and there may be things that don't go as planned. But that's the story. That's the journey. Right. I love it. I love it. Yep. You should do that for sure. It's you know, I had my knife making Tuesday series for 107 episodes or something like that. And it was this story, this progression, this growth that people still go back and binge watch because it's a story.
00:44:33
Speaker
And ironically, one of the questions was kind of a do we because Ed was asking me this, like, do we do we tell people we're doing it? Do we just start doing it? Do we give them the soft pitch? Like, you know, how much do we want to commit to this? And there's an there was a Johnny five group that had an open source model that leaked and is now or that was it leaked. And so they made it open source. And so, like, I don't really
00:45:01
Speaker
There's a lot, all of these builders clubs get political and I just want to make the thing and I, but I want to get, so, um, I'm kind of ironically letting the cat out of the bag already, but, uh, we're going to simplify some things to make it more reasonable to make, but darn it, darn it. That's this, I want the, yeah, I'm excited. Shoot. I have one requirement.
00:45:26
Speaker
It has to load fixtures for you. Oh my God. John, that's not funny. I know. Oh my God. Hey, Ed. Oh my God, Johnny. It might be able to do it. Think about that. Think about that. Live on the podcast. Johnny Five.
00:45:50
Speaker
is going to load fixtures under the machines. Okay. Yeah. So we're going to start with the treads and the base and kind of figuratively and literally build up right there. But this is what I want to do, John. That's awesome. Anyway, I can see the spark in your eye. This is exciting for you and I love it. So that's what's going on.
00:46:19
Speaker
Good. So we get to talk next week, but then maybe Blade Show changes things up or no. You're here. Not really. I leave Thursday to Sunday's Blade Show. Oh, sweet. That's easy. That's awesome. Yep. So we'll record on Wednesday like normal and then.
00:46:34
Speaker
Yes, I'll see you next week. For the folks that are on the Business of Machining Patreon, let us know your thoughts on if you've got a creative idea of what John and I should do when I'm up in Toronto, or if you've got questions, we'll throw them that way for the queue. I'm sure we'll do some sort of a Q&A, right? Awesome. Yeah. Cool. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:46:53
Speaker
And if anybody who's listening is coming to Blade Show, obviously you need to come say hi to me, because I would love to meet you guys. Awesome. I love it. I saw a guy wearing a Saunders t-shirt last year at Blade Show. Really? That's cool. That's awesome. Oh, yeah. Cool. All right, but just a question. All right. Goodbye. Have a great day. Bye.