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21 - The Naughty Corner
Episode 21 • 6th September 2022 • Parts Department • Justin Brouillette & Jem Freeman
00:00:00 00:52:27

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Motor fires, blown air lines, a semi-load of tubes, thoughts on hiring, and Baby Pants first impressions.

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HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcripts

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Sure.

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Geography

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It's our specialty

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podcast.

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Open.

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Oh, we got a whole list.

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We got a big list today.

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It's got a lot to do.

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Hold tight everyone.

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It's a two hour episode.

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Shall we do a little clapping

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Well, like, remember at the beginning, who are we?

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1 2 0 1, 2, 3, 4.

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Do you hear that?

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now what's that

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Oh, it's not working.

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Can't hear your pulse anymore.

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That's good.

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checking you alive, but yeah,

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Keep the pulse down.

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Good to be back.

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yeah.

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How was your rest of your trip?

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Oh good.

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I just woke out from quite an intense dream where I work out with this intense

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sense of needing to slow down and smell the roses or whatever that expression is.

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And I was kind of living in this like university city, and every

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lunch time I take my bike out and just go for a bike ride.

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And I think I just woke up thinking I need to slow down and.

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Take my time a little bit, but then also sort of driving in to work,

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thinking about how like incredibly privileged that is to think that way,

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Yeah.

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you know, yes.

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I have a stable job and family and blah, blah, blah.

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Mm-hmm

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yeah, it's a challenging

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thought, but

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I had a similar well, I, I don't know.

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I don't really mind sharing I in my, my personal therapy session this week, I.

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Was my therapist was saying basically the same thing to me.

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You need to slow down.

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You're doing a lot, you're doing too much.

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And I'm like, yeah, I know that.

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But like, how does that solve any of the things that I'm trying to like accomplish?

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And for me, like half the time that relates to like, I feel like I'm,

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you know, traffic is too slow and I can't get to work fast enough.

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And like, I can't get products here to make products FA you know fast enough.

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And I've seen no resolution in that at this point, even though we've talked about

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it a couple times, but it's interesting.

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I still have the same sense that I need to slow down, but

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I don't know how that works,

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you

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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We're so trained in the opposite direction, like

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trained to trained to hustle.

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Yeah, my thought, I suppose, in response to my dream, I was like, instead of

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leaning over my laptop, every lunchtime, like hustling to finish the latest

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email to get out and sell more product, I should just be going for a walk

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sure.

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No, I there's a lot of validity to that.

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Finding some balance I suppose

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Yeah.

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is the, is the easy answer,

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I think there was on like our national public radio thing.

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It's kind of broadcast all over.

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I, there was a story a while back about how like basically the, the, the

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hook of the story was it's illegal in France to sit in front of your computer

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or sit in your office and eat lunch.

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Like you have to go out and do something.

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So it's basically that exact story.

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And so then they went on to interview back and forth, like people in America,

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people in France, and like how they felt about their coworkers and.

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Yeah.

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And basically what it came down to is like all the, most of the people in France

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felt more connected to their coworkers.

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They figured out how to get along with them better.

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It seemed like because they had these other moments that weren't,

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that were more personal rather than just only work related.

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I mean, still work, but like you're forced to be not forced.

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You, you choose to be more friendly, I guess.

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I don't know.

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connected.

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Yeah.

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Ah, look, I can relate to that here.

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Like, eh, kind of letting work bleed into breaks.

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Like we have quite well, I'd say very structured break times here, and

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everyone tends to stop at the same time, particularly if work's under control,

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which it has been for quite a while now.

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So, but yeah, I, I, I let work bleed into, I I'll just finish this quote.

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I just need to, you know, get this out the door and then lunchtime half

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over and everyone's already sort of had their lunch and disappeared

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and off doing their own thing.

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So yeah, to,

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It, my dog, my dog used to come to work with me.

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So I wanna quit my job.

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In 2013, we got a puppy basically at the same time.

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And basically until the pandemic every day, I was the caretaker.

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So, you know, when I got a shop, she came to work with me.

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And while I'd always find it annoying that she like wanted

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me to, it wasn't even about her.

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It's just, I'm this, this person that like, I'm annoyed

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to have to stop, to walk my dog.

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Right.

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Like I just wanna keep working, like I'm in me.

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Like that was always good for me to like, have to stop and go walk the dog because

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you know, I, I got away from the computer.

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So I guess the lesson here is you need to get a dog at your office

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so you can go take it for walks.

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Does this hunter?

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Isn't it?

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Yeah.

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Yep.

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You have dogs

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to work?

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Once in a while my wife demands her presence to be her coworker at home.

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So I don't get to bring her as much, but she's always a hit here.

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yeah.

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Shop dogs are the best.

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Yeah.

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I, your, your, your new scene is interesting.

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I think I maybe prefer maybe your lighting set up.

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Isn't done yet, but I, the back, the last one is pretty good.

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I know, I know my lighting's not done.

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Haven't worked that out yet.

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Yeah, that's right.

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You could like

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of

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light out the boxes differently.

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So each box could be like a different light.

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I was yesterday, I was looking at this cuz this space is really narrow.

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Like it's I think 900 it's about three feet wide.

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Yeah.

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I mean I

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That's narrow.

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whoever designed this building intended this to be like a server cabinet, I think.

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And so I've got it.

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This shelf, which is sort of.

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1 5200 Mel D, which takes up quite a bit of elbow room.

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And I can't actually spin my desk chair around to get out.

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So I often like trip over myself, trying to get in and out of the room.

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But I was thinking of replacing this set of shelves with some thread boards.

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So it's only taking up as much like minimal depth and it only takes up

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space where I wanna saw store stuff.

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So I can put bulkier things up high and then have clear space down low,

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where I'm trying to actually work.

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But I'm happy with this setup.

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It's, it's been fantastic actually, actually over the last week or so

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since I've reconfigured this and made it a bit more comfortable,

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Yeah.

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it's been, it's been so good for my work focus cuz I'm, it's

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probably it's terrible functionally or whatever that expression is.

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Cuz I'm like staring into a corner with people behind me, but like

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it's been fantastic for my focus.

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Just not having any peripheral vision.

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And just like mucking down and getting whatever I need to do done and not being

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aware of who's moving around me or,

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yeah, it's basically what we, what would be sent to if we were

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bad in like primary school, like you're in detention, basically.

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the naughty corner.

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It's fantastic.

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And I've, I've put acoustic felt on the walls, which does this weird thing.

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If I lean too close to it with my noise counseling headphones that like it

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freaks out the headphones, just like, whoa, this surface is too, too dead.

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I don't know what to do with this.

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there's no sign waves here.

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What do I do?

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How's.

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It's been actually mostly good.

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We've had kind of a mix of both good and bad where we've shipped.

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If you can see kind of see the back of it.

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There's eight dust boots to go out there to be picked up.

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So we've been, we have all the pre OORS are shipped actually, if including

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that, if you include that pile which is great took about a week to catch up.

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And so now we're.

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We've gotten, you know, new orders and we've been able to basically turn 'em

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around in a couple days, which is cool.

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Ah, fantastic.

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That's cool.

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so that's the, that's the best part of it.

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And I've spent a lot of time working on designing fixturing for the ATC pedestals

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and like basically making a way that I can actually make long enough parts.

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Cuz they're like the base for the long, longest pieces are 17 inches.

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So it's like most of my table and they're skinny and long.

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So I had to make a way to hold them basically, cuz there was no other, I don't

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have another work holding method for that.

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So I learned a lot about like that kind of thing, but the bad side of

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what's happened this week, which isn't drastic, but we had one of our vacuum

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hold down, motors, start on fire.

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I saw that.

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Basically spontaneously a wire slipped off of one of our hour

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meters that was connected to it.

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And it just fried one of the coils.

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So Ricky and I ran to the back room when the fire alarm went off,

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which is linked right up here, the back room, the center of the shop.

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And it was just filled with smoke.

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And I was like, oh no, the dust collectors finally lit up, you know, like

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Yeah.

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but it was just that motor, which is pretty crucial, for a

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lot of how we use that machine.

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The router anyway.

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We're gonna have our electrician come and hopefully rewire some of

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it because it just doesn't work.

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Part of the other problems.

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The switches are always going out on that ding thing.

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Like we've replaced the power switches four times

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Wow.

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the four motors since I've had it since 2017, they're just junk.

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Mm.

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Some changes coming with that.

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We had an airline blow off.

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Our Kaiser just shot

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off

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scary when that

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terrifying.

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Luckily we're very far away from it and I'm probably gonna go to some, some

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threaded versions for that little section.

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But yeah.

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Other than that, it's been good.

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Yeah.

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I think maybe on the bomb actually, Saunders talking about you can

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get these, can't remember what they're called, but they're.

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Valve that put in your airline near the compressor

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the

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fuse.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Fuse air F is such a cool idea.

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So if it, if your system suddenly dumps a whole lot of air, which only really

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happens, if you break a line, the fuse goes, Uhuh, it's not gonna happen.

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Like it's just a mechanical thing.

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That's a magically shuts down.

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When we were putting in the Kaiser, I was reevaluating all of the airline stuff.

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And I luckily realized we didn't have to replace everything I

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thought we were going to have to.

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And so I was like, oh, those interviews were cool.

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Maybe we should put one of those in and what I could find

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on McMaster, which is like the easiest way to order hardware here.

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There was no version that worked it just anyway, so I didn't do

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I had the same thing when I looked into them.

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I was like I'm confused.

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I don't know which one we need.

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they were all very large, like huge versions in our, we have like the

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toy version, basically, even though it's like considered industrial.

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Yeah.

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I think after learning about air fus, as I kind of went around the workshop

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and just put some extra hose buckles on things and just like made sure

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there were no spots where we could get too much whiplash, if a hose did go.

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That's kind of what I was wondering, like, is there like retention, like

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cable, so like something to hold it to the wall again or wherever it is.

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That's not just the original clamp, like, you know,

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Yeah.

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I just use those saddles, like pipe saddles

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yeah, sure.

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I think they're called a half saddle just with a single screw or

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you could use a double saddle with two screws and just like pin stuff

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I'd be very skeptical for the amount of power I saw coming off that thing,

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that one would hold it it was wicked.

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Cause it was a one inch line that whipped away for, it was like the

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main connection to the Kaiser.

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I guess I didn't crank it down hard enough.

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Anyway, dangerous.

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And luckily we're rarely ever in that space, but it is right by the forklift.

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So like, if you were forklifting, you just got lacerated, you know, by whipping air

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hose.

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So I'm gonna, that, that really is about the only thing I feel like in the shop.

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That's not really well connected, so hopefully we'll get that figured out.

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Cool.

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Yeah.

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Vac pumps.

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I'm always expecting our vac pump to die at some inconvenient moment.

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you know, you hear stories of bearings just going and they just stop instantly.

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We've actually got a spare one just parked under the wide belt

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sander, like ready to plug in.

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a compressor.

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Oh sorry.

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Spare vacuum pump for the CNC.

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Oh, wow.

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so if one, the hold hold down, pumps goes, we can just like

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So what's crazy about ours is they have these like very affordable little motors

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and they're used for like weird things, like house vacuum cleaners, like in house.

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And then also like car wash PO you know, like, how do they, I don't know if you

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have these, like, you go through the car wash and they spray you off those

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things, I guess are the same thing.

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And then also vacuum hold down.

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And so they only have a certain life and you have to replace the

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brushes like yearly at least.

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And I don't know why I had thought about like every year, every time

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we touch them, I'm like, I should have an extra one of these motors

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laying around, never bought one.

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Cause I was like, I don't wanna just have $200 sitting here doing nothing.

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And then luckily we can usually do fine with just three motors on

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and did until we got the new one today, but they're like 150 to $200.

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So I, I don't know.

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We'll probably.

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Hopefully keep one more ready, but the air compressor is a

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whole nother story anymore.

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Like, I dunno if you heard Grims talk about his spring God as a nightmare.

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Far out crazy.

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Your vacuum pumps sound very different to our vacuum pumps.

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My cheapest vacuum pump I can buy here is about five grand.

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So yes, the cool thing shops saver kind of found this company or

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contracted them to make these, they call it like an F one or an F four.

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It's basically just one or four motors.

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And then there are these, these kind of things that work in

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series that is put into a box.

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And so they're very affordable.

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I think when you buy that system, it's $2,500.

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Maybe, and what's cool about them is they all work on single phase,

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which is like all residential service in America is single

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phase.

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And so like, that's why I bought it.

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Cause I, I put it in my garage first and it serves a four

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by eight machine really well.

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And to this date, like, yeah, it's, it's like eight grand or 15 to get like a

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rotary vein kind of blower pump style, which is the upgrade from what I have.

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And I just never thought that was a good investment at this point.

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So maybe, maybe if we

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upgraded,

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Gotcha.

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Gotcha.

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Okay.

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Makes sense.

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we just have stuff start on fire every once in a while instead.

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So baby pants was a hit hitting our floor this week.

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Yeah, I know.

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I saw that.

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I

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appreciate the

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video.

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That was great.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, look, I got that video out in a, in a, in a hurry.

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It would've been nice to have tidied up our our actual ducting connection

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a little bit, so it didn't look quite so less, less gaffer tape and more

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That's how they always look.

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Right?

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Like that's how that stuff is always though.

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like,

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impressive when it's not like that.

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but yeah, baby pants, super exciting.

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I dunno if you want unboxing impressions on the podcast or not, but

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You can say it.

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We can cut it if, if not,

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we can always chop it out.

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The, the one criticism I have of pulling out of the box was the.

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The adhesive on the inside, which looks, I dunno, what sort of glue it

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is, but looks like hot melt adhesive.

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I was just like, Justin, why have you chat?

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What's all this glue.

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So yeah, no, it's, it's an interesting, it's definitely an intentional choice and

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Of course.

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Yeah.

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I'm

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we decided, yeah, I'm glad kind of came up.

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We decided that more of keeping the boot together as an assembly was worth

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some aesthetic especially on the inside.

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oh, we've done in tests and other things.

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And this certain hot melt glue is made for HT P E And it's not super easy to control.

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It's like flow.

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So we have a little gun for it and we decided to put it on the

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inside rather than the outside where you'd see it all the time.

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It just is not as aesthetic as you'd want it to be.

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And yeah, I

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AB yeah, absolutely.

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No.

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Like, and I knew all of that pull to some example, you know, the box,

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I was like, someone asked me about it and I was like, oh, I'm, I'm

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sure that's like very deliberate.

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And I'm sure it's a great bond on both of those plastics and totally understand.

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it's tricky.

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Isn't it like getting that you want it to be strong.

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And so of course you're gonna do everything you can to make it as

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strong as possible and keeping it on the inside makes total sense.

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But

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It was outside inside, or we tried to do a little of both, but it's

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just, yeah, it's hard to control.

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And so it's like, all right, well, at this point, brand new product, I

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don't want a bunch of people going, oh, this broke because we only screwed it

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together.

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And so yeah, we put the glue on the inside.

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Maybe over time, we'll be able to like figure out how to minimize that.

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And

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I wonder if you can get black hot melt, like the same

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you can,

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and I had somebody recommend that, but the type we're using that's specialty for

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H D P E does not seem to come in that.

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But the other idea we had, which we haven't tried is just like black

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silicone which is an interesting thought.

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We don't know if it adheres, especially long term to HGP.

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So honestly the screws alone should hold really well.

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We've never like the one we've been using the whole time.

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Couple we've been using, we didn't glue the top at all, but we ever

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just like this hasn't been tested long enough, so yeah, no, I

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Yeah, that's cool.

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It's like when you pull bits of cars apart and you see like how much adhesive they

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pile into them behind the scenes, it's like, there's this black goop everywhere

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that's then been painted over, or

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Yeah,

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It's kind of almost more acceptable when it's black or like, it makes it

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feel more industrial or something.

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no for sure.

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Yeah,

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Cool.

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But yeah, no, in, in summary, baby pants, as you saw in the video, just like

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ridiculous improvement for us going from that ti tiny convoluted piece of crap to

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huge airflow and like big brushes, yeah.

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Immediately wanna add one to the other machine as well.

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Cuz the other machine is where we do our filthiest work with like

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machining this acoustic panel.

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We run this big half inch hoer with like a custom Shaer bit on it.

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And we run it all in one pass and just like this just stuff goes everywhere.

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How does that one tool change?

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Is it the same?

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Different tool changer.

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It's linear.

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Yeah.

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So yeah.

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Well done.

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Yeah, no, thanks.

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I, I was glad I got there safely.

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I think your example, other than not having dust collection, that

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machine, what you had before is about as dramatic as it gets like a two

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inch port is just like it's comical.

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Like that is basically what our ShopVac use here.

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It's like a hobby

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Yeah,

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So it made for a really good comparison video.

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So based on your notes, I'm guessing, you're thinking about

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how you're gonna sell more of this.

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What did I, what did I write down?

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You're gonna get a booth at a tool show and

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Oh, oh, I see what you're saying.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It's kind of all compiled into one conversation of some friends that went

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to the woodworking show at Atlanta IWF.

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I was messaging with them after the fact.

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And one was like, oh, you should think about bringing some of

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your stuff there next year.

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You know, like the dust food and, and I was like, Hmm, yeah, never

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really considered like showing it one of those things before.

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I'm like our conversations about markets and stuff like that.

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I'm like, I wonder if this ever pays off because, this one person's

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example of the booth that they were associated with was 20 feet by 20 feet.

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And it costs $16,000 for a week.

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And that one doesn't surprise me all that much, but I was just doing the

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math of like, how would that pay off?

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Cause it's like, that's just a little part of it.

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Like you gotta bring a booth, you gotta pay for everybody to go there.

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All, you know, all this stuff.

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it's probably like double that booth cost.

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And so then I was just thinking, what if instead, there are companies like

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DMG is publicly said, like we're not gonna go to these things anymore.

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Instead what I've

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heard is we're gonna fly out prospective buyers to our facilities on our

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dime and like show them a good time.

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Basically show them our stuff.

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And that's a better investment than hoping somebody at a show wants to

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talk to them and like buy a machine.

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Wow, that that's amazing.

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Isn't that crazy?

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How do you apply that mentality to digital marketing?

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So like the contrast that, you know, that's one example, but I was just

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thinking, if I spent $20,000 on digital marketing, would I get a better ROI than

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taking myself and employees to a show?

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be an interesting comparison study.

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You would think so.

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I would say yes.

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A hundred percent.

Speaker:

Unless we were going to like a dust collection conference, it's just that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's a bit of a mind bending example from DMG.

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That's.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

I don't remember where I heard that.

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I feel like it was either on a podcast.

Speaker:

I don't know that source, but it's just an interesting idea from such a big company.

Speaker:

I mean, you imagine what it costs to ship some of those like mil turn

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like what?

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and yeah.

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And rig them in and out of the show and all of that.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Phenomenal amount of money.

Speaker:

That's interesting.

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Yeah.

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It's kind of first take for me.

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That's kind of like the difference between undirected ad spend versus really

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tightly targeted digital marketing.

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah.

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mm, cool.

Speaker:

Wow.

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A lot to think about there.

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for sure.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

Speaking of digital marketing, I tried a new email platform this week.

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I got served an that on Instagram for, you know, One of these email

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making apps called flow desk.

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And I just, at first glance, I was like, oh, their templates look quite nice and

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designy and were just appealing to me.

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So got a free trial and had a crack and just coincided with this week when

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I needed to get outta an email for a new Kitco sort of pre-launch campaign.

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And so I made that and Harry and Jay was like, what gem?

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What are you doing?

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If you verified our DNS service, blah, blah, blah.

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And I was like, oh yeah, I've done it.

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It hasn't said it's worked, but I've done it.

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I sent off a few test emails and then a J again was like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

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whoa, what's going on with these fonts?

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Like they're nonstandard.

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They're not gonna display properly in other browsers.

Speaker:

It's like, wow, let's test it.

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Who's got it.

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Some, who's got the worst old, like email, like Ben, sent me

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his old Yahoo address and I sent.

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A test to Aaron's Hotmail and we checked that things were displaying.

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Okay.

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And we're like, cool.

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Yeah, it's not too bad.

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Send it, send off our emails.

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did it convert?

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You sent me some stats.

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I don't

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the open rates were pretty good, like 50, almost 60%, which I was happy

Speaker:

That's great.

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through rate was decent and conversions were pretty minimal.

Speaker:

But a lot of those leads were pretty old as well.

Speaker:

These were the list of emails we've been collecting on the website for

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people that were interested in this product, knowing that it was coming.

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But we've been collecting those emails for months now, I

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think since, or maybe even may.

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So some of those leads were pretty old.

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Hmm.

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So fair enough.

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If they didn't go

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but that leads me to think though, that there's two things maybe to

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that, The open rate is really good.

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I think for anything that's like a signup based thing where

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you're like intentionally trying to get information that those

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numbers usually are better right.

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Than just like your random marketing email.

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But the conversion could be low for a bunch of reasons that they

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were just curious or they wanted in to see what the potential was.

Speaker:

But

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There was no price point on it earlier either.

Speaker:

Yeah, exactly.

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That's really good.

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That's good.

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Those are good click through.

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Did they click on the emails?

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All right.

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I think it was like 13, 14% or something,

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Yeah, that's pretty good too.

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but yeah, I don't have much to compare that to cuz we've

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done so little with email.

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And I've never really looked at the metrics in Shopify, cuz we've

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sent previous ones direct from Shopify and the metric interface

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in flow desk is way nicer.

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So I it's like right there and you can go, oh cool.

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And you can see it changing throughout the day as

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yeah, it definitely interests me.

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I've been trying to find an alternative to, I think I said this before in a

Speaker:

MailChimp that I've used forever for NA and Portland CNC, just because

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when I started the Portland CNC one, it was like, it was just the cream

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of the crop and it's still a good service, but I just have an ethical

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issue with their now parent company.

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And also I'm like, I've kept it under, I'm somewhat proud of this in a weird way.

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I kept the free plan on both of them the entire time.

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It, maybe I should have had a larger audience by now, but like but I've

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kept it under, I've kind of like cold the lists down whenever, like, you

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know, I'm getting close because it's.

Speaker:

Until I go massively over that.

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I'm just gonna be flirting with this line of like

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people that actually are engaging or not.

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And

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Jim never opens my emails.

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He can get deleted off the list.

Speaker:

know,

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See

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no, I did see somebody where you're talking about my

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dust boot semi info thing.

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And you had signed up on the show recently, and then I just saw

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somebody else from, from like butter signed up for that thing again.

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And I think you're, I was like, they must be trying this out

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to see if they wanna try to.

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no doubt.

Speaker:

Yep.

Speaker:

interesting how much I'll try it.

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30 days.

Speaker:

That's good.

Speaker:

That's a good amount of time.

Speaker:

It's a good trial.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

And I'd segueing again, I guess, to you, that thing, did you watch that reel?

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I sent you a Tyler, the creator

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talking about

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but I would need to.

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your stuff.

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It's just this great little clip that Aaron sent me a little while ago

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struck a chord with me cuz he talks about it, of you know, kids these

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days, they just throw, you know, one story up on Instagram saying I've got

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a new track and then, but that's it.

Speaker:

And he's saying like I'm out here a year later after my album

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dropped still promoting it.

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Like still talking to you, telling you about it.

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It's just like I put so much like love and effort into making this.

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Why would I stop telling people about it?

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And it just really struck a chord with me of.

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Because I, I have moments all the time of like feel like

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I'm just pushing stuff down.

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People's throat.

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Why am I telling them again about kid parts or blah?

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It's like, actually, no, I put like years of R and D into this product.

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I'm gonna keep telling people about it.

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And I, I should feel okay about that.

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I'm not a business man, I'm a business, man!

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I didn't listen to it.

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I can relate to that I think a lot of my content on social media has been about

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desperates for months and I'm sure the people that potentially see most of

Speaker:

them are like, all right, something else now let's see something else, you know?

Speaker:

But what's crazy about it is especially the way that Instagram

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has gone towards reels.

Speaker:

It's all discovery based now.

Speaker:

So like the people that see your stuff.

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We'll be some of your existing followers, but a lot of it is new people.

Speaker:

And like the amount, even the amount of times I've explained or shown or have

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FAQs, we still get the same questions over and over of people that either

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haven't seen something or it didn't get translated to them in a certain

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way that does this work in this way?

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And it'll be like, yes, of course.

Speaker:

or, you know, whatever the answer.

Speaker:

And it's, it's amazing how many times you can post about the same thing.

Speaker:

And still there's always, there's always somebody else that hasn't seen it.

Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker:

And even as someone in your audience who has seen a million

Speaker:

dust boot videos posts, personally, it doesn't bother me whatsoever.

Speaker:

I mean, Some part of it, you know, I'm along with you for the ride in

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terms of watching you make that and bring it out and being supportive

Speaker:

and like buying one and like

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all of.

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

Or maybe it's just, cuz I understand I'm I'm also trying to make content

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and promote products on Instagram.

Speaker:

So I was like, of course he's gonna keep posting about it.

Speaker:

So yeah, I'm probably not the right person to judge that, but I don't mind Justin

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keep, keep telling me about dust boots.

Speaker:

someday we will all be just creators and we'll all be engaging with each other's

Speaker:

content intentionally to help our friends

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That's right.

Speaker:

That's right.

Speaker:

gem a project.

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What pro you need

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

what's your don't have to do,

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no, I don't have enough to do.

Speaker:

I just had, you know what I said earlier about slowing down?

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Well, I need a

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you should add

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something on that.

Speaker:

I just had a sense this week of like, why again, why did I fail another week

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to get up early enough to come in and.

Speaker:

Do R and D playtime in the workshop and had a moment on Thursday after Thursday.

Speaker:

And towards the end of the week, I walked out onto the workshop floor

Speaker:

and I went and stood in front of the pencil sharper for a while.

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And I was like, oh, pencil sharper.

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I miss you.

Speaker:

I wanna play with you again.

Speaker:

Yeah, I need to get back out there.

Speaker:

And I've got, you know, a list of ideas that I do wanna work

Speaker:

on some weird fixturing and like getting some new complex, off

Speaker:

access joints happening and stuff.

Speaker:

So there's no shortage of things to do, but I do have one particularly

Speaker:

silly and potentially meaty project incoming Nick Atkins, who

Speaker:

is a boat builder in Melbourne.

Speaker:

I've probably mentioned before.

Speaker:

He is a bit of a like Grasser guru.

Speaker:

I think I got shared, maybe I just saw his content recently or something.

Speaker:

I don't know why.

Speaker:

mm.

Speaker:

He was on a, a local podcast recently, the shop store podcast.

Speaker:

It was a great interview with him anyway, super interesting guy.

Speaker:

He messaged me a couple of weeks ago saying, Hey, there's all these like

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massive plastic pipes that have come out of the docks that need a home.

Speaker:

They're gonna get scrapped and recycled.

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They're like 700 mill diameter.

Speaker:

What it's at like three and a half feet, diameter pipes by four meters long.

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They need a home.

Speaker:

And Laura and I were just like, right.

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Let's , get these pipes.

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We need them.

Speaker:

Cuz Laura and I have been sort of chatting late at night on the couch

Speaker:

about how we're gonna build a commercial composting machine that can actually

Speaker:

deal with the volumes of saw dust.

Speaker:

We generate.

Speaker:

Because we've kind of tested what we can, but we're just, you know,

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now we're just accumulating sawdust and we don't have enough space to

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actually process it fast enough.

Speaker:

So we need to build a composting machine that can keep up with our sawdust.

Speaker:

We saw these parts and we're like, yes, this is just like the perfect

Speaker:

starting point to build this hair brain scheme, machine something.

Speaker:

We don't know what the machine is yet, but we know that these

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pipes are gonna be part of it.

Speaker:

So there's a, semi-trailer coming this morning after we record, like

Speaker:

with about 60, 64 meters of this pipe and poor Ben, our production manager

Speaker:

has been like diligently cleaning the workshop lately of like all my junkers.

Speaker:

Like Jim, do you need these things anymore?

Speaker:

No.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker:

Get rid of this, sell that, put this in the bin.

Speaker:

And then this week I was like, Hey Ben, there's a semi trailer

Speaker:

of More gem stuff coming oh, wow.

Speaker:

It'll be

Speaker:

up, Ben cleaned the shop out of Gem's stuff.

Speaker:

And now he is just bought a semi to, to fill it up.

Speaker:

That'll be fun.

Speaker:

That'll be my project for a while

Speaker:

I, I don't know that it's gonna make any sense to explain it.

Speaker:

So I also don't know if you know how you're gonna do it, but I'm

Speaker:

very curious to see how these giant pipes go into a semi-trailer

Speaker:

and end up dealing with compost.

Speaker:

Doesn't make sense to me right now, but I like, I like the, the

Speaker:

mystery of it

Speaker:

Oh, it doesn't make sense.

Speaker:

to us either.

Speaker:

at least Laura's involved.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

That's great.

Speaker:

Mm.

Speaker:

literally yesterday as we were like rounding out the preorders

Speaker:

and I've also my, my R and D time is first half of my day.

Speaker:

I've just been working on fixturing and thinking about the ATC stuff.

Speaker:

And before packing boxes and working on the shop yesterday and I was staring

Speaker:

at the router and I was like, oh, I've got another idea for a new thing.

Speaker:

Like, and that's usually an exciting, like, it's a good moment.

Speaker:

We usually talk about it for a while.

Speaker:

And we never like say no, don't do it.

Speaker:

But it's also like, that's like just how I'm wired, where it's like, alright, I

Speaker:

got enough of the old thing figured out

Speaker:

give me another new thing.

Speaker:

Yeah that's cool.

Speaker:

No, I'm in the, I do the same thing.

Speaker:

I'm I'm terrible at finishing stuff, guess.

Speaker:

Thankfully, I have a team now to finish.

Speaker:

And be diligent and do their jobs well, and I, I scratch around doing

Speaker:

a halfass job, just starting things.

Speaker:

in listening back to our discussion about you launching new products

Speaker:

and how the list has gotten long.

Speaker:

I got defensive for you.

Speaker:

And I was just like, it's almost like, the man, but it's your own company.

Speaker:

like, doesn't make any sense, but like, they're trying to hold me back.

Speaker:

I just wanna make new things.

Speaker:

but it's not that at all.

Speaker:

It's just like, just do a good job, in certain ways does hold back.

Speaker:

The kind of like raw progress.

Speaker:

That's if you stifle that though, to a, to a certain degree, you turn into

Speaker:

a big stodgy company, in my opinion, like I, and there's other sides to that.

Speaker:

Yeah, no, I agree.

Speaker:

There has to be a balance and Yeah, while it's incredibly

Speaker:

valuable to be held to account.

Speaker:

I am aware of that, of not letting systems override the creativity

Speaker:

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker:

too much.

Speaker:

There's just needs to be like a, I dunno what you call it an MVP basically, right?

Speaker:

Like the bare minimum of where we launch a product.

Speaker:

I, if you get past that, it's, it's all gravy.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

All right.

Speaker:

Well, I have incredibly cool tech to share.

Speaker:

I don't know if you saw this

Speaker:

ahead of time, the Penta web machine link there.

Speaker:

Um, just watch you open this.

Speaker:

Ah, so the pocket see people,

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

what.

Speaker:

it's crazy.

Speaker:

What the hell?

Speaker:

can that look?

Speaker:

So good?

Speaker:

I don't know.

Speaker:

I immediately sent this to the other people at Autodesk and I was

Speaker:

like, where is our version of this?

Speaker:

This is so cool.

Speaker:

That for the people that aren't visually seeing this it's Penta machine company

Speaker:

or machining, I dunno what their full name is, but they're the old pocket.

Speaker:

And see they're coming out with this new five axis machine we've talked about.

Speaker:

Um, but they have a web simulation of this machine that will be running at IMTS it's,

Speaker:

it's designed the everything's parts, but it's a full five axis simulation

Speaker:

of the machine in a web browser.

Speaker:

And it's like super easy to control.

Speaker:

There's a link.

Speaker:

Whole, I recognize the part

Speaker:

yeah, it's that carabiner that designed the everything's been making.

Speaker:

So this'll be running supposedly at IMTS.

Speaker:

How do you say that?

Speaker:

Cara-beener

Speaker:

Carabiner.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

How do you

Speaker:

I just thought you said some Cina.

Speaker:

I just misheard you thought we had an aluminum situation.

Speaker:

it's in there?

Speaker:

I mean, incredibly attractive work holding too

Speaker:

with

Speaker:

very good.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

That's cool.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

This machine is just like, I'm similar to our conversations about five access

Speaker:

and like trying to find a reason, like, I'm trying to find a reason to buy one

Speaker:

of these things when they come out.

Speaker:

Cause they're just it basically like a large 3d printer enclosure,

Speaker:

but it's, it's a proper spindle five access machine with tool changing and

Speaker:

Oh, it's getting a bit hot and heavy in here.

Speaker:

It's pretty.

Speaker:

off.

Speaker:

Wow.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker:

I could just watch that for the next half an hour.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Pretty good working.

Speaker:

So we, we have a lot of notes about hiring.

Speaker:

We both

Speaker:

Yeah, we do.

Speaker:

Does that mean you're hiring?

Speaker:

no, unfortunately not at the moment, hopefully soon, but I have

Speaker:

a friend that was wanting to chat about hiring for the first time.

Speaker:

And so I was kind of like reminiscing of my thoughts about

Speaker:

hiring for the first time and like how I feel now versus then, and.

Speaker:

The difference of the first person you hire versus the third or

Speaker:

the second, even the impact that first person makes is so dramatic.

Speaker:

Anyway, that I didn't have anything very specific, but just

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kind of thinking about it again.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I was chatting to a client slash fellow maker the other day.

Speaker:

He does sort of similar work, but he is still in that phase where he

Speaker:

is just a solo operator and we were chatting about, you know, how butter's

Speaker:

team has grown and how he's still running solo and, you know, enjoys it.

Speaker:

And I was just, you know, remembering back to those early, early days where

Speaker:

there's kind of, there is a sweet spot there where depending on the sort of

Speaker:

work you're doing, it can be really effective to be a single operator.

Speaker:

You can run quite high margins.

Speaker:

You probably have to work more than is healthy.

Speaker:

Yes.

Speaker:

make it all work, but like, there's a kind of a sweet spot.

Speaker:

We can work like six days a week and earn really good money and

Speaker:

do great work and just make it all hustle and make it all work.

Speaker:

But yes, I think, and then there's this kind of, I feel like then there's this

Speaker:

very awkward stage beyond that, where it's like a small support team, incredibly

Speaker:

effective, but like very hard to make the numbers work for a while there.

Speaker:

And I feel like there's a kind of a, I don't know.

Speaker:

I mean, everyone's business model is different, but just speaking

Speaker:

from our experience, was that sort of awkward in between stage

Speaker:

between like one on two people.

Speaker:

And now having a team of, I think, nine, including me,

Speaker:

I feel like we're now getting back to a sweet spot of like, cool.

Speaker:

All right.

Speaker:

The business model's starting to work again.

Speaker:

The margins are getting back to where they should be.

Speaker:

Whereas when we're kind of six, seven people, then it just really

Speaker:

wasn't working very well at all.

Speaker:

And obviously there's heaps of factors that lead to that, but it's not just

Speaker:

about team size, yeah, I do feel like there's an awkward in between stage

Speaker:

I have this continual thought and it's never cause I've,

Speaker:

I've also never made it pass.

Speaker:

I feel like I said this a couple weeks back, but where your

Speaker:

company's at, it feels like.

Speaker:

The point passed the awkward stage I, we had four people total at one

Speaker:

point and it felt great, but I always felt so much pressure we were always

Speaker:

flirting with not having enough money.

Speaker:

And and I think I'm just thinking back of like, if I had to answer for you, it's

Speaker:

probably that we've never kept the jobs.

Speaker:

I haven't done a good enough job of like selling enough jobs

Speaker:

that keep things consistent.

Speaker:

And I do have an interesting perspective now of, for the first time having

Speaker:

somewhat consistent sales of something.

Speaker:

like a product versus service that we still had really

Speaker:

low job shop, work revenue.

Speaker:

Last two months, at least it's been frustrating, but weirdly enough

Speaker:

though, like other sales of products have, you know, grown obviously in

Speaker:

a way that weren't there before, and that's definitely helped.

Speaker:

And I can now see this like potential where my dream of always

Speaker:

having those two things be somewhat like a 50 50 is, would be ideal.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker:

And then they can, play off of each other.

Speaker:

And I think in my, my perspective, I'd always rather have more product sales, cuz

Speaker:

it's just seems much more controllable.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

but I don't know.

Speaker:

I don't know how now how you get from one or two or four employees

Speaker:

and team size to that next stage.

Speaker:

And like, especially in that, like you didn't ever really

Speaker:

hire a salesperson, right.

Speaker:

and now current sort of thinking is not to think too much about the team size,

Speaker:

but let the work determine what we need.

Speaker:

So we are very much at the moment.

Speaker:

We're just like trying to really consistently push sales

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

than we ever have before.

Speaker:

And not, not think too much about the effect that that will have on

Speaker:

the workshop, but let the workshop feed back when it becomes an issue.

Speaker:

It's like, we, we, we have way more capacity in terms of what

Speaker:

we can do out there on the floor.

Speaker:

So at the moment, the struggle is trying to just like sell

Speaker:

enough, to keep them busy

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

beyond that point and find where the new bottlenecks are.

Speaker:

Cause at the moment that bottleneck is very much in sales and quoting.

Speaker:

So yeah.

Speaker:

I would love to hire someone into that sales position this

Speaker:

year, but we'll see how we go.

Speaker:

I have this problem with recruitment where just like in life probably where everyone

Speaker:

I meet, I'm just like, oh, I like you.

Speaker:

I wanna give you a job.

Speaker:

I'm like, I'm like that dog on app is like,

Speaker:

Like.

Speaker:

Yeah, I find it really difficult to sort of separate the, what we're actually

Speaker:

looking for in the job description from like meeting all these new people

Speaker:

and like having engaging interesting conversations with them and learning

Speaker:

about their back stories and just, yeah, I possibly need to be removed

Speaker:

from the recruitment process for that reason, so we can make more objective

Speaker:

like decisions about who we hire.

Speaker:

That is funny.

Speaker:

I have that same reaction.

Speaker:

we'll have deliveries from a company and sometimes I'm like,

Speaker:

oh, you're such a good employee.

Speaker:

Like, I , what's your name?

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Like, we're, what's your phone number?

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I,

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not that I don't need a delivery person, but like, would you, you seem like

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you could be very trainable and you could do something for us, you know?

Speaker:

I think that's really interesting point and some not

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something you should suppress.

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I think you should be taking numbers

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basically a register,

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like, because when it comes to the moment, when you do need someone to help

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you, like, you don't want cold leads, you want be able to go back and go like,

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oh, is that delivery driver was awesome.

Speaker:

I wonder if wonder if they're looking for work, just give

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them a call and suss them out.

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Do you remember me?

Speaker:

I've had, I've had applications from which I don't think they were in any

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wrong position to apply, but it was, I've had applications from existing

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clients, repeat clients, like people that work an employee of theirs.

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And I'm like, I can't, even if you're the , I don't know.

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We'd have to have a weird conversation.

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If you were the best applicant your boss you're, you're the only

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assistant for your company, right?

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Like like, and I remember having the conversation with this person,

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the owner about how happy they were to have a new employee.

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And I was like, I cannot take that person.

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Like.

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No, I don't think it's ethical to poach people by any means,

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but I think it's important to, I suppose, be always scouting.

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And then that, that was something I sort of came to in the last week of

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like, I often haul back from putting recruitment processes in place because

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I don't like disappointing people.

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So I don't like saying, Hey, there's a job coming up at like butter, cuz

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then I have to disappoint a whole bunch of people who don't get that job.

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Yeah

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But.

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The distinction I came to was like, okay, I don't wanna be recruiting all the time,

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but I do wanna be scouting all the time.

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So I wanna be, if any little connections come up, I wanna be having conversations

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with people of like, Hey, we're not hiring right now, but like, what do you do?

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What are you interested in?

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is what we do come and have a coffee.

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And then, so when we do need someone in a hurry, it's just a matter

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of like, looking at that list and going, oh, who, who have I spoken to?

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Let's just see where they're at now.

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They might not be available of

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course, but they might be looking, they might be looking for a change as well.

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So.

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I don't know if it's ever proved fruitful yet, but I leave an

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application open all the time on their website, kind of for the same reason.

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Like not to, I don't, I don't know.

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Sure.

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To some degree it could be wasting people's time.

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I very clear on the website.

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Like we aren't hiring, but if you want to, you know, fill this

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out, that's on, you know, on you.

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And when you look, I look over all of 'em I can't remember that that's ever

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turned into anything at this point, but

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Hmm.

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Yeah,

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I like that.

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Yeah.

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If you actually use that as a resource.

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Fantastic.

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I mean, if it's just going into your inbox and you're never looking at it ever

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again, like

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straight to my spam actually.

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No,

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you, you're probably wasting your time and their time, but

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no, it's

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become a, usable list then

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Yeah.

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It's it's, I've had one air table list since I started trying to hire.

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So it's every application.

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Yeah,

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Very cool,

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yeah.

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I thought when you were saying scouting 365, you had found some

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software cuz you know, we're mostly a podcast about software

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dear.

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Yep.

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it's a Microsoft product office 365 now for scouting.

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Hm.

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Oh, I

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are here.

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Yeah.

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have a weird question, but you do a lot of this stuff.

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Have you figured out any systems for when somebody orders a product?

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Do you just put like, I guess maybe I'll go back.

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When you, when somebody orders a product and it has an assembly

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guide to it of some sort, how do you give that to the customer?

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But we tend to give them the wrong assembly guide.

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that's

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Uh,

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That goes down really well.

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What do we do we have, when a job gets bundled up and wrapped to go out

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the door, it gets a sticker put on it with the product name and a QR code.

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And that QR code links to some sort of asset, whether it be a video on

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YouTube of how to put it together or a PDF or a webpage, we've got a real

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mixed bag of assets from different eras, but it'll link to something useful.

Speaker:

And that's, we've got, we've got a lot of work to tie those assets together and

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make new ones which are more relevant and better and blah, blah, blah.

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But they scan it with their phone and pull some sort of link up that should

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help them put it together basically, or tell them how to look after it.

Speaker:

We've got one that goes on as well, which is like a care and maintenance QR code,

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and just takes them to a webpage where it,

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they can click through tabs and see which material they're working

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with and how to look after it.

Speaker:

I was just struck by the idea.

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So like we just, I just make like a most of the time I'll make some sheet

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that gets handed out, you know, put in the box, got a Nat attacking me.

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And I realized while packing a dust boot, you probably saw it's like the little

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sheet that has like some QR codes on it.

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Cause I, I try to do the same.

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I like a QR code or a link to a web asset that can, it can always be updated.

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So like, If it's in transit or something happens, like they can always get back

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to the thing that's important, like the guide or whatever that is, you can

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always be updated on the other end.

Speaker:

And I realized one of them, one of them, I hadn't put anything in the box.

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So I just emailed them personally.

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And it was like, Hey, this is what I forgot to put in the box.

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You need this to, there's a couple details.

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If you have a shop saver that are pretty important about the dust boot,

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don't remember seeing that in the box.

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you just dump it

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was just so excited about the stickers.

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I was like, yeah.

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Stickers.

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Yeah.

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I, I try to put it in a way that you can't miss it, but I guess you can miss it.

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I

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interesting.

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Anyway, I had this thought that I also wanna send everybody that

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orders any product, whatever we're putting in the box.

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I also wanted to come digitally to you and we send you the shipping notification.

Speaker:

And so I was trying to think of like, How do you do that?

Speaker:

If it's not built into like your shipping system or like, could it be in Shopify

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if that's what you're shipping with?

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is there a, is there an app or a thing that's like for kid parts,

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here's the PDF that gets slipped off with it, you know, I don't know.

Speaker:

And it comes in the email, so you have it in two places.

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And there's never, like, you could forget the one in the box

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on accident, and then I dunno.

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Yeah.

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I think Jay's built that in air table and Shopify.

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I dunno if it goes, it goes to the customer in a paper form, but it

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could easily be an email as well.

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Jay's built a product builder in air table that you, we can build out all the.

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Components of every product

Speaker:

Wow.

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and quantities of each kit.

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And then that's linked to the order printer app in Shopify, so that when

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an order comes in, it automatically pulls those parts out of air table and

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builds a, a checklist for shipping.

Speaker:

And so that gets ordered.

Speaker:

That's what we look at on the workshop floor of like, oh, someone's ordered

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the key parts that should contain these parts, check, check, check,

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check, check, all the boxes, initial packed by gem that goes in the box.

Speaker:

So we've checked it.

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And then it goes to the customer as well.

Speaker:

So they've got like a checklist of what should be in the box.

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And it it's quite a convoluted

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beast that Jay's built.

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It's quite hard to drive and add new things to it, but it is,

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it was quite complex to make, but it's the end result is.

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yeah, for sure.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Well, I, it's kind of about what I'm doing too and It's like some things I

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wanna put effort into, like, I want that solution, but I also don't want to spend.

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Weeks on figuring that out.

Speaker:

And then each new product, like you're describing a product builder, right?

Speaker:

Like that's kind of what you need, but it's also very complicated to like

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set up if it's also complicated to set up and use, it's a problem for me.

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Like we have a whole knack wall thing that's made, but it's super

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complicated to continue to use.

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And thus, I haven't used it because it's too complicated.

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yeah,

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anyway,

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yeah.

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Look, and that's one of the things that I'm ignoring on the product launch list

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of like, I don't want to go into air table and try and remember how to build out

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The components of this new product.

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I just.

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Sell units and get it out to people.

Speaker:

So yeah, it's always a balance.

Speaker:

And of a little follow up on that same idea.

Speaker:

Rick.

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And I very quickly just adopted the idea that we would just start putting

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in any concept of a product straight into the same inventory, like database

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of airable for a product at the beginning, because we kept having that.

Speaker:

We talked about that problem where I would just have stuff like where's

Speaker:

the, where's the nuts and bolts for this product.

Speaker:

Oh, I don't know.

Speaker:

It's in Justin's email probably or like even honestly it's been really helpful

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cuz I'll do like revision detail notes in that now just in a note in the air table

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product about like, oh, we changed the spacing of this, to this, on this version.

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And it's like, now I have it somewhere versus

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That's cool.

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just so simple.

Speaker:

Yeah, that's cool.

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That reminds me, we've got a change log for products somewhere, and I'm

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sure it's an air table, but I don't know where, so I, I don't use it.

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So that's

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yep.

Speaker:

the, the, the dangers of building complex systems.

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Mm.

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Oh, well, let's just go make some new stuff.

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for sure.

Speaker:

I need to work on my cabinets this weekend.

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So that'll be, that's my next step.

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Making fronts for the

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cabinets.

Speaker:

We've got 'em Aaron's, Aaron's built them all over our house.

Speaker:

The, the boxes, the first floor, we just have like Ikea boxes all around now.

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And so I just have to, and I got the bamboo, so I have to

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cool.

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figure out how to make the fronts work for off my machine, onto their boxes.

Speaker:

Awesome.

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without, without making it complicated fusion model.

Speaker:

I'm not gonna let myself mess around with like making the perfect parametric shit.

Speaker:

I'm just gonna like probably rhino.

Speaker:

Honestly, I might just rhino model each cabinet.

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So it's done.

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And I don't break anything.

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Yeah, sounds fast and efficient.

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Get it done.

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get done.

Speaker:

Smash through quite a bit there.

Speaker:

I woke up earlier today.

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I'm feeling good.

Speaker:

Good.

Speaker:

What's early.

Speaker:

Six, not early for you.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

That's good.

Speaker:

That's respectable.

Speaker:

I watched the sunrise behind you, basically.

Speaker:

You did.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

It's gotten

Speaker:

Hey, no, you, you can't say you got up early just cuz you watched my sunrise.

Speaker:

doesn't count you.

Speaker:

Got up early cheer time.

Speaker:

I think that counts.

Speaker:

cool.

Speaker:

I'm hot

Speaker:

But

Speaker:

need to turn my air

Speaker:

yeah, I'm gonna go and see where I'm gonna store all these pipes.

Speaker:

Where are you gonna put that semi trailer?

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker:

Have you told Ben about this yet?

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I don't know if he quite believes me, but yeah.

Speaker:

No, I really, I bought a semi trailer.

Speaker:

Cool man.

Speaker:

All right off.

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