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5 - Optimism Override Slider
Episode 5 • 10th May 2022 • Parts Department • Justin Brouillette & Jem Freeman
00:00:00 00:50:39

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Poplar Plywood, Quoting with Quotient, Airtable, Like Butter's 4-Day Week, and Fusion 360 Drawings.

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DISCUSSED:

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.

  • Sales target from last week, fudging the numbers
  • PDXCNC RFQ Form
  • Quoting "parts of a day"
  • Poplar Parts are... interesting
  • Friday's off at LB? Do tell
  • LB - 4-day work week since 2016-17
  • Jem and Jay try Quotient - the results are in. 👀
  • Fusion 360 Drawings Experience
  • Conventions vs getting it done
  • Controlling Formatting and Conventions 👎
  • Screen capture to replace client drawings

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Show Info

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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

Jem:

Check check one, two,

Justin:

holy moly.

Justin:

That's loud

Jem:

I watched a YouTube tutorial on making video lights out of cake tins.

Justin:

the Cake tins?

Jem:

Now that the option to get moody then.

Jem:

Oh yeah.

Jem:

Look at that.

Justin:

pretty great.

Jem:

Hmm.

Justin:

I got one of these stream deck things, but I haven't

Justin:

hooked up any lights to it.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

One of my key ones is that it's got your time.

Justin:

So I don't have to do the math anymore cause I always get it messed up.

Jem:

I've added Portland to my world clock.

Justin:

Yeah

Jem:

what's the stream day like.

Jem:

Do you use it for fusion?

Justin:

you can.

Justin:

It's basically just like a shortcut machine.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've seen them.

Justin:

very simple setup right now for this image.

Justin:

You can like change the pages to like, this is some of the like air boxes in

Justin:

the shop that I have on smart remotes.

Justin:

And then the heater in my office, the mist control for the mill.

Jem:

Really?

Justin:

turns on the Prusa lights that are on a little thing.

Jem:

You've got the mill hooked up to it.

Justin:

Oh God, no.

Justin:

It's just the mist collector is on a

Jem:

Oh, the mist collector.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

thing.

Jem:

Mistaway or whatever.

Justin:

That was primarily so that you walk away and leave it on,

Jem:

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jem:

What are you drinking?

Justin:

Oh, I've been trying to drink less like sugary stuff.

Justin:

So I've been trying this ginger ale, but it's got that like Stevia stuff in it.

Jem:

Oh

Justin:

It's that's okay.

Justin:

It's got some, a little bit of flavor.

Justin:

I've already had enough coffee and it's like one o'clock.

Justin:

So I can't drink that anymore.

Jem:

How's your week.

Justin:

It's been all right.

Justin:

All right.

Justin:

We're still battling the Kaeser breaker seems to be under

Justin:

size now it's been tripping.

Justin:

So we think we can change that.

Justin:

And it's been working mostly, but it really stumped the electrician for a bit.

Justin:

It was like, why is it tripping?

Justin:

Other than that, our forklifts been out of commission because I accidentally

Justin:

changed the battery with the wrong style of battery 12 volt battery.

Justin:

And if reversed and tried to start it.

Justin:

And so I don't know what I did to it at this point.

Jem:

you just changing the battery yourself?

Justin:

it's just the

Jem:

Not, not the traction battery, just

Justin:

Yeah, just

Jem:

things,

Justin:

one that, yeah, it was D so we bought the thing you used

Justin:

last summer and it's a 1997.

Justin:

I've done a little bit of engine work on cars and stuff, and I have no

Justin:

interest in doing most of it, but I was like, oh, I can change a battery.

Justin:

And then I bought the wrong one where the poles are on

Justin:

the opposite side on accident.

Jem:

Gotcha.

Justin:

think about it.

Justin:

And then blew some fuses.

Justin:

And now I don't know.

Justin:

And it's fairly expensive to have technicians come.

Justin:

So I've been trying to toy with it myself, but,

Jem:

I assumed you meant like the traction pack in an electric forklift.

Jem:

And I thought that was rather ambitious.

Jem:

That'd be it.

Justin:

no, no.

Justin:

It's a gas LP

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

old one.

Justin:

So it was working great until this happened.

Jem:

Classic.

Justin:

How about you?

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I don't know what I've been doing.

Jem:

I get to the end of the day and I have to like, look at my timecard to be

Jem:

able to tell Laura what I do that day.

Jem:

It's all a blur.

Justin:

You keep your on time.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Track track every minute.

Jem:

Pretty much.

Justin:

just straight into projects or

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Into zero projects.

Justin:

like that.

Jem:

Nah, zero

Justin:

Is there a projects.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

What have I been doing this week?

Jem:

I've been detailing that job.

Jem:

I told you about last week, but American Oak tables that

Jem:

we're going to turn on the CNC.

Justin:

Oh yeah

Jem:

getting closer.

Jem:

I haven't prepped the stock for that yet, so we're not ready to set up that

Jem:

janky thing again, but that'll be fun.

Justin:

yeah.

Jem:

Bunch of quotes.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Got a solid two hours on the pencil sharpener yesterday morning

Jem:

and got the first automated double-sided part off the machine.

Jem:

So that was a win.

Justin:

That's a big one.

Justin:

I was watching you.

Justin:

You were posting some good stories on that.

Justin:

And I was like, is he going to do it?

Justin:

And then I don't remember if I either missed it or you didn't show actually

Jem:

I wasn't too conscientious on the stories yesterday.

Jem:

I just

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

dropped in bits and pieces, but yeah, I guess it's a big deal.

Jem:

Like that was always the intention to be able to machine both ends of apart

Jem:

and have it spit it out automatically.

Jem:

it was a good win to get to that.

Jem:

And I only crashed it the hardest I've ever crashed it once.

Jem:

So, you know,

Justin:

Do you anything or what's crashing typically.

Jem:

that was both tools into both chucks simultaneous.

Justin:

broke the tool then.

Jem:

Just a rapid yeah.

Jem:

Snap, the end, clean off one of the thread mills.

Jem:

Cause I think they just braised on like, it's a thing.

Jem:

That's a carbide shank.

Jem:

They don't bend only the carbide.

Justin:

How do you know?

Jem:

Well, naturally I don't have a surface plate that contests um,

Jem:

snap, the one tool clean off and broke the tip on the other one.

Jem:

And, I've done it so many times.

Jem:

Now that recovery process is quite quick.

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

Poor little is get beaten back into true.

Jem:

As close as possible.

Justin:

I think you had a story, the pan over something, it said like pencil

Justin:

sharpener, alignment, fixer tool, or something on like a piece of wood

Jem:

The beating stick.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

or we call it, I know.

Justin:

What did they call that?

Justin:

Percussive maintenance.

Jem:

I've got a whole drawer in my tool.

Jem:

Trolley just called percussion.

Jem:

Yes.

Jem:

I got that back online pretty quickly and got that part done.

Jem:

I've been doing the threaded peg that's the first double ended bake.

Jem:

But now that that's working, then I can get the KittaParts dowels into

Jem:

production because we're still doing them one at a time and flipping

Jem:

them manually between operations.

Jem:

That'd be good.

Jem:

What else is happening?

Jem:

I dunno, I got in trouble last week.

Jem:

I think I mentioned we were uh, trying to close out the end of

Jem:

April and hit our sales target.

Jem:

And I had one job clear on the Friday when , I was kinda, I was watching

Jem:

the inbox and the web chat like this.

Jem:

We've got a chat function on our website and stuff, and I was

Jem:

staying engaged because I was.

Jem:

How to sale running.

Jem:

And I was trying to close out the month in a strong position.

Justin:

instant responses,

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

emails that our customer would pay the deposit on a little joinery job.

Jem:

And I was like, I jumped straight into Xero and I approved the invoice, which

Jem:

then puts, puts it into the monthly sales

Justin:

Accrual?.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

That, yes, we made it.

Jem:

And then Monday morning I was chatting to Sarah and she was like, ah it's.

Jem:

So what you did with that invoice, I was like, that's not how I do it.

Jem:

And like, I've changed the date on that.

Jem:

So it's going to fall into my, to have missed our sales target by like two grand.

Jem:

Oh man.

Jem:

That's a buzzkill.

Jem:

I mean, not really barely written for the same there.

Jem:

Just keeping the pressure on.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

you get a lot of benefit out of the chat thing from customers?

Justin:

Do they get a lot of benefit out of it?

Jem:

I find it's useful at times.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Just for answering quick questions.

Jem:

It can be more efficient than email, I suppose at times, but that I reckon

Jem:

and more often than not, I'm just sort of saying, Hey, Hey there,

Jem:

can you just fill out the form?

Jem:

Or like just redirecting them to part of the website or to the quoting form.

Jem:

Speaking of quoting full until I looked at yours the other day.

Jem:

It's nice.

Justin:

Oh, just our website.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

With the templates

Jem:

and the guides and stuff.

Jem:

It's cool.

Justin:

My intention with all of that.

Justin:

Like when I first started was it was basically just me for quite a while,

Justin:

you know, eight months or nine months.

Justin:

And I was like, and I've always done all the quotes, basically with

Justin:

a little bit of help off and on.

Justin:

So it's always like, how can I do the least amount of work each time?

Justin:

And it was like, well, I can keep optimizing this aspect to like, that's

Justin:

how I started making videos and posts was, how can I make it easier on myself

Justin:

and maybe provide a little bit of educational stuff, I guess, to people.

Justin:

But yeah, I love those Airtable Forms.

Justin:

There's a couple of things I wish I could do.

Justin:

Like more like if, then kind of like filtering as they're

Justin:

filling stuff out, but

Jem:

Yeah,

Justin:

you can kind of trick your way into that with the way they do the

Justin:

conditional stuff in the first place.

Jem:

They've added more if then stuff recently.

Jem:

Haven't they have you played with that,

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

I don't know if I've played with it too extensively on the forms but other places.

Justin:

Yeah, but there are, we use those for so many things.

Justin:

Like even like internal processes, like I have some that are for creating tasks.

Justin:

I just opened up a page and it's got a task form and it

Justin:

goes into projects and stuff.

Justin:

I've literally always taken all of our inquiries through that one version of

Justin:

that Airtable form on our website and which is nice, cause it's always in

Justin:

the same base, you know, somewhere.

Justin:

And I think it's a good qualifier for people

Justin:

to show that they're kind of interested, you know, and real

Justin:

work rather than just throwing you files and they're not prepared or

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

That's why we've been using it too as the qualification step.

Jem:

And we keep refining the questions on it to try and improve our pre qualification.

Jem:

So I like just yesterday, Sarah and I were talking about taking off the dropdown

Jem:

option for like, What can we do for you?

Jem:

One of the options was helped develop a new product.

Jem:

And we, we deleted that yesterday because as much as I find that work rewarding,

Jem:

I had a sort of ephiphany the other week because I've only got so many hours

Jem:

in my week and that high-level R and D work typically, always falls to me

Justin:

Yep.

Jem:

and say, I've got, you know, eight hours a week where

Jem:

I can do that sort of work.

Jem:

I would much rather be doing that.

Jem:

High-level R and D on our business, rather than on someone else's product.

Jem:

Because at the end of the day, I can only charge so much per hour for doing

Jem:

that R and D work for someone else versus developing a new product, but could go

Jem:

on to sell really well or whatever it is.

Jem:

So that, that kind of tipped me over the line.

Jem:

Cause like a month ago I was like, yeah, this is great doing this product

Jem:

development for other people, you know, we've got a lot of experience now.

Jem:

This is something we could potentially specialize in.

Jem:

And then yeah,

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

realization that it's a finite resource.

Justin:

I know it's interesting as I've had this kind of trending things since

Justin:

about October, towards the exact same realization where we were, I don't know.

Justin:

I just always in the cyclical process of never feeling like we have enough

Justin:

job shop work, and I was always chasing kind of making that work.

Justin:

And I was like, well, it had this taste of, I told this before.

Justin:

I think here to you is, wanting to make more products.

Justin:

So we, we really like went hard at that throughout pursuing the

Justin:

inverse right now of that, where I was like, I started turning on

Justin:

a little bit more of our options.

Justin:

Acceptance of smaller jobs.

Justin:

Whereas we had kind of raised them up so that we could focus on our own products.

Justin:

And

Justin:

it's just been slower, a lot slower process than I would

Justin:

have liked for a lot of reasons.

Justin:

But you've part of that thought was I remember a couple of weeks

Justin:

ago you were saying how valuable those R and D projects were.

Justin:

And I do the same whiplash of like how much I appreciate it.

Justin:

And then I'm like, I don't have enough time for that.

Jem:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jem:

I can only support maybe two or three clients at a time per in that space.

Jem:

And any more than that, it's too much.

Justin:

Definitely.

Jem:

For the business to sort of be scalable, then that has to

Jem:

be a really limited part of it.

Jem:

I don't think we'll stop doing that sort of work.

Jem:

I just think what we want to sort of promote the fact that we do it

Jem:

and the people that, we'll still do it for the people that find us and

Jem:

need that and where the relationships are good match and things like that.

Jem:

But,

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I think that's the reason why I've left it on because we get

Justin:

the inquiries through the form of like, you want design services.

Justin:

And they only have an idea, not drawings and those are tough

Justin:

to, to make work usually.

Jem:

It's hard to put enough budget on them.

Justin:

Yeah, that's exactly the thing.

Justin:

There's usually not enough budget.

Justin:

I think there's just kind of a scenario where if you already know.

Justin:

What you need help with?

Justin:

You probably already have help in some way, or I don't know what it is, it's

Justin:

one of the things I still take them.

Justin:

Cause sometimes you do get the perfect job and I'd rather say,

Justin:

Hey, sorry, we can't help right now.

Justin:

You know,

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

Yeah, for sure.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I find myself just not putting enough hours in the quote.

Jem:

Just being, you know, classically too optimistic about how long it's gonna take

Jem:

me to detail a new thing for somebody or, or solve something for someone.

Jem:

It's such a unknown area.

Jem:

And you discover all sorts of things along the way.

Jem:

Like, if I think about some of the products that I've sunk a lot, a lot of R

Jem:

and D time into internally, and like how much time I've put into them to get to a

Jem:

certain point, like imagining what I would have charged at develop that to a client.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Well, think the more I learned, the more we learned culturally here

Justin:

about when we would, let's say lose on those, other projects, we would then

Justin:

inflate that's the wrong word, but we would increase our quotes appropriately

Justin:

for the future ones trying to cover those.

Justin:

we didn't make it.

Justin:

And I think from the other side is the potential client I've been there

Justin:

enough where it's like, oh, these prices are absurd, but really, they

Justin:

probably aren't or either they don't want the project, you know, and

Justin:

they're giving you the F-you quote or it's just it's more than you expect,

Jem:

It's a chronic problem for me, if underquoting basically has been forever.

Jem:

And I've always tried different strategies to get myself around it

Jem:

to override my optimism like back when I had that crazy grasshopper a

Jem:

patch, I had a slider that was called like optimism override or something.

Jem:

It was just like a multiplier that would apply contingency.

Jem:

And so I've always tried to find ways to kind of shape myself around

Jem:

it and just like in force there will be enough time in quotes.

Jem:

And so I'm running into that problem again, since we've rebuilt

Jem:

everything in Airtable is that there's not that function at the moment.

Jem:

And.

Justin:

Design in a factor.

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

And whilst I'm getting more confident at like increasing our GP, cause the way

Jem:

we quote it at the moment, we kind of do all the raw costs and then decide what

Jem:

the gross profit percentage needs to be for that sort of work and then apply

Jem:

that I'm getting more confident going.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

Yeah, no, I'll put another 10% at the end,

Justin:

yeah.

Jem:

but I'm still terrible at like putting enough hours into the job.

Justin:

Yup.

Justin:

Yup.

Jem:

so I was trying to think the other day how it can sort of add

Jem:

something into this happening behind the scenes that I'm not thinking about

Jem:

that it's like kind of overriding my under estimates, but I don't know.

Justin:

this makes me think, and I'm the same way.

Justin:

I never feel like I hit the perfect price for us and them.

Justin:

That's I think maybe that's just, unless you're a salesperson by heart,

Justin:

I had my first couple of years of like, especially not having done any of this

Justin:

before I had this, it was like maybe the first year I was talking to my

Justin:

friend, Seth, and he is not involved with this business, just really smart guy.

Justin:

And he was, he was saying, I don't know, maybe just make it simpler on yourself.

Justin:

Cause that's complaining about, it's so hard to choose how many hours, like

Justin:

either don't get the job or get it.

Justin:

And he's like, maybe make it simpler on yourself and just say, how much

Justin:

of a day is this going to take me?

Jem:

I like

Justin:

Like, is it a half day?

Justin:

Is it a full day?

Justin:

If it's six hours, it's probably going to be eight hours.

Justin:

If you work eight hour days.

Justin:

And that really helped me to like stop thinking about it and minute amounts.

Justin:

The client's probably not going to not choose the job unless

Justin:

they're on a shoe-string budget.

Justin:

And then that's probably not a good fit in the first place

Justin:

unless you really want that job.

Justin:

I always think about that whenever I'm really struggling.

Justin:

I'm like, I don't know.

Justin:

It's it's at least a half a day easily.

Jem:

Yeah, that's a great point.

Jem:

I, I used to do that and I'm out of the habit now I'm back in the mode

Jem:

of like, Manouchehr of like three minutes and 27 seconds for that part

Jem:

of that job and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jem:

But I, yeah, that's a great point.

Jem:

I need to get back into that head space of just looking at the titles

Jem:

for different parts of the job and imagining, like stepping out onto

Jem:

the floor at 8:00 AM and going cool.

Jem:

When will I be done?

Jem:

Will I be done by morning tea, lunchtime end of the day?

Jem:

That's a great technique.

Justin:

You can't do it until you've had enough experience failing though, right?

Jem:

No, but yeah, I've had plenty of plenty of experience failing.

Justin:

five.

Justin:

Yeah, same.

Justin:

Sometimes I'll just the last thought on that.

Justin:

Sometimes I'll walk out and go like, Ricky, I'm quoting this job.

Justin:

This past, when we did, like how long do you think that took, would it take you an

Justin:

hour or would it be like half a day full, you know, how long would it take you in?

Justin:

usually even just getting those like big round numbers is surprisingly helpful.

Justin:

cause sometimes I'm not, we stopped keeping track of time and even the

Justin:

perceptive ideas of how long some of those processes take or off in my head.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yup.

Jem:

It's a, it's a thing.

Justin:

We went from, from app talk to now, we're just like

Justin:

a sales and quoting podcast.

Jem:

Sales and marketing with Justin in Jem

Justin:

salesforce sponsored.

Jem:

I was going to say your what?

Justin:

We check the box at the same time

Jem:

Oh, did it uncheck itself?

Justin:

you checked.

Justin:

And as soon as you did, I checked it and I unchecked it.

Jem:

Yeah, I was going to say the machine noise last week.

Jem:

It was very uninformed.

Jem:

Um, You're not stuffing production for this.

Jem:

I have

Justin:

It's given convenient, honestly, with our power being out.

Justin:

It's been convenient to not have things been running.

Justin:

Like Ricky's got some computer work.

Justin:

But yeah, you're right.

Justin:

It wasn't as bad as I thought.

Justin:

So I think we could totally run it if we needed to.

Jem:

I reckon it was fine and kind of nice to hear a little bit of life,

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

It's not just a dead silent shop

Jem:

the wine of a router in the background with.

Justin:

only

Justin:

you and I would appreciate that.

Justin:

when I walk into the shop and I hear that, like the riders

Justin:

whining, I'm like, ah, money.

Justin:

That's good.

Jem:

I think your tools rubbing in the background there, Justin

Jem:

might want to duck out and adjust that fade,

Justin:

yeah, it's going a little high

Jem:

Hey how'd you go with the Poplar?

Justin:

I cut it last night before I left.

Justin:

I posted a little real and Instagram, but it's, it's exactly what you described.

Justin:

Every other layer on one direction is rough as hell and little bit

Justin:

rougher on the top and bottom than I expected, but it wasn't too bad.

Justin:

Like, I think it's all serviceable.

Justin:

I think I probably had hopes that it would be closer to like a Baltic core,

Justin:

but it's, it feels more like balsa.

Justin:

Have you ever cut that before?

Jem:

Oh yeah.

Jem:

It's really.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

So I guess the question I have since I haven't done anything with it, since I

Justin:

cut it was does it stand up pretty well?

Justin:

Like those edges?

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Does it just, I just remember having to sand the long way and to get past the,

Jem:

the tear out, that's the only thing.

Justin:

Oh yeah.

Justin:

You said like a millimeter or something, right?

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Like half a mill or something.

Jem:

We have an edge sander.

Jem:

If you have an edge, then

Justin:

just go on.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

you just go on sweet.

Jem:

Yeah, no, I, I remember it finishing quite nicely, just very soft,

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

but you can burn through it.

Jem:

Like it's easy enough to sand it off.

Jem:

It's just like, you can go too far, very quickly.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

That is the problem with those things is they're so good

Justin:

at tearing through material.

Jem:

yup.

Jem:

Quite aggressive.

Jem:

Yeah, we've been using more and more Hoop Pine and enjoying it.

Jem:

So that's the Australian grown stuff, but we're replacing Birch with I

Jem:

think Baltic, but Baltic Birch is more of an American expression.

Jem:

We don't, we just call it, Birch over here.

Jem:

But I think it's, I think we're talking about the same stuff

Jem:

probably comes out of Russia.

Justin:

Yep.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

I don't know why that distinction there.

Justin:

Must've at some point been another Birch.

Jem:

maybe, well, we've used finish Burt from Costco in a bit in the past.

Jem:

That's lovely stuff.

Jem:

Like the best Birch plywood I've ever seen or used by far

Jem:

just really beautiful stuff.

Jem:

But our local supplier stopped importing it a couple of years ago, unfortunately.

Jem:

But during, I think it was 2017 when we were using a bit of that product.

Jem:

And our important maxi ply was still bringing it in lower.

Jem:

And I got a chance to visit the Costcos in mill in Finland.

Justin:

Oh, wow.

Jem:

And that was really cool.

Jem:

I'd never been in a, a timber processing plant that big, seeing them take those

Jem:

logs and just like unroll them in a second all the processes around it.

Jem:

But they had this coal, they kind of had two plants running.

Jem:

They had a plywood plant and a chipboard plant.

Justin:

Hm.

Jem:

And pretty much all the off-cuts from the plywood processing got

Jem:

chipped and turned into chipboards.

Jem:

So it was kind of these two plants sort of interwoven into each other and all

Jem:

the waste, all the waste from one then created another product in the other

Jem:

and brilliant, really nice set up.

Jem:

It was pretty funny because Laura and I rocked up there.

Jem:

It was just, yeah, just the two of us.

Jem:

The fins are hilarious.

Jem:

They say wonderfully sort of formal and quiet that we wrapped up in this boardroom

Jem:

and they had this whole like PowerPoint presentation ready for us as if we are

Jem:

some big international company visiting.

Jem:

And they had four staff and morning tea prepared and like four people

Jem:

spent two hours with us, giving us this, PowerPoint presentation

Jem:

about the company and then this tour around the thing, it was quite funny.

Jem:

But really, really sweet and cool.

Jem:

Cool to say.

Jem:

if we were ever in a position to stop importing our own plywood, I'd love to

Jem:

go back to them and get their stuff.

Justin:

I haven't heard about that.

Justin:

Have you used apple ply before or heard of it like made basically

Justin:

in our backyard, like 50 miles south, maybe a hundred miles.

Justin:

I had thought for the longest time that it was like all American made, it was like

Justin:

the red, white, and blue, like plywood.

Justin:

And then I found out as prices.

Justin:

And this is before the big event of the Russian invasion, but

Justin:

that was always my backup plan.

Justin:

If.

Justin:

We had two in prices on Baltic Birch, basically imported stuff was gone.

Justin:

And then I found out it's the same core.

Justin:

They just import the core parts and then assemble it here rather

Justin:

than the whole sheet and assembly getting imported at once.

Justin:

They glue it locally.

Jem:

all living clued locally, but veneers come in and then the depressing.

Justin:

it's a lot, it, I mean, it's a, it's an amazing product.

Justin:

You were talking about the best you've seen I today.

Justin:

I've never seen a better, assembly of plywood than apple fly, but

Justin:

it's also usually like almost double or triple the price, usually

Justin:

double and now it's just so wacky.

Justin:

I don't even know, that really threw me for a loop.

Justin:

Cause I was like, oh, we'll just use apple plights.

Justin:

It's made down the road.

Jem:

Also these Birch, oh, it's soy glue

Jem:

formaldehyde free soy adhesive.

Justin:

Yep.

Justin:

That's a really cool product.

Jem:

That's what the popular plywood we can get here is as well.

Jem:

That's soy adhesive.

Justin:

as this stuff we've been using,

Jem:

Nah, I notice you've got a net zero MDF policy on your website as well.

Justin:

Do you also do that?

Justin:

Oh, wow.

Justin:

Person I've ever heard to that.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah, we turned off MDF maybe two, two years ago or something just in an

Jem:

interview staff meeting or that how much work are we actually doing in it?

Jem:

Not that much.

Jem:

What would happen if we turned it off?

Jem:

Yeah, let's do it.

Justin:

Was there another reason other than, well, what were the reasons for it?

Justin:

I guess?

Jem:

Just health.

Jem:

It's just gross Nuna.

Justin:

same.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

We still use it for our sacrificial shape.

Justin:

Same.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I don't know of a replacement for that.

Jem:

on a, I've tried to do research.

Jem:

I would like to try the, HDPE version of that.

Justin:

Whoa.

Jem:

We do like a really thick sheet of HDPE and you

Jem:

perforate it thousand thousands

Justin:

Oh, we're back to the whole sheets.

Jem:

And then, you know, you deck it beautifully flat, and then you're just,

Jem:

just, just, just skimming into it.

Jem:

But, you know, 0.05 or

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

but it's quite a commitment

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

trial that system.

Jem:

So we've never gone down that thought.

Jem:

It was still running India for sacrificial.

Justin:

that, that popular applies.

Justin:

So, light core, or maybe it's maybe it's porous enough.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

So my story about MDF, to see other people just are like, oh, okay, that's fine.

Justin:

Or they're like, what are you talking about?

Justin:

This is the only thing I get, you know, have stuff made out of.

Justin:

My story of it was nobody ever told me about what it was in school and we'd

Justin:

make a lot of models Dust collection was basically non-existent in this tiny room.

Justin:

I used a router in, so we'd make Topo models of a site for

Justin:

school and architecture school.

Justin:

And I'd just be in

Jem:

What models

Justin:

topographic like

Justin:

PO

Jem:

typographic Topo.

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

I just be in there watching this ancient machine run.

Justin:

Cause it could start on fire easily every once in a while and just breathe in it.

Justin:

And I had a sore throat slash cough for a solid year.

Justin:

Like it just did not go away and, and it took me a while to

Justin:

figure out what that was about.

Justin:

Especially after that, I kind of learned more and more that I mean, from my

Justin:

understanding, like the dust is so fine, it goes straight through filters.

Justin:

you can't remove it really from the air once it's in the air.

Justin:

It's just never been worth it.

Justin:

To me and people really appreciate that.

Justin:

I think the work here other people want to do it.

Justin:

That's great, but it's just never been a thing we've done

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

So you've, haven't done it from the start.

Justin:

well, blind prototype for somebody out of it.

Justin:

And that was about it.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Let me give you the first couple of jobs.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah, it's interesting.

Jem:

Isn't it?

Jem:

I have broken my own rule once in the last two years for a job that called for

Jem:

black velcomat, I think is the product.

Justin:

like outdoor stuff.

Justin:

Outdoor

Jem:

goes out until it's just, you know, that fully stained product.

Jem:

Think that European name is about Chromat or something we call it falls color here,

Jem:

but it's basically a full color and yeah.

Jem:

If anyone were doing this job cutting this big world map.

Jem:

It was supposed to be in paper rock, which is like an HBL solid

Jem:

high pressure laminate product.

Justin:

Yep.

Jem:

But then the spec changed and yeah, it just happened in that instance.

Jem:

Broke my own rule.

Jem:

Cause I was like, this is actually the best product for

Jem:

this job called or run it.

Jem:

That makes sense.

Justin:

That is the downside is that you run into this problem all the time

Justin:

of, especially if you want to make a 3d, a large 3d thing and you need

Justin:

contiguous, non, like layered material.

Justin:

There's not a lot of options foams

Jem:

is foams.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've never really played with fine

Justin:

I'm on the Velcro mat website and they say Velcro mat is not MDF.

Justin:

It is an evolution of the MDF.

Jem:

Yes.

Jem:

Yes.

Jem:

Good luck with that marketing.

Jem:

Have you done much with high density foams

Justin:

no, honestly, I've gotten some samples, every job we've gotten close

Justin:

to doing for somebody it falls through.

Justin:

I think for budget reasons, it's pretty expensive.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

And that's often jobs where you're doing like three-day surfacing

Jem:

with lots of machine time, right?

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah,

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

We have an RFQ for like a mold.

Justin:

It was like our full CNC bed of 3d surfacing and their budget wasn't

Justin:

even enough to cover the foam.

Jem:

yeah.

Justin:

I was.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

how are you quoting them?

Jem:

Three-day surfacing jobs.

Jem:

Do you run timing in cam or do you just look at the surface area and apply.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

minimum.

Justin:

I do a roughing setup, do some type of adaptive clearing

Justin:

depending on the material.

Justin:

And then I'll do something like a parallel pass on it, just because that's,

Justin:

I think that's one of the closest ways you can get a time estimate in fusion

Justin:

and it may not be the best operation, it doesn't have a lot of pickups,

Justin:

where the machine needs to move.

Justin:

that works somewhat.

Justin:

I did for a while, when we were getting more of those increase, I

Justin:

wanted to try to figure out like a square foot price, so that, so that

Justin:

instead of needing to calculate it, they're all pretty close to the same.

Justin:

I mean, if you get really deep you may need to have some type of other factors.

Justin:

It's just a couple inches of, you know, change over the surface.

Justin:

there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do a square foot,

Justin:

estimation pretty quickly

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

It's great point.

Jem:

Think about that.

Jem:

If we get more inquiries for that.

Justin:

that's exactly what I was like.

Justin:

Well, someday I'll get into that because we just don't get them that often.

Justin:

I'm curious about your, you said last week that you take

Justin:

Fridays off, but like butter.

Justin:

And I immediately wrote that down to talk about, I think I heard some story

Justin:

like a news story that was like, it was either New Zealand or Australian company

Justin:

that had chosen to do that years ago.

Justin:

And it was like an American is like, what do you mean?

Justin:

Like you can take a day off.

Justin:

What do you mean.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

So we have been doing a four day work week since 2016, I think 2017, maybe.

Jem:

And look that that statement has a lot of disclaimers around it.

Jem:

Because until I had children, I was working at six or seven days a week.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

as a company we've been doing a four day work week since around then and it

Jem:

kind of happened by accident cause we was around the time where I was like, I

Jem:

need someone to help me with the admin.

Jem:

I'm doing everything.

Jem:

I'm on the tools I'm doing.

Jem:

This is unsustainable working, you know, six or seven days a week.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

Let's get a business manager.

Jem:

And that was a 2016 was when we hired Sarah and Sarah came in from

Jem:

a completely different industry.

Jem:

And we were like, yes, you're fantastic.

Jem:

But we want you for the job.

Jem:

Oh, we can't afford you for five days a week.

Jem:

And she was like, oh, well, why don't I I'll just work four days.

Jem:

And I was like, okay, cool.

Jem:

We can afford you for four days.

Jem:

Let's do that.

Jem:

then, yeah, very quickly because everyone in production was working five days and

Jem:

she was doing four days and very quickly, it was like, oh, this isn't natural.

Jem:

This is kind of tricky to make this work.

Jem:

Cause you know, Sarah is not here on Fridays.

Jem:

It's like, why don't we look at doing a four day week?

Jem:

And most people were into it.

Jem:

And you know, there was a transition period where like some

Jem:

people were still doing five.

Jem:

Anyway, basically it just evolved over a number of years to the point

Jem:

where the website said, yep, we're closed on Fridays, Fridays became

Jem:

close to the public at least.

Jem:

And and then yeah, it became more and more formal at the time.

Jem:

And now it's definitely a thing.

Jem:

And it's interesting.

Jem:

It comes up in conversation because it's coming to question a little

Jem:

bit, like, cause when I started receiving business coaching, they

Jem:

were like, what are you doing?

Jem:

Like how can you squander

Justin:

20% of your revenue or a

Jem:

that much of your potential production time?

Jem:

And like you've got machines sitting there three days a week doing nothing.

Jem:

And I was like, all right, I'll just try and prove you wrong.

Jem:

But yeah, it does come up and like.

Jem:

Even just lightly, running our numbers.

Jem:

We're like, yes, we need more production hours in the week.

Jem:

How do we achieve that?

Jem:

And so few people have been doing full-time hours in four days or

Jem:

full-time hours in four and a half days coming in Friday morning.

Jem:

So there's, you know, there's all sorts of little things happening around that.

Jem:

It's not a strict,

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Full day, only week, but during, during the pandemic, like the heat of the

Jem:

pandemic, was the last winter, I think, or maybe the winter before, like, Hey guys,

Jem:

we need to up our production now is, is anyone interested in going full-time and

Jem:

doing like five days in four, because that's a model that a lot of businesses

Jem:

use when they're doing a four day week.

Jem:

And most of the team are like, yeah, cool.

Jem:

We'll give it a go.

Jem:

And we did a six week trial of doing five and four and pretty

Jem:

much everyone by the end of the six weeks was just like, thanks.

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

go to work in the dark, get home in the dark.

Jem:

Like it's not that extra day of income is not worth it to me for that sacrifice.

Jem:

So we, most people went back to the four days at that point.

Justin:

I would assume, but things were different.

Justin:

This, this eight hours a day that's considered full normally for you?

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

7.6.

Jem:

Yep.

Justin:

7.6.

Justin:

why is it 7.6?

Jem:

Cause a 38 hour week is considered a full-time for manufacturing in Australia.

Justin:

Oh.

Jem:

And yeah, I mean, I'm quite attached to the idea.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Back.

Jem:

I like the idea that our staff have a weekday to go off and do stuff,

Jem:

you know, go to the doctor, go to the bank, do all that life stuff.

Justin:

Yup.

Jem:

I know also just this you, other interests, having, having people

Jem:

who are engaged and interested in other stuff beyond their job, I

Jem:

think is a really beneficial thing by them as individuals, but also

Jem:

for the culture of the company and

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I think, I think that's basically how the original argument of this article

Justin:

that I read some time ago, probably about that same timeframe that you're

Justin:

talking about the productivity loss wasn't dramatic or at all potentially.

Justin:

And that people were much.

Justin:

About it.

Justin:

I've never heard my knowledge, somebody here, I'm sure there are, but just from

Justin:

hearsay, I haven't heard of anybody in the states doing like a full day off.

Justin:

It ends up being four, 10 hour days And then you take like a Friday off,

Justin:

which my shop neighbor does that.

Justin:

I could see that too.

Justin:

I kind of incidentally work like 10 to 12 hours a day kind of accidentally.

Justin:

And

Jem:

that's

Justin:

see that.

Justin:

So I don't know.

Justin:

I know it's different when you own something versus when you

Justin:

are getting paid to be there.

Justin:

So

Jem:

That's right.

Jem:

I do the same thing.

Jem:

I do roughly a sort of 38 to 40 hour week when everything's on

Jem:

the control being in four days.

Jem:

And that's, I find that quite uncomfortable, but yeah,

Justin:

It's different.

Jem:

it's different.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Well, you.

Jem:

What are your hours?

Justin:

it changes all the time.

Justin:

Kinda changes by the staff.

Justin:

We have like I mentioned, we're pretty slim at the moment.

Justin:

So I have been getting up earlier and earlier.

Justin:

Maybe you've been influencing me.

Justin:

I was going to show you my let's see here, kind of this, this happened

Justin:

without dramatic failure of the podcast.

Justin:

Can you see that?

Jem:

Oh, Jaylon put Chloe

Jem:

and they felt diary.

Justin:

I made a , little attempt at your default.

Justin:

Derek's I like this idea and I felt dramatically unable

Justin:

to have my own schedule.

Justin:

It's a couple of days.

Justin:

This worked really well.

Justin:

Some days I wasn't even remotely close to it, but it's been nice.

Justin:

I really liked, I look forward to a couple of the blocks,

Justin:

some of them I hate, you know?

Justin:

But like, it gives me a little more freedom mentally to like, work oh, I can

Justin:

just work on like this prototype part now.

Justin:

And I'll, I know when I'm going to work on quotes, which is like a totally

Justin:

new thought to me instead of it's like always burning in the back of my mind.

Jem:

I know that was the big thing for me too.

Jem:

Instead of full day feeling like, oh crap, I need to be doing that.

Jem:

Just going now.

Jem:

I'll do it at that time slot.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

That's great.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I'm still kind of trying to figure out the owner one.

Justin:

I think you mentioned that was

Justin:

kind of, it's a tough, I've just kind of been using it as like clean up of

Justin:

all the things I need to worry about.

Justin:

So I called it owner.

Justin:

3s, which is that lean term, like sweep standardize.

Justin:

I can remember the fruit third one.

Justin:

that's been somewhat successful.

Justin:

And I guess to answer your question about the timeframe, it's been mostly,

Justin:

I'd say completely successful in that I let people choose their own

Justin:

schedule as long as it's regular.

Justin:

So it's not been a problem.

Justin:

The only problem is when we have deliveries and nobody's here

Justin:

because for a while, most of us just didn't want to work early.

Justin:

But we, at times we've had a guy that would come in at seven and

Justin:

he'd be here wanting to work.

Justin:

And what's nice about that is then you almost get like a second shift.

Justin:

Cause like Ricky likes to come in at like 10 and he works till like six 30.

Justin:

So it kind of works out and that you get, if we were that busy, it would work out

Justin:

to get more hours out of your equipment.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

And your staff.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

But when you're not busy, it doesn't, it's, it's just a convenience.

Justin:

as being a small company, I don't have a ton of benefits to offer still.

Justin:

So that's one thing I think people can appreciate at least is I mentioned

Justin:

before, we're just, I'm just really flexible about, if new leave, as long

Justin:

as you're covered what you need to get accomplished, somebody else then.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Whatever works.

Jem:

that's cool.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think that's where I see if it becomes a problem in future that

Jem:

we're still just doing four days.

Jem:

Then I see people still doing a four day contract, but split them over

Jem:

the week so that we're getting, so the machines are running every day.

Jem:

If we need that capacity, then that's the easiest way to get it in my mind.

Justin:

For sure.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Well, the thing we found challenging in the past around that.

Jem:

We used to have quite a much more split week.

Jem:

So it would have people who are only in, on certain days or

Jem:

only did three days or two days.

Jem:

And the communication breakdown was really challenging of just like not having

Jem:

everyone in on the same day on the same schedule is so much easier to communicate

Jem:

effectively versus like, oh, did you like, have you been told this about

Jem:

this job or not knowing who knows what?

Jem:

But now that we've got a much better sort of internal ERP effectively

Jem:

with Airtable, I think that would be less of a challenge these days, but.

Justin:

It's still hard though.

Justin:

we had an employee that worked only a couple of days a week and they were

Justin:

always somewhat challenged by how long it had been since they'd worked

Justin:

basically, they bashed those two days.

Justin:

We would always have a lot of stuff for them to work on when they got there.

Justin:

So there was never a catch-up period.

Justin:

It was just always like, yeah.

Jem:

Jump in.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

It doesn't work.

Justin:

Great.

Justin:

It regularities nice.

Jem:

There's a pile.

Jem:

That's the sander and a pile of pots.

Jem:

Good.

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Oh, it was more like design a six fixtures real quick, you

Justin:

know like get a made by tomorrow.

Jem:

yeah, yeah.

Jem:

That's tricky.

Jem:

One about guys, Josh has gone back to study this semester and he's

Jem:

in that detailing role in fusion.

Jem:

And so he's just here two days a week at the moment and he drops in and it's just,

Jem:

yeah, there's a pile of jobs to detail.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

But he's doing really well.

Jem:

He's learning a lot and smashing through it, so it's cool.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

You have Jim and Jay try quotient and the results are in, and I'm

Justin:

curious to hear what the results.

Jem:

Well, when I wrote that the results were in and it was

Jem:

off the table, we'd scrapped it.

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

had a few days of excitement.

Jem:

It was like, Ooh, this is good.

Jem:

This is good.

Jem:

And then we tried some of the connections and we're like, we can't

Jem:

feed the daughter into it that we want to get into it out of Airtable.

Jem:

So we quote an Airtable and then we want all of that data to

Jem:

automatically feed into a quote

Justin:

oh

Jem:

the input web hooks as they're cold and not particularly advanced

Jem:

the outputs look really strong.

Jem:

So getting stuff out of it into zero or other platforms should be fine.

Jem:

Anyway.

Jem:

So we basically canned it.

Jem:

And then JD did another sort of 48 hours of research into

Jem:

other options in that space.

Jem:

Cause we're trying to avoid building our own basically doubling out.

Jem:

And then giant.

Jem:

And I had a sit down yesterday and ran through all the options

Jem:

that they'd researched and basically swung full circle back.

Jem:

Quotient and

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

cool.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

Let's give it another go.

Jem:

Let's do a full trial, like connecting it to all the bits

Jem:

that it needs to be connected to.

Jem:

And it's not going to be as automatic as we'd hoped,

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

We both of us keep coming back to your comment of like

Jem:

how much customers love it.

Jem:

And we can see from what we've fiddled with it, it would be such

Jem:

a nice client facing interface.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

So even if it's not automatic, I think it'll still be a great improvement.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I mean, if there's manual entry, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Justin:

I still enter in every, customer's info at the beginning, and then I

Justin:

have it templatized to a point where.

Justin:

I can just basically, because most of our jobs are very similar in

Justin:

terms of like, they need labor, they need some type of material.

Justin:

I usually have to update the material to the right thing.

Justin:

And a lot of them are already in there and I have to maybe update the price.

Justin:

That's all crazy lately.

Justin:

And then you enter in the amount of hours and maybe whatever

Justin:

custom detail about that job.

Justin:

And maybe yours is similar enough that unless you've got the perfect system,

Justin:

I think maybe like you're Airtable.

Justin:

I'm always going to be making something custom on every quote.

Justin:

Like they're never, they're never the same.

Justin:

Sometimes we get repeat jobs and I can just copy the old quote

Justin:

and update a couple things.

Justin:

That's nice.

Jem:

Yeah,

Justin:

I think you could pretty easily automate creating the

Justin:

customer and the little bit

Justin:

of like company info.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

We'll automate the lead entry, but yeah, it looks like it's going to be manual

Jem:

entry for builder the job details itself.

Jem:

But the bit that we should be able to templatize, I think is all that, the

Jem:

generic information about the process and, you know, these are the steps in our

Jem:

deposit process, or these are the pros and cons of raw finish versus sealed finish.

Jem:

And like, just turn that template stuff on and off in the bottom of a.

Justin:

Yup.

Jem:

Cause that's the main thing we're lacking at the moment is all that,

Jem:

just that richness of information.

Jem:

So instead of them just getting this black and white quote PDF out of zero, they get

Jem:

like this rich text thing with pictures and lots of info and it looks like it

Jem:

will be able to do that for us then

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

we'll, we'll keep going and see.

Justin:

I have a friend Joe, that we used to share a shop and he does like find.

Justin:

he had started out kind of on his own selling stuff on Etsy, which

Justin:

is, I don't know if you have of that

Justin:

to some degree.

Justin:

And he just you know, managing that kind of stuff.

Justin:

Wasn't really his like, desire, right?

Justin:

Like not many people want to build an ERP.

Jem:

I do.

Justin:

Yeah, you're right.

Justin:

A few of us.

Justin:

And I showed him quotient and he loves it and he finds that as far as I

Justin:

remember he was saying that he thinks it helps him more easily sell clients,

Justin:

things that they want potentially, that he would otherwise have to have

Justin:

some really verbose conversation about.

Justin:

Cause he'll put an options.

Justin:

Like I built a lot of vanities for bathrooms and he'll put in an

Justin:

option like this docking drawer thing that he gets that you can put

Justin:

in a little outlet in the drawer.

Justin:

But if he just says that, it sounds like he's trying to like add stuff on.

Justin:

To this thing, you know, it's like hard to show, but if it has a photo that you

Justin:

can pop up and it describes it, they check the box, it's in their project now it's

Jem:

nice.

Jem:

Yeah, we'll check it out.

Jem:

Tell me about the drawings infusion.

Jem:

You're way ahead of me in this field.

Jem:

I think I do very hacky one.

Justin:

Oh gosh.

Justin:

Someday I'll have, we'll have to have a.

Justin:

Compliments to fusion episode, but this is not one of my

Justin:

compliments to fusion comments.

Justin:

I know they've done some work to improve them, but I find them

Justin:

mostly very frustrating still.

Justin:

And there've been some new stuff that I like.

Justin:

I really like ever since we started doing products, the revision table

Justin:

thing kind of came out perfectly last month, where now you can track

Justin:

those things, especially when you're sending out court requests and other

Justin:

companies have them make stuff for you.

Justin:

It's really nice to be able to like say this exact thing changed and you can

Justin:

call it out and put it in the table.

Justin:

Some of that was broken.

Justin:

I guess I got it fixed, but I just find, I do a lot of fiddling

Justin:

to make it do the same thing.

Justin:

Like the templates are there, but they're not.

Justin:

You can't save most of the things you really want to save.

Justin:

In my opinion, like I want the drawings to always have a title.

Justin:

It don't have titles and you've gotta like custom make those every time.

Justin:

I, you know, it's basically just been me using them here and a

Justin:

couple other people have over time, maybe you have a similar feeling.

Justin:

I have a background where I was graded on how well I made drawings, right?

Justin:

Like in school.

Justin:

And then in the few years I worked, like I had people that were, that sat me down

Justin:

and said, this is how you do drawings.

Justin:

So it was like a heart to heart talk and very serious to these people.

Justin:

Like you only put your dimensions in this space so that they never

Justin:

get cut off by the printer.

Justin:

You know, it was like all this stuff.

Justin:

It's painful to me in a certain sense, because I can't put that

Justin:

kind of nice detail into it.

Justin:

And it was very important to me at one time.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Okay.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

That's my take on it.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think I've always been a bit rebellious with that stuff.

Jem:

yes, I was trying to enduring conventions conventions, but I think

Jem:

I rejected them pretty early on.

Jem:

And the first sort of industry job I had, it was all about speed

Jem:

and getting line drawings and renders out as fast as possible.

Jem:

And it became more important to ensure that things were communicated.

Jem:

Clearly.

Jem:

Convention was less important.

Jem:

It was more about the key dimensions there.

Jem:

Yes or no.

Jem:

Great, cool.

Jem:

It's being communicated and I guess flowing that into my own business of.

Jem:

It became much more sort of a practical thing.

Jem:

A lot of the drawings I did were just for internal use for like coal,

Jem:

we need to make the steel frame.

Jem:

Here's the dimensions highlight, make sure you hit this dimension.

Jem:

And then I think I've continued that like we do do some formal shop

Jem:

drawings that go out for approval.

Jem:

But during, during the pandemic, when video communications became more common,

Jem:

I got into the habit of doing screen captures for clients and I pretty

Jem:

much scrapped drawings completely.

Jem:

And I would just turn on a screen recording program like this and

Jem:

just talk, walk and talk a client through fusion, like pick the

Jem:

project apart and go, yeah, cool.

Jem:

This is what I've done here.

Jem:

This is that detail.

Jem:

And that's why I decided to do this.

Jem:

Cause this looks funny and just, you can communicate so much so quickly.

Jem:

That's very hard to communicate or very time consuming to

Jem:

do that in a tech drawing.

Jem:

There's problems with that in terms of mock-ups and communication

Jem:

of changes and things like that.

Jem:

Obviously I'm trying to get more disciplined and make sure that they at

Jem:

least have a PDF thing that I can mock up that goes with that screen capture.

Jem:

But I find 90% of my communication with the client for approval is

Jem:

happening in screencaps or those days.

Jem:

And I find it super powerful.

Justin:

Interesting.

Justin:

Yeah, this is pretty like, I've not heard of anybody else doing that, but

Justin:

I totally know what you mean in terms of I'll do that internally a lot.

Justin:

I'll make a video to show.

Justin:

Usually it's like, oh, I figured out how something works through talking

Justin:

to somebody at Autodesk about fusion.

Justin:

And I'm like, look, guys, you can do this now instead of, you know, it's this other

Justin:

thing, and that is easily the best way instead of like doing it each person.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

I can totally see it's, you know, most clients I would venture to guess our

Justin:

clients don't end up having a background that they could read you know, like a

Justin:

traditional drawing of some sort very well anyway, so it's not necessarily helpful.

Justin:

A lot of times when we do any work for them where we need some kind of drawing

Justin:

or presentation of representation of the product I use renderings.

Justin:

And I sometimes just send them like the fusion public links so they can just

Justin:

spin the model around and they love

Jem:

I use that all the time.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I'll send the screen capture and that fusion public link

Jem:

so they can pick it apart.

Jem:

I find that's a fantastic combination for most people.

Jem:

And the thing is I don't like architectural drawings.

Jem:

I have a real distaste for receiving like a drawing package.

Jem:

I open the email and I'm just like, that's a quote inquiry.

Jem:

I pretty much just like glance at the drawing package.

Jem:

And I'm just like, oh, I'll deal with this later.

Jem:

I just feel immediately overwhelmed and like rich, which bit of

Jem:

the thing you actually want?

Jem:

Like just give me one page and highlight the key information.

Justin:

even with my background, I hate that.

Justin:

cause it's usually I know from being in the architectural field that it's

Justin:

intentionally left, vague most of the time

Jem:

exactly.

Justin:

intentional so that they're not liable for anything.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

That's it.

Jem:

Check, check, measure all dimensions on

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Make up your own, you know, make your own drawings for us.

Justin:

And it's like, wait, what.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

And I understand why that industry operates that way, but yes, as someone

Jem:

who has to then quote the joinery for a thing it's incredibly infuriating

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Sometimes though, it's the best, because I'll get this beautiful rhino

Justin:

file from an architectural designer.

Justin:

And like, nobody sends me things like this.

Justin:

Like this is, this is straight to my form heart,

Jem:

Oh, yeah.

Jem:

It's lovely when that happens.

Justin:

What are you up to the rest of the week or today?

Jem:

Let me check my Airtable list.

Jem:

I think more of the same today, a little bit of detailing, lots

Jem:

of general admin to get through marketing meeting in the afternoon.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Bits and bobs put some bulbs.

Jem:

It's one of those days where I'll get to the end of that and

Jem:

I'll think what have I achieved?

Jem:

I don't know.

Jem:

But.

Jem:

And I got in at 5:30 AM, so I must've got something done.

Jem:

Right.

Justin:

that's the worst.

Justin:

Sometimes I think we've maybe chatted about that before, but some of those

Justin:

days where I'm just like, like last couple days, I've just been making

Justin:

drawings and exploiting DXF for like laser cutting bending projects.

Justin:

And I get to the end of the day, I'm like, that was, what did I do?

Justin:

You know, like it's not anything I can see nobody's working on a new thing.

Justin:

And I, sometimes I just have to like go sometimes I just pick up a broom

Justin:

and like I got to sweep something

Jem:

It feels good to do that.

Jem:

Hey.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

My equivalent to that is like jumping on the forklift and just

Jem:

moving some packs of material around to clear the workshop flow.

Justin:

yes.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Our shop was bigger.

Justin:

I'd probably be spinning around on it if it worked more that's I

Justin:

guess that's my new, my trend line is if it worked, I'd be using it.

Justin:

I do have to say though, from bitching about my air compressor installation,

Justin:

that thing is such dry air now.

Justin:

we don't have any moisture on our airlines anymore and it is, it also

Justin:

runs for like 45 seconds at a time.

Justin:

And then it's off.

Justin:

Like he used to be like minutes.

Justin:

It's crazy different.

Jem:

Awesome.

Jem:

Did you not have a dryer previously?

Justin:

No, we lived by putting a lot of those water separators all over the

Justin:

place, which was kind of stupid.

Justin:

And I should have done something better a long time ago, but it's

Justin:

over

Jem:

the, the surface taper of your spindle, is it arrest free?

Justin:

Yeah, surprisingly.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I mean, I have, like, we had a couple machine, like whole system separators

Justin:

in the back by the old compressor.

Justin:

And then at each machine there was at least one to three filters,

Justin:

like legitimately there's like two or three on one machine.

Jem:

cool.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

When we installed the dryer, I never ever found moisture in

Jem:

one of those filters ever again.

Jem:

It's

Justin:

so wild.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

It sounds like a little like refrigerator, like, like a dorm fridge,

Jem:

Yeah,

Justin:

never any

Jem:

I guess we'd better wrap it up and keep this thing in check,

Justin:

for sure.

Justin:

I'm gonna attempt to fix a forklift,

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Good luck with that.

Justin:

I dunno either that, or I'm going to call somebody and pay a lot of money.

Justin:

Cause I did a stupid thing, but

Jem:

Yes.

Jem:

I guess if I was Saunders, I'd ask, you know, where, where is your time valuable?

Justin:

I've been thinking about that too, it is to my knowledge, other than

Justin:

our lawyer, it is the most costly thing.

Justin:

We can hire out some, somebody to repair or for, to work on our forklift.

Justin:

And that blows my mind.

Justin:

I'm like kind of pissed about it, especially cause I was the

Justin:

one to make the mistake about it.

Jem:

Yeah, it's frustrating.

Justin:

No, I, I have the same thought, but I also don't have like

Justin:

a ton of paying work right now.

Justin:

So I

Jem:

Got to get it done.

Justin:

spend more time than I need to.

Justin:

Okay.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

Good week.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Thanks man.

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