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6 - Jem Got Covid
Episode 6 • 17th May 2022 • Parts Department • Justin Brouillette & Jem Freeman
00:00:00 00:43:22

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Jem comes to us from his car because he got Covid. Discuss best hires and whether freelance marketers make sense? Also, Rigid Tapping on PDXCNC YCM.

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DISCUSSED:

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.

  • Jem got Covid
  • Justin needs more contingency
  • Staff Work Plan if WFH suddenly

Which Hire was most impactful?

  • Business Manager Hire (Sarah) make a big difference?
  • The job ad from 2016
  • Relieving Jem's admin work
  • Beneficial she was out of the industry?
  • Years hiring to find Jem clones vs hiring someone who could free up my time.
  • Hiring friends vs seeking the best candidate

Advertising

  • Internal / Freelancer?
  • Social Dilemma
  • Balancing social media engagement - pros/cons
  • LB's Advertising Efforts
  • LB - Facebook - Feels random
  • LB - Google Ads - feels more transparent and intentional
  • Justin's advertising is random and not often successful



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Show Info


HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcripts

Justin:

How terrible you're feeling.

Jem:

uh, Look on a scale of one to 10.

Jem:

Not, not that terrible.

Jem:

No,

Justin:

you look like, a podcast producer actually in the

Jem:

Oh yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Like I imagine, the start of Gimlet media, when he was like doing the startup

Justin:

podcasts, he'd always record himself in his car and you didn't see the, the visual

Justin:

of it, it's kind of what I imagined.

Jem:

It's a pretty good recording environment.

Jem:

Really?

Jem:

It's very dead.

Justin:

Yeah, it is.

Jem:

Good.

Jem:

And this cause, cause I mean the electric, I can just run the heater flat out.

Jem:

Great.

Justin:

You keep it plugged in and then

Jem:

Yeah, we charge it.

Jem:

Oh, he's not driving it at the moment.

Jem:

Cause we're in isolation, but I've got 180 kilometers on the, on the

Jem:

range, so yeah, it's a lot of heating

Justin:

yeah, it's there forever.

Jem:

right.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

How's your.

Justin:

It's pretty good.

Justin:

Better.

Justin:

I think I fell.

Justin:

I don't remember if we talked about last week, my life has

Justin:

been kind of all over the place.

Justin:

There's a ton of rain last week and it kind of cause some trouble at my house.

Justin:

So I had to race home one day and deal with that.

Justin:

And luckily nothing happened damage wise.

Justin:

that's been a little chaotic and I dunno, things have settled down here.

Justin:

Luckily I found a forklift driver or, sorry, not a forklift driver.

Justin:

That'd be weird.

Justin:

I found a forklift mechanic.

Justin:

That's kind of an independent contractor or as his own business,

Justin:

rather than these big companies.

Justin:

And he's fantastic.

Justin:

He fixed my battery problem.

Justin:

I had two shorts somewhere up by the ignition.

Justin:

I dunno, he tore the whole thing apart basically.

Justin:

And it was like you know, more than me fixing it obviously, but I think

Justin:

I probably would have taken about three days and not found all of it.

Justin:

And he did it in two hours, I think.

Justin:

It was pretty awesome.

Justin:

in that regard

Jem:

he wasn't charging that lawyer money.

Justin:

No, no, this is the great thing.

Justin:

Is this like, he's probably making decent money on his rates and.

Justin:

I said this to Ricky, they're comparable to what we charge.

Justin:

So it's like, it makes sense that somebody else does their profession

Justin:

for the rate, somewhat close to what we charge to do their profession.

Justin:

That's happy, super happy to have found him.

Justin:

He'd also told me almost immediately when he got there that two or

Justin:

three other things that I wanted the other companies to look at, it

Justin:

didn't need to be worried about.

Justin:

He's like, those are fine.

Justin:

You don't need to worry about it.

Justin:

And I was like, go, all right, sold.

Jem:

Awesome.

Jem:

That's great.

Justin:

how about you?

Justin:

I mean, there's a little bit of a situation on your side.

Justin:

I think.

Jem:

Yeah, there might be a little bit of that.

Jem:

Yeah, we have managed to avoid Covid for whatever it is, two and a half years now.

Jem:

And finally caught up with me or finally caught up with the business.

Jem:

So there's been two of us out this last week.

Jem:

I'm on my sixth, sixth day of quarantine.

Jem:

We have to do seven days.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

As a minimum.

Jem:

And then they let you out if you are symptom-free.

Jem:

So yeah, hopefully coming into the weekend here and hopefully I'll be

Jem:

all clear by Monday enabled to go back into the shop, but yeah, it's been a.

Jem:

I wake off back here which, you know, it's kind of been being six, never fun,

Jem:

but at the same time it's been, you know, good downtown to sort of think about

Jem:

some stuff and get the sketch pad out and try not go on too many YouTube benders.

Jem:

Yeah, it's been pretty weird and I've felt caught in a mildly drunk the whole time.

Jem:

It's been pretty weird feeling, I've swung wildly between sort of

Jem:

optimism and pessimism at different times about lots of different things,

Jem:

but for the most part it's, you know, what my body needed to do so.

Justin:

It's a lot of time to think.

Justin:

I'm sure.

Jem:

It's all right.

Jem:

Yep.

Justin:

Has the rest of your family received the blessing?

Jem:

No, thankfully only my daughters come down with it so far.

Jem:

And she's had it before and she bounced back.

Jem:

She bounces back pretty fast from,

Justin:

the day.

Jem:

Yeah, pretty much.

Justin:

Oh, that's good.

Justin:

I think he would said right at the end of us talking last time, I think he

Justin:

maybe had gotten like a message about it.

Justin:

You remember you looking at your phone or something and you're like, oh no,

Justin:

I just found out somebody got COVID.

Jem:

yeah, that was literally the moment as it going off the podcast

Jem:

last week where I found out one of the others come down with it.

Jem:

And then yeah, we sort of took matters into our own hands at that point.

Jem:

W we mask up instead of doing rapid antigen tests that work.

Jem:

And then I came down with it a couple of days later, but thankfully,

Jem:

no one else in the team has.

Jem:

So far, so it's meant that everyone's been spent a week pairing on without us.

Jem:

And it sounds like it's all gone pretty well, so that's been really good,

Jem:

but

Justin:

It's always nice in those situations when.

Justin:

I'm sure you have to a greater extent.

Justin:

It's like when things are set up well enough that you don't

Justin:

have to be there for it to work.

Justin:

And especially when you get to that place of, I don't have to

Justin:

worry about that happening even

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

It was pretty good this time around.

Jem:

I was so out of it on Monday morning that I kind of forgot that I'd written

Jem:

a list for this particular occasion.

Jem:

And certainly as I was handing sort of production out of the Ben I

Jem:

was I was calling in from the tent and I was so out of it, I was just

Jem:

like, Hey, can we just take over?

Jem:

He was like, yeah, sure.

Jem:

I got.

Justin:

did you, did you work from the tent, like on a laptop?

Jem:

and

Justin:

No,

Jem:

I've done very little work

Justin:

that's good.

Jem:

really just haven't I haven't felt like it, but also I just

Jem:

haven't really been capable of it.

Justin:

Sure.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

head's head space has been pretty wacky.

Jem:

Um,

Justin:

Common.

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

So I Ben took over and I'd kind of forgotten that I'd written a

Jem:

contingency plan in Airtable for this specific moment of when , these

Jem:

are the key things I do every day.

Jem:

That form part of my role that I'm handing to use the thing.

Jem:

And it didn't matter.

Jem:

Sounds like they went, they went fine.

Justin:

Yeah, that's good.

Justin:

there's a couple of things that can't really happen without me.

Justin:

And I remember having a very concerned conversation.

Justin:

I think my wife and I were hiking and I was just like really stressed

Justin:

out when COVID had just hit its full force in the early days.

Justin:

And I mean, yeah, I don't know, in a certain sense there's I

Justin:

still haven't resolved some of them, which is kind of sad.

Justin:

If I get hit by a bus or get COVID payroll doesn't happen.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

And I remember, I think I kind of resolved that, but I didn't fully.

Justin:

And then some of the other things I forget now, a sales things, invoicing

Justin:

can't really happen, so we could basically continue work until we

Justin:

ran out and then people would have to like pay via here's some cash,

Justin:

you know, like on a piece of paper.

Justin:

Yeah, that's a good, I should probably a smart idea to put down

Justin:

some Justin needs more contingency.

Jem:

Contingency plan.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I mean, it's a pretty big deal to be able to fully replace yourself even for a week.

Jem:

It's definitely taken us a long time to get to that point where

Jem:

that's not incredibly disruptive.

Justin:

For sure.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Need to have a lot of that.

Jem:

People have systems in place, I guess, but yeah, even just having

Jem:

a simple plan, I think is a good, good thing for everyone to do.

Jem:

I'd love to get to a point where everyone in the business has kind

Jem:

of got that least of like cool.

Jem:

we didn't have to worry when someone with unique skills or unique tasks drops

Jem:

out for, you know, it goes on holiday.

Jem:

It's like go have business manager is going on holiday in

Jem:

a couple of weeks for a week.

Jem:

And I know that she's documented.

Jem:

The crap out of everything.

Jem:

And so that when it gets to that week, I'm just going to basically get a

Jem:

handover document of like, Ooh, this is, these are the key things I do

Jem:

every day to keep things ticking along.

Jem:

These are the priorities.

Justin:

I do that whenever I know I'm going on vacation, I make here are all

Justin:

the things I expect to happen and, you know, these things need to be done.

Justin:

And for some reason, I don't think unless, unless I'm delirious in this

Justin:

moment, like you are that I don't remember actually doing one for COVID.

Justin:

Ricky was, I think he was precautious only out for a couple of days because of

Justin:

his significant other had potential air.

Justin:

And we thought, and so he stayed home and I was like, man, we need to really

Justin:

have the, a plan, have a backup of things that you can work on remotely

Justin:

because I've always had this thought of, or he mostly works in the shop, but he

Justin:

also has pretty good fusion skills now.

Justin:

Design as well as cam he has a computer at home it's remote.

Justin:

I don't expect it to be like perfect.

Justin:

But I don't know how you have all dealt with this, but there's really

Justin:

no formal thing going on here about what you should do, you know, in the

Justin:

states, it's like, you don't have to give anybody time off for it.

Justin:

You don't have to pay for them, you know, to recover.

Justin:

And it just feels a little crappy that if they want to do the right

Justin:

thing and stay away from the rest of everybody else to stay, that they're

Justin:

punished for not getting work time.

Justin:

we did talk about that.

Justin:

At least having some kind of contingency of like, what could

Justin:

you work on if you weren't here?

Jem:

That's a good idea.

Jem:

We kind of, in the earlier days of the pandemic, when we basically stayed open

Jem:

the whole time, because manufacturing was able to, but a lot of other industries

Jem:

got shut down, but there were a couple of weeks there where we elected to pack

Jem:

up and go home because it felt too risky.

Jem:

yeah, at the time we encouraged, we get w it would've been good to

Jem:

have more of a plan, but it was all happened very quickly back then.

Jem:

And we basically sent, sent everyone home with the plan to get better at vacation.

Jem:

So there was a period of time there where that was sort of actively encouraged

Jem:

by the business these are the things you can do, on the clock even.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

This, this would be valuable to the company if you've got

Jem:

better at Fusion sort of thing.

Justin:

We had a couple moments of that, where people had a, there's

Justin:

a person that worked here mostly in the shop, but had fusion skills and

Justin:

they transitioned to, work from home.

Justin:

Figured out a way that they could start doing distanced work.

Justin:

And that was like the first time I'd ever had that experience.

Justin:

Cause I do it myself sometimes, but I'd never set up anything for anybody else.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Maybe this is a good, next fun, but that which hire was most impactful.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

That kind of leads in a, I suppose, the biggest change for us in terms of that.

Jem:

So shifting systems and thinking was when we hired Sarah with our business

Jem:

manager 2016 I ran a job ad on Instagram, which was, may like with an

Jem:

orbital sander, gaffer tape to my foot.

Jem:

Phone in one there and a nail gun in the other hand at night, and

Jem:

trying to do everything at once.

Jem:

And I think Sarah was the only applicant who didn't see that ad because she's

Jem:

not on social media and she kind of came lifted fields or a friend of

Jem:

a friend as a contact and was just like a real game changer for us.

Jem:

I don't know that we really knew what we needed other than that we needed

Jem:

help with admin and sort of relieving my time on the admin side of things.

Jem:

And Sarah came from sort of a professional sports admin background, which was, you

Jem:

know, we would have never expected to have hired someone from some way like

Jem:

that, but it was just the perfect fit.

Jem:

Anyway I think in hindsight, I remember sort of years in the years

Jem:

after that thinking, why did it take me so long to hire someone to

Jem:

help with this side of the business?

Jem:

And I think I'd, I'd sort of been whenever we'd have the opportunity

Jem:

to hire someone, to bring someone in, I ended always been very organic of

Jem:

like, oh, you're a, you're a warm body.

Jem:

You say you need, will it work?

Jem:

We need things done.

Jem:

Yeah, come, come help us.

Jem:

So that was kind of instead of very informal and just kind

Jem:

of spur of the moment often.

Jem:

But the other thing that was going on was that I was always hiring people to

Jem:

do what I could do at the end of the day, trying to find clones of myself, like

Jem:

who would be good at doing making things.

Jem:

And after hiring a business manager, I sort of, it kind of clicked.

Jem:

I was like, oh yeah, no, I should have, I should find someone like this a long

Jem:

time ago because it frees out my time.

Jem:

if I'm the highest performer in the business terms of which

Jem:

I was at that time, I've just sort of getting stuff done,

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

then admitted.

Jem:

It just made so much sense to free up my time to have more time

Jem:

in the workshop to then produce.

Jem:

So do that high level where so yeah, that was kind of a tipping point.

Jem:

And then, you know, I think from that point we have become potentially

Jem:

too admin heavy over time.

Jem:

But there's all sorts of complexities tied up with that.

Jem:

I think as I mentioned the other day, like going from working six or seven

Jem:

days a week, and then having kids and deciding that, that was not sustainable.

Jem:

And trying sort of pull back to more normal hours is meant that naturally I've

Jem:

had to sort of delegate out some of that, more of that sort of admin GD to other

Jem:

people in the business, which has meant we've become quite admin heavy at times.

Jem:

And we're always kind of fighting to get enough production hours in the mix.

Jem:

If that makes sense.

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

know.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

I can definitely relate to basically everything you said, and

Justin:

I'm sure everybody goes about it differently or in their own way.

Justin:

I had that thought for sure.

Justin:

I think basically every time I've ever hired somebody, except for when they

Justin:

didn't work out a couple times was like, why didn't I do this sooner?

Justin:

that, I think Saunders said this forever ago, that you should hire six

Justin:

months before you think you need it.

Justin:

if you're in the best position that you possibly could, right?

Justin:

Either it will take you that long or you'll be in trouble by the time

Justin:

you get there with needing support.

Justin:

And I dunno, it doesn't honestly isn't that like realistic for me, it

Justin:

never really works out that way, but I did the exact same thing when I

Justin:

heard the first employee and I think.

Justin:

One F one-on-one after that was, I basically split up in my head.

Justin:

Right now for Portland CNC, I'm doing cam and quotes and I'm doing

Justin:

production, which is, you know, a list of things, making stuff in the shop

Justin:

where they're with a machine, typically with a CNC is the starting point.

Justin:

And then even other things with that.

Justin:

And I was like, I gotta replace one of these sides.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

Like somebody is going to do the other side.

Justin:

And, I mean, I don't think it makes any sense to be fair to both of us to hire an

Justin:

admin person when you're the only one of the only production people at the time.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

Like if you're adding another person to one, you don't add an admin person.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

Then usually, I think there definitely is a place.

Justin:

I'm very, I was very curious to see what your answer was to what

Justin:

made the biggest difference.

Justin:

But I'm also curious, I don't have kids, but I am working very

Justin:

much like a dog still, right.

Justin:

Like all the time.

Justin:

And it doesn't ever seem like it's going to end anytime soon.

Justin:

Because you had a constraint of kids potentially, let's just say

Justin:

that was the, maybe the catalyst and you wanted to make a change.

Justin:

What actually made that difference that it was either profitable or was

Justin:

it already profitable for you to not work like that and hire somebody else?

Justin:

Or did you make another change that made it that way?

Jem:

Oh, good question.

Jem:

And honestly, I'm not going to know the answer because

Jem:

we didn't know our finances.

Jem:

Well, enough back then.

Jem:

Like literally we've only sort of gotten to the point 15 years into the

Jem:

business where we know kind of that balance, that financial balance data

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

in terms of production versus admin and title, you know, fixed,

Jem:

fixed cost versus um, the other ones.

Justin:

Yeah, I don't know.

Justin:

You have the other ones.

Jem:

Soft like my brain.

Jem:

So I don't can't really answer that, but I think, yes.

Jem:

You know, working crazy hours, pre business manager.

Jem:

Yes.

Jem:

The business was profitable.

Jem:

And in hindsight it was probably, I probably could have dialed

Jem:

back at that point a little bit in terms of how I was working.

Jem:

But yeah, no, absolutely.

Jem:

There's a, this is a crossover point.

Jem:

Like you say, like, it doesn't make sense to go out and hire an admin role when it's

Jem:

just you or probably just when it's you and a couple of other people they must be.

Jem:

And I don't know the math off the top of my head, but there's going to be

Jem:

a sweet spot there where it's right.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

Like we've got now depending on our fixed costs and our production hours.

Jem:

That makes sense.

Jem:

Now.

Jem:

Well, some of that into an admin role, but

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

Hmm.

Jem:

That's a tricky, tricky thing to know.

Jem:

When is the right time, I guess, Hey.

Justin:

for sure.

Jem:

Yeah, like I've got business owner, friends who rely, you know, effectively,

Jem:

still doing it all themselves, but turning I have a way more than way.

Jem:

But then I rely heavily on subcontractors, external bookkeepers, external, you

Jem:

know, keeping everyone kind of as a Sammy external subcontractor so that

Jem:

the business can COTA kind of flex and move as they need it to as opposed

Jem:

to taking on internal payroll staff.

Jem:

We always went down the internal payroll sort of right, because,

Jem:

you know, at some level I liked having a team and that dynamic and

Jem:

having people on call at all times.

Jem:

Grow and

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

ideas and things like that, but there's different ways to do it.

Justin:

That's interesting.

Justin:

On Sarah, right?

Justin:

Your business manager, was it beneficial that she was out of the industry?

Justin:

Like, do you, do you think that was beneficial?

Justin:

Or just coincidence.

Jem:

Look, I think it was good to have an external sort of skill set, but then it

Jem:

probably could have come from any industry whether that had been from manufacturing

Jem:

or, or sports admin as it was, it was so different to what we'd been doing.

Jem:

Like I still joked with Sarah now about like how.

Jem:

Frightened.

Jem:

She was of my, filing system,

Justin:

Like file files or papers.

Jem:

type of files and receipts.

Jem:

My system was pretty much just stuffing them in a plywood box.

Jem:

And then at the end of the financial year, kind of bumbling

Jem:

them all up into a plastic bag and labeling them that financial year

Jem:

and then starting a fresh box.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think, you know, anyone who'd come in professionally at that point would

Jem:

have been a breath of fresh air and, you know, bringing new skills and new systems.

Jem:

I don't know that coming from an external industry was specifically an advantage and

Jem:

I'd look, I'm sure there'd be advantages in hiring someone from that industry too.

Jem:

for sure.

Jem:

How have you sort of been close to looking at that in the past or.

Justin:

I feel like I've been all over the place in terms of, I wouldn't call it

Justin:

experimenting, but I know what I'm good at and what I think I can be best at.

Justin:

And I've, since I started by myself, it was always like,

Justin:

what is the most complimentary.

Justin:

Over time, I've gotten to this place at like what's complimentary to that.

Justin:

And the last person that was kind of a friend needed a stop

Justin:

before starting his own thing.

Justin:

And he was kind of a perfect scenario from when we were trying start up our

Justin:

little product design studio again.

Justin:

And Andy's his name?

Justin:

And he had run a machine shop and done a lot of, kind of high-end proper machining.

Justin:

We had just gotten the mill, you'd done operations management kind of stuff.

Justin:

So not business management, but more like internal processing

Justin:

and making things work.

Justin:

And that was kind of experimental, but also really helpful.

Justin:

you got a lot done, but it also, at the end of the day, I don't know that

Justin:

that was maybe like the perfect fit.

Justin:

I'm always at the end of it, like, should I've hired.

Justin:

Marketing should I have ha you know, it's like, I never really feel like

Justin:

I'm aside from the maybe the first hire, which was like, I need somebody

Justin:

to help me, like, just do anything.

Justin:

And that's kind of how it's been a lot of the time is there's another

Justin:

person that is also wears eight of 10 hats in some fashion where they

Justin:

either can make and do a lot of things and do cam and do, shipping.

Justin:

And and those people are kind of invaluable to me.

Justin:

Not that some of them aren't, but the people that are really flexible

Justin:

and willing to do anything, Ricky's always has the best attitude.

Justin:

He's always like, whatever you want, I'll do anything.

Justin:

I'll do it well.

Justin:

And that's fantastic, but I, yeah, I'm at this place now actually kind of maybe

Justin:

transitioning to this next topic is I think I need help with marketing and

Justin:

advertising is my best take at this point.

Justin:

Right?

Justin:

We have products that we're either making or want to sell.

Justin:

And I feel like I've hit my wall of what I know how to do to market them,

Justin:

whether it be Facebook ads or, you know, trying to make organic media.

Justin:

That seems to be the king right now.

Justin:

Like Tik TOK and stuff like that.

Justin:

And I

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

don't have the bandwidth left for it, you know?

Justin:

And so I've been kind of exploring whether that means, do we hire somebody

Justin:

to try to work for us internally or is it a freelance person or is it some,

Justin:

there's all these new services where you, like, you tell them what you need

Justin:

and they try to pair you at some costs.

Justin:

That's kind of where I'm at right now with hiring yeah, I don't know.

Justin:

You of are, which of us wrote down the advertising thing.

Jem:

I think it's tricky.

Jem:

Huh?

Jem:

Like you can do, like, you're also good at systems and building your own

Jem:

systems and having that, you know, that small practice team of people

Jem:

who can just get on and do anything.

Jem:

It is such a powerful model, I think when you're at that scale.

Jem:

And if you then see the right sort of mix of work into that, you

Jem:

can go a long way with that, that small, like agile business model.

Jem:

I think

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

it only, becomes too much admin wise.

Jem:

I think if you've potentially, if you're feeding the wrong sort of work in, like,

Jem:

if you're getting the right sort of work and it's easy for you to process through

Jem:

the systems you've built then United.

Jem:

Yeah, you can get so much out of that machine.

Jem:

Marketing.

Jem:

Marketing's a strange world.

Jem:

in my delirious state, in the last few days, I watched the

Jem:

social dilemma for the first time.

Justin:

Oh, yeah,

Jem:

Simon.

Jem:

I'm feeling pretty worried about

Justin:

for sure.

Jem:

all of that at the moment.

Jem:

But my gut feeling getting help with that would be to find a subcontractor

Jem:

that can just help you a little bit here and there as you need initially, and

Jem:

kind of work out, you know, establish your, your, how are you going to do it?

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've always struggled with that.

Jem:

Like, I don't, I really like making the content, but those platforms

Jem:

I've always enjoyed shooting stuff, so I'm very happy behind the camera

Jem:

or in front of a camera as need be.

Jem:

And I can imagine sort of hiring someone to come in and

Jem:

do like content creation for me.

Jem:

And I've dabbled with that in the past.

Jem:

Like I've had moments where I've like, oh, I, someone could just, if

Jem:

someone on the team could wrangle a camera, that'd be so much better

Jem:

because then they could just document products and shoot video and stuff.

Jem:

And I've tried it in the past.

Jem:

And the feedback has always been like very quickly.

Jem:

We lose either my voice or my, my visual aesthetic that's of better is,

Jem:

has grown and grown up with so yeah, I don't know where the best mix is.

Jem:

what do you want?

Jem:

Like if you could, do you have an idea.

Justin:

What I know is.

Justin:

I mean from making products since 2011 in some fashion is either, I've

Justin:

found a few things that we can have other people make and are profitable,

Justin:

or as how I kind of started out with things is other manufacturers make

Justin:

stuff that we designed and sold it.

Justin:

And those were always profitable.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

That sounds no way braggadocious.

Justin:

It's more like we still have that situation where

Justin:

we've design different things.

Justin:

The problem is, I think they're good enough.

Justin:

They're good.

Justin:

Let's say they never scale.

Justin:

We never get to this place where it's like, oh, we keep selling more.

Justin:

We need to make more wait, we can't keep up.

Justin:

I need to hire people to make more.

Justin:

It's always like, just kind of, it feels like this trickle of, of sales.

Justin:

especially as we were trying to transition to.

Justin:

You know, doing that more as a full-time part of our business, I feel

Justin:

like there was just nothing to rely on there, and my experimenting with

Justin:

advertising in different ways marketing just always feels like I'm spending

Justin:

more money than I'm making back on it.

Justin:

And I hit this, I'll start to sell something, you know, like a Facebook ad

Justin:

will start to work and then it just stops.

Justin:

And I'm like, what happened?

Justin:

Like why?

Justin:

I don't know.

Justin:

That's not really a great answer other than I, I want

Justin:

somebody to help us take that.

Justin:

I could still come up with the ideas to, you know, and shoot the videos.

Justin:

Like you're saying, I still like that part.

Justin:

I just don't.

Justin:

I feel like I'm hitting a wall too often.

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

That's a big one.

Jem:

That's like, why did the ad stop working?

Jem:

That's a question that comes up for us.

Jem:

Cause we never advertised and we had that same feeling of like, it's just a

Jem:

slow trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle.

Jem:

And then over years and years, some of those products sort of build up to

Jem:

like quite substantial annual sales, but totally from that sort of trickle

Jem:

effect or just like word of mouth you know, a little bit of organic stuff on

Jem:

Instagram getting the word out there.

Jem:

But then yeah, just in the last 12 months, we've kind of had a first sort

Jem:

of foray into advertising, digital marketing primarily through Facebook ads.

Jem:

And now a little bit through Google search paid search.

Jem:

But that's, that's the still, it's still the biggest question

Jem:

of like what October was so good.

Jem:

What happened is like it's like rural fulls up So, yeah, I think if you're

Jem:

going to find someone to help you with that stuff, you need to find someone

Jem:

who can help you answer those questions.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

but that said, like we do have someone who helps us with that.

Jem:

And they're great, even still, it's such a complex seems to

Jem:

be such a complex environment.

Jem:

It's very hard to get those answers.

Jem:

So we, we pulled a bunch.

Jem:

We we've kind of had a modest little spin that we've rolled out every

Jem:

month, the last, you know, whatever it's been probably nine months.

Jem:

And we've played with it in different ways and push more of it here and more there.

Jem:

And the start of the year, we were frustrated by that spending

Jem:

that money with Facebook.

Jem:

I always felt quite dirty about that spend.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I don't like advertising.

Jem:

Having seen the results from a few of those good months, it's like, right.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

We know it's possible.

Jem:

No varmints, there we go away.

Jem:

We could see it scaling.

Jem:

Like I'm like, oh, cool.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

This is, this is working.

Jem:

I can see how this works now.

Jem:

And then it drops off.

Jem:

And so we're quite frustrated by that by the start of this year.

Jem:

And so we pushed the majority of ad spend into Google paid search Just the

Jem:

difference between those two platforms was quite striking in terms of the back end.

Jem:

They were like, if you played with the back end of both of those,

Justin:

What was the other one?

Justin:

Facebook and

Jem:

Google paid search.

Justin:

yeah, a little bit.

Justin:

It's changed a little bit.

Justin:

I've been playing a little bit more with, I tried to advertise

Justin:

something recently, product on Google.

Justin:

And I'd never really done.

Justin:

It's been a long time.

Justin:

And that first, my first attempt was a complete failure.

Justin:

probably five, $700 and just nothing just disappears.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

In my impression switching to Google as that primary spend was the interface

Jem:

was much more sort of transparent.

Justin:

Hm.

Jem:

I liked the fact that we weren't serving ads to random

Jem:

people in their Facebook feed.

Jem:

We were serving ads to people who had searched for.

Jem:

A bookshelf or a table or, you know, something related, like someone

Jem:

was actively going out there on the internet and looking for a thing.

Jem:

And then we're serving an ad to them saying, Hey, we make a thing.

Jem:

But like that thing,

Jem:

and that I feel as is daddy's I feel about the whole advertising thing.

Jem:

I feel much better about that model than the, just the scroll scroll,

Jem:

scroll, or here's an ad scroll, scroll, scroll, like, and I know it's small.

Jem:

I know it's more complex than that in terms of how people

Jem:

are being selected, but still,

Justin:

It does make, I mean, that makes some sense too.

Justin:

I mean, I know enough from my most successful for it into

Justin:

advertising was when I was starting that intro to CNC course online.

Justin:

And I the only time I've ever tried advertising where I was in the presale

Justin:

days, just like a couple of months I did it kind of trickled it out.

Justin:

I was also doing other things there was two and a half months where

Justin:

I was getting like six, I think the best was six, our row ass.

Justin:

So it was basically like six times my ad spend versus, you know,

Justin:

coming back to me it was fantastic.

Justin:

And I was like, this is gonna go so well.

Justin:

And I was like, so excited and then it was basically like a

Justin:

logarithmic, like drop after that.

Justin:

And now it's just I keep it real low.

Justin:

Continues to trickle in people that are interested, but the sales don't happen.

Justin:

Really.

Justin:

It's just leads for people that might be interested in that.

Justin:

And I don't know what the hell changed pricing could have changed a little bit,

Justin:

but other than that, I don't understand.

Justin:

Cause it wasn't even published at that point.

Justin:

You know, it was maybe it was like the FOMO factor.

Jem:

I think it was definitely a thing with the pre-sale If I'm a,

Jem:

whatever it is, there's definitely something that happens there.

Jem:

I've found that with product launches, you know, KittaParts has been our

Jem:

most successful product launch by far.

Jem:

part of that was, you know, a year of storytelling on Instagram of

Jem:

like just developing the mains and ways to make that product.

Jem:

And then kind of organically arriving at a point where like, oh, we've made

Jem:

a thing who wants to buy it where, I mean, are they going to sell it to them?

Jem:

And then that sold that.

Jem:

And I have not basically.

Jem:

But I think, that sort of long lead time of a story that sort

Jem:

of developed into a product.

Jem:

anecdotally Eric and there is something about the presale model that generates.

Jem:

More interest or more activity.

Jem:

I mean, there must be a reason why Kickstarter and all

Jem:

those platforms are a thing.

Jem:

Right.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah, for sure.

Justin:

No, it's all my friends here has done a couple of them.

Justin:

I've done one.

Justin:

It was forever ago, so it's completely changed and they've

Justin:

they did one more recent.

Justin:

And I was asking them whether they thought it was a good idea for us

Justin:

to try the Nack Wall on Kickstarter.

Justin:

And most of what I'd heard the last few years was bad.

Justin:

Probably not like skip it.

Justin:

And that's what their take was, was just unless you're in the perfect scenario.

Justin:

well, what I knew, even back when we did in 2011 is you're still generating

Justin:

most of your own interest regardless.

Justin:

And so you're just giving away roughly 10% of your income

Justin:

between the fees to somebody else.

Justin:

So if you're going to do that, the chances that you're going to get,

Justin:

like, you know put on the front page at Kickstarter pretty low, unless you

Justin:

have the perfect product, I guess.

Justin:

so anyway that's kind of what I'm hoping happens.

Justin:

I guess too, I haven't shared as much as I probably should have through the process,

Justin:

but we've been developing this product that I don't know that are people that

Justin:

follow the Portland CNC probably aren't the perfect customers for it, but it's

Justin:

maybe you've had this experience too, where it's like, maybe in the earlier

Justin:

days for the customers for one product are not the customers for another product.

Justin:

And so will your existing customer base doesn't really go, oh yeah.

Justin:

I'd love that because I seem to keep coming out with completely random things

Justin:

because that's the way my brain works.

Justin:

And like the last thing was a whiteboard and it hasn't sold exceptionally well.

Justin:

it kind of goes along with this weird, like office products thing.

Justin:

I have a obsession with, I guess, I just, yeah, I don't without having

Justin:

enough data, I guess I don't understand.

Justin:

It's either a bad product or it's not pushed in front of the

Justin:

right people at the right time.

Justin:

This is what I always think about.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think I forget how many people there are out there.

Jem:

Cause you kind of get stuck in your little bubble of.

Jem:

What you used to and like what you think the market is.

Jem:

But I think there's definitely, I, my reaction to you saying that is that

Jem:

you'd say you just need to get your products in front of the right people

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I hope so.

Jem:

and work out who those people are.

Jem:

Cause it's like, they're great products.

Jem:

They're really well-made, but it's just a matter of yeah.

Jem:

Getting the right eyes on them.

Jem:

I think.

Jem:

Because I think you and I are probably similar in this way of like, I don't know

Jem:

about you, but my Instagram following whilst it's is a really powerful thing.

Jem:

That's kind of organically built up.

Jem:

A lot of that activity is just other makers or other people who are interested

Jem:

in making who are like, Ooh, that's cool.

Jem:

That's cool way.

Jem:

Like, I really like how you're doing that, or that's a great technique.

Jem:

And obviously there's some sneaker interior designers and people who

Jem:

might specify us and sitting in that, sitting there in the background.

Jem:

But I think you'll probably, I'm guessing you'll probably similar in

Jem:

that respect of what you've got a

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I mean,

Jem:

fellow makers and CNC enthusiasts.

Justin:

Yeah, no, I think it's the same.

Justin:

I mean, our, I think you know, a couple accounts, the NAC one is pretty small.

Justin:

It's 1200 people and I don't really post there, which I should.

Jem:

You should.

Justin:

and yeah, and the Portland CNC, one's always been easier for me

Justin:

to just go, here's what we're making.

Justin:

You want to see it, you know, like it's very easy.

Justin:

Bless.

Justin:

Maybe you can relate to the, like you're different.

Justin:

I think then I, I think I have too much of like a feeling of

Justin:

preciousness to share the things on Nack that I'd never felt like.

Justin:

I like the process doesn't seem as relevant.

Justin:

I'm changing that mindset, but it's taken me a while, whereas the CNC stuff.

Justin:

So it's just been like, we're making us sign, anything is content in my mind.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

but yeah, no, it's not the same.

Justin:

I would love to have a, especially with, with the wall, trying to sell that.

Justin:

It's like, I would love to have a follower base of just interior

Justin:

designers that want to specify.

Justin:

That'd be amazing.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think that's something, to be said though, even.

Jem:

isn't that focused audience of just being genuine and, you know, doing that

Jem:

thing of just showing what's exciting or what you're working on at that time.

Jem:

I think that's, that's a really powerful thing.

Jem:

That gets across to everybody.

Jem:

I think people tune into authenticity and excitement and people

Jem:

who, or they're making things.

Jem:

Cause that's what they wanna do.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Hm.

Justin:

I continue to try to remind myself sometimes we'll have a

Justin:

client pick up a job and they're like, oh, this place is amazing.

Justin:

And I'm like, oh, is it?

Justin:

seems small

Jem:

to me.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

You

Justin:

know, like I wish I had more space.

Justin:

It's kind of dark.

Justin:

I'm really lucky to have so many amazing tools to use every day.

Justin:

And I just kind of always focus on what's ahead of me rather than like

Justin:

you know, even in sharing sometimes.

Justin:

I feel like I've done an okay job of thinking of it as like, well,

Justin:

there's always, somebody potentially new or a group, a big group of

Justin:

people that don't do this every day.

Justin:

And they're just interested to see what, you know, what is it,

Justin:

what, what has this machine work?

Justin:

And the people that already know about it can either keep going or make an

Justin:

angry comment, which you get a little of both at least in the states.

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

I have to remind myself that all the time that not everybody

Justin:

has multiple CNCS to play with.

Jem:

Yeah, I know it's easy to do.

Jem:

Isn't it?

Jem:

It's great to have external people come through the workshop for that reason.

Jem:

I think you get, you see their eyes light up and you're like, oh, that's right.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I guess that is cool.

Jem:

I think you're really good at that in terms of you've got that educational

Jem:

bent on your content already.

Jem:

So the way you sort of explain the prices to things, or, you know, it goes

Jem:

from this software to this machine of like, because you're trying to sort of

Jem:

educate people on process naturally.

Jem:

I think that comes through nicely.

Jem:

But yeah, I definitely definitely have that sense when we have someone new come

Jem:

through the workshop and giving them the tour, that's like have a chat to them.

Jem:

And then, yeah, it's a nice reminder, I suppose.

Jem:

to be like, yeah, cool.

Jem:

I made this.

Justin:

Yeah, no, it is.

Justin:

And it's been, unfortunately, you know, I don't want every day for there to be a

Justin:

tour it's really distracting, you know?

Justin:

But it's been far too.

Justin:

Like I wanted to have more, I don't know, local community based things

Justin:

from 2019 when we moved into the.

Justin:

They basically have had a poor time to have people come over since then.

Justin:

And we were always hoping to do more training things.

Justin:

Like I'm hoping in the next couple months we're going to start doing like in-person

Justin:

training, if it's still seems safe, but that was always one of the thoughts.

Justin:

And then there's yeah.

Justin:

Local maker groups that if we'd been approached early on, you know, when we

Justin:

moved here, like, Hey, you're already doing this stuff and you're coming to

Justin:

these events, do you want to host one?

Justin:

I was like, yeah.

Justin:

And then literally like, COVID shut all that down.

Justin:

So we've always wanted to be more involved and it's just really,

Justin:

we've been really closed up trying to stay safe as we can here.

Jem:

yeah.

Justin:

someday hopefully.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I actually, I didn't realize you'd moved just before the pandemic.

Jem:

So at similar timing for us.

Jem:

It takes about a year to get a workshop, not to a point where you feel like

Jem:

you can have people in, I think,

Justin:

Oh man.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

My other piece of news that I'm beaming with pride about here is I've made,

Justin:

I've set my first aluminum part by any means, but I designed this and also

Justin:

region tapped it, which is the first and one of the more terrifying things

Justin:

I've done on that machine so far, because from a lot of help from friends,

Justin:

I finally got through the process.

Justin:

How you set up like fusion we'll do, let's say drive the G code for you, but

Justin:

you still have to calculate your own feed rate and RPM for it to work properly.

Justin:

Like it's not you put the feed rate into basically the RPM and that's

Justin:

about all you can control because of the pitch, the pitch of the thing

Justin:

driving it is basically your feed rate

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

just took me a while.

Justin:

And luckily Andy had gone through this before me and I had never done it myself.

Justin:

normally, or like single block through something go real slow

Justin:

when you're trying to not crash.

Justin:

Well, this has to go a hundred percent.

Justin:

It's it's slow still, but it's buried in coolant and you just

Justin:

push go and it goes, and it's just.

Justin:

You know, completely concealed and you can't see what's going on and it got to

Justin:

the bottom and I didn't hear any pops.

Justin:

And I was like, I think he made it and it came back out and there

Justin:

was like chips sticking out of it.

Justin:

And I was like, oh no.

Justin:

But then I looked in and it was perfect.

Justin:

it works and I

Jem:

lovely little pot.

Jem:

And how does it engage?

Justin:

so you, you can see behind me, it goes in the wall and then you turn it

Justin:

and it locks in the horizontal position.

Justin:

It won't continue to turn the way you tighten it,

Jem:

nice.

Jem:

Like a press fit.

Justin:

basically.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

So it can go in and then twist and we're using it for, you know, all

Justin:

these different types of ways to Mount something to the back clamp

Justin:

from the backside of the wall.

Justin:

I also did some round overs, which are harder than they

Justin:

sound to, to get them right.

Justin:

To get the little edges, all blending.

Justin:

And yeah, it was pretty stoked about, it felt like a.

Jem:

Is that a two-sided operation?

Justin:

Yeah, and I didn't get the best, second side set up.

Justin:

So I missed a little bit of my round over, but I have dreams of making it a, one-side

Justin:

like a double-sided round over, so that then I just flip it over and deck it off,

Jem:

that'd be

Justin:

someday need to sell some first.

Jem:

lovely little pot.

Justin:

Thanks.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I'm pretty happy with that one.

Justin:

It's like the only thing so far we've found that makes sense to

Justin:

make on the mill for this assembly.

Justin:

Everything else is router based.

Justin:

And

Jem:

You mentioned the other day that you'd thought about printing those.

Justin:

we did, we actually used to print.

Justin:

I still think they could probably perform well enough, but I know somebody who's

Justin:

going to crank it too hard and break it

Jem:

is that Billy the printed thread or you tap the printed part?

Justin:

You tap it, you can do it a couple of ways, but basically you just print

Justin:

it like you would pre drill the hole and then you can use a tap through it.

Justin:

And it even in PLA, which is pretty brittle it'll tap just fine and paver

Justin:

performing nothing up there right now.

Justin:

I got the part right here, they were performing perfectly fine up until I

Justin:

took it out to try the aluminum one.

Justin:

the other thing you can do, apparently it's like some kind of hot tap,

Justin:

I guess, where you just like, get like an actual threaded thing, a

Justin:

little bit warm, and then you can just use it as a tap in plastic.

Justin:

Like that.

Justin:

Just kind of funny

Jem:

Yeah, that's cool.

Justin:

This is like probably the best selling point for me on the

Justin:

printer was that we could make these.

Justin:

30 minutes, you know, like I designed one change it and this took me

Justin:

half a day to make, you know, one, cause I don't know what I'm doing.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

That's part of the process.

Jem:

You have a sense of like the busy Aluminum part economic

Jem:

goal based on that cycle time.

Justin:

I think so.

Justin:

I think we should easily be able to put a bunch into a fixture.

Justin:

And I mean, even the slowest it was got, I don't know, four

Justin:

minutes or something like that.

Justin:

Collectively it's pretty fast

Jem:

cool.

Justin:

know coming from a small stock.

Justin:

finally that may be something we can actually just like run and walk away from.

Justin:

And rather than, you know, every time sitting there and

Jem:

that'd be a satisfying.

Justin:

yeah, it would, yeah.

Justin:

Pretty stoked about that guy.

Jem:

Awesome.

Jem:

Yeah, it'd be nice to have a pot that you can just sit and forget.

Justin:

Oh my God.

Jem:

dream dream, right?

Jem:

Lights out.

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

I want a little palette.

Justin:

I mean, even a advices.

Justin:

I think I can set three or four up at a time, probably fine for awhile, but

Justin:

yeah, it makes some little pallets and then the first side is easy

Justin:

enough to hold like a strip probably.

Justin:

And then you could flip them over into something you believe you can use the

Justin:

tap at that point, which is kind of nice.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

All the stuff that I'm Okay.

Jem:

Pearson does with palletizing small parts.

Jem:

I love watching videos.

Justin:

like, how can I do this?

Justin:

What can I make that?

Justin:

This is like the only thing that's ever come close to that for me.

Jem:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin:

Well, so when you go back, when you feel better or when your day days.

Jem:

One of my days are up in night and have symptoms.

Jem:

I can go back to work.

Jem:

So hopefully on Monday,

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

take the weekend to you recover hopefully.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Try and get my head back in the game.

Justin:

well, I'm sure that'll happen.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

We'll have to

Jem:

feeling pretty weird at this stage.

Jem:

That's okay.

Justin:

Yeah, for sure.

Justin:

I, I think I haven't struggled to be productive and I guess you get over it.

Justin:

If you just can't do it, it's a weird

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've always been that person that can't not be doing something.

Jem:

But this week I've definitely found that I just couldn't do.

Jem:

I tried being useful a couple of times.

Jem:

That just became exhausted very quickly.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

That's all right.

Justin:

I think we should have

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

different.

Jem:

Speaking of being exhausted, Dan.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I don't know.

Justin:

I don't know what the hell I'm doing exceed is.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Have you got stuff that's pressing at work?

Justin:

No, it did.

Justin:

We've taken on a few more job shop.

Justin:

Which has been nice, good, lucky enough, that change a few things and

Justin:

all of a sudden get more inquiries and more people that are interested.

Jem:

That's good.

Justin:

yeah, I've got a few smaller jobs to do, it's pretty interesting.

Justin:

I'll probably post something about, it's like a two inch thick slab of a Walnut.

Justin:

kinda like a guitar pick shaped coffee table with a giant chamfer on the

Justin:

entire thing, which I haven't totally figured out how I'm going to do yet, but

Jem:

Like a multipass multipass chamfer

Justin:

Lots of passes.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

That'll be fun.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

And Turkey's just set up to we're working on are the dowel part.

Justin:

It's going to be like a peg that goes on the wall.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

may fail catastrophic.

Justin:

They've got this really ghetto setup for a second op to cut.

Justin:

Scoop a little saddle part into it, and it's kind of like held between some

Justin:

French cleats and a couple toe clamps.

Justin:

And it's the round dowel though on one side.

Justin:

So it's either going to shoot off or be just fine.

Justin:

I don't know.

Jem:

Awesome.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

If I can get some action.

Jem:

yeah.

Justin:

off shots.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Coleman.

Justin:

All right.

Justin:

Well, hope you feel better.

Jem:

Thank you.

Justin:

It was full, full energy gym.

Jem:

I'll be bouncing back next week.

Jem:

Yep.

Justin:

Hopefully, hopefully it's just a one week thing, man.

Jem:

Thank you.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

And take care of

Justin:

Yep.

Justin:

See ya.

Jem:

by,

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