Episode 137

137 - 16-bit Sex and the City

Jem and Justin tackle tricky importing issues and economic uncertainty. They chat shop tech including robots and CNC sanding ideas. Updates on Profit First distributions, tax savings, and the cash flow rollercoaster. Plus, beta configurator progress, cool soldering irons, and movie tangents.

Watch on Youtube


DISCUSSED:

✍️ Comment or Suggest a Topic

  • Flip flops economics
  • Price rises?
  • OK Go - Love - Sense of loss
  • Nack iMac stand legacy
  • Threads on PS1
  • Can we still make good kids? Good Podcast
  • PF Distro
  • New Sheet
  • Taxes ))<>((
  • Monday bakery cash slump
  • Found the best soldering iron TS101 ꘎
  • KittaParts Beta configurator revenue update
  • $24,661.42 in 2 months
  • 🚨 Jem to turn cart on again by next week! 🚨 
  • High School Teachers – Justin needs you!
  • Debris - Zero Dollar Product
  • Vortex tube cooling, can I 3D print one
  • Goodfellas



  • 00:00 ello
  • 02:20 Supply Chain Forced Fiasco
  • 09:00 Navigating Pricing Strategies
  • 10:51 Love for Love
  • 13:10 Technical Difficulties.mp4
  • 16:08 Robotics in Filmmaking
  • 18:59 Machinery and Tooling
  • 22:01 Innovation in Sanding Techniques
  • 25:05 3D Printing + Custom Tooling
  • 28:04 Threading and Machining Strategies
  • 30:51 Soldering for Two
  • 32:01 Personal Productivity Tools
  • 33:14 Financial Management and Profit Distribution
  • 35:40 Saving for Taxes
  • 36:51 Debt and Business Cash Flow
  • 43:00 Revenue Targets and Seasonal Slumps
  • 45:01 Sales Workflow and Customer Engagement
  • 48:59 Education Products - Get at Justin!


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Show Info

Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.


HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcript
Speaker:

And we're on.

2

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Hello.

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is here.

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are we live?

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Are we live on the air again?

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You gotta warn me so I put pants on.

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Jesus.

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You do have an accessory today.

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is this?

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What do you got?

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Sling bag?

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my little baggie, my little dealer bag on for some reason.

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I don't know why.

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Greetings.

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How's it going?

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Greetings.

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Episode 137.

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Welcome back.

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37 we got a little this

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strength break.

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much longer than I expected it to be.

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I know.

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It's such a like computer made like salsa.

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It's so like, turkey.

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Yeah, 16, 16 bit, Sex in the City.

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And title.

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Good start.

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What's happening?

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Haven't seen much new Gorbo yet.

30

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So that's probably good for my health since we last talked.

31

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Good, probably good.

32

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How's the economy?

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still there, I guess.

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I don't know.

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I was texting, I think, I don't know if I said this last week, I texted a friend and I was

like, how are you dealing with, how are you dealing with all these changes, these

36

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flip-flops?

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Like, cause I know that they order a lot from China for their business.

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And by like that day, it was maybe 10 in the morning or something here.

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And by the time they responded, maybe within a half an hour, they were like, didn't you

see it's back already?

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They're off.

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And I was like, what again?

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It was like yesterday, these just came out.

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So, you know, since we've been starting talking, it could be different.

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I don't know.

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That's the worst of it.

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It's just, who knows?

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Because you've got a couple of things that come in from the overseas land, so yeah.

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Just a lot of them, yeah.

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And you have some on the way now that are like, in jeopardy as to whether they'll arrive

or not or what.

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I almost anxiously bought some more when the last round were announced.

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I know I considered it.

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Yeah.

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And then I, I texted you and I was like, dude, I don't know what to do.

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I'm just like, normally I feel like I have a good sense of like which way to go.

55

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And kind of by the time you, I think, message back or something, I was just like, no, like

cash is better than like product that I don't necessarily need at this moment.

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But I don't know.

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It's stupid to say the least.

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take.

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Yeah.

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I take a tub.

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Yeah, I'm glad to not be...

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Not that we have the same situation, but I'm glad not to have...

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Well, no, that's not true.

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We do rely on some imported stuff, not to on-sell, but like the clear coat product that we

switched to a few months ago is imported.

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Not ideal.

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Australian businesses just keep seeming to go out of business.

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Ones that sell water-based spray paint.

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don't seem to have a great track record in this country.

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So we're currently using a Swedish product.

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Which is one of the few imported ingredients that we have, but it's good.

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Seems to be a reliable supplier, so we'll just hang out there for a while until something

better comes along.

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I'm seeing prices go up already on things and I don't know.

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Yeah, I just like gotta take it day by day and I think the worst scenario.

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is if we got to start adjusting like pricing and cost price, you know, the costs and then

adjust our pricing and like, I mean, I've got apps that help you more quickly reprice

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things for Shopify, but like.

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cool.

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It doesn't like play like I still have to figure out like what my margin would be on all

those things, you know, like to even change the price.

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So it's like, you know, that's, that's a nightmare scenario of like chasing things up and

down and like trying to hold out on changing your price.

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If you sell a commodity items versus other people and

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Hmm.

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Yeah, it's Tricky.

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I did, you know, because we did some price rise earlier this year and it was a whole lot

of work because I went to town calculating it all in Airtable.

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But in the end, was a bit like, by the end, I was like, oh, I probably just could have

done a blanket 5 % and it would have worked out fine.

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you at some point.

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I was like...

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well and it's just like yeah on average five percent would have done it because i didn't

even end i didn't end up putting in prices up on our on kidda parts like on our flagship

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product a couple of them actually dropped slightly when i recalculated them which is

probably silly thing to do to drop a price on something that's not a commodity product but

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anyway so weird

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But yeah, I don't know.

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I don't know.

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Meanwhile, everyone else puts all our supplies, put their prices up happily every year.

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Yup.

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Yup.

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mean, but regardless of the stupid tariffs, did, you know, I changed a couple of prices

just to kind of adjust where things were at and what kind of competition was.

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But I mean, in general, I kind of shared last week, but my best plan right now is to try

to prioritize making products that we can make.

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as much as we can here that don't have our reliance on an import or I mean, that's easier

said than done because like, it's just, we're in a very globalized, you know, society at

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this point.

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So that it's anything but that is kind of naive.

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You see that kind of comment, like, if you just made your, like I sent you the Haas drama

of like them saying that their stuff was going to like,

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jump in price and you should buy now and like that kind of open letter, right?

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They posted on their Instagram and then there was people adding themselves as...

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unfavorable supporters of the oligarchy, the fascists and

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And then all these people in the comments like, if you just made your machines in America,

it's like, well, that's the most naive thing.

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so many of those things are just only made in Asia, which I don't, these are just.

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things that everybody's saying,

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Mm.

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Yeah, yeah, feels like the best thing we can do as little micro businesses is just carry

on trying to innovate and make good stuff, right?

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Like, what?

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for failing.

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No, little bubbles.

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What else do we do other than continue to innovate, make good stuff out of local

ingredients where possible and yeah.

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Keep on keeping on.

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Right.

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Is that really, is just finish is really one of the only things that you import as a

necessity for products and...

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Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's stuff that I'm not thinking of like hinges, hinge

hardware, screws, stuff like that, that would all be imported.

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But yeah, pretty minimal in terms of the core ingredients, pretty minimal.

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aspects are coming in from overseas.

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Got a little message from the chat here.

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There's a nice little magical fees and tariffs.

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It's a different Mel, Drew Mel.

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It seems to be a subscription add-on from a company called Magical Apps that will let you

add magical fees and tariffs so that you can basically denote why you have an additional

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cost, I guess, what the fee is applied to product or order calculation.

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Examples, this product requires bottle deposit.

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So obviously you could put this, this requires a tariff.

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Add required fee surcharges tariffs and deposits to products or orders.

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Signior Debris, have we been joined by Signior Debris?

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No way.

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Excellent.

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I like how we just get, we get one, we get one new.

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Doug and Mel.

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Yeah.

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Very, it's very expensive to be on this live stream.

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Fantastic.

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Welcome Drew.

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I didn't know you had a real name.

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Nice to meet you.

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Fantastic.

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how it is.

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Oops, oops, we might have to bleep that out.

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ME!

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So what did think of this video?

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What video?

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the best video of the week.

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The video, the witty witty witty.

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Okay, go boys are back.

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I loved it.

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Justin sent me robots.

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I like it when you send me robots.

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And this time it was in the form of the latest okay go video, which whenever an okay go

video drops, I'm always pretty quick to run to YouTube and check it out.

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But I was like, no, don't have a...

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screen larger than my phone on my person for the next few hours.

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I'm gonna wait.

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And so I waited and watched it on the 4k at home.

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I was like, mmm good.

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And then I watched it about six more times.

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Showed Laura and then watched the behind the scenes.

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Mmm good.

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And I was interesting.

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I had this weird sense watching.

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I had a subtle sense of loss watching that video.

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because it ticked so many boxes in terms of what I love about video making and have

enjoyed about photography and video making in the past.

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And I was like, I used to do bits of this.

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Like this was, it used to be part of my sort of creative output.

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worked on short films, I've worked on sets.

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I've worked on a lot of music videos way back when and then

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watching that video and particularly watching behind the scenes I was like aww aww it

makes me bit sad because this could have you know could have in another another life

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another reality it could have been me making this shit yeah but it was a very very good

video very enjoyable and pretty amazing from just a technical standpoint

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Can you hear me?

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Yeah.

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Have we got technical problems?

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My browser seems to have completely locked up where I'm recording this.

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I can hear you.

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I can't see anything change and I can't change anything in the browser, which is wild.

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Doug and I are still here.

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I don't understand how it's still working.

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think Doug is gaslighting us though.

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Do do do do.

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Be interesting if it comes back.

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Ooh.

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got some bubbles bubbles bubbles do you need to re- do you need to re-invite Doug or will

he find his way?

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I think he's...

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says there's one person here.

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Cool, I stayed in here.

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Don't know.

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Okay, it's recording again.

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Welcome to the behind the scenes where we combat technology for 30 % of each episode

recording.

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ever recording him this time instead of at the beginning of the chapters is going to go in

about eight minutes and go technical difficulties

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Yeah.

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Where were we?

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okay, go.

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Sorry, I got distracted I have a little bit of a like, okay, guys, that's enough.

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Okay, going.

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Like, there's just like, I'm always, every time I watch it, I'm like, it's really, really

good.

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It's like, you know, fantastic.

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I can't believe you did this like every time, but also it was just.

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I kind of like regretfully clicked on it.

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And then when I did, was like, oh no, this is, this one's different.

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This one's like kind of amazing, particularly because they use you are robots like crazy

throughout the whole thing.

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And like they really heavily rely on mirrors and the robots to like I was saying to you,

feel like trick your senses into like this perfected prismatic reflecting craziness and

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I also was thinking about like how quickly they're moving these things like around their

necks, these mirrors with robots.

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And it's just like, I don't want to see anybody lose a head real quick.

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Yeah, you'd struggle to shoot something like that in Australia, I think.

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I think they shot in Hungary, Budapest.

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I wonder whether there was any sort of regulatory looseness that made that easier.

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Don't know.

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But yeah, looking, like having big industrial Cukas, because it's not just UR, there's the

big Cuka bots as well, towards the end.

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Yeah, there's like six of them, like in when the set gets bigger towards the end.

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I don't know, maybe you can get away with it in a filming context, but yeah, you can't

even use a cobot in Australia without lasers and light curtains and stuff.

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Yeah, yeah.

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their whole point.

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I know.

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I think, yeah, chatting to this cobot rep recently, that's well, that's my current

understanding is that, yeah, if I got a cobot in here doing sanding, I would need some

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sort of safety.

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You can do it with cameras, like looking for humans and then locking it out in certain

view range or whatever, or light curtains or pad sensors or blah,

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Because I think the argument is that they can still hurt you.

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Yes, they have sort of pressure sensitivity, but they can still like throw a tool in your

face if they're working and you're silly enough to walk within, walk into the end effector

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zone.

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It needs like one of those like dog surgery cones at the end.

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It's like it's got its own little buffer zone on the end of it.

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Doug.

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Doug the dog.

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dog

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I've only just met you, but I love you!

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm-hmm.

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Speaking of cobots, I got a quote yesterday on selling my wide belt sander and my edge

sander.

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Just out of was like, what are these puppies worth?

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Yep.

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And they thought I could get...

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no, no, I'd done my research.

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His estimate was very similar to what I'd sort of thought.

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And 30 to 35k for my wide belt, which is great because we only paid 47 for it six years

ago.

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Pretty happy with that.

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It remains to be seen if we can actually sell it, of course, but...

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and like three and a half of the edge sander.

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So yeah, decent.

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I think we paid 6K for the Edge sander maybe eight years ago.

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Yeah, so yeah, they seem to be holding their value recently well.

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So I was.

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invest in is tooling apparently.

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I was immediately fantasizing about that and what I would do with that.

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Fantasy gem was like, Cobot please.

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And then rational gem was like, cash in the bank please.

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So we'll see who wins that conversation.

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of like having cash in the bank?

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Cash in the shop.

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But yes, I'm desperate to make a unhinged cobot that talks to you and does sanding duties

begrudgingly.

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I got an inquiry similarly from somebody on our NAC accounts of how we used to make those.

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I guess you can't see it, but back behind me, maybe you can see it.

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There's an iMac stand.

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We made those for, I don't know, two years.

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And then I discontinued the iMac.

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So we stopped making them because it just seemed silly to like sell a product for a

discontinued product.

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And...

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I always struggled to make the right amount of profit.

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It was like kind of my first dabbling into making products ourselves.

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And a lot of my NAC products before were printed things that were outsourced.

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I never actually produced those myself.

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were, what would you even say?

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Like just produced for us.

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So I had to out presses and all that kind of stuff.

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that iMac stand was one of the first things we made like on the router finished.

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produced the whole thing in our shop.

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And I've had a few people over the years say, hey, there's new types of, you know, Apple

screens, iMacs out there, would you consider this?

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And I've kind of like looked into it each time and gone, no, you know, it's not the best

plan right now.

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And this was the first time where I was like, hmm, maybe if I did do it.

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And the two thoughts I had was to use kind of the same angled chamfered big bevel on the

sides on a big piece of wood, because it's about four inches tall for the tallest one.

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And then I was like, you know, instead of the hardest part about that is the same as your

bevels on your shelves is there's a big bevel and you've got a hand sand out that face to

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finish it.

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And I was like,

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What if I just get like a sanding attachment for the router?

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Like it's a continuous surface typically and I could tool change two or three of them to

do different grits and just make a big cylindric sanding thing, make some crazy dust boot.

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Sanding aggregate, yeah.

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I had a tooling rep drop in a few weeks ago and he hasn't sent me what he was gonna send

me yet, but we talked about what we've talked about here of like, basically you're that,

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like a tool changing sanding.

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thing the CNC can pick up doesn't necessarily have to fit in the like our tool carousel

might be bigger diameter, but you know, manual tool change in and then it can while the

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after roughing pass, chamfer pass, then you tool change in the sanding head and it runs

around the kit apart, chamfers and then you tool change out and it does the finishing pass

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and releases from the vacuum table.

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He was like, yeah, I've supplied

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Things like that to other companies, usually they're running on like a five access

machine, so bigger tool, member load, bigger tool swing and stuff, but it sounds like it's

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feasible.

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He didn't have that much experience with them in terms of he didn't know like what the

tool life was like.

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Cause we talked about the fact that it's kind of, it's a pretty small surface area.

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I have always imagined that it would just clog way too quickly to be cost effective.

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But he said there's

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There's a few different ways of doing it.

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You can do it with a grit or can do it with a flap wheel geometry.

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Like a grinding flap where it's just the paper bits and that can slowly wear down.

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You get a lot more life out of it.

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Anyway, I'm super curious.

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It reminds me I should follow up with him.

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Sandy Man.

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probably too naive.

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think somebody brought this up to us when we were doing them the first time, because we

have a custom tool made to cut the angle on them.

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And that's beautiful, but you still, no matter what, you're going to end up sanding it

to...

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Like the surface is so nice until you have to start sanding it.

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And no matter what, blending filleted corners on a chamfer is just tough.

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quite a bit of time and that's where all your profit goes is the hand touching is way too

much on those products.

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No matter how cool and everything else you try to design them.

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I was just thinking if I could, mean, the stupidest way would be 3D print the right shape,

attach sandpaper to it, attach it to like a rod that goes in a tool holder.

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I don't know.

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Probably crazy.

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Be fun to try.

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What could go wrong?

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simple.

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Well, my spindle can't go very slow.

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That's our spindle.

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All I think it's like minimum something like 2000 or 1800 rpms.

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Which is pretty fast for sanding, I think.

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I don't know what a

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a 3D printed arbor.

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I don't know what a Merca spins at, I bet it's not a whole lot faster than or slower than

that.

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Faster or slower?

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Anyway.

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yeah a cool thing to play I hadn't thought about 3d printing sanding attachments that's

cool I did think yeah it should work why not yeah well this still have it still have a

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steel arbor

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Wouldn't 3d print the armor.

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Thank you.

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Just twists off right away.

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Solid infill would be fine.

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Yeah, cool.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Meow.

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I did, speaking of 3D printing tools, I did some research last night because Rodeo, who's

building the PS2, was here yesterday and we're talking about tooling strategies on the

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pencil sharpener, one and two.

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And with the new crafted hardwoods, black butt stock, it's a bit more chippy, crispy.

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harder.

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It's a bit harder to get like crisp threads on it.

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And we've halved our chip load on the PS1.

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So basically the chamfering tool is running at double the RPM of what it was to try and

get the same threaded result, which means we're building up more heat.

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And Ryo was asking us to, you know, why we don't run it even faster again to get it

crispy.

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I was like, trying to find that balance between tool life, you know, they're relatively

expensive custom.

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thread mills that we have ground and, you know, obviously wanted to last.

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And radio was asking like why the walk and then we call them with like a air blast.

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I was like, maybe, yeah, that could help tool life.

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And then it reminded me of these cool things called vortex tubes, vortex cooling tubes.

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You ever seen this?

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They're like a completely static object.

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You feed.

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compressed air into one end and you get hot air out one end and chilled air out the other

and they do this cool like physics vortex inside and you can get like minus 50 degrees out

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of one end allegedly and apparently yeah they are used in some machining applications as a

cooling option and my brain immediately went to cool can I 3D print one so I think they're

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about 300 bucks US

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just about one to play with but

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Need like a little bucket of coolant that you just go and dip it in real quick.

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That's you need your arm for.

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But I can't get my, I can't get my shtick sweat, It's timber.

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tip all lubey?

350

:

Yeah, that's interesting.

351

:

mean, can you, is it a rigidity problem?

352

:

Like why can't you cut at the same speed as you used to?

353

:

Did you say that?

354

:

We've gone at the same speed, but we've doubled the RPM.

355

:

we've reduced.

356

:

Yeah.

357

:

We're trying to reduce the chip load to get a cleaner thread.

358

:

because of geometry, like the kinematics are different or like, you just can't pull off

the same kind of thing as you did on the other machine.

359

:

yeah it's just the stocks more brittle fragile

360

:

sorry, I thought you were talking about the, I think about the new PS2 was like not as

capable.

361

:

Sorry.

362

:

the change in timber on the PS1.

363

:

Yeah, so just fiddling with the machining strategies on that to try and get a better

result, which will inform tool passing on the PS2 obviously, yeah, don't know.

364

:

It is, yep, custom ground cupboard.

365

:

I don't know.

366

:

I mean, it's not a slotting operation.

367

:

There's great chip evacuation.

368

:

Even in the female bore, that's not the issue.

369

:

It's just we've sped up the spindle, which is fine.

370

:

We've kind of done it at a level where we're comfortable.

371

:

It's not like cooking it.

372

:

But we know if we did slow it down even more, we'd get a better thread again.

373

:

I don't know.

374

:

Ice cold air.

375

:

one pass?

376

:

No, single pass thread.

377

:

Try a second pass.

378

:

to get a cleaner result.

379

:

The damage is kind of already done.

380

:

I suppose we could split the passes, maybe that would get a...

381

:

Yeah, if we did half half.

382

:

or even, mean, typically the best case, right, is like lesser on the second pass, but we

could try both.

383

:

Something.

384

:

yeah, yeah, let's say like a roughing and a finishing approach.

385

:

much.

386

:

Yeah, Interesting thought.

387

:

Herman.

388

:

for just finishing.

389

:

It's only got two spindles man, come on.

390

:

yeah, no good thought.

391

:

Haven't thought about double passing it.

392

:

That's curious.

393

:

That'd be easy enough to try.

394

:

I don't know much about, I'm not like by any means we thread with form taps on the middle

and that's about my only threading experience.

395

:

And that just kind of works always, just magic.

396

:

Hmm.

397

:

Yeah.

398

:

lost your window.

399

:

Oh there you are,

400

:

Do a really good cat.

401

:

it's giving me like ASMR trickster.

402

:

Wow.

403

:

Definitely.

404

:

I haven't bought a co- yeah, probably.

405

:

I haven't bought a cobot, but I did get my retail therapy this week.

406

:

Buying a new soldering iron.

407

:

It's a little different.

408

:

I've never, it's also a hundred bucks.

409

:

I'm sorry.

410

:

Same price, same.

411

:

but it's fantastic.

412

:

It's a T, is it?

413

:

TS101.

414

:

It runs on USB-C entirely.

415

:

So you can just run it on a battery bank and walk around with it in your pocket.

416

:

Solder wherever you want.

417

:

Heats up in like five seconds.

418

:

And I got excited about it because my grandfather.

419

:

pioneered the first sort of heat electric soldering iron and manufactured them for long

time in Australia.

420

:

And that was like his thing.

421

:

Like he built a successful business making soldering irons.

422

:

And so when I saw this thing on Rodeo's desk a few weeks ago, was like, hang on, what is

that?

423

:

It heats up in five seconds.

424

:

I simply must have one now.

425

:

Haha.

426

:

And it's a fantastic little thing.

427

:

Now I just want to solder all the projects, but yeah, highly recommend.

428

:

If you need a good soldering iron, this thing's sick.

429

:

Do you do sold there much?

430

:

I do.

431

:

Yeah, I'll use this holding iron, you know, maybe once a fortnight.

432

:

Semi-regulate, yeah.

433

:

don't really get it.

434

:

Is that because of PS2?

435

:

No.

436

:

No, no.

437

:

Hmm.

438

:

Interesting.

439

:

I don't really get into, I have one, but I don't use it much.

440

:

Like once a year, maybe.

441

:

Yeah, Yeah, I think suppose playing with LEDs, doing lighting projects, doing a little,

yeah, I don't know why I use one, but I do pretty regularly.

442

:

check it out, LinkedIn show notes.

443

:

Yeah, it's fun.

444

:

Good.

445

:

That's a good one.

446

:

I haven't been sleeping super well.

447

:

Just keep staying up till 8.

448

:

Add to my quarterly distribution.

449

:

I guess I'm a couple of weeks late now, but I actually did it, you know, like processed

where money should go for my profit.

450

:

Cause we're like on the calendar year.

451

:

Quarterly.

452

:

I finally took my old spreadsheet that you started, Laura started, and I basically just

like ignored 90 % of.

453

:

what was mostly your business rehashing and was using like two pages of it.

454

:

And it was great at the time, but as 2025 rolled around, had no way to continue using it

basically.

455

:

So I just stopped as I had mentioned here.

456

:

However, I threw it at the best thing I have right now, which is GPT.

457

:

I would have given it to Claude if I had access.

458

:

Still I've got five days left until my subscription.

459

:

It is driving me crazy because GPT sucks at so many things.

460

:

So many things.

461

:

Cloud is so much better.

462

:

tried to get it to have me rehash it.

463

:

It took like a million tries and it finally got me like the most basic.

464

:

What I ended up having it do is make an app script for Google Sheets.

465

:

So it could generate using my old, the spreadsheet you had made.

466

:

It gave access to it and then regenerated copying over some of the data.

467

:

Cause I didn't want to lose all my old like logging from before.

468

:

It makes sense.

469

:

deeper demo?

470

:

was GPT driving Google Sheets directly or it was just giving you stuff to copy and paste

over.

471

:

Okay.

472

:

into a app script.

473

:

I think it's what it's called inside of Google Sheets.

474

:

You like make a new sheet app script and it opens up a new page, which is just, it's a

goofy process.

475

:

And then it runs, creates another page, which is like completely raw, new, unstyled, which

I don't know if it can do styling, but somewhat linked.

476

:

or three pages and then I took it from there and I couldn't get it to really copy over

because it was transposed and it couldn't figure out how to transpose from horizontal to

477

:

vertical.

478

:

How stupid.

479

:

And all that said, I finally got it working.

480

:

I went through and I logged all my 2025, because it's still been happening on my bank.

481

:

I just haven't been keeping track of it in another way to be like a little more analytical

about it.

482

:

So I just a couple, I gave myself a couple more points of owner pay, which is still vastly

below what it's supposed to be.

483

:

nice to be moving in that direction.

484

:

We just did our taxes.

485

:

the accountant, because they were due yesterday.

486

:

I had saved more than triple the amount I needed for taxes, which was nice.

487

:

Which means the account, well, there's just a million factors with like.

488

:

Equipment was bought so that did it deducted a bunch.

489

:

I had interest payments on loans that deducted a bunch we had remainder of healthcare

expenses from either like I don't even remember what it was this time not IVF but So just

490

:

all amasses into this This is why we hire accountants because it's like we just throw all

this stuff out of like I don't know in this year The return was only 90 pages, but usually

491

:

it's like over 120

492

:

our tax return of like all the things that get submitted, just crazy.

493

:

Too many things.

494

:

But all that said, I had been saving with profit first taxes, which normally I really

hadn't.

495

:

I just kind of like hoped there's enough money sitting around somewhere.

496

:

And I had plenty, plenty of money saved, which was delightful.

497

:

That's awesome.

498

:

especially in the regard that it's like Erin and I are paying taxes.

499

:

You know, my business gets passed through with the LLC kind of things, which is pretty

normal here.

500

:

And typically when we have to like pay something for taxes versus like getting a refund,

it comes out of our personal accounts.

501

:

And I was like, Hey, hey, hey, Erin, I've got money for this in the business.

502

:

Did you know that?

503

:

And she's like, It probably makes a lot of no sense because our systems are so different.

504

:

cool.

505

:

I haven't done any of those quarterly things at all because there's been nothing to

distribute because we've been paying off debts the whole time.

506

:

There hasn't been like a, which is good.

507

:

You know, last year we paid.

508

:

profit then and pay it off?

509

:

Yeah, all the profit has just been going straight to debt.

510

:

Yeah, like fortnightly payments.

511

:

Last year it was fortnightly payments and we paid off our ATO debt pretty quickly over the

course of the year anyway.

512

:

So I haven't done that and since it kind of sucks because like we finished paying the tax

ight like right on the end of:

513

:

like

514

:

nine months, fantastic.

515

:

And now it's like, cool, now we owe ourselves a shit ton of money.

516

:

And we've done, and then the business slumped.

517

:

And so like January for every March, it's been slow.

518

:

There hasn't really been any profit.

519

:

And so like we've stopped paying debt, the debt to ourselves.

520

:

And it's frustrating because we're like, well, damn, we made such good progress last year.

521

:

Now it just kind of stopped.

522

:

And it kind of feels like that thing of like, cause it's not a third party.

523

:

that we're paying back.

524

:

It's like, oh, you know, it's easier to make excuses or not move money where it should be

going and stuff like that.

525

:

But we've had a few more positive weeks.

526

:

The last few weeks have been looking up.

527

:

We've come close to target or hit target last few weeks, which has been reassuring.

528

:

And it's funny last Thursday, because I've moved my distribution day to like a Tuesday

night.

529

:

like Wednesday, Thursday is the start of my

530

:

make some money and then weekend and then Monday Tuesday is like oh I've got two days left

come on let's and so Thursday last week I was like this is going really well we've made

531

:

great progress these two days like bank accounts looking good on track I think I chatted

to you Friday morning feeling really positive and then Monday morning rolls around after

532

:

the weekend and I paid superannuation and payroll

533

:

before 9am I'd already paid like 20 grand, I'd already paid like 21 thousand dollars in

bills before 9am on two coffees and no breakfast and my body was just like, went into like

534

:

shock of like, bleh, like ready to just like go and vomit with anxiety and I had to like

walk myself around the block, just get some sunshine and something from the bakery to put

535

:

some food in my system.

536

:

was like, it's gonna be okay.

537

:

It was just like the classic like small business rollercoaster.

538

:

like, this is going well.

539

:

There goes all the money.

540

:

That's the craziest.

541

:

mean, I've every week basically probably reported those things here, but we had this

absolutely bonkers January completely out of nowhere.

542

:

We didn't do anything to cause it.

543

:

Advertising was working.

544

:

People were spending money.

545

:

I don't know.

546

:

Like over double, over double what our normal monthly should be.

547

:

Hmm.

548

:

which is just crazy and it was mostly product related, but you know, amazing.

549

:

I have profit first set up all of this stuff.

550

:

It's moving the money into the right places.

551

:

I'm not spending really much more than I want to.

552

:

And it's just like, know, February was a little bit slower, March bottomed out and all of

that money just disappears over two months.

553

:

You know, it's like, it's just madness.

554

:

And I think as I'm looking at the ratios again,

555

:

now that I have it all in one place, what do I do?

556

:

Do I create another account that's like rainy day fund that's like, I don't know, stealing

from OpEx additionally so that I have more money that I don't think I have?

557

:

I don't know, I don't know what.

558

:

And I always just come back to this like, well, you can just always make more money.

559

:

That's one option or save money or fake, fake yourself out and store it somewhere else.

560

:

It's like my three options that I can think of.

561

:

And I just feel so mental still how can have this like record month and then it just feels

like it's gone two months later without like, I didn't go buy any major tools or anything.

562

:

Yeah.

563

:

We made the decision to up our sort of weekly revenue target to try and cover this, to try

and cover like two slow months a year.

564

:

Like let's up our increase over the whole year and so that we've got a bit of a reserve

fund to cover the sort of summer slump for us.

565

:

And we did that, but we just haven't been hitting targets.

566

:

So there's no...

567

:

you know, all the accounts are on the low side, barely managing to cover costs, but it's

not building up.

568

:

And I guess the purpose of building up this year is to cover next year's low point, but we

don't have that now.

569

:

So I don't know, it's a bit of a catch 22 tricky thing.

570

:

We just need a month's revenue dumped in there just to get us ahead.

571

:

then we can, yes please, just one extra month somewhere.

572

:

Somewhere please.

573

:

I pretty much had that and it's gone.

574

:

That's what's so insane making.

575

:

This is like, I had that extra month.

576

:

Anyway, I all said.

577

:

You know, it wasn't a crazy amount, but like, I'm very glad that I was saving for taxes,

which sounds crazy, but like, you know, it's just the way things have worked out from the

578

:

basically the front of pandemic till last year.

579

:

Like I, it just.

580

:

It didn't really make sense to save a lot for taxes because of the way we were reinvesting

in like all the, all the factors.

581

:

So,

582

:

I wouldn't have otherwise.

583

:

I I'm now, I changed my tax savings going forward because I feel like it needs to be more

as we go forward because we are doing better every month usually, well not continuously,

584

:

but every year we're more revenue and thus more taxes.

585

:

Small mo.

586

:

We'll see how it goes, who knows.

587

:

forever.

588

:

What's that thing from that Miranda July film?

589

:

Back and forth forever.

590

:

I did a little review yesterday of how the new beta Kitterparts configurator is going,

because it's becoming more and more important in my sort of sales workflow.

591

:

More people are using it.

592

:

I still have add to cart disabled, because there's still bugs in it, which sort of...

593

:

kind of overpricing some components or double, there's duplication happening, which I

haven't entirely gotten rid of.

594

:

So don't want people to check out the wrong parts.

595

:

So everything's manually coming through me, which is fine for now.

596

:

But I've done the last two months, I think since it's been online, I've done 25K in sales

through it, which was more than I thought.

597

:

Pretty happy with that.

598

:

But I was like, cool, I should do a review of this, just...

599

:

I've had curiosity to see where it's at, but also kind of look at, you know, what I'm

offering like a very, for us, what is a very significant discount of 15 % on sales through

600

:

it as an incentive to get people to use.

601

:

I was like, I worked out what that cost me, so to speak, in discounts.

602

:

And it's more than I was paying for the VividWorks configurator, which is kind of a mute

argument in a way, because it's like no one was really using and checking out using the...

603

:

vivid one anyway, but I was just like, oh, that's funny.

604

:

I've I've spent, I've lost sort of like $1,800 in discounts, but I've had great engagement

with it.

605

:

I don't know.

606

:

I'm basically, I don't care.

607

:

that,

608

:

More and more.

609

:

15%.

610

:

Yeah.

611

:

It's early, I might have done the math wrong, but anyway, basically it's going well.

612

:

All right, that's very good.

613

:

I mean, as you were saying that I was thinking.

614

:

what a bigger company would do most likely or one that's more aggressive about sales, like

doing the perfect thing to convert, right?

615

:

Would be convert it if there's problems, refund or change the order after, but at least

you've captured the sale.

616

:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

617

:

And I think there's probably something to be said about at some point, yeah, fix all the

problems you can, but give yourself a deadline of like at the end of this month, well, A,

618

:

I would drop your discount a little bit, maybe go to 10 % or something.

619

:

But then also, also just give yourself a deadline and be like, still call it beta, give

them warning, but.

620

:

Let them check out, just see if I bet you convert more because I bet people are like not

wanting to wait around and they don't understand the process of how it would work

621

:

otherwise.

622

:

yeah maybe, yep, yep yep.

623

:

What's the worst?

624

:

You're still just going to have the same kind of like, you can still check in with them,

right?

625

:

I think I'll still get both.

626

:

this is a problem.

627

:

Yeah, look, I'm part of me because I'm really enjoying the process of seeing someone's

configuration come in and going and then actually workshopping it with them and evaluating

628

:

to that process of like, cool.

629

:

What about we do this?

630

:

And if you don't use that component, it'll be cheaper for you and blah, blah, So that's

been really enjoyable just like from a customer service point of view.

631

:

But yeah, I think even if I turn add to cart on, I'll still get that.

632

:

For people who do want to customize, that's not going to go away.

633

:

yeah, do touch turn it on.

634

:

offering both with some minor note of like, there's a chance there's mistakes and if so,

we'll figure it out.

635

:

Do the right thing.

636

:

Okay, hold me to account.

637

:

It's gonna happen by next recording.

638

:

Let's go.

639

:

Do it.

640

:

Is there any way to like track conversion of people that use the, the configurator to

something check out, move forward.

641

:

know.

642

:

Maybe.

643

:

it probably is.

644

:

I don't know how to do it, but...

645

:

Me neither.

646

:

yeah.

647

:

Mr.

648

:

Debris, do you have any ideas?

649

:

sure they do.

650

:

I have a quick call to potential listeners or people that know people.

651

:

We are working on products related to mostly high schools, I would say.

652

:

High schools, as I've talked about, these schools that come and visit us, we've gone and

I've gone to see their schools and I've come up with this kind of series of

653

:

Products that we're working on.

654

:

It's probably more like a year out.

655

:

I would say six months and I basically just want kind of like a group of educators to

discuss Options with like what they might want If they're interested at all, so if you are

656

:

an educator Could be colleges, but I would assume high schools would be a better fit maybe

middle schools Primary schools is how you call them

657

:

No, that's just the, just, just the, That makes sense.

658

:

So do you call them middle and high then?

659

:

We just have high school, middle school is another thing here.

660

:

Hmm, so you just kind of split the, I see.

661

:

Yeah.

662

:

high, high.

663

:

When you're about 12, 13, you go to high school.

664

:

And you do six years of high school.

665

:

Right.

666

:

Okay.

667

:

Well, anyway, if you're in, if you have some interests in product related things for, high

schoolers to do CNC, CAD and CAM, and I didn't think this through very well.

668

:

It's not making a whole lot of sense probably, but things like you would do with a CNC

router, CNC machines, and are interested, send me a message.

669

:

debris has come through the solution.

670

:

on how to track that.

671

:

Just talking back one topic.

672

:

Drew DeBree says, zero dollar product added to each configurator order.

673

:

And then you run analytics or searches against that product.

674

:

So that's smart, easy.

675

:

I can just have that script when they add the cart, add that zero dollar product in, I

think.

676

:

I shank, I shank, which kind of comes back to your point about adding useful things into

carts, links and.

677

:

resources and stuff, which I still want to try.

678

:

that zero dollar product like your kitaparts guide product.

679

:

Yeah.

680

:

Choice.

681

:

Choice, cuz.

682

:

So they don't even know any different.

683

:

Exactly.

684

:

Shall never know.

685

:

Bingo says Drew.

686

:

I gotta go man.

687

:

I gotta go.

688

:

Yeah.

689

:

I do actually.

690

:

It's traditional.

691

:

It's public holiday here tomorrow because of Easter bunnies and so our pack of van is on a

Thursday instead of a Friday.

692

:

Yeah.

693

:

Got a couple of things to finish.

694

:

reminds me of, have you seen the movie Goodfellas?

695

:

No.

696

:

Okay, that hurts a little bit.

697

:

It's my favorite movie.

698

:

Erin had never seen it and I've been talking about it for 15 years with her and I give her

crap all the time.

699

:

Like, you just, haven't even seen my favorite movie.

700

:

You know, it's like, it's in my mind, it was longer and we had made it be this like three

hour movie.

701

:

It's two hours, 20 minutes.

702

:

And we started watching it and she got tired and fell asleep.

703

:

So we're halfway through it, but it is so good.

704

:

And there's, there's lines in it that just, I think of constantly like.

705

:

It's not packing a van, it's like fell off the back of a truck.

706

:

They've get products off the back of the truck because they steal from the, it's a good

movie.

707

:

that the director of one of my favorite movies, Happy Feet, also directed another

well-known film, Mad Max, which I've never seen any of the Mad Max films, which probably

708

:

is shameful as an Australian, but...

709

:

That's a ridiculous overlap of two things.

710

:

is a note, fantastic.

711

:

Final departing recommendation from me, if you have children and like a podcast about such

things, which I don't listen to many parenting podcasts, but someone sent me this one

712

:

during the week.

713

:

was like, that was a really good listen.

714

:

I'm glad I went there.

715

:

It's linked in the show notes.

716

:

It's an author talking about screen time and technology and AI and what the hell to do

with that with children as they grow up.

717

:

with a look.

718

:

LinkedIn.

719

:

That's the end.

720

:

try it.

721

:

The end.

722

:

for joining us, Debris.

723

:

He also worked on Babe, yes, exactly.

724

:

Happy Feet, Babe and Mad Max.

725

:

What a catalogue.

726

:

Ugh, what a crazy situation.

727

:

The end.

728

:

Bye bye.

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for Parts Department
Parts Department
Justin Brouillette (Portland CNC) and Jem Freeman (Like Butter) discuss CNC machines, their product design and manufacturing businesses, and every kind of tool that they fancy.

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Jem Freeman

Co-founder and director of Like Butter, a CNC focussed timber design and manufacturing business in their purpose-built solar-powered workshop. Castlemaine, VIC, Australia.
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Justin Brouillette

Owner of PDX CNC