Episode 18

18 - Lubricated Naysayer

Quotient talk resurfaces, Trouble in Baby Pants Land? Constraints prove beneficial and multiple book recommendations.

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Titles

  • The Nimble Slippery Butter
  • Lubricated Naysayer
  • Trouble in Baby Pants Space/Land
  • Jem Says it Gets Better



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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

Transcript
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my audio's not working Why?

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No work.

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it worked?

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I don't understand.

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It's like super quiet.

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Can you hear me?

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Maybe now God.

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Oh weird.

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Hm.

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Wait a second.

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We just stopped for some reason.

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that was weird.

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said it uploaded and then it stopped.

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Now wait.

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Yeah, we're not started again.

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I wouldn't think that that would cause it to.

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Ooh.

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workable?

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I can crank my input levels.

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I like that you've written, Justin's clap in air table in the correct spot.

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And I've literally just like scrolled it with a bio on my plywood desk surface.

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Wait you wrote on your

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desk

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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with what

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With a pen.

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does it come off or you just keep writing over

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just keep writing notes on there.

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It's all sorts of weird things written on there.

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it's yours.

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Do what you want, man.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's why I own a wide belt sander, just so you know.

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let me take this table down real quick.

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Can clean my furniture.

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I need to clean my desk.

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That's like a, that's a clip in itself.

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How

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Cool good, good.

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I've had a pretty weird week.

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Hmm.

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we haven't chatted about this for a while, but I've been loving quotient.

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Been really getting into question

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You've been using it with clients.

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Yeah,

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tell me that.

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That's tantalizing.

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well, because of our kind of redistribution of roles here,

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it's meant that I've, I'm now the sales and marketing guy.

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And so I'm now solely responsible for quoting and quoting output.

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Whereas before I had Sarah's support in outputting the quotes so often I

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would generate the numbers and she would build them in zero or in quote.

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She would send them on.

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Whereas now I'm, I'm the guy checking them reviewing and then building them question.

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And I'm just really loving the you know, pinging them off to clients and

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being able to tell when they open them or don't open them and how many times

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they've come back and looked at it.

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And it's just, I

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Yeah.

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super useful and just, you know, just the simple stuff that we didn't have before

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of being able to add in options and

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itemize stuff and just drag things around and kind of quickly customize a template

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to make it more attractive for a customer's awesome.

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Yeah.

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I love that too.

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it's funny because my nature is to go, oh, I wish it was better in this way.

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That's why I end up being on, you know, on like an Autodesk feedback

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group where then I'm like, oh, this is a little too much feedback now.

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Like , I've, I've dug myself too deep.

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but for the, I think I've used it since 2018 it's honestly like

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the place where I go and find the most reliable info about a job.

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yeah.

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Right.

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it's just always there, like all the important that needs to

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get translated to the client.

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I try to get into the quote so that it's there as like a contract.

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Right.

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that's where we agree on things.

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So yeah, it's been good.

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I enjoy it works pretty well with air table surprisingly and like

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Zier all those kind of things too.

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Yeah.

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Have any comments from clients

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yeah.

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Had some good feedback from clients.

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we haven't integrated it into air table yet.

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I think it's got a couple of hooks in it, but, we've kind of held off

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until we, we weren't sure whether we were gonna commit to it, but

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now that I'm driving it, I'm keen.

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I'm gonna hang onto it.

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I think.

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do you have any issues with the fact that it doesn't generate a tax

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invoice, is that an issue for you?

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Oh, well, I don't know if we talked about in particular has no sales tax.

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It's a unique one of two states in America that doesn't have sales tax.

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I've lived in other states and it's pain in the ass, but I never

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have to deal with that ever.

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Okay.

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yeah, I guess not, I don't know.

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I don't know those caveats.

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People are wanting like a, PDF or something for their bookkeeping.

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Yeah.

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So, but businesses and companies, particularly if we send them something

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out of quote, and it's just a quote they

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can't put that through their accounting system to be paid by the powers that

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be, because it's not a, a tax invoice.

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So then we have to turn it into a tax invoice in

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Yeah.

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but that sounds like that's not an issue.

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So people just pay directly from your quotient

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sorry.

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Sorry.

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I missed understood what you said.

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No, that is still a definitely a friction point for me.

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I also just take it as a point of making sure that everything's right

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before I go and invoice them so they don't end up paying something.

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Well, there, there is no way currently that I understand how to automatically

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have somebody pay I've I've talked to,

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Please hold while Justin readjusts his menagerie

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quotient about what I want is the client to be able to immediately pay

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a deposit without leaving the page.

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Yeah, that'd be lovely.

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That's what I want.

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I don't want 'em to necessarily pay the whole thing.

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I want them.

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Without any other thing before they leave and they don't have to go find an email or

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something so far no way to do that, if you connect quotient in zero, you can do that.

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Create invoice thing in zero, and then I go and edit it

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and then I send it to 'em and

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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I've just put in our banking details down the bottom and

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written the language the next step is accept this quote, and then here are our

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banking details to pay a 50% deposit.

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When that deposit then clears into zero that's when I generate a zero invoice and

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send them a receipt, basically with a,

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a tax invoice, but,

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There's gotta be

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a pretty decent way to like use the API to even through zero

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create an email that's generates.

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Something payable,

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Yeah,

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ties back.

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It there's gotta be a way.

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I

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we don't do enough volume that it's like, I'm not sitting here

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throughout a week going like, God did I have so many invoices to,

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to make like My stack of money.

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Now for me, it's more about that.

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Like you said, being on the same page, so there's no hindrance to conversion.

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It's just like, cool.

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I know what I need to do next.

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Yeah,

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for

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some money.

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for all of the years that I've used it, that is the thing people love quotient.

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I've basically always used it.

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I, my first, like maybe 10 quotes, I think I sent, created in Excel and then

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I'd make a PDF and then email it to them.

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And that took forever.

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And I was like, this has to change.

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And basically since then I've used quotient people just love it.

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And, and it's almost like a thing we can.

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we make it a incredibly painless online, contemporary, quoting and payment process

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because it's pretty rare, I think.

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but the pain point is the break between quotes and paying for me,

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that's the only time get confused they're like, where do I pay?

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You know?

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And I've tried to put in the language, like, you'll get a separate email

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with a a payable link and yeah,

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Oh, cool.

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work,

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in done.

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Yeah.

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I,

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Awesome.

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Well,

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it was really loud.

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Was it loud for you?

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God.

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I

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as

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on my side.

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serve you, right?

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Very good.

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So can you just park in any audio from your side now?

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I lie.

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I've never done this before, so hopefully I didn't mess up my tracks,

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but I have a separate track for sound effects and I have stream deck piped

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in, so I can do, little that action, but then I just threw an application

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in for script and I live created that and then connected to same track.

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I've been feeling incredibly stressed and.

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Just like, I can't get everything, not even close to like what I need

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to get accomplished every day.

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Yeah.

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and haven't found any good solutions there.

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you know, we're getting a few more inquiries.

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I'm working on some trickier quotes where I can't get material vendors to reply

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Mm,

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for chasing, the, the big news of today, unfortunately, which this could change

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for all of you that have purchased a dust boot right now, they seem to have

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missed our custom order of strip brushes.

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When I checked in and they're trying to tell me it's going to be

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12 weeks before they can do them.

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Trying to figure out how to resolve that.

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So that obviously everybody that ordered in June doesn't have to

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wait 12 more weeks yeah, never fun.

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I just, yeah,

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frustrating.

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So you don't no solution on that at this stage,

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TBC.

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My thoughts today were, so the custom brush is a little bit longer than

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what we can get from standard lengths.

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So they're like maybe inch increments or something like that.

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And we wanted a little bit longer than three inches so they

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were like, cool, we'll do that.

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Somehow that didn't happen so we can get the three inch brush now,

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by Friday, my thought is the best thing I can think of is the best

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for them best for the customers.

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And hopefully best for us too, is I'm gonna reach out to all the people that

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have ordered and say, here's the scenario.

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Give people the option to wait for the custom one to come in or to make

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a off the shelf, free inch brush, and then replace it with the custom one.

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When.

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That comes in and hopefully not get angry emails.

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But seems like most people will be,

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I think given that most of the people who have probably bought in at this stage are

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sort of the early adopters fans of PDX, already friends, friends of the brand.

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I would've thought you'd be fine.

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Yeah.

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And I think, yeah, people will appreciate a little manufacturing update and I

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think everyone, I think everyone like all my clients and suppliers now, I feel

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like everyone's on the same page of.

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Wow.

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The last few years have been hard and this is kind of the new paradigm

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now of like, it's just harder to get stuff it's slower to get stuff.

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And we all just continue to get along and like, understand it.

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It's more difficult, like

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what's frustrating about this one is it's not even like, oh, we can't get something.

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They

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know.

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Yeah.

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ma made a mistake,

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which.

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Yeah, Gotcha.

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Understandable, but like the guy had made multiple commitments through

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the process that it wasn't a problem and they'd be shipped by now.

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So

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anyway, that's, it's stressful because I'm always stressed a little

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bit about going on vacation or leaving for, you know, a period of time.

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And while this was somewhat unplanned to go to the UK next week, it of

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course felt really close to the time we could be getting the brushes and

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then be assembling and be shipping.

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And

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now it's like feeling like we're trying to triage a, bigger problem

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than just having stuff arrive and I guess I just have to go, what can I do?

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You know, like have to, I have to go and

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Yeah.

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I wouldn't worry about it.

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It'll work out

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I know you totally know what you mean though.

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Like I took a day off on Monday this week, my daughter's birthday

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and just, yeah, one day at home.

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I mean, I had other stuff riding, writing on my mind, but just,

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yeah, one day outta the office meant that I came back on Tuesday.

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I was like, whoa, I've got so much to get through.

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How am I gonna possibly catch up?

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I think I was already feeling behind at the end of last week.

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And so.

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Yeah.

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Missing that one day kind of, it was a bit overwhelming, but

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just, you

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Yeah, for sure.

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get through what you get through.

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And,

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Uhhuh

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I think that's been one of the benefits of running a default

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diary for me is just like, cool.

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I'm behind.

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Yes.

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But I'm still only gonna quote for two hours.

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Cause that's, that's the rule

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mm-hmm.

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is more important than trying to like play crazy catch up and then

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let other things fall behind.

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So

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yeah.

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you ever have people checking in on their quote

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Oh yeah.

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Yeah.

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So then you're not probably as sorry.

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I like two hours a

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no, but I wouldn't have an issue saying that.

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I've thought I haven't solved this, but I'd love to solve this.

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I'd love to have some sort of transparent.

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Queue system where a customer can almost see how many RFQ we've got

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or like where they are in the queue

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that would be, yeah.

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For.

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and like, cool.

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I could, I've submitted an RFQ to like butter and I can see that,

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you know, they're based on the rate they're getting through them.

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They're probably not gonna get to mine until next week.

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Yeah.

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Oh, I have simple version of that.

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You could, could you number RF fews or jobs at all?

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Do we number them?

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Yeah.

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of a job number or

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something?

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yeah, yeah.

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Like I number 'em as they arrive from the form I was just thinking you could

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do like a, I dunno if you've have these things, but like you go to a service

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desk and like a department store and they're like now serving number,

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Now serving Quote 4376.

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right?

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Like you could just put a little PA that on your website of like

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what number you're working on and have it stream from air table.

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Like here's the active,

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This is the active quote.

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Yeah.

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they can see how far away they are.

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Like the, the bit that, where that falls down though, is

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that we do qualify pretty hard.

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So it's like, yes, you submitted an RFQ, but like we might have already

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either pushed it down the priority list or you're about to get an email

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saying, no, sorry, we can't help.

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So

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Or, or maybe you can get Jay to do some magic.

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And the other version of this would be like when they, if you send

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like an auto receipt say currently, it takes about 27 hours to get

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a next step, you know, response.

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And you just average the time from first change to next.

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no, I'd love

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I want that too, if you get that figured out,

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Forgotten what I was

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uh, on that, on note Like I've mentioned it before, but here it's

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kind of a, they're a newish provider.

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At least they've been marketing hard to a lot of people, but send, cut, send

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is like, maybe you've seen 'em online.

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They're like, you basically just send DXF and they laser cut or

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water jet or whatever metal parts.

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So we we've been prototyping stuff with them.

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And they, we were talking today when you make an order, they have like, what we

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were joking is like the pizza tracker.

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So like you order a pizza from dominoes they have a tracker, like

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they have that for their parts.

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So like of the parts we have being worked on, like, it shows us the exact

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time they move through each step.

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And it says my parts are being powder cutted right now since

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the eighth, which is cool.

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And then what time they expect it to ship and it's yeah, it's

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very, I go back there and check.

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It's almost like shipping tracking where now I'm like, where's my parts at.

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That's cool.

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I've wanted to do that with our air table build cuz we move jobs

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through production statuses as they go through different processes.

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Yeah.

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And I remember we looked at it maybe last year and we couldn't work out

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an easy way to sort of share an air table listing without kind of

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oversharing, but don't think it'd be too hard to make a little pizza track

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of with what we've got in air table.

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If someone could go into their job and go cool.

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Oh, it's in the spray booth this week or?

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I suppose the most minimal ver I've thought the same thing,

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and I couldn't think of any way to make it private in any way.

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I guess there's no like pass wording, I guess the only way I can think of doing

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it for us, if we ever wanted to go into that process, which I don't know how

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beneficial it is, honestly, for us on, it'd be interesting for the client if

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they actually touch did it, but like you could just have the job number and

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then like, As like an embed on a site.

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And then when you type that, look it up, then you could see the

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status, like what step it's in.

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And that would, I mean, if somebody else sees that, it's like, oh no,

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Oh

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oh, it's in spray job 9 99.

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Like

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yeah, totally.

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You could have an air table view just with the production status

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views and the job number views.

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Like no names

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that people just have to know their job number.

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Hmm.

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I reckon you're onto something there.

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And then, you know, it's, it's only gonna work for people who are kind

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of like proactive and interested enough to go and look at it anyway.

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So if the interface is a bit weird,

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so be it to start with.

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yeah, yeah.

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I mean all those kind of little things, I think I think they're like stickiness for

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people that are potential or encourages them to be potential repeat customers.

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Like it's, you're increasing the experience, especially.

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I mean, maybe you feel the same, but like here people don't really,

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there's not a lot of embracive technology in like web things for

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fabricators or people that manufacture.

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It's just not, there's not a mix of that.

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So I, you know, that we have any of this pay by web or quote by web stuff is

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already a huge step ahead.

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I feel like.

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And that kind of thing.

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awesome.

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Yeah.

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I have a generic, large question.

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Be a little shift here.

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Generic

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I was generic.

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I have a generic, large question.

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I AI have large generic question.

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Do

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generic, large question.

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my generic, large question is.

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Do you as a company still feel nimble

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Ooh, that is a large question.

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or do you think, I guess there's two sides.

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Do you think your team feels that way?

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And do you feel that way?

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Shoot, shoot, man.

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I should have read the show notes before I got online.

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I'm gonna say less, less and less.

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So as we become more structured, I think that naturally phases out the old butter.

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That was incredibly nimble.

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This was pretty butter.

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We, yeah.

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Used to pride ourselves on being nimble and just being able to chase

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any sort of work any direction.

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Oh, you want a fiber optic artwork?

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Yeah, sure.

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We'll make one of those and spend 18 months doing it.

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And then, oh, you want a little plywood thing for your market still?

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Yeah, sure will do that too.

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We'll do it all at the same time, not sleep.

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Yep.

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And I think, yeah, as we've grown up a bit and started valuing things like

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stability and sleep and not working seven days a week, I'd say that's at the expense

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of being nimble and sort of defining who we are and what we do and what our

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specialty is and slowly understanding.

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The more we specialize the easier it is.

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And the more work we get by like cutting off opportunities, we're

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just finding more work basically.

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So that's been a really sort of unintuitive, interesting

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insight as we've moved along.

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So yeah.

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To answer your question.

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No,

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That last little bit struck me.

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I've always, I think I learned a second year of school this lesson that they'd

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very intentionally tried to teach us of.

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Like they gave us this super constrained, super small site to design a house for

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which you don't do much house design in architecture school, surprisingly.

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But it was, it was I think by definition too small for the city.

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And so the, the goal was like, try to prove them wrong, right.

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Make a house here.

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That feels good.

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And, and why does it feel good?

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And I love that that's like the thing I love about design

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is the more constraints often.

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It like turns into a better project.

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And what you

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totally.

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almost that same exact thing your team and processes being more constrained

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to certain types of clients or work has proved to be better for you.

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Which is interesting.

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I, I don't think I would guess that to be the case, but makes

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this feels really unintuitive to me.

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And I think it's been a challenge for me and some of the other sort

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of long term staff of having come, you know, spent years in that model

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of just like we can do anything.

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Mm-hmm

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It's a big shift of in thinking to.

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No, this is what we do, and this is what we do well, so we're just gonna do that.

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And no, we're actually gonna say no, no to that RFQ.

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Cause it doesn't meet a certain set of criteria, but it's oh, but it looks

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like a really good job, but yeah, but it doesn't fit these, our new targets.

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yep.

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So yeah, pretty weird, but effective is what it seems to be

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effective is what it seems to be.

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Wise words from Yoda master Jem.

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Good backwards.

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It's It's it's an Australianism I guess

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it is

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now,

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Out man editing last week's podcast to the listeners out there last

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week was the first time that I did the cutting of the audio.

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And I had to cut out so many weird, awkward pauses of mine.

Speaker:

Yep.

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Yep.

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I, I cut out.

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We both do that a lot.

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I, my friend had recommended to cut out more pauses when I sent

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him a draft of our first episode.

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And he was like, there's like a lot of pauses there.

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You should cut out.

Speaker:

He was like, really nice about it.

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And I was like, okay.

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So yeah, I bet most of the editing ends up being cutting out

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the pauses between us thinking.

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And

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so it

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yeah.

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Yeah.

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hi, have a.

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I,

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And then, you know, like it doesn't feel weird naturally when we're

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talking,

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no, I know,

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and, you know, I don't know.

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Maybe it's not as weird as we think.

Speaker:

And like my podcast app actually cuts out silence for me, is interesting

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as it's playing back overcast.

Speaker:

Awesome app.

Speaker:

I love it.

Speaker:

Weird.

Speaker:

How efficient have you?

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

No

Speaker:

good.

Speaker:

my AI

Speaker:

for

Speaker:

app.

Speaker:

Yeah, it it's a lot of, a lot of that

Speaker:

Where do you stand on NEB ability?

Speaker:

NB ability I think honestly way, way too nimble still for all the reasons that

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you've just described as being good.

Speaker:

I would love to have found more of a specialty, I suppose,

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that continues to grow.

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Whereas whenever we get slow, I tend with job shop work and we need it.

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I tend to start opening.

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Focus again.

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then we're doing a bunch of small jobs that don't flow.

Speaker:

Well, they don't, I suppose one of those things, right.

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You could focus on is like machine set up.

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That's similar all the time.

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Like if we have to tear down a whole thing and set up a new thing or like

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if you'd probably want to clean the machine out if you're doing aluminum to

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like stainless and just all those little things that like, if you only did, for

Speaker:

example, aluminum jobs, you wouldn't need

Speaker:

yeah, yeah.

Speaker:

eat that overhead cost, but yeah, way too nimble.

Speaker:

I've been thinking about that lately more and more , how do I

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cut things out of this business?

Speaker:

Like the thing my friend always says is you have all these

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fishing lines, you know, in.

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All these different ideas, digital products and physical products,

Speaker:

or two brands and job shop work, and YouTube videos and courses.

Speaker:

And it's just honestly overwhelming at this point.

Speaker:

Like I just need to start to kill off something I think, or the alternative

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is to hire somebody to help with it.

Speaker:

But none of those feel like they would support somebody doing that.

Speaker:

So it's really, I don't really have any answers to it cause it feels like

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each one of them has good opportunity.

Speaker:

And

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

mean, I'm kind of a broken record about this, so

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no, I, I totally relate though.

Speaker:

Cause it feels so wrong to try and cut any of it out.

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Like it feels so unintuitive and backwards from the way that we've grown

Speaker:

mm-hmm,

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to then start saying no to something that you've always done or yeah, just cuing

Speaker:

off a whole headline feels really, yeah.

Speaker:

Feels really weird.

Speaker:

It's hard to reconcile.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

I mean, it even feels even in the microcosm of the last two months of having

Speaker:

what was really quite a big change in product sales for us, with the dust boot,

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even though it's not a huge number, it was a big change because normally we sell

Speaker:

like calendars and some digital stuff.

Speaker:

And once in a while something else, that's it was a big change and it got me, like,

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it was like, all right, since October we've been doing this, this other product

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design thing, maybe it's paying off now.

Speaker:

And then those sales have slowed.

Speaker:

And when we would already like, kind of shifted away from job, I was like, did I

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just kill off the job shop, work that now we need at this point Yeah, just makes you

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feel like you've made the wrong decision.

Speaker:

I think in those moments, a series of decisions and, and confused, like

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we talked about advertising, it's like the advertising doesn't really

Speaker:

work to continue, hopefully pushing sales further for like, for products.

Speaker:

I kind of just fill in between all those things at the moment, like, which

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one of these, which, so what should I focus on, you know, this week or today?

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Yeah.

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I mean, I think that's what you just described as an argument for consist,

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like consistently keeping the job, shop, work going as your sort of backbone.

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But that thing of like, you know, not spending weeks or months just

Speaker:

focused on product design, because then of course your job shop

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work will suffer and fall off.

Speaker:

I'm gonna sound like a broken record too, but like, you know, quoting

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job shop work every day, as well as moving the product design forward.

Speaker:

So you've got this like regular flow of bread and butter work

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Yeah,

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Yeah.

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Cause of the biggest change in our business, I think over the

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last year is just the flattening of the wave we used to be so up

Speaker:

that sounds amazing.

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chase the work, we get too much work.

Speaker:

We stop quoting and just that constant cycle, whereas we've yeah.

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Through consistency.

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And sort of focus.

Speaker:

I think we've found that we can, like, we can see it in at like real graphs,

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like that way of just flattening off and it's still up and down.

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Of course it is.

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It's always gonna be up and down, but like it's a way flatter line and it's

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trending in an upwards direction.

Speaker:

So yeah, I think we're on the right track, but.

Speaker:

You know, honestly, you having said that the last few weeks or just

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since we've been doing the podcast, we, you know, we knew each other

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from messaging on like Instagram before I think we'd started slacking.

Speaker:

But not super well.

Speaker:

And it kind of always figured we had pretty similar businesses

Speaker:

and you were a little ahead and, experience in progress and things.

Speaker:

But you having said that, that there's like a pathway to this making sense,

Speaker:

you know, like you're having success with all these things through your

Speaker:

coaching, through your focusing on certain types of jobs and work.

Speaker:

It's like, it's pretty encouraging.

Speaker:

You know, it feels like a light at the end of the tunnel of like, I wouldn't

Speaker:

say this is the low point by any means, but it's like just really challenging

Speaker:

to be where I'm at at the moment.

Speaker:

I feel like and I I've always felt.

Speaker:

It's a lot of opportunity, right?

Speaker:

It's the conversation I have with my wife all the time.

Speaker:

It's this is gonna happen someday.

Speaker:

Right?

Speaker:

Like one of these things is gonna work out

Speaker:

than it is now.

Speaker:

And I'll just, you know, I can keep, just keep saying, gem says it gets better.

Speaker:

Yeah with focus.

Speaker:

I think it gets better.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

it's not like we had a natural progression to this point.

Speaker:

We've, you know, we flatlined for years in terms of our progress.

Speaker:

And you know, probably from the tier the 10 year point, we were like very

Speaker:

flat as a business, just like not really changing much, very similar

Speaker:

sales doing very similar work.

Speaker:

And then, yeah, it's only really in the last year or so that we've kind

Speaker:

of accelerated that and changed things dramatically and have seen the result,

Speaker:

started seeing the results of that.

Speaker:

And obviously we've still got a long way to go, but yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

so we just got in an email parts department, podcast editing,

Speaker:

so somebody can edit for us.

Speaker:

I think they were listening in somehow to this, recording.

Speaker:

We just got an email.

Speaker:

This man offers to edit our podcast for us.

Speaker:

So I guess we don't have do that anymore.

Speaker:

great.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I, I'm not gonna give 'em free advertising, but they, they claim

Speaker:

to be doctors of, of this medium.

Speaker:

Is it personally addressed,

Speaker:

Yeah, I think yeah, yeah, they did.

Speaker:

Oh, I think they, they filled in the first line and then I

Speaker:

think you got the email too.

Speaker:

filled in the first line and then the rest of it, or maybe they have like a mad lib.

Speaker:

They're gonna remove all the, all the OS ums, another mistake.

Speaker:

So obviously don't list our podcast cause we already have that

Speaker:

done with Don and his minions.

Speaker:

This man doesn't even listen.

Speaker:

Elaborate.

Speaker:

Don't worry, you won't see this "doctor" any more.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I guess I have a recommendation from somebody.

Speaker:

I think that listens of message back and forth forever, but is.

Speaker:

Objective frames or ADJ frames on Instagram recommended this book.

Speaker:

After we were talking about all the sales stuff called boss life, colon

Speaker:

surviving my own small business, which is a little bit of a tantalizing

Speaker:

headline for, for me at the moment.

Speaker:

And so I was working on refinishing my stairs this weekend, and he

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messaged that and I was like, ah, I'll listen to this as an audio book.

Speaker:

And it's a little dry the guy similar to like, if you've read the E myth,

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like the stories are not great.

Speaker:

Like the writing isn't like amazing, but the point is more like he,

Speaker:

the guy goes through in details.

Speaker:

Like at this point today, when I, came to work that my bank balance was

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this amount, it was like 130, $2,000.

Speaker:

And that'll last us 14 days if I don't do anything else.

Speaker:

And I was like, whoa, that's some heavy burn

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

So I haven't gotten too far through it, but.

Speaker:

was a good recommendation.

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

I'll check

Speaker:

probably listen to it on the plane

Speaker:

Yeah, I've got a book I wanna read recommended by a friend

Speaker:

last week called less is more,

Speaker:

ah,

Speaker:

doing his PhD and architectural de growth or economic de growth

Speaker:

in the field of architecture.

Speaker:

And.

Speaker:

Got chatting to him and I, I wanna chat to him more about it cause I'm intrigued.

Speaker:

And I wanna read this book, so I'll report back on it once I've read it.

Speaker:

what intrigues me about it is if the, I think the concept is I think

Speaker:

that economically the world has to slow down if we're gonna survive.

Speaker:

And I'm intrigued in terms of how that relates to at a micro level, to

Speaker:

a small business like ours, that's trying to grow, but also trying to make

Speaker:

furniture in a sort of low carbon model.

Speaker:

How does, you know, if someone buys a like butter set of shelves instead of an

Speaker:

Ikea set of shelves, is that, and we're we're using carbon neutral manufacturing.

Speaker:

Methodologies does, does our growth is our growth offset by the fact that we're.

Speaker:

Doing that I don't know.

Speaker:

Anyway, it's a complex idea and I'm interested to explore it more, but

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Yeah.

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back on that.

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I don't think, I dunno if we've talked about this directly, but I have a very,

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like, I've gotten over it to a certain degree, but part of what was hard for

Speaker:

me to make things for other people, when I started Portland, CNC was the

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feeling of this doesn't need to exist

Speaker:

Mm.

Speaker:

in an ethical sense, a certain material, a way of making.

Speaker:

Like temporal things, like making things for burning man.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

I, you know, the last one particularly I've never actually made something

Speaker:

to my knowledge for burning man, but I get quotes like every year

Speaker:

RFQ and my thought is, they're gonna have this done by somebody unless

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like, I'm not gonna talk them out.

Speaker:

Right.

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Somebody's gonna do this work.

Speaker:

So that's my only excuse for quoting it is to try to make it as minimal

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of an impact as possible somehow

Speaker:

lesser material.

Speaker:

But otherwise I just feel terrible about it.

Speaker:

And I'm like, why?

Speaker:

You know, like even, even making your own products, sometimes I'm like, I don't

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wanna make this thing, you know, like, and I have to like almost talk myself

Speaker:

into when we have to make something right.

Speaker:

for somebody else in this business,

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

We in, I think 2019, we made a decision to stop serving event companies or

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people that were making like one off props for events, or if an RFQ

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came through where it was clear that it was probably for an event, we

Speaker:

go back asking the question, cool.

Speaker:

What's happening with it afterwards?

Speaker:

You know, is this just going in a skip in a bin?

Speaker:

Or is it being reused and sort of yeah.

Speaker:

Then qualifying that job in or out based on their reuse policy, which

Speaker:

feels a bit presumptuous, but we were just, we were just sick of seeing,

Speaker:

you know, we were, this is before we turned, it was around the same

Speaker:

time that we turned off MDF as well.

Speaker:

So we were just, you know, making these, you know, MDF boxes for an

Speaker:

event that we knew it was a big cosmetics show or something, or, you

Speaker:

know, pretty confident that was all gonna go and there'd be afterwards.

Speaker:

Unfortunately really profitable too.

Speaker:

Those event things.

Speaker:

work.

Speaker:

It's quick turnaround, you know, they'll pay a

Speaker:

any of Yeah,

Speaker:

quick turn and yeah.

Speaker:

But I suppose, yeah, I get what you're saying about, if you take on the work,

Speaker:

you can try and do it as best you can.

Speaker:

But our take on that was like, cool.

Speaker:

Let's just say no and just make it harder for those

Speaker:

yeah, sure.

Speaker:

harder for those people.

Speaker:

But yeah, it's an interesting conundrum.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I don't yeah, there's no, I I, I kind of do a slippery slope thing for myself

Speaker:

in those circumstances where it's like, well, if I say no to this, then I have

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to say no to that and that, and that.

Speaker:

And it's like all of a sudden I've you know, reverse, reversed

Speaker:

myself out of any profitable work.

Speaker:

Yep.

Speaker:

and this profession's still gonna exist.

Speaker:

You know what I mean?

Speaker:

It's like, and yeah, I don't know.

Speaker:

We, we do a lot of efforts to try to like minimize waste and always try

Speaker:

to like offer it as reuse as much as possible when there is drop and stuff.

Speaker:

But

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

at some point it's unfortunate to just, it is what it is.

Speaker:

I don't know.

Speaker:

Try to use the best things you can.

Speaker:

It it's not keeping me up at night, but I definitely don't

Speaker:

feel good about some of it.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

You need a little cricket sample on your stream deck.

Speaker:

So when we're quiet for too long, you can just say

Speaker:

yes.

Speaker:

Has um, has your eCommerce sales picked up?

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Nice.

Speaker:

July finished.

Speaker:

July was pretty flat.

Speaker:

August started in like literally from day.in August was just like

Speaker:

This is my wife's theory.

Speaker:

People got paid

Speaker:

maybe.

Speaker:

Get that money.

Speaker:

They, or paid their rent.

Speaker:

They paid their rent.

Speaker:

And then they're like, I have a little money left.

Speaker:

Let's get a bet.

Speaker:

poor bit poor bet.

Speaker:

Hasn't we haven't told a bit yet.

Speaker:

Ah, somebody buy a bet help.

Speaker:

'em out.

Speaker:

No, it's been a strong, well, what's it been and a bit, but

Speaker:

yeah, it was good last week.

Speaker:

Solid.

Speaker:

What do you do?

Speaker:

What I, you always have job shop work, but do you get to the point where there's

Speaker:

not enough production work ever anymore?

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

then, then what?

Speaker:

De facto, like, is it R and D time for everybody?

Speaker:

Is it cleaning?

Speaker:

Is it learning?

Speaker:

What's the next step?

Speaker:

It's usually, it's not that production work ever comes to a grinding hole.

Speaker:

It's more cuz we have four people.

Speaker:

Like five, typically.

Speaker:

So five people on the floor at the moment.

Speaker:

It's more that it'll, they'll come to an afternoon where we've

Speaker:

mismanaged the workflow a little bit.

Speaker:

And one of those people will be like I'm a bit slow.

Speaker:

I've, I'm running out of things to work on.

Speaker:

And depending on who that is, it'll be like, cool or redirect

Speaker:

into R and D time or redirect into sales or helping the sales or, you

Speaker:

know, there's always stuff to do.

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

and I think it's dependent on who it is.

Speaker:

Who's running polite in terms

Speaker:

of where they get redirected, but yeah.

Speaker:

Everyone's typically got a sort of secondary focus, I think.

Speaker:

So like if John runs out of things to machine, he's got a long list of R and

Speaker:

D to work on, so he'll switch to that.

Speaker:

And

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

if Aaron runs outta production, he'll come in and help with sales.

Speaker:

And so, yeah.

Speaker:

It works out.

Speaker:

Interesting.

Speaker:

but yeah, we're trying to find that balance, always trying to find

Speaker:

that balance of like how much we're quoting, how much we're feeding

Speaker:

in versus how much we can output.

Speaker:

And that, you know, that comes back to quoting the right sort of work too.

Speaker:

Cuz some jobs will just slow us down and kind of get in the way out there

Speaker:

and things can grant into a halt just cuz of the type of work we're trying

Speaker:

to do in large volume versus other jobs that kind of just slip through easily

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

are well lubricated through the system and kind of flow through nicely and get

Speaker:

done and out the door and put, yeah know.

Speaker:

what's interesting.

Speaker:

thinking through what you were saying, but also kind of at the same time

Speaker:

thinking about that book I was listening to and how you know objective frames.

Speaker:

I forget your name, man.

Speaker:

I forget.

Speaker:

I hate about Instagram, how you can't see.

Speaker:

Oh, just shit, Jim.

Speaker:

I hate how on Instagram, like you can't like, see people's real names, you know?

Speaker:

So like, I think we introduced ourselves, this guy that recommended the book

Speaker:

forever ago, years ago, but it's like, it's there anymore, so I don't remember

Speaker:

do the same thing.

Speaker:

I'm like scrolling back.

Speaker:

Who's

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

back far enough.

Speaker:

wanna like make a note.

Speaker:

But.

Speaker:

Sorry, don't remind me your name.

Speaker:

I'll have to message you.

Speaker:

But it was a good recommendation because I was talking about sales in the, you

Speaker:

know, I think in chapter two or whatever, he's talking about having to hire sales

Speaker:

for the first time in 15 years, because he literally got carpal tunnel was

Speaker:

like the reason he was quoting so many, his commitment was to quote 24, within

Speaker:

24 hours of receiving an, an inquiry.

Speaker:

And so he would stay up just crazy hours trying to like pump out these.

Speaker:

And so it's an interesting, he discusses like, it's helpful for me to hear

Speaker:

how he went through, even if it was like 20 years ago, going from I'm the

Speaker:

only, like our discussion of we're special, nobody's gonna learn this like

Speaker:

his first person was an in-house hi, like shift from the floor to sales.

Speaker:

That person did.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker:

And then he also hired somebody external for the next person.

Speaker:

And just hearing the difference of those people and like how we brought 'em on

Speaker:

and like having no idea how to do it.

Speaker:

And just his hiring practices that frankly sucked at first and like slowly learned

Speaker:

how to, you know, get better at it.

Speaker:

Not that mine are good, but I dunno, just helpful to hear somebody

Speaker:

else, the process, I suppose.

Speaker:

That's why people wanna listen to this is they hear us complaining about

Speaker:

our problems and trying figure out

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Oh, nice.

Speaker:

Interesting.

Speaker:

So when are you after the UK next week?

Speaker:

So you're away or away for a

Speaker:

week?

Speaker:

all the, the work week.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I still don't really know what I'm doing there.

Speaker:

Like it's some kind of feedback, discussion thing for fusion, but

Speaker:

As bigger

Speaker:

about no, it's,

Speaker:

it's called a manufacturing.

Speaker:

Synco

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

know a few other people that are going, which is nice now.

Speaker:

Sweet.

Speaker:

and debating, we'll see, I may do do it may not, but I might try to make

Speaker:

like a little vlog outta the trip

Speaker:

Hmm,

Speaker:

keeping myself busy while traveling alone, since it's not like an actual

Speaker:

vacation might post that depending on what I can share from Autodesk and

Speaker:

otherwise who knows I guess on that note, we're trying to record a podcast

Speaker:

next week, but I also dunno my schedule.

Speaker:

Jim and I live very far apart in time.

Speaker:

So if there's not one, that's why we couldn't figure it out.

Speaker:

we'll work it out.

Speaker:

I reckon.

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

I, I don't know why by the way dog is here today.

Speaker:

If

Speaker:

you got a dog.

Speaker:

Oh, Hey.

Speaker:

do you wanna meet Jim?

Speaker:

Oh,

Speaker:

hello.

Speaker:

Mom is gone.

Speaker:

She's coming to work with.

Speaker:

How you Awesome.

Speaker:

Should we wrap it up?

Speaker:

mm-hmm,

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

wrap it up.

Speaker:

what are you and hunter doing this afternoon?

Speaker:

Gotta do a few more tests uh, tweaks

Speaker:

Boots.

Speaker:

the final boot stuff,

Speaker:

It's a boot.

Speaker:

we're basically just still tweaking the last weird little, like

Speaker:

literally choosing the drills.

Speaker:

That are undersized for press fitting unique to the way that the plastic

Speaker:

interacts with pins and magnets and stuff, because they either

Speaker:

go in and stay or they come back out and like yeah, minor details.

Speaker:

The material, two sheets of a, the material we've ordered as varied

Speaker:

by 40 th which is a pretty giant amount when you're considering four.

Speaker:

So it's 0.04 It's like a millimeter.

Speaker:

And

Speaker:

Oh,

Speaker:

that's a pretty giant amount when you're trying to like, do our little

Speaker:

side drilling operation or like, it basically invalidates all of the champs

Speaker:

and if you don't get it right.

Speaker:

stupid stuff like that, that needs to be made into a process.

Speaker:

Somehow.

Speaker:

with.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

How about you?

Speaker:

Well, your, your week's done.

Speaker:

Well, I'm not quite, I've got,

Speaker:

As I

Speaker:

got a a day of quotes and drawings ahead of me.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

Looking forward to it.

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

good.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Nice.

Speaker:

Nice.

Speaker:

Well, hopefully I'll, I'll see you in, I'll be in another continent

Speaker:

See in London.

Speaker:

See, I'll see.

Speaker:

You'll you in the

Speaker:

Beautiful.

Speaker:

Thanks man.

Speaker:

Bye

Speaker:

turn?

Speaker:

My, whatever I said into like a Bel, like a last time, I can just do it for you.

Speaker:

It was just slowing the pitch in um, no, not the pitch.

Speaker:

Just the playback speed in the script.

Speaker:

did it in that sort of clunky broken way.

Speaker:

Just an audio experiment is what this is.

Speaker:

Is that all I am to you?

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About the Podcast

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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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About your hosts

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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

Founder of Portland CNC & Nack