Episode 26

26 - Building a Shack in the Woods

Jem contemplates a shack in the woods, September product launch review, and goals for October.

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.

  • Product launch Sep?
  • LB: ⭕️
  • PDX CNC: ✅ Duct Tower



  • Goals for October
  • ThreadBoard
  • ATC Pedestals




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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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loading up?

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Ooh,

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Every time a , new setting.

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So was exciting.

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Yes.

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You can tell how, how well I spend my time during the week, can't you?

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Doing productive things.

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Oh, well I think I worked on the mill room.

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In effectively to just like organize some stuff too.

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So didn't mill anything.

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Nice.

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Who would do that?

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did you get your pallet set up?

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I got the cam.

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I wanted to get, I basically, before I tore her down, what was

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there, I wanted to like, make sure that I knew what I was gonna do.

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So its close.

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But, you know, today, hopefully that's kind of my hopeful end of the day goal.

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Get it set up.

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Yeah.

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Cool.

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Oh yeah.

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So I forgot to say good morning.

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Good morning, Dustin.

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Good morning.

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For those not watching this there's now a keyboard on Gem Side

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that can play the sound clips.

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I'm all flustered.

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I was gonna say now mine won't work.

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You've canceled it out.

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Oh, it's always coffee time.

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It it, it's coffee.

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Oh my God, it's so much better.

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How do you load those into that

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Fun and

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You like little clips?

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You

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can

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yeah.

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Just waves on a SD card.

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My word.

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It's

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It's pretty, it's pretty janky set up though.

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I've got got one pair of old Apple headphones, one in my left ear

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that monitors that audio cuz I can't hear it through the laptop.

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and I can hear you in the other ear.

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Oh, it's

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yeah.

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yeah.

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I've obviously had a very productive week as you can tell.

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you get done this week?

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Nothing.

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Done

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Air Table.

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Doesn't have a dark mode yet.

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Doesn't

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No, I want to script, have a dark mode.

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That's my top

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Yeah, that'd be nice too.

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I always end up editing like at night and I'm just like

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staring at this white screen.

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Like the thing I figured out, you can invert your Mac screen and so as

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long as there's nothing else on the page, it'll be black, but everything's

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like teal and orange in weird places.

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Yeah.

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Delicious.

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You're quite at night hour, aren't you?

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I'm often

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My watch in Australian afternoon time.

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And you're still awake and it's after midnight.

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I try not to be up after midnight.

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That's kind of the, the limit.

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I tried to be asleep by then, but yeah.

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And what time do you start work typically?

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I wake up at like 6 15 and then get to work by, usually by eight.

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I like to be there before, but sometimes down For a long time, that was one of the

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few people going to work it seemed like.

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So the traffic was way down and now it's like right back up.

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And so if I hit the wrong time, it's 10 minutes longer, Not the

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end of the world, but frustrating.

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Yep.

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I wanna know , why aren't you building a shack in the woods yet?

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I'm not building a cabin in the woods yet because Oh, I feeling more

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optimistic about the future this week.

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had a good, good little debrief about my concerns with my business coach on

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Monday about, Oh, just the concerns that have been building up around, you know,

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the ethics of growing a business in

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a, at all that

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yes.

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economy and how to deal with all of that.

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And we just had a good little 15 minute chat about, You know,

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the opportunities that are present in that issue, how we can proceed and

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try and set a good example and be brave and do all the things we want to do.

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So, yeah, feeling good.

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good.

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Very good.

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but I do, I do love building cubbies, as you can tell by this funny little room.

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I do take great pleasure in building and fiddling with small spaces.

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So I think a shack in the woods is in my future at some point

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Yeah, I get that for sure that like, I was obsessed, My friend and I growing

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up to live down the street, Adam, would get the space underneath the staircase.

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So it was like one of those like wrap around, not fancy, but just like

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a normal down half over down half, and you could crawl underneath it.

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We would just hang out in there all the time that, and

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build fort out in the woods.

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And so I totally get the like, like I guess the mill room's

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kind of like that for me.

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It's like, ooh, now I can make the wall organized just how I like it.

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And, I can imagine also that the next time I see this, you're gonna have

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like an enclosed space around you.

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So somebody comes in the door and then they have to like go in like a curtain.

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Little tent.

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Yeah, yeah,

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It's perfectly sound isolated.

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I went camping on the weekend and I think that

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Ah,

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just further accentuated the feeling of wanting a small, cozy

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I get that.

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And also just the simplicity of camping, like getting home and having

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to deal with plumbing problems and cabinets that I haven't finished

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building and things like that.

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I was like, Damn, tent life is so

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Except for the no plumbing part.

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I'll take the plumbing

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there.

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There is that.

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bucket

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Sanitation is pretty amazing.

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Yeah.

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I'll give you that.

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I get it.

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I,

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Speaking of your little mill

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mm-hmm.

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has anyone told you off for storing tool holders in timber holes yet?

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Nope.

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No.

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That's good.

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Yeah, there's very few, like, I guess I'm lucky or maybe I've rebuked enough

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of them and I don't get enough new people coming in that like nobody's really like

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yelling at me on Instagram all that often.

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Why do you have a thought of why that would be bad?

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No, I just feel like I've been told off for that in the past, storing tools

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in timber holes cause of the moisture,

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Hmm.

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rust, blah blah.

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Never had an issue with it.

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they're not enclosed and they're all painted.

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That was one thing I didn't want with the mill room.

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There's so much.

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Oil floating around in the air.

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I think that I just imagined that would be saturated by if

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it was just raw plywood edges.

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So re primed and painted it and just looks better have become a

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fetishist for painted surfaces.

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They just look so much, you know, you can only have so much wood in my opinion.

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And then it starts to all just blend into the same aesthetic.

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Yeah.

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Particularly when it's overall and it all takes on that same level of crime

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yes.

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Mm-hmm.

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UV yellowing.

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Yes.

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How was your.

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Has been critique good.

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I feel like I'm en crunching on getting the pedestals out.

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I went pretty hard on, Finishing up and like dialing in.

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I've got all these little, I seems so tiny, the little tiny like pit bull

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clamp and the uniform clamps that go on the pallet and just dialing in and

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making sure everything's accurate.

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it's not the only thing I've worked on, but I spend a good day and a half

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on confirming things and like actually taking the Pearson model into, on top

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of my actual model of the mill table with the Ren shop probe and just making

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sure everything goes in the right spot.

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Because like the way Pearson describes it right, is you want your models to be

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really accurate for the stackup because you use, I thought this was pretty smart.

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You use one of the pins on the base as your G 59

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Mm-hmm.

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then that's where you call all of your offsets from.

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And so if it's not modeled accurately, then you potentially are creating it.

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Like with that I sent you that photo of the palette and the, and the vice.

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Like if that wasn't an accurate model, you be in trouble.

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yeah.

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Absolutely.

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I dunno, just being

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overly cautious.

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yeah, it must be slow to set up all that stuff for the first time.

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Like is that the first time you've used pit bulls and that sort of fix

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Yeah, for sure.

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I mean they come with like these, there's some okay documentation, but

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then like on the back of the package, there's more that I hadn't seen of

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like, if you use this one, it needs to be 12.7 millimeters from this.

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You know, it's just like, if you get it wrong, then I've

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scrapped at $400 pallet and

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Yeah,

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oh all the time.

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And when he associated with that.

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So it's just been, you know, it'd be easier.

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Like it was nice when like Andy was here and he'd done all this kind of stuff and

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Hmm.

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Did I say this last week?

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I feel I have this overriding feeling of like really wanting to have somebody

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hired in like a mill capable position like that has experience again because

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it was just, you know, slower, you know.

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we've done a lot of r and d in production off that machine for a while now, and so

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we didn't really need anybody, I guess if we could have been paralleled tracking it

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if I had the capacity and the money, but we didn't, so now I'm just like sitting

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here like, I should have hired somebody now so we could be moving on this faster.

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But chicken in the egg

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absolutely.

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Yeah.

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probably you.

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What's new over there?

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We are just off the back of our hot Laps quarterly review season.

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just finished up the last ones on Monday, I think.

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Yeah, although I've, I've got one later this morning, so the first

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time I've requested to be lad by someone else, so that'll be fun.

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got to prepare my, do my homework, prepare my notes.

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Sarah's gonna take me for a walk on the phone and ask me questions,

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so that'll be interesting.

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yeah, just off the back of everyone, everyone else's lap and feeling,

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I suppose quite reflective about, you know, the positive way about

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the team and where we're at and all the things we'd like to do next.

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Have

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yeah, that, that's been, that's been positive

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have you seen Arrested Development, the show?

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a little bit.

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Have you seen the episode where, The guy one, the main, I forget his name.

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The dad has a surrogate and it's that guy with a camera.

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Yes.

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It's like, Sarah, what if Sarah had one of those to walk around with

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you into, Sorry, I got a little distracted thinking about that.

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We joked, we joked about that when we first moved to Castleman and Sarah

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stayed in Melbourne about getting one of those Ss with an iPad on them

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Yes,

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she could like drive around the workshop, just sort of peer over your

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shoulder, like, what are you doing?

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Hello?

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The thing I was thinking of is either the, it was the surrogate or the iPad robot.

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I forget what that's from.

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So yeah, we've been doing that and we've been, I've spent quite a bit

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of time this week getting my ducks in a row for a bit of a targeted

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campaign on vinyl related stuff.

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Mainly kid aparts, but also trying to just capture some of the interest

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around custom vinyl solutions.

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Cause we do a fair bit of custom work for people like making custom bookshelves

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or setups for their high five gear

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Yeah.

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turntables.

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So making a new landing page with Jay today, probably just sort of have

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somewhere to land that ad traffic so we know exactly who's coming in off

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those ads and where they're landing.

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That's cool.

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yeah, try and do a kind of a joint effort, which we, I think I've said

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before, like we don't typically ab do any advertising for custom work.

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We only try and push product.

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But I think this campaign will be a little bit more mixed in terms of also promoting,

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the fact that we do do custom work.

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Yeah.

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cause Aaron's been pushing the sales stuff pretty hard of late.

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he's kind of, well he's, he's owning that space at the moment.

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Like he's, he is the sales guy right now and wellbeing till

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the end of the year at minimum.

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Yeah.

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That's awesome.

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I'm so

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jealous of,

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He wants more a grade leads.

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So we will see how we can rustle up some more business for him.

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Cause he wants to be in a spot where, which makes total sense.

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He wants to be in a spot where he can clearly say no to the.

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The B grade and the C grade work and just really focusing on what we're best at.

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That's really interesting.

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I never had graded my lead.

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My, my RFQ is

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before and

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a good thing to do.

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I've mentally done it, you know, and like you kind of put more effort into those

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ones you think you're gonna turn out to be the best jobs, and prioritize those.

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But I still haven't done it.

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And you said that weeks ago and I thought, oh, I should add that as a column.

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But we just have so few anymore that it's like I can just do it mentally.

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But it would be interesting to have the data later to see if those

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gradings turned out to be true.

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You know, if your gut was right.

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Yeah.

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That's a good, good point.

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Actually

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Oh, that also be a really cool feature within

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Air Table to be able to have user averaged ratings.

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So like you and other team members could rate the same record and then it

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would show the re the rating of that instead of just one person's rating.

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You could do that with multiple

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Yeah, you just have a lot of fields.

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We've got so many fields.

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a bit full on.

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We need to do some cleaning out work at some stage.

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Field glu.

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Oh yeah.

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Yeah.

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But that's what's happening at this end.

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I've been the, the marketing guy this week.

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Oh,

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that's fun.

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I'm curious, we were talking about that offline.

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I'm curious to see, You had sent me a draft of the video you're working

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on for the ad and my first gut reaction was like, I have nothing

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that's gonna be constructive here because none of mine convert.

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Like I just throw money away.

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I feel like it's either I don't convert or my ads do convert for services.

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We get a lot of RQs that come

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through the couple ads we do very low spend.

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But all of the product based things just never can figure out

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what that, what that thing is.

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And I think I'd said before, my friend that had done a decent amount

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of advertising kind of helped me set up some for the courses that

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it's the only thing that ever.

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It was a tandem of what he called what I know the words now prospecting where

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you're like just getting a lot of clicks.

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Right.

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And so anyway, that clicks, then you can remarket it to a different

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type of campaign to convert.

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Okay.

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And you're using that second pool is like people that have been to this

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page show them this other thing.

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And I don't know if it's just my sentiment.

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I can't seem to like create that thing that works.

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So, you know, for the amount of money I'm spending on advertising,

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which isn't crazy, I could probably be hiring somebody to do it too.

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, you know, like outsourcing it cuz it's just, know, exploratory

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is what it always ends up being.

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yeah.

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I mean that's, I dunno, I find it really hard with Facebook to

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find out, you know, we don't, our Facebook spends pretty small,

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Yeah.

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conversion tracking is impossible it seems, at that end.

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So, yeah, we'll see what happens.

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That's why we wanted to do this landing page so we at least have some sense

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of how much traffic that landing page gets, cuz it should only be coming from.

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Those ads initially,

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Yep.

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but we'll see.

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pretty common.

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I see that a lot.

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Right?

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With like, especially softwares, whenever you look at like a review

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side, they'll always send you to a landing page, And then you can't

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like, find the pricing on that page usually either, which is infuriating.

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It's like, I wanna buy the software, but it's like, sign up for a trial.

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And I'm like, I don't

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wanna do that.

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speaking software, do you get the are you on, have you signed

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up for the latest workflow?

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You replacement tar?

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No.

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Do I need it?

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Nope.

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We don't need it.

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We don't need to rebuild our systems, but it promises big things.

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T a n a

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Oh God.

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I can't handle this.

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You're gonna have to send me a link at some point,

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I,

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not finding anything useful.

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Inc.

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Oh, probably not like that.

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It's pretty much just WorkFlowy with super features stacked on top of it, as

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far as I can tell.

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It like makes work through like complicated

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Yeah, yeah,

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Interesting.

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I'll take a.

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other news here, I suppose, is that we did not launch anything in September.

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End of September , came and went.

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And no new products, which actually feels like a responsible and adult thing to do

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yeah,

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right now is focus on the products that we have and the communication that we don't

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have on our website for those products.

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But yeah, sort of doing a bit of home improvement in terms what we already

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offer and how we communicate rather than trying to pump out yet another thing.

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yeah, yeah.

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I keep thinking about, and you do well at this already, I keep

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thinking about how I think it would be successful to, if I could.

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Make one to two videos a week about

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existing products or tangential things that they're like all, it's basically

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like another version of seo or like a feeder into help sell the product, right?

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Totally.

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or just brand building in general.

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I'd figure out the money situation there.

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I would love to have somebody or, or take off enough of my plate to be able

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to make the videos, but I think it'd probably be better if I had somebody that

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was like producing them and I, I did my, whatever I needed to do on camera like,

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Yeah.

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perform and then, they could, you know, keep pumping out either social

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media as well as, just YouTube videos.

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Like I think I'm now thinking a lot about how education plays a

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really nice role into potentially.

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Selling something.

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Like, even if it's not like an outright sales pitch, it's there already, You know,

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like your video about doing like how to, how to mount your, crates on the wall.

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It's like people love the character, but then also you're basically

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selling the product, right?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that's pretty high on my to-do list at the moment.

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It says video daily, up the camera jam, get it done.

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I love that we both have buttons now.

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I'm sure the listeners are like tearing their hair out, like, Oh,

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it's only gonna be buttons now.

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It's only gonna get worse.

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Justin, this can just deescalate into, you know,

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now, what was I saying?

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Videos daily.

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Yeah, like I would love to So this is just gonna turn into a bin fire.

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I'd love to get more product videos on our website.

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Cause I did a little exercise the other day of like, What makes

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it easy for me to buy products?

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What do I like buying and what makes it easy for me to convert on those things?

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And I was thinking about those couple of things that I am quite susceptible to.

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And product videos are pretty high on that

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Oh yeah.

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I don't have to be very involved, but if there's product, video and a few

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photos, it makes a massive difference.

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So I really want to get more product, video cooking and you know,

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where that can be quite informal.

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Like, that crate one I made just on my phone the other day.

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that's kind of what I'm thinking of, just setting up the product in the space

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and just, yeah, doing the quick little walk through, talk through the features.

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We don't have anything like that at the moment, so I need to get my

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proverbial in gear and make them

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I feel like you have

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some videos.

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Like I would've been, you know, back filling some of my stuff like

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are now selling tool holders that we've were reselling as of today.

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and I had a previous video because it kind of comes up often.

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Yeah.

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Woo.

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it's just like a small product launch.

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I won't even like, do much about it, but, just kind of nice convenience

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things that you're already buying, say like in the future, the pedestals.

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And you'll also want more tool holders, Right.

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So, I've already done.

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Luckily in this case, I realized today I was like, well, like

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you're saying, a video's nice.

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And I'm keeping some of the product pages really simple because it's like, what else

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do you need to know about a tool holder?

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Like, and so I added this video that was had to set up by so 30 er,

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32 tool holders because I made it back when I was making the course.

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And people also, I had to learn it at some point.

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How do you properly set it up?

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What's the, you know, order of putting things in, How do you tighten it?

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and so I just linked that video on that page and I think it helps

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to create trust, I think too.

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Like if you happen to come across only that page, Right.

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Somehow,

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Yeah, totally.

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Trust and sort of all, some sense of authority too.

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Like you know what you're doing.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Or, or if I did it wrong, it's even worse.

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Like

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he doesn't even know how to set up the tool holder.

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Yeah.

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beyond delegation, what are you not delegating or can't delegate?

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was I thinking?

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I'm gonna describe what I thought it was first.

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what was gem thinking with writing down beyond delegation?

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I was thinking like he's in such a crisis that it's not even delegation time.

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He needs to hire somebody to solve this problem.

Speaker:

I think that's, Is that more self reflective?

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Justin?

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Yeah, maybe So, projecting a little bit

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get a room.

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No, it was quite the opposite actually.

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I feeling very positive, I guess, again, off the back apart lapse.

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I'm feeling very positive about what I have delegated and I, I think.

Speaker:

Yes, it's delegation, but I think it's kind of beyond that point

Speaker:

because it's kind of more complete.

Speaker:

It's like, here, this is yours now here, Aaron, take sales, run with it.

Speaker:

and the change that happens in people when you do that is quite incredible.

Speaker:

cause you know, Aaron and I have had a, a collaborative sales relationship

Speaker:

for ages now where we're both working on it and we're both sort

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of helping each other, is great.

Speaker:

And I don't think, there's no reason not to work like that, but they're

Speaker:

just the shift when you sort of give someone something completely and say

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like, Take responsibility for this.

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This is yours.

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Run with it.

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I'm not gonna be looking over your.

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Yep.

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the shift that sort of occurs when that works is amazing.

Speaker:

So like, I'm just seeing that in , various aspects of the business where we've done

Speaker:

that and seeing people run with their roles and their responsibilities and

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succeed has been incredibly rewarding.

Speaker:

and also like the flip side of that is really weird of like just having to get

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over myself and not, not feel useless.

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Cuz I've definitely had hangups in the past of like, or needing to feel busy

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or look productive and not, not in a false sense, but like, you know, always

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wanting to be the one who's working the hardest and pushing the longest hours and

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Hmm.

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blah, blah, blah.

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Like,

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Yeah, that would

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be

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hard.

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If I'm giving people these responsibilities, I also have to get

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over myself and just be comfortable in not doing those things and not be

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not being seen to do those things.

Speaker:

So yeah, that's been interesting.

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I realized as you were saying that, that I had never considered that

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situation where I wasn't working.

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I guess I, I never, I wouldn't have thought of it as the hardest, but

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more like the most, weekends, nights, 12 hours a day, ridiculous stuff

Speaker:

that just kind of feels common.

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But like I do have that guilty feeling when I take a vacation or.

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Leave early in the day, and Ricky will, this is not at all a criticism of him.

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I think he's just so used to me being here when I say at like

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four or four 30 or something when I, I'm gonna leave now, I think.

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And he is like, Oh, you know, like, there's like surprise, like, what do you

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mean, why are you, whoa, something wrong?

Speaker:

it's an interesting thought to like, not that you're entitled to it or

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something, but just like that it's taking me some time to think that I

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can only, it's okay for me to just work eight hours a day, you know?

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Like, and honestly in a certain sense, like the set that is a, model I guess,

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which I definitely don't do in any way.

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you know, like take a, take a lunch break and go for a walk.

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Like, I still can barely make myself do.

Speaker:

So, you know, nobody's ever really done that to a large extent here.

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And I feel like I've potentially led that path even though I, when people start,

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I'm always like, Please take lunch.

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Like, I don't eat.

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I'm kind of weird, but don't, don't not eat for me.

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Do as I say, not I do.

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yes.

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Yeah.

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totally.

Speaker:

And I, I'm definitely not there yet.

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Like, I still get a sense of sort of accomplishment from a, a big week in

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my time tracking app or like a big day.

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Like I'm still pushing sort of 12 hour

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Mm-hmm.

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four days a week.

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so there's some balance there, but yeah, I'm still sort of addicted

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to that high of like, Oh, look how many hours I did this week.

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I must have been productive.

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Look how much I got done is like, there's some value attached

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to that, which I think is.

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Probably at the end of the day, quite unhealthy.

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It shouldn't be about how many hours I've done, it's about

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What I've actually achieved.

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But

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For

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sure.

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to get away from that.

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I mean, the obvious question, I feel this way extensively and

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I don't know how to change it.

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That there's no way I can work enough for all that I want to

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accomplish in a week or a day.

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Do you have that feeling?

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Oh yeah.

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You think everybody that does something like what we do, like an entrepreneurial

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or like a business owner has that feeling?

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Or are there people that are just like, Yeah, I've done enough.

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I feel like I accomplished all my goals today.

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Do you think people are, there's people like that

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They're probably different sorts of people or at different

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stages in their life maybe.

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Yeah.

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But

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I just, just, It's hard for me to believe.

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I know it's hard.

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It's hard to imagine, isn't it?

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Because, yeah, I definitely have that sense of like, there's just so

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much I want to do and get through.

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How could I possibly

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Mm-hmm.

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not maximize my time?

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for sure.

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Yeah.

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pause for a second.

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Is there like a, Is it raining there

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Yeah.

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It's, it's, it's ambiance.

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where's the ambience buttoned or there's always the coffee there?

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Coffee in space.

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Oh, that's a, that's a different one.

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did you label the buttons or do you just know what they are

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No, I've just as I said, Very productive way.

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Justin.

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done this so many times now it's, you're just over here.

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Like you don't even look anymore.

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I'm really busy guys.

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I'm just gonna shut my door for an hour or just while I make some calls,

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You just see the silhouette of gem just.

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aming of shutting the doors.

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Loving having thread board.

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I'm loving being surrounded by thread board and I think thread board needs to

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be my next focus to get it out the door.

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Cause it's.

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Oh, it's very enjoyable.

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I'm just really taking great pleasure in making small tweaks

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every day and moving things around and just putting cooks and things.

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This whole desk set up is fully supported by pegs, cuz I've got,

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The walls are so close together that I've got pegs on both sides and

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the whole desk just sits into it.

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It's a good time.

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I should have, I should have brought it up, but yeah, I noticed that you

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now have it on both sides of you, and I think it used to be just one

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Yeah,

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No, it's great.

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I, You gotta immerse yourself in your product design, right?

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Like, Gotta use it.

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I bet you've tried to climb with those,

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haven't you?

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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of course.

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Mm-hmm.

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all the

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I never published any of those videos.

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Someday when we come back to making Knack Wall, I have a lot of slow motion

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video that, and, and we never got us to break, but we tested Mac Wall with

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hundreds of pounds, if I remember right.

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And it never broke any of it.

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It deformed quite a bit, but we like waited the hell out of it with a huge

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fixture plate and just kept stacking it.

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I had like multiple slow motion camera shots on it never broke.

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And I was like, so the slow motion's kind of mute.

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But the point was that we could, Well, you know, we had an easy two time

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safety factor at like 200 pounds.

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So

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Great.

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Was that that really janky setup you had on the end of a

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bench?

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Yeah.

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It wasn't very photogenic, was it?

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The end of our pallet rack in a corner

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That's right.

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Yeah.

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and probably the safest spots, but brakes.

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That was just gonna hit plywood.

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But it was, it was janky.

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It was like taking all the mill scraps that I could find, like aluminum pieces

Speaker:

and just like, How about where else?

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Oh, there's a key litter bag for the mill and we just like throw it on It's

Speaker:

got like probably a hundred gigs of that video that never did anything.

Speaker:

Oh gosh.

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What are your goals for October?

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wow.

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Maybe thread board's.

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Tempting.

Speaker:

Feel like you have enough development time in to

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No, probably not.

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I, I should focus on our vinyl campaign, but that's not gonna

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take me all month, surely.

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Yeah, that's the, that's the fun part about little products like Duck.

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The duck tower was, it was well ready.

Speaker:

I just basically wanted to confirm a few things and like make

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sure I could source some stuff.

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And it was the easiest part of relaunching the Shopify store.

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It was just like, Oh, add the one product with some

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images, It was like, when it's small like that, it not even any variance to it.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Nice simple product.

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They're the best.

Speaker:

Love it.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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I think I'm just a bit confused about what accessories I'm gonna

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offer, but just keep it simple.

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Yeah.

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I'm having a great time with like just two different lengths of do peg, so someone

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else can have a great time with that too.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

Why not?

Speaker:

Yeah, it is amazing when you, when you come up with something that has,

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scalability or like uniformity to it across such an area that you, it, it feels

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like there's an endless possibility with what you can make for it, which is just

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like for what we, you and I do is so fun.

Speaker:

there's so many ideas we never made or that only exist on this weird wall

Speaker:

that would never work for anybody else,

Speaker:

fun, little weird, get things you can make.

Speaker:

What?

Speaker:

What's your October goal?

Speaker:

I think it's lunch in the pedestals.

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Think they're gonna be out

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soon for pre-order anyway.

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frankly just need to

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get a couple things made on the mill with that new fixture, the pallet, and

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then I would really want to make a video.

Speaker:

I, for some reason that goes hand in hand to me, like the launch

Speaker:

of a product, a more significant product should have a YouTube video.

Speaker:

To me, there's just something about it, like, like you're saying, it just

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feels like the right thing to do.

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Yeah.

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so don't wanna just do renderings for it, like, I like to do renderings, but

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Mm.

Speaker:

it'll also be good to have succeeded at making them and knowing that we can make

Speaker:

them exactly how we're imagining to make them, rather than just like, you know,

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I feel like a video is gonna be important with that product.

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Cause I don't, it wouldn't suit, I don't think it would suit our machine,

Speaker:

but like have the sense that at.

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if I was a customer, my biggest question mark would be that, how the

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hell do I put this on my machine, and how do I make my machine talk to it?

Speaker:

So if you can address those concerns in a video.

Speaker:

Yeah, what I'm curious about with other machines than Shop Savers is

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obviously I'm not gonna have guides to how to install those things.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

at least to start, But you had mentioned before that like you

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don't fill your controllers that open to change potentially.

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So I mean, what it amounts to on Shop Savers, which will have it guide out is

Speaker:

you're just changing the position of where you go to do the tool change macro, which

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is a preset and which you can also change.

Speaker:

You can change.

Speaker:

Features of that it all, it all basically is a bunch of little text

Speaker:

files inside the controller folder on the C Drive . It's very straightforward.

Speaker:

but you

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is, is, the shop stable PC driven,

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it's got a dedicated card, which makes it like ACI card.

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That makes it like more than just the PC itself.

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So it, it doesn't put the processing power on the computer to run

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Right, but it is running in a

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just the Windows pc.

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Yeah, right.

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There you go.

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Yep.

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Very

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straightforward.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And this is limits, but it's strangely reliable and just works, I guess.

Speaker:

It's, it's low cost, I think, which is nice.

Speaker:

Like if you need to replace it, you can just swap in a new one and put the

Speaker:

card in and, which seems to happen all

Speaker:

too often.

Speaker:

, unlike our Multicam controller, you

Speaker:

boy thing that I posted on Instagram

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

couple of weeks ago.

Speaker:

We got ours repaired and they, they sent out a, a loan unit

Speaker:

while they were repairing our one.

Speaker:

But the replacement cost for one of those is like five grand.

Speaker:

That little.

Speaker:

What, So this is, this is so another, manufacturer that makes those, that

Speaker:

sells these kind of things too, sells the pendant to control the little like spiny

Speaker:

dly with the controls for at least $500.

Speaker:

And I think you have to pay for a software thing too.

Speaker:

And a few people have found 'em on eBay for about a hundred to 150 bucks.

Speaker:

And they claim they don't work.

Speaker:

The manufacturer doesn't, but pretty sure they do.

Speaker:

Of course then you're not getting like support and all that good stuff, but,

Speaker:

Yes.

Speaker:

Yeah,

Speaker:

do you have good support for your machine locally?

Speaker:

look, it is pretty good.

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Yeah,

Speaker:

That's good.

Speaker:

the tech, some of the technicians are great.

Speaker:

very helpful,

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

very generous in their sort of time and, expertise.

Speaker:

But at the same time, I, maybe it's just this, the ATMs, not

Speaker:

the Atmc, the a XYZ machine, cuz that's a bit more unusual for them.

Speaker:

The Canadian one

Speaker:

with the knives on it that we've

Speaker:

Trinity.

Speaker:

We need like a knife button

Speaker:

Ching.

Speaker:

. I feel like we're kind of more

Speaker:

the technicians are to some

Speaker:

extent.

Speaker:

because it's a bit of an oddball one.

Speaker:

Yes, generally speaking, support's been good.

Speaker:

Few complaints here, but nothing I need to address.

Speaker:

I have in this weird, conversation, not weird conversation.

Speaker:

Oh, weird tangent to this conversation.

Speaker:

I've always been on the edge.

Speaker:

Like I, I think I do it still where you like, add hashtags to a post, Right.

Speaker:

Kind of annoying, but it seems to work.

Speaker:

It pulls in people.

Speaker:

So I've always been hashing Y cm, C and C on anything related to the mill.

Speaker:

And it is the smallest community of anything I'm a part of.

Speaker:

Like, there's like five people I think that, look at this, it is so small.

Speaker:

but somebody in California that seems to be a machine dealer or support

Speaker:

dealer, you know service representative, that I had never seen just said, Oh,

Speaker:

I found this post from, I dunno if you remember, I, I spilled coolin all over

Speaker:

the floor on accident and like, it was like 10 o'clock or something ridiculous.

Speaker:

And, he responded based on finding that on the hashtag.

Speaker:

On Instagram and was like, Hey Justin, I see you have a Y Cm.

Speaker:

I'm glad you know you're close to us.

Speaker:

That's exciting.

Speaker:

Like super friendly.

Speaker:

He's like, Here's how you adjust that so it doesn't happen again.

Speaker:

And I was like,

Speaker:

Oh, nice.

Speaker:

amazing.

Speaker:

There's somebody else that uses these machines like that,

Speaker:

followed them immediately.

Speaker:

Such a good positive experience from a hashtag title options

Speaker:

positive hashtag experience.

Speaker:

So years since, since I started using Instagram, I think 11, whenever that

Speaker:

was, I've made use of unique hashtags.

Speaker:

That I, you know, claim as my own, but I try, I've tried to make them

Speaker:

unique enough so that they don't get used randomly by other people.

Speaker:

But it's been quite a useful sort of cataloging system of being able to go

Speaker:

back over, you know, 10 plus years and being able to pull out photos for certain

Speaker:

projects or certain products and things.

Speaker:

And that's been

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

a good little function that

Speaker:

No criticism at all.

Speaker:

But we have, I have a couple friends that have used that for their

Speaker:

kids for photos over the years.

Speaker:

their, their name and their middle name.

Speaker:

it's actually, it's strangely easy to then find all those

Speaker:

photos of those kids, I guess.

Speaker:

which is nice, especially if they're private, it wouldn't matter.

Speaker:

But, the one I've used lately is baby pants, CNC hashtag, which is strangely

Speaker:

gotta be

Speaker:

else.

Speaker:

strangely unique.

Speaker:

If you just, if you leave off the CNC part, it gets weird.

Speaker:

So I don't recommend that

Speaker:

Well wanna chat Patronus?

Speaker:

I don't think I have a, I need one of

Speaker:

it.

Speaker:

I'm jealous of that man.

Speaker:

So much better than my, like super slow to react.

Speaker:

I push it and it's like two seconds later it comes on.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Atmosphere,

Speaker:

Just keep it rolling the whole show, Rob Camping this weekend.

Speaker:

So,

Speaker:

I'm not set on that.

Speaker:

I'm just representing that concept as, you know, whatever our support or

Speaker:

funding idea what we've been discussing.

Speaker:

It could be.

Speaker:

What, what would said supporters get, do you

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I follow a few that get nothing.

Speaker:

people

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

basically helping to support and keep the thing going.

Speaker:

So I'm not necessarily

Speaker:

dedicated to the idea that they need to get something else.

Speaker:

I also follow some podcasts that used to do like special, I mean, this

Speaker:

podcast was making 18 grand a month on their Patreon, so they were like

Speaker:

sending out every month or two, a special thing if you were a certain

Speaker:

level, like you'd get something in the

Speaker:

mail.

Speaker:

That sounds like a ton of crazy work that I don't think we have the

Speaker:

bandwidth, unless this grows a lot.

Speaker:

I'm open to creative solutions.

Speaker:

I'm not saying patron's the best thing.

Speaker:

I do have one that's very lowly supported for p, c and C for

Speaker:

like just content that I make.

Speaker:

it's been up to a hundred bucks or something like that for a while.

Speaker:

But, frankly, all I'm looking for is just enough that we cover help

Speaker:

with editing, I think at this point.

Speaker:

And

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

if we can figure that out or some of it even, and I think it helps to make

Speaker:

people more connected with the show.

Speaker:

So if you have thoughts on what that can be, otherwise I'm open

Speaker:

to like it being, you know, behind the scenes kind of thing or

Speaker:

Well, why don't

Speaker:

we just spin one up

Speaker:

and then, then

Speaker:

it's

Speaker:

of, I was thinking, I was thinking the same.

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

then we can start thinking about it.

Speaker:

Yes.

Speaker:

Cause Yeah, I'm, you know, I support, I think I do support a podcast I've done

Speaker:

for years and I don't, well maybe they did send out a couple of things once, but

Speaker:

basically, yeah, I just give them a couple of dollars a month and cause what they do.

Speaker:

But yeah, and I, I'm, I don't quite know what the special content would

Speaker:

be, but I'm kind of interested in that idea if there was a way to do it,

Speaker:

I guess one of the things that we could do is to have a more private

Speaker:

discussion place if people wanted it.

Speaker:

That was, I mean, we already have like the Reddit, which nobody else.

Speaker:

I think I've had one comment on there.

Speaker:

There's seven followers.

Speaker:

I mean, we just have a small audience at this point too, so it's not like,

Speaker:

Yeah,

Speaker:

you know, any of these things are gonna make a big difference.

Speaker:

But, I think there's enough people that I've had, you know, we've had enough

Speaker:

comments that I think there's people that would throw a buck or two or five in

Speaker:

Dunno.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

What are you doing the rest of the week

Speaker:

do, do,

Speaker:

or by next?

Speaker:

I am going to try and embrace my role in marketing.

Speaker:

I'm gonna try and make videos every day.

Speaker:

least pick up the camera every day

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

yeah, just kinda commit, commit to that and see what I can achieve

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

and try not to spend too much time faffing around with my cubby.

Speaker:

I mean if they're very specific thread board, product design

Speaker:

solutions for customers.

Speaker:

Cause I can attest to the same problem of making things for our office

Speaker:

that never solve a lot of day or I mean all of the NWA stuff, frankly.

Speaker:

Hopefully that's not all lost at this point.

Speaker:

no.

Speaker:

What about you?

Speaker:

What's on?

Speaker:

What's the

Speaker:

Gonna mill the damn pallet pallet, pro palette's getting

Speaker:

on the machine this week.

Speaker:

And I wanna make the pallet and I wanna make long bases

Speaker:

that I can't make right now.

Speaker:

So like it's all kind of one thing, but it's also 15 steps to get there.

Speaker:

Oh, and also we did make a pretty sweet fixture to be able to

Speaker:

cut the cool forks yesterday.

Speaker:

I whip that out

Speaker:

pretty nice.

Speaker:

It's like a vacuum fixture that you cut one side and then the one and done

Speaker:

fixture on the, on the router, but

Speaker:

not completely certain.

Speaker:

It's going to work perfectly.

Speaker:

But we needed, more than anything, we needed a way to cut the, the second

Speaker:

op because once they turned into a half of a fork , they're real hard

Speaker:

to hold again and when you turn 'em

Speaker:

over.

Speaker:

So hopefully that's, gonna work.

Speaker:

It's, it's waiting for parts to go on at the moment.

Speaker:

Awesome.

Speaker:

Oh, I'm keen to see that.

Speaker:

Tool hold.

Speaker:

bit of router fixturing.

Speaker:

that's pretty

Speaker:

cool.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

do a little video on how to do, how to add fix string to your router,

Speaker:

which I think you're well capable of.

Speaker:

But if anybody else is interested, I'll put a link to it that, how to like,

Speaker:

tap into your frame and how to think about it and how to like, lay out your

Speaker:

fixturing so that you can reuse it in cam.

Speaker:

it was pretty key to be able to do something like this.

Speaker:

It's in the computer already and in the machine already.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Awesome.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Good.

Speaker:

Well, shall we get back to it?

Speaker:

You have a button for that.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

No.

Speaker:

I'll just leave with this,

Speaker:

Play us out George Michael, that's the name of that character

Speaker:

in Arrested Development.

Speaker:

Ah, yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

So I had this thought off the record.

Speaker:

The,

Speaker:

I appreciate the chat

Speaker:

though.

Speaker:

Always

Speaker:

come in.

Speaker:

Bye.

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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