Episode 27

27 - Swiss Lathe of Wood

Have we sacrificed enough for the algorithm Gods? Sell, Why sell? No, upsell. Plus willful ignorance.

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Show Info

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HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter

More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC

Nack

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Transcript
Speaker:

Oh, so much latency.

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Justin is a glow or like the sun.

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Is that working?

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Yes, apparently.

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you've been piped in.

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Successful piping.

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You can hear my nonsense.

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I hear you.

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Nonsense.

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Loud and clear.

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I have it.

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the two channel black hole is activated and working.

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Mine too.

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My black hole's going great.

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Glad to hear it.

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all, we're audio hijacked and black hold.

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Yeah.

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Oh, good.

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Going on.

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Just good.

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Does this sound normal?

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No, not when you yelled into the microphone.

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It wasn't it, but it's fine.

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It's fine.

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Now it's fine when you're not yelling.

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like crazy.

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Oh shit.

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it got real.

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I usually sit back a little farther.

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like a woo.

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This is where the guys should have realized Justin's audio is too hot.

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Apologies.

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Oh yeah, you can do that.

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Well, to start my day I had people messaging saying they wanted to

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buy things and Shopify wasn't letting them cuz they had an outage.

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That's the first time I've ever seen that before.

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Not the end of the world, at least they said something rather than just

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leaving and not, you know, coming back.

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yeah.

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That's great.

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It's that immense demand for the pants,

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how is the, The hunger for pants these days.

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It slowed down a little bit.

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Yeah, I don't know.

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I don't, I know, I don't know how to analyze, I, in some weird way, I feel

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like the performance I have to do is to keep posting about it so that people see

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it, but I don't think that's the case, you know, in this weird world of like

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Yep.

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reels just disappear after three minutes nobody sees 'em again.

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So, yeah.

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How about you?

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Instagram performance this last couple of weeks, particularly terrible.

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Mm, mm-hmm.

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I don't know, it just seems to go through waves, but yeah,

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really, really low engagement.

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Maybe it's punishing me for being Slack the last sort of month or so.

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love to.

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Wouldn't, we all love to know how it works, but yeah, my, my videos

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have bombed for the most part.

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Isn't that so encouraging?

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Like when you put effort and then it would be better if it was

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just consistent than like this.

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It feels like a complete What would you say?

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Lottery, right?

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We're just like throwing stuff

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Yeah.

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say to Ricky sometimes Well, hopefully the algorithm Gods like this video cuz

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it just feels like sacrifices, you know,

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Exactly.

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Is it similar on YouTube

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man, YouTube is changing.

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For the longest time, if you were just doing your standard like video, You

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know, upload non short form video, it would be the same kind of trajectory.

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My videos never hit the, trending zeitgeist ever, so

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I never experienced that.

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You get your, a percentage of your normal viewers that have notifications on, and

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then it would slowly trickle up over time.

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You might hit a little wave that, you know, just a kind

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of a steady arc going up.

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But now they're doing something more similar every once in a while to like

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the short form where you put something there and it like spikes and you're

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like, Oh man, it's gonna go crazy.

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And then it stops and plateaus.

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But that's kind of like how every platform now feels like they, they

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test you against all these people and then all of a sudden it's just, dead.

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I put a short up today on YouTube of that, that ruby tip runa shop probe thing

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going in and out, and it's like the worst, shaky video, but, It has 9,200 views,

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which is high for me on those, and it just, you know, it goes up immediately to

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8,900 views and just straight across flat line

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Flat lines,

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for no apparent reason.

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I know.

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That's when it's easier to get suspicious.

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Those

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Oh yeah,

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It's like, why did that, why did that peak?

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It's for political reasons obviously.

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Yeah.

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I did a little experiment on my.

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my little video from a couple of months ago, throwing aluminium

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parts in a cement mixer

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Well, that went well.

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Yeah.

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That went super well on Instagram, and then I kind of, I forget about

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TikTok most of the time, and then I was like, Oh, maybe I should That went.

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So well.

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I'll throw that up on TikTok, having not done anything on TikTok for months, and

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it went almost to the identical numbers.

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It.

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370,000 views on Instagram and almost hit the same within a week on TikTok.

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But then it, they both plateaued at the same

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It's so weird.

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no, it was kind of validating in a way of like, Oh, okay, so maybe,

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you know, are obviously genuinely interested in that video, like

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it's working on both platforms.

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What about that is engaging, Hey, nice parts, Department logo behind.

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I just put those up today.

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Yeah.

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Oh, I've been thinking about making one of this

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yeah, you could like have it hanging down behind you, like off the

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ceiling or just have like floating graphics that come up on our screen.

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We could put an advertiser spot right here.

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This episode brought to you by:

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Oh,

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All right, in your hand.

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I probably need to move it.

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It's not the best spot.

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My head's usually right there.

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I guess I move my.

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Fuck credo over here.

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Probably can't read it all

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Nope,

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Nope.

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not on potato cam.

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Not a potato cam.

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anniversary.

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PS what's that mean?

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What this mean?

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Oh.

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what mean?

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It's the one year anniversary of the pencil shop

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Oh,

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I feel like we've had it way longer than that, but yeah, my

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phone reminded me the other day.

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It's like, it reminds me of your children's birthdays.

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It's like, Oh, look.

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Look what happened a year ago,

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it reminds you of your, your children's birthdays,

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Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday Mr.

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Sharpener, Happy Birthday to you!

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and.

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Yeah, no, I was just thinking kind of, I wanna make a little video about it.

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I think I'm gonna make a YouTube video about it.

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You should.

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I should.

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But no, I was just thinking it's been a nice validation of like having committed

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to building a custom CNC machine,

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commissioning and building.

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It's like, yep, that was worth doing.

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Glad we did.

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Mm-hmm.

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because whilst it doesn't run flat out all day every day, it has been

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a game changer for our process

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Yeah,

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and just being able to really commit to that product line and sell as much

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of it as we possibly can and still have room for production on that machine.

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So it's kind of like the Swiss lay of

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For Wood

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do processing of wood

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title option.

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Very

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Yeah.

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No,

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had someone reach out last night with a a photo of a rema with a very

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entertaining English as the second language title on the packaging.

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They, they said I should send to you for education purposes.

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Oh yeah.

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Now I'm curious.

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Yeah.

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No, it's been good.

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That's, that's, yeah.

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It's exciting.

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I mean, those kind of dates, like with the mill, I think it passed

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this summer of having it and.

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It just made me feel like I hadn't done nearly enough with it, and so.

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in, in a related note, yesterday I machined a pallet on the Pearson

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base and it felt so good that like, came out really nice, like did a

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really slow single direction like facing with like a small inmi.

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It had to fit in all these little spaces, but it's the same consistent

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finish all the way across and it like has a little iridescence to it and, I'm

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sure it's not as smooth as other people could make it, but it's got all the

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fixturing on it and the fixturing works.

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Feels great.

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Yeah, it feels really nice.

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I love that photo of your, your face with the reflection in it.

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Was that

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there's, I have to send you the first version of that . Cause I, you know,

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like when you turn your phone on and it's like on Zoom three instead of one?

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Well, like it was, Like this is me.

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It was hilarious.

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No, the Oh, that happened to me too yesterday.

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I got some video lights in the mail yesterday

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saw those.

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I finally bought some video lights and I was setting them up.

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Testing with a couple of just phone selfies and just the, yeah.

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The crisp fidelity of like having these two lights.

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Oh, amazing.

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But yeah, the pallet looks fantastic.

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Yeah,

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So that just vacuums onto the, Pearson base.

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It does whatever the heck it does.

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When you pull that thing up and the pins come in and then you

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put it down, you push the thing.

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Some reverse airflow, vacuum.

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I don't know what it's called.

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or is it kind of spring?

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It is vacuum, right?

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There's vacuum created to suck the pins in, but they're spring loaded,

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so it's, it's normally closed.

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And so you need the airflow to

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it would lock

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I thought about taking it off, so that's one thing I haven't done yet is I need to

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like find the right grommet to go through the side of the machine so it doesn't

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like, you know, chafe constantly on metal.

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So I've got it going through the door right now.

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It's like underneath, it's like I'm, I'm powering my tent, with a

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wire going through the, the door.

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not do you at all, but if you, You can run it with the airline off completely, right?

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I'm pretty certain, I think I've seen Pearson do that before, but I was also

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concerned like, what happens if coolant and chips get inside the, the end of it.

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So I just left

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it on for now and It, it was a little vibrating out on the

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edges, which is what expected.

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I don't know the machine that well, but I could feel a slight difference.

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And for what we're gonna do, it's all a real light cutting on that, on

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that pallet that's so large anyway, it's like basically taking off less

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than a millimeter on the sides and then facing parts and drilling.

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So I'm not concerned.

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And Had assured me that it was gonna be totally fine for that kind of thing.

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So a photo, was the first one.

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Very good.

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Look in my face.

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Look,

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Look, look, look deep, deep in my eyes.

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Yeah.

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Very cool.

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Yeah, that's exciting.

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what's the feed stock for that pallet?

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What do you feed it

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feed it, I see aluminum, it's like five eight, so 0.625 inch thick stock.

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That's by two inches wide.

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And then we can change the length obviously, to, Cause there's three

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different sizes of base right now.

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So they're pretty sweet in that they can take three different sizes all in one row.

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And then if you're doing the smallest version, the two two

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by wide, I can put multiple in each row and the index with pins.

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Yeah.

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Where's the indexing on those pin?

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I don't know if

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I posted any photos.

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Yeah, you can see there's kind of like parts in the middle of the,

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Yep.

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Yep.

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only, the only one in the row.

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The thing I think I'm gonna add still is like, I don't know if I'll do outlines,

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but I'm gonna, I'm gonna engrave.

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Where off one is OP two.

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So it's just like dead simple to like understand.

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Basically you could look at it and, and load it without training

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is my goal and not have to know where the CAM is and all that.

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Yeah.

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It's, it's really satisfying to engrave in metal.

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It's probably one of my favorite things about the mill so far.

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It's just like super crisp.

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Easy to do.

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Mm.

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Cool.

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What's that?

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That lean expression, poker, poke, yoki,

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making it idiot prep.

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that's, that sounds like we've, we've westernized that a bit.

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, I dunno what that is, but I know what you mean.

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Ok.

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Yeah.

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Oke mistake, proof.

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Hey.

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Yes, there it is.

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I always love that exam.

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I think Saunder's made that cool little.

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Oke conspired, 3D printed thing for like packing bolts, the right

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number of bolts and washes into bags.

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Like you had to fill out the little card with the hardware and

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they each had a little hole, and then it had a pour on the volume.

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You just kind of tipped the whole thing into a bag and it meant

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that you could kind of visually

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Oh, I don't know if I saw that one.

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you had,

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Hmm.

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inserted all the correct hardware before you tipped it into the bag.

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It was very cool.

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I love that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, me too.

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Especially when like, I mean, the goal.

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Here is that rookie would be able to help do, you know, just change cycles out

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without really needing a full training on you know, how everything works.

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And I'd say one of the most satisfying parts about using that base so

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far is like, I got past trusting.

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Like that, that mill, that video I had of the probe measuring the pin is like

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Yeah.

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it was within three tens, which I think is honestly probably

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the measurement of my probes.

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Probably not that accurate.

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So I measured the pin, which is what they suggest.

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You set that to G 59, and then everything else after that is theoretically

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good if you'd model it right?

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So I was real nervous about that at first, but made sure that my

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models were accurate, not like inset into the base and all that.

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And then after that, what's great is you just leave it there and as long as your,

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your cam is right, then it's dead on and it repeats when you put it back on.

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And you can move it between machines that way, which is super cool.

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If I had more than one machine,

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Yeah.

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Is it a different thing to Pearson's vacuum work holding, or is it the same?

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Pearson's stuff for ages, could you put like thin finished stock

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on that base and just have it,

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the same

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you buy a separate pallet and it has an inlet, I think, in the

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side for that same quarter inch.

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Push in connector, and so then your base uses air, and then that uses

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air and it sucks through the top.

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That's my understanding.

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Which I, I'm almost certain we will do because it's so convenient

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that I don't ever, This is exactly what he wants, they want us to say.

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Right.

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I'll probably never take that thing off the machine now because

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unless it absolutely requires it, like I'm, I haven't figured

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out how to put the vice yet on.

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I, I understand that I'm gonna put it on a pallet , but I don't know

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how to mount it to the pallet yet.

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Like bolts, but then into the.

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device?

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Like, can you, couldn't you like turn one of the Ps and pallets into like a little,

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fix your plate and then use something like the Saunders what are they called?

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The

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Yeah.

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Yep, yep.

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My advice.

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low profile MO device.

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Probably I have, I probably should sell one of these vices, but I have

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two Kurt Vices that are four to $500, and I just wanna like, stop spending

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money on fixturing . So I wanna at least figure out how to do it, I guess.

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And then after that,

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enough.

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maybe optimize after that a little bit more.

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I think what's gonna be really great is being able to, like, I thought

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about this the other day, using a pallet and like tapping the side of it.

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So you could put on like stops that could hold like a first stop to the side of

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the pallet, like on top, like squeeze it from the outside and then you could

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use the top of the pallet for like a MO device or something if it was, you

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know, larger than pallet or something.

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I don't know, just making it more flexible cuz.

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Even, even so, like the example of right now I have a 12 by 18 pallet,

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what I use for the the bases that I'm gonna make for the ATC pedestal.

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It's giant, barely fits on the table and.

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I, the bottom is super sharp, so I, I probably need to get a back chan, but if

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I wanna flip it over and like chan the backside, I have no way to hold it at all.

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Currently, so

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Yeah.

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I don't really know how to go, I mean, it's kind of a weird edge case, but.

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No, you're just making me want a mill really bad.

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Do it Jem, just buy a mill.

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Nobody will know.

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It's pretty fun.

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It's slow for me.

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Anyway,

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Hmm.

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We've got, I'm really intrigued.

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We've got this client at the moment.

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They.

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Classic land, land rovers to electric drive here

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Oh, cool.

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wonderful brand, like they just do these immaculate conversions, joint

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motors should look up their stuff.

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They do an amazing job.

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Anyway, we've been doing some aluminum machining for them on and off for like

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some battery box prototypes and we just, just machined a bunch of like dash.

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Vents and like little things that they then, you know, get finished and

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power coded and put in their vehicles.

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But I'm really intrigued that a company in Melbourne doing

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beautiful vehicle restoration work is employing a plywood specialist in

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Central Victoria now and a half away

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Mm-hmm.

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to machine aluminum on their router.

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I'm like, where's the gap?

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Like,

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be buying milk?

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Why are we getting this work?

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You're either too cheap or the only one that'll do it.

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I don't, I definitely don't think we're too cheap, but

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how big are the parts?

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They vary, like the battery box part's quite big.

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Parts probably have to be done on a router unless you've got a really big mill cuz we

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cut from a, like a full you know, four by eight sheet of about 12 mil, half inchin.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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But you know, the parts we were just doing yesterday were little,

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you know, little dashboard

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Yeah,

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bits and.

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But also thin sheet stock.

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So maybe vacuum, vacuum router table set up is more appropriate than a mill.

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I don't know,

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Yeah, probably I, My guess is we used to get, there was a a bit there where,

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getting like kind of big piece aluminum quotes like all the time, and I kind

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of realized that I think we were, I don't know if they were doing a lot of

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analytics on their side, but we were just showing up for those kind of searches.

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And most machine shops don't have a way to cut something that's.

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Like mill, if you look at the, the lineup of past mills, right?

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They're very often like huge ex travel, potentially like 40

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inches by like 15 inches deep.

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So like they, there's like no Y travel and most mills, and I think as

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soon as you get into like, plus you.

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Saying that is one thing.

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Even if you have all the travel, you have to figure how to hold it

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down still . So like we have that magic sauce with the vacuum tables.

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That really makes it easy.

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And if you're not like looking for super accuracy, then it works.

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But, and I think, I would guess, like they're, they, they like that you're done

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the other parts well, and they don't have to go source another place to, to get

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it done for the smaller parts, you know.

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yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I've said, yeah, we certainly can't offer supreme accuracy,

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like I think five hundreds.

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What can we do?

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Like I would never, like typically to a client, I would say we can't go.

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offer more than sort of 0.0 0.1 male tolerance, which

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is, I dunno what that is in

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thingo, but the machine's probably

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Oh yeah.

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of that.

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Jesus.

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That's, yeah, that's tight.

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That, so that's 3.9 tens 0.00039.

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That's really small for us.

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We, we, give mostly because we don't feel like we can accurately even measure it.

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We don't give more than like what would it be point.

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Yeah, more like 0.5 mil I would say is more like what we usually give for,

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especially like just most things, because most of the time people don't need it.

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And if they really do, then it affects, you know, how we

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might quote it and anyway.

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Mm.

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Anyway.

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it means, I don't know.

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Yeah, it's good.

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It's a good thing.

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Yeah.

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It's been great work too for John to get his teeth into and get comfortable with.

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, it's been a, an added benefit of getting those jobs is it's, Yeah.

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Great exercise for him to wrap his head around all of that.

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That different process been cool.

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Oh, kind of tangentially related to aluminum and the mill and routers.

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I had never done any slotting on the mill before.

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I just terrifi, I was just like, Oh, I'm definitely gonna break tools.

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Like all of my thoughts and knowledge was like always do some type of,

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you know, nibbling on the sides.

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Head and ham operations make a space, you know, adaptives.

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And so yesterday I was like, this is stupid.

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I was gonna do these little slots like.

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Back and forth and it was like 45 minutes of machining.

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It was.

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So it was like, you know, 400 wide or something.

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And I had a 3 75 tool, so it was just gonna go.

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so I asked on discard and they're like, Oh yeah, you can slot that, no problem.

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And so like, I slotted like 300 deep across the thing, super slow.

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And it was just like so easy.

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I don't know why I was so concerned.

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It just felt wrong coming from, you know, routing when it's so easy.

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I slot, whenever I cut aluminium.

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I always just use this one quarter inch tool,

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Mm-hmm.

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an SRO cutter, which I love.

Speaker:

But yeah, we.

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Five mile deep in that.

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What's that?

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Nice deep aggressive sliding.

Speaker:

according to like Nick, who is answering my questions where you, where you look

Speaker:

for the trouble is like, if he can't evacuate chips, which makes total sense.

Speaker:

Like if you bury it so far that it can't get the heat out, then

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I don't know.

Speaker:

Yeah, makes sense.

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I, I never had like a rule in my head of it was just like,

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don't do it in metal, you know?

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Mm.

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Cool.

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Our next two items conflicts with each other.

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So I wrote upsell and cross marketing apps because I added this

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little app to our kn shop when I relaunched the calendars this year.

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called a distortion.

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It's a free, kind of like frequently bought together, and you can do other

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stuff with it, but it's like it'll supposedly automatically give suggestions.

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But from the start of selling, it's, it's calculated that we've had.

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An additional, I mean, these numbers are small, but this shop is small, right?

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It says it's calculated 400 extra dollars in revenue on like $1,200 we've had at

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sales of those calendars this year so far.

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So that's super rare.

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People don't usually, they usually buy a calendar and just like check out.

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That's it.

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So they've been adding.

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Almost like doubling their carts through this silly, little free app.

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So I just thought that was worth ringing up because supposedly the

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click through rate on this, this, this little app, 17 point a half percent,

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That's

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seems really high.

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Yeah,

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This is not a shop, not a Shopify store though, is it?

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no, it is.

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Yeah, that's, I have is always on Shopify with them.

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Yeah.

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I'll, I'll put a

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That one trip.

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Okay?

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Yeah, it's link.

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Please

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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For free.

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I mean,

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me a link.

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It's coffee time.

Speaker:

Yes, yes, yes.

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Can't help myself.

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Not enough buttons.

Speaker:

We've seen

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what they do this

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Yeah, but.

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There's other versions.

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I have a paid version for the CNC shop, which I may get rid of, but it seems

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like it might have a better potential.

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Yeah, we need to, It's been on our list to add something like that to our store,

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and I know Jay has looked into it a little bit and I can't remember what the issue

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was, but it was difficult for some reason.

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But

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They, They both.

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They both.

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I had to do a little custom styling with the Asion one, but

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the other one like adopts your sites, like styling capabilities.

Speaker:

I'll follow a link to that too, but it's kind of impressive how well that worked.

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I think it's just called Frequently Bought Together.

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It's converted two sales for $190 on the paid one, so

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Hmm.

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Great.

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I figured it'd be good for you for how many things you have going on.

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be good for me.

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Now 350 variants.

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Good.

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My counter to that is I'm just, I'm really bored of the cell right now.

Speaker:

I like I, I really enjoy making videos, so I just need to knuckle down and sort of

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embrace that and take pleasure in doing.

Speaker:

but at the same time, I'm, yeah, I'm tiring of the sense of pushing

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content down people's throats,

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Mm-hmm.

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but

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Yeah.

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we need those sales to run a business.

Speaker:

So yeah,

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How is that corresponding with the success of those things, those efforts, you

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said your videos weren't doing as well.

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Do you think that relates or is it just like a general

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no, no, totally.

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Yeah, no, of course it relates.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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When web sales are slow and response to content is slow, then yes, that.

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It has an effect on my enthusiasm.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah for sure.

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but more sort of in, in the broader sense of like, I'm spending a lot of my week now

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either making content, editing content, or like in the back end of Google Analytics

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and Google Ads poking around, looking at reports and numbers and fun have.

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And then I get to the end of the week and I'm like, I, I

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just spent like days doing that.

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I could have just been making new things, like I could have been making fun stuff

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that's genuinely, you know, engaging me.

Speaker:

But also that, that's what excites our audience too, is when we're in

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that sort of fun r and d product

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Oh my God.

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Yeah.

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that I, Why am I spending my time reading marketing reports when I.

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just be doing

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Mm-hmm.

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organic, fun stuff.

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That's good for me too.

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So, yeah, a bit torn.

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Yeah,

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see.

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I just need to be patient.

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I'm very fickle with this stuff and I, I, my enthusiasm ebbs and flows

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I'm the same

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hourly basis, so I just need to, Yeah, try and stick to

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something for longer than a week.

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And

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goes.

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It kinda reminds me of that book that Alex had recommended that I ended up finishing

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listening to the bo, I can't remember.

Speaker:

I'll put a link.

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The boss.

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The boss, how the boss survived his own business or something.

Speaker:

It's about.

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Woodworking company that is like 30 years old in like 2010,

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it did look 'em up.

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They are still around, which is interesting.

Speaker:

But it got pretty repetitive, I would say.

Speaker:

But similar to like the E Myth or other books like that.

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It's probably just great to hear.

Speaker:

Other people going through stuff you've done or you're trying

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to do or, or wanting to do?

Speaker:

Like in the case of, I think Alex brought it up for sales related things, because

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we were talking about that here, and it ended up talking a lot about sales

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and the burn rate of this company.

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It was just absurd back then, right?

Speaker:

Like, it was like a hundred thousand dollars, like.

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I swear like a month.

Speaker:

I forget the exact numbers, but he is constantly going through how much

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money they're burning and like how many days they have and you know

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what to do about certain sales people and they end up hiring a consultant

Speaker:

for sales, which really helps them.

Speaker:

And some of the tactics that they use then.

Speaker:

So I would say it reinvigorated me, but it did help me think about how

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to potentially hire a salesperson a little bit differently than.

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I would've thought of previously.

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great.

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I definitely need to read, be good timing.

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it's pretty easy.

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I would like listen to it and like do other things often.

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Yeah, I'm a, I'm a fan of audio books.

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That's all I can find time for these

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See, same.

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Put it in my ears.

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Yeah.

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Oh, Although the guy I will, I will pre-warn you, the narrator is not the

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author and he says CNC like a damn robot.

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He's like C and c.

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And I'm like, It's no, that's not how you say it.

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stop

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one word.

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C ends maybe like if you reading a normal sentence, then he just got stops

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and goes like, How do I say that again?

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C and c.

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Classic.

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Good.

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I have a recap of last weekend.

Speaker:

Ricky and I prepared and finally did this Maker's Market.

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I think I probably mentioned it to you I think after we were finished last week,

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but we just kind of Knew it wasn't gonna be like the best thing for us, but we're

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like, we'll probably sell some calendars.

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We just gotten those ready.

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I had, you know, a decent amount of stuff.

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We brought the knack wall and set it up and just wanted to get like info

Speaker:

and feedback and kind of decided the best route with that would be if people

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wanted custom versions of it, we could probably take that on easier than to

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try to make it ready for purchase.

Speaker:

And so we had quite a few people interested to talk about it.

Speaker:

Had a guy that was really interested in.

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Putting it across his entire two story loft wall . I was

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like, Let's go, let's try that.

Speaker:

So they would take information.

Speaker:

And then speaking of that sales book that we, you know, I was just

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talking about, I, I realized about two thirds of the way through the show,

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I was like, I should be taking their information, not letting them contact me.

Speaker:

Right.

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Like,

Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker:

at that, but the real, Yeah.

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Right.

Speaker:

, the real deal breaker situation.

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The real sad situations.

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We sold $35 worth of product in six hours and I was, we were both so frustrated

Speaker:

by the end of like, people would come by and look at it and these are cool.

Speaker:

Look at the calendars, and then they just keep going.

Speaker:

And I, I've said this here before.

Speaker:

I don't know that I'll ever do one of those again.

Speaker:

Like I just, Erin says, you know, my business doesn't fit well in them.

Speaker:

I think she's probably right cuz it's just like hands down, a terrible

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showing for us every time we do it.

Speaker:

So, I don't know.

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I figured I'd tell my losses here,

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Yeah.

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I mean, if it leads to other custom work, then maybe

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my only hope.

Speaker:

out.

Speaker:

But that was.

Speaker:

That was always my issue with doing those sorts of events is that we could just

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never tell, had great conversations, you know, potentially got some really

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great leads, but it was impossible to tell like in the month that followed

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Yep.

Speaker:

you know, how did that convert and was it worth it?

Speaker:

Cause it definitely, it was never worth it on the.

Speaker:

but maybe it was in the, in, you know, we grew really fast in those early days

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when we were doing that sort of stuff.

Speaker:

I think grew, like, we doubled in revenue every year for like the

Speaker:

first five years or something.

Speaker:

Like, it was just this mad, exhausting trajectory.

Speaker:

And that was the time when we were doing all that sort of stuff, like, yeah.

Speaker:

So maybe it was part of that early success.

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I don't know.

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Yeah, for sure.

Speaker:

I mean, that was my only hope.

Speaker:

There's two things that happened that was redeeming was, well, I

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would say two redeeming things.

Speaker:

One, you know, realization was I'm probably never doing this again.

Speaker:

Like it, you know, we lost money for sure.

Speaker:

And it's just exhausting like you do so much effort, you know,

Speaker:

set up, take down worked extra time to make it happen, you know?

Speaker:

But the two things that were great is somebody local came up

Speaker:

that has a different type of CNC machine, was like, Hey, I follow

Speaker:

you on, on the CNC Instagram.

Speaker:

We would really like a dust boot for our machine.

Speaker:

And it's one we wanted to try to expand into hopefully.

Speaker:

So we're gonna work with them on making that work.

Speaker:

I guess.

Speaker:

I don't know why I'm hiding it, but they have a Laguna and they seem to

Speaker:

be pretty popular here and they have.

Speaker:

Ridiculous actuators, but it should prove to be fairly easy to adopt.

Speaker:

And they have, I think only behind your 50 mill port version.

Speaker:

It may be one of the worst ones I've seen.

Speaker:

Okay, cool.

Speaker:

mean everybody, all the machines are just bad it seems like at dust

Speaker:

collection, so that's good for us cuz , we could keep fixing them

Speaker:

It's

Speaker:

so that was really positive.

Speaker:

We've already emailed about that and I just, Dig into that at some point.

Speaker:

And then the other thing Ricky and I just kind of chatted a lot of the time

Speaker:

about like product ideas and new things.

Speaker:

So that was fun.

Speaker:

And we the hell was I gonna say the, the, you know, realized we could potentially

Speaker:

do some custom knack, wall crickets,

Speaker:

Yeah,

Speaker:

Crickets.

Speaker:

couldn't find the button fast enough.

Speaker:

I think it's this one.

Speaker:

There you go.

Speaker:

Mm, mm-hmm.

Speaker:

I like the, I like the feedback in there too.

Speaker:

That was nice.

Speaker:

Yeah, I think it's like one of those bug zapper.

Speaker:

Oh,

Speaker:

. Bug zappers.

Speaker:

I love your last question there.

Speaker:

What are you willfully ignoring?

Speaker:

That's chatting with Joe about something else, and that kind of came up between

Speaker:

us and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna ask Gem that this week because there's

Speaker:

some stuff I'm ignoring for sure.

Speaker:

I wonder what gem's ignoring.

Speaker:

I don't know.

Speaker:

If you'd asked me that a few months ago, I would've had an answer

Speaker:

was not suitable for the podcast.

Speaker:

But I've feel like I'm getting better in that respect.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Good.

Speaker:

found a little

Speaker:

answer.

Speaker:

A boring answer.

Speaker:

I know.

Speaker:

Sorry.

Speaker:

Come on,

Speaker:

I've managed to find more reflection time.

Speaker:

I'm not saying I'm not ignoring anything.

Speaker:

I just can't think of anything right now.

Speaker:

No, I've managed to find more reflective time in my schedule, I

Speaker:

think as I've come off the tools.

Speaker:

And so yeah, I kind of, I'm more on top of not ignoring stuff by just being busy

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

or a hundred percent of the time.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

. Yeah.

Speaker:

That's nice.

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

What about you?

Speaker:

I'll,

Speaker:

come back to that.

Speaker:

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker:

My recurring problems like that are usually more like decision making and

Speaker:

personal, kind of like quandaries of like wanting to do the right thing with

Speaker:

like somebody asking a question, but it's like, I don't know, potentially

Speaker:

revealing of like a process that I don't wanna like, you know, or a tool.

Speaker:

Key, kind of like a, not necessarily a trade secret, but just like something

Speaker:

that, you know, I'm pretty open about most things, but you know, there's

Speaker:

a, there's a line or something.

Speaker:

And so there's just a couple conversations that have happened, you know, in the

Speaker:

past couple months that I'm just like, I don't really, and I don't, I don't

Speaker:

know how to respond typically to them.

Speaker:

It's like, how do I say, I don't want to tell you this,

Speaker:

You know, like, that's too far.

Speaker:

So there's, there's some of that.

Speaker:

There's, Yeah.

Speaker:

Nothing crazy trying to handle, you know, launching new products.

Speaker:

There's just, I don't know if you find this, but it feels like there's always

Speaker:

a bunch of things you don't expect.

Speaker:

And then dealing with trying to make it right for the customer, but not

Speaker:

like going broke in the process.

Speaker:

. you know, just small problems that need to replace, we've had dust boots.

Speaker:

one, it's kind of tore apart and I'm pretty certain that it's like had to

Speaker:

have been like the duck got caught and just yanked real hard potentially.

Speaker:

Because we've crushed them and it takes a ton of force.

Speaker:

I mean, I'm not saying we're they're perfect by any means.

Speaker:

Just, just little, you know, hard stuff to deal with that you're like, I

Speaker:

don't want, I, you know, I wanna work on the new thing and not like try to

Speaker:

solve these these problems that are.

Speaker:

Kind of open ended, like there's no like definite way to solve them.

Speaker:

Yeah, that's the what's the expression?

Speaker:

Please hold listeners while Jim thinks of the word.

Speaker:

No, it's gone.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Something I'm willfully ignoring, like consciously ignoring at the

Speaker:

moment is that I'm supposed to be out of direct, out of the sales process.

Speaker:

I'm supposed to be overseeing sales.

Speaker:

mm-hmm.

Speaker:

And ultimately I'm responsible for it, but I'm not supposed to be doing it.

Speaker:

Yep.

Speaker:

Oh, interesting.

Speaker:

my, I'm holding my best and favorite client very close to my chest

Speaker:

them go because I just really enjoy working with them.

Speaker:

And I love the, you know, how weekly chat now design meetings

Speaker:

and I'm not ready to give that up.

Speaker:

And, you know, it's a three or four or five year relationship at this point.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I'm at one on one level.

Speaker:

I'm scared of handing it over

Speaker:

cause I don't want it to damaged.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

And on another level I just really enjoy it.

Speaker:

So yeah, I'm consciously ignoring that and just hanging out to it.

Speaker:

Sure.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

So yeah, I'm not sure what to do about that, but,

Speaker:

Interesting you say that.

Speaker:

I'm not gonna say that I believe this to be a hundred percent true, but the sales

Speaker:

consultant in that book, who was always talking, the owner of the business, kind

Speaker:

of corrected or like pushed the owner strongly that like he didn't know what all

Speaker:

the sales leads and processes were at the time, even though he was the sales manager

Speaker:

cuz he was moving himself out of sales even though he was the best salesperson.

Speaker:

So relatable to us, right?

Speaker:

He was just saying, This is crazy.

Speaker:

You can't not know all of these processes, all these jobs.

Speaker:

And they didn't really have a CRM set up, so that didn't help.

Speaker:

But I don't know if I believe, I don't know, I don't know enough about sales.

Speaker:

I personally want to be like, All right, hands off,

Speaker:

You know, like if somebody else comes in, I don't wanna have to

Speaker:

constantly be thinking about every job.

Speaker:

Like that anyway.

Speaker:

that could be just once again, bad sales tactics by Justin, the book.

Speaker:

I'll write someday.

Speaker:

No, I don't wanna think about every job either.

Speaker:

And it's been wonderful not having to but yeah, I'm just hanging onto this.

Speaker:

one and I know, like I've got direct feedback from my team that

Speaker:

that's, it's a problem for them.

Speaker:

Like, cuz there's still too much, they're big jobs.

Speaker:

They're very meaty jobs that we get through this relationship.

Speaker:

But there's still too many little details in my head and so like I'm

Speaker:

trying to really get better at ensuring that I've dumped everything out.

Speaker:

But there's always little things cuz I've had, you know, hours of conversation

Speaker:

leading up to winning this job.

Speaker:

You know, sitting with the client infusion, designing level de fund details.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And then when it actually gets to production, there's, you know,

Speaker:

then that presents problems for the production team and for everyone.

Speaker:

So yeah, I'll just try and improve that.

Speaker:

for sure.

Speaker:

get it outta my head.

Speaker:

This whole transition over the last 12 months has really just been an

Speaker:

exercise of getting stuff outta my head.

Speaker:

That's what it's about.

Speaker:

Yeah, I mean, in both regards of getting stuff out of your head as well as like,

Speaker:

I mean, I, I'm thinking of scenarios where like, we don't really have a ton of

Speaker:

repeat clients at the moment, but there's a couple over time that I can imagine

Speaker:

not being super excited if I went all.

Speaker:

Now new employee X is taking over working with you because they just get used to

Speaker:

working with somebody and they don't want to, you know, work with somebody else, or,

Speaker:

they don't know all than I know, right?

Speaker:

And so the answers aren't as fast or complete or, you know, they

Speaker:

have to like ask somebody else.

Speaker:

So it's, it's hard to imagine it ever of really backing out of all that

Speaker:

completely, which, you know, maybe that's just always how it'll be.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Sales.

Speaker:

It sounds so sales just yeah,

Speaker:

always be noling.

Speaker:

that's your version.

Speaker:

Whenever Erin comes into the shop, she'll, like Ricky is very good at like

Speaker:

organizing stuff, but Erin will get bored and she just like was organizing.

Speaker:

I got her the one time when we're working on our cabinets, she was organizing the

Speaker:

empty tool holder, cases in the drawer.

Speaker:

We just throw 'em all in that one spot and they're just, you know, if

Speaker:

you need to find it, you gotta dig.

Speaker:

She was.

Speaker:

Numerically organizing them so you could find them again.

Speaker:

I was like, it's kind of kind of crazy, but also brilliant at the same time.

Speaker:

Cause it like take way less time if you add it in three different bins.

Speaker:

Awesome.

Speaker:

Yes.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Hm mm.

Speaker:

What's on for you now?

Speaker:

I have some family coming to visit.

Speaker:

This is afternoon, The thing that I've been talking about with a couple friends,

Speaker:

how we're all three small business owners and we related that all of our spouses

Speaker:

have said something of the same, where it's like we're the person that never

Speaker:

stops thinking about work and business.

Speaker:

And on the outside, that always comes across as like, I don't know

Speaker:

if it's selfish, but It's hard for the other people around you to like,

Speaker:

Be a part of that sometimes, why do, why do you not wanna talk about

Speaker:

anything besides your business?

Speaker:

I'm excited to see this, this family that's coming, but I'm also thinking

Speaker:

like, I just wanna make pedestals, like let me go play in my mill room.

Speaker:

You know, That's like all I can think about.

Speaker:

Which I think is part of what makes you good.

Speaker:

You know, accomplishing something when you do what we do.

Speaker:

But it's also hard to just, for me to just go, All right, now I'm

Speaker:

gonna sit and go have dinner, and like, not also be thinking about

Speaker:

something, you know, focusing on them.

Speaker:

I have such a hard time with that, like disconnecting from

Speaker:

the, the projects I'm working on.

Speaker:

Yeah, that's super hard.

Speaker:

I, Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah, I can definitely relate to that.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

It'll be good.

Speaker:

We're gonna stay in the little cabin on the mountain, which is kind of fun.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

What's, what are you up to?

Speaker:

Hmm, I've got a video to edit today.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

And our CoLab with never too small, the YouTube channel think they're dropping

Speaker:

their end of all the promotion today.

Speaker:

Yep.

Speaker:

So fingers crossed we'll get some sales off the back of that cuz web sales

Speaker:

have been super slow the last few.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

and yeah.

Speaker:

Tying up some loose ends towards the end of the week.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Should be a good day.

Speaker:

Yeah, it's fun.

Speaker:

in my little cubby, Ben's going overseas next week, so

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Bunch of handovers to do with him and just, yeah, make sure

Speaker:

everything's in order before he exits the building and, Hmm,

Speaker:

that's good.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

Mm.

Speaker:

That's it.

Speaker:

Stand next to it.

Speaker:

See yeah.

Speaker:

Bye.

Speaker:

Come on.

Speaker:

It's the same, it's exactly the same sound.

Speaker:

Uh,

Speaker:

Sound.

Speaker:

You conveniently save them all down

Speaker:

A whole Dropbox.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

It.

Speaker:

Have a good, Have a good, Have a good,

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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