Episode 6

6 - Jem Got Covid

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

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DISCUSSED:

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.

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

Which Hire was most impactful?

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

Advertising

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



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Show Info

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HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcript
Justin:

How terrible you're feeling.

Jem:

uh, Look on a scale of one to 10.

Jem:

Not, not that terrible.

Jem:

No,

Justin:

you look like, a podcast producer actually in the

Jem:

Oh yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

It's a pretty good recording environment.

Jem:

Really?

Jem:

It's very dead.

Justin:

Yeah, it is.

Jem:

Good.

Jem:

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

Jem:

Great.

Justin:

You keep it plugged in and then

Jem:

Yeah, we charge it.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

yeah, it's there forever.

Jem:

right.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

How's your.

Justin:

It's pretty good.

Justin:

Better.

Justin:

I think I fell.

Justin:

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

Justin:

been kind of all over the place.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

And luckily nothing happened damage wise.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

That'd be weird.

Justin:

I found a forklift mechanic.

Justin:

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

Justin:

rather than these big companies.

Justin:

And he's fantastic.

Justin:

He fixed my battery problem.

Justin:

I had two shorts somewhere up by the ignition.

Justin:

I dunno, he tore the whole thing apart basically.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

And he did it in two hours, I think.

Justin:

It was pretty awesome.

Justin:

in that regard

Jem:

he wasn't charging that lawyer money.

Justin:

No, no, this is the great thing.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

didn't need to be worried about.

Justin:

He's like, those are fine.

Justin:

You don't need to worry about it.

Justin:

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

Jem:

Awesome.

Jem:

That's great.

Justin:

how about you?

Justin:

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

Justin:

I think.

Jem:

Yeah, there might be a little bit of that.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

We have to do seven days.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

As a minimum.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

It's a lot of time to think.

Justin:

I'm sure.

Jem:

It's all right.

Jem:

Yep.

Justin:

Has the rest of your family received the blessing?

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

She bounces back pretty fast from,

Justin:

the day.

Jem:

Yeah, pretty much.

Justin:

Oh, that's good.

Justin:

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

Justin:

maybe had gotten like a message about it.

Justin:

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

Justin:

I just found out somebody got COVID.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

no one else in the team has.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

but

Justin:

It's always nice in those situations when.

Justin:

I'm sure you have to a greater extent.

Justin:

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

Justin:

have to be there for it to work.

Justin:

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

Justin:

worry about that happening even

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

It was pretty good this time around.

Jem:

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

Jem:

a list for this particular occasion.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

like, Hey, can we just take over?

Jem:

He was like, yeah, sure.

Jem:

I got.

Justin:

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

Jem:

and

Justin:

No,

Jem:

I've done very little work

Justin:

that's good.

Jem:

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

Jem:

haven't really been capable of it.

Justin:

Sure.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

head's head space has been pretty wacky.

Jem:

Um,

Justin:

Common.

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

are the key things I do every day.

Jem:

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

Jem:

And it didn't matter.

Jem:

Sounds like they went, they went fine.

Justin:

Yeah, that's good.

Justin:

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

Justin:

And I remember having a very concerned conversation.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

you know, like on a piece of paper.

Justin:

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

Justin:

some Justin needs more contingency.

Jem:

Contingency plan.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

that's not incredibly disruptive.

Justin:

For sure.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Need to have a lot of that.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

of got that least of like cool.

Jem:

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

Jem:

out for, you know, it goes on holiday.

Jem:

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

Jem:

a couple of weeks for a week.

Jem:

And I know that she's documented.

Jem:

The crap out of everything.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

every day to keep things ticking along.

Jem:

These are the priorities.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

his significant other had potential air.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

also has pretty good fusion skills now.

Justin:

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

Justin:

I don't expect it to be like perfect.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

punished for not getting work time.

Justin:

we did talk about that.

Justin:

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

Justin:

you work on if you weren't here?

Jem:

That's a good idea.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

up and go home because it felt too risky.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

better at Fusion sort of thing.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

they transitioned to, work from home.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

orbital sander, gaffer tape to my foot.

Jem:

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

Jem:

trying to do everything at once.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

that, but it was just the perfect fit.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

help with this side of the business?

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

You say you need, will it work?

Jem:

We need things done.

Jem:

Yeah, come, come help us.

Jem:

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

Jem:

of spur of the moment often.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

who would be good at doing making things.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

time ago because it frees out my time.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

then admitted.

Jem:

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

Jem:

in the workshop to then produce.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

too admin heavy over time.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

If that makes sense.

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

know.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

I can definitely relate to basically everything you said, and

Justin:

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

Justin:

I had that thought for sure.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

months before you think you need it.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

you get there with needing support.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

heard the first employee and I think.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

And then even other things with that.

Justin:

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

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

Like somebody is going to do the other side.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

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

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

Then usually, I think there definitely is a place.

Justin:

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

Justin:

made the biggest difference.

Justin:

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

Justin:

much like a dog still, right.

Justin:

Like all the time.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Oh, good question.

Jem:

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

Jem:

we didn't know our finances.

Jem:

Well, enough back then.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

fixed cost versus um, the other ones.

Justin:

Yeah, I don't know.

Justin:

You have the other ones.

Jem:

Soft like my brain.

Jem:

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

Jem:

You know, working crazy hours, pre business manager.

Jem:

Yes.

Jem:

The business was profitable.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

But yeah, no, absolutely.

Jem:

There's a, this is a crossover point.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

a sweet spot there where it's right.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

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

Jem:

That makes sense.

Jem:

Now.

Jem:

Well, some of that into an admin role, but

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

Hmm.

Jem:

That's a tricky, tricky thing to know.

Jem:

When is the right time, I guess, Hey.

Justin:

for sure.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

to taking on internal payroll staff.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

having people on call at all times.

Jem:

Grow and

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Justin:

That's interesting.

Justin:

On Sarah, right?

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

Or just coincidence.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

Like I still joked with Sarah now about like how.

Jem:

Frightened.

Jem:

She was of my, filing system,

Justin:

Like file files or papers.

Jem:

type of files and receipts.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

and then starting a fresh box.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

for sure.

Jem:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

what is the most complimentary.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

before starting his own thing.

Justin:

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

Justin:

little product design studio again.

Justin:

And Andy's his name?

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

So not business management, but more like internal processing

Justin:

and making things work.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

that was maybe like the perfect fit.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

to help me, like, just do anything.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

And and those people are kind of invaluable to me.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

I'll do it well.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

advertising is my best take at this point.

Justin:

Right?

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

That seems to be the king right now.

Justin:

Like Tik TOK and stuff like that.

Justin:

And I

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

and they try to pair you at some costs.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

I think it's tricky.

Jem:

Huh?

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

who can just get on and do anything.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

I think

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

it only, becomes too much admin wise.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

the systems you've built then United.

Jem:

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

Jem:

Marketing.

Jem:

Marketing's a strange world.

Jem:

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

Jem:

social dilemma for the first time.

Justin:

Oh, yeah,

Jem:

Simon.

Jem:

I'm feeling pretty worried about

Justin:

for sure.

Jem:

all of that at the moment.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've always struggled with that.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

or in front of a camera as need be.

Jem:

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

Jem:

do like content creation for me.

Jem:

And I've dabbled with that in the past.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

And I've tried it in the past.

Jem:

And the feedback has always been like very quickly.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

what do you want?

Jem:

Like if you could, do you have an idea.

Justin:

What I know is.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

stuff that we designed and sold it.

Justin:

And those were always profitable.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

That sounds no way braggadocious.

Justin:

It's more like we still have that situation where

Justin:

we've design different things.

Justin:

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

Justin:

They're good.

Justin:

Let's say they never scale.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

I need to hire people to make more.

Justin:

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

Justin:

especially as we were trying to transition to.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

more money than I'm making back on it.

Justin:

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

Justin:

will start to work and then it just stops.

Justin:

And I'm like, what happened?

Justin:

Like why?

Justin:

I don't know.

Justin:

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

Justin:

somebody to help us take that.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

I just don't.

Justin:

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

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

That's a big one.

Jem:

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

Jem:

That's a question that comes up for us.

Jem:

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

Jem:

slow trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

Instagram getting the word out there.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

And now a little bit through Google search paid search.

Jem:

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

Jem:

of like what October was so good.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

who can help you answer those questions.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

be such a complex environment.

Jem:

It's very hard to get those answers.

Jem:

So we, we pulled a bunch.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

that money with Facebook.

Jem:

I always felt quite dirty about that spend.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I don't like advertising.

Jem:

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

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

We know it's possible.

Jem:

No varmints, there we go away.

Jem:

We could see it scaling.

Jem:

Like I'm like, oh, cool.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

This is, this is working.

Jem:

I can see how this works now.

Jem:

And then it drops off.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

What was the other one?

Justin:

Facebook and

Jem:

Google paid search.

Justin:

yeah, a little bit.

Justin:

It's changed a little bit.

Justin:

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

Justin:

something recently, product on Google.

Justin:

And I'd never really done.

Justin:

It's been a long time.

Justin:

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

Justin:

probably five, $700 and just nothing just disappears.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

was much more sort of transparent.

Justin:

Hm.

Jem:

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

Jem:

people in their Facebook feed.

Jem:

We were serving ads to people who had searched for.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

But like that thing,

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

are being selected, but still,

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

coming back to me it was fantastic.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

logarithmic, like drop after that.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

Really.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

but other than that, I don't understand.

Justin:

Cause it wasn't even published at that point.

Justin:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

most successful product launch by far.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

And then that sold that.

Jem:

And I have not basically.

Jem:

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

Jem:

of developed into a product.

Jem:

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

Jem:

More interest or more activity.

Jem:

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

Jem:

those platforms are a thing.

Jem:

Right.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah, for sure.

Justin:

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

Justin:

I've done one.

Justin:

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

Justin:

they did one more recent.

Justin:

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

Justin:

to try the Nack Wall on Kickstarter.

Justin:

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

Justin:

Probably not like skip it.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

most of your own interest regardless.

Justin:

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

Justin:

between the fees to somebody else.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

have the perfect product, I guess.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

because that's the way my brain works.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

enough data, I guess I don't understand.

Justin:

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

Justin:

right people at the right time.

Justin:

This is what I always think about.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I hope so.

Jem:

and work out who those people are.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

Getting the right eyes on them.

Jem:

I think.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

That's kind of organically built up.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

That's cool way.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

that respect of what you've got a

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I mean,

Jem:

fellow makers and CNC enthusiasts.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

You should.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

Bless.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

I like the process doesn't seem as relevant.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

designers that want to specify.

Justin:

That'd be amazing.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

That gets across to everybody.

Jem:

I think people tune into authenticity and excitement and people

Jem:

who, or they're making things.

Jem:

Cause that's what they wanna do.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Hm.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

And I'm like, oh, is it?

Justin:

seems small

Jem:

to me.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

You

Justin:

know, like I wish I had more space.

Justin:

It's kind of dark.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

you know, even in sharing sometimes.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

people that don't do this every day.

Justin:

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

Justin:

what, what has this machine work?

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

has multiple CNCS to play with.

Jem:

Yeah, I know it's easy to do.

Jem:

Isn't it?

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I guess that is cool.

Jem:

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

Jem:

bent on your content already.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

educate people on process naturally.

Jem:

I think that comes through nicely.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

to be like, yeah, cool.

Jem:

I made this.

Justin:

Yeah, no, it is.

Justin:

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

Justin:

tour it's really distracting, you know?

Justin:

But it's been far too.

Justin:

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

Justin:

from 2019 when we moved into the.

Justin:

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

Justin:

And we were always hoping to do more training things.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

And then there's yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

these events, do you want to host one?

Justin:

I was like, yeah.

Justin:

And then literally like, COVID shut all that down.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

yeah.

Justin:

someday hopefully.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

So at similar timing for us.

Jem:

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

Jem:

you can have people in, I think,

Justin:

Oh man.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

I finally got through the process.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

driving it is basically your feed rate

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

just took me a while.

Justin:

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

Justin:

normally, or like single block through something go real slow

Justin:

when you're trying to not crash.

Justin:

Well, this has to go a hundred percent.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

the bottom and I didn't hear any pops.

Justin:

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

Justin:

was like chips sticking out of it.

Justin:

And I was like, oh no.

Justin:

But then I looked in and it was perfect.

Justin:

it works and I

Jem:

lovely little pot.

Jem:

And how does it engage?

Justin:

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

Justin:

and it locks in the horizontal position.

Justin:

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

Jem:

nice.

Jem:

Like a press fit.

Justin:

basically.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

from the backside of the wall.

Justin:

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

Justin:

sound to, to get them right.

Justin:

To get the little edges, all blending.

Justin:

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

Jem:

Is that a two-sided operation?

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

that'd be

Justin:

someday need to sell some first.

Jem:

lovely little pot.

Justin:

Thanks.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I'm pretty happy with that one.

Justin:

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

Justin:

make on the mill for this assembly.

Justin:

Everything else is router based.

Justin:

And

Jem:

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

Justin:

we did, we actually used to print.

Justin:

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

Justin:

going to crank it too hard and break it

Jem:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

performing nothing up there right now.

Justin:

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

Justin:

took it out to try the aluminum one.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

Like that.

Justin:

Just kind of funny

Jem:

Yeah, that's cool.

Justin:

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

Justin:

printer was that we could make these.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

That's part of the process.

Jem:

You have a sense of like the busy Aluminum part economic

Jem:

goal based on that cycle time.

Justin:

I think so.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

minutes or something like that.

Justin:

Collectively it's pretty fast

Jem:

cool.

Justin:

know coming from a small stock.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

that'd be a satisfying.

Justin:

yeah, it would, yeah.

Justin:

Pretty stoked about that guy.

Jem:

Awesome.

Jem:

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

Justin:

Oh my God.

Jem:

dream dream, right?

Jem:

Lights out.

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

I want a little palette.

Justin:

I mean, even a advices.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

enough to hold like a strip probably.

Justin:

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

Justin:

tap at that point, which is kind of nice.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

All the stuff that I'm Okay.

Jem:

Pearson does with palletizing small parts.

Jem:

I love watching videos.

Justin:

like, how can I do this?

Justin:

What can I make that?

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

I can go back to work.

Jem:

So hopefully on Monday,

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

take the weekend to you recover hopefully.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Try and get my head back in the game.

Justin:

well, I'm sure that'll happen.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

We'll have to

Jem:

feeling pretty weird at this stage.

Jem:

That's okay.

Justin:

Yeah, for sure.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

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

Jem:

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

Jem:

I tried being useful a couple of times.

Jem:

That just became exhausted very quickly.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

That's all right.

Justin:

I think we should have

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

different.

Jem:

Speaking of being exhausted, Dan.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I don't know.

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Have you got stuff that's pressing at work?

Justin:

No, it did.

Justin:

We've taken on a few more job shop.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

That's good.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Like a multipass multipass chamfer

Justin:

Lots of passes.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

That'll be fun.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

may fail catastrophic.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

French cleats and a couple toe clamps.

Justin:

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

Justin:

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

Justin:

I don't know.

Jem:

Awesome.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

If I can get some action.

Jem:

yeah.

Justin:

off shots.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Coleman.

Justin:

All right.

Justin:

Well, hope you feel better.

Jem:

Thank you.

Justin:

It was full, full energy gym.

Jem:

I'll be bouncing back next week.

Jem:

Yep.

Justin:

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

Jem:

Thank you.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

And take care of

Justin:

Yep.

Justin:

See ya.

Jem:

by,

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About the Podcast

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

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About your hosts

Profile picture for Jem Freeman

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