Fantastic piece! 40 years ago I started my shop as an accidental entrepreneur. Worked day and night until I did a job for a guy; as he wrote me the check for $575 he said, " How long did this take?" Fearing that he was questioning the price for the two hinges in his hand I stumbled and said 30 hours, it was 60. He handed me the check and said "Did you earn enough on this job?". Now I was sweating and was speechless. As he left he invited me to have a burger later. He was the most successful business person I have met and we had burgers for 40 years and I built a large tool and die with injection molding becasue of his advice. So, find that mentor or mentors. What he taught me was to check the ego at the door and #7 make sure the math works. How? Know what an income statement really is, simplify the books until you understand them and go from there. This is really hard for people but so important. Many thanks!
Very good points. As a one man shop I've been basically following those rules for the last 33yrs as my product has lead me on. Work hard, never go in debt, expect it could all go away , take pride in my work and make customer service and satisfaction paramount. Everyday I'm grateful I'm working for myself instead of punching the time clock.
I’ve becomed adicted to your channel, not a machinist myself but for learning and fun. But this is my top video of all RUclips and its because of you and your passion to share your knowledge. God bless you.
Good to see you doing this series again. great topics, super helpful. valuetainment youtube channel is excellent if you dont already subscribe. Cash flowing your capital purchases seems very rare, glad to hear you re-emphasize it... To me there is nothing more fun than researching a tool or machine you want, save up the money, make the purchase in cash, and put it to use in the shop.
John, great foundation list to a build business from. One more line that I think should be added to the list, maintain your health and smell the roses from time to time. There is no point running a business especially as a sole trader if you don't look after your health, both mental and physical. No work = No income = Reduced quality of life. It is a show stopper to your business. Cam
I went to vocational school for machining, but I have the entrepreneurial bug. I’m 19, so I guess I’m still considered somewhat of a newbie when it comes to machining, but I’m doing all I can to learn so I can open my own shop one day. You and Titan’s channels have been the perfect place for me . Thanks for the great videos .
I just really love your approach to do your business: the approach to make your customers really satissfied with your feedback, with your soul open. I'm trying to do my business in the same way!
Enjoy this topic! I am starting a welding/job shop in Detroit, and with a background in metal work and art, I can find myself in over my head from time to time. The thing I learned is that a little debt is not a bad thing and can be a good motivator but know your limits.
Sound advice! I’m definitely in the hobby/job shop category and not quite the full entrepreneur yet. Just slowly building equipment inventory. Yes i just bought a manual lathe 20x72
Many of the things you mention are hard to comprehend until you are actually in the heat of business. For the past 30 years, I have just jumped into the deep end of the business pool with the expectation that the problems will be a lot more obvious from that perspective. I cannot solve problems that I am not aware of and problems that I am not aware of can sink the ship. I have had a few solid successes, but my last business fizzled out. I did not, however, have a pile of soul-crushing debts which kept me out of hot water. I was able to pivot and pick a new path with no long term career injuries.
Great advise as always. I agree with you on the patents. There's many versions of just about every tool we use in this trade. Table stops, vise stops, jaw stops, part stops and so on! A lot of the setup tools dont have patents. Got an improvement to an existing tool? Make a small test batch and get them on the market. If they sell, make more. Like what John said, Get what you can out of it before someone else improves or copies it. Move on to another idea. I have 4 totally new tool prototypes. 7 more improvements to existing unpatented tools in mind and 3D model stage. Most were made to help me create value as an employee, by optimizing my setups. I didn't even consider selling them until I started seeing them Traverse and MSC. I'm in no position right now, to get these tools to Market. I would rather GIVE them to someone who can make that happen. I ain't going to lie, the tools I saw in MSC and Traverse catalog , makes me feel good to know that someone else was thinking that way.
Awesome list, John. Great for someone just starting out, like I am. Only I planned on it taking about 2-3 years to start turning a profit, especially since I have SO, SO much to learn about CNC machining. The hard part for me is turning away business I know I could do, one day, but not there yet.
Good list, but before getting to that list one has to seriously ask what YOUR OWN definition of success is. the ratios of: creativity,free time,stress,profit,FUN etc etc have all got to be blended in the correct proportions for each individual. Get it right for yourself and you will enjoy life, get it wrong and you might not achieve maximum happiness...and only impress strangers from a distance ;-)
Great stuff John. A mentor of mine 60 years ago had a saying. "Plan your work and work your plan" I have used that to keep me on track through out my live. Listen to your mentors... All the best-- Fred
I am very glad to say I have been following all these principles to the best of my ability and it has been working well! Typing these up to hang on my 770m! Thanks for sharing!
#2) The new ISO 9001:2015 is pretty much all about risk and risk management, the previous versions were all about documentation. If you can manage risk and documentation well, then I would say you have a fair chance at ISO 9001. The same can be said of AS9100. I also always have wished more people would write about using ISO9001 and/or AS9100 in the small shop such as it is in the current world. Yes, it can be done in a small shop.
NYC CNC I figured not all of them would be “Warren Buffet” or whoever, but with a sufficient layer of anonymizing you could get the stories out imsure.
Starting a machine shop without dept is pretty much impossible if you ask me. I did 3 years on old payed machines and it was a struggle. Now we lease new machines and make better stuff but now the struggle is elsewhere haha.
I'm thinking of taking on a loan to acquire a business. £25k hopefully, on top of my savings to pay a *deposit on the property as well as for stock and various shop upgrades. I agree that taking on debt is generally bad, but I'm in a position where my current (soon to retire) boss would be willing to sell the property to me - in instalments - for about what it was cost me in a few years rent at a new place. So the reward of taking on that risk seems worth it.
Hey John I'm in the middle of filing my first patent and I just bought my first Haas CNC. You're going to think this is crazy, but I haven't run a machine and almost 10 years! Do you know where I can go for a class or seminar to get me up to speed as fast as possible?
My experience agrees with pretty much all those points. I am looking forward to when my shop gets enough steady business to turn from profitable hobby shop to money making full time shop. :-)
Tip 10 : Jon, take a look back 2+ years when you made a clip discussing the very same issue. If i remember it right, you had hit a turning point and were considering what avenue you wished to go in for the future. was it when the baby was born? You were asking you supporters on the channel what we felt about the live/work balance. whatever decision you made it looks like you are having more family time and the business has gone from strength to strength. It doesn't look to me like you sacrificed either. You never mentioned the top ten tips back then but i'm sure you followed then and your own advice or you would have sold up or been divorced by now. The list for five inspirational people i look up to always has you at the top, Simon Sinek, Lars Christensen and Titan (titans of cnc). I think your ego has got a little bigger than the one the guy had in his New York apartment starting out but success has been the making of you. Ten years on and i'm still working with Chinese hobby machines, sometimes wish you would run a series going back to basics. The new foundation you run is leaving some of us smaller operators behind and you starting to charge - i can appreciate every thing you are doing and accept you cant do it for free, nor would i expect you to. unfortunately every body wants us to have our lives on subscription these days and there is only so much monthly expenditure you can justify before something has to give. I haven't fallen off the merry go round yet.
Your list is missing one key ingredient. Something colloquially referred to as “luck” that is a favorable set of external events, circumstances, experiences, etc. There are plenty of businesses that followed all the points on your list and more but still failed. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: about 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, and about 50% in their fifth year. The average life span of today's multinational, Fortune 500-size corporation is 40 to 50 years. It would be fair to assume good number of those failed businesses were started and run by smart, passionate people. Unfortunately we will never know why they failed and if there are common factors among them. Studying subjects that do not exist is rather hard. Business schools analyze few spectacular failures in their programs but mostly focus on “success factors “ they can observe in businesses that are doing well (at least for now anyway ). Successful businesses are statistical anomaly but that is all we have to look at so we do and draw incomplete conclusions. That is confirmation bias. So while the advise you dispensed is valid, it is not everything one needs to be successful. Anyway, congratulations on developing and running successful businesses. PS: If you haven’t already, read “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicolas Taleb. It will give you an entirely new perspective.
Nerd City just released a video on what words in your title will get you demonetized. Even if youtube isn't you main source of income, check out these words that you may be surprised to learn will get you demonetized. Contains, countryside, counts, cutting, delivery, dozens, drove, employees, example, existed, fifth, finder, finish, focal, gallon, gave, grab, grinding, hard, holder, hose, hot, implementation, included, incomplete, industry, inside, knife, known, lessons, odd, offered, removal, rep, request, risk, ruined, screwed, shocking, shooting, sites, spokesman, sympathy, tablets, that, valley, various, vendors. Those are the ones I thought could apply to you.
![CHILE vs. BRASIL [1-2] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5ObJt_71AYc/mqdefault.jpg)
Fantastic piece! 40 years ago I started my shop as an accidental entrepreneur. Worked day and night until I did a job for a guy; as he wrote me the check for $575 he said, " How long did this take?" Fearing that he was questioning the price for the two hinges in his hand I stumbled and said 30 hours, it was 60. He handed me the check and said "Did you earn enough on this job?". Now I was sweating and was speechless. As he left he invited me to have a burger later. He was the most successful business person I have met and we had burgers for 40 years and I built a large tool and die with injection molding becasue of his advice. So, find that mentor or mentors. What he taught me was to check the ego at the door and #7 make sure the math works. How? Know what an income statement really is, simplify the books until you understand them and go from there. This is really hard for people but so important. Many thanks!
Well done, I am delighted and grateful! You are part of my list. I'm reinventing myself through you!
Thanks John. Good solid advice. A copy of that list is now pinned-up on my wall!
Thanks John!
Very helpful, im a solopeneur eith a home built cnc router and lots of ideas, this will help me weed out the bad ones.
Very good points. As a one man shop I've been basically following those rules for the last 33yrs as my product has lead me on. Work hard, never go in debt, expect it could all go away , take pride in my work and make customer service and satisfaction paramount. Everyday I'm grateful I'm working for myself instead of punching the time clock.
I’ve becomed adicted to your channel, not a machinist myself but for learning and fun. But this is my top video of all RUclips and its because of you and your passion to share your knowledge. God bless you.
Thanks!
Thanks John! It's great to see people succeeding and wanting to share their knowledge
Thanks John, great video. You are an inspiration to all of us who think about starting a small business.
Awesome stuff! I can always feel your energy in these videos. Don't ever stop!
Good to see you doing this series again. great topics, super helpful. valuetainment youtube channel is excellent if you dont already subscribe. Cash flowing your capital purchases seems very rare, glad to hear you re-emphasize it... To me there is nothing more fun than researching a tool or machine you want, save up the money, make the purchase in cash, and put it to use in the shop.
Great original article with some great tips! Thanks for bringing them to us and sharing them.
John you always boost my motivation to keep fighting for my future business
Thanks for sharing this list and your interpretation of each point, what a great resource! I'm about to watch this a second time to take notes.
John, great foundation list to a build business from. One more line that I think should be added to the list, maintain your health and smell the roses from time to time. There is no point running a business especially as a sole trader if you don't look after your health, both mental and physical. No work = No income = Reduced quality of life. It is a show stopper to your business.
Cam
This is great. It’s humble, detailed and direct! My favorite, it’s realistic!!!
Thanks Stephen!
I went to vocational school for machining, but I have the entrepreneurial bug. I’m 19, so I guess I’m still considered somewhat of a newbie when it comes to machining, but I’m doing all I can to learn so I can open my own shop one day. You and Titan’s channels have been the perfect place for me . Thanks for the great videos .
I just really love your approach to do your business: the approach to make your customers really satissfied with your feedback, with your soul open.
I'm trying to do my business in the same way!
This is one of my favourite videos from you, thanks a lot
Enjoy this topic! I am starting a welding/job shop in Detroit, and with a background in metal work and art, I can find myself in over my head from time to time. The thing I learned is that a little debt is not a bad thing and can be a good motivator but know your limits.
Sound advice! I’m definitely in the hobby/job shop category and not quite the full entrepreneur yet. Just slowly building equipment inventory.
Yes i just bought a manual lathe 20x72
Thanks!
I love your passion John, you are on my list. : )
:)
Brilliant list John, my brother has not long started his own business and I will be advising him to take a look for sure, thank you, ATB Matty
Thanks!
Many of the things you mention are hard to comprehend until you are actually in the heat of business.
For the past 30 years, I have just jumped into the deep end of the business pool with the expectation that the problems will be a lot more obvious from that perspective. I cannot solve problems that I am not aware of and problems that I am not aware of can sink the ship.
I have had a few solid successes, but my last business fizzled out. I did not, however, have a pile of soul-crushing debts which kept me out of hot water. I was able to pivot and pick a new path with no long term career injuries.
Great advise as always. I agree with you on the patents. There's many versions of just about every tool we use in this trade. Table stops, vise stops, jaw stops, part stops and so on! A lot of the setup tools dont have patents. Got an improvement to an existing tool? Make a small test batch and get them on the market. If they sell, make more. Like what John said, Get what you can out of it before someone else improves or copies it. Move on to another idea. I have 4 totally new tool prototypes. 7 more improvements to existing unpatented tools in mind and 3D model stage. Most were made to help me create value as an employee, by optimizing my setups. I didn't even consider selling them until I started seeing them Traverse and MSC. I'm in no position right now, to get these tools to Market. I would rather GIVE them to someone who can make that happen. I ain't going to lie, the tools I saw in MSC and Traverse catalog , makes me feel good to know that someone else was thinking that way.
Thanks, very helpful advices. I just getting started my own workshop cnc journey, and I hope one day to have success like you.
Love your energy and enthusiasm
Thanks John. Well worth a save on this video so that I can review it when tough times come.
Totally on point! Spot on! Great advice!
Awesome list, John. Great for someone just starting out, like I am. Only I planned on it taking about 2-3 years to start turning a profit, especially since I have SO, SO much to learn about CNC machining. The hard part for me is turning away business I know I could do, one day, but not there yet.
Thanks mate, great vid il be useing that list and reflecting 👍🏻
Good list, but before getting to that list one has to seriously ask what YOUR OWN definition of success is. the ratios of: creativity,free time,stress,profit,FUN etc etc have all got to be blended in the correct proportions for each individual. Get it right for yourself and you will enjoy life, get it wrong and you might not achieve maximum happiness...and only impress strangers from a distance ;-)
Great stuff John. A mentor of mine 60 years ago had a saying. "Plan your work and work your plan" I have used that to keep me on track through out my live. Listen to your mentors... All the best-- Fred
Thank You John. I copy your list to myself and start to use here in Brazil. Regards Bro !
Whaaaat??! No Whining..whyyyyy :-)
So much wisdom, such excellent advice.
Pumped for chip breaks to be back!
Thanks!
Great video/list John!
Thanks Ryan!
I am very glad to say I have been following all these principles to the best of my ability and it has been working well! Typing these up to hang on my 770m! Thanks for sharing!
#2) The new ISO 9001:2015 is pretty much all about risk and risk management, the previous versions were all about documentation. If you can manage risk and documentation well, then I would say you have a fair chance at ISO 9001. The same can be said of AS9100. I also always have wished more people would write about using ISO9001 and/or AS9100 in the small shop such as it is in the current world. Yes, it can be done in a small shop.
Cant wait to work tomorrow now, thanks!
Amazing video and tips! very inspirational
Great video !
Great video. Would you do a future video on your list of people from number nine?
Oh that's an interesting question. Maybe. Some (many) of the people don't know they are on the list though!
NYC CNC I figured not all of them would be “Warren Buffet” or whoever, but with a sufficient layer of anonymizing you could get the stories out imsure.
Starting a machine shop without dept is pretty much impossible if you ask me.
I did 3 years on old payed machines and it was a struggle.
Now we lease new machines and make better stuff but now the struggle is elsewhere haha.
To me, "hitting cycle start" is the best part. Even if the tool breaks hahaha
liked...but if tool breaks...
@@TAH1712 then we know how not to break it next time...
I'm thinking of taking on a loan to acquire a business. £25k hopefully, on top of my savings to pay a *deposit on the property as well as for stock and various shop upgrades.
I agree that taking on debt is generally bad, but I'm in a position where my current (soon to retire) boss would be willing to sell the property to me - in instalments - for about what it was cost me in a few years rent at a new place. So the reward of taking on that risk seems worth it.
Thanks
Fair play Saunders!
For ERP please look at ShopTech E2 Shop System. I went with it and do not regret it. So easy and as much help as you need.
Hey John I'm in the middle of filing my first patent and I just bought my first Haas CNC.
You're going to think this is crazy, but I haven't run a machine and almost 10 years! Do you know where I can go for a class or seminar to get me up to speed as fast as possible?
We have classes! Info and dates at www.nyccnc.com/events
Make sure your actively selling your product or your patent won't be defensible.
Patent is useless if someone in China rips off your product. Happened to too many friends I’ve known
My experience agrees with pretty much all those points. I am looking forward to when my shop gets enough steady business to turn from profitable hobby shop to money making full time shop. :-)
Great Video! Don't like the music that kicks in mid video though. Was kind of destracting me ...
Tip 10 : Jon, take a look back 2+ years when you made a clip discussing the very same issue. If i remember it right, you had hit a turning point and were considering what avenue you wished to go in for the future. was it when the baby was born? You were asking you supporters on the channel what we felt about the live/work balance. whatever decision you made it looks like you are having more family time and the business has gone from strength to strength. It doesn't look to me like you sacrificed either. You never mentioned the top ten tips back then but i'm sure you followed then and your own advice or you would have sold up or been divorced by now. The list for five inspirational people i look up to always has you at the top, Simon Sinek, Lars Christensen and Titan (titans of cnc). I think your ego has got a little bigger than the one the guy had in his New York apartment starting out but success has been the making of you. Ten years on and i'm still working with Chinese hobby machines, sometimes wish you would run a series going back to basics. The new foundation you run is leaving some of us smaller operators behind and you starting to charge - i can appreciate every thing you are doing and accept you cant do it for free, nor would i expect you to.
unfortunately every body wants us to have our lives on subscription these days and there is only so much monthly expenditure you can justify before something has to give. I haven't fallen off the merry go round yet.
Great advice.
Glad to see chip break back from the grave!
John do you have partners in your business or in your business endeavors?
Nope - see ruclips.net/video/y7URv3Ga7os/видео.html
so nice bro
Damn good.
Your list is missing one key ingredient. Something colloquially referred to as “luck” that is a favorable set of external events, circumstances, experiences, etc. There are plenty of businesses that followed all the points on your list and more but still failed. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: about 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, and about 50% in their fifth year.
The average life span of today's multinational, Fortune 500-size corporation is 40 to 50 years.
It would be fair to assume good number of those failed businesses were started and run by smart, passionate people.
Unfortunately we will never know why they failed and if there are common factors among them. Studying subjects that do not exist is rather hard. Business schools analyze few spectacular failures in their programs but mostly focus on “success factors “ they can observe in businesses that are doing well (at least for now anyway ).
Successful businesses are statistical anomaly but that is all we have to look at so we do and draw incomplete conclusions. That is confirmation bias.
So while the advise you dispensed is valid, it is not everything one needs to be successful.
Anyway, congratulations on developing and running successful businesses.
PS: If you haven’t already, read “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicolas Taleb. It will give you an entirely new perspective.
Generate good business karma 👏👏👏 tks
👍
Fun fact: Cooperative businesses are twice as likely to succeed as a conventional business.
1 question: where do you find metal stock. I feel like my wallet is getting violated with sand...
We buy large orders from places like Alro and Yarde Metals. Small stuff / online = Xometry Supplies (super good pricing, usually free shipping)
Nerd City just released a video on what words in your title will get you demonetized. Even if youtube isn't you main source of income, check out these words that you may be surprised to learn will get you demonetized.
Contains, countryside, counts, cutting, delivery, dozens, drove, employees, example, existed, fifth, finder, finish, focal, gallon, gave, grab, grinding, hard, holder, hose, hot, implementation, included, incomplete, industry, inside, knife, known, lessons, odd, offered, removal, rep, request, risk, ruined, screwed, shocking, shooting, sites, spokesman, sympathy, tablets, that, valley, various, vendors.
Those are the ones I thought could apply to you.
Quade loves u
And curtis