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  1. machinistguy

    How to Transform a Single-Client Company into a Diversified Enterprise – Challenges and Strategies in Industry 4.0

    MARKETING SCALING QUESTION 
    Are you the CEO or the Lead Engineer? When you start out you have to be both, but eventually you have to decide and hire the other. Re: job stability, we deal with a lot of ebbs and flows in our business too. The solution is contract workers, most of which are broke PhD students from the local...
  2. machinistguy

    Educational Resources for Entrepreneurs

    SCALING 
    I've always known my range of knowledge regarding areas of a business were very heavily skewed towards the engineering side. As for knowledge of finance, operations, team building, sales, etc I'm mediocre. My solution starting out was to focus on what I'm good at. Find a product who's...
  3. machinistguy

    Exhausted by the grind?

    MINDSET 
    I've been feeling the same way. My answer was also growth, but not just any growth. I no longer just consider Return on Investment, but also Return on Stress. All decisions and new customers must not only grow the business, but also make it easier to operate. For my particular business, that...
  4. machinistguy

    Most Billionaires Don't Change The World

    SUCCESS! 
    "Changing the world" is less about changing the world as it is about ego. The delusions of grandeur. If they start the next unicorn social media AI company to get the media going off about how they're the next big thing, maybe they'll feel validated. It's a selfish business vs the other path to...
  5. machinistguy

    B2B Customer Relationships Etiquette

    PEOPLE 
    Thanks for the reply. It seems the general consensus is most people are open to crossing the purely professional boundary as long as you keep to basic social rules like being genuine, and the extent of the interaction dependent on personalities meshing, etc and you respect the company's rules...
  6. machinistguy

    B2B Customer Relationships Etiquette

    PEOPLE 
    I was expecting advice about golfing and buying front-row seats to ball games being standard B2B sales behavior, but I got the opposite. This seems key to all interactions. Do you think more positively of the people who asked you for beers? If you had to refer a client to one of the people you...
  7. machinistguy

    B2B Customer Relationships Etiquette

    PEOPLE 
    Our biggest customer is a publicly traded company. We did ~$190k in sales with them last year, and projected $300k this year. The company is the client... but it's really individuals that we work with. The quality control employee, the team lead, the VP CC'ed to half the emails but we only...
  8. machinistguy

    Starting to think I just suck at this...how do I collect proper market research? (Mortgage niche)

    MARKETING 
    I didn't say they weren't smart enough. You're selling a solution that's a deviation from how they've been doing it. Everything you wrote confirms that you need a massive education campaign. You're not looking at it from their perspective. They have a thousand things on their mind, from a big...
  9. machinistguy

    Starting to think I just suck at this...how do I collect proper market research? (Mortgage niche)

    MARKETING 
    Not my area, but I'll give feedback since you asked for it. 1. This sounds like a business that needs high customer education for them to be sold on why they need this solution. If you advertise through FB, do you need a whole funnel? Ads to build awareness, not convert. Then ads to build...
  10. machinistguy

    Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

    HOT! CHAT 
    Does anyone have an article or instructions on proper cyber security procedures like "Create a unique, complex password for each account and this is how you manage the different passwords"? I've gotten a bunch of different sign in attempts recently from foreign countries and other US cities.
  11. machinistguy

    Building a Manufacturing Conglomerate Progress Thread

    EXECUTION 
    Delivered the first prototype this week!Some minor finish problems; should be sorted out next week. The client was super happy. Can't wait to get the initial PO for this, it should be a 6fig PO. This is going along really well, I've even moved the goal post. No longer plan to use it as a loss...
  12. machinistguy

    Purchasing a trendy B&M business...

    HOT! INVESTING 
    $500k in profit, $900k in revenue... in 2021? What happened to 2022 and 2023? Is that where you got the $420k revenue number? Then it's going to do $170k this year? Which is a loss of $80k. The business isn't worth $350k, its worth less than zero because it's unprofitable and declining...
  13. machinistguy

    Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

    HOT! CHAT 
    That tattoo is officially the trashiest thing I've seen all year. Keepin' it classy internet.
  14. machinistguy

    Building a Manufacturing Conglomerate Progress Thread

    EXECUTION 
    Hitting the Gas While Running Out of Cash Been working on a new product line for our big client. It should double our repeat orders, bringing total repeat orders to $40-50k/month. I know most machine shops in the US are prototyping shops making 1-100 parts one time and then never again, but...
  15. machinistguy

    The Greedy Method of Getting Results: The New/Small Business Solution to Overthinking

    IDEA MINDSET EXECUTION 
    They sound like the same thing. I'm not saying if you're unsure what step to take, just any random step. I'm saying if things are so complicated, confusing, or uncertain and you can't tell which step is the best in the long term, just evaluate what step brings the most immediate gain and take...
  16. machinistguy

    From Laid off to CEO: Building a Multi-Million Dollar Software Company [Progress Thread]

    HOT! EXECUTION 
    Do you have a newsletter/YT channel to post updates about your game in gaming forums? You should be selling and getting feedback from customers ASAP! I thought that's what the Stardew Valley guy did. I can't imagine a worse nightmare than spending years on this game and finding out nobody is...
  17. machinistguy

    The Greedy Method of Getting Results: The New/Small Business Solution to Overthinking

    IDEA MINDSET EXECUTION 
    I'm not sure what you mean by "The One Thing". I'm just saying if you don't know what to do next, stop overthinking and just do the thing that leads to the most immediate improvement out of all your options.
  18. machinistguy

    The Greedy Method of Getting Results: The New/Small Business Solution to Overthinking

    IDEA MINDSET EXECUTION 
    A few years back in my college Algorithms class, we were discussing different ways to find out what the optimal solution is to complicated problems that can't be solved directly (Multivariable Optimization Algorithms). One of the most basic ways to do that was a Greedy Algorithm. What is a...
  19. machinistguy

    Let's Talk Gross Margin... High Margin/Low Volume vs Low Margin/High Volume

    IDEA SCALING EXECUTION 
    Yeah the F*ck ups early in company history is what set me on high margin work only. Too many close calls I don't want to live through again. But the company was in a completely different place than it is now. And no, we're nowhere near capacity. The more I think about it, the more it makes...
  20. machinistguy

    Let's Talk Gross Margin... High Margin/Low Volume vs Low Margin/High Volume

    IDEA SCALING EXECUTION 
    I had an argument with the CEO of a client company yesterday about how I only take high margin/lower volume work but turn down their lower margin/higher volume work. It wasn't the main point of conversation so we didn't go in depth but I'd like to do so here and hear everyone's thoughts. High...

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