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Keith Dickinson – Dickinson Manufacturing Solutions
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You have found Authentic Business
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Adventures, the business program that brings
you the struggle
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stories and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land. Coming
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to you actually onsite at Dickinson
Manufacturing with Keith Dickinson here.
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We’re typically at the Sun Prairie Media Center
underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie,
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but it turns out this place is cooler,
so we’ll just run with that.
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Today, we’re welcoming/preparing
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to learn from Keith Dickinson,
the owner of Dickinson Manufacturing.
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So, Keith, how are you doing today?
I’m doing great.
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This is cool.
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I’m excited
because the last time I was here,
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you had machines on this side,
but I don’t think you had anything here.
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Right.
So that was prior to 2014.
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Yeah, it’s been a while.
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We started in 2005, OK.
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And this space had the wall going
all the way and 30,000 square feet.
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Three thousand square.
Thirty thousand.
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I wish.
Yeah, I know.
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A 30 by a hundred.
OK.
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And then in 2014 we added up the space and
it’s about half of what we already had.
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So we’re in like forty
five hundred square feet.
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Nice.
Yeah. That’s cool,
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so you guys are growing?
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We haven’t added any space since 2014.
Sure.
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Sure.
And we didn’t add any equipment this year.
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So we’re not I wouldn’t say
that we’re growing, but we’re stable.
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Sure.
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Well manufacturing business
in 2020 I imagine that’s
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that’s okay.
Stables good.
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Yeah.
Plus this can’t be cheap.
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No.
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Well they’re not
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totally crazy expensive but. I mean you got
space, you get operator, you got
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the machine itself, care
and feeding all that jazz.
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Well I, I’ve heard that
machining in general is one of the highest
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capital equipment investment
industries that there is.
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So that’s perfect segway because I want
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to ask you, how did you
end up in this business?
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Well, how far you want to go back?
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Well,
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15 years in a day I suppose. OK.
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So I’ve been a machinist
all my adult life.
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OK.
You went to school for it?
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No, but I was very, very, very fortunate.
OK.
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I started on the East Coast. OK.
Right after high school I joined
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the service and I was
in the army for three years.
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When I got out, I moved from Wisconsin
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to Connecticut,
where my girlfriend at the time
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lived.
So I got a job out there as an industrial
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X-ray repair technician.
Industrial X-ray repair technician.
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OK, so was that
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trained by the army then
when you’re in there?
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No, I was actually
in multi-channel communications.
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Oh, wow.
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But they were still big
words. We got wires, it’s all good.
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They asked me, what makes you think
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that you could be an industrial
X-ray repair technician?
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Sure.
And so I told them, look outside,
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I drive a 57 Buick Roadmaster
and I keep it on the road.
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So maybe I could do this job. How hard
can it be? So, exactly.
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So they taught me and I was
a repair technician.
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All right.
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And that’s where I first
saw metal being cut.
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OK.
And when I saw metal getting cut,
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the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Really?
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Oh, my God.
Love at first sight.
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I said, that’s what I’ve got to do.
Oh, nice.
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Yeah.
And that was back in the day when
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pretty much all companies, you know,
were trusting enough to give their
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employees keys and say, come in and fiddle
around with the equipment if you like.
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Just be careful.
Sure.
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So I’d come in on my off time and I’d make
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candlestick holders or who knows
what, just to have fun. OK.
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And then I got married and I was going
to I needed to make some more money
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and they weren’t willing to give
me as much of a raises I wanted.
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So that’s what sent me out
to find a machining job.
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All right.
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So I saw one in the paper one morning
and they said and I called them and they
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said, Do you know how
to read a Vernier calliper?
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And I said, sure.
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And they said, do you know
how to read a micrometer?
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So, yeah, no problem.
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So they said, well, can you
get to an interview by 10:00?
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Yeah, I’ll be there.
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So I talked to my boss and he said,
yeah, sure, go get to the interview.
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So this is like 8:30
in the morning.
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So I run my ass down to the library
and look up vernier calliper
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and I look up micrometer and I found
out what they were and how they worked.
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All right.
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And I went to the interview
and got the job nice.
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And then I trained under
this guy Lou Baumer.
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OK.
Eighty two year old man at the time.
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Wow.
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And taught me machining like nobody
could have taught me machining.
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He had 60 years under his belt.
Exactly.
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All right.
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So that’s where I learned
the basics of machining.
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Sure.
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And from there, I just went
on to different places.
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And again, I was fortunate.
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I went to a shop where I did a lot of R&D
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and research and development
and and building equipment.
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All right.
And then I ended up moving out
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of Connecticut and ended up
at Lockheed missiles in space.
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Oh, yeah, great.
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That’s a pretty good job.
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I would have stayed there except for they
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stopped doing their
manufacturing in Austin, Texas.
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Oh, all right.
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But it was very interesting
and I learned a lot.
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Connecticut to Austin,
Connecticut to Austin.
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Then we were we were making a remotely
piloted aircraft, small aircraft.
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So how long ago was this?
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This was in the late 80s.
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Early 90s, OK?
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And then they lost the contract.
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So they laid everybody off.
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And I found myself at another company
making parts for Applied Materials.
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You know who they are?
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They make the machines that actually
make wafers for, like, IBM.
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Oh, interesting.
Okay.
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So they would like
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they would make the milling machine
that then I would buy I’d be IBM.
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Sure.
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And then I’d make my product
on their machine.
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Oh interesting.
OK, so that’s Applied Materials makes
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the semiconductor machine and I made
parts for those pieces of equipment.
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OK, so I had some, I had some very,
very good mentors and training and from
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from from Texas.
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I ended up going to California
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and machining for about a year and a half
and then brought me back to Wisconsin
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and we started the business in 2005.
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So why did you decide to start a business
versus just finding another job?
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Yeah.
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So what happened in my career,
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although I had some very,
very good training and I always.
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Worked my way up to the top,
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I was the lead in the research
and development department at Lockheed.
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Yeah, but then I lost my job anyway.
All right.
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So I had no control over if
I was going to have a job.
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I love it.
I love it.
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So now nobody can sell this place but me.
It’s on you.
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Exactly.
You hold it.
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And if I make correct decisions,
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I
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glean the benefit of that.
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And if I make bad decisions, well,
I guess I made bad decisions.
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That’s right.
But they’re all on me.
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And every time you work yourself
to the top and machining and you have
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to go find another job,
you usually take quite a pay cut.
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All right.
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It’s just the way it happens because each
shop has their own way of doing things.
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Sure.
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And so you’re not as valuable
coming off the street.
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So they would say, sure,
you got to prove your worth.
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Exactly.
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So you kind of got to start
over all the time.
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All right.
So you’re the typical competitor.
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Do you are they basically a size
like this or their monstrosity?
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Machine shops?
It’s a mix.
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There are some big production machine
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shops and then there are some small
shops that are probably close to mine.
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OK, so there’s a variety
of them out there.
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All right.
But one thing that they don’t have.
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Yeah.
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Is the diversified experience
that I bring to the job.
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I like it because I’ve been able
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to machine pretty much in the name
of the cross across the United States.
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And each time that you move to a new
environment and the type of work that I
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did building mock up
of satellites at Lockheed.
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Cool.
Yeah, pretty cool work.
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And I and I got exposed to that.
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So a lot of the tricks and a lot of the
ins and outs of machining that let’s say
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a guy is stays in one job
for 20 years at one place.
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Yeah.
You wouldn’t see those different styles.
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And sure, they’d be so focused on this.
Exactly.
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A new part comes their way
and they’re try to learn.
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So interesting.
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So at the time I started the business,
I had twenty five years of experience.
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All right.
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So you were married at the time
that you started the business?
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I was my first wife.
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Debbie passed away in twenty seventeen.
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Okay, I’m sorry,
but we started it together.
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Yeah.
In twenty five
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actually to back up just a little bit.
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I had talked to one of my friends
at a party about starting my own business
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and it was my dream
to start my own business.
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Yeah.
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And he said you should
talk to my older sister.
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She’s here at the party and she knows a
little bit about starting up a business.
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So I went and talked to his sister, Mary.
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His name was Bill Harris, my best buddy.
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So I went and talked to Mary.
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And Mary said, if you’re serious,
you should go talk to score.
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So I found out who Score was and I went
and I talked to them and it’s free and.
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Yeah, and they gave me some advice
and they impressed upon me the need to
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actually develop a business plan,
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which I had no idea how to do this because
I’m just a graduate of high school.
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Sure.
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But I went to the software store
and I found a cheap program.
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Sure.
And I plugged it in my computer and I went
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hammering away at it
and it took me about six months.
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Oh, wow.
OK, well, I didn’t do it full time and.
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Sure.
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And actually I had to back up a couple
of times because the program was smarter
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than me and I’d get to a certain point
in the program entering the data it asked
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for and it would say alarm,
red light, don’t start this business.
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It will not work.
Wow.
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So I had to adjust some numbers
and so it worked OK.
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And then once it worked,
we printed it out and we went out
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to the banks to look
for a loan to give me a loan.
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I need to buy a fancy machine.
Exactly.
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And they said, no, no.
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I asked for one hundred thousand
dollars to get it started.
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Right.
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Which isn’t a ton of money when you
think about no commercial banking.
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No, that should be like a sure sign here.
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Sometimes they want to look
at a loan below 250.
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Right.
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So so all I need is one hundred
thousand and I can get this baby going.
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So the first bank I went to
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on my advice is if somebody says no,
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that just means you need
to go see somebody else.
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That’s right.
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So the first bank said we can
give you thirty thousand dollars.
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I said, OK, let’s see,
I can buy a third of a machine.
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Sure.
That doesn’t work now.
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So I went to the next bank and it happened
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to be somebody that my wife knew,
her boyfriend, her husband.
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And we went in and saw him and he said,
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what you how long have
you been doing this?
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And I told him and and he said, that’s
all you need is one hundred thousand.
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That’s all I need.
He said.
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Go make a machine shop, better answer,
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and neither one of them read my business
plan that I spent six months on.
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Not at all.
Not at all.
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They didn’t look at the
financials or anything.
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They glanced at the fact that I had won
them all right.
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And I discovered at that point and I think
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somebody had already told me this,
that documents for you.
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Yes.
Because that that says that,
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you know what you’re trying to do
and at least you have a plan.
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Yeah.
And for them to get all involved in it,
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the nitty gritty of one hundred thousand
dollar loan, I didn’t think they didn’t
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want to waste their time,
but it was disappointing.
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I think I did so much work,
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at least take it home at night
to tell me you read it right.
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I even printed it out with colors.
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There’s pretty colors
and graphs and everything.
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It’s 29 cents a page, actually.
That’s funny.
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So I got my loan, all right.
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And I first went and looked
for the machinery I was going to buy.
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Mm hmm.
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So I found the house machine, which you’ll
see that I’ve got all hosses.
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I noticed that today.
Yeah.
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And they’re built in California.
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OK, it’s medium price point.
Mm hmm.
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It’s not the highest.
Not the lowest.
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I had run a machine, a machine
in Texas since Greensmith.
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So I had experience in the machine
that I it was really a workhorse.
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So I kind of believed in the product.
Mm hmm.
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So I ordered the machines.
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So now the.
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But they take a while to order.
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They they don’t come in directly.
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So I had like three weeks to find a place
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to put them because I thought that
you just go to a realtor and they just
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find you a car that was going
to say three weeks is not
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seven.
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So now I got machines on the way and I
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start looking for a place
to put them a property.
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And now I’m running into Headache’s.
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Yeah, I’m fine in like one place
that hadn’t poured their cement yet and I
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had to read their lease,
which I don’t read legalese that good.
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But I did find the paragraph that says
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even if we don’t pour your cement,
you still pay rent.
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Oh, I said, really?
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I don’t think that works very much.
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Another place
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said I said, Is this zoned
for what I want to do?
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They said, Yeah, we think it is.
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Well, oh yeah.
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Yeah, I need a yes.
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Well, you can check with the city of LA
and I did.
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And they said, oh no,
you’d have to get a variance.
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And that takes about three
to four months if you get it.
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So that was a is on the way.
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And then I ran into Mack McCallan, OK,
and that’s the building that I’m in now.
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Want to make McKellen’s buildings even
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the same spot for 15 years,
15 years we’ve been in here.
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Wow.
And we love it.
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We love it.
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So he saw me that same day
and it was on a Saturday.
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And he’s the owner.
Yeah, that’s remarkable.
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You usually don’t see the owner.
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You’ll see a real estate
agent or whatever.
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And he showed me the lease.
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He showed me the place.
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I said, is it zoned for M3
for what I want to do?
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He said, it’s not in the least,
but I will write it right there
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and I’ll sign it,
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signed it right there.
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And I signed the lease that day.
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And he he even told me if you ran
into a bind where you didn’t have a place,
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if you didn’t rent this
place right right away,
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if we don’t have it cleaned up for you
[00:15:35]
in time, we’ll have a place to store
your equipment until you can get going.
[00:15:40]
Yeah, he’s very cool.
Yeah.
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Max is no longer with us.
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Unfortunately, he passed
away a couple of years back.
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OK, but his daughter
runs the business now.
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I know his daughter,
but I can’t place her name.
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Carrie.
Carrie.
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Yeah.
So cool.
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So that’s how we got in this place.
Very cool.
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In 2005, huh.
Yeah.
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And my wife quit her job
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and as soon as you started the business or
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to help me start the business and I
of course had to quit my job.
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Yeah.
I don’t suggest that
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if you could have an income coming
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in while you get started,
that would be beneficial.
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Doesn’t hurt.
But she quit her job.
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So you can imagine when
we first started out,
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we were bleeding
financially out of both sides.
[00:16:23]
Sure, we had the bills here and we had our
bills at home and no income to cover
[00:16:28]
either one or someone
to back up one step here.
[00:16:32]
So you decide you want
to go off on your own.
[00:16:35]
How did that conversation
go with your wife?
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You’re like, hey, funny story.
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I want to go off on my own.
[00:16:43]
Well,
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I think the advice that I got
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from my sister really helped
because it was scary.
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I talked to her and said, I want
to do this, but this is scary stuff.
[00:16:56]
Mm hmm.
And she said to me,
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Keith, do you make a product for somebody
else who sells it right now?
[00:17:03]
I said, you’re darn right I do.
[00:17:05]
Every day I go to work, I make something.
They sell it.
[00:17:08]
Mm hmm.
She says, What makes you think that you
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can’t still make it and sell it yourself
to your question.
[00:17:16]
And I said, you know what, I can.
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And I had the confidence
in my background and
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in the work I was actually doing locally
that, you know, that I had the skill set
[00:17:29]
to be able to make
whatever came to my door.
[00:17:33]
Very cool.
[00:17:34]
So that helps to be,
[00:17:36]
you know, some people might start
a business where they’re like a management
[00:17:40]
professional, but they don’t know
how to actually do the work.
[00:17:44]
Oh, those that kind of a person.
Sure.
[00:17:47]
I kind of feel for them if things get
[00:17:49]
tight because who’s going to jump in
the saddle and ride and make it happen?
[00:17:53]
Whereas because I’m the one
that knows how to do it,
[00:17:59]
not so good on the business side sometimes
[00:18:02]
that I see more often, but I see
extremely kind and I’m and I’m not.
[00:18:05]
And I admit that people will
[00:18:08]
I’m sure those people that would say,
no, that’s not how to do a business.
[00:18:11]
Don’t start a business like that.
[00:18:13]
Like, for instance,
I did not go out and find my customer base
[00:18:17]
first and then start the business
and develop it around them.
[00:18:20]
So I went out and did the other way where
you make it and they will go, Oh yeah.
[00:18:25]
And that’s kind of what we did.
[00:18:27]
And so through a lot of
fliers and actually what got us going
[00:18:32]
in the beginning was a we
had an open house, OK?
[00:18:36]
And that generated enough interest
that the people that came in and I was
[00:18:41]
able to talk to one on one,
tell them my experience,
[00:18:44]
they were willing to give me a chance
and start giving me some work.
[00:18:48]
And so that was in the.
I’m sorry about that.
[00:18:53]
No way.
[00:18:55]
And so that was in we actually
started in August of 2005, OK,
[00:19:03]
we were down to our last dime
[00:19:05]
by December end of December,
and every business worth its salt
[00:19:10]
that starts up should go down
to their last dime, I think.
[00:19:13]
Well, then, yeah.
[00:19:15]
And then
and here’s something that happened
[00:19:18]
that that was beneficial, though,
is that because we started in August,
[00:19:24]
taxes for the year, we were able to
write it all off as a business loss.
[00:19:31]
All right.
[00:19:32]
Because we had started the business
in August of that 2005.
[00:19:38]
So tax return time, we had a big
chunk of money coming back in.
[00:19:42]
All right.
That’s a good thing.
[00:19:44]
And so that, you know,
[00:19:45]
if I was to look at it again, I mean,
I would if I was starting a business and I
[00:19:50]
knew cash flow might be an issue
and you’re you’re working for somebody all
[00:19:55]
this year, I would stretch it out kind
of towards the end of the year,
[00:19:58]
start your business and then, you know,
you’ve got a huge refund or you could get
[00:20:03]
a big refund based on if you still
have losses in the business.
[00:20:06]
Sure.
During that year.
[00:20:08]
Fair.
Especially when there’s big expenditures
[00:20:10]
like one hundred thousand
dollars to get you going.
[00:20:13]
Right.
That’s interesting.
[00:20:15]
So who are the people that you brought
[00:20:16]
in for your open house and how
did you get them to even come?
[00:20:20]
Because they know.
You know?
[00:20:22]
Well, the one one shop did know me because
I was working at a at a shop that was
[00:20:28]
doing work for a customer
that knew me personally.
[00:20:32]
And and of course, we gave them a flyer
and then we just looked up all
[00:20:37]
of the industrial users in the area
and we and we sent them a flyer.
[00:20:46]
Yeah.
[00:20:46]
Maybe kind of a little fancy card and said
open house color, everything or color.
[00:20:50]
It was even color.
[00:20:52]
And we got a pretty good turnout.
[00:20:53]
And it was what got
the business started to flow.
[00:20:56]
Yeah.
[00:20:57]
And by by that beginning of February, this
place was starting to pay for itself.
[00:21:05]
That’s not bad, this place.
[00:21:06]
But I still have I still
have nothing to bring home.
[00:21:09]
OK,
[00:21:11]
business has paid for the business.
[00:21:13]
The business was paying for itself, sure.
[00:21:15]
But by the end of February,
it was actually paying for itself.
[00:21:19]
And I had some money to take home
[00:21:21]
and things started to stabilize
on that side of the equation.
[00:21:24]
All right, that’s cool.
Yeah.
[00:21:26]
So when your hundred thousand dollar loan,
[00:21:27]
did you include some cash
for your daily living?
[00:21:31]
I did.
[00:21:33]
I did.
[00:21:34]
For cash, cash flow for the business.
[00:21:37]
But nothing I didn’t really for me because
[00:21:39]
I didn’t anticipate my wife deciding
that she wanted to quit her job and.
[00:21:42]
Oh.
On board, that was no was a surprise.
[00:21:44]
Oh,funny story.
[00:21:47]
And yeah, at the time, I mean,
she was just so excited.
[00:21:52]
She just wanted to come
on board and that’s cool.
[00:21:54]
Said, Hey, honey, we’re in this together.
[00:21:56]
That’s admirable, right?
[00:21:57]
Well, believed in you will
swimmer will drown together.
[00:22:00]
That’s right.
That’s yeah.
[00:22:02]
That’s super cool.
[00:22:03]
So from a marketing standpoint, did you
like this open house thing is intriguing.
[00:22:09]
Did you mail them?
[00:22:10]
Did you go door to door to these places?
[00:22:12]
Did you call them up?
[00:22:13]
We mailed them, OK, we mailed them
[00:22:17]
and then we did some follow up phone
calls to make sure that they got them OK.
[00:22:21]
And then we kind of got an idea of
who they might be sending.
[00:22:25]
All right.
[00:22:26]
And again, it wasn’t
that that was just the catalyst.
[00:22:31]
Yeah.
[00:22:31]
Then what happened is
that word of mouth took over.
[00:22:35]
Oh, that’s good.
[00:22:36]
And these engineers,
[00:22:39]
because we primarily do work for engineers
who design the work that we build
[00:22:44]
and and they have a pretty
good networking system.
[00:22:47]
I’m sure I’m not in it.
[00:22:49]
So I don’t know exactly.
[00:22:50]
But sure, we constantly have
[00:22:53]
people that would call us and we’d say,
where did you get our name?
[00:22:57]
And it would be another engineer
that’s having work done here now.
[00:23:00]
Oh, right.
Sure, that’s cool.
[00:23:02]
Yeah, that’s super cool.
[00:23:03]
So it just spread kind
of like word of mouth.
[00:23:06]
Yeah.
[00:23:06]
Through through this area
that there was another machine shop.
[00:23:10]
Mm hmm.
[00:23:11]
Not just another machine shop,
a world class machine shop.
[00:23:15]
I like it.
Not the cheapest machine shop.
[00:23:17]
Sure, but the best machine
shop for machine shop.
[00:23:21]
That’s probably a better thing.
[00:23:22]
Well, I would think so,
[00:23:23]
especially if you’re going to put
my component on your one million dollar
[00:23:27]
remotely piloted sub that’s going
to work under the oil rigs in the Gulf.
[00:23:31]
Right.
You don’t want that to fail and lose your
[00:23:34]
one million dollar piece
of equipment, right.
[00:23:36]
By saving two hundred
dollars on the component.
[00:23:39]
You know, it’s interesting.
I was reading or I am reading a book about
[00:23:41]
lean manufacturing and they’re
talking about Ford and the whole
[00:23:48]
oh my gosh, my mind is blank.
[00:23:49]
Whatever came before lean manufacturing.
The assembly line.
[00:23:53]
Assembly line.
Sure.
[00:23:54]
And all the machining
tolerances back then.
[00:23:58]
Tolerance is probably
a very loose term for that.
[00:24:01]
Sure.
[00:24:01]
Because once they get the parts and then
they had to have somebody else work their
[00:24:05]
magic to make those parts
fit with the other parts.
[00:24:07]
Right.
It was just that was just accepted.
[00:24:10]
Sure.
And Ford is like, no, no, no, no.
[00:24:13]
Right.
Clean that up right now.
[00:24:14]
Mass production.
[00:24:15]
Oh, my gosh, this is an easy term,
but so is interesting.
[00:24:20]
Stuff like that has evolved.
[00:24:21]
And I imagine there’s some things
[00:24:23]
that you’re building that are
just crazy type tolerances.
[00:24:27]
Well, it depends on what you call crazy,
[00:24:29]
but all my machines will hold positioning
of to ten thousands of an inch.
[00:24:34]
All right.
[00:24:35]
In my world, that’s crazy because a human
hair is about four thousands of an inch.
[00:24:40]
Wow.
OK, so one tenth of a hair.
[00:24:42]
Yeah.
If you could split a hair into ten pieces.
[00:24:45]
Yeah.
[00:24:45]
That would be for ten thousands of an inch
and my machines can hold half of that.
[00:24:49]
Wow.
[00:24:51]
How do you even measure that.
[00:24:52]
Is that the micrometer of culture.
[00:24:56]
That seems like too precise for that.
[00:24:58]
So we have micrometers that will measure
[00:25:02]
that, that will measure OK,
[00:25:05]
that, that fine because I see when you’re
adjusting those is based on tension,
[00:25:11]
the plus or minus, I would just pressure.
Right.
[00:25:14]
Well, that’s why we would have
to train you for a while.
[00:25:17]
And I’m sure, you know,
you’d get the hang of it.
[00:25:19]
It just doesn’t happen.
[00:25:21]
It doesn’t happen overnight.
[00:25:22]
OK, and speaking of training, you met
some of the people that work in the shop.
[00:25:28]
Yeah.
Have some good everybody.
[00:25:29]
We got the most excellent people
and all of them have been trained here.
[00:25:33]
That’s going to be rare, though.
[00:25:35]
I mean, let’s just shift
into employees, right?
[00:25:37]
Because employees for me have been
a headache over the past year.
[00:25:41]
Yeah.
It’s been like with calls on call, right.
[00:25:44]
Nine and a half years.
[00:25:45]
I’ve been fighting employees
for eight of those years.
[00:25:48]
Right.
[00:25:48]
With dodgems fund employees
pretty much the same.
[00:25:51]
So here’s my perspective on that.
[00:25:53]
OK,
[00:25:55]
and you’ll hear there’s a little angst
in my voice when I talk about it, OK?
[00:26:01]
Because whenever I hear companies say
not you, right.
[00:26:06]
Machining companies or manufacturing
[00:26:08]
companies say, you know what the problem
is, we don’t have any trained workers.
[00:26:12]
Oh, my question is, are you training any.
Right.
[00:26:17]
And what happened was,
[00:26:20]
I believe
[00:26:21]
at least this is what I saw throughout
my career in the late 80s, early 90s,
[00:26:28]
shops were still in training mode.
[00:26:31]
They in other words,
[00:26:33]
they were they were bringing
apprentice along and they continually
[00:26:39]
doing training continually and.
[00:26:43]
Then that all stopped in the mid 90s
and in the 90s,
[00:26:49]
somebody in corporate decided, hey,
you know what, that costs money.
[00:26:53]
Well, yeah, it costs money, right.
[00:26:55]
But now we’ve got trained workers.
[00:26:58]
Yeah, it also makes money.
Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:00]
So and it’s a double edged,
double edged sword.
[00:27:05]
Short term.
[00:27:06]
Short term, it costs more money,
[00:27:09]
but also short term,
you have people that are learning.
[00:27:12]
So now they’re hired
[00:27:15]
from the head down,
not from the neck down.
[00:27:16]
Right.
[00:27:17]
And and they’re when you’re learning,
it’s a more enjoyable experience than just
[00:27:23]
sitting and putting a widget in a machine
because you are making progress.
[00:27:27]
Happiness, right?
Yeah.
[00:27:28]
So all of my people, my people,
[00:27:31]
all the wonderful people
that work for this business.
[00:27:34]
Yeah.
[00:27:35]
Have been trained from
[00:27:38]
the base, the basics from cutting stock
on the saw all the way to programming.
[00:27:43]
Wow.
Right.
[00:27:45]
Where in my day to be a programmer
you had to have a college degree.
[00:27:50]
Oh I didn’t have a college degree.
[00:27:52]
I was kept out of it for quite a while
[00:27:54]
and still I went and got
a software package my own.
[00:27:57]
Yeah.
[00:27:58]
And taught myself how
to program figure it out.
[00:28:00]
And then I did get lucky and I landed
a job where I got to do some programming,
[00:28:05]
OK, and and that’s how
I know how to program.
[00:28:08]
And I thought if I ever have my own shop,
everybody gets to program nice.
[00:28:14]
So it’s a well-rounded
[00:28:17]
then they become
well-rounded in their trade.
[00:28:19]
And it’s not a machining job.
It’s a craft.
[00:28:24]
Oh, I like that.
[00:28:26]
It’s craftsmanship.
[00:28:27]
These people put out work
that the first thing the customer says
[00:28:32]
ninety nine percent of the time is, wow,
that’s what you like.
[00:28:37]
Wow.
Look at that.
[00:28:39]
Mm hmm.
And then the next thing they find is
[00:28:41]
that guess what, everything fits together
presently even better.
[00:28:45]
That’s correct.
Yeah.
[00:28:46]
And so the quality is there.
[00:28:49]
The craftsmanship is there.
[00:28:51]
They they grow into this career, complete
[00:28:56]
enough that they’ll probably compete
against me someday or you know,
[00:29:01]
we have had some employees that
we’ve trained and then they get good
[00:29:06]
enough to where they can go
out and find another job.
[00:29:09]
And you could try to match
the wages and the benefits.
[00:29:12]
But what you can’t match is
another environment, right.
[00:29:15]
That their culture.
Yeah.
[00:29:17]
And they’re looking for and they’ve gone
[00:29:19]
off and looked at that and I’ve
even had some come back.
[00:29:23]
Oh.
So my recommendation to anybody that finds
[00:29:27]
himself in that situation that, oh,
I don’t want to train anybody and build
[00:29:31]
them up because they might leave me,
let them leave.
[00:29:34]
Don’t burn the bridges.
[00:29:35]
Guess what, if you’re doing
what you should be doing,
[00:29:40]
you probably have to come back to you.
Yeah.
[00:29:42]
Make a valuable workplace environment.
Right.
[00:29:46]
And the three things that we built,
[00:29:48]
there’s three things that make
you’ve already heard this.
[00:29:50]
One, three things that make
a business successful.
[00:29:54]
People, people and people, people,
people, people all day long.
[00:29:58]
And if you build the people,
you’ll build the business.
[00:30:01]
And that happens on the customer
service side, too.
[00:30:05]
Oh, absolutely.
It’s it’s it’s a business about people.
[00:30:09]
Yeah.
Most are, regardless of what the even
[00:30:13]
certain business owners may not
may not be aware of that.
[00:30:17]
Look at the construction industry now,
[00:30:19]
still, generally speaking,
terrible customer service.
[00:30:24]
And I know we’re trying
to figure out how to fix that.
[00:30:27]
I mean, just us see me as a consumer
[00:30:30]
and some business partners and I
mean certain areas of construction.
[00:30:34]
Sure is a tough nut.
[00:30:35]
Yeah, tough nut.
[00:30:37]
I want to ask you about your first
[00:30:39]
employee so your wife
comes on with you, right?
[00:30:42]
She didn’t do machining, right?
No.
[00:30:45]
OK, so who is the first machinists
that you brought on besides yourself?
[00:30:50]
So
[00:30:53]
my wife was out at lunch one day, OK?
[00:30:55]
And it was like a
[00:30:58]
light bar foodbartender there.
[00:31:02]
I was complaining about his job
and he and I was busy.
[00:31:06]
I needed I needed a hand.
[00:31:09]
And so you were at this bar?
No, I wasn’t there.
[00:31:11]
Just my wife was there.
Oh, your wife is there.
[00:31:13]
OK, having lunch.
[00:31:15]
She talks to the bartender and the guy
[00:31:17]
comes down and meets with me
and he goes, yeah, I’d like to work here.
[00:31:22]
All right.
[00:31:22]
No skill, you know, as far as machining,
no background, no background at all.
[00:31:27]
And so I only had two
machines at the time.
[00:31:29]
I had this have three.
All right.
[00:31:31]
And I had the T.L. one, which is
the machine, the laser at the end, OK.
[00:31:35]
And I had work for both of them.
[00:31:37]
And of course, that can
only be in one place right.
[00:31:39]
At one time.
So I.
[00:31:42]
Locked him in over on the lathe and taught
[00:31:45]
him how to run the late night,
and he started running the way for me.
[00:31:48]
Very cool.
Yeah, just off the street,
[00:31:51]
essentially the bartender skills
and whatever other background he is
[00:31:55]
and an attitude to learn
that you can’t you can’t teach that.
[00:32:02]
I will take the right attitude.
Right.
[00:32:05]
Versus all the skills
you learn to learn that.
[00:32:08]
Well, they had
[00:32:10]
some some,
[00:32:12]
you know, like in one of these technical
[00:32:14]
colleges and now you’re
God’s gift to machining.
[00:32:18]
Right.
[00:32:18]
And actually, when you get in here, you
find out you really don’t know very much.
[00:32:22]
Right.
But a person with the right attitude
[00:32:25]
in this environment,
you wouldn’t believe how fast they learn.
[00:32:29]
Oh, I bet.
Yeah, you have for personality.
[00:32:31]
You can train the rest.
Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:33]
Yeah.
[00:32:33]
If we could have done them when they’re
four years old, you can train first now.
[00:32:36]
Right.
Somebody else had that job.
[00:32:38]
Yeah.
Interesting.
[00:32:40]
So like within a few days he’s
off and running or an hour.
[00:32:46]
Well no.
[00:32:47]
I mean you probably have
four basic operations.
[00:32:52]
Sure.
[00:32:52]
The job’s already set up a
basic operation.
[00:32:56]
You can teach in about four hours.
[00:32:59]
And by that time, they can
start to make parts OK.
[00:33:02]
And it’s we’re not talking about
critical, difficult parts.
[00:33:05]
No trouble yet.
[00:33:07]
But then there’s a career, right?
Yeah.
[00:33:09]
And then they start learning from that.
Yeah.
[00:33:11]
Push this button, make sure
nothing bad and stuff like that.
[00:33:13]
Yeah.
[00:33:14]
So you can send them to work
there and they let me know.
[00:33:17]
Red lights.
There
[00:33:18]
better not be any red lights.
[00:33:20]
OK,
[00:33:21]
so do everything right.
[00:33:23]
There’s no red lights so they
can stay with you for a while.
[00:33:26]
So I had my first employee
then I, I hired two more.
[00:33:31]
Wow.
[00:33:32]
And that was all in the first
year after the first year.
[00:33:37]
OK, because by that,
[00:33:40]
by the summer of the first
year we added another machine.
[00:33:44]
Nice work was picking up.
Yeah.
[00:33:46]
I hired a new person and by I guess
summer the next year.
[00:33:51]
So it was two years in.
[00:33:53]
I had three employees.
Wow.
[00:33:55]
Yeah.
Except for
[00:33:58]
so one day
[00:34:01]
two of them come talk
to me at the same time.
[00:34:04]
Oh they’re both leaving.
[00:34:05]
Not a good thing now and.
[00:34:09]
I felt like physically,
[00:34:12]
if somebody punched me in the gut, right,
just when you think he had it figured out.
[00:34:16]
Oh man, I thought I had to figure it out.
[00:34:17]
Mm hmm.
[00:34:19]
And it was physical.
[00:34:20]
And I that night I talked to myself and I
[00:34:24]
said, I’m never going
to let that happen again.
[00:34:27]
So how am I going to make sure
that that never happens again?
[00:34:30]
I was just going to ask you.
You figured that out?
[00:34:32]
Yes.
All right.
[00:34:33]
Here’s the silver lining.
[00:34:36]
What we can do best in this
environment is train people.
[00:34:42]
So I’m going to key in on that.
You’re leaving.
[00:34:45]
You’ve been trained.
Good luck.
[00:34:47]
I’m a proud papa.
[00:34:49]
I get to hire again.
[00:34:51]
Oh, I get to train again.
Sure.
[00:34:53]
And we bring somebody on and we train
[00:34:55]
again so that it doesn’t do
that to you right there.
[00:35:01]
So and and I’ve lost
people over the years,
[00:35:06]
but I got some great people
that have been here a long time.
[00:35:09]
Mm hmm.
[00:35:10]
In fact, one young fella
came to me and he he’s
[00:35:17]
showed what he’s worth.
[00:35:19]
And after he was here about two years,
[00:35:21]
I said, you’re going
to be my general manager.
[00:35:24]
And he said, what’s the general manager?
[00:35:26]
Do I go?
[00:35:27]
You’ll figure it out.
[00:35:29]
You’ll figure it out, sir.
[00:35:31]
And ten years later,
he’s not only been the general manager
[00:35:36]
for ten years, but he also became
a principal, a partner of mine.
[00:35:42]
Wow.
Yeah.
[00:35:43]
In this this last year.
Very cool.
[00:35:46]
So at a very young age,
he’s he’s a partner in this business.
[00:35:51]
Partner in this business.
That’s awesome.
[00:35:53]
Yeah.
That’s going to make you feel good.
[00:35:55]
Oh yeah.
Wow.
[00:35:56]
Yeah.
It’s
[00:35:58]
that way.
I can maybe retire someday.
[00:36:02]
So twenty five.
You set the business a few years later.
[00:36:05]
The economy had a little bad day.
[00:36:07]
2008, 2009.
Yeah.
[00:36:10]
The end that affects your business.
Oh wow.
[00:36:12]
2008.
The end of 2008.
[00:36:14]
December.
[00:36:16]
It was like a light switch got turned off.
Wham.
[00:36:20]
No more RFQ request for quotes.
[00:36:23]
Oh no more.
[00:36:25]
Nothing, no phones rang.
[00:36:28]
So we started cleaning up the shop and
doing some things that were left over.
[00:36:32]
Sure.
[00:36:34]
And thinking this is
just a temporary thing.
[00:36:36]
Well, you know, I probably should have
[00:36:38]
reacted to it sooner,
but it was my first downturn.
[00:36:41]
It’s hindsight.
Yeah.
[00:36:43]
So then
[00:36:47]
we found out that there was
[00:36:49]
in the stimulus package
that they offered in 2009,
[00:36:54]
there was very little for manufacturing.
[00:36:57]
OK,
[00:36:59]
but I had been a member of the Chamber
Greater Matterson Chamber of Commerce
[00:37:04]
for some time and kind
of knew the folks down there.
[00:37:08]
And I called down there and I said,
is there something in there for me?
[00:37:12]
And there were smart enough
to point me in the right direction.
[00:37:15]
And there was a thirty five thousand
[00:37:17]
dollar loan available
that would pay for the
[00:37:23]
the payments on your capital equipment.
All right.
[00:37:26]
And it was it had to be paid back,
but it was zero interest, zero fees.
[00:37:31]
It was free money.
[00:37:32]
OK, and then there was a time period where
you didn’t have to pay it back and then
[00:37:36]
you could pay it back over a long period
of time, which we paid it all back.
[00:37:41]
Yeah.
[00:37:41]
But at the time that thirty five thousand
dollars paying those loan payments
[00:37:45]
on the machines
gave me the cash flow to keep some people
[00:37:49]
on board that I wouldn’t have
been able to keep on board.
[00:37:52]
All right.
[00:37:52]
So we had some rolling
layoffs during 09, OK?
[00:37:57]
And so 2009 was very educational to me
because I learned how to run a nonprofit.
[00:38:07]
But we made it.
[00:38:08]
Yeah, we made it where there were some
shops that went out of business, I bet.
[00:38:13]
And it was really tough coming
out of the back side of it.
[00:38:15]
Even when the work
started picking back up,
[00:38:19]
the the the customers
[00:38:22]
were taking advantage of it
because it was so much competition,
[00:38:26]
they could get their products for less
money and shorter in a shorter window.
[00:38:32]
So now we had to make everything
twice as fast for half the price.
[00:38:35]
All right.
Which we did.
[00:38:37]
And we we worked our way out of it.
[00:38:40]
And by 2010,
[00:38:44]
midway through 2010,
I think things started picking back up.
[00:38:49]
OK, and then hello.
[00:38:51]
Twenty twenty or thirty thousand.
It was bad.
[00:38:55]
Yeah.
[00:38:56]
Yeah, that’s interesting.
[00:38:58]
So how are you guys faring.
I guess so.
[00:39:00]
Is manufacturing as a whole.
[00:39:02]
Let’s start with that figuring.
[00:39:04]
Let’s even look at twenty eighteen.
Twenty nineteen.
[00:39:06]
Was manufacturing doing OK.
[00:39:08]
Yeah, I think so.
[00:39:10]
I mean, everything’s been pretty stable
[00:39:14]
and we’re a very small company, so,
[00:39:17]
you know, we we don’t feel the impacts,
you know,
[00:39:22]
on a large, large scale.
[00:39:23]
But we do feel when like
when oil prices drop.
[00:39:27]
Mm hmm.
[00:39:29]
Energy companies quit investing
money in renewables and or in R&D.
[00:39:35]
OK,
[00:39:37]
and so then any overflow work comes back
[00:39:40]
into their own shops or if
it retracts, so there’s a
[00:39:45]
like a domino effect that that that can
affect the work that we’re doing.
[00:39:51]
All right.
[00:39:53]
Now, 2008, 2009 was
[00:39:56]
was pretty weird because actually
everything shrunk at the same time.
[00:40:01]
Right.
[00:40:02]
That didn’t happen this
time in two to twenty one.
[00:40:06]
It’s been weird.
Yeah.
[00:40:07]
It actually going in to 2020 we had
we still had orders pretty solid.
[00:40:16]
And then when covid hit
[00:40:20]
we thought we’d see a downturn
[00:40:22]
immediately, but it didn’t
happen immediately.
[00:40:24]
And we were deemed essential
[00:40:26]
because we’ve got customers that
do have contracts with the government.
[00:40:30]
Mm hmm.
[00:40:31]
So that work that was still in the
pipeline, it stayed pretty strong.
[00:40:35]
Oh, nice.
Yeah, it stayed strong.
[00:40:37]
Yeah.
[00:40:38]
But then it started to weaken and it
kind of dropped off about a month ago.
[00:40:43]
And we actually did have
some layoffs a month ago.
[00:40:47]
OK,
[00:40:48]
it was only about from what we saw,
[00:40:51]
as long as everything keeps trending
the way it is, that it was about a
[00:40:56]
six weeks of slowdown and now things
are starting to pick back up again.
[00:41:01]
OK, so we’re hoping that it keeps trending
[00:41:04]
that way,
although now we’ve got a presidential
[00:41:07]
election to deal with, which is fear
and uncertainty in the markets.
[00:41:11]
And companies have a tendency
to to pull in and.
[00:41:15]
Yeah, a little bit just
a little bit before.
[00:41:18]
Yeah.
[00:41:19]
Thing about it is, is that they
can only hold on so long.
[00:41:22]
Right.
And when they finally let loose I think
[00:41:26]
twenty, twenty one should
be a pretty good year.
[00:41:28]
All right.
That we’re hoping to be OK.
[00:41:31]
Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:41:32]
They can’t guess they can’t stay
in a holding pattern forever.
[00:41:36]
No sooner or later are you
going to take off or land.
[00:41:39]
Exactly.
Exactly.
[00:41:40]
This is how it rolls.
Yeah.
[00:41:42]
So what have been some of the biggest
[00:41:43]
challenges outside of the whole covid
thing in 2008 would have been some
[00:41:47]
of the other challenges that you
didn’t necessarily anticipate?
[00:41:52]
Well, one and I hate to hit on a certain
[00:41:54]
industry, but, you know, so I won’t say
their name, but their initials are bank.
[00:42:00]
OK,thanks.
[00:42:02]
All right.
Tough.
[00:42:04]
Tough.
Yeah.
[00:42:05]
For no reason at all.
[00:42:07]
You can find a bank that all of a sudden,
[00:42:10]
even though you’ve been paying everything
and you’ve been doing everything the way
[00:42:13]
that you’re supposed do,
they can start to make things difficult.
[00:42:18]
Yeah.
[00:42:18]
And then you just have to go down
the road and find another bank.
[00:42:22]
So again, I would tell anybody.
[00:42:24]
Yeah, exactly.
[00:42:25]
And look, they’re making money off you.
Yes.
[00:42:29]
So you are the customer and don’t ever let
[00:42:32]
them make it feel like it’s the other way
around because they are very intimidating.
[00:42:38]
Because they hold the cash.
Yes.
[00:42:40]
But they hold the cash so
that they make money off of you.
[00:42:43]
They hold some of the cash,
the bank down the road hold.
[00:42:46]
Exactly.
Yeah.
[00:42:47]
So that’s that’s one thing that
that I’ve discovered through the years.
[00:42:52]
And even in the startup,
I learned my lesson right off the bat.
[00:42:56]
But then through the years I thought I
[00:42:57]
would be able to establish
a relationship with a bank.
[00:43:01]
It would last like it does with my
customers for fifteen years, I’m sure.
[00:43:05]
And that didn’t happen.
[00:43:09]
I can’t put my finger on exactly why,
except for
[00:43:15]
there is something to
[00:43:18]
the fact that young
[00:43:20]
aggressive bankers come in and they’ll
pretty much give you what you want.
[00:43:24]
They’re doing such a good job,
[00:43:25]
they get promoted and they get
shipped out to Phoenix or something.
[00:43:28]
All right.
All right.
[00:43:28]
And then the rest of the bank gets a hold
of it and you get treated like a no.
[00:43:32]
Sure.
[00:43:32]
Instead of that personal relationship,
just another loan kind of thing.
[00:43:35]
Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:36]
So that’s that’s one thing
that’s been surprising to me.
[00:43:40]
But I mean,
[00:43:41]
we’re doing great with who we’re
with right now, and so everything’s good.
[00:43:45]
But again, I think you should always kind
of keep an eye all
[00:43:50]
over your back to the fact that if you
even if you have a good relationship,
[00:43:54]
it wouldn’t hurt to keep another
relationship on the side.
[00:43:58]
Yes.
[00:43:59]
Just as a backup.
[00:44:00]
Mm hmm.
[00:44:01]
It’s interesting how business works
[00:44:03]
in comparison to romantic
relationships, right?
[00:44:06]
Yeah.
[00:44:06]
I mean, business,
you always have to have a side.
[00:44:08]
The romantic ones that’ll
just get you in trouble.
[00:44:11]
Yeah, business that’ll probably save you.
[00:44:13]
Well, I don’t know anything about that.
[00:44:14]
You’re probably the expert on that.
[00:44:16]
So the business side, I
don’t even know where to begin.
[00:44:20]
And the romantic one.
[00:44:22]
Yeah, it’s interesting that
that’s just the way it is.
[00:44:26]
Right.
[00:44:27]
The other things,
[00:44:29]
you know, that are a little bit
of a drawback is working with customers
[00:44:33]
on research and development projects
is really rewarding at best.
[00:44:36]
But at the same time,
eventually they do go towards
[00:44:40]
the production market
and then you lose that business.
[00:44:43]
Oh, gotcha.
[00:44:44]
So, you know, we had
to prepare ourselves for that.
[00:44:48]
The other thing is,
[00:44:49]
is sometimes we feel bad that we
can’t be everything for everybody.
[00:44:54]
But it’s not possible.
No.
[00:44:56]
And and if if you’re looking
to buy a Porsche or Mercedes,
[00:45:03]
you wouldn’t go to a Ford dealership.
Right.
[00:45:06]
And expect to spend the money that you
would spend for a Ford and get a Porsche.
[00:45:12]
Right.
[00:45:13]
So but people will try to buy
the Porsche for the money.
[00:45:16]
You know, everybody wants a deal.
Yeah, right.
[00:45:19]
And and sometimes when we hear because
we’ll quote a job and it’s Porche prices,
[00:45:27]
but you’re going to get
a Porsche in the end.
[00:45:29]
Mm hmm.
[00:45:30]
Yet other companies might
give them a price.
[00:45:33]
That’s a lower dollar Ford price.
Sure.
[00:45:37]
And
[00:45:39]
we have to and they’ll come back and tell
us, hey, we could get it for this.
[00:45:42]
And we have to say, well,
sorry, we can’t do it for that.
[00:45:46]
Right.
Because the amount of effort and work
[00:45:49]
that we’ll put into it,
we’ve got to get paid for that.
[00:45:53]
And so we just have to realize we
can’t be everything to everybody.
[00:45:58]
Right.
And that’s that’s kind of hard sometimes.
[00:46:01]
But you want people to say yes.
Yeah.
[00:46:04]
Because if they don’t,
that’s zero money for you.
[00:46:07]
Yeah.
[00:46:07]
So you can’t sacrifice your quality
to be somebody, right.
[00:46:12]
Exactly.
Exactly.
[00:46:14]
Yeah, I would I would rather not take
the job on than to try to cut all
[00:46:17]
the corners necessary in order to make
it at the price that they want to pay.
[00:46:22]
So I pretty much have to say
I’m sorry, I can’t help you.
[00:46:25]
Yeah, no.
[00:46:27]
And you wouldn’t believe how many times
that the goal for that other option.
[00:46:31]
And then we’ll get a call six weeks
[00:46:33]
from then and they’re
in a real rush for it now.
[00:46:36]
And they’re willing to spend the extra
[00:46:38]
money because they gave it to another
shop who did not perform on it.
[00:46:42]
And now not only are they six weeks
behind, but they’ve got a hassle.
[00:46:47]
They’ve got to go through with returning
that ad or whatever they have to do.
[00:46:51]
And then they got to get into our queue
where and we try to help them out
[00:46:55]
and speed things up if we can’t
afford brokedown fix or repair daily.
[00:47:00]
That’s right.
That’s funny.
[00:47:03]
That’s awesome.
How are you marketing your business now or
[00:47:05]
how you marketed your past
business for the past five years?
[00:47:09]
Bankers don’t want to hear
this because we don’t market.
[00:47:12]
Oh, we don’t market.
[00:47:16]
Well, it markets itself.
So word of mouth.
[00:47:18]
Word of mouth.
OK, yeah.
[00:47:20]
Yeah, word of mouth.
[00:47:21]
And that’s kept us in business.
[00:47:23]
Plenty of business for fifteen years.
[00:47:26]
The occasional podcast interview.
Right.
[00:47:28]
Well here we go.
Yeah.
[00:47:30]
I should have, I should
have mentioned that
[00:47:33]
this is our first advertising that we’ve
Jerrell Dickinson Manufacturing Solutions.
[00:47:38]
Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:47:40]
That’s cool.
[00:47:41]
That is impressive that you’ve been
able to run for fifteen years.
[00:47:43]
It’s just word of mouth
from pretty much the start.
[00:47:46]
It sounds like a start
except for a few flyers.
[00:47:49]
Yeah.
That’s crazy.
[00:47:51]
Yeah that is interesting.
[00:47:53]
So what’s, what’s going to happen
in the future do you predict to knock down
[00:47:57]
some more walls and some more
stuff or is this a good size.
[00:48:00]
It seems like every industry there’s an
ideal size for a given type of company.
[00:48:06]
So are you above below within
the Goldilocks where you sit there?
[00:48:11]
I believe that right now we’re the right
size for the niche market that we’re in.
[00:48:17]
Okay.
All right.
[00:48:19]
Now, that being said,
I am going into like a semiretirement.
[00:48:26]
All right.
And yes, I’m.
[00:48:29]
Are you really?
Yes.
[00:48:30]
Oh, all right.
Oh, five years.
[00:48:33]
I’m going to be in a beach.
Yeah, exactly.
[00:48:35]
And and so a lot of the decision making
I’ve already passed on to my partner.
[00:48:41]
Oh, wow.
And it just depends on what kind of a mix
[00:48:45]
he wants because he’ll be bringing
the company into the future.
[00:48:48]
OK, and I, I refuse to micromanage it.
All right.
[00:48:52]
He has to make the decisions on it.
[00:48:55]
And right now I would believe that we are
[00:48:57]
about 80 percent, 20, 80 percent R&D,
one off short run production, OK.
[00:49:06]
Twenty percent production.
[00:49:08]
OK, if he were to change that mix,
[00:49:11]
for whatever reason,
he decides, if we went more towards
[00:49:16]
the production side, I believe he may
need more space and more capacity.
[00:49:21]
All right.
[00:49:22]
And again, he may want to do something
[00:49:25]
with advertising that I didn’t want to do
and go a little bit more nationwide.
[00:49:29]
Sure.
[00:49:30]
And and, you know,
pick up the business Soman.
[00:49:34]
So it’s kind of it depends
on what he wants to do.
[00:49:36]
All right.
[00:49:38]
So I’m going to leave that question
for your neck and for your next podcast.
[00:49:42]
All right.
Can you interview Rick Edwards?
[00:49:45]
That’s cool.
Yeah.
[00:49:46]
How soon is this happening there?
[00:49:48]
Well, I’ve actually started this year,
except for covid messed it all up
[00:49:53]
when I was going to be at the beach today.
[00:49:55]
But when I was doing as I was I was
[00:49:57]
working, you know,
essentially working one day a week.
[00:50:03]
And I’d be available to come in if they
needed me for the rest of the week.
[00:50:08]
But then we had some people
out because of covid.
[00:50:12]
And so I ended up coming
in a little bit more.
[00:50:14]
I don’t get on the machines
and make anything anymore.
[00:50:17]
OK, so I’m I’m here kind of just as a as
[00:50:20]
a resource and to help out
Rick in managing the place.
[00:50:25]
But yeah.
[00:50:26]
And a little bit of clothing.
[00:50:28]
But other than that I’m sure they all do
the they they do the important stuff
[00:50:33]
15 years you earn there,
you built them big business.
[00:50:36]
15 years.
I’ve been machining
[00:50:40]
business long time.
[00:50:42]
That’s a long time for anything.
[00:50:44]
So I wonder
how the machines here have they evolved or
[00:50:49]
changed in the past 15
years or is it pretty much
[00:50:53]
a drill like I see a three and a half inch
floppy on this guy
[00:50:57]
and my my wife’s got embroidery machine
that came in for three and a half floppy.
[00:51:02]
Right.
[00:51:02]
And I remember saying to her,
it’s a three and a half floppy.
[00:51:05]
What do you do with it?
Right.
[00:51:06]
And the repair guy was like,
[00:51:09]
let me tell you a story about these
files and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:51:12]
And he justified the three
and a half floppy my guy.
[00:51:15]
So is that essentially the same
story with this stuff?
[00:51:18]
It is.
OK,
[00:51:20]
you’re right.
[00:51:21]
So as they evolve, because this is
a 2005 model, OK, it’s got the floppy.
[00:51:26]
But if you look over here, this is
a 2014 model and it’s got the USB.
[00:51:33]
Oh, OK.
So that is just jumped, right?
[00:51:36]
Yeah.
All right.
[00:51:37]
And you can actually have them Bluetooth.
I sure do.
[00:51:41]
All kinds of crazy stuff now.
[00:51:42]
OK, whatever the technology is.
Sure.
[00:51:44]
But it’s not going to be
on a two thousand five machine.
[00:51:47]
OK,
but yeah, we even ran into some problems
[00:51:51]
with getting the three
and a half inch floppy.
[00:51:55]
We had to go to a company in California
[00:51:56]
that’s still just to get there,
just to get them.
[00:51:59]
You can buy them anywhere.
[00:52:00]
No, and that’s fine.
[00:52:02]
But our but our computer system and our
[00:52:04]
programming system
is state of the art fact.
[00:52:07]
We just ended up putting in a new
server over the weekend.
[00:52:12]
My GM is all the IT stuff and.
Sure.
[00:52:15]
So what happens is that is only for
[00:52:19]
just transfer from back and forth.
Gotcha.
[00:52:23]
And then the rest of it is
backed up on computers.
[00:52:26]
OK, but it’s so interesting
because it blows my mind.
[00:52:30]
I was even saying this to myself today.
[00:52:33]
I’m trying a little website.
[00:52:35]
And now when you compare now to two
[00:52:37]
thousand five Internet speeds
now, it was like a thousand times faster,
[00:52:41]
like, why do I have to wait
for a website to load it?
[00:52:44]
I shouldn’t have to wait
because we’re fifty six K back in the day
[00:52:48]
was lightning and now we’re at one
hundred meg up and down on the low side.
[00:52:53]
Why are we waiting.
[00:52:55]
It seems like the,
[00:52:57]
the software always seems to be outpacing
the speed of the hardware by a factor.
[00:53:01]
So when I see a three and a half inch
[00:53:03]
floppy like this one and half meg,
is that enough for the file?
[00:53:07]
But maybe it is.
[00:53:09]
So it must be.
[00:53:10]
That’s a good question.
[00:53:12]
It’s not it’s not well,
for some programs that we do a lot more 3D
[00:53:18]
machining, which is pretty big, so this
machine wouldn’t be tasked with it.
[00:53:24]
Gushin But, you know, this is an example.
Yeah.
[00:53:28]
A lot of this is not a lot,
[00:53:29]
but some of the stuff that we make is just
a square block with some holes in,
[00:53:33]
you know, so that doesn’t take
much data at all to produce.
[00:53:37]
This is kind of sexy.
I don’t know, man.
[00:53:40]
This chunk of steel,
you can see what you guys did.
[00:53:43]
That’s impressive with
the threads on there.
[00:53:45]
Holy cow.
Yeah, I think I could make you
[00:53:47]
into a machinist if you feel
like that looks like a mechanic
[00:53:52]
and stuff like this.
[00:53:53]
Osia, you know, it’s funny this
this weekend I’m with my buddy.
[00:53:57]
He’s got a kid that’s about
the same age as my kid.
[00:54:00]
So they’re off playing and they’re like,
hey, when you guys play Legos with us.
[00:54:04]
So they play Legos with us for about five
minutes and they run off, my buddy and I.
[00:54:08]
Playing Legos for two more hours,
and he had some kind with gears.
[00:54:12]
Wow.
[00:54:12]
And I’m staring at it just like I
hate Legos and forever is cool.
[00:54:17]
Yeah.
[00:54:17]
Just trying to get all those years
to work and stuff like that.
[00:54:20]
Yeah, it’s interesting because when you
[00:54:21]
work on your business, so to speak,
you’re doing more behind the desk,
[00:54:26]
you’re banging on the keyboard,
all that kind of stuff.
[00:54:28]
You don’t get to do the mechanical stuff.
[00:54:30]
And I find that I have to have my car
[00:54:33]
hobby in order to keep
the mechanical brain.
[00:54:36]
Well, that’s the craftsmen in you, too.
[00:54:38]
I think that true craftsman needs to be
able to make something out of something
[00:54:43]
else or improve something
that they have with tools.
[00:54:49]
And it has to be tangible.
[00:54:51]
Yes, not something in the
[00:54:54]
virtual world.
[00:54:56]
An engineer might be happy working in his
virtual world all day,
[00:54:59]
but probably I’d rather metal
totally, you know, only going.
[00:55:03]
You can see it.
Yeah, you can feel it.
[00:55:05]
You can see what.
You can measure it.
[00:55:07]
And yeah, it becomes something.
[00:55:09]
I think that’s why I
never got into software.
[00:55:11]
It’s trying to find a bug in software.
[00:55:13]
I would just have the hardest time.
Oh sure.
[00:55:15]
Finding the problem with the part.
Really.
[00:55:17]
Yeah.
It doesn’t line up.
[00:55:18]
You can clearly see what’s going on,
[00:55:20]
but maybe the software
person feels the same way.
[00:55:23]
Just the opposite I suppose.
Sure.
[00:55:25]
So at any rate.
[00:55:27]
So you’re how do you feel about walking
away, I guess retiring from this?
[00:55:32]
Is that a good feeling
or is it a is it tough?
[00:55:34]
Oh, man, it’s tough.
[00:55:36]
It’s like ignoring your baby chick.
[00:55:40]
I mean,
[00:55:43]
what is it’s in good hands.
[00:55:45]
And I’m really proud of all
the work that they’ve been doing.
[00:55:49]
Yeah.
[00:55:49]
And so it’s been
I’ve had to have a few conversations
[00:55:54]
with myself, OK, about how do I feel about
it and how, you know, and I tell you what,
[00:56:00]
it’s it’s getting easier as I is I is the
more conversations I have with myself.
[00:56:06]
Right.
[00:56:07]
I’m not going to talk myself out
of it because I’m going to retire.
[00:56:10]
Yeah.
[00:56:10]
And I’m going to go fishing and I’m going
to do the things that I want to do.
[00:56:13]
But I’ll never I don’t think I’ll ever
[00:56:15]
lose the connection,
which is a beautiful thing to
[00:56:18]
the shop goes on and I’m
always welcome back in here.
[00:56:22]
And I think I might even get
a phone call once in a while.
[00:56:24]
The old man still has a few
tricks up his sleeve.
[00:56:27]
Oh,
[00:56:29]
that’s awesome.
[00:56:30]
So if you were to give advice for someone
that was considering starting a business,
[00:56:33]
let’s just start broad and then we can
work into machine broad business advice.
[00:56:38]
What would you give someone something
[00:56:39]
that you wish you would have
known fifteen years ago?
[00:56:49]
And this is probably not new advice,
but if if you have an idea and you believe
[00:56:54]
in it strongly and you’re willing
to do whatever it takes, go for it.
[00:57:00]
Don’t let anybody stop you.
I love it.
[00:57:03]
That’s cool.
Yeah.
[00:57:03]
And don’t let don’t let
the banks say no, no.
[00:57:07]
Listen to what they have to say.
[00:57:09]
You may have to tailor it and and shave
a little off here or there, but don’t go
[00:57:17]
at least shopping around.
[00:57:21]
Let’s see what else.
[00:57:25]
You know, I
[00:57:26]
I really, truly believe that it helped me
[00:57:29]
that I knew the business
before I started the business.
[00:57:33]
Yeah.
And and I think that’s very helpful
[00:57:39]
because it adds that passion level.
[00:57:41]
You have to really be passionate
about it, to be able to
[00:57:45]
to be able to stick through some
[00:57:48]
of the hard stuff that you’re going to go
through in the beginning
[00:57:51]
and then don’t get discouraged
even when it looks a little bit dismal.
[00:57:56]
It’s a little bleak.
Yeah.
[00:57:59]
Talk to other people that have
been in business that helps a lot.
[00:58:05]
Yeah, I would suggest becoming
a member of the Chamber of Commerce.
[00:58:09]
All right.
[00:58:10]
I think that relationship has helped me,
especially in the hard times.
[00:58:15]
Yeah.
Because, you know,
[00:58:16]
when everything is going along good,
you don’t need help from anybody.
[00:58:19]
But as soon as it gets a little bit rocky,
[00:58:22]
boy, I take advice
from just about anybody.
[00:58:25]
Right.
Right.
[00:58:26]
Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:58:27]
What are you guys doing over there?
[00:58:29]
You don’t want them to say,
who are you exactly?
[00:58:32]
Been a member.
I’ve been involved.
[00:58:33]
Blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
[00:58:35]
Instead of just being I’ve been
[00:58:36]
in my little hole trying to get a nut
job, I’m having a hard time getting in.
[00:58:41]
And then the other thing is, is that
[00:58:45]
of course, it all depends on your
[00:58:46]
philosophy, on how you
want to run your business.
[00:58:50]
Mind is one philosophy, which was people,
people, people and train, train, train
[00:58:58]
so well, not train, train, train,
[00:59:02]
but you have to train to get as a catalyst
to get them thinking on their own.
[00:59:07]
And I take no credit for where
[00:59:11]
these people are today with their career
because they’re fantastic.
[00:59:16]
They blow me away.
[00:59:17]
But I taught the basics or we
taught the basics of business.
[00:59:21]
Once they have those basics,
they got the tool kit and they start
[00:59:25]
putting the tools together
and put notches on their belt.
[00:59:28]
Sure.
Right.
[00:59:28]
And then what’s really
[00:59:30]
crazy neat is to watch them
figure out a new problem
[00:59:35]
with the tools in their tool kit without
you helping them by the hand to do it.
[00:59:40]
Yeah.
[00:59:41]
And now you have a person that’s
really well on their way to
[00:59:46]
being fulfilled and and starting
to perfect their career.
[00:59:51]
Yeah.
[00:59:51]
And be able to hold
their head high and go.
[00:59:53]
I am I am a world class machinist.
That’s cool.
[00:59:57]
Yeah, that’s impressive.
[00:59:59]
There’s something to be said about
having passion for the job, right.
[01:00:02]
I think so.
Instead of just punching a clock.
[01:00:04]
I think so.
I think that I think at least when I was
[01:00:08]
before I started my own business, the
shops that I worked for that treated me
[01:00:14]
as just somebody to plug parts in,
[01:00:17]
that’s what they got back.
[01:00:19]
You’ll get what you pay
for and you get what you nourish.
[01:00:23]
And and and the shops that held me
in a higher esteem to be able to think
[01:00:31]
on my own and and where
where you work for somebody
[01:00:36]
that you would never even call a boss
because they’re a mentor and a coach.
[01:00:41]
That’s key.
[01:00:42]
And then then you know what?
[01:00:44]
Then you get everything out of me.
[01:00:46]
That’s what works for me.
All right.
[01:00:48]
That’s what tickled my fancy.
[01:00:51]
Somebody’s actually wanting my opinion and
[01:00:55]
and and listening and and letting
me think and letting me share.
[01:01:00]
And that’s that’s kind
of more of a complete job.
[01:01:03]
Sure.
Using the hands,
[01:01:05]
the heart and the brain.
Everything. Instead of just the hands,
[01:01:07]
right?
Exactly, that gets old after a while.
[01:01:11]
It totally does.
Yeah.
[01:01:12]
But, you know,
you can even turn that into something
[01:01:14]
where you’re using your mind
if you turn it into a dance, I call it.
[01:01:19]
OK. So what we call a door slammer, a job
[01:01:22]
like we have over here where
the cycle time on this part is like
[01:01:27]
twenty seconds or thirty seconds,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[01:01:32]
But if you think about it and you use
[01:01:36]
the most efficient body movement,
you can even turn it into like a dance.
[01:01:42]
Sure.
[01:01:42]
And so it can become satisfying
that you’re it’s choreographed.
[01:01:48]
And then once you have that baseline,
you can change the dance.
[01:01:51]
All right.
But if it’s done differently every time,
[01:01:54]
you can’t improve on something
that is done differently every time.
[01:01:57]
Then it’s chaotic. There’s no baseline.
So.
[01:01:59]
All right.
Yeah, that’s clever.
[01:02:01]
Like adding an extra moves to your
the four step, right.
[01:02:05]
Exactly.
[01:02:06]
As long as you get the four step down,
you can tweak and have some fun with it. You betcha. That’s cool.
[01:02:11]
That’s cool.
What’s a business advice would you give
[01:02:13]
to someone that was considering
starting a machine shop?
[01:02:16]
Don’t do it in Madison, because
the competition is real stiff.
[01:02:22]
Machine shop.
[01:02:25]
So I would just I would just say that,
[01:02:30]
you know, I wouldn’t get
I would start small like I did
[01:02:34]
about one hundred thousand dollars
will get you into enough machinery.
[01:02:38]
Will it still?
Oh, yeah. OK.
[01:02:40]
I think it will.
[01:02:41]
And and I wouldn’t skimp
on the place, though.
[01:02:46]
I would leave yourself room for expansion.
Sure.
[01:02:49]
Because if you’re not going
to grow it, don’t start it.
[01:02:51]
Right.
[01:02:51]
And and you don’t want to be moving
in your first 10 years,
[01:02:54]
I can’t imagine moving one of these
machines would cost. It’s expensive.
[01:02:58]
I mean, yeah, it would it would
be expensive to move the shop.
[01:03:03]
Yeah.
[01:03:04]
It would have to be well
worth it to do that.
[01:03:06]
Mm hmm.
[01:03:07]
So I would start small, you know,
with a couple of machines maybe,
[01:03:12]
but I would do
quality state of the art machines.
[01:03:16]
I would not start with something old.
[01:03:19]
Because the thing is,
is when you first start out
[01:03:22]
the customers that you gain,
you cannot afford to disappoint them.
[01:03:26]
Right.
So you can’t go, oh, my machine went down.
[01:03:29]
No, not in your first couple of years now.
[01:03:32]
No, it has to be.
[01:03:33]
I can do that for you.
[01:03:35]
You’ll have it at this date
with this level of quality.
[01:03:38]
And this is how much it costs.
[01:03:40]
And you got to follow through with that or
[01:03:42]
you’ll you’ll lose them
before you got them.
[01:03:44]
Yeah, it’s tough to grow,
especially by word of mouth that way
[01:03:46]
in the fifth, sixth, seventh,
eighth, ninth, tenth year.
[01:03:49]
Maybe they’ll understand an excuse.
[01:03:52]
Something happened. Maybe.
[01:03:53]
But in that, maybe.
[01:03:55]
But in that first two years,
[01:03:57]
I think you have to be able to perform
on time and every time.
[01:04:03]
And
[01:04:04]
yeah, that’s about it.
That’s cool.
[01:04:07]
That’s cool.
[01:04:08]
Keith, thank you so much
for being on the podcast.
[01:04:09]
Yeah. It’s been awesome.
Thanks for having me.
[01:04:11]
This time went fast,
but this is impressive.
[01:04:13]
I just like sitting here in this,
[01:04:16]
you can just smell the must be
cutting oil or something like that.
[01:04:19]
A little cutting oil. OK.
[01:04:21]
And that metal and stuff like
that, I miss stuff like this.
[01:04:24]
Yeah.
[01:04:24]
The office doesn’t have this at all
so that’s just how it is.
[01:04:29]
Whatever.
OK, yeah.
[01:04:30]
It’s good times.
This has been Authentic Business
[01:04:32]
Adventures,
the business program that brings you
[01:04:34]
the struggle stories and triumphs and successes
of business owners across the land coming
[01:04:39]
to you from Dickinson Manufacturing,
which is just a cool place, right?
[01:04:44]
How would you like people to get a hold of you?
[01:04:46]
How would be the best way?
[01:04:48]
They can look us up on the Internet or
they can just call us at area code:
[01:04:54]
608-222-3489. 222-3489, awesome.
[01:04:59]
And you do stuff nationally
or is it mostly local?
[01:05:03]
A lot of it’s local to engineering
firms or companies that are local.
[01:05:07]
But we have customers in California
and in Texas. So, across the country.
[01:05:12]
Sure.
All right.
[01:05:13]
Canada?
[01:05:15]
I don’t know if anything is going
to Canada, although our products that are
[01:05:18]
going to our engineers are
actually sold all over the world.
[01:05:21]
Oh, really? Nice.
All right.
[01:05:22]
Well, there you go.
What’s the website?
[01:05:26]
The website is DickinsonManufacturingSolutions.com.
[01:05:30]
Gotcha, and Dickinson,
[01:05:32]
this is funny because I kept
calling your name wrong.
[01:05:34]
Oh, right.
Dickinson, D-i-c-k-i-n-s-o-n.
[01:05:39]
Ok. I got it good here.
Like I don’t know if I have it right here.
[01:05:41]
Yeah, that’s funny.
So this is Keith Dickinson.
[01:05:43]
Keith, thank you so much
for being on the show.
[01:05:45]
You’re welcome.
Thanks for having me.
[01:05:47]
Find us airing at 103.5 Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m.,
[01:05:50]
Sundays at 2:00 p.m., as well as
at SunPrairieMediaCenter.com.
[01:05:54]
Past episodes, of course,
can be a found morning, noon, and night.
[01:05:56]
The podcast link found at drawincustomers.com.
[01:06:00]
If you’re listening to this on the web,
please like, subscribe, and share.
[01:06:03]
And that’s all we got.
Right.
[01:06:05]
Thanks for listening.
We’ll see you next week.
[01:06:07]
I want you to stay awesome.
[01:06:08]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.
