Piranha Jaws | The 4 Things We Look for Hiring & Firing – Part 2
This is the second episode of our two part series. The four ways that we hire, we’re going to be talking about our interview script and piranha jaws. We’re going to be talking about group interviews and how they will save you so much time. We’re also going to discuss some of the problems that we’ve had while trying to find good people. So listen to this little clip, and maybe you can relate to this.
You’re a young entrepreneur, young business owner, young management, and you have guys that are maybe 10, 15, 20 years older than you, that are coming into the job. And because you’re younger, they know you’re younger. They can see you’re younger. They feel like you don’t know anything. [inaudible]
So Donnie, me and NACE actually designed a script and some piranha jaws. So when we do the interview process, um, that we’re not just winging it every, every time someone comes in the door, right?
Yeah. You’re keeping it consistent.
Absolutely. And then I don’t have to think about it because the mind is for making crucial decisions. And the pin is for remembering another notable quotable that has helped us a lot. The mind is for making decisions for you, use your mind for the most important things. Don’t use it to remember a silly script. You write the script down, you systemize it and you use it, but don’t use that power of your brain to just remember how you’re going to hire somebody. Yeah. This,
This was a huge release for me, cause I’m a little OCD and a little add and I made, got made fun of a little bit. Sounds like a lot of DS. It is good. And so in high school, there’s this there’s several times I would repeat things in my head over and over and over checklist because this is before checklists were profound, there was no phones. You had the Nokia and that was it. All you had on the Nokia was a snake game and piranha jaws. That’s it? There’s no app to like there is today. Right? And so I would literally repeat things over and over in my head because that’s why I did, because you want to do to get done with your finances. I would do my checklist. I would do my homework, schoolwork, anything, and I would do it over and over. And it took so much time for me to do that. And once, once with my wife, she, she told me how to put things on paper. And that was just the beginning. That was the beginning 11 years ago. And it freed my thinking up, not thinking about little stupid. Oh yeah. But he Donny, he doesn’t get this pause thing, man. I don’t know.
Are you, well, I’m just getting into it. I’m filling it. He’s filling the pause. No, not spas. I’m just filling it. Like the
Flow is the flow. The flow is circular on
The hips. And so yeah, the pin is for remembering the brains for thinking, you have to think right away, you have to be crucial because as owners and bosses and some of the people saw this week, we’d gotten put really in a really weird situations by employees weirdness. And we had to think logically, not emotionally with our Dilla, but we had to think
Logically and emotionally process it in a healthy way to get what we needed for the company. And then all of our notes, all this crap that we’ve reviewed at the end of the day it’s notes on our notepad to-do list. Yeah. Yup. Nascent me actually carry a, a, a to-do list all day Dani. So like, no matter, no matter what, because like we have a million things come at us. So no matter what, and we could probably, like I said, there’s so much that we could go into deeper on all these things, but it’s like, if you don’t write it down immediately, like if I go out in the shop and someone grabs my attention, I will forget about what I just did unless I have it on my checklist because they just totally distracted me
100%. If it does 100%, it doesn’t get done. And if I don’t write it down, it will never get done. And it will, I will forget about it until you tell me, Hey, did you do that thing? And I’m gonna be like, you know what? I remembered it, but I forgot it because I’m that guy that tries to remember every freaking thing with my piranha jaws. That’s the kind of crap that I deal with is just remembering, uh, nonessential facts that will not, not, not do me any good, right. Versus things that I could be using my brain for, which are, you know, just much more, uh, important things to do during the day.
If your machine is the biggest thing you should be worried about is how to problem solve. How are you going to solve the current problem? That’s facing me right now. And so this is going to bring us back to the script. So we wrote it down and I’m going to take us through the script. So we look for four things, Donny, when we hire you ready? Yeah. And I would say, I would say what I’m going to say, what I’m going to tell them. Right. I’m going to tell them, and then I’m going to tell him what I told them. Okay. So they’re all like understanding because they probably didn’t understand the first time. Then I tell them they probably didn’t fully get it. Then I’m going to tell him what I told them and what we have. We have a pad, we have a clipboard and a pen, or if they bring their own pen and we say, Hey, fill out the top three questions. Yes. Don’t fill out anything below that. Yes. I will answer those questions and give you those questions later. Wait for that. And all of a sudden, if they don’t listen,
Uh, they’re not a listener. So that sounded like a legitimate buzzer.
It is. But it’s like, number one, it all starts back at the beginning. When you send them that email and it says four o’clock sharp dressed in press pen and paper. So as they walk in, are they, are they on time? Some of them will show up 30 minutes early. Some of them, someone will show up even an hour early just saying, Hey, I just wanted to make sure I knew where it was. Some people will have came the day before. That’s true to let us know that they’re coming tomorrow morning. Yeah. And they’re coming tomorrow.
I like that. That’s that’s Ooh, that’s really nice.
Right. So they actually scouted the place. Make sure they knew exactly where it was. Make sure wasn’t dumb that day. And then they actually came, uh, to tell us, right. And then came the next day. And then they came about 35, 40, 45 minutes early. Um, and then, Oh, that’s sounds like a personal problem or, or is it, or a superpower that was like three times today.
Wait, you guys go 30 minutes. Okay.
Then he says, that sounds like him, but I don’t. I, unless, unless he can prove it, I don’t know, five minutes early.
Oh, I shouldn’t be disappointed because those guys go 30 minutes. I’ve gotten like I get, I don’t even get a minute. Okay.
Ooh. I was Hambridge bridge. It is,
It is. Oh, Oh it is. Oh, well I’m sure Forbes has some stats on these things, but I’m not sure, but okay. So then the other things we’re looking for, did they dress to impress and you know, everybody at Donny,
What is, what is your, what is your rule on dress to impress me? Piranha jaws, right.
I just want to see what people think because EV like, let’s just say common sense is not so common. Do we all agree on this? Like, is this a thing we all know? I believe it. And um, so I want to see what they think is impressive. Jean CO’s that’s happened.
It’s happening. So
The one thing I, I, I’m kind of borderline on the dress to impress thing, because I’ve been in the position where I’ve had, I’ve had a job that I was getting an interview for that I didn’t have the money. I was broke. Basically. I was, I had no money. I was broke and they gave me that quote of dress to impress. Right. And I didn’t have clothes to dress, to impress. I literally had to dress in like the best things I could find. I had dress shoes that I hadn’t worn in like four years that had like, the heels were like clicking, like the blue, rubber heels hanging off. Like, so I literally showed up, like I wanted to work that day. I didn’t dress like a bum. I didn’t smell bad. I just looked like I was ready to, uh, go to work that day, whatever the job was.
So, so the dress depress, isn’t it. It’s not a, it’s not a deal breaker, but it’s just like, you want to get someone’s like perspective on like, what is their idea of that? What does that look like to them? So they’re closed. So that, so that just gives you, Oh, Brandon has something to say. I have a question. Okay.
What if they look like a, you know, a bum ish, but they smell really good. Like piranha jaws?
Well, I’ve went off. I went off smell before sometimes. And that doesn’t always work either. Oh, Oh. W that, sometimes that comes back to bite you because sometimes people and their self-aware, which is hugely important. They’ll like, come looking good, smelling, good, whatever. And then they come the next Monday to work. They smell like a cigarette that just got put out by coffee, and then they forgot to brush her teeth.
Yeah, no, it’s, I mean, because the interview like, Oh, I’ve got this one day too. It’s like catfish, you know, exactly one day to dress up, look nice. I’m not going to smoke before I go in. So I’m not going to be me. Right. I’m just going to do this. What they, what, what general society thinks is a good, um, interview, uh, person.
So we’re looking for consistency. And so if they pass this next step, which we’ll touch base in a second filters out next process. Yeah. Which is awesome. Yeah. So then we, so within, I basically tell them, I’d say, okay, keep it short and sweet, like a dollar rancher piranha jaws, right. Because that’s the nicest deal. Um, and NACE added that to the script and, um, and
What they love, they don’t laugh. They’re gone if they don’t have, if they don’t have a sense of humor, they have to have that. They have to be able to laugh. Now I got a question. Absolutely.
What happens if this particular person just happens to really like jolly ranchers and they just keep one in their pocket for like, you know, just, uh, they’re trying to quit smoking or chewing tobacco. And they use those jolly ranchers as a, as a way to take their mind off of it. And in the middle of the interview, you’re like, keep it short and sweet, like a jolly rancher. And he just straight up reaches in his pocket and just kind of like, does that quick unwrap on a, on a jolly rancher pops in his mouth and just gives you that look of like, yeah, I just did that. What happens? He might have
99.9% of getting hired right then, or going to the next phase. Yeah. And so they, they give us like a 32nd spiel on where they’ve been, what they’ve been doing. And then I go on to tell them that. So I’m going to tell you about the four ways that we hire. Right. And then I say at the very end, I’m going to ask you guys some questions and then I’ll let you guys ask me anything that you want to ask me about our company, what we do, what we make. And then I usually even give him a little tour. So, and guess what, if they do a premature question, uh, they can’t listen. They’re disqualified. Yup. Right? So everything that we’re doing is designed to filter piranha jaws. Do they come early? They come on time. They come late too. They have a pen and paper. What is this restaurant? What is their dress to impress? And that that’s not a deal breaker. No, I actually, none of those are deal breakers. It’s just, we get a good read on the person. Yeah. And it’s not even, it’s not about clothes or, or the style clothing, um, or the type of clothes or the shoes. It’s more like, did they wash their freaking shirt before they come in? Yes. Or did they just smoke a hot box it and then spray acts on them when they walk out.
Yeah. The ax bath.
So it’s not hard. It’s just, it’s just, what is there? Consistency? Not fake it till you make it. Yeah. Getting a read on these people. Number one, the number one way we hire is we will hire a good people or, sorry, we’ll cut. We’ll rewind that. But we’re not really, we will hire people with good attitudes over skill every day of the week. So number one, in order to keep our culture. And I kind of go into that before, like what our culture is and all that stuff. Um, we hire people with good attitudes because we’ve hired machinists. I’m a machinist. And this just happened. Probably what Britain a year ago. We brought a couple of like really good machinists in right over attitude. Yeah. Skill over attitude. What happened? We told him what was your experience?
I’ve seen so many individuals.
He sounds so scarred by this. So, so this is,
What’s really weird is Rafa dad passed away. We had, we had about three people here that ended up either one passed away, a couple got fired. But when we started to try to hire, because we didn’t know, you don’t know what you don’t know. Right. Is we try to hire skill over attitude. And the three people that came in were doppelgangers of people that got fired.
It was the weirdest thing. And we we’re like, Oh my gosh, this is beep beep
I replace them. It was so weird. It was same
Attitudes. Everything looked the same older,
But they literally had the same attitudes. All right. All right, Brandon, go, go back to your brain.
I’ll be the first to admit that I turned into a big sour for this after he passed
After dad passed. Yep. Yeah.
And some people don’t like changes, but those changes turned me into a better man than I am.
Oh, piranha jaws did you hear the angels singing from heaven?
And actually probably about a week ago, Brandon, I said Brandon did better this year than last year. And during this why? And I said, because the one year he ended up getting a little upset and did 95%. So he does 95%. Awesome. And then 5%, he took off a week because he was a little upset, whatever. But this year he was sourpuss Jordan and I not only as brain and grows the ownership, the leaders, they have to be willing to grow. And so Jordan had to say, this didn’t work with Brandon because one, what generation did he grow up in to? What’s his love language and three what’s his personality type. So we had to figure that to get the best, our employees, Brandon, Brandon, what is your love language, physical touch.
That is all I Brandon, Brendan. But we, we, we can,
Our goal was to get the most out Brandon cause our, our trajectory. And so we had to change
The way we approached him as leaders. Okay. Brandon, do you have anything more to say on what you’re going to say? You said, you said, you said you did some people don’t like change, but you did at first. I, I didn’t. You didn’t, but it grew on me. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. That’s where all the hard work in terms of this year is your best year as an employee. I think so.
Yeah. He’s he’s right, man. I’ve watched guys come in and they would literally, you know, Fridays, you would sweep every everybody’s cleaned. We shut down the shop early. We cleaned and I’ve literally watched the old school guys come in and sweep a square around their machine because that was their zone. They wouldn’t touch anything else. It was just, this is what I did for the day. This is my work over here. What you did is not mine. And that’s just like the wrong mentality to have. And that usually is what happens with every old school machines that walks in the door. They got all the talent in the world, but they’re just, the mentality is crap.
So, so Donnie, so we actually hired a guy that was, I believe, like he actually knew what he was doing and he was a little bit older. So sometimes, you know, we’re kind of younger. I’m 38 or so it could be wrong in I’m about to be about to be 38. Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. That’s great news. Cause I thought I might be going on 39, 35, but we’re twins. Yeah. Three year labor. Yeah. It’s it it’s strange maybe. But so, so we hired this guy in a new, the Haas control, right. He was a laid guy. And so we say, Hey, like he passed, like he passed like the interview process. I kind of liked him. He sounded confident. I was like, this might be a good move to hire someone with skill. Um, cause me and Neisha are doing so much more in the office these days. So I need someone out there that can do stuff that maybe I don’t have time for right now. And so we brought that.
You’re hoping that you get somebody that can just take off and run. Like you don’t have to walk them into this. You can just let them go and do their thing. Right.
And so what I would say, Dani, as far as like master machine, like we have like a minimum piranha jaws. I mean like, like we, our crashes on our machine are like zero a year.
Maybe you guys like crash is the closest piece of wood that you guys can find. Just knock on it right now. I
Donny, I don’t even need it. Okay.
I don’t want to hear it. Let’s do it. Nope.
I’m going to tell you why, because it would be a Navy system, exactly systems. So once every job that we’ve ever done, which is repeat, usually we have some more prototype and stuff that every job that we’ve done on either programmed, NACES programmed, we’ve proved all the tooling, all the notes that they need are in the setup sheet. Every tool, every piece of fixturing is in a setup box offset. So everything, however, the way you prove is single blocking. You have to watch your distance to go. All these things prevent us. And we’ve been training the guys underneath us right now for 12 years. 11, 12 years. Yes. Correct. So been with us for a little bit.
And so that’s how we minimize how many crashes we have. And so, um,
You guys are controlling that though.
Absolutely. And so,
So you don’t have, when you hire people, you don’t have who’s programming. Who’s a dedicated programmer.
We don’t have one that’s me and NACE where we’re the programmers.
Okay. So perfect, perfect. Uh, tie into this. I’ve never worked in a shop where I had a dedicated program.
This is why I’ve heard the dedicated programmers have never actually operated the machine. Some of them because Jordan and I will get companies, do we have programs? And they’ll send us the dedicated programmers program and it’s junk it’s beep yeah. Yeah. It’s cause, cause they don’t know the speeds and feeds and how your remit drill it and tap it.
Oh no, no.
For real. So, so this guy comes in Donnie, right? He comes in and I say, Hey, so just for like a couple of weeks, all I want you to do so, so I’m gonna cut you off. Okay. Rude. So if they pass the interview, so when they come to our shop at 4:00 PM on Tuesdays, right? We say, what’s next? And we go, you were here with us within 24 hours. Yes. If we decide to move on, if we decide to move on, you will have a two week trial basis. Not for that shadowing. They actually get a shadow day. Why is the shadow day important? Because they get to come and hang out with us and our piranha jaws. And I say, this is important because number one, I want you to like it here. Number two, I want you to like us. And hopefully we enjoy you too.
Right. And so I say, um, because if we don’t, it’s not going to work out. And so this guy came in because if I don’t like you and you don’t like me, we’re both not going to have fun. And then we laugh. Yeah. And then yeah, they do love me. Yeah. And uh, so he came in and I said, so just for like a little bit, I don’t necessarily need you to make an offsets. I just want to see, you are telling me on your resume. That what is that? Just do 78% of people are lying on their resumes. BBB, PPP.
Wow. What is the beeping? I that’s
That’s my brother. You know what it is? It’s a guy making offsets. They told not to. Oh, I was wondering men. Donny were both wondering, what’s a beeping sound with the
Loss control guy,
Fricking Haas guys. And they’re their Haas controls. I’m over here thinking Siemens and man.
So if we’re talking about the same person, yes, no, we are totally him. We know what you can do, but just don’t make cost sets. I happens. I want to see what you’re doing me on your resume is the truth. Yeah. But the guests, what shows he can’t listen? No. And so his whole
Deal, Donnie was, he wanted to prove himself. And so what does that say to me? There’s, there’s some fact that he can’t actually respect me because I told him to do this. Number two, there’s a, some type of confidence issue there that he feels like he needs to disobeyed what I told him in order to prove himself worthy. And that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for someone that can just do what I say. And then I’m going to let you loose. I’ll let you do what you can do, whatever you want. And you guys, if somebody’s going to do something a hundred percent more effective, but only 50% quality of one of my tasks I can do. I want them to do it. Yeah. Because you guys can spend a hundred percent more time on it than I can, but they’re pretty good at not the best.
Are you guys ready for the next like Mike Mike drop topic right now?
Let’s do it. Are you going to take us off of our topic we’re doing now?
No, this is right on the topic that you guys are talking about.
This, this could do whatever. I mean, but you’re a young entrepreneur, young business owner, young management. And you have guys that are maybe 10, 15, 20 years older than you, that are coming into the job. And because you’re younger, they know you’re younger. They can see you’re younger. They feel like you don’t know anything. Yeah. So when you bring them in and you tell them, listen, don’t make offsets. I just want to see what you’re doing because of the age gap. This, this I have. I hate this word. It’s called seniority. And it is the root of all evil. It will destroy an entire shop. At least in my opinion, seniority levels will destroy shops. And it’s a culture that I do not approve of. And I will, if I ever run a shop, if I ever own a shop, I will never, um, let a seniority, um, driven mindset rule my shop because of
Let’s cover that in another topic or another, because that’s a huge issue. And there’s lots of things around that, how we actually address some of that stuff. Um, and so I, I go on, so like basically that day, he actually, um, said that he can’t do this. He walked, he NACY came into the office. I went in there, he came into the office to tell you something, right. He said, basically I can’t do this. He goes back out, Donnie goes back out, goes to the machine. And so, um, I just talked to our mill manager and our lady managed the light. Yeah. He just said, he’s done. He can’t do this right on the first day of shadowing. A couple, just a couple hours. Yeah. Like maybe two hours. Maybe he said he quit. He said, basically I quit. He went out there and he went to Aaron and said, Hey, so, uh, I’m going to wash down this machine or whatever.
And Aaron said, he came back to me and he’s like, so w what just happened? I said, Nate just told me. He just said he can’t do this. He said, okay, well, I was confused. Cause he just said, he’s going to wash down the machine and get the chips out. And I was like, and so I went and talked to him anyways. He, he was like, no, I can’t do. I said, well, you don’t need to clean out, clean out the machine. Then man, you could go home. And w w we’re going to actually pay you for your shadow day. We paid him for his shadow day and he got out of there. And, um, long story short, he actually called us about a year later after he couldn’t do any other jobs too, and wanted to work for us again and was like that ain’t going to work. But so, and he said he would do anything clean toilets, anything.
I mean, I’m all about I, if I could have a dedicated toilet cleaner, I would, I would hire one.
So I go on to talk about, we hire attitude over skill every day of the week. There’s not enough money that I can pay anybody to change that because they’ll come in. They’ll pretend like there’s something that they’re not. And then eventually the attitude will start rising up and it’s like a cancer and it starts affecting other people. It starts affecting the culture that you’ve spent years in. Lots of money, lots of times P and my pool. Exactly. So I so sorry. So I bring up this analogy. You got something. Okay. So we’re all in the pool party. Right? All right.
Yeah. You’ve got a whole shop. That’s in this pool party and you’re inviting this new guy in.
Yeah. And we, and we have, our wives are in, you know, uh, kids it’s bitsy bikini’s and kids, but you have the new guy, he just had a little bit too many adult beverages or water or crazy.
And then, and then NACE shows his nipples
And he and I, we had the Kohler die in the pool. Yeah. So, you know, who’s won a in the pool. Yeah. And this guy does what happens? Boom. He goes where the culture, the party, everybody gets out and fleas, everybody gets out of the pool. They run out of the pool. They run out and they’re scared because if they stay in, they’re going to be contaminated.
Yeah. I’m loving these analogies, these piranha jaws.
And so they all start laughing about like someone being there. So you on me, you know what I’m saying? And so, yeah. And so I’m like, so we can’t bring people in to run the good stuff. We have to make sure that they like it here. We like them being here. Um,
I guess what you’re saying is the best characteristic in an employee that would, Trump all would rule all, none is their attitude, attitude.
And we will train the skill
You can. Yeah. You can learn. You can learn how to run a machine because you can learn.
You can say, brother, you’re not skillful, but you have a great attitude. They’re like, you can do any of that. Hey Donnie. But listen, not everybody that applies here. Are there any other machine shop they’re not necessarily going to ever be titled a machinist, but if you teach them, you train them, you’ve got your systems. They can press the buttons. They can use the calipers. You can train them to do those things. And if they can’t, then you, you have to move them either to another position or you move them out. But, but we hire the attitude because none of our guys actually started off as a machinist. None of them, none, not a single one of them. And, but, but they’re the best guys that we have. Like, they’re the best that we could find. I mean, they’re awesome.
No, what I did before this, Ooh. What did you do before this
I’m smelling like a, some grease?
No. Oh, my main thing was court ponds. Did that translate
At all into you working at master machine? Didn’t make
Oh, better. Oh, I mean, it’s a totally different world. Yeah. Machining and in hard labor. But I think, I think the culture is different. Oh yeah. For sure. The culture here has purpose. The both of those guys I worked for were you, you hated your boss. Oh, they were, uh, one was bipolar for sure. And the other guy was just a cheap-ass. He didn’t know.
You gotta pause. You gotta get applause.
He didn’t know what he was doing. And then I ran into these guys, which we’ve known each other since we were babies. Yeah. Your mom was there when I was born. She’s wiping in both of our butts at the same time. Oh, did we take baths together? You took a bath with me and it was hard
And it, you know, what it all comes down to is you can have, if your, if your boss could have a crappy attitude, but you can have an employee that has the best attitude, it’ll never work. It’s gonna it’s. You have to have both. Both people have to have great attitudes because if you have both have great attitudes, then the only thing that comes from it is success. Uh, you guys, you guys operate on success and attitude. And regardless, if you had a bad day as the day before, or you woke up in a crappy mood in the morning, you’ve established that you fist bump in the morning, you say, good morning, you show up there to have a great fricking day. And if you’re not there to have a great fricking day, we don’t want you here because guess what? I’m here to have a good fricking day.
I like it. I like it. I feel it. I love it. It’s pointless. So this has happened.
I’m going to tell you what I’m going to say. And then I’m going to tell him, and then I’m going to tell you what I told them. Oh, you’re going to have a good day. You’re going to have a good day. You’re going to have a great freaking day. I like it. Words have power. They do. Yeah.
So, so number two, the number two thing we’re looking for is we hire people that are goal orientated. Huh? We hire people that are goal oriented. You know why guys? And they go, no. I said, because people that have their own goals say, you’re say you’re a husband. You’re a father. It means that you have piranha jaws that is going to drive you forward into the future. Will, it will carry you in the good times. It will carry you in the bad times. But those goals are something that you’ve set for yourself. You’ve actually in time to think
About it. And it’s something that you want to accomplish in this life. And I say, what happens? What happens to the people around you? Whenever they gambled all their money at the casino, whenever they just got in a car wreck, whenever someone just passed away, your dad just passed away. When your mom just passed away, your best friend just passed away. What happens to those people around you? And they go out. I don’t know. They start not showing up at work. They start pulling their hoodies over their head and not watching their machine. They start having a bad attitude. They start, they start becoming a really, really bad employee because they don’t have anything to live for because whatever they live for, wasn’t actually a strong enough motive to keep them going. You see this news? I do. And I have a quote for that.
Most people plan more in their lifetime on a vacation than they do their future. Say it again. Most people plan more than their lifetime on a vacation because they’re getting on Google, the Google, finding the spot where we can. Can we go for the best bang? Yep. All men for the bucks. Yep. They’re doing all of it. What can we do next? Blah, blah, blah. They’re spend hours or weeks. 40 hours. But people don’t spend 40 hours to think about their future. Their goals. What’s main goals. When do I want to die? When do I want, how long do I want to live? How much money do you want? Want to have? What’s my goals. What do I want to do? And give, what do I want to do before it’s done? Yeah. Before it’s all said and done, what do I want to accomplish? What legacy do you want to leave behind? Do I want people to remember me by, right. Well, don’t think about that. That’s deep. That’s deep. We almost got depressed there. That’s real deep. And uh, and so my middle name. Hmm. Oh, wow. So, so I, I go on and tell him
That. We said I felt bad, but I did it. Yeah.
But I, I go on to tell them that, Hey, we, as a company, I said, we’re, we’re, we’re basically two companies underneath one roof. Okay. And I said, we have goals as a company. And I said, when you guys have goals, we have goals. I said, when you help us reach our goals, we can help you reach our goals. So it’s a circular motion and it’s going to be,
It’s going to be, it’s going to be, to say,
We will help you reach your goals. Yeah. That’s it girls. You said our twice. Yeah.
You said, you said to reach our goals. We can help. You can help us reach our goals. It’s like a very, that’s usually what I’m thinking. That’s usually what I’m thinking in my head. So we only read your Jordans
And there like that, you said like our goal is twice. You’re not higher.
I, I want you guys to know. I pride a lot in being friends with you guys, mainly because you value a lot that I look for in a shop. I met Tony. Mike sues
The Seuss family at Eagle quality. Um, I’ve never worked at a place before that. They put, um, this family, the family values into a workplace. Like there was no corporate life. It was w uh, families come first and your life is more important than, you know, the button that you’re pushing. But what’s funny about that. It was almost counterintuitive because they put so much value into me as a person that they got double out of me as an employee. I, I literally loved waking up to go to work on a Monday morning. I loved being there. I would stay there till the, I would stay there for two days straight. If they would let me, I literally would do anything for that family. I didn’t. I went through some of the roughest times in my life working in a machine shop. And if I didn’t have a machine shop and a family dedicated to establishing a good workplace, I wouldn’t be here. Like I literally would be dead. Oh man. But because of machining, because of people like you guys that care, literally just you legitimately care, I’m going to cut you.
I’m gonna cry Donnie. I could 110% agree with Donnie right now. Yeah. Yeah. So we won’t go into this, but, but Jordan nine, we have several companies, uh, four at this point. Right. And our goal, one of our goals is we want them to enjoy coming to work more and then being at home. So I, I tell them this, Don, I said, when the crabs and the fan, okay. When it’s raining, it’s pouring. I want this to be a place that you feel like it’s almost a getaway that you get to, you get to come and do something that you enjoy with people that you enjoy doing it with. And it’s almost like, no matter what’s happening, you guys get to come in here and hang out with people. You like do what you like. And it gives you almost a break from the stress, from the weird stuff.
Yeah, man, if I’m not machining, I’m not happy. That’s really what it, th the, the mentality I look for in people there’s, it’s far and few between there’s. But if you’re not machining, you’re not happy. I literally went through phases where I didn’t have an apartment. I was living either out of my car. And I was fortunate enough to have a guy that would let me crash in the shop to be there. So I could, I, you know, I had a place to stay. I could sleep and he’d be ready to heat
File insurance. When you crashed into piranha jaws
The shop, I didn’t crash, literally crashed into the shop, but I took a nap. I would take a nap in the shop. I would borrow the shop to take a nap. So I could be ready to go to work the next day that the, yeah, there’s people like that in the world. That at the end of the day, I’ve never owned a shop. I’ve only worked in them and I’ve only experienced working for people. And I’ve had, fortunately for me, I’ve had a very great working experience inside of machining. I think that’s why I’m so addicted to it.
I think part of that is just because what you bring, because you bring like a great attitude every day, you know, like you, you want to overachieve, you want to do your best. And you’re like, you’re like excited. Like you bring, you bring
The beats it’s dude. It’s because of management. It’s because of management. It has nothing to do. My, my drive is there because I was treated a certain way. If I would’ve walked into machining and had no idea what I was doing, but my boss was a Dick. I would instantly, it would leave a stain on me that I would not want to do it anymore. I would look for something else because that’s the only image I have of it. You’re the first, like, most of the time these people walking into these places, I’ve never seen a CNC male before, right. Because no one talks about late cause laser, um, Oh, you sound like you’re biased. Maybe. Um, no, one’s seen a mill before, so they know what they’re doing.
The manager. That’s probably, that’s probably it. So, so, so whenever I talk to these guys, I tell them, wait, so I tell them that, you know, whether this is for a season or if this is for, like, for like the rest of your career, as long as our goals are, are aligning with each other, like, I can help you get to yours and you can help me get to mind, like, it’s a good fit. Like we want you to be here, you know? Yeah.
You will get, you will get so much better reception and so much better momentum. You guys clearly are doing it just from having that, that attitude. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah. And, uh, and then, so I, as I go and tell him, I said, the third thing that we look for when we hire somebody is what we look for a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. So we look for a growth mindset is my middle name. You got a lot of myths. You got a lot of middle names
I want to, can we, I’m gonna actually make a, uh, a middle name counter for, uh, I think we’re on, we’re on six now,
But, uh, in our Google docs. Yeah, let’s do it. And so I say not a fixed mindset. I said, we don’t believe in being single dimensional. So at a small company, and you’ve been at a small company, like there’s a lot of things that make the world go round inside that shop light from the material, from the purchase, the quoting, the, the packaging, the finishing, the setups, all of that stuff. There’s so many things to list, but I say, I want my people to be, I want them to be trained on the lays. I want them in to be trained on the mills. I want them to be trained on the sauce, because if Brandon’s sick one day and we need something on the saw who’s doing it. So we’re only as strong as our weakest link. So I want them to be able to learn as much as they can. And a lot of people, Donny will come in from big aerospace manufacturers. And they’re like, you know, they’re tired of being a number. They’re tired of being on, on the skeleton shift or the graveyard shift or whatever that is. Um, they’re, you know, they’re tired of, they can’t do anything, but this they’ve been grinding or they’ve been painting. You had me at grinder.
Oh, did you get that one? Okay. Got your tone.
I mean, I like grinding.
We’re waiting for it. I didn’t
Know if you disconnected.
No, I was just, I was waiting, man. Yeah.
So, yeah. That’s his middle name too.
And, uh, so we’re just like, we, we w like, they’d come in, they’d been, they’d been painting or they’d been sanding or finishing or whatever, but because they’re good at it. Their managers are like, I only want you and you alone to do this, and you can’t touch the machines. So they want to come in here and learn something more. Um, so a lot of people are really attracted to that. They’re really drawn to that aspect that we want to cross train everybody, not cross dress, but cross train everybody on our machines.
You could take that really badly too. I mean, cross training is just like,
Oh yeah. So, and, um,
No, I I’m, I’m 100% with you, man. I feel like you get those guys, but also you get the guys that come into the shops, thinking they want that life. They want that family shop life. That job shop life.
I think it right when they have it, they don’t know. Yeah.
Yeah. Because they don’t realize, guess what? The guy that was, uh, was getting paid to, to sweep and sweep alone, and the guy that was getting paid to wipe your machine down and the guy that was getting paid to make sure that the material was set by your machine and, and all that stuff. That’s gone. Guess what? You’re the, you’re the salt cut guy. You’re the operator. You’re the setup. You’re, you’re all of that.
You got to put your own. Cool. And your, what? I gotta put my phone in my machine. You’re telling me I gotta touch my tool. Crib.
You, you tell me, I gotta, I gotta look through a refractometer and figure out what the, what
Happening, what the fresh
I, uh, so you guys have, you guys are programming and you have guys with set up sheets, which I love set up sheets. I love having it all labeled out the shop I worked at. We established that, but every guy was responsible for their machine. Every guy was a programmer at that machine. And whether they were qualified or not, they learned it. Um, my boss prided himself on teaching people to program machines. So every single person would, there was capable of programming, delays, the mill, um, whichever they needed to do. Everyone was all capable of it. And it really kind of created like this internal drive between everybody to like, be good. When I got there, I saw that everybody could program. And I thought that that was just a normal thing. So I literally would borrow, I’m going to quote my fingers right now, but I would steal the computer, uh, bring it home at night, learn to program. So I could program. I wanted to run a machine. I didn’t know what it entailed. I just wanted to do it because they were doing it. You learn piranha jaws
To program. So you could program.
I learned to program. So I could program literally that’s because someone else was doing it. I just was like, well, I can’t. So they’re there. They’re all doing it. Why can’t I?
So here’s another little fun fact. So at master machine [inaudible] USA, not only do we pay people per hour, right. We have Cintas as sent to
Every time they program a program, they get extra money bonus bonus. Yep. So it’s like performance incentive pay. Absolutely. Yes, exactly.
Yup. And then, and then, so, so from there on, we go on to the number four way, the number four thing that we’re looking at for hiring people is that we want to hire people.
The size that’s incorrect,
Excited
Is over delivery. Oh.
Because if you keep over-delivering one day you’ll be overpaid. And I tell them yes. And they go, no,
Because my bosses, they never watched anything. I do. They don’t care. I said, well, that just applies. If your boss does care. But like, if you over deliver every single day, someone will notice one day you’ll get paid. Buyers will know you won’t get paid. More. Someone will try to snipe you something, something will happen. If you continually continually over-delivery boom. Doing consistently what others do occasionally. Yeah. A hundred percent. If you do that, somebody will notice. And they’re there. They’re like, no, they don’t notice. And I say, well, then you should get overpaid, but I guarantee you.
But, but the thing is they do notice because I’m literally, you’re describing us. It shows that sort of situation I, I went through. And, but
You also have to realize some of those people are in some really massive companies, you know, 500 plus employees. And it’s it’s, you don’t even know some of the people that you’re working with. Um, so I think it is probably, you can’t get unnoticed when you’re at those big companies. Um, but somewhere it will pay off if you consistently over deliver, because somewhere someone’s going to be sick. Someone’s not going to show up and they’ll go, who’s the next person that I need to go to, to figure out this. And it’s going to be the person that over delivers every day. I guarantee you.
Yeah. See, I, man, this, you guys are like, I feel like you’re talking. Right.
I am talking. I am. It feels like
[inaudible] talking about me. Oh, nice. Oh yeah. Yeah. I am talking about you. Are you though? You hear that voice?
No, man. I, I, if I had, if I could I give this advice a lot, I’m actually, I’m on the, I help out with the, my tech school. That’s close to our area. That’s just opened up a CNC program. Um, and I, I, I like, I go and help out with cam or I help out with just talking to students in general. Just about the trade. Yeah. Um, the biggest thing I can talk about is, um, enjoying where you work because the money will come. I’ve just, I’ve done it the reverse way. I’ve, I’ve done it where I’ve chased the money and I’ve been in a really good spot that I wasn’t patient on. And I chased it and I jumped ship thinking that the next ship across was know, had the, was going to do better. And it was good. It just, for me, it wasn’t good. Right. So
Back real quick. Yeah, absolutely. So Dani is classified as a millennial, right?
Yeah. Okay. I am classified as a millennial,
So something Jordan and I do a little bit different in our hiring process. As we look at their age, we see what generation they’re classified as. Yep. That determines how, as a leader, we need to approach a person. So millennials, they will jump ship and they have a higher record of going from job to job for either pay or benefits. Yep. Now gen Zs, which we have actually at some of our other companies, don’t even here in here that they’ve seen some recessions, they know how to save. And they would rather be at a place of employment with a great culture and not worry about the pay because they know how to save the, don’t worry about the pay because they know how to save. Yeah. That’s huge. When we do the hiring process of what generation is, and we’ve had it from gen Z, millennials, gen X, baby boomers, we’ve had those. And we have to literally shift our mind thinking to way they think, because our looking glasses are so different. Yeah.
Oh, you’re one you’re literally 100% accurate. I’ve I’ve my resume. That’s the first thing that pops up is wow. You’ve, you’ve had a lot of jobs. You’ve gone into a job every year. Right. Um, you know, job to job job. Why honestly it’s cause I didn’t like it. I didn’t love it. I did it a year and it’s like, this isn’t working for me, but I want to find something with purpose.
It still doesn’t look good whenever you have someone looking at it. You’re like, they’re not a happy person. So over delivery. So I tell them that this isn’t like, um, this isn’t like a one-time act. This isn’t like, um, I’m going to do it once. And this will last forever. So I’d tell them that this isn’t like bringing your, your, your boss a cup of coffee once it’s like over-delivering every single day take a hundred cups of coffee. It is in like when me and NACE are gone traveling to our other companies, like w w we have cameras to watch. So like, we know if they’re, over-deliver on our phones. Yeah. And I can come in the shop, Donnie. I’m sure you know, this, I can come in and look at how many parts are done, because I’m looking at them before I leave. So I can see like, is the quota there? I mean, like, we don’t necessarily enforce that, but it’s like, I can still tell like how many parts were done. Okay. They only did half the production that day. Why were they doing another machine? Or were they literally just sitting there so I can find all, all, all that information. I believe it. And like, as far as, as far as like master machine light data established this company about 39, 40 years. And so
Before the internet was a big thing before the Google, all that stuff, the Google before all that was like a big thing. Um, we got business based off of reputation, reputation off of over delivering making good parts, delivering them on time, high quality. And I said, we can spend 40 years developing that reputation and we can destroy it in a day. Yup. Right. One, literally one thing one day. I mean, because you can send good part after good part after good part. What are the buyers water? The inspector’s going to remember you by the last bad part that you sent.
Yeah. The last bad part. It’s going to be the last part. Right? The last phone call conversation. It’s always the last thing you did.
So my, my good parts of yesterday will not hold me over till tomorrow. You know what I’m saying? Like, like I’m only judged on today. So can I cut you off real quick? This is huge. It’s huge. This is off topic. I’m very sorry. Oh, but we had some new parts yesterday that were released onto the worldwide web and, um, that she would say.com. That’s true. Dani does Dani know Butlin in product? I don’t know. Hey, Hey Donna, did you know about our, uh, Aiden’s Paranas or Pronto? John’s Serita. John’s piranha jaws
Yeah. I know you guys made them eight inches after me. Ooh, Whoa.
That’s a little conceited. This is a thing from six inch to eight inch issue. Huge. We talked to some people that’s true. And people, the first thing we said, we said, how much are you gonna pay more for two inches, for two inches? You know, like side to side, one inch, whatever. But people were like, dude, don’t go with it. But they said they would actually pay lower than the new products of the agents Serita. Joel’s yeah. They’d been going good. So, so let’s ask Donny on our first day, how many, you think, how many prawn and jaws do you think we sold? So it was like four hours,
Four hours closure. Yeah.
Thanks guys. I needed to know the window. So a four-hour window. I’m going to say,
Can I say Dani? It could be like 25 times too, but if you can do that math, you can guess that number.
Okay. That’s I mean, two 50 is not bad.
No. So we did, we sold 50 sets and just a couple hours. Yeah. Uh, which was, which was awesome because we didn’t know, you know, how, how much of a thing this is going to be. So it’s cool, right? It is new product, new
Product. Definitely a good start. And NACE definitely
Switched the topic big time, but I think he was just so excited about it. Cause, cause uh, we’ve been dreaming about it for a couple of years. We just haven’t done it yet. I believe it. I think he was excited.
I would be excited to eight inches is something to be excited about. I mean,
You have girls just streaming everywhere right now.
I know. Or wait or machinists boat.
It’s simple. Go bigger because nobody has a product right now.
No. How many? I mean, do you know how many parts you can hold in? It agents set of jaws. How long was your part? I mean, as long as you want it to be really, I’m just saying like, I know for me, for a fact that I’ve had situations where I’ve based on the length of my six inch jaws, I could, I had a part that could probably, I could hold two in, but because of the tooling and everything else, I couldn’t make it work. So I ended up running one, it was a roll. It was literally a waste of time because I’m running one part when I could be running two more effectively having eight inches, not to mention it being Steele, ground pardoned, jaws that aren’t going to flex as much as you would with like a custom set of eight inch aluminum jaws. You’re confidently holding on to material. You’re running more parts in a, in a single vice, which I think is a no-brainer saving money and you’re yeah. You’re saving money. And guess what? You’re making
More money building your confidence guys.
And you’re confident that you’re holding something back. Yeah. Eight inches is always going to save your marriage. It will every time, every time. No, I’ve I, when you said that you guys were coming out with the eight inch serrated jaws, I was excited because I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to make the mission name, don’t wear it out. I’ve been in situations where I’ve needed jaws that are, were wider than six inches. Right. And I’ve made soft gels or I’ve made aluminum jaws and you don’t understand like the flex that happens when you extend out a piece of material without having some sort of, kind of support behind it. So you’d go to run like this massive amount of parts. And you think like, wow, I’m really like, you know, optimizing this program and, and, and making a lot of utilizing machine time. And you don’t realize that this my jaws are flexed. And so you go to run the part and next thing you know, you go to drill a piece of plastic and it just pops out of your jaw and the rest of the parts of scrap because you weren’t actually grabbing onto it. Oh man. It’s just flex. Don’t flex away. So having something that’s cerated, number one, number two, steel. It just number two. Grinding. Yeah.
So let, let, let let’s, uh, take us back to wherever we’re going. So I’m sure that people are like, what are you talking about? That we were talking about hiring people and stuff and yeah. And grinding. So over delivery. So we talked about, that’s the only way that other companies knew about us. So like buyers that were buying us with us currently, if they’d go to another shop or another company, they knew our reputation, they just fired it right back up, started shooting his quotes, all that stuff. But that’s how, that’s how we built our reputation was, was by over delivering. So, so here’s the thing about over-delivery you don’t over promise and under deliver nation, what over deliver and under promise. That’s right. Because then they’re always happy. They’re always happy. So if you’re not going to make it in two days, do not sell them in two days. Tell them the exact time that, you know, you can get it done with another couple of days on it. Just make sure you got yourself covered. So yes, over delivery is a huge thing for us. So we have to make sure not only are we doing it, but the guys underneath us are doing it because if they don’t over-deliver every single day. Nice. Can we over-deliver? No, because they’ll get underpaid.
I don’t know if we can’t over deliver if they don’t over-deliver to us. Nope. Nope. Where are you thinking about something else next? I was just thinking this whole time. I want to underpay people right now. Just get me a reason to underpay you. Yeah.
No. If your employees aren’t over delivering, then you’re going to be stuck with taking up the Slack and you’ll never be able to, I mean, you can, but you will, you will, you wouldn’t be able to live here. You would be working nonstop because you cannot
Over promote or they will under deliver. Absolutely. So I had that happen. No, we have had that, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told the customer, Hey, we will have this done by this day. And it’s like, it’s not cutting it too close. You know what I’m saying? But it’s like, it should be done. Like, it should be what you would do, right? Like it will be done. You go off the cycle time, you’d go off of, and you give them, you give them some, you give them some room for, for, for doing it, changing out the piranha jaws. Right. So you give them some room. And I usually give him several hours of room. And then what happens, Donnie? When these things don’t get delivered after I promised him,
Oh man, you get the phone calls. So
What I get the emails. And then I’m like, Oh, I start sweating. And I’m like, Aw, Oh, Millie. I do one of those, you know? And then, then I get a phone call. So whose phone does it go to? Donnie? It goes to my phone. So I take the heat. It’s a lot of heat sometimes. But normally our guys are really good, but I have in the past, like before we got everything nailed out and stuff and scaled up, scripted out some systems like we’d take phone calls and we, we still take them every now and then, because you know, a machine might go down and you don’t expect that you can’t control those things. And you just have to communicate with your people that this is what happened. And, uh, they will or will not be gracious about you communicating, but you just kind of have to take it and say, I’m going to do my best. And there’s been plenty of times that me and nays have to. And in order to over-deliver stay all night through.
Yeah. I mean, that’s part of being a shop owner. Unfortunately in guess
What? We aren’t get overpaid or overtime.
We actually lose money.
Well, I sacrifice time with my family to make sure I’m over delivering for customers several times. Yep. But we’re going to end this podcast and a boom. You guys stay tuned. We’re going to come up with lots of good content for you guys. You guys confident in this? I am. Oh, Brandon Yukon. Are you confident? Oh yeah. Dani. Are you competent?
It’s just, it’s confidence is spewing out of my mouth right now.
Boom. Is an acronym, right? Oh, yep. All right, well let’s spell it out. All right. We’re going to start at you guys. You got to bring the boom. If you’re going to win,
I got the boom beg overwhelming, optimistic. You gotta have that momentum. One, two, three.