Swarfcast

Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Today, I’m going to tell you a story about how dots in my past came together serendipitously to help me solve problems and make some good deals in our used machinery business. When I met the people in these stories, I had no idea they would be significant to our business down the line, and of course, I never could have predicted how they would connect with one another. Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                                                                                  View the podcast our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h One of the most interesting and gratifying parts of being a used machinery dealer is the wonderful network our company, Graff-Pinkert has built around the world for over 80 years. We do business with an incredible variety of people. Technical specialists, new machinery dealers, used machinery dealers, end-users, end-users who act like used machinery dealers. The classifications of many of these folks often become blurred. I’ve got my robot guy, Mike in Michigan, my INDEX guy, Mitch, and my South American INDEX guy Allen. I’ve got my Schutte and Gildemeister guy Mauro. I’ve got my Tornos guy, Dulio, and my Tornos guy in Germany, Achim. The list goes on and on. Serendipity brought us all together, and now that we have all these relationships they stack on top of each other to create new serendipity. The more dots you have in your network, the quicker you acquire new dots. Noah Graff and Rex Magagnotti in Graff-Pinkert’s booth at PMTS Last month, Graff-Pinkert presented at the Precision Machining Technology Show (PMTS) in Cleveland. The booth wasn’t in the greatest location because we registered at the last minute. But we knew it was important to be there because a show like that is such a fertile place for serendipity. There’s tens of thousands of people who are part of the same tribe. Sure, some people are doing milling and some are doing turning. Some people are running machines made 50 years ago, while others only want to use the newest technology. Other people like me are pedaling iron. But we all speak the same language of machining, and most of us can benefit something from getting to know each other. On the second day of the show, Bill Camloh a distributor for the Japanese CNC machine tool builder Shimada stopped by our booth. We met Bill about 10 years ago when he contacted us because one of his customers needed a bunch of nice used Hydromats after his shop had a fire. It was one of those great machinery deals that you still remember a decade later. It sounds a bit morbid, but fires are sometimes quite serendipitous for machinery dealers, and manufacturers too for that matter, if they have good insurance and fire suppression systems. Customers become a little more aggressive in their spending when they genuinely NEED more machines and they have an insurance company playing sugar daddy. Honestly though, that deal is bit fuzzy in my brain by now. I don’t generally don’t think about it when I talk to Bill. He told me he’s the same when he talks to us. Anyway, Bill came by the booth and introduced us to a very close friend of his, Shinji Okuda, the Vice President / General Manager of SB Machine Tools, the U.S. distributor of Shimada. Shinji and I made small talk for a few minutes and exchanged business cards. Just then, my friend Jay Sauder, owner of Sauder Machine in Plymouth, Ohio, stopped by the booth. Jay is a brilliant guy, who I always enjoy talking to. He’s been on the podcast twice. He uses super high-tech Japanese and German machines to make hydraulic wheel cylinders for Amish horse drawn buggies. We still haven’t made a machinery deal with Jay yet, but he’s always teaching me interesting things. Shinji and Bill were about to say their goodbyes after they saw Jay come over to the booth and start talking to me, but I stopped them from leaving and introduced them to Jay. Jay doesn’t own any Shimadas. He runs Mazaks and INDEXs and DMG/MORI machines. But just about instantly, he and Shinji started talking shop, and I sat back and admired the new dots I was creating. My serendipity guru, Christian Busch, says that whenever you meet someone new, it’s good to think about all the people you already know who might benefit from an introduction with your new contact. When you introduce two people who can help each other, you create potential serendipity for them, and that serendipity has a way of finding itself back to you. Ok. Back to the story. The conference ended on Thursday, and I returned to Chicago on Friday where four shiny used Citizen Swiss machines, fresh off the boat from Japan were waiting for me in our Graff-Pinkert warehouse. We had just rolled the dice, importing a Citizen K16 VIIP, L20E VIII, L20 VII, and A20 VII, as well as a DMG MORI 32/5 and a Fanuc Robocut Wire EDM. The machines looked beautiful! However, before we could sell them, the first thing we had to do was get their controls in English and get them running. Rather than bring in Citizen technician to work on the machines, we brought in Chris Armstrong. Avid readers and listeners might remember Chris from my interview with him on Swarfcast, as well as his role in blog and podcast “Tale of a Used CNC Machine.” Chris used to work for Citizen, he co-owns a production shop near Houston called Texas Swiss Factory, and he does technical service on all types of Swiss machines. Those who know him call him the Mad Scientist because supposedly he’s able to get any CNC machine going. Chris had been at Graff-Pinkert all week working on the Citizens, and he had made good progress. Friday was his last day in Chicago before returning to Houston, and I was dead set on having a video of all four citizens running before he left. I had taken videos of three of the machines so far. But we still needed to the get the Citizen K16 VIIP going. In order to do that, we needed to connect it to the Alps bar feeder that came with it. The problem was that we couldn’t figure out how to run the bar feeder because its control and buttons were in Alps Bar Feeder Connected to Citizen K16 VIIP Japanese. It was now 4:30 PM, and Chris and I both hated the idea of leaving without that machine running. Chris asked me if I knew someone who spoke Japanese, and ideally someone who also spoke “CNC machines.” I thought about it, and I remembered Shinji from the PMTS. I debated whether it was appropriate to call him. But he did tell me that if I ever needed help with anything I could call him. And he was the only person I could think of. I called the number on his business card, and he picked up! I told about him our situation, and he said he would try to help. Then I called him on FaceTime so he could try to make sense of the messages on the bar feed’s PLC. Icould see that he was talking to us from his living room at home. Shimada’s machine tools generally don’t use bar feeds, so at first it was difficult for Shinji to make sense of the PLC’s error messages. But then we turned our attention to the PLC’s key pad. We asked him to translate the Japanese characters on each button. Then we quickly grabbed a pen and started writing the translations right on the keypad. The scene kind made me feel like a code breaker! It was fun. Shinji turned out to be lifesaver. With the translated buttons, Chris was able to activate the bar feeder, and we got the Citizen machine to run. (Scroll to the bottom for the video we took of it running). Chris and I celebrated by getting Al’s Italian beef for dinner. Now we just have to sell the machines. Anybody reading or listening to this, feel free come on down to Graff-Pinket and have a look. They are beauties. Before I end this little tale, I’m going to bring up a less fun story that happened four years earlier. Our religious readers our there, (and I’m not talking about organized religion) might remember a blog I wrote recently about a bunch of Swiss machines in Japan that we were cheated on back in 2019. We paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for some late model Swiss machines, including two Citizen L20E machines, which the seller, JS Precision, never actually owned. Before we had realized we were never going to get the machines we had paid for, we had pre-sold the two L20Es to a company in Texas, co-owned by Chris Armstrong. They had even put down a deposit, which we had to send back, of course. But those machines that we were cheated on introduced us to a new customer. A year later we sold Chris’s company a Citizen M32. I also got to interview Chris for the podcast. Two years ago, we hired Chris go to remote 200-person town in Texas where he revived a shiny red CNC Escomatic EC08 that had been defiled by rats. He’s also been a life saver over the past few years, helping us over the phone to troubleshoot our used Citizens. Finally, four years after our failed attempt at buying Citizen machines from Japan, it was only fitting that Chris was the one to get our new imported Japanese Citizens going. So remember, when you meet people, particularly in your business sphere, don’t discount their significance just because you don’t see it at that moment. It could take two days or 10 years, or in my case both, until the dots connect beautifully. Question: What dots have you connected in your life?    

Lately, Graff-Pinkert has seen a lot of new opportunities for our used machinery business–particularly in the category of machines that I like to call “Sexy Ugly.” Many customers are clearing the decks of their dirty Acme, Davenport, and Brown & Sharpe cam screw machines to become pure CNC machine shops, while at the same time, quite a few machining companies are still embracing those ancient cast iron beasts. I know I’m not saying anything that most of you readers don’t already know, but to people outside the machining industry, it must seem pretty bizarre to see many successful companies loading up on technology from 60 years ago while their competitors are buying the newest CNC machines on the market. It made me think back to a classic Swarfcast double episode, (EP 63 and EP 64), in which I interviewed David Wynn, the CFO of ABF Engineering and Machining, whose production consists of 50% CNC work and 50% Brown and Sharpe screw machine work. Wynn told me in the interview that in a high production run he often can get a closer tolerance on a Brown and Sharpe screw machine than on a modern CNC machine because the machine is rigid like a tank. He jokes that “a Brown and Sharpe was a CNC before CNC was cool.” I know this equation only applies to certain types of parts, but still, what a crazy world when you can make a part in 10 seconds with a machine that cost $5,000, while your competition is making the same part in 40 seconds on a machine they bought for $150,000. I called David up yesterday to check up on him four years later. He says about 50% of the work is still on single spindle Browne & Sharpe cam screw machines, and his operation continues to be more automated. I hope you enjoy the interview. I believe it has remained quite current. Make sure to check out both EP 63 and EP 64. Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                                                                                  View the podcast our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h Main Points of the Interview Today’s Swarfcast is part one of an interview we did with David Wynn, CFO of ABF Engineering and Machining, a third generation screw machine shop in South Fulton, Tennessee. After earning an MBA, David joined his family’s business 17 years ago. His stated mission is to run a machining business composed of old cam screw machines as though it were a tech company. (2:40) Dave gives a history of ABF Engineering and Machining. The business was started by his grandparents and father in 1976. They primarily ran Brown & Sharpe screw machines. (4:45) Dave talks about the machines in his shop. He said the company has Haas lathes, CNC Swiss, and a CNC mill, but still more than 50 percent of the company’s work is done on Brown & Sharpe screw machines. The company is running 15 Brown & Sharpes currently, but Dave says he has about 100 in the building. (6:30) Dave gives a brief education about Brown & Sharpes. He says what makes Brown & Sharpes productive is that an operator can work with the turret and other tools simultaneously. The machines are extremely rigid, and have a gear driven 5Hp motor. (12:47) Dave explains how building a cam for a Brown & Sharpe screw machine is similar to writing a CNC program for a Swiss machine. The main difference is the CNC program is immediately implemented while the cam takes days to build. (14:45) Dave talks about how he came into the business. He had never stepped foot in the shop before he turned 18 years old. While in college and grad school he began working at the company. He earned an MBA, but instead of going into the finance industry he fell in love with the machining business and decided to do it full time. (18:40) Dave talks about how ABF Engineering and Machining changed after he and his father bought it from his grandfather. He says they chose to focus on creating a new culture based on teamwork and innovative work practices. They prefer to hire people who fit into the company’s culture rather than hire based on an applicant’s talent. (21:55) Dave talks about the company’s unconventional practices for work hours. Its employees have the flexibility to work when they like and choose how many hours they work as long as they get their work done and work as a team. He says that most outsiders look at him like he is a space alien when he tells them about some of his policies. (28:40) Dave says that usually the people who are most successful at his company are the ones who put in a lot of hours at the shop and also at home. One of the characteristics he looks for in a great employee is someone who is constantly trying to better herself. Questions: What is your favorite non-CNC machine tool? Do you know how to run a Brown and Sharpe? Don’t forget to check out the podcast and summary for EP 64!  

Today’s podcast is part two of an interview we did with David Wynn, CFO of ABF Engineering and Machining, a third generation screw machine shop in South Fulton, Tennessee. Dave makes a lot of his profits on mechanical screw machines that are older than him, but he emphasizes using advanced technology to automate his business’s processes. Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                                                                                  View the podcast our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h     Main Points of the Interview (2:15) David says it is important that his employees be driven individuals. He wants people who can work independently in a loosely structured shop environment. His employees can divide their work amongst each other as they want and structure their time how they want as long as they meet production goals. Dave says the more power you give your people, the better they perform. (3:55) Dave says his goal is to one day have someone else handle the day to day responsibilities of his company so he can focus on growing the business by improving customer relationships and automating business processes. He says he would like to be able to step off the face of the earth for 30 days and and then return seeing the company running smoothly as though he never left. (8:20) Dave discusses his goal to automate every part of the business that takes his mind away from the key tasks at hand. He says his shop has one button that turns off the all the lights, regulates air conditioning, turns off exhaust fans and everything else necessary to leave the building. (10:20) Dave talks about the parts he is making on his Brown and Sharpes. He says if he has a high production run he can often can get a closer tolerance on a Brown and Sharpe than a modern CNC machine because the machine is rigid like a tank.  (13:35) Dave says he does not see his company as competing with China. He says his parts are not commodity parts because he often does short runs of 500 pieces or less. He jokes that “a Brown and Sharpe was a CNC before CNC was cool.” (14:20) Dave says he feels the machining business in his blood. He thinks the machining bug has been passed down to his 5-year-old son who has been coming to the shop every day since he was born. (18:20) Dave says he is glad he went to business school rather than going straight into the machining business out of high school because it taught him to determine the values of assets. He says his dad had actually forced him to go to college. (20:35) Dave says he sees purpose in the machining business because every mechanism people use has parts that have been machined. He appreciates creating tangible products rather than merely creating liquidity in the finance industry. Question: Is a college education important for running a machining business?

On today’s episode, we’re shaking things up. We’re playing an episode from a podcast I guested on, the Business Growth on Purpose podcast with Jose Palomino. One of the topics we focused on in the interview was how I discover new leads and opportunities in our used machinery business by using strategies that create serendipity. You know–the stuff I often like to talk about. Keeping your eyes open for interesting things you weren’t originally looking for. Contacting lots of people out of the blue who might be able to help you. Saying the right things in conversations to bring out valuable information.   Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                                                                                  View the podcast our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h   Jose Palomino:  I’d like to just spend a little time (discussing) good luck. Or I think the term you use is “serendipity.” Where can I actually start shaping good fortune by things I do or don’t do? Noah Graff: Selling machine tools—maybe more than half of the job is the buying and finding stuff. Sometimes you call somebody or visit somebody’s shop looking for one machine and it turns out that machine sucked. But then you see another machine in the corner that you had no idea they had, but you are interested in. All of a sudden, you found something that’s way better than what you came for. You have to keep your eyes open for things in order to find luck.  I interviewed this guy for our podcast who wrote amazing book called The Serendipity Mindset. His name is Christian Busch. The book is about all the different things you can do to find luck in your life and in business. One example is a strategy he calls “serendipity hooks.” Say you’re calling somebody on the phone about a machine, but they say they don’t have it. Instead of ending the conversation, you continue by saying “before you hang up, our company also has a service, buying and selling machining companies. Do you know of anybody looking to buy a company or sell a company?” Boom. All of a sudden, you call for one thing and you might find something totally better. Palomino: The request you don’t make is an automatic no. Graff: Absolutely.  There are a lot of dealers who some might say talk too much. They’re like the town cryer. They give away a lot of information in conversations that might be questionable to share. But if you tell somebody else a secret that maybe you shouldn’t tell them, maybe they’ll tell you a secret back. The more things you put in the open, the more magic that could happen. Palomino: You mentioned before something called “serendipity bombs.” That sounds interesting.  Graff: Serendipity bombs are really cool. Say, you need to get something. Like you’re a podcaster and you’re looking get some awesome people on your podcast. You think of six people who could maybe help you, and you send Hail Marys out to them. Maybe one or two actually come back. I had a guy recently who bought a Swiss screw machine from me. He was this guy in Idaho. He made rifles. He contacted me about a machine on our website, and it wasn’t even the right model. It was a model that was smaller than the one he needed.  Then I thought about it, and I remembered that the week before, my friend Randy, another dealer, was telling me he had that machine in stock. I called up Randy, and he still had it. The next day I called up the guy from Idaho and he bought the machine right away.  Palomino: The request you don’t make is an automatic no.  What comes to my mind in all the years of coaching people trying to do ramp up their sales or their business development activities, oftentimes the most powerful thing is being a little bit vulnerable and asking for help.  And I find a lot of good people who would be helpful if they could. I have found a lot of kindness and goodness coming back my way just by being out there in the world a certain way. Graff: Yes. That is totally true.  People often want to help. It’s incredible. They get this sort of feeling inside that, “oh, you value me, you want me to teach you?” And then by them doing that favor, all of a sudden you become closer in your relationship. There’s this guy I love to study. His name is Robert Cialdini. He’s a social psychologist and one of the things he talks about is reciprocity. I think it’s sort of another kind of serendipity creator. The more things you have out in the open and more favors people do for each other, the more magic that can happen. Question: What have been your most successful methods for finding new business?

On April 1, Budweiser ran an ad on Instagram with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney promoting March Madness, as well as celebrating one year since she transitioned to becoming a woman. This one short ad caused a mass boycott of Budweiser and brought out the worst of the intolerance and divisiveness that plagues my country. I understand how people become uncomfortable seeing “other” people who look different from the majority or who don’t fit into easily into a familiar, “normal” category. I also understand how people can be biased against various sexual orientations based on their religious belief–even though I staunchly disagree with that attitude. Everyone should have the right to their own belief, but extreme harassment, sending death threats, stirring up hate on a massive scale online, that I have to make my own extreme judgement on. I’m not open minded about that behavior. But I believe that if people could just see each other as fellow human beings, such hate and fear could be neutralized. It’s a powerful force when you genuinely get to know other people and listen to each other, even people who may have disgusted or scared you. It gives you the possibility to see them as people, the same species as you are. They are people often with similar joys, interests, values and fears. The Mulvaney story reminded me of a podcast interview I did back in 2021, in which we interviewed Jackie, a CNC machine shop owner who in her 40s transitioned from a man to a woman. Jackie is from our same tribe. She is a person who is passionate about working in precision machining. She’s not a mysterious figure lurking in a dark corner of a night club or a teenage TikTok influencer–though there’s nothing wrong with people who do fit those descriptions. Jackie could just as well be your coworker. Scroll down to read the original summary and listen on your favorite app or with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app.                                                                                                  View the podcast our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h Main Points Today’s podcast is the first episode of a new season about mental health. Our guest on the show is Jackie, owner of PXR Machining. Jackie spent the majority of her life trying to mask a significant part of herself from others and deny her own feelings about who she always knew she was. Through therapy she finally gained the courage to transition from a man to woman in her late 40s. Jackie talks about her CNC machining company, PXR. She started her first plastics machining company back in 1992. Over the years she has designed and machined a variety products in the plastics sector from tabletops, to signs, to gun smithing tools, one of her most steady products these days. Her shop features CNC routers and CNC mills such as the Fanuc Robodrill (pictured). (3:00)  Jackie talks about a brutal motorcycle accident she had 15 years ago at age 35. She spent three years in a wheelchair, yet continued to run her business. Then a friend of hers was going to get married, and she decided she was not going to go to the wedding in a wheelchair. Her right leg was mostly paralyzed, so she needed an orthotic foot device in that shoe to keep her foot from flopping around. She fabricated one for herself in her shop in one day. (6:00) Jackie talks about first realizing she was a female trapped in a male’s body at four years old. Her grandmother asked her what she wanted to be and she said she wanted to look pretty like mom. Jackie’s parents then had a serious talk with her to clarify that she was not a girl. (9:30) Jackie said she first thought about undergoing a sex change when she was 17, while working at Radio Shack alongside a trans woman, but she was too scared to do it. Instead, she got married the next year, with the hope that if she built a family and a successful business she could bury her feelings of being a woman stuck in a man’s body. Sometimes that worked, but she says after the motorcycle accident the walls came down around her and it was very visible to her that she had “hid herself from reality.” (11:00) But somehow Jackie then managed to bury her painful feelings once again. She had just gotten remarried a year before and was planning to have another child. She also wanted to get her shop going strong. Jackie says she wishes during those three years in a wheelchair she had gotten a therapist, but she had been turned off by the stigma of getting one and instead tried to “DIY” her mental health. She says she finds it interesting how most people will take care of their physical health when they get hurt, like getting a cast after breaking a leg, but when they get a mental injury they to try “walk it off.” (13:31) Jackie talks about constantly trying to overcompensate for her knowledge that she was a woman on the inside. She owned a restored Dodge Charger that was a replica of the General Lee from Dukes of Hazard. She owned 10 motorcycles and the biggest pickup truck you could buy. But later on, after she came out as transgender, friends told her they had sensed her secret for a long time—she could never actually have hid what was going on inside. (15:30) In her latter 40s Jackie hit a wall. She says she had lost all the fire in her belly that tells a person to do things. Her shop was suffering, her home life was suffering, her mental health was suffering and she knew she needed help. She joined an online forum for trans-support and the members told her to get a therapist. (16:30) Jackie says getting a therapist was the most important pivot point for making improvements in her life—it finally got her to start the transition process. (17:30) Jackie talks about her current relationships with family members. She works alongside her father in her shop. She does not talk to her sister often. Her 30-year-old daughter is starting her own machine shop right now, and they share a bond with that. She has a teenage daughter who lives with her mother (Jackie’s ex-wife) who understandably has had difficulty with the transition. (18:30) Jackie says the first step in a transition process is to get a therapist. Her therapist eventually told her to go to a medical doctor to start hormone replacement. She decided in therapy she was interested in getting a lot of surgical procedures to make her look more feminine. She says everyone has different preferences of what they want to get augmented or reconstructed. Jackie has had her breasts enlarged, facial reconstruction, vocal reconstruction, and “downstairs surgery.” I asked her if it was traumatic to look at herself after her organs were swapped out. She says she was finally able to look at herself in the mirror and say, “that’s actually me.” (21:30) Jackie says the transition took her about three years and that hers was a relatively quick process. She says some people can do it faster, but other transitions can take over 15 years. She says she continually saw her therapist during the process, which she likens to going through puberty rapidly. She says getting rid of facial hair is one of the most difficult parts of the transition process. It can take years of electrolysis. Another change she has had to get used to is having less lean muscle mass because she has less testosterone. Now she can’t lift things around her shop like she used to. (23:30) Jackie says despite transitioning to become a woman, she still is attracted to women rather than men. (29:30) Jackie says she feels people have core personalities that are just us, but we all also have masks. She says she pulled her mask over herself so people would see only what she wanted them to see. But now that she has let the mask go she finally gets to see who she really is, along with everyone else. (30:15) Jackie says her advice for people who need to alter their life or deal with things that require a lot of thought is to see a therapist—they should ignore the negative stigma and stop trying to DIY their mental health. Question: What was one of the most difficult changes you had to make in your life?  

Today’s episode is extra fun for me because I had the pleasure of interviewing my brother, Dr. Ari Graff. Recently, Ari has shifted his career focus from practicing psychotherapy to life coaching. His coaching focuses specifically on helping men who feel unhappy and stuck in romantic relationships. It also helps single men who have difficulty maintaining or starting satisfying relationships. As you might have guessed, today we’re not going to be talking about the machining business. But I wanted to do this interview because to reach your full potential in your professional life, it’s beneficial to have a solid personal life. In this interview, you’re going to hear ideas about why some romantic relationships fail that you may not have considered before. We’re also going to talk about how with the right approach you have the potential to improve an unhappy relationship. Whether you’re a man in a dysfunctional romantic relationship, someone single, or someone in a seemingly wonderful relationship, this interview will likely make you think. And for women listening to this, you’ll find it interesting and important as well. You can also view the podcast in video form on our YouTube Channel. Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                    Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h   Highlights of Podcast Interview Noah Graff: Ari, why do you think that people listening to this podcast might find your coaching interesting? Ari Graff: I know there’s a lot of men in your industry, but there’s going to be a lot for women in what we’ll talk about. I think a lot of men these days are stuck, and they’re not sure how to be men. What does it mean to be masculine these days? This is something that I’ve been figuring out over the past few years. And now it’s something that I coach men in. Noah Graff: When you describe your coaching, you talk about “Nice Guy Syndrome.” What does that term mean? Ari Graff: In early 2021, I discovered a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy. It’s kind of a provocative sounding title, but I really connected with this book. It’s been out for about 20 years, and it’s about this concept of nice guy syndrome. “Nice guys” are men who believe that if they’re loving, and kind, and caring, then they’ll get the love and satisfaction that they want in life and in their relationships. It’s not that being nice is bad, (but) it’s the excessive niceness. It’s the people pleasing—always wanting approval. That was (a place) where I was really stuck in my marriage, always wanting to get her approval for whatever I did and being very needy. And to my my ex’s credit, she didn’t want that. She wanted a partner who was more assertive, who was more of a leader. But this isn’t just about leading in a relationship. I’m leading in my whole life. Noah Graff: You’ve talked to me in the past about the concept of polarity. What is polarity? Ari Graff: (The idea) is that for a romantic or sexual relationship to have good chemistry, one partner needs to be in the masculine energy role and their partner in the feminine energy role. Noah Graff: Does this harken back to John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Ari Graff: It does bring up differences between men and women, but I do want to say that this isn’t just for people in traditional straight relationships. This applies to people who are gay or lesbian, or people with different gender identities too. You can be trans or non-binary and still want to work on your masculine energy or your feminine energy. All people have both masculine and feminine energy, so it is nuanced. But most men are going to be more masculine energy oriented. That’s the way that they lean, and that’s the way that they want to be in the relationship with their romantic partner. Explain masculine energy. You want to think about masculine energy as certain traits that you can tap into. These are around leading and doing, being organized, problem solving. Things that we typically associate with being masculine. And nowadays, women are in high powered roles. They’re in that all day. They’re doing all the time. They’re in that masculine energy all the time. And then it makes it difficult for them to get into that feminine energy when they come home. And then men don’t necessarily know how to lead them or help them into that feminine energy. Noah Graff: Is that something that you felt happened with your marriage? Ari Graff: Yes. I wasn’t up to the task of being a leader. I grew into it over time, but it was too late. (But) I think you’ve still got to be open to working through things with people. A lot of the men that I work with, they’re like passengers in their relationship or their marriage. They just feel like they’ve made this decision, and now things are happening. They may feel stuck. They feel like they don’t have a choice. And the reality is you always have a choice. You’re always making a choice to be in your marriage. You may not feel like you’re making a choice. You may feel like there’s a lot of things or forces that you don’t control, but you’re always making a choice. You can contact Dr. Ari Graff on his website https://drarigraff.com or at agraffpsyd@gmail.com.

For those who don’t know, I am a used machinery dealer, with a specialty in selling Screw Machines. I like to romanticize the used machinery business by referring to it as treasure hunting. We specialize in selling rare models of machinery, located in remote locations, owned by esoteric folk, serendipitously stumbled upon. Every used machine we sell has a story behind it. And I have found the machines and deals that have most interesting stories often turn out to be some of the most lucrative. Today I’m going to tell you one of those stories. It all started three years ago, when a machinery dealer in Texas called us about a powerful yet very specialized used screw machine that belonged to one of his good customers. The machine was a beautiful, virtually unused, Swiss made, Escomatic EC08, Mfd. 2013. It was a 6-Axis, CNC, coil-fed screw machine with a max rpm of 10,000 that could machine parts up to 8mm diameter and 100mm in length. It was a powerful machine for the right job, but I would not be shocked if less than 50 models of its ilk existed around the world. So who owned this machine? Remember the horrible shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 that killed 58 people? One of the things that made that horror possible was the bump stocks that were attached to 13 semi-automatic weapons belonging to the shooter. For those who don’t know, bump stocks are attached to semi-automatic rifles to mimic the rate of fire of automatic rifles. After the shooting, a federal agency banned them. Supposedly, the owner of this Escomatic EC08 had produced those bump stocks, a machining job that was no more. Just to clarify, I don’t think he used this Escomatic to produce parts for bump stocks, he just happened to be the guy who made them.  In any case, this machine had 400 hours on it and had sat in a warehouse for several years. We see this story play out sometimes in our business. A beautiful new machine is bought for a specific job, and that job never even started. Then the machine sits, because the owner has more important things to do than fuss about getting rid of a moderately expensive piece of equipment (I think around $300,000 retail) that few people in the world have even heard of. Because there are so few Escomatic EC08 machines in the world, particularly in the United States, it could be valuable but also the kind of machine you would never want to buy for stock. Graff-Pinkert peddled this machine for years. Once in a while, a customer would flirt with it, but nobody had ever come close to buying it. Then one day, I was contacted on the internet by shop owner in the Czech Republic interested in the machine. We sent an email quote and he immediately accepted our offer, sight unseen. It was surprising but not unprecedented. But, if there is one thing I have learned in the used machinery business, very few deals are easy. When a company overseas that you have never heard of instantly agrees to buy a machine that no-one else has ever been interested in, it’s good to take a breath and remember that no deal has been made until money is in your account. But this customer truly was ready to pay and take the machine immediately. They didn’t want to come inspect. Covid was rampant at the time, and the machine was in the middle of nowhere Texas. Besides, it looked perfect and had been run 400 hours, probably just for testing. But before they wired the full payment, they asked Graff-Pinkert to guarantee that the machine was in good condition. We could have held our breath and done that, but it didn’t seem wise. We did not feel comfortable guaranteeing a machine that had not been turned on for at least three years. We suggested to the customer that they pay for someone to inspect the machine and get it going. They agreed without hesitation. The machine was deep in the heart of Texas, in a town of a little more than 200 people. We needed a CNC ace, who didn’t mind taking a roadtrip to the middle of nowhere to wrench on a machine he probably had never heard of. We called up my friend Chris, a customer who had purchased Citizen M32 not long before. Chris lived in Houston, five and half hours drive from the machine. He had worked for Citizen prior to cofounding a production shop and still loved servicing machines. Chris was nicknamed the Mad Scientist of machining because supposedly he could fix anything. He was the perfect man for the job! (By the way, we did a great podcast interview with him a while back, Episode 110).  Chris drove 350 miles to the 200-person town to get to work on the machine. The machine didn’t turn on. But why, if it had run only 400 hours? Because rats had gotten inside it and chewed up wires in the back of its PLC. The rats were gone long before Chris got there, but he could see their old droppings. There was no reason for them to stay there because there isn’t much to eat inside a virtually unused screw machine. The PLC control was beyond repair, and we prayed it was the only problem with the machine. I called up Tornos USA, who used to distribute the machine, to purchase a new one. Tornos was helpful, but it took over a month to get the part sent to Texas. Chris traveled back to the machine and we crossed our fingers that it would turn on. It did!  And we lived happily ever after. Sometimes the stars do align. Serendipity leads a machinery dealer in Chicago to the impossible to find customer or the impossible to find machine. In this case, a shiny, red, rat infested but immaculate, coil-fed CNC screw machine from Switzerland, likely sent to a 200-person town in Texas for making bullets (that were never made), then revived by a CNC mad scientist before being sent to the Czech Republic, where it likely was repurposed for medical work. Question: What are the strangest machinery deals you have been involved in?

On today’s show we’re talking about what you do if your business’s growth becomes stagnant or even stops all together. Our guest is Jose Palomino, host of the Business Growth on Purpose podcast and founder and CEO of Value Prop, a consultancy that gives established B2B companies strategies to jump start growth when it has fallen off. Jose gave me great insight about how you objectively examine the health of your company and take steps to make changes. We talked about B2B marketing and what you can do to revitalize relationships with your customers. If your business’s growth is stuck, or you’re just trying to build a business, you’re going to get something out of this interview. You can also view the podcast in video form on our YouTube Channel. Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                    Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h   Noah Graff: Say you’re a pretty diversified precision machining company doing $5 million in sales. Your growth has slowed and you’re feeling stuck. What is the first step to getting back on track? Jose Palomino: It always starts first with an interview with the owner. I always like to get into their head to know what they think their issues are. Then what we want to do is go through those issues with the leadership team. Even further, I want to talk to some of your customers. If you have somebody who you’ve been working with, who’s loyal to you, who you feel you have a great relationship with, I just want to talk to them. I’m not going to interrogate them. I just want to get a sense from them. Something is stopping you from growing. You went from zero to $4 million, from $4 million to $8 million, then you stopped growing. What happened? What changed? And that’s what we want to dig into. Graff: It seems like it is important for people to understand their companies better if they want to turn things around. Palomino: Here’s where it gets hard. There are times when I’ve done this exercise with the leadership team and they conclude that they don’t know what’s special about what they do. And I say, okay, well that’s not good, but the good news is identifying that. When they tell me the attributes that they think set them apart, then I say, how would we validate that? Because I want to know that if I look at your competitive set, even through just a Web search, would I see the same words, ideas and illustrations you’re telling me set you apart (from other companies)? Because if there are two companies that to the average buyer look to be about the same size and capabilities, then they cancel each other out. By definition we call this “equally credible claims.” Graff: It can be hard for a contract manufacturer to differentiate itself from competitors. Palomino: That’s why you need to talk to customers. When talking to owners, this is a one of my standard questions. “When is the last time you personally had a conversation with your top five customers?” And the reality is it’s, “Well, I used to when I started, but I haven’t in a long time.” I’m talking about years they haven’t (talked to them) unless there was a problem. Graff: What do you say to customers when you call them? Palomino: I would start with a very general question like, “How are we doing for you? I really want to hear the good, bad, and ugly.” And you have to really listen for the answer. You can’t just say, “Okay, great. Enough about you, let me tell you about me.” Then I would say, “Is there anything you’re working on now that you might need some help with? You know, if you’re in the industry, we may know a resource.” And that’s the home run. If you can (provide) a client or a customer to another resource. You did that for them. You will solidify that relationship in a profound way. It’s not a blank check, but it definitely helps because it’s not the words of sincerity, it’s sincere action. Graff: What is another thing you can discuss when you call a customer? Palomino: If I think I actually have an idea for them, I might say, “By the way, our team put our heads together. We thought there might be some opportunities for us to help you with something in particular. Can I tell you a little bit about it?” Make it one simple thing. Something like, “You know, one thing we’ve never done for you but we’re really good at is induction hardening.” “I know you make some parts where that probably makes sense in your engineering. Is that something we should talk about, because it’s something we do really well. We would love to demonstrate that for you.” They might say, “Well, what do you mean?” And the moment they say “what do you mean” is a wonderful thing. Because now you have a conversation going around the thing that you want to talk about. And it’s an easy conversation. And here’s the thing—the prefacing of it. My team and I got together to think about how we can help you. And we came up with one good idea we want to share with you. Question: What strategies does your company use to create growth?

I know you will enjoy this favorite past episode, whether or not it’s your first time hearing it. As Swiss machines continue to improve, so does the capability of the accessories and tooling to aid you in the machining process. This episode will hopefully illuminate some ways you can improve your efficiency and accuracy by adding modern technology to your current machines. Our guest is Jim Gosselin, owner and President of Genevieve Swiss Industries. Genevieve Swiss sells innovative accessories specifically for Swiss CNC lathes, such as live tooling and cutting tools, to combat the problems small parts manufacturers constantly deal with. Scroll down to read more and listen to the podcast, or listen with Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. Main Points Jim gives an overview of Genevieve Swiss. He says the company’s mission is to make the job of the machinists easier. If machinists have the right tools to get better efficiency and quicker setups, then machining companies will be more profitable. (2:30) Jim says he was always interested in mechanical stuff from a young age. He liked to take apart his toys as a kid to try to understand how things worked. He dropped out of high school in his Junior year and went into the military where he became a combat engineer. He summarized that job as “building things and blowing things up.” (3:00)  After getting out of the military, Jim got a GED and took college courses at night. He worked at a machining company called Savage Arms in Westfield, Massachusetts, that made shotguns and other hunting equipment. In 1983 he became a programer and ran the new Citizen CNC machines that the company purchased. The machines had 2 turrets with 5 stations each, with cross drilling and milling capability. He says those machines were not actually sliding headstock. Rather, they were sliding guide bushing machines. The turret and the guide bushing slid together on the machines. (4:00) In 1987 Jim became an applications engineer and salesperson at Brookdale Associates, a Citizen distributor in New England. In the late 1980s Brookdale Associates began building high pressure coolant systems for Swiss machines. He says before then, high pressure pumps were not used for Swiss turning. The company also sold a line of accessories, including tool holders for Swiss machines. In 2002, he and his colleagues traveled to Switzerland where they began a relationship with PCM, a company that sold high quality live tools. Jim thought that Brookdale would distribute PCM’s tooling, but it was a difficult year for the machining industry, so his boss didn’t want the risk of taking on a new product line. He told Jim if he wanted to start his own company he supported the idea and would be his best customer. That was the start of Genevieve Swiss. (5:45) Jim says that when he started Genevieve Swiss he realized at the time that many Swiss operators were getting older and they were burning out because the Swiss machining process caused too many headaches. He decided his company’s mission would be to make Swiss machinists’ lives easier by supplying them with products that enable faster setups and better cycle times. (8:00) Jim talks about developing gear-driven head live tools for Swiss machines with PCM. He says that prior to gear-driven live tools, typically live tools on CNC Swiss machines turned at 4000-5000 RPM for cross drilling or cross milling. He says this wasn’t efficient for end-mills that could be as small as a diameter of .020” or .030”. The slower turning speeds caused burrs and slower cycle times. The new gear-driven heads produced 3 times the output as the older technology. (9:25) Jim talks about the products Genevieve Swiss sells. The company sells accessories specifically for Swiss machines such as live tools and cutting tools. It sells arbors for slitting as well as coolant that is specifically designed for high pressure delivery. He talks about a thread whirling head for a Citizen L20 that is designed to have coolant flow right through the head and then delivered to the cutters. (see video above) (10:30) Jim says that chip control problems are one of the most significant hurdles for Swiss operators. He says often in medical work that uses difficult metals like 465 stainless, chips can come off the machine like ribbons. Genevieve Swiss is working with its insert tooling supplier UTILIS to sell laser ground chip breakers. (see demonstration video below) (12:40) Jim talks about insert tooling developed by UTILIS in which coolant flows through the tool and is focused on the tool tip. (17:00) Jim says most of the Genevieve Swiss’ innovations come from listening to customers on the shop floor. He says the company talks to customers and distributors to find out what machining problems operators are complaining about. (20:00) Jim compares the construction of older Swiss CNC machines to those of today. He says that Swiss machines used to have heavier castings to achieve rigidity. While today’s Swiss machines are built with lighter castings, Jim says they are designed more intelligently based on factors such as stress analysis, which enables them to stay ridged. (21:30) Jim says the incorporation of lasers is one of the most interesting recent innovations on Swiss machines. Lasers can do cutting, milling, cross drilling, and knurling. They also enable welding two parts together while still on the machine. He says though 3D printing is slow right now, it could be a disruptor in small parts manufacturing one day. He brings up a scenario of a Swiss machine that also incorporates 3D printing. (22:30) Learn more about Genevieve Swiss at Genswiss.com. Question: What are the biggest challenges you run into running CNC Swiss machines?

I am a treasure hunter for a living. I pay my mortgage by finding obscure used machines from all over the world and then finding people who want to buy sexy-ugly/high-tech equipment. The best way to do that is by interacting with customers in ways that create serendipity. Today, I’m going to tell you how calling people on the phone, even when it seems like a long shot, can result in serendipity. If you approach talking to people with the right strategies you have the potential to create tons of meaningful, significant, productive conversations. You can also view the podcast in video form on our YouTube Channel. Listen with the player at the bottom of the page or at your favorite podcast app.                                    Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://lnkd.in/dB_nzFzt Instagram: https://lnkd.in/dcxjzVyw Twitter: https://lnkd.in/dDyT-c9h     We get tons of emails from people inquiring about machines they see online from Graff-Pinkert, our used machine tool company. Sometimes it seems difficult to call everyone back, so rather than do nothing, I go to our nice automatic quoting system and send them a price, photos, and info. Then I hope they get back to me. They often never reply. I know many people who inquire are just researching the market and don’t really NEED that machine they’re asking about. Or, maybe they see a price on the quote that’s out of their budget and dismiss the machine out of hand, which is a pity because we might have been willing to negotiate. And that’s the end of the story. I didn’t sell a machine, I didn’t learn anything, I didn’t make a new contact, and of course, no serendipity happened. It’s quite common for us to get contacted by customers looking for machines we don’t even have. Often, people see a used machinery ad sent to them from one of the machine tool advertising websites like Machinio, which does not always take old listings down right away after machines have been sold. It can sometimes be frustrating for customers when they contact us about machines we no longer have. I’d be frustrated too. But on the other hand, it’s great. Those machines floating around online, both available and unavailable, for thousands of eyeballs to ogle, creates a treasure trove of serendipity. The funny thing is, very often, people inquire about a specific machine they see online, and they aren’t even interested in that machine in the first place. One time, I had a guy contact us about a Star, but he was just as interested in a Tornos Deco we had in stock. Often people don’t even know what machine they want. They just click on something that they want to learn about. Wednesday, I got an inquiry from a customer who saw an old listing for an Escomatic EC08 that we sold two years ago. It’s a powerful CNC coil-fed screw machine that’s very rare. I wouldn’t be shocked if there were less than five of that model in the United States. (I wrote a good story about that machine in a previous blog, by the way). I looked at the inquiring customer’s website, and I saw they had a lot of small Swiss machines in their shop. So I called them, even though I didn’t have the EC08. A man answered, and I asked for the name that was signed on the email inquiry. But the guy on the phone told me that person was no longer at the company. We both thought that was weird. I guess the person who sent the inquiry still uses his old company’s email address and still likes to click on machines he wants to learn about. So, just to summarize again—I called a company because they asked for a machine we didn’t have. Then the person I asked for didn’t even work there anymore. But sure enough, me and the guy who answered the phone ended up having a good conversation anyway. We talked about what machines his company uses and how business is going. Because I knew they ran a lot of small diameter work, I suggested they could be interested in Graff-Pinkert’s newest piece of inventory, a beautiful Tsugami B0125 III Swiss CNC machine with a 12mm capacity. He told me to send a quote over. Will he buy this machine? There’s a chance. Stranger things have happened. The big thing was I CALLED. We talked. Information came out, and I met someone interesting. If I had sent an email saying that we didn’t have the machine but asking if they wanted something else, they might have written back, but that’s unlikely. Another guy on Wednesday wrote us about that same Tsugami Swiss machine I just mentioned. He asked for the price of the machine. Generally, when people say they “just want a price,” it sounds like they’re doing research or window shopping. As a seller that can be frustrating, but hey, I do it sometimes to other people. So I called him and left a message, figuring if he didn’t call back I would then email him a quote. Thursday morning he called back, and I gave him the price over the phone. I like telling the price to customers over the phone or in person rather than in an email or text because then I can try to gage their interest from their initial reaction. The guy told me he wasn’t just doing research and he had work for the machine. When I told him the price he said it was much too high. He also said he saw us buy the machine at a recent online auction, so he knew around what price we had paid. Then the conversation got more interesting. He told me he had bought some LISTA cabinets at the same auction, and he had purchased three other Tsugamis just like ours from the same shop a while back. Right now, our little Tsugami is still sitting at the auction site. Getting the machine rigged, and cleaned, and drained, and out of this factory has been a nightmare for Graff-Pinkert’s office manager Kelly. The parties involved have been unresponsive, and the price estimates are crazy. Thousands of dollars to clean a machine! However, this guy I was talking to was experienced getting machines out of that shop. He knew which people were trying to rip us off and which people were being unnecessarily difficult. He told us who to call to get the machine drained. He also told us we should make sure to ask about getting the machine’s transformer that was hanging from the ceiling because the company had tried to leave it out when he took his machines. No phone call—no new knowledge—no serendipity. Phone call—important things were happening. Ok. So I have advised people to make calls. Many people reading or listening to this are probably saying, of course you make calls, you’re in sales. Tell me something I don’t know. Ok. Let’s talk about making the calls. After you make the call, how do you go about it to get as much serendipity as possible? First, I like to prepare for the call ahead of time. I look up the company’s website and find out what machines they have, because maybe they have some other machine they want to buy or sell, other than the one I’m calling about. If I want to prepare even more, I will look up the contact’s name online and check out their LinkedIn profile. This way I know if I’m talking to management or someone on the shop floor. Sometimes the guy on the shop floor is just as important or more than the management guy, because they know what machines the company is using and not using. They also often know more about equipment the company actually needs. So after I have this info, I’m prepared to use one of my favorite serendipity tools to bring out some magic in the interaction—serendipity hooks! I learned about serendipity hooks from my serendipity guru, Christian Busch, author of The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Finding Good Luck. He is the guy who inspired my whole serendipity obsession in the first place. If you want a great breakdown of many of the book’s principles listen to the podcast interview I did with him, Episode 123. Back to serendipity hooks. Serendipity hooks are extra things you can insert into a conversation that bring out new game changing information. Busch likes to bring up the example of meeting someone who asks you what you do for a living. Rather than say one thing like “I’m a machinery dealer,” you say a bunch of things. For instance, “I’m a machinery dealer, and a journalist, and I have a podcast, and in my spare time l love to salsa dance, but I don’t dance much any more because I want to spend time with my wife and my amazing 1-year-old boy Abe.” All of sudden, in addition to talking about machinery dealing, we can talk about journalism, and podcasts, and dancing, and kids, which I’ve been surprised to find that other people actually find interesting. Before I call a potential customer, I first look at what machines the company has on their website, and I also look back at our own records to see what we have sold them in the past. Last year, we did a nice deal in which we sold some Tornos SAS16.6 multi-spindles to a longtime customer. We knew the customer also had Wickman multi-spindles that we had sold to them in the past. One of the ways we were able to make the transaction more attractive for both parties was to take back one of their 1-3/4” Wickmans in trade. Another serendipity hook we have been using often lately is bringing up Graff-Pinkert’s new business of consulting machining companies who are looking to buy or sell their businesses. After I discuss machines that people have contacted us about buying or selling, I say something like, “One more thing. Just so you know, Graff-Pinkert also helps machining companies buy and sell their businesses. Are you looking to expand your company through acquisition?” After they say yes or no, I say, “do you know of some other company looking to buy or sell?” Stuff often comes out—usually it’s people saying they would like to expand, but sometimes I do find out about companies for sale. Not long ago, I was talking to a customer about purchasing one of their CNC lathes. Turned out they decided to keep it, but the call wasn’t a total disappointment. I asked if he knew of any companies for sale, and he did. Treasure. Or at least potential treasure. So, to sum it all up, emails are a consolation prize, not the first option. Call people. Visit people in person! Ask questions that can provoke information. Tell people interesting stuff about yourself that makes them bring up unexpected things. All of sudden, your conversations become significant, educational, productive, and serendipitous. This was seeking serendipity. Question: What was an interesting or productive conversation you had recently?