00:11:20 · Ty Morse, Jim Belosic
[00:11:20] S0: When we were just at dinner last night, we talked a little bit about expectation setting and like making sure that whatever you're saying that you're gonna do, you actually do it. And not only that, you kind of exceed it most of the time. How do you think about expectation setting in your mind with the customers or even with suppliers and vendors and stuff? [00:11:37] S1: For for expectations of... My son is joining us in in the audience here. I always told him... I was like, I don't make threats. I make promises. If you don't clean up your room, I'm gonna throw out everything on the ground. And it's like, I will throw out everything on the ground. And then I had to buy it back again. So anyway, that hurt me more than it hurt him, but expectations are promises. So if I promise a customer that it's gonna be there on Thursday, it better get there on Thursday. If I promise them that it's going to cost a certain amount, it's going to cost a certain amount. So the expectations is like live by the sword, die by the sword. The issue with it is it's like a ratchet. When you improve stuff, that's the new bar. Like you can't go backwards, which is where, you know, we run into these crazy challenges. Like manufacturing is a hell of a lot easier when you're not quick turn. So from day one, we're like, oh, we'll be quick turn because I'm impatient. I want my stuff fast. We should do that. Scaling that is really hard. And then as you get better and better, you're like, cool, let's let's shave a day off of our lead time.
00:11:37 · Jim Belosic, Ty Morse
[00:11:37] S1: For for expectations of... My son is joining us in in the audience here. I always told him... I was like, I don't make threats. I make promises. If you don't clean up your room, I'm gonna throw out everything on the ground. And it's like, I will throw out everything on the ground. And then I had to buy it back again. So anyway, that hurt me more than it hurt him, but expectations are promises. So if I promise a customer that it's gonna be there on Thursday, it better get there on Thursday. If I promise them that it's going to cost a certain amount, it's going to cost a certain amount. So the expectations is like live by the sword, die by the sword. The issue with it is it's like a ratchet. When you improve stuff, that's the new bar. Like you can't go backwards, which is where, you know, we run into these crazy challenges. Like manufacturing is a hell of a lot easier when you're not quick turn. So from day one, we're like, oh, we'll be quick turn because I'm impatient. I want my stuff fast. We should do that. Scaling that is really hard. And then as you get better and better, you're like, cool, let's let's shave a day off of our lead time. [00:12:43] S0: It's like Amazon where they say suddenly it's two day shipping or, you know, one hour shipping and people don't want to go back.
00:12:43 · Ty Morse, Jim Belosic
[00:12:43] S0: It's like Amazon where they say suddenly it's two day shipping or, you know, one hour shipping and people don't want to go back. [00:12:49] S1: Yeah. No, you can't you can't go from one day shipping to seven day shipping. Like people get super pissed and I would get pissed as a customer. I'm still a customer. I think about myself as a customer. I'm I'm the number one representative of all of our customers out there. And I want what they want. I actually, I think I want more than what they want. I'm probably the most demanding customer that we have, and I'm never satisfied. I'm always ratcheting those expectations and making sure we hit our promises. [00:13:21] S0: Were there any, like, specific examples in the history of the company where you did have those expectations or, like, set a high bar for expectations and then just completely missed them? And like, how did that feel?
00:13:33 · Jim Belosic
[00:13:33] S1: Yeah. Well, it still happens. And it happens through nature. You know, if if the pass gets closed during a winter storm and, you know, we can't get trucks over the hill or mechanical issues, you know, maybe a machine catches on fire and we have to evacuate the building for half a day or something like that. Someone accidentally hit a sprinkler in the ceiling and, you know, so yeah, you have to, you have to make some calls, send some emails and let people know that we're gonna disappoint them. I love to be part of that conversation. I like to get the pain so that we can make the system more robust. So it doesn't happen again. That's a big part of our expansion across The US because, you know, just operating out of Reno, usually in the winter, it's pretty easy for us to go east, to go west over the Sierras, sometimes things get stuck. But if we, you know, we have different facilities in Texas and Kentucky and wherever we're going, they can all help each other. We can all load balance a little bit. Usually we can get something on a plane in Memphis and then they can fly over the weather and then make it to Southern California or whatever. So yeah, we we have lots of challenges every day where we disappoint people. But if you... If you're arm's length from that, it never hurts you as much. Like I I want to get touched. I I I wanna like feel the burn so that I don't do it again. Like I'm so stupid. Like that's the only way I learn. You can tell me that it's hot. I have to like grab it and see that it's hot and get burned. So being like on the front lines and feeling the pain with the customer and having the customers yell at me directly, I'm like, okay, cool. Let's let's have backups on backups. You know, let's have more material in stock. Let's have additional customer support people so that they're not waiting for a response for, you know, hours or whatever. It's things you learn over time. You you finally figure out where all the weak links are, where the chain breaks, and then you make the chain stronger in those areas.
00:15:34 · Ty Morse
[00:15:34] S0: When you're kinda looking out over the next like couple years and you're thinking about how the scale up will end up unfolding, what does that actually look like in your mind?
00:15:42 · Jim Belosic
[00:15:42] S1: Speed. Mhmm. Speed is the main thing. I think Amazon kind of showed the way where if I can get it to you tomorrow or even in two days or or whatever, people, people like the convenience. People are lazy. I know I can get in the car and, you know, go to Target and get some stuff. Or I'm like, oh, if it's gonna show up tomorrow, you know, that's fine. So that, that Amazon effect on speed is trickling into every other aspect of our life. You know, DoorDash with food, you know, I'm like, oh, thirty minutes. That seems like a long time. It's like, we're so spoiled. So people get spoiled on everything being almost instant gratification and it's going into manufacturing too. So, you know, if you give me a million square feet, I could have a huge mega factory, and I can produce parts really, really fast, but I can't get them in your hands fast enough because actually one of our constraints is our carriers. You know, UPS and FedEx are incredible, but it's expensive to move things by air all the time. So, you know, you go do a ground network and coast to coast it's five or six days. You know, if shipping from Seattle to Florida takes forever, from Southern California to Massachusetts takes forever. So the future is, you know, distribution, I guess. I wanna make sure that we have capacity wherever there's there's population centers. I want that accessibility in all those population centers. I want people to think about SendCutSend like Home Depot. You know, I go to Home Depot all the time. If I knew that I could just go to a local manufacturer that was super accessible, and I just walk in the door and be like, hey, you know, I need this made, you know, help me out, help me figure it out. That would be amazing. I think more of The US needs that. Every city has tons of manufacturers, but their doors aren't open. You know, some of them don't have websites. You know, you gotta know a guy or whatever. So we're we're trying to change that. I wanna show the example of what we're doing, you know, being more open to the public. It's actually a good way of doing business in manufacturing. Can... Like, our customers can grow with us or we can grow with our customers. You know, we started out just doing prototypes and, you know, stuff for hobbyists, guys in their garage. But now, I mean, 90% of what we do is for, you know, large enterprise.