Inside the Guild: How Sharpeners Are Growing Faster Together

What’s actually working in a sharpening business right now?

In this update, I’m sharing what we’re seeing inside the Guild of Professional Sharpeners—from charging premium rates and adding high-value services, to building real connections that help you grow faster (without doing it alone).

We cover:

•  How sharpeners are increasing their rates 
•  A “spa treatment” upsell that customers love 
•  What’s happening inside our weekly Guild calls 
•  Lessons from real sharpening businesses in the field 
•  Behind-the-scenes of building out a new shop and adding a straight knife grinder 

If you’re building a sharpening business—or thinking about starting one—this will give you a clear picture of what’s working right now.

Join the Guild of Professional Sharpeners:
→ https://members.guildofsharpeners.org/

Subscribe to the “From the Bench” Newsletter (monthly insights + real-world strategies):
→ https://guildofsharpeners.kit.com/b95b5ecf74

You don’t have to figure this out alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, Matt here at the American Edge and the Guild of Professional Sharpeners. We're going into Q2 of 2026. So this is now the beginning of April. I have some notes on some stuff that is going on, uh, mainly within the guild, but also within the American Edge. And I just kind of wanted to go through these things for uh your awareness and um because there's a lot of good stuff going on. So I'm gonna be referencing my notes here. But first thing up is the guild call. So every Thursday night we meet up on Zoom and we do a series of calls. A couple good ones uh last month included uh a call with Bubba. So every we do two office hours a month, and in one of those office hours, I try to do a class. A couple months ago, Grant gave us a class on stropping, and that was awesome. It was we started out like thinking, you know, I just try to get people to plan on like a 10-minute thing, and then we can get into all the questions and stuff that people have. Uh so office hours, this is designed for the people who are working through the coursework within the guild and trying to get their business going. So it's a place for them to come ask questions, share stories, get feedback, and have so that we can help them accomplish their goals. So, yeah, anyways, like a 10-minute class, but we it was such a great grant, it is so awesome. Uh, that ended up being a significant part of the call, but it, you know, we could have kept going on stropping. Last month, Bubba gave us a class on the angle guides, mainly for belted systems. There's a lot of different options out there, and Bubba is very fluent on those, so it was nice to have him share with us his experience on those angle guides. One of the other things we do on the group calls is I try to host somebody once a month to present on something. And in March, Eric Ho, a guild member, presented on premium sharpening, and that got a lot of good feedback. He went over some ultimately the thing he was getting at is how can we as sharpeners charge more for our work? And the strategy is deliver premium results. So he went through how do we measure premium results. He did his own thorough study of um a bunch of different things. So he reviewed that study with us. I will try to leave a link to his report in the description here on this video, and this is also gonna be on the podcast feed. So I'll try to leave a link to it there as well. But he has a it was awesome. It it changed, it helped me change my sharpening methodology, which I really appreciate. Uh, those were those were some calls in the past. Upcoming, I was gonna do a call with a person who is also a knife maker and a sharpener. I had to he's he had to postpone. So I got that scheduled for August now. But at the same time that was going on, Greg, a member of the guild, I've been hounding him to give us a class on his spa treatment. He has been posting some really fantastic images of the work he's doing to restore cutlery, and he just makes them look amazing. I thought, I was like, man, how do we we got you gotta teach us, dude? So uh he's going to fill the role in April and give us the spa treatment tutorial, uh, everything he's learned and that he's applying to, and that's a paid service too, right? That's an upsell that when people bring him high-end cutlery, he's like, yo, do you want this to look good? I can make this look good. It's gonna cost a little more, but it's gonna be amazing. Especially, and then like all the refresh, like older antique stuff, like a really cool skill set to have. So I'm I'm stoked about learning from him on what that's gonna be. That's uh, and then I do have some other classes, guests lined up for May and June, but we'll get into that when we get there. And I don't have a class yet assigned for the office hours in April, but I'm taking input if anybody, any guild member wants me to review something or find somebody to review something, I will be up for doing that. Uh, some other things, just uh running comments in the forum. There's always a running feed of stuff going on in people's businesses. Buck has been doing a total retrofit of his van, and it's been great to be along for the ride for that. And um, yeah, remember he he was like, things don't always go quite as well as you as you plan, but he's making it work, and I'm excited to see what that turns into for him. Uh, Grant got a unique request to cut serrations into really high-end carry knives. So we'll be neat to check in with him to see what comes of that. And then I put out a thing about doing volume discounts. So Greg was very helpful in encouraging me to raise my rates this year, and I did that. And as I was doing a batch of 15 knives, I was like, well, I'm probably gonna not charge $12 a knife for these. Uh so I kind of put the question out, like, does anybody do volume discounts and what does that look like? And there's some good feedback on that. So I enjoyed that thread. So, and there's always more coming, but those just stood out to me while I was making some notes. Uh, I added I added one discount, and there's one discount pending. So, another thing that we do in the guild is I try to incorporate discounts on the things you need to run your business. Like dream, like my go my hope would be that the discounts offset at least the networking membership. So it's a cost advantage to members to be part of the community. Uh, still working on that, it kind of depends on how you're running your business. Uh, but I did add one, I use this software called MileIQ to track my business miles. And uh they reach, they send me a thing like where you know, refer some people, and you so anyway, I got I put that out. Uh, and then I by posting that discount code or discount link, I discovered that quite a few people are using mile IQ, and it's my opinion that anybody running a business should be tracking your miles. It took me too long to figure that out. So if I can be any force of helping people get to the point where they're tracking their miles and then they're deducting that when they file their taxes, that is a positive step in the in terms of your business. So there is a discount there for that. And uh this is not like limited to guild. I'm just gonna I'll post it in the link here too. And if I'm doing that, then I should share that they are going to shoot me an Amazon gift card if people follow the referral link. So don't do it because of that. Only do it if it's right for your business. But it why not? Okay, and then there's another one pending. A lot of there's not a lot of us who are serving restaurants, but that there's there is opportunity in restaurants. And there are oftentimes we are asked if we do a knife loner program, and there's something in the works that I'm hoping shakes out where we'll be able to purchase knives to put into a restaurant uh loaner program. So that's that that's a teaser because I don't know whether it's gonna happen exactly, but I hope that it does, and I hope that it opens up more opportunity for guild members to build a thriving business. So that's on the radar. All right. Okay, the next thing I want to get into is from the bench newsletter. If you're not already subscribed to this monthly newsletter, I invite you to do so. I'll include a link to that as well. This is uh it's more of like an informational thing. Everything like the work that I do, I do want the guild to grow. I think it's an awesome thing, and it could really help a lot of people. So, no hidden agenda there. Like, if you think it's the right fit for you, come on in. From the bench newsletter is a newsletter that I hope provides information and helps people inform people about the work going on in the guild, and that is coming out monthly. The one that just went out was um, so if you saw the or listened to the last podcast with James, he described his evolution in his business and he wrote an article for the April newsletter, which will be coming out mid-month. So I hope you get that. Uh, that's more that's on the I really love purposeful design of your business. It I get a little bummed when I see business owners who hate the thing that they built for themselves. So it's not up to me to decide what looks right to you. I just hope that you take the time to think through what it is that your business should look like and how it should serve you and your life, and like at the same time serving the people around you, but not become a slave to it. And James is one of the people that really stands out as someone who has implemented purposeful design in his business. So fun for me to be able to shine a light on him. The next one is gonna be by Ken. Uh, and I did a podcast with Ken. Uh, he's up in Halifax, Maritime Sharpening. Ken is a phenomenal person and an excellent sharpener, and I'm looking forward to putting that out. And he also drafted an article for the April from the bench newsletter, which is fantastic as well. So if you're not already subscribed, please do. And then I do have a few more lined up. Grant, actually, who I spoke about, who did the honing class, he's agreed to do a podcast with me. And he's another, like, there's just so many wonderful people. I'm I'm excited to um to be able to share their story in some way. So uh if okay, that's it. Plug for the newsletter, sign up for it, please. It's low on the promo, it's mostly like sharing information. And then another thing I just wanted, I made a note because I think it's awesome, is I've implemented this call chain inside the guild where I'm I would I want people to communicate with one another. I get on the phone with a lot of people and I find that it's so helpful to talk to other sharpeners. So, what I've started doing is I implemented a call chain. So every week, every Friday, I I pair up members uh and invite them to get on the phone with each other. I can provide like a script or talking points if you want, but it's low, like 20 minutes, you know, just just feel the waters and like see what it's like to have a conversation with another sharpener. Some of them I've heard go on for a while and then like they have to cut it, but they loop back around because there's more that they want to talk about. That's what I'm trying to get. Like I you shouldn't be doing this alone. So I want you, I'm just trying to get you to connect with people. Uh, we're all we're all moving in the same direction. We all have our own story and we're doing things a little bit differently, but there's a lot of commonalities between people who are sharpening and trying to make a business out of it. So, anyway, uh I've I'm splitting that up so that every quarter I hope that I nudge each member into a conversation. So we just moved into Q2, so I got the list, and I'm I'm meeting I'm pairing people up every Friday. Um that ultimately should be like a selling point on the guild. You don't have to participate if you're not comfortable getting on the phone with people. That's no sweat. Just let me know on the side and I won't include you on the list. But there should be pretty low stress, it's all meant to be fun. Um, okay, so that's it for so we covered uh guild, past, future, talked about the newsletter. There's some stuff going on at the American Edge, which is my sharpening business as well, and I thought it'd be fun to highlight that. So this year I began renting a space across the street from me. There's a farm across the street, and the way the universe worked out, I made a request to rent some space there, and they granted it. So I also bought out another sharpener who is retiring, maybe an hour and a half away from me, and I bought a bunch of gear from him. The gear that I was most interested in was a 72-inch straight knife grinder, which would allow me to properly do chipper knives. And I think there's a big market for chipper knives, and it's a place of curiosity for me. So I I wanted to go that way, and an opportunity came up, so I did it. It's been a lot of work. Moving the machine was a lot of work, estimate like five or six thousand pounds. Like it was a lot of work getting this thing over here, getting it set up. Uh, had to originally there there is power in the space, but I upon digging into it, it wasn't really going to work out right. So the uh owner of the property put in a new subpanel for me. Super cool of them. Uh, this machine came with a phase converter, a rotary phase converter. So anyway, it took a look, took a bit of work to get it wired up. I got some feet for it. It is a concrete slab. I got it leveled up. The coolant that I have for it, I realized it wasn't uh it would freeze, so I had to figure out how to keep it from freezing because the space is not currently heated, so that was a bit of a time delay as well. But anyway, uh I'm still marching in the direction of getting this thing going. Last week I got it spun up, the coolant's flowing, uh, got it working in auto mode, and as far as I can tell, it's time to put some knives on there. So I'm pretty stoked about that, and I hope to be sharing more about it. I also I'm uh still noodling on the way to D-burr chipper knives like really well. And I saw a eight-inch buffer, I'm looking at it right now. I just got it yesterday from Grizzly. It's a shop box, one horse, but it's the thing is a behemoth, it's awesome. I'm stoked about that as well. Uh, so that'll be fun. I did get it spinning yesterday, and it's it is smooth. I'm really stoked about that. Okay, the uh just the other thing is like this is a busy season of life. It's spring on the farm. It's uh I do still have a job and like work's ramping up there. So there is no shortage of things going on. So it's part of my life, is also how do I figure out how to scale the sharpening work so that it doesn't stress me out, going back to that idea of purposeful design in our business. So I'll be uh continuing to work on that. And then the last thing is that this I showed it quickly when I started. This is a remarkable device. Uh, it's a paper tablet. I started using it a few weeks ago or so, and I found it's pretty remarkable, hence the name. And I really enjoy it. If you've been with me for a while, you know that I'm big on journaling and writing. I'm a super fan of the best self journals. I would uh attribute much of my success to the time spent journaling and writing and planning. So, what I have done is taken the a lot of the modified templates, the page work in the best self journal, and built my own here on the remarkable, and I'm working through that and I'm using it right now as reading through the notes. So, anyway, just a neat device. Okay, so that's a wrap. I hope uh that's interesting. Reach out to me anytime if you have any questions. And if the guild sounds like it might be the right fit for you, I definitely invite you to check it out and I'd be happy to talk to you about it if uh you're curious. Alright, catch you next time.