People in Production Podcast with Ryan Nelson

Episode 15 - Ian Reel (Part 2) - Classroom to CNC: When Your Side Hustle Becomes Your Empire

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From purchasing his first CNC machine with no prior experience to building a successful manufacturing business with 14 machines and 10 employees, Ian shares his journey of calculated risk-taking and growth.

• Starting with a small 1,500 square foot facility and expanding to a 14,000 square foot building
• Learning the complex world of CNC machining through manufacturer support and networking
• Creating systems to replicate knowledge and remove himself from day-to-day operations
• Finding significant company growth during 2020 when many businesses struggled
• Building a professional network through NTMA to overcome the isolation of entrepreneurship
• Developing effective hiring practices through trial and error
• Balancing business growth with family life and keeping work stress away from home
• Manufacturing's biggest threat: young people not knowing the trade exists


Speaker 1:

Ian, we are back at it. We had some great conversations in part one about your story through teaching and starting into offering a product that turned into a production company. But let's talk about that journey of when you bought your first machine and how it took off, and we'll get a picture of what your company looks like now. So continue your story of your journey of when you bought that first machine. Is this machine sitting in your garage at this point, or what does it look like for you?

Speaker 2:

So the first machine was not sitting in my garage. I actually had a small, well commercial location that I was renting from another business owner in town. It was about 1,500 square feet, so 1,500 square feet, essentially a large garage, but had industrial power and that sort of thing, and that was where a lot of the fulfillment stuff was going on for the other employees prior to getting the CNC machine, and so that was kind of a pivotal point as well about you know, hey, can I put an industrial machine in here? And the landlord was like absolutely you can, let's do it, let's go for it. You know it took time to research builders to find the correct machine, to ultimately get paired up with the correct company that was able to take a novice under their wing and have the resources available to me and a place where I could ask silly questions and feel like that I couldn't get somewhere.

Speaker 1:

So was your manufacturer one of your leading education points, or was there another resource that you could go to for education?

Speaker 2:

So it was. It was not the manufacturer, the original manufacturer. They were making those on the parts that I was buying on a completely different machine that I ended up buying due to the. I needed a one size fits all machine and so it led me to a little bit larger form factor machine. And for your listeners that would want to know what I got, I mean I got a twin spindle, twin turret, y axis laid with bar feeder, high pressure, cool pressure coolant, I mean the whole shebang uh, as a first machine. So you know, an eight axis machine is what I cut my teeth on.

Speaker 2:

And that was really interesting conversations with with other other machines, tool builders. Uh, when they were asking you know what's your experience in cnc? And I said, well, I don't have any and they go, well, we're not going to sell you a machine. So the company that ended up working with me and really just treating me really, really well for a new person was Machine Tool Specialties out of Oklahoma and, matter of fact, they're members of the NTMA as well. So I see them frequently at events and those guys class act people. Nothing bad to say about their business.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. So this was in 2017?

Speaker 2:

2017. Yeah, the first machine in 2017. And then, with their help, with their guidance, they were able to take the machine into their floor, help spec out some tools and prove out some programs. Then they brought me down to Tulsa, showed me how to run the machine on a program that they had written for me and essentially turnkey for the bread and butter part. Uh, that was that was needed, uh, for it to run. And then we're just networking and asking a lot of questions, and tooling reps coming through the shop started to meet and and learn from other individuals in the manufacturing area, just locally and for whatever reason. They treated me really well and we were blessed with the information they were able to share.

Speaker 1:

So from the time that you plug in your machine in your 1500 square foot shop time, that you are fully providing all of your products in house. How big of a gap was that transition?

Speaker 2:

Actual time or how long did it feel it felt like a hundred years Actual time may have, I mean I, I mean it was making decent parts within the first three, four weeks of being on the floor, but it was a turnkey. You know part Um, but I was still still learning how to run the tools, still learning how to get to a life. You know just all the stuff you continually learn in a shop, um, and paying a lot of stupid tax. Um, I didn't know what I didn't know and really just trying to learn and fail forward. And there was a lot of failure. Luckily there was nothing that was detrimental to the machine. I didn't really damage it much. I mean I've crashed it, but it wasn't anything that was, you know, machine ending or life ending for that machine. So that's, that's been good. And then just continued to design parts and prototype and work, and work, and work at it.

Speaker 1:

So at this point you've got two fulfillment people you're running the machine. Was your wife helping with the company at all, or was she responsible for her stuff and and you were running this on your own?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, she wasn't. She wasn't um much in the day-to-day operations of business, so she would still work her full-time job and then and then we wouldn't blend much of that, I think, for our sanity. Um, so yeah, that's how things were. She wasn't in the business on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 1:

So when was your next hire and what was the role you hired? Because right now you're the operator flawed as you might be operating at this point, but what did it look like to grow at this point to add additional team members?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so really what I ended up doing was, before adding additional team members, I ended up adding some more equipment. So then I added a second machine in that small 1,500-square-foot facility and was able to still crank more volume out of there. And I had some part-time people that would sprinkle in and would help us when things got busy out of there and, you know, had some part-time people that would would sprinkle in and and would help us when things got busy, uh. So I had a had an old roommate of mine that was coming in and helping with fulfillment, uh, qc of parts, you know, bagging, bagging parts, you know whatever, bagging and tagging stuff. Um, and really I think the the transition really switched from when I got out of that 1500 square foot facility and ended up purchasing the building I'm in now Just a little over 14,000 square feet, so it's still a small, small building in comparison to some of the other shops, sure, but on that day I delivered a third machine, so I added a machine, moved and did all that and it was still the sole operator, machine operator. So I was running three machines.

Speaker 2:

And then 2020 is when I saw a tremendous amount of growth in contrary to a lot of people. But 2020 was really, really a big year for me and really had to work on replicating myself within the business. So replicating myself on what I was doing on the machines. You know, I just couldn't get all the setups done. I just couldn't make good parts all the time when I was trying to set up a machine. So some of the spindles would be off, not making parts because they needed to be checked or whatever making parts because they needed to be checked or whatever.

Speaker 2:

So I I found an operator, uh, and, lucky enough, happened to be an ex student of mine, uh and was able to talk to him and I said you're a machinist like. You're doing this as a trade. He's like well, yeah, well, why don't you come talk to me? Maybe we could work together? And so he ended up coming and I said well, I'm going to, I'm going to treat you like I, like I would myself, like I'm not going to hide anything from you. I'm going to show you everything, I'm going to teach you everything I've learned, like I don't know if I do it right, but this is a way. If you've got any ideas, let me know. I'm here to learn too. Let's be a student of the profession and and get after it.

Speaker 1:

And then I want to circle back to one thing that you said that I think is important and my recent podcast we did with Brandon Worrell. He was talking through the lens of company. He was going to buy what he was looking for. And you bring up another point when you are so entwined with your company that it can't operate without you, your company doesn't have a sell value because the only way it's worth something to someone else is if you come with the buy. And then why would you buy the company if you're going to, or why would you sell the company if you're going to do the same work and turn it over to someone else?

Speaker 1:

Some people might have a reason for that, but you make a very important distinction that for your company to have a worth in terms of a sale value, you've got to disengage your role from the company needing you to exist. And so for pointing that out, because I think a lot of people miss that point. They think, hey, we're X amount of dollars profitable, but if you're not paying yourself for the role that you play in addition to the profitability, then you're actually, the company is still revolving around you and you've got to figure out how to disengage for it to be of value.

Speaker 2:

It was 100% and there was a certain level of tribal knowledge that was locked up in my brain and when you bring an employee on, they're going to try and do right by by the company and try and do right by what you've asked them to do. But if all the information and everything that they're asked to do is locked up in the owner's brain, or in this key employee's brain, how do you, how do you move forward? So there was a huge, a huge growth curve for me on on becoming more organized, um, documenting things better. Uh, what is a good part, what is a bad part? You know what does that look like? Um, and really trying to communicate to employees. You know how to be successful.

Speaker 2:

So, as the machine shop has continued to grow, we've continued to add machines, you know. You add on ERP systems. You add on systems and structures on how to track good product, how to document when products go wrong. You know how to make things correctly and just what that looks like and to continue to replicate yourself and, as you say, almost disengage yourself from the day to day operations. So you can, you can be more. You know the 30 or 40 thousand foot view and make sure that everybody in this team and everybody in this organization has the tools they need to be successful organization has the tools they need to be successful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and again, you, you work your network of relationships to find that right. Hire as well. When you realized you had a former student that was in the industry and that was important to to reach out to your who's to find the right who right and just asking questions.

Speaker 2:

they're like, well, how's, how's work going? And I said, oh man, I could use some help.

Speaker 1:

and then then people start recommending and then, yeah, you just follow through and ask some questions because you didn't have any knowledge of the industry and you gave an interesting dynamic of what it was like to go from a teacher who had community around you down the hallway to being a guy running his own shop. Can you share some of those thoughts with us?

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah. So as I've continued to grow the business, I find my role changing. You go from a designer, a visionary, to then being a technical person on the machines to now having employees, having more business, dynamic issues or just problems that have to be solved, and I find myself having a skill set that is not necessarily good at that or needs work. And as a teacher, when you're faced with a problem, you know there's always a built in professional network. So if you have a trouble student, or you have a trouble thing that you're trying to figure out in the classroom, you walk down the hallway and ask that veteran hey, what do you do in a situation like this? And there's bunches of people to ask and bounce ideas off of. And in business I found that that was not as easy, and so I started looking for an association that maybe had like-minded business individuals that were going through the same thing I'm going through or trying to learn about, or ones that have already been there. And guess what?

Speaker 2:

You go to an NTMA event, you start talking to people and you find out that your problems really aren't that big in the grand scheme of things, and then a lot of people have been through it or in it right now and you can bounce ideas off of each other and that's been really important for me on the information I'm wanting to get at this stage in my life and business and they give you hope that you can survive this, because sometimes, being a small business owner, you feel like, is this a bigger problem than we can get past?

Speaker 1:

And it's just nice to hear other people share. Oh yeah, you can navigate this and share their journey.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if you're in an echo chamber, I mean that's pretty bad. But if you just ask the right questions or just be vulnerable enough to ask some questions and listen people, people steer you in the right direction usually.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and what's your company look like today? How many employees do you have? Machines, what? What are you comfortable sharing about you do?

Speaker 2:

So including part-timers, we have 10 employees, so seven full-time, and happy to have them. I mean, wouldn't be able to do it without them. I'm in a situation where if I need to take a few days off, I know that parts will still be made, good parts will still be made, parts will still be shipped, that sort of thing. We're up to 14 machines, so 14 machines in a relatively short amount of time. Swiss machining, so I have a lot of Swiss style machines, but also have some traditional mills. But in general when people ask what I make I make, I say, well, I make small parts roughly the size of a Kleenex box and smaller, and things is smaller than your, your pinky fingernail, if you want to get down to really tiny stuff.

Speaker 1:

So you had initially started this just to make your own products but then realize, hey, we have capacity, we can provide services to other people, and I think you said earlier, automotive industry, food service industry, self-defense, I mean. So you actually found an avenue where, hey, there's other demands and you were able to diversify your services a little bit more to help create opportunity for your team. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:

Correct To help bridge those gaps. You know every industry has a roller coaster. The firearms industry is no different. It's kind of peak and valley and really, really bubbly. And to kind of flatten some of that out, especially once you have other people that entrust that you're steering the ship correctly, you want to make sure that you have a stable environment for them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, love it. I also noticed on your website you've got a careers page that people can go to and say, hey, here's where we start, here's the type of roles that we hire into and stuff like that, and I just really love your candidness of saying if you're looking for something, this is where you'd start and here's the opportunity to work up. Do you get many people responding to those?

Speaker 2:

I do so. It's pretty interesting when, whenever we do a campaign to get some employees, I typically have the opposite problem. I have a lot of resumes I have to go through and usually I shut the open jobs down within a week, a week to two weeks. The last one I opened up for a warehouse personnel hire, I had 70 applicants in about three or four days, so it's pretty can be pretty intense trying to get through that. What have you learned about hiring?

Speaker 1:

in that process.

Speaker 2:

What's that.

Speaker 1:

What have you learned about hiring in that process?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that I'm not good at it, and if you think you're good at it, you're not process oh, that I'm not good at it. And if you think you're good at it, you're not. There's something to learn every time, so I just I have to get more reps at hiring, so I'm just I'm just not perfect at it.

Speaker 1:

Sure, one of the things that I do for teams there are different tools that you can use and I use something called AcumuMax Index and it helps to align people with their natural wiring, with job opportunities. And does this profile of a person fit the profile of the role that you're trying to play? And there's a different personality for a long run CNC operator versus short run CNC operators and there's different things like that. That when you're really looking to make that important hire, a lot of times we're just doing crapshoot, saying hope, this is the right guy, I liked him, but what you don't understand at the moment is are they going to be able to do that role long-term or are they going to do it for weeks and realize they're miserable and move on?

Speaker 1:

And there's a lot of opportunities to be really intentional about that and the interview and the conversation has to be more than about their skill sets. It needs to be how they function and how they operate in a community, how their mindset is around work and stuff like that, to really create some efficiency in that so that you have you feel less of a risk in the hire because you know that there's alignment with what you're hiring them for. So love the fact that you're continuing to grow. And you're right, it takes reps, those first handful of hires, especially if you do it only once every four, five, six months, man, it's hard to. Especially if you do it only once every four, five, six months, man, it's hard to. And we usually wait to hire until we're at a crisis point and then we have to hire and we can't take our time, and that's that's the hard part about that process, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

It is I mean nailed it.

Speaker 1:

Yep. So, man, ian, your transparency has been great. I love the authenticity of the conversation where you've just said hey, here's the journey we've been through and some things I've learned, some things I'm still learning, and I just really, really appreciate that. What would you say to the person who's thinking about starting their own shop?

Speaker 2:

Starting their own shop. Well, everybody's journey is different. Mine was based around a product and that's where I felt comfortable. So I think any journey needs to be met with calculation, and then if you over-calculate, you won't ever do it. So there's nothing wrong with investing in yourself, giving it a chance and trying, and that's exactly what I did. So I took some risk, invested in myself and definitely look back not regretting any of that.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, man. What a great, great encouragement. Hey, one thing I love to do is what I call the speed feed round, and so I'm going to throw some questions at you. You just answer your first thoughts on it. And for those that don't know, ian and I are both in the Kansas City area and people may have heard the Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl. I don't know if you're a Chiefs fan or not, or if you even care, but if you were given two Super Bowl tickets, who would you take to the Super Bowl with you?

Speaker 2:

Two Super Bowl tickets. I would take my wife and probably my office manager, CEO, which happens to be my wife's sister.

Speaker 1:

Office manager, CEO, which happens to be my wife's sister. Okay, very fun, very fun. You guys are going to have some fun in New Orleans, if that's the case, right?

Speaker 2:

We will.

Speaker 1:

Very good. So those early morning shifts. I know you guys don't necessarily start at 5 am, but on those early mornings, what are you going to have in your hand for keeping yourself awake? Is it going to be coffee, energy drinks, soda, what do you? What do you consume?

Speaker 2:

So I am a lover of caffeine Coffee is a go-to, and then, unfortunately, I happen to also like those energy drinks. So any of the caffeinated energy drinks that are that are zero calorie or zero sugar, yeah, that's.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of my jam that are zero calorie or zero sugar. Yeah, that's kind of my jam Gotcha, gotcha Very good.

Speaker 2:

And, in your opinion, what's the greatest threat to manufacturing right now? Oh, I think the greatest threat to manufacturing is that young people don't know the trade exists, and once they start to figure it out and the speed in which this industry is changing, I'm fearful that the young people coming up will think that it's too daunting of a task to learn it, and I think that is, yeah, just very detrimental.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, really appreciate that. What is one tool in your leadership tool belt you couldn't live without?

Speaker 2:

Kathy.

Speaker 1:

Kathy, my friend, yeah, yeah, I love it. And she's your what? She's my sister-in-law, she's your office manager or CEO, did you say?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, basically she runs the place essentially, so if I'm gone, she's, she's our easy button with with pretty much anything operations. But, uh, to be to answer the question a little more seriously the probably the one thing I think I'm really good at, uh, is a no flinch rule, so I don't flinch when I'm given the information. So, um, I hate, I hate that people try to deliver me information to or curate the way they deliver me information based on how they think I would react to it. Um, I'm more of a give me the information. Let me handle my emotions and I'll keep those in check. I need to know the truth and give me the information raw and straight to the point.

Speaker 1:

That's great, hey, and I have to say this you kind of said the first one was joking, but I'm going to actually lean into that because and I think I may have mentioned this a few episodes ago there's a book called who, not how, by Dr Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, and the whole principle of that book is you've got to quit thinking about how to get something done and find the who, who can get it done for you, and that's how you multiply your business. And similar principles can be found in 10x and some of those other writings and stuff. But your first answer made a lot of sense too. So, uh, hey, uh. Last thing, uh, we've learned a little bit about your business and stuff. Is there anything that's just a passion point of yours that if we were able to start the whole episode over, you'd be like man, I wish we could talk about this because we're so passionate about it.

Speaker 2:

Gosh, you know? No, not really. But one thing I will say that is something that I try to work on is I try not to take stress home, and the way I'm able to do that is my kids are still young, so when I show up at home they still greet me at the pickup door. They think I'm a superhero and I shed all that stress and try to make sure that I'm still a superhero for them and I don't ever want to bring that work stress home. I don't want them to know whether or not I had a good day or a bad day, you know type of deal. I'm always just dad. They're superhero and that's a point of pride. I guess that I just try to keep that normal for them.

Speaker 1:

So burdens of business aren't brought home. That's awesome, dude. This has been such a great interview. Thank you so much for making yourself available for it. I think you've encouraged a lot of people in this, and keep doing what you're doing and keep growing. A great company, my friend.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Thanks for the time.

Speaker 1:

It's been a pleasure Take care.