In this episode, we sit down with John Zmuda, President of Moseys Production Machinists, to uncover how his team revolutionized their operations by ditching outdated manual processes. From the frustrations of late-night spreadsheet marathons to unlocking double-digit growth, John shares the transformative impact of adopting modern ERP and QMS software.
Learn how transitioning to a machine shop ERP system gave Moseys the tools to streamline workflows, improve customer communication, and free up time for strategic growth. Hear firsthand how Joanna, the company’s customer service lead, shifted from time-consuming order entry to proactive client engagement.
John also dives into how automation and digitization have boosted team morale, attracted younger talent, and created a culture of innovation and collaboration. Discover the hidden costs of manual workflows and why investing in modern tools is essential for thriving in today’s competitive manufacturing landscape.
If you’re still juggling spreadsheets and paper trails, this episode will inspire you to rethink how you run your business. Don’t miss it!
👉 Tune in to learn how modern ERP can unlock your shop’s potential.
Personal LI: /john-zmuda-7725bb3b/
Company LI: /moseys-cnc-machine-shop/
Website: https://moseys.com/
Paul at 0:04:hey John good to see you here on the podcast welcome to the show
Guest at 0:06:Oh thank you good to see you as well
Guest at 0:35:Anaheim just south of Placentia so
Guest at 0:38:Anaheim
Paul at 0:44: we had a good time in Denver or Golden Colorado at the EGS event recently and just chatting and I said you know what John you’d be fantastic to have on the show so just as a little bit of intro you are the president or congratulations on getting that promotion of mosey’s production machinist in Southern California are you in Santa Ana where exactly are you Anaheim
Paul at 0:45: you’re in Anaheim
Paul at 0:45: okay
Paul at 0:57: and you’ve been an employee in that business for a very long time and as I said just took over as president not too long ago so let’s give us a little bit of a background on you and the company and then a snapshot of maybe what Moses looks like today and then we’ll get into more detail
Guest at 1:18:All right well I’ve been in a manufacturing specifically contract machine shop for about 30 years now started much smaller companies running machines making oil tool parts and those companies technician out were sold or whatever happened to them ended up here
Paul at 1:22:okay
Guest at 1:37:In 99 so I’ve been here since 1999 every just about every physician within the Oregon organization except finance so started running machines cleaning machine setting up machines got into some light programming fixture design
Guest at 2:09:Supervisory roles throughout the years ended up director of operations about 10 years ago and from there to slowly gain more responsibility chief ops officer and now president COO so the owner has mostly retired he stops by a couple times a week to hang out and see what’s going on and and it’s good source of advice and information but pretty much hands off at this point
Guest at 2:13:Kid does he calls us or now running the business
Guest at 2:18:Yeah
Guest at 2:31:Yeah he is that
Paul at 2:34:those kids were 30 years of experience yeah Bob was on machine shop Mastery podcast and was a wonderful guest as you can imagine and just yeah wealth of wisdom and it’s super solid human being so yeah and the business was started by his father is that right
Guest at 2:48:That’s correct they started the business in 1975 his dad Freddy and I hope I don’t get this wrong I’ve heard it a lot of times so I think I have it now but his dad
Paul at 3:13: yeah
Guest at 3:13:Was a onesie to the machinist prototype and mold I believe it was in mold and decided that he didn’t wanna make one of anything anymore so started a company to do production work and shortly after that brought brought Bob on when he came out of the Air Force he started working in the business and been building the business ever since
Guest at 3:24:My wife and I started here like I said in 99 she started a little bit before me we weren’t married at the time we got married after but
Paul at 3:24: but you knew each other before you started
Guest at 3:28:No we met each other here
Paul at 3:30: oh you you met her here oh nice I love that story I love it
Guest at 3:55:Yeah so the workplace romance turned marriage and we’ve been we’ve been together ever since but now we were with Nick Bob son he is in the CFO position so Christie is chief human resources Nick is CFO and I am president COO and we were headed to detour so we’re taking it from here
Paul at 4:04: it’s a powerful combination there that’s awesome and so let’s give a little bit of the snapshot of what Moses looks like today who you serve number of machines or people or whatever
Guest at 4:20:So where were 22 spindles we serve aerospace medical device laboratory side we do some oil tool some natural gas
Guest at 4:23:A little bit of EV
Paul at 4:46:okay
Guest at 4:47:That’s pretty much anything that comes in on on contract it has sufficient volume for our capabilities we don’t really do one or two piece orders anymore it doesn’t fit the structure of the business we do a lot of automation so quantity is what fits us best were 3033 people today so 33 people right now
Paul at 4:48: yeah
Guest at 5:02:Well we’ll stay that size for the foreseeable future that’s what the automation is allowed us to do in our our milling and turning and five turning works centers so
Paul at 5:03: yeah you have a bunch of robots in that place
Guest at 5:05:Yeah
Paul at 5:06: so it’s fun place to tour around for sure
Paul at 5:10: yeah
Guest at 5:12:Fun place to be we have a lot of a lot of cool stuff going on
Paul at 5:17: yeah so can you just go back a couple years and describe
Paul at 5:27: maybe what decisions led up to you deciding you needed a different management system to help run the business with but you know we got introduced and started talking with you guys
Guest at 5:27:Oh
Paul at 5:56:got it okay
Guest at 5:57:Absolutely we were we were on an ERP system before we were on pro shop that was the sequel based very very much like an older dust space type system with a lot of tab and black screens and just very dated they updated the system put a user in her face to it but the function of it was the same it was a great system for the financial side it did really good
Paul at 6:06: right
Guest at 6:19:There and scheduling was fairly strong but everything else was lacking it it didn’t involve quality at all so scheduling and finance was all the CRP we’re looking for something more to capture operational data to close the single point of failure gaps that we had in people
Paul at 6:34:yeah
Guest at 6:39:Setting up and operating through memory through experience rather than data so we started looking for a way to capture the data keep the data and provide the data at the source of work and push-up came along we interviewed a few different RPS
Guest at 7:00:At the time pro shop was absolutely the strongest at getting that data and providing it to the people after the source of work so we made a move it was a fun move because it wasn’t just the RP that we changed a little lesson for everybody that may may hear this we changed our ERP we’ve added
Guest at 7:17:Technical difficulty we added we added quality system in QA and QuickBooks all at the same time oh and quoting up in paper parts all at the same time
Paul at 7:18:wow that’s a lot of changes
Paul at 7:25: yeah go all in okay
Guest at 7:30:Yeah well if you’re gonna do it I guess just do it so we did it yeah it was it was fun not really fun but it was a little bit of fun
Paul at 7:31: well we’ll get
Guest at 7:33:Lotta stress a lot of hours
Paul at 7:43: yeah we’ll get into more of that was part of the motivation to capture that operational data and make it more data driven than memory driven was that driven by
Paul at 7:57: like your Workforce like this silver tsunami Baby Boomers you know lots of retirements of this these people that have been in the business for years I know that’s that’s been a theme and many shops that I’ve talked with
Paul at 8:16:got it
Paul at 8:21: sure but it was
Guest at 8:22:100% that’s the driving factor in making a big change for us was the fact that we had we had several people and some of them had a couple two people had already admitted the business that took a lot with them we were able to recover of course and get back on
Paul at 8:24: probably hard right
Guest at 8:43:We got yeah I know it was absolutely hard a lot of wasted time and a lot of cost that we wouldn’t have to we wouldn’t have gone through if we had something in place that had that you’re still gonna have a learning curve because having the data is not the complete solution there is there is skill and experience
Paul at 8:44: oh of course
Guest at 8:52:That that’s required but at least if you have the directions you can get there without the directions you have to reinvent the wheel
Guest at 9:01:Yeah
Paul at 9:04: yeah it’s like trying to bake a cookie without even knowing what the ingredients are if you don’t have a recipe you could be a great chef but you’re not going to make the same cookie without knowing what’s goes into it
Guest at 9:04:No
Guest at 9:17:Oh
Paul at 9:19: so it was the the complexity or cost or expensive that those missing those people was it just in like longer setup times and like Reinventing the wheel for how parts were made or higher scrap rate or like what went into that
Guest at 9:24:If you can think of it we’ve probably experienced it
Guest at 9:51:Scrap there was cost there was lagging time there was OTD hits we had we suffered in metrics it hit the business in the end because the people that left they weren’t operators or just said that people we were looking at senior level design people that built fixtures and rope programs were looking at the quality manager
Paul at 9:51:got it got it
Guest at 9:54:Yeah it was a big hit
Paul at 10:03: sure
Paul at 10:06: yeah
Paul at 10:07: got it
Guest at 10:12:That we would’ve suffered either way because it was it was time those people were leaving it wasn’t anything that that was we were we were blindsided by it but we were ready for it either so that was a big driver to close those gaps
Guest at 10:27:Is it absolutely
Paul at 10:27: yeah no I’m sure there’s some bittersweet you know wishing a cherished coworker a good retirement but at the same time like holy crap what are we going to do without this person right so yeah
Paul at 10:35: all right so you assess several systems decided on Pro Shop thank you very much for that
Paul at 10:41: and so when when exactly was that can you refresh all of our memories
Guest at 10:49:I was 21 yeah
Paul at 10:49: 2021 okay so also coming out of covid
Paul at 11:07: yeah and besides that one system can you think of you know other systems other spreadsheets other little databases things that you were using to maybe accommodate for the fact that it didn’t have quality and operational data and sort of combine all those things into one
Guest at 11:07:Oh yeah
Guest at 11:41:So the operational data we were using Excel before that we had forms that we would fill out and then photocopy upload those to the server and then the operators and instead of people would get those those handwritten forms for the set up that were legible sort of they would write all over them and then turn it back in the programmer would decipher that and then rewrite the form photocopy it or scan it put it back in the in the server again
Guest at 12:18:Our metrics is where we were missing the most we had to do the most deep dive without a good system that we had to go in in mind our sequel server and use it was Microsoft access at the time Excel and access and combination to build metrics and we’re really big on on metrics we’d like to understand our outside delivery our cost our revenue efficiencies utilization we roll it up into OEE score and publish it for everybody to see and understand
Guest at 12:46:And we had that was all manual and then I was the one that used excel and wrote the formulas then then put that in access and built the forms and and did all of that and if it broke I had to remember and re-teach myself how I did all of them it was it was a lot of work and a lot of time put into changes updates and fixes when they needed to be done and you know Microsoft love to update when they do
Guest at 12:54:Things things tend to not work the same anymore sometimes so as his risk
Paul at 13:05:yeah yeah and I imagine and I imagine all that work you were doing was taking away from actually working you know on operational improvements and whatever in the business itself you’re just like spending time putting numbers together
Paul at 13:14: oh well okay
Paul at 13:20: holy cow
Guest at 13:31:Well yes and no it took mostly away from family time personal time it was after hours when I would I would go home and work till 10 11 o’clock at night building spreadsheets and doing all that it wasn’t it wasn’t miserable I enjoy doing but it just wasn’t value added for for anybody long-term
Paul at 13:34: you had your wife feel about you working till 10:00 at night on spreadsheets
Guest at 13:40:That she was fine she had to go watch TV and left I left her remote
Guest at 13:43:Yeah
Guest at 13:51:Yeah we switched I got free time she’s gonna bug me
Paul at 13:55: so you got so you got free time once you got Pro Shop in place is that is that what you’re alluding to
Paul at 13:59: right yeah
Guest at 14:23:Sure all of the systems the paperless push shop we were on haiku we’re not anymore on a different different system now same basic premise automatic balloon tagging in and recordkeeping but once we put those systems in place and figured out how to get them to work together and work for us the way that we do things cause we’re a little bit different we have a 10 to kinda do things our own way so once we got all that to jail
Guest at 14:44:Yeah I opened up quite a bit of time for all of us not just me but everybody here that we’re moving papers and peeing and information all day there they’re not doing that anymore now they have time to talk to customers and talk to employees and and build culture which is essential in any business
Paul at 14:52:yeah I definitely get the impression When I visit Moses that you guys have a really solid culture a team that’s really bought in
Guest at 14:55:Can you
Paul at 14:55: and just as a good place to be
Guest at 15:03:Dinosaur started an accident it took a lot of work to get there a lot of years and we made a lot of mistakes along the way
Paul at 15:22: well I do want to come back to that but let’s talk for a moment about the fact that you decided to undertake I know your Erp quoting quality and accounting software changes all at once and you said it was fun but not actually fun can you just elaborate a little bit more on what that process was like
Guest at 15:27:It was brutal
Guest at 15:31:Yeah it was brutal
Guest at 16:13:We had a lot of good support from all the software’s involved so so everybody helped us on board and they helped us figure it out there’s a lot to bringing in bringing in a semi automated system in the background that you have to do still so it’s not easy not to plug-in play depending on I guess how deep you wanna go with it it doesn’t always plug to play and for us we wanted to go all the way in and understand every aspect of it so we spend a lot of hours in training with
Guest at 16:39:Paperless parts team pro shops team high QA team learning basically how to set the systems up so they could work with each other as efficiently as possible for us it was just a lot a lot of weekly training three of the five days we would be in some kind of webinar or group training learning how to do things and then practicing that after so
Paul at 16:39:sure
Guest at 16:42:You know
Paul at 16:46: if in hindsight would you choose to spread those apart and not do them all at the same time
Guest at 16:58:I’ll see probably but most likely now I probably just do it again it’s got it done with you
Paul at 17:01: just rip the Band-Aid off and make the timeline shorter what was the timeline do you remember from when you started
Paul at 17:04: till when you were kind of running work orders and
Paul at 17:07: having those work fairly well together
Paul at 17:19: okay
Paul at 17:22: right
Guest at 17:38:Oil pressure throttle this back gratefully so it probably if it was a good thing but we were trying to do it the first week I said no no no limitation specialist said no no we’re gonna we’re gonna follow this work order which is the training work order built-in and we’re gonna do this to the schedule and you’ll you’ll understand why as we progress and it didn’t take longer to understand why we had to do it in order but it was
Guest at 17:42:We were working off live orders on a live schedule
Guest at 17:51:I don’t remember really but I’m gonna stay no more than three months into the process
Guest at 17:53:Yeah
Paul at 18:08:very good do you remember as you went through that was there a moment where there was a feature or something that you realize how it was going to work or how the with the impact might be that you were like wow this is going to be a game changer for us
Guest at 18:19:Yes the ability to issue NCR on the fly at the source
Paul at 18:32: sure
Guest at 18:41:By the operator was really important and the way that we sold it to the operator but nobody wants to ride in not bad you’re a bad guy you made a bad part it’s not true you need to capture that data I’m afraid of it so you can look at what is causing
Guest at 19:11:These deficiencies or defects in process or product that we can eliminate and you don’t have to worry about anymore the only way you’re gonna be able to do that is to capture all the data points and say OK what’s my largest what’s my largest target here where can I make the most impact with the least amount of of change and let’s let’s handle that first and we were able to start doing that where you’re never gonna get never never it’s hard to get
Guest at 19:37:People on the floor that are really passionate about what they’re doing they’re dedicated and they they care about cycle times and they care about about process to stop and grab a piece of paper in a pan and write down a problem or compose an email or do the things that you don’t have if you don’t have an automated Avenue to do with with pro shop we were given that
Guest at 19:41:And they absolutely use it
Guest at 19:43:What
Paul at 19:48:so did it take much to get them to buy in that this is not a bad thing it’s a learning opportunity for improvement in the future
Guest at 20:05:No a couple conversations and some reassurance that this isn’t a tool for punishment or not nobody’s using this to judge you it’s us to be able to judge our process and the tools that we’re providing you and are we do we as the management
Guest at 20:35:Group are we doing a good job making sure that you have the right the right Plainfield so it’s about us not about you and you know that that took a minute to just see once that seated it was easy get constant NCR activity skipped the tool tip and things that never would’ve even been thought of before they were just replacing replacing insert and an NCR about this tool chip too early
Guest at 20:37:So we need help
Paul at 20:44:and has and is that really improved your rate of improvement and you know those the sort of root causes of things like that
Guest at 20:47:Double digit growth
Paul at 20:53: and that’s one of the factors your ability to make those improvements
Paul at 20:54: have a system for that
Guest at 20:58:Absolutely being able to on board
Guest at 21:14:Crushing a amount of work and a timeframe that would’ve been impossible before because we would’ve been too busy chasing down why why did this why did this go wrong what happened or what happened now we know that we can act so much faster
Paul at 21:15:that’s very cool
Guest at 21:16:So yeah
Paul at 21:27: I love it yeah that mind shift from ncr’s or bad to ncr’s or opportunities for improvement is I wish something that every shop would Embrace and obviously there are you know
Paul at 21:36: to be able to do it more quickly and have less cost per NCR as opposed to writing a paper ticket and you know doing all the
Paul at 21:43: that’s of course an important I
Guest at 21:45:Yeah
Paul at 21:46: yeah it was interviewing another customer who
Paul at 21:48: said that
Paul at 21:58: that they had the same exact shift and they said we’re putting together like individualized training plans for different employees based on their NCR activity
Paul at 22:09: it’s like you know you need to learn a little bit more about this or that you know based on what we see in the data so and their teams feel supported and it’s not punishment and it’s you know
Paul at 22:12: there for growth and success so yeah
Paul at 22:14: good for you guys that’s awesome
Guest at 22:16:Thank you
Paul at 22:22: I remember when we came and did a sort of a testimonial video
Paul at 22:52: that sounds like the process in your office and order entry was dramatically reduced the time frame and just the the lack of having to do all the paper I forget the name of the woman she’s just incredibly sweet one of your order entry customer service people but she was like yeah it’s completely changed my day my week and now I can spend way more time actually talking with customers like you said can you celebrate a little bit on sort of what happened in that front end process
Paul at 22:56: yes of course Joanna
Paul at 23:14: right
Guest at 23:16:Awesome that would be Joanna and she takes care of all of our customers she’s she’s all day on the phone talking to customer and email him on teams and text messages will be every every way you can contact somebody she utilizing and so are they now they love it they love the openness of communication
Guest at 23:35:But that’s what that’s what the automated order entry is as automated as it is the the availability of the technology and pro shop allowed us are allowed her to not spend so much time key
Guest at 24:09:In every piece of data into a sequel base system so I’ll freed up a lot of time and the ability to get information so much faster and she’s on a conference call with important customer and they’re doing waterfalls trying to find out exactly when they’re gonna have these parts they want to expediter or whatever the case may be the data is in instantaneous you can pull the work order up there is there’s no searching through different fields and screens and tabbing through screen compiling data off of seven or eight Different
Guest at 24:16:Different windows to get to where you need to be it’s right in front of you
Paul at 24:19:and what is the reaction from customers been to that increased level of responsiveness or service
Paul at 24:29: okay
Guest at 24:29:They they like it that the biggest response that we get from anybody is from customer auditors
Guest at 25:07:They liked the fact that we do have all the data at our fingertips and it’s preserved they like to the set up information and everything is captured and done in a very user-friendly and reader friendly way so they really like that they liked at the quality side of things integrated into the ERP so it gives you connection that you can track cost to errors you can track the effect OTD on errors I mean or from errors you can do all of that so it’s it’s really a good System
Guest at 25:26:We haven’t had a customer not like it yet the only comment that we got from a customer this is a really really strange supplier quality engineer and and she came in and let us it
Guest at 25:32:Was fantastic absolutely fantastic
Paul at 25:32:what it can yeah share more about that
Guest at 25:58:It was just about bond bonded parts in about recordkeeping and about all these things that were really micro details that any auditor for like an AST or or surveillance may point out as an opportunity for improvement but she drilled into it
Guest at 26:22:And her only complain about the system was that we couldn’t configure the HTML side to do things like audio alerts and flashing text and really draw out if you had a nonconformance ever and in your life on a part number it shit it should buzz the city of Anaheim should be aware
Guest at 26:25:So
Paul at 26:46:right
Guest at 26:51:You know I get it I get it but that’s my fault not pro shop’s fault because I’m able to go into those those I believe they’re called iFrame boxes and look at the HTML and I’ve played with it enough and gotten and googled enough now that I can actually bold and color text and I can do things that affect how notes look at how work order operational notes look
Paul at 27:03: really like audio alerts and have speakers on every computer
Guest at 27:06:That kind of gave her what she was looking for but then that wasn’t enough now she wants she wants me to attach wave files and you know yeah yeah hey you know maybe that’s a suggestion but
Paul at 27:08: well that’s funny
Guest at 27:10:It was deep
Paul at 27:24: and I presume you’ve you’ve experimented with just going to the preferences and changing the type of text editor for a field to the wizzy wig type so you can make it just big and bold and red and underlined and whatever you feel like
Guest at 27:29:Actually no I instead I did it the hard way
Guest at 27:35:Yeah
Paul at 27:39: maybe all right maybe you and I should talk maybe you and I shouldn’t talk after we hit it stop on this cuz yeah any notes field like notes that flow on parts that flow to work orders or
Guest at 27:46:OK
Guest at 27:48:Sure
Paul at 27:50: yeah pretty much universally you can do that without having to HTML it so yeah let’s let’s talk more after this but I’m glad that surfaced but that’s a really funny story
Paul at 28:24: I have have some of the the maybe the more the more reasonable quality Auditors from your customers do you believe I have this supposition that when when a customer you know your customer sends in their quality team to do an audit that if they feel highly confident that is more likely to translate into more orders with your company like this is one of our vendors we want to double down with and grow more with do you feel like there’s been an impact in
Paul at 28:34: in the work you’ve gotten because they feel like you’re just a really together vendor that’s that’s less risky maybe than others that have don’t have a stable systems
Guest at 28:51:I would say absolutely yes and I have I have not had confirmation of that from a customer saying well because of your ERP system we are going to give you more work
Guest at 29:16:But we’ve been growing and we weren’t growing at that rate before so it’s coming from from something and it’s not just personality it’s the system it’s how the company is operating it’s trust they trust us and they trust us because we’re able to give them what they want when they want it with certainty and accuracy
Guest at 29:36:So you know we do what we say we’re gonna do and the only reason the only way we’re able to do what we say we’re good we say I’m pretty face the only way we’re able to do that is because we have a good system that that allows us to be able to see what we need to see to make those commitments and then then hold to them
Paul at 29:37:yeah yeah that’s a great way to put it
Paul at 29:42: do you have any sense of
Paul at 29:50: the return on investment of your Pro Shop subscription cost to the bottom line or top line or whatever of your business
Guest at 30:13:So we we are getting our money out of it for sure I don’t have I don’t have math that I can show you right now for that but every bit of the cost of per shop is is returned to us in time back hundred percent
Paul at 30:23: it’s Time Savings like labor overhead labor and even on the shop floor is that you think sort of the biggest impact just doing more and less time
Guest at 30:41:It’s mostly in an overhead the shop floor we had an MES system in place before so we were standing travelers they were fairly automated was still paper base but they were fairly automated it’s just a travel was our big big sore point
Guest at 30:57:But the overhead side the administrative side is incredibly faster the purchasing side of things is incredibly faster all of that has given those people the ability to work on the business
Guest at 31:28:With me instead of just doing the day-to-day tasks we can strategize now we can we can try things experiment and build new relationships with outside processing and find new material sources and leave the building our procurement managers is out a lot visiting and learning he’s on board on the board now he’s learning and making connections where before he was at desk punching in
Guest at 31:30:Purchase order information
Paul at 31:32:that’s
Guest at 31:35:So yeah it’s beneficial for sure
Paul at 31:44: that’s cool I have not heard an anecdote quite like that that’s really cool cuz yeah getting outside the building and getting more I mean you know being part of ntma and
Paul at 31:52: these groups there’s so much great learning so much great networking and you know pure collaboration so that’s wonderful
Guest at 32:13:Of something that Bob did for me early on is give me involved in associations and networking in meeting people I’m not naturally good at that I’m not I’ll talk to you all day but you gotta start the conversation and you gotta ask me questions or else we’re just gonna stay here and stare at each other
Guest at 32:29:So if it’s not my sweet spot but he pushed me out and got me involved in it you mean through TMA I’ve been able to learn an unbelievable amount of
Guest at 32:56:Mostly how to act and how to think about things so through through their associations I’ve been to other countries I’ve been to multitude of shops and you know very well you visited times of shops how much you learned from just being someplace else and seeing other peoples activities and other people stop process how much you can absorb from that
Guest at 33:23:And I’ve had the opportunity to do that I’m trying to position us now so that our people can go to the same kinds of things in and spring of time is the way you do it and that’s that’s how we our strategy and automation and all of that is to be able to free up time so people can use use their abilities that are the strongest and the strongest abilities their butts their thought processor
Paul at 33:30:yeah yeah
Paul at 33:38: sure
Paul at 33:38: yeah
Paul at 33:43: yeah
Guest at 33:44:Cognitive power is not the hands of robots can live on machines we need people processing and thinking and discovering and planning and making mistakes lots of mistakes that’s where we try to keep them as low cost as possible but lots of mistakes
Guest at 33:48:When they have time they do that and then they grow
Paul at 34:19: I just had a thought and I’ll just share it here you know you know we have lots of clients and all sorts of places many near you would it be useful if we helped facilitate like collaborative shop tours of you know you go visit another Pro Shop client with your team and then they come and visit your client your site with their team and you guys like share ideas not just around Pro Shop it’s around things in general would that be something that would be useful to you
Paul at 34:23: okay
Paul at 34:37: yeah
Paul at 34:40: yeah sure it’s
Guest at 34:45:Yeah we do that now to a small degree but something structured with it with specific intentions would not would not be a bad bad idea but we do share now we have forums and we we talk we’re small community you know large community there’s lots of shops but we’re smaller than you would take
Paul at 34:47: tighten it yeah yeah especially in a local local region
Guest at 34:48:Yeah very tight
Paul at 35:06: so you mentioned you used to work late into the night on spreadsheets and you don’t and now your wife has to deal with you in the evening you just share a little bit more of maybe the personal impact on the the changes that you guys have made in the business in the last few years
Guest at 35:13:Yeah the personal impact is well personal gross of course
Guest at 35:16:Getting time back
Guest at 35:26:And then being able to reinvest that time and other areas of the business I’ve been really really helpful
Guest at 35:45:But a lot of of it is being able to invest in ourselves as well so we invest a great deal of time in the company while we’re here during the day and then at night discussing and and researching and learning and talking to other people
Guest at 36:11:But a lot it’s not just sitting in front of a laptop punching in and formula now it’s it’s learning more than discovering the metrics that should’ve been just provided to you so yeah it’s it’s a shift instead of running the business from the business and from the house that we can run the business from the business and then grow help grow the business from the house
Paul at 36:30:has we talked about culture a little bit earlier do you feel like there’s been a change in any of the culture aspects of the business with a more digitization of the company with all these different tools that you brought on
Guest at 36:41:Yes or whenever you start digitizing you become more relevant to the younger generation
Guest at 36:50:So we’ve been able to find some talent that we probably wouldn’t have been able to acquire otherwise
Guest at 37:21:Where we get constant compliments on how clean and organize everything is in a lot of that is because it’s there’s not paper everywhere there’s not bloopers hanging up nothing hanging off the machines anymore there’s no magnets on the machines holding up paper after paper it doesn’t look like a billboard so that all of that helps you whether you realize it or not when someone walks out on your floor and they just look out
Guest at 37:50:Organization affects machines being straight rose tidy lack of clutter all of that affects and whether they say that or not or they even realize it or not at all affects and I can’t really qualify the business growth based around that but I can I can’t quantify the positive comments and we get a lot of positive comments about to shop peers and customers alike
Guest at 37:53:So
Paul at 37:57:that’s cool have you ever you’ve recruited some younger team team members to the back Bill some of those folks retiring
Paul at 38:11: sure
Guest at 38:15:Yes that some youngsters come in some rookies that were working on training them some of them have really grown quickly and they’re doing a fantastic job some a little more work but it’s all it’s all part of the process it’s all work
Paul at 38:21: that’s awesome that’s awesome do you think your average employee age has shifted down in the last 3 years 4 years
Paul at 38:30: no cool
Paul at 38:39: right sure
Guest at 38:55:I would say so we have several people in their 20s we have a couple in their 30s and then there’s there’s a big difference it goes to your 20s couple in your 30s and now the rest of us are in our 50s or 60s so there’s still a big gap there but we are able to bring in some younger people and from places one of our procurement people she came from Nordstrom now it’s purchasing but she was purchasing she was in stocking
Paul at 39:09: cool
Guest at 39:15:But because of the system and the interest in what the company offer her an education she’s exploding and growing rapidly and purchasing so yeah we could’ve done that before it would’ve been an old system that’s like I said
Guest at 39:24:Based looking and clunky and hard to navigating and understand that that’s not attractive
Paul at 39:25: yeah yeah for sure
Paul at 39:28: well that I love I love hearing that
Paul at 39:34: as we look to kind of start to wrap up this conversation a little bit
Paul at 39:45: I’d love to hear what your biggest wins and sort of best strategic moves and just as a business in general of any type that has helped Moses been so successful over the years
Guest at 39:51:The biggest thing that helped us grow is responsiveness
Guest at 40:06:We don’t ever not answer the call or delay the conversation he just we handled it right away and we handle it with with data with
Guest at 40:29:Soft skills and we make sure that the buyer or the manager that’s on the other end of the line is comfortable when they hang up the phone they understand what they’re gonna get in there and they’re comfortable that they’re gonna get it and then when the time comes for them to receive what we promised him they get it no matter what I think that’s the single single
Guest at 40:58:The biggest thing that has helped us capture more work from existing customers as well as new work which is hard to convey that to somebody who’s never met you before until they talk to us twice maybe three times and they say oh well you guys are you guys are about about your business you are you are responsive in your emails soon as the quote comes in we’re on it we start working with them asking them questions
Guest at 41:16:Suggesting things that maybe maybe we see that could be beneficial and you know half the time they’re receptive the other half to say just want a price and a time and that’s it but you know where you’re going from there you know you know how that’s gonna shape up pretty quickly
Guest at 41:20:So
Paul at 41:20:that’s that’s such good advice we just did a
Paul at 41:42: an episode of the making chips podcast talking about customer service and the lack of it in some companies and just how critical it is for growth and that’s exactly what you’re speaking to you know there’s this old mentality which I think thankfully is going away in the business where and one of the guys shared you know where they have a customer you know inquire about it the status of a job
Paul at 41:50: they didn’t know so they go out and talk to The Machinist and The Machinist says well it’ll be done when it’s done and they’ll get it after it’s done
Guest at 41:54:Yeah yeah
Paul at 41:56: that doesn’t cut it anymore right
Paul at 42:04: sure
Guest at 42:12:And we’ve had that mentality here we have people here that will answer you like that but you just follow that up it’s OK so when will that be I need to know I have a customer waiting on an answer I have to know so I’m not leaving your station until I understand so when will it be
Guest at 42:18:You’re gonna get all kinds and all different places
Paul at 42:20: sure
Paul at 42:42: one last question and then I want to ask about how people can reach out to Moses if they want to learn more can you picture for me if you had not put Pro Shop and maybe even paperless and the other tools in place 3 years ago what the business might look like today if you were still on your old you know your old system old we are doing things
Guest at 42:45:I think
Guest at 42:52:From a growth perspective we would probably be
Guest at 43:08:Sorry it’s a really hard to say probably a half probably half to 2/3 of what we were able to accomplish we would still have gotten done but we would all be beat up
Guest at 43:33:I think just because of the great that the individuals that run the show here and I mean the whole stuff not just the sweet people let everybody the great determination to win that they have this we would’ve still got a lot of it done it just would’ve been unbelievably taxing and we wouldn’t have a chance to learn
Guest at 44:07:More about what’s coming in the future and what’s available to us now in AI and and API stuff and and everything that’s out there we would’ve learned probably zero about all of that now we were learning about that and we’re we’re starting to formulate what’s next and we wouldn’t be making any plans we would’ve just been busy working you know so it would’ve kept us kept us from working on their business and we only would’ve been working in the business so that’s a tragedy because you can’t you can’t sustain you’re over your growth like that
Guest at 44:10:Eventually you hit a wall then we were approaching
Paul at 44:11:oh of course yeah you’ll burn out absolutely lose people yeah
Paul at 44:22: well it’s it it definitely feels great to be able to contribute to to the success of you and your team and the business there so thank you for the opportunity
Guest at 44:25:Thank you
Paul at 44:33: so yes if people want to learn more and reach out to you know this incredibly capable machine shop that you run how would you suggest they do that
Paul at 44:45: just moses.com okay nice
Guest at 44:51:You can reach out to us on LinkedIn Moses or you can reach out to us at www.moses.com website sir our email me directly at John [email protected]
Paul at 44:53: okay very good
Guest at 44:55:And we’ll chat
Paul at 45:00: yeah well John it’s such a pleasure again to get to spend some time and chat with you
Paul at 45:09: just very excited about the future of Moses and what you’re doing with it and it’s an honor to support you guys and thanks for being willing to share your story
Guest at 45:14:A pleasure chatting with you too Paul thank you for all your support
Paul at 45:16: yeah you bet all right cheers my friend
