00:00:05:00 – 00:00:13:23
Unknown
Sean James. Welcome to the Manufacturing Transfer podcast. I’m so glad to have you guys here today.
00:00:13:25 – 00:00:36:04
Unknown
Yes. So you guys have a absolutely fascinating story about starting the business. and I would love to have you guys start by sharing how you decided to start Servant Solutions and what that journey has been like.
00:00:36:07 – 00:01:24:07
Unknown
Yeah.
00:01:24:09 – 00:01:57:25
Unknown
Oh. That’s cool.
00:01:57:27 – 00:02:26:06
Unknown
Yeah.
00:02:26:09 – 00:02:46:10
Unknown
So you had to start charging, making some money to buy all the tools so you could keep doing some machining. Right? It’s like this is cycle. You got to feed.
00:02:46:13 – 00:03:14:17
Unknown
So, James, did you finish college or did you drop out?
00:03:14:19 – 00:04:38:21
Unknown
Yeah. Couch engineering College would be. That would be my worst nightmare. Quite honestly. Yeah. so how did you get those first jobs that, started bringing some revenue in?
00:04:38:23 – 00:05:09:26
Unknown
Yes, it certainly does. So, is are those inquiries that you’re getting, offload work from other shops or are they actually like OEM companies that just need parts made for their own products or some of each. Okay.
00:05:09:28 – 00:05:17:04
Unknown
Got it.
00:05:17:06 – 00:06:03:27
Unknown
Right.
00:06:03:29 – 00:06:59:08
Unknown
Yeah. It looks like you’re in a industrial space now. so how long was it before you moved out? you needed to. And you obviously have more than one talk now. So what have you added for machines and what size space.
00:06:59:10 – 00:07:26:13
Unknown
Okay.
00:07:26:16 – 00:07:50:03
Unknown
Nice. And you now have. Yeah. Go ahead. James.
00:07:50:05 – 00:09:13:08
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, it really does. And you’ve added more equipment since, right?
00:09:13:11 – 00:09:17:28
Unknown
Right.
00:09:36:07 – 00:09:49:27
Unknown
Yeah.
00:09:50:00 – 00:10:58:19
Unknown
All right. Knock on wood. that is such a fun story. And you had not done machining. You just seen it on YouTube and. Right. You. Neither of you had.
00:10:58:22 – 00:11:18:29
Unknown
I love it so much, man. I wish there were more people that just were geeking out on tool parts and thinking machining is cool and wanting to start shop. So hopefully you are have inspired more and will continue to do so. So as you grew and is it still just the two of you or do you guys have any, employees?
00:11:19:02 – 00:14:05:27
Unknown
Okay, so, tell us about the, I guess the organic organizational side of the business, how you decided ultimately that you needed an ERP. That’s usually not something that a two person shop, decides.
00:15:08:19 – 00:15:25:19
Unknown
Really? Did they specifically say you have to have a system in place? Or how did that go?
00:15:25:22 – 00:15:47:26
Unknown
That’s cool.
00:15:47:29 – 00:16:00:22
Unknown
Oh, wow.
00:16:00:25 – 00:18:49:14
Unknown
Wow. That is an honor to hear that. That’s kind of amazing. What, what has what kind of things has it helped with? And.
00:19:07:04 – 00:20:34:03
Unknown
Very cool. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that. and you’ll see the fruit of that, especially as you start bringing people on and there’s clarity about what they should be doing and how should they be doing it. Right.
00:20:34:05 – 00:20:39:04
Unknown
Yeah.
00:20:39:07 – 00:21:04:02
Unknown
Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah, because recruiting is is sometimes one of the biggest challenges shops have. Find people. and I will mention, we’ve had, we’ve had customers that I know either an employee had to move out of, out of the area for a life reason, and sometimes, depending on their job, they just kept their job and they just run pro shop from five states away.
00:21:04:03 – 00:21:22:07
Unknown
You know, if it’s mostly an office job, it doesn’t really matter if you’re there in person, right?
00:21:34:22 – 00:21:40:14
Unknown
Right.
00:21:40:16 – 00:21:52:14
Unknown
Right.
00:21:52:16 – 00:22:42:20
Unknown
Very cool.
00:22:42:23 – 00:23:19:22
Unknown
That is a. That is a fantastic story. Thank you for sharing that. It reminds me, I was talking to a customer who said that, he was driving home one day and, got a got a call from a customer that was very, urgent. And the customer realized that they had sent a drawing with, I think it was a whole diameter at one size, but the 3D model was at a different size, and they really needed to know, you know what size the hole was, right?
00:23:19:24 – 00:23:37:13
Unknown
Because they. Yeah, they just needed to know that. So he pulled over on the side of the road. He pulled out his you know, he already has phone out, pulled over, pulled up pro shop, went to the work order, went to the push article report. Pulled it up. He said yeah, it’s this this size, this tolerance and this is what it actually measured.
00:23:37:15 – 00:23:56:09
Unknown
And he’s like otherwise because they came off of job boss. He’s like, otherwise I would have had to either drive back home or go in the next day. Go down to the floor, find the job, find the inspection report, look at it on the piece of paper and call my customer back. And instead I could give it to him in like two minutes.
00:23:56:11 – 00:24:17:07
Unknown
And that level of customer support and and responsiveness just made the world of difference. So yeah, but but that was still inside of there. That was not at the top of 12,000ft in the Alps. It’s so cool.
00:24:17:10 – 00:24:45:07
Unknown
Oh, man, I love it. so can you talk about when when I was talking to, actually another set of brothers, that older but a company in Denver, that run pro shop. they said that pro shop has really helped them to minimize mistakes, which minimizes, you know, helps them reduce scrap and rework and actually helps them ship more revenue because they’re just more efficient with their time.
00:24:45:07 – 00:25:43:06
Unknown
Do you have you seen anything like that where you’re actually able to ship, you know, more volume of stuff because it’s easier to organize and you’re making fewer mistakes.
00:25:43:08 – 00:25:52:08
Unknown
Right.
00:25:59:15 – 00:26:36:26
Unknown
Right.
00:26:36:28 – 00:27:01:28
Unknown
Right.
00:27:37:10 – 00:27:55:26
Unknown
Right.
00:28:19:27 – 00:28:30:16
Unknown
So that. That means a couple of things. so are you doing inspection reports in pro shop? You’re doing in for articles and in process.
00:28:30:18 – 00:28:37:18
Unknown
Okay.
00:28:37:21 – 00:28:52:17
Unknown
Okay. For the balloon, for the ballooning and. Yeah.
00:28:52:20 – 00:28:57:24
Unknown
Oh, it’s it’s not the high Q1.
00:28:57:26 – 00:29:02:06
Unknown
Right.
00:29:02:09 – 00:29:18:02
Unknown
Okay.
00:29:18:04 – 00:29:28:24
Unknown
Right.
00:29:28:26 – 00:29:42:10
Unknown
Got it. Now, you’ve also mentioned tooling a couple of times, so it sounds like you might be using push ups. Tooling module. Is that true?
00:29:42:13 – 00:31:34:16
Unknown
Tell us about that.
00:31:43:04 – 00:31:52:01
Unknown
Right.
00:31:52:04 – 00:32:10:27
Unknown
Right.
00:32:11:00 – 00:32:36:02
Unknown
That is. Yeah. That is a universal challenge that every shop has. And even when there’s 50 people, I can tell you, there’s still. It’s hard to find time. But speaking of process improvement and finding time, it sure seems like you guys do a lot of that. You share on social media the lean improvements you make. so you you you seems like you already have a culture of continuous improvement and actually work on it a reasonable amount.
00:32:36:02 – 00:33:01:15
Unknown
Or at least that’s what it looks like.
00:33:01:17 – 00:33:10:11
Unknown
Do you segment lean? Yep.
00:33:10:13 – 00:33:43:12
Unknown
Oh, yeah.
00:33:43:14 – 00:33:54:14
Unknown
Yep.
00:33:54:16 – 00:35:29:27
Unknown
Got it.
00:35:35:11 – 00:35:54:10
Unknown
Right. That’s good.
00:36:44:03 – 00:36:58:26
Unknown
You know.
00:36:58:28 – 00:37:34:12
Unknown
All right.
00:37:40:13 – 00:37:44:08
Unknown
Sure.
00:37:44:10 – 00:38:08:29
Unknown
That’s awesome. Glad to hear that. Yeah. Our product and developer team work very hard pushing out new features. And there’s some been pretty cool exciting ones lately. And, I don’t know if you were on our. I don’t know if you’re on our webinar last week where we sneak. Maybe it was that was this week was earlier this week where we, gave a sneak peek into the next release with some pretty cool new stuff.
00:38:09:01 – 00:38:25:23
Unknown
It’s it’s in the. Yeah, it’s there’s a recording. So.
00:38:25:25 – 00:38:28:27
Unknown
Yeah.
00:38:29:00 – 00:38:53:26
Unknown
Yeah. And I just didn’t know there was a new snapshot feature with the 3D model viewer. So you can spin it into a spot hit snapshot, and it saves that into this new image carousel that we have coming out. So anyway, that’s going to be neat. okay. Where was I going to go next?
00:38:53:28 – 00:39:17:11
Unknown
Oh, I was going to say, if you ever find your way out to Washington, come visit us, because Paul Acres shop is just, like, five minutes from my office here. He he’s Paul acres. You know, fast cap is here in Bellingham. He’s from Bellingham. So.
00:39:17:13 – 00:39:41:05
Unknown
I was at a customer south near Seattle, and they are totally into lean, totally into pro shop as well. And they have their, their their morning lean kaizen meetings every morning. They stand around in a big circle and they do their thing and on their on their corkboard they have they have pro shops, mission statement on their board.
00:39:41:05 – 00:40:02:29
Unknown
And then they have then they have their. So the boards divided in half. It’s like half pro shop, half two second lean. And I’m like I’m like that’s all influence from Bellingham, Washington. And anyway so yeah. yeah. Fast gap is a really cool company. And
00:40:03:01 – 00:40:38:26
Unknown
Well, it’s it’s a single trip. So awesome. what would you say to, you know, I hear the argument, and I, and I, even there was a someone had on LinkedIn recently, the, the small, you know, the topic about ERP and small businesses, small shops and, you know, he said, you know, you basically paying, you know, several thousand dollars a year just for an organizational tool, which doesn’t actually help the bottom line or help the top line.
00:40:38:28 – 00:41:14:00
Unknown
how would you. Yeah, how would you, answer that, having, you know, been through what you’ve been through in the last few years with us?
00:41:50:21 – 00:42:25:07
Unknown
Right. Yeah. Of course.
00:42:25:10 – 00:42:38:21
Unknown
Who did you train with on our team? awesome. And, What’s that?
00:42:38:23 – 00:42:42:19
Unknown
Right.
00:42:42:22 – 00:42:51:19
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:51:21 – 00:43:06:20
Unknown
Yep.
00:43:06:23 – 00:43:16:10
Unknown
Right.
00:43:20:15 – 00:43:34:03
Unknown
Right. Yeah. And Kevin came from a shop that used pro shop. So he used it on a daily basis himself.
00:43:34:05 – 00:43:44:13
Unknown
Right.
00:43:44:15 – 00:43:49:16
Unknown
Right.
00:43:49:18 – 00:44:13:21
Unknown
Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The fact that we, you know, pretty much almost universally hire that our training and implementation and staff from other shops or, you know, deep machine shop experience and often pro shop users themselves is just, Yeah. Because we’ve had those same calls where we’ve had like, you know, I used to work at a company that used pro shop.
00:44:13:23 – 00:44:34:09
Unknown
I had to move or something, you know, whatever. And I’d like to come work for pro shop, you know, and it’s like, oh, you already have pro shop experience and you want to come work here. It’s like, yes, please. So that’s perfect. James, I want to talk about the you talked about Facebook groups, or groups, early.
00:44:34:12 – 00:45:47:19
Unknown
you started one. can you talk about that and share? what it’s turned into and. Yeah. How it’s, how you interact with that.
00:45:47:21 – 00:46:47:20
Unknown
Yeah. And it has absolutely exploded, hasn’t it? It’s. How many? How many members does it have now?
00:46:47:22 – 00:47:09:20
Unknown
Right.
00:47:19:15 – 00:47:44:00
Unknown
Right. That’s fantastic. I just love the fact that you started that. And it’s grown and it’s collaborative and supportive. I there’s some, you know, I’m in that group I see, you know, someone will ask hey I’m having trouble with, you know, this thing or that thing and there’ll be like 50 people that provide constructive feedback and answers.
00:47:44:02 – 00:48:30:09
Unknown
It’s just an incredible resource.
00:48:30:11 – 00:48:45:00
Unknown
Absolutely.
00:48:45:02 – 00:49:14:27
Unknown
No way.
00:49:14:29 – 00:49:58:20
Unknown
That is. Yeah. That is. That is fantastic. Yeah. Sometimes you you don’t realize you are minutes away from someone that you could have a really deep, you know, and cool relationship with. And, something like the internet brings it together.
00:49:58:22 – 00:50:22:18
Unknown
That’s so cool. That’s awesome. I just want to, as we kind of look to wrap up here. can you share, maybe 1 or 2 of the most kind of, memorable experiences or situations you guys have been in, at certain solutions. there’s something that was really cool. Something that was a super big challenge.
00:50:22:21 – 00:51:12:15
Unknown
just super memorable.
00:51:12:17 – 00:53:12:14
Unknown
Great.
00:53:26:26 – 00:55:10:18
Unknown
Yeah. No, I love that. That’s good advice. That was one of the, Next questions is what what what advice do you have for for you know, even, you know, newer shops or even more, you know, bigger shops, but, that have been sort of the secrets of your success. and that’s a good one. So it’s a good way to start.
00:55:10:21 – 00:55:17:15
Unknown
That’s solid.
00:55:17:18 – 00:55:26:13
Unknown
That’s really solid advice.
00:55:26:16 – 00:56:05:18
Unknown
Sure.
00:57:03:18 – 00:57:54:24
Unknown
That is really good advice. Did your parents teach you the the six months? Or did you just learn that yourself and decide that this is something we’re.
00:57:54:26 – 00:58:21:10
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. No. Great advice. Wow. Awesome. Well, guys, I, I can’t thank you enough for spending this time to do this. I think what you’re building there, the way you’ve learned about the industry and about financial management, sounds like YouTube has been an influence. Influential, all in, learning for you guys, which I’m sure is true of your generation.
00:58:21:12 – 00:58:40:14
Unknown
I know I learned a lot from YouTube as well, but, yeah, just the the transparency you provide, with, you know, your lean journey and all the things that you do and sharing. it’s really cool to, to be even a small part of that. So thank you for the trust of, you know, being a customer.
00:58:40:16 – 00:59:03:15
Unknown
and, if people want to learn, if they, you know, listen to this and they’re like, I want to send some work to these two guys. How would how would you, suggest they get in touch with you guys?
00:59:03:17 – 00:59:18:25
Unknown
Nice.
00:59:24:17 – 00:59:43:25
Unknown
So that that video of you, putting that eighth inch gen mil through, through hell, was chattering that is that on YouTube or did you not if you didn’t post that one.
00:59:43:28 – 00:59:57:21
Unknown
that is super funny. All right. Awesome, guys. Well, thank you again so much for your time today. It’s really been cool to hear. I’m glad pro shops been helpful to you and your journey. And thanks and thanks for sharing it. All right. Cheers, fellas.
01:00:03:23 – 01:00:38:16
Unknown
Hey, buddy. How’s it going today? Going good? Yeah. Lots on the go. It is. Has been a busy time, so I just, got off an interview with Sean and James Servin from Servant Solutions. Right. The Serban brothers. Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely loved their story. they are one of a couple of. Actually, I think three sets of brothers we have as clients that had never touched CNC machines really in their life, decided to buy one after watching YouTube videos and just turned into a business.
01:00:38:18 – 01:01:04:21
Unknown
Wow. yeah. It was. It’s such a fun story. I can’t wait for you to listen to it. But, you know, we talked about, a bunch of things, including the fact that there’s still just a two person shop. And why would a two person shop buy, you know, a sophisticated ERP system? but, besides, you know, them wanting to get rid of what they called their garage standard, which was basically chaos.
01:01:04:24 – 01:01:38:25
Unknown
okay. And just sort of get more professionalism as they want to grow their business, which has, you know, helped in spades. they said they would not have gotten one of their biggest customers if it wasn’t for pro Shop. And I’m like, really? What did you just, like, tell them? Yeah, tell the story. And they said that that company and I you know, we didn’t talk about the name, but that company had had such good success with other shops running Pro Shop that they were specifically looking for shops that ran pro shop.
01:01:38:28 – 01:01:55:03
Unknown
So when they when they had their, you know, their first conversations and it’s like, yeah, we have, you know, they they have robo drills and they bought a de Tron recently. So they have, you know, pretty nice machines. It’s like, yeah, we got nice machines and we run pro shop and they were like, oh, you run pro shop.
01:01:55:03 – 01:02:15:26
Unknown
Okay, great. Let’s set up a meeting and and so anyway, that was just like music to my ears. And then, of course, even just the two of them talk about, you know, hating tribal knowledge, just wanting to get rid of it and just make sure there’s a system and they’re not getting tripped over things they forgot, or the other brother doesn’t, you know, didn’t tell them.
01:02:15:28 – 01:02:36:11
Unknown
But they also one of them want to go on vacation at some point. I don’t know, of course, of course. so I’ll tell you two other stories. They, they, you know, as they think about, hiring, you know, their first employee, they said they had a woman reach out to them because they’ve talked about that. They’re they have their big social media people.
01:02:36:11 – 01:02:54:02
Unknown
They they share a lot on on Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn. But, they had talking it they were talking about wanting to, you know, eventually hire and, and they had a woman reach out to them and say, hey, I want to move back to upstate New York. I know pro shop because I use it at another company.
01:02:54:04 – 01:03:24:11
Unknown
And, you know, I would love to come work for you. And they’re like, wow, not only could help us find customers, it could help us find employees to rate employees. So that is awesome. And then, we talked about, we were talking about just sort of the connected and interconnected nature of the system and the accessibility and he said they they went on a trip to Europe to go visit the, the, machine tool factory.
01:03:24:13 – 01:03:55:04
Unknown
Okay. Germany. And they decided to take a side trip to go to Switzerland and, he said they were literally like on the top of a mountain at like 12,000ft. And James or Sean got an email from a vendor who really needed something from them. So he whipped out his phone, pulled out pro shop, got the piece of information, sent it to him on the spot, and he’s like, that job would have been weeks late had I not been able to access that from the top of the Alps.
01:03:55:04 – 01:04:26:28
Unknown
So he was like, he was like, we’re on the top of the world with pro shop. And I’m like, oh, that’s a great slogan. That’s so awesome. So yeah, that was really fun story. Yes, I love it. My god. Yeah. The whole, you know, from anywhere. You know, it’s it’s cliche in some ways. But then also in that moment you’re like, no, it really matters like to be able to do it anywhere and get what you need and pass it on and not block people and, you know, it’s like, that’s absolutely music to my ears to.
01:04:27:03 – 01:04:47:02
Unknown
That’s fantastic. Yeah. So anyway, it was a great conversation. I can’t wait for you to listen to it. they’re just excited. Love their passion. Love there. And two second lean is a big, big homebuilders. Yeah. And they didn’t know that Paul Acres is right here from Bellingham as well. So I’m like yeah you got to come visit and we’ll hit two birds with one stone.
01:04:47:02 – 01:05:06:29
Unknown
And you know, see, you know, see the sea bass cap and yeah, yeah. So that’s cool to have, that much impact coming from Whatcom County, Washington. Yeah. Super cool. Wow. Oh, that sounds like really a lot of fun. I look forward to that episode. Yeah. All right. Cheers, buddy.
