okay good morning good morning everyone well I guess if you’re on the East Coast

or further east it is not morning good morning Dave

George Jerry JD how’s good to see you there buddy Lawson Linda Killian Katie

Jenny the people Hunter Dylan L all right you guys are

streaming in here it’s great to see everyone I hope you are doing amazing on this wonderful Tuesday hey there Lawson

I would love as I always often do uh please put in the chat where you are

joining from I’d love to see so everyone can see where everyone is coming from in the

country and the world Warren Michigan rard Minnesota Fort Hill South Carolina

Frederick Colorado Cajun Country yes JD you are looking forward to the Crawfish Boil in a few weeks um Boseman Montana

Idaho Ripley New York awesome BC thank you up north Charlotte beautiful

fantastic Siri BC as well ingred David Toronto Chicago

awesome well thank you all for joining me I um I’m flying solo today I don’t

have any Co pilots and uh Linda oh good to see you Linda awesome from Wooddale

Illinois Great Kyle is in Jacksonville Florida so

a little bit of housekeeping um uh the chat is great for

putting comments reactions anything you want where you’re where you’re joining from um I’d love for you if you have any

questions for me please put them in the Q&A section and uh and we will get to some

Q&A at the end um uh Hey dad my dad is on from Eugene

Oregon um as his real name not not his pseudo name Ben do as he sometimes joins

as but uh Katie with e in Ecuador amazing um all right we are definitely

have an international presence here so all right we are talking today

about um making 2023 your best year ever and I’m going to be highlighting uh

things that I’ve learned over years and things that I’ve seen the best customers of ours and the shops that I’ve toured

and the owners that I’ve talked with just what they are doing um so for those of you that don’t know who I am my name

is Paul vanmeer I am one of the co-founders of Pro Shop I used to own a machine shop myself and this that’s

where we built Pro Shop and we sold that company geez it’s it’s actually 7 years

ago now so time flies when you’re having fun um and now we bring Pro up to the

world and try to uh what we try to do is deliver powerful manufacturing software

by deeply understanding our clients challenges in ordering to meaningful meaningfully improve their businesses

and Inter their communities and that communities part is super important to me personally and it’s through these

webinars that we try to help all shops meaningfully improve their businesses

not just clients obviously um and of course we deeply would appreciate becoming a partner and a you know and

and work with you but even if we never do I hope these these uh webinars bring you uh value and ideas to help your shop

grow and Thrive and improve your local communities so there is no doubt about

it I’ve I I will go to my grave saying that running a Job Shop a machine shop is one of the hardest jobs in the world

it is um just really really challenging it’s expensive the margins are generally

low there’s all sorts of risk um and the companies and the owners that start

these businesses truly put their Blood Sweat and Tears into your into your companies um you know I’ve talked to so

many owners who have you know taken out mortgages or um save taken all their

life savings and put it into their businesses and and many of them came

from the industry as a machinist or a tool and die maker or they work for some other shop doing something and they said

you know what I want to do this for myself I Want To Be My Own Boss I want to start my own company but most shop

owners don’t have any formal schooling or coaching on how to run a business but they are brave and they jump in with

both feet and do it anyway and I have huge respect for that because it is so

challenging um and the best shop owners the people that I talk to that are doing the best

the companies that are thriving they are um there’s qualities that I have seen come through over the years they are

curious they are humble um they put their egos aside they they accept and

ask for help I think in particular um you know we’re seeing a

lot more diversity in in the industry thankfully a lot more uh women shop owners but uh but is still pretty

dominant by men and men just to get a little touchy feely on all of you you know generally have a hard time asking

for help right they want to be the best at everything they do they want to be perceived as experts they want to

perceived as having all the answers I know I certainly have suffered with that for for decades um but it’s it’s good

and it’s right to ask for help and to realize you don’t know all the answers and so that’s some of the things that I

will talk about today are um just realizing that that you don’t need to do

this All Alone um it’s okay to ask for help it’s okay to get partners it’s okay to talk with other um with other shops

to get in community to network and uh and learn together so what are some of

the most successful shops doing that I have seen over my decades in the industry one of the most First

Fundamental things is being a sales driven organization uh this picture is of my first machine shop our first shop

so we see couple of my business partners in the back there um started with a little tiny 2,000 foot Warehouse in 1997

yep thank you Aubra dropped the uh our origin story video I will mention

they’re going to be dropping a lot of video links um and other links in the chat so you’re welcome to open those up

as tabs in your browser but when we send out the video recording of this we will send a PDF with all the links for

everything so you don’t need to worry about um about capturing every single one if you if you don’t want

to um so that was our shop we started out uh and speaking of funding it the

guy on the right Darcy he took out a second mortgage on his house and that was enough for us to buy a Hos vf4 a

used manual Mill and lathe and uh and pay for this rent you know for this little space for a few months and we

started knocking on doors um and of course at the beginning that’s the that’s how we got our work but we truly

were not a sales-driven organization um we uh it was between 97

to 2001 was actually a pretty good time in the economy you know wasn’t that hard to find business but after

9911 we uh we almost went out of business and we realized that we were

not doing the right things to run a business you know it was easy to be successful between 97 and 2001 just so

without a lot of actual skills we we managed to do okay um but uh we were not

a sales-driven organization and it was a very tough lesson to learn back then about why why it was so important to

always be investing in sales and marketing so we uh we uh we got help

actually from a local Small Business Development Center which is a nationwide Network usually associated with with

universities So Small Business Development Center write that down if you want help they often provide counseling and business help for free so

hopefully there’s one near you if you want some guidance on some of this or they really I mean they guided us through so many things including uh not

getting going bankr so but at the very beginning of our shop um and even after

we had this additional coaching I would literally because I I was I sort of landed in the sales rooll um after you

know the first uh year or so as we started to kind of specialize as we grew the company and I literally had an

aluminum briefcase just like this that I would that I had foam uh sort of fil

filled with foam and then I would cut out the foam and I would inlay all these machine parts that we made and I would

go around and I would literally cold call companies out of the phone book I would look at find websites you know for

companies near us and I’d call them up and I’d say hey do you guys need to buy machine parts and I would try to get an

appointment with the buyers or with the engineers and I’d go in there and I’d show them my briefcase of all the parts

and I had also a little portfolio of Parts pictures that were too big to put in my briefcase and I just tried to make

personal relationships with these people and um it’s slow and it’s it’s hard work

and there’s a lot of rejection but it’s something you have to do as we got more

mature and later on when we really wanted to differentiate our company from everyone

else we realized that you know there’s every shop has fancy machines and you

know has on their website they have great quality in delivery and we need to differentiate ourselves somehow so we

started publishing a dfm or designed for manufactur Bild newsletters which ultimately turned into

boot camps and we built up I think we paid uh some

website that had a newsletter that sent to Engineers if we could send some newsletters through them some email

blasts through them um and our ask of those people that clicked on our on our

email was to sign up for our dfm newsletter and so over the course of a couple years we built up maybe a couple

thousand engineers at hundreds and hundreds of different companies and the feedback we started getting was this is

great advice we love it and we’d love even more so people started asking if we would could come on site and do um boot

camps uh you know training on site for for their Engineers so we did probably

close to 30 of those over a three or four year period and quite honestly um I

think this is a good example of doing well by doing good because we although we certainly wanted to win work from

them we um went into those uh sessions and the and the things that we published

with no expectations that we were going to get anything back from it we just wanted to share knowledge of how they

could cut the cost of their parts in the lead Times by making them easier to make easier to machine less scrap less

whatever um and uh and it really helped we just gave and gave and gave and

ultimately it came back to us in you know millions of dollars worth of business over the next several years so

I think the importance of giving I guess that’s kind of what we’re doing here today we’re trying to just share knowledge and uh and you know sort of

believe that the karma of doing that will come back to you many times um in the future so so some practical advice

about sales and marketing stuff definitely invest in it it it is if you can hire full-time employees to do that

I know especially small shops can’t do that you know while you’re still small you don’t have the budget to hire a

salesperson um when you can do it um or if you if you are an owner and you

want to or you you want to do that yourself you can you know backfill and

have people you know offload the work that you normally would do so you can go focus on being the sales and marketing

person at your company um you know no one can do it better than you honestly but um it’s really deciding how you want

to spend your time but getting out there um you know

networking improving your website uh years and years ago when so we you

know again 97 we started our shop the internet was just barely a thing back then but we actually Focus quite heavily

on our website and SEO search engine optimization um it’s pretty much free it

doesn’t cost much to do SEO unless you hire a company to do it for you uh and one of the best things that we did and

I’ve subsequently heard this from really wise people including one of my podcast guests is really focus on niches you

know being a generalist shop just I’m a Job Shop I can do anything you know that

can work but that that the phrase the riches are in the niches is a phrase for a reason so um I’ll talk a little bit

more about that later but we really sort of made sure that in our in our uh

website we had these what we call longtail keywords that were very specific about the types of work we were

really good at um so for example we did um you know cockpit display panels so

highly cosmetic lots of tinyy little intricate tools you know bead blasting anodise all sorts of things that we

became very good at so we you know we had special website Pages just for that with pictures and lots of descriptions

of those types of parts and when a company is searching for a vendor for that type of work they are much more

likely to find your website than if you just say we are a machine shop and we serve lots of Industries so so focus on

that uh again yeah don’t be a generalist um and then get out there and network

right uh trade I’ll talk about some some shops that are just really killing it with doing trade shows um doing

networking events we are a member of ntma and I highly encourage industry

memberships like those they are just great places to learn great places to network uh great places to potentially

find customers as well but it’s that don’t go It Alone you know ask for help build a community around yourself

uh the best shops are doing those things for sure when you are out at an event or you get someone on the phone if you’re

cold calling you gotta practice your pitch you don’t want to just say hey I

own a machine shop we have eight machines and we do Machining work and we have good quality right everyone can say

that so getting very specific you only have that one chance to make a good

first impression so if you can say something like my shop are experts in delivering high quality cockit display

panels we partner with our clients to cut costs reduce risk and produce Flawless Precision Parts on time that is

something they’re going to remember and whether you’re at a trade show whether you’re on the phone you know they’re much less likely to hang up on you and

say yeah sure we do have Parts like that you know and we sometimes have trouble with our vendors so uh so work on that

pitch uh I can’t stress how important LinkedIn can be for shops I’ve talked to

many shop owners that say they get a vast majority of their work from LinkedIn so um it’s just a great place

to you know build your company page out make sure your logo is there make sure you have links back to your website

share pictures and videos of the projects you make uh tell a story of how you saved a customer with a short lead

time or you know some another vendor dropped the ball and you picked it up and and delivered for them um you know

share human stories about your employees about what you’re doing about your barbecue you know personalize your your

brand your message and um but Share value right also like my dfm newsletters

you know share things that are going to provide value to shops and do it Rel do it

reliably um you know doing it in fits and starts is not going to be nearly as effective as doing it you know week in

and week out for uh for for a long long time and if you do have prospects that

you specifically want to Target um make sure you take the long game in

how you’re going to do that right if you if there’s a company you know near you that’s a perfect type of prospect for

you um you know start by engaging with the content from their company from

their people their leaders their their employees you know share share their

their post you know comment on them and comment some comment something thoughtfully not just you know thumbs up

right put some thoughtful effort into to into sharing what they’re talking about and commenting and then build up some of

some familiarity with you and your company and then go ahead and you know start uh getting into their direct

messages and saying hey you know I’d love to talk to you about being a really solid supplier reducing your risk and

all those kinds of things so definitely take the long Dame don’t just blit someone out of the blue with uh with a

sales post or sales message so one of the other things that

clients uh clients companies are doing um or not doing is inconsistent adoption

of technology so for most of the shops that are on this call today certainly those that are clients um I know you

guys are investing in software but uh Hardware is also super super critical um

I’d say the shops that I see that are thriving the most are definitely on The Cutting Edge of more

sophisticated machines more sophisticated softare Ware more sophisticated business processes um and that is making a

difference so um it doesn’t so that being said and

as as I so some of the some of this webinar is um is built off of a Blog

that I that I published a few weeks ago called the halves and Have Nots uh shops because I’m seeing this widening Gap um

of shops that are just crazy busy and shops that are not busy at all or really not consistent busy and it’s troubling

because to me I want every shop to thrive and we need every shop to thrive

given how much demand there is coming back into our country and our and our um

our continent from overseas uh you know Co accelerated that but I think that

Trend was already happening even before covid started so there’s a lot of there’s a very bright future for

precision Manufacturing in North America and it’s it’s a shame if every shop isn’t uh isn’t uh having success uh

because they’re not doing the right thing so as I was writing that blog and as I was thinking about this and to

thinking about you know shops that are buying fancy five AIS pallet machines and all sorts of stuff like

that uh I actually I realized that that while that is important and that can

really Drive efficiency and and Effectiveness and cut lead times and um

cut cost there are many shops that are really doing super well without

investing in a ton of really expensive fancy machines so you don’t have to but

it can certainly and does help um and I’ll highlight a shop a little later

that uh has um a really nice variety of good solid machines none of them are

super super fancy or expensive but they’re absolutely crushing it um super busy enormous backlogs highly profitable

just doing great um with other with everything else that they’re adopting and doing so so of course I’m I uh am biased on

this given the business that I am in but really building solid business processes

based uh in lean manufacturing and software can be just an enormous um an

enormous benefit for uh the success of a company and I’ll talk a little bit later

about it on sort of the sales side but um we have definitely seen um companies

that are just really doing super well with uh making themselves stand out from

the crowd and and sort of the the um the competitive you know nature of so many

shops out there um by by using technology well uh and sharing how

they’re using it with their customers this is we added this this uh

I wasn’t quite sure what to actually say on this slide added this just a few minutes ago of course we don’t generally

uh business do doesn’t generally love regulations but when I mean in this

example is pursuing industry certifications and really being

proactive on things like cyber security uh I will highlight and I know

I have some customers here on the on the uh the call today um that have done an

incredible job with this um but pursuing you know I so as 1345 API um whatever it

might be that is sort of your your Niche your specialty or if you want to get into that Niche it really does open

doors um there are lots and lots of oems that are becoming more stringent about

what types of clients or excuse me what types of vendors they will allow to work with them and for many of them if you

don’t have as9100 you just cannot get you know a foot in the door so uh

historic ly these have been very expensive and I’ll talk a little bit later about how shop how Pro Shop makes that less expensive faster easier to get

in the first place and then less owner to manage uh sort of along the way but

uh but I definitely can stress if you if you are on the fence about this at your shop um I I say Do It um you know and if

if you want help of course we can help make it really a lot less expensive and here my next slide is uh a client that

has done an absolute incredible job job there you go Chandler um uh so Coastal

Machine and Supply historically and still very heavy into the oil and gas business but they after implementing Pro

Shop yeah there’s a a video that we did um with Coastal uh they pursued as9100

uh got it very quickly and efficiently and then aggressively pursued uh defense Aerospace and commercial space

Industries and now that accounts for a pretty decent portion and grow growing of their business um and they did it

because they they saw the importance of doing that they had the free time uh to

do that after implementing Pro Shop and uh they’ve just absolutely executed it

flawlessly so really really great example so check out their website check out their video um really an inspiring

example cyber security is becoming increasingly important it will make or

break shops uh there is no question about it in my mind um all of you that

have been following the cmmc uh regulation of course will know

that it is evolved it started out with 1.0 and then it changed to 2.0 and they

keep picking out pushing out the deadline but it is absolutely coming they are not going to back down from it

um in one form or another you know in the next year or so it will be requirement for any company that’s in

the defense industrial base or the dib they call it or serving the government sector in any way even if you’re a sub

you know a sub tier vendor to a company that ultimately does if your company is

managing um Federal contract information or controlled unclassified information

which is basically what drawings and models and G-Code and all those things are that’s that’s called cui um you will

need uh really robust systems and I’ve seen a lot a lot of shops kicking the

can down the road they are deciding uh to not proactively pursue it they um or

they’re very sort of idly doing it um when the requirements finally do hit and

it will be it will be mandated that you cannot even quote on something in the

defense space without having a cmmc certification there’s going to be a mad

rush to try to get Auditors to come and and Consultants to come help your company get certified um become

compliant and it’s just going to be a mad house because there’s not nearly enough Auditors out there to meet the

demand of the 300 plus thousand shops that will need or manufacturers

suppliers that will need to get that certification so stop kicking the can do

it um I’ll talk a little bit about how we can help with that um but however you do it uh just do it I I am confident

that even companies that are not part of this industrial you know defense base

will start flowing down the requirements to their vendors regardless so even if you’re in oil and gas if you’re in

commercial Aerospace if you’re in medical you know the the big oems out

there they do not want their data to be hacked because your shop doesn’t have a

secure network or um or uh you know you get hacked and

they they steal drawings and models so um Linda I will get to how Pro Shop can help with cmmc a little bit later later

thanks for the question um but uh yes so super important but a little bit longer

term so here I’m going to highlight a bunch of companies that are just doing really well and embodying some of the

things that I just talked about so let’s go take a let’s go take a a look here um

and so again tying back to that blog that I wrote you know these shops that are I call it in have category they are

busy they have good backlogs they are they are well Diversified um they had to start

somewhere right they didn’t start that way um and coming back to my point

earlier about you know most shop owners get into the business without a really

deep bench of experience of how to run a business right they again a lot of them more technicians or they maybe grew up

in the family business uh learned from watching their parents or aunts and uncles do it but um still don’t have a

lot of formal to uh you know formal schooling and how to do that so you got to start somewhere and changing the mindset of I

want to learn how to become a really good business person and run my business

in a sustainable profitable process driven way is a big mindset shift uh

from you know I have a bunch of machines I need to make chips and keep those spindles busy

so uh so it uh it uh it it takes again takes a mindset takes some forward

longer term thinking rather than just you know what’s happening tomorrow but it is so uh so so

important all right let’s talk about a few examples of shops um none of these shops know I was going to talk about

them but uh hopefully they’re okay with that Thompson Precision in Idaho

fantastic example of a shop that is really doing well in a specialized niche

so they decided several years ago to focus on doing finish Machining of metal 3D additive parts and they have

absolutely thrived in this in this very nichy area um and so they do they work

with a lot of commercial space companies uh because lots of lots of that commercial space stuff uh is

becoming more and more 3D metal printed but um finish Machining of those has always been a challenge for for most for

most companies that need that that kind of kind of part so they decided to specialize in that um I talked to to

their President Steve at a trade show recently and he just reinforced to me

how important it is to really Niche down um of course the fact that he was at a trade show is another example he was

he’s out there with a beautiful booth and meeting people and talking uh talking to prospects and talking to

customers on the technology side um this is the shop that I wanted to mention earlier jjr engineering and Fabrication

um they uh quite honestly have you know most of their machines are hos machines

so not the fanciest machines in the world but they have truly adopted

significant uh you know software technology uh lean manufacturing um incredibly data driven

company um truly a paperless shop floor and you’ll even notice and this I loved

when I was Vis we were there visiting uh to shoot a video which will hopefully coming out in the next couple of weeks

even this this assembly station here which was very well labeled had uh this

number 1500 which is the assembly operation number that they were using in

Pro Shop so they basically rearranged their entire shop floor made it very visual um and very clear about how the

flow of product matches physically what’s happening in the digital side within Pro

Shop so um I’m really excited for that video to come out they’re just such an amazing company um and they are also um

really setting themselves apart from their competition by showing their customers and showing their prospects

how technology driven they are so um yeah really neat shop um great example

on the automated side more on the equipment side um just right here in our

town Holtz Holtz Enterprises Holtz Racing Products you know has invested in some highly automated machines you know

this uh this mitsura pallet pool they have lots of um really cool uh multiaxis

uh barfed lathes and even to the extent of they built I wish I had a picture of it I don’t um just amazing racks on the

tops of their machines that feed that feed into their bar feeders so they can run even more unattended time um uh

because they you know they they’re not just floating in one bar at a time they have a rack with you know 10 15 20 bars

that they can just load up and it can run for literally days on end almost unattended so really neat example of a

company doing that well another local shop ironate machine

um they have invested in you know they have two multi-spindle pallet pools they

have really high-end offline tool presetters shrink fit holder uh you know

systems um they have lots of multi-spindle laths they are really upgrading their equipment all the way

around not just the machines but all the support equipment that goes into it they’ve invested heavily and it’s really

paying dividends in how they’re executing how they’re cutting costs uh the impression that their customers get

of just how technology-driven they are on The Cutting Edge and uh just a great example of a really nice shop doing that

well on the sales-driven side I’ll highlight a couple of companies Affinity

is a company up in Vancouver BC um they are out at trade shows they are doing

social media they are out there meeting people sharing their sample Parts um you

know I grabbed this off of a uh I think it was a I said on LinkedIn I guess but it might have been an Instagram post you

know using little Graphics uh and of course this website they got years ago

presumably amazing Machining doca what an incredible website name to get um but

uh always you know has been sort of a company that’s really driven to do things super well um and they’re the way

they’re doing their sales I think is just uh is just a remarkable way to do it Rous sheets manufacturing Solutions

truly a world-class facility and a world-class company um you can see from

this picture you could the whole thing literally eat off their floors you know it’s kind of a cliche you could actually

do that at this company um and they don’t have a cleaning crew all their machinists just kind of keep on top of

things um always clean as you go they keep a spotless facility they are

heavily invested in both technology on the hardware side this is what they call H alley who’s one of their one of their

Partners but they have rows of of yasda pallet machines and mininos and really

nice high-end lathes multi-spindle laths um they have their CMM machines have

pallet feeders uh just incredible so they can keep inspecting things at high rates

without having the machine sitting so they feed the parts into a pallet pool that can feed two different CN or two

different cmms right next to each other just really incredible company and also

an amazing company on the sales and marketing side if you follow them on LinkedIn and I encourage you to do so

they are always posting about their equipment their machines their their certifications their Partners what

they’re doing to you know meet meet and exceed client needs it’s just truly a work world class

uh operation all around so definitely follow them for some inspiration on the networking side um I

was uh this is a a shop that um that we know well and uh I was at two different

events over the last few months you know local one was a defense networking event and the other was an aerospace event and

they were there right they were there meeting people doing businessto business meetings um meeting with existing

clients um and just you know putting themselves out there and uh and uh not

just holding up in their shop hoping that you know work comes in the door so great example and I also Abra thank you

for posting um the link uh I interviewed and Dyke uh on my podcast uh recently

and that just came out a few weeks ago um so definitely encourage you to grab that uh that link and go give that a

listen um one thing that is unrelated to to any of this but I think is just an incredible thing to highlight the the um

amount of philanthropy the Dyke machine has done is absolutely mind-blowing um

orders of magnitude more donations than any shop I’ve ever heard about uh in my

20 plus years almost 30 years in the business so um definitely go give that a listen uh very interesting but yeah a

great example of a shop that’s just getting out there meeting people growing their Network and growing their

sales cyber security uh as I already talked about a couple shops doing that super well Southern

Machine Works um you know great shop down in uh the South I don’t actually

know exactly where they are um they have been very aggressive on the cmmc and

cyber security posture uh a couple of years ago they were reaching out to us to see how we could help them and what

we can do and they’ve actually been a beta client for Pro Shop Safe which I’ll talk about in a little bit um so again

they’re not waiting till the last minute to to become compliant um they are out there on the front lines doing it

um doing it very very well so uh and then another one here Olsson

Custom Designs they’re under the security section but they quite honestly kind of like rousi Ates just uh

definitely go check out their website um and the video we made for them um

they’re they’re um it’s just an incredibly well-run company um beautiful

shop um very sales-driven they’re out there all the time doing sales doing marketing doing branding one of the

things I think is most impressed about them their just sort of their brand image is absolutely impeccable right

with their building with their facility with their website everything they do is

just top class um and they I I know they attract the types of clients that care

about those types of things and are willing to pay you know a higher margin to work with a worldclass organization

like them so just hopefully those examples Inspire again we will send a PDF file with all

of these links just in case you’re just too busy cutting and pasting and clicking on links uh opening up all your

tabs um but uh those are some shops that are really doing things well in all

sorts of different areas and hopefully can inspire you as well so let’s get to the part I only

have one slide for this because I don’t uh you know again this is not a sales pitch but

but uh there are definitely things that Pro Shop can help with with all of the things that I just talked about um so

we’re going to drop a bunch of different links here as well uh driving efficiency

right as I talked about from from the very early parts of this webinar it is such a Cutthroat business um it’s so

competitive shops need to be constantly thinking about how can I cut out cost

how can I drive efficiency how can I keep my spindles turning more often um and and so we we have a great uh video

on on that on driving uh Revenue growth and cost

efficiency um instilling confidence in your customers um one of my favorite uh stories was um

I was talking with a client who had recently gotten a bunch more work from a

big OEM and he he was talking about how he had done this

and he was visiting this this company and actually we highlighted this

on a webinar I can’t remember which one it was um maybe it was about being sales driven but he he went to this company

and he started telling them about how how he ran his company on Pro Shop and how it was paperless and how everything

is one spot and it was all linked and it was easy for employees to get the information they wanted and there wasn’t paper travelers to lose and they were

really interested in learning more and they were in their conference room and he was meeting meeting with I think the

like the VP of procurement and the head of their planning department uh for their internal

manufacturing and they asked you know if they could learn more and all he had was a cell phone on him didn’t have a laptop

along but they had they were in conference room with a big TV on the wall and he said you know could I cast

to your TV with my phone and they said yeah no problem so he whipped out his cell phone connected to their Network

cast to the TV and gave them about an hourong demo on Pro Shop from his cell

phone he said their jaws were basically on the floor they were just blown away

by how he ran his company how he could ensure uh success with their parts how

he could reduce risk for them how he could be cost competitive for them how he could make sure that you know every

eye was dotted and every te was crossed with the paperwork he was delivering with his parts and they said to him that

they were concerned conned about some of their other vendors who really weren’t pushing this technology and some of the

owners were getting kind of old and you know a few years away from retirement and they had a lot of part numbers and a

lot of Revenue spend with these shops that they weren’t as confident about and

um and you know this shop uh won a lot more business from that customer after

having that meeting and showing him how he was running his business in such a data driven technology-driven

way another similar story um setting shops apart from the competition um we

and there’s a link uh it was a modern machine shop uh article uh it’s called your competitors can do what you do so

this was another customer in the Northeast area a company called um East Branch

engineering and they had uh a com they had a big customer that was pairing down

their vendor base and they were slashing vendors they realized they had too many it was too expensive they didn’t want to

work with so many shops they wanted to work with fewer higher quality shops so there was a a large program that they

did that was dual sourced so they made half the parts another shop near them made the other half the parts and um

they’re big you know big aluminum hog outs and they sent sort of a procurement

quality team to audit and go visit both of these vendors and when they you know

went into the competitor shop they had you know an older Erp system

they had paper based Travelers everywhere things were disorganized their inspection was was done on paper

um you know it was uh it just was not super impressive when they went into

East Branch they sat them down in the conference room they immediately started showing them how they run their business

with Pro Shop they even some of the people that came were new so new to you

know to them so they even pulled up that company’s contact page put in the contact information of those new people

right in there in Pro Shop right on the spot phone number email you know name title things like that they were

impressed that they were just like let’s do it right now it only takes a few seconds and then they started looking at

some this specific part number that they were talking about which they happened to be running that day that time so they

um they showed them in the conference room the part number how they documented all their work instructions their INSP

plans their tool lists everything and then they walked out and then they actually saw a work order with

quantities and inspection results and then they walked out on the shop floor and saw The Machinist they on a you know

on a device right at the machine doing their inspections looking at their work instructions doing anything doing

everything in a very paperless efficient data driven way and can you guess which

shop got cut and which shop won the entire contract yes of course I wouldn’t

be highlighting and if it didn’t go that way so yeah they chose East Branch they got you know all the all the work that

that other shop was doing and then apparently the contract even doubled again later so it became a huge scope of work for them so I love that story is

just a great example of uh the real meaningful impact of adopting technology being sales-driven and doing all these

things the right way uh meeting regulatory requirements we can certainly help with that um you know as I

highlighted with um with the case study for uh Coastal

machine right helping M get and then maintain as certification we’ve helped

dozens and dozens of shops get their certifications and be much less expensive and onerous to to maintain

them over time um I just thought about it we we did a I did a Blog recently about the zero prep

audit um and uh the concept of always being audit ready which I believe is the

most effective and efficient way to uh to run your company and I know Aubra and Sarah are scrambling to find that link

now um but the idea that that you can you know meet get ISO get as get 1345

certified with less cost uh have it help you build solid business process to run

your company more efficiently more profitably um is is only a good thing uh

on the cyber security fi side getting to Linda’s question from earlier Linda so

we have built a lot of new features in Pro Shop over the last couple of years to to check off a lot of the boxes from

the nist 800 171 standard which is essentially the foundation of the new

cmmc requirements so whether it be you know requiring uh or supporting

two-factor authentication or um you know encryption at rest or password

complexity requirements or audit logging and all sorts of things that are um

really important uh to cmmc and you’ll not pass without them so we’ve tried tried to build a lot of features to just

help make that less expensive and easier but one of the big things that we’re doing right now is and we’re just a

couple months away from releasing what we call proshop Safe which is an acronym

for secure access file ecosystem so it is taking our existing file structure um

that every shop uses today with proshop and adding a whole it’s basically

reimagining how that is all done in the back end so it will basically allow a

shop to to store all of their cui and other sensitive data on our cloud in an

encrypted environment completely controlled by who can access what files and folders and

permissions all through their proot credentials so it um uh it’s uh it’s a pretty huge leap

forward in our technology for doing that um and it will essentially allow a company

to uh maybe with some some exceptions but to a great great degree allow them

to manage uh a cmmc compliance without having any of that cui physically stored

within their company at all not on servers not on computers and certainly not in paper so um we have clients

basically already doing this today so the concept is if someone broke into your building and stole all your computers in the middle of the night you

do not need to worry about any any any leakage of sensitive data because none of it exists on any of your local local

computers um and minimizing that footprint of where you store cui will be

a significantly dramatic cost reduction um in just the compliance side of of

cmmc and the nist standard um in a in a way that you know we hope really drives

cost and allows it to be more accessible to to more shops uh we know that shops that only do a little bit of Defense

work might decide to get out of the whole defense game entirely because it’s just too expensive and too onerous to

meet the requirements and we’re hoping that we can reduce that barrier enough that they decide to you know stay in

those Industries because it is definitely a growth industry and that will include all commercial space um you know those uh all you know

the SpaceX and blue origin all that stuff if they’re working with the government that is managed through the space force which is a newer branch of

the military and uh even though it’s not defensive in nature um it’s still we’re

going to meet the requirements of all those uh cement standards so so that’s keeping data safe and

security um and of course I could preach the choir all day long about building robust processes I think one of the

things that we hear clients talk about most oh thank you Sarah for the zero prep audit

um that we that I personally just really believe in is the way to run a

successful profitable business is to build really good business processes

and have people drive those processes right if if a

um and who was it it was God it was a customer I was talking with um and they

said if my name is in the is in the business process then it’s not a

sustainable process right my name has to be completely out of the answer for oh

it was it was Jamie was Jamie marzil and he said if my name is in the solution in the process that’s not sustainable

because I don’t want to be doing actually anything in the business I don’t want to be working exclusively on the business building those processes

building the team setting the vision and um and that uh Pro Shop certainly does

in Spades um and uh so that’s enough on

that um I wanted to finish the slides out

with this quote um which I thought was I I actually hadn’t seen this before we did a social post recently Thomas from

Traxxas manufacturing besides my wife Pro Shop is the best decision I’ve ever made um he goes on to talk about you

know why and what we helped them do um but uh you know we really hope that if

if some of what I’ve shared um is compelling enough that you’d like our support in that um we’d love to talk to

you about it all right I we see we have a couple of questions uh coming in here

so I’ll I’ll get to those uh hopefully um Susan I answered your question before

about about what how we can help maintain uh I’m I’m sorry Linda um Susan

is her sister about how we can help M get certification uh So Pro Shop safe and then all the features that we are

coming up with in addition to that I guess I’ll add we are building so for

those of our clients that have gotten what we call our cyber security excuse me our qms flying start package which is

basically a full qms an as9100 compliant qms in a box like delivered inside all

the protop modules we’re doing a very similar thing with cmmc so we’ll have a

cmmc flying start package we tried to do this a while ago but with when they switch from cmmc to cmmc 2.0 I kind of

threw a big wrench in the monkey works for that but um so we are recom out with

a a fresh one to meet the requirements of of the latest standard um but it

basically will if not to use too many technical terms it will be your SSP and

it will be your poem proshop will will manage your security plan and uh the the

all the processes for how you meet the requirements now many of the things that a shop has to do are outside of the RP

but Pro Shop will still become and we we believe our clients will largely use it the way you do an as you do one of your

as9100 Audits and it’s almost entirely in Pro Shop we believe the cmmc audits

will be the same way almost exclusively run out of proshop um as just the tool to organize how you meet the compliance

which include many processes that are completely outside of the system so but

uh so that is that um will CMC be important be as important

for Canadian companies to have um that’s a great question um I I ultimately

believe yes that the Canadian government will have something very very similar um but I do think there are ways because

this is also true for Australia um you know the you know the defense industrial

base is a Global Network right there are comp there are companies in all of you

know all these countries that are sharing work that are collaborating on projects um and uh they have you know

International networks of suppliers so yeah I’m pretty sure it will be pretty important I don’t know the specific

regulations on it myself personally but um that might be something we can share in our Forum or something like like

that what if any impact is there with safe and hybrid Adrien asks um it’s a

good question um I’m pretty positive it will be the exact same thing um you’ll

just be uh having your files locally stored instead of in our Cloud um now we are helping more and more customers go

from on-prem and and and off of hybrid as well to Pure Cloud understand that’s

not possible for some companies just based on the speed and quality of their internet connection but if the argument

up until now has been you know our customers won’t allow us to or we just don’t feel comfortable with um you know

data in the cloud um you know as an industry that’s changing fast uh you

know for our clients that are fully Cloud we use the AWS gov Cloud which is

a um you know a server Network that is designed to be compliant to um all the

requirements that the government has for all these things the government themselves use tons of AWS go cloud

services um so I think from the client’s side that’s becoming less and less true

that things are more safe on a local network so um in fact uh some of we

believe it’s some of the higher risk to have everything locally compared to uh

compared to having in the cloud because you’re very unlikely that your security team is As on top of everything as AWS

and our team is that are working you know constant ly on making that that solution uh more

secure so thank you Adrien for that um let’s see what is the typical cost so

more more general question what is the typical cost for a small company with 20 people um it depends so we have fairly

sort of transparent and straightforward pricing it’s just based on the number of users and the types of user licenses we

have three types we have shop users mid-level and then administrative executive users um sort of very much

ballpark um with a typical distribution of all those three types of seats um you

could say on average about a thousand bucks per employee per year so if you had a 20 person shop it’s going to be

about 20 grand a year for a subscription we do offer a purchase model as well which is less expensive on an annual

basis but of course has a much bigger upfront cost um so our sales team would be more

than happy to chat with you if you are curious to get some demos or talk or learn more about it um and I will

mention you know some people are like oh my gosh that’s a lot of money um it is a lot of it is it is a lot of money but if

the ROI isn’t significantly positive like you are saving or generating a lot

more profit than what Pro Shop costs you then something has gone terribly wrong I mean we’ve had clients share with us

that they have saved more money in so many different areas than than the Pro Shop subscription cost them on an annual

basis that um uh whether it’s you know reducing actual overhead bodies that

aren’t needed or can be repurposed into more value added roles um whether it could be um I mean we’ve even had more

than a handful tell us they’ve saved more money on their UPS shipping charges their overnight shipping charges and

Expediting fees with their processors uh on an annual basis than Pro Shop cost them so just that those two little

buckets uh um of cost alone uh we’re saving them more than prup costs and

there’s just so many other ways um so you you really need to kind of shift your your mindset of thinking about

what increase you know reducing cost and increasing revenue and throughput um

through investment in technology so another question what are the chances of a small shop uh that are in the that are

doing Defense work will get attacked um I think I’m I’m not an an expert in this

but I know that manufacturing is the top if not the second um industry most

attacked by hackers um and it is only getting worse and worse almost

exponentially every year so I would say there’s almost 100% chance your company will come under some kind of cyber

security attack at some point or another um and there’s a lot that you can do to

improve your basic cyber hygiene if you look up the cmmc standard even if you don’t intend to pursue it level one um

or the nist 800 171 it’s a published standard you can go get it download it read it uh even level one uh just some

of the most basic things about password management and employee training and things of that nature can really make a

big difference in in keeping your company safe so um and uh so yes uh

again cyber security is definitely a big thing what is the best way to do employee training um so uh Jeff I’m not

sure if that means employee training a pro shop or employee training in general um as far as uh Pro Shop Based training

um we have a very formalized process that we’re constantly evolving and

improving um where we use proshop to manage the training and implementation process of proshop so the very first

work order in a company’s system is this tip work order and it outlines every

learning objective from estimating through invoicing and uh has videos has

live training with your implementation specialist we pull different employees in to the training based on their roles

and that’s all documented in the org chart using our company positions module and as a general more broad question

that is how we recommend um doing employee training is organizing it in a

system with what roles people are in what training they need to get to be

proficient in those roles and then documenting different training tasks that they need to get trained in in

order to be you know proficient as a setup machinist or a day shift lead or an entry operator or a buyer or an

estimator whatever that might be so um so that is and you know and sure shop

does a reasonably good job of of managing that whole training process uh so uh two more questions and I think

we’ll run out of time here is Pro Shop storage encrypted yes as I said before with Pro Shop safe it’s encrypted at

rest and it’s encrypted in transit between the browser and the servers on AWS go Cloud so yes for sure

um uh Linda ask Will there be changes or additional dashboards in the quoting estimating for sales processes yes for

sure there are um we have recently just uh I guess the last version of prosop

has a bunch of new attributes for things like win percentage um chances of

winning a bid um reasons you lost it or won it um so we can you can start to

sort of analyze more of your quotes and see why you’re winning or losing quotes um but for sure having a an entire

module for uh what we call kind of a RFQ module is absolutely on our road map um

it’s a big module it ties in a lot of different things but we believe it’s really important to um make sure that

quoting processes uh can be highly efficient um but I will say I’ll just give a plug for estimating

templates the shops that are doing um estimating the best in prosop are highly

reliant on templates they have really crafted super robust really specific um

yet broad enough to to not be too narrow templates that have all of their processes even standardized quality

checks built into their estimating templates so I know this is getting a little bit in the weeds but you know if

you always do incoming inspection for your outside process let’s say anodize or chem film one of your things is to

always check the threaded holes for Gunk or damage to the threads you can build that right into your estimating template

so you you can add time for it you can add the the instructions for how you do that based on your business process or

or tasks and then every time you use that template to build a part which turns into a work order that will flow

right down onto the work instructions and quality requirements for the work order so without any additional effort

or time investment so um I’d say uh definitely lean heavily into estimating templates we have lots for those that

are clients today there we have lots of we have a couple different webinars that we did client learning webinars about

how to um do those we won’t share those in the chat because those are for clients only but um anyway uh so yes

thank you Linda for that question so it is the top of the hour um I’m gonna wrap things up so

thank you all so much for joining me today today I hope that was useful I hope that you decide to if your shop is

um struggling in any way uh that you decide to shift the mindset and what it

takes to really be you know a worldclass business learn to be a better business

leader owner uh read books watch videos um consume our content and um uh really

thank you for your time and attention today and uh we’ll see you on the next one thanks

everybody