Holy shit, has is been a year already? Seriously!?!
For those of you who don't know, after 16 years of working at the Maricopa County Superior Court as a Database and Applications Manager, last April I quit my full time gig to work full time at Tuff Writer. Now, the fact that we went through 5 CIOs in 5 years and the latest one was / is bat-shit crazy didn't hurt but Peachy and I had talked about my leaving .gov and had come to the conclusion that it was time to shit or get off the pot. So now, one year (and some months) later, here we are.
How's it been so far, you ask? It's been a wild ride.
Couldn't have done it without the wife though:
In the past year we've hired a few people. A few have left (and come back). We've brought our first full time employee (other than Peachy and myself) on board and are already looking at adding a second one. We've purchased our first brand new CNC machine (making this 3 total) and launched yet another Kickstarter project (as well as collaborated on 2 more).
Brand spankin' new Haas VF-2SS:
I've gone from being worried whether I could make this work full time to regretting not having jumped ship sooner. Don't get me wrong, there's still a long (L-O-N-G) way to go, but the progress we've made in the past year would have been impossible if I was still punching the clock with the county.
Peachy and I went to a cafe this morning and spent over an hour going over upcoming projects and we've already booked projects out well through October. While being busy is not the same thing as being profitable, we're fortunate to be doing alright there as well. While we've continued to reinvest proceeds back into the business (guess that private jet will have to wait) we're doing alright and the black, though by no means as well as when I was drawing that sweet, sweet government dollar (no jet for instance but I did buy myself a DJI Phantom a few months ago).
That doesn't mean that things have been simple or easy, but they have been exciting and sure as hell educational. One of the biggest questions I need to answer is where I run a manufacturing company that makes pens or a pen company that manufactures other stuff.. or possibly we're really running two businesses at once. A little help and mentor-ship would go a long way here but the local small business accelerator program in Phoenix wasn't a great fit for us (unless you're a hair salon, real estate agent or fitness gym owner, you're going to be a little disappointed) but finding people to talk to about some of the issues we run into would be nice. Just last week at BLADE Show I ran across a few guys in the industry and we chatted for a few hours. It was quite honestly one of the best round table discussions I've ever had since being in business. I probably got more valuable feedback in those two hours than I have in weeks (in my defense, I don't get out much). I wish I knew how to find something like this regularly as I imagine all of us enjoyed the discussion and got something out of it.
Your's truly (the handsome one), Will from Tactile Turn, Brad from Southard Knives and John from Grimsmo Knives:
Where does that leave us going forward? Well.. forward I suppose. We're definitely going to keep the pens coming. We've recently added a used Epilog CO2 laser and LIT Fiber laser for part marking and engraving (as well as other things we haven't even tried yet). We've got numerous collaborations in the pipe as well as products we're machining for friends in the industry. There's at least one more Kickstarter project on the horizon for this year and a video project we're working on.
I suppose the biggest challenge will be focusing on the right things. Now, if I only knew what those are.
It's ridiculously hard work (what is this sleep thing you speak of?) and occasionally terrifying (wadya mean the new mill needs a new spindle?!?!) while always being challenging but who knew that running a business could be this much fun?
Alright.. time to get back to work!
-jack
