Joe D Grinder
Titanium
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2005
- Location
- S.W. New Mexico
When I read all these threads about self employment and jobs, I feel like there is an option missing. Everybody seems to think that the only route to making it in business is advanced training and expensive equipment. Well, I'm sure that is the most popular route, but it's very popularity makes that route more competitive, and that's what you DON"T need!
I'm sure that a lot of you folks make a lot more money that I do now, and many probably make more than I ever did, but I have managed to raise 5 rather expensive daughters and keep my wife from having to join the workforce, own my home and shop outright, so let's say that this is my definition of success. If it's not yours, well maybe you need to follow the popular formula and just be better at it than anybody else, however it seems more like just hammering out stuff faster than anybody else can dooms you to always be buying the newest and fastest and most expensive machines you can afford and watching them decrease in value rapidly so you have to do it again in a few years. That's just how it looks from my side, so don't think I'm claiming any big knowlege about your buisnesses or the ones you want to start.
All I know is that I started doing some hand work that required some offbeat skills back in the late 70's. Before that, I had always had a job somewhere and did some moonlighting. When I sold auto parts, I used to buy broken machinery, (wheel balancers, battery chargers, jacks, etc. and repair and sell them on the side, then later I'd pick up electric power tools from customers and repair them for parts and labor charges. I kind of got my feet wet that way, and found out that I could make SO much more money doing simple repairs than I made at my full time job. And it was work NOBODY else wanted to do. Almost no equiment required. Then I found a source of single phase motors, used, that were cheap and started building alternator testers and selling them to junk yards so they could prove the used alternators worked when they sold them.
Anyway, jump to the late 70's and I was making some stuff (once more on the side, still had fulll time job at the mines) that required some off hand grinding skills and I thought I was getting quite good at that, so I heard about a guy who made ortodontic pliers and instruments, mostly by hand. I went and had a talk with him and he said I could do contract grinding for him, after he looked at my work. He hung 100 pair of pliers around the side of a cardboard box and told me what to do to them and sent me home with them. I had to grind a spot on the side of each pair of pliers that was almost the size of the side of the box joint to flat and parellell within .0005 on each pair, offhand, and could only screw up a couple of times or the side of the pliers would be too thin. I brought them back a few days later and he inspected them and paid me, then gave me another job to do on the same pliers and sent me off again.
I trundled those pliers back and forth for a time, doing different stuff to them, until he kept them one day and gave me another hundred pair of blanks to work on. He was finishing the jaws and putting in grooves and ramps, etc. on the first hundred. When he was done with that, they went out for plating. When they came back they were finished.
At that point he was going through a cardboard box that the mailman always tossed the mail into each day, and which Larry had never inspected or opened in the past 30 days I had been working for him, that I could see. He was opening envelopes and taking out checks and orders. He never opened an order until he had stuff to ship. When he had opened enough orders with enough checks for that particular style of plier to use up the hundred we had made, he chucked the rest of the envelopes back in the box. That was it. No need to look at any more orders, 'cause we didn't have any more pliers finished. He always started with the most recent orders, 'cause he figured the guys who sent the older orders were already mad, and "we might as well make somebody happy with our snappy service." He used to go to dental conventions in Tucson and write a phoney name on his badge and go around starting rumors that he had died, just to give himself a laugh and stop customers from "pestering" him.
Here is the point;
Those 100 pair of pliers brought in about 10 grand. That was 1978. They were not TOUCHED by any machine more sophisticated than a small horizontal mill. Most of the work was done on belt sanders. He had some nice machines, but they were all manual and mostly used for building jigs and fixtures. His building rent was about $250 per month as I recall. I didn't cost him much, and he was the only person who worked there. I figured his gross income at about 12 to 15 k per month and his expenses not enough to keep him below 10k net before taxes per month in 1978. Don't know what that is in today's dollars, but it ain't bad for a 70 year old man who is fond of coffee breaks and long lunches.
I knew what I needed after watching him for 6 months. I needed products that a small number of people REALLY wanted, and I needed the manual skills to make them very fast. Anything that represented a large enough chunk to tempt the "big machine" guys to horn in would be no good, because I couldn't compete against CNC. Whatever it was, I had to either be able to pleasantly surprise the customer with the price or it had to be good enough that nobody really cared about the price. My capitol had to be my product and my skills, because I had no money to speak of.
I think you can get the picture from there. I'm tired and it's bedtime. Let me know if anybody wants to hear more about it and I'll be glad to carry on for a while, but I think the point is made, if there is one.....Joe
I'm sure that a lot of you folks make a lot more money that I do now, and many probably make more than I ever did, but I have managed to raise 5 rather expensive daughters and keep my wife from having to join the workforce, own my home and shop outright, so let's say that this is my definition of success. If it's not yours, well maybe you need to follow the popular formula and just be better at it than anybody else, however it seems more like just hammering out stuff faster than anybody else can dooms you to always be buying the newest and fastest and most expensive machines you can afford and watching them decrease in value rapidly so you have to do it again in a few years. That's just how it looks from my side, so don't think I'm claiming any big knowlege about your buisnesses or the ones you want to start.
All I know is that I started doing some hand work that required some offbeat skills back in the late 70's. Before that, I had always had a job somewhere and did some moonlighting. When I sold auto parts, I used to buy broken machinery, (wheel balancers, battery chargers, jacks, etc. and repair and sell them on the side, then later I'd pick up electric power tools from customers and repair them for parts and labor charges. I kind of got my feet wet that way, and found out that I could make SO much more money doing simple repairs than I made at my full time job. And it was work NOBODY else wanted to do. Almost no equiment required. Then I found a source of single phase motors, used, that were cheap and started building alternator testers and selling them to junk yards so they could prove the used alternators worked when they sold them.
Anyway, jump to the late 70's and I was making some stuff (once more on the side, still had fulll time job at the mines) that required some off hand grinding skills and I thought I was getting quite good at that, so I heard about a guy who made ortodontic pliers and instruments, mostly by hand. I went and had a talk with him and he said I could do contract grinding for him, after he looked at my work. He hung 100 pair of pliers around the side of a cardboard box and told me what to do to them and sent me home with them. I had to grind a spot on the side of each pair of pliers that was almost the size of the side of the box joint to flat and parellell within .0005 on each pair, offhand, and could only screw up a couple of times or the side of the pliers would be too thin. I brought them back a few days later and he inspected them and paid me, then gave me another job to do on the same pliers and sent me off again.
I trundled those pliers back and forth for a time, doing different stuff to them, until he kept them one day and gave me another hundred pair of blanks to work on. He was finishing the jaws and putting in grooves and ramps, etc. on the first hundred. When he was done with that, they went out for plating. When they came back they were finished.
At that point he was going through a cardboard box that the mailman always tossed the mail into each day, and which Larry had never inspected or opened in the past 30 days I had been working for him, that I could see. He was opening envelopes and taking out checks and orders. He never opened an order until he had stuff to ship. When he had opened enough orders with enough checks for that particular style of plier to use up the hundred we had made, he chucked the rest of the envelopes back in the box. That was it. No need to look at any more orders, 'cause we didn't have any more pliers finished. He always started with the most recent orders, 'cause he figured the guys who sent the older orders were already mad, and "we might as well make somebody happy with our snappy service." He used to go to dental conventions in Tucson and write a phoney name on his badge and go around starting rumors that he had died, just to give himself a laugh and stop customers from "pestering" him.
Here is the point;
Those 100 pair of pliers brought in about 10 grand. That was 1978. They were not TOUCHED by any machine more sophisticated than a small horizontal mill. Most of the work was done on belt sanders. He had some nice machines, but they were all manual and mostly used for building jigs and fixtures. His building rent was about $250 per month as I recall. I didn't cost him much, and he was the only person who worked there. I figured his gross income at about 12 to 15 k per month and his expenses not enough to keep him below 10k net before taxes per month in 1978. Don't know what that is in today's dollars, but it ain't bad for a 70 year old man who is fond of coffee breaks and long lunches.
I knew what I needed after watching him for 6 months. I needed products that a small number of people REALLY wanted, and I needed the manual skills to make them very fast. Anything that represented a large enough chunk to tempt the "big machine" guys to horn in would be no good, because I couldn't compete against CNC. Whatever it was, I had to either be able to pleasantly surprise the customer with the price or it had to be good enough that nobody really cared about the price. My capitol had to be my product and my skills, because I had no money to speak of.
I think you can get the picture from there. I'm tired and it's bedtime. Let me know if anybody wants to hear more about it and I'll be glad to carry on for a while, but I think the point is made, if there is one.....Joe