Transcript
Sunny 00:02
All right, welcome to another episode of capacity. We're here in about half an hour west of Boston at ACP water jet. ACP water jet is a laser cutter and water jet contract manufacturer. Work with defense contractors and prototyping energy fuel cells, fusion reactors, all sorts of different components. Different components, and has grown really well and and done through a lot of people based philosophy as well as using new technology. Thank you for being on the podcast.
Carlos 00:34
Well, thank you for having me here.
Sunny 00:36
So this is a very well run operation. Do you have a long history of manufacturing? Did you learn this from a family member or work at another, you know, laser cutting facility for a long time? Or was your history with manufacturing?
Carlos 00:50
No. So manufacturing never happened before. ACP, water jet, I learned, and our team also learned everything from experience here. So before the water jet cutter, that was our first machine, we never really, I never knew what water jet cutting was, laser cutting or press brake.
Sunny 01:10
How do you even get the idea to start a company like this? If you've never had exposure to sure it happened.
Carlos 01:13
A friend of ours used to work in a company that had water jet cutting. He ran the CNC department, and we wanted to open a business. And the idea was, okay, we got one of these water jet cutters, and we gonna be rich in a couple of years. So that's how everything started.
Sunny 01:31
What was the first machine that you bought?
Carlos 01:35
We bought a Mitsubishi water jet. And Mitsubishi definitely helped us get the business started. It was a lot of new we bought a new, wow, yeah. So we started with a new machine, which it was Mitsubishi at the time, and they probably still have a Mac funny. So it really helped you get a machine financed. And the whole process started, and we we were able to, so the idea of becoming a business owner was in October 2008 we were up and running April of 2009 Wow. So it was a fairly quick from not being a business owner to become one.
Sunny 02:10
I mean, also in a time period where a lot of other businesses were really distressed, correct?
Carlos 02:13
Yeah, we are. We were in a recession, yeah. But it was people say that it's always better to start in a recession, because you can always you're always growing. You're always on an uptrend and a downtrend. And for us was we had no no business experience. We had no customers line up. We just had an idea of starting a business together and growing from there.
Sunny 02:36
So no experience in manufacturing, no experience in business. Just got a new machine in a recession. People are scared. They're not making decisions. How did you convince your first customers to give you parts to run?
Carlos 02:52
We used to call everybody around us. We used to use a fax machine and fax any company we thought would be using water jet cutting at the time, at the very beginning, I was a lot younger, but also it was like this kid with a water jet having selling parts, selling a service to us. So it was more about the age. They were more into the age than the actual business. Not only that, water jet cutting 16 years ago, was a newer technology. So not a lot of people had water jets. They knew plasma cutting, laser cutting and some other cutting methods, but the water jet was a new thing.
Sunny 03:33
Did Mitsubishi help you, like, communicate what the value was of their machine? Like, did you use a lot of their talk tracks? Like, did people ask you about your experience? Like, were there any issues where they're like, hey, you've never done this before. We'll wait for years before we work with you.
Carlos 03:47
We had some customers like that, yeah, but we were always we were very persistent. Yeah, we were working full time, and we come at the shop in the afternoon and weekends. So we were working on Google, creating campaigns, building a website, sending facts to companies that were close by. But it was about, I want to say, a few days before you have our first order, that one, I just, I just don't recall the first order, but it was, there was no minimum charge. Was just, yeah, we need this done. Can you do it? There was no structure. We just needed to put that machine to work and start generating revenue.
Sunny 04:29
And then how did you feel when you got that order? Didn't know how to really use the machine. Or, like, where did you get your first material? Like, what was that startup process like?
Carlos 04:38
In that case, it was a little bit easier on my partner's side, I used to have a business partner, so he was working in a shop. So he understood, okay, we can buy aluminum from this place, stainless steel for another one. And he knew how to program the water jet. I knew nothing about programming or operating the water jet, so the way we worked out was he was programming in our. Running. So I had some training from the Mitsubishi techs to get the machine running and maintenance. And he was doing the other programming side, and we were looking at a quote.
Sunny 05:12
It was just two of you, for how long? How long was that like? How long was it just a two of you in a water jet?
Carlos 05:17
So it was about two years. So 2011, we have we split the partnership, and we were able to purchase this side, and he was able to move away from the company. And from 2011 it was still just me, Patricia, and a newborn. So it was just three of us for another two years alone. So 2013 we had our first hire, and Patricia has been supportive the whole time.
Sunny 05:39
Does she think you're crazy in the beginning or…
Carlos 05:45
No, she supported me. That's one of the things. I am blessed to have Patricia, because she always supported my ideas, even though, as we had a mortgage, that machine was a mortgage they had to pay in five years, and you also had rent to pay. You had all the other costs involved to run a shop. And I still had my full time job, and I was a carpenter, so I used to really construction, so nothing related to manufacturing.
Sunny 06:16
When do you run the water jet? At night? At night?
Carlos 06:19
Wow, yeah. And we another blessing we had. Our neighbor next door was a garage door guy, so he was able to unload the trucks and have stuff for us on the loading dock. So that helped us a lot for the first until we were there. So we were there from 2009 to 2013 so we they helped us get the unloading the trucks and anything else we needed to, we just called him. His name was Bob. Say, Bob, can you just unload this truck coming over? And he would just with a forklift. So that's amazing, yeah, very, very nice people.
Sunny 06:52
I have to ask, and you don't have to talk about if you don't want to, but splitting up with a business partner can be really painful. What was that? What was that? What was that journey like?
Carlos 06:59
It was fine. The first day we set up and talk about being a business owner, we were very clear and transparent. We said to each other, if there's not working out, we're just going to split. And the main idea was where we were getting busier by 2011 and somebody need to quit their jobs, because we're still working full time to stay in the company. Both of you were both, yeah, both of us. So we needed somebody. Had to quit, and the company had to support if needed. And that was where we didn't have a clear solution. He didn't want to quit his job. He didn't want to quit. I was able to quit my job, but I needed support. If the company could not pay for my basic needs whatever. There was just bare minimum for us to keep growing the company. Yeah, and that's where it was. We came to a conclusion, we need to, okay, we got to figure out how much this business worth.
Sunny 07:55
Did you approach him, or did he approach you? Or, like, how did it even come up to be like, Hey, this is we're at a point in time where this isn't working out?
Carlos 08:01
I approached him because I said, I can quit my job tomorrow and I I'll be 100% of the time of the company, and being there is going to help us grow faster, because I can be talking to customers, calling people all day long, receiving material, cutting orders, and doing all the other process we were doing it, but it was not something that they could support us. They also had a newborn at the time, and he just didn't want to take the risks. So it was very clear that I wanted to, once we knew that that wasn't going to happen, I said, Okay, so I'll buy the business from you. And said, and I'm fine selling. So there was no fight as far as I want to buy too. We had a pretty straightforward talk, and said, Okay, let's figure out how much it's worth it, and then the other piece of the pie is okay. How do I pay him to and we came up on an agreement, and it was the best decision we made to us and for them too. Today, they own their own shop. They have a machine shop. They're very successful. It was just something not meant for us at that time. For both of us, we're still very good friends, so the partnership was just awkward in the beginning when we split it, but was not a the friendship still there.
Sunny 09:13
That's good, yeah, that's very fortunate. Oh, yeah. So you quit your job, you're here full time. What was the first change that happened? Like, how, what were the things that you did right away?
Carlos 09:22
The activity level you had to I had to be I was on the phone. I was online all the time. I was trying to figure out how to work with Google. Google, back then, didn't really call you and bug you, Hey, do you need help? I can assist you creating this campaign. If your campaign was not right, they'll send you an email that it was not compliant with their policy, and that's it. You got to figure out how to make it compliant. And so my on the early beginnings was trying to figure out how people get business and how people will find us to so we can offer our service. And so we went through manufacturing reps that. They helped us. One of them, Carl. He was said Carlos, fax was the best way. He was old school. So you know why? Because email you can just click Delete right away the fax. You got to take off the fax machine and throw it in that garbage so at least they look at it didn't work. It worked. We had a few customers that we still have today from those faxes. But it was again today, nobody uses faxes anymore. Or if they use that faxing, it comes in an email, yeah, so you can still delete it, but back then, people still have faxes, a communication.
Sunny 10:32
So you did all the sales yourself, all the sales. Why do you think you won work in that time period?
Carlos 10:38
Specifically, I think, is the same as today, where I could offer the lead time they were looking for. They have vendors that were not it was either a quality issue or response issue, communication, getting parts to them faster. So we were able to turn those jobs around fairly quickly. I would deliver. We would do anything that we could to in their business.
Sunny 10:58
So at this point in time, had you learn how to program the machine and run everything yourself, like completely it just you, your wife and a newborn and a newborn. Yes. How did the company evolve from there?
Carlos 11:09
So I was in the office quoting, and the machine was running, so I had to program in a way that the machine could run unattended. And my year is very trained from those times where I was in the office, any different noise outside? It was a smaller shop, so, but any different noise, I'll run outside and stop the machine or just see what's going on. And so that's where I built my programming. But also, there were days where I just couldn't figure out how to program some parts, or the files were not corrected. I couldn't fix it. And that's where I had the support from Mitsubishi to Okay, I can't figure this out. Can you help me? I need this job done for tomorrow. And same thing with the service. Something went down with the machine within I didn't know how to fix it yet, the way I know today. So I can 100% say that Mitsubishi water jet, Mitsubishi, at the time, they had water jet cutting machines. Now they don't have it anymore. That was a big, big helper to get the business going, understanding the machine, programming the machine. When I had any bugs I had, I knew every tech and the Mitsubishi I could call him on a cell phone, the sales rep at which I still very good friend, Frank. So Frank, it's when we I see him at fab tech, and it's just like so he's such a nice person to be around. We always talk about when we started, when we first approached them in 2009 and we just didn't know what we're doing. And today we are both myself and my my other business partner, we were both successful.
Sunny 12:43
It's amazing. So single person operation till now. You have bunch of different machines downstairs. You have a whole team your your scale of your business is 50 times bigger than you were back then. What was that journey like? What What were the the biggest learnings and the biggest missteps, the biggest pieces of luck that you got from you know that 22,008 2011, period till now?
Carlos 13:07
Yeah, we've been growing since we started. We had a slowdown the last year, and we're back on track this year. But it was definitely a lot of learning from your mistakes, because I haven't come from manufacturing. So I was learning and to build a business. I didn't go for business school, so it's just that daily learn, how can we do this job better? How can we make money on this job? How can we advertise? How can we get customers to buy back, buy again, from us. And the other piece of the puzzle is hiring people. Once you hire people is different than you running the business. How can they run the way you run your machines and do the maintenance like it's supposed to be done. Make sure the shop's clean, organized, so when a customer comes in, they they appreciate seeing an organized, clean shop, versus a shop they go, it's a complete chaos. So it's definitely there was a lot of learning on this journey mistakes. And what was the explosive mistakes?
Sunny 14:12
What was the first big one, and what happened?
Carlos 14:16
It's hard to learn. Well, it's hard to narrow it down to a few of them, but it usually is. It's one I was not running alone. We had more people and just it's just in the training communication, beginning to do a job a certain way, and it didn't go the way we were planning. But we not really super bad mistakes, but it's the one mistakes we have in this journey is where you get to a point where you grow, you become comfortable, and then that's when the problem lives. It's just that constant. You get really comfortable. You get to a point where you never thought you'd be and you got to keep thinking, Okay, what's next? In my. I staying this big, because if you're not growing, what I learned, if you're not growing, you're dying. Because you're not everything is going up, all your costs, everything is it's moving up. And if you're staying stagnant, you just you're that you're a dying business.
Sunny 15:16
Yeah, a lot of people struggle with complacency or, like, entitlement. You know, you feel like you've already done the work and so you get to enjoy it, or you just feel like you don't want to take on more risk. Like, how do you how do you change your mindset to always be thinking about growth?
Carlos 15:32
You have to take risks. There's no such thing as staying standing still. We he had water Jack cutting, so 2013 we made a big move from the shop. We were to a bigger shop, and we went from one machine to two water jets, and that's where we see the business was pretty much doubling every year. But we knew water jet wasn't the only cutting or service we could offer. There was always some other services we needed to offer our customers to get more parts for them, and so you got to take a risk. So what? What can I add to our capabilities? And we were looking at laser cutting at the time, where we just, we couldn't get approved. We had a five year old business, but we just couldn't get any financing approved to get a laser cutter, because back then, and still now, they're close to a million dollar machine, and we didn't, we didn't have a higher revenue business yet, and so we went down the path, okay, what can we buy in between that can still be used later? So we started with a press break, so we were able to cut and bend parts, and eventually got into laser cutting.
Sunny 16:40
So you ran everything through your water jet and then bent it afterwards.
Carlos 16:44
Before the lasers, yeah. But in the laser was something that I always had in mind to okay, we had the water jets, and the laser comes in hand to do all the sheet metal work. But because we couldn't get a laser financed, we said, okay, we can get a press break finance so we can start bending these parts. So we went that route for about a year, and then we were able to get into laser cutting and kind of close that circle.
Sunny 17:09
A lot of people would have been scared to get a million dollar machine at that size right, especially if your revenue couldn't support it like there's a lot of different things that I know about you that says that you really believe that equipment and technology can help you? Like, why? Where did those beliefs form? Like, why? Where? Why do you have such a deep faith that getting the next laser, or the fiber laser or the tube laser or the laser welder, that those maneuvers are the right things to do to grow?
Carlos 17:37
It’s just like on the water jets. But in general, there's always a better way to do the same job, and that lately is coming through technology. More and more technology is making our life easier, from a smartphone to iPads on the shop floor going paperless. So those things are helping us through this technology. I tell some people say we are a technology company, because these machines all CNC program. So it's not somebody that's punching a code or putting the tape right. That's how it used to be. Now you go to a computer, everything is off. It's offline. You can see the program offline. I can be home or anywhere in the US or in the world and send a program to a machine. So how can we use that technology to do our nesting, do our programs. How can we use it? Keep using it to look at costs. Are we costing this right? Are we costing too low? Can we charge more? Can we do we need to charge less? Can we get these certain types of jobs and that goes through, okay? What technology are we missing? What are customers looking for? And that's a infinite game. We're never going to stop looking at what's next that we can add to our capabilities.
Sunny 18:50
So when you take a risk, sometimes you lose. Have you purchased or adopted a technology that didn't actually work or didn't actually help? Yes, what was it and what? What didn't you see when you were initially excited about it?
Carlos 19:03
Yeah, so we had some deburring machines that we had back in the day, and was just okay, when we have this, we can have all this type of work that we're going to be doing it, and ended up sitting more than than using the machine. And that's one of them. The other ones, I will say it's true software. We bought some software that we just figured it would do something, but it didn't. So we had to either go and look for another software or or any anything else that could do what we were looking for. But yeah, machine is for sure. We have some machines where we're selling today that they had a purpose, but now they are just sitting around in becoming a cost issue and a space issue too.
Sunny 19:44
So it was either because there wasn't as much of a market or as much value as you thought, or it did something that you assumed, because you're like, oh, this technology works really well, but it didn't actually do it?
Carlos 19:53
Exactly.
Sunny 19:55
I see. Do you think that you have gotten less risk tolerant over time? Do you take smaller and smaller risks now, or the same, more risk tolerant?
Carlos 20:04
I would say it's about the same. In my head, it goes, I can only offer what I have. I don't want to offer it and go through a vendor, because then we don't control the time. So with the laser cutter or the water jet cutting, I cannot offer laser cutter because I just didn't have one. So same thing with a price break. I can't offer vending services until I have a price break. So I wasn't I'm not getting better, but still the risk takers still there. What else can we do? What kind of customer we will be able to service today. We have a larger customer database, so I'll probably we can probably consider a smaller risk, because we have a lot of customers. That's when we introduced machining, because we knew some of these parts that our customers needed us to water jet cutting. Had some machining work done as simple as accountable, but uh, I still looking for service that we don't have today, that we can offer our customers, and the ROI do should? That should be shorter than it used to be, just based on more time in business and more more customers that we serve.
Sunny 21:18
So going back to what we were talking about earlier, oftentimes when you create something that's providing good income, good wage for your employees, for your entire team, you're doing good work for your customers, you can shift into playing, not to lose mode, where you're like, I have to at least protect this and I'll take risks that don't kind of threaten that. Do you think in that way, or are you just mostly focused on the future, like what it could be and where you're headed?
Carlos 21:43
It's where it could be. Yeah, I'm not looking into if you're protecting your you are losing any manufacturing. If you're protecting and doing the same thing for too long, then you some you're going to lose business.
Sunny 21:57
When you think about a new idea, a new concept, some new invention, new machine, new piece of software, walk me through how you think about it, like how do you envision what it's going to do to your business, or what it could be like? How do you process that in your brain?
Carlos 22:11
We have to be able to create a customer experience, then nobody else is doing it. Or you can do it better, and that's going to go through all the way from our quoting to touch points for the customer, follow ups and communication. I think the one thing we tried for a long time is just communicating with the customer. When we do good and we do bad as well. If something's going wrong, we communicate with our customers who let them know what's happening, because no shop out there. It's going to be 100% on time delivery. You're going to have, you're dealing with machines and people, so you have to go, you're going to make adjustments. I'm big machine researcher, so usually some people call me, Hey, have you seen this? What do you think about it? So I look into water, jet cutting, or laser cutting, whatever we do. And I feel when you talk to a sales rep from a machine and you manufacture and they don't know anybody else. Said, Have you heard about this machine? So I haven't. So do you know that they can do this? And that said, I don't know. Said, Are you selling laser cutting machines? So yeah. So you should know everything about laser cutting, every machine in the world. You should know machines that are made in Spain, Italy, Germany, China, everywhere else you should be deep into work, understanding what they can do and you can't do that's similar to I was reading a story about a one of the Ford CEOs. He drives the Lexus. They said Lexus the greatest car and and people think he was crazy because he was driving a Lexus and he was the Ford CEO, but said, Yeah, we got to build stuff like this. What we built is not even close to Alexis, and that's how he had to change that culture, looking at what they call it, when you have a rival, a rival company, but you're learning from the rival, not competing. You're learning from them, just like Microsoft, so you're learning from what they're doing good. Same with what are we doing good, what other people are doing good. Instant quoting platform didn't exist few years ago. Now it exists. How can we use that, not to compete against them, but to make life easier for our customers, that they can go order parts online, 24 hours a day. We are here, typically Monday to Friday, seven to five so they can how can we make it easier for our customer? I think that's the end. That's that's what we if I had to ask a question, is that's the question I will ask every, every time I got to make a decision, how can we make easier for a customer?
Sunny 24:39
I mean, you've really committed to that. You have a digital quoting system. You also have kind of an instant e-commerce quoting system. You spent a lot of money getting that developed and and finally searching the internet for all sorts of different providers like what drove that level of commitment, that you're willing to spend all that money and do all that. Yeah, like, what was the drive? Like, what was the vision there?
Carlos 25:03
I'm a worst enemy, so if I'm ordering from me, I want to understand what's the experience if I was a customer of ACP. So there's a lot of things I want to still do. I talk to people like, I want to have a domino app, right when that order comes into production, you know exactly, just like you have that tracking, some people can opt out, and some people say, Yeah, I love to have all that tracking so I know exactly where my parts are. So it's always becoming today so easy to buy stuff from Amazon or any other online store. And how can we do that into custom manufacturing in not only that, how can we do that in days? And that's a big thing for us. It's parts in days now weeks. How can we do these in days now weeks? And that's where it becomes tougher. That's where technology it's going to help us get there, because the you can only do so much without technology. But when you add the time constraint, and you're building custom parts, not production lines, where you can you have months to plan and you can figure that out. You can go to the 10th of a second or every operation, save some time here and there. Sometimes you don't have that time. You have an order that's next day. Sometimes you have to run to a local Metal supplier to get a piece that you don't have in stock to fulfill the order. And of course, there's a premium for that service, but that's something that our customers know. We can do it, and they come back to more for more orders like that.
Sunny 26:32
How do you think about companies that have taken that model to the extreme, like everybody knows, oshcut and send cut, send and in Europe, 24/7 Taylor, their model, though, is saying no to a lot of stuff that they can't do versus you want to offer as close to an instant experience, but also you say yes to a lot of things to try to figure out how to do it. Like, how do you think about mashing those two business concepts together?
Carlos 26:55
It's a tough one. It's a tough one because you either has to say, like, they have a set of okay, we can do this really well, and we can do this for a good value, but we need a lot of those. Not only that, they need a lot of automation behind the process. A lot of software goes behind those calculations. To understand this is this works with our business model, and we go into a similar phase where we're looking at orders that coming in, and does this make sense for us today to to get an order like this? Or should we look into, okay, what's the average order we need to be hitting every time? But we're looking for model where we want to partnerships, where it's easier to do business with us, where you can if you have a custom part that does not fit the mold of an instant quality platform. You can still call us or send us a fill up a form and discuss that project, and it's sometimes we even suggest, make suggestions to make your part for less some a lot of time, people say, oh, I want this water jet. Say, why not laser cutting and vice versa. Some parts. I want a laser cut, but, yeah, this is not going to work on a laser. We we either have to water jacoty Or we had to make adjustments. So it's a more of a creating a partnership, not that one time order. The more B to B business where we're growing with them, just like the customer base, we have a lot of prototyping. They have they needed parts tomorrow. They need parts on Saturday. They need parts delivered to hotels because they're doing uninstall and that's what that's why we're here to support the customer. And sometimes, when they have a big order, doesn't come to us because we don't have that pricing they're looking for. Anytime they think about getting parts ready for next day or a three day turnaround, that's when they turn to us and say, Hey, ACP. Can you guys do this? And we do that up daily.
Sunny 28:45
Are you going to change your name from ACP water jet to ACP sheet metal or something?
Carlos 28:48
Yeah, we shorted our name on our logo. It just says, ACP Cut process ship I see, and that's that was the last logo change that I made, Patricia. At some point in our office, we're gonna have all the names. We used to be called ACP machine shop, then ACP water jet came in 2011 but the logo has changed a few times, and the last time we did is, which is on my shirt the water jet part is it was the beginning. So it has to be more when more than a water jet cutting shop, so ACP was just, just keep ACP and in the Cut process ship. That's pretty much what we've been doing. We're cutting through laser machining or water jet, we're processing the two second ops or the Browning, and we shipping those parts.
Sunny 29:37
So what do you see going forward, like, what's the technology that you're the most interested in? What do you think is next? What's the next? What's the next? You know, software, machine, whatever it is that that's that you're thinking about, or whatever technology, maybe it doesn't even exist yet.
Carlos 29:49
Yeah. So for us, will be on the software side, making improvements on our instant quoting platform, make it easier, more intuitive. So easier. Customer experience on the quoting side, I was also working on keep improving our quoting process and looking into what is working, what's not working, what's making us money, what's not bringing us the revenue. We're looking for to keep supporting other customers that we are doing today. Machinery is the same thing. How can we consolidate processes into one machine or or maybe two machines. The limitation we have today's space, we have a physical limitation on our building, so we have to be very careful with the technology we're bringing in. But we see welding, or future laser welding, so we might become one of those early adopters to laser welding. It's a, it's a, it's an amazing technology. And we're also looking into a punch laser combos, which has been around for a little while, and it's just an amazing process where you can do cutting, bending, tapping, forming, so a little bit everything on one machine, and run that machine 24 hours a day. Not only that, but you can sort because that's the other thing we got to think about when we had the order, either to an instant quoting platform or through our quoting system, how many people will touch is how much, how much profit you're going to have. So the last people touching that from quoting to programming and operations, that's where the magic happens. So limiting the number of touch points in the in the whole from from quoting to shipping, that's where the goal is, to minimize as much as we can.
Sunny 31:31
How do you digest new concepts so we know that you use our API to push orders in automatically that are made on your website. How did you even know that was possible and that you should try to use something like that, and that paying for that would be useful like, how do you get the source of information? Who do you ask for for advice?
Carlos 31:52
It's well, fulcrum was one of big one of the big change we did. We have been using the quoting software, Paperless Parts, to do all the quoting, and we needed to go into a more user friendly for operations. Fulcrum came came, came to to us. So we started learning more about fulcrum, and not only that, that you guys had an open API, which I started to understand a little bit more. And once we started developing our instant quality platform. I say, Okay, can we connect that to fulcrum? And sure enough, we are doing that today. We still have to do some final tweaks to make it work, but it's not on the fulcrum side. It's more on our platform. So just making, again, the least amount of double data entry. That's what we were doing before we had paperless parts in another ERP system, we were doing double data entry, so minimizing that saves us time, saves us time into quoting programming, and we can add more value to our customer. We can we can be less expensive, but also keep our margins the same or bigger so we can grow. It's a win win for for our customers, because we can do that much more efficiently, but also on our internal process, we can do more rush orders per day than we used to do before. So automating programming, that's something we're going to be looking. How can we automate programming? How can we automate some other process so that we don't have that using software.
Sunny 33:23
There's a lot of fear in the world right now about AI automating people's jobs away, or of software machinery in general, but your team is extremely positive. Really open. Showed them nest planning immediately started using it right away. How do you keep that culture alive where people aren't afraid of the of the advancements, but instead are excited to use it.
Carlos 33:44
Well, you have to. It's, I think there's a culture we built. We always bring in new stuff, and we learn and keep developing until we get better. We don't. We have a culture where we we share feedback. And so it's, I don't think it's AI is not taking jobs away. It's bringing more jobs into manufacturing, because you're you're able to create more revenue, and with that revenue, you're able to hire more people. You're still going to need people running machines. You can go into more automated systems, but you're also going to have people in the process. You're going to need programming to do a final check. You're going to have inspectors. You're going to have people running the forklifts, unloading trucks, packaging parts. So AI is not, I don't think it's going to our team. They are very familiar with AI. I use AI to create some models. As far as pricing models, that's where I start. Okay, am I pricing correctly? Am I pricing incorrectly? Looking into, how can we improve feedback from customers in technology is just not running away from Ai. How can we make like reports, specific reports to understand efficiency for our operators, and that's going to come true. An AI platform software. And we, we embrace, we embrace technology. That's just the way moving forward.
Sunny 35:07
We talked a little bit before the this chat here about the E Myth and how good of a book that is, and kind of showing common mistakes that people make while they're scaling. Never had business experience before. So you're learning manufacturing, then you're learning manufacturing, then you're learning how to run a business correct. Then you're learning how to be a business owner and not just an operator, yeah. And then you're learning about culture and people. Like, how has that journey been? Like, what have you learned? What have you kept? What what came true out of that book that that seemed like a spooky but like, what was, what's your experience been there?
Carlos 35:40
It's just there's a lot of things we don't know. We don't know what we don't know. And going through the book is interesting to understand why you are. And being an operator and becoming a business owner, it's a big step, and because you have to understand, how can you duplicate yourself? And you only, you can only do that through people software. Can do some of the stuff that you can do, but somebody has to know that, other than just yourself and the our path forward is going to how can we make successful easier for our team? How can they achieve their PPA? We call the PPF goal, the personal, professional, financial goals. How can we help them achieve those goals? And that's the journey we are now. And the email is funny, because we went, I went through those stages. Was probably still on some of those stages, because I haven't completely duplicated myself. If you're looking 16 years ago, 16 years ago, yes, I was able to hire water jet operators, programmers. So in some way we we have done that, and now we are in a process where we have to make these standards so SOPs, how we do and that's through the book too. How can we make this as a standard process? So when a new hire comes in, he goes through a process. He understand the training. We onboard them quicker. They are successful quicker than the last person in it's constant. It's constant improvement. It's continuing improvement.
Sunny 37:04
What has held you back in the past? What's holding you back now from fully duplicating yourself?
Carlos 37:10
It's just a day to day. It's one of the things that I want to say. The last two months has been okay. What are my three big things I have to do today, regardless of what time? So what are the revenue activities I'm going to have to do today? So I can keep ACP, the company can keep investing in training. We do a lot of training for our team. What can be done? What's What can I do to duplicate myself into three other leaders today that based on our size, so they can be their best and also help other people be successful in the company. So that's where the challenge is, and that's where we are, and that's the moment we are right now. We are creating SOPs so training becomes easier. We have one day on board. We give them three books to read. Atomic habits is one start with the y, and we call the 10x rule, because you cannot, you can never bring dreams so big. And if we think about back then and now, I never thought about it being a situation that we are today, how much we grew our first year revenue versus the one week revenue or six month revenue. So understanding how to build a team is what you learn from books. And executing is the hard I would say it's is the hard part. How can I execute what I've been learning the last year or two to books like that, in atomic habits and some other books that I've been reading lately on leadership. How can I become a better leader that I am? How can I become a better communicator? Because the message has to be it only works once you understood the message I'm communicating to you. So it's becoming a good communicator, becoming a good leader. Inspire them to achieve their goals, to show them the path. Okay, what is the path for me to go from here to to what is the my employee maturity model? How do I get from deburring to become a operations manager at some or a leader in the in the company?
Sunny 39:20
So you've way more than 10x over the last 15 years. Is your goal to 10x again over the next 15 years? And yes, and how are you going to get there?
Carlos 39:27
It's going to be through two milestones. So we are right now. We are we have to build process. We have to put these systems into a training platform. That way we can scale based on these systems, systems that work. So we are looking at okay, what went well, and what didn't, and duplicate the the actions that did really good, and understanding those So analyzing just like the military does, okay, we had a mission. Okay? What went well? What went wrong? How can we improve from here? So same, I would say the same idea we'd be doing here every day. What went well yesterday? What went down last week? We had a scrap. Was this a training? Was it a communication issue? So how can we improve this daily? So it's always like that transition. How can I I've been doing this for so long, okay? How can I make this better? How can we make this job easier? We have a good roadmap ahead of us. Today. We are into marketing. We never had a sales team. We have team of team. We have a team of people doing estimating. So we are the leads are coming in through us, through Google or referral or meta, and they are becoming we, so we quote the job and we follow up, but now we are into okay, we need to build a sales team where people are reaching just like I used to do. I used to look up a Okay, around 10 miles from me, what companies could do business with us and really doing the outreach that we we haven't done. So everything else is pretty much word of mouth and referrals, or somebody that worked with a company we used to do business, and they moved to another company. They say, ASP, I was working at this company. I have some parts here that I think you guys can manufacture for us. So we see quite a bit of that the last two years, people moving from jobs, and then they go into new companies and and sometimes even companies we already do business, which is which is cool, so they already know us, and it's just just a clear path for us to get more business. So it's just for us, it's we started marketing the company we we and we are building a sales team to take us to the next level. We did a deep research for the last five years, and what we found out is when people find us, they stay with us and they spend more money. So it's just finding us, that's where the opportunity lives. So we need to have more people find us, and then we from there, we create a partnership and keep growing that partnership.
Sunny 42:04
What other thoughts do you have that we haven't covered yet about this journey of yours? You've been on this crazy ride.
Carlos 42:09
If I was able, it's one of those things, if I was able to do, most people can do it's I'm a Brazilian immigrant. Came here into the US 24 years ago. I only had three, $300 in the pocket. No place to stay. I had to stay in the hostel for two weeks until I found a place to stay and find a job and go to English as a Second Language class and improve my English. I had okay English, so I had to improve the English and build a company, build a family. Now we support 16 families in growing so we want to keep supporting more people that came with a dream to to, you know, the American Dream, which is, it's, it's hard work. It's pretty much hard work, but it can be done. You can come to the US. There's a lot of opportunity. A lot of people don't know ACP, don't know Carlos, or what we do here. So it's, it's one of those things that I hope inspire people to to execute on that dream. It's that, it's just the level of activities where we sometimes we we miscage, where we need to do so much more. And not only that, we are capable so much more than we think we are. So just pushing ourselves to to do better every day and do good as well. That's where we're looking forward for the future.
Sunny 43:31
Well, thank you for taking the time to share your story. If people want to get a hold of you, how should they contact you?
Carlos 43:36
Yeah, they can go to our website, ASP, waterjet.com, we have a phone number, email, the instant quality platform, the quote form or the in the email to our sales team so they can easily reach us anytime.
Sunny 43:50
Amazing. Thank you.
