Alex Forbes Lane 17 Cabinet Co - Part 2

Business Brain, episode 560 for Casual Friday, June 21, National Day of the Gong 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome back to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we dissect them, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains. Every single. We get together here in Durham, New Hampshire, where I don't own a gong. Can you believe that? I'm Dave Hamilton.

I'm not here at the west coast, and I don't own one either.

Yeah, but I'm a drummer.

You'd think.

I like. I'm a drummer who grew up in the 80s.

Yeah.

Everybody that I like revere. Not everybody, but most everybody had gongs. Because, like.

Yeah, I'm surprised.

I know, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's amazing. Yeah. So I'm excited to continue our discussion with Alex forbes from Lane 17 Cabinets. And we're just. I'm, you know, we're just starting to roll into. You know, we've made it this far. We take. We can take a bit of a breath, and now we're going to start building systems to get to the next level. And so it's super valuable to follow along with Alex's journey. As you know, he pivoted and back against the wall. I had no choice. Had to do these things. And now we're a little more organized and now we can build out some systems and start some output thinking, which I think is great.

Yeah, no, it's. It's been a fun interview so far, and I think you're gonna love the rest of it. Listen, you're here. So listen to the. Listen to this. Now, you don't have to hear them in order. It's. It. I think there's. There's a. There's not too much continuity, but. But go back and after you listen to today's. Go back and listen to Wednesdays if you haven't. Because there's some great stuff in Wednesdays, too, so.

Absolutely.

All right, well, without. Without further ado, here we go.

Now, in this. I want to ask you about this stage. I feel like you've kind of got the stage now where you're thinking, all right, I can. I can think. I can take a breath a bit now. We need these systems. And I know you're embracing some, you know, lean manufacturing and 2% improvements or whatever. Talk about, well. Well, two parts. What it feels like to leave the shop floor and be in your office. Because I think that's a difficult thing for. For people. It's difficult for me to look out and see Everybody, like, physically working and going, shouldn't I be out there? And then the second part is, talk about the systems that you are starting to work on now.

When we. A few years ago, when we transitioned to cabinets, it's funny, like, I probably made every piece of furniture the first half of the business, and I have never actually made one of our cabinets that we've. In the last four years. So at first, though, to your point, like, it felt very foreign, and it felt especially. I have a business partner, he has 20% of the business. I think at the time, we had one or two employees. Like, I was. If we had four people, I was a quarter of our entire workforce. And like, here I was in the office kind of messing around, even though I was doing things. But it didn't feel that way. It felt like I was missing out or whatever. So that. I think that lasted maybe, you know, five or six months until I realized the kind of value that I could add being removed from that. And I. I think there's that lull time, and it's no different when you hire somebody new. There's kind of a lull in productivity when you have to train somebody new. When it was me, I was kind of like, I was kind of training myself to be the, you know, the next version of the leader within the business. So. So I haven't been in the shop floor for a long time now. Like, I'll do everything to avoid going back to the shop floor. It's.

Well, they might probably don't want you there, right? They.

You'd mess everything up.

Yeah. You make sure.

I think at this point, almost all the equipment in the shop, I don't even know how to turn on. And I don't want to know how to turn it on.

You.

You. You don't. The day that you find out, it's bad. If. If you. If I were you, the day that I found out is the day I would start micromanaging people again. It's like, I don't want to do that. Like, it's better when I don't.

That's a natural tendency for sure, to.

Do that, Especially as an independent entrepreneur. You're like, oh, I can figure this out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we. We did that. And so now we have, you know, we're about. We're looking for our 10th person. So it'll be the first. This includes my business partner and I. So it'll be the first time sometime in the next month that we will have cracked, you know, double digits and total people under one Roof and the just point your finger and say go do work like that doesn't work anymore. So we need, you know, the, the lean thing. We needed to hang our hat on something. We, you know, this business is new. This, every single thing is, has been a kind of product of my brain over the years and we needed to develop a real culture. We decided to hang our hat on this lean mentality which are two second improvements, Shannon. Not 2% improvements. I guess they're similar.

Two second. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's just, it's, it's continuous improvement and it's meant to just incrementally improve things kind of forever. Less fatigue. You should be able to enjoy your job more. It's all about adding value to the customer. And sometimes the customer is that, you know, you're the guy next to you downstream in the process, not actually the end user. Sometimes it's you the next day doing a different process that you need to, you know, work on something you had worked the day prior. And so we, we hung our hat on that. That comes through the rabbit hole of SOPs and creating standards and standard work and creating flow in the shop. And all of a sudden how do we create the things? Yep, that was at the Paul Akers 2 second lean. That's a lot of. I'll put a link in woodworkers pull.

It, put a link in the show notes. Ye, yeah.

That can apply to a lot of other businesses too. It's really a mentality, not like a system. It's, it's almost a lifestyle. But the, we're now in the process of real delegation. So there's now multiple people in the office to where my business partner was doing all the engineering and shop drawings. He's stepping out of that role. We have two others. We hired a designer to do design and then ultimately sales. And we're starting to, you know, that lull is like so there's a huge spike in payroll with little to no change to productivity. And because of how technical we are as a business, it might be that way for 90 days before they're really running and gunning. It's like how do you pay for that? And the answer is I don't know. It's like we're going to just keep selling and we're going to keep figuring it out. And the system side of it is like, I think is the last thing to unlock to really make this thing a sustainable, you know, well oiled machine to an extent.

Yeah. And I commend you for realizing that. And, and Also this, this mindset or framework of we're just going to figure it out. That that's, it's just a huge part of the mentality that carries you through so much of this stuff that you're just like, well, I don't know man, but I, I, you, you have to just keep moving and taking action and sure you'll make mistakes. We always say, you know, mistakes are tuition, one of my favorite lines. And that's how you build something great. You're not afraid to get out there, figure it out, make those mistakes. But also you're smart enough to embrace best practices. This just, you know, two second lean thing. Great. You got to do that. I know you've hired a coach recently. That's what, what's the name of the coach? John. What's his last name?

John Cipher.

Cipher.

Cipher. Yep.

He's, he's written a book called Output Thinking and in, you know, I think that's, you know, reaching out to help. Whether you're reading the books or hiring these guys to come out, it's just the next evolution of your business. And I think it's a testament to success that you actually have time to think that way.

I think it's also I've realized because I, I tried a business coach, he was more like a, you know, fractional cfo. It's how he branded on, on Twitter, I won't say his name, but used him for I think four months. It was like 10 grand. It was, I got no value from it. The guy just, and it was really nothing against him. He just couldn't, he just didn't possibly know enough about our business and he was coaching in a way that like you needed to. Where John is great because John is like his concepts apply to business as a whole. It doesn't really matter if you're a cabinet shop. He, he did video rental which is totally obsolete now. Like right there's all these. He. So he's really good at articulating that and because even though I'm not in the shop, I'm very much still in the business and it's hard to have that kind of visibility from business as a whole almost as like a game and somebody like John Shan, I'm sure your, yourself with your coaching, you kind of provide that insight and that visibility and I think that. But I think you need to be as an entrepreneur, you need to be in a certain phase of your journey to be open and willing to even hear that those concepts. I think if you approached me four years ago when I was still making tables. I wouldn't, you would have been speaking Spanish to me. I wouldn't have even known, you know, what you're talking about. So it's kind of like catching people in the right phase.

Yeah, that's a good, that's a good point. And okay, and so la last question really for me is I met you up through X and you're you know, building up there doing talk, talk about that and the, the value that you're getting out of it beyond a prompt you, but I know you would say this anyway beyond just building your brand and followers. Talk about that part of your, you know, the last six months.

I think the brand and the followers is purely a byproduct of the process of being on X. So I got on there because, you know Dave, like we were mentioning earlier that the grinding phase, the process of kind of seizing opportunity and going through what it takes to get somewhere is not a pretty process. And as a result of that and I think everybody's human, like there's no outlet for that either. Like where do I go? My, you know, my wife can only listen to the same problems every single day. And I love her but she's just like, you know, she, she asked me how my, how my day was cautiously and so of course and I also don't want to bring home all the problems so like I'd rather bring problems to the other people that can relate to those problems. And I, and I had been on X for a couple of years. I found SMB kind of community, little pocket. And that's ultimately how we did the, the growth madness thing in the group. But all of a sudden I, I started posting about some of the challenges of the day to day grind and you know, it almost became this therapeutic process for me because I got enough engagement back of other people either going through it at the same exact time I was people who, who had gone through it and, and could offer some advice or somebody that was maybe before that was like, hey, I think I'm going to be there in like six months. Like how'd you navigate this thing and that? So there's it all of a sudden became this, this breeding ground for connection for you know, people just doing something similar even if it was a totally different business. And that connection is just purely what has kept me coming back. And the viral hits are fun but you know, I, I, I like just the, the, you know, providing more value and frankly not even trying to do anything, just post about, you know, what's going on in My world. And you know, who else has something similar to relate to.

Yeah, that's awesome. And, and that's it for me. We, we that collaboration and meeting other people that are going, either going through what you have, what you've already gone through to help out or you're helping them out. It's, it's, it's a big deal. It's a huge resource, I think for sure, buddy. Using it in a positive way. I'm not a huge fan of social media for all the negatives that come of it, but this is certainly a positive. So. Dude, that's great.

I think X is, is probably one of the last places that you can share stuff like that before because everything else is a highlight reel. Right. So X, even though it's changed a bit, it's still about the most authentic place you could be right now.

That's a good point.

I, I think, I don't want to derail us, but I, I think there's plenty of stuff on X that is completely inauthentic. However, for sure. And I think that's true of all social media. I think you can, if you craft your, whatever it is, you're following your environment on any given platform, you can find value.

Well, that's what I learned from you, Dave.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying.

I ignored it forever.

Yeah.

And he was like, you're doing it wrong. You know, you just have to. And I was like, really? And then once I started messing around with it late last year, it's like, oh, he's right. I mean, it's super valuable.

Yeah. You just gotta ignore.

Yeah.

The noise because it get it is built to attract you with the things that you hate. Yeah, right. And you've got to just like not give into that at all. And that will eventually fine tune it. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yes. I love it. I love it. Well, Alex, thank you so much for hanging out with us. You know, someday I'll have you do my kitchen and you know, we'll build some cabinets in California and you know, follow along. We'll put Alex's X handle in the show notes. And coming up to business brain, follow along as we meet some, you know, awesome entrepreneurs. Follow along with all of us. So thank you for coming again, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. A ton of fun.

Absolutely. It was a pleasure to meet you and thanks for, you know, answering all our crazy questions. I love, we love digging into this stuff, as you can probably tell. So. Yeah, it's great.

I could talk all. Talk all day about.

Thanks for hanging out, folks. If you have any questions for us, of course you can find us on X, you can find us on Facebook, you can find us on LinkedIn, and you can email us feedbackusinessbrain show. In fact, just go to businessbrain show. That's gonna be the best place to find us. We'll see you there. Have a fantastic weekend and we'll see you next week.