Before I sold machine tools, I ran them

I came out of high school in 2001 and went straight onto the shop floor. Machining came in 2004, the year my son was born. Operator on tight-tolerance CNC, then manual horizontal boring mills, then setup and planning, then running the department and a crew. The last eight years of that, I was doing as much design for manufacturing as machining — in with the engineers before the print was finalized, working out what would actually run and what was going to cost them.

When you put a print in front of me, I'm not guessing. I earned my ticket on the shop floor.

I've stood in a shop explaining to an owner that the deep cavity work he'd bought the machine for needs through-spindle coolant — and the machine sitting in front of us didn't have it. The guy who sold it wasn't being dishonest. He just didn't know it mattered.

I don't want to be that guy.

Then eight and a half years selling cutting tools across the Lower Mainland. The territory grew four times over, and it wasn't because of pricing. Owners started calling me in early — when they were planning a run, or when they needed cost out of a job. I speced machines for shops even though I sold tooling and made nothing on the machine, because if the wrong machine landed, the right tooling never had a chance.

The last two and a half years I've been inside hundreds of the best shops in North America with a camera, asking owners how they actually got there. Two things stuck with me. Every one of them had someone on the supply side they genuinely trusted. And I was spending all my time in other people's shops instead of the ones down the road from me.

So I came home.