• 48:35
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Digital game plan, Truco Machine, CNC machining, reverse engineering, pharmaceutical industry, food industry, maintenance departments, e-commerce, website development, marketing strategy, business growth, entrepreneurship, specialized parts, production plants, customer relationships.
SPEAKERS
Curt Anderson, Andy O’Connor, Damon Pistulka
Damon Pistulka 00:02
You all right, everyone, welcome once again. It is Friday, and you know what that means. It is time for stop being the best kept secret. We are going to have so much fun today, because we’re going to be talking about digital game plan strategies with two truco machine. We got Andy with us here, and we got the that pretty gentleman right over there, Kurt Anderson, is going to take it away, and we’re going to have some fun. So let’s get going.
Curt Anderson 00:27
Damon, thank you, brother. Happy Friday to you, man. How you having a good week? Yeah, okay. Well, you know, because, because football season’s over, right? Didn’t end last week
Damon Pistulka 00:37
for some people around here, dude.
Curt Anderson 00:41
So for our dear friend Damon in Seattle, he’s got another week, so maybe a few weeks so well, Damon, congratulations rooting you on this weekend. Hope you have a great week and or good, good weekend. We’ve got Andy O’Connor in the house, dude, man, this is I’m just so juice so fired up. Andy, happy Friday. How are you?
Andy O’Connor 00:59
Man, I’m doing well. Thank you very much for having me My pleasure.
Curt Anderson 01:03
My goodness gracious. Andy, we’ve got a ton of are you sitting down? Are you ready for this?
Andy O’Connor 01:08
I am sitting down. All right, that a boy we’ve got, we’re gonna
Curt Anderson 01:11
go fast and furious. Andy, my first question for you. Okay, first question for Andy O’Connor, and he’s a wonder. He’s the CEO extraordinaire at truco machine, Andy, when you were a little guy growing up, little guy growing up in Buffalo, New York, who was your hero? Who did you look up to? Who did you worship like? Who was your hero when you’re a little guy growing up? That’s easy. It was my father. Awesome. Great answer. So do share, let’s hear all about Dad.
Andy O’Connor 01:40
Well, my father, he, you know, grew up kind of in Buffalo, and he’s always a mechanical person, and he got into hydroplane racing when he was young, and then he worked for Dunlop tire, and he, he did a lot of cool stuff there, like he worked, worked with the tire development people, and he, he was literally like a Formula One races in my car and Daytona, and he was racing himself in the boats. And then eventually, what happened is, he, he decided to start an engine business. So it was truco engine. And basically he bought out a retiring guy’s equipment. And, you know, for 40 plus years, he was the master engine builder around this area. And Little over 20 years ago, I helped take over the business, and, you know, about seven years ago or eight years ago now, we got into CNC machining, and unfortunately, we don’t do engines anymore because we kind of morphed out of it. But, you know, we still have our roots there, but it kind of taught us a lot of how to take things apart, put it together, how things work. And you know now the main focus is we, we do a lot of work in the pharmaceutical industry, in the food industry, making parts for them and rebuilding things. And so, you know, my we wouldn’t be here without my father.
Curt Anderson 03:20
Wouldn’t be here without dad. And Dad’s name, please. James O’Connor. James O’Connor. So, alright. So little guy growing up in Buffalo, what inspired you to get involved in the business?
Andy O’Connor 03:32
I think, just always being around it and just, you know, spending time in the shop. I used to come to work with my dad. Obviously, lunch was the biggest deal for, you know, a 10 year old, 12 year old, like, when’s lunch, but just being around it, talking to the, you know, the guys that work there, and, you know, yeah, finding something to do. Like, first thing that any kid would do in our shop is you use the glass beading cabinet, you know, like sandblasting some parts and stuff. I actually had my son doing that now, so very cool just being around and, you know, decided, Oh, somebody’s got to do this. So, yeah, that’s great. I’d say it’s so
Curt Anderson 04:17
common family business that, you know, you’re going with dad, and it just kind of like it just sinks into your DNA. And then next thing you know you’re just, you know you’re talking about a dinner table holidays. And then next thing you know you’re working there is that kind of how it rolls. Yeah.
Andy O’Connor 04:31
I mean, for me, like I was coming in here when I was not at school. Oh, nice shirt.
Curt Anderson 04:37
Kurt. You got you brother just for you, look, I’m flying the colors today. Man, yeah, yeah. For me, it was
Andy O’Connor 04:45
like, just, you know, you had a day off of school and you got sent to work. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, didn’t
Curt Anderson 04:53
even have an option. So, alright. So dad was your hero growing up. He got, came, gotten. Your DNA, and then, you know, we when, when you’re little guy, did you want to be an entrepreneur? Did you want to be fireman? Like, what? How did you ever have those aspirations? Or what are your
Andy O’Connor 05:11
thoughts there? I don’t know. I kind of like the idea of business. So I did get a business degree. A lot of people are like, Oh, you, you know, we must be. You must have went to school for machining or mechanics or something like that. No, I didn’t ever a day in my life. I just learned it here. Yeah, so I did, I did go down to Florida and went to college down there for business.
Curt Anderson 05:31
Yep, nice. Yeah, awesome. So, hey, we got Diane Byers
Damon Pistulka 05:35
here today. Hey Diane, Happy Friday to you. Here we go. Thanks for Thanks for stopping by today.
Curt Anderson 05:42
And speaking, I know her dad’s her hero, and she followed his footsteps on entrepreneurship, so it’s a very common theme here. So Andy, you started talking a little bit about truco, like the transition, I want to dive backwards. So you talked a little bit about what you guys do at truco machine. I want to dive in first, and then we’re going to come back to, I want to dive into a little bit that transition, how you went from engines into machines, but share with folks out there who is truco machine. How do you guys make the world a better place?
Andy O’Connor 06:13
Well, we’re a CNC machine shop, and we’ve, we’ve kind of found our niche where we go work with, you know, production plants. Our largest customers are pharmaceutical plant and kind of get in and meet the maintenance people there and learn about their equipment, and then figure out where we can offer solutions for their problems. As far as, like, you know, we don’t have any of these parts. A lot of their equipment’s made in Europe, and really hard to come by. And so we’ve, we’ve invested into some technology so we can actually scan parts and reverse engineer them, and then we machine them and we make them brand new, right here, you know, yeah, kind of want to, want to New York for the customer that’s here in town. So, yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s morphed into, you know, we eventually got rid of the engine business. And, you know, last year was it for engines. We’re done with it. So, yeah, that’s cool. It’s a little bittersweet, because I spent so many years in it. But in the same token, the engine business changed. Yeah, how many engines have you guys had to rebuild? Probably none. So yeah, the work was kind of going away. I saw a CNC machine at the they call it the performance racing industry show in Indianapolis, it’s big, big thing. If you’re into racing, or engines, or any of that stuff, is the biggest show they have. I went one time and I saw a CNC machine making a block for an engine out of a giant piece of aluminum. Just it was running for the entire show. The program was so large, and I was just watching that, and I’m like, that’s cool. And then Mike, he’s married to one of my wife’s best friends growing up, he was also CNC machinist, and you know where he was working, he wasn’t getting paid, and was going downhill. So between the two of us, it’s we bought a mill, we brought it in here, and then over time, I got rid of this piece of engine equipment, that piece of engine equipment. And then last July, it all went and we put, we’ve got four CNC machines. I just brought in a whole bunch of manual equipment that I bought a shop out down in Pennsylvania, moved it all up here. And so, you know, that kind of rounds out what we have. And then over the course of doing this, our customers like, Hey, can you make this? Hey, can you make that? And Mike’s like, I can’t. I don’t have any way to measure the radius here, you know, on these parts. And so we invested in them. It’s called, it’s made by Zeiss, which is pretty high end equipment company. It’s called the Gome scan one. So it’s 100 millimeter camera, and uses blue light technology, and we got a turntable, so you put the part on it, hook the computer, and the camera to it, and we scan like a part on this turntable, and then we can make it into a digital image, and we can actually pull coordinates off of it. It’s a it took us years to learn how to use it, but now we can scan a product, and we can take it all the way through the software to make CAD file and then machine code, and the end result is something that’s pretty much identical to whatever we scanned. It’s within 1000s of an inch in accuracy, yeah. So we, we’ve been doing this for our local customer, and there’s, you know, a lot of opportunity out there. And just trying to get the word out that, yeah, we can, we can do this for people. You know, I’ve got an example of something that we have scanned. This is a, this is a cam. So it’s kind of ironic.
Damon Pistulka 09:57
Specially made cam like that. It’s something. Following it, yeah.
Andy O’Connor 10:01
So this opens a bioport door and a pharmaceutical filling machine. It’s very specific piece, yeah, and they’re, they’re pretty tricky to make, but this is a result of that camera. There’s no other way you can figure that all out, right, without that camera, you know? And these things are made in France by the OEM, they take a super long time to get, yeah, they get, you know, the operators. This little knob here is what the levers connect to, and that gets twisted, and it’s done, right? So they can’t even get the supplies they need. So they have to make them local, right? Yeah, and that’s where we come in. That’s, that’s our bread and butter, right there. So we do stuff like
Damon Pistulka 10:44
thinking about it. There’s a ton of that equipment around that’s so specialized, and so all the way from, like you said, pharmaceuticals, there’s other chemical processes, there’s paper making, there’s just tons of different food. Yeah, food would be a huge one, like you
Andy O’Connor 10:59
said, big one for us. We have a couple customers in the food business, Yep,
Damon Pistulka 11:03
yeah, just because they’re so specialized, yeah,
Curt Anderson 11:06
so and so. The thing is, Andy, when you think about, when we talk about, like, hey, how do you make the world a better place? Yeah, so your pharmaceutical company, I don’t know, Damon, typically, if you’re in a pharmaceutical space, you’re making something kind of important, like, I don’t know. Maybe you’re saving lives, or, you know, whatever it might be. And so the cool thing is not the cool thing, you know, when that machine, that piece of machinery, goes down and, like, Andy, like the way you’re describing, hey, this part, this machine comes from, you know, Switzerland, France, whatever. And one little part, just, you know, we’re at a halt, you know, 1000s of dollars, you know, probably 10s of 1000s of dollars, yeah, per hour. And so Andy Now, now in Damon, I’ve seen it in person. What Andy does? He throws on his cape, and then he shows up, and he saves the day. Andy, is that how that goes?
Andy O’Connor 11:54
I just go in. They call me. I don’t know if I put a cape on, but
Curt Anderson 11:58
hey, come on, we got it. We got him. That’ll be good. Now we’re live here. It’s good for it’s good for media, right? It’s good to make it, embellish
Damon Pistulka 12:04
it a lot. So yeah, but yeah, that’s cool.
Curt Anderson 12:08
So anyway, so So now maintenance Mike, or maintenance mark, or whoever that that customer reaches out to you, like, Hey Andy, we now in you can dive into this little bit. You do a lot of proactive work, but when they’re in a reactive like, oh my goodness, like, we’re at a halt right now, you come over and so that’s when you start the process of that reverse engineering. Is that kind of how it works on your end? Yeah.
Andy O’Connor 12:30
So typically, the process, the first time we make it, is the longest, right? It’s one of those things. So if if you’re down to your last known good part, um, or the second to last known good part, we would like to one of those couple last known good parts in our hands so we can take the time to reverse engineer it before you put the last one in and it
Damon Pistulka 12:57
broke away out, and give it to you. Try to rebate,
Andy O’Connor 12:59
kind of like, that’s the worst case scenario. It’s a lot easier to take one, one good piece, you know, and send it off. Obviously, the the best way to do it is if they have their own print, right? Like, here’s a print exactly we want. But what we found is, is that a lot of these companies, they don’t, they don’t have anybody to make a print of the part. They just have that part in their hand, like, we need this. And so that’s, that’s what it comes down to, is we’re not using a print very often, which kind of separates us from other machine shops. Because most machine shops, you walk in there like, Hey, can I get a price on this? Where’s your print? So, you know, it kind of eliminates some of the battles of competition that you would face.
Curt Anderson 13:48
So in, in your own, your reverse engineering, to really create, like that prototype, right?
Andy O’Connor 13:55
Yes, yeah, yes. And, I mean, that’s where the, you know, the heavy amount of time comes in at the beginning. But the nice thing is is, you know, you spend a couple weeks making that cam the first time, and then every time after that, then you just pull the programs up and you just make them. That’s where you really start doing well on a product, right? So we’re always open to looking for more of that. And I think that’s what our project with Kurt is really about, is trying to find more people that need that specific type of part and little bit engineering to go with it. Or, you know, we we would like people to stock the parts they need that are made by us, you know? So, yeah, no, there’s minimums and things like that. Oh, you need the bill for Ted.
Damon Pistulka 14:51
There you go. But, yeah, that’s because you think about it, if, if I’m sitting here, I got the machine made someplace else, and it doesn’t matter, because I know in. The in the equipment industry, I used to buy automated equipment, not like they’d been like a pharmaceutical that’s a lot more extensive, but just with that, I mean, there’s little things that are in those that are doing, you know, like that one you show at a can that’s flipping a door at the right time. Something else is helping the timing go and and to make these automation systems work and make them simpler, but when they when they break, you’re just kind of, what the heck? You know, you’re stuck, yeah, and the company, company, you know, they’re off building their next big machine, and it could be months to get apart from
Andy O’Connor 15:41
it is the those cams, they waited three months so they they, they’re constantly having issues with them. And I honestly think, like, from my engine days, you would give a vendor like Caterpillar, like, I want this part number, and they’re like, that supersedes to this number. I think that’s what’s going on with this particular place, is still having problems with their product, and so they keep kind of redesigning it, and they waited three months for the new version of them to come in, which, lucky for me, they, they ordered one just for me to have. And we now, you know, make the the 2.0 design, yeah.
Damon Pistulka 16:23
So, yeah, very cool. Well, excellent.
Curt Anderson 16:25
Well, Andy, if you don’t mind just, I’m gonna, we’re gonna do a little show and tell. I’m gonna pull up your website. And very cool. And you’ve got a really nice website, you guys can see that. So, oh yeah, uh, Andy, so just share a little bit about, like, what, when folks land here, what are they seeing, and what’s, what’s going on on your website?
Andy O’Connor 16:45
Well, that’s the, that’s a roller for making manicotti being cut off on the lathe. Nice. So it’s a pasta company we deal with. You know, that’s a Teflon roller that we’ve machined for them that the when the manicotti comes down the line, this is, this is the roller here that, like, forms the the twist in the shelf. Yeah, you know, it’s just something that we made. And Kurt during the process, he’s like, You need a hero video. And so Mike and I, we set that part up to to video it, you know, and kind of became the video that you’re you’re showing off the part coming off the machine, ready to go.
Damon Pistulka 17:31
Yeah, super cool. Super cool. There’s so much of that stuff too, so many different things that you don’t really realize how they come to you and how much it takes to get it to you, right?
Andy O’Connor 17:46
And it’s, you know, that’s a part we made a couple times. And I think when they wear them out, they’ll probably call again when they look up where these come from. That’s another customer that has the minimum maximums in their inventory. So, you know, they’re only going to buy so many, like, say, say, they only can have eight on the shelf. Yeah. But what we’ll do is we’ll when, when we work with a customer like that, when you set up a CNC machine for eight parts, you might as well run 16. Yeah, yeah. It’s the time is in the setup. It only takes a few minutes for the machine to make that part. It takes, yeah, an hour or two to set it up. So kind of like another thing that we do for customers is we have a little bit of extra stock on our shelf. So said, hey, you know we’re out of these. Say, Well, I got four in stock. I can sell you today, and then, you know, we’ll put in an order for another eight and 12 or whatever. So. And we’ve, we’ve had that happen more than once, where, oh yeah, they’ll buy the extras off of our shelf. And I always, my dad used to call that, found money. Yeah, my dad was, we had the part on the shelf somebody needed you found money.
Damon Pistulka 19:02
So very cool. And that’s, it’s really cool, how you’ve positioned what you do, you know, really to solve problems, rather than we’re a machine shop, because there’s a lot of machine shops, but there’s not a lot of people that can do what you do. Hey, give me the physical piece and we’ll replicate it.
Andy O’Connor 19:24
Yeah, we did like a shaft for conveyor for the plant, the pharmaceutical plant, a bearing war through the end of this shaft. Can you fix it by two o’clock today? It was a call first in the morning on a Friday. Yeah, alright, I’ll come over and look. And sure enough, we machine, we we turn the damage off, machine to sleeve. I pressed it on, figured out how much press it should have, and, you know, for the new bearing. And yeah, I had it back over there by one o’clock. So Wow.
Curt Anderson 19:59
- Yes, yeah, like you said, Damon, such a different element where, you know, a lot of machine shops, you know, it’s great when you get like, Hey, we’re going to run, you know, 1000 of these, a million, you know, whatever, just, you know, it’s kind of Ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, you’re making that same part over and over. This is such a cool niche that Andy’s created where he’s almost like, you know, it’s almost like 911, you know it’s like he could, it’s almost like CNC 911, if you will. You know what I mean?
Damon Pistulka 20:24
Yeah, it really is, because they’re sitting there, as you said, before they got 1000s of dollars at stake, and their machines not running, or their machine, and they know they put the last piece in, and that could happen a week from now, and they need to take care of it before it happens. Yeah.
Andy O’Connor 20:41
And the it’s not going to get any better with the parts coming from overseas, you know, yeah, tariffs and things now and and the lead times, the expense of the parts, like some of these parts, when they tell me what the OEM cost, they don’t usually tell me, but sometimes I get it and it’s like, really for that?
Damon Pistulka 21:03
Like, yes, I guess I’m cheap, yeah, yeah, well, and
Curt Anderson 21:08
that’s the thing is. But there’s also a price for, you know, your engineering, your you know, the machinery, the Zeiss machine that you just described, you know, there’s a lot you know, you and Mike have now created an expertise of, you know, she’s Annie, nothing personal or, sorry, you know, I don’t have a drawing, you know, could you take care of this for me? I mean, that’s a big ask. You know what I mean? In the same in the same regard, like they’re in trouble. So like, you know, again, back to that 911 like you’re coming in really saving a day for that situation, or you save that day, and then when you have things in, on the shelf at their place or on your place now you’ve put out future fires that that are now non existent.
Andy O’Connor 21:46
Yeah, yeah. And that’s kind of where we want to live with the customer is, you know, work a relationship where, you know, okay, these are the items that we go through often, and, you know, the first time, obviously, like I said, is going to be the longest. But once we get get established and have the parts developed and the machine programs written, and, you know, availability of all the materials and stuff that we can build that little extra stock for them, typically works out pretty well.
Curt Anderson 22:18
Yes, exactly. So the cool thing is, Andy, so when we met, so kind of, you know, it’s very common contract manufacturer just, you know, it’s, Hey, we’re, we’re out there, we went through the digital game plan process. What really stood out to you, as far as, like, you know, trying to stop being everything to everybody, but really niching down anything that you want to describe or like, what was your experience kind of, going through that digital game plan process, it kind of
Andy O’Connor 22:45
narrowed in like, oh, we want to focus on companies with 300 or more employees, because they seem like they’re in the the size and shape that they’re going to have a maintenance department. They’re going to have these problems where they need the parts, you know, made, and keep them on the shelf and stuff, and then to the digital game plan to, like, go through those things and actually get a pretty comprehensive list of potential customers. That was pretty eye opening to me.
Curt Anderson 23:21
Yeah, and it’s, what’s awesome is like, when it just, don’t, you feel like, I almost feel it’s like a sense of relief when, like, you know, it becomes so daunting. Of, like, you know, you know, hey, we can see and see for anybody, or we can bend metal for anyone, versus no, like we crush it and Andy, that was kind of an aha moment for us, when we kept like, Hey, who’s that ideal customer? Look like, Who’s that soulmate? And also, it was like, Well, this is a major global, you know, pharmaceutical company, and this is a fortune 500 company, and this is a major food brand. Like, that’s your sweet spot, right? There are like, you know, not everybody can work with major companies. You know, a lot of lot of companies aren’t. A lot of folks aren’t equipped to work with major companies. So I think that’s a testament to you and your team, that you guys like, hey, you know what? We’re our sweet spot is that 300 and over, you know, they have a maintenance team and but yet they don’t have the wherewithal, the means to, like, re engineer and make these parts, right? Is that? That’s kind of the discovery that we had going through that process. Yeah, for sure.
Andy O’Connor 24:21
And you know, when you get in and you meet, meet the people that actually make the plants go, and it seems to be like, I guess, my, my kind of people, the maintenance type people, you know. And you could talk to lingo with them and actually sit down. And, you know, like I would go to the plant, and we do plant shutdowns. And, you know, breakfast is a big, big deal there, you know, I work hand in hand with the machinists or the mechanics there for, you know, 10 straight days, and you start at 6am and so by 8am you’re hungry for breakfast. Fast. And the funniest part of what I’ve been doing is so hot sauce is kind of become my business card. There’s my brother’s hot sauce from down in Florida as a diner, and it says, you know, is put some in your hash. So my brother’s main dish is corned beef hash and hot that he makes to go with the hash. It’s a Go Go diner in Fort Myers, Florida.
Curt Anderson 25:29
But hey, you know what, Andy, with the weather that we’re having, we better, I think, I think we deserve a breakfast down at your brother’s. We better head down. Probably need to do that maybe like, the next two months or so. But Andy, I didn’t tell you, man, and I’m telling you right here live. So Damon Andy gave me a bottle hot sauce. So my wife does this wonderful Christmas breakfast that we do every year. Family comes over and so and so forth. And so I broke that out. It was a huge hit, Andy, everybody we celebrated Christmas with your brother.
Andy O’Connor 26:03
How’s that? That’s awesome. There was one of the other contractor guys at the plant this week. I was walking down the halls, Andy, I’ve been looking for you. And I was like, oh yeah. He’s like, Yeah, can I order a couple bottles of hot sauce? Man, I’m all out. Like, Oh man, I got one in my truck. I’ll give it
Damon Pistulka 26:21
you. That’s awesome. That’s
Curt Anderson 26:24
awesome. Damon, we need to get you over here, because when you visit, when you visit, yeah, so And Diane, you’re
Damon Pistulka 26:30
hot sauce business card. She loves it. That’s exactly
Curt Anderson 26:33
So Diane, he’s got cases of the hot sauce, and that’s exactly what he does. He uses the hot sauce as a business and he’s been talking about private labeling it and putting truco on the hot sauce, right?
Andy O’Connor 26:44
Yeah, also, like, It’s my brother’s Eggman, yeah, I could go either way. Like, I like pitching my brother’s diner at the hot sauce. People know who gave it to him, right?
Curt Anderson 26:54
You know, man, I’ve been, I’ve been meaning to tell you about that. So, yeah, you were a huge hit Christmas morning at the Anderson. So let’s get back to so now Andy being website was not a priority whatsoever. Any digital marketing was not in your lingo, your language, dude, you got into E commerce. Like, what on earth is going on here? Like, talk to us about people can actually buy these parts on your website? Is that correct?
Andy O’Connor 27:23
Yes, and those are, those are just parts that we, we manufactured over the years that we had surplus of them. You know, you got the stopper head gear and the stopper head shaft. Those are very specific, right? But those are parts that we sell regularly to our customer here. And those would be off of, like a TL pharmaceutical filling machine, very specific part number. And you know, we make batches of those for our customer, and we have extra sitting on the shelf. And you know, if somebody hits on it and wants to buy them directly from us, we’re happy to do it. And then we’ve got the fireman’s wedge Mike’s neighbors, the fire chief in the town over where Mike lives. And you know, people make these out of wood. Like, you know, there’s another people that make them out of aluminum. You make us some. So, you know, we had some time we made a whole bunch of those. And you know, a couple local people are using them, but we’ve got them in stock, so, you know. And then we have some tooling that is used in plants like the pharmaceutical or maybe dairy plant for doing sanitary clamps or pump seals. So just a few things we developed here over the years. It’s like, well, we got these in stock. Let’s see if they’ll sell. So hopefully people find them. We’ll ship them to them. But that’s the other thing too. Is Now, if we come up with another one that we want to put on there, and, you know, grow our marketplace, it’s all done. It’s ready to go. Yeah? So, yeah, yeah, we’ll see. So cool. It’s still in diapers, as Kurt said,
Curt Anderson 29:07
diapers just Damon. What were you going to share?
Damon Pistulka 29:11
No, I think it’s cool because you do, and some of those are, they’re nice pieces of equipment, but they do make them for different companies, so it’s cool, or your customers could just order them there, if that’s what they’d rather do. Because, as Kurt always likes to say, you know, if you can sell somebody something at midnight, at Friday night, when they really need it, and you don’t have to be there, that’s a good thing.
Curt Anderson 29:34
Well, here’s, here’s the call me directly.
Damon Pistulka 29:42
Yeah, you got Andy’s now
Curt Anderson 29:43
he’s, he’s probably had a hockey tournament anyway, so yeah, but the cool thing is, here,
Andy O’Connor 29:49
what’s that Andy, I’ll still answer. He’ll still
Curt Anderson 29:53
answer, man. And so the cool thing is, here, you know, if somebody actually does, these are so niche, right? Yeah. So, all right, is it? Is there a possibility that nobody ever searched for these? Yes, that, you know, that is a reality. However, if maintenance Mike has that same machine, and he is in, or she, you know, maintenance Mike, or maintenance Margaret, right? My mom’s name Margaret, so I’m going there again. So, you know, they’re out in, you know, Salt Lake City, whatever, and they like, oh my goodness, the stopper head gear isn’t working, this, such and such part isn’t working. And they’re like, you know, hey, go, somebody go Google search it. Somebody get on AI and like, where do we find this? It’s so niche. Andy’s coming up on virtually number one on all these keywords, because there is no competition, right? Yeah, it doesn’t cost him. There’s, there’s virtually little to no expense to putting this out here. And most importantly, if that engineer lands on here, and maybe they don’t need, like, that exact part, but they’re like, Man, I need something really close to it. Now I can get a conversation going. Where, if Andy just had, I’m a CNC shop. I have no idea what he did. Yeah, what he does, right?
Damon Pistulka 30:59
Yep, I’ve seen there is an E commerce company I’m familiar with out of Illinois that actually that is their strategy to sell niche products like this with, you know, very, very limited demand, but very high, high value when they’re doing this. I mean, because, like, these items are not $20 items. There’s a lot of these. Lot of these are hundreds of dollars. And you’d look at them, you go, God, that’s that’s a $20 item from a CNC perspective. But when you consider where you use it, how much it it, how much depends on it and depends on it working right? They’re very expensive, yeah.
Andy O’Connor 31:40
And then, especially in the pharmaceutical game, yeah, her parts are they’re ridiculously expensive. Now, there’s things you have to know about, materials and certifications and processes, and we’ve learned that over the years. You know, when you make something you know, for like this cam, you you had better have the material certification saying it’s 360 stainless, right? Yeah, otherwise, you can’t even bring it in the building, yes, you know. And then that has to be passivated after it’s machined and things like that. So, yeah, I don’t know. We just kind of stumbled into that industry, and, you know, kind of dove in the deep end, and now that’s what we
Curt Anderson 32:24
do, awesome, yeah? And so the cool thing is now, and what I really admire, and he’s just really thrown on his marketing entrepreneur hat, and he’s like, Okay, where are there other e commerce types of opportunities? Because now these things are scalable, you know. So, yeah, the, you know, the customer paid for the upfront engineering, the prototyping, so and so forth. But now there’s scalability opportunity here, and there’s, you know, there’s, there’s nothing preparatory. So it’s just like, hey, this is a part that goes on a machine, and who else wants it. And so, you know, it really what it does. It just it starts branding Andy as an expert of, you know, like he’s got on his website, no print. No problem. I know. Andy, that drives you a little bit crazy, because you would love to have that print, but it’s also these guys have the capability and the expertise to reverse engineer that and get those parts on there.
Andy O’Connor 33:12
So actually, Mike’s designing nozzle rack right now on the computer back there for for the gassing nozzles on the filling machine. That’s a project we’re working on. So we scan the original, and the original was welded together, and we’re re engineering it so that we’re going to bolt the two pieces together with, like, both bosses, and make it a little stronger, because the welded broke, I guess. Yeah, but it also needs to be, like, the same weight, because somebody else tried it and it was way too heavy. It was a couple pounds heavier than the original, and it didn’t work. So we basically came up with an idea of how to, you know, save weight here, and then also make it a two piece assembly that bolts together and not welded. And so, you know, it’s a, it’s a project type job. I had to order some special torque wrenches from, like a surgical place, you know, they’re all sterile and everything, and they’re told me, it’s, I don’t know, four months or something like that for the torque wrench. So I said, Well, four months for the project, because torque wrenches are going to be that long. Yeah, you know, it’s one of those things that, okay, well, I never dreamed we’d be setting up to kind of make a whole new setup for this German filling machine. Yeah, here we are. So that’s cool.
Curt Anderson 34:30
That’s cool. Absolutely love it. And so, and then we’ll start winding down. You know what? Any you know I’d be I’d be remiss if I forgot this. So any first time we met, what did I say to you?
Andy O’Connor 34:43
You said you would get on camera if you had this head of hair.
Curt Anderson 34:46
I go, I he’s a big dude, like, he towers over me and we’re standing there. I’m like, Dude, you got great hair, man. I’m like, Man, if I looked like you, I’d be I’m like, I’m on camera all the time. I’d be all over the place. So we finally got him kicked. And screaming. And even Mike behind him, he’s rocking a great head of hair. That guy
Andy O’Connor 35:05
on camera. Mike doesn’t want to be on camera, that’s why I’m blocking him.
Curt Anderson 35:10
Giveaway, let’s see your hand back there, Mike. Can we see her? Hey, there he is. There’s right. So these, it’s almost, it should almost be illegal, these two good looking guys working together. I don’t know who put these two together, but so
Andy O’Connor 35:23
like an old married
Curt Anderson 35:24
couple, yeah, tell his wife. Becky. So Andy, as we dove in, you’re also doing subject matter expert interviews. We’re like you. If you go laying on your website, as a matter of fact, I’ll pull it back up. You’ve got all sorts of blog content, like really walking people through that process. So again, if the engineer, maintenance, Mike maintenance, Margaret out there, if they have, like, oh my goodness, this machine shut down, you know, so and so, get out there and Google it. You now have, you’re being proactive and putting information out there. Talk a little bit about, like, how that’s been that process of, like, sharing your expertise in creating those blogs and website, anything that you want to share. You want to share in that front well,
Andy O’Connor 36:04
with the project we did, it was really seamless, because you just basically got me talking and took notes and put the blogs together. I didn’t have to do hardly anything. It was wonderful. Super cool. Theresa did it all.
Curt Anderson 36:19
That’s right. So it’s a, it’s, it’s a wonderful, you know, just getting all this information out here and, you know, putting out these new blogs and that type of thing, and so, and now, like, Hey, do you have a new you have a new marketing team? Do you not?
Andy O’Connor 36:34
Ah, yeah, we just met with her. My wife, Becky’s gonna do a little little side work through the company. And, you know, now I have to pay her, but she’s going to, she’s going to take over and get trained up on doing the the internet marketing, and learn from Kurt and the team and how to maintain and how to, you know, reach out to people through LinkedIn, and which, you know, I’m, I’m happy about that, because that’s not me. You know, I was over at the plant working on a crusher last night, tearing a broken spring out of it. Like I’m not that guy, yeah, you know. But in the same token, we got that spring out, I went out this morning and, you know, took it to a place that, and they’re trying to get somebody to make us a new one and stuff. So, you know, I’m more the keep the wheels moving guy, yeah, so I’m pretty happy to have her, you know, she has a day job, but she’s excited. I think about it, what’d you think? Kurt, was she excited?
Curt Anderson 37:37
She’s fired up. Damon, she works at a major university nearby, does a wonderful job. And you know what she said? She’s excited to get her creative juices flowing to dive into marketing. Sure, I can tell you that. So yeah, and she said she doesn’t really get to take advantage of that with her her job at the university, yeah. And so she’s really excited to step in and what Go ahead?
Damon Pistulka 37:59
Damon, well, and I think one of the things that that I’ve learned in I see in people like your wife, yourself Andy, is that the digital game plan process is fairly simple, right? It’s it’s getting the knowledge out of your brain into into words, then onto onto into text someplace and across the places it needs to be to really educate the customers and the potential customers, because people wouldn’t know about what you do if you weren’t doing as many people wouldn’t know about what you do at without those articles you’re putting up, without the social posts that you’re doing without that because it right now. As you know, the buyers get younger, they’re all used to we, you know, I want to look it up on my phone, figure out who I’m going to
Andy O’Connor 38:49
use, who hasn’t exist on the internet. It doesn’t exist.
Damon Pistulka 38:53
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it’s, it’s, it takes that, that, that knowledge that you built over the years, and gets it down, so it can teach people and they can find the solutions they need.
Andy O’Connor 39:04
Yeah, exactly. So we’re excited about it the whole time. So, yeah, let’s go.
Curt Anderson 39:10
So Annie, for for manufacturers out there that are maybe where you were a year ago, you know, kind of this whole marketing thing’s new. What tips advice would you share with them? How? How would they stop being the best kept secret? How would be a good place for them to start? Um, call, call Ryan case, call their local MEP,
Andy O’Connor 39:33
yeah, just, just, you know, I’ve I always imagined myself like, when I was in college, I took a little computer programming class, and then I didn’t really get it, you know, and I’m like, Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna build a website one day. I’m gonna build a website one day. And it just never really, you know, I had some, some people, I think one i. One guy on my hockey team’s brother did the first website for a few 100 bucks, you know, like, like, you know, it was why, it wasn’t something that I can actually do myself. And I didn’t put much thought or effort into it until this project came around. And it’s like, boy, this is probably a work like because, quite honestly, we got this far because I know a lot of people, and, you know, I get in here because I know people get in there because I know, well, I’m running out of people that I know that can get me in places. We’ll need to try something else. Yeah, so I’m excited about it. We’re still in our infancy. Hopefully this new employee, she can reach out, find some new people and drag them in for me, but we’ll see. Well, excellent answer.
Curt Anderson 40:47
And let’s, let’s go here. So you had a great mentor, your hero growing up, your dad, James, and you know, wonderful businessman. What business advice? You know? You’ve been a long time. How many years you’ve been an entrepreneur now? 20 how many 20 plus? 24 I guess, 24 years. What is the best business advice either you received or that you’d love to share along, maybe your younger self, or a young entrepreneur out there? What’s best business advice that you’d love to pass along?
Andy O’Connor 41:17
I guess, from my experience with the engines, I would say, just because something was working in the past doesn’t mean you should keep doing it in the future. Yep, you know, I beat my head off the wall for a long, long time working on engines specifically in only Yeah, and then, you know, I got into this, and then I got into, you know, the shutdowns and going over and working, rebuilding pumps, rebuilding mixers. And they’re like, geez, you know, how about rebuilding stuff? Where’d you learn all this? Well, engines, obviously, but it translates into so many other things. And it’s, quite honestly, to me, it’s better, you know. So just if it’s not working, make a change. That’s my
Curt Anderson 42:09
There you go, make a change, and you know what? And drop the mic right there, because I love that, you know, it, it’s so easy, you know, I’ve got a quote right here. It says, like, you know, you know that comfort zone is like the death of dreams. Comfort Zone is a death of dreams. And my hat’s off to you, Andy. I know like you and I goof around a lot, but I really admire that takes a lot of courage, and I know we need to start mining down. We need to wind down. But you know when you started having that aha moment of making this transition exciting scary, like, did ever like, oh my goodness, can I really do this not do engines? Like, what was, what were the emotions, or what was going through your mind when you were talking making that transition? Mike?
Andy O’Connor 42:51
How about Mike? Mike’s like, there’s the hand. Mike was the driving force. He’s like, You need to get these out of here.
Curt Anderson 43:00
You need to get these out of here and so. And I was there the day that you got rid of your last engine. I don’t know if you remember that, but I was the day you’re, you’re, I should have brought bottled champagne. We could have, like, smashed the champagne on the your last engine was going out the door. The day I was there last Oh, the big one. The big one, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Damon Pistulka 43:22
Very cool. We got another comment from Diane buyer here. If it isn’t on the internet, it doesn’t exist. The quote from Andy,
Curt Anderson 43:31
quote of the week, right there. Thank you. She’s got one one more.
Damon Pistulka 43:36
Yeah, yeah. Here we go. And then the code is replaced with, if it isn’t working, make the change. That’s a drop the mic. Drop the mic.
Curt Anderson 43:44
I agree with you. Diane, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the comments here. Andy, we wrap up. Dude, what are you super excited about for 2026 with, with at truco machine. Again, friends. Stop by. Connect with Andy O’Connor on LinkedIn. Go to truco machine. Check out his website. If you’re a machine shop, if you’re a manufacturer, like, oh my goodness, I feel behind. You’re not behind. You can get a new website, get your get E commerce. Andy’s done it. Andy, what are you super excited about for 2026
Andy O’Connor 44:12
Um, well, you know, 2025 was the last year of the engine, and, you know, we transitioned to just the CNC machining and stuff. And I’ve got just about all the equipment I need out there in the shop. And, you know, it’s just a matter of doing a little bit of, you know, cleaning up and fixing up and organizing and getting it just right. And I think we’re going to probably add some some more help here in the shop in the near future. So I’m excited to, like, go get Go get em like, go get some more customers, and bring some more parts in, and, you know, few more helpers, and just start really getting a ball rolling on, on, producing people’s stuff and getting it out. You know, I don’t have, I don’t have P. People calling me Wait, when am I still under heads? Going to be ready? I dropped out three weeks ago like they’re not calling me, bothering me anymore, when I’m trying to work on knowing this aspect of the business.
Curt Anderson 45:11
And doesn’t that feel great?
Damon Pistulka 45:14
Niching down, niching
Curt Anderson 45:16
down, man. And it doesn’t hurt. It hurts so good right now. So yeah, this is, I tell you what an inspiration you are, Andy, thank you. You know what I’m gonna go. There one last question for you, Andy, you ready? Sure? I know you’re a big hockey fan. Your hockey player, hockey dad, all the above are you baseball guy? I’ve never read you baseball guy?
Andy O’Connor 45:35
Not so much. No. Okay, football, just the bills, hockey, I think.
Curt Anderson 45:42
Bills moved. I don’t think Buffalo has a team anymore, right?
Andy O’Connor 45:46
They Oh, everybody’s so disappointed that they fired McDermott. It’s just heartbreaking for everybody. Like, what are you thinking? Of course, we watch the same owner make stupid decisions with the sabers for 15 years. So it’s, yeah, okay. Now it transferred to the bills.
Curt Anderson 46:02
We’re just, we’re used to it. We’re just used to it.
Andy O’Connor 46:05
So at least my son isn’t in tears this year when they lost. He’s, he’s come to realize that this is just the way it is.
Curt Anderson 46:12
Come he’s now, after eight years, he’s immune to it, you know. So, yeah, I hear you. So he was
Andy O’Connor 46:18
trying the last couple years, and then this year he’s like, man, it’s just the way the bills are. We call it billsy. They’re being very busy,
Curt Anderson 46:27
being very built, you know. So, you know what? We’ll close out on that. Yeah, we’ll close out on that. So, Andy, Mike. Mike, one the hand. One more time. Let’s the hand. There he is. So, Mike, thank you guys. I know you’re super busy. Thank you for taking time to join us today. What an honor, what a privilege to be on your journey with you guys. Damon, what are your thoughts as we wrap up?
Damon Pistulka 46:50
It’s super cool. How you position your company? You know, first of all, coming away from the engine rebuilding and all the technical things that takes and moving into now building these specialty parts really high value and and being able to do it without prints is super cool.
Andy O’Connor 47:07
Yeah, well, thank you.
Curt Anderson 47:09
Well done. So hey, you’ve been hanging out with us for the past, however long it’s been. Let’s, let’s, let’s give Andy a big standing ovation. Damon, how about a big round of applause? Well done, my friend. Yes. You know the guy that was never on camera. Now, now, now we can’t get him off it. Yeah. So alright, we’re going to wind down. So I want to wish everybody a wonderful, amazing, incredible weekend. Thank you for joining us today. We’re going to be back next week with a wonderful, incredible guest, and I’ll tell you, when you part, how about this? Go out and just be someone’s inspiration, just like our dear friend Andy and you too can make the world a better place. Damon, why don’t you close this out and Andy, hang out with us for one second. God bless everybody. Damon, take it away.
Damon Pistulka 47:49
All right, awesome. Well, Andy, thanks so much for being here, and it was awesome today talking about digital game plan strategies with you guys there. Truco machine. I want to thank Diane and everyone else to drop the comments in there during the show. Appreciate you. Appreciate all those listeners out there. If you got into this thing late, you want to go back to the beginning and listen to Andy and the story and the way they’ve transitioned their machine shop into a specialty, I can just say manufacturing, mega place, or whatever the heck you want to call it, that that is really making a difference in these, in these food and pharmaceutical companies. It’s just so cool. Thanks everyone. We’ll be back again next week. Thanks for having me. You.
