The Maker's Quest

A Podcast exploring the journey of making things and living a creative life

Podcast

How Makers Handle Challenges – EP13

How Makers Handle Challenges – EP13

In this episode, we talk about how makers handle challenges. We talk about acquiring tools, acquiring skills, acquiring new clients, and how social media algorithms are diluting creativity.

Audio Version


 

Video Version

Hosted by

Greg Porter
https://skyscraperguitars.com/
Greg On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gregsgaragekc/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SkyscraperGuitars
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GregsGarage

Brian Benham
https://www.brianbenham.com/
Brian On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benham_design/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXO8f1IIliMKKlu5PgSpodQ

 

Transcript

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:02:22

Brian Benham

You’re listening to the Makers Quest podcast. I’m Bryan Burnham.

 

00:00:03:01 – 00:00:25:07

Greg Porter

And I’m Greg Porter. And today we’re going to be talking about some of the biggest challenges that we’ve faced out there. And challenges can come from any direction. They can be clients that are hard to deal with. They can be projects that are hard to deal with. Both Bryan and I run businesses as well, so there’s a lot of businesses related business related challenges that we encounter.

 

00:00:25:14 – 00:00:39:06

Greg Porter

And so, Bryan, I’ll I’ll kick it off what are or what is one of the biggest challenges you faced? I think one of the important things to to talk about here is not only the challenge itself, but then how did you deal with that challenge? How did you overcome that challenge?

 

00:00:39:06 – 00:01:01:21

Brian Benham

I think one of the ones that comes to mind the most are four That’s forefront in my mind is a recent challenge that I had with building a lamp on my lathe. And the lathe is not something I use very often. So I have been able skills and every time I go to the lathe and I have this idea like, All right, I’m going to do this, they’re going to build this lamp or whatever it is.

 

00:01:01:21 – 00:01:22:09

Brian Benham

I realized that I have just the lathe and not all the tools and things to go with it. So I don’t have a ball. Chuck That’s big enough. I have a little tiny bulb. Chuck And so when you start adding up all the costs, if it’s not for a client, it’s hard to spend the money on buying these tools So I could learn new skills to continue furthering my business.

 

00:01:22:09 – 00:01:34:10

Brian Benham

I think the biggest challenge I’ve had, and I think this has been a challenge just from day one, starting my business is accumulating the tools that I can use to learn the new skills on.

 

00:01:34:17 – 00:01:57:01

Greg Porter

You know, that’s something I’m I know you see it in your YouTube video comments. I see it quite a bit. I see it in other people’s channels, too, where people will see a project that you’ve done and they’ll say, Well, that would be great if I could do that at home. I only need $50,000 with the best tool dominoes or, you know, whatever it is.

 

00:01:57:01 – 00:02:09:04

Greg Porter

And so I would I would put myself in that position and ask you, So how do you overcome that? How do you say, you know what, you don’t need $50,000 worth the tools to get this lathe project done?

 

00:02:09:23 – 00:02:34:05

Brian Benham

That’s a really difficult thing. And I think our last guest, Eric, from the Craftsman Legacy, we had a lot and he he said something to the effect of like, what are you doing today? So you can do what you want to do in the future. And that’s kind of how I started my business. When I first started my business, it was in this little tiny one car garage and it was in a terrible neighborhood.

 

00:02:35:01 – 00:03:01:03

Brian Benham

So crime ridden neighborhood, we didn’t have a lot of money. This was just me and my wife back then. She was my girlfriend and we rented this dumpy little house that was a little tiny car garage, and I didn’t have any tools. So the first tool I bought was just this little tiny table top $89 wasn’t even a contractor table, so it was like a table top side, like this little tiny bench store.

 

00:03:01:11 – 00:03:25:21

Brian Benham

And so I just started making little bird houses and things to sell. And then I took that money and I bought a router. And so now I had between the two, I can make more stuff. And then I just eventually started accumulating tools by always reinvesting everything I could back into the business. There wasn’t any kind of tool fairy that came in and sprinkled these tools into my shop while I slept or I had back then.

 

00:03:26:00 – 00:03:50:11

Brian Benham

YouTube hadn’t even been invented yet, so there was no such thing as sponsors. Like if you wanted a sponsor, you had to be like Norm Abram with your PBS TV show. So it was just a matter of just having the the drive to go after it and just keep keep working no matter what. And that’s basically how I built my shop and also built a lot of knowledge, especially how to do things safely.

 

00:03:50:11 – 00:04:06:12

Brian Benham

Because sometimes when you don’t have the right tool for the job, you try to substitute like we talked about in a previous podcast, making it work with what you got. Do you try to substitute a tool that’s not really meant for that particular application and it gets dangerous real quick if you’re not careful?

 

00:04:06:15 – 00:04:33:24

Greg Porter

Yeah, for sure. Woodworking tools can get very risky and anything spinning. My goodness, I you know, we all do it right. You get the the safety sally hat on when you’re watching people’s Instagram feeds and things of that nature. And I saw some someone doing some extraordinarily questionable things on a banned saw this past week of oh oh man what’s your fingers, buddy?

 

00:04:34:07 – 00:05:16:09

Greg Porter

But I think we’ve all been there. I mean, I can I can remember using a handheld circular saw to try and cut a dish in a piece of wood so I can hammer out a bowl form. And about 3 seconds into that operation, I realized why I should not use that tool for that particular purpose. But. But I think right along that line, Brian, I think some of the challenges are when you don’t have, I’ll call it the right tool for that job, how do you back up and execute the vision that you have in a way that will you know, you can actually nobody wants to compromise their idea.

 

00:05:16:09 – 00:05:36:21

Greg Porter

Maybe I should say that first. So when you you have the vision of what you want to do, you don’t have the tool that you need. How do you back up and say, realistically, how can I get from point A to point Z? And I would tell you from my experience, a lot of that goes back to, you know, thinking like you’re in ancient Egypt, how would they have done it?

 

00:05:36:21 – 00:05:57:22

Greg Porter

And they might have had a piece of Emory or some other type of thing that was, you know, abrasive. And two years later they’re done with whatever it is that they’re trying to make. But but kind of stepping back and thinking about things and in the very, very, very basic, how would they have done this 200 years ago?

 

00:05:58:07 – 00:06:09:06

Greg Porter

Perspective makes you rethink the tools that you might need. And you can say, well, you know what? It’s going to take me a little bit more time, but I’m going to do it this way. Do you ever run into that? Maybe I should ask it that way.

 

00:06:09:06 – 00:06:31:23

Brian Benham

Yeah. Well, to go back to your point of no one wants to sacrifice their vision, a lot of times I have to, because sometimes my vision is so far out there. Like, I’m not even sure if it’s really even possible. I have projects in the works that are just kind of like sitting there because I don’t know the physics or the mechanics of how to get it to go to the next thing.

 

00:06:31:23 – 00:06:55:17

Brian Benham

So sacrificing my vision does happen a lot, but I will say that I don’t ever really necessarily give up on it completely. It’s like, okay, well can I make a smaller version of this? And then I can sell that smaller version or take what I learned from the smaller version and apply it to the bigger version. So like the example of turning my lamp, I didn’t end up making a smaller version of it.

 

00:06:55:20 – 00:07:17:20

Brian Benham

It did come out pretty close to the vision that I wanted to, but it did involve some risk using an undersized, bold chuck and then some creative ways to kind of clamp it after the fact, and I end up having to take it off the lathe to do the final drill out, to attach all the whatever you call those threaded rods to run the wires through to wire it up.

 

00:07:17:20 – 00:07:37:01

Brian Benham

And one of those threaded rods is it perfectly straight because I, I, I didn’t have the drill, Chuck that would drill it while it was still on the lathe. So yeah. So there’s just some kinds of things that end up in perfect because of the process that you don’t always have the right tool or the skill to, to get it across the line.

 

00:07:37:01 – 00:07:46:16

Brian Benham

But I never really give up. I just kind of keep going forward and I just know like, okay, that one is bye my one that I went to school on as part of the journey and then the next one I can do better.

 

00:07:46:18 – 00:08:07:24

Greg Porter

Yeah, that that’s a good way to say it though, Bryan, is that sometimes you do have to live with a little bit of imperfection. And it’s not that you’re not a good craftsman or anything else, it’s the amount of time between where you leave it in perfect. You can never close that gap to perfection. And I think I think, you know, some of us do get hung up on that.

 

00:08:07:24 – 00:08:41:22

Greg Porter

You know, anybody who’s who’s ever buffed a mirror type finish understands what perfection should be. And, and man, when you take the amount of time to go from from a matte finish to a perfectly polished out gloss finish is exponential and understanding especially, you know, if you don’t have all the tools that you think you might need, which I guarantee go into the most well-stocked shop on the planet, and the guy running it will say, I sure could use a couple more tools to help me with this, right?

 

00:08:41:22 – 00:08:57:22

Brian Benham

Yeah. Yeah. That’s the more you know or the more you learn, the more you’re like, okay, I learned how to do this. Now I need this tool so I can learn how to do the new thing. And it’s just always this, this thing. Like, I think we’ve talked in the past that you can never really master craft because there’s always one more level to go.

 

00:08:57:22 – 00:09:02:22

Brian Benham

There’s always another level up. You may not realize there’s a level 14 until you get to level 13.

 

00:09:03:03 – 00:09:04:12

Greg Porter

Yeah, exactly.

 

00:09:04:16 – 00:09:23:10

Brian Benham

And then I think another fair point. While I was trying to figure out this lamp, I have a friend that does a ton of turning Robert. He has a whole bunch more turning tools than I do. And so then as the frustration was building, I was like, All right, I got to I got to call Robert and just be like, Hey, what do you think, man?

 

00:09:23:10 – 00:09:41:00

Brian Benham

And so I kind of rely on some of my friends that have more experience than me. They kind of help me through it. And then you had, I think it’s called a length stream, Chuck, which is like this really big thing with the spiral thing that would allowed me to turn that whole lampshade around and clamp it from the front edge to drill out for the stuff.

 

00:09:41:00 – 00:09:58:19

Brian Benham

But I didn’t end up going getting it because I’m just lazy. And he lives across town. But I ended up working my way through it. But Dell, the offer was there to kind of lean on your friends to help you out with fill in the gaps of things that you don’t have, either tool wise or knowledge wise.

 

00:09:58:22 – 00:10:22:03

Greg Porter

I think that’s a great point, Brian. When I when I look at some of the most revered artists out there, whether it’s it’s Andy Warhol and the paintings that he is responsible for, and I see that very carefully. And he didn’t paint all those paintings. In fact, some of the paintings, he didn’t even touch the canvas. He was the artist responsible for it.

 

00:10:22:03 – 00:10:43:23

Greg Porter

And he had a team of people that would go in and paint the paintings and not always the case. But I think in in a lot of the instances, his large format stuff, he didn’t even really touch that much. And I think as as artists, as creators, the responsibility isn’t 100% ours to create the thing. And I look at the architecture side of the work that I do.

 

00:10:43:24 – 00:11:02:04

Greg Porter

I can’t go build that building. I can’t build a $20 million building with these two hands. It’s impossible. It would it would take me 20 lifetimes to to do such a thing. And, you know, the amount of dollars worth of equipment and man hours and all of those things like you couldn’t develop those, all of those skill sets.

 

00:11:02:15 – 00:11:29:13

Greg Porter

And I think a lot of us, you know, when we’re out in our shops and we’re creating those things that you can sort of put your arms around, right? We we believe that every single thing involved needs to be us. But when you start to back out a little bit, we don’t all own a sawmill. We don’t all, you know, own equipment to to draw out steel sections or anything of that nature, you know, So people are still creating parts of the work that we do.

 

00:11:29:13 – 00:11:41:04

Greg Porter

It’s just a matter of where do you draw that line? But leaning on friends and leaning on other professionals is never a bad thing to do. In fact, it may allow your work to turn a corner that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

 

00:11:41:05 – 00:12:04:04

Brian Benham

Yeah, there’s been so many times where I have been hanging out with friends or even just you. Sometimes after the podcast we sit around and and talk shop till till late in the evening and that has sparked many ideas of like, Oh, I need to explore that. Like one of the things you suggested to me was watercolors in my proposals for clients.

 

00:12:04:04 – 00:12:16:14

Brian Benham

And I have been exploring that. And once I got over that major hump of the learning curve, things have really picked up and I’ve been able to start to really implement that into my my process.

 

00:12:16:17 – 00:12:39:05

Greg Porter

Yeah, I’ve seen I’ve seen some of the Oh column sketches that you’ve done that way. Yeah. I don’t know. I think, I think there’s a we tend to limit ourselves sometimes based on, on what we’re doing right now or what we’re capable of doing right now. And you really can, you can leapfrog over some some major valleys just by leaning on some other people sometimes.

 

00:12:39:05 – 00:13:02:10

Greg Porter

And understanding that that’s just part of the creative process is knowing where your limitations are. And if you can bring in an all star welder on a project and they leave these stacked down welds that put you to shame, your piece is going to look better because you had that person do it. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or a bad artist or not creative or or don’t have the, you know, this wonderful skill set.

 

00:13:02:17 – 00:13:09:17

Greg Porter

It just means that they might be better at that and your resources are better spent there. What they can do in 10 minutes might take you three days.

 

00:13:09:17 – 00:13:40:14

Brian Benham

So yeah, yeah. And you don’t even have to go up to like a master. You could go not to sound degrading to go down, but you can hire an apprentice to work with you. And they can help. Help with a lot of the tasks that are very time consuming to free you up to explore other options. I think you had mentioned in a in the past episode that Frank Lloyd Wright had a huge amount of people that worked for him through a school, I believe.

 

00:13:40:19 – 00:13:42:04

Greg Porter

Yeah, through Taliesin.

 

00:13:42:04 – 00:13:52:07

Brian Benham

Yeah, through his, through a school. So he had a whole bunch of apprentices there that helped them explore all kinds of other ideas that he would not as one person be able to have the time to do.

 

00:13:52:12 – 00:14:11:09

Greg Porter

Yeah, you get to, you get to scale yourself. Everybody always says, I wish I could clone myself, right. I get more done. Well, you can. Yeah, they may not be exact copies, but they’ll be close enough. And you know, you can control the quality of work coming out of people, you know, who do things for you. It’s just about.

 

00:14:11:09 – 00:14:24:20

Greg Porter

And criticism always sounds like a bad word, but, you know, valid criticism of, hey, I would like it done a little more like this or a little more like that. And it’s amazing the quality of work that people will produce if they’re given just a little bit of direction.

 

00:14:24:21 – 00:14:33:12

Brian Benham

Yeah, So so we should we should flip this around and talk about some of the major challenges or biggest challenges that you’ve had.

 

00:14:33:14 – 00:14:54:13

Greg Porter

Yeah, I think, Brian, I could take this in a handful of different directions, but one of the biggest challenges I faced was the car that I restore and I talk about it all the time, the Volkswagen Karmann gear. But it was it was 18 years of my life that I spent working on that car. And it wasn’t 18 straight years by any stretch.

 

00:14:54:21 – 00:15:20:21

Greg Porter

And there were probably gaps of several years in several spots. I got that car when I graduated from high school. My brother backed into it the next year and dented the nose in something terrible and the the car was full of Bondo when I bought it and I didn’t know it. It looked beautiful. When I bought it, it looked like a show car and I drove it as my daily driver so it didn’t sit in the garage or anything else.

 

00:15:20:21 – 00:15:38:17

Greg Porter

It was out on the road and all of that bondo started to rust out of the car and I was left with this terrible looking car that had rotted away. And it had been, you know, somebody put lipstick on it to sell it to me. And I made the decision when my brother backed into it that I was going to restore it.

 

00:15:38:17 – 00:16:01:07

Greg Porter

It was I had to two choices, sell it as is for nothing and lose everything I put into it, which was 30 $200, I think is what I paid for. It or restore it. And I had no skills for restoration. Zero. I didn’t know how to weld. I didn’t know how to paint. I didn’t know how to apply Bondo or do anything.

 

00:16:01:14 – 00:16:29:03

Greg Porter

But I knew that I wanted that car the way that it was when I bought it. And I knew that I could put it back that way if I could just figure it out. And it was it was in storage, I want to say, for three years. So I started working on it when I still lived with my dad, and then I moved out of his house and bought my own house and it had a single car garage and my wife moved in with me and she took the garage.

 

00:16:29:04 – 00:17:00:18

Greg Porter

So I had to knock that garage down and build a two car garage, which I did with these bare hands and a couple of my friends. But it was I didn’t pay anybody to do anything on that project. So I built my own concrete forms, poured my own foundation, dug my own hole, did all the electrical, all the framing, everything, and finally got that garage done and brought the car out of storage and into that garage and started to pick at it and realized my welding skills needed vast improvement.

 

00:17:01:06 – 00:17:22:09

Greg Porter

And so I probably spent a year welding and pounding on old hoods and doors from the junkyard and developing a set of skills, learning how to use a paint gun until, you know, I was ready to finally make my first weld on that car. It was terrible. And when I did it, I was like, Well, I kind of regret this.

 

00:17:22:20 – 00:17:43:11

Greg Porter

And, you know, you step back and you say, well, every body shop in the country has a guy who can weld on cars. So it can’t be that hard to do. And again, just developing that then sheet metal skill set for putting putting those pieces together and then learning how to build a car like it’s a it’s a process and there’s an order to it.

 

00:17:43:11 – 00:18:02:21

Greg Porter

And anyway, then, then we moved again and I had to build another shop and the car sort of sat in the corner and got covered up while I, you know, plumbed in the compressor, did all the electrical, which, you know, when you’re working a full time job, it takes quite a while to get those things done and slowly put it together, which was great.

 

00:18:03:02 – 00:18:29:10

Greg Porter

And then it was a matter of, okay, I’m I’m really going to paint this car and that paint is going to cost $1,000 or more. And when you’re, you know, you’re not Daddy Warbucks, you want to make sure that if you’re going to spend $1,000 on paint, that it’s going to come out. Well, outcomes the old the old mindset of I better practice on some spare parts first with some cheap paint and really understand how to lay down paint.

 

00:18:29:10 – 00:18:50:06

Greg Porter

And I don’t know how many test parts I painted. And you know the operations, right? If you’re if you’re doing a high performance paint, you’re dealing with maybe two or three different primers. So you’ve got an epoxy to seal, you’ve got to build primer, and then you’ve got a sealer primer that all have to go on before the first shot of color does.

 

00:18:50:06 – 00:19:12:12

Greg Porter

And I used a metallic paint, which is the metallic pearl paint, which is the hardest stuff to shoot, period. It doesn’t get any harder than that. And so practicing with expensive paint on small parts to see how is the paint going to like when I cleared it is to clear thick enough all of these things. Can I buff it out?

 

00:19:12:21 – 00:19:35:17

Greg Porter

And so literally taking I think I think I did it on the front hood of the car. I painted the front hood from start to finish and buffed it out and did everything else till I was happy with that, with that part. And I, I painted the whole thing twice, stripped it back down to bare metal and started again because I was unhappy and I say all of these things.

 

00:19:35:17 – 00:19:58:08

Greg Porter

It was it was a challenge in so many different ways. I learned to sew so I could do the upholstery and, you know, everything slowly came together on that car. But it taught me so many lessons that, number one, anything’s attainable. You just have to practice. You just have to develop the skill. You have to develop it to to a point where you’re going to be happy as the customer if you’re working for yourself.

 

00:19:58:08 – 00:20:27:20

Greg Porter

Right? And I’ll I’ll use another example. I did all the upholstery and again, you know, upholstery material isn’t super cheap, so I had to find some way to practice on parts and I decided I was going to cut the pattern for a headrest and I probably made that headrest. I know it was at least a dozen times. It was probably more than that, and it was developing, you know, the ability to do the welding that goes around the seams.

 

00:20:28:04 – 00:20:52:12

Greg Porter

It had a top stitch in it, which means basically you stitch something together, you fold it over, and you put an exposed stitch. So that exposed stitch, everybody can see all the time. So it has to be perfect. And you know, you’re dealing with this thing with all these corners and it’s got five layers of material that you’re trying to keep straight and just all of those weird little nuance skills that you had to put together, I had to put together for it.

 

00:20:52:12 – 00:21:23:04

Greg Porter

And the car is not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s it’s damn good. And I’m proud of the fact that when I went into that project, I knew absolutely nothing about anything with regard to how to restore a car. I knew how to work on motors at that point in my life, but I had no idea how to replace a set of floor pans or, you know, cut the car in half, a rocker, panels in it, or English wheel a part that was going to fit perfectly with the car.

 

00:21:23:04 – 00:21:46:21

Greg Porter

I can’t tell you, you know, some of the panels, how many attempts I took before I got one that worked. I put so much cheap metal into the trash, wasn’t even funny. But I think the the big point of of all of that, Brian, you know, when you’re faced with a challenge that’s that big to quote Eric again he talked about you know it’s not about the size of the problem.

 

00:21:46:21 – 00:22:21:06

Greg Porter

It’s about being able to to break it into bite sized chunks that you can understand and make sure that they’re in the right order. So it is it’s very much a chess game. And I can’t tell you how many nights I would sit there and just write lists of if I do this, then this, then this, will that work or do I have to do it in a different order because certain things overlap in your you’re sort of closing this thing together as you’re going and and if you don’t get stuff done on on the inside and the guts before you put the fenders back on, you can’t get back in there.

 

00:22:21:16 – 00:22:41:03

Greg Porter

It’s all welded together. But but again, the point of all of it is the point of this conversation, I think, is it doesn’t it doesn’t matter when you’re facing challenges to worry about, can I do this or can’t I do this? Because the answer is you can. It’s just a matter of how you’re going to get there and being able to break things down and bite sized chunks.

 

00:22:41:03 – 00:23:03:18

Greg Porter

And one of the things that I tell our young people at the office all the time, when you’re faced on the call it day one of a project, a big project, and you have the blank piece of paper and somebody is like, Where do I start? And my answer is always the same. It’s start with what you know, just start writing down what you know is is the project site an acre?

 

00:23:03:18 – 00:23:22:08

Greg Porter

Is it ten acres? Are there electrical lines running through it? By the time you you add all the detail that you know about, you’re down to this. Well, my site’s only this big. And I got to be aware that there’s a stream on this side and there’s a sewer line on that side. So I’ve got to park people on, you know, over here, over there.

 

00:23:22:23 – 00:23:39:02

Greg Porter

And and the problem starts to solve itself. If you just start going through what you know and can’t you know, car restoration is very much that way. Well, what do I know when I have this old hunk of junk sitting on a trailer? Well, I know that I’m going to have to get all the rust off of it.

 

00:23:39:02 – 00:23:58:02

Greg Porter

Okay. Well, let’s start there. And the second you start sandblasting it or grinding it or chemically stripping the paint, however, you’re going to take care of that piece of it. It’s going to tell you exactly what it needs and then you’re going to be able to make your list. Well, I need a an inner lower rear quarter. I’m going to need a rear apron.

 

00:23:58:02 – 00:24:14:04

Greg Porter

I’m going to need a sail panel. The dashboard needs some work. And by the time you do those things, everything else is going to slowly present itself to you and you’re going to solve that. You know, it’s going to help solve its own problem in a weird sort of way. I know I’ve got all along. Yeah. But that.

 

00:24:14:05 – 00:24:14:16

Brian Benham

And.

 

00:24:15:01 – 00:24:15:20

Greg Porter

Huge challenge.

 

00:24:16:01 – 00:24:39:06

Brian Benham

Yeah. In visualizing the order of operations I think is a really good skill. If you don’t have the visualization skills, that’s probably a good place to start is that’s like just figuring it all out and be able to see how it goes together is, is a huge part of my workflow for sure. So it all kind of started with your brother backing into the truck.

 

00:24:39:06 – 00:24:44:19

Brian Benham

Did you ever arch to the car? Did you ever think your brother for backing into it so you could go on this journey?

 

00:24:46:14 – 00:25:07:20

Greg Porter

That’s a great question. The answer’s no. I may still be a little bit bitter, you know, because. Because one little, you know, 30 seconds of of being unaware translated itself into 18 years of pain, that if now, you know, it’s been a decade since I got it done and I’ve been able to drive it now, I’ve had a decade’s worth of fun.

 

00:25:07:20 – 00:25:24:15

Greg Porter

I feel like I’m still owed eight more years of fun before we’re even. But but now, you know, I’ve talked to him about it and I’ve shared with him. I said, you know, if you would have never backed into my car, as weird as it sounds, if you would have never backed into it, who knows what would have happened.

 

00:25:24:15 – 00:25:42:14

Greg Porter

You know, I would have never stopped driving it and it probably would have rotted away to nothing. And, you know, it may actually have had a worse outcome if he didn’t if he hadn’t have backed into. Yeah, but but the other piece of this is that was I can still remember, gosh, I would never do it again today.

 

00:25:42:21 – 00:26:04:22

Greg Porter

But I went out there after it happened right. You know, the Carmen Ghia has like a big beach ball nose to it. Yeah, that’s right. Where he hit it. Just dead center right in the middle of the nose. And the dent was probably, you know, a little bit bigger than a basketball, but not much. And I thought, well, shoot, I could just take a sledgehammer out there and I can pop this thing a few times.

 

00:26:04:22 – 00:26:09:08

Greg Porter

It’ll be right back into shape. And how how was I ever wrong but.

 

00:26:09:08 – 00:26:10:07

Brian Benham

Made it worse, huh?

 

00:26:10:20 – 00:26:27:24

Greg Porter

But I learned, you know, if you slowly approach a dented piece of metal or a piece of metal, that’s not the shape you want it to be. With enough small hammer blows, you can put it back exactly how it used to be. Or you can take a flat piece and make it into any shape that you want it to be.

 

00:26:27:24 – 00:26:56:13

Greg Porter

And I would absolutely thank my brother for the opportunity for me to develop my metalworking skills. I did some things on that car and I’ve worked on several other sheet metal projects since then, whether that’s the door that I made for one of the houses that I that I designed or some of the other cars that I’ve helped restore, that that skill has just been amazing to me, the types of things that I’ve been able to make.

 

00:26:56:13 – 00:27:21:08

Greg Porter

And that’s going to sound like a brag, but you stand back sometimes you’re like, How did I do that? You know, this thing started as this flat piece of metal, and it’s this really organic, cool shaped, you know, soft, pretty, you know, very smooth, beautiful thing. And and again, if my brother had never backed into my car, you know, who knows, I may have been still attracted to to that and figured out another way to get started in metalworking.

 

00:27:21:15 – 00:27:44:17

Greg Porter

But that was what really jumpstarted me into into a lot of the sheet metal stuff I do. I was welding before I ever touched the car, but I was welding, you know, thick pieces of steel sculpture, really, and developing the ability to to work with some of that thinner sheet metal, I think has has allowed me to do some pretty darn cool things over my life.

 

00:27:44:17 – 00:27:49:02

Greg Porter

But that’s enough about the car. I know you’ve had other huge challenges, Brian.

 

00:27:49:02 – 00:27:49:14

Brian Benham

So.

 

00:27:50:05 – 00:27:54:06

Greg Porter

I’ll let you pick pick one category, a challenge. Okay. Well.

 

00:27:54:17 – 00:28:21:21

Brian Benham

I think we should shift gears and talk a little bit about business and acquiring clients. Like, one of my biggest challenges is acquiring new clients. I’m I’m an extreme introvert. So for me, just to walk into a new interior design office and say, Hey, you should hire me, is is not a thing I have any idea how to do or how to make small talk or even try to email them.

 

00:28:21:22 – 00:28:35:02

Brian Benham

So I am I’m hoping that I can pick your brain a little bit on how you handle stuff like that. As as since you’re a partner in an architecture firm, I imagine a large portion of your day is spent on acquiring new clients.

 

00:28:35:04 – 00:28:59:22

Greg Porter

Oh, my word. Yeah, it can be. And I will share this. I come off as a fairly extroverted person when people meet me and I’m comfortable in a lot of social situations. My least favorite thing in the world is to walk into a room full of people. I don’t know. I would I would rather take pain, physical pain than go into a room full of people.

 

00:28:59:22 – 00:29:33:12

Greg Porter

I don’t know and be forced to interact with people that I have no idea who they are. I probably have something in common with them, But you know, it is it’s very difficult. And so I would I would tell anyone that that is a as a business owner, as somebody who’s done business development, that is something that you have to get your you have to understand every single person who’s ever run a successful business and marketed in any way, shape or form has had that same terrible feeling in the pit of their stomach that I don’t want to be here and this sucks.

 

00:29:33:13 – 00:29:57:18

Greg Porter

And they’ve figured out a way to get over that barrier. And it goes back to, you know, my dad. When you’re young and you want to ask a girl out on a date, you’re talking to your dad about it. He is, you know, what’s the what’s the worst thing they can say? It’s no. And before you walk into that space or that office or that, whatever they’ve the answers already know when you walk in the door.

 

00:29:58:02 – 00:30:23:09

Greg Porter

Right. Because they’ve never met you. If you didn’t go there, they’re not hiring you. So you now go through the door and your chances went from 0% because it’s already a no to maybe 50%. They’re either going to say yes or they’re going to say no. So just crossing that threshold and uttering the first word or making that introduction, that terribly awkward introduction of, Hey, who are you?

 

00:30:23:09 – 00:30:49:17

Greg Porter

I’m Greg. And and just making that introduction, you know, it’s somebody who described relationships as it’s like you have to plant the seed, right? You have to grow that relationship. The first day you meet someone, the probably not going to give you something to do. They may know somebody. They may give you a phone number. You know, this person may need something or that person, but the person you’re going to meet is probably not got anything for you on day one.

 

00:30:50:03 – 00:31:09:06

Greg Porter

So you have to approach it like you’re you’re planting a seed and you don’t know where it’s going to go, but you’re hoping that the target that you’ve you’ve decided on, there’s a reason you’re going to somebody’s office and it’s because they’re in the line of work that you want to do. They do the projects you want to do or something along those lines.

 

00:31:09:06 – 00:31:32:13

Greg Porter

You’re not, you know, just randomly going and knocking on doors. But if they’re in the market you like if they’re working with the type of clients you like, if they’re doing project that you want to be a part of, even if they can’t help you, sometimes the best thing they can do for you is give you a lead for somebody else who might have something for you to do and once for me, I have a huge hang up.

 

00:31:32:13 – 00:32:01:08

Greg Porter

I hate asking people for things like I hate asking people for anything. I have a really hard time with that. And so going up to somebody and, you know, maybe in different words than this, but saying, do you have any work for me to do is is a hard thing to ask for. But sometimes it’s the question I ask is more along the lines of can you put me in touch with somebody who might, you know, need my services or can you point me in the direction of of a group of people that you think I might have some success with?

 

00:32:01:08 – 00:32:25:14

Greg Porter

And most people have a pretty good mental Rolodex of who in their business or who in their circle might need your help. And a lot of times, you know, it’s the seven degrees to Kevin Bacon sort of theory of developing work. They may not have something the next person may not have something, but at some point that Web is going to connect you to a person who needs exactly what you have.

 

00:32:25:23 – 00:32:46:06

Greg Porter

And, you know, you you hope as a business owner and somebody trying to drum up business, that that that timeline is as short as possible. But you never know. And if you if you never put it out there in the universe, it’s never going to happen. I know so many people that are incredibly talented who who refuse to sell themselves.

 

00:32:46:06 – 00:33:04:20

Greg Porter

They think that people are just going to come and knock on their door. And I can tell you, as somebody who hires all kinds of different consultants for our business, if somebody is not reaching out to me, they’re not on the top of my mind. The person I’m going to call is maybe the last person who contacted me about fill in the blank service that they offer.

 

00:33:04:20 – 00:33:22:23

Greg Porter

And, you know, as a as a person who hires a lot of folks that way, you have your group of people. But that group of that that ring is always open to add another person. If there’s somebody who’s a good fit and, you know, I’ll say I’ve I’ve worked with some of my consultants almost my entire career, but there’s still room for more.

 

00:33:22:23 – 00:33:43:01

Greg Porter

If somebody is talented, I will find something for them to do If they if they fit our team. And, you know, so So there you go. I don’t know if that helps or not, Brian, but but in terms of challenges, that is one of the absolute biggest challenges. And the people who are good at it, it just floors me.

 

00:33:43:01 – 00:33:58:20

Greg Porter

It’s like, how do you do that? They just walk into a room and they’re instantly friends with everybody. Yeah, and I don’t have that. I’m not enemies with people I’m not hard to get along with. I open up very quickly, but I have such a hard time going up to somebody and saying, Hey, I’d, I’d like to talk to you.

 

00:33:58:20 – 00:34:14:10

Greg Porter

Who are you? And I always in the back of my mind, I’m like, What are they going to do? Tell me I don’t want to talk to you and turn their back. And I’ve had that happen before and it’s kind of awkward and embarrassing is like, well, and I always look at it as, I guess that’s your problem and not mine.

 

00:34:14:10 – 00:34:23:10

Greg Porter

Like you’re you’re kind of a rude person If you just want to turn your back, walk away from somebody that feels like it’s on you and not on me. But maybe that’s just my way to make me feel better. Yeah.

 

00:34:23:20 – 00:34:39:02

Brian Benham

Well, I mean, it’s happened to me. I was at a networking event a few years ago and just trying to make small talk, and some guy is telling me about what he did, and I was like, That’s that’s really cool. If I ever have a need for that, I’ll call you. And he’s like, Yeah, don’t bother. I’m really too busy to buy new people.

 

00:34:39:02 – 00:35:04:14

Brian Benham

And then he walked off and I was like, Oh, why are you even at a networking event? I don’t like maybe something I said, I don’t know. But yeah, I think social media has kind of helped break down some of the barriers for introverts because you’re able to comment people’s posts and like people’s posts and, you know, slide up into their DMS a little bit and to to see it how the kids say it.

 

00:35:04:14 – 00:35:38:02

Brian Benham

But I think that’s kind of helped, helped a little bit. But it also is a double edged sword that sometimes back in the day, like Instagram used to have the top nine for hashtags. I don’t know if you remember that, but yeah, most of my people that follow me were woodworkers, but I was able to leverage that to get work because I would post a picture of my work and I would use woodworking hashtags and all that generation of those hashtags also helped move my work up into the lesser known like Denver interior design hashtag.

 

00:35:38:02 – 00:35:59:12

Brian Benham

So pretty soon I’ll be in the top nine for Denver interior design. Just because all the woodworkers were interacting with my my post. But then Instagram kind of did away with that and spammers took advantage of that. They’re just be ripping off other people’s work and posting as their own and that’s a whole whole nother big challenge of trying to navigate the Internet.

 

00:35:59:12 – 00:36:15:15

Greg Porter

But well, yeah, So I mean, there’s a divergent topic in terms of challenges Bryan, we’re both on social media, we both have a podcast here. What are some of the biggest challenges you faced in terms of social media?

 

00:36:15:15 – 00:36:36:09

Brian Benham

I think knowing what to what to post or just to be able to get above the noise, like I mentioned before, I used to, to see my work as the top nine and now the only time I ever see my work in that top bracket of a hashtag is if one of the spam accounts scraped my content and posted it as their own or they’ll post it posted.

 

00:36:36:09 – 00:36:58:02

Brian Benham

Hey, here’s this cool thing. DM to claim or DM to take it down. And I was like, Why don’t you just you knew who you got it from? Why don’t you just tag them? But anyways, yeah, so that’s a really frustrating thing to see your work be posted in the top, but no no credit given to you or any way for anybody to even find you.

 

00:36:58:02 – 00:37:03:10

Brian Benham

And then that person has a million followers while you have four.

 

00:37:03:10 – 00:37:30:11

Greg Porter

I you know, I think I think it’s probably common for people in the in the maker community to assign a certain amount of value based on how many followers or subscribers or likes or watches or view time or what have you. And that is a real metric in terms of, you know, at the end of the day, if you’re selling a product, your your key indicators are going to be how many of them did you sell?

 

00:37:30:11 – 00:37:57:06

Greg Porter

And if your product is eyeballs, that’s what those metrics measure. But the the challenge can sometimes be how do you how do you get there and what is that true value And? How much effort are you putting in and what do you really get back? And I suppose a lot of that depends on what you want out of social media and I know for me I’ve changed over the years what I want to get out of it.

 

00:37:57:12 – 00:38:18:24

Greg Porter

YouTube is is probably my big biggest venue. If you will, biggest number of followers. Instagram is sort of that way. But but you know what you want out of it. And at one point I thought, you know, I wanted to do that for a living. And that’s no longer the key. And really the value I get out of it is sharing what I know and seeing other people get inspired by that.

 

00:38:18:24 – 00:38:42:14

Greg Porter

And it’s it’s a very different metric. How do you measure that one? Right. Right. But the the first time you get a direct message on Instagram and somebody has a photograph of the thing they made that looks exactly like the one you made because they thought it was so cool. It’s immeasurable in terms of, you know, how how cool that is to see, you know, imitations, the sincerest form of flattery.

 

00:38:42:14 – 00:39:06:00

Greg Porter

Right. But but seeing somebody take a design that that you came up with and you developed, you know, usually the one that you show on Instagram isn’t always the first one you’ve ever made. You know, it might be the third or fourth if you’re making small things and see somebody try their damnedest to copy it. And because they want what you designed and it’s not that they’re ripping you off, it’s, it’s that they’re, you know, paying some respect there.

 

00:39:06:00 – 00:39:33:23

Greg Porter

But it’s interesting to see the challenge of social media and how it’s different in so many ways. You know, is it is it that you’re trying to get subscriber or sorry, sponsor money? Is it that you’re trying to get subscriber numbers? Is it, you know, all of these things and maybe I should should flip it around and and how have you seen that that challenge manifest itself with with what you’re doing and the way that you measure success through social media?

 

00:39:34:14 – 00:40:00:03

Brian Benham

Yeah, I don’t know how I measure success through social media. I don’t feel like I’ve obtained much in that in that realm. I, I started my YouTube channels like everybody else because it was like the thing to do is like this new, new thing. And then you started seeing people get sponsors. And so I try to get sponsors and of course they were growing at such a huge, faster rate than than what I was doing.

 

00:40:00:12 – 00:40:30:22

Brian Benham

And I think the biggest difference was between them and me is that they were all in and I wasn’t all in. I had a I treated it as a side gig because my real passion or my real thing that I wanted to do is to create art and then share that, ah, on social media and hope that that would generate other things for me to where other people focused on chasing the numbers and chasing the algorithm and playing the game to grow the audience.

 

00:40:31:05 – 00:40:50:13

Brian Benham

So it’s like a different mindset. And, and I think, you know, if you, if you want to be that thing, that’s awesome. But if you want to be an artist that creates things, not content, it’s going to be a hard a hard battle to to grow in that platform because the platform itself wants you to be the content creator, not the artist.

 

00:40:50:14 – 00:41:14:16

Greg Porter

Yeah, and I think, you know, the the word sellout used to get overused in the music business and and really what it stood for was an artist who changed their art and their vision and their ideas so they could sell more records to make the record company more money. And I feel like in so many ways, the social media companies have done the same thing to creators.

 

00:41:14:16 – 00:41:39:09

Greg Porter

Here’s a platform where you can do whatever it is you want. There’s no boss, but by manipulating the algorithm, they’ve manipulated the way people express themselves. And in turn we see art or creative things that are watered down simply to comply with an algorithm that somebody else came up with. And I know that that probably sounds high and mighty, but it’s not intended to be.

 

00:41:39:09 – 00:42:11:24

Greg Porter

And I think my point is, when we’re talking about challenges, the biggest challenges we face, I think the biggest challenge a lot of us face in real life is staying true to ourselves. What is it that you want to do? Who is it that you want to be and what do you want to leave behind? And having having just that never say die mentality with regard to to those creative visions that this is going to come out as close to my original vision as I can possibly make it.

 

00:42:11:24 – 00:42:36:12

Greg Porter

And I’m not going to let anybody else get in the way of that if it’s if it’s a skill gap or a tool thing or whatever, that’s fine. But when somebody else comes in and changes your expression, that to me that’s a huge challenge and I’ll share. You know, in the world of architecture, we’re creating something where we have a creative project product that somebody else owns from day one.

 

00:42:36:12 – 00:42:53:13

Greg Porter

We never own it and there is a lot of input and it’s the reason I do so much in my shop and, you know, the creative side of things, because at the end of the day, I’m being creative on somebody else’s watch and they get to tell me how to be creative, right? They get to pull those levers.

 

00:42:53:13 – 00:43:18:03

Greg Porter

And when I come home from work and I’m out in my shop, I tell people all the time, I share this with my wife. When I’m in my shop, nobody can tell me no, nobody can tell me I can’t do it that way. I’m in full control of it. And I think when I look at social media, when I look at people who do things on social media, I think we could all benefit from reminding ourselves that there’s no one else in control.

 

00:43:18:05 – 00:43:43:01

Greg Porter

You may think there is, but there isn’t. You are in full control of whatever it is that you’re doing, how you share it, how you express it, and how it comes to life. And I think that when personally, when I came to that realization that I didn’t have to put up a video every week, I didn’t have to do it in a seven and a half minute or ten minute or 15 minute format, whatever the algorithm was telling us this week, it completely freed me up to just do whatever the heck I wanted.

 

00:43:43:01 – 00:44:00:09

Greg Porter

And you know what? If I didn’t want to make a video out of something I made in the shop, I didn’t have to. And and that completely, I think, is a creative person freed me up. I still really enjoy sharing. I probably going on too long about this, but I feel really I feel really passionate about these things.

 

00:44:00:24 – 00:44:26:07

Greg Porter

But but at some point it really did free me up and it really took some of the braces off. I still do enjoy sharing. I love sharing what I do. Whether people like it or hate it is is inconsequential to me because there’s going to be somebody out there who gets a little nugget from something they saw that’s going to help them down the road from either making a mistake or help them do something a little bit cooler because they saw something from a different angle.

 

00:44:26:07 – 00:44:47:07

Brian Benham

Yeah, So I had a thought. I’m not really sure how to articulate it fully, but it has something to do with like watering down your your vision or watering down your content that you had talked about earlier. And, and I think that happens just just because people don’t know how to turn on the creativity or they’re afraid if they don’t follow the crowd, they’ll get left behind.

 

00:44:47:07 – 00:45:22:01

Brian Benham

Like the the YouTubes are littered with epoxy. Poor resin tables is a big thing. And then next week it was ten segmented tables. And then the week after that it was putting a thumbnail that, Oh, look at my $20,000 or whatever to get people to click. And so there’s always like this. You just got to be just like everybody else because the algorithm rewards that If you click on an epoxy river table video and you watch that video, then YouTube goes, All right, that guy likes those kind of videos.

 

00:45:22:01 – 00:45:45:24

Brian Benham

We’re going to show him all kinds of epoxy refer table. So if you did a poxy river table, there’s a chance that you’re going to come up in the video of all those other videos to increase your odds of growing your channel and getting getting eyeballs. And it’s it’s really unfortunate you know that that that’s the I feel that that’s the cycle that you’re chasing the algorithm because you have to kind of a thing.

 

00:45:47:01 – 00:46:06:12

Brian Benham

Dave Pichardo He used to be the drunken woodworker. Was he go buy, make, make TV set now or make something TV now? Yeah. So they have a podcast and he was talking on his podcast about that same phenomenon that he keeps saying over and over and over again that he’s going to stop worrying about the algorithm and be more creative.

 

00:46:06:20 – 00:46:27:07

Brian Benham

But then at the end of the day, he still has to pay his bills because he’s so invested into the the YouTube thing that he’s afraid that if he veers away from that, he won’t be able to pay his bills or or his YouTube channel will crash and burn. So even if you want to be creative, once you’ve got into the hamster wheel, you can’t stop running.

 

00:46:27:09 – 00:47:02:23

Greg Porter

Well, and and I would agree if your sole source of income is is YouTube AdSense or sponsored from being on YouTube and having the eyeballs, then you do have to worry about those things. I think somebody shared with me quite a while ago that if if you’re really wanting to make a go out of being a creative DIY person and you want part of that to be a YouTube channel, that you really need to have a business plan and a part of that business plan can be YouTube, but not the whole business plan.

 

00:47:03:20 – 00:47:32:02

Greg Porter

And it opened my eyes and that that was really what steered me away. You know, I spent some time, I think, you know, a lot of folks know this. YouTube flew me out to New York for a week to do next up. And I learned all kinds of stuff. They gave me 20 $500 worth of camera equipment. And, you know, I got introduced to some of the best photography and lighting people in the world, script writers, you know, people talking about designing sets.

 

00:47:32:02 – 00:48:00:06

Greg Porter

And I mean, it was a week of just crazy amounts of YouTube information, how to deal with the algorithm and some of those secrets behind. I thought I was going to really jump in with both feet on on YouTube. And the more I started thinking about it, it’s like, well, you know what? If that kind of goes belly up a little bit, I’ve got all my eggs in that basket now and my resume is going to have this big blank spot where where YouTube was the thing and so I did a little bit more studying.

 

00:48:00:06 – 00:48:16:15

Greg Porter

And, you know, one of the guys I talked with said you need to really create a business plan and YouTube needs to be part of that, but you need to have a business plan. So what are you going to do? And you know, that was that was where it really turned in. It’s like, you know what? I don’t have to worry about the algorithm because YouTube is going to be a tool for me.

 

00:48:16:16 – 00:48:37:12

Greg Porter

I’m not going to be a tool for YouTube. It’s going to be a tool for me to promote products I’m doing to to help to share information and do things that are personally things I want to do. You know, from the education standpoint, here’s how I approach these things. Or I like, you know, these design things and and I completely away from it.

 

00:48:37:20 – 00:49:00:00

Greg Porter

My main channel, which is Greg’s garage, which I think some folks know. And I realized, you know, music was the thing that I really wanted to build a business on. And I started a guitar channel. It only has it has fewer than 8000 subscribers now, and I make 20 times more with 7000 subscribers than I ever did on my big channel because I have a business plan.

 

00:49:00:05 – 00:49:15:18

Greg Porter

And that business plan uses YouTube as a tool and not the other way around. And I think the same can be said for people who make furniture or who do other DIY things is is you really do need to have a business plan. And part of that plan can be social media.

 

00:49:15:18 – 00:49:46:01

Brian Benham

Yeah, I totally agree. YouTube is only a small portion of my business and that has also allowed me to experiment with YouTube for last year and the year before I was like, All right, I’m going to start to invest more time into creating content for woodworkers to try to build that side of the business up. And I realized after after that time period, the last couple of years that that was a mistake there.

 

00:49:46:04 – 00:50:05:16

Brian Benham

There is way too much competition out there of people with their ten tips. And I have no interest in doing that because if you sit and watch ten tips, here’s ten tips to make you a better woodworker. But you never get up and go out in your shop and put it to practice. You just wasted your time and I don’t want to waste people’s time.

 

00:50:05:16 – 00:50:29:22

Brian Benham

So I try not to ever do those videos. There’s maybe one or two out there, but a couple of years ago I took on a sponsor that I thought like, this is this is awesome. This is going to be great. We’re going to is they’re going to help me build my channel. And they they tried to help me build my channel and not not to their discredit, I’ll tell you, it was cairn’s Precision metals.

 

00:50:29:23 – 00:50:51:12

Brian Benham

Oh yeah, they’re great group, a group of guys and I have nothing bad to say about them at all. But most people that watched my channels were woodworkers and they’re a metal company, so I was trying to incorporate metal into my woodworking projects, one for my own art because that’s kind of what I was interested in. So I thought it was a good fit and then I thought I could do something different.

 

00:50:51:23 – 00:51:14:10

Brian Benham

And what happened during that year because we made a year’s agreement. I do, like every other month or so, I do a sponsored video for them over a course of a year for a certain number of dollars, and they would they would supply the metal for each project. And what happened is every single time I posted a video using their products, it was a metal working video.

 

00:51:14:10 – 00:51:32:17

Brian Benham

I would get comments, be like, Hey, get back to woodworking. I signed up here for woodworking and I would lose subscribers. So my on that video on each one of those videos, there is a dip in subscribers. And I was like, Oh crap, this sucks. And I kind of wanted to like, call them up and be like, I’m sorry, I need a backer.

 

00:51:32:17 – 00:51:46:22

Brian Benham

This deal, this isn’t good for either one of us, but at the same time, it was something that I was interested in and I wanted to see it through the end because I don’t want to be I don’t want to be that guy that like backside of a deal just because it’s not going well. So I wanted to get it across the finish line.

 

00:51:47:09 – 00:52:05:04

Brian Benham

So I got it across the finish line and then my numbers were going down all year because people are unsubscribing every time. So of course they didn’t want to go again, which is totally understandable. If I was them, I wouldn’t go again either. So there’s I have nothing like I said, nothing bad to say about them. They were great, great guys to work with.

 

00:52:05:13 – 00:52:29:23

Brian Benham

But then I started doing a couple more woodworking projects where I didn’t use any metal and my audience had During that year, my audience had started to shift to being more open to that kind of work for me, and people started commenting. I’m disappointed that you didn’t make that panel, some kind of metal panel that you put a patina on and that you use just a boring wood piece of wood for it.

 

00:52:29:23 – 00:52:49:23

Brian Benham

And I was just like, Thank you. It’s awesome. I that was that comment like made my day. I don’t know if they were being mean or sarcastic or whatever, but that that maybe feel good that like it was validation of that year worth of worth of work that wasn’t going well. And so when I look back on it, I wish I would have never tried to cater to wood, just just woodworkers.

 

00:52:49:23 – 00:53:14:23

Brian Benham

I wish I would have made more broad content just showing the builds that I do and how I do it. And that’s kind of the direction I’m now going just to build the thing that I want to build. And if if some sponsor wants to come hang out with me and not try to control my creative process and just give me the tool that they want me to do whatever, and just let me use the tool or not stand there and read the bullet points.

 

00:53:14:23 – 00:53:16:16

Brian Benham

Then I’m all in. But yeah.

 

00:53:17:04 – 00:53:41:23

Greg Porter

You know, I’m a huge tool fan and by tool I mean the music band and their lead singer was in an interview one time talking about what they do because it’s very different music. You know, they’re they’re prog rock. I guess wood would be the way they say it. But he talked about it. He said, you know, when we were coming up or, you know, getting discovered, I guess is probably the right way to say it.

 

00:53:42:06 – 00:54:00:16

Greg Porter

So we were so very different than everybody else, but we knew that if we kept true to ourselves and if what we were putting out was good, that at some point the sharks would start circling is how he said it. And he said, and sure enough, we went out and people were like, This is a very different thing.

 

00:54:00:16 – 00:54:17:11

Greg Porter

But it’s really interesting. And then, you know, the momentum builds and so on and so forth and, you know, wound up with a record deal. And now they’re packing arenas night after night, night after night. And I can’t remember how old Danny Carey is. I think he’s I think he’s 60 years old now and they’re still packing arenas.

 

00:54:17:17 – 00:54:38:13

Greg Porter

But but the point was that if you’re doing something interesting and you’re doing it really well, your content, your your art, your expression will find audience. The audience will find it because they’ll be out there looking for it. And, you know, it’s interesting you say, you know, you shift from one thing to another and that’s okay. We all change.

 

00:54:38:13 – 00:55:01:03

Greg Porter

You know, Aerosmith’s third album lost a lot of fans because it wasn’t the same as their first album, right? It wasn’t that same brand of rock and roll and in the same can be said in the YouTube community. You mentioned Dave, but you know, his his content now is extraordinarily different than it was at one time. He’s doing some go kart stuff and and some other things that are not woodworking related.

 

00:55:01:15 – 00:55:22:01

Greg Porter

And at some point he’s going to find an audience of people. If he has, he already has. I’m sure I’m certain of it. But you’ll find an of of people that are just interested in him doing different projects, not necessarily woodworker, not necessarily this one type of thing, but creative projects is what I get from David, I think he’s a graphic designer, maybe by trade and yeah.

 

00:55:22:06 – 00:55:33:12

Brian Benham

Yeah, he has the graphic design degree and that’s that’s one of the things that I follow him for is I want see what he can incorporate from his graphic design into his woodworking. Not not giving me ten tips.

 

00:55:33:14 – 00:55:49:09

Greg Porter

Yeah. And, and I think, you know, the same is true and I feel like I’m being a little bit preachy here, but but I think it’s worth hearing. You know, so many people want to play the YouTube game or the Instagram game and some people play it and are very, very good at it. But you don’t have to be it.

 

00:55:50:08 – 00:56:11:09

Greg Porter

That doesn’t have to be your end goal. You can put stuff out on YouTube and not want to be a million subscriber channel. You can be happy with being. I’ve seen people at 3000 subscribers just being incredibly successful in their businesses and it’s because they’ve built a plan and they’ve used their social media as a tool to build their business.

 

00:56:11:15 – 00:56:32:21

Greg Porter

And their business is built around what it is that they want to do. And and that vision of of what it is that that is them. And I feel like the more the more you see people stick to that stay true to themselves, the more success they have. It’s when when they’re trying to and I don’t want to knock on river tables, but do the river table to get the views, not because they want to do it.

 

00:56:33:01 – 00:56:56:21

Greg Porter

Like if you have a really cool idea for a river table, knock it out, do it. It’s going to be cool. I’ve seen some awesome stuff out there, but then I’ve seen, you know, the 300 river tables that just I need to get my river table to. Then, you know, the algorithm or whatever it was. But anyway, yeah, I try not to disparage people’s creative ideas and things of that nature, but, but are absolutely.

 

00:56:57:06 – 00:57:01:15

Greg Porter

I think the more you stay true to yourself, the better off you’re going to be just in life.

 

00:57:01:16 – 00:57:23:24

Brian Benham

Yeah, I totally agree. And that’s a data point, as is true on my channel to the Times where I’ve deliberately done content. That’s not really what I want to do it. It doesn’t perform as well, even though it was designed to chase the algorithm that I thought it was going to move my channel forward and actually move my channel backwards.

 

00:57:24:15 – 00:57:54:07

Brian Benham

So yeah, I was staying true to myself. And I think that’s to your point that you’re you’re building your audience out of people that are into what you do. And so that when you move outside of that thing, you’re no longer true to yourself and you and you move away. So a sinister way to look at that is some of those people that are super successful are are they staying true to themselves by just being this creepy used car salesman?

 

00:57:54:07 – 00:58:11:16

Brian Benham

I got I shouldn’t say maybe I should edit that comment out. But, you know, you know what I’m saying? Like, there’s people out there that are wildly successful in the YouTube space, but they’re not really they’re not they’re they’re talking like they know what they’re talking about, but they’re just talking that aren’t they don’t do the do to do the back it up.

 

00:58:11:20 – 00:58:33:19

Greg Porter

Yeah. And you know, some people are content creators and really not artists and and designers and that’s okay too. That’s that’s a whole different group of people. But I you know, our audience I think is more people who are on the design side, on the creative side, on the making side of things that, you know, a lot of us are content creators, but that’s not our job.

 

00:58:33:24 – 00:58:56:21

Greg Porter

We happen to also create content. I think those are two very distinct groups of people. Brian, you’ve mentioned before prop furniture, and I think that’s that’s an important thing to say. And again, it’s not a disparaging thing. If somebody is a content creator and they’re creating content for content sake to be successful on YouTube, that’s sort of a means to the end, right?

 

00:58:57:04 – 00:59:19:06

Greg Porter

But if you’re an artist, if you’re selling furniture or designing furniture for clients, prop furniture has no place in that. There are very few people who will pay you to make a plywood couch for them unless there’s some really big artistic expression that goes along with it or, you know, it’s intended to not be sat on and be a museum piece.

 

00:59:19:06 – 00:59:31:07

Greg Porter

But yeah, I’m I’m looking at the clock. Bryan. We’ve on here, I think a little bit over an hour. Yeah. I don’t know if there’s some some thoughts you want to wrap up in terms of challenges and tackling challenges.

 

00:59:32:07 – 00:59:55:21

Brian Benham

Yeah, I feel like we’ve pretty well exhausted this this topic from challenges to building your skills to finding clients to getting your stuff out there on YouTube. And I think the last point I would make on YouTube or just content creation in general, as you can, you don’t, you can be a content creator but not be a content creator.

 

00:59:56:02 – 01:00:05:21

Brian Benham

Let me let me rephrase that different way. You can you can be an artist and share your work on social media, but you don’t have to play the content game there. That’s a better way to say it.

 

01:00:06:07 – 01:00:32:24

Greg Porter

I love it. Absolutely. And the the one little piece I would leave everybody with, I always talk about eating elephants. And when we look at challenges, whether that’s personality challenges, you know, interpersonal relationships, whether it’s projects, whether it’s skills, I always look at at big challenges as eating an elephant. And one of my good friends who’s no longer with us asked me one day you said, How do you eat an elephant, Greg?

 

01:00:33:00 – 01:00:48:18

Greg Porter

And you sit there and you’re like, Well, I don’t know. I guess you take your four. Can you take the first bite? He said, That’s right. An elephant, one bite at a time. And that’s how you deal with all these challenges. You know, they’re just elephants that you have to eat. And sometimes they take a long time, but you can only eat it one bite at a time.

 

01:00:48:18 – 01:00:54:07

Greg Porter

You can’t do the whole thing at once. And just approaching it from that mindset has always helped me out.

 

01:00:54:09 – 01:00:57:02

Brian Benham

So yeah. All right, we should do an outro.

 

01:00:57:10 – 01:01:06:03

Greg Porter

I’m Greg Porter. You can find me at Greg’s Garage, Casey on Instagram, Greg’s garage on YouTube, and also at Skyscraper Guitars.

 

01:01:06:04 – 01:05:25:16

Brian Benham

All right. And I’m Brian Benham. You can find me at Brian Benham dot com, and I’ll have links to all of my socials and youtubes there. And you are listening to the Maker’s Quest podcast, so you can check out the show notes there where we’ll have links to everything. Thanks for watching.

 

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