Make Your Own Gear (MYOG) - Heath Jackson

[00:00:00] Hi, my name is Heath Jackson. I'm a certified financial planner and I started a consulting firm called True Growth Consulting and my unexpected hobby is making your own gear.

[00:00:11] Welcome to Unexpected Hobbies of Financial Advisors, the podcast where we interview fellow financial advisors about their pursuits and pastimes beyond their professional persona, some of which may be surprising to their colleagues and clients.

[00:00:24] We're interested in what makes them tick and how their unexpected hobbies might or might not relate to their everyday lives.

[00:00:32] Here's our discussion with this week's guest.

[00:00:38] Welcome to the Unexpected Hobbies of Financial Advisors podcast. I'm Brian Wright with Fiduciary CFO. Alongside me, as always, my co-host and fellow financial advisor, Joshua Walker.

[00:00:48] Good morning, everybody. It's great to be here.

[00:00:49] Great that you're here. All right. Joining us today, this is an interesting one.

[00:00:55] I don't, I don't know a lot about a lot of hobbies. I don't know a lot about pinball. I don't know a lot about guitars, but, but this is something we're going to learn. We're going to learn some new stuff here.

[00:01:04] I feel like I'm going to unlearn a lot of things today as well.

[00:01:06] Maybe. Yeah. A little bit of both.

[00:01:08] Yeah. So, Heath, thanks for joining us today with your unexpected hobby, making your own gear.

[00:01:17] M-Y-O-G.

[00:01:18] M-Y-O-G.

[00:01:19] M-Y-O-G. Make your own gear. Right on. Thanks for joining us.

[00:01:22] Yeah. You know what? I talk about work all day long. I'm so excited to be here and talk about the stuff, you know, that, that I really enjoy.

[00:01:30] So.

[00:01:31] Very good. So, so make your own gear. So what kind of gear are you making?

[00:01:36] Yeah. The, um, well it's, I guess it would be as general as saying soft goods. Right. So, um, it, I got into this, I got into it because I wanted to make my own tent and I wanted to save money on a very high quality tent.

[00:01:52] So that was, it was a Dyneema, right? We can talk about Dyneema fabric, but now what I make is everything. So, um, leather goods, um, sewing stuff for my daughter.

[00:02:06] She goes, she knows now that she can go to any store and buy anything, bring it home and say, dad, make this fit.

[00:02:13] Um, so sometimes that's what I'm most proudest of is being able to say, here you go, try it on.

[00:02:19] And it, you know, her say it fits, but, um, it's, it's really about camping and hiking my family. We are a huge national park family. So we're always putting up a tent somewhere.

[00:02:33] We're always trying to lower the amount of weight that we have inside of our backpacks as we journey to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up.

[00:02:42] And, um, you know, I've had so many hiking hours of thinking, man, I wish this fit better or I wish, man, this thing right here that's rubbing on, that'd be cool if it didn't do that.

[00:02:55] Or it would be a lot better if this didn't weigh so much because I'm not really good hiking shape all the time.

[00:03:03] So I've had the privilege of doing the Grand Canyon hiking, backpacking.

[00:03:06] And, and when we were in the Canyon, 60 degrees, nice first week of April at the rim, 7,000 feet, 12 inches of snow.

[00:03:15] And our tent was not up for the job.

[00:03:17] So you're working with trying to make one tent.

[00:03:20] I'm guessing you only want to carry one tent around.

[00:03:22] Yeah.

[00:03:22] Is there a particular fabric that answers the call of being warm enough and light enough?

[00:03:28] Yeah.

[00:03:29] I wouldn't say warm because, um, I think the, when you're looking about warmth, you're not looking at a tent, right?

[00:03:36] You don't want to go buy a real tent.

[00:03:38] You want to go buy a tent that's going to protect you from whatever elements are coming at you.

[00:03:43] And then you want to be able to have enough room to bring all of the stuff that's going to keep you warm.

[00:03:49] So for example, our, um, our trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon was not very successful.

[00:03:57] We took a tent that was not one that I made.

[00:04:00] It was about 10 years old, got to the bottom.

[00:04:02] We set it up inside of a, I don't know, a divot.

[00:04:06] Right.

[00:04:07] So it rained on us all night.

[00:04:09] We, we had water at least three inches high in the tent by the time we woke up.

[00:04:14] Um, so it's not about warm tent or cold tent.

[00:04:18] It's about how do I keep the water out?

[00:04:21] And so then all of our, you know, the, the things that we've brought to protect us with, um, doesn't get wet.

[00:04:28] So that's really the key, but the fab, my fabric of choice in every case is, is called Dyneema.

[00:04:34] And it's, um, it's specialized really invented in the eighties by the, the Cuban brothers.

[00:04:43] And so it was called Cuban fighter for a long time.

[00:04:47] It's, it's how we won one of the president cup races by a long margin and no one knew it, but it was this special cell fabric.

[00:04:57] That's very light and very heavy duty.

[00:05:00] Um, and since then it's just kind of made its way into a lot of different industries.

[00:05:05] Okay.

[00:05:06] And so that's, that's kind of how it started.

[00:05:08] This tent that I wanted was a thousand dollars was made out of that.

[00:05:13] And it looked just like no design whatsoever.

[00:05:16] And I said, it looks like I could make that.

[00:05:19] And my wife goes, we'll do it.

[00:05:21] Um, so then I bought the cheapest sewing machine I could find at Walmart.

[00:05:27] I had no idea.

[00:05:28] It was just me and YouTube for hours and hours.

[00:05:32] Sewing machine broke within a week.

[00:05:34] I had no idea what to do or how to fix it.

[00:05:37] So I took it back.

[00:05:37] They took it back.

[00:05:38] I got another one that was twice as much, still almost the cheapest machine that you, that you can buy.

[00:05:45] One week it's, it's broken.

[00:05:47] I go to another store.

[00:05:49] I buy another one that was twice as much.

[00:05:51] Um, broke it within a week.

[00:05:54] I finally called the repair guy, which had the same name as the company.

[00:05:58] Right.

[00:05:59] So that's important because of what his advice to me was.

[00:06:02] But so I won't say the name, but this, this guy told me, throw it away.

[00:06:08] What you're, I mean, your, your name is the name of the machine that I have here.

[00:06:14] And you're telling me to throw it.

[00:06:15] Why throw it away?

[00:06:16] He goes, cause it's plastic.

[00:06:17] It's junk.

[00:06:18] Throw it away.

[00:06:19] I go, so what do you want me to do then?

[00:06:21] He said, go find something that's metal.

[00:06:24] And it was the best advice anybody ever gave me in this hobby.

[00:06:28] Now, granted I'm, I'm a, I'm 200 hours deep into this, this new hobby of mine.

[00:06:34] Right.

[00:06:34] Which wasn't meant to be a hobby.

[00:06:36] It was meant to be, you know, within a week, maybe I have this tent that I saw online and, you know, I've, I've done it myself.

[00:06:42] And I've spent 50, 60 bucks maybe.

[00:06:47] And it turns out it's a year later.

[00:06:49] And I've got five machines that I own now.

[00:06:53] And I'm buying them off Facebook marketplace.

[00:06:55] I'm buying them off offer up and friends and family are calling me saying, Hey, I got this machine in the basement.

[00:07:03] And so I had to learn a lot.

[00:07:05] And as I learned, I found that really you don't buy a sewing machine made after the year 2000, because that's the moment that these parts that are, you need to rely on all the time.

[00:07:20] They're made out of plastic now.

[00:07:23] So the machines you see back here, um, this Nakajima 280L, it's a Japanese machine.

[00:07:29] It was made in the early seventies.

[00:07:32] Great machine for heavy duty stuff.

[00:07:34] Everything leather gets done on that.

[00:07:37] It can sew anything up to about three eighths of an inch thick.

[00:07:40] Whoa.

[00:07:41] It's, um, it's a beast.

[00:07:42] It's a walking foot machine in the, in the make your own gear community.

[00:07:47] Us, that has its own connotation.

[00:07:49] That means it can do anything, but really what happens is as the, as you sew something, it goes from front to back, right?

[00:07:59] So it's got to carry itself through there.

[00:08:01] And that's the feed.

[00:08:04] This compound or walking foot feed means that it's got something underneath that's pulling it.

[00:08:11] It's got a walking foot on top that pulls it.

[00:08:14] And it's got a needle that reaches out, grabs it and pulls it back.

[00:08:19] So you've got almost no ability to mess that up.

[00:08:25] I mean, MYOGers will know you can mess anything up.

[00:08:28] And your most used component of all times is the seam ripper.

[00:08:33] That's the one where you rip out the seams that you've just done and you start over from scratch.

[00:08:38] So that, that one's from the seventies.

[00:08:43] It's, it's, it's kind of a gym because it was purchased by Juki.

[00:08:47] And Juki is kind of known as the heavy duty walking foot brand out of Japan, but it all started because of this model.

[00:08:57] Okay.

[00:08:58] So that's why it's my favorite.

[00:08:59] This is my Bernita 217.

[00:09:01] I call this a cottage sewing machine because it's very heavy duty.

[00:09:06] It's also zigzag.

[00:09:08] So it will do the stitches like this, which is very helpful when you're, when you're making gear like I'm making.

[00:09:17] Okay.

[00:09:18] So you see all the fancy stuff here.

[00:09:21] This is, this is allowing you to make wider or narrower zigzag stitches.

[00:09:28] Okay.

[00:09:28] And it's just kind of an all purpose machine that can do anything.

[00:09:31] And it looks like there's equipment that's under the table as well as on top of the table and it's integrated into the table.

[00:09:37] Yeah.

[00:09:37] Okay.

[00:09:37] You could say that this is, these are both commercial machines instead of household machines.

[00:09:44] Okay.

[00:09:45] Now that's not an accurate representation, but that's kind of how it's, how it's known.

[00:09:50] A household is all built in.

[00:09:52] It's got the motor built in.

[00:09:53] Both of these here have very powerful motors underneath the table and then a belt system that runs the machine.

[00:10:03] Attaches.

[00:10:03] From the motor below.

[00:10:05] Okay.

[00:10:05] And then it's got the, the treadle at the bottom where you make it go by pressing your foot on it.

[00:10:12] I believe I've got it turned on.

[00:10:15] So like that, you press it down and it, and it goes.

[00:10:18] You mentioned cycling through a couple of machines real quick early on and you got yourself up to five in, in counting all of the machines that have been in your possession.

[00:10:28] What, what number are we looking at here?

[00:10:30] 35, 40.

[00:10:34] A lot of them are still in my garage.

[00:10:36] So I do, I do work on machines.

[00:10:39] That, that was part of it.

[00:10:40] There was a time where I got, I got fed up with having to go somewhere.

[00:10:45] So I just opened up a machine and took the entire thing apart.

[00:10:49] Um, a lot of YouTube still, a lot of the people that I, you know, my biggest contributors and influencers in what I do are the people who are really good at taking apart a machine, making modifications to it, cleaning it up, being able to present it really well.

[00:11:06] So, uh, one of my claims is pretty much any engine, any kind of machine that comes my way, I can take it apart and fix it.

[00:11:16] So I don't enjoy that as much as I enjoy making the, the equipment, but I do, I do put myself on the website.

[00:11:24] My company, I guess, 77 gear co all one word.

[00:11:28] You could find me on Instagram.

[00:11:30] I've got a website out there.

[00:11:32] I do not have a business.

[00:11:33] I'm this, I'm do not do this for profit, but I enjoy it when people reach out and they'll say, Hey, I got this machine and I'm in here running my consulting firm.

[00:11:43] I'm like, yeah, sure.

[00:11:44] Bring it by.

[00:11:45] Yeah.

[00:11:46] What do you charge?

[00:11:47] Um, how about you give a donation to your church?

[00:11:51] Yeah.

[00:11:51] Yeah.

[00:11:52] Something like that.

[00:11:52] Give, you know, give, give something away to somebody else.

[00:11:55] Cause that's, that's what I tend to do when it comes to these machines is fix them up, give them to somebody or whatever the case is.

[00:12:02] So I'm not any for the money.

[00:12:04] I mean, the company name really started because my pictures of all of my projects were taking the place of the pictures of my kids, which should fill up your, your social media.

[00:12:16] So I needed a place to be able to put all of those pictures and not cloud up the whole stuff that most people were looking for when they, when they found me.

[00:12:26] Is the community fairly local?

[00:12:28] Cause you talked about Facebook marketplace and YouTube, but then.

[00:12:32] Okay.

[00:12:32] Um, I would say it's not for me because I'm in the San Antonio market.

[00:12:36] There's not a lot here.

[00:12:38] Um, and when I find the people, it's because of the hundred thousand person Facebook group, or it's because of.

[00:12:46] So there's nowhere you go in the local market to find these people.

[00:12:51] You find them in the online communities.

[00:12:54] And then it just so happens that they're not too far away.

[00:12:57] Okay.

[00:12:58] So I have made that connection with few locals where we were together on a, you know, you can go into Facebook and find all the members that are in my area and we'll find them.

[00:13:08] And like, I need to reach out to that person, made some pretty good connections that way.

[00:13:13] I'm guessing there's a collector's community as well as a practitioner's community.

[00:13:18] Oh, absolutely.

[00:13:20] Absolutely.

[00:13:21] You can, I'm probably a member of 40 of these groups on Facebook, but, um, and not only that, but they get so specific as to the brand name.

[00:13:32] So, and some of them will get so specific as to go back to the actual model, right?

[00:13:38] This is a Bernina 217.

[00:13:40] It's a very, it's, it's a very lucrative machine.

[00:13:43] If you find one, you buy it, right?

[00:13:45] It doesn't, it doesn't matter what it costs.

[00:13:47] Um, the main thing you're looking for is to, you know, if four parts were mere or broken, eh, maybe you don't want to buy it because it's extra time.

[00:13:57] But still, I'm sure it's a lot like those, those games behind you there, right?

[00:14:01] There are certain ones that if you find it, you get it.

[00:14:04] Even if you can't make it operate, um, right now you, you can at some point.

[00:14:08] Well, and that's, I've had a lot of machines like that.

[00:14:11] So that's what, that's kind of what I'm thinking coming from the pinball collecting world.

[00:14:15] Um, you know, you talk about, you're tired of servicing it.

[00:14:18] And so, you, you know, you got a machine and tore it apart.

[00:14:21] Um, how, like how much, how much of, of these, as you open them up, are they, are they have interchangeable parts?

[00:14:27] And is there, is there still a vibrant manufacturing community out there, you know, kicking out parts for these essentially antique machines?

[00:14:35] Um, I know in pinball it is, and some of them, some of them, you could take something from here and put it in that.

[00:14:41] But light bulbs, like that's pretty much it.

[00:14:43] Like they're very unique based on the manufacturer and, and, and, and certainly the year that they came out and the technology and things like that.

[00:14:50] So what about your world and the, and the sewing machines?

[00:14:53] Are there interchangeable parts?

[00:14:55] Absolutely.

[00:14:56] There yes and no.

[00:14:57] Right.

[00:14:57] I'm sure it's the same way that you're looking.

[00:14:59] There were, there were companies that said, we're going to be different and we're going to create something completely different.

[00:15:04] Right.

[00:15:05] I mean, in the sewing machine market, it all relates back to Singer.

[00:15:10] Right.

[00:15:11] Everyone knows Singer.

[00:15:12] Every time a family member says, Hey, I got this sewing machine.

[00:15:16] It's a Singer.

[00:15:16] Right.

[00:15:18] If it's, if it is, I'm not really worried about it.

[00:15:21] There's so many Singer machines and the great and the bad thing about the Singer machines is pretty much everything that they did.

[00:15:28] They didn't make it compatible, but everyone copied them as soon as they did something.

[00:15:33] So all of these blue and pink machines made in Japan in the fifties, they were all the exact model of the sun Singer that happened 15 years ago.

[00:15:45] Um, in some cases they did it better than Singer did, but they always made it very, um, very interchangeable.

[00:15:53] So needles and the presser feet and the, a lot of the different components were very compatible.

[00:16:00] On the other side of that, there were about four American companies that were trying to compete with Singer.

[00:16:06] Domestic and white were two of those.

[00:16:09] You probably have never heard of them before and you'll never hear about them again because they don't exist anymore.

[00:16:14] Um, they were like a lot of companies in industries, they were bought out.

[00:16:19] And then that company was bought out to where we really have about five sewing machine companies and that's it in the whole world.

[00:16:25] Right.

[00:16:26] Um, those, those ones tried to be so different that it's very hard to find some of those parts.

[00:16:32] Even, even the needles are really hard to find interchangeable.

[00:16:36] Based on what I know of the human condition, I suspect I know the answer to this.

[00:16:40] Does it tend to get a little tribal by manufacturers?

[00:16:45] Yes.

[00:16:46] Yes.

[00:16:46] It gets very tribal and I'll say a few things here that are going to make that just to demonstrate that will make somebody really angry.

[00:16:55] Stir that pot.

[00:16:56] I do not like Singer machines.

[00:16:59] Uh, there, and, and people argue with me at, uh, my answer to that is Singer.

[00:17:06] Um, is the reason why all of this exists.

[00:17:09] I give them a tremendous amount of respect for what that entire company did for the United States.

[00:17:16] Right.

[00:17:18] You could take this back and say that most of what we did, the industrial revolution, maybe you'll disagree.

[00:17:26] Some people say it was more about the vehicle, the car.

[00:17:28] I would say it's not, it's the sewing machine.

[00:17:30] It was our ability to get our military more stuff because we were able to get Singer and other companies to have all of these mechanisms to be able to send things out into the field very quickly.

[00:17:42] And then eventually we were able to get women out of the home into the factories to be able to use these machines and then immediately create these more colorful machines that are household for them to use once this was over.

[00:17:56] And so much of our economy came from the sewing machine industry.

[00:18:01] That's, that's another way.

[00:18:03] Right.

[00:18:03] And then, you know, the Singer machines, they stopped with their innovation because of some patent issues.

[00:18:11] And so all of these other countries flooded the markets with more innovative stuff.

[00:18:16] So anytime I see a Singer machine, I know it's not very innovative.

[00:18:20] Yeah.

[00:18:20] And in some case it wasn't made well.

[00:18:23] And the Singer family got out of the business in the eighties.

[00:18:26] They went into military.

[00:18:28] So the Singer family was brilliant.

[00:18:30] They knew when to get out of the Singer sewing machines, the 1980s.

[00:18:34] And then it was taken over by private equity firms and things like that.

[00:18:39] So yes, very tribal.

[00:18:41] You can say, you can say things that, that do not, um, that, that are not supported by other, other individuals.

[00:18:48] There are some certain machines, um, like the Singer featherweight.

[00:18:53] If you go look up on Facebook marketplace or even online goodwill, you'll find these machines going for a thousand dollars or more.

[00:19:03] And they're just the tiny little machines.

[00:19:04] I do not like them.

[00:19:06] They, they, they serve no purpose that, that you can't find with another machine.

[00:19:11] But that's, that's, those are almost fighting words, right?

[00:19:15] I'm sure there's a couple 80 year old ladies that not real happy with what I'm saying right now.

[00:19:21] Okay.

[00:19:22] Okay.

[00:19:22] So that, that gives us a price point to anchor off of.

[00:19:26] If somebody was to go out and get a proper interaction, I'm not asking you what you paid for yours, but.

[00:19:31] No, I'm fine telling you that.

[00:19:32] No problem.

[00:19:33] Okay.

[00:19:34] Spill the beans.

[00:19:34] What'd you spend on those things?

[00:19:35] Yeah.

[00:19:36] So I bought this Nakajima for $700.

[00:19:38] Okay.

[00:19:39] I drove 300 miles to find it.

[00:19:40] I wouldn't let go of it for less than 3000 right now.

[00:19:43] Okay.

[00:19:44] This Bernina, I paid a thousand dollars for it.

[00:19:47] I wouldn't sell it for under 5,000 right now.

[00:19:50] And it's in the condition because it's in perfect quality right now.

[00:19:54] Okay.

[00:19:54] I have what you can't see over here, a modern machine, right?

[00:19:59] And I mean, modern meaning it was made in the 2000s.

[00:20:01] Okay.

[00:20:02] A very expensive machine.

[00:20:03] It's a Janome.

[00:20:05] Like if you had Janome, you know that I would only recommend Janome machines made in the last 20 years.

[00:20:12] And so that's, it's one, it's very heavy duty.

[00:20:15] It's got a lot of the, the great functionalities to it that you don't find on the old machines.

[00:20:20] So it's very quick.

[00:20:22] I don't rely on it for big projects, but I rely on it for, um, that one came out new at $5,000.

[00:20:30] I paid 1600 for it.

[00:20:32] I wouldn't sell it for less than 2,500.

[00:20:36] Have speaking of modern machines, have manufacturers indulged the urge to make smart sewing machines

[00:20:42] that are web enabled and connected to an app?

[00:20:44] Oh, absolutely.

[00:20:44] Oh, heck.

[00:20:45] Okay.

[00:20:45] Now you've got machines that are in the 10, $15,000 range that, um, I think the most advanced

[00:20:52] things right now are doing more of, uh, fabric welding as opposed to using thread.

[00:20:58] And then they're also, they've got the huge screen on them that you draw it, draw it out

[00:21:04] and it does it for you.

[00:21:05] Okay.

[00:21:06] So you've got a lot of that.

[00:21:07] All right.

[00:21:08] Going back to the very beginning of your tale, you wanted to make this tent.

[00:21:12] Yeah.

[00:21:12] Were you on a timeline that you like, Hey, we're going camping in 10 days.

[00:21:17] I can do better than this.

[00:21:17] Or is it just, Hey, I want to have this tent and it'll take as long as it takes.

[00:21:21] Yeah.

[00:21:22] Yeah.

[00:21:22] Uh, it was more of a planning effort because we, I, uh, I lead a Boy Scout troop.

[00:21:27] So we are camping every month with the Boy Scout troop as a family.

[00:21:32] We're going every few months.

[00:21:33] So there's, there's no real time that we're going to wait.

[00:21:38] There's always another trip.

[00:21:39] Yeah.

[00:21:39] And, and I was also smart enough to know that sometimes I pick up projects and get

[00:21:45] them, you know, 90% and then that 10% takes me in the, uh, another year.

[00:21:50] You know, sometimes I do that.

[00:21:52] Uh, so there was no real timeline on it, but I wanted to get it done because I wanted to

[00:21:57] do it.

[00:21:58] If that makes sense.

[00:21:59] I wanted to do it more than I needed the finished product.

[00:22:02] And so, yeah, it, it kind of, it kind of hit these deadlines, whether they were real or

[00:22:09] whether they were perceived and then, you know, kept getting moved back, kept being moved

[00:22:12] back.

[00:22:13] And how long ago was this?

[00:22:14] How long you've been doing this?

[00:22:15] Um, it's been about seven years now.

[00:22:18] Okay.

[00:22:19] So seven, seven years doing it.

[00:22:21] Yeah.

[00:22:21] Right.

[00:22:21] And you mentioned doing alterations for family members and how old are your kids?

[00:22:27] And are we, are we talking like a fifth birthday or prom dresses and wedding dresses?

[00:22:33] Yeah.

[00:22:34] No.

[00:22:34] Um, so my kids are 2018 and 16.

[00:22:38] Okay.

[00:22:39] My daughter's the middle one.

[00:22:40] She's the 18 year old.

[00:22:41] She's the one I do the most work for.

[00:22:43] Naturally.

[00:22:44] Um, my, my 20 year old is a, he's a fishing guy.

[00:22:49] Okay.

[00:22:49] So he is, he is an, he's one of the best fishermen I've ever met.

[00:22:54] And I know I have a bias there, but just completed a trip at, um, Corpus Christi right

[00:23:01] here on the Texas coast with a friend of his catching tarpon.

[00:23:05] And I mean, he's, he's just very, very good at it.

[00:23:09] We'll sit down together and we will make like, what is this thing that you need for fishing?

[00:23:15] The last thing we made was this little belt loop that it goes on his belt and then he can

[00:23:21] put his rod in it to, to rest it.

[00:23:23] No kidding.

[00:23:24] We found one online and said, you know what, let's, let's replicate that.

[00:23:28] But then we made some modifications to it because there were some things that he wanted to see.

[00:23:32] Okay.

[00:23:33] So that's what we've done together.

[00:23:35] Um, but in principle, you could do a vest, you could do a hat, you could do waders.

[00:23:39] You do the gear.

[00:23:40] Yeah.

[00:23:41] We, um, one of the things he wanted was he basically came to me with the problem, which

[00:23:46] is my favorite, right?

[00:23:47] Here's the problem I have, or here's the pain that I experienced.

[00:23:50] Fix it.

[00:24:00] Yeah.

[00:24:01] Yeah.

[00:24:02] It's going to poke through pretty much anything.

[00:24:04] And I went, nah, hold my beer.

[00:24:06] Okay.

[00:24:07] And so creating the little vinyl protectors and then it folds up and it wraps up and, and

[00:24:13] he can carry it with him.

[00:24:15] He still has that.

[00:24:16] And that was probably five years ago.

[00:24:18] What is he using for bait that you have to, cause I use nightcrawlers and you're not going

[00:24:23] to get through anything.

[00:24:24] What was he using that you had to do something?

[00:24:26] Nothing live, nothing live.

[00:24:28] So he's, he's taking some kind of lure, right?

[00:24:31] Some of these lures are the size of my head.

[00:24:33] Some of them are tiny because he loves doing the fly fishing as well.

[00:24:37] So it's, it's all over the board.

[00:24:40] This one in particular was for these lures that are nine, 10 inches long.

[00:24:46] Okay.

[00:24:47] So it was, they have huge hooks on them.

[00:24:50] The kind that if you've gotten a shot at a, at a hospital with that size of needle, you'd

[00:24:55] probably run out screaming.

[00:24:57] So that's, that's where we're at.

[00:24:59] My daughter is the one that comes home with a dress and says, dad, this is too low.

[00:25:04] And I say, no, it's not.

[00:25:06] You're going to wear it.

[00:25:07] You're not, we're not bringing that up any right.

[00:25:09] We're so we have the father daughter thing going.

[00:25:12] And then when we get to that negotiation, then I go and do the thing that she's asking

[00:25:18] for.

[00:25:18] And that works out pretty well.

[00:25:19] You're talking about the youngest is the one.

[00:25:21] I thought, I thought we were talking about the bus line.

[00:25:24] That's backwards.

[00:25:25] We're talking about that.

[00:25:26] And we're talking about the bottom, right?

[00:25:28] So the, the top needs to go up higher.

[00:25:30] The bottom needs to stay down lower.

[00:25:32] Right.

[00:25:32] I just want to clarify.

[00:25:34] That's the kind of parent I am.

[00:25:36] Not the other way.

[00:25:36] And she ends up with a dress that looks like a Quaker.

[00:25:39] Right.

[00:25:40] That's right.

[00:25:40] That's right.

[00:25:41] And I always joke with her.

[00:25:42] Why does all my stuff look like a Puritan?

[00:25:44] Yeah.

[00:25:45] My fabric is that, you know, it's shiny.

[00:25:47] It's, it's, you know, what a tint's made out of.

[00:25:50] I always joke with her when I see her try something on and go, you know what?

[00:25:54] I think I'm going to attach a foot of ripstop nylon at the bottom of that dress.

[00:26:00] So you can hold your brother's lures in it.

[00:26:02] Yeah.

[00:26:02] Okay.

[00:26:02] That's right.

[00:26:03] So speaking of people coming to us with problems and then problem solving, that's what we do

[00:26:07] all day long for the clients.

[00:26:08] Do you ever have the chance to, to make anything that's solving a physical problem for the clients

[00:26:14] or are they not really know or aware of the, uh, the, the side hobby that you've got?

[00:26:19] Um, well, you know, I, I would, I would say that my passion for both is, is kind of evident

[00:26:27] it has a lot of crossover because I'm, I'm a very bespoke person, right?

[00:26:33] I don't like making the same thing twice.

[00:26:35] Yeah.

[00:26:35] I've never used a pattern.

[00:26:37] I don't, I, I, I respect people that can, but to cut out a pattern and make something

[00:26:43] exactly the way that somebody has already made it before.

[00:26:47] Or it, it, it just completely takes the fun out of it for me.

[00:26:52] Sure.

[00:26:52] So my patterns are usually me saying, you know what?

[00:26:56] I, it needs to be a little bit longer.

[00:26:58] It needs to be a little bit shorter and that's the wrong.

[00:27:01] And we go from there.

[00:27:02] Sometimes I mess up and I have to restart it or do a lot of seam ripping.

[00:27:07] Um, and it's the same way with the clients.

[00:27:09] Usually clients are coming to me because the little systematic online experience that's

[00:27:16] offered at a lot of places didn't fit them for some reason.

[00:27:20] And they needed to talk a little bit more and have somebody listen a little bit more

[00:27:24] and construct something maybe that hasn't been constructed.

[00:27:27] That's my favorite part of both sides of the business is being very bespoke on, on all of it.

[00:27:34] Now I learn a lot of lessons from the clients, right?

[00:27:38] So I've, I've worked with probably a hundred firms or more.

[00:27:41] Sure.

[00:27:42] And there's always a lesson.

[00:27:43] There's always a template that I can pull from somewhere.

[00:27:46] And now let's get started with customizing this to you, but it works the way in both of those

[00:27:52] same way in both of those.

[00:27:54] Yeah.

[00:27:55] Yeah.

[00:27:55] Not to put you on the spot, but do you do clothing of like, do you make your own shirt,

[00:28:01] alter your own shirt, or is that not worth the time?

[00:28:04] I have, but it's, it's, it's more work than it's worth for me.

[00:28:07] Yeah.

[00:28:08] Um, what I'll do is I will buy shirts and do the same thing where I, I've learned how

[00:28:13] to very quickly modify shirts.

[00:28:15] If it's a size too big, it's really just two seams, right?

[00:28:21] It's down the side, all the way down to the, um, right down to the cusp.

[00:28:26] If I just take a half an inch and go up all the way across there, it's a 30 minute project.

[00:28:31] And I've just reduced the size by, by one.

[00:28:35] So I will do that, but I'm not into making my own shirts.

[00:28:39] Yeah.

[00:28:40] Okay.

[00:28:40] What's the most challenging material you've worked with, or is there a material that you've

[00:28:44] yet to work with that you're looking forward to like Kevlar or something?

[00:28:47] Yeah.

[00:28:48] No.

[00:28:48] So that, I think that's two questions that like the Cav, the Kevlar and those are exciting,

[00:28:55] right?

[00:28:55] I like, I like working with them and I always want to work with the newer material because

[00:28:59] it's got some kind of whiz bang feature to it.

[00:29:02] Right.

[00:29:03] It's impenetrable.

[00:29:04] Oh, that's cool.

[00:29:05] I want to make something out of that.

[00:29:07] Those aren't necessarily the most challenging.

[00:29:09] Hmm.

[00:29:10] The most challenging fabric in the world is anything dry fit.

[00:29:14] Anything that is, um, you think about Lululemon, you think about those are the most challenging

[00:29:20] because of the stretch that happens.

[00:29:22] And you talk about these, the feed on both of those, you have to have the feed at the

[00:29:27] top, be exactly the same as the feed at the bottom.

[00:29:31] And if you stretch it at all, then you get a little pucker.

[00:29:34] Um, I had a friend that reached out to me that always makes fun of me for this.

[00:29:39] And it was a weird call.

[00:29:40] He's like, Hey, um, Hey, my wife's got, my wife's got this dress and man, we went to the,

[00:29:47] we went to the place down the street and they said they were going to charge $250.

[00:29:52] Hey, what do you think, man?

[00:29:54] Could you, could you just look at it?

[00:29:55] And I looked at it and went, you're going to owe me for this.

[00:29:59] But yeah.

[00:30:00] But not $250.

[00:30:01] Yeah.

[00:30:02] Cause it's, it's, it was a, it was a stretch dry fit type of material.

[00:30:07] And it was terrible.

[00:30:08] I had to restart several things because the sketch, the stitches would skip.

[00:30:12] And so that is definitely the most challenging thing, no matter what, at any, at any point

[00:30:18] in time, leather is challenging.

[00:30:20] Um, in some cases, if it's too thick, there's a lot of intricacies to it.

[00:30:26] The type of thread, the type of tension that you have on your machine.

[00:30:29] Um, but still I love doing leather because everybody loves, everybody loves a leather

[00:30:35] project.

[00:30:36] Right.

[00:30:37] Wallets and yeah.

[00:30:38] Yeah.

[00:30:38] Computer bags.

[00:30:39] This is why that made.

[00:30:40] I saw that in a wonder.

[00:30:42] Yeah.

[00:30:43] Okay.

[00:30:43] Yeah.

[00:30:43] You did that yourself.

[00:30:44] Very simple.

[00:30:44] Yeah.

[00:30:46] So if you say so, those are really it, but then the other side of it is the Dyneema, the, uh,

[00:30:52] ripstop by the role is the company that I use.

[00:30:55] I have no ties to them except for, I've been invited to be their vintage sewing machine expert

[00:31:01] in a few cases.

[00:31:03] So they, you know, they're kind of, they were there when I started.

[00:31:06] That's how I kind of learned a lot of the stuff, but they've always got a new product that's

[00:31:10] coming out with some kind of feature.

[00:31:13] I, I gotta get my hands on that.

[00:31:16] You mentioned earlier a lot that you got into this at either your, your wife was either

[00:31:22] encouraging or, or daring you to do this.

[00:31:24] Yeah.

[00:31:24] Is that something that she regrets that you've gotten sucked down this, this rabbit hole or

[00:31:28] Oh my gosh.

[00:31:28] Yes.

[00:31:29] Um, I mean, it's, it's both, it's both ways because my wife is also the kind that will

[00:31:35] say, Hey, when you have a free moment, you know, I do have this, I have these genes

[00:31:40] that they're just a little too long.

[00:31:42] And so she loves that element of it.

[00:31:45] Right.

[00:31:46] Um, she doesn't like storing 20 something machines.

[00:31:50] So at one point I think that my marriage relied on me getting rid of about 10 machines.

[00:31:56] Yeah.

[00:31:57] And you know, just watching the look on her face, I can tell about how many that I'm allowed

[00:32:02] to have.

[00:32:03] Yeah.

[00:32:03] Good for you to recognize that.

[00:32:05] That's important.

[00:32:06] That's an important skill.

[00:32:07] Hey, I don't want to, I don't want to act like I have marriage figured out.

[00:32:11] Okay.

[00:32:11] Cause I don't, but there are a few little things where you can say, Hey, I got this machine

[00:32:16] up here and her go.

[00:32:17] Yeah, cool.

[00:32:18] And there's times where I go here's seven machines in a pile, you know, and she makes

[00:32:23] a different face there.

[00:32:25] So there, there definitely has been, there's been times that I will get sucked into this

[00:32:30] room.

[00:32:30] Cause this is my consulting room as well as my surfing the room.

[00:32:35] Right.

[00:32:36] Okay.

[00:32:36] And I'll be in here for 18 hours straight one day without drinking anything or eating

[00:32:41] anything.

[00:32:42] And she doesn't like that aspect either.

[00:32:45] Your urologist probably doesn't either.

[00:32:47] And I have to remind her of this.

[00:32:48] I used to golf and golf was, you know, six hours on a Saturday outside of the house.

[00:32:55] Yeah.

[00:32:56] And you know, one of our biggest issues there was I'm gone for a lot of the big things

[00:33:00] that are happening with my family.

[00:33:02] Right.

[00:33:02] This was a way to get a five or six hour hobby in, but do it here at the house.

[00:33:10] Yeah.

[00:33:10] So I could step away and go help with the kids or, you know, whatever the case required.

[00:33:15] So there was, there was a lot to that in, in being able to do the golf ish thing, but

[00:33:21] here at the house.

[00:33:22] Yeah.

[00:33:23] And thinking back to that time, seven, eight years ago, getting into this, what words of

[00:33:27] wisdom would you have for yourself that, uh, you, you wish you knew then what you know

[00:33:31] now?

[00:33:32] Yeah.

[00:33:37] So, yeah.

[00:33:45] Yeah.

[00:33:46] Yeah.

[00:33:46] So same thing that we're all telling our clients.

[00:33:48] No, you could do that.

[00:33:50] I'm not doing anything magical here.

[00:33:51] You could do all of that yourself.

[00:33:53] Just be ready to commit 20 hours, right?

[00:33:56] A year to this one thing.

[00:33:58] And also 20 hours to learning what it is and how it is.

[00:34:01] Yeah.

[00:34:02] Yeah.

[00:34:02] I wish I would have spent an extra $5,000 in the beginning and not gone through a lot

[00:34:08] of the pain and trouble and learning that I didn't think was relevant.

[00:34:13] Yeah.

[00:34:13] I mean, I'm making up the word, I'm making up the number 5,000, but there are a lot of

[00:34:32] things that I've done.

[00:34:32] So that would be the biggest thing.

[00:34:35] Second thing would be reduce expectations on something that people have made into something

[00:34:42] very difficult or have understood as very difficult for centuries.

[00:34:46] It's not like I came into this as a first timer, right?

[00:34:49] I'm starting this new industry that nobody's ever thought of.

[00:34:52] Yeah.

[00:34:53] People have been making clothes since Adam and Eve.

[00:34:55] Yeah.

[00:34:55] When I had old ladies say, oh, that sounds like a lot of work.

[00:35:00] I go, nah, I got this.

[00:35:02] No, they're right.

[00:35:03] It's a lot of work.

[00:35:04] There's a lot that goes into this and it's not easy to do.

[00:35:08] I would have reduced some of like maybe that $1,000 tent wouldn't have been the first

[00:35:12] thing I strived for.

[00:35:14] Sure.

[00:35:15] Yeah.

[00:35:16] And it ended up not being.

[00:35:17] So I ended up working on probably 20 extra projects before I finished that tent by just

[00:35:22] realizing I have no idea what I'm doing.

[00:35:25] Yeah.

[00:35:27] So those would be the biggest two.

[00:35:29] Is there anything that you've made that's going to end up being a family heirloom that

[00:35:33] Grandpa Heath made this and it gets passed down generation to generation?

[00:35:36] Probably not because nothing that I make is really about the uniqueness of it from Matt's

[00:35:43] standpoint.

[00:35:43] Can we, I think the, um, the biggest things would be the tent that I made that I ended

[00:35:50] up finally getting done?

[00:35:53] Yeah.

[00:35:53] Yeah.

[00:35:54] Yeah.

[00:36:01] Yeah.

[00:36:02] So I made, um, I made, you know, an attachable case that it goes into it or that it stuffs

[00:36:07] into.

[00:36:07] And it looks like a packet whenever you're done.

[00:36:09] It was, it was a dumb design.

[00:36:11] I still sometimes want to go in there and change it, but, um, we call it the packet.

[00:36:17] And when we go camping, everybody wants to pack it because it wraps up into a ball about

[00:36:23] this big, but it's still warmer than most of the sleeping bags that we own that we've

[00:36:27] bought.

[00:36:29] And it's, you know, it's, it's smaller.

[00:36:31] It's, it's, it's lighter, but for some reason it works better.

[00:36:34] Right.

[00:36:35] Now that's the whole component of all of this.

[00:36:38] So things like that are the most, are the things I'm most proud of.

[00:36:41] I don't see there being anything outside of some of the leather stuff that I've made

[00:36:45] being family herbs.

[00:36:46] All right.

[00:36:47] I'm not making quilts and Afghans and things like that.

[00:36:51] Sentimental stuff.

[00:36:51] Yeah.

[00:36:52] Yeah.

[00:36:52] A lot of respect for those ladies.

[00:36:55] As we wind down, you mentioned a, uh, 77 Gear Co.

[00:36:59] What was, if somebody wanted to find your work online, where did they go?

[00:37:02] Yeah.

[00:37:03] They could go to Instagram and find seven, seven, seven, gear co all one word.

[00:37:07] Okay.

[00:37:07] And, uh, seven, seven, seven, gear co.com is the website.

[00:37:11] Okay.

[00:37:11] Um, something they may want to go look at is I created a sewing, a sewing machine.

[00:37:17] Scoring model.

[00:37:18] And that is on the website.

[00:37:20] Um, what.

[00:37:22] Scoring model, like trying to make everybody mad.

[00:37:24] And yes, exactly.

[00:37:25] That's so you read it.

[00:37:27] Right.

[00:37:27] But that wasn't my intent, but I knew that was, that was happening, but I would get people

[00:37:32] that would say, what do I get?

[00:37:34] Like I'm a first timer.

[00:37:36] What do I get?

[00:37:37] Say, well, you need to go get this machine that was made in the forties.

[00:37:41] Why would I get that over something that was made in the eighties?

[00:37:44] Well, because more metal.

[00:37:45] But so there was no way to compare models made in different generations.

[00:37:51] Hmm.

[00:37:51] So I created a story scoring machine.

[00:37:53] That's got 10 different scoring elements and whether it's, um, whether you made the

[00:38:00] kitsch tech map.

[00:38:01] Yeah.

[00:38:02] You made the kitsch tech map of sewing machines.

[00:38:04] Yeah, exactly.

[00:38:04] The tech.

[00:38:05] Awesome.

[00:38:05] There you go.

[00:38:06] The kitsch tech map of sewing machines.

[00:38:08] Yeah.

[00:38:09] Okay.

[00:38:10] Well, so that's something that they could find out there.

[00:38:12] That that's, that's really it.

[00:38:14] The two elements there.

[00:38:15] Instagram and website.

[00:38:17] And if somebody wanted to find the professional work that you do on behalf of the client firms,

[00:38:21] where did they go to find the professional?

[00:38:23] The best place would be true growth consulting or true growth dot consulting is my official website.

[00:38:29] And that's T R U G R O W T H.

[00:38:34] No E all one word.

[00:38:36] Okay.

[00:38:36] Okay.

[00:38:37] I have to explain that.

[00:38:38] And there's no.com.

[00:38:40] Um, I get that a lot too.

[00:38:41] It's dot consulting dot consulting.

[00:38:43] So yeah, we have, we have an Instagram.

[00:38:45] We have, um, we have Facebook.

[00:38:48] LinkedIn is a great place to find me.

[00:38:50] Um, so you can go to any of those Heath Jackson at LinkedIn.

[00:38:54] And I've also got my company on there as well.

[00:38:56] Outstanding.

[00:38:57] All right.

[00:38:58] Anything further from you, Brian?

[00:38:59] No, this is, this is really interesting.

[00:39:01] Um, I could have gone a lot further.

[00:39:02] Yeah.

[00:39:03] We, we could have probably talked another, another hour.

[00:39:05] This is a, no, this is, this was really cool.

[00:39:07] Um, like right at the end, like with the,

[00:39:10] the scoring system, I have so many questions about the scoring system.

[00:39:12] Yeah.

[00:39:13] Um, what a cool idea.

[00:39:14] And I can just imagine like if you did something like this,

[00:39:17] if you did something like that for pinball, like just.

[00:39:20] You would be a lightning rod.

[00:39:21] The amount of attention you would bring to yourself and just did the pinball

[00:39:25] community, you know, doing something like that.

[00:39:27] I can only imagine, um, with a product that's been around since,

[00:39:30] you know, industrial revolution.

[00:39:32] Yeah.

[00:39:33] So, so yeah, that's, that's fun.

[00:39:35] I I'm definitely going to check out the scoring system.

[00:39:36] Um, and like many people, my mother has a singer that's very old.

[00:39:40] Um, so, uh, yeah.

[00:39:42] And her sewing machine too, probably.

[00:39:43] What?

[00:39:44] And her sewing machine too, probably.

[00:39:45] Oh yes.

[00:39:45] Yes.

[00:39:46] That too.

[00:39:46] So yeah.

[00:39:47] Awesome.

[00:39:47] Well, Hey, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

[00:39:50] This was again, this is a good time.

[00:39:52] This is a lot of fun.

[00:39:52] I learned.

[00:39:53] I know so much more now than I did an hour ago.

[00:39:56] So this is really cool.

[00:39:57] Excellent.

[00:39:58] Well, and thank you guys for doing this.

[00:39:59] This, this is huge because people love sharing this.

[00:40:02] And you know, I love going through all of your, your past episodes and just learning

[00:40:07] about other people.

[00:40:08] So I appreciate that a lot.

[00:40:09] Thank you guys for doing it.

[00:40:11] I'm glad you could be part of it.

[00:40:12] Thanks a lot.

[00:40:13] Thank you.

[00:40:15] Unexpected Hobbies of Financial Advisors is brought to you by Fiduciary CFO, forward

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[00:40:32] be construed as legal, tax, financial or investment advice.

[00:40:37] You should know better than to take any of this content seriously.

[00:40:44] Thanks for being a fan of the show.

[00:40:45] If you were listening and thought to yourself, Hey, I know somebody they need to have on the

[00:40:49] show.

[00:40:50] You can do something about that.

[00:40:52] Go to unexpectedhobbies.com slash nominate and tell us who they are and what they do that's

[00:40:58] so interesting and unexpected.

[00:41:00] If we agree, we'll send them an invitation and we'll hope they say yes.

[00:41:04] Now it's unexpectedhobbies.com slash nominate.