Megan Long: 0:01

If I don't get every signage job, my business is going to be okay. There is enough for all of us. The best thing for all of us to do is find how we complement each other.

Porter: 0:14

All right, folks, welcome back to Transacting Value, where we're encouraging dialogue from different perspectives to uniter-shared values. Our theme for season four is intrinsic values what your character is doing when you look yourself in the mirror. This particular conversation, though, now that we're in the month of August and talking our August core values of perseverance, reliability and vitality, we're also jumping into our third mini-series of the year, called Incorporating Value. This is where we discuss how people's personal values impact or influence corporate environment. Now, this may not be suits and ties and, as a matter of fact, this conversation, I believe, is probably far from it. She's actually the owner and operator of Forged Waterjet Fabrications out of Missouri, but, from what I understand, the majority of her time is working in the dirt and lifting heavy things in a whole bunch of metals. So we'll get into that. Her name is Megan Long and, without further ado, folks, I'm Porter, I'm your host and this is Transacting Value. Megan, how are you doing?

Megan Long: 1:15

Good, how are you?

Porter: 1:16

I'm doing well. I appreciate you taking some time out of your evening to talk and hang out for a little while. How's your best? Absolutely Good day.

Megan Long: 1:23

Good day we actually had a little. This is that weird Monday where we got a holiday around it, so we took an extra day and just enjoyed time with family, so it was nice.

Porter: 1:32

That is nice, and so obviously you've got the luxury to make the calls, I assume as far as the scheduling goes right.

Megan Long: 1:37

One of the best things about owning your own business is you do get to make your own schedule.

Porter: 1:41

You do get to. You don't have to ask for PTO.

Megan Long: 1:44

On the other hand, you might work all night or four straight weeks, but there are the perks to it.

Porter: 1:50

You know, sometimes working 60 to 80 hours a week just to be able to have the opportunity and the freedom is worth it.

Megan Long: 1:57

Absolutely, we used to be on teacher schedules, which are pretty good when it comes to kids and life and things like that, but still having your own business and making your own calls still trumps that.

Porter: 2:08

Yeah, I bet it does. And while we're talking about it, for anybody listening, who's new to the show, megan and I are talking on a video call, but you can't see her and Megan, nobody realistically may even recognize your voice. Who's hearing this? Everybody may be totally new, so let's start with a little relationship building. Right, take a couple of minutes. Who are you? What do you actually do? What kinds of things have shaped your perspective in life?

Megan Long: 2:32

Well, I'm actually a by education. I'm an athletic administrator, school principal. I have an MED, my master's in administration, and thought that would be what I was going into. Speaking, talking, teaching comes naturally. Spent years, coaching and things like that. I'm married to a coach. We were both coaches before. We have a lot of the kids that do all the sports, so that's kind of our life. And then we shifted into fabrication by using a water jet, which most people think we make jet skis, which would be awesome, but mostly. But we actually just we make machine parts, we do creative art things, we do stage design, home decor, all those types of things that go along with our machines.

Porter: 3:16

So we've shifted from schools and coaching and things like that into fabrication, which allows us like we were talking about earlier, to just kind of run our own schedules, which is obviously a huge benefit, and that also explains teacher schedules you mentioned earlier. Now I get it.

Megan Long: 3:31

Yeah, I mean, teachers do have a great schedule, but the fact that you get to design your schedule and you pick your days off, things like that, does give you the upper hand in that part of it.

Porter: 3:41

Yeah, dude, for sure. And you mentioned water jet also. Just for clarity here, and if everybody listening to this knows and I'm the only odd man out that's fine too. But when you say that I'm picturing like pull water in, pressurize, shoot water out like for thrust or lift or something Like you mentioned for jet, Absolutely so.

Megan Long: 3:58

We're pulling water in. It's a high pressure, it runs through high pressure tubing and we'll cut any material at two and a half times the speed of sound. So you're talking 50,000 PSI, like up there, and it cuts. The idea of water jetting is precision, so you're trying to get the best cut at the fastest pace, because there's lots of machines that do precision cutting. They just take a really long time. So we're trying to provide that type of precision in a more timely manner which allows clients to save money and save time.

Porter: 4:32

Okay, but precision, for example, 50,000 PSI. What happens when it's splashing?

Megan Long: 4:39

It comes out okay. So it's coming out with so much force it's cutting straight through Basically the water stream, if you imagine, like the end of a pencil you know, not your old school number two that you have to sharpen like one of your clay pencils.

Porter: 4:52

It's coming out about that.

Megan Long: 4:54

It's coming out with enough force to cut straight through. We personally have seven inches of clearance, so I can cut seven inches of steel like butter.

Porter: 5:04

Stacked of like dense steel. Yeah, whoa.

Megan Long: 5:09

It's still to this day. I watch it and go oh my gosh, it worked. It's amazing.

Porter: 5:14

Yeah, have you ever.

Megan Long: 5:16

Yeah, so it holds precision. So when you're working in machining you're going to put parts. We do a lot of parts for different manufacturers and they're asking for plus or minus five in that precision. So we're talking 0.05. We have to be on the dot. That's the only tolerance we have. We can hold that at our average cut.

Porter: 5:37

So once we've read that we do have five levels of cutting.

Megan Long: 5:40

So we can actually tighten that down and give it like a three tolerance, or, if we need to, we can tighten it down and do it tighter. But just on average we can hold a 0.05 tolerance, no problem.

Porter: 5:50

And tolerance is like deviation of the measurement.

Megan Long: 5:53

Yeah, so if you have a straight line, you get 0.05 off that line to the right or the left total Geez.

Porter: 6:00

Okay, and so obviously, precision parts being like, I'm assuming, gears or rounded edges and pistons and these types of things.

Megan Long: 6:08

Yeah, so we do parts for all sorts of we do department of defense contracts. We do stuff for a local company that makes playgrounds. We cut blades that go to the dog food factory. Then they'll end up cutting up dog food. So we're making sure that what happens wearmaking is fitting on what they already have.

Porter: 6:26

Okay, so you're accommodating custom work also.

Megan Long: 6:29

Yes. So when we started we cut it through a wide net and we work as a job shop. So most water jets that you come across are going to do something specific. They're going to cut rubber for gaskets. They're going to cut nothing but airplane parts things like that. We have a wide net so we work with our local manufacturers and industry. Some of them are Fortune 500 companies. Sometimes we're just making parts for the machines that they use. A lot of them get their machines from overseas, so it might take three months to get a part to fix your machine from Germany. If that happens, you've got lines that are down Some of the factories around here. If they have a line down for a day it costs them $80,000 a day. So we're going to make that part, they're going to take it over, throw it back on their machine and fire right up. In other situations we're actually making something that's going to go out Like that is a part of something. So we're making those in mass quantities and sending those out that go to a part of a company, and then we work really hard to provide our type of technology to the everyday public. So in the same day that I can cut a bomb box for a DOD contract, I might cut a metal hanger for your kids, t-ball trophies and metals, or a bib and metal holder for someone who runs marathons in five case.

Porter: 7:51

Okay, all right, I don't fully understand this. So you get a master's in education and you're the principal of the school.

Megan Long: 8:00

I could be. I never was Like I learned real quick like that.

Porter: 8:04

I have the.

Megan Long: 8:04

I have that I was a high school social studies teacher and coach and then have my master's, but never went fully into administration other than in summer school. I was the summer school principal once because I realized that I really liked teaching kids. I didn't really want to separate myself into an office away from.

Porter: 8:20

Okay, well, I have to imagine there aren't too many school field trips going to a fabrications facility.

Megan Long: 8:26

You know we get a few on occasion. We don't get a whole field trip, but we get. There's a lot of STEM programs. There's some career and technology schools that bring their kids in, so we get our chance to show it off everyone's wallet.

Porter: 8:38

Okay, and so you what? Use that as an opportunity to bridge, teaching people? And then you said yeah.

Megan Long: 8:44

I think, I think, I think the one thing we learned from teaching we were, we were teaching at a time when it was like go to college, go to college. And we are the exact example of that. We're. Both of us have postgraduate degrees in our household and it was about go to college whereas we're seeing a shift now and probably the one of the things I regret the most as a teacher was pushing that and not having an understanding for the value of technical school and the things that we need. You know I talk about. The machine shop next to us is ran by the world's most wonderful people. And you know there's a lot of people with a lot of degrees and things like that, but those guys next door to me are the guys that make things run. They're the guys that make things work, so giving an option for technical school or things like that, and showing people that we really don't have any of the background that you would need for what are jetty? We're not machinists, we were geometry teachers and we're not CAD trained which is the three things that our programming takes. But we've learned it and we've done it and anybody could do what we do. You could purchase and you know, start your own small business, get a machine, learn it just like we did, and do that on your own, without having to have years of college education or debt or things like that.

Porter: 10:00

That's what's up. Congratulations.

Megan Long: 10:02

Yeah, it's cool.

Porter: 10:03

Yeah.

Megan Long: 10:05

So I mean literally like 10 years ago. I wouldn't even know what a water jet was.

Porter: 10:09

I know no clue 10 days ago before you, and I spoke, I didn't either. So right, and the people either.

Megan Long: 10:17

like I said, they either say we make water jet or jet skis or they've seen that there's a YouTube that does kind of like will it cut, and they throw random things and just see if it'll cut like a camera or a cell phone or whatever. That's usually people's extents with it or orange county choppers They've seen it on orange county choppers to cut out the wheels for the motorcycle. So that's usually where people have their experience with it.

Porter: 10:42

Yeah, I think maybe Discovery Channel. I saw it once or twice. Yeah, yeah, ok. So all of these things are the harder skills, though, right, and not to oversell their importance or undervalue their relevance either, but we're talking transacting value. The bigger goal also is being able to communicate some of the softer skills to compliment that right, like, for example, we talked earlier, perseverance right, and so, whatever failures and setbacks, ie, barriers to entry, lacks of education, those kinds of things You've got to teach yourself or find somebody to teach you right. So, for everybody listening right now concerning some of those softer skills, I think that's where I want to move this real quick. This is a segment of the show called Developing Character. Developing Character. So for everybody listening, if you're familiar with the show, this will make a lot of sense, and for anybody new, and, megan, for you as well. The point of this segment is two questions and it's to highlight some of your personal values and then we'll drag those into your brand and business after that. So question number one, as vulnerably or willing and in depth as you want to answer, totally cool. What were some of your values growing up?

Megan Long: 11:47

I think, hard work. I'm super competitive, so winning was important probably too much, but just hard work, having a goal and finishing and achieving it. On the other side, I just happened to be raised in a household that made it very simple to set this goal Everybody's working together to get to it. We achieved the goal and then we set the next one. But also I was very lucky to have a family that, along the way, showed you like how to be competitive but also be kind, how to work within a team and bring people along with you and to make it beneficial to more than just yourself, to always be giving something back and to be helping along the way. I was also an only child, so I had a lot of resources and things available to me that not all families have and so just making sure that everybody had a chance at the things that they wanted to do and finding the value in everybody, what they bring to the table, because not everyone's born with those talents or those skills, but they do have something that adds to the group and the overall success of wherever you're trying to get.

Porter: 12:59

And that was way more loaded than I was expecting. I was trying to write a key.

Megan Long: 13:03

I'm a teacher we never ready.

Porter: 13:07

We're testing my short hand. The cool thing about that, though, is I think there's direct implications to winningly explicitly or implicitly being exposed to those types of values. Growing up directly applies to what you're doing now. So before we get too much further ahead, though, my second question, and then I'll put all this together for you. So then, over time now, if assuming anything's changed, what are some of your values now?

Megan Long: 13:33

I think now I have a much more focus on, I think, when I was younger, I kind of like here we go, everybody get together and we're going here, whereas now, learning from that, there are certain groups that in either because of where you live or the field that you're in that don't have the same access to what you have. So having a more intentional inclusivity to what I'm doing or what we're doing within our business is really important to us, rather than being like kind of the all call of like hey, who wants to do this or who wants to work together? Get that. You've got to go find the people like just like us who had no idea what water jetting is. We had to go find it, and so now I think there's just more intentionality in the things that we're doing, to make sure that that we are doing things well, but we're also doing things that are beneficial to people other than us.

Porter: 14:25

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Megan Long: 15:28

And so now I think there's just more intentionality in the things that we're doing, to make sure that we are doing things well, but we're also doing things that are beneficial to people other than us.

Porter: 15:40

That's huge. I was just talking to somebody earlier today, as a matter of fact, about that. Why do we do what we do? Apply that to whatever skill set you want, but why do we do what we do? And one of the things that we came up with in the conversation was to be able to identify your own strengths and then share them with other people, to share that experience and then, in this case, even communicate more effectively. Right, Intention makes all the difference, and you had also brought up I guess we'll call it an aspect of kinder competitiveness. Let's call it where it's okay to beat somebody's face into the dirt, so bad that you win by 20 points. Metaphorically right. But sportsmanship the Marcy rule. Okay, well, same same sort of principle, though right Like sportsmanship, goes a long way, and I think it's not just in sports how you handle failure, how you handle there's sportsmanship in winning.

Megan Long: 16:36

Yeah, there's sportsmanship in winning by a lot as well. Just because there is a big difference between first and second, or win or loss, it still could be done with honor and with grace and in a way that is beneficial, and we've all learned from winning and we've all learned from losing, and so there's something to get out of both sides of it. But I think mostly, at least in my life, lessons has been pulling the pride out of it and finding out what the win really means or what the loss is really going to teach you more so than the pride of carrying yourself like I won or the shame of I lost that you're pulling out the right things when you set the pride and shame aside.

Porter: 17:18

So if we just collectively, for the sake of time and a baseline here, if we just collectively refer to that as an ego for right now all my Freudian listeners, you can comment that you will. But if you were to take that aspect of, let's say, egotistical behavior and how you've learned to grasp it and work through it and all these kinds of things honor and grace and humility, I'm sure to a certain degree too, how do you, as the owner or operator of a company, how do you bring that into a brand? What do you do with it? Personal values are good, but they don't pay the bills. Actually, they don't buy you groceries. So who cares? What are those values and those things do for you in that type of environment?

Megan Long: 17:57

I think one of the things I learned is when you get in a business, we basically did a no plan B type situation, like when our jobs we had four kids- we ended up adopting a little bit later, so we had five kids.

Porter: 18:11

There were four kids at the time.

Megan Long: 18:12

We just went off to college at Mizzou, I mean it was like the most ridiculous thing, and so we did no plan B option.

Porter: 18:19

Like we have to make this work.

Megan Long: 18:21

So you jump right in, which then can make you really intense about I've got to get this sell. I've got to get this company to see what I can do. I've got to get them. You know what I mean. In our area, when we came there, you can walk into a machine shop and explain to them like I own a water jet. I see you make this part. It takes you three hours to make that part, or maybe it takes, let's say, it takes you three hours to make that part.

Porter: 18:47

I can make it in six minutes, I'm going to save you material. Yeah, that's true, I'm going to save you material. I'm going to save you labor, my parts are perfect when they come off the machine, so you no longer have to send them to like your deburring and stuff and there's some long time machine shop guys that are looking at me like oh, darling.

Megan Long: 19:08

I mean it was almost like I was walking in there with like some type of voodoo. If you take that as like the loss, then you're white, you have nothing to work with, so you've got to take your ego out of it and be like it's not me, it's not because I'm a woman, they just don't know what's available in everybody. You know they're in a system. They've got a system that's worked for maybe 60, 70 years. Why would they even contemplate that at this time? You know so, then you're working along with it. I think the other thing is it was interesting to me that when we started, we cross over with a lot of businesses Like we don't do signs. However, we are super handy to sign companies. So rather than cutting out all those letters you see on a sign and them cutting them out by hand, our machine does it like that. If you see a rib crib that has flames around it, like, we've cut those flames. Well, usually a sign company is in charge of all of their signage, whether it's their awnings or their neon signs or their you know, their big flackers that we see as we drive down the road. We're, in addition to that, when we came in, the amount of people who automatically were like oh my gosh, your competition and like we couldn't talk to them, we couldn't get in the door, they were just so worried that we were there to sweep all that, and the truth was we were there to make it easier and more cost efficient for them, and so I think one of the big things I've learned when it came to competition and stuff is we live in a place that has well more resources than any of us really need. We live in excess in the United States and every situation, especially people that are, like me, middle class white. We have things available to us, and so I learned real quick that there's enough available, like if I don't get every machining job, my business is going to be okay.

Porter: 21:00

All right, folks, stay tight. We'll be right back on Transacting Value. Alrighty folks, here at Transacting Value, we write and produce all the material for our podcast and house game perspective alongside you, our listeners, and exchange vulnerability and dialogue with our contributors every Monday morning. But for distribution, buzzsprout's a platform to use. You want to know how popular you are in Europe or how Apple is a preferred platform to stream your interviews? Buzzsprout can do that. You want to stream on multiple players through an RSS or custom feed, or even have references and resources to take your podcast's professionalism, authenticity and presence to a wider audience. Buzzsprout can do that too. Here's how Start with some gear that you already have in a quiet space. If you want to upgrade, buzzsprout has tons of guides to help you find the right equipment at the right price. Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform. You'll get a great looking podcast website, audio players that you can drop into other websites, detailed analytics to see how people are listening, tools to promote your episodes and more. Podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners. The team at Buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed. Join over 100,000 podcasters already using Buzzsprout to get their message out to the world Plus. Following the link in the show notes, lets Buzzsprout know we sent you, gets you a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan and helps support our show. You want more value for your values. Buzzsprout can do that too.

Megan Long: 22:32

I learned real quick that there's enough available. If I don't get every machining job, my business is going to be okay. If I don't get every signage job, my business is going to be okay. There is enough for all of us. The best thing for all of us to do is find how we complement each other. I don't want to be installing a giant chili sign on the side of the road. That is not my job. I don't want to do that. I will, however, cut letters and signage and designs and logos for the sign company to go and put those in to save them on turnaround time to increase their profit margin. I think the real win there, when you're thinking of competition and winning and losing, the real win is when we're partnering together and using the best of what we know. I've learned so much. The guys next door to us have taught me so much. If I can, I'm going to get them to teach me to weld At some point. It might make them nervous to give me anything like that. I think that's what I've learned about competition is you can compete and you can compete to make each other better. That's where we learn from winning and losing. I need to do this if I'm going to get to where these people are, and whether it be in sports or whatever it is in life. Really, it's more about matching our best with someone else's best so that we get the best part out of everything.

Porter: 23:55

How do you do it, though? Let me clarify that Not only working with other people's better qualities, and not necessarily identifying yours, but how do you foster that, for example, at Forge Waterjet? How do you create that atmosphere and sustain that culture?

Megan Long: 24:11

The very first part for us was just its education, its teaching people. It's showing them hands-on here's what we can do, here's what you're doing, here's where we can help. It's showing that, hey, maybe we do blades for the dog food factories we're not making the whole blade. They're sending in a chunk of material, we're profiling it out and sending it back for them to do the real work to secondary process and get it down to an actual blade. The fact that we can profile it out so quick and so fast saves them hours upon hours of man time and the amount of material that they need to use. It's really about getting people in working together, finding out what they need, what will help them. Not most big companies are looking to make a huge shift in their manufacturing or fabrication. They're not ready to just wipe out an entire section of their company. If they were going to do that, they'd just buy their own waterjet. It's really about sending down people and educating them and seeing Then for us too, seeing what they have to offer us. We've been very lucky when, for example, again with the signage we've been able to add to our business by partnering with them. If we need something vinyl, they vinyl it. If we need something engraved, we got engravers. If we need something powder coated, we've got that. It's working and listening well to what people need help with.

Porter: 25:37

I think one of the big things is we have to also be willing to say hey this is not my strong point, or this is an area I need help in.

Megan Long: 25:45

What can you do for me? We've just found that the more we say hey, I know someone that does that, do you know someone that does this? We connect and network that through. That has been the most beneficial to our business and allowed us to work and do projects all over the country because we helped somebody with something. The next time something was in our wheelhouse. they thought, oh forge, let's call them, we're being able to do that. It's really about learning and listening and educating amongst the groups to find out what you can really do to improve the other person. I think that's a big point is not we're not doing it from a fact that we need to improve for us or forge needs to make more money or something like that. Our goal is what can we do to help you? We've seen their revenue turn on the backside of that. That's hard to put dollars on. When you're talking to big companies and things like that, it's hard to put money on the intangible. For us personally, we've seen that come back around and pay off on the backside. Maybe we didn't get a job or business or something in the front side, but maintaining that relationship and working with those people and maybe just constantly sending something that might kept our name and are in their minds and then it circles back around. We've had a lot of success with that.

Porter: 27:04

I guess that's why patience is a virtue In every opportunity, in the spirit of learning and networking, I suppose, and community. You then take every job that's offered to you.

Megan Long: 27:17

We take one-offs. If this gives you an idea of how different things are that we get. We do a lot of things for churches, like church if they have vacation, bible school or they're a big church camp or something. We do a lot of stage design and things like that. Our name is made their way around. We ended up doing a mission project with some ladies who literally they basically cut material and make feminine hygiene products for third world countries where girls aren't allowed to go to school because they don't have those products.

Porter: 27:49

Oh wow, all right, folks stay tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value. Did you know that children who do chores to earn their allowance have more respect for finance and more of a drive for financial independence? Did you know that families who complete tasks together have stronger bonds? Did you know that cognition, sense of self and anxiety all improve if people have regular interactions with nature? Imagine what instilling self-esteem, resilience, family teamwork and an authorized sense of self could do for the growth of each generation, no matter the temptation At Huff and Cluck or Farm, that's just another Tuesday. Want to learn how to homestead or just more effectively develop your character for an unknown future? Follow our direct message on Instagram at Huff and Cluck or Farm. Watch it happen in real time. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. A foolish man learns from his own.

Megan Long: 28:46

So then we ended up doing a mission project with some ladies who, literally, they basically cut material and make feminine hygiene products for third world countries where girls aren't allowed to go to school because they don't have those products. It was literally like one of those jobs we were going to cut like three or four kind of acrylic stencils, if you will, that they would sit down on the material and then cut around them. So we find that through you know, this lady comes, we cut them. I'm like just take them. There are four pieces. We had drop material. It's no big deal. We ended up then from her, she talked to someone and we ended up doing like the entire signage and stuff for a new church out of the Lee Summit area, which probably ended up being like a five to $10,000 job for us all, from just being the only people who would like take her job because it seemed not important, or a lot of people have a minimum. A lot of people say, like if you come to us we'll cut it, but we'll do 25 of them.

Porter: 29:45

We don't have a minimum.

Megan Long: 29:45

You get that. If you want that one thing, if you want that one knife blade cut out of your dad's old sawmill blade, we'll cut it and you take it, and that's just the way you do it. And that has, I think, created a system of customers and things for us. Just because people want to do something nice on the way back, they've gone out of their way to use us things like that.

Porter: 30:08

And if we can't do it, we just find someone else. I mean, I think that's one of the big things that companies do.

Megan Long: 30:12

They're like we don't do that, we don't send them on. But we all have enough connections to get people to the right place and you just never know what that's going to do for them, what that's helping their life, what it's going to help in someone else's life. We get a lot of things that have to do with honoring someone who has passed. Oh, okay, yeah, and that's a delicate thing to be in, but I feel like they trust us with it, they feel good about it. It's a hard place to come in and ask for that, but we've just been able to kind of create that atmosphere of welcomeness and inclusion and whatever your thing is, whatever you need, we want to help you with it and we want to provide you the same service as the company that's a Fortune 500 company. We want to provide you the same service and I think that's one of the big things.

Porter: 30:59

I mean even just outside of quality craftsmanship. A corporate culture like that speaks for itself too. Would you call it deburring, right when you shave off the rough edges and things? Yeah, and I think that's a lot of other types of machinery they leave out, yeah, and I think having, I guess some let's say, life and employment experience. There's some companies that leave that on your soul a little bit too and then it's a bad taste. I think it kills some of the quality and the relationship and the rapport and all these other aspects that when you find a company that offers quality service, not just for customer service but also for atmospherics and as a company to work for, and brings these to the table and actually stands behind options, like you mentioned, the knife out of the saw blade, for example, networking and being able to create these experiences in these environments is difficult, I think, in any industry. Here's an example Podcasting right now, overall, I think, is more viewed to be the mouthpiece of society to some degree or another random topics, but the mouthpiece of society in a relationship now like ours, right From a host perspective and then contributors that come on the show, these interview style podcasts it's difficult to foster that same sort of depth in a relationship for people listening in on the conversation. They end up sort of third wheeling the conversation if they're even able to participate and I think opportunities like that where then in our case, you and I what we have to offer is a quality conversation where you have social currency to take with you and you have insight, in this case, into water jet fabrications which is totally new to me too, and all of these other options that you now have something to stand on. And you brought up a great point earlier too, talking about the importance of trade schools, and people of any age can go to a trade school. Millennials or high schoolers or, I don't know, maybe elementary school kids, as they grow up, decide that's something I want to get into, because that's what my parents did, for example, and there's a lot of power in all of those things that you've just been able to showcase in 30 minutes All of these values, honor and grace and these other things that you brought up that you showcase in your company. I think it's opportunities like this, where we can also network and find other complimentary outlets to showcase our value systems and then options to apply those values. That also carries some merit and some gravity. Alright, folks sit tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value. I'm Porter, I'm your host, I'm a millennial, long-distance father who's attempting to learn about people, teach about life and talk about values with complete strangers. No script, and we're inviting you to listen. In all of my deployments, one thing I've learned is that we need to increase dialogue, showcasing the value of a value system, and just start a civil conversation. Somehow, as Martin Luther King said, we're not judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character To find where perspectives meet values. Join us every Monday at 9am Eastern Standard Time on all your favorite podcasting platforms, like directly from our website TransactingValuePodcastcom, and we'll meet you there. All of these values, honor and grace and these other things that you brought up that you showcase in your company. I think it's opportunities like this, where we can also network and find other complimentary outlets to showcase our value systems and then options to apply those values that also carry some merit and some gravity. And, megan, I've got before we run out of time here, I've got really one other question for you. If people want to find more information out about Forged Waterjet let's say, for contracts in business or culture, and they want to mirror your business model, for example, or they want to find out anything about waterjet things, what you can do with it, what you can make with it, or just you, what do you recommend? How do people reach out to Forged Waterjet. How do they find out more information?

Megan Long: 35:07

The easiest direct route is to email us at ForgedWaterJet at gmailcom or we have a social media site. Usually Facebook is the easiest way to see a variety of the different things that we do. We're so lucky in what we do that we have zero. I'm the marketing person like Morse Nightmare. We have zero getting budget because we have been totally able to do all what we do off social media and just word of mouth. That's how lucky we've been able to do. The easiest thing is either jump on Facebook it's right there under Forged Waterjet and shoot us a message on Messenger, or to email us, and then they can call us directly. Our numbers are on there as well on our Facebook page. But we've just been very lucky to run off those straight things, and I have no doubt that there's a million marketing people who, if they got a hold of us and it could do massive things. But we again want to make sure that we're able to keep up with the business that we have and do it well and we've been able to do that just through word of mouth, and social media.

Porter: 36:09

Yeah, scale to your own standards, capabilities too, but yeah, that's huge. And so, for everybody listening, the links for Forged Waterjet, the Facebook and website considerations, whatever streaming platform you're using to play this conversation, if you click See More, or if you click Show More and you see the description for this conversation, those links will be in there also, so you'll be able to go tying directly to Forged Social Outlets.

Megan Long: 36:35

I love that, because we're usually the people that are that when someone's like, they have some idea they've had for an invention, or they are like I wonder if I could do this or what if I could fix this with that. We're usually the people that they call it and we can. We can find a way to make it, to get it done.

Porter: 36:51

And that's huge too Resource, when this goes a long way.

Megan Long: 36:54

Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes we do things and I'm like holy cow. It worked Great. It takes. One time we made a 10 foot fans that looked like windmills for a event center. 10 feet in diameter yeah, they're ginormous.

Porter: 37:12

When they took them and hooked them up.

Megan Long: 37:13

So we did the cutting and the putting them together and then an engineer actually took them and put the motor and stuff in them and they were when they first turned them on.

Porter: 37:23

They sucked the chairs up. They were so powerful and so big, so the engineer had to readjust them.

Megan Long: 37:29

But yeah, they wanted them to look like windmills.

Porter: 37:32

They called Big S Fans which is literally the name of the company. Yeah, yeah.

Megan Long: 37:36

And they don't work for individual one or two fans or something, and they already have a certain set and they wanted this style and we worked with it and pulled them off. So again, we want to help people make their dream come true, kind of like Arsid.

Porter: 37:52

I got to be honest with you, megan. I really thought out of this conversation. We were just going to focus on Forge, waterjet and hard skills and manufacturing and machining, and what you've created, or what you are creating, is way more than that. As a service, you're providing for people and then ultimately, obviously, the reliability and what you're putting into the quality of your product as well. But the service you're providing in terms of community, for other businesses or just direct to consumer in some cases the products, the service, the relationships, somebody to lean on, is huge and, like you said, mutually complimenting each other's strengths and skill sets and then sharing it with other people.

Megan Long: 38:30

We hope so. I think you get that with you. Focus on serving people, not making money. If you serve people and do right by them the money will work itself out.

Porter: 38:40

Yeah well, fear and anxiety are great motivators too, so somewhere.

Megan Long: 38:44

I guess we had no point in being like. This has to work.

Porter: 38:49

Yeah, that in itself is, I'm sure, its own conversation, just how you dealt with all of that and life stressors in the process. Yeah, hats off to you, man. Congratulations on what you're building. I think it's awesome. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, now I guess saying that to close this out, though I really do. I appreciate your time and coming in to talk, sharing your perspective and talking about value systems and software skills. Even as it applies to trades, I think it's unbelievably important to learn not only what we bring to the table and become aware of our strengths but, like you alluded to earlier, also how to communicate them and share them with other people to have some sort of a mutual benefit. So I appreciate the opportunity, I appreciate the insight and I appreciate you being a little bit more vulnerable talking about Forge and some of your values too. So thank you for that.

Megan Long: 39:34

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Porter: 39:36

Yeah, 100%. This was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it and everybody listening I hope you did too. Saying that, though, thank you for listening. Thank you to everybody clients, customers and experiences that helped Forge become what it is today, because obviously you can't have one without the other and for everybody listening and you guys tuning in and aligning a little bit more directly with our core values for August of perseverance, reliability and vitality, and also supporting this mini series for the year incorporating value. I have also got to thank our show partners though Keystone Farmers, market, hope and Clucker Farms and obviously Buzzsprout, for your distribution as well. Folks, if you're interested in joining our conversations or looking into our merchandise or any other member only perks or whatever you can join on our website transactingvaluepodcastcom. Follow along on all our social media. We'll continue to stream new interviews every Monday at 9am Eastern Standard Time on all your favorite podcasting platforms, and until next time, that was transacting value.