The Duo returns for the 9th episode. They sit down with PBMA founder James Stanfill and chat about the group’s beginnings, what it means to be a pro bike mechanic and how we all rise together in the bike industry, They also discuss the recent Falcon Heavy Launch and answer a popular #carbonqueries question regarding inspection techniques.
Dan: 00:00 Hello and welcome to the ninth episode of the fiber side chats by Ruckus composites, where your hosts Shawn Small and I’m Dan stinely and we’re here with sma. We’re coming at you from the Dulles pbm a convention. We’re interviewing James about what the PBM is, where they’re going, and how we all rise together in the bike industry.
Dan: 00:35 So we’re talking about space x and we’re talking about this weekend carbon, right, vic? Yeah, this weekend. Carbon. Pretty amazing. Huge, unbelievable. It’s a real heavy topic. So we were in DC so you as you’ll find out later in this episode and seeing things as large as they are that have been the space multiple times is incredible. One of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen. Seeing shuttle Discovery, we went over to the Smithsonian air and space museum in what’s in Ashburn, Virginia technically, and got to see space shuttle Discovery is unbelievable and the fact that now you know they’re making these rockets out of carbon fiber is a lot of money sending them to space and landing them with almost simultaneously. Yeah. They actually had to choose to offset their landing, which I think was kind of interesting. Why did they, what did they choose to offset? They didn’t want to overload a lot of the ground base tracking systems and radar. I guess that I think it was something to do with actual the rocket’s landing. Don’t remember. It was kind of just a bandwidth capacity, information, capacities. The situation I forget. I don’t know. It was kind of glossed over and that’s all the explanation that they really put out. Beautiful. Watching Landon near nearly simultaneous. Yeah. The video that shows the double sonic boom is amazing.
Dan: 02:07 I wish I could’ve seen that in person. Two more this year. Two more Falcon Falcon heavy. That’s right, because it’s spoken nines. Its three Falcon nines together. The next Falcon nine launch is actually on my birthday on Saturday. Happy Birthday. Seriously. All right. What else did you ask for? Because I know you asked for a launch. Had hit her head launch and launch. Maybe. Maybe we’re trying. If anybody knows anybody at Tesla, send us the contact or space or space x company or. Yeah, any one of the three is our goal this year. We’re talking to Ilan A. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. As we said, you know, the cool thing about space x especially is their usage of carbon fiber. It’s used in almost every aspect of those rockets. What are their, what’s the factory you went on the factory tour last year. How are they doing the layup in, in the factory?
Dan: 03:04 Is it different for everything that they’re making are. And the other question, are there any automated labs that they’re doing? That is a great question. I’m visiting the factory was last year was pretty amazing. I wasn’t not allowed to photograph anything. Um, I don’t know how much I’m allowed to talk about, but most of there I don’t remember signing anything either. Nice. Nothing I came home with. But um, yeah, I mean they’re laying up carbon in a pretty standard manner. I mean that was Kinda the biggest takeaway for me is somebody that lays carbon every day or you know, has a staff that does, is how similar our methodologies were. And basically it comes down to you can lay carbon thousands of different ways, right? You can get great casting results on bikes up to rockets and pretty similar methods, you know, whether it’s vacuum bagging, you know, when she’s having a huge resurgence right now.
Shawn: 03:56 But we’re really, what it comes down to is your quality methodology. And that’s where spacex is totally different. They do ultrasound on everything or a type of ultrasound obviously. And so do we, I mean, you can as your favorite model is what you can build either a wedding cake or a twinkie. And some days when you lay up carbon, you look at it, you can’t tell whether you have a wedding cake or twinkie until you ultrasound it, you know, in their application if they have any sort of void or issue when the rocket is going to break. Pretty simple. Uh, we have any sorta like significant void or don’t have an Asian or casting aberration. Well, our customer are cyclists could get hurt. So, you know, where we stand apart is we check our work, you know, and there’s nobody else doing that up. You know, in North America at all, how are they scanning these rockets?
Dan: 04:50 Think some of the parts are huge. They are huge. I mean they’re as big as our building. So are there. Are there little computer-assisted arms transducer and just the part move? Does the arm move? There’s a lot of automated scanning technology in general for big stuff. Uh, they use a little bigger transducer than ours, you know, that using a little quarter inch guy but they’re not using a much bigger would be a fast computer if that’s what they were doing. It’s the Tracy Chapman, but basically they are using some robotic technology to scan it and the kind of a nice thing where they have the benefit is they have all the 3d models of their part. So it’s pretty easy to compare and contrast the actual production data versus the intended data. And that’s an area where I really want to grow our business is I want to get the cad models and some of these bikes, whether that’s through further partnership with r o, m and they give us the cad models and we verify their bikes or we do our favorite method of brute force.
Shawn: 05:49 And by brute force I mean with that is, you know, we’ve played with those 3d scanning arms room or the Faro arm came over and Joel’s really confused by it because it looks like a big robotic snakehead yeah, it’s, it definitely looks like a robotics uses a, it puts a laser in a blue light on it and all sorts of wacky stuff. And which I believe that’s what we use to make the internal seat posts plug it is we borrow access to that machine for any 3d scanning that we need. So what I want to do is I give her unfamiliar. Sorry to cut you off. If you’re unfamiliar with the 3D scanner, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It looks, it looks like a robotic Cobra that the operator uses and it literally puts out a laser that looks like a cross and you scan it over to the park and it comes out as a cad file, generates a full computer model for yourself and uh, what we’re doing is pairing that information with ultrasound to create the ability to create a full mapped bike at that point, kind of in a similar method that they are.
Shawn: 06:46 It’s yet again, you can design and build anything, but unless you prove it or verify it’s quality, it’s a mystery. And that’s where he at. Again, we’re pushing that envelope space, grade technology, space x technology here. Well, what, let’s cut that.
Shawn: 07:01 I’m overstepping my bounds. I mean we really did. It was. I mean really what we’re doing is it was really refreshing to see some of the methodologies we’re developing here being used in a much bigger application. It felt very similar. I mean, I’m not trying to help maybe a little bit and give yourselves a little pat on the back, but it’s amazing. Nobody else is bringing that level of, I guess quality and expertise to carbon fiber engineering in the bike industry right now are really out of this world feeling. Huh? All carbon. So I mean that’s the reason. One of the reasons why they’re recovering their parts. All the other private rocket coming out private, all the other previous rocket companies use what’s known as Expendable Launch Vehicles, Aka the drop them into the ocean and going to be seen again. You know, I actually, Jeff Bezos was recovered like three or four of them, Apollo era as well, which is pretty cool.
Shawn: 07:50 But for the most part they gone. He has, there’s some, there’s some rogue sector around their pirates go and get all the crash shuttles to learn other people’s technologies. Uh, no because they’re down at the bottom of the ocean and they’re 40 years old. I’m not worth it. Not Worth it. Yeah. Nobody’s really basles pulled stuff out though. Yeah. It didn’t. Just, they pulled out three of them and can, making a private collection or something. Oh yeah. I mean you pulled out the Apollo era stuff and. Yeah, I mean that’s stuff is priceless to humanity, my, my opinion. Um, so the big thing why they space likes went to the recovery route is boy, you know, things are expensive when you throw them away just like bikes, you know, why not, they do repair on them, you know, and you can, they do take some abuse.
Shawn: 08:33 Obviously they’re going to what, 24 miles an hour, 24,005, sorry, 24 miles an hour, a coasting a up to 24,000 miles an hour. I take all sorts of abuse and they have to get retrofitted or reworked a little bit and it saves a lot of costs just like we do wonder how many repair technicians they have. I have no idea. It would be cool. Yeah, it wouldn’t be cool to know that. Also, I would like to know, I have a lot of questions. You do want to know how they’re removing the damage because obviously they’re doing that as well. They’re not going to do any repair. There’s no repair different than our methodology really. I mean it’s pretty standard. I guess that’s what I’d like to see is the application of a similar technology just on a huge scale like that. The only time we ever see it, it’s like, oh, this, this tube is wrapped up.
Dan: 09:21 Or we had to put this half of the bag and a vacuum or something. It would be. See, it would be awesome to see those technologies on a grand scale on these mobile repair suitcases. They look like they basically a vacuum pump and a thermal blanket. They’re pretty cool. A Boeing has the same thing. You’re not gonna like load a wing into a, you know, just to stay where it is. Exactly. Yeah. They have all these little mobile repair kits. Uh, I mean with the space x, they’re pulling it back into a hangar and they have access to it, but yet again, they’re not going to load the whole rocket shell into a big vacuum chamber again, on production once when you make the thing ones. But how are you limited by size on the vacuum bag? A really all you’re limited by technically is you’re pumping capacity, you know, bigger.
Shawn: 10:07 The part takes a long time to draw that air out and the biggest thing, you know, like with the we do, you have to seal the bag and it’s easy for us because our bags are hilariously tiny for the most part, so it’s really easy to seal them or our pump is about 100 times bigger than we need there. They’re probably running pretty big turbo vacuum pumps because you know, they probably have God I would guess almost maybe a quarter mile to a mile of vacuum line. I mean as far as like sealed perimeter. So if you have any sort of leak but you just wrecked the whole part, which is crazy. But there, I mean there’s devices to help that with. Obviously there’s what’s known as ultrasonic leak detectors is basically looks like a. Oh, what is the device that guy old guys use on the beach for five?
Shawn: 10:49 Oh, metal detector. Yeah. Yeah. They just walked around with a looks like guys walking on the metal detectors and headphones found a leak in a wedding ring and some doubloons would love if that. The people who did that had to wear bucket hats and Aloha shirts, so how soon before you get a metal detector, you already saved cans. Why not? Why not take the next step? Was money to be found in the bet. You’d find somebody watches and rings and nails square nails. They take it back. Especially in the Oregon coast. There’s a lot of people who. There’s a lot. Yeah, the Peter Iredale. I’m not for that board yet. It’s a very exciting hobbies. The love of the hunt, but congratulations to space x. What a huge feat for humanity really. That’s never been done on that scale and were ushering in the future. It also, it also answers the question of is carbon fiber repair safe? And that answer is when performed correctly. Yes. Most certainly, yeah. Definitely been to space and back. As your favorite band says, I can take you to the moon and back.
Shawn: 12:14 We did have a CarbonQuery this week. Really a real one. A real one submitted from my mom, from my me thinking it’s my mom really from where we did it, came through podio. Carbon queries. They’re sneaky. Sneaky, uh, the carbon queries about fluorescent penetrating die, how to properly use it and when does it and when is it not effective a boy. We’ve been talking a lot about that one and all these conferences. It’s cheap to get into, which is awesome, right? What we say 30 bucks. Yeah, it’s about $34 for what? A whole gallon of the stuff that we still have like three quarters of the bottle, three quarters of ellen because he diluted to. That’s a parent die or liquid penetrant, Die Flores and punish them. Diet comes, goes by a different name all the time. Uh, basically what you do is it’s all really thinned out.
Shawn: 13:12 Die. I’m the one we use is water base because it’s easy to clean up and you basically, it’s limited. Like all inspection techniques are very application based, but let’s say you have something, you have an area of damage on a bike. You tap it out a little mystery some days. So sometimes you pull out your punch and Dye. We keep bars in a spray bottle, you spray it on a, you definitely covered this full surface of it. And let it kind of sit there, if it can, idea is that it kind of soaks into that crack a little bit and then once it’s soaked in, you very gently wipe the surface to get the excess residue or excess moisture off. And then you use your little uv flashlight, um, and shine it an idea is that where there are cracks, they fluoresce a florist meeting, they’d glow beautifully.
Shawn: 14:03 So yet again, it’s an amazing technique. It’s limited, you know, bikes have a lot of paint on them and sometimes the Diet will actually go under the paint or if it’s De lambed, uh, and it can kind of disappear on you. But in certain areas it’s really cool to see if you have damage. It’s more near the surface, um, or very thin crack lines that you’re unsure. They don’t tap out. You can spray it on and sometimes it’ll show you how far it goes. Uh, basically if a goes in anywhere, it’s likely assign. We use that as a precursor stop. You know, if we don’t want to do ultrasound for whatever reason, it’s quick to like check in area. Basically at the dye goes in anywhere, you’d probably have an issue, you know, if you see any sort of cracking and then what we’ll do is after that it’s usually follow up with an ultrasound right away to verify it to like very clearly define where things go.
Dan: 14:52 Yeah. That’s the point to be clarified. Is that the only real method to know if something is broken other than it’s obviously broken as ultrasound and sometimes even the dye is pretty tricky to know. So that’s why we always default back to it. Yet again, it’s fun to play with. It’s used a lot. If you know the water based one, it’s used in pools or like plumbing systems. You can follow the dye and see where it leaks out. It’s a lot easier to see them in water or something is leaking, you know, if the dye comes out, you’re like, I mean, oh ask, uh, you said I get five of those preps. You can see where it come out. Uh, or they make it for auto or sorry, not autobody, like car insurance. If you have a leak in a, who knows my oil leaking oil leak most commonly, yeah, every card, everybody’s on the leaky car at some point I’m just a matter of how much is coming out in where, so you can trace it.
Shawn: 15:46 It’s pretty cool. Pretty simple. Yet again, don’t put anything in your engine. This is without knowing what it is. Do Your own research, do your own research, but if you don’t do it at all, uh, but penetrant die for bike inspection, a great visual way. Also to show your customers as well. A lot of times we feel that a lot of questions of how do I convince my customer that this bike is actually broken? Um, this is a really good visual way to do that. So if you have any questions, please feel free to follow up with us anyway. You know how to get ahold of us by this point. A. But yeah, happy to point you in the right direction. Getting started with fluorescent penetrant die
Dan: 16:31 So we spent last week on the east coast for yet another version of the [inaudible], BMA, professional bike mechanics workshop out in, in Dulles went really well, wouldn’t you say? Yeah. We spend three days presenting a lot of old faces from the other presenters and all new faces for us in the audience. We fielded a lot of really good questions. Stylistically, the presentation was a little different. I’d say I’m, the audience really took the opportunity to ask questions in the midst of the presentation, you know, everything was more like of the moment like, Whoa, Hey, what about this? Or what about this? Or give me an example of uh, the other ones kind of questions were saved for the end. Not One is better than the other, but it was just a little bit, uh, a little bit different for us. It was, it was fun to have that dialogue.
Dan: 17:20 And that’s one of the things we enjoy a lot about it actually is, you know, interfacing on a face to face level. You’d have that conversation where you can have that direct feedback and they’re like, you know, if we say something and you see a lot of people kind of look off in the distance or like their furrowing the brow a little bit, you’re like, in a great example of this is you see people start to take a. well, I love as a presenter. I love when people take notes. You’re like, yes. Connected. What I say matters when people ask all the questions were great, um, by people asking very great follow-up questions about our material. We could see they were comprehending really well we were talking about and then being like, well, I saw this this one time. Can you help me understand the situation?
Shawn: 18:08 I really, really appreciate the group. It seemed everybody benefited from the background and kind of production history that we gave of carbon as well. Not a lot of people know how it’s made. Not a lot of people know why it’s so expensive, so energy and labor intensive. So it was nice to hear feedback on that as well. Sadly, we can’t tell you too much more. Uh, that’s uh, one of the benefits of being a member there who pbm May. So definitely if you are a shop owner or a service service tech investigate the PBM A, it’s a really great organization. They bring together a lot of really intelligent people giving really great presentations. Many different products were kind of the only presentation that’s not hands on because obviously we can’t exactly show people how to repair now, but everybody else, you know, a scram brings a marvelous set up.
Shawn: 19:05 Magura brings an amazing setup seeing those drawings by judy or just beautiful man. It really is an artist. The man isn’t our demand, but yeah, a lot of everybody that comes and brings an awesome display, campy, seeing all the, the new road disk stuff also really awesome. Yeah. Really Great Organization. Uh, and we’ll, uh, we’ll get into it. We’ll have to play the role of the recording with James and you’ll hear him talk all about. It was great sitting down with him and hearing his kind of vision and passion for everything. And if you are listening after the fact you were at Emma, had follow-up questions, obviously a please feel free to reach out, happy to steer you in the right direction on any of them. But yeah, we’ll just start right off in the questions. The first one that we got for you is how’d you get your start in the bike industry?
James: 19:52 Trying to race my bike in 1991. It was 15 and raised in Arizona or New Mexico and Southern California for a number of years. Also working in a bike shop part time as a mechanic and then full time as a mechanic and then managing the service department and managing the whole shop and then getting completely pissed off at bikes in the bike industry and left so same story.
Shawn: 20:17 It’s called Ruckus.
James: 20:20 I worked for a big company that provided me training and opportunity and managed 100 employees in 10 stores, making a million dollars. Wow. For location for about five years and learned a lot but not super passionate about that. Came back and continued on in their life is
Dan: 20:40 what kind of racing where you’re trying to do
James: 20:42 a road race, mountain bikes a one time a part of the season. Not My passion or like to ride my mountain bike, but not race. It was all right.
Dan: 20:56 What was the experience of managing that many people?
James: 21:00 Stressful. It’s a lot of responsibility for hiring, firing people, being comfortable to tell people, no, you’re not doing your job. Right? Uh, but they taught you the skills to do that, which, you know, liking history would never. Most places in the bike industry don’t provide that kind of stuff. Like we had essentially courses that coming in, courses built for managing people, hr in loss prevention, budget marketing. Then you would go for two or three days with other people like yourself, other managers or store managers or assistant managers and go through this training and that was their internal development program.
Dan: 21:40 Where were you working prior to? Starting Pba.
James: 21:45 I’ve worked for cannondale, specialized on. Worked with a contractor who did a number of events as a race mechanic with maddock was director of operations at USA. Cycling went from USA cycling, so specialized lived in Morgan hill or we’d never lived there, but living in Santa Cruz, we commuted, ran an [inaudible] by chop there within the company and manage a lot of the texts and team support that we were doing and my better half had the opportunity to advance her career and I wasn’t, you know, I was never going to be specialized forever. That’s not in my DNA. Love the bikes, loved some of the people, but it wasn’t a place to plant roots and do a lifelong thing. So we moved to Austin for live now and I worked on contract for about a year and someone, someone said something or did something or passing opportunity for me or someone I knew and thought, you know what? We need to talk more about. What we know is mechanics. You know, nobody knows that I manage a hundred people unless I tell them and brand stores that were making millions of dollars. Unless I tell him where I have those skills and you can’t discount that. I may not have them just because I’m a mechanic or because you’re a mechanic or she’s a mechanic or their mechanics.
Dan: 22:59 What kind of prompted you to that? You wanted to start pbm for listeners that may not be familiar with PBA stands for professional bike mechanics association. You talk more about that. When did that idea hits you, you know, you’ve talked to you have a wealth of experience in management and upper level functions and you just wake up in the dream one night and be like, oh, we need to have an organization that teaches people a wasn’t more methodical than that. Was it really, you know, just kind of a moment of inspiration.
James: 23:30 I’ve always thrived to be the best I can be. Many others like me do the same and you see within a lot of organizations in the bike industry that people that are very high op were a mechanic, but we as an industry don’t recognize that. We don’t think back and say, oh, the dude that owns Pedro’s started as just a general bike mechanic. And along the way he also ran indy [inaudible] and other places. You know, and people don’t think back about that where they started and what their roots were like. Mechanics are passionate people in March 20, 16, collectively a few of us had this idea and we floated it out on facebook and then that exploded into what’s now like 10,000 people in this facebook group for better or worse, it’s 10,000 people. Thinking about the idea of what a professional bicycle mechanic can be.
James: 24:17 Some people think it’s a paycheck. Some people think it’s an attitude. Know we can go all day long and look up the definitions and argue, you know, webster’s versus the Oxford Standard or something. But at the end of the day it’s a collective of all those things. And by September of Twenty 16 where at interbike and we opened a membership model legally formed an association and you know, the end of 2017 we went from about $30,000 in revenue income. 15,000 in expenses, 200 and eighty thousand in like a hundred and 60,000 in expenses. Workshops aren’t cheap. None of us get paid to do this. We all have other jobs. You know, I hustle all day long working on stuff for sma and then I go and try to find some work on a weekend at a race or do something that can generate some income for James, but it’s showing success and it’s growing and that’s, that’s good for everybody. I think.
Dan: 25:14 What’s been the industry, you said you went to interbike, uh, to kind of launch the first time. What’s been the industry response to all this? How are they taking to the organization?
James: 25:24 In the beginning? I think a lot of people were skeptical. You know, we’re still still around 18, 19 months later, two or three or four or five years later in the future. We’re still going to be around the conversations, get easier as people start to understand what we’re trying to do and focus on, uh, in the beginning was a lot of explaining or understand what that, what are you even talking about? You’re making a union. We’re not making any. We could make a union and destroy everything. Close all shops. No, we’re not working anymore. We can all go broke doing that would be good for nobody. But yeah, just just people are recognizing the value that we’re bringing to this technical side of the bike trade. Any negative reactions, you know what I mean? In the beginning of the facebook group was all people thought we were and they said, ah, Pba, that’s his facebook group and there’s a bunch of dumb ass people in there and we’ve worked hard to try to moderate that without being a censorship. People like that word censorship. It’s not easy tasks. There’s a lot of people in there, a lot of different personalities, a lot of different places in time. I don’t stay up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, reading facebook posts and now we’re established enough and, and disconnected enough from that that that perception is getting better still there. I still hear references to it, but if someone actually goes back and looks at it from when they made their opinion is a different environment.
Shawn: 26:45 Yeah. It seems like it’s really well, you know, I follow along pretty close. It’s pretty well self moderated at. You’ve done a good job of steering it and that everybody else has now inactive kind of your vision on, you know, opening up the dialogue. It was, you know, if someone complains about customer, which that happens a bunch, you know, someone comes back being like, Hey, have you thought about dealing with it this way? And they’re like, hey, that’s actually a really good takeaway and you see that and you’re like, oh that is really good advice that this person had this person now has and then they get to take back home and see how that develops.
James: 27:15 We built a forum, we have an actual forum. It works with an APP and everything totally legit, but it’s not as convenient as facebook. So we see it doesn’t get as much use. It’s grown quite a bit. I mean there’s almost a thousand users in there now, which is good, but we can control that a lot more here. If people want a genuine tool, that’s where it’s at. A super good model. There would be for a company that provides tech support to have their own space in the forum and we’ve we’ve throttled who can access that space by betting the membership and members only can access that space and they could ask a tech question anytime of the day and maybe when the tech rep came in in the morning, drank their coffee, instead of reading a bunch of emails and returned a bunch of calls, they can read through the forum, answering the questions, and then everyone’s all catalog for everybody else who might have the same question basically doesn’t provide that.
James: 28:04 I think it could clean up a lot of that person’s day instead of wasting time on phone calls and emails two or three times a day check in. They’re going to do your check work, but you’ve got to warranty your service something. It’s an idea and a thought hasn’t gotten a lot of traction, but I think it’s got merit. How many members are currently enrolled in pbl? There’s. There’s about a thousand members and that’s a collective of individuals and shops and corporations or companies collectible. Do you have a number of. How many shops there are? Uh, it’s between 1:50 and 200 of those are, you know, owner operator, smaller businesses, um, mobile businesses that are being represented or recognized elsewhere or most important care is the mechanic and the mechanic has a place to work, opportunity to work. Um, if there’s not a place for them to do it, how can we help enable them with the knowledge they might need to do it on their own.
Dan: 28:57 Would you say that the mechanic is the best ally in all of this?
James: 29:03 Yeah, I mean, absolutely on Day one I stand up there and say that this thing was built for mechanics. Does it have other applications? So [inaudible] absolutely. The core focus today now is on the mechanic. We’re not here for three days and three different cities, you know, staring down a hundred people each time to not be focused on them and, and help them with success, provide them the tools they need.
Dan: 29:29 Would you say is the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome so far and starting the PBM?
James: 29:36 The biggest challenge is building something from nothing. I mean, there’s nothing like this existed. We didn’t just plug into something, I filled out all the non-profit paperwork myself based on form. You go through and provide the data and on the front page it says we’ll contact you within six months or nine months and if you get something in either case it could be a letter that says we also need all this other stuff and when it came back I saw the envelope and I was like, here we go, restart this whole process. And came back fine. Somehow I did it all right. It’s like 200 pages, not awesome, but it worked out and it came out OK and you know, paying for that, you know, we didn’t have any money in the beginning. I paid for all that, you know, some of the other board members paid for a lot of that stuff to happen.
James: 30:21 Finding the support early on from, from some companies is difficult. Why? Why are you doing that? Why would we help you? And now you know, like I said, now we’re in a successful, I would call a successful place. It’d be good to have more money left over so we could do other things, but at the end of the day, that’s not the goal or not a for profit organization and we don’t want to build a structure where there’s highly paid people managing people who make almost next to nothing. In some cases it should be a model of success that, that anybody can carry on and hopefully in time, you know, we pass that torch to other people to help run it, but we can’t just like, all right, we’re out. You know, we’ve got to keep driving it until it’s can sustain on its own.
Dan: 31:01 Since we’re. Since the group is in the successful place, what then do you see as the biggest challenge going forward from here? How to grow, where to grow, why to grow? Yeah. What is, what do you think is going to be the biggest challenge to overcome from the successful place
James: 31:19 that’s not the American bicycle mechanics association or us or the Texas or anything like that. We didn’t purposely didn’t regionalize the name because it has implications worldwide. We have members in Canada, UK, there’s folks at this workshop from Brazil, I mean, it’s crazy when you think about it. So then the next biggest hurdles are going to be how do we provide deliverables in those regions? Do we need to work with people close? They’re like our education partners in Canada to build out and deliverables. That makes sense for people in Canada was difficult. We can just ship them stuff from us in an easy fashion, but if we have a set up there and a distribution point and someone looking after those individuals, then we have growth in a bigger market. UK is the same and go from there and there’s members all over the place, but those are the two outside of the US that are the most populated with interested people right now. So continued to grow with as important. Do we do more workshops? Do we alter the workshops? Do the workshops, include other stuff? And that’s all we’re looking at right now.
Dan: 32:21 Do you have plans to take these summits internationally anytime soon?
James: 32:26 I don’t know. There’s a lot of logistics around that. Um, a lot of the partners here that are presenting and teaching have partners in other countries that they can tap into for the resources. Some don’t. So how do handle getting the materials they need and how does it work? Does it make sense? Do we go for a week or two weeks and do three in a row? Like what does it look like? I’m. So this is all stuff we’re thinking about what it’s takes time to build that. Next question for you.
Dan: 32:53 What do you think the future of the IBD looks like?
James: 32:59 I think there’s a lot of challenges. For a long time people were not embracing the internet and now everybody talks about embracing the Internet and you can’t ignore it. Everyone carries the internet around in their pocket and the better you can do to integrate your business to that in some way, whether it’s selling stuff, fixing stuff, helping people find their stuff, delivering stuff, whatever that may be. That’s what we have to find the traditional. I’ve got, you know, 60 percent of my spaces, retail bikes, I think that’s gone in a lot of places. Some places are very successful with that stone and they’ve done a good job to create that success, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with direct to consumer, you know, we should care about is how do we service that, how do we take care of that consumer now that they’ve got the product.
James: 33:49 I think it was discovered in the, in the mobile world, you know, we’ve got franchises and there’s a bunch of these independent mobile guys here that the customer base from one to the other, gender overlap very much. I don’t have the hard number, but it was somewhere in that 10 to 20 percent of overlap. That means that some of these shops that are joining to a more mobile thing, you’ve got a shop based in a mobile, have grown their customer base and not it and the mobile is not out there competing with their customer base. They’re finding different people. So the smart shops, I think we’ll look at ways to connect with people outside of their shop and I think that’s an important step and you see it. I mean, I’ve worked in events and other stuff for a long time and you see a different engagement level when you’re out there and someone else’s environment or whether it’s dark or putting your clean or dirty. There’s still stepping into your world, go out into there’s see what they actually need. What are they doing? How are they riding? Their bike
Dan: 34:43 service is going to change in the next five to 10 years. Do you think it’s going to change?
James: 34:50 Yeah, I do. I think that you used to hear and see ads for bicycle mechanics and you’d see a posting and brain or wherever bicycle mechanical on it the service manager wanted. Now almost every one of those says, I’m looking for professional bicycle mechanic. Just the one word changed. The whole perception, you know, the purpose of these workshops is to give them the information that they need. Help them have the tools and resources to be more successful and help more people. And future evolution of these war include other stuff for, for personal growth, not just tech grow. And that’s going to be important because if a, if a shop has got 10 employees today, they might only be able to support four or five in the future and if I was going to bet they need people that can work on bikes and not just sell them or do both, so let’s make sure that the mechanics are equipped with the skills or people interested in the tech side that don’t have the skill now didn’t get it so that they’re prepared for the future. Even if it’s a minor adjustment kind of thing. Do it right. Do it safely into the day that safety is the number one concern. Brands and companies want their product represented. Well.
Dan: 35:58 Talk about that one word. What does it mean to be a professional bike mechanic in your. In your eyes?
James: 36:05 I mean, I think to take the bike mechanic professional is putting your best foot forward. Being the expert, presenting yourself in the right manner, understanding, listening, not just collecting a paycheck. It’s an attitude in a way of life, almost showing up to work and flip flops in torn jeans because your service mechanic and you’re working in the back. It’s not professional. I don’t care if you live in a beach town and it’s all beach cruisers. It’s still not professional. You always wanna present or look nice and people see that and they say, oh, that looks nice. You know, you don’t go to a car dealer in the dude’s walking around in shorts. There weren’t suits. Sometimes people don’t like that, but you can’t argue that it doesn’t look like a proper presentation of of what they’re trying to do.
Dan: 36:51 How would people. How receptive to you and the organization trying to change that attitude? Is it difficult to change that mentality?
James: 37:02 Yeah. We have written a couple of things that are published on what professional is with definitions and all the stuff and most people’s and the definition is there a professional, someone who takes money in exchange for service that makes you a professional, so if I take your computer and type some words for you and you paid me for that, I’m a professional word processor. You know, whatever, whatever you want to put the term as, but it’s way more than that. It has to be more than that. That’s good enough for you. It’s not good enough for everybody else and it shouldn’t be raise your own personal bar to a new level and that will make you a professional.
Dan: 37:42 Under that idea of professionalism, what is, what is the next five years look like for the PBM? A, are you really going to try and hammer that idea of professionalism to the industry?
James: 37:53 I think in a workshop like this, we’ll have a session that’s talking about being a professional attitude and the persona and the idea and the vibe that it should create and you know, we can take that to other events. Interbike or Cabo, we can take these things out to these events and do a presentation with that same thing and bring the passion, you know, Brett Fleming’s here, your fellow Portlandia, um, and you can’t argue with the guy who is passionate and driven and he wants that for everybody else too. So we got, you know, there’s multiple people giving the same message and that’ll continue to grow and that’ll help grow that term in idea, you know, beyond our industry.
Dan: 38:35 In a perfect world. How and where is the pbm a again and grow that industry in the next five years in your perfect model, you know, the idea of perfection for pbs Gma, what does the next five years look like?
James: 38:51 Growth on events like this where we’re connecting with people, you know, not to target growth in membership numbers. There’s a target, you know, the more people that are members, louder the collective voice becomes if you have a shared idea, that’s one, two, or three things that align with us out of here.
Dan: 40:04 We all rise together in a sense.
James: 40:06 Exactly. Instead of, you know, you’ve got the, the shop that has no qualified people working there and kids at a school and you need that and your professional shop. And the consumer just goes over there because it’s cheaper, but they may have paid more if they felt safer and understood what was going on here.
Shawn: 40:26 We’re seeing that as a direct relationship with being here and starting to I guess on sheet some of our mysteries and you know, and not become a silo of information would start talking about how do these guys or gals look at something successfully or what questions should they be asking or taking back to their tech reps as well. And just using us almost as like almost joked. We’re like their wikipedia, you know, carbon resource. Like let me take a pad of carbon, going to go in and edit some stuff in a few minutes and send us a text. You know, that people came up like the all they leave the first day, they come back the next and they bring in five photos to like, oh crap. All the crap sitting in the back of their shot. Oh my God, this would’ve been to do with this. What is the end of life like this look like? And
Dan: 41:15 when people leave from pma, what’s the one thing you want them to take away when they walk out of a workshop at the end or something? After these three, three days are done and everything’s all, you know, all finished, wrapped up people around the airport or going to the airport on my own. What’s the one thing you want him to take away with them? I want them to feel like they’re part of something, whether they’re member or not. That
James: 41:33 came here and like I said in the beginning, you got 100 new friends. Here’s all, here’s 100 new friends and then here’s 20 people that are big people in the industry teaching you. You know how to get ahold of them now to you’re not out there on your own. Don’t care if you live in the middle of nowhere and we’re going to shop in a town of 300 people. There’s other people out there. And we saw that on facebook too and I didn’t know that was even so many mechanics or this and that. Never had a chance to talk to another mechanic. It’s a bigger world than there are part of it and they should, they should walk away feeling like they’re part of something
Dan: 42:03 as we like to say that about. Tapes it up for this episode. Thank you so much, James, for starting the Wma for having us to present a. it’s incredibly valuable to have face time with people. You know, we talked a lot about the facebook group and how those conversations are good. What we have learned is that face to face time, you know, discussing all these topics that we’ve talked about is incredibly invaluable. So thank you very much for having us. Thank you very much for starting this organization and we wish you the best and we hope to keep presenting.
James: 42:35 Thanks for the time and hanging out. Talking about glue and oxy
Shawn: 42:42 every single session. Uh, they started out great, but they’ve gotten better and better and better. So Kudos to you. You know, in the, in the two years that you’ve started this, it’s really, really grown and changed a lot. Everything for the better. So again, thanks for having us. We always say about living in the present. Thanks again for listening everybody. We’ll see you next week.
Speaker 2: 43:05 I.