We Are NOT Building Enough! (15 hour days?!) S15E07 

I love having Bri on. She is smart and succinct in her explanations. She seems like the best type of manager. Supportive and informed. Bri kicks ass. Can't wait to see her Sunday goatee!

I swear, Bri is the soundest plant manager. Seems a no BS kinda person, with workers at front of her mind and an ability to call it straight down the line. Seems a super star.

Hearing Doug say "I think its the wait times" less than 2 minutes into this episode made me say "YOU THINK" Out loud

Bri is the best. Sometimes I feel like her perception is being overvalued because she gets so little screentime, but that what little we see of her seems incredible competent. But then every time she shows back up, its always to be spitting facts in that calm, no bs manner.

Goddamn I love Bri and her insights into employee retention.

cardigan has sleeves and has buttons. sweaters have sleeves but no buttons. vests have no sleeves so a sweater vest does not have buttons or sleeves. they are all made to be worn over an underlayer

Doug always sounds like he is repeating what he heard on his grindset business bro podcast the day before.

100,000% the reason i have not purchased a table is i dont want to spend that kind of money to wait 1yr+ for that thing (that is not cheap). if i could purchase it and have it in a months time maybe 2 months including shipping then id purchase one now. $ is not the issue for this kind of table, just time to receive the product is the issue.

Morning Wyrmlings! My wife and I both work 3, 13 hour shifts a week, and have 4 days off, truly a blessing of work/life balance

Doing kickstarter feels like the reason for the wait. You get a Majority of orders all at once and get slammed. If the orders were allowed to trickle in through the website, it wouldn't be such a stress on the production line.

I used to work two jobs that worked out to be 16 hour shifts a few days a week. I absolutely did get injured when fatigue started affecting my judgement

How does Doug go one video from looking like a college professor to the next looking like a homeless guy? It’s kind of impressive

Votes for Bri interview episode!!! Think an earlier episode mentioned it got cut, bring it back! We want to know more about Bri's awesomeness and her background 🤙

At my place of work we have a weekend crew. They work three 12hr shifts on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, or Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Saturday, Sunday, Monday. They are paid for 40 hours.

Bri is SMART. Keep her on your team as long as you can. I’m certain this is already how they do it, but a metal precision tool company I did work for intentionally ran what I’ll call “feed and watch” material overnight and over the weekends. Then, assembly materials were done on weekdays. Less people needed to watch a CNC or similar kind of machine do something. Then you have better efficiency for assembly on days when you have more workers and need those hands. But I’m sure it’s already set that way. I just thought it was a very important step when they told me about it. It was really smart. Essentially they got all the blanks created in the “off days” and then handled the more precision and human necessary work on other days.

Friday , Sat, Sun, 12 hour shifts. 36 hours paid for 40 with four days off is very attractive.

Why is Bri actually the coolest?! Love her, need her on more. AND JOHNNY! ❤

Time to buy out another furniture manufacturer, would love to see a Wyrmwood Europa!

OMG the Bri-Ian turn at 3:33 illustrates perfectly how used they are to working at Wyrmwood. "I'm going this way! Oh, no, I guess I'm going this way."

I love that Brianna is so dedicated to the color coding that she even did her hair! /sarcasm :)

Bri is such a wonderful asset to your company! I'm glad you have her.

Whatever Bri is being paid now is not near enough. That is one brilliant and talented individual.

Bri is an absolute star. Never let her leave the company. She also needs to be in more of the group meetings as her insight and communication cut through some of the BS. Fun BS, but not always needed.

Troy to Doug: "We're not hiring you." 😂

You guys should make a mgt bench. Thats essentially a miniature table thats more narrow with storage and the same style legs so it matches

Please outsource to Europe! Take a trip and find good manufacturing partner. Great Wyrmlyfe content.

Bri is great. I feel like she's a great manager to work for.

Hello team Wyrmwood, I would like to thank you guys for the daily content. In the summer of 2022 I got the diagnosis A.L.S. this made it so that during the summer of 2023 I had to stop working. Your videos, especially the ones around the meeting table remind me of my job and make it that it feels like I’m back at work. The serious discussions, the jokes and laughter in between. So therefore thank you!

as someone who was working 3-2-2 12hr night shifts my best guess is 10hrs would be most ppls safe limit

I'm sure you realize this, but damn you have such a superstar with Bri. I've worked a lot of different jobs in a lot of different settings, and that has honed my ability to see a fantastic manager. She's it. Competent, Clever, Thoughtful, a good communicator, Straightforward and Clear, no crazy Ego (cough cough, Doug). You need to make sure you're doing everything you can to keep her happy at Wyrmwood.

Be careful with mass laws, when i worked warehouse work there was a rule about not having 8 hours off between shifts made overtime mandatory until a threshold was made or something weird. Just double check.

Give the people what they want: Wyrmwood X Homestar Runner collab.

The massive long waitlist is built-in marketing right there. People see there is demand and the company can’t keep up, so they want the product. Kind of like FOMO. Be satisfied with a certain lead time that can create that FOMO marketing but can still capture a large % of potential customers. My guess is 3 to 4 months, or that would be me personally…which is what I did during MGT 2 Kickstarter. Love that sound byte of Metal Gear Solid with Troy. 😂

So yesterday the wait time was a "you problem" for the customer, but today, the wait times are an issue because they are effecting the bottom line, and driving consumers toward your competition?

I really like Doug's approach to this. The whole idea behind the MGT was basically a great gaming table, well crafted, at a price most people could afford. By increasing the price you alienate people who otherwise would buy if production could keep up. While that's ordinarily how business goes, demand is too high, jack up the price, it goes against what Wyrmwood is sort of about. If you can maintain the quality, the price, the innovation and increase production to better meet demand, you can still get closer to maximizing profit. Because price remains the same (other than adjusting cost of goods sold when materials become more expensive) and get more tables to the most customers you can. It is, I think, a better customer service experience than "hey we know all of you want this table, well we need less of you to want them because we can't make them fast enough, so here's a price increase to do that for us" and this is coming from someone who has backed MGT 2.0, I was 3 hrs late to the launch and won't be getting my table until March or April.

You guys always brighten my day and get a good chuckle I wish all workspaces are like yours

This video deserves all of the likes just for the "Chariots of Fire" bit. hahaha Had me rolling.

Try adding extra production shifts on Fri/Sat with your existing workforce but only make it 1 or 2 times per month. Also would recommend max of 10 hrs per shift in a production environment is the safe limit before you will see a rise in injuries. Other option is creating a 2nd workforce for Fri/Sat/Sun, voluntarily have existing employees move over to start with a good experience foundation, 10-12 hr shifts, pay for 40 hours for those 3 days. They will still have 4 days off each week.

Also, 30 for 40 or 36 for 40, Three Day weekend shifts are so damn attractive. I work freelance Film/TV Production, and my favorite workweek is a three day shoot. Yeah, sometimes we go 16 hours, but you get paid extra for that, and that leaves the rest of the week open for Life. Loss of the weekend can be tough for family folks, but I'm sure there are many people who would jump on the chance of a three day work week.

At the wages you pay… I would move from Florida for a two day 15 hours/day workweek if paid for 40. Be dead tired for two days afterwards, spend a day doing chores, and the other two can be spent on other things. Sounds amazing for work life balance. I don’t have much woodworking experience (got random knowledge because I watch a lot of woodworking content), but I’m a quick learner and am already used to using my body to earn money.

Personally it would make sense to have your weekend shift concentrate on building up component back log and loosen the bottlenecks in the production line, what ever single process takes the longest to do, have the extra shifts build those. Build inventory of parts for the main shifts.

I would like to nominate this episode as best Wyrmlife episode to date. 🏆 Speaking from the perspective of a leader with experience in multiple open-source and public goods focused organizations, the level of functional transparency your organization commands is truly astonishing. Through this transparency you have demonstrated that your team consists of a group of highly capable, solution-oriented, creative thinkers. I would hypothesize that this is a significant contributing factor to the strength of your marketing influence. I find so much value in Wyrmlife at several levels, please don't ever stop. ❤

Hollandaise sauce is egg yolks, clarified butter, salt, and some kind of acid. The most common is lemon juice. Some people only put white pepper some add cayenne pepper. There are also recipes with white wine. These are whipped together in a careful method to make the liquid gold that you could put on a roof shingle and it would taste good.

Literally the last episode. Doug "Whats our pricing philosiphy" Troy"Offer the best product for the most reasonable price so customers dont pay an arm and a leg" This episode. Doug "Sorry wyrmlings were raising the prices to lower demand" 🤣 I get the philosiphy that the wait time could potentially hinder the growth and its simple economics. Just appreciated the duality of Doug.

this discussion is on the right track, i was reading the comment section in your insta and everyone wants a table, but the answer by wyrmwood is always "subscribe to our mailling list etc". That is not the "add to cart" mentality Mr. Dougie doug talked about fewer episodes ago. But then, what should happens first, the sale or the production capacity increase?

Anyone else in love with Bri's analysis and intellect?

Back when I build small airplanes in western Canada we had a shift. Friday - Sunday 12.5 hr days. It was the most popular. Now the people who tended to me on it were single people, or people with young kids, as that parent had 4 days with the child when the other parent was working. Also I'm glad to hear of a manufacturing place that it looking to raise the price of there items to add better wages. I've been in manufacturing for 15 years. Been a trainer, a charge hand, and a line manager. Never have I heard someone at the top of the business say things like this. Its always nickel and diming the manufacturing workers. Wish I lives closer, I'd hand you a resume.

I work in a kitchen and pull three 12-14 days in a row, then am off for 4 days. It's the best thing ever.

Congrats to Bri on her thumbnail debut!

2:33 - perfect under the radar reference/joke from Johnny.

We compete on quality is the best thing to hear from a company.❤

Hollandaise sauce is made using Lemons Butter and Egg yokes (not the whites). It's an emulsification of ingredients, the hard part is making it so the lemon doesn't curdle the proteins in the butter.

There are pros and cons. I worked shifts in my day. Problem with crazy weekend shifts (in my opinion) - unsociable hours. You want to meet your friends, see your parents, spend time with your partner? Well, chances are they work 9-5, so your social life is non-existant. Some may not care. Many do care. And even if your social circle is same as your work - you will spend first two days off just recovering and after that it is not much better than a normal weekend. Similar situation with holiday and being sick. If you are away or unwell at that specific time - someone would have to pick up the slack. And that can transiently hit productivity very hard

Here's a good way to get more production hours without as much employee burnout or overtime expense. Adjust as necessary per Mass labor laws... Divide staff into A/B crews with 12hr shifts Crew A works Mon, Tue, Fri, Sat, Sun (60hrs) Crew B works Wed, Thu (24hrs) Next week crews swap days. End result, both crews work 7 - 12s every 2 weeks (84hrs) and have one 3-day weekend without using vacation time. Shifts are longish (12hrs) but they only have to work 2 or 3 days before being off for 2 or 3.

It's DEFINITELY the wait times. I would've bought one ages ago, but kickstarter BS and tiers and time slots, it's all terrible. Even now, I'm still looking for a large dining sized table that I can use for tabletop gaming. Money is not an object, but time is!

Wait time is the deciding factor for my wife. We're going to replace our table and would love to get a Wyrmwood but it doesn't solve our immediate problem to have to wait a year.

Raising prices is healthy for companies like this. As Doug said, outsourcing is the only other way, and they want to keep it in-house. I am willing to spend some extra cash on quality work.

I work in a 24 hr factory we have 5 shifts a,b,c work Monday to Friday 8 hrs a day. E and f shift work 3-12 hr days Saturday, Sunday, and one day during the week. E and f only work 36 hrs with a pay differential to equal 40 hrs. I work on B shift and I will say it is important to have a quality weekend shift because you will burn out a,b,c shift with overtime. Equally I noticed alot of weekend shift will pick up a 4th day for overtime because they have a 3rd day off.

Built my own MGT because I wasn't going to wait. Regardless of saving $1k, I would have rather saved my time and just bought one. Trouble is, I don't need the table a year from now. I needed it now.

Having an option of 3 on, 4 off, would work really well. Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. 12-13 hour shifts. 36 hour, paid at 40 hours. Fill the extra hours with part timers to keep the operations working 16 hours total per day. This still gives Fridays as a meeting/maintenance day.

I'd like to get a basic MGT, but not willing to get on 1 year waiting list. Imagine a lot more potential sales feel same way.

I'm not on the mailing list. Doug is right, the biggest thing keeping me from buying a table is the wait time

As a person from a promised land of work life balance (one of them), I think that working 32 hours in 48 hours - in a factory where being maimed by the tools is a real threat - might cause a rise in workplace accidents. I'm a software engineer and I know that if I run a couple of 16 hour days back to back, my brain ain't working at more than 60% capacity at the end of that stretch. But at least I won't lose an arm if I'm not at 100%. Ps. Bri is effing awesome. Even Doug actually listens when she's speaking 😂

Weekend shift seems like a good idea, I’m just not certain about 15 hours. Gotta figure fatigue would set in and be pretty bad by the end of the second day.

Employees would have to sleep at the factory. 15 hours shift. You are definitely not getting 8 hours of sleep. Commute can take 15-30 minutes both ways. 30 minutes - 1 hour to get ready. At least 15 minutes to eat a meal unless they are going to scarf it down. All this adds up. Less sleep and fatigue means more accidents.

I would have purchased a table already if i could have had it delivered within 2 weeks.

Before my cancer and subsequent transplant, I LOVED working crazy weekend shifts to have a 4-5 days off in a row.

Fatigue for 15 hour shifts would set in on the second day. You don't have time from the first shift to get home, get ready for the next, wind down, and get enough sleep for the next shift for fatigue to not immediately set in on that second day. Burn out on the weekend shifts would be high no matter the pay or "time off". I think hiring more people and raising prices would help solve some of the problems.

You make me that crazy shift offer, I politely refuse every time. I work in Forestry/Natural Resources/wildfire and I can tell you now the fatigue ain't worth it. The kind of task doesn't matter, after 12 hours the odds of burn out go up and up.

Doug's mix-up between joining a free online waiting list and actual sales is pretty surprising. 😮

One of the problems running production all day every day is that you start having exponential breakdown of equipment because there just isn't time to properly maintain equipment.

Can confirm, I bought a Prophecy when you couldn't order MGTs and I dont regret it. Make it so the Prophecy customers always undercut the MGT timeframe by half and make that obvious to the consumer. After all 2300 for Cherry MGT and 12.2k for Cherry Prophecy... Decreasing Lead times across the board will increase sales obviously but if you want to increase quality sales, prioritize their lead time even more. Capitalize on the fact that people want something sooner and may be willing to pay for the nicer model if they get it significantly sooner. Impacts production but doesn't directly impact costs in the same way.

I’d do it. If my current gig were ever to fail, Wyrmwood would be on my short list of places.

3 days is more practical than 2, and you still get 4 days off - rotating shifts such! Everyone (no matter the money) likes consistency & dependability to plan things around...

Worked weekend option for years. I don’t know how it works in that neck of the woods, but where I am, it ended up saving a whole bunch of money in daycare costs.

Here is the solution: you outsource domestically. Find another competent company who can build them (like the chairs and the Amish). You'll never catch up. If you're 1 year out on tables you can double production, and then double production again and people will need to wait 3-6 months. If you want to get to a point where people have to wait 2-4 weeks, you'll need to DRASTICALLY increase production. Alternatively, you open another location on the west coast that only builds tables and you are able to get shipping prices down and increase table price by 5% and probably increase overall profits (assuming shipping is baked into the price) by more than 10%.

I wanted to get a modular table for my wife's birthday but the timeline was so long. I ended up working on building my own to buy time till they're more available.

Goatees are indeed indecent.

Hollandaise sauce is essentially a mayonnaise made with butter. It’s generally made with a double boiler and melted butter, as opposed to mayo which is usually made cold with room temp liquid oils (sunflower, canola, etc)

We need more Bri in our life. nice leather jacket as well.

Hope you are all tracking things more on a conversion basis rather than just impressions. Impressions are great, but tracking people that are actually engaging in the website and partial steps of the buying process will give you a better insight on performance. The email sign up is definitely a slam-dunk, but trying to sift through those folks and determine the activity on the website to compare interest will be helpful as well.

Knitter here. Cardigans are basically sweaters that are open at the front, no buttons necessary, just has to be open. Think zip up jacket vs pull over hoodie. Sleeve length can vary, but cardigans will usually have them. Sweater vest is just a sweater that has no sleeves. Also, Bri is probably one of your best hiring decisions ever.

Cardigan is any sweater that's not a pullover. You can have a button, snap, zip or toggle cardigan, any of which could theoretically be sleeveless.

Permit issues aside, I would modify Doug's 15/day Sat+Sun for 40 hours pay approach to 12/day Fri+Sat+Sun for 48 hours pay instead. At 12/day, they're only putting in 1.5x standard hours instead of ~2x, reducing the safety & burnout concerns of working long hours per day, & you also get +6 hours/employee. Yeah, that intrudes on the open Friday thing, but I would note the weekend workers wouldn't participate in that anyway - since they wouldn't be on premises for Friday. 48 hours pay is 36 + 12, where 12 is 36/3; equivalent to 30 + 10 = 40, so equivalent pay bump to Doug's initial proposal

Do a 9/80 schedule, with an A and B shift. A group gets one Friday off, B gets another Friday off. Another shift that’s weekends 12hr Friday, 12hr Sat, 12 Sun and get 4 hours for free.

All for the weekend shift if it gets me my table faster. The wait is the biggest flaw you guys have. If I was aware of how long the wait was when I ordered on the website, I probably would’ve not got it. On a side note, I would 100% work 2 days a week crazy hours for having 5 days off.

This conversation needed to be had, they are currently behind on MGT orders as is so I am very happy they are looking for solutions

I think 2 15 hour shifts is where I'd probably draw the line. 3 twelves would be great, but having 5 days off in a row every week? I'd either be picking up a part time job just to keep myself busy, or if I was paid well enough, buying a camper and leaving town every week haha

I just received my MGT table this morning! I have to say it’s absolutely worth the fucking wait. With that said I would say get em out quicker if you can but when people received their tables they’ll be happy it’s not some hunk of shit like most furniture is nowadays

The viewers need a theme park style map of Mass plant. Love the walk behind hallway shots but always trying to figure out where everything is located.

The crazy weekend shift option seems like a fantastic offering for people. The concerns brought up are very sound, but if the expectations are clear then it could go over very well.

Sat shift finishing at 10pm and Sunday shift starting 6am is killer. Much better off have two crews doing 3 day shifts each and stagger. One crew does Mon-Wed-Sat and the second crew does Tues-Thurs-Sun

What about two 3 day 12hr/day shifts a week? A mon-tue-wed shift, Thursday for all your mainanance and meetings, and a fri-sat-sun shift. Repeat until profit. Leaves free time and consistent fair shared shifts. No 16hrs work strain either.

The last job I had was overnight weekends, 12 hours a shift, for 2 shifts, and the other 5 days I had off. It's certainly an intense shift to work, but it is possible if you make an effort to prepare yourself for it. That having been said, I'd suspect not many people are built for that sort of setup. If wait times for tables are close to a year, wouldn't having a second shift during the normal workweek make more sense than just having a single shift on the weekends? Double the shifts means half the wait time; shrinking a year wait to 6 months.

If I did woodworking and lived in MA, I would try out the shift.

I think Brianna's point about machine operator safety declining toward the end of a 16 hour shift cannot be understated. What do y'all have right now in terms of safety rate, injuries per person per month, or whatever it is, for a normal 8-hour shift? I saw one site mentioning that accident or error goes up 13% on 10 hour shifts. 12 hour shifts have a 28% accident or error rate increase. So, more waste, more lost time. Y'all are going to have to do a very real cost/benefit analysis. Don't forget to build in state and federal requirements for breaks and meals. Let us know how it goes! Interesting stuff.

I'm pretty sure that whoever wrote the Rosa character from Brooklyn Nine Nine must have known Bri..

Do your research just don’t talk to anyone. Thats an iconic moment. I want that on a damn dice vault.

I've never been in production, but I've been in a warehouse setting, having a dedicated staff that comes in as the weekend crew tended to work a lot better for everyone scheduling wise than trying to have weekday staff also come in for weekends occasionally.

Hollandaise is generally just egg, acid(lemon), and like... a SH*T TON of butter. depending on your flavoring preferences, it can have things like mustard, cayenne, tarragon, or other herbs and spices