I’ve spoken with 25 people so far this week to buy or sell equipment, and nobody mentioned the midterms coming up next week. Right now, going into the weekend, my mind is on next week’s doctor’s appointments, the impending winter, and what the Cubs’ roster will look like in 2027. Month by month, Washington politics becomes more irrelevant to my everyday life. The politicians become more laughable and neutralize each other with their loud stupidity. The “real” people in this country who work hard to make a living, who start businesses, who treat sick people in hospitals, who pave the streets and keep the cellphones working, are becoming more and more turned off by politicians and their election blather. After the upcoming election, our country will not only survive but thrive. It won’t be because Republicans or Democrats win or lose. It will be because people ultimately believe in themselves, not in being saved by the government. What we are seeing in Europe these days is what happens when people hold onto the belief that their government should take care of them, that it can save them from their own laziness and hopelessness. They burn cars, bicycles and garbage, and…

Robby Burton, 30, co-owns AG Drives, a drive shaft company in Green Bay. Blake Schultz, 23, is its director of business development. Robby’s grandfather started the company, and Blake’s dad worked for him. Both families have been in the business for decades. When Robby took over, he was in his mid-twenties and brought in his friends from high school. None of them had formal business training. His garage was so full of parts he couldn’t park his car. He had a newborn at home. Some of the machining happened on a lathe in a friend’s backyard. Now they have their own shop. This past year the business grew more than 300 percent. ************* Link to Graff-Pinkert’s Acquisitions and Sales promotion! ************* Listen on your favorite podcast app using pod.link.     . View the podcast at the bottom of this post or on our YouTube Channel. Follow us on Social and never miss an update! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarfcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swarfcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/todays-machining-world Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmwswarfblog ************* Interview Highlights Learning on the Job Robby’s path ran through engineering. He earned a two-year degree in mechanical design and spent five years as a drafter, designing rolls for the paper industry. When a big project fell apart during COVID, he…

In a lifetime, how many opportunities have you missed to listen to a potential friend, or at least a possible interesting acquaintance, because you stopped at “how you doing today?” This thought became real to me recently while listening to a marvelous book, Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi. It is Levi’s first novel. He described it as an “experiment,” but friends who read pieces of it implored him to try to get it published. The story is about Theo. We don’t know his last name until the end. He flies alone on a private jet to a university town named Golden, ostensibly attracted by 115 portraits drawn in pencil by an unknown artist, displayed in a local coffee shop. Theo buys all of the art pieces anonymously. One by one he writes handwritten letters to the particular subjects of the portraits and invites them to meet him near a prominent fountain in the center of town to receive their portrait as a gift. Over the course of the book, we learn about many of the people as Theo graciously meets them and thoughtfully brings out their “stories.” Invariably they want to know why this kind old man with a…