top of page
Search
mike43953

Funny story…

When I first started Machined In Wood, I knew that I’d need business cards and a website, so I googled it and ended up getting a Vistaprint account that offered both. The business cards were pretty decent, but the website part of things was not that great. Whatever. I threw together a very basic website so that when I handed people my business card, they’d be able to go to the website and learn more about my little business. It wasn’t a big deal to me because initially at least, this was just a side hustle that I was doing out of my garage. When I was laid off from my job at Bose right at the beginning of Covid and we were all forced to stay at home, I had not much better to do than to throw myself into actually turning this thing into a real business.


“I have to do it, but I don’t wanna…”


At some point, Vistaprint decided to stop being a web hosting service and my website was changed over to Wix. The transition from Vistaprint to Wix was a pain point that I had very little time to deal with. Much of what was working before suddenly needed to be updated. Even after updating, because my site was not originally built on Wix, a lot of things just didn’t work properly and I really have no need for many of the features that Wix offered, so making it all work was just a nagging “I have to do it, but I don’t wanna” thing.


One of those things was Blogging. I didn’t think much of it, but it was one of the new features, so I decided to play around with it and made a post. It wasn’t anything, just a test to see what it would look like etc. So, I posted that one test and never gave it much thought afterwards. Aside from having posted 1 time, I really didn’t know how it all worked.


Hacked?


Fast forward to maybe a year later, and one day I get an e-mail telling me that my website has a new member. What? A new member? I’m the only person that should be a “member” of my website. It’s just me and my wife and she didn’t do anything that would have made her a “member”. Was I being hacked? Did someone get my login info, add themselves as a member and are going to take over my website, to be used for their own nefarious intentions??? I sent an e-mail to this new member inquiring as to what the hell is going on. Almost as soon as I sent that e-mail, I panicked and thought - “Great, now they know my personal e-mail address!”.


I called Wix tech support to find out how on earth someone could have achieved the lofty status of Member without my knowing about it. The support guy explained to me that when someone wants to read these blog posts, they’re prompted to join the website so as to be informed of new posts etc. It wasn’t anything to be worried about. We laughed about how I had that feature for a couple of years and never knew how it worked.


Shortly after that conversation, the new member, whom I had blocked and removed from membership, got back to me and explained that he was just curious to know more and decided to check out my blog. Nice guy. I apologized for not having any idea how these things worked and that was the end of it.


Some time later, maybe a couple of months, I got an e-mail from that same guy and he was interested in having me work on machining a set of speaker enclosures for him. He had found the design on an audio enthusiast forum and wanted to make a pair for himself and have the parts for the speaker box CNC machined so that he could assemble and finish them on his own. After the typical back and forth via email to work out price and the specifics of how he wanted them made, he ordered the material from an online supplier called Ocooch. The material arrived and I did the work. Meanwhile, this gentleman was kind enough to ask if it would be OK if he posted my information to the website for anyone else who wanted to get the same work done.



Before I had even completed the work for Machined In Wood Website Member #1, I got another email from someone in Fremont, CA to build the same set of speakers, using the same material from Ocooch, and that they found me via that same audio forum. As I type this, those parts are done and waiting to be shipped off to California.


Fred’s Speaker Enclosures

Now, I’m located in Massachusetts, and the idea that someone all the way across the country placed an order for CNC woodworking services from me is one of the coolest things about having started a business out of my garage from nothing. I know that online sales and social media have changed the way the world does business these days, but in my little side hustle turned full time business, we don’t even attempt to do online sales. We really didn’t have a social media presence at all. No Facebook, no Instagram, not even selling on Etsy or eBay. Just my website, and even that was rarely ever updated.


So I wanted to make another blog post and take the opportunity to tell the story of how I thought Fred tried to hack my website and instead ended up being one of the more fascinating customers that I’ve had the privilege to get to know a little, and that our encounter led to even more customers finding out about my shop and our capabilities.


This whole adventure has lit a fire under my butt to make more blog posts about some of the crazy projects that we take on and the stories behind them. I’m honestly not that good at social media, and anyone that knows me, knows that. In the time since this all happened, I have actually created an Instagram account, which led to having to create a Facebook account, and I already had a YouTube channel with virtually no subscribers and only a few videos.


Instagram: @Machined_In_Wood

Facebook: MachinedInWoodFB

YouTube: @machinedinwood


My plan is to post more to those platforms, but also to keep posting to this blog with stories of our adventures as a small business, how actually running a CNC Woodworking business is different from what you see on YouTube and whatever else I want to share with the world. If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this and if there is anything we can do for you, don’t hesitate to reach out!


  • Mike

8 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Blog? Sure, why not?

I'm not a big fan of social media, but I guess rambling on about my adventures here wouldn't be so bad... I'm setting this up now because...

Comments


bottom of page