Fired the Agency, Hired the Engineer: Bad Marketing, Niche Products & Growing Out of the Weeds

Both Matt and Michael open the week running on fumes — but not without wins. Matt's team is locked in on the five-robot Project 29 build with a December deadline, onboards two new engineers in one week, and approves a search for a second electrical engineer as the team eyes doubling headcount. He also finalizes cutting VFS from Develop's website and reflects on a 77% Q1 OKR completion rate — solid, but with hard lessons on setting clearer accountability metrics.Michael's week is defined by contrast: he fires a marketing agency after just 30 days when they miss 13 of 14 deliverables and cost him an estimated $15,000 in lost Shopify revenue by breaking his Google and Meta ads. He walks through the incident in detail and makes the case for eventually doing marketing in-house. On the product side, he debuts the Auto Vice LT — sold out on the first run — and shares a new fifth-axis compatible rotary base plate he's developing after the original vendor said no. He also previews a 3D configurator that lets customers see Gimbel products laid out on their actual machine table before buying.The episode closes with a candid conversation about identity shifts — both hosts have had to consciously let go of being engineers to become CEOs — the cognitive load of AI overuse, patience in hiring (350 applicants and still waiting for the right assembly tech), and whether trade schools or recruiters are the better pipeline for small manufacturers.