Well. It has been a few months. I’d love to tell you that things have calmed down since my last post, but you have likely – and correctly – inferred from the title image that this is not the case. TCG Machines is on an absolute tear: in the last three months we have secured over $320,000 in Provincial and federal grant money for various R&D and production initiatives; we’ve been issued two international patents (one in Japan and one in the USA); we’re actively hiring for four new positions (and plenty more to follow); we have applied for a matching-funds, interest-free loan through PrairiesCan to help fund a multi million-dollar project starting in 2026; we are kicking-off a new $200,000 partnership with Amii on yet another R&D initiative; we are actively negotiating the purchase of a multi million-dollar building; and we’ll be exhibiting at the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention (Spiel Essen) in Germany next month. All of that is against the backdrop of – by far – our best sales year to date, with monthly order volumes 40% higher than last year’s average. Have I mentioned that we don’t advertise? Well, we don’t. What might happen if we did, you wonder? Let’s get our production capacity shored-up before entertaining that hypothetical, shall we.

This probably comes across as gloating, which is not my intention. What I am trying to convey is the sheer number of irons we have in the fire. The fire is basically just iron at this point. And each of those irons needs attention in the form of emails, meetings, phone calls, report writing, resource allocations, budgeting, planning, flattery, bribery, strategic assassinations, and so on and so forth. Luckily, I have a truly phenomenal team at my back, such that while I am focused on “increasing enterprise value” – or murder, or whatever it is exactly that I do – our core business continues to excel. Our Dev Team just released a major software update, and while the release didn’t go perfectly smoothly, the end result is that we now have an industry-leading 99%+ perfect match accuracy for Magic: The Gathering card identification. AND our customers are now equipped with a Quick Correct modal tool which allows them to easily manage the less-than-1% error cases. That’s pretty fantastic.

Backing up our Dev Team is our world-class Service & Support Team, for whom we very consistently get effusively positive feedback from our customers. There’s no shortage of instances I can point to, but a recent one I greatly enjoyed was a YouTube post from the Poke Pastor, aka TJ. Initially upon receiving his PhyzBatch-9000, TJ was skeptical, which is not an uncommon first reaction; there is a learning curve when introducing a new robot into your work flow. However, after getting on a video call with our Support Team, he was enthusiastic about the sorting machine, and about us! Love it. Love our team. Also, just kind of love what we do. Anyway, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: our Service & Support Team is our beating heart, and it’s what really sets us apart in our space.

And then there is our Production Team. These guys go hard. Without a product, we have no company, and without production, we have no product! Fortunately for us, we have the most talented and dedicated card sorting machine engineers and assemblers known to science. As with all aspects of our company, our production is on a bit of a journey, and we are actively working on tripling our capacity. This includes trying a new “pulse” based methodology, having our production leaders enrolling in Six Sigma training, hiring on lean manufacturing consultants, and several other initiatives to increase efficiency and output. What does 150 machines’ worth of metal fabricated parts look like when they show up in crates? Well, I’ll show you! What do you mean you didn’t ask for this? Well too bad. I mean, you could close your eyes and scroll to the next block of text if you really don’t care. Man, you’re a weirdo.

One of the great things about working with a bunch of great people, is that you tend to enjoy each other’s company. In our latest mandatory company fun day event, we gathered for a BBQ in the park, complete with DJs (thank you Bryce and Denis!), lawn games, and grill-master Dan!

Oh, and we’re on the cusp of our collective fleet of machines hitting 500,000,000 trading cards sorted! That’s 1,000 tons of cards!!! What does that even mean!? Who am I, and how did I get here?

Ah, and in other fun news, we were selected as finalists for the Calgary Small Business Awards, specifically for the Bow Valley College Innovation Award. That’s cool. Nice to have some official recognition and appreciation for the work we’re doing here. Good job, team 😊

I shouldn’t paint too rosy of a picture, though. Running a business is full of hardship as well, and the worst part, without a doubt, is when a member of the company needs to be let go. Last week I had to have one of the most difficult conversations I have had throughout the 10-year history of our business, when I drove out of town to meet with one of our remote staff to terminate their employment. They were the first full-time employee I hired, and had been with TCG Machines for nearly five years. That sucked. To their immense credit, they handled themselves with dignity and professionalism, which made it as “smooth” of a conversation as could be hoped for. Still, not the kind of thing you look forward to. But that’s business! You need to make the decision that’s right for the company, and sometimes someone who was excellent at one stage of a company’s growth no longer fits well at another stage.

I’ve had to fire eight people, now. I can clearly remember each of those conversations, and not one of them was easy. Something to consider if you choose to go down the entrepreneurial road.

OK, well, on that horrible downer of a note, let’s take a look at what’s been happening in my personal life!

Small children. Yes, they’re still there. I love my kids, but my god, they take an exceptional amount of energy. Life is just so gosh-darned busy. It makes you want to curl up in the fetal position and scream as loud as you can, but then your wife comes in and slaps you across the face and yells, “Get a hold of yourself, man! You’ve already burned through your self-care quota on your stupidly long runs. Your selfishness knows no bounds!” and you briefly return to a state of lucidity, only to remember you’re a thirty-something entrepreneur with two young children, and right back into the scream-ball you go! It’s a vicious cycle. I’m in my scream-ball era.

Take, for example, just one day from this past weekend. It was the first weekend for months in which we had no plans on the calendar. A plan-free weekend? What a concept! Sundays are always long training runs for me (still preparing for a marathon, if you’ll recall), and, as per usual, I woke up at 5:00 AM so as not to have my run consume the entire day. The day’s training requirement? Three hours, with 2.5 being “easy pace” and the final half hour being at marathon pace. Well, I don’t know the meaning of the word easy, so I crushed out 34.6 km in three hours, like a boss! Then it was off to the farmers market with our kids and the neighbours and their kids, where we spent a nice couple of hours eating lunch, grocery shopping, and watching our children run around like wild animals.

Then, out of the blue, I got a text from my stepsister who had four front row tickets to Monster Jam that afternoon but couldn’t make it; she wanted to know if I would use the tickets. Oh, hell yeah! We quickly made plans with our neighbour so that I would take my two kids and their son to the event. And what an event it was! A packed stadium featuring enormous jumps and a half dozen 5,400 kg (12,000 lbs) trucks with 1.7 m (5.5 ft) tall tires. Dude, monster trucks are ridiculous! One of them was called Sparkle Smash, was shaped like a pink unicorn, and shot confetti out of its horn. I love to see other people and businesses not taking themselves too seriously. Anyway, the kids had a great time, I had a great time – big win all around. Then home for dinner, kids’ bedtime routines, and crawling into bed only to start another cycle the next morning for Monday.

Was that a typical weekend day? Honestly, kind of. I mean, I’m not going to monster truck rallies every week, but replace that with “family event”, and it’s a pretty consistent template.

I’m sure you’re wondering where I find the time to write these blog posts. Well, increasingly, I don’t – as evidenced by the time between posts. Currently I am writing this late at night on a Tuesday, cutting dangerously into my allotted sleep window, and knowing that I’ll be up in a few hours at 5:00 AM to run. Also knowing that there is a jam-packed day of emails, meetings, phone calls, interviews, planning, and general business development ahead. Maybe things will calm down eventually, but I’m not holding my breath.

Update:
I got a horrible night’s sleep last night! Went to bed way too late, around 11:00 PM, couldn’t sleep, so took a melatonin around midnight, then my daughter woke up three or four times in the precious few hours between then and when the alarm went off at 5:00. Still got up though, and still ran. Pretty crazy, so far this year I have run just over 1,000 km. I think I may retire from running after this marathon. Nobody has time for this.