Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a passion for building things with tools and technology.
In 2022, I founded Forge Machine, a small business that designs, manufactures, and sells 3D-printed board game accessories. What started with a single machine grew into a modest but scalable and sustainable operation, generating around $30,000 in annual revenue and 3,000 sales while maintaining a 4.9-star average customer rating.
“When you scale up a process you multiply not only the strengths but also the weaknesses of that process.”
Growing the business required growing as a professional. I quickly learned that scaling wasn’t simply a matter of adding more machines—it required optimizing every part of the operation. Product design, bookkeeping, customer service, machine maintenance, inventory management, etcetera, all have the potential to create inefficiencies. As volume increases, those inefficiencies compound and, if not managed, can become catastrophic. Identifying and eliminating process friction became essential to sustainable growth.
