Founder's Story
Scaling Smart: Jared Probst on Transforming an Industry with Rapid Axis | Ep. 195
Thu, 03 Apr 2025
Jared Probst, Founder & President, Rapid Axis, details his journey from working in his stepfather’s machine shop to founding Rapid Axis—a company that revolutionizes short-term manufacturing and component fabrication. Jared shares his experience overcoming early cash flow challenges, building a robust sales system, and prioritizing operational excellence. His insights on customer service, innovative lead generation, and sustainable growth offer invaluable lessons for entrepreneurs in manufacturing and beyond.Key Discussion Points:Roots & Inspiration:Transition from a family machine shop to a dynamic sales and leadership role.The vision behind Rapid Axis, born from firsthand industry experience.Overcoming Challenges:Navigating early financial hurdles and avoiding cash flow pitfalls.The importance of disciplined operations and responsive customer service.Growth & Innovation:Leveraging cold outreach and digital tools for lead generation.Scaling sustainably without debt through strategic planning and resource sharing.Takeaways:Precision, persistence, and a customer-first mindset are crucial for scaling.Operational excellence and innovative sales tactics drive sustainable growth.Jared’s journey highlights the power of transforming challenges into opportunities.Our Sponsors:* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Chapter 1: Who is Jared Probst and what is Rapid Axis?
But you have a quick turn manufacturing company and you specialize in fabrication of components across various industries. So, Jared, how did you get started with this company and why did you choose this industry?
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So so I give you the long story, but we only have 15 minutes. I'll kind of reduce it. But but I was born into manufacturing. My stepfather had a machine shop in Mountain View, California. It was mostly life sciences products. So I took a summer job for him and ended up taking on drafting.
Chapter 2: How did Jared Probst transition from a job to founding Rapid Axis?
After some time, we sold that company to a to a German manufacturing company and I moved into sales. um, not related to the industry. Eventually I was poached by a sales company, um, a manufacturing company for sales role. And, um, and I mean, the rest is, is, is history. Um, I ended up becoming an executive. I ended up becoming sales leadership. My last company, I was the head of sales there.
So, um, so, so ultimately I always had the idea for rapid access since my late twenties. It just took me a while to get the capital together and, launch it.
So when you transition from having a job to being a founder, it's like having a steady paycheck or a paycheck, depending on the sales commissions to possibly not having a check at all. How is that feeling?
So I was very lucky in that I married well. I married the love of my life. She was very supportive. She also has an excellent lucrative career. So she was supportive of me in that regard. The capital I had to start the business was money that I'd saved for roughly 15 years because I had the idea for Rapid Access when I was in my late 20s. So I had a long runway also.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Jared Probst face when starting Rapid Axis?
There was a period of time though, I won't kid you, that I think I was seven or eight months in where I drained my account balances with costs and we were very close to running out of money. But within about a week of that time, after all the stress I had, the invoices started getting paid and we've never had a cash flow issue since. which I'm happy to say. What you're saying is so common.
I've been through it. Other people have been through it. That is why I think it's very hard for everyone to be an entrepreneur. What traits do you think that you would say somebody needs to have to be successful in business?
Well, I think ultimately the major advantage that I had was that I had the sales background. And in this industry specifically, as well as many others, it's not enough to just open your door and say that you're open for business. You have to go out and actually get the accounts, right? So I'm very well networked in the Bay Area with manufacturing companies, competitors, partners alike, right?
The one issue they always have is obtaining the actual opportunity. The companies nearby, they don't come to them. They So so I had a system that I developed that worked very well for me at other companies. As far as how I sold, I did the same exact thing for rapid access. So we're able to get leads in the door. The second thing I would say is that you need to pay attention to your books.
Chapter 4: What qualities make a successful entrepreneur in manufacturing?
Your cash flow is everything. If you're not invoicing on time, you're not collecting on time. If your margins aren't right, you have to constantly be paying attention to these things. Right. So so so while I do have some engineering background because my experience, my father's company, it's been the sales and accounting side that really has made this company healthy.
Sales could be the most important thing that people learn. Maybe you could maybe group marketing into the sales side. I'm with you. If you don't know sales, I like though that you found not just a problem. You know, many times people are solving a problem and that's the company they start. But if you see a problem in the sales side and you can solve that. exponential.
What makes you a great salesperson?
Oh man. I mean, I don't know. You flatter me by saying I'm a great salesperson. I think really, um, um, I can be, I can be an active listener. Like, like this is a consultative industry, right? It's not, it's not, it is, it is a commodity. The customer has to buy it from somewhere, right? But they have ever, they have many options. They could go overseas.
They could go to go to the shop down the street. Um, ultimately we, we're very good at listening to what the customer's after, what they want. Um, but, um, but more than that, like, like I'm not afraid to knock on doors. I'm not afraid to make cold calls. And that's, that's been a huge hurdle for anybody in, in sales. Like pick up the phone. You have to.
And on the marketing side, can you generate sales for marketing? Absolutely. We do too, but it's outreach. It's not SEO and PPC that's making the money here. It's us actually doing cold hours to people over social media as well as email. So it's got to be done. That's the uncomfortable step, but it is the first step in getting the contact and generating leads.
It's so easy to think listening. All you have to do is listen to the customer or client and they will tell you what they need. But yet it's so hard for people to do that. So when you're looking, let's say for whether it be in a sales associate, I'm just making up titles, but like, you know, let's say base level salesperson or maybe even a sales leader.
Are there certain things that you're looking for when you're hiring for that position?
Yeah, I mean, generally for us, because we do have the technical aspect of the engineering fabrication side, we want somebody who's had a little bit of experience in that area. But outside of that, what I'm looking for is account hunters, right? These aren't people that are used to sitting at a desk and fielding warm leads. Now, our publicly traded competitors, they have a huge online presence.
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Chapter 5: How does Rapid Axis maintain its competitive edge against larger companies?
Technical questions can take hours, sometimes a business day to answer. But at least a person knows they're being taken care of. The biggest issue that we hear from our customers about what our publicly traded competitors are doing is post-service support, right? You've shipped the components to your customer. They have questions. They might need a material certificate.
They might have a question about an inspection or a feature that wasn't done perfectly or to their specifications or whatever, right? Many of our competitors will take days or even weeks to reply, right? In our case, they're going to get a response in 15 minutes confirming that we've received the question, and then it might be a business day, but that's much faster than anybody else, right?
So now on the economics of pricing, we periodically will analyze our competitor pricing. We're almost always around 30% beneath the, I would say, equivalent services, right? So so we know that we're that we're cost competitive. We don't have the pressure of private equity or venture capital dictating how we price things and how we do things. Right. Which is very helpful, too.
And then and then finally, like like maybe because we don't have that million dollars a month in PPC and SEO spend, we can afford to do prices like this for our customers. So. So yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say that's ultimately it. The final thing is that we don't shy away from complexity. There's whole models out there for fabrication that are focused on just taking easy, quick work, right?
As soon as our customers get out of prototype, we support prototype. As soon as they get into low volume production and they have high tolerance, high technical requirements, they want material search and traceability, they want finishing certificates, all this stuff, we can support it all. We still can support it all. If we have to do custom tooling, we'll do custom tooling.
You know, so it's very much, the organization is very bespoke to the customer's requirement. We have, you know, just as an example, like we do, we work with Rivian for prototyping and we've done some low volume production for them. Their standards and specifications of requirement are totally different than say a Thermo Fisher or a Raytheon, right?
So we've been able to tailor the customer's experience on the backend based off of what their corporation needs provided to them.
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I think a lot of the things that you said can be related to even industries that are completely different around the customer service. There's been, I think, a downtrend in larger corporations, just how people feel when working with them. It sounds like something like what you do, it's very complex. So the more touch points...
having the email, your requirements of timing. I mean, those are great call-outs. So thank you for sharing that. I know you're launching instant online quoting, which is going to really separate you from other competitors the same size as you. You can compete at a bigger level with these publicly traded companies. Can you talk about that?
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Chapter 6: How is Rapid Axis changing the game with instant online quoting?
So we have used it to write some blog, some content for us, which I've gone back and modified to make sure that it's accurate as well as not not going to raise any red flags of Google. Right. Um, we've used it for creating email sequence threads, which then go get personalized by the rep so that it has your personality in it.
Um, I've also really lately, this has been an immense cost saving for me. I've been using it for legal regulatory questions. So, so, um, a lot, there's a lot of regulation or industry around aerospace and defense related components. Um, You're able to go ask ChatGPT about specific classification codes that are provided by customers, how you can remain compliant and all this stuff.
We have GovCloud. We have all these things to keep us compliant. But before we're even entering fabrication or the estimation process, we're able to confirm with ChatGPT what the legal risks are or hurdles around a component. And our expert attorney charges $500 an hour. So that's been a welcome change from ChatGPT.
I was just talking to an attorney yesterday about how like the whole, he was showing me an app that he uses now. It's basically like ChatGBT, but for attorneys. And it has like all of the data of cases and stuff in his industry in the U.S. And I'm thinking like, and we were talking, he's like, yeah, my job will probably become obsolete, you know, in a few years.
Or at least the cost of the service will significantly go down. One would hope. He's not even doing much work anymore. But no, that is amazing. And thank you for sharing that about how you're leveraging AI and technology. When you look at the next few years of your business, of the industry, just being a founder, is there some personal development?
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