The beginning of your journey into CNC is all about building momentum. From the day you decide to get your machine, you want to stay on a clear and constant path forward. What you don’t want is to become overwhelmed and never actually move forward.
To us, it’s a horror story to hear that someone purchased a CNC ONE machine, and left it sitting there for months. Your CNC ONE machine is built to be your best employee, but like any employee, it needs leadership.
We put together this quick guide to discuss the important steps in starting and scaling your CNC business.
1. Setting Goals
When you first get into CNC, it is very important to think about what you want this to become, and what it can become in your situation.
Identify what your goal is with your CNC journey. Do you want a side hustle you could do from home while you keep your full time job? Do you want to build a brand or business and scale it to become your full time career. Or do you just want to make enough money to pay off your CNC machine and fund your own builds?
Regardless of your goal, you should think in terms of making it as simple as possible to start, create cashflow, and momentum. In fact, even if you do have big goals of building a full time business with your CNC, the first step is to start with more simple goals like paying off your machine and starting a side hustle.
2. Choose Your Product
When choosing what product you want to make and sell most people have no idea. Focus on creating projects that you are personally interested in. The truth is, boredom stops progress, so you want to make it easy to stay excited.
It is also important to build something you are interested in because you are likely already an expert in this area. This is important for building great products but also for understanding the audience you are selling them to. So figure out what motivates you, what problems you have, what hobbies you are interested in.
You could make almost anything with a machine like CNC ONE MAX. Make sure to check out our guide 33 CNC Business Ideas You Could Start From Home to see what’s possible.
3. Position Your Product
Create a product that will sell. You could sell anything as long as you could market it and position it well. So, it’s not really what you make, but how you make it. For example, here are two ways to improve a design.
Try to create a product that will help people remember something. Such as a product that provides an emotional attachment to. People want to remember events and other people. But also, people want to remember their own interests.
Or, create products that are functional or solve a problem. This is about positioning. You could position a general product for an extremely specific niche. Instead of making a cutting board, make a cutting board designed for offshore fishermen to cut bait.
4. Tell Your Story
Share your progress on social media. We recommend making a dedicated instagram account to your business. Keep it focused on sharing your builds and telling the story of your progress. You don’t need to suddenly become an influencer, just share what you think is cool. We promise, other people will also find it interesting.
Don’t worry so much about getting a big following and finding customers that way. Think more about the networking opportunity. When you meet people in your every day life, being able to quickly pull up an instagram account and showcase your work to people that you meet in person and online. This will also make it easy to build connections that do similar things to you online. These connections will help you avoid mistakes and inspire new ideas. Building connections will speed up your learning curve
Tip: if you want to take some of the anxiety out of posting to social media, you could create a profile that nobody knows about. Don’t share it to your friends, just post to the internet and let those who share your interests find it.
5. Getting Off The Ground
Ok so how do you scale to a full time business starting from nothing? First, start getting sales and product feedback.
Figure out where the best place is to buy the product you are making. Find out where customers in your niche typically go. Don’t just sell those offshore fishing cutting boards on Etsy, take them to your friends and family who do offshore fishing. Take it to community events like local fishing tournaments. Get feedback on the product. Continue to post on social media. Work on refining your production and selling process to make this a consistent side hustle.
6. Building A Brand
Once you feel you’ve got something special, give it a name and start a brand. Be the best at a specific thing and your customer base will come to you. “We sell offshore fishing bait cutting boards”.
Creating a full time business with your CNC isn’t about waiting around to sell thousands of cutting boards on Etsy. It’s about selling offshore fishing bait cutting board with a unique design that makes it personal and solves a key problem for it’s audience. This is how you get consistent sales without much effort and how you can charge high prices for your work.
Building a brand is about building a relationship with your audience. Choose a niche you care about. Make a product that is special. Tell your story as you go. Engage with your audience. The rest will sort itself out.
Conclusion
Embarking on your CNC journey can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it requires a clear plan, dedication, and the right mindset. With passion and persistence, your CNC machine can become more than just a tool—it can be the cornerstone of a successful and sustainable business. In the end of the day, when you set out to build a brand, you'll find much more excitement and purpose behind your work. This is key to long term success.
Ready to start your successfull CNC journey?
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