S1E42 What you can accomplish if you budget one hour a day towards your purpose. #CADModelOfTheDay author, Rob Maldonado, CSWE

With over 36,000 Instagram followers, Rob Maldonado is the author of #CADModelOfTheDay , an initiative he started over 300 days ago in which he posts one CAD model every single day, without absence. His social media following skyrocketed after his #507Movements animations. Rob discusses tips on being consistent, habit building, confidence, and his trajectory as a mechanical engineer. A must listen for any mechanical design engineer and SolidWorks afficionado. 

Rob’s Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCBn8_PWZwdwzLeu23w8bew

Rob’s Instagram: @virtualflatcad , https://www.instagram.com/virtualflatcad/?hl=en

Rob’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maldonadorobert/ 

Hosts: Rafael Testai & Aaron Moncur

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Transcript

Presenter: 0:00

The Being An Engineer Podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. Enjoy the show.

Aaron Moncur: 0:29

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Being An Engineer Podcast. We have a special treat today. One of our team members here at Pipeline, Rafael Testai is going to be taking over the interview and we have a fantastic guest, Rob Maldonado. So I'm just going to sit back here and enjoy the show for the most part, Raf, I'll turn it over to you.

Rafael Testai: 0:53

All right, Aaron, happy to be here. It's super excited to have Rob on the podcast. First of all, I'm a huge fan of Rob, if you guys don't know who Rob is, you don't do CAD. Because if you look up anything CAD-related on YouTube, or SolidWorks, what he does is going to be probably one of the top five videos that come up. So Rob, welcome to the show.

Rob Maldonado: 1:13

Yeah, thank you for having me here. Super excited.

Rafael Testai: 1:16

Of course. So I wanted to kick it off with one of the main things that you're known for with it, which is hashtag #CADModelOfTheDay. So how did you get started with CAD model of the day, and what made you want to get started with that initiative?

Rob Maldonado: 1:31

Well, to be honest, I, the first seed of that idea, so to speak, was when I was in college. This was a quirky thing about my curriculum, I took a video game design class, and I wrote music there, all while doing engineering curriculum. So that was a thing. But there, I met this guy named Zach. And he runs an Instagram page called Zack James Games. And he had his own series called hashtag #DumbDude, he was an artist. So he did concept art and all the animations for the game. But he had, he just did a little doodle every day on a sticky note, took a picture of it, uploaded it into Instagram. So that's where this the seed got planted. And I thought to myself, 'I want to do that.' But I am terrified. Because I don't think it's logistically possible to model something every single day. The breakthrough came when I found out about another Instagram page called Beeple_Crap. And if you haven't seen his stuff, he does renderings in cinema 4D. So it's 3D modeling, but more of the, the artistic side of it. And he's been doing a rendering per day for 12 years, he's done more than 4000 Wow, scenes in cinema 4D. And I guess a little warning his stuff, it might be a little bit surrealist and strange, but it's amazing work, though. So just in case you want to check it out. But he got interviewed, and you got to ask the same question that you did that you just asked me? And his answer was, well, I just give myself 45 minutes every day, we got to take the perfectionism out of it. And that's something that I struggle with is I'm very much a perfectionist is. He just sets a 45 minute timer just has a bunch of 3D assets, whatever he can render within 45 minutes. That's that's his rendering for the day. So I just took that mindset of just being like, 'Okay, my, my budget, my time budget for this is one hour per day.' And I don't always follow that. But for the most part, again, myself one hour per day, whatever I can provide at the end of that hour is CAD model the day.

Rafael Testai: 3:53

That's amazing. I'm taking notes right now.

Rob Maldonado: 3:55

Okay.

Aaron Moncur: 3:56

Can I interject real quick, Raf?

Rafael Testai: 3:58

Please.

Aaron Moncur: 3:59

I don't want to throw off your flow here.

Rafael Testai: 4:00

No

Aaron Moncur: 4:00

Okay, so I don't I don't know as much about you, Rob, as Raf does. Raf is honestly a big fan. He's been talking about recording this episode. He's been really excited about it. So maybe for for my benefit and other people listening out there. Can you just give us maybe a quick background of who you are and what you do?

Rob Maldonado: 4:22

Yeah, so I'm basically, I'm a mechanical engineer, I do a bit of freelance design, but I also run all my social media pages. And basically my main project right now, Model of The Day I didn't really explain what that is, is basically, I, I model something every single day and then provide a deliverable for my social media pages. So this could be just a screenshot, as simple as that could be a rendering an animation, just whatever it is, the only rule quote unquote rule is I just have to model it on that day, keeps me sharp, after model it on that day, and it can be any deliverable. And that's that's pretty much it. And this is it's great. It's been great fodder for my YouTube channel, because I have infinite topics to talk about now, way too much way too many for one guy to do, but that's a different story.

Aaron Moncur: 5:23

That's awesome. And has this been consecutive that you've done all these models? Or do you take a break here and there?

Rob Maldonado: 5:29

Nope. 300 so far

Aaron Moncur: 5:31

Wow

Rob Maldonado: 5:31

300 consecutive days.

Aaron Moncur: 5:34

Is that 300 business days are just 300 days period consecutively?

Rob Maldonado: 5:39

300 days period. I started November 8, 2019.

Aaron Moncur: 5:43

That is amazing.

Rob Maldonado: 5:44

That was 301 days ago, today's 301

Aaron Moncur: 5:48

Congratulations.

Rafael Testai: 5:49

Congrats, man.

Aaron Moncur: 5:50

Big Feat.

Rob Maldonado: 5:51

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I had a lot of close

calls, uploading at 11: 5:54

55pm. There's been about honestly, a couple dozen of those, that happens more often than you would think either, just poor planning, just under estimating the scope of what I wanted to deliver, or just, 'Oh, look at the time, time for a model.'

Rafael Testai: 6:18

Well, I think that that's a golden nugget right there for every designer listening, allocate one hour to improving your CAD skills every day. How do you allocate this hour? Do you put it first thing in the morning? Or do you put it in your calendar? How do you make sure?

Rob Maldonado: 6:35

Honestly, the only rule I set for myself is as early as possible. So the the earlier I can get it done. Yeah, the the, the, the sooner I can feel the relief of being done with my entry for the day. But, it's, I think just being flexible with it. For example, around day 50, I think I went to Disney World and spent the day with my friends. I took a three hour drive from where I am in Fort Lauderdale up to Orlando before all these world events went to Disney World. But I woke up at 5am did the model, had it posted by 6am and then just drove to Disney World. And that was that?

Rafael Testai: 7:18

Wow, that's commitment. That's admirable.

Aaron Moncur: 7:21

But do you have days where, okay, I'm gonna make a quick analogy here. I like to exercise in the morning, and I have a rowing machine that I use. And for the most part, I enjoy using this rowing machine. But every now and then I wake up and I'm like, 'Man, that rowing machine, I don't feel it today. I don't want to do this today.' But then I tell myself, 'Okay, I don't have to go hard. Just sit down and do some easy rowing.' And that helps me. I don't know, accept it, or at least get on it and start and oftentimes, once I get started, it's, it's easier to go a little bit harder. But do you have days like that? Where you're like, 'Geez, I really not feeling this this CAD model of the day thing?' How do you how do you convince yourself to keep doing it?

Rob Maldonado: 8:05

Oh, absolutely. That's a great question. Because I feel that often. And, I mean, if you look at the pattern of my work, it's literally just what you said, you look at your rowing machine, it's like, you are not my friend right now. But you just convince yourself with the ideas like, okay, I don't have to throw out my back here. Let's just get some motion going, and I do the exact same thing. So there are some days where the model is excruciating Lee simple. I think I did a diner mint. One time, is this a squashed dish with color

Aaron Moncur: 8:42

Nice

Rob Maldonado: 8:42

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's the beauty of CAD model, the day for me is that there is no minimum scope. All you all I have to do is just model it the day of that's it. But otherwise, if I just wanted to make a mint, take a screenshot and post it, that's valid, unless and there's, and there's some days where, where I have to do that just to keep my sanity.

Rafael Testai: 9:05

Let me ask you this. How has doing CAD model of the day improved your skills?

Rob Maldonado: 9:10

Oh, tremendously. I mean, definitely. I thought I thought it was a pretty efficient before, but now it's just... especially after, I would say date, 50 or 60. So, I guess I'll step back for a bit and, and just say the first I want to say 40 to 50 days were really tough, because it's just, it's just habit building, right? When you start an exercise routine, you're most likely to fall out of it within the first six weeks. And it just it was difficult, those first 40 or 50 days, but by day 60, I just began getting faster and faster to the point it's like, 'Okay, I got a rhythm now. I got, I got momentum.' And that that's what, that's what helped me power through until now.

Rafael Testai: 10:09

Would you say that the CAD model of the day makes your reverse engineering skills better? Because would it be more considered cartoon CAD or reverse engineering or a mixture of both?

Rob Maldonado: 10:20

It's a mixture of both. So there is plenty of models where I will tear something down, I got my trusty set of calipers. And just measure everything to the best of my ability. And just to get it working, just a real life representation of what that model is. And once you get that you can do all sorts of cool things, an example is the marble soda bottle, the ramen a bottle, it's like that soda where you got to pop the marble into it to open it up. I destroyed one of those bottles, I got the glass marble out, I measured it and measured all the other stuff. By the way, they do not lie of how difficult it is to get those marbles out. I had to saw the marble out of there with a jeweler saw. I thought it's like, oh, I just stick a screwdriver and twist the little pop up. No, I had to break out a saw. But I did that measured it and I diagra, I produced diagrams saying, this is what it looks like, when it's closed, here's a cross section. And here's what it looks like when it's open. Because I always wondered the same thing. And people found value in that, just knowing how things work like that.

Rafael Testai: 11:35

I got an idea for some of your social media content, because I know a post you're talking about, I saw, it's recent. What if you were to do a behind the scenes, we show people when you tear stuff apart? That'd be fun.

Aaron Moncur: 11:47

That would be cool.

Rob Maldonado: 11:48

Yeah, I've done a, not I haven't shown myself tearing stuff apart on camera yet. But I have done a little bit of live streaming on my YouTube channel. And for my, when I did the PlayStation 2, which was actually literally the day after, that was when I hit 2000 subs on YouTube. And I had had a 12 hour livestream and I just took apart a PlayStation two beforehand. And just reverse engineer it for 12 hours, basically,

Aaron Moncur: 12:19

Wow

Rob Maldonado: 12:20

People came by, said hello, check out my stuff. And it was a really great time,

Aaron Moncur: 12:28

I didn't even know you could do that just live stream for 12. This is how much of like an old person I am. Raf makes fun of me sometimes, because I don't understand how the internet works. But I didn't even know you could do that. That's cool. And so people were just like, stop by and chatting with you as you're modeling this thing and live streaming your screen. Is that how it worked?

Rob Maldonado: 12:45

Yeah, exactly. I had a couple couple dozen viewers throughout. But those kept cycling out. And the reason I did that was for two reasons. One, I was doing a giveaway, that you have to be present for the stream to get a code and enter a giveaway. And I just wanted to make that as accessible to my international audience as I could. So I started at 8am, Eastern Time United States. But that is like a same time over in India and and Europe where a lot of my fans are actually. So I wanted them to get get in on it, so did that and ran it all the way to 8pm. And people kept cycling through.

Rafael Testai: 13:31

So other than getting your SolidWorks certifications, because I see you're a CSWE correct? Congratulations. So any tips for an intermediate user like a CSWP who wants to take their solo skills to a next level? What would you recommend they do?

Rob Maldonado: 13:49

Well, I think this is really important more than just the time of practicing. Because, of course when you practice something, you're going to get better. But the important thing is that you challenge yourself constantly. Have you ever made a sheet metal part before? If not just maybe look at something in your house, maybe a computer case or something? Try and reverse engineer and see if you can get the bends and all the flanges in there. You'll, you're bound to learn something like that if you've never done sheetmetal before. What about weldments? Do you have a deck outside your house that you can model using the Wellman's functionality play around with the trim tools. And I think, that's another thing that I tried to do with my model the day is I try to mix up what I model from day to day wildly varying, I do the mechanism very often but, here's a molded part, here here's a forged part. Here's a pull another plastic injection molded part and with those, picking those parts with different manufacturing techniques, those will require different modeling techniques to realize those in SolidWorks. And that will naturally get you the wide skill set it you need to become a CSWE

Rafael Testai: 15:10

Sounds like a lot of reverse engineering, various objects.

Rob Maldonado: 15:14

Yeah, I think a lot of my skill came from reverse engineering, even from the very, very beginning. When I was in when I was in college, it was, it was like, oh, here's a plastic cup. Can I model this? If not, why, let's find out. And then you just, I just work at it until I could.

Aaron Moncur: 15:30

I love that philosophy. This is something that that Raf and I have talked a lot about, what's the best way to learn mechanical design, mechanical engineering, and we always talk about just take stuff apart and see how it works inside, so I think what you're saying is the same thing just applied to CAD modeling.

Rob Maldonado: 15:49

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I, I feel like that 100% applies here. And just just keep varying, varying the topics. One of my past jobs, I was an applications engineer for a SolidWorks reseller. So the company that administer seats of SolidWorks to companies, and I did a lot of official SolidWorks training, and there would be a good, it'd be weird, because, right now, I'm 27. And when I was working, the job was like, 24-25 years old. And I would get these guys that are twice my age, pretty much and I'm supposed to teach them, they're supposed to learn from me. And a lot of them will say, like, I've been engineering longer than you've been alive. And I've, I've been modeling since 99, there's nothing you can teach me. And a lot of the times, within the first minute, it's like, oh, by the way, did you know you can create an axis like a what? I've been drawing center lines these whole time. It's like, well, I mean, if if you for 15 years, make sheet metal parts over and over and over and over again, you're going to be good at sheet metal. But when I show you a surfacing technique, it's it's pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone, that's the key.

Rafael Testai: 17:06

So one interesting thing about the content that you post, you also post their 507, Mechanical Movements. Many engineers may be familiar with this, if you go to 507movements.com, they're just different mechanisms. How do you manage to do one of these under one hour? There are quite complex, some of them?

Rob Maldonado: 17:25

Yeah, I would say relatively few of them go over an hour actually. I would say, an average complexity, mechanical movement, takes me around 45 minutes, plus maybe another 15 to animate. That hasn't really broken the rules for me, and especially because I've done so many of them. They're, they're among my highest performing posts. So I like to do a lot of them. But at this point, I get, I get them mostly done within an hour. An hour and a half sometimes, I've had to actually punt some of them were just, I can't get it to work. I gotta get something else. And sometimes it happens.

Rafael Testai: 18:08

I see. I Well, I see that you have a BS and mechanical engineer, like you mentioned before, and maybe in your previous talks with employers, and they saw that you can model the day, would you say that they greatly value the CAD model of the day? Or are there other things on your resume, which employers value perhaps a little bit more?

Rob Maldonado: 18:28

Well, the thing is when I was working for for an employer is in a traditional sense, CAD model, the day didn't exist, I quit my application engineering job became a freelance engineer. And a few months later, is when I decided to take the dive into CAD model today. That being said, it is highly valuable, not only because it's, it's the content gets spread around, but it's shows an example of what I can do. It's a huge portfolio of work. So I get constant messages on LinkedIn saying, like, 'Hey, I think you'd be a great fit for our engineering position. How about you take a look at it?' And I get that pretty often. So there are people out there that value my project and die on my skills that it takes to run a project like that? I'd say before that, being experts certified, that definitely, when people know what that is, that holds a lot of water.

Aaron Moncur: 19:35

I can speak a little bit to that as well as an employer. If an applicant were to come to me and say, oh, by the way, I have this project. You can check it out on YouTube, where I've done all these CAD models and things, I would love that not just because oh, I can see his portfolio online. I can see his skill set. I mean, that's part of it, but I would love that because it shows such strong initiative. And if I'm going to hire someone I want, I want to see that that person has their own drive their own motivation. So for me, that would be huge.

Rob Maldonado: 20:10

Wow, it's actually very interesting to hear that from the other side. I never thought of it that way.

Rafael Testai: 20:17

So I think this is the perfect time to talk about the other side. So we're talking about Pipeline Design & Engineering. So the Being An Engineer Podcast is brought to you by us, Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment, such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly gigs, inspection stations, and more. You can find us on the web at testfixturedesign.com or designtheproduct.com. The links will be in the description below. So let's move on to the next question. As we discussed, you're very well known on social media, you get all these messages on your LinkedIn. And you don't have to give away your secret sauce. But if one is passionate about doing SolidWorks modeling, and wants to share or teach an audience, what are the three things that you would say had the biggest impact in growing your social media following?

Rob Maldonado: 21:11

Oh, boy, three things. So I think the one thing that I'm able to point to is consistency. I mean, it's very well known that social media, and their algorithms are not well known, I guess, I guess. What, whatever goes into their algorithms, is an enigma. If you ask Google engineers, how does YouTube recommend me a video to watch or, I don't know, because it's a neural net, right? So I'm definitely what's helped my following. Posting every single day, I believe, makes you rank higher in practically all social medias. Each social media likes an influencer, that posts often and can keep his or her audience engaged. So, you know part, I think, one key is daily posting. And of course, that's, that's not going to be possible for everyone's or for everyone's for whatever vision they have for what their content wants to be. But the more often you can post, the better. The reason gaming content does so well on YouTube, people play a game and they put an episode up a day in their, in their channel blows up for the most part. Number two, I think I just got really lucky. So something that happened was, it was around, I would say, day 95 of CAD model of the days when I really started to get my audience. Before day 95 I had 100 followers. And I think what really set the lightbulb off was starting to model the 507 Mechanical Movements. The first one I did was movement number 27. I'm looking for right now. So way way long time ago. Yeah, it was around day 95. And that it was really, it was really an aha moment. Because before, then, my best posts were just getting 20 or 30 likes on Instagram, for example, I posted movement 27. And I got 27,000 views on it. So

Rafael Testai: 23:35

I got it right now. Hold on a moment. 27 I'm on my way.

Rob Maldonado: 23:40

Here, here it is, it is day number 99. So that that was the inflection inflection point, right there. That's, that's when things started to really click. It's like, Oh, I think this is content that people want. So then I just tried another, if he's a little flame engine, here's another one got 10,000 views. And I just got on the into the habit of every three or four days, I post a mechanical movement. I don't saturate my content with it. Because I'm passionate about other stuff, right? But just to keep keep the interest of the the mechanical nerds like myself, and many of my followers.

Rafael Testai: 24:25

Yes, and your listeners

Rob Maldonado: 24:29

Yeah, represent, but I post and post one every three to four days. And I think that's that that seems to be the, it's it seems to be a really, I guess, magic number, not only because of how well the how well the algorithm does. I think there was a streak where I posted three mechanical movements in a row and I didn't really see any difference other than posting it every other day. But the thing is, like you mentioned And before there are days where making an entire mechanical movement, I've just wake up and like, I don't want to model this right now. I'm just, I just want to model a mint, right? So it is. So it's like a good balance between, giving the people what they want, but also keeping this a sustainable project for me.

Rafael Testai: 25:20

What are you doing your modeling of, because we also, I think it gets overlooked that whenever you take a SolidWorks class, everything's seems to be very smooth and straightforward. But when you do an actual mechanical design job, you encounter, a lot of things are not taught in school, like when a feature tree blows up, that they didn't really teach us that in school had to learn down on on the fly. So what happens when you encounter the 507 Movements, and you just can't get it to function on CAD, the way it's supposed to function? What do you do?

Rob Maldonado: 25:51

Well, I do, I do what any other engineer does, figure out why it doesn't work, and then try to make it work. And the best example of this, actually, I have the video on my YouTube channel, where I did, I believe it was mechanical movement 82, that was a two hour stream, I think, and that was one of the rare instances where mechanical movement was actually giving me giving me trouble. And if you like, scrub through the video, I put this thing together. And it just didn't work. But I, it's a live stream. So I didn't want to punt it away immediately. So like, okay, I'm thinking like, Oh, actually, I thought this was a four bar mechanism, but it's actually a five bar. That's why so floppy, the stick one of the bars out and this and consolidate a little bit. It's like, Oh, it's like, it's getting closer, but it's just not contacting, right? What have you made this link shorter? And then, just kind of that that iteration, and you actually see me do that in real time, nothing edited out. It's all there. And then getting it to work at the end was like, yeah, the, the, the the chat was going going nuts to when they when I when I hit recalculate, and it was actually advancing the movement. It was great.

Rafael Testai: 27:09

Ron on cut. Awesome. So was there ever a person that gave you a shout out that spiked your following or you just said the consistency and the topic was primarily it?

Rob Maldonado: 27:21

I did good shout out here in there. At but, that's just been tacking on little things here. And there. I think the biggest thing is when I modeled the mechanical movements, I don't know what it is, because, of course, it has to start somewhere, right? So for some reason, mechanical movements do super well, in Instagrams algorithm, particularly, if you look at my Instagram page, I have more than 35,000 followers right now. But if you go to my Twitter page, it's about 250, or something like that. So I've yet to find the secret formula for, for Twitter. But yeah, it was just getting lucky and just having content that the algorithm really liked.

Aaron Moncur: 28:12

I've got a question for you, Rob. So I think we've already established that I'm a dinosaur when it comes to the internet and social media, and I don't really understand how it works. So I have always assumed that social media, Instagram, and YouTube and all that stuff. When it comes to a professional context for engineering for product development, that arena. There, there's not, it's not that useful, you're not going to develop new business or or have a huge professional following. within the field of mechanical engineering, product development, CAD design. And so it wouldn't be worth my time to spend all this time trying to develop a big, like Instagram account or something like that. Have you found that that your followers are mostly like hobbyist and enthusiasts? Or have you found that a large percentage of your following is actually that that professional crowd?

Rob Maldonado: 29:19

Yeah, I wish I had more specific data that could break it down, but just from like, chat, interactions, comments and stuff like that, a plurality of my audience appears to be students, university students who are in robotics teams, because, when when you're a student, you can't fork over 1200 dollars for SolidWorks training, you're on your own. So if you want to learn to sharpen your skills, it's gonna be with me and everyone else on YouTube. And, I take that I take that with open arms and I'm, I'm really happy to provide the content that like, like, like, like what Rafael said. They didn't teach me when a when a feature two breaks, what do I do about it? It's like, Well, I do you see my feature tree break right in front of my crying eyes. And you will and you see, and you see me and you see me fix it right in front of you. And I think that's valuable to them.

Aaron Moncur: 30:15

Oh, that's hugely valuable. Yeah, I agree with all of that, because they don't really teach you these tricks to fix feature trees in school. And so watching an expert do it, there's so much value in just watching that process.

Rafael Testai: 30:28

I think this is the perfect time to do our second plug. We actually made an academy for this. It's called my pipelineacademy.com. And we have started an initiative, an initiative to teach people basically what they don't teach you in school about CAD and mechanical design. But that's, that's something that we put a pause on for now. So the next thing that I wanted to ask you is about an engineer or mentor, have you ever had one? And if so, what was? Or is your relationship like with them? And what are a couple of things that they taught you that that helped expedite your learning curve to become a better designer?

Rob Maldonado: 31:03

Yeah, well, I've had a couple guys throughout the year, throughout the years, my old old job was this guy named Roy, who even though I was experts certified before I left college, I still wasn't really confident in my own skills. And it was through his coaching, especially when I started teaching classes, like, right out of college to industry veterans of how to use a software, and how to apply that in an engineering context. I was not very confident, and he, with coaching from him. And I remember spending time giving mock lessons to him, just giving me the confidence, like, Look, you know the stuff, just just just be a little bit more confident in yourself, then you do what you do. And I guess that that helped a lot. Back in college, I had a professor that I had throughout the years, Professor Bachman shout outs if you're listening to this. But but yeah, he he had a very rigorous way of teaching engineering that, I clicked with. One of the biggest things I taught myself to do during during my college days was to learn how to learn how to focus. And I thought, and I think a lot of that help came from my professors. So I'd say those are the two biggest mentors that I've had. Right, right now, I'm on my own right now.

Rafael Testai: 32:48

So Rob, you mentioned that this this mentor helped you with your, your confidence before? Could you pinpoint maybe a couple of specifics as to what that means? Like that mean, when someone says the confidence, maybe I visualize, okay, maybe the eye contact, I guess, or the delivery once tone of voice, but it could mean totally something else? What did it mean, in your specific case to improve your confidence?

Rob Maldonado: 33:12

Well, I think for me is, it wasn't really body language. I think, my, my public speaking was all right. I had the YouTube channel before then. So I was used to it. But I think the way I taught things, I always added, like, I guess, weasel words. It sounds like I think this is the best way you can do this rather saying like, when when you are faced with this, this, this is the option to go with unless this happens. And then, you can postulate from there. But it was just, it was just like a lot of uncertainty with the things I was teaching. That was about that.

Rafael Testai: 33:53

That's great advice, actually. Thank you.

Aaron Moncur: 33:55

You're probably becoming a mentor to a lot of people at this point.

Rob Maldonado: 33:59

I would say so. If the people that I help saw me as a mentor, that would mean the world to me.

Rafael Testai: 34:06

Let's talk a little bit more about learning how to focus any tips on that?

Rob Maldonado: 34:11

Ah, yes. So I have ADHD. So that can be that can be tough to cope with. A book that I'll recommend is Deep Work by Cal Newport. It's a great read, relatively short one. And I think they have it an audio book is that if that's more your style, but basically he gives, he gives the steps of really how to how to set up your environment, what mental exercises you can do to really get this deep level of focus for long periods of time and I think it's, I read that back in junior year of college, I think, and I think it saved my hide, it really, it really gave me the tools to succeed in those last set of classes, which brutally brutally difficult, so just being able to focus like that.

Rafael Testai: 35:07

Thank you for the book suggestion.

Rob Maldonado: 35:09

Yeah, again, that is Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Rafael Testai: 35:12

Okay, right on. Well, since you were talking about your mentors, I wanted to give a shout out to my mentor, my mentor's here, Aaron. Aaron has been, I started working with Aaron when I was 27 years old. And I'm 29 now. And my degree is actually in molecular biology and genetics with honors. But I fell in love with engineering at the age of 27. And Aaron has told me quite a bit about this field. And I love it.

Aaron Moncur: 35:37

Thank you, Raf. That's very nice of you to say, of course,

Rafael Testai: 35:39

I just want my audience to know that maybe they didn't. So the last thing that I have on my list to ask you is, what is your ultimate goal in terms of professional goal? Is there anything else that is there anything that we can do to help you accomplish it?

Rob Maldonado: 35:55

Well, I think the ultimate goal is I want to start leaning off of freelance work and go full time with my YouTube and social media pages. That brings me so much joy. Not only doing the CAD and all the day project, but getting comments like I just got yesterday saying like, 'this is the greatest SolidWorks content on YouTube, please don't stop posting.' Stuff like that, like really, really lights a fire under me to produce as much as I can. And if I can make this my full time job, that would be a dream come true. Um, I don't know what that is going to look like, that's like one of those big, hairy, almost intangible goals. But I think right now, I'm gunning for 100k followers, 100,000 followers on Instagram, and 10,000 subs on YouTube. And let's see where that they see that where that leaves me?

Rafael Testai: 36:55

Isn't there, like a certain threshold of subscribers or views that you can monetize your YouTube channel?

Rob Maldonado: 37:01

Yes, and I'm already at that right now. So that is 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. So you need to have people like watching your content. And it's like, what while it can monetize, I don't. Because it's, it's not much at all, and makes the experience more annoying for my, for my viewers, so I don't really know, really monetize my youtube channel right now. But when when we get a little bit bigger, we'll see what kinds of options are the least annoying, and, so it's a win win, I can focus more on the content and people get their content.

Rafael Testai: 37:41

You mentioned how much of an impact that makes when some of our subscribers or followers leave positive feedback. Have you ever had any haters?

Rob Maldonado: 37:49

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, when my Instagram following blew up, so so come the haters. So, just pick any mechanical movement, you like scrolling through the comments, and just make yourself some popcorn, because there's some, there are some real zingers. I actually don't remove any comments, unless they're like, really, really, like hateful or offensive. If they're like, they crossed the line, you know what I mean? They cross the line, I remove it, but if they say this thing sucks, I just leave it there. Doesn't really doesn't really affect me. And if everyone else is enjoying it, it's all good.

Rafael Testai: 38:37

Do you have such following that your friends defend you whenever you get a hater like that.

Rob Maldonado: 38:42

I don't, I don't, actually it's happened a couple times. It's it's, it's not like every single time, you know what the biggest YouTubers are will they'll have almost a cult following it. I don't have anything like that. But I do have a bunch of loyal, loyal followers and subscribers. So yeah, so see you guys.

Rafael Testai: 39:03

Right on? Well, Aaron, is there anything else you'd like to add?

Aaron Moncur: 39:07

No, no, nothing else. This has been great. Rob. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you hanging out for a bit with us on the podcast.

Rob Maldonado: 39:14

Yeah, it's such a pleasure to be here. So fun.

Aaron Moncur: 39:20

I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com. Thanks for listening.