Looking for a remote helper?

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1

I think I want to try and hire some remote online help.

Current state of affairs

I got a taste of working 48-50 hours a week, and I really like it. I usually work M-Sat gone from the house from about 6-6, and on Sunday I do a few things from home for a couple of hours, that is just not the right way to deal with this project. Sales have been extremely steady so my work week consisted of a lot of dealing directly with shipping stuff from the store. I got maybe an hour here and there to actually do the stuff that I really really like to do, CAD make better things, experiment, make things!

I hit the ten-year mark and it was like hitting a freaking wall. I can only assume the last year or so I was running on pure desire to make it to the ten-year mark. Kinda just had my head down and pushing on. Shipping has been really messed up the last 6-8 months so that took a lot of time and money to sort out and took a lot of my optimism as well.

Solution?

Okay so how do I gain time to make things, while also keeping up with the day to day?? Step one, International direct LR kits just about to make a trial run, if that is successful I can very easily add more products to that list. So I should actually slowly be transitioning to only shipping U.S. orders and that should free up a considerable amount of timeā€¦(obviously this will unfold over many many months but it also has the advantage of possibly lowering international prices, order speed, ect). Step two - paying for helpā€¦

So for Step two, my idea is paying help with the Docs, and maybe all online portals. An independent contractor means I have the largest pool to select from, and I donā€™t have to deal with the paperwork of having an employee onsite, and the hours can be open and flexible.

I think I can work with someone and pretty easily get them up to speed with using mkdocs and come to an agreement with how it should look and what it should say and work into other online aspects after that. So at first with would sort of be just minor things all the way to full blow build and use instructions. The hard part is figuring out a pay rate and a way to track it (suggestions)? Maybe just a couple of hours a week at first and go from there.

Alternative solutions?

I am open to suggestions here, so many of you have been around for basically the entire ten years and have a much better view of the project, feel free to offer out of the box suggestions, constructive criticism, and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

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There are so many little things I want to fix in CAD, so many new projects I want to try, a new Zen and MPCNC versionā€¦

I think I SHOULD be working in CAD a few hours per day, not a few hours per week. I suck at business, it took me ten years to hear the advice many have given me, but now is the time. The time it takes me to pivot these days can be frustrating. I feel like steering this biz used to be easy and fast like a go cart, and now I am driving a train and I need to build new tracks to even start to think about changing directions.

Example. If I make an update to a tool mount, I have to identify a problem, figure out a solution, make it, test it, iterate it, test again, update the docs (all the different pages), update the store, update the Print Farm, manage the inventory, answer the new questions. Adding another person could handle half of that and help with testing even if it is just seeing how it prints. Now imagine all the machines, all the parts, all the pages in the docs / website / shop.

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In my mind I am looking for someone that can;

  • take pictures and do basic edits,
  • some basic graphics (like arrows and highlighting certain aspects of the pictures for the docs),
  • willing to learn the git/mkdocs if they do not already know it,
  • is experienced with at least one of the V1 machines,
  • has a 3D printer and has no issues with printing the current V1 parts,
  • maybe even throw in some social media posts.
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I hope you find that person, it would be so freaking awesome to have you back in CAD, back in creativity and innovating the machines.

Consider also finding someone to help execute the business (e.g. shipping parts, managing the store so to speak).

It feels to me like a situation similar Nate from SparkFun, where you find that you like the creativity and want to focus on that but need to have business execution to keep the enterprise running.

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I can think of a lot of forum members who would do an awesome job. I hope you find somone and that you can focus on the fun parts.

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I mean that would be ideal, just not sure how that would work and if sales could support two skilled people comfortably. Dream goals, I guess. I think I am making progress to this. Trying to remove myself from the places someone could more easily replace me.

Thanks!

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Is updating the docs really where you spend your time? I am not saying itā€™s not needed, but are you going to get meaningful time back?

If you are working 50 hours per week, how much of the time is packing orders, customer service, updating documentation, updating social media etc.

I guess what I am getting at, is getting someone to update documentation is only going to get you say 5 hours per week. But if you got someone to pack orders and respond to customer emails maybe that saves you 20?

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As someone who has helped with the documents before, I would definitely say this is a high priority area. Making them more clear, concise, easy to follow and with more precise visuals would be a great asset.

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So I think Carmen just said she would like an application!

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Oh and Congrats on being able to look at this. What an achievement! it was alot of fun to be behind the scenes of the lr4 (for the lil bit of the time I was there). I look forward to many more projects like that!

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As someone that is most likely to loose their job due to company being sold in the next 6 to 8 months this would be very tempting if I was in a different stage in my life.

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If it were possible to ā€˜bundleā€™ or break the things you want done with the docs into well defined chunks I bet youā€™d get them done for v1 store credit.

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I would Love to help!

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It is awesome that you are thinking into expand your business. Thats a big step. For sure many people would like to help, even for free/store credit or on contract.

I dont have all my things fully sorted out (even my lr4 builds are sitting in a couple of boxes waiting for final assembly) I started my business expansion in November and have not finished yet in april and new projects dont stop coming in and i cant say no. In a future i would like to help for sure

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This is the biggest weakness right now. For example the LR instructions are a mess. If I start selling more CNCā€™s the docs need to be more complete and refined to prevent a explosion of forums help posts. And as other unclear posts happen someone can update the docs ASAP.

Interesting proposal!!

I am always trying to make it better. The side effect is hopefully more steady sales and more cool people, but first I just want to be proud of what we have and know it is as good as it can be. Right now I am not stoked on the state of the docs.

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Good documentation is really hard. You want details, but not too much detail. You want a clear path, but you want options. The more documentation you have, the more organization becomes important because it gets overwhelming to the person trying to read it. You want consistency. You want good instructions, but you may want that information differently when using as a reference. And then keeping it up to date is a whole other thing. Documentation is one of those things where itā€™s almost never as good as you want it to be.

From my perspective, the documentation is pretty decent but the structure is a little awkward. What you do once you have it built is where people seem to struggle. To be fair, I think thatā€™s harder than building it (not that Iā€™ve built an LR4ā€¦ yet). You almost need a flow chart to see where to go depending on machine/board/firmware/CAM software/etc. I think restructuring the docs could provide significant improvement but determining that structure isnā€™t easy either. It probably makes sense to move some of the pages into an Archive section.

Iā€™m willing to provide some help. Iā€™m just not sure what help is needed. I donā€™t claim to be amazing at this either, but Iā€™ve written a lot of software documentation. Like mentioned above, if you can break it into pieces, I think it will be easier to get help. It still helps to have someone overseeing the documentation as a whole for organization and consistency.

Sure there is always room for improvement, but the current documentation is not bad.

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17

In my life before retirement I worked in the design and documentation of automatic handling and storage systems.
My experience suggests that design and documentation are closely related.
So the suggestion I would like to give you is to ask for help with production, packaging and shipping and to keep for yourself the part that you like the most and that over the years you have shown you can do very well, that is, design and documentation.
Have a good day and good work.

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I have recently moved a few pages around and moved/made the archive section. Definitely need to get more in there. You are right though, that balance of just enough words and pictures is very hard, but when you get it right it is an obvious win.

I think maybe we will do a test run on one page and see how it goes. Let someone take the reins, I will oversee, then ask the collective what you all think. If that works out it lets one person keep in step with feedback and I donā€™t have to stop what I am doing as much and get out of the groove.

I find myself pulled in many directions and getting ā€œdistractedā€, in the best way possible but it can be difficult to get back into the groove of whatever I was doing.

That is the part I would love to hand off the most, but that means having an in house employee, all the taxes and paperwork that go with it, scheduling, sick days and all of that.
I think moving my international stuff out of the shop will significantly lighten that load (with obvious customer benefits), and in doing that will also mean I am getting some things prepped outside and then just shipping it in, that will also lighten my load.
As a direct example, now that I am getting LR4 kits pre-made, I could actually have them prepped and shipped to me as well. Full machine kits take the longest time.

So I hope these small changes will quickly add up to a larger chunk of free time. And someone keeping up with ā€œreal timeā€ docs/socials/vid clips(?) might really let me be more creative and responsive to design changes and maybe even more time spent on sourcing and cutting costs.

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Once upon a time, a long time agoā€¦ (but in this galaxy right here) :smile:

A much younger version of me went on an assignment to go review the progress of an offshore contract engineering / contract manufacturing supplier. As a trial run, my employer at the time was going to have this supplier design and manufacture a next-generation version of a circuit board that we used in one of our products.

As I reviewed the design (and the prototype in their lab), something didnā€™t seem right. They had used our IP correctly, but there were also features in the design that were very innovative and which were not in our previous generation design. As I was thinking about this, I took a walk around the lab I was in. I discovered benches in other corners, some of which had prototypes of other systems. It suddenly became clear to me that these were next-generation products for several of my employerā€™s competitorsā€™ product!

Looking a bit more closely, the very same board that I was looking at for my employersā€™ product was also integrated in those other full systems.

What turned out to have happened is that this same supplier had made really aggressive (cost) pitches to several manufacturers of similar competing products pitching their capability as a design and manufacturing house. They had won a full outsource from two of those companies and the trial run of one board from my employer.

ā€œBeing efficientā€, they had married functionality and IP from all into one unified design that just had slightly different packaging and a couple of variations of a base board for the other two companiesā€™ product.

I snapped pictures of the other setups and returned home after my visit.

It was a mess.

Cautionary advice for you Ryan: Make sure your supplier isnā€™t making kits of your product that ship out the back door to grey/black market destinations.

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Itā€™s Friday, soā€¦

Maybe weā€™ll be up to 1000% tariffs in a few weeks on products that rip off protected IP :slight_smile:. Need some laws tweaked, and a Saul Goodman inspired firm to no-win no-fee low-hassle chase after and close down cheats on behalf of small-med businesses.

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