Hello Maslownians,
I’m deviating from my norm and making a release “update” to both the Disciples Of CNC members and in the Maslow forum at the same time. There is much happening and much more happening in the background. It is an exciting time.
First I would like to welcome the new members that have recently joined. “Welcome Aboard!”
I have sat down and tried to write this many times. I am very forward with my ideas and thoughts yet very private about my family life. Put a pin in this and we will circle back.
I’m going to say I hand full of people through conversations in the community have become aware of my circumstance and been greatly supportive and for that I’m eternally grateful.
First let me explain where things are for Disciples of CNC and Hand Made CNC controllers. We have 1 unfulfilled order that will ship by the end of the week. All orders that took place before last weekend have been fulfilled.
Sales by appointment: Our sales model evolved organically. Since the launch of the Blue Smoke Herder Shield anyone that has reached out has been helped. As we launched the Blue Smoke Herder Shield my Father suffered a massive stroke. My mother passed away 4 years ago and my Father has never been the same. They were together since they were 5 years old as friends before becoming romantically involved in High School. The points they were together and made decisions together all that time. Once that half of the relationship ended my Father has felt lost and over time his direction seems to have dwindled until he really just wanted to sit and watch TV. There are many facets to his health and health choices that lead up to this.
This is difficult for me to talk about simply because I was taught to keep problems to myself. Figure out a solution then talk about things once they are solved. This is more complex than that formula. It’s even tougher because I have ties to California and 2 years ago all of my family moved to Texas. So I’m running back and forth and have found a love of Texas of my own. I tried unsuccessfully, so far, to buy a house over a weekend. There are many things I know but the process of buying a house is just not as straight forward as buying a bar of soap.
One of the key problems for me was my desire to drop things and spend more time with my Father or to commit to the obligations I made first. My Father taught me to follow through on things I started. So it was a difficult choice but a clear one to handle my obligations first.
I’m really not good at talking about my life at this level. A few of my peers that know about this have given me good advice here and this helped me get through this.
Because of these events it became obvious I needed to manage my time and this lead to the model of sales by appointment. The number of people that said they wanted to oder a Blue Smoke Herder Shield and the number that did fell in the camp of 2 to 1, or a 50% conversion ratio. It became evident that a single product was not a sustainable business model. This is not an end to Disciples Of CNC it’s just not profitable to run a business on shields alone. I find it a good experience. We now have a good number of shields in the wild and they are working very well from all reports so far. This is very satisfying to build a product and see it help people.
MOM Magazine - In my last update I described the templates on my 2011 iMac were stuck in a boot loop. Upon investigation it looked like a wipe of Pram or a few other simple reset tasks would solve the issue. Then I was greeted with probably the worst message possible. There is a hardware failure in your hard drive back up as soon as possible. This is from a recovery mode without access to look at files. I have a Windows partition and can get at files from there but file copy fails. Linux on a stick is similar. I was on the fence what to do, I had a 2007 refurbished Mac mini picked out in a shopping cart when I heard that Apple was announcing product updates. After checking into it Today I have ordered the new Mac Mini to replace my iMac and attempt a recovery. I believe I will have it sorted and a new Episode of Made On Maslow done by the end of November.
The UK branch of Blue Smoke Herder Shields, what happened there? I met with an entrepreneur and we had a great discussion of the opportunity and all looked good. We left it at they were going to look into the Tax implications and look at forming a company to operate under it. At last contact it got tied up in red tape. In the mean time an other party has reached out and told me they are making Maslow controllers for people in the EU. If you are in the EU and need a Maslow controller let me know and I will be happy to forward your information, they are making a version of the TLE board and I pointed them to the BSHS files in the community garden.
Kit, Kits, Kits! - I have had discussions with both current camps that are on the map to make kits and they are working hard to provide users with positive experiences and choices in buying new Maslow Kits. It will be interesting to watch how the product grows with the community.
I have been working on the next version of Maslow upgrades as I envision it and performing testing of various parts of the Maslow when not engaged any other priorities.
As I say every time, feel free to reach out with questions or comments:
https://www.disciplesofcnc.com/contact-us.html
I often intermix I and We. We is my lovely and supportive Wife Cindy and Rue. I would be unable to accomplish the things I do without their support and yours.
Thank you
Brandon - Aka “Bee"