[sudo-discuss] Sudo Locksmiths' Co-op: right-livelihood work.

Yo's- I should have started a new thread with this to begin with, sorry 'bout posting this twice, but there's some new stuff toward the end: Opportunity for right-livelihood jobs: Sudo Lock Services Co-op. "Fifty bucks gets you in." Charge $50 for simple lock picking, no charge if we can't pick it. "Try us first!" Pretty quickly the income gets sufficient to support keeping a stock of common locks on hand, and drills: so if we can't pick it and have to drill it, we can replace it on the spot with at least something that's sufficient to provide security until we or someone else can come back in to install the original type of lock or better. Over time we can add more services, for example complete assessment of home security, small business security, and naturally, computer security. At which point change the name to Sudo Security Services Co-op (or use a name like that from the beginning?). And charge higher rates for businesses and computer security. The latter can go up into the three-figure hourly rates per person, depending on the project. Many of us are naturally nocturnal, so 24/7 service can be offered easily. Many of us around here are also unemployed, under-employed, or borderline homeless. Billing the client $50 translates to being able to allocate $40 - $45 of that to the member who picks the lock, and $5 - $10 toward the overhead costs of the co-op. Every additional $40 - $45 of income really counts for a lot of folks here. I've already got a job but I'd be willing to help organize this, do basic business planning & spreadsheets, and so on. If/when Eddan is authorized to practice law in California, he might be interested in doing the legal work to set up the entity. And since SudoRoom has hella' publicity right now, that publicity will go a long way toward starting a marketing buzz that could bring in customers. New stuff: I can build the telephone infrastructure for automatically processing calls from customers to co-op members including overnight calls. There are lots of folks here who can design & build the computer infrastructure for handling email & text messages from customers to co-op members. The goal here is, someone contacts us by phone, email, or text, the message goes to whoever in the organization is remotely logged-in to work at the moment (via whatever devices they use e.g. laptop, landline, mobile), someone who is geographically near the caller picks up the ticket and scoots off to pick the lock. It would be a hella' cool enhancement if the infrastructure could also use geographic location to find the co-op member who is closest to the customer and available to go to the site. This could be done with caller ID, zip code, GPS, and/or other methods. Alternately, we could allocate jobs on a round-robin system, so each person gets a roughly equal number of jobs per month. The invoice & payment system will need to handle multiple options: cash, checks, credit cards, electronic payment systems (PayPal, WePay, etc.), and even paper invoices that the customer signs when they make payment (that can be entered into the online system the next day). Transportation to job sites: some folks here use bicycles, scooters, motorcycles: make that a marketing point, that our overall carbon footprint is low. "Your Sudo Services Co-Op locksmith may be showing up on a bicycle..." This also converges with the "geeky / hackerish / unorthodox" image and marketing approach, so it works in our favor. Toolz: Once this gets going, there's legitimate reason to buy all the lockpicking tools needed, including pick guns that make the job go much faster (it's a device with a spring-loaded trigger to operate the pick in a manner similar to the more recent "bump key" technique, and yeah it really works well, to the point where you could get lazy with your skillz if you use it too often;-) Other misc. costs for starting & running this will include: cost of setting up the co-op legal entity, getting the members bonded to work legally as locksmiths, and routine bookkeeping & tax preparation each year. But those are very low overhead costs compared to anything that runs out of a storefront. What do y'all think? -G.