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

[Anon195714]

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.