Three years ago I spotted an opportunity in the 3-d printer market. There were no large format hobbyist PLA extruding printers out there. So I researched all the open source projects, and found a new type of design that was ideal to making bigger prints.
At the time I had an intern who I was unable to motivate to work on his assigned project of mass marketing on blogs and forums through customizing an expensive script. So I asked him if he would be more motivated to work on making the design and getting it mass produced and starting a kickstarter project.
He agreed. One week later I went to visit his room and found a note saying that he had decided to go.
Last night I looked over all kickstarter projects for 3d printers, and now most of the projects are using the Kossel design that I had chosen. When I had chosen it there was not yet even one on Kickstarter, and only one or two people on the reprap forums had built it. Since then millions of dollars have been spent on Kickstarter for Kossels.
I have a cultivated and rare talent for discovering tremendous business opportunities.
But it’s not enough.
I can’t implement them all myself. And I’m not a good manager, my chief failing likely being that I am not a stern enough task master.
I am good at inspiring people with my visions. But I’m not good at getting people to actually do the fucking work.
People want to work 4 hour work weeks. Or 4 hour days.
I can’t fault people for that. I’m the same way. Unless my feet are to the fire I only play around. Only need motivates me.
Every time I’ve had interns here, I’ve taken away the very thing that I rely on for motivation. I pay all expenses and provide a fun and comfortable and secure environment, and give very little oversight over their time or work. A recipe for failure.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars lost by not following up on the Kossel is just one example of lost opportunities. If I could just find competent staff or interns or partners to do what I say, there are literally dozens of opportunities at least as good that I have identified. I have several projects already started, that are just on the verge of greatness, but I’m stuck for lack of talented and focused staff.
The motivation problem is funny, in a black ironic humor kind of way. One intern also left after I had given a task that required concrete results, for a project with greater profit potential than the Kossels, and the reason he gave for leaving was that he could not find the motivation to work on that project. The reason it’s funny and ironic is that I had hired him based on his chief skill as a motivation expert. I expected him to be expert in finding motivation to work on my projects and in motivating my staff. Instead he says he is only now motivated to work on his own project, which will be an app about motivation. Dark and twisted irony.
Update: In two days of research I have stumbled upon a way to revolutionize the 3D printing industry, with very high resolution full color printing in a structurally sound material. Update 2 30 seconds later: A little more research shows that my invention is already commercially sold in industrial rapid prototyping machines. However there are not yet any hobbyist 3d printers available with this tech. From my preliminary research it’s looking like it’s doable to change that. A $250,000 dollar industrial machine could be made into a $2500 hobbyist version. And eventually into a sub $1000 version.
Now to get it done. Hiring the tech people in Indonesia will be a huge challenge. I have resumes on hand for the engineers, but I’m not confident that any in Indonesia are qualified for this level of complexity. I’m already looking at incorporating in Bulgaria.
There are a few other 3d printer ideas that I’ve come up with since yesterday that I’m more likely to be able to complete here that the market is ready for. Looking over what is already out there and expanding the knowledge with google fu and holding many ideas in the creative ultra-parallel unconcious mind at once shows how various technologies and innovations can combine.
Random Xpat Rantings 
The solution is quite simple. You need to employ doers with a proven background of doing. Workhorses that only need to be told where to go.
Looks like you seem to attract people such as yourself. Might need to work on tweaking self somewhat. Complaining alone achieves nothing.
Also, a personal manager, holds you yourself accountable.
It is extremely difficult to get people to leave their home country to come to work and live in Indonesia.
It takes a rare personality to be able to do that. Most people will not.
That filters out most of the workhorses.
People have personality types. You don’t hire accountants from an art school. You don’t look for legal interns from people with a social studies background.
I was looking for unicorns – men who are adventurous self starters who can work in a hierarchical team. Is there such a thing? Managing adventurous people with an entrepreneurial spirit wound up being like trying to herd cats.
The plodders who follow directions don’t like to take off across the globe into the unknown. The visionaries don’t like to stay in one place long enough to properly plod.
I’d love it if my original vision were possible; a team of the best and the brightest collaborating and having a great time doing so. That would have been so fucking cool.
Instead it often seemed like a business focused party that I was paying for.
It may be that I’m going to have to be more traditional in how I manage my business structure, raising finances and offering high salaries and ruthlessly firing people who don’t meet ruthless quotas.
I’d love to have people prove me wrong, and blossom under little pressure. But it seems humans don’t blossom unless there is pressure.
What you are looking for is indeed a unicorn. “Adventurous self starters who can work in a hierarchical team” – That is a tough combination to find.
And this sounds good: “a team of the best and the brightest collaborating and having a great time doing so”. But it does not seem like what is actually being offered. In reading about your setup it seems that you are a sort of lifestyle/entrepreneurial guru who is looking to attract subordinate followers.
The type of person who can do what you want has an ego which will not allow for the degree of followership that you want.
Some great points to be taken from posts like this, especially for young guys. Being in business/money reveals character. 99% of guys characters are weak, useless, unreliable and downright. Between my business partner and I with 3 businesses between us, we’ve had a partner hijack our domain and demand a ransom, a partner steal $20,000 and a developer partner leave without so much as a note, knowing he was crucial to the operation of the business.
Not to mention in general I’m the hardest working person in every business I’m in and of almost every person I’ve met. I’m out here in Chiang Mai and the guys here have no work ethic at all, most of them are younger and have never had soul crushing corporate jobs so they aren’t incredibly grateful for being location independent. The majority will end up going home. I know exactly the kind of kid you’re talking about with these anecdotes, never had a problem in his life, expects location independence to be 80% fun 20% business on the beach with his laptop. You’re 100% right it filters out most of the workhorses.
They also haven’t had the business failures so their heads are still in the clouds about what business success really is, they want to make millions of an app as opposed to grinding 15 hours a day at a service business that solves a viable problem with aggressive outbound sales. Have not seen one guy out here make an outbound sales call or email and the majority are in service businesses.
My life in Thailand is not that much different then my life in Toronto, just a lot cheaper, still working 12 hours a day, currently 8 30 pm on a Friday night and I’m trying to solve a technical problem on one of my sites. With that said I couldn’t put those hours in for anyone else. I think the only way to go is paying for the best and firing the non-performers. And besides most of the entrepreneurs you’re getting are wannabes, not fit to be business owners or employees, they just end up bouncing from hot spot to hot spot waiting for something to happen. Its a real shame, at 24 I would have killed for an opportunity like you’re giving these guys.
I believe it was one of the Mr. Olimpia winners, that said: Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder but no one wants to do any fucken work.
I agree Will, It’s good to have a soul crushing job experience to have a proper comparison. If that’s not going to motivate you, then nothing will I guess… I remember in my first business I bought business cards (it took me a while to choose the right format),I remember that it had my title on it: CEO*. I also was “planing” my tax evasion strategy. All while the number of unit sold was still: zero… What a joke. Hopefully few years of real work experience changed my priorities and vision for the future.
*It could be a way to screen potential people if they have CEO written on their business card without any achievements.
Ronnie was right about that. I think thats a great screening tool. And very true, the kind of soul crushing suffering will either motivate you to succeed on your own or die trying. If it doesn’t then you’ll be a lifelong slave-this is true of every single person I’ve worked with.
Three things I notice:
1st, You can not hire motivation. It is not a skill. If you have motivation to manage a team then you can hire execution. If you are not motivated to put in the work of communicating with people, of providing guidance, mentorship, of making regular decisions on allocation of capitol – both cash and man-hours, and most of all of wading happily through failure after failure until you reach the rare successful project, then you need to find something else to do that inspires you more. Anyone claiming to sell ‘motivation expertise’ is selling hope. On being a stern taskmaster, in a small organisation you need only to be a stern task master to yourself, and then notice that most people will exhaust themselves trying to keep up with a leader, and others will lag behind and drift away from the pack.
2nd, I am only an occasion reader of xrants, which i do enjoy and value, so I may have the wrong idea, but I get the impression that business associates get interviewed for an initial evaluation on potential and interpersonal chemistry, filtered through who is willing to travel, evaluated upon WHAT THEY SAY TO YOU, then given some subset of keys to the castle – ie. front door and pantry but not the wine cellar or what have you. On the other hand, would be lovers get interviewed, evaluated on potential and chemistry, filtered through willingness to travel – ie show up at a 2nd meeting – evaluated on WHAT THEY PUT OUT while largely ignoring the content of WHAT THEY SAY THEY WILL DO FOR YOU, and entered into a long series of trials where underperformers are ruthlessly dropped and replaced by new entrants.
Men are different from women as groups, but as individuals they all come to you because they want to be around you, and/or want some thing from you. Do you meet with interns at least weekly and discuss what they are doing? Do you fully feel your reaction to what they communicate? Do you give them the gift of honestly communicating your reactions? You can hardly expect a lover or a business partner to hang around if left alone for too long a period, you have to have ongoing communication – appreciation, acceptance, desire to change this or that, disappointment, anger, the whole of it. If you don’t check in, and, in the parlance of new age semi nonsense ‘really show up’ then relationships will fade. Oftentimes they fade anyway because the other partner loses interest or hope.
3d, I do not recall any mention of whether your interns are given any contractual rights to ownership of some portion of what they contribute to or build, ie. an equity stake, or whether they are expected to operate independently in exchange for cushy digs and an idea of mentorship that may or may not pan out. Is internship like joining a mafia family or law firm where a new member goes all in in hopes of becoming a made man or making partner long in the future, or is it akin to working for a building contractor or engineering firm that has some very concrete task that needs doing with a concrete reward attached to results? Clear contracts allow both parties to understand what the other party expects, and clear and realistic expectations help avoid disappointment and contempt.
-Dave
Hey my names kolby, if I get a way out there can you give me a try? I’m a hard worker, and a fast learner, and I know my weakness is boredom with the task at hand if it gets to be a while repeatedly doing the same thing. I need a change where I’m at, and having wonderful ideas to make happen would be my motivation. Another thing about me, I was born to help people, and I often stretch myself thin because I dont have a focus. Maybe we could help each other. Maybe if you give me a try it wont work. But maybe it will. Email me.
Motivation boy was funny though.
Hi Xsplat,
as usually an interesting insight. What a coincidence, I just came to Bulgaria yesterday to do some business.