PiBurner of the Week: Alisha Pate
Let’s celebrate our PiBurner of the week!
Alisha Pate aka Laser Cowgirl
o
Owner at
Pate Ranch Creations
We are proud to announce this week’s PiBurner – Alisha Pate
Today, we have the great pleasure of featuring an engineer, a businesswoman, a leader, a maker, an influencer, a hustler (more on that later!), a wife and mother (Is this all the same person?! ya, she’s kinda superhuman) Alisha Pate.
If you think that’s a lot, she is also a pilot and a martial artist (She is a Haganah fighter which is a martial art similar to Krav Maga)
We met Alisha through her fast-growing group on Faceboook called Hustle and Burn. It’s an active community of over 11 thousand makers (at the time of writing) where people share business tips, motivation, inspirational ideas, and Alisha herself shares settings – to save people time and money with experimenting on different materials. Most makers in the group use LASERS for all sorts of things, usually side hustles. And the kinda stuff they share there is pure magic.
She also has some incredibly helpful videos on her youtube channel. (You should subscribe!)
For instance here is a video that explains how to do a tumbler with a narrow neck! We get hundreds of questions on these.
And because her values of helping makers succeed align so well with our own values, we are proud to have her as an affiliate of LensDigital. Check out our products through her affiliate link: https://www.lensdigital.com/home/ref/13181
So, Let’s take a minute to get to know her better.
About Alisha’s Career
Professionally, Alisha is an accomplished systems engineer with 24 years of experience spanning three industries (high tech, aerospace, and oil & gas).
She loves solving complex problems and using her hands to create new things. That is what pulled her into the complex world of lasers.
Her career spans three industries:
In the High Tech field, Alisha was an interoperability engineer testing software and hardware.
And in the Aerospace industry, she served as a Systems Engineer for Lockheed Martin and NASA!!! She was responsible for some incredibly high-stakes projects including:
- Test & Verification Engineering Manager for the Orion Space Capsule
- Systems Engineer on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Pilot Trainer Program
- Systems Engineer on the F-16 Block 60 United Arab Emirates Pilot Trainer Program
Finally, in the Oil & Gas industry, Alisha was a Global consultant for Halliburton and a Drilling Engineer for Chevron. An impressive resume, to say the least!
More recently, Alisha has been building a business that combines the capabilities of her engineering mind with her creative passions.
How Alisha got started with Lasers
Alisha told me that working lasers allows her to combine her passion for engineering with her creative drive – allowing her to express her creativity in new, unique ways.
I started with a Cricut and we did our first craft show in 2018.
She did well in that first show and knew right there that she needed a serious laser. She saw several advertisements for the Glowforge laser and thought “That’s it”. Like so many of us, Alisha started with a Glowforge and it turned out to be the “gateway” laser.
Her husband asked her for a business plan (imagine that!? He is also an engineer, obviously) and that is how it all began.
Even though Glowforge Pro was where she started and now she is now on her 5th laser in just 3 years! Her Thunder Shop on her Texas ranch became a fine-tuned production machine powering her sales growth.
Her sales grew at an insane pace (all while she was working full time at Chevron!):
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- 2019 – 25k
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2021 – 120k
Here is how it all happened…
The Journey
In late 2019, Alisha met another maker online in the Glowforge User Group, Emily Caroline (ThatMomWithALaser!). They hit it off and shared ideas with one another – Emily shared her vision of That Mom With a Laser and Alisha shared her ideas on getting a more capable machine and growing a business.
They both gave each other guidance and helped one another and soon after, Alisha ordered an Aeon Mira 9.
That machine was a beast compared to her old GlowForge Pro. It was paid off in 2 months with graduation crates!
She saw an opportunity to grow and… went for it!
I soaked up all the learnings that I could and I pushed that machine to its limits. I really enjoyed it and I started building up a brand for Pate Ranch. I leveraged my social networks in my local town and really started to sell. I quickly saw that I needed a second laser in September as I was always waiting on a job to finish. I knew if I had two machines I could produce so much more. Optimize the operation. By that time Covid had hit and everyone wanted a laser. The Mira that took me less than a month to get as it was in stock would now take 6 months. I had to start looking at other laser vendors and eventually settled on a Thunder Nova 63. The holiday season was upon us. In December of 2020, we sold over 44k in that one month alone. It was crazy.
In late 2020 Alisha partnered up with Melanie Joy to start their own Facebook group – Hustle and Burn.
What was her motivation?
We wanted to share the things that we weren’t getting in other groups. I wanted to teach others how to grow their side business with a laser – not just how to make something, but also how to scale the business. There are so many things people needed help with and were not getting it from other groups. How to do a business plan. How to execute a retrospective. I wanted to take the things I do in my day job at Chevron and teach others as it was all applicable.
I also wanted to share technical tips that I was learning annd applying. I have always been “Open Kimono” on what I do and how I learn. Why not! This is one of very few groups where people actually share settings and tips hard to find anywhere elese. That is why I started the Hustle & Burn Laser Community Group. Hustle and Burn is dedicated to starting, owning and operating a laser business. A place where we can strategize, share sales / marketing tips and our engravable “finds”.
As her own business continued to grow so did the Facebook group membership numbers. Her community is over 11k members and has a great culture that encourages everyone to contribute and help each other daily. Alisha and her moderators try to make a fun spin on things like the one day they allow self-promotion. They called it “Pimp It Tuesday” and on that day you can post links and sell your wares to the community of 11k people. The community is friendly to both guys and ladies and we love the diversity!
As Alisha grew her business, she continued to invest more in technology. She purchased 2 more lasers over the last year: another Thunder Nova 35 and most recently a Bogong Fiber JPT 50 watt laser.
There sure is a learning curve with the fiber machine and I love it. We should always be learning. I have also built my own Laser/woodworking shop for all this hot mess I have now. We built a 3000 sqft shop which contains a design room where the three lasers live and a real woodworking shop where we mill our own wood from our land and craft it into something unique. We have upgraded most of our tools to commercial grade hardware.
And with all this going on, Alisha still continues her day jobs as Engineers for Chevron in addition to the ultimate side hustle. She went from just running a laser by herself to including the entire family and integrating multiple tools. Her son is a welder for the Air Force and provides that aspect. Her husband is a woodworker and runs our sawmill and the other woodworking tools. And her daughter is an assembler and is very creative. Not only has this created an extra income stream but it’s created an incredible bond for the entire family!
Pate Ranch
Alisha owns 75 acres outside of Houston Texas in New Ulm, TX. According to her, this was the best investment they have ever made! They purchased it 6 years ago and never dreamed that they would build a home and a dream shop on it. But if you work hard for them, dreams do become reality.
This is now our dedicated shop for the side hustle. We started with nothing here. Stayed in a tent for 2 weekends, upgraded to a new RV that we stayed in for a year until we decided where we wanted our home. We have about 23 head of cattle that keep it mowed for us. We work hard all day long and enjoy a nice beer by the firepit after dawn. We love God and our Country and cherish relationships and experiences.
And very recently they had a little cute addition to the ranch! Meet Cinnamon!
What inspires you?
I absolutely love the design side of this work and also love teaching others how to do it and helping them succeed. I got a computer science undergrad because I like creating digital greeting cards back in the mid-1990’s. I loved it and I could design all day long. That is what inspires me to be creative. I am always thinking: what can I do in the software to make something cool and unique. I am very happy with the growth that my side hustle has had to date. It really has far exceeded my expectations. Right now I am in a good sustainable state with my day job and side hustle. I honestly have about as much as I can handle. I plan on keeping it at this state until I retire from my day job or another round of layoffs come around! As mentioned, I like teaching others in a way that makes it easy to understand. As an engineer, I work with other engineers that over-complicate explanations of things. I try to dummy that down and make it understandable for the common person. Helping others feeds my bucket.
Examples of favorite projects
Alisha loves working with the wood from her land. They have about 60 acres of Texas Red Cedar and her projects come out absolutely gorgeous.
Love working with our own Red Cedar. It is so pretty when done. It really pops.
My husband mills it and we then dry it in our kiln. After that we engrave it and seal it with some of our favorite finishes. I have done some really pretty work with it. I think my most favorite was when my daughter built a bench with my husband for her FFA Agriculture Mechanics project. She built it from a tree. It was great to watch that and then I got the honor of engraving it for the family that purchased it. They donated the bench to a foundation of a young man that I knew whom died and has since been an inspiration for community outreach on teaching youth to raise animals. I was so nervous to not mess it up. I only had one shot to get it right. Being that I knew the young man I actually cry a bit every time I make something with his name on it.
It’s a beautiful thing to create something with your own hands that has so much meaning to you and your community…
As for PiBurn projects, a picture is worth a thousand words!
How Alisha found the PiBurn laser rotary attachment
We are thrilled to have our PiBurn rotary in Alisha’s hands. In her words, this is how she came about the PiBurn:
I found PiBurn through discussions that I started to hear about this new laser rotary attachment on the market. I already had 2 laser rotaries from another vendor that we ok. I am always a person that is open to the next thing and newer technology so I thought why not give it a try.
I am glad I did. I really like the PiBurn 3.0.
I plugged it into a new Thunder 35 as it was my second job on the machine and whipped out 35 cups for a client with ease. It’s a great product that I am willing to put my brand behind. I have done over 600 cups in the last year with the Pi Burn 3.0 without a hiccup. Love it!
And recently, she ordered another PiBurn, the PiBurn 4!
For Alisha, the less adjusting and less time she has to spend with set up for each cup means more productivity and more product moving out the door! Also, the PiBurn helps her save on material costs by consistently pumping out tumblers without those costly mistakes that other rotaries lead to – throwing away messed-up tumblers is like throwing money out the window. PiBurn makes this a thing of the past.
Alisha. Thank you for being a leader in your field and not just following your dreams, but helping others follow theirs! Thank you for inspiring others to start and grow their business. Thank you for helping out fellow makers with burning questions about their lasers.
And of course, thank you for being a PiBurner!
Happy PiBurning!
Len and Stan
