ALISHA PATE Straight Shooter...continued

added benefit for Alisha is working with the organization itself. She loves Folds of Honor’s mission and feels privileged to help them succeed mightily. She highly recommends laser creators look into such organizations and what they need as the demand is there. Alisha shared with me that the award and trophy market is vast, and there is room for everyone at the table.

As for the Pate Ranch presence out in the marketplace, you can find it in several places: an Etsy shop for digital designs, a part of the business that she loves, which provides 10-15% of annual revenues.

Mix of Business

The real estate orders are handled through Google docs, where her clients can sign in, pick their product and font, include the message, and then she receives the order. Not a website or anything fancy. And this piece accounts for 30-35% of her revenue stream.

Finally, Pate Ranch has Shopify, but it is skeletal at best. However, Alisha swears that this is the year it will become fully populated and operational. Really!

All of this proves you don’t have to have anything big and fancy to be successful. Notice that over 50% of the annual revenues come from the simple Google Doc setup.

they’ve been partners ever since. They for each other and are building their an engineer’s thoughtful and thorough an engineer, too!

They recently moved into their barndominium, built (and are still working on) in the out of Houston. Having both worked suburbia, they had a goal to move out a life surrounded by creeks, trees, water,

Alisha says James is a great sounding strategies for growing the enterprise. both strategically and materially, as he for the enterprise. They source wood some projects, including having a While there, I saw the piece of cedar mantle for their great room fireplace out the picture of it now resting in its sounding board for ideas and He’s a part of the business, he also does woodworking wood from their property for kiln to prepare it for use. cedar that would become the fireplace drying in the kiln. Check its place of honor!

On the home front, Alisha and James, have been together for over 30 years, married 26. The couple met when James approached Alisha at the gym as she was working out. “You’re doing the exercise wrong, and I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.” was his opening line, and They continue looking out their future – of course, with thorough approach. Yes, James is barndominium, which they the countryside, 90 minutes worked as engineers and lived in out onto property and build water, and cows!

They have two children, Kyle and Reagan; they are 19 and 20 and both in college at Texas A&M. Kyle is in the Corps of Cadets studying Construction Science, while Reagan is working toward her degree in Petroleum Engineering.

The family gene for entrepreneurship has been passed down to both, as Kyle expresses his creativity in the welding world, and Reagan has her own silversmithing business.

So, what’s with the six lasers? It is an interesting progression. From the first laser, a Glowforge Pro, Alisha quickly knew she needed more capacity. Enter a Mira 9. Still needing capacity, she reached out to Aeon for another laser. It was September 2020, and nothing was available before December. That wouldn’t work, so she researched other options and came upon Thunder USA. After determining which model would best fit her needs, she got fantastic news – it could be delivered (to her dining room!) in