Patrick Jreijiri shares his journey in product design, mechanical engineering, entrepreneurship, and growing his freelance product development company. He discusses challenges he overcame like competing with cheaper labor abroad and the loneliness of remote work. Patrick also provides insights on processes like prototyping early and drawing inspiration from different engineering fields.
Main Topics:
Patrick's background and discovery of his passion for inventions
Experiences starting companies and failed product development projects
Challenges of entrepreneurship like estimating costs and timelines
Automating processes to improve operations dramatically
Insights on remote work and deciding to hire contractors vs employees
About the guest: Patrick Jreijiri is an accomplished entrepreneur and engineering professional with extensive experience in business development, mechanical engineering, and product design. He currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Jiri, a company dedicated to creating innovative solutions in the tech industry. With a strong background in engineering and a passion for technology, Patrick has successfully navigated the challenges of starting and growing his own business, and his insights into remote work, product development, and entrepreneurship make him a valuable guest for the Being An Engineer podcast.
The Being An Engineer podcastis a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Patrick Jreijiri shares his journey in product design, mechanical engineering, entrepreneurship, and growing his freelance product development company. He discusses challenges he overcame like competing with cheaper labor abroad and the loneliness of remote work. Patrick also provides insights on processes like prototyping early and drawing inspiration from different engineering fields.
Main Topics:
Patrick's background and discovery of his passion for inventions
Experiences starting companies and failed product development projects
Challenges of entrepreneurship like estimating costs and timelines
Automating processes to improve operations dramatically
Insights on remote work and deciding to hire contractors vs employees
About the guest: Patrick Jreijiri is an accomplished entrepreneur and engineering professional with extensive experience in business development, mechanical engineering, and product design. He currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Jiri, a company dedicated to creating innovative solutions in the tech industry. With a strong background in engineering and a passion for technology, Patrick has successfully navigated the challenges of starting and growing his own business, and his insights into remote work, product development, and entrepreneurship make him a valuable guest for the Being An Engineer podcast.
The Being An Engineer podcastis a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Patrick Jreijiri:
first prototype as much as you can early on because if you get towards the end and that's when you start your prototype, you're too late
Aaron Moncur:
Hello, and welcome to the being an engineer Podcast. Today we are thrilled to speak with Patrick Jreijiri, who is an accomplished entrepreneurial and engineering professional with extensive experience in business development, mechanical engineering and product design. He currently serves as the founder and CEO of Jiri, a company dedicated to creating innovative solutions in the tech industry. With a strong background in engineering and a passion for technology. Patrick has successfully navigated the challenges of starting and growing his own business, and his insights into remote work, product development and entrepreneurship. Make him a valuable guest for the being an engineer podcast. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Thank you, Aaron for having me. I've been waiting for this.
Aaron Moncur:
Terrific. Alright, So Patrick, what made you decide to become an engineer?
Patrick Jreijiri:
Well, like any other kid that grew up playing with Legos and watching anime Gundam albatross or the robots on on those cartoon shows, you would, you'd end up wanting to go into robotics. And that was the thing that pushed me towards mechanical engineering. I went to school, and I started taking some robotics courses, and I hated it.
Aaron Moncur:
Really? Yeah,
Patrick Jreijiri:
I had, it wasn't what I expected. I know that I expected just a lot of math. And I didn't really enjoy it. But I enjoyed something that's closer to it, which was mechatronics. And it's the combination of mechanical and electronics. So I started doing more of that. And I had an amazing professors that he had a big passion for it, shout out to him. He has been he he transferred that passion to me as well. And I really enjoyed it. And I've been working since then with a
Aaron Moncur:
terrific. Alright, so can you share a little bit about your journey through product design, mechanical engineering, mechatronics through starting your company, Jiri, and then maybe tell us a little bit about about what you do at your company?
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yeah, for sure. I started them back in college. I was I had a friend that was telling me that he started taking some contract work of what is that? I grew up in Lebanon and in Lebanon. If you want to do mechanical engineering, it means that you are doing HVAC. 95% of graduates go work in HVAC, whether they were in Lebanon, or the Gulf or Europe or anywhere else. And so when when I heard that there's something else. Hmm. Okay, that is interesting. I knew that I wanted to do robotics before. And I wanted to do something other than HVAC. My dad was an HVAC, I didn't enjoy it. I wanted to just go against the flow. And that's my character. Just sometimes I just want to go against the flow just because it's so just for fun. Yes. And so I I started doing that and I checked, attract different places where I can work and do my internships that has nothing to do with HVAC. I worked in aluminum foundry, I worked in a company that creates and burns, conveyor belts, and palletizers and D palletizers. And I even worked in a car mechanic shop. Just because I wanted to do things with my own hands. I wanted to try things out, see how things work, how to, how to fix them, and all of that. And from there, I started taking more internships like that. And then when I graduated, I started the while before I graduated, I'm gonna go a little bit deeper than just the engineering. I was going through a hard time in my personal life, and that made me not do very well in school. So, back then I started thinking, Okay, I'm not doing very well here. Should I turn to something like psychology or something else because I like talking to people. I like helping people. But the thing that happened is, that's a very long arc that we can talk about. or anyone that wants to talk about it can reach out to me. But I was with some friends and staying the staying the night at the weekend. And they asked me hey, Patrick, do you want us to play? Like, yeah, sure. So we started praying. And then one of the guys there, he said, Patrick, I want to tell you something, God wants to tell you that, he's going to use your inventions. And for me, just being not being a religious person, just more of a spiritual, I know that there's someone out there, but nothing more than that. I took that as a confirmation for myself to go into that direction of inventions. And that has set my trajectory for the rest of my life. I'm basically, and I was 20 years old. Now, I'm 3035, almost 36 in July. And I've taken that word, and I've lived by it since then. But the problem is, when I finished, I had an opportunity to work with a company that works with leadership development, and helps young people and business man and entrepreneurs and everything on how to develop their characters, their productivity, and all of that. They I was offered a position there, I worked with them for a year, a little bit less than a year and a half. Now, actually, I did that less than two years. And I hated it. Because I had to do sales, I had to do something that was not inventing stuff. And, but I learned a lot from it. I learned marketing, I learned processes, I learned sales. For me, one plus one is equal to That was my sales technique. So if you, I tell you what it is, you should know that this is the best thing ever. And if you don't buy, there's something wrong with you. And that didn't work very well at all, as you can imagine. But I learned a lot from I learned a lot from it, when it comes to sales, and it's nice and all of that. And from the edge. But there's always the first question, and my and the course that I was giving. What is your dream? And we start that first chapter, we started there. And from there, we start putting goals. So from there, we continue over the next six, six months. One time I was interviewing a friend of mine doing trying to sell him the course. It said, Patrick, what is your dream? I just took a moment. Wait a second. That is a deep question that I probably haven't fully thought about before. And I said, I want to have my own shop, where I have my laptop. I designed things. I build them, I prototype them, and I sell either do it for people or do it for myself, said yeah, why aren't you doing that? So that's a good question. And so and so from the edge, it wasn't like it was just a couple of months after that, I quit. And I started doing what I wanted to do for at this time. And I started and 2015 in January 2015 I started taking projects. I had my first project that got published everywhere. It's a shoe that uses shoe that uses magnets for cushioning. It was called 2016 Moonwalker. It wasn't a really amazing product. And we designed it we had prototypes and everything. It was amazing. The magnets were a little bit too strong for the Chinese women trying to build the prototype in China. And so they were telling us we needed to have man to come and pull off the pull off the shoes off of the work tables because work tables work was funny but it got on Indiegogo they got $200,000 funding it got into 50 different articles and magazines and it got on science.com It got Tom playboy.com You name it but well because of lack of good management the project died all of my hopes died I thought that Oh wow. I'm starting like this and it's gonna I'm hitting the jackpot from day one. It's gonna be amazing.
Aaron Moncur:
I have a question about these shoes that the magnets in them where they're like two opposing magnets so that when when they were compressed, that's where the the dampening where the cushion came from. Were was different. Okay, got it. That was That's really interesting. out, there
Patrick Jreijiri:
was six millimeter gap between the Okay, and I got the footprint or the pressure map of a foot and tried to place profit magnets and the places where the foot pushes the most. So it was it was pretty interesting. I didn't get to try them. I know where the prototype is right now I lost all contacts with the original client. But yeah, I wish I can have my hands on them. Anyone that's listening. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:
To try them on. No, never. Oh, bomber shoot, that
Patrick Jreijiri:
would have been so fun. Yes, but I was told that walking in them is really amazing. That's what I was told by my dad.
Aaron Moncur:
I'm so curious to experience that. Yeah. Wow.
Patrick Jreijiri:
If I receive them, I'll try them and mail them to you.
Aaron Moncur:
Okay, I'm gonna hold you to that. Everyone. You heard it here. It's a promise. Yeah. Yes. So that that brings up an interesting point. We just had an event here at Pipeline last week called PDX product development Expo. And one of the presenters. Ian McEachern, who's been a guest a couple of times here on the podcast, talked about this really cool, artificial heart development project that he was on where they developed. I mean, they went through the full process, they developed a functional artificial heart in about a year. And he didn't go into why. But he mentioned that the engineering team did everything right, the product worked as advertised. But it never really saw the light of day and never became an actual product. And that's something that happens, right? Your story is the same thing. Engineering did everything right. But for whatever reason, you know, there are probably a myriad of different reasons out there for why these things happen. The product just it doesn't go anywhere. How did that? I mean, how did that feel to you?
Patrick Jreijiri:
Oh, it's very disheartening. And it's not the last time that happened, and happens over and over and over. I was working on this project. It was I started from scratch on a company hired me. It was a Canadian company. They hired me to do to design or at least to lead the team that would design a robot that builds prefab houses. And we designed that we designed the whole thing. When we were ready to start building it, the what was needed has had changed. And it wasn't communicated to me properly. And then we had to scrap the part of the whole project. And we had spent around seven or eight months working on it. Oh, painful. Yes. And can you imagine you have a couple of trailers, they show up to your land. And then a couple of trailers of panels and robot that the trailers would attach to them to each other, like a transformer opens up and starts picking up those panels and putting them in place, you need only two people on site, just an operator and manager basically. And you can run it 24/7 with you. And that would build the whole house. And the plan was to build the house in seven days. So imagine you can show up by a piece of land. And then take whatever time it needs to build the banners off site. And then when everything shows up on site, you have seven days and the whole thing is ready to move in. Amazing. Yeah. So they they scrapped the project. And I was really bummed because it was one of the best project I've worked on. And one of the best companies and best teams that I've worked with. But they just got cancelled, and it didn't work out eventually.
Aaron Moncur:
Yeah. Well, shoot. Yeah, I've been on projects like that as well. I spent almost two years working on a medical device, right towards the beginning of my career and that one ended up not not going anywhere. It's disheartening. Like you say, when that happens, let me ask you a little bit more about starting your business. So that's, I mean, that's no small thing to start a business. What were some of the obstacles that you faced in the beginning and how did you overcome them?
Patrick Jreijiri:
I started my business you can say twice because I started in 2015 and I was working as a freelancer. Back then I was still in Lebanon and trying to build prototypes in Lebanon was very difficult. Getting good internet was the because it was very challenging. Working from home was very challenging because no one took you seriously. So it was pretty difficult from that side. But also one of the main challenges as an entrepreneur and especially working remotely, is the loneliness of it. Because it become, you're working on your laptop all day long. And you don't have those interactions with other people in your in the office, which is why I predict that complete remote work is not going to work completely. There is going to be eventually the word is going to settle to something either hybrid or fully back into the office. I know a lot of people are excited about remote working and all of that. But not everyone is built for that. People will start asking to go back to the office because those interactions that you get with your fellow employees, someone passing by just saying hi, meeting someone or bumping into someone at the watercooler or having lunch together with someone else that would that build up your social battery, whether you are an introvert or extrovert, you need some sort of that interaction.
Aaron Moncur:
I agree 100%.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yeah, and you otherwise, you have to be very diligent on making sure that you have a good support group. And you have a very good group of people that you hang out with regularly. And back then I didn't have that in Lebanon. And so I work slack that for two years to three years. And then I moved to the US, I was burnt out, I didn't want to work by myself anymore. I didn't want to do freelance because also working in Lebanon is a fairly expensive country, compared to the rest of third world countries. And I was always competing with people from Turkey, from India, from Pakistan, where they can charge$5 An hour or $10 an hour and live like kings. While if I charge 2530 $35 an hour, it wasn't enough. And so I lost I lost a lot of clients because of that, because they were looking for a cheaper job option. And when usually when people in the US are looking abroad, they are looking for a cheaper option. And so I was at a disadvantage from the get go. But I still had some awesome projects, I learned a lot, I got to meet a lot of new people a lot of new ideas. And I built a fairly good upper profile. At the end of it. I had five over five stars 100% job success rate. And and every time they come up with a new badge, I would ask them like, Hey, do I get that badge? Oh, yeah, your profile qualifies for that. So I just get it. I don't have to work for it.
Aaron Moncur:
So that was the first time I guess you started your company. And then you mentioned a second time is that after moving to the US?
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yes, I moved to the US. So I didn't want to have I don't want to do that. Again. I wanted to be working in an office nine to five, like regular people at least have a steady income, at least so I can support my family. And I found I found this company here in Waco, it was growing at were as a very, very old company. I think they started in 1960s. And I started working with them. And it was amazing. I was hired. I went to the interview as a drafter. I was applying for everything from CEO to mechanic. And the only people that replied to me are these people and I went there. The job was a drafting position. And when they knew that I was a mechanical engineer. They hired me as a mechanical engineer. Not with the pay for mechanical engineer, but at least. Yeah, yes, exactly. And I started working with them. Eventually, they fired the other guy that I that I was supposed to be helping. And they told me Patrick, now you're in charge. Oh, wow. It was just two months and and I was still at done. And and so they were like okay, do what you got to do. You need to hire people hire people, that department, whatever that you want.
Aaron Moncur:
Wow. That's a lot of responsibility very early on.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yes. And so I started hiring people and I pulled a few people from the shop floor so I ended up with people that are someone that was a machinist or mechanic Engineers, and two people from the shop floor one that was there for 30 years or more, and one that is very good and electrical and hydraulics and has studied all of the, all of those systems of the company. And so I pulled them and, and that way they were going through every job that I draw or anyone on my team draws. And they would give me they would give us feedback. And that way, we're able to capture a lot of the tribal knowledge that was on the shop floor onto paper. Because that wasn't being done before whatsoever. And we started building processes and building trainings for the shop floor, especially for the newer, newer hires, because they start getting to a point where everyone is close to retiring, close to the end of their life, or they just want to do something else. And so the the turnover of employees was very high. So we were tasked and building a training for them. And the guy that we got shout out to him his name is Rudy is one of the most amazing guys you can ever meet. He built amazing trainings for them. And it was it was drastic on how it changed the shop floor. And from there I built during those two years, I built systems for them. I had them move from paper folders to everything digitized. I helped them change some designs and standardize some designs at 16 different configurations. I with changing just certain designs, we took them down to only two. And while a lot and training and onboarding new people. And with all those changes, I was able to save them I did the math, I was saving them $2.4 million year over year, it was one point the first year another 1.2 in the second year. And then from there, it was 2.4 refuge every every year.
Aaron Moncur:
You were a good investment.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yes. And still wasn't getting paid the an engineer salary, I had still got some amazing raises, which nothing to laugh at. I wasn't even close to the engineering salary of my area. And when I told them like, hey, I need a higher raise. Well Patrick, we don't care if you go make millions, this is our final offer. Okay. Oh
Aaron Moncur:
My goodness, that's terrible.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yeah. It was an amazing experience. For me. I learned a lot. And I knew it was coming eventually. And I knew that it was going to come to an end because I started feeling like I need to be doing by what I used to do, because I enjoy that more and less stress, less politics, less issues happening between shopfloor and managers and me being stuck in the middle and all of that. So I started taking projects on the side while I was working there, starting around October of 2019. As I was taking no action before, around August 2019, I started taking side projects, and they were pretty decent amount. And I when I when I activated my Upwork profile, I saw what I used to charge back in Lebanon. So I you know what, if I want to get any project here, I better really get something really wow. for it. So I doubled whatever I used to charge back in Lebanon, and it was also double of what I was getting. For my salary. Well then, then I added some like, you know, since I'm doing this, why not? So I put a number that was only imaginary for me. And I got a project. Oh, okay. So I started working on it. And then I got another project and the third project while I was still working at that company, and so getting towards October, November of that year, and such feeling, you know what, I think we might be able to pull this off. I talked with my wife. We prayed about everything. And I said, I think I'm gonna quit on my two year anniversary. Because learning from the older generation that's the right thing to do. If you want to quit you stay for two years now for three months, like how it's happening these days. And so, I, we did our bills, we checked our expenses, we made sure that our expenses are as low as possible. And I found out that I have a runway of four or five months with just those projects and whatever we had saved up. So like, okay, you don't want to give me the raise, I quit. Here's my two weeks notice. And I'm leaving.
Aaron Moncur:
Now, I want to ask when, when you put your two weeks notice in? Did they were they surprised? Do you think they were thinking in the back of their heads? He's not he's not ever gonna quit? You know, we'll give him a little bump and pay and he'll stay? Or where do you think they were kind of expecting it at that point,
Patrick Jreijiri:
I think they were expecting it because the new manager that I got, I really bumped heads with them. And I. And so probably that was part of it as well. And we, I always called people on their beers. And people don't like that apparently. I had to, I had to move on. Especially like your work, your work in engineering, and you work and CAD models and everything I was able to win an Excel sheet, just excel sheet, I'm not expert in coding, but I was able to build an Excel sheet that is used by the salesman, where they go and build all of the configurations that they want with the client on the spot. It goes to a database, it pulls up all the prices for all the parts or the components, everything that they need. And it gives you a price right there on the spot. It will be more of a quote or like preliminary quote, definitely, it has no Max who procurement and quoting and engineering for anything that is outside of the ordinary because we have a sensor. And that was really stunning. The phrases stuff, which I don't mind, there are some people that uses those, whatever that they were selling them for, like daily, and they really needed some extra features and bells and whistles. And so I just needed to be able to capture all of that, and not having to rely six months in advance or have it six months down the road, then find out that all this new stuff that was to go with it. And I even built a way to connect it to SolidWorks and build a CAD model based on the Excel sheet. And gives it gives us all the all the drawings. And just one Cliff basically. And that had reduced would have reduced the process of processing any order from six months to two days, if any?
Aaron Moncur:
Well, sounds like you automated a large part of the entire process for them.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yes. Other and other than the actual manufacturing. I automated. That's very cool. Yeah. They said, now sorry, we're not gonna do it. Because if you leave, we don't know. We don't have anyone to take care of it. Like, Oh, so you're expecting me to leave. You don't want to train anyone. And I been working on this for the past six months, especially that I'm a person that wants to improve always improve processes and everything. So if we do this, it helps the company greatly. And that's where I was going. And when they said that oh not okay. He's like two weeks notice.
Aaron Moncur:
You said something earlier about wanting to stay for two years. And having learned that from the previous generation. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your mindset in that, I don't know call it loyalty, call it dedication, call it whatever you want. But can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think that's it's rare these days, that you find someone who's willing to stick it out for some minimum amount of time which is not a short amount of time I'm in two years is that's a pretty significant amount of time. So tell us a little bit more about that and what was going through your head during those two years.
Patrick Jreijiri:
I I heard from people older than me that here in the US that the average or the good thing to do is to stick it out for two years because if you want to go get another job, it's a little bit more difficult to do To get another job if they see you helping a lot, and that was pre pandemic, mentality, I know now it's completely different. If after two months, if you that this isn't gonna work, you just quit and go find something else. And it was first, some sort of a loyalty, more of it thinking about myself that it will look better for my resume. Because I don't want to be hopping a lot. And so if I want to go and get another job somewhere else after I finished from that company, it will be easier to say, Yeah, I stuck out for two years. So I can do it again. I'm not gonna leave halfway through it. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:
I think that says a lot. I mean, as an employer, myself, when I see that engineers have been moving from job to job, you know, six months a year, that's definitely a red flag for me. And I think that can be difficult to overcome. So I, I congratulate you for being willing to put the time in and, and stick it on course, I'm not suggesting that, you know, if someone's in a extremely toxic environment, they should just stick it out. But it sounds like anyway, I I, I think that's, it says a lot about you and your character that you are able to do that. Thank you. All right, well, let me take a very short break here and share with the listeners that our company pipeline design and engineering, develops new and innovative manufacturing processes for complex products, and then implements them into manual fixtures or fully automated machines to dramatically reduce production costs and improve production yields for OEMs. Today, we have the privilege of speaking with Patrick, today, GT. And we're talking a little bit about his journey to creating his own company, and some of the background experiences he had. Before that. Let's talk a little bit more about product development. So when you create a new product, obviously, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome a lot of obstacles. Can you describe the process that you follow a your company, Jerry, to take a product from concept all the way through market ready?
Patrick Jreijiri:
This is the million dollar question. A lot of people ask me, why don't you set up processes for the volume to hire people to do this, just when you get to a point where you need to be creative, you cannot put a process on creativity. But you can control a few things or whatever thing that you can control, I usually start by getting the needs and the wants from the client. And from there, I can determine the deciding factor or the size of battery, the torque of the motor the size of the device. And the forces that are on there. I pick I see what is the deciding factor. And what what cannot be changed whatsoever. We need this to be running this type of motor because we need this type of torque. So I started there, and I started building around it. I started getting building enclosure, finding the right batteries, the right sensor, the right component, the right hardware, and from there, I slept, buttoning everything around with answers growing with that thing, that deciding factor as the heart of it.
Aaron Moncur:
Brilliant. You mentioned how it can be difficult to put a process around creativity I've found I found similar things in my business. Nevertheless, there are some processes that we do have in place. Some of those processes come around defining budgets and schedules for the projects, which which you know, we do our best to hit but it's a creative process, right? It's innovation. It doesn't doesn't always happen. Do you find that? It's it's pretty easy for you to at the beginning of a project estimate how long that project is going to take, how many hours it's going to take what the costs are going to be? Or are you typically providing your customers with kind of a like a rough ballpark or maybe a range.
Patrick Jreijiri:
I usually offer them at range. But there was a client a year and a half ago, they asked me to do something for them. Something very complicated. I told them it's going to be around 70 hours. It's going to be plus or minus a little bit. They said okay, I stopped working on it. I finished it. I checked back my report. I found out that I worked 60 and a half hours Sorry 69 and a half hours Oh, wow,
Aaron Moncur:
are you ready? Yes,
Patrick Jreijiri:
I was only 30 minutes. And the more I worked in, the more I work on new projects, I start understanding my capabilities and my ability to finish on time and how much each project requires. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:
Is, is Upwork, your primary place to find new work? How are you advertising and finding new jobs? Well,
Patrick Jreijiri:
I have a very interesting case, because the more I advertise, and the more I market myself that as a client I get, the less I advertised, the more clients I get, which is
Aaron Moncur:
fascinating. Why is that you think?
Patrick Jreijiri:
I think it comes down to my trusting God. And it says, not to me to say, I provide, I provide for you. It's not what you do. It's not my own stance is when I when I provide for you. And seriously, and I was getting projects, I was getting six, seven projects at a time. There was a, there were some weeks where I would my record have been seven, sales meeting in one week in a span of one week or five business days. And the average sales call was 13 minutes. I timed all of it just being curious. And I got all of them. And I and just 13 minutes, and I didn't apply to any of those jobs, just people that reached out to me.
Aaron Moncur:
Amazing. Wow. Yeah.
Patrick Jreijiri:
And when I started doing marketing, and SEOs and all of that everything dried up. I'm not saying that should be everyone's strategy. I'm just say, This is what has been working with me. And this is my testimony, when it comes to finding new work.
Aaron Moncur:
Fascinating. Okay, so you've you've been doing Jiri here in the US, since 2019, is about five years, something like that. I'm assuming there are times when you have so much work that you can't do it all by yourself, how do you handle those situations?
Patrick Jreijiri:
I want to, I want to keep my costs very low. So I hired contractors, and said, our full time salary employees who choose. And so that way, whenever I have a project, I get the contractor, I hired them for that specific project. And then when that project finishes, they move on with their life, and move on with my life with no strings attached. And that way, I'm not paying extra overhead. And whatever work that they do is actually generating income for me. Because usually, as you know, engineer, the engineering department is usually an overhead. But I tried to circumvent that and make the engineering department or whatever engineering services or product design services that I offer to be the generating the generating aspect of the company. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:
I'm hearing a lot of similarities between Jeri and what pipeline was back in the beginning. We were the same way. I only hired contractors, I didn't want the, I guess the liability. full time employees. I guess for me, when that changed is when there was just so much work and a history of so much work that looking at numbers, it made sense to hire people full time, it was actually less expensive that way, what until you have that that, you know that history of always enough work, then I hear what you're saying it can be challenging to commit to hiring people full time. Yeah.
Patrick Jreijiri:
And I'm, I'm with you, I want to be I think I want to be where you are right now. I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure if I want to be dealing with teams and people that big and with multiple teams. Sometimes I think I just want to be dealing with just myself, some clients, maybe a contractor here and there. And that's it. And sometimes I'm like, what if I grow this thing and start making millions off? Just enough for me and my family on vacations enough to buy a few rental properties, have some passive income and call it good?
Aaron Moncur:
Yeah, I'm laughing because I was right there. I remember going to lunch with a friend of mine, you know, way back in the day. This is the first year or so my A business and him asking you, why don't you hire employees? And I said, I don't want to worry about anyone else. I'm happy, just me. I never want to have anyone else. I just want it to be me. It's much easier that way. And, you know, I guess things things changed. As I look back now, there's no way I would want to do this by myself anymore. And I'm not saying, you know, that's going to be the case for you, or that's going to be the case for anyone else out there, who's kind of freelancing right now. It was just interesting how things changed over time.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yeah. I'm just following the flow and see where it leads. And if I may have to hire people later on, I'll hire people. It's not such a big deal.
Aaron Moncur:
Yeah, there you go. Well, Patrick, let me ask you. One more. One more question. Before we sign off here. What is one, or maybe two things that you have been able to do over the years to accelerate the speed of your engineering, your product development, you know, what are some pro tips that you found useful in just accelerating, accelerating the speed of these projects,
Unknown:
Testing and prototyping, test and prototype? Everything at every single step, because you can design as much as you want on your CAD software, or electronic software. And when you get the physical parts, it's going to mess up, and it's not going to behave, how you thought it's going to be no matter what you do, no matter how many times you revise it, or how many times you show it to people, it's gonna give you issues. And so this prototype as much as you can, early on, because if you get towards the end, and that's when you start your prototype years too late, because you'll have to go back and change a lot of a lot of stuff.
Aaron Moncur:
Wise, wise words, and I couldn't have put it any better myself. Okay. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for for being on the show today. How can people get in touch with you?
Patrick Jreijiri:
They can reach out to me on LinkedIn, my name Patrick Jreijiri, or through my they can go to my website is www.Jiri dot tech. It's J i r i dot tech. I tell people Jiri is like Siri, but with a J so they can remember it. Or they can email me, Patrick Patrick dot Jiri.tech.
Aaron Moncur:
Wonderful. All right, Patrick, anything else that we should talk about that we haven't covered? Before we sign off? Um,
Patrick Jreijiri:
Yeah, the. for engineers, I advise them to always work and different fields and not get stuck in one certain field. Because you can always draw inspiration from different things. from different fields you can think of, you can start implementing stuff that you learn in your automotive experience into your consumer products or something from your consumer product experience into the industrial machinery, and start coming up with simpler designs, because the consumer products focuses on costs. But the industrial focuses on robustness, and they don't think about cost as much as the consumer product field. And so you can be learning things from from each other. You can find the controller that you use in your small components that you can actually use in your industrial machines doesn't always have to be a PLC that cost you an arm and a leg. I know in some cases, no, you have to do that. But in some cases, you can, you can get something that is cheaper than a few$1,000 You can probably get something for 50 100 bucks and do the exact same work.
Aaron Moncur:
Well said. Great advice. And Patrick, thank you again so much for being on the show today.
Patrick Jreijiri:
Thank you, Aaron. That was really, really nice to be here.
Aaron Moncur:
I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures complemented with product design and r&d services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online visit the wave dot engineer Thank you for listening.
