Ep 4: From Idea to Market: The Invention Journey with Brian Fried

I have an idea, man. I've said that a lot of times. I felt that a lot of times I've gotten excited about that a lot of times, a product idea that was going to change the world. I've also heard it a lot running around this crazy world with all these e-comm folks and entrepreneurs that I get to see in these different communities. I hear it all the time, Tim. I have an idea. I've got an invention. I know the secret to making a ton of money with this new product. The problem is most of the time it doesn't work. I've experienced that myself with these product ideas that I had that I thought were going to be great. I couldn't get 'em off the ground, or they were just a giant dumpster fire when I actually tried to launch them, or sometimes even got myself in some legal trouble for some patent infringement and trademark infringement issues.

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Today we're going to be talking about the steps to actually go from this crazy idea, or maybe it's not crazy, but it feels crazy. It's so exciting that you might have to actually turning it into a process that you can move forward with to turn it into a real business. So it's going to be an actionable episode. We've got several steps that we're going to go through with a tried and true and just established veteran in this industry and in this business, taking your idea and turning it into an actual product business that worked. It's going to be a great episode. Please listen to the end and we'll see you on the inside.

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Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Growth Beer podcast. I'm your host, Tim Jordan, and I remember the excitement that I had when I started my e-commerce journey. At the time, I was a full-time firefighter and sitting around the fire hall just thinking about what I was going to do next, my side hustle, my big plan, my big idea. And I kind of accidentally found this e-commerce thing, which eventually led me to the idea of creating little products. And I remember how exhilarating it was. I mean, I was fired up. I was emotionally charged. This is going to be great. I was going to deliver the coolest product to everybody in the world. I was going to make millions, and it was all going to be awesome. And that emotion led me to jumping in headfirst and making some ridiculously big mistakes. The first products that I tried to launch were immense duds.

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They cost me a ton of money. They got me in some legal trouble. It was bad. Now, I'm not trying to scare you. What I'm trying to say is that emotion's good, that gustos good, that motivation can be great, but if we're only running off emotion and not using a process, it can really bite us in the butt. So today as our guest, I have a guy named Brian Fried who is an expert in the process of bringing an idea, a product to life as an invention. So Brian, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, Tim. Thanks for having me. So how many times have you heard people talk about the horror stories of trying to launch a product and bring it to market and it being an absolute failure? Am I the only one?

You're definitely not the only one. There are a lot of people out there with some great ideas. And the question is, when you have that idea, what do you do with it?

And you've been working in this field for a lot of years, right? I think I saw on your website like the early two thousands.

Early two thousands. It's been over 20 years that I've been an inventor and just helping people through navigating, figuring out what to do, what not to do. It's been about 18 plus years at this point.

Wow. And as I look around the interwebs, I see your name titled as the Inventor coach. Is that accurate?

I think so. When people call me, it's like, Hey, coach. I'm like, alright, I'm the coach,

The inventor coach. Yep. Alright. So I know that you've done a lot, right? You've been a consultant, you've helped people walk this process. You've also been an inventor yourself, brought products to market yourself. Do you personally have any horror stories of a terrible product that you tried to launch and it was a giant flop?

Yes, I have. Sometimes you started off saying you're excited because it's for you and you think that it's something that's viable for everybody else without really considering what the market is for it. And that's when you try to figure out is it something that you should work on? You give it a shot, and how much of a risk are you going to take? So that's what is really important to balance out and figure out what to work on, what not to work on. Is it something selfishly for you that you want to see out there? Or is it for a big enough audience? Is it something niche? Are there many of the same type of things that are out there? Is it something that you're making that is taking somebody 2, 3, 4, 5 more steps to do than something simple to do? So these are the things that I think about and I've learned along the way for sure.

And I know you've developed a pretty robust system. You have the 10 steps to taking your product to market, but how did you get started in all this? I know you didn't wake up one day and decide, I'm going to be an adventure coach. I better learn how to do this. What was the genesis to this whole expertise?

I have to say that just growing up, I realized that I was a pretty curious kid. I'd like to see how things were made. Science wasn't my major subject, but just knowing how things work, getting into seeing how things are made, the stories behind them kind of intrigued me. There was a point where I said, you know what? I have some pretty good ideas. I don't know what to do with them just yet, but I know I have them. So I just started to just compile them in my brain. I'm like, you know what? I'm one of those people with that notebook. I'm writing all my ideas down and eventually I'm going to get to it. And I did. And I started to categorize the different ideas that I had and realized which ones had the biggest window of opportunity from a marketing perspective, not a selfish perspective. And that's when I started to press the button on many of them. And as I started to work on them, I had some levels of success to be able to show people that if I can do it, you could do it too. I'm nothing spectacular or special, but that's the kind of journey that I've taken to be able to now be able to help people with their big ideas.

And it's an interesting time to have an idea, especially a product idea. For those of you listening that have heard me on stage somewhere, I talk about this all the time, but commerce basically was done the same way for thousands of years. You built something, you made something, you procured something, you sold it locally, you sold it to your village, your town or your city. And maybe there was a little wholesale, like the East Idiot Trading Company kind of changed some of that. But typically commerce was done the same way for thousands and thousands of years. It's only been in about the last 12 or 15 years that e-commerce changed that. Right? Like myself, just 10 years ago as a firefighter and now I'm sourcing products overseas and I'm taking it straight to consumer, we radically changed the way commerce is done. So for anybody that has an idea, that has a vision of a product, in my opinion, it's never been easier to take to market, but it's also never been easier to do the research, to validation, to do the sourcing, the procurement in my mind. Would you agree with that, that this is the golden hour for inventors?

Absolutely. Tim, when I first started, it was difficult to find a 3D printer and I would have to find a way to be able to make a prototype. Now you have desktop 3D printers, right? Also, when you came up with an idea, when I first started, it was all about getting into brick and mortar stores. These days you don't necessarily have to be in a brick and mortar store to be successful. Some people are happy with residual income, some people are happy with their product, turning it into a full-time job, full-time career. So there's a balance of what it is that you're looking to do. And that's the great thing. And what I love to do is learn about who you are, what your product is, what your goals are, and then kind of figure out where you are right now and then help you to get to where you want to go. And some people are into licensing to earn royalties and other people are into manufacturing, starting their own business and having that more and taking a little bit more ownership of the success or failures of their idea.

It's funny you said take ownership of the failures. Not many people say that, but that is a big part of, so I want to get into something tactical because we can talk theoretically and philosophically and emotionally about this idea of creating your own products for hours, I'm sure. But I know that the listeners would like to hear something tactical because the majority of this audience has an idea where they already have a product that maybe isn't going so well that we should Google better. And I know that your expertise involves a lot of steps that I skipped early on in my product development, inventing and e-commerce journey. And just for the listeners, I have not just sourced products and sold them. I've created inventions from scratch. You can go around the internet and find stuff that I created. I have patents, I have trademarks for that were mildly successful, but I have a lot that sucked.

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Also, more importantly, I have a giant list of ideas that I think are going to be fantastic, but I've never moved forward with 'em because I don't know the appropriate step to take, and I'm scared to spend too much time walking down the wrong road. So from my viewpoint, which is probably similar to the context or the viewpoint of a lot of our listeners, Ryan, let's jump into the tactical steps. What do you tell people as they move forward from this general idea, a napkin with an idea on it to trying to produce something real?

It's interesting because people sometimes come to me and say, Brian, I want to be an inventor. What do I need to do? And then I have some people that come to me with an idea that they've made a prototype, they have a patent, and they're like, it's unique. And they're like, I'm not an inventor. So what is it really? Let's talk about just the general idea. Look, Tim, you are a patent holder and you have a book of ideas yourself. So how did you come up with them? Well, I think the most important thing is to be aware, aware of your surroundings, right? You're sleeping, you wake up, all of a sudden you have your alarm clock, you're getting out of bed, you're in the bathroom, you're doing something in the bathroom, you're using things, you're going to the kitchen. There's kitchen gadgets and tools and things in the refrigerator.

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Then you're out the door. Maybe it's public transportation, maybe you're taking a school bus, maybe you're driving your kid to school. Whatever it is, there's things that are going around in your daily routine that you're just going through the motions. But there's people like you and I and pretty much everybody out there that does come up with something that says, you know what? I don't like the way this is being done. Or maybe if this was done this way or maybe there's nothing at all, and you are the person that stops to say, I'm going to do something about it. So you capture that idea how quickly, Tim, you come up with something and poof, it's gone. Whether it's in life or coming up with an invention idea, whatever, it's like it's gone. But a lot of people also come up with ideas from being in their career, their job. You see things and maybe you want to make things efficient or just find a way to plug in something that doesn't exist. So just the most important

Thing. Wait, lemme pause you for a second. Yes, sorry. If that's all right. And it sounds like we just defined two things, an invention and an inventor. And it sounds to me, correct me if I'm wrong, what you're saying is most inventions are the solution to a problem, something that is more efficient, something that it doesn't actually have to be like a problem. The problem to be solved could be something that's entertaining like a kid's toy, the better mousetrap. So an invention, I guess for loose purposes could be defined as the solution to a problem or the solution to a need. And what you said was interesting. An inventor is someone that stops and thinks about how to solve that problem because it sounded to me like you said, everybody runs across something at some point in their life that could be done better, that could be done more efficiently. So we're all looking at opportunities, but the inventor is the one that takes a step back, breathes for a minute and says, okay, how do I solve the problem? Did I get all that right?

It sounds about right. Look, everybody can have different interpretations of what that all means, but I would say that I agree with you there, Tim. Being aware of what's going on, you're capturing that idea. You're evaluating the challenge, you're coming up with a solution. Look, whether it's an invention or anything in life, when I have a problem and I want to tell you about it, I'm coming up with a solution at the same time. That's the way that I've kind of trained my brain and I train other people to do that too. Don't just give me your wine list, give me the solution to it. So I would say absolutely, but then there's the people that do something about it, stop, say, I got to do something. If I'm not going to do it, somebody else will. And then you're going to have a woulda, coulda, shoulda story somewhere down the line. So absolutely,

I feel like my old buddy, Sean Green, would love what you just said about not just having a problem but creating a solution. And I know that we could spend the entire episode now talking about just those definitions. I don't want to get hung up there, but that's going to stick with me. Just the definitions of those two things. That's interesting. I've never thought about it that way, but I love it. So alright, keep going, keep going. Don't want to slow you down here.

Yeah. So I came up with that idea. I stopped in my tracks. I text myself, left myself a voice message, whatever it was to capture it before somebody honked the horn when I cut 'em off and it's gone or they honked whatever it was. So then the most important thing I think besides coming up with the idea, there's obviously a lot of important things. I would say, Tim, that I find a lot of people that are so excited about their idea that it doesn't matter anything else except that this is their idea. They can walk down the aisle of Walmart and not see their idea on the shelf, or they can look on page one of Google and say, oh my gosh, nobody has this product or idea. I'm going to be a gazillionaire. And there's a little bit more to it. A lot of times what people do is they do their search online and they search with their eyes closed.

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You don't want to find it, right? Yeah. That's the emotional side that you mentioned in the beginning is you have to look at an idea as a business research and development going through the steps of building and commercializing your idea or your invention or your business. And that's one thing that I really spend a lot of time on with people is you just came up with an idea, Tim, is this something that you can call your own? Is this something that's going to make you money? Are you going to put your money in and get something out of it? Or is it something like you're going to be happy you have one of these or a few of these, Tim, but is this all bet you want is just to hang a patent on the wall or put it on your desk like I have?

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But I'm just saying there's a lot of reasons why people come up with their ideas, but the most important thing is to search and to get a professional patent search done with a patentability opinion. So they're going to take what you came up with, compare it and see if it's something that you can call your own. Is it something that you're infringing or is it already in the public domain and you can make it and I can make it. Anybody can make it and you're going to be competing like you do on the e-commerce sites and everybody's making or selling the same thing.

So even if you have the greatest invention idea, if you can't protect it, you can't put a motor around it, there's definitely danger in creating it because it might not be exclusive. Right? Yeah. Talk to me about the public domain thing. One of my good friends, rich Goldstein, who's trademark and patent and IP attorney that I personally use and recommend, he talks a lot about finding product ideas by looking at patents. So things that have either fallen off of the protected list, I don't know what the actual terminology is for that, and it become available or looking at patents and then figuring out other versions or other solutions to the same problem that a specific patent's being sold. Do you use patents for research too?

Most of the time between my own ideas and other people that come to me, we're comparing what we came up with to what's already existing. Is it enough of a difference to call our own? Is it something that's over 20 years old that's in the public domain and if we do decide to make it, we could still be successful. There's a lot of ideas that come to me, Tim, that people show me the similar type of product or the same product that's out there, and as long as they're not infringing on somebody else's intellectual property, you can make it. That's why when you go online and you go to Amazon or any of the other e-commerce, you see the same product. Many different ways of being sold, whether it's bundle or the pricing is significantly different. Maybe there's somebody that doesn't have to necessarily invent, but they can take something and commercialize it the way that they want.

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If there's enough of a difference to be able to call their own, then there's an opportunity to get some sort of intellectual property that might give you some more options possibly to manufacture it and have that exclusivity for the time that you own your patent or the rights to it or to license it to earn royalties. Because if I'm going to license it to earn royalties, and we could talk about that. If I'm going to give somebody my intellectual property rights, rent the rights to it, they're going to manufacture it, distribute it, and I'll learn a royalty from it. I'm giving them a competitive advantage in the market. That's why it would be potentially a licensing deal.

Got it. So once we come up with an idea, step one is to do your research, see if it's already protected, see if it is protectable or see if you need to go back to the drawing board for any of those reasons.

Yes. Or stop and wait. Just wait for your next idea. I can't tell you, Tim, how many times I talk to people and we realized that it's pretty much the same thing. They don't necessarily want to go into business and compete or that's just not enough of it, like they wanted some sort of intellectual property. But if it's a same thing, you could take anything you want and buy it and sell it as long as you're not infringing. But for the most part, you want to come up with something unique to be able to have that competitive advantage in the market. For sure.

I once did this YouTube video that was a little bit popular based on the name. It was titled something like, you Can't Polish a Turd. We have these crappy ideas, we have this crappy plan, and we're trying so hard emotionally to make it work that we skirt the edges of what's actually possible with patents and trademarks. We're really trying to polish this turd and maybe sometimes we need to realize it's a turd and just wait for a better idea.

Absolutely. I could tell you, and this is the point I was going to make before Tim, when I go through ideas with people, I help them to realize that they should stop and wait for the next one because you'll come up with another one. If you went through it and you just stopped in your tracks to be able to pull something up to be able to work on it. It's okay if you hit a brick wall, you're in that zone, you'll come up with something again. But to work on something, put your time, money, energy, effort into something that you're going to go in a big circle with a little less money coming out the other way where the tar, no, it's really something that it's not easy inventor to inventor to speak to, but ultimately I let people make that decision to realize that maybe they should just wait for the next one and keep your money in your pocket.

So assuming that we can move on to the next step, right? It's protectable, it's not already protected. We have something with a glimmer of hope here. What's the next step?

I would say that you want to bring it to life. You want to be able to see if it's something that, how it works, how it looks, how it feels, depends on what type of product or idea that you're working on. For me, when I first started, I used to rip things apart that already exist and put 'em together and get as close as I can to a patent. Now you can make CAD files, you have cut and sew type of items. If it's fabric, you have wood, CNC machines, you have metal type of fabrication things. Whatever you can do to get as close as possible to a prototype, to be able to make it real, to see it, use it, feel it, test it, get other people's opinions, feedback advice to know if it's something that you should continue with is something that I like to do. So if it's not something that you could take apart, then it's easy enough to do make CAD file or find a way to be able to make a prototype. If it's something too crazy, not crazy, but I mean that's going to take a lot of money, put it that way. You can even make a 3D animated video. Just something to be able to bring it to life to be able to see it and get some opinion and feedback and then figure out if there's a big enough window of opportunity to continue.

So when you say bring it to life, you're talking about a viability check. You're talking about getting something like just the bare minimum kind of testable, whether it's a 3D rendering or whether it's a 3D printed version or something, right? So bring it to life. You're talking about the alpha phase. You're not even a beta testing yet. You're talking about just minimum viable product.

Absolutely. Look, there's people that come to me in practically every industry or category that you could think of I've been involved with, but I've come up with some simple ideas, Tim. So for me, when during covid there was tough to find paper towel rules and I was cherishing my paper towel rules and anything I had around getting a little crazy, but I started to see that the top of my paper towel rule was disgusting. So I asked other people, my friends and family send me a picture of what your paper towel roll looks like on the top. And it was disgusting. There was all kinds of garbage on there, water dried up, orange juice, chocolate, whatever, tomato sauce. So I realized that it was a big enough problem to say, you know what? There's a lot of people with paper towel rolls. So what I did was I came up with something simple. It's called a paper towel topper. You put this cap into the inner tube of any paper towel roll, and now when your hands are wetter, dirty, boom, you pull it off and now your top of your roll stays clean and dry.

For those of you that are listening to just the audio and you're not seeing the video, what Brian has here are the vertical paper towel holders. And you're right, it's really bad in my workshop. It's just covered in all sorts of nasty stuff and then I wiping my face on it and I'm washing my hands and wiping it. And this just looks like a little acrylic disc essentially that sits on top of this thing. Also, just a shameless plug here. If you're listening to audio, go and subscribe to this podcast on YouTube right now. That way you can see the videos of these as well.

Just a simple idea. It doesn't have to be rocket science, although I have worked on those type of things, but I'm just saying be aware of the things and surroundings. And then that was simple enough to be able to create even out of a cardboard little box to cut it out to visualize what it looks like and then to be able to make a CAD file and then be able to 3D print and test it and see what other people think, and then start to act as if it's going to be out in retail, what it should look like on the shelf and the colors and packaging and all that. And then just kind of go back to where you are and just get those steps accomplished. So I think that bringing it to life is something that's really, really important for yourself and also for other people, and you want to make it real.

And what do you think some of the best practices are for getting opinions? I know people that have come up with a quote invention and they ask their mom, do you like this? And she says, well, of course I like this, honey, you invented it. Or we're asking the wrong people like this may shock you, but I don't wear women's shoes. So if somebody had a new design for women's, I'm probably the wrong person to ask about these women's shoe accessories. Although strangely, I have sold women's shoe accessories on Amazon. So maybe not the best example, but what do you think the best practice or some of the best practices are for determining how you're going to get that feedback and how you're going to get that feedback loop going and do a little bit of validation testing?

If you came to me, Tim, and you asked me what I thought of your idea, I would tell you I love it. It's amazing. No, I'm not saying me, but your friends and family because if they said no to you, you'll be upset with them and they might ruin their relationship with you. So it's great you have some critical family members, I'm sure we all do, but step outside, get a non-disclosure agreement. Have something that says, Hey, if I show you my idea, you're not going to disclose it to anybody without my permission. Okay? That's something that is easy to get, a non-disclosure agreement. The other thing that I like to suggest also, Tim, is if you're at that point where you kind of got that prototype to a good spot, then there's some ways to protect it. You file a provisional patent application and that gives you the right for one year to say that you're patent pending, and while you're exploring the market for one year, you could show it around before that year is done.

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You can convert it to a non-provisional patent application, otherwise known as the utility patent. If it's just ornamental, you could just file a design patent. So there's ways to protect with a non-disclosure agreement or without. And just continue on the path of asking people, step outside of your friends and family, go into a place that you visualize where it could be sold. Ask people their opinion, say, Hey, how much would you pay for that? Tell me what you think about my idea. Guess what? I have one in the back of my trunk right now. Are you going to give me $20 for it? You know what I mean? So put people on the spot. I've done surveys, I've gone into a Barnes and Noble and the cafe and I needed teens and tweens opinions and I gave them gift cards to their cafe to answer a 20 question survey. People still do that, right? I think it's really important to get other people's opinions.

One of the best hacks that I know for that is using Pig fu. I don't know if you're familiar with fu, but pick FU is awesome because you can segment the target audience, you can use 3D renderings or pictures of a prototype and get feedback. And then my understanding is on a viability feedback loop like we're talking about, that's not just creating a go no go answer, yes, we should move forward, or no, we shouldn't. But the data that we have is also going to impact the next version. So we're also data gathering if we do move forward for the next iteration.

Absolutely. I think it's important to get that validation. You know what though, Tim, we need to be real with what we've come up with. There's people that come to me and say, I came up with this idea. It's an amazing golf ball and it's unbelievable. Everybody in the world is going to want this golf ball. Okay, yes, you're on the golf course and there's everybody around is playing golf, but when you step out of the golf course, everybody, do you play golf? Do you play golf? So I think it's really important for people to gauge their window of opportunity. Okay, is it, you said earlier a woman's shoe, right? So right away you lost half your audience, right? Maybe you'll lose half your audience, but then out of that, maybe you came up with something in the heel that does some kind of tip or some kind of trick, but I don't love the color of the shoe or I don't like the way it fits.

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So now you're starting to bring that window of opportunity lower. Is there a market for it? Yes, but you want to try to find ways, and that's what I've done with a lot of my ideas is I can talk to you about what the purpose is, but I can end up at the end of the day saying, how many people have a kitchen? Right? I win. So think about your audience, think about the window of opportunity. But the other thing, Tim, that a lot of people do is they come to me with an idea that's for a specific niche and I look at it where maybe it can be more mass or maybe it can be in a niche that has a little bit more of an opportunity. So you are working with people with online and all that, people coming to you with an idea for a category, but what if it's this category? There's more eyeballs here. Yes, that's good, but maybe it's third, fourth, fifth on the list. So you want to try to find a way to maximize your window of opportunity and that's what you should focus on. And then test a couple other things, see if it works. If it does, press it. If it doesn't work, pull it out and keep finding new things to test.

Alright, so we assume that this product is going to work, right? What's the next tactical step in this journey to building this business?

I learn about the person, I learn about the product, and you need to do the same thing for yourself. So is it something that you're into working with a factory, working the logistics of shipping, warehousing, distribution, accounts payable, accounts receivable, insurance returns, customer service, is that you or and you have control, you can make the decisions, you can gauge what the price is and kind of own it, or is it something that, you know what? It's a little bit over my head. Maybe I don't have the time. People are at different stages in their life. Some people are limited on funds to be able to commercialize it through manufacturing. So then there's licensing. I have gazillionaires that come to me and say, Brian, I can make this 10 times, but I just want to license it because I'm limited on funds, limited on time, not funds on time. I want to see it out there. I want to go to a company that already has the distribution and the manufacturing capability to be able to manufacture it, distribute it, and earn a royalty from it. And some people are okay with that. I could tell you, Tim, that one of the greatest feelings for me is to see people use my idea for the reason I came up with it. So everybody has different reasons, different gauges of what they want to do and what their success model is and just taking people on that journey.

So we just hit a big fork in the road. I thought this was like tactical, step by step by step by step in my brain as a brand owner and as a seller was thinking, Hey, now I need to go into sampling and cost gathering and prototyping. But you just threw a curve ball at us by saying, Hey, that idea in and of itself, as long as it's protectable, may actually have value without you having to go too much further physically by yourself. So this idea of licensing is you've got the idea. Let's say you've got a utility patent on it specifically. Somebody else may take and run with that and give you a percentage of the proceeds or whatever it is. And that's really as far as you have to go, right?

Yeah, you get to a certain point, sometimes they're happy with the design that you did, maybe they'll tweak it a little bit, but you are renting the rights to your intellectual property and again, it's to give them a competitive advantage in the market and some of the manufacturers with distributions, otherwise call the licensee where the licensee with the intellectual property, we can offer it to them to be able to put it into their pipeline, show the buyer, see what kind of interest there is, and then be able to work a deal together to be able to earn together.

How do you find a licensee? I've been to the licensing show in Vegas and it's basically like Disney and Mattel and Hasbro and selling the image of Elsa from frozen to put on your crappy backpack, right? Yes. But a lot of times these inventions are being licensed or being licensed by niche production companies or you've come up with a tool and you license that to a large tool manufacturer that already has distribution at Home Depot, yada, yada, yada, right? So I know we can go a lot of ways, but in like 45 seconds, what's the best next step to start identifying who might license this or is there a marketplace for licensees or how does that work?

When you're talking about the licensing show, you're talking about mostly brand property licensing. So if I'm manufacturing and I want to have a competitive advantage in the market, so I came up with a snack container and I thought it would look cool to have a face on it. So now my snack container turned into Elmo and Cookie Monster. So I licensed my design to a company, they manufactured it and distributed it every time. One of themselves, they had to pay me in Sesame Street, just as an example, let's say I come up with an idea like this one that says, you know what? I came up with a set of tongues and that I kept this one on display. But you pull that lever up and it locks the tongue so it doesn't open up. So what I did was I put grooves in it and now every time one of them sells or you go to the store and you say, you know what? There's a set of tongues. There's one with adjustable and one without for the same price, which one would you buy? Bingo. So you come up with this adjustable tongue. So I went to the stores and I noticed the tongues that were available on the shelves and I said, you know what? These could be good potential partners. I flipped,

Lemme pause. Sorry, lemme interrupt you. For those of you that aren't seeing the video, just to be clear, he's saying tongs, not thongs

Are

Not tongs that Brian has created. These are kitchen tongs. Alright, sorry, keep going.

Is it my New York accent, Tim? Hopefully I got to be careful, right? This is a G-rated show. Anyway, so my tongues ended up, I went around the stores and I looked to see different types and I wrote down the companies that were in that niche and I took a look and I saw which ones were players, which ones were going to be able to sell the most because the lower ones, even though they're in retail, they might not do a tremendous amount of distribution. So I go to the players in the industry, I see which ones are out there, and I talked to them and them, I pitched them,

You're going to add this little feature, but you got to pay me for it.

That's right. I'm going to give you a competitive advantage in the market. I've done my due diligence, I did my research, I filed a provisional, or I have a utility patent file issued or filed. I have a prototype, I have the CAD files, I'm ready to go. Let's do a deal. That's one journey. That could be another journey. One of my other products is pole ties, and I was on QC with these for many three years, just about three years. And this I did really well on QC. And then I had companies that came to me and said, Brian, you can keep doing QVC, but we want this in retail. And then I had a computer store chain come to me and say, people have been saying they use it for wires and cable management. So there's a lot of journeys. Nothing is kind of textbook. Every person product journey is kind of different angles and ways that it could go, but I try to be intuitive to see things where it could go and then figure out where you are and then kind of get those steps in between going.

So about seven minutes ago I asked you for the 45 second version on how to find someplace license this, but it sounds like that's not possible because every product is going to be radically different. Every process and every path and every potential licensee is going to be found a different way based on the product.

You can go to the stores that you envision your idea to be in, jot down those names, call them up and tell them that you've done these steps that we went over before and then see if they're interested in licensing it. So I work on medical devices calling up j and j or Kimberly Clark. I work on construction riggers and called John Deere, whatever. There's companies that are out there in the niche that you came up with it and those are the ones that you want to go and see if you can help them get a competitive advantage, go to the players that are going to sell the most to be able to make it worth their while and your while.

So if I'm going to take the other fork in the road, I want to start producing, I want to create my own product, create my own brand, own the whole thing. What is your advice on the next step after this viability testing and you have the data and feedback for the next step. The way I've always done it is I take that feedback and a rendering or like you said, just a cardboard cutout or whatever this is, and start trying to get pricing for manufacturers estimated pricing. It's never going to be exact because that becomes part of the viability process too. It is this thinking to be so expensive that I'm not going to make any money based on what I think the market trends. Is my thinking along the right line there or did I skip a step or did I mess up from your process?

Look, you can come up with the idea and you want to do it a certain way and you're out pricing yourself in the market. So if it's something that should be $10 and now it's 17 to $20, you can make it all you want. Is there a market for it? Are people going to buy it? So you mentioned earlier pricing is very important. There's people out there that sometimes the manufacturing, they're like, Brian, this costs me $2 to make and I'm going to sell it for three because that's all that, right? So is that a good business decision? Is that a good business model to put two in to get one out? You want to be able to know that you're going to have some kind of business going operational expenses, marketing in between and also what the consumer is going to pay pay. I love USAI manufacture products in the USA.

(40:13)
However, it's got to make sense because if I'm three times more than what it would cost here in the US to make it overseas, I might not be in business. If I miss out on USA manufacturing, then I have to make it overseas. But then when it comes here, somebody's taking it off the boat in the US using distribution, warehousing, everything else, and now you have a USA company that's able to make some money too and pay taxes and all that stuff. So there's a lot of variables to when you come up with it to figure out how is it pricing based on volume? Look, when we're starting off, we don't want a gazillion units in our garage. We want to be able to test it. So sometimes what I do, Tim, is I'll show a prototype and I'll take some orders beforehand or I'll make a short run and it might cost me a little bit more, but at least I know that what I'm in for, what it feels like before I go all in.

Now, for most of you that are listening to this and you're thinking about product that we could spend seven more hours and not even scratch the surface of production and sampling versus prototyping versus all the logistics. I don't want to get too deep into that. I think that the meat of this episode so far has been what I needed to hear personally and probably a lot of you is like the steps leading from the back of the napkin idea until starting down this route of actually producing or having it produce a license deal, but with limited time that we have left. Brian, tell me some of the biggest mistakes that you see, great inventors or the producers of a great idea make that kills this wonderful potential idea before it gets off the ground. What is the wooden stake in the heart of the perfect idea that you see most commonly?

Not listening to others, not doing your due diligence in your research, not making business decisions, but making emotional decisions and asking better questions out there. Listening to the people that have made mistakes, and not that yours is going to be exactly that, but to be able to figure out out how to make less mistakes. I'm kind of talking from that side. I always talk about the benefits and the reasons and things that you should do, but you ask me what not to do or what things to avoid or what. I see people making the mistakes and asking for money when you really don't need it. There's people that think and their perception is that you need a gazillion dollars to be able to do something and start something. I'm looking at business plans for 1.2 billion, million dollars. It's not necessary all the time. You can start off if somebody showed me something and their perception was so far off that at the end of the day I ended up making and helping them make 3000 units for $3 total.

(43:17)
I'm sorry, 3000 units for $3,000. Okay, I'm serious. They thought tooling was going to be $25,000. The mold cost 600. They thought each unit was going to cost three or $4 per unit. It cost 80 cents. They thought they were going to need to make a hundred thousand units. They needed to make 3000 units. So check in to see if what you're thinking is your perception. It might be the first time that you're coming up with an idea and bringing it to market and going through that motion, but it doesn't have to be like that. It could be a different way. So ask better questions and see if there's other opportunities. It might cost you a little bit more, but it's better than getting all that money, having people involved that you have to answer to when all you needed to do is just look on the other side. And the perception was a lot different. And I find I do that a lot, Tim.

Yeah, I do that a lot. I know a lot of people that do that a lot and it's not always ego. Sometimes it's ego, but sometimes it's, Hey, we've been down this road a few times. I've made several products. Why do I need to ask all these questions and get all this advice? Because I should know the answer, right? With my role at Carbon six, we have leadership principles and one of those leadership principles is that we are more concerned with getting it right than being right. And that's something that I think about frequently very often because I do, I get in my head the way that this is supposed to be and maybe it's confidence based on experience or maybe it's just a strong gut feeling, or maybe it is lack of humility. I know better than these other people and man, what a crucial mistake.

(45:02)
I mean, what a debilitating mistake to make to your potential business or your potential product or your potential brand. I can already tell you that that list that you just shot out is going to be a great social media clip that we're going to put out there because so many people need to hear it and it's not what I was expecting you to say. I was expecting you to come up with some great proactive tip, and I guess this could be proactive, but these mistakes really are not specific to one mistake, but it's saying go out and listen to others get the feedback so you're not making these catastrophic mistakes. I think that's great advice. And that applies not just to product development for inventions, but any sort of business and even personal life, interpersonal relationships, all of that good stuff.

What's going to make you different than all the others out there? Are you doing your due diligence to see the competitive advantage, the benefits, the reasons why people should use your idea, use your business, use your product, whatever it is, find the benefits. People sometimes show me things that are to prevent something, and I kind of went off on that tangent earlier about preventing certain things and doing certain things, but find the reasons why they should do business with you. Is it the price? Is it the twist and turn that it does different than everything else out there? Is it the marketing that you're going to put into it that's going to make the competitive advantage? What are you going to do to stand out from the crowd? It's tough. For me, the term

I use use is USP Unique selling proposition, right? Absolutely. And in the Amazon world, like the quintessential saturated product everybody talks about is garlic presses. I mean there's a million garlic presses and a differentiator is not putting a silicon handle on it. A differentiator is not making it one inch larger. A differentiator is going to be a substantial change to the whole game of squishing garlic, right?

You want to talk about a substantial change. So one night I had no room left in my fridge and I came home with leftovers and there was a carton of eggs in the refrigerator and there was two eggs left in there and I said, this is ridiculous, all this space for two eggs. So that annoyed me, and that's what happens to for things annoy me. I come up with an idea. So what I did, it pisses

You off and you go on to

Fix it. That's it. That's right. So it's a problem solution. So my problem is I got annoyed anyway. I came up with a collapsible egg tray that tele, it's a telescopic egg tray for those who aren't watching, they're listening. So I put my eggs in small to jumbo, and as I take them out and doing this in the air, as I take them out, it goes back As you take the eggs out, it goes back until there's only space that you need for two eggs. So I called it eggs extra space. So how are people, Tim, are you going on Amazon to find a collapsible egg tray? How would you even know that this exists, right? You talked about that garlic press. How would somebody know that that garlic press also grows garlic? You don't know those things, right? So what I have to do is be creative and find a way that when you are looking for an egg tray that here's another suggestion that comes up. That's the challenge.

It's funny, Brian, one of the things that people associate me with in this world of Amazon and e-commerce is egg trays. Oh, because I did a large case study on it. This

One's got your name on it.

Mine was much more old school and boring than that. But funny how small the world is that we both have done egg trays, man, I've got two pages of notes here. I know we're out of time. We're going to have to get you on another episode to do a chunk of kind of those next steps. I've learned a lot. Look, I've invented products legitimately from scratch. I've been patents. I've sold products successfully. I've made mistakes. But I mean I've probably learned 20 or 30 things just in the short time that we've talked that I didn't know of that that is super valuable. So we appreciate you sharing that. I know that you wrote a book, you do consulting, you do all sorts of stuff. Where can people find you on the internet if they want to not just learn more about what you do, but I know you also have free resources on your website.

Thank you, Tim. So yeah, I have three books. This is my latest one, how to Make Money With Your Invention Idea. I have an e-learning course called Inventor Class. My website, brian free.com, B-R-I-A-N-F-R-I-E d.com. I run the National Inventor Club. It's a live streaming monthly meeting, and I'm really proud to say that I launched an app a few months back. It's called Inventor Smart Community. You can find it on Google Play in Apple App Store, and I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so we can connect up on there. You can just find me, Brian, freedom Inventor.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for everything you've contributed. For those of you that are listening, thanks for being here until the end. Make sure that you comment, make sure that you leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening on. Let us the biggest tip or the biggest takeaway that you got from this episode. Let us know how we're doing. If you've got ideas for other episodes, make sure to leave those there. You can also email me directly, tim@growthgearpodcast.com, and happy to help you however I can there. If you are listening to this on audio platform, make sure that you check out all our socials. We're on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, all the places, and we send out snippets. So when you're mindlessly scrolling in bed at night, maybe you'll get some little snippets from future episodes. Also, check out our YouTube version. We've got the video version on there, as well as Facebook shorts, or I'm sorry, YouTube shorts. If you just need to ingest a little bit of wisdom from all of our great guests occasionally. But thank you again, Brian, for being on. Thank you all for listening and we'll see all of you on the next episode.