Episode 18 - OFF-SHOOT IDEA (that crazy period)

This week Jack develops a product in what he calls the CRAZY PERIOD.  You will get a quick, step by step look at the begining of an idea to its quick completion and all that goes into it. Perfect for the novice inventor to get a general idea of the invention process.

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
So tell me if you've heard thisone before. I don't know what to
do. I don't get just oneidea, I get three and then maybe
another two. Real quick, Jack, how do I know which one to
pick? You don't You just startwith one that you like the most and
think it's gonna make the most money, and then you go and once you've

(00:39):
left, you don't look back.Hi everybody, and welcome back to the
thirty year Overnight Sensation. I'm yourhost, Jack Courage, and this podcast
is a conversation, not a class. If you're a novice inventor or want
to be an inventor, I'll takeyou through the steps of designing, manufacturing,

(01:00):
selling, and getting your product outin the market. This podcast is
not affront for a subscription service orsome company trying to generate money off of
your ideas. It's about the trialsof inventing and it's not easy, but
you can do it yourself. Youjust have to be smart about it.
I have known one of my businesspartner's Brad for over twenty five years,

(01:25):
and in those twenty five years,he's always had an idea for reinventing the
pomp bomb. I think he likesthe simple attention, the sound it brings,
and that they're very inexpensive to make, but they're always a moneymaker.
We give him crap about it allthe time, but it's always on his

(01:47):
mind. He has said for years, if we could just come up with
our own pomp pomy idea, we'dbe able to sell it for many more
years. And for years that hasplagued me that I couldn't make what my
friend wanted. Well and tell maybenow, after the hand Flag hit a
plateau, I knew just a backoff. It wasn't really a rush since

(02:10):
we were protected, and as Isay, I would stay at it selling
it at the right time. However, as I previously noted from a team
in the last episode, they said, hey, you know, your hand
flag might be a little masculine,and I thought, what would a little
feminine version look like? So thisis all rolling around my head when I

(02:35):
came across what I call the crazyperiod. As I said last season,
this crazy period was for my product, the Foodoo. To remind everyone,
the crazy period is my turn thatI use when inventor has finished their product
and is now waiting for the finalproduct to arrive from the manufacture so that

(02:58):
it can be it can be debut. Usually the inventor has all the marketing
and sales figured out for the launchby then, and they just have to
wait. And that waiting generally drivesthem crazy, and they're apt to make
poor decisions, are trying to changetheir product in some way while they're waiting.

(03:19):
These changes are not based on newdata or new information. The inventor
is just waiting and it drives themcrazy. And I've seen it myself on
other inventors many times. Needless tosay, my answer to this period that
every inventor experiences is to do anotherproject in that time period to keep your

(03:43):
mind off the first project that youtry to keep your mind off of.
And so I kept going back tothe hand flag and didn't really have,
you know, a feminine counterpart.So this is where the pomp pammy idea
started to happen again. This productis probably one of my fastest to go
from concept to sale. We evenhad to rush the patent protection because we

(04:05):
had a client that was looking tobuy something different for national exposure as soon
as possible. Personally, the reasonI liked this project so much was it
took a business partner a graphic designerand me all working together to come up
with something new, something patentable,that would protect us and they too would

(04:30):
enjoy having at least one patent afterall these years. See, I don't
mind the vanity of having a patenton this one. Since the vanity was
a byproduct, we had this ideathat needed immediate protection, and since all
parties had significant input, we allgot to put our names together on the
patent. So for once, theguys that don't generally get their name on

(04:55):
patents did and we still protected theproduct and that was fun for me.
So, Jack, what's the flippingidea? Our lead concept artist, Derek
Mister On top of the latest styles, Mister Mojo thought the time was right
to do something with the seventy stylesterry cloth wrisk sweatbands. He'd seen kids

(05:19):
and millennials win them around a lotand said maybe we should think about adding
the flags from the hand flag.Brad the business partner, thought maybe we
could add pom pumps to the sweatbands, something to bring attention to waving.
I knew neither idea was patentable,and this customer in waiting was a national

(05:43):
customer, so we would need topatent this idea if it was all possible,
simply due to the exposure we wouldget and that would hopefully bring future
sales for hopefully many years. Okay, the next part is usually very hard,
but for us it went through likethe breeze. We all got together

(06:03):
discuss what we wanted. I wantedsomething somewhat in the ballpark of the hand
flag, but possibly feminine aspects.Like I said, Brad won something that
showed motion but more than the handflag, and if it can make a
pom pommy sound, all the better. And Derek wanted to tie it to

(06:24):
the risk sweatbands to be goofy enoughthat millennials would buy it because it harkened
back to the seventies or what theythought was vintage. Normally that would be
a tall order, but I gotright to work and this dang thing almost
created itself. I was sold onDerek's terry cloth wrist sweatband as the base,

(06:46):
and Brad, always in the pompommy category, was right. I
went out and bought all types ofpom pommy type products. Flat ones,
round ones, square ones, longones, short ones. There's a lot
out there, all the while,I was researching to see what patents were
already out there, and you know, there were quite a few of them

(07:10):
too. I also saw how manypomp pom ideas were attempted, and also
not only just attempted, but receivedpatents. And from what I could see,
I understood why they were patented,but they just didn't seem practical or
they didn't seem like they could bea money maker. I even saw one
idea that was patented that used apomp pom combined with the strap for the

(07:36):
hair arms or legs, and allI could think about were the complaints,
like I bought this and it's tooitchy, and those kind of complaints always
have high returns. It was alsogood to find examples of past ideas to
share so that we did not goin that direction. We needed something new,

(07:59):
Okay. Once I ruled out thestandard round, itchy pompom, I
started to look closer at the flatpom poms, and I just felt like
they had too much going on andnowhere to print a name or a message
on it. It was just aboutcolor. So I started to think about
Derek's idea about adding a draping flag, but one flag looked lame, and

(08:22):
the hand flags were much wider thanany risk sweatband. The width of our
hand flags was anywhere to four tofive inches, and the sweatbands were three
and a half inch squares basically whenyou laid them down flat. So for
fun, I bought some silk cheesyUSA flaglike handkerchiefs from the Dollar store and

(08:43):
I cut them in three inch stripswide and made him about twelve inches long,
as I feared. When I wrappedthe strip around the sweatband, the
excess five inches dangled kind of leftme uninspired. So next I attached the
strap to the side of the sweatband, where now I can dangle down at

(09:05):
least twelve inches. But that didn'thave much of an effect either. But
I did like the visual, andBrad said, hey, let's sew a
patch on top for any of thecustomer's logos or company names. So now
we had on top and on sideof a round object which allowed us to

(09:26):
put a logo on top the danglything on the left side and room to
put like on the other side,maybe a logo of a company, and
then on the bottom the our company'sname. So now this sweatband had,
like I said, the patch ontop and a piece of material dangling on
the side. I looked over atthe flat pomp pom again and attached it

(09:50):
to the sweatband. No way topatent that, and it didn't really look
good either. I just it justlooked wrong, and it's it's funny how
things work out. I placed theflat pompom down on my work table and
I liked the way the pompom fringestacked onto itself back into place when I

(10:11):
laid it down, and I thought, that's it. Oh boy, Jack,
you flipped your lead. Where's thisgoing? I'll tell you where it's
going. When I saw how thebase of the flat pombomb stacked on top
of itself before it spread out inone hundred little strands, that, my

(10:31):
friends, that was the look Iwas looking for. I knew where to
take this design. I went overto all the leftover poly nylon hand flag
banner prototypes so we had in astack, and I grabbed them. They
all made that swishy sound when rubbedtogether, kind of like a pompom.

(10:52):
I cut one of the larger flagsinto a three inch wide by sixteen inch
rectangular strip, then I cut anotherrectangle three inches by twelve inches, and
then I cut the final piece threeinches by eight inches rectangle, and I
stacked them up. When looking downon them stacked up on top of each

(11:18):
other, it looked like just onethree inch by sixteen inch rectangle. But
you and I know there were actuallythree pieces there, But there could have
been six or ten. It justdepended on how many pieces you wanted to
stack up in a stair step fashion. Each level could have had something printed

(11:39):
on that level to make one longthree inch by sixteen inch image, or
each level could have had a completelydifferent image on what's printed on the level,
or a different color. And thenI added the secret ingredient. For
the three inch by sixteen inch rectank. I cut fringe strips into the material,

(12:03):
just like I had done for thehand flag, but the strips were
only four inches long, leaving onepart twelve inches uncut. Let's call that
level three. Do you see whereI'm going with this now? I then
took the twelve inch long strip andcut fringe into four inches, leaving eight

(12:24):
inches uncut, and that's being leveltwo. And finally I cut the three
inch by eight inch rectangle so thatonly four inches were uncut and four inches
were fringe, making that level oneall made so they could be stacked on
top of each other, with onein fringe and the other end uncut.

(12:46):
Jack, you lost me. Igot fringe and math coming out of my
ears. So hold on, there'sa reason for this madness. Just hang
with me a little bit more.Remember, Derek wanted something to tie in
with the Ben Brad loves the moveof the pom poms, and I want
something that was gonna cause some attention. So what did we have. We

(13:07):
had, at the most simplest terms, three levels of material that were cut
in half with fringe. What aboutthe flat part? You ask? Why
did I make such a big dealabout the flat part? See, you
can print on the pom pom fringe, but due to its shape, it
will not retain that image. Itwill just it's about the color. However,

(13:30):
this layout allows someone to print onthe top level of the dangling material
and then cut fringe into the material, but due to the flat parts,
you would be able to continue tosee an image or the name of the
sponsor or the company. Jack,that explanation was rough. I could be
catching up on my wordle I getit. I explained all of that,

(13:56):
because now I can file for apatent on something that is surely different.
We have designed a stair step printable, wearable flat fringe product that has levels
of different sized material that can alldangle on the side of the sweatband.
We've even figured out a way todouble it up so the levels could be

(14:18):
as ridiculously thick as the customer wanted. But for starters, we just began
with the three levels, and thatis how the wrist rally was born.
Remember I give ideas a name thefirst day they take form, and before
long the name sticks. I willtell you in a later episode where the

(14:39):
name came from. But I likedit, and as I did for the
hand flag, we own the importantURLs and the social media names behind it.
So it all worked out. Theday the lawyer said we were protected,
we contacted two places with final multipledesigns. One started to hesitate,

(15:00):
hey, so we decided to swingback and go after them later. The
other company, NBC. Yep thatNBC got the idea immediately and placed in
order pinning you know, final productapproval, and that is very common.
But we had a very very shortwindow to get the Pride Flag Risk Rallies

(15:22):
to NBC. So our manufacturer gotus the samples in just a few days
via photos. We worked it outthat if NBC approved what they saw in
the photos, we would immediately startto manufacture the risk rally. If,
and this is a big chance thatBrad really stepped up for when the actual

(15:45):
sample did arrive, if they wereunhappy, we would stop the manufacturing process,
retool and reset at our costs justto get it done now. Of
course, if any of this hadgone wrong, we would have lost the
order because we wouldn't have been ableto get it there in time for the
parades. Luckily for us, therewere parades all months, so we were

(16:07):
able to ship in stages just tocomplete the order. And our manufacturer Lee,
he was great at every stage.He took picks and sent them to
us. This all happened so fastthat I didn't even use my seamstress Pam.
I cut everything out of paper coloredit used safety pins to secure it.

(16:30):
That you secure the dangling part thatwas hanging down to the sweatband.
Had we had time, Pam wouldhave probably knocked it out in a few
days. But as crazy as itseems now we needed every hour so could
we could get it done? NBConly had one stipulation, and that was
that we had to use the newPride flag that had the triangles at the

(16:52):
bottom, and that was no problem. Derek looked at he took care of
it in a matter of mens andit was off to Lee. We knew
six weeks later we would have ourproduct on floats worn by NBC affiliates,
all celebrating and having a good time, and guess what they did. We
also knew it'd be a break onus getting publicity, so we decided to

(17:15):
go back to the second client whohesitated, and see if we could continue
the rollout. Little did we know, even with the joyous reviews from the
parades, we would hit a substantialroadblock. And that result, as strange
as it can be, grabbed usthe biggest client I could have ever thought

(17:37):
to get. So until next time, when you're thinking of ideas, never
settle, and when you're stuck,and I mean really struggling, just stay
the course. Keep in mind whenit gets tough, that's when most people
give up and quit. There's alwaysanother way. I'm your host, Jack

(17:59):
Courage, thirty year overnight sensation stayat IT