Rock Through the Window

Driving a billboard around town attracts attention.  Sometimes good, sometimes well...

Yesterday we stopped off at the gas station. Here in Oregon we are not allowed by law to pump our our fuel. As usual we let the gentleman know how much we needed and a conversation ensued about what a RocLok was. Here's the interesting part, instead of wanting to know more about our product the attendant's immediate comment was "how about gluing the rock to the top of the car so you don't get locked out of your vehicle?"  Obviously meant as sarcasm I made the mistake of engaging, joking that having a rock on the hood of your car might takes away from the hiding aspect of the product. To which he retorted

"yeah, and they would probably take it off and throw it through the window!" 

The throw it through the window comment seems to be by far the thing we hear the most from people when they first see the RocLok. When people first started coining this phrase I admit it irritated me. Personally I've never had a house window broken out by a rock and don't often hear about cat burglars running around town breaking into homes with rocks. Still this among all other possible comments is the most popular, hands down! So I've come to embrace it and adopted the old if you can't beat them join them theory. 

However, hearing this yesterday I started to think, what does this answer say about people's psyche's? Where does this reluctance to accept something new come from? I'm guilty of it and from the numerous trade show appearances we've made over the years, it seems most people are.  What compels us to want to run away or hide behind sarcasm instead of taking 2 mins to learn about something new?

For me, I think it is that deep fear of being sold to.  I fear that if I learn about something, I might be "tricked" into buying it. So really I guess it's my own fear about lacking  the will power not to purchase an item that drives my reaction. 

Now that the roles are reversed I have to remember that everyone has their own reason to be adverse to learning about a new product.  Perhaps that is why television sales are so successful.  No interaction with another person, no fear of having to say no, or getting into a debate about why you don't need the thing they are trying to sell you. You can make an "informed decision" in your pajamas from the security of your own home. Even better if the sales person on the tube annoys you, just change the channel!

Still it's hard to accept this truth when you are trying to grab attention for your new product  If you push too hard people push back with reasons why they don't need it, if you don't push enough noone knows you exist.  It's really a balancing act and after 3 years of learning what works and what doesn't I've found out first hand what an art form sales and marketing really is. All I know is that instead of getting frustrated when someone suggests our rocks should be shaped like a dog turd, or annoyed every time someone proudly announces "they'll just steal my rock!" I just have to remember that they are just deflecting their discomfort with being sold to and it has nothing to do with the merit of my product.  At least that is what I'll keep telling myself.

Hands

Through my years I am amazed at how lucky I am to have my hands.  My hands have been through a lot, when fairly young I almost shot off my left pointer finger.  The bone was shattered, the finger nail gone, but after a short while it was back to mostly normal.  As life progressed and my desire to always work with my hands with wood working projects, hobbies or whatever I had many cuts and scrapes.

As I grew older I focused more on sales type jobs giving my hands a much needed repreve, signing documents and typing out contracts.  Then in 2001 my wife and I bought our second house, a spacious 4,400 Sf house that was very dated.  The day the house closed we demolished the walls around the kitchen, and took out the kitchen.  Over the next many months we re-built the kitchen, living and dining rooms all into one huge great room all the while I was working over 60 hours per week in Real Estate.  Throughout the next 7 years we continued to remodel that house and we were hooked on remodeling.  We bought and flipped a few other houses, meaning more cuts scrapes and scars on my poor hands.

At times I feel like the Terminator, where he is able to regenerate after seemingly impossible odds.  Yes it happens in the matter of a few seconds while it takes me a month.  But while tearing out our driveway I was pushing a large broken piece of concrete into the Backhoe bucket, unfortunatley I did not move fast enough and the 300 pound piece stopped when my hand hit the bucket of the backhoe.  Again it was my left pointer finger that was laid open by a jagged piece of gravel.  Not one to make a big deal out of it we bandaged it up and got the project done.  There is still a scar 5 years later, but as I said I am amazed at how well it healed.

My hands had no idea what I had in store for them when we decided to launch the RocLok.  From the chemical burns, to the bumps scrapes and cuts I keep stressing out my poor hands.  As time progressed I was able to find better gloves and save them from a little pain.  They still get stuck between a RocLok and a hard place, still get chemical burns and still are cut.  Just a month or two ago while working on a prototype part for the truck I am building, my left hand (again) got caught up in a router while milling some aluminum.  This was one of the more serious injuries I have had, I had to clean it up, get it ready for transport, and drive home because of course I was alone.  I was very lucky that the large vein was not ruptured, but laying just at the surface.  The doctor was able to close up the .5" X 3" hole, and 10 days later the stitches came out and amazingly it was mostly healed.

Having built a condo for people with disabilities, I never imagined I would be living here nor that I would need everything here.  I am still very lucky I know many people with amblitory issues and I could not imagine life without my hands.  No matter what I have done to them, they keep coming back for more and holding on till the end.  When I have a migrane I can release tension in my neck and reduce the pain, I can give Melanie a massage, I am building a truck, and making RocLoks. 

Everyone should be happy for the small miracles each day, be happy for what you have no matter how small and ignore all the bad stuff.  Yeah I have been hit by a car, lost my dog, grandparents, all my life savings, my house, and so much more, but at the end of the day I still am very lucky.  Look for the positive elements in life not the negative, life is a self fulfilling prophicy don't make yourself miserable, get out and enjoy life.  If you have the fortune to have two functional hands look down at them and realize how lucky you really are to be able to have 10 fingers moving independantly allowing you to things so much easier than many other people. 

Lazy Sunday

Today was one of those rare "lazy" days.  One of those days when you feel really anxious to go out and conquer the world, but have absolutely no drive to do it if that makes any sense. I have consumed myself with work so intensely over the past 3 years that working has become my biggest hobby.  Sometimes I worry that this new found passion has taken over and that I might loose my sense of fun and excitment for other hobbies I used to enjoy.  

I suppose it is great that I enjoy what I do so much.  I love the challenge of trying to problem solve and the creativity it brings out in me.  I think I've become a better writer and have realized some talents I never really knew I had.  Still it is frustrating that I don't draw as much as I used to. Before computers I spent the majority of my free time creating.  Mostly in the form of illustrating or sewing but always working with my hands.  Now a days, I toil away on this black box researching and brainstorming. A while back I implemented a "no-computer weekend" rule for myself hoping that it would refresh my brain and spark new outlets for creativity.  I definately helped my stress level and rekindled my enthusiasm for work once Monday roled along but I also got a little bored.  The silly thing is I have so much to do around the house its amazing that anyone could find themselves bored.  I think that is why I'm bored, who wants to spent their free time doing mindless chores?  At least when I'm working on work related stuff I'm able to expand my horizons, I can't say that about doing the dishes.

Well tomorrow is the last day in a long weekend and while I'm sure there are alot of people out there wishing that it would never end, I can't wait for business to get back to normal. It's been a long 5 days without any sales which is par for the course on these "sudo" holiday weekends. I say sudo because it seems like marketers have tainted the meaning of the holiday's with ads about their HUGE (fill-in the blank) DAY SALES.  Not even Memorial Day or Martin Luther King Day is spared from retailer need to compete for customers.  The sad thing is that small businesses like ours can't even dream about competing with these guys and so every long holiday weekend we take a week with no pay. It makes it hard to want to "celebrate."

I can only hope that our lack of sales is simply because people are out enjoying their last days of fun in the sun.  If we were in the position camping might have been a nice way to spend the last 3 days but with the high price of fuel and limited funds, it wasn't an option this year. With that, here's to a more prosperous week ahead, onward!

Another Day in...

Last night we stayed up late and slept in this morning.  Enjoying coffee and the blueberry pancakes I made, I thought about how nice it was to be able to cook breakfast at home again since we have our house back now.  We both have to lose a fair amount of weight after living in hotels and eating out for every meal for the last 10 months.  Melanie has been much better at getting back into the exercise routine, and has only had a few days off the elliptical machine since we moved back into our house.

Although many of you are out enjoying the holiday weekend, we had to go to the office to take care of some stuff today.  It is nice to be able to work when we want and where we want.  Unfortunately the AC at work is down and it flooded my office last week.  The landlord said it was fixed by week's end, but unfortunately that was not the case and today was another hot day, keeping it around 90 degrees inside the shop.  Due to the heat we cut the day short.

Since I did not have a lot of work stuff to take care of at the office, I was able to complete a little more on the truck I am restoring. For those of you who do not know, I am building a 1939 Dodge 1.5 ton truck.  I started with a mostly complete and fairly good truck, then I took a 1995 Dodge Ram and stripped them both down. I will be using the Cummins Diesel engine from the newer truck, the wiring all to modernize the 1939. I love the look of old cars and trucks, so don’t worry I am keeping the look of the original 1939 truck. I am customizing the original gauges to operate with the new engine and show the speeds that we are more accustomed to today. One good thing is that the 1939 engine and the 1995 both have a similar look, the diesel is mechanical and I will try to maintain a relatively original look under the hood.

Because the axles and springs were about 80 years old I decided to upgrade them to something out of a 1999 GMC Topkick, this also gave me full disc brakes, a ratio in the rear that allows me to go over 35 MPH, and a much greater handling capacity. In the end it should be one amazing truck, and very useful in the business. We will be able to load pallets onto the rear lift gate and roll them onto the truck, and drop them off at the port for our international retailers.

I am sure you can tell the truck is a passion of mine and something I can not wait to finish. But the business comes first, so money and/or time for the project is hard to come by. Luckily we have many of the parts we need for a while, and there is still a lot of welding which is mostly time and very little cost.

Overall today was a good day, we got some work done, we got a little of the truck completed and we took a little break from everything. Fortunately the condo we live in now is very well insulated and unlike the shop it remained a pleasant 72 degrees inside. Until we can get the AC fixed at the shop it looks like we will be doing a lot more work from the house. Part of the reason it gets so hot at the shop is because we have a brewery in the space behind us, their place is always hot and the whole complex is not insulated between units. The good part is that even in the winter we do not need to turn on the heat.

Well thank you for following,

-Ryan

Inventors Point Of View

Yesterday while at the office a person came in and tried (unsuccessfully) to sell me tape...  yes a door to door tapes sales person.  He tried to tell me how it would help my business blah blah but in the end we do not use tape in manufacturing.  We make a rock, and make it solid, no tape holding it together.  In the conversation he asked if I invented it and brought it to market, I did and he was impresses.

Knowing that there would not be a tape sale, he mentioned that he had an invention.  I asked what it was and he replied he could not tell me.  I enjoy helping others realize their dreams so I gave him several realities of starting a business or bringing an invention to market. 

The first misconception is that you have the best idea in the world and that you can not tell anyone about it because they are going to steal it.  The reality is that you may very well have a great idea, but telling people about it allows you to talk with potential customers about what they would want.  And they may save you from wasting years of your life and tons of money on a bad idea. 

Another reality is that it takes a lot of passion time and money to bring something to market.  Most people do not have all of those attributes and many are not as passionate about your idea as you are.  If your idea is so easy to replicate that just by mentioning it they can beat you to market...  there is no barrier to entry and even when you bring it to market you can be quickly and easily taken over by people with more money time or passion. 

So make sure that there is key differentiators to your idea, something that makes it unique, and that there are attributes that are not easily duplicated.  Most of your friends or colleagues will not want to spend $50K on special tooling to make your product so that could be a barrier to entry.  However it would not be wise to tell the industry leaders or companies (that would be your competition) what you are planning.  Again they have more passion (they are already in the market) they have more money, and they have existing market share.  So there is a point where you should keep things close to the chest.  Don't go out telling everyone exactly how you will make it, but telling them the idea, and seeing their reaction is good.  Ask people what they would pay for such a thing.

If your idea is revolutionary and something you need to educate your customers about, it will take longer to get market share.  That means more time marketing spending money and not making any money.  Be prepared to lose everything you have, everything you own to make your idea a reality.  You can say this will not happen to you because I am smart, I have money, I have connections...  but in the end that will just delay the inevitable.  If you talk to most successful inventors, you will hear that they had huge hardship before things got good again.  I was one of those people who said it would not be me, I had a nice 4,400 sf house worth over $750,000 about half of which was equity, I had other Real Estate that added to my equity.  I had savings from years of making over $100,000 per year.  I had two degrees from a good business school, one in Advertising Management and one in Marketing.  I started my first business when I was only 10 years old, and was in sales most of my life.  So I thought I had this thing beat!  Needless to say 2008 was a huge reality check, I gave up my old income to devote the time needed to build my business.  The market crashed and I was not able to sell that house, I lost $400,000 in Real Estate because I no longer had the income to cover the payments.  Our savings went into the tooling, inventory materials and marketing.  We had sales so things seemed like they would pick up and start paying us instead of us paying to keep afloat.  For the first two years we still were growing, and still did not have any debt...  Well the savings was gone so we started to borrow some money to pay for marketing front the materials and pay for some other large expenses.  Today we are still growing, some weeks we make good income but then we have a bust week and it is all gone again.

Unlike most people who can go to work, and be paid for their efforts or time.  Being a business owner or inventor everyday is an expense, leased space, electricity, phone...  all of the stuff needs to be paid.  Even when you make a sale you need to buy more stuff to make another product so you can do it again another day.  Having come from sales it was not far different, but the risk and expenses are a lot more than being a sales person.  A sales person is selling a known product, not trying to carve out a market for their invention.  I remember vacation time, sick pay and benefits, now I offer those to my employees but never have a day off and never get paid for every hour I work.

If your invention is a deviation from something already available you may have an easier time than trying to tell people why they need a $65 rock, but the competition can take you out faster and easier.  So everything is a give and take and should be considered before taking any step.  You always need to look forward, learn from the past and when you make a decision do it.  There should be a good reason to do or not do something so don't waste time and money changing your mind all of the time.  If you receive feedback or evidence that you made the wrong choice (it will happen) then think about everything again and make another choice.  Nothing just happens, you make it happen so don't waste time complaining about what happened.

By now you are wondering why people try to invent things or start new businesses, well the answer is simple for me.  I love what I do, I have learned a lot about what is important and what is not.  In the end hopefully it will all pay off.  The harder I work now the more likely I am to reduce the time when life sucks in the middle.  I am living the American dream, I had an idea, I built it into a product and have been building a market for my product.   I am not anyone special, I was not born with a trust fund, I am just a regular guy like you.  I am building my product in the USA, and make it from US materials, and am creating jobs here.  I not only give income to my suppliers, but as a manufacturer I add another product to my vendors product line and increase their odds of making a sale.  I also have had the fortune to be able to offer a job to an ex US Marine who now assists in manufacturing.  This all makes me feel good, I like knowing that I am keeping money flowing in our economy.  I love having a product that I made, it feels better than when I just shuffled paperwork.  Yeah I made more money but I never had anything to show for it.

One other pitfall I have seen is that people spend too much time and money trying to make prototypes before making sure the product is viable.  Don't spend 5 years perfecting your idea, just go to your garage, shop or whatever and put together something yourself.  It will not be perfect, but you should be able to see the flaws immediately, see the things that increase complexity and therefore add the most to the cost.  You can also think about what makes your invention different and better.  It was after I had made my prototypes that I finally went to a designer to have specific parts designed and made.  I could have wasted all my savings trying to design it first, but by having a functioning prototype the design was fast, it worked and cost a lot less.  I actually went to my first trade show with my prototype, I was into the trade show for over $5,000 I met with the largest industry leaders all with a prototype that I made in my garage.  It was not perfect, but then my potential clients (vendors) could tell me what they cared about, what they wanted different all before I had paid for a design or made it perfect.  This was also good because I could feel out pricing before I fixed the costs to manufacture the product.

After telling the tape sales person all of that he kept saying don't tell me that, and he still refused to tell me the base idea of his invention.  Oh, well not everyone listens.  I know how hard it is to tell people about your invention, I was there myself.  Yes you should be cautions but if you never tell anyone about it you will never sell it.

Another thing to consider is how you manufacture the product, if you ship it overseas to be made, you no longer have control over the process.  Your design may be compromised, leading to your competition duplicating your product.  No matter where you make it this could happen, so just be careful who you get in bed with. 

I congratulate all of you who have ideas, I commend all of those who make the idea into a reality!  Just remember that you are jumping on a crazy roller coaster and in the end it could end up good or bad, enjoy the ride as much as you can.  Don't be scared to give everything up for a dream, if no one took risks life would be boring and technology would not be nearly advanced as it is.  Did the first astronaut think it was the smartest and safest idea to strap himself inside a missile?  Probably not, but look where it has taken us.

If you are already halfway down the roller coaster of life and business, keep your focus on what is important.  Don't get hung up on the fact that your life may have been easier before you started this, just keep plugging away.  Some days will just suck, that is life.  You may think you finally hit bottom, then it gets worse, that is life hang in there and make the best out of it. 

Memories of My Moronic Marketing Mishaps

Days like today make me nervous. It seems like just before any holiday traffic on our website goes down the drain. No matter what I try it just doesn't seem to get people to buy.

Monday was a good sales day, we received 6 orders and things were looking great, then Tuesday came along and now day three of no sales and I get start to get anxious.

The unknown sucks. Sometimes it seems like getting a steady 40 hour 9 to 5 would make life so much easier. But then I remember that everyone is out of work and that even working for someone else doesn't guarantee shelter from the unknown. So I continue to cling to the belief that as long as I put one foot in front of the other and try something new each and every day all of my hard work is worth something and one day it will all come together.... won't it?

Reflecting on everything we've tried over the last three years to get the product noticed makes me wonder if there is anything left. In year one we were pretty green, so I chalk that up to a year of learning the ropes.

There were a couple of rookie moves that really stand out. The first came when I tried to drum up some interest in the RocLok by posting a comment on a bloggers article about being locked outside. What's the big deal right? Well, me in my infinite wisdom thought, "no one wants to be sold to so why not post as a customer who loves the product instead?" FAIL! The blogger researched my email address which wasn't tied to the business but once she figured out my name game over. She was pissed. I tried to explain my thought process but she wasn't having any of it. To her I was just a low life spamming and lying to her audience. I really, deeply did not intend to cause any harm. I just didn't know what the best approach was, I tried and failed. Thankfully the blogger simply deleted my comment rather than lashing out on my actions publicly, I thank my lucky stars for that.

After that crash and burn, I went for the more direct approach and decided to post an article of my own on a local news community board. It was a great article outlining the reasons parents should hide a key for their school aged children. I was very proud of it. As a graphic designer, I wanted to add a photo so I purchased a stock image and submitted both for all of Portland to read.

I'd been following this community page for a while and was well aware that people can get for lack of a better word bitchy. But I'd seen some local vendors post before with good feedback so I thought I'd give it ago. I never expected what was to come. The first poster borated me for spamming on a community page, told me that this was a place for real news. I decided to defend myself, letting her know that it was real news, my life’s news. Her retort, trying to sell fancy rocks is not news, I'd like to throw that rock into the face of the woman in that photo. Enough said. Without haste I wrote the news station to have my posting removed as there was no self post removal button. Probably a cowardly move, but admittedly I'm not one for having the thickest skin in the face of conflict.

After those two extremely humbling experiences I became more cautious on what and where I posted but I never gave up. Instead I read up. Learned everything I could about the good and bad ways to tell the world about my product. I guess the biggest mistake I made was naively thinking that because McDonalds can get away with spamming the world, telling everyone about my little product the same way wouldn't hurt. What I've come to realize is that McDonalds probably gets as much bad feedback from their advertising as I did, but because they are millions of times larger than I am that 1% doesn't affect them. A small business can't afford any negative in the beginning unless that negative is so monumental it sparks a frenzy of media attention which really wasn't the way I wanted to start things off.

It really is hard to draw a line in marketing. Whether it's yourself or a product you created, taking the personal feelings out of the equation is next to impossible. To this day whenever I here a negative comment about the RocLok it hurts. It's like going up to someone and telling them they have an ugly baby. At tradeshows I'm always amazed that more people have something negative to say than positive. Instead of listening to what the vendor has to say we are all programmed to think the worst first. I'm guilty of it too. We don't like to be sold to and companies have sold to us for so long we don't trust anything any of them say anymore. It's kind of sad and it makes it that much harder for us little guys to get a word in.

Ryans Life, day2

Hello World,

Today not much productive happened, we had a appointment with a contractor who was supposed to come out and fix our fridge they damaged over the last 10 months. He came out but the “brand new” door had a huge gouge in it… so another week and maybe we will have that fixed. Throughout the rest of the day I talked with past clients, future clients and a friend from New Hampshire who survived Irene.

I read my friends updates on Facebook and Twitter and no matter how happy I am to see everyone traveling it reminded me of the days when I used to travel. I miss being able to travel, meet new people and see new things. When I proposed to Melanie, I flew her to Italy, a train ride with Prosecco (Italian champagne) ended in Verona Italy, and took her to Juliet’s Balcony and dinner at a place owned by the family the Montague’s were based on. Throughout the rest of her stay we went throughout Spain, France, Italy, Morocco, Greece and many other wonderful places. In total I traveled to 14 European counties by 21, throughout most of the lower 48 states, and a few trips on Cruise liners in the Bahamas. Life was good.

I do not regret the amount of time I spent building my Real Estate career or giving up everything I owned to start a new business in the USA… But at times it is hard and at many times I hope that it will all pay off. I was on my way to retirement by 40 with a nice 4400Sf house and all the toys I could want, but now that is all a distant memory. Living in Hotels for the last 10 months waiting for my condo to be repaired after the fire has given me a interesting perspective. The funniest part to me was that I owned three houses and did not have a place to live. I have learned to live with almost nothing, in small spaces and a life on the road living out of one suitcase. I have literally been able to pack up and move in under fifteen minutes, which is both impressive and sad at the same time.

Well those are my thoughts for the day, welcome to our blog and our lives.