Inventive Entrepreneurship

Talking about today on Starts Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed, we’re going to really try to crack the code of what it takes to get an invention, an invention, to market, to actually have an idea, take that idea, protect the idea, bring it to market, and then make it a commercial success. And today we’re going to be joined by.

Marcia Reece, uh, the inventor of sidewalk chalk and a number of other very cool inventions. So she’ll be speaking with us today on this topic, and we’re gonna get in. We’re gonna really get into it. We’re going to try to figure out how to crack the code of what it takes to come up with an idea. Put the idea into motion.

Build an actual prototype. Take that idea to market and actually make it a successful launch. And we’re so lucky to have Mark because she’s done this. She’s done this over and over again, and she has a lot of experience. So we’ll jump right into it in a minute. Marcia. Uh, but welcome on and really happy that you’re here.

And able to share with us your your experiences. Glad to be with you all. Thank you very much for inviting me. So, Michelle, I know this is a topic near and dear to you. Uh, you are running a company called paw. com and one called Meowingtons. Sort of a cat and dog thing. And you’re constantly innovating and designing and inventing new products.

Um, I know you have some some new ones under wraps. And we won’t talk about those. But You know, some of the other products that, uh, PAW. com has come to market with are unique products, uh, some of them have patents, uh, and, uh, design and utility patents for, uh, for instance, you have the memory foam pup rug, you have the waterproof blanket, you have a lot of innovative products.

So I think this is going to be an interesting topic as we learn from Marcia, but what it takes to have an idea and take that idea all the way to commercial success. I would love to hear from you, Michelle, on that before we go there, though, I just want to remind everyone here that this is a podcast, and if you’re listening to it in podcast, you can actually come to the live show every Friday at 2 o’clock Eastern.

It’s on an app called Clubhouse. And we’re the startup club. We’re the largest club on clubhouse and you can go there and you can actually join us on stage. And if you’re in the audience today and you’ve invented a product and you want to talk about your product or your journey along along that path, we’d be happy to have you come on stage.

Michelle, what do you think about today’s topic? I mean, I personally love anything that’s around product marketing, product improvements, product development. It’s something that I’ve been doing for a very, very long time from software to now consumer good products. I consider, even though it’s for dogs or cats, consumer good products, because the way we design things, we try to think of the whole ecosystem that’s affected it.

By the actual product and, um, one thing I’ve really learned, you know, when I first started out as very idealistic young woman, I was always trying to think of, Oh my gosh, what is something that’s like totally different and totally unique. I’m going to say, uh, Marcia and Colin, that’s very, very hard. What I have learned is.

You know, start with the problem, start with actual products that are maybe in market and how do you improve them? How do you make them better? How do you make them? So, you know, it solves more people’s need, desire, or issue. It doesn’t always have to be a problem. It could just be things that. People actually want Colin because gosh, there’s always things that we can do to improve on things.

I have always found that as a faster way to get to market. And then Marcia, I would love to hear your idea. And I know this is part of, um, what Colin was hoping for is, you know, ways to have successful launches and actually go to market. That’s, that’s, that’s a huge challenge. I know for a lot of us, we have this great idea.

We do a concept. And, you know, we’re so happy and excited and we’ve spent all this money and we have all these great ideas and then, you know, getting it to market and selling it is, it’s a big challenge for a lot of people and oftentimes, you know, these products or concepts meet the graveyard way before their time.

So I I’m dying to hear your idea. You you’ve brought to market Marcia, some very innovative products, you know, like how did you step through that? I’m sure they weren’t all a big success on day one. No, they certainly weren’t. Michelle. Um, I much like you find. Problem. If I have a problem, then I create a practical solution to that problem in the form of a product before I take it to market.

I’ve always done this for the 50 years I’ve been creating products. I did some calculations today and it was 43 years ago that I created sidewalk chalk. It just doesn’t even seem possible it could be that long ago. But what I do is I focus tested. Back then, back 43 years ago, I made sidewalk chalk in my kitchen.

I made lots of practice runs until I got the formulation. The way we wanted it, and then I took it to what used to be called craft shows, and we would sell out repeatedly, and that told me people liked it. The other thing I did when I was there, I listened, and I’d ask questions, and I could learn by watching the pricing structure.

If people said, how much is it, and I quoted a price, and they picked up three or four, I thought, wow, that’s a They don’t have any resistance to the price. If I quoted a different price and they put it back down, I knew it was too high. Now that’s very primitive and it’s very elementary, but it worked every time.

And so then once we had done probably six months of craft shows, AI had a lot of retail cash because. I was selling retail so I could develop my packaging for the, uh, brick and mortar market. And back then, we took our chalk to Walmart when they had 66 stores. That’s how long ago this was. One of the thrills of my career was my friendship with Sam Walton, and I had the privilege of in September of 1989, having lunch with he and his wife in their home.

And that is always a high point, but back to your question, I always focus test everything I do. And sometimes I use a service called PICFU, and I will submit.

And it’s quite an inexpensive way to do some focus testing. Yeah. SMarciaha, how did you like taking a step back even before doing this market testing? Like, how would you, how, what went through your mind to think you could make colored chalk that you could write on sidewalks with? Like, can you give us a little bit more of the backstory?

And I know for those who’ve read the book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, Uh, Marcia is featured in the book and the book talks about the story a little bit, but what’s cool here is you can actually go, we can get a lot more. of the, uh, you know, of the story and really understand how it came about. Like, how did it first come to your mind to do something like that?

Well, I was a young mother and I had a very prissy daughter. She only wore pale pink and she didn’t like to get dirty. But I love to have my kids do creative art activities. I think when you can, um, use free ended art activities, it really expands a child’s mind. And of course we didn’t have screen time back then.

Thank heavens. But she loved to do arts and crafts with me. And the only chalk available then Colin was from China and it was dusty. It was dirty. It broke. It was full of lead. And I just thought. And she loved to play with it and it would get all over her hands and her clothes and it wouldn’t come off the sidewalk and she was so upset about it.

So I just thought I gotta find a better way. So I went to the library. I had no idea what was in chalk, not a clue. Started researching how you would make a sidewalk chalk and came up with some different ideas that I would take home and experiment with and when I would get it right then I, um, moved forward.

And taking it a few steps ahead of that, um, once we had a very much homespun cottage business, I linked up with Coors Industry in Golden, Colorado. Now you know Coors as making beer, I’m sure, but Coors also had a ceramics division which made ceramics. It’s a very similar process And I met a gentleman there named Bob Jones, and I ended up hiring him away from Coors, and he really was the one who helped take us from, uh, handmade production into automated production.

Production so we could do the big numbers that we had to do, but it all came calling from trying to fill a need as a mom. And, you know, we moms are very lucky because we get to watch the entire dynamic of our family and we can see what would make their lives easier, what they’re struggling with. And those are the kinds of struggles that I like to create a product around.

Yeah, it’s fascinating the journey there. It’s like it’s ideas are everywhere. You just have to sometimes be aware of the problems that you’re experiencing in life or others are experiencing in life or bottlenecks in an industry. And if you can identify that and see that and apply a solution. You’re, you’re, you’re much better off than if you, if you just come up with an idea and you don’t even, and there’s no problem you’re solving.

It seems like this, the, the problem or challenge that you were solving there was that your daughter wanted to, you wanted her to be able to play with chalk, but the toxic Chinese. I know this chalked very well, by the way. I had to, when I was young, I had to write on the chalkboard a hundred times.

Patience is a virtue. While worth contemplating, I have no idea why. Surprised, I have no idea. Surprised some penalty. It was a Catholic school, but, but in any case, it was better than the strap, I guess. Uh, but, but that being said, that’s, you know, I’ve been, I don’t think anyone really has a love affair with chalk, uh, especially that white stuff, whatever.

But this idea that it became a craft and art, you know, it became something. And when my kids grew up, they used your products and, or we did, I guess we used it and we, we used it pretty heavily, you know, in the neighborhood, uh, you know, on the, on the outside, on the driveways and. And, uh, it’s just something that, you know, I think most people know the product, but let me ask you a question here, like, so you come out with this product, you got the Walmart deal, you got distribution, so you hit it right off the bat, you solved the problem, you got distribution, love that, cause you know, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come, so you took care of that right away, but how did you protect it, how did you defend people?

Thanks. The concept or did it just get knocked off by a hundred other companies? Well, I want to first go back a little bit, Colin, because getting that Walmart account was not easy, but it was quite a journey that I think your listeners will enjoy hearing. I met with my buyer and, uh, they didn’t ever had never heard of sidewalk chalk, of course, because it didn’t didn’t exist.

So he gave me a seven store test. He or we had two products. We had a four pack and a six pack. And he gave me a seven store test. He ordered 144 pieces of each product. So 288 for each of seven stores with a 30 day guaranteed buy back. Now, in all honesty, we’d never sold 288 pieces of chalk to any store.

So I’m worried about how. Are they going to sell this through? So on my way home from the meeting, I hatched this idea. What if I called each of the seven store managers whose information he had given me, and I volunteered to do a sidewalk chalk art contest in their parking lots. And I called the local media and all those little towns had a little local newspaper who only did cover on the front and back covers.

The rest of the newspaper was black and white. Well, here we were, um, uh, kids outside in the sunshine, doing art on the sidewalk. We were on the front cover of all seven newspapers. And I hired, or I asked, um, The mayor or the school superintendent or the public librarian, somebody of note worth to be the judge of the contest.

And Walmart agreed to give a first, second, and third prize. And I agreed that everyone that was in the contest would go home with a little two pack of chalk. Well, that chalk contest blew that product out of the store. And we had seven stores to do that at. So we did two a day on the fourth day. I’m doing the final store and I get a call from my buyer.

And he said, Marcia, we’ve got a problem. And of course I’m thinking somebody’s gotten hurt. Somebody swallowed my product. And he said, we are out of inventory everywhere. How soon can you get us restocked? Well, the bottom line to that is we restocked those seven stores nine times in Those 30 days, that is the value and the lesson of doing the extra work.

Was it hard doing those sidewalk chalk? Kind of, kind of, yeah, it took a lot of time and organization, but it was so worth it. So after the nine, the seven stores were done. I called him and I said, Steve, I’m just thrilled with this. Um, I’d like to get a few more stores. And he said, well, let’s do a 14 store test.

So he gave me 14 more stores where I had to organize and do 14 more chalk contests. And that continued then that again, we sold like crazy and then, um, they gave me a 21 store test. And then he said, Marcia, you better come down to Bentonville and meet with me. So I made my very first trip to Bentonville, Arkansas.

It was very different than it is now. And met with him and he had a green and white striped sprocket fed printout on his desk and he looked at it and he looked at me and I’m so sorry, I can’t show you visually the product that we sold Walmart because it’s so important for your listeners to know. It didn’t look like a brand new shiny iPhone or Tesla.

It was very primitive packaging. So Steve looked at me, he looked back at his numbers. He said, Marcia, I don’t understand this. You are the number one selling item in our toy department and your packaging and your presentation suck. And that’s when I said, Steve, tell me what I should do. And so he took me back in their planogram room and he showed me.

All kinds of packaging and we decided that blister packaging would be our best solution. So then we put our product under blisters and that was right at the time. We had figured out how to do molded shapes. So I showed him dinosaur chalk, my pretty pony chalk circus chalk, and he loved it. So we, we right in his office, his little tiny office, we assorted multiple packs with.

The new shapes. And again, he allowed me to go into the back door of Walmart and I could see every day what was selling and what wasn’t. They were very, very kind to a small, um, Toy company. At any rate, that is how, uh, Walmart happened. And then after the 21 store test and the changing to the blister pack, then they gave us a nationwide distribution, all 66 stores.

And the funny backstory to that is, Colin, um, I had gotten a call from The executive producer of ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and they had asked if they could come do a story about our chalk company. Well, we were home based. In my office, I think, no, we did have our first factory by then. We were out of the home.

We were in an old plumbing shop, um, that was close enough to the home that my kids could ride their bikes back and forth. And ABC News came and did a story about. Our little company and I had the art department from the high school come to a whole mural where they parked the school buses of Peter Jennings history through ABC News again going the extra mile doing the research and I made 700 cookies shaped like the ABC News.

Oh, my goodness. Talk about brain damage work. Anyway, they came. We made it. And I asked her if Peter would talk to my kids elementary school. That’s how that school thing happened. Because nobody like Peter Jennings had ever come to Niwot, Colorado. And she said, yes, I think he would. So we had planned a school assembly.

And then right before, two days before he was to come, she called me and said he was, uh, Ill would not be able to come, but Greg Jennings, uh, Greg Dobbs would come and Greg was their international reporter. Well, they loved the, the kids and the cookies and the big art drawing. We ended up having two minutes and 20 seconds on world news tonight.

That’s a 10th of their news show is about our little tiny company. And they talked about how our product was in Walmart and how we were being test marketed For a McDonald’s Happy Meal promotion and this was back decades ago. There was no cloud. I happened to grab a VHS tape and I did get a recording of our segment.

Thank heavens, but. Nobody saw it. I mean, if you didn’t have your TV on ABC News that night at that time, it wasn’t possible for you to see it. So I was sad that some people I wanted to see it didn’t, but someone that I didn’t know saw it. Did see it. The next morning I go into my office and I get a call and the first words out of this person’s mouth were why the F is Walmart getting all this publicity and we’re not.

And I said, Sir, they’re buying our product in all of their stores and I can’t get your buyers to return my call. Colin, it was the head of Kmart. And they placed a 4200 store order, drop shipped to each store over the phone. And then he said, five weeks lead time missing. Do you think you can do that? I mean, very condescending.

But anyway, that’s how, then once we had Kmart, then Target fell, Toys R Us fell. It, that, that effort I put into Walmart and ABC News is what really stopped Made that company what it was. Yeah. I think you hit a couple of like key formulas there are codes that you were breaking and like what’s old again is new again, things don’t change, right?

You could have just did the product, did your test with the stores and sat back and see what happened. But no, you actually made it happen. You know, you see that a lot with distribution, right? Michelle, like you get a deal. Like I know pod just got to deal with Wayfair, deal with Chewy. You got to deal with Bark.

Like you got to deal with all these companies. But you can’t just do a deal with them and sit back. So maybe Michelle, you can add a little bit more color. To working the distribution, working, making the PR happen, doing what it takes to make it successful. If you get a distributor, they won’t necessarily just come.

Yeah. I mean, first, I just have to say, Marcia, like your PR skills and just, let’s just say seizing the opportunity are absolutely amazing. Like it’s, that’s really a case study of like taking an opportunity and making it work for you. And I don’t know that, you know, most of us are good at really doing that because we’re so worried, right?

Like we’re so in our own head, but I absolutely like you’re, you’re, you’re making me think about things that I need to do, but a call and to answer your question, yeah, I mean, it’s almost like show business, right? You’re only as good as your last name. Um, you know, we, we have to really stand up and tell people about the good deals that we’re doing and not be shy about it and Marcia, like in, like that’s guerrilla marketing at its best, like no task or no attention to the smallest detail should go unnoticed.

I know like right now in today’s, you know, world, everybody’s looking for like, you know, to have the Kardashians or some big influencer, but there’s something to be said and you’ve like showed how that’s accurate. And there’s many cases of that today. Like, just like reaching the people and speaking to people in a way that means something to them goes so far.

Uh, you know, you don’t have to be the number one person on TikTok or paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to influencers. Just talk to the people that are right in front of you in a sincere way. And, uh, one thing that Colin says, it’s like a hundred different moves. A hundred different moves. Like just, just put yourself in their head and don’t be too proud about it.

Just, you had a great product and you did an amazing job of actually showing it. And that’s another thing, you know, a lot of us marketing people will say is it’s, you know, stop just telling everybody it’s a great product or a great idea, but just like show them you like really showed them. And I think what you did with Peter Jennings and whatnot, that was like a true sincere appreciation, uh, you know, and obviously that was not lost on them.

That’s very true, Michelle. I had no clue what, how that story would end up when they took it to the cutting floor. We became friends, Greg Dobbs and I stayed in touch all through his career. I would, I would always email he and Sam Walton when any good little things happened to our company, because those were the two pivotal events that, that did change the whole, uh, dynamic of it.

And that’s another thing that I want to stress. Don’t, Ever forget to say thank you to the people who help you along your journey, because there were a lot of people who helped me like Sam and Greg and this gentleman, Bob Jones, and I didn’t do this all alone. Yes, I started the idea, but we ended up with 72 percent global market share and five factories making chalk 24 seven.

That didn’t just happen because some mom in Niwot, Colorado, wanted to help me. a better cleaner product for her daughter. It happened because people helped me. And again, like you said, humble yourself and ask questions and listen and learn. And that’s one thing I’ve, I’ve brought over a hundred products to market now.

Not all of them have been successes by far, but I still listen and learn because Even as seasoned as I am, and at this age in life, and I’m a grandmother of five, so I’m not a youngster anymore, but I feel 23 inside, so that’s good. But I still learn from people to this day, and it feels so good to be able to give back and help people, because I had people who helped me.

And I remember when I first went to, uh, the Denver Merchandise Mart, which isn’t even there anymore, they tore it down and I felt so sad. Um, I needed to get my first manufacturer’s rep and I had my little colored dog. They look like a little dog poop is what the original ones because they were squirted at the chalk was squirted out of pastry tubes originally and I went into these showrooms with these fancy ladies and their long painted nails and here I’m just a mom from Niwot.

I was, I grew up in on Iowa hog farm, so I’m not a fancy lady. Oh, I wasn’t then I’m a little fancier now, but I went into all these. And they kind of laughed at me like, yeah, this doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Well, then I went into the showroom of Barbara Averin and Barbara sat down with me and she showed me catalog sheets and she showed me, uh, case packs and she showed me how other companies sold product and she took my line on.

So she was my first rep. And to the day she passed away, I never forgot to say thank you to her either because she changed our world and so that so many people are willing to help if we are willing to ask questions and Colin had asked me how I protected our product. Our formulation, Colin, to this day is still a trade secret like the Coca Cola formulation.

It has never been duplicated. Kmart tried for a year to knock it off and they couldn’t. And I know exactly what it is. It stops people from figuring it out. And I just chuckle because it’s not that challenging, but it’s, it’s, it’s so, uh, oblique that you really have to get into the weeds of chalk to even think about it.

But to this day, it’s never been duplicated. Now, I did sell the company to the world’s largest toy company on February 9th, 1990. And, um, they had a royalty arrangement that they had to maintain sales at certain levels to continue to own the manufacturing rights. I sold the hard assets, I licensed the manufacturing rights, and so that’s, Colin, how that ended up.

Oh, wow. That’s so cool. I love the, I love the little isms that we get from this show and what you’re talking about, how you became friends. And often in, in, you know, our businesses that we’ve been involved with, we become friends with the distributors and for even now, like, even though I sold the company 10 years ago.

We’re still friends with a lot of these individuals and, and, and relationships do matter. They do make a difference. They do make a difference. I’m getting text here a lot. Sorry about that. But they do make a big difference. Um, Michelle, can you touch upon that? I’m getting hit with a lot of text here. I mean, for me, relationships are key.

And you know, one thing I’m going about right now, specifically for Paul, Marcia is like, I’m trying to connect with my network because I’m trying to get into brick and mortar distributors. So, you know, the best successes I’ve actually had are, you know, just talking to the people that I know, asking them if they know somebody, if they can help me, like.

You know, just cold reaching out to people is hard. You know, you don’t know who to talk to. You’re trying, you’re trying it so it can be so like disheartening. Well, I also think you don’t know who to trust because you’re trusting somebody, you’re trusting somebody with your baby and these products become our children because you give them your heart and your soul.

And your brain. And so you do have to also find people that you can trust. And I think that is even more challenging. And with the world so connected these days, we can be talking to people about our, our, products that we’ve never even met. And I still, I’m, you know, a little bit old school here. I still like to, to see the people that I deal with face to face.

I think once you, you can do a lot online and zooms and internet, Calls like this, but once you meet face to face, it’s a whole different level of accountability and trust. Yeah. I mean, I, I totally agree. And it is like, I know, especially once the pandemic happened and even still now people are reluctant to come into the office or to travel.

But for me, I, you know, I, I love that. People in general, and I really do meeting them like enjoy meeting them face to face. I feel like it’s an investment that’s worth it on a personal level, as well as a business level. And I think if you approach it that way, you’ll find that you do have a lot of allies.

And I’ve just, I’m always impressed how much people actually do want to help me, even though they don’t even know me. Yes. And Michelle, anything I can do to help you just reach out to me after this call. I still have a lot of good connections. Another thing that for my current product, which is Stay Well Copper, that’s been a whole new world of challenges.

And I’m going to be walking a trade show in August in Denver. And I Don’t it’s not a product for brick and mortar. I wish it were but it’s not Uh, but I do want to walk the trade show and see What ins and outs I can uncover because there will be people there who will be able to help me with stay well and um That’s another great place to meet people is to go to trade shows in your industry.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I’m just about headed to one and, and you’re affirming that we were kind of like, Oh, should we go or not? And, um, yeah, we are going to go and it’s difficult, like you said, like the, you know, you get people in the finance team or people, different, various people like, oh, you’re going to spend money that way.

But, um, I’m with you, you learn so much and, um, you make connections and there’s nothing like good connections. Absolutely. Absolutely. And talking about the finance team, that’s a whole nother side of entrepreneurism. Um, when I first created chalk, it was all, we self funded it of course. And this was back at 43 years ago.

No banker took me seriously. When I started getting large purchase orders, I went in to meet with my banker and they looked at me like I was crazy. And they said, you know, this is unproven. We can’t. So I ended up pledging all of our personal assets to fund the company. Oh my gosh. And then once you make it, well then all the bankers want to give you money, which just irritates the heck out of me.

They wouldn’t help me when I really needed them. But now that I don’t need them, Oh, I could get any money I want. Yeah, I love it with brick and mortar. You know, I was dealing with all the giants and they all wanted to pay 2 percent net. Never. I used to tell your terms. I can have children in less time than you want to pay.

Oh, my God. That’s great. Net. Never 2 percent never. Yeah, that that’s a good 1. I like that. I’m going to use that. Well, I know we have somebody on the stage. Lord, do you have any questions or any experiences that you’d like to share with us with Marcia with the audience? Yes. Uh, actually, uh, it’s Kara Colton.

That’s my, that’s my, uh, legal name here. Um, hey, Marcia, I see that you have a. A jail filled, uh, wrist rest, and I also happen to work in the area to, um. Uh, very good. I assume you understand that the copper tunnel syndrome problem has been growing rapidly in the States. And over the past 20 years, people have been diagnosed with cover tunnel syndrome.

The numbers went from under 2Million to 23Million, um, in Just over the past 10 years, um, I’m also an inventor and, uh, in solving my own problem, the carpal tunnel syndrome with a computer mouse, I created a new mouse. And since, um, um, hearing your experience of how to overcome the entrepreneur journey and, uh, bring your product to market so successfully.

I’m wondering if we could book a one hour consulting session. I’m happy to pay her for your time. Uh, maybe you could help me get my product out there as well. I’ve been doing this solo for about seven years and it’s very difficult. Uh, we are making sales and we have a lot of return customers, but we just haven’t made it to the national stage yet.

Yes, I’d be happy to help you. Why don’t you reach out to me after the call and we’ll chat. When I made my wrist rest, it was exactly why you said back in the early days, keyboards were about an inch and a half thick. And if you typed all day, your wrist became very, very sore. So I created that gel filled wrist rest.

And I didn’t take it to market myself. I did a worldwide license with case logic. Case logic was one of the big players in that electronics field, and they took it. So that’s another Avenue. You don’t always have to do it yourself if you partner with a really great company. And they were wonderful. And I can still connect you with their president.

So I, I’ve, I’ve gotten caught. Thank you so much. Uh, My, my, uh, I kind of burned the bridge with, uh, Logitech. So in the early days when we were supposedly talking about licensing deals with Logitech, uh, it didn’t quite work out. So after that, they’ve been trying to destroy me and I went on market without them, I went to market without them.

Uh, we’ve been selling independently for a while now, but I wonder maybe Uh, maybe an exit, you know, um. Including having them buy me out would be a good option. Uh, because obviously I can’t get to the rest of the world just by doing what I’m doing. It’ll take. Centuries. It will. It will. And that’s why with the wrist rest, I did.

I did license it because I knew their expertise in that area could could get market share so much more quickly than I could. Where are you located? I live in Los Angeles, a small town called Rancho Cucamonga. Oh, I know that. Yeah. I’m familiar with all there are here in the, here in the Hills . Yeah. And I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona, so we’re, we’re easy in the same time zone area.

Okay. Okay. Uh, yeah, I see your, I, I’m on your website. Um, I’m on your website actually, so can I just send you an email? Um, would that be the best approach? Absolutely. You can send it to marcia@staywellcopper.com. Marcia, M-A-R-C-I a@staywellcopper.com. Oh, that’s also on your, uh, uh, on your clubhouse account as well.

Oh, good. Good. Good. So, Marcia, you, you, you’ve had a lot of success. Uh, I remember your product again. The, I remember the risk thing as well. Uh, just growing up with computers, uh, Lord, thank you very much for that. Uh, I wanted to, uh, ask you a question. And, uh, because not every one of your products has been a success.

And then the book starts scale, exit, repeat. Uh, we quoted you on a prior show is talking. About a TSA portfolio, a document portfolio. I guess it was the idea was that you would have a, a, um. A, uh, you know, you’re going through the TSA and you’re able to show your passport or whatever within a, in a, in a portfolio or a document portfolio, and it didn’t work out.

Can you talk a little bit Yes. About some of your failures? Because I think in this show we’re, we’re trying to track the code, right? And part of cracking the code is, you know, what are some of your failures? So that would be one of them, if you could talk about that and maybe a couple others. Sure, I made a product called Quick Check In, and it was a vinyl portfolio.

You opened it up, and on the left side, there was a see through pocket for your driver’s license, your passport, and the right side was one pocket that held your boarding pass. And so you could just flip it open, all your documents were there, and again, true to form, this product idea came up because when I traveled, I would see people fumbling around trying to find.

All their documents and dropping things and leaving things behind. And I just thought, gosh, if that was all just in one easy, flip it open, show it, close it. That would just be wonderful. So I thought it was going to be another home run. I could not get distribution on it. I don’t know, and I don’t know why.

I did run it through focus testing. People in our focus group really liked it. I still use one. Believe it or not. I don’t use it for travel as much. I have some other newer purposes. I use it for, but it never caught hold. And that was always a surprise to me because. It did solve the problem very effectively.

There’s the need today because we all do it on our, on our phones. Now we check in with our phones primarily. So we don’t have all that paperwork. So maybe it just wasn’t a big enough problem to solve. I think that’s a good way to go out of their way and pay money for it. Just wasn’t. A big enough problem.

Exactly. And I couldn’t get distribution in the airport stores, which is where I was trying to get distribution. Um, so I think again, not everything hits. And, um, I did another product for a company out of Montreal, Canada, and it was a toy item and they were so excited about it. They were animal shaped.

cases, they had goofy animal faces on these cases and they were to hold school supplies and the company wanted it so badly. And our focus group kept saying, why this one’s got an odd interior configuration because of the shape of the animal head. So what would you put in this compartment? This compartment is bigger.

It wasn’t, uh, Logical inside it was cute on the outside and kids liked what it looked like But it wasn’t highly functional and that was not a successful product and I fought against them Tooth and nail to not make it because they spent a lot of money on those injection molds But I couldn’t convince them not to so the market always speaks loudest.

Yeah, it’s the brutal market And I know how hard it is to get a deal with all the airports Because we just got one for start scale legs and repeat it’s going to be in every airport Store Hudson’s in WH Smith in September, October. So I know it’s not easy to do. In fact the first time we applied They turned us down and that was about nine ten months ago in but the books getting a lot of acclaim.

So They’ve now said that they are going to carry Start, Scale, Exit, and Repeat in all their airport stores. So I know it’s not easy. Uh, are there any other lessons that you’ve had a product that’s succeeding, it’s doing well, but something else went wrong? Like, for instance, uh, you got sued because you violated somebody’s patent, or you just couldn’t get the financing, or you couldn’t, you know, you mentioned you couldn’t get the distribution for this one.

Are there any other product failures or taking the market failures that you could share with us? I think, you know, in sad, honest reality, the product I’m doing now, Stay Well Copper has been my biggest challenge of my entire career. It has universal need. It kills germs on our hands. I have not been sick or had a cold since 2016 because I use this product every day on the back of my phone, on my car keys.

I don’t leave home without it. Now, when I created this product, it was before the pandemic. And I. almost died from a very deadly MRSA staph infection in the lowest part of my spine. And when I finally got well, and it was a long, hard process, um, which involved having final rights twice, six surgeries and having to learn to walk again.

So it was, I’m not, when I say I was deadly sick, I was deadly sick. So I created a product that would kill germs without using drugs and chemicals, because all the antibiotics they had used on me had ruined my hair, my skin, and my nails, the fast growing cells. Fortunately, they have regenerated, but it was Pretty freaky there for a while.

So I created this pie, did the research. I knew that copper would kill germs. I have a wonderful relationship with Revere Copper up in upstate New York. They’re my supplier. They’re the oldest manufacturing company in the U S started by Paul Revere when he was 65 years old. If you can imagine back in the 1801, and Paul had 14 children.

This is another factoid. At any rate. I didn’t think this was a product for brick and mortar because it’s a product that needs explanation. So I put it on Amazon. Now I had never dealt with Amazon. I had never bought from Amazon. I had never sold to Amazon. So I, Blindly and stupidly put my product on Amazon and within about three or four months, I was doing about 130, 000 a month.

So it was selling really well. Then the pandemic hit and Amazon kicked us off. They delisted us because we said in our listing that we killed 99. 97 percent of germs, which we do. We were halfway through getting our EPA registration. We didn’t have it yet, but Amazon didn’t care. So it took eight agencies, and that’s how I ended up meeting Norm, which he’s been such a wonderful friend and such a great resource, um, eight agencies to help us get back on Amazon.

We did get our brand registry. We got our registered trademark. We got our patents. We got our EPA registration. But to this day, I cannot get the sales back to where they were and I can’t figure out why. I, I just, but I’m, I’m stubborn and I’m not giving up because this product is so effective. We get tremendous reviews from our users.

We have great reorder rates. Once people learn about us, they do love it, but oh my God, what a challenge this has been. So I don’t want it to be my biggest failure because there’s too many people around the world that need it. But boy, yeah. What is the product exactly? Is it, can you just describe it? Yes.

Um, you can also see it on my website, site, stay well, copper. com. We make phone patches that stick on the back of the germiest thing we touch all the time, which is our iPhone. And we make rollers that fit on our car keys. They have a swivel attachment so you can roll them between your hands. When I go to the grocery store, the bank, the gas station, I never touch those buttons because they are covered with germs.

They never get cleaned properly. I use my roller like my sixth sanitary finger. And then we have some copper dog tags that also can go around your neck that men seem to like to wear that more than the roller. But so it’s very simple product line. It’s not a complicated one, but it’s just I can’t crack the Amazon code.

And when we were selling 130 a month, we were FBM. And we will pay nothing for PPC. I can’t figure out how we got there and I can’t figure out how to get back there again. So, if anybody in your audience can help me with Amazon boy, I can make it work. I’ve been I’ve been an Amazon seller for over over 7 years.

And, uh, at the peak, we were selling, or making about 170, 000 a year on Amazon, uh, selling the RPT mouse and then, uh, randomly out of nowhere, uh, we got a whole bunch of, uh, competitors and marking, uh, bad reviews and all of a sudden, once the, the rating dropped below 4. Went to a 3. 8, uh, the sales stopped, you know, it went from.

Uh, you know, over 10, 000 dollars of sales in a month all the way down to 3000. So, you know, that was very detrimental to my earnings to my income. And I, I’ve called as a self support on Amazon multiple times. And the, uh, and I even went to see us to see the managers in person to tell them to report a problem, but nothing’s changed.

Um, they don’t have a way. To really defer or, um, discourage your competitors from smearing your reputation and the moment, um, I guess they have an algorithm behind the Amazon powerhouse. Um, the moment they see there are more. Ratings, you know, uh, that are under 3 stars, they’ll start. They’ll start to, um, discourage the buyer from seeing your product.

So when you were making over a hundred thousand dollars in sales, you know, on Amazon, your impression rate was probably in the millions. I would say three or 4 millions per per month. And that is very significant. But once the rating started to suffer, and I assume you’re going to have competitors from overseas, from, uh, from domestic, they’re going to.

Uh, they buy reviews. That’s the worst thing about Amazon. They don’t do anything about it. And you can just go, you can Google today and you’ll see a purchasing Amazon reviews. There are still several sellers out there and they’ll still do this thing, but Amazon will not stop them. And we have each time we’ve been listed, we’ve lost all our reviews.

We had many, many 105 star reviews. They’re all gone. I think we maybe have 2 dozen reviews now there. And and fortunately, we don’t have competition. I. Enforce my intellectual property diligently, and I go onto the main e-commerce sites once a month. And if I see anybody in our space that is violating my patent, I’m all over ’em.

So that, that we’ve been able to keep under tabs, but it’s just getting, oh, so the new two new platforms, uh, Marcia, there are two new platforms I think you try out. One is TikTok shop, um, very popular. The other one is Temu, TEMU. I don’t want to deal with team because they’re all Chinese base, but I, I am just getting things on tick tock now.

Yeah, start with tick tock. It’s definitely very helpful. And since you are very outspoken and. As long as you can explain your idea well, and, uh, your product, I would say the price. It’s not marketed above 50 because people on on on tick tock are also very price sensitive. If you’re under 50, I don’t see any problem with you selling, you know, making the big thing again.

It’s very likely. Yeah, well, I will tell you in complete candor, I have worked with hundreds of companies. No one is as difficult as Amazon. No one has made me want to scream louder than Amazon. They’re the most difficult platform. They truly do not have any regard for the sellers. Any thoughts Michelle on that?

Because I know this is a, an area you’re, you’re in the middle of as well, Michelle. All right. Michelle? Uh, she’s about to be out. Yeah, I’m here, I’m here. Go, go ahead. I, I missed what you were saying. No, it’s just a little Amazon. Like this, the, the fact that it’s, it’s, Amazon’s driving everybody nuts. And Oh, Amazon is.

But, you know, I, I was just listening to you intently. Because we’re newer to the game. And, like, I, I, I’m just going to say a couple things. I know this is not an Amazon session. We should do one again, Colin, with Amazon experts and questions. So one thing, like you said, which is correct, getting on Amazon brand registry is critical, right?

Then you have to kick people off your listings. If that’s what you want to do, which is what we’re doing. Cause they were surfing on our listings and we were paying for ads. The second thing is, and Laura, I’m sure you know this, but you know, you can protest reviews. You can get bad reviews dropped like Amazon’s changing so much all the time.

I am not pretending like I’m an expert. I’m not. But I can tell you this. We’re learning a lot and I can see I’m seeing ourselves go up and up as we learn more. It’s like you need a PhD quite honestly in Amazon and there is so much to learn. But we should come back Marcia with Norm and you and some of our other friends.

Like I would love to do, um, you know, some Q and a and deep dive into Amazon, but it is a great opportunity in my opinion. And that’s not just an opinion. It’s according to what I’ve seen. Thank you. I think everyone if you can find the sweet spot on Amazon, there really is nowhere like Amazon, but boy, does it have the pitfalls and I’m 100 percent in favor of doing a show with Norm and some of the other Amazon folks because we’ve all there’s no one that deals with Amazon that doesn’t have a few scars on their back.

Uh, I wanted to make a quick comment, uh, with, uh, Michelle’s mark on the, uh, protesting the. Uh, the bad reviews, so you can only protest it if they write something about it, but Amazon makes it where they can just give you a score like a one star review without writing anything. And since the seller, uh, can’t really see the comment or the, uh, the review, there’s no, there’s no way to report it.

So that’s that.

Yeah, and I also know, Michelle, um, Marcia was talking about takedowns, competitor takedowns, and you just started doing that as well. I think it’s important to protect, you know, in the book, we start to see a list of repeats. We start with the first chapter about, you know, ideas are everywhere, and then the second is ideas to action.

And then the third is, you know, the, um, uh, catching a wave. The fourth is building a moat. The fifth is scaling, picking ideas that can scale and, and learning how to scale your organization. And the moat is important. A lot of entrepreneurs get out there and they don’t realize they need to do patents. They need to do trademarks.

You don’t necessarily need to do them right out of the gate, by the way. If you don’t have the funding, that’s okay. You can still prove your concept first, but we had a product on paw. com that became a, you know, a national hit. And we were late to the game. We failed to do the patent on it. And, uh, I’m going shopping with my wife at Christmas, like two years ago.

And like fucking product is right there in Costco in front of me. I’m like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Like we invent the product and it’s, and yet we didn’t, but we didn’t do the necessary moves to protect it. So it is really important that if you do a product in the United States, that you do file for a patent for that product, especially if it’s unique.

And by the way, you can do a design patent, which is not as good. If you can do a utility, it’s better, but you can do it within up to a year of launching, of advertising that product. If you can do it before that, you can get global rights. Thanks. Well, and the great thing is, Colin, at my age, I can get a patent issued in six months because the patent office, if you have a terminal illness or you’re above a certain age, they, they give you priority to get your patents issued.

I’ve never heard that. I think that’s amazing. That’s really cool. It was wonderful. That’s true. That’s great for an inventor like you just won’t stop. Okay. That’s another. We’re closing out now. We have about two, three minutes left. But Marcia, like, I mean, come on, when are you gonna retire? Like, is there an addiction here?

Are you addicted? You know, I guess in the last chapter of the book, I talk about the entrepreneurial addiction and sometimes it can be bad, sometimes it can be positive, but it just seems like you’re addicted to creating and solving problems. I am, and you know, I have, I live in Scottsdale, Arizona where everybody out here is old and retired.

People look at me and say, why are you still doing this? Because it lights my fire. When I tell you I feel 23 inside, I have the energy of a 23 year old. And that’s because this stuff lights me up. I wake up hyper challenged, ready to go. And I look at my friend, you want to play pickleball? Do you want to go play tent?

No, I don’t. I hate that old boring stuff. But I’ve told my children and my grandchildren, if I die with a product design in my hand, you know, I died happy. I truly know this is what God made me for. I know it’s what I, my calling is. I love it. I hate the e commerce side of it, but. The product design development part of it lights me up like nothing you can even imagine.

No one makes me do this. I don’t need the money. I’ve been lucky to sell a couple of products for some pretty good change. I don’t do it for that. I do it Because I’ll tell you one quick story as we’re closing out many, many years ago, I was in a Toys R Us store in Boulder, Colorado, and I was walking the aisles looking for packaging, colors, trends, just looking to see, and I always look what’s in the, in the closeout bin, because that tells me what didn’t work.

And I hear this little girl say, Mommy, Mommy, if you buy me this, it’s all I want all day. And I thought, I wonder what that kid walks. And I walked around two aisles over and there she was holding my bucket of sidewalk chalk. And that’s why I do this to hear that little girl say, Mommy, Mommy, it’s all I want.

And when I hear, I have people today call and say, I haven’t been sick for three years. Thank you. I just, it just lights me up to know something I created changed somebody’s life. And I think it’s an honor and a privilege to get to do this. The day I stop, it’ll be close to, uh, it’ll be close to, uh, coffin time.

I just love it. You’re amazing. You’re absolutely amazing. And, you know, you start, scale, exit, repeat over and over again. Like you are doing it. I think it’s amazing. Your, your, um, maybe we can connect you with the Procter Gamble, uh, folks. They have a venture fund, or not a venture fund, it’s more like a licensing fund.

So maybe your, your, uh, product would work well with Procter Gamble, and they could take it from zero to a hundred, and very, very quickly. Yeah, I would do that in a heartbeat because the one other thing I have learned is there are people just like case logic took my gel filled wrist rest. They took it to the stratosphere.

I couldn’t have done that. That quickly. So knowing when to exit is a very key thing and they have massive distribution. So if you, if you google proctor and gamble innovation fund, they have, uh, and by the way, you can look at some past episodes. We profiled them. We, we, they, they actually were a sponsor on startup club and we did it.

We interviewed a number of people that actually made the book, but also we had them on clubhouse and you can just look at the past episodes, but that might be a good option for you to, to join that competition usually runs enough, you have to apply in October. Every year they’re still doing it, but we can get you in contact, Marcia.

Super. Thank you very, very much. And Colin, look who joined us. Our friend, Steve. And Seattle my gosh Steve, but okay, so we have to extend the show now. I know, I know, Steve. Hey Steve, how are you doing? I met Steve at the Empowery Show in Las Vegas. What a genius. We have a genius on stage. He’s going to be a speaker that’s coming on our show.

I think we’re booked in September, October. But the reality is like, if you do not get on startup. club and sign up to that email list, you’re not going to know that Mar Marcia was coming on and she was amazing. You were just amazing today, Marcia. And then you would not know that Steve’s going to come on Steve.

Uh, welcome to our humble little show in the humble corner of the world. And you missed a really good show with, uh, with Marcia about. Learning about inventions and taking them to market. But any, any thoughts, Steve, about tips for distribution, especially around Amazon?

No pressure, Steve. Throwing you in the middle of it there, right? I know, I know. He may not hear us. Okay. Well, I want to thank you both for inviting me. Colin, you have been someone I have watched and admired ever since I learned about you through Norm Farrar, and to actually get to spend this hour with you, you just, you were the highlight of my week, and I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me, and I know now our paths will cross many more times.

I think so as well. And by the way, your story and the stories of 50 other people who actually, uh, made the book, we interviewed over 200 people, uh, but your story and Joe Foster from Reebok, his story, his story. Uh, I, I do a lot of speeches now, and I’ll often quote your story about sidewalk chalk, and it’s just, it’s just phenomenal.

We learned a lot today. We, we, we’re uncovering that code. We’re breaking that code. Yeah, go ahead. One of the things I wanted to tell your audience, and I’m sorry to interrupt you, Colin, it’s very important when you’re out meeting with people and Michelle, this will be good for you as well. Make sure before you spill your beans, you have them sign an NDA.

If someone is not willing to sign an NDA, don’t talk to them. And that’s my parting wisdom. We like that. Well, you’ve been listening to Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. Yes, that’s the name of the book, the number one bestselling book, but it’s also the name of the podcast. And you can go and search on Google or look at any of your podcast networks and, or YouTube now.

We actually recently went on YouTube. I’d say about six months ago, Mimi, and it’s blown up. We have over 30, 000 followers on YouTube. Uh, and we have some videos that are posting over 10, 000 views now. Uh, it’s starting to blow up, but you can listen to the episodes there as well, but nothing’s better than coming in person.

Come to download this app called Clubhouse, join Startup Club, and join us on stage live and ask questions. And, and let us help fuel your startup journey on Startup Club. Thank you very much. We’ll see everyone next Friday, two o’clock Eastern.