Evan Carmichael answers inventor John's questions on three critical moves: secure a patent before selling anything, launch a website early to build your audience and collect emails, and skip expensive custom development until your business makes money. Use free tools first.
Questions this video answers
Patent the invention first; once the product is publicly sold you can no longer obtain a patent on the core invention, only on improvements.
Create the website first to start building audience momentum, collect emails, and get feedback while the product is still in development.
Avoid spending money or learning to code unless it’s a passion. Use free platforms like a Facebook fan page or simple newsletter tools initially, and only hire professionals once the product generates revenue.
Chapters
Questions from an inventor. So I got a couple questions from one of my YouTube viewers, John— love you guys— who is an inventor and wanted my help to help him grow his business. So I'm going to answer them in the order that he asked and hopefully provide value for you guys. So the first one was, Evan, I have a couple questions for you for starting a business. Number 1, patent first or sell first? What are the ups and downs? This is an easy one. If you have a product, an invention that can be patented, then you wanna patent it first before you start selling. The reason is once a product is commercially available, once you're out there selling it, then you can't get a patent on it. The only thing you can patent is improvements. And I made this mistake with my first company. It was a software company. We created software and then launched it and started selling it, started making some money. And then when we're looking at partnerships and investors and being acquired, people ask, "Well, do you have a patent on it?" And we looked into it and we actually couldn't get a patent on it anymore because it was already released. The only thing we get a patent on was any improvements we made to the software. So anytime we added something new to the software, we looked at getting a patent for that, but we couldn't originally patent our creation. So patent first, then sell. Next question: Should I do the website first or make the product first? So obviously you're gonna have to do both. My preference though is to make the website first. You know, you want a website that— you still need the product because you're gonna have to have something to sell, but marketing and building momentum is so hard for a new business that you want to give as much time as possible to allow momentum to build up. So we create a website and I would put your ideas on there and have a way to contact people, if it's a newsletter or whatever it is, that people can sign up for and get updates and contribute. And as you make improvements and as the product gets closer to launch, you can update people and get their feedback. If people feel like they're a part of it and people feel like, you know, they're on the inside where they're learning about this thing before it even launches, they're gonna wanna share, they're gonna feel connected to it. When it does come out, they're gonna buy it first, they're gonna tell their friends about it. So you wanna build that momentum up as soon as possible. If you create the product and spend all this time creating the product and say, finally, it's ready to go, and now we're ready for a website, then you're gonna spend so much time just trying to get the website to have some momentum and the marketing behind that that you may get frustrated, and a lot of people give up at that stage. So I would start with the website, start building momentum, start getting people to care about it, release updates as the product comes out, and start building your momentum. And the last question was, should I learn how to make my own website or pay people to do it for us? So I hate spending money until I'm making money. I hate spending money until I'm making money. Anybody can spend money, right? You could take— I don't know how much money you have. I'm assuming money is important to you, or you don't have a lot of it, and that when you spend something, you have to get a return on it. You know, if you had $10,000 in the bank, is it— is the best use of that to go out and hire a web company to make your website? Probably not. There are easier ways to get started. And I don't think you learning how to do a website is the best solution either, because then you're doing stuff that you're not great at. Unless you really wanna learn web development, it's a passion of yours, and you wanna dive into it, that's a different story. But if it's just, "I need a website, so I'm gonna learn how to do it," you're not gonna be able to be great by doing things that you're not great at and you have no interest in. You're gonna be great by focusing on what you're really, really good at. Obviously, at some point you need a website, but you can start, start it on Facebook. All the tools are there. Create a fan page. You can have people sign up, right? They, they like the page, they get updates when you're launching something, they can comment on it. You can launch the whole thing on Facebook without spending any money, and all the social tools are already built in. So I wouldn't learn how to web code myself, and I wouldn't hire a company until you start making money from the product. Launch with Facebook, launch with something else, use a tool to help you so you're not spending money. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, click on the link to support me in the description, leave a comment, let me know what you think, and click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
