MBA1210 Q&A Wednesday: How do you get started when you have the ideas but need engineers?

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Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that's always got your back with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar mba.net Today's question is from Josh and Josh asks how do you get started when you have the ideas but don't have the engineers to implement and get started? My wife and I have an idea to produce a technology product. Problem is we don't know the first thing about making electronics. How do we get started when we need engineers and prototype developers right off the bat? Great question Josh. And you can get started even without engineers, but I'll also explain when you're going to need to get them involved, how you can lower your costs and maximize success. Creating a physical product with minimal experience is a challenge, but you can manufacture it and start the wheels in motion. I'll also talk about how you can start selling the product before it's actually ready for mass production. That way you can fund your business and fund production to serve your customers. Can't wait to get into this one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Josh has an idea to produce an electronics product, a physical product. He wants to get started, he wants to validate his idea, but he's a bit nervous because he needs engineers and somebody to manufacture it right off the bat. Totally understand where you're coming from. In fact, one of my first larger businesses was manufacturing clothing. I had to learn a lot about the manufacturing process. Now with an electronic product, it gets even more complicated. So you definitely have a challenge. But Nicole and I have actually helped one of our clients launch a Kickstarter campaign for an electronic product. It was called the Wi Fi Boss. It was a wifi router that had parental controls and it was sort of pocket sized so you could take it anywhere. This is really back in the day. But we helped promote it, create the promotional video, create the website, and advised along the process. So I'm aware of the challenges that you're facing right now, Josh. Number one, I mentioned Kickstarter. So when it comes to a physical product, I highly recommend you crowdfund your initial launch, your initial offering. Why? Because it's going to validate your business idea so you don't produce something that people don't want. The other thing this is going to do, it's going to force you to create the first prototype. Because Kickstarter will not allow you to list a Kickstarter campaign. If you don't have a prototype, a functioning version one of your product, it doesn't have to be perfect, but they ask you to detail how you actually create the product, the manufacturing cycle, and actually have a working prototype or a version one. You can't just ask people for money and not prove that you actually pulled this off. And now you just need the money so you can, you know, scale up. Now, what I love about crowdfunding like Kickstarter is that you're asking people that you don't know for honest feedback. And if they really want to put their money where their mouth is, if they actually want to buy, you know, pay with their hard earned money, what you're offering, it's easy to ask your friends and family, hey, do you think this idea is a good one? You know, it's easy for them to say yes. It's easy for them to say that sounds good. I'm not really familiar with this, but that sounds pretty good. And a lot of people take that for as a big green light. Let's go for it. Let's spend some money and manufacture. But your friends and family are primarily not going to be your customers. And even if they were, you're going to need more than just them to make this a viable business. So understand before you actually create this Kickstarter campaign that this project is going to cost some money. Not a lot of money, depending on the product, but some money. I don't know the specifics of your product and how intricate it's going to be, but it's going to take some time and money for research, for marketing, for creating that first prototype and documenting the whole process. But I'm going to say right off the bat, this will take some time. I would say giving yourself six months would be a good tight deadline. It's not too much time, but it's not too little time. Again, it all depends on what kind of product you're talking about here. But in general, you can create a physical product and put it on Kickstarter in that time, create the campaign, create all the materials, create the website, create the video that you have to create, tell your story, all that stuff. But one of the things you can nail before you start building a prototype is what it actually offers, what problem actually solves, and who does it solve it for. You got to get really specific who your audience is and what exactly does your product do? I'll give the example of the Kickstarter we worked on, Wi Fi Boss as an example. So it's a wifi router that is specifically geared to this audience. Parents that have children between the ages of 5 and 16. Why the age range 5 to 16? Well, that's the time or the age where children are going to get online. And parents want to have control over how much time is spent online as well as the content. So what exactly does it do? Well, it's a little router. It's literally the size of a recess cup, if you're familiar with that. And you plug it into your existing wi Fi router. And then you can manage the router through an iPhone app or an Android app. And you can block specific devices from getting Internet access, or you can actually give it time ranges. So you could say no Internet access to the PlayStation during these hours, no access to phones, let's say, for example, during dinner time and then a curfew, all Internet kind of gets shut off from the kids devices after this time. Now, the founder of WiFi Boss Mario Suave, the client that we were working with, he had a big why and you need to find your why. Why are you creating this product? Because you're going to have to tell the story in the Kickstarter campaign. So as you can see, you already have a lot to work on before you even get to the prototype phase where you need engineers. And his why was that? A lot of his friends were asking him for advice on how to control Internet. He's a tech savvy guy and he's able to hack into, you know, the routers and be able to do things like that. But he wanted to create a simple solution for his friends to be able to kind of help them manage the Internet in their home. So you notice that, you know, their kids are staying up all night on chat and they're waking up, you know, cranky and not able to go to school with a fresh brain and a fresh body. Kids were on their phones during dinner time, things like that. So they wanted to be able to regulate it in a way that is clear. And also at the same time, it kind of becomes like just the standard. There's no more negotiation. Those are the rules. And that's how it is. So once you know exactly what your device does, what is it geared for and who's it for, then you can really have a clear message. When you're doing your campaign, when you're doing your marketing materials, when you're doing your website, when you're doing your video, who are you speaking to specifically? Well, you're speaking to parents in this example who have kids from the age of 15 to 16. In this example, Mary has his own story of why he got started. He has a daughter of his own as well, where he wants to be able to manage the Internet time that she spends. So a lot of this is just writing things down, documenting. A lot of technology products spend a lot of time in documentation. I know this, I run a software company. Before we build any major feature, we spend a lot of time writing down what this thing's gonna do. Being clear, it's like a guide. So when anybody works on this, they read the documentation. Come the time when you need to build a prototype and you hire a manufacturer, you can easily just say, hey, read my documentation so you can understand what this product does, who's it for and what we're trying to achieve. So this is super simple to do right now with no engineers documenting what your product exactly does. Who's it for? How does it serve them? Now, when it comes to time to build a prototype or version one, you can easily source and manufacture overseas. There's a great site called Alibaba. I'm sure you've heard of it before, and Alibaba is basically a huge marketplace for goods that are manufactured in China. Now, you're not going to buy something that's already made, but you can contact these stores, these retailers, these manufacturers and say, I want to build this thing. You can give them your documentation and say, can you give me one unit of this? How much will it cost? They can quote you a price. You want to find a manufacturer that's building something that's similar to what you're doing. So if I was trying to manufacture, like the wifi boss, I would try to find somebody who's manufacturing, you know, small wireless routers. Then I can add my tweaks, the software, how it connects to, you know, an iOS or Android app. But at least I narrowed down to somebody who knows the world of routers. What you want to do is you want to make sure that they give you a version one. Now, obviously, when I say version one, I'm not talking about the first version they give you. Okay. In manufacturing, it's going to take a few back and forths in order for you to actually have the product you're looking for. When I say version one, I'm saying the actual version of what you're going to sell to your customers. So that means that they're going to manufacture something according to your documentation. You're going to agree on a price, but you're going to have to agree on revisions as well. So you're going to say, hey, I need at least five or six revisions, just in case that means they send it back to you. You take a look at the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it, you know, works. You're going to ask for some revisions. Here's a bunch of revisions I need. That's one revision cycle. And again, we're just working on one unit. But you have to obviously tell them, hey, I'm building this company and if we can work together, if we can get that one unit right and we can, you know, do this right on Kickstarter, we can be able to manufacture more. Because when I put on Kickstarter, I'm going to have to build more of them and sell them and deliver to my Kickstarter contributors. And in this day and age, manufacturers overseas, they're on Alibaba, are very familiar with Kickstarter so they understand what it's at stake here. They understand that you know you'll be coming back if they produce a great quality product. Now, an essential element to this process is you need to document everything that happens, the whole process. It's really important for you to journal daily. Why? Because you're going to need this in telling the story in Kickstarter to prove that you you came up with this idea, you came up with the details, you wrote the documentation, the back and forth between you and your manufacturer, creating, you know, the prototype and you want to detail these things on your Kickstarter page. This is going to help you in the long run. A little bit of documentation, a little bit of journaling every day is going to really help you when it's time for you to launch.

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At the start of the episode, I said let's dedicate six months to producing and launching this Kickstarter campaign for your product, for your digital product, for your electronic product. Your first three months is really going to be fleshing out the idea, fleshing out who is it for and how it serves them. The documentation, detailed documentation, your own personal sketches if you like. You can even just doodle with your iPad. It's totally fine. The manufacturer is going to be able to clean that up and create a more of a professional sketchup that you can use or a mock up I should say that you can use in your Kickstarter campaign. The next three months can be going back and forth with your manufacturer to of course sourcing Your manufacturer, finding it on Alibaba, trying to find somebody who can produce what you're looking for and you'll be surprised. You know, manufacturing a prototype may be a little pricey, but it's not that expensive. You can get started for lower than you think. I don't know the exact details of your product, how expensive it is, but I would 10x the retail price of a competitive product. So say, for example, I'm producing a power bank to charge smartphones. If that power bank costs, let's say, $100 on Amazon, I should expect to spend at least a thousand bucks. At least a thousand bucks to get that prototype of the custom made one I want before I mass produce. It can cost more, especially if there are intricate details, but it gives you some idea. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show and thanks for asking that question, Josh. I hope it answers your question. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar@100mba.net don't forget to hit subscribe so you get all our episodes automatically and you have access to all our archive episodes. Whether you're listening to me right now on Stitcher Radio or Overcast or Apple Podcast or Spotify or Castbox, whatever we are on everything, just hit subscribe and you'll get our episodes automatically. So it's ready for you when you're ready to listen. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Creating a physical product is a lot of work, but there's a different sweetness about selling something physical versus something virtual, like a course or a software program. Both are great, but I built both types of businesses and there's a different type of sweetness to selling something that people can hold in their hands. So I wish you all the best, Josh. It's going to be a lot of fun. Don't forget to email me to update me on how you did with this business. All right? Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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