Designing Success With Tracy Hazzard From Table Top Inventing Podcast With Steve Kurti

Do you dream of a classroom where learning is natural? Can we inspire students to lifelong learning? What exactly is the purpose of an education? Inspiring students to be curious, independent, creative, innovative, deep thinking, confident, proactive, collaborative, determined, educated. Rise to the challenge of changing the world. This is teaching. This is learning.

This is who we are.

Welcome to the Tabletop Inventing Podcast.

How does a young lady pursuing a career in biogenetics find herself a successful artist? How can a small company file a lawsuit against a huge company without getting crushed? And how do you fall in love with 3D printing after avowing never to use it? The stories behind these curious juxtapositions are waiting for you in today's podcast.

I can't tell you how many fails we have on our prints all the time. It takes iterations sometimes. Some of our designs, including that angel I was referring to, takes 200 hours to figure it out, design it, get it printing right. And that's not, you know, that's not an exaggeration. That's probably underestimating. That's okay. It should take that amount of time to make something great. And so that failure along the process is an opportunity to learn, learn. And that's one of the most important things.

Welcome to the Tabletop Inventing podcast. I'm Steve Curtie, AKA the Mad Scientist, and I'm pretty jazzed about something that happened this last week. We just finished up our first Inventor Camp of 2016 in Apple Valley, California, last Thursday. But on Wednesday, while we were in full swing, I had the coolest thing happening. One of the challenges this year involves binary numbers, byte conversions, and ASCII tables. If you're a techno geek, you'll get those references, but if you're not, those are terms for how the data moves around in your computer, cell phone, and the Internet. I wanted the kids to see under the hood, so to speak, to see that things aren't really as mysterious as they seem. I was talking to Lily and Trevor, who were tasked with programming up a little solution for encoding letters and numbers into binary, and Lily was telling me about how her program worked. She was pretty excited that she could look at the 8 bit representation by the LED lights and look up the letter on a chart. I turned to Trevor to ask him if he knew what they needed to do next, and he answered, yep, I'll do that in a minute, but right now my brain is on fire. It was so awesome and so funny that I had a fit of laughter on the spot. And that's what I love to see. Kids with their Imagination on fire. Today's guest, Tracy Hazard, also loves to see kids with their imagination on fire. Tracy is the CEO of Has Design Consulting, a design company headquartered in Orange County, California. Let's find out how Tracy is igniting the imagination.

So my guest today is Tracy Hazzard. Tracy and her husband have a company that has designed over 250 products, and they are experts at taking IDE and turning them into products. And they have an 86% success rate, which I think is phenomenal, actually. And they are hooked on 3D printing, but it did not start out that way. Tracy, tell us how you got hooked on 3D printing.

So I was pregnant with my third child, and we had just lost a client who stiffed us, actually. And I was really in a crappy mood. And Tom pulls out make magazine. He said, have you seen this? This is the coolest thing. There's all these 3D printers in here. And I looked at him and I said, you want to Talk about spending $4 right now? And we're just as we're getting on an airplane to go see his mom all the way across the country. I was like, this is not a good time to talk to me. But over the next couple of months, he wore me down and convinced me that it was worth skill building for our business. And so I said, okay, because we can build prototypes in Asia and we could do all of this, and we didn't really need a 3D printer for that. We really didn't do products that were small enough in my mind. But I said, well, if we're going to understand the technology and we're going to, you know, offer this up as a service to our clients, we better understand it. So I reluctantly agreed. And the 3D printer arrived just as my daughter did. So it sat in the box for a month, and then. But once we got it out and realized how hard it was, that's actually what convinced me that it was worth doing. So I know that sounds crazy, but it really did. It convinced me that if something is this hard to. To design for when we've been designing three dimensionally for 20 at this point, 23 years or 24 now. But it was just something that I said, we have to go forward with and we have to help others learn how to do this and get started, because they're going to quit. We're really tenacious, but most people are going to quit. And so that's really where we said, this is our place in this to really kind of inspire what the future of it can Be and inspire the design part of it, which is really critical because if you know what to make, then there's no point in using the printer, which was my original point. But along the way we figured out the what.

So I'm actually curious, what was the first thing you printed and what direction have you taken your 3D printing in? Tell us a little bit about that.

So, you know, it's one of those things when you first get a printer, and I think this is a big mistake that most printer manufacturers make is that they don't have a lot of really cool stock art in there. So, you know, sometimes it comes with half a dozen things, but most of them are really, you know, gears and gadgets and they just kind of cheap and cheesy. The Makerbot that we bought came with this bracelet and you could print this bracelet. It was a stock art and it had kind of a really cool texture to it and it was a little stretchy and it printed in, you know, I think a few hours. And so that was probably the first thing that my husband printed because we have three daughters. So they wanted to see something cute come off the machine and, you know, pop pink and, you know, they didn't want to see some dumb little robot come off of it. So. So that was the thing that I think is really missing, is that if you're going to buy a 3D printer, your mom, your wife, or whoever is going to really want to see something cool come off of it because you're spending so much time in that 3D printer or in reverse, your dad and your husband. So, you know, it's got to be something that everybody wants, and that's what's really missing. And so those are the first couple things you print off because you got to make sure the machine works and you haven't quite learned to it. So. So some of the first things that we print though were junk. They were terrible. It took us about six months before I would let Tom Instagram anything that we printed there. And you have to think about it. And the very first thing we Instagrammed actually looked like a badminton. I forgot what it's called. Birdie. A badminton birdie. That's what it looked like. But it was the base of an angel we were building for the holidays. And so it was just this thing with no real face, no head, no angel wings. So it looked like a badminton birdie. And honestly, we printed it tons of times because it's just funky cool looking and the girls loved it, so they got to play with it. But that was the first thing. And then after that it was our angel design, which is kind of complex. It has many, many different interwoven parts.

Well, now I'm going to have to go look up your angel design. So are you guys working with the 3D printer mostly as a prototype machine on the business side or using it as an evangelism device?

Both. We do use it for some of our clients on occasion. We've designed casters on it, hubcaps that go around casters as well, and even some end product 3D printing accessories that go with products that already exist on the market for our clients. But you know, really, I think that's such a minor part of our business. Yes, we're using it as evangelism for what you can do. But our goal really is to make 3D printed end product at some point. So think about it. You would go to a Target or a Walmart or a Staples and. And you would just buy product that had no inventory on the shelf anywhere. You're just going to 3D print out what you want and maybe make it your way.

So you guys have probably been to the inside 3D printing show.

Yes.

All right. Because there are a lot of people in that industry that are very interested in what's the killer app. How do we bring 3D printing into the marketplace? Because right now it's kind of sitting on the fringes. It's a cult thing. It's kind of making its way into education. And I'm not going to talk about exactly what I think about that.

Oh, I'm happy to talk about that.

So you guys are interested in bringing this into the mainstream? You would like to see 3D printers sitting at Walmart and Target, et cetera.

I don't even really care if they're sitting there. I would love to have 3D printers in every home. And I have daughters. I have a 21 year old, a 7 year old and a 2 year old. And my 7 year old is already starting to 3D print. And I believe that an introduction to 3D printing is required in every classroom. It's not a technology we can just ignore. It should be introduced there. It's an opportunity to learn something. Now, will every student love it? No. But I believe that there are. This is one of the technologies that girls will love and that's one of the things that drives me because I have these daughters. So I think then you have to support that because it is not something you're going to learn in a couple of hours in a classroom.

All right, so you said something that I don't hear very often. And so I need you to, to dive in a little further. You said you put your daughters in there. And it's not that I'm against the idea of girls in tech or the, or against the idea of guys doing design, but by and large, the boys want to kind of print robots and guns and projectiles, and the girls want to print, you know, bracelets and earrings and things like that. So why do you want to see 3D printing in the classroom? Because of the girls.

So there are three reasons I love 3D printing. One is that it just. It's a lesson in failure, in successful failure. And it's good for every single person, not just girls. But it's good to have that successful failure and to not feel like a failure from that. I can't tell you how many fails we have on our prints all the time. It takes iterations sometimes. Some of our designs, including that angel I was referring to, takes 200 hours to figure it out, design it, get it printing right. And that's not, you know, that's not an exaggeration. That's probably underestimating. That's okay. It should take that amount of time to make something great. And so that failure along the process is an opportunity to learn. And that's one of the most important things. The second thing that I think is so great about it is that we now have three dimensional thinking that we're continuing to encourage. I believe that kids come in with this mindset of three dimensional thinking and we sort of teach it out of them. And so if we can keep it in them by allowing them to continue to do this, I can't even imagine the kind of products and the kinds of technologies that these kids are going to invent and innovate because they have a different way that their mind will be working and be conditioned to work. So that really excites me. And then the third thing is that I'm just so in support of the idea that you should have a school component and an at home component. I think if you really get passionate about something, then you take it home with you and you can't stop doing it. I couldn't stop sketching, I couldn't stop making clothes. This was part of who I was. And I became a textile designer. And I actually got dragged into it. Like I thought I was going to study biogenetics at Brown, didn't get into the school and then didn't get in and was devastated and then said Well, I applied early so I can still apply anywhere else. And my mom said, well, why don't we look at RISD right down the street, Rhode Island School Design. And I was like, why would I want to go to art school? Sure enough, two months later I'm applying to art school because it seemed like the logical thing to do.

So. So I'm actually curious now and kind of went where I normally like to take the program actually, because I'm curious how you guys got here. So tell us a little more about that journey and like, why biogenetics and. Yeah, why biogenetics?

You know, it was really the school system that was the problem for me. And it was this. We didn't have art in our classrooms here in Orange County, California. We had it once a month if we were lucky. And so we didn't have that sort of constant exposure to art. My mom though is an artist, so I did have that. But I had this kind of was being in a sense pushed and driven by my engineer dad to be a working woman and go into the workplace and manage these high end projects and do what he was doing. And I wanted that life and I didn't think art could give it to me, but I did love art. And so it took, you know, my going to art school and seeing that this is a career path. It's not just something you end up doing at, you know, at festivals, you know, it was something that you could really do as a career. And so I went into originally graphic design and then textile design and went out into the working world with it. And that just fit me.

So if I ask what you think about the idea that art isn't taught in schools right now, it's ridiculous.

But I think also in a 3D printed future, if we don't teach art and design, what's going to get made? This is a critical component. Design process is a thought process, Design thinking. And when you think design and granted, I written an article, John Assaroff, great neuro thought process, Neuro Jim. And he thinks about the way that you can't take innovation and think it. It's a subconscious process. So the idea that you don't have a process for thinking like you have a scientific process. So if you have a scientific design has a process as well. And it's a problem solving process. And when you go through that process and then you're able to access that subconscious innovation transfer between the subconscious and the conscious mind, you get these wild ideas that then might just become real and that excites me more than anything. But if you don't keep that pathway open by allowing this sort of creative process throughout school and you don't encourage design thinking like you encourage scientific processing, then those two things, then they can't occur.

All right, so I kind of pried the lid open a little bit. I might just blow the lid off with this next question. I don't know how big your company is, so I'm just going to go out on a limb here. Have you guys tried to hire or work with students coming out of the current school system? And what do you see from that?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked that. There's a huge gap in education right now. So we see this very large gap between sort of ideological thinking about whatever it might be. It could be art, it could be design, it could be technology and actual doing. So there is not a lot of doing going on there. So the problem with that for me is that we should be having successful failure, as I mentioned before, but we shouldn't have to repeat failures. Not everyone should have to just go through and repeat these dumb failures again and again and again. And yet we've got kids coming in out of school, starting businesses and failing flat on their faces for stupid things that could be fixed by having the right internship that would have taught them not to do that, by having the right apprenticeship that could have gotten them in to understand how you get a product made or how you build a business. These are things that just. I don't understand why we still have such a gap and still such a separation between the business world and the education world. It's just such a hard line in most schools. And you can't get entrepreneurs to give talks at schools. They're not asked. And you can't get schools to get educators to come and talk to business. They don't cross the lines. And I don't understand that.

I'm not sure if we'll jump down that rabbit hole just yet.

You know, it's a rabbit hole.

But I'm really curious how you guys. Because you say you came through and you got the art and the design. How did you guys come to business? Like, how. What was that path? And how did you learn what you needed to learn?

So I think, you know, all along I was in a way, being groomed for business by my dad. Like, I think that he was really setting me up to be successful in business. And he would come home and he would give lessons. My dad was in the oil industry and built multibillion dollar Oil refineries. He was project managers for those. And he always had a. Was pushing really hard to have women be project managers. And so he had training programs and all sorts of things that he had put into his company. And when he retired, I. I can't tell you the number of women who came up to me and said, you, dad made such a difference in my career. And really, all along, he was bringing those lessons home. I may not have realized it or thanked him for it or recognized it, but that's what he was doing. So I already had a propensity for that. But my first job out of school was in industry. So I went to work for one of the largest textile companies in the world, Millikan. And the first thing they do is send you off to leadership orientation training, and you learn statistical process control and Dale Carnegie, and you learn all kinds of things that we would never have gotten into art school. And so it was such a gift for me because I found that it just. I had a propensity for it. I loved it, it drove me, and it kept going through. The idea of process in design and process in business are actually very similar. They're all about problem solving. And so it just fit who I was and turned us into a business. And then Tom and I, my partner and husband, went into business together because he's more on the design and inventive and innovation side, and his brain works that way. And my brain is much more systematized and controlled. And so we needed to balance it out or we'd like destroy our family. In the process of having two inventors in the family or two designers in the family might have just destroyed it, but luckily we were able to build a nice, balanced business around it.

I asked a question earlier, or you mentioned something, and I wanted to bring that back. You guys have a little story that is told in lots of business schools, and I'm curious. Tell us a little bit about what that is and how you navigated that.

So back in the late 90s, we started another form of our business, which was called T Tools with two T's for Tom and Tracy. And it was a accessories for handheld computers. It was stylus pens. Back at the Palm Pilot days, I'm really dating myself that I am a lot older than I look.

But yeah, so it was, you know, a stylus pen, but it was a really inventive product. It had patents associated with it, but they hadn't quite issued yet. And all of a sudden one day we're, you know, we're in the midst of building an online business at a time at which it was just coming on. And we had an email list and what we really wanted so badly was to be in the box. The ship with the Palm Pilot. There was a catalog in there and we wanted to be the pen in the box. And that was our ult. And we met with PalmPilot at Palm Computing at that time, numbers of times and one day we get featured in Wired and we're super excited. So we open up Wired magazine and there's our pen. And right next to it is a pen that looks almost exactly like ours and it ships with the PalmPilot. And it is one of those things where you look at it and we were devastated. We're like, this infringes on our patent. What are we going to do? We have this little business, we haven't even been in business long enough to build up enough cash flow base. We can't fight this. What are we going to do? So I go to bed and I cry and we wake up the next morning and we assemble our team of angel investors and all of the people who are involved in our business and we say what are we going to do about it? And we decide to wage a PR war and file a lawsuit, but just file. We only had $5,000 so that's all we spent. We send it on PR and just a filing and made a huge bluff and got kind of lucky because Palm Computing ideo had actually that's the largest industrial design firm in the world at that time. I don't know if they still are. And they indemnified Palm Computing with their design. So now you had a kind of smaller guy in the middle paying all the legal bills and Palm Computing was trying to go public. So there was like they didn't want any of this kind of, you know, riff raff stuff going on with their developers. And at that time it was like the very first, what we, we call app developers today. But it was like third party solutions that community support was so critically important. And here we were saying, hey, you're stealing from a third party solution. This isn't a good thing. This is not a way to treat your developers. They didn't want any of that going on. So there's all this pressure to settle. So they did settle and then the end of the story is that we got two checks, maybe we recouped our $5,000 and that was it. And then they killed the product. So we never got any royalty or anything. So. So that's the story that is taught and it's taught like a case study at Harvard Business Review. And they take the students through this idea of what would you do? And they don't tell them what we really did until the end. And a very small percentage do what we did. Very, very small percentage. Almost all of them like quit, go do something else.

Interesting. So how have you guys grown since then and what have you learned from all those lessons?

You know, we learned a really different way of the way that we treat our intellectual property, the way that we treat our patents. And there's a reason. We have an 86% commercialization rate, but we also have a 95% issuance rate. We've only had one patent that didn't issue ever. And it was written badly, that's why it didn't deserve to issue. But it's one of those things where we treat our intellectual property as a part of the design process, but not at the beginning. So many people are obsessed with their patents, obsessed with the IP process and they do it first and they do it early and they don't even know if there's a market for what they want to sell yet. And so that's where we differ is we don't patent until like mostly, probably almost all the way through the prototype process. And so we've already decided, we've already proven there's a market in some case, shape or form. We already have a complete plan for how it's going to get commercialized and, and maybe we even already have a client we're working with on it or a partner we're working with on it before we even dive in to do the patents.

So you guys just file a provisional at the beginning and then run with it after that or you don't even go that far?

No, we do, we will. If we think that there's just a seat of a concept, we'll file the provisional at the beginning. And even if we have to file more later or file something different later, it gives you more time. And we don't believe in non disclosure agreements. I'm sure people are out there, there's a bunch of lawyers out there going to write me letters. It happens all the time. But we don't believe in them because, you know, you're small. What are you going to do? How are you going to fight that? And it creates this adversarial relationship between you and the person you want to disclose to and maybe even a lawyer gets involved and that's never good. So you just kind of want to deal with it on a much more friendly and open and honest basis. And so the provisional patent allows you to do that.

So for our listeners who may not be familiar with provisional patents, how much does that cost to file a provisional?

If you're a small independent, it's like $130.

So that's not like $5,000.

Yeah, assuming you didn't use a lawyer to file it. But I'm assuming you did the search yourself. But I think even still, you could probably, for $5,000, pretty much get it done with most attorneys.

So I'm interested in how do I help our listeners get the confidence that they can do what you guys have done. So tell a teenager how can they do what you've done?

So I think we've sort of lost the world in which we talk about mentors and coaches and things like that. And we're really. A teenager's really great at understanding what a coach is. So a coach is on the sideline at your soccer game or your lacrosse game or behind the dugout at the baseball game. You have a coach there. And what are they doing? They're teaching you strategy. They're teaching you about how to improve your skills, how to pay attention to yourself and what you are doing. They're giving you tactics for how to play and how to play against different people, so how to play against competitors. And yet we forget in business that we don't have coaches all the time, especially if we're going into entrepreneurship roles. So we go to college without coaches. Teachers are not coaches. It's not the same thing. They're teaching a curriculum. It's not personally invested in a connection with you and where you're going and what you're doing. So we have to start seeking out coaches. And we used to do that with internships and apprenticeships and things like that. And we have to go for that and go seeking that nowadays. And a lot of us who've been advanced in our careers are even saying, hey, I need a coach now. I gotta go find someone to help me do this next stage of my business. There's always a stage at which you need a coach. And I think that we forget that on the sort of technology and design side of business and the invention side, it's required. It is not a. It's not for the faint of heart to go into invention and innovation. So why would you do it alone? And that's really where I see that we're missing the point. And there's a place for mentorship, and you'll find Someone in there, like, I consider my father a great mentor to me over the years, and that's great that he was free. But my dad hates what I do. He hates that I'm an inventor and an entrepreneur. He wishes I would go to work for a company. So he's not the perfect mentor overall and not a great coach from that standpoint. I value his mentorship for what he does give me, but it's a different thing. So, you know, mentors have a different role, and they're there to, you know, touch base. When you don't feel right about a decision you're making or you don't feel like, is this best for me and where I'm going? And those are someone you, you know, you. You tap into throughout your life. That's a little bit different.

So if I was a teenager and I was looking for a coach, how would I go about that?

You know, you got to stop thinking that you're gonna just go out there and find a company and be willing to do a free internship. And I think that that's the mistake at teenage years. You can do that. You're still living at home. It's easier go and get a free internship, because there are lots out there. But I get applications all the time, and they're like, oh, we want to be your intern. Oh, and we want to be paid $50,000 a year. Like, what? I don't have time to teach you and pay you $50,000 a year. If you want to come learn from me, come shadow me. I'm happy to have you here, but I can't tell you how many times I can't get. I can't get a student to show up here. They won't show up. They don't participate. They're like, well, it's free, so I don't have the time. But the value of what you can get out of coming into our design offices and learning from a process and learning on a project or even just saying, hey, I have this skill, like a videographer. I have the skill. Can I shadow you and livestream you for, you know, while you. While you do a trip or while you go and give a 3D printing presentation? And can I do that and will you give me some coaching in exchange? Absolutely. Those things are out there. Those opportunities are there. There's so many startups and there's so many good entrepreneurs out there who don't necessarily have the time to teach you, but if you want to sit there and provide them a value, they'll pay you for that, and then you'll learn something in the process. So use your skills. Social media, great skill to be providing someone that, you know, teenagers have that a lot of us entrepreneurs don't have time for.

All right, so we're running a little short on time, and so I'd like to hook into our last two questions. And the first question we always ask is, in the digital age, we have Wikipedia, we have Google. We can look things up on YouTube if we want to know how to do something. What does it mean to be educated? Define that word for us.

Oh, that's such a good question. You know, I think that for me, education is. It never stops. So for me, it's always a learn something new, meet someone new. And that's some of what education in its formal sense doesn't really do. Well, you know, they expose you to one teacher at a time or one course at a time. And I'm of the opinion that, you know, a broader reach, it's who you know and what you read that really grows and expands you every day. And so I make it a very big point to get out there as much as possible and meet new people. And I make it a point to try to read. And I try really hard to get to this. I try to at least read a book a week, and most years I've managed to get two in, so. And I have had a couple years where I managed to get to almost 300. So normally when I was home and pregnant a lot, but, you know, other than that. But it is a goal of mine to try to read as much as possible and try to expand my thinking. And I don't do it in a way, which, I mean, I will read anything. Classics included. Rereading classics. This is something my dad always gave me. We have a library of classics. I think that they start your brain thinking about what's core, what's basic.

What is life about, and you start thinking about those things, and then you start applying things that you're seeing in your business and in your world, and that is expansive. That, to me, is education.

And so the last question we ask is related to that. And I have to say, actually, I need to interject this. I don't think I've ever had anyone say, meeting people, but that is so educational to meet people, because there are things that people know that books can't teach you. So thank you for pointing that out. The last question we like to ask is, what is the purpose of an education that's a little more philosophical.

Ah, very good. You know, I struggle with this because I have a daughter at San Diego State University, and I can't tell you, probably she's a junior right now. Every semester she's come to me and she wants to quit. And I keep saying, well, I'm not paying for your wedding if you don't get an education.

Mother. But you know, the thing is, is that for me, I have always seen my education as a door opener. And so if I didn't have that degree from Rhode Island School of Design, I wouldn't have gotten that first door opened for me. And I think if you have a opportunity, an opportunity to get that type of education where it's a door opener either because of what you studied or because of where you studied it, that is a value long term and it is a connection base. So here in Southern California, when someone says they went to San Diego State, there's a whole network of people who went to San Diego State. And so it doesn't matter to me whether or not she studied what she loved there. She got a good base education, and it is opening doors for her when she puts that on her resume and walks out there. I also think it's a discipline. And that to me is a really good sign that someone's a good employee. They followed through, they got a four year degree or two years or whatever it is that they managed to get. It shows that they had the discipline to go and do that. Even if it's night school, it doesn't matter. To me, that shows a propensity for wanting to learn and a discipline to be able to execute it and complete it. And I think that says a lot about someone and it really is in and of itself a reason to hire someone.

Well, I think we're gonna wrap it right there. Tracy, thank you so much for talking to us about the design world. I've been meaning to go find someone in the design world for quite some time. And so thank you for being our first designer on the show.

Oh, well, thank you.

And if our audience wants to know more about you and what you guys do, what's the best way for them to connect?

So you can find us anywhere on social media, on our website, and it's hazdesign. H A Z Z D E S I, G N. And I also have an ink column and you can read my thoughts on design and innovation all the time.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Steve Tracy said my favorite phrase, successful failure. We have a dozen different ways to say the same thing. Failing forward failure is the first step to success and a host of others. The basic idea is to stop being afraid of being wrong or of making a mistake along the way. Anything big requires learning, and true learning always starts by being bad at something before being really good at it. If you want your kids to experience successful failure, check out inventor camp@ttinvent.com that's T T I n-vent.com let's ignite more imagination.