Launching Your Product Successfully With Tracy Leigh Hazzard - Part 2 From The Invention Stories Podcast With Robert Bear

It is part of your inventive mindset that gets in the way 99% of the time.

Welcome to the Invention Stories Podcast where we share stories of inventors who turn their idea into a product. Please visit our website@www. InventionStories.com. and now from the Invention Stories Podcast Headquarters studios in Morro Bay, California is our host, Robert Baer.

Welcome to the commercial free Invention Stories Podcast. I'm your host Robert Baer and thank you for joining us. You're listening to episode 76, our interview with Tracy Lee Hazard, part two. This episode is the second part in a two part series. Tracy Hazard is the owner of 37 patents who has brought over 267 products to the market that have sold over $2 billion. And while the typical success rate for inventors bringing their idea to the market is between 1 and 4%, Tracey has an 86% success rate. And besides being featured in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Wired, CNN Money, as well as being an innovative columnist for Inc. Magazine and a contributor to Thrive Global, she is the best selling author of Guerrilla Patent Tactics and Successful Launch by Design. Simply stated, if you have an idea for a product, the first thing you should do is learn more about Tracy Lee Hazard we have Tracy Hazard on the line from Irvine, California. So let's continue. What is it you're currently doing?

So besides writing my column, which I write every month, I write six articles. I host four podcasts. I host a podcast called Product Launch Hazards. I host a podcast called New Trust Economy which is focused on the blockchain because Woz made me think about that. And so I'm exploring blockchain innovation and how it might help businesses be more successful and create more value in the process for influencers, inventors and entrepreneurs. I host Feed you'd Brand, which is a podcast for podcasters or videocasters, whichever one you want to be techie, it's got a lot of deep tech on there, but it also has a lot of great marketing tips and tools for growing your show and monetizing that show. And it's really service to my clients. So we service our business through a podcast. And then the fourth one is the one I've had the longest, which is called WTFF3D print podcast. And I don't host it very often anymore. Tom mostly does it, but we've done 565 shows or something like that. I know on 3D printing and start and listen to my first episodes and come back and send us emails and messages and say wow, you changed my Thinking about this technology, I was all in the tech, and now I'm thinking I could make product. And I love that I've inspired people to do that. So our goal there is to help people understand 3D printing and not give up on it as a possibility for what they might want to do with it.

So, Tracy, I think there are some really great tools out there to help the inventor today. And I know you've been doing this a long time because I've been listening to your podcast, and one of the things I found fascinating was that in the early days of the Internet, you created your own shopping cart.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And let me tell you, it got hacked, right? Like, it happened, right? You know, you built it and it's like, got a hole right in it. And, you know, these things are so much easier today. Shopify. Who doesn't love Shopify? Like, it's really amazing, all the tools we have. And that's actually why it's actually a lot easier to create product market fit understanding today than it was when I did it 20 years ago.

Yeah, you see it all the time. Product market fit. You can have the best product, but if you have no access, you won't succeed. And vice versa. Versa, you can have the best access. It's right here on my notes. It's what I plan to bring up next.

There you go. That's because you're in the note too, because you see it, too. You see it all the time in the stories and the failures of what you're hearing. You understand, like, you look at that and you go, oh, they're all making the same mistakes again and again and again.

I think our challenge here at Invention Stories and on the podcast is getting the real story. The inventor goes on. They would rather give us the About Us website story. The glossed over, everything's fine, we're doing well. Which couldn't be further from reality. I think that's because when an inventor fails or makes a misstep, there's shame or guilt when there really shouldn't be any.

No, that's so, so true. Look, I mean, not everything that I've invented succeeded, right? I have a higher success rate, but I work for other people, so they already have access. They already have a sales channel. They're already in Costco. I just need to design them something new. You know, my statistics are not reflective of inventors out there. Mine are reflective of industrial design firms out there. The ideos of the world, right? So it's very, very different. And to Compare them. To me, that's not possible because I have a deep understanding of systems and process and have access to infrastructure that most independents don't have. But from what I see on the independent side, and from what we did when we did this way back when, is that it is part of your inventive mindset that gets in the way 99% of the time. And it is this do it yourself mentality where you think you need to reinvent shopping carts and you need to reinvent all of these things. Now, it may have been a necessity then, but it's not a necessity now. And so being unwilling to reach out to experts, being unwilling to hire someone to do something for you because you think, I've got a lot of skill, I got a lot of engineering mindset, what it does is it distracts you and detracts from your ability to do the thing that is most important, which is making sure that your invention is valuable to the world. And so you end up doing a lot. Right. And that's where I see the. The do it yourself mentality actually hurts the inventors most often. And it is the thing that trips them up. And why would they admit that? Because that's the thing that they believe is most valuable about themselves, that they're highly capable and skilled. But it's a. You know, it's both. Right? It's a benefit and it's a detriment.

Let's say I've got an idea for an invention and I'm very new to inventing, don't know much about the invention process, but I've got an idea and I know it's going to be a winner. I don't need to do any market research.

It's the best thing since sliced bread.

Yeah. Best thing ever. And I come to you and I say, tracy, I'd like your advice. What advice would you give me?

So the first thing I do is I would say Google it. Okay? And Google it in like layman's terms, like, you know, don't use your tech terms. What would somebody else call it if they were looking for it? Google it. Now, there are two things that I want to see on Google. I don't want to see nothing. Actually seeing nothing is a bad sign. If there is no competition for what you want to do. Stop it right now. Really understand more about it. Because if there isn't even someone searching for topics on it, even if the product doesn't exist, but that the topic areas of interest you are going to have, you're in a marketplace that is so disruptive, you're going to spend millions of dollars educating people on why it's good. Instead of having tapped into something that people already are desiring, right, that they're looking for, they have a need for it. So now if you see other products, don't get discouraged. Because if you see other products, the thing about it is, is that there's a really good sign that there's a market that exists for it. So that's really good. Now you have something to compare yourself to. Are you really better? Are you obviously better? That's the most important part. Like, is it obvious that the unique thing you've added to it really outshines all the others? And can you make it better, more cost effective? It doesn't mean it's cheaper, you just make it more cost effective because you could make it more profitable. And so is that possible? So now you have something to compare against. That's an awesome way to go about it. That's a lot of what I do when people come to me as I'm like, okay, I spend an hour prepping for the call with them and I look up their product and I do all of that and then I have to be the one who say, wow, I hate to tell you this, but you do have competition. And here's the competition and here's why your product is not obviously better. Because all this stuff is hidden underneath and no one's going to see that in an image when they shopping through Amazon, right? It's not going to become obviously aware to them. So you have a hard sell, you have an educative cell. So if you don't, woo hoo, you've got a good idea that's worth pursuing to the next level.

I think we've been talking a lot about the invention process and your approach in general terms, but I'd like to use a specific example. We interviewed Brett Newman on episode 67. He's the inventor of the Soundverter Turbo Scoops. And I'm an audiophile, I think, because I spent a lot of time editing and just say if you look up the word audio file in the dictionary, there's a picture of me. Let me give you a quick background about Brett. Well, he noticed on a number of flat screens they don't have speakers that face forward. So long story short, he invented the SoundVerter Turbo Scoops, a molded piece of plastic you put on the bottom of your television set and the sound comes out better without having to use a sound bar or anything like that. Now my father in law, who is hard of hearing, always blasts his TV and the sound is completely distorted. I don't mind anything loud, but when it's distorted, it just drives me crazy and I can't relax. So Brett sent me a pair of Turbo Scoops. I popped them on and now my father in law doesn't have to listen to it on such a high volume. Don't get me wrong, he still listens to it loud, but it sounds clear. And because it sounds clear, I can relax. Maybe that wasn't quite the long story short. But anyway, here's my point. Brett is new to inventing and he holds a patent on the Turbo Scoops and it's a single product. But what advice would you give him?

Partner up? Yeah, because there's gotta be some audio companies like I can think of right now that. There's this great company that I used to work with that does TV stands, right? And in the TV stands they added on this like gaming shelf. Like it was just simply a shelf to put your speaker on. And it raised it up and the sound was so much better, like. So that was their best selling product and they made $400 TV stands. And this little $30 shelf killed it for them and made them millions of dollars. So companies that make products surrounding it that could benefit from the sound improvement could benefit from those things. They're perfect. Let them use their marketing arms. They're already out there marketing to the right audience for you. You're just adding a product and they make a margin on it and they take care of all that marketing for you. Now you're in the right place, you're selling it. All you got to do is be making stuff and coming up with your next great idea. Partnering JV joint venture, partnering with the right people who can take on and do the stuff that you don't know how to do or you don't have the capability of doing is an accelerator. It's going to get you selling stuff faster, get you selling more quickly. That's fantastic. And a great way to do it, especially when you only have a single product. So this is another problem, is that you're not a brand until you have a product line, until you're serving a niche market and you're going back and forth and, you know, maybe it's, you know, audio files that is your target market. That's fantastic. But if you don't have a microphone and you don't have a, you don't have all of these other things in your product line, then Partner up with somebody who does and add your product to their line.

So you would advise Brett to partner up rather than to see if you can get into Best Buy, Target, or Walmart?

Absolutely, yeah. Because, you know, here's the thing. They don't trust you. They don't know you, and you only have one product. So it's a lot of work for a big retailer to set you up on their platform and get you in as a preferred vendor. And you can't be audited. Like, I mean, it's just so much expense and money, and in the end, you'll lose money in the process because you won't have the cash flow to scale up to that size. So I have a woman who did a mop pad that was completely sustainable, got herself into Walmart, but she's been stuck there with the same sales, the same number of stores that carry her because she hasn't expanded her product line because of the amount of volume that they do do is good, but it doesn't yield enough profit for her to reinvest that into growing her brand. And without brand growth, they're not going to add you to more stores. And so you actually end up hurting yourself in the long run. And so that's what people don't understand about how the retail market works. They think, oh, this should be on the shelf at Best Buy. Right. In this particular case. But getting on the shelf at Best Buy in and of itself is so much effort and work that you should just be selling it somewhere else first because it'll be easier later. If you're already mixed in with all these other products and selling and turning, then Best Buy is going to go, yeah, of course we want it. We're going to take those people's products, your products. I'm going to create a whole brand around it. And now all of you are selling, you know, millions of units a year. That's fantastic, right? Hundreds of thousands of units.

I think that's really good advice, and I'll be sure to pass it on to Brett. I really enjoy listening to the product Launch Hazards podcast. I'm learning so much from them and look forward to listening to the rest as well as reading everything on your website. Because it's your 86% success rate. It makes me want to learn what you know and have shared, or at least try to. I've also learned a lot from interviewing the inventors and sharing their stories over the last 10 years. This is our 76th episode of the Invention Stories podcast, and I'd like to try Something starting now. And for those of you listening, I want to encourage you to send your feedback to us@inc inventionstoriesahoo.com or inventionstoriespodcastmail.com now, if Brett agrees, I'd like to help him succeed with his SoundVerter Turbo scoops. I choose Brett because not only do I believe in his product, but because it's so lightweight, easy to ship and smart. So each podcast going forward, we will update you on the progress he has made. What do you think, Tracy?

I love that I thought of it.

Because, well, I really enjoy listening to and learning about the inventor's journey, but I wanted to see if I could actually take what I've learned to help an inventor.

Their stories are great, right? But stories don't point you in the way of success. And what I found over time is it's the partners. So what you'll find on product launch hazards as you continue forward is that at some point I'll shift and start introducing you to the people that I refer people to. And that's the big difference there. If you really want to know about mass market retail and what goes on, I'm not the expert. Timothy Bush of TLB Consulting is the expert here. And what I've learned, I've learned a lot from working on projects with him and sending him clients and going through it. Now, I do have my own experience, direct experience, mostly with Costco and Target and places like that, but it's not in every product category. He has broad product category experience. So when I don't know anything about food and he knows tremendous amount about food. So having mind share with these people that I bring on the show has really expanded over the last decade. My ability to serve clients and make sure that they get all the way through the process and get all the way through to success. That's how we do it, is we hand off at the right time to all of these people and there's a trust factor that goes on because I know because our mindshare is so similar, he's not going to undermine what I've just done and make people redo stuff because that's what happens. You get into, oh, well, now you're working with me and my sales process is different or my marketing method is different and we have to redo all that stuff. I don't want my clients to waste their money. I don't want inventors to recycle through those things and have to do stuff again because there's nothing worse than redoing. It's costly it's time consuming, and time is the worst thing to consume when you're on your way to mass market, because there's only so much of a window for opportunity. So we want to make sure that that happens. So that's where aligning yourself with those right people will give you more ability to help more people. Because if you can identify, this guy's got a great product, he's onto something. Now you just need to bring them the right people over time. You don't have to learn it, you don't have to do it. You just have to know who to bring them to. And so that's where my business has shifted. So more of what I do now is give people an overview strategy on how it could work, evaluate their idea, but then I send them to all those other people at the right time so that they don't get distracted with. A lot of times, inventors like to do a lot themselves, but the other thing that they do is they procrastinate about the thing that they love the most and they take the longest to hire that person. So if it was sales, they take the longest to hire a sales and marketing team, they vet them, they take the long because they're so nervous about this part, because they feel they don't have core knowledge in how it should work. And they're so afraid of being taken advantage of, which there's a high likelihood they will be if they act too quickly. So that's where you have to come up with trusting the person who might be helping you the most, whether it's your attorney, whether it's your manufacturer, and ask them for the next referral. That's a great way to go about it, because they're not going to steer you wrong, because the manufacturer is not going to turn you to a marketing agency that's going to do you wrong. Because then you won't make more product to sell. Right? So it's a cycle. It's in their best interest to turn you on to the best people.

You know, it seems like you've got it figured out like you own the map to find the lost treasure, because the industry averages 1 to 4% success rate and you're at 86%. But I'm listening to you here and now and on your podcast and reading your articles. I'm a believer. The problem is there are a lot of people and companies that prey on inventors by promising incredible success rates and return on investments, but they are nothing but a bunch of crooks.

Right? Which is why I don't take this is why most people don't qualify. Because in order to be it to make that happen, your product, your market, your. All of those things have to be in the right metrics, right in the right area of ways of which I can help you. That doesn't mean I can't refer you to someone else so that you can build some of those things at the lower end. That's what I do most often. I just want to be really clear. I never pay referral fees to any of my people and I never allow them to pay referral fees back to me. That is not how we work because that just makes you pay more money. And that is not an okay thing. That is unethical to me. There's none of this affiliate marketing thing going on with the people who are on my show or any of that. We do not have any of that going on. Don't allow it.

I did notice that the product Launch Hazards podcast wasn't sponsored.

Nope, we don't do it. Yep.

Well, we've thought about allowing someone to sponsor the Invention Stories podcast. We get a lot of offers from companies I don't even know, but I just don't feel comfortable promoting something that I don't use or don't believe in.

Yeah, you know, I agree with that. The been there, done that again and again rule is my thing. If I don't work with them or if I don't have a client who successfully worked with them, I don't introduce them to my people. And you should be careful, too, because there are a lot of scam artists out there. So that's honorable, ethical thing. And I'm proud of you for doing that that way. So you should be. Your audience should be so grateful.

Well, I don't listen to too many podcasts, but one of my favorites is Business wars by Wondery.

I love Business Wars. That's one of my favorite shows.

Yeah, it's good. And I'll be listening to one of their episodes and then be all into it, and here comes the music and boom, two minutes of commercials. Sometimes I'll drive long distances and so I save up the business awards episodes and I'll binge listen to them along the highway. And I'll be listening and the commercials will come on and I'll be fumbling with my phone trying to advance through them so I don't have to listen to the same commercials over and over. I think it ruins the podcast. In addition, I think that if someone's making a choice whether to listen to one of Two podcasts, one has commercials, one doesn't. It gives me an edge. I feel like the business world is trying to find new ways to jam commercials into our brain. With podcasting being new, they're trying to make commercials and podcasts the norm. And I'm a fan of just keeping the invention story pure. I mean, these people have already suffered.

They've already suffered enough, right? Yeah, exactly.

And what they've done is a beautiful thing. They tried to make their dreams come true. And I feel honored that they're sharing it with me. And it seems like it seems wrong to chop it up and commercialize it.

Yeah. But the reality is that you have to keep going, right? Because the more stories you bring to the world, the more people will learn. Because we learn more from failures than we do from successes. And I know this because I don't have enough traffic on my show. Part of it is because I don't market it at all. I did it for the community that it's on my email list. That's really it. And so it's a personal passion project. Now. This year we decided to switch the model up, and all of the partners, the experts that I bring to them, were all pooling our dollars to advertise the show. So instead of doing referral fees or any of those things, we said, why don't we collaboratively advertise together to draw the right audience in? Because at the end, everybody will have more business, so it will be fine. But if we get more audience into the show, we're going to have more educated clients. And at the end of the day, that matters more. Your stories are. People see themselves in that. They're like, that's me and mine. It's like a cold bucket of water poured over them to say, it's not going to work this way. It works a totally different way than you've been taught or you think. And so nobody wants someone to do that to them. They don't willingly do it. So we don't get the listeners either. And you know what? That's okay with me because the few that we do, I'm helping and I'm happy with that. And I've changed their lives, and I know that, and I'm good with that. This is not a short term plan for me. But to your point, this is why I have my second company. We invented a method by which we put advertisements on podcasts because I hated what you heard there. What you hear, this interruption, this systematized thing that happens that came out of radio. It doesn't belong in podcasts. The podcast hosts should be in control of advertisements, making sure that they're right, fit for their audience, and when they're irrelevant, should be able to take them out without a lot of work, without a lot of editing, without any of that. And that's why we invented our newest business, because of that.

And what's the name of it?

That's called Potatize.

What a great name. Potatize.

Yeah, Potatize. It's a hosting platform for podcasts, but it has ad mixing capability and you don't need to use it. From day one, you can host on ours just like any rss, whether you're with Libsyn or Soundcloud or whoever you're with. But at the end of the day, when you host with us, you have the future ability to take ads on your show. But more importantly, you can put ads on a specific show. So if one specific show says, wow, an ad for a lawyer who I've worked with makes a lot of sense on this show because this is about patenting. And that's where this one went wrong. Let me put that lawyer ad here and let me put this marketing groups ad here, because that's where this show went wrong. Marketing. Now you're in complete control of that whole process, of where those ads get placed, what they're about, when they are. And more importantly, you could advertise for those cool product ideas on your show when they have something to promo like, oh, wow, they're offering a Kickstarter right now and I really want to support Brett and I'll put that in for the next 30 days and then I could take it out of my show when it's all over. So you are in control of that. And that's at the end of the day, what I always want is I want inventors. I want you guys to be in control of the information, the process, and then the outcome, because it really belongs to you. Because you're the creative force, you're the inventor, you're the mindset, you're the host. It belongs to you. And if I can return value to that, that's what I want to do. We talked early on about my interviewing Steve Wozniak, and that is why Woz is so excited about Blockchain and other things like that. Because what he wants is he wants inventors and creators of the world to get value from the get go. They want it to be built into the process, that if you came up with this idea and somebody else took it and run with it, you're still going to get your equity, you're still going to get your value, you're going to get your percentage, and it's going to be built into the blockchain and no one can take that credit and value away from you. I love that. That's my mission in the world. Can I get it so that you get it and somebody else doesn't take it from you?

Tracy When I look at how you identify yourself, it says Tracy Hazard, Ink Columnist Column Brand strategist product launch expert 3D printing Product design Innovation hazards why do you list yourself as an Ink columnist first?

So the reality is it's the attractor point. So if I want to get to talk to, I need to be what they're looking for. People don't know to go looking for a ghost designer, which is really what I do for people, right? I'm designing under their brand, so they don't know to go look for that. But when they say in columnist they think I need pr, it would be great to be connected with that person, right? So whether it's on the podcasting side of the businesses that I run or the design side, they all need publicity and they all need someone to write about their story and care about them. So Inc Columnists and podcast hosts are always at the top of my bio for people because it's someone who might be able to promote them someday.

And what's the best way for someone to contact you?

So the best way to contact me is friend me on LinkedIn like you did. So that's actually the easiest way to do it because I am on there all the time.

You've been listening to episode 76 of the Invention Story Podcast, our Interview with Tracy Lee Hazard, Part two, and I want to thank Tracy for being our guest today. For more information, please visit hazdesigns.com that's H A Z Z-E-S I G-N-S.com productlodgehazards.com or tracyleehazard.com the proceeding has not been a paid advertisement nor endorsement. Our goal@inc inventionstories.com and the invention Stories podcast is to help people and smarter and interviewing Tracy Hazzard helps us accomplish this goal. Thank you for listening to the Invention Stories podcast and for sharing it. It is our hope that by sharing the journey the inventor goes on. Since having the idea not only helps inspire others who have an idea for an invention, but gives them some advice on what to do and what to avoid, I recommend that you proceed with caution because there are some really terrible people and companies out there that are constantly ripping off the inventor. We invite you to check out the InventionStories.com website and either tell us who you are using the guest book or click on the link to share your story. It's free. I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn and friend me on Facebook. My name is Robert Baer and I'm the host of the Invention Stories podcast and the owner of InventionStories.com thank you very much for listening today. And please tell a friend.