Product Design 101 with Tracy Hazzard from Get Known Now with Jill Lublin

Welcome to the Business Owner Publicity Podcast. Jill Lublin is an international speaker on topics of publicity, referrals and networking. As author of her best selling book Get Noticed, Get Referrals and co author of the best sellers Guerrilla Publicity and Networking Magic, Jill is a master strategist on how to capture the attention of the media and increase your visibility in the marketplace. To get a free audio recording of one of her recent stage presentations that will work hand in hand with the podcast to help you implement a successful PR strategy, go to www.publicitycrashcourse.com freegift. On the podcast, Jill brings together experts and thought leaders serving small business owners to share with you their success secrets and how you can get publicity for your business. And now, here's your host, Jill Lublin.

Well, hello and welcome to the Small Business Owners Publicity Podcast. I'm Jill Lublin, your host and today we have Tracy Hazard. She has worked with over, actually designed over 250 consumer retail products, things you buy every day. And those products have generated almost $800 million for her clients. In fact, her process is featured in an entrepreneurship course at Northwestern and she is also a podcast host. Welcome, Tracy.

Thank you, Jill.

Well, I'm curious, what inspired you to help small business owners?

Well, you know, originally I was working mainly with large companies, companies over, you know, 100 million, 200 million in sales per year. And what I realized is that they all started small at one point and then they made a bunch of mistakes along the way. And when I get involved, it' almost too late to help them. And so if I started with help with small businesses and inventors specifically because this is product related, then I could maybe head some of that off, some of those serious mistakes so that they could make it faster to the 100 million and not end up cash strapped and in difficult places.

Well, that makes a big difference and I love this. But now how did you get to this point in your career? You've been designing and making people, now you're featured. And Northwestern entrepreneurship course. How did you get to this point?

You know, it's one of those things where it just happens to answer in the right place at the right time or just crazy things happen. And so for me, what happened, how we ended up in Northwestern and this is my partner is my husband, which is an unusual thing as well, but actually very common for a lot of small business owners. So they relate to us very well. But we had a business back in the late 90s, early 2000s and we had an it was all based on an invention which many small Businesses base their very first product on just on a patent or on one thing. And it was for stylus pens for handheld computers. And we got.

Infringed upon by ideo, one of the largest industrial design firms in the world, and palm computing, which at that time was gigantic in the tech industry. And our patent got infringed on, and we just. We didn't know what to do. We flipped out. I cried a little and just thought, I'm losing my business. What am I going to do? But when you're small, you get a little scrappy. And that's exactly what we did because of that. Exactly what we did. And how we won our lawsuit without actually going to court was what ended up being a part of that entrepreneurship course. So a combination of how we use design and the patent process and. And how we also fought it with using, actually pr.

Well, you know, that's my favorite topic.

Exactly. We put out a press release that says, do we detect a bit of pen envy? And at that time, the Internet was kind of new, so it went, at that time what you would consider viral.

Oh, isn't that wonderful? Makes my PR heart happy.

So let me ask you, what do you like most about what you do?

You know, I absolutely love the getting to use our friend Bill Sterling. He calls it superpower. I get to use my superpower every day. And so when I see somebody's program and I see their line and I see the products that they're putting into the market, I know instantly what's wrong with it. And it just resonates with me. And I know exactly what we need to do to fix it. And I see the path really clearly for them. And the problem is, especially with a lot of small businesses, you have so many things you're juggling and you can't. The forest for the trees. And so, because I can see that really clearly, I can just guide them right out of it.

Oh, I love that. That makes a lot of sense. So what do you see as common mistakes clients are making, particularly when they're growing their business?

Well, I think that they treat their products too much like a baby. And, you know, I mean, you hear this all the time, especially with inventors that, you know, this is their. They worked on this for years, and it's their thing, and you have to treat it a little less precious. And when you do that, you can see that it's okay to make changes to it, that it's okay to pivot and flex and adjust for what the market needs are. And also, they don't really listen to the market very well because they're so focused on what they are making instead of how they're getting it to market.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, let me ask you, how do you solve those problems?

Typically it's just the outside view that really helps and also having as many years of experience as I do, but 90% of the time it's that they just aren't really seeing and understanding that the majority of consumers are women. And so there's just a little something wrong. The color's not quite right, the finish isn't quite right. It's not got the right message that's coming across in their packaging. And so some of the. There are honestly a lot of little things that we can fix that don't cost a lot of money that can make the change.

I love that. Okay, that makes good sense. So what technique do you wish that more clients knew about?

I actually wish they knew more about and that's why I started a podcast on 3D printing. I wish they knew more about these low cost prototype methods and low cost ways to fail fast because in product it means it's.

It's probably one of the most expensive and risky ventures that you'll do in your small business if you launch a consumer retail product. So the last thing you want to do is spend a lot of money before you've tested the market. So if we can do things like prototype really low cost or even make a very small 3D printed first run, we can really head a lot of those things off and test the market and make some final decisions before you spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands on tooling.

Ah, that makes a big difference.

I love that. You know, I'm just curious, what do you wish you knew when you started that you know now?

I wish I knew a lot more about how to.

Talk clearly to the clients about the design process because it sounds so fuzzy, right? It's like, oh, you're just making it pretty. But there's so much success and failure designed into a product from the beginning. I wish I had known that I should be more expans about my services and how I approach my clients, which is what I do now. But it took a really long time to get there and I think I could have headed off and had made even much more successful products for clients if I had done that earlier.

Yeah, that makes sense. What's been your biggest mistake and more importantly, what did you learn from it?

I think my biggest mistake is probably actually a really common mistake for most small businesses, and that is not really paying attention as much to and preparing for the ebbs and flows of cash flow. Because in my business, a lot of my income comes from royalties and that's based on the same seasonality of the retail market. So I have a really heavy fourth quarter and not as good in the first and second. And it's one of those things where I don't always have the right type of clients teed up. So on the off season I have more fee based clients. And that's always been a really struggle, even still.

Okay. Right. No, that makes sense. I think that's a big thing for every business owner if they're honest.

Exactly.

Yeah. What's your biggest challenge now?

My biggest challenge now is flexing my business and moving into a sort of different genre. So Tom and I have been designing together for a really long time and I'm sort of shifting out of that and I'm pulling away a little bit, doing a lot more writing and a lot more podcasting and other things like that. And so handling a lot more of the marketing side of our business. And he's handling a lot more of the technical and design side of the actual day to day. And it's kind of a shift because we're so used to being kind of intertwined in how we work.

That makes sense. Yeah, I get that. So let me just ask you, being an author myself, what are the three best books you've ever read that have had the most impact on your work?

Oh, that's such a good question.

I'm a huge reader. I read about 200 books a year, believe it or not.

Yeah, I mean, I consume everything. So when I wanted to learn how to podcast, I read Narisha's book, which I know you interviewed on your podcast, which was one of my favorites. And I read, you know, I read like 10 or 10 or 12 things around a subject so I can get a broader view and understand of what it is. It's kind of the research in me. But I think probably the biggest books that have an impact on me have been classics. Early on, Great Expectations, probably one of my all time favorite books.

And one of the lines in there is, you cannot choose to accept to be part of my character. And that is that everyone you meet and all the things you read and all those things become a part of who you are. And I just love that kind of thinking and the impact people have on you.

I love that.

Yeah. My other favorite is Crime and Punishment. I know that sounds like A weird book, but Dostoevsky, I mean, brilliant writer.

Yes, absolutely brilliant, I agree.

But for current books, think and Grow Rich for Women really was eye opening to me in terms of you study successful men and you just study all these success manuals and all these things, but to finally see it put into women, that really inspired me.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. And what about just another business book? You want to throw one more in?

I think there's Rembrandts in the attic. It's the one I refer to all my inventor clients. It's sort of a way of thinking about utilizing your invention and your intellectual property as an asset. Instead of thinking of it like it's the thing. It's sort of, this is an asset. I can sell it, I can utilize it. I can, I can help it give my company higher valuation. I just think it's a really different viewpoint on intellectual property.

I love that. Okay, that's one I haven't heard. So let me ask you, how do people get a hold of you?

Well, they can find me on LinkedIn and they can also find me anywhere on social media. Has design and it's H, A, Z Z D E S I, G N. And I have a website, hasdesign.com and you can email me through that.

Oh, wonderful. Okay, thank you for that. So if you could do it all over again, what would you want to change?

There's so little I would want to change. I actually really love all the difficulties and things we've gone through. I think they really formed who I am and how I design and how well I can accomplish things for my clients. But I think the last six years, because of some hardships, we closed ourselves off a little bit and we kind of stayed, just the two of us, with a few very limited clients, and it wasn't as rewarding. So it was earlier this year that we stepped out and that's how I met you. And so we've been stepping out all year. And I really found that sort of expansiveness and being able to help more small businesses and more inventors, that is so much more rewarding. And I wish I had done that sooner.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you, Tracy, really, for coming on with me today and sharing your wonderful wisdom with our listeners.

Thank you, Jill.

You're so welcome. And thank you everyone for listening. I know that you've learned something more today from our wonderful guest, Tracy. And I'm Jill Lublin thanking you for listening to the Small Business Owners publicity podcast. And I want to remind you that your message matters. Bye bye everyone.

Jill Lublin is an international speaker on the topics of publicity, referrals and networking. As author of her best selling book Get Noticed, Get Referrals and co author of the best sellers Guerrilla Publicity and Networking Magic, Jill is a master strategist on how to capture the attention of the media and increase your visibility in the marketplace. Place to get a free audio recording of one of her recent stage presentations that will work hand in hand with the podcast. To help you implement a successful PR strategy, go to www.publicitycrashcourse.com freegard.