Tracy Hazzard Helps Us Take Our Ideas Into The Real World From Cash Flow Diary Podcast With J. Massey

Cash Flow Diary podcast episode 272 welcome.

To yet another exciting episode of the Cash Flow Diary Podcast, the podcast that teaches you insider tips, tactics and strategies for creating leverage streams of cash flow into your life. Learn from top performing entrepreneurs, business owners, investors and thought leaders from across the globe as they share their secrets to success. Like what you learn on this and other Cash Flow Diary Podcast episodes, go to learninvestingnow.com and sign up to receive powerful tips and information that will help you succeed as an entrepreneur and investor. Now, here's your host, investor, entrepreneur, business owner, educator, speaker, author, and master facilitator of Robert Kiyosaki's Cash Flow game, Jay Massey.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Cash Flow Diary Podcast. I'm your host, Jay Massey. Glad that you are here today because I'm excited. Well, and I know you're like, Jay, you're always excited. Yeah, that's true. However, I'm excited because we're actually doing something I don't think in our hundreds of episodes we've done yet, we're going to be talking about business in a completely different way. I'm talking about the purest form, as in your straight idea. You have nothing like nothing but an idea. And you want to go from concept to cash. How on earth do you do that? You've seen these products appear out of nowhere and you're like, man, I got a great idea. I want to invent something and I would love to be able to see it get to a store. So you know what, there are people out there who know exactly how to do that. And we've got one with us today. And I'm so excited for you to meet her. Why? Because we're talking over 250 products over a billion dollars. Billion. That's a B, by the way. Lots of zeros for her clients. So that means she knows how to walk people through this process. An income columnist. So she's writing about it, making sure that you and I can understand it and has her own firm, has designs. Today's guest is none other than Tracy Hazard. And I know this is going to happen. So I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again. Grab a pen, pencil, iPad, something, because she's going to drop some serious knowledge and you are going to want to pick it up because 37 patents co invented. I think we're going to learn a lot today. Help me welcome Tracy Hazard. Tracy, you there?

Yes, I am. Thanks, Jay.

How are you doing? So Far.

Very good.

Excellent.

Excited to talk to your audience.

Well, I know they're excited to talk to you, because not all of them want to do real estate, and they got great ideas. They want to build cash flow. They feel trapped. All these great things. And I want to talk about it all.

Well, you know, everybody's got Shark Tank fever. You see it. You think, I could do that? I can make the next great thing.

Indeed.

And so I hear it all the time. People like, really? You have patents. Oh, I want to talk about this. I think it's a great idea. Yeah, that's the trick. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Indeed. Indeed. Now, before we get too far into that, here's what I want to do. I want to take you back a little bit, because I tend to think today's entrepreneurs are a lot like yesterday's superheroes. So, you know, you can take Wonder Woman, Black Widow, the Hulk, Superman, Spider man, all of these people that are in comic books, et cetera, They're a lot like entrepreneurs because I think they get dressed up, they put on masks occasionally, but they use their special skills to save people and help improve the quality of life of those around them. And entrepreneurs do the same thing. But just like superheroes, we also didn't start off with our capes and our systems in place and everything that we now know today. We had an origin story. We began. You know, maybe we didn't get bit by a spider or some radioactive juice, but at the end of the day, we became who we are today. But what I want to know is before the Ink magazine column, before the products, before the billions of doll that you've helped your clients generate, what I'd like to know is, who is Tracy Hazard?

Well, I was just a modest designer coming out of art school, actually, and went to work at some great companies and learned some great things about the basics of launching products and product development in general. And one of those companies was Herman Miller, who, you know, the Aeron chair that is like the symbol of. The iconic symbol of great office space, the tech office space. So I got to work on that project and really see what really is involved. And it's extremely difficult to do it at a level of Herman Miller and Apple or those kinds of products. And you don't see that when you go out into the world. Most of the products we've seen are not designed at that level.

The ones we all clamor for, the one there's a line around the building for. Yes, but that most of the products that are made out on the market are just merely sourced and shopped and there was no one really designing there. So we, we kind of found ourselves. My, my husband is my partner in this like little niche area of being able to help smaller companies put some of those good design practices in place. And the difference is, is that when you're competing against something that has no design process and we add that to it, all of a sudden we were just generating really great success for our clients.

Right, right. That's amazing to me. So you literally go from hey, I have this idea in the middle of the night to product.

Well, that's actually, you know, you want to talk about the real origin part of the story. So the origin part of the story is that I, we bought a Palm Pilot.

You know how old that is? I'm old. I'm a lot older than I sound. I have three daughters and one's 21. So yeah, the, you know, the Palm Pilot, I wanted one for Christmas. I saw it and I thought this is a life organizer. This is so cool. And I'm not a very, you know, to ask for something Christmas was like a really big deal. So, so Tom was like, I'm all there buying it. And pretty quickly I was like, this is not a style pen, this is dumb. And so we started talking about it and Tom came up with this fabulous invention. Tom's my partner and husband obviously, and fabulous invention there. And he wanted to start a business on it. And he said, my mom's willing to loan me $30,000 for me to start and tool for this and do this. I want to do this. And I looked at him and I said, I love you and I love that you're an inventor and I love how creative you are, but you're not capable of running a business on your own. So I'm going to step in front and that's exactly what I did. You want to talk about superhero? I'm going to step in front and run this business so that we can do this safely and not destroy our family in the process. And we made a lot of mistakes. We were young, we had a lot of failures. We got into an IP lawsuit with palm computing, of all people. Of course, yeah, you know, like all of these things happened and we learned from all of those hard knocks things, but we also learned ways to be flexible and successful. And our, our design process at the end of the day is always what has saved us, has always helped us. Having a system by which we, we solve problems and we do things and we apply it to every part of business. Not just a product.

Got it, got it. And for everybody listening, just so that we can catch them all up a PalmPilot, just, just imagine your iPhone but black and white with virtually no memory and all it can really, really do is keep a calendar. Okay, so just think, think about that and that's kind of where we were and understand that that's where it started. But technology changes and it changes very, very rapidly. But you brought something up that I think a number of people jump to first. Because I know I get this in the real estate space all the time. They're, they're like Jay, I would love to do real estate because I, when I'm doing a seminar or teaching or coaching or what have you, I always ask people, hey, have you ever said to yourself that you would love to do real estate if you just knew where to get the money? Now you said something that, that your husband was able to go, you know, to mom. Now if I go to my mom for 30 grand, that ain't gonna happen. That, that's what I know. And I know there's another, another a whole bunch of people who are saying that exact same thing that was like that's great, he could go to his mom, but what about me? So what would you say for that particular person who thinks they have a great idea but is going, well, I don't have any money to make it happen.

Well I hate to break it to you, but the reality is is that you have to start there, you have to start friends and family, you have to tap debt, you know, do debt financing product, hard product, hard non tech based. So like software apps, they're a little bit exception. But any hard product, especially one that's going to go into mass market retail, so Target and Walmart and Costco and those kinds of places are extremely risky investments for just about any investment firm I've ever spoken to. VCs, angels, everything, they have to absolutely love it. It has to be amazing. And chances are really good that you won't be able to demonstrate that without spending some money to get their first, first interesting. Are going to have to find someone with some pockets or some way to generate some cash or ways to do it very inexpensively. And that is really what is changing over the last, I'd say six, eight years is that there are so many ways to do it at a much lower cost. Things like 3D printing and rapid prototyping and all of these things have made being able to prove that you have a product actually accessible at something that's not Hundreds of thousands of dollars, but something that's just a few thousand.

Got it, got it, got it. So basically what I've always maintained the position that one of the reasons that real estate is great and accessible to so many is because it has POC or proof of concept and that it comes built in. I don't have to prove that, hey, people would like to live in buildings because, well, that's kind of obvious. It sounds like to me that what you're saying is that you're, you, you're just going to have to spend some money to get to that same stage to prove that people would actually want use and actually pay money for whatever your widget is. Is that accurate?

Yeah, it is. It's, it's. We have a process that we use. It's a seven step process and I'll share that with you in a minute. But the first stage is prove it. So you prove it before you actually ever even make anything. And that is a really unusual way for an inventor or product designer to do it. And most people are shocked at the fact that I say that.

But hold on, that would seem like it would remove a lot of the risk if you can do that that way.

Okay, exactly. And so that's why when people are shocked at our statistics. So yes, we do 250 products and that's pretty prolific for a couple of designers. We don't have a big design staff here. So, you know, but it's really the success rate of those designs that is the high. So we have what we call, we consider it an 86% commercialization rate, meaning that of all the designs we've done that got to that sort of final stage of concept. They 86% of them are in the market or have been successfully marketed in some way, shape or form by a client or by ourselves.

Wow.

That is. Yeah, for a patent, for instance, the average commercialization rate for the USPTO is about 47%.

Wow, this is better than Vegas. Keep going.

Yeah. So our steps work. And it's because what I basically say is we don't patent anything, we don't produce anything, we don't do any of those things. We don't jump straight to that. We have these screeners along the way that basically you're going to spend some money. It's not zero, but you're going to spend some money and get some answers. So that proof of concept you were talking about, that's built into real estate, it's not built in every time you do a product just because there is a shelf to size it on doesn't mean. And because people are buying things, doesn't mean they're going to buy your thing. And so that's what you have to. You have to set. So our prove it stage is set to assess the market fit and the product fit and the ease of access between the two. So you can, you know, you can imagine that sometimes there's a market for something, but our ability to access that market is so difficult or would be so costly. So we also use that as a screener. It's like, is it hard to get to that market? Is it hard to reach them?

Got it. Got it. See, I told you guys. You grab a pen, pencil, iPad, notepad, something, because this was going to happen. That was step one. We're going to get to the rest of the step. So I am trying to delay, because I know you're scrambling right now to grab something to take note. So what's the. I mean, this is hyper interesting to me, and I've got to be careful because I know what'll happen is that I'll. You'll give me an idea in a second, and what'll happen is I'm like, hey, let's go do this, Tracy. I'll be ready to go.

And inventors are even worse. So we get all excited by shiny objects.

Exactly.

And yeah, no, I mean, it happens to all of us. And that's why we use this process so that it grounds us so that we don't get distracted with the shiny object.

Right. So if you've got 37, then that probably means what, there's 370 that started that, or was there thousands? How did. I mean, I'm looking at the ratio here.

Yeah. Not everything is patentable. You know, it just doesn't happen like that. So, you know, out of those 250 products, there are, you know, not even 37 of them. You know, there might be a couple of patents per product on a couple of them. So, you know, it doesn't really work quite that way. We don't really use patents as. As the crux of everything we do. When it fits, we do it. And it just helps us with competitiveness and helps us with being, you know, getting something acquired. So if you want something to be bought out later, if you have an exit strategy for acquisition, you have to have some intellectual property. You have to have an asset that goes with it. You guys understand assets in real estate quite well. If there's no asset base to it, then it's really hard, you know, Then you are always getting devalued.

Right, right. Yes. Got it. And the interesting thing about this is that it's your process of building the asset that has me intrigued. Not so much the process of, of selling the asset. Although I'm sure there's more to. There's. There's more there as well. Because as you know, real estate people, we're doing, you and I, we actually do the same thing. We just have a different process be. I mean, instead of a patent, I'm going for title. You know, that's it. It's kind of the, the same thing. And I'm just listening to you. I'm just like, this is interesting. So what, what happens when Tomorrow, tonight, in 30 minutes, I wake up with a great idea. How on earth do I even get to a stage of how do I prove something that doesn't exist? This seems, that it seems so counterintuitive to me right now that my brain can't even go to like, what's step two? It's like, how do I prove it? I mean, here, test my widget that doesn't exist. I don't get that.

Well, think about it this way. If you were to find a property that you thought was really great, are you gonna drive your mom by it and say, hey, mom, what do you think?

No.

No. You're gonna drive an expert by it, right?

Yes.

The same thing here is that you have to think about. Okay, well, I have an idea. And let's say I have an idea, right? We're working on one that right now. So we have an idea for how to.

How to do a different kind of bike helmet for girls. Okay, that's one we're working on. My 6 year old who came up with this idea that her ponytails don't fit in her helmet.

Okay, your six year old. This is great.

Yeah. So this is her concept. And I try to engender in my girls this entrepreneurial and invention spirit. So when she says this to me, I say, okay, well, let's start solving the problem and let's think about it. But first, before we figure out the solution, let's validate whether or not that really is a problem for just you or is it a problem globally?

Okay.

And so we do things like, we just simply do a Google search. We do things like we check it on Amazon. We, you know, we check for these things out there. And you know, a lot of investors believe that they should. They don't want to invest in something that they've never seen before somewhere. So if you don't see it anywhere, a lot of times that's a really big flag. If you see it but you know that it's inferior, it doesn't have this feature, then you might be on to something. So then to the next stage, and that is to validate that special thing, what is special about what you want to do? And that's the concept you're testing. So you're really not testing a thing yet. You're testing an idea. So, and you're testing where that might play. Who's the market for that? So in our helmet example, if I couldn't get to moms, then if it only would sell to girls, how am I going to access them? They don't have, you know, they don't, they aren't online, they don't have credit cards. You know, like, if that was who you were marketing it to, then that's not a fit. But you knowing that moms are the ones who buy these, do moms care about this? Do they know that that's a problem is, you know, these are questions you can ask, you know, but you could do it simply the way that we did it, which was simply ask the question in a survey. And there are lots of online and mobile devices that have a network of people that in any demographic, you can ask them questions. And it's just a quick survey. So for a couple hundred dollars, I can find out whether or not what moms do when their daughter's hair doesn't fit in their helmet. Do they let them not wear a helmet? Do they, do they change the hairstyle? Do they make them suffer with how it hurts? What do you do when that happens? And you give them ABC choices and you see what occurs, and that's kind of just the simple way to go about it. The problem is, is a lot of inventors get kind of scared that they're letting their idea out of the bag.

Yeah.

And we don't believe that. We think that if an idea is, is good, then you need to validate it. And the challenge to anyone is taking that idea to market. That's the hard part. So if you're on a running path to do that, and that's what we do, is we try to do it really fast. No one can catch up to you.

Huh. So, okay, you, you bring up a couple of things that, that are going through my head, because again, my, my frame of reference is always. It's, it's real estate. That's, that's what I'm thinking. And typically it's it just sounds like you're doing your due diligence part kind of on the front end before you actually produce something, whereas I like to do it after I've got something under contract. And, and I know, like I cool, now it's time to do the work to, to validate that this building, this apartment, this commercial property is like good in some way, shape or form. But it sounds like you're doing that on the front end to trying to eliminate the idea before you get too far down the process. Am I close?

Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And there's two reasons for that. The one is that, you know, in your case, you're still not bound. If there's, you know, if there's problem in the deal, you can still get out of it. But in the case of a product design and an idea that you have, you will have to spend money to make it. So you'll have to spend money to get to that stage of due diligence. So we want to avoid that as much as possible in the process. And so any way we can do that very inexpensively, we try to do that. And then the second part of it is that think about it this way. What if you fall in love with the property?

I try not to. That's a bad thing.

You start to fall in love with your idea, it becomes your babyface for many, many people. Now for me, 250 products later, I can take or leave just about any one of them. You know, it doesn't, you kind of lose that sense. But when it's your first or when it's, you know, in there, you fall in love with it. And so we don't want to fall in love with something because then we're going to get too attached to something that might fail.

Yeah, yeah. Now, now, how long does, how long is that process though, like to go, hey, Mom, I've got this idea to, to it. I don't know. I don't even know what this next step is. I don't even know what to say. So like, it just in my head, I'm like, I' ready to sell something. So it's like from the time I've had the idea, I'm like, let's sell it tomorrow. That's my proof. But there seems to be so much more before I get that far. And I'm just like, how long is this?

Well, you know, that's a great question. And it just depends on the product and what it is. And our process applies to services. So if you were doing like a coaching package or a service package. And we actually did this a year ago when we started our podcast. So I, you know, I did all the research, I did all the look, I checked out the niche, I checked in with all the people and said, you know, is this something you want? Would you be interested in this topic? You know, and kind of went through all that early screening process, didn't have to spend any money. And then within six weeks, we had launched a podcast, gotten it started, and we had. Because we set up such a system, I mentioned to you, off air before we do five podcasts a week, you couldn't do that if you didn't have a process and a plan and a system in place to be able to handle that. And we, we do that. So the second phase after prove it is to plan it. And that's really where you sort of pick your timeline. And a timeline really is also dependent on your accelerators. So good service providers are accelerators. And that's one of the choices we make, because you have to trade off between accelerating and money. So when you don't have enough cash flow, when you don't have enough money, you. You don't have enough money to hire someone who's going to make it go faster for you. And in the end, if that's a detriment, if, like, if it's speed to market, that is essential because technology is changing or things are happening, or it's just so timely and we don't have the money to do that at that planning stage, we also cut it off.

Interesting. Interesting. Well, I guess it's a good thing that hair grows slowly.

That's right.

Okay, that makes sense to me. It's interesting how similar but yet different this process is when it comes to getting it done. And I still think you guys are superhuman for being able to produce a podcast five, five times a week. That is impressive. I don't care who you are, that's impressive. So, okay, so it's prove it the planet. Then what? Okay, you have probably figured out that one of the greatest things that you have at your disposal is, well, your mind. And that's literally what we're talking about. Those great ideas that are in your head and bringing them to a stage to where they actually become a product or service or something of all of those great things. And I don't know about you, but that makes me excited. It means you are really, really wealthy. You have a ton of wealth inside of your mind. If we can just figure out how to mine it and get it onto the other side. This is amazing. What is possible, dare I say probable, when you put yourself in, in the right mindset. So here's what I'm going to do. One of the things that I've done is I put a collection of ideas, also known as a book together. It's cash flow diary, 10 steps to creating wealth in Any Economy. You can grab a free PDF copy by going over to cashflowdiary.com FreeBook cashflowdiary.com Freebook and you can begin to glean some of the ideas that have been put together. Choose the ones that work for you, spit out the rest, but more or less go and make something happen. That's where the rubber meets the road and the difference begins to be for you. Let's get back and find out what the rest of this system has in store.

Price it.

Oh, good lord. How on earth do you figure that out?

Well, so we, it's because we don't do by a cash basis costing. So we don't, we don't look at it that way. We don't look on it as this is a product and it costs us this much to make it. So it's not a cost basis we're going on. It's a market basis. So when we look at the market and we say, okay, we want to, we want to make a helmet and the Average helmet is $29. Okay, can we do what we want to do that's special and keep it in that price range? Or what we have is special enough that we can add 20% to it and go for a higher end market? Or is it just not special enough at all and it has to be cheaper than the market price. So we look at it from that perspective and we have to validate it, but we essentially set a target price and a target cost. So we also have a cost of goods. And that is the tricky part because most people, if you're pricing out a service package, this is where I see people go so wrong. Entrepreneurs really blow this all the time. Time is they say, well, it would be so great If I made 100 bucks an hour. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, it's okay, that's what I'll charge. That seems like the right thing to do. Or they come out of a world of where they were working in house and they know what their essential hourly rate is for their salary and they just charge that on a freelance basis. Such a mistake. That's not a sustainable business strategy. And from a product standpoint, it's not a sustainable business strategy if you haven't built in for the profit properly. You haven't built in to have a sales channel. You haven't built in for operations of a business, business you don't yet have. So, you know, you want to build it in for what it needs to be in the future. And if it's not viable today, it will never be viable later. So that's what we look at. And we really. That's another screening point is if it's just not possible to make it in anywhere close to that cost range, then we kill the product.

Yes. Sounds like lots of murder product murdering is going on over there. I mean, it's like, wow, so many.

You know, there's so many, so many new ideas. It's just this is, you know, and sometimes products come back up like ideas. We don't throw them away completely. They're, they're, you know, pinned up somewhere, you know, stuck in a sketchbook there. They still exist. Because sometimes technology changes and make it possible for us to be able to do something we couldn't do two years earlier.

Got it. Got. Well, yeah, totally. Like, even this conversation when it comes to technology and distribution, it could happen.

It could happen that you had a property and the neighborhood resurged and now it's viable and it wouldn't have been before. So you always don't, you know, you don't shelve anything. You go back and if you really liked something and you thought it had potential, you'd go back to it.

Agreed? Agreed. Totally understood. Now I just gotta ask. It's not how do you do? You wake up one day and say, hey, I know, I want to help inventors get their products to market. Like, really?

No. You know, it kind of creeps up on you, you know, you're talking about being a superhero. You find out that that is your superpower. Like, I could sit there and look at a product and go, it's not going to make it. I'm sorry.

Wow.

We call it the ugly baby syndrome. So that I, I am really good at telling someone that your baby's ugly in a really nice way. And when you don't believe me, then I give you the I'm good at giving you a place at which you're going to go and get the same answer that I already came to. And then, you know, it's finally, don't ask your mom, don't ask your friends, don't ask, you know, don't ask your family, because either they're going to say all yes or I'll say no. It depends on how supportive they are of you as an entrepreneur. You know, when they don't, when they're afraid for you, they say, no, oh, no, that's a bad idea. But when they, when they love you and they support you, they'll say yes, no matter whether it's a good idea or not. And so you have to find a way to get somebody to tell you objectively.

Got it, Got it. So then I'm going to ask you the question I get like four times a week, if not a day, which is so difficult to answer, but is a question that happens all the time. So how do. How does anybody know, like, this is a good idea, quote, unquote, good idea? Like, my idea is great? I mean, yeah, in our head, it's. It's wonderful. Like, is there a way that any person, like, on their own can just go, yeah, that, that one's good, but I should try something else different? Or is this process the only way to figure this out?

You know, I haven't found a good way because every time we do products, it's always in a different category for different clients. So it might be, you know, one moment it might be in the juvenile section of the store, and the next moment it might be in the high tech section. So you can't be an expert in all areas. I think that we just use the criteria development. So we design from it. So we use it as a screener, but we also use it as a way to say, is this keeping with the brand integrity? Is this keeping with the design integrity? Is this still expressing all the specialness about it? And if all along the way you start sacrificing those things and there's compromises being made, you're going to miss the mark. But if you keep it going and all of those things, keep validating it, you should be feeling more and more confident in the process. And there should be more and more people you're tapping along the way, too. As I mentioned, those accelerators, when you're tapping them, they're going to. Their job is really to watch out for landmines, to make sure that you're not stepping into something you shouldn't be doing. And that's the best kind of consultant you want to bring in, is someone who's going to. Who's going to warn you of all those things that might go wrong on your path. Because when you don't have an. We call it not having a lot of Runway. So you got to launch with a very short Runway when you don't have a big cash flow. And so when you've got that short amount of cash flow, you, your decisions have to be tighter. You have to make every decision right, because not making those correctly is fatal. It's, you know, a big company can make tons of mistakes. They can hire rookies and their systems in place, either fix them, you know, they have double check systems, or they just throw more money at it and they can advertise and market on the end and make it right. Yeah, an entrepreneur can't do that. So you have to trust that the process is going to work for you and that along the way you're going to feel more and more confident in it. And when you don't, you have to listen to that intuition. And I think that's the problem. Most people, they get, you know, siloed and they get like blinders on and they think, I'm going for this goal. And I said I was going to do it, so I'm going to keep going on it. And they're not taking enough of that feedback in. And, and I'm not saying, you know, take it all in and say, oh my gosh, you have to take it in and say, does this resonate and does this fit with. Do they really understand what I'm going for or are they missing it? And if they're missing it and you still really believe in your product idea, then you have to take that as a sign to do something different. Re engineer, remarket it, remessage it, because they're not getting it. Yeah. So if you still really strongly believe in it, you do still have to take it as a criticism and constructively do something with it.

You know, you said something that I thought was interesting, and I want to pick up on that at this particular moment, is that this doesn't apply just to a physical product, but it also could apply to a service offering as well. Could you expand on that a little?

Yeah, I mean, we do it the same way all the time. So when we offer, you know, a consulting package, we actually do the same process. For us, we're figuring out, you know, how are we going to package something together. If it's a seminar, a course course, a webinar, whatever those might be, we look at them as the same thing because you always have to go through it. The only great part about it is it's always a lot more flexible. You can always just make a few changes and then see if it's right, make a few changes. So it didn't cost you as much. It's a lot easier to do.

Use it the same way. And we still make sure that everything is meeting its brand integrity, its product integrity, and is fitting what we're doing. And when we find that happening, we always know there's a great market fit. And when there's a great market fit, stuff sells.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I think you're going to have an interesting perspective on this next idea that I or concept that I'm thinking about, because I believe this. It prevents a lot of people from moving at the speed that they should and more importantly, it gets in their way. But I'm betting that you have a different perspective on failure or failing and failure events than what most people do, because there's, there's got to be so many iterations of everything that, to everything that you ever bring to market. I'm interested to hear your, your perspective.

Yeah, I have a high tolerance for it. I mean, that's really what, what happens over time is I. You have a high tolerance for failure. You have a high tolerance for the, you know, the speed of discard, as you put it, you know, throwing ideas away. You have to have a high tolerance. But I, you know, there's a famous quote that Edison said he figured out a thousand ways not to make a light bulb and only one way that worked. And that is the really, the sort of design, iteration and invention process works like that. And it's, it's. We call it iterative. Iterative. We do it again and again and again and we refine constantly in the process. So for us, failure is learning and it just, it becomes that way. And it is something that we've been doing since we were educated in college. And you get to a stage at which you just can accept that. That doesn't mean I like to fail. I certainly had some big failures in my life and we're not too happy. You know, I owned a retail store and it just, as much as I could, I just couldn't make it work from a cash flow perspective. And I had to, I had to shut it down. And so there's failures in there along the way. And you learn from those though, how to do something different and how to do it in a way in which most people can't intimate. So you can try to model someone and try to learn it, but you don't understand why it happens. And I believe that you should absolutely follow in somebody's footsteps who's done it right before. But when you start to deviate you have to know that you're putting yourself up for failure risk because you don't maybe have the information on why they did what they did.

Yeah, yeah, I totally get that. I often ask people to imitate before they innovate for that very reason, because you don't know what that failure of it waiting around the corner has for you. It could be quite an interesting experience. Now, there's something else that I'm picking up from you that I often tell people, especially in their marketing or developing relationships or hunting for investors and all these things that we have to do as real estate entrepreneurs. And, and because oftentimes they think it, you know, I just want to find the people with the big money or they think that, that, that, that that has more to do with it. The amount of, you know, their success is tied to how much money somebody has or how much money they have to invest in something. But you were talking more about processes and sequences, and that's something I tend to focus on. A ton is like, it's not so much what you're asking people to do, it's when, in what order. That makes a huge difference. And I'm sensing that you've got a similar philosophy.

I do. Because, you know, actually the investor model, we, we took investors when we had our stylus pens for handheld computers back in the late 90s. And so, you know, we did angel investors at that time. So it wasn't just Tom's mom, it was a whole. But we had 13 other investors. And it was a really difficult, high pressure situation for me because I didn't, you know, done it before and had to go and get an SBA loan on top of it. So there's a whole bunch of things that we learned at that time. And what we learned really about it was that it's so risky. And since then, the market of investment has changed so much that people are just diversifying their portfolios and trying to do too many things. I think that's the way I see it. And because they don't believe really any of it is going to hit. I mean, when you look at like a venture capital firm, their success rate is less than 10% for the most part. It's that, that 10% that happened to be such high risk, that had such high return that is keeping them going. But to me, that's. You might as well play the lottery or, you know, go gamble in Vegas.

Right?

I don't, I just. That's not acceptable to me and I want to fix that like that, that you know, that's where I would get in with. So when you look at having a right set of investors, I think they all have to be believe in your system, believe in your process, believe in the way that you're going about doing it, because the trust in that has to be high.

So there's that kind of, you know, level of connection to that. And putting in a system in place that demonstrates that you can do that or that, you know, every property I'm sure you go into is different, and they have it different. But if you had, let's say you were turning them, you know, and you're going to, you know, refurbish them or whatever, but if you had a system by which you did that, that guaranteed that they would be done on a certain timefra, and you said, we won't take a property that can't be done in that timeframe. You're already setting in constraints that will lead you to success and give you a higher confidence level or give your investors a higher confidence level with you. So those systems are just so critical in the process, and not enough investors have the discipline to expect them.

Yeah, no. In fact, they don't even know that they should have them, let alone what they are if they do, which is the. The whole foundation of everything that we try to do is to help people have some of those before they get started. This is absolutely fascinating to me because, I mean, the world must look completely different to you because there's opportunity around every corner. How on earth do you actually turn it off? Because I know my brain. Every time I go and visit another country or. Or a different city or even just. I can't turn off, like, the opportunity that I see. And real estate's everywhere now. We're talking about just ideas. So how on earth do you manage to, like, like, sleep with that? I can't even. Because I know my brain, and I'm assuming you're not too dissimilar. So I just gotta know, what's your secret?

Well, you know, interestingly, just this past week, I wrote an article in Inc. About how creatives don't sleep enough that we're genetically predisposed not to sleep.

Okay, there we go.

Entrepreneurs might be similar. Yeah. And so, yeah, I know. I always joke that my family realizes that I don't sleep enough, and they gave me two copies of Arianna Huffington's book Thrive for my birthday this past year. So they recognize that I don't need it, that I don't get enough. But it is hard. It's really hard to not do it. But. But that discipline, I have learned is the only way to get anything done. And if at the end of the day, my regular business isn't profitable and if I'm not able to kind of float all that, then I can't do the successful, exciting, futuristic products and projects I want to do if I don't have a strong base underneath me. And having the discipline to make sure that you have that constant cash flow is really critically important. And it's taken a long time for us to get to a stage at which we recognize that. And that's actually why we started our podcast and why we started our 3D printing venture. And why we started that was because that would be steady income all year round, where the rest of our business was still very cyclical. So we found an alternate cash source and we built a whole, you know, we made it a project and we made it a priority and we built it in place and we had a one year plan for it to happen and we met our goal because this past week we just took on our first advertiser for our podcast. So, yeah, Woohoo. So we are on pace to do exactly what we need, which was to even out our yearly cash flow. It wasn't that we didn't have enough money and we weren't successful. It's just it wasn't always coming in at the right time and it felt stressful. So we put a plan in place. So when you really recognize what your goals are and why you're doing something, it also makes it a little easier to just say, yeah, that's a great idea. Let me just write that in my sketchbook. And it is part of the reason why I started, I started writing for Ink and, and we have, you know, the podcast is actually a really great way for me to get out ideas and talk about them and then let them go.

Yes. Yeah, it's got to like, I mean, you got it, man. I'm just thinking about this process that you're going through. It's got to be like giving birth every 30 seconds or something.

It can be. It can be, yeah. And you know, and that's why, you know, to me, for it to be that painful is something that you don't want for anyone. So that's really why we, why we set the way we do it, why we talk to people the way that we talk, why we, why we try to help inventors and mentor them, because we just don't want that to happen. That it is as painful as that Every time.

Right, Right. Well, here's what I know. I know there's more than one person listening right now. Who. They were taking notes, and then they were just like, you know what? I can't keep up, but I want more. So how can they find out more of what you guys are doing? Because I know there's more than one person who wants to explore the concepts, the ideas that have been stuck in the back of their head and figure out, like, what's my next step? Tracy, I know they want to know that, so tell them how we can get in contact with you.

Well, that's great. Mentors to inventors. So it's M E N T O R S the number two, and inventors plural dot com. And that's our website. And there's a Facebook group that we just started, and it's a membership group, but it's for right now. It's free. And. And we're doing. Every two weeks, we're doing a coaching call. So basically, you can get on and ask us questions. And we have a different topic every other week. And we also, like, in the next one, we're bringing in an Amazon private label expert, because that's one great way to. Accessible way to bring products to the market and test them out. And so, you know, we try to bring people in to do that. There's a podcast, there's a blog post. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things coming as it goes, and that's just really the best way to get information. And also, you can find out all about me, and my company has design that way as well.

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you a lot. I know that my. I. If. I'm concerned that if I keep talking to you, we're gonna make a company or something. So I need to. What I need to do is I've got to ask you this, this final question.

Because while we've been discussing going back and forth all these things, I know that there's more than one person who's been, like, considering mulling it around in their head. Like, you know what? I want to put on my superhero outfit. I would like to become one of those entrepreneur people, too. And. But they have in the back of their mind, Tracy, that voice. And I know, you know that voice. You've done battle with that voice, that voice that comes up probably with every one of your clients, and you have mentored people and helped them squash that voice or at least still make progress in spite of it. And what I would like to know is what would you say to that person who still has that voice in the back of their head right now, but thinks that they're ready to finally make this happen. And you knew, here's the key words. You knew they would actually follow through. What would you tell them?

So that voice is fear. And fear is a good thing. I believe that fear is a good thing because it keeps you from, you know, burning your hand and doing really stupid things. But you have to listen to that and say, is this really truly fear, or is it. Is it fact or is it fiction? Is it really in my head or is this really true? And you have to take an objective look. And I have a great coach who's. Who always says, you put fear in the trunk, so you take it along on the ride with you. But fear is in the trunk, and so it's there, and it will start banging and yelling at you when you're going to do something really stupid. And you just have to then listen to it over all the noise in your head, but it's not driving the car. And so that's what holds a lot of people back. I do see it all the time. And the inventors get into this cycle of, oh, but it's not ready yet. It's not perfect yet. It's not proven yet. I need to make another prototype. I need to make another model. And that's where I say, no, you need to say, does the market even want this? And when you start asking the questions outside of yourself, you can discern that fact from fiction. But it does. It takes a tremendous amount of confidence in yourself to step out there and be an entrepreneur. Takes even more, I think, confidence to be able to say, I know that I'm not okay with running my company. I know that I'm good at inventing and coming up with ideas, but I need somebody to help me with operations. Asking for help is even a harder thing to do and. But critically important indeed.

I love it. I love everything that you're doing. You're making ideas possible. You are the essence of capitalism as far as I'm concerned. And I am glad that you have taken the journeys, the lumps, the bumps, and have decided to share your genius with so many and help the needed things come to market. I mean, I can only imagine some of the things that have come to market because. Or that will come to market simply because you will help somebody bring something that someone needs. So thank you for all that. You guys are over there and doing well.

Thank you for having me. And I certainly enjoy talking to you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, you know what time it is. It's time for you to move at the speed of instruction. What does that mean? Today. Now, you heard her say mentors to inventors currently free. That's called do it now. Right now. Not tomorrow, not when you get home. You're already listening. On a mobile device, yes. You're on the treadmill, I get that. But when you take a break in between reps, just. Just go right on over there, get started, because your idea needs to be in the marketplace. I want to see it. I probably actually want whatever it is that you are thinking of making. I know this. I have daughters who have hair and the hair definitely doesn't fit under the helmet. That's all I'm going to say. Nonetheless, guys, it's up to you to go make it happen. It's been fun talking to you today. I look forward to talking to you soon. Until next time.

Sam.