Create a Successful Product with Your Invention Idea with Kevin Mako: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Talking Too Loud. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to create a successful product with your invention idea. To drop these value bombs, I brought Kevin Mako into EO Fire Studios. Mako Design and Invent was established in 1999 and is the first company providing world-class end-to-end physical consumer product development tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and home inventors.

0:35Kevin is president and also host of the Product Startup Podcast. In today's foundation, we'll talk about prioritizing energy. The number one thing when you think about developing your product is focus and how crowdfunding can be a phenomenal tool for hardware startups and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kevin and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work.

1:08A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success. A must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Kevin, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something about yourself that most people don't know. What's up, Fire Nation? Very excited to be on the show today. Thanks, John, for the question. You know, before the last 12 months, I used to be on a flight once or twice a week going to our various offices, keynotes, all that sort of stuff. But given that I haven't been able to do that for most of the last year, I actually used that extra time to get my private pilot's license.

1:49So I bring this up because the reason I got into it wasn't just for flying a plane, but the incredible learning opportunities. See, the process of becoming a pilot is, of course, like a great amount of skills and all that sort of stuff. But it's also a large part like psychological training. It really pushes you to elevate your professionalism, discipline, ability to handle emergencies, conquer fear and, you know, basically to relentlessly always be prepared with like multiple alternative plans. And, you know, I was already quite a disciplined professional, but I can certainly say that it's made me even more advanced as an entrepreneur.

2:24and even, I'd say, a husband and a father. And I always say this to entrepreneurs. We all hear that lifelong learning is important, but just really know that whether it's becoming a pilot or taking a language course or learning something online or even just taking a shot at starting a venture, you will always take away far more than just the content. And to your listeners out there, I mean, you're a part of that right now, listening to this podcast with JLD. I love that, and it's so true. I mean, one of my favorite quotes that I use all the time is all the magic, Fire Nation, happens outside of your comfort zone.

2:59So you can't just live in this comfort zone of like things that you already know, just being in the rut in the same routine. Get out of that comfort zone because when you do stretch that brain, when that brain stretches, when you force it to, it never goes back in a good way. So love all this. And we're going to be talking today about creating a successful product with your invention idea. And Kevin Macco is a person to talk to for this. So first off, I want to just ask you to give us an example of what a hardware startup is for those people that might not even be familiar. Yeah, so a hardware startup, just basically think of an invention, a gadget, a gizmo, stuff that can be sold in Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, et cetera, right?

3:39It's the kind of the physical objects around you in your day-to-day life. So we live in a pretty crazy world and a lot of things are going on. I will say one thing that's been pretty interesting is people are still spending a lot of money. They're buying stuff, Amazon, eBay, Home Depot. I mean, you name it. People are spending money. So if you're a hardware startup right now, what do you see as the current status of the overall invention industry? I love it. The hardware industry or the invention industry is going through a crazy, crazy revolution right now. I kind of call it the perfect storm of opportunity for new product startups.

4:16And there's really, it boils down to six things that are happening at the same time, all coming together right now in this crazy storm. So first of all, love it or hate it, over the next 20 to 30 years, everything that you touch and see around you, look around your room right now, everything that you see from the chair that you're on or the desk or the window you're looking out of, it will all be connected. There will be chips in everything, maybe in a very small way, like saying, hey, your couch cushion needs replaced. Or in a large way, as we're already seeing with many products like the Nest Thermostat, right?

4:50so much happening in terms of the space of innovation and the opportunities are available, but that's just one of them. But in addition to that, you know, there's other things. First of all, the product design tools, the software, the prototyping techniques and all that are making it easier than ever for product developers to make client inventions real, right? We've got advanced CAD design tools, simulation software to ensure products are high quality. You've got all these kind of crazy prototype parts like metals and advanced materials that we can use. So just the development in itself is going through a revolution to make it just that much easier to design a great product, but also test what the outcome of that product is going to be from a physical perspective.

5:31Three, big companies are spending far less money on research and development, but much more money on acquisition of small product companies. Think of the Nest thermostat. Think of Oculus Rift and all these things. Heck, there's that sponge that was sold for millions of dollars. It was literally just a cleaning sponge. Is that the magic sponge? You got it. You know the one. I've heard you mention it on the show before. That thing is absolutely unbelievable. Again, it's an example where companies are looking and saying, let's let the world innovate, and then we'll just buy those great innovations as they come out and they get market validated.

6:11Fourth, there's more support than ever before. Hardware incubators, maker spaces, hackathons, co-working spaces, colleges and universities, like product innovation programs, the list goes on, right? When I started this business 20 years ago, up until today, there are over a hundred times more entrepreneurship incubation centers around the world than there were back then. I mean, this is just one example of how much support there is than ever before, including things like EO Fire and JLD, your book, obviously, which is literally laying out a roadmap for how entrepreneurs can succeed. you. So five, this is a big one, especially when it comes to hardware, is additive manufacturing.

6:48So manufacturing like 50, 100 or 200 units at a time locally, quickly, so that you can test those units in a real market. Far cheaper than traditional manufacturing. And obviously, the big bonus, though, is it allows you to iterate and improve before you go into your bigger, more capital intensive production runs for larger volume. Next, crowdsourcing. Let's think Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Shopify, Amazon, all this sort of stuff. There are so many tools to get your invention directly to consumers now. Again, this was 20 years ago, very, very rare, almost impossible to do. And then well before that, even more difficult, right?

7:22So these really, if you look at those things above, those are six things that are all coming together at like the perfect storm all right now in 2021, creating a tremendous amount of opportunity over the next four years for those who kind of take advantage of that. And I can just remember looking at the landscape back in 2016 and being like, okay, I want to bring this journal to market. Like, what's a great way to do this for the Freedom Journal? And I said, well, what are these new crowdfunding things that are going on here? And, you know, using Kickstarter and getting on that platform and then getting promoted by them and then just having, you know, the validation that, you know, people did support this project and it didn't get fully funded, that they were going to get their money back.

7:58So there's like literally no risk. They were either going to get the product or they were get their money back. It was like a really cool way to get something out there into the world and get proof of concept and all of those things. So like with that, Kevin, and just with everything else you're talking about, how does today in 2021, a home inventor get a new invention idea to market? It's a really interesting conversation because it's one of those things where if you search around on Google, it's actually very difficult to figure that question out. It's almost more disinformation than there is information out there.

8:29So, and it's not just at any fault or anything like that. It's just that it has evolved very quickly, even so much as to the last couple of years of what's happening. So the short answer to that is if you've got a product idea and you're trying to make it successful in some way or not, there is only one way that that works in 2021. And that is to get to manufacturing. There is no get-rich-quick scheme, no shortcut, nothing else. develop your product, get it into production, manufacture even just a few hundred units, and get real people to whip out their credit card, purchase a unit, and then most importantly, get reviews from those people of how much you love your product.

9:17And from there, then of course, you can talk all kinds of scaling options like licensing, distribution partners, wholesale, retail buyers, brand collaborations, whatever else. There's lots of options beyond there. But the key thing to really drive home is that all of that happens after manufacturing. The key is, as a startup, your goal needs to be, okay, how do I go from this sketch on a napkin or whatever I'm at, this rough home-built prototype, how do I get from there to production? And I know it might sound kind of daunting, but today here with JLD, that's what we're going to go through. I'm going to talk about both from a technical perspective, how do you actually do it in the back end, how do you build that?

9:55But then also, how do you do it financially? How do you actually make that happen? Fire Nation, this is why I love bringing people who are the masters at specific topics, specific areas of expertise, because then you get to follow the proven path. You get to follow the common path to get to your version of uncommon success here today with Kevin Macco. And so, you know, I like the biggest tips, Kevin. So give us the single biggest tip for developing a new product in 2021. What is that? All right. The big one. Well, John, I think you're going to like this one. I've heard you talk about it a few times.

10:30I think you've got an acronym for it. But when it comes to hardware, and this obviously applies to software service-based firms as well, but when it comes to hardware, the number one thing when you think about developing your product or even thinking of your features is focus, focus, focus. I mean, in hardware, it's particularly important because it It is very difficult at the end of a development cycle to make very quick, cheap adjustments if you haven't focused out of the gate. And I want to give a few examples of this. One of our clients, Go Fish, underwater fishing camera, awesome thing. You can buy it all over the place now.

11:09They took a market that already existed and they really just narrowed down on a very tiny niche focus. How do we get a camera that has a very basic feature set to work underwater that literally attaches to your fishing line so you can see what's happening? That's it. Nothing else. They've relentlessly focused on that and they've obviously become a huge success and they actually ended up exiting and selling to a bigger company. You know, a very simple example is one of our clients called the tri-plunger. He literally looked at plungers and said, why are they round? They should be triangle shaped.

11:43My toilets are now triangle shaped. That's it. this guy great guy right actually interesting story walks into a big retailer his first method of trying to sell this thing walks in with boxes can I talk to the manager huge box these plungers says I've got a way better plunger you should be selling these things manager goes you know what I do have a little bit of liberty on what I buy I'm gonna buy that box off you we'll see how it goes and that was the start of the success story wow crazy right so you know and then I even when we're talking niche, I look at our own story with macro design. So 21 years ago, I was struggling to get an invention developed, classic kind of story, startup story.

12:22I was having my own problem. I said, okay, how can I solve this problem? I very quickly realized it was nearly impossible for an invention startup out there, impossible to get your product developed to production. So I had this vision, how do I create a world-class, full end-to-end physical product design firm that was tailored exclusively to startups and inventors. Basically, a niche within a niche within a niche, right? And we're in the product design field, but tailored only to mass manufactured consumer products, stuff going to Walmart and whatnot, and then specifically for startups. And everyone I talked to in the industry back then, they basically said, oh, that'll never work.

12:57That's way too tiny of a niche. Any firm that's of either that size or that caliber, let alone both. It's all about the big Fortune 500 product clients and those big revolving contracts. They say everyone avoids inventors and startups unless they really need them to help pay some bills. And then, of course, you got to get back to your big corporate clients. And right then, I knew I was onto an untapped niche. So I went on to hiring very specific, very niche builder designers, senior folks out of Dell, Boeing, Bose, Nike, Bosch, Procter & Gamble, Mattel, others. I built processes to develop products from sketch to store shelves for inventors.

13:36I connected with all sorts of organizations and stuff that could help startups with the pieces they were missing in their journey. And although it was super niche, it worked. I mean, since then, we've worked on over 1 ,000 products. We have four offices from coast to coast, millions of units in people's hands all over the world, 20-plus awards and so on. But really, it just goes to show you the sheer power, whether it's hardware or service or software, but the sheer power of niche in 2021. The sheer power of niche. And I want to just double back to something Kevin said, focus, Fire Nation, follow one course until success.

14:10You know, these things are so powerful. In fact, discovering your niche is step two, chapter two of the Common Path on Common Success for a reason. Focus is the word that I use most for a reason. And that's why you need to listen to people like Kevin. And of course, myself, when we're telling you these are the things you need to be zeroing in on when you're creating your invention idea. Now, we have some awesome things coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. There are plenty of things to worry about when trying to grow your business. Don't let tech be one of them. If you're looking for the right tools and a platform that connects your team seamlessly, then look no further than HubSpot's customer platform.

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15:30Get ready to grow with HubSpot's customer platform. Visit HubSpot.com to learn how HubSpot's customer platform can help you grow your business. Hosting on Airbnb is something I hadn't really considered until a couple of years ago, and I'm so glad I did. After purchasing an investment property in our community, we wanted to find a simple way to share it with those traveling to Puerto Rico for a vacation. We thought, why not earn some extra cash? Turns out Airbnb is a perfect fit. Getting started was simple with the Airbnb setup guide, which provided a ton of insights into what amenities and features guests love the most.

16:04And by following tips from other hosts, within about six months, we earned super host status. With how easy it is to get started, I'm just sorry I didn't do it sooner. Later this year, we'll be traveling to see family in California and Maine for a couple of months, and we're considering putting our own home on Airbnb while we're away. That's right. While you're away, your home could be an Airbnb. Find out how much your home could be worth at airbnb.com slash host. Kevin, we're back and I've been hearing this thing floating around the universe called a new consumer product. So before we go any further here today, give us an example of a new consumer product.

16:44It's these inventions, right? You're intending to take this physical idea, this gadget, this innovation that you have in the physical world, and then releasing it to the market so that end users can buy it, right? So that the world essentially can buy that physical thing that you've created, that idea. What are those steps involved in developing this new consumer product? This is where it gets cool. So I'll go through kind of, we'll do it in order from, you know, coming up with the idea to production, right? So because in physical product development, it's also a bit uncertain as to what those steps are too.

17:20So we're just going to lay it out, but also in order, right? First things first is identifying the opportunity, right? Some people are very fortunate and they've just, they've been walking through their day-to-day lives and they see something, right? And they've just, they've come up with it, right? A lot of the clients that we have come in, they really, they just almost somewhat stumbled upon something that they realize was a pain point or whatever else, right? Some of our clients have been sitting on these ideas for years, right? They've been in their back pocket and they say, oh, one day I'm going to do something about that invention idea.

17:49And then you just wait, right? And then I would say if you're still kind of searching, you know, if you're interested in the product space, and this could be whether it's a hardware thing or anything else, software, any business, but the best advice I'd give is just, you know, keep an eye out in your day-to-day lives and in your work for inconveniences that affect you. When that happens, don't just say, oh, that's annoying. Look at it and say, how could I actually solve this problem? So first things first, come up with that invention idea. Once you've got that idea come out, second step is just sketch it out.

18:21That's the easiest thing you can do at home. Do some Google research, sketch it out, just the basics. You're trying to just bake out that idea a bit on paper. Third, this is where it kind of starts to get serious when you say, okay, look, we're going to do something with this. And this is what's called an industrial design phase. And industrial design basically means visual design, so how the thing actually looks, combined with functional logic. How do we actually plan to build and engineer that thing? And that's done through software called essentially computer-aided design or CAD software. This is essentially digital software that allows us to do the 3D renderings, the actual builds.

18:58Now, this is by far the most important step. This is where you want a number of very senior designers and engineers to really figure out three critical things that form the foundation of basically the future of your product. This CAD design is the actual same model, which then gets iterated and refined all the way through to production and even into subsequent prototypes. So three things that are key is one, the key features. Again, focus. Keep it simple. Very, very niche focus. Second, visual or cosmetic look and feel, how it integrates with these features. And then third, exactly how these things are going to physically work, which then leads into the next step, which is mechanical engineering.

19:38And if you have electronics, you're also doing electronic engineering. This is kind of like the detailed grunt work on building out every little mechanical and or electrical detail of the industrial design that's been done. After that, you're into your rough prototype. So this is where it comes alive. This is the first time that that thing is a real physical thing. But this prototype is really just starting to be used to muck about with it, make sure, figure out what you like, what you don't like, have some conversations around the features, that sort of stuff. And really, if you have any kind of test or experimental mechanics or whatever, making sure that those are working.

20:13Now, that leads into your full and final prototype, in which you may do more than one. But usually speaking for most mass-manufactured consumer inventions, if done well, can be done with probably just one final prototype. But this is one where, if done correctly, should be very close to a production unit. This is both used to sell and market it, but also internally, you want to be thinking about using that to refine any last minute details in testing it before you're actually going into the final step, which is manufacturing of that product, getting units made so that people can buy them. Buyer Nation, this kind of step-by-step process, this kind of flow, this is just exactly what you need when you want to take your invention, your idea to market, like this step-by-step process.

20:59Now, I want to talk about best options, not just any options, Kevin, the best options. What, according to you, are the best options for those looking to sell a new product to the market today? Yeah, that's a great question because when you're coming up with those initial ideas, right, you should be thinking down the pipeline, like, okay, how am I going to sell this thing? How do I actually monetize this, right? And I would say first and foremost, and also most exciting, is crowdfunding. This is a phenomenal tool for hardware startups. Because basically what you're doing is you're putting your finished product prototype, you know, from the phases of before.

21:39You have your finished nice prototype right before you're ready to go production. You're putting that to the world. And then you're having people who are really interested in this pre-purchase your product. at which point you use that money to fund the production run, which then can occur many months down the road. Now, a really important thing to remember here is most of the crowdfunding platforms, especially the big ones, they all require you pretty much to be ready for production before you post on their platform. So that's one thing. The other thing to consider is you need to work to sell that product once it's on that platform as well.

22:12It's not a set it and forget methodology. You really have to use that as a tool to leverage up to get your first few users. Now, the key is you don't have to sell a ton there. You just have to show a few to get real buyers using the product and saying that they love it. You know, another option that is good as well, but I really think crowdfunding is one of the best, but another option which is good is Shopify, Amazon, et cetera. These are very easy to use tools where, of course, you have to have units in production, but when you do, it gives you a direct line straight to the consumer. It gives you a strong feedback loop in the way of reviews as well.

22:46So if people love it, you can leverage that. And if there's some issues, you can iron out those issues while building your next version of the product. But as always, I recommend building a great product first, a very simple, clean, focused product first, very high quality product first, so that you start with raving fans. And then from there, if you've done those first two things well, what's really amazing is you can leverage that success to start talking to those wholesalers or distributors, which in hardware is like really different than any other industry because you can have tremendous scale.

23:16You meet the right buyer and you can go from 500 unit order to a 5 ,000 unit order on one decision maker. Right. So the scale when it comes to distribution and wholesale and all that is big, which of course leads to what everyone always is thinking of at the very, very end is, well, how do I then get into retailers? But you have to understand that retailers is like the end game. That's once you've gone through those steps and you've proven that, that's when you can start getting into retailers. A lot of the time you're doing that through your wholesalers or distributors. But retail, to get direct, is possible, but you really have to prove your model.

23:51And then that's when you get to the big stuff like selling directly to brands or co-branding or even white labeling it under another brand where you sell it to them and then they use their brand to sell it onwards and licensing deals and all that sort of big stuff when you actually scale from there. But really, that order above is kind of key. And it all kind of starts with getting your first few, doesn't have to be a lot, first few units out to market to get those braving fans. Now, that is exciting, Fire Nation, to think about that end result when you're actually going through those final steps that Kevin's talking about.