00:00
One of Utah, you spoke about your book. And of course, the main title is inventor confidential, but the byline for it is the honest guide to profitable investing.
00:10
And I want to focus on the word honest, because that implies what some of the stuff you've been talking about is that there are a lot of scam artists out there. And phony companies selling bad advice. Where their real goal is not to is their ultimate goal is not to get the product on the market. But the inventor is the product they are the ultimate goal is to get money from them. Tell us a little bit about what an inventor should watch out for what are the red flags? That that should be a dead giveaway? Well, like the way you say that the inventor is the product. Oh, that's a good one, I might I might steal that from him.
00:52
The first red flag is when people ask you for money telling you right now. So first, the first red flag.
01:00
Here's a hard, cold truth for your audience.
01:03
There's a lot of failure in this product development and taking, you know, products to market. And now the question is, you know, how much
01:13
are you going to lose on losers? You know, we all of course, I've had Mr. On smart spin. And I've had, you know, 10 other products that have sold in the million million units. I've also, in all my travails of licensing things have dozens, many dozens of products that didn't make a dime, you know, so this is all part of, you know, sort of, like being in the music industry or anything, you know, you just don't show up with a band and you can't be Led Zeppelin overnight, it doesn't happen. So, you know, I try to be, you know, honest with people and, and there's an industry set up in, in the United States and of companies that allegedly help people, they go under different names, some of them are considered invention submission companies, and there's been a lot of talk about that, and they're identifiable, I will say this about the inventor, submission companies. A lot of them. I'm not, I'm not advocating for them, but I'm just saying a lot of them put their success numbers, you know, on the on right on their website. So when under 1% of them are a fraction of 1% have make more money back than they spend with them, you can see that and you can make a decision. That means that over 99% of people are putting money into it and not making any money back. The more subtle ones that aren't as obvious that are these coaches and vendor coaches and vendor coach, you know, companies and people who set themselves up with being gurus and, and basically they're, they're, you know, they're out, you know, either books, associated articles and all types of stuff.
02:44
Preaching, you know, gold mines, and all this, when you really pile down their numbers, there are no gold mines, they one of them was coached, like 10 15,000 people and
02:54
brags about 200 licensing deals out of what 15,000 Do the math, okay. And by the way, those 200 None of them made any money. Okay, meanwhile, he's charging $3,750 For six months of coaching. So this type of stuff is, you know, really, it's the stuff that gets under my skin. It's a lot like politics, you know,
03:15
you know, it can get to you, so you don't want to get too much into it. But but you know, when you when you see politicians saying things that aren't fact based and making up stuff, and, and just putting it out there, it's all the same genre of crap, you know, and it's really important for your audience and listeners to really parse down because they're very, very clever. It's one person I had exchanged Twitter exchange with one of them recently, he had a product that he claims as his biggest success story of all time, I know for a fact because I know the inventor that that the, the the product didn't have any commercial success at market. And it it, so I call them out on it. And his answer to me was, I had hoped that it was sold hundreds of millions of units. I had hoped, yeah, you hoped but it didn't. Okay. So you have to really parse these clever, you know, these very clever, they put all their money, they put 99% of their money into marketing, to you to make it sound like it's easy, because inventors are oftentimes naive, they're looking for someone to help them. And before you know it, you sign up and you think it's not a big deal and so forth. The question is, where are the results? The red flag is if they charge money, ask them what are you what are your success numbers? What percentage how, how can I how can paying you money helped me and what I'm doing and I write in my book, you know, we look if you're going to bake a pie just to give it away, good. Go to your thing. I'm not I'm not going to bother you. But if you want to make money or make back more than your pie then cost you to make it then you really got to look at these things very carefully because there's people out there that will will, will will, you know I don't want to say take advantage because you know, you're they're all adults and you've got to do your home.
05:00
One more. By the way, let me just have this because it's thanks for the therapy. They'll say, Well, other people charge and vendors, like attorneys to do patent filings or prototypes. Yeah. But But attorneys are providing a service a specific service, that there's legal and ethical issues involved with charging, and they're not going to work on the back end. And in the case of prototypes with goods, so if you're charging for a good and service that has value, or you can identify it, that's a lot different than the air these people are breathing. Okay, so you can see I'm a little passionate about, I don't wanna get too wound up. But, but read my book, and you'll see, and, and when I use the words, honest and profitable, what I'm saying is profitable. I'm saying, be very careful, because you can become unprofitable really quickly. And the question is how much you're going to lose? Because I've been down that path with with the, with the stir shift, you know, I lost a lot of money, a lot of money, I won't say, but it was close to seven figures. Okay, so I've been down that path. Now. Fortunately, I earned it, then I was able to blow it. And then I earned it back again. But but I will just say that it was the most painful experience of my life in many ways, put my family, my home at risk, and a lot of things that inventors do. And I will say at the end of the day, that it probably gave me the platform to do a lot of things I do today because if I hadn't been through that experience I probably wouldn't be as passionate about but just just keep your head on a swivel. Be aware of it profitable comes in how much risk you're willing to take. And the honest part is, is parsing through all these marketing, this marketing BS to to get to what's really right and good for you. Don't take shortcuts, do the hard work and do it yourself.