← The $100 MBA Show
The $100 MBA Show
MBA2243 Guest Teacher – Stephen Key – How to Bring an Idea to Market Without Starting a Business.
00:17:23
You have a great idea for a product. But you don’t have the time, resources, or know-how to bring it to life.
Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
Omar Zenholm
Got a 7am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.
- [00:20]
Stephen Key
Yay. Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.
- [00:40]
Omar Zenholm
Hey.
- [00:41]
Stephen Key
Oh.
- [00:41]
Omar Zenholm
Welcome to the $100 RMBA show. The place to be to build a business you want every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have an old friend of the show, Stephen Key, who taught his first guest teacher lesson back in episode 121 in 2014. And he's back today to teach you how you can bring your idea to market without starting a business. Your great product idea is valuable and there are tons of companies that would love to take your idea and run with it. They have the resources, they have the manpower, they have the distribution and they're willing to give you some healthy royalties in the process. But how do you make this happen? How do you actually make this happen in the real world? Well, that's why Stephen Key is here to show you how to do exactly that. Let's get your idea made, let's get into it, let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher, Stephen Key is the world's leading expert on how to license your product idea and he walks to talk. He has repeat success as an independent inventor. But for most of us, the idea of licensing your idea to another business sounds really daunting and intimidating. It's kind of confusing to know where you start and how do you actually get paid for your idea. Well, this is why I'm so excited to have Stephen Key come and speak to us with this guest teacher lesson because he's going to break it down for you step by step. So by the end of today's lesson, you know exactly what to do to to license your product idea and get paid royalties for it. I'm going to pass it on to Stephen Key now, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away, Stephen.
- [02:31]
Stephen Key
Hey everybody, this is Stephen Key. Thank you for joining me today. Today I'm going to teach you how to bring an idea to market without starting a business. So let's get started. Everyone has an idea, but the question is, what do you do next? Maybe you don't have the time, experience, or money to bring an idea to market. Or maybe you already have a business and you're extremely busy, but you still have lots of ideas. And starting a business for every new idea is not a great option or a very good idea. So what should you do with all those ideas? I can tell you firsthand. If you have a good idea and you don't do anything about it, sooner or later you're going to see it on the store shelf or maybe even on tv. But you do have another option. Now, you can either license or rent those ideas to companies that are already in business, companies that have the shelf space, the manufacturing, the marketing, the distribution, and the relationships with all those retailers. This is called product licensing. Companies today realize in order to stay competitive, they need more new ideas. And companies today are opening the doors for people like us to send them our ideas. It's called open innovation. They know by opening the doors and letting people like you and I submit ideas to them, their chances of finding good ideas has increased. And when they license or rent your idea, they pay you a royalty for each and every one of those ideas they sell. So in essence, they do all the work, they take all the risk, and you sit back to collect royalties. And today, there's thousands of companies in every different category looking for new ideas. Let me give you an example of some of the categories. The pet category, kitchen, hardware, sports packaging, golf, medical toys and games as seen on tv, glassware, automotive accessories, fitness, and many, many more. So now, how do you license or rent your ideas to companies? I'm going to give you four steps here, and I'm going to start with step number one. Study the marketplace. During this step, you're going to determine, is your idea actually new? Now, the best strategy here is not to reinvent the wheel because that's going to take time and money. What you want to do is come up with an idea that's a small improvement on an existing idea, and then you're going to search for it and make sure it is a new improvement. Now how do you do this? Well, the simplest way to do this is go to Google and do a Google image or shopping search to see if your idea is new. Now realize there's going to be a lot of ideas out there, but you need to try to find your idea. So spend a lot of time doing this. It's a Very, very, very important first step. Now, once you're doing this, you're going to find similar ideas and you're really looking for your point of difference. That's what's really, really important here. But while you're doing this, make a list of all those companies that have similar product ideas because you're going to be reaching back out to those companies a little bit later. So what's really important when you're doing this is really trying to find your point of difference compared to similar products that are on the market today. Now, the next step, if you have not found anything, I want you to look for prior patents. Now, the easiest and quickest way to do this is to go to Google Patents. At first, when you start to search for prior patents, it's going to feel a little overwhelming, it's going to feel a little daunting. But with a little bit of practice, you can be pretty darn good at this. You're going to type in similar words as your idea and see what you can find. Now, please Note, there's over 10 million patents out there, so it's hard to find everything and it takes a little bit of practice. So if you need some help, you can always hire someone to help you do a patent search. But at the end of the day, I think it's really important for you to learn how to do this yourself. Even if you hire someone, please learn how to do this yourself. It's not that difficult, but it does take a little bit of time. Okay, so number two, this is your next step. Step number one, like I said, you studied the marketplace, you looked around, your idea is new and novel. And now you're moving on to step number two, which is pitching your ideas. Okay, the great news is you don't need to be a salesperson. All it takes is a one page advertisement of your product idea. We call it the sell sheet. It's actually quite simple. At the top of your sell sheet, you're going to put your benefit of your idea. It's your unique selling proposition. You're going to summarize the benefit of your idea in one concise, juicy sentence so people can understand the benefit of your idea very, very quickly. Keep it short and keep it concise. Next, you're going to show a picture of your product. Now, it can be a sketch, it could be a drawing. Maybe you've taken a product and you've cannibalized it and made this rough prototype. But that main picture, the big picture on your sell sheet, needs to be your idea. Now here's the good news. You don't really need a prototype at this stage. You can use a 3D computer generated rendering. That's right. These 3D computer generated renderings today look fantastic. In fact, the product looks so real, people think they can buy it and they're extremely affordable to do. Now you're going to put that rendering on your sell sheet. That's going to be the biggest thing. On your sell sheet, you have your benefit statement. At the very top, it's your unique selling proposition. You might have a few features of your product, your contact information, and if you have filed, let's say, a provisional patent application, you might want to put patent pending at the very, very bottom. All right, now for an added bonus, if you want to take the time and if you do have a prototype, you can make a one minute video. That's right, a one minute video showing the benefit of your product idea. For the first 15 seconds, show the problem, show someone struggling. And for the next 45 seconds, show someone using that prototype, your product and solving a problem that they have. And you can embed a little button on your sell sheet that people can press while they're looking at your sell sheet and then they can watch your video. It's very, very simple to do. And it's very, very, it's a very, very powerful tool. Okay, so here you go. Once you've added those both together, you're ready to go. But you have to do one thing before you reach out to companies, and this is very important. You need to protect your ideas. And you can do that with the provisional patent application for under a hundred dollars. Your provisional patent application gives you patent pending status for one year. It gives you the ability to start to pitch your idea to companies and feel secure that you have filed intellectual property. Okay, Very simple to do. Now you can learn to do it yourself. There's software out there that will teach you how to write a provisional patent application, or you can hire a patent attorney or a patent agent for them to write it too. But I'm here to tell you, for a provisional patent application, there's some wonderful software out there that will walk you through all the steps. So please do this for whatever your budget allows. I highly recommend that you learn how to do this yourself because you're going to add a few things that maybe someone will not add because you care about it more than anybody else is ever going to care about it. Okay, here we go. The next step. Number four, finding the right company. Targeting the right companies is extremely important. But you have to realize targeting the largest companies is not the greatest strategy because the large companies don't license much. It's those mid sized companies that are hungry that are looking for that next idea. Those guys license a lot. So go after the big guys you can. But realize the mid sized companies are a better target. Now, once you identify who these companies are, and you did that because the first step you were studying the marketplace, you're trying to find similar ideas. In fact, you're looking for your idea, but you're finding similar ideas and you realize, hey, these other companies are selling similar ideas, might be a good fit for your idea. There you go. It's really simple to do. Now, once you identify these companies and make sure they're mid sized companies, you can reach out to them through LinkedIn. And the great news here today, you don't have to be a salesperson, right? You're there trying to send them your sell sheet so you can use LinkedIn. It's easy to reach out to these companies. Make sure your profile looks fantastic. You're going to be reaching out to companies in the sales and marketing department and all you're going to try to do is make a connection. And once they connect with you, right, then ask them, have they embraced open innovation, do they work with outside product developers or submitting new ideas? It's as simple as that. And once they say yes, ask them about their process and then ask for permission if you can send over your sell sheet. Okay, I also want you to do something that's very important. Make sure whoever you're reaching out to you do a little bit of homework. Check them out on the Internet and make sure they've got a great track record. It's just one of those little things that you need to do so you feel confident submitting an idea to a company that makes sure they have a great track record. All right, so what's happening now? Now you're in the game. You've submitted an idea to a company. Now they're going to review it, they're going to get back to you to see if they're interested. And if they're interested, the next step will be a licensing agreement of what they're going to pay you when they sell your product idea. Okay. Product licensing is perfect for people with a lot of ideas. And what I just explained to you, you can do this anywhere in the world on a very, very small budget. So if you have those ideas and you're not doing anything with those ideas, learn about product licensing. You'll absolutely love to jump in the world of innovation. Okay. Once again, this is Stephen Key. I want to thank you for listening. And if you want to learn more about product licensing, you can visit me at my website called Inventrite. That's righ.com inventright.com and there's more information there for you. So thank you for joining me today. Now back to Omar.
- [14:01]
Omar Zenholm
They're called underarms. So why are they top of mind men? Wouldn't we rather forget our pits? Well, sweat, odor and irritation makes it kind of hard, especially when you're conscious of it. When you're maybe on stage, you're speaking on a webinar, it could be really, really uncomfortable worrying about sweaty pits. New dove men plus care 72 hour antiperspirant helps prevent underarm distractions like sweat and odor so you can be more present in the moment and confident. Here's a statistic for you. Did you know that 2/3 of men think about their underarms at least once a day? Can you imagine all the things you could do when you're not worrying about your pits? Like focusing on your presentation, focusing on your audience, making sure you're delivering a great webinar speech meeting, whatever it might be. Listen, when you take care of yourself, you take care of others. Hygiene is just the first step in self care, laying the foundation for all the acts of care you share throughout the day. Dove men plus care 72 hour antiperspirant forgettable underarms. Unforgettable. You pick it up wherever you get personal care products.
- [15:05]
Got a 7am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast.
- [15:18]
Stephen Key
Boo.
- [15:20]
Omar Zenholm
If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.
- [15:25]
Stephen Key
Yay. Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.
- [15:38]
Omar Zenholm
Didn'T I tell you? Stephen Key is the leading expert when it comes to licensing your product idea. Many people don't go down this route because they feel a little bit out of place, a little bit like they're unsure how to move forward. But Stephen Key has done it over and over and over and has helped hundreds of inventors and entrepreneurs get their ideas license. If you want to learn more how to take your idea, protect it and make sure that you can license it to other companies, go to inventright.com that's invent R I G H T.com even if you have a business right now and you're growing that business, sometimes you get ideas for products and services all the time instead of just letting it sit in the back of your head or in your journal. A few weekends of work can get your idea ready to be licensed. And remember, once it gets picked up by a company, there's not much you have to do. They do all the heavy lifting. You just get the residual income. So it's a great idea to diversify your revenue streams. It's one of the few true passive incomes I've seen in business. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe, hit Follow on your favorite podcast. Appreciate if you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, hit those triple dots in the top right hand corner and hit that follow button so you get the next episode automatically. Also, if you want to check out some of our playlists, we have grouped up some of our best lessons in different topics like marketing, sales, finance. Over at our website, just go to 100mba.netpower. You'll see all of our beautiful playlists we call Power packs that you can just devour whether you're new at business or you're looking to top up your skills. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I met a lot of entrepreneurs in my 20 years of business experience and some people are really good at the beginning of a business idea. They're really good with the idea and the initial jump or start of the business, the MVP stage, mocking up the idea, even selling this idea to other people. They're not so strong when it comes to scaling and growing, growing the business. If you're that kind of person, licensing your product idea is a great idea. It's no wonder that Mr. Wonderful Kevin O'Leary over at Shark Tank is always interested in the idea of licensing taking the product that's on offer and licensing it to other companies. It's a great model and it might be right for you. If you're intrigued, don't forget to check out Stephen Key's website over@inventright.com I'll check you guys in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
- [18:27]
Got a 7am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.
- [18:49]
Stephen Key
Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.