Forum; Robert Gold: So You Want To Be An Inventor

from the longhorn radio network the university of texas at austin this is for him the new venture is being someone actually creates the technology the park service and does something with it and a lot of people have trouble distinguishing between people with ideas is actually an inventor among those people would rather go and get their designer and entrepreneur i've coined the term over the years entrepreneurial inventor two very specifically talk about those type of people the people who are the idea generators the idea producers the idea managers the promotional people are if your entrepreneurial inventor you basically take the idea from inception through money in the bank this is olive korea

today's guest on foreigners robert gould is the author of your recap the entrepreneurial inventors guide to developing protecting and profiting from your ideas over twenty years mr gold has built a career designing and developing products and raising the money to promote them he makes a case for an inventor developing his own ideas i think developing yourself is the only way to go really for a total satisfaction across the board but i am the majority of inventors are looking to sell their ideas and move on to something else and i'll tell you something contrary to popular belief that is probably the most direct route for any sort of income out of inventing is to develop your ideas that point where you have a dog and pony show that you can present the people we might have a prototype we have some sort of secrecy protocol in place and maybe a patent pending protection and i've seen several ideas that stage made good money on them over the consulting firm at an outright sale and i found

that if you don't hold the idea so close to divest if you let other people in on it in terms of bringing some investment capital bring in some engineering help bring in some promotional help odd even the small inventor can take good idea one with over the course of three to six months develop it into something that has some sort of value as opposed to just an idea and then turn into actual cash within that year and i know a lot of small inventors across the country who have been in touch with over the years who have learned that if you don't hold your idea like it's your child way you have to see every moment we have to worry about it if you look at it as an invention then you can make money off a step back from illegal or the next night and the best of us would do it i think we're using the word idea somewhat abstract way what kinds of facilities might someone actually need to you need access to a leopard in a

machine shop so something i guess it depends is upon the idea and you're right that is a very abstract concept that can mean so much or so little for musgrave on the back of a napkin what were people saying this is it is the idea of the century and then they don't do anything with it that somebody spends tens of thousands of dollars building a prototype and then doesn't do anything with it they're both still it is and then into the invention face but until you actually make money with it it's not the entrepreneur real inventors dream it's it's about an invention a lot of cases people building just for themselves so if we want talk about ideas let's talk about ideas as the the base that the framework that you belong from the idea have to create the proper documentation protocols if you don't document everything i mean from day one through what three wherever it ends whether its sale to another company

or you start manufacturing or wherever you go with it without the proper documentation you're lost because you get to be able to prove that your idea you have to be able to arm good prototype makers in explaining to them without the proper documentation of what you want this to be talking and they're gonna be imagining well doesn't want this really want that or what is it really that we're talking about that so the idea becomes documentation documentation becomes protection you protect yourself easily the documentation the patents the year the year dr disclosure program on the path doctors via secrecy protocols i have in the book and after that when you're next step with the idea which is now gaining momentum and on substance the idea is now an entrepreneurial venture and you can take it into that either marketing phase where you try to sell the idea wouldn't take prototype phase we'd develop it more your lives and one was a

byword for me right there you have to be able to say goodbye to your idea when you definitely definitely i think that's one of the major down falls of small inventors who inevitably have a lot of good ideas and get caught up in taking one idea putting more eggs not in one basket and saying this ideas and make a million dollars the side is going to change that world well that might be true if they might make their money that might change the world but i think an entrepreneur inventor and these changing marketplace is more concerned with iss a marketable product is this something that's that we need we're not just really they're very proud dora one shot product world marketplace will sell for a couple weeks or a couple months i make germany and bang it's gone sometimes as a good progress if you're doing that on a regular basis you're making money on a regular basis but most inventors can't let go of the

prior the u s of the seat is the brainchild of their actual child in the they don't want to let it out to the world without them to protect it and no single inventors in ireland you can't you can't do it all yourself you need to have the right networking skills like communication skills the right presentation skills to take your idea and put in front people who have the ability to make money with it with your they're not and good entrepreneurial ventures end up with a series of inventions on the mark at each one a little feet of of dollars each month coming into them they get a royalty check this one one month ago a royalty check another one another month i started develop a nice income which allows him to work on more ideas on if you try to stay just with one idea you better have something that is very sustainable very long term that can be out of business that if everything else goes to how in the world you can still control what's going on that business and

that's fairly rare do you need a lawyer to rubble junior lawyer like the old saying goes seven lawyers guns and money every every inventor needs a good lawyer are there a lot of pitfalls and our traps along the way that aren't necessarily set on purpose but they're there sometimes they're inadvertently set by other people sometimes a very purposely set the trip up the inventor and stuart idea or worse yet and to his bank account and an attorney is very crucial to getting everything in place so that when you move ahead to next phase you not somehow shooting yourself in the foot there are armed rules and regulations of a governor almost any field inventing is fairly loose but there are rules or protocols

there are things that must take place and the attorney is often keyed to making those things take place contracts negotiations are scrutinizing the other people's secrecy agreements so that you not signing something where you wind up on the short end of a stick you're not describing so far as i can see something that one would do as a hobby this is this is a calling that yes very much a calling but there are a lot of people out there who they know they're inventors but they're starting some job that that life and the course of their life has brought them to chlorine but they always knew they had these great ideas they want to do something with them i suggest for those people cannot abandon their jobs and whatever life we could be created over the years and jump into inventing full time cause it can destroy your life but if you take a good idea and run with it as a hobby

it can turn into a very successful business and i've seen it happen i am being an independent inventor like i've been for twenty two years is a rollercoaster lifestyle some years i make a lot of money for years i am below the poverty line and i try to equalize it out with different inventions bring in revenues and writing in doing consulting and things like that all based in the invention field but it's a living but it's not something that you wanna rely on as a living until you've been doing it a while until you first i get it big and it happens sometimes stupid ideas and i shouldn't those two words don't go together stupid ideas i don't think there are any stupid ideas but that's a term an hour in our society so it is a stupid idea well there are stupid ideas like the pet rock made millions of dollars for the creator that idea virtually overnight and then there are ideas that people put millions of dollars into that scene really sound

insane to make more money and they just fizzled so you don't know where the major powers and i come from you just have to go buy your gut instinct and a lot of market research which is a big part of entrepreneurial inventing what was your first successful experience with it the first successful the experiences that team travel gammon over there that we're really made any decent money on our travel gammon is a year a concept that is very simple it's a backgammon set that is made on a flexible material in this case campus it's silk screened it foams up it has all the professional size pieces of a professional size board when you unfold there ah but gives you the convenience of a small board and i used to go the beach back to new york and i was doing some design work for people i was i was dabbling in inventing i first started out twenty years ago or

so it created the spark my credo lot of products at home many inventions again things i just wanted and i really you know what there was a market for myrna i gave this sample to a friend of mine he said that's going to have to be completed and have a good time so that's great i'm going to a department store carson pirie scott in chicago the seldom scene when it can't take this along a show tune well i didn't i really didn't think anything would come of it he brought it over there will people would retry produced on it and he came back with an order for thousands of them and we have set up shop in his father's basement in the basement for our store silkscreen news berkeley twenty four hours a day seven days a week and having these the little italian women we found in a neighborhood with sewing machines come in and so the billboards end and we want you to boxes of pieces and we went a little production line and we'd make some good dollars off libya's was a fairly

inexpensive product that sold like hotcakes it was back in the mid seventies when a backgammon was very big and i was amazed that their success and what it really taught me was that you never know where the success will come from you have to keep your options open or what kind of serendipity plays an incredible role in inventing we also have to be a master of logistics problems oh yeah but i didn't start out there and lecture anybody does i've made my mom well i was i made more than my fair share of mistakes over the years in and actually it's as one of the reasons i wrote the book i had some experiences with an engine marketing firms lawyers prototype makers publicity people often not all at once but in different projects over a long period of time that showed me that it's not as simple and straightforward as i thought it was so

i started developing systems to keep myself on track in each of the products it was working on because i work on multiple projects simultaneously this wave one crashes and that left behind dry if i have an idea crashing oil component on the ideas of a back burner and bring it up to full speed and down i found over time that you really need to look in all the cracks and crevices of every deal and every person you need to have to really try to find out where they're coming from the start people out there who play on inventors are according to the justice department as of three years ago arm inventor ripoffs are becoming one of the top white collar crimes in this country to the tune of almost a billion dollars a year and i say that the people might course isn't one of the seminars lectures i

did and they say well you mean these people with them offer their ideas and run and make money with it it's completely opposite the inventor always thinks i'm to lose my idea invention marketing companies which are partly owing system of europe they truly are not interested in your ideas they're interested in attempting a bank can and they do that by making you feel that they can do everything that you know needs to get dunphy your idea that a developer didn't have promoted better protected they're gonna do everything in the marketplace imaginable for you and what they end up doing is creating a brochure for you which you could create yourself or couple hundred dollars annually and that spending eight to ten thousand hours with this firm as its a cop but what you're describing is something that some vendors actually need is unclear a market for that there's a market for it and there are legitimate companies out there that do that i

used to do that before i became so involved with my own inventions that i just i don't have time anymore and so for the people so the entrepreneurial inventor has to be a good project manager if nothing else he has to be able to see the entire invention of the developmental stage the protection state finances and he has to manipulate juggle each one of those sections of the intention to bring it to fruition there are companies and help him but it's been my experience that the company's award do all camp and charge we too much for their services and the whole idea of my book was to give people my experience the last twenty years condensed down into a series of systems and protocols and advice based upon mistakes i've had to go through a costly tens of thousands of dollars and hopefully they won't make the same mistake hopefully will be able to use but say the secrecy protocol which ended a cost me thousands of dollars over the years with attorneys to

hone down from that point you'll be able use it right off the bat to see themselves money because they can walk into attorney with unsafe is this good enough for me to protect myself can tweak it so you feel good i think the one biggest thing i learned early on was that people don't invest in parks they invest in and without without the right credibility doesn't matter how good your party's either some reason steal it from you walk away from you cause i don't like you have you had any experiences in seeking venture capital that you could offer the perspective investor being a tremendous experience and i have raised at this point personally better than we're half dollars for various projects have partners where at this point we've raised so the cumulative with my money i braise and the other projects almost three million dollars over the last twenty years some large projects were raised a million

plus and others where we really needed ten or fifteen thousand dollars to get a prototype done and be able to move equipment market what content her walk into the bank and not acting an inventor can walk into a bank and that's about as far as he's you know get with the banks walking him he's not going to get a loan or an idea he's not going alone human invention even if he has a patent pending first gold bangles a pending doesn't mean you have it when you have it come back when you come back with the patent will say having a parent doesn't mean you can sell it come back when you've got a product ready to go to market and it's your catch twenty two when you need the money to make the product available so it can go to market and i can't bring it to you until you give me the money but i can't you know those loans on their arm banks are notorious for not being kind to inventors on the other and the scale is the venture capitalist who was notorious for reading inventors off by

literally stealing their companies out from under them and in some cases it can be helped the only way it certainly may get money is through a venture capitalist i've found in my personal experience and what i what i talk about in the book americans raising capital is that small investors are probably the best way a small investors who either have a technology base that is compatible with what you're doing if you're creating some sort of new law machine that that has something to do with the lowly ministry let's say if you can find some investors who have a proprietary interest in a lean company or have a an interesting in the sale and marketing of linens they may be good kennedy to invest but on the other hand there are people who have no background what you're doing who were just people who have money who understand that it's a risk but they think it's a good idea and put the money in our several large ventures i've been

in word phrase better million dollars have been done just this way with artwork called sophisticated investors they can afford to lose the money because that's the way the law's written you're not allowed to you shouldn't morally either take money from people if they can afford to lose it because is always a risk no matter how good the invention it but taking a sophisticated investors with our work background and technology is often good because they're investing more on the gut feeling of what it is and the good feeling of how they feel about the inventor in his his team than anything else and i found in my experience that that creates a great report that everybody becomes a team people of the money and feel that they have a vested interest in white held in all sorts of ways and you never know whether i will lead that at mit working serendipity thing kicks in and you end up getting connections and contacts far beyond what you ever imagined these people might have and things

start to move in a direction that's very positive every time you get anybody on board it serves to happen explain how trade shows work into what intern or stranded with ideas to trade shows work in a lot of different ways there are are they can be yeah hell on wheels for where they can be very pleasant but either way i have a bigger issues because you you tend to stand up for eight or ten hours at a pop singer same thing hundreds of times to people but what a trade show will do is this a if you're at a trade show that is for the army the rough and tumble working class of what ever the invention is the movers and shakers or not there will people actually use this product our and even example i used to be in the law enforcement and military weapons fields weren't a lot of inventing for a number of years we would go to various types of conventions we go to the police chief's conventions to

all the police chief and his decision makers are more great part we head and then we go to conventions that you showed hardware where the swat commanders would show up and actually guys in the field would be there walking around and although he's showing exact same product it's two very very different shows one show to the police chiefs we be talking about liability we'd be talking about cost savings we'd be talking about public relations we'd be talking about affective in terms of love statistics and what have you that they've already accumulated debt and that's the reason they're looking at that particular product on the other hand are more we have the actual people in the field whether they're plumbers are cooks source officer utah a whole different language when you use the show a whole different way to get feedback on is this real is something you're actually use something that one shoe using it you have any problems with or what you're using now compared to what we have here the bells and

whistles and why you should be using our crop trade shows work for the inventor another way there are a lot of new technology shows where a lot of companies are bringing up technologies that don't have specific and uses or if they do they're limited inventors especially on especially entrepreneur real inventors who get out of these trade shows often find technology that is cutting edge that really has made its way into the marketplace and parks yet and will see it and no quick still an idea that they had that they weren't even sure it was feasible or c a chemical or process or material that makes it feasible and all the sudden that trade show is transformed that idea into a business venture did you market this our staff through preacher yes we did and it was very interesting because of the power staff was a totally unique concept along foresman it was developed

based upon a statistic we found in the uniform crime report overreach here we've we look at the statistics on the number of police officers are in the line of duty by assaults and it turned out that ninety four point five percent of all law enforcement assault injuries that happened happened with hands feet sticks and knives at less than six foot distance and these five point five percent happen with guns ninety four point five percent happen all the ways the power step was developed a hamlet ninety four point five percent were an officer does not draw his firearm but he still has to have a very commanding presence and he has to be a will to subdue sometimes multiple people so we look at statistics we said we need something that can deliver a way yeah not painful but yet incapacitating blow to an individual at least six feet and we need something that is done it looks like something that people don't wanna

go up again says william gave to the awesome world that it has and even its function without using on someone like i demonstrated before you firing it is is disturbing to most people are we call that a deterrent first we fire in front of someone doesn't touch them but it scares the hell out of him and makes him not walking from the officer so this isn't a psychological and other structure to it and i am we took this to a lot of different trade shows the two i described the movers and shakers on the street officers and we got tremendous feedback we got pros and cons that made us go back into the lab and worked on for another year before we go back to the trade show the feedback to tradeshows was essential to taking apart the next step which was actually putting it in it a police patrol car and the corrections institution and other field applications and getting

firsthand feedback is this item still available in the marketplace you know we never went into full scale production on this it was originally built as a prototype to test a concept because of one over very well in fact we had or orders from new york city department of corrections california all of the country actually but we couldn't ensure the weapon no insurance company would give us liability insurance and because of that our market became very severely limited to military applications be the vice is very multi functional in as much as you can change the barrels from one non lethal impact of ice to a grenade launcher to a covert underwater weapon to a power crossbow to all sorts of different devices which appealed to people like the navy seals and delta force in are a lot of three letter agencies and we did make a number of units for them but we decided to take our expertise we have developed in this agreement of the process

it is the guest on mormons and robert gould author of the few rica the entrepreneurial inventors guide to developing protecting and profiting from your id is published by practice hall the views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin where this station technical producer for formed cliff hargrove production assistant alex to more about a new producer and host alex graham is this cassette copies by writing for him for so long radio network communication building the

ut austin austin texas seventy seven wanted to that's for him to say it's a longhorn radio network communication during the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one telecommunications services university of texas at austin this is the longhorn radio network it's both robert gould inventor being an inventor is being someone actually creates a technology product a service and does something with it and a lot of people have trouble distinguishing between people with ideas and

who is actually an inventor among those people with ideas so you want to be an inventor this week on fraud and chris christie