10 Lessons I Learned Inventing Something New (SwitchPod From the Start) #Best Education Page #Online Earning

 Hey, it's Pat here and in this video

I wanna share with you 10 lessons I've learned

since inventing a physical product,

starting at the beginning all the way to the end.

So I want you to stick around to watch this video

because there are so many lessons learned

that are applicable for any sort of business owner,

especially if you're thinking

about doing a physical product and you've probably

had ideas for physical products in the past,

but even if you're sticking in the digital realm,

I recommend you watch this because

these are important reminders for you.

So to start off I need to take you back into time

to Los Angeles 2017 at a conference called Vid Summit,

which my videographer, Caleb, and I attended.

And we noticed while we were there

that a number of attendees, especially vloggers,

had one of these guys called a GorillaPod.

It's made by JOBY.

It's a great tool.

A number of vloggers use them,

not just for putting down their cameras

and taking really interesting shots

or wrapping around poles and things like that.

But they've actually bent them in a way like this,

and you've seen other vloggers,

probably poopular vloggers like Casey Neistat

or Peter McKinnon, use 'em in such a way

where they are holding them out like this

and it's kinda bent at an angle to remove the camera

further from your face so that you can

have more of a wide angle,

and that's really smart.

But we notice that there's a lot of problems

with using this tool for that purpose.

Number one, it's hard to go back and forth

between tripod mode and for me especially,

somebody who likes things to go back to like perfect,

it's hard to get back to perfectly straight.

Secondly, it's, for me at least,

'cause I'm pretty much a weakling,

it's hard for me to go back to tripod mode.

So we were like there's gotta be a better solution.

So Caleb and I, we put our heads together,

and we were like, well what if there was a way

to have the tripod legs come together

and turn into like a handle

and have it easily switch back and forth.

And just at that moment, which was, I don't know,

fate or whatever, our good friend Richie Norton

from prouduct.com came along and we pitched him that idea.

He has a company, prouduct.com, that helps entrepreneurs

take these ideas in their head and turn them into actual

physical products.

We pitched him the idea and he was like, dude,

yeah, let's do it.

And we were like, really?

'Cause you know, we get these ideas all the time.

But having that person be here to validate that idea

just gave us the idea to keep going one step further.

So we decided that we were gonna go

as far as actually creating a prototype

just to see what this would look and feel like

to determine whether or not we could actually

continue to move forward and build this thing.

Which brings me to lesson number one,

which is it's really important to understand

exactly what the problems is that your potential product

or idea would solve.

An when we spoke with Richie he really drilled it

in our heads to understand really

what's the problem that we're solving here.

Like yeah, this is cool, you can create this little thing

that can do this, whatever,

but what is actually the problem that you're solving.

Any good business or product solves a problem

that a specific group of people have.

Our group of people were gonna be videographers,

specifically vloggers, and the problem of using

a device that can help them switch from tripod mode

to vlogger mode and have them just have more time

to create and film versus struggling with a little tripod.

So we had our target audience in mind,

and we knew the problems that we had.

Luckily we were in that audience

and we had the same problems,

so we were then set on the right foot.

So after speaking with Richie for a little bit

we realized this was gonna be a very expensive process

to go from idea to actually creation.

There's a lot of moments in the physical product

sort of journey that require different decisions

that affect the price point and how much you spend

even before you make your first dollar,

if you make your first dollar.

And so we had to then determine, okay, like,

how can we cut the costs as much as possible?

Because this is really a side gig for us

and we just really had no idea what we were doing.

And so we learned how important your prototyping process is,

and that when you start prototyping,

meaning creating something that at least gives you a feel

for how the thing will look and work,

making it as simple as possible.

So we started with not any of these things that move,

but actually just the shape.

So we looked at a number of vloggers

who were using this GorillaPod

and we started to kind of see what the usual shape was.

And we started to determine what the angle

of this thing might be that we were gonna have

as be handles that would be put together.

So this is the very first thing that was created,

which is just made of acrylic.

I mean you could even take it even further

and just start with like cardboard, right?

Just to get a feel for how something looks

and how something feels.

And then this evolved into other ideas

just by having this one initial prototype.

It was like wow, what if we added this

and what if we added that?

So we added a little thing here at the bottom,

which added like some straps to keep the weight off

of your arms so that you can hold

heavier cameras and all this stuff,

but then we were like this is insane,

we're making this,

we're already doing what's called feature creep,

which is another big thing you have to worry about

when it comes to these physical products especially.

But even things like software

or your online courses or what have you,

it's really, really easy to start adding

a ton of things in there that may or may not be required.

The most important thing is to get an MVP,

or minimum viable prototype, if you will,

to share with others to collect feedback.

And so that's what we ended up doing.

We actually experimented

with different kinds of just materials.

We had a material discussion early on

just to understand what it would feel like

if it was aluminum or metal versus others, plastic.

And then we had our very first 3D model printed,

which was this one here.

Which was really really cool to see.

To get it in the mail and actually see something

that was in our heads, an idea that we had

that actually worked,

and it's a little flimsy right now.

It actually initially had these little clips here

that you'd have to kind of pull back to then move.

Wow that was really loud.

Like that.

And this already gave us a number of ideas on,

wow, what could we do better?

How can we make it easier?

How can we make it lighter?

How can we make it less hard to work with

or all those kinds of things.

We had yet to share it with anybody

outside of us and our team,

but just getting to this point alone

was really cool to see.

Like, wow, this could actually work.

This isn't a dumb idea.

But this isn't nearly done yet.

Now the third lesson here is that this stuff takes time.

I mean I work in the digital space,

many of you do as well,

and we live in a world where well we can

create an online course in a couple weeks, if not sooner.

We can put up a YouTube video in an instant.

We can do a Google search in a nanosecond.

Physical products take a lot of time,

especially when you're in the prototyping phase.

So even up to this point here

with the first 3D printed prototype,

I mean this took about a month

to a month and a half to actually get.

And then even moving forward into here.

I mean we're looking at a whole year's worth of effort here.

And patience is gonna be a really important thing here.

You need to actually, yes, work on things,

but realize a lot of this stuff,

especially when it comes to the manufacturing

or if you're using other teams like Prouduct

to help engineer certain things,

I mean this stuff takes time.

So moving forward we printed a few more prototypes

and just versions.

This one's a little bit more flat and thinner.

So we were just exploring how that felt,

you know, when they're all together,

changing different grip handles and that sort of thing.

And then we have this 3D printed model.

It was printed with a white plastic actually,

which looked pretty cool.

It was dipped in rubber at the handle.

But what was really interesting is that you can see

this is the first time that the prototype

actually had cutouts.

And the reason for that is so that it was lighter.

And if it's lighter and it has less plastic

or things to actually shape it,

it's gonna be cheaper.

And this is stuff that we, Caleb and I,

wouldn't have ever thought of.

This takes me to lesson number four,

if you're gonna do something you wanna work with people

who know what they're doing, right?

And a lot of times when we start businesses

we're doing a lot of things that we've never done before,

which is totally cool.

It's cool to dive in but it's really, really simple

to go find people who have done things before you

who are experts who know about these things

who can make decisions for you that are about questions

that you didn't even know you had.

So we were able to cut out the holes

which made it lighter and it would save us costs over time.

But we realized, like, actually we started playing with this

and holding it for quite a while,

and even though this was 3D printed

and we know it's plastic

and it's not going to be the actual material,

some of the clips here that we had to hold it in place

when it snaps in, as you can see here,

it kind of broke on this side

and it showed me that, like, wow,

there's a lot of small different pieces in here

that I don't know if we need it to be done that way.

What can we do to have the same motion

of opening and closing it and keeping it there

without having to have to have these little clips

that would actually require two hands to use.

Is there something we could do.

Which brings me to lesson number five.

And lesson number five is try anything.

You are at the phase where you are allowed to try anything,

and there are really no stupid ideas.

There are ideas that aren't gonna work,

but it's good to try those ideas

because now you know they don't work

and you can try something else.

So it was at this point that we decided to add magnets

to keep things open or keep things closed

without having a bunch of mechanisms

and extra pieces and parts in here,

which would, again, save us a little bit of money

and hopefully make it even easier to use.

So that led us to this 3D printed model,

which inside this mechanism here,

which we also had a few other small 3D printouts

of just that mechanism alone, it includes magnets.

So that when it opens it actually snaps into place,

but it can still be with a little bit of force,

brought back.

So that felt really cool.

It actually has a really nice tactile feel to it,

which was kind of unexpected.

So this was, again, going into lesson number five,

which is just try anything at this point

and see if it works or not.

Now this one we also added another idea, try anything,

which was these grips that go all the way up

because we felt it would give people more options

for holding it either up or below.

We just wanted to add that in there

so that when we finally handed this to people

we would see whether or not they

would actually use it or not.

Caleb and I had gone to a number of conferences

and visited a number of places where vloggers

and other YouTubers existed.

And we started sharing it with them

just to kinda get some initial reactions.

And we actually filmed some of those reactions,

which was just really cool.

I think the coolest thing and the best reaction

that we got from people was people who were just going like,

oh, of course, like yes, this makes totally sense.

Like why hasn't this been invented already?

Which was great validation for us,

and we weren't quite at the point of asking people

whether or not they would buy it or not,

we just wanted to get gut reactions from people

to see how they would use it,

not giving them any instruction

to see if it was intuitive or not,

and it actually started to become something

that we could see people using

and people could using themselves, too,

which was really interesting.

So it was at this point when we started collecting feedback

that we started internally discussing

what the material was gonna be made of.

And we had discussed probably five or 10 different materials

from aluminum to various kinds of glass injected molds

and other kinds of things,

and we decided that we were going

to experiment with a couple and actually have them made.

Now when I talked about earlier

about how expensive this process was,

I mean it gets very expensive,

so these two prototypes here

are made of two different materials.

This one was I think a nylon-based plastic kind of thing,

which was, it's stronger than plastic

but not quite as strong as this aluminum one here.

This aluminum one cost about $2,000

to make at the manufacturing plant

because it had to be handmade.

This one was made with, I think it was

just like injected molded or printed out in some way.

But as you can see, like even if I show you like this,

like the plastic wasn't laying the way it wanted to,

and we also spray painted it red

'cause we were taking it to an event,

and we're like, hey, let's just spray paint it

a very obvious color that people could see,

and it worked okay, and people loved it,

but it feels a little bit different.

It's not quite as strong,

and it's a little bit flimsy as you can see here,

and the paint started to chip off,

which was something that was really interesting, too.

But it still did the job of capturing people's attention

when we were at events like Vid Con,

which is where we brought both of these.

So again, try anything.

You see these little spacers here?

That kind of reduces the sound when you bring it together,

but we saw that it added a little bit of space in between.

We added some feet on here.

Again, just trying a bunch of different things.

This is the phase to do that.

Now taking this to Craft and Commerce,

we actually did have an opportunity to share it with Casey,

which was really cool thanks to an introduction

from the founder of the company.

And he grabbed it and he had

some great comments to share about it.

He has not endorsed it,

I just wanna be completely up front with that, yet,

but he did have some really nice comments,

like, well, I would prefer it to be black,

all black because videographers,

we don't wanna really be seen all the time.

We just want things to be kind of just hidden almost.

So black, that made complete sense.

And he wanted it to be a little bit smaller as well.

We had a camera on it.

This is also the first prototype

where we introduced the little thing at the bottom

that screws into the camera that you have at the top,

and we also found that this

little tiny knob here was too small,

so we definitely made it bigger in the next prototype.

Which was definitely influenced by Casey.

Before we printed it out in aluminum again

with another $2,000 prototype,

we 3D printed it, of course, to get the right size,

get the right knob size,

and this is the final 3D printed prototype

that was printed with the right magnets and stuff.

(part thudding on ground) (laughing)

Again, 3D printed and prototype, not the real thing.

But that eventually led to the final prototype,

as you can see here, which is all black

and super smooth and larger knob and to Casey's

and many other people's specifications.

And we've shared this directly

with a number of videographers who thankfully

want it as soon as possible, which is really cool.

So we've gotten a lot of validation verbally from people.

We've actually had people offer to pay for our prototypes,

which is secondary validation, too.

But we're really excited because the general feedback

from the vlogger space is that they're ready

and willing to pay for it when it goes live on Kickstarter.

Which if you are ready to sign up for the wait list

or check it out on Kickstarter if it's live there already,

you can check it out at switchpod.co.

But don't worry, I have a few more lessons to share with you

related to this entire process.

But hopefully you can see that it's taken a long time

to get to this final prototype.

Which, again, this is aluminum.

We are going to create the final product

in a different material that's easier to work with

in the manufacturing process.

But in order for us to get there

we have to raise money for the molds,

which are gonna cost anywhere between 50 to $60,000.

What the molds do is it allows us to injection mold

and create these almost like on a manufacturing line

versus the aluminum ones here, the prototypes,

which have to be handmade individually.

So the cost is gonna be significantly less per unit,

obviously, coming from the prototype versus actually

manufacturing it in a plant.

All right, so let me put these all back on the line here,

and I'll share lesson number seven with you now,

which is you might be wondering, well, like,

what about patenting and protecting your idea.

Should you share your idea with anybody before you do that?

And it was recommended to us by a number of people

to not share it, actually by I think this phase here

we had already gotten a patent pending.

I think we just got it on Legal Zoom

and there's many other different places

that you can get a patent pending at.

And that's just to protect yourself and your ideas.

Now obviously and we've had a lot of people say, Pat,

this is a US patent.

What about when you come out with this thing,

what's stopping other people in China from creating it.

Which is a really, really important question,

and it's a tough one to answer because honestly,

somebody in China could probably rip this off,

which is why you wanna have good relationships with people

who know what's going on over there

to protect it as much as possible.

But, you know, I think a part of competition

is realizing that you have a brand

and that you are hopefully gonna stay on top of things

to sort of stand out from the competition

that may come your way.

But patenting and protecting your idea is really important

and you wanna do that as early in the process as possible,

which, again, adds to the cost of this entire process.

So for example, the guys Tom and Dan over at Studio Neat

who develop physical products and kickstart them,

they don't do patents because a patent's only as good

as how much you will enforce them,

although I feel like it protects you.

If a person sees a patent there they're less likely to do

whatever it is they might be doing to copy your stuff.

But anyway, Tom an Dan have been great

as well as a number of other people.

We connected with them not too long ago

and they've been super helpful

and I think that's the big lesson

for lesson number eight here is that

there's a lot of people who have done a lot of things

that you're attempting to do before you.

Connect with them.

I mean not just experts who can actually help you

build these products like Prouduct does,

but actual people who are there and willing to help.

Tom and Dan have been so amazing,

and they've been featured on the SPI podcast,

and we'll put a link to that below in the description

so you can listen to,

but they had a lot of great pieces of advice

and have given us directly a lot of advice.

Actually a big piece of advice was

when we were gonna go live on Kickstarter

we wanted different sizes, different colors

and they were like don't do that, don't do that.

Keep it as simple as possible,

which is a big just overall lesson here to begin with,

bonus lesson for you,

which is just like, if you're doing anything,

try to keep it as simple as possible.

It was Tim Ferriss who had once said,

you know, if this were easy what would it look like?

And I think that's a brilliant way

to move forward in your business,

and it really helps us as entrepreneurs

who are already trying to think of other ways

to complicate things to simplify

so we can actually get things done.

So lesson number eight, connect with other people

who have done it already.

Join mastermind groups, join groups,

find groups on Facebook, connect with others at conferences.

If they've done it,

see what you can do to provide value to them

so that they'll be willing to help you

if they aren't already.

And what's really cool,

and we found this over and over

and over again in our journey,

is that there's way more people there

who are willing to help than those who aren't.

So a lot of important lessons shared here

from the relationships that you're building along the way

to knowing your numbers and making sure

to keep things simple but prototyping,

collecting direct feedback.

Lesson number nine for you is related to the launch.

You know, originally we were gonna launch

this thing in October of 2018.

Then we sort of gave it more time to build up more hype

and to shoot more videos, collect more feedback,

those kinds of things.

We actually changed the prototype

just a little bit along the way,

and then we were gonna launch in November of 2018,

which we've delayed again.

Now why all the delay?

Well we understand and hopefully you do as well

that the launch of your thing is a big deal,

and you wanna put the right ducks in a row

before you actually announce it to the world.

And what are those ducks mean?

It means, well, number one, understanding your numbers.

So that's been a big process for us,

is like understanding, okay, well,

how much can we charge and why?

And what is it all gonna add to?

For Kickstarter, specifically,

what are the different pledge levels that we're gonna have?

And those sorts of things.

Those aren't just decisions you make in a snap.

You have to plan and actually calculate

and all those kinds of things.

We've been having a lot of discussions with people

and doing a lot of research for Kickstarter, for example,

for products like this to stack things in our favor.

Another important component of a launch is

well how much support are you gonna get on that day

and from whom?

So we've connected with a lot of people

and have built a lot of hype on our social channels,

and you'll see a link to the Switchpod Instagram

and the Twitter page below.

We've been building a lot of hype on our podcasts

and on our video channels and those kinds of things,

which has been great.

We've been getting a lot of people excited about it

at these events in person, which is great.

So that's our target audience.

We have a wait list of about 2,000 people right now

who are waiting for the launch of this thing,

which is really cool at the time

of us filming this video here.

But we also have created a lot of relationships

with other influencers who we've developed relationships

over time or even really quickly,

so that we could hopefully get some help from them

and support from them on launch day as well.

And we've been willing to go and travel to them

to film videos and those kinds of things.

So hopefully we can get a big splash on launch day.

So a lot of this process is the creation,

is the prototyping,

and once you get it to a final prototype stage,

like it could be really, really tempting

to just go okay I got it, I'm gonna launch it tomorrow.

Just like a YouTube video.

Just because it's done and it's edited

doesn't mean that that's the time

that you should publish it.

Sometimes there's specific strategies

to letting people know about it ahead of time,

to announcing it, to building buzz and marketing.

All of that stuff is really important, too.

So just 'cause you have a final product ready

doesn't mean you should launch right now,

but you should definitely pick a date eventually,

hopefully and make that announcement,

and hopefully have some people backing you

with that in the first place.

And you never know, there could be a person out there

who could really help you that you might not have considered

and it's just important to go out there,

step out of your comfort zone, and let them know about it

because it is a new thing.

They might wanna get behind it

and be one of the first to share it, too.

And then finally, lesson number 10.

This has been a very difficult process.

A lot of money has been spent.

I think to date we've spent about $25,000 overall

and we haven't even launched on Kickstarter yet.

These are the prototypes and working with other companies

to help us out and the patents and all that stuff.

It's a lot of money.

It's not a small investment for sure.

Could we have spent less?

Probably.

If we invent something else we'll probably spend less

because we're a little bit smarter now.

But hopefully this video is giving you a lot of advice

so you don't spend as much money

and you can actually approach it in a smart way, too.

It's also taken a really long time,

and for somebody who is used to putting my head down

on things and having results come a little bit sooner,

it's definitely something that requires a lot of patience.

And so I think the biggest lesson I can offer you

with lesson number 10 here is to just have fun, right?

It's about the climb not necessarily

the mountain that you're climbing, but the climb itself.

And I think it's just when you realize the opportunities

that we have available in front of us

to create 3D prototypes, to offer something to somebody

who has a problem and actually create

that solution for them.

To actually see the reactions of somebody

holding your plastic or wooden or cardboard thing

to actually visualize that yes,

this thing could actually be

the thing that solves my problem.

It is such a cool thing.

No other time in history do we have this much

of an ability to create new things

and to show it to people and to build businesses

out of it, too.

So the opportunities here are great

and I think it's so cool to see where this might go.

I have no idea where it'll go.

I don't think it'll be a flop but it could be.

But it could be a home run too,

I have no idea, and that's part of the fun as well.

So hopefully, lesson 10, you're having fun in this process

and hopefully by seeing the behind the scenes

of us going through it too,

you can see well, we also don't know what we're doing,

but we're having a lot of fun trying to figure it out, too.

So hopefully this video has been really helpful for you.

If you wanna check out Switchpod and the launch

or where it's at now you can go to switchpod.co

and check us out there and just special thanks

to Richie and the team over at Prouduct for helping us

really put this together and making it happen

because this was just an idea that we had one day,

and here we are, we are very close to launching it,

if not having it launched already

by the time you watch this.

Switchpod.co, it's here to help and solve

a small little problem, small little friction

in the vlogger space.

What's the little friction that you're gonna solve

with your physical or digital product?

Let me know what you're working on below.

You don't have to reveal the entire thing,

but I'd love to know what your next invention

or product or idea's gonna be.

Leave it in the comment section below

and again, thank you so much.

Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.

Team Flynn you're amazing, I appreciate you,

and Team Flynn for the win.

Cheers.

Of all the prototypes I think this small one

is my favorite 'cause it really was the first one

that explored the magnets,

but it just feels really cool.

It's a small one.

I mean maybe in the future we'll create like a mini version,

but it's kinda cool 'cause I can do it with one hand, too.

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