57. The Inventors Blueprint for Amazing Products and Success! (Bullseye Method)

Looking for a step by step guide as to how to build a successful invention, supply chain and life from your invention?  Look no more, the Bullseye will guarantee you focus on the right things at the right time for your invention.

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The Problem:
Inventors and entrepreneurs are always full of ideas. They’re like a dog scratching at the door to get out into the yard and chase squirrels. The squirrels represent the ideas. Not only is any single squirrel tough to catch, but if you try to catch more than one, you’re unlikely to catch any. The Innovator’s Bullseye gives you a tool to zero in on the squirrel you need to run down.

The Bullseye Approach:
The tool has four levels. The most important thing to get right is at the center (your customer), with each outer level becoming less critical to your success.
Note: Your goal is simplification. When you complete your bullseye, just a few words (or a short phrase) in each area is enough. That way, you’ll be able to understand your strategy at a quick glance!

The Center of the Bullseye: Target Customer
Who is your target customer? What pain are they experiencing, what gain do they want, or what job are they trying to accomplish? This is not the place to focus on solutions. You must be able to write this in one sentence. 

Example: Vacationers struggling to secure items on their vehicle.

First Ring: The Marketing Mix
Also known as the “4Ps” (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion), this ring of the bullseye helps you clarify how your product or service will satisfy that customer job, problem, pain, or gain.

Product
What features matter to your target customer and their problem/job/pain/gain, and which are distracting? Choose no more than three features (ideally, one!) that are the most critical or unique to your product or service.

Price
Is it better to be cheaper? More expensive? Free? Sell on a subscription basis? Don’t worry so much about the specific price. Settle on a pricing strategy. The specifics will change. The strategy should not. 

Place
Would it be better to sell on Amazon? On your own website? Direct through live salespeople? In a retail store? Through a partner? On social media? In the Marketing Mix, “place” refers to where your customer goes to buy your product or service. 

Promotion
How can your brand or your advertising create a meaningful difference in the mind of your target customer? This isn’t the place for all your messaging or advertising plans. Focus on the promotional strategy—the most important message to communicate or the most important tactic t

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Transcript

0:00

and here's what's tricky about this ring before we move on is this is the ring

0:05

that looks like progress when you spend too much time here but in reality you're

0:10

pretty far away from the customer and their need where if you're going to be going for a value price point and it's

0:15

got to be the cheapest then realize that supply chain becomes really important the choices you make on outsourcing

0:22

whether they're contractors whether they're employees whether they're fractional whatever you decide this is

0:27

why all these four things are in this ring those are software those three are going to be I think 90% of the people

0:34

watching this are going to are going to need to deploy those three if if I could rename that the Godfather principle you

0:41

know keep your friends close keep your enemies close this is the most dangerous ring in the bullseye because Good

0:48

morning inventors and how are you look just a quick note before the show season two of the Invent with Me podcast is

0:54

brought to you by the Invent withMe Patreon odds are you've been listening

0:59

to the show for a while now and you need more information i don't typically agree with a payw wall unless it's a situation

1:07

in which there's not enough time in the show or there's just more tender love

1:12

and care needed to get you to the successful point with your invention where you want to be the sign up process

1:19

is incredibly straightforward just go into the show notes click on the link for the Patreon and sign up via their

1:25

safe payment platform $6 a month connects you to the Discord which is

1:30

stacked with current inventors as well as other professionals and myself and together all of us are going to make

1:38

sure that your dream becomes a reality all right guys remember I took the punches so you don't have to and enjoy

1:44

this episode brought to you by the Patreon thanks hello guys and welcome to

1:50

the Invent with Me podcast where each week we guide aspiring inventors and product creators to turn their

1:55

innovative ideas into reality and on today's episode the four steps to

2:00

transform your invention idea into a viable business and with me in the

2:06

studio today to help facilitate fractional chief marketing officer with over a 100 product launches under his

2:12

belt Jason is an expert in being disruptive and breaking the norms that

2:18

separate good inventors from great inventors welcome back Jason how you doing man no it's good to be here i'm

2:24

I'm really excited about this going to dive into it this is a great formula this is a really important episode

2:29

because for so long our listeners has have been asking for something tangible we like to riff on this podcast but

2:37

rarely are we kind of taking a step-by-step process and you have something laid out engineered and

2:43

crafted a great formula for inventors to define what is success going to look like with my invention but I'm skeptical

2:50

how do you really have the gull to say that this is something you can nail down in four steps is it that simple everyone

2:57

listening to this knows there is a lot to pay attention to you've got a number of different things but over the past 25

3:04

years or so what I've been able to do is simplify it down into kind of four zones

3:09

but the whole idea is you can't hit the bullseye if you don't know where the target is and we want to start at the

3:15

center and then we want to work outward from there and each ring that we go outward we learn a little bit more we

3:22

you know we we make sure to catch everything but not everything's equally important things closer to the center

3:27

are more important things as you get further out are a little bit less important but it makes sure we don't forget anything i I really like this

3:35

idea of the bullseye you know you you sent this to me and I honestly I feel

3:40

like I could really benefit from the bullseye even for this podcast for anything I'm trying to divi define a TA

3:46

target audience demographic an execution plan so walk me through the bullseye

3:53

from from the beginning i guess we're going to start we're going to actually use torque strap sweet so uh real

3:58

invention but you listening to this with your own idea you can take this format

4:03

and just walk through it yourself and I would invite you to just print out a blank of the bullsear just draw it on

4:09

your whiteboard and start to actually work through it and you don't want to draw it too big because you want to make

4:15

sure that in each area you've got just a sentence or a few words because when

4:20

you're done you want to be able to know like this is my strategy these are all the things I need to pay attention to on

4:27

one piece of paper or on one whiteboard and you know you don't it's not some

4:32

book that you hand to someone that no one's going to pay attention to so we're going to start with torque strap and we're going to hit we're going to aim

4:38

for the center of the bullseye right away which must be all the time you can probably tell where I'm going with this

4:44

your target customer and the pain the gain or the job they're trying to do so

4:50

what is the number one thing so how would you answer that Grant with torque strap what is the primary thing a

4:58

Torquestrap customer is trying to do not like the product that you're that you want to sell them that's that's next

5:05

what is the job they're trying to do what's the pain they've got what's the gain they want to achieve i'll say

5:11

definitely they want an alternative to ratcheting but I'll throw you a zinger

5:16

i'm also torn should I just attack the the the safety aspect so I kind of have

5:23

two bullse eyes do I put them both in the center awesome awesome question what I would do this because the bullseye is

5:29

such a simple thing to do you could complete one of these bullse eyes in about 10 minutes you just kind of hit

5:34

that i'd do two of them you might discover that okay with both of these

5:40

there are just a couple of different things that I would do but what it does is it forces you to think about hey when

5:46

I get all the way out to my competition which is in the outer ring and we'll talk about why that is when we get there

5:52

but let's say there's an alternative to ratcheting or a safety angle who do I

5:58

com I probably have two very different competitors with with both of those value propositions you know on the uh

6:05

you know ratcheting is pretty easy but when I'm competing with safety like what are you competing there with you know is

6:12

it different and should you be thinking differently about everything that's why it it has to be at the center that from

6:19

because that forces you to think of everything else around the bullseye is forced to think from the customer's

6:25

perspective what's their problem they're trying to solve be simple have just one

6:30

thing in your bullseye that you're aiming for you might discover you've got three four or five bullse eyes and you

6:36

realize you know what this one's the most compelling and it will tell you which of the angles is the most

6:42

profitable one to take yeah and I and candidly I already knew this about my

6:48

target um but for the sake of argument I mentioned that in the beginning I was

6:54

torn between the safety aspect and had I drawn out two bullse eyes I think I eventually would have come to the

6:59

conclusion that the safety aspect it's uh it's it's it's throwing a throwing a

7:06

handful of darts at a board rather than taking one and focusing in one spot right yeah 100% i think once you do it

7:13

and this is the thing that I work through with my one-on-one clients say "Okay let's take a look at all of the

7:20

different customer value propositions that you might have and let's decide cuz you know as an inventor how much money

7:27

time energy staff do you have to be able to kind of chasing you know four

7:33

different options?" I kind of think about it like you get a dog that's kind of just scratching at the back door to

7:38

get out you know there are squirrels all over the backyard how if that dog leaves

7:44

the you know open the door tries to chase more than one squirrel is going to catch none but if they go after one uh

7:52

you know uh uh my wife's actually in the studio with us today can't see her but she's in the studio uh her family had a

7:58

dog this kind of overweight broken spaniel if anyone listening to that will know what kind of dog this is cool dog

8:06

but not the most athletic animal in the world but they'd let it out the back

8:11

door and it would lock it was just instinctive it would lock eyes on one squirrel or one rabbit and it would run

8:17

it down you know when you're at the center of the bullseye it's just one target customer and one problem they're

8:23

trying to solve or one key pain so you focus on that when you get outside of that the first ring is the marketing mix

8:30

product price place and promotion those are the four key aspects so you're

8:35

looking at okay well what product am I going to have that satisfies that need what how is it going to be priced where

8:43

who am I going to sell it through what channel is it going to sell it through and then what brand or advertising or

8:49

promotional messages are going to be the best for that and the whole big deal is

8:54

people think about all of these like well I got to have to have everything nailed down no just what you know in

9:01

vision forward what is the what kind of product would satisfy that so let's take

9:07

torque torque strap for instance let's run through the four Ps product price place and promotion let's talk about

9:13

torque strap the product first i think that's the easiest one right no ratcheting just pull and go that's how I

9:20

see it yeah it's that's how I define it as well okay so easiest one and for you

9:25

listening to this or watching this product is usually the easiest one like okay well that's the whole thing you've

9:31

been spending all this time thinking about but let's talk about price now uh don't worry about the specific price

9:37

like hey it's got to be $19.99 or whatever you know don't think about that

9:42

think about pricing strategy what was Torstrap's pricing strategy were you going to be cheaper were you going to be

9:49

more expensive were you going to be what what was the idea when you were thinking about how to price well I can tell you

9:55

that in the beginning we all uh default unless we're seasoned and experience we all default default to 1995 or

10:03

$24.95 uh the reason being we feel like imposters but if you just take a really

10:09

clear look at Torquestrap it is so obvious now that Torquestrap only works

10:14

in the higher price point uh small company you're running smallerQS smaller

10:20

batch runs all these barriers to entry you're going to face your startup costs everything generally speaking I think

10:26

for new inventors the only way is the higher price point so if we were to do

10:33

it in hindsight absolutely we would say Torquestrap will be the higher price point product i think that makes sense i

10:40

think for most inventors you're going to be in that uh you know going after kind of a low price point or a value price

10:47

point is going to be tough when you're talking about you know minimum order quantities when you talk about all of

10:52

the other things you need to do so let's talk about channels and there are a lot

10:58

of different choices right there's Amazon there's selling through your own website selling through reps how did you

11:05

think about it with Torquestrap to me I just kind of thought well let's leverage what is already there lowhanging fruit

11:11

and that is my 200 followers on social media and it just kind of expanded from there when I define it now I can say

11:18

with confidence that our channels are 100% uh social media or digital media

11:25

marketing which leads to e-commerce because you catch them while they're on their phone and you close the deal while

11:30

they're on their phone all in the same swoop yeah 100% i feel like a torque

11:36

strap really lends itself well to that it lends itself well to hey it's compared with other products where you

11:41

would see it on a website on social on Amazon i get it i can compare it i can

11:46

make the decision other viable strategies though could be like hey this needs to be you know personto person

11:55

like you need to actually sell it at a farmers market or you need to sell it doortodoor you need There are a lot of

12:01

different ways to do this the whole idea is to think about that channel that's place that's the third P think about

12:07

what channel because all of those decisions kind of fit together uh especially with price remember that uh

12:15

and that's why those all these four in the same ring right because you need they all kind of interrelate with each

12:20

other so you know that if you got a value price point and you're selling on Amazon you know Amazon's going to be

12:25

taking 25 30 35% and that leaves you very little

12:30

money for cost of goods sold very little money for the fourth P which is promotion advertising so when you think

12:36

about Torquestrap what was the most effective promotional strategy don't think about like hey a specific ad or a

12:43

specific message what was the promotional strategy that you leaned into low cost high volume uh meaning it

12:50

costs nothing to shoot a video and and and you you lose nothing if not a bit of

12:56

pride when a video flops yeah no I I loved your video strategy what what I

13:01

liked about that best is torque strap required demonstration sure like you had to see it like if you didn't see it like

13:07

okay what's ratcheting i kind of in my mind understand what ratcheting is like but to actually see it like oh I just

13:14

pull it and it's done if you didn't see it it doesn't seem real that's why I

13:19

love video and I thought it made sense so what I would write in those is hey product is non-ratcheting torque strap

13:26

you know the torque strap product the pricing strategy is a premium price point the place is digital marketing and

13:32

e-commerce you know and the promotion big promotional strategy video boom 1 2

13:39

3 4 that's your first ring mhm simple as that mhm absolutely now it it's tough

13:45

for people to defi define these things in the beginning and that's why I'm laying out my business you know here it

13:50

is because this was not easy to define and this is four years of refinement to be able to answer these questions

13:57

quickly uh however I do think that for most of us inventors they can fall into

14:02

the same realm now we you guys have watched a lot of the show that you I know that a lot of you aren't video

14:07

savvy and never have any desire to be that is totally fine replace replace that channel with B2B you know and

14:14

exactly take a deep dive into that yeah i think it's uh in each one of these just as is it's as important to think

14:21

about your target customer and their issue as one thing you don't have two

14:26

three or four pricing strategies you don't have eight channels to market you know you don't have 15 different

14:33

features that are critical you know the torque strap has a lot of different features you know but the number one

14:39

thing is no ratcheting right so that's the number one thing it's going to keep you focused and it'll kind of keep you

14:46

out of overwhelm so just like hey write down each one and what what what if you get it wrong well at least it's on there

14:53

and you kind of know and you can fix it and you can see your entire business strategy on one piece of paper will

15:00

really help you know like okay if I change this I got to change this and this you got to understand how things

15:06

hook together now's a good time for you to just kind of explain the logic behind the bullseye these things get a little

15:12

less important as we expand yeah and that's why I put them that way that's why I organized you know these in the

15:18

different concentric rings you know for instance in this next ring we're going to talk about tools and software you

15:24

know and people are talking a lot about AI right now and they're kind of really getting into a large language model or

15:31

into you know Gemini or Claude or whatever it is that they're into they're

15:36

kind of they kind of get disconnected they spend way too much time focusing on a piece of software that is kind of

15:42

pretty far removed from the customer's problem and from the product price place and promotion that you're trying to kind

15:48

of solve that problem with that first ring is how you're going to satisfy that customer's problem directly the

15:54

marketing mix the next ring out is what tools and systems are going to support

15:59

you in delivering that marketing mix and then in the final ring it's what's the

16:05

macro environment that you're sitting in that's just fancy language for what's what's going on in the world right now

16:11

that might impact your ability to sell that product you have not only are they less important but you have less control

16:19

as you go out so we want to make sure that you focus on all the things you need to focus on but you don't overfocus

16:25

on something that is less important you know and we'll get to some of those i think you'll see as you as we go through

16:31

like oh okay yeah for torque strap for instance let's get into that next ring which is kind of your operations side

16:37

let's talk about supply chain you know for for torque strap obviously your

16:42

supply chain is critical for delivering the product but there are multiple ways to develop a supply chain there are

16:50

multiple suppliers you could pick right I mean with Torquestrap talk to me a little bit about how you thought through

16:55

the supply chain after a couple weeks of digging around on Alibaba Aba I concluded that what I not only what I

17:02

needed to do but what I wanted to do was to globally source about four components and to uh bring them into the US to be

17:10

assembled here that conclusion came by way of trying to protect the IP in my

17:15

initial runs uh and a few other factors and it gave me the clout to be able to

17:20

say assembled in the USA which I thought might be on people people's parameters of value my opinion has changed since

17:27

then so to put a put a bow on that answer globally sourced components

17:34

assemble in the USA i think that makes a lot of sense you could see though where there could be a lot of ways to get that

17:40

done let's say you had 100x the volume you know you might decide you know what

17:46

I'm going to assemble everything i'm going to source and assemble in Malaysia for instance you know who knows i mean

17:54

uh or you could source in Asia assemble in Mexico you could there are a lot of

18:00

ways to do that you kind of get what I'm getting at that yes supply chain is critical for all the reasons you

18:05

described you want to make sure you have good quality control you have you know a

18:10

multiple and redundant supply chains for critical components all of those sort of things but there are a lot of ways to do

18:17

that and any good ops person will tell you that you have a primary supply chain you have a backup supply chain you know

18:23

all of those things are important because the end customer they're you're a little further away from the customer's problem do they really care

18:30

if you got it from Malaysia or Thailand that's right probably not and that feeds into analysis paralysis like come on

18:37

guys you're in the outer getting close to the outer ring of importance on decisions and you're tripping up over

18:44

you know where they're made exactly is it better to does Cambodia on look better on the box than Malaysia i like

18:51

remember you know in this inner ring we talked about price where if you're going to be going for a value price point and

18:57

it's got to be the cheapest then realize that supply chain becomes really important that if you're going for it's

19:04

got to be the cheapest thing well then I have to spend a lot more time on supply chain to make sure that I'm getting the

19:10

cheapest materials that still meet my quality standards it makes the supply chain a lot harder if you've got a

19:16

premium price point and you've got a redundant supply chain that's got more

19:21

reliable delivery but it's going to take an extra 3 days on the water you might say you know what that's worth it sure

19:29

and let's do that so let's kind of move on to you know kind of your business processes and operations a lot of times

19:36

what I what most people are talking about in here is things like customer service uh there can be a lot of

19:42

business processes you need to deliver uh depending on what it is if it's B2B process becomes really critical right

19:49

here but for you uh Grant with Torquestrap talk to me a little bit about customer service and the approach

19:55

to that right well it's not like uh you're opening a call center or you're

20:00

selling insurance right so your your your customer service lifting is quite a

20:06

light load so certainly I hadn't mapped it out but just by nature of the way

20:12

that the customer service inquiries came in I realized Okay this is a task I can probably do

20:17

for the first 6 months and that proved to be true and ultimately after about a

20:22

year and a half that's when I was able to outsource that to the next level of employee you know kind of kick that let

20:28

that stuff roll downhill well think about that for a second this is that ring where you it's all about how you

20:34

support that group and I'm going to skip over kind of tools and we're going to go over to people uh because you you

20:40

mentioned that that this is how all those four things work together right where the people you hire and the

20:47

choices you make on outsourcing whether they're contractors whether they're employees whether they're fractional

20:52

whatever whatever you decide this is why all these four things are in this ring because you might decide with customer

20:59

service that you need to make sure that you have not only have a customer service process but you are outsourcing

21:06

that to people that can you know that can do that work like you're going to do it at first make sure the process is set

21:13

and then you're going to be able to outsource that this is the first ring where you start to think okay someone

21:19

else could be doing this for me i don't need to do this myself i think the closer you get to the customer the more

21:25

you want to make sure that you are you know 100% in it to win it so I like how

21:31

kind of the I like how it for torque strap the people decisions you made and the process decisions you made are

21:38

linked that that help show people uh what this you know kind of the power of the tool let's talk a little bit about

21:44

tools and software you know in this kind of business operation were there tools or software uh for Torquestrap or kind

21:52

of in the Torquestrap business that were game changers for you well certainly from a baseline you know you have uh how

21:58

do you build out your website and when you're a high school graduate like myself any uh web hosting platform like

22:06

Shopify Wix that's going to be your number one tool anybody can build a backbone of a good website on a Shopify

22:13

or a Wix now beyond that as times went on you look at conversion rates and

22:18

things like that how do I acquire these customers more frequently at a low cost well you want to have really good

22:23

reviews on your website so I employed the Looks Review app on my website why

22:29

it was $39.95 and it had decent reviews from there you start to work with Amazon

22:35

which is more of a place than a um um than a software however with Amazon you

22:41

can work with softwares like Sellerboard that can really consolidate all your data and

22:46

information i think those are the top three for us at this point i think those are those are software those three are

22:54

going to be I think 90% of the people watching this are going to are going to

22:59

need to deploy those three what I really liked about what you said was that like hey Amazon is a place it's a channel to

23:07

market but there's software that sits on top of that not only buried inside Amazon but third party software you can

23:13

put on top of that that will help you get better data and do better analysis

23:18

on where you're converting how you're selling which make a lot of sense and you can see how the channel decision you

23:24

made helps you determine what additional software and tools that you need you see how that kind of fits together like you

23:31

wouldn't pick seller board without having Amazon right right i mean so it's

23:37

these decisions kind of cascade and they you know one kind of begets the other that's why you focus early cuz I I've

23:44

talked to so many entrepreneurs that just get excited about a particular AI tool or a particular review tool that's

23:51

awesome but like like hey you're doing 100% of your sales on Amazon why like

23:58

you should be focused on Amazon reviews you know this other tool isn't going to do anything for you why are you paying

24:03

for that why are you putting it it's not just the money the 39 bucks a month or whatever it costs it's the time and the

24:09

mind share that you put into it that's the really thing you got to pay attention to especially in this ring and

24:15

here's what's tricky about this ring before we move on is this is the ring

24:20

that looks like progress this is the d this is the most dangerous ring in the bullseye because when you spend too much

24:28

time here because you're in control this is the first place where you're like "Hey you're the one calling the shots on

24:34

you know someone's trying to sell you on their software and it can make you feel important it can make you feel like

24:40

you've done a lot of work but in reality you're pretty far away from the customer

24:45

and their need uh it's important to get it right but you can't spend too much time here." Gotcha reminders what ring

24:52

are we in right now we're in the outer ring we're in the We're in the third ring so we had the first ring was our target customer the bullseye the first

24:59

level okay second ring the first ring in that surrounds it is the marketing mix product price place and promotion the

25:07

next ring out we go one that's your operations ring that's level three and that has your supply chain your business

25:14

processes customer service things like that tools and software and your people

25:19

whether they're contract or full-time employees or whether you know whether they're you know service providers of

25:26

whatever type they all go in there and we don't want to list like here are the 15 employees we need you know the

25:32

janitor the accountant like no no no who's the most important people you need

25:37

so in your case if it's fulfillment like hey we got to make sure that the fulfillment people you know have their

25:43

stuff together great if it's customer service okay great those are the most important this you will have other

25:50

people you know you'll have other needs don't worry about every piece of software what's the most critical thing

25:57

that supports the bullseye that supports that target customer and what they need

26:02

love it so now we're approaching the outer ring i think this is going to be my favorite because it's kind of ironic

26:08

you have four rings and they really associate well with the years of my business and now I'm in year four and so

26:15

this outer ring I may be the most apt to speak on so let's dig into it yeah dig

26:20

in this is the this is the business environment what's going on in the world and you don't control what happens here

26:27

that's the idea the whole idea behind this ring is you don't control you can influence and you can react to this but

26:34

to think that you can control your competition you can't you can control the vibe that's going on kind of what's

26:42

happening right now what's the zeitgeist going on whatever word you want to use time and timing you can't control that

26:48

you can't control the legal regulatory environment you know new tariffs new regs lack of regulations all of those

26:55

things can benefit or hurt you you can't control them and you can't control what's going on in the macro environment

27:01

that like hey we're all a sudden we go into a recession you can't control that you as a business can't control that you

27:08

know what your job isn't to like well I'm not successful because of the macro

27:14

environment you know what that's way far out on the outside of the ring like you can you should be ready to react to that

27:21

but it's all about like if you've done your work inside these things should be

27:27

pretty easy so let's start with competition first what was the most important thing for you from a

27:32

competition perspective now in year four who's who's Torquestripe's biggest competitor well any anything you can use

27:39

to strap something down is a competitor that's something I knew from the beginning but what was interesting and

27:45

what you outlined in the Google doc you sent when you and I were prepping for this video was sometimes competitors can

27:51

be friends and that has proven so true so much more than I thought um they're

27:57

they're more than willing to take meetings in some cases after you have some clout of course right uh they're

28:02

kind of willing to collab may possibly finally get that licensing deal that we all dreamed of in the beginning exactly

28:09

and they can sometimes offer insider tips like maybe their manufacturer you

28:15

never know what you're going to get out of these people so you know we we just got knocked off in Australia and the

28:22

Australian distributors freaking out i say "Guys let's find the silver lining

28:27

what kind of videos are they making and what ideas can we take from that what language are they using to sell the

28:33

straps and how can we iterate on that and how are they building the straps maybe they're building them 10% more

28:39

efficient than us they already knocked us off so I'd say it's fair game and you know so there when it comes to

28:46

competition know them don't think that they're not your competition they all are but

28:53

also uh friends close enemies closer right yeah i love the I love the god if

28:58

if I could rename that the godfather principle you know keep your friends close keep your enemies closer yeah you

29:04

know you just you have to understand what's going on it's I liked what you said that everyone who's strapping

29:10

something down you got a bundle of twine is a competitor you know uh you know closing the you

29:17

know getting a topper for your truck is a competitor absolutely so all of those things are competitors and you got to

29:23

pay attention to all of those so you know what I put in the Google doc for you was hey what if you had you know

29:30

could you cooperate you know we think about competition and I like to think about coopetition

29:36

you know so if you've got a trailer manufacturer can you approach a trailer manufacturer with a hey sell the torque

29:42

strap along with your trailer or can I co-arket with that or can I use like hey

29:48

if I know people are buying trailers can I buy those keywords so that people see

29:53

that alongside it so I I like how you're thinking about it that learn from your

29:58

competition keep them close try to find deals try to work deals with them you

30:05

know re realizing of course that they are trying to make a buck at your expense but if you could make a buck or

30:12

they could make a buck or if together you could make three let's go make three yeah so all right uh next is kind of

30:20

time timing vibe zeitgeist what's going on in the world right now that impacts

30:26

Torquest Strap you know from a you know kind of what's going on like kind of what are people thinking about sure well

30:33

we're we're obviously uh that COVID hangover has treated some people in the outdoor space really well so I'll focus

30:39

on that one right people even during CO right away for some reason we all wanted

30:45

to go to go camping that kind of hasn't ended and then that that introduced me

30:50

to the the space of overlanders hikers backpackers uh recreational vehicle

30:55

enthusiasts you name it and it still holds true people they still have all those toys they bought during CO they

31:01

still want to go pitch the tent right so we lean into that heavily i think that's one a great example of kind of a global

31:08

vibe or at least a US vibe that we latch on to absolutely i mean and to my

31:14

knowledge you had no hand in starting co no it but I was in the right place at

31:20

the right time I had a product that's the thing so and sometimes just timing is like that and you just got to pay

31:27

attention when when you see something happen you got to be ready to jump on it because there's no way to control that

31:34

but you know when you see wow we all have to be inside people want to go out camping I got to be ready to jump on

31:41

that no hesitation and if you've done all your homework to get to that point that's why hey these are things that you

31:47

know people think about these things like well I can't control the environment i can't control the e economy i can't control

31:54

regulations no you can't control them you can take advantage of them though when they happen so you got to be ready

32:00

this is kind of the readiness ring of the bullseye you know it's the macro environment but you got to be ready you

32:06

got to be poised to take advantage of opportunities when they come up sure so let's hit this legal regulatory i know

32:12

sometimes I put uh intellectual property in here too and the reason I don't focus on intellectual property is like hey

32:21

intellectual property is kind of a a support to the whole thing like having a patent awesome that's it it's it's great

32:28

that you do I have seen so many businesses succeed without any at all

32:33

they focus on a trademark or a trade secret so when you think about your intellectual property portfolio you know

32:39

your patents trademark trade secret and copyright Those are the four types it

32:44

doesn't always have to be a patent so what I like to focus on here is legal and regulatory environment so is there a

32:51

new law in Florida or in Denver or I know Denver is a city Colorado or in

32:57

Canada that says if you don't strap things down with this approved torque

33:03

you know that you're liable for this and that or is there an insurance company that's going to get up in your business

33:10

so what about the legal regulatory environment for torque strap yeah so

33:15

definitely there's DOT regulations that kind of govern the federal and then there's state level regulations and

33:21

that's kind of left at not to discretion but that's enforced by your highway patrols and things of that nature so you

33:28

got to look at is there training programs in place is there guide books or maybe even it's um just a independent

33:36

safety industry uh company if you will that that helps to protect employees or

33:44

drivers whatever the case may be and do they lay out guidelines and handbooks and can we become part of that situation

33:52

yeah when I was uh early on in my career one of my first jobs as a product manager was to try to get our product on

33:59

spec and what that meant was I was in fiber optic cabling so our job was to get our cable assemblies on the

34:06

specification that the contractor wrote or that the architect wrote a lot of medical device companies absolutely take

34:13

advantage of this they know that hey there's a Medicare funding code and if you're in you know if you're in medical

34:19

device you know exactly what I'm talking about there's a code for that it specifies a certain specification and a

34:26

certain amount of reimbursement that they're going to give so this is where you're thinking about that regulatory

34:32

environment what you don't want to do is say well that supersedes what the customer needs this is something that

34:38

can supercharge what's already there so let's say the torque strap you gave training to all the Florida Department

34:45

of Transportation you know state troopers say "This is how you should properly strap things down and you're

34:52

using torque strap." When that guy pulls over someone who's got some janky ass

34:58

trailer set up he says "You know what you should be looking at torque strap cuz it works like this." That guy's

35:04

going to go out and buy them mhm it's that sort of idea where you're trying to find a way to take advantage of the

35:10

regulatory environment last thing is the economy so and I I hear from inventors

35:17

all the time like well this is a good time or this is not a good time because the economy is good or the economy is

35:22

bad it's you know what there is never going to be a perfect time but and gosh

35:29

since you launched Torquestrap the economy has gone through all kinds of

35:34

girrations talk to me a little bit about how the economy kind of general economy impacts Torquestrap

35:41

well when you start a business in CO for the rest of your career you're never going to know which way is up or down

35:46

that's one benefit of starting during CO so I have no point of reference to say "Oh well this is a rough time." Uh as

35:53

far as the economy with Torquestrap it no matter what it's a

35:58

day-to-day marketing battle that you face and as I said it's it's kind of all

36:04

you know when you look at it day by day because you can't just put a blanket statement on how you're going to reach

36:09

people and think that that is going to survive the test of time for 10 years in 10 years you're going to have three

36:16

dips knock on wood hopefully not a pandemic whatever can happen in 10 years

36:22

so for me COVID was a big one right now tariffs and made in USA is a big is a

36:28

big bugaboo or a big topic right so how do we lean into that or how do we take

36:33

advantage of that well some of our competitors are moving their factories maybe in a hurry maybe prematurely right

36:39

and there will be a ripple effect they may be out of stock in 6 months because they put a a in their chain

36:48

we chose to eat it on the tariffs and keep the products going keep the Amazon rankings so economically health globally

36:57

socially so much can vary that's how we've dealt with those you know small uh

37:03

examples of changes in the in the economy yeah I think that's the reason that I I put it all out on this outer

37:11

ring is these are uncontrollables and you're not going to know but think about what you said there

37:18

that hey we knew we wanted to make sure we had a we had place and torque strap had ranking that's a channel discussion

37:25

now in order to fulfill that there's a supply chain implication right that okay there might be some legal regulatory

37:32

tariff things going on that might impact the supply chain okay helps you you know decide if you've got a primary and a

37:39

secondary backup for supply chain is there a way that hey if Malaysia's got 35% tariffs and Singapore has 15%

37:47

tariffs and you could shift okay you're prepared uh and really the macro and

37:54

micro economy you know at the price point you know you're talking about for torque strap you're not buying a home

38:00

you're not buying a car you know this is a discretionary purchase that's you know

38:05

you know that helps facilitate you getting out and kind of enjoying this kind of new hobby that you figured out

38:12

during CO i wouldn't worry about it too much just it's something that you can pay attention to and hey if uh the

38:18

economy is going really bad say okay well maybe I lean into that with my messaging a little bit and help people

38:25

see the value in getting this product you know and when things are really good

38:30

maybe there's a different angle that I take but it's something you kind of react to and you adjust but if you've

38:36

completed this bullseye which you have for torque strap you can start to see whatever happens you've got alternatives

38:43

and you know like like hey the you know competition's okay but it's not more

38:49

important than the price I set or my pricing strategy and you're not kind of making something more important than it

38:55

should be that's the value of this and we did this in about this is about 35 minutes with a little bit of fluff and

39:01

buff on either side you can do this by yourself with a sheet of paper in 15 minutes absolutely absolutely now I've

39:10

I've I've humored you long enough Jason but now I'm going to ambush you man because I love it what a what a phony

39:16

you are why didn't you put financing and funding at the center of that bullseye

39:22

here's the thing if I've if I've got my bullseye ready now I know what kind of money I need until you do this you don't

39:30

know what to go ask for do you really need $25,000 in bridge funding that you

39:36

can maybe get with a credit card or a personal loan or do you really need 1.2 million that you better be approaching

39:42

an angel investor investor for until you really understand what the entire

39:48

business looks like how do you know what to go ask for how do you know what resources you need

39:55

and I can promise you every angel investor every bank every person you're

40:00

going to uh approach is going to ask you all these questions in one form or another and if you don't have a good

40:05

answer you're not going to get funding mhm so that's another one of the values to doing multiple bullse eyes if I've

40:12

got hey I've got four different customer needs I could go after and you do three of them and they all require over a

40:18

million dollars in capital and the last one requires $30,000 in capital that you

40:24

can maybe self- finance or bootstrap I'd do that one mhm at least to get started and then generate your cash flow and

40:32

then maybe you don't need you maybe learn that you didn't really need 1.2 million you only needed 200,000 but

40:38

you're at a point at the business now where you could self- finance that and you could kind of step up to the next

40:43

level where you don't have to go beg for money gotcha and the guide that you wrote that that you shared with me is

40:49

that on your Substack or what can people find that yeah people will be able to find that uh I I'm building a new

40:56

website that will help kind of generate uh and give people all of these uh all

41:02

of these resources all these tools so that uh links will all be in the description so you can go get it sweet

41:08

and you wrote AI prompts with I which I love about each of these items on the

41:13

bullseye exactly what to ask AI who you are what you do and give me multiple

41:20

options there chat GPT yeah I I found that like Yeah it's once you get the

41:25

hang of this after you do this once or twice and you've got it up on your whiteboard and you're like "Ah I got it

41:30

i don't need chat GPT anymore." But what I saw is as people were going through this they'd get stuck and if I'm working

41:38

with someone one-on-one I can say "Okay stop for a second let's talk about supply chain options." And I can give

41:43

people 10 or 12 options i've been doing this for 25 years i've seen all of these options but if I'm not there sitting

41:50

next to you you'd get stuck on it or you might not think of a different option

41:55

well that's what AI is good for let it spit out a bunch of options it doesn't mean it's right you know most you know

42:02

the responses you're going to get are going to be wrong or BS but you'll know like this AI is just there to generate

42:08

some ideas for you and then you're the one who picks like oh no based on my

42:14

customer and based on this that I'm going to Amazon this is the piece of software that I need got it that'll be

42:20

helpful but oh man I I didn't think of that or I didn't think about going in

42:25

that direction that's what it's perfect for so yeah it's why I wrote the AI prompts for it uh because I couldn't be

42:31

there so my challenge was I can't be there one-on-one with everyone i can't be there for everybody how could I write

42:39

something that would help let people do it on their own perfect love it well there you have it folks that's episode

42:45

57 of the Invent with Me podcast The Innovators Bullseye thank you again Jason for putting pen to paper because

42:52

that's something I struggle with and I know the listeners are going to have fun with that if you're watching on YouTube

42:59

subscribe if you're listening to the podcast leave a rating like the show do whatever you got to do thanks for

43:05

listening guys and we will see you on the next one