58. The 6 things Successful Inventors do (For Big Profit!)

Wondering what a serious inventor would do with your idea? Perhaps you have an invention idea that you TRULY want to see all the way through and you don't want to sell yourself short with a bogus licensing deal.  Inventors who make profitable products and companies all follow some variation of these 6 rules.

Want to join an exclusive Discord community of seasoned inventors and be on a first name basis with people who LOVE this world of product development?  Access the exclusive Discord through the Patreon below for just $6/Month! ⬇️

By popular demand... introducing Grant's "Invent With Me" Patreon.
-You may want to join if...
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3. You need inspiration and weekly tips to bring your invention to the market and start making 7-figures from your idea.
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IWM Engineer; Lance at https://www.freelancedesigns.ca/

The Invent With Me Podcast
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00:18 - Step 1: Ignore 90% of Advice Online
04:30 - Step 2: Research the Market (Using Amazon)
08:31 - Step 3: Wait on the Patent!
12:47 - Step 4: Prototype for Cheap
16:08 - Step 5: Source like a pro
21:50 - Step 6: Price for Profit
24:11 - (Bonus) Market with Zero dollars

In this episode of Invent with Me, Grant pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to turn a simple invention idea into a profitable six-figure business—without chasing patents or wasting money on bad advice. With just $6,000 and a product idea called the Foam Former, Grant walks listeners through the six essential steps that successful inventors take to bring their product to market. He debunks common myths pushed by online "gurus," explains how to do realistic market research using Amazon, and dives into why most new inventors waste time on patents too early.

You'll also hear about the early struggles inventors face, the false promises made by invention brokers like InventHelp, and how to trust your gut while filtering out 90% of the noise online. Whether you're a first-time product creator or already have a few ideas under your belt, this raw and insightful episode is your blueprint for building a real product business—without falling into the typical traps.

What if I told you that a simple idea and a $6,000 investment could turn into a six-figure brand — and it doesn't even start with a patent?
This is how real inventors actually make money, in six simple steps. And for today's episode, we’re going to use my little pal here, called the Foam Former.
But before we get into that, let’s talk about Step One: what's the first thing most inventors do to become profitable and actually make money?

The Invent With Me Podcast, where each week we help aspiring inventors and product creators to turn their innovative ideas into reality. Join us on youtube to have the ultimate show experience! www.youtube.com/@inventwithme

Transcript

0:00

what if I told you that a simple idea and a $6,000 investment can turn into a sixf figureure brand and it doesn't

0:07

start with a patent this is how real inventors actually make money in six simple steps and for today's episode

0:13

we're going to be using my little pal here called the foam former but before we get into this let's talk about step

0:18

one what is the first thing most inventors do to become profitable inventors and actually make money well

0:26

the first thing they're going to do is they're going to ignore 90% of the advice that they hear on YouTube forums

0:31

online from lawyers you name it knock down the noise me personally when I

0:37

first had an invention idea back in 2020 I got on YouTube and all the typical uh

0:42

gurus came up and they wanted to preach about how fun and simple and safe and

0:49

fast licensing an idea was right and to their point there's some people giving diligent advice on how to build out a

0:56

marketing plan to convince a company to take on the risk of licensing your

1:02

invention figuring out how to manufacture it and make it it's true the

1:07

methods they're teaching are true but the result is intangible or at least

1:12

it's you're being misguided right it's falsely advertised because at the end of

1:17

the day I run a company and I get people throwing patent ideas at me all the time i really don't want to open them for a

1:24

lot of reasons one I have plenty to work on myself number two the the heavy

1:31

lifting involved in figuring out if a product is going to work and then dealing with the personality of the

1:36

person selling the patent because nine times out of 10 they think their product is the golden goose and it's just not

1:42

there's a lot more to consider in this realm of bringing a product to market

1:47

than just a solid idea and a patent right we need a marketing strategy we need to market for cheap we need to

1:54

market efficiently we need a manufacturing strategy we need to manufacture for cheap we need a

2:00

comprehensive approach as to how we're going to hit the market and what medium we're going to sell on shopify Amazon

2:05

brickandmortar B2B B TOC you name it all right I digress so that's the 10-second

2:11

recap on YouTube advice internet advice gurus my experience for some reason

2:17

something in my heart told me back in 2020 to ignore 90% of what these people

2:23

are saying being kind of blind and blissful in this process is a huge asset

2:28

fear is the number one paralyzer of inventors move past those fears you're

2:34

not curing cancer presumably the idea that your invention is going to get out

2:40

of control and become some become something you can't even handle so you need to quickly hand it off to a bigger

2:46

company that can false this is the reason why two years ago Marcus and I

2:52

started the Invent withMe podcast because what a huge gap there was in this space where when you get online you

2:58

have attorneys giving you cautionary tales and trying to get you to fill out a patent uh right away you know to to

3:05

hand over the retainer and then the other side of it was people selling a $4,800 course with really no end in

3:12

sight all right and then the at the very the net that's catching the most flies and the flies being us inventors is

3:19

things like Invent Help and Davidson Davidson who they advertise on TV you

3:25

know they'll they'll have a little video of a old woman in the kitchen she taps

3:30

her head she thinks of an idea picks up the phone and just starts smiling and nodding her head as she talks to one of

3:36

the representatives at Davidson oh my god don't do that oh my god no that it that look the their

3:44

business model is the cult mentality the rope them in and get another dollar and

3:49

get another dollar and the next phase and the next phase and eventually you're going to achieve uh success and

3:55

enlightenment with our program the day never comes okay i promise you that

4:01

nobody cares more than you so that was step one inventors ignore 90% of the

4:08

smoke and haze and advice out there and they latch on to the 10% because there is a good 10% if you can read between

4:16

the lines all right read between the lines when you're taking advice consuming videos consuming podcasts

4:22

consuming any type of information because that 10% is very true very valuable and you will grow from it the

4:30

second step inventors who actually make money take when they're on this journey is they research the market let's go

4:38

back to when I thought of this invention idea right here this this is called the foam former nozzle and for those of you

4:44

listening this is a nifty little plastic nozzle that attaches to the end of these

4:49

expanding spray foam cans and this this gives you the ability to apply the foam

4:54

in a really nice smooth manner now market research is tough and abstract and certainly what I'm not proposing is

5:01

that you hire some sort of consulting firm or data consolidator what you

5:07

really need to do is just hop on Amazon and Google and see if the product exists and is something like it selling well so

5:14

a great example is the other day I was coaching an inventor on the Discord um she had a really great idea for a

5:21

certain type of uh wreath that goes on the door right holiday seasonal

5:26

decorative wreath and her idea is to make it uh interchangeable i won't get into the details but cool idea i said

5:33

"All right well let's hop on Amazon let's just see what's going on let's just um let's see how many people are

5:38

really into wreaths." So we get on Amazon and I think we typed in wreath hanger okay and sure enough 11 12

5:48

products come up you look for the indicators on these products as to whether or not they're moving a lot of volume and the first thing I look for is

5:54

is there products in that niche with more than a thousand reviews and the answer here was yes there was many door

6:01

wreath hangers hangers that go over the door to hold the wreath in the realm of like 15,000

6:08

reviews okay so then you look at the next indicator what is Amazon saying about this product often times you'll

6:14

find a little bubble that says 100 plus sold in the last month 300 plus a,000

6:20

plus sold in the last month okay from there you can do some quick mental math on on how much they're actually selling

6:27

if you really want to go pro mode you can download Helium 10 which I'm not they they tried to give me an affiliate

6:34

link i I I don't know for me the there wasn't a ton of value there but uh if

6:39

you're really into data collection get grab the Helium 10 sign up for that and then you can enter these Amazon asens or

6:46

their SKs or their product names and it will give you a estimation of how much that particular product is selling a

6:53

month so so with that in mind you know I I told her like "Hey I feel pretty confident that you're in a space with a

6:59

lot of traffic and you could latch on to a lot of these keywords you know wreath wreath accessory re change out wreath uh

7:07

customized wreath all these things are going to be highly hot topics and searchable on Amazon so you may be able

7:13

to catch a lot of flies now going back to this plastic nozzle knowing what I know now I kind of did the same analysis

7:20

and not a lot of people are looking for this right not a lot of people are looking for plastic nozzles smoother

7:27

spray foam spray foam nozzles there's a handful and they're going to default to

7:33

the the the gun type of spray foam nozzle you know the popular ones that you see at Home Depot for just applying

7:39

it quick and easy but as far as smoothing things out uh you know again I thought of this a year ago and I thought

7:45

this was a banger but knowing what I know now after running the Invent with Me podcast not a lot of people are

7:50

thinking about this not a lot of people want this we'll we'll we'll get into that in a minute now why do I talk about

7:55

Amazon when there's so other options well it's just the most free easy way to assess data you know you can't get

8:02

Walmart's numbers you can't get Bed Bath and Beyond's numbers but you can get Amazon's numbers and like it or not

8:08

they're like more than 40% of the US market when it comes to sales and retail

8:13

use that use that lowhanging fruit that's the best data collection you're going to have in the shortest amount of

8:19

time that could easily squash a bad idea and save you months of of product

8:24

development and even some cash because if you go about the wrong way you can really blow some cash and that leads us

8:31

into step number three what do successful inventors do uh step three is

8:37

they wait on the patent so many of you listening to this

8:42

are thinking "How can I patent this idea right now so no one else can do it?" Why

8:48

would you want to patent something that you don't know if it will sell people are so patent and I get it i was one of

8:56

them but guess what a patent is just a piece of paper it is only worth your

9:02

ability to defend it in court and if your patent is making you no money you

9:07

don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend the patent in court i've had an issued patent for two or

9:14

three years now and still to this day I can tell you that even though we do multiple millions of dollars in sales a

9:21

year when you look at our profit margin do we really have an extra $300,000

9:26

hanging around to defend the patent if someone was to someone was to infringe on it of course not right so what makes

9:33

you think that a patent is so important to you in this beginning stage well oh well well Grant I I just don't want

9:39

someone else to capitalize on the idea i don't want someone else to do it i'm sorry that's not a good enough reason

9:46

okay just start moving on your product you decide if it's worth patenting

9:51

because a patent is going to cost you you know around $9,000 for a non- tech idea you have to pinch every penny in

9:57

this process not because there's no money in this game but there's no money in this game for people who go about it

10:04

wrong that I guarantee you so going back to this foam nozzle when I first thought of this idea I was pretty hot to try on

10:11

making this because I thought I could make it cheap and efficient and sell it at a high price and I could make viral

10:16

fun videos that were really satisfying to watch because it applies foam and

10:21

what I did was I didn't I did a rough Google patent search to see if something

10:26

existed nothing was really even close but more than that I just shopped around

10:31

on Google and Amazon to see if something similar existed it did not and I took that as permission to go ahead with the

10:38

idea and keep on researching the process to bring this to market let's say that

10:43

someone did own the patent on this no one's doing squat with it i just proved that with Google and Amazon that means

10:50

that the patent is something that I could probably buy outright from the person for a few thousand dollar and

10:57

let's say my grumpy neighbor actually owns the patent right and it still has

11:02

life in it because patents are only 20 years he still has a he has a patent on it that has 10 years left right so I

11:08

think I'm screwed i'll still offer my neighbor $3,000 for his patent or maybe less i'll

11:15

start at $1,000 if he says no I'll offer him a little bit more if he keeps saying no I'll work around his patent it's sad

11:21

guys but there's always a workaround but you see in all these scenarios I didn't freak out about the status of the patent

11:28

why because no one's doing anything with it and that tells me that my drive and my passion for the product is going to

11:35

far override any piece of paper that I can simply work around in a matter of 6

11:41

months once I have a solid plan and I know how to generate revenue why are we talking about how good smart inventors

11:48

who make money they wait on the patent well you issue a provisional patent

11:53

because that costs less than $150 if you do it yourself there's plenty of AIS i'll try to dig them up and list them

12:00

below uh Google patents is great for getting your baseline comparing and

12:05

contrasting draw write up a provisional patent no one at the USPTO is even

12:10

reading your provisional patent it's just a formality send it in on a piece of paper that gives you legal patent

12:16

pending status for 150 bucks just do it get it done and don't think about the

12:21

patent again for a year okay you've already checked Google patents you've

12:27

already checked shopped on Google shopped on Amazon you already filed a provisional patent that's it that took

12:34

you three hours and cost you $150 okay we're done talking about patents for now

12:40

we're focusing on profit the fourth thing that inventors do who actually

12:46

make money is they prototype for cheap in the Discord is a gentleman named

12:51

Lance and Lance has become a really good friend of mine over the years and when I had this idea the first thing I did was

12:57

I hit up Lance and I said "Hey I'm just I'm just kind of doodling on a piece of

13:02

paper but this is my idea for a foam nozzle and this is kind of how it would work." And he took a phone call with me

13:07

obviously for no charge uh because we're on a firstname basis and he'd do that

13:13

for anybody in the Discord and from there he got kind of excited about the idea i said "Yeah I could see that

13:19

working i could see that." I said "Okay well then you know let's do this let's just work together for three months i'll

13:25

give you 600 bucks a month just to be at my beck and call and let's just work out this product right?" What I didn't do

13:32

was go to a big firm brag about how I have an idea that's going to change the world let them stroke my ego and say

13:38

"Grant you're a genius oh my goodness i can't believe no one's thought of this well for $15,000 we'll take your product

13:46

from A to Z no no no no no we're going back to the cult mentality invention

13:52

design firms that is a no find yourself an independent engineer or product

13:58

designer work out a fair way to work with them you know you're finding a middle ground of price because you could

14:04

easily go below 20 grand with an invention design firm or you could just try to spend a hundred bucks on Fiverr

14:11

and get bad results and have to keep paying for revisions have poor communication with

14:16

non-English-speaking engineers and designers so let's find a middle ground 600 let's space out uh $1,800

14:25

over three months a lot a lot of you can afford that okay $600 a month to work

14:30

with someone lance is happy he knows he's getting paid i'm happy i know that anytime I have a thought or a change I

14:36

don't have to deal with paperwork and I know that the product is going to get nailed because we have the

14:42

time to finesse it and do it right well within a you know what I didn't anticipate was I wasn't going to need 3

14:49

months because within a day Lance had printed out really awesome prototypes

14:54

and he even sent me a video of him testing it on a piece of cardboard and this was awesome because

15:00

look you don't you can't spend a lot of money because you don't know how your invention is going to react or even look

15:07

or behave or feel until it's somewhat roughly prototyped you know a prototype

15:12

is not a sample it's just whittle it out of wood cut it out of cardboard make it out of epoxy 3D print it uh grind it

15:20

down mill it weld it whatever you have to do but a prototype is going to tell you a lot and what this prototype told

15:26

me was that you can actually form foam it will react because if anybody's used

15:34

that stuff it's literally devil's blood so that was that that demystified a huge concern in my mind so okay now for a

15:42

very small amount of money and time we realized the concept is solid okay but

15:47

we did want the product to be more aesthetic feel better in the hand not slip out of your hands so we did keep

15:53

reworking the product for a couple weeks and it came out to what you're seeing today a really sleek product that that

16:00

looks great feels good in the hand and it functions perfectly and this leads us into step four what do inventors who

16:06

actually make money do in this process and in the fourth step they source

16:12

manufacturing like a pro once I knew that this plastic nozzle was solid and it worked the first thing I did was get

16:18

on Alibaba because that's the lowhanging fruit that's the easiest place to manufacture find manufacturers connect

16:25

with them and begin a really strong rapport and communication right india

16:30

Vietnam Cambodia Malaysia are these available yes they

16:36

are available but I can promise you that for the development period China is the

16:44

best to work with even if you don't end up going with China the mold is going to have to be made in China they're the

16:50

only people making molds maybe Korea is making molds but they're probably still

16:56

sourcing them from China right and engineers in China are the most well

17:02

positioned engineer your product for you to put the final touches because you know Lance isn't a injection molder he's

17:09

not a mold maker so Lance may design the the the CAD file for this and it may

17:16

have conflicts and sure enough it did he he said "Look man your plastic is thick in places and thin in places this is

17:23

going to cause inconsistent swelling and expansion it's just not going to work you have some bevels that don't work

17:29

some under some undercuts whatever you know it's a language I don't speak but I still had Lance on retainer and I was

17:35

able to connect Lance and Rick on Alibaba who was a manufacturer that I

17:40

found and they worked through the details together okay again none of this

17:46

area is my expertise that doesn't matter you want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none because you can focus

17:52

on engineering till you're blue in the face but guess what it's not a huge part

17:58

of the inventor's bullseye and where you need targeted focus now maybe you don't have an engineer you don't want to work

18:04

with a lens and you're just feeling this process out and you start talking with a manufacturer and they start asking you a

18:10

lot of questions you don't understand that's when you jump into chat GPT and have a very candid conversation with

18:16

chat and tell them what questions you're getting asked and how you don't want to sound like a newbie so how should I

18:22

answer that's going to give you you the ability to keep your friend close right

18:27

keep the manufacturer close so that they will have the patience to work with you because if you start saying I don't know

18:33

over and over again they're going to think this person is never going to place an order they're never going to go through with it so you need to talk the

18:41

talk and walk the walk and chat GPT is a really easy way to do that and with this

18:46

at one one night Lance wasn't available and he was asking me about porting and venting and I just asked Chad GPT i said

18:52

"What is this guy talking about?" And it explained to me what what metal you might want to make the mold out of and

18:58

the exact names of the metal and how pent porting and venting works with injection molding all these different

19:04

terms and I was able to respond fairly quickly with a really detailed response

19:10

that let him know I'm serious i'm a buyer and I'm willing to make this

19:16

transaction which motivated him to keep on working and get this done much faster

19:21

another part of sourcing manufacturing like a pro is knowing who you're dealing with on the other end are you a trading

19:28

company are you a manufacturer are you both ideally you want both but sometimes

19:33

trading companies can be good that's basically just a middleman that could be literally one man working from home but

19:39

he has the ability to run across the street to the mold maker and then to the other side of the street to the packaging department and then uh three

19:47

blocks down to the guy making the springs and he can put all that together for you and he may be able to do it at a

19:53

fair price some factories will do all that sourcing for you which is how I usually go about it not every product is

20:00

the same so you have to kind of take what you can get and feel out the situation but what I really liked about the factory was they were working with

20:07

me as though they were a trading company as though they were a manufacturer and what was really important was they were

20:13

making molds on one side of the factory and injecting on the other side of the factory with everything being inhouse

20:20

and under one roof that's a lot less stress to me and a lot less cost to me always know where your molds come from

20:27

don't ever let somebody play middleman on that so many people want to manufacture plastics in the United

20:32

States and they come to find out that the mold's coming from China anyway so now you're paying a US manufacturer a

20:39

middleman fee for just going and sourcing doing what I'm explaining you know on Alibaba and sourcing a mold

20:46

right so know where your molds come from don't get played so going back to the nozzle what you know what was the mold

20:52

cost well that was $1,900 you know Rick quoted me $1,900 and then he quoted me

20:58

11 cents a piece to shoot these that means to inject these and make one

21:03

single piece 11 cents okay so then I factored shipping which I found Jake on the Invent with Me Discord and he told

21:09

me that I could probably get this done for 1,400 bucks so the all-in cost for these nozzles was $6,000 for 25,000

21:17

units now I think on the first order that'd be about 24 cents a nozzle but in

21:23

future orders after you amvertise the the mold cost fancy way of saying once the mold is paid off in future orders

21:31

these are only going to cost me about 16 cents a nozzle i could sell these things for $3 a pop all day long so we know the

21:38

cost is fair but do we know we can make a profit on this and that leads us into

21:43

step five of what inventors who actually make money do in this process and in

21:48

step five they price their product for profit last time I checked you're not

21:55

running a not for-p profofit is that fair to say and believe me I ran a non-forprofit for several years the only

22:01

problem was I didn't intend to okay that's not a good feeling take it from

22:06

me so you're working for profit so how do we structure how we're going to sell to the end consumer for profit remember

22:13

a few minutes ago when I said I could make these for 16 cents and sell them for $3 all day long that's not very true

22:22

now buying for 16 cents and selling for $3 is an amazing profit margin i'm not

22:27

even going to guess but it's it's in the high 90s okay so why doesn't that work though well

22:34

people don't generally buy $3 items on Amazon why when you factor in shipping

22:40

and fees the minimum amount for shipping might be you know $2.50 so it doesn't

22:46

make sense to pay for shipping on such a low dollar item if you look closely on Amazon you'll rarely find something

22:52

under $6 and the reason is the minimum fees and kind of the minimum barrier

22:57

what you'll see is a lot of six-packs and nine packs toenail clippers is a great example my wife wanted to clippers

23:03

the other day the smallest quantity she could find was a six-pack the reason is the shipping so what we do with a

23:10

product like this is we structure the sales method in three packs six packs

23:16

nine packs right simple stuff so don't just sell one for $3 sell nine for

23:22

$24.99 or a dozen for $24.99 so let's go with that let's say we're going to make a 12-pack and let's let's sell it for

23:29

$29.95 right okay so that with Amazon fees being 20% and your shipping being

23:35

another 15% um factor in some other BS costs of a couple percentage points that still

23:41

leaves you with an 80% net profit margin on this product not gross net for

23:48

reference that's a really good profit margin if I look at a net profit margin on my Amazon I'm lucky to hit 40% 80% is

23:56

outstanding but I think this is going to be a volume game and we'll get into that in a little bit but the next step how do

24:03

you move this product they market with a Z mentality now two episodes ago I did

24:09

we did a whole show about marketing with a Z mentality you can find that in the description when it came to the

24:15

marketing plan for the foam nozzle I personally wanted to shoot less videos than I do for my other company because I

24:21

just didn't have time between Torquestrap and the podcast forget about it and I wanted to consider the audience