You may have a patentable idea, but if it doesn’t solve any problem, then it’s useless. Before you patent something, make sure it has value. Do the idea refining and marketing first. This is what Russ Krajec believes in as a recovering patent attorney. Russ is the CEO of BlueIron, where he provides patent-related financing for small businesses. Join your host, Timothy Bush, as he talks to Russ Krajec about patents and how to do them in today’s market. Learn that your idea is key to everything. A weak idea to solve a non-problem will equal a very thin patent. Learn the value of the patent today.
—
Listen to the podcast here
How To Patent Your Product In Today’s Market With Russ Krajec
We have such a great guest. I can’t wait to get into that. This episode is all about patents. I get a lot of questions, “Should I get a patent? Do I need a patent? Do retailers look for patents? What if mine’s patent pending? What if I have a design patent, and that’s all I have?” I’m not a patent attorney. I can only give a small amount of advice when it comes to, should you, could you, and do you want to get your product patented?
One thing I do know is better to protect your product if it’s possible than it is not to protect it. It allows the retailer to know that the technology or the design in your product is unique to you. If there’s no patent on your product, then it also tells the retailer, “Anybody can make this product.” In fact, one of the suppliers that we already do business with could probably make this product for me because it’s not proprietary. When it comes to, “Should you get a patent or not?” The answer is yes, you should, if you can, if your product is patentable.
Whether it’s design or otherwise, the question becomes, “How do you do that? How do you pay for it?” A lot of my clients, people that I’ve spoken to can get a patent. They want to get a patent, but to do it right, it’s going to cost them $50,000. That’s too much for them right now. I have the solution and we’re going to talk to him. Not only is Russ going to explain to you patents and break it down for you, he’s going to offer a solution that is quite unique and very usable to those of you out there that want to get a patent but just can’t put down the money for it.
His name is Russ Krajec and he labels himself a recovering patent attorney. He believes that IP can be used as a financial instrument. He’s the author of Investing in Patents in and one of IAM’s Top 300 Patent Strategists. A CEO of BlueIron. He finances the cost of patent portfolios, ensures IP portfolios for enforcement and defense, and provides loans using IP as collateral. He is a practicing patent attorney as well as a wholesale and retail insurance broker specializing in intellectual property insurance. I know you guys are super interested, so without any further ado, let’s get right into it.
—
Russ, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to it.
When you contact me, I was looking at what you do and it’s so interesting and so different from other people that we’ve had on the show. I was interested to dive into every one of our readers and every one of my client struggles with patents, IP, and how to use it. Should they use it? Should they get it? I hear all over the board, “I don’t need a patent. I can’t get a patent. I should or shouldn’t get a patent. It’s too much. I’m going to throw it to the side.”
It runs the gamut. I thought it would be interesting for us to have a good discussion about patents in a wide range, but before we do that, let’s introduce you. All my readers are called Big Boxers because not like underwear, but they want to get into big box stores. Tell them a little bit about yourself, what you do, and then we’ll go from there.
My name is Russ Krajec. I’m a recovering patent attorney.
What is recovering patent attorney mean?
I was an engineer. I’d been through the patent process a few times as I was working at different companies, Hewlett Packard and others. I was somewhat familiar about being an inventor, but I always had this desire to invent my own stuff and bring it to market. I was working at HP at the time, I had this invention. I go to this patent attorney, who’s on my hockey team and I tell them, “I got an invention. I want to bring it to market.” It was something that would be appropriate for Home Depot or Lowe’s hardware type of product. In fact, it was a bracket to make a sawhorse, and I had a way for the sawhorse legs to fold up and they folded up nice and neat.
I’m an engineer. I designed the product. I had drawings. I had built prototypes at that time. The patent attorney wouldn’t give me any advice. I’m like, “What should I do?” He said, “You could do a provisional patent. You could do a search. You could do non-provisional patent. What do you want to do?” I’m like, “I don’t know what I want to do. I’m asking you, $400 an hour, help me understand this.” At $400 an hour, he was more than happy to explain all this stuff in ad nauseam but never gave me any advice. I wound up spending $5,000 doing two bad patent searches. I was so disappointed that I took the patent bar to become a patent agent.
If your asset is worth it, patent it quickly. Click To TweetMy thought was, “I want to understand this patent process so that I could invent my own stuff and license it.” What happened was I wound up working for that guy for about three years to learn the trade of patents, and then I went to law school, went out on my own as a solo attorney but my whole goal was how do I reverse engineer the patent system to work for the inventor. How do I create value in the patents? What you alluded to is that there are a lot of predatory behavior in the startup ecosystem and the entrepreneur ecosystem.
Once you’re on the radar, then there are all kinds of programs that are designed to ferret you out so that people can copy you.
I’m thinking more about the predatory behavior of the patent attorneys. My shtick about being a recovering patent attorney is I don’t like the conflict of interest between the client and the patent attorney. The conflict of interest is the patent attorney has a financial incentive to write you a patent, no matter if you need one or not, and they push the patents because that’s the product they’re selling. If you go to a house painter, they’re going to say, “How can I paint your house? Your house needs painting.”
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t but you’re hiring a workman to do some job for you, and you as the client need to know if it’s the right thing for you or not. There’s a lot of very bad advice that’s being touted as conventional wisdom that hurts independent inventors and not the least of which is this idea of, “You should get a provisional patent application.” Make no mistake, always wrong for an independent inventor or a small company.
You’re saying that having a provisional patent filed is pretty much a waste of time.
Not only a waste of time, but worse than having nothing. Independent inventor was trying to save money. They’re trying to be judicious with how they’re spending their cash, which is great. They do a thin provisional. Some guy down the street or I’ll follow your provisional for $1,500. That’s guaranteed going to be a problem in two ways.
One is either way too thin. In other words, it doesn’t have the legal requirements of the description or it’s way too fat and it’s got way more stuff in it than it ever should have. That turns into a long-term problem as well. It’s the same way you’re hiring a workman to do some job for you, and if you walk into a patent attorney’s office and say, “Here’s my 400-page description of my invention. Here’s my one-page description.”
They say, “File it for me.” The patent attorney is going to file it for them even if it’s the wrong thing for the company, but because you asked them to do it, they’re going to do it. The predatory behavior turns into, “Get this provisional now, I’m protected. Now I have an early filing date and all this nonsense,” but the truth is you’re going to have a good patent application when somebody spends the time to do a good job writing it. Until that happens, you have no protection.
Conventionally, people think, “If I get a provisional patent, that gives me a window of time that I’m protected. I can pool my money and maybe get some more financing to file the actual patents.” You’re saying that’s just this false sense of security.
A couple of errors that people made. One is, they think that I have a false sense of security. Here’s the problem, is that they behave as if they have ironclad patent protection on a provisional.
They got moat. They’re in the castle.
What do they do? They go out and start chirping about their invention. They start telling the world about it. They start offering it for sale. They start doing all this stuff, but in reality, they’re not protected at all until they file this non-provisional provided that their patent attorney does a good job of that. They won’t be protected until after that happens, but they’re behaving as if they are.
What’s a provisional patent for then?
It was created and the patent laws changed about 1995 when they started harmonizing US patent law with all the European stuff. Before that, the foreign patent applicants, essentially, they’d be able to file in their country, wait a year, come to the US, and then they’d get their patent in the US. Essentially, foreign patent owners would get an extra year of the patent term because they could start a year later.
US applicants were not able to get that extra year because we had to start on day one, and so they had this provisional thing that allowed you to wait, and then you started your patent protection. That was essentially what it is about. It was a way to put the US applicant on the same playing field as with the foreign guys. The thing is, for a startup company, for an entrepreneur, you want that patent as fast as possible, not as slow as possible. The point is the provisional is delaying getting your patent.
Provisional is not patent protection.
It’s a placeholder. Anytime I file a patent application, I can check the box and say, “Make this a provisional or make it a non-provisional.” I checked the box provisional and nothing happens at the patent office. Up to a year later, I could refile it and then I get in the queue to be examined. I’m delaying my patent. The eventual patent, I can delay it up to a year by using a provisional.
The only purpose is to delay getting a patent. That’s it. If you look at pharmaceuticals, there are very few patents that make all their money at the end of the patent term year 2021. Pharmaceuticals do, but stuff that we’re trying to get into a big box store, we’re worried about people knocking it off next year not between 2020. We, as small-time inventors, want to get our patents as fast as possible, not as slow as possible.
That is just super contrary, too. Believe me, I hear all the time, “I have my provisional.” We all, including myself, exhale a sigh of relief. You got your provisional, but that’s like saying, “I have a blocked artery, but I’m going to put off getting a stent put in for a year.” Maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe it’s not. Probably not a good idea, but if you have a blocked artery, you want to get that stent put in as soon as possible, not wait a year.
There are a couple of ways you can get patents fast. There’s this thing called patent prosecution highway, which is the best way to get patents fast. Essentially, I could get a patent issued in six months, in my hand, printed and published in six months as opposed to delaying a year. It might take you 3 or 4 years before you get a patent, but that patent in your hand means you can enforce it.
Patent in your hand means you can raise money against it. You can borrow against it. You can sue people who infringe, you can take them to court and all that stuff exists when you have your patent. That’s part of the problem. Part of my heartburn with getting provisionals is that they’re designed to delay getting the asset and if the asset’s worth it, you should get it quickly.
Another thing that comes up a lot that I haven’t been able to nail down any solid answer to is, is there anything that you could do with your product that then negates your ability to patent it later?
In the US, we have this one-year grace period. If you put something on a website, publish your idea, or offer it for sale, even if it’s not built, but if you offer it for sale, you have a one-year grace period to file your non-provisional patent or file the complete description of the thing. I’ll tell you a little bit about the business that I do is I will finance the cost of patents for companies. I’ll finance the patent when I think the patents going to have value, and how do I know if the patent has value? We do the market research. We do the heavy lifting of figuring out, can we build the product? What’s our cost of goods? Is there a real market for it?
What’s the retail price for it? What’s our wholesale price going to be? Is there a real business here? If we go through that exercise, we have confidence that there’s a decent business here, I’ll finance the patents. Typically, we’re not trying to do one off patents on single products, but my investment thesis is making sure there’s a market, and then the patent will have value as opposed to, “I got this great idea, isn’t it? It’s a billion-dollar idea.” There’s no billion dollars to sales. Making sure that there’s a real market is far more important than making sure that you have a patent.
Make sure there's a market, and then the patent will have value. Click To TweetFirst of all, I feel bad because I feel like I was trying to build up to this bomb dropping, “We finance patents if you have a good idea, but you can’t afford to get a solid patent, boom, that’s what we can do for you.” I feel like we didn’t build it up to that.
Make sure there’s a market. The hardest part is not the idea. The hardest part is the branding, addressing the real customer need, and figuring that out, and then the idea falls from that.
The same thing goes, it used to be years ago in my business where I would just turn people down. They came to me with a product and I would say, “No. That’s not going to work in retail.” I felt bad about it. Eventually, I came up with a product evaluation process. I take clients in the evaluation process. We take them through eight categories and the categories include their product partly and partly their company, because for a product to be successful, there’s a company component to that success, too.
Retailers don’t just want to partner with a product. They can do that now on their own. They have sourcing agents all over the world. They don’t need your help to get a product. What they want to do is partner with a company that has a product or a line of products that’s out there that has a following. When we evaluate their product, we also evaluate the company, but we go through extensive pricing strategies, and then we give them a score from 0 to 5.
For us, products that rate out 4 or 5, we have about a 75% success rate getting interest from retailers on those products. Once they’re a three or less, it drops off dramatically. It sounds to me a little bit like that’s the same thing you’re looking at with a patent is it may be a good idea, and I always go back to, because one of my favorite Shark Tank is where that guy that came up with the little clip that goes over the camera on your laptop. He was just so pumped about this little clip. When you’re not using your camera and nobody can look and David Herjavec says to him, “Can I put a piece of tape over my camera?”
“Can’t I simply close my laptop when I’m not using it? Do I have to have this clip?” The guy’s presentation went off a cliff because it was a patentable idea. He had a patent on it and nobody else had done it, but it’s not a product that he’s trying to invent a need for something that there’s no need. People will figure out how to cover their camera on their own. I constantly remember that because, don’t create a problem to solve. It is your product solved a problem that people will pay for. That’s a good example for you. The guy had a patent, if the product was patentable, just not sellable.
They went to a patent attorney and the patent attorney took this guy’s money.
Probably a decent amount of it.
He got paid up front. He took no risk. “You’re going to be a billionaire. Here’s my invoice.” The guy paid happily. Here’s the other thing, is that independent and vendors do not understand how the sales job works when you talk to your patent attorney. When I first started and I was working for a patent attorney, every time when you file the patent application, you shake their hands. You say, “Congratulations.” You tell them, “Good job. This is fantastic. You just got your patent application filed.”
When the patent issues, you do the same thing. The ceremony was important. When I was working at the law firm, I’d get stuck with all the independent inventors because I was a young guy. Somebody come in the office, I’d talk to them and I’d be like, “That’s interesting.” You’d hear them on the cell phone, walking out the door, “Mom, the patent attorney thought it was a good idea.” The reason why I’m a recovering patent attorney is I don’t like that predatory nonsense. Think it through, show your work, do the heavy lifting to see if there’s a real product here. If there is, do a good patent and do a good job of it.
It’s easy. I get a lot of people call, “I got this great idea. What do I do?” The last thing you should do is get a patent. Here’s another reason why you want to do the patent later. When you go through that eight-step process of figuring out every little component of the business, the product, and it was a customer need, you learn things.
You learn how I can cost reduce this product. You learn how I can package it appropriately. You learn what does the customer want. All that stuff informs what should be in the patent. On day one, the lightning bolt hits me and I write down the ideas that I have, I have very little data to support the investment in a patent. I ask people to go through that thought process, the learning process of building out that idea, finding the right product that fits it, do the heavy lifting of the engineering and the marketing, then write the patent.
There’s so much more that goes into it. I’m a member of a couple of inventor Facebook groups, and every day there’s somebody on there that has an idea that they want to license. I say it 100 times that generally, nobody’s going to license your product that’s unproven just because you have a good idea. You need to build it, patent it, sell it, prove it, and give it some value, and then somebody might be interested in buying it from you, licensing it. Unless you came up with the 90210 poster right at the peak of 90210, then probably not, but I can see how easily brought drawn in these inventors are because they’re good at coming up with an idea, but they don’t know all that’s involved in.
They look to you. “You’re an attorney. You’re here to protect and help me, and therefore I will generally trust, whatever you say,” rather than looking at the attorney of, “This guy is here to file patents. That’s how he makes his money.” You go to a divorce attorney. He’s going to try to give you a divorce. You go to a bankruptcy attorney. He’s going to try to put you through a bankruptcy. That’s what they do. It’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with that, but eyes wide open going in there. You go to a bankruptcy attorney, probably not going to talk you out of filing bankruptcy. It might give you some options, but in the end their job is to do that for you.
The same thing with a patent attorney. The attorney-client relationship is two elements. One is that if I’m your attorney, I’m your agent. You tell me to do something. I’m your guy. I have to go out and do that. I can practice in front of the patent office or at court. You want that done? My job is to go do it for you. That’s pretty well-understood. The other part is this fiduciary responsibility. I’m supposed to tell you the truth and the hard facts that you need to know, but the problem is that the hard facts you need to know directly conflict with my personal interest.
I wouldn’t make any money if I constantly told you, “The patent is going to cost you $50,000 and then you probably got another $200,000 to put into this before it’s even sellable.” Nobody’s going to have a business that way.
There’s a lot of predatory activity. “I’ll write your provisional. Whatever you want.” They downplay that fiduciary responsibility, and the truth is the patent attorney’s duty of care is to get you a patent. How do I get a patent for this? Maybe I’ll get some undetectable method claims that I know are easy to get through the patent office.
He’ll show it to you, sign this document and say, “You looked at this, is this what you want?” You’re like, “I don’t know, and I’ll sign it.” They wind up calling me later because we’ll do loans using patents as collateral, too, and they’ll say, “Can I borrow $2 million or $20 million on this patent?” You’ll look at it and like, “This is a completely undetectable method claim.” It is undetectable.
All you did was take your best trade secret. You paid an expensive attorney to publish it for the world to see, and you have nothing in return, and then they’re asking me, “Can we borrow money again?” I’m like, “No, I can’t because these patents aren’t very good.” That’s where the disconnect happens, where you, as the customer, need to know, are you hiring this person to do something that’s going to add value to you? All of these ideas we’ve tossed around are that fog that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially first-time inventors just haven’t experienced yet and don’t know how to navigate.
Let’s not burn all the patent attorneys at the stake. I’m sure that there are probably some decent patent attorneys out there in the world, and so to you, decent patent attorneys, well done, eyes wide open. I’m going to create a scenario for you and we’re going to walk through several of the things that you do. Let’s say I created this completely unique sports product. It helps a significant amount of people do something that they’re not generally able to do right now.
It enhances the value of their game and their happiness of their game, but there’s nothing like it on the market. It’s not a tweak on a current product. It’s a brand-new, never been seen before product. I’m able to prove to you that it’s needed, wanted, price-effective, and it has good margin. I have all these surveys that I’ve done. I’ve been out to tournaments and talked to professionals and I bring all this to you. What is it going to cost me to get this thing protected?
The US average cost for writing a patent application is between $12,000 and $15,000. That’s the entry fee. That is just writing the description of the invention, writing the claims and so on. We send it into the patent office, and then we have the back and forth between the attorney and the examiner, and that usually takes a couple of years.
There are different ways you can expedite it, but you will typically pay twice as much in what we call the prosecution, the back and forth with the examiner as you will for just writing the application. Cash out of hand, if you went down the street to the average patent attorney, you’re going to spend $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 before that patent arrives in your hands. You can mitigate some of that by doing better patent searches ahead of time.
We’re pretending that I’m an inventor. I’m not any type of a patent. I came to you with my invention, but nothing else.
When starting a business, the hardest part is not the idea. It's the branding. Click To TweetDo I want to finance that patent? I want to see a business reason for why that patent has value.
First of all, just to patent it, it’s going to cost me $45,000 to get a good defensible patent that I can feel and sleep at night. Let’s pretend that I’m able to show you that the product is wanted, needed, it has a space, it enhances people’s lives, and I have people lined up already to buy it and retail it. Let’s say I have all that, and you’re going to make an offer to me to finance that for me because I don’t have the $50,000.
What we typically do is finance that $50,000. Our typical deal terms are a loan for that amount that becomes due when the patent issues. We typically structure this loan and you pay interest only payments until the patent issues, and then you pay principal and interest afterwards. The key about this is that you can walk away at any time. What I’m saying, if I’m financing your patent, is that you can walk away from the patent at any time and I’m happy to take it back. I’ll live with the patent if you don’t.
If I walk away then you own the patent?
Yeah. If you don’t pay the mortgage on your house, you don’t get to live there anymore. Same credit deals. For me, it’s about having some skin in the game and I’m designing that patent to be licensable, to be salable, that it will survive litigation, and I’m happy to take it. If you go to a regular patent attorney and you get halfway through the patent process and say, “I don’t want this anymore. Why don’t you take it back?” They’re not going to do that. You paid for it, you bought it. I’ll put some skin in the game and I’ll make sure that I do a good job with the patent.
If you’re going to end up with it, you don’t want to end up with something that has no value. Obviously, you’re the only going to finance it if it’s worth anything and you’re going to do a hell of a good job patenting it so that if you end up owning it you have an asset. How long on average is this patent going to take?
It depends on what the business need is.
Give me an average.
On the fast end, we could get a patent in six months. Published patent in your hand in six months, and we do that through the patent prosecution highway. It’s a lot of pushups. I’m going to compress all that expense into very short period of time, but I can get a patent quick. If I take the normal route, it can wind up being 2, 3, 4, 5 years before the patent issues.
If it takes 3, 4, 5 years, can I sell it during that time?
Yes.
If I don’t have $50,000 now, chances are I’m not going to have $50,000 in six months.
You don’t have to worry about that. Once we filed a good patent application, not some thin provisional, but fully described invention, you go out and start selling all day long. In fact, the bet that I’m taking with this financing is twofold. One is I’m betting that the patents are eventually going to have some value, but I’m betting that you are going to be successful.
I’m not taking a percentage of revenue. I’m not taking, “This is a billion-dollar thing and I’m taking 10%.” No. It’s none of that nonsense. I’m just trying to finance that amount of money over the time that it takes to get the patent. I’m hoping that you’re going to be in business and be able to repay your loan. If you are, I am happy.
If you’re making billions of dollars on this $50,000 patent, I’m static. I want you to have all that upside. My thought process is I’m not trying to retire on any one of these ideas, not a single one of them. I want to do this by the train load. A bunch of individual patents, not just one and I’m retired. It’s a lot more thoughtful. It’s a lot more workmanship and procedural. This is what I’m trying to look for a good idea, make sure the company is going to be successful. Make sure they have everything they need to show some success and then make sure the asset is going to have some value at some point, then you make an investment.
I assume based on your model that you do end up owning some patents. What do you do with those?
I try to sell them on the secondary market. I use patent brokers who know how to unload these assets and they have a Rolodex. They know people in different companies that acquire the assets. They’re typically patents wind up being trading cards in some litigation. There are different routes for selling the patents.
The truth is I might have to sit on that patent for 5 or 10 years before the market comes to that idea. The patents have no value until somebody brings a product to market. If you’re successful in bringing a product to market, the patent will have value. The patent has no value until you do all that heavy lifting.
When you sell a patent or you’re looking just to recover the money you have in to it, are you looking to make a profit or both?
You try to sell it for as much as you can, but the reality is if I have patents that are infringed by Apple and Samsung, which I have a portfolio that’s out for sale right now, I’m lucky to get $200,000 out of them. The best you can get is maybe $100,000 in asset out of them. Let’s say I have a patent on some consumer product that nobody is producing, you cannot even give those things away.
I spent $50,000 on it, maybe I could get $10,000 out of it. The patents have no value until their sales in the market. Before that, the patents have speculative value. We can look and say, “Wouldn’t it be great if 100,000 people were buying this product every year? Wouldn’t it be great if many people were using my new sports training aid?” It’d be great and I could run these spreadsheets with lots of zeros on it, but the reality is if nobody’s buying it, it doesn’t have value yet, and somebody has to make the investment to make that patent have value.
Bringing this whole thing to a close, somebody has got an idea. It’s a good idea. Give me one thing that they need to do and one thing that they shouldn’t do. I feel like we’ve already done that. They need to go to you, and don’t do a provisional patent. If there’s a mistake that most people that you come across make, what’s that mistake that they shouldn’t do other than provisional patent?
They give up too soon. A lot of people, and this is myself included when I had the product that I mentioned, I think, “I’ve invented this thing. I got a patent application filed. How come there’s no money? Where’s the money?” I should be able to license it and somebody else has to do all the work.
The real entrepreneur is the one who takes the creativity that they use to create the invention and applies that creativity for, “How do I bring the product to market? How do I validate that there’s a real market here? Who do I talk to, to generate some interest? How do I go to those professional sports tournaments and get people to use the product and get me some endorsement?” That hustle, the entrepreneur creativity, the business creativity is every bit as important as, “I got this great idea.”
You have to put in the work. Unless your name is George Clooney and you came up with your own vodka with your buddy, lying on the beach in Mexico, you’re going to have to put in the work. By the way, even he had to put in a tremendous amount of work to get that thing done, but the bottom line is you’re just Joe Schmoe. You’re going to have to put in the work. There’s no easy way around it.
Once you filed a strong patent application, you can go out and start selling. Click To TweetThey style themselves as, “I’m Mr. Idea but I’m too lazy to do the heavy lifting.” If I flip that around, “I don’t have the creativity to go out and try some guerrilla marketing tactic.” That’s nonsense. There’s enough creativity in the market. You can just read the blogs, listen to the podcast, post on guerilla marketing or clever marketing, and there are people that are trying interesting things. If you’re creative in the idea stage, you can be creative in the marketing stage. If you put those two things together, you’re unstoppable.
Big Boxers, what we’re talking about here is if you have an idea and it’s good, you’ve done your due diligence. You know it works, but you don’t have the money to get a real patent, Russ can help you with that. It’s a clever idea. It’s a great way to help out inventors and entrepreneurs. Don’t give up so easy. Understand that you’re going to have to do some hard work. It’s not just about your idea and now you have some backups, something to go to. Russ, I appreciate your insight and the information, super invaluable.
Hopefully, I’ve given you a different perspective from the normal pablum of all run out and get a patent and all of a sudden, you’re magically protected.
It’s a little bit of a disrupt there. I liked that a lot. I appreciate you being on. Thanks so much for your time and we’ll look forward to chatting again.
Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.
—
Big Boxers, welcome back. Russ has left the building. What an interesting guy, what an interesting concept. A lot of great information, especially just blowing my mind on provisional patents, pending patents, and the misconceptions around those and how we’ve been taught that, “You’re protected if you have a provisional. You’re protected if you have this type of patent.”
Great information, Russ. Thank you so much for stopping by. Thank you for giving us a wealth of knowledge and also, thank you for offering your services, because there are a lot of people that just don’t play in the sandbox because they can’t get that money. They’ve spent money on production and getting their product created and then now to protect it all the way, another $50,000 seems like a lot, but it’s worth it. It’s needed, especially if you can do it. Russ, thank you for coming by. Thank you for your knowledge. Thank you for what you do. I’m sure you’ll be getting a lot of calls.
Guys and gals, listen. It’s good to talk to you and to be bringing you some information. I’ve been holding onto this. Russ and I had this talk back in June 2021 but a lot has been going on, and so it’s taken me a while to get it out. I’m glad to finally get it out there to you. A couple of quick announcements. If you haven’t been by TLBConsulting.com, go by there. Lots of cool new things there. More information about the VIP Group, which is continually growing. We now have 32 people in that group. A lot of cool information happening there. We’re meeting every single week 7:00 PM Eastern on Wednesdays.
If you are thinking about or in the process of taking your products to regular big box retail, this is where you need to be. There’s no place on Earth that you’re going to hear more up-to-date information and real-time sales with buyers than you will in this group. Everybody in this group is super dedicated to launching their product and get it into retail.
It is a great place for collaboration, and if you want to know, how do I talk to buyers? What do buyers say? What do buyers ask? What do they want to know? How do I negotiate a deal? What about vendor paperwork? If you want to know any of that stuff and you don’t want to learn it in a book and you don’t want to know what people used to do several years ago, you want to know what people are doing right now, this is where you need to be.
Go to TLBConsulting.com. Click on VIP Experience and sign up. We’re excited to have you. I can’t wait to meet you. Also, a lot of other cool stuff in there. We’ve rearranged things so that it’s a lot cleaner, easier for you to navigate in there and easier for you to sign up, purchase, pricing, worksheets, and anything that you need. Anything that you need to get your products on the shelf is going to be at TLBConsulting.com. It’s great to speak to you and be back in the microphone. I’m looking forward to next time. Until then, I look forward to seeing your products on the shelf.
Important Links
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the On The Shelf community today: