If you’re not feeding your dreams, you’re feeding someone else’s
- Kathie Lee Gifford
Some time around forty years old, I woke up to the fact that I had put all of my own dreams on hold. There would always be time later to pursue them, a soft little voice inside me would say, as I pursued the objectives of making money in a profitable career that was supposed to someday release me from its clutches. Then I could pursue my dreams.
Real dreams do not take money. The very pursuit of money, and the eventual acquisition of gobs of it, is what will suffocate your dreams. And that’s assuming you make the Big Money you were trying to. You’re dead a long time, as my friend Randy keeps telling me, and time is short. That does not mean dropping everything and moving to a temple in
If at first an idea does not appear absurd, there is no hope for it.
- Albert Einstein
Likely, you do not have One Big Bold Dream either. Your life might be sprinkled with a dozen small dreams, supported by the effort of working in a day job. Or, you might have a dream that takes you through five or ten years of your life. Don’t let anyone tell you that your dream is unworthy—that’s not for them to decide—that’s for you to decide. In fact, it is probably a good sign that others throw cold water on your idea. Any good idea I know of that came to fruition always began by being scoffed at.
Sticking with it
Bringing a product to market has many challenges. The first big challenge is finding the courage to take the first steps towards your dream. Then there is the challenge of sticking with it when you cannot see immediate results. And then there is the wisdom and strength needed to walk away from the whole thing if continuing it doesn’t make any sense.
“That product. That was my idea!” How many times have you heard someone say that?
When you have an idea, understand that many other people have had the same idea.
- An idea by itself is not worth much.
A tiny fraction of people pursue their ideas or their dreams. Most of us go to our graves clutching our dreams tightly to our chest, never having given life to them. Maybe we are afraid we or our dreams will turn out to be worthless, and by avoiding our dreams, we never have to look defeat in the eye.
We distinguish ourselves not by coming up with ideas, but by pursuing them.
Trust in God, but keep your powder dry
- Oliver Cromwell
At the same time, there is no need to be foolhardy about it. There are ways to step towards your goal without committing your life savings to it at the first opportunity. Cash alone will not make your dream a reality. Cash allows you to avoid having to be as creative as you need to be when you do not have cash.
Keep your day job. Design at home
Search the web for a CAD program that is fun to use and will satisfy your needs. I used Alibre partly because it was below $1,000 but mostly, because I was able to make some design progress within a couple of hours of it. Spend the time to go over every free tutorial available. There is no need to spend money on extra classes.
Get a rough prototype made
Many manufacturers of 3D printers will do one or two sample pieces of your designed part. If you can’t get it for free, you might be able to get it done through a 3D printing service for a couple of hundred dollars. They charge by weight, so you could save some money by producing a miniature of your design. The 3D service you selected should be able to offer you a scaled down version of your design. When it arrives, show it and explain it to everyone who cares to listen. Keep a notepad handy and take notes at every opportunity.
Use the feedback to improve your design. Try everything, even though it might not seem like a good idea at first. The beauty of modern CAD is that you can try every little interesting design change for free. Iterate back and forth with your “team” until they are sick of you and your stupid idea.
Get more prototypes
Use the service again to get several more pieces made so you can see how well they fit together, how they feel in your hand and how they work in practice.
Bring the pieces with you everywhere you go. Sleep with them. Leave them on the kitchen table while you are eating. If you are having guests over, leave them in a prominent position so your guests ask what they are for. Continue with the statutory inventor’s conversation maker: “Funny you should ask…”
Decide on a mold maker
Who you pick and what your contract looks like is critical. Get this wrong and your product will be rubbish, no matter how good the original idea was. This is the biggest commitment you will have made so far because it defines how your product will be made, how you will relate to your manufacturers and whether the product will even work in the end.
Get commitments from your mold maker the product will work as specified. Pick a mold maker who can also do the plastic injection molding part and everything else needed to get your product in a box. This might mean ordering and adding off-the-shelf ingredients to the product.
Test the injected parts before signing off on molds
The first injected parts in your hands will be your last chance to make corrections to the product that might have slipped through. Make sure it all works exactly as you wanted. Once you sign off on the molds, it will cost you real money to makes further changes to those molds.
Place order for first production run
If you’ve done your homework so far, there will be no surprises when a pallet load of product arrives at your door, or better, you have to go pick up.
Do everything yourself
Anything you yourself can do, rather than outsourcing it, do it. This saves money but more importantly, you learn the nature of your business from first principles. If your product and company take off, the more you understand of the underlying nuts and bolts of it, the better decisions you will make.
Test, test, test.
Remember the original reason you thought your idea was brilliant? Now is your chance to put it into action. Even if you are so tired of looking at your own creation you can’t stand it, put it to practical use now. You will learn a lot from all the little mistakes you made in the design. Use what you learn to form the basis of the improvements you will make to the next version of the product, but also, to document for your customers what issues they may face when using your product.
Your dream product is in your hand
You have gotten this far. That was not so hard, was it!
The next stage, selling it, is a much bigger task and will be the subject of the next little book in this series.
The strength of a fuse is in its weakness
- Anonymous
A note about teamwork
My son plays soccer. Out of the last four weeks’ matches, his team won the first three. On his team, they have three star soccer players, and goal after goal the three stars knocked the ball into the enemy’s net repeatedly. This last Saturday, however, my son’s team lost by a landslide. They lost against a team that did not have a single exceptional individual player. They lost because it rained all through the game and the pitch had turned to mud. Why did that cause my son’s team to lose the match? Well, when you play soccer on a drenched pitch, you can’t dribble the ball; you must pass it to your teammates. But strong players don’t like to pass the ball, no matter what the coach says. The opposing team was at a distinct advantage because they were good at passing the ball to other; that was the only way they could win any match, rain or shine. The opposing team, without a single exceptional player, was strong because of their very weakness. It was an education for me to watch the other team pass the ball back and forth to each other while my son’s team ran back and forth over an unforgiving pitch, looking for openings that never came.
As a novice to plastic injection molding, I simply had to pass the ball to other players at every stage.
It made all the difference in the world.
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