This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey there, what's up? This is Chris Guillebeau, back with you here again on Side Hustle School. I hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode about the equine lover who ponies up to change horses in midstream. You know, sometimes it's good to start on the spur of the moment, but you also don't wanna put the cart before the horse. Well, good news and better news for you today.
Good news, today's story illustrates this lesson very well. Even better news, I won't be mentioning anything else about horses for at least the rest of this episode. Don't be a naysayer though, they may come back later. Now moving on, I don't know about you, but I am always cold. I pretty much wear long sleeves every day, even in the summer.
When I check into my hotel room, I put the temperature on like 76, that's in Fahrenheit. I think it's something like 300 degrees Celsius. Just kidding, it's actually 24, but that's warm. So I don't like the cold at all, but I do like to run. And as much as possible, I try to run outside regardless of the temperature.
Well, today's story has something that it sounds like I need. It's a product designed by a runner for runners who get cold. And on the show, I try to present different perspectives. So often you hear a perspective of just start, don't worry about the research, go for it, fast track. And I think that is really good advice for a lot of different projects and people.
Because you can get paralyzed with indecision, you can spend forever planning something and never do anything about it, et cetera. However, there is another side to it. And if you have the personality of doing research, being methodical, if it's really important to you to prepare, and in fact, if you wanna do something like get a patent, which you'll hear about today, well, you might like this perspective and you might like this story. It's coming to you right after this. [Music]
In Baltimore, Maryland, Susan Clayton has owned a hair salon for 22 years.
She's also dabbled in real estate, but she's moving away from that to focus on a side hustle she's very passionate about. The Baltimore, Washington, DC area can have some pretty extreme weather. It gets hot in the summer, but winters can be cold. Susan is an active runner. And when she ran in the colder months, she couldn't find gloves or mittens that felt comfortable, especially for running, yet also kept her fingers warm, thus accomplishing the main purpose of mittens.
One day she even saw a friend of hers running with socks on his hands. And she thought, "I can do better." But you know how this story goes, right? She couldn't find what she wanted for herself, so she decided to make it both for herself and for others. There were two processes that came next. First was the manufacturing process, or really the design and manufacturing process.
Susan had a vision for something specific and she was a knitter, so that was helpful. She knitted the first prototypes herself. She tried a few different versions, experimenting with them while she was out running. And when she settled on what she wanted, she turned to a website called Makers Row. It's kind of like Alibaba, which we talked about in another episode this week.
Makers Row is a directory where you can find all kinds of manufacturers, textile, and fabric companies. Through that website and eventually some other referrals, Susan was able to find a manufacturer to produce the first batch of her idea, which was now called Run Mitts, like running with mittens. Now we could look at that process in more detail, but I actually want to fast forward and talk about something that we haven't covered at all on the show. That is the process of getting a patent. Now this question comes up a lot to me.
You know, I have this idea. I want to make sure my idea doesn't get stolen. How can I protect it? How can I patent it? My response is honestly, most of the time, you don't need a patent.
It's a very time intensive, expensive process that you'll hear about in just a moment. And most of the time, your efforts are much better spent just trying to develop your product or service in the first place and put it out to the marketplace and see if it has a good response. That is more important for a lot of people and a lot of projects. However, this story is an exception. Susan is exceptional.
And she really wanted a patent for this because the mitten she made came from a simple design that she knew would be easy to copy. She had come up with something that was different from all the other mittens in the world, at least somewhat, but the design itself was not complicated. So she knew it would be easy to copy and she wanted to protect it. So how do you get a patent? Well, most likely you're gonna need a patent attorney.
This is a lawyer that specializes in this process and you can do this process yourself as well. But if it is really important for you to have this patent, your odds of success are gonna be much higher with someone who specializes in this and knows how to navigate the system. And it is quite the system. So to find that person, Susan just Googled patent attorneys in Baltimore and then called one. Most reputable attorneys who specialize in this field will do at least a brief initial consult for free to see if your idea is worth pursuing.
And then if they like the idea, if they think it has merit, then they'll take you on as a client. Susan and a potential patent attorney talked on the phone and then met in person and both of them decided to proceed. Now, getting a patent is not a short process by any means. This process for run mitts took three years, mostly in an extended waiting period where your application is in and you're just kind of standing by for months. It's also not cheap.
It almost always costs at least a few thousand dollars and it's not unusual for it to even be $10,000 or a bit more. Susan and her attorney were able to keep costs relatively reasonable, but it's still not something you can do on the cheap. Still after spending the money and waiting all that time, Susan emerged victorious. She received her patent number from the US Patent Office. It was numbered 9,220,307 and she now felt confident about putting her product out without worrying that someone would steal it.
For her, that investment and the long wait were both worth it. Now, the first sale on her new website run mitts.com was to her brother, but it was still exciting. After she sold the first pair on the site to someone she didn't know, she was over the moon. This is her first season selling the mittens and she's done more than $10,000 in sales so far. Most of the local sales in Maryland have been to friends or at running expos, but naturally her website sees sales from all over the country.
Now that she has her approved patent and a good manufacturing process, Susan is excited to move from the product development phase to a more active marketing phase. So she's getting out to more of those expos, improving her website and planning to ramp up. She says she's learned so much over the past year in particular, and now she's ready to get to work implementing. Speaking as a person who is always cold but still likes to run outside, I'm so glad she pursued this dream. [Music]
So congratulations, Susan.
Susan is creating an asset for herself, not just a fun product that meets a need, but now a patented one that she can continue to develop. And if this business ever grows to the point where she has the opportunity to sell it, well, the patent is a very valuable part of that asset. So as I said, it's often much better to just focus on getting your idea out there. That's what a lot of our stories have done. That's what a lot of our listeners are working on.
But if you have an idea like this, well, maybe it is worth the research and the waiting period and the investment. Just as we talked about yesterday, you always wanna make sure that your decisions are guided by your goals, what you hope to accomplish, and why you're starting this side hustle in the first place. So I hope you think about that. I hope you take one step today that will get you closer to creating some kind of asset for yourself or otherwise creating security for yourself. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.
Today's episode is number 132. That means you can find the show notes, learn more about Run Myths and Makers Row at sidehustleschool.com/132. It is a joy to bring you these stories every day. I'll be back again tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
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