Invent It, Sell It, Bank It!: Make Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality Read Online Free PDF Page B

feeling at ease around strangers can be a challenge if you’re naturally shy, but it’s critical that you be able to draw people in and read them well, even if you’ve only got a few seconds with them, so that you can tailor your pitch accordingly. There’s also a bit of showmanship required for great selling, so if you suffer from stage fright, now is the time to start working on beating it back. Acting classes, comedy classes, public speaking courses, and especially improv classes are great training grounds for introverts and others who want to sharpen their communication and presentation skills.
    If you’ve done everything you can to improve your salesmanship, but you still don’t feel that you can represent your product the way it deserves, this is one of the few instances in which it would be not just acceptable but also imperative to bring in someone else with better people skills to do your presentations and pitches for you. You’ll probably hate that bit of advice. How could I suggest that you trust someone else with your baby, someone who couldn’t possibly care about it as much as you do? I’m telling you, if public speaking is really a struggle for you, you have to do it. It’s the only way you’re going to get anyone to pay attention.
    Finally, if your business is large enough, you could ask an employee to pitch for you, or you could hire an outside sales rep or distributor. We’ll talk more about how those business arrangements work and their advantages when we get to the art of the pitch in Chapter 7 .
    One Last, Important Thing…
    Although it is not a character trait, there is one other thing a successful inventor needs, and I would be remiss not to mentionit here: money. All the passion, confidence, drive, determination, charisma, and showmanship in the world will not help you if you don’t have enough money to pay for the bare necessities, such as a prototype and travel expenses so you can meet with buyers and show your product. In addition, count on everything costing more than you think it will. There are many inspiring stories of people down to their last dimes whose inventions saved their families from financial ruin and went on to make millions. There are many more who spent everything they had on their inventions and were left with nothing to show for their efforts. This book is filled with advice that should help you avoid that kind of disaster, but nothing can change the fact that invention is still a risky business. Be prepared. We’ll discuss where, when, and how to pursue funding options in more detail in Chapter 5 .
    A SUCCESSFUL INVENTOR DOESN’T NEED…
    A Business Background
    Many inventors are extremely entrepreneurial and business-savvy, the types who knew they were going to create their own business from the time they learned to tie their shoes. They start selling glow sticks to schoolmates at the age of nine and are working on their third business plan by the time they are in their early twenties. I was not really that person. In retrospect, however, I can definitely see that I had an inventor’s brain, which is a lot like one of those spinning-wheel fireworks, the kind that shoots flames and sparks as it rotates in a pyrotechnic whirl of color and light; the kind that once it catches fire, there’s no stopping (you’re probably nodding your head in recognition).
    But though my mind was constantly spinning with ideas, there is little in my background to suggest that I would become an inventor and entrepreneur. I studied television, journalism, and film.I gave up my journalistic ambitions because I thought I might like to make movies, and I also dreamed of being a Tony Award–winning playwright. I handcrafted my own jewelry and I never, ever read the business section of the paper. You really never met a less business-y type than me. If that sounds like you, take heart—a business background can be helpful to inventors, but you don’t need it.
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