EPISODE 156
In this episode we dive deep into Product Research, Filing a Patent, and Going from Corporate Accountant to Full-Time eCommerce Entrepreneur with Marc Sauer.
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Intro 0:00
Welcome, everyone to the firing the men podcast a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you were capable of more than join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
David 0:24
Welcome everyone to the firing demand podcast. On today’s episode we are joined by Mark Sauer. Ken and I have known Mark for about three years now as we met at the St. Louis e commerce meetup mark is a recovering CPA and a full time ecommerce entrepreneur. Marcus founded multiple successful e commerce brands and has been selling online for almost a decade through eBay, Amazon, Walmart, and multiple international marketplaces. Mark’s brands have a large catalog of products that he has developed as well as a recent addition that he designed. It has a patent pending, we are excited to have Marcus on the show today to share his wealth of experience with you. Welcome to the show, Marcus, thank
Marc Sauer 1:02
you. It’s good to be here. I’ve been listening you guys for a while and yeah, we’ve known each other for for quite a while, absolutely longer than three years. It feels like but but yeah, absolutely. So
David 1:12
let’s start off with that. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your path to being an E commerce entrepreneur.
Marc Sauer 1:19
Sure, currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area right outside of San Francisco. Like during mountain biking, I worked in the corporate world for a while as a as a CPA worked in internal audit and financial reporting, and then made my transition to full time entrepreneur last July. And it’s no regrets. I’ve absolutely loved it.
David 1:40
Awesome. Now I got to ask as a fellow recovering CPA, what drew you to that field
Marc Sauer 1:46
CPA, I’m probably going to do it in a little bit like some of the other factors. But really, when you go into a company, if you know the accounting, you can move all over, you can move to a lot of different places like to the leadership to an operational to a financial role. So knowing the numbers would be a great way to enter pretty much any kind of company you’d want to and then move around there. That’s what I thought, but reality isn’t really doesn’t really match that it’s not really how it works in the corporate world.
David 2:11
Oh, very nice. Very nice. Over to you, Ken. Let’s get Yes.
Ken 2:14
Yeah, for sure. So So Mark, can you share with the audience? Like how you started an E commerce? Did you first start selling on eBay? Or like where did it start? And kind of like, can you walk through like the progression of how that how that worked?
Marc Sauer 2:26
Yes, sure. I was thinking about this. And I first got into ecommerce when I was in high school. 2002 So my eBay accounts, 20 years old, and just selling things from like, garage sales and stuff. And then um, you know, back then, like, there’s no, there’s no Alibaba, there’s no safe way to source things. And so one thing I did is I would contact like, niche sporting good companies like rock climbing companies, motorbiking companies, hunting companies, and I just send them emails, like, Hey, I love your products and see some promotional material. And they sent me like, tons of posters, and I just put those in the back. Not too ethical, but first 18 year old household I was then don’t really know how to source items. And that was that that worked. It definitely gave me a win in college to spending money.
David 3:10
Very nice. Now, did you ever think, you know, three years ago that fast forward three years, you’re gonna be on a podcast with two random dudes that you met? at a at a meet up in St. Louis, did you ever foresee this happening?
Marc Sauer 3:23
No, no, I didn’t. Um, three years ago, three years is a long time the E commerce space. And there’s lots happening than with my business and macro things like COVID and just supply chain issues. And yeah, three years is a long time in E commerce. I mean, a lot of different things happens.
David 3:38
Definitely. I don’t think I envisioned it either. However, I have to say that there was a couple of those meetups for you, Ken and I over in a corner going deep on data. It was a special connection. And it’s been cool that we’ve all stuck with it. And I was great. I would not be on this podcast. Had I not gone to that meetup. So do you still go to meetups anymore?
Marc Sauer 3:58
That’s an interesting question. Um, you know, when I lived in Chicago before I live in St. Louis, I use that just to meet people and I moved there. And like, the E commerce meetup in St. Louis is great. But I live in the Bay Area, which is full of entrepreneurs. meetup.com like no one’s posted in like a big E commerce groups like yours. And like, these are groups like 600 people, and I’m too busy to really start pursuing that, you know, being an entrepreneur, so I’m kind of confused. I guess we work must have ruined it when they bought it. I really don’t know.
Ken 4:25
Yeah, absolutely. So, Mark, so you shared with our audience earlier that you’re a professional CPA and then you transition to full time entrepreneur. Calm so can you like walk the audience through how that went? Like did you plan for it? Was it a bra and any advice that you would give your salary? You know, three years ago,
Marc Sauer 4:46
I mentioned the example of like, my old eBay account, but then you know, that kind of petered out. I stopped doing that after a while I went to college I want to do graduated to, you know, a financial role or like, work for a big international companies a lot of different things. But I graduated at the worst time hit graduate college in 80 years at the very beginning of the Great Recession. So it took a while to really get back into the corporate world. And between graduating getting my first job was it took a while I did some traveling abroad, I got a master’s degree, I could write many books that no one ever read about that time period. But having been lag behind because of the Great Recession, I started the corporate world with like, a lot of energy, just like to make the time up to get ahead, get what I wanted. And I learned really quickly. It’s just not how the world works. Like, every time I tried to get a promotion or take on a new project or trencher, a new job, there’s always some, there’s always someone from the corporate world, like a corporate bureaucrat is telling me no, for whatever reason. And after my second job, after a few years, I’m just like, okay, like, I’m not getting any chances here. This is it didn’t work. Did you even get a job? And now that I’m here, it’s not working at all. Like, there’s got to be an easier way. And so I thought from being a layperson working in the corporate world to becoming an entrepreneur, a business owner, what do you start from there? What’s the first step, and the first thing I did was listen to podcasts religiously, as many as I can per day in the shower, and double speed. And one podcast that helped me quite a bit was actually Entrepreneur on Fire. Because every day, every podcast is a whole different entrepreneur and different stories. So you hear a lot of different stories, what people do. And I found that E commerce is probably the best for best fit for me, because I had lots of experience and connections in China from when I traveled there from, you know, my between years, I knew Photoshop pretty well, because I was I was dabbling like wedding photographer, but you know, I got my bypass their e commerce when you get a product. And you know, you’re bootstrapping this, you don’t wanna spend a whole lot of money, you don’t want to get a chorus or like, buy all this expensive software. I’m just so desperate, really, to get a change in my career, because it wasn’t working out. Nothing was working in the corporate world. So I literally, I’m not joking, I called in sick for an entire week. And I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, I saved my apartment, instead research on what to sell. And I just sat there, just just research. And I found that the more time you put into it, you get a lot out of it, the product research and you understand a lot of market trends, and you understand like what sells and what doesn’t sell, but I found a product, you know, I would consider it a failure. But that one product, even though was a failure name, you launch a lot of other products and another different brand. And it just keeps growing on itself and you make mistakes. But um, I guess you just got to start. And that was the important part I just started and it took them from my first sale to getting out of the corporate world took about five years. But sometimes it’s faster. Sometimes it’s longer, but depends on your financial situation, and where you live as well, and a lot of other things.
David 7:56
So let’s dive into this time period. So you’re working the corporate job, it’s not all that it was cracked up to be, at least not what you had envisioned. How long from that point in time to taking action into listening to podcasts into like that sick day? Like what what was that timespan?
Marc Sauer 8:14
It was about a year and a half, actually. Because I remember like, specifically, like I got thrown under the bus perfectly by a coworker. I’m like, Screw this, like I’m done. And I just it was his podcast every day non stop. Yeah. And just immersing yourself into it. You just have to you have to want it more than anything else. You can’t just have acid, you have to really go after it. You hear a lot of people saying that, like there are there’s no opportunities, the market saturated? Well, yeah, that’s partially true. But at the same time, there are less opportunities out there, but they’re not going to be they’re not going to visit themselves present themselves to you.
David 8:47
Definitely, definitely. Now a follow up question is something that you said you had mentioned market research. And this is something that the more time you put into it, the more you get out of it for someone just getting into this, you know, if you spent an entire week on this, what kind of stuff were you doing, then kind of as an amateur? And then what would you do now? How do you approach market research now shares professional,
Marc Sauer 9:08
what I did is I had two screens I look at this one would be Alibaba who would be Amazon. And then I also use Google Trends and just like constantly getting new ideas, anything that came to my mind, like, Oh, I’m sitting in the kitchen, look at that theoretical garlic press. And like think of that, but you know, the best ideas aren’t going to be coming from things that you see in your kitchen doing the kind of market research and best ideas are going to be things you find rent, in my opinion. But what if I would have to go back and do it I would shell out money for a subscription something like helium 10 and find like a few free courses online. I think Helium 10 offers one I’ve spent some money you know when you’re starting off in your in the paycheck, every two weeks, you see like, oh 180 $7 subscriptions, a lot of minus X percentage of my paycheck you know, and you think of it that way, which is not really the way to think about it. So you you do need to spend Money on some things very targeted things up front. You can’t be completely frugal about this but at the same time you have to money just not too much money.
Ken 10:07
Yeah, I liked that advice about not buying a $5,000 fakers. So, so mark so you’ve went you’ve successfully went from corporate job corporate America to full time ecommerce entrepreneur successfully by the way, that’s congrats. That’s that’s really difficult. And so yeah, so for someone that’s listened to the show, what kind of advice can you share with them on like, what should they be focusing on during that transition? If they if they want to, you know, go full time? Like, what are some things that they can focus on to help them out?
Marc Sauer 10:37
That’s a good question. I would say that time management’s a pretty serious one. Because like, when I started this, I was, you know, I was single, and like, I could put throw time, as much time as I could possibly into this, like, stay up really late. Call in sick for a week. It’s hard to do. I mean, if I was to start this now, you just can’t become comfortable. Like, I’ve got some friends who say, Oh, yeah, that sounds cool. I’d love to do it. But they you know, they have to go through their nightly routine a TV shows go to bed at this time. No, don’t do any work past this hour. Like you can’t do that. Like if you want to succeed or get ahead, you have to like make sacrifices you have to really want to. So in podcasts would be a good thing. I mean, like, you know, as I said, just you want to listen to podcasts, other people’s ideas and what they did and what works and what doesn’t work. Yeah, just trying different things.
David 11:25
So, so keeping this conversation going about advice and firing the man, let’s go back to your last day, like what So you started this journey five years ago, you have now arrived? Tell me about that day? What’s going through your mind? What do you do after? Get out? Tell me about that day?
Marc Sauer 11:46
Well, it’s just pretty much ready to go to the next step. And I mean, it was time everything was working was hard to leave the corporate world because I live in the Bay Area, which, you know, isn’t exactly the cheapest place, it’s probably the most expensive on Earth. But, you know, there was just so much momentum and just the corporate world was getting into like, it was just getting in the way every step that I did. And then like, you know, here, I’m managing a few employees at night. And then I’m going and doing very low end things, like was my corporate job and it’s like this, this can’t work this can’t last. And I guess since I left the corporate world, it’s just everything. It fit in perfectly. It just everything fit in terms of responsibilities, it is a struggle to with, I mean, cashflow, because you’re used to getting a steady paycheck when you’re in the corporate world. But like, when you’re in the business world, your perspective changes because an entrepreneurial e commerce startup world because so it could be getting a paycheck, or it could be reinvesting in this or that suddenly, it’s a balance, that was one of the bigger challenges and find that balance, essentially between like going from a steady paycheck to like actually having to pull money out of the business. So that was that was one of the bigger challenges, I would say,
Ken 12:57
yeah, some really, really good advice and definitely a failure on those challenges. Let’s pivot a little bit into product development. And so you’ve got some really unique products that solve problems. So without sharing, you know, the nature of the products you sell, can you share with the audience, kind of what motivated you to create and develop these products versus just launching an Alibaba me too product like other sellers do?
Marc Sauer 13:23
Right? That’s a good question. You see a lot of people that are so desperate to get into this I mentioned before how like, you have to really want it but that doesn’t mean go and buy like 1000 like couldn’t sweatshirts, Baby Baby towels, which is like they talked about or talked about in podcasts to go to meeting products. Like, don’t do something like that you got to you your first product, you have to be some you have to sell my first product was an apparel product. And I noticed this something that was popular at the time, on the train in Chicago, actually, I’m like, Oh, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that. And so that product was a failure, but it launched going along with that trend I launched like I think 100 other products like that, like different kinds of products and different kinds of apparel, other little accessories. And yeah, it’s just one by one and what was it? I had no one teach me what you shouldn’t shouldn’t do. So none of these of this first brand was no product was like a runaway six figure month product. They’re just doing every product was just doing okay. Which was great in that there wasn’t a lot of competition, so not much in terms of PPC costs, but it was hard to scale because you got all these different products. You’re just making it Okay, ma’am. And then about a year after I launched that brand, I was visiting my parents at home. And my mom was complaining about a problem she hadn’t house and she’d always complained about this since I was a little kid. It’s not unique to our house either. But I was thinking there has now that I’ve got my ecommerce store Like research carried on, like, there’s got to be a solution for this. And I, I looked on Amazon, there was not a solution for this problem like, oh, wow, this is good. I really didn’t wasn’t using helium 10, or looking at other like comparing other sales, but none of them nothing like this exists in that. And I started at that point really diving into how to get this design and it was going to take an engineer and injection molded with an IV or plastic and some other components as well. And so starting off from square one, the layperson knows nothing about injection, molding your engineering and designing to releasing this complex product that took like over four years. And that was a hard product. Because in the meantime, I found out that this problem, there’s easier simple solutions, this hard product was still a solution, but they’re easier solutions to Can I try that app. And these your solutions just took off immediately, they sold so quickly. What was funny about this as these your solution, it wasn’t a new product, it was just a repurpose product, that there’s a million different listings for an Amazon eyes for a purpose for one usage. And it just it just took off. And I was able to make lots of different variations from that. That’s the cheaper one in like different sizes, colors, different components. It’s good I can I can talk about that a little more.
Ken 16:22
I really like that you know that you solved an everyday problem by by creating a product and launching it so that can you dive into that like a little bit more like, are you doing that more with your other brand? Like with your other products? Are you are you just finding problem everyday problems and then developing solutions and launching products based on that?
Marc Sauer 16:42
Well, it’s that’s hard because like, like, for example, you go on Shark Tank, for example. Everyone’s like, Oh, here’s a problem that solves. And like, I consider this to solve a lot more of the problems from Shark Tank. But Tom is because it’s a common product that’s repurposed, you can’t, you can’t patent it. Like, there’s no way to patent it. So it’s this is pretty much the strategy there is to launch, I had to learn this too, I didn’t learn this straight on, is to launch as many variations as you possibly can. I’m just so it’s impossible to catch up with you. Because like this one products and have like 30 different variations at the end of the day, starting March. And like for someone for someone to try to catch up or like a Chinese or the mini Chinese and try to copy me like it’s they can’t do that it’s going to be impossible for them to like copy 30 variations and just like because you’re not gonna know which one it’s in sales. And it’s gonna take a lot of capital to get all the variations captured together. And so I’m pretty much as giving, like, customers an Amazon like no reason to go to another listing besides mine,
David 17:49
I like I really like that. I think the typical Amazon seller, if they’re being honest, they have failed product launches. Like I think it’s probably over 50% Personal products I’ve launched are over 50% of them just don’t really pan out the way I hope they do. And so whenever I hear injection molding, or mold costs, I get nervous. I feel like my risk is going up, I like to go play at the $5 blackjack table, meaning low MOQ. And now you need to go to the high stakes table where you have this element of uncertainty. So can you talk about that? What does that look like? What lessons did you learn as you’re going through this? And also comment on your CPA. Some people would say you have no business to an injection molding or figuring out types of plastics. Select talk about that. figuring it out
Marc Sauer 18:45
there. I’m glad you mentioned deal gambling thing because when I lived in St. Louis, I dabbled into gambling and I you know, I read poker rather not gambling, not the analytic poker, but you know losing my first $100 In poker and then I scouted to tournaments and from a $10 ticket one time I literally, I literally want a ticket to the World Series of Poker a $10,000 ticket from a $10 turn. And so you go from playing with like the locals and the local casino until like, the best in the world like I had, I had that at the time, the highest earning poker pro in the world ever, sitting directly to my left and like, yeah, you’re at a different table, you’re at different risks, but you just have to adjust your mindset to it. That mindset is the most important thing. That’s this is one example I have there. You have to really validate the product, you have to really understand how everything works. You have to you have to understand that like there is demand for it. And you have to like what I invested there at that time, the business I knew pretty much if you completely failed, it would not sink me but I believed in a lot. So you hear about all these like modern day business failures, and that’s because they bit off more than they can chew. Whereas the correct step is to take baby steps, but only, like likely with gambling only play with what you can afford to lose, you know, I lose track a lot of it like, for example, the mold in if it was made in the US, for example, I would be around $60,000. Versus in China, it was less than a third of that, and you order like the correct MOQ. So it’s not too much stuff I ordered a little too much in this time. And honestly, my first run with the mold had a lot of issues, they didn’t really do decent QC at all, I thought because they were sourcing from the wood, some of the components had issues to it, which are just as bad as a QC. So there are all sorts of problems. And so literally from the first run of this injection molded product, I’m probably, I’m probably gonna lose some money, it’s not going to be a loss, but it definitely it’s not going to be a profit, which is fine, because every single problem that was discovered it’s been fixed or getting fixed. So we’re making the second run is just about to get shipped out right now.
Ken 20:57
That’s awesome. And yeah, like, I think it’s crucial to like, share the missteps, or the obstacles that we all face to with everyone else. So you know, right ahead, like David mentioned, if he hears mold costs, he’s freaking out like, crap, like, and so you know, like, what you’re explaining mark is that, you know, there’s going to be problems, you’re just going to work through them and continue to, you know, make new versions and improve. And so that kind of leads me into my next question is, So Mark, you’re one of the people that I know that like, improves products, like consistently and very well. And so, which I think is crucial to like the longevity of a product and also to like, differentiating yourself. I know some of your brands have have been attacked by Chinese competition over the years. And so you’re always like, I’m making mine better. I’m doing this, I’m doing that to differentiate. So can you share with the audience like a couple things that come to mind on like, when you have a product? Like how are you going to make that better? How are you going to differentiate it, we can pick a random one, like a baby towel or something, but like, what are kind of the steps that you that you kind of go through to see how you can improve a product,
Marc Sauer 22:01
I’d say, I just launched a new product, I just started something new, this didn’t just launch it in the USA launched in Canada and England at the same time. And this product took a while like I had a an employee’s like kind of looked down, this can use can do some sourcing, and we couldn’t really figure it out. And so looking at competitors, and all the competitors had, first we looked at the competitors for a similar product and similar line to my best brand. And we noticed a lot of the reviews were 3.5 to four, and they’re all for all the competitors had the same issues, essentially, that was crap, it was junk. And they really made it sound like it was something more on the on the listing and I bought one and it was complete junk it was I can’t emphasize like how it was so deceiving. And so there’s, there’s many better ways to do this. And so I read the reviews, I did sourcing, I looked at the different pricing, and this looked at different alternatives and how much they were going for, and their velocity. And then I’m like, This is good. This works. But on top of that, like, you know, Amazon, between when we started now Amazon has been completely, like, saturated with Chinese sellers. And they, when they find money, they go at it aggressively. And but they’re they don’t really take chances are they don’t really do new things because they that’s just kind of the way things work in China with from education to like entrepreneurship, they want to see it like that, like verified. They want to see the revenue stream that is there for competitors. And so you look at all these things about the demand of the product. And you also looked at the listings like some competitors listings, there’ll be like, it’ll literally have be sold by Amazon literally and have one product image or like the foreign listings will have like awful grammar like Photoshop, hell, just like they just look like junk. And then you think is like somebody who’s, you know, based in America wants to do better like what can how can you improve that the overseas can accomplish and can’t do and so you put your face into it, you know, you say this you’re an American company, you say a brand’s story. You talk about your brand you talk about your company like what the mission statement talking about your history in the past. You don’t you use Photoshop absolute minimal like like for example, for the theoretical like I don’t know blender in the kitchen, like a high level, high quality listing is going to have someone in it like a real person and maybe with their kid but like a foreign competitor listing will have like they’ll do Photoshop hell, it’ll just be like someone just completely booked versus Photoshop and they’re thrown in there with bad grammar and like, Who do you think the like, typical American customer wants to buy from? Like, you have to like take those things into account and it’s going to make a big difference.
David 24:43
Now my next question, it’s two parts and still going along with product research, product development, how many will call it like prospects, ideas? are you evaluating for every one product launch?
Marc Sauer 24:57
I’d say probably that’s a good question. I’d say probably Five, five ideas, five ideas to one. But a lot of those ideas I can combine together. Okay,
David 25:07
now my, my next question is, so you kind of you have your idea bucket, right? And I kind of think of it as the top of a funnel, and then you work your way down to identifying the best product. And with you being retired CPA, I would imagine there’s some analytical numbers based rules that you’re applying or metrics that you’re looking at. And so can you talk about that, basically, that the spreadsheet math behind? Do I launch this or not? Is this gonna work or not?
Marc Sauer 25:36
That’s, that’s a really good question. I mean, for a lot of the products I launched, there were no competitors before they became very popular. So you can’t really do that you can’t really take a textbook approach, you just have to kind of like fill it out. There are several products that I’ve launched, in the past couple of years that year that like, you don’t think you’re gonna be popular, but just ordered enough for you like, I’m okay losing. So once you validate everything else that like there’s there could be demand that this is popular, but this is close enough. And this sells and the competitor sells for that much, you kind of get an idea how much it is. But you also for risk management, you kind of just you buy anywhere from I do this for new products, anywhere from like a couple 100 to 1000, depending on the price. And sometimes they take forever to sell out. And they’re not really a failure, or success. Other times, just like I’m ordering two weeks later, like a brand new batch, like huge. So there’s no real for me, at least there’s no real equation to this. It’s just kind of like its risk management, I would say, because you also have to factor into like how much time it’s going to take to get pictures and to make a video and PPC, but you just you want to get a gut feeling and as much information as possible from whatever source you can not use helium 10
Ken 26:50
Yeah, I that’s interesting, too. Because like, I don’t know that I’ve ever launched a product, like a product that didn’t exist before. And so yeah, I mean, like, you’re right, like, there’s, you can’t like go and look at competitor, like, you know, pricing and all that. I mean, you have a rough estimate of like fulfillment, you know, cost of goods, things like that. But sales velocity demand, like there’s no, if it’s a unique product that doesn’t exist on the market, there’s no data for it. And so I like that approach where you’re ordering enough to, for a market test, I would say, you know, Hey, throw it out there, you know, is it gonna stay? Of course, they’re gonna fall off the wall, and and then you go from there. So like, that takes a lot
Marc Sauer 27:29
of finesse like that I started, I’ve said this before, I can’t stress enough for anyone listening who wants to get into this, don’t take something that was a million variations, and launch it and think it’s going to be the same. It’s it’s, it’s, you want to differentiate enough where people are going to
Ken 27:43
care? Yeah, absolutely. Let’s talk about I know you’ve launched a product that’s unique. We’ve talked about a lot of these in one that you’ve filed a patent on. And so you’ve went down that that route, that journey. And so can you share with the audience? Like, what are some things about patents? And then like, what does it look like from you know, kind of from start to finish of your journey?
Marc Sauer 28:03
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good question, too. It’s a whole different world. This is kind of the tricky thing. And like, I was fortunate enough to be lucky about this. And this is for anyone listening who’s thinking about that, just to remember that you will talk to patent lawyers who are from big firms who want to make their numbers, you want to get numbers better. So they might tell you just to patent something, just patent to spend the money on us to patent it. But a lot of times, you don’t need patents, I mean, that it might be hard to protect, or some might not want something from a patent Exactly. Or you might find it valuable enough to copy it. A lot of times people want patents is well, because investors and like investors that if you ever want to sell the company, it just sounds really good. That’s patented. Because like this product, which is really unique with the startup costs and like launching it, it would be hard for a competitor to really like launched in there with the exact same design and catch up in terms of reviews and like in quality and everything. Like I mean that’s kind of the truth. Like for a lot of products there’s there’s some things that like my most like I said, my most popular products you can’t patent because it’s already common product. But I started to get my my injection molded piece patented, because it was so much money just to to put it in there. And I it was gonna be a blockbuster product. And so I wanted to get the nice patent too. And there’s two kinds of patents. I’m not an expert on this. And so when I applied for this in January, so it’s it’s been a while. There’s a design pattern, which is cheaper, faster. It’s pretty much you can’t I can I understand you had an issue with this here at one point. It’s pretty much you can’t make this exact design but from what I understand you can slightly change the design and doesn’t violate the original design patent or there’s utility patent which means it’s the utility of this product or house. The house really made or manufactured you don’t have a claim on that. You, you have a claim that being unique and it’s good for 20 years, it’s pretty much building a moat around a product. And so a competitor of mine Brexit, like they brag that Oh, patented, patented patented, and I looked at their product, and it’s patented in Europe. But it’s not fat in the United States. And so people use that a lot of times just kind of brag about it. I mean, I honestly don’t think if I didn’t pass this, there would be a lot of competition for I don’t think anyone would violate this, I think it’d be very hard for someone to violate my patent. It’s just it’s for investors. So like, for investors, I want to get outside investment. Or if I want to sell the company, I’d say it takes a while to to get to it. I looked at them just yesterday, because like I said, I applied for the patents in January, and I haven’t heard back from them yet. It takes a while for them to review it. But I’m expecting the next year or two, I should I shouldn’t be getting it. It’s not it’s a little longer than a trademark. Would you do it again,
David 31:02
no one wants to know now
Marc Sauer 31:03
actually, I can’t really say that because I I’m relaunching my my blockbuster product. And it depends, once you release a product to the market. You have, or it’s publicly disclosed from my understanding. This is not legal advice. I’m not happy. You got one year to file a patent on it before, it becomes like, you can’t do that anymore. And so I would launch it, I would, I would find that my product launch with public disclosure. So day one, you’re launching it publicly disclosure, trying to get see how well it’s going to sell. And if it’s selling really well, and you think there could be people making a copycat product, I would, I would definitely patent them as soon as you can. Otherwise, I mean, it’s a patents aren’t cheap, you know, 12,000 bucks minimum, to get that 12,000 bucks plus extra fees. If there’s an office action from the USPTO. It depends on which profit you think you’re going to make from it from a lifecycle and just kind of how big you’re looking for this product?
David 32:02
Did you go through an attorney or an agency,
Marc Sauer 32:05
I went through an attorney that my friend recommended. He was it was interesting, because he pretty much told me a non vs answer, like you’re not going to get the same thing from an a patent attorney who’s you can make a lot of money off of you versus an independent person, you want to try to independent figure because they’re their patent company, the company law firm that specializes in patents are going to try to sell you something a lot of times even if you don’t need it. So it might be hard for you want to try to find someone who can give you free advice in this friend that was learning that was recommended to me. Initially, he went back into private practice. So he referred me to someone and they specialize in patents. And yeah, took it from there.
Ken 32:47
A couple of follow up questions on that was now so you had mentioned your arrange for your patent was about 12 grand, was it a utility patent or design patent?
Marc Sauer 32:56
Those utility patent? Okay, design patents a lot cheaper, but there’s just not a lot of more protection on it.
Ken 33:00
Okay. Yeah, so so so utility patents definitely like the higher end one where it where it protects you from like functionality where like, whereas the design patent, someone can just sidestep it with just a different small little change to it or whatever. So, yeah, and then one last question is, so you mentioned, it’s been almost a year now. Now, did they say what’s the standard time for for it to be like completely, you know, I guess active or, or completed was it like two years, three years,
Marc Sauer 33:30
I don’t remember, like I looked at last night on the podcast, but I, I looked up last night on the email to see where I was at, and I hadn’t heard from them. For a while about this, I am looking at another patent for another product actually right now that I’m designing, which is similar to that the original product. But um, before you apply for a patent, you want to make sure that your product is solid, so I didn’t apply for it until the design was solid. And if you’re getting a 3d mold made, or an injection mold made, you want to get it 3d print 3d prints, you want it to make it get as close to the plastic as you possibly can, that you’re going to use, and you want it to function perfectly. So I’m designing something right now I’m on the third, 3d print. And I don’t I mean, I have to make sure that design is good, because it’s designed to work. So I’m probably going to patent patent making another patent but there’s a there’s going to be some more work to make sure that actually the design is perfect, and there’s no more flaws to it.
David 34:33
That seems like a really practical approach to to this whole process naked kind of makes it a little less intimidating.
Marc Sauer 34:40
Right totally. But I’m like you talk to a lot of like, IP law firms are like, Oh, just since independence in the patent, but I’m like, for boring for the first time like no, absolutely not. I’m going to make sure my design is perfect before filing a patent. Because this new product I’m making I don’t even know if it’s it’s the design is going to work because I’m trying some different things. This risk management
Ken 35:01
tool. One question is the products that you have now that you filed a patent on? Has anybody tried to knock you off? No
Marc Sauer 35:08
people? No, it’d be hard to knock that off. But um, there’s like me two products that are somewhat similar. And they’re just complete jumps. And you see that in the reviews and what people say about them. And
David 35:19
very nice. Well, that was that was really helpful in terms of, of the patent process, the injection molding process, and really neat story, I think, a lot of people, the first thing they do is go to launch that me to product. And I think a lot of people probably get burned out early on, because it’s just an uphill battle, when you are launching the hooded baby towel that has 1000 other sellers. And so I think that’s, that’s really neat. And it’s cool to see somebody execute on it. So now Marcus, what what do you have in store over the next 1218 months? What do you what’s on the horizon?
Marc Sauer 36:00
Sure, that’s a great question I am planning on last in the last year, I expanded to England and beefed up my presence in Canada, England, I know what the demand for my products are going to be in Europe. So I’m expanding to the rest of Europe, Germany, France, and I am expanding to Japan. So the goal is to slowly make products they’re going to be bangers no like, product, I’m not going to release the products that are just going to make a little bit of profit just going to be okay, focusing on on high income products that I can not just launch in America, but globally, all at the same time. Like I said, my last product I did, you can really make a lot of games that way, get ahead quite a bit. And tell me that I’m trying to build out a b2b segment where I would sell my products to different companies and government agencies, I actually just had someone from the Marine Corps reach out today to fill out a form 899 before they buy some of my products, I don’t know what they want to buy it. But uh, not just use Amazon, but go b2b Because you’re gonna get bigger orders bigger margins, not to pay all the fees and PPC as well, less competition. So that’s my real goal for 2023. expand internationally and go business to business.
David 37:12
Awesome. And what about beyond that 510 years down the road, I’d like
Marc Sauer 37:15
to get into more technology, heavy things. I mean, I live in Silicon Valley, people here, they’re more like they’re used to taking large sums of venture capital and making a software as a service thing or some app or something with discussing profit margins and just running with it. So So you kind of expand my, I guess, ecommerce, and just like b2b, I’d like to keep that in mind. Things that can act like ways to involve more technology, my products, things that kind of scale up faster and bigger technology footprint. So that’s kind of going to be what I’m, I keep my eye on for sure.
David 37:50
Very nice. Very nice. Well, I’ll tell you what one of us one of the three of us is going to have a seven or eight figure exit in the next couple of years. And we all need to go to Pat’s Tavern in Dogtown Missouri, where it all started. And celebrate that was that was the starting point of great relationships that have have lasted this long and will into the future. So over to you can.
Ken 38:14
Yeah, absolutely. So anything else we want to cover guys before we get into the fire round. All right.
David 38:19
Thank you ready to go?
Marc Sauer 38:20
Are you ready for the fire round? Yeah. So let’s go for it. All right.
Ken 38:24
What is your favorite book?
Marc Sauer 38:26
My favorite book? I’ll give you two books and reading right now. The corner my desk ones, the extras printers playbook. Another one is from zero to one by Peter Thiel.
Ken 38:35
Okay, excellent. What are your hobbies? My hobbies?
Marc Sauer 38:39
Besides working my business? I’ve got a two year old son and I like a mountain bike in Northern California. It’s absolutely amazing to that around here.
Ken 38:48
Really cool. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man
Marc Sauer 38:54
performance reviews about people having to give you bad feedback just because they have to give you bad feedback. Like you’re doing great and everything. But you forgotten your TPS report. So sorry.
Ken 39:07
I totally agree. All right.
Marc Sauer 39:09
I can I can expand on this question for hours. Yeah.
Ken 39:11
Oh, gotcha. Yeah. What do you think sets apart successful ecommerce entrepreneurs from those who give up fail or never get started, you have
Marc Sauer 39:20
to want it. You just absolutely have to want it. You have to be willing to get up at whatever time or going to bed or whatever time and you’d have to really want it. There’s there’s lots of options out there. Don’t give up try something new. Last few will have done made this path before out of the corporate world. You just have to focus and try new things keep innovating, but don’t gamble everything at once. Use risk management but you just have to. You have to want it you have to try and keep trying to advance.
David 39:50
Awesome Excellent advice mark. And Marcus want to thank you for being a guest on the podcast. This has been just another awesome firing the main story, somebody who who recognize that they weren’t happy in corporate America. And they started investing in themselves in learning. And they took action. And there’s a lot of people that don’t take that third step which is which is the action part and it’s really cool to, to hear your story and watch you develop over over time. So you
Marc Sauer 40:20
guys as well. So it’s been an interesting journey seeing a start from three guys with like corporate jobs in a working or meeting at the tavern to to right now. It’s, it’s quite a transition.
David 40:30
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. All right, Mark. Thank you for coming on the show. If people want to get in touch with you what would be the best way?
Marc Sauer 40:39
Sure. I would say either LinkedIn. My name is Mark Sauer ma RC S A U er, or through Twitter, which is beached B E ch. Ed. That’s my handle.
David 40:53
Very nice. Very nice. Thank you and look forward to staying in touch