This is my first invention, at least the first one that I have applied for a patent for.
It is a drawer liner keeper for rubber non-slip drawer liners. These drawer liners keep the contents of a drawer from sliding all over the place when the drawer is opened or shut. The problem with the drawer liners is that they slide as well, thus rendering the drawer liner rather useless.
I created these drawer liner keepers. They are small 1″ square pieces of plastic with self adhesive strips. They have a tab that you simply insert the perforation of the drawer liner over in each corner of the drawer.
There is a little video on the site that explains how to install them as well as the before and after results of the installation. You can find them on my site, www.drawerlinerkeeper.com.
Since Elon Musk is in a way a modern day Walt Disney, how about Elon taking his business ideas and actually create a real EPCOT, the way that Walt Disney imagined it, not a theme park.
Walt said “EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.”
I’ve wanted to be a part of Walt’s original EPCOT idea since I heard about it. I remember in October of 1966, just 2 months before Walt’s death, Walt airing his whole EPCOT idea. What a concept I thought. I want to be a part of this. In 1966, Nasa was in the midst of the Apollo program, eventually headed to the moon. Walt wanted to play a part in it, if nothing else, to get people excited through his animation team explaining the dream to America. What Walt really wanted was to see what the brightest minds of our country could come up with. Walt saw the advances that science was making. As scientists, first there has to be an idea, an aha moment, then the testing of the hypothesis, and finally the creation. EPCOT was going to try and bring together the brightest minds as well as those with incredible imagination. Brad Bird, the director of ‘Tomorrowland’, the Disney movie about a boy that invented a rocket pack that ended up in a sort of EPCOT, was a tribute to the original EPCOT idea.
Fast forward 50 years to today. With Elon Musk’s ‘The Boring Company’, he could actually use this company to accomplish the underground roads that Walt’s crew conceived to keep traffic out of the city. Elon seems to be echoing many of the thoughts that Walt had, creating underground tunnels to mitigate traffic in high congestion areas, primarily in EPCOT. Musk’s new company hopes to increase the speed of these tunnel boring machines 10 fold to reduce the cost of the whole tunnel boring process.
Walt also saw the direction that our cities were headed and wanted to build a city that showed what was possible, for those that wanted something different, something that was forward thinking. Elon has also said that he wants to do something to stop our dependence on fossil fuels, thus helping with climate change. This is forward thinking, not just thinking about the present, but to the future.
It’s obvious that Hyperloop, one of Elon’s other projects could also be integral to a modern day EPCOT. It would be Walt’s version of the WED PeopleMover on steroids. I actually had this idea when I worked at a fossil fuel testing facility 30 years ago. I’m glad that Elon is pulling this off. We can use low pressure air to move pods, much like the drive through bank teller pods that you put your money in to make a deposit. This would be a great way to get people in the city to the place they need to go.
Creating EPCOT would be a small scale prototype city, one that if it works on a small scale could be applied to larger cities. If the main purpose of this new EPCOT would is to be an incubator of ideas, it would hopefully spurn other cities to follow this lead. Instead of declining cities and wringing our hands about the future, it would put a more hopeful slant on our existence, being excited about what would be thought of next. Heck, EPCOT could stand for Elon’s Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
I realize that I’m not the first person to make this connection, but maybe if enough of us keep planting this bug in Elon Musk’s team, they may realize that there is some merit to it.
I’ve often thought that maybe there would be enough people out there who wanted to see this become a reality and to put together a ‘Go Fund Me’ site, but really a ‘Go Fund EPCOT’ site. If the likes of Elon Musk or Richard Branson, who are billionaires don’t think that creating the original concept of EPCOT is for them, maybe the rest of us who do believe that there is merit to the idea could create a collective entity that is funded by individuals like you and me. Sounds far fetched, but then again isn’t that what EPCOT was in the first place?
I have owned an e commerce business for 16 years. Before you go into an e commerce business, you need to be aware of a few things. If this will be your only presence, I mean no real brick and mortar store with actual customers walking into your store, you need to consider your personality type. Do you need people to interact with during the day? I’m not talking employees, I’m talking the people that maybe you currently are helping by providing a service or product. Do you enjoy the banter of these customers, getting to know them, actually establishing a relationship with or are you the type that does not enjoy interacting with customers? If you do not enjoy interacting with customers, then an e commerce business may be just your ticket as you rarely will talk to any of your customers and most likely will never meet them in person.
I thought I was the latter kind of personality; I didn’t really need to interact with my customers, I just wanted to grow my business. For many of my customers, I had become a friend, not just a merchant. I knew about their struggles as well as their successes. I knew the name of their spouse. At times, I felt as though they came in just to chat, even though they would throw me a bone (purchase) when they stopped by. I pride myself on being a good listener and felt that I wasn’t just selling them my services, but also my time, being there to listen, as many of them were business owners who wanted to chat with another business owner about the challenges of being in business. Some of them wanted to talk about personal struggles they were facing. I felt as though I provided a safe place for them to express whatever they were going through. When I started transitioning to a 100% online business, I wasn’t there to greet them anymore. I had hired other staff to do that for me. At first, when they did see me walking to my office they would joke, “Well look, you do still work here. I thought you had moved to CO.” After awhile, they stopped coming by entirely, even though we still had a store presence. My staff had been trained to be very friendly and helpful, but to my customers, it just wasn’t the same.
When you have a brick and mortar store, you can only stock but so much inventory, therefore you pretty much know what you have in stock. When you have an online store, the sky is the limit regarding inventory. You can list millions of products, never stock them and have no clue what has been listed. When you have a brick and mortar store, sure you can order something for someone, but typically most people wand and need it now, therefore, you know what is in the back warehouse. When you have the actual inventory, you know what you paid for it, but when you simply offer it online, you may or may not have it in stock and the price may very well have changed since you listed it online. Instead of maintaining say 2,000 skus, now you are maintaining 500,000 skus and you never know when someone is going to buy a sku that you just haven’t received the most recent pricing for or didn’t have the time to update your pricing online. Whoops. Also, did you put in the correct weight for the item or did you forget that too? When it is in the warehouse, and someone is standing in your store and wants it, they typically are not going to ask you to ship it to their house. They want you to let them put it in their car or truck. No shipping needed and no shipping lost.
Let’s talk about shipping. To get all of these orders to people, you are going to need to hire people to receive the product in, put it in a bin and when it gets sold, you need someone else to download the order, print the pick ticket, then go get the item in that bin, package it properly and get a label printed to ship it. Did you download the most recent shipping rates on your site and does it work or did you forget to do that too? Packaging isn’t free. There is cushioning, boxes and tape that needs to be kept in stock. How about packages that get damaged? Will the shipper cover it or did you pack it wrong? Oh yeah, you need to ship out another one for free because it was damaged. If a customer drops an item carrying it to their car, typically they aren’t going to look to you to give them a new one for free.
Online is all about doing more of this right here, looking at a computer, …..all day long. Do you enjoy this? If so, then owning an e commerce business may be right up your alley. You are going to need access to a developer and by the way, these people aren’t cheap. Many times you are looking at $100/hr or more, unless you bring someone on-board full time. There is also the software that will be needed to manage all of these online orders. You need something that is powerful enough to manage your online inventory as well as synch to your actual inventory software. The more you know about software, the easier it will be for you.
If you have a brick and mortar store, you know all about advertising. You may even use Google and Bing now, but you will need to do much more advertising if you want to sell online. If you are just starting out, your website will probably be on like page 9. You must be on page 1, at the top of the fold (top of the computer screen that does not require scrolling down). The only way to do this is to use pay per click advertising from the search engines. Depending on your market, this could be very expensive or only moderately expensive. We have a lot of product on our site, so we spend upwards of $8K per month, which to some isn’t much at all and we have been online for 16 years. Just because you pay the search engines money doesn’t mean they are going to put your ad on the first page, you must meet all of their criteria in order for them to place you in those top key positions. You can manage your own PPC ads at first, but it is best to have someone else do this for you as you grow.
When you have a brick and mortar store, you have the advantage of talking to your customer and giving them all of the reasons why they should buy your product. When you only sell online, you do not have this luxury of having the customer in your physical presence. You can have all kinds of great ad copy, but it is too easy for people to leave your website and go to another. If you have them in your physical store, you have a better chance of converting them to a sale. You can ask them what it would take for them to buy your product and be willing to negotiate with them, not so online. You get one shot. I do know that all of us use our phones to shop for better pricing many times when we are in a brick and mortar store, but we don’t do that 100% of the time. Sometimes we just want to buy it and leave, we don’t want to price compare to 10 other places. Online, it is way too easy to price shop. If your product is exactly like someone else, you can price shop within 5 minutes, choose the lowest price and be done with it. You will find that if your product is exactly like another, Amazon and Ebay will probably have the exact same item with free shipping. If you start playing that game, it will be a quick spiral to the bottom where nobody is making any money. Having a unique product is your best bet to owning an online store. Have a unique product and your online store should see success, but don’t just be another one of those sites that offers exactly what 10 others offer unless you have some exceedingly great offer that makes you different than anyone else.
I know that brick and mortar stores are closing all over the US due to on-line shopping, and brick and mortar stores need to figure out how to combat this. It’s not 1950, nor 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 or even 20015. It’s 2017 and on-line shopping is changing retail. People want delivery to their door. Back in the day, you could simply call your grocer, tell him what you wanted and he would deliver it. On-line shopping allows you to do this EXCEPT, it’s not your local grocer, it’s a company across the country with bulk buying power that is putting your local small grocer out of business; sure you as a consumer saved money, but you do not have a relationship with the CEO at Blue Apron. You are simply one of thousands of orders per week, a number. It’s a tough market out there, and there is a possibility that your site is better than the next guy, but you better have something unique or a new twist for your site or you will be competing on price and that is never pretty. Use your imagination. Don’t just create site number 1,456 of the same stuff that others are selling. If you create something that is unique, it has a better chance of succeeding, but beware that having a business on-line is like surfing. You may have a secret spot, but others will eventually find your secret spot requiring you to keep finding those secret spots.
When you go to a theme park or a zoo, you have a chance for a little while to forget about life. It’s a place where work and other issues of life are left behind. Typically there are walls which keep the outside world at bay; the hustle and bustle of life. When I was a kid, we went to the park and the zoo often. It’s ok to put life on hold and simply enjoy the animals or whatever rides and shows that the park has to offer.
You’ve heard that phrase before. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” Sometimes, no most times, what is obvious to others is overlooked by us.
Have you ever been so focused on something that you don’t realize that your direction is totally off? Running into consistent road blocks it’s obvious to those watching us to try another method, but we continue on hoping somehow that the results will be different this time. It’s like trying to chop down a tree with a hammer; maybe if I just keep hitting it harder it will fall. Does it occur to us to use another tool? When you are the one doing the activity, it’s hard to get another perspective. It requires leaving the activity for a season to gain proper perspective. At times it requires even more, or should I say less. It may require quiet contemplation seeking the divine guidance given to all of us, if only we should ask.
There is a saying out there, “If your dream doesn’t scare you, it isn’t big enough.” For one, finding that dream sometimes is the biggest challenge. I’m a dreamer, but for some reason I seem to be stuck; I mean really stuck, like for 2 years stuck. I’ve never had problems coming up with new ideas, but to come up with that one big dream for myself, I am stuck. I would think that this “big dream” would just come up and slap me in the face, but so far this hasn’t happened.
When I was a kid, I wanted to build space ships, amusement parks and flying cars, but now that I am 61, the reality that this takes major money and education that I just don’t possess. I know that seems like a cop-out. For one, Disney already built some of the coolest amusement parks, so unless I want to work at one, why duplicate something that is already almost perfect. Flying cars, well it seems that these are just starting to evolve, in the way of drones. Since this is new, maybe it’s not too late for this. Space ships, well SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing this, but still they are stuck using LOX and SRB’s. For space travel to be a reality, some physicist needs to discover anti-gravity.
I started a tool repair business because I enjoyed tinkering. I mean, it wasn’t tinkering with cool cars, but at least it was tinkering, using a modest sum of money to be able to launch my self into business. This evolved into selling tool parts on-line which does a pretty good job of paying the bills, but lacks in the creativity department. I would actually let this business be run by someone else IF I discovered that big dream, but I haven’t.
Do I discover the dream or does the dream find me? I think dreams are like seeds, divinely planted within us. It’s up to us to water and nourish the dream, but we can’t make the seed. Man has tried to make seeds to no avail. We can make new plants by making a hybrid which produce seeds, but we can’t create seeds. Only God can make seeds. In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus says that it is the smallest of seeds, yet it grows into a tree that the birds of the air can roost in. When God plants that seed within us, don’t minimize the size of the seed, because we don’t know what God plans to do with that seed.
I have decided to not force the dream. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like down time. I must redeem the time I have been given each day, but this is something that I need to learn to do. I will release it, let it go until I know that another dream has been planted within me.
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