Inventor Beware!

Did you know that 1 in 3 inventors have spent from $8000 to $12,000 on scams that claimed they would help the inventor get his/her product to market? Such scams, traps, and raw deals are rampant. Of the 8 women I interviewed for my book, The Right Sisters: Women Inventors Tell Their Stories, four of them told stories of buying into such scams.

So inventors BEWARE!

My friend Louis Foreman, the Executive Producer of the award winning program “Everyday Edisons,” offers this advice: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”



The most important thing you can do when you first get started is lots of homework! Always carefully research anyone offering to assist you in getting your product to market. Check out the reputation of any person, company, or organization BEFORE you spend a penny.

I’ve found the United Inventors Association (UIA) to be particularly useful. They offer a terrific 10- part miniseries entitled “What Every Inventor Needs to Know” in which the first episode is all about avoiding scams. Obviously, UIA recognizes what a problem scams are for inventors.

Check out UIA. You can subscribe to UIA for free and get a monthly newsletter as well as access to the mini-series.

And remember to always do your homework!

Naming Your Business

Early on, a friend who owned a business said something that stuck with me. “Get a name and put it on everything.” If I was going to put the name of my business on everything, I knew I had to decide exactly what I wanted in a name.

When I came up with KleenSlate, I knew it was right. I was starting over, changing careers at mid-life, so the name was relevant to me personally. At the same time, the world was moving away from chalkboards toward whiteboards. I felt like the old term for chalkboards—slates—fit once again, and using it as my company name could help bring it back into fashion. I changed the spelling of clean because I thought the misspelling signified the need for erasers. I was having the time of my life and when I said KleenSlate, it made me smile. “This is good,” I thought. “When I tell people about my product, I will always smile.”

Since then I’ve read what experts on branding have to say about choosing a name for a small business. It boils down to 4 essential considerations. Choose a name that:

• is easy to spell and pronounce,
• describes what you do
• distinguishes you from others
• will bring you business.

By carefully thinking about a name for my business that related to well to both my invention and myself, I also managed to stick to these rules. I love the name of my business; it still makes me smile.

What are your questions or thoughts about naming your business?

Philanthropy-Giving Back

Ever since I started KleenSlate Concepts, I’ve looked for opportunities to help others as a way of acknowledging the help that has propelled my inventor journey. For instance, I frequently donate product to schools locally as well as across the country and internationally.



I learned about philanthropy from my mother as well as from the generosity of others. When I was a kid, my family lived in Mexico while my parents did graduate work. Because they were going to school, they had to get resourceful about how to earn money. Mom started selling homemade granola to the local super market. It was soon a reasonably lucrative enterprise. When we were ready to move back to the States, Mom turned the business over to our housekeeper. She taught her about business, especially bookkeeping, and she introduced Maria to the store manager as her business partner.

When I was a single mother at 20, I realized that an education could get me out of poverty. I enrolled in the local community college, Columbia College, where I applied for and was awarded various scholarships. The generosity of people who established these scholarships helped me through tough times. The gift not only helped me financially, but it also boosted my self-esteem because I felt like someone believed in me.

That’s why I’ve chosen to donate a portion of the proceeds from The Right Sisters: Women Inventors Tell Their Stories to fund a scholarship at Columbia College for women like me—young women in difficult situations who recognize that education is a way out of poverty.

My mother’s generosity was a significant influence in my life. Philanthropy is as important to me as the more practical issues in the inventor-entrepreneur life—things like patents and manufacturing and promoting.

I’d like to hear how readers are repaying the help they’ve received during their inventor journey.

The Birth of an Idea- Part 2

Wanda Plimmer is the inventor of the Nursing Nest, a device that supports a nursing baby. Wanda is one of the inventors featured in The Right Sisters.

Wanda's idea for the nursing nest was born following an emergency C-Section to deliver her first child. She describes the conditions that prompted her invention this way: "My incision hurt, my lower back hurt, my shoulders hurt, and I had Carpel Tunnel from holding him up for so long. I was falling asleep sitting upright on the bed in the middle of the night, and twice I dropped him onto the bed. I couldn’t believe how unsafe I felt dealing with this tiny baby when I was exhausted and hurting."

Inventors often create out of a sense of frustration. Many people feel like there has to be a better way when frustrated, but inventors use that feeling as their source of inspiration.

Wanda was terribly frustrated after the birth of her son as she tried to nurse him. She turned to books and health care practitioners who explained that she could nurse laying down if she used blankets to prop her baby. But even though this helped a lot, she was still frustrated. Here is a excerpt from The Right Sisters describing her moment of inspiration and what she did about it.

The only problem was that for each feeding when I needed to reposition to the opposite breast, I had to shift all the blankets and pillows that I had arranged. One night about midnight as I was nursing Joel Walter, I had this sudden image of what I needed to make this work so much better. I got out of bed as soon as the baby fell asleep and went to the kitchen to find the electric carving knife. Then I grabbed a slab of foam that I happened to have. I didn’t know exactly what the end product was going to look like, but I had a good sense of the shape it needed to be. That night, I created the first prototype for the Nursing Nest.

The thing that distinguishes inventors from other dreamers is their pro-activity. When they imagine a solution; they get to work to make it happen as Wanda Plimmer did. Tell us how you were pro-active in bringing your idea to life.

The Birth of an Idea-Part 1

Folks are often curious about when, where, and how an inventor first gets an idea for an invention. That's one of the questions I asked the women inventors whom I interviewed for the the book I'm writing: The Right Sisters: Women Inventors Tell Their Stories. Their answers to these questions illustrate the creative mind at work on a very practical level.

I thought my blog readers might enjoy reading a few excerpts from The Right Sisters that zero in on the birth of an idea. Here is a short segment describing the moment when I got the idea to make my first invention:

My younger son Joe wanted to make a gift for his basketball coach. “Mom,” he said, “Can you help me make a dry-erase board with a diagram of the basketball court? And can we get some markers with erasers on the end? Coach is always erasing with his hands and then he wipes his hands on his pants and he’s covered with black smudges.” My fingers were also black at the end of the day as were my fellow teachers because we used our hands to erase rather than reach for the block eraser. I went on the Internet to look for a marker with an eraser, and I quickly discovered that there was a 1.8 billion dollar marker business, but not one company had designed an eraser to go on the end of the pen. Joe and I both had the same thought: A person wouldn’t buy a pencil without an eraser, so why buy a marker without an eraser? Right then I thought, “This is it! I’ll invent an eraser and I’ll take it to market.

Little did I know the challenges that lay ahead that would change my life forever. Best of all, that little eraser helped send Joe to college!








Stay tuned for more excerpts from The Right Sisters. And please if you have your own story about the birth of an idea, drop us a note in "Comments."

Michael Jackson, Inventor

Yesterday, millions of people said good bye to Michael Jackson. His death was shocking, especially to those of us who spent years listening, dancing, and working out to his music.

For several days following his death, stories about Jackson filled the airways, revealing many shocking, as well as amazing, details of the man’s life. As people gathered for his memorial service, I followed the story on NPR and learned this surprising fact: Jackson had a patent. He was an inventor!

Of course, we know he created extraordinary music as well as dance steps, but he also invented and patented a system related to dance. According to “Discovery News,” the title of the patent was: “Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion.”

It's a system that consists of a special shoe that has a hitch designed to attach to a projection in a stage. When the shoe engages with the component in the stage, the performer can lean forward beyond his or her center of gravity. (To see a video of the shoe in action, click the link above.)

The creative mind comes in many forms: scientific, practical, and artistic—and clearly the boundaries are fluid. Having always appreciated the creativity of the man, I can’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction at having this small connection with Jackson’s legacy.

Homework is not a 4-letter word: Preparing to Meet with Corporate Buyers

If you are in the San Francisco area next Tues., stop by the Mascone Center and say hi! WBENC (Women Business Enterprise National Council) will be hosting their Annual Conference: The Bridge to Quality . Check out the web site for more information: www.astrawba.org/wib_2009
Wendy Steele from Tapewrangler, http://www.tapewrangler.com, and I will be giving an enlightening workshop June 9th from 4-5:30 at the Moscone Center, Gateway Ballroom room 103. "How to Prepare to Meet with Corporate Buyers" Come by, pick up some tools and tips and learn about how certification can move your business to the next level. Hope to see you there!