Founder journeys are always interesting… most are packed full of ups and downs. Here is a story of a new founder (Sarah) who had a product idea and would not give up. She showed that tenacity and being humble are great assets to have for a new founder. Learn from real-life stories of what it takes to get your idea off the ground. Mike Grabham recalls the story of Sarah.
Transcripts here.
Hello there everyone, Mike Grabham again today. You know, I just want to share with you today a story of a founder who really emphasizes tenacity and never stopping, never giving up. It’s just a great, great story. So, I met with probably seven or eight founders over the last couple weeks, and that’s fairly normal for me. You know, not all based here in the northwest, some based outside the northwest, and there’s one founder that I met and I’m going to call her Sarah.
It’s not her real name and I’m not going to talk about her product. But it’s a consumer product, she’s going direct to consumer, it’s a fairly small product with some plastics and electronics. And I just want to share with you her story and how she got to where she is today. It’s just a great, awesome story.
So 18 months ago, Sarah had an idea. She was working out her idea, trying to find how to produce this idea. She never had a product, she never had a company, never done a startup, never done any of those things, she had a full-time job. She kept her full-time job and started working on this product and just doing some drawings, and started meeting people and talking to more people and trying to learn about how to make the product, and what she needed to make the product.
She met with over 30 people. Somewhere between 30 and 35 people. And what she was doing was both learning and trying to find someone to actually help her build the first prototype. So after over 30 people, she found two gentlemen that could actually help her build this prototype, which they did. That took her 12 months to get that far. And once she met with that person, or those people, to help build a prototype, in 60 days, 60 days, they had a prototype built. So it tells you that, you know, it wasn’t a hard product but she had to find the right people to help her build the product. And she did that by never giving up. Keep asking questions, keep asking for help, keep looking for people that could help her.
Those are the things that are important when you’re building that first product. So, you know what was really interesting, so she spent 12 months to get to that stage. Now, over the last six months, she now has quit her job, now she’s working on this full time. She’s doing a lot of marketing testing and et cetera now that she actually has a prototype that works. She’s doing all the right things and she’s not spent a lot of money, which is really the way to do this. She’s testing the whole way through about, will people buy it? What will people actually buy it for? And who is the target customer that is actually interested in the product? She’s doing all these things and doing a lot on Facebook ads, et cetera, which you guys have all heard me talk about before.
I just want to reiterate the fact that here are the things that she had that I think every one of us have to have is, we have to have tenacity, we have to be humble, we have to be able to ask for help. Ask anyone for help. We have to look past our limitations as an individual because we can’t do it alone. We have to have help to build whatever we’re building, no matter what it is.
Feel free to share this on Instagram or Facebook or Linkedin or wherever, wherever you wanna share it. And if you have any comments, please leave them below. I will answer all of them, I promise. And of course, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and until next time, thanks a lot, have an amazing day.