The Balls for the Job:
Part 2
In Search of a Million-Dollar Idea
It’s been a while since I published Part 1 of The Balls for the Job: How to Survive the Roller Coaster Life of an Entrepreneur. I realized I hadn’t explained why I was writing this story or why it’s titled The Balls for the Job, which is a metaphor for self-determination. It’s also because one of our most successful consumer products, Sneaker Balls® sport shoe air fresheners is ball-shaped. That ball shape was also the subject of our trademark infringement lawsuit introduced in Part 1.
Why am I writing about our experience? Libraries are filled with stories of successful entrepreneurs, billionaires many, who achieved breakthroughs in medicine, sports, technology, and the arts. But few stories focus on the lives of everyday entrepreneurs/inventors who struggle through the ups and downs of making a living on a small to medium scale over decades. I wanted to give you a decades-long picture of what it’s like to get started in business and to overcome the defeats that punctuate the wins over time.
Friends asked me why not publish a book the usual route instead of publishing these stories on Medium. The answer is simple. This is where entrepreneurs and start-up junkies — who read — hang out. And it’s free.
One of Henry David Thoreau’s most frequently quoted sayings is “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That may also be said of many entrepreneurs and small business people. But Thoreau’s intent in writing Walden; Life in the Woods was to show we don’t need to lead lives of quiet desperation. We can improve our condition.
I read a statistic 50 years ago that 90 percent of American males dreamed of owning their own business. Today that desire applies to many women as well. The reasons many dreamers don’t achieve their dreams of independence are many. One reason, I believe, is the “entrepreneur as a rock star” role model feels unattainable for most people, so why try.
We can, however, be happy with success on a small to medium scale. When I was in high school a friend of mine said he wanted to be an inventor, but he lamented that all of the best things have already been invented. He was making a joke, of course, and went on to invent and patent a product used in the automotive and woodworking industry.
My point is, it’s never too late to create. You don’t need to be a genius or have grown up in a particular place or time to exercise your creativity or to follow your passion or express yourself or become an entrepreneur even if you never attain fame or fortune.
This is Part 2. of the story, which will be told in 41 parts, is meant for anyone who dreams of controlling their destiny. You will learn how Mary Lou and I have ridden this rollercoaster for the past 45 years and never become media darlings or filthy rich. Our journey hasn’t always been pretty and that’s important to understand because learning how to climb out of the holes is as useful as knowing how to leap over them. Anyone who dreams of living the life of an entrepreneur needs motivation to get started. I hope this story will nudge you forward. If you haven’t read Part 1., or it has been a while, here is a recap before we move on.
In 1994, my wife and partner Mary Lou and I had spent nearly four years in and out of Federal District Court in Denver, Colorado defending our Sneaker Balls® shoe air freshener trademark against retail giant Footlocker. Those years felt like a war: destructive, divisive, depressing — not between us, but against our infringer. The night after our attorney’s closing arguments, and before the jury rendered their verdict, Mary Lou and I were sitting on our back porch mentally preparing for the trial’s outcome. We talked about what we would do if we lost the case. We recalled that summer night 19 years earlier in 1975 at Elitch’s Amusement Park in Denver, Colorado when, like a madman, I had blurted out to her, “In the next hour I’m going to have an idea that will make us a million dollars!” I had said it in earnest, and she had looked at me with eager twenty-five-year-old eyes and asked, “What’s the idea?”
“I don’t know. I won’t have it for another hour.”
If necessity is the mother of invention, wishful thinking must be the father.
Permission to Fail
One of Mary Lou’s many talents is making people feel they can achieve anything they put their minds to. As a fifth and sixth grade teacher, she inspired her students with that can-do attitude. If you have ever been lucky enough to witness ten-year-olds perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet on stage, and do it well — the entire play — you would know that this is only possible through the magic touch of a gifted, committed teacher. The sorcery she laid on me that eventful evening at the amusement park was something I later came to think of as my “permission to fail.” Her open smile and the straightforward question were a kick in the butt, “Why don’t you quit the foundation and do something on your own?”
She could have suggested I stay at the Western States Arts Foundation and work harder to get along with my boss — who by the way was an exceptional leader. I was the problem, not him. Mary Lou could have suggested my expectations were too high. She could have suggested I was performing a valued service and should stick it out. Instead, she said,
“The longer you keep doing something you hate, the longer it will take you to find something you love.”
That was not easy to hear. After all, this was 1975 and the country was in a deep recession. We weren’t married yet, and I had a son to care for plus a mortgage and a car payment. I also had a great health plan at the Foundation. Wasn’t giving up a good-paying job and chasing an unformed dream the definition of recklessness?
On the other hand, I could take her suggestion as a vote of confidence. As you will read later, we faced many turning points in our married life when we had everything to lose, yet she acted without fear. Even today, at age 70, after 41 years of marriage and the ups and downs of working together, she negotiates life with confidence and purpose. She feels fear, of course, we all do, but she is not controlled by it. I mention this because it’s not easy to be an entrepreneur, hearing the constant warnings from parents and friends about the danger of walking a tightrope without a safety net. And they are right; it is dangerous. Still, doing what makes you miserable also takes a toll.
One of the corollaries we learned when developing new products is, “The longer you nurse a bad product idea, the less energy you have for finding a good one.” This is true of every decision we make in life.
In any event, let me move ahead and tell you how the so-called million-dollar idea was born that night in an amusement park.
Was This Our Wheel of Fortune?
My son and his friend decided to move on from the arcade to an amusement ride. We followed behind at a distance, continuing to talk. As we roamed, we noticed a crowd gathered around a booth in the center of the midway. Adults and kids were bent over what looked like record turntables. They squirted paint from ketchup-type squeeze bottles onto 12-inch-square illustration boards attached to the turntables. The spin speed was controlled by a button connected to the turntable. The centrifugal force made the paint spread to the edges, generating abstract patterns and shapes on the artboards. Most of the designs people created amounted to blobs and blots, but with some artistic talent and some luck, one could produce an interesting abstract design. The random nature of this process was called Spin Art.
The four of us jumped in and became artists, discovering how to control the paint spread and the bleed with enough precision to create some engaging designs. We dabbled until we had a dozen pieces we thought suitable for framing. Total cost, about 20 dollars.
On the way home, we wondered if our great works had commercial value? Could we sell them? Where? Art galleries would laugh at us. Especially if we revealed how we made them. Still, some designs were appealing, and when cropped they seemed intentional as if we had planned the result. It was impossible to duplicate the originals using a spinning turntable because we couldn’t control the outcome. But…what if we photographed our originals, made color separations and offset printed them as lithographs?
This wasn’t as easy or inexpensive to accomplish in 1975 as it is today. We needed to invest in four-color film separations at a cost of $250 for each image, plus pay for printing plates and printing. Photoshop wasn’t born until 1990, so we couldn’t digitally enhance the designs. The inkjet printer didn’t become a home consumer item until 1988 when Hewlett-Packard released the DeskJet inkjet printer, priced at $1000, so we couldn't print them at home.
There was no easy way to test our designs either. The internet had yet to be born, so we couldn’t upload prototypes to a website or Facebook or Instagram to get peoples’ reactions.
If we wanted to sell our masterpieces, we would need to print a few thousand copies to make the cost low enough to sell at a profit. But, how would we reach the market if not through art galleries? What would make them special enough for someone to buy? We didn’t know the answers, so we put the idea on the back burner and let it simmer. Mary Lou prepared to return to the classroom that fall, and I went back to my job at the Foundation.
A month or so later, a close friend in the ad business invited me to join him as a guest at the Denver Advertising Federation monthly meeting to hear a lunchtime presentation by an advertising guy touting a new advertising concept called “positioning.” That lunchtime lecture was a revelation and it turned out to be the motivation I needed to position our Spin Art masterpieces.
In Part 3., you’ll see photos of our artworks and learn how the power of positioning made me think seriously about quitting my well paying job to become an entrepreneur.
