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Guest: Dan Klitsner, Inventor of Bop It.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
What Successful Toy Inventors Learn Through Iteration
Bop It inventor Dan Klitsner shares lessons from hundreds of toy ideas, including timing, relationships, iteration, play value, and disciplined execution. You will also hear practical guidance on invention strategy, licensing readiness, product testing, partner selection, intellectual property strategy, and launch planning.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Failures are the best way to lead to success
- Toys blended with industrial design
- Toys are generally creating opportunity, where products solve a problem
- Don’t just think of products as a problem solving tool
- Everything is RITE (a formula for how to evaluate your idea)
- Relationship, Idea, Timing, Execution
- Meetings that are failures, they can be learned from
- A great idea is only one part of the puzzle
- Pretend that your idea is only a 5 out of 10, then improve it
- Timing is not luck, you can gauge this via research
- Relentless listening to everyone and everything throughout your product journey
- Knock on the right doors, and enough doors, to find a good fit
- Listen to your prospective buyers
Episode transcript
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Read the full episode transcript
Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a toy inventor with tens of millions of its units in the market on how to
Kevin Mako: use best practices from the toy industry to make your product a big success.
Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,
Narrator: product developers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial
Narrator: idea to getting your product on store, We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business.
Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses. Now, on to the show.
Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Dan Klitsner to the show. Dan is the inventor of the super popular toy Bop It, along with over 300
Kevin Mako: other toy inventions that are in the market today. Bop It alone has sold more than 30 million users. units. Dan has been in the product game for over 25 years with over 500,000
Kevin Mako: followers on social media. Today, Dan is going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventors, startups, and
Kevin Mako: small manufacturers can use the best practices from his success in the toy industry to build
Kevin Mako: and launch a successful toy product and how those lessons can apply to success in any hardware product vertical. Now, on to the episode.
Kevin Mako: Hey, Dan, welcome to the show.
Kevin Mako: Hey, Kevin. Thanks for having me on. Great to have you on. I must say, first and foremost, you've got like 50 of your toy products sitting
Kevin Mako: behind you. For the listeners out there that can't see this, you'll have to turn into YouTube one day
Kevin Mako: when we put these live because that is one of the most spectacular backgrounds of your many
Kevin Mako: accomplishments. And I know that's only a drop in the bucket for all of the things that you've done
Dan Klitsner: over your 25 year career. Thanks. It is for those who can't see it. This is actually my home studio. And it's also a music studio.
Dan Klitsner: And those are guitar hooks that my wife one day said, hey, those things you hang your guitars with, you should put your Bop Its and Simons. Because I do a lot
Dan Klitsner: of products that are three-dimensional and have done a few toy guitars. So I started to put them
Dan Klitsner: on the wall. And what's great about them is you can just pull things on and off if you know how guitar hooks work.
Dan Klitsner: It's turned out to be the perfect product to hang my products up behind me.
Kevin Mako: Very cool background. Appreciate it. It's a great eye candy for me anyways on this recording here. Let's jump into it.
Kevin Mako: Give the listeners a bit of a background of your 25 year history and the 300 plus products that you've had licensed over the years.
Dan Klitsner: How did that all start? And how did that all start? you get to where you are today? Well, I have always loved to draw and build stuff since I was
Dan Klitsner: little. And I think that I've always connected to people through play, starting with friends and
Dan Klitsner: family, just to shortcut how that became an industrial designer, loved it. And then somehow combined industrial design with games.
Kevin Mako: And that sort of describes most of the products are created. Amazing. And like even just Bop It itself is sold over 30 million units.
Dan Klitsner: And that's just one of many of your product lines? Yeah, I can't believe it. It's been 25 years this year and had no
Dan Klitsner: idea. I can't believe it's been 25 years, but also that it is a product that kind of combines
Dan Klitsner: my passion so perfectly that I'm just so excited that it's lasted. And that is, I said, industrial design, games and music.
Dan Klitsner: It's become something that I've done a lot with since then. And it's also, I think it's taught me a lot of lessons that I then could apply to a lot of the other
Dan Klitsner: products that I then created after it. And that's some of the things I think would be great to
Kevin Mako: to share with everyone is what, you know, it's one thing to have a hit and have that be a great thing, but what can you learn from it? Well, I appreciate it.
Kevin Mako: And I'm sure we'll jump into some of those lessons today. I'm really looking forward to that. I find it amazing that you put together
Kevin Mako: three passions that you had, essentially into one and created this phenomenal product and then leverage that to continue pursuing the passion that you had, the creativity
Kevin Mako: that you had. So let's talk not just about how to help startups that are in the toy industry succeed,
Kevin Mako: but I know that you've got a lot of lessons from what you've learned in toys that can apply to anybody listening.
Kevin Mako: Of course, this episode is primarily about toys, but because there's so much that anybody in a hardware product can learn from you, I'd really love to hear some of those tips and
Kevin Mako: tricks right from you of how you were able to be so successful, not just with one, but with
Dan Klitsner: many, many, many products along the way. So where would you like to start? Because that's a big subject. That is a big subject.
Dan Klitsner: One caveat for anyone who's in the toy business or any idea business is nobody has multiple
Dan Klitsner: successes without 10 times as many, I'll call them failures. Failure and failure to me is a great word.
Dan Klitsner: It is, I like to say, and maybe the only way I can survive this kind of business where you have to have a lot of ideas, you have to iterate a lot, is to not think
Dan Klitsner: of failures as things that are, you know, were a mistake or a wrong turn, they are a building block. If you think of
Dan Klitsner: every failure as one more building block to success, it just, one, it makes you be able to do it again
Dan Klitsner: because otherwise you just say, I'm 10 times better at being a failure than a success and you identify with that.
Dan Klitsner: But I really have, you know, rather than just sounding nice, I really believe that. It's the way that you have to learn from everything and continue
Dan Klitsner: to return to it and go back to it. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably have things that they fell in love with and tried
Dan Klitsner: and failed and can relate to what did they learn that made the next one successful. So that's part of the cycle of innovating for me.
Dan Klitsner: But there is a kind of a formula that I created for myself. You know, the overall feeling is maybe we're saying how to think like a successful toy inventor,
Dan Klitsner: even if you're not inventing toys. What are the lessons you learn from inventing toys? One of the things that's so important or the difference between toys and other
Dan Klitsner: products is that other products often in industrial design or product startups, they are solving a problem or a pain point. And that's the main focus.
Dan Klitsner: What toys are often are things that disrupt a behavior.
Dan Klitsner: There are things that people that entertain or that get people to connect, that let people escape from problems they're trying to solve.
Dan Klitsner: So right off the bat, you know, the tutorial world is really
Kevin Mako: kind of the opposite of the product startup world. So that in itself lets me know there's probably lessons in there.
Kevin Mako: They say, why don't you try to apply something completely opposite from your thinking, you know, that idea of disruption versus problem solving. It's a really good observation.
Kevin Mako: And one of the things that we've actually talked about it on the show is you've got either opportunity or pain points. And those are the two ways to look at a product.
Kevin Mako: But something that maybe you can derive from what you just said there is looking at your product, if it is a non -toy product and trying to think about
Kevin Mako: it as not just solving a pain point, but where's the opportunity? Where can you add a little bit of pizzazz to this to make it interesting or entertaining or connect with
Kevin Mako: others? Looking not just at the pain point, but looking at the opportunity as well. Because when you get both, of those, you can sell on both edges.
Kevin Mako: Some edges sell more to somebody who's looking for that opportunity, looking for something interesting or something that's creating new value to their life. Others are
Dan Klitsner: looking to solve a pain point. Some are looking for both. It's quite interesting how you notice toys are very extreme on one side.
Dan Klitsner: And industrial design products are very extreme on the other. Somewhere in the middle is probably the perfect blend. Right. That's right. I like to say it's the things
Dan Klitsner: that you didn't have any idea you needed until you saw them. They weren't necessarily solving something. But once you see them, I need that.
Dan Klitsner: You know, that's the emotional side that I think you could put it into any product. Just making sure you're not just thinking of it as a problem solving tool,
Dan Klitsner: that there's always something, whether it's, you know, just a little bit of flare or something that it entertains, something that makes someone feel really good about using it.
Dan Klitsner: I think I've learned a lot of that from making toys where that is all that it's judged on is that entertainment value. So that's definitely something I'm very interested in.
Dan Klitsner: and when I work on projects at Arctoy is how to bring that in. And I have this sort of a, it was a talk
Dan Klitsner: I gave at a college once where I had to sound smart. So I wanted to come up with an acronym for how do you know?
Dan Klitsner: And I thought, how can I tell these students who are in design, what's the secret to selling an idea or a pitching idea or creating, developing an idea that's successful?
Dan Klitsner: How do you know when it's right? And I thought, oh, how do you know when it's right? what could write stand for.
Dan Klitsner: And this is basically really the thought that I feel you can't really sell an idea, at least in the toy area and probably others, until everything
Dan Klitsner: is R-I-T-E-R-I-E-R-I-T-E, right. And this is like not a formula for how to create things. It's really a formula for how to evaluate
Dan Klitsner: whether you're picking the right idea at the right time, with the right people, with the right
Dan Klitsner: execution. To visualize this, think of RITE as the four legs of a table. Each one of them has got to be
Dan Klitsner: supporting your idea, your product. And you want this table to be as tall as possible because there's a lot of other people out there doing the same thing.
Dan Klitsner: So you want to have the tallest table with the best chance of succeeding. And those four legs I call relationship, the
Dan Klitsner: R, idea, timing, and execution. And you can kind of divide any product into those four categories and to ask yourself,
Dan Klitsner: is this leg of the table tall enough yet?
Dan Klitsner: Because if not, what happens if a table has a leg that's not as tall as it needs to be, it falls over. So it's this very simple visual.
Dan Klitsner: And so the reason I put relationship as first is it sounds like people say, well, how do you know who to pitch something to
Dan Klitsner: or who to go to, well, clearly it's, but it isn't just who, it's how you develop relationships
Dan Klitsner: and that you accept the idea that even meetings that are failures, you are literally building
Dan Klitsner: all of these tools that often are the future of who you sell an idea to later. So you have to
Dan Klitsner: think that this part is when you have an idea, can you, are you showing it to someone that you trust, that you know how to deal with, that you've had history with?
Dan Klitsner: That's often something if you try to go in cold, you'll find that it's a lot harder to sell an idea than someone that you've been developing a relationship with.
Dan Klitsner: So that's an example of the art. There's a lot there. The research into who that relationship is. There's so much more than just, I've got this great
Dan Klitsner: idea. I want to show it to someone. Who's the someone? And make sure you really understand that person, that partner or the business that you're selling it to.
Dan Klitsner: The eye for the idea or innovation, I say, it seems like the easy part where people say, oh, I've got this great idea.
Dan Klitsner: but they forget that there's three other things they need.
Dan Klitsner: And so that often when people say I have a great idea, I would like to say that almost always that leg of the table is way too short,
Dan Klitsner: meaning that the idea is you think it's great because it's yours and you think you've thought of everything. But until you really pretend that it's a five out of a ten,
Dan Klitsner: what do I do to make it a ten out of a ten? You probably haven't explored enough. So I like to test that as assume any idea you ever come up with is a five out of ten.
Dan Klitsner: at the very best before you settle on it.
Dan Klitsner: And is it, you know, tall enough? So there's that when you see a visual, you can imagine these legs of the table are crooked and you're trying to make them fit.
Dan Klitsner: And so the T is for timing, which is not luck because timing, you should be able to gauge.
Dan Klitsner: Is this the right time for this product to come to market? Am I behind? Am I too early? Am I too late?
Dan Klitsner: What similar products were like it that might make this? you know, a me too. There's things like that that are very important in timing to really
Dan Klitsner: not, to really gauge your timing and whether it is the exact right time.
Dan Klitsner: And E is the toughest one for designers execution. So you're going to have 10 people say, oh, I had that idea. I showed that idea that same person. They didn't like it. Why?
Kevin Mako: You know, I showed it first, all these kind of things. And the point is if 10 people showed the same idea executed 10 different ways, it's really a different idea.
Kevin Mako: And so it's the part that says, try a lot of executions before you say, that's my idea.
Kevin Mako: It's done. Make sure that the leg of that table is, you know, if you've got the relationship, you've got the idea, you've got the timing's perfect, don't fall short
Kevin Mako: on not exploring why you may fail because you just didn't execute your idea in the best possible way. That is brilliant.
Kevin Mako: The right acronym. I want to talk about each of those for a moment. Relationship, idea, timing, and execution. I love that you put
Kevin Mako: relationship first because that's such a powerful and overlooked concept. I even think about it with our clients at the design firm.
Kevin Mako: When people come in, it's amazing how few actually spend the time to get to know the team that they're working with and get to start building that rapport. Obviously,
Kevin Mako: there's a transaction that's happening, but it's so much more than that. And if you can build a strong relationship, it allows such an easier flow of information and ideas,
Kevin Mako: and outside the box thinking. It's one of those things where is the designer on the weekend thinking about your project
Kevin Mako: where they're having a shower because you've built this great relationship with them and you've got something great going on, some magic being built out,
Kevin Mako: or are they thinking about somebody else's because you were very transactional? That's just one small example. Obviously, relationships can be anything.
Kevin Mako: It could be with your patent attorney, with somebody you're looking to license it to, with your investors, with your other business partners, with employees, etc.
Dan Klitsner: There's all kinds of things there, but relationships can be so powerful.
Kevin Mako: And I can tell you, it doesn't take a lot of effort. It just takes a moment to think about them as another human being. They also have some stuff that they have to do.
Kevin Mako: They also have busy schedules and just building that over time and solidifying that to be something that can really work for you. So relationship is so powerful.
Kevin Mako: The next is the idea. I love that you mentioned that it's only one piece of the puzzle. What I like about ideas is that unlike you, most people don't come up with thousands
Kevin Mako: of ideas in a lifetime.
Kevin Mako: And one of the most amazing things is that they're, let me just say they're the lucky ones. Yeah.
Kevin Mako: You've made a lot of work for yourself. That's for sure. The idea is the starting. And, you know, it's amazing. I don't like discounting the concept of idea.
Kevin Mako: I know there's a lot that floats out there that ideas a dime or dozen, but that's not actually true. I don't believe that.
Dan Klitsner: I think that really good, really well thought out ideas are once or twice or maybe three times in a lifetime.
Dan Klitsner: And then, of course, as you've done, you can turn it into a lifelong career. But most people really, realistically speaking, your average person is going to come up with a few.
Dan Klitsner: And of those really only a couple, maybe one is really going to be something that is revolutionary, that will be a very successful product.
Dan Klitsner: So I do like to put some value on the idea, but also with the understanding that it is just one piece of it,
Dan Klitsner: which really is powerful, especially in products, industrial design, whether it's toys, whether it's inventions, all the same.
Dan Klitsner: Yeah, but as you said, that it's intentionally number two, meaning the idea. idea with no sense of who your audience is, which is the
Dan Klitsner: relationship you have to the end user as well, you can go on and on about relationship. It's really just saying, if you don't love
Dan Klitsner: people, you shouldn't be doing product development because you've got to be, enjoy the interactions you have and get to know people.
Dan Klitsner: That's the most successful people are the ones that aren't just doing it because, oh, you've got to work these relationships. They actually enjoy it and they
Kevin Mako: that they'll be successful and enjoy their path by really finding the people they want to work with and want to build a product with.
Kevin Mako: So I can go on and on about it, but it's become throughout my career more and more important and more valued. And it sounds kind of cliche or whatever.
Kevin Mako: But even if you fail on certain things, if you built great relationships, at least you, you know, you look back and you said, that was, wow, I really got to know that person
Kevin Mako: on that project, even though it didn't succeed. But usually there's another project. later that that comes around and is of value.
Kevin Mako: Anyway, I won't, I won't interrupt more on the relationship side. You could literally do a whole hour on that. Well, and it's a small world,
Kevin Mako: especially in the product development space. It's surprisingly small. People know each other.
Kevin Mako: Like you and I were talking before the show, you're such a well-known individual in the toy space.
Kevin Mako: It warned my heart here that you'd heard of us and Mako Design a few times before. Just that sort of thing, it's no longer surprising.
Kevin Mako: But every time you hear it, it really does catch you off guard that we have one or two degrees of separation from most of the major players in any
Kevin Mako: given industry and products, no different, especially as you get into niche parts of market. So it's really important to be not just a transactional individual, but be a
Kevin Mako: part of the scene. And the more successful that you become, the more that you can integrate that if you are focusing on relationships.
Kevin Mako: So jumping forward to timing now, I find that's amazing that you mentioned that timing isn't luck because that's so true. You can do your research. You can really try and figure
Kevin Mako: out market trends. Google has tools now that allows you to see what keywords are trending,
Kevin Mako: but you can just see what's out there and spend your time researching and understanding where you may or may not fit into the market.
Kevin Mako: I find that's so applicable to your final point, which is execution.
Kevin Mako: In my industry, that all comes down to prototyping. You say try and try and try on your toy ideas and it's very similar in any
Dan Klitsner: kind of hardware product where that means that you want to break things. All of these, I find amazing that you bring back to this concept of
Dan Klitsner: failure and using that as a stepping stone because one of the most important things for any industrial designer mechanical engineer electronic engineer product manager you name it
Dan Klitsner: is breaking prototypes that is where you find your best value that is really where you take a product from
Dan Klitsner: being okay to being great from being somewhat workable to being robust and if you can focus on
Dan Klitsner: finding failures aggressive looking forward to failures trying to discover failures trying to create
Dan Klitsner: failures, that allows you to further and further improve the quality of the product and the quality of the output. Yeah, what you just described there is a thing I sometimes call
Dan Klitsner: relentless listening, meaning you can't be a passive listener. You have to aggressively
Dan Klitsner: list, you know, everything informs you. And on all those steps, whether it's in the relationship,
Dan Klitsner: idea, timing, or execution, someone's going to say something at some point to you that you have to make sure everything, you're the, you're the editor of your own movie here.
Dan Klitsner: And you've got to be able to decide, is that aggressively listen and decide, is that a keeper or throw it out.
Dan Klitsner: But don't be the person that says, I know what I want. I've got my vision and know, you know, this is my vision.
Dan Klitsner: And I think that you see that could work, but often even people who claim to be, this is my
Kevin Mako: vision, they probably were really good at picking up little cues from other people and not
Kevin Mako: being afraid, like you said, to break a prototype to say, this is my vision, but let's see how it measures up. And let's assume it can always be better.
Kevin Mako: And, you know, the hardest thing is probably that moment where you go, it's ready. And that's why I say I use this R-I-T-E. It's just sort of a gauge.
Kevin Mako: Like it's more, are all my legs equally good? And what's the weakest one? Even if they're all good, still, what's the weakest one?
Kevin Mako: And I just find it a really valuable way to check yourself on if you're really thoroughly
Kevin Mako: listening to everyone and looking at it because, you know, the worst thing is to move forward with something before one of those things is right. And it's a lot of fail.
Kevin Mako: you can turn the failure in success, I think, if you really pay attention to those things.
Kevin Mako: I like to kind of looping back to the timing and making sure that you're getting it right first before you go to market.
Kevin Mako: Too often, folks are trying to hit some sort of arbitrary deadline. And I don't mean arbitrarily in a mean way. We want to hit this Christmas schedule or this particular
Dan Klitsner: trade show. I find that's one of the most dangerous things you can do because you're essentially stating that we must do what we can within that time, regardless
Dan Klitsner: of the quality of output. which is almost in any situation, unless there is some timing scenario, which it's make or break,
Dan Klitsner: which I can understand. But if it's not an absolute make or break, the cost of shortcutting
Dan Klitsner: anything along the discovery process is probably going to far outweigh the benefit of hitting that Christmas season.
Dan Klitsner: In fact, there's another Christmas season happening 365 days after that one. So your business, which is a lifetime business, should not be looked at in terms
Dan Klitsner: of a particular month or week or whatever else. Sometimes if you hold your cards and wait for the right moment,
Dan Klitsner: then you preserve your resources until it is the right time. This is a long-term business, like you said. Many ideas I have, I've had for 10 years until the right moment,
Dan Klitsner: the right company. Several success stories that I've had were just knowing there was something there and it was the R and the E in that formula.
Dan Klitsner: It was a great idea. Even the timing seemed right.
Kevin Mako: It just wasn't the right company, in my case, to license it to.
Kevin Mako: You know, all you need is the one company that needed what you had at that moment. And that has happened to be several times where, including Bop It, where seven,
Kevin Mako: eight, nine companies see it.
Kevin Mako: It's just doesn't hit them. You know, you're not either, it's nothing else you're doing wrong, but it's just not right for them.
Kevin Mako: And so in the licensing side, it's a lot about making sure you knock on the right door.
Kevin Mako: So there's your research into the relationships and really understanding what someone wants. So a lot of people try to pitch ideas to someone who have already told them,
Dan Klitsner: we don't do games. You know, we only do dolls in this in the toy side. And they still people, you'd be surprised how often people will try to push
Dan Klitsner: something at someone who it's not right for. So the right applies to just a very simple check valve. Well, that's a good tip as well. I wanted to lead into that.
Dan Klitsner: If you've done, let's call it that everything's right. And you've built your prototypes, you've got it to a point where you like the product, you believe
Dan Klitsner: everything else, the timing's good, you like the idea now, and you want to start building those relationships on the licensing side or even through sales, through
Dan Klitsner: wholesalers, distributors, or even direct to retailer, online, whatever it may be some way to actually execute on taking your product to market.
Dan Klitsner: What advice do you have for those folks who are ready to go and now are
Kevin Mako: trying to get into the market. After many years, having built a lot of relationships, going through them, calling them, you know, making sure it's the right timing for
Kevin Mako: them is probably the biggest thing is what, what is your schedule? What are you guys working on? Are you working on 2024 yet?
Dan Klitsner: Are you this? You know, what? You certainly don't want to show an idea to someone or even if it's perfectly finished, if it's just going to sit there for too long.
Dan Klitsner: And you, you know, you don't want to show it to them if they're so busy finishing up their line for 2022 that they,
Dan Klitsner: really, you know, want to do you the favor of, oh, sure, let's have a meeting. But you kind of, so you have to really understand in that case for licensing.
Dan Klitsner: And it's the same with retail. I know it's, you know, making sure you really are in the right.
Dan Klitsner: The probably timing is the most important part of that once you think your product is done, is be really careful that you don't push it at someone who
Dan Klitsner: isn't an open door at that moment. I guess this comes back to something you said earlier, about really listening to everybody
Dan Klitsner: along your journey because these people will generally give you that feedback.
Dan Klitsner: And if you can try and really collect and listen, then you can figure out in conjunction with them when that right timing might be. Yeah.
Dan Klitsner: And that said, you know, I'm sure there's plenty people listening who have a story where they had something. And sometimes you do everything opposite of what we just said,
Dan Klitsner: and it still works. You know, it's like in a fact is you have to, you do have to know that sometimes you just go for it. It's fine. But keep in mind, if it is a rejection, why?
Dan Klitsner: But it's not to say, don't give it a try when you have something that you can push at someone that you have a gut feel.
Dan Klitsner: But I do think that's if most people who develop something are probably researching where they're going to sell it.
Dan Klitsner: I think a lot of what I'm focusing on currently is social media connections with direct-to-consumer.
Dan Klitsner: And that's where I started as kind of a celebration of Bop It's 25th year and a way to give back.
Dan Klitsner: Actually, my wife and I have started a thing called Bop It for Good, where we're a show, purpose is to create fun products using the BOPPIT name or other inventions that I've done
Dan Klitsner: and figure out ways that they can connect people through play, which is sort of what I love to do, is to connect people through play.
Dan Klitsner: And that has been really interesting because I'm doing
Kevin Mako: what you're saying, trying to figure out, okay, these are direct to consumer. I'm building a lot through TikTok, Instagram, connections to people who love Bop It or other games
Kevin Mako: I've created. So what can I do that's going to engage them? And when
Kevin Mako: And when it is the right time to sell things like that they might, you know, engage with. And I mean, actually using the consumer in that case as the brainstormer
Kevin Mako: because I've got maybe 500,000 followers who are pretty engaged.
Kevin Mako: They'll tell me 30,000 ideas if I'm not careful. You know, if I'll throw it.
Kevin Mako: So I'm kind of saying I'm not going to be worried so much about proprietary ideas right here as the benefit of what I can get back from just throwing.
Kevin Mako: it out there and saying, what do you think?
Dan Klitsner: You know, what is this missing? When would you like to see this? What price should it be? All those kind of interesting questions that often were someone else's decision.
Dan Klitsner: I'm getting those directly now.
Dan Klitsner: And I find it fascinating, you know, that you can, you can sort of launch something direct to the consumer themselves if you can engage them. That's great.
Dan Klitsner: Really helpful. And a lot of this comes back to relationships. And I really appreciate how you mention that as well to the end customers, because that is another relationship that
Dan Klitsner: everybody should be thinking about, who are your even perspective end customers, your online community,
Dan Klitsner: your followers, those are easy people to build relationships with because they're directly engaged with you on these social media platforms.
Dan Klitsner: So I love how you're actually taking that one step further and you're almost, let's say, crowdsourcing with your followers to help you figure out what are the
Dan Klitsner: ideas or what are the models that's going to be most beneficial to them down the road. And that is
Dan Klitsner: something that keeps coming back to this relationship concept, but you have to think about all these
Dan Klitsner: different types of relationships with your business, and then really think about it, even just
Dan Klitsner: on a weekly basis, what are you doing this week to help strengthen those relationships? You know, anything you do now will pay dividends down the road. Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Klitsner: It's the social media side, again, I didn't even have barely answered email a year ago.
Dan Klitsner: I mean, I was accused of never answering email, meaning that I had no, I had very little time. I thought, I'm going to let other people do that.
Dan Klitsner: I just like to make stuff and do the making part. And then to actually jump in and say, I'm going to start, it's
Dan Klitsner: called Bop It inventor, you know, a handle for coming out there is, yeah, I invented Bop It and many other products.
Dan Klitsner: And I'm going to share tips and invention stories and just sort of see what happens. I was so, like you said, surprised by how opposite it was for me as someone who
Dan Klitsner: wasn't that engaged with social media of this kind of explosion of engagement, ideas from all sorts of people that.
Dan Klitsner: really love knowing who's really behind the creation of some of these games or product ideas
Dan Klitsner: and the authenticity of that person reaching out and saying, you know, what do you think? How would you make this better?
Dan Klitsner: And I've had a few games that failed that I've put up to say, why do you think this flopped? Those are by far the most popular post.
Dan Klitsner: Like I'm so, you'll find the creativity and just people and how intelligent they are. I think I had three million views about 100,000 responses
Dan Klitsner: by putting up an old game that flocked that I really wanted to know why do you think it's flocked? I want to go and try and relaunch it and I'm
Dan Klitsner: actually going to go back with a lot of this advice and repitch it with some of these ideas. And you know, people know, it's not, I think
Dan Klitsner: sometimes someone will say, oh, do I get a piece of that or you know, and say, no, look, this is a public place. Anyone can take these ideas and I try to make that clear
Dan Klitsner: if I'm going to go out there and do this, yep, anyone can look at these ideas publicly and do whatever they want with them, I kind of think I'm the one who's
Dan Klitsner: probably going to do it because I have the pathway to there. But I kind of like that idea as well,
Dan Klitsner: that it puts the emphasis on the doers, that if you want to throw ideas out there, it's what you do with them that really is what counts.
Dan Klitsner: And so I kind of like it as a model. And the chance that something could go viral is so much higher than the chance that someone will rip you off, in my
Dan Klitsner: opinion. So I kind of like, that's my future is to go out and start taking some of these ideas and throwing them out there and seeing which one really pops.
Dan Klitsner: So the one product that I am trying to launch on my own is this product called the Unibop.
Kevin Mako: It's basically a Bop It like the, if you can see it, you can hear it.
Kevin Mako: It looks like the easy button, in fact, or the no button that people may know, but all it is is a button that says bop it on the front.
Kevin Mako: And this is a single button interface that was meant to go on the front of my book that I'm writing called Take This Book and Bop It, which is how to think like a toy inventor.
Kevin Mako: And this bop it on the front, when you hit the front cover, right, it
Kevin Mako: says you bop it and it says one of the funny sayings. So the idea is to create a product that I start on social media by engaging people.
Kevin Mako: I've been sharing this the whole time as I've been creating it. I've been getting people's ideas. There's all these things that it says.
Kevin Mako: The deeper you go, the more it starts saying sillier things. What I find fascinating about this is just the idea of starting a product riffing. It started out on a book.
Kevin Mako: Someone said something. And that through social media, it kind of became, it's becoming real. And I plan to then distribute it or work through that as the audience,
Kevin Mako: sort of like a Kickstarter through that media. But I just thought I'd share that as, you know, that's basically my next project is how to get people to hit this.
Kevin Mako: silly button. Very cool. Well, look, Dan, much appreciated for having you on the show. And thanks again for all your words of wisdom. You're welcome, Kevin.
Kevin Mako: I really enjoyed it. And it's really a
Narrator: privilege to be here. Thank you. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast.
Narrator: The show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success.
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Narrator: -to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients.
Narrator: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako -design.com.
Narrator: That's M-A-K-O Design dot com for a free consultation from one of Mako Design's Ford Design Studios from coast to coast.
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