Hey everybody! Welcome to the that will never work. If you want to be a guest on the show, just come to Mark Randolph dot com to apply or if you want to chat directly with me or about what you hear today, I invite you to join me on that. That will never work discord. You'll find an invitation on the website. This episode of that will never work as a special student edition. I'm actually here at High Point University in High Point north Carolina, speaking to some of the student entrepreneurs. And with me today is Faith Griffin who is an entrepreneurship and marketing junior who has invented a product called the Shaving Step. And I think she has some questions about where do you go from here? Hi, I'm Mark Randolph, co founder of Netflix and six other companies over the years. I've heard that will never work thousands of times, but I've learned there are things we all can do to increase the chances that they will so join me for that will never work.

So, Faith, welcome to that one over work. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. So I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is what the hell is a shaving step? So why don't you show us or tell us what a shaving step is and then we can chat about what you might want to talk about of course. So this is a shaving step right here. This is my first prototype. Um but basically what it is, it's a patent pending step stool designed for women, or really for anyone who shaves their legs um and may not have a place to prop them in the shower. So this is a step stool that you can use in the shower um to have somewhere to place your foot. So basically, um we have the main step stool part which has different holes in it for drainage.

Um we have a storage compartment where you can store your razors and your shaving cream. And then we have the legs which are pretty cool because they are this one extendable and retractable for people of different heights. Um The feet are rubber so that it won't like slip inside in the shower. Um and then the legs are collapsible so that you can store it once you're done, travel with it and it has a handle, so you can take it wherever you need to go, wow. So actually, it's funny because I've been working with high point entrepreneurs for a number of years and it's funny because I think I've watched you pitch this twice, if not maybe once, but it's interesting to see how the product has developed from basically this concept and now you actually have something which is looking looking pretty legit. Thank you. Yes, it's definitely been a process. I think the first time I pitched for you, I didn't have a pro.

I think it was just like a um like CAD model on a power point. So it has been a process, but it's nice that you've been able to kind of see it grow. Yeah, it's kind of going from the classic, imagine if you will into something where you actually can show it off. But you know the thing that's amazing to me, and by the way, I am not one of the man who does shave. In fact, it's actually a special occasion when I choose to shave my face. Um but it strikes me that it's amazing that there aren't more of these that, I mean just the idea that how much easier would be to be able to lift your leg up to a certain height to do that. Why aren't there other ones? What, why isn't every shower made with a step built into it?

Yes, that's a great question. Um So there are a few kind of similar products, but none of them have all of the key features that the shaving step does. Um which is a good reason why it's patent pending, but um I just, when I was kind of looking for a product to solve my problem, a lot of them just didn't look very stable or you would have to like glue them into the shower, which means you couldn't like take it anywhere else. So I just kind of looked at all the things that they were lacking and decided to make that up and put it into this product. And are there existing products that are shaving steps? Um not exactly like this. Um there are a few stools but a lot of them can't collapse. So that kind of thing. It's not very easy to store and things like that. So you're still a student.

Are you living in a dorm here on campus? So in other words you basically, you have to take this thing from your room into the shower and then back to your room. Yes. So luckily I do have a bathroom in my room, but there are some dorms that still have the community style. So that's why I wanted to make it portable also for the girls that have to carry it down to the shower and then back to their room, you got to see this thing is actually made so that it can collapse and has a handle. I mean it's designed to be portable and is that a key aspect, the portability of it? Is that what differentiates it? Yes, that's definitely one of the different differentiators because like I mentioned earlier, some of them, you have to glue them. Other ones,

you can't really collapse. So it's very hard to take it with you to different places. And I wanted to make sure that if you happen to take it to the gym to a hotel, um just anywhere or even storage, like once you're done with it, you can fold it back up um, to store it away. So that definitely is like a key factor to it. And so is this the only existing prototype? I do have one more. Um, this one is a little bit easier to maneuver. So that's why I wanted to bring it around, but I do have one other prototype. Yeah, really nice.

So, um, where are you in the process right now of developing this product? This company, whatever. Yes. So, um, I'm trying to find a manufacturer and then in line with that, I'm also trying to get more funding. So that is kind of a question that I wanted to ask you so far. I've only pitch to judges mostly at the university and our competitions here. But how do I take a different approach and pitching to investors? Um, I guess what are kind of, some of the main things that you look for?

So it's a great question and I'm going to dig into that in a minute, which is, there is quite a difference between pitching in an entrepreneurial contest then there is pitching legit for money and we'll talk about that a second. Is that your next step is raising money? You think where you, where you go next with this? Yes. Um, so like I kind of mentioned earlier, we're like right at the brink of trying to find a manufacturer, but then I just kind of need some funding. So once I do find one, um, we can put it into production and then kind of start marketing and hiring a few extra team members to get it launched soon. And what evidence do you have that people will actually buy this? Yes.

So, um, I've done some market research surveys, gotten some very positive feedback and then kind of just by eyeing the competitors and um, seeing how their sales are kind of going through amazon. Of course, I can't see their numbers, but kind of looking at the feedback and things that they get, I can tell that there's definitely a market and I'm just talking to people around me. Um, and hearing them always say, oh my gosh, I need that. Why isn't this out yet? So, um,

kind of things like that. Okay, so let's talk about both those things simultaneously about pitching for money, about raising money, about validation of sales. It's kind of this classic um, dilemma, which is that people only want to lend you the money or give you the money when you don't need it. Uh, their business model for any investor assuming their investors rather than, you know, philanthropists is they expect to get a return on their investment. They're going to give you some money and lo and behold what a surprise they want it back and they want it back times some large multiple preferably. And so what they're trying to do is minimize what the risks are to that happening or put more specifically, they're trying to understand what is the risk here and they expect a couple of things. One is that,

you know that answer and you know it clearly and it's not a problem to say, here's what I think we're gonna figure out. Here's what I don't know what this money is meant to prove. And just to give you a simple exam giving you this because this is going to inform the way you catch and more importantly, when you decide it's appropriate to raise and how much you might want to raise, those sort of things. So that issue is each time you raise money, it's with a very, very specific unknown you're trying to know. So, and I'll use a software company, for example, because it's fairly easy at the beginning, you might have an engineer who says, I think there's a really cool way to do X. So when he or she raises money,

they're saying, I think I can write code that will solve this problem. And if we solve it, just think how amazing that will be. But it's very clear, I'm not 100% sure it will do this. An investor says fine, I'll stake you X dollars to allow you the time to write that code and see if it works. If it actually works now, there's not gonna be any customers. We're gonna validate that there's not a technical risk. And that would be the first rays, then they raise money. They hire a few engineers to help they build it and lo and behold it works now they say our next step is to figure out whether anyone wants this. And so that's the risk because it could be that no one wants it. So they raised the money,

they hire a salesperson, they begin selling some and lo and behold they do sell some, so now that's great. Now the company steps up in value again and now they say great, we've proven that someone wants it. But the risk is now, first of all, I'm selling everything in san Francisco, for example, where everyone's tech savvy, are people gonna want this in high point, are they going to want this in Indianapolis? They're gonna want this in Iowa, that's the next risk and it goes on like that forever. There's always one thing, you don't know all of a sudden you prove you can sell everyone in the country.

Now the risk is, does this person have the chops to be able to build out a whole sales team. Are there gonna be enough people who can build the leads? Never stops. You're at phase one. So the very, very first thing you have to prove is is there there there, do people actually want this? They actually willing to buy it? I think that's what you're trying to prove. You have to have a very clear perspective on what it is, you want to prove, it could be, in fact, I'm not sure I can manufacture this. So I'm not sure whatever it is,

but my guess is that your next thing you need would need to prove in terms of raising money is can I sell this? Am I on the right track? So yes, just doing like a bit more customer discovery? Yeah, okay, so I know that you've done a whole bunch of entrepreneurial pitch contests things and there's a big difference because in a pitch contest for the most, most cases they let you finish, you have two minutes, you have five minutes and you get to run the whole five minutes, you get to go in order, you've got the whole process, you have all the slides when you pitch for money, it's like making a Supreme Court presentation, you get about five words in and then they interrupt you and begin asking questions and so you never get a chance to lay out your argument in this nice sequential way you're gonna have to go in the direction they want to go. Um When I I was younger,

I worked for a music publishing company, so I was kind of peripherally involved in the music business and this is back in the dark ages and they still had record albums, I don't know if you're old enough to know what a record album is and the when people would always send in these demo tapes trying to get record deals and the rule of the record tape, demo tape is you never build, You're you're never build meaning. Do you start off with this song and then this one and this one in our best song is number four because we got as you would if you're putting an album out because the person is the record company exact pops the cassette, another technical back in the past in their car tape deck listens to 30 seconds and decides whether they're going to listen more or not. And so you want your very, very best thing first. And that's the same thing for pitching. You're not going to get everything out of your mouth all of it out. So get your best things out early And now you might say, Mark, what are my best things? Your best thing is all the proof points you have that, this there's a there there and I it strikes me,

I think you really need to collect some hard evidence that somebody actually wants this and you unfortunately are getting all kinds of wonderful glowy affirmations about how amazing this thing is. But as I've spoken to other podcast guests before, there's a big difference between someone saying, oh my gosh, faith you are so brilliant, This is so great. And then pulling out their wallet and buying one and there's a big difference between saying I would so buy that and between bed bed bath and beyond buying 5000 of them. Uh, and I think your next step for fundraising before you is to see how close you can get to that. Now tying it all together, boy, you got me on a good roll question ideally you want to have that evidence when you go into present because the evidence is what's gonna make them, rather than saying I talk to people and they want it. It would be wonderful to say I've demonstrated they wanted because I've sold a bunch. I haven't manufactured them yet, but I've sold them.

Um I have this executive at Bed Bath beyond saying he will put in a purchase order if I can put it together in other words, and then they're still going to distrust you. They're still going to distrust whether this is really real. But you're narrowing down that risk and that's the more you can have proven, the more clear you can be here is what the next risk is, the better you'll do in terms of what the valuation is. You get how much money you can raise and how easily you can, you can raise it. So you got to get out there and figured, have you ever tried, have you considered doing a Kickstarter with it? I have um I was just speaking with um someone on my team about that the other day, um doing a Kickstarter and I think that would be a good way to get some more validation. And while raising money to, it's funny because people talk about the Kickstarter crowdfunding. But the reason I love Kickstarter is it is a place you are allowed to sell something before you've made it.

It's a perfect place to validate whether people will put their money where their mouth is. It's really hard in that there's a huge number of companies who are trying this. There is boatloads of crap and it's very, very sobering. And the downside is you always wonder did it not raise any money because my product sucks or did not raise any money because nobody saw it. And it's very hard to tell the difference. It is in my opinion, especially since you have you have you have patent protection on this or so because you have that no harm in trying a Kickstarter and seeing what happens. But you have to do more than that. I think you should be out really at this point. Selling in some ways. Um selling to individuals is a Kickstarter thing, but there's no reason you can't go and try and get a bed bath and beyond to place an order or at least give you this validation that in fact we agree there's a market here. Well, yeah, I've never even thought about um I guess like going into the retail companies yet.

I guess I always thought I'd have to wait until I how to manufacture first. So I guess how would I approach them? Just kind of with the prototype. And so there's a couple of ways. One is you strike me as being a reasonably persuasive person. So get the meeting. I mean, network call, email hound, get the meeting because the reaction you're gonna get is gonna be incredibly interesting to you. Listen, I hope the person goes, you know, the buyer was, oh my God, faith,

this is astounding. I'll take a million how quickly or he or she is gonna go, oh, you know, we had a product similar to that and it didn't do well or I mean there's a million ores and just hearing those is gonna be so eye opening for you. And the more of those meetings you can get, the more refined it's going to be an understanding what it takes to sell it. Okay. In terms of a retail, um, you know, I've, I've spoken a lot of people also about going and trying at small scale someplace. I mean, I mean, what's,

what's, what's the undergraduate student population of high point? You know, it's around 5500. Yeah. So I'm guessing that's probably close to 3000 female students here. What about it in the college bookstore? Okay, it's a good idea. It would be really interesting. I think even to try and say put your name on a waiting list and see what happens or I don't know whether you want to go in there and say, I'm taking, I'm doing my own little Kickstarter. I'm taking orders. I mean, I don't know anything you can do to simulate someone pulling out a credit card before you've built it.

And you don't have to I'm just saying, imagine the difference between when you're actually pitching to raise the money to do your manufacturing and being able to say I have the buyer of bed bath and beyond. I have the buyer at the National Association of College bookstores, um both really interested in placing a very large order. Would that work? No, I think that's great and definitely good at kind of mitigating that risk, as you were saying, because there's going to be like a million risk. But if I can say, look, there's already people who wanted and are very serious about it? I think that'd be great going into investing with that. We came into it from the perspective of what would it take to raise money that way, and that would be a huge one. But it'll also be a tremendous way for you to validate that you have the right product,

you have the right price point. That in fact, the portability, I mean, all the assumptions you've made based on your own individual usages and your friends bears out in the bigger market, I think I'm 99% certain there is a very, very large housewares show, do you know about it? Have you been to it, so that it's a trade show, it's where every single person who buys housewares which range from everything, you know, from dishes to silverware, to draperies, to everything has a huge convention and I'm not sure what city it's in, it might rotate and it would be hugely valuable for you to be able to set up there.

And just even if it's in a tiny little booth, even if you can borrow something to be in someone else's booth, because then you're gonna have buyers from every single big houseware stores in the world walking past and having conversations with them. And that would be hugely informative too. But understanding how big that market is that I would spend money on that before I spent money on anything else. So that's kind of my that's kind of my thinking here you're in a great spot. I love seeing the prototype. It feels like before you begin putting more and more effort into refining the prototype, you've got something you can demo, you've got something you can show, let's get out there and validate whether or not this is actually gonna, going to resonate with people. And if you decide to raise some money early, just don't do a lot and make it very clear that this money, I'm going to raise a very small amount is just purely for me to begin doing this next stage where I go out and see if I can sell it. If I can get an order from a store.

If I am going to go to the house, where show I'm going to whatever. I don't want to dictate the specific tactics. It's just the basic approach. You know, I really appreciate it because I, I guess my mind was so like stuck on. Um, like the manufacturing and getting it made that really kind of changed my perspective. And I think of course it was great advice and I'm definitely going to be trying to reach out to some people seeing like, hey, can you just give me your thoughts on this very quickly? Just trying to get some more opinions and more customer validation and see what they say. You know, one of the things that is somewhat difficult is it's a hardware product. Uh,

and hardware products are unchangeable or very, very complicated and expensive to change. And so for a hardware product you have to bend over backwards, making sure you understand everything about it before you set it in stone, so to speak. Because once you start manufacturing and then you begin going to the buyer for bed bath and beyond. Um, and they go, oh, we love this. But, and the butts could be numerous. It's really hard to change it because they might say this is for example, what do you think the retail price would be right now? I'm thinking about 24 99. Um,

it's very competitive with the kind of similar products out there. Can you really manufacture that for $12 or whatever it is. Yes, $5 or one I spoke to said, he estimated that it would take around $6. He told me to kind of shoot for that ball park. So I would hope it could be under like between five and $12 around there. Yeah, because the thing is you might, that's one of the things you might find out is that some of the things which add cost like telescoping legs or whatever. I didn't even know. You might find out that no, it's more important to be able to be sold at retail for 14 95 which means you've got to do it for two or $3 than it is to have all the features to be more expensive. But again, I don't know, I don't know that business.

I don't know the customer and don't use the product. But those are the things that I want you to really become fluent, an expert at. Yes, I definitely will. I'm trying to just take it and learn as much as I can. So I think it's really cool faith and I think uh, I hope when we check in again next time you're able to say, not just here, it is the amazing space. Say and I'm ready to begin manufacturing because I validated that here's who wants it. They're willing to pay for it. I ran a Kickstarter. I sold it to here even though you haven't produced it yet. I think that would be a really, really great thing to have demonstrated next time we,

we chat. Yeah, I think so too. I would be really happy to have those updates next time I see you. So I'm definitely gonna get to work. But it's the fun part of entrepreneurship in my opinion, is the uncertainty and waiting off and, and not knowing what's going to happen because every, even if things don't work, you go, oh my gosh, that's amazing. All the stuff that I learned, it's very exciting and you definitely learned so much just by doing an entrepreneurship to So, and so also, I just mentioned earlier,

we were, as we were setting this up, Faith had shaving step out and someone came up and goes, oh my God, you know how much I would have paid that when my kids were two years old, just as a portable stool. And the thing is that you're going to learn some of those, that's what the big pivots come from. You know, that could be, in fact, you maybe even go to a buyer at um, what's it called, babies r us or whatever. The one of the huge maternity shops and talk to the buyer there and see what they think you're in a great spot because you're a student. And so people are happy to spend the time talking with you and you should definitely take advantage of that once you're in business,

then their whole business is not talking to you. So milk it while you can definitely will try to. Well thanks faith, I really appreciate you coming in. Great work so far. But let's make that next step. Yes, thank you so much. My pleasure if you would like to get advice about something, come to my website and apply to be a guest and then that will never work podcast, you'll also be able to get an invite to my discord as well as sign up for the newsletter. And finally you'll find all the links to follow me on social. I'll see you there

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