The Inventor's Journey: Three Strikes I'm in

By Steven Smith

Three Strikes, I'm In. I believe anyone has the opportunity to make their passion or desires a reality. The choice is yours, and the decision is totally up to you. If you want something bad enough, your passion can become a burning desire, and you should make an attempt to go after it. If you never try, then you may sit there wondering what it would have been like if you would have taken that opportunity. I am blessed to say that I am a disabled vet and a cancer survivor, but through those adversities, I still pushed through all that to complete this challenge and to hopefully give others the will and desire to complete theirs. You have one life to live with many opportunities before you. Follow your passion and vision, and go find your gifted opportunity in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684569328

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The Inventor's Journey

Three Strikes I'm in

Steven Smith

Copyright © 2019 Steven Smith

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-68456-931-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68456-932-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Journey Begins

Scam Brats

Just a Little Small Talk

How am I going to pay for all this?

Protecting Your Investment

Marketing Your Invention

Personal Justifications

My Journey’s Journal

The Journey Begins

Well, it’s been a long time coming. After years of trial and error, research, patience, and perseverance, I received my first patent in 2005, but it’s not so much the fact that I had just the one patent that excited me the most. It’s the many obstacles I had to overcome to get to this stage of my life. At this point, I currently own a few more patents and some trademarks with more in the pipeline, but I really should have many more at this point of my life. There were many roadblocks that caused me not to reach this destination a lot sooner, and that brought me to the reason I decided to write this book. The most important factor here is to try to help other inventors achieve success with limited error unlike myself. The one thing I can tell you, about being a part of this great world of inventors, is you must have patience and perseverance if you have the desire to make this longtime achievement a reality. I’m not saying this because I’ve heard others say the same thing. I’m speaking on my behalf and my own personal experiences. It really wasn’t until years later after I started product development that I began hearing about similar testimonies and experiences of others. I have found that it’s not a common, everyday thing to just walk up to a person and ironically they are inventors, so it’s a great feeling to be in the company of an elite group of people who have made a difference in this world. Even the ones back in the day of Alexander Graham Bell, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, and many more.

Throughout my book, you will hear me refer to the word journey because the word is defined as going from one place to another, and certainly over the last twenty-five years for me, it has been a long, drawn-out, and sometimes grueling journey, but I have learned a great deal in the past years, which have also allowed me to share my experience with others who have or will consider doing this. When I first started, I was inexperienced and illiterate in the field of inventing, and little did I know, there was a lot to learn. One of my very first hurdles from the start was finding a company that could help me get started on this journey. The one thing I learned from the beginning was, there were many companies out there that would literally charge you astronomical fees, take your money from you, sell you a lifelong dream, and leave you hopelessly with nothing. All this was for me to see my product idea sitting on the shelf with someone else’s name labeled across the package, and my hopes and desires gone, up in smoke.

I had very little knowledge and experience in dealing with people and companies that I chose to handle the products that I designed. I had a great track record when it came to product developing, and it’s evident because a lot of the products I thought about developing were already successfully marketed; but the biggest problem is that the products weren’t marketed by me. In other words, I had a great mind for developing these ideas, but in many cases, a lot of the ideas were already on the market. One main reason was because of the lack of experience in finding the right company and trusting them to help me move forward and get to the finish line with development and the patent process of completing a project. Let this be a good learning lesson to you, so you won’t end up making the same mistakes, kiss a good product goodbye, and flush thousands of dollars down the drain. One thing about inventing a great idea is that most inventors come up with these ideas because they may have experienced situations firsthand, where a certain product is needed or they’ve witness a better way of making something work better.

There is so much to learn in the invention world, and once you have invested years of commitment getting involved with this type of business, you start looking for a better and less difficult way of reaching your goals by limiting your mistakes. It’s almost like traveling to work every day and taking the longest route because no one ever told you that there is a shorter route to get there; but then you just happen to run in to a detour, and the detour takes you a better and shorter way to get to your