Turning a complaint into millions.
thank you thank you thank you
many moons ago i was born in a tiny tiny
country
but beautiful country named saint lucia
was born of very young
parents and if you know about growing up
in tiny countries or developing
countries you know that many people
celebrate the diy lifestyle and that’s
the
do-it-yourself lifestyle so in our
country
my dad made his own toys as a kid
people build their own houses and the
most important part about this talk
is people cut their own hair
so i’m growing up in my house and my
dad’s really old school
my dad is the guy that needs to do
everything himself he’s not going to pay
for a barber
he’s the guy that’s going to cut your
hair my dad had only
one hairstyle and it was the buzz cut
the buzz cut was him just buzzing my
hair down and that was
unfavorable so for 13 years i was
getting this buzz cut
and i hated it so going down the line
i grew up i got to 13 years old
and i was sick of these haircuts and i
said you know what
i’m gonna cut my own hair because i
didn’t have any money my dad wasn’t
going to send me the barber
and i decided to cut my own hair well
i’m 13 years old and you could imagine
with a clipper
and a 13 year old cutting their own hair
it’s not a good situation
i ended up cutting my hair and i had
cheetah spots on my head
bad spots all over it was horrible
so this comes to my first part of the
presentation
the problem statement and you know what
when you have a problem it’s time to
solve it so
what i ended up doing was i kept cutting
my hair and messing up and i realized
that there was a problem
and i realized that my dad was giving me
bad haircuts
and then i realized that i couldn’t cut
my hair perfectly
see the problem was i couldn’t get the
perfect lineup
or hairline on my hair so what i ended
up doing was cutting up some plastic
templates in my house
from dish detergent bottles to folders
and i ended up making these templates to
put against my head
so i could run the clipper or the razor
and they wouldn’t give me
any bald spots so i ended up making a
prototype
actually this is one of my first
prototypes that i used as a kid for many
years
so what i say to you at the beginning
of this presentation is always
write down your problems my problems
were my dad was cutting my hair
i can’t cut my hair i can’t cut my hair
perfectly
write down those problems because you
can solve them at a different time
i have an inventor book i write down all
my problem statements
in an inventor book grab your phone
write down a problem when you have it
and then you can solve it whether you’re
sitting on the toilet or in the bath
i come up with inventions in my sleep so
i solved my problem 15 years went by and
i used this tool every other week
before job interviews before dates you
know
growing up you were trying to be cool
you were trying to go on dates you were
trying to
have the great clothes but you had to
have the the great haircut
at the same time so 15 years went by
and you know i didn’t really think i had
anything it was just a little tool that
sat on
in my bathroom and it wasn’t anything to
me
so one day i didn’t want to do a chore
and my wife got mad at me and she told
me
you never finish what you start
and you know what it hit me harder than
i’m lazy or content
and i never finish what i start it
actually
hit me as if i wasn’t actually doing
things for my life or reaching for my
goals
and my friend andy enriquez he says you
never show up
my friend andy enriquez says show up for
your life and i felt like i wasn’t
showing up for my life i wasn’t taking
that jump
so i did the chore because i didn’t want
to get in trouble with my wife
and then i went to my inventor book and
i said you know what maybe i should go
to a patent attorney
and show them my inventions now i’ll
show you
the first page of my book and the second
page of my book
was that little plastic template tool
that i used for 15 years and was by my
sink
and i didn’t really think i had anything
i ended up patenting this
this product uh what a patent is
is basically you saving your invention
so that no one else can copy you and if
they copy you
they either have to settle or you can
sue them
it’s intellectual property intellectual
properties your rights
your inventions your innovation so
i went and i patented this product i was
dead broke i mean i used up
all my money my my get bank accounts
were on
e i didn’t know what to do the first
thing i said was
i need to raise some money all right so
what i ended up doing was bringing this
prototype to all these pitch
competitions
and i’m standing in front of a crowd
like you guys and i’m here like
ah the cut buddy it’s gonna save
everyone it’s gonna cut your hair
you’re gonna do it by yourself who wants
to go with me who wants to invest
and i remember doing these pitch
competitions and just hearing crickets
in the crowd just like the silence that
i hear right now
no one really believed in my product
because everyone wanted the sexy things
like the
new apps or artificial intelligence they
were like the cut buddy
a hair template no technology so
no one invested in my product i had to
bootstrap my own business
because no one wanted to give me money
and what is bootstrapping
bootstrapping is basically holding
yourself up by the bootstrap
and investing in your own company until
you’re profitable so i used my own money
to manufacture my products now remember
i was already broke from these patterns
now i am super broke if i make any
mistake
and if this doesn’t work out i am
homeless
my back is against the wall it’s
robodope like ali
i have to fight and punch against the
corner
so the only thing i knew when i got my
products
was to grab my product and do these
youtube videos
so i have this cool rap music
[Music]
and i’m cutting my hair and i’m feeling
cool it’s like buy the cut buddy
it can edge up your hair easily and you
know what i’m starting to get
two to five sales a day it’s not bad
maybe i could pay off some of my student
loans
but i started seeing these notifications
on my youtube video
and they’re popping up one of them said
that guy got a five head a five head
humans have four heads what does he mean
a five head
someone else said he has a mcdonald’s
arch line on his head
like mcdonald’s arch line on my head
someone said that i look like a dragon
ball z
character and if anybody knows anime
hair
dragon ball z and all other anime
cartoons
are very animated with their foreheads
the one that really got me which was
very clever
was someone said i was ahead of my class
and they put head in quotations
do you guys know what was happening at
that time
i was selling a hairline product for
cutting your hairline
and i was going bald yes
i’m bald now so people were roasting me
they were mean they were critical it
hurt me so bad
i was just depressed i remember being in
my bed
almost crying and my wife rubbing my
back saying it was gonna be okay
i was ready to give up things were going
downhill for me
and just a few days later i got the most
important email
of my life and it was a veteran with
disabilities
and this veteran said i take medication
and my handshake because my handshake i
can’t
cut my hair perfectly so i bought your
product
and with your product i can steady my
hand
and cut my hair perfectly and i’d like
to thank you for making
such a beautiful product so that people
with disabilities can have nice haircuts
too
and given the fact that i was ready to
give up
and i got an email like this it really
lit the fire
in my stomach because i realized that it
wasn’t just me trying to get rich on
this
patent or this invention it was really
about
solving people’s problems that was my
mission
it was to create confidence through a
fresh haircut
i started looking at my reviews and it
was veterans
it was service members and active
military duties
it was the salon artist who was trying
to learn
how to do the edge up it was the mother
with two autistic children these are
real reviews i was reading
so what i realized it was time for me to
back up
and research what my target markets were
and i realized with doing that is i
could identify
influencers that can carry the product
and talk about the product
so i exited myself as the model because
my hair was going away
i know i’m handsome and everything but
that hairline wasn’t looking good
so i went on youtube and i found these
influencers with great hairlines great
personality
great great engagement these influencers
were micro influencers so they weren’t
expensive
so what i offered them was a commission
on each sale
i gave them a coupon code so they could
give to the customer
and that created just a community of
beneficial relationships so the customer
was getting 10
off the influencer was getting 10 on the
sale
and i was getting the sale at the end of
the day
remember my sales were these measly two
to five sales a day
when people were roasting me these
influencers boosted my sales to 50 sales
a day
100 sales a day 400
sales a day i’m in my garage packing
packages like crazy running to the post
office
and the post office workers were saying
what’s up mr cut buddy
i felt famous and on march 5th
2016 11 30
7 and 27 seconds am
my phone started going bus bus bus bus
bus ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
ding
and i just didn’t know what was going on
i thought it was my galaxy just
overheating and i looked and there were
just a bunch of notifications
there were sales i’d gone viral that day
with one of my influencers
10 million views on one video
thousands of sales in just a few hours
i was rich things were amazing i was
successful
i mean it was successful to a point that
paypal
froze my account and thought i was money
laundering
that’s how crazy it was gq wrote about
us black enterprise wrote about us
npr how i built this made a cartoon
about us
and they even put the mcdonald’s arch
line on my hairline to show my struggles
things were going so great that even
shark tank contacted me
and gave me the break of my lifetime
where i was able to go
onto shark tank and get a deal from my
idol damon john who had been wearing his
clothes as a 13 year old
fubu which he invented and i was using
the prototype of
my product so it’s full circle
i ended up with my idol and that was all
because i decided to write down my
problem
solve my problem by coming up with a
solution
with a simple invention then protecting
my idea with a patent
and then launching it bootstrap wise
alright so this led me and my partners
to have a licensing deal and what
licensing is
is when you have a patent and you have a
protected product because
you are an inventor a big corporation
is interested in your product and ends
up giving you royalties
to rent your idea and put it in all the
retail stores
so now you can go to tens of thousands
of stores and get my product
and now i get to sit back and retire and
live on a little truffle farm in
pittsboro
and now i’m happy you know
but you know what when when i really
think about it
and i’m gonna go a little bit off script
here is
am i am i really happy at the end of the
day
yeah i’m very successful the products
booming
things are going great but am i happy
you know when you go to class right
as a like a third grader and they tell
you draw the
image of happiness at art class
and you draw the mother the father
uh the little daughter holding the
parents in and
the son holding the other parents hand
and then even the dog and the cat are
holding their hands too and there’s a
nice green lawn
and then there’s a big house behind them
there’s a nice car
and then there’s a beautiful yellow sun
just happiness on the whole family
you know what i did i never wrote down
or drew
or defined what my happiness was before
i started this journey
i never actually wrote down what were my
tangible and intangible things that i
wanted
so maybe i wanted a modest home maybe i
wanted a family
maybe but i wanted a dog in a nice yard
maybe i wanted a lamborghini
i never wrote those things down so i was
chasing a magical creature
i was trying to impress something that
didn’t exist
throughout the times i i launched my
invention
i should have celebrated the time when i
went viral
i should have celebrated when i went on
shark tank and got a deal on national tv
i should have celebrated but i didn’t
because i didn’t never
i didn’t ever define what my happiness
was
so this whole time i was depressed and
unhappy
so what i challenge you to do is write
down your problems
protect your idea but most importantly
before you do these things i want you to
define your happiness
so that every time something great
happens in your life
you celebrate like there’s no tomorrow
because at the end of the day
your happiness is most important your
mental health
is most important i want to see
everybody here solve their problems
and be happy thank you