A few years ago I invented a plastic toy that makes building Hot Wheels tracks more fun. Occasionally, I get feedback that my TrackJack is too expensive. In fact, the first ever Amazon review I got said it was a clever, useful, and well-made product ... but too expensive — so they gave it 2 stars. The price was $24.99 (currently it's $29.99 and 4.4 ⭐s) Now, you may know that there's not a lot of room between $0 and $25 ... because ... math 😊 Of course I realize that most people are not aware of the costs of bringing a product to market. Some think the inventor pockets the entire selling price. The reality is that we might profit a few dollars per sale if everything goes perfectly well. Here's a list of all the costs to bring my TrackJack from idea to customer. 🟢 PREPARING INVENTORY - Manufacturing (sample, make, assemble) - Packaging (make, ship, assemble) - Barcode Fees - Shipping to Warehouse in USA - Shipping to Warehouse in Canada - Customs Brokerage Fees and Tariffs - Inventory Receiving Fee - Storage Fees (recurring) 🟢 SELLING - Reseller Listing Fee (Amazon, Walmart, Etsy) - Reseller Sales Fee (per order) - Shipping Materials - Order Fulfillment Fee - Shipping to Customer 🟢 BUSINESS OPERATIONS - Refund Risk and Costs - Marketing Costs and Risk - Business Operation Costs - Foreign Exchange Fees - Insurance Costs - Accounting Costs 🟢 INVENTING - Idea & Market Research - 3D Modeling - Prototyping - Testing - Find Manufacturer - Manufacturing Mold (limited lifespan) - Safety Testing - Product Naming - Product Photography - Brand Design (fonts, logos, messaging) - Legal & Trademark - Patent Application - Packaging Sourcing - Packaging Design - Packaging Die 🟢 FOUNDER / INVENTOR - Personal time to manage all of the above - High probability of failure 🟢 PROFIT - If everything goes perfectly well with a product that sells for less than $30, you might make a few dollars per sale. - Then you lose some of that to income taxes.

UPDATED: Made public December 8, 2025 3:30PM ET. You’re a member of our community and this is how this change will affect you: - If you have ever posted or commented on something you do not want visible publicly, you may want to delete it now. Act quickly as this is the only notice before the change happens in a few days. - All posts and comments will be visible by anyone who visits the community, even if they are not a member. This includes content under the COMMUNITY, LEADERBOARD, and MEMBERS tabs. Currently, only members can view this content — but that will change when public.  - Content that is visible to non-members may be indexed by search engines, making our community easier to find. That’s all there is to it in terms of your content. Three more notes: - Visitors will have to become members before they can post, comment, or send chat messages (and chat is restricted to members at Level 2). These requirements keep spam to a minimum. - Some of the resources and training under the CLASSROOM tab will be visible to non-members, but most will only be available to members.  - Membership remains free. We are testing the public option to see if our community can help more people. If it works — great. If not, we may go back to being private. BTW, this is a good business lesson — no one knows what really works, experimentation is necessary to optimize. Thanks for going along for the ride. PS: This does not affect our TeachingSuperhero community — that will remain private.

One of the mistakes I made as a young entrepreneur (a looonnng time ago) was not realizing how scalable marketing needs to be. As an engineer, my operations were designed to be efficient and scalable. I would exhibit at various tradeshows and efficiently gather a few hundred leads and follow-up with them. Some would convert to customers, but most would not. Eventually, I realized that the tradeshow route was not adding enough leads to the "top of the funnel" as it's called. And you need a lot of leads in that funnel since only a small percentage will ever convert to customers — this is typical for most businesses. So I switched it up and started doing direct mail and email marketing, where we could reach thousands of people in a short period of time. Think about this for your own business because sales is a volume game for most businesses. Here is how to do the math: (1) How many of your leads convert to customers? For most businesses, it is well under 10%. Example of a 5% conversion: 100 leads convert to 5 customers. (2) How much money does the average customer pay you? Let's say it's $500. (3) Using the above numbers, to generate $50,000 in revenue requires 100 customers which requires 2,000 leads. Giddy up!

But the nerves are kicking in. What questions will they ask? Will you have the confidence to explain your skills clearly? Will you use the right words and insights—or draw a blank at the worst moment? You realize you’ve learned the material, but you haven’t put in enough “reps” for it to stick. Text, videos, and quizzes just aren’t cutting it. What you need is practice. Real experience. And fast. There’s only one solution: play a hyper-realistic simulation game. Master business. Master accounting. Master digital marketing. Master project management. Build confidence fast — click the CLASSROOM tab in our businessXP community.

When I was in engineering school, I would look around my class and see students frenetically taking notes about what the instructor was saying. Realizing that the instructor was repeating the textbook and that you can't pay attention and take such detailed notes, I opened my textbook and simply highlighted the important parts. This led me to my note taking strategy that has worked well for me for 30 years as an entrepreneur and inventor where I've had thousands of meetings. The key is to document two things: ✅ Important information ✅ Action items. That's really all you need. Use bullets. Avoid the filler. My average meeting might have 10 to 20 bullets. When I used to use a paper notebook, I had a few icons to identify action items. Box for a to do ⏹️ (I check it off when done) emails (E), calls (C), internet research (I) — I use strikethrough to mark those done. I also draw a line down the middle of a page when everything is done on that page (or moved to another system) so I know it's been handled and that I don't have to look at it again. I tried for years to move to notetaking with an app to save me from duplicating my notes from paper to another system and eventually I settled on Workflowy — I like its simplicity, neatness, and instant access on all my devices. I've used OneNote, Evernote, and others but I find they have too much. Simplicity and speed are more important to me. Hardware systems I've tried include a Casio task thingie (early 1990s), Palm Pilot & Handspring Visor (late 1990s), HP iPAQ (2000s), Microsoft Surface 1 (2013-ish), Samsung Tab A with S pen (2016-ish), Remarkable Tablet (2020). Looked into but never bought into those pen/paper transmitting thingies. The attached video provides a brief demonstration.