Patent Pending

My product is now patent pending! In the last video, I talked about a product that I was working on and how a local businessman offered his assistance. After almost getting sidetracked by the lack of progress, I decided to shift gears from the manufacturing to patenting. The driver was when my mentor told me that the vast majority of business owners offer services rather than products. I thought back to my own experiences of just how many colleagues I have that are in the services space rather than the products space. It is a lot easier to build generational wealth and scale when you own a product that the market wants and/or needs. This information excited me as I was thinking about some of the famous inventors that get highlighted during Black History Month. I could be the first person that I know - and that many people know personally - that will actually own a patent. Now I don’t want anyone the think that this journey is easy or quick. Just to get to the point where I was ready to actually file the patent took a little over 6 months. After creating a rough prototype in my garage, I met with a patent attorney to get an idea of how the process worked and the associated costs. The next step was to field test the prototype. My best friend owns a cleaning company so I asked him if he could get his staff to test the product and provide recommendations. I was pleased to know that I had almost hit the nail on the head! And with just a few tweaks, the product was ready to submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A meetup.com group that I attended gave me some valuable insight that allowed me to file the non-provisional patent application on my own! Due to the nature of my product, I plan to take the licensing route unless I can get an unbelievable deal with getting it manufactured and retailed/wholesaled. As this project unfolds, I will keep you all abreast of how it goes.