Welder World Blog

Do you do your best thinking behind the wheel? Behind the wheel of a big rig is where I have my best thoughts, PayPal was one of them.

Just shortly after the dawn of the debit card, I had a brain wave for being able to allow people, that were not fortunate enough to have a credit card, to still make purchases online, via their debit card or straight transaction from a bank account. I had taken the idea to Invention Submission Corporation (ISC), but due to overwhelming exitement, I didn’t explain the idea quite the way I should have. If you ever get to this point in your life, I strongly suggest you have all your ducks in a row before you proceed. The idea I conveyed to ISC, led them to think I wanted to patend an idea for a card swiper integrated into your PC allowing you to do this. ISC did a wonderful job on the 00.00 book I paid for with all the excellent research they had done. What I should have asked for was the technology (programming) to ALLOW the use… big difference.

If YOU believe in it, don’t ever give up.

Frustrated, I put the idea on the shelf for a while. No knowing much about computers or programming, I searched for someone that did. I found 4 different people who said they could help, for a very hefty fee. So, I tried to find private funding. Each Person I went to (multi-millionaires) thought it was a very good idea, but they were very pesimistic, (how they became wealthy is beyond me). All of them had asked me the same question, they asked, “with the technology that is out there right now, how is it no one has thought of this yet?” I told them there was…ME! Who was I to them? I had no credibility in this area. I’m just a truck driver to them.

Today, PayPal is a household word and is resposible for hundreds of millions of transactions. Unfortunately, I let that negetivity knock down my self confidence, and the idea became a reality for someone else. For the record, PayPal was not the name I had come up with.

On to the next one.

 A number of years pass, then another idea hits me like a ton of bricks.

I was on I-90 in Montana and stopped at the Broadway Truck Stop, exit 495, to see if they had what I was looking for, a keychain retractor. You’re probably wondering where the heck I’m going with this, but wait, it gets better. How many of you have your CB mic hanging from a mini bungie cord, that swings around from the ceiling of your cab, occasionally hitting you in the head?

I bought a keychain retractor, bent the belt clip at a 90% angle and fastened it to the ceiling of the cab, hooked my mic on and… it didn’t work. The mic was too heavy for the spring inside and the chain was too noisy. I took the retractor apart, twisted the spring tighter, replaced the chain with a mason’s string and… the spring still wasn’t strong enough. The cord worked like a charm. I bought another retractor and some JB weld. I did the same modifications to the second one and welded them together…voila! I would only use it at night so no one would see it. I don’t think Hugh Hefner had anything pulled as hard as I yanked on those two retractors, trying to break them. For 3 months I tested out my prototype.

Back I went to ISC, another 00.00 later for a book on the research they had done. They do excellent research when you’re specific on what you are asking for. I only needed another ,000.00 and they would have taken it to market.

I scrounged around looking for someone with the same vision as me and came up empty handed. Every effort I made to save money was shot down by my wife (now Ex-wife). It’s very hard to achieve something when you keep getting shut down. So, I put that one on the shelf for a while. A year later, I was in a truckstop in Michigan and nearly had a heart attack. There it was, on the shelf for .99 (at the time). ISC estimated my cost at producing it at approximately .75. I was so furious. I bought one, took it home and threw it on the kitchen table in front of my wife and said, “not such a bad idea now is it.” She was speechless.

Hipocritical

 The sub heading in this article “If YOU believe in it, don’t ever give up,” well I did, give up that is. Advice is only good if you take it. It was always easy for me to give advice but I never took my own. I have learned the hard way. That’s what mistakes are made of. I have a number of other ideas I’ve been working on over the past few years, and my biggest one yet has been in the works for the past 25 years. I’m not giving up on any of them this time, and the big one, well lets just say, I’ll give you a little hint…maybe in another article. It’s so ridiculously simple, you’ll probably kick yourself for not thinking of it.

Check out my articles to come, I’ll be giving hints.

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