Your phone rings again. Being one of the first calls since your breakthrough product launched last week, you smile, hoping it's another sale. Instead, it's a partner calling. She asks if you have heard about the several new products in potential foreign markets similar to yours - all copycats. The news hits like a ton of bricks, leaving you shocked, disappointed and worried. Although you have a patent, you're not ready for a copyright war so early in your entrepreneurial journey.
Today's guests, Tomoko and Kevin Nadolny, encountered a similar problem shortly after launching their first product, Runbell, ten years ago and gaining impressive media coverage in Japan, the US, Australia, and other markets. Competing with counterfeits of your newly-launched product can hurt revenue, stagnate growth and cause distress. How they managed the challenge, overcame other ups and downs and continued growing their business is a story that will motivate you to keep building innovative solutions in the face of uncertainty.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
● How to successfully manage product copycats and imitators.
● How constant product innovation can expand your pool of customers and grow revenue.
● How to capitalize on national media exposure for long-term growth.
● How the mindset of a marathon runner is crucial to entrepreneurial success.
● And so much more!
Are you a runner or jogger who runs in crowded places - or do you know someone who does? Are you tired of shouting to alert people when you are approaching? Then, you will love Runbell, the stylish wearable bell for runners to alert pedestrians with a clear ring. Visit www.run-bell.com to learn more and get a 20% site-wide discount that lasts through the end of 2023.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today!
Your phone rings again. Being one of the first calls since your breakthrough product launched last week, you smile, hoping it's another sale. Instead, it's a partner calling. She asks if you have heard about the several new products in potential foreign markets similar to yours - all copycats. The news hits like a ton of bricks, leaving you shocked, disappointed and worried. Although you have a patent, you're not ready for a copyright war so early in your entrepreneurial journey.
Today's guests, Tomoko and Kevin Nadolny, encountered a similar problem shortly after launching their first product, Runbell, ten years ago and gaining impressive media coverage in Japan, the US, Australia, and other markets. Competing with counterfeits of your newly-launched product can hurt revenue, stagnate growth and cause distress. How they managed the challenge, overcame other ups and downs and continued growing their business is a story that will motivate you to keep building innovative solutions in the face of uncertainty.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
● How to successfully manage product copycats and imitators.
● How constant product innovation can expand your pool of customers and grow revenue.
● How to capitalize on national media exposure for long-term growth.
● How the mindset of a marathon runner is crucial to entrepreneurial success.
● And so much more!
Are you a runner or jogger who runs in crowded places - or do you know someone who does? Are you tired of shouting to alert people when you are approaching? Then, you will love Runbell, the stylish wearable bell for runners to alert pedestrians with a clear ring. Visit www.run-bell.com to learn more and get a 20% site-wide discount that lasts through the end of 2023.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today!
Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
In today's interview, we talk about going from that initial AHA. Moment of product development to doing a small test launch to later getting exposure on the TodaY show and then how to grow your business. From there, you'll really enjoy the stories that this husband and wife team share about their product marketing journey.
Announcer [00:00:18]:
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now here's the host of the Harvest Growth podcast, John LeClaire.
Jon LaClare [00:00:38]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to have two guests on with us today, Tomoco and Kevin Nadolni. They are the co founders of a company called Runbell. I'll let them describe exactly what this product is, but when you'll hear it's genius, it's one of those problem solving products, as you hear it, you'll say, why didn't I think of that? I can't imagine this didn't exist before these two co founders invented the idea a few years ago. So let's start our interview, Tomoko and Kevin, by talking first about what is Runbell and how did you develop this product?
Kevin Nadolny [00:01:08]:
Runbell is something that you wear on your fingers, and it's just like a bicycle bell for Runners. So just like bicycles have a bell where they can warn others of their approach because they're coming faster than other people, and they're usually coming from behind where you don't see them. Runners have the exact same problem in dense cities or on isolated trails where you can't exactly see everything in front of you, using some sound cue to let people know you're coming. It's automatic. People hear a bell, they know something. Usually they think a bike is coming. And that's what Runbell is. Runbell is a wearable bell for Runners.
Kevin Nadolny [00:01:44]:
The way we came up with it was really when we were both living in Tokyo and we're husband, wife, and we just had our first son. And that's a huge lifestyle change, right? All of a sudden you have all the Free time in the world to do everything you want to do just on your own schedule. And then now all of a sudden, you have no time, and everything is focused on raising your kids, raising your baby, especially. And so how do you fit in your workout routine into your daily schedule? So that's when I was like, well, I'm going to keep running, but I'm going to run from the office to home. So I usually took the train home. It took about an hour from door to door. And instead of that, how about I run 5 miles in less than an hour, or about the same with changing and use that same commute time, but for my exercise. So that's what I started to do.
Kevin Nadolny [00:02:40]:
And Tokyo is just a really crazy city. It's a lot of fun, a lot of energy, and a lot of people on the streets and tons of lights, tons of ways to get home without having to cross cars and traffic. But a lot of people sharing the sidewalk with you. And usually it wasn't an issue. Like, usually the sidewalks are pretty large, but every once in a while, you get in those bottlenecks and you just want to say, hey, I'm coming through. And a friend of mine in the States was actually making fun of me. He's like, you should try running with this. And he showed a Japanese guy using a bicycle bell walking around Tokyo, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to try that.
Kevin Nadolny [00:03:24]:
And I took a bicycle bell, and I put it on my fingers, and I started to run with that. That's how I got started. Obviously, running with a bicycle bell is not nearly as convenient as running as something that fits on your fingers, designed for your fingers. But that was the initial inspiration, was I started running with a giant bicycle bell on my finger and tested it out that way to see if it would actually work. And of course it did.
Jon LaClare [00:03:51]:
It's a friendly noise. I think that people are used to. It grabs their attention hearing a ringing bell. Like you said, they're assuming it's a bike coming up behind them. Maybe at first, but it grabs your attention enough to make you think to turn around, but it's not rude or in their facE. I love the concept. It makes so much sense because I've run. So I've lived in near downtown Chicago on the south side, and I lived in downtown Boston, and not quite like Tokyo by any means in terms of crowds, but I love to run.
Jon LaClare [00:04:17]:
Or when I visit New York City, I love to run. Just the energy of running in these crowds, but it's hard. You're constantly stopping, slowing down. And a big part of it is you've got people in front of you. You have to get their attention. And it gets really old really fast to say, on your left, on your left. I almost feel more rude saying that, even though, of course, you're doing it to try to help the whole situation. So I love this concept that it's much more, I would say friendly in that situation.
Jon LaClare [00:04:40]:
So, yeah, great invention. So that's how it all started back in the day. And then an early part of your launch or success was on Kickstarter. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?
Kevin Nadolny [00:04:51]:
Yeah, we can talk about how we first got to Kickstarter, because Kickstarter, you really need to have a prototype and like a manufacturing plan. And so Kickstarter is a great structure because you can go and look and see what all the other successful projects are doing and say, okay, I need to do these steps first. We needed to have a functional prototype. We needed to have some manufacturing. We needed to have a price so that we could charge people and know how much it's going to cost us to make so we don't lose money. And so one of the really fortuitous things that happened to us is we went on Amazon, ordered a couple bells that we liked a lot from Amazon Japan. And when they came in the mail, we found them and we're like, okay, who makes these? Like, we know they're from Japanese manufacturers, but where in Japan are they made? Because we like this manufacturer better than that one because they have the better style, better quality. And so I was at home trying to decipher the Japanese.
Kevin Nadolny [00:05:53]:
I can read and write and speak Japanese, but not nearly as good as her, of course. And so it took me a long time to figure out where does this person, where's their manufacturing facility?
Tomoko Nadolny [00:06:04]:
Yeah, because for us, the musical tone is very important. We don't want to annoy pedestrians by dinging it like, you don't, get out of my way. We don't want a message like that. We just nicely share the road. So we needed to pursue the quality of the sound. Yeah, so we found the manufacturer and then we just went to all the information written on backside of the product and then Google it. And then what we found was like, that manufacturer was actually literally down the street from where we.
Kevin Nadolny [00:06:47]:
Tokyo. Crazy Tokyo.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:06:50]:
And then even the package said, it's made in Osaka. It's not in Tokyo, but the manufacturer actually located in Tokyo. And then, yeah, we said, oh, my goodness, maybe we really should do this. This is really meant to. I next day, I really made a phone call to the guy. And that's how we started.
Jon LaClare [00:07:17]:
It's true serendipity, or I think you guys call it fateful encounters. And that happens so often in business. And in a lot of the interviews that I've done over the years, talking to many founders and inventors like yourselves, there is a commonality that there's this serendipitous or fateful moment that turned out to be a turning point. It really varies what that moment is. It's not predictable, but it's all about noticing, I think, and taking advantage of it. Right. So that Aha. That you felt, I think, like, okay, this is an answer.
Jon LaClare [00:07:49]:
We've got to try something out. And since then, we'll get into the success you've had since then. It's been really a real starting point for you. I rewind a little bit to my business. We've been around doing video marketing for now 17 years, a long time. And our business in the early days, we focused on product launches for the first many years of this and specifically on TV here in the US. And TV infomercials are very common way, or certainly were in terms of starting a new product campaign. The world has changed over the past few years, but kind of right at the beginning of that change, we had a moment to like, let's test some Facebook ads.
Jon LaClare [00:08:27]:
Right. And to be honest, this is back, like the very early days of Facebook. They didn't work. It was really was. I don't think they'd figured out Facebook, meaning on their back end back in the day, many years ago, but we kept testing and there was that one moment, that fateful moment that we had an aha. Or tremendous results right away. And that for us was a complete change in the course of our business where we still do national TV launches. We got a couple coming up in January, in a couple of months.
Jon LaClare [00:08:56]:
But most of our business has really moved to this digital side and it really came back to this one success early on. And then it's about taking advantage of it. Right. So you guys did that, too. It's finding that and you got to run with it. Right. These fateful encounters, these moments don't just happen to us and like, hey, we've won. It's about the start of the journey, but going maybe a course change.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:09:16]:
Yeah. Fueled us. Really. Like, you have believed we can do this.
Jon LaClare [00:09:23]:
Yeah, absolutely. And then talk about the success you had on Kickstarter. How did that launch go?
Kevin Nadolny [00:09:29]:
The launch was, it was like a 45 day campaign and for the first 20 to 30, 25 days or something was pretty like, I don't know if we're going to make it. We're like halfway to our goal. Maybe we set our goal too ambitious, product price too low. So we need so many backers. We needed hundreds of backers to reach our goal, which was pretty ambitious for our first time. We didn't have an email list to work off. We didn't really have a lot to set us up for success like some big companies do, or maybe how we would approach Kickstarter. Now we have a customer base.
Kevin Nadolny [00:10:06]:
So we had a little bit of maybe blind ambition at the beginning, but we started to hit off on just like a few media picked us up because it's a really unique product. Does this really work? Was a big question. So people were debating it. A lot of people didn't like us, which created a debate, something to talk about. So people are like, oh, this is the dumbest idEa. Don't ding at people. And then people are no, like, you don't understand. I have that situation too.
Kevin Nadolny [00:10:35]:
It works. This is a great idea. This is genius. And we had that back and forth. And then a few people from like Outside magazine and some other big publications came out and said, this is legit, this is a great idea. And then it just exploded off of that. And so we ended up ending our campaign with 700 backers, 37 countries and $25,000. And we're like, that's success.
Kevin Nadolny [00:10:58]:
We got this. But as you said, that was step one of many steps down the road. So that allowed us to do our initial mass production run. Our initial, we did a lot of stuff after that.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:11:17]:
Never knew. Shitting globally, like shipping, like 37 different countries is so hard.
Kevin Nadolny [00:11:27]:
We had a lot of plans and we pulled it off to all those different countries. But, yeah, adding in, like Saudi Arabia was a tough one that just never arrived. There was a few that were. By the time we ended up shipping, we had 1000 backers at that point. And so we spent hours and hours packing it ourselves.
Jon LaClare [00:11:53]:
Yeah, we talk a lot about testing and I think crowdfunding like Kickstarter is one way to do that. There's so many other ways, right? Whether it's like selling at a trade show or a flea market or whatever. But that important timing of early stage launch of testing, getting feedback before you invest too much of your own money into this, right, get it, start small and prove the concept and then grow from there. And that's one thing, of course, that happened. Of course it helps with funding, right, to build out that first manufacturing run as well. What came next, though? So after this success was proven or tested on Kickstarter, what was next for your business?
Kevin Nadolny [00:12:34]:
That was an excellent question for us at the moment. So our campaign ended and we just got all this great publicity and we were having tons of backers every day coming in. And then when it ends, it's just over, and we didn't have a website set up. We didn't know e commerce, we didn't know how to do collect payments. And that was kind of before shopify, or maybe when Shopify was just getting off the ground. A lot of people hadn't figured out how to make that as a service to small businesses, to collect payments online. So there was a lot of learning done really quickly, immediately after. We're like, we need to figure this out immediately.
Kevin Nadolny [00:13:11]:
So we did find some way of collecting payments online safely without all the credit card stuff that happened in the early days of the internet. So setting up our website page was a huge endeavor. And we went through many iterations before we landed on Shopify. I think it's the best, at least for me. And then we were also like, how do we keep getting the word out? And luckily, we had a lot of earned media where people saw the product, they saw the previous. Every media article that was written kind of built up to the next one. So then that introduced more media to our products. And they're like, well, we want to write about that, too.
Kevin Nadolny [00:13:56]:
So one thing kept leading to another where we ended up being on the Today show a few months later. And so we had the website, we had a way of keep making sales. And then all of a sudden we're on the Today show with, like, a national TV in the US, completely unpaid for. It's just all earned media where we're just going along for the ride. And that was a really exciting time.
Jon LaClare [00:14:21]:
Yeah, it can be a real breakthrough in a business to get that especially massive national coverage. Over the years, we've had a lot of clients be on the Today show and Good Morning America and some of our things. And it can be a direction change or course change for your business to really drive increase in sales. Right. That massive exposure kind of starts it off. How did that impact your business from that point forward? So let's call that maybe the first massive hit. Like, you've got a bunch of along the way. But going from the Today show, how did that help you in your business going forward?
Kevin Nadolny [00:14:54]:
You want to talk about it or. It wasn't necessarily the breakthrough that we were hoping for. It wasn'T necessarily we were onto Today show, we got all this free press, and then people just came onto our website like crazy. It was a short period of time where it lasted, and it slowly starts to taper off. So how do you keep that momentum going year after year? And now we've been in business for almost ten years. Next year is going to be our 10th year, which is crazy. So finding that momentum and finding that secret sauce to find new customers and make a profit off of that, I would say we're still struggling with what's our secret sauce of doing that. Being on all these great TV shows wasn't changed the trajectory so much that all of a sudden we were like set and we're like, we're golden.
Kevin Nadolny [00:15:52]:
I would say it almost set us up for higher expectations where we tried to scale too fast and we realized it didn't happen. So we had to pull back. So a lot of that was, we were like, yes, we're on this, we're going to scale up. And then boom, it starts to slow down too much and we haven't figured out how to keep it going. Another thing was exposure also led to copycats where we had people in China, like, copying us and sending know they photocopy our packaging and they send it just as us. It's not our product, doesn't look like it's not the same Quality, but they use our brand and they leverage off of it. We do have a patent and we were able to successfully drive most of them off the market. But as we were successful, we had other challenges.
Kevin Nadolny [00:16:41]:
So it's been an up and down experience since then, I suppose.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:16:45]:
But when we talk about like a copycat, it's kind of weird to say but welcome them because when somebody copy you, which means you made right thing. If it doesn't worth copying, it's not worth copying. Then nobody copy. But people started to copy and then just make exact same thing what we do. It's kind of cool. It just reminded me of the story of Coco Chanel. Of course, she's a fabulous designer. And then all the fashion designers copied her.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:17:26]:
And then she said, let them copy because the copy cats make my stuff more genuine and then stand out. It's okay. Whipping. I was like, that's so cool. So I just tried to keep our cool, say, okay, it's okay because we have that quality sound. Of course, we bought some of them, the copycats, but they can't make the same quality sound. This is really crafted in Japan. The Japanese craftsmanship, well, because I'm Japanese, so I'm really proud of.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:18:01]:
Yep.
Jon LaClare [00:18:03]:
Yeah, I think that's very true. It's a good way to think of copycats because really every successful product business is going to generate copycats, no matter your patent protection, no matter what you're doing to protect yourself. It's just the nature of it. But it is a testament to success. It means, okay, it's selling, it's working, the fact that you want to fight against it as much as you possibly can, but it is, unfortunately, one of the things that comes along with a successful product launch for sure. So you mentioned you talked about kind of continuing growth. I want to rewind a little bit after getting national exposure because we've dealt with that a lot, with a lot of our clients and just for the benefit of our audience, one of the ways that you can drive continued growth is something controllable. Right.
Jon LaClare [00:18:44]:
So one of the beauties of earned media, like the Today show, it's fantastic. It's free, drives, a ton of exposure. It's just hard to scale. Right. It's hard to guarantee. Okay, we've done this once. You can't just buy it again. Right? You've got to earn it again.
Jon LaClare [00:18:57]:
And you've got a great product like yours. You're going to get those opportunities, but you can't control them as much. So getting that combination with earned media and paid media together, now you can scale it, you can control it. And that's one way to go forward. I know you guys have done some of that, too. I just want to clarify for our audience.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:19:13]:
Definitely, we felt like we are becoming just a one hit wonder after Kickstarter. Yeah, we did it. And then all those media, like from us, France, and then Scandinavia, Japan, and then all those different countries worldwide, that's what we felt. Talking about us. But then just one hit wonder. So we needed to come up with next steps.
Kevin Nadolny [00:19:44]:
And that's another way of addressing copycats is you innovate, you keep innovating. So we actually had a big lifestyle move where we gave up the neon lit streets of Tokyo and we came to a much smaller and still a big city of Portland, Oregon, but quite a bit different. We call it like the trip from Neon lit Tokyo to Moonlit Portland, where all of a sudden we found we're running in the dark a lot.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:20:16]:
Not many people. No use of rumble.
Kevin Nadolny [00:20:20]:
There's use of rumble. We got trails and we got like the urban pass along the waterfront, so some places to use it. A lot of the times where we were running, it was so dark. All the streets were dark. Cars are coming by.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:20:32]:
Yeah, sunset is very early here. Pasaden, like 430 in midwinter.
Kevin Nadolny [00:20:40]:
So we're like, we got our next product idea. You need to be heard and you also need to be seen. Like, these two go together. So let's create something that not just allows runners to see in front of them, but can also alert others that they're approaching using light instead of sound. That's the basic idea. And then we want to build on this ring concept. So we have a ring for Run Bell. It wears on your ring, so let's take that same idea.
Kevin Nadolny [00:21:10]:
Instead of a bell, let's put it a wearable light on your hand. We've run with flashlights before. That was kind of like the first thing we did. The fallback is, let me just grab my bike. I got my bike light, and it's going to grab it and run with that. Same with a bike bell. I like to bike as well. We could also put a headlamp on it and run with that.
Kevin Nadolny [00:21:33]:
A lot of people choose to do that, but I really preferred something in my hand where I could use it to shine where I wanted to or alert people where I wanted to. Same with Tomoko. And so we wanted to have this idea. Let's take that same bike light, the same concept as Runbell, and let's put it on our hands. And then how do you make it compact, ergonomic, easy to use? That took a lot of product development and testing. We again went back to 3D printing and kind of 3D printed a mold, got some electrical wiring, put it together. So. Okay.
Kevin Nadolny [00:22:09]:
And started running with that, testing it with friends, running Hood to coast with it. Hood to coast is an all night, like, 30 hours. It takes us 30 hours running event. And I think launching a new product really reinvigorated the whole company. So we had those ups and downs. It's like, okay, now we can see the vision we need to keep innovating. And we again launched on Kickstarter. We again launched.
Kevin Nadolny [00:22:39]:
Not again. We launched for the first time in Japan on Makwake, which is another Japanese crowdfunding. And now manufacturing and production of that is a whole side story. COVID hit all sorts of obstacles hit. Our manufacturing partner went bankrupt in the middle. Right after we sent them money to open the molds, we had to chase a lot of people down. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs always talk about those struggles that they hit, and then you can easily just give up and say, I'm out. That was a lot of work.
Kevin Nadolny [00:23:16]:
It was fun, but it takes real grit to keep going at it. And I think grit is like the buzword. A lot of people say it, but I think it's true because we just kept going at it, and we're successful.
Jon LaClare [00:23:36]:
I've heard you guys compare that grit, that difficulty, which every business has to pass through, just parts. Part of it. Right. It makes the journey at the end of it a lot more fun, a lot more meaningful, et cetera. But I've heard you guys compare it to running a marathon, which is obviously very fitting for a business that deals with runners directly. But how do you make that comparison? Like, running a business is like running a marathon, especially for those in our audience that maybe haven't done that before.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:23:59]:
Exactly. That's how I feel. But, John, you are also a marathon finisher. That's so amazing.
Jon LaClare [00:24:08]:
I think I hold the record for the slowest marathon.
Kevin Nadolny [00:24:13]:
But you can't go out in a marathon and run as fast as you can and expect to finish. You run fast and you're pacing yourself and you're pushing yourself to your limits. But you also have to recognize, I still have a long ways to go, so pacing yourself, understanding it's going to be a long race. And then you also hit the wall at, like, mile 18. I remember mile 18 where I hit the wall and I was just like, I was out of gas, I was out of juice, and I didn't really know about fueling and salts in my first marathon. I was just like, I'm young. I'm just going to run.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:24:52]:
Yeah, but then people cheer you up. Really.
Kevin Nadolny [00:24:55]:
Running in Japan is the best.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:24:57]:
A lot of people cheer up runners. It's the same way running business. You feel like, oh, maybe this is it. But then all those moments, like, customers reach out to us with such a sweet, lovely feedback on our products. Like, hey, I love, love, love your products. Because we did that. We do that. It's just fueling us.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:25:24]:
It's really fuel in the same way, like running marathon and running business, I love that comparison.
Jon LaClare [00:25:32]:
And you talk about hitting the wall, and it happens to pretty much everybody, right? Even the elite runners, et cetera. And I think back to my first marathon was the Boston Marathon, which I ran it Bandit. I didn't qualify back in the. This is like the long time ago. You could run it just like. And half the people did it without a number back. It was very different back then. But the beauty of that race is there's people along the way.
Jon LaClare [00:25:56]:
I love how you talked about that, right? When people are cheering for you, even in the hardest times, you can make it through. And to contrast that a marathon, I didn't finish, I was sick. But also, it was, I think, more difficult. It was in New Mexico, beautiful like white sands, and then this long straightaway with nobody on the sides of the road. Right. It was that much more difficult because you're completely alone. And I think a lot of times in business we feel that way. Right.
Jon LaClare [00:26:20]:
It's about the nice thing as opposed to a marathon. In a real marathon, you can't just manufacture a crowd. Right. But in a business, you can find those people that are going to be your cheering section. You wIll. The other difference is a lot of times the easy crowds in running a business are not cheering you on. They're saying, you'll never do this. They're naysayers, whatever.
Jon LaClare [00:26:39]:
Because they're not used to it. Finding a cheering section that is positively along your side in that journey is necessary. I think so. I personally love that comparison.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:26:49]:
Yeah. Thank you. Yes.
Jon LaClare [00:26:52]:
I want to jump back to one thing and just reiterate, and then after this, I give you guys the chance. If there's anything I didn't ask you that you want to talk about before that, though, you talked about innovation for the benefit of our audience. I love what you've done and I want to clarify something. So when you started with Runbell, you have a product that is relatively a niche product, right? It's for runners and it's specifically for runners in certain situations and beginning in urban areas and around dark corners and that kind of thing. Relatively a niche, a ton of runners in the world, of course. And then what I love and what is a common and recommended approach in innovation is as you expand your line, well, now you've got this. It's easier to launch a niche product, right? It's easier to find people that have a passion for what you're doing when it's a small, niche focused audience as opposed to something that works for everybody, right? Because it's a cluttered world out there. But the nice thing is, once you've got that audience, now you've sold so many of these over the years, you come out with the torch light, right? So the light version, now all of a sudden it's great for runners, it's great for all of your audience, and you can market to all those, but also an expanded audience.
Jon LaClare [00:27:58]:
I mean, this works for everything for any kind of walking your dog outside, a lot of areas where the run bell might not work as well, potentially. So that's a great, I would say, piece of advice for audience to pay attention as you think about expanding your line of products. Start small, start with that niche, a real focus. And once you've got that, now you can expand and go gradually broader with bigger audience, which means potentially bigger revenue opportunities as you continue to grow the business. Anyways, want to mention that. But is there anything else that comes to mind that I didn't ask you that you think could be helpful for our audience?
Tomoko Nadolny [00:28:30]:
When I listened to, I really listened to most of your podcasts, John. And then I found myself kind of left out because, well, I'm not that big. Like most of your guests were so successful already and then maybe they call themselves startups, but hey, I am the startup. I am really so humble. And then I feel like, hey, if you were talking about million dollar sales or those kind of things, that really overwhelming. So if I can connect to some of the listeners of yours, like someone like us really have a good idea, maybe even having to start it to manufacture anything, but thinking someday one day I really want to do something, maybe those people can relate to us better, but I don't know how to address, but yeah, it's just wanting to message them. Don't be afraid. You get there slowly but surely.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:29:44]:
Don't try to, I don't know. I really want to message to those people, encourage them. Your idea definitely should be known by people. So let's do it. How can we do it? How can we manage that?
Jon LaClare [00:30:04]:
I don't know. It's encouragement, right? It's great to hear from people like you that have had a great success to talk about that early part of the journey, because we never look at that. That's why I love doing this show is a lot of our interviews. We talk about the early days, which are hard and frankly, struggles continue, right? Running any business is hard. They're just different trials along the way. But in the very early days, you wonder, is this ever going to make it? Is it ever going to turn that corner? And we just need that encouragement, I think. So it's great to hear from you to encourage our audience. And as I said, everybody listening should find their cheering section.
Jon LaClare [00:30:39]:
Hopefully today's interview helped, but if not, or either way, find people personally in your lives that can truly be your cheering section. So great advice. Thank you. I do want to encourage our audience. Go. Please check out their website, which is run-bell.com. It's Run-bell.com. Anybody who's driving, it's in the show notes, always go back to and find it later on.
Jon LaClare [00:31:01]:
Right now there's a site wide 20% discount on the website that runs through the end of 2023. So if you're looking for a gift for a runner or the light for anybody who spends time in the outdoors, both great gift ideas. Run-bell.com. Well, I really appreciate your time. Both of you were fantastic today. So thank you so much for sharing your story with our audience.
Tomoko Nadolny [00:31:25]:
Thank you so much. John.
Kevin Nadolny [00:31:26]:
Thank you for having us.
Jon LaClare [00:31:27]:
Be sure to check out run-bell.com to learn more. And be sure to check out Harvestgrowth.com to see other episodes we've recorded. If you'd like to take a shortcut and learn the process that we've used to launch hundreds of products since 2007, you can download our Secret Sauce, our product marketing campaign cheat sheet right from Harvestgrowthsecretsauce.com. Or go to our website, harvestgrowth.com. You can set up an appointment right from the site to speak directly with a member of the Harvest Growth team in a free, one on one consultation.