The Only Product of Its Kind: Strategies for Creating and Scaling a Category-Defining Device

What does it take to launch a successful product in a space where 97% fail before reaching the market? In this episode, we’re joined by Michael McCrary and Robert Hulet, co-founders of Prox PRD, the world’s first dedicated phone reminder device, to share their journey from concept to building a patented, category-defining product.

Their story serves as a roadmap for entrepreneurs to validate ideas, simplify complex solutions, and scale a product from garage-level assembly to national media attention without relying on venture funding or bloated overhead.

Whether you’re launching a new venture or refining a current product, this episode is packed with real-world strategies that can give your business an edge.

In today's episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we'll cover:

• How to get product feedback fast before spending big
• How to turn customer support into a growth strategy
• How to use long-form video to boost trust and sales, and simplify your message for better conversions
• How to scale production without sacrificing quality
• How to build a loyal user base with real utility
• And so much more!

Whether you're refining your product-market fit or scaling into DTC channels, this conversation will inspire you to think differently about product development, messaging, and growth.

Visit www.proxdevices.com to learn more about Prox PRD and discover why it is loved by so many.

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! 

Transcript

Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
Today's episode is packed with valuable lessons for anyone launching or relaunching a product. I'm joined by two founders of a successful technology product company who share how they turned around a slow start but getting their messaging exactly right. You'll hear how one strategic shift made all the difference in their campaign. We also dig into how they learned directly from their early customers before and after launch to refine everything from their product to to their marketing to even the instructions inside the box. If you're preparing for a product launch or if your current messaging just isn't converting the way you had hoped, this episode is a must listen, let's jump in.

Announcer [00:00:39]:
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, Jon LaClare.

Jon LaClare [00:00:59]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to have Michael McCrary and Robert Hewlett with us today. They are the co founders and co inventors of the Prox prd. If you haven't heard about this product, you're going to really love what it does and they've got some great stories behind it as well. But before we dive in too far, I just first wanted to welcome you guys to the show. Thanks for taking the time today.

Robert Hulet [00:01:21]:
Thank you.

Michael McCrary [00:01:22]:
Yeah, thanks for having us.

Jon LaClare [00:01:24]:
So let's talk a bit about before we jump into the product, a little bit about your background because you guys had big careers, you know, long careers before you came out and invented the Prox prd. Tell us if you both can about your backgrounds before Prox.

Michael McCrary [00:01:38]:
Well, first of all, it's like I have been an entrepreneur all my life. I've never really worked for anybody and except for when I was in high school and I went to, actually went to work for an entrepreneur during my summer jobs and I got the bug and I've never looked back. So I've been, gosh, I've had probably about 12 different companies bringing different products. I've had import distribution company involved in a pecan company. I'm silent partners in companies and stuff. So I'm just full on entrepreneur. That's, that's really my background and in trying to bring products in the market, you know, doing business development. But I also have a finance background, you know, accounting and finance degree and stuff like that. So, and I, and I do business valuations for, as an expert Witness and things like that. But it's small business. I'm a huge, huge fan of small business and helping people out. I'm always in support of the small guy. So yeah, that's my background.

Jon LaClare [00:02:37]:
Robert, a couple quick questions for you before we jump into Michael's background. So what was the very first business you launched?

Michael McCrary [00:02:44]:
Well, the very first one was actually a construction company. We put up commercial covered parking in Arizona, all throughout Arizona. And then when I sold that, I ended up buying another company which was an auto parts company. And then that's why I started importing containers from China and Taiwan and India and, and selling it to like, I don't know, 8,000 to 13,000 retailers throughout the United States and retired from that, get into business consulting. Next thing I know I still had the bug. I just started, you know, going back out other, other businesses and, and I think it's over time. You know, Mike and I crossed paths through a mutual friend and, and I was just so excited. I said, you know, I've got this guy that is just so smart and he's, he's got, you know, just the right background to be able to, to bring an electronics device into the market. And we hit it off and it's, it's been really good, a great journey.

Jon LaClare [00:03:43]:
That's awesome. Michael, what's, what's your background?

Robert Hulet [00:03:46]:
Well, it's sort of the same in some aspects in that both the low tech and the high tech. So low tech. My first job out of college was up in Alaska doing computerized estimating up in Prudhoe Bay. And then after a few years and got married and had a kid or had a kid on the way, I put my resume out and a computer company hired me. And prior to that, actually when I was a kid, when I was in junior high, I was actually going to Stanford and programming on computers there. But to me it was just a fun thing. And my career path was actually going to be construction. But when I put my resume out, a computer company hired me and then I ended up managing the operating systems group down in Southern California for Burroughs and then just kept doing computers and kept doing more high reliability computers. So went from computers that might be on naval warships or computers that were running automation back in the 80s for building planes, for building cars, Mercedes, Boeing, and then went on to do some protocols for the traffic equipment throughout the United States actually became a California law, then went back to construction again after I sort of got a little burned out on the latest, greatest computer every nine months or six months. So it Was nice to see a building be there for a while and then had retired from that. And a friend of mine said, you know, I've got a challenge for you. So that's. I'll tell you a little bit about that in a later bit. But meeting Robert really was the spark because he had a lot of similar experiences, but very complementary experiences and knowledge. And so. So I really thought it formed a great partnership because of his knowledge base and my knowledge base me on the more on the technical side, meet him on more on the how to start a business and be a business entrepreneur. And that was a perfect complement for us.

Jon LaClare [00:06:04]:
I got to ask about the high reliability computers. It makes sense. I've actually never heard that phrase before. As soon as you said that and explained airplanes and naval warships, et cetera, like, I guess I never thought about that. Like if they had our computers that are constantly having to restart and you know, kind of fix problems along. Yeah, you can't do that. I never really thought about that. Like, I'm glad that they, that there are high reliability computers. I'd be interested to dive a little bit deeper on the technology and in another conversation about that and learn more about how those are different. But the interesting thing is, you know, now you're in the tech space again with this particular product, the Prox prd. Can you guys talk about the proxy prd, what it is, how it works?

Robert Hulet [00:06:44]:
Oh yeah, absolutely. So I'll defer to Robert to give the marketing side and I'll give my little technical side just briefly. On the technical side, it really is a device that's using our patented methodology of determining when you've lost proximity with your phone. And it does that by utilizing a constant low power Bluetooth low energy connection to your phone. So it doesn't run your phone down because it's a Bluetooth low energy different like Bluetooth headphones that run your phone down. So then it also uses an accelerometer and we do a form of dead reckoning. And so we determine whether or not you've walked away from your phone by both the Bluetooth signal and also the movement that we're detecting with the accelerometer. And so we give you an alert. So if you walk, you know, fast, you might go a little bit further, but normally you get an alert between 50 and 150ft and it's detecting the lack of proximity via the Bluetooth signal and knowing you're moving via the accelerometer.

Jon LaClare [00:07:52]:
Michael, you want to talk about the benefits? I think I'm sorry Michael. You talked about the benefits. Robert, maybe you want to talk about the sort of non technical side maybe of like what use cases. Have you seen that this has been successful both for the two of you as well as for some of your customers?

Michael McCrary [00:08:07]:
Well, I think, you know, first of all it's kind of a new concept to most people having, you know, the prd, which is a phone reminder device. You know, first of all them getting that connection that hey, this is, this is something different. And in fact, you know, I kind of learned this from my wife. She is, she's the person who forgets her phone, but she just kind of manages it. She, you know, like she would drive down the street but turn around and come back and get it or she'd walk out of the house, house and turn around and get it. But she just thought that was a way of life. She wouldn't have gone on and looked for this device. It wasn't even on her radar. But once I gave her one and next thing I know I could hear it go off outside. She, I see her come back, pick up her phone and stuff like that. She is just, she goes, everybody needs one of these things. She goes, I just don't think people realize that they forget their phone. And there are some people that, okay, maybe you don't forget your phone for a month, but when that thing goes off it's like, oh my gosh, it just saved me, saved me from leaving it in the restaurant or leaving it at home and everything. And it really kind of comes down to people do resonate with the fact that yeah, I have left it at the restaurant and it's been stressful and you know, so it's that whole thing of we have to realize everything's on this phone now. Our pictures, text messages, banking. It used to be I could forget my phone at home and I come to the office, I could work all day and go home. I can't do that anymore. I get to the office, if I don't have the phone, I can't get on some websites. Everything's gone to this, you know, the phone authentication for the bank or the platform to know that it's me. It's like I have to go back and get it. And so when Mike and I connected on this, you know, Mike did a lot of research. I mean he's brilliant. He won't tell you that, but I'm going to tell you he is absolutely brilliant. And he's, he's. We don't even say that he's type A, he's type double A. And he's into perfection and he wants this thing to be perfect. So, you know, we, we went down this road and we wanted to make sure that we could do something that was unique and we wanted to be able to do it without an app being required. We didn't, we wanted to make it easy. No passwords, no subscription, which really resonated with customers. You know, it's like, you know, they're so sick of subscriptions these days. And we didn't want to collect any data and we don't sell any data, which is unusual. You know, people don't realize in this field of, you know, item trackers and everything else, you're the customer and people do sell your data. We don't do any of that. So it's very unique and we wanted to make sure that it was extremely reliable. So my job was to be able to take what Mike could do and putting this device together. And yeah, we're co inventors, but what happened is I'm more of the user experience and he would adjust according to the user experience back and forth. And we went through 200 iterations of the code before we went to market. I mean, we, we worked at every single level tested, retested, you know, we went with alpha testers, then we went to beta testers and we just kept expanding, expanding, expanding, expanding to make sure we had the messaging correct. And it was a lot of work. It's like, you know, that's one thing. It's like I had no idea how much work this was going to be. You know, I've been involved in a lot of businesses and I think at this point, you know, Mike and I probably have over 10,000 hours invested in this thing just to make sure it is a very reliable product. So my job was to try to get that message incorrect. And it has been a, it's been quite a task because it is something that is different, something that we realize now you have to explain it. People don't get it right off the bat. You really. And that's why we ended up down this road with you, Jon.

Robert Hulet [00:12:09]:
So to answer your question, really how does it work from the customer's perspective? We get some reviews that are great explanations. One of them says, look, this device works really well. Great. It's very simple. You pair it to your phone. It pairs the. The Amazon reviewer said in this one case that it pairs faster than any Bluetooth device I've ever had. We say it pairs in about 30 seconds or less and then we have a quick start guide that says here's how to do it. For three different phone makes. The Apple, the Samsung, the Google. We have videos on how to do it. We really tried to make it easy so that even people that are non high tech, you know, seniors or just people that are not high tech whatsoever, it doesn't matter, they can still accomplish it. And so it's really simple. You pair it to your phone, takes about 30 seconds and it will alert you when you leave proximity to your phone. That is the essence of it. And there, as Robert said, the no app, no subscription, that's an important concept. And that's where it went to a high reliability. Because we're not putting a product out there that as soon as you turn it on, the first thing it does is say, okay, you need to update it. Download the app and update it. We are putting a product out there that has to work 247 all the time, no update, that's high reliability. And that we've actually, we've actually done that where it's designed to be on all the time. We have people ask us, should we turn this off? No, it's designed to be on there all the time. Because that one time you forget your phone, you don't want it off, you don't want it on the recharger, you don't want it. So we made it so it would last for a year. You just pair it to your phone and you forget about it. Our best one is when we get people said, I got a surprise that alerted and let me know. I've had people say that they were in their office and one of the, one of the people you talk to, Ken was in his office and he was talking to me about it and said, yeah, I was in my office. I go down, get the elevator, get downstairs, this thing goes off. I'm like, why is this thing going off? Oh, I don't have my phone. He had to remember why this thing would alert because it hadn't false alerted, but he'd forgotten his phone. So I went off and told him. He went, well, went up, got his phone, all's good. So, you know, those are the stories we like where it's so simple, it's on you all the time. You just forget about it until that moment. That's how it works. We want it to be easy, no maintenance. We call it livable technology.

Michael McCrary [00:14:49]:
What I, what I really like. Yeah, what I really like are the stories. And I've had this happen a few times now where the person is Driving away from their home, and they go, oh, shoot, I forgot my phone and everything else. And then they stop and they go, wait a second, I didn't hear an alert, so I must have my phone with me. And sure enough, then they pull over, they reach down, and they do have their phone with them, but it brings them instant calm right away. So they're trusting it the other direction, which is, I think, fascinating. But the important thing here, though, is that every single step that you do with the, like I said, you can adjust the alert distance, you can adjust the volume. You know, every push of the button has been thought out. You know, how long you should push the button, you know, do you push and hold, you know, all the different features. I mean, just hundreds and hundreds of hours into each feature to make sure that it is exactly correct. And let me give you an example of that. The volume, you know, when it came to different alert tunes, you know, whether it's volume or duration or pitch, trying to find a balance of that versus, you know, the battery usage and everything. You know, the research that went into what happens with people is, you know, as far as hearing impairment, you know, what pitches they can hear and creating tunes that have alternate purposes, you know, whether it's an industrial setting or, you know, that they can hear low or high, you know, having the variety, that is not by accident, that is, is like lots of research. And then seeing what we can do, and then once we can do it, checking to make sure we have enough battery power and then producing, you know, a battery chart that says, okay, based upon so many alerts, based upon this alert tune, based upon these circumstances, you know, how long will the battery last? And we have been able to achieve all that and still get approximately one year of battery life. So that was another thing too. It's a replaceable battery.

Jon LaClare [00:17:03]:
I want to point out how easy and simple this is for our audience sake, especially. So, first of all, if you're watching the video, you can see if you're listening. Go check out the website. It's prox p r o x p r d.com p r d as in phone reminder device. You can also go to a phone. I'm sorry, rememberphone.com rememberphone.com these are all in the show notes, of course. Check it out if you're driving. But if you are watching the video, you can see how small it is. It's a small device that attaches. Right, right to your keychain. I keep mine with me at all times. It's as you guys have Said, you know, it's not that often necessarily I forget my phone, but it's often once a week, right? Like I'm. It's in my car or you leave it on a restaurant table or whatever. And you don't think it's that often, right? Like, it's. I'm surprised I've learned how often I forget it, you know, even for a couple of minutes, where it can be a stressor, right? It can be something I worry about because if I did lose my phone, it would be tragic. It'd be a really hard, you know, a terrible thing to try to overcome. I have to share a quick story. So when we were shooting your video, we flew, myself and my camera guy, we flew from Denver, where we're located, to Salt Lake City, a short trip to film on the plane. A real scenario. Walking off the plane, forgetting your phone on the seat as you stand up and leave it underneath your bag and walk. Before you even get outside the security level or the end of the. Kind of the gateway, it goes off, right? So it was a real scenario. It's funny, as it went off the first time, people were. And of course, I knew it was going to happen. We're filming all this, people are asking, like, what happened? What, you forget my phone? Like, oh, I hate that I've done it. People are voicing up like everyone's done it or certainly been scared about it. But then when we landed in Salt Lake, we, we had lunch with a good friend of mine before we flew back that same night and filmed some more. And I shared the product with him and he shared a couple of stories with me that were. I, you know, I, I can't imagine going through this where he's actually left it on his. On the plane several times. And a couple of those times he got past the level where you can't go back and he's, you know, it's either you have to fight with the people or, you know, I guess beg the people to go back on the plane, the flight attendants or whoever it might be to go find your phone. And, and maybe they do that. But imagine going on a trip and not having your phone. I mean, for me, like, if you stay in a Marriott hotel, for example, your phone is your key sometimes. So I've done my check in, I'm ready to go to the hotel. Like, I no longer have my phone. I don't even know where the hotel is, right? How am I going to get there if I'm going to get an Uber to get there without A phone, you're kind of stuck. And they do make it very difficult to get back on. Sometimes they'll work with you. But for getting it on a phone on a plane would be a very, very difficult thing to go through. But that's really any scenario if you lose your phone, your banking, your email, your contacts, but especially out of town. Like I really would have no idea where I'm at, where I'm going, what my schedule is without my phone at hand.

Robert Hulet [00:19:54]:
Yeah, we have really become dependent on the phone. I agree. I mean at every, every age level, you know, traveling, whether it's banking, whether it's authentication, you want to, on an IRS.gov website, you got to have an authentication app. You know, typically you have to have ID me or some other authentication method to get on that. But yeah, just traveling, that's a. The real question is how do we reach these people? How do we say, okay, here's something that really works that's well thought out that you can actually live with, that you can use every single day. Right. That you can have with you. It's, you know, it's not going to annoy you. We thought it out in the middle of the night, if it's sitting there on your dresser, it's not going to make a sound ever. Because it won't make a sound unless it's motion activated purposely so that it could be livable technology. Your phone can reboot in the middle of the night, go dead or whatever else. Maybe it doesn't even come back from a reboot when it's updated. But when you pick up that prd, if it can't talk to the phone for any reason, it's going to let you know. So we thought about even the worst case fail safe scenario. What would happen if, what happens in the middle of night if the phone isn't working? We don't want to wake people up. What happens in the morning when you go and get your coffee, you go grab your phone, you go turn the coffee pot on, you might wait there, you might come back, you might be checking your emails. You know, my wife checks her emails every morning religiously. She gets on the phone first thing and her PRDs never woke me up. And that's the reason, because we designed it for livable technology. So reliability and livable livability, those are two big things, reliability and livability.

Jon LaClare [00:21:39]:
I do want to mention too how simple it is just to reiterate that it you guys have spent, I'm sure, thousands of hours in development to make sure it's simple for the end user. So when you get, you order a ProxPRD, you get it in your hand. It does take literally 30 seconds. It's super easy. You mentioned there's videos and there's instructions. It's, you know, it almost makes it sound more complex than it is because it's just you answering it. However you learn, there's a way to find out how to do it. But it is just a couple of simple, very simple steps. And once you set it up, you never have to think about it again. That's what I love is you're not turning it on every morning like you said. You're not like, hey, did I remember to bring it with me? You just keep it on for me, your keychain or you know, whatever's with you at all times. And it makes it that much easier to use. It's something you forget about until you need it. And there it really is, a true lifesaver.

Robert Hulet [00:22:24]:
You know, we, we, we have extensive instructions and, and sometimes I think having, you know, really good instructions, a very detailed user manual, things like that actually sort of work against us. People sometimes assume they have to just because it has these features, they have to adjust these features. I, I really want to have like a big card in there that says, look, you don't have to adjust anything. It will work as is and if you have any problems, call us. We so many times, you know, if anybody has any problem, it usually takes us very little time to help them through it. Usually it's something they some preordained opinion that they had about how it should work or how it should be set up. And it's one of these things where they have to be told now this is, this is how it works. And they go, oh, okay. I was expecting it to be harder. I didn't realize it was, I was done. I mean we've had people going, I didn't realize I already set it up. We're like, yeah, let's just test it. Well, hold on the phone, walk away, go ahead and they'll come back. My favorite, my absolute favorite customer support call was pretty early on when we were, Robert and I were taking the customer support calls and I'm helping like a 90 year old lady, a very sweet lady. And she said, this is really important to me. I forget my phone all the time. You know, I forget the doctor's office, I forget it at the grocery store when I need it, I forget at home and I don't have, have it. She says, I really, really Want this to work? And I said, it does work. Put on your purse, put on your keys, something like that. It'll work great for you. She goes, could we try it out right now? And I helped her set it up. She said, I don't know anything about Bluetooth or phones or nothing. I said, okay, we'll help you. We've got it set up. She goes, well, is it working? I said, well, go ahead and walk away. And I heard her walk away. I heard it alert, I heard her come back. And she goes, I'm so excited, I just wet myself.

Jon LaClare [00:24:31]:
That's funny.

Michael McCrary [00:24:34]:
Well, the one thing I wanted to.

Jon LaClare [00:24:35]:
Let you know is that.

Michael McCrary [00:24:37]:
Let the audience know that we spent, gosh, hundreds of hours dialing in the default settings to make sure that somebody could just take that, 30 seconds, connect it, and they're done. And we believe that the default settings should handle 95% of the people out there. It's just the. We talk about these adjustments and, you know, you can look at the user manual and do different things and stuff like that, but that's really the 5% who really have a special cases. Another thing I'd like to talk about is that you held up, you know, the Prox prd, and as soon as people see it, they make the assumption that it is an item tracker, because it kind of looks like a lot of the item trackers out there. There's probably 50 different item trackers out there on the market, tile being one of them, but it's not an item tracker. In fact, item trackers, you must have the phone so that you can go to the app and you can ping your keys. In our case, it's like, first of all, we don't have an app, but since you have to have your phone to get the item tracker to work, what we do is we work in tandem with the item tracker, and what we do is look out after the phone so that you have the phone so that you can use your item trackers. In fact, many of us, we have a PRD and we have air tags or PRD and tile. They work very well in tandem with each other. But. But we do have a lot of people that see it and they go, oh, I already have one of those. I know what that is. They make the assumption that they know what it is, but it's completely different. It's not an item tracker.

Jon LaClare [00:26:09]:
Absolutely. And it's. It's funny because I've had that question many times. I explain it to friends and you know what it is, and it kind of looks. You know, the shape of it is similar to a tile and some of those trackers, but it, it's the opposite, right? It's, it's, it is. If you lose your phone, you can't use those trackers. I mean, they have their purpose.

Michael McCrary [00:26:25]:
Sure.

Jon LaClare [00:26:26]:
This is really in some ways kind of the opposite. Right. It's, it's getting your phone, which may be our most valuable in terms of information and you know, what would happen if we lose it product that we own. For many of us, it has so much of our life in there. So it's the opposite of making sure you don't lose that, that device in the first place.

Robert Hulet [00:26:41]:
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Definitely is the opposite. And they work great together. I have people ask all the time, can I use this with my airtags, Can I use this? Can I keep them on the same keychain? Will they interfere with each other? And I said, nope, it'll work great, no problems. And people like that. So, you know, they like being able to have both functions. They understand, you know, some people do not want the tracking, they don't want the data collected for something like a tile. And our device with no app and no subscription model, there's no data collected, it simply let you know before you get too far from your phone. But Robert is absolutely right. As soon as you hold this up, people will say, I have one. And then you'll say, nope, it's not a tile. It's not equivalent to a tile. This helps you not lose your phone, not forget your phone. And they'll say, well, so can I track my keys with it? No, you can't. And that is the hardest marketing part with this particular device right now. The shape of this device brings that immediate question in. You know, is this a tile? Is it a tracker? And that's something we're working on trying to defeat marketing wise. As you're aware, Jon, it's an effort, you know, future products, we may have to do something a very different shape to make that a better process, an easier process to get past. But for right now, you know, we generally like to explain it first and then show the product. That way they know that, oh, okay, this is not a tile when I see it.

Michael McCrary [00:28:15]:
Yeah. In fact, the other thing too is that, you know, it is patented. So, you know, we have this motion sensing technology, you know, so that it only alerts when it's moving as well as other things. And, you know, we have a couple of patents and we have some international patents. It is unique. There's Nothing like it on the market. There were a few people when we got into the market that were trying it, but they were getting false alerts and they didn't really have the distance down pat and things like that. And all of them, like we've had two different ones call us up and say, oh, my gosh, your product is fantastic. Everybody here owns one now. And so, you know, and then we just don't see those products anymore. It's. We really are the only one on the market doing this.

Jon LaClare [00:29:00]:
And I think it comes down to how hard it is to make something simple. Right. It took. It takes a lot of work to figure out all the problems that could occur and avoiding them and making sure setups is easy, that it works reliably, all these things. It takes a lot of work up front to make sure for the end user it is simple. And so that's, you know, it's been hard to achieve. You guys have done it and really are now the only one left in the market that has any viable product for a solution like this.

Michael McCrary [00:29:25]:
Well, I remember about a. I think it was about a year ago, Mike had called me and he says, hey, do you know the research says that bringing small electronics devices to the market, only about 3% succeed?

Robert Hulet [00:29:39]:
And then getting into the market, not selling it, just getting it to the market.

Michael McCrary [00:29:42]:
Just getting it to the market. Right. And then what is it? Just 3% of that 3% or something? Like, it's a very small percentage. And I thought, oh, my gosh, he wrote me into this three years ago before he told me that. But we're just fortunate that it's doing very well. And, and I'm just really, really, really pleased.

Jon LaClare [00:30:02]:
Absolutely. I want to talk about the marketing a little bit. So we talked a lot about the product, and you have a sort of unique or somewhat unique way that you've been able to grow this so far. And now we're working together on the direct to consumer marketing and really scaling the business. But before we met, one of your big marketing successes was being on tv, so PR through news shows, et cetera, and then having people see it on TV and then calling it not commercials, but on news segments. Et can you talk a little bit about how that has worked and how that has helped your business?

Michael McCrary [00:30:35]:
Well, sure. In fact, actually, I'll take it. Let's take it back a little bit further. Further back. And that is that when, when we first had the device we wanted to put on the market, we put it on Amazon. And I think a lot of people do that and it served a great purpose. It allowed us to put it into the market and immediately get feedback. You know, what were people saying about it, you know, who was, what did they expect? And it was interesting. We had a, we had a situation occur where people were contacting us saying this thing won't alert at 10ft. And I thought, that's interesting. There's nothing in our materials that say 10ft. In fact, we explicitly say, in fact, we started saying 50 to 150ft on purpose because that's about the range. Then it goes off depending on the person's environment, you know, whether they have windows or vaulted ceilings or if they're got a lot of RF in their area or in their home. So it was one of these things where we didn't realize it at the time, but you have to be careful in how you present things. And what we did is we had one picture of a man walking away from it, which you could probably interpret was about 15ft. And but we wanted to make sure the person was in the picture and people were just making that assumption. So we had to remove that person and just leave the phone on a bench. And that changed everything. And you start realizing the little subtleties that you have to look at, you know, every single word. There were some words in our advertising that were being misrepresented. It was like, okay, we've got to change that word, you know, so a B test and a B test and a B test and a B test and, and go over this. So over time with Amazon and then to date, Mike and I have taken every customer support call. There aren't a lot of them, but we do take them. And that allows us. They say, you know, as an entrepreneur, go to the front line. Go to the front line, talk to your customers one on one. They'll tell you everything you need to know. And sure enough, we have learned a lot. So then what happened is we got into, you know, doing a 30 second ad on television, you know, trying that. But, but you're right, the whole concept of we were approached to be able to put the product on CBS Morning show and CBS deals and that was a 90 second segment. And what a difference. When you had time to explain the product, we started realizing that and we didn't realize this early on that this is a product. And there are a lot of products like this, you know, out there. I mean, not like ours, but products in general that you have to explain them. They're just not initially intuitive. It's not like a candy bar. Hey, this is a candy bar. Everybody knows what a candy bar is. But if you're, if you have new technology or a new product, it's going to have to be explained. And that's where, you know, we were at fault early on because we thought, oh, people will just get this. You just say, hey, stop forgetting your phone. And so when we even did the 30 second television ad, even though we said those things, we realized people were calling up saying, you know, we were thinking they were going to call to order their call and say, so tell me how this thing works, you know, over and over again. So that's when we started realizing, okay, we've got to go to these 90 seconds or these, you know, 120 second segments to be able to truly explain it. And so that people could, could, you know, understand what it is.

Jon LaClare [00:34:15]:
I love that you take the calls still to this day, like you said, there's not a lot of them because it's so simple once you get it. But it is great, especially in the early days of a brand new business, as you mentioned, to be on the front lines to talk to your customers directly, to learn from them, you know, what, what do they like, what they don't, what questions do they have? It helps your marketing, it helps your packaging and helps your instructions. And it's if you farm that out too early and as you, you know, grow eventually, most businesses have to eventually right to just because of sheer volume, etc. But that's after the learnings. If you farm it out too early, you miss those learnings, you miss those opportunities to connect in some way to your audience. You know, I, we talk a lot on this show about even the sales process as you can make that truly direct to consumer at some point. If it's a home show or a flea market or whatever, it might be in very early stages to even learn the messaging of okay, what resonates, what do they like about this? But it's, you know, maybe more importantly, as you've talked about, after the purchase, okay, do they get it? Is it working? Are there problems that you can get ahead of early on? You know, you guys went through, as you mentioned, I think, hundreds of rounds of testing right throughout this process. But there are some ways that consumers are going to do things that nobody expects. Right. They're going to ultimately test it too. So it's even learning beyond that to connect with them. You'll get answers that you wouldn't have thought of.

Robert Hulet [00:35:34]:
Oh, absolutely. In fact, one of the things that we always supported is we did not Tell the customers, the people that are involved with our alpha and beta testing. We didn't tell them how to use it. We didn't say you have to put it on your keychain, you have to put on your purse, you have to do this, you have to do that. What we said is, here's how it works, tell us how you're using it, tell us what works best for you, what we can do to improve it, what would make it better. And we especially wanted people, we encouraged them, tell us what you hate about it, what could we make better? You know, what's the one thing you don't like about it? We really encourage it. We said, do not be shy if you only say gleaming wonderful things about it. We'll take you off the alpha program. We want to know every negative thing that ever in your mind, even envision, whether it's too big, too shiny, too white, too loud, whatever it is, we don't care. We want to know. And so we took every bit of feedback now going back a little bit to the marketing. So we initially, you know, we did Amazon, we did Amazon ads, we did YouTube, we made a few of our own little segments. Then we went out, we filmed our own commercial, we made a 32nd one. We use that as the basis for a lot of beta footage or excuse me, forgot what the marketing term is for the extra footage that you give for the commercials. B roll, yeah, sorry, was drawn a blank on that. So we gave, that became the basis of that and we ran that commercial probably a hundred thousand times on YouTube and it did not pay for itself on YouTube. So what we found is 30 seconds is an adequate amount of time. So when we got the opportunity to be on CBS deals, we had to take a chance because they said, you know, you have to make sure you've got lots of product ready for us and it has to be dedicated to us so that if you sell well, the product's there because we have guarantees to our customers being on cvs so on C. So we did that. We took the chance, we pre ordered a bunch materials, made sure we had it all set aside for them, ran it, had a wonderful session with them, loved how responsive the audience was. That then became us being on Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight and cbs. Not just the CBS Mornings but the CBS owned and operated stations on segments that they would put on the steals and deals equivalent. But then we are on American steals and deals and local steals and deals. So what we found is that if somebody comes up and says talks about the device Tells them how it works, that they can give some confidence that it's reliable. And they understand that, you know, this is a good quality product with people that care about a company that cares about the customer. We had people call us and say, look, I goofed up, you know, dropped it in the toilet, went in the pool with it, you know, and they confessed up. And we've sent them a courtesy version, you know, a new one, just as a courtesy, just because they called up and they told us a story about how important the product is to them. But we've learned that if people know about it and they can trust it, and they can trust that person telling them about it, they'll buy it. People are looking for this. I get people call me up and say, I want this to work. I'm changing it. I changed phones. I want to take this, I want to put it on my new phone. Before, I didn't even know this device was there. I've been looking for this my whole life. I wanted this, I found it. I want it to keep working on the new phone. And so that's a reoccurring theme. We're getting the calls now. Aren't the support calls, how do I make this work? A lot of our support calls now are how do I make it work on my new phone? Because it's been working so long for them, it's been reliable for them, and they want to keep it and they want it on their new phone. I love that.

Jon LaClare [00:39:46]:
Are there any resources that you guys recommend, anything that's been helpful to you, like any books or websites or courses you've been through that you think could be helpful for our audience to know about?

Robert Hulet [00:39:56]:
Well, Jon, Robert, I think, is a super fan of your book. I think if we'd had your book early on, the perfect launch system, we would have utilized that way back. I think we had to learn quite a few things expensively and hard knocks. You're right on the money. Let me tell you. You impressed me as a, as a technical guy. You impressed Robert and your business acumen. I think that perfect launch system, you're nailing it. That, that should be like in the Harvard reading list for entrepreneurs. It really should be New York Times bestseller eventually. Let's hope. Okay, so thank you.

Jon LaClare [00:40:38]:
Thank you. I wasn't asking for a plug, but I do definitely appreciate that. Thank you.

Michael McCrary [00:40:43]:
Well, let me, let me add to that on that. On the same note, I have an accounting background, a finance background, and I think I really appreciate the fact when I was reading your book, Jon, that because you have an accounting background, you understand the importance of going out into the market after you've done a significant amount of planning, a significant amount of research and know that if you're going to invest X, you have to have some, I guess, you know, I'm not so sure what the term is, but you have to have the expectation, you have to know what your return is going to be almost before, before you invest that money. And I, over the last 20 years dealing with marketing companies, it seems like I'm, I've always gone down this road of the marketing company is learning on my dime. You know, they're, they're willing to take my money, put it out there on ads and I mean all sorts of ads. I mean it could be meta ads, it can be Amazon ads, whatever, but it's sort of like they're learning along the way and I'm paying for that education. And it's just been refreshing working with you and reading the book on Here's a guy that gets it, here's a guy that's launched the products and you know, we're in good shape. So that, that's a little bit of a plug and I think that's, that's important. So anyway, just wanted to say that.

Robert Hulet [00:42:15]:
Well, there, there is, there, there is one more resource, Jon, I want to mention now that sort of getting the brain working correctly. So we are big fans of the Shark Tank and we're sort of doing like everything you've ever seen of every person they've ever had on that where they say, yeah, that guy's doing it right where we've leapfrogged everything. We haven't tried to over buy our customers. Right. We haven't leveraged it so far that we're running a negative, trying to buy our customer base. We have been able to utilize by every, almost every cent by reinvesting in the company and keeping our expenses phenomenally low. We aimed at scaling as we progressed. I mean we did things ourself initially. We were programming every one of these devices ourself. We were putting them in packaging. We used to have packaging parties and they would tell me that the people would come and help us, that we only come by for the sandwiches because I would take them to this great sandwich shop and we would do thousands this way. We would do it all ourself, you know, all the assembly, all the kit, you know, putting the, you know, folding the boxes, you name, you know, sealing it up, making the master cartons, everything, taking them to ups. We were the shipping, the receiving, the final assembly line. We did the quality assurance testing right there. I mean we double checked every unit every single time to make sure it was going out the door. And it worked. Every single one ourself to make sure we had a super high quality product. Always we had our eye on how will we scale this. So we have a friend of ours, Ed Miller, who did manufacturing for big names out there, retired manufacturing guy, used to run the manufacturing and he would come in and make notes and I invite him and said make notes, tell us what we're doing wrong, tell us what we have to have documentation wise so we can scale this product. So resources, Shark Tank, they would talk about how are you going to scale this? And they would say I don't want to get invested in this product because you don't have any method to scale it. You're doing it all yourself. So we thought early on how do we scale it, how do we have the double checks on it? What's the quality control going to be? And we progressively scaled it as we could afford the scaling process. And we did do patents early and sometimes they say don't worry about the patents, you know, because nobody steals ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the implementation of the idea that's the hard work. And but we did, you know, patent along the way because we knew we were very unique in the marketplace and we wanted to protect that position. But the, the real work is, is learning. The biggest resource is learning from others that are entrepreneurs too. Whether it's looking at Shark Tank, looking at, I know it's a little bit of a canned thing in Shark Tank, but there's still a lot of good information there because they'll talk about the key points, how much you're spending on marketing, how much is your product versus what you're selling it for. Can you scale it? Can you make more of this? Can you make 10 times more, 100 times more, 1,000 times more? Because we think we can scale this product well, we know right now we can scale this product to 30,000 units a day. We can now manufacture at Apple levels. That's part of what Apple inside China gave us, you know, that knowledge base. So with great quality and so as a, as a resource, yeah, learning on Shark Tank, learning about business, learning about marketing. Any resources you can read about marketing, like your book, which is fantastic, which goes beyond just the marketing goes to the business aspects of things too. I think that's really the key for any other entrepreneurs out there, start making sure you Have a product that people want, verify that they'll pay for it, learn about marketing, and then it's marketing, marketing, marketing. Once you got your product out there.

Jon LaClare [00:46:32]:
In mass, that's great advice.

Michael McCrary [00:46:36]:
I got a piece of information from a resource that was the most unlikely resource, and that is from a fortune cookie. And the fortune cookie, actually the little thing inside said, if you have two people in business that agree with each other, one is redundant. And, you know, I've. I've always thought about that, and it's true. Because everything, every time Mike takes a position, I will automatically take the other position. And if I take the position, a certain position, he will take the other position. Because we believe steel, sharpened steel, and we will argue the other point. Even if I disagree with the point that I'm arguing, I will purposely argue it. And Mike goes, you are really good at arguing stuff, so be careful about arguing something that you don't agree. Agree with, because we'll end up there. And. Which is true. I think that's just growing up with brothers, you kind of learn that tactic. But. So, yeah, we purposely sharpen each other's skills. And one thing that happened is I was in charge of the messaging in the box. And Mike calls me up, and also on Amazon, and Mike calls me up one day and he goes, I think our problem is all the messaging needs to change. And I'm like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. I've got, you know, I can't believe how many hours I have in that. So he goes, no, he goes, it's just, you got to change it. So I had to go all the way back to square one, because I couldn't argue, I couldn't argue back that he was wrong, which. And I knew that if I couldn't. And I couldn't hold my position, it was going to cost me hundreds of hours, which it did. And there's other things that went the other direction on him that cost him a lot of hours. But I went back and revamped all the messaging. I looked at every single panel, every, you know, the Quick Start guide. We ended up developing the help guide in the box, you know, which just tells people the top 10 things you need to know about your PRD, which, you know, came about because of our customer support calls. People will call up and say, hey, does this thing work with my hearing aids? Yes, it does. Works with all your other Bluetooth devices, you know, and just, you know, how do I. How do I change the alert tune? Or just. It could be all sorts of things. But we changed it. And once we did that, it really helped a lot. And by the way, another thing too is people don't realize this, but the proxperity actually has a bonus feature. And the bonus feature is the selfie clicker. Just you click it twice and takes a picture. So it's nice because in the old days, you know, you'd set the. You'd have your family over at Christmas and you'd set your phone or your camera up and you'd set the timer and everybody comes around and next thing you know, you know, it goes off and we go, oh, I blinked and you got to go back over and set the timer again. This way you set the phone up and you can just double click, double click, double click. You can take 10 pictures in a row. It's great. And it's great too for people like plumbers who can't see up behind the back of the sink. They can just hold their phone back there and double click. All sorts of great things with it. Car mechanics. Yep, yep.

Robert Hulet [00:49:46]:
Electricians. I. I used it yesterday taking a picture of a bolt on a heater, a little portable heater that my dog peed on. And I had to take it apart, but I couldn't figure out this one screw. So I used the clicker so I could hold it and right where I wanted the camera and then take the picture of it and then I could blow it up and see what type of screw it was. So there's always things like, you know, I. It's amazing how many times I've used that feature.

Jon LaClare [00:50:20]:
Well, I love how you put the instructions, some simple ones on the back of the device, where to remember that. Right. So if you don't use a selfie clicker very often, maybe it's, you know, a couple times a year, whatever. But you're like, oh, it does have that feature, but how do I do it? You're not going to remember necessarily, but it's right on the back of the device and some other features and instructions as well. So it makes it even easy if you forget down the road on some of the extra features that the product offers. Well, is there, is there anything I didn't ask you guys? This has been an awesome interview. Anything I didn't ask either of you that you think could be helpful for our audience?

Robert Hulet [00:50:52]:
Yeah, I think about, you know, a couple things. Well, what's next for our business? So we have some newer versions coming out, ones with more of an industrial battery designed to be in the car door, ones that are designed to have more feature sets for the people that in fact want additional features beyond what we're doing now that require additional energy, maybe some compatibility or equivalence to other products out there. We're never going to track. We're never going to take people's data, ever. We might offer a ping the phone feature in the future or a ping the PRD in the future, things like that, but we will never be collecting people's data. We're not in that business. We are selling a product, not collecting your information to make you the product. So that's, you know, a lot of the companies out there, I'm sorry, but they aren't selling a product. They're selling a product collection device in my mind. Yeah. So I think a big thing. Speaking of acronyms, our device is a prd, that's phone reminder device. And that's a really hard thing to come across to people sometimes because it's like a PDA for old school. You know, Digital assistant. Right. Personal digital assistant. That defined what a personal digital assistant was. When that PDA came out, when granola came out. Okay. Nobody knew what granola was. You had to be on a commercial, had to have a kid eating granola, and Mikey had to like it type thing. Right. So you had to explain what that was. Well, we're having to explain the phone reminder device, a prd. It's a new acronym for a new type of device out there to be with you all the time, to remind. To remind you about your phone, to keep your phone with you so that you don't lose or forget your phone. PRD is that's a new terminology. So that we have to, you know, the audience has to realize we're defining that with this product. It's there. There's nothing else out there. We have review, we have reviews, but customers that get it, and they say, this is the only one out there. I've searched for others. You know, I've searched for cheaper ones. We're like, no, this is a good value. It works. It's high reliability. And there is no cheaper version out there. There's no other version out there. It's just us. You know, it's a high quality product and it's very hard to make this thing work in this particular area, in this marketplace, to get all the facets working correctly to make a livable technology device. Phone reminder device of purity. And then I think that we have a lot of resources on our website for our customers. We have videos, how to videos, we have extensive troubleshooting as one of our customers said, the most extensive user manual I've ever seen for a consumer electronic device. And they're right, it is. And I told Robert it would be. It has everything you want to know about our device on there in detail. And then what else I would like to say to the audience of people is that this device was designed to lower anxiety. And it does, because if it doesn't go off and you wonder, is it working? Am I anxious? And you click it, you get a blue light, and it tells you your phone's nearby. You didn't forget it. Even if it's, you know, lost under the seat in the car, you know it's there. I've used that feature this week where I clicked it and I said, I do have it in the car somewhere, and it fallen between the seats, which really irritated me because it's hard to get out. But I knew it was there. I'm at the restaurant going, okay, I know. I know it's here because my PRD is telling me I have the phone here. And so, you know, that lowers the anxiety level about one more thing you have to worry about in your life. And I also think we could almost call it a phone training device, because after a while, it actually helps you to remember your phone. And it's so reliable that people just. They count on it, you know, all the time.

Michael McCrary [00:55:16]:
Yeah. In fact, I often say we have solved a problem that most people don't realize they have. Have. And what happens is that, like, I'll press people and say, you're telling me you never forget your phone? Oh, yeah, I do. And I go, when. When you do, they go, oh, yeah, it's stressful. And I said, that's. We just like to be in the background all the time. And that one time it's going to save you. And it's funny, early on, we were. We'd always say people would have their aha moment, and they would call us going, oh, my goodness, that just saved me. Like, I was going to be driving for an hour and a half, and I would have had to turn around an hour and a half and drive all the way back to get my phone. Thank you so much. And we go, well, that's your aha moment is that once they have their aha moment, they will. Like, my wife has had her aha moment. She will never, ever be without her prd, ever. She just. She trusts it that much. So, yeah, it's. It's a. It was built to be simple, as you said, and also to Be reliable. It's just. And Mike says it's a livable, livable technology that you can just carry with you.

Robert Hulet [00:56:27]:
And then I'll say one other thing. So now that you have the two co founders here, we can say that we keep you from losing it. I love it.

Jon LaClare [00:56:38]:
Which is your tagline too. And it's so true. And it's. I love the double meaning because you do keep. You keep everyone who has a PRD from losing their phone and from losing it from anxiety or stress. Right. Like the, the anxiety that comes with it. And it's, it is one of those things. I like the double meaning of the livable technology, too. So it's something that you really, you know, it's, it's easy to use, it's livable with your daily life, but also, you can't live without it. Once you have the Prox prd, you've used it a couple of times. I found that in my own life just from the first sample that I got from you guys a long time ago. I now can't imagine not having it. You realize how often you leave your phone behind and this saves you every single time from that. It's. It's a wonderful product. I do want to tell our audience, oh, good.

Robert Hulet [00:57:18]:
It saves you. It saves your time. You know, that's one thing we don't really talk about. You know, when you have a cost of a device, you know, besides reducing that anxiety and frustration, you know, one of the aspects. And you touched upon it and we never really touch upon that. We save you time. We keep you from losing your time, too.

Jon LaClare [00:57:38]:
Absolutely. It's been a great success and I do encourage our audience. Check out their website, learn more about this business and their product. You can go to ProxProx, P R, D.com or RememberPhone.com. they both go to the same website, so it doesn't matter which one. They're in the show Notes. If you're driving, go check it out later. Of course. But Michael and Robert, thank you again so much. This has been such a fun interview. I really appreciate you guys taking the time today.

Robert Hulet [00:58:04]:
Thank you, Jon. It's been great.

Michael McCrary [00:58:06]:
Thank you for having us.

Jon LaClare [00:58:08]:
Thanks for tuning into today's episode where we uncover the stories and strategies behind some of the most successful product marketers out there. If you're looking to take your own business to the next level, be sure to visit perfect launch.com. you can grab a free copy of my book, the Perfect Launch System. It's packed with the proven principles we've developed over the past 20 years, helping hundreds of businesses launch and grow successfully. Plus, you'll also get exclusive onepage summaries of some of our most popular podcast interviews, real world insights you can apply right away. Head to perfect launch.com and start building your perfect launch today. Until next time, keep learning, keep launching and keep growing.