- Joined
- Sep 3, 2007
- Messages
- 144
- Reaction score
- 8
First off....it's been a while since I first started on SDN. I just received a 7 year member badge!
I started this thread on DentalTown, and it was suggested that I might find a better audience over here.
So, I'm going to copy/paste what I've written on DT in this thread. As such, these first couple posts will be long. After that, I'll be crossposting the same posts on both SDN and DT forums.
___________________
Hey everyone.
This is going to be a bit of a journal for me, to help track my steps and thought processes as I get this side project off the ground. I'm a little behind but I'll try and lay out what steps I've taken since January.
I'll try to keep this as up to date as possible, but between working fulltime 5 days a week doing clinical dentistry, taking the intense gIDE implant continuum (had over 60+ hours of video to watch and study before taking an online exam) and getting this thing off the ground, I've been pretty damn busy.
Overview and background:
I read Stephen Keys' One Simple Idea about 1.5 years ago and it prompted me to create and file a provisional patent for a simple dental product. It worked fine, but costs to manufacture were too high after discussing it with some dental product manufacturers, and in retrospect, demand wouldn't be terrible high in the first place. Lesson learned.
Sept 2016: had an epiphany of an idea for a surfing apparel product. Worked like made to design, file a provisional patent, hire costume design student to make the mockup, then brought pattern to manufacturer, got test run made, and started pitching to local surf shops and bigger companies for licencing. The wholesale price to have the product made locally was high, and I could have halved it by committing to a 1000 unit order to have them made overseas. I had some genuine interest from a couple shops but they needed a lower wholesale price. I waited on it a bit. The day that I'm talking to a Ripcurl rep he sends me a instagram screenshot of a product that was just launched, right as I happen to scroll to the same photo on my instagram feed. This product happened to serve the exact same function as mine. Between getting beat to market, facing the prospect of dumping a bunch of $ into an unproven overseas-made order, pricing problems and having to worry about storing inventory, I slowly abandoned the idea, and kept the test run products for use amongst my friends and I.
Then in Jan 2016 I got hit with the idea of writing an eBook. I think I was probably listening to a mix of EOFire, DentalPreneur, 6Figure Side Gig, and Smart Passive Income podcasts at the time, and then it clicked: My target audience isn't just dentists, and not just dentist owners, but associate dentists.
So first week of January 2016 I decided to start writing. I laid out the chapters that I would write about and just went at it, hardcore for 3 weeks. The chapters covered:
All while writing, I toyed with different ideas of distributing this book: kindle, amazon, print, download from own website, subscription etc. I decided to distribute from my own website
As I continued writing, I ended up creating some extra resources, one of which was enough to be its own short ebook in itself.
This is when I decided to offer multiple packages. My goal is to offer 3 tiers of products: one basic book, the book + 8 extra resources, and book+resources+ TBD.
I'm also going to offer 3 free downloads on the website: one is resource for gather important info while at an associate job interview. The second is a list of cheap, essential, and solid products to help make clinical dentistry faster and of higher quality. The last is going to be an entire chapter out the main eBook. I decided to offer this last one for free so people could "test-run" my writing and see if they think an entire book will be of the same value.
___________________
TL;DR - i wrote some ebooks, assembled some resources, and am launching a website to help out D4's and new dentists transition to the working world. Relevant links in my signature
I started this thread on DentalTown, and it was suggested that I might find a better audience over here.
So, I'm going to copy/paste what I've written on DT in this thread. As such, these first couple posts will be long. After that, I'll be crossposting the same posts on both SDN and DT forums.
___________________
Hey everyone.
This is going to be a bit of a journal for me, to help track my steps and thought processes as I get this side project off the ground. I'm a little behind but I'll try and lay out what steps I've taken since January.
I'll try to keep this as up to date as possible, but between working fulltime 5 days a week doing clinical dentistry, taking the intense gIDE implant continuum (had over 60+ hours of video to watch and study before taking an online exam) and getting this thing off the ground, I've been pretty damn busy.
Overview and background:
I read Stephen Keys' One Simple Idea about 1.5 years ago and it prompted me to create and file a provisional patent for a simple dental product. It worked fine, but costs to manufacture were too high after discussing it with some dental product manufacturers, and in retrospect, demand wouldn't be terrible high in the first place. Lesson learned.
Sept 2016: had an epiphany of an idea for a surfing apparel product. Worked like made to design, file a provisional patent, hire costume design student to make the mockup, then brought pattern to manufacturer, got test run made, and started pitching to local surf shops and bigger companies for licencing. The wholesale price to have the product made locally was high, and I could have halved it by committing to a 1000 unit order to have them made overseas. I had some genuine interest from a couple shops but they needed a lower wholesale price. I waited on it a bit. The day that I'm talking to a Ripcurl rep he sends me a instagram screenshot of a product that was just launched, right as I happen to scroll to the same photo on my instagram feed. This product happened to serve the exact same function as mine. Between getting beat to market, facing the prospect of dumping a bunch of $ into an unproven overseas-made order, pricing problems and having to worry about storing inventory, I slowly abandoned the idea, and kept the test run products for use amongst my friends and I.
Then in Jan 2016 I got hit with the idea of writing an eBook. I think I was probably listening to a mix of EOFire, DentalPreneur, 6Figure Side Gig, and Smart Passive Income podcasts at the time, and then it clicked: My target audience isn't just dentists, and not just dentist owners, but associate dentists.
So first week of January 2016 I decided to start writing. I laid out the chapters that I would write about and just went at it, hardcore for 3 weeks. The chapters covered:
- job searching
- interviews
- communication
- clinical efficiencies
- CE
- finance
- legal
- health
All while writing, I toyed with different ideas of distributing this book: kindle, amazon, print, download from own website, subscription etc. I decided to distribute from my own website
As I continued writing, I ended up creating some extra resources, one of which was enough to be its own short ebook in itself.
This is when I decided to offer multiple packages. My goal is to offer 3 tiers of products: one basic book, the book + 8 extra resources, and book+resources+ TBD.
I'm also going to offer 3 free downloads on the website: one is resource for gather important info while at an associate job interview. The second is a list of cheap, essential, and solid products to help make clinical dentistry faster and of higher quality. The last is going to be an entire chapter out the main eBook. I decided to offer this last one for free so people could "test-run" my writing and see if they think an entire book will be of the same value.
___________________
TL;DR - i wrote some ebooks, assembled some resources, and am launching a website to help out D4's and new dentists transition to the working world. Relevant links in my signature