Back in the day, when I lived in Byhalia, life was good. I just didn't know it. I was a framing contractor for lots of local home builders building an average of 500 houses a year. Money was good. Racing motocross on a national level every weekend after practicing all week on my private practice track was my way of life. I kept our race bikes in the living room. My house was the garage. Me and both of my kids qualified for the World Finals in Vegas 2 years in a row. Jamie's best finish was 9th and I was running 5th before I landed on my head while still attached to the bike. I got up and finished 12th that year. Rene finished 17th on a small bike up against all big bikes and older girls in the women's division. I can guarantee you we had more fun than anyone there. And that was why we raced. It sure as hell wasn't for the money.
Between racing dirt bikes every weekend, casinos every rainy day, and a super-high maintenance girlfriend, I was never able to save a dime. I was living paycheck to paycheck on a $360K a year income. Boy, if I had it to do over again, I might not have dropped $10K at the casino like it wasn't nothing and saved a little money here and there. The economy crashed right after our last trip to Vegas and people stopped buying houses. I was pretty much out of a job. While I was living it up, I acquired a $750K debt with the IRS by working over 100 Mexicans for 10 years and not paying my taxes. I lost everything over a 2 year period except for my debt with ol' Uncle Sam. I had to come up with a way to make money; and a lot of it.
Living in a trailer park in New Albany, facing eviction and hiding from the repo man, I asked my uncle to invest in my idea to build and sell remote control lawn mowers. Picking up where I left off from my teenage years, I went with 12VDC components thinking 12VDC would be cheaper. Driving it around on concrete was okay. However, about $3000 later I learned 24VDC power is needed to propel a 150 pound lawnmower across uneven terrain in lawn mowing applications. To convert the 12VDC to 24VDC was going to cost more money and my Uncle pulled the plug. He found this company on the Internet selling 12VDC mowers just like what I was working on. He said I should learn how to sell these things and signed me up as a dealer for Evatech, Inc. He said, "What do you mean, it can't be done? This guy sells 12VDC units!"
When the 12VDC demo unit finally arrived (2 months later), it was equipped with 24VDC components and not the 12VDC as advertised. Evatech offers four different residential models with the only real difference being the price and electric start. Every mower he sold used 24VDC components. This should have been a red flag that Evatech is bad news. So, I was right. It can't practically be done without spending a fortune on aluminum to make it light weight. And even still, I don't think aluminum would make it light enough for the 12VDC motors to work efficiently. And if it can be done, it doesn't make since when 24VDC is not that expensive.
Learning how to sell a concept idea product was a fun adventure. I built a web site as a dealer for Evatech, Inc. and borrowed about $20K from my Uncle for advertising putting the site in front of thousands of people. I generated a few sales here and there for my company but mostly all I accomplished was generating awareness and sales for Evatech. He was not very good at paying commission. If you learned about remote control lawn mowers from my advertising and then turned around and bought direct from Evatech, you would inquire about a mower referring to model numbers associated with my company. Not once, over 1 1/2 years, did Evatech ever pay a dime of commission from a direct sale. I had to sale the mower out right and have it dropped shipped if I was to profit any money what-so-ever. But it was making a little money and if I wanted more, I needed to drive more traffic to my site. I went back to the drawing board and learned more about advertising through press releases.
Uncle loaned more money for a press release campaign and it took longer than expected to put it all together. Lots of online journalists picked up the story but their audience was small and nothing ever came of it until a local News syndicate picked it up and offered, in a nutshell, to tell all of Memphis 3 times if I paid their costs. If my story was non-profit, they would have not required me to pay their expenses. It was a supper fair deal. Once again, Uncle pulled the plug and that never happened. He had began to lose interest in my ideas. Close to a million local visitors would have made things happen for sure. All the money spent on the press releases was for nothing because I didn't accept the only legitimate (once in a lifetime) offer that it triggered.
By this time, my family was starting to think I was obsessed with lawn mowers. My uncle told everybody he had loaned me $40K to help me out and I couldn't make it work. He failed to mention he pulled the plug on the first prototype and the press release campaign. So, yea, to everyone I looked like a complete nut. Who are they going to believe? Uncle has more money than anyone in our family and, in my family, your credibility is based on how much money you have. I was still facing eviction and running from the repo man while raising two teenagers as a single father. You can imagine my frustration.
The GIE+EXPO was coming up. It is the world's largest lawn & garden show held every year in Louisville. All of the big name distributors from all over the globe show up to see what's new in the lawn & garden industry. I needed to be there in the worst kind of way imaginable. Uncle was fed up and had told me on several different occasions he didn't want to hear the word lawn mower ever again. I asked him for one last shot. I needed money to get to the Expo. Red-faced, steam boiling out of his ears, talking about red nickles, while referring me to some goose and gander storybook, he agreed. Now, I had to get convince Luis to loan me a mower to take up there because I had sold my demo unit (that sale is a story in itself) to pay rent. Talk about a long shot. After all of the dust settled, me and Luis were at the Expo sharing a space with one of his suppliers. Not with a nice display area indoors and a demo area out doors like everybody else. No, it was me, Luis, the mower and a pallet set up way out back in the mud. I brought along my computer and printed out 1000 or so cards and brochures to hand out. We handed out only 100 or so before the mower blew the controller board Friday morning cutting our weekend short. We missed the weekend crowd of 12,500 containing distributors from all over the world looking for the latest and greatest in the lawn & garden industry. However, with the 100 or so cards and brochures we did hand out, two were distributors from Ireland and Italy. Both ordered 10 units each of the 44T that listed for $18,899. Imagine what would have happened if we had a nice display indoors and a nice set-up out doors all weekend long. Did Luis share a dime of the profits? Hell naw! He bought a damn sailboat! When I got back, Uncle said, "See. I told you no one would buy a lawn mower right before winter!" He even told me right before I left to go up there, "you'd be lucky to get a couple hundred people to show up this time of year." Imagine my frustration now as I am getting evicted and moving in with my sister were my truck finally got repossessed by the repo man.
Determined to make money to raise two kids, I bit my tongue and remained a dealer for Evatech. Spring 2010 rolled around and sales started coming in again. Only this time, all of my customers were getting mowers that did not work as advertised if they even worked at all. He kept telling me to tell the customers that the mower was damaged during shipping. Boy! The hits just kept on coming. Refusing to throw in the towel and determined to get customers saying positive things about Evatech and their number one dealer, I started building the mowers myself until Luis figured out what the problem was. All that did was open up a can of worms and get me sued for patent infringement. I did make some (instead of none) customers happy.
After my truck was repossessed, my uncle loaned me $2K for a junker to get me to and from. I asked him for $4K to get a dependable truck. And because of my credibility, I had to take the junker or leave it. I have had to barrow thousands for repairs ever since. As of today, you have to crank it three times to get it started, it still misses and gets about 8 miles to the gallon. If it is cold out, it will not start. Both door handles fell off on the inside so you have to reach out the window to let yourself out. The front brakes are gone and using the back brakes gets tricky at times especially when it's raining. You are not going to get out of the way nor stop in an emergency. I pulled out in front of a police officer who had his signal on and merging to turn right. At the last minute, he changed his mind and proceeded to go straight. I attempted to get out of the way and he about T-boned me. My truck stalled. While his face was pressed against his windshield, he noticed I wasn't wearing a seat belt and pulled me over for it where he found out my license was suspended over a failure to appear charge for a speeding ticket. He took me to jail. Since that day, I have racked up several other visits to jail and failure to appear charges because I have not the thousands of dollars it is going to take to clear all this up over a dad gummed speeding ticket. And the speeding ticket was 75 in a 60 on the only part of Hwy 78 with a 60 MPH speed limit!
anyway...
As a competitor of Evatech, I have successfully built and sold 24VDC wheeled models. I have built and sold a tracked model that works as advertised. I have a distributor awaiting my line-up and ready to order 20 units. I have a group of investors interested in putting the hammer down for the 2010 GIE+EXPO and funding development of my line-up of remote control lawn mowers. On my way to the meeting where they were planning on finally funding the project, my junker runs out of gas. It used to take 15 dollars to get to Memphis but that day the truck started drinking 25 dollars one way. I went all-in the night before the meeting with 18 bucks in gas and didn't make it. At the same time, Luis from Evatech filed the lawsuit for patent infringement. By the time the meeting finally got rescheduled, the investors changed their minds because of the lawsuit. They we're talking 6 months shop expenses for development along with funding the Expo. They even put up a costly retainer to a respectable patent attorney to make sure my line-up wouldn't infringe any one's patents.
I met with a new prospective investor yesterday and showed him the tracked model. He is very interested and likes the idea...wish me luck.
