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Stephen Key

Author Profile

Stephen Key

Biography

Stephen Key is a successful, award winning inventor who has licensed his ideas for over 30 years. Several of his products have been endorsed by celebrities such as Michael Jordan and Alex Trebek, and sold in retailing giants such as WalMart, Walgreens, and Disney stores and theme parks worldwide.

ARTICLES BY Stephen Key

Contracts, Contracts, Contracts

My students often ask me to show them what a licensing agreement looks like. How would you go about drafting a contract with a potential licensee without having ever seen one? This is a great question.

Tim Ferris Is One of the Most Successful People I Know

I met him back in 2003, before he had written the immensely popular Four Hour Work Week and achieved international acclaim. The book is still a best seller today! He is a remarkable individual and I’m proud to call him a friend. I’ve often wondered: what is it about Tim that has made him so unbelievably successful? I’ve thought about what I can learn from my interactions with him. Is he different today than he was in 2003?

Do you have ideas that should be sold in the marketplace?

Do you have ideas that should be sold in the marketplace? Are you employed, but looking for other sources of income? Licensing is a great side business for people with product ideas because it’s low risk and doesn’t demand a lot of investment. You don’t have to quit your day job or raise capital to successfully license a product idea to a Fortune 500 company. My book, One Simple Idea, teaches you the ten steps to licensing your product idea.

Tim Ferris is one of the most successful persons I know.

Tim Ferris is one of the most successful persons I know. I met him back in 2003, before he had written the immensely popular Four Hour Work Week and achieved international acclaim. The book is still a best seller today! He is a remarkable individual and I’m proud to call him a friend.

Do you have ideas that should be sold in the marketplace?

Are you employed, but looking for other sources of income? Licensing is a great side business for people with product ideas because it’s low risk and doesn’t demand a lot of investment. You don’t have to quit your day job or raise capital to successfully license a product idea to a Fortune 500 company. My book, One Simple Idea, teaches you the ten steps to licensing your product idea.

You Have a Company Interested in Licensing, Now What?

You had a great idea and you found a company who wanted to license it from you — now what? Can you or should you still be involved with the project? I think so. There are a lot of different ways to be useful and helpful to a licensee, but I want to discuss one way in particular today.

Is this idea really worth my time?

Have you asked yourself, “Is this idea worth my time?” Some inventors become so excited by their product idea that they forget to assess if the project is even worth pursuing. Are you going to make enough money from this idea for it to be worth your while? These are important questions to ask before delving into the licensing game, and doing the math can help you answer them. If you figure out you’d — at the very most — make around $20,000 a year, then maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe it is. But either way, you should have an idea of what you’re getting into.

Do the Math!

Some inventors ask me, “Do I really need to do the math?” The answer is an emphatic yes! Why would you sign a licensing agreement without knowing how much money you’d make at different royalty rates? The information you gather before meeting and negotiating with a potential licensee will influence what you ask for and give you a realistic idea of how much you’re going to make. However, I toss the sheet I do my computations on after I’m done, because I don’t want to be motivated solely by money.

Take Precautions to Protect Your Idea Before showing It Around

I received a call from a panicky and distraught woman who has a product idea this afternoon. She began showing her idea to potential licensees without taking the simplest precautions to protect what she had imagined. Was she too hurried?

Eddy Goldfarb - Master Toy Inventor - Part II

In my last blog, I started writing about my interview with Eddy Goldfarb, one of the most consistent toy inventors in the past century. His advice is valuable — he’s had profitable idea after profitable idea, making his life’s work inventing.