Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Daniel Victor. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Daniel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?
I’m fortunate to have a very supportive circle of friends and family around me, who have served as the backbone of success through my entrepreneurial efforts; HID SIPS and Lady Bird Lake Rentals. These people have been instrumental in my life, and in the life of these businesses. Their contributions come in many forms beyond just financial. My friends and family have also invested in my endeavors unconditionally both emotionally and operationally.
When I asked them to contribute to the HID SIPS Kickstarter campaign, they said how much. When I invited them to attend an event, they were the first ones there and the last ones out. Truthfully, if I asked the people in my life to jump I am forever confident they would ask, “how high”? There have been occasions when I’ve been short-staffed and had to lean on these people for last-minute help, and they’ve answered the call time and time again without complaint. There have been crucial connections I’ve developed that have come from friends and family going out of their way to make the introduction. These people have driven new customers my way in addition to being customers themselves.
Currently, I have begun seeking funding from friends and family for an HID SIPS investment round. The response has been phenomenal thus far and I am forever grateful for their generosity and willingness to get involved in a variety of ways.
Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
From a young age, I told my teachers that my dream job was to own my own business. It was not long before I got sent to detention for selling gum on the playground. Fast forward to the day I got my driver’s license and I was buying items from garage sales and flipping them for a profit or bartering them online, all the while aspiring to dream bigger. During the course of this pursuit, I found my passion for engineering and hardware products. I would take apart and put together old appliances I could get my hands on. These admirations lead me to graduate with a System and Industrial Engineering Degree, with an emphasis on Engineering Management, and accept an engineering role at a Fortune 10 company. It wasn’t long after that that I started my first business, which I successfully exited just a few months ago.
Being born and raised in Arizona, the importance of hydration became engrained into my life from morning to night, and every hour in between. When I moved into a two-story home, making trips down the stairs to my water filter quickly became a thorn in my side and a hindrance to my sleep. Frequently, I would fight to forgo the urge to roll out of bed for more water; choosing to accept the dehydration rather than disrupt my sleep cycle.
I scoured the market looking for a water dispenser that was built for the bedside. After finding nothing of the sort, I went to work creating and patenting the world’s first Water Dispensing Table Lamp. Now known as HID SIPS™, the Water Dispensing Lamp has turned into a product with a much larger purpose.
No longer was the Water Dispensing Lamp designed solely for people with long walks to their water, including second-story bedrooms, college dorms, fraternity, and sorority houses, rehabs, and hotels. There are many people in the world today who need extra assistance getting out of bed; the elderly, disabled, sick, injured, and more. Additionally, people who suffer from nighttime dry mouths due to hangovers, medicine, snoring, sleeping with their mouths open, and more have testified to their need for the Water Dispensing Lamp.
With HID SIPS™, I am on a mission to help ensure that nobody wakes up without water again. Now people can simply fill up their water reservoir once every few months, rather than having to fulfill this chore on a nightly basis. The customizable design allows any lamp shade to be easily interchanged to match the style of any bedroom. The risk of spilling that full cup or bottle next to your bed is eliminated as well, and now everyone can sleep sound knowing their bedtime hydration needs are covered with HID SIPS™.
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
I recently completed the sale of my small boat and paddleboard rental business, Lady Bird Lake Rentals. Operating out of Austin, Texas, this business was born out of the booming market in that city and the steep growth of the paddleboard industry. Growing this business out of the ground was a very valuable learning experience. I learned how to start a company, how to run a service-based business, and how to think outside the box, amongst many other things. One of the most valuable lessons I learned was the value of my time, and that’s when I began to strategize the sale.
The business was listed for sale in a variety of places, with no website being too big or too small. This diversification of these posts lead to a large influx of interested leads, over the course of a couple of months. We received many offers and were able to leverage this interest; causing a bidding war amongst a few of our prospective buyers. Additionally, we listed our business early on in its peak season. This gave potential buyers the opportunity to begin immediately recouping their investment and get a feel for the business as soon as possible.
It was very important to continuously push the potential upside of this business by emphasizing our own revenue growth, partnership growth, and statistics about the market. In tandem, our ability to highlight the current assets (both tangible and intangible) was one that allowed the potential buyers to paint their own picture of all the possibilities that buying this business presented, and the stepping stone it could serve as for their dreams of growing it. We remained honest about why we were selling Lady Bird Lake Rentals, where we felt there was room for improvement, and how we thought each prospect could utilize their own skillset and vision to take what we had built and run with it.
Completing my first successful exit was a very enlightening experience. The lessons I learned about selling while the business is in-stride, and how to hook-line-and-sinker the highest bid, will help paint a picture of the exit strategies for HID SIPS™ going forward. Understanding when it’s the right time to sell, and how to part way with a company you’ve grown from the ground floor, is a practice I’ll continue to partake in as I evaluate my future endeavors.
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
Marketing can seem like a daunting expense, and it’s hard to tell how to approach it or how it may benefit your business. Running my first company, I leaned heavily on local partnerships which came at no cost. When I would spend money on marketing, it was in small increments through social media advertisements and pay-per-click website ads. This allowed me to carefully monitor the ad’s engagement and spending. These types of strategies worked for this business because its demographic was local to a few zip codes.
When I started HID SIPS™, I quickly learned that I’d have to take on a whole new approach. Getting my foot in the door for publications and press releases was proving to be painfully difficult. Finding cross-promotion partners was no easy task either, as HID SIPS™ was, and still is easy, relatively small for a company taking aim at a national market.
Finally, one day I received an email back from one of the larger gadget blogs and online shops. To no surprise, they had tiered paid packages for getting my product/Kickstarter campaign on their website. I evaluated the options carefully, immediately writing off a few that well surpassed my established marketing budget. After some back and forth negotiations I settled on a package that cost nearly 75% of my entire marketing budget! Needless to say, I was stressed.
I spent days monitoring the analytics of that package. I chewed my fingernails away waiting for some of this traffic to drive my Kickstarter campaign up. While there were some sales that were derived straight from that site, I stopped checking the analytics after a few days and considered the investment to be nothing more than a learning experience and a waste of money.
Much to my dismay, what I didn’t realize is the doors it would open for me. A week later the Water Dispensing Lamp had made its way onto a variety of articles, websites, and even podcasts. The following I was getting from this marketing gamble, and free space on other shopping websites were single-handedly paying for the ad. Finally, I had built up a portfolio of positive coverage that would help propel my product forward.
It certainly did, and I breathed a sigh of relief, as these articles opened up new doors for me. Some of the largest publications and television shows in the country have since reached out, and so have some of our most loyal customers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hidsips.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/water_dispensing_lamp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hidsips
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hid-sips
- Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/hidsips
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrr40x6WFexsLcdc5PQjZXA