Making Something From Nothing: Chris Gabrelcik Of Lubrication Specialties On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Take time to enjoy it. Don’t be too uptight. As my business grew, every quarter was a new frontier. I always stressed about what was going to happen next, and looking back, I wish I could have taken more time to live in the present moment and enjoy what was happening instead of focusing on the next month or quarter.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Gabrelcik.
Chris Gabrelcik, founder and CEO of Lubrication Specialties, Inc. (LSI), is one of a select few in the entire world that holds both titles of Certified Lubrication Specialist (CLS) and Oil Management Analyst (OMA). He is also a member of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE), and Association of Diesel Specialists (ADS). He attends annual STLE and ADS conferences to remain informed on the latest scientific advances and studies available to the industry. He began Lubrication Specialties, Inc. in 1997, and since the development of Hot Shot’s Secret THE ORIGINAL STICTION ELIMINATOR in 2004, his company has grown rapidly and continues to do so as he strives to bring forward the highest quality products possible to his customers. Lubrication Specialties, Inc. is a proud member of the Better Business Bureau.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up in a steel mill town — Youngstown, Ohio — during a time when all the mills closed. The area was very depressed and is to this day because most families there depended on steel for income. When the mills closed, it created a chain reaction causing all the other businesses to close, which caused the area to become a bit scrappy and rough around the edges. There was a lot of crime, drugs, and alcohol abuse that plagued the area. I was one of seven children and we all depended on each other to get through. Despite these challenges, there were people in our community from every country because Youngstown is truly a melting pot, and that allowed me to learn from and meet people from different backgrounds to hear their stories. I’d say my experience growing up in Youngstown helped to shape my entrepreneurial spirit.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It’d probably be “You don’t have to be smart. Just follow smart people.” I didn’t have a formal education, so I learned to follow successful people. My theory was that I didn’t need the level of success they had achieved — I only needed a portion of it, so at every phase of business development or difficulty I reached, I would (and still do) look at the people successful in that arena. When my challenge was marketing, I looked at companies like mine but bigger and followed their lead, but with my twist. When business development became a roadblock, I looked at larger companies with several business units and copied their system. I wanted to work smarter, not harder, and it makes more sense to tweak a successful system than to put time and energy into inventing a new one.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
The first ten years I was in business I was the only employee. Eventually, I needed to hire some people to help. When we had five employees, I became frustrated because it seemed like we could never do anything right, but then it occurred to me that I had never managed anyone before.
I had no training in management, and knew I needed to become savvier, so I read the book “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lecioni. It felt like he had a camera in my office and wrote the book about me. After reading it, I sat down with everybody on my team and put the book on the table and said ‘This is going to fix all our problems’. They were as excited as I was, and it did fix our problems, at least for a while.
As the company started gaining steam I started to think “this could be big… I better figure out how to run a company.” In that moment, I decided to read “Good to Great” by Jim Colllins. That book opened my eyes to business and figuring out my purpose and vision; to be honest, I hadn’t really thought about these things before then because I was mostly just trying to survive week to week. Most of my education comes from reading books, and as the company grows, I pinpoint my biggest challenges and then find a book that addresses it.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I always try move my business ideas forward with the least amount of overhead and in the most efficient way possible. I am never really sure whether it will work, so I find ways to build on minimum investment. For instance, if we have an idea for a new product, I don’t budget thousands of dollars for a roll-out. Instead, we talk about it on forums and gauge the interest level for the idea or product. Then, if people are receptive, we move it through development and make an e-commerce offering. As it picks up steam, we offer it to dealers and finally retail.
If we want to try a new advertising venue, we run a few tests first and analyze the results. Then, based on what we find, we either back out or double down. Taking an idea to market takes a lot of analysis and willingness to experiment. It might not be the original idea, but rather a variation of the first idea. You’ll never know unless you get it started!
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
I always start with internet searches. Then, I start talking to people in the industry to see if they have ever heard of the idea and typically get connected with a longer list of stakeholders to keep having these conversations. I also rely on forums to survey people about upcoming innovations because they provide a great wealth of information. Usually if it’s out there, someone will tell you.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
After you think of an idea you need to tweak it; the first idea is not usually the final product. Start looking around at similar products and see what is good and bad about them, then improve yours accordingly and vet it out.
Then, talk to people that would be a likely user of the product to gather insights. If you get a lot of excitement, you’re on the right track. Once you get to a point where you want to patent an idea, do it! It might be time consuming, but it is doable. If all looks good, then it is time to contact a patent attorney. If you find a patent on the product while you’re searching, it’s not a deal killer — you can always try contacting the person or company to see if you can license it. The patent attorney you hire will do all the heavy lifting.
Finding a company to build it can be more challenging, but start small. Small companies are more willing to work with you and be flexible. The price will be higher, but that can be adjusted later as you scale up.
Another way to vet ideas with your target audiences is to visit trade shows because you will find a wealth of information there. Typically, there are manufacturers looking for business and you can get an idea on cost of goods. You can usually find 5 to 10 companies ready to give you a quote and let you know lead time and minimums, and then you have something concrete to work with, including a general idea of what your startup costs are going to be. For instance, you should know roughly what it will cost you for a patent, what it will cost for your initial run of widgets, how much product inventory that will give you, and how long it will take you to create that inventory.
Next, start on a website, start working Facebook, online forums, ebay, and Amazon. Start looking for influencers on YouTube. Find someone who will try your product and talk about it, because these are all inexpensive ways to enter the market. The goal is to build a market.
Consumers and retailers do not want to buy a product that nobody knows about. In my early days, I went to retailers and they told me “we don’t market products, our job is to be a place for people to pick them up.” So, you have to establish a track record first and — luckily — the internet makes that possible for anyone.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Take pictures. This is something I never thought about doing because I was always working on the next steps. Now that we have manufacturing, blending, R&D, marketing, sales, international sales etc. people want to see pictures of the days I was working out of a 30x 40 pole barn, and frankly, I’d love to have the memories to reference to really celebrate how far we’ve come.
- Hire good partners. Early on, I was selling my first product for two years before I ever thought about a patent. By the time I called an attorney, he told me it was too late, and in hindsight, I lost out on a lot of revenue.
- As the company grows your role is going to change. When I started, I was knowledgeable about lubricants and sales; that’s what I loved. Then, as we grew, my role shifted into management. Then, eventually involved cash flow management and understanding accounting. Then, I added marketing and distribution to the mix. Finally, I’m in a spot now where my role is about building a corporation — as opposed to a small business. I wish someone had explained that to me early on so I could have been proactive instead of reactive about my training and could have been looking forward to how I could build a good foundation for the next stage.
- Balance your time. It always feels like everything is mission critical in a startup business, so you’re always working hard. I spent way too much time working and not enough time with my family because it always felt like the business could turn at any time and I want to be prepared for whatever came at me — not just because I want the business to succeed, but because I feel the pressure of supporting a lot of people’s livelihoods. Looking back, I realize most of our business hiccups would have been fine had I had enjoyed dinner with my family instead of working into the night to fix an issue that could’ve waited until tomorrow. Sometimes the urgency is just a fake narrative in your own head.
- Take time to enjoy it. Don’t be too uptight. As my business grew, every quarter was a new frontier. I always stressed about what was going to happen next, and looking back, I wish I could have taken more time to live in the present moment and enjoy what was happening instead of focusing on the next month or quarter.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Research! Look for competitors, similar products, companies in the same space, and all the information you can find to benchmark your idea. Then, start thinking about what the initial investment would be. “Can I afford it?”, then ‘What is the potential market?”, and “Am I risking 5k to possibly get 500k or is it 10k?”
Pretty soon, the idea will incubate and make more sense or less, informing your next steps. Usually after a few weeks, I am either really excited about an idea or I wonder what the heck I was thinking.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I have never used one of those consultants; it simply has never occurred to me. Typically, when I or someone on the team has a new idea, we survey our stakeholders and just keep working on things until the idea makes sense or fails. This is the benefit of having a reliable and smart team surrounding you.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I have always bootstrapped all my businesses because the whole VC world was out of my comfort zone. I don’t think it’s bad, I just was not familiar with it. I have talked to other business owners that use VC, and they seem to scale up much faster than I did, but they also spent a lot more time raising money instead of building their business. Honestly, I think as a business owner you must gauge what you’re comfortable with and what your business needs and then choose from there.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
We work on building products that solve problems and save people money. Our most recent idea that we’re bringing to life is called Tire Hog. It is a 100% mobile machine that breaks down the tires in a continuous process using various levels of microwaveable power along a conveyor belt, ultimately allowing for reclamation of high-quality end products at a rapid rate.
It’s currently still in the engineering phases right now, but once it is up and running — assuming 240 workdays per year — it is projected to recycle 288,000 tires, producing 1,440 tons of carbon, 763.2 tons of oil, and 676.8 tons of natural gas per year. This is equivalent to a total annual revenue of over $2.15 million for buyers. Over 300 million tires a year are scrapped and put into landfills with no concrete recycling solution in sight. As the U.S. is continuing to head toward an escalating climate crisis, the need for a tire recycling solution is pressing.
One way or another, all our businesses and products reduce greenhouse gas in a significant way, so I’d like to think we’re helping reduce the carbon footprint wholistically.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Wider access to education. It’s important that students learn how to think. Thinking well and understanding possibilities is what drives innovation, and innovation drives progress and growth for all of us.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?
Charles Koch. I read his book and I am fascinated at the way he scaled up his father’s business. He put a system in place to make business units successful. I also learned from his idea of “good profit.” Good ideas and good businesses should thrive because they are good, not because they are subsidized.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Chris Gabrelcik Of Lubrication Specialties On How To Go From Idea To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
