An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
The business will get more complicated. That’s why companies need to have technology like NetSuite, to help scale the business. In our early days, we used QuickBooks. It was suitable for bookkeeping, but it didn’t have all the capabilities we needed for future growth. We ultimately landed on NetSuite for that reason.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing James “Jimmy” Gould.
James “Jimmy” Gould spent 30 years in the investment business, transacting billions of dollars of bonds with large institutions. Now, as the founder of SoapStandle, he’s developed and patented a product that is bringing the focus back to bar soap, promoting its benefits on health and the environment.
Launched in 2018, SoapStandle is a handy and eco-friendly tool that sinks its “teeth’’ into bar soap by creating a platform that keeps the soap elevated. This allows the bar soap to shed water and dry, so goo never develops, providing a no-slip grip that makes bars last up to 30% longer. With growing demand for plastic-free packaging and bar soap products, SoapStandle has positioned itself as a natural companion to many popular soap brands.
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”?
My dad was an engineering professor, my mom an English teacher, and I was a happy kid that didn’t really harbor any entrepreneurial visions. Growing up, I worked on my grandfather’s farm and was given a cow. Eventually, I had a small herd of five and I guess that was building a “business.” My dad also got me interested in trying to figure out how to do things more efficiently or improve on an idea or design. I knew that eventually I’d love to run my own “something” — I just didn’t know what at the time.
Fast forward to graduating from college and starting in the investment world as a stockbroker. I worked for big firms — you’re basically your own boss, so there’s an entrepreneurial aspect to that. Thirty years later, those foundational lessons from my dad led me down a path to innovate an everyday item. I developed the idea for SoapStandle, patented it, manufactured it, and began selling.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
As an avid reader with a finance background, I’ve encountered many great quotes like, “Buy straw hats in the winter” (Bernard Baruch) or “Price is what you pay, value is what you get” (Warren Buffett). But my favorite is about leverage — not financial leverage, but time, people, experience. It’s John D. Rockefeller, Sr. explaining what the ‘rule’ was at Standard Oil Company:
“As soon as you can, get someone whom you can rely on and train them in the work. Then sit down, cock up your heels, and think of some way for Standard Oil to make some money.”
Think. Not “work harder.” Not “negotiate tougher.” Think. And act on it.
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?
There’s a great book by Ron Chernow called The Warburgs. It’s a biography about an investment banking family from mid-19th century Germany. Their story is of two brothers and a sister: one brother ran the investment bank, the other brother was an artist, and the sister took care of the family. I loved that the investment banking brother ran the firm to support all of it — the business, the arts and their family — all things he highly valued. What I took away was that businesses, and the country, would be better off if they didn’t only think about shareholders, but all stakeholders.
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?
New ideas, by definition, aren’t ‘proven.’ Since there’s no evidence, you must have conviction and stick with it. When I first developed the SoapStandle, I encountered a lot of people who thought it wasn’t a realistic business idea.
When I decided to turn this idea into reality, I found product development companies willing to take your idea and help get it patented, develop it, and build a prototype. A friend of mine had an ownership interest in one of those companies, so I connected with them early on. But they had a long list of reasons why it wouldn’t work. If I had accepted those opinions or “professional viewpoints,” I would have stopped, the idea would have died, and we wouldn’t be talking. Conviction is key to turning an idea into a business.
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 their idea has already been created?
Do your research, check out the market, and identify the gap. Fifty years ago, it would’ve been very hard, since researching online wasn’t a possibility. I asked my close circle of people around me. I looked for similar products in the U.S. and European markets. Eventually, I went to an attorney to ensure the patent didn’t already exist. I also researched the bar soap industry and discovered the single biggest reason people favor liquid soap over bar soap is to avoid messiness of bar soap. I had something that solved the messiness problem. That means I had the solution to the driving force of the billion-dollar liquid soap industry.
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.
Once you confirm your idea fills a real need, you explore filing a patent. Having a patent empowers you to have elevated conversations with investors, manufacturers, and distributors. There are cheaper ways online to file a patent, but I went to a good-sized law firm to get my patent professionally filed, which gave me confidence in the execution and intellectual property protection.
The next step is finding a manufacturer, which can feel like a needle-in-the-haystack process. I found a platform that put out my RFP to about 50–100 manufacturers. I heard back from about 10. Most manufacturers told me my product was too difficult or too expensive to make, or they wanted to change my design. Doing that would have compromised the SoapStandle’s effectiveness. Ultimately, I found a manufacturer who could produce the product as designed and we’ve been with them for three years now.
Right now, I’m preparing to scale and I’m exploring partnerships for SoapStandle’s national distribution. Breaking through to a large national retailer is our next big step.
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.)
- It’s hard to fire an employee, but it’s even harder to hire. Firing an employee is emotionally hard and expensive. Finding good people who are the right fit is even harder still.
- Whatever you think your margins are, they aren’t that good. The cost of things can sneak up on you. We use a cloud ERP suite called Oracle NetSuite and it helps us gain visibility into our finances and enables us to track everything in one place to identify cost-effective solutions and improve efficiencies.
- The business will get more complicated. That’s why companies need to have technology like NetSuite, to help scale the business. In our early days, we used QuickBooks. It was suitable for bookkeeping, but it didn’t have all the capabilities we needed for future growth. We ultimately landed on NetSuite for that reason.
- Scarlett O’Hara Management 101: Tomorrow will be another day. Whatever setback you have one day, you can reset, learn, and make tomorrow better.
- There are only so many hats you can wear — and it’s best to figure out the ones that don’t fit early.
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?
My advice is to begin with the “block and tackle” strategy. Think through as many iterations of your product as possible. Learn how patents work and make sure your idea is unique. Your concept must be serviceable and manufacturable. If you don’t get IP protection, then no one will pay much attention. When you’re ready to source manufacturers, the entire tone of the conversation will change once they learn you have a patent.
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’ve received several letters from consultants, and I’m sure there are some good ones out there — but the good ones didn’t find me, and the fee wasn’t worth it. I may have been unlucky, but I would try to do it yourself.
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’ve bootstrapped this from the start. My valuation differs from many investors — there are millions of bar soap users and potential customers and I think we can gain momentum with a huge number of people. Building a CPG company with venture capital is vastly different from fundraising for an app. So, I’ll continue to fund SoapStandle until I feel the time is right.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
That’s a great question. When I think about it, I’m head down in my work, and stepping back, I feel guilty that I haven’t made the world a better place. But then I think about all the plastic bottles used for liquid soap packaging and it’s an environmental disaster. SoapStandle is a solution for people and a path forward. I’ve gotten emails from people who are converting their households to bar soap because they can now avoid the messiness of the bar.
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.
I would start “Lobbyist for the Rest of US (LFTROU).” When you consider how legislation happens in the U.S., everyone with a special interest is represented through well-paid lobbyists. Shouldn’t we have some lobbyists for the vast middle of the country — those without a defined “special interest”? LFTROU would crowdsource 50 cents a month from a vast swath of the American people to go toward lobbyists fighting for “the every man.” Let’s say a third of people in the U.S. (that’s about 100 million people) put money toward this group — that’s $50 million a month and $600 million a year. Those funds could be used to hire some lobbyists to the benefit of all American people. We’ll have a voice in the back rooms… and on the front page.
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? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Jerry Seinfeld. I quote Seinfeld almost every day. There was so much genius in that show on the simplicity of daily life. It’s relatable. I also think he’d be a huge fan of the SoapStandle because he’s so particular about things. I’d have breakfast with him and hand him a SoapStandle. Please make that happen.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: James “Jimmy” Gould Of SoapStandle On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
