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About Me
I'm a well-educated "Baby Boomer" that just retired from a varied life of creativity and hard work, only to find out that social security doesn't pay all of the bills. Fortunately, I am a fairly creative person that knows how to set goals and achieve those goals. As I often tell my friends and children, you don't need a job, you need an income. A person can only make a limited amount of money with their own two hands, such as working a job for "the man" for an hourly wage. Using the advantage of social media and online sales, the world can be your market for mass produced products. Even more so if your product is eco-friendly, or "Green" in nature, utilizing our natural resources responsibly and recycling to the best of our ability. My wife, Barbie, and I live on our 80-acre family farm in Southern Michigan where the Summers are pleasant and full of nature's life, growing crops and laying up for the Winter. Now that I'm getting older I don't care for the cold so much anymore so we've become Snowbirds, flying South for Winter to enjoy eternal sunshine, and to wear shorts and a t-shirt all year. I've had many money-making ideas throughout my lifetime, but didn't have the financial resources or courage to pursue them. It's terrible to have a good idea only to let it fade away to nothing more than a memory. Faithfully I've prayed to God in heaven, returned a percentage of my financial gain to our church, and I have faith in God that He will bless me in this venture. Selling a small chunk of land, I was holding on to as an investment, has allowed me to start production on this product that I believe will open the eyes of outdoor lovers everywhere.
Me flying the turbine Thrush crop dusting in NW Ohio.
Necessity, The Mother of Invention
In 2015 I had started a new job in SW Florida, I was teaching commercial pilots how to become "Crop Dusters". I didn't have a traditional place to live, I lived on my sailboat, in a marina, with all the amenities of a first class resort. On this particular day my friend, Bob, and I took his flats boat out to fish the Intercoastal Waterway. After we had our fun Bob says, "Hey, let's go find John and see what he's up to." 30 minutes later we find John and his crew beached on a sandbar and well into their activities of swimming, fishing, playing on the beach, and making sand castles with the children. Since we're only planning on being there a short time we didn't tie up our boat, we just held on to the side of John's boat while we visited. From my position I can see into John's monster ice chest which holds all of their drinks for the day for both the adults and children. I watched as yet another adult would come over, lift the lid of the cooler and grab an adult beverage or bottle of water for one of the kids. During our short visit I witnessed our friends run completely out of packaged drinks, yet over and over someone else would come to the ice chest and lift the lid only to find empty beer and soda cans floating in a sea of half melted ice. Hence the saying..."Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink", except maybe the melted ice in this now messy ice chest. About this time I could see the party was coming to an abrupt end because the children were thirsty so Bob and I said our goodbyes and pushed off toward another fishing spot.
Later that evening I was back on my sailboat for happy hour. As I reflected on the day's activities I couldn't help but think about all of those empty beverage containers floating in that ice chest and our friends out of drinkable water. I thought, if only they had an emergency water filter like the one I had recently purchased to add to my survival gear. They could have put one end into the melted ice and pumped out 99.9% clean, filtered water to drink. As I let my superior enhanced mind expand on the problem, it wasn't long before I had a concept drawing of my "Cooler Water" drain plug.
So there you go, necessity is the mother of invention. I have now field tested several models of my Cooler Water drain plug and everybody that has seen it agrees it could turn that expensive, upper end cooler into a piece of survival equipment for the boat, the truck, or anywhere your might take it.
Me at the marina in Cape Haze, FL in 2015.