March 2010 Newsletter
Greetings from the LucidLights team!
2009 was a wild ride, and we know you want to know all about it, and about our plans for 2010, so let’s get to it. We apologize for the length of this letter and for the delays in getting it written, but there are reasons for that, and we have a lot to cover. The year started off slow, but there is a lot of good news too…Capital raising
The economic downturn in 2009 pulled the rug out from under capital raising efforts for most all startup efforts in this country, and that included LucidLights. We were very close to being able to go to manufacturing last spring, having negotiated with several plastics and circuit board manufacturing businesses along the front range. In particular, we were very excited about a small team of designers and engineers at a shop in Longmont who loved LucidBrake and wanted to team up on its final design under a sweat equity arrangement. However, our entrepreneurial training stressed capital raising first, waiting to proceed until you can safely take all required steps without running the risk of running out of capital. Because of our desire to be conservative and make sure all bases were covered, we hesitated to proceed with the Longmont team, at about the same time that sources of capital withered. This was another learning lesson, and adjustments have been made. On the positive side, these people are a great resource, and they are eagerly waiting to proceed with us when the time is right.Raising our own capital
Early last year we made a commitment to “raise our own capital” once the effort to find investors was costing us more time and effort than it was being beneficial. We have diligently proceeded with this intention using a wide variety of techniques. The positive momentum is still increasing with these efforts.During the rest of 2009 we continued our LucidLights and LucidBrake efforts in what we call stealth mode. John quietly continued technical improvements work on LucidBrake, the product we are sure will be first out of the gate. Our 30-second LucidBrake video clip is still playing on YouTube today, and we do have some very positive and hopeful news to report about LucidBrake.
We also determined our best plan for proceeding is to ramp things up one step at a time, instead of waiting for all capital to be raised. The primary reason for this shift is that we now know confidently that we can sell out of our first production run of LucidBrakes. Read on!
YouTube video
Recall that over a year ago we posted a 30-second video clip on YouTube, showing LucidBrake in action. If you haven’t seen it, please take half a minute and go to http://LucidBrake.com to see it. It’s important to note that this is the one and only bit of public marketing and promotion for LucidBrake to date. We have a list of marketing and promotion steps ready to go when the time is right, but until then this one public video clip is it. Almost daily we continue to get emails from people who want us to put their name on the list to be notified when LucidBrakes become available.Our “I want one” list
The LucidBrake list now tallies about 550 of these requests! And during 2009 we received probably 7 or 8 phone calls from companies in Colorado, California, Missouri, Texas, Canada, Britain, and even Romania, all wanting to discuss wholesale purchases of large quantitites of LucidBrakes for inclusion on their manufactured products, for a variety of reasons. For example, Canada has new laws mandating working brake lights on their electric and gas power-assisted bicycles, which are becoming quite popular, and two different manufacturers called us thinking we probably have the perfect cost-effective and simple solution for their brake light requirements.New industrial design
During the year, John learned how to solder tiny, surface mount chips onto tiny circuit board traces and pads. As a result, the second generation LB2 design has improved over the first generation LB1. LB2 is now a small board at about 2 inches by 2 inches in size, with 8 ultra-bright LEDs arranged around the edges. This board can be mounted in a much lighter, smaller, aerodynamic package for bicycles, or with special double-sided sticky tape pads from 3M Company. (These pads are used to hold steel panels up on walls in outdoor harsh weather!)Fundraising idea
One of our marketing visions is to promote LucidBrakes as a fundraising opportunity for schools and students all over the country, similar to Girl Scout cookies only more life-saving, easy to sell to parents and grandparents, and much less fattening. How feel-good is that?!This newer, smaller model also allowed us to design a brake light with a translucent panel showing advertising logos or other graphics. The bright brake light still shows well when braking, yet when viewed up closer the logo shows well to the public. Of course, John’s first vision here is to have a big red "N" for sale through Nebraska shops.
Corporate Sponsorships
During 2009 we learned about corporate sponsorship opportunities as an alternate way to self-fund the first production run of LucidBrakes from one of the best experts in the field, and decided to pursue this concept as one way we’ll self-raise capital. We have several ideas we are pursuing for the near future, but we did put on our own first big event recently, and it was a big success!Rocky Mountain Writer’s Summit
On January 16th the Rocky Mountain Writer’s Summit was held here in Lone Tree, Colorado. You can learn more about this event at http://WritersSummit.com but here’s a nut-shell summary. About twenty publishing service providers (editors, printers, marketers, promoters, ghost writers, and so on) joined us all day for this free public event at the Lone Tree golf course club house.LucidLights acted as one of the events sponsors, and LucidLights were used to guide people to the speeches throughout the day in a quiet, highly visual manner that received a lot of positive attention. These presentations by the service providers were scheduled every half hour all day long, and the rooms were packed to the point people had to sit in the aisles on the floors. Donations to the Food Bank of the Rockies were accepted at the door, and we’re very pleased to report the Food Bank reports there was enough to provide over 3,000 meals to those in need. Way cool!
We learned a lot about how to create large, sponsored events, especially about what it takes to attract the “bigger corporate sponsors”. We did get some sponsors, but without a track record we learned it’s a challenge to bring in the really big players. Now that we have a successful track record, next year’s event promises to be a big capital raising opportunity to help fund our efforts to make the world a better place, including LucidLights and LucidBrake products! Plans to parlay this experience into a LucidBrake-centric event are also on the drawing board.
Foresite
Springing from the Writer’s Summit was the development of our new service called Foresite. You can read more about this service at http://WritersSummit.com/foresite.php but basically we’ve created a highly automated web site specifically tailored for authors, even before their book is published. Our clients earn passive income, and their pre-release book is promoted using associative marketing techniques EJ has perfected over the years. Our search engine optimizations techniques are unlike anything anyone else has done, and they work! Our customer’s Foresite web sites are consistently showing up on the first page of Google search within a week after the pages are created. One fun example is to search on Google Images for “Angel Books”. You’ll see over 15 million results are returned by Google, but EJ’s book cover is in the absolutely number one spot, on page one!All of these and other web efforts are great preparation for when LucidLights and LucidBrake products will show up on the first page of Google when we’re ready for them to be there in the near future!
Other passive income
We’re actively pursuing several other ways to generate streams of passive income, so we can raise the capital we need for the LucidLights and LucidBrake efforts. EJ is pursuing teaching opportunities in addition to her CFU classes, including online classes that are being currently being defined and refined. John has created some alternative affiliate marketing websites, including sites related to solar energy and to Visual Basic programming.Examiner
John and EJ have both applied for and been accepted to be Examiner writers. These are high visibility news sites read nationwide by a growing audience, with direct and indirect economical benefits too numerous to describe here. Check out these samples of our articles…http://tinyurl.com/yd5797b
http://tinyurl.com/yeq3ess
Again, when the time is right, appropriate mention, tie-in, and links to web sites on these and other web properties we currently have, will provide us a huge marketing advantage with LucidLights and LucidBrakes!
How You Can Help
Bicycle sales are going strong, here in the U.S. and all around the world, with a lot of optimism in the industry. We’re poised and ready to be a very important player in this large and growing market and interest in LucidBrake has proved to be huge! If you know anyone who might want a LucidBrake once they become available, encourage them to check out our website and to get their name on our waiting list.Are you wanting to author a book? Do you know someone else who is? Have them ask us about our Foresite service, even before they begin to write, or especially if they’ve gotten started. There are very good marketing reasons to get a Foresite web site before you get published, and we’ll be glad to go over all the details with anyone who wants to know more about this opportunity to improve their book’s launch success, and make passive income while in the process of writing it!
Thank You!
With gratitude, we thank you all for the interest and encouragement you’ve show us with our LucidLights and LucidBrake dreams and passions. Thank you!-John & EJ
John 720-879-3493, jccraig@gmail.com
EJ 720-879-3495, thornton.ej@gmail.com