Turning frustration into invention

May 28, 10:02 AMSF Single Parenting ExaminerJulianna McLean

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Inventor Julia Rhodes

As single moms, we all have our frustrations. If each of us could come up with a product to solve just one of those frustrations, we’d all be successful business women like Julia Rhodes.

In 2001, Julia Rhodes was a single mom just getting by on her teacher’s salary.

She got the idea for a product one day while searching for the missing dry eraser she needed to clean her classroom whiteboard, a frustration she noticed other teachers shared, as well.

Tired of using her hand to erase the small mistakes on her board, she thought there had to be a better way.

Rhodes went on to invent, patent, manufacture and market the first KleenSlate product, a dry erase marker with a built-in eraser on the tip (so it can’t get lost).

That was just the beginning. She now runs an international product development company, KleenSlate Concepts, which produces award-winning products used in schools all over the world.

Rhodes is a self-proclaimed rule breaker, whom the US Patent Office recently referred to in a press release as “one of our most inspirational inventors.”

Here are her top three tips for momtrepreneurs:

1. Break the rules. Rules are for wimps. Breaking the rules makes life exciting. Being an inventor and entrepreneur is about risk taking and putting everything you have on the line.

2. Break the rules. When someone told me that a woman with a single product couldn’t sell it to retailers without a man accompanying her, I cut out a man’s head from a sheet of whiteboard and glued it to a popsicle stick so I’d have a “man” with me at the negotiating table. Not only did this help me sell my first product, the Kleenslate marker, it gave me an idea for my second product, KwikCheck II, a handheld whiteboard paddle used in classrooms to encourage student participation, making the learning process more interactive—and paperless.

3. Break the rules. Most people wear business attire to trade shows and other business meetings. Not me. I wear a “whiteboard dress” that I custom-tailored.

Julia writes on the dress things like, “Ask me about my products,” which turns out to be the perfect conversation starter. She once wore the dress to an inventor convention, and it was quirky enough to attract the attention of Jay Leno, who ended up interviewing her about it on the Tonight Show.

If you are a woman business owner looking to network and learn creative ways to grow your business, Julia invites you to join her at the Women Business Enterprise National Council’s Women in Business Conference June 9-11 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

Students show off their KwikCheck II paddles.     KleenSlate markers.