The man who became a millionaire recycling golf balls (and other brilliant ideas)

In the 1980s, Jim Reid had been making a living for over ten years as an inspector at the Walt Disney World amusement park in Orlando, Florida.

Jimmy had a good salary and a good job, but he wanted something more. And he had an idea that would change his life forever.

During a round of golf with some friends, they discussed Jim's passion for scuba diving to search for treasure. One of the attendees suggested he try diving in one of the lakes on the course . Who knows, maybe he could find some treasure, something worthwhile.

Without thinking twice, Jim dove into the waters of a pond on the course, where he found several golf balls. He examined them and, realizing they were in perfect condition , figured they could be used again without any problem, and perhaps he could resell them.

He showed the bag full of balls he had collected to the field owner, who offered him ten cents each. That day he pulled two thousand balls from the pond... He had found his "treasure."

Jim obtained permission from the club owner to dive into the depths of his ponds in order to rescue thousands of golf balls, which, once treated, he would sell back to the club.

In one day I was already earning as much as in a whole week at the amusement park.

Seeing the business's potential, he quit his job and focused on golf balls , which he would take home in his car and put in the washing machine to clean. The problem was that they made a deafening noise when he washed them, so his neighbors reported him. Jim decided to hire his neighbors and start his own company, Second Chance Golf Ball Recyclers, where he first employed part of his family and later hired professionals .

At first, he did practically all the work, but as the days went by, he began closing deals with more and more golf courses, hiring divers and more staff.

And once the business model was proven, replicating it was easy. For ten years, he made a lot of money. By 1993, he was earning over $1 million, and just a year later, he sold his company for over $5 million to Sport Supply Company.

At fifty, Jim Reid retired to enjoy the rest of his days and the benefits of an idea that changed his life forever. And it was all thanks to his balls.

Cakes too easy

In the 1920s, the American food company General Mills launched the Betty Crocker brand, an instant cake mix, but the product failed to sell as expected because customers found the recipes too simple . The solution was to "complicate" the preparation to make it more difficult. And so Betty Crocker became a huge success.

The original General Mills product was so simple that all you had to do was add water , mix well, and bake for thirty minutes. But something didn't add up, as initial estimates indicated sales should have been much higher. So they decided to hire psychologist Ernest Dichter , considered the father of motivational research , to study the case.

Dichter devoted himself to researching the motivation behind purchasing decisions ; to do so, he conducted in-depth interviews with small study groups, following a method now known as a focus group.

After studying General Mills' problem, Dichter realized that making a cake with this mix was too simple, so much so that people didn't feel the satisfaction of having actually baked a cake. Its simplicity made them feel they hadn't put in the effort, because the instant mix made the entire process seem too easy, underestimating the customer's work and skill. That's why they didn't like the product.

About the author and the book

Iván Fernández Amil is an Industrial Engineer who defines himself as a storyteller. In Innovators (Editorial Somos B), he reveals, through 50 brilliant ideas and 50 amazing characters, 50 innovations that shaped our history.

Did you know that doubling his employees' salaries made Henry Ford a multimillionaire? Or that the CT scan wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Beatles? What if I told you that the award-winning film Schindler's List was Spielberg's final year project? Or that thanks to a lockdown, Isaac Newton became the genius we all know?

The book collects the best-kept secrets and the most entertaining curiosities of the geniuses, heroes, and visionaries who changed the world.

Dichter recommended that the brand add some kind of difficulty to the process, so that the people preparing the cake would feel that their involvement was essential to making the cakes, thereby making them feel useful. The solution he proposed was simply brilliant: eliminate the powdered eggs from the mix, so that customers would have to add the fresh eggs themselves.

What Dichter discovered was the bond that is created by allowing the consumer to develop part of the product. The effort put into building it becomes "affection" for the product ; this is why people tend to value objects they have created themselves more highly, and why this effect is also known as the " IKEA effect ."

To achieve this, the task must be simple enough so that the small complication does not generate stress , such as adding eggs or assembling a piece of furniture with precise instructions, but it must also make the customer's perception of the results very high, such as obtaining a cake or having a new shelf.

By the way, Betty Crocker became a best-seller and today more than sixty million American consumers continue to use its instant mixes to prepare their homemade cakes.