William Bushnell Stout was a prodigious engineer and inventor. Aviation historians know him as the builder of the 1919 Batwing, which was the first commercial American monoplane and as the father of the Ford Trimotor airplane. The Trimotor was the first production passenger airplane designed with a metal skin instead of cloth, wire and wood. In a way, Bill Stout helped to create commercial air travel by developing a reliable commercial aircraft made with durable materials.

Automobile buffs may remember the Stout Scarab of the early 1930s. This unique vehicle is the grandfather of today's modern minivan. Bill Stout’s Scarab had many futuristic features not seen in other '30s cars such as four wheel independent suspension, hidden door hinges, push button door locks, flush glass, fully enclosed wheels, no running boards, and flush aero headlights.

As an inventor and small business owner, Bill Stout offered some words that are applicable to today's small business environment. Bill said, "Never resort to mathematics until you have exhausted all the possibilities of a couple of toothpicks and a piece of string." What Bill meant is you don't need to analyze a new idea to death; frequently, you can try some low budget experiments to test your idea.

If you're in the restaurant business and you want to add some ethnic food items to your menu but you're not sure if your customers are interested, you can print up a small run of special item menus and clip them to your regular menus. Then you can measure what people order and determine the popularity of these dishes. You can keep experimenting until you find a combination that works. Cactus Ya Ya, a well-known restaurant in Vancouver, specializes in Mexican and Southwestern cuisine. They also offer eclectic fare such as garlic mashed potatoes and Philadelphia cheese steaks. It works for them.

In the wholesale segment of my plastics business, we decided to try a price-cutting tactic to see if we would gain more business. We registered a fictitious name, placed a small ad in the yellow pages and put in an extra phone line with its own number. Then we placed a small ad in the yellow pages. Our slogan was "Before you buy, call us for a quote!" We were disappointed in the results of the campaign and axed it a few months later. Nevertheless, it was an economical experiment, costing less than $700, that didn't sully the name of our regular business. We moved on to more promising programs, but at least we had tried another tactic.

Mail order experts say you can't accurately test the statistical pull of a mailing list or an offer unless you mail at least 5,000 pieces. That's true, but if you send, say, 500 pieces and you get some response then, by all means, scale up and do a full-blown test. If you get absolutely no response, the market is telling you something. Shut down your direct mail program and re-think it. Is there a problem with the offer in your mailing? Or maybe you've got a bad mailing list. Think about it before you spend more money.

If you've got a new product idea, you don't need to fly all over the nation to try it out. Chances are there's someone within easy driving distance of your office who's a potential customer for your idea. Buy them lunch and solicit their opinion. They'll probably be flattered you asked and provide you with valuable feedback.

Before we ever embarked on filling a production order for displays in our plastics business, we made a hand-made plastic prototype to get the OK from our customer. Before we did that, we made a "quick and dirty" sample out of cardboard and masking tape, using a box knife. It only took us a few minutes but it told us whether the proportions were right, the size made sense and whether the part was stable enough so it wouldn't tip over. These were all things you couldn't tell from a two dimensional sketch. While we were using cardboard and masking tape instead of toothpicks and string, we were following the philosophy of the legendary Mr. Stout.

Bill Stout's lesson is very applicable to running your own business. Don't be afraid to experiment, especially if it doesn't cost much to do so. Don't wait and vacillate. Try something new ... now!