Formidable Woman met the dynamic duo of Inventor’s Club Worldwide. As a co-founder of Inventor’s Club Worldwide Katie Kupstas PR was created in order to help ICW members with local and national media opportunities in addition to relationship building to enhance their business opportunities. Katie has worked for luxury retail corporations and helped them launch new products in the Washington DC and Philadelphia markets through merchandising and events. The mission of ICW along with her vision for the company is to ensure members have a complete understanding of their options throughout the product development process, IP legal, licensing and public relations. Katie partnered with Kristin Jacobson, a marketing and business leader with over 20 years of experience growing and scaling businesses. With expertise in business operations and growth marketing, her experience ranges from enterprise-level companies like UST, Microsoft, & Apple to a variety of early and mid-stage startups.
FWM: Katie, What are your strengths as a PR professional?
Communication is my greatest strength. I know that every dollar counts to my clients since most of them are bootstrapping and they want to know how their money is being spent. I communicate with my clients as often as possible to ensure they have a full understanding of the work I am doing to get them media coverage. My husband and I have lived in 3 different states on the east coast over the past 21 years. My network is very large because of the places we have lived and the strong relationships I have made. Being able to make connections to help my clients is something that gives me great joy!
FWM: Who are some of your clients?
Inventors, Startups and a few authors are my clients. Most recently I worked with a startup called TimeRepublik, the largest time banking company in the world with 100k members worldwide. Another client I am very proud of is Sink Spinner and inventor Bryan Alintoff. Sink Spinner is a novel product for the bathroom sink that saves time, water and money.
FWM: Tell us about Inventor’s Club Worldwide and its benefits.
Inventor’s Club Worldwide is a non-profit and the only educationally driven organization for inventors in the United States. We take pride in reaching inventors from across the globe. Inventor’s Club Worldwide meets weekly with our members and founders via Zoom to answer questions on intellectual property by an IP attorney and former patent examiner at the USPTO, Tod Kupstas, Kristin Jacobson- co-founder- she has worked with Shark Tank clients and scaled businesses for decades and myself: PR professional. https://inventorsclubworldwide.com/
FWM: Inventor of the Han-D-Icer, David Svengalis of Hollywood, CA said, ” I have learned more in the last year as a member of Inventor’s Club Worldwide, than in my total 10 years of inventing.”
We are proud to know we are making such a positive impact on the inventor community here in the United States and internationally. Inventor’s Club Worldwide is headquartered outside Philadelphia in Wynnewood, PA. We have had inventors join us from Belize, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Brussels and The Rock of Gibraltar to name a few. Inventor’s Club Worldwide or ICW as we call it for short, is launching a patent pending platform for startups that was created by the founders of ICW in order to help with the process. More information to come on that soon.
FWM: Share new projects and initiatives for the remainder of the year.
The Inspiration Through Innovation Awards is coming up for our ICW Members October 15th, 2021. This year it will be a virtual event and next year we hope to have it in Orlando, FL.
Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/inventorsclubworldwide/
https://www.instagram.com/katies.clicks/
https://www.facebook.com/Inventors-Club-Worldwide-109745690505773
FWM: Kristin, Tell us about your expertise in growing and scaling businesses.
Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, I was exposed to all aspects of business including finance, marketing, and operations from a very young age. After college, I worked for a management consulting firm where we focused on financial operations for mid to enterprise-sized businesses.
Thanks to my background in financial operations and consulting, it made sense that optimizing revenue growth would be my passion. I’ve been in marketing for over 15 years now, and my work has evolved into leading digital marketing teams – both as an outsourced CMO and paid digital strategist. I currently lead 2K North, a creative agency that offers marketing implementation and growth consulting to businesses, from startup to enterprise-level brands.
FWM: What do you enjoy the most?
My favorite thing about this work is that I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I am constantly looking for new opportunities, and ways to solve problems. I love collaborating with clients to find the best strategies that will help them reach their goals.
FWM: Tell us about partnering with Katie and the launch the Inventor’s Club Worldwide.
Katie and I agreed to join forces one day, after we discovered that we were both working in the same space. She had personally built a private Facebook group for inventors to over a thousand strong, while I was focused on building a marketing agency that offered scalable solutions for startups. Together with Katie’s expertise in IP and networking and my knowledge of growth marketing, Inventors Club Worldwide was born! We are thrilled to have been able to help thousands of inventors avoid getting scammed as well as help guide them step by step on what they need to grow their product or business.
Katie and I are both passionate about helping people, and we love partnering with creative entrepreneurs who want their business dreams to come true. We feel like we have an emotional partnership with all of our members.
Katie is skilled at PR and networking; she also has a degree in education that informs her desire to teach and help others. My background is data-driven marketing with an emphasis on operations strategy: my love of all things digital combined with skills at revenue growth make me great at what I do!
When you combine these professional skills along with our stubbornness and strong sense of right/wrong- it makes us very powerful accomplices when it comes to making Inventors Club Worldwide successful.
FWM: Share your goals for the remainder of 2021.
Inventor’s Club Worldwide has evolved since we first formed it in 2019. While we always branded ourselves a mission-driven organization, we just officially completed the process of being a non-profit. Our focus for the remainder of the year is to complete the transition to non-profit and work on funding opportunities.
In addition, in October, we have our first annual ICW Inspiration through Innovation Awards ™, where we honor inventors or startups who’ve brought an innovative idea to market.
FWM: Why join the club?
Inventor’s Club Worldwide’s sole purpose is to help Inventors and Startups bring their idea, product, or business to life. We offer weekly networking, a Mastermind video series, Office Hours for direct mentoring or group Q & A sessions with experts in the startup space, and an ever-growing library of self-guided documents, videos, and eBooks.
We offer different membership levels, ranging from $29 to $599 per year. Whether an inventor is just starting out or they have already invested in their business idea’s development- our memberships will work for anyone who is ready to take the next step towards bringing their dreams into reality!
If an inventor is just beginning their journey with a new idea but not much money, then the $29/year level would provide access to our supportive community, networking and events, and our self-guided library documents. For those who are at the production stage and want something more hands-on, we have our advisory board-level support for startups which offers 1 on 1 mentoring with our professionals as well as a free application to our innovation awards.
