From Silk Tie Disaster to Smart Invention: The Coaster That Actually Works with Bob Labbe

The Silk Tie Incident That Sparked a Manufacturing Revolution One Engineer Never Expected

When a ruined silk tie becomes the catalyst for solving a problem that's plagued every drink coaster user, you know you're about to meet someone who thinks differently about everyday frustrations. In this episode of Tech Diva Biz Talks, I sit down with Bob Labbe, an engineer with over 50 years of experience building air pollution control systems for steel mills and utility plants, who decided retirement was the perfect time to reinvent something as simple and universally frustrating as the drink coaster.

From Corporate Engineering to Kitchen Table Innovation

Bob's journey from managing massive industrial projects to perfecting a tabletop solution reveals the entrepreneurial mindset that turns problems into opportunities:

• How a Georgia Tech engineering background prepared him for spotting market gaps others miss
• The progression through three successful air pollution control companies that taught him business fundamentals
• Why timing matters when transitioning from employee to inventor
• The moment when personal frustration became professional inspiration

Problem-Solving as a Business Philosophy

Bob breaks down his approach to identifying and solving real-world problems:

• The four-step process for analyzing obstacles and creating multiple solution paths
• How condensate capture, conveyance, collection, and containment solve what traditional coasters can't
• Why American consumers demand value regardless of whether they're buying automobiles or coasters
• The pricing strategy that makes innovation accessible at $19.95 for a four-coaster set

Beyond the Coaster: The Golf Connection

• How Bob's putting struggles led to writing "Putting by the Numbers," now in 44,000 retail stores worldwide
• The quantitative method that reduced his putting average from 40-44 putts to 30.5 putts per round at age 80
• Why solving one problem often reveals skills for tackling completely different challenges
• The parallel between engineering precision and athletic performance improvement

Ready to see how engineering precision meets everyday problem-solving? Visit ultimatecoasterco.com for the drip-free coaster, or boblabbe.com for his golf putting system that's helping golfers worldwide. To have the coasters imprint

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Transcript

[00:00:01 - 00:00:59]
 Welcome to Tech Diva Biz Talks where we tune in, dive deep and level up. I'm your host, Audrey Wiggins, AKA the Tech Diva, brand strategist, marketing mind, and your guide through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Let's talk tech. Hello Tech Diva Nation. My guest today is Bob Labbe and he is an inventor and engineer of the ultimate drinking coaster. And he's going to talk about that within this segment as well. So I want you to meet Bob. He's a guy who has a pet peeve with drink coasters and justifiably thinks that you should too. All right, Bob, Okay. The drink coasters are meant to protect any surface, of course, right. We know that from any water rings produced by cold beverages, but they aren't user friendly. So one day before a nice dinner out at a restaurant, I'm sure there's a nice dinner, nice restaurant, right Bob?

[00:01:00 - 00:01:01]
 Right. Absolutely.

[00:01:01 - 00:01:46]
 Okay. He was enjoying an ice cold drink with his family. He was dressed to the nine and decided to use a leather coaster for his drink. So after about 10 minutes he grabbed his beverage only to have the coaster stick to the bottom of the glass, spilling the condensation all over his tie, his shirt and his slacks. His silk tie was forever stained. So it was. Right, okay. Oh my goodness. And a new product was born. All right, so Bob, that was kind of a quick thing. You're going to have to give us some more information on the other side when we, we take our break. But, but give us your, your fun fact here. What's that about?

[00:01:47 - 00:04:03]
 Well, Audrey, I, first of all, I want to thank you for having me and the, the, the, the coaster. I would have never thought I would have ever invented a coaster. And that's kind of a fun fact that I'm an engineer, been building air pollution control systems all my life. All for steel mills and utility plants and cement plants. Big stuff, you know. So how would I ever get involved with a drink coaster? And you described what, what occurred back in October of 2023. Drink Coasters has always been a pet peeve of mine because none of them work. Okay? You got the paper ones, you got the leather ones, you got the stone ones, the metal ones, you, there's a hundred different types of coasters, but the fact that matter, none of them work. And so I, after having, as you described my incident with Rooney in a very favorite special silk tie bind, I said to my daughter, we were having dinner with my daughter and son in law and my wife and all, I said, you know, I, this is a pet peeve. Of mine. And now that I'm about ready to retire, I think I'm going to invent a. I'm going to invent a coaster that really works. And that's how the coaster was born is I. And that was in October of 2023. And I met me, went to work doing some hand sketches and, and I still had my chief engineer at my air pollution control company available to me to, to make the kind of drawings I needed to make. And so between October, November of 2023, I made enough hand sketches and Tony did the AutoCAD drawings and all I needed to present to my patent lawyer. So the process went October 23rd. We're drawing it, we're thinking it out. We got the drawings made. By the end of December, January 1, 2024, I was at the patent attorney's office showing him my drawings and all the claims I'm making about my co. Truly, Audrey, this is the only coaster in the entire world that really works. Okay.

[00:04:03 - 00:04:09]
 Okay. Well, we're going to hear more about that. That's exciting. So you have another fun fact too, centered around golf.

[00:04:10 - 00:06:27]
 Oh yes, that's true. I wrote a book called Putting by the Numbers. Okay. And I've got a copy of the book right here and what it is. I started playing golf when I retired from my first company back in 1990 and my partner and I sold the company. And then we said together we would play golf because we both enjoyed the game. But you know, golf takes four and a half hours to play an 18 hole round. And when we were in business, we just didn't feel like we had four and a half hours to go play golf. But we loved the game and we played with our salesmen at the meetings every year. So that got me on to playing golf. And I found out I went to a practice, practice PGA school up in Maggie Valley, North Carolina to learn the, learn how to hit the clubs, that kind of stuff. So I took, took a lesson back in lessons back in 1996 and I became pretty good at the game from the driver all the way to getting to the green. But my, my problem was I couldn't when I was a long distance from the green and trying to put the ball, I would either hit it way too hard or way too soft and I'd end up three or four putting the green, which was ruining my score. Okay. So I had to figure out a way to solve that problem. And so Edward Stimson developed a stint meter in 1935 and it, you know, it just rolls about three balls down a tube and they travel on the grain and they get a certain distance and that establishes the speed of the grain. Well, that's a qualitative method measuring how, how fast the green is. So I use that, I started from that thing to develop my method, which is a quantitative method. And in this book as well as there's two tutorials in home practice video and an on course practice video that describes the entire method and it, and I was cutting, I was putting 40 to 44 putts around before this book. Last year at age 80, I putted 30.5 putts per round. 18 whole round.

[00:06:28 - 00:06:28]
 Wow.

[00:06:28 - 00:06:47]
 And I guarantee anybody that really takes this book seriously and watches my practice videos, they will improve their game 4 to 5 strokes for a simple price of somewhere between 5 and 15. Now where can you improve your golf game 4 or 5 strokes for 15 bucks?

[00:06:48 - 00:07:50]
 I know because they want to give me some lessons for 150. I've got my clubs in the, in the back of the car. They come out once a year. I'm in an apartment. It's like, I'm not dragging those things up here. I already have the tent in, in the apartment. I can't bring the golf club so that they stay in the back seat. All right, so we will hear more from Bob Labbe on the, on the other side of this message from my business, Altogether Marketing, 

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welcome back, Bob, and welcome to Technical Biz Talks. We're going to get into some other questions here so we can learn about you, learn from you about business and we'll, we'll talk about some, some other stuff about that coaster again. Okay?

[00:07:50 - 00:10:07]
 Sure. All right, well, Audrey, I, first of all, I want to thank you for having me and the, the, the, the coaster. I would have never thought I would have ever invented a coaster. And that's kind of a fun fact that I'm an engineer, been building air pollution control systems all my life, all for steel mills and utility plants and cement plants. Big stuff, you know. So how would I ever get involved with a drink coaster? And you described what, what occurred back in October of 2023. Drink Coasters has always been a pet peeve of mine because none of them work. Okay? You got the paper ones, you got the leather ones, you got the stone ones, the metal ones. You, there's a hundred different types of coasters but the fact that matter, none of them work. And so I, after having, as you described my incident with ruining a very favorite special silk tie bind, I said to my daughter, we were having dinner with my daughter and son in law and my wife and all I said, you know, I, this is a pet peeve of mine. And now that I'm about ready to retire, I think I'm going to invent a. I'm going to invent a coaster that really works. And that's how the coaster was born. And that was in October of 2023. And I met Melee, went to work some hand sketches and, and I still had my chief engineer at my air pollution control company available to me to, to make the kind of drawings I needed to make. And so between October, November of 2023, I made enough hand sketches, sketches and Tony did the autocad drawings and all I needed to present to my patent lawyer. So the process went October 2023, we're drawing it, we're thinking it out, we got the drawings made. By the end of December, January 1, 2024, I was at the patent attorney's office showing him my drawings and all the claims I'm making about my coaster. And truly Audrey, this is the only coaster in the entire world that really works.

[00:10:07 - 00:10:25]
 Create a picture for us from transitioning from corporate America, you're an engineer, into being an inventor. And just so for those of us who out there who have our own products and they want to bring them to market, basically we're talking about startups. Can you give us a little bit of that journey? And then I'll follow up with another question.

[00:10:26 - 00:14:23]
 Okay, well, I think the best way for me to answer that question, Audrey, is to take us back in time. When I was a, I graduated from Georgia tech back in 1968 in engineering, became an engineer, went to work for American Air Filter in the air pollution control business. And that because back then air pollution control was just in its embryo state and the Clean Air act didn't come about until 1970. And so this was a great opportunity. So I would tell people, first of all, if you're going to start a business, you got to look for an opportunity. What creates the opportunity for you to go in that business? And I thought air pollution control in 1968 was a coming field and I wanted to learn that field. So I went to work for American Air Filter. I worked for them for five years and learned they were a great teaching company. They had 40-hour week classes for six months, and they taught me Lots of things, practical things I didn't learn in engineering school. And so they kind of taught me the business I was going to, I was going to start. So now I saw the opportunity, now I had the, I had the know how, the education to execute that opportunity. And, and so for the next nearly 50 years, through three air pollution control companies, I started them, developed them, sold them, went on to the next one and, and so on. It was a progression of companies. And I just sold my last company back in 2023 and fully retired. Well, this is how I got into the coaster business. Same thing. The idea of having, as you described earlier in the conversation, I spilled my, the condensate from my leather coaster onto my tire, ruining a very special silk tie of mine, which I could never clean. And that gave me the idea, okay, that was the idea. So that was kind of, you got to have an idea and say, well, you know, there's hundreds of, hundreds of coasters out there, but none of them work. That was kind of a pet peeve. That kind of was subliminal in my mind my whole life. But I was busy building these air, big air pollution control systems. What was I going to do with a little coaster? Well, now I'm about ready to retire and I have this, I have this coaster, this leather coaster spill on my tie, the condensate ruining my tie. And I said to my daughter, I said, you know, I'm going to invent a coaster that works well here, here's a leather coaster and here's the coaster I invented, okay? And they are vastly different. And so what I would tell people, you got to have an idea first. You got to know there's a marketplace for it. And your idea has to be better than anything else is on the market, or at least as good as everything on the market. Well, not only is my idea and my product as good as everything is, there's, there's no coaster in the market that's, that can do what my coaster does. Because see, my coaster captures, conveys, collects and contains condensate. So it doesn't get on your clothes, doesn't get on your cocktail table, and doesn't get on your carpet. It saves everything of value, your clothes, your table and your carpet. Saves all those valuable items in your home or, or in your office from being damaged. And you know, condensate, be that ice cold drink or a hot drink, can leave heat stains on your furniture. And matter of fact, we had that happen in our house not too long ago and it was to an antique Piece of furniture we had in house, and it cost several hundred dollars to repair that.

[00:14:23 - 00:14:24]
 Wow.

[00:14:24 - 00:15:05]
 Well, these little, these coasters here, you get a set of four of them with, with the holder and all, and they really work. And they do. They, they keep you from having heat stains or they keep you from getting condensate stains on anything that, that you find of value. And so there you go. You got an idea, then you develop a product. And that's what we've been doing for the last, since October of 2023. We've gone from idea engineering, design, patent lawyer, product, product patenting, then to manufacturing, then market and sales. And that's what we've been doing for the last basically 24 months.

[00:15:06 - 00:15:20]
 Wow, that's exciting because we always talk about, you know, what, what is, what problem are you serving, solving, you know, as a business? And it goes back to the old saying, right? Necessity is the mother of invention.

[00:15:21 - 00:15:25]
 Exactly. That's it. That's a great. I use that a lot. That's a good one. Yes, it is.

[00:15:27 - 00:15:53]
 In this case, it might be, you know, the father. Okay, absolutely. Yeah. That's so that, that's exciting. So what mistakes do you see or, you know, what advice you have for, for businesses trying to communicate, you know, the value or the, the message from the, from the product that they're creating? We're going to stick with, with products and not ideas here.

[00:15:53 - 00:17:22]
 Okay. Well, you know, I think one of the things that first of all, if you get the idea and you develop a product, and you believe it to be the best product on, competitive with the best. Ours is indeed the best coaster in the entire world. So I think if I don't know that everybody can get to that level of excellence in their product, but you're always trying to create excellence and never quit. My advice to any young entrepreneur is never, never quit. I mean, you, you will get you'll get setbacks, you'll get people that reject you. You'll get big corporations that reject. We've been rejected a long way, but we are, we are making sales in retail, B2B, C to C. We're doing good business and our business is constantly growing in these coasters. But we've been, we've had many rejections in the last 24 months, but we've had a lot more acceptance. And that's the thing I would tell any. Don't become discouraged. It's okay to. It's actually okay to become discouraged. But don't quit. Keep driving forward. Keep driving forward. There's Always a solution that you'll find to your problem. You just got to keep working at it and give it your best.

[00:17:22 - 00:18:12]
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Are there any systems you know that makes the consistency easier instead of exhausting?

[00:18:14 - 00:18:54]
 Well, you know, I think the first, the first thing anytime you run into obstacle you got to the first step is to find the problem problem. What is the problem? And, and then you got to analyze the problem. Okay. And then you have to create a multitude of different ideas of that could be solutions the problem. And then you pick from those ideas that you, that the right, what you think to be the right solution. And then you put your energy and effort into developing that and driving it forward. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. But if you're wrong, you got to start over and you got to keep. Do not quit. Just do not quit.

[00:18:54 - 00:19:04]
 Absolutely. So what about pricing? Because you're coming up with your own, your own products and services. What your advice or you know, around pricing?

[00:19:05 - 00:20:18]
 Well, you know, I think first of all the, the consumer in, in America, but actually worldwide is very, very smart, very astute to what they buy and they want to get value for their money. Whether they're buying an automobile or buying a coaster, everybody wants to get value for their money. And so we, when we decide this started pricing this, you know, we, we looked, we are American manufactured. Okay. But we, we have also, we have off coast, off coast manufacturing too to serve the other continents. We can serve Europe and Asia and the other continents of the world with our offshore manufacturing. Surprisingly, however, with, with all of the tariffs that have been developed. The price of our American manufacturing, when you consider all the cost of, of the logistics involved in getting a product to market, our product made in America is at the same cost as our product made offshore.

[00:20:18 - 00:20:19]
 That's awesome.

[00:20:19 - 00:21:30]
 So it's really great because we can logistically supply say New Zealand or Australia with our offshore manufacturer or Europe or we can supply American manufacture to England, Canada, Mexico, whatever. So we have two points of manufacturing that helps us to serve the total market and that helps the pricing as you're getting back to the pricing, we wanted to bring this product to market at a price that people would say, okay, this is really a good product for my value. You get four of these products with a. With a coaster holder. And you get them for 1995 retail. You can buy them at. You can buy them on Amazon. If a prime customer, you get them shipped to you free. Okay. That 1990, 95 comes with shipping. So you get four of these. They're great present we're having. We've got about 10,000 of these units in stock right now, and we're, we're manufacturing more to keep up with the demand. People are beginning to see that this is truly a coat. The only coaster that really works.

[00:21:31 - 00:21:34]
 Yeah. And that. That's the key right there. It's a product that works.

[00:21:34 - 00:21:35]
 Exactly.

[00:21:35 - 00:21:43]
 Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so we're going to take one more quick break, and we'll come back and we're going to do our rapid fire round. How about that?

[00:21:43 - 00:21:44]
 Okay.

[00:21:47 - 00:22:45]
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All right, we're back with Bob Labbe Bob, thanks again for, you know, giving us that insight on pricing, bringing things to market, and a little insight and there, you know, a little manufacturing from us and off coast or near coast you're talking about. So that's good. When we're talking about delivering and creating our own products. So this rapid fire round, we're gonna do rapid fire. I'm gonna ask you maybe about five questions. Give me a quick answer, and I'll go to the next one. All right?

[00:22:45 - 00:22:47]
 Okay. Sounds fair. Okay.

[00:22:47 - 00:22:48]
 Okay. Coffee or tea?

[00:22:49 - 00:22:49]
 Coffee.

[00:22:50 - 00:22:53]
 One tool you could not run your business without.

[00:22:54 - 00:22:55]
 My computer.

[00:22:57 - 00:23:04]
 Best advice you've ever received. Never give up the biggest myth entrepreneurs need to let go of.

[00:23:05 - 00:23:07]
 You're too small to succeed.

[00:23:07 - 00:23:12]
 Finish this sentence. Most entrepreneurs will grow faster if they

[00:23:12 - 00:23:23]
 were willing to have an open mind and entertain anybody's idea and give it some thought before they draw a conclusion.

[00:23:24 - 00:23:56]
 Wow. I love it. And this is going to be. We're going to go back. We've talked about your product, so. But this is just, you know, kind of like the final question. The inventor spotlight. If you will. So before we wrap up, I want to highlight, I want you to highlight something unique, you know, about yourself. You're not just a business professional, you're an inventor. So tell us even more about the drip free coaster. What problem it solves and what inspired you to create it. We kind of said those things kind of along the way, but just it all up.

[00:23:57 - 00:26:46]
 Well, you know, my, I've spent my whole life trying to be a problem solver, okay. And being an engineer, that's what engineers are, we're problem solvers. And as I, I feel like I made a good contribution to the world in, in solving a lot of the air pollution control problems, whether they were particulate or gaseous. So two NOx all those kinds of gaseous problems for the sake of humanity. Now obviously, you know, I, I did fulfilled those jobs as a career and I was, I was really more interested in developing income for my family so we could grow and educate and enjoy life. And so I think making a contribution to humanity and air pollution is, is a good byproduct. But obviously, you know, when you're, when you're trying to make a living and, and to provide for your family, that's your primary objective in gold. And that was mine. Now continuing on to solve problems, you know, playing golf is solving a problem because if you've ever played golf, you know, it may be the hardest game on the planet, okay? So golf is a problem and you have to solve that problem. And that's what I set out in 1966, 1996 to do, is to solve that problem. And that's how got in. Well, I found when I started playing golf that by my Achilles heel was I couldn't put long distance putts with any accuracy and it was killing my score. So that's the reason I wrote this book. I had to solve that problem. And that's what I did. That problem. And I wrote this book. And I can assure you this book is in 44,000 retail stores worldwide now. And I'm hoping that I'm helping every golfer. There's 300 million golfers in the world. I'm hoping, I'm hoping I'm helping some of those golfers solve their problem with long distance, buddy. So that's how I got onto the book. And then the coaster, as we discussed earlier, had a problem. It ruined my silk tie. That was a no, no. So I had to solve the problem. And that's, that's what we said about. So the last two years we went through solving the problem, getting the problem to manufacturing and sales and marketing and now the park, the marketing. This product is being sold in, in on the Internet with Amazon or Ultimate CoasterCo.com or, or in retail stores. And so it's, it's, it's just solving problems has been my life's work.

[00:26:47 - 00:26:50]
 Can we also find the book online as well?

[00:26:50 - 00:27:20]
 Yeah, the book is that you can go to boblabbe.com or puttingbythenumbers.com and it's, it's at Amazon and you can, you can buy it at Walmart. I mean on Walmart.com there's, it's a lot of different apps but actually going to Bob lobby.com is the easiest approach. But you can also, if you're an Amazon prime member, you can get the book at a very low price and get it shipped to you free.

[00:27:20 - 00:27:28]
 Fantastic. So I, I think I know a few golfers we can get and we need that book as well as the coaster.

[00:27:29 - 00:27:35]
 But well, I tell you I, this book is so good when I screw up if my game I come back and read it.

[00:27:37 - 00:27:41]
 Now what did I teach myself? Let me go back the page was that one?

[00:27:41 - 00:27:42]
 Yeah.

[00:27:42 - 00:28:01]
 Oh my goodness, yes. But I love because it really brings us full circle, you know, spotting, spotting a real world problem, creating a solution and then building something around that. Bob, this has been such a great conversation from strategy and clarity to innovation and execution.

[00:28:01 - 00:28:05]
 Well Audrey, I just want to say I want to thank you very much for having me everyone.

[00:28:05 - 00:28:54]
 So if you're listening and thinking I need more practical solutions like this in my business. Make sure you check out Bob's work including his drip free coaster at ultimatecoasterco.com and, and we'll have the link, you know, waiting for you of course in the show notes along. Well I'll get the link from you too again Bob, about the book so we can can find that as well. And as always, you can catch this episode's show notes and more business tech at technivabiztalks.com, your hub for smart strategies and bold conversations that keep you tech-tuned. That's it for today's tech evil Biz talks. Hope you caught a gem or two. If you did share it, review it and most of all put it into action. Until next time, tune in, level up and talk tech.