Meet Marshall Day

We were lucky to catch up with Marshall Day recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marshall , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

Both of my parents.
They are both people who taught me to always believe in myself and never give up.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Our story is a rather unique one.
My business partner and I come from different backgrounds, Kevin worked in areo space with an engineering degree from cal poly working on an array of rocket propulsion systems and parts for the delta rockets.
My background was working in video production, I grew up working with my father helping do the video for his production company. As I got older I took that to shooting concerts for a list of the rap, country and rocks biggest stars, to producing, editing and directing music videos.
As I was getting older I had a kid on the way and I was talking to a buddy about some of the ideas I’ve always had and I needed to get something else going to bring in some extra money.
The RAK-O was one of them. He told me that’s a great idea and I needed to go to the store to get the basic parts to start working on it so I did.
I looked at that tool for a year before I took it to a few buddies asking them how to make this into 1 tool.
My grandfather was an inventor so I was talking with him one day and he asked me to bring it out so we could work on it.
I left it with him overnight and he had JB welded the first official slider together for me with some pvc pipe and pieces of a lever from another tool.
That was the birth of this happening!
From there fresno state university helped me measure it and make a 3d design I could send out to 3d print.
I went through a few different prototypes dialing in size and how I wanted it to function when I got one that worked perfect!
I was thinking great! Now I need to meet a manufacturer and not buy a few days later a good friend of mine has come by. Usually I’d put the tool up just to keep anyone from taking the idea but this was a good friend of mine. He walked in and said wow! What is this?! I told him it’s a project I’ve been working on for a while. I just need a manufacturer to help from here…
He said I have to introduce you to my old boss Kevin!…
Kevin and I met, he loved the product and after a few years of getting to know each other he was ready to not just help manufacture this but be my partner in the business.
Fast forward, we made even more prototypes, added the ability to pick up animal waste with our custom Ducky Bags and added a bottle opener.
In September of 23 we started a kickstarter to hope generate some extra cash to make the tool knowing we were going into production regardless but we were unsuccessful…. Turns out the 56 followers we had on our Facebook knew about the RAK-O already! 🤣🤣
We pushed forward and made the first 5,000 units, started selling March 1 at the fresno home and garden show. We did a new clip with one of the local news stations and they blew this up at the home show! We had such a great response we took it to the national hardware show 3 weeks later.
We spoke to casting directors from shark tank, people from all over the world who absolutely loved the tool, We did a ton of interviews for different social media influencers on top of met some incredible people and connections.
We have been trying to get the RAK-O in stores with some good success, however we met one of the box box stores at that show and it ended up turning into a huge deal!
We can’t talk about where until closer to the first of the year but what we can say is we will be in 2,112 locations of one of the biggest big box stores in the nation!!
So be on the look out for the RAK-O early 2025 and we are currently selling on our website www.rak-o.com, we are in a few select ace hardware stores across California and we are in ranch and home in Washington state.
In addition to the RAK-O we have the hand held RAK-O in the world and looking to release that mid 2025 as well.
We’re not just a tool company.
We have some extra things we are setting up that are important to us as well
We have a school fundraiser program we are working on, we have an after school sports fundraiser we’re working on to help kids -collage students raise extra money for their activities. And donating matching commission to their cause.
Last but not least, I had a house fire in 2019 and unfortunately I had 2 dogs in the house.
When I pulled up to the house my male was out front with an oxygen mask trying to revive him, when I asked where my female was not a few seconds later another foreman walked out with her and she was gone too. They removed the mask from my male and put it on my female trying to revive her, when I asked why they took us off him they told me he’s gone, they only had 1 and it had just been donated and they wanted to try to revive her.
It was that moment I knew if and when this RAK-O took off my goal was to donate those masks to every fire department in cities this tool is sold. We’ll, we have the full support of Everette Taylor, the ceo of Kickstarter, we have opened dialog with the big box store we are going to be sold in about delivering these masks with the first order of RAK-Os. Reach out to all the fire departments in those cities and have them come pick up the masks once delivered, we will reach out to all the news stations to have them do a story in each city to promote what we are doing, we have also started the dialog with Amazon to see if we can get them to get behind what we are doing as well.
Ultimately our goal is to get 1,000,000 masks made for the 58,150 fire stations across the United States and help save some of the 40,000 plus animals that die in a house fire each year.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Drive, financial motivation and the belief in my product were 3 key factors in getting this product started.
Knowing what all went into making this from the idea in my head to the product you see today is not my knowledge but my business partners! Him and I took my idea, failed it in then he went to China and engendered it until it was perfect in the factory.
So my advise is do everything you can do that’s within your power on your product. Wake up everyday and ask yourself what can I do today to take 1 step forward to this, if money is you hold up ask yourself the same question! Not every step you need to take involved money. You can read, research, write down your numbers , your market, how many products in your market does something similar sell. There always steps to take, figuring out those steps is the trick.
My best advise is play with the idea, find someone you can trust you can talk to and bounce ideas off of. The more you talk about your product the more you can learn about it, dial it in, play out scenarios to help avoid lost time and money.
Ultimately, never give up. None of this is easy, it may feel like you’re never going to get people to listen, just don’t give up. If you believe in what you have, you have to make everyone else believe too.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

Both of them Love me unconditionally.
They never gave up on me even when I gave them all the reasons in the world to.
So as someone who knows the look of disappointment, the look of how proud they are today couldn’t make me prouder.
I hope that both know how much I appreciate them always believing in me and supporting my choices. By them always allowing me to be me, it allowed me to become who I’m meant to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rak-o.com
• Instagram: @rakogardentool
• Facebook: @rakogardentool
• Twitter: @rakogardentool
• Youtube: @rakogardentool
• Other: All social media is @rakogardentool