In his eighth year as a massage therapist, Greg Polins' thumbs started to give out on him, and the pain radiated upward: first joint, saddle joint, wrist.

Eventually, after a day of back-to-back massages, Polins was reduced to placing ice packs around his hands at night, in an effort to reduce the swelling.

"I finally got to the point where I was going to have to go and look for another job," said the 43-year-old.

Instead, Polins invented something new -- a deceptively simple piece of soft plastic that slips over the thumb and mimics its shape.

He has a patent pending on the "Thumbsaver," and he is actively marketing it to massage therapists.

Along the way, Polins found out something interesting about Southwest Florida.

Tucked in between the golf courses and boutiques, just below the surface, this area has all the talent you need to turn a concept into a manufactured reality.

He designed a prototype with the help of a Sarasota prosthetics expert. He found his way to a sophisticated Manatee County mechanical engineering team by chatting with the guy who delivers Federal Express packages. He is getting his patent through a guy he met at the gym.

Polins has now pumped about $35,000 and many hours of work into the Thumbsaver project. He is tapped out, but hopes that he is on the threshold of a lifetime of positive cash flow.

Polins could not have taken his Thumbsaver from a sketch to a product being mass-produced in Taiwan without some help.

He had some experience as an entrepreneur, but nobody has all the skills required to bring a manufactured product to market.

"I mean, it's hundreds of procedures," Polins says.

Working his network

Polins' job at Sarasota Life Extension Institute on Clark Road involved both fitness training and massage therapy.

For nearly two years, though, Polins has been moonlighting as an entrepreneur with one goal: designing and manufacturing his brainchild.

It started when he tried reinforcing his thumbs with sports tape, then looked for ways to brace the digits even more.

"When you do this for a couple of hours," said Polins, making a fist and pressing his thumb straight down onto the table, "after a while your thumb isn't straight. It's bent, like this."

Eventually, he started experiencing joint pain that traveled up his thumb through his hand and into his wrist.

"Imagine yourself a massage therapist, and

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