Product Genius, the Podcast for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Startups

Steven Julian

Was it luck that made that new product successful? Or does luck even exist? We're going to talk about that and a whole lot more as we dive deep into the topic of luck when it comes to your product development with special guest star Tiffany Krumans in studio next on Product Genius.

Tiffany Krumins

Do you want to be a successful inventor entrepreneur? Struggling to get your product from idea to market? Well, you've come to the right place. Welcome to Product Genius. The down-to-earth podcast that explores important topics about inventing and launching new products. Noah McNeely is your trusted guide. With more than 20 years of product launch experience, he's here to help you on your journey to become a product genius. Let's get started. Here's your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian.

Steven Julian

Hey, that's my line. As she said, it is your slightly annoying host, Steven Julian. Here for... The fantastic episode, and this is a special episode of Product Genius. With me, as always, is my other host, the co-host. I don't know if everyone can hear the trains in the background, but it's really cool in an ads environment. Noah McNeely is here with me from Product. Quick Start. Noah, welcome to your own studio.

Noah McNeely

Well, thank you.

Steven Julian

You told us last time we recorded that this might happen. There might be a train. I think it's so awesome that it came in right at the beginning of this show.

Noah McNeely

Well, we are doing the show from under the train tracks, so it was bound to happen.

Steven Julian

Beside the train tracks, which, by the way, they stopped putting the little overhang. I heard they stopped doing that. One of my clients told me.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, so we're in the Historic Depot District of downtown Lawrenceville, Georgia. What Steven's talking about is we had these really cool decorative signs placed over the roadways, but they were a little bit too low for all the garbage trucks in the city to get under. So they eventually took the little barriers down. And now, because they literally from my window, I could see them hit it at least twice a week and then they'd have to come out and repair it. And I'm like, they probably have a whole team just dedicated to repairing this sign.

Every week.

Steven Julian

And that team took up way too much time and they finally said enough. And so they took out those decorative things. Those overhangs had no luck, which is what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about luck today, making luck and luck in the product development space. And if you haven't already caught on, we've already picked up a laugh. We've picked up a mmm. We've picked up another laugh. There we go. And so we are thrilled and excited because our I can't even call her a guest because the founding member of Product Genius is here with us in studio, Tiffany Krumans and her dad, Brian Duncha, here with Opu Probiotics.

Tiffany and Brian, welcome to the studio. Thank you.

Tiffany Krumins

This is our first time in the new studio, so we're excited.

Steven Julian

And Tiffany, welcome back to your own show. Yes.

Tiffany Krumins

Yes. It's good to be back.

Steven Julian

So we are so glad you're here. And before we get into the topic, because Noah brought you in. Specifically to talk about this topic of luck and luck as it comes to starting your own product and developing your own product. But before we do that, our show, Product Genius, is brought to us by Product Quick Start and. also by Opu Probiotics. So tell everybody what you've been doing. Tell everybody about Opu and what it is and how awesome it is.

Tiffany Krumins

So when you and I stopped doing the podcast last year, I did that because I was throwing all of my energy and all of my time into my newest brand, Opu Probiotics. It is an instant-dissolve probiotic that my father and I launched together. It is manufactured here in Georgia at an NSF-certified factory. We're very proud of that fact. That is the highest standard for supplements in the U.S. And our packaging is also made here in Georgia. So everything is U.S.-made here in our own state. And we're super proud of what we've been building.

Steven Julian

And for those people who've never taken a probiotic, what is it and why is Opu different from so many other probiotics on the market?

Tiffany Krumins

Yes. So most of the probiotics, well, all of the other probiotics on the market are either a chalky powder that you have to mix into a beverage and then chug and hope you get it all out of the bottom of the glass. Or a gummy, which kids typically take, but now. adults apparently are. And then pills, of course, which no one loves pills. So ours is an instant dissolve powder that has the consistency of almost like a powdered sugar. And you open up the little packets that it comes in that you can store anywhere and you just pour it directly on your tongue.

People ask me over and over again, can I pour it in a beverage? Can I put it in yogurt? And I'll say, you can if you want, but that's weird because it's instant dissolve. So it's so light that most of the time when I open it on video, it kind of goes off into the air. You'll see a little bit of it come out. So it's not going to go on your tongue like a BC powder or something that you're used to doing in powder form. It is instant dissolve.

Steven Julian

Interesting. Now, Brian, and before we get to the topic, Brian, I wanted to ask you, how cool is it? Uh, to work with your daughter. I mean, how, how much, how much fun has this been for you in launching this?

Tiffany Krumins

It's been the opportunity of a lifetime. We just. have fun all the time. We've got my wife involved and the kids involved. Last week we were making boxes to get ready for production. And we were basically a, a sweatshop making boxes.

Steven Julian

And, and, uh, I just want to also ask you because Tiffany said this a ton when she and I were doing the show together, she would always. We'd always eventually kind of come back to where she got her work ethic, where she got her entrepreneurial spirit. That comes from you. I mean, you have been her role model. Talk a little bit about before doing this with Tiffany, you ran your own business for decades. Talk a little bit about kind of your background.

Tiffany Krumins

Well, I did. I started, I came out of the Marine Corps and worked for several years at different things, ran cities and did masonry work, building fireplaces and doing a lot of heavy type labor. And at about 31, my chiropractor said, do you want to walk at 40? And I said, I'd like to. And he said, well, you need to get out of this business and start using your brain instead of your butt. And so I. got into looking at different things, and one of them was backflow testing, protecting the water systems here in Gwinnett County.

And so we developed that, wrote the paperwork for it over about a six-week period. The state accepted it, and the county adopted it. I did it for 31 years. And he had probably 85, 90% of those customers were with him all of those decades. That's how well he treated them. So it worked out very well and put Tiffy through school and got her straightened out and fed them all and kept them all going. So it worked out very well.

Noah McNeely

Well, from a personal story here, Brian actually helped me here at the new... Building studio, I had a problem with my backflow valve and a plumber was going to charge me $1,800 to do it. Brian looked at it. 30 seconds later, he said, I'll just do this. And it worked. I fixed it.

Tiffany Krumins

Glad to do it.

Steven Julian

And his bill wasn't $1,800. Is that the assumption we can make from this?

Noah McNeely

It was a much lower bill.

Tiffany Krumins

Sadly, we had to shut down my dad's business after those 35, almost closer to 37, I. think, years when we lost my mom. And so that was a huge shock to him, you know, to have his whole life for all those years and then close down the business, lose my mom, and have all that change at once. The fact that we got to go into this together, not even, what, two years later, was good for both of us. You know, we got to be there for each other and start this new adventure.

Steven Julian

It's been fun. It's been fun, and it's also been... Profitable and you guys are growing and all that kind of stuff. So we want to thank you, Jody and Noah and myself, want to thank you for being a sponsor of Product Genius and also being the launcher of the podcast a few years ago. So we're so glad you're here. And Noah, I'm going to just, I'm going to kind of throw it to you and let you kind of set up what you wanted to talk about. With Tiffany and Brian here today.

Noah McNeely

Well, as I often do to your annoyance, I'm going to go back to Opu first or go back to what we were just. talking about before I do.

Steven Julian

So I had a great segue. I really sealed up that part of the interview, although the one mistake that got edited out, but I was doing a great job. I threw it to you. And because it's your show, you're like. Shut up. I'm going to do something else.

Tiffany Krumins

It's so nice to be on this side of the table and see you guys do our same relationship together. This is awesome.

Noah McNeely

Killing segues is a personal mission of mine. Yes, mine too. But anyway, on Opu, I actually had a question from a listener of this podcast because they've heard the ads and they've heard us talk about it. And the question was, do you really use it or is it just a thing you advertise? And I told them, I really use it. I'm not going to go as far as our friend Brock doesn't say that he gives me superpowers, but it's great. And for me, why do you like it? All the typical stuff that a skeptic would ask.

And for me, at my age, I'm getting older, so I keep adding pills to my repertoire, my daily routine. And. this is something I can do. that's not another pill. I don't have to do it in the bathroom. I can do it on the go. I can do it anywhere I want to go. Uh, anywhere I am. And that's saying it tastes good. And it's, it's, it's one of those things, unlike the BC powders and stuff you were talking about, you know, that kind of ruins your taste for the next 30 minutes or an hour.

You're not going to do it and then go eat a sandwich because the sandwich is going to taste horrible. Opu doesn't do that. It tastes great. Then it's gone.

Tiffany Krumins

We've never had a person sample it ever that didn't love it. You know, one flavor or the other. It might be a fan of one or the other, but it's hard to explain to people. They hear powder, and until they actually taste it, they don't get it.

Noah McNeely

I like the mocha mint. That's my flavor.

Tiffany Krumins

Yeah. Do you mix them together? You want them together? Mocha and mint? Yeah, I like them best. That's what people keep saying. They're like, you need to do a combo and just like. mix them together, chocolate and mint.

Steven Julian

So really what you do is open both half and then save and you got two. So I'm someone who, yeah, powder, I hate that stuff. And when I tried it, I was like, wow, it's an accurate description. It instantly dissolves. That's fantastic. So I'm going to do, I'm going to put segue number two. Yeah. Segway number two. I threw it to you to set up the topic. You decided to continue the OPU love fest. So screw it. I'm going to take it back and I'm going to set up the topic to both of you guys.

And, uh, and besides you said all that and you didn't even ask a question. So that was the nice thing that, that, uh, reminded me of some past episodes.

Tiffany Krumins

That's why we are not the. Yeah.

Steven Julian

So now, so now the slightly annoying host will now co-host will now, you know, set it back up and let's, let's get into the topic. So, uh, Noah, you had, you had, uh, called me and, and when we were setting this show up, you said that, you know, one of the things we definitely want. to talk about is let's talk about the topic of luck. because Tiffany, this show. Started out of your appearance on Shark Tank with Ava the Elephant now over 10 years ago. And as you've told your story so many times on this show and in other interviews, there's this element that people think of and think, well, you just got lucky because you went on with six clay models.

And Noah, you've been helping people develop products and get them to market. And I imagine you've had plenty of people go, well, you know, I just hope I get some luck or they think it's just luck that makes their product go or succeed.

Tiffany Krumins

So they'll literally put the hands of their marketing into luck. I mean, they don't have a marketing plan and they'll think if I get the TV spot, if I get the interview, then I'll sell my product.

Steven Julian

So they'll reach out to you on LinkedIn and go, how do I get on TV?

Tiffany Krumins

I think there's like an end. all be all that will change everything. None of those have come to us and fallen in our life.

Steven Julian

So what has gone, both with? OPU. now and as you were doing Ava, what has been, what have you seen behind what other people look at as luck? And you can't just say hard work because I know there's a ton of hard work.

Tiffany Krumins

Oh no, I'll tell you.

Steven Julian

Specifically, what is it?

Tiffany Krumins

So this is the perfect example. We just appeared on CBS Mornings. That was a deal that took us about three and a half months to land. All of the ones just like it that came before told me no. So I appeared on GMA Deals and Steals, which is the more well-known of the two. And I appeared on the very first ever episode of that. It was right after Shark Tank. And so I was kind of their guinea pig. And so I thought I was a shoo-in. I'll come back. I know her.

She'll let me on. And she's like, nope, I've taught her now twice. And both times I circle back. They didn't want to take OPU yet. And they're like, you don't have enough sales. You're not here. You're not in enough places because a lot of their products are in retailers, which we're not doing this. time. And so I got a lot of no's and I mean hard no's after having that connection to ABC and stuff. That could have stopped me in my tracks on these morning shows. But I went after the CBS deal because a lot of my Shark Tank friends had had success with it.

But it was not easy earned either. It took a lot of meetings. I went out to one trade show that I was speaking at and this lady happened to be coming into town at the same time. She was going to be at that same show, but not until the next day. So I had to change my flight, had to stay another day to try to connect with this person. Then her flight, I did all of that and stayed, and then her flight got canceled, and she still didn't make it in that day.

So it's a million of these little no's basically along the way, and you just have to keep doing it with the same enthusiasm.

Steven Julian

So long listeners of this show will know that you answered a Craigslist ad, which started the Shark Tank. And now here you are with. Opu. You do three and a half months of work to make one appearance and how many other appearances don't show up or don't happen because you do the work, but it just wasn't luck to land it.

Noah McNeely

So she had to answer in that. I always thought she was walking down the street in a little town, Auburn, Georgia, and this van pulled up, tinted windows. Whoa, whoa, let's stop the story right there. Grabbed her, and the next thing she knows, she's on TV.

Tiffany Krumins

I'm a millionaire.

Noah McNeely

I thought that's how it went. Wasn't it pretty easy?

Steven Julian

Yes, that's exactly what happened. Brian, is that your recollection of your daughter's experience?

Tiffany Krumins

Well, even my first appearance was kind of, not a joke, but compared to what they do now. So now people get flown over, they get put up in a hotel, they have their own trailer. I was like, what? They have their own trailer with makeup and hair. I went out when it was a pilot. And so basically the conversation was, we love you. We love your idea. You can come out if you want and audition basically, but you're on your own. They did. put us up in a hotel. I remember that.

But everything else was us.

Steven Julian

It was a red roof inn?

Noah McNeely

Yeah.

Tiffany Krumins

It was decent. But the problem was me and my husband were low on money and we're like, should we invest in this? We didn't know. It wasn't a show at the time. It's this random thing you're pitching to investors. I didn't know who they were. So yeah, it was a gamble. Another gamble of trying to figure out, is this the right step for me? I could have lost everything in it.

Steven Julian

Noah, let me ask you, because we've been talking about the TV appearances and that absolutely is part of it. But as you work with clients, how does the topic of luck come up? What are some of the things you've heard or you've heard people rant about? when you think, no, you've got it all wrong?

Noah McNeely

Well, you know, I think that sometimes they'll look at people, not just Tiffany, but others that have been successful and they say, oh, they got, you know. They talk about, oh, they had a lot of luck. And I say, well, you know, look at someone like. Tiffany. She must be extremely lucky. She's got three companies now or she's been through three companies. I don't think anyone gets that quote just lucky. And I don't want to use the term stalker, but I follow you on LinkedIn and you do a lot of posts.

And most of the responses to your posts are very positive.

Tiffany Krumins

That's awesome.

Noah McNeely

Congratulations. Good job. But once in a while. You'll see one that's, I think, a little bit snarky. With stuff on the internet, you don't really know the tone someone intended.

Tiffany Krumins

It's never too bad on LinkedIn, but I know what you're talking about.

Noah McNeely

It may have been totally a very positive tone. I always read it as like, oh, you just got lucky.

Tiffany Krumins

But I always give them a heartfelt answer, right? A long, in-depth answer.

Noah McNeely

You do, but I think that if there's a few people out there that are willing to verbalize that on a LinkedIn response, there's probably a lot of people that really don't understand. You know, luck. And they look at luck as just this magic thing that happens. But I think so far you've told about taking the chance to go out. to California. You weren't just in the right place at the right time. You had to position yourself in a place that could be the right place.

Tiffany Krumins

Well, and it was very foreign for me. I didn't go to college. I don't have a college degree. All schooling business things to me were very intimidating. So to take that leap and go over and stand in front of these. You know, millionaires and billionaires and pitch something was a huge leap of faith.

Noah McNeely

But here's the impression sometimes that people think, oh, I'll just sit on my couch and that'll be the right place at the right time eventually. But that's never the right place. That's never the right time.

Steven Julian

Well, and again. I'm going to encourage everybody that's listening. We want you to listen to all the new episodes of Product Genius as Noah and I continue to move forward. But there's such a treasure trove of Noah's appearances and other appearances and you telling your story over and over and over again in so many different ways. Almost never repeating yourself, but there are so many elements of the story of... You didn't know kind of what you. were doing. You kind of found yourself in this whirlwind, but you didn't just sit there and just let the whirlwind take you.

You and Barbara and Barbara helping you in a lot of it.

Tiffany Krumins

We made a lot of losses.

Steven Julian

Trial and error on your own, right? And a lot of mistakes. And what happened with those mistakes? Did you throw up your hand and say, I just am not lucky? You said, what did I do wrong? We learned a lot. Exactly. So refresh our memory of just one example where it wasn't luck. It was actually this went wrong and here's what we learned from it.

Tiffany Krumins

Well, one of the big things with this company is the way it's set up. So this is a direct-to-consumer brand for the reason that I learned so much from CVS. I've shared that story many times. I sold my first product into CVS. I lost $75,000 of Barber's Investment. To that deal, we lost, but I really did as the business owner. And I never could really mentally come back from that. I knew that even if, you know, after that, I obviously learned all the terminology and all the. things and I know them, but I know them so well that now I know I don't want to do retail or at least not on a large scale.

Yeah. Not into 6,000 stores and hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment. And so taking that really bad, quote unquote, luck of that deal has really. It's been a blessing. Look what it taught me in my new business that I want to go direct to consumer. I want to spend my marketing spend online. I want to connect with people directly in person, and I don't want to necessarily go through retail. The other thing I want to talk about that's not really luck per se, but it's more of perception, is that there's this perception.

So when I get online and I talk about my dad being my business partner, people instantly, and I hear this comment until I explain, think that I'm daddy's little girl, that daddy has money. When I say am I partnered with my dad, they assume that.

Noah McNeely

Are those the same people that call you honey?

Tiffany Krumins

Yeah, probably, yes. And that's okay from an 80-year-old woman. That is not okay from a man. So I always tell them my dad's story. I said, listen, my dad was just what we went over. He was a business owner for over three years. For three decades, he supported us. He paid the bills. But he never made extra money at his small business. We never went on vacations or any of that. We just got by, and he was a fantastic person in his business. So, no, he didn't take any money from that and it go into my company.

We started this together through blood, sweat, and tears and a small investment from both of us. Well, the other thing that most people don't realize that have never been in business is the time it takes. I explained to people that they said, how did you have the biggest backflow testing company in Georgia? I said, 100-hour weeks. They said, you can't work 100-hour weeks. I said, hide and watch. I worked, you know, seven, eight days a week and 18-hour days. I'd work from six in the morning till six at night and then go home and type paperwork till midnight.

And I did it for a year. I did about 15 years, 100-hour weeks. That's how you make a successful business. It's not sitting on the couch hoping that Oprah calls and say, wait for the call.

Steven Julian

It's hard work.

Noah McNeely

People in the back end of that, they look at your successful business and that's where the luck thought comes in. Oh, he got lucky, but they don't see. It wasn't luck. It was perseverance. It was hard work.

Tiffany Krumins

Him and my mom both sacrificing constantly. I mean, she was going to school and running the whole office side while he was working all the physical stuff, then coming home and still doing paperwork until midnight. So it's not easy.

Steven Julian

And a backflow testing business. It's a great business in that it has to be tested every year. But it's a bad business for that too. It's not the type of business that, oh, and then we're going to add these five other streams of income. It's just I'm doing the backflow testing.

Tiffany Krumins

And he could never leave because it always had to be done and he didn't have any employees doing it. So he was constantly home to be on that schedule of keeping up.

Steven Julian

And this is to anybody around. the table other than me and Jody because he's doing the producing and I'm just blathering on like a slightly annoying co-host that I am. So when it comes to the topic of luck, And we've kind of blown up the myth of, oh, you just got lucky or, oh, you're daddy's little girl and so that was the luck you had. Then I think the other thing people think is that they think luck is you, and I guess I kind of hinted at this, but you hit it on the first try.

And Noah, you do product development and there are so many prototypes in there. So we've had the conversations of coming back and going, You've got a $5 product that is going to take you $15 to produce and you can sell it for $5. So that might be a problem. So I think sometimes people think they're lucky in that the very first time they develop it. So again, in developing Opu, it wasn't just... Instantly, you had a dissolving powder. Noah, as you've worked with people, how often has it been that they come in with an idea and it's right from the beginning. and they got lucky?

Noah McNeely

Over the years, I've learned even when I'm doing something, even when I'm hired to do something and I get it the very first shot, hey, that's great. That's fantastic. I don't trust it because I'm like, there's going to be a better way to do it. I'm going to take a step back and assume that's not the winner. It may be, you know, I might have hit it right on the nail, but it's typically not that way. So, yeah, people typically would come in. Some people think they've got it. They've got everything squared away.

It's perfect. And then 10 minutes later, after I've talked them through some things, they realize there are holes in their plan. Some people like that. Some people get really angry with me and I never hear from them again. Those are people I don't want to work with anyway, and we've talked about that on one of the shows, I think. But yeah, I've never met anyone that got it right the first time every time.

Tiffany Krumins

I think what's given that perception is influencers or celebrities. So a lot of celebrities have put their names on products, and so they're not sharing any of the behind the scenes. They're usually not doing any of the development. It literally is a company. that's come to them and said, you want to slap your name on here? Sure. And then it's sold. This, we spent two and a half years on Opu. My dad and I spent two and a half years working with this factory, coming back after COVID. So we basically had the conversation, COVID hit, everything stopped.

We just, the company, it wasn't even a thought anymore. We were like, what's happening in the world? And then we had to circle back, restart, do all of our development for our packaging together. And yeah, it's just a very long process. for then everybody to see me go, here's Opu. And I'll have them ask me on social, are you? When they haven't read my story on like a TikTok or Instagram, they'll think that I am an influencer selling it. And I said, no, I'm not just the business owner. No, I did not just put my name on this.

Me and my dad developed this product together. And we just have to keep beating that. into people's heads.

Steven Julian

So first of all, if... You need to have me doing the pictures. No one would think that I'm just an influencer. That goes without saying. That's automatic.

Noah McNeely

I'm sure you influence some people.

Steven Julian

No, not at all. Not even close. And you know what? I had a great thought, and now it flew right out of my head because I was having so much fun listening.

Noah McNeely

I've got a filler thought.

Steven Julian

Please, let's do it.

Noah McNeely

There are actually people out there that assume George Foreman was in his garage designing girls. Right. But you are a hands-on business owner. George Foreman, it's just his name on there. Now, for legal reasons, I don't know the facts of any of that. I'm just hypothesizing.

Tiffany Krumins

Yeah, but it's a perfect example. That's exactly what you see most places now.

Noah McNeely

Did it work? Did the filler get you?

Steven Julian

No, but I'm going to go to another question that, Noah, you gave me before the show. These people who believe in luck, they might actually be doing some harm. It might hold them back a little bit.

Noah McNeely

Oh, I absolutely think it holds them back because they see successes. Because. you're sitting here, we're going to keep talking about Tiffany. They see Tiffany's success with the licensing of Ava and the OP of probiotics. And they look at that and say, well, she got lucky. I'll probably never get there. But they don't see that. most of us, we're dealt a hand of cards. Some are great. Some are not so great. I mean, they don't see the fact that... You survived cancer. They don't see that. Well, was that bad luck?

No, it just happened. And just like anything else in life, it's just a card you were dealt. It's how you handle that card that makes the difference. And I think people that believe in luck and they look at people that are successful and say, oh, I wish I was lucky.

Tiffany Krumins

There's waiting on their lucky break. Yeah.

Noah McNeely

They don't realize that you have to make your own luck. And that's not to say, you know, some people, yeah, terrible things can happen. And, you know, it's, I'm talking about your average person.

Tiffany Krumins

I think the only luck I've had is by trying a thousand things and maybe getting those two giant ones. You know, nobody's trying. those thousand things like I am. I'm trying them all. I mean, you name it, I've submitted. Just this last month, I submitted for three grants. So I did all this grant work. Well, one of them was really easy, but I shared. I got none of them. So my company, I speak with my hands.

Steven Julian

That was Tiffany hitting the microphone.

Tiffany Krumins

I'm going to smack my dad in a minute. Yeah. So you've got to. Really be willing to do all of those experiences and win or lose on most of them.

Steven Julian

And you said you tried a thousand things and two or three come through. And I think anyone who's got any kind of success or has built a business, they would agree with you. It's how much of the activity. And Brian, I'll go back to your business and the backflow testing. You worked on and you got the certain business, but there was a lot of, it wasn't just showing up and doing the work. There was a lot of the work that was keeping the work. There was a lot of work of keeping the relationship.

There was a lot of work of him going.

Tiffany Krumins

over and testing for this little lady at a church all the time, year after year, because she lost her husband and didn't know how to keep it going. And like, those were the things that kept him going.

Steven Julian

So there's so much stuff behind the scenes that comes to it. I guess let me ask this, because Tiffany, the other thing I was going to bring up with you is we were joking off air about boomerang videos when we used to do the show years ago, and you were so good at it. I, again, I am not. A talent for Boomerang. That is not going to increase your social media presence.

Tiffany Krumins

I thought your eye rolls were on point.

Steven Julian

You were good. Listen, that came out of a lot of honesty and truthfulness coming out of my soul. But what I've noticed is in the time that I've known you, in the seven years we've known each other and kind of worked together off and on. You were in Boomerang and TikTok wasn't even a thing and you were on Facebook and then you moved to LinkedIn. I've seen you move from platform to platform and when. you're building a product-based business. You can't, in this world, you can't do things the same way.

Tiffany Krumins

Yeah, that's actually a really good segue into something I wanted to talk about. You're welcome. That's one of the things that we've had to do.

Noah McNeely

It worked for her.

Tiffany Krumins

That TikTok conversation is something I had to adapt to and really open my mind to because I wasn't a huge fan of TikTok. I saw it as, every time I pulled it up, it was just filth coming across my screen. I'm like, oh my God, I'm supposed to have my business on here. But once I started doing it and I did our own page, I started connecting with some really good potential customers and they were able to ask questions and there was all this really good back and forth. Yes, there's a couple of idiots in the bunch, but you can block them very easily.

And we just did our first, I just did our first TikTok live selling with our little shop on there the other day. And I had eight sales and it was like, this was a big win. You know, eight sales, eight boxes is. great for a day. And for me to be on for an hour, I'm not. You know, going to shy away from doing that. So now I've learned that I have to open up my mind to these things that, again, make me uncomfortable and try them anyway. All right.

Steven Julian

You said we got on TikTok live and then you said I. So here's the scoop that Product Genius, the podcast, is going to get. How soon? Until the great Brian Dunsha, the co-leader of OPU.

Tiffany Krumins

You know what he's going to do? He's going to hold the stool samples. So I made... I made stool samples out of brownies. This sounds insane, but this is so...

Steven Julian

I just want to make sure Jody...

Tiffany Krumins

That's going to be his job.

Steven Julian

Hold on. I just want to make sure Jody goes back and we pull from this show. He's going to hold the stool samples because that is a sounder out of this show.

Noah McNeely

I think the title... Of this show should be Lucky Stool Samples. Lucky Stool Samples.

Tiffany Krumins

And if people have any questions, I'm going to taste sample them on YouTube just to prove their brownies. See, he's committed. These are good brownies.

Steven Julian

That will double the sales from 8 to 16.

Tiffany Krumins

On TikTok, it probably will.

Steven Julian

Just so that, because, well.

Tiffany Krumins

Take a bite out of this perfect one.

Steven Julian

I guess I, well, you know, so the way my mind works, it's like, hey, send us your stool sample to show how Opu is healthy. Right.

Tiffany Krumins

She's always. I kind of reminded her of Cousin Eddie.

Steven Julian

I appreciate you throwing out your cultural reference. I would have updated it to, I don't know, I'll come up with an 80s reference.

Tiffany Krumins

I love him so much.

Steven Julian

I love it. That's fantastic. So, I don't know where I was going to go. We've been doing stool samples and TikTok Live. And again, let's kind of talk, let's kind of keep it around luck. So we've said that there's a lot of work. There's a lot of potential failures and learning from them. But let's kind of talk about the success because once you start to taste the success, once you start to see it, once someone develops their product, once Opu has gotten to the point where you're getting some sales and you're getting some of those appearances.

What are. some of the things that you've noticed that you need to do or that you need to keep doing or you need to be willing to do to keep that success going to where people might look at it and go, well, you just keep getting lucky. And again, not just, oh, I got to work hard. What are some of the things you notice when people are developing their product and they start to get to that minimum viable product or they start to get it on the market? How do you keep the success train going so that to some people they might think you're just still getting lucky?

Tiffany Krumins

I can start and you can think about yours. Please. Yeah, because he's not really in the marketing side of it, so it's almost like he stops them. It was a convoluted question.

Steven Julian

You're welcome. You deserved one. after taking my segue.

Tiffany Krumins

Mine is continuing to put in the work, and I say that because we just had our CBS feature. It was this huge high. So me and my dad went up to New York. It was this whole thing. We got to go into studio. It was. one of those, you know, once in a lifetime moments. And then what happens for me, just with the personality that I have, is I tend to be real high like that. I've worked real hard up until that point. Lots of busyness. And I come home and I crash.

And so and a lot of entrepreneurs are like that. This is a very common trait with successful entrepreneurs. That's why they're good at what they do. When they get an opportunity, they go hard, they make it happen. And then the next thing they know, they're rock bottom. So getting back out of that rock bottom, I was there on Tuesday of this week. It was like, you know, the orders went out for that. All the good stuff happened. And then all of a sudden it was like, now what? Now all of a sudden I felt like I wasn't doing enough.

I wasn't building boxes in my living room until midnight. You know, it was like, I need to be doing more for the business. I'm not going to succeed. And so pulling myself back up every time and going, okay, what is the next step?

Steven Julian

And I think also, you know, again, this podcast started out of, and all of that started back with an appearance on the pilot episode of Shark Tank. And now you've done some other appearances on other shows. And I think there's an element inside of all of us. That when we get to that mountaintop and when we get to that appearance, there's this thought of going back and... Watching my appearance again and, oh, I was on the pilot episode of Shark Tank or re-watching that, oh, that was really good. And, oh, oh, and, oh, dad, remember you were standing behind the camera when I was there and you were taking your own, oh, that was really cool.

And we just want to live in that moment and we don't realize that you've got to get up and go at it the next day. And again, I'm going to bring in your business, Brian. I mean, when it's backflow testing, there's no, there. There's no high point. You just keep going. You got to climb in the hole and test the water again.

Tiffany Krumins

Well, the difference is she's a show pony and I'm a workhorse. I'm a mule. and I'm used to dragging the wagon. She sits on top and waves and it works. It's a perfect.

Steven Julian

It's a combination. But by the same token, you've learned to be a little bit more of a show pony. Get your face out there. Have a little fun. Bask in the glory. And by the same token, what you've learned from your dad and what you've learned from doing this show, what you've learned from. Building your business before is I got to grow.

Tiffany Krumins

I can never just be the show pony. I can never just be the one that goes on and smiles and nods. I have to do all the building of the boxes too.

Steven Julian

Yeah. Well, so you got to get to A-list celebrity where you can just attach your name to something and then do a boomerang and dance around and sales go through the roof. All right. I've delayed it long enough. It's time for you to jump in.

Noah McNeely

So I'm going to try to tie all that together, believe it or not. I think you're continuing the work. It's something you said. I think it's very important. But I think that means different things. at different stages. In marketing, I think it does mean continuing to try new things. Boomerang? I don't even know what that was. Boomerang, TikTok, et cetera. But how many of those things do you try that don't go anywhere? So you just got to keep trying on the marketing side. I think, Brian, in your business, it was.

Just keep going. Keep building clients. Keep growing that business. Keep doing what you do.

Tiffany Krumins

Be good for your word.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, be good for your word. In the space. That I'm in and the development side is not necessarily continuing to try new things. That's actually a problem I have because they just keep wanting to add things rather than seeing something all the way through. So what I think this all boils down to is you have to keep going with the process. Whatever that process is for your business and for your state in your business or your development, you can't just get to the point of, man, that was the most awesome prototype ever.

I'm going to take six months off.

Tiffany Krumins

I think that's what's so great about Noah is he tries his best to prepare his entrepreneurs. and his inventors to know that there is a next step because we know a couple of serial inventors that are fantastic. One of them has really good products, but he would do nothing but design products with you around the clock if he could. And they don't want to focus on the actual sales.

Noah McNeely

If he were a multimillionaire, he could be my only client. He would just keep throwing stuff at me.

Tiffany Krumins

They're unicorns that have really good ideas, but even the ones with bad ideas still want to develop them constantly. They've got to see that next step. And I think you're one of the only engineers I know that actually preps them for that stuff up front. You can't help them with it, but you're like, hey, you know, you got to actually sell this, right?

Steven Julian

He's not an engineer.

Noah McNeely

I'm recovering engineer. Engineers are notoriously...

Steven Julian

Anal? Well, yes.

Noah McNeely

I was going to say... I was going to spit take with Tiffany.

Steven Julian

That was awesome.

Noah McNeely

Notoriously, they have tunnel vision. So they're very focused on what they're doing right now in many cases. So they don't even think about the big picture themselves. They may know. all about it. They're certainly not going to advise their client about it. Not because they have any malice necessarily. There are some that do. There are some bad people out there in engineering. I'm not one of them. But not because they have malice, but because they're just so focused on, oh, you asked me to design this thing. So I'm going to design.

I'm not thinking so much about, oh, well, then you've got to sell it someday. I'm not worried about that. That's not my job. I'm just going to stay over here and design this thing. It's not because they don't want to. They just don't.

Steven Julian

I want to give everybody, I want to give our listeners a homework assignment. I want them to find someone in their sphere of influence or go just outside their sphere of influence. Find someone who's building a business. Find someone who's developed their own product. And Tiffany, you've done this through LinkedIn. You kind of got a presence on LinkedIn a few years ago and really. Open yourself up to allowing people to come in and share how and you were trying to help people who wanted to develop. their own product. You've had to step back from that a little bit because you've put all your energies into Opu.

But I want to encourage everybody, reach out to someone who's developed a product. Find someone locally who's run a business. Find someone like a Brian who's done something for a while and done it successfully. And invite them out to breakfast, lunch, coffee, and just talk. I think one of the things that we're slowly beginning to relearn, and maybe we didn't know it so well before, and we're getting worse at it before COVID happened, is we've stopped talking. We've stopped picking each other's brains. We've become like, I have to know everything myself.

And one of the original things of this show is we're not geniuses in everything.

Noah McNeely

And watching someone's TikTok or YouTube video is not talking.

Steven Julian

Yeah, that's not talking. That's listening.

Noah McNeely

But you're only hearing what they want you to hear in that moment. It's not a dialogue.

Steven Julian

And there's profit in that, in listening, but it's not everything. And thank you, Noah, because you reminded me of what I was going to ask Tiffany before.

Noah McNeely

I'm calling full credit for that. You.

Steven Julian

do. You get it. It's your show now. The thing that I was going to ask before is you were talking about... A thousand things go into this. And we were just kind of talking about, oh, you got lucky with this. And one of the things I was going to say is, and you kind of were talking about what's to blame for the idea of, oh, it's luck. I was going to say, I blame television shows. I blame the way we consume stories now. Because you've told the story, that pilot episode.

And any episode of Shark Tank, when we see the person talking and it's a five-minute, seven-minute segment, that's an hour and a half of taping. I remember the first time you told me that and I went, holy crap.

Tiffany Krumins

Right.

Steven Julian

Everything has to be short now. Everything is shortened down.

Noah McNeely

It's not just TV shows. I mean, it's, again, the YouTube videos.

Tiffany Krumins

That's why I like LinkedIn because you can get into more depth there. It's way deeper.

Steven Julian

But even then, you can't go too long because if someone sees a long thing on LinkedIn, they're like, I'm not going to read that. I.

Tiffany Krumins

write essays on there.

Noah McNeely

You watch a YouTube video of some guy doing a skateboard trick. You only see the time he succeeded. You don't see the 800 times he didn't succeed. I mean, it's like if you took a deck of cards and you kept drawing cards until you got an ace and you only showed the four times you drew an ace, oh, that guy's super awesome. He's lucky.

Steven Julian

What are those other cards off to the side? Don't pay attention to that.

Noah McNeely

I think you have to be very careful, and I think you're exactly right. We are a culture that likes to take very small bites of things, and we only want to see the best parts.

Steven Julian

Well, and not only that, we're a culture who loves, so right now as we're taping this, the movie Air is out. And I heard someone on the radio, I'm going to let you guys in on one of my pet peeves, slightly annoying, my rant. I heard someone talking about that movie. Oh, I went to go see the movie Air. It's the true story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan. That is completely not true because anytime. a movie says based on true events, that means it's probably 1%, 2%, maybe 10%. There are elements of it that are very true.

They're trying to give the spirit. But they completely changed the story. Why? Because it's got to entertain you. When it comes to luck or when it comes to business success, when it comes to developing a product, when it comes to building a business, backflow testing, individual, independent financial advisor, a guy who helps people podcast successfully, there is so much boring, unexciting grind. And, you know, part of my job in this podcast is to try and make topics that are boring. But the boring is what makes the luck. Because out of the boring, you learn from your failures.

Out of the boring, you get the, you put in a thousand things and you get the one that's going to get you that appearance. Out of the boring. You get the prototype that works.

Tiffany Krumins

Yeah, or you pack 10,000 boxes at your house.

Steven Julian

You put that on TikTok.

Noah McNeely

I think you meant to say your job is to make boring topics interesting. No, it's not. So it's just make boring topics.

Steven Julian

It's really. just self-deprecating humor on myself to just get people to wake up.

Noah McNeely

We should reevaluate our mission. Yeah, perhaps.

Steven Julian

More interesting? Can I put it that way?

Noah McNeely

This would be like Elon Musk's Boring Company. It's the Boring Podcast? Yes.

Steven Julian

No, no. It's a Product Genius podcast. Wow. You took something I said now. Okay. Apparently I'm in trouble. I'm going to be written up after the show. Um, so I, I, I want to kind of land this plane, uh, and it's going to come off and everybody's going to say, you're so lucky to have Steven as the slightly annoying cohost of the show. Actually not. They're going to say fire him and hire me. Um, but let me just kind of land this by saying, uh, we, we, we've been talking about luck and I think we've kind of.

Really broken down the myth that it isn't really luck. Luck appears out of a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, a lot of effort, a lot of strategy and repositioning strategy, all those kinds of things. If you, everybody listening to this, if you want to make sure they leave with one thing, one. thing out of our conversation, and I'm pulling out the length of this question to make sure everybody gets to answer. And I want the three of you to answer, okay? Out of all this, if they remember just one thing, what do you want them to remember?

Tiffany Krumins

Just to bounce back quickly. Mine is always just, seriously, all of the emails and things that I've done the past year, I have gotten, you know, 95 of those have been no's or no response at all. One of them was a great thing that some people would call luck. We had a customer who loved Opu. She emails me and she says, I'm the A lead executive at a place called Chosen Foods. And it's this really well-known brand. And she says, I've been using your product for three months. I had no idea.

She was one of our subscribers. And she said, I love it so much. I want to bring it in as part of our wellness program. And so we started all this stuff. Even that was hard to adapt. So she loved the product. The people who had tried it in the office loved the product. But then they had to get people that they emailed that lived across the country. To show interest and wanting just this free box of Opu. And even that was challenging because, you know, like work sends you all these different incentives or whatever.

So just continuing to go after those types of things. Oh, what happened with that? I'm sorry. That's where I was going with it. I tried to do quite a few other wellness. After we got that going, I reached out and started conversations, and then all of them kind of fell flat. So I was thinking, ooh, this is a new business model. I can take this worldwide. And then it was like, nope, still just chosen foods. But yeah, so just keep going after those opportunities, one after another, even if you hear no.

Steven Julian

Yeah, I like that. Brian. Oh, Brian's saving himself. He's going to be last.

Noah McNeely

So what I was going to say is, and I'm going to go. I'm a total level 11 nerd here. Love it.

Tiffany Krumins

Love it.

Noah McNeely

Luck does not exist. Statistics. Statistics exist. And this explains, like what Tiffany was saying, you've got to try a whole bunch. of things. And statistically, eventually something's going to work. But a lot of things are not going to work. I mean, statistically, yeah, there's a chance I will get the concept, your prototype right, the very first time. It's possible, but not probable. Statistically, we have to try that over and over again before we get to something. that's a good solution. So math, math, not luck.

Steven Julian

Noah McNeely, luck does not exist, and neither does Santa Claus.

Noah McNeely

I'm turning the nerd hat off.

Steven Julian

I like that. Okay, we'll back to it. But that's a great point.

Tiffany Krumins

It takes that many.

Steven Julian

Brian, you've got to top that. Luck does not exist. No, you don't have to top it. What's the one thing?

Tiffany Krumins

And I'm going to show my age again, but Zig Ziglar, when I was a kid would tell you in sales, you've got to get through the 40 no's to get to a yes. You may have nine people in a row tell you to get out of their face and you have no interest. And the 10th person says, I love it. I want to show everybody. I want to tell everybody I know, but you just. got to do the hard work, get through the nine. If you go home on eight, you'll starve to death.

You just have to make your own luck.

Steven Julian

All right. Now, I am going to push back just slightly. You said Zig Ziglar when I was a kid. Come on. You were in your 20s when you heard Zig Ziglar say that.

Tiffany Krumins

Late 20s.

Steven Julian

Which you were a kid. But I never forgot it. Man, listen. For those of our listeners that have never read anything about Zig Ziglar, Google him. Get one of his books. You will not be disappointed.

Tiffany Krumins

He was a man. Still works, too.

Steven Julian

Timeless wisdom. Leave it to Brian to give us timeless wisdom at the end of the show. There's nothing left to add to that.

Tiffany Krumins

Something I've never heard in my life. Just kidding.

Steven Julian

Wow. She couldn't let that go. She couldn't let that go. Well, better him than me. Because, well, you busted my chops too on this show.

Tiffany Krumins

I almost said busted his balls, but my dad frowns upon that.

Steven Julian

Well, now you did. Thank you.

Tiffany Krumins

It's not very ladylike.

Noah McNeely

And now we've just transitioned from PG to PG-13. Yeah.

Steven Julian

He'll. be on there holding the stool.

Tiffany Krumins

Speaking of, Noah owes us an answer after the show. Don't forget. That's not PG, remember?

Noah McNeely

That's not fourth.

Steven Julian

Well, that was pre-show. Man, Tiffany is just lifting back the curtain. Sorry, go ahead. You know, she becomes a sponsor of the show and all of a sudden she thinks she can say anything she wants.

Tiffany Krumins

Bonus word.

Steven Julian

Aren't you just glad that finally you were on a show where you didn't ask a question and it was okay because you were the guest rather than the host? There you go. I got back at you. In all honesty, Brian, thank you so much for being here. Tiffany. We love you. Same here. Great to have you in the studio. I'm so glad you're still involved with the podcast this time as a sponsor. For those people who want to order Opu Probiotics, become a subscriber, even just try it out. Tell everybody how they can.

Tiffany Krumins

They'll go to getopu.com, so G-E-T-O-P-U.com or Opu Probiotics. That'll work as well. And then we're on Amazon as well now. Fantastic.

Steven Julian

And Noah, for those people who want to get a quick start to their product.

Noah McNeely

ProductQuickStart.com. And there's a form there. Just fill it out. I will respond as soon as I can.

Steven Julian

And I want to remind everybody that if you've enjoyed this podcast, we want you to subscribe, like, tell somebody else. You know somebody else who does product development. You know somebody else who's an entrepreneur or trying to get a product to market. Tell them about the show. We'd love for them to be a listener. And if you want to know how to do a great podcast, you need to go to JodySmith.com. J-O-D-E-Y-S-M-I-D-H.com. Sounds like a... Sounds like a TikTok or a boomerang or something else like that. So for everybody around the table, for Brian and Tiffany and Jody and Noah, this is your slightly annoying co-host Steven Julian saying thank you so much for being here and we will see you next time on Product Genius.