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

Steven Julian

You can't afford perfect product development, which is why you can't afford to miss this episode of Product Genius.

Intro Lady

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

That's my line. Yes, it is your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian. Welcome to Product Genius with Noah McNeely. Coming to you almost live from the fantastic studios, The Lair. Of innovation and development inside Product Quick Start. Noah, you're sitting by my side.

Noah McNeely

I am. I am live.

Steven Julian

You were just going to let me keep going.

Noah McNeely

Well, I didn't know how far you were going to go, but I do love the word lair. I'm going to totally do some superheroes.

Steven Julian

Absolutely. I think that every time I walk back here now, we do broadcast from Noah's Product Quick. Start location and behind the wonderful offices. There's a layer. It's a layer of innovation.

Noah McNeely

My new design paradigm here is going to be the bat cave.

Steven Julian

I love it. I love it there. All we need is a little light symbol with, I don't know if you'd have the bat. There isn't a bat symbol. You got to figure out what symbol, as I sit here looking at a toilet seat that you're developing. So that's probably not it. There's probably something else.

Noah McNeely

We're going to not use that in symbology. Maybe a gear or a light bulb. A light bulb. I think that'll work.

Steven Julian

Just like the title of our show. So Product Genius. We come to you thanks to Opu Probiotics. We just had a fantastic guest in studio. Tiffany Crumans was here for another recording, and we are now going to talk about a very interesting, almost philosophical thought, but we won't stay on the philosophical. We'll get into the esoteric, and then we might circle back around. Noah, you gave me this idea, so let me just... Say it with as much dramatic flair as I can muster on this podcast, and then we'll get. into it.

You are more important than your invention.

Noah McNeely

That was full on William Shatner right there.

Steven Julian

Thank you. I love that. That is a compliment. I appreciate that. There was definitely pause acting. that was happening in that. So you are more important than your invention. It almost sounds like a platitude, but there's a lot in there. There's a lot of meat in that phrase. I believe there's a double meaning, so break it down for us.

Noah McNeely

There's a bit of double entendre here, and one is deep and philosophical. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time there because this is not a philosophy. Well, it's not intended to be a philosophy podcast, though I'm sure we ramble in that direction occasionally. But the first meaning is that your invention, your business, your professional life, your quasi-professional life. That's only one part of life. It's not even the most important part. And I bring this up because I've been doing this a long time. I've met people that have become estranged from their family because they so focus on their invention or their business.

I've met people that, you know, they've ended up divorced because. they became obsessed with getting a product to the market rather than balancing that out with everything else going on in their lives.

Steven Julian

And I, you know, one of my, my first career that I got involved in was in, and I'm going to stop right now. I'm going to just take a moment because when we, I opened the show by talking about Tiffany was in and we had a train come through right at the beginning, which you had told us when we first started in this studio that, Hey, we might occasionally hear a train.

Noah McNeely

Now any good layer needs to have background noise. Absolutely.

Steven Julian

And so for this show. We've got a wonderful spring shower happening right outside.

Noah McNeely

It's the waterfall in the Batcave.

Steven Julian

Yes. Right. Right. So where's the? where's the? you can do the Batcycle and I'll be on the Batsegue and it'll be. it'll be fantastic. So and so the point I was going to make. just to go back to the philosophical, you know, don't don't sacrifice your whole life. Don't sacrifice other things that are just as important, if not more important, especially more important than any business. My first career, I worked in church ministry, actually, and same kind of thing. The ministry can get something that's a good cause, things that can swallow up your entire life and ruin relationships and ruin families and ruin your health.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, it's important not to become ridiculously focused on any one thing like that. You need to keep balance. With your time, with your energy, with your finances, I've told people don't mortgage the house to, and we've talked about this, don't mortgage the house to produce an invention. There are other ways to get that done. If you have to go to that extreme, maybe you're putting a little too much emphasis on one pillar of your life.

Steven Julian

And before we go to the other meaning, because we're not going to spend a ton of time here, but this is the most obvious point, but it's still a very important point. So I guess you are not saying don't be excited. Don't be engaged. I mean, you're not saying that, oh, well, your business and your product, just give it a little bit of time. I mean, we're not saying that you shouldn't do the work. There's work to be done. It's going to take a lot of time. It's going to take a lot of sweat.

It's going to take a lot of sacrifice. Quick advice, any off the cuff, if you're...

Noah McNeely

Yeah, I would say just don't lose yourself in your invention or in your business. You know, take that time to go to your kid's game, to go on a date with your spouse, to, you know, to take a day off from it and whatever hobby you like, do that. If you keep putting those things off, you're going to lose those opportunities and you're just going to. ultimately, you may be successful as an inventor. But you may look back at the end of that and say, what did it cost me? It cost me way more than I anticipated.

Steven Julian

I'm going to make a big stretch because I don't even know if they're going to be able to hear this in post-production. Jody does such a great job producing, but maybe keep a little bit of the rain noise in the background because this podcast is very important to us. You want to present ideas to help people become more of a genius in developing. their product. But even in the midst of this, we stopped and we're listening to the rain. We didn't lose ourselves. I, as the slightly annoying co-host, just made sure and point out, hey, it's really raining outside.

And we actually set off air. It's one of the things I love doing is just stopping and listening to the rainfall.

Noah McNeely

So, Jody, if you could add some really deep sound, a little instrumental music right now, that would be perfect.

Steven Julian

Yes. A little background. You know what? Right now, when we get done with this show, I'm going to go watch Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy from Saturday Night Live and just watch them over and over again because I'm going to enjoy that. All right, so that's the first meaning. Let's talk about the second meaning, not quite as philosophical. What do you mean, what's the other meaning to you are more important than your invention?

Noah McNeely

So the practical, less esoteric, more, you know, I can do something about it. in my invention business side is, you know, a lot of people think their invention, their idea, that's it. That's the main thing that they've got going on. From. the outside looking in, anyone that you are talking to about your invention, be there investors, potential partners, me, your customers, we're going to be looking at you and evaluating you as much, if not more, than your idea, than your invention.

Steven Julian

Which a lot of people who start their product and start their invention, they miss that point, right? They think it's all just about what. What it looks like and how it acts. So talk a little bit more about that because I think there are people who are listening are like, what? You're crazy. They don't care about me.

Noah McNeely

I'll give actually a real world example going on right now. I'm going to change the names because they might listen and at least one of them will be offended by what I'm going to say. So let's call them Mickey and Donald. So Mickey actually has a... He's an investor. He invests in companies and inventors. He loves working with inventors. His whole thing is he knows how to sell. He can sell anything to anyone. So he loves taking on inventor partners and helping them get their product funded and then selling the heck out of. it, basically growing their business.

Donald has this fantastic idea. It's actually one of the best invention ideas I've ever seen. And I actually introduced Mickey and Donald. And I warned Mickey, you know, Donald's a little bit, he's a lot to handle. And so I was like, okay, well, you guys meet, you guys talk, see if you can work out together. Mickey, he loved Donald's idea. He's like, I want to do this. Let's make it happen. Three weeks later, I get a call from Mickey. He's like, it's just not worth it. This guy. Yeah. This guy, any deal with this guy is just, it's, it's, he's driving me nuts.

He's calling me four times a day and just wants to talk, talk, talk about stuff that's irrelevant. I keep trying to say, Hey, let's, let's focus on what we have to do. I think I'm going to pull out of the deal, not because of the idea, not because of the invention, not even because of the business potential, but because of the guy. So that's a clear case where that individual. In this deal scenario is more important than the invention.

Steven Julian

Interesting. So I guess. part of the advice, the first major piece of advice based on that story and based on the point you're trying to make is as you're developing your product and doing your invention and wanting to start something, it's good to have a pretty good idea of who you are, your strengths, your weaknesses, your personality traits. Even if Donald in that scenario. Had been willing to go, I know I can be a little bit of a handful. I want you to feel comfortable telling me to tone down a little bit.

So is, is that the advice you would start with?

Noah McNeely

Why? I started out and ended up in engineering school, but I've worked on it. I recognize it as a shortcoming. But I think that self-awareness, that becoming aware of what your deficiencies are helps. That's the first step in trying to work around them or to deal with them. I mean, it could be you're too shy. It could be the opposite. You're too talkative or you're too confident or you lack confidence or any number of other things that we as human beings. Have his flaws in our characters.

Steven Julian

I, uh, I was going to. start another podcast for myself. that, that just focused on my flaws, but I, there was only one episode, right? Well, see, that's what you thought I was going to go with, but I was going to say, I realized I wouldn't have enough time to do anything else in my life. And I am more important than my, I am more important than my invention. I didn't want to lose my family and doing unending episodes that went on forever. So you like that?

Noah McNeely

I do. That was great. You were self-aware.

Steven Julian

I'm self-aware. So you've got to be talking about more than just character flaws or more than just very annoying habits and things like that. So as someone is, and I guess you can kind of go almost anything. You've talked about an inventor. You've talked about the person investing in the company. What are some of the other things about people being more important? Other than self-aware, is relationships kind of knowing how to build a good relationship? Because when you're building this product, you've got to develop some relationships with you doing product quick start with investors.

Noah McNeely

Talk a little bit about that. Well, I. mean, relationship building is another one of those skills, or maybe it's even a personality trait. In some cases, it could be a little bit of both. I've met a guy I worked with for many years. And he's like probably the best sales guy I've ever met. This is when I ran a different company. We had a sales department. And literally, he could get on the phone with someone who's never heard of him, never talked to him before. And he's their best friend within five minutes.

And they're like, hey, when you call him back? That was a great relationship builder. I'm not in that category. I think he's at one extreme. On the other end of the extreme, you've got people that, you know, they just can't, you know, they're not going to have a relationship with you no matter what. But that's, again, one of those things they can become self-aware of. They have to do some introspections like, why don't I build these relationships? Maybe it's not something I can fix, in which case we need to look at other ways to get around it.

Steven Julian

I did a lot of coaching. I did various. coaching at various levels. And I remember one time a coach that I coached with told a team, you guys don't have to be friends to work together well and to achieve things on the court. I came to believe that the more a team got along and built relationships with each other, the better, that's the best operation of any team. You can get the most out of a team, but you're someone who's a little prickly, a little hard to be around, a little icy or cold or whatever.

You just got to know how to, I mean, at least just let some people in or at least figure out how to make it work.

Noah McNeely

Even if you're a very prickly person, it's very difficult. There's probably one person you could find that you could get along with. And then that person could become your window to everybody else. You know, I've had to tell another anecdote. I had a client once that was that he was prickly like that. And, you know, I worked around, you know, I'm easy enough to get along with. I dealt with him. But the problem came when he went to, he. actually went to visit the factory in China and he started telling them how to do their job.

Which is never a good idea for anybody, really. And the factory called me up and said, we're discontinuing this project. We're refunding his money. You're going to have to take him somewhere else. So, you know, even with people that you're paying a lot of money to, sometimes it's not worth it to them if you're just that difficult to deal with. So I think had that particular individual recognized that about himself, he would have taken someone with him. Or sent in his place to be sort of that mediator, that friendlier face on his personality.

Again, he had a lot of great skills. Don't get me wrong. It's just that wasn't one of them.

Steven Julian

He was important, but he needed to figure out how to be even more important than the invention, and he got in the way of it. And I think, again, in this topic of relationships, maybe relationships is too... Too wishy-washy of a word or people are like, that's not business-like. So I think it's also who you surround yourself with. Are you building a? team? People bring you into an equation and you become part of the team of helping that product get to market. You don't become an owner in the business. You don't become an investor.

You're helping them develop the product. And whereas someone else helping with marketing, someone else helping with the concept of patents or various things like that. So it's also kind of who you surround yourself with. You were telling a story, and I'm going to ask you to tell it now, about when you've been working with people and they had people on their team or in their relationship that helped them immensely in working with you.

Noah McNeely

Yeah. Sometimes the response to this topic is, well, I am who I am. I can't change that. Okay, fine. I'll grant you that. Maybe you can't change. Your personality is what it is. We're not going to try to fix that. You do need probably to get someone else to fill in the gaps you have in your personality. I've got this one client. He's, you ever had one of the, well, this is going to be sound offensive, but he wouldn't mind. You ever had one of. these little dogs that you come home and that dog's so excited to see you that he's just running around the house.

He's yipping. He's like, he hadn't seen you in months. You were gone 10 minutes, but now he's like, he hadn't seen you in months. That's how he acts. Well, this client is so excited about his business. That's kind of what he reminds me of. He's just, he's just. When he starts talking, he's just yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. All good stuff, but so fast and so excited, I can barely keep up. He recognizes he has this issue, which is fantastic. Again, that's the first big step. So he brings his wife to every meeting and she keeps him in check.

She knows how to get him, hey, just calm down. Let me talk the business stuff about this project with Noah or whoever. It's a beautiful partnership. It works really, really well, but it all started with him realizing, and maybe she's the one who told him, I don't know, but realizing that he had some challenges there that were not necessarily flaws so much as he was just wired really strong in one. strength, and that's being super excited, super driven to succeed, but he was so strong in that strength that it kind of bled over into becoming a flaw in other areas.

Steven Julian

In breaking down the, again, our main topic of you are more important than your invention, you kind of said in the email exchange that we did, I saw the word obsess a couple of times. So I'm going to head down this rabbit trail for just a second and you can cut it off if you want. I'd like to obsess over obsessing. And the idea is, again, you're more important than your invention. People obsess. About so many different parts of their invention. is, is obsessing making the invention more important than themselves because they're getting caught up in the littlest thing.

Do you see that a lot?

Noah McNeely

Well, it can be. And it often relates to, again, their, their personality type. You know, some people will get so obsessed with some of the, you know, the, the physical details, like we will go back and forth over the particular shade of red for two or three weeks. When at the end of the day, your customers, they're not even going to know. you looked at 25 different shades of red. They're all going to be kind of the same. You're going to have the same impact at the end of the day with that.

Some people obsess on things like that or, you know, every feature being on it that they dreamed up. Other people obsess on the marketing. People that will, they'll go out and they'll do the whole logo and website and everything before we've even designed the product because that's what they obsess on. So yeah, I think people will tend to obsess on things that they enjoy doing sometimes because that's what's fun to them. They kind of let everything else go to the wayside.

Steven Julian

Ladies and gentlemen of the audience of Product Genius, I just put Noah through his own advice because longtime listeners of this show will know that there is an Easter egg yet to be revealed of Noah's obsession with screws. And he could spend all of his time. You could spend so much time with clients about what screw to use and what screws the right one. But you are more important than...

Noah McNeely

Well, screws are very. important. They've changed civilization. But I think you were obsessed with my obsession with screws. Absolutely.

Steven Julian

I'm very self-aware about that. I am incredibly self-aware about that. I was also just trying to show that I am more important than... Well, I'm not more important than this show.

Noah McNeely

Yes, you are.

Steven Julian

Well, I am more than this show, but in bringing this show, I was just trying to.

Noah McNeely

You're good enough. Oh, stop.

Steven Julian

No, no. People love you. Oh, so now I got jack handy. I'm going to go watch Stuart Smalley. We're getting near the. I have ground this show to a halt and I want to try and get it back on track and finish strong. Let's finish strong about being more important than your invention. We kind of started philosophical and then we went esoteric. Can we bring it back to philosophical one more time? As people are going through this process that can take years to go from idea to other things, this process can take so long.

What's the advice of not getting lost? What's the advice of someone who it's almost impossible to not get mired into obsession, to not find yourself stuck? In? the mud of trying to get this to market, give us, you know, talk to us, encourage us, give us some advice.

Noah McNeely

So I think the key there is having people around you, advisors, not, you know, it could be someone like me that you're, you know, you're paying to do something with it. Again, it could be your spouse. It could be your mom. It could be your kid. It could be your neighbor. Someone that respects you well enough to be honest with you. And they're going to help you find your, hopefully in a very constructive way, they will help you find, you know, your flaws. You know, you're kind of really focused on this shade of red.

Maybe, maybe we shouldn't spend the next six months on it. Or, you know, when you talk, nobody else can get a word in because, so the people you're hiring to give you advice, how are they advising you if you don't ever shut up? You know, so people like that, that can give you that honest. Truthful, sometimes painful advice are important.

Steven Julian

We are not a religious show, but there is a scripture reference that says, speak the. truth in love. It's good to have people who can speak the truth in love. And sometimes we need to hear that truth. So I can relate it to my own. I do not develop products. I'm an independent financial advisor. And there are times where I've come home. And my wonderful wife, I'll be going, oh, you can't believe what happened. And I'll talk about a client that frustrated me. And I get done with the story and she's like, I don't really see what they did wrong.

And I'm like, but they did. And then the more I think about it, the more I realize, ooh, I think I got obsessed. And when you get obsessed, sometimes you focus on. Things that you think are so important, but really aren't.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, the small things start to seem very big, and they're still small things.

Steven Julian

And you mentioned people. If I may add a piece of advice, even though I'm the slightly annoying co-host, so you've been talking a lot about people and relationships. I'll just also say, and I think you kind of said this at the beginning, it doesn't always have to be other people. Sometimes it's. put the project down and go take a walk. Go take a day.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, sometimes reconnecting with yourself is that's the advice you need. Absolutely. And, you know, some people are out there going to say, well, I don't really have anybody that I trust to give me advice. So you can hire, you know, you can hire people. There are coaches out there. You know, you want to make sure you're hiring someone. that's not just telling you what you want to hear and that you're going to have to spend some time ferreting that out. There's lots of self-help out there. There's therapists that can help you.

If you've got something you just can't get over, it's like. I go in a conversation and I don't stop talking. Help me, help me, doctor. Well, there's people that will help you with that.

Steven Julian

So it can be people in your life currently. It can be something you do on your own. You can also pay to get some help. So Noah McNeely, the last piece of advice is you might need to seek help.

Noah McNeely

We all do.

Steven Julian

We all need to seek help at some way, at some level. And don't be ashamed of that. I did kind of chuckle. But in all seriousness, it's... Yeah, I like your idea of kind of seeking some coaching. Maybe it's counseling. Maybe it's coaching. Maybe it's advice. Maybe it's taking someone out to coffee and picking their brain a little bit. And maybe it's just binging Star Trek The Next Generation Season 2. I don't know. Take your pick.

Noah McNeely

That was a deep cut, but yeah. You like that?

Steven Julian

Can you tell what I'm currently binging at home?

Noah McNeely

It really didn't start to get good until Season 4. I'll have to.

Steven Julian

You know, I'm going to push back slightly. Season one, they were all trying to find their footing.

Noah McNeely

The producer's rolling his eyes.

Steven Julian

I think season two, Pulaski replacing Crusher was clearly a mistake, but you could see everybody starting to really develop their characters. So I would, I would think I would meet you halfway and say by season three, they clearly hit their stride.

Noah McNeely

All right.

Steven Julian

We'll have to go back.

Noah McNeely

I'll have to go, it's been a few years. I'll have to go back.

Steven Julian

It's on Paramount Plus currently. Then they're not even a sponsor and I. just gave them a shout out, but my. My subscription is ending soon. Anyway, so since I took us into a deep cut, I'm going to pick it back to you since you're the genius. Is there anything we missed? Is there anything you want to make sure and say? Last parting shots, last parting thoughts before I wrap up the show, which is the worst last question to ask. And I did it again.

Noah McNeely

Well, I would just go back to what we said. This is probably the hardest part of self-realization or self-awareness that you have an issue. So how do you discover that? And I think one of the things you do is if things just aren't working out, if things are just not getting anywhere, take that step back and ask yourself, is it me? You know, maybe there's something about me. Maybe it's not you. Maybe you're just with the wrong people. Who knows? But I usually find in my life that it's me when there's something like that going on.

Steven Julian

But it's usually a combination. I would say there's, there's, there's almost always something that you can say, I think I might be doing. this and I need to work.

Noah McNeely

Usually it's, I'm not properly conveying how I'm correct to people.

Steven Julian

So it's me, you know, you've been listening to business relationship advice with Dr. Noah here on Product Genius. Noah, thank you so much for bringing up. It is, it's a very deep question. There's probably a lot of other trails that we will. Explore later and maybe we'll refer back to this as the deep cut episode. But I want to remind everybody that if you're looking to have a conversation with someone who's going to help you in being speaking some truth with at least some honesty, if not a little bit of a, I don't want to say you're speaking it in love when it comes to their business, but.

You love to see people succeed in business. How was that?

Noah McNeely

Speaking it in respect.

Steven Julian

There you go. Speaking truth and respect.

Noah McNeely

I'm going to respect you enough to tell you the truth about what I can. I'm not a therapist. I don't have a couch. you're going to lay on and tell me all your problems, but we can talk about your product and talk about your business, and. I'll tell you what I think.

Steven Julian

So tell everybody where to go.

Noah McNeely

So the best way to reach me is just through the website, productquickstart.com. And there's a form there. I'd love you to fill that out so that I can prepare for our call. I'd rather you not simply say, call me. I've got a great idea because I can't prepare for that very well.

Steven Julian

Because Noah is more important than your badly worded contact us.

Noah McNeely

Oftentimes those are, I call the person, it's like, hey, I want to talk about new vegan options. And I can't help with that. I don't do food.

Steven Julian

So the more they fill it out, the more they're showing how important they are and you can show them their importance by taking the detail they've given you, helping them take the next step, helping them see what they might not be able to see about their product or development. So make sure to go to productquickstart.com, fill out the contact us form. Noah will get back in touch with you and he can help you take your product to market or be honest with you enough to tell you what's wrong with taking. your product to market and why you're going to lose a ton of money.

Unless you maybe take some of his advice. So Noah, thank you for that. I want to remind everybody that Product Genius is on all your favorite podcasting platforms. That's why you're listening to it now. I also want to remind you that you may have someone in your life. We've talked about relationships. Maybe you know other product developers. Maybe you know people who have brought products to market. And you're listening to this. They can listen to this as well. Tell them about the show. We'd love to hear from them. And you can certainly contact the show as well.

Maybe there's a topic you want us to talk about, or maybe you just want to rant, and we'll let you do that, and we won't share it on the air unless you give us permission to. All right, now I'm rambling, and I'm, you know, Jody is more important than my rambling, so Jody is telling me to wrap it up. For Jody Smith, our producer, at JodySmith.com, and for Noah McNeely, this is Steven Julian, your slightly annoying co-host, saying, We will. catch you next time! That was my Kirk Paws on Product Genius.