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

Steven Julian

Noah's angry and Noah's frustrated and you'll be able to hear us maybe help him deal with that anger and frustration and we might even dig something up from Noah's past. next on Product Genius.

Noah McNeely

Do you want to be a successful inventor entrepreneur struggling to get your product from idea to market?

Steven Julian

Well, you've come to the right place.

Noah McNeely

Welcome to Product Genius. The down-to-earth podcast that explores important topics about inventing and launching new products.

Steven Julian

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.

Noah McNeely

Here's your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian.

Steven Julian

Hey, that's my line. Yay! Welcome to another hopefully award-winning edition of Product Genius. As she stated, I am your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian. Seated next to me is our intrepid producer, Jody Smith. And across the table from me is the host of Product Genius, the man whose lair we sit in, in the offices or but next to the offices of Product Quick Start. It is Noah McNeely. Hello, Noah.

Noah McNeely

Well, hello. I'm not used to having my name sung in quite. that way.

Steven Julian

It was pretty good, wasn't it? It came off the cuff. It felt right.

Noah McNeely

It worked.

Steven Julian

Do you want me to try it again?

Noah McNeely

No.

Steven Julian

And here's the host, Noah McNeely. All right, Noah, we've got a very interesting topic today. I think the reason I was singing potentially is this is as close as we will ever get to Product Genius Story Hour.

Noah McNeely

Yes. So once upon a time, When we were doing this show with Tiffany, I think about three years ago, we had a show all planned out. We had all these things we were going to talk about. And then she comes in, she's angry. She's angry about something. She's like, I want to talk about this.

Steven Julian

Okay, now before you continue, I just want to shout out Tiffany Krumans. She, of course, started this show. If you haven't listened, go back and listen to old episodes. She is now launching Opu Probiotics, opu.com. Or is it opuprobiotics.com? Ooh, I should have looked that up. Oh, no, Tiffany, don't get mad at me. I'm sorry. Just search Tiffany Crumman's Opu Probiotics and you'll see all the stuff she's doing. So we're in the studio.

Noah McNeely

We don't want her to get angry again. Exactly.

Steven Julian

Exactly. So we're in the studio. We've got this show all planned out. She comes in and she's mad.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, she's angry about something. So we're talking about this.

Steven Julian

And for once, it's not me. But go ahead.

Noah McNeely

So she kind of changed the whole show at the last minute, kind of like you do to me sometimes. And that's kind of where I am today.

Steven Julian

So those longtime listeners of the show will appreciate that Noah is on a quest to talk about product development and to talk about getting your product to market and comparing everything in that space to some kind of cultural or movie reference. And today we're doing Groundhog Day because, and I, so I sang your name also because of that Sonny and Cher song that Bill Murray wakes up to every single time, every day as he repeats Groundhog Day over and over again, because you are a little frustrated and a little, you know, it's, it's, it's steaming you a little bit, not to the point of, of, well, okay, I'm not going to go there.

All right. It's steaming you to the. point where you're, you've had the same thing happen. Over and over again in not a long amount of time. And it happened to the point where you're like, that's it. We're going to talk about it on the show.

Noah McNeely

Yeah. So in the last week, literally one week, I've had two different clients come to me complaining about a particular other product development company. And in the last 60 days, I've had this happen four times about two specific product development companies, which I'm not going to name them. Of course not.

Steven Julian

We don't want to do that.

Noah McNeely

You know, they have lawyers and stuff, probably. But there are two specific companies, one here in Georgia, one in Florida, and there's plenty of companies, so if you think it's you, it's not you. But these are what I would say are well-meaning companies. A month ago, we did a show about scammers. Companies that know what they're doing is wrong, at least I think they do, and they're just out to separate inventors from their money, and they don't care whether you succeed or not. They couldn't care less. These are companies which I think on some level they. believe they're providing a good service, but they just don't know how to provide a good service to inventor entrepreneurs.

Steven Julian

They don't know how to provide the best service that will help the entrepreneurs get to their end goal, right?

Noah McNeely

Yes.

Steven Julian

Because you're not going to give away the company names, and I think that's right. I think that's the right thing to do. Not that you need my permission, but…. What details can you give of any of those stories of the last 60 days that, again, would protect the industry?

Noah McNeely

I'm going to tell three of them. I'm going to just rephrase in my words what happened. And then one, which is the one that pushed me over the edge, I'm going to actually read some excerpts from this lady's email, and I've redacted all the company names and anything that could be identifying. I'm going to do that so you can see why. Maybe you can see why it made me angry. But the first one, they were charged a ton of money for a design with no possible way to manufacture it. It didn't include any of the clients' key requirements.

Basically, the company, which was. an engineering design company, product development company, they just weren't listening to the client. They didn't deliver what they needed.

Steven Julian

Okay, so let me stop you. If it's okay, I'd like to stop you on each of these so that we can have a conversation.

Noah McNeely

I'm happy to stop.

Steven Julian

Yeah, thank you. So on that first one, you said that they didn't deliver some of the key requirements. And I'm imagining that any engineering and design company that's worth their salt should know they need to deliver the key requirements. So is it... Is it that they, hey, we did plans, so we did our job. So break that down a little bit for us.

Noah McNeely

So in my pessimistic, angry mood, here's what I think happened, is that this inventor went into this company, a company that does work with inventors but does a lot of work with other big, cash-flowing, established companies as their primary gig. I think they went in, they explained, hey, here's what I need my product to do. Here's the requirements. And I think the engineer on the other side, the designer on the other side, we're like, yeah, we know better than you do. So we're just going to kind of ignore that because we don't like it.

And we're going to deliver back to you the design that we think you need, even though it's not what matches your business because we don't really care. And that's the angry me talking about what happened.

Steven Julian

And when the client receives this back, was it something that they're like, hey, this obviously is not what I asked for. Is it pretty obvious? or did they go, look, I got some designs and then you had to tell them, this isn't going to work. You can't develop this.

Noah McNeely

So unfortunately, a lot of times inventors, well, most of the time inventors have never worked with engineering and design companies. So they don't know that that's not the way it's supposed to work. So they're like disappointed, but they're like, I guess this is what I paid for. All right. And then they find me and I tell them the truth and then they get angry. Like I do.

Steven Julian

Right. So they get angry with you. No. Okay.

Noah McNeely

So, so give us angry at me.

Steven Julian

Right. Right. Exactly. So, so, so I guess you have to, I. mean, if you're an inventor and it's your first invention and you're kind of walking this, there's, there's a, there's an element of faith and trust that they got to trust that the person's going to do the best job for them. But yet by the same token, they have no expertise to really know that they're getting that.

Noah McNeely

Right. Yeah.

Steven Julian

Okay. I can see why you're getting frustrated. I'm getting frustrated too. Go to the next one.

Noah McNeely

So the second one, different company, one of the two, Georgia or Florida companies, their project just kept getting stretched out and stretched out, which happens. Some of my projects stretch out. You have problems you have to solve, and sometimes things take longer than you want. But the real issue is there was zero communication between that company and this client. So they're just sitting around waiting and waiting and waiting. Even when they ask, hey, what's going on, it would take two, three weeks for them to get back to them. So Angry Me says what happened in that case was this company sold this project to this person, started the project, and then they got a really big client. come in the door, and they're like, oh, we don't have time to work on Fred's project.

We're going to focus on Technocopy Global Corps' project. I don't even have time to email Fred, and I don't really like Fred's project anyway because it's just an invention, and I don't have time for that. So that's what I think happened in that case. That's what angry me thinks happened in that case.

Steven Julian

And for our listeners, it should be a minimum expectation that if you work with a company that is helping you with engineering and design, they should communicate with you.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, and I'll admit, engineers, myself included, we're not always the most proactive communicators. But if you send me an email saying, hey, what's the status? I'm going to respond. I'm not going to wait three weeks and then get back to you.

Steven Julian

Even if the status is, hey, I am swamped right now. I'll get back to you. Two, three days, a week, give me a week, I'll tell you what the status is.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, sometimes the status is we're still waiting on parts. Right. Same as we were doing a week ago. Right. I don't have. anything new to report. You know, that's just the reality sometimes.

Steven Julian

But three weeks. That's communication. Yeah, three weeks. And is it fair that if I'm going to a company, so if I'm, again, I'm an inventor, this is my first product, I'm trying to get it off the ground, when I'm sitting with that engineering and design company, Maybe one of the things we need to talk about at the very beginning is, hey, let's set the expectation of communication. I'm not going to email you every day or maybe not even every week, but how often are you going to keep me updated of what's going on?

Because even if they had said, hey, we had this massive project come in the door. We got to table this for a couple of weeks. I apologize, but I'll get back to you. At least they're communicating.

Noah McNeely

Right. Well, exactly. You may not like to hear that. Right. Ratty thing to do, but it is, you know, it's capitalist. We'll come back around to why I think these people actually mean well later and we'll talk about that. Okay.

Steven Julian

Give me the next one.

Noah McNeely

Okay. So the third one is. actually a client that I met with, started doing some work with many years ago. And I was very honest with them about, as I am, I like your idea. You have this problem. You have this problem. You have this problem. And this problem is going to lead to that problem. If we can't solve these problems, which are business problems, not engineering problems, then you really don't, well, some of them were engineering problems. Anyway, you really don't have a path to a business. That client didn't like to hear that then.

So they, you know, we parted ways and they went to one of these companies and now they're back six years later. I wish I'd listened to you. This company charged me all this money. I didn't get anywhere because either they... They just wanted the client's money or they didn't know better the way I did to tell them the truth of the matter.

Steven Julian

And what does angry you think about that? Depends on what day. because one day you think they were just trying to get their money.

Noah McNeely

Generous angry me thinks they were just didn't know any better. And they were probably, since. they were an inventor, they were probably assigned to a junior employee. In that particular company who really didn't know the pathway all the way to a product launch or a business launch. And so that person was just, oh, you want to put this feature on there? Okay, I can draw that up. Oh, you want to put this feature on there? Okay, I can draw that up. I don't know how to make it. Well, isn't that important?

Well, I can draw it up.

Steven Julian

I can draw it up. I made a CAD design for you. Exactly. Short-time listeners of this show, we certainly encourage you to go back after this episode and catch up on all the episodes of Product Genius, but short-time listeners of this show might think, man, Noah's just angry. He's just bitter. He's getting mad at these people. But part of this frustration comes out of the fact that you have identified in these scenarios that you've been guilty of this on some levels in the past.

Noah McNeely

Yes. And we'll talk about that. But before we get to that.

Steven Julian

Oh, man, I pivoted wrong.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, you pivoted a little too early there.

Steven Julian

This. is what I get for not following the script. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen.

Noah McNeely

No, that's okay.

Steven Julian

Take two.

Noah McNeely

I kind of want to read some excerpts from the email.

Steven Julian

See, I thought you were going to do that after you. Okay, but yeah, this makes sense.

Noah McNeely

You have an email. I have an email. So this is the email that pushed me over the edge. This is the one where I was like, okay, now this is a pattern. Now, and because of what I read in this email, you know, other things, those were just conversations. So I didn't get as many details. This one, I got some details and it really made me angry. I'm going to read it. I've redacted the company name and any identifying features. So I'll read those out as redacted. So, and I quote, at this point, I just want to wrap things up with redacted company name and forget I ever worked with them.

I'm not sure how the sketches they provided are high level concept sketches. But apparently in the world of engineering, that's what they are. I'm reading in a very angry tone, obviously. I'm curious to know what. standard concept sketches look like when juxtaposed with these high level concept sketches I received. I thought they were going to help me develop my idea in terms of redacted and the mechanisms we could use for the redacted. I'm going to skip down a little bit further. I just don't see how these sketches are worth 30 hours of work.

For goodness sake, it's not like. this is an entirely new idea. Redacted already exists. Anyway, as you can tell, I get very upset every time I think about redacted company name, but I've decided to just go ahead with filing the provisional patent without any information on the mechanisms so I can get rid of them and move on. So that made me angry. You know what made me the most angry? I've seen what this company did for this person. It's eight hours of work. It is not the 30 hours they charged her for.

And knowing this company, I'm pretty sure they charged her $175 to $200 an hour to do it. So that's a massive amount of money, and it's overcharged for what they did.

Steven Julian

Yeah, yeah.

Noah McNeely

So that made me angry, and that's why. we're here today. Sorry we're not talking about the other topics that we had planned.

Steven Julian

This has been Angry Story Hour. With Noah McNeely of Product Quick Start.

Noah McNeely

I may have to take an extra pill later.

Steven Julian

Yeah. Okay. Take a swig of your Dr. K, Kroger Big K Zero Sugar. Yes. Cola. Just relax. So let's kind of change the anger a little bit by giving as much benefit of the doubt to these redacted companies as possible. While you have stated, and it is a recent past episode, and I encourage everybody to go listen to it, about the scamming in your arena, in your area of expertise. And that's not expertise at all. That's just scamming people out of their money. There is an element of they may be trying to kind of do the right thing, but just doing it very poorly.

So what are the mistakes here that are not literally scamming people out of their money?

Noah McNeely

I think it's important to say that the reason I think that they're trying to do the right thing or they mean well is I actually used to run a company a lot like this. I mean, these. are actually legitimate design and engineering companies just like the company I used to run. However, their primary focus is not inventor entrepreneurs. It is companies that are cash flowing. Sometimes it's really big companies like Coca-Cola and Black & Decker and on and on. Sometimes it's smaller companies, but they're cash flowing. They have money to invest in doing kind of the corporate traditional way of doing a product development.

That's not typically what an inventor needs or can afford. And so when these inventors come in the door, they're really trying to match them into that model. And this is kind of what we did at the old company. We thought we were doing a good service because we were providing something that they really couldn't get anywhere else. Work we were doing, but we were carving out a small piece of the whole thing that they could afford to help move them forward. However, and this is one of the reasons I actually built the business model product QuickStart the way I did, is that doesn't help them get across the finish line if they don't have the resources to go the whole distance in that methodology.

So I think they meant well. I think they mean well. And if you come in and you're an inventor, you've got a lot of funding behind you, I think that process is going to work just fine for you in most cases. But if you are shoestringing this, as many inventor entrepreneurs do, it's just not the right approach. It's like you go to the car dealership and you need a used Honda and they sell you a Ferrari. Yeah, it'll... It'll get you where you're going, but it's going to be repossessed because you can't afford it.

Steven Julian

Well, I was going to say square peg round hole, right? I mean, this is the age-old trying to put a square peg in a round hole. So you talk about the corporate cash flow scenario. What are some of the biggest differences? What are some of the things that are dramatically different about a Fortune 500 company coming to one of these? Engineering design company saying we want to develop a product versus entrepreneur. Other than the obvious thing of we got a lot of money we can throw at this. There's differences to the process.

Noah McNeely

Sure. And it's a. sliding scale. It's not, you know, when you get to very, very large corporations, and I've done projects like this in the past, a lot of, you know, frankly, a lot of the people you're working with, they're more concerned about protecting their jobs than they are about the success of the project. That's counterintuitive because you'd think the two would be related, but they want to be able to tell their boss at the end of the day, if the project does fail, oh, I followed all these steps, and I spent $250,000 on a really extensive design research phase and on a market research phase, and we did 300 focus groups all across the country and Canada.

So we did everything right, but it failed anyway. So it's really not my fault. Don't blame me. Don't fire me. I would fire that person. So a lot of times I think processes are followed just because it's sort of a CYA approach to product development, which is great if you can afford it. I've worked with Fortune 500 companies. They can afford it, and that's just how they do it. Some smaller corporations, they don't do all that, and. they know that they're not going to do all that, but they've been around the block enough to know that.

Okay, I'm not spending $100,000 on market research. I might spend $5,000 on it or whatever because I know my budget and I know how this works. and here's what we're going to do. I'm going to put more money in engineering or design or whatever. So it's a sliding scale. Inventors don't know any of that typically. And inventors can't afford most of that. They have to take really their best shot with the resources they have in whatever that looks like.

Steven Julian

So with that as kind of a main difference, it becomes fairly apparent that Some of these scenarios that are making you angry and frustrated, I can see how that could fit into they mean well. They almost are doing the project like it was coming from a larger company of, hey, we just do a design. They're going to come back and go, oh, you need to change this. Oh, okay, well, it doesn't work.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, to an extent. I mean, the person whose email I read, I kind of look at that. They developed. Kind. of top-level, non-detailed concept illustrations, which is really, frankly, not much more than this person went to them with. They just kind of took what this person described and drew it. That's kind of what happened there. That's like, I mean, you wouldn't build a house like this. You wouldn't go out and hire a contractor and say, you know, I know it's going to cost $500,000 to build this house. I've only got $20,000.

And the contractor says, okay. I can work with that. Then they go on the way of foundation. We're done. I spent your $20,000. Call me when you have more money. That's kind of how this looks to me. I think, but at the end of the day, I think they still think they're doing a good service because they are moving the inventor forward. It's just not really what the inventor needs.

Steven Julian

Is now a good time for me to raise the topic of what you did in your past? How's that for a tease? Is that good? Do you like that?

Noah McNeely

That kind of depends on what we're talking about, doesn't it?

Steven Julian

So I tried to bring this up before, and you said, I'm going to read the emails first. So now I'm bringing it back. And one of the reasons that I think maybe your frustration level is, and you stated it, you were around one of these companies. You even led, helped lead one of these companies.

Noah McNeely

Yeah, I was CEO for five years.

Steven Julian

What have you been guilty of? How have you been guilty of this in the past?

Noah McNeely

Well, you're going to phrase it that way, huh?

Steven Julian

I can phrase it a different way. Have you ever made this mistake even remotely in a scintilla of this mistake?

Noah McNeely

Let me describe how it works and how we end up in places like this. So in the company I used to run, I had dozens of employees. So companies like this, design engineering companies, product development companies, they might be very small, in which case you're... Probably going to be, as an inventor, going to be a little better off typically. They may have a dozen employees. They may have three dozen employees. When you're doing projects for Coca-Cola and Black & Decker and Procter & Gamble, and they're writing $80,000 checks to get projects started, and you're invoicing a. couple hundred thousand dollars a month, that works.

Because if you've got a dozen employees, designers and engineers aren't cheap. More than a million dollars a year in payroll right there. So if you're not invoicing $150,000, $250,000 a month, you're not going to be around. So all this is going great. You're billing these big companies. But what happens when those big companies pull back? Which it can be cyclical. They will do that. Then you have to look at your team. And I've been there. You have 30 people and say, okay, who are the people I'm going to have to get rid of?

And what's the core team I need to retain in order to rebuild this as soon as the market turns back around? So you get rid of the people you have to, which you don't ever really want to get rid of anybody. But then you're back down to this core team, which is still maybe 12 people, maybe 10 people. That's still a big machine to feed every month. But there's not a lot of big company work out there. So you start taking inventor work. You take little company work. You take. company.

And you're still trying to match it to. Kind of the way you're used to doing things. So they come in and you realize, okay, they've only got about $10,000. So what can I do for $10,000 the way I do it for big companies? So you carve this out and you do it and you charge them for it and you did what you said you're going to do. And in your mind, it's helping them move along, but it's really not. It's just not the efficient way to go about it. So that's one of the ways it happens.

As the CEO or the leader of a company like this, by the time you're that size, you have multiple layers of management. So you're probably not touching that inventor project. You probably don't really know what's going on. And there were a lot of projects I could not be involved in the details of. And that's, you know, these projects end up getting assigned to the lower level employees just because they're a lower priority, especially when things do start to pick back up. Let's say you've got four or five inventor projects in-house.

And then Coca-Cola. calls. Well, who gets the priority?

Steven Julian

You know, as we're getting deep into this topic and helping you with your frustration in this last week and 60 days that you've had, it's reminding me yet again why Tiffany started this show years ago, why you... Started as a partner in the show and why you have continued to carry the show forward. because I think one of the most important things that if it hasn't come out already, I'm going to state the obvious. If you are an entrepreneur and an inventor entrepreneur and you are looking to bring your product to market.

The buck stops with you to an extent. Now, we do this show because you can't be a genius at everything, and we want to bring the geniuses on to talk, and we want to talk about your genius of how you help people get their products to market. But the more you know about... The engineering process, even if you can't do it yourself, the more you know about market development, the more you know about marketing, the more you know about research and development, the more you as the person who is trying to bring. your product to market, you have to be responsible for knowing what you're asking them to do, what you expect them to do, clearly stating those results.

I mean, it's a caveat emptor, buyer beware, but it really is buyer know what you're buying. And know what you need to ask and know what you should be expecting.

Noah McNeely

And be skeptical of companies. Almost everything. Be skeptical of me. It's a small company here, but there are probably companies that I never hear about, I don't get complaints about, that do this well, that are larger companies, and I just don't hear about them because clients were happy. I'm sure they exist, and there's probably a model that works there. I think it's probably a difficult thing to thread that needle between doing that kind of work and corporate work at the same time. But when you get with a company that's got more than four, five, six, eight people, you're going to have a great meeting, and probably the person in that meeting is a salesperson.

Right. That is their only job.

Steven Julian

And that's not evil, right?

Noah McNeely

It's not evil.

Steven Julian

It's just how the machine works, I guess, is. really what you're saying.

Noah McNeely

It's definitely how the machine needs to work in a corporate environment. A Fortune 500 company, you need someone that's really good at sales, that really knows how to go in and do that because you're competing aggressively with other product development firms to get that business. An inventor really doesn't need a salesperson to put the shiny polish on every little thing and promise the moon and then let the engineers try to figure it out later because there's not enough. In an $80,000 program, yeah, maybe there's enough budget to figure that out.

In a $10,000 program or a $5,000 program, there is not enough budget to figure that out. And you as the client, you get screwed because the salesperson promised you everything you needed and the engineer couldn't deliver it. So the engineer or the designer gets caught in the middle between sales and the client's needs.

Steven Julian

I'm going to take it back. I think you said something and then you kind of pivoted to another part of the topic. I want to go back to it. You mentioned being skeptical. And it's funny. So now I'll say longtime listeners of this. show know that there's a long-running joke about people being skeptical of even telling you anything about the thing they want to talk to you about. Oh, you got to sign an NDA or we need more vegan options. All those little inside jokes that we've had.

Noah McNeely

That's a whole different problem. Exactly.

Steven Julian

But my point is that's what they think they need to be the most skeptical about. They really need to be skeptical. And really pay attention to what they're paying for and what they're going to get and how that works.

Noah McNeely

And be careful that you might simply be getting the sales pitch rather than someone listening to your needs and responding the way an engineer or a designer and someone that actually has to do the work would respond. If you're just getting the sales pitch, you're not going to hear any of the negatives. No sales guy is going to tell you, yeah, this is a great idea, but here's the problem with it. You're not going to hear that from a sales guy because they want you to sign that check. Right.

Steven Julian

And, yeah, I'm with you on that. And I think that our. listeners, we said in the last show about scamming that… Scammers, all they're trying to do is separate you from your money as quickly as possible, and it won't take that long for it to show itself as a scam. I think these potentially well-meaning companies or these well-oiled machines that are giant machines that, if you're not careful, will chew you up and spit you out, they're not doing it to be evil. It's how their machine runs. So understand what you're getting involved in.

And I love your advice there. Beware of being sold. That's not evil. That's not wrong. Know what you're in the middle of.

Noah McNeely

It's a shadow of evil, perhaps, in some cases, especially telemarketers.

Steven Julian

Well, it's just you're signing up for more money. It's really signing up for more money, and they may not do exactly what you want them to do because maybe they can't.

Noah McNeely

This discussion, I think, is bringing out some latent trauma for me.

Steven Julian

We're here for you, Noah.

Noah McNeely

Well, see, as we talked about the salesperson and the engineer getting caught in the mail, I've been that engineer, too. I've been... A junior employee or a more junior employee. in this situation where the salesperson went out and sold something that we really can't accomplish, that nobody can accomplish with the budget that they sold it for. And then we have to try to scramble to figure that out. So sometimes, that's why I say they mean well. Sometimes it's the engineers that you're working with. It may not be their fault that they have to deliver you really a bad deliverable.

It may simply be where they're stuck.

Steven Julian

When that happened. If I can ask you a question about that trauma.

Noah McNeely

I'm not telling you where I buried the body.

Steven Julian

No, no. When that happened, were you doing that project on an Apple IIe or a Macintosh or a 386 or 486 or Pentium?

Noah McNeely

How old do you think I am?

Steven Julian

Well, come on. I mean, 386, 486. Come on. You and I are close to the same age. How heavy was the laptop you were using? Five pounds? Seven pounds?

Noah McNeely

So the software we use used to only work on what they called workstations, which didn't run on Windows. They're like, I don't even know if this company is still around, but Silicon Graphics Incorporated or whatever, they made these extremely expensive software or extremely expensive computers to run this engineering software, which frankly you can run on your iPhone now. But back then... It took this, what was a massive amount of computing to run that. So I have no idea what computer it was.

Steven Julian

All right. I was just asking. I thought it'd be fun. I didn't know it would make you more angry. Boy, he really is angry, ladies and gentlemen.

Noah McNeely

As a new grad, it was a pretty cool computer to work with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool.

Steven Julian

By today's standard, it's handheld, right? Yeah.

Noah McNeely

It wouldn't even manage your email server or your email software.

Steven Julian

Yeah. I'm with you. All right. I hope, I know this has helped our listener. I really want to know, has this helped you at all, Noah? Have you released it a little bit? It's possible. Do we need to give out a barbaric yawp so that you can, you know, kind of, or yell out con, really, like, con, you know, or, you know, large-scale Fortune 500 engineering and design companies, you know.

Noah McNeely

I don't think any of that would help me. I think we. should try to tell people how to. Avoid being in this situation. And there's not going to be a silver bullet here. I think being skeptical of what you're being sold is one thing. I think the other thing is, can you tell me about some inventors that you've gotten to the market? Now, don't ask for, oh, I want to call 20 of your clients.

Steven Julian

That's not a fair question.

Noah McNeely

I'm not going to let you call that many of my clients. I'm very protective of my clients. However... Go to my website, I have links to the websites of their products that are actually launched. You can go look at them and try to reach them that way. But if I give out all my client phone numbers, they'll call me up and say, stop giving people my number.

Steven Julian

Well, and I think the number one piece of advice is to be skeptical. Skeptible, skeptical.

Noah McNeely

Absolutely be skeptical.

Steven Julian

Be skeptical and skeptical. I think the second piece of advice that I think has come through is... I mean, be detailed about what you're asking and what you expect of them. And if they're not delivering, I guess give. yourself a way out before it gets worse, potentially.

Noah McNeely

And make sure you understand the contract. I'm going to go back. Again, it still makes me angry. The email I read. I'm actually suggesting that that lady asked for some of her money back because there's stuff that was in that contract that they simply did not deliver.

Steven Julian

Read the contract. Hey, there's another great piece of advice.

Noah McNeely

And if you're like, hey, I did this project with this company, and I don't know if they put a lot of words in here. I don't understand, so I don't know if they did or not. Well, maybe talk to some engineers or talk to me or talk to someone that can explain it to you. so you know, am I getting what I paid for? Am I paying for what I need?

Steven Julian

I like it. I think I have another piece of advice that people can follow is if you haven't figured it out already, Noah McNeely is sitting across the table from me and he's doing this to give back to the product development market. He's doing this because he's done this for a while and he wants to. get some information out there. He is also working with entrepreneurs and inventors to help bring their products to market and Product Quick Start is the company that he started. And he is using it to try and help people go through this process.

It won't be painless, but there will be less pain than going through it with the scammers or some of the others that won't be named. redacted company info here. So go to productquickstart.com. Why don't you just kind of, it's been a while since we've done this, walk everybody through what it would look like to start the process with Product Quick Start.

Noah McNeely

So Product Quick Starts. Purpose to be here is to provide high quality product development services for inventor entrepreneurs, but in a very streamlined way for inventor entrepreneurs, which is what we talked about companies today that don't do the streamlined part. Best way to reach me is through the website productquickstart.com. There is a self-assessment form there, which is just some very basic questions. It helps me understand where you're at in your process. If you fill that out, that helps me prepare for a call with you. And then beyond. that, the way I work is once I understand what you're trying to do, I'll ask myself, is this something I can really help you with?

And if the answer is no, then I ask myself, is there someone I can send you to that can help you? And if not, I'll tell you why I can't help you. But then after that, I will create what I call a discussion document, which is basically just an outline of what we talked about. Here's what needs to happen. Here's what that's going to cost. We'll go back and forth once we're on the same page, understand each other, you understand everything. I want you to sign up for something you don't understand.

I don't want you to pay me to do something you don't need. Then we'll start working together. Whatever element of the process you need help with, all the way up to fill in a warehouse full of product, that's what I'm here for.

Steven Julian

Do you feel a little better having talked this out? I do. Is this good? Yeah.

Noah McNeely

Yeah. I think I need some pizza too there.

Steven Julian

Okay. So we'll get some pizza. I was going. to suggest chamomile tea or maybe just another Dr. K zero sugar.

Noah McNeely

That might, the caffeine might just make me.

Steven Julian

Jumpier. Yeah. A little angrier. Okay. So I'm going to talk in smooth, soothing tones for the rest of this episode to try and help Noah get all the way to calming down from his anger and frustration. But actually.

Noah McNeely

Can you do the little harmony noise? That was.

Steven Julian

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Hold on. Jody's going to get really mad at this. If only we could draw it out a little bit.

Noah McNeely

Meditations with Steven.

Steven Julian

Yeah, exactly. So if you want to help get your product to market, go to productquickstart.com. Fill out the contact us form. And Noah, don't say call me. I have a product idea. Fill it out completely and Noah will get with you.

Noah McNeely

That's better than just call me. Sometimes it's call me and I call them and it's like, I'd like to sell you cleaning services. Well, now I'm definitely not going to buy your cleaning services because you just wasted my time.

Steven Julian

If you really want to at least put a smile on Noah's face, just fill out the contact us form. and put, we need more vegan options. He'll get it and he'll like it. And if you don't know what that means, then you need to listen to some of our past shows because it is a nice little Easter egg in our shows. Go to productquickstart.com and I've stopped. Oh, wait, I stopped the soothing. If you want a podcast, you need to go to JodySmith.com because he helps people podcast. And if you want to help with your investments, you need to search my name, Steven Julian.

That's all I can give you because of compliance. So for Noah and for Jody, this is your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian, saying we'll catch you next time on the soothing tones of Product Genius.