Product Genius, the Podcast for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Startups
Honest advice for inventors—with obscure cultural references included at no extra charge.
Episode
236
Is Your Definition of Success Killing Your Creativity?
Are you accidentally turning your first product idea into a set of requirements—and killing better ideas before they have a chance? Steven and Noah unpack one of the most important invention development disciplines: separating success criteria from potential solutions. Using examples involving aluminum, concrete, camping gear, the Avengers, and a surprisingly useful Hulk strategy, they explain how inventors can define what a product must accomplish without prematurely locking in how it must work. Learn how clearer product requirements, focused brainstorming, target-user thinking, and prioritized success criteria can lead to more innovative, manufacturable, and market-ready inventions.
Core Topics for this episode:
- Invention Process
- Inventor Strategy
Key Takeaways Include:
Listen here:
Episode Blog
Is Your Definition of Success Killing Your Creativity?
Inventors love solutions.
That makes sense. An invention is, after all, a solution to something.
But there is a sneaky product-development trap hiding inside that instinct: sometimes we become so attached to a particular solution that we accidentally promote it into a requirement.
Suddenly, “it needs to be lightweight” becomes “it must be aluminum.”
“It needs to resist wind” becomes “it must be concrete.”
“It needs to broadcast over a long distance” becomes “it must be ten feet tall.”
And just like that, you may have eliminated a dozen better ideas before you ever gave them a chance.
In this episode of Product Genius, Noah McNeely and Steven Julian explore the difference between success criteria and solutions—and why keeping those two things separate can dramatically improve creativity, innovation, and decision-making during invention development.
Success Criteria Ask “What?”
A success criterion describes what the product needs to accomplish.
It defines an outcome.
For example:
- It must be lightweight.
- It must resist being blown over by wind.
- It must fit in the trunk of a car.
- It must be easy to use.
- It must keep trash away from animals.
- It must broadcast a signal over a certain distance.
These statements describe what needs to happen without prematurely deciding how it will happen.
That distinction is incredibly important.
When you define the desired outcome broadly enough, you leave room for creativity.
Solutions Ask “How?”
Solutions answer a different question:
How are we going to accomplish the success criterion?
Suppose the criterion is:
The product must not blow over in the wind.
Potential solutions might include:
- Give it a wide base.
- Stake it to the ground.
- Partially bury it.
- Add ballast.
- Change its aerodynamic shape.
- Make it extremely heavy.
- Use a tethering system.
Concrete might be one solution.
But concrete is not the requirement.
If you accidentally write “must be made of concrete” into your success criteria, you have already eliminated every other approach.
That is how a seemingly harmless assumption can quietly kill innovation.
The Aluminum Trap
Noah gives another straightforward example.
Imagine someone says:
“The product has to be made from aluminum.”
Why?
Perhaps the real requirement is that the product needs to be lightweight.
Aluminum certainly might satisfy that requirement.
But so might:
- Magnesium
- Certain plastics
- Composites
- Thin-wall steel
- A hollow structural design
- A completely different product architecture
If aluminum is treated as a potential solution, the development team can compare it against alternatives.
If aluminum is treated as a requirement, the alternatives never get considered.
That is the trap.
Of course, context matters. If you own an aluminum-products company and the entire business strategy depends on producing aluminum products, then “must be aluminum” may legitimately be a success criterion.
The point is not that requirements should never be specific.
The point is that specificity should have a reason.
The Avengers Have Success Criteria Too
Naturally, Product Genius eventually brings the Avengers into product development.
In the first Avengers movie, the heroes have some pretty obvious success criteria:
Defeat Loki.
Save New York City.
Stop the invasion.
Those are outcomes.
One potential solution presented in the movie is to nuke New York.
Technically, that might address part of the problem.
It also performs rather poorly against the “save New York City” criterion.
Another solution is to release the Hulk.
Still messy.
Much less nuclear.
As the situation develops, the heroes learn more. They discover new constraints and new opportunities. They develop better approaches, including closing the portal bringing the invading army into the city.
That is exactly what happens in real product development—usually with fewer aliens.
As you prototype, test, research, and talk with users, you learn things.
A solution that seemed brilliant three months ago may no longer make sense.
If your underlying success criteria remain clear, you can replace the solution without losing sight of the goal.
If the solution itself became the goal, changing direction becomes much harder.
Separate the Lists
One practical technique is remarkably simple:
Keep separate lists.
List one contains your success criteria.
List two contains your wish-list items.
List three contains potential solutions.
When a client says, “It needs to be ten feet tall,” Noah can ask why.
Maybe the answer is:
“Because the signal needs to reach a long distance.”
Great.
Now “broadcast the required distance” can go on the success-criteria list.
“Make it ten feet tall” moves to the potential-solutions list.
Nothing has been thrown away.
You have simply put the idea in the correct box.
That preserves the original thought while reopening the door to other possibilities.
Must-Haves Versus Wish-List Items
Not everything you would like your product to do deserves to become a success criterion.
Some features are genuine must-haves.
Without them, the product has no reason to exist.
Other features are simply desirable.
Noah calls these wish-list items.
A wish-list item might improve the product, but if it cannot be included in generation one without blowing the budget or delaying the launch, the product can still succeed without it.
That distinction helps fight another common inventor problem:
Feature creep.
Inventors naturally keep thinking of improvements.
Wouldn’t it be cool if it also did this?
And this?
And this?
Soon the product has become more expensive, complicated, difficult to manufacture, and slower to launch.
A wish list gives those ideas somewhere to live without allowing every interesting idea to hijack the development program.
Brainstorm One Criterion at a Time
Once the success criteria are defined, Noah recommends brainstorming solutions for each criterion individually.
Do not try to solve the entire product at once.
Take one requirement.
Forget the others temporarily.
Generate as many potential solutions as possible.
Some will be terrible.
Write them down anyway.
Why?
Because bad ideas often lead to good ideas.
If you constantly reject ideas because they conflict with some other requirement, you begin narrowing the solution space too early.
The goal during brainstorming is expansion.
Evaluation comes later.
For example, while brainstorming ways to prevent a product from blowing over, someone might suggest making the entire thing from concrete.
Fine.
Write it down.
Later, when you compare that solution against another high-priority requirement—portability—you may quickly eliminate it.
But during brainstorming, it still deserves to exist.
Creativity first.
Judgment second.
Your First Idea Is Not Your Product
Inventors often arrive with what they call “the idea.”
But what they usually have is actually a bundle of assumptions and potential solutions.
The shape.
The mechanism.
The material.
The size.
The manufacturing method.
The way the user interacts with it.
Some of those choices may turn out to be excellent.
Some may not.
Separating the underlying success criteria from those initial solutions does not weaken the invention.
It strengthens it.
If you go through a disciplined development process and ultimately return to your original solution, great.
Now you have evidence that it really is a good solution.
If you discover something better, even better.
Changing the implementation does not invalidate the invention.
It improves it.
Start With Why—Then Keep Coming Back to It
Success criteria answer what.
Solutions answer how.
But neither completely answers why.
The why comes from the product definition and target user.
Who is this product for?
What problem are they trying to solve?
Why does the product need to exist?
Noah uses a camping example.
Imagine the product is intended for people who drive to campsites and need a safe, convenient way to suspend trash where animals cannot reach it.
That tells us something about the user.
It also tells us something about the problem.
From there, success criteria can emerge:
- Keep trash away from animals.
- Resist wind.
- Be easy to set up.
- Fit in a vehicle.
- Be reasonably portable.
- Meet an acceptable cost target.
Now the why becomes a filter.
Does each criterion still support the target user’s real need?
Does each proposed solution support the why?
If not, something may need to change.
Prioritize Your Criteria
Success criteria are not always equally important.
That matters when solutions conflict.
Return to the camping example.
Making the trash-support product from concrete might make it wonderfully resistant to wind.
But if portability is the highest-priority criterion, the 300-pound concrete version probably loses.
On another product, cost might outrank convenience.
For a premium product, convenience might outrank cost.
The correct decision depends on the user and the business opportunity.
Prioritizing the criteria gives the team a framework for making those tradeoffs.
Instead of arguing based on personal preference, you can ask:
Which solution best satisfies the most important requirements for the people we are actually designing this for?
That is a much better product-development conversation.
If Your Target Market Is “Everybody,” Try Again
One of Noah’s most practical pieces of advice comes near the end of the episode.
When defining your target customer, do not write:
Everybody.
Inventors rarely have the marketing resources to sell to everybody.
And products designed for everybody often become optimized for nobody.
Be specific.
Who needs this most?
Who experiences the problem most strongly?
Who is most likely to pay for the solution?
What matters to that particular customer?
The clearer the target user becomes, the easier it becomes to create meaningful success criteria.
And the clearer the criteria become, the easier it becomes to evaluate solutions.
The Product Genius Take
A good invention-development process deliberately separates three things:
Why are we creating this product?
What does it need to accomplish?
How might we accomplish those things?
The why defines the user and the problem.
The what becomes your success criteria.
The how becomes your potential solutions.
Keep those categories separate long enough to explore the possibilities.
Your first solution may still win.
But make it earn the victory.
Do not crown it king simply because it arrived first.
And if all else fails, remember Noah’s final product-development lesson from the Avengers:
Don’t nuke New York.
Release the Hulk instead.
Or, read the full transcript here:
Steven Julian
Are you making the mistake of blending your success criteria with your solutions? What does that even mean? Well, you're going to find out because we're going to blend an Avengers analogy. Abbott and Costello get some reference. Robert Urich is going to be mentioned again in his role in Spencer for Hire. And I even betray Noah by revealing something that he said to me in confidence. Next on Product Genius. 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. Hey, that's my line. Yes, welcome to another hopefully award-winning edition of Product Genius. Yes, I am. The slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian. We are broadcasting live on tape on your favorite podcasting platform from deep inside the lair of Product Quick Start for the show called Product.
Genius. Seated to my right is the intrepid... On the lam producer, Jody Smith, seated across the table, is the genius or one of the geniuses. He's just the one that brings us all around to try and help you as a product developer and entrepreneur and inventor get your product to market. His name is Noah McNeely.
Noah McNeely
Hello. Hello. That was a really long introduction. You left out Mother of Dragons. Yes. Et cetera.
Steven Julian
Mother of Dragons. What would that be?
Noah McNeely
It's from Game of Thrones. Okay.
Steven Julian
Well, listen, I was shouting out Larry Sanders. I was shouting out a personal anecdote that happened right before we went on the air that we're probably not going to get into, but it's a great story and will keep us laughing for months.
Noah McNeely
But if you don't know Game of Thrones, you are culturally illiterate by today's standards.
Steven Julian
Yeah, I know. Again, I was using a Larry Sanders reference. What other evidence do you need that I'm kind of out of? I haven't gotten to that show yet. I'm still wanting to finish. Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Noah McNeely
The 90s called on a flip phone. Yeah, exactly.
Steven Julian
Exactly. Exactly. And I got to. get my palm. I'm going to put my palm pilot down so that we can get into this show. So, Noah, you've got a great topic for us. You did. I will let people behind the curtain and let you know you sent me. You sent us all an email. Hey, this is what I want to talk about. And I came in like going, wow, this is a great email. There's all kinds of stuff. And your first comment to me was I just I was just. it was almost like a desperation.
Put it together of ideas kind of thing, or you said I needed to carry you today, and I'm not quite sure why.
Noah McNeely
You know, that was told to you in confidence, but here we are.
Steven Julian
Part of the joy of this show is we don't stand on... We stand on our professionalism here. We stand on our entertainment while also giving information.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, I think my exact comment to you was, due to circumstances entirely within my control, I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be.
Steven Julian
And that's because you are- We'll see how it goes. You've got all kinds of business. You are. ramping up. You've got all kinds of clients you're working with. So yeah, I mean, it was within your control that you're doing the outgrowth of this show, which is helping people with their products. So anyway, the reason I'm bringing up that thing that was shared in confidence is because I was looking this over and going, Wow, you got a lot of stuff here. There's a lot of good things. We'll see how it all pans out.
Noah McNeely
It is possible. I work best under pressure.
Steven Julian
Yes, I think so. I think so. Okay. So the topic and theme for today, of course, you already heard the little sounder in the intro, so you kind of know where we're going. But it's a common mistake that entrepreneurs make. And your comment was they blend their success criteria. So blending success criteria with solutions is a common mistake that entrepreneurs make. Before we dig into the topic, let's go ahead and do the glossary first. Let's go ahead and get terms so we're all on the same page. What do you mean by success criteria?
Noah McNeely
So when I say success criteria, that's your list of all the things, your product, or if you're a different kind of entrepreneur, your service or your business, all the things it has to do, all the things it should do in order to really have a reason to exist.
Steven Julian
Okay.
Noah McNeely
Sorry, go ahead.
Steven Julian
So what do you mean by solution? What is a solution?
Noah McNeely
So a solution is a possible way to address a success criteria. So every success criteria. If you're doing your job well and really exploring the territory, you should have multiple possible solutions. Okay, so a success criteria, think of that as it's more expansive, it's broadening, it's blue sky. You're starting there and you're journeying out to find lots of different possible fixes or things you can pop in to solve or address that. And all those fixes and possible solutions, that's your solution set. Intentionally limiting. They're driving you back toward a place where you can make decisions.
Steven Julian
So in some aspects of this, your solutions will help you get to the end result of the success criteria. But you say that there's a mistake when people are blending their success criteria with solutions. So give us the bottom line at the very beginning, then we'll kind of. dig into what it looks like on a day-to-day basis.
Noah McNeely
And frankly, it's not just inventors. Throughout my career, I've had CEOs of Fortune 500. Well, not CEOs because they're not usually dealing with me, but like heads of product development.
Steven Julian
The vice president of something.
Noah McNeely
Yes. Executive vice president in charge of excellence of product development in the Midwest region or whatever. Sometimes really high executives will also have this issue where they will actually take what is a solution or a potential solution. And they will introduce that as a success criteria. So random example, it's got to be made out of aluminum. They'll put that as a success criteria when, in fact, that's just one possible solution to, you know, it must be lightweight. And, you know, OK, aluminum is an answer, but there are a lot of other potential answers there as well.
Steven Julian
So is one of the solutions to this common mistake? Make sure you know what box you're playing in or thinking about or talking about or discussing. Hey, right now we're only sticking with success criteria. We're not really focused on solutions. or is part of the problem that those things are always? interweaving and going back and forth. Ooh, I asked you a question that was not on your notes. Yeah, look at that, ladies and gentlemen. I stumped him.
Noah McNeely
Way to go, throwing it all off target now.
Steven Julian
I'm having fun. I'm having so much fun.
Noah McNeely
The last time I tell you I'm ill prepared, you come in and poke fun at me all day. I think it's actually, you do go back and forth, but you need to keep them separated one at a time. So you may, you're going to start with your success criteria. As you work through your project, you may add some to that, but it's not, you're not just going back and forth in the same conversation or the same meeting. So you create your success criteria. And then you take a break from that and you focus on one and then you develop a bunch of solutions for that.
A week later, you may realize, oh, well, there's this other success criteria I didn't think about. I'm going to add that in. You do that process again. That's okay. Nothing is set in stone. It's really just a tool to help you find success. in your product. I thought you handled that well.
Steven Julian
See, you just need to go with the flow. So when it comes to, you know, I was taught in school when I was going through writing, learning how to write, and, you know, I'm still working on that. But they always say who, what, where, when, why, how. I think you wanted to kind of talk about those or at least a couple of those as it relates to success criteria and solutions. So what questions are you answering in those two particular topics?
Noah McNeely
So your success criteria, that's all about what? Do this thing on its own. Whatever that is, it could be all sorts of different success criteria. Your solutions are about how.
Steven Julian
How you're going to do what you want it to do.
Noah McNeely
So again, it must be like, wait, well, it's going to be made of aluminum. It's going to be small. It's going to be made of plastic. It's going to be, there could be dozens of potential solutions to that one success criteria. An example I wrote down here is, let's say you have this product you're developing. And one of the, for whatever. reason, one of the success criteria is it must not be blown over by the wind. Okay, well, that's great. A lot of potential solutions there. Well, it could be half buried in the ground.
It could have a really wide base. It could be tethered to some stakes, like tent stakes. There could be a lot of different, it could be made of concrete. There could be a lot of different potential solutions to that one success criteria. But if you go in with, oh, it's got to be made of concrete, that limits you from exploring all the other things, which might be better ultimate solutions for your product.
Steven Julian
Is one of the mistakes that happens in this that, as you said, they blend their success criteria with solutions. In that blending, at times, when you focus more on a solution or think your solution is a success criteria, So to your point right there, it's got to be made of concrete. Sometimes if you get too focused on the solution when you're still trying to figure out success criteria, you may be limiting yourself when it's not time to limit yourself or you paint yourself into a. corner, put yourself in a box and are saying, well, it's got to be made of concrete because it can't fall over in the wind, not realizing, wait a minute, let me think of their other solutions to that problem.
Is that one of the mistakes people make in their product development? Absolutely.
Noah McNeely
And what that does is that limits your ability to really innovate. So now sometimes, depending on the situation, what looks like a solution for one program may actually be a success criteria for another. I mean, if you are a concrete company, then you make concrete products. It's okay that the success criteria is must be made of concrete because that's what fits your business model. And then you go from there. But generally. Making it out of concrete is not necessarily – that's going to be too specific to be a success criteria. that is a potential solution.
All right.
Steven Julian
I'm going to potentially get myself into a lot of trouble, ladies and gentlemen. We are talking about success criteria and solutions. By the way, if you're keeping track at home, I hope by now you've made your tally sheet and you're seeing how many. times we say the word success criteria and solutions. I think we're already up to 10, so this is fantastic. I wonder what the show's about.
Noah McNeely
I hope you're not drinking shots.
Steven Julian
No, no, no. Not at all. Not at all.
Noah McNeely
If that you're asleep.
Steven Julian
You'll be up for the next three days. I am going to ask a question about a potential analogy. And you're either going to go, no, no, I don't want to do that. Or you've got this great analogy that's going to tie this all together. Does this have anything to do with the Avengers?
Noah McNeely
You know, it's possible. I write things on these sheets just to throw you off once in a while. Yes. Well, I have an analogy about the Avengers. Surprise. I have an analogy. Yes.
Steven Julian
And it's about time we went back to a story or a movie. I love it when you do this.
Noah McNeely
But just to annoy you, I'm going to say, but before we talk about that, you were asking about the question. So we talked about, you know, what and how.
Steven Julian
Oh, we got to get to another one. Yeah. We do.
Noah McNeely
So I should point out, very important, and this is another thing that people confuse. We may come back to this later. Neither success criteria nor potential solutions answer the question, why? That's a totally different thing.
Steven Julian
I was told to start with why.
Noah McNeely
Yes. And we'll come back to that. We're going to end with why.
Steven Julian
We're going to end with why instead of starting.
Noah McNeely
We're not going to end with it, but we're going to get to it later toward the end. I like it.
Steven Julian
I like it. All right. So give me the Avengers analogy.
Noah McNeely
Okay. So at this point, you know, Avengers, the first Avengers movie came out in 2012. So if I'm spoiling it for you, that is your fault. I assume at this point, if you wanted to watch it, you've watched it. So in that movie. Loki is the villain. He's Thor's brother. He's this bad guy, and he comes to Earth, and he's got all these aliens that he brings to New York City, and then they're trying to take over the city and the world, et cetera. So a success criteria for the heroes of the story is defeat Loki.
Another one is save New York. City. Yes. Potential solutions are, well, let's nuke the city. And that came up in the movie, if you've seen it. Another potential solution is release the Hulk. And then, of course, there's all sorts of other solutions that come along. But as the movie progresses and develops, things change. Situations change. They learn more about things. So then they develop other potential solutions. Oh, let's close this magical portal that's bringing aliens in. Let's confine the enemy to this one area of the city so they're not killing people outside of this area of the city.
So that kind of brings up another point. If you go straight to potential solutions and that becomes your success criteria, you do not have the flexibility to adjust as you learn new things. So if their solution was from the beginning, oh, nuke the city and that's going to be the success criteria, well, maybe they defeated Loki, but they wouldn't have solved that other success criteria of protecting the city. So having your success criteria more broad and broadening and expansive, that allows you to adjust your solutions down the road to fit the situation as it evolves.
Which, granted, 30. minutes on screen, a lot of things evolve. Whereas in your product development process, that might be something evolves in a couple months or whatever. You learn something down the road. If we do it this way, it's going to be too expensive or whatever. Those are things that can come up in your process. And having your solutions. Or having your success criteria more broadly defined than actual solutions gives you the ability to go back and reevaluate the solution you've chosen against that criteria and come up with something you would still have a success.
Steven Julian
All right. That was Noah's first mic drop of the show.
Noah McNeely
That was a lot of talking in one answer.
Steven Julian
But you got passionate.
Noah McNeely
And clearly, I am passionate about the MCU and the Avengers.
Steven Julian
That is a whole nother show that you need to start, apparently.
Noah McNeely
Oh, I've done a whole Bible study about these. Oh, boy. It was fantastic.
Steven Julian
Wow. I did one on The Simpsons one time.
Noah McNeely
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Steven Julian
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Noah McNeely
So number one, focus on the outcome again. And this is kind of reiterating what we just said. What do you need the product to do? What is it? What's it supposed to do? What is the outcome of this? That helps you develop your success criteria. The other thing is after you've got that list of success criteria, go back and kind of grade yourself. Do I have any hows in here? that should really be what's? Have I put, oh, it should be made of concrete. That's a how. How can I replace that?
And if you find those hows, how do I change that to be a what? So I've had clients that have successfully done that. They come in with, again, it should be 10 feet tall. And. then I have to push them on, okay, that sounds like a solution, not a criteria. Why are you saying that? And then we get to the root cause of... Why they came up with that solution. And then we find out what it must do is, well, it's got to broadcast a signal for a great distance. Well, making it 10 feet tall is one way to do that, but there are others.
So we can usually kind of backtrack from a how to get to the what.
Steven Julian
And if you're creating this and if they really do that and they've got, they come up with a list and it's expansive and it's blue sky and it's very open-ended. They may have a long list and they checked it and they go, no, no, I didn't put a how in place of a what, but they've got a lot of what's. There's almost a subset underneath success criteria. that's also not necessarily solution. And I think you've got a nice little phrase for it, but there's also a subset of success criteria. Talk about that.
A wish list, I guess.
Noah McNeely
You know, I called these the younger stepbrothers or. the stepchildren of success criteria. And this is another temptation sometimes people have is that every idea they have, they create a success criteria for it. And what I'm saying is the real success criteria are the ones that are absolute must-haves for your product. Like if you don't have this, then your product doesn't have a reason to exist. But then there's this other subset. And these are what I call wish list, wish list. That's a hard word to say, wish list items. And these are things that, yeah, if I don't have this in gen one of my product, I've still got a product and I'll still grab market share.
But if I can get this without breaking the budget or breaking the launch schedule, let's have it as well. Let's include it if we can. And those sort of become the secondary group of. Semi-success criteria. You're not going to make overwhelming, overriding decisions based on those, but you need to be aware of those as you go through your process. Like, oh, if we can include this, let's do it.
Steven Julian
Okay. So you also have, so you've made this large list. Are we to the? point now where we want to start like, okay, we figured out. What they are, we've also taken some off because we go, no, no, those are more solutions. We've also now gone, okay, this is more of a wish list. And so now you've got those actual success criteria. Before you go to solutions, you want to go back through one more time and focus one at a time? Talk a little bit about that. Like, okay, you've done this to this point.
You've taken hours. You've taken days. You've been noodling on it for a while. Before you get to solutions, there might be one more thing you want to do. Go back through that list one at a time.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, so we may actually go.
Steven Julian
I guess brainstorming is what we're talking about.
Noah McNeely
Right. We may actually go a bit deeper into an element of this concept in another episode that I have planned.
Steven Julian
For future date TBD?
Noah McNeely
Yes. Okay. It's future date TBD. So that's a teaser that really said nothing.
Steven Julian
Listen, that's what a slightly annoying co-host does. This is why you brought me in. If you don't like it by now, if I'm not. the right solution, then just tell me and I'll leave right now. Oh, boy, that was the coffee talk.
Noah McNeely
Well, you're not made of concrete.
Steven Julian
I'm close. I'm more soft, doughy center. But anyway, that's another story for another. OK, go ahead. What were you saying?
Noah McNeely
So, you know, we've talked a lot about. we've had episodes on brainstorming. So we're not going to necessarily. we're not going to go through that. However. You cannot brainstorm all your success criteria at one time. Don't even try it. It's counterproductive. You're going to end up with a very narrow list of ideas that you probably had already coming into the process. So don't do that. Focus on each one of your success criteria. Brainstorm just that one. Don't think about all the rest. And yeah, I know. People are saying, oh, I'm going to get involved with all these stupid ideas.
I know. Do it anyway. It's okay because those stupid ideas may lead to better ideas. So focus just on each success criteria. Even if you have an idea there that you know, well, this violates success criteria number seven. I don't care. Write it down. Brainstorm that one. Success. criteria and come up with a whole bunch of solutions just for it.
Steven Julian
Yeah, I was going to say, when you get to this point, you're brainstorming on the one success criteria at a time, and inside that one success criteria, out of that brainstorming, is where you're going to get most of your potential solutions, correct?
Noah McNeely
I didn't understand the question. Fantastic.
Steven Julian
Let me ask it again. When you say, okay, I've got this list of success criteria, I've now done that, and I've weeded out what was solutions, but now I'm going to take this one success criteria. At this moment, I'm going to brainstorm it one at a time. So number one, I start thinking about it can't fall over in the wind, and I'm going to brainstorm around it. And when you brainstorm around the success criteria, that one success criteria at a time, that brainstorming is where you're going to actually come out with mostly solutions to that one success criteria.
Noah McNeely
Right. So the goal of brainstorming that one success criteria is to come up with a long list of potential solutions for that. And at the end of the day, the solution you pick. is probably going to be in that list. If not, you know, there's methods to deal with that as well.
Steven Julian
So the mistake, I'm going to go back. So the mistake that we started the show with, this big, so I love this, what we've actually done, and you accused me, which it's true, that I... I kind of let everybody behind the curtain that you had got these great notes and said, I just kind of threw them together. I want to see what comes out.
Noah McNeely
I'm crying on the inside.
Steven Julian
What you've done is the success criteria of this show was let's have a good show. Let's have an entertaining chair and cover a topic. We have focused on that and now we've kind of just worked our way through it. And now we're coming out the back end of this show. And what I like about it is that. So going back to the problem, going back to the common mistake entrepreneurs make, because it's time for my confession. I was kind of reading this like, why is this a problem? What's the big deal?
They're just figuring everything out. You're really trying to get them to. focus on that. who, what, where, when, why, how. You're really focusing on, if you're going to be thinking about success criteria, do everything you can to stay focused on that. Get that list first. Then you can go one at a time on that list, and now you can focus on solutions. So the problem is when you don't. So silo those things, it becomes a jumble of spaghetti and you might get lost.
Noah McNeely
Right. So siloing them helps us to remain disciplined through our process. I think we're all, I'm guilty. I think we can all be guilty of letting our preconceived notions kind of run, you know, run the show. And a lot of inventors do this, you know, they have their first idea and they're like, even if they're trying to do the process, if they fixate on that so much. That becomes their driving criteria. when really that first idea they have, that's just a collection of potential solutions. It may be the right collection.
That's fine. However, it may not. But going through the process at least helps you validate that it is the right collection of solutions. If you go through the process and you find out, oh, well, maybe it shouldn't be made of concrete because this will be better. That's not done anything to detract from your process or your success as an inventor or the validity of your idea.
Steven Julian
Yeah.
Noah McNeely
That has strengthened your idea. That has helped you strengthen your idea to be a better product and a better business.
Steven Julian
All right. So turning the page a little bit, not literally because we're still on the same page of our notes, but Simon Sinek wrote a – Simon Sinek wrote Start With Why. I believe that's the author who wrote that. Uh, and, uh, kind of famous book about business planning and stuff with that. So, uh, Noah McNeely's version of that is 25 minutes into our conversation. It's time to start with why. Uh, so let's not forget about the why you teased it earlier. It's time to bring it back into the conversation.
What's the why of all this?
Noah McNeely
All right. So, and why is why important, right? So the, um, at this point, hopefully. You have a long list of potential solutions for each one of your criteria. So why, you actually did start with why, and that is, it relates to your product definition and your target user. So when you started this process, at the beginning of your idea, you probably had some notion of, okay, I'm going to create a product that does this thing, and this is who it's going to do it for. So I wrote down an example here.
Your why. It might be campers need a safe and convenient way to suspend their trash bags out of the reach of animals. It needs to be a solution that they can carry in the trunk of their car. So this is for people, you know, they're going car camping, but not to a place that's already got these things where you can hang your, you know, hang your trash up. And this is, I took my kids camping not long ago. That's why this is fresh in my mind. So that's your why it identified who's your target user and what do they need this product to do?
From there, that's where you started. From there, you create your success criteria. Okay, well, it can't blow over in the wind. That's important. So if it blows over in the wind, then the raccoons get in it. It really hasn't done a good job for you as a camper.
Steven Julian
So I could bury it or I could have concrete.
Noah McNeely
Yes. Let's see. Yeah, you could. So you end up with- Now it's all coming together, Jody.
Steven Julian
I figured out all this. This is all because he went camping.
Noah McNeely
Well, you could, but again, back to the why. Yeah. So your why- Helps you create that list of criteria. And that also may help you do something that I think is very important, and that is prioritize your list of criteria because some criteria may be more important than others. For example, not blowing over the wind is really, really important. I would argue that maybe for people traveling by car to camp, portability might be even slightly more important than... Not blowing over in the wind. They're both really important. And then you get further down the list.
So it's got to be, you know, cost in this range. It's got to be whatever, all these sorts of different things. It's got to be easy to use. It could be a very long list of success criteria and that's okay. But you need to start ranking those as this is number one, this is number two, et cetera. And the reason you do that is because that helps you, again, reflecting back to the why, meaning who and what. And who and what they needed to do, what you needed to do, that helps you decide amongst your potential solutions.
So back to the not blowing over the wind. You mentioned it could be made of concrete. Well, that's going to solve the not blowing over the wind criteria, but we just identified that might be criteria number two in this case, because criteria number one, maybe it's got to be portable. And if I make this thing out of concrete, it's not going to be very portable. So that helps you cross that one off and pick a different one. That was in pick, you know, maybe the 10th stakes version. So that's a pretty easy one.
You get further down the list and sometimes there does tend to be more nuance in your decision making. Like it's got to be easy to use versus it's got to be low cost. There you may have to really dig deeper into. the why. and well, the who and the why kind of are together and think about, okay, who and why, who is the target market? Why do they need it? Is this a target market that's going to value lower cost or ease of use more? And then you have to make those decisions.
That helps you come up with different solutions. And you may find at the end of the day, you have several kind of competing full concepts, but then at least you have some guidelines on how to decide between them.
Steven Julian
One of the success criteria of our podcast is we try to be slightly entertaining as we talk about product development and bringing your products to market. And one of the solutions is you have me as a slightly annoying co-host. So I don't know if this solution will work, but I'm going to try it anyway. There is a subset of our audience who's probably listening right now and is screaming into their podcasting listening device who is on first, what's on second. I don't know who's on third. I've been having that in my mind the whole time, so I wanted to go ahead. and bring that out.
I don't know if it's a solution. He was for my brain and now I can turn the page.
Noah McNeely
So I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You should have seen the look he gave me. It's like, man, that. That felt like he was going to stand up and walk out of the studio.
Steven Julian
Other than my faith in God through Jesus Christ, that is one of the defining characteristics of my life is my mom and dad giving me Abbott and Costello tapes in my stocking when I was seven years old and started listening. Oh, you've done it now. And I listened to that over and over and over again. And now my youngest son has memorized that with me.
Noah McNeely
For any of our listeners under the age of 40.
Steven Julian
No, go to YouTube.
Noah McNeely
It's out there.
Steven Julian
Find Jimmy Fallon's remake of it. It was beautiful. Well, Costello, I'm going to New York with you. You know, Bucky Harris, the Yanks manager, gave me a job. Okay. Anyway, so, and actually, I do want to give you massive credit because this whole show, everything we do, everything you. talk about, your business, what you do now. It all, it does start with why, because, and I like you, so the starting with why is what got people going down this road. Oh, I need to, we need more vegan options. No, I need to create, you know, I need to create this product to help, you know, Tiffany's story.
I want to deliver medicine to someone and, you know, and so all, all of this, we always start with why it starts them down the road. And what you're doing is at the end of this success criteria and solutions and the, And what does it do and how? Now, when you get to that point, okay, let's go back to why. Let's not forget why. Because if you do, you'll get to how, and then all of a sudden, and you've told stories where it's like you get to this part of the solution and you're like, you are so far away from your why now in this.
You've lost the plot.
Noah McNeely
You can go back and look at each one of your potential solutions. Compare it to the why. Make sure it still aligns. You can. do the same thing with your success criteria. Compare it to the why. Make sure it still aligns. Sometimes you may find it doesn't align at all, but it's still a really good idea. Maybe you don't have the right why, and that's okay sometimes. Sometimes people decide along the path that, you know, I was going to make this product for teenage girls, but I really think it's for 85-year-old grandfathers.
I've never seen that happen.
Steven Julian
I would love to hear that story.
Noah McNeely
There's no story there, but I'd love to make one.
Steven Julian
That would be good. That's the next movie deal.
Noah McNeely
I thought more teenage girls had false teeth. I didn't know.
Steven Julian
So I think let's kind of wrap this up. I think first off. People listening who've never heard or thought about the idea of success criteria for solutions, they may be blending them without even knowing they're blending them. So let's define the topics.
Noah McNeely
It's another way to simply look at it. If you never thought about it from this perspective, which is typical. I mean, those of us who have never done this before, maybe, again, you just come in, you've got your idea and. you think that's kind of it. But there's really a process. There are several processes you can go through to make sure it's the right idea and it's the best implementation of that idea.
Steven Julian
Give some very practical advice for someone who hasn't done this or hasn't done this in a long time. How do you start? Is it just as you got to sit down, get a cup of coffee, get a piece of paper, and just start hashing it out? Can you give somebody a step one? Can you give somebody help with? they haven't done it in a long time or they've never done it?
Noah McNeely
Sure. I think it does, again, start with why. So sit down, write out, think about your idea, and write out. Who's it for? And if you write the word everybody, you're probably not going to succeed. Who's it for? Be as specific as you can be because you're not going to sell. If you're an inventor, you don't have the marketing budget to sell to everybody. Focus on who it's going to be really for. That will help you develop the product for that group of people. And then focus on, ask yourself, okay, the other part of why is, well, what does that group of people need it to do?
Start there. And again, sit down, have a cup of coffee and everything else flows from there. Yep.
Steven Julian
And then from that, as you start doing that, what does it do? Don't forget to then check it, go, are any of these really, how am I going to do that? Okay. I got to push that aside. Make sure you focus on the what, and then one at a time, you can go back through those and start doing solutions.
Noah McNeely
And you said that just right. It's push it aside. Don't throw it away. It's not that it goes away. It just goes onto the third list.
Steven Julian
Wow. A master client. Listen. You gave me a little bit of a hard time, but there's a reason why I do it the way I do it. You worked your way through this topic, and I'm now wiser coming out the other side of this, and this makes a lot of sense.
Noah McNeely
It was a nice therapy session.
Steven Julian
It was. It was. It was. I'll send you my bill later. He's not. laughing, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a little scared. Okay, so listen. This has been fantastic. I think this has been very helpful. If you guys are listening and you're an inventor entrepreneur, you've got an idea, you have now been given. A great value in what you can spend some time doing to, and you'll come out the other side of this with a better understanding of your idea. You'll have a better understanding of what it's going to try to do and how it's going to get those things done without losing sight of the why.
So Noah, for those people who want to, first of all, anyone after listening to this show. When they contact you, hopefully they've done a little bit of this on their own, and you'll be able to tell that they've done, oh, you must have listened to that episode. But how do they get in contact with you? How do you specifically help someone? Through product quick start beyond just giving great advice on a podcast they're listening to.
Noah McNeely
One last piece of advice. Don't ever nuke New York. Release the Hulk instead. It's better. It's always better. Always better.
Steven Julian
Although in releasing. the Hulk, as you save New York, there'll be a lot of cleanup. And out of that cleanup, there may be some messes that have to be cleaned up.
Noah McNeely
You can break it, but you don't have to. Yeah.
Steven Julian
Well, the vulture. It was created and that created a whole separate story. We've lost like half the audience. No, we haven't. Are you kidding? Most inventors, entrepreneurs are big fans of the MCU or just only like that one version and hate the new version in the new timeline. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, so you can fix any Marvel problem with multiverse.
Noah McNeely
Absolutely. If only we had that in product development. Absolutely. We'll do an episode on that.
Steven Julian
Oh, the multiverse of product development. I'm writing that.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, I'm going to start writing that one tomorrow. Yeah, so you can reach me. Productquickstart.com is the easiest way. And there's a contact us form there. Just please don't tell me, hey, call me. Just tell me a little bit about what you want to talk about so I can be prepared. There's also a form you can fill out. that, you know, it's a self-assessment form is what I call it. And that helps me understand even more about where you're at, where you're trying to go. If you can do those, I will get back to you and we'll set up a time to talk.
Steven Julian
The other cool part that I'll add on to that is one of the reasons why Noah does this show is even before you call him, check out some of our past episodes. Listen to some of the other topics we've done. Listen to some of the guests that Noah has brought on. Because one of the reasons why Noah does this is, and if you've listened to some of the guests that Noah works with or that Noah refers to, because the whole... Concept of this show that Tiffany started and that Noah is now running with is the idea that Noah doesn't know everything, but he does know other people.
He knows people who can help with patents, people who can help in terms of. Working with factories and people who can do prototypes. There is a sense of coopetition among the people who do this the right way. And you're one of them. And you've kind of found some of the others. that do some other things that help your clients.
Noah McNeely
Yeah. So if people have similar philosophies to me, meaning we're in this to help inventors not to waste money and to actually succeed. Then, you know, we're on the good side here. And I don't mind work with anyone in that space.
Steven Julian
So check out productquickstart.com. Fill out the contact us form. I want to thank Noah for letting me be a part of this show. He hasn't fired me yet. I want to thank our intrepid producer, Jody Smith, to our right. Shout out to Spencer. That was a reference also to Spencer for Hire. So that keeps our Robert Urich streak alive of this show. If you're trying to keep up with all the inside jokes, I apologize. You can contact us and we'll fill you in on all the backstories. No, we won't because that's what makes sense.
Makes this show fun to us. So for Noah and for Jody, this is Steven saying, I'll continue to be slightly annoying and we will catch you next time on Product Genius.