Product Genius, the Podcast for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Startups
Honest advice for inventors—with obscure cultural references included at no extra charge.
Episode
237
How to Kill Big Problems with Small Solutions
Is your invention so big and complicated that you don’t even know where to start? Noah and Steven explore how inventors can turn overwhelming product-development challenges into manageable progress by breaking big problems into smaller, clearly defined pieces. Drawing on a complex real-world Product QuickStart project—plus football, Ocean’s Eleven, Game of Thrones, plumbing, and Tesla—they explain why clear boundaries, deliberate handoffs, focused work, and small proof-of-concept prototypes can help solo inventors and large teams alike develop an invention without getting buried by the whole problem at once.
Core Topics for this episode:
- Invention Process
- Prototyping
Key Takeaways Include:
Listen here:
Episode Blog
How to Kill Big Problems With Small Solutions
Some invention ideas feel wonderfully simple.
Others look less like a product and more like somebody emptied a box of problems onto the conference table.
Electronics. Software. Mechanical parts. User interfaces. Fluid flow. Manufacturing. Marketing. Regulations. Packaging. And somewhere underneath all of that is the thing you originally wanted to invent.
When a project gets complicated enough, even experienced professionals can stare at it and wonder: where exactly do we start?
In this episode of Product Genius, Noah McNeely and Steven Julian tackle that problem using a lesson pulled directly from a large, multidisciplinary development project Noah was working on: big problems become manageable when you stop trying to solve the whole thing at once.
The trick is not merely breaking the project into smaller pieces.
It is defining those pieces—and the boundaries between them—well enough that you can actually make progress.
You Cannot Practice “Winning the Game”
Imagine a football coach walking onto the practice field and saying:
“Okay, everybody. Today we’re going to practice winning.”
Useful.
The team cannot practice the entire outcome as one giant activity.
They practice offense.
Defense.
Special teams.
Individual plays.
Position-specific skills.
And, apparently, the touchdown dance.
Each smaller activity contributes to the larger objective.
Product development works the same way.
“Develop my invention” is not really a task.
It is an outcome made from dozens—or hundreds—of smaller tasks.
Trying to hold all of those problems in your head simultaneously is a good way to feel overwhelmed without accomplishing much.
Heist Movies Understand Project Management
Ocean’s Eleven does not begin with:
“Let’s rob the casino.”
Well, technically it does.
But that is not the plan.
A successful heist requires a collection of smaller problems to be solved.
How does the safe work?
How do we disable the security system?
How do we get into the building?
How do we move the money?
Who handles which part?
Each specialist can work on a portion of the problem because the overall challenge has been divided into manageable pieces.
The same principle applies whether you have twelve experienced professionals on a development team or you are one inventor working at your kitchen table.
You still need to divide and conquer.
The Solo Inventor Has to Change Hats
If you are working alone, dividing the project does not necessarily mean dividing it among different people.
Sometimes it means dividing yourself.
Today you are wearing the product-development hat.
Later you may put on the marketing hat.
Then the finance hat.
Then the manufacturing hat.
Then the unfortunate “I need to answer all these emails” hat.
The important thing is to avoid wearing all of them simultaneously.
Noah points out that product development, marketing, manufacturing planning, and other activities do not necessarily happen in a perfectly sequential order.
You should not wait until the product is completely finished before thinking about marketing.
But when you are working on marketing, work on marketing.
When you are building the prototype, build the prototype.
When you are developing the brand, develop the brand.
Focused switching is very different from trying to do five jobs at the same moment.
Know How You Work
Steven brings up time blocking: deliberately assigning a fixed block of time to one activity and protecting it from distractions.
For some people, that works beautifully.
For others, not so much.
Noah describes himself as a multitasker, but not in the mythical sense that he can genuinely perform thirty cognitive tasks simultaneously.
Instead, he works well by switching deliberately between focused activities.
An hour on one problem.
Then another.
Then perhaps back to the first.
Someone else may need two uninterrupted days on a single task before changing gears.
Neither approach is universally correct.
The useful question is:
How do you personally do your best focused work?
Some inventors may need calendar blocks.
Some may need to turn off their phone.
Some may need to leave the office and work at a library.
Noah sometimes physically moves to another part of the workspace or leaves his phone behind when he needs to concentrate on building a prototype.
The goal is not to adopt somebody else’s productivity ritual.
The goal is to create enough separation that one problem gets your full attention.
Define the Boundaries
Breaking a project into chunks is only useful if you know where one chunk ends and the next begins.
This is one of the most important ideas in the episode.
Noah describes a complex project involving multiple electronic modules that have to communicate with each other.
If Module B and Module C are being developed separately, the team needs to define the interface between them.
What information does B deliver?
In what form?
What does C receive?
What assumptions can the person working on C safely make?
If that boundary is explicit, development can happen in parallel.
The person working on Module C does not necessarily need Module B to be completely finished.
They simply need a reliable definition of what Module B will eventually provide.
That is how complex projects move forward.
And the same idea applies far beyond electronics.
Inputs and Outputs
One useful way to think about project boundaries is in terms of inputs and outputs.
Suppose you are developing your target market.
The output might be:
“Our primary customer is this specific type of person with these specific needs.”
That output becomes an input to branding.
Now the person—or version of you—working on branding has something concrete to design around.
Branding produces another output.
Manufacturing planning produces outputs.
Engineering produces outputs.
Testing produces outputs.
Each stage does not exist in isolation.
But the handoff between stages should be clear enough that you know what information or deliverable is moving from one to another.
Without those boundaries, you have not really divided the problem.
You have merely renamed different parts of the same giant fuzzy problem.
The Plumbing Analogy
Noah uses a wonderfully ordinary example: getting warm water from the city water supply to your faucet.
If you had to invent that entire system from scratch, “make warm water come out of the faucet” would be a fairly intimidating project.
But the real system is divided into segments.
Water distribution.
The line from the street.
The house connection.
The water heater.
Hot and cold plumbing.
The faucet.
Between those segments are well-defined interfaces—often literally valves and fittings.
A builder does not need to know every detail of the city’s water system.
The builder needs to know what arrives at the connection point.
Pipe size.
Pressure.
Location.
Connection requirements.
Once that boundary is defined, one group can work on one side while another works on the other.
That is modular thinking.
And it is enormously powerful in product development.
Good Boundaries Allow Parallel Progress
Clear boundaries become even more valuable when multiple people are involved.
Imagine waiting for every part of a complex product to be completely designed before anyone starts the next part.
Development would crawl.
Instead, teams define interfaces.
The mechanical engineer knows how much space the electronics can occupy.
The electronics engineer knows what power is available.
The industrial designer knows where the user controls need to go.
The software developer knows what data will be provided by the hardware.
The manufacturer knows what materials and processes are being considered.
These definitions may evolve.
That is okay.
But even a provisional stake in the ground allows work to begin.
Without one, everybody waits for everybody else.
Your Boundaries Are Allowed to Change
Breaking the project into pieces does not mean the original structure becomes sacred.
You may discover that two chunks really belong together.
Merge them.
You may discover that one chunk is actually five separate problems.
Split it.
You may learn something during prototyping that changes the assumptions feeding another part of the project.
Update the boundary.
The purpose of decomposition is not to create bureaucracy.
It is to create forward motion.
The structure is a tool.
If changing the structure helps solve the product more effectively, change it.
Daenerys Didn’t Conquer Westeros in One Task
Naturally, Game of Thrones makes an appearance.
Daenerys Targaryen has an enormous overarching objective: reclaim power.
But she cannot accomplish that as one task.
First there are dragons.
Then armies.
Then ships.
Then alliances.
Then cities.
Then increasingly questionable fire-related management decisions.
Her path changes as circumstances change.
She learns things.
She gains resources.
She loses resources.
New problems appear.
The larger goal remains, but the immediate problem is always smaller.
Inventors need the same mentality.
Do not wake up every morning and attempt to “launch the invention.”
Ask:
What is the next manageable problem that needs to be solved?
Solve that.
Then move to the next one.
Crude Prototypes Are Small Solutions
Noah connects this directly to the way Product QuickStart develops products.
A client may arrive saying:
“I want this finished product that does this thing.”
But a development team cannot simply jump to the finished product.
First, they may build a crude prototype to answer one important question.
Can this mechanism work at all?
If yes, great.
Now solve the next problem.
If no, that is useful too.
You have learned something before investing heavily in everything else.
This is one of the most valuable reasons to divide a project into smaller problems.
Sometimes a small experiment reveals that the larger idea needs to change.
Discovering that early is not failure.
It is inexpensive learning.
Solve the Riskiest Questions Before They Become Expensive
Inventors often want to make the product look finished as quickly as possible.
But appearance may not be the most important uncertainty.
If the entire business depends on a mechanism that nobody has proven can work, solve that problem first.
If the product depends on an unusual material, test it.
If the electronics must communicate over a certain distance, prove that.
If users have to understand an unfamiliar interaction, test it with users.
Each uncertainty can become its own smaller development problem.
This allows you to spend money progressively as confidence increases.
The alternative is building everything at once and discovering near the end that one critical assumption was wrong.
That is a much more expensive education.
Tesla Didn’t Solve “Electric Car”
The episode closes with Tesla as another example.
Tesla did not succeed by solving one giant problem called:
“Build an awesome electric car.”
That outcome required hundreds of smaller problems.
Battery technology.
Charging.
Power electronics.
Motors.
Thermal management.
Software.
Manufacturing.
Packaging.
Safety.
User experience.
Supply chains.
And a long list of other engineering and business challenges.
Solve enough smaller problems and eventually the large outcome emerges.
Whether or not the Cybertruck looks like Steven’s old Pinewood Derby car is a separate question.
The Product Genius Take
When an invention feels overwhelming, the answer is not simply to “work harder on the invention.”
Shrink the problem.
Break the project into meaningful chunks.
Define what belongs inside each chunk.
Define what comes out of it.
Define what the next chunk needs from it.
Focus on one role at a time.
Use crude prototypes and small experiments to answer specific questions.
Allow the structure to change as you learn.
And remember that you do not have to solve the entire business today.
You need to solve the next useful problem.
Then the next.
Then the next.
A hundred small solutions can become one very big success.
Or, read the full transcript here:
Steven Julian
Have you ever had an idea that you're really excited about, but it's such a big idea with so many bits and pieces that you don't know where to start? Well, you came to the right place to get some solutions. next on Product Genius. 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.
Noah McNeely
My line, yes!
Steven Julian
Welcome to another hopefully award-winning edition of Product Genius. It is your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian. Why do you know I'm slightly annoying? That's because I decided to hold that note until Noah himself actually looked up from his note-taking going, what are you doing?
Noah McNeely
I thought we were doing Good Morning Vietnam there for a second. Yes, absolutely.
Steven Julian
Great reference. Great reference. The show of... Pop cultural references that are. only for people close to our age or people who like to watch old movies. Seated to my right is the intrepid producer Jody Smith and he who has already entered the show because it is his show. He is the one who brings us all around the table and he talks about his genius. We bring our genius of production and slightly annoyingness and he also brings other geniuses to the table and he helps you bring your product to market. It is Noah McNeely of Product Quick Start.
Noah McNeely
Welcome, sir. Well, thank you. And no, no, my friend, this is our show. So if it goes poorly, I can blame you as well.
Steven Julian
Oh, when it goes poorly, if it ever has, I think it, I don't know. Has there a show that's gone poorly?
Noah McNeely
I'm not sure, but if there was, it was your fault.
Steven Julian
Yeah. And listen, I was just about to say, if a show does go poorly, there is without question. Only one culprit, and that is me. That's what I do sitting in this chair. That's why I'm the co-host. That's why I'm slightly annoying. That's part of my gimmick. That way, everything. can be heaped upon me so that you can stay the genius that you are and, more importantly, the leader of the show.
Noah McNeely
And to be clear, if you were having this discussion with me not here and you said it was all my fault. That'd be fine. I don't care. Sure.
Steven Julian
Absolutely. I'll do that. So apparently we're doing a show with Noah, not here sometime in the future. Hey, welcome to the episode known as bring your project to podcast day. Noah's got a project he's working on. And out of that project, he had some thoughts. He had some ideas. We started a conversation and it's leading to this episode. So I'm going to cut and then we're going to get to a solution or we're going to get to at least some things learned out of this project. Noah has brought to the podcast.
Now, he can't obviously share every single detail. He's going to talk in generalities because of client confidence and because it's not quite to market and all that kind of stuff. But Noah, let me get out of your way for just a second. And why don't you talk in general terms? about the project that you're currently working on now and why you brought it to the podcast?
Noah McNeely
Yeah, so I'm in the middle. It's a huge, huge group project. There are a lot of different people involved. It is still, you know, it's an inventor project still, but it's one of these. that's, you know, it's got a lot of backing behind it because it is such a big project. And there's probably about 10 or 12 people on the team, all with different areas of expertise. And it's this big problem to solve. It's got electronics. It's got software, it deals with fluid flow, user interfaces. It's got this whole deal around medical information and all these different things.
And it's such a big problem to solve with so many nuances that, frankly, even this team of senior experts and senior, very experienced people, we had trouble. Getting started at first.
Steven Julian
So one of the outflows of this, because what I don't want to have happen is somebody who's a solo entrepreneur, a solo inventor going, well, no one's talking about this project with all these different people. It doesn't apply to me.
Noah McNeely
No matter. Yeah, it absolutely applies. to you. That's why we're talking. This is not the group project only episode. This applies to you. He just, I'm stealing it. I took it right out of your mouth. No, that's not what I mean at all.
Steven Julian
So the, so the, so the, the topic today is no matter how big or small your project is, there's going to be moments where you go, there's just too many things. This, this is too big. So, um, and, and so again, you're, you're not, and so I've tried to talk about solo entrepreneurs, but. It's almost, this is something that goes about industries and other businesses. And of course, you have a reference. It reminds you of a story or reminds you of a movie or, you know, kind of tie it in.
Make it entertaining. Yeah.
Noah McNeely
So like you said, even so entrepreneurs, it could be a big problem for you to solve, even if you had a team of 12 people, maybe it wouldn't be. But, you know, everybody's got these big problems to solve. You know, one of the things you can do is you go back to, I think, an old Confucian proverb of, I. don't know if that's where it is. Maybe that's just what I think it is. But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You can go to that. And, you know, they also like to say the journey to the refrigerator also begins with a single step.
I'll be right back.
Steven Julian
I'm going to get a Dr. Pepper out of your refrigerator. Keep talking.
Noah McNeely
Please, please do. But that's not really all that useful. I mean, it is a little bit in the point of that is, well, you just got to start somewhere. Okay. That's fine. But you still got this great big problem ahead of you. So that's, um, that's why I brought that up because I thought it would be funny. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Yeah.
Steven Julian
By the way, the, uh, the journey to your refrigerator inside the layer of product quickstart is four steps. So that's right. I was shuffling, but you know, it's still, it's four steps there, four steps back. So, uh, and so, so you've got, and, and again, many examples, uh, you know, I was thinking. Team sports, I was involved in it and I coached. it and not one player, multiple players have to do multiple jobs to get there. You got to break it down. You got to break down big problems, right? So, okay, so there's some examples.
And you did mention, you didn't quite mention it yet, but you were talking to me before about, there's examples of this in movies as well.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, of course. You're jumping around my notes here, so you're confusing me, but that's okay. I'm right there. I know. You skipped like three things.
Steven Julian
No, I didn't. Think about this. So I was waiting for you to do the industries and you didn't.
Noah McNeely
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Steven Julian
This is what we get for trying to use notes.
Noah McNeely
Yeah. So this big project I'm working on, we had to get started. The way we eventually got started was we broke it into a chunk.
Steven Julian
Hold on. The question now is, is Jody going to edit this episode to take that out?
Noah McNeely
Oh, I think you need to accentuate all the disagreement here.
Steven Julian
Producer my butt. All right.
Noah McNeely
It's productive disagreement.
Steven Julian
Noah, I'm going to get out of your way. Tell me what you're thinking.
Noah McNeely
Please stay in my. way. But no, you said team sports. So just the example there is, you know, a football team can't practice to win a football game. You know, they've got to practice all the different segments of the game. You got to practice offense. You got to practice defense. You got to practice special teams. You got to practice your touchdown dance. All these different things. Oh, the last one's optional, but you got to do all these different things. You can't go out and say, okay, go practice winning the game.
That doesn't work that way. You've got to break that big problem into lots of little problems. You know, and some teams do that better than others, I guess, but you have to do it that way. And think about those other industries that, you know, like a lot of industries, like a wedding planner can't.
Steven Julian
I thought that was a good one.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, they can't plan to put on a wedding. They have to break that into segments. You've got to have a segment about getting the flowers there. You've got to have a segment about getting the rice that kills the pigeons there. All the different stuff.
Steven Julian
Well, I would say both those examples, you plan a wedding by 127 smaller tasks that you've done. You win a football game by practicing all those different things of offense, defense, special teams, and yes, even your touchdown dance that you plan in front of the mirror.
Noah McNeely
Right. So like you said movies. So yeah, you're right. I had something, I always have something about movies. It seems like maybe I watched too many movies. I don't know, but.
Steven Julian
No way.
Noah McNeely
Yeah. So like heist movies like Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job, you know, they don't plan to let's rob a casino and that's the whole plan. They have to break that into different chunks. So it's one person's responsibility to figure out how the safe works and one person's responsibility to figure out, you know, how do we disable the alarm system? All these different things. They have to be broken into chunks and then that becomes the overall plan. But that way you can have one person working on maybe step 12 of the plan while other people are working on the different bits and pieces.
Steven Julian
So the only question I have to ask about your. movie reference, those are great movie references, Oceans 11, 12, and 13, The Italian Job. Does The Secret of Nim have this as part of their storyline or not? Just trying to keep the joke going.
Noah McNeely
I don't think so.
Steven Julian
I don't think that was part of the plot line.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, there's only so much planning mice can do. Yes, exactly.
Steven Julian
So you've got all kinds of clear examples where things have to be broken up. So you're kind of bringing it back to the solopreneur, the entrepreneur, the inventor working by themselves. How do they do that by themselves? How do they get all these skills? You and this project you brought to the podcast. You had all these different specialists, and somebody's got to start somewhere, and somebody's got to decide to be the first one to go. You can't just all work by yourself. So bring it down to the individual levels.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, so these examples, they're teams of people. Obviously, a football team's going to divide up, divide and conquer how they approach the game. These heist movies, they're going to divide and conquer. In this big project I'm working on, we divided and conquered that. and brought it into segments. But you as an entrepreneur, Inventing a product, that's a really big problem, even if it's a simple product. So you yourself, even if you're going to do everything or almost everything, you need to break that up into chunks. And that may mean that you have to wear different hats throughout that process.
And it's really tempting to try to think about the whole problem at one time as an inventor or entrepreneur, but that's usually not very productive. Putting on the hat for chunk one and just focusing on that and then putting on the hat for chunk three and focusing on that. These don't necessarily have to go like. you don't have to finish chunk one before you start these other chunks, but you have to really focus your time. Like, in fact, I would say you don't do everything necessarily sequentially. You don't wait until the very end of your product development to think about your marketing, but you put your marketing hat on and you take your designer hat off for a little while to get that done.
Steven Julian
How have you seen yourself or how have you seen your clients? do this well? Because I'm sitting here thinking some of this might be based on personality.
Noah McNeely
Absolutely. Okay.
Steven Julian
So what are some of the ways you've seen this work well? What are some of the examples where someone has gotten fuzzy on this? Let's start with how do you see this work? Because I get it. Okay. I've got to wear different hats. How do I? What are some examples of people putting on this hat, doing it, and then taking it off and setting clear boundaries, doing this well? What does that look like?
Noah McNeely
So I see errors on kind of or problematic behavior on both sides of that. So on the one side, if you leave, you might be kind of fuzzy between the... The between the boundaries and that may even be unintentional. So you're working on your marketing, but you keep getting distracted. You're thinking about, okay, and I'm using marketing just as an example. It can be anywhere along the process. So you're working on your marketing, you're writing your logo, you're developing your logo, all that sort of stuff. And you really can't make any progress there because every 10 minutes you think about, oh, well, what about this other thing over here that I've got to go work on?
Sometimes I think some people need to really almost work in a different space. For each of these things, you know, maybe take your laptop to a different table or go to the library to work on this thing if you find yourself too distracted by whatever environment you normally work in.
Steven Julian
So in my career as an independent financial advisor, I was told early on time blocking is essential. If you can do this and do it successfully, it's okay. I'm going to set an alarm on my phone. For the next 90 minutes, I'm going to focus on marketing. And then I'm going to take a break. And you almost organize your day out. I'm going to try to put on these three hats today during these three blocks of time. And then you've got to guard that. Is that what you're talking about?
Noah McNeely
It is, but... But my point, I guess a point I would make there is that doesn't work well for everybody. And I'll be honest, that doesn't work great for me. So for me, I do find myself. easily distracted because I am working on several projects at once. So that's why sometimes I find changing my environment helps. Even if that just means going to a table on the other side of the room to focus on something else. And maybe turning my phone off for a while to focus on this, that, or the other.
Or coming back to the shop and leaving my phone in the office so I can focus just on building that prototype.
Steven Julian
So one of the solutions I think where we would start with is somewhat, you've got to figure out who you are. Yes. See, I see it as a personality. And I brought up that story because I'm not the greatest time blocker. But I had to get at least decent enough where I said, okay. After I check my email in the morning and get all that stuff out of the way, I can't go back to my email until 1 o'clock, and I got to take that time. So I had to be somewhat of a time blocker, but there are some people, type A personality, man, they can, and going back to your point of football, you talk to any football coach, they have their practices down to the minute.
We're going to this, we're going to this, they blow the whistle, they go, and you got to get everything done in that amount of time. I do think there are some their personality type in yours. You're kind of admitting this like, hey, sometimes I just I got to know when to check myself. I don't you don't necessarily set alarms, but you're like. No, I really need to concentrate on this, and so I'm going to go over here, and when I feel like I've made some progress or I can't put off anything else anymore, I'll go back to the other thing.
So is a little bit of knowing yourself, whether you need to be slave to the clock or not a little bit?
Noah McNeely
I think so, and I think it's going to work differently for everybody. So knowing yourself, you bring up a good point there. I think there are a lot of people that are like, And I like to describe myself this way. I'm a multitasker, but that doesn't mean I can do 30 things at one time. What that. means is I can be very disciplined about switching from one thing to the next. And sometimes in rapid succession, this isn't necessarily, this is part of your personality too. Some people need to take a whole day and just do one thing.
Correct. That's fine. That's how you find the way you work well. If that's how you work best, do that. I actually don't work the best that way. I do need to do one thing at a time, but I actually find myself working better in an hour at a time. And because of my particular mental issues or whatever we want to call them, I need to jump from thing to thing more periodically so that that keeps my creativity flowing. Other people, and I've worked with some in the past that... They really do not thrive that way.
They thrive on the other end of the spectrum. No, I just want to focus on one thing for two days. And if you distract me at all, I'm going to lose my mind and start over. Product Genius is brought to you by Opu Probiotics.
Steven Julian
Pre and probiotics you can pour directly on your tongue in. delicious mint and mocha flavors. But the taste is just the beginning. With Opu, you can see improved digestive function, boosted immune system, easier weight management, improved mental health, and much more. Try today at getopu.com. That's getopu.com. So we've talked, so I like that you've taken the time and we've talked a little bit about kind of know thyself and figure out how you work best in this, but that we do need to tackle the main issue of big, big problems or big tasks gone down into manageable chunks and taking those chunks one at a time.
You've got something that you want to kind of talk about, a big trick, something that can really kind of help with this idea of this big problem, big project, and breaking it down into smaller things.
Noah McNeely
Yeah. So one of the key, you know, it's easier said than done to break a big problem into small chunks. How you define the boundaries between those different chunks. And it's really, in my experience, very critical to make those boundaries very solid. Very explicit boundaries. And I don't mean explicit like explicit lyrics in a song.
Steven Julian
I was going to say, what. do you mean by boundaries? The boundary between marketing and talking to the factory? Are you talking about boundaries between – because I'm just kind of – I guess in order to know the boundaries, I have to know what all the different tasks are. In your big project, everybody knows what their task is. I think sometimes as a solo entrepreneur, it's like I'm not even sure I could define all the tasks. Am I on to something there?
Noah McNeely
Yes, absolutely. And there's people like me that can help you understand what those steps are, of course. But I think the boundaries between things like marketing and talking to the factory, those – Those are a little more obvious. It's really more within these elements of a program. So like within marketing, you've got your branding, you know, your logo and et cetera. And then you've also got, you know, who am I marketing it to? How am I going to market it? This, that, and the other. And not letting those things blend together.
So in other words, the brand will feed in or the target market that will feed into the brand. Once I identify the target market, the output of that, you know, it's teenage girls or whatever, that becomes the input to defining the brand. Or in the example that I was, you know, in the project I'm working on, we're dealing with electronics that have to communicate from one area to another. So that boundary becomes module B is going to deliver this information to module C. And Module C is going to take that information around with it.
So it's not left fuzzy in the sense of, well, Module C's got to do this and Module B's got to do this. And we don't really know yet what's going to be, we got to set a stake in the ground and say, okay, Module A is going to deliver temperature and power and whatever to Module C. And then if we define that well, we can have somebody start on Module C long before we finish Module B. That sounded very technical and engineering and nerdy, and I apologize.
Steven Julian
I was just going to say, you are tackling this like an engineer.
Noah McNeely
I know, and it's irritating. Why?
Steven Julian
But it's necessary, apparently. I suppose. What's the biggest danger of...
Noah McNeely
Asteroids. Oh, I'm sorry. There's more to the question.
Steven Julian
You sure it's not hemorrhoids? What is the biggest danger?
Noah McNeely
I'm sure.
Steven Julian
Okay. So what's the danger of me not defining the boundaries? What is the danger? What's the biggest danger? Is it that I get stuck? Is it that I never get anything accomplished? Is it that I come out and it's just this giant mishmash and I've never really solved any problems or found a solution? Or it's the project that I work on for 10 years and never get to the end?
Noah McNeely
If you don't define the boundaries, I think you really haven't divided the problem up. I mean, if you don't define a boundary, Then how do you know where, you know, problem group B starts? How do you know what you're supposed to have at the end of group A to get into group B? So in other words, you haven't divided that up at all now. It's just still one big problem to solve.
Steven Julian
Can I give you an analogy from my career?
Noah McNeely
Please.
Steven Julian
Okay. So I'm allowed by compliance to say that I'm an independent financial advisor, and that's all I'm allowed to say. If I said more, I would have to get it approved by compliance, yada, yada, yada, yada. I started my career with a firm that's famous for bringing in people from other careers like me, kind of a nonprofit educational background type scenario. Studying to be a financial advisor, and there is one thing I will say great about this former firm that I started with. They took away so many other parts of the problem of being a financial advisor by providing an assistant, by providing office space, by taking care of computer and having an IT, because they set the boundary so clearly of your job.
Talk to people, find people, get them to talk about their money, show them what you do, and see if they're interested in hiring you. That's it. That's a whole job. That's all you got to worry about. Everything else that would pop up, well, call the computer. They'll call the IT. We'll send somebody to you. Have your administrative assistant handle that. We'll take care of the... I never had to worry about any of the other things around the business. I mean, and people go, well, there was something, but they really did a. very good job of defining the boundaries of saying, this is your job.
That's all it is. Find money. So I think the more in your bringing your product to market and putting your idea, the more you can eliminate some things or the more you can hand off. I'm going to have somebody else handle that possibly so that I can – so that is part of defining the boundaries, defining what you want to accomplish.
Noah McNeely
I think that's it. But I also think that even if you are a lone entrepreneur, you're at that stage of your process and you're bootstrapping it so you can't afford an assistant or whatever, that goes back to wearing the right hat at the right time. You have to – you cannot wear the assistant hat and the IT hat and the – I'm the guy who – You know, pays the rent hat. You've got to put on that hat, finish that task or get as far as you need to on that task, then take that hat off and put another hat on.
Steven Julian
Because if you don't file your taxes, they're going to eventually come and close down your business.
Noah McNeely
Well, yeah, there's that. But if you're going through email and you're flipping from email to email and wearing a different hat every two minutes, you're not going to, you're going to drive yourself crazy.
Steven Julian
Yeah. And so you talk about the handoffs, you know, got to be explicit. I'm putting this down and I'm picking this up for a specific period of time or until I get to this part of the process. And then, okay, I got where I needed to go. I got something done. Let's put that down. Let's go to something else. Now I'm going to put everything down and go home and rest because I need to get my rest. So the handoffs kind of being explicit. So let's say we start. We're doing good.
We're not as fuzzy. We've got some handoffs. We're starting to define. The boundaries go farther down the path. Is this just, oh, I just got to do this once and really concentrate on it. It'll be fine. Or is this a daily, you know, take up my cross kind of thing that I got to do this over and over and over again?
Noah McNeely
Well, I mean, hopefully it's. not quite that intense, but. You have to look at it. It's a tool like anything else in business. It is a tool that you have at your disposal to use. So don't freak out early on and worry about, oh, what, you know, define this handoff between this step and that step. Well, what if I'm working on it and that needs to change for some reason? That's okay. We can come back and change these later, but you have to start somewhere. And starting somewhere is not, oh, I got to solve this whole big problem at one time.
It's still breaking it into bits and pieces. And you may find that, oh, well, piece C and piece D, they're really kind of the same and I'm going to merge this. That's okay. If that helps you get further along, that's fine. And you may also find, well, piece D needs to divide into five different pieces at some point. That's also okay. It is not, what you do on day one is not set in stone. This is really just a technique to help you move down the road.
Steven Julian
Yep. Not only do you have a movie. analogy, I believe you have a streaming slash TV series analogy.
Noah McNeely
Yeah. So, you know, years ago I watched Game of Thrones. I watched the whole thing all the way through. And I, you know, I enjoyed it because I like fantasy sci-fi stuff. But, you know, so one of the main characters in the, for those who haven't seen it, one of the main characters is Daenerys Targaryen. And she, you know, you kind of follow her journey. You know, she's one of several characters. you follow her journey. If you don't. The show can be really annoying because it'll spend three scenes on one character and then go to someone else.
You don't get back to that character until like two episodes later. But anyway.
Steven Julian
But they do define the boundaries very clearly.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, kind of. But anyway, that's not my point. My point is, you know, her goal, her overarching goal, you know, her family had been thrown out of the kingdom and lost the throne and this, that, and this. Her overarching goal throughout the series is to reclaim, you know, her rulership of this kingdom and all. And, you know, there's a lot of bits. and pieces, but she couldn't start. In fact, she didn't even know enough to start with that as the whole goal. I'm going to retake the kingdom. She had to do it.
She had to divide it into little segments and each one led to another. And she had to make changes and evolutions along the way based on how things evolve. So just back to the thing about the boundaries may change in the definition of the different segments may change. And as she started with. I've got these baby dragons. I've got to raise these dragons. That's step one. Then I've got to find an army. Where am I going to find an army? I've got to get a fleet. Now I'm going to burn these cities and all this sort of horrible stuff she ends up doing.
But she couldn't start with all of that at one time because, again, she would drive herself crazy. She had to do things in chunks. So that's sort of an odd example in a way, but it does relate, I think.
Steven Julian
See, my reference would have been Gilligan's Island. They, you know, they had to get off the island. They. had to break it into chunks. The problem was every single week there was something else that would come up that would distract them from doing what they needed to do.
Noah McNeely
You had to build a bamboo radio. You had to build a bamboo car. You had to get the Harlem Globetrotters there.
Steven Julian
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you had to get the Howells to dump all their stuff. And then you make bicycles that you spin to turn the fan and all that kind of stuff. Exactly. No, I like your analogy better. I will.
Noah McNeely
Go ahead. No, you're going to say something.
Steven Julian
I believe you have one other analogy.
Noah McNeely
I do. Something a little bit more practical. So let's say your goal, your overarching goal is I want to have warm water come out of my faucet.
Steven Julian
I think that's everybody's overarching goal.
Noah McNeely
Oh, fine. But let's say you had to develop the whole system from scratch. So you can't just start with, oh, warm water coming out of the faucet. You've got to break this into chunks.
Steven Julian
So think about how the water- So you start by having baby dragons.
Noah McNeely
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. If you can start with. baby dragons, you should start everything with baby dragons. But anyway, it's too big of a problem to solve at once. So you've got- And think about how it actually works in the real world. The water company just doesn't deliver warm water to your faucet. They have broken it into, and the whole system is broken into a set of segments. And there's something between each segment, a valve. So first, the water comes from the water, well, there's stuff before that, but the water comes from the water tower and there's big water mains, gets to the street in front of your house, and there's a great big valve there that can be turned on and off to let water go to the next step, which is the pipe that goes from the street.
To your house, there's a big valve there. And then from there, you've got, they open that valve and it sends the water in a couple of different places. The water that's going to be hot goes to your hot water here. The water that's going to be cold can come straight to your sink. And there's other valves there that actually goes up. to the faucet, which mixes it and et cetera. So each one of those segments is a different element of the problem. And those valves, that's the really well-defined boundary between each one.
So if I'm building a house from scratch, I know what I'm going to get from the water company. There's going to be a valve, it's going to be this size, this is how much pressure it's going to deliver, theoretically, from the water company. And I can take it from there, you know, as a plumber or a builder. I know, okay, well, I'm getting that from the city. So I know this is the size pipe I need and whatnot. Maybe that's all my job. Maybe I'm just doing the pipes under the ground and I'm taking it to the stub and somebody else is going to build the house.
Well, I know they're going to need this size valve here, so I'm going to put that at the end of my work. And then they can already be designing the house knowing what size valve they need to interface with. And that's really those well-defined boundaries between... The different segments of the problem. And. that's why it's important.
Steven Julian
Yeah. And everybody listening to this, I think you kind of think through what's the warm, you know, they've got the getting warm water to my face. I like to use that part of the plumbing analogy rather than I got to get this stuff out of my house. So both work and both involve plumbing. One is water coming in. The other is using water to get other stuff out.
Noah McNeely
Well, thinking about the delivery of clean water is much more pleasant than the removal of dirty water.
Steven Julian
Yes, yes. But of course, your slightly annoying co-host does immediately go to that part of the solution of that problem slash solution. But I think I like your idea of, and again, getting back to the bottom line of this, you kind of had, you know, the thing that started this was killing big problems with a lot of small solutions. Anybody, almost anybody listening to this, actually anybody listening to this show, no matter where you are in the process of inventing and or bringing your product to market, or you've already done it and accomplished it, hopefully at this point is going, yep, I. know what he's talking about.
I can think of those valves. I can think of the different parts. And you got to start by, or at least think about dividing those things up. Think about attacking them. By clear handoffs and creating defined boundaries. And does it ever end?
Noah McNeely
Well, when your product launches, I guess. It's just the problem changes, right?
Steven Julian
Yeah, I guess it comes to different problems. You want to go from the problems of how do I get this on from my brain and idea to market? And now it's how do I keep it on the market?
Noah McNeely
How do I improve it?
Steven Julian
You know, minimum viable product, you know, get it to market. You've talked about those kind of topics. So this, in a way, is what you do, right?
Noah McNeely
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, helping clients to break their project up into chunks. And, you know, even if I'm working on your project, I have to do that, too. You know, again, you say, oh, I want to, you know, I want this thing that does this thing. Well, I can't. Make that. I can't make the finished product. You know, I can't start with. that. I've got to start with, well, you know, I'm going to first make a crude prototype to see if we can even accomplish that. And then from there, there's another segment.
In another segment, in another segment.
Steven Julian
Because the other side of this is one way that the problems may end is one of the reasons you also want to kill big problems with small solutions. is one of those small solutions might come to say, okay, we did this, this, and this, and there's no way this product is going to work in this current form because of this. That's a solution. Again, it's a solution some people may not want to hear, but that's your job to go, I helped you find this solution with minimal. With as minimal pain and cost as possible to the person.
And then other things is, okay, the solution is we got to change. If you're willing to change this and this, then we can keep going down this path. So I like that. I like where we're going with this. I think this is a topic we've covered in various ways, danced around. This is another way to talk about. it. And more importantly, helping people tackle it.
Noah McNeely
Right. And to that point about sometimes things change, go back to the plumbing analogy. So let's say you realize, okay, the house is too far from the street for that one, you know, what we plan to work. You may have to put like a pumping station midway. Let's say it's a house that's half a mile from the road or whatever, and the water coming from the city is really weak. So that's going to change that segment B, and that's okay. You can still have segment C, D, and E. Those are all still the same.
It's segment B that goes back and changes, and you can still have a success there.
Steven Julian
So I'd like to maybe finish this episode with a little shout out to an engineer because you kind of give one last example. And I think it was an example that you and I are roughly close to the same age. And I think there was this general understanding that something would never be done. This big problem of, ah, they'll never be electric cars.
Noah McNeely
Well, there will never be electric cars, and then there will. never be cool electric cars, and there will never be electric cars anyone wants to drive. So, you know, Tesla, everybody knows what Tesla is, and they didn't solve the problem of building an awesome electric car. They solved a hundred little problems to get to that point of building an awesome electric car.
Steven Julian
I still remember, speaking of my career, that you allowed me to talk about a little bit of... A client, we were talking about Tesla when it was originally $40 a share, and they had just started to, they were ramping up production, and the thought was, they'll never sell to the general public. They'll never be able to get the cost of this down. And I remember the client going, boy, if this hits, this is like turning $10,000 into $100,000. It actually would be about a million at this point, based on that investment.
Noah McNeely
Now, the Tesla truck, I'm not so sure about. The Tesla car.
Steven Julian
I know exactly the Tesla truck. I built one of those in my Pinewood Derby one year, a long time ago.
Noah McNeely
Exactly. If they started there, I'm not sure the stock would have gone quite as high.
Steven Julian
Although. it is the classic, it is the closest we've ever seen to a Transformer on the road.
Noah McNeely
I also think it's the closest I've ever seen to what the people in the 70s thought the future would look like. But more movie references there.
Steven Julian
I got to go find some. Yeah, I think I'm going to watch MST3K over the weekend because I'm sure there's some old movies that show the Tesla truck there. Yeah, that was designed by an engineer.
Noah McNeely
I think it was designed by some people addicted to some substances, but who knows?
Steven Julian
Well, yeah, you're right. Okay, I apologize to all the engineers who listen to our show. Sorry.
Noah McNeely
This is not really our opinion. Don't sue us. We love the Tesla truck. It's beautiful.
Steven Julian
We'd love to take one. We'll sponsor it if they'll give us one.
Noah McNeely
It is a design icon for the future.
Steven Julian
Yes, yes, absolutely. Noah, I just want to remind everybody. So, Noah, your company is Product Quick Start. Go to productquickstart.com. They can do the contact us. Don't put, oh man, you're already starting the music. Don't put, I got a great idea. Make sure and fill out the information. Noah, thank you.
Noah McNeely
Yes, the views expressed on this program do not reflect the views of product Quickstart. All right.
Steven Julian
And by the way, past performance is no guarantee of future result. Please read perspectives carefully and consult your financial professional. I want to thank Jody, our producer. I want to thank Noah for putting this show together and bringing Jody and I together. We had a great time. Hope you guys learned something. This is your Slightly Annoying Co-host, Steven Julian. Saying again, we will drive the Tesla truck if you give us one and we'll catch you next time on Product Genius.