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

Steven Julian: Do you like books? Perhaps you prefer self-guided formative experiences. Well, today you’ll get both. Plus, we celebrate our first ever guest from outside our borders. He’ll talk about bacon and we don’t mean the Canadian kind. Next on Product Genius.

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

Steven Julian: Greetings and salutations, loyal listeners, of the great podcast known as Product Genius. Coming to you almost live from deep inside the layer of Product Quick Start, it is me. I already said that. And it is the intrepid producer, Jody Smith, and seated across the table, feeling very comfortable in his own place. It is Noah McNeely, the host. Hey, Noah.

Noah McNeely: Well, I’m as comfortable as I get anywhere. I never really feel fully comfortable.

Steven Julian: In front of. a microphone? Or in life?

Noah McNeely: Anywhere in life.

Steven Julian: Sounds like another show.

Noah McNeely: Recovering engineer. I’m still trying to get my feet under that. But yeah, I’m doing good.

Steven Julian: As long as I don’t bring any more discomfort or uncomfortableness than you already have in your life, I think I’ll take that as a satisfactory answer.

Noah McNeely: It’s a fun sort of discomfort with you.

Steven Julian: Well, thanks. I’m not sure there’s another show.

Noah McNeely: Not that kind of fun discomfort, but okay, we should stop talking about that.

Steven Julian: Speaking of which, we’re proud to have Tiffany and Opu Probiotics as our sponsor again. I couldn’t resist. You put it on a tee and I knocked it out of the park. Love you, Tiffany. We miss you. I hope you’re doing great. And yes, sorry.

Noah McNeely: We’re going to get another letter.

Steven Julian: We’re going to get another email. Oh, man. Before that happens, let’s welcome in our guests. We are thrilled, man. We’ve got a great guest. Noah, you keep lining up these fantastic guests who have all kinds of interesting things to say. So let’s go ahead and bring them in. We have Laurier Manden. He is the author of a book called I. Need That, and he’s the head of a company called Graphios.

Noah McNeely: Graphos. Graphos.

Steven Julian: Sorry. Dang it. I spelled it wrong on my notes, and I messed it up. Let me fix that.

Noah McNeely: The year is young.

Steven Julian: You’ve already made their strike one.

Noah McNeely: You get three strikes this year.

Steven Julian: I know. Speaking of which, as of this recording, there are about 25 days till pitchers and catchers report. One of those teams will be from Toronto and Laurier is from Canada. Laurier, welcome to the studio.

Laurier Mandin: Hey, it’s great to be here. And I like that name. I’m thinking there could be a cereal brand in Grafios.

Steven Julian: Oh, oh, I like that. Oh, you’re so kind. You’re so kind. But for those people who are now Googling you and finding out about the book and looking for the company, let’s tell them about the company and what you guys do.

Laurier Mandin: Sure. Graphos or Graphos Product, what we do is help innovators, and that includes inventor entrepreneurs like the kind that listen to this show, develop products and take products to market. The most important part of the work we do is in helping them. Position their product and come up with. a really solid go-to-market roadmap. So we’ve been doing that for over 30 years, if you can believe it. And I believe it now because I was just out shoveling snow for about two hours. We had a huge blizzard and all my neighbors are somehow older than me. So I’m feeling every year of my age right now. So we’re pretty deep in. In marketing products, and that’s what we do best.

Steven Julian: Now, speak also, so out of that, and since you’ve been doing that for 30 years, you definitely have the gravitas and the history, and not just from snuffling show, a shoveling snuffling.

Noah McNeely: That’s two sharks.

Steven Julian: All right, make a note. We’re going to edit that. All right, shoveling snow. I need to slow down, Laurier. All right. Out of the gravitas of the experience, you were able to also write a book called I Need That. Talk about the book and what readers can expect.

Laurier Mandin: I Need That is a book that I worked on for over five years. I started before COVID and just launched it recently. And it’s something that I really wanted to get right because it answered a problem or its goal. is to answer a problem that everybody who’s developing a product has. They’re automatically, just by the fact that they’re doing it, they’re heading into this default trajectory to failure, sadly, where 70 to 95% of new products fail. And that’s just so not necessary. And there are some persistent, repetitive reasons that I saw as to why this continues to happen. And I recognize that if I were to just show people, okay, these are the things that everybody tends to do wrong. These are the things you need to know about your product. Here’s what you need to know about your customer and your customer’s brain. And if you understand all of these things and you take the right steps, then you’ve got no excuse to go into that 70 to 95% batch failure rate. And I joke that, you know, if you, in Vegas, the odds of winning in blackjack or roulette are close to 50-50. You get kicked out of Vegas. Coming in with odds of 70% to 95% for being too risky. And yet people take huge sums of money and years of their lives and throw them at launching products with these terrible odds. And they’re not fixed odds. You can do things to change them. So that’s the short summary of why I wrote I Need That and why I put five years of my life into doing that. And I’m really happy with the outcome. I think that I managed to not make it a… It’s a thousand-page book. I mean, it’s about 300 pages, and it gets you through the things you need to know in order to be successful.

Steven Julian: Absolutely. Noah, I’ve got a question for you before you even ask Laurier your first question that you want to ask him. So as he described his company and kind of what they do, I’m like, I’ve heard some of those things before because you talk about positioning. And we’ve talked many times on this show about coopetition and about how you are trying to help people build a team and you find others who are doing the exact same thing. So talk about why you specifically wanted to have Laurier on the show.

Noah McNeely: Yeah. So I think if you are a listener, have listened to a few of these episodes, you’ll notice there’s a trend. I tend to bring people. on that are a lot like me in some way or another. He has this marketing book, which is he’s an expert on marketing, which is something I can advise people about just a little bit, but he can give much better, deeper advice than I can. And his book, unlike a lot of the marketing books out there, it recognizes that product entrepreneurs have needs too. It’s not just talking to the bigger companies, not just talking to product managers at established companies. Acknowledge and address the needs of the typical people that I work with and that would be listening to this show.

Steven Julian: So you help people develop the product. They definitely need help marketing. Right.

Noah McNeely: As Laurier talks about in the book, you have to have a good product. That helps with the marketing. But as I tell people often, I can make the best product in the world for you. But if you don’t know how to sell and market it, you’re still going to fail.

Steven Julian: So, Laurier, let me kind of get out of your way by asking a question that I’m sure you would love to be asked in every single interview and every. single networking group you go to and probably even at a cocktail party or two. Give us one or two things that an entrepreneur who’s just developed a new product, what are the most important things for their marketing to be successful?

Laurier Mandin: One of the most important things is for them to understand that, yes, someone will buy their product. To achieve a specific outcome. But that’s not necessarily what is going to be the strongest motivation of that buyer to buy the product. What really motivates people is something much bigger. It’s that desired long-term future state of what they want to be, where they want to be. And I call that the coveted condition. So in order to get an idea to understand what a coveted condition could be for your product, take the product name and say, I need name of product here. To become blank, so to become fitter, more efficient, more popular, get promoted, whatever. that long-term outcome is that if I were to take away that product after a year of using it repeatedly, what would you miss the most and what change in your life would be in jeopardy from not having it?

Noah McNeely: So this is a question you’re asking. You’re asking the product developer to ask hypothetically as if one of their customers was asking that question. After using the product, am I understanding that correctly?

Laurier Mandin: Yes, and it’s much more of a marketing question. It’s kind of a brain science question, too, because it’s really trying to understand the emotional part of what the reasoning is for someone to buy the product. And I know that that’s a challenge. when you’re working on and developing and engineering a product, is you’re thinking about… Functionally how it’s going to work. Will it achieve the outcome that it needs to functionally achieve and not going beyond that in terms of how is that person going to feel after that? But we recognize in marketing and the work that I do is that people don’t just buy on solving a functional problem because most of us have solutions to whatever problems we have. We have our status quo way of solving those problems. It’s very, very painful to us emotionally and to our mind, to the neocortex, the big rational part of our brain, to accept that we’re going to have to learn a. new way. So to the emotional part of our brain, new is good, new is exciting, a new way of doing something and something we can dream about is motivating. But to the rational mind, new is scary, dangerous, new has always gotten us killed. Harmed in some way, so we avoid it. So really, one of the biggest things that innovators, that inventor entrepreneurs need to learn to do is to market their products effectively, to get their head out of just that obvious outcome that you’re going to get someone to. It’s obvious that if I buy myself a Ford F-150 that I can throw stuff in and get it from point A to point B and run my construction business. The reason why on the commercials I’m seeing this truck bouncing over boulders and on the top of beautiful mountains and places I’ll never go is because that’s the emotional stuff that gets me to think, wow, yeah, I want a better life. I want to be in command of this powerful machine. It’s not just about that basic functional need of having a truck.

Noah McNeely: Yeah, so I think the emotional aspect of marketing is certainly something. that… I, as a recovering engineer, often struggles with because, you know, we as engineers, product developers, we’re often taught to kind of put emotion aside. And which, yeah, if you’re an engineer with a company that’s got a marketing department and so forth and so on, that’s fine. But a lot of us who are entrepreneurs, we’re kind of one-man shops or one-woman shops or whatever. We can’t do that. Or if we do that, there’s a big danger. So I love the way you approach that. You know, one of the things I like to do with my clients, at least in my sphere, is help them avoid mistakes by talking about mistakes I’ve seen other people make. You know, I always change the names in the scenario to keep the guilty, you know, to protect the guilty and the innocent. Do you have anything like that? What are some, do you have any mistakes you could talk to kind of in a real world way? Again, protect the innocent and the guilty that might.

Laurier Mandin: This is an interesting crossover question between what you do and what you understand as an engineer and what marketers do. And I. talk a lot about validation methodologies in the book. And one of the biggest mistakes that anybody developing a product is, is not necessarily not doing the prototype testing and making sure that it functionally does its job properly, but understanding. Do people want it? What people want it? So doing the validation testing that I find is kind of the crux. It’s the tipping point into failure that so many products go into. And there are all kinds of reasons why innovators fear doing proper validation.

Noah McNeely: Assume our listeners and assume this particular host doesn’t really understand all the terminology that well. What do you, in sort of like… As if you were explaining to someone who’d never heard the term, what is validation testing? What’s an example of that?

Laurier Mandin: Great. And thank you for taking me back a couple of steps. So validation testing is taking the product, and often this is best done in its roughest, barest prototype form, and having people utilize it and finding out if they feel that they really would, they want this. A combination of finding out if users want to use the product, if they will be able to use the. product, and the most important thing when it comes to deciding that you’re going to build something is will they pay what it’s going to cost you to create that product, to manufacture it to a high level of quality, to get that product in their hands, and to make them successful with it. Because that’s often… All of that bundled together, the answer is often no. They will not pay for you to make this thing, to make it amazing and get it to the point of shipping it to them with all your costs. that are going to include processing returns and customer service and all those other things. Because there’s usually a business also around this product. So all those things together, part of what we’re validating or we’re testing for is do customers, do the people who you’re expecting are going to buy this thing, Actually see as much value in it as you believe is there. And will they pay you in decent enough numbers that you could be successful to acquire and own it? Product Genius is brought to you by Opu Probiotics. 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.

Steven Julian: We’re speaking with Laurie A. Mandon. He is the President and Principal Consultant with Graphos. I did correct my mistake. And also the author of.

Laurier Mandin: I Need That.

Steven Julian: And Laurier, I wanted to ask this particular question. One of the things you are called to do or one of the things you see probably as your role is wherever someone is in their journey of getting that product to market and marketed correctly and connect with customers and clients, you’ve got 30 years of experience. Are there a couple of similar bottlenecks that the inventor entrepreneur finds themselves in where they get stuck or they are about to give up or they just can’t get over the hump? What are some of the similar? And that’s a very loaded question because you’ve done technology products, you’ve done. Simple, you know, probably very basic products with, you know, so that’s like, there’s a wide spectrum. So what are some of the bottlenecks you? see people come across? So it’s not mistakes and it’s not advice for success. It’s be ready for these obstacles or be ready for these hard points or pain points.

Laurier Mandin: The biggest challenge has been, and this is something you probably encounter with your work, is manufacturing, getting the right manufacturer. Getting the parts right, the components, all depending on what kind of product you’re putting together. But I’ve had more products that get to the point where now they’re coming up with manufacturers and part specs and all that stuff ends up taking way more time than they thought it would. And I guess for one thing, it’s really important to recognize that everything is going to take, you know, I’ve heard 30%. I think that’s low a lot of the time, longer to do and 30%. More to produce than you think it will. So it’s on actually producing the item that most of that logjam happens. I find that when we get to the stage of creating the marketing, doing the positioning, we talked a little bit about that, writing the content, creating an online store, doing all of that stuff. That’s kind of the fun part. And we don’t end up with huge delays. Very often what we end up waiting for is actual product. And the inventor entrepreneur is always so excited and so, you know, everything in their life revolves around getting that product to market and getting it selling that that’s really arduous and painful. So I find that the bottlenecks aren’t typically so much on the marketing side, as long as we create the proper expectations of how long it’s going to take to build things and design things and write. The content and put it all together in a really nice package. And then once that happens, it’s a flywheel and you’re working on continuous improvement and trying to figure out what may not be working, optimizing things like that. But most of it is probably the stuff you guys tend to encounter on the product development side and when you start getting into the real nuts and bolts of manufacturing.

Noah McNeely: Yeah, I mean, Steven, I know you got something, but that 30% longer than you expected to take, that’s… For people that have some experience with product development, for the people that are brand new, you know, that have been. an entrepreneur that’s never done a product before, that’s a much bigger number often. They have very unrealistic expectations. You know, they see movies and they see, you know, Tony Stark make something in a half hour. It’s like this high-tech thing. It’s like, oh, that can’t be that different from the real world.

Laurier Mandin: Six months must be plenty.

Noah McNeely: Yeah, so a lot of education can go into helping to guide an entrepreneur on the product development side. But I think also, as you’re alluding to on the marketing side as well. But, Stephen, you had a question, so I interjected, so go ahead.

Steven Julian: So, by the way, you brought to the table the–I think we need to–I think we need to create–Jody, make a note. We need to create a manufacturing montage. Of what it really is like in the lair of Product Quick Start. It’s not two minutes long. It’s Noah in a dark, cold corner of the lair, like going through his bit drawers.

Noah McNeely: You just made me sound like Dr. Frankenstein.

Steven Julian: Yeah, and? What’s your point? So, Laurier. I also wanted to ask this question, you know, and kind of? talking about the bottlenecks, you mentioned the word process in the last answer you gave. And I think you guys will kind of stand behind, in fact, I found on your website, kind of the words proprietary and kind of a couple of trademarked processes that you guys do. So if someone works with you. How is their experience going to be more unique than working with someone they find just searching the internet and looking for the first marketing company that doesn’t necessarily specialize with entrepreneurs and inventors?

Laurier Mandin: That uniqueness, I guess, comes from doing it in a way that we’re always optimizing and putting our learnings into and creating systems and platforms and frameworks so that we can be more efficient for our clients. The processes that probably set us aside from more generalist marketing companies and that are built around us marketing products very specifically. So when we take on a new client, we understand the world that they’re going to be going into with this product and the kinds of marketing tools that they’re most likely to be using. Everything that we do and those processes that you mentioned. Are geared around the specific needs that. they’re going to have as a product-making client and also around the gaps that are probably existing in their knowledge. I thought it was interesting that you asked the question about validation and recognizing that for a lot of inventor entrepreneurs, that might not be in their vernacular, in their vocabulary. And to me, that’s true. And the other side of it is it’s shocking. Because you really got to know some of this stuff. I mean, really, read. I Need That before you call me. Because once you’ve done that, some clients I almost feel like, did you read this book when I meet them now? Because they have this advanced level of knowledge. But most really are starting at a point where they should be armed with more knowledge before they’re… Before they go in and start talking to marketing companies.

Noah McNeely: Yeah, and I think a lot of times, you know, the inventor, entrepreneur, especially someone new to it, they just can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want to buy their product. And in your space and in my space, they can’t imagine why it wouldn’t work or why it can’t be made for whatever it’s going to be. made. And I think you and I probably both fight similar battles there, at least to get people to wrap their head around that. I did want to jump over. Or jump back to the book a little bit because there were a couple things in there that piqued my interest. One in particular, because I’m a big fan of bacon, you have a chapter which I thought would be both insightful and entertaining about how all of a sudden bacon became a thing and marketing was a big driver of that. Is there something? Is there a lesson there that we could apply to entrepreneurs?

Laurier Mandin: There’s definitely kind of a psychological, and when we talk about positioning, how bacon came to be is really a wide positioning and influencer marketing 100 years ago story. Because, yeah, bacon wasn’t originally a breakfast food. It was something that a food… Producing company wanted to come up with a way to sell more of, but it didn’t have a place in people’s world. So what they did was they got a well-known and one of the first of his kind in his day, TR man, to write letters to doctors. And I. think he wrote letters to 5,000 doctors and had them endorse bacon as a breakfast food. that would give people. You know, better start to their day. It would give them something more substantial and, you know, accompanied with other things that would make it a more reasonable breakfast food like eggs. And he actually had, I think it was 95% of the doctors responded endorsing this idea. And then they took it to the media and the power of newspapers in the day was such that putting this on the front pages of all the newspapers in America made people feel that they needed bacon in their lives, that that’s where bacon. It went from this kind of obscure thing that not too many people were eating to that breakfast food that everybody craves. You want the sizzle of that bacon because a PR guy 100 years ago decided or was hired to make you want it.

Noah McNeely: That were, you know, my taste buds would certainly agree that bacon is….

Steven Julian: The PR guy was right.

Noah McNeely: Yeah, well, bacon is something we need in our box.

Laurier Mandin: You have something to work with there.

Steven Julian: In fact, asking that question, I’m now. going to cut this interview short because, or you keep going, I’m going to go get some bacon.

Noah McNeely: I was just going to say that reminds me, that story reminds me a little bit of the Nathan’s Hot Dog story where on Coney Island, Nathan’s opened this restaurant and they would give doctors… Free hot dogs if they would simply come and eat out front wearing their doctor’s outfit.

Steven Julian: It always goes back to the doctors.

Noah McNeely: Yeah, so it’s an interesting thing. Another chapter that jumped out at me and made what I thought was a really interesting point. It’s got food in the title, but I don’t know why I was attracted to it.

Steven Julian: You were hungry when you were reading it.

Noah McNeely: Maybe I was, but the one about how we don’t need another Apple, and I thought one of the insightful things there is. there’s so many people that try to copy Apple, but they’re trying to copy, especially early stage companies are trying to copy a very mature and established Apple rather than really trying to copy what Apple was when it was at their stage. I think I interpreted your point in that chapter correctly, but maybe help the audience understand that a little bit.

Laurier Mandin: You’re so correct on a few different levels, right? We don’t think about being Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak starting a business out of their garage with this terrible logo. You know, it was this tree, woodcut of a tree or something like that that most people wouldn’t recognize. We imagine, you know, Apple, the biggest company in the history of the world. And being so innovative and yeah, but one of the reasons that that’s in the book is whenever I ask somebody and we need to know kind of what kind of marketing they like, what their brand image would be like in their mind. And Apple’s always at the top of the list when they say, you know, I want it to be like this and I want my website to be like Apple’s. And one of the key things I talk about with that is that Apple is what it is because… It’s an innovator is because it did things no one else had ever done. And if you copy an innovator, then you’re a follower. So yes, be that. Innovate. Create new things. Create excitement. Do. things in a user-friendly, intuitive way that people learn without a manual. Do those things. But please don’t try to be another Apple. Don’t try to be another anybody. That’s kind of the most important part of that chapter to me.

Steven Julian: So you said earlier that, you know, this was a labor of labor that took five years out of labor of 30 years. And you kind of said it wasn’t a thousand pages. It’s also not a picture book of 25 pages with pop ups. There’s definitely some depth to it. Without giving away all the secrets, although I really would, I almost want to quiz you on the most powerful word in marketing. So I’ll let you decide whether you want to tell us that and tease it or tell people. they got to read the book to find it. But as people, if people do take the time to invest in this book.

Noah McNeely: And they should.

Steven Julian: And they should. And by the way, speaking of the 95% of doctors who said yes to bacon, I was thinking of the four out of five. Dentists who recommended Trident. I think two out of two podcast hosts on this. show will heartily recommend that people should read this book. What will they get? What kind of journey are they going to go on? What are they going to be able to, where are they going to go? Man, that was highly profitable because I read that book.

Laurier Mandin: I hope it’s not just from the content of the chapters themselves. At the end of every chapter, I have a series of action items that I do these now for quick wins, I call them, and there’s 104 of them, or no, I think it’s 114 in the book altogether. But to me, those are the steps that I think are the most useful, the parts of the books that I think are the most useful, because they don’t just apply, they’re not theory. They’re, okay, what did you read in this chapter? And how does this apply to what you’re doing, what you’re building right now? Because I’ve read so many books myself, and I’ve often found that, you know, I read that whole thing, and I struggle to find what is actually applicable to my world. So what I didn’t want to have with this book is for people. to read it and to say, no, great, there’s a lot of good theory in there, but nothing is really relevant to me. In every chapter, There should be like five things that are relevant to the product that you’re creating. And here is how you can apply specifically those learnings to what you’re working on.

Noah McNeely: That was one of the things I really enjoyed about your writing too, is that, yeah, there’s some philosophical stuff in there, but you… You always seem to tie it back into something practical and real world. And a lot of books don’t do that. A lot of books, you know, they want you to go off and think about it, which there’s a lot in your book to think about. But you’re also kind of give us the answers to the quiz, too, which I think is very useful, especially for entrepreneurs who don’t, you know, we don’t always have all the time we’d like to have. So I think that’s a very good approach.

Steven Julian: I hate to do this. I’m the slightly annoying co-host. And as slightly annoying co-host, my job has to be that Laurier, I think, is correct when he. says at the end there are five or six action items. And for him to call them quick wins, I think that’s fantastic. It also has to be said that this book has homework. So I just have to say it that way to be slightly annoying. I apologize. But I was thinking to put a positive spin on my slightly annoying way of saying it. Even if you got a failing grade of 50. And you only did 50 of the things you would, or 50%, you would have over 50 quick wins in your product development and getting product to market. That’s a huge investment. That’s a huge return on investment. So well done. So I apologize for calling it homework.

Laurier Mandin: Yeah, well, nobody’s going to grade you on it. I think that’s the most important thing. So you’re going to hold yourself to doing this homework because you want to succeed, right? Self-study course.

Noah McNeely: I would call it self-guided formative experiences.

Steven Julian: That’s the recovering engineer speaking.

Laurier Mandin: Exactly. And as your teacher will tell you, you can cheat all you want, but you’re only cheating yourself, right?

Steven Julian: In this case, they’re not cheating at all. They’re self-guided doing. it. I like it. So, Laurier, let me ask this question. Obviously, I guess the–let me just say. As other than going to Amazon or your other favorite book website and searching, I need that. And it’s Laurier Manden, L-A-U-R-I-E-R-M-A-N-D-I-N. If you want to search the author, is there any other, is there a particular way that would, that people can look for the book? or is it like, no, it’s out there, find it. however you can and get it. So let me ask that first.

Laurier Mandin: Easy to find on Amazon and Audible, but go to lmanden.com. L-M-A-N-D-I-N.com. And I’ve got links directly from there. I don’t get commission on the links because it’s my book in the first place. But that’ll get you to the best place to buy it where you live. And at the same time, you can sign up for my daily emails because one of the things that I did as a follow-up to this book is I’ve been writing every single day. I work on putting out an email that helps people to learn, to move forward, to keep on advancing in their… Product making, product marketing journey. So that’s kind. of the added bonus is go to almanda.com and get my daily emails. And I promise you’ll learn stuff every day.

Noah McNeely: Well, yeah, so I really appreciate that. And I think I do encourage everyone to take a look at it. But before we move. Kind of on to the end of the interview, which I think is why Steven’s waving at me. I had one question. I’m not waving. Yeah, I’m creating this mythos that Steven’s always.

Steven Julian: Goodness, great. What is going on with it? Man.

Noah McNeely: But I have a question.

Laurier Mandin: He’s dancing.

Noah McNeely: It’s one of the very first questions I wrote down in my notes, but I wanted to kind of.

Steven Julian: But you didn’t get to it, did you? No, I wanted to. Now you’re circling back.

Noah McNeely: Hey, I wanted to send it to the end. Steven Juli

Steven Julian: Greetings and salutations. Steven Julian: I am your slightly annoying host, Steven Julian. Steven Julian: Welcome to a new edition of Product Genius. Steven Julian: This time… Without Tiffany Crumans, but what we do have is the fantastic Noah McNeely. Steven Julian: Noah, welcome back to the show. Noah McNeely: Yeah, it’s good to be back. Noah McNeely: I feel like it’s been an entire pandemic ago. Steven Julian: Almost. Steven Julian: It’s been at least, it’s been a year, but it does kind of feel like a whole pandemic ago. Steven Julian: So, Product Genius, this might sound a little bit different. Steven Julian: There are some differences. Steven Julian: Why don’t? Steven Julian: we cover all that stuff up front?

Steven Julian: Broadcasting this show almost live from the Plush Palatial Studios that is the worldwide headquarters of Product Quick Start. Steven Julian: Tell everybody about your new digs. Noah McNeely: Yes, so Product Quick Start, we were fortunate enough to move into a new facility, well, new to us facility that we’re renovating in what they call the Depot District of Lawrenceville, Georgia, which is this… Exciting little area where we have some breweries and we have a distillery going in. Noah McNeely: that I think is going to make tequila and I try to remain sober during the day when I’m working here. Steven Julian: Especially when you’re doing the show. Steven Julian: Well, maybe not as much when you do that. Noah McNeely: Probably more important that I remain sober when using the power equipment in the back. Steven Julian: Amen. Steven Julian: The other thing we want to talk about for those people who are coming upon this episode and have listened to past episodes. Steven Julian: In some respects, we’re the same, but in some respects, there are some differences. Steven Julian: This show was always known as Product Genius with Tiffany Krumans. Steven Julian: Tiffany is still with us, but she’s not with us in the studio. Steven Julian: So, Noah, I ask. Steven Julian: you, where in the world is Tiffany Krumans? Noah McNeely: Well, anyone that has listened to more recent shows probably knows Tiffany has a lot of ideas for businesses, and she also has… New children in her life, and she stays very, very busy. Noah McNeely: Her latest company is called Opu Probiotics, and it’s a fabulous product. Noah McNeely: I recommend you try it. Noah McNeely: I particularly like the mocha mint flavor. Noah McNeely: But anyway, we believe that Tiffany is scouring the world looking for the finest ingredients she can for that particular product. Noah McNeely: So you might find her in the Himalayas or the Amazon. Noah McNeely: Probably wearing a baby and a baby Bjorn and with three other kids following her around. Steven Julian: And everybody can go to opuprobiotics.com, opuprobiotics.com, and see all the latest things that Tiffany is doing with that product. Steven Julian: And therefore, she was the creator of Product Genius originally, and you were a fantastic partner and sponsor of the show and would come on and talk about… Developing products through your business, productquickstart.com. Steven Julian: And when Tiffany really launched Opu, she told all of us, Jody Smith, the producer of the show, and myself as the slightly annoying host, hey, I’m going to take a little. Steven Julian: bit of time off. Steven Julian: I got to launch this new business. Steven Julian: And then in the meantime, let me just fast forward a little bit. Steven Julian: And I don’t know how much behind the scenes and unplugged you want to get. Steven Julian: Why are you sitting across the table from me and why are you now kind of leading this ship that Tiffany built up to this point? Noah McNeely: Well, first, we’re going to hope that the Shipley is led in a good direction and not running aground. Steven Julian: Not yet, at least. Steven Julian: We’re five minutes in. Steven Julian: It’s so far so good. Noah McNeely: So, yeah, we’re doing great at the moment. Noah McNeely: Well, I always enjoyed doing the show. Noah McNeely: I mean, I had a lot of fun with you guys and it really hits one of my passions, which… I like talking about this stuff. Noah McNeely: I do what I love. Noah McNeely: I enjoy explaining it to people. Noah McNeely: I think the show is a good way to do that. Noah McNeely: I’ve actually met a number of people through the show. Noah McNeely: Those are all great conversations. Noah McNeely: My hope is as we move forward, Product Genius will be a show that’s useful for inventors, of course. Noah McNeely: Really, I think we’re going to. Noah McNeely: talk about things that relate to all entrepreneurs or most entrepreneurs. Noah McNeely: Even to people that work for bigger companies that want to think more like entrepreneurs. Steven Julian: So here we are after more than a year off. Steven Julian: We’re doing a new show. Steven Julian: Noah McNeely is sitting across the table from me. Steven Julian: Jody Smith from JodySmith.com is still our producer. Steven Julian: I’m still the slightly annoying host. Steven Julian: And here we are still talking about product development. Steven Julian: We’re going to talk about inventing. Steven Julian: And today we’re talking about help. Steven Julian: I’ve got too many ideas. Steven Julian: Which is definitely true of this show after not doing it for a year. Steven Julian: And people who are doing product development and kind of trying to bring their product to market, as they’re bringing one product to market, they have all these other ideas. Steven Julian: That’s the entrepreneurial, that’s the inventor. Steven Julian: There’s a lot of people listening who, number one, are going, okay, yeah, they’re talking about something I need to talk about. Steven Julian: And when you’re listening to this, you might also be thinking, Ooh, I know someone else that needs to hear this. Steven Julian: So listen to this one, invite them to hear the show because we’re going to be talking. Steven Julian: about, I got too many ideas. Steven Julian: So the title of the show, obviously I gave a little bit of a inkling of it.

Steven Julian: You are guilty of this just like anybody else, right? Noah McNeely: Oh, absolutely. Noah McNeely: In fact, the fact that I’m doing this podcast while writing a business and… Engaging in various other hobbies may be an example of where I’m guilty of this, but I’m trying to balance it well. Noah McNeely: And we thought this would be a really good topic for the first show because Tiffany is actually a great example of doing this well. Noah McNeely: She realized at some point that she had too many different things going on. Noah McNeely: So to be successful, she had to push some of them to the back, and that’s why. Noah McNeely: That’s why we’re here. Steven Julian: That’s why she’s out finding those great products or finding those great ingredients to go into the mint mocha. Noah McNeely: That’s why she’s in the Amazon today. Noah McNeely: Exactly. Noah McNeely: So, you know, this is a problem that doesn’t just affect inventors and entrepreneurs. Noah McNeely: It actually affects big companies as well. Noah McNeely: And back when I did a lot of big company work, this was a topic that would come up. Noah McNeely: The big. Noah McNeely: scary corporate name for this is portfolio management. Noah McNeely: As an inventor entrepreneur, you never need to use that phrase again, probably. Noah McNeely: But the idea is even big companies, they have so many things that they want to do or would love to do, but they can’t do them all. Noah McNeely: In a big company, like a Fortune 500 company, I almost said some names there, but I don’t want to be sued or anything by any of my clients from years ago. Noah McNeely: In a big company, you have entire teams of people in many cases. Noah McNeely: Their whole job is to manage and really to do the portfolio management role. Noah McNeely: They’ll have roadmaps of products that the company is going to develop for five, ten years out in some cases, and they have to prioritize those. Steven Julian: So let’s talk about the person who’s listening to this podcast who’s trying to bring one or a couple of products to market or are trying to build their business. Steven Julian: Go from idea to prototype to development.

Steven Julian: When you say, help, I’ve got too many ideas, can that be true of one product? Noah McNeely: It can be. Noah McNeely: It can be true of one product or it can. Noah McNeely: also just be the nature of the individual. Noah McNeely: So I’ve met people that clients have come in and they get really excited about their product. Noah McNeely: We go through that. Noah McNeely: And then a lot of times on the way out the door, they’re like, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Noah McNeely: I’ve got seven more I’m working on. Noah McNeely: We’re going to talk about them next time. Noah McNeely: And I think they tell me that to get me more excited about working with them, but that’s really often a red flag. Noah McNeely: So on the next meeting, you’re at the next meeting, I usually have to tamp that down a little bit and say, you know, look, that’s great. Noah McNeely: I love all these ideas, but let’s get one on the market first. Noah McNeely: And I think that can be a tough thing for entrepreneurs, even myself, because I have… I have so many things I want to accomplish and want to do, but it’s easy to want to spend all the time in the visionary stage. Noah McNeely: Hey, this is going to be fun. Noah McNeely: I’m going to spend all day thinking about this idea and jotting out what’s it going to be like when. Noah McNeely: I’m done. Noah McNeely: But the problem is there’s a lot of things that have to happen between now and achieving that vision. Steven Julian: And the ideas is the sexy part. Steven Julian: The ideas is the everybody’s. Steven Julian: Had at least one or two ideas. Steven Julian: I actually, I still don’t know why at times I’m the slightly annoying host of the show because I’ve had very few ideas of products. Steven Julian: I’ve never tried to develop anything, but I would relate it. Steven Julian: I, I love the world of comedy and I love listening to comedians, especially them talking about doing jokes. Steven Julian: And it’s one thing to have, Hey, Seinfeld had a book called, is this anything you start with an idea? Steven Julian: Hey, is this anything? Steven Julian: Is this potentially funny? Steven Julian: But from that point to getting it to where it’s a tight bit to be done on stage, there’s this huge, there’s a lot of work that goes in. Steven Julian: So you just mentioned it’s easy to do the ideas. Steven Julian: I got seven more, but they got all this work they got to do to just to get that one. Steven Julian: But I want to drill down and I want to kind of push back and ask even that. Steven Julian: person who’s on that one, I’ve got too many ideas. Steven Julian: Do they get sidetracked with too many things even in that one single idea? Steven Julian: That they’re bringing to market? Noah McNeely: Yeah, that can happen too.

Noah McNeely: I think we may have talked about this a long time ago, but there’s a concept I call minimum viable product or early viable product. Steven Julian: I remember that. Noah McNeely: Yes, it’s a classic. Noah McNeely: You should check it out. Noah McNeely: But the issue there is sometimes maybe it is just one product, but they have all these ideas for that one product. Noah McNeely: Oh, I want it to do this. Noah McNeely: I want it to do that. Noah McNeely: I want it to be Wi-Fi and I want it to levitate and I want it to glow in the dark. Noah McNeely: Sir, it’s a doorknob. Noah McNeely: It doesn’t need to necessarily do all that. Noah McNeely: Those are all great. Noah McNeely: Let’s get one on the market. Noah McNeely: because all that stuff you just talked about, that’s a two-year development program. Noah McNeely: If we just do your basic product, which is already cool and already different than anything out there, you can be on the market in six months. Noah McNeely: You can generate revenue. Noah McNeely: You’ve got a successful business at that. Noah McNeely: point. Noah McNeely: And more importantly, you’ve got money that you can now spend on Gen 2 and Gen 3 and Gen 4. Noah McNeely: But if we start down the path of developing, The super mega colossal product now, you’re never going to get there. Steven Julian: And we titled this show again, Help, but I think probably more often than not your job as the product development guru, as the genius who helps people bring their product to market, you have to tell them you really should be saying, Help, I have too many ideas in this super amazing, stupendous product. Steven Julian: Very rarely do they verbalize that. Steven Julian: You’re helping them verbalize. Noah McNeely: Right. Noah McNeely: Well, sometimes I have to help people realize it is a problem because, like I said, a lot of visionary people and a lot of entrepreneurs, like myself, we do tend to love that visionary phase. Noah McNeely: And we think that’s the most important thing. Noah McNeely: It’s not. Noah McNeely: It’s actually one of the least important and easiest parts of having a successful business.

Noah McNeely: So think about it this way. Noah McNeely: Think about all the little boys who dream about winning a Super Bowl as the quarterback. Noah McNeely: Now, you can’t just keep dreaming about winning a. Super Bowl. Noah McNeely: That’s great. Noah McNeely: That’s a wonderful vision. Noah McNeely: But if you don’t start exercising and training and learning the game, you’ll never play on a team, much less get to the Super Bowl. Steven Julian: So it’s a difference between being a Super Bowl quarterback and being Uncle Rico sitting on the front step saying, if Coach had put me in that game, we would have won the state that year. Noah McNeely: That’s exactly right. Noah McNeely: And there are no time machines that will get you back there. Steven Julian: Exactly. Steven Julian: So portfolio management, to use the term of the Fortune 500 companies, is really them kind of categorizing or siloing or insert other corporate term here. Steven Julian: But really, it’s checking boxes. Steven Julian: It’s laying it out in steps.

Steven Julian: Is that something that you, as the person with Product Quick Start, is trying to help people say, okay, here are the 17 steps that we’re going to have to take? Steven Julian: Or is it just getting them focused on creating the 17 steps? Steven Julian: Kind of talk through that process. Steven Julian: Someone’s got an idea, and then someone starts to spiral into too many ideas. Steven Julian: The portfolio management that you do, not for the Fortune 500, but for the individual. Steven Julian: entrepreneur and inventor, what do you try to bring to the table? Noah McNeely: Yeah, so it’s really launch your product in 375 easy steps. Noah McNeely: No, it’s not. Noah McNeely: There’s really only two questions. Steven Julian: I thought it was 367 steps. Noah McNeely: We revised it last year. Noah McNeely: Oh, okay. Noah McNeely: So there’s really only two. Noah McNeely: Two questions that I ask people to consider when they’re trying to prioritize the features of their product or which product to develop or which product to develop when. Noah McNeely: And with the assumption that inventor entrepreneurs, you probably don’t have five people or 20 people on a team that you’re paying to do all the analysis. Noah McNeely: And yeah, you go to a really big company and they’re going to ask a lot more than these two questions. Noah McNeely: At least they’re going to ask a lot more versions of these two questions. Noah McNeely: But the two questions I tell people to consider is, number one, what can I get to the market with my resources? Noah McNeely: And of course, I can help them try to figure that out. Noah McNeely: This is how much it’s going to take to develop this product, to make the tooling for it, to produce it. Noah McNeely: So we have to be. Noah McNeely: realistic about what resources you have to actually get that to the market. Noah McNeely: And that may mean you can’t launch five at a time. Noah McNeely: Now, I’ve had some clients that are just independently wealthy, and yeah, they can do it. Noah McNeely: They have the resources for that. Noah McNeely: It can still be a bad idea in those cases because a resource that people often overlook is their own time, their own focus, their own ability to strategize and think about their business. Noah McNeely: So the second question is, what can I sell? Noah McNeely: You know, what will I be able to sell? Noah McNeely: So, yeah, this is a great idea. Noah McNeely: I have the funds to develop it. Noah McNeely: I have the resources to develop it. Noah McNeely: But is there a market for it? Noah McNeely: And is it a market that I understand well enough to actually sell? Noah McNeely: And the answer to either of those questions is no. Noah McNeely: Then that’s probably not the product you should develop first. Noah McNeely: You need to focus on the product or the collection of features in your product. Noah McNeely: that both of those answers are yes. Steven Julian: And I know we’ve talked about variations of those questions over past episodes. Steven Julian: Encourage everybody to go back and. Steven Julian: listen to Noah’s past episodes on Product Genius. Noah McNeely: Product Genius is brought to you by Opu Probiotics. Noah McNeely: Pre and probiotics you can pour directly on your tongue in delicious mint and mocha flavors. Steven Julian: But the taste is just the beginning. Noah McNeely: With Opu, you can see improved digestive function, boosted immune system, easier weight management, improved mental health, and much more. Noah McNeely: Try today at GetOpu.com. Steven Julian: That’s GetOpu.com. Steven Julian: Let me focus in on the second question. Steven Julian: first, because I think… The typical inventor entrepreneur who sits down with you, especially with their first idea, and you ask them that question, you know, what can I sell? Steven Julian: Can this sell? Steven Julian: Their answer, bar none, is going to be, well, of course this is going to sell. Steven Julian: It’s a fantastic idea. Steven Julian: I came up with this. Steven Julian: It came in a bolt of lightning. Steven Julian: Everybody who brings you any idea is going to tell you, well, of course it’s going to sell. Steven Julian: It’s fantastic. Noah McNeely: Yeah, I’ve heard variations of, well, why wouldn’t you buy this if you could buy it? Noah McNeely: I’ve probably heard a hundred variations of that throughout the course of my career.

Steven Julian: You’re a communist pig if you don’t buy this, of course. Steven Julian: This is great. Steven Julian: Sorry, that was my insertion, not Noah’s. Steven Julian: My apologies. Noah McNeely: Yeah, so we’re going to remain politically apolitical here as best we can. Noah McNeely: Uh, yeah. Noah McNeely: So a lot of, um, a lot of inventor entrepreneurs, they’re so enamored by their idea. Noah McNeely: They just can’t imagine it not being successful. Noah McNeely: And then they’re like, well, as soon as people see this, they’re going to want it. Noah McNeely: That may be true. Noah McNeely: And that, that in some ways that for most people, that probably is true. Noah McNeely: The question becomes, how do you reach those people? Noah McNeely: And that’s also part of how do you sell it? Noah McNeely: Can you sell it? Noah McNeely: Uh, so if you’ve got a, it’s a product that, oh, everyone would use it. Noah McNeely: Well, that’s almost the worst kind of product for an inventor because. Noah McNeely: You don’t have the marketing budget to reach everybody. Noah McNeely: If it’s more focused, like, well, people that have teenage girls that want to learn how to play golf, you can reach that market a lot easier and in a more forceful way. Noah McNeely: So that’s also part of, you know, what’s it going to take to sell this? Noah McNeely: Not necessarily even, do I have the sales? Noah McNeely: skills? Noah McNeely: You can always hire someone to do that for you, but it’s got to be. Noah McNeely: Do I have the resources not only to design, develop, produce this product, but do I have the resources to sell it? Noah McNeely: What are those resources going to be? Steven Julian: And in your help in answering that question, because I was kind of pushing back against the question, the second question you asked there, what can I sell? Steven Julian: You have to drill down and you have to ask that question more specifically or they have to answer that question more specifically because really what you’re asking is, is there a market for this? Steven Julian: Can the person define the market? Steven Julian: Can you sell it? Steven Julian: Meaning the person who’s got the idea, how would you sell it? Steven Julian: So let me then ask this in helping them answer that question. Steven Julian: How much is it you trying to get them to have their eyes open to all the all that that’s going to entail of selling the product? Steven Julian: or and or how much is it you saying, if you’ll listen to me, I’ve had a lot of experience and I’ve done this for a long time and I’ve done. Steven Julian: this. Steven Julian: On corporate level and individual level, here’s what I believe and I know surrounding what you’ve just told me about this idea. Noah McNeely: It’s a little bit of both. Noah McNeely: It depends on who I’m talking to and how receptive they are. Steven Julian: Ah, there we go. Noah McNeely: Different people with different personalities. Noah McNeely: You know, it’s kind of like the old Aesop’s fables, the way he would teach very powerful people lessons without insulting them, as he would tell a story about someone else who was fictional. Noah McNeely: They would maybe learn a lesson about. Noah McNeely: So sometimes I have to do that. Noah McNeely: And it comes along as, you know, I have to say, you know, look, I’m not into sales. Noah McNeely: I’m not into marketing. Noah McNeely: I design, build, and create stuff. Noah McNeely: I can help you fill a warehouse full of product. Noah McNeely: That’s no problem. Noah McNeely: We got that. Noah McNeely: What I can’t help you do is I can’t help you sell. Noah McNeely: I can’t help you market. Noah McNeely: I can tell you what I’ve seen other people do and what that’s cost them. Noah McNeely: And oftentimes that loan and going through that process is enough to help them realize, oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Noah McNeely: I hadn’t thought about that. Noah McNeely: I am going to need a budget for that. Noah McNeely: And so sometimes I approach it that way. Noah McNeely: Sometimes people come in and they do have a lot of really good business savvy, business knowledge, business experience. Noah McNeely: They understand that right up front. Noah McNeely: I have to do a lot less in those cases. Noah McNeely: Sometimes in those cases, it’s more about explaining why it costs so much to make this product or that product or whatever it is. Steven Julian: So let me just ask Noah McNeely, the Product Quick Start CEO and the guy who’s done this for more than a few years, although you only look like you’ve been doing it for a few years. Noah McNeely: Well, hair dye goes a long way. Steven Julian: Exactly. Steven Julian: And flattery will get me everywhere. Steven Julian: Do you enjoy to an extent when someone who’s just starting out in this, it’s their first idea, they’ve never run a business, but they’re receptive to your kind of expertise and guidance. Steven Julian: There’s that that’s satisfying. Steven Julian: As well as the satisfying of kind of someone with some business savvy who knows the business stuff and you don’t have to spend as much time on that and you can really just focus on. Steven Julian: the product development. Steven Julian: Is there a preference one where this is just a personal question I’m asking at this point? Noah McNeely: That is a very difficult question. Noah McNeely: Exactly. Steven Julian: I’m slightly annoyed. Noah McNeely: It’s very individual based. Steven Julian: This is a relational thing for you, right? Steven Julian: This is a relational business, even for you and this. Noah McNeely: I’ll put you this way. Noah McNeely: I’m at a point in my career, I’ve done this long enough, I don’t usually have to work with people I dislike. Noah McNeely: Now, I will do my best to help anyone. Noah McNeely: Even if I dislike you, I will try to point you in a good direction, sometimes to someone I don’t like, but also. Noah McNeely: They don’t know that. Noah McNeely: Yeah, they don’t know that. Noah McNeely: No, but either can be good. Noah McNeely: I think it’s better for me to answer this from the standpoint of what’s the worst type of relationship. Steven Julian: Oh, there we go. Noah McNeely: That’s where someone comes in and they’ve never developed a product before. Noah McNeely: They don’t know anything about it, but they saw something on TV. Noah McNeely: So now they’re an expert or they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Noah McNeely: So now they’re an expert and they come in and they’re like, this is how you’re going to do it. Noah McNeely: This is how you’re going to do it. Noah McNeely: And I’m like, well, why are you here? Noah McNeely: How am I supposed to help you? Noah McNeely: You know everything already. Noah McNeely: Even though everything you just told me is completely wrong. Noah McNeely: I know you’ve read a book about it that some idiot wrote who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but that’s not how you do it. Noah McNeely: That’s not how the real world works. Noah McNeely: So those are not good relationships. Noah McNeely: Those usually end quickly. Noah McNeely: The other side of that is people that they just cannot accept what I’m telling them. Noah McNeely: So here’s the problem you have. Noah McNeely: And if you cannot solve this problem, You don’t have a business. Noah McNeely: Now, that’s just my opinion, but my opinion is based on a lot of experience, and some people just, they get really irritated about that, and I never hear from them again, and that’s probably for the best for me. Noah McNeely: But unfortunately, they then go out and they find an engineer who’s just happy to take their money, and they’ll spend a year. Noah McNeely: Dumping thousands of dollars into making something that they can never afford to produce or. Noah McNeely: that it’s never going to sell or it’s just the wrong market. Steven Julian: I like the way you answered that question. Steven Julian: Well done. Steven Julian: I asked a difficult question. Steven Julian: Noah gave a great answer to it. Steven Julian: So let me transition from the second question you asked of what can I sell. Steven Julian: And let’s kind of circle back real quick to that first question. Steven Julian: What can I get to the market with my resources? Steven Julian: This is a… Another way of kind of talking about minimum viable products. Steven Julian: So what do you need to know from the person that you’re talking to? Steven Julian: when it comes, because that word resources, let me unpack that just a little bit more. Steven Julian: You know, what can I get to the market with my resources? Steven Julian: You kind of need to know some things. Steven Julian: How much money do you have? Steven Julian: How much time do you have? Steven Julian: Kind of break that down. Noah McNeely: Yeah, I need them to be honest with themselves and with me.

Noah McNeely: Stuff costs what it costs. Noah McNeely: You know, I can’t work for free. Noah McNeely: Most people cannot. Noah McNeely: It doesn’t do you or me any good for you to come in and wear a fancy suit, pretend like you have. Noah McNeely: all this money, and then you don’t. Noah McNeely: Because then you and I are going to talk and go, hey, this is generally what this is going to cost. Noah McNeely: And you’re going to get one or two steps into that and say, oh, I can’t afford to go any further. Noah McNeely: Well, it’s like, well, why did you waste the money on the first two steps? Noah McNeely: I told you what it was going to cost to get this far. Noah McNeely: It’s like, I don’t know. Noah McNeely: Well. Noah McNeely: I can’t refund your money. Noah McNeely: All the work is done. Noah McNeely: The prototypes are built. Noah McNeely: Whatever it is, that’s done. Noah McNeely: I’m sorry you can’t take it any further, but I don’t know what you want me to do. Noah McNeely: Go out and raise some money and come back in a few years, I guess. Noah McNeely: So that’s kind of the worst scenario there. Noah McNeely: I think I do need to do my best to explain to them, and I try my very best to this where I can. Noah McNeely: This is generally what it’s going to take. Noah McNeely: Hear what they’re trying to do. Noah McNeely: I’ll lay out a scope. Noah McNeely: Okay, the first phase is to get us to a prototype. Noah McNeely: I can give. Noah McNeely: that a pretty tight number. Noah McNeely: If there’s stuff in there, I don’t know. Noah McNeely: Yeah, I don’t know. Noah McNeely: Are we going to end up in this material or that material? Noah McNeely: Beyond that, I have to give an estimated range. Noah McNeely: And then I can give my best guess at what the manufacturing is going to cost. Noah McNeely: But I can’t, you know, obviously on day one, nothing’s been designed. Noah McNeely: So I don’t know exactly what that is going to cost at the back end. Noah McNeely: So I do my best to open their eyes to what the costs are going to be. Noah McNeely: And also a little bit, you know, you’re going to have to have money for marketing. Noah McNeely: If you’re going to do a patent, I’ll send them to Brock, who you may know from other shows. Noah McNeely: All that’s going to take money. Noah McNeely: You may have to prioritize what you want to spend your money on and how you want to spend it. Noah McNeely: And I think actually in our next episode, we have some ideas about that. Steven Julian: Ooh, fellow with a tease. Noah McNeely: A slight tease, yes. Noah McNeely: I like that. Steven Julian: Well done. Noah McNeely: I am not a radio professional. Steven Julian: You just played one on this podcast. Steven Julian: So let me just, again, push back slightly on the word resources. Steven Julian: So we are talking about money. Steven Julian: There’s no question. Steven Julian: that is the main. Noah McNeely: Not just money. Steven Julian: Well, that was my question. Steven Julian: Don’t take my question away from me. Steven Julian: You definitely are not a professional when you did that. Noah McNeely: Clearly not. Steven Julian: So apart from money, what other resources can people bring to the table that you need to know about that will help you in helping them develop their products? Steven Julian: See how I did that? Steven Julian: Was that good? Steven Julian: All right. Noah McNeely: Thank you. Noah McNeely: So you may have other resources in terms of people in your network. Noah McNeely: You know, if you come in and say, I have this great idea and it’s for, you know, baseball players and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Noah McNeely: And okay, that’s great. Noah McNeely: But you don’t tell me, oh, and by the way, my cousin plays Major League Baseball. Noah McNeely: Well, you know, that’s a resource that we could know about. Noah McNeely: that can actually change my mind about how you would market this. Noah McNeely: Oh, well, maybe you don’t need all this money for marketing because your cousin can endorse it. Noah McNeely: Well, that may change what I advise you. Noah McNeely: on. Noah McNeely: