The Keys to Product Marketing & Success

Some entrepreneurs believe that all that is necessary to succeed is putting a product out on the market and that miraculously, people will buy it.

The truth is there are many more steps needed to ensure that your product or service will be desired by the marketplace.

In this episode, I talk with David Fradin from Spice Catalyst about the keys to product success – from topics like how to use the right strategies to market your product or service to have an understanding of what the market is telling you and when to listen to outside ideas instead of internal departments as Kodak did when it canned its digital film department!

About David: David Fradin was classically trained as an HP Product Manager and was then recruited by Apple to bring the first hard disk drive on a PC to market and later became the Apple /// Business Unit Manager at the same level as Steve Jobs.  He is the author of “Building Insanely Great Products,” “Organizing and Managing Insanely Great Products,” and the Wiley published “Successful Product Design and Management” all available now on Amazon. He has trained companies such as Cisco on these topics worldwide. His mission is to help products succeed.

Connect with David on Facebook, LinkedIn and on the web at https://www.spicecatalyst.com

Transcript (auto-generated; may contain errors):

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Hello and welcome to another episode of MOJO: The Meaning of Life and Business.

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A lot of us have some sort of product that we work with whether it’s our actual service that we deliver it is our widget that we invented, create, produce, market or other kind of products like even nonprofit

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organizations still have a product that it is that we’re offering.

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When we look at a product and the key to product success, it becomes extremely important for us to understand what it means to be in a position to have a successful product, launch, keep it live, and keep innovating while that product is out there that it remains

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relevant. And so I have a really incredible guest on the show today for those of you that are watching on the video.

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You may think Larry David is on the show but I’m going to say It’s not actually Larry David.

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It is my friend David Fradin. Before I bring David on, let me tell you a little bit about David.

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David Fradin was classically trained as an HP product manager, and was recruited by Apple to bring the first hard disk drive on a Pc.

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To to market, and later became the apple business unit manager at the same level as Steve Jobs, the author of building insanely great products, organizing and managing insanely great products, and the Wiley published Successful Product Design and Management

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all available now on Amazon, and has trained companies such as Cisco

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on these topics worldwide. David, welcome to the show.

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Well, thank you for having me absolutely thank you let me ask you is a really important thing, and a lot of people kind of forget the importance of paying attention to the actual product that they’re selling.

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They’re like, yeah, I know that I can get out there and I can sell whatever it is that i’m selling, but they may not be clear on what they need to do.

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And when we were in the green room we were talking and you mentioned it takes 130 skill sets to really master product success.

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So I’m not going to ask you to tell me all 130 skill sets, because I think we would be here for a couple of days to do that.

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But let me ask you, I mean when we’re looking at product success in a high level, to start what is part of success mean to you, and the keys to product

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success. Well, probably success means that you get more money out of the sale of that product or service that you put into it.

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In the first place, about 40% of all the new products and services introduced each year fail in the marketplace because they don’t follow the 5 keys to product success.

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And, by the way, that represents nearly a trillion dollars of wasted research and development money from which the organizations that spent that money will not get a return on their investment.

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So the keys to that success is theadic of the Nava by company spice, catalyst for the word spice or the s stands for strategy that you need to have a 32 part product market

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strategy before you begin the development of the product and what I say market.

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I mean that’s like a grocery store marketing is the process of getting customers to go to that store.

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So you have to understand what your market is and what the product is going to do for the people and or the companies, if it’s B to B or business to business in that market.

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Place, and That’s the first most important part is the product market strategy.

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The P. stands for having a repeatable process in developing the product.

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What am I? Clients a few years ago had 5 products.

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They brought to market. All 5 failed because they did not have a repeatable framework for product development.

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They they, they ended up developing a culture of blame within the organization where they would point fingers at each other as to why the product failed.

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The I. and Spice stands for having the information available to the managers to make decisions about the product.

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The C. is having the customers in terms of understanding who it is that our your customers, and exactly what it is they want to do.

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It’s not what they want, it’s not what they need Because a customer, if he or she understood what they wanted that means they understand the problem that they have and they’ve also have defined the solution.

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To that problem that’s why, for example when henry ford in the early 1,009 hundreds is thinking about making a cheap mass produced car. He went out and asked people would do you want a car and Everybody said No, I

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don’t want a car I want a faster horse but if you got out and observed what people were doing whipping their horses to get from one side of deer board.

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Michigan to the other side. he would have known by observing what people do, the problem that he had to solve, and that was solved with an internal combustion engine on a four-wheeled carriage heads the model

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T car or automobile, and this, lastly, the point you mentioned earlier.

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The E and spice stairs have it for having the employees trade or come on board, with all of the 130 competencies or skill sets spread across.

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Obviously the team that if, you’re missing major portions of that you’re not gonna have a successful product in development and or at product introduction, or later on in a in a sustaining manner, and thank you and that’s

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really good in terms of an outline that we need to be looking at in terms of what it is that we’re doing and going from there.

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And I just want to reiterate one thing. you mentioned one triple dollars in R and D.

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Costs that will not see or return on investment by the companies for missing those core pieces.

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And what it is that they’re doing and just to illustrate that I mean, think about it in your own product development.

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If you’re listening to this? we what is it that you’re actually doing?

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How are you paying attention to this? How are you really figuring out what your product is that you’re not going to be losing a significant amount of the investment that you’re making on your product?

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Development, and if you think you’re not actually developing a product, I hate to break it to you.

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But you’re wrong. Everybody is developing a product. even if it’s something as simple as a commodity.

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Right I mean we’re all selling this particular Widget, or this particular service? right?

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Let’s say that you’re an air conditioning repair company.

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You. Your product is still how you fulfill your air conditioning repair service.

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And so if you think that it’s just Oh, I don’t sell a widget, you’re wrong, and you really need to be thinking about what it means to be in that position, and so you really want to go back and listen

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to what David just mentioned with the acronym for spice.

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And really here what David was saying Now, in that perspective now from where you now we’re realizing I have a product.

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It’s no longer just that service that I am offering David Let me ask you, when we are starting out in product development. right?

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We’ve got that spice idea that we need to be looking at, and you mentioned that Us.

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With the strategy is the market strategy. so we have to see where we’re actually talking with, who were talking To what through needs or you.

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Mentioned Henry Ford also in that idea. I guess the question is, though, is for somebody who is creating a brand new product, and they’re trying to get a handle right?

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I mean a lot of, inventors as an example are they’re great in the lab, or they’re great in their garage tinkering around.

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But they’re terrible business people, if we were to help one of those inventors.

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What would be something that we would say that they really need to be thinking about.

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That would say right. This is exactly what it is that you need to do in terms of positioning you to having good success.

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I mean, of course, No, in the market things on those lines.

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But is there any one thing that would be better again, just about any product?

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Has some sort of market may not have a broad appeal. but there may be a niche that’s there, and if we watch Shark Tank, we know that is the case.

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I mean people go on. they’ve $1,000. in sales $50,002,000,000 in sales, or whatever it may be. but anything specific, though, that we can cite.

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This is one thing you have to be thinking about. Now the key is understanding what it is that your customer wants to do.

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Why they want to do it. When do they want to do it?

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Where do they want to do it? How Do They want to do it what’s standing in their way?

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How how important is it for getting that thing done, and how satisfied were they, or are they with the current solution?

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An example is, if we go back to the Cape man and the cave woman, and they were in their cave, and they wanted to leave some drawings of the cave walls, or some writing, so they could communicate something to other people without having to

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be there. So they found that if they picked up a piece of birds wood called charcoal, and they scribbled on the wall that they could accomplish that thing that they wanted to do, well then somebody observed the fact that the

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caveman or woman did not like the idea that their hands got really dirty from the charcoal.

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They had to constantly wash their hands, whatever they were writing on the wall.

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So they decided to surround the charcoal with wood, and they called down a pencil, and then they noticed that the pencil kept wearing down, and they had the cost, and they sharpened it, and that they could use ink with a

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quill from a from a bird, and use that and a thing called paper that they somebody had better.

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I think it was the Egyptians with papyrus, and they could write on the piece of paper.

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And now it was portable, much more portable than a slate of of granite that they chiseled off of their cave wall. and then someone noticed that the the quill kept running out of ink so the

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ballpoint pen was invented. and then typewriters, electric typewriters, dedicated work processors of the word processing for your personal computer and your laptop and your ipad and So

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forth. So that’s all doing the same thing and that is getting words down or pictures down.

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They could be used for communication. but the innovation that occurred, the invention that occurred was to improve upon doing each of those things better or faster, or with higher quality.

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So an inventor sitting in their garage is just not going to come up with an idea for a product unless they first start with.

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What is the problem that the customers tried to solve I’m pretty sure, Henry.

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Thomas Edison. Edison was not sitting in his lab trying to admit the electric bulb.

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Just try to event a way to make light without using a candle, or without using a whale, oil and all inventions that are successful.

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Satisfy something that a customer wants to do, and they all start with first observing, like a social anthropologist, what people do, and then interviewing people that do those same things, and then doing surveys of larger numbers of

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people that could then be projected against the entire marketplace, so that you have a quantifiable estimate of what the size of the market is.

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The The next thing you do is you segment your market into of common characteristics, of those people that do those things, or those companies that do those same things.

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Then you do your market research and your competitive research, and that gives you the information you need to do.

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Your product, positioning the place in the body for your product, which lends to the brand for your product, and then you can put together your pricing strategy, your distribution, strategy, your sales, strategy, your trading and support

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strategies, and all of that. To then be rolled up into a dialogue or a table that we call features, advantages, and benefits of your product, and that’s entire package consists your product market strategy which will take

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somewhere between 3 to 6 calendar months, using the tide required to do the observations and the interviews of the surveys, and about one to 3 months.

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People. Time spread over those 3 to 6 months, and then you turn that all over and to your engineering department or your developers, and then they could build the product specifically to solve the problem of what it is that people or businesses want to do

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Thank you, and it’s really interesting I mean you were talking about Edison, and inventing the light bulb. then wanting just to do without using candles or whale oil.

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And many other famous inventors that have invented things exactly in the same regard.

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Trying to avoid the problem. How do they solve a different issue and i’m just thinking all of those people that created things by accident as an example. We all know those little stickies that we use all over the place and the glue that is on

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that was a mistake or penicillin came about because something became moldy, and there’s a lot of those kinds of inventions.

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Also that happen purely by mistake, and some things that are like that is so.

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Necessary, but nobody would have thought about it until somebody’s like all right.

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This is such a simple thing, and it doesn’t require this you can just do it that way like you were saying

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They didn’t want to get their hands already with the to our call anymore.

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So they stuck between a piece of wood, and they call that the pencil

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But if you think about it also you know certain things like well, we’re dealing with as an example. I don’t know planning the shower, and just something that makes it super easy to clean it without having actually just rub

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it right, and I actually personally had an idea until

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One of the big companies came out with something exactly what I wanted to do a little bit differently, but because I was pulled no by a couple of folks.

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I didn’t perceive it but neither here nor there that’s not it’s.

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Not the time or place for that conversation. let me make a comment on that. if that’s the kind of product you were thinking of developing for a particular problem a difficult problem, cleaning the shower that’s the business that

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Procter and Gamble is in, and they own over a 150 brands and their needs of innovation.

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Of product discovery of what a lot of people call design thinking is that they go out, and they observe, for example, 40 housewives doing laundry over a 4 month period.

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So they do 10 a week, and by the time they get into their fourth week of just observing housewives doing their laundry, they pretty much identify the problems that housewives are trying to resolve and

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that’s their process is to first go out and Observe what it is that their customers want to do that resulted in the What’s the little pod thing that you get from ivory that you just throw the pod into your

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into your washing machine, or stick it to your kid’s mouth to see if it’s mouth will explode that latter use no one anticipated that anybody would be that stupid to do that the guy at 3 am that

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invented the stick and sticky notes, or what a host of notes or something that’s called like that.

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He had just happened to invent a glue that wasn’t as because 3 amos and was it was in the glue business. he had invented a glue that wasn’t that sticky but he noticed people throughout the

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office had taken little pieces of paper, with probably 3 M. Scotch tape that taped it to their monitors or to their walls, or whatever.

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And he said, Well, what if I put this? slightly sticky glue the back of this paper?

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I could have a have a whole new product. Certainly the the good your brothers that were trying to advance tires had no idea that they would accidentally knock some sulfur off The shelf.

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Would fall in the vat of rubber, and they discovered vulcanization, which does something to enable them to make tires.

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So yeah, in your pursuit of trying to develop a product or service that satisfies what it is that you already know customers want to do.

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Accidents could occur. serendipity could occur, and you could discover a new way of doing something that’s called innovation faster or better, or with style.

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Another example I could give of that is, if Travis, the founder of Uber, grew up in Washington, Dc.

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Or New York City instead of Los Angeles. His problem that he had in La as that there was all these cars running around the smartphone was there.

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So Steve Jobs is idea of putting the Internet in your pocket.

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So you can have a smart application in your hand and He probably experienced what I’ve experienced in la years ago.

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I would call a cab, and the cab would not show up.

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That I call back the dispatcher. The line was busy.

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I finally get through. they put me on hold for 10 min then they’ll tell me that the cab is on its way, and then it doesn’t show up.

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So I have to call up again. so travis had the idea that if I just put in where it is that i’m back Oh, wait a minute.

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Gps goes where i’m at so i’ll have to do is put in where it is that I want to go.

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What I want to leave it will calculate, based upon the demand at the time how much is gonna cost.

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So then show me a cute little map of cars backing up a one-way street try to get to wherever i’m standing waiting for the pickup.

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But if I was in if he was in New York or Washington, and I used to have offices there, or lived there, if all I did was like this scratch my nose 10 cabs and pull up and try to pick me up as a ride

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because the way you inhale a cab in the arc or Washington is go like this, and they’re all patrolling or out on the roads room, where rooming around looking for fares to pick up.

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So he would not have had a problem of getting a ride for Point 8 to Point B.

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In those 2 cities compared to a screen area like Los Angeles, and therefore Uber, from at least him would not have yet been developed.

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And It’s interesting how you frame that and you know just putting your hand out and calling a taxi in New York.

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For anyone that is from the New York area. You certainly know what that is.

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I mean. Sometimes they go right past you and I mean out of 13,000, and change yellow taxis in New York City.

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There’s still plenty of those taxis when you really want them.

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They’re still not available to pick you up believe it or not even with Uber and lifts.

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And I certainly know exactly what you mean with that one way street backing up, trying to get you, especially at the airport when i’m on the phone with my driver.

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Where exactly are you? so that I can find them because you gotta love how some airports have that dedicated rideshare area.

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I mean I get out at it’s so weird still saying the Harry Reed Airport.

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I’m so used to mccaren airport out in Vegas, and I know I get out of the terminal.

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I go over to the right chair area and they’re all lined up by number.

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But you’re trying to figure out exactly where your guy is going to end up. and when they’re coming, and all of that, and you’re trying to deal with you know hundreds of other people potentially that want the same thing and which

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is your car, which is their car and it’s like all right fine. So let’s see where you can go with that.

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And I mean what Travis did with Uber is absolutely incredible.

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Change in that industry. What Netflix did with blockbuster?

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What digital film did to Kodak. I mean there’s so many of these stories that are out there where innovation has put the old major monopoly.

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If you will, out to faster. I mean, there was a term a lot of people that are of a certain generation.

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Now wouldn’t even know the term mob bell those of us so that are of a certain generation, or we’re working in the telecom industry like me.

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We know the term myself, simply because that was the phone company, and that was exactly what was out there.

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But if we’re looking at what happened, and deregulation that the Government ended up putting in forcing the companies to break up, forcing the all sorts of additional competition, and then you had some cell phones coming around which

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really continue to change things. I mean you used to hear

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It was the me 3 major companies, right at T. Mci and sprint were the 3 primary long distance companies.

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Brent at T became cell phone companies, too, and Verizon ended up becoming a major player, even though Verizon was a local phone company when they first started.

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That was New York ninex or that 9 X end New York telephone.

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I think when they merge to become Verizon.

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And it was just amazing how that happened but the key takeaway here is, if you’re not putting your if you’re not innovating and putting your own business out to pastor someone else is yeah it’s very key

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to what they call it Well, sunset your own products.

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I’ve got the exact term that’s used early on in apples days when Steve was there, there was 2 Steve Jobs, the one that that I tried to stay as far away from this possible when I was apple big at

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apple the early eighties, because the guy was nuts he was against catalizing his own products.

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Later, after he had his failure first on the apple 3, and I was the fourth product manager of the apple 3 and trying to clean up the best that he created, and then what he had is failure of the

00:25:05.000 –> 00:25:17.000
Macintosh, which resulted in his failure at night or his firing in 1,985, because he sold a 100,000 of the developers. The developers found out they couldn’t write anything for It the largest

00:25:17.000 –> 00:25:25.000
program was only 10 kB and he was trying to sell it as an office computer, and it could did not have a work processing program on it.

00:25:25.000 –> 00:25:39.000
It did not have a spreadsheet it could not print letter quality printing, because it couldn’t connect to a letter quality printer could not do accounting because the size of the disk drive was too small.

00:25:39.000 –> 00:25:49.000
He and he got fired a few months later, after Macintosh sales in January of 1,985 dropped the 4 units.

00:25:49.000 –> 00:25:56.000
He then went on and created another company called next, and he mispositioned the product of the marketplace.

00:25:56.000 –> 00:26:08.000
It was a $10,000 product with most personal computers were selling around 2 or $3,000, and no one could understand why they wanted a $10,000 computer on their desk.

00:26:08.000 –> 00:26:12.000
Well, universities discovered, and he had to try the position it that way.

00:26:12.000 –> 00:26:16.000
That this was a computer, the equivalent of a made frame.

00:26:16.000 –> 00:26:29.000
Ibm, 360 or ibm 370 computer and a professor could have the equivalent to that compute power on their desk as opposed to going to the shared computing services.

00:26:29.000 –> 00:26:44.000
On campus, but he didn’t position it strong enough that way. So I remember being interviewed by business week magazine when I was the associate director of the Personal computer industry Service, and a market research firm called dataquest which is

00:26:44.000 –> 00:26:48.000
not part of the Gartner group, and she asked me, what did I think of next?

00:26:48.000 –> 00:26:55.000
And I said last, and sure enough, a year so later, Steve was out of the computer business.

00:26:55.000 –> 00:27:01.000
He bought Pixar. I was struggling greatly with Pixar in the late 1980 S.

00:27:01.000 –> 00:27:11.000
And I founded my research for my book, building a salary great products that he sought out, and he got some private mentoring by David Packard, the P.

00:27:11.000 –> 00:27:17.000
And the Hewlett Packard Company, and I do day very well, because when I was in corporate Pr.

00:27:17.000 –> 00:27:22.000
A few years earlier at Hp. I handled dave’s personal Pr.

00:27:22.000 –> 00:27:25.000
As his as a chairman of the Hewlett Packard

00:27:25.000 –> 00:27:41.000
Board of directors, and Dave came out of that. say, Proctor and Gamble understanding what it is that your customer wants to do by observing, because the field of product management I prefer to call it product success management came

00:27:41.000 –> 00:27:53.000
from brand management in 1,932 for Procter Gamble to Hewlett, Packard in 1,938, and Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett led the drive for that and

00:27:53.000 –> 00:27:58.000
then that’s why there are millions of what I call product success managers worldwide understanding.

00:27:58.000 –> 00:28:05.000
What it is that the product wants to do and as dave talk, Steve, in the late eightys.

00:28:05.000 –> 00:28:08.000
Don’t be afraid to cannibalize your own product.

00:28:08.000 –> 00:28:14.000
An example of not doing that is the failure of Eastman Kodak.

00:28:14.000 –> 00:28:22.000
The film company Guess who invented digital photography? Kodak did.

00:28:22.000 –> 00:28:36.000
And I think it was around 1973 but the salesforce was conserved that their sales of film, both still film and motion picture film which they dominated for decades.

00:28:36.000 –> 00:28:42.000
We’re afraid that it would reduce their income their in their sales commissions.

00:28:42.000 –> 00:28:46.000
So they killed the digital camera that Xerox had invented.

00:28:46.000 –> 00:28:56.000
And excuse me. a kodak had invented. Then again, in the mid to late ninetys, they license kodak license from a company.

00:28:56.000 –> 00:29:02.000
That I was consulting with their digital film a storage sort of like.

00:29:02.000 –> 00:29:25.000
Simultaneously again out of fear that it would cannibalize the Commission checks for the salesforce and kodak back in the seventies and eighties was one of the biggest and most successful largest employers

00:29:25.000 –> 00:29:37.000
of people, the United States, and it particularly upstate New York. and now they are worth less than a 1 billion dollars, mostly in the business of selling their patents off because management.

00:29:37.000 –> 00:29:43.000
There was a afraid to catalyze their own products. Apple came along later.

00:29:43.000 –> 00:29:49.000
Steve went back to Apple, took these lessons to heart, and

00:29:49.000 –> 00:30:07.000
He was involved in the invention, actually the acquisition of the ipod, which was a replacement to the the the Walkman cassette player and the portable disk player that sodi had and dominated the portable

00:30:07.000 –> 00:30:13.000
music market. But the digital plague of music through a little box was a replacement.

00:30:13.000 –> 00:30:29.000
So sodie could have cannibalized the road product, but they didn’t and at that opened the door for apple, and the ipod and the ecosystem connected to itunes which was the complete solution of

00:30:29.000 –> 00:30:38.000
the complete customer solution that Steve was, is very famous for doing. and then he was not a fail fail, afraid.

00:30:38.000 –> 00:30:52.000
When he came out with the iphone to cannibalize the ipod market, and it took 10 years before now, just in the last year, so Apple has discontinued the ipod product line, because you have the ipod on

00:30:52.000 –> 00:31:00.000
your iphone a log with a camera. And strangely enough, it also does telephone calls.

00:31:00.000 –> 00:31:04.000
Strangely enough, it also does telephone calls. I love that line.

00:31:04.000 –> 00:31:16.000
And I mean it’s interesting because one of the projects. I’m working with, and we talk about completely also changing a model.

00:31:16.000 –> 00:31:30.000
The App store completely changed our needs to go to the electronic store, buy a disc of whatever product it is, and install it on our computer.

00:31:30.000 –> 00:31:36.000
And the gentleman who actually created that and sold it to Steve Jobs.

00:31:36.000 –> 00:31:45.000
His name is Jesse Taylor. for those of you that may know who he is, or luck him up.

00:31:45.000 –> 00:31:57.000
Jesse was a guest on this show. in our first season, and is now involved in a identity privacy product that i’m working with him in.

00:31:57.000 –> 00:32:08.000
But that’s a completely different story. but when we’re talking about changing things, and how Steve Jobs saw the value and changing up.

00:32:08.000 –> 00:32:24.000
Also. how do I compete against everyone else and all the electronic stores, and bring that in now to be part of the whole ecosystem with itunes and the apple universe dramatically changed the trajectory of the

00:32:24.000 –> 00:32:30.000
company. I mean, if they didn’t have the app store they wouldn’t have a good chunk of the funds that they do.

00:32:30.000 –> 00:32:43.000
Now, and the iphone would not be as valuable as it is now, simply because all the apps would not be there without the app store. You know, having to download it and get it from this place in that place who do you trust what do you

00:32:43.000 –> 00:32:57.000
do I mean Apple is making a significant amount of money just through the App store, and how many countless businesses started, only because the App store exists, and being in a position to sell your app through that.

00:32:57.000 –> 00:33:04.000
And so we see that there’s so many opportunities when we’re looking at that to really get there.

00:33:04.000 –> 00:33:25.000
So, David, let me ask you when we look at where we’re going with product success management, and knowing that we really need to be paying attention to those 5 key areas Again, the acronym of spice, knowing that we need to be not

00:33:25.000 –> 00:33:32.000
afraid to countnibalize our own product or to keep innovating, and put our own product out to Pastor.

00:33:32.000 –> 00:33:49.000
As I mentioned earlier. when it comes to that, anything else, though, that we really need to be paying attention to, to make sure that our product is is going to really withstand a test of time.

00:33:49.000 –> 00:34:00.000
And again support product in the way that exists today. Not necessarily, but our company the or be an acquisition target.

00:34:00.000 –> 00:34:07.000
Anything that we should be thinking about or not thinking about in that regard.

00:34:07.000 –> 00:34:13.000
You know something that people are gonna be surprised that I mentioned and that is different.

00:34:13.000 –> 00:34:29.000
In the case of your cleaning product for stars shower stall, you can have the very best product of the world. but if you don’t have the distribution which is the equivalent of the app store to get the

00:34:29.000 –> 00:34:33.000
product into the heads of those people that are trying to do that same thing.

00:34:33.000 –> 00:34:41.000
You’re not going to be successful and in your Case You would be going up against the machine of Procter Gamble.

00:34:41.000 –> 00:34:47.000
Likewise. for many, many years the liquor business was dominated by distributors.

00:34:47.000 –> 00:34:58.000
The beer business was dominated by distributors until State governments took away or or allowed and permitted craft rulers to occur.

00:34:58.000 –> 00:35:11.000
Now, I think, in California there’s something like 1,800 craft breweries before all there was was Budweiser and and cores. And now I can get many many different types of flavors of beer because

00:35:11.000 –> 00:35:17.000
that monopoly was taken away. going back to your mobile, the old at and T.

00:35:17.000 –> 00:35:21.000
They had a monopoly granted to them by the government.

00:35:21.000 –> 00:35:31.000
But now that that was taken away, distribution opened up and created lots of operations for innovation, we’re about to see the same thing.

00:35:31.000 –> 00:35:45.000
But it’s going to be a much bigger struggle over electricity, electricity, production, storage, and distribution just the other day the first microgrid powered by buses.

00:35:45.000 –> 00:35:53.000
Oh! open to Maryland, and it was a private company that are leasing the buses, I think.

00:35:53.000 –> 00:36:07.000
No, I think the the county of Maryland is buying the buses and these 2 companies installed batteries at this one location, and charging facilities and solar panels to charge the batteries, and they’re

00:36:07.000 –> 00:36:22.000
selling the electricity to the bus service. and Then with the buses are not being used during dog peak times they’re available as battery backup for the micro grid that they’ve created and I think it’s a

00:36:22.000 –> 00:36:37.000
silver spring Maryland, we’re gonna see a lot more of that fighting its way through government regulation, tried which is trying to prevent the competition by using government as a means of maintaining a monopoly give me another example

00:36:37.000 –> 00:36:54.000
of why distribution is so important. I was given credit by our Cn Magazine, which was at the time in the early 2,000, was the predominant rag for the cell phone industry as having created and shipped

00:36:54.000 –> 00:36:59.000
the first advertisement on a cell phone. This was night.

00:36:59.000 –> 00:37:06.000
This is 2,003 and I was confused by Nokia that they had the largest worldwide market share.

00:37:06.000 –> 00:37:22.000
So I had the cell phone apps develop for donkey of phones, only to find out later, because I hadn’t bothered to do the distribution and the market research that Nokia was only selling 2 phones in the United

00:37:22.000 –> 00:37:27.000
States, and they were not strong enough computationalized to run the games.

00:37:27.000 –> 00:37:32.000
The cell phone games that I have developed for it, and the other applications.

00:37:32.000 –> 00:37:48.000
But I had a massive distribution of the cell phone applications in Europe, but my salesforce for sewing ads on cell phones in the United States, and us companies had little interest and buy ads. in Europe So I had a

00:37:48.000 –> 00:37:56.000
disconnect in distribution, and the result was I was unable to continue the company and raise any venture.

00:37:56.000 –> 00:38:15.000
Capital funds for the company. if I had kept by powder dry, and waited until I understood that there was 15 unmet needs in the words of a totally alright from synergm and as books jobs to be

00:38:15.000 –> 00:38:27.000
done and waited until there was a market demand for cell phone ads that I would be part of the 15 billion plus industry today for cell phone advertising.

00:38:27.000 –> 00:38:32.000
So just because I was first to the market does it mean you’re gonna be successful.

00:38:32.000 –> 00:38:43.000
If you ignore the issues of how you’re going to get it distributed, which is in the latter part of your 32 part product market strategy.

00:38:43.000 –> 00:38:59.000
And thank you, and it’s really important. to Keep that in mind, and also just know the licensing route or the other rats that you may be taking those all have their own benefits and disadvantages when you

00:38:59.000 –> 00:39:15.000
think about what it is that you’re doing and again. you want to work with someone who can give you that specific guidance on what route to take when you are trying to get your products out to market and there are specialists

00:39:15.000 –> 00:39:25.000
that can certainly work with you the right mentor the right people behind you, and one of the things that I said many, many times you’ve heard me say it on this show before.

00:39:25.000 –> 00:39:29.000
You’ve heard me say it if you’ve been following me for a while.

00:39:29.000 –> 00:39:41.000
Elsewhere is that you need to have your own at least informal Board of advisors that are there to act as a group of people that can back you up.

00:39:41.000 –> 00:39:46.000
Give you advice to help you figure things out before you need it.

00:39:46.000 –> 00:39:48.000
In other words, you want a banker before you need a loan.

00:39:48.000 –> 00:39:51.000
You want an attorney before you have a legal matter.

00:39:51.000 –> 00:39:54.000
You want an insurance guy before you have a flood in your basement.

00:39:54.000 –> 00:40:00.000
You want an account before the Irs comes knocking all of those concerns.

00:40:00.000 –> 00:40:09.000
You need to have those kinds of people in at least an informal board that you know that they are there for you.

00:40:09.000 –> 00:40:23.000
To help you make those decisions. And again, the right mentored the right coach to help you figure out license, saying the distribution things along those lines like David was talking about.

00:40:23.000 –> 00:40:33.000
So, David, let me ask you if people want to get more information about you. How would they be able to find you?

00:40:33.000 –> 00:40:44.000
Probably best to just go to my website. spice, countless one word, dot com. And my contact information. is there, or search for me on Linkedin.

00:40:44.000 –> 00:40:49.000
David Frayen, and then asked to connect with me there and then.

00:40:49.000 –> 00:40:54.000
We could message each other or send me an email to [email protected]

00:40:54.000 –> 00:41:07.000
You could also go to amazon and Look up my name, and i’ll show you the list of books that I’ve written, including the ones that we’ve talked about today.

00:41:07.000 –> 00:41:28.000
Thank you. and again that is spicecatalyst.com so that you can look it up, and we will certainly have that information in the notes as well that you can connect with Dave, and if you are looking him up just listening dave’s last name

00:41:28.000 –> 00:41:35.000
F. R. A. D. I. N so that way you can find him and connect with Dave.

00:41:35.000 –> 00:41:50.000
So it’s really important to think about again what it is that you are doing with your product what it is that you’re doing when you’re thinking about the strategy to launch and maintain your product in the marketplace David

00:41:50.000 –> 00:41:55.000
thank you so much again for being my guest on today’s program.

00:41:55.000 –> 00:42:00.000
Thank you, happy to be with you, thank you and again.

00:42:00.000 –> 00:42:09.000
Spicecatalyst.com when you’re thinking about what it is that you are going to be doing moving forward.

00:42:09.000 –> 00:42:21.000
Remember. go back to that 5 acronym for S P I C E so you can go back and really pay close attention to what it is that you’re doing how you’re going to maintain your operations, and consider growing

00:42:21.000 –> 00:42:26.000
your business on that note. This has been another episode of

00:42:26.000 –> 00:42:36.000
MOJO: The Meaning of Life and Business. And until next time, here’s to your success.