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We Asked AI the Hardest Questions About 52Launch. Here’s What It Got Wrong. · Pitch to Product

• Peter: And I'll give you like a little test that you can put on. If you couldn't find it on Amazon, statistically, you know what the chances of you wanting a widget that you were going to use or bay you know use for a project or to have a dinner party or whatever it is, and that widget's not there, that's great space people. Okay. That is the first thing. And I always tell people if if you had found the widget that you were looking for at this point, we would never be on a call. So when you find that widget, That is the that's your best indicator that you know, don't pass go, don't collect two hundred. Hello and welcome to the Pitch to Product Podcast here at fifty two launch. I'm Steve Sisto and he's Peter Draculitz. Thank you for watching. You guys are fantastic. Peter, I think we have a very good episode today. So first of all, in the last just couple days, how many prospects have you and the team spoken to? we're averaging about twenty one. To 25 people a day that we're processing. And I say you use the word processing because not everybody is someone I want to talk to. we're probably talking to about 14 to 15 every day that we have selected to say, you know what, these are the people that like have a great idea, seem to understand what we do. And even then it whittles down to the next part, which is these questions. Yeah. Well So going off of that, how many of them have concerns, whether it may be about the pricing or the IP or the manufacturing, whatever it might be? I will tell you a good a good little test. If you have no concerns, that's the that's a red flag. You should have a concern for us. That's a concern for your like, yeah, there there is no cherry pie here. This is like the the we need to address these concerns because they're the same for both sides. This is an interview process for for both of us for everybody out there. This is we're interviewing you just as much as you're interviewing us. I am Selective on bringing products, I know that we're going to succeed with because if I didn't, we would be, you know, we would just be a run-on-the-mill company. There's plenty of those out there. And that's my challenge is that everybody that does parts of what we do, there's probably 7,000 companies that do something that we do. None of them do all of the things that those 7,000 companies do under one roof. That's us. And that model can sound a bit strange to people. They're like, how could this possibly be? And when they Google it, A lot oftentimes the concern is the one stop shop fallacy and and that sort of thing because they don't understand that the model works when you do it the right way. Well, and look at the model doesn't work until you're ready to do it the way, right? And so there is there's seven questions. We have a podcast out there that talks about the seven questions you need to answer yourself before you even talk to us, right? And when you realize there's only seven questions, it actually simplifies what I am looking for. It's when you are, you know, I look, I had a call today, and it was just like I it was like, you know, fingernails on a chalkboard or whatever that sound is that drives you nuts. I gotta do this, and then I'm gonna go find this person. I'm gonna get this designer. I got like and I had another person tell me they had fifty-five different opinions from fifty they put a RFQ out onto an on onto a engineering platform, and they have fifty-five different opinions to make the simplest thing I've ever seen. Where do you even start with that? Either. Well, I mean, I always tell people there's 10,000 ways to not make something. And if you focus on the 10,000 ways, this is a 10-year project. You have to hone in on the way to make something. And I'll equate it to like Dan and I have had talks on podcasts. It's like building a kitchen or a bathroom. If you start tearing down the bathroom and then put the tub in the toilet and the or the kitchen and the sink in the aisle, and then you look back for a second, you go, I really wish we I need to move the sink over here. You know how hard that is. And It's an overrun. It's an extra cost. It's a change order. It's it's those things. Yeah. If you were certain every morning of what you were going to accomplish in the first hour of your day when your feet hit the ground, would you get it done? I would say so. Absolutely, because it's clarity, right? It's there's no mistake here, just clarity. So I try and provide clarity. Bobby does an incredible job of providing clarity in a very direct manner, which which people love him for. And I love him for, right? That's why he's he's he likes to take the intakes of calls. But I I think the one thing that's super apparent, Peter, to anybody that speaks with you or Peter or anyone else at the company, we are an open book. We don't hide anything. We don't sugarcoat anything. We're not trying to put any rose colored glasses over anything. We we tell it like it is throughout all the stuff. look at there is risk. Yes. Right. I I am here to mitigate the risk. I always tell people that you spent more money on worse things. the risk that you're taking here is mitigated s because I can take care of all the fear. I look at I'm obligated. I'm a company. I I could be You know, like if I wasn't achieving the contract, which is pretty simple to read, yeah, you aren't gonna get there. The biggest fears that people have, it comes down to do I have the confidence in my product. And I I will say this straight out. If you are not willing to invest in your own product, you don't believe in it. So just don't do it. Right. Right. And it's it sounds harsh. I don't mean to be mean about it, but like I invested my entire life into starting something that I had no business starting. I've done that several times. Like, you know, so like when you see opportunity, you you gotta understand that. There's a lot of work that needs to go, a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of effort. We because of my background, Dan's background, our system is transparent. Here's where there is, it's not that we're not transparent on this. There's answers I do not have. Yeah. You you called me with a crazy idea and you want me to tell you the the way it should be made and give you a cost on the first call. Well, that's what you're hiring us for. I know how to get to that real truth cost in a fixed fee program. In a six month process. Sometimes it can take a little bit longer and sometimes it probably should, but we want to get there in six months because I don't make money on that part of the process. The reason why we have the accelerator program people, they have nothing to do with my manufacturing business side of the of the company. What I have experienced, and and this is 10 years of experience, and you you know, I have never, and I challenge everybody, I have never been given a CAD model or design from a design firm. That can be manufactured that meet these three c three criteria. That it can be manufactured cost effectively, that the equipment that I that is readily available can make it. So that's like that's two actually, but I'll count that as one. That it has the like the margins aren't there and the it's just over engineered. The investment in tooling and cost and like it's ridiculous. So and ninety ninety nine percent of the time the The 10% of the details that are mostly crucial to reducing cost, no one's answered. So if that's the case, if you're going to hand me something that I have to start from scratch for, I think that there's a service that those 7,000 other companies have provided you, but I don't need any of those. I'd rather that we start from scratch and quickly eliminate the ways not to make it within the first six weeks so that we can focus on the best thing that we can make, knowing the parameters and That is when we make happy products. Yeah. We have a few episodes that you and Dan did, that you and Bobby did, breaking down all the manufacturing numbers. So make sure to go check those out. But for now, Peter, let's get into the purpose of this episode. What we did is we asked AI to tell us. First of all, we asked everybody in the company with friends and family to ask the hardest questions you could possibly. Ask. And I I I think I used one of them. What is the dangers of hiring fifty two launch? Dangers. And so we want to understand what AI is telling our prospects before they go on the call with us so that we can address them head on, so that we can answer those questions even before they talk to us. Well, and look at a lot of the a lot of those answers are in industry general. And we created a product that is industry specific for those people that have not gotten you to where you thought you were going to get to. Yeah. So that's why I wanna I'm looking forward to this, man. Let's let's go because this is what makes us different. This is our unique value proposition, and this is why we succeed where others don't even try and go. Yeah. So so this response that I have in my hands is directly from an AI prompt, which was what are the biggest risks of hiring 52 launch? Yeah. Number one, you could lose a large amount of money before making a sale. Fifty two launch's website describes its services as an end to end program. The danger is that your total investment could be higher than the initial proposal. For example, you might pay for design and prototyping, then discover that production, tooling, inventory, shipping requires another investment, which is 100% true. It does. And we're upfront about that. In fact, our proposal is it's clearly states out so that you can ask that question. Look at can I accurately predict? No, I can give you averages. I can give you specifics. I can give you It's the Goldilocks theory, right? Like I I c at every at the fifteen stages that and I call those the macro decisions. You know, there's there's a million micro decisions. We don't need to make those. I know what plastic we're gonna use. Like let's not waste time. I I you know, today I talked to somebody that was like they were so worried about like the specifics of a product. I'm like, no, there's already a place that we can go buy that product. Like, so let's not worry about things that don't reinvent the wheel. Focus on the things that make your wheel different. That's that's it. But the Yeah, we're transparent that it does take money. You have to make an investment. And look, I'm just gonna tell you right off the bat that the way that that response was proves to me that artificial intelligence, AI, language models, and yes, I'm calling you out. Don't come and like set my alarm off like you did the other night. but it's not entrepreneurial. The entrepreneur is gonna look at this, or the business owner is gonna look at this. Everyone, like it said, you can lose a a a lot of money before making a sale. Well An entrepreneur is going to look at it this way. I have to make a significant investment before I can start selling anything. The opportunity is not in the first sale. The opportunity is seeing is there a thousand, five thousand, a hundred thousand, million sales. There is not a company in the world that instantly overnight start at the start of the company sold a million bottles. Take a look at Coca Cola, right? They sold 1,800 bottles in their third year. Yeah. Like takes time. It takes time and it takes persistence and they were set up for it. But over time, I mean, you tell me other any other soft drink that is as big as them. Yeah. So, you know, the I'm and I'm sure no one went into that business thinking, my God, I'm gonna lose this. So just the mentality. The mindset there is different. Your mindset needs to be if you spend time, you're you're never getting a return on investment. If you invest time, you're getting you're working to get a return. Invest the time in finding out what the investment costs need to be. That's the most most important thing. And we do that. Yeah, absolutely. Number two, you may not own everything you think you own. Fifty two Lawns states that clients retain a hundred percent ownership of their products, which is true. However, the exact legal meaning of ownership depends on your agreement and what has been created. Ask specifically who owns the CAD files, the molds, the tooling, new inventions, patents, packaging designs, et cetera. So first of all, I don't That's a complete falsehood, at least from my understanding. There's there's a work for higher law out there. If I do work for you, you own it. If you don't pay me, like if you if you if I do all this work and then you don't pay me, then that's where the gray area is. And no, you you don't own it at that point. When you finish paying me, I don't want it. Yeah. Like like you came up this is your dream. This is your idea. This is what I'm helping you build. But just to be clear, we you own a hundred percent of everything that we do. I don't keep creative rights, which is an industry term for like music and creation or Jingles, like creative rights are real, right? There's there's an ass cap. Like if you get jingles on the radio, you would get like royalties. I don't keep that. If you come up with the idea, it's your idea. And if we help you refine that idea, it's still based on your idea. So you own a hundred percent of the IP rights, the copyright, the design rights, and like I don't I don't even take retention of your of like I don't how do you say it? Like I I'm not an equity partner either. Have we ever sought to acquire a client in in the 10 years of 52 launch? I've never sought it. They've come to me to say, Hey, can you help me? And those are people that like, you know, look at Shoot 21 and and this this podcast is brought to you by Shoot Twenty One and Dart Links. There you go, check those out. You know, look at great family. They came to us with two ideas. they we we knew they didn't have all the funds, but they were able to get as far as they could and we took it over from there. Yeah. And we write them a royalty check on a regular basis. That's not the norm, but There there's that's it was a great partnership, right? Like they did everything they could. They like I couldn't build that without them. And so when they when they were out of like we took a serious look at it, and again, it's a great partnership. They still do a lot of work. This is they were humble enough to ask for help and we felt the opportunity. I will also tell you when you know your first goal, and you shouldn't give up equity in your company, you shouldn't give up your product, you shouldn't give it up. Your challenge is gonna be to get to the second and third production order where those numbers start to get big. At that point, you are going to need to have a funding or an equity partner to scale. That's a good problem to have. We'll help you with that too. Yeah. Number three, you could become dependent on 52 launch or its manufacturing partners. 52 Launch coordinates multiple stages of development and uses a network of partners. This creates a potential dependency risk. Would you call that a risk, Peter, or a benefit? Again, I I can just tell you by reading this or listening to you. AI is not entrepreneurial. Are we a dependency partner? Well, like I would tell you, do you depend on your life partner if you're married or if you're a spouse? Like, there's a certain thing that you should depend. So it's trust. That's the bigger question here. The reality is, Steve, someone who has never gone through the process needs to hire us because it's a daunting task. We make it look simple, but it is not. It it takes a lot of people to fail quickly, find the answers when there are no answers, there are no solutions, and we've never We never run into that stump. Like we figured that out. But the second time, you could easily say, I don't need you guys anymore. I will tell you the second time you realize that we are your best partner. And it is not a risk. It is something you should be like, people hire us for their second, third, fourth projects because they understand the value that we got. And they're like, Do I really want to be the person doing this work? Yeah. I'm built for it. Right. Like I'm I'm not looking at no no knock on any deliverable services that like your local community, you know, they say true garbage meant. that's a hard job, but guess what? If they can if they're good at it, they can get through it they can get through an eight hour day in in you know five hours. Yeah, absolutely. it's it's a hustle. But they get paid well because no one else wants to do that job. Correct. Right. Thirty jobs require like you to have a process where you don't feel the pain. And that's really, you know, for us, every pain point is just a normal Thursday around. Think within the regards to the accelerator program, each spoke, a person can in theory do it themselves. Eve even if they are in the marketer, they can learn marketing. Even if they are in the designer, they can learn design. The manufacturing aspect, if you're not involved, enveloped in that world, is it can you truly do it? No. you you could. It it's it's like look at here's the thing. Everybody I can give you the blueprint, Steve, you can put it online. You can like, you know, the the the six spokes put the brochure out there. You I'll give it to you if you call in. It's our proposal. It is the roadmap on how you get a product successfully launched. What you know, again, we even have the revision process. The revision process is so specific at each stage. You should not have more than two revisions. And that again goes back to the clarity conversation. If at the design, if the product design, if I don't know exactly what I'm making within two revisions, I'm wasting time. We should have it done. We should know it even before we start. Like that's the new thing with AI. We should know what we're making before we even start making. Right. Right. Because if I knew that, then this this goes faster. It gets it gets done with less mistakes. Or it gets me to a point where I can figure out, shit, the way that there's a bleep for you. the way I thought it was going to work out did work out, but now I can see a better way. Or wow, that is not exactly what I intended. And that is what a revision's for. But if you're going back to revision, you know what? Maybe I should have made it blue instead of purple. Make that decision. Go that's why Henry Ford's right. You know, you can pick any color you want, just make it black. Because take the decision out of it. Einstein used to wear the same clothes every day because there was no decision. He didn't wear the same clothes. He wore he had the same shirt, same outfit. Steve Jobs did the same thing. Because when you wake up in the morning, you don't to think about what you are gonna wear. It just makes that morning a little easier. Absolutely. Get the low stakes things as out of the way as possible. That is the secret to succeeding in any business. Get the low stakes, keep the MVP, the core successful product. Don't iterate beyond what you do. But the artist has to put the paintbrush down. Like you gotta know when enough is enough because you can keep dreaming infinitely. At some point you gotta move on. It's yeah, it's the designer's curse, right? Keep designing. Look, I just got my haircut. And it was just like I said it was gonna be twenty minutes. It ended up being thirty five, forty minutes. Cause but I appreciate it because It was like okay, just one more. Like fix this, do that. Like adjustments. It's those micro details that make a the difference between a good haircut and an amazing haircut. Absolutely. All right. Number four, a good looking prototype might not become a profitable product. Prototype can demonstrate that an idea works without proving that it can be manufactured economically, meet applicable regulations, or attract enough buyers. So this is where AI is right in 85% of what they're saying. That is a completely wrong statement. Because if you look up the definition of a prototype, a prototype will never be a product that you can sell. A prototype is the is a functional. In fact, here's what I'd recommend. And you can you can put these answers in. So the better questions ask: what does a prototype not do? Okay. And that is a better answer that you will get from AI or from from from Google or whatever your your your search engine is. Because A prototype is not a product that you can go sell. A prototype is not something that you can scale. A prototype is not something that is going to be the exact replica of your product and function. A prototype will, when you drop it once, break. Yep. Okay. A product that is manufactured is designed for dark drop tests. It shouldn't break. Those plastics and all that stuff are designed because how many times have you dropped your phone, Steve? Alta. Right? Alta. And you have cases and you still drop your phone and you have magnet holders and you have belt holders and you put it in your pocket. We're Everything that you're going to put in your hand eventually is going to be dropped, which is all consumer products. If everything was a prototype, the minute you dropped it, you'd you'd have to go buy a new one. And you can't because you've only made one. Is it possible to scale that way? See, you it's impossible. That's why it's wrong. Like a a pro you know what the correction here is if you are looking to start a business with a new product, you need a pre-production sample. That means before hitting the button that says go make 10 million of these, Not right away, but the first thousand, five thousand, a hundred thousand, one million. you want to be damn certain that your pre-production sample is signed off on. Right. And that that is where I will tell you, you you need to go a little faster for consumers out there. You can't get perfection. Look to be a four to a four point three star. If you're trying to get a five star project out there, you'll you'll you just can't. You're better off owning being a great product that's a little bit of that's above average, not perfect. Cause There's no such thing other than like Dan will say as McDonald's French fries might be might be the four point nine point nine, you know, four nine nine products. That's right. All right. Number five, the payment structure could leave you with limited leverage. 52 Launch requires a one-time upfront investment to begin its services rather than charging a commission on sales. Well, okay. That's a great question. That's not just not the way it works. You can't you can't build the house without paying the contractors to get the material. Get things done, get the designs part. Like even before you even get materials, you need a draftsman, you need designs, you need plans. Those plans need to be approved to move forward. That is what you're hiring us to do. And if you were weren't hiring us, if you came to us with that, you could go straight to manufacturing. The only reason why I have a payroll of 65 people is because in 10 years, Steve, what what are the statistics or likelihood of stats that not one single person has brought me something that can go straight to manufacturing? Yeah. And and I'm gonna tell you, if you are that person out there that has what you believe are drawings and designs and CAD models that you hired off some third party person online, I'm sure they're fantastic. But if you're not getting quotes or you're getting quotes that are too high, it's because they don't know how to make a product for manufacturing. They know how to design a product, they know how to give them what you wanted. I have thousands of those out there I can refer you to. in fact, you know what? The Joe Caddy podcast should probably be linked here. Yeah. Cause in the Joe C or at the clip in the Joe Caddy. You know, he had hired somebody before. In fact, a lot of people that have go through us have hired other people before and they did not get the result. They realized somewhere along the way, I am not this is not the right place. And I I realize that too. So I have to be the first person to tell you when you give me when people say, I I already got it all figured out, that's you're not my client. Like 'cause like I don't have it all figured out. I've been doing this ten years. And so if you think it's that simple, go for it. Like like you don't need me. If you're hiring me, it's because or if you're talking to me, it's because you know you don't have it figured out. So let's be honest. Let's go figure out the things that need to get figured out, which is the hard parts that everyone else has charged you for, but didn't do. I'm the opposite. Let's let's let's figure out what those are and focus on those for minimal fees and get them done, then go make it. Absolutely. All right. Next up, these are the questions that AI wants people to ask you before they hire us. Number one. Will I own all custom IP and receive every original design and engineering file? Yes. So let me clarify on this. The better question is what don't I get? For example, best example I can give you is if you want a 20 megapixel camera and you want to own the IP rights that includes the software, the lens, the material, the whole, the whole stuff. I wouldn't do that. You're we're better off going buying the best megapixel camera that is in volume that doesn't have license agreements off the shelf and utilize that. You do not own the creative rights or the IP rights of that. That we're buying that we're buying that product and we're allowed to use that software. So that's where there's ambiguity that like we're again, we're not on the wrong side of it. Just people don't understand that, you know, to make a brand new camera, I can make ever we can make everything from scratch, Steve. You don't want to. We want to we wanna there's things that we can buy off the shelf. Yeah. The it all comes down to who's paying. And this is a a a good thing, right? When we tell you that, okay, we can either Put it together the way it is, and there's no cost to engineering, that means the person who already did that work owns the rights to whatever that product that we're buying off the shelf is. If we tell you there's an invoice and there's a and again, it wouldn't be just a sprung on invoice, it'd be a conversation with say, look, it this is an engineering fee. In that engineering fee, that means you own it because you're paying for it. If and and that's a huge differential. So even easier on tooling. The reason why, and people are like, well, can the factory amortize the tool over the per piece price. Yeah, they could do that, but it's probably like you gotta talk about a hundred thousand pieces for them to amortize the tool. When you amortize the tool, let me explain. That means you don't own the tool. It's part of the contract. When you get to the hundred thousand pieces or that that criteria, you still don't own the tool. You have to go back and buy. So I'd rather and what we do is we have incredible tooling and molding manufacturer like designers and and make and makers. So I would rather And it's better for you to go and like we have knocked down these prices. I don't make a lot of money on tooling. It is we're a fraction of the cost that you would have. But it is so important that you invest in your own tool because you own it, which means when we own it, I don't leave it behind. It gets moved. I can protect it. It's not being run in the middle of night. And it's yours. And and if you talk if you're gonna invest money in IP, invest the money in your own tool so that you can control it. That's it. Well, speaking of question number two, what is the realistic all in cost through my first production run? So look at this, this could vary incredibly big. I'm gonna go with what I would say the minimal runway, which does require you as the inventor, entrepreneur, business owner, to understand that they're not compromises, they're just like phases. Phase one should be what is the core successful product? And if you look at the you know, the Steve Jobs or or whoever set it out in the in the startup world, you should be a little embarrassed on your first. product run, right? You should get customer feedback, then adjust and then iterate. And that's called two point And then you should look at three point So the engineering term is this is what I must have. That's your core product. This is what would be nice to have if it doesn't cost any more or it's easy to figure out we could be in the must have zone. That's your that's you're already in two point territory. The would like I the the future, don't start talking about that. Like cause you need the core successful product. And we're not against a knife right We are going to be a good good knife. And and we don't need to go, but wait, there's more. Right. Like this is a product that you should say, this is what I do better than everybody else. Exactly. I don't need the gimmick to say, but wait, this is more. That that one value proposition should be able to stand on its own merit. And that's again why that's that's our that's our criteria to scrutinize is that value proposition that you have found, like the one. And I'll give you like a little test that you can put on. If you couldn't find it on Amazon, statistically, you know what the chances of you wanting a widget that you were going to use or bay you know use for a project or to have a dinner party or whatever it is, and that widget's not there, that's great space people. Okay. That is the first thing. And I always tell people if if you had found the widget that you were looking for at this point, we would never be on a call. So when you find that widget, That is the that's your best indicator that you know, don't pass go, don't collect two hundred. like you need to go and start thinking about the step of am I the person or are we the people that will take this idea and be passionate enough to turn it into a business? And I use word passion because there's no passion in these six questions. No, there's not. Okay. There's no passion in these six questions. If you don't have the passion to do this, these six questions are designed to tell you you're not ready or you shouldn't do this. Well, question number three can I speak with previous clients who developed a similar product. Of course. I've got how many podcasts have we got, Steve, there there? Maybe it's a little our fault. I can't keep up with organizing at the forefront so that the most relevant ones are there. I also have look at there's there's there's client journeys that we are documenting, but you have to understand 99% of my clients are under a non-disclosure agreement with me. Actually probably 90%. but we respect that. Yeah. I can't just share something with you because you want to know. I can give you some phone numbers. I can give you some people that have told us. You can go look at the products online. I'm I'm gonna be honest. I am done proving to the world that we are who we said we are 10 years ago. Because every step of the way we've done everything we said we were gonna do, and here we are. Yep. Number four, what happens if I terminate the relationship halfway through? that sucks. You shouldn't have hired us and we shouldn't have hired let you hire us in the first place. I can understand. There's some circumstances. I've we've had small. group of people that you know someone's passed away during the process. It sucks. I can turn over the, you know, documents and whatever we've done at that point, but we're a fee for service because I am not working. And again, this goes back to the other question. Why don't we do it on commission base? Well, because I got to pay people who aren't commission based, designers, engineers, people, they don't they're not commission based. They're they're hourly or they're a salary. And they do like I have to get as much work out of them as I can. I got to do like we have to get specific. But If they pass away, I can't say, Okay, guys, or hey, you quit, I gotta give them their money back. The the deliverables are very set in stone. And you're getting a lot of deliverables. In fact, as soon as it's done, it's going into your drive. We have portholes that you get notifications. You have a CSM that's going to communicate with you. Like we get through this in six months. So, you know, if you don't like or if you've changed your mind, that is an uncomfortable conversation, which I don't want to have, but that's why we have an arbitration clause because If that becomes the situation, I'm gonna let a third party just tell me, hey, this is how we're gonna do it and who's right, who's wrong, and how much do we give, or or maybe we don't give anything back. I'm not gonna be I can't be in that emotional conversation. I'm I'm a business, I gotta pay people. You're hiring me to get a job done. So let's make sure, and Bobby and I and and the rest of the team, we make sure that you understand that before you rise a check. I don't wanna I don't wanna give you don't don't give me a dime until you decide. The scope of work, the decision, the contract, then let's go to work and I will get the job done. Speaking of deliverables, what objective milestones are Fitto Launch contracted to? Well, they're in our six spokes, right? And and they're very cleared out. Like the the objection is we gotta design a new product. We have to help you like create a name and brand it. We have to understand the market so we know who's gonna sell it. Cause the biggest j danger is you cannot launch a new product into a general sphere. You would spend your a boatload of money to get Well, no sales. Even when you do it in a very targeted margin, you s put a lot of effort and spend money to get no sales. So let's make no qualms about that. The hardest part of this is the selling part. And it's not hard. It just takes patience because you can you can spend a ton of money to get a sale. What we are trying to do is find, not trying, but we have to do, and what the goal here is. is to put the effort out there to learn and quickly find how the market lets us be discovered. Correct. Right. And that is the new worlder. And I would say since 2005, you know, it's changed. The the paying to be the the pay to play model, like keywords, all that stuff, they've all diminished. The the cost of acquisition has gone through the roof because AI now is going to decide for a human being what they're going to show that human being based on their profile. And You have two marketing things now, which you didn't have before. You don't have direct access to the decision maker. You have to convince AI that you're worthy of the conversation with the person that that they think is lined up, which is great. The challenge is it takes work. How many sightings? how many sites, right? Like the word it's C I T E, right? When we get cited by a relevant third party, that is what AI looks for. Yes. So If I were you, I would take your product and put it into the most credible cited parties that you could catalogs, magazines. Now, does Steve you you help us manage that? When you put yourself out onto a website, I won't mention names, but you know, a site, do they automatically like does the do the sales just come in? Let's use Amazon. No. When you want when you land launch on Amazon. Do you automatically get found the next day and people start buying from you? No, it's not like there's this big billboard saying, hey, look at this new product. You you have to crawl your way out of the hole and make yourself known. You've it take look at if you did if you don't have a trademark, just so you understand, it takes two years before Google before Amazon even trusts that you could be a prime partner. Correct. If you're if you're a branded register trademark and you have r you know, what do they call brand registry recognition? You go you bypass, you go to the front of line. It's like having a P a TSA pre check. Yeah. Right. But even then. If I get the p TSA pre-check and I'm out there, I'm still how many other products do you think are on how many billions of products are on Amazon? Yeah, billions. It's it's ridiculous, right? Like so how many of them are the exact same effect from the same manufacturer? I would say that you know, we we have some pretty successful products and we're still ranked like nine thousand seven hundred and thirty on Amazon. And I'm an expert at this. I and guess what? I'm okay being in that. Yeah. It's a huge, it's a it's a great little business. Right. It's a portfolio business. It does it generates revenue month in, month out on, you know, twenty products like that. Like that's the way you gotta look at it. but your your best bet is you gotta build your organic. When people organically buy from you, they trust you, they tell two friends. Like we are you know, we're we're we're built to help you organically grow your sales so that at the end of the day you can spend your way through it, but it's really crawl walk run. Yep. We had a client, their website just went live three days ago. We just started posting for them organically three days ago. Already have hundred thousand views on one of the videos. Pre orders are coming in in in just three days. And we haven't put a dime on ad spend yet. Look at we we had the same thing. We've had a product that went, I would say a couple of posts went pretty viral, but the comments were like, Wow, right? And you and I were like This is exciting. Let's embrace it. Right. Yes. They were calling us out. But we were calling, we were calling a product out as well. Right. And it's not, it's not a branded product. It's something you buy in general. It's like it's just a run of the mill. Like no nobody owns it. But we called it out and said something that was true. Mm-hmm and true to the fact. Yes. And you know, again, the haters come out first. And I can't explain why, but when the haters come out, that means you're doing it right. Yeah. Right. When you get that email that says you're an idiot. What are you doing? You're a scam. You're a gimmick. Embrace it, right? And if you are, shut it down. Yeah. If you're truthfully trying to help people, call them out, prove to them we are an appropriate society. I keep saying that. And and you respond to all those people, you invite them to buy the product, test it out for themselves. See it. And that way they know that we're real. Even if they don't like it for whatever personal reason, they know that we're real. And that goes a long way. Well, is there another question I didn't get? There's there's one more question. Yeah. Can I move my product to another manufacturer at any time? Yeah, you absolutely can. I mean, look at that's my job. Would you? Well, yeah. And look if if if we've done something or again, there's been a couple of circumstances where and it wasn't because of bad conversations, we had some products move to the United States, right? Like, or the client wanted to move it to the United States. That's a a big conversation. Like everyone calls and wants to make it US made. You when you see the numbers, there's like no way. I think we got a podcast that Dan and I did on that. But You know, with time on, you know, seven or eight other orders, it made sense. It was a simple product that they could make in their home state. And they said, Hey, you know, we're thinking of packing up the tool because the per piece price would be the same here and we'd be saving well, after tariffs and everything, it'd it would save it, but we just, you know, we want to be local. And I'm like, Absolutely, guys. Like, you know, you let me know when you wanna you want me to help arrange the shipping of the tool. So we did. We we had it shipped over here and they're still happily producing product and and they're great people. I I I want be supportive. There was another one where, you know, when companies buy you out, you know, they already have manufacturing capabilities. Even though I I was lower in cost on all those okay on those few occasions. you know, they have but I would say that we help and maintain like ninety I couldn't give you a number, but it's like in the h you know, it's not a hundred, but it's like in the top. It's in the nineties. I'll get Austin to give me that statistic. but yeah, it it's it's the goal here is, you know. I have to earn my business every day. If I'm not helping you lower costs, improve quality, get speed here. you know, I would tell you that just on a minimal basis, you couldn't afford one person. I don't charge money for it. I simply make it so that, you know, it's a production order. You put the production or in and that's my relationship with you. Cool. All right. Would you like to hear AI's recommendation for working with fifty two launch? Yeah, please. All right. I would not rule out fifty two launch solely on the information available, but I would avoid committing a large non refundable amount until the contract Budget, IP ownership, and exit terms have been independently reviewed. The best next steps depend heavily on what you are developing. What do you think? Yeah, look, I actually agree with that statement. Like you shouldn't hire us until that's clarified. I think we just clarified that in this conversation. I am not here. Well, in fact, look at you find another person or another company in this space that on the very first page of the book a scheduled meeting, I tell you, I am not here to steal your idea. I process and I give you an acknowledgement statement that you have a non disclosure so we can talk openly. And even then, Steve, I don't want to know the secret sauce. Like unless I have to. And even then, don't send me your prototypes or anything like that until you hire me. Because I don't want to be responsible for any of your IP. Right. It's yours. I I didn't come up with it. And in fact, look at what I my IP is my factory. This is where I get a little like, you know, I have you you had said it earlier. 30, you know, the the 137 to 170 steps that are required. Anybody can do that. The difference between me and Joe Inventor or Jill Inventor is simply this. I know I can pivot earlier. You don't have the team to do that. So you're gonna follow the course and never make the right course adjustments, whereas we look for those. Where does this fail? So you can only do that when you have the two things that no person has. That is the network of manufacturers that I'm not married to one manufacturer. I have multiples, and I'll give another speech on that. But more so, I have 65 very confident people that understand that it is their job to stop the production line, make the change, pivot so that we can go faster at the beginning. And that is what, you know, when you get the right, when you think you get the answer, you haven't scrutinized enough to make sure it's the right answer. And that's why you're still in the million micro decisions that someone else has given given you. I don't want that. I'm going straight to the top. I want the experts at the manufacturing and tell me which is the best plastic to use. This one here. Okay, good. Yeah. Trust the experts. Trust the experts. Use AI to help you. But the look at the one thing that AI will never do, and I'll I'll speak to you guys. It is it is a clear choice. I personally, I look at the entrepreneur to becoming a business owner. I always tell people at the end of the first call. If you get a actually it's at the s at the end of the second call, once you've had a proposal review, I would say that is either your first wantrepreneur conversation or your first founder conversation. Right. That is the earliest I can tell you whether or not you're built for this or not. If you're not built for this, you should not do it. And when you're not built for it, I understand it it it sounds like I'm being mean and I'm gonna do a Mark Cubanism here. It is not, it's not intended to be mean, it's it's intended to be honest because. If you still believe that you are not a entrepreneur, you are gonna go and spend out a little bit of money at a time. And over time, that's gonna take you 10 years and take more of your capital resources. Put that towards vacations for your kids. Do something that you're gonna enjoy better. because i unless you decide that you're gonna be a founder of your idea, everything else is a waste of time, money, and effort that you should be focusing on all the things. Yeah. This is not a set it and forget it. Process. I mean, you have to be involved. Well, and and look at there's only one consolation price to doing it that way. At some point, when everybody else is not delivered what you expected, or that you have not reached the expectation, if that motivates you to call and say, screw this, I'm just gonna go get this done, if you made that right at the beginning, you'd be a lot more successful because time is not on your side. No. The longer this takes, the more chances someone else already has it, the less like man, this last year and a half, just between two in two years, AI has changed the world, flipped it upside down. And it's great. There's things that you can absolutely take advantage of right now. But if you're still if you haven't started, you're gonna miss this boat. Yep. Right. Just like when when Facebook started, you could you could friend anybody that you wanted. like it was a wild west because there was no provisions to stop anyone from doing it. Those people built when TikTok started, if you just created TikTok. Campaigns or TikTok posts every day, one a day consistently. You you probably those people that did that have three to four hundred thousand followers. Videos didn't even have to be that good as as long as you were posting the algorithm. You were on a call with me today. Yeah. You know that guy's got two hundred and fifty thousand followers on TikTok. Unbelievable. Was there anything about him that screamed a TikTok? No, I mean he wasn't he was not your prototypical No, he doesn't even know how to spell TikTok. And I'm not knocking him down, but You probably had a kid or a grandkid that helped him get set up and he just like had time during COVID to to to do stuff. And just by that early adopter and then it worked out. Early adopters win the races most times. Yeah. All right. Well, Peter, I think we addressed all of AI's risks and warnings and and red flags. Anything Yeah, you didn't even trigger me on this one. No, this is what it's the I process. When I saw the when I saw these questions come through, these are the the frequently asked questions that we get. And When you're asking these questions, it's really hard for me to determine. And I don't it's not up to me to determine. It's for you to determine are you a wantedpreneur or are you trending to become a founder of a business? Because a wanted that is the kiss of death. Listen to Mark Cuban. We can put some links to that. But you don't want to be a wanted in a real business. And and I can't afford and and I don't have the time to I look, I'd love to be the educator for Wantrepreneurs. The challenge is I'm a doer. If you want to do this, I need business I need business minded founders to start. If you're a Wantrepreneur, watch my podcast. I'm helping you become grow from Wantrepreneur to a founder. That's really the goal of this. Absolutely. Well, check out our other episodes. Thank you for watching. If you have any questions about what we do, drop them in the comments below. And if you have an idea that you want to bring to market, contact us today at 52 launch. Yeah. Please share, share, share. This is all about the shares. Show this to somebody that you know. Is having conversations with you, but hey, I had this idea and I'm trying to do this and I'm trying to do that. There is no try, there's just do. So do it. Share it with people to have them call us. See you next time on the Pitch the Product Podcast. Thanks for watching. Thank you.