Got A Product Idea? Don't Write Another AI Prompt Until You Watch This

Dan Peter 7-23-26: I don't want people to go down the path thinking they're gonna have a great result and then turn around and lose their money, falling into a pit where they they they they just lost fifty, sixty, a hundred thousand dollars. look at it think that's got a little bit to be determined still. Right now, I think it's a great tool to get a high level thinking, get your points across. from an IP federal standpoint, they're saying that anything that AI creates for you is technically not your IP.

I don't know where that ruling's gonna come down, but it's just things you gotta navigate. It it's a really good tool. There's physical things that AI cannot do. Yeah, I I mean, look at I'll go a step further.

I think it's great. I I think AI is the best thing since. The internet, right? however, just like the internet proved to us, there can be some dangerous things that come out of having people being able to communicate online.

I mean, I know this is probably the wrong subject to bring up right now, but I believe that the whole pedophile challenge we have in this country has a lot to do with the internet. And you know, that scares the daylights out of me. and I shockingly say that because I think AI could be could have a similar situation when it comes to the information that people are getting from it. everybody believes it's 100% accurate and true.

And it really isn't. I mean it's in its infancy stages right now and it's learning and getting better. But by no means should everybody take what's on w what AI says to be 100% factual. I think we're years away from that happening.

it's gonna learn. It's where's this gathering its facts from? Exactly. Somebody that wrote it somewhere in a piece of content online.

So if that information was all approved and and ready to go and was perfectly there was no dispute that that was the truth, AI is gonna get it right. There to me, I I will tell you AI is becoming the new type of attorney where they can give you a lot of opinions. Their job is to be cautionary. And really make sure you understand, like, hey, go slow, take the small steps, don't take the big steps.

Dan, you've been an entrepreneur and a business owner all your life, just like I have. where does that fit in entrepreneurship or starting a business? Do you go slow and take small steps or do you have to go for it? No, I I think that well, two you'll get two different answers from two different people.

I've always been a believer in I go get it. I've done that my whole life. I'm You know, my feeling is I'm gonna learn by making mistakes. That's the only way you learn.

so Well, and your s your starting point would have been somewhere like mitigated, right? You're not going blind into I'm gonna go throw a bunch of pap poker chips on the table and think I know how to play this game. No, I mean, like anything else, you wanna know the answers to your questions. So yeah.

yeah, I I think that look, I I I I was excited to talk about AI today for a number of reasons. the biggest concern for me is that You know, w we're we're still, you know, having people hire us for accelerators. I I know that you're in charge of sales at at fifty two. And you said that now it's the average client takes about seventy nine days.

Yeah, it went from about ten days to about seventy nine. Yeah, so about seventy nine. That's a specific number. Seventy nine days.

Seventy point three, so about with the show. So, you know, what does that mean? Well, that means that again, AI AI is influencing people's decisions or at least their fact finding, which is awesome. I I love the fact that everybody is utilizing AI because if you're not utilizing AI today, then you I mean, it it's a shame because it's a powerful tool.

But again, you know, y using it the right way is important. going at it helps a skelter. I know you just brought up, you know, pret you know, once you once you just Close your product idea out there in the internet, you know, out there in the social media world. Now you've, you know, someone can copy that idea now.

You're not protected anymore. It's how much money did we just spend the last time on every one of these calls? And I will tell you about three months ago, the change happened where you know, when you and I used to get on calls together, you'd see like a napkin, or someone would have to explain it to you, or someone would draw it right in front of us. I went to the beach a couple of weeks ago and someone drew it in the sand.

Yeah. When I show you now. the conversations that Bobby and I hope a wave washed up and exactly it took that. Technically I didn't want to tell them it's public disclosure, but no.

you should see the inner the content and the things that people are showing me. Like it's very high level, but you technically disclosed your information at this current moment in time. Right. And that's dangerous, right?

Because that means you can't get an IP, you can't like if you're good but the plus side of that is is that you're able to go look at A rendering of your idea. Have AI help you develop your idea. So that is like incredible information that you don't no longer have to be a good drawer for the first time ever. Someone the whole team saw my barbecue belt.

Yeah. So again, that's the positive side. But I'm I'm just simply afraid of this. We've we've spent close to a hundred thousand dollars over the last three months developing our own proprietary AI model where anything that goes into it is proprietary to 52.

So we're not disclosing anything to the right, you know, to the public. we're protected. So yes, we're utilizing AI as much as we possibly can. and it's some areas are really good.

well, let me rephrase it. Some areas are good. there are a few areas that are very good, and there's a lot that's just misleading. The the similarity, the the online search engines.

Is very similar to right now. Those that were really good at put inputting the right search tools, like looking for the right specific things, that is really powerful where AI is actually very incredible. To your point, the the the 10 days to 78 days, it is the over what do they call it? Paral analysis paralysis when you have too many options to look at.

Right. And you're trying to cut through the clutter. So look at I think right now for us, it actually is a powerful tool to be able to like really identify our like a value proposition differently and and remove ourselves from the people that used to, well, you know, everyone else can do this, this, and this. You know, if you're doing it for a prototype versus a product, it's the same, it sounds the same.

Yeah. But you just spent the same amount of money to get one versus doing it to get a thousand to five thousand and a scalable model. Right. So that's that's what AI does not necessarily know how to differentiate.

Exactly. And again, the research component of AI is incredible. But You've done the research, now you have to compile that. So a human has to now look at that.

And that human is an expert, you know, at research or an expert at creating the right research that's gonna help make a decision, a thoughtful and an educated decision on whether you should move forward or what direction you should be moving forward in. AI is a tool, yeah, but you do need human interaction, you do need that human emotion because. The last time I checked, we're in the consumer product space. And who buys our products?

Consumers. Do robots buy our products? No. No.

So humans do. So they have that emotional attachment or that you know, they're the ones that left left brain or right brain. The logical side of AI is incredible. The emotional side of AI is non existent, right?

That's where you still need the hey, is this going to sell? Yeah. Like ask that to AI, you'll never get an answer. I have been in product sales, you've been in product sales for our whole lives.

So the answer is I can see something that's going to sell right from the get-go, how it would sell, what we need to sell, who would buy it, where it would go. You know, again, the the frustration that I don't know if you can hear my voice, but the frustration for me, and and everybody here has heard this numerous times, and I'm and I'm certainly not saying this to boast. I'm just simply saying that I do not have to work anymore. I've I'm at an age that I've done quite well.

my whole life being self-employed. and I do this now because it's fun. That's the 100% of the reason why I come to work every day. And I don't even call it work.

It's fun. I surrounded myself with a a great team, many who are smarter than I am. And I love coming to work because I love helping people. that's why we started this business even 10 years ago.

I did not have to start this business with you, Peter. I do it because I love it, keeps me young. keeps me, you know, motivated. and the frustration I have is that when we first started this, we thought that Invent Help was our competitor.

And you know, our friends at Invent Help are not our competitor. They they do something entirely different than what we do. We tell people that we don't really do licensing opportunities. We just cause we haven't seen any out there that that have been successful.

So we decided to go the route of bringing a product to market from From beginning to end. Nobody else does that. That is our value proposition. We did as much as we could to discourage people from spending the money on Invent Help if they wanted to actually capitalize on their proprietary product, right?

And they weren't going to be able to do that through a licensing deal. So we just said, don't spend that money there because it'll be less money for you to come hire us to actually get you. To a point where you're now getting money back into your bank account. Okay.

That was important to us. Yep. It's always been that way. Now, fast forward, now we have AI.

And you know, AI is now, you know, a a form of invent help where they're they're not selling you anything, they're providing you information, but the the the questions that we're getting are like, I wanna my headache wants to explode. That's why we keep you out of the the idea department. First and foremost, Guy, I'm gonna tell you, audience out there. We like we're experts at what we do, but by no means are we not learning every single day.

we are going next month, I believe the team I know the team's going to China. We do every almost every month now. But in September, the or I think that maybe end of September, beginning of October is the Canton Fair, the world's largest fair to it be introduced and and network with manufacturers. However, half of the manufacturers in China that have a website that tell you they're manufacturers are not.

They're they are literally brokers. it's amazing what you can do today to look like you're a manufacturer. Remember we going on when we started, we used to Google search or whatever. Beautiful factories.

Yeah, and we were like, wait a minute, there's nothing there. And we would send Google there. Google Earth showed, like, wait a minute, though, this doesn't match up. They just showed me this nice factory, gave me an address, I punch it in, it's not there.

Right. Google, I not we'd send Luke there and Luke, like, guys, the there is no factory that looks like this there. So look at it, it's everybody markets that way. It's just that's just human nature.

I I like today, I I emailed a door manufacturer that I was I'm looking for a new front door and I I I I got an email from a manufacturer and it it had a had a name on it that I never recognized before. And it looked like they were legitimate, and they are legitimate but in the end. But I click on, I fill out my name. So now I'm gonna get more spam.

But I gave my number and all that stuff. And guess who guess who it was? It was Anison Windows. Windows and Doors.

Yeah. Who who I've talked to a hundred times because They have so many different aliases. They have so many marketing materials that they send out to capture your well, that's that's called the A B testing. And when you get it good at it, you don't just A B test.

You put out you put out all kinds of stuff out there. And AI can pump those out. Like the point I'm trying to make is that that that's happening in China. So at the end of the day, if you AI is not making your product, they are not making it.

They're telling you where you might go. and it's up to you whether you want to take the risk of Sending money to a company that you've never been to in a foreign country and cross your fingers that everything works out. That is what we've been doing for thir I've been doing it for 30 years. I have a network of manufacturers that I've actually been in the building.

We we vet our questions all the time, Dan. Like, you know, how do we know what what is the what is the vetting process? It's 30 years of, you know. do we keep the same factory for a 30 year period or we have to get new factory?

Like it's like a title wave, right? You get as they start to grow and they they get like you know, Walmart comes in, we're in the same factories, but who are they gonna give you whose business are they gonna take first? Our our thousand to fifteen hundred piece order or our fifty thousand piece order. they're the we're gonna get in line, but the fact that we're still we are still relevant there.

They're just still taking our business because the aggregate amount of business that we do, although they're small orders, they They do feel like we're important because we do so many different things. For instance, we talked about this the other day. We have a factory that we do work in with well, Walmart has pretty much dominates the factory. But these guys make towels for Walmart and they're sick of it.

They want to do other things. So we brought another soft goods product. I love it. It's so unique.

It's so unique. Exactly. It gets, you know, can you imagine looking at towels for 20 years? That's all you've looked at for 20 years and touch, but Again, the point that I'm trying to make is AI will not make your product.

they'll help you maybe create a logo, they'll help you with your initial design. they might even course, they'll get you some. So we so we track these things. And so far in our on our back end, AI has not won a name yet that passes the test that we know needs to.

That can be trademarked, that can be unique, that is not five thousand. And it actually gives you strong recommendations that, yeah, we can trademark that, which, you know, again, I can assure you we have twelve hundred patent attorneys and IP attorneys that we run these through and they're like, Yeah, no, this is gonna get you in trouble. And, you know, again, if you don't know that, that's AI can give you the information, but the little specific the specificities is like where they can't, like a belt, a stitch, you know, which ones cost more, which ones cost less.

You can never get those details, maybe in twenty five years, but It's the human interaction when someone looks at a product and goes, You gotta move that handle just a little bit down because it doesn't fit the hand or it needs to it'll save you three dollars if you move it this way. Like those are the things that no one knows. AI can't learn. In fact, it's it's that is pure experience of someone.

What's that adage like ten thousand dollar service? It's a two second job with a hammer, but you paid ten thousand dollars. You didn't pay ten thousand dollars for the hammer and the service, you paid for the knowledge. Yeah, I never heard that, but that's a great one, Pete.

That'll be your like Cliche forever. that's a good one. Can you remember what you just said? I it's on camera, so I don't have to anymore.

I'm getting old. Yeah, I I guess go circle back. I don't my concern is I don't want people to go down the path thinking they're gonna have a great result and then turn around and lose their money, falling into a pit where they they they they just lost fifty, sixty, a hundred thousand dollars. And they call us back and we can't help them.

I mean, you've unless you have more money. So we're just trying to prevent people from making that mistake. Use AI for what it's really good at, and that's research. again, the drawings that you showed me, they came up with great concepts.

But yeah, again, we always talked about this in the past. The most important aspect of manufacturing is DFM. That will never, ever change. So you have to be able to design a product.

So it can be manufactured cost effectively. It's the moat. So do you remember what that means? Margins, operation, the advantage, advantage, and your control.

So, you know, if you follow those rules, you know, that's a good start. but again, I I I really when I I came into the podcast room, I was thinking, I'm gonna drop a bunch of F bombs and I'm gonna be like pulling my hair out, but that's just not who I am. I wanna be that person that can get away with saying You know, yeah. But I swear a lot more.

I we'll let Gary V do it. He can get away with it. But I swear a lot more in the office when I get in front the camera. Like it somebody somebody said, yeah, I saw a Peter video yesterday and he yeah, was it the one that I'm alone?

And I said, Was it the one I'm angry? He goes, No, you're really calm. I said, That's when I'm angry. Yeah.

so again, we we're this I told Steve, Who runs these podcasts, like I gotta jump in that podcast tomorrow? I gotta get something off my chest. I I guess I wasn't as emotional as I wanted to be, but it does upset me that you know, I've seen it twice now this week, an email sent back to us with 150 questions that are not relevant to anybody, quite frankly. We had someone say, I wanna be, I wanna, can I meet the designer?

Can I meet the engineer? Can I meet the No, no. I mean, you can meet your product designer because they're in-house here. maybe the engineer, if we're using one of our own or for or we could be using one at the factory.

But yeah, the only way you're gonna meet those other people is flying to China, which we well do which we've done, right? So we have a podcast to go to China and meet the factories. I always go back to guys, we have 750 clients that we brought to market. Call them.

Yeah, you don't need to Like call you do your AI research, but call the clients that have actually gone through our journey and are actively selling their products right now. And that is the that's more important than asking AI a question. I d I last night, look at it drives me crazy, but last night I asked AI a bunch of questions. the only time 52 launch showed up, and you guys can all go to AI and and type this in because this is accurate.

I said What do you think about fifty-two launch? Would they be a good company to hire? I'm not even gonna tell you the answer. You go, you go find out.

Type that in. What, you know, should I hire fifty-two launch to bring my product to market? I'm curious what your answer was, because we we've already I just did it last night and you guys can go search it. and it'll tell you exactly who we are and what we do.

Yeah. And not surprisingly, the answer is they're a good company. yeah. So it's if you want to get a product to market from A to Z and create revenue, then fifty two launches that company.

Go go AI that. that's what you should be AIing, not asking questions that wound up are just not relevant to the early stages of this journey. Normally I'm the one who does all the talking. I can't.

No, I just it's okay. We've built I love it. Keep going. We've built an incredible company to keep Over 10 years.

And I was looking forward to AI and I still am looking forward to it because it's actually going to make us better, stronger, and faster. but man, man, it's like you know, bottom line is if you if you want to bring a product to market, go with your gut. You've got us to back you on the other side. If it's a horrible idea, we're gonna tell you it's a horrible idea.

And we'll give you Ten other good ideas that we know. We are not doing anything different than we did ten years ago. No. The difference is actually we're better at what we were much better at.

I would hire us today versus I mean, poor people that hired us ten years ago, we were well ten years ago, we were asked to do something else. People had failed at other places. Clearly, like it w we thought it was failure. Yeah.

They actually got their services. They probably wouldn't have made a decision to move forward if they hadn't gone through the invention help process, right? They got their patent, they got this, they got that. They got enough people that say, you know what, why hadn't you just bring this to market?

And that's when our phone rang. Right. That's how old we are because the phone used to ring. Now the lead comes in, right?

The the email comes in, the the DM comes in. But now we're still doing the same thing. What we've been trying to do is prevent you from like I don't need any of the other services if you've decided to go and turn a business like a product into a business. If you haven't decided that yet, then you know, look at we're gonna be here when you've spent fifty, sixty thousand dollars with other people.

And hopefully have some. I'm trying to prevent you from doing that. That's the key thing. And there are a lot of choices out there.

If you want to simply have your product designed, we can do that. But but 10,000 other companies can do that as well. If you want the entire process done under one roof, where you have your own product developer, your own designer, your own CSM, that is what we've built. I feel like Ron McLean letting Don Cherry go here.

This is like a Canadian reference. I just sitting here and watching. But all right, let me let me ask you something that I know will trigger you. Of course, Steve asked us one question we haven't gotten up at yet.

No, no, this is Steve Steve's used to that. He triggers us. He he doesn't come in here with like a just, hey, let me ask you a few questions. He knows how to trigger us, man.

I love that. Yeah. I'm gonna trigger you right now. Help help me identify for our for our clients that have hired us that that's the rented mule conversation.

Like people that come in and think that we're just the rented mule and we're gonna do what they like, we're here to w do what they tell us to do and that's the way it's gonna work. Help me understand. Should they hire us or should we not have let them hire us? Well, okay, okay, what what is one of our we have five am I thinking of CSMs?

No, not CSMs. We have we have our mission statement, we have our vision statement, and we have five five core print core values, right? Yep, make clients win. I'm getting old.

No. Not getting old. I am old. so you know, one of them, well one of them's, you know, one roof, one team.

Yep. the other one is customers have to succeed. Yeah. Right?

Customers have to succeed. Make clients succeed. I believe that's exactly what it says. And what does that mean?

Well, sometimes that means that and I I saw you did a podcast where you told somebody their baby was ugly. Yeah, which means not your baby, but your product is ugly, we're not gonna do it, right? Yeah, I'm usually honest. We cannot As a company, afford to have unhappy clients.

End of discussion. We just, I just won't have that, period. Are we going to have unhappy clients? Absolutely.

Through a long journey, there's frustrations that boil over, this challenges. In the end, our job is to bring a successful product to market. one that we believe in, obviously, one that our clients have to believe in. And we are going to almost force a decision to make sure you don't make a mistake.

Because if you make a mistake, we've made one by not enforcing what we think you should do. And that is the biggest challenge that we have. is I'll say it right out loud. Why would someone pay the money they pay to hire us to not take our advice 100% of the time?

I mean, I don't understand. Like we've done this 750 plus times. We've we've seen every major disaster. We've seen fires at factories.

We've we went through COVID. COVID. we haven't had a boat sink yet, thankfully. No, although we have insurance for all that.

But the point is that we've seen pretty much everything. And the great news is that we haven't brought a bad product to market. Our sometimes it takes longer than it should, but in the end, if we follow our core value of every client has to succeed, then we have to we have to be in control of those decisions. Look at we know better.

And I'm gonna you're 100% right. And here's the framework. So now the question is like, let's prove that. How do you do that?

And I'm gonna tell you. We talk about the minimal successful product, right? We this is where the invention help companies. When you go to them and they never have to make it, how over design can they do something?

Yeah, right. There's no constraint. It's so easy to be in the theoretical world. But when you have to decide that you have to make something, you have to have a lot more responsibilities.

And those responsibilities are look for your minimal successful product, that thing that is a 1.0 starting point that delivers your value proposition extremely well. The next one is KISS. Keep it simple.

And I I'll I I will eliminate the next S because if you're stupid, that happens. And that's not like you gotta understand to get rid of that other S because you just got to keep things simple. Then you have the moat theory, margins, operations, the your your your main advantage in the market and what you're trying like your total subversible market. If you do those three things, how can you get off course?

And that's what nobody focuses on. Everyone wants to see the billion dollar idea. I will even say total addressable market. I just want to know where the first thousand people are.

Cause if I can find those thousand, I know I can find five thousand. I know I can find fifty thousand. So I'm not looking, I don't care if it's a billion dollar industry. There is people online with a single product doing six to twelve thousand dollars a day or a week or a month.

Like that's what you need to look at. It's not total serviceable market. It's what is your market share that you are having the minimal operational cost that you can to be successful with a side hustle product. Right.

So let me ask you a question. Is it easier? Would it be easier for us as a company to sell a twenty five hundred dollar program where we're just quickly rendering your product idea and giving it to you and say, Yeah, go, you know, this is what we can do. Or is it No, it's a great question.

Look at you're gonna get a reaction out of me. So I can't easier than what we do? The answer is yes yes or no. The answer is absolutely, except for one thing.

I have a Principle problem with that. I don't want to deliver something that doesn't end the result where the client's happy. Exactly. If I'm going to make clients succeed, how do they succeed?

When I give them a picture for how does that go into our core value? Exactly. So, and the other question would be: like, why if if our core value is to make a customer successful, how does that what is our differentiator? That's a better question.

What is our differentiator? Why are we different than any other company? it's real simple. Look at.

We have the core people. Everyone has a specific role to do and they know how to do it well because we've trained them to do it that way. The hardest part is when they know what they need to be doing, and someone says, I don't want to do it this way. Can we do it this way?

And we know better. That is when I kind of put the you in the rented mule category. Like we're not that company. We know better.

Follow our process because if you deviate from our process, I can't make you succeed. I can only guide you to success. And I don't want to do that. That's why I'm very critical of like when you are on a call with me or Bobby or Dan.

That is the that is the thing I'm looking for. Because if you are not flexible in your approach, your objective to reach and be successful is my only mission with you. Right. And if we don't do that, how do we fail?

So I love Pete's answer. It's always long. Yeah. It's never short.

The our principal value proposition, what makes us different than anybody else, is right in our right in our mission and vision statement and our core values. go to the website, you can read them. One of the most important ones in there is that we are one team under one roof. One roof.

yeah. And we you can hold us accountable and responsible for what we do. Again, 95% of our products that are manufactured overseas, which again, we are experts at, they have more than one component that needs to be made. So good luck trying to source your packaging.

At one company in China, your injection molded part in another, and God forbid you have an electronics, you've got to now bring in a third factory, and somehow you've got to figure out what factory you want to have that marry those products. Yeah, potentially, potentially in three different regions of China. so again, at the end of the day, that is our value proposition is that we handle it all. From beginning to end and take full responsibility to to deliver your product and and launch your product.

And that's what makes us happy, proud. It's what inspires our team to do a good job. And that's never gonna change. I mean, that is our value problem.

And by the way, very few companies, if any, do what we do because it's hard. It's it's hard to do it. It's taken us ten years and we're still not. At my level of satisfaction.

You mean this isn't one, two, three, six eight? Yeah. So look at on on that note, Steve. Come back in a couple of weeks and you'll see more grey hair.

Right. I would I would love to have Sander on this on this podcast to to kind of go into deeper detail of how, you know, everyone thinks we're vertical. We're horizontal in the beginning, but as you scale, you become vertical because there might be equipment that you're not gonna invest in yet. The factories will help us.

But when you start to scale, that is when things get easier and you become more vertically integrated. I had a client, I just met with Sanders this morning. Yeah. Sanders, our production manager.

And I met with him this morning. went through every single deal that we have 150 active clients right now. Yeah, 150 that are in the production stage, 215 active. But I went through every one and he identified some of the areas that he's having challenges with sourcing.

you know, hopefully I'm able to help him with that. But at the end of the day, when you're bringing him A brand new product to market that no one's ever made, it's hard to find a manufacturer that wants to do that. Mind you, add a quantity that is not outrageous. Right.

So it it takes time. And and again, if it were easy as one, two, three, like you said, we'd everybody in the world would be doing it. Everybody in the world would be doing it. So it just takes time.

The and by the way, it's it's crazy, but the longer it takes, guess what that means. The longer it takes me it's harder for somebody else to duplicate it because it took so long and it and people give up. Instinct instinctively, people quit. Yeah, what did Kennedy say?

We don't do things 'cause they're easy, we do things 'cause they are hard. Right. Hard. so again, l you know, I always say turn that frown upside down.

You the harder it is, the better off we're gonna be. Yeah, I agree. What is our motto around here? We never ever give up.

So that's that's a that's a great segment. Yeah, you know it's not guaranteed not an o success not guaranteed. Failure's not an option. That's the way it is.