How to take your good idea to the next level (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
So, Frances, here's something I've been thinking about. As leaders, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do the right things and have the right answers. And in many situations, asking the right questions is far more important.

[00:00:15] Frances Frei:
Oh yeah. If we ask the right questions, we increase the likelihood that we're gonna get to the real problem because it shows, it allows people to explore the area and navigate the area.

[00:00:27] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And I, uh, ran this quote from Albert Einstein, uh, smart dude, uh, that was super provocative on this front, which is, is some version of “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the right questions to ask.”

[00:00:47] Frances Frei:
That's everything.

[00:00:48] Anne Morriss:
“…which would allow me to solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

[00:00:51] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:00:51] Anne Morriss:
And it, it seems very aligned with the way you move through the world.

[00:00:58] Frances Frei:
Yeah, yeah.

[00:00:58] Anne Morriss:
Where that speed is the payoff at the end of that kind of deliberation.

[00:01:03] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So, uh, we were recently brought in because a company said, “We have a gender problem. Will you help us fix the gender problem?” And so we could have come in with all of the solutions for how to fix a gender problem, what we, what we call our gender toolkit.

And what we found out by asking a series of questions within the first hour, so within Albert Einstein's hour, what we found out is they didn't have a gender problem at all. They had a communication problem, and we got there by asking people, “Is there anything that you are experiencing?” I, and we asked women, 'cause they said they had a gender problem. We asked, “Is there anything you're experiencing that is just a small nick in your dignity throughout the day?”

[00:01:45] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.

[00:01:45] Frances Frei:
That question uncovered what the real problem was, which is that they were being communicated with, everybody was being communicated with in a really brutally aggressive way.

[00:01:56] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. It was not just, uh, it was not just the women in the company. Right.

[00:01:59] Frances Frei:
It had nothing to do with gender. It had to do with the two founders’ really, like, aggressively, brutally aggressive communication. And so out of respect, they treated other people as they liked to be treated, which we of course know is the wrong thing to do.

[00:02:13] Anne Morriss:
Super powerful example.

This is Fixable. I'm Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:02:21] Frances Frei:
I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School. And I'm Anne's wife.

[00:02:27] Anne Morriss:
On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and solutions are often just a single conversation away.

[00:02:34] Frances Frei:
Today we'll be having a conversation with someone we're calling Bree, and Bree left us this very interesting voicemail.

[00:02:41] Anne Morriss:
Let’s hear it.

[CLICK]

[00:02:42] Bree:
Hi, Anne and Frances. I'm a former creative director and current Pilates instructor. I also own a company that I accidentally created with my business partner. It's actually a fitness equipment company, which is a huge plot twist on my life, since I can't even put together IKEA equipment. We have a patent, we have manufacturing and distribution, and we've sold it worldwide.

The problem is that it's not my wheelhouse. I totally believe in it and won't give up on it. But I would like it to go onto someone who knows what they're doing better—someone with resources, someone who's good at schmoozing, someone who's good at sales, all things that I'm not good at. I'm really good at watching serial killer documentaries, and I need to get back to what I'm good at doing. Can you help?

[CLICK]

[00:03:25] Anne Morriss:
Wow. This is gonna be a good conversation. I, I feel like this is gonna be a conversation, Frances, where asking the right questions is, is gonna be really important.

[00:03:34] Frances Frei:
Yeah. And she has a problem that is what do I do in my presence so that the company is prepared for my absence? And that is a few good questions away.

[00:03:58] Anne Morriss:
Bree, welcome to Fixable. We're so thrilled to have you on the show.

[00:04:01] Bree:
Thank you for having me.

[00:04:02] Anne Morriss:
So, um, what we wanna do today, we wanna get to know you a little better, and then the three of us are gonna get into the sandbox of trying to be helpful to you today and see if we can't co-produce a solution and send you off in, uh, a state of enthusiasm to solve your problem and with some actionable things on your list. How does that sound as a game plan?

[00:04:26] Bree:
I wish you the best of luck.

[00:04:28] Anne Morriss:
That's all we need. That's all. And we like a little skepticism.

[00:04:32] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:04:32] Anne Morriss:
Because, uh, it's motivating. Um, so let's, let's get into it. You've invented a very cool product.

[00:04:39] Bree:
Thank you.

[00:04:40] Anne Morriss:
From what we can tell. Can you, um, tell us a little bit more about it?

[00:04:43] Bree:
So it is a, um… It is a combination of a couple of different Pilates pieces of equipment. Um, the one that I would compare it most closely to is a Pilates tower and stall bars.

[00:04:57] Anne Morriss:
And you're talking to someone who's been very intimidated by the space. 'Cause they all feel like—

[00:05:02] Bree:
It’s scary looking. Right? Or torture.

[00:05:03] Anne Morriss:
They're scary looking. Their, these, the names of these instruments are scary sounding.

[00:05:06] Bree:
Oh, ours is even scarier-looking, honestly. Yeah. Ours is the scariest. Might be the scariest-looking one of all, but, um, it solves a couple of problems in the Pilates industry is that most Pilates equipment is very large, and as I'm sure you know, real estate, the number one expense is space.

So we wanted to make something that you could have a piece of equipment that could do resistance exercises and things like that, but that didn't take up all of this space. So instead of having something that you did mostly lying down, we did something that you did mostly standing up. Which also solves another problem in sort of two aspects of Pilates.

One is that Pilates is mostly done lying down. We always say you don't get to stand up in Pilates until you're pretty advanced, but obviously, people need to be doing standing exercises and balance exercises and things like that. And I have a specialty working with neurological conditions, and definitely, people with neurological conditions need to be working on exercises that are standing. That are gait based exercises.

So it was a product that could work for my private clients, but also we could put a whole bunch of them in a room and they wouldn't take up that much space, because they only take up literally three, a little over three inches into the room. Which is basically nothing. And then like under three feet of width of wall space for each one. So when you—

[00:06:35] Frances Frei:
That seems like a miracle.

[00:06:37] Bree:
It’s… right?

[00:06:39] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:06:39] Bree:
I thought so as well. And so we created it originally just for ourselves, but then other people were seeing it and they were like, “Oh, we want this too.” So, um…

[00:06:47] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:06:47] Anne Morriss:
Other, other studio owners. This is…

[00:06:50] Bree:
Other studio owners.

[00:06:51] Anne Morriss:
Okay.

[00:06:51] Bree:
Right. So we did, like, our first run of 50 and then we sold our first eight and eight, both in New York City actually. So then we, um, ended up having people in Europe want them. So then we found a distributor that could do it in Europe. He knew a distributor in Australia. So then we have distribution in Australia and Europe and—

[00:07:15] Frances Frei:
My operations brain is going haywire right now.

[00:07:18] Bree:
—in the Middle East. But every time we, we place an order, our orders have always been 50 to a hundred. We loved an order of 50. We loved that. But then the factory was like, “No, it has to be a hundred.” So, and then, you know, there was COVID and supply chain issues. So all of that also kind of plays into it, but over time it's had some direct to consumer sales. It's had some sales in the rehab space, so we see that we have three potential markets, but the market I know is the Pilates market.

[00:07:54] Anne Morriss:
And so, so Pilates, uh, B2C, and then there's a rehab. These are your kind of three verticals.

[00:08:01] Bree:
Right. Yeah.

[00:08:02] Anne Morriss:
And so, I want, and tell us about the team right now.

[00:08:04] Bree:
Well, the team has actually changed, literally as of two weeks ago, but it's me and my business partner, so she and I have been working together since 2010. So we've been business partners for a very long time, so we have a really good relationship.

I am the creative slash teacher. She's operations, so she handles placing orders, dealing with, like, import stuff, dealing with shipping, like all of that. She does that. We just brought in a, um, sort of, it's like an accelerator group. So they have web designers and social media advertisers and things like that all within one company. So really it's just myself and my business partner. And then we have this new company that we're working with that is like an accelerator type company.

[00:08:59] Anne Morriss:
And then, directionally, how is the business going just from a demand standpoint? Are sales up, flat, down?
[00:09:07] Bree:
It is so flat. It is like the flattest, it's just been flat forever. It's been, you know, for years and years and years now. Not, I mean, that sounds like it's been decades, but since we started, you know, we'll sell, like we sold eight to a new studio in Chicago and then we sold two today. And then we might go days and days with no sales. But the way the business is operating and has always operated is we sell, we use the money to spend on the people that we need to try to grow it, and then we buy new product. Rinse, repeat, and we've never paid ourselves, which is, I have to say, it's not a fun way to do business.

[00:09:54] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm. What is it that you do on a day-to-day basis?

[00:09:59] Bree:
I, so I always say I get to do the things that are in the creative world that no one else can do. So if there needs to be a blog written, we did have a social media company, but I do some of the social media.

Um, we have an online studio with workout videos and just kind of continuing education stuff. So, I manage all of that. So I manage all the teachers on it. I edit the videos that go on it. I put them on our site. I let people know they're on there, our site. So I do lots of little things. I try to stay in the world of things that I feel most competent at, which tends to be teaching.

You know, like right now I'm working on a rehab training manual for physical therapists so that if PTs buy the product, they would know like, here's a protocol for working with shoulder injuries or knee injuries or hip replacements or spinal issues or whatever. Because I feel like that's, that's the stuff I know how to do. Um, and then I have a lot of meetings about stuff I don’t—

[00:11:02] Anne Morriss:
So many meetings.

[00:11:03] Bree:
—about stuff I don't know anything about.

[00:11:04] Anne Morriss:
What, on this list that you just described, which of these activities are energizing to you?

[00:11:12] Bree:
Teaching. So any of the sort of teaching people how to use it, teaching people what to do with it. Um, more of the educational stuff because that's really the kind of things I like coming up with accessories for it. So that's something that we've added over time. So I'm like, “Ooh, it would be cool if it could do this.” And then I will work with a product designer to make accessories for it. And people have come up with all sorts of cool things that I would never have thought of, and that's why I love our Instagram. 'Cause we see that somebody out there was doing something and I'm like, “I never thought about turning away in that direction and doing that exact same exercise, but that totally changes it.” And it’s, it's very cool and interesting. Um, but I always feel like in terms of work that I need my creative brain to be fed and doing what I would consider more mundane business stuff is not something that feeds my creative brain at all.

So. I do think, you know what my, my issue is, it is feeling like I'm failing and feeling like that that is partially my fault, that we're not working hard enough. Both my business partner and I are pretty big introverts, and so when we have recommendations of like, oh, you should go to like schmooze fest type things, we're like, “Oh god.” Um. Let's, I was like, we, well, it shouldn't be us. Like we need to find somebody who’s, like, a person that enjoys that kind of stuff. Who would do it really well.

[00:12:48] Anne Morriss:
Frances. Any additional questions?

[00:12:49] Frances Frei:
Okay. Yes. So I have a couple of diagnostic questions and then I, and then I'd like to summarize where we are. Um, so the sales that's occurring in London, Australia, Middle East, I'm assuming you're not in those places, like you're not traveling to London, Australian, Middle East to, so what generates those sales? How do those sales occur?

[00:13:06] Bree:
We have distributors, um, that distribute other Pilates equipment.

[00:13:10] Frances Frei:
And so for those distributors, are those three different distributors or one distributor across countries?

[00:13:17] Bree:
We have three distributors.

[00:13:17] Frances Frei:
Okay. And—

[00:13:18] Bree:
Oh, we actually have four distributors. Sorry. We have a Canadian distributor, so…

[00:13:21] Frances Frei:
Okay. Do you have a US distributor?

[00:13:23] Bree:
We don't, we, we are the US distributor.

[00:13:25] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Okay. Um…

[00:13:27] Bree:
Which we also think is a problem.

[00:13:29] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Yep. Um, so here's where I think we are. You are, um, you've gotten a better mouse trap. Like you have figured, you have solved a problem, you've solved a real problem, you've done it with deep empathy, and it’s, like, making the world better.

So you have created something of enormous value, and you should feel great about that. And the people who create are rarely the people who distribute. So that you are lamenting the fact that if you tried harder, you would be able to distribute. I just wanna go ahead and let you off the hook. No, you wouldn’t.

If you had excess, excess energy, it would be to create more. Your excess energy is not gonna be to distribute. So, I would just go ahead, and I would do a constrained optimization for your business. And the constraint is you are not the distributor. So that you are distributing in the US I think is probably one of the reasons why everything is flat.

Right now, and this is what Anne was getting at with you of, like, what's energizing and not, you are doing things that are neither energizing, nor are you very good at. You knew this on the way in.

[00:14:39] Bree:
Right?

[00:14:39] Frances Frei:
Um, and so part of what we're gonna do is give you permission to stop doing those and to partner with someone else for whom that's entirely what they do.

[00:14:50] Anne Morriss:
Can I, can I try something?

[00:14:52] Frances Frei:
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

[00:14:52] Anne Morriss:
Um, I wanna try and, I, take another swing at the summary just to put some—

[00:14:56] Frances Frei:
Oh, thank you for that. Yeah.

[00:14:57] Anne Morriss:
Scaffolding around this a little bit. So, first of all, um, what you're doing is really hard. The fact that you haven't succeeded wildly yet is not a reflection on your capability or the idea, but what you are doing is gathering important data around each of those things. Um, it seems like there's appetite for this product out there. You didn't know when you started down this path, but does that feel right? There is, you feel like there's a market at this point here?

[00:15:32] Bree:
We actually had a very interesting conversation. We were, we were thinking we need somebody to sell this, kind of like you're saying. That is a salesperson. Um, so we had a conversation with someone we had found on LinkedIn who had been in sales in the rehab world, and he just very casually said, “So just looking at this,” and he is like, “Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see like this as like six to $7 million a year in the rehab industry.”

And we're, you know, sitting there almost wanting to laugh because we're like, “That's amazing. Great that you see that,” but it's like we haven't been able to figure out how to even crack into that market, you know, but…

[00:16:19] Anne Morriss:
But, but are, do you have conviction that that market exists?

[00:16:23] Bree:
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:16:24] Anne Morriss:
That’s the quest , that’s the experiment.

[00:16:25] Bree:
I think it’s so perfect in that market.

[00:16:26] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. That's the experiment. And so that experiment feels like it was wildly successful. There's a second experiment around the design of the business. Like who, how does this ownership structure work? Like what does this business even structurally look like? How are the incentives divided up and who does what?

And you seem early in that experiment, and there's a third experiment around that's very important to you, Bree, and material to how this story plays out, which is what's the role you're gonna play. There’s a fair amount of work to be done to, to like work this one out. And do you wanna do that work? Uh, or do you wanna come up with a graceful transition plan for someone else to come in and do some of this hard work? So that, to me that's a, that's a third category.

[00:17:22] Bree:
Oh no, I’ve definitely said from jump that I would be happy to put it in someone's hands that was a good steward of it, but what I would not be okay doing is walking away and having it disappear.

[00:17:39] Frances Frei:
Right, right.

[00:17:40] Anne Morriss:
Great.

[00:17:42] Bree:
That’s basically my, my thing. I'm like—

[00:17:44] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:17:44] Bree:
I think it's great. Somebody please go take it and make it everything that it could possibly be.

[00:17:48] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:17:49] Anne Morriss:
Okay. So in the meantime, you were, you're gonna have to hang in there on these operating experiments.

[00:17:54] Bree:
Right. Right.

[00:17:54] Anne Morriss:
Right. Um, but if we can get you to a place where, you, uh, have the conviction. You're not gonna be doing this forever. This is a short period of time, and let's figure out how to structure the experiment to get you the learning as quickly as possible, which includes getting the right talent and human capital into the business as quickly as possible.

[00:18:17] Frances Frei:
Or, we don't think of it as a business, we think of it as a product. So I, what I keep thinking in my mind is, do you wanna, you're building a product or do you wanna build a company? And I don't get the sense that you wanna build a company.

[00:18:29] Bree:
No interest in building a company.

[00:18:31] Anne Morriss:
Beautiful. That's a beautiful level of clarity.

[00:18:34] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So I think you have done everything to get this ready, to have someone else who honors and cherishes and looks for additional products to have, to either sell to them outright or to license to them.

And so if you had a hundred units of energy, I would spend it on doing so. It's not a schmooze fest. This is a very targeted way of, of going in and finding the person who can distribute to it, and I would bet that there are clues of how to do it based on how you found the Middle East, um, Australia, London, Canada distributors.

[00:19:14] Anne Morriss:
What, what's your, Brie, what's your reaction to that?

[00:19:19] Bree:
One. I think that would be fantastic. Um, when Frances was talking about that we've already kind of found these people, I'm not sure we have because when we found the person to manufacture it for us, that was somebody I met when I was teaching a workshop, actually, in London.

So I was teaching in London, met someone who has an equipment company and had just remembered that I met him and he was a nice guy and I reached out to him. The other distributors, our Canada distributor, our Australia distributor, our Europe distributors, are all distributors that are sort of sub-distributors of the person who manufactures for us. So it's basically contacts that we've made through him. So I don't know that we have those contacts.

[00:20:07] Anne Morriss:
I just wanna, I, I wanna speak to like the part of you that's holding onto the story that you keep accidentally doing these things or keep accidentally meeting these people. Like, you are doing this with gorgeous intention and are bringing a tremendous amount of vision, energy, creativity, capability, and scale to the challenge.

And that first, that launch part of taking, like, some amorphous idea and bringing it to life in some way, that's in—wildly difficult to do and you are, you keep doing it in your life, again and again and again and again. And that's a really exciting pattern.

You present to me as incredibly creative, incredibly scrappy, incredibly resourceful. Like when you see a sense of possibility, you are able to turn that possibility into something real and tangible in the world in like record time. There's a human being out there that has the answer, and you just need to use all of your creative energy and talent and problem solving skills to find this person as quickly as you possibly can.

And you have the internet at your service. You have this incredible network. You have the guy who sized your market in 30 seconds, said it's 6 million. You know, go. I’d, I'd make that your first phone call. Uh, describe the problem to, you know, how can you help? I honestly, I would give you 72 hours to find a credible lead on this.

[00:21:49] Frances Frei:
I, I actually think that that's the right amount of time.
[00:21:50] Anne Morriss:
And I bet Frances would take the under on that.

[00:21:52] Frances Frei:
I would take the under on it.

[00:21:53] Bree:
Yeah.

[00:21:54] Frances Frei:
Um, like for you to find the credible person that's gonna be one or at most two degrees of separation away. Because here's the other thing, like, it's gonna be somebody that works at Peloton, um, or was it Lululemon who bought the Magic Mirror? Um, and—

[00:22:08] Bree:
Yeah.

[00:22:09] Frances Frei:
Like schmoozing, you don't wanna do, but solving this, I can already just watch you. The, our listeners can't see you, but I can. You are ready to go do this right now.

[00:22:17] Bree:
Okay. I can think of these people, like when you say, 'cause I've many times written down Peloton, like I've written down Peloton. It's been something I've written down. But what is the, what is the way in? To have the person listen?

[00:22:35] Frances Frei:
So, so, yeah.

[00:22:35] Anne Morriss:
What a great, what, what a great question. Now we're having the conver, now we're having the right conversation.

[00:22:39] France Frei:
So you want—

[00:22:40] Anne Morriss:
Frances, do you know anyone at Peloton?

[00:22:40] Frances Frei:
I do. You wanna be introduced to somebody at Peloton? No problem.

[00:22:43] Bree:
I would love to be introduced to somebody at Peloton.

[00:22:45] Frances Frei:
Yeah, no problem. I… will happen before today ends.

[00:22:47] Anne Morriss:
What's your next question?

[00:22:48] Bree:
Yeah, it's sort of, you know, it's sort of like trying to figure out how do you cold call, like, “Hey, you wanna buy my thing?” Like, 'cause that's sort of how we feel. Like, do you wanna, do you wanna buy this? Do you wanna like, just take this on? Like, wouldn't that be fun for you? Like… How do we make that happen?

[00:23:05] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So here’s, so for, yeah, so, so for the framing of it is I have an amazing invention. It's been market tested. I have the prototype, I have the patent. I've done all of the things. It's now to be—

[00:23:18] Anne Morriss:
I have the devoted customers who are lit, literally like weepy at how many problems this solves for them.

[00:23:25] Frances Frei:
And it, it solves so many problems for them, uh, including the ambulation one that you're saying, which I just think is huge, and that you also get a real estate like b-burst out of that. It’s like that. My wow continues.
[00:23:37] Anne Morriss:
I think you used the word miraculous, Frances.

[00:23:38] Frances Frei:
I did.

[00:23:39] Anne Morriss:
I don't think it's an understandment.

[00:23:41] Frances Frei:
I don't think it's an understatement. So you have this thing and you are looking for a partner to blow it out. You want this to be in the hands of everyone who needs it. So you're looking for someone to partner with to do that. And those, that's the intention of all of your conversations. And the people will either be the partner or they'll put you one degree closer to the partner.

[00:24:00] Bree:
Okay.

[00:24:00] Anne Morriss:
And you can be open saying, “I don't know what this partnership looks like. I just know that I have solved a huge problem for the marketplace.” And you can, you can be on that call at this point, super open and curious. It doesn't have to be I have an offer for, you know, a complex fin-financial debt swap.

[00:24:20] Bree:
Right.

[00:24:00] Anne Morriss:
You know, like you can, you can say, I'm trying to find, I'm trying to find the right structure. We have learned a tremendous amount over the last five years of doing this, and we have a really exciting momentum and we're looking for the right partner now.

[00:24:34] Bree:
Okay.

[00:24:36] Frances Frei:
So I, I think that you, you wanna shift away from the, a company to a product, and now you're looking to partner with someone or license to someone to sell this product that is a world changing product.

[00:24:52] Bree:
Okay.

[00:24:53] Frances Frei:
So you're not looking for a salesperson, you're not looking, like none of that stuff, the social media, all of that. It's not, that's not what you want.

[00:25:01] Anne Morriss:
Um, Brie, did we achieve the objective of this call?

[00:25:04] Bree:
I think maybe you did, you know, the problem has been solved.

[00:25:08] Frances Frei:
Yeah. I, I'll take the bet.
[00:25:08] Anne Morriss:
So what's your next move, Brie?

[00:25:12] Bree:
Well, in 72 hours I'm going to be asking for your contacts to, to reach out to, and then, um, talking to my business partner and rehashing what we've talked about. And I'm sure she'll agree 'cause we're both, we both kind of feel the same way. Um, and looking for an off ramp for our sort of current involvement, which is not what either one of us wanna be doing, either myself or my business partner.

[00:25:39] Anne Morriss:
And doing it with the freedom that you didn't fail here. Uh, this is, this is the logical next chapter in the story of this idea.

You know, Frances, Bree’s journey, I’m gonna use journey unironically. It's one of my commitments this year. Makes me think of the lifecycle of an idea, which I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about, um, thinking of the Paul English case and um, just the work that we've done with entrepreneurs, like this idea of where do good ideas come from and then you're not done with the idea necessarily.

[00:26:45] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:26:46] Anne Morriss:
And then w-what do you do to make sure that they can survive out in the wild?

[00:26:52] Frances Frei:
So the Paul English view of the world is that great ideas, great innovative ideas come from annoyance. So it's, so he just is constantly looking at what annoys him.

[00:27:04] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.

[00:27:04] Frances Frei:
And if it annoys enough other people, there is an innovation waiting to happen there. So he reframes and is quite excited when he gets really annoyed.

[00:27:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, and it's a great example. So he, he essentially started Kayak, if I understand correctly, which is this great service for, you know, finding the best flight because he was deeply annoyed that he had to go to, you know, airline website to airline website to solve his problem, which is how to get from here to there.

And I know when you teach that case, part of the challenge to the room is to bring their annoyances into the table, and what I love about you coming home from those classes is, you know, in, in every class, at least, like at least one legitimate idea is, is born from this discussion about it astounding how irritated we are by our environments.

[00:27:57] Frances Frei:
It’s astounding. There is an innovative idea that could end up becoming a company, and it is born from our annoyance.

[00:28:04] Anne Morriss:
And, and one of the things I loved about this conversation with Bree is, uh, and you're not done.

[00:28:10] Frances Frei:
Right.

[00:28:10] Anne Morriss:
Um, and figuring out what your role is going to be in the life cycle of turning that idea into a product and then potentially or not into a business, is actually quite a very subjective and personal trajectory.

[00:28:27] Frances Frei:
And it's very unlikely that the person who started from the annoyance is gonna be the person who brings it all the way through production, distribution—

[00:28:36] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:28:36] Frances Frei:
Retailing, all of, all of that. And in Brie's case, she had the annoyance, brought it all the way through to the product. She also tried to make the product the company, and that was probably a bridge too far. And that might've been when she needed to start to develop a team.

[00:28:53] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. One of the questions that we often ask entrepreneurs at the beginning stage of just thinking about this is does this idea want to be a product or service? And eventually the next, the subsequent question, does this, I, does this product or service wanna be a business? Those are two very separate questions.

[00:29:14] Frances Frei:
Very separate.

[00:29:15] Anne Morriss:
And, you know, uh, the third one is then what role do I wanna play at what point in this lifecycle? And when you start down the path, you don't have answers to any of those questions.

[00:29:25] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:29:25] Anne Morriss:
And your job in the beginning is to answer them and, and get data that will in, inform a good answer. And that's where she is. She's just beating herself up along the way. And I think that's, that's the opportunity, that's the emotional opportunity here, is for her to stop.

[00:29:42] Frances Frei:
Yeah. For, to liberate her from the, from the unproductive need to do that. Yeah.

[00:29:47] Anne Morriss:
The self-flagellation. Yeah.

[00:29:49] Frances Frei:
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a work problem you're feeling stuck on, send us a message. You can email fixable@ted.com. Call or text 234-FIXABLE. That’s 234-349-2253. We'd love to hear from you.

[00:30:06] Anne Morriss:
And consider sharing this one with a friend who's embarking on the entrepreneurial journey for the first time.

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

[00:30:22] Frances Frei:
And me Frances Frei.

[00:30:24] Anne Morriss:
Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar and Roxanne Hai Lash.

[00:30:34] Frances Frei:
This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard. If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.

[00:30:43] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review. It really helps us make a great show.