Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.102: Mastering the Product Game: Branding, Sales & What They Don’t Tell You w/ Madison Paige | The Ambitious Podcast

Transcript

EP.102: Mastering the Product Game: Branding, Sales & What They Don’t Tell You w/ Madison Paige | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:00
  Many people that are trying to build a brand show up as a small
• 0:02
  business. Does someone need to have a
• 0:04
  certain amount of money behind them?
• 0:05
  You can get pretty far just by brands.
• 0:08
  I have clients that will come to me with 100,000 followers that
• 0:11
  are struggling to make more than two to $3000 a month.
• 0:15
  And then I have clients that have 2500 followers that are
• 0:18
  making 10 to $15,000 a month because they have a community.
• 0:23
  People constantly just want to go viral.
• 0:25
  Community is what builds retention.
• 0:27
  It's what builds referrals, it's what builds, you know, word of
• 0:30
  mouth, It's what builds engagement, how many people are
• 0:34
  buying a second time. Have you ever thought about
• 0:37
  creating a product based business?
• 0:39
  Or maybe you'd be curious about what is different about a
• 0:41
  product based business versus a service based business?
• 0:45
  Well, today we are diving into all things product and today
• 0:49
  we're joined by the incredible dear friend of mine, Maddie, who
• 0:52
  is an absolute expert within this industry.
• 0:54
  She has helped brands. To go to a few. $1000 a month
• 0:58
  for selling out their products on things like Etsy all the way
• 1:01
  up to supporting brands that are now in major retailers like
• 1:04
  anthropology. Maddie also is the host and the
• 1:08
  incredible founder of her podcast, the Small Business
• 1:12
  Growth Podcast that has over 400 episodes around building a small
• 1:17
  business. So today we talked about really
• 1:20
  the the behind the curtain, if you will, of what it actually
• 1:23
  looks like to have a product based business and what are some
• 1:26
  of the misconceptions about building.
• 1:29
  A product. Company when is the right time
• 1:31
  to build a product company and also what are questions that you
• 1:34
  should be able to answer or things that you need to consider
• 1:37
  before you ever think about launching a product?
• 1:40
  And so I wanted to share some of the key things you're going to
• 1:42
  learn by listening today #1 She talks about the really big
• 1:46
  distinction between having a small business and actually
• 1:50
  building a brand and what it means to have one versus the
• 1:54
  other. She also.
• 1:55
  Talks about the fact that having.
• 1:57
  A product based business and labeling some as quote UN quote
• 2:00
  handmade is not actually as valuable of a of a brand
• 2:05
  proposition as you might think it is.
• 2:07
  She also breaks down her mop method of her magnetic online
• 2:11
  presence and how to actually use that to attract a ideal customer
• 2:15
  that you want to be working with and also to use it to understand
• 2:19
  your true differentiator within your market.
• 2:22
  She also breaks down the hero product strategy and why brands
• 2:26
  like Scrub Daddy, Liquid Death Hero Cosmetics and even more
• 2:31
  have been able to scale to household names with just one
• 2:35
  single product before ever expanding their product line.
• 2:38
  She talks about the real difference between building a
• 2:40
  business built on acquisition versus retention, how to
• 2:44
  actually understand the difference between community and
• 2:47
  audience, and why 85% of people experience decision fatigue when
• 2:51
  brands launched too many products at the same time.
• 2:54
  And she also will talk about a case study specifically around
• 2:57
  Coach, the luxury retailer Coach for purses and bags, and why
• 3:02
  they were able to forex their stock.
• 3:04
  Price within two years as a result of their positioning.
• 3:08
  Ultimately, she's going to also help us to know that if you are
• 3:11
  someone who is a service based business right now and maybe
• 3:14
  you've thought about adding products to your existing
• 3:17
  business, things like journals or merch or any of those things.
• 3:21
  She's also going to help to breakdown what service based
• 3:24
  business owners need to think about before ever adding a
• 3:26
  product to their product line. So I will tell you, you know,
• 3:29
  even for me, I am not somebody that I would say at this time is
• 3:34
  looking to start or launch a product based business.
• 3:37
  But I will tell you, the conversation today gave me so
• 3:41
  much insight even around just brand marketing community, all
• 3:45
  of those pieces when it comes to even my service based business.
• 3:48
  And it gave me some really good food for thought in the
• 3:52
  exploration of what would it look like to add, you know,
• 3:54
  products to my existing service business, even just to help my
• 3:58
  existing clients. So whether you're thinking,
• 4:00
  well, I'm not looking to, you know.
• 4:02
  Grow a product based business. I will tell you there are a lot
• 4:06
  of parallels in today's episode that you can learn from so
• 4:08
  without. Further ado, let's get into
• 4:10
  today's episode. All.
• 4:19
  Righty guys, and welcome back to the Ambitious Podcast.
• 4:22
  Today I am very excited because I am joined by an incredible
• 4:26
  friend and amazing entrepreneur who not only is a complete ninja
• 4:31
  at service based business, but she's also a ninja at product
• 4:35
  based business. So, Maddie, welcome to the
• 4:37
  podcast. Hello, thanks for having me.
• 4:40
  Yeah, I'm excited to dive in because I think, you know,
• 4:43
  obviously for me every week we talk about service based
• 4:47
  businesses, which is, you know, obviously as you know how to set
• 4:50
  up your services, how to market your services, sell your
• 4:52
  services. But I think it's, at least in my
• 4:56
  opinion, there's not as many people that talk about the
• 4:59
  behind the scenes of what it looks like for the product side.
• 5:02
  I don't know why that is. It feels like the service,
• 5:04
  there's a lot more conversations about it, but it feels like for
• 5:07
  the product side, it feels difficult to really learn what
• 5:11
  does it take to create a good product?
• 5:14
  Like is now a good time for people to create a product based
• 5:17
  business? Everything inside of it.
• 5:19
  Yeah, totally. It is a totally different world
• 5:22
  than service. Of course, it's still marketing,
• 5:24
  sales, branding, but it is you flip it on its head, especially
• 5:28
  with your delivery side of things.
• 5:29
  Yeah. So, OK, let's let's take it from
• 5:32
  the ground up because I would imagine the person listening,
• 5:35
  they probably do not have a product.
• 5:36
  And if they do, maybe they have a product that's in the kind of
• 5:39
  early infancy stage of getting that up and running or maybe
• 5:43
  it's an idea. And I know for you, you work
• 5:46
  with people who are kind of like, I feel like in two
• 5:48
  buckets. Like you have like the kind of I
• 5:51
  guess startup visionary type of product found here.
• 5:54
  And then you have, you know, what I might consider to be the
• 5:57
  more like desire to stay small, small scale, like an Etsy type
• 6:01
  of product, etcetera. So like maybe to start, I think
• 6:04
  what I've learned from you, if anything is like not all product
• 6:06
  is created equal and product business is not just product
• 6:10
  business. They're actually are tiers
• 6:12
  within creating a product business.
• 6:14
  So like if someone's wanting to listen today and realize, OK,
• 6:17
  what do you mean by product based business?
• 6:19
  What are those tiers kind of look like for you?
• 6:22
  Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a wide variety of product that
• 6:25
  you can have. You can start a business and
• 6:28
  have an Etsy sell on Facebook marketplace and make like, you
• 6:31
  know, 2000 bucks here and there or, you know, a month, you know,
• 6:34
  during the holidays, it really kind of explodes.
• 6:37
  You're making 3000. You know, you can think of it
• 6:39
  more as a as a side hustle. You know, I want to make a
• 6:42
  little extra money. But then there's also the
• 6:43
  product based world that you're like, I want to get into
• 6:46
  anthropology. I want to be in Target.
• 6:48
  I want to work with big influencers.
• 6:50
  I want to have Super Bowl commercial roles, like I want to
• 6:53
  play big. And there really isn't a right
• 6:56
  or wrong. It depends on what you want.
• 6:57
  But one thing that's nice about product is you can dabble in it,
• 7:01
  but you also can master it and really make it big and have a
• 7:05
  billion dollar company that actually is very, I want to say
• 7:10
  automated, but it's streamlined to the point of like you have a
• 7:13
  fulfillment center, you have a production center, you have a
• 7:16
  team that's like doing a lot of these things.
• 7:17
  And you're really just the top of the top of the funnel.
• 7:22
  Whereas if you want to keep it small, you are the producer, the
• 7:24
  shipper and you're doing all these things.
• 7:26
  You really can look at your business as a really large
• 7:29
  scale. And I work with, you know,
• 7:31
  $5,000,000 companies that are like, I'm good making 5 million
• 7:35
  if I can have more profit. And so when it comes to product
• 7:39
  based business, you have a lot of variety of how you want to
• 7:42
  run it. Some people do handmade, some
• 7:45
  people get things manufactured, some people try to market on
• 7:49
  social media, some people strictly do influencer marketing
• 7:52
  and just send people to your website.
• 7:54
  There is such a variety of sales channels in goals and ambition.
• 8:00
  We're like, I feel like in the service world because I run a
• 8:02
  service based business, we're all kind of building to have
• 8:05
  more clients. Like you're building more
• 8:06
  clients and you're just kind of gaining more, but it always
• 8:10
  comes back to you in the delivery and that's a big piece.
• 8:12
  Whereas in the product based world you outsource delivery,
• 8:15
  you outsource the production and the fulfillment and all of that
• 8:19
  and you really get to be that like top of.
• 8:22
  Admin basically and like, I'm wondering with that, because
• 8:25
  obviously even just listening that for most people, they be
• 8:28
  like, I'm already overwhelmed because there's just there's so
• 8:30
  many, there's so many options of what product you create.
• 8:33
  There's so many options of again, the vision of it.
• 8:36
  And so maybe to start off, you mentioned, obviously there's
• 8:38
  kind of these like two different buckets, right?
• 8:40
  It's like the desire to stay small business, if you will,
• 8:43
  versus the desire to create a product that eventually becomes
• 8:46
  a bigger business. Yeah.
• 8:47
  If someone's thinking about looking or investigating
• 8:51
  starting a product based business or they're in one, does
• 8:53
  the pathway of how you grow that look different for one vision
• 8:58
  versus the other? Because as a service based
• 9:00
  business, I feel like at least speaking for the clients that
• 9:04
  I've helped, just many of us, maybe even yourself at moments
• 9:08
  myself too, where I've been like, OK, like this works for
• 9:11
  the stage, like this works. But then your strategy kind of
• 9:14
  compounds as you get to these new levels.
• 9:16
  So right when you get to $1,000,000 a year business, a
• 9:19
  $2,000,000 a year service business, you're just kind of
• 9:22
  adding new bells and whistles. You're taking certain things
• 9:24
  away. It kind of evolves as you gross.
• 9:27
  You don't have to have that clarity at the beginning.
• 9:30
  But I think I think about, you know, for example, like a, a Bay
• 9:34
  luggage company as a product, right?
• 9:37
  Like I would imagine versus like the person who's selling
• 9:40
  suitcases or luggage on Etsy, you kind of have to know, I
• 9:45
  would think, where do I see this business going?
• 9:48
  What category is it going into? So like when someone wants to be
• 9:51
  small Etsy business versus big business, do they need that
• 9:54
  clarity before they press go? You don't have to do it before
• 9:57
  you press go, but you have to align your actions with the
• 10:01
  goals that you have. So I call this the difference
• 10:03
  between being a small business or a brand.
• 10:05
  Many people that are trying to build a brand show up as a small
• 10:07
  business and that is you're whipping things together.
• 10:11
  You know, it's the week before a launch and you're like
• 10:14
  scrambling, trying to take photos.
• 10:17
  You are kind of just like reactively a little bit more
• 10:20
  going through life, whereas a brand is very proactive.
• 10:23
  So we look at like a base luggage like they are doing
• 10:26
  right now in in November, they are doing next summer of their
• 10:30
  campaign for next summer. They are just working so far
• 10:33
  ahead, which they'll it allows for them to be more proactive.
• 10:37
  So from the start, you don't have to do that.
• 10:39
  If you are a brand, of course, they've been around for a long
• 10:41
  time. But if you're pre revenue, I
• 10:44
  would go into it understanding, you know, what is my overall
• 10:46
  goal? It's the first question that I
• 10:47
  ask people like in three to five years, where do you want this?
• 10:50
  And there's a big difference from somebody that tells me, I
• 10:52
  want to be, you know, in the hands of celebrities and I want
• 10:56
  to be in anthropolitan and I want to be in these stores.
• 10:58
  Or if they say, you know, I just want to make an extra 5 to
• 11:01
  $10,000 and like, you know, kind of keep it there.
• 11:04
  Like if they're holy shit, I'd made it number is like 5 to 10
• 11:08
  grand versus 5 to 10 million. Very big different strategy from
• 11:12
  the start. You're just thinking bigger, a
• 11:14
  little bit larger scale when you think of an Etsy.
• 11:18
  And it's not even Etsy. It's just people that want to
• 11:20
  stick a like, you know, stick at a lower.
• 11:22
  And a lot of people are like, Hey, I want to, you know, make a
• 11:24
  couple $1000 while my kids are home, feel like I still have
• 11:27
  kind of a creative outlet, have something fine, great.
• 11:30
  Again, there's no right or wrong.
• 11:32
  But when you're doing that, it is a lot.
• 11:35
  You're thinking smaller, you're thinking like more short term.
• 11:38
  You're just thinking, OK, how can I launch as much as possible
• 11:42
  to try to get these influxes? How can I discount?
• 11:44
  You're thinking very transactional.
• 11:46
  And then you're thinking, OK, how can I retain a couple of
• 11:49
  these people? And basically you're just trying
• 11:51
  to build your monthly recurring revenue of product sales, you
• 11:54
  know, whether it's subscription or whatever to your amount.
• 11:58
  And then you can kind of coast and you can bring a couple of
• 12:00
  new people in. It's also a lot harder in
• 12:03
  product to just coast like it is in service.
• 12:06
  Like in service you can be like, oh, all right, I'm good here for
• 12:09
  like 6 months. Like I have clients for six
• 12:12
  months in product. It can be June and everybody's
• 12:15
  spending their money on vacations and all of a sudden
• 12:18
  your sales dip because people aren't thinking about buying
• 12:21
  whatever mittens in the middle of June.
• 12:23
  And so you do have a lot more fluctuation, still a little in
• 12:28
  service. But when we're looking at the
• 12:29
  brand side, you are building for longevity.
• 12:33
  You are building brand identity knowing that in five to 10 years
• 12:37
  your product suite is probably going to look very different
• 12:40
  than it looks now. And we're going to expand that
• 12:42
  product suite. You're just thinking bigger like
• 12:44
  the a mistake people make is they're like, OK, I'm going to
• 12:47
  make this product. I'm going to make whatever dog
• 12:50
  collars and they name their brand like, you know, dog
• 12:53
  collars R Us and then it's like, OK, long term, you can't scale
• 12:57
  that because you've pigeon held yourself into dog collars.
• 13:00
  And so this brand people, this brand space, what they have to
• 13:04
  do is you are just thinking bigger.
• 13:07
  You're thinking longer term in the entire process of it.
• 13:11
  Well, I think that like for most people as entrepreneurs, I think
• 13:16
  at the beginning you're so scrappy that you're just like,
• 13:19
  OK, I'll have to solve a problem and I'm going to create a
• 13:21
  product. But I think you hit the nail on
• 13:22
  the head. Sometimes people don't take
• 13:24
  enough of a step back to be like, OK, wait a second though.
• 13:27
  What do we see as the vision of where we're going?
• 13:30
  What do we see as the vision of like what I would be a yes to,
• 13:33
  what I would be a no to? And I think the other piece,
• 13:36
  which I kind of note there is like, there's also what works
• 13:39
  for the, the market and there's what works for you.
• 13:42
  And like I also want to say, I know people who have been like
• 13:45
  that Etsy business and they make some good money, like you can
• 13:47
  make some serious. Serious, I have multi multi 6
• 13:51
  figure companies that are strictly on Etsy.
• 13:53
  Yeah. So like I don't by any means in
• 13:55
  this process want to like put down Etsy because I know some
• 13:57
  people who are making some good moolah off of Etsy.
• 14:00
  Yeah. But I think one of the questions
• 14:03
  that instantly came up for me because you said pre revenue and
• 14:06
  I think that when when people are building a service, there's
• 14:10
  such little startup cost needed. Like truthfully, let's be
• 14:14
  honest, the the startup cost of a service based business is your
• 14:18
  time. Like you're just like it's sweat
• 14:19
  equity. Many of us had a nine to five.
• 14:22
  We would be, you know, at work for X amount of hours.
• 14:25
  We'd come home, sit on our laptop, blitz it trying to
• 14:28
  create something, take calls on lunch, put something up in
• 14:31
  marketing on our break at work. Like there was this fluidity.
• 14:35
  And I think because of that, it allows a lot of people to
• 14:38
  transition from a nine to five or a corporate job, whatever it
• 14:41
  might be, into becoming an entrepreneur pretty seamlessly
• 14:44
  right now. When I think about products, I
• 14:48
  think most people see if like, hey, let's just say like for me,
• 14:52
  if I, I feel like if I ever created a product 100% I'd be
• 14:54
  like a candle company or something because I'm obsessed
• 14:56
  with candles. But I think about the fact, OK,
• 14:59
  you need to have the manufacturer of that candle.
• 15:03
  You have to either do it yourself, you need the branding
• 15:05
  for it, you need delivery, you need tracking.
• 15:07
  Like you, there's you just see all these hurdles, whereas I
• 15:10
  feel like in service you're like, I need me, like I need my
• 15:13
  hours, I need my effort, I need my clarity and skills.
• 15:17
  So let's talk a little bit about pre revenue because I think that
• 15:20
  in service people are like, you can start with nothing.
• 15:23
  Feel like the same is definitely not true when it comes to
• 15:26
  product. So if someone's thinking about
• 15:28
  creating or maybe they have the dream of starting a product
• 15:31
  based business, realistically, what does that look like startup
• 15:36
  cost wise to like get a business going?
• 15:38
  And does someone need to have a certain amount of money behind
• 15:40
  them, maybe in your opinion, to make it have a fighting chance
• 15:44
  of being successful? Yeah, there are people that
• 15:48
  start with 500 bucks in their bank account and they're ready
• 15:51
  to like, you know, grind it out and make sure it happens.
• 15:53
  There's plenty of stories like that.
• 15:55
  If you watch Shark Tank long enough, you'll hear him.
• 15:57
  But if you want to do it right, there are going to be some
• 16:03
  costs. It helps if you can do creative
• 16:06
  yourself, because if you are a creative individual or you have
• 16:09
  somebody that can help you with creative, the people without the
• 16:13
  creative side, the aesthetic side, it's going to really, it's
• 16:15
  going to really struggle. And so if you have to outsource
• 16:18
  that, it can be expensive and it can be something that really
• 16:22
  holds you back without it. So if you just can't, you don't
• 16:24
  need to have the absolute perfect everything.
• 16:27
  But branding is so much, especially in the beginning of
• 16:32
  your product based business. It's the difference between
• 16:34
  coming in contact with a brand and being like, oh, this is
• 16:36
  cool. Like someone's making this, this
• 16:38
  is awesome and being like, holy cow, how have I never seen this
• 16:41
  brand before? Like I need to learn more.
• 16:43
  It's the, it's like the obsessed factor.
• 16:46
  And so that's definitely a piece is like you can build a
• 16:49
  business. I have plenty of clients that
• 16:50
  have come to me and said, hey, like I was a graphic designer by
• 16:54
  trade and I built this business and for like somehow it worked.
• 16:58
  Can we figure it out and like make it repeatable?
• 17:00
  And I'm like, OK, you did just kind of like you had a niche
• 17:03
  enough company that was beautiful enough that people
• 17:06
  were naturally drawn to it. But that can only get you so
• 17:09
  far. So you do need the creative and
• 17:10
  the strategy. It's something that I talk about
• 17:12
  a lot, the art versus the science of business, the
• 17:14
  creative versus strategy, the like structure versus the
• 17:17
  aesthetics. You need a little bit of both
• 17:19
  when it comes from a cost. It's very different than
• 17:22
  service. Like I was sitting down a couple
• 17:23
  weeks ago with one of my friends who wants to start a service
• 17:25
  based business And like it was like 4 hours of me being like,
• 17:28
  OK, get a calendly link. Like make a form, you know, have
• 17:32
  a really simple website and like start making content.
• 17:35
  That's all you got to do. And whereas with a product based
• 17:38
  business, we can work for a while.
• 17:40
  And like, I was sitting down with a new ski helmet company a
• 17:43
  couple weeks ago and she was just about to launch and she's
• 17:46
  like, man, at this she's like, I just, I'm so happy to like, you
• 17:49
  know, be like more seasoned in business.
• 17:51
  And I'm like, well, you're at stage 0.
• 17:53
  Like you still haven't even started.
• 17:55
  So you like you have so much to do still.
• 17:58
  And so when it comes to cost, of course it's going to be
• 18:00
  different if you're manufacturing ski helmets to
• 18:04
  clothing to, you know, every little thing is going to be very
• 18:07
  different. I have some clients that their
• 18:09
  products cost 350 landed in their home and I have some
• 18:12
  clients their products cost $250 like landed in their home.
• 18:17
  Those are going to be very different upfront cost.
• 18:19
  I think something that's really important to understand is that
• 18:21
  many people get very overwhelmed by manufacturing and like
• 18:26
  working with a manufacturer and it's actually pretty simple.
• 18:28
  These people want to work with you, they want your money.
• 18:31
  So they're willing to be very flexible, especially if they
• 18:33
  know that this is kind of your first run, that you will work
• 18:37
  with them for a while if it works out.
• 18:39
  So if they will be flexible with you with the like minimum order
• 18:44
  quantities. So don't be afraid to ask with
• 18:46
  some of those things. I think a service based
• 18:47
  businesses, at least myself, I'm in product all all day long, but
• 18:51
  I have like 100 product based businesses I would love to
• 18:54
  start. Like I have a new product based
• 18:56
  business idea every week. I'm like, oh, that would be
• 18:58
  great. Put it on the list and a lot of
• 19:01
  people might be like, OK, eventually they want to, you
• 19:04
  know, all right, let's add this as kind of like a secondary
• 19:06
  revenue source for a service based business, whether it's
• 19:09
  connected to your service or not, what you need is you need
• 19:12
  your product and you can make it, but I would recommend
• 19:15
  manufacturing it. You can hand make it, but I
• 19:17
  don't recommend it. It's not that I don't love a
• 19:20
  handmade business. I do love a handmade business,
• 19:22
  but I don't advocate for it to be the most scalable because you
• 19:26
  just have to build out your own team and all of that.
• 19:28
  At some point to do your own in house production, you need a lot
• 19:31
  more space and it can be really tough.
• 19:32
  But in the beginning I would get it manufactured if you can.
• 19:34
  If you want to hand make it, you can as well and question.
• 19:37
  Not actually really quick. Do people care?
• 19:41
  You know, when people market like it's handmade, I'm like,
• 19:44
  no, I hate it. For me personally, I'm like,
• 19:47
  listen, I don't care how it was made.
• 19:49
  I just want to know like. And frankly, handmade is not
• 19:54
  always a higher quality. These machines are made to make
• 19:58
  a higher quality product. And so many people use handmade
• 20:02
  as their differentiator as like this is what makes it different.
• 20:05
  I hand make all my skin care and it's like, I don't know if I
• 20:08
  want your grubby paws in my skin care.
• 20:12
  Like I'm a little, I'm a little skeptical of that, like.
• 20:17
  In your lotion, Yeah, yeah. Like in your face serums.
• 20:21
  Yeah. And so I think like a lot of
• 20:23
  people use handmade as this, like, oh, it's handmade, but it
• 20:27
  doesn't actually have to be a differentiator.
• 20:28
  And it's not often times many of my clients when they go from
• 20:32
  handmade to manufacturer, they find out it's cheaper, it's much
• 20:37
  easier on them and their nervous system, and it's actually much
• 20:40
  higher quality. That's another like that people
• 20:43
  have about getting something manufactured is that it's not
• 20:45
  very high quality, you know, if it gets if it's overseas.
• 20:48
  But like there's many things we can't manufacture in the States
• 20:52
  that like China is really good at or India is really good at.
• 20:56
  And so they have just different technology than what you can
• 20:59
  make handmade. So no, the consumer, average
• 21:02
  customer doesn't really care. If I'm walking around a farmer's
• 21:05
  market and someone's like, this was my grandma's peanut brittle
• 21:07
  recipe. I'm I'm sold.
• 21:10
  I love it. Great.
• 21:11
  I'll take your fingerprints. Grandma, though I'm sold to your
• 21:14
  grandma, I'm not sold because of the actual thing itself.
• 21:17
  Yeah. So what you really need to start
• 21:19
  a product based business is you need a product.
• 21:20
  Obviously I would try to find a manufacturer for it.
• 21:23
  You need a brand and you need to create the brand visuals like
• 21:26
  you need to understand understand, are you going to go
• 21:28
  kind of groovy? Are you going to go clean and
• 21:31
  trendy? Are you going to go, you know,
• 21:33
  vintagey? Whatever is your actual
• 21:35
  aesthetic that you want, you need to decide on that.
• 21:37
  But above all else, you need messaging and you need really
• 21:40
  great messaging. What makes you different than
• 21:42
  everybody else, because it's really hard to actually innovate
• 21:45
  in 2025. Going into 2026.
• 21:48
  There are so many products out there and everybody has a
• 21:50
  product, but you can make a product that there are so many
• 21:54
  out there, whether it's, you know, athletic wear line of
• 21:57
  leggings and crop tops or it's soap or skin care, whatever.
• 22:00
  But how you differentiate is on your branding and on your
• 22:03
  messaging. And so if you just have those
• 22:05
  two things, you can become an industry of one in and of
• 22:08
  yourself. And then you just need to start
• 22:10
  marketing and building a community.
• 22:11
  So it's very similar in the service world is like you need a
• 22:14
  brand, you need to understand which lens you're going through
• 22:17
  and you need to start marketing. But like that's really all you
• 22:19
  need. You know, we are setting up your
• 22:21
  foundations of your brand. I think it's more important to
• 22:23
  look long term in product because you're like, OK, this is
• 22:26
  the first run of my products, where do I want it to be?
• 22:29
  But it's adaptable, right? Like 3 years down the line, you
• 22:31
  can be like scrap that idea. I want to do this instead.
• 22:34
  So you can still learn with it. But you really need a brand
• 22:37
  identity. You need your messaging, you
• 22:39
  need your product. And then you need to start
• 22:40
  building a community around your brand, right around the idea.
• 22:44
  OK, brand because? I was literally just talking
• 22:48
  like a week or so to a different product based founder who also
• 22:51
  will come in the podcast shortly.
• 22:53
  And when we were talking about brand, we were talking about the
• 22:56
  fact that it's just shifted so much in the sense of a bunch of
• 23:01
  different buckets. Number one, I think that there
• 23:04
  is you have to know what brand category you're in because I
• 23:08
  think sometimes we're going so polished with their brands and
• 23:11
  then you'll see people on the contrast the other side of the
• 23:14
  spectrum. You'll see like someone who just
• 23:16
  created a product, maybe they again intended to be small.
• 23:20
  They start just messing around on TikTok sharing it.
• 23:23
  Before you know it, Bethenny Frankel's using it.
• 23:25
  And now they're pulled out and it's like their whole business
• 23:28
  blew up, even though they weren't necessarily being like,
• 23:31
  OK, we're going to be a luxury brand.
• 23:32
  To your point earlier, they somehow by accident or you know,
• 23:36
  by just visibility end up with their product in the hands of
• 23:39
  somebody who has influence and boom, now you have you have
• 23:42
  brand created. So I think for most people when
• 23:46
  you think about marketing and brand, there's so much to your
• 23:50
  point earlier of channels you can do opportunities that you
• 23:53
  can leverage. We've got like social media
• 23:55
  marketing, we've got paid ads, we've got influencer marketing,
• 23:59
  We've got just like all these different opportunities, I guess
• 24:03
  I would say. And I think because there's so
• 24:07
  much marketing and brand that we're all consuming, even to
• 24:10
  think about someone who's like, OK, I'm going to carve my way
• 24:12
  into that marketplace regardless of the product that you have, I
• 24:16
  feel like can be very intense. So like with all those pathways,
• 24:21
  is there kind of an order of priority in your opinion when it
• 24:24
  comes to what you prioritize and maybe even like why you might do
• 24:28
  them in that order? Yeah, you have to identify with
• 24:31
  your brand. What style of brand do you want
• 24:34
  to be like? Some people want to be that
• 24:36
  founder facing like Gritty before they're even launched.
• 24:40
  They're starting the content and they're saying come with me to
• 24:42
  start the newest, you know, skin care company out there and
• 24:45
  they're like really getting with it.
• 24:46
  Some people that's just like not the way that they want to build
• 24:48
  their business. I will never say that adding a
• 24:51
  founder element into your business is going to weaken your
• 24:57
  marketing. It will only only strengthen it,
• 25:00
  but it's not absolutely necessary.
• 25:02
  There's plenty of brands out there that are growing without
• 25:04
  it, but how you really have to go about it is you have to
• 25:08
  understand who could really use your product, what makes it
• 25:12
  truly different, and if there isn't actually something
• 25:15
  tangibly different about your product and everybody else in
• 25:17
  the industry. You have to make something,
• 25:19
  whether it's a motion, a message or something and then your brand
• 25:23
  visuals. I call this like the mop method.
• 25:26
  The magnetic online presence is you need an ideal customer so
• 25:29
  you can, you know, use other products.
• 25:31
  So like if you think about even like base luggage, if you look
• 25:34
  at base luggage as marketing right now, they're doing
• 25:36
  collaborations with Gap. A lot of times they'll have like
• 25:40
  Rd. lipstick in the bag. So they'll be like what's in my
• 25:43
  bag? And they're taking out the Canon
• 25:45
  G7X and they're taking out the the road lipstick.
• 25:48
  And they're basically trying to say the girlies that use base
• 25:51
  luggage also love these products.
• 25:53
  And so you can use other people's likeness to kind of put
• 25:57
  you at that same pedestal. And so if you can identify who
• 26:01
  your ideal customer is and what other products that they use,
• 26:04
  look at what actually makes you different than every other
• 26:07
  product in the industry or whatever they are currently
• 26:10
  using. And again, if you don't have
• 26:11
  something tangible, you have to make it by your messaging and
• 26:15
  then identify your brand visual. So like vacation sunscreen, if
• 26:19
  you don't know them, they basically their marketing just
• 26:21
  looks like it's like a sunscreen company from like the 40s, like
• 26:24
  it's very vintage, very old. And like that's how they
• 26:27
  separated themselves from the sun bum And, and you know, the
• 26:31
  copper tone that is not and like they literally just
• 26:33
  differentiated based on vibes. And you can do that, but you
• 26:37
  have to have those three things work together really seamlessly
• 26:41
  to really carve away. Because I want to look at your
• 26:44
  industry like on a graph and everybody is kind of over here
• 26:47
  and you're like, put yourself way over here.
• 26:49
  You are in those white spaces in the market, as people say is
• 26:53
  like, you know, there's a lot of examples of this as somebody
• 26:55
  that came in and just said, Oh, I'm just going to like do
• 26:58
  something slightly different and like place myself here and say
• 27:01
  that I'm the luxury inside of this market or say that I'm, you
• 27:04
  know, 4 Gen. Z in the market.
• 27:07
  I think coach did a really good job with this in the last two
• 27:10
  years, coaches, coach purses, they were kind of falling off
• 27:14
  and in the last two years their stock price has 4X in two years.
• 27:19
  And it's because they basically said we're going to be the intro
• 27:22
  to designer and we're going to only attract Gen.
• 27:25
  Z. We're going to really dive into
• 27:27
  the Gen. Z.
• 27:27
  They have outlets, which they've had for a while.
• 27:30
  They have outlet malls for a luxury store.
• 27:32
  Most, most of them don't want an outlet mall.
• 27:35
  They, their price point is like 100 to $200.
• 27:38
  Sometimes it can be 5 or 6, but it's a very accessible price
• 27:41
  point. They said that they wanted to be
• 27:44
  your first designer bag. If you go into their stores,
• 27:47
  it's a very designer, like it feels very luxury.
• 27:51
  There's like 2 items on the shelf.
• 27:52
  Like it feels very luxury where it gives you the feeling that
• 27:55
  you're buying a Chanel bag, but you're buying $150.00 purse.
• 27:59
  Like it's very different. And So what they did is they
• 28:02
  said this is what every other luxury is doing.
• 28:04
  We're going to be mid luxury but with a luxury experience and
• 28:07
  we're going to market to Gen. Z.
• 28:10
  And so they picked, they differentiated based on ideal
• 28:12
  customer. And so you can kind of pick, do
• 28:14
  I want to differentiate on brand?
• 28:16
  Do I want to differentiate on ideal customer or like truly
• 28:19
  messaging saying my product is better for this demographic?
• 28:23
  Well, and I think something that's like complete goal that I
• 28:25
  want accentuate that you just hit on is I think the other
• 28:28
  piece too is that it's also rooted in data of the market.
• 28:33
  Yes, it's not like coach and the advisors on their marketing and
• 28:37
  sales and advertising team sitting at a a desk and me.
• 28:40
  OK, great. What do we want to do?
• 28:41
  It's like they're looking at the fact that you've got a Gen.
• 28:45
  Z who wants a luxury bag in some category.
• 28:49
  They want they're they're willing to spend premium, but
• 28:52
  they're not fully bought into all of them being a Chanel
• 28:54
  customer. So like they identified this gap
• 28:58
  or this way that something had not been done before the OK,
• 29:00
  great, there's an opening, we're going to fill that.
• 29:03
  And I think that that's like the center, in my opinion of good,
• 29:07
  good entrepreneurs or good products or services for that
• 29:09
  matter. It's do so in a way that is not
• 29:12
  so rooted in ego, but more rooted within the actual market
• 29:16
  itself. And I think that the other the
• 29:19
  other company, they think this so, so, so well is liquid Death
• 29:23
  like the one that I like, just like the Mecca of all marketing
• 29:27
  and brand because like, you know, let's get down to the
• 29:30
  basis of the product right to your.
• 29:31
  It's water. It's.
• 29:33
  Water, OK, I think it's water. Like the fact that Dasani even
• 29:38
  is allowed to sell their product anymore is a whole other
• 29:40
  conversation. But like, they're still around.
• 29:42
  And yet here's someone who wants to, everyone knows like
• 29:45
  cosmetics base hard to infiltrate, beverage base super
• 29:49
  hard to infiltrate. And so here's someone who's
• 29:52
  like, oh, we're going to take like the most natural resource
• 29:54
  on the planet and we're going to brand this in a way that nobody
• 29:58
  else has done. And everyone's like, oh, is that
• 30:00
  beer? Is that like what is?
• 30:01
  That energy, energy drink there. Was so much disruption that they
• 30:05
  created, but then even with that it it I feel like was again,
• 30:10
  they saw this opening of like when you think water, you think
• 30:13
  of like the clear plastic water bottle in the blue label and
• 30:16
  like the person who's you know, drinking or it's extra filter.
• 30:20
  They didn't play into any of that.
• 30:21
  They were just like this is the water that you feel like fun and
• 30:25
  excited kind of thing to have on your table that you're drinking.
• 30:28
  And I think all of them in my opinion are such a testament to
• 30:31
  the fact that the founders saw an opening they didn't
• 30:36
  necessarily look at, OK, well, what do I want it to be in what
• 30:39
  brand do I want it to like to be?
• 30:41
  Yes, But it's also I think to your what you were sharing these
• 30:46
  differentiators, there's one which is like what you want to
• 30:49
  create. But I think the second tier is
• 30:50
  also what is the market need. And I think that if you can
• 30:55
  release this, well, I wanted it to be X, like I want to create
• 31:00
  this product and actually ask yourself like, what does the
• 31:04
  market need? I think most of the products
• 31:06
  that I know to be wildly successful have one on that
• 31:10
  factor. I'm not sure what the name of
• 31:11
  that company is, but it's a a carrier that you snap onto your
• 31:15
  waist and like your baby can sit on.
• 31:17
  It Oh yeah, I forget what it is, but Kylie Jenner wore it and it
• 31:22
  blew up. Yes.
• 31:24
  And so it was like the girl went to airports where moms were
• 31:27
  carrying their kids non-stop. And hey, why don't you try this
• 31:30
  on? And they're like, yeah, OK,
• 31:31
  sure. And I remember that business,
• 31:33
  that brand blew up. And even like for example.
• 31:36
  Poppy as a. They're a good one.
• 31:39
  They sold for, you know, 10s of millions of dollars or billions.
• 31:42
  I was going to say, yeah, 1.8 billion, I think it was.
• 31:45
  Like dizzy amount, yeah, insane, insane amount that they sold it
• 31:49
  for. And again, that was because they
• 31:52
  were trying to create a beverage soda that was not made and
• 31:55
  filled with a bunch of crap. So I think you know it's also
• 31:58
  looking for the person creating a product as to what the problem
• 32:02
  it actually solves is, if you weren't thinking about it
• 32:04
  strictly from your vision and ego. 100% And you can
• 32:08
  differentiate based on actual tangible use it like what is
• 32:13
  this problem? And I think those are the best
• 32:16
  businesses because they actually grow a lot more.
• 32:18
  I don't want to say naturally, but like they really do because
• 32:21
  people see it just like that girl in the airport, they were
• 32:23
  taking videos of it and posting it and those videos would blow
• 32:26
  up and it was basically just showing people, hey, this is the
• 32:28
  problem are like you have your hands full and you don't have
• 32:31
  anywhere to put your toddler. And then like here was the
• 32:33
  solution and they loved it and you can really see that.
• 32:36
  So my clients that are like inventing something or you know,
• 32:40
  it's expanding in a market somewhere that's like really not
• 32:43
  out there. Absolutely do see rapid growth
• 32:46
  because it's enough of like a shock factor of like, wow, why
• 32:50
  did somebody not think of this sooner to really gain some
• 32:52
  traction? But you definitely can
• 32:55
  differentiate based on brand. It's just going to be harder and
• 32:58
  you still need what makes this different?
• 33:00
  Like, you know what, what are we saying this makes it different
• 33:03
  for based on this branding? Well, and I think the question
• 33:06
  off of that too, which most people even have within services
• 33:08
  is, you know, do people buy a good service or do they buy good
• 33:12
  marketing? And I think in the product
• 33:15
  space, my gut, without knowing your answer, my gut says the
• 33:19
  reason that I might submit that they buy into good marketing is
• 33:23
  I think there's a lot of people who have fantastic products that
• 33:26
  don't know how to showcase them in a way at the ideal client or
• 33:29
  the audience cares about. Yeah.
• 33:31
  And then there's people who probably seemingly don't have an
• 33:33
  incredible product in the sense of the actual thing that they've
• 33:36
  produced, but their marketing is so good and so captivating that
• 33:41
  you're like, OK, who is this company doing?
• 33:43
  So I'm not sure if you've seen the girl clearly, I consume way
• 33:46
  too much TikTok. But the girl that I saw on
• 33:48
  TikTok, she was going around to celebrities and she had this
• 33:51
  like de bloat supplement. And maybe at like a coffee shop,
• 33:55
  she'd see celebrities and she would search for them basically.
• 33:58
  In LA belly Welly yes, and and she would make her.
• 34:02
  They kind of drive me crazy, those videos because I would be
• 34:05
  like, what did you just do? She literally, for anyone who's
• 34:08
  not familiar, would go and try to locate celebrities like out
• 34:12
  just living in the wild, having coffee, whatever, and would
• 34:16
  literally take her supplement that she created and pour it
• 34:19
  into the top of their drink. While they're drinking?
• 34:21
  Yeah, while they're drinking it. And sitting and having coffee
• 34:25
  and they, the, the celebrity would look at them and be like,
• 34:29
  hello, like, who are you? And like it was such a
• 34:31
  disruptive marketing. It's a shock factor.
• 34:35
  Shock. Factor so because of that, no
• 34:37
  one is gonna care maybe traditionally about this like we
• 34:40
  got like another bloat supplement, but now she's got
• 34:43
  attention. You go OK, like who the heck is
• 34:45
  this person? And like where is she getting
• 34:47
  the balls to do this? So gosh, like I think the
• 34:49
  marketing is what really allowed her to get seen and to take off.
• 34:53
  But to you and your opinion, do you think the success of a
• 34:57
  product based business is rooted in marketing?
• 35:00
  Because I think in service it can be a lot in good service
• 35:03
  gets you referrals etcetera. Do you think it's about the
• 35:06
  product or you think it's about good brand and marketing?
• 35:08
  There are people that have pretty terrible products out
• 35:12
  there that are making billions in their business or have a
• 35:16
  billion dollar product. I always say that this world, me
• 35:19
  working in this has ruined shopping for me.
• 35:22
  Cuz I can look at a sweater and be like cheap, it's $4.00.
• 35:25
  Like I know that that costs them $4.00.
• 35:27
  They're like, I'm looking at skin care.
• 35:29
  I can look at the ingredients and say, cuz I work with so many
• 35:32
  industries. I know so many costs of
• 35:35
  different things that I can see that things are actually being
• 35:38
  made very cheaply. And so it is a lot of branding,
• 35:42
  especially when you get to a bigger point at the beginning,
• 35:47
  your product does need to be good and people need to enjoy
• 35:49
  it. Like if your moisturizer is
• 35:51
  causing rashes, it's not going to work, right?
• 35:53
  Like it's not going to work. People aren't going to want to
• 35:56
  rebuy it. But you can get pretty far just
• 35:59
  by brands. Like if we look at products very
• 36:02
  often, I could buy a cheaper alternative out there, but I
• 36:05
  will buy the brand because I like what that brand says about
• 36:10
  me that I purchased that brand. And that's what we're really
• 36:12
  seeing is like the value behind your brand of what is it.
• 36:17
  It's not that like how this is going to feel when I buy it,
• 36:19
  it's how is it going to make me feel when I use it.
• 36:22
  And so when we're really looking at products, brand is so
• 36:26
  important, like you said, versus service service, your service
• 36:31
  has to be good. Like if I wasn't getting my
• 36:32
  clients results, people would like, yeah, I could market and I
• 36:36
  could get new clients, but people would find out pretty
• 36:39
  quick. And so it's one of those things
• 36:41
  that if you can't actually do a service, if your service is
• 36:44
  quote UN quote cheap in the experience, people will find out
• 36:47
  pretty quick product. You can fool a lot of people by
• 36:50
  pretty packaging and good marketing and good branding.
• 36:53
  There's plenty of top name household name products out
• 36:57
  there that they have like a 98% markup on because they're
• 37:01
  actually being made incredibly cheap.
• 37:05
  Now, OK, on the aspect of brand, yeah, like I think that like
• 37:10
  there's such a debate around brand because there's branding
• 37:12
  which people think of, right. You think you think in product
• 37:14
  based business, you think about the label, you think about to
• 37:16
  your point, like what, what category do you want to put it
• 37:19
  in? But I think a massive piece that
• 37:21
  I've seen is the impact of brand around community.
• 37:25
  And. Around audience, which I know
• 37:27
  you hit on a ton and the fact that just having branding is not
• 37:35
  that you have, you have a brand. And I think that again, like in
• 37:40
  my opinion, and I know we kind of keep coming back to this, but
• 37:42
  like, I think as a service, you can kind of have a little bit of
• 37:46
  less brand and your brand will overtime take shape.
• 37:50
  I don't think that you have to have deep, deep, deep community
• 37:53
  to start. I think that you kind of like
• 37:55
  ultimately plant seeds, you create that.
• 37:58
  But I, I think about all of the brands that people are obsessed
• 38:01
  with meaning like the products fly off the shelves and the
• 38:05
  people around them. So when we think about, in your
• 38:09
  opinion, this just like the difference or I guess the
• 38:11
  deciding factor between what is community versus audience.
• 38:15
  Yeah, yeah. I think as a brand, everyone's
• 38:17
  like, I just need to get seen. I need to get visibility.
• 38:19
  I need people to know that I exist.
• 38:20
  And it's like, that's visibility of your brand, which, yes, in
• 38:23
  fact is relevant. Yeah, but just because someone
• 38:27
  sees you on their feet or sees you on TikTok versus they feel
• 38:31
  like they want to actually be part of your community or two
• 38:34
  such different factors. So out of curiosity, like when
• 38:38
  someone's wanting to build brand, what do they focus on to
• 38:41
  build community versus just audience?
• 38:44
  Yeah, yeah. This is really important because
• 38:46
  people constantly just want to go viral.
• 38:49
  And as long as I can get 30,000 followers, I should be able to
• 38:52
  do this. But I have clients that will
• 38:54
  come to me with 100,000 followers that are struggling to
• 38:58
  make more than, you know, 2 to $3000 a month.
• 39:01
  And then I have clients that have 2500 followers that are
• 39:04
  making, you know, 10 to $15,000 a month because they have a
• 39:08
  community. So at the root of everything
• 39:10
  that I teach, no matter if you're pre revenue or if you're
• 39:13
  making five, ten, $50 million, I'm going to go back to how
• 39:16
  strong is your community. Community is what builds
• 39:19
  retention, It's what builds referrals, it's what builds, you
• 39:22
  know, word of mouth, it's what builds builds engagement.
• 39:25
  It's what builds higher average order value, higher customer
• 39:29
  lifetime value. We don't want somebody to come
• 39:32
  in and buy your product once. It's really easy to get somebody
• 39:36
  to try to be intrigued enough to buy something one time.
• 39:39
  It's actually much harder to get somebody to buy for two times.
• 39:43
  The second purchase is the hardest purchase to get because
• 39:46
  once you get 2, it's much easier to get 3 because they already
• 39:49
  said that they liked it enough to buy another time.
• 39:52
  So what my major focus is with a out of these businesses is how
• 39:55
  many people are buying a second time because a lot of times it's
• 40:01
  very, very low. I've had clients that are making
• 40:03
  $5,000,000 because they can run ads and make $300,000 a month
• 40:08
  but the retention rate is 5% which is so low.
• 40:12
  And what you're doing is you're just, you have so much
• 40:15
  acquisition cost that your profit is so low on those
• 40:18
  purchases because you're just spending so much money to get
• 40:21
  them and you're not retaining them.
• 40:22
  It's the difference between making one sale at $59 and one
• 40:26
  sale at $59 every month now for the next three to five years, it
• 40:31
  starts to build. And so when you really focus on
• 40:34
  building a community, you're focusing on like service to the
• 40:38
  customer. Like this is where delivery
• 40:40
  really comes in in the product based world is your focusing on
• 40:43
  service to the customer of like how do they feel when they
• 40:46
  purchase? You're focusing on the value
• 40:49
  that it means to them. And so people as we see young
• 40:53
  millennial Gen. Z, Gen.
• 40:54
  Alpha and moving forward are going to be the primary element
• 40:59
  of the buying, like of the consumer spending and the
• 41:03
  consumer market. And So what we look at them,
• 41:05
  they are more value centered than any other generation that's
• 41:08
  alive right now is like that, you know, that kind of age
• 41:11
  range. And So what that means is is
• 41:14
  they are kind of like voting with their dollars based on
• 41:18
  their values, whether it's sustainability or health or
• 41:22
  Wellness or whatever they're saying or just like trends.
• 41:26
  And, you know, I like the vibe that they have.
• 41:29
  It's aspirational to me. I'm voting that that is my my
• 41:32
  style. That's what I want.
• 41:33
  And so you have to share your values.
• 41:36
  If you look at community, whether you're in a church,
• 41:38
  you're in the, your local community, What makes community
• 41:41
  is shared values. And so it's the same with
• 41:43
  business, but for some reason we try to complicate it.
• 41:46
  It's if you can have shared values, shared meaning, shared
• 41:50
  desires, shared motivations, just like in community with
• 41:53
  friendships, you can build a community that really, really
• 41:55
  loves your brand. And then if you can support them
• 41:58
  as you are the medium to achieve whatever your message is.
• 42:02
  So like, you know, if you're making diaper bags for men like
• 42:07
  they, that is a very different that your message doesn't have
• 42:11
  to be like this is the best diaper bag with the most amount
• 42:14
  of pockets in it. Like your message can be that
• 42:18
  this is going to help men be more confident fathers in
• 42:20
  public, like, and that this is going to like make you step into
• 42:23
  this new stage of life. And then in your marketing,
• 42:27
  instead of being like, this is the best diaper bag ever.
• 42:31
  And like that's all that you got.
• 42:32
  Once you buy it, you're done. You want to talk to them like,
• 42:35
  OK, how what are other ways that you can be more confident as a
• 42:39
  father? You know, what are other ways
• 42:41
  that you can do this that And like, you know, that's what
• 42:42
  you're trying to do is if you're building community, you're
• 42:46
  building something deeper than without your product even a part
• 42:50
  of the conversation. What are you helping them
• 42:53
  achieve in your marketing and in communication with you?
• 42:57
  So it's a lot more how can we make them feel supported and
• 43:01
  using our products as the medium to be able to do that.
• 43:05
  So like even I'm like, I'm working with people all the time
• 43:09
  that everybody has a different message, but we're trying to
• 43:12
  help their community know what is, what does this product mean
• 43:17
  for me? What is this representing?
• 43:18
  So every time that they use it, they feel that they feel
• 43:22
  empowered, they feel confident, they feel, you know, inward that
• 43:26
  they want to like sit with this cup of tea and like, you know,
• 43:28
  go inward a little bit. There's all of these different
• 43:31
  messages that we can really go back to.
• 43:34
  And that's what gets people to buy and to rebuy is because they
• 43:37
  want to feel that feeling again. And so you have to facilitate
• 43:40
  that feeling. I think it's massive because
• 43:44
  when, you know, even when you think about to your point of
• 43:47
  it's all about retention and it's not about acquisition.
• 43:50
  You know, we think about this in service.
• 43:51
  I think that people, we always talk in the service space about,
• 43:54
  you know, monthly recurring revenue and the fact that it's
• 43:56
  like really how, how can you get someone into contract for, you
• 43:59
  know, three months, six months, nine months, 12 months and try
• 44:03
  to have this ongoing commitment with somebody.
• 44:06
  And I think about, you know, for, let's just say a candle, if
• 44:10
  I'm selling a candle, just someone buy 1 candle from me.
• 44:12
  Or do they buy a candle every season because they're curious
• 44:14
  about what our new scents are that we're going to be
• 44:16
  releasing? And I have this, this company
• 44:19
  that I always buy their candles, sand and fog.
• 44:22
  They're like just like the go to.
• 44:23
  Yeah, they're great. Always buy and every single
• 44:27
  season for years now it's like, OK, great, we go to the home
• 44:29
  sense kind of equivalent or the HomeGoods and go and get their,
• 44:33
  their scent of the, the season. But it's like that's ongoing
• 44:37
  purchasing from that company having non-stop.
• 44:40
  And I think that, that the piece of that is like to your .1
• 44:46
  customer at $59 versus 1 customer for the next three
• 44:48
  years of $59. When you add that up times 2000
• 44:51
  customers, 3000 customers, right?
• 44:53
  Like there's such an aspect here of volume that's needed.
• 44:57
  So I think that really what I'm getting from it is like, if you
• 45:00
  don't have a good product, you're not going to have people
• 45:02
  coming back time and time again naturally, because that's your
• 45:04
  point. If it causes a rash, I'm
• 45:06
  probably not going to put on my skin.
• 45:08
  Again, but it doesn't need to be, you know, top of the line
• 45:12
  like it doesn't need you don't need to be using gold in your in
• 45:15
  your like for to get people to be able to buy back.
• 45:18
  But again, your product needs to be good and actually work and
• 45:21
  like do the thing. But your branding on top of it
• 45:26
  is what's going to make the perceived value of that product
• 45:29
  much higher. And know what you're actually
• 45:32
  selling to your point of daddy diaper bag.
• 45:35
  Like when you think about this diaper bag has many
• 45:37
  compartments. The dad who's buying it like
• 45:40
  obviously wants to make sure that it has physically enough
• 45:42
  compartments for him to use. But to your point, the thing
• 45:45
  that he's actually concerned about is like, how do I carry
• 45:47
  this with me all day Saturday, Sunday, Monday through Friday
• 45:50
  and not feel like I have my wife's?
• 45:52
  Purse. That I'm with me right because
• 45:55
  all of them have been marketed that way.
• 45:56
  So, OK, the on this piece, the curiosity that I know, you know,
• 46:00
  for my clients and maybe even for the person listening, if
• 46:03
  they have a service based business, they think to
• 46:06
  themselves, OK, well, like should I be adding products?
• 46:09
  Like should I have a product based business?
• 46:11
  Or maybe they have a confidence from their current service base.
• 46:14
  Like I could do a product based business.
• 46:16
  But I've also, and this is just my personal opinion, I've seen
• 46:19
  service based business owners who are like, I'm gonna become a
• 46:22
  product based business owner and it's just like, it's different.
• 46:26
  It doesn't land because I think they're not taking in
• 46:29
  consideration these factors you've mentioned.
• 46:31
  Like it's just kind of like I have the inspiration that I
• 46:34
  could physically make X. So I'm just going to do that
• 46:36
  because I have this person who trust me over here, they're
• 46:39
  going to trust this new product as a result.
• 46:42
  So if someone's thinking about as a current service based
• 46:45
  business right now thinking about creating a product, is
• 46:50
  there any I guess advice or like forewarning that you would say
• 46:54
  about like what would allow that to be successful?
• 46:56
  Because I've seen some people do it very well and I've also
• 47:01
  others where it just it did not hit the mark.
• 47:03
  Yeah, When it comes to adding product onto a service based
• 47:07
  business, a couple of things that are really lovely is that
• 47:09
  you already have a community, you already have people that
• 47:12
  love you, you already have people that trust you because
• 47:15
  they invest in you. Something you have to realize is
• 47:18
  it's a lot harder to make $10,000 when you're selling a
• 47:21
  $39.00 product then when you're selling a $5000 coaching
• 47:25
  program. And so it's a longer play to
• 47:29
  make big cash. It can happen especially if you
• 47:32
  have a community because the volume, again, going back to
• 47:36
  that can be there. But understanding that a product
• 47:41
  based business is as complicated as you really want it to be.
• 47:44
  Like if you want to outsource it, it's something called a
• 47:47
  three PL. which is basically like a fulfillment center.
• 47:49
  Like you can send your product to a fulfillment center,
• 47:52
  somebody makes a purchase and it goes through the fulfillment
• 47:54
  center and it makes it to their house.
• 47:56
  Or you can have an in house team that is like shipping products
• 47:59
  or you can be shipping products at midnight if you want to be
• 48:01
  doing that in the beginning. What I would say to somebody
• 48:05
  that wants to have it is a is this a long term play or is this
• 48:08
  just something that you're like kind of enjoying?
• 48:10
  Like I've always said, I could make like journals or like
• 48:14
  planners first for business owners so easily, Grant said.
• 48:19
  There's a ton of them out there now, but I could make them very
• 48:22
  easily because everybody like this is one of the things in my
• 48:26
  head that I'm like, Oh, I could totally do this.
• 48:28
  But with the community that I have that's complementary to my
• 48:32
  current community, it's something that I know can be
• 48:35
  made without me. Like I'm not hand binding these
• 48:37
  things like they're going to be made and sent to my house so I
• 48:40
  could ship them out or I could get a fulfillment center.
• 48:43
  But is it something that I want to sell for like a season or is
• 48:46
  it something that I want to sell for a while?
• 48:48
  And that the answer depends on how much resources you want to
• 48:51
  put into it. Like if this is something you're
• 48:53
  like, no, I'm really going to expand this.
• 48:54
  I would start a new profile. I would come up with a brand
• 48:57
  name around it because that other brand name is going to be
• 48:59
  much more scalable to your business then like your your
• 49:03
  personal brand and then your personal brand can funnel into
• 49:06
  the the product brand. We see this a lot.
• 49:09
  There's a lot of people that have done this and some people
• 49:11
  do product 1st and then become a consultant or they're a
• 49:14
  consultant and then they go into product.
• 49:16
  The other nice thing about product is it can be very
• 49:19
  outsourced. Like at a certain point you
• 49:22
  aren't doing hardly anything other than like a check in every
• 49:26
  once in a while to make sure that your product is.
• 49:29
  You might develop new products, but if you don't launch new
• 49:31
  things, you kind of just have your like signature line.
• 49:34
  It's what's going. You just have to launch it every
• 49:37
  now and then and you'll bring a couple of, you'll bring sales
• 49:39
  in. I think the biggest thing to
• 49:41
  realize again is that it's going to take time to make 6 figure
• 49:46
  months in a product based world. The amount of $30 planners you
• 49:50
  have to sell, you need a lot of visibility there versus in the
• 49:54
  service based world. It can feel a little easier when
• 49:56
  you're selling something for a higher ticket, but it is a
• 49:59
  really great way to build another income stream that is
• 50:04
  infinitely scalable as long as it's built that way.
• 50:07
  Like at a certain point, there's a reason that a lot of these
• 50:10
  product based business owners don't seem like they're doing
• 50:12
  much is because you can outsource production,
• 50:14
  fulfillment, marketing, you know, customer service, and then
• 50:18
  all you have to to do is kind of like keeping the face of the
• 50:21
  brand and that's all that is like kind of fueling it.
• 50:24
  So it is a really great income stream.
• 50:26
  Plus it's great. It's a lot easier to sell
• 50:29
  someday than a personal brand. It's something that you're
• 50:32
  actually using your personal brand to almost build equity in
• 50:36
  that you can sell it. You can you know, you can get
• 50:40
  orders to get into anthropology and then you're getting a 5000
• 50:43
  dollar 5000 unit order. And so there are pieces that you
• 50:47
  can scale. It just takes a little little
• 50:49
  bit longer in order to get there, but it's infinitely
• 50:52
  scalable to a product based business like or to a service
• 50:54
  base. I mean, sure, you hear of
• 50:56
  service based businesses maybe being evaluated at a billion
• 50:59
  dollars, but that's like the Grant Cardones and the Tony
• 51:01
  Robbins of the world. It's a lot hard.
• 51:04
  Like a poppy was $2 billion evaluated at which started in
• 51:09
  2020. So that's in five years she sold
• 51:12
  for 2 billion. That's a lot harder to do in
• 51:15
  service. So you can scale it more
• 51:17
  infinitely because you can get into wholesale and then you can
• 51:20
  get into direct to consumer and then you can get into all of
• 51:23
  these other little buckets that your income can start to stack
• 51:26
  really quickly. It's just really getting you to
• 51:29
  the point that you have the brand authority and the
• 51:31
  community that can get you there.
• 51:34
  Well, I think the other thing too is service based, but I
• 51:36
  don't think like there's the aspect of if you're a service
• 51:38
  based business, adding a product, you can add a product
• 51:41
  as a a way or an Ave. to to have the focus of revenue.
• 51:44
  So like, you know, for example, people who have like you're
• 51:46
  saying the planners, the merch line, if you think about even
• 51:50
  like a an example might be like a call her daddy before her
• 51:54
  beverage line, she had her podcast and then she added her
• 51:56
  merch line of unwell merch that people could buy.
• 51:59
  So like, you know, truthfully, she's not making billions of
• 52:01
  dollars off of these these. Like sweatshirts?
• 52:04
  Yeah. Like that she's selling, but I
• 52:06
  think that the other thing that some service based businesses
• 52:09
  don't maybe consider as an opportunity, even if you're
• 52:11
  like, well, I don't see myself being a product based founder is
• 52:14
  also to look at is adding a line of products to your business
• 52:18
  potentially complimentary to send traffic to the service
• 52:21
  itself. So like, for example, if someone
• 52:25
  has like I I literally full transparency, I'm pretty sure I
• 52:29
  have a call her daddy, not unwell, but it's like called her
• 52:32
  call me daddy or whatever upstairs, like her OGOG stuff.
• 52:36
  And I remember someone had like gifted it to me years ago.
• 52:40
  And anyway, if I'm out in life and I'm at the coffee shop and.
• 52:43
  It's marketing on. Sunday the 1st question is, Oh
• 52:46
  my God, I love your sweater. That's so funny.
• 52:47
  Where did you got that? And now you've started a
• 52:50
  conversation about that's about somebody's brand.
• 52:52
  So I think that the other thing to also think about is when you
• 52:56
  sell or have even just as a service based business, a
• 52:59
  product available, I also think it's an extension of the brand,
• 53:02
  even if you're not looking for the product itself to become a
• 53:06
  separate brand. And so I think that there's kind
• 53:08
  of also like kind of back to your earlier point of like the
• 53:10
  tears of vision. There's also tears of, of where
• 53:14
  it could go in the sense of what it could do for you like as as a
• 53:17
  business in general. Yeah, Well, I think there's a
• 53:19
  good and a bad way. We see this with influencer or
• 53:21
  celebrity brands all the time. So like, yes, there's like the
• 53:25
  bar or like like the Jerf Ave. there's a lot of these people
• 53:29
  that are making pajama lines for who knows what reason, but
• 53:32
  everybody has a pajama line these days.
• 53:34
  But. Are we all buying that many
• 53:36
  pajamas? Total Cycles pajamas.
• 53:39
  Let's talk about that. Literally I wear the same like
• 53:41
  men's Walmart. My husband's shirt that has like
• 53:44
  a yeah. Like I was like are buying
• 53:46
  matching sets. I didn't.
• 53:47
  Know I know if I go somewhere, maybe I'll bring my one or two
• 53:50
  PJ sets, but if other people see me, I know truly I so there are
• 53:55
  good and bad ways to do it. We see this a lot like if you
• 53:58
  look at Rd. Rd. is an incredible case study.
• 54:00
  Granted, we don't all have Justin Bieber to like really
• 54:03
  push us out there and to make sure not that she wasn't anybody
• 54:06
  before, but he really brought her like the fame that she has
• 54:11
  like at least to the level that she has, but she grew that
• 54:14
  business intentionally. That girl is no is not dumb or
• 54:18
  she had some really good advisors helping her do this.
• 54:20
  It was very connected with her personal brand.
• 54:23
  She was her major influencer. And so they're marketing.
• 54:27
  If you look at their cuz now their business, all their P and
• 54:30
  LS are public because they just got purchased by a public
• 54:33
  company. They had less than 11% of their
• 54:36
  expenses going to marketing, which is huge because she wasn't
• 54:39
  getting paid anything because she was the founder and she was
• 54:41
  the primary. And even though they sell, they
• 54:43
  send PR to everybody that is that was their major form of
• 54:47
  marketing was her where you see it wrong and go back to Alex
• 54:51
  Cooper. I think her unwell beverage was
• 54:54
  very misaligned with her brand to this day where it's at.
• 54:58
  It was great for her when she was in college, but the reason
• 55:02
  that that feels like it's already fizzled out.
• 55:04
  She doesn't talk about it. She doesn't promote it like she
• 55:06
  it's just not something it might be on her podcast still, but I
• 55:09
  bet it'll fizzle in the next three to five years.
• 55:12
  It'll be gone. And she launched an ad agency
• 55:15
  like in the last couple of months.
• 55:16
  It's because that's aligned with who her brand is now.
• 55:19
  The beverage company wasn't and so same thing with the service
• 55:22
  based business. We can look at these influencers
• 55:24
  as kind of like extreme examples when they have millions of
• 55:27
  followers. Is A is there a market for
• 55:31
  another pajama company out there?
• 55:32
  B. Is this aligned with the current
• 55:34
  brand that you have? So a lot of times you'll see
• 55:36
  these people build up these brands and then it's like a
• 55:39
  merch line. And does another, does the world
• 55:42
  really need another merch line of your merch?
• 55:44
  Yes, you can sell some of that, but that's a very different
• 55:46
  strategy than if an influencer is starting a skin care line or
• 55:50
  something else that is going to be an extension of their brand.
• 55:54
  That's one of the most important pieces.
• 55:56
  It would be incredibly random for me to start A products based
• 56:00
  business with the community that I already have that doesn't have
• 56:04
  anything to do with being a business owner.
• 56:05
  I could do it, but I'd be starting from Ground Zero.
• 56:08
  And so it would be the same thing for anybody else.
• 56:10
  Is like if you want to use your personal brand, you can be kind
• 56:13
  of the evidence of how that brand lives everyday through
• 56:17
  your personal brand, but it should be an extension of your
• 56:19
  personal brand in order for it to play off of each other
• 56:22
  properly. Well, like I could see the
• 56:24
  pyjamas, for example, like if you were an influencer who's
• 56:27
  like, OK, like a sleep coach or you're like somebody who's like,
• 56:30
  this is all I talk about. I talk about night time
• 56:32
  routines. Even if you're an influencer and
• 56:34
  you're like, the only thing you ever film is your night time
• 56:36
  routine and that's what you're been known to be famous for,
• 56:39
  then yeah, sure. Like go and create a pyjama line
• 56:42
  being like every night that I now film this, I'm going to be
• 56:44
  wearing my pyjamas, that kind of thing in my night time routine.
• 56:47
  Like I feel like there's a there's a correlation.
• 56:49
  And I think the other piece that I also I think is important is
• 56:52
  that the fact that in the personal brand you have just
• 56:55
  such deep personal brand to like make, for example, merch that
• 57:00
  basically is a billboard of you like no one wants to wear like
• 57:03
  the Maddie Show. The Keith.
• 57:04
  Perkovic show on they're clothing like no one cares to do
• 57:09
  that. As you get back to your aspect
• 57:10
  of brand and mission, what is the brand or mission behind it?
• 57:13
  And does someone want to wrap that brand and mission?
• 57:15
  So I think that the the beverages didn't really do well.
• 57:19
  I agree. I kind of saw that like fizzle
• 57:22
  cheer wording, but I think that the the merch, the only reason
• 57:25
  that that does well in my opinion, is the unwell identity
• 57:29
  is actually something that people resonate with, even if
• 57:31
  they're not wanting to wrap like the call her daddy.
• 57:34
  I think I've worn that sweater maybe twice because again, like,
• 57:37
  what are you going to wear in public?
• 57:38
  I'm going to wear that like to like go like, you know, pick up
• 57:41
  breakfast, like it's just this weird.
• 57:43
  So, but then on the contrast, like I had, there was a Oh my
• 57:48
  gosh, I'm blanking on his name, but there's a fitness influencer
• 57:50
  and he created sebum. He created his his line of
• 57:53
  sweatshirts and like he's a huge brand, obviously, but the one of
• 57:57
  the the sweaters that I have that like an ex I stole from
• 58:01
  full transparency, I stole from my exes.
• 58:04
  It says like it's, you know, always pursue pressure.
• 58:06
  And it basically was talking about the fact that like, you
• 58:10
  know, again, this is one of his mottos around his fitness
• 58:12
  journey. But at the end of the day, his
• 58:14
  name is nowhere to be found on it.
• 58:16
  But when I wear it, everyone's Oh my God, I love that sweater
• 58:18
  wears you find I'm not. So I think it's again, making
• 58:20
  sure that in the creation of any kind of product that you
• 58:26
  understand why you're making it and what the goal is.
• 58:29
  And the other thing I definitely wanted to ask whether it
• 58:31
  connected to a service based business or not is also volume
• 58:34
  of products. Because I, while I, I don't ever
• 58:38
  see myself creating a product based business, If I did,
• 58:42
  there's no chance I'm making like 9 products.
• 58:44
  OK? Like I would be like, OK, I want
• 58:46
  to be the Coca-Cola, I want to have the signature product and I
• 58:49
  would want to scale that as far as I possibly could.
• 58:52
  And I know that you, you know, even just a recent conversation,
• 58:55
  we're talking about the fact that people are non-stop like
• 58:57
  new product, new product, new product all the time.
• 59:00
  And I think probably for most people who think about creating
• 59:03
  a product based business, they think to themselves, well, how
• 59:06
  many freaking products would I have to create?
• 59:08
  I have to market those, I have to fulfill, you know, delivery
• 59:11
  on those and shipment on those and all of it.
• 59:12
  So is it possible or is it actually maybe potentially
• 59:17
  recommended to go into a product based business looking to have
• 59:21
  one product? Or do you think someone should
• 59:23
  kind of go in and aim to have a product line?
• 59:25
  I always say if I were to create a product based business, I
• 59:29
  would find an industry with a gap in the market and I would
• 59:32
  make one product and market the absolute heck out of it and then
• 59:37
  expand. If it came to be.
• 59:39
  I would have a hero product and nothing else.
• 59:42
  With so many case studies of businesses like this.
• 59:44
  Scrub Daddy, great one, one of the most successful Shark Tank
• 59:48
  businesses ever. They had two products.
• 59:50
  They had the soft and the hard. Scrub Daddy, the two sponges and
• 59:53
  they have an incredible story, but they basically grew the
• 59:56
  scrub daddies and for two products like this is the hard
• 1:00:00
  one for the hard, you know, stuff on the pans, this is the
• 1:00:02
  soft one for, you know, your everyday whatever and they
• 1:00:05
  scaled those two, but it was just the scrub daddy hard and
• 1:00:08
  soft. It was all that they had.
• 1:00:10
  And then now if you go to the store, Scrub Daddy basically has
• 1:00:12
  a aisle of the scrub mommy and the scrub baby in the scrub
• 1:00:16
  toilet and like all of these other things.
• 1:00:19
  But it wasn't until scrub Daddy became a household name that
• 1:00:22
  everybody was like, I want to sponge and they think of scrub
• 1:00:25
  Daddy that they did that. Why that is, is because you can
• 1:00:31
  create a a brand, a community and a status around working like
• 1:00:36
  around buying this product with one product really easily.
• 1:00:40
  But when you start launching, gosh, I have people all the
• 1:00:42
  time, they launch new product every month.
• 1:00:44
  And it's like, yeah, but your audience never latches on to
• 1:00:48
  anything as their favorite because they're constantly
• 1:00:51
  rotating through. You never get to actually sell
• 1:00:54
  the inventory that you have, especially in the beginning.
• 1:00:57
  You're trying to like transparently what a lot of
• 1:00:59
  these brands do. Why they do this is because they
• 1:01:01
  want to be able to buy 10,000 of these at really high margins.
• 1:01:06
  And that's why they only have one product because they spent
• 1:01:09
  all their money on those 10,000. But what they're able to do is
• 1:01:12
  market it really incredibly. What is the problem?
• 1:01:15
  They set the scene of the brand, they talk about what that
• 1:01:19
  product is actually going to do for them, and then you can
• 1:01:21
  expand. Another example is hero patches,
• 1:01:24
  the like pimple patches. They started with one product.
• 1:01:27
  It was 1 hydrocolloid like patch that they put on their face and
• 1:01:32
  again, they have a whole aisle now.
• 1:01:33
  Like they got everybody started wearing pimple patches.
• 1:01:36
  They started popping up in other brands.
• 1:01:38
  Now they have the invisible that you can wear under your makeup.
• 1:01:40
  They have the ones with the little like pokey in them to
• 1:01:43
  like do all of these other solutions.
• 1:01:46
  But the first solution did the job.
• 1:01:48
  It did it enough and got really big and they grew it and they
• 1:01:52
  did all of the like. They gained the market share,
• 1:01:55
  they gained the awareness of it and now they have all of this
• 1:01:58
  variety. They have the nose patches, the
• 1:02:00
  forehead, the everything. Because when you add products
• 1:02:03
  like that, you're adding such a complexity to your website, to
• 1:02:06
  your marketing, to your sales process, to your inventory, to
• 1:02:10
  your production, that if you're constantly adding new products,
• 1:02:14
  you are actually doing your customers a disservice because
• 1:02:17
  85% of people would say that they have decision fatigue.
• 1:02:20
  I know I do. And so if I'm trying to figure
• 1:02:22
  out on your website which one of these is for me, I'm going to
• 1:02:25
  bounce. I'm going to get overwhelmed and
• 1:02:27
  be like, I'll figure it out later.
• 1:02:29
  Same thing with your with who's ever product they're trying to
• 1:02:32
  sell is if you have one product, it's really easy to be like, all
• 1:02:35
  right, I've heard people talk about this, I'm done great.
• 1:02:38
  And so it's much easier with one product to scale it.
• 1:02:41
  You build the foundation of the brand, what the brand stands
• 1:02:44
  for, you know why this one product is so good, and then you
• 1:02:47
  can expand to complementary product.
• 1:02:51
  Well, and also you're leveraging the proof of the original
• 1:02:54
  product. Like if I don't like Coke, I'm
• 1:02:57
  probably not gonna like Diet Coke.
• 1:02:59
  You're. Probably not gonna like Coke 0
• 1:03:00
  and I'm probably not gonna like. Lime.
• 1:03:02
  Coke or Cherry Coke or whatever, right.
• 1:03:04
  So like there is a natural leverage as well of like get the
• 1:03:07
  buy in on the first product. Back to your point of like
• 1:03:09
  pimple patches. Yeah, if you're buy in on the
• 1:03:11
  first product so that someone's like, oh, this is great.
• 1:03:14
  I'm interested in buying multiple.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah. Or like I'm even thinking about
• 1:03:17
  nail Polish. Nail Polish is like such a a
• 1:03:19
  classic industry that because it's like if your nail Polish as
• 1:03:21
  the product is not good, doesn't last, it ships, it doesn't, you
• 1:03:25
  know, whatever it might be, apply well, you're not going to
• 1:03:27
  buy 18 colors of the same one. The reason OPI like dominates
• 1:03:31
  the market is because their quality is used now in all nail
• 1:03:34
  salons, like it's literally everywhere.
• 1:03:36
  But they had originally initially a very small product
• 1:03:39
  line to start and now they're obviously like seasonal and all
• 1:03:42
  of these things, endless products.
• 1:03:43
  But again, I think it all comes off the fact that, you know, you
• 1:03:46
  can rely on the original product, which is what then
• 1:03:49
  transferred trust to the other things that they created.
• 1:03:52
  Yeah. OK, so I'm going to ask to kind
• 1:03:54
  of put a bow on today. Someone's thinking about either
• 1:03:59
  growing their current product or they're thinking about starting
• 1:04:03
  a product based business. And you I know from just like
• 1:04:06
  our coffee chats, fire chats, all of the things I've seen,
• 1:04:09
  just all of the shit that's gone down when it comes to a product
• 1:04:12
  based business. If you were going to like give
• 1:04:15
  your insider wisdom to somebody of do not do X or this is what
• 1:04:21
  you're going to do, like what you would recommend to kind of
• 1:04:23
  like a set the stage for the highest likeliness of success.
• 1:04:28
  Where should someone start? Or maybe where should they not
• 1:04:32
  start as like their next step? Yeah, I have a long list of do
• 1:04:35
  nots and I think do not price your product just because
• 1:04:39
  everybody else is pricing it at a certain point.
• 1:04:42
  Price it according to actual profit because at the end of the
• 1:04:44
  day, it's really easy to try to be like, I want to be the most
• 1:04:47
  affordable option so people buy it, but people aren't buying
• 1:04:49
  affordable, they're buying brand.
• 1:04:51
  Do not discount the brand side of your business because that's
• 1:04:56
  going to be a really big piece that people are really going to
• 1:04:59
  connect to. Do not discount the values that
• 1:05:02
  your brand has. Many people say, Oh, well,
• 1:05:05
  nobody cares like I'm doing. I'm making my business
• 1:05:08
  sustainable out of personal responsibility.
• 1:05:10
  My customer doesn't care. They do care.
• 1:05:12
  And the ones that don't, that's fine.
• 1:05:14
  But for some people it's a check.
• 1:05:16
  Like it's a, it's a qualifier on their list.
• 1:05:19
  Do not overthink the idea of like your ideal customer and all
• 1:05:25
  of these pieces. It's if you really can grow and
• 1:05:28
  adapt as you keep on going. What I want you to think about
• 1:05:31
  is how can we make a product that's good?
• 1:05:34
  How can we make a product that like achieves the goal that
• 1:05:36
  we're saying it achieves? Doesn't have to be the best on
• 1:05:38
  the market, but how can we achieve that?
• 1:05:40
  How can we find something that is different than everybody out
• 1:05:44
  there? That's another do not, do not
• 1:05:45
  just look at a brand that's aspirational in your industry
• 1:05:48
  selling the same thing and say, let's just do that.
• 1:05:50
  I have clients all the time come to me and they say I love this
• 1:05:54
  brand and then I go and I look and their websites are like the
• 1:05:58
  exact same as that other brand. Not going to help you because
• 1:06:01
  you have just put yourself at that same point and that brand
• 1:06:04
  already has authority and trust. And so everybody is going to
• 1:06:08
  pick them over you if you are equal to what that brand is
• 1:06:11
  saying that they're doing. So if you are trying to create a
• 1:06:14
  product, don't get overwhelmed with it.
• 1:06:17
  It's actually once you get into the world, I actually think it's
• 1:06:19
  easier. I might just be blind to it at
• 1:06:21
  this point because it's been a while, but I do think it's
• 1:06:23
  easier than people expect. Find a manufacturer that can
• 1:06:26
  make your product that you like, that you like the quality.
• 1:06:28
  Don't be afraid to ask for samples from like 5-10 different
• 1:06:31
  manufacturers to compare. Identify what you want your
• 1:06:34
  visuals to be and have fun with it.
• 1:06:36
  Like get dreaming with it. A lot of people you can get very
• 1:06:39
  far with really great visuals, like go do a photo shoot, a
• 1:06:42
  video shoot, whatever that looks like, and then talk about your
• 1:06:46
  values. Like why did you create it this
• 1:06:48
  way? Talk about the founder story.
• 1:06:50
  Like people do care about you. You can't be the like North Star
• 1:06:53
  of your brand, but you can be a really big part of it.
• 1:06:56
  The reason like Jake from State Farm and Flow from Progressive
• 1:06:59
  exist is because insurance is really hard to connect to.
• 1:07:02
  So they put a person behind it for us to connect to.
• 1:07:05
  Same thing, like it's really hard to connect to lip gloss if
• 1:07:07
  there's not a person behind it. That's why everybody loves
• 1:07:09
  Haley, Haley Bieber or I guess like Rd. is because she was the
• 1:07:14
  person and behind that brand. And then just start creating
• 1:07:17
  community. I always say that if I had a
• 1:07:19
  product, I would have what if I started a product basis?
• 1:07:21
  It would be 1 product with a very niche community with some
• 1:07:25
  fun branding and I would start building the community as soon
• 1:07:29
  as I decided to press go on the idea of the product.
• 1:07:32
  I would start before I even had it in production.
• 1:07:35
  I would start ASAP, start building that community.
• 1:07:39
  You can get a lot of buy in early on and like I would just
• 1:07:42
  start creating value. Like I had a product a while
• 1:07:44
  while ago that I wanted to start.
• 1:07:45
  That was kind of in the when I was building.
• 1:07:47
  I lived in a bus for a few years and I built out my bus and in
• 1:07:51
  the era of me building my bus, I found like this product that I
• 1:07:54
  was like, oh, this would be great.
• 1:07:55
  But it was in like the DIY kind of like crafter or whatever
• 1:07:58
  world. I'm like, wow, this is a great
• 1:07:59
  thing and there's nothing out there like this.
• 1:08:02
  It was one product, but I would have started immediately
• 1:08:06
  creating community around DIY crafting, things like that.
• 1:08:10
  And then I would have started the product base like, OK, I'm
• 1:08:12
  starting this business because the sooner you can build
• 1:08:15
  community, the sooner you will be able to make that high cash
• 1:08:19
  months. It's so interesting the
• 1:08:21
  correlation between service based business too, because I
• 1:08:23
  think even. There's a lot, yeah.
• 1:08:25
  Yeah, there's so many, there's so many correlations.
• 1:08:27
  Obviously there's definitely distinctions, but I think, I
• 1:08:29
  think distinctions mainly are around the actual product of the
• 1:08:31
  service, but the marketing. I so agree with the brand.
• 1:08:34
  I agree with the media, I agree with because I think even
• 1:08:38
  service obviously, as you know, because you have a service side
• 1:08:40
  to to your knowledge as well is like, I think so many people
• 1:08:43
  come in and they're they want to start an online business or they
• 1:08:47
  want to start a business in general that is a service based
• 1:08:48
  business. And I think I got to convert
• 1:08:50
  somebody today and I'm like, you haven't even earned the right to
• 1:08:52
  sell anything like you. No one has any idea who you are
• 1:08:56
  or what you haven't added any value to your point.
• 1:08:58
  You haven't created any community.
• 1:08:59
  You haven't actually create any connection point at all.
• 1:09:01
  And you're like, hey, give me your money.
• 1:09:03
  So I think while, you know, yes, it may be a different flavor in
• 1:09:08
  the service bucket, I think that the principle is the same, which
• 1:09:10
  is the fact that, you know, the things that I heard you say kind
• 1:09:13
  of like the the same through line today is like marketing is
• 1:09:18
  the difference maker. Like if you can't stand out in
• 1:09:20
  marketing, like you're not going to stand out as a service,
• 1:09:22
  frankly, but or as a product brand, like know what makes you
• 1:09:25
  different, know where you can be.
• 1:09:27
  To your point earlier, a category of one like everyone's
• 1:09:29
  here, I'm going over here, I'm looking to say, OK, not just
• 1:09:32
  like what would feel good for me, but what is the opening that
• 1:09:35
  I can truly fill within this market.
• 1:09:38
  And I think with that as well, to your point, like there still
• 1:09:41
  is just as there is in service, there's value in having a great
• 1:09:45
  product and there's value in having a great service.
• 1:09:47
  I think the thing which I know like obviously we, we chat about
• 1:09:50
  scaling and stuff all the time, you and I, but I think the thing
• 1:09:53
  that I take from today is like the principles are actually very
• 1:09:56
  straightforward in the sense of it doesn't have to be
• 1:10:00
  complicated. But what I'm seeing is like it's
• 1:10:02
  about these core elements of really marketing brand and a
• 1:10:05
  great product. And then obviously there's
• 1:10:07
  logistical pieces as there isn't any business that you have to to
• 1:10:10
  navigate. But to your point earlier of
• 1:10:12
  like once it's all up and set, that's why you'll see product
• 1:10:15
  based founders kind of sit back and chilling.
• 1:10:17
  I think it's actually the same truthfully in an aspect with the
• 1:10:20
  service based businesses, because service based business
• 1:10:23
  owners, the real strain typically comes from the
• 1:10:26
  product, meaning like them, the service, not from the marketing,
• 1:10:30
  not from the brand, not from the sales, like all that.
• 1:10:32
  Eventually, even with scaling, that becomes very streamlined.
• 1:10:35
  And it becomes to your point earlier, how do we create more
• 1:10:38
  capacity, which for you know, the product is, how do we
• 1:10:41
  create, create more products faster, more efficiently to more
• 1:10:45
  countries, to more people? Like it's all still about the
• 1:10:47
  delivery, but the rest of it eventually becomes streamlined.
• 1:10:51
  And so I, I think it's exciting because I could definitely see
• 1:10:55
  if someone's in a product based business, how those principles
• 1:10:57
  could translate to either other products or if you're a service
• 1:11:01
  based business, how if you learn the principles of brand and
• 1:11:03
  marketing and sales and all of that, how even like you do, your
• 1:11:07
  knowledge can transfer to you can literally create
• 1:11:09
  technically, like let's be honest, literally anything at
• 1:11:11
  this point because you know how to do the product and you know
• 1:11:14
  how to do the service side too. So.
• 1:11:17
  Yeah, I guess for someone listening, obviously I know you,
• 1:11:19
  you literally live and breathe in this space.
• 1:11:21
  I, I will tell you guys straight up, if you are a product based
• 1:11:23
  business #1 or #2 you're thinking about starting a
• 1:11:26
  product based business, there's not a single other person that I
• 1:11:28
  would recommend for you to reach out to #1 if you listen to her
• 1:11:32
  podcast, which is the Small Business Growth podcast, Nailed
• 1:11:37
  it, Small Business growth podcast.
• 1:11:40
  I should also mention Maddie is an OG podcaster.
• 1:11:43
  Her podcast has like a bajillion episodes that are all packed
• 1:11:48
  with value. And like, I'm not talking value
• 1:11:50
  isn't like her just kind of talking around things.
• 1:11:52
  Like I'm talking, if you actually took notes, you
• 1:11:53
  probably would have a blueprint on how to grow and scale a
• 1:11:55
  business if you listened. So incredible podcast is
• 1:11:58
  definitely the person I'd recommend for anyone looking to
• 1:12:01
  start a product based or who wants to grow a product based
• 1:12:03
  Maddie. If someone wants to, you know,
• 1:12:06
  pick your brain, get into your world, you know, whether they're
• 1:12:09
  thinking Etsy and kind of, you know, mom and pop shop size or
• 1:12:13
  they're like, I want to be an anthropology, as you said, and
• 1:12:16
  like take over the world with my product.
• 1:12:18
  Where do they reach out? Where, where should?
• 1:12:20
  They find you. Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  You can find me on Instagram at This is Madison page.
• 1:12:23
  You can go there or you can go to thisismadisonpage.com and you
• 1:12:27
  can apply and just reach out to me either where anywhere.
• 1:12:30
  We can just book a call and we'll sit down and chat about
• 1:12:32
  it. I just want to hear what your
• 1:12:34
  idea is, your vision is, and kind of look at, you know, what
• 1:12:37
  you really want to do. And I can see what that insight
• 1:12:39
  might look like of what that process is to bring it into
• 1:12:42
  fruition. Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  I would love to chat with you. Come over to my Instagram or my
• 1:12:46
  podcast, which is the Small Business Growth podcast.
• 1:12:48
  And yeah, I have like 400 episodes and you can get a good
• 1:12:51
  idea of my my style over there. But yeah, I hang out on
• 1:12:54
  Instagram mostly at This is Madison Page.
• 1:12:57
  Amazing. Well, Maddie, thank you for
• 1:12:59
  coming on and sharing all of us. I feel like I got a master class
• 1:13:02
  business. So thank you for all the
• 1:13:03
  insights today. And with that being said, you
• 1:13:05
  guys, we will see you on the next episode.
• 1:13:08
  And, as always, stay ambitious.