Video Transcript:
In this video I want to talk about your product. This is something that a lot of entrepreneurs face as a problem, and the primary reason is that they all spend their time in the build phase. It goes like this: build vs. sell. The reality is – that’s the third step in the proper product cycle. It’s not the first. This is why so many entrepreneurs spend so much time, I’ve worked and known people that would spend 18 months trying to build and never went out to start selling, and when they went out to sell, no one was buying, so they went to building again. They did it completely wrong.
So in the product cycle, if you’re making under $100,000 a year, that’s probably what you’re doing. If you’re trying to become an entrepreneur or if you are an entrepreneur, and you’re stuck at this $100,000 or below mark, the problem is your product. You’re not trying to sell it as much as you’re trying to build it. If you go out today and you start try to sell whatever it is that you’re trying to sell, you’re going to learn more in that process than you’ll ever learn in trying to build. Now, I’m not talking about going and surveying and all those things. Actually go out and sell it. You could survey a bunch of people, but if they’re not willing to give you money for whatever it is that you’re selling, your product or your service, then they’re not potential buyers and their data’s worthless to you. Sell it! Ask them: “Hey, you know what, I’m doing an event. It is going to be a $500 for you to attend, this is what are you going to learn, so you can learn that.” “So what do you want to learn?” “Get perfect.” Next person. “So we’re going to be doing an event. We’re going to be teaching this.” “Oh this is what I want to learn, but for $500 it is too much.” Or, you know, “I don’t think that $500 is valuable enough.” You need to do that in the sales process to figure out exactly what your product needs to be.
A good case in point – recently we opened a new office in Ohio to sell local marketing services that we’ve been selling all across the US and Canada and actually a couple of clients in Europe as well, and we found that our price point for Ohio was way too high. So we had a decision to make: we could either charge less while doing the same work, which of course we didn’t want to do, we could create a lower price product so we could fit the market, we didn’t want to do that either, so what did we do? We stopped trying to sell it. We found that our product in that market was not a viable product. We continued to sell it in other markets, we continued to thrive past this point. So what are you doing with your product? Are you a builder or are a seller? And if you’re a builder, you’re right here, if you’re starting to figure out what do you need to sell a little bit more often than not, then you’re starting to work your way into this hobby standpoint where you’re making about $250,000 a year. You’re hitting that ceiling, though, because you’re not perfecting it. You’re not concentrating 100% of your time and energy into selling your product first and then letting your team do the implementation of the build-up of the product afterwards.
So that’s the information that you need to go from job to hobby to business. Right here, all you’re doing is building. Here, you’re starting to sell a little bit. Here, all you’re doing is selling. You’re making sure that the first thing you do every morning when you wake up is to sell. You’re making sure that the last thing you do before you go to bed at night is follow up with your leads and make sure to try get a close. And when you do that, you have a business. You’re making a million dollars a year. We’ve talked in previous videos what that can mean to you and your family. So I’m Rodger the Partner, and I want to show you how you can develop the perfect product to go from a job to hobby to a business so that you can live the lifestyle that you want to live. Thank you.
