How To Choose Your First Million Dollar Product

Welcome to a random drink with Moran. Today we're talking about how to choose your first million dollar product.

I was sitting with my, with my book writing team and we were caught around this idea of choosing the first product idea and someone said to me, hey Ryan, what's the biggest challeng that some of your students or some of the people that work with you, what do they run into when they first start working with you? And I said far and away the biggest question that I am asked at this point is what product do I sell or what market do I go into? And so that's what we're going to cover today on this session. All right, let's go ahead and dive in because one of the most commonly questions for me is how do I choose the best market or how do I choose the best product for me and for the goals that I have? So I just put a poll over on the live over what is the biggest challenge that you face when choosing your first product? That'll help me guide some of the conversation. But this is a common question that I usually come up with is I know that I want to start a business.

I know it in theory, I know it in concept, but I'm not sure how to move forward. I'm not even sure what type of product I need to choose. Now here's the thing. Many people come to me and just ask, what's the best business that's going to help me make my first million dollars? I'm biased, but I believe the best model for building a million dollar business is a physical products business. Or if I were to generalize that even more, I would just say a products business because there's millions of dollars they made in digital products, software as a service, products, physical products. But the idea of having the thing that you sell to a target audience and having a suite of them, that's how you build a million dollar business. There is no special hack, there is no special algorithm. There is simply do you have products that you can bring to a specific group of people? The easiest and the most simplistic to understand and to bring to the marketplace would be a physical products brand. You don't need to be an expert, you don't need to fulfill anything besides sending somebody their product. For example, if I send you my coffee, this is meringue coffee, you bought the Moran coffee, you got the coffee exchange made complete. Whereas with an info product, if you're an expert, the result is kind of in your hands to ensure that your customers get the result. And it's intellectual property, which is great, it's super profitable, but there is more attached to the end result of that person experiencing what they bought. Whereas a physical product, once it shows up, you're done. So I'm biased, but I'm of the opinion that if you've got a physical products brand, that is the fast lane to having a million dollar business. Now, in the olden days, people would just be looking at, they were really looking at, what system can I hack in order to sell products. So in 2013, 2014, the conversation was largely around what keywords do I rank for on Amazon, what markets are wide open on Amazon? Or even before that it was ebay. Today it's more like Shopify and Facebook ads. People are looking for the loophole, they're looking for the arbitrage. They're looking for, can I buy something at this price? Sell it at this price. And that's awesome. Like that is a really great way to get started. But I think that it prevents most people from getting to their first million. A more predictable way to get the million dollar business is twofold. One is either to target a pain point. And what that means is you have a hole in the market. You see that there's a group of people who are complaining about a problem. You, you've read Amazon reviews, you've read website reviews, you've gone on Reddit and read what people are complaining about and you develop a product that addresses a specific pain point. We'll talk about that more in a second. Or number two, which is in my opinion, the more predictable route, not necessarily the better route, but the more predictable route for the person who's never run a business before, is to have three to five products that services a person that serves a specific type of person with products that they already buy. So this morning I made this cup of coffee. I used coffee beans, flax milk, a water boiler, a frother, cinnamon creatine. There's six products used in making Moran's cup of coffee. So if I did a Facebook live every day, forever and ever, I'm in six, selling my brand, my blend of coffee. Well, guess what? I just have six products that I could sell to you right out of the gate to have the exact same experience that I just had. Oh, and there's the coffee mug as well. So there's seven products. The mug, the beans, the flax milk, the creatine, the frother, the boiler and the coffee grinder. There's eight. I just named eight products specific to one type of person and it's the type of person who watches this on Facebook live here side rant. How would I launch that business? I'd launch that business by doing videos every day, drinking this cup of coffee, having conversations with other entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs with my target market. I would boost that video to kingdom come until I had an audience. I'd be interacting with all of you in the comments every single day. And guess what all I need is for. Let's see if we've got eight products, average price point of $20. If we were selling eight products at like 15 sales a day, that's a million dollar business. Go ahead and run the math on that. You can fact check me on that. So there's like there's a business that's a million dollar business, right? And if you follow along, all I need is a regular audience to sell those products to. And that comes in the form of social media targeting the exact typ that would buy that suite of products. That leads me to the most important point of building a million dollar business. Now, I said the types of products that you would sell would be one of two. Either you're targeting a specific pain point or you're selling a suite of products, three to five products, to the exact same person. But there's one piece of that that is the most important point among all of it. And it is the first thing that, that you need to identify if you want to build a million dollar business is who your target customer is. I mentioned the olden days of selling on ebay and selling on Amazon where you could throw up a coffee mug or a supplement or an iPhone case and there weren't a lot of sellers who were on Amazon or ebay. So if you were to take that product and you were to get it on Amazon and be a first mover, you could move a whole lot of product. But because all you're doing is selling product, you're now going to play a price war game. Which means that if you're selling iPhone cases and someone else comes along and sells the exact same iPhone case, you're going to feel threatened because someone else is selling.

For less money. Well, that's not okay because you were first to market. How do you shield against that? You shield against that by knowing exactly who your target audience is so that you can address their pain points, so that you can build an audience and so that you can identify that three to five products that that same person is going to purchase. It is hard, not impossible, but hard to build a business out of selling iPhone cases or coffee cups. But it's really easy to put together a million dollar business that serves a specific person. And one of the products is an iPhone case, one of the products is a coffee mug. It's just an easier, simpler, faster way to build a million dollar business. And if you know exactly who the target audience is versus what you are going to sell now, how do you identify that? How do you figure out who your target audience is or who the best person to sell is? Look, we could do a whole bunch of market research and we could do a whole bunch of digging into the numbers, but at the end of the day, you're probably going to choose yourself. You're probably going to create products that you yourself want, would want to purchase. So let's just start there. Let's just start with you. What do you buy on a regular basis? What do you identify as? Are you a crossfitter? Are you a church goer? Are you a yogi? And if that's the case, then it's probably really easy for you to identify that first group of products that you already purchase. If you do yoga, you're going to buy a yoga block, a yoga towel, a yoga mat, a yoga bag, yoga classes, probably some training courses on doing yoga. You might buy some yoga grips, you're going to buy some yogi socks. I don't even do yoga and I just named seven products. I think I'm not a good counter. I think I just named seven products that you could market to the crowd of people who do yoga. So it's just easier if we start with a group of people. So where do you identify? Who do you hang out with? Are you regularly going somewhere? Are you part of clubs? That's a good place to start. Get the creative juices going of what market I'm going to choose. Now, there's a couple criterias that I think you should consider when vetting. If you've got enough money in a market or enough money with a product, number one, we've got to be in a market that's big enough. Big markets, there's too much hype about going after small niche markets. Hungry niche markets, awesome. But small niche markets I'm not interested in. I want there to be a big market for something. I want to be able to run Facebook ads to get in front of a group of people. I want to be able to go and get influencers in my group of people. So are you in a big market? Are lots of people buying something and have they been buying that for a long time? Fidget spinners, was a big market, but it was not around for a very long time. Pogs. Are any of you old enough to remember pogs? Leave me a comment if you're old enough to remember. Pogs. Slammers. If you were old enough to remember what a slammer is, you know that that was a big market with a lot of money to be made, but it didn't last for a long time. Whereas coffee with cinnamon and creatine and milk has been around for a really long time. Much better market to go into something that has been around for a very long time. That's why, you know, people are afraid of competition a lot of the times. But if you think about it, competition means that there's a group of people who are making money in that market. There's lots of people. If there's lots of competition, it means there's lots of people who are making money in that target audience. That's a pretty good sign. So if you're able to carve out this much of the person behind those products, that means that you're going to have a much easier time building a million dollar business. So the number one is, are you in a big market that's been around for a long time? Number two, are other people talking about it? Is there noise about this specific topic? Now the reason for this is I want to be able to step in front of the conversation that people are having. Can I go to influencers who are actively talking about this topic, who are taking pictures and posting it? Can I go to the Facebook groups? Can I go to the blogger and give them my product and it be part of the conversation? Are we in a big market that's been around for a long time and are other people talking about it? Now here's the trifecta. Here's where you've got the zone, the sweet spot, the bullseye. If you are the target market and you can identify some products that you already buy and it's a big market and other people are talking about it, guess what? You found the bullseye. So one of the things that you could practice right now is looking for trends that are up and coming that lots of people are talking about. That's a spin on a market that's been around for a long time that you are actively participating in. Guess what? We found the bullseye. When that is the case. Okay, let's do a quick recap here. The way that you build a million dollar business is by having a suite of products that target a very specific person. For example, I mentioned two Ways that you could do that. One was a pain point to a specific market and the second was just having a suite of products that targeted an exact very specific group of people. The problem or the downfall is if you are a product or pain point based business, it sometimes is difficult to think of three to five products that would serve that same target audience. So your second at bat, your second product has to be just as revolutionary as the first. And I found that to be, you know, that's where billion dollar companies are made, but it's not where predictable million dollar businesses are made. Predictable million dollar businesses are made when you've got a specific group of people and you can quickly identify three to five products that that person already buys. And that is your aha moment to be able to release those products and build a million dollar brand.

How do I connect with an audience at scale and find out what my company's true why is? So let me just help you out here. Your company's true why is to serve your customers. It's to get your customers one step closer to the goal that they have. So the first thing that I would recommend that you do is look at your customers and who's already showing up. Or if you haven't launched your business yet, look at your followers, who's following you right now and what journey are they on. Your job as a company is to help those customers take one step closer to the goals that they have. So if we look at a company like Quest Nutrition, they started out with the goal of ending metabolic disease. That's a tall order. And it's a tall order for people like you and me to be like, what's my why? Why do I exist in the world? Why does my company exist? Let's make this real easy. Your company exists to serve your customers and your customers know what they want and they'd be happy to tell you. So your job is to ask, to listen, and to make it easy for your customers to go on their journey. Your business isn't about you. You don't keep the business afloat, your customers do. So listen to your customers and give them what they want. It will make you very, very rich. How do you build an audience while doing that? If you know who your passionate customers are, listen to the pain points that they have and then start releasing content that make it easier for them to go on that journey and your products be part of that journey. Quest, who I mentioned before, does this really well. Somebody wants to go on a low carb diet. Their first question is, well, what about pizza. And so they have a recipe for using Quest nutrition products to make pizza. That's a really, really great way to get people to buy into your company mission, to go on their own journey, and to see their products as part of that. So what journey is your customer on? Your job is to give them products and content that help them make that easier. Another way that you connect with your audience at scale is to speak to their beliefs. What do they believe? What do they believe about themselves? What do they believe about the marketplace? And start speaking to that belief. And that's how you will get people rapidly following you and sharing your content. So helpful content that makes their journey easier and speaking to their beliefs is how you build an audience at scale.