How To Make $1M in Sales (In 12 Months)
Ryan Daniel Moran breaks down how to hit $1M in sales by finding a specific group of ideal customers and launching to them directly. Instead of broadcasting to everyone, successful brands target a 'room': Amazon shoppers searching a keyword, listeners of a niche podcast, or customers in a specialty bike shop. He walks through case studies and tactics for both using existing audiences and building your own.
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You don't have to reverse engineer how somebody built a billion dollar business or even a 10 million dollar business. What you need to study is how people got to the first million. And when you study that, you realize it's way more doable than you think. What's up? How do you get to a million dollars in sales? Do you need to run a bunch of ads? You're in my garage. Do you need to get a Super bowl commercial? Do you need to be a famous celebrity influencer? How do you take an idea and get it to a million dollars in sales? That's what we're going to talk about today. When you look at the big brands that you see on retail shelves or the products that are in your home, like Quest and Siete and One and Jocko, these are all big brands. And you might think that you need to follow their strategy in order to build a really big brand. The thing is that they didn't start out as a big brand. They started as a very small brand grinding their way to the first million. And every single brand that you love started, started in the same way as they were growing their business to the first million. So instead of trying to copy what the big brands do now, like run big advertisements or big sponsorships, what you should be looking at is how to copy what they did when they were small. If you want to sell a million dollars worth of stuff, you first need to be able to answer the most commonly asked question in sales, which is, can you sell me this picture? You can sell anything. Sell me this pen right here. You can sell anything. Sell that. There are two ways to sell this pen. One is I can talk about the features of this pen. Look, it clicks. And it's got a squishy thing for your fingers and it's got black ink. Boring. No one wants to buy that pen yet. That's what everybody does when they're trying to sell this pen. Hey, Alex. Yeah? What do you need a pen for? Drawing tattoos on people's butts. Okay. And you charge money for drawing tattoos on people's butts? Sometimes. Okay, so do you want to be the type of person who charges a premium for drawing tattoos on people's butts, or do you want to be in the low level tattoo artist? No, man, I'm trying to get rich. That's how we sell a pen. Wait a minute. So the first lesson is that you don't sell products. You sell to the person who will be using that pen. Now let's talk about how to do it. Are you Literally filming me getting in my car right now. My life isn't that interesting. I'm not Alex Hormozi here, by the way. I'm not really a guy who draws on people's butts. No disrespect if you are, but, you know, I'm just. I want to clarify that before we continue this video. All right, YouTube, you want to see? Alex, drop the camera.
Now, what most people do when they're trying to sell a pen is they'll just yell at the top of their lungs how great the pen is. Hey, do you want to buy my pen? Pens for sale. I have pens for sale. They click. See, that's what most people do. They are standing in front of nobody, yelling about how their product is so great. Or they're talking about it on social media where anyone and everyone can hear it, but no one's listening. Or they're trying to get on retail stores where there's foot traffic, but it's not the person that you want buying the product. People are just yelling about their product to people, hoping that they get a few bites. That's not the way that you grow to the first million. But wouldn't it be easier if you had a room of people who were tattoo artists that wrote on people's butts or people who were professionals that already knew that they wanted to make a purchase? If you had a room of people that were ideal to buy your stuff, that would make selling pens a lot easier. So how do you fill a room with people who are ideal to buy your stuff? That's what I'm going to show you next. It wouldn't be a complete video if we didn't have a story about Kellogg's. Look how much shelf space Kellogg's has. It's incredible. That's distribution. But it's only one form of distribution, and it's the old school way of distribution. The new way of distribution is to get into the room where all of your ideal people are and. And bring the product to them. This just banks on foot traffic. It just banks on people walking past and saying, oh, look, Kellogg's has a new flavor of Frosted Flakes. I might as well try it. That is kind of like staying outside in a field and yelling, hey, my product is awesome. It might work, but it's definitely not the best strategy to start with, I'm going to show you some examples of brands and businesses that did it the right way. And now, as a result of doing that, now they can go into retail stores and they can Write their own check, because they've already got the room of people who want to buy their stuff and are actively buying their stuff over everybody else. Hey, I need you to do me a favor. I got to the house early before filming and got a workout in, but I forgot to bring other shoes, so I. So I need you to not show my shoes as we're walking through the stores here. Up. Yeah.
All right, so check out this example. I'm whispering because we're in a pharmacy. Physician's Choice. You see him on retail store shelves everywhere. It's a $200 million company. And guess what? He didn't start in retail stores everywhere. He started on Amazon.com and what did he do? He ran ads and ranked for keywords for people who were looking for Probiotics. It's a huge market on Amazon. So rather than run a bunch of ads or sponsor influencers to talk about why Probiotics are great, he went to where people were already shopping, which was Amazon. There's a huge market there. And he got his product to show up in front of the people who are already shopping for that. That's like walking into a room of people who are already looking for. For what you have to sell and saying, I got it. That's a much better way to sell your stuff. Not only is that how he got to his first million, but that's how he got to his first hundred million. By the way, Selfish Plug here. Logan, the founder of Physician's Choice, says that he got the idea for this brand by listening to the capitalism.com podcast and coming to our event called the Capitalism Conference. Sitting out here, I think it was like six or six years ago, maybe your Capcom six years ago in Austin. And I just kind of got like a fire lit under where I was like, you know what? Like, I'm going to go all in on this. Maybe you might want to come to one of those. Now, here's another way that you can do it. Instead of finding just the shoppers who are looking for what you have a business like Magic Spoon said, who already has the people in a room that I could get in front of. What Magic Spoon did is they sponsored podcasts. They said, hey, we know all of these low carb podcasts, keto podcasts. We also know these biohacker podcasts, these health and fitness podcasts. They're the type of people that if they were all in a room and they saw what we have to offer, they would want to buy it. So they paid those people to talk about their Cereal. Now they have distribution in all kinds of grocery stores and retail around the world. And they're probably a billion dollar company. But it started with small audiences that other people built on something as simple as podcasts. And they got those people to talk about it. And that's how they got to their first million in sales in the same way. Another example would be Onnit. I was an investor in this company and instead of sponsoring a bunch of podcasts, they sponsored one podcast and it was Joe Rogan. That was all they needed. They got an up and coming influence influencer who had a big audience of people who are ideal for optimization. This brand's tagline was they were total human optimization. So to that market, Joe Rogan already had all of the people in the room that was the exact demographic that would want to buy a product like this. So Aubrey, the founder, gets on that podcast, gives equity to Joe, and the brand goes kaboom. They sell for hundreds of millions of dollars, but the first million was them getting on an up and coming podcast, talking about the brand. And that was how they got the first group of customers to buy them and take them to seven figures. A lot of people think, well, if I could just get on the retail shelves of big box grocery and retail stores, then I will have made it. That's not always the case. Well, let me show you an example of somebody who did it really well. And it was like 25 years ago. Clif Bar, you see them everywhere. You've probably eaten one or many. Well, Cliff did not get to their first million by being in retail. At least not retail as we know it. Clif Bar started by being in bike shops. Why bike shops? Because this is the brand for endurance athletes. So 25 years ago, when Instagram wasn't a thing and there were no podcasts back then, and they could only get into retail in order to get in front of customers. They got in front of the right customers, they got into the right room that only endurance athletes went into, and that was bike shops. That's how Clif Bar got to their first million dollars. Then they piggybacked off of that success and got into more stores. They didn't jump right to getting worldwide distribution. They could do it now because they proved that if they're in the right room, people want to buy their stuff. That's how we need to think about it. Not how do we get everybody to see our stuff. Not how do we go viral, not how do we get on every shelf. Not how do we get the biggest influencer like the Kardashians to talk about us. We think instead about how we get a small group of people that we know would benefit from trying our stuff. That's how we get seven figures. Now, there's one other way to do it. Up until now, I've been giving you examples of how to go to rooms that other people built. Podcasts, influencers, Amazon. These are all rooms of people that other people built. There's another way to do it, and that way is to build your own room. Now, it takes longer, it takes a little bit of effort to build a room of people that want to buy your stuff. But there are ways to do it that are not expensive. In fact, sometimes they're free. The conversion rates are fantastic and they're great for anybody who is getting an idea off the ground. So now what I want to show you is a couple of examples of brands who built their own room, launched to those people, and got to seven figures. All right, so if you're like just scraping it together, this is an example that is really going to fire you up. So Tara Bosch, right here started SmartSuites. Tara had just 500 people on an email list. That's how she started this. Sold for. Was it $300 million? Yeah, 360 or something. Oh, my goodness. So Tara sold her Co. For $360 million. It didn't start as a big company. It started with an email list of 500 people. And you know how she built that list of 500 people? She manually reached out to people that she wanted to connect with and asked if they wanted to follow her story as a founder. And then she started doing updates about what was going on in the business. That's how she started this brand. And those people started advocating for her on social media and in retail stores. Anyone can do that. If you got an idea, all you need to do is get a small group of people in the room. And if you can't afford to go to somebody else's room or you don't know anybody else who's built the room. You can build your own room with just a few hundred people, put them on an email list, just like Tara did. Four years later, she had a nine figure exit. That's ridiculous. Now, this is obviously a little bit more advanced, but take Jocko as an example. Jocko built his own room. He built his own room by creating a bunch of content and creating raving fans and followers of people who wanted to be like Jocko. Now he can launch whatever he wants. He's got pre Workouts over there. He's got protein powder, he's got energy drinks, he's got supplements. That man can sell anything that he wants. Cuz he's already got the room of people who want to buy from him. And anything that he recommends that obviously takes a lot longer. And you're not going to do that in 90 days. But you can absolutely have a group of people waiting to buy from you in about 90 days by just getting the right people into the room and then launching your product. Here's a more realistic example. Anybody can do what these founders did. The founders of Aulani started building their own audience of fitness enthusiasts. Cause that's who they were. They started documenting the journey of them building a business. And as a result, they had a group of people who were following their journey. They launched the product to that group of people, they controlled it and as a result they got to their first seven figures. It didn't stay there. They started ramping up other forms of marketing after that. But the first seven figures came from them just talking about fitness and getting the right people into the room. Now check this out. This brand just sold, just sold this year to Celsius the energy drink for $1.2 billion. Can you imagine? It didn't start as a billion dollar business. It started as a small little Instagram following. Following that, they launched cool products to. So. Okay, okay, I got it.
Okay. Okay, thank you. So. So an employee saw us, we're getting kicked out. They said we can't film in here.
I wanted to tell you this story in the store, but we got kicked out. So bulletproof. Do you remember when they were everywhere? You remember this Al? They were everywhere. They're the hot girl at the dance. Everybody wanted to be bulletproof. Now what do you hear about bulletproof? Not a lot. Here's where bulletproof went wrong. They started by launching to the audience that Dave, Dave Asprey started. It was the biohacking brand. And as a result of him podcasting and blogging, they had an audience that they launched to. They filled the room with biohackers and then they were able to launch biohacking products as a result. That's how they got to their first seven figures and ultimately they got to eight figures and I think even nine figures. But then they broke up with their influencer and they stopped going to the biohacking crowd and they started just creating the product for everybody. Like this protein bar. How is it different than all the other protein bars? A greens powder. How is that for biohackers? You don't hear about it anymore. You don't see them advertising to the biohacking community anymore. And so now they're just living off the distribution that Dave built by putting the right people in the room. They're not doing that anymore. And now the business is suffering. That's what you don't want to do. You want to follow in the footsteps of what Dave did to take it to seven figures, which is get the right people into the room and then launch products. Not try to get everybody to see you on retail stores or through viral videos. Think about the person who's buying the pen, not just the features of the pen. All right, now that we're back at my house, there's one more example that I want to show you that did a really good job of building their own Black Rifle Coffee. You've probably heard about them. They're a publicly traded company now, but they weren't always the behemoth that they are today. Black Rifle Coffee started by creating YouTube videos. Did they make YouTube videos about coffee? Kind of, sorta. They did a bunch of videos about shooting guns. Conservative values. And sometimes they talked about coffee too. The reason that's important is because they weren't standing on the street corner saying, our coffee is delicious. Although once in a while they worked it into their content. For the most part, they talked about the values of the person that they wanted to buy their coffee. In fact, part of their whole shtick was Starbucks is liberal. Were not buy our coffee instead. That's speaking to a specific person. And as a result, they filled the room with the type of people that they knew would buy their coffee. And when they launched, they immediately had a seven figure brand. Here's what I want you to do with this. I want you to put in the comments where people can follow your brand, where they can get into your room. I want you to put in the comments. I help young guys build muscle. Get on the waiting list for my protein powder here. I want you to put links to your products or your waiting list in the comments of this video so that we can all support each other. You see, it only takes a few hundred people to be on a waiting list or a Facebook group or an Instagram page. It only takes a few hundred people to really smash a launch and take a product to 25 or even 100 sales a day. And that's a million dollar business. So if you serve cat owners or travelers or young parents and you've got a room where people can follow you and see where your products are being sold. Put it in the comments below so that we can all support each other and get in each other's rooms and. And buy each other's stuff. I'm Ryan, Dan and Ryan. With capitalism.com, we're building a community of entrepreneurs who are building million dollar businesses. That's what we do here@capitalism.com I'm so glad that you're along for the journey. Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys on the next episode. Take care.
Now. In case you think my life is just lake houses and mansions, Teslas, let me humble myself for a minute with the money that I made from selling one of my businesses for $16 million. I did pay for a lake house. Yeah, it's right over there. It's not a lake house anymore. The lake waters in Texas are in a drought right now. And my what was a lake house is now a quarry house. It all started when Trump got elected. We're gonna drain the swamp. Okay, Maybe we went a bit too far and the Biden administration made their lake levels lower. I'm taking this impression way too far, as I always do. Do we think that Ryan's Trump impressions are actually good? Because I'm like, I'm a little on the fence with it. I'm not really sure. Nobody knows Biden. Oh, shit. Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico. See, that was good. Nobody knows Trump impressions like me, Alex. Nobody. Puerto Rico.
