YouTube episode (Capitalism.com, Aug 23, 2023) in which Ryan Daniel Moran coaches a member, Brandon, who plans to sell a pet carrier. The core discussion contrasts niching too narrowly (targeting "wiener"/dachshund owners) versus targeting the broader market of small pet owners; Ryan advises being specific enough to serve someone without needlessly excluding adjacent customers. The episode also covers product features (backpack-style carrier, absorbent bottom, suitability for long-bodied breeds) and go-to-market steps (prelaunch, photos, tests).
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August 23, 2023
He stated "Literally, I think it's 1/4 or 1 in every 5 wiener dogs have this disease."
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In this podcast episode, we get to say wiener like 55 different times. In this episode, I'm gonna be joined by one of our members, Brandon, who is thinking about selling a product to owners of wiener dogs. And this is such a great case study because he wants to sell to wiener dogs, but he doesn't own a wiener dog. So I'm just gonna summarize this wiener of an episode for you in the next 60 seconds or so. Brandon says, I have a product idea and I want to sell to wiener dog owners. And I say, do you own a wiener dog? And he says, no, I actually, I'm a cat guy. And I'm like, oh, that, that's cool. So why don't you sell to cat people? And he's like, because I like to say wiener a lot. And. And also I just think there's a bigger market opportunity for wiener dogs. And I said, wait, this is a great teaching point. This is where entrepreneurs niche down to specifically and they actually cut off part of their market unnecessarily. The magic of choosing a person is to be specific enough to help someone without unnecessarily isolating other parts of. And it's a huge distinction when you are deciding what your business is going to look like. Sometimes our temptation is to niche down too much because we're in our head about who we're serving. But I hope that as a result of hearing this episode with Brandon, you get clarity on who your person is and how you can serve them for the life cycle of your business. Does he only need four products at 25 sales a day at a 30 price point to have a million doll?
Good morning, Brandon. How are you?
Good morning, Ryan. Doing well. How about yourself?
Doing well. Nice to see you. Tell me a little bit about your business and how I can help.
So I'm targeting small pet owners.
Recently got a pet and the first product I want to create is a pet carrier, which if you, if anyone has ever owned a small pet, like you need a pet carrier to go to the vet or travel on the plane. But I think my. My most ideal audience are small dog owners. Specifically like wiener dogs. I think my main issue is that we talk a lot about how you should be or it's a lot easier to target an audience when you are exactly that avatar. And I own a cat and I don't own a small dog.
Then why are you going the wiener dog route?
I was thinking more along the lines of what my product is most suitable for rather than like my specific audience that I want to talk to.
This is, this is a really good teaching point. Because what I tell people is that you want to be specific enough to serve someone, but not so specific that you start isolating people unnecessarily. There is something to be said about isolating a specific group so you can serve them. Socialists tend not to like my message from capitalism.com but I don't intentionally isolate anyone for like unnecessary reasons. Right. So in your. That's an extreme example. But in your case, you're like small pet owners. Got it. Small dog owners. Okay. Wiener dogs. Now we've just niched down unnecessarily. Unless you tell me, for example, I, I do know somebody. They came to the incubator, they built a multimillion dollar business and they only targeted pit bulls. Pitbull owners, like passionate group. It's who they were. They, she said that they had special needs because of the, the way that their skin folds. And so they had products that were designed specifically for washing and moisturizing hit bull skin. And they had a multimillion dollar business that needs a specific amount of specification in order to serve that person.
Right.
Because you're not going to have this same product line or service for golden retrievers. Their skin is different and they're a long haired breed. So in your case, if you tell me that you can make a bomb ass carrier that works for cats and dogs, then it's not necessary for us to niche down to wiener dogs. But if you tell me that wiener dogs as a breed have special restrictions when they travel and they tend to pee more when they're scared. And so this has a special film or, or a layer at the bottom that absorbs. Now we're talking right now. Now I'm on board. So the question is, are you niching down in order to be of service or are you niching down because you think it sounds good?
My thought process is because. So for, I guess like some statistics like for wiener dogs specifically, they're one of the most prone species to this specific disease called intravertebrate disc disease. Because they have really long bodies and really short legs.
Literally, I think it's 1/4 or 1 in every 5 wiener dogs have this disease. Disease. And my carrier is meant to be more of a backpack that you can actually carry. But most backpacks are in what you would imagine like a backpack form. And it's not very suitable for that style of a body.
Yeah. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. So Brandon, you said you developed this for cat owners. You arrived at this statistic later. So how did you design or get to this product idea at first?
Most regular pet carriers are already generally that shape, but they don't have, like, backpack straps. And there's a lot of quality of life differences between the product I'm aiming to make and the things that are already available on the market. So that's how I arrived at getting a pet care that is more natural for a small pet to be sitting, because most pets lie down on all fours and they don't sit for a long period of time. So that's how I landed on that specific configuration of the pet.
Okay, so I think that pain point is specific enough for you to target small pet owners. And I don't think you need to niche down. Like, you could run a test, right? I don't own a wiener dog. I've never owned a wiener dog. This is not my market. But there might be Facebook groups and audiences and influencers that are specifically designed for wiener dogs. If that's the case, then you make that a subset of your marketing. They get a subset of your marketing where you say, hey, I developed this for small pet owners. I found that it works really well for wiener dogs because, as you're probably aware, 1 in 5 develop this issue because of X. It becomes a subset of your market, not the entire focus of the business.
If you listen to my content regularly, you know that I'm really big on choosing a specific person to help. The magic of choosing a person is it gives you the clarity to speak to someone, care about someone, and serve them with a lot more direction. And in my experience, if you choose one person, it gives you a clear lane to go down and speak to. And it allows you to launch four products that get to 25 sales a day at a $30 price point. That's $1 million business. But in this conversation with Brandon, he wants to niche down a little bit too specific. He wants to go specific to wiener dog owners, a specific breed of dog, and he wants to sell products to them. That might be a great idea. But after talking about it and hearing him talk through what he wants to build, he doesn't need to go that specific. And it would actually trap him and pigeonhole him too much if he were to niche down too much.
I would suggest that you market to all small pet owners because that is a great market, it's a profitable market, It's a growing market, and you don't isolate anyone unnecessarily by targeting them. Then you can have offshoots from different breeds or Cats versus dogs or, you know, what have you. How tell me a little bit about the product and its launch and where you're at in kind of the sales trajectory of this product.
I found a supplier that was able to get the quality that I wanted and I got a sample from them and there's minor details that need to be fixed. So I think I'm still in the product development phase of getting it to that, I guess like 90% perfect for a launch where I can actually show photos of it and it will look exactly like what you're supposed to receive.
Yeah. In that case, then it would be a good idea for you to set a pre launch date if you haven't already. If you're in that part of the process, you can set a pre launch date and start working towards that pre launch date. You can have sales on this thing as soon as those photos are ready. Good work Brandon. Good to see you.
Awesome. Thanks, Ryan.
All right, see ya.
As a result of this conversation, Brandon took six months of thinking about it, planning for it, and now has an action plan for what he's going to do. And now we can go launch his first product to a small audience and have 25 sales a day and launch three more products. Do you know one of our members hit 100 sales a day in like seven days in business? Like stuff is happening really, really fast right now, but it can't happen if you're just in your head thinking about it, planning for it, listening to content about it. So when you're ready to actually start the road to 1 million, come join our community@capitalism.com 1 Fill out the form and we'll see if we can help you. I'm Ryan. Danny Moran with capitalism.com thanks for watching.
