"How to Test Your Product Before Investing Big | Evan Carmichael"

Make sure that your company is testing your product or service on a small scale before you dump a ton of money into it, because if you make the wrong move, you could be in debt for the rest of your life trying to pay off this one bad business decision. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe that hungry entrepreneurs deserve help, and today I'm answering a question from a YouTube viewer, Mo, one of my new fans on Facebook and on YouTube, answering tons of questions. So I love Mo, thank you for participating. Mo's question is, my goal is to sell hair products online through up-and-coming hairlines that haven't hit mainstream. How do I test it to see if I could sell online if I don't invest in the products itself to sell? Do I buy a little bit of each and see if it sells? Even a little bit of each would end up costing a lot. So Mo, a couple options here for you. I would not recommend spending money on buying inventory and then hoping that they sell online. This is the classic mistake that most entrepreneurs make. They think they have a great idea for a product or service, especially on the product side. Either they're gonna invent it themselves, they're gonna be a supplier and sell, and you end up buying all this product and it sits in your basement, in your garage, or in your bedroom, and it doesn't sell. And you're stuck with this inventory, having dumped thousands of dollars into it, and you never get that money back. And you end up chucking it or selling at a huge discount, and I don't want that for you. What you have to do is test. If you're launching a new product, if you're representing the company, I would try to set up a website. If you're trying to do this online, set it up and be a commission salesperson. Don't buy the product, make sure the company can fulfill it. And if they can't do it, if you're working with the wrong company, then find the company that will do that. Where all you're doing is facilitating the order and you don't actually have to have any products. Talk to the companies, if they're just getting started up, Say you want to be an online division for them, you want to set up a website to rep some of their stuff. If I make a sale, can you deliver? So all you're doing is feeding sales to them and they're sending it to the customer. That's a way for you to test it. If you set up this website, put all this energy into creating an amazing website, have tons of great content, testimonials, all that stuff, and it doesn't sell, then the most you're out is just that website. You don't have 2,000 of product X sitting in your bedroom with thousands of dollars sunk into that, that then you're out of. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing you can do if you're creating your own product line is launch a website, talk about it, and try to get some pre-sales. Try to get pre-orders for what you're doing. Talk about the benefits of your product. You can show pictures of it. You can show what the— what people can expect from using it. Share your story, why you invented this, and try to get people to buy before you've actually created the product. If there is an interest, if people are asking for this, saying, "Yes, I need this," 'Please make this product,' and you get to a certain number, whatever makes sense, maybe you need 10, maybe 50, maybe 100, whatever it is that makes sense for your business, then you can make it. Then you know that your idea is good. If you create the site, talk about how great your product is, you're promoting it, people hit the site, and nobody signs up, there's no interest, then you've just saved yourself thousands of dollars going in the wrong direction. The other thing you can look at if you're just starting that will help with your presales is websites like Kickstarter. Kickstarter is designed to help entrepreneurs launch their products. You put your idea up there and it's basically a website that helps facilitate pre-orders, pre-sales. You say when it's gonna be delivered, you say all the great features about it, and people will start to buy. And you have to reach your goal. You know, if you reach your goal, your funding limit, then you have the money you need to launch. And if you don't, you can cancel the project. And it'll help you test to see, is this something that people want or not? And your worst-case scenario there is you're out your time in creating the campaign, but you're not out thousands of dollars in inventory that you end up, you know, again, in your basement, in your garage, you can't sell it. Okay? Too many entrepreneurs make that mistake. Don't buy product, don't buy inventory until you have some sales coming in and you have a pretty good bet that it's gonna work. Because no matter how excited you get about it, no matter how much you love the product, it's not a guarantee that other people are gonna love it as well. And I don't want you to end up with all this inventory and you're not able to sell it and make your money back. Thanks for the question. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me wanna do more for you. And hey, I wanna hear from you too. Please leave a comment under this video. Let me know what you think about this question that Mo asked. And if you have a question for your own business, leave it in the comments. I'll do my best to create a video reply for you. And we'll see where things go. So thank you guys, and I'll see you on the next episode.