597. If You Don't Have an Audience to Sell to, Do This.

1800 followers. Her company makes $25 million a year, the last time I checked, which was last year. So who knows? She could be higher than that. And still around 1800 followers. You do not need an audience to sell to. Does she have an Instagram? Yes. Can I find her there? Yes. Can I click on a link and go buy from her somewhere else? Yes. Does she have to spend any of her time, money, efforts, resources on building social apps? Absolutely. 25 million reasons why she does not have to. Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours, whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many, so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what are mistakes they could avoid, how did they turn an idea into successful business? And what are strategies they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. This is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support, and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Hey, product Boss. And welcome back to another episode. All right, so I can't tell you how many times I see people saying this or they message us in the DMS on Instagram or I get an email that's like, I want to grow this business, Jacqueline. I have this product based business, I want to grow it, but I don't actually have an audience to sell to. And you can tell me if you're guilty of this too. But so many of us now in this day and age believe that we need some sort of online audience to be successful. And I'm going to tell you outright in the first like minute of this podcast, you do not need an audience to be successful product based business. Okay, do you mean to say that again for those of you in the back? You do not need an audience to be a successful product based business. You do need customers to sell to. You do need potential people to sell to you. So you do need people to know that you exist. You need a customer base to sell to. Right? Because you can't sell to no one and have a successful company, but you don't need to necessarily have an audience in the world that we currently live in, where it's on social media. So back in my day, right, I've been in this business for two decades. Facebook was invented when I was in college and it was not used for selling, right. It was used for connection. And obviously we've seen social over the years change and keep changing and keep changing. And then some years ago, people started using it to promote products and it turned into a another tool in our tool belt, another visibility channel to use. But it is not necessarily the only visibility channel. And I think the reason why so many people were attracted to it were like, oh my God, I can get a thousand people to see my stuff or 20,000 people or 2 million people, right? For free. But can I tell you that that's a lie? Nothing's free. None of it's free either. You got on the platform when it first started, whether it's TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever social platform is happening at the time, and you got on in the very, very, very beginning and you learned it and you created a to content that made sense, right? Which is not free. Your time, if you were paying yourself for that, that's not free. That's time being spent and you happen to get in at the right time. Or there are a lot of successful people on the social media channels that some do or grow organically, but do you know how else they grow? They are paying for ads, they're paying for placements, they're actually investing cash into growing right there. Or they're doing exchanges and they're giving product for visibility. And that costs money. So I just want you to know that it's kind of a farce that these online platforms are free. And yes, if you are willing to invest the time and energy in learning a platform, understanding it and creating content, often then you can be successful. And I'll tell you, like, our company has grown massively on social recently. We post four times a day and I pay somebody. So not only am I doing it, but I also pay somebody that we create content strategies together and I pay for the content to be created. Right. I have photographers and videographers and all the things. So it's not free. It's actually a huge part of my balance sheet. Like, not my balance sheet. Yeah, my profit and loss statement. This is a big expense for the company. Right? So let's transition out of that. Right. I just wanted to kind of overcome that sort of fallacy that this is like a free way of marketing because it takes money and it takes time, takes an investment in all of that. So, so what I really wanted to get into today was what do you do right, if you don't have an audience to sell to, how do you sell to people? How do people discover you? And again, I wanted you to overcome this idea that it has to be on social, in fact, and I've talked about them before, but I have one student, she is in Multi Stream Machine, which is our signature program which teaches you how to sell more platforms, more sales channels and we really teach you how to like niche down and be known for something with your core product or your hero product. And so she had a full time job, she had this idea for a product she was making all the things, she went through one of our free challenges and she's like, oh, I gotta hone in. And so she found the one product and she decided to get that one product on Amazon. So she was like, I've been selling direct to consumer on my own website, I've been trying social media, I'm on Etsy. None of it really fully felt like it was taken off, but it had enough data that she knew like her best selling product. And then she's like, I'm going to put that on Amazon. And in the first 90 days on Amazon with one product, she made $31,500 on Amazon. And do you want to know how many followers she has? When I last checked, when I became like her last follower, when I last checked, she had 24 followers, she made $31,500 in 90 days. And then she updated me a year into it. At the end of the year she's like, I left my full time job, I've replaced my full time job salary and I have made $200,000 this year. What? With 24 followers. Can you hear me when I say you do not need an audience of your own necessarily to sell to if you do this thing? And so you're like, okay, well what's the thing get on Amazon? No, not necessarily. It's not that platform in itself. But actually what it is is that you get on sales channels or sales platforms that have an audience that's built in. That is the thing you want to do if you don't have an audience to sell to. So I believe that everybody, if you can do it, should have a great website. I love Shopify. If you go to the productboss.com shopify for example, we have like a freebie like trial for it. But I love Shopify because it has templates and it's the kind of e commerce site that will grow with you. You'll never hear me as your coach tell you, don't have a website because you can't build on borrowed land. And that will always be yours. And if you think about my story, where I started Cuffs Couture, I built the website. I did not have a platform that was as easy as Shopify, and I built it. And I didn't have an email list, I didn't have a social media anything, nothing. I just thought the global Internet would somehow allow people to find me. And I built it and nothing happened, right? I launched my collection. It's like Cuffs Couture is now live on the Internet and nobody bought except for a friend and eventually her friend, because no one knew how to discover me there. But when I started doing what I'm teaching you in this episode, that's when it went from like a trickle, and I mean trickle, like a drop every two weeks, maybe every month, like one tiny droplet that's not gonna sustain to turning on a waterfall. And so what that was, what that unlock was for me was that when I figured out that I needed to get onto other sales channels and that already had built in audiences and when I did that, people were able to discover my brand. They were able to know like and trust me based on the sales channels they were already shopping on. And then once they discovered Cuffs Couture, they then were like, oh, what's this Cuffs Couture? And then they came over and they followed me or not followed me. They engaged on my website. They bought from me directly. Okay. Then I started getting the pings on my phone, like nonstop pings. I remember I was at this Indian restaurant in Hollywood with my husband and. And all of a sudden I was like, what is happening? And I start getting like a ping and another ping and another ping. You know that sound you get when someone starts places an order and you like get alerted on your phone? I was like, oh my God, babe. Oh my God. And I was like freaking out. I was like, look at them coming through. I ordered champagne. I was like, gotta celebrate. Like, what's happening? Well, I had started selling on other sales channels and by having my own website, I was able to catch like, if you're going to make it rain, right? They say make it rain. Like if you're going to do marketing campaigns, you're going to like do something really big and you're going to make it rain. Do you have the buckets to catch it? So thank goodness I had My website created, even though initially it wasn't the thing that worked, I had it so that when it did rain, when people started discovering my company, when the ping started going off, they actually found a website to come to. And again, it was without social media. I didn't have it back then. It was not used in the way that we use it now as marketers. So my story to tell you, kind of like my way of doing this without an audience. I've done this thing, all of my money, all of my savings, my 20 grand as like a 27 year old, it was a lot of money. And I put it all into cuffs couture, into the packaging, into the product, into the raw goods, into building the website. And I was like, oh my God, this is all of it. What happens if it doesn't work? And when it wasn't working, I started freaking out. Am I an idiot? Am I dumb? Like, what am I even doing here, right? What business do I have in business? Even though as a designer and a consultant I was able to help other people's companies, but for some reason with me I was like, what is actually happening? So I realized that I needed to get in front of other people's audiences, right? If I didn't have the ability to generate them. And a lot of times people generate that through paid methods, right? You grow an audience because either you're creating content and you're going viral or you're think about olden days, right? Like, and people are doing it now, like mailers. Like, you get an email, you get a actual physical mail list and then you're sending people postcards, you're like, hey, come buy this. Right? There's that. Or people are running ads and they're paying for ads. But what do you do when you don't have money to spend on ads? You don't even know how to operate ads. You don't want to spend money on ads. It's like a slot machine that you're praying to God pays out, especially if you don't know how to do it. So I was like, okay, I need to find the audience. So the two of the first things that I did was one, I'm just going to go to where the people are. And that's when I decided to add on an additional sales channel where the people are. And I did in person markets because I had identified my ideal customer avatar. I knew who she was, I knew her age range. And so the trade shows I did, I didn't just do any show. And I say trade Shows like markets, right. I would have done Unique la, for example, the unique shows, because it's a younger customer base. They're coming to discover products. They're my ideal customer. They would match right there. That's what they're expecting to see there. I probably wouldn't take Cuffs Couture to an art show. It wasn't art. Maybe I could have, but it wasn't like my ideal customer and it wasn't my ideal customer each, right. So I added in in person events. The coolest thing about adding that on was I didn't need an audience because the event I did, they were the ones marketing, they were the ones bringing in the people, they were the ones bringing in foot traffic. I didn't have to worry about getting customers to sell to. I, I just had to pay and invest into having a booth or a table at that event because the customers were coming. And when the customers came and they connected with me and my product, then I was able to get feedback from them. I was able to start selling, I was able to see what did they want, what were my core products. At first, when I first launched, I had no idea. But then I was like, oh, they love the Celeste cuff, which was one of my basic cuffs. It's the gold one that I show all the time. Right. They kept buying it and what did they say to me? It looks like a stack of Bangles. So when I got that information, what did I say when I was pitching it to people? People love this because it looks like a stack of Bengals. Oh yeah, you're right. Right. And so I got that immediate feedback. I made sales, I got to know what they liked. Right. And, and I teach this inside of Multi Street Machine. I got their email address because what do you own when you run this type of thing? You do not own your social media following. You do not. You do not own your Etsy listings. You don't. But what do you own? You own your website and you own your email list. So I was like, join my email list and I will send you a discount code and you can buy off my website because when those people leave, you can give them a business card. All of us take business cards. How many times do we use the business cards? Not that often. Right. But if you capture their information now, you can market towards them. They walk away from your booth, but you've got their email address. You can email them and now they can buy from you again and again and again if they never see you at that market ever again. Right. So that was like the first thing I did, I went to where the customers were and I said okay in person was the fastest and easiest way that I found that I can get in front of my customers. The second thing that I did to go from that trickle to a waterfall was I also added on wholesale because wholesale was something I knew. It was my background working for other big companies. We sold wholesale. All the things that I did, I worked the markets, I worked magic show, I did all the things. The Maddox show is a trade show for the apparel industry. And why did that work for me? Well, I just had to figure out and again, I'm going to say this here when I say wholesale and the way that I teach wholesale versus the way that a lot of people now think is the only way, which is using a platform like fair.com and while I love fair for the connection point, it is not the only way. So please hear me when I say this. So the way that I teach it is how you go and find the retailers that are the best. You know, they're quality retailers. Your competition might be selling to them or people who are not your competition but have a similar customer avatar and then you find them and then you reach out to them and you make sales to them. So why did adding on that sales channel work for me? Because I just needed to get to the stores that had the trendy people shopping that taste makers. Because my whole goal with my business was for tastemakers. If you see or you've seen, I had a lot of celebrities. It was before the influencer. So the influencer was a celebrity. And I had a ton of celebrities wearing my brand. All right, product boss, I have a serious question. Does it ever feel like you've tried everything and you still aren't making the sales you want to be? Or maybe you've poured countless hours in days and nights, there's been tears into your product biz and you're starting to think that maybe you're just bad at business. I mean, trust me, I have literally been there. So I'm here to tell you that you aren't bad at business and that selling your products doesn't have to feel this hard. So what I've seen from coaching thousands and thousands of product based business owners like you is that they just don't know how to get their products in front of more customers, customers to make more sales. And listen, I get it because I used to have that exact same issue with my product biz until I figured out the one thing that took my business from like one or Two sales every two weeks to people I knew to making six figures in my first year of business. That's right. I was able to take a piece of fabric that I folded over three times and turn it into a six figure international success which was worn by countless celebrities all in just one year. And the best part is that I did it without spending a single cent on ads or having an audience or a following or an email list to sell to. Now listen, I want this for you too, which is why I'm sharing my secrets so you can learn how to turn your product based business into a money making machine that provides the stability and financial security that you're looking for. And it's all happening inside of my free masterclass, the three part framework to building a consistent, profitable, revenue generating product based business in 2024. So if you're ready to get clarity, get profitable and take that next step, all you need to do is head over to theproductboss.com framework to save your spot. Again, that's theproductboss.com framework. Or you can just click the link in the show notes and I'll see you inside. All right, now back to the show. How do you think Kim Kardashian found Cuffs Couture in a store. In a store when she used to shop for herself, when she used to go out shopping, right? There was a store in LA and I sold to them and they had a bowl, I have this photo and they had this bowl of cuffs. That's how they displayed them is before I ever came out with like a point of sale display, the very beginning. And there's a picture of her holding the cuffs up and smiling. And that's how she bought them. And she bought enough for her and her sisters. She purchased them for me actually, not for me from the store I sold to. So I didn't need Kim Kardashian to follow me on Instagram when I didn't need to pay Kim Kardashian to post, right? She actually discovered me on the shelves of a store that she know like and trust, right? She goes to that store, she's like, I love this store. I buy all my things from the store. Oh, what are these? Right. And that's how I sold to her and then countless other people. So if you don't have an audience to sell to, what I want you to think about doing is adding on a sales channel, an additional sales channel, right? This is multi stream machine, right? This is the turning your company into a money making machine by Getting what you're known for and getting them onto sales channels that have built in customers and you get really good at this. So while I've talked about adding on two sales channels, I don't necessarily recommend adding them all in at the same time. So typically what happens is you usually have started with your first one. I see a lot of our customers either start or clients and our students start either on like Etsy because it has a pretty low barrier to entry. And by the way, Etsy also does their own marketing and brings customers. Right? That's why you got on that channel. And I see other people, the low barrier of entry is actually starting with in person markets. Same reason the customers were there. So you may have started in this way and you may or may not be getting the results that you're hoping to get from these sales channels. Maybe you are, maybe you're not, but perhaps if you were to really hone in and identify what can you be known for, how could you stand out in that market? Right. Are you focusing in on your best sellers? Are you focusing into like a niche? And then what sales channel can you add on to your business as another stream of revenue? And the ones that I love have built in audiences, Amazon Wholesale in person markets. Then the ones that are slightly harder. But there are other sales channels that I also teach on are your own website, direct to consumer and selling on social channels. Right? But the visibility, the thing that you have to do for social channels and for direct to consumer, your own e commerce site, is that you have to drive traffic there. You have to be a more active marketer and you have to put more time in. So if you're like, I'm looking for a more passive way right now. You're like, I'm looking for a more passive way to get my business up and running, to sell to more people, to get on more sales channels, you actually might start with one of these other channels that I'm talking about. So I want you to think, where are customers built in? Who could I sell to that already has an audience? And by an audience or customers might be a retail shop that they already have their customers come to that retail shop. So that'd be wholesale Amazon, where Jeff Bezos wants to sell everything to everybody on that channel, right? One in four Americans have Amazon prime in person markets. They're doing their marketing to sell the tickets or to get people to come to that event. And they're charging you booth fees because they know they have people coming there. And then when you start to unlock Adding on additional sales channels with built in audiences, then it will start to start the flow for the more direct to consumer ways of doing it, which would be social and E commerce. Now one other thing that I didn't talk about that we actually do teach inside of MSM as it's coming to me is working with influencers and affiliates. So another reason people have seen such success with influencers and affiliates is because they have a built in audience. That's why people want to collaborate with creators and influencers because they have an audience to sell to. And you're like great, I can get in front of their audience, get awareness about my company and they can buy. So that's another way to do it. And that's another way that like if you don't have an audience to sell to, get in front of someone else's audience. So when you, one of your strategies could be I'm going to do an entire like influencer creator campaign, right? Or if I'm thinking about Brian, he's in my programs and he's in the mastermind with me and he has freshwater pearl company and he works with influencers that are 50 and above. They're women, they're creators and they have been his top salespeople because women that are in their age range are looking to them for fashion advice and fashion accessories. And every time they talk about one of his necklaces or bracelets or pieces of jewelry, people are like, oh my God, I trust you. They're following them and they're like great, I want to buy that. And that is a sales channel for him. So it's a sales channel with built in audiences to sell to. So if you don't have an audience to sell to, I recommend that you find other sales channels, right? You can turn your company into a money making machine by, by finding other sales channels that have an audience to sell to. And here's a differentiator and some of you might be like, well you used to teach it this way and I are teaching it this way. So as you hear me moving forward into, you know, really coaching from one perspective, which is mine, I believe that you start with one sales channel and you start to get feedback, right? You start to identify what do customers like, what's my best product? Like how do I hone in? And then as soon as you start to make a sales, some sales and you're like, hey, I'm starting to get really clear on like what I'm making, what I'm selling and who my customer is and what I can be known for. That's when you have more data to start expanding onto other sales channels. I don't recommend. You're like, I'm launching and I'm going to be on Amazon and in person and my, my own website and all the things, right? Because it's a lot of platforms and sales channels to learn all at once. So I would rather you kind of do one at a time, do one and get good at it. And then you're like, okay, I understand this one. I'm starting to see some traction. Or I'm not seeing traction, I have to learn how to do it better. Or I actually got on the wrong channel and it's not working. I'm going to try this one. Or I'm starting to get traction. Great. Now I have more data. Just like that one product company where she had data from Etsy and Social of the product that people kept going to. So she's like, I'm going to take that and I'm just going to get onto Amazon. She didn't do Amazon and trade shows and influencers and blah blah, blah all at the same time. She did one and she got really good at it. And she went from making barely anything to $200,000 in a year. Right. I just imagine that exponential growth. So she's gotten really good at Amazon and then she might be like, great, I'm doing really well at this. Maybe now I'm going to sell wholesale and then she get out on wholesale. And imagine she makes $200,000 on Amazon and that keeps growing. She gets really good at that sales channel and then she decides to sell wholesale. And imagine she makes another $200,000 through that revenue stream, right? Another sales channel. And now we have multiple streams of revenue, we have multiple ways of selling our product to people's audiences. And both of these ways that I just told you, she doesn't actually need social media. She doesn't need an audience. But guess what will happen? Inevitably you start to see her on Amazon, you start to discover her in stores. You might look that product up and say, how can I buy directly from them? And then you find their website, then you find them on social, potentially. And even if she just has 24 followers, they're like, okay, this company exists, but she's not really posting here. That's cool. I'm just gonna go to the website because at least you have like your link in bio for them to shop from you, right? So I'm not saying not to have social media presences. I think you should because the younger generation looks brands and companies up through social media platforms and the older generations. And by older, I'm in that older generation. We go to still to www.whatever, right? Or we google search it versus, like young people might look it up on a social platform. So you want a presence on these platforms, but you do not have to actively be working these platforms. So I hope that this makes sense to you, that there are so many possibilities. I'm going to leave you with one more, one more inspirational one. I have a student that has about 1800 followers following them on social media. Okay. And some of you may be like, that sounds amazing. Wish I had 1800. And some of you like, that's all 1800 followers. Her company makes $25 million a year. Okay. 1800 followers. Her company makes $25 million a year. The last time I checked, which was last year. So who knows? She could be higher than that. And still around 1800 followers. You do not need an audience to sell to. Does she have an Instagram? Yes. Can I find her there? Yes. Can I click on a link, go buy from her somewhere else? Yes. Does she have to spend any of her time, money, efforts, resources on building social? Absolutely. 25 million reasons why she does not have to. So it is possible. And I just want to give you that hope for my friends out there that are like, I don't want to do it. You don't have to. And then for those of you who are like, but I like social, which, personally I like social. It's. It's a marketing invisibility plan that I actually enjoy. There's some of you out there that are like, I love doing it that way. I do want to drive my own traffic. I do want to learn SEO. I. I do want to post four times a day. I do want to create content. Awesome, right? Awesome. You can build the audience. Right. That's more equipped to you. Right? I have some students that are crushing it. Right. You know, Annika Payne Maven, she crushes it. Brook would be happy. Crushes it. Right? They do such a good job on social and that's part of their plan because they enjoy it. And if that's the thing, then great, they have an audience to sell to. But both of them are still students of mine that have backups to that method. So if something. I remember when Meta crashed, Annika messaged and she's like, because I'm in this program, I've been building my email list. So when Meta crashed and no one could be on Instagram, I emailed them and said, if you're bored and can't scroll the Internet right now or scroll Instagram, I've got a deal for you. Come shop and we're giving you 25% off lingerie or something today. I remember she did something like that and she's like, and I made tons of sales because she had the backup, right? Remember, you can't build on borrowed land. Most of these platforms and sales channels I talked about are borrowed. We do not own them. So you do own your own e commerce site and you own your own email list and everything else are just other sales channels to sell to and you have your option of how you want to do it. Okay, if this resonated with you, if you were like, yes, this is good, this is great, come share that with me. Send me a message on Instagram at the Product Boss. Let me know your biggest takeaway here. And if you haven't done so already, I'm asking if you could please leave us a review for the podcast. It is so helpful. I read every single one of them and in this transition of moving the company forward and the podcast and all the changes we've made, I love to see your reviews, to really keep giving you what you need and what you want and what you desire and also being like, oh, we're on track for exactly what you need. And if you have not such positive feedback, send me a message on Instagram and we can get into a conversation there. But I hope it's all positive because you're awesome and you're amazing and we all believe in supporting each other and lifting each other up. So I will see you on the next episode, my friend. Thank you for being here and listening all the way way through the Product Boss podcast. If you love our show and it has helped you in any way in your business, would you mind doing two things for us? Subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode and leave us a review. Reviews help other product entrepreneurs know that this is the place to be to grow their businesses and realize that they're not alone. And we know that you all know that a five star and honest review helps you sell more products to more people. So you know that your reviews help us reach more listeners around the world. 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