688. The Fix: Why Your Sales Are Inconsistent -- and the One Shift That Changes Everything

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 hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into successful business, and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And 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. Oh my goodness. Friends, if you are anything like me, you probably spend more time running errands than running your business. Am I right? Like, everything needs something, we gotta run around. And I knew that this was like a major issue for me back in the day, which is why I decided to get help where I could. And I decided to let Instacart handle all of my grocery shopping. So I no longer had to worry about running all the errands and having to run out and get more almond milk, my lattes rather. I was like, you know what, we're just gonna let Instacart handle that. So I want you to imagine skipping the store and getting back to designing packaging, orders, making, or maybe actually taking a break, even a nap. Remember those? Okay, so with Instacart, you can get groceries and essentials delivered in as fast as an hour so you can focus on growing your business without sacrificing a meal. Plus, less stress and more focus. And here's a tip. I've actually used Instacart before to order gifts from my daughter's friend's birthday parties. Because I haven't had time to run out and get presents. And I've been able to get the packaging, like the gift bag and the gift hello, Sephora. Delivered to my house while I was in the middle of coaching sessions so that I could have the present right. It's like having a personal assistant without having a personal assistant. So if you want to do what I do and get the help where you can, you can try it now if you head to the product boss.com instacart. Hey, hey, product Boss. Welcome back to another episode of the Product Boss podcast. I am your host, Jaclyn Snyder. I am so glad to be with you today. Now listen, this is one of our special episodes and I'm going to call them the fix episodes because I want them to be short, potent and really built to help you get unstuck fast. So this is for you. If you feel like your physical product based business, that your sales feel unpredictable, maybe your energy is low and you're wondering what else can you do to make this work. And if that feels like you, then my friends, this one is for you. So, you know, I just got done last week with a ton of coaching calls, whether they were for my programs because we have a lot of live components and live coaching in my programs or I was on with masterminders, people in my program called Jacqueline's Insiders. I mean, just lots and lots and lots of one on ones and I was really able to kind of dig in and see a pattern. It's this pattern that I'm starting to see come up more and more and more, especially for product based business owners. And you know, I have coached thousands of you over the last 20 years. And if you feel like this is you, if this episode kind of goes like, ooh, that's me, I just need you to know you're not alone, okay? Because I see you, my friend, you are working hard. I see you, you're creating, you are posting, you have your Shopify site set up maybe, or you're on Etsy or you're hauling your goods to markets you're getting listed on Fair, you're trying to sell wholesale, right? I know that you're trying to do all the things to sell consistently, but I also know that one week you might feel like you're getting a handful of orders and the next one feels like crickets, right? That inconsistency is the thing that makes you go, oh my goodness, is this the thing that, is it working? Is it finally working or is it crashing and burning and am I going to have to shut the doors? And I'm going to tell you real fast, I work with multi million dollar product based business owners and there are some weeks and there are some months that feel off and they feel the same way. So I don't want you to feel alone in this. Whether you're just starting out, whether you made a few hundred dollars, a few thousand dollars, your $10,000 a month company, you're $100,000 a month company, $500,000 a month I don't care what the number is. There are times where things feel funky and you are not sure. You're just not sure. So what do you do? A lot of times, business owners, founders, people who are kind of still holding so much of the responsibility in their businesses, they start to scramble, they start to look around and be like, what do I have to sell? Can I post more? Maybe I need to make more. Right? You tweak your prices. You're like, I'm gonna put this thing on sale or I'm gonna lower the price or you launch new products. I know what to do. They don't want this, so I'm gonna offer this, right? Or you wake up one day and you feel inspired and you're like, because you're a maker, you could just make it. But here's the deal and you're probably like, yeah, this is accurate, nothing really changes, right? Maybe sometimes there's a little hit of cash Inflex. I have a student that I'm thinking about specifically that, you know, she sells a certain product, but she can make these wooden products at home. She has a million dollar Etsy based business. But we all know that Etsy right now is feeling a little cuckoo crazy, right? The sales are just not coming in and so she's just like, well, if I just make something else, if I make something else. But the thing is, is that's not the way, right? And the other thing that I think people think is like, I gotta discount it. Well, if I just put it on sale, they'll buy it. Sure. I think putting things on sale, especially, you know, bigger brands also they'll put things, things on sale to clear through inventory. But we're not putting things on sale to just initiate sales. Sales are meant to get us back on the black. Sales are meant to clear through inventory that we need to turn back into cash flow. They're not mean, just get us sales. And so when you do all these things and you start to scramble and you do all the things and more and more and more and more, I'll bet you notice that truthfully, in the long haul, nothing changes. Your sales still stay inconsistent. You start to think, maybe it's me, maybe it's me, maybe I'm not a business owner, maybe I should have gone to business school, maybe I need a partner, maybe I don't know enough. Or maybe it's the algorithm. Darn you, Mark Zuckerberg, right? That algorithm always working against us. Or maybe that self doubt creeps in and you're just like, I'm not cut out for this. And if you've had these thoughts, I also want to tell you it's totally normal at all levels. It's totally normal. You can have a $10 million business and be like, I'm not cut out for this. It's new. You're learning. We're entrepreneurs, right? There's going to be these highs and these lows. It's like a friggin roller coaster that's fun. And then sometimes you're like, can I get off? But here's the thing, and this is what I want you to hear and I want you to hear me clearly, my friend. It's not your effort. Because if it was your effort, most of us would be gazillionaires at this point, right? Oh my God. If our effort equaled the revenue brought in, we would be so wealthy. Like Elon Musk space shuttles to the outer planets wealthy. But it's not, it's not our effort. It's not your effort. It's usually, and what I've seen from all this coaching, it's usually your approach. So let's dig into this. Okay, so here's the truth, and here's the truth that changed everything for my students, everything for my clients when they started to realize that, you know, sure, we could fix these things. Like, yeah, we could get better at marketing, we could get better at how it's made, better at packaging all the things. But a lot of times, and that all is stuff that we want to get better at. But a lot of times it's not necessarily the marketing problem. And you know this, I've proved this over and over and over because I teach you that you can grow these businesses without ads and without an audience. But really what the biggest problem is that you have a misalignment problem. A misalignment problem because most product based business owners are focusing on the wrong things, right? I've seen this and this is, it's not your fault, especially if you're coming off of Etsy. Because what typically happens is business owners are focused on what they are making instead of who they're making it for. And I get it. Listen, I'm a fashion designer by trade, by heart. You know, I'm like, oh, that thing's pretty. But to put it on someone's body, right? The human that's going to wear it, the deal here is like, I really have to think, and this is something you have to think is who is this thing for? Why do they need it? It can't just be because you're creative and you went to a, I don't know, like a craft store and you saw flowers and you're like, I'm gonna make a wreath. That's okay. But we gotta start to draw the line between hobby and entrepreneurial endeavors. And I love the word entrepreneur. I haven't used it in so long because, you know, when we came up with the name of the product, Last Boss was very trendy. I'm friends with Natalie Elle as a boss babe, right? There's these girls that have this company called Boss Project that have been on the podcast. Like, there's the word boss. And that's fine because boss is like, you get to be the boss of your own business. You get to be the boss of your own time, right? You get to kind of say what you want to happen. But do you want to know what we all truly are? We're entrepreneurs. We are people with endless ideas. With 1 million tabs open in our brains and excitement. Ideas follow through movement. The difference between everyone else with their ideas and us, what makes us entrepreneurs is we actually go out and do something about it. These ideas, right? But the other side of this is when you get especially us as designers and creatives and makers and artists and bakers and food people and people who are inventive and just make. Whether you're making or manufacturing or you're sourcing, we're attracted to stuff, right? We have a good sense of style, a good eye, and we think we like the product. But I think what you don't realize is there's something innate in you that does understand that invisible bridge between your product and the customer. I think that a lot of you, and I'll say the same for me, we may not be able to say it. I might not be able to say my ideal customer is Emily and she's 28 years old and she lives in Brooklyn and da da da da da da. Right? But we feel it. We feel like we know who this is meant for. We feel like we know that this customer is out there. And if you don't, then this is your work. And if you do, then this is your work. Hey, friends. Okay, so I don't know if you're anything like me, but sometimes it feels like my self care routine is slipping through the cracks. Because when I'm juggling and wearing all the hats in my business and doing all the things, I mean, the last thing I have to do is like really fulfill that self routine that my daughter's talking about. She's like mom, so listen. So when it comes to running a successful business, you can't really pour from an empty cup. And a lot of times that self care is like one of the first things to get yourself recalibrated. So that's why I want you to meet Glossy. Now, Glossy is my favorite daily beauty supplement designed to transform your skin and gut health from the inside out. And I'm actually an investor in this business because I so believe in this idea of science backed ingredients for digestion and skin hydration. And Glossy makes it really easy to look and feel your best without that whole 10 step routine in the mirror. The thing I don't actually have time for, all I have to do is simply mix the stick into my water and I'm good to go. So if you want to try this, because I so believe in this business, I think it's amazing. It's done so many wonders for my skin and my gut, which are two things that I need help with. And you want to simplify your wellness and your beauty. All you have to do is click in the show notes and you can use the code Jaclyn Snyder. So it's my full name. Use the code Jaclyn Snyder and I'm hooking you up with 15% off your order. So cheers to glowing skin and a thriving business. Because when you start to figure out who this is for and you've got the feeling of it, you want to kind of write it down. You want to understand who you're making this for. You want to have some sort of visual or identity to this person so that you could be like, would Emily want this? And I know this, I get it, is that I know your energy goes into your product. Right? The fun part about our products, the most boring part is, at least for me, having the same thing over and over and over. Which is why I think I went into fashion. Because going into fashion was like, what's happening with the trends? What are the collections? What, you know, just there were trends and things would constantly change over. But the other side of this is sometimes we're just buffering, right? We make new sense, but we didn't need to have new sense. We have new styles, but we didn't really need new styles. Maybe you weren't selling as many as you should have. So why are we making more styles, right? These new listings, these new skus. But the thing that. Is it boring? I don't think it's boring because I'm a people person and I make product as a service. And I say that because even when I was. I don't know if you all know this, but I worked in bridal for five years. I worked in a custom bridal gown store in Beverly Hills for five years while I went through college. And then after. And I had brides. And they'd walk in and I take them through all of the dresses and I. I'm short. I don't think you all realize how short I am. When people meet me in person, they're like, huh, okay, so I'm five three. And wedding gowns are quite long. And I gotta tell you how high I had to hold my hand to, like, my arm up in the air, holding all these gowns that were 10, 15 pounds each, putting them in the dressing room with the person and paying attention to what the bride wanted. This is usually the most expensive product that she had ever bought, right? Her wedding gown. And it was one of the most important things to her. And it was ceremonial to be in that space. And there might be a mother or a mother in law. Oh, all the stories I could tell you. If any of you come out of bridal, you all know, right? Or a bunch of friends or no friends. And the vulnerability of being in a room with a woman who wants to look the most beautiful that she's ever looked, spending the most money that she will ever spend. And she gets in there and she gets. And the other side of this is. And this might have happened for you, we grow up thinking of what our dress would look like. And then we finally try it on. It's like, huh, maybe that isn't the dress for me. So there's all of these things happening in this dressing room. And what I would look at is I would look at her. I would look at her face. I would see the interactions between her and the mother, the bride, that was the nightmare. And the mother, the bride, that was awesome. And the friends that were too involved in chatting, and nobody was paying attention to her, or everybody was paying attention to her, and it was her. The clothes, the gowns, the wedding dresses were what fit her, what made her smile, what lit her up, what was the thing that solved the problem, which was her dream came true when she saw herself in that gown. Everything she thought of, of her own wedding. So why I say this and why I share that visual and this experience of me in these rooms with these women spending $10,000 on gowns, but also feeling so incredibly vulnerable or special or whatever, is that I can have all the dresses there, all the styles, all the colors. But what I really needed to understand when they came in, when I had them do their intake form, when I sat and talked with them for a second while I paid attention to the people around them, was her. So are you putting your focus? Are you spending the time and your energy on understanding who you're making your product for? You're hearing me say this several times. It won't be every episode, but right now I'm really wanting to hammer this home. It is not something that we've talked about over and over on the podcast. And the fixes, the overall fix, the thing that I teach in the product biz, fix. And really at the core, if I think about myself as an actual brand strategist, which is actually what I am, I understand the unique selling propositions and I understand how to connect the product. Market fit, right? How does this product exist in the market, and how does it make sense to your ideal customer? That's the fix. Everything else becomes easy if you think about it as a domino. My son will, like, set up dominoes. You know, they're all lined up and it's like the little path. And, you know, once he. He sets it all up, then he tips over the first one. And if you tip over the first one and it's positioned right, you put it in the right place. That domino effect where all the other dominoes will fall. That's what I want you to think about when you start to truly understand your customer. Everything else will work. You'll know where they are buying, where they're showing up. Right. Maybe they're not at the farmer's market down the street from your house. You'll know where they shop, what they want, how much they're willing to spend, what their expectations are in a brand and packaging and the marketing messaging that's getting sent to them, and even the product that's being created. And the price. The price is so important. So when you do that, that's the fix. That's the one main domino that pushes it all the rest down. And I need to keep reminding you of this because I know that there's coaches out there that are like, make more, make more, do more, make more. I want to find the easiest way possible. I believe in hard work. If you know me. And lately, this is thanks to fashion school. We'd have one all nighter once a week. I don't know how I've continued this, but when I have deadlines, I stay up late. I'm a night owl. I work through the night. I'm Never going to say don't work. And especially creative businesses, especially if you're a maker or designer or creative, that stuff takes time. That is not a solve a math problem and you're done. So I get that there's the work that goes into it, but it's not the doing more that's deburring. It's not that, oh, I should just, you know, I'm not selling these frames, so I'm going to start selling these socks. I don't know, I'm going to make this thing over here. I'm going to make this thing because someone walked over to me and said, you know what you should do and they should all over you. It actually comes the fix. The getting from stuck to selling is that you do the right things for the right person. When you switch from product centered, when you're always thinking about the product, the product, the product, and you start to think customer centered, everything changes. So I want to give you a really simple shift that you can apply today. And it's something I call the three lens fix. So when you're looking at your business, I want you to ask yourself these three questions. We're going to look through three different lenses. So the first question is, is, would my customer understand what this is in 3 seconds? If they landed on your website, on your webpage, would they understand if they walked up to you at an in person market and they were at your booth, would they understand if you popped up on social, if they read your product title, if they saw your offer, your photos? Does all of this make it so blindingly clear who this is for and why they need it, that your ideal customer sees it and like, ooh, show me more. And somebody who's not your ideal customer is like, oh, okay, cute. Click right. My friends, clarity sells. Clarity sells. And when they're confused, they scroll. Clarity sells. And confusion scrolls. So the next question I want you to ask yourself, the second lens I want you to look through, is, would my customer care about this? So on a bunch of these calls, I've had these live workshops and boot camps and I'll ask people what they have and like, well, I make natural ingredient soaps with that. I'm not doing synthetic scents. And they're natural ingredients and they're hand poured and they're made by me in my house. And it's like, okay, cool. And does your customer care? They care down the road. But when we went back to that dating analogy, the first thing is, how does it look? And then they engage with the product in some sort of way. And then they start to discover what else is there. Whether it's a surprise and delight that they had no idea about or something that, you know, something that like when they open it up and they discovered something or something that they can blatantly see, do they care? And when I tell you this, you know what they care about? They care about themselves. They don't really care about your story. Knowing about your story will make them feel better. But they care about how they feel when they wear it, how they feel when they taste it or smell it or they engage with it. That's what they care about. They care about themselves and how they feel. And that's okay. So you gotta ask yourself, because they're not going to buy based on, well, it's hand poured soap. Okay, that's okay, great, I get it. That's why we're at this market. But what do they actually care about? They care about the status, they care about the way it makes them feel and interacting with the product that they're seeing that they had a problem to solve. I ran out of soap and I needed more soap. Right. So I want you to think about this. Like are you actually solving a problem? Are you actively solving a problem? Or are you just making something that you love, that you hope someone else will buy it? Because like I said, customers don't really want your product. I mean, they do, but you know why they want it? You know what makes it the thing that they think about? Because it's the result of how they feel when they use your product, when they wear your product, when they taste your product, when they smell your product. They want the feeling and the result that your product gives them. I hope that this is landing for you. And then the third question, that third lens question is, would my customers choose this over my competition? Right. Would my customer choose this over other options out there? Competition? Is your product positioned as the best choice for your ideal customer? Or is it just another candle brand tea company, you know, sticker piece of jewelry company stationery. Is it just another. So this is where truthfully digging deep into understanding your brand, building a better brand. The other part is the psychology behind pricing. Some of you know how to price. You're in my other programs, you have our cost sheets and you know you're working things out. That's actually another call I had today, was actually all about pricing. It was the second week of our sales accelerator and there are still questions of confusion, not even how to use the pricing sheet, but the is this possible? Have I hit the top of the market? Can I go lower? We get so worried about the numbers. Sure. The numbers make a lot of sense, right? The numbers are important. But when you can really think about where your brand meets, your pricing meets your strategy in that product, then it's not just what you're selling, it's how you're presenting it. People are buying the brand, they're not buying the product. So I want you to think about this and I want you to think about all of your products. And you might want to take your best selling product or your product that you're known for and you might just run it through those questions, those three questions. And what are those? It's would my customer understand this in three seconds? Would my customer care about this? And would my customer choose this over the competition? I want to remind you that your business does not need to be more complicated. It needs to be more aligned with your vision. And sometimes one small fix will unlock a whole new level for you and your business. So use these three questions we talked about through this lens and run one of your top products, your best selling product, through these questions. My friends, we are going into another section of the year. There's another shift coming. Summer is like a new year and there's things that happen and buying behaviors happen and things change. So let's friggin go. Let's do this together, let's get prepped together and we're gonna do this. I hope this episode was everything you needed today. Let me know over on Instagram, heproductboss. Follow us over there and send me a dm. Let me know. I wanna hear from you and make sure, sure you're following the show. All right, my friends, I'll see you next time.