Your Digital Product Only Needs To Solve One Specific Problem

Getting really specific about the problem that you're helping someone with is the whole secret, because it becomes very difficult to launch a digital product when you say, I'm going to help anyone make any sort of financial decision, right? Because then it's like, well, yeah, I'll just go to YouTube and listen to 10,000 different people say the same thing to me, right? But if you pick a hyper-specific problem and especially when that problem relates to someone with purchasing power, the value proposition changes completely. So for example, if you go, are you a, are you a high-earning or high-net-worth entrepreneur based in India who makes more than $500,000 a year and are looking for creative ways to reduce your tax liability. That's really specific. That's someone who has purchasing power. If you help them do that, them spending $100 or $300 on a digital product, but for them to save, you know, $50,000 in taxes, that's a very easy trade, right? And so that's the way to think about digital products is like, How do I start with a hyper-specific problem that the cost of learning how to solve it completely rationalizes the upside that the person is gonna get from it? So I guess my question to you is like, do you have any ideas of a specific problem?

So I completely understood what you said. So even from, you know, some of my writing, et cetera, the ICP is more like a template tech person who's in this first job who's 25, 26 and who has to save money, invest for their goals. So goal planning and investments and all of that. That's one idea. But so that was actually my counter question was the product that General CFP has, you know, goal planning, retirement planning, asset allocation, all of that. It's more for the masses or someone who's in their first job between 25 and 30. And that's where it's, that's the specificity in terms of, you know, first job, you have money and you have no idea what to do. Uh, and, and then the question to that was the pricing, because you don't know that it's a little bit for the masses, not for specifically what you mentioned earlier, with someone who has a higher income will be willing to pay that for that specific. So that was— that's where I am, where it's a mass type of thing, uh, but for a specific, uh, sector.

Yeah, I mean, you could make either of those work. I, I would encourage you to not think— I, I think it's, it's misleading to think like for the masses, you know, like try, try to, try to get out of thinking about how does this appeal to a lot of people and instead think about one specific person, like ideally someone you know. You're like, oh, my friend's kid is 26 years old and just got a job and they're making XYZ and they don't know what to do with their money. Like How do you, how do you create something that helps that one person? And then the internet and writing on LinkedIn and everything is good at finding all the people that are just like that person, you know? The other thing is sometimes we don't realize when we're thinking in bundled terms. So you, you said it and you said this is for someone who's in their mid-20s. They just got their first job and they don't know what to do with their money. That seems like a specific problem, but it's actually not because, because they don't know what to do with their money is a big umbrella that encompasses— there's lots of things you could do with your money, right? Like, and if you start to unpack it, you realize it's like, okay, if you were talking to a complete beginner and you said one of the things you should do with your money is you should buy stocks. That's just one thing, right? But if a person has never bought a stock before, immediately 50 questions come to mind, right? They're like, what platform should I use? How much money should I allocate toward it? How do I find good companies? What happens if I buy a stock that immediately goes down tomorrow? Should I sell it? Like, just that one recommendation opens up 50 new questions, right? And then if you go to another one and you're like, uh, you should just buy, uh, US Treasury bills, okay, immediately 50 other questions pop up. It's like, what platform do I do that on? Is that as liquid as buying a stock? How long do I have to hold it for? What happens if XY— like, so oftentimes I notice that when people are thinking about digital products, they tend to think at the highest broadest level, which is like people don't know what to do with their money. But you would be a lot more successful if you built a whole product that was like, here is how to buy your first stock. Yeah, right. Because, because even just that one problem, you, you have a ton to dig into. There's no shortage of questions. There's no shortage of information. And so that's— I would try to think Who specifically can you help? Ideally someone that you know so that you can imagine that person. And then second is what is one problem? Not like multiple problems. What is one problem that they have?

I know actually the way you said it now, it just struck me that, for example, how to invest in mutual funds, which people in India don't really know. And I was first thinking having all 6 things together in one. Like exhaustive course and price it at certain thing. But now when you say it like that, it means that, you know, that specific thing can— and then you see if there's traction, people are paying, how's it going, feedback and all of that, and then probably keep doing for one specific. So, uh, maybe that's a— that's the takeaway that I'm thinking about right now.

Yeah, that is— that's definitely the way to do it. You should only— you should only move on to trying to cover multiple different types of problems or multiple different types of solutions. Once you've become really proficient at building these types of products and you are successful at solving one problem for one specific type of person, even that is challenging, you know, and it's also more helpful and it's also the thing that you can charge more for. So the secret and like where everyone goes wrong is they try to bite off more than they can chew. You don't need all that. Just solve one specific problem.

Yeah, got it. No, I think that makes complete sense. And then the pricing follows through that as well. So obviously pricing here is a little difficult to understand, even for one specific problem, it should be lower or higher or whatever. But I think if it's one problem, then they're getting that benefit, they'd probably be higher than, you know, uh, in general.

So yeah, the thing, just to put a fine point on it, This is really important for everyone. One of the best things that you can do for, for anything that you're creating on the internet— this works if it's free, it's crucial if it's paid— is you have to price anchor to the upside and/or downside. And so in this situation, what I would do is I would target— so you have your target person, you know, it's like, hey, you're a mid-20-something who just got their first high-paying job out of college, and you don't know what to do with your excess earnings. Okay, now how do we price anchor? We say, if you do nothing and keep it all in cash, well, right now across the world we're experiencing 5 to 15% annual inflation. So that means by the end of the year, after all your hard work, your cash will be worth 5 to 15% less than it is today. That sucks, right? Or what I recommend is not doing anything fancy and just putting all that cash into mutual funds. But which mutual funds? And then what are all the questions, right? Which platforms? Which ones are safe and reliable? Which ones have the highest dividends? Which ones are least likely to go down during a recession? Etc., etc., etc., right? Well, in, you know, Mutual Funds Crash Course, I walk you through all of these and help you identify your first mutual fund so that you can focus on your career and make sure at the end of the year your cash isn't worth 5 to 15% less than it is today. If you charge $99 or $350 for that, but like you price anchor to, okay, so let's say this person earns $100 grand a year and they profit like they're able to invest $15 grand, you know, $15,000, but 5 to 15% inflation. So that means it's really worth maybe closer to like $10,000. So that's a $5,000 difference. So I will help you avoid that $5,000 difference. It's just gonna cost you $350. So for everyone here, would you trade $350 to keep $5,000? Right? Obviously the answer to that is yes. And so this, this is really crucial. Like you have to walk people through the thinking, otherwise they don't understand the value that you're proposing.

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