MBA1149 Lessons Learned When Launching a New Product

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Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show. Real World experiences turn into lessons every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the Real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn lessons learned when launching a new product. Yes, we've launched a new product and instead of just giving a shameless plug about our new product, I want to walk you through some of the lessons we learned going through the process. If you have an existing business and you're looking to launch a new product, a new service, a new thing, you're going to love this lesson. We just beta launched a new software called Anytime Webinar. If you want to check it out, it's anytime webinar.com and even though this is not my first business by any means, or even my first software product, building and launching it taught me some serious lessons along the way. And these are really just reminders to you as you're getting started with your first Product or your 50th what to look out for, what to plan for, what to expect, and how to maximize your potential for success. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So a couple of weeks ago we launched Anytime Webinar. This is a whole new software product that me, Nicole and our team have released first. It's important to address the elephant in the room. Why? Why did we release this new product? And essentially it's a new business, it's a whole new brand and website and the whole shebang. Especially for the fact that we have an existing webinar software called Webinar Ninja. Well, the simple answer is, is that we saw a need in the market and a need for our customers. Our flagship product, Webinar Ninja, has been around for over four and a half years now, and it's been growing. And we've had a lot of great users. Love our software, absolutely love webinar N engine. It offers live automated series and hybrid webinars. It's like our top of the line product. We absolutely love it. But many of our users would ask us, hey, we would love to run just automated webinars. I would love to go really deep on creating a whole sales funnel using automated webinars. And if you are not familiar with automated webinars, these are webinars that are recorded videos. Basically people would sign up, watch videos, maybe send questions via email, click on the offers, and they would convert from website visitors to leads to customers in that fashion. Now, Webinar Ninja offers automated webinars, but it's included in the package with live and automated. Most of the customers that fall in love with the webinar Ninja is because our live webinars are fantastic and our automated webinars are great as well, and they're constantly improving. But some customers are like, hey, I just want to do automated webinars, not live and automated. And I'm looking for a simple, easy solution that's affordable. And we notice a lot of our users that either are currently with us or have left us in our exit surveys mention this and we kind of brushed it aside for a bit. We're like, hey, we offer automated and live webinars. Just take a basic plan, take a starter plan, and just don't use a live. But then we sort of see that a lot of people are starting to use automated webinars as a part of a whole sales process. So Nicole and I started thinking, hey, what if we created a standalone product that just focused on creating automated webinars that automated the whole sales process from website to sale? It became very clear that we needed to create a standalone product for this. We also realized that, hey, we wanted to make it simple, the whole product to be easy to use and the pricing to be just straight up easy to understand and to say yes to. Most of the competitors in this space are quite confusing. They were quite ugly, and they're quite pricey, to be honest with you, From a business owner that runs a software company. Knowing the cost of automated webinars for a company, I can tell you it is pretty overpriced. Most of the costs for webinars are in the live webinar portion because live webinars require a lot of bandwidth and server power to run the live broadcasts. It's not to say that automated webinars are free to run, but it just costs a fraction of the price when it comes to live versus automated. So we said, hey, let's create a small product and see what the market tells us. People that just wanted to run automated webinars can just try using this product. And we were calling it Product X. We didn't really have a name for it yet. And people that want to run live and automated, then Webinar Ninja is the one for them. So we started working on it. We started using all the feedback that we got from users about automated webinars and including it into the software. And it took us about 14 months to release what we have now, which is our beta launch and we called it Anytime Webinar. Now I want to go through some of the big lessons I learned going through this process. Lesson number one, you're going to take longer than you expect. There's more work to do when you launch a new product, a new business than you actually imagine. Even though I've done this so many times, I forget, I forget how much work is involved. The small things like your search engine optimization on your website, getting indexed on Google, testing your checkout and payment processing, and creating a help support center with tutorials and a way for people to submit support tickets. These are all these little nitty gritty things you forget that you have to do when you build a new product, a new business, a new brand, logos need to be created, branding style guides, all these things that just creep in. So lesson number one is take the estimated time you are thinking about and double it. It's going to take longer than you expect. Number two lesson learned is have a clear focus. Have a very clear focus and a clear vision on why you're building this product. This really helped us, this really helped us with Anytime webinar to have this clear focus. We were set on making a super simple only automated webinar software. Something that somebody can set up and just completely forget about where they just have it presented on their website. People sign up, they register for the webinar, questions are easily answered via email or via the app. People click on the offers, you can track sales and it's totally automated. Just like if you put up any kind of opt in form on your website, people opt in, they get the freebie, they get the email. You don't have to think about it set and forget. And we also wanted to go along with this theme of easy and simple and transparent and honest. Because let's be honest, when it comes to this industry, a lot of people are trying to really swindle people into weird things. We're not down with saying, hey, this is a live webinar, when actually it's recorded. We believe that you could be honest, it could be a recorded webinar, and people will still love it and they'll still convert if you do it right, if you have the right systems, you have the right technology. And that's really our goal. We did that also with our pricing. We wanted to make sure that we have one solid pricing, yes, one pricing, no plans, very clear and very affordable. We have one pricing, which will be $39 a month. For now, that's what it is when we launch out of beta, currently in beta, it's only $9 a month because we want people to test it and give us some feedback. And in exchange, we're giving them a pretty heavy discount and they lock in that discount for as long as they're a member. That leads me to the next lesson, but hold on for that. So clear pricing, one price, no multi tier. They can only go monthly and then inside their account, if they want to go annual, they can upgrade to annual and save some money. But when you have a clear vision and a clear plan and a clear theme to your product, it's easy for you to stay on course. Two, beta testing. You have to beta test. You have to make sure that people get their hands on the product and give you feedback. What I love about beta testing is that it gives you a license to make mistakes, to have a few typos, to have some issues. It's okay. People know that going into it because it's beta now. Before we went to beta, we obviously did our own testing in house. We put it through the ringer, we tested it, we ran some webinars ourself, we built tutorials around it and made sure that everything works. When we wrote the tutorials, we made some changes, but there's going to be things that we're going to miss because we're not using it in every single scenario that some of our users would. This is why we launch in beta first. So currently, anytime webinars in beta, people sign up, we have a free trial, so they can actually try for 14 days for free. And then after that it's only $9 a month. It's a 75% discount. Why the heavy discount? Well, in exchange for signing up and giving us feedback, we're going to give them a big discount. We need feedback. We need to hear what they love about the product and what they would love to see in the product. And this doesn't have to be some big hoopla. It could be a simple Google form. In fact, our feedback form is a Google form that they fill out. It's about six questions and it takes about 10 minutes to complete. It's just the essential information we need to know so we can be able to improve the software. And of course, if there's any issues or bugs, they're going to report it right away. We're going to be able to fix it quickly. And we limit the beta users to only 250. Why only 250? Why don't we just open up to thousands? Well, because we want to be able to handle all the requests and fix things quickly. I want to be able to respond to every single person and tell them, hey, our developers are working on it or they fixed it and I want to be able to reach out to some of them, even with a call or two, if possible. Now you might be wondering, why am I charging? Why am I charging $9 per month for the beta? Well, I'm lucky enough to know some people that are in software and have launched their products in beta recently and they shared their experience with me and they told me, hey, we offered beta access for free, but people didn't use it. When you give something for free, people don't really use things, they just shelf it. But if you charge, even if it's a minimal charge, $9 a month, it's enough for them to get their hands dirty, roll up their sleeves and use the product. You want them to use the product. It's the whole point of beta. So they use it, give you feedback. Even if that feedback say, hey, I love it. This is fantastic, this is exactly what I want. That's good feedback. You might get negative feedback, totally cool. The negative feedback is welcomed because that's how we improve. But you got to get them to use it and paying for it is part of that. People don't value free and unfortunately, when you don't value something, you don't use it. The next lesson is you're going to be tempted to perfect every single thing along the way. You need to do just good enough. One of my favorite quotes is by Mario Brown. He always preaches this. He says, take massive imperfect action. And this is essential when you're launching a new product. When you're putting it into beta. You want to make sure you get the product out there. They touch it, they feel it, they use it, and then you can polish it later. I had to really force myself not to polish anytime webinar. I had to make sure I put it out there with its rough edges. Most people won't even notice it. And I can polish later. But right now I just need to make sure the proof of concept works and people actually love this thing. What you're trying to do here is optimize the product to make sure you have the best chance to selling this thing like gangbusters. When you're launching outside of beta, when you have that major launch and you sell it to people and people start seeing it and they start seeing your marketing videos and your Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff, they're like, wow, this is amazing. I need this now. And you're not gonna get to that level in your own head, in your own team. You need to hear from people to actually use it. On top of that, you need material to market with, meaning that you need case studies, you need testimonials, and beta is great for that. So when you're leading up to beta, remember, hey, I just gotta get this in people's hands. What, what's the minimal viable version of this? There are so many things I could have improved or made better, but I had to let it go and say, I can make it better later. What are the essentials I need to have to make this a useful product? I said, hey, my goal is it's to actually make it good enough for people to use on their actual website. To actually invite people to automated webinars using anytime webinars, you know, on site widget and getting them onto our software. That's the whole point. If they can trust us to do that, then the product is good enough. And then I can polish the next lesson. Price. We always ask ourselves, how do I price my new product? Well, it's really a crap shoe. You really need to just put a price out there, something that you have in your gut and see how it goes. You might have to raise, you might have to lower. It's okay, it's not written in stone. Some of the best SaaS companies have changed their price so many times. As long as you grandfather the people in on their original price, you're all good. Now, how did I come up with our price? Well, I really looked at the value this product is going to give them and I thought, hey, what's the best way for me to illustrate the value to our customers. So it's like a no brainer purchase. So we created something called an ROI calculator on the website. If you want to check it out, just go to anytimewebinar.com and go to the pricing page or just go to anytimewebinar.com pricing on that page. There's an ROI calculator and basically it calculates how much money can Anytime Webinar potentially make you and your business. You plug in your average website visitors, conversion rates and the price of your product, your price, average price of a sale. And from there you get your monthly mrr, your monthly reoccurring revenue. And when you plug in some decent numbers, you might notice, hey, I'm going to be making an additional $6,000 using anytime webinar. How much is Anytime webinar a month? $39 a month. Sign me up twice, that type of thing. That's what we really wanted to do. A no brainer situation. And to really reflect how much of a value it is. You got to show them how much value you're giving them, what's the potential they can make with your product, how their business is going to improve, how their life's going to improve. I thought this ROI calculator would be a great idea. Just show them the numbers. Hard to deny, hard to fight facts, right? They say the numbers don't lie. And that's really what we try to do and we placed it right on the pricing page. So it's not enough for you to just decide on a price, but you have to justify it. You have to show them how it's a great price through the value you're giving them. I want to leave you off with one big lesson that I learned in the past and tried to remember and remind myself constantly about it when I was creating Anytime Webinar. And that's, you're just not going to please everybody. Whatever you put out there, you're going to alienate some people. People are not going to like it. And that's totally fine. That's actually a good sign. You want your product to be a bit polarizing. You want people to really love it, which means you're gonna have people on the other end of the spectrum saying I really don't like it. And that's fine. It's just not for them. No one's forcing them to buy your product, even though no one's forcing them to express their opinion. But hey, everybody feels like they have a voice today. And that's Totally fine. Have a clear vision about your product. Be flexible, but understand that you can't please everybody if you're gonna get conflicting feedback like, hey, I want this product to do X, Y and Z, or help me do all these different things and it's not focused. It's gon really hard for you to create a product like that. Make sure you take feedback with a grain of salt and it's aligned with your vision, your overall goal with the product, how you reach that goal. You can be flexible. But if your product is a training course on how to train your dog and then you get feedback saying, hey, I love dogs and all, but I'm a Goldfish guy, how can I make sure my goldfish is happy? Well, that's really not the goal of your product. You could be flexible in how the course is shaped when it comes to training your dog, but Goldfish is a whole different market and a whole different product. So be wary of feedback that kind of turns you away from your goal as well as the fact that, hey, you're just not going to create something for everybody. Porsche has a great tagline and it's everything to someone and not something for everyone. And I love that because it says, hey, you want to create a product that's like, man, this thing is my world. I love it. It's changed my life. It's helped me so much and not, huh, you know, it's great, you know, I guess everybody can use it. No, that's not a product you want to build. All right. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 MBA show. I hope you learned a few things from by me sharing my lessons that I've learned along the way. Building Anytime Webinar if you're interested in want to run automated webinars for your business to have automated sales, you can sign up for free for a 14 day trial over at anytime webinar.com and if you're listening to this recently, then you can sign up for our beta access and get it for as low as $9 a month past the trial. And that price is locked in for as long as you remember, 75% off. Hard to beat that, right? Anyway, even if you don't buy, I would love for you to try it out and give us some feedback. Thanks again for showing your support and subscribing to the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. It's super humbling running through the paces of building a new product, a new business again. You forget how much work it took to build that other business or or other businesses. You're humbled by the effort that you put into and continue to put into this new business. It makes you think twice before you launch another business. But if anything, I encourage you to share your experience when you're launching a business with others so they can learn as well. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care, Sam.