MBA924 How to Create a Successful Version 1 of a Product

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

Right?

And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times.

Right.

So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. Ready to Save on New Tech it's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium support, and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster, and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals foreign. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, the business podcast that helps you sharpen your business skills 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 $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net. If you have a business idea that's keeping you up at night, your first step is to make sure people want what you're about to sell. This process is called idea validation and it's something that we're really good at at the $100 MBA. It's one of our most popular courses and we're offering it to you for free. It's a seven part video course and workbook that you can get over at 100mba.net. In today's lesson, you will learn how to create a successful version one of a product when you're launching a new product in your business. Whether you have an e commerce store, whether you're selling an ebook, whether you're selling a course, whether you're selling a software. Getting it out in the world with version one is so important, but it's also very critical. You want to make sure you do the right thing so you get the momentum, you get the success. You need to keep moving forward to keep continuing with this product idea. That means creating a product that people want and will buy and this requires a balance. A lot of people spend a lot of time planning their product, tinkering away and delaying the launch of that product. But you don't know what people really want or are willing to buy until you actually put it out in the world. So we're going to be talking about this process, how to set yourself up for success, how to have a plan of action so you get that product out in the world. Version one. And remember, it's the first version. There'll be many others, but we want to make sure it's as successful as possible and that we create something that we can build upon. We got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. The first thing you need to do when it comes to creating version one of your product is to set a deadline. I know that sounds crazy as a first step, but you have to do that. Why? Because you have to force yourself to get it out there. If you have no deadline, if you give yourself as much time as you like, you're going to start building and building and building on this product. And it's not going to be what we call a minimal viable product. That's what we're looking for here. Now, we have plenty of episodes on this whole concept of minimal viable product, but today we're just going to focus on making sure that your minimal viable product or your first product, your first version of your product is something that people want. So you got to get your product in people's hands in order for you to be able to change, tweak and improve your product to make sure the actual version one works. So this pre launch or this pre release is kind of like a beta version. So by setting a deadline, you force yourself to say, by this day, I'm going to get actual customers to use my product Now. Yeah, this is applicable to any kind of product, informational product, software product, physical product. Now, the best way to make sure that you hit that deadline is you make sure that you are very clear on what you're trying to achieve with your product. What problem are you solving? How are you helping people with this product? I'm using an example throughout this episode. 1 I'm just going to make up because I'm currently learning how to play the piano. I'm taking all these courses online, but so let's say I wanted to create a very basic course on how to get started with the piano, how to learn the basics. Now, by the way, this is very rare. It's very hard to find a course that is just going to teach me the basics just so I can know how to play some simple songs on the piano. I'm saying to myself, why isn't there a course that says, hey, learn these 20 songs in the next 30 days or something like that, or the next 60 or 90 days. The point here is that there's no clear learning outcome. I don't really know what I'm going to be able to do by what time if I follow this course. So let's say, for example, I'm creating a beginner's course in piano. Learn these 20 popular songs in 60 days and it's a 60 day course. And you're going to sit there and you're going to play the piano for 30 minutes a day and in 60 days you'll be able to play these 20 songs. Let's say these songs are common ones like the Saints Go Marching in and Jingle Bells and things like that. But think about it, if you know nothing about the piano, you've never played or taken a lesson in your life and you know that in 60 days you'll be able to play 20 popular songs, that's a pretty compelling offer. Now if I just narrow in on that learning outcome on that purpose, on that goal, I can create a very simple course. It doesn't have to be a huge course. I can easily overcomplicate it. I can easily get them to learn some more complex songs or create some sort of affiliate program in my course so they can buy their keyboards from me. Or I could do live coaching. I can complicate it like crazy. But that's not we're trying to do here. We're trying to keep it simple and, and put out version one so then we can learn what they like about this version, what they don't like, what they're looking for, and then we can iterate based on user feedback. So step one, get very specific about what you're trying to achieve with this product. Number two, ask yourself, what's the least I can do to achieve this goal? Now remember, more is not always better, especially when it comes to content products. I prefer less content, less videos, less lessons. If it's gonna get me to my goal. If I have to do less and I get the same result, of course I want that. So you have your deadline, you have your specific outcome, and now you're making a list of all the things you have to do to achieve that very specific outcome. What's the least you have to do? You might be thinking, well, in this piano course example, I need to shoot some videos, I'm gonna need some high tech equipment, I'm gonna need some lighting. No you don't. Again, what's the minimum thing I have to do? The quality can improve. Later we can get all high tech and, and HD and all that stuff later. But right now, your smartphone is actually pretty damn good. And there's some pretty inexpensive software that you can use to just plug your computer into like a electronic keyboard. And it will highlight the keys that you're playing as you're playing them. So that's very simple. And you can have your phone as an overhead camera with a simple tripod. And that's it. Keep it simple. So after you list everything you have to do, shooting the videos, editing them, putting up a website, having a course platform, all that stuff, right now you have to get this product in somebody's hands so you can iterate off this version. Now remember, this is not the actual first version. This is just. I'm testing the grounds. I'm figuring out how to create the best version one. This is kind of the beta. Now, I have a couple options here. You can either offer your beta version of your product to people for free or for a heavily discounted price. I prefer the latter because you want to see if people are willing to pay for this, even if it's heavily discounted. Let's say, for example, I'm going to be selling my course for $99, but for the beta users, I'm going to sell it for $19. $90 is a pretty good deal. And if people are not willing to pay $19 for this, they're not going to be willing to pay $99. So it's a good indicator. Now, when we launched our software company back in 2014, webinar ninja, we did this. We had beta users, we had a heavily discounted version of this software, and they would be grandfathered into later versions, updated versions. So people jumped all over because it was a great price, great value, and it gave us some validation that, okay, people are willing to buy this product. They're willing to actually part ways with their hard earned dollar with this product. Now, once you get that first lot of customers, and you can limit it to 50 customers, 30 customers, you have to have a good number. I say 30 is the minimum, just so you can get some feedback from them. So you can actually get on Skype and talk to them, or get on the phone or email them and say, hey, what are some things you like about this product? What do you think I can improve? Where did you get stuck? What are some things we can do to help you utilize the better? The feedback is gold. You want to take that and be able to utilize that. You might get feedback from people that say, hey, I haven't even tried it yet. I haven't even opened the box. I haven't even used your product. That's good feedback. That means you need to have a better onboarding system to encourage people to actually get started with your product. Now, one thing I recommend you should do when it comes to this beta version release of the product is in addition to giving them a discount, you have to kind of stipulate and say, hey, we're giving this discount, but you have to be willing to, hey, give us feedback. We need feedback. That's why it's discounted. You're going to do a little bit of work in exchange, you're going to get a great deal. Just make it clear at the start when it comes to business, you can't be too proud. If you need to make some major overhauls to your product or your service, you know that you have to do it because you heard from your group, you heard from the beta group. You can't be romantic about it. You got to make these changes if you need to. I have done this over and over again with our businesses, with our products, where it's kind of hard because you put so much time and effort into building something that you think people want and, and then you realize, ah, they don't want that. I put so much time. You have so much sunk cost. You know that whole idea of the sunk cost fallacy where it's like you don't want to let go of something because you put in so much time and effort and money into something, but that's over with. You don't want to keep going down the wrong path. So don't be romantic about your ideas, listen to feedback and customize the next version or your actual version one based on what you've heard. Now, this is common outside of the business world, even in Hollywood. I recently read that a movie that was starring Denzel Washington called Roman J. Israel Esq. Was, was screened in a festival and critics really smashed this movie. After they screened the movie, they gave it some really harsh criticism. And some of that criticism still exists online on Rotten Tomatoes and other places. But after that first screening, the producers of the movie and the director came together and said, hey, we need to fix this. So they re edited the movie and then when they released it in cinemas across the country, the movie actually greatly improved. And a lot of people would go to the cinema and watch this movie and say, I don't know what these critics are talking about. This movie is really good. So maybe they got some bad criticism at the start, but that feedback was really helpful to Help them turn it around and not make this a bust and make it a waste of money. And in fact, there's a pretty big discrepancy between the critics rating and the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes for this movie. So this process requires a bit of thick skin, but it really helps you in the long run. Now that you got all this feedback from your beta users and you have a good idea of what to improve, what to drop, what to add, and then now you can go back to the lab, make these tweaks, make these changes, and set a new deadline for the release of version one to the public. Having that beta group is priceless. It's going to help you create a better product that people want. It's also going to help you know how to price it, how to support people, how to make sure they use the product.

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All right, it's time to launch version one of our product. We did the beta version, we made sure that we got all the feedback. We tweaked, we changed, and now we're ready to release version one. Now on the website, we gotta make sure that people know what other people think of the product, not just me. I can't be the only one as the owner of the business saying, my business, my product is awesome. You need some testimonials. You need some genuine testimonials, and you can get them easily because, hey, you got some beta users. Now reach out to them, email them, say, hey, I would love for you to give me a short testimonial. You can give them an example just so they know how long or short it is, maybe three sentences or so. Ask them if you can use their name and maybe their image. And there you go, you have a whole bunch of testimonials you can use on your site. This is going to give you incredible social proof, enough for people to say, hey, these are real people just like me running businesses or trying to learn the piano, in my case. And this is what they have to say about it. You see how that beta version really helps you get a better version one and a Better version one. Marketing strategy number two. Don't forget to tell your story. When you're releasing a whole new product, it's okay to kind of give some backstory and say, hey, this is how I came up with this product. And give them the whole play by play. Say, hey, we actually released a beta version. We got some beta users. They loved it, but they wanted some improvements in these areas. We made these improvements and now it's here. People love to know how you got from one place to another. They love the backstory. So give them a short, sweet, descriptive backstory and you can do this right on your sales page or you can include it in your sales video. Again, don't forget to reiterate on the sales page the purpose of the product, what problem you're solving so people understand why they would want to buy this. Hey, if you have this problem, then you're gonna want to buy this product. Make sure that's clear. And one last tip. When you're getting feedback from your beta users, use the same language that they are giving you because that's the language people are using. Don't use the language that you would use because you're too close to the grain. You might be too technical, you might know the piano a little bit too much to be giving. You know the actual verbiage that you want to use on your sales page. Maybe even something simple like in my piano course example, don't use terminology many people don't know, like, hey, learn all the chords you need to play some great songs. People might not know what a chord is. You might want to say, know all the right keys to hit to play all your favorite songs or maybe even create that great harmony by hitting the right keys at the right time. Take the language that the customers are using in your feedback. Those words are how people describe their problem and how they like to solve it from the perspective of a non expert. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. Remember, if you want to get product version one out, make sure you set a deadline, make it happen. Make a minimal viable product. Get a beta version out there, get some feedback, relaunch it, get some testimonials, use the same language. You got this. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA Show. If you haven't left us an iTunes rating and review, we would really appreciate it if you did. And the way we love to show you love for giving us love is we do something called Free Ride Friday. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our courses. This Friday, we're giving away easy course, a 30 day course on how to build your own online course. You can win it simply by just leaving us an iTunes rating and review. We do a weekly random draw and somebody wins every Friday. All right, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Building a new product can be intimidating, but it's also exciting. But I really encourage you to keep your timelines short. So if you want to get product version one out within two months, that's better than three or four months. Why? Because it's hard to keep momentum over a long period of time. You want to have short spurts so you can keep your motivation up and you keep things intense that you feel a little bit of pressure. If you're looking to launch something in three, four, five, six months, it's hard, especially if it's your first product, to stay focused. So shorter deadlines are better, especially if you're just getting started. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode where it's Q and A Wednesday. I answer a listener's question, which is how do I prevent somebody from stealing my idea? A very common question that we're going to be answering in tomorrow's episode. So hit subscribe. Make sure you tune in tomorrow. All right, I'll check you then. Take care.

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