Hernan Vazquez explains why selling directly online fails: build a platform first. Give away free value and use paid ads to attract a niche audience, then sell anything to them. Alex Becker grew millions of followers this way before launching courses and software.
Hey everybody, what's up? On this video, I'm going to show you how to create a platform that you could sell pretty much anything to. Hey guys, what's up? Hernan Vazquez here. Welcome to another video and thank you once again for the support that you have been giving to the channel. It's been quite a ride and again, this is just the beginning, okay? It's a young channel and it's gaining quite a lot of traction. So I really want to thank you guys for the support, the comments, you know, the likes, everything. So thank you, thank you for that. Um, you know, you guys make me real, really happy. So with that being said, I just wanted to touch base real quick on a topic that I have been discussing with a couple of consulting clients for the past, I would say, week or so, and which made me make this video. So the main problem that many people have, and, you know, some businesses that are making, you know, $30,000, $50,000, $75,000 a month on the offline world and they want to implement, you know, an online strategy to double that or triple that, which is completely attainable and possible, they try to work with the same rules as the offline world. Now, this also applies to wannabes or newbies or people that are just starting with their online paths, meaning that they are too focused on selling a product the way that you will sell it offline. Okay, I consult with a couple of guys and they will tell me, oh yeah, I have this amazing product that I want to sell, and/or I have this amazing some other product that I want to put on this market, etc. And the reality is that online rules are kind of different than offline rules. So let me explain a little bit what I mean. The main focus of every of your online efforts should be focused or aimed to the mid and long-term game. And by that I mean instead of just trying to sell a product, try to develop a platform that you can then sell anything to. What do I mean? Let's say that you are selling watches because Um, I, I consulted with a guy that was selling watches and he wasn't getting that many results. The reality is that people that like watches potentially like some other stuff like lifestyle, uh, cars, uh, travel, uh, clothing. You know, there's a bunch of things that are around the watches market that you can really leverage on. There are some markets and some niches that are amazing for some social networks. For example, Instagram, you will see, you know, watch pages that are— that have, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand followers, and they're making a killing in there. But the reality is that they didn't focus on selling the watches in the first place. They focused on building a community, building a platform. And the only way that I know of building a platform is by delivering a ton of value and to invest to get more people to watch that kind of value. All right, so there are basically 2 ways, okay? You deliver a ton of value and then you pay the big guys like Google or Facebook to send you traffic to that value so that people can start getting to know you and they can subscribe to you, they can follow you on Instagram, etc. So that's how do you develop a platform. Now that's of course thinking on the mid and long term because initially building a platform takes time, takes money, takes effort. Effort. It's not easy, but once you have the platform— and by platform I mean it could be, you know, um, 100,000 followers on Instagram or 200,000 subscribers on YouTube or a list of 5,000 people or 5,000 friends on Facebook— whatever your platform is, you can sell pretty much anything because that platform will be super, super engaged with a particular topic. On this particular case would be watches. Lifestyle, luxury cars, whatever, and then you can sell pretty much anything to them. So instead of, you know, trying to sell them first, just add value and build a following. Once you build a following, you can develop a huge amount of success. One of the best examples that I know of is Alex Becker. If you haven't seen his YouTube videos, I suggest that you go and see him because he has done those exactly 2 things. He has built— he has given away a ton of value, and he has also built a platform based on investment, okay? He invested heavily in his business, and he also delivered a ton of value with his videos, okay? So that allowed him to, you know, to sell a ton of products, a ton of membership sites, a ton of affiliate websites, and not only that, but now he is developing software and he has the platform to sell software to. He can go out there and say, you know, make a JV, a joint venture with another software company and say, hey, I have 100,000 people in my list. I want to email and to send people your way. Okay? So that's how you build a platform. Focus on building a platform, not selling a product. The sale of your product will come after people have known you, consume your content and trust you. If you're importing your offline business, which is, you know, you have this kind of building that people enter and they are pretty much, you know, convinced to purchase when they enter, all you need to do is to sell to them. Well, that's not how internet works, okay? Have that in mind. Now, the reality is that your online platform will also allow you to grow your offline business. Okay, and your offline business will allow you to grow your online platform. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that on the next video that I'm gonna record just after this one. All right guys, so keep in touch, keep tuned, leave a comment below if you love this, share this with somebody that needs to see it, and I hope to see you guys on the next video. Bye-bye.
