← The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
700. What 700 Episodes Have Taught Me About Product Success, Failure, and Freedom
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Jacqueline Snyder
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. Hey product bosses, quick check in. Is your sales growth feeling stuck, like totally flatlined despite all of your hustle? Or maybe you're like, okay, this should actually just be harder. Maybe you're feeling like you're walking in mud and it's like, why does this feel so hard? Either way, if you're nodding your head thinking, someone please, please, please just, just tell me exactly what works so I can finally grow without grinding myself in the ground. Well, I've got something so good for you. Say hello to the accelerate your sales podcast bundle. Okay? It's my absolute best, totally free playlist of episodes that'll show you exactly how to stop being the best kept secret, right? Let's get those products seen. Or how about expand your sales across multiple channels without overwhelm. Hello, abundance. Or create products your customers can't wait to buy over and over and over again. And it's going to really help you start to build your business with that clarity, ease and enjoy. Because growing your business should feel amazing, not exhausting, my friend. This is your shortcut to more sales, less chaos, and way more fun along the way. Grab it now. It's a hundred percent free. I just wanted to make it super easy for you to find those episodes. You're like, which episodes should I listen to, Jacqueline? Here it is and it's packed with pure gold. All you have to do is head to the productboss.com growth or click that link in the show notes and then pop into your email and let's do. This is your time to feel the freedom to find that abundance and to get passionate about your Business again. All right, I'll see you in there. 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 got to 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 for 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, like, hello, Sephora. Deliver 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 productboss.com instacart hey, friends, and welcome back to the Product Boss podcast. I cannot believe I'm about to say this, but holy moly. We've officially hit 700 episodes. 700 episodes. I don't know that I've done anything 700 times. Maybe sleep, but I cannot believe it. Like, I'm sitting here in awe, reflecting on. You know, we started this podcast back in January of 2018. We are in 2025. It feels like we've lived a million lifetimes. We have survived things that. I mean, like, it is just unbelievable what we've sort of lived through here on the podcast. And in a time of podcasting, right, like, podcasts weren't the biggest things in the last, I don't know what, 10 years and the lifetime that we've all lived through that. Holy moly. So I just want to take a moment to celebrate with you. I think first I'm going to take a moment to celebrate the commitment that I have made to this community, to the podcast. And I say that, and I know it sounds funny because I, you know, when you see those award shows are like, I like to thank me and I'd like to thank me. I'm going to thank me, but I'm going to say it because I'm not one to stop and celebrate. It's something I blew through so fast. I know I coach you all on it, but it's something I blew through. And also, I don't think that I give myself enough credit to myself sometimes about the commitment or the resilience or the drive or the courage that it takes to, to, well, one, for me to step up and say, I want the product boss. I want to be the leader of the product boss. I want to move this company forward at a time when myself and my ex co founder were at this point where we're like, we don't know what to do, but we can't keep doing it together. We think we have to, you know, have different paths. And I just spoke to her a couple days ago to Mina. And so Mina, if you're listening, thank you for getting this show started with me. Thank you for hopping on a call with me on Facebook. Years ago when I heard your name mentioned on a podcast and it was like, I had a product, I wanted to sell it on Amazon. I heard you selling a product on Amazon. I said, hey, can I pick your brain? Which turned into her and I leaving each other 15 minute voice messages. And then to us saying, do you think we should start a show? Should we start a podcast? Are we too late? Are we too old? What are we even doing here? We don't even know what we're doing. And we did it, and we did it scared, we did it messy, and we did it anyway. So if you go back to episode one, you can hear both of our voices and just the growth that we've had. And I want to model that for all of you because it's like sometimes you don't know that next step or the thing you're going to do that's going to be the thing that changes your life and changes your family's lives and can impact a community. So I am going to take a moment to just, you know, reflect for myself on just things I never thought I would, would have done. I used to hate my voice on voicemails, all the things. Right. So there's that. But let's just move on then and say, I'd like to thank you. I'd like to thank you for listening to the show and for supporting me. And some of you have been here for years and years and years, and I love you so very much. And some of you are meeting me for the first time, or maybe you've just started listening or someone sent you the episode and you're like, hey, I'm gonna listen. So. So thank you. Thank you for listening, thank you for supporting the show, and thank you for showing up for yourself. Because entrepreneurship is hard, but the ripple effect, especially with women in business and when we make money and what we can do, the ripple effect for our lives, the impact on our spouses, our partners, our families, our kids, our parents, what we're modeling and showing, these are things that. And I reflect on this often. It's like most of us, even for me, like, my mother could have never imagined this. My grandmother. Absolutely not. My great grandmother. Right. I just found out that my dad's mom used to. They called my aunt the banana baby. And I didn't understand why they called her a banana baby and found this out at my dad's funeral. But it's because my grandmother was a banana picker. She used to work at, I think at a plantation in the Middle east and used to pick bananas. And they called my aunt the banana baby because she brought her baby to work and they'd put her in a box while, like, she'd lay there or play or whatever. Right? Like, women did what they had to do. And I'm so fortunate and lucky that I get to do this from, you know, in safety and comfort on a microphone. But it took my grandmother and her mother and her mother before and all of the women that walked before us to get us to where we're at. So thank you and also thank you to my team. Thank you to my podcast team, thank you to my current team. I know it sounds like I'm accepting a word, but I just want to say it because we don't stop enough to reflect. And this has been a really, really big couple years. We're almost at two years since I bought the business out, even though it feels like it's minutes away, like, I just did it because I've had my head down rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding, and going through an election year and 20, 25, whatever this year is. So I want to kind of go into some of the biggest lessons from this journey and what I wish every product based business owner knew. And the thing is, is that from the early days when we started the podcast, we didn't know what we were doing. We just knew. We like to talk to each other, we like to talk about physical product based businesses and, and we thought maybe if there was one other person out there that was like, I want to grow this thing, I want to do it, but I don't want to do it the way that the bros do it. I don't want to do it in this like really big e comm way and I don't want to do it in like this small maker, sort of like Etsy makers. Got a makeway where it's just like your own two hands and keeping it small. But you found this path that you're like. And I say Etsy makers, but it's more of like, just like, I have a craft that I maybe sell sometimes. But a lot of you out there were like, me and Mina, where we were like, we're women, we have ideas. We want to make some good money. We want to be able to take our kids on vacation and pay for camp and not have one spouse hold too much than the other. Maybe it was to buy some nice things. Maybe it was to pay for a house, a dream house to support parents, whatever it is, right? We were like, could we do this and could we do this with our businesses? And we did that with our product businesses. And then we started to do that with the product boss, which we never, ever, ever, ever thought was going to grow into a business. We thought just a podcast, right? But then people were like, how do we work with you? How do we. Can we get into groups? Can we get into rooms? And the first two years we were just doing masterminds until we jumped into our first program. So I think that what I want to share there is like, you don't have to have a plan, There doesn't have to be a plan. You just got to get up and do it. Just got to take action. And then, you know, you get to the messy middle. And when the messy middle is kind of like, it's funny for us, the messy middle was just about 20, 19, 2020, when we were like, this is going to be our year, we're going to do it. And then we all know what happened in 2020 and all of our plans went out the window like they do. And everything shifted and it was like, we got to show up. And I remember going live every single day and I was like, this is what we're going to do, guys. You're going to keep selling, we're going to do this, we're going to do this. And people were making sourdough and I was building courses in our basement and showing up live and being like, let's go product bosses, let's go. And it didn't feel like we again had a plan. No one had a plan, but we just kept showing up and kept doing it anyways. And that is what really started to shift the business. That is what really started to shift how we showed up for each other and how we showed up for the community. And oh my goodness, it was like, it was incredible with everything that was happening in the world, with all the fear and people we lost. It was also this incredible time of connection and slowing down. And I'm just always grateful too for the time we had. So what I want to tell you and through like the beginning of the messy middle is that one little lesson I want you to take away is that you don't need a perfect plan to start. You just need to start whatever it is that thing you want to start, start it. What's going to keep you stuck is just not going. Hey, friends. Okay, so I don't know if you wrote 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 care 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 Jacqueline Snider. And I'm hooking you up with 15% off your order. So. So cheers to glowing skin and a thriving business. So let's talk about what hasn't changed. Like, as I reflect back and I think about the years and what we taught together and what I've brought forth as your coach now at the product boss is like, there's things that still matter, no matter what happens with the trends. And even they get repeated and deeper than. So one thing is bestsellers will always win out over more products. What does that mean? When you're known for something, you have a core collection. Meaning like maybe you sell bathing suits and you have like, you do two sets of bikinis, a one piece and a cover up. But we're not making sandals and hats and denim jeans and dresses. Right. Like we're really, really specific. Or you're, you're doing a skincare regimen. You do candles and room scents, right? Those are collections. Then we can talk about hero products. Hero products might be something like, I don't know, homesick candles, where it's like they have candles or they might have started just with candles that had home six cents, right? Those are going to beat out. When you're known for something and you're honed in and you're focused, that's going to beat out everything every time. I was just reflecting on a student of ours that I think we helped her hit her first six figures. I just remember it was her first six figures, but I don't remember if it was a hundred thousand or a couple hundred thousand because eventually I think she got to half million dollar business. And we were reflecting on the pandemic when she was first starting out and she was making all sorts of things and it was like we could see the stuff that she could be known for and the stuff that people kept wanting. So we're like, do more of that. Don't worry about these other products and decorations and hats and sashes and all that stuff. Let's do more of this one thing. And she did. And she grew and she grew and she grew. And the thing is is that that's going to get you pretty far. I'm not saying that you're going to have a single product in different variations forever, but a lot of times when you're known for something, when you have these core collections, when you lean in, my friends, you can make a lot of money you can make really good sales when you're honed in. It's not a forever cause. Yeah, you will expand at some point, but in the beginning, can you be known for something, Right. So that's always going to be out more products. Always, always, always. You're not sheen, you're not temu, you're not a department store. You want to make sure that if you had a buyer that was like in different categories, like the home buyer or the swimwear buyer or the beauty buyer. Right. That one buyer could buy from you. That's what you want to start with. Probably. I would say you got 10 million bucks in that way. Okay. Another thing that's always going to win for me is diversified sales channels. I think a shift is that I want you to get really good at a sales channel. Right. We call it sales engines now. So your main sales engine, the place that you're getting the most sales, I want you to get good at it. I want you to go deep in it if it's starting to work. And I want you to make that thing work even better. And then you add on other sales channels, other sales engines. Right. Because that's the idea of other people discovering you in other places. But some of you might say, you know, where I started isn't actually where I should have started. And I'm going to work on this one sales engine wholesale, Amazon in person. It's hard to diversify and do all of them at once. But being only on one sales channel forever is the thing that gets a little bit spooky. Because what if all your eggs are on one basket? What happens? And that is something that we learned. That is the thing that has lasted standard test of time. During the pandemic, doors shuttered. Right. In person, events were canceled. So many things happened. But when they were diversified, when our customers, our students, had multiple places to sell, that's what did it. When Meta crashes, they have another place to sell. I have a student that sells amazing on TikTok. And then when TikTok was going to get taken away, she had an email list and a website and wholesale that she could still sell to. So that's always going to matter and still win over profit, over popularity. Profit will always win. Having a profit over your own fear or thinking you have to discount or comparison, that's not it. Profit is always going to win no matter what. No matter what the trends, having profit being priced correctly is always going to be the thing. So these things, these truths, these things that I feel like we've talked about for so many years. They stand the test of time, right? And that's what we've talked about on the show. These are some of the pillars that we teach every week, right? These are those truths that last. Now let's talk about some lessons you might have picked up along the way. Okay, I've got seven lessons from the 700 episodes because each of these is its own mini mindset reframe. Or maybe you may call it a truth bomb, right? Like, you're like, oop, she said it. So I want to kind of go through these and say, all right, maybe these are lessons that I might have picked up along the way. How about, your product isn't your problem. Your positioning might be. So what does that mean? You might have an awesome, amazing product, but if it's not positioned correctly, if you don't know who your ideal customer avatar is, if you don't know where they shop, if we don't understand the brand, the positioning, the thing that is like the invisible bridge between your product and the customer, if that's missing, right, that's your problem. It's not necessarily your product. How about your pricing isn't too high. You're not pricing for the right customer. That's another truth bomb. Or if it's not selling, you may be selling on the wrong sales channel. How about this one? You can grow your business without burning out, but you cannot grow your business without having systems, right? You can grow. You can grow as fast or as low as you want, but you need the systems and the repeal processes to make that thing work. Another thing to think about is that you don't need more. You don't need to add more and more and more and more products. You don't need to sell to all the customers. You need to know what you're selling and who you're selling it to. You need the clarity on what's working and the clarity of what your customers want. And how about this one? You don't need an audience or followers to be successful and sell your products. They're great to have, and if you have them, wonderful. And if you want to grow on social, amazing. But what if I told you you didn't need them to make sales? What if I told you you didn't need them? Right? That's a lesson. Because you can still sell wholesale. You can still sell on Amazon, you can still sell it in person markets. You could even still sell on your own website without a social media following. The website might come with needing to pay for ads, but other than that if you don't want the social, if you don't wanna grow organically or you can sell on a website because you're showing up in person or you're showing up on shelves of stores and people discover you and that's where they go by. Okay, and the last one is that your dreams are not unrealistic, they're just under supported. You might just be looking for support, you might just be looking for belief because you may not have the belief yet, but the belief is there and the belief is coming and I believe in you. So you're here and you're looking for the support. So what's next? Well, lots of things. I feel like this has been a year of evolution for me. A lot of deep growth, a lot of leadership trainings that I've been doing and really stepping into a next level of being like I feel like I'm personally evolving. And as a company we are also evolving. It's not necessarily front facing, but there's lots of things internally that we're doing and evolving on and things that we're building and creating and getting amazing emails sent to you and podcast bundles and we've rebuilt the programs and the way that we're delivering them and the coaching and the community, all of that. It's always evolving and going deeper and more refined. And what I'm really excited about moving forward and moving into the summer is one with clarity. Like I'm really trying to step into my freedom and that's like freedom of time and freedom from attachment to results. There's some things happening personally and my life with my mom, with my grandma and I have always said that it takes the blend. And for me this summer it's about time. It's about spending time with people that I love and with my kids and slowing down and actually we're not really traveling this summer the way that we normally do because we're going to be where we are, we're going to be with our family, where we are, in our house. And I'm going to continue to be building on the business like in the back end and continuing to work on myself. And this is really sort of like a death and rebirth year for me. It's like a butterfly, right? Like the caterpillar into the chrysalis and what comes out on the other side. And I don't know what it is, but I'm super excited about it. I'm excited about what's to come. And this podcast and the two episodes a week or one episode, I'm not sure. Right. Like, we'll see where it goes. But. But this podcast has always been a place where we all come back together. And going forward, my goal is that it gets sharper, it gets deeper, it gets more focused, and it also inspires you in other ways. Because what I do know is that the how to. What you're asking for in business, a lot of the how are in my programs. They are. I've rebuilt the programs in the last year and a half. I've rebuilt everything with templates, with coaches, with coaching, with curriculum. If you're like, how do I do that? Literally, probably in one of my programs. But what I want to do with you here, when we spend this time together, where I know it's just, like, valuable time and I'm in your earbuds or playing through your speakers, is I want to inspire you. I want to light you up. I want to move you forward. I want you to see what's possible because your business is really just a tool. Entrepreneurship is a tool and a mirror and the reflection of what you're doing in your life and what you want in your life, the possibilities for you. And that's what I want to do. I want to light you up here on the show. And so I will continue to deliver the goodies and the trainings and the in depth. But if you're like, God, if she could just go deeper. I've done it, I've built it, and I'm going to continue to go deep here. But who knows? Let's see where we go. Let's see what fun we have. So thank you again for listening to the show. Thank you again for being a part of 700 episodes, which is completely bonkers, right? Like, sticking to this. I mean, I always say, like, I don't stick to things like going to the gym, but obviously I do. Obviously I do. And here are 700 episodes to prove it. So thank you, my friends. Thank you for building your dream while listening to mine. And I hope you walk away today with something you needed to hear, some bit of inspiration and something maybe you didn't even know you were waiting for, and something that helps you keep going so that you can do the thing, so that you can do the commitment to something so big that you maybe never even dreamt of or thought was possible. And you keep moving forward and doing it because you've made that promise yourself and perhaps to someone else, that you're going to stay committed and show up for them. And I'm here to show up for you. All right, I will see you on the next one.