← The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
712. The Exact Steps I’d Take If I Launched a Product-Based Business Right Now
00:30:54
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
A
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, hey, Product bosses. Okay, really really quick. Are you spending more time making all your products or maybe packaging your boxes and actually growing your business? I know. Okay, so if you've ever wished that someone would just tell you exactly what works when it comes to scaling your product brand into real money, right, like the good profit and making sales and growing this business that I know you've dreamed of, then I have something really special for you. I pulled together a special bundle of our top podcast episodes that every product based business needs to hear. So think of this as your shortcut straight to the strategies that help you grow your sales, build a brand that lasts, and avoid that burnout that no one is actually talking about. Enough. So we're talking mindset shifts and marketing strategies and those behind the scenes lessons. And yes, you're going to have some quick action plans and strategies that we're going to share in here as well. So it is my top episodes playlist and it's totally free. We just wanted to gather it up so you didn't have to scroll through hundreds of episodes and think, what do I want to listen to? Right? Let's make it easy. So all you have to do is head to www.theproductboss.com top or click the link in the show notes, pop in your email. I'll send over those exact episodes that have helped thousands of product based business owners like you move from the hustle to sold out. Right? I want you to go from where you are to getting you seen and sold. And that's all gonna happen with this compilation of episodes for you. I just wanna make it super easy. So let's start building your business with clarity, strategy, ease, and freedom. 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 gotta 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? 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, delivered 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, product bosses. And welcome back to the Product Boss podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Snyder, and I was asked this question recently. Now, if you don't know my background, I'm going to get into that a little bit more. But if you don't know this, I'm just going to tell you that I have personally helped conceive, design, produce, and launch means put it out there to the world to sell it in front of the right audience. Over 2,000 fashion, apparel, and accessory brands. Yes, over 2,000. Right. So that is a lot of companies that I have helped birth out of my brain. I've helped design, I've helped them create, actually make the product and then sell the product. And not only that they've learned to make and sell the product, but also how do they build an audience? Who are they selling to? What customers are waiting for them on the other side. So I say this because I started to think about this at this point and thought, if I started a new business today, what would I do if it was for me and my business? And I actually crossed this path recently with my husband, actually with my son, because both of them had ideas for product based businesses. My husband had an idea for a something for voice and singing because he's a Broadway actor and has an amazing voice. And he sometimes teaches people and says, like, we can come out with products that we can sell. My son has a 3D printer and he kept being asked by friends, hey, can you make me one? Can you make me one? And if you know me, that I know how to make things and sell them, and that's all I wanted to do. So I was like, oh, I can teach you. I told my son, I was like, I'm the person. I've done this for so many people since 2007 when I started my other company, Designer Consulting Co Op, which I'm actually going to be closing officially this year, even though it's more or less like I haven't been taking new clients there and really shifting full on into the product boss. So now when I coach people and all that, it's only through the product boss since I acquired the company. So the idea here is that I thought about it and I was like, if I started a new business today, what steps would I take seeing behind the scenes of these 2,000 companies I've helped personally launch and all of the product bosses I've worked with, whether they've been in my online courses or in my masterminds or I've coached them. And you've heard those coaching calls here on the podcast. They've worked with me in virtual intensives, whatever it is. I started to see patterns, I started to see things repeat, I started to see gaps. And I was like, huh, okay, if I started this today, what would I do? And I want to go through that with you today here. Okay, so let me back this all the way up, Back, all the way back, all the way up. I want to back it up and say, between we do these live challenges and workshops many times throughout the year, or when you've heard me do the coaching calls on the podcast and I coach people outside of it, right? Whether they're in my mastermind, whether they're in our coaching programs, whatever it is. And I hear them and I'm like, you have a great product. So they've made something, they have the idea and they make something and then they jump to trying to sell that something. But there are so many parts in between that are missing, they're missing. These foundational aspects of your product based business are actually not there. So while I can tell people all day, every day how to sell their product, how to get more visibility, how to get more eyes, try these things, what I've realized is, and it works for so many people, Multi Stream Machine has worked for thousands and thousands of people. Like almost. If not, I think we might have just crossed 5,000 students in that program. All kinds, handmade businesses, manufacturers, people who source products, people have brick and mortars, all types of businesses in there, food companies, jewelry companies, everything. But a lot of them have touched on these foundational pieces, but they haven't established them enough that they're solid, that they are like solid. They're there, they know who they're selling to, they know what they're selling. They really have this really solid foundation that they're growing their businesses on and that they also feel confident in it. Now maybe you just have a product idea, maybe you're just starting out, you're listening, you're like, I have an idea, I have a product, I want to make something, I want to sell it. But you don't actually know the steps to take to get there. What I don't want you to do. All of my one on one clients that I've worked with since 2007, those 2,000 people I've told you about that are one on one, they're paying me $120,000 a year, each of them. Okay. Over the course of years and years and years. Well, I started off way lower than that. So when I first started it was like $60 an hour. But you know, 16 years in that business, 15, I don't, can't count, but way over a decade at this point, on my way to two decades, I've worked with a lot of people and they were able to work with me from the idea phase. Right? They ideated an idea and I got to take them through all of these steps. But the people that haven't had the ability to work one on one with me, the it was a big investment or people who don't have the ability to get coached with me. I've been thinking about it and I'm like, there's just such a gap to the foundational parts that build a super solid business. So I'm going to take you through the steps that I would take if I was starting now. And I want you to think about this in the way of whether you've already started, you've been selling, you've been trying to sell whatever place you are, or you have an idea, you're trying to come up with an idea, you're thinking about it, and you really are. Like a product based business is what I want to do. It's something I want to build, I want to make things and I want to sell them, but I'm not sure the steps to take moving forward. Hope that makes sense. Now I put just together something really cool for all of you. I've done this with my team. It's brand new. I'm so excited about it. Okay. In all of this and figuring all this out, I was like, you know what you all need? You need a checklist. You need a checklist. You need to go through this with me and have this checklist and think, what do I need to set up as a really solid foundation for my business, whether I'm just starting out or I've already started to build my dream product based business. So I'm introducing the ultimate checklist for building your dream product based business. And you can get that right now@theproductboss.com dream. That's the productboss.com dream. All right, so let's jump in. So if I was starting out right now, I would first start at this, at the ideate it phase. Okay, so I have an entire framework that I've built out around this and you've heard me talk about this on the podcast when I've been coaching people. So pay attention to these different pillars of this framework so that you can follow along. There's seven different steps to this framework. So the first one is to ideate it. So if I was just starting out today, I'd first figure out, okay, I'd come up with my ideas, I'd come up with the ideas and I'd think about it and I'd narrow it down because I'd need to validate the idea that I had. I'd want to make sure that whatever I was coming up with had customers that wanted what I was selling. I would have to figure out, like, what made my product unique, why mine and not someone else's. And I would step into and figure out my market research. I'd really have to figure out, okay, who exists there in the landscape, who's out there from a market perspective, that's a bigger company to small companies. Now the biggest mistake that I see here a lot of times is people Are like, well, there's nothing unique about me. Like, how can I define that? How can I be unique? Because. And I know I bring up candles, but I do it because I want you to understand the simplicity and the success that you can have with something so simple. So there are a lot of candle makers out there. And so you're thinking, well, does the world need another candle? Yeah, it does. It needs your candle. It needs your version of this candle. It needs your way to fill a need in the market with your kind of candle. And I've seen it happen. Brennan Candle Company. Valerie in her first year of business after she joined our programs and she went through it all, she made a hundred thousand dollars selling her candles and she was battling cancer, okay? She was able to build a business that basically took her out of having to work for somebody else and into being an entrepreneur, a creative entrepreneur, someone who makes something and sells it. And something that you would say, well, other people do it well. Brennan Candelco is still an incredible company with incredible fragrances for candle snobs. You may have heard her on the podcast. And so that's her unique selling point, right? That's her unique selling point. And she understands who she's competing against. So she understands the places that she's the brand she's competing against in department stores, but also smaller companies that candle snobs may know about. Guess who you're not competing against People on Etsy. I say that because Etsy is not a place where you're building and establishing a brand necessarily like a company that has a unique point of view. And that's the thing that I really want you all to start to think about as you're building your dream product based business that I actually want to move you from just coming up with products and just these ideas of products to then thinking about actually, how am I going to build a brand now? Brand might feel disconnected, that might feel too big, right? You might be like, well, I'm just a business or it's a side hustle or it's a hobby. But a brand truly has a feeling to it, an essence. You could look at it and say, oh, I know that and I'll probably do an episode on this in the future. But the same way that like you could look at Disney or Coca Cola or we did the episode on Stanley, right? Where you're like, oh, I know what I'm going to get from that company. And so I want you to do this research bigger, like bigger brands, understanding what they have and smaller ones and Then find your place in the market. Okay, so that's that ideation phase. Like you're coming up with awesome idea, and we have to figure out if there's a place or how do we figure out our place in the market? There is always a place. We just need to be unique about it. Okay. So the next thing I would do if I was starting is I'd figure out, okay, I have to make this thing to make my product. How am I going to make it? Do I need a prototype? Do I need to design something? What do I need to do? In fashion, we would have to source materials. We'd have to actually draw out the designs. There's like a whole bunch of steps. So depending on what you're making, if it's candles or fragrance, you're coming up with the formula, you're coming up with the scent profile. Right. If it's jewelry, you may either design your jewelry by drawing it out and sourcing the pieces or making the pieces you need. Or maybe when you make it and you're coming up with the designs of it, you're piecing it together as you go. Like, you might just be the kind of person that's, oh, I like this bead, and I like that bead. And I'm going to see what happens at the end. Food you're coming up with. Like mama cheesecake, for example. One of our students, she makes cheesecakes. So she actually ideated the idea of cheesecakes and selling her cheesecakes and her unique selling proposition. The thing that defined her and made her different in the market, I think one were her flavor profiles and two were the size and how she served the cheesecake. So her cheesecake cookies, her mini cheesecakes, her cheesecakes in a jar. Now, the making it part is, how is she gonna make it? What is the flavor profile that it's going to be? So I think first that would be one of the questions I'd ask myself. And then the other thing is, do I want to make it myself, don't want to hand make it? Do I want to manufacture it, don't want someone else to make it, or do I want to source a finished product? When I was talking to my husband about starting his company, we were looking at sourcing it overseas and telling them what we wanted. But finding a product that was already made and putting our label on it, right, that was for him versus my son would be technically hand making his 3D printed items. He'd have to design it himself, and then he'd Be making it on his printer. Right. Maybe it's on his own hands, whittling out the plastic. But it would be. He wouldn't be like sending it to a 3D printing company to manufacture for him. Okay, so you'd. I would make that decision. I'd be like, well, what do I want to do? Who do I want to be? And then I would look at that, and as I made that decision, I'd make a choice on, well, where do I want this business to go and grow? And so based on that, I'd have to figure out, do I, Is it scalable? Scalable means can I grow it handmade? Does it need to be manufactured? Can I start it handmade and eventually manufacture it? We have so many choices. Where you start is not where you're going to finish. I just want you to know this too. So I'd really have to figure that out. Do I need to source things? Right? Do I have the sources? Do I know what I want it to look like? Do I have the timelines? That'd be like the make it phase. Okay. The next part is that brand it phase. That this part of my framework. So branding it is that step that I see. So the places I see biggest gaps are the ideated part where maybe you've ideated it but you haven't done the market research and you don't know your unique selling point, your unique selling proposition. Right. I think that's the biggest gap I see in ideation, the make it. I think a lot of you have making it under control. But I, I see the gap in telling you, hey, you could grow this business because you don't know how you're going to scale it. You don't know how you could possibly make more of this product. So we have to plan for that. We have to create a plan and think we're going to start here. But long term, I may need a source and find manufacturers and like, I can grow it bigger. We, we just have to have a plan now. We get to brand it. This is a huge gap, like such a huge gap. Because what happens is that you start to make the product, but you get lost and don't necessarily come up with brand names that are like the logo and the naming convention is confusing, or maybe the company has evolved past that. The packaging is not clear, it doesn't attract your ideal customer. The visual identity is wonky. And the visual identity, part of the brand, part of it all is the part that you could recognize so quickly. If you see Coca Cola writing it's Coca Cola, right? If you see something Disney, it's Disney. And so I know we're not those really big brands, but it's that visual identity that then is such the gap where if I try and buy from you online, if it is not established across your social, your website, your packaging, all of it, it starts to get disjointed and that's where it's harder to. To build off of. Now, I'm not saying that you need to hire a packaging designer for this or any of that, right. I think a lot of this can be done yourself, but it's something to think about, that your brand can have a story and an identity that then really connects with your audience and connects and meets the needs of your customer. Right. So that's what I would do if I was starting right now. I'd make sure that I was creating a memorable brand. Something that had a story to it that then connected with my ideal customer. Something that's really bright and bubbly. And something bright attracts a very different customer than something that's all white or all black. Here I'll give you an example. When clean beauty first started, or when you thought about clean or green or organic, it was, for lack of a better word, granola, right? It felt. Remember how everything felt like it was natural. Like if you imagine like natural paper, brown paper, green writing, everything kind of felt like the very, like natural. That was when it started. But if you were to walk into, let's say a Sephora right now and go to the clean beauty sections, they're just as competitive in their branding and their identity as non clean beauty. We have crossed out of needing it to feel that way and more. Now people are. It's not the exception, it's the rule. People are like, I want clean beauty and I want it to be beautiful packaging and I want it on my counter. So if you look at a beauty brand, like Rare Beauty, which is Selena Gomez's company, right, you'll look at her branding. Or if you look at Drunk Elephant, which the tweens and the teens really love because of the bright colors. But I started with that a while ago. But then if you look at Caudalie, that's a European company that like takes stuff off of grapes, they're like old school with their branding. So they haven't like really elevated it. They've stayed where they are so you can just identify. I want you, when you're out in the out and about and shopping, you want you to think like, it's attracting me to this brand. And that's what I would do. I'd be like, who is my ideal customer? Who am I trying to attract? I. That's another part. I'd really identify who my ideal customer was. If you're selling to everyone, you're selling to no one. So I'd be like, who do I really want to sell to? How can I meet their problem, need, want, or desire with my product? And how do I deeply connect with them? And that's what I would do. Okay. Then the next thing I would do for market it, I'd think about marketing it, and I'd come up with a marketing strategy that could build an audience to sell to. So you've all heard my story, or maybe you haven't. But when I started Cuffs Couture, I had nobody to sell to. I did not have social media. I did not have an email address. I launched Cuffs Couture. I started, I made it, right? I ideated it, I made it, I branded it. I did not market it, but I tried to sell it immediately. I jumped straight to selling. And so I built this website. Everything looked beautiful. I put it out there for the world, and literally nobody came. It was all crickets because I had no. I was not marketing. I went straight to selling, and I skipped marketing. So the marketing part would be, if I did it now, I'd have to figure out, who am I going to sell to? Where are they? How do I find where they are, my target audience, where are they most active? And I would find one place to market to them. I'd find one way to start to establish trust and to educate them on my product. And that would be one way. And then the other thing I would do is I'd be building an email list at the same time, because the only way I'm going to connect with them. Even if I decided to do this on Instagram or TikTok or a social channel, if I did not build my email list, I would not be able to email them. I'd have to wait for them to come find me. And if you know me, I don't wait around for nothing. So that's what I would do. I'd figure out, where is my ideal customer? Where are they most active? I'd go there. I'd start to build trust with them. I'd start to test them and see, do you like what I have to sell? Right? Is this where my customers are actually hanging out? And then I would target them, and then I'd figure out a way how to grow my email list and get them into my email list because then I'd be sending them emails and that's what I do, right? That's how I'd market. So I'd need an audience to sell to, I'd need a customer to sell to. Because my mistake when I did Cuffs Couture was I launched to no 1, right? I launched to no 1. Which is why I had to figure out sales channels that had people built in. So if I were to start again today, I would start to establish my audience, my customers immediately. So not only did I have them to sell to, if I decided to go the multi stream machine route where I was getting onto more sales channels that had built in audiences, not only would I have my own audience and slash customer base, I would then have. I'd be able to expand it onto more sales channels and onto more marketing channels using the part that I use in msm. Okay, all right. So most of us go from ideated and we make it and we just jump to selling it. So sell it as the next part of this framework. 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. And 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 doctor'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 Jacqueline Snyder. So it's my full name. Use the code Jacqueline Snyder and I'm hooking you up with 15% off your order. So cheers to glowing skin and a thriving business. So if I were to start again today, I would decide on the most effective sales channel for my product. I would pick one place to get really good at. It would be like single stream machine. I'd find one place to test my product, right? To get the data. So set, test and try, get the data, send my customers to try and convert them. And I would decide on one place. I'd build one really strong revenue stream before I took it to more sales channels. That's what I would do to start. I would establish what I was known for. I come up with my core products. So either my hero product or my core product line, Hero product or core product line. That would then as I put it out in front of my ideal customers that I was working on building, remember, like in the marketing section, and I put it out in front of them and they started to tell me with their dollars what they wanted, what they didn't want it. That's how I would define what my best sellers were. But I'd come to them being really straightforward. Here are my hero products or my core products. I'd start to establish what I was known for. It would start to tell me what my bestsellers were and I do it on one sales channel. And I would have a strategy for launching that sales channel, getting it up, ready to put in front of my ideal customers. And I'd have an entire plan to sell it. I'd know when I was selling it, I'd know how I was selling it. I'd know the exact marketing materials I needed to send out to sell it. So am I doing it on social media, Am I doing email marketing? What am I doing to sell it? So it'd be a mix of these activities to direct them to the one sales channel. And I'd be ready. I'd be ready to figure out how I was going to sell it. So then the next step after that would be operate it. And is it exactly in order? This is in the stages of knowing this and operating it will probably come up throughout, but operating it is another huge part. We talk about systems inside of MSM for systems that I think keep people stuck. But now I want to dig into the operational part of it all. So if you're just starting out, you want to first decide, are you a sole proprietorship, an llc, a Corporation, what are we doing for legal and tax purposes? Okay, that's one part. So then I would go to understanding and protecting my intellectual property. Do I need to protect it with a trademark? Do I need to protect it with a patent? Right, I figured out what it is. But what do I need to protect in terms of my ip? How do I want to create, like the right business structure? So that's a lot of stuff that I think people do, but they don't necessarily do it the right way. And then I'd also need to set up like my financial system. Like, it took me so long. I remember it used to take me so long to figure out my finances. Not only that I was super scared of it, but then it would be like, what do we need to know? Are we pricing these correctly? What will the market bear? Are you priced for profit while remaining competitive in the market? But then the operational part too, the other part to consider is the logistics. How are you going to fulfill it? How are you going to ship it? What is your customer service going to look like? So that's all the parts of operation, whether it's when you're just starting out or further down the line. We have to know the logistics for fulfillment, shipping, production, customer service, as well as setting yourself up initially the right way so that you're structured correctly, you're protected if you need to be. You have a financial system established for managing your expenses and your income and your taxes. And. And truthfully, the most important part is that you're priced for profit. And then also thinking about this, do you need someone else to do this or not? Can you do it all yourself? Do you need help? Do we need to hire someone? Do we need an intern? Do we need to make our teenager do something? Is our husband helping us? What are we doing? So we have to think about that. And then the final part of all this, the final part is how do you grow it? So we've ideated it, we figured out how we're going to make it. We've branded it so that it tells like a really strong story to our customers. We figured out how to market it, which is bringing in the right audience to sell to. We're selling it. We've gotten really good at selling on one good sales channel. And we were operating it so that we know we have the right business structure, something really stable to build off of. It's priced correctly. We know how we're going to fulfill. And the last part is growing it. So when you grow it, the idea here is we're going to look at our sales data, we're going to look at what we have, we're going to look at our marketing strategies, we're going to think, what are the opportunities coming up? So that's what I would do. I like, I would start with my core products, my hero products. I would establish what I was known for. I'd put it out there. This is exactly what I did with Cuffs Couture. I take it all to this and then when it started to work, when I started to see that kind of trickle turn into a waterfall and oh my gosh, people like it, it's working. I'm working out the kinks. Then that next part would be, what's my next step? How can I continue to grow this and scale it? Scale and grow. Interchangeable words, right? What else am I going to do now? Am I going to get it onto more sales channels? I've established it on this one sales channel. I have proof of concept. People are buying it. I'm starting to establish a customer base and an audience, but also then what's next? How am I not reliant on one stream of revenue? But rather maybe at this point is when I start to build onto multiple sales channels, right? I start to get more eyes by expanding where I sell. And then that would be the next part in growing it. So if this was helpful, this is what I would do if I was starting again. And whether you are just starting out, you have an idea you have already started selling, there are parts in this that you might find that are gaps between when you came up with the idea and started making it to selling it and all the in between. I really want you to have a solid foundation underneath you. I really want you to think about how can you solidify what you're building here, because I want you to turn this into your dream business, right? You deserve your dream business. You deserve everything that comes with it. You deserve to take this idea into a paycheck, right? You deserve everything that comes with this beautiful, amazing, incredible idea that you've come up with. And so I hope that this checklist is helpful to you as you are either going back or moving forward or whatever the case. So again, all you have to do is head to theproductboss.com dream for this ultimate checklist. And I hope you like it. Let me know on Instagram at the productboss. Let me know if you got it and if it's helpful and I'll talk to you on the next one.