A Walk Through Making Your First Product in 7 Steps (FS027)

Can you get over the psychological roadblocks and self sabotaging tendencies and create something valuable enough for people to buy?

Have you tried? Have you heard the voice in your head calling you out?

“You piece of crap. Nobody’s gonna buy this stupid thing. Who do you think you are? There are so many others smarter than you about this. What makes you think anyone will care?”

I’ve felt that. So have Corbett and Caleb. In fact, most of the successful internetters we speak to have hit that same roadblock.

So let’s talk about how to get through that bullshit and start making something your audience is going to love.

Corbett’s 7 Steps to a Prosperous Product

1. Choose a topic… something to learn and become an expert/uber-geek in. This is the general direction you’re going to go with your business either because it’s something you enjoy or something you struggle with and want to figure it out and teach others.
2. Build an audience… start putting ideas out there and seeing if people connect with them. Are your ideas and hunches about their struggles true?
3. 1-on-1 coaching… offer some services (Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid is an excellent resource here). Not just a general hourly rate, but an idea of a transformation people are going to go through. Get a feel for helping one specific person have that transformation. Go above and beyond, doesn’t matter if it’s unscalable; this is market research.
4. Run a challenge… start with the end in mind. By the end of 30 days you’re going to be able to ________. “It’s free, just sign up with your email and we’ll send you weekly emails.” This process and content will create the underpinnings of your product.
5. Host classes, record them… offer one-off classes. Record them to integrate into the product later. Sell these, but cheaply. Allows you to test out the process of selling the product, using the payment technology, see how the content is heard/received, etc.
6. Announce and assemble the product… start gathering interest. what it’s gonna do from start to finish. Grow an email list by announcing it, saying when it’s coming out, who it’s for, what it’ll do. The product is built from the content you used in the challenge and refined by the experience with coaching and classes.
7. Launch Your Product (+ Keep Selling It)… Get it out there, do the launch stuff, but don’t stop there. You’ve got a great thing now, something you know works and is helpful… something to iterate, make better, and offer for the next several years. Good on ‘ya 🙂

Show Notes

Start A Blog That Matters is in Fizzle — “This course sells for $97 separately, but now we’re adding it to the Fizzle library. That’s right, Start a Blog that Matters is now included in your Fizzle membership!”

A new horror film by Wes Anderson — an excellent faux trailer from Saturday Night Live.

Scott Dinsmore | Live Your Legend — Corbett mentioned how he helped Scott build this site and much of the Start a Blog That Matters material came from this experience.

18 Months, 2 Blogs, Six Figures — Think Traffic — the guide Corbett wrote in 2010 that chronicles his journey to earning his income online.

Fizzle Founder’s Stories — In Fizzle we have loads of deep interviews with folks who’ve made successful business online. We mention Nathan Barry and Brett Kelly in this episode. Those are superb, and there’s a ton more if you haven’t tried em yet.

Push Standards | Design by Tom Ross — “You can bang your head against a wall trying to tweak your website for months, or you can trust in the process of someone who does this professionally.”

Steven Pressfield on What 10,000 Hours Gets You — “But what exactly are we learning when we’re beating our brains out all those years?”

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story: Donald Miller — An amazing look into what would happen if you looked at your life the way a director looks at a movie.

Simple Green Smoothies – Drink your veggies and feel incredible! — “Welcome soon-to-be spinach lover! with simple green smoothies by your side, get ready to boost your energy, lose weight effortlessly and make healthy eating a lifestyle— not a diet.”