With the seemingly ever-increasing costs of living, are you struggling to cut your cloth accordingly? It stands to reason that if you can’t decrease your expenses, the only way to close the gap on having more money is to increase your income… So let’s find you a great product that sells!
This week heralds the start of a new series on managing your money, and so today we’ll kick off with a four-stage process to finding your product that sells.
In the age of the side hustle, this exercise will take you one step closer to figuring out what’s next.
Show Notes
- [01.09] Two ways to have more money.
- [01.44] Three ways to increase your income.
- [02.43] What product are you going to sell?
- [02.56] The 4M process to finding your product that sells:
- Meeting the need.
- Know the Market exists.
- The Magic of YOU!
- Building the Muscle for your success.
Related posts and episodes
- How much should you have saved by now?
- The biggest myth of a side hustle
- How to fast track financial freedom at any age
- From my IT day job to my meal planning side hustle with Monika Malan
- Three reasons you should start a side hustle
Get the first two chapters of my book FREE!
You can get the first two chapters of my book free HERE
Get my book
- If you want a paperback copy and you’re in South Africa, visit my site www.LisaLinfield.com
- If you want a Kindle copy or a paperback anywhere in the world, visit Amazon
Quotes
“So not only do you need to know the problem your product is solving, you also need to know whether your ideal client knows that they have a problem your product will solve.” – Lisa Linfield
“You need to learn how to incorporate your strength into the product that you sell.” – Lisa Linfield
“There truly is no INSTANT success.” – Lisa Linfield
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome to Working Women’s Wealth.
We’ve been doing a whole series on personal change tying in with the launch of my new book, Deep Grooves: Overcoming patterns that keep you stuck. If you want to get my book, head to LisaLinfield.com.
We’re going to kick off a new series on managing your money… starting with earning more income.
As you know, there’s only two ways you have more money – you earn more income or you spend less money. And one thing I know for free working with hundreds of people, is that saving money is extremely hard, as most people’s income is being swallowed by medical expenses, housing, food and transport costs.
So, it stands to reason that if you can’t cut your expenses, the only way to close the gap on having more money is to increase your income.
Whenever I say this, people say… OK… but HOW.
Well, again, there’s basically three ways to do this
- You have investments that make money while you sleep.
- This is by far the ‘easiest way’, but requires you to have saved the money in the first place… which for most is the problem
- You earn more income from your job so the eight hours you work generate more income
- either by motivating for a raise
- or by getting a new job that pays more money
- Starting a business on the side
- Either by buying a franchise or business
- Or by starting one from scratch
The biggest question I get when people want to start a side business is Which Product Should I Sell? How do I find one? How do I know that it will sell?
Now the answer obviously depends on you. But there are a few things you need to know when choosing a product to sell.
The 4M process to finding your product
The first M is about Meeting The Need
- You need to make sure that your product meets a known or unknown need in the market place. The question we ask here is ‘what problem am I trying to solve?’
- This truly is a tough one… because sometimes people don’t even know they need your product. Take for instance my book. It’s actually really tough to sell it because whilst I know that the reason people aren’t able to start businesses, stick to a diet, change their relationships or go for a new job is because there is something in their thinking that’s holding them back… they don’t know it.
- So for me, the problem my book solves is not the outcome (weight loss/jobs/money or relationships), it’s the root cause.
- But if people haven’t yet worked out that they need to change their thinking, not their doing, they don’t think they need my book. So they won’t buy it. But they’ll buy a weight loss book, or a money book.
- So not only do you need to know the problem your product is solving, you also need to know whether your ideal client knows they have a problem that your product will solve.
The Second M is about knowing the Market exists.
- Now this often is what catches people out. We all think that we need to sell something so unique, no one has ever done it. But, in reality, then you need to explain it or educate about it… which takes a lot longer and a lot more money to get it sold.
- The answer truly lies in being able to sell something that there’s already a market for.
- I once read a story about a well known influencer who took on a challenge to sell something WITHOUT using her brand or existing platform. She built a $1m pillow case business in 3 years. Why? Because everyone uses pillow cases.
- The secret is to niche yourself within a market that exists. Then, you know there’s a need or problem already being sold – you just offer a slightly different solution to a targeted part of the market.
The first 2 Ms talked to something around your product. The next two Ms talk to YOU. Two of us can sell the exact same product – yet I may build a $1m business, and you may never sell further than to your family. Same product. But success in selling a product relies on YOU.
So the third M is around the Magic of You!!!
- It’s hard to build a business – starting anything from scratch relies on learning, growing, pivoting and picking yourself up.
- So, it’s easier to go through this learning curve if you’re leveraging your superpower. Why? Because your superpower is something others wish they had – and often, it’s something you do so naturally, so effortlessly, that you don’t even know it’s a superpower.
- So making sure you include it in your business enables you to have the energy to keep going – because it is ‘effortless’.
- So if you’re great at sales, running an old age home is not the way forward to you. But if you’re phenomenal with old people, being a sales person may not be what you should do.
And the last M is building the Muscle for your success.
- Selling a product PROFITABLY requires you to run a business.
- And running a business requires you to master or manage a Decathlon of Marketing, operations, sales, customer management, technology, people, logistics, compliance, billing and finances and product value chain management.
- Whilst that may sound overwhelming, it isn’t. It just takes time and good old fashioned experience.
- So, in a sense, it doesn’t matter what product you sell first, what matters is how much it helps you learn about building your muscle for success, your skills, and your resilience to get up when you get knocked down.
- There truly are no instant successes… when you look behind people’s stories of ‘instant success’, there’s usually years of learning that has put them in the right place at the right time.
In my course, Which Product? I take you through the 4M process and how you find the right product that meets a need and where the market exists, as well as understand how you build in your superpower into your business and build muscle for success.
You can get it now for just R350 or $21 by going to Business School For Startups.com and you’ll find the link on the front page.