July 24, 2023
139. Build an Evergreen Product That Practically Sells Itself (without being salesy!)
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In my experience, there’s one factor that can make or break the success of your online business: the product. It might sound obvious, but with all of the talk around branding, marketing, funnels, and things like that – which are important – it can be easy to lose sight of the importance of having a really solid product offering. Today I’m here to talk about creating a product that sells 24/7 without having to be super salesy. I’ll cover how many products I recommend you sell at any time, how to stand out from the crowd, the number one thing your product needs in order to sell, and more! Let’s talk about eight ways to create a product that’s going to generate you moolah for years to come.
In this episode, you’ll hear…
- The number of products to offer and what form they should take
- Making a product that gets results
- Pricing your product right
- How to test and get testimonials for your products
- Creating evergreen systems to sell your products for you
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1. Focus on creating a few core items
It’s hard to create a “bread and butter” product or program if you have a million different offerings in your business. The best way to create one standout product is to focus on it intensely. That doesn’t mean it has to be the only thing you sell, but you have to be wary of stretching yourself too thin.
2. Think about how you want to show up
When you’re looking around at other people who offer things similar to what you’re thinking of selling, honestly ask yourself what you wish they were doing differently – then do it! If someone is offering a group program with a weekly call and that sounds more like a waste of time than something you’d like to do, try something different. That’s the beauty of creating a business on your terms.
3. Your program has to get results
If you want a product that’s going to sell for years to come, it has got to work for people. It needs to be amazing, it needs to get your customers results. They should want to scream about it from the rooftops. No amount of advertising or marketing is going to make up for a subpar product.
4. It should probably be smaller than you think
Because you’re an expert in your field, you probably undervalue or underappreciate how much you have to offer. You might think you have to put everything you know into one product… when actually that can end up being overwhelming to potential customers. Make sure your product includes just what your customer needs in order to get the desired results – without all the fluff and filler.
5. Don’t underprice your product
When you’re just starting out, you’re probably desperate to sell your product. You don’t want a high price point to turn people away. But if you need to price your product low in order to sell, it’s probably either not good enough (see point #3!) or you’re trying to sell to the wrong people. When you’re creating life-changing results for people, you don’t need to feel bad making money!
6. Create a product that scales
Oftentimes, you’ll see people struggling in their online business because they’re selling either low-ticket products or direct access to their time. In order to generate a product that’s going to grow your business, you need to be thinking about the long run. You only have so many hours in the day, so there’s a natural limit to how much you can sell. And those low-ticket offerings are going to require more time marketing them than they may ultimately be worth. So think about how your products can scale.
7. Beta test your product
A lot of the previous points rely on building a product that works, that gets results, that people will want to talk about. One way to find out if your product is doing that is to beta test it. You can start reaching out to people you know who are active in your community and let them know you’re working on a product. You can offer them a hefty discount off of what you plan to sell it for in exchange for a testimonial and feedback. (Tip: Ask them to do a video testimonial – it will be much more effective!)
8. Sell, sell, sell your product
Now that you have everything in place, it’s time to sell that product over and over again. The key here is to create evergreen systems that sell it for you. There’s too much to talk about here, but you can check out the replay vault to my From Startup to Sold Out masterclass, where I go deep into this topic and more!
If you want to find your ideal customers, create a streamlined system to sell to them, and amplify your reach and impact, the From Startup to Sold Out masterclass recording is available to purchase here.
Episode Transcript
Sam Vander Wielen: Hey there. It’s Sam. And welcome back to On Your Terms. I’m so excited that you’re here. So I’m really excited because for the next couple of weeks, I’m running something that I’m calling Online Marketing Summer School. So I’m going to be airing a series of episodes that are all geared towards helping you bump up your online marketing game this summer.
So I’ll be real with you, as always. I am taking a little time to recoup this summer because I just lost my mom. My mom just passed away. Yes, you heard that right, both of my parents. I have lost both of my parents in the past year. So as you can imagine, it is very tough, very overwhelming. And I need a little bit of space.
And I know that I’ve already given you hundreds and hundreds of episodes of the show and thousands of emails and blog posts and social posts, and I know that there’s so much waiting for you that you might just not have had time to catch up on yet. So I decided to put it all together for you. Call it Online Marketing Summer School. And I am really excited to bring back some of my favorite episodes from my, and also, from your favorite teachers here that I’ve had on the show to help us bump up our marketing game this summer.
It’s such a good time to revisit your marketing strategy or to create one. If you haven’t yet, don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody. But it’s such a good time for you to do that because you can get some things set up this summer to maybe do some sort of promotion in the fall or just have a better half of the rest of 2023.
So I invite you to kick back, relax, listen to the next couple of weeks of episodes all about online marketing, and I hope that you’ll send me a DM on Instagram at @SamVanderWielen or leave a review of the show wherever you listen to. Let me know if you’ve liked these episodes. Hopefully, if you’ve never heard them before, I’m introducing you to something new.
And if you’re listening to them again, take a note from my mom, who was a brilliant, brilliant woman and would reread so many books throughout her life. Like she reread the book Flow and like Tipping Point and so many different books throughout her life. She would reread them in different parts of her life. And she would always walk away with something new, and she would always put in the notes what year she read it and what year, like what she learned that year versus the other years. So there is nothing wrong with relistening to things. I relisten all the time. So I hope that if you’ve listened before, you take away something new from this great episode. So I’ll see you on the other side. Please send me a message. Let me know how you liked it. Thank you so much for listening.
Hey, hey, hey. And welcome to another episode of On Your Terms. I’m so excited to talk with you about creating products, products or programs, whatever it is that you want to create, that you want to sell over and over and over again without having to be on your phone 24/7, without having to be super salesy, whatever that means, and without having to continuously go back to the drawing board and be like, why isn’t anybody buying this thing?
So in today’s episode, I talk with you all about how many products and programs I recommend that you actually sell in your business at any given time, how to stand out from the crowd more than anything else, what the number one thing is that your product needs to do in order to sell. Period. End of story. We go over that a ton in this episode. I also talk about getting straight to the value in your product and how to remove the fluff so that your clients can actually see the results more immediately. And we talk about creating products and pricing products that it actually allows you to scale. Last but not least, I’ll round out this episode with talking about beta testing, getting it into the hands of your first paying customers and then scaling and amplifying your product in the end.
I’m so excited to jump into this episode with you and in case we don’t know each other yet, by the way, I’m Sam Vander Wielen. I’m an attorney turned entrepreneur who helps coaches and service providers legally protect and grow their online businesses using my DIY legal templates and my Ultimate Bundle Program. But here on this show, each week on On Your Terms, I bring you fresh tips about how to legally protect your business and grow that business on your terms. So let’s get into today’s episode and find out how to create a product that will generate you the moolah.
So I’ve talked a lot so far on the show about how I created one business when I first left the law and it wasn’t successful at all. And then how in 2017, I shut down that business and started my legal business, Sam Vander Wielen LLC. And how things just have gone totally differently. And one of the things that I feel like I focused on in a much different way and that has led to like so much of the business’s success is my product.
And when I say product, by the way, I don’t mean that you have to sell physical products or digital products even. It could be that you have a coaching program, a course, a membership, like just insert that whenever I say product because I created kind of this hybrid, like course digital product community membership thing with the Ultimate Bundle. And so it’s kind of a it’s all encompassing.
So I really focused on the product in a much different way than I ever did. I don’t even think I thought about it at all with my first business. And I think that that has had such a big impact on the fact that four years ago, I created a product that has now generated millions and millions of dollars in revenue. And obviously, that wasn’t even my goal. I didn’t think anyone would buy it. But I think that there were certain things I did right along the way that have made it what it is today.
So I’m hoping that this episode today, we can get clear on what steps you need to take to create your own product program thingy, whatever that will be the thing that years from now you’re talking about and being like, I can’t believe that this thing in and of itself on its own has generated just millions of dollars on its own in revenue. So it’s pretty incredible what you can do when I think you really create something with good intention and a lot of thought behind it and you really put the time and the energy into the actual product itself.
So keep in mind, as you’re listening to this episode today, that when I created this product, I did not create this product or program or whatever with the idea that I was creating it so that I could generate millions of dollars or so that so many people would buy it or anything else. I literally started it because I thought it would help people. And so I think that a lot of times when I’ve heard other people talk about this kind of stuff, they’ve had like a similar experience that they really started from a very good place. So we’ll talk about all of this stuff today.
Let’s get into, I have eight ways that you can create a product that’s going to be your bread and butter from years and years from now. So first and foremost, number one, I just wanted to say off the bat that one of the things that I think helps to create a great product is to only focus on creating a few core items in your business, and that’s what you’re going to focus on perfecting and selling, obviously. But you’re not going to be selling 100 things, and then like one thing is going to be your bread and butter. I think one of the reasons that something can become your bread and butter is because you’re so intensely focused on it.
So I only for the last four or five years have only ever sold the Ultimate Bundle and then individual templates. That’s it. Like I have never run off and created all these new products and services or anything like that. So I think that it helped me because it was just like a fine-tuned machine, like you just keep coming back to it and you’re just like, again, again, again, again. And you just keep making it better and better. I don’t really think there’s any magic number when it comes to how many products or programs that you should offer in your business, but I do think there’s just such a thing as too many.
So for me, I would say like one to three programs or products is the max. That’s the max that you really should ever have at any given time in your business. And preferably I would love to see you only have one or two. So I would love to see you maybe have a group program that you run a couple times a year and you have your private coaching or you have your private coaching, but you sell your course on Evergreen. And then a couple times a year, you promote that course and in like a live fashion, like what I do with the bundle.
You find some kind of balance because it’s not only the best way, I think, to sell a product and really like maximize the juice that you can get out of that product, but it’s also the best way to balance your sanity and your life. And as you know, hopefully by now, what matters most to me more than anything is to live a normal life, live a life on my terms. I want to focus more on my family and my friends and my cute little puppy and reading and traveling and giving back and gardening and cooking and doing pretty much everything other than being a business owner. Like this isn’t who I am at my core, right? So it’s also what allows me to do that.
And if that’s something that’s important to you, then streamlining the amount of things that you offer is like one of the best places to start. But I also think that that was one of the reasons why I was able to so successfully maximize the juice out of one product, because it’s just been my like, I like eat, sleep and breathe this Ultimate Bundle for the last four plus years, you know? So that really helps. That’s why I want to start off with that tip.
All right. Tip number two is that I also want you as you’re thinking about this product and we’re thinking now about only creating a handful of these products, I want you to think about how you truly want to show up, how you truly want to offer this. Like in last week’s episode, episode number 12, I talked about finding your paying customers, and I talked about really leaning into your unique value proposition. So if you haven’t listened to episode 12, make sure you go back. It might be a good place to start and then you can come back here. But I talked about really leaning into like, what makes you different? Because for those of you who are concerned about the fact that this space has like blown up and that there may or may not be so many people doing already what you do or whatever, then that’s all the more reason why you have to lean into this like unique value proposition.
And so when you’re doing market research and when you’re looking around and thinking to yourself, oh, everybody’s already doing this, or somebody already offers a course, what is it like naturally and organically that you wish was different about that? Like I remember seeing something that I saw years and years and years ago that somebody was doing that was like a group program. So they were like having people meet every week to talk about this like very dry and boring subject. And I was like, I wouldn’t want to do that. I would just want like little bite sized information done on video that I could watch on my own or listen on a walk or something like that. And I would like implement it in my own time. But I don’t want to be required to meet every week for two hours to talk about this. Like, that doesn’t sound fun to me, you know?
So that’s when I was like, well, there have to be other people who are interested in this same subject and they don’t want to consume this information that way either. And so why don’t I do it a little differently? So you can look at either the way the information is being presented, maybe you even have like a unique spin on the content of the information. Maybe people are only ever talking about it from one angle. There are all kinds of endless possibilities.
But I want to encourage you that as you’re creating this project or this program or anything that you need to think outside the box, don’t just look at what everybody else is doing and think that that is the definition of what’s possible for you. That is just what’s being done, right. It has nothing to do with what you’re able to go out there and do.
When I created the Ultimate Bundle, there was nothing like it, right? So if I would have just created something that was just similar to what everybody else was doing, but a little twist of different, that wouldn’t have been good enough. The whole point was that I had to think outside the box. I had to think in a different way, what was not being done? So I want you to look at the space and see how people are doing it. What you would want to be different if you were a consumer. You could obviously even do some market research about that as well. And I want you to put your unique spin on it.
Third, and this is probably the most important tip of the entire episode, so pay attention to number three for sure. But number three is all about if you want a product that is going to generate a lot of revenue for you and is going to continue to generate revenue for you for years to come, it has got to work that that product has got to be amazing. The program has to get people results and people have to love it because you can pour in as much money as you want into Facebook ads one day until the cows come home. You can scream about your product on Instagram stories every single day until you’re exhausted. You could email out to your email list begging them to buy it. I guarantee you nothing is going to sell this program or this product for you as well as word of mouth. Nothing. Because it’s like a spider web that you can’t control. Right?
So when you have customers who buy your product eventually or we’re going to, towards the end, I’m going to talk a little bit about beta testing and selling beta testing if you’re new, and you’re like, you might be listening to me right now being like, but no one’s bought it, so how do I do that? Right? So you’re going to give them the best experience possible. You’re going to make that product and that program the best that it can be so that they get a great result. And you’re going to use any little blips in the road, anything that comes back that doesn’t quite work to continue to fine tune and improve it, right? Like my Ultimate Bundle wasn’t perfect from the start, but I kept listening and listening, listening and improving, improving, improving.
So you’re going to make sure that you get these people the happiest result that they can get. Of course, we can’t control what other people do, so like they have to put in the effort and all that good stuff. But that has more to do with the first episode number 12, where I talked about finding the customers that really need what you’re going to help them solve, right? We want to get the right people into this program, then they’re actually going to benefit from it. And I’m telling you, when you change people’s life in that way, when you make people feel better about something, when you make them feel healthier, happier, better in their career or their relationship, their business, whatever it is, they are going to tell other people about it. Because just naturally, like, think about what happens when you love something, right, you go around, you tell other people about it.
So I saw in my own business, after enough people purchased it, after I kept focusing on customer retention, customer happiness, really making the product the best that I could. I saw that all of a sudden, this snowball effect started. I started getting tagged in comments online when somebody would post a question in a Facebook group being like, hey guys, I need a legal contract or I’m so frustrated about this legal thing, I don’t know what to do. Someone would be like, hey, you should talk to Sam. I actually bought her bundle and like, here’s her information, you should buy it too.
And then it started being like getting reached out to through email and saying, my friend told me this. Then, you know what happened? People started telling other people in big groups like in schools or like certification programs like, hey, I went and worked with this girl. You should too, right? And my name started getting dropped in like chats and on public boards and schools and all of this big stuff. Right. And it just goes and goes and goes.
And once that starts going, there’s no stopping it, really. It is a big, big freight train. You can pour ads in like all day long. You can pay for Facebook ads, but there’s just like nothing, it is invaluable to focus on this word of mouth effect. Right? It’s something that Tyler McCall, he has a follower to fan society. And I always think about that term follower to fan is that really there’s a middle step here that we’re taking somebody from follower to a purchasing customer, right? Because we have to like trigger them to become a purchasing customer.
But then while they’re a customer, I feel like that’s really where we make them a fan, right? Because I don’t just want my followers to be fans. I want people who end up coming into my most intimate community, my customer community. I want them to be huge fans because they’re the ones that are going to be like little foot soldiers and they’re going to go out and they’re going to tell other people about my stuff.
So that’s what we want to focus on, really getting people the results that they want or your thing actually being the best, right? I do truly believe in like putting your best foot forward as best as you can. And that doesn’t mean it has to be perfect, but you have to keep trying, keep improving something. I also want you to imagine having to like, confidently talk about this product every day.
Like, imagine you’re in my shoes, you’re four years down the line. Every day you’re getting up and you’re opening up the Instagram app, popping open stories, and you are going on and talking about the product that you’re thinking about creating right now or that you have created already and you’re popping it open four years from now and you are talking about that same product confidently on Instagram without any worry or concern that somebody is going to be like, oh, I wish I wouldn’t have bought this or this wasn’t that helpful or anything like that, right? That’s the product that you’re trying to create.
I have no problem, no qualms about getting onto Instagram, getting on a workshop, getting on somebody else’s podcast, writing something and talking about my product, asking for the sale. I have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s helping people. People love it. People love it. They tell me every single day, right? So there’s nothing for me to feel bad about. I’m not doing anything wrong.
As I always say, Target doesn’t feel bad about running another commercial on TV, encouraging us all to go spend more money and go do more Target runs. So I have nothing to feel bad about because I know that the product stands on its own. It’s great. People are going to love it and if they don’t love it, they weren’t the right fit. And then I take a step back and I look at what happened in my marketing, right? So think about that. Think about it from that angle. Try to imagine yourself like, can I talk about this product? Like two, three, four, five, hopefully ten years from now, that’s the kind of product you’re striving to create.
So number four is that I want you to keep in mind as you’re creating this product, that whatever it is like as you’re designing a product, a course, a program, whatever you’re thinking of helping people work through can probably be pared back quite a bit. So we tend to, because we’re the experts, we tend to undervalue and maybe just underappreciate sometimes how much we have to offer other people and probably how little they really need out of what we can actually offer, right?
So when I first put the Ultimate Bundle together, it was basically like law school in a nutshell. So I had put everything in the kitchen sink in there. Like, you have to learn about this and you have to know about that. And my lessons themselves were like super long and super detailed and I was like really obsessed with like, everybody knowing about the nuances and the details. And as I took feedback in and as I just observed, like user behavior, which is another thing I would encourage you to do if you ever go down like the course or membership route, I was like, oh, people don’t need all of this. And what it actually ends up doing is backfiring and people don’t end up actually consuming or implementing the information.
So number four is all about making sure that we have just what they need. We have the core content in your program, in your product, that the person needs to get the desired result, but without all of the fluff and the filler, right. I really want you to think of every lesson, every module, every whatever you do as like, how does this move them closer to the goal? Because if it doesn’t move them closer to the goal, then it’s kind of fluff or filler, which keeps them from getting to the goal faster, and remember, if people don’t have a good outcome or they don’t experience the desired result that you’re trying to get from creating this program or this product, then they’re not going to be super happy. And if they’re not super happy, then they’re not going to tell other people about it. Right? And we need good testimonials and like all of that kind of stuff.
So I really want you to be thinking about this as you’re creating this product, a product that’s going to make you millions or hundreds of thousands even, is not going to be full of fluff and filler. It doesn’t need to be super long. It needs to be super valuable and it needs to get people to the desired result as fast as possible.
To that point a little like secret bonus tip here, maybe 4.5 is that anytime you can sneak in a couple little quick wins for clients in a program or a course or something, that’s always a big bonus. So if you can get them like a quick little win off the bat where they achieve something, they finish something, they do something they’ve been holding back on, it will create a snowball effect for them as well to feel motivated to like dig into the rest of your stuff.
If you want, I could have a whole nother episode so you can tell me, send me a DM. Let me know if this would be interesting to you, but I could do a whole nother episode on like customer happiness and retention. For those of you who have courses and membership programs, I think there are so many things you could be doing and group programs. I think there’s so many things you could be doing to keep clients engaged, to keep people happy, to get them on task, like get them accomplishing the things that you’ve laid out in the course. Like there’s just so much. So let me know if that’s something you’d ever want me to chat about.
All right. So number five, I want to talk with you about pricing this product because when it comes to pricing a product, what I see so often is that when people are either creating a new product or they’re new to business, or maybe they’re just feeling still a little uncertain that people will buy this and all of that kind of stuff, they price a product really low. And so if that is you or you’re struggling with any of those things, make sure you go back and listen to episode number 12 of On Your Terms, because I do talk about finding the right customers and all that kind of stuff.
But also now, after listening to this episode, I hope you can see that the more comfortable and confident you get with the results of your program, the more you’re going to feel comfortable asking what you’re worth. So you don’t need to charge $47 for a product if you know you’re changing someone’s life. Right? So that’s the other thing. Like, I know that my product is not the cheapest on the market. I also know that it really works and that a lot of people do find the value in it. So I’m not trying to prove the product’s value to those who don’t see the value in it. I’m trying to get it into the hands of those people who need it most and who truly do see the value and who are ready to like put this stuff to action and make the changes and get their businesses legally protected and they can make it happen.
And there are all kinds of things we can do, by the way, with payment plans, trying to make it more accessible, having sales, things like that, but you can get paid what your product is worth and especially when you’re actually helping people. So I want you to remember, too, that when you try to price something at a $47 value, a $97, even a $197, anything probably less than several hundred dollars, you’re really putting yourself in a position where you’ve created a volume business maybe by accident, right?
So if we were like Marie Forleo, we had like Marie Forleo sized email list and you created a $47 product, maybe you can make a ton of money on the sale of that product. But when you’re starting out and you have a small audience by creating low price, low ticket offers, you’re putting yourself in a position to have to require yourself to sell a ton of that product in order to make it work.
The thought process is totally backwards. The thought process that you may have at this point is like, if I price something cheap enough, then more people will want to buy it. The problem is you don’t have enough leads, right, to do that. You have probably a lead generation problem as well as a sale problem. So we need a lot of consistent and fresh leads coming in who are all like on target and the right person and all of that. And then the product needs to speak to those leads and that’s how we make sales, right?
There’s also, I find, a like psychological problem with pricing as well. So when I go to look at products sometimes and I see how cheap they are, personally, I tend to think that that means it’s a low value. So I see low ticket, I think low value. So if your product, if you’re doing these things that we’re talking about so far in this episode and your product is delivering results, changing people’s lives, it’s going to bring them more money or more time or more something, right, then you need to charge and your price needs to reflect that, right? Because you don’t want people thinking, oh, this must not be that helpful. So it can actually have a reverse effect on it.
Tip number six is that you also want to create a product that allows you to scale. So a lot of times I’ll see somebody create a product or you’ll see somebody who’s struggling a little bit in online business and then all of a sudden, they’re like, hey guys, I’m going to sell mugs or I’m going to sell t-shirts or I’m going to start a new like one-to-one intensive coaching session. Like, you can have three hours with me or something like that.
That kind of stuff when you create, when you spend your time and your capital really with your audience, like we don’t get a lot of time to talk to our audience. We don’t get a lot of their attention. So you need to think carefully about how you’re using it. And if you’re using it to advertise, either that low ticket offer, or something that’s like a one-off thing, like a one-time 90-minute session, where is that headed? Right? Where are they supposed to go after that? Unless you have like a funnel set up where the person gets a one-time 90-minute session, and then they can upgrade to your program at the end or something.
But it really doesn’t make sense in terms of if you are sitting here today and you’re like, I want to create the product or program that ends up generating me millions, you need to be thinking about that on the front end of it being something that is scalable, right? Something that is able to continue to be sold over and over and over again without requiring more of you. Because the more of you that’s involved, the more times that you have to be live and present and create content over and over and over again, as opposed to creating something once and being able to sell it, the less scalable it’s going to be. And really only those kinds of products or programs are able to generate those types of revenue returns.
So it’s not that there’s anything wrong with creating other kinds of products that do require more of you, or if you’re someone who loves the coaching aspect or loves the consulting aspect and you love being involved with your clients, that’s totally fine. It’s just that in this episode, we’re just talking about things that are scalable, things that maybe you can sell while you’re sleeping, I hope, and generating you a lot of consistent revenue no matter what’s going on in your life.
Okay. So now number seven is all about the beta testing phase. And this is for you if you are kind of in the like you’re conceptualizing a product or you’ve maybe even tried selling it, but it’s not really working yet, I would hope that you would go back and do the things that we’ve talked about so far in this episode and gone back and listen to episode 12. So you make sure that you’ve done kind of the more marketing and research side of it correctly. But if you now are ready, but you’re not sure, like if it does get those people the results, you don’t have any testimonials yet, you’re not sure about the pricing, I want you to start by beta testing it.
So I can only tell you the way that I’ve done this. I don’t know what the official way or the right way is of doing this. But when I created the Ultimate Bundle, I think I found about like 12 to 15 people who were kind of in my community, like they were responding to my DMS, they maybe were responding to some emails and things. Maybe I even had free sessions with them at that point to just like discover your call type things to get to know them.
And I reached out to them, and I said, hey, I’m working on this product. I know that you said you needed some contracts, and you needed this or that, how about — this product is going to normally retail for, I think at that point I thought maybe $1,000 or something, but I’m willing to offer it to you for X, it was like a couple hundred bucks in exchange for a testimonial. And I think at that time I was smart enough to require a video testimonial as well.
So during this phase, not only will you get a little bit of cash flow, which will help to maybe make up for some of the expenses that you’ve incurred probably in creating this product, but you will also get the opportunity to get some proof of product, right, proof of concept. So the fact that you could even get somebody to buy this through a beta testing alone will tell you whether or not this is starting to like pick up some traction, right?
If people aren’t even interested in the beta stuff, there are several things to go back and to rework, right? It might be that you haven’t properly explained the value of whatever it is that you’re offering. A lot of times that tends to be because people focus on more of like the deliverables. Like there are 10 calls, there are 12 workbooks, there are 3 sessions, the blah, blah, blah. We want to talk more about the transformations and the results that would come from it, what things that they’ll actually be able to do after they’ve taken your program or while they’re in it.
So we want to focus on that value. Maybe it’s time to look at whether or not the target audience was correct going back to episode 12 for sure, talking about whether or not maybe the name is bad or is confusing. I’ve had people just rework like titles and names before as well as sometimes even the branding. So sometimes the branding gets too stuck. Like people get like, oh, I can’t release this until I get this like logo and this thing or a website or whatever. I’m not really talking about that, but I do believe like, just like anything, it’s not so black and white. It’s like the stuff doesn’t come down to like, it doesn’t make or break with your branding, but it can help.
And the way that I think it can help is that depending on what you do, I think that you can convey a lot with your branding. So I’m very visual, so maybe I like overemphasize this for myself, but I thought a lot about with the Ultimate Bundle, what the colors would be, what the photography would be. Like for example, because I’m a lawyer and people tend to think that lawyers are super stuffy and like serious and scary or whatever they think about lawyers, I wanted to accurately convey the fact that I’m not like that, right? Hopefully you know that by now.
So I was very intentional about the fact that when I did a photo shoot and I knew that I was going to be using those photos for the Ultimate Bundle, I made sure that I was wearing really relaxed clothes. And I also made sure I was wearing the colors of not only my brand but of the product as well, which are all relaxing. They all kind of have like beach vibes, cozy vibes, relaxing vibes, right. I wanted people to see my product and instantly feel at ease.
So I do think that there is something to it, right? You can have softer fonts, you can have softer colors, you can have more professional looking stuff. I mean, sometimes I see things and I think it just doesn’t look that professional. Right? And I understand that when you’re starting out, it’s so hard because you’re like, you’re on a budget and all this, but with the tools that we have available to us now with like things like Canva having such professional looking templates for free, right, I think the key is to like pick a brand palette, a brand kind of vibe that you go with and then be consistent so that people’s eye starts to get trained.
Like think about back in the day when you used to go on Pinterest, and you’d be scrolling through. Maybe it was just me because I always look at foodstuff, but like I would see a food pin and I would instantly know which blogger it was because they each have like such a unique style of photography and the font and the colors and the way that they would like design their pins, right? So you kind of want that same psychology to apply that you don’t want to be just picking randomly every single day like a different Canva template that just looks cool because you think it’s trendy.
If you have like the more 80s like pop vibe, you want to go with that. If you have the more like desert vibe, like Bohemian vibe that’s on Canva a lot, like go with that, but stick with whatever it is. Stick with your brand colors. Create the palette on Canva, for example, and you want to be consistent. So if you’re just starting up, I would think about your branding, make things look consistent and professional. I would go back to the drawing board if people aren’t buying the beta, if they don’t like it, if they don’t complete it. Sometimes people find that when they sell things in beta, they like don’t get much feedback from people at all. So that can be a sign that you maybe need to rework the audience a little bit.
All right. Last but not least, we need to number eight, sell, sell, sell that product and we need to sell it and sell it again and then sell it some more and then create some Evergreen systems that sell it for you. And that is all what I’m going to talk about in Masterclass number two of my From Start Up to Sold Out Masterclass series, where I’m going to teach you the crystallized super actionable steps that you need to be able to find your paying customers, create this incredible product that you can sell for years and years to come, even on autopilot, and then get found by customers and amplify your impact through Evergreen marketing strategies, traditional PR, everything in between.
So what we talked about in today’s episode is what I’m going to cover in the Masterclass number two. What you heard in episode 12, I’ll be covering in the first Masterclass. You can buy a ticket to just one of these Masterclasses or save and get a ticket to all three. We’ll drop the link in the show description below. In the meantime, I would love for you to send me a DM on Instagram at @SamVanderWielen. Let me know how this episode was for you. What is your number one takeaway? What is the thing that just kind of like popped in your mind when you heard me talk about how you could create a product that could make you millions? I’m so curious to know. So let me know.
And before you go, if you haven’t already, make sure that you follow and subscribe to On Your Terms, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, now is your time to rate and review the podcast. It helps us so much to get this podcast into other entrepreneurs’ hands. With that, I can’t wait to chat with you until next week.
Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at samvanderwielen.com. And to stay connected and follow along follow me on Instagram at @SamVanderWielen and send me a DM to say hi.
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Resources Discussed in This Episode
- The live masterclass has passed but you can purchase the recording here
- How to Find Clients for Your Online Business
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