Episode 77: One Single Fact About Olive Oil That Will Absolutely Shock You
How do you make great infoproducts, and how do they fit into your product ladder?
Summary
Nick and Kai use Zingerman’s deli in Ann Arbor as a case study for why consultants and freelancers should sell educational products rather than give everything away free. The conversation covers how a paid guide signals authority, creates a product ladder entry point, and moves buyers from unaware of a problem to ready to purchase a solution. They work through five concrete reasons info products belong in a service business, including a gap Kai admits in his own Podcast Outreach book.
Highlights
- Zingerman’s sells 40-page paid guides on individual food topics (olive oil, parm, balsamic) for around $5, positioned as a cash register upsell at the deli counter. Nick bought them in 2007–08 and still trusts Zingerman’s judgment on those products above nearly anyone else.
- Kai’s case for charging vs. giving it away: a free booklet says ‘here’s some info’; a $5 price tag says ‘we’re so confident in this knowledge we’re putting a sticker on it.’ The price itself is a signal of expertise, independent of what’s inside.
- Nick says a good info product has to do two things simultaneously: make the reader genuinely more capable at the relevant skill, AND move them toward the next rung on your product ladder. Educating without a clear next offer is a dead end for both sides.
- Nick connects this to the buyer awareness stages in Eugene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising: customers range from completely unaware of a problem to aware but not yet buying. His four-plus weeks of free analytics content before launching Draft Data was designed to move readers from ‘I have analytics installed, problem solved’ to feeling the pain of ignoring them.
- Kai lists five benefits of educational products for consultants: signals authority, starts a product ladder, empowers buyers to act, prepares them for the next purchase, and trains them to pay for information rather than always expecting it free.
- Kai admits a specific gap in his own Podcast Outreach book: a buyer read it, booked two podcast interviews in 90 minutes, then had nowhere obvious to go next. No clear service offering followed the book, so the momentum stopped there.
- On mixing free and paid: free content establishes that your paid stuff is worth buying; even a $5 product qualifies out, in Nick’s words, ‘the 90% of shmos that wouldn’t be paying you anyway.’ The first small purchase trains the buyer to transact with you before the larger ask arrives.
Read the transcript
So, the world’s greatest business is a Jewish deli from Ann Arbor, Michigan, called Zingermans that we talk about quite frequently. And they, I don’t know if this is talked about very much. They write a lot of books. And I’ve talked about a couple of their books. They have one that’s about running business, which you’re on this podcast and you probably care about running a business. So that seems interesting. It says Zingerman’s Guide to Customer Service. But they also, for the people that are actually buying their stuff, have mini guides that are like 40 page little volumes. And Kai, when you come to Chicago in a few weeks, I’m going to show this to you. They have guides that are like 40-page deep dives on Parm, olive oil, balsamic. So like every food group. They have like a 300-page guide to bacon because bacon is a significant topic. But mostly it’s these like tiny quick hit things. And it’s basically like: here’s what to look for in olive oil. Here’s the background on olive oil. Here’s what Alice Waters taught you and also taught you wrong about olive oil. And here’s why we care about olive oil. And what we sell, and what we think is good about olive oil, and where olive oil comes from, and how you should cook with olive oil. And here, I guess, two recipes that happen to cursorly feature the olive oil that we’re selling. By the way, we sell olive oil. And when you come out of that, you become a significant nerd for olive oil. And I’m not sorry for that to everyone that’s ever eaten in my house. But the other consequence of that is, like, I don’t trust very many places quite as hard as I trust Singermans on olive oil or Parm or Bacon or Balsamic. And I’ve read all of those. So what they’ve done effectively is I’ve paid them for the privilege of them content marketing extensively to me, but I also level up as a human being. Because then I even yesterday, I had like 10 people over for a barbecue in my house. It was just like off the cuff thing. And I had a bottle of olive oil that I knew was particularly special and I was able to jaw about it to everybody and they were so fascinated by it. And then I come off looking way more interesting than I actually am. And that I mean, thanks to Zingerman’s about that. And then they get my money, right? So it’s something that. The reason I’m saying all of this, and we’re kind of segwaying away from food, and we’re going to stop talking about food now, is because they have worked well. following what I believe is a very like traditional info product e content marketing blueprint. And it’s something that we talk about a lot on this podcast, where it’s basically you educate the customer, you empower them and you move them into a place where they feel more comfortable buying from you. Because I don’t know if I would have, you know, gone away from my beloved cola vita cooking olive oil if I hadn’t known Why it’s more valuable to have like more delicate olive oils, right? So the other consequence is that through that education, they primed my wallet, right? And that’s a perfect position for a Jewish deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan to be in. And I think that you can take that and look at it from a technical standpoint pretty well.
Well, here’s a question that comes to mind. These are paid guides, or are these free guides? These were paid. I paid money for them, yeah. Why wouldn’t they be free? I mean, what’s to be gained by charging for this when Why not make it available to the masses? He asks legally.
Well, I mean, they probably could easily just put a PDF online and do it that way, but this was like before that was a huge thing. Like, I got these in 2007 and 8, so there’s that. But also, you could put them next to the cash register of the deli counter at the place and make them an upsell. Are you curious about all the olive oil behind you, Mr. Person who just bought a Reuben? Okay, well, now you can for five bucks. And also, you just afforded a $10 Reuben, so don’t tell me you don’t have five bucks. So there’s that. It also qualifies out. I think the reason you asked this question in such a leading, winking way is like. you’re getting people who are already used to buying you, to buying stuff from you. So you begin the process of initiating a transaction by having this. And so you’re You’re finding customers that are already wallet out by dint of them paying you the $5 for the guide. For a practical business standpoint, it recoups business printing costs and shipping costs, and that’s basically it. You’re like breakeven on that. And it’s probably fun for them. They’re nerds.
And I’d say that there’s another aspect to it, too, where By presenting it as a paid product instead of a free product, they could have the same physical thing as a loss leader next to the cash register and say, Do you want to learn more about olive oil? Take this book with you or this booklet with you. Understand everything there is to know about olive oil. But by charging for it, they’re saying we’re so confident in our knowledge of olive oil and that you will gain from it. We’re putting a price tag on it, we’re putting a sticker on it, and you get to pay for the right to learn this information. That’s how good it is. And I think there’s a signaling aspect that comes into Charging for information, charging for education, that sometimes gets overlooked. If we make everything available for free, well, then everything’s available for free. If we start to charge for Small pieces like, hey, this might only be $5, $10, or $20, but it saves you 20, 60, 90 minutes of study and research yourself. That makes a lot of sense. And it also signals: I am somebody, or Zingerman’s is an institution who knows their shit.
Yeah, and I think I couldn’t agree more. There’s also like Sort of a rough product ladder there, too, right? Like it’s $5 for the olive oil and then $50 for the bottle of olive oil or the olive oil guide to the bottle of olive oil, right? But also, like, There’s something very powerful in being able to say, you’re going to come away from this knowing everything that you need to know about olive oil, which is true. You should not spend more than 40 pages reading about olive oil. You should spend far more time. Tasting and like consuming olive oil and treating it well. And beyond that, like, what more do you need to know? But then you get to be: okay, well. Olive oil, if you were part of like higher end cooking in the mid-90s, you know that there was some serious Dutch tulip panic about olive oil. And so you are automatically somebody who like everybody knows what it is. It’s a thing that’s fancy. And but it’s also this thing that can be screwed up really easily and misused really easily. And so, um You keep from getting into the pitfall, and then you become, frankly, more knowledgeable at parties and a better cook. Do you want to be a better cook? Great. Here’s 44 pages on olive oil. I think that’s brilliant.
I’m just thinking to myself, taking it from food-focused info products to info products at large. One question that, or educational products. Whatever we want to call it, packing information, education, knowledge into a thing, a book, a video, audio file, whatever, and selling it to somebody. Pulling the lens away or going up a level from Zingerman’s to the concept at large, I just was taking some notes to myself. What do you, dear listener, or what do you as a consultant gain from Having an educational or an informational product or any type of product as part of your product ladder. And I think it really breaks down to four, at least these four elements that I cribbed from what you were just saying. It signals authority and it signals expertise. It gives the start of a product ladder. It’s no longer buy the $40 olive oil, it’s buy the $5 guide. And then buy the $40 olive oil, and then da da da da da, from there and there and there, it empowers buyers by educating them. So it not only teaches them How to do it themselves. Somebody could buy Zingerman’s guide and then go to Whole Foods and be like, I want that one. Zingerman’s told me to get that one. But it also builds trust by empowering the reader. It says, Hey, I Zingermans have taught you this, I Kai Davis have taught you this. Well, now you have a more trusting relationship with that reader, with that buyer, and they’re more likely to purchase again. Oh, and I forget what the fourth point was. So I was writing it down just as you asked that question. But I think the fourth point is: singles authority, product line. Take no prisoners. Take no prisoners. Fourth point is always: take no prisoners.
They’re inconvenient to feed.
But we could see how this maps heavily onto a consultant’s business. Because all of those attributes, signaling authority, product ladders, empowering buyers, taking new prisoners, or whatever the fourth point was that I hopefully will remember someday.
Okay, so I’ll zoom out while you’re thinking about your fourth point. And there’s kind of two takeaways that I want to be specific about for the audience. There’s two things that a good info product should do, and it needs to do both of them at the same time. One of them is it should make them generally more badass and empowered at doing whatever the thing is that is germane to your positioning, right? So if you are a Rails developer and you need to help people with Stripe integrations, You should be providing a guide that helps people feel comfortable and empowered about doing a Stripe integration on Rails, e. g. The second thing is it should prepare them to make the purchase, right? It is not enough to just educate them, but you also have to move them into a position where they feel comfortable going onto the next rung of your product ladder. Otherwise, they’re just going to be like, well, great. Thank you. What do I do now? And you’re like, well, I don’t know. And they’re like, well, I don’t know either. And that’s dumb. Right. So if, for example, I’m putting together, I think by the time this episode runs, we will have launched Draft Data, which is a I do your analytics for you campaign. And that has been preceded by four and a half weeks of free advice about analytics and their procedurality in an organization, right? And so I’m moving you into a position where you recognize how to do analytics well, but also recognize that it is hard. And you’re lazy, and so you have me. Right. And so that’s one example. That’s not even with an info product, but I’ve moved you into the situation where you were a curious human who has a problem and doesn’t necessarily feel it. To feeling the problem, to then wanting to buy something to get their way out of the problem.
You just described the different stages of Product awareness that they cover in this wonderful, wonderful book. I’m reading a breakthrough advertising, and I’m completely spacing on The name of the author, hold on, once by Eugene Schwartz, where you have a product that everybody knows of, but just, or the buyer knows of, but just hasn’t bought yet. down to they aren’t even aware of the problem yet and need to be educated on the problem. And everything in between is different stages. And what you just just just described of educating your readers on the pains of analytics, the benefits of analytics, It’s educating them to the problem. So then when you come to the table with the solution, it’s easier to say, okay, great, you already understand the pain. This is the solution to that pain. They might not be as of three weeks ago or as of today, shopping for an analytic solution. But after they’ve gone through this nurturing and this education, they’re in a position where they say, oh, gee, I actually do have that struggle. Oh, this is the solution for that struggle.
Yeah, yeah. And it’s, you know, sometimes people don’t recognize that they have the struggle, so it’s on you to outline that there is a struggle, right? So, with analytics, like you have analytics installed and you might think that that’s the end of the problem, but if you’re never looking at them, then what are you doing? what the goal of analytics is to get revenue generating design insights out of it because our customers aren’t like looking at your analytics and also being like, that’s cool, you know? But then you have to convey that to them, right? So then you have to teach them how to pay attention to that and what ROI can potentially have for a business. And I’ve learned that over four or five years, and I think that the world is insane. So I have to go and espouse. What we’re kind of talking about here is that there’s a contrarian point of view about analytics, right? Like, or about maybe every Rails app is doing their Stripe integration wrong. Or maybe an axe I ground for a long time and still sort of grind is like people don’t do design research and they cut it out of their budgets and they’re stupid for that. And so like A large part of my positioning has been: maybe design research is a good idea, and here’s why. Or maybe paying attention to analytics in this particular way is a good idea, and here’s why. Or maybe Paying attention to case studies of A-B tests and changing your call to action button to green is wrong, and here’s why. And so I’ve always thought about ways to Figure out what’s busted. Figure out what’s like weird about the industry that I can grind an axe about in a very public way. And I oughta I genuinely think that’s kind of how innovation happens. I know that that’s like a such a cliched term, but it comes from adopting a point of view that’s not necessarily what the What the flock is doing, and then saying, okay, well, I believe this, here’s why. And I don’t think, and I think I’m not, you know, being crazy about it either. Like, here’s a well-reasoned argument for it. I think it’s a lot of like contrarian consulting and bootstrapping points of view come from that. A lot of classical disruption comes from that, too. Honda being like subcompacts of the way, you know, that’s like a classic Layton Christensen story. Anyway.
So, so for consultants, for freelancers, when it comes to educational products, I think I mean, we’ve covered a lot of the reasons why Zingermans does it, the way you do it in your business. In a little bit, we’ve talked about the ways I do it in my business, but I think it comes down to the four points we landed on. An educational product, and again, I’m going broad with this definition. It could be any type of content: video, audio, text, physical printed book, digital PDF, something else, at any price point, in any shape or form. It’s an educational product. You’re charging for it. And the benefits are it signals authority to people in your audience or potential customers or potential clients. It gives you the start of a product ladder. You have a $500 service. Well, if you have a $50 book that teaches the reader why they need the $500 service and shows them you could do it yourself and it’ll take 100 hours, or you could hire me to do it for you. It makes it easier for people to leapfrog up and say, Oh, I understand why I need to pay you for this larger engagement. It empowers buyers by teaching them what they need to know in a concise way that says, This is how to do the thing. Somebody recently bought a copy of my book, Podcast Outreach, my guide on how to get on podcasts as a guest, and emailed me afterwards and said, the book was great. What I love is it had one single goal: get your butt onto podcasts. And I was like, Thank you. And he emails me back and he says, Hey, I just booked my first two podcast interviews after 90 minutes of effort of reading the book. It empowered that buyer to take that next step of, Doing the thing. One area I’ve messed up in as I go through this list is: I don’t necessarily have a clear-cut service offering immediately after somebody buying that book. So that’s one takeaway I have from this episode. Think about my entry-level educational products and think: well, what comes next for that buyer? Jumping back a thread for that fourth point, it’s preparing somebody to make a purchase for that next rung on the product ladder. It’s training them and getting them ready to. Buy whatever that next service offering is. And I’d say that fifth one is: the fifth one that I finally remembered would be: it trains people to pay you money rather than always expecting free information. As freelancers and consultants, we’re only giving away information and we aren’t charging for it at any point. It sets a weird perception of we’re teaching, we’re teaching, we’re teaching, and now comes the ask for money. And people are going to say, well, you’ve been giving away such great information for free this entire time. Why should I pay for this thing? But I think by introducing paid products into your offerings, It becomes easier for people to say, oh, yes, this person is teaching, this person is educating, this person is sharing, but they also have paid versions of this that I could choose to buy or not buy.
Yeah, and I mean, that all goes into like authority building and thought leadership questions, also, right? Like, you look You look more like a prize to be won if your thing costs even $5, right? It is why we half-jokingly sell about pages for $5, you know? Please buy the about page that you deserve richly. But yeah, no, I do think there’s something to that. You’re saying, like, I’m worth Something this has value, it’s going to provide an outcome, take it or leave it, and you end up qualifying out the 90% of Shmos that wouldn’t be paying you anyway.
Fuck them. Yeah, and I think there’s a good point to be made where not everything necessarily needs to be charged for. In my own business, I go back and forth between. Creating products that I sell and creating products of a similar caliber that I’ll give away for free. And one of the reasons I do that strategically, and this gets a bit more into 200 and 300-level strategies that we’re going to cover in the next episode. But one of the reasons I approach it that way, a mixture of paid and free products or product-shaped things, is for people who have not yet bought a thing from me. I want to present them with a piece of content, a product that I could be charging, you know, two, three figures for, and have them have that experience of consuming it, appreciating the information. So, when that pitch comes around and says, like, hey, I’m releasing my new product on referral systems, it’s, you know, the launch price is $30. There’s not that hesitation of, oh, what is one of Kai’s products like? They’re able to say, oh, wow, I’ve been on his list. I’ve been getting his daily emails. I had that for that experience, those free resources he shared. I have more trust. There’s that element of empowering. So I think we could scale down and say the free information we share. It empowers people to make that next step of doing that first initial purchase. That first initial purchase further empowers somebody and moves them towards making that next purchase. It’s valuable to always be thinking about how does this lead to somebody taking that next action? If we’re giving it away for free, is it to train them that, hey, the quality and content we’re sharing is very, very great? You can feel safe when it comes time to hand us money, and then from that first purchase, how do you ladder up in terms of trust from there?