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Completely. You touched on in those early questions, like what’s the highest impact. I also think about what’s the lowest time to produce and For my first educational product info product, I guess, no, this was actually my second, but we’ll call it my first because my first was terrible. For my first prime info product. It was me packaging together a webinar I did with a 7,500-word write-up on a subject and making it available for sale for $29. It took me half of a morning to put together, cobbling it together from existing resources. And at that point, I was then able to. Promoted to people to point to it as evidence of the work I was doing, the discipline I’m operating in, outreach marketing. And have it as a touch point, have it as a continually updated definition of my understanding of this field and my presence in the field.

So to interrupt for a second, you just used a term here, and let’s just define that quickly for listeners who aren’t familiar with it. You said these conversations with customers gives you that initial sales safari Let’s share what a sales safari is for people who aren’t familiar with that as a term.

I think it is. I mean, it comes down to the process of You want to create a product that solves a pain, that solves a problem that somebody in your audience or somebody in the community you’re marketing to is experiencing. And you touched on sort of three of the main tracks you could. Create a mini booklet that talks about your area of expertise. This is what I know about this thing. You could create a mini book that talks about You know, how people are doing things wrong in your industry and how you see it as a different way. You could talk about common problems that people are experiencing and what a solution is, just tackling one problem and then guiding them through this is how you solve it. And I think following any one of those methodologies, your goal is to help the reader, somebody who is in your target market, somebody who you studied through this process of sales so far, going out and studying them. Researching them, hearing what questions they’re asking, hearing what areas they’re searching for help with within their business, and then creating a problem or creating a solution, a product that fixes that for them or helps them understand. How to fix that. And it doesn’t need to be a super elaborate course. It doesn’t need to be over the top. The constraints that I like putting around Product creation, especially the first product that you make as a freelancer or a consultant, price it under $50. And by pricing it under $50, You’re now saying, well, for it to be valuable for the recipient, for the recipient to get a, let’s say, 300% return on investment, it needs to be $150 to $200 worth of value. Can you provide that in a 40 to 50 page book? Probably. Okay, great. So we have constraint number one: price, which helps scope it down in terms of what exactly we include. And so Then I think a nice step is: well, how long does this need to be? And we could look around and see 300, 400 page books out there. We could see long, multi-part video courses. And I think an important thing to remember is just because you include more information for the recipient or the reader doesn’t necessarily make it more valuable. I had to call off Jonah Weeby a couple years ago and we were chatting and I and At one point in the conversation, we were discussing how there’s an interesting pricing contrast if you said, Well, hey, Kai, I have two products available for you. One’s a thousand-page book that will teach you exactly how to solve your problem, it’s $100. The other is a one-page leaflet, teaches you how to solve the exact same problem. It is $10,000. Which would you prefer to buy? And I like that example because it really shows that just because there’s more information available doesn’t necessarily make it more valuable for the buyer or for the person reading it, that you instead want to focus on getting The maximum impact with the smallest amount of information. If it ends up being 20 pages, but it helps that reader understand A-B testing, the economic impact of design. Uh, what research what outreach marketing is, how to get on podcasts. Great, you have solved that problem for the buyer or the reader. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a large thing or a large product. It could be a very small product. It could be two 10-minute videos that you recorded. But the videos teach the person watching them how to do a thing, or teach them another way of viewing the world, or teach them how to solve a common problem they’re experiencing.

There’s a wonderful quote I read recently that I added to my list of directives. There are more people with less money. Than there are less people with more money. And just thinking about products, it really put me on a new course and say, well, We definitely don’t want to be selling a $1. 99 product because we’re never going to have the volume to make this a successful business. But if it’s a choice between selling a $99 thing or a $49 thing, there’s probably a significant larger number of people out there with $49 to spend on your product than there are $99 to spend on your product. And so there’s a bit of optimizing there for The sweet middle ground. Not necessarily pricing too low, and this is interesting in a contrast with my continued advice to charge more, but I think it’s good to scope whatever you create against how many people are there in the market with this to invest in the product. If you’re selling to businesses and you say, hey, this is a $50 guide that will save you four hours. that’s a really good deal for most businesses. They will invest $50 to save four hours or to understand a thing better. If you are selling to consumers, it becomes a bit more challenging. Consumers can be a bit more hesitant to spend or invest on a product. But I think either way, thinking about what that price is and well, are you pricing to capture the majority of the market is an important thing to consider. What’s the cheapest a product should be? I think the cheapest that you should sell a B2B product. So this is a difficult question to answer, honestly. So let’s aim for 200-level advice here for the average listener of the podcast. I think you should not price a product below $25. Below $25, it. Doesn’t really command any value. It’s almost too cheap to be seen as being worth anything. You could definitely price above that, but I like $25 as a baseline for something short, something small. Maybe it’s two or three short videos. Maybe it’s a, you know, a 30 to a 50 page booklet. Something small that teaches them something new, and they’re able to say, Okay, great, I have gotten $25, $30 of value out of this, if not more. I am happy with my purchase. But I put the floor at $25. But even saying that, there’s a range between, I think, $25 and $50 where people are very, very indiscriminate in terms of the pricing. So what is the difference between a $25 and a $30 product or the same product at $25 or $30? Probably not that much in terms of how your market perceives it. So, why not price it at 30? And we have the same question to 35 to 40 to 45 to 50. So, I think The lowest you could price it is at 25, but it’s very easy to see the logic in walking it up to the 40 to 50 dollar price range because really What’s the difference between a $40 version and the $25 version aside from another $15 in your pocket?

And honestly, when it comes to selling your first thing or selling your first product, it’s okay. And I often try to optimize my pricing. So, I get a little bit of negative feedback. So, I have a few people, let’s say I sell 50 copies. I have one, maybe two people who say, you know, it was valuable. It just didn’t feel, you know, like it was $50 worth of value. I try to optimize to that point because I want there to be a small return rate or a small refund request rate on my products because that tells me. For a majority of the people, for a large percentage of them, the value exceeds the price. But I want there to be a few people who say, oh, you know, this just doesn’t seem right like it’s on the money. because that tells me I’m close to that limit in terms of what I could charge for the value I’m providing. Then I could step up the value, add some more resources, add some more content. And then raise the price. But I like optimizing for a few people, 1% to 4% of people, saying, I have a question here. Is there another bonus?

And I even think, on top of that, if you have somebody come in the gate spending $20 on your introductory product, but the next rung on your product ladder is, let’s say, a one-off call at $200. You’re asking for a 10x increase in price. You’re asking for such a large jump there, it’s going to be hard to make it. Where if that introductory product was $50, Now it’s only a 4x increase in cost up to that $200 call. It’s still a big jump, but it’s not as large as $20 to $200. I think it’s also important just to consider this in terms of: well, hey, if my goal is to release a thing, we’ll get to what that thing might be in a bit, but I’ve released a thing. Some people who buy that thing will go on to buy the next thing, the next thing I have for sale. How big of a spread is that? Because if it’s too large, people are going to say this feels risky. I’m unsure. I don’t know what to do. And you’re going to end up needing something in the middle there to act as a bridge product. 20. to 75 to 200, and then move them up, say, the rest of your service ladder. But there’s another sort of pricing aspect to consider there.

I think you should, in a sense, Always be launching as soon as you start, as soon as you have an idea, as soon as you have that first glimmer in your eye of your first product. You should tell people about it. Past clients, current clients, prospects, people on your mailing list, people who follow you on social media. I had an idea for a product a few weeks back. By the time you, dear listener, here, this will be a few months back. And my first step was adding a PS to my daily email for that day saying, like, hey, I’m thinking about something like this. If you’re generally interested at all, click this link and I’ll tag you as being interested and I’ll send you more info down the line. And that was a way for me both to signal to people on my list: hey, I’m thinking about making this type of product. This is going to come down the line sometime soon. And also allow me to understand: okay, how many people are enthusiastic enough about this idea to click a link? And From that, I’m able to validate: oh, is this something I should continue making? And also understand: okay, people now know this is a thing. Let me continue to promote it. But when it comes to that actual launch, I think. It’s hard to say absolutes. I like because I email my list daily. I find it easy to slot in. A 4 to 10 day launch sequence into the daily emails I’m sending, provide content, have it relate to the product. Move forward, they get the next email the next day. And so I like having a launch sequence that’s four to seven emails long if I’m launching to my email list, but I have to actually disagree with you for a second. I think that having that email list isn’t necessarily a prerequisite or an absolute here. It makes it easier if your end goal is to, or the outcome you’re searching for, is. Sell product as another revenue stream. You want to have a captive audience or an audience you have assembled and built around you to effectively sell your product. But if you’re looking for an outcome of demonstrate my authority in my industry or collect my knowledge and make it available for clients who or prospects who want to work with me but can’t afford working with me. The mailing list is nice to have, but not that essential. You could essentially have a product that’s you taking the standard operating procedures for doing one of your high-touch services. Packaging it all up, including like a this is how do you do it, this is the tutorial, these are the processes I run through, and making it available for a fraction of the list price of your main product. And you don’t necessarily need a list to launch to at that point. Instead, you’re able to say, okay, you don’t have the budget to afford my service. Instead, let me show you the do-it-yourself option. This is everything I know about it. This will allow you to get started immediately and start seeing results. Here, you could buy it for a fraction of what the done-for-you offering is. So, the mailing list is nice to have. But that very much, I think, is a slightly more advanced move that takes you down the path of building an audience to consistently sell information products. When we think about a first information product or first educational product for Your audience as a freelancer or a consultant, it doesn’t necessarily need to be promoting it to your mailing list. It could very well be taking information you already have. Curating it, assembling it, putting it into an easy-to-understand, easy-to-grok format, and making it available for people who aren’t able to afford to work with you.

What type and so we both dabbled in different types of information products. What type do you think makes sense for A freelancer or consultant making their first information or educational product. If you could go back in time to the Nick D of six or eight years ago, what would you advise him on?

When I think about the different types, some of the advice I’d give Kai of yesteryear would be It really breaks down to there being three main types of mediums you could work in. You could be creating text-based mediums, like writing a book or a booklet. You could be working with audio, podcasts, paid private audio feeds, audio lessons. You could be doing video like screencasts or interviews or talking ahead. As far as I’ve identified, it really breaks down into those three. Let me know if there’s a fourth or a fifth I’m leaving off the list, but those seem like the three dominant ones. And the advice I typically give people is: Think of those three and then think about what’s easiest for you to create. And if it’s easiest for you to make the clackety clack noise on your keyboard and make 5,000 words appear, you should be writing books and booklets or writing articles and content. If it’s easiest for you to speak into a webcam or a microphone and make video or audio, you should be exploring those mediums. Don’t feel like The first product necessarily needs to be a book or needs to be a video course if those are paths that aren’t as easy for you. If you have a competitive advantage or an unfair advantage in one particular medium. Double down on that medium because you already have skills in that area. You’re a very accomplished writer, so it makes sense that you gravitated towards cadence and slang and creating books. And I think It’s important for people to consider where that natural aptitude or where they’ve worked before lies. I’ve worked with people before who run video production agencies and I’ve talked with them about creating educational products, and they say, Oh, we’re going to write a book. And I’m like, Why aren’t you recording video? You have all the equipment, you have all this knowledge, and it just never clicked because there was an invisible script that they were following. Oh, my first product needs to be a book, so I better. You know, drag myself across the sand and the glass to make a book type thing. But the truth is, it could really be any type of information product, any type of education package together. I just think it has to fall into, or it defaultly falls into one of those three categories, be it audio, video, or text.

Very much so. Yeah, play to your strengths. If you have an advantage in one area. Definitely lean into it. And even on that playing to your strengths note, I think that sort of addresses how to figure out what to make. That question of What is that first thing I should build? And Nick, you pointed out the value of market research and sales safari and studying your target market and your customers. And I think that is invaluable. Amy Hoy runs 30 by 500 through Stacking the Bricks, a wonderful, marvelous course on creating education products, and she teaches the Sales Safari methodology. Her course is incredibly valuable. I highly, highly recommend it. A secondary path or a path you can mix into this if 3x500 isn’t open for enrollment or you aren’t going down that path is to look at the standard operating procedures you’ve created within your business. What are the systems you’ve built? What have you documented? What processes have you put together that you use on every client engagement? And then pull those into a product-shaped offering. This is how I came up with podcast outreach. It was me taking the standard operating procedures I had created for myself and my team. Putting it into a book shape and saying, like, okay, great. If you want to get on podcasts, here’s the exact process we use to book our clients on podcasts as guests. And I’ve rewritten it, put it into a format you will understand that you’re able to follow. It teaches you the basics to the more advanced topics, and you could get started. Feedback on the book has been: this is great. I read the book, and 90 minutes later, I was booked on three podcasts. Because I just took, here’s the step one through three you need to follow. And put it into a book form and made it available. So lean into where you already have a lot of knowledge. Lean into the solutions or the areas of expertise you already understand deeply, and use that to make your first product.