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A new product is in the works — One that is focused on implementation. But I need your help ↓
Before we dive into productizing yourself (crafting great products), let’s zoom out first.
In the one-person business economy, you are building a brand in the digital space and then monetizing it by selling your skills in the form of a product instead of a service so you can sell value instead of your time and thus have the freedom of time and leverage.
Of course, at the start, I’d also suggest having a service so you can collect some capital. But services have a low ceiling (especially as a one-person business) which is why you need to also focus on building great products.
Productization is a term used to describe the process of turning something, often a service or solution, into a tangible product that can be distributed.
Productization = Transfer of Value
When it comes to "productizing yourself," it typically means turning your skills, expertise, or personal experiences into a valuable product (e.g. courses, SaaS products, books)
Before I go into how to craft great products, I want to (hopefully) reframe your thinking around one-time purchase products.
Think of your products as a subscription. Even if they are a one-time purchase.
Why?
When you think of your products as a subscription, you will:
The problem?
Most creators think that they can make a product and then forget about it.
It should not be a one-and-done thing.
Unless if you are 100% confident that the content in your product is evergreen.
Evergreen = The principles covered will last at least 10-20 years
Okay, so what?
When you give value continuously, your customers will associate quality with your brand + loyalty will increase (if you actually provide high value).
This in turn increases word-of-mouth.
Instead of your customers paying you in cash every month, they pay you in word-of-mouth (which if you ask me is better)
Why is it better?
Because word-of-mouth marketing is exponential.
Let’s say 1 person tells 2 people and then those 2 people tell another 2 people each and so on and on.
(1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 16…….)
And thus ↓
Great products sell themselves
What do I mean?
Your brand is how people perceive you. The better they perceive you, the stronger your brand. And the more authority your brand has.
Crafting a digital product doesn’t just make it so that you have an extra income source but it also increases authority… by a lot.
It goes from “he’s saying something” to “he knows what he’s saying”
When you are covering a novel idea, it’s important to zoom out and look with fresh eyes. What may seem easy to you, may not for others.
Think like a user who has never tried your product before.
Break down your solution and set all the constraints up front. Understand and dive into your customers’ pain points, challenges, and goals.
Then, tell the story of your product.
People want painkillers. Not vitamins.
People are often drawn to solutions that provide immediate relief to their pressing problems or pains.
How do you make a product that solves a problem immediately?
It varies from product to product. But keep this notion in mind.
Market Research is split into two categories:
Defining your ideal customer
It is easy to think that this is not that important of a step.
You probably have an idea of what your ideal customer is like based on the product you have decided to make. Defining your ideal customer is the first step to researching your customers.
Questions you need to ask about your target customer:
Now, let’s go through why we need to ask these questions.
Now that you know what questions to ask about your target customer, you now have to ask a few questions about your past self.
Questions:
When you visited a website,
When you were a beginner,
Answer these questions on a note-taking app like notion (highly recommended) or on a notebook. After this, we will go into the ways you can research your target customer.
Essentially, you're creating a customer avatar for your product.
Let’s split up The Research Phase into two categories:
Market research is really about asking yourself a bunch of questions and then answering them based on the product you want to build.
We have already written down many questions to ask yourself and also why you need to ask them. It is the same here but we will go a bit deeper.
First of all, where can you find your customers?
Are your customers on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, or somewhere else?
Once you know where they usually spend their time, you know where to market your product and also where to do your research. If your customers are on Twitter and you make your product based on your research on Instagram, it will not sell as well. It might still sell well. Just not as well. It's as simple as that.
Secondly, what does your customer want?
Why do your target customers even need your product? And Why Yours?
Why not that other guy who is charging less?
This part will also include the topic on your Unique Selling Point which we already covered earlier.
When you know what your customer wants, you know what problem your product needs to solve.
Here is my suggestion, Take a pen and paper and write down all the pain points of your customers/reasons why your customer need your product. Afterward, write down how your product will solve their needs.
The question I hear a lot is “How do I make sure that what I think my customer needs is correct?”
This is a question you might also have.
To truly understand their needs, you have to talk and ask your current or potential customers.
When I first started, I would join discussion groups and ask a few people what they would like. You can ask anyone who is willing to share but make sure the person you are asking is a potential customer for you.
Here are a few questions you can ask them:
Design thinking forces you to really understand the problem you're trying to solve.
To make a great product, the only way is to:
One way of deploying design thinking is by creating User Narratives and Customer Journeys.
User narratives provide a detailed account of a hypothetical user's experience in interacting with your product or solution. These narratives put you in the shoes of the user, helping you visualize their journey, needs, pain points, and emotions. By crafting user narratives, you're able to step outside of your own perspective and gain insights into how users might interact with your product.
Customer journeys map out the various touchpoints and interactions that a user has with your product throughout their experience. This highlights key stages, emotions, pain points, and opportunities for improvement along the user's path.
By analyzing the customer journey, you can identify pain points, areas of friction, and moments of delight, allowing you to optimize the user experience and design solutions that address specific pain points.
The second aspect of Market Research is researching your competitors.
Competitor research is vital.
I’m not going to tell you that this is all that you need to succeed in the product space but this will pivot you towards the correct direction.
For example, you are thinking of a product to sell, you come up with an idea, and you start making it and in no time, it is ready to be published, you publish it but no one buys it, nothing really happens and you feel defeated because you just wasted a lot of time. This could have been easily avoided if you did your research.
Here are 2 examples to see if your potential product has an audience:
Most of the time, you need a starving audience, not just a normal audience. A normal audience will sell but a starving audience will give you great rewards.
Alex Hormozi talks about this. Even if you sell the worst hotdogs outside a stadium with a bunch of hungry people, you will be sold out.
Same thing here. What does your audience really want? What will they spend their hard-earned money for?
Most of the time, it’s to earn more money or achieve a goal they might have.
But the core principle is the same, it’s to improve their quality of living.
Which falls under The 3Fs:
F - Freedom of Choice
F - Freedom of Time
F - Fulfilment
Not just a product, but a valuable one.
A product solves a burning problem.
Harvard Innovation Lab outlines a simple method to see if the problem you are trying to solve is worth solving.
I call it the UUU Method.
Urgent, Unworkable, Unavoidable
Is the problem you’re solving urgent?
Is the problem you’re solving unworkable (hard to solve by themselves)?
Is the problem you’re solving unavoidable?
If it falls into these 3 categories, you got yourself a burning problem.
This is self-explanatory, does your product require a software-based product or an information product?
Optimize for that.
But for this guide, I’ll talk more towards creating an information product.
Outline your product. What lessons do you want to include? Then, what topics do you want to talk about in each lesson?
Outline these lessons in an A → Z format. Not A → D → B → Z. Essentially, make it have a clear structure (from start to end).
Then fill in the lessons.
Granular Breakdown
Within each lesson or section, consider the topics you want to cover. Break down each lesson into sub-topics to ensure a thorough and organized exploration of the subject matter.
At the end of the day, your product must deliver on its promise.
If your product helps to lose 10kg in 10 days. Make sure it does that.
In essence, this is all for product creation (for the basic part).
There’s so much more that I could have written about creating great products. But if I did, this guide would be 30000 words or even more. It’s already more than 15000 words.
30000 Words = Concise Book — and you are not here to read a book. You are here to get a comprehensive guide.
This is the end of Phase 2.
Click the button below to enter Phase 3 ↓