Bootstrapping A New Offering

At some point in the evolution of your authority business, you’ll be ready to add new offerings. And for many reasons we’ve discussed on prior episodes, it’s far better to bootstrap new stuff then to launch a fully formed product to crickets (the worst).

This week on TBOA, Jonathan and I discuss how to get the confidence to launch a brand new product or service in a way that you’re proud of and is recognized by the market as something that’s worth the price:

Building confidence in yourself and others about something you’ve never done before.

Hedging your bets so you don’t spend tons of hours creating a course that launches to crickets.

Getting your first customers–and glowing testimonials–for a new productized service.

Price points to start with on a 10X Product Ladder.

A “three coupon” approach to accelerating an eBook launch.

Validating new positioning statements when you’re starting out, or planning to pivot.

Quotables

“How do you get your first customers, your first clients, or even the feedback that you need to create the thing in the right way?”—JS

“I mean, for me, it’s really simple. It’s reaching out to the people on my list that I think this might fit, because generally speaking, I’m not sitting with a blank sheet of paper, dreaming something up.”—RM

“When I notice someone struggling with something, and then I notice somebody else struggling with the same thing, I’ll think, ‘Huh, I wonder if there’s something there?’”—JS

“When you do a launch, your list will get bigger. That’s how it works.”—RM

“When is comes to pricing, people are atrocious at pulling a number out of a hat.”—JS

“What’s interesting is they found errors in your book, but they engaged with it. This is why we need to get over this idea of perfectionism because people engage for different reasons.”—RM

“If you’re going to get $245 for this course, then you can reverse engineer how many videos you want to make.”—JS

“If you think this is a numbers game, you will never launch.”—RM

“I’m not looking for data to prove to me that it’s going to work. What I’m doing is looking for an opening.”—JS

“What this process does is it gives you that confidence that you’re not going to lose your shirt, that you know how to speak to your ideal client, and that if a bad one sneaks in there, you’re going to be done really fast and they’ll be out.”—RM

“I don’t dream stuff up, like, ‘Boy, it sure would be cool if the universe had this in it now!’ It’s always from some struggle I observed.”—JS