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I found something I finally am ready to start executing on!

Idea threads

Johnny boy

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This is very important and will save you thousands of dollars and possibly months or years of your life.

Get sales before anything else.

Whether it's putting together a SUPER professional kickstarter/crowdfunding-type thing
Or making really good ads (like purple mattress
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BvwpjaGZCQ&ab_channel=Purple
)

Or whatever...

You need to be able to prove that it can get sales.

Make video content explaining it in a very professional way.

I'm talking Harmon bros. level quality.

Or make a rock solid instagram page and start paying micro-influencers to review your product.

Or make youtube videos "How to fix dry nose" and make tons of them.

Sponsored blog posts...etc...you get the idea.

Sell it, before you ever pay anyone to bottle it up. It doesn't matter if you piss off 10 customers. You need to prove that you can push a button and get orders rolling in.

This will save you SO much money and more importantly, TIME. But since you work for little pay, time and money are the same thing for you right now, so don't blow it when you could be operating intelligently.

So many people in your shoes are STUPID because they don't get EVIDENCE they can get SALES. They think you set things up and then get sales. No, you get sales and a reason to invest and set things up. Don't be like the thousands of people who start a business and 'take a risk' only to F*ck it all up by not proving demand. Business is not that risky, being stupid is risky. Always test demand. It's okay to dupe 10 people into 'buying' a product that isn't ready yet, just don't take their money. They will forgive you.
 

Johnny boy

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Go study this kickstarter.

Create your first batch at home, get some bottles from home goods or something, print out some labels and get people to review it. You can even pay people on fiverr to review your product. Take the videos and post them on a youtube channel. Use that to set up your page. Hire an adobe illustrator expert for like a hundred bucks or so to come up with really good looking mockups of what your packaging could look like. Use that to advertise the main photos of the product instead of the cheap bottles you initially used.

Hype up everything and market it as the newly created cure for dry noses.

I think this would be a good kickstarter. You can give people orders of it as their reward for funding.

This is how I would do it.
 

Johnny boy

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Keep the original effective formula, whip up a batch, go get some professional branding together that will serve as your primary marketing material as you start your first legitimate campaign. Try to keep it all under a grand to start and get it done this month!

Solve the other problems later. The FDA isn't going to no-knock raid your home and shoot your dog.

It is almost always better to shoot first and aim later in business, contrary to what non-business owners tell you about being cautious. At least when it comes to your first couple ideas, because beginners are always filled with fear and let things stop them dead in their tracks.

Your hurdles will not be getting the "ok" to sell this stuff...your hurdles will be selling the stuff! So 90% of your time should go towards that, and take a couple hours to read up on what approval you need to sell it based on the ingredients you're using.
 

Johnny boy

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Thank you so much for this post. I love learning from other people. With you telling me about getting demand before making a product, I feel like it saved me from losing a lot of time and money. What are some of the ways you go about test demand to see if people will actually pay for you product, not just say they will? Do you make a an entire landing page, or something to that magnitude?
I go 100% "fake it till you make it" mode. You can just not charge their card and have the "submit order" button take them to a "error 404" page.

The important thing is to be creative in HOW you sell it. Lots of people think it's easy and overlook the "how to sell it" part. As in they throw a product up on facebook ads and expect orders to come flowing in (profitably). Those days are long gone. I bet 50% of facebook ad revenue is wasted and it's newbies testing out their ads to realize business is a lot harder than they thought, or large companies who have other revenue sources that don't mind wasting some money.

So you need to be persistent in your testing. Don't be discouraged if your first ad campaign is not profitable. You need to be scientific with this shit, as well as creative. 10 different ad sets, 10 different demographics, 10 different creatives, all mixed and matched and a/b tested like a motherfcker. If you're going to be messing with paid ads and selling a product, you should say to yourself "I'm going to be the best goddamn online advertiser on the planet if I'm going to expect success". Otherwise you're just chasing temporary luck. Or...you have to have a product that gives you an actual reason to expect success, such as you're the only one with access to it or can get it cheaper....or you manufacture it....or you invented it, etc. If you're just alibaba-ing that shit and throwing up fb ads, you're late to the party and hoping to get lucky.

When I say "creative", I'm talking about really thinking in a unique way about how you get sales. Like making your own ads that are so damn creative they go viral, or being so ruthless in approaching influencers or making sponsored blog posts that it's a full time job, or making a product so good that it's a productocracy and people talk about it, or you find a way to get press attention for it. It takes the mind of a businessman and an artist to succeed. Following the rules AND thinking outside the box and breaking the rules. Ying and yang.

However, I always start with the laziest, quickest strategies first because if it works with those strategies, it's definitely "go-time" and it's very encouraging and easy to do. If I CAN sell something with basic paid ads and basic targeting, then I REALLY need to seize the opportunity.
 

Ing

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2 years ago I was about to do the same with a different active ingredient.
I asked some manufacturers and negotiated. And one I found, he reduced the minimum to about 1/10 of the first amount.

Than I setup a shop and sold the skin cream. Before ordering. I tied google ads and in the end I got...zero sales.
Well left is only a story, but nearly no costs.

One reason I didn’t go on with trying was regulations in EU.
 
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Johnny boy

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You mentioned fiverr in an earlier post, is it possible to get decent marketing materials and branding from there at an affordable price?
Let me be very very clear about what I mean when I say you need to market this.

It needs to have a commercial and it needs to be like these..


Now, if you just mean making some logos, some packaging design, etc. Use Fiverr.

But you need to sell this thing and make something that captivates and clearly educates why someone should use your product to solve their problem.

And it doesn't have to be expensive to do this, it just needs to be good.

 
D

DeletedUser84644

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We’ve had many conversations about how we want more people to have this but that would be very hard to share, and most of the time it would stop there. Until recently when we were talking, she mentioned that 90% of makeup in the USA comes from just a few labs. I had the thought that perhaps there would be something similar in the this product category, so I went looking.

Just the other day I found out that these do in fact exist and that I could have them make the product and bottle it and label it, then just send it to me.

Though I haven’t gotten super far, I found a few companies that specialize in organic products and other things like that, that will help me make the products. So I have been sending emails over there last few days to them to get quotes.
See that kind of highlights one of the biggest misconceptions budding entrepreneurs have about entrepreneurship, is that they think that they have to do absolutely EVERYTHING in house. Which is, quite far from the truth. There are very few companies in the world that can be anywhere close to remotely being able to actually do such a thing, not even some of the biggest companies like Apple (Where its Founder was known for having a big EGO with wanting to do as much in house as possible), does everything in house. Why? well because it's often way more efficient and cost effective for a company to outsource a particular business function to another business that is a specialist in that said business function. The degree to which things are done in house versus what's outsourced varies from company to company, but no company in the world has the ability do it all in house (Even if it looks like they do most of everything in house, they still have some minor things outsourced.) Even stuff as insignificant as office supplies are a clear good example of a necessary business function being outsourced (B/c it would just make no sense for a company to spend all of the time, resources, and money to manufacture them themselves when they can just pay a manufacture to do it for them).
 

Johnny boy

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Thanks so much for the input! This is the exact method that I'm planning on using. I'm strictly only contacting manufacturers to see how much it would take to even get the minimum SKU.

I actually ordered a package of 100 cheap bottles for like $10 yesterday and I plan on playing a bit with my formula to see if I can eek out a little more performance.

But I really like your idea with using Fiverr to hire someone to use Photoshop or illustrator to design the labels!

I think eventually I want to go retail with this, but that's a long way away.

My biggest worry is that people will just glance over a Kickstarter for essentially a nose balm. I'm also worried that no one will want it since there's a bit of a stigma against sticking your finger up your nose, as that's honestly the best way we've figured out to apply it.
They will glance over it more at the store. On Kickstarter you get a chance to explain and pitch the story and science behind something. On the shelves you don’t get that.
 

Zooman009

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If you’re looking to bottle it yourself, you’ll need one of these of something similar.
It’s not that expensive and will make your process smoother. ( see what i did there?:rofl:)


edit: you don’t need this, or a thermal printer, or anything else until you have demand for your product.
Thanks for recommending that! I don't think I want to bottle it myself since I don't really have a proper cosmetics lab to do it in. But my test batches early on will be at home.

I'm mostly just bottling what I have at home so u can get some sort of "alpha" batch that I can start getting testimonials and input from people on.

I know a few people and plan on getting them samples so I can get their honest opinion on it.
 

Zooman009

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Nice thread.. I think it's really worth testing out this idea with the great suggestions that are given. I can completely relate with how hard it is to get going. Sometimes you just need to push through to completion and actually complete your first test. Then, try to improve on it... It doesn't need to be perfect from the first time!
Thanks for responding to my thread! There's a lot of great stuff coming up on here as I work through things!

I actually have a small scale test in the works, so we'll see what happens.
 

Zooman009

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Hey @Zooman009,
I read through your post and I have a few concerns that I think you should consider regarding your product formulation, marketing, and dealing with the FDA. BTW, I'm a licensed esthetician(skincare expert).

When you said you reformulated the balm to be "all-natural" and "all-organic" and said it smells good, it's a sign to me that you have quite a few essential oils and fragrant compounds in the formulation. The problem with these ingredients is that they have been shown in scientific studies to cause serious adverse reactions - from allergic contact dermatitis, photosensitization, contact urticaria, and even difficulty breathing (Yikes! Especially since your balm is intended to be placed in? or around the nose?). You could be faced with lawsuits from consumers. I don't want you to go through that.
Here's the studies. Unfortunately, only physicians, scientists, academic students(my case) can have access to the full study. You can read the abstracts though.
Surprising, right? The wellness and "clean" cosmetics industries have perpetuated the belief that "natural","clean","organic" products are safer and better, when scientific evidence has shown otherwise.

My advice to you is to ditch your "organic" formulation and "organic" lab and find a cosmetic chemist and/or lab(ideally one that follows Good Manufacturing Practices, GMP) that's not associated with the "clean" cosmetics industry (more on this industry later). People that are on Accutane or have just gotten off of it have extremely sensitive skin, because the drug did an overhaul on the skin's physiological process. Ask your formulator to make the formulation geared for sensitive skin. Glycerin, Panthenol, Avena Sativa Kernel Extract, Petrolatum, and Squalane are examples of good ingredients for sensitive skin. You'll want a soothing, non-irritating, and simple formulation for sensitive skin.

In your marketing, you need to be extremely careful about not making drug claims, which you already know. That's good. The reason is if consumers report your brand to the FDA, you'll possibly have fines to pay. The FDA has examples of warning letters sent to brands on their site:
Take the time to read them and understand where brands messed up, so you won't make the same mistakes.
Avoid any claims stating "natural" and "organic" because they mean absolutely anything beneficial for the consumer. The FDA doesn't even have a standard for these claims:
If you do decide to use these claims, you'll align yourself with the "clean" cosmetics industry. What's wrong with them? They spread the most misinformation, use fear-mongering marketing tactics, anti-science, and have problematic products on the market. I don't think it's a smart decision for you to be in association with them.

Lastly, I think you should consult with a physician about the safety of applying cosmetics in the nose. Consider even reaching out to the physicians on the forum. Everything I advised you above for a formulation; I know those ingredients are safe and beneficial for sensitive skin. But for the mucous membranes in the nose, I don't know; this isn't my area of expertise. Talk to them before attempting to reformulate again. Best wishes.
Thanks a lot for reading and responding to this. That’s definitely something that I was worried about. As I’ve been working on it, I’ve wanted someone who actually had experience in the field to help me out, but haven’t had any luck with it. I’ve been slowly adjusting it, but you have some really good points.

I’ll look into all the sources that you referenced and I’ll consider adjusting what I’m using. For the most part I don’t intend on making any false claims and I fully intend on staying as transparent as possible about my products.

This has been an amazing journey, and I’m glad you’re helping me with it.
 

Zooman009

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SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I had my first-time selling at a farmer's market, and it went way better than expected!

After changing the claims on my product, I decided to change to advertising as just lip balm. More specifically, it's a lip balm for people with really dry and sensitive lips. That mostly got rid of my issues with nose stuff. Even though I often use it that way, I didn't want to make any dangerous claims that could end up hurting people.

The formula turned out incredibly smooth and easy to put on and I added scents for others with less sensitive lips as I thought it would attract more people. (it did). But I did keep the original plain mix for those who didn't want scents.

I ended up selling 96 tubes of lip balm in just the two days I had my booth, and both days were pretty slow because it's a lesser-known farmer's market! I totaled $367 in revenue, which was way higher than expected! Selling out of one of my scents, and nearly sold out of 2 more of the 6 scents that I brought.

But above all, the thing that paid the most (at least emotionally) is that a wonderful lady went onto my website from one of my business cards and left a note telling me that she's struggled to find a lip balm that works well for her and her daughters extremely sensitive lips, and my stuff is the first stuff that's actually helped her!

Considering this whole event was just market validation, I'm really optimistic! I really think I just need to improve my website and try to build a presence online so that I can sell to more people who might need it. I'm also looking into selling at small local shops that might let me have some shelf space, to see if retail might work!

Honestly, this has been amazing! I hope you all have a great day!
 

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Roughly 5 years back when I was 14, I had pretty severe acne, so we went to the doctor and I had Accutane prescribed to me. The issue was that it caused all of my skin to be incredibly dry and especially my nose and lips to the point where it hurt. I would be bleeding from the cracking that was happening. My nose was constantly feeling stuffed up and filled with scabs.

Similarly my mother also started using Accutane at around the same time because she’s had to deal with acne even into her mid-40s.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great medication but with how dry it was it felt like a living hell every day.

We're not the only ones with this issue either. Looking at trends, dry nose is searched more than even chapped lips. My friends complain about dry noses too and even after acutane, my nose tends to dry up because I live in Utah where humidity never goes above 20%.

Eventually my mother and I decided that we couldn’t take it anymore so we figured out a formula to help with it, and I kid you not, we were able to relieve all the pain and itchyness within one day of use. After 3-4 days, the scabs would begin falling off.

We’ve had many conversations about how we want more people to have this but that would be very hard to share, and most of the time it would stop there. Until recently when we were talking, she mentioned that 90% of makeup in the USA comes from just a few labs. I had the thought that perhaps there would be something similar in the this product category, so I went looking.

Just the other day I found out that these do in fact exist and that I could have them make the product and bottle it and label it, then just send it to me.

Though I haven’t gotten super far, I found a few companies that specialize in organic products and other things like that, that will help me make the products. So I have been sending emails over there last few days to them to get quotes.

My issue is that I'm not really sitting on a lot of capital since my current job pays very little, so once I get the quotes on these things, I'm probably gonna end up having to save a bit to buy it, but I intend to.

I want to see where this goes, and if you guys do as well, feel free to follow this thread. I'll try to periodically post updates in the future.
 
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Zooman009

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Go study this kickstarter.

Create your first batch at home, get some bottles from home goods or something, print out some labels and get people to review it. You can even pay people on fiverr to review your product. Take the videos and post them on a youtube channel. Use that to set up your page. Hire an adobe illustrator expert for like a hundred bucks or so to come up with really good looking mockups of what your packaging could look like. Use that to advertise the main photos of the product instead of the cheap bottles you initially used.

Hype up everything and market it as the newly created cure for dry noses.

I think this would be a good kickstarter. You can give people orders of it as their reward for funding.

This is how I would do it.
Thanks so much for the input! This is the exact method that I'm planning on using. I'm strictly only contacting manufacturers to see how much it would take to even get the minimum SKU.

I actually ordered a package of 100 cheap bottles for like $10 yesterday and I plan on playing a bit with my formula to see if I can eek out a little more performance.

But I really like your idea with using Fiverr to hire someone to use Photoshop or illustrator to design the labels!

I think eventually I want to go retail with this, but that's a long way away.

My biggest worry is that people will just glance over a Kickstarter for essentially a nose balm. I'm also worried that no one will want it since there's a bit of a stigma against sticking your finger up your nose, as that's honestly the best way we've figured out to apply it.
 
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woken

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My biggest worry is that people will just glance over a Kickstarter for essentially a nose balm. I'm also worried that no one will want it since there's a bit of a stigma against sticking your finger up your nose, as that's honestly the best way we've figured out to apply it.

Not true. You also need to incorporate a bit about how kickstarter works in your video.
You don’t need to necessarily show how it is applied.
Not all dildos show you how to use them yet people know how to use them. LOL
 

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They will glance over it more at the store. On Kickstarter you get a chance to explain and pitch the story and science behind something. On the shelves you don’t get that.
True. I do have an active ingredient in it, so do you know anything about what I would have to do with the FDA? It's already been approved as a drug, but I was looking around and it seems like new products including it need to be registered or something.
 

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After doing some medical research, I realize some of the things that I had, aren’t recommended by a lot of health experts to put inside of the nostril. With that sad but also helpful realization, I’m definitely gonna have to work on re-formulating it somewhat.
 

Zooman009

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Keep the original effective formula, whip up a batch, go get some professional branding together that will serve as your primary marketing material as you start your first legitimate campaign. Try to keep it all under a grand to start and get it done this month!
You mentioned fiverr in an earlier post, is it possible to get decent marketing materials and branding from there at an affordable price?
 

Zooman009

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I looked at FDA resources and it does say that something is only classified as a drug if marketed to for non cosmetic purposes. So I think I’ll need to get creative with the marketing. Similar how that ice lotion stuff never strictly said much other than moisturizing.

Edit: The active ingredient that I want already has an official monograph from the FDA which means I shouldn’t have to worry about getting pre-approval. This way I can market the benefits without getting in trouble.
 
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Let me be very very clear about what I mean when I say you need to market this.

It needs to have a commercial and it needs to be like these..


Now, if you just mean making some logos, some packaging design, etc. Use Fiverr.

But you need to sell this thing and make something that captivates and clearly educates why someone should use your product to solve their problem.

And it doesn't have to be expensive to do this, it just needs to be good.

These videos are great and great ideas for creating your own commercials. I am planning on doing the same once I get my idea brought up a bit more. Still working on details of my own product. And just taking it one step at a time. Learning what I need to in order to complete my next goal. Not over focusing on the end goal of a final product.
 

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Short update:

The test bottles for filling arrived today and I finally managed to fill the first bottle with it. Huge hassle. I'm gonna need to buy some sort of syringe to more effectively fill the bottles. But the bottles work well!

One of the manufacturers that I hit up got back to me and let me know that they don't make stuff with one of my ingredients, but I'm not too worried since there are a lot of other people out there.

Overall good progress so far.

Probably need to work on marketing materials now. Which means I gotta bottle some more and find people willing to try it and get me some testimonials!

So fun

Edit: I watched the ads that Johnny Boy shared and I have a few ideas brewing in my head for ads already. Which is good. Just gotta get them onto video
 
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woken

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Short update:

The test bottles for filling arrived today and I finally managed to fill the first bottle with it. Huge hassle. I'm gonna need to buy some sort of syringe to more effectively fill the bottles. But the bottles work well!

One of the manufacturers that I hit up got back to me and let me know that they don't make stuff with one of my ingredients, but I'm not too worried since there are a lot of other people out there.

Overall good progress so far.

Probably need to work on marketing materials now. Which means I gotta bottle some more and find people willing to try it and get me some testimonials!

So fun

Edit: I watched the ads that Johnny Boy shared and I have a few ideas brewing in my head for ads already. Which is good. Just gotta get them onto video
If you’re looking to bottle it yourself, you’ll need one of these of something similar.
It’s not that expensive and will make your process smoother. ( see what i did there?:rofl:)


edit: you don’t need this, or a thermal printer, or anything else until you have demand for your product.
 

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Zooman009

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Alright. I think I'm gonna start doing weekly updates so you guys can see what happens as I go through the "Desert of Desertion."

Honestly I haven't gotten that far since last week on Wednesday, but I did do a poll on my Instagram complaining about the dryness of my nose every winter.

On that post, I added a poll to see how many people agreed and a whopping 77% of them said they had a dry nose in the winter too.

Next up, I'm gonna reach out to some of those people and see if they'd like to try my stuff.
 
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This is very important and will save you thousands of dollars and possibly months or years of your life.

Get sales before anything else.

Whether it's putting together a SUPER professional kickstarter/crowdfunding-type thing
Or making really good ads (like purple mattress
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BvwpjaGZCQ&ab_channel=Purple
)

Or whatever...

You need to be able to prove that it can get sales.

Make video content explaining it in a very professional way.

I'm talking Harmon bros. level quality.

Or make a rock solid instagram page and start paying micro-influencers to review your product.

Or make youtube videos "How to fix dry nose" and make tons of them.

Sponsored blog posts...etc...you get the idea.

Sell it, before you ever pay anyone to bottle it up. It doesn't matter if you piss off 10 customers. You need to prove that you can push a button and get orders rolling in.

This will save you SO much money and more importantly, TIME. But since you work for little pay, time and money are the same thing for you right now, so don't blow it when you could be operating intelligently.

So many people in your shoes are STUPID because they don't get EVIDENCE they can get SALES. They think you set things up and then get sales. No, you get sales and a reason to invest and set things up. Don't be like the thousands of people who start a business and 'take a risk' only to f*ck it all up by not proving demand. Business is not that risky, being stupid is risky. Always test demand. It's okay to dupe 10 people into 'buying' a product that isn't ready yet, just don't take their money. They will forgive you.
Thank you so much for this post. I love learning from other people. With you telling me about getting demand before making a product, I feel like it saved me from losing a lot of time and money. What are some of the ways you go about test demand to see if people will actually pay for you product, not just say they will? Do you make a an entire landing page, or something to that magnitude?
 

Johnny boy

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this is a great recent post about it
 
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Zooman009

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this is a great recent post about it
This thread's idea of "pretotyping" is essentially what you said with Kickstarter.

I love the idea, and I get the clever marketing ideas that need to be accounted for, but recently I've noticed MJ's ideas on testing or sampling for customers. Which is something I really thing would be good in order to get traction.

However, it doesn't really seem to be easy to give even a video demo of the product on a Kickstarter. Honestly I feel like the only real thing I can rely on is testimonials to market it, since it's kinda hard to convey a dry nose and improvement of it as it's in your head.

I'm still pushing through with this. But dang man.
 

olli_23

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Nice thread.. I think it's really worth testing out this idea with the great suggestions that are given. I can completely relate with how hard it is to get going. Sometimes you just need to push through to completion and actually complete your first test. Then, try to improve on it... It doesn't need to be perfect from the first time!
 

olli_23

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Just an idea. Try to find 5 people who have this issue. Let them test the product. Then let them talk in front of the camera and give them their testimonial. Use a compilation of this as a video ad.
 
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Zooman009

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Weekly update

I'm gonna be honest. With Christmas and everything going on last week, absolutely nothing happened...

I got incredibly distracted and didn't do anything, which is annoying cause I had a lot of free time as well. I can't even justify it.

Luckily I just sent out to my followers asking if anyone dealing with it, wanted a free tube. Since I do have a working formula that is safe.

Hopefully if anyone says yes, they'll use it and I can see what they think.
I'll probably also reach out to some of the original people from the poll to see if they're interested.

Sidenote: I messaged MJ through the texting channel after I learned that he lives like 10 minutes away from me after his latest YouTube video. He responded and thanked me for it and wished me best of luck, which I thought was pretty cool.
 

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