Idea Generation To Execution: Fastlane Millionaire's Step By Step Guide

[MTF]

1. Goggles with chlorine get foggy after some use.

Every 2-3 months I buy a new set of goggles and trunks.

Have you tried Aqua Sphere Kaiman goggles? They should last longer than 2-3 months.

Also, do you swim year round in a swimming pool? I'm pretty sure you have some awesome open water swimming venues there, so you could train outside at least 3 months each year.

Having said that, I'm subjective here as I hate swimming pools and how they mess up my skin (which is why I pretty much stopped swimming outside of the open water season).

As a side note, I wish there were swimming pools that were chlorine-free yet still safe for swimming. I know there are some natural pools - 7 Natural Swimming Pools That Are Completely Chlorine-Free but they're all outside (understandably - the plants need light).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[DougRMR]

After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:

• This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
• The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
• You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
• My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
• If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.

Prelude:

What do I need?

• An Amazon seller account
• Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
   • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
   • What ingredients should X avoid?
   • What do people with X have to be careful of?
3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?

OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

1. People with blonde hair.
2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
   • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
   • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
   • Hydration
   • Heat
   • Sun
   • Fading
   • Staining
   • Using things with dye's
   • Chlorine
   • Harsh Chemicals
   • Using color-safe hair care products
4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
   • Hats
   • Scrunchies
   • Sunscreen
   • Lotions
   • Shower water
   • Going swimming
5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.

That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase. Research Phase and then finally comes the Testing Phase.

EDIT:
Here is my next post in the series: The Preliminary Testing Phase

Just to add for the benefit of everyone, since I've had very interesting results following your steps: Once you find a solution, I suggest you Google "solution + problem + forum" and see how many other people have figured the solution out. Also, that scholar Google thing is a God send!

Anyways, I do have a question. It turns out this solution I found is actually an umbrella solution for many other things that is already in the market. It just so happens (from what I can tell) the niche that has the problem I looked up hasn't caught up that this can help. Is it worth it to make a separate brand and marketing plan for this specific niche even though this solution is marketed in other places? I don't know if this makes sense.

To put it simply: there is a supplement out there that has helped a ton of people feel relief over a problem. A niche of people (which is the one I found) haven't seemed to realize that this crosses over to them and can help them. I also don't know if the niche is big enough, though. Thank you!

 

[NeoDialectic]

Just to add for the benefit of everyone, since I've had very interesting results following your steps: Once you find a solution, I suggest you Google "solution + problem + forum" and see how many other people have figured the solution out. Also, that scholar Google thing is a God send!

Anyways, I do have a question. It turns out this solution I found is actually an umbrella solution for many other things that is already in the market. It just so happens (from what I can tell) the niche that has the problem I looked up hasn't caught up that this can help. Is it worth it to make a separate brand and marketing plan for this specific niche even though this solution is marketed in other places? I don't know if this makes sense.

To put it simply: there is a supplement out there that has helped a ton of people feel relief over a problem. A niche of people (which is the one I found) haven't seemed to realize that this crosses over to them and can help them. I also don't know if the niche is big enough, though. Thank you!

That is usually a GREAT thing for someone starting out. It means you have an easy time making the product or testing the product. It is obviously more likely to be encroached by competitors faster, but success is success.

 

[NeoDialectic]

@MJ DeMarco , I wanted to add a link to the Testing Phase to the original post so new lurkers could see them back to back. But it seems like I can't edit the post anymore to do that. Is there a cutoff to how long after the post was created that it can be edited? Here is what I wanted to add:

Here is my next post in the series: The Testing Phase

So you're implying that if the test had a lot of momentum, it's better to improve on the current product and win back your audience with the momentum you gained rather than starting again

Yes. A listing that is already selling has so many things going for it over a new listing. It's likely already ranked in applicable search terms. Even outside of that, we can't prove it, but we do think momentum itself on a listing becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where Amazon gives you more traffic more easily between rankings and ads. So let's say you are selling X per day and run out of stock. When you get back in stock, you may start selling alot worse till you build some momentum again. The newer the listing the more the effect. A 10 year old listing with massive sales history will be affected less and may even get it's own boost as your repeat customers juice up the sales as soon as it's back in stock.

On the other hand, it does depend on what you mean by bad. If your listing is 3 stars, then I would say you should start a new one with your new and improved version. If you are already selling good with 3 stars, that tells me your product is very much in demand (or there aren't any other options) and a new listing should gain traction fast too then. But if it's 4+ stars, then it will just get better as more people have your better product and leave glowing feedback.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Hey man. I'm having trouble finding a specific manufacturer. So far, I know about three companies that are selling the supplements that help my niche. One of them sells them incredibly cheap. However, I can't seem to find a manufacturer for these supplements, save only for the active ingredient itself which needs to be kept at incredibly low temperatures (I'm pretty sure you can only do it in lab conditions, it's like 14 degrees F).

I'm at a loss here, though, there's probably something I'm missing because there has to be a way to access this type of manufacturing, seeing as there are a few companies that use that active ingredient. I've used importyeti and American Chemical Suppliers to maybe find some leads on who the suppliers might be but I can't get a foothold on that specific supplement. Much less than the average stuff like vitamins, melatonin, gummies, etc. Do you have any suggestions you could give when one seems to be at a dead end in this regard?

I'm gonna keep looking for about a week more but if I can't find a foothold, I might have to change to another thing. Hopefully not

Good Question. So, this is an example of a situation that I would personally usually move onto the next product as there is always so much opportunity out there. UNLESS I really believe in the product. If I did, then I would continue searching as this issue you are having is an ENORMOUS plus and barrier to entry for competitors if you can figure it out.

Exactly where I would look next depends on the type of ingredient itself. It's all a bit of a fishing expedition, but every clue brings you closer and closer.

For example, if it is an Ayurveda type ingredient, that would lead me to Indian manufacturers. But I would check out other countries as well. I would personally go to somewhere like Alibaba, pull up 20-30 supplement manufacturers from various countries (or specific ones if I know it comes from a specific country) that make things that are similar or in a similar category. Contact all of them and ask them if they make something like that. Here's the important step... When they say no, ask them if they know who does and if they can give you a recommendation of where to look next. 19 may say they don't know. But you would be surprised that there are a few that are willing to help and share their in depth field knowledge. If it leads no where, I would keep expanding my contact circle.

The thing is, as you said, you KNOW that it is being made somewhere. So unless you don't think the juice is worth the squeeze, your only choice is to keep going. So if that would lead no where I may start becoming more and more creative with my approaches. Contacting researchers in the field (papers usually have contact info) and asking them. Contacting the companies themselves acting as a customer and tailoring my questions in such a way to squeeze out any further info. I bet it is very possible to figure out what country they are getting this ingredient from. As a customer, this is very important knowledge for you after all!

We have bumped into a similar problem before and at the end what we found was that the reason the ingredient was so effective is it was an Ayurvedic offspring of an actual pharmaceutical. Which put it squarely in a gray area legally. The way to import it would be to deal with outfits directly in India as big USA manufacturing companies do not want to deal with that type of liability. When we were just starting out, we may have seized the opportunity and ran with it. But since we were already successful, we decided the possible liabilities weren't worth it for us. So keep in mind that this may be the reason you can't find it in the USA (or not....tough to know baed of the details you provided).

Hope that helps. Please don't forget to chime back in and let us know your progress!

 

[DougRMR]

Hope that helps. Please don't forget to chime back in and let us know your progress!

Next update. I'd have to fork in $2000 minimum to get some samples (which is crazy good in the grand scheme of things). I don't have the money to spare now but I'm having trouble gaging whether the starting investment is worth it, considering I don't even know the niche's response to this. I know you said you should invest as little as is possible to not waste too much gaging what the market wants but this might be a good barrier to entry, if we're looking at this the right way. I just don't want to make the investment and find out that it'll be a dud.

I see a few alternatives: either 1. make a fake mockup of a website where I "sell" the supplements and just say that they're sold out and see how people respond to it then (however, I'm not sure whether this will tell me how Amazon's audience will respond) or 2. Open an amazon seller account and have the product up but sold out and see if I can gage that way (don't even know if this is possible, probably not)

I'd love to hear your response. Either way, these past weeks have taught me more on finding a need than I ever had.

 

[ArmanK]

I think "a more effective treatment for cold sores" obviously sounds like a lucrative good idea. What your post seems to be missing is "and I've been using X ingredient/product on mine and it helps clear it up in days! Looking online, no one seems to selling this ingredient to help with cold sores".

Don't take this the wrong way, but otherwise, your post sounds like "Do you think curing cancer is a good idea? Is it worth me digging deeper?".

thanks for replying here and to my pm. just wanted to share what i already mentioned to you in case others are following along or have additional insigh to share (im all ears)!

after doing some more research i think that it could be useful to specifically target new moms who are getting cold sores. because babies can face severe issues if they are exposed to cold sores. even leading to death in some cases.

and with new moms being in constant contact, kissing, hugging, touching their babies i would feel like they would be desperate to find a solution marketed to them.

also found out that 67% of the world has hsv-1 which causes cold sores. so there seems to be a huge TAM.

but as @NeoDialectic pointed out in his pm to me - OTC (over the counter) health products like this can face heavy regulations.

i have interest in this because it has affected me personally for so many years but i dont want to get married to a single idea.

curious what other readers think? any other obvious roadblocks i may be missing?

 

[NeoDialectic]

Sure,

1. What I mean is, that a lot of people within the different FB communities that I joined to familiarize, myself and learn about AMZ have messaged and dm'ed about helping with product research. I considered this because I was thinking that maybe I had not done enough product research and the majority of these people in the forums had.

2. I was waking if there was anything else I should do in addition to the steps you laid out for product research/validation.

3. Earlier this year I read 12 Months to 1M (Ryan Moran's book) and in the book, he mentions joining FB groups and doing research to help build an audience, help validate your product and allow others to follow along so I did that. The product is something I would use myself and am passionate about. Looking on AMZ I see that there are 5 sellers selling a similar product in this niche but all have a sub-4 star rating, and have under 100 reviews. Looking over H10 I see that there are other products in this niche that have over 10k sales a month and still have an overall sub-4 star review. This makes me think that is a market for this product, people are possibly looking for this product but want it to be more convenient and I believe I can make it more convenient.

4. Yes, absolutely. I can make this product more convenient, make the changes to this product thave buyers have suggested, and likely make it for a lower cost but I do not want to create a race to the bottom. I believe I can also market it to a different segment of buyers who none of the other sellers are marketing to.

5. The general field is supplements but it isnt pre-workout powder or protein powders (I know a tough and expensive field to get into).

6. The first batch (without AMZ fees) is going to cost me roughly $4500 shipped to me, lower if I ship to AMZ but a few sellers in the various FB AMZ communities have said to not tell the manufacturers where you'll be selling so they do not compete with you.

7. It is not, I realistically have 10k to invest initially. Do you think I should have more?

Thanks for the reply.

1. I can't speak for these "researchers". I'm sure maybe someone finds value in them, but I personally would leave those messages on read.

2. We are big advocates of taking things one step at a time and really testing things out. However at a certain point, depending on the type of product, you need to make an investment and get the actual product made. Don't keep researching and action faking. Either figure out a way to test the product based on ways I have described in this thread, or invest.

I recently wrote a thread that may have some value to you that is kind of on this topic HERE

7. No, that is enough.

I think it sounds like you have done sufficient research on the topic. As mentioned in the bulletpoints, it seems like oyu have to decide how you should test it next. Either figure out a way to test the market for your idea without making the $4,500 investment to get it professionally made.....Invest the $4,500 to get the product made and test that way.....Or move on.

Sure, the short version is that I was looking on Alibaba but decided to search Reddit and Upwork to see where others where going. Searching both overwhelmingly lead me to a website called 1688.com. 1688.com is the non-US version of Alibaba. On 1688 the suppliers do not speak English and you will likely not be able to search the website unless you have a vpn.

I got on Upwork and got a sourcing agent and started looking for a supplier, I reached out to 10 of them (via my sourcing agent) with a generic formula with my specifications and once the sourcing agent received them he sent them to me.

If it is a supplement...... Be careful sourcing those from China. I'm not saying you can't do it succesfully. I am saying there is a decent chance you are gonna get a crap product with crap ingredients that wouldn't pass American QC standards.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[NeoDialectic]

Update on Idea-to-Execution Amazon plan:

Halfway done on the landing page, completely done with the product copy. Finally got the hang of designing exactly what I wanted to do. After I'm done with the website itself, gonna optimize it and make it responisve. After that, will start with the FB ads, most of which the copy is already done.

A few things I learned:
-Google Scholar is crazy valuable, especially for supplements and stuff that could use evidence to help "the rub" of your product.
-You'll probably get a million roadblocks before you even start. The reason it took me this long to even get halfway into the website was because the domain/servers started to get wonky for some reason, my laptop's only charger got busted up and the things I had in mind were 10 times harder than I imagined. Still, I'm glad I'm getting things done.

Kinda impatient, cause it feels like I'm action-faking in a way (since I'm not market testing yet) but I know I'll get there little by little.

Dunno if anyone's still hanging on to this idea but would love to hear anybody else's experience

1 million times YES on basically everything you just said.

Your roadblock example is so true that it hurts. It's a running intra-office quip. If you asked me how long it would take me to build our last business that was selling 100s of products a day from start to finish... I would say maybe a few days of pedal to the medal action ( Or at WORST a few months if you include the time to have the product created and in hand..where most the time is just waiting on that shipment)........ Surface level it feels 100% true. But anyways, let me setup a newsletter for our products really quick. I can't imagine it taking more than 30 minutes considering there are already services that help you with this....Which turns into a back and forth of trying to get your newsletter emails to land in the customers inbox instead of spam. 10 email templates, 3 email services, 2 domain servers, and 3 weeks later you finally finished your 30 minute job. Oh, and it kind of looks like a 6th grader made it in Microsoft word with some word art..So someone should probably do something about that. Dont worry, we will get to it shortly....a.k.a.THREE YEARS LATER

It's all part of not just the struggles of making something new, but your growth as an entrepreneur. My first website took ages to make. Now, I've made new professional looking websites ready to sell/test in literally a day from start to finish. But if I wanted to add a new feature to it that I haven't dealt with before, it may realistically add days.

 

[Dionysos]

Man, I want to thank you (and your partner) for putting all of this out here (for free)! Way to give back to the community.

This is so detailed, and to the point that you almost have to come up with a great idea..

What I like is that you can start working immediately on the process of finding the problem. I will be using this technique to find a good idea!

 

[BrazenFoxx]

Something I remember from the TMF book was to ask people who are using products regularly for their feedback. I asked my family for help with sportswear/accessories and gathering a small group of people to give feedback and within 24 hrs I have a product that they wish they had - meeting their needs and solving a problem.
Fastlane product ideas from friends, family or local groups. I haven't learnt the art of having my own ideas... yet... but thankfully there's help close to home.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Hey @NeoDialectic

thank you for your helpful thread and all your other valuable posts.
Let's say you've launched the sunscreen for blondes/people with died hair, how would you grow the company from there? Would you launch other products for ppl. with died hair - even if they exist in an abundance already (e.g. shampoo for died hair) or would you leave it as a "One-product-brand" and go through the framework again to launch another business?

For context, I've built 2 ecommerce businesses in the past (both exclusively on Amazon, sold the 2nd one to an aggregator).
I've used the 'review method' for the first brand, found my first successful product which I was able to improve but struggled to add additional products.
Eventually I decided on a 'niche' and added more products but they don't really go together for the same person mostly. e.g. A sattle for a woman's bicycle and brakes for high end mountain-bikes.

So I would describe that business as a cashflow-'brand' but it's hard to build something off amazon with it since I don't serve a distinct group of people.

With the second brand (the one I've sold) I had a similar problem - found a product which was doing very well in another country & brought it to Germany where it was not available. But again I was at a loss on how to grow from there since I didn't found products that made sense to add to the brand.

My goal is to build a company which can be sold for 8 figures and I've used a similar approach to the one you've described here to find ideas, but so far I've only came up with single-products that will - if successful - result in another low 6-figure profit/year brand but no plan to go from there.

So my question comes down to, how do you turn the "Golden Goose product idea" in a sustainable brand, which has authority in it's niche, isn't out of business when existing brands copy the idea & can be sold for millions?

Really good question.

I don't think there could possibly be an answer that will be right for all types of brands and products.

The real question is if you've built a brand or not. If you haven't built a brand, then you may as well just use the framework for a new product. If you have built a brand, then I would do the following two:

1. Look for other complaints in your niche and try to solve them with new products or modify existing products to solve a complaint. The process would obviously be a modified version of the framework since you have already selected for a bunch of things.
2. Make copies of popular products your competitors make in your niche. Yea, you aren't solving new problems but if you built up a brand name, in most instances it would be lucrative to leverage that. We had many products that only putted along and never did fantastic, but 50k a year is still big money to just leave on the table! I would still recommend adding some kind of value-add to the product so you aren't just literally a copy. But the difference between #2 and #1 is that here you aren't specifically looking for untapped markets but just providing the customer with another choice that is hopefully at least a little better than competitors.

However keep in mind that the actual answer is context dependent. It really depends on your products, brands and business issues. While we could have added like 30 products to leverage our brand name, we didn't. We could only spread ourselves so thin and it would complicate the operation more than we wanted. With other business circumstances, adding too many products may dilute the brand.

So for the sunscreen example, if I hit success with my primary products, I would do the following:

1. I would probably start thinking along the lines of "Is there anything else dyed hair/blonde people use that could discolor their hair?" or "Could sunscreen that does not stain hair be used for other circumstances". First question is pretty intuitive, but an example for the second question could be made from my trip to Florida this week. The car I rented had white staining on the backs of the seats by the end of the week. I realized it was the sunscreen rubbing off me. I could see an entire market for sunscreen that doesn't leave markings on things and it would be consistent with the theme of this brand (if that's the way we took it).
2. I would also be looking at making copies of established products. For example a shampoo for people with blonde hair. As mentioned, I would try and add some kind of value that separates my shampoo from others. I would research what ingredients are good for dyed hair, find one that most my competitors don't use and add it. The difference between this and the product from #1 is that the idea wasn't market derived at all. I don't know if the market is looking for X ingredient. But it will likely still get sales just because of my brand name and there is always a chance it will hit big too!

I think your example of having a brand that sells saddles for women's bikes and adding high end brakes is a good example of a poor addition (without knowing the specifics!). You will likely have a hard time getting purchases on the second item because you aren't really leveraging your brand correctly. Let's say that you sufficiently branded your product in a such a way that the customer associated Brand X with your product (When someone asks them where they got their saddle, do they reply with saying it's brand X or for their friend just to Amazon saddles and get one that looks like it).

Taking that for granted....The first thing you should ask is something along the lines of "If someone likes my product, what will it make them think my brand is an authority on?". The more specific, the better the additional product could leverage the brand name. Off the top of my head, I would think that when they buy your woman's bike saddle and they love it, they would likely think you make great saddles or great woman specific bike products. Offer them one of those and it will get some action solely from being associated with your brand. So if you offer woman shorts. You could advertise it as designed to fit the woman's body and work in synergy with your woman's saddle to offer the most comfortable ride. See how that fits into your brand like a glove, while high performance brakes just sounds like it's a completely separate product and why would they want to buy your brand over brands that have a name in the field? Their only tie to each other is that they are bike parts. For your brand to earn the authority on something as broad as "bike parts", you would likely have to have many successful products across many bike parts.

I'll think about expanding this whole branding idea into a new thread as a few other things could probably be said about it. But hopefully this post helps push you in the right direction!

 

[sev969]

Paid the supplier for the material and the factory that will be making my product. All exciting stuff! Will update this thread in a year when my shipment arrives haha

Meanwhile, I spoke to my old man about starting a home cleaning business so I can get some tips because he runs a reasonably successful auto detailing business. Then instead of giving me tips, he pitched me on partnering with him to run his business. I took up the offer to quit my slowlane job and work with him. Time to go annoy ICK

 

[NeoDialectic]

Paid the supplier for the material and the factory that will be making my product. All exciting stuff! Will update this thread in a year when my shipment arrives haha

Meanwhile, I spoke to my old man about starting a home cleaning business so I can get some tips because he runs a reasonably successful auto detailing business. Then instead of giving me tips, he pitched me on partnering with him to run his business. I took up the offer to quit my slowlane job and work with him. Time to go annoy ICK

Thats great to hear, but it sounds like you really buried the lead! You should have started with the fact that your dad owns a successful auto detailing business. In and of itself that may not be a fastlane business, but it opens SO MANY fastlane opportunities.

Off the top of my head:

1. Make your own cleaner products. You could go generic, but even better is start taking the time to experiment with all sorts of different chemicals. I'm sure auto detailing forums are a wealth of knowledge if you dig deep. Make a unique good product (even if it's not necessarily better than the best) and start using it. Start offering it to customers. Before you know it you will be making more off your products than your services.
2. Expand into more offices and cities. I know I've seen threads on here of people doing it with landscaping businesses. They may be able to give you tips.
3. Think about what unique services you may provide "while you're detailing the car". I know that is what happened with the pressure washing business. I think landscapers started offering that while they were there and next thing they know they were making a ton more doing that than landscaping!
4. Thousands of businesses across the USA run a detailing company. Which is great! You will be knee deep in a field with alot of B2B opportunity. Keep your eye open at all times for opportunities. You should always keep in mind "What could make me do this faster, better, or easier" for every single service you offer and thing you do. Experiment doing things in different ways. It may slow you down at first, but it only takes one success. That one success will improve your service provided and it will open the door to possibly even making a business out of it.

Even if you don't expand it, this will be a great opportunity to learn and pick up some skills running a business. Just keep in mind that you should try to prevent getting into a rut where you are just spinning your wheels and not expanding but also not quitting just because "atleast this is a business". Unless you just prefer the work, running a business isn't inherently any better than working a slow lane job if it isn't providing you with more benefits. Many brick and mortar businesses become brass handcuffs (like golden handcuffs but without the high income!)

 

[fastlane_dad]

Hey Neo, i apsolutely and utterly love this golden piece of information that you've shared with all of the beautiful users of the "Fastlane Forum". I must say that you changed my paradigm of percieving the world. In the process changing my young entrepenurial head. I read your post a few days ago and i started making random business ideas for the fun of it, im sure i will stumble upon a fantastic idea that i will later use. Changed my minsdet definitely. As of currently writing this, im just a guy with some extraordinary goals and wishes, trying to be the best version of myself mixed with a little bit of arrogance, why not hehehe. I currently haven't made any money(age, but is that really an excuse?). But that will soon change, thanks to me, everyone i follow and amazing people's advices like yours, that want to help a young guy with discipline and goals.
If you have any advice for me, that will help me to succed in this modern day and age, where to start... i will gladly listen to it and be like a sponge.
I look up to the people like Mj and im sure i will meet you all someday so we can discuss about.. everything!
All the love, all the power!

Many of the threads @NeoDialectic has started on here are definitely GOLD, for framing your mind, and starting to put a plan of action to work TODAY (left foot in front of the right).

Also, take a look here for some threads I posted on mindset, persevering and dealing with family and friends who aren't supportive.

Actionable steps to begin / mindset
Dealing with slowlane family/friends
Enterpreneurship as a way of life

Let us know if you have any further questions or ways to help set you up in the right direction.

Most important, is to take out a notepad and jot down 5 tasks you can work on today to move you in the direction of your goals. Knock those off, then rinse and repeat tomorrow. @NeoDialectic and I did that to the tune of 15 years before we had our first successful exit.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[DCDeuce]

@DCDeuce That's fantastic progress. Care to chime in on any lessons learned so far, or what you should of done more of or different?

In which ways was Vine a surprise ? Are you clearing any profit after your advertising expenses?

How did you zero in on the final product / idea that you went with? Do you have a plan to expand the line currently?

Lessons learned....

Well, the first lesson I learned is probably not to use Amazon Vine, I read a good amount of mixed reviews prior to signing up with Vine. I made 15 units of my product available and the first review that came in was a negative review from Vine. The review is one sentence and says my product doesn't work after one use. I clearly stated on the company's website and in the listing that my product needs to be used for at least two weeks to see the effects. So now I have to hope a few people leave 5 star reviews.

If anyone reading this decides to go the AMZ route, I would skip Vine altogether, the reviewers are intentionally harsh and AMZ charges you to ship the units to the customers AND it cost money to be a part of Vine. So I lost product and spent money on the shipping only to have a bad review. *insert facepalm emoji here*

The second lesson I learned was to get good enough out to the door and don't reinvent the wheel. At first, I obsessed over every detail because in my head it has to be "perfect" and how I must create something new and novel. I know this sounds cliche but I have a buddy who had a great idea for his first venture into AMZ, after going back and forth with two manufacturers for 7 months, he woke up three weeks ago to find out someone else had a very similar idea and released it on AMZ. Yikes - 7 months down the drain. Get good enough out the door and don't reinvent the wheel. My product is already being made, I just make it in a different way.

The third lesson - have some savings to outsource. If I had to do everything on my own I would probably still not be up on AMZ. Coding the website, writing the scripts, product videos, product photography, product renderings, back and forth with AMZ for multiple different things, learning AMZ PPC, the website blog, and SEO...a lot goes into this and I chose to outsource due to the sheer time commitment. It's obviously not impossible to learn all these things but as with my first business, I learned that others can do it better - especially the product photos and renderings.

The next time around (if there is a next time) I would probably do a bit more product research and I would have chosen a product with considerably lower competition. My chosen category has steep competition but I've somehow been able to amass 8 sales (got another sale since posting my previous message) in 6 days. I do not know if the trend of sales will continue with my first review being a bad review but I guess time will tell.

To be completely honest, I zeroed in on my product by listening to MJ sounds cliche, I know but a friend of mine who is a woman said "why isn't this made this way" (not her words exactly because it would completely give away my product). It hit me like a ton of bricks, she thought nothing of it but I saw opportunity. I hopped on Amazon, my variation wasn't being made, I searched through 7 maybe 8 pages, and google searched the keywords in every way possible - still wasn't there. For me, that was enough. I did more product research but those were the main parts.

I'm sure I'll have other lessons learned nuggets to drop but if anyone has any questions feel free to reach out, but now I need to get back to addressing this review, thankfully it's not a 1-star review but it might as well be.

Good luck to anyone else on their journey, hope to see you in the Fastlane

 

[NeoDialectic]

Not coming in to put holes in this thread, I've been reading some of your posts @NeoDialectic and have found them valuable enough to chime in with this question:

I ran an Amazon business back when it was just getting cool to do it in 2015. And, I got hosed. I did a TON of research, picked my niche, nailed a couple of product launches, and was generating around 5K/mo in revenue, but spending more than that in advertising + COGS and inventory management, fees to Amazon, etc. So, I was in the red, and losing money daily.

Competitors kept coming in, doing something similar, because there's no real way to avoid that, and you're completely owned and operated by Amazon's will with algorithm's and with whoever has the most money can win, pay for others to give you bad reviews, push up their rankings, literally copy everything you do, and crush you.

Two questions this leaves me with:

- What would be your advice for someone getting into an e-commerce space and nailing a niche where they aren't going to just get crushed by someone who has more money that can steal their idea?

- For someone who doesn't want to venture down that rabbit hole again with Amazon having full control and with e-comm being easy enough for anyone to steal and throw a competing product on Amazon, do you have other execution tips / advice / threads you can point me to, on how to generate ideas for solving problems that are not going to easily be stolen and beaten out by someone with more cash on Amazon?

My immediate question would be what kind of product are you selling and what was your value add? Does it abide by the principles that were laid out on this post?

Your pricing should reflect the fact that Amazon takes it's fees, advertising is expensive, products are expensive to make, and that the Lamborghini isn't going to pay for itself.

I did my best to describe an easy way to find a profitable niche. Going along with my sunscreen example.....If you started having success with it, I don't think you will have competition for a good amount of time. More than long enough to make a name for yourself and enough profit that you shouldn't be outspent right away. Sunscreen brands are not constantly searching Amazon for what new sunscreens people are selling. If people are noticing you right away, the failure was likely during the idea generation phase. You may have went into an area with one or two small competitors already, with too small of a value add that was easy to copy.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Maggalon]

I`m delighted with your work, man. Looking forward for next parts.

 

[Deleted107976]

Great work, looking forward to seeing the journey!

 

[DougRMR]

After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:

• This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
• The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
• You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
• My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
• If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.

Prelude:

What do I need?

• An Amazon seller account
• Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
   • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
   • What ingredients should X avoid?
   • What do people with X have to be careful of?
3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?

OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

1. People with blonde hair.
2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
   • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
   • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
   • Hydration
   • Heat
   • Sun
   • Fading
   • Staining
   • Using things with dye's
   • Chlorine
   • Harsh Chemicals
   • Using color-safe hair care products
4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
   • Hats
   • Scrunchies
   • Sunscreen
   • Lotions
   • Shower water
   • Going swimming
5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.

That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase.

This is great stuff. Loving the value and will definitely stay tuned for your other posts.

Though, can you clarify what the Interactions List is, exactly? I can't seem to grasp it. Is it referring to what could cause/solve the audience's problem in every day life?

 

[SDFreedomFighter]

Thanks for letting us peek behind the curtain, looking forward to the next installment of this thread!

 

[RamboCambo]

Love the thread! Do you have any tips on the execution part? Say with your hair product idea, do you bring in experts to help you make the business, source supply, learn the steps yourself before proceeding? When do you know to stop learning/know enough to actually make that product or sell that service?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[JorgeInmortal]

After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:

• This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
• The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
• You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
• My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
• If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.

Prelude:

What do I need?

• An Amazon seller account
• Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
   • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
   • What ingredients should X avoid?
   • What do people with X have to be careful of?
3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?

OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

1. People with blonde hair.
2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
   • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
   • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
   • Hydration
   • Heat
   • Sun
   • Fading
   • Staining
   • Using things with dye's
   • Chlorine
   • Harsh Chemicals
   • Using color-safe hair care products
4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
   • Hats
   • Scrunchies
   • Sunscreen
   • Lotions
   • Shower water
   • Going swimming
5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.

That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase.

this really gave me a lot of clarity on how to get the process right. Thank you so much!

 

[arivera]

That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase

Great, just a suggestion: try to quickly post the next phase; so as not to lose enthusiasm.

 

[NeoDialectic]

This is fantastic, and a lot of what I do when copywriting. Question: if your first iteration was that "milquetoast" would you change the name of the second iteration so that you avoided any bad reviews? Thanks so much for your contributions!

I am not 100% sure what you mean. If you got to the point of receiving a bunch of reviews (good or bad), you must have sold alot of items and that is likely a successful test.

Are asking whether you should change the name when going from test to final product , because the test one may have sold well but received a lot of bad feedback because of it's flaws? If so, then it may be a good idea to make a new listing with a new name for your improved product. It would depend on how much momentum your first listing had though.

 

[DougRMR]

Good Question. So, this is an example of a situation that I would personally usually move onto the next product as there is always so much opportunity out there. UNLESS I really believe in the product. If I did, then I would continue searching as this issue you are having is an ENORMOUS plus and barrier to entry for competitors if you can figure it out.

Exactly where I would look next depends on the type of ingredient itself. It's all a bit of a fishing expedition, but every clue brings you closer and closer.

For example, if it is an Ayurveda type ingredient, that would lead me to Indian manufacturers. But I would check out other countries as well. I would personally go to somewhere like Alibaba, pull up 20-30 supplement manufacturers from various countries (or specific ones if I know it comes from a specific country) that make things that are similar or in a similar category. Contact all of them and ask them if they make something like that. Here's the important step... When they say no, ask them if they know who does and if they can give you a recommendation of where to look next. 19 may say they don't know. But you would be surprised that there are a few that are willing to help and share their in depth field knowledge. If it leads no where, I would keep expanding my contact circle.

The thing is, as you said, you KNOW that it is being made somewhere. So unless you don't think the juice is worth the squeeze, your only choice is to keep going. So if that would lead no where I may start becoming more and more creative with my approaches. Contacting researchers in the field (papers usually have contact info) and asking them. Contacting the companies themselves acting as a customer and tailoring my questions in such a way to squeeze out any further info. I bet it is very possible to figure out what country they are getting this ingredient from. As a customer, this is very important knowledge for you after all!

We have bumped into a similar problem before and at the end what we found was that the reason the ingredient was so effective is it was an Ayurvedic offspring of an actual pharmaceutical. Which put it squarely in a gray area legally. The way to import it would be to deal with outfits directly in India as big USA manufacturing companies do not want to deal with that type of liability. When we were just starting out, we may have seized the opportunity and ran with it. But since we were already successful, we decided the possible liabilities weren't worth it for us. So keep in mind that this may be the reason you can't find it in the USA (or not....tough to know baed of the details you provided).

Hope that helps. Please don't forget to chime back in and let us know your progress!

Hey man. I'm doing research in my spare time and although I haven't found any manufacturers for the supplement I have been actively sending inquiries asking about it. Haven't received any replies but doing it now during work hours lol

That being said, will keep you posted if I find anything worthwhile or if I get something new. I'll try your approach for one more week but if I start getting dead ends I might have to look elsewhere.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[DougRMR]

Update: got a "good" response from 3 manufacturers. One claims to have the supplements, the other says "they're pretty sure they can do it" and the last one says they don't sell it but that he can check with others to see. Most of them are from China, btw, if that makes any difference.

The last one sounded genuine but the other two felt a bit sketchy. I dunno if there's something I can do to verify their claims but will keep checking. Thank you for the Alibaba suggestion, I wouldn't have thought of that.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Next update. I'd have to fork in $2000 minimum to get some samples (which is crazy good in the grand scheme of things). I don't have the money to spare now but I'm having trouble gaging whether the starting investment is worth it, considering I don't even know the niche's response to this. I know you said you should invest as little as is possible to not waste too much gaging what the market wants but this might be a good barrier to entry, if we're looking at this the right way. I just don't want to make the investment and find out that it'll be a dud.

I see a few alternatives: either 1. make a fake mockup of a website where I "sell" the supplements and just say that they're sold out and see how people respond to it then (however, I'm not sure whether this will tell me how Amazon's audience will respond) or 2. Open an amazon seller account and have the product up but sold out and see if I can gage that way (don't even know if this is possible, probably not)

I'd love to hear your response. Either way, these past weeks have taught me more on finding a need than I ever had.

Hey, just replied to your PM about your specific product.

Echoing here some of what I said. I do think you should spend some time testing the product, even if ultimately it doesn't necessary translate to Amazon. You may learn some things along the way, the same way you just did about finding a source.

It will also give you time to open your Amazon account and start handling everything they want to open your account. Start that ASAP.

 

[Ayobami23]

The Testing Framework:

You have finally arrived at the most crucial step. Remember, no matter how genius you think your idea is, you are not the market. Entrepreneurship is like gambling. If you are like me, you don't like gambling when the odds are not your favor. So you want to do your best to change your odds from the odds of the player, to the odds of the house. That means having a long term mindset and leaving enough for next time. You may lose this time, but if you learn and keep trying then the odds are in your favor of winning over the long term. That is why I don't recommend blowing all your resources on your first idea. Of course it is possible that you can bet it all on 00 on the roulette table and win. But it is not likely.

So with that in mind, you have to give the idea your spiritual all but not have it ruin you. You can't keep trying when you used all your mana on the first try. This can mean different things to different people. The larger the investment you make, the faster and more accurately you finish this part. Only you can decide what is right for you. @fastlane_dad and I have always bootstrapped as much as we can through the beginning stages. We replaced investment capital demands with creativity. Hopefully I can show you how to do that as well.

This part of the process will rely heavily on you answering the 1st question from the Preliminary Research Example correctly and concisely. You want to try and figure out how you can solve the issue or provide the value to the customer with as little monetary investment as you can. Here are some ways to do this:

• Making something at home
• Repurposing an existing product
• Finding private label alternatives
• Negotiating small samples
• A combination of all these things

This is probably the one step that is the most diverse and difficult to make concise steps for. Most people would be surprised by the type of things you could test. However each type of issue/product may require it's own type of test. Once you have practiced this exercise enough, it will become easier and easier to see the way.

One of the biggest roadblocks people have in their thinking is believing that their product needs to be perfect. That is far from the truth. During your testing phase, the first thing you put out can be rudimentary in most areas as long as it is effective in the specific value you are proposing to solve. Once you get a good market signal from testing, then you can scale up investment on par with the signal and you can pour your heart and soul into the final product. You will find that along the way during the testing phase, you may actually have to adapt your mission statement and end up somewhere completely different!

Another roadblock is thinking that their solution isn't worth the money your customer will give you. If you naturally think this, it may be hard to shake this feeling. But you should be able to solve any guilt associated with this concern easily. This is how we do it...We legitimately want all our customers happy. So we provide a very liberal return policy. If the customer is not satisfied, they get an instant refund and a thank you for giving us a shot. It's no skin off their back. We want everyone to walk away happy. As long as you are solving the customers issue, most people will be happy. Those that aren't, get their money back.

Keep in mind that once you start getting sales, these methods should be phased out and turned into something high quality. The point of this exercise isn't how to make the fastest money by producing the crappiest product. The point is to figure out if you should spend your valuable time and resources on making the best product to solve the problem. Making the best product you can usually means something high quality, well thought through, and just overall something you can be proud of. A better product will get more more happy customers, reorders, more referrals, less refunds, and a leg up on competitors when they finally come.

The Testing Example:

During our research in the previous parts, it became clear that a solution already exists that just isn't marketed this way. Mineral sunscreens do not have the offending chemicals and are widespread. This gives us a wide array of choices.

Side note: Remember when I said a roadblock is thinking your solution isn't worth the money? This is a place where many people would feel that way. They think just because you are selling the customer an existing product, that you are somehow pulling one over on the customer. That is a very incorrect way of looking at things. Knowledge isn't free. My mother wouldn't sit there researching what ingredients won't discolor her hair. She has better things to do with her time. She would just go on Amazon and type color safe sunscreen, or something of the sort. Currently, no one is giving her an option that she could immediately be comfortable buying without doing more digging. You will. There's nothing misleading or bad about that. That is a huge value add. Every time we buy something based on a brand, we do this too. We use the brand as a heuristic to mean "this is a well enough known brand that even though it may not be the absolute best, I think it will be good enough to solve my issue and I am willing to spend a little more for the brand name to ensure that without doing my own research". Most of us do this and are more than willing to pay for this shortcut!​

Different types of product have their own set of testing solutions. Here are a diverse set of examples for this type of product.

The quickest most unethical way
You can create a mock product with 3d renderings. You will either prevent the order from being placed (on your own website) or cancel orders that are placed. Not only may this not be ethical, but there are also other issues. If you are preventing an order being placed by doing something like giving an error during checkout, then you don't actually know if the customer would have went through with it. Carts are abandoned all the time. If you are cancelling orders, this could get you into hot water very fast in most the marketplaces and you may find your account at risk and you stuck at go before you even began. So we do not recommend this route if at all possible.

The quick hands on way
It looks like the fastest ways to have a product in hand to test for this example is by making sunscreen at home.

Side note: Think no one wants your homemade sunscreen? O ye, of little faith. Why don't you type in "sunscreen" into Etsy.com search and see how many sales are happening. Even when the customer knows that it is literally hand made in a random mom's kitchen, they are still more than happy to buy it.​

The tradeoff with this is that you have to do more research into regulations and you have to be willing to get your hands literally messy. This is a completely acceptable solution. We have done the equivalent of this and there is nothing unethical about this as long as you do this legitimately and follow any regulations. Don't let regulations scare you away. You can google "regulations to produce sunscreen" and there will be a ton of info on it, including directly from the FDA. A quick shortcut for regulations on labelling is just to copy existing products labels and change the design elements while keeping the same structure and wording.

The best part about this way is that with enough motivation you could literally have a product in your hands by the end of the day. More realistically you could have something within a week or so. Do the research on how to make one online, buy the ingredients, the bottles, get a local place to print labels and you are on your way! Use google at every step of the way.

• "How do I make a mineral sunscreen"
• "Where do I buy X ingredient"
• "Where do I buy a X color pump bottle"
• "Where do I buy a X color pump"
• "Where can I print a label"

You can either do the designs yourself or hire someone on some place like fiverr.com to do it.

Remember....you aren't optimizing for cutting cost or absolute highest quality here. You just want something "good enough to get the job done" and while still reasonably priced in low quantities.

We wouldn't currently do this as we have money to invest, but this is a decent choice.

The quick hands off way
This is the way we would likely do things right now. I would google for "private label mineral sunscreen" and start calling places. Here are two places that I chose for this example. Keep in mind that I chose them strictly as an example because of how easy it was to find the price. I have never used them and have no idea how good the product is:

https://www.wildwestskincare.com/collections/sunscreen-with-zinc-titanium-dioxide
https://proceuticalspl.com/

The first one doesn't look as visually appealing but I can get singles for $37 or 10 at $20 a piece. The second one looks more professional in my opinion and the minimum order number is $24 at a cost of $25.50 a unit. Many private label companies will give you label templates and even make sure you are following regulation on the label. This may ease some peoples anxiety with doing it yourself.

So for $37 + shipping you can have a real product in your hand and be in the market very quickly! Or you may choose to invest a couple hundred to get a more professional looking starting batch. Again, this depends on your circumstances and goals. Don't forget that you can usually negotiate with these companies. There are dozens that provide these services and with a well thought through phone call you may be able to get a very good product, at a very low quantity and at a good price.

The traditional route
I won't spend to much time on this since this is the most intuitive route. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the traditional route. You find a contract manufacturer that makes your types of product. You start a relationship with them and discuss your requirements for the product. They will be glad to provide you stock formulas for the type of product you want to make and then you have to do more research on how you would want to customize it. For example, you would ask them to provide you with a sample of a stock mineral sunscreen. If you like their sample, you would ask them to add X, Y, Z ingredient to it to provide even more value to your customer. Or maybe there is an expensive ingredient that most don't use but you can because you will price your product accordingly. The guy you talk to can be a wealth of knowledge as this is what they do all day and they too want you to succeed. So don't be afraid to ask. Doing this could demand a $3,000 - $10,000 investment. Depending on alot of factors.

At this point in our career, there is a good chance that we would do things this way. A few thousand dollar investment isn't much for us and we could go straight to providing as much value as possible with a custom end product. If the test succeeds, we would still try to improve the product from this step based on feedback or more research we have done. But If we fail, we would have alot more personal investment where that came from so we could easily shrug it off. That's why I said your level of investment and commitment is a very personal thing.

Conclusions:

So these are the ways you can get up and running very quickly to test the market for your product. If you have touched on a strong market need, you will know immediately. But don't be discouraged if results are first lackluster. You should try different marketing and different angles of attack. Many successful products will start off with only selling very slowly. This is still a huge win! Many people will be turned away because of the inherent flaws in your test mule. But you only gambled small financial investment and now you are more confident in investing the required time and financial resources to make that AWESOME product that will drive a productocracy. This is where you become an expert in all things sunscreen and colored/blonde hair. You can spend days/weeks/etc properly researching people's experiences online/offline and even scientific papers written on these topics and ingredients. Then you go through the iterative steps of creating a good presentable products. But again, you are doing all this knowing that when you have the final product in hand you, people are going to be snatching it out of your hands! Too many aspiring entrepreneurs spend all day at the creation phase and either come up with a spectacular product that no one wants or give up because they lose motivation through the slow creation phase. There's nothing like sales coming in on your test mules to continue motivation you during this phase.

A strong immediate response is usually the best thing you could hope for, but don't write off slow responses or product you have to tweak. They can still become big hits or even if they don't, a milquetoast response product can still make you more than the US median salary. That's the power of being the producer.

We have ordered our "final" product as soon as within 1 week of starting the test phase or as late as months after. It all depended on the market response, whether we had to keep tweaking/testing and how much time we had to dedicate to this product at the time.

Epilogue:

Alright guys. Hopefully all this has helped you guys peek behind the curtain a little bit and got you going in the right direction. As I have been writing this series, I see there is probably a lot more that needs to be addressed. For example I do have alot of failed examples during the Idea phase that would show good lessons. There are also countless examples I could make of how to test different types of products. When you see enough of them, you can start picking up on the similarities and it becomes easier formulating your own successful tests. I think there are probably steps that I glossed over that deserve their own focus as well, like the marketing/ad copy/listings/etc. Let me know which areas still leave you scratching your head. So I may continue the series in the future. But for now, I'm exhausted of writing!

Your posts are roadmaps to treasure

 

[xShepherdx]

It makes me happy hearing that I was able to motivate you and your GF into the right direction!

Great question too.

The answer depends on the individual and their risk tolerance. A few points.

1. All things should be done through a LLC or Corporation that you created. This creates a liability shield. So if something happens, only your company (which has near zero) can be sued. You can't squeeze juice out of a rock.
2. Google "piercing the corporate veil". It will pull up things that an owner does that allows the person suing their business, to say that the owner didn't actually treat this as a business but as an extension of their personal things and because of that he shouldn't be afforded the protection the business provides. These are simple and obvious things that can be avoided but that many people don't. For example, don't treat your business bank account as a personal bank account where you can buy personal goodies with. Treat it like a separate entity and so will the law. Easy
3. Don't do anything illegal like fraud and avoid gross negligence as that also shifts responsibility from the business to the officers making those decisions. Using your example.... Someone burning themselves on a hot item that is meant to be hot, would likely be a business liability. On the other hand, you knowingly choosing a part that is 2 pennies cheaper but knowingly has a 50% chance of exploding... Is negligence. So set your disclaimers as all other companies selling heat pads do and don't do anything crazy.

That's the gist of the matter. But as I mentioned, there could be some nuance. Are you a wealthy individual, or even relatively well off because of your career? In that case, you could consider general business liability insurance. Maybe you could even consider product liability insurance. But since you are well off, those are no big deal and are very low costs for peace of mind from the very unlikely happening. Are you a college student with $1,000 bucks to your name? As I mentioned earlier, you can't squeeze juice from a rock. They can try to sue you, but the second their lawyer contact you and finds out that you and the business have nothing to their name, they will vanish.

Now that we moved past the scary part of the conversation, talking about liability and lawsuits... Here is the realistic part. Except for some insanely rare bad luck (close to 0%).. You are not going to be sued for basically anything a company like Amazon will allow you to post, until you are already successful and sold countless of these widgets. If someone burns themselves, they return that crap and move on. If they feel really feisty, they leave a bad review to vent and move on. What are they gonna sue you for? What lawyer is going to take the case? It would have to be some REAL freak accident for a lawsuit to be worthy.

TL;DR : Do the very basic steps to protect yourself. Don't sell anything wildly dangerous. Don't commit fraud or do anything wildly illegal. Get insurance or consult an attorney if you have ALOT to lose. Then go on with your business of trying to sell your great products without anxiety or wasting headspace worrying about liability/lawsuits.

As a "rock", it sounds like I have nothing big to worry about as long as I'm doing things the correct way LOL.

The LLC is a great idea and we will set one up once we commit to testing - it's cheap and easy enough where I live so this should have been a no-brainer.

We're excited to begin testing ideas and your response has opened the doors for us to do this properly.

Thank you so much for the detailed response, this helped a ton!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.