Over the years, I've created (and sold) a lot of different products. But while that's true, I've also NOT created many, many more that I've considered!
So how do I decide?
To be honest, with several courses, a membership, and a bunch of other workshops (i.e., mini-courses), I've created too many products.
Here's what often happens: You create a product, launch it, and make some money. You think, "Oh wow! I can sell things!" and your instinct is to do that same process again with an entirely new product. You do this again and again until you look around and realize you have made a LOT of stuff, but you're not really known for any ONE product in particular. And none of the products are driving sales on their own...so, as a result, you feel like you need to KEEP creating new products in order to drive revenue.
Can you relate?
The far more elegant and efficient solution is to build one signature product that is in perfect alignment with your overall premise as a creator (i.e. the thing that makes YOU unique).
When someone comes into your orbit, what problem are you helping them solve? What future are you helping them to realize?
THAT is what really matters – and that is what your signature product should address head on.
Some people who have done this really well:
- Hello 7 and the We Should All Be Millionaires Club
- Tiago Forte and Building A Second Brain
- Dickie Bush and Ship 30 for 30
- David Perell and Write of Passage
- Marie Forleo and B School
- Ali Abdaal and Part-Time YouTuber Academy
- Marie Poulin and Notion Mastery
These creators exercised extreme restraint in how MANY products they created, instead focusing on making that one product extremely good. When you invest more and more time into improving your product, it builds a competitive advantage. The number of iterations you've put into improving a product makes it hard to imitate.
These creators' businesses are also perfectly aligned with the product. When you come into their ecosystem, what you want to learn from them is delivered through that product. It becomes obvious once you enter their ecosystem that their signature product is the best investment (if you have the financial means to purchase it).
Their products are actually so good that they even drive new top-of-funnel awareness due to the sheer volume of students and positive word-of-mouth!
I really screwed this up.
Instead of creating one signature product that serves the typical creator who enters the Creator Science ecosystem, I created a bunch of narrowly specific products that serve types of creators:
I'm proud of ALL of these products, but none of them make sense for me to put in front of every new subscriber to my newsletter. Not every creator wants a newsletter, a podcast, or a membership. And The Lab serves professional creators – the smallest overall segment of my audience!
So here's what I wish I would've done:
- Get clear on the overall premise (promised outcome) of my business
- Develop a Signature Product to deliver that promise
- Develop a Lead Magnet that provides an outcome (for free) and aligns with that Signature Product
- Develop an Entry Product that sits in between the Lead Magnet and Signature Product
That's really all you need to have in place to have an elegant yet sophisticated product suite.
Yes, you could develop more products outside of that if you really wanted to...but I would instead recommend investing more and more time into the signature product.
Now, I'm working backward to redesign my own product suite:
- Premise: Help people become professional creators
- Lead Magnets: Creator Crash Course, Toolbox, Revenue Swipe File
- Entry Product: CreatorHQ (launching April 11)
- Signature Product: Creator School (launching later this year)
- Graduate Product: The Lab
Most people develop a graduate product last as a way to continue serving their existing customers. I did this backward!
Think about your own product suite. Do you have an applicable signature and entry product that serves your typical new subscriber/follower? If not, I would develop that.
If you do, you probably don't need to develop more products. Instead, focus your energy on creating irresistible free content to get your name out there.
