Hi Candidate,
Out of the 20+ products we've launched (on money, business and psychology), some have been hits. Others have been duds.
Let me show you two products — you guess which one succeeded.
Product #1: IWT Health Insurance product
Does anyone else find health insurance totally confusing?
A few years ago, I was certain my readers wanted a product on healthcare. After all, I'm an educated guy and I had trouble figuring out what health insurance to use!
We asked people if this was a pain point. Resoundingly, they said "YES!" We spent over $50,000 building a product, and before we launched it, we showed it to a couple customers who said it was great.
Product #2: "Side Hustle" product
A while ago, we had another product idea: how to start a "side hustle."
We already offered Earn1K on the Side for people who wanted to use skills they already had to freelance, but what if you wanted something even simpler, just to make a little extra cash?
This idea had come directly from our readers. We kept hearing this comment that people were interested in "side hustles." They didn't want to start a business, they just wanted to make a little extra cash.
Let me pause here!
Which of these two products do you think succeeded?
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Come on, make a real guess before you scroll down.
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The answer is: neither of them!
And the story illustrates why knowing how to listen to your customers — and doing "customer research" — is so important.
Sometimes they tell the truth, sometimes they lie, and sometimes they don't know the difference. It's not that they're bad people — it's just that you have to "dig" to find the real truth of what people really want.
Here's what happened...
For the health insurance product, this looked like a hit. I was sure there was a demand for this product because I wanted an easier way to figure out health insurance, and I knew that tons of people found it equally painful.
There was only one problem:
Nobody wanted to pay for it!
Finding health insurance is like having dull elbow pain. It's annoying, but the vast majority of people just go on their way, rationalizing it away (and even getting used to it). With health insurance, almost everyone wants an easier solution … but nobody wants to pay for the answers.
The product was dead before it even launched.
For the second product, the Side Hustle product, we got interested and dug in deeper.
This time, we discovered that this was a "casual desire" — there was no burning desire here. It was like someone tossing off a comment about how they'd like to eat some chips later. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't … but they were not going to pay for a course to show them how.
By the way, we discovered this because we didn't accept people's first answers. They initially said, "Yes! I'd LOVE to find a side hustle! I just don't know what..."
So we said: "That's interesting. Out of curiosity, how come you haven't joined our course Earn1K on the Side?" Over 90% had no answer. Of the ones who knew about Earn1K, if they were serious, they would have already joined — or would have a very specific price objection. (By the way, earlier this year we stopped selling Earn1K and replaced it with the expanded, updated and more powerful Earnable. if you'd like to start earning more, click here to learn more.)
While there may be a lot of people talking about side hustles, they aren't a good audience to go after.
So we pivoted to another thread in our research, people asking for "advanced personal finance."
This felt like a smaller group, since most people haven't buttoned up the basics yet (start here if that's you). But the people who did want "advanced personal finance" had a very strong desire, as well as a clear need.
So we created this "niche" product instead and it became a hit product: How to Win the Game of Advanced Personal Finance. I love this product and so do our students.
This is the power of listening to the people who matter: the buyers.
And more than that, knowing how to separate the actionable insights from the noise and the platitudes.
- How to tell who's lying
- How to tell who will buy
- How to find the right product idea — and how to steer clear of the wrong ones
You can learn how to do this fast and accurately.
Today, I want to give you access to our full "toolbox" for customer research.
It's all included in our course: Greenlight Your Idea.
Get all of the exact scripts, surveys, checklists, tools, and questionnaires we use to get unstuck, discover what our customers really want, and "greenlight" every business and product idea. (See the full list of what's included here.)
