"I Built a Great Product. Where Are the Customers?"

0:00I have a D&D publishing business, making Dungeons & Dragons books. >> Cool. >> And I've spent a ton of time doing the theory of constraints to the product development. >> Sure. >> Where I have a background in like IT dev ops, so I've been optimizing that and I've been realizing that I've been neglecting the rest of the funnel for like the whole business as a business. >> Do you sell on Amazon? Do you sell Shopify? What do you sell? >> Primarily I do it right now through like Kickstarters. So a bunch of crowdfunding campaign, people give you a bunch of money to build this product. You then build that product.

0:27>> a publishing business, basically. >> Yes. >> Okay, got it. >> Yes, and so >> Do you have a pen name? >> Sorry, do I >> Do you have a pen name? >> Uh no, it's all under mine. >> Uh but so but like so you're an author. >> Yes. >> Okay, cool. >> Yeah, so I'm I've made two books. I'm working on my third. I got a handful of like other supplements and stuff. >> Okay. >> And so I've done I don't know, maybe like 30,000 in Facebook ads, miscellaneous other advertising methods, but that's not my skill set, not what I'm good at. So I'm trying to think like like as going through the exercises, revenue is definitely my biggest constraint at this point.

1:00>> Sure. >> It's like I don't know all the other stuff too much. I've been focused on that. >> Yeah. >> And so I can make a better product faster. But I have need a better way to sell it. Like I need a better way to bring in customers and so a bunch of the people have had great ideas on things to try. Dipping my toes into TikTok, doing miscellaneous things on uh my email list. >> Yeah, TikTok shop is kind of interesting to start to watch the product. >> Yeah, that's that's what Caleb recommended. So if I if if you were in my shoes and you took like a step back to look at the business as a whole, where would you look at trying to apply your resources to really like build up that revenue as efficiently as possible?

1:35>> Do you have um but all is all of your revenue comes from Kickstarter or do they go to Amazon afterwards and then it becomes like >> 90% of it's coming through Kickstarter and then >> On a regular basis? >> Uh there's a project that launches every year well, the first project took about 14 months to get to the second one. The second one >> books. >> Yes, so I have a third project that I've already >> So you have a launch business right now. >> Right now, yeah. >> Okay, so there's like basically no revenue between launches. >> Yeah, people can go buy the stuff in between launches on Shopify that I've got set up.

2:03Um, and I've been thinking about setting up Amazon at this point. >> set up Amazon. >> Yeah. >> We sell 50 times more books on Amazon than Shopify. >> Okay, so would the the next play thing increase >> a million a month in books. >> Okay. >> [snorts] >> Oh, it's just as silly to me. You know, they're like silly, ridiculous. The books are free. >> So, so setting up Amazon >> I'm like, they're free. You don't have to buy them. They're like, we'll buy them. I'm like, whatever. >> [laughter]

2:29>> So, setting up Amazon would be like the best revenue boost ignoring doing any marketing pieces. >> for sure. >> All right. >> Cuz here's what's really interesting is that um I I Did you watch my traffic ranking video? I put it out like it's three videos ago. It's very recent. Anyways, I'll just tell you. >> So, what's really interesting is that people don't think about Amazon as a traffic like a social media or traffic source.

2:53But I think like 13% of customers that Well, let's just test this. Wa- Watch my theory just look flop on this. Did anyone buy my book first? One, two. Look at this. Cool. Okay, that's cool for me. Anyways. Okay. Um, so people will buy the book and then they'll find me later somewhere and they're like, "Oh, that's the guy that wrote that book that I like." And so, Amazon actually gets me customers. There's this whole misnomer that like you have to have an audience in order You have to have an audience to have a big launch, but if you've got product, which it sounds like you do,

3:24>> Mhm. >> then when you have 10,000 five-stars, I buy books with If there's any business book that's 10,000 five-stars, I'll buy I'll just buy it. And so, number one is I would I would do Amazon for sure. Like for sure, it's where 90% of people buy books. It's like you're not on the biggest platform that that people buy and sell books from. Now, you can still do your launches. I still launch through Shopify, so I can still own the own the customer base and all that stuff, but between by all means, like kick it up there and and do it in multiple formats and multiple languages.

3:55Like right now, I think we have like 30 or 40 SKUs from from from two books. So, it's like we have all four formats and we have two books, and then we have them in five languages and we have them on 13 platforms. So, we have it on Kobo Digital, or Kobo, we have Draft2Digital, we have like uh what do you call it? Um Uh it's kind of funny about publishing cuz that's fresh on my mind. Um Ingram, if you've heard of that, uh Spark, um if you Google it, it'll come up. Um And so, all that's to say, I think you just need to like the first thing I would do this quarter is maximize all distribution of the books on all platforms that people buy books on.

4:36The first thing. The second thing I would do was try and expand my audience. Like right now, like let's just use all of the distribution that already exists. Let's do that first. And then, um you can do, you know, Tik Tok strategy or whatever what- whatever you want to do to to basically market any other product that that this works. Now, long term, once you get your third book out, it actually unlocks a bunch of stuff because you'll be able to be profitable with ads because you'll be able to sell bundles. You can sell three books at a time, and you can sell really three, but it's like six books because you're going to do audio and audio, digital, and hardback times three is nine books.

5:10And so, you can get away with like basically a $99 or 125 or 149 in terms of price tag, and you'll be able to you'll be able to to arbitrage the traffic that way. >> Okay. Yeah, you you would never buy one of these as like a audio book because it would be I mean, essentially you're using this as like >> Oh, got it. Understood. >> character and stuff like that. But, I think the platforms could still make sense then for doing >> I'll say this. >> Yeah. >> You would be surprised. >> I would be very surprised. >> Yeah, yeah. >> [laughter]

5:36>> No, but like you'd be surprised. I My workbooks are audio, but they're workbooks. But, people buy them on audio. >> I don't know if I've ever seen anyone try that, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done. >> People listen like listening is a very different experience. And a lot of times people are like, "Okay, just having in the background." Cuz what's interesting like I get a lot of people who tell me like, "Oh yeah, I've listened to your book six times." Right. And it's just cuz like listening your your comprehension significantly lower than visual because it's a second attention stream. You're doing other stuff, too. And so it's like every time they listen to it, they get something else. It's the same book. And so it might Dude, it'll take you a half day to to narrate it. Like throw it up. If people hate it, you can take it down.

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