Scratch your own itch is great advice if you want a guaranteed customer base of 1.
As it turns out though, it’s not typically fantastic advice if you want 10,000.
The graveyard of products scratching a single guy’s hairy back is much bigger and more representative of what actually happens than the few you’ve heard about on How I Built This.
Want a better business/product idea? Go try to collect the money already being spent.
Principle: The cereal is not for you.
A friend of mine named Sean O’Rourke has launched dozens of new products very successfully over the last decade. His analogy:
Jack and Jill each want to create a cereal brand.
Jack thinks of all his favorite’s from childhood - flavors, textures, ingredients, etc.. He talks to all the manufacturers, and in 1 year comes out with something he really loves. All his friends like it, too.
Jill’s favorite is Cocoa Puffs, but she ignores that and drives to Walmart. For 6 months, she stands in the cereal aisle observing people’s behavior, asking questions. Which ones fly off, which ones go stale? What color boxes are the most picked? Do people buy more chocolate, cinnamon or fruity? Does the box make any health claims that seem appealing? How many grams of sugar in each best-seller?
In 6 more months, Jill has a perfect competitor to the cereals currently being purchased, knows exactly how to position it, how to differentiate it, where to put it on the shelf, and who will buy it.
Jack’s brand might do well. Jill’s brand almost certainly will.
Tactics
If you’re hoping to develop a new product or start a business, identify a trend in culture or consumerism that you’d enjoy diving into.
Find a topic related to that trend using Google Trends, Exploding Topics, or Treendly. Find what the people are already searching for.
When you find something that fits within this domain, gather every product/solution for sale on the face of the earth in that niche, and start a spreadsheet.
Columns: Name + link | subtitle description | observed target audience (who are they selling to? | positive review highlights (what do people love?) | negative reviews (what do people hate?) | price | what’s the emotional payoff?
You make a list of 50-100, all carefully analyzed and scrutinized (yes it will take time, just like all $10M brands should), you’ll have a great idea of what product you should create.
Habits
Make that spreadsheet, and just start paying attention to what people are buying and searching for now.
Find a new product within that category every day.
You might not find anything interesting today. But within 6 months of your nose to the ground, you’ll smell something.
God speed,
Mike
Today’s inspiration: I made $2M with one video