Original subtitles

0 In this video we go over my product failures. 1

This is a YouTube video that I made. 2

So if you are not subscribed to my YouTube channel you should be. 3

Click the link down there. 4

But so it might sound a little YouTube-y. 5

But I apologize for that but really pay attention because these are my first seven products that I failed 6

and the lessons that I learned from them. 7

So I hope that you guys avoid running into these failures and you have one failed product or 0 hopefully 8

because we're laying it all out here. 9

You should be able to validate demand. 10

I knew no ways before I got started. 11

I was just guessing and taking action. 12

But hey the action got me here so...enjoy. The absolute most important thing on Amazon. 13

Is your product selection going into the right market. 14

So let's take a look at all of my failures so that you can see the lessons that I've learned of what 15

does not work. 16

And I'll go over a couple of that people have sent me that know where they've run into their own issues. 17

But before we get to that I need to address some haters because people have been complaining lately 18

so I got one claim someone calling me a scam artist saying that I did not hang out with Gary Vaynerchuk 19

and I did not do six million in sales so all right here we'll put there's a screenshot of my sales. 20

I've also done many interviews I've been on Manny Coates, 21

Brian Burke, I've been on Startup Bros. I'll link that in the description. There is me talking and taking 22

a selfie with Gary Vaynerchuk. 23

I was on the Daily Vee 367. 24

And there is also a video of me frolicking in a snowman suit in VaynerMedia office. 25

So if that's not enough proof for you. 26

Well I don't know what. 27

What else do you want. 28

All right. 29

So let's get to it. 30

And I'm going to show you guys the products that I have failed on and the lessons that I learned from 31

them. 32

Before we get to that video make sure you hit subscribe down there because I'm going to be releasing 33

that video of me with Gary V at Vaynermedia. 34

What I learned from the head of each department the digital landscape is changing so fast and I'm really 35

excited to share that information with you guys and make sure you hit that bell because that tells you 36

when I released the new videos my entire strategy has changed. 37

I'm going to be more vulnerable and open. 38

I'm going to be posting every other day or is that as much as I possibly can. 39

And guess what I'm going to be giving it all away for free. 40

You're not going to see me charge for information like a lot of people do. 41

Gary told me to just just just be honest and give everything I have away for free so I'm going to do 42

that. 43

I know that the universe will pay me back some way in the future and if it doesn't well at least I get 44

to help thousands of people. 45

Here is the first product. 46

It was LED strip lights. 47

The first one that I ever tried. 48

I got these waterproof ones. 49

But what's different about these than the other ones these are individually programmable. 50

Well what does that mean. 51

Well it means that you need a microcontroller to power them. 52

So something like this and you have to program them yourself. 53

Well this was great for me and inventor but not many people who are inventors like me why did this product 54

fail. 55

Well if we take a look over here at Jungle Scout the sales are just really low. 56

Look there's one guy who's doing 201 sales a month but the rest of that there's just barely 57

trickling in. 58

And so now those number one low sales. Number two I wasn't different guys. 59

I did nothing new and that's what a lot of people when they start out they are just doing absolutely 60

no means of differentiation. 61

So when asked the question with all these other ones have reviews why would people buy yours over the 62

other product. 63

I didn't have an answer to that. 64

And then this comes in at number three. 65

I was competing against direct Chinese sellers so if they're going to beat me on price they have the 66

same product as me and more reviews. 67

Nobody's gonna buy my stuff. 68

It's just basic common sense. 69

So you always have to find a way to differentiate in that marketing pitch. 70

I know I could. 71

I'll make a video in the future about how I would go about and actually could make it in this market. 72

But that's not for now we're just looking at what went wrong. 73

So on to the next product. 74

But I did not completely lose because check it out. 75

Alexa trigger a white board rainbow. 76

There are cool things that came from it. 77

Product number two in my search the 80-20 coffee mug. 78

A lot of entrepreneurs know about the 80-20 principle in a lot of them drink coffee. 79

So logically I thought this would be a hit on Amazon. 80

No I was completely wrong. 81

Perhaps I now with my knowledge I could go make this successful on Facebook advertising targeting the 82

right people. 83

Perhaps the authors of the 80-20 books as well as Tim Ferriss movies and what not. 84

Anyways let me tell you why this failed. 85

Most people looking for coffee mugs or looking for something funny to give as a gift to somebody else. 86

So I wasn't able to rank with that because I had my conversion rates. 87

If you don't know what 80-20 principle is you're not going to buy this product. 88

And then I wasn't able to rank for they were the keyword 80-20 because Amazon thought it was books and 89

I was doing PPC and I just couldn't even get it to show me I could do some hacks to get it to rank for 90

that keyword and we could see if I convert but there were conversion rate might be extremely low still 91

because most people looking for 80-20 are looking for books and they're are just introduced to the rule. 92

Also I wasn't able to rank for the keywords gifts for entrepreneur or entrepreneur gifts because people 93

didn't know what the 80-20 principles yet again. 94

So even though the lunch partner might like it 80-20 and whatever pastor had Amazon's based off stats 95

didn't work. 96

So what's the overall lesson learned from this? 97

Don't make a new innovative niche product and try to launch it on Amazon. 98

It's not going to work. 99

Whatever you're launching on Amazon it has to make logical sense for that keyword. 100

When people type in this keyword and they see your product. 101

Yes. 102

So for example let's say we were going to launch a new funny coffee mug. 103

One of them that I've seen as successful is a poop coffee mug. 104

They made a brand new mold and it's in the side. 105

It looks like poop and coffee mug. 106

That's successful because people are looking for funny coffee mugs. 107

It's appealable to the masses so you're able to rank and convert on those keywords. 108

So if you're going to be innovative on Amazon you have to be innovative within this square. 109

If you want to be completely innovative and make niche products you've got to go to Shopify and Facebook 110

and go on social to introduce them to a new concept that they will love. 111

But you're not going to be introducing people to new concepts on Amazon unless it's through this keyword 112

way that it's what they're looking for but it's brand new. 113

So and they understand it. 114

So take that into account and we'll see some other mistakes that I made and they took me awhile to learn 115

this lesson. 116

Oh. 117

Another reason why this failed is I had a bad hand model. 118

You need to get some sexy hands if you're going to use a hand model. 119

All right. 120

So here is the next one I was like this put the 80 20 but let's put it on a wrist band think smarter 121

not harder. 122

Yeah. 123

So I launched this at about the same time. 124

But same thing. 125

OK. 126

People were looking for motivational wristbands and gifts for entrepreneurs and everything but it just 127

didn't match with that search volume. 128

And people didn't know what it was. 129

So it's the same D idea as the last coffee mug. 130

But I was on to something more because there was margin. 131

These wrist bands did kind of work. 132

So I'll show you then what the next product is not going to go over the lessons because the same as 133

the last one OK so I learned my lessons. 134

You got to go where the search volume is. 135

So I went into Serenity Prayer bracelets because I thought OK let's go into this because there 136

is search volume for the words 'Serenity Prayer' and let me go in and make a bracelet for that because 137

there are people buying bracelets. 138

with Serenity payer and I can make something different 139

So I did that and we would look at it here. 140

If we pull up the Jungle Scout in the numbers they don't look very great here. 141

OK. 142

But when you pull up the Viral Launch market intelligence the numbers actually look quite a bit better. 143

The numbers actually look better here because... 144

Ok I see some monthly revenue here let's go over we need to look revenue last year that got eighty six 145

thousand thirty. 146

So there was some number here. 147

But you know at the end of the day guys let me just be honest here was my product design wasn't very 148

good. 149

That was just the truth and it wasn't a good quality when I picked it up. 150

It didn't make me smile and be excited it was more of a "All right". 151

It's got to be a homerun for it to work in my opinion. 152

So this did not work. 153

Another failure. 154

So I said "Screw it". 155

This is failure number four. 156

But I did not give up. 157

I kept going guys stick with it because you're going to see how this progression of my lesson learning 158

when failure failure failure failure seven failures to six million dollars because I never gave up and 159

I learned lessons all along the way. 160

So now on to the next one... Whoa man, these are crazy glasses. 161

Yeah. 162

So this was my next failure. 163

And these glasses were... the Jungle Scout when I ran the web app. 164

It looked like it was gonna be a killer. 165

It was saying it was selling roughly two thousand per month. 166

So it was just gonna be a killer. 167

I got a good a pretty good price on them for about four bucks and they're selling for thirty dollars. 168

But it turns out there were all the sales were going to one main person. 169

OK. 170

And that was a brand. 171

It was selling just based off of the brand and the brand name that they had made so... 172

And Jungle Scout was wrong. 173

It said it was selling two thousand a month. 174

It was actually only selling about maybe one hundred. 175

And then the rest of the competitors maybe once or twice a week. 176

So they just there wasn't the volume that it promised to sell. 177

And so now I literally have hundreds of these in my house. 178

So if anybody wants some, leave a comment. I'll send you all of them that you want. Also send out wristbands, 179

all sorts of other stuff. 180

All right. 181

So what lessons did I learn from this? 182

Well number one, you've got to check out Jungle Scout and make sure that the products are evenly distributed 183

sales because if it's all focused on one brand, then it's gonna be hard to steal those. 184

They might be driving external traffic or might just be a pure brand buy and you can't compete with 185

them. 186

And I also learned that you need to check and make sure that jungle Scout actually right. Do the 999 trick, 187

check out Viral Launch - their tool is better at predicting sales than jungle Scout is because 188

it said it was doing two thousand a month. 189

It was not at all. 190

So it ended up just being a giant mess. 191

I had no way... 192

So I actually did do something right here by customizing and getting these metal frames because the 193

rest of them were plastic. 194

So this is unique and everything. 195

But guess what? 196

You've also got to make sure not only is your product different but is it good? 197

Is it good quality? 198

So people are using this for raves and parties and you want to know one problem? When people are jumping 199

up and down... 200

It'd be nice if the classes stayed on their head. 201

The competitors stayed on their head. 202

These don't. 203

So now I'm just stuck with these hippie Kaleidoscope glasses and they're great. 204

But you also can't walk with them on. 205

It's very disorientating. 206

And the competitors you could walk with them on. 207

So that's where I failed. 208

But I also I'll show you the other ones that I failed too. But I was getting closer with these. 209

So how do you solve the problem of these falling off of your head? 210

Well you get goggles. 211

So we got these goggles going now. 212

And so these were actually worked a lot better. 213

And I was pretty proud of the quality of these but I had no form of differentiation yet again. 214

The Chinese came in and I'll show you that on the computer. Checking out right here you can see some 215

of these are even down in the seven dollars after fees. 216

There's just no money to be made here. 217

But they just drove the price down. 218

I could not compete on price alone. 219

I had no form of differentiation. 220

So yet again I'm going to lose. 221

That's that's what it comes down to. 222

Whoa, alright! Now we've differentiated. 223

That's right. 224

We're the only ones out there with the furry ones. 225

Guys we've got this. But there is one problem. 226

There's going to be people wearing these and they're gonna be dancing. 227

They're going to be all hot and stuff and put it on and off and then... 228

Oh no. 229

The fur the fur! It just falls off. 230

It gets in your mouth. 231

It gets in your nose. 232

Chicks ain't gonna deal with that. 233

It's all over the camera now. 234

So like we've said you gotta have you gotta find the where there's these search volume so there was 235

with the kaleidoscope search term. Kaleidoscope goggles or rave goggles and stuff. 236

So I could rank for that. 237

It looked cool and everything but did not get good reviews because this fur is falling off all the time. 238

This product was yet another failure. 239

But I saw this long path of failures. 240

I had sick four different glasses that failed, these failed my wristbands failed, my coffee mug failed 241

my lights failed. You know just feeling about ready to give up. 242

But there was a prevailing that came from this all. So I've had all of these failures but I've learned 243

a lot of lessons along the way. 244

You need to find something with high search volume you need to find somewhere where you can innovate 245

and make something new and unique. 246

But within a small square so you have to innovate within what people want. 247

OK great. 248

Now you have to make sure that you have the best product and you need to have that uniqueness, that 249

competitive edge so that you can price higher than the others and not just get into a price war. 250

So there's a lot of factors that need to go into account here. 251

But I finally got one scenario that laid out: the solar eclipse for 2017. 252

Took all those lessons that I learned and now was OK. 253

I'm going to source the best glasses to make a whole new product. 254

I'm going to innovate and make a new eclipse viewer that nobody's ever done before. 255

I'm going to completely take over the whole market in every aspect and kill it and I'm going to make 256

another video on that because I learned so many lessons from that. 257

But here is what came from it. 258

I found lenses that were safe to view the eclipse with and I put them into these product that I had 259

from the past. 260

So all of my failures culminated and I did hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in these and 261

I'm so proud of it because it just shows that if you keep pushing and trying and learning from your 262

mistakes and you never give up you will achieve. 263

And I did and these are the exact glasses that I wore for the eclipse and it was best one of 264

the top experiences in my life. 265

I realized that we didn't get to why I see a lot of other people failing so I'm going to make a different 266

video about that in the future. 267

And I've got a great video that's taken me a lot of time but it explains my entire journey as an entrepreneur 268

and of the solar eclipse and going on from here out. 269

So make sure that you're subscribed to the channel there and then hit that bell so you're notified of the 270

new content. 271

We're going to be releasing a lot more. 272

And could you please comment below and let me know what failures you've had as an entrepreneur or with 273

products on Amazon. 274

I think by sharing the failures and the perseverance that we all go through, more people will be encouraged 275

to start or to continue to go because everybody's always posting about their what went awesome and not 276

many people are posting about their failures and it's kind of like the news is always talking about 277

negativity and never about the positivity. 278

This is like the opposite wherever you talk about the positive but come on there's lessons learned from 279

all of these failures. 280

So please share and below. I comment and respond to everything. 281

So I look forward to hearing that and seeing you guys next time.