"This is going to be SOOOO easy."
That’s what I was thinking when I read The Four Hour Work Week 15+ years ago and committed myself to building online businesses.
Everything seemed so easy and straightforward.
- You get an idea for a digital course
- You make that course
-
You then retire to a mansion on the beach with your endless pit of internet money
That’s it! It’s THAT easy, right?
If you’ve been building a business, you likely started with the same mindset.
And you’ve since quickly realized it’s not quite that simple.
There’s a simple reason for that.
Most business logic is completely unintuitive.
What you THINK you should do – is typically the exact opposite.
Let me give you an example that I’ve mentioned a few times before… but is worth repeating, a lot, and dictates everything I do now:
If you want to make a product that sells, look for a market with a LOT of competition.
The more competition, the better.
Competition simply means there’s already a giant market with lots of people buying.
And if you go in and just:
- Make the same thing
- But 10% better
-
For a specific segment of that market
…then you’re almost guaranteed success.
Compare this to how most newer entrepreneurs (and non-entrepreneurs) think: they’re convinced they need to have an ultra-original, blow-your-mind idea no one’s ever thought of.
But me, personally?
These days I only make products that have competitors – preferably a lot of competitors.
I just find people that are unhappy with those competitors and feel like their specific problems aren’t being handled correctly by them – and make a version that fixes those problems for them.
No, I’m not saying to COPY your competition.
But I am saying that the easiest way to find an idea that’ll be a winner is to find products that are already crushing it (with lots of competition)… listen to people’s complaints about those products… and then make a similar product that focuses specifically on fixing those complaints.
Take a tiny slice of a humongous pie and you’ll still have more than you can eat.
You’ll hear me say this a million times in CopyHour: "Model. Then Innovate."
I want to share a few more of these unintuitive business lessons with you this week.
The ideas that young Derek would have said were totally wrong – but that are actually essential to building successful one-person businesses and selling tons of stuff with your copy.
Starting with a simple mindset shift that makes high-converting copy SO much easier to write.
If you’ve found yourself stuck writing in circles for weeks on end – this will probably break you out of it.
Talk tomorrow!
— Derek