The Product

In order to get other people's hard earned money to leave their bank account and go into yours, you'll have to either give them something, or do something for them.

Physical Products

Intro

When I finally decided to create this course and sell it online, it meant that I had to actually write it down, structure it into a legible product, and list it for sale online.

Just because you know you want to start a camera bag brand doesn't mean you can launch it tomorrow. You'll need to find a manufacturer, get some samples, launch a production run; the list goes on.

After settling on a direction to start with, you should have your product in mind. Having no idea who you are or what you've chosen to pursue means I have to dart back and forth between my own random examples or generalisations to make my point, so here I go.

Product Design

I nearly started a Golf Bag brand by scratching my own itch. I was playing frequently at my local 9 hole course and was only using about five clubs, as opposed to the usual 14. Even after leaving most of my clubs in the car, my bag was still way heavier than it needed to be.

I remembered seeing lightweight half-set bags referred to as Sunday bags, but even they seemed overkill for what I wanted. I started poking around online and found myself perusing Alibaba — the ultimate direct-from-manufacturer website in China. I came across a bag that was barely anything more than a floppy piece of canvas sewn together with some pockets stitched on to hold balls — it was perfect!

I had them screen print a random mock-up logo on it and had two sent to me for about $100. Low quantity samples are always expensive so the manufacturers can cover their time cost of messing around with individual units opposed to their usual bulk orders.

After testing and confirming the bag was almost exactly what I was searching for, I had one request. The shoulder strap was adjustable, but the padded section on it was fixed. The weight of the club heads would cause the bag to hang at a specific angle, meaning the padded section of the shoulder strap wasn't actually providing padding to the shoulder.

I explained this to the manufacturer and asked if they could change the strap and modify it to have a 'floating' padded section, so that no matter what length the shoulder strap was set to, the shoulder padding would always stay on the shoulder. They agreed and said this change wouldn't even affect the price.

On top of this, they were happy to make as few as 50 units of this bag for me to start. So the notion that getting products made at a low cost per unit requires thousands of units upfront is simply not true these days.

This is what product design looks like. Solve your own problem and sell the solution.

Validating Your Idea With Samples

Once you have physical samples that you're happy with, there's things you can do before going into a production run of 100+ units, which can seem a little scary.

This is the 'Sell 1 Unit' framework which I'm pretty sure Tim Ferriss explains similarly in the 4 Hour Workweek.

Convince your manufacturer to send you 2 samples. Use one to create content for social media and promotional purposes and list the other for sale.

This forces you to face the challenge of actually selling a single product. There's no point ordering 100 units if you can't sell one.

Nobody has to know you only have 1, and when it does sell you can simply say "first drop is sold out — preorder now to get in on the restock" or "more on the way" etc.

You've now validated your idea!

Validating Your Idea With A Pre-Order

Using a similar method as above, you can get samples made and list them for sale as a pre-order. You'll need to find out how long your supplier would take to make a batch of your product from the day you place an order with them. There are a lot of potential variables, but it might look something like this:

You list your product for pre-order on February 1st and sell as many units as you can throughout February.
On March 1st, you order however many items you've pre-sold (plus some extra so you can keep selling!)
On May 1st, your order is ready and your supplier ships your goods to you. (Or even directly to your customers for efficiency.)

The benefit here is that you're making the sale before you have to purchase the stock, so there's no risk. The negative is that most people don't want to wait 2 weeks, let alone 2 months for their order, so your customers would have to be real supporters. If your product is special enough, or your lead time is quick enough, pre-orders can work.

The Golf Bag Website

I got a bit carried away with the Golf Bag concept and went as far as putting a website together for it. My plan here is to actually sell the business and release my learnings as a case study showing all the steps that go into building and selling a turn-key physical products business.

I also created the website just to see if I could bring my idea to life in a legitimate way while testing the limits of the Carrd.co website builder.

I also like that it shows you can just make stuff without having to fully follow through. I had so much fun creating and testing the product, building out the website and perfecting all the wording on the website but when it came down to the thought of actually launching it as a business and a product I decided it was something I didn't want to do right now.

But, if I can sell it to a keen operator I will have proved that you can even make a business out of making businesses you have no intention of starting or running yourself!

Anyway, here's the site: https://albertrossgolfcompany.com/

Services, Virtual and Digital Products

Digital Products

Digital products, in my opinion, are the holy grail because they have zero marginal cost of replication. This means that once a digital product is created, it can be purchased an infinite number of times without adding to your workload. Any subject that you're an expert in could be turned into an online course and sold infinitely. (See Jack Butcher — Build Once, Sell Twice.)

If you're taking this course, you're getting a first-hand example of me executing this idea. I've been building businesses for over 10 years to the point where I could walk onto a stage with a moment's notice and deliver an hour-long presentation on how to get started with launching a business — I can confidently say I'm an expert in this field.

It wasn't until I took Jack's course that I realised I was also an expert in running skatepark competitions. Having worked in the Freestyle Scootering industry for over 10 years and owning multiple companies in this industry, I had the opportunity to run and host many events at skateparks, literally hundreds. One day, I wrote down everything I knew about running a skatepark competition and pitched it to several youth centres as a course for their students. From a single email, I received approximately $10k worth of interest, which absolutely blew my mind.

The specifics of this example are still pending and processing, but the level of interest alone validated the idea to such an extent that I had to take it more seriously, prompting a revision and restructuring of the curriculum and the offer. More details to follow in a future update.

Anything you know how to do can be converted into a course once and sold infinitely.

Service Business

A service business can be defined as an entity that provides specialized tasks, often related to maintenance or upkeep, directly to the consumer or another business.

The tasks are usually hands-on manual labor (think: gritty work people don't want to do), and they rarely involve the sale of physical products.

Instead, they focus on delivering a combination of expertise, labor, and convenience to meet a specific need.

The beauty of a service business is that if you know what to do and have access to the resources needed, you can be making money tomorrow! It's as simple as printing out flyers and dropping them in letterboxes or putting free ads on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace.

Whenever I see that someone is even mildly passionate about something that they are really good at, I instantly start to think, "They could do that for a living."

Here are some classic examples.

Car Detailing: Car people can be obsessive over how they clean their cars and how clean they are. Embedded in this enthusiasm is a skill that they could definitely charge people for. They already have the necessary tools too, so it's literally something that they could be earning money for tomorrow.

Yard Maintenance: Yard-proud homeowners always stand out to me as well. If you're the person with the greenest grass and the nicest yard in your neighborhood, where people are constantly complimenting your lawn and gardens, perhaps that's where your days might be better spent. To be at that level, you clearly have a passion for it and have demonstrated the ability beyond doubt. Again, you also have all the necessary tools and equipment already. You could be promoting your availability already; why aren't you?

Pool Cleaner: I don't know if anybody is as passionate about pool cleaning as folks are about their cars and their lawns. But if you own a pool and you've gone to the effort of learning how to keep it clean, then you could charge other people for the convenience of never having to worry about that. If I owned a pool, I would 100% pay for this instead of going to the trouble of learning about it and stocking up on the chemicals and then having to find a safe place to keep them. This is something people just don't want to do.

Handyperson: Perhaps you're no stranger to home renovations and have one-by-one learned all the skills necessary to repaint a house, re-tile the bathroom, or re-whatever it is that you or your significant other deems in need of change to improve and upgrade the house this month. Handyperson for hire is as legitimate of a service business as any and would be super simple to start promoting your abilities and accepting work.

There's another way to look at this too, which is, what are you already doing for work? You've obviously proven your capabilities already. Maybe once upon a time you needed training and valued the security of a predictable workload. But now you're getting older and starting to see the value in setting your own schedule, owning your own time, and being your own boss. If your boss is charging clients $300 for a job you get paid $100 for, the upside for you is obvious. That's somewhat of an oversimplification, and I go into more detail in the math module. But I felt it was important to mention now as well.

Things you probably can't do:

I don't mention plumbing or electrician work in this instance because if that was something you could do, and were qualified to do, you'd probably already be on that path. They're not exactly hobby skills that one picks up on the side. When I talk about service businesses, I'm mainly leaning into things that you could start overnight based on pre-existing skill sets and a bit of local advertisement.

That being said, I think there's a middle ground of things you probably could do, with some time:

Pest control, mobile pet grooming, and window tinting are just a few that come to mind. Neither of these are service businesses that you could start overnight, as each requires specialized training and equipment; and in the case of pest control, official licensing too. But the reason I mention them is to highlight services with a slightly higher barrier to entry. The higher the barrier to entry, the less competition there is. If you're doing yard maintenance, someone else can get into it just as quickly and easily as you did. But if you're tinting windows, there's a much smaller pool of people with the skills necessary to swoop your clients.

A Service Business I Would Start

Some of the following was originally written as a Freedom Framework blog post on the Formulate Freedom website and has been edited and included to provide an example within the How To Formulate Freedom course.

Golf is the greatest game on earth, and that's an undulating hill I'll die on.

Knowing you're playing golf the next day is like a surfer anticipating good swell.

You've cleaned your grooves, loaded up your bag, and your shoes are waiting by the end of your bed, but it's only 9 PM.

I've been in this situation many times before, and I find myself on the website of the course I'll be visiting, trying to get a peek at the gift I'll be receiving come morning.

But all I see is a couple of blurry photos from a decade ago that barely show the course.

So, I head on over to YouTube thinking, "surely some opportunistic young gun with a drone has flown over every golf course in this state and listed it online", but nope.

A couple of courses here and there and a plethora of vlogs, but that's not what I'm looking for.

I want to feel like I'm already there. I want to slowly glide over each hole of the course, envisioning what it'll be like tomorrow while I'm definitely not slicing every second drive into the bushes.

But I can't because the videos don't exist.

That's where the Golf Course Drone Flyovers Service should swoop in and inform Golf Course owners that it's 2023 and they're literally flushing money down the toilet by not showing off their course online.

Here's the play:

I'd purchase, rent, or borrow a drone (or hire/rent/borrow a drone operator). I'd go to the nearest golf course, flip the drone into cinematic mode, and fly it over the whole course in the direction of play — hole by hole. I wouldn't do it as a full-on bird's eye view, and I wouldn't do it at eye level either. I'd do it at about 2 or 3 times the height of the average person. This way, the video gives the viewer an advantageous look while still showing the beauty of the contours of the course. It shows them what it would be like to play there and makes them want to play there. It makes them want to see the next hole.

This process wouldn't take too long at all. Covering 18 holes in one or two hours with a drone would be an easy feat. And that's budgeting extra time for some artsy shots around each green.

Charging even $50 per hole could net you $900 for less than a day's work. Flying a drone around a golf course and trimming some videos is hardly gruelling work but personally I'd charge at least $100 per hole.

I've thought about this in great detail before and even pondered the possibility of having QR codes at each hole so golfers waiting can simply scan and get an instant real-life overview of the hole ahead of them. This, of course, would be an obvious upsell to the course owner.

I know this example is quite idealistic and specific. But when I think about ways I could make money, the very first thing I think is, "What would I love doing?" How could I rig the system in a way that I'd get paid a considerable amount of money for doing something I'd genuinely enjoy doing? Then I think about how much money I could make per unit of work; that is, how little can I do for a considerable amount of money. I love golf, I love flying drones, and I love the idea of making decent money just by standing around on a beautiful golf course flying a drone. So for me this ticks all the boxes!

And again, I know it sounds overly idealistic, but as someone who's made a seriously decent living doing what I love already, I'm convinced I could do it again; I'm convinced you could too.

Virtual Business

A virtual business is one that conducts the bulk, if not all, of its activities via web-based platforms.

The first example of a virtual business that comes to mind is my own, Formulate Freedom. I am creating e-learning products that I sell and deliver through the internet.

Online Course Creator

But if I took myself out of the equation, I'd say Search Engine Optimisation and Ad people are a perfect example, despite how annoying some of their constant cold email outreach can be. Someone who specialises in SEO or Google Ads can reach out to a customer via email and perform the whole role from their computer. No face-to-face meeting and no need to rent an office.

Digital Marketers

Next up, I would say, are website builders. Just like SEO and Ad people, they can secure and fulfil work unhindered by any physical world constraints.

Website Developers

Another personally relatable example is running an online store, which I have done successfully since 2016. This exists in a bit of a grey zone in the realm of virtual business examples because it definitely does require real-world space to store goods and old-fashioned elbow grease to pack and send orders, in my setup. However, if I ever wanted to be totally hands-off, I could transition to a third-party logistics provider that would store my product and dispatch orders for me, turning my operation into a much more "web-based platforms only" type of business.

Ecommerce

Graphic designers, software developers, writers, virtual assistants — the list goes on.

One of the best things about virtual businesses is you can become skilled in many of these fields with a couple months of curious YouTubing.

A Virtual Business I Would Start

I'm always shocked to see the number of service-based businesses in my city that lack websites. Often, all they have is a Google My Business listing, where the 'website' tab sometimes links only to a Facebook page, or not to anything at all.

Whenever I'm genuinely looking for services, such as an electrician to come and install a power point, an air conditioning technician, or even a pest control company (yes, all recent experiences), I'm reluctant to call up a business that doesn't have an official website.

I know this is in no way an accurate depiction of whether they're qualified for the job or not, but to me, it's just a red flag and an almost instant no. I feel like a website is a window into the world of that business, and if someone doesn't think their own business deserves a website, then I feel like they don't deserve my business.

I have to imagine many other people share this sentiment, and I imagine that doesn't bode well for "Pete's Painting."

If I had the time to start another virtual business, this is absolutely the first market I would go after: busy tradespeople who wish they had a website but don't even know where to start.

But I would not ask for permission! These people are busy. Between quoting new jobs and invoicing the completed ones, ordering materials, and actually doing the work, they don't have time to jump on a call with you and see what kind of website they'd want you to build for them and listen to you blabber on about a bunch of terminology they don't even understand.

Just do the work. Build them a site.

Use a dead-simple and ultra-fast website builder like Carrd to display the services they offer and make it effortless for customers to contact them.

If they already have Google reviews, use them on the website.

If they have photos posted on Google or Facebook, use them on the website.

Make it in a way that when they see it, they're going to think, "Wow, they've really gone all out on this."

Then send them an email, a text message, and a direct message on social media (all at once!) to make sure they see it. With a subject that will catch their attention like, "I Built You a Website for Pete's Painting."

Explain to them how you and many others turn away when they realize a business doesn't have a website.

And then ask them for $500.

Put yourself in their shoes. They haven't had to mess around with finding the right person or spending any time explaining what they want. This incredible website is just delivered right to their inbox, already functioning. They don't want it to just disappear.

If I did this for 100 businesses, I think I'd get enough sales to justify the effort. I also think enough of them would end up wanting nicer, more feature-rich websites eventually and turn into much higher-ticket, longer-term customers.

I also think it could open many interweaving streams that you could not anticipate beforehand.

This is an example of a virtual business I would love to start.

It will cost you time on your computer, but no physical world restrictions like getting a lawnmower to the customer's house or being at a specific place at a specific time.