In a comprehensive guide to entrepreneurship, the speaker outlines a strategic approach to choosing and scaling a product or service. They categorize all sellable items into seven groups, each with physical and digital versions, such as products, services, access, attention, risk, money, and endorsements. The speaker emphasizes the importance of leveraging personal experience and industry knowledge when selecting a product to sell, considering the entrepreneur's resources and ability to provide value. They introduce the "delivery cube," a six-faceted framework to enhance a product's value and profitability, which includes delivery methods, support levels, consumption modes, speed and convenience, and pricing strategies. This model helps entrepreneurs identify their optimal product offering, balancing ease of sale with fulfillment challenges to drive business growth.
"You either have direct personal experience with the problem that you're trying to solve, which is if you're new to this would be one of my strongest recommendations because you probably aren't going to be able to guess what people want."
This quote emphasizes the advantage of solving a problem you have personally experienced, as it gives you insight into the customer's needs and wants, which is particularly valuable for new entrepreneurs.
"I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with acquisition.com. I always wish Bezos, Musk and Buffett had into their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us."
The speaker is sharing their entrepreneurial journey in an effort to offer guidance and inspiration to others, aiming to emulate the success of famous entrepreneurs by building a significant business.
"Last week, I gave a guest lecture at University of Texas on a class in entrepreneurship, and the common question that I got in this aspiring group was, what do I sell and how do I make it profitable?"
This quote sets the stage for the speaker's expertise in entrepreneurship and indicates the primary concerns of aspiring entrepreneurs, focusing on product selection and profitability.
"The first thing that I want to start with is the only seven things that you can sell. And there's digital and physical formats of each of these things, which actually give you 14 different things you can possibly sell as an entrepreneur in general."
This quote introduces a framework for understanding the range of products an entrepreneur can sell, divided into seven core categories, each with a physical and digital version.
Products
Services
Access
Attention
Risk
Money
Endorsement/Brand
"So there are unlimited things to sell. These are just how I bucket them mentally, personally."
This quote explains the speaker's personal method for categorizing saleable items, suggesting that while there are countless items to sell, they can all fit within these seven categories.
"So I had somebody the other day be like, what about a rock concert? That is access to an experience, right?"
This quote demonstrates the practical application of the seven categories to real-world examples, illustrating how even specific events like rock concerts can be categorized within this framework.
"Now, that would probably preclude you from most physical products, probably most kind of digital, like, software type stuff. And so most of the time, you're going to start, likely with some sort of selling your time, which is often services if you're starting out."
This quote explains that with a limited budget, one is often restricted to offering services rather than products due to the high costs associated with product-based businesses.
"You can't sell money unless you have money, right? You can't insure risk unless you have enough capital to show that you can cover the cost of the thing that you're insuring."
This quote highlights that certain business activities, such as finance and insurance, require substantial capital to begin and are not suitable for those with limited funds.
"Figure out the person you could provide the absolute most value to."
This quote emphasizes the importance of identifying the target customer who would benefit most from the entrepreneur's offerings.
"Now, you might record it and then also sell the digital versions of that."
This quote suggests diversifying offerings by combining different categories, such as selling both physical experiences and digital products.
"One of the things they look for is past experience in the industry."
This quote indicates that having industry experience is a valuable asset for entrepreneurs and is something that incubators like Y Combinator look for.
"So I know a lot of stuff about eyes. So if I wanted to get into a space, that would be a category of stuff that I actually know a lot more about than you might expect."
This quote exemplifies how personal or familial experience can provide unexpected knowledge and advantages in a specific business domain.
"I've also been in the kitchen there, so I saw some of the inefficiencies there that I could probably solve."
This quote illustrates how hands-on experience in a job can reveal insights and opportunities for improvement that could be the foundation for a business idea.
"Are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to 5100 million dollars plus, we would love to talk to you"
This quote is an invitation to business owners aiming to significantly scale their businesses, indicating the speaker's interest in assisting with such growth.
"And then you can transfer the experience that you had there to the new thing because there's a lot of ignorance, debt of stuff that you don't know about."
The speaker emphasizes the value of transferring existing experience to a new industry to mitigate the lack of knowledge and steep learning curve associated with entering a completely new field.
"Is there any one of these that I already have a little bit more experience with? And then of those things, which problem is the biggest that I think I can solve given the resources that I have access to?"
This quote suggests a strategic approach to business growth by focusing on industries where the entrepreneur has some experience and identifying the most significant problems they are equipped to solve.
"What I want you to think with is what I call the easy to sell, hard to fulfill continuum."
The speaker introduces a framework to assess products or services based on the ease of selling them versus the difficulty of fulfilling them, which is critical for strategic business planning.
"On the flip side, man, that's not delivering very much, which makes it significantly harder to sell."
This quote underscores that products or services that are easy to fulfill but offer little value are challenging to sell, highlighting the need for balance in the continuum.
"The delivery cube has six pieces to it, and they work like this."
The speaker introduces the 'delivery cube' as a mental model to evaluate different aspects of product or service delivery, which impacts scalability and profitability.
"Each of these have different value propositions that are associated with them."
This quote highlights that different delivery methods offer unique value propositions, which should be considered when determining pricing and scale.
"Do it yourself diy dwy, which is done with you, as in you're holding their hand through the process of whatever it is you're doing or done for you, where you do all of the work yourself and you sell them a final product or final outcome."
The speaker delineates the spectrum of product service delivery, from DIY to DWY to DFY, each with different levels of involvement, value, and scalability.
"What level of support am I going to do and specifically on what medium?"
This quote prompts the consideration of the type and medium of support provided with a product or service, which affects scalability and customer satisfaction.
"ly less valuable than somebody who's real time available to hop on a zoom call whenever they want."
This quote emphasizes that a person who is available in real-time, such as for a Zoom call, is perceived as more valuable compared to someone who isn't readily available.
"Anything that's live is typically going to be perceived as more valuable. And if it's in person and live, probably the most valuable and probably the least scalable."
This quote suggests that live and in-person services are seen as the most valuable form of consumption, highlighting the trade-off between value and scalability.
"The fifth lens of the delivery cube is the speed and convenience of whatever we're delivering."
This quote introduces the importance of how quickly and conveniently a service or product is delivered, which is a key factor in determining its value.
"If I charge ten times more for my current thing, what would I have to change about my thing that I sell in order for it to be worth ten times more?"
The quote illustrates the concept of the Ten X test, which is about reimagining the value proposition of a product or service to justify a significantly higher price point.
"That is the easy to sell, hard to deliver continuum, where if you choose the most scalable version of this, you could have no employees and sell tons of units, but it would be very difficult for you to get a good price tag because the value might not be there."
This quote discusses the continuum of scalability versus value, indicating that highly scalable models may struggle with pricing due to lower perceived value.
"And so when I'm thinking through each of these things, I'm ticking off how I want to support each level of value within the thing that I'm selling."
The quote conveys the process of using the Delivery Cube to evaluate and plan the support for different levels of value in a product or service, which is an essential part of business planning.