The Right Product

Successful business requires exchanging value where both parties get the better deal - you sell something for more than it costs to produce, while customers buy something worth more than they pay

Eben explains the fundamental business exchange: 'what you need to be able to do is sell something that costs you less to produce than you're getting in return from the customer' while 'from the customer's perspective, they need the same thing. They need to buy something that's worth more than the money they're spending.'

Start with something you know about when choosing your first business - use your existing expertise, talents, or gifts rather than diving into completely unfamiliar territory

Eben provides specific examples: 'if you happen to be excellent with money, you might want to start a service that helps people with their money' or 'If you're excellent at fixing cars, you might want to start a business that has something to do with fixing cars.'

Use affiliate marketing to test niches and learn marketing without creating your own products first

Eben specifically recommends 'becoming a member of amazon.com's affiliate program' where 'you can start a blog or a website and you can sell any product that Amazon sells on your website. And when someone wants to buy it, they click on the button. They go and they check out through Amazon and Amazon sends you some of the money.'

Customers buy benefits, results, solutions, or relief - not your actual product

Eben emphasizes: 'You're not selling a product from your customer's perspective. They're getting a benefit. They're getting an outcome. They're getting a solution. They're getting some kind of result that they want or they're getting relief from pain or anxiety or worry or fear.'

Human buying motivation is irrational - driven by desires for approval, social status, and unconscious fears rather than logical product features

Eben explains: 'Humans tend to be motivated by crazy things like getting approval from others and achieving a higher social status and avoiding some of their irrational, unconscious fears or playing out patterns that they had since they were children.'

Your product is an obstacle between your customer and what they want - they have to go over, around, or under it to get their desired outcome

Eben uses the analogy: 'Imagine a game board where you start at one end of the board and you go through a path and you end up at the other end of the board. Your customers at the beginning and they want to get to the end. Your product is in the middle. It's like a wall that they have to go over or around or under.'

Car buyers don't want the car itself - they want reliable transportation and social status signaling that makes neighbors think they're important

Eben breaks down the real motivation: 'They don't want a car. They want something that gets them from their home to work and back and doesn't break down on the side of the road. They want something that their neighbors will look at and say, oh, you're very important because you have that fancy car.'

Create products that sell themselves by making customers say 'that will be the easiest way to get what I want' when they hear about it

Eben's goal is clear: 'I wanna create a product or a service that when they hear about it, they say that will be the easiest way to get what I want.' He wants customers to respond: 'That's what I want. I need that. Yep. I'll take two.'

Apple products sell themselves because they're intuitive, have fewer controls, and don't require technical expertise to use

Eben analyzes Apple's success: 'They sell themselves. All you need to do is take one of them and start using it for a little while. And you kind of realize this thing's kind of stupid proof. It's got fewer controls and buttons on it than just about anything else.'

Study Steve Jobs and Apple's product launches to learn how to create products that make people immediately say 'I need to get one of those'

Eben recommends: 'Go to their website. Watch every keynote address that Steve Jobs gives. Watch all of their product release videos. Notice how they create and offer products. And notice how after you've watched the video where they launch a product, you say to yourself, I need to get one of those.'

Most purchases are wants, not needs - we only truly need food, water, clothing, and shelter for survival

Eben clarifies the distinction: 'Most of the things that people buy, they don't actually need. What we need is we need some food, and we need some water. And, maybe we need some clothing or in some shelter if the weather gets really bad. We don't actually need almost anything in our lives to survive.'

Increase perceived value by showing customers the simple action steps they'll take and exactly how they'll get their desired result

Eben explains the process: 'They need to see picking up the golf club and hitting the golf ball and having it go a lot further and a lot straighter. They need to see that happening so they can go, oh, I see how that works.' Customers need to see 'how the steps all fit together to give them the outcome that they want.'

Add informational products as bonuses to dramatically increase perceived value at low cost

Eben recommends: 'you can create informational products. I love selling information products, but you can create them and you can offer them as bonuses or offer them for free along with the real products that you sell. So you can create very high increased perceived value by creating bonuses.'

Professional packaging costs only $100-300 but provides significant competitive advantage because people judge books by their covers

Eben states: 'You can get a great design for a $100, $200, $300 for just about anything. It's really important to have a professional design, of your product. I really think that it's, important when you're starting out because you want every advantage.'

Name products to be impossible to forget using alliteration and benefits - Coca-Cola succeeds because it describes what it contains and uses repetitive C sounds

Eben analyzes: 'Originally, Coca Cola had coca in it. There was, you know, cocaine in the cola. And that was a selling point' and 'it's also hard to forget because it has repetitive sounds. Notice the alliteration, the two C's, co k and cola. There are actually three of them there.'