12 Months to $1 Million Quotes

“Before you climb the next mountain or conquer your next demon… Take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate your wins!”
― russell brunson, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Most people think you need tens of thousands of dollars to get started, but you can get there with just a thousand, or less,” Jared told me. “The money isn’t the obstacle. The truth is that ninety percent of the battle is getting your head right and just pushing through all the obstacles, no matter what. You have to make it your mission to find a way.” Jared’s obstacles didn’t end that sleepless Christmas. To this day, competitors copy his ads, and even his products. Some of them are total scam artists who take orders with no intention of fulfilling them. “When I first started, I’d get so angry at the scammers, but that wasn’t helping me,” he said. “Now, if I see someone copying my stuff, I immediately get my lawyers involved and send a cease and desist. It’s part of the game. I’ve learned to just deal with it.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“But anyone can sit and “kick around ideas” all day. That’s the easy part. The hard part is deciding to take the risk of actually bringing that product to life. The hardest part is getting past the head noise: What will my family think? What if my product sucks? What if I get a negative review? While I will help you with the “how to,” you have to go all in on getting through the mental hurdles. It’s time to make a decision: Are you willing to go all in?”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“6. Do you know how you will get predictable sales? I don’t mean to overwhelm you just yet, but your sales process has to be scalable. For most people, Amazon is the easiest place to start. We’ll cover that later. Unless you have a different way to collect sales consistently, then Amazon will be your starting place. 7. What will be products two, three, and four? Do you know what your follow-up products are going to be? If you don’t know what else you might sell to your person, then you’re not ready to move on. Your job will be to roll out products for that same customer as quickly as possible and as fast as you can comfortably handle them for the first year. Having an idea of your subsequent products will put you far ahead in the process.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“4. What does your group think about similar products on the market? If you have a group of products you’re thinking about focusing on, you can start to identify “holes” in the marketplace by listening to what people are already saying. Read customer reviews and look at internet forums. You can also start vetting your idea by posting about it online. My buddy Moiz tried using Tom’s natural deodorant, and he hated it for a simple reason: It didn’t work. He thought, I wonder if I could do this better. So he started asking questions on online forums, getting feedback from other natural yuppies like him. From the response, he knew there was interest. He did a $500 round of prototypes and sold out immediately. That was the beginning of Native Deodorant, which was later acquired by Procter & Gamble for $100 million. It took Moiz only eighteen months to go from a $500 prototype to a million-dollar brand (and it sold for nine figures!). 5. Where does your person hang out with others? With an idea of what we might sell, we can start to think about where our first customers might come from. It’s much easier to make sales when you can drop your product in front of a group of your ideal people. Does your target customer listen to specific podcasts? Do they follow certain influencers? Do they belong to specific groups? Do they read certain blogs? Brainstorm where your ideal customer focuses his or her attention, and you will quickly know where to put your product in front of them. In the next chapters, you will also learn how to develop a micro-audience that is ready to buy your product from you. I also like to write down the names of ten friends who will get excited about a product because your ideal customers know other people just like them.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“1. To whom are you going to sell? You start by identifying your person. It can be you or someone you know, but once you identify them, look at what group of people they belong to. Are they CrossFitters? Do they eat a paleo diet? Are they nurses? Are they Christians? If you don’t know the answer, start with yourself. What groups do you identify with? 2. What do they already buy? Can you list at least three to five products that your group already buys? If you can’t list at least three products, you’re in the wrong market. At this point in the process, it’s really tempting to make up a product idea from scratch, but I recommend that you start by identifying what your person already buys. Just start writing down what your person already buys on their journey to be a great mom, a great entrepreneur, or a great designer. 3. Which product out of that suite of products do you want to focus on, to either make a great version of it or a version that solves one of their problems? Looking at the list of products you came up with, ask yourself, “How are those products not serving my group right now?” Does one of them jump out as a potential “gateway” to the rest of the list? If you identify the first product that solves a pain point or serves as a gateway into other purchases, then you know exactly where to start.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“The next time they invited me over for lunch, they wanted to update me on their progress. I couldn’t wait to hear how their new business was going. As soon as I got there, however, question hour resumed: “Ryan, what business should we really start?” Here we were, back to square one. They had no prototype, no audience, and no proof of concept. They’d been stuck spinning in place because they were waiting to be told what to do. What I helped them discover was that there was no perfect product or “right” business to start. Instead, there’s simply a set of decisions you need to make. Once you make these decisions, you’ll have a good shot at success. But until you make these decisions, you’ll be stuck in analysis mode forever. Again, you don’t need to know how to do anything—we’ll go into more detail on the process throughout the rest of this book. First, you must make decisions. It’s also okay to change your decisions later, but answering these questions will allow you to start to move down the path to your own million-dollar business.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“People buy products that say something about themselves. Paying twice the price for Bulletproof Coffee versus the competitors says that the person is a high performer. On the other hand, drinking Black Rifle Coffee, which we mentioned earlier, says you shoot guns, or that you don’t care about the opinions of other people. The product (coffee) is almost exactly the same, but the person is completely different.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Even if your gateway product is the same as everyone else’s, you’re going to communicate in a way that’s specific for your target market. Remember, you’re not just selling a product. You’re creating a message. You’re taking something that’s already there and crafting a story that’s tailored to your customer. Two people can buy the same product for completely different reasons. Somebody who’s buying gloves to work in the garden might buy the exact same gloves for woodworking or going to the gym. Their preference would be to find a brand that speaks directly to them. Put simply, customers want to buy into brands that are going to serve them over the long term. You’re not just selling workout gloves. You’re selling to people who work out. This is nonnegotiable.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Your job is to identify three to five products that your ideal person might buy. You don’t need to worry about how to make it or how you will sell it—we’ll fix that later. Just brainstorm what your person already buys and potential things he or she might like to buy. People who do yoga buy mats, towels, and blocks. That’s three products. What else might they buy? Clothes, travel cases, or yoga pillows? Do people who do yoga buy other things, too? Like tea, meditation cushions, or essential oil? And do people who do yoga have different shopping habits than others? Do they buy organic, or avoid synthetic skin creams? Write it all down. You don’t need to worry about how you’re going to do anything just yet—just know that the internet has opened up opportunities for anyone who wants to create something from scratch. Anybody can do a Kickstarter campaign. Anybody can sell on Amazon. Any website can rank in Google. Anyone can run an ad on Facebook. Anyone can post on Instagram and connect with any influencer. Your job is to find out where your customers are, and drop your bait into that pond.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Check out Kickstarter and look at projects that raised a million dollars. Go to Amazon and find the best-selling toilet paper. Watch Facebook ads and see what companies are being talked about. You can do this kind of research on any channel where you’re thinking about selling, or simply by paying attention.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“When you start with people and create products for them, you become a price setter, not a price follower. That gives you better profit margins. And you get repeat customers, rather than one-off sales.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“This book is designed to get you out of The Grind as quickly as humanly possible. If you follow the steps outlined, you will leave The Grind about four months after you finish reading. Your challenge will be making fast, bold decisions, and being okay with them being less than perfect. Otherwise, you will overthink every step, and you will stay stuck at “Stage Zero,” the state in which you’re just thinking about becoming an entrepreneur.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“To set your expectations, I often split the twelve-month process into three stages: The Grind (months one to four), The Growth (months five to nine), and The Gold (months ten to twelve). Most people fail because they never make it out of The Grind.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“All I needed from there was enough of an audience to be able to talk up the yoga products I was planning to sell. We started sharing content on the page to get our followers to like and share that content. We spent $10 per day on advertising to build the following. And we engaged with our followers in the comments. After about thirty days, we had around 3,000 people who liked our page. But we did one more thing that was the most important piece of it all: We documented our product release on the I Love Yoga Facebook page. We didn’t brag about the product or try to sell it; we simply talked about our product by showing the prototype process, explaining the difference in our product, and sharing every change we made to it based on feedback from people like them. We showed them that we’d added a thicker strap to our yoga mat simply because that was what they said they wanted. We showed them that we listened to them, that we wanted to hear what they had to say, and that we wanted to serve their needs.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Everything you’re doing in business is really just audience-building.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“If you have three to five products, at an average price point of $30 per unit, each selling twenty-five to thirty units per day, you have a million-dollar business.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“More Sales Does Not Equal More Profit My first product order for Sheer Strength cost me $600. I ordered 100 units at $6 each and we sold it at a $32 price point. The money came out of my savings, and at the time, I was so worried that it wouldn’t sell, and I’d be out $600. To the Ryan of the past, I now say two things. First: Who cares? Put on your big boy pants, Ryan. It’s only $600. Second: This isn’t the real problem. Assuming you follow this process, create a decent product, and identify your customer, your bigger problem is that you won’t be able to keep inventory in stock, as we’ve talked about already. Trust me on this. Keeping inventory in stock so that you can keep building your sales momentum is a real challenge. With Sheer Strength, we kept raising the price until it hit a point where sales were just slow enough that we could keep up with ordering the next round of inventory. We took the money we made from sales, and we bought another 500 units. Then, in the next round, we bought 1,000 units. We just kept rolling the money back in, over and over, as the company grew. It was pure bootstrapping. In retrospect, I wish we’d been even more aggressive at the beginning, but we feared what would happen if we placed that first huge order and the product didn’t sell. For a lot of people, the biggest hurdle is not placing that preliminary order, but rather finding the money to avoid running out of stock faster than it can be replaced.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“If you’re thinking of starting a business . . . you have to remember that proof of concept is key,” Hanny says. “I’ve seen a lot of people fail because they were spinning their wheels on less critical aspects of the business. Go ahead and sell your product on Amazon, your website, or whatever your preferred channel may be, but get a proof of concept first, before a lot of money is spent unnecessarily. Is your product something the market, and your audience, really needs?”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“He kept running out of product—which, again, is the worst thing that can happen to your business.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Say you use a French press to make coffee,” said Travis. “There are tons of French press designs out there—some are full stainless steel, some have mostly glass, some are more sleek, curved designs, some are more industrial. What we’d do to develop and split test a French press is collect all the product designs we think are best and then split test them against the top sellers in the category. Based on the split test, we’ll decide on which design to go with.” Getting customer feedback is a direct result of getting sales, according to Travis. “When you launch a product, you do whatever you can to get as many sales as you can early on, because that’s what drives feedback. That’s what allows you to listen to your customer. When we first started out, we went from, in four months, doing four to five thousand in sales a month, to two years in, doing about two million in sales a month.” Those sales are the fuel that runs the feedback machine and allows new products to be developed.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“One of my mastermind members, Travis Killian, once told me about how he gets products to stand out in a busy, loud marketplace. His answer was simple: “We listen to people. We execute so many split tests, it’s insane. We’ll mock up the product and ask people, Which do you like better? This one or this other one from our competitor? We do that for all the top competitors in the market, all the ones we think have the best products in the niche.” Split testing requires nothing more than asking people which one of two things they like better. That’s it. Show someone two items, and ask for his or her preference. It’s one of those rare things that happens to be simple, easy, and effective. “I remember one time, when we were just starting out,” Travis told me, “we paid one of our friends to go to the mall in Austin, show pictures of our products versus our competitor’s products, and collect survey answers on which one they preferred.” If it sounds like a ton of time and money to pay someone to do inperson surveys and split testing, Travis says that’s not even essential. “When we started out, that’s what we did. Now, we use services online to run constant split tests of our products against our competitors’ products. The most important thing is to get the feedback on why survey respondents have a preference. Why do they like the other guy’s product over mine? That’s the data we really want to collect. We spend our time analyzing that data and applying it to the products—deciding first if the feedback is something we can, and want, to address, and then making changes from there.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“When we cut our price, we sold really well (because when you follow the method in this book, it works), but we ran out of stock. It was a predictable outcome. Being out of stock is the worst thing that can possibly happen to your new business because you’re essentially out of business when you can’t take orders. We had to wait out the four-week lag for another shipment to cross an ocean and get to the Amazon warehouse. When we finally got new stock back in, we were essentially starting over. Yes, we had customer reviews, but our momentum was dead. We had to run another discount to get moving again. We did recover, but that one mistake set us back months. I can’t say whether an extra month of planning would have kept us from making that awful choice; probably not, honestly. You can’t control for everything. Your goal is just to take your product from an idea to a physical item in a customer’s hand. It’s simpler than most people think it is. Find the right supplier, get samples, refine with research, put in a small order, and get the product online. That’s all you need to worry about right now. Don’t overthink it. Just fix the mistakes as they come.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“A lot of beginner entrepreneurs—and a fair number of experienced ones, too—are afraid of high prices. They want to cut prices as soon as financially possible, probably because some intro-to-business class told them that’s the best way to build a brand. I can tell you from experience, though, that if you’re building a brand, you don’t want to get into the business of cutting prices. You want to be near the top price point in your market. The reason is simple: It’s much easier to scale a premium brand than it is to scale a low-priced brand. Only companies selling inventory in massive quantities can really win at that game. You’re not going to beat Walmart’s price, so don’t play Walmart’s game.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“A better deal for a better product was out there, but I didn’t put our momentum on hold to look for it. We made the adjustment as we progressed. That never-ending, purpose-driven quest for improvement gives you the freedom to direct your focus right now on getting that product on the market. Whenever I catch myself overthinking a product and delaying the crucial move from concept to sale, I remind myself, “Let’s make some mistakes.” After all, there’s so little risk involved in this method; when you’re working with small orders up front, the downside of a mistake is very low. You’ll find a way to sell those first 100 units on Amazon eventually. Even if you don’t, the loss is minimal. Mistakes, even bad ones, are a part of this business. No amount of preparation ensures a perfect process. Sometimes you’ll make a modest mistake, like going to market with the second-best supplier cutting slightly into your margins. Other times, you’ll commit a nastier error, like the time we lowered the price on our yoga mats without really thinking through our inventory limitations.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“I’ve known far too many people who get hung up on designing packaging when they should be getting their product ready to sell. They work and rework a logo, change out the color of their plastic wrapping, consider a hundred different fonts for their brand name. Honestly, if you’re selling a product on Amazon, most people won’t even notice your packaging. For the customer, the packaging is a brown Amazon box on the doorstep. If the product speaks to them, they’ll get it regardless of the plastic you wrap it in.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“The key to your product probably won’t be that it’s new. It’ll be that it’s different, even if it’s just in one small way.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“Find Your Supplier I’ve come to trust and rely on suppliers from Alibaba.com, but I know it has its detractors. When it comes to user experience, the site is, frankly, a bit of a mess. There’s also a certain distance between you and the supplier that the more firm-handshake-loving, look-them-in-the-eye-while-you’re-negotiating types don’t like. These days, though, Alibaba has a lot of competition, so there are plenty of options out there if you want a different path to your product. You can search for wholesalers, manufacturing companies, or contract manufacturers for your chosen product and find any number of smaller companies you can contact personally to get that more direct experience. Or, if you’re feeling particularly old-fashioned, you can attend a trade show in the market you’re going into. Find out where the next event is, hop on a plane, and go speak to a room full of potential manufacturers in a new city. Some people even go so far as to fly to China to meet directly with manufacturers. I’ve never done that—and I never plan to do that—but plenty of my friends swear by it. Of these options, though, I’d still recommend starting on Alibaba or a similar site and ordering ready-made product samples. Something magical happens when you hold a product in your hand: You realize it’s real. While it may seem at the outset like the best way to make your perfect product is to go meet a contract manufacturer in person and get them to build your design from scratch, that option comes with a lot more risk: the risk of lost time. We’re talking about at least three months before you see your first prototype—more likely six, or even twelve. All of that and you won’t even know right away if the resulting prototype will be the one that will make your brand. That’s why I recommend you come up with the idea, get samples, and improve over time. Perfectionists hate the approach, but you can’t expect to make it to a million dollars in twelve months if it takes twelve months just to get a look at what you’re creating.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“It didn’t take long to find some willing partners. We set down the specifications, and Sean talked to all the manufacturers who said they could fulfill our requests. We narrowed it down to two quality options, and then we choose the one with the best price and the best communication. Sean ordered the prototype, had it embossed with our brand logo—Zen Active—and in no time at all, we unrolled our first yoga mat on the floor in Sean’s house. That was our yoga mat. It was our product, with our specifications, with our logo, in Sean’s house, ready for sale. And all it took was one website and a lot of groundwork asking questions. Now, I’m not saying we got the product totally right on our first try. We made some mistakes, and we made adjustments to improve the product over time, but the basics of taking an idea and making it a ready-for-market product really is this simple. All you have to do is find the suppliers, do the research, make the tweaks, and find the best offer out there. Find”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

“I was in charge of decisions and marketing, and Sean was in charge of research and operations. When we were trying to identify our target customer, he spent a ton of time putting together spreadsheets comparing all the different markets we should consider. When he showed them to me and asked me what I thought, I replied, “Yoga.” Huh? “We could easily do multiple products serving people who do yoga,” I told him. “It’s an emerging trend. And I know a ton of those people; I can ask them what they want. Let’s start a yoga business.” Sean’s initial response was, “That’s not a quantitative analysis, Ryan!” I’ve never been one to overthink things—most people spend way too much time in the research period. I make decisions fast and adjust later. With our target customer identified, we made a list of possible products and chose our gateway product—a yoga mat. With that, we began the process of product development. We looked up the top-selling yoga mats on Amazon and read through the reviews; we asked questions on Facebook groups, subreddits, and Instagram influencer accounts. It didn’t take long before we had an idea of the main pain points we needed to address with our first product. I remembered Don’s advice and began looking for people to make the product. With a quick scroll and a click, we could choose between a wholesaler in China, a private label supplier out of India, or a contract manufacturer in Vietnam. For about fifty bucks, we were able to order a set of yoga mat samples that had the exact features we were looking for. It was that easy. Samples in hand, we needed to refine our product idea to make sure we were really hitting the pain points we’d identified. At that time, I’d done yoga maybe two or three times in my life, and I wasn’t nearly the right demographic for our mats anyway. That forced me to ask questions. We were targeting yoga-loving millennials, so I went where they often congregate: Starbucks. There, I did the kind of tough field work that really makes an entrepreneur sweat: asking young women questions over coffee. “Which yoga mat do you prefer? Why?” “What makes the difference between a bad yoga mat and a good one?” “What’s wrong with your current yoga mat?” “What do you think of this one? And what about this one?” Next, I headed over to local yoga studios to see how our samples stacked up against the strenuous demands of a yoga class. A few classes later, Sean and I had everything we needed to narrow down our product development. Armed with all our data, we went back to the manufacturers. From a couple yoga-clueless guys, we’d become knowledgeable enough to know not just what a good yoga mat looked like, but how it had to feel and perform. We knew what we needed our yoga mat to do. Now we just had to find the manufacturer to supply it.”
― Ryan Daniel Moran, 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur