Jay Melone’s Post

Am I the only one who's spent years chasing the wrong customer? Everyone tells you to "niche down" but they don't explain how. When I launched my first product a few years ago, I was sure I knew who my customer would be. One thing I was certain of was to avoid making my market "everyone." We've all heard variations of the advice: "When you solve for everyone, you sell to no one." Instead, I'd follow the advice of brand and marketing experts: "niche down." All of the content I created, the messaging in my sales pages, the words I used within the product itself... I directed it all at a very targeted niche I hoped to operate within... a specific customer I wanted to help. When I launched the product, sales came in. But not nearly as many as I’d hoped. Weeks and months passed and toolkit sales trickled in. It was deflating. In trying to avoid being too broad, I niched down too far and too fast. I put my blinders on. I had ignored the data. But once I took time to look, I discovered my initial customer was a degree or two off. Instead of it being the niche I was most familiar with, my actual customer was a version of myself who was just a few steps earlier in their journey. By listening and iterating my product to attract my ideal niche and customer, I generated: 1. A direct increase in product sales 2. A surprising spike in sales of my consulting & coaching services Anyone else made the mistake of niching down with blinders on? --- 🌲 If you want to learn how to (actually) niche down... Read the full story how I used customer data to pivot my product and attract my ideal customer. It drops in this Sunday's (free) newsletter. Link in bio Jay Melone.

4 stages to earn an extra $21k/mo from your existing knowledge. The work is hard. The path is simple. Years ago, while still working as a full-time Product Manager, I had this itch to earn additional income. But other than a promotion, a new job, or a second job, I had no clue how to get there. If I could go back and coach my younger self, here are the steps I'd have myself take to productize my expertise and earn multiple income streams. 1️⃣ MONTHS 1-2: COACH A FEW INDIVIDUALS Product Management was a hot field that was just starting to take off. I had learned a good deal by being in the trenches and figuring stuff out the hard way. I managed 5 others on the path to becoming PMs. I also knew other PMs that were earlier in their career. I'd set up a weekly 1:1 meetings, where I'd show them how I do what I do. We'd lay out related to-dos and projects for them to work on. As they got stuck and had questions, I'd take notes and help them through it. I'd templatize the hard parts that came up repeatedly. The first couple would be free. Then, as my confidence (and results) grew, I'd charge $250+ per session. My goal would be to coach 4 individuals. Total monthly income: $1,000 2️⃣ MONTHS 3-5: COACH A SMALL GROUP Next, to better leverage my time, I'd repeat my coaching in a group format. They'd use my growing library of templates to learn and do their work, better. When my templates broke or didn't cover certain scenarios, I'd adapt them. I'd begin building supporting material for the templates - especially the parts I repeated or had to coach people through 1:1. I'd initially charge $100 per person per session. Next I'd charge $500 per person per month that included a block of sessions. My goal would be a group of 10 people. Total monthly income: $5,000 3️⃣ MONTHS 6-8: TEACH A LARGER GROUP As my templates + supporting resources turned into an organized set of materials, I'd teach it to live groups. Just like with group coaching, I'd continue to refine the material until it was at the point that people could be successful with less and less of my active involvement/coaching. I would package the training into 2-day training formats and charge $500 per person. My goal would be classes of 20 people per training, run once per month. Total monthly income: $15,000 • Training: $10,000 • Coaching: $5,000 4️⃣ MONTHS 8+: BUILD AN ON-DEMAND COURSE The coaching and teaching would enable me to: • Deepen my expertise • Learn from my customers • Build and iterate my offers Now I'd package my templates, training, and systems into an online course that's proven to help up-and-coming PMs. I'd sell it for $200. My 1-year goal from launch would be to sell 30 per month. Total monthly income: $21,000 • Course: $6,000 • Training: $10,000 • Coaching: $5,000 Can you see yourself doing this? P.S. I kept the timeline and numbers somewhat modest, to account for balancing your existing life and job.

"Do what you love" is incomplete advice. Here are 2 truths I've figured out about building a successful business: 1. Passion is fleeting (and a bit over-hyped) Everyone tells you to build a business doing work you're passionate about. Every time I sneeze, someone else is recommending the Ikigai method to help you focus on things you love. What do I love? I love not having to work. I love surfing. I love outdoor projects around my home. I love watching my boys play sports (on repeat). Passion hasn't been a thing I decided upon. It's stuff that's come to me, while I'm working and building. But as soon as it arrives, it can also disappear. And the craziest part? It can also return. 2. Good things take time When it comes to work and business building, I am one of the least patient people I know. I'm a bit of a monster... with myself, anyway. Cracking the whip more often than not throughout my career. But when I look back at all of my most successful ventures, they were the result of many components I created, over a long stretch. Things I iterated. Things I accidentally created. One thing I connected to another thing. Until one day, years later, I had... sorta by luck... created flywheels within my business that enabled the company to grow. As Steve Jobs said, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward." What do you think about all of this? I expand on these 2 levers in today's newsletter:

Online communities are broken. If I had to guess, I'd say I've joined 300 online communities over the past 10 years. I feel like I've given them their fair shake. In the end, not one has kept my attention. I've joined communities run on just about every platform: • Skool • Circle • LinkedIn • Facebook (ugh) • Discord • Slack I've joined communities that are: • Free • Low-ticket (<$100) • Higher-ticket (>$500) I've joined communities in my broad industry. And I've joined communities that were super niche to what I do; i.e. a group of clones. I've joined communities where everyone was strangers. And communities with people that already know & trust one another. I've joined tiny communities where you'd assume there'd be lots of deep discussions. Instead, it was a graveyard. Then I'd joined large communities, hoping for more action, only to be hit with 400 unread notifications. Mostly nonsense. In the end, they all felt like much more of a distraction than anything else. And the worst were filled with self-promoters. So earlier this year, I tried to create my own. tl;dr I shuttered it after 2 months. Not only was it a ton of work, but I was bored... by my own community. I thought it was just me. Maybe I'm hard to please? (I think that's true anyway) Maybe I just happened to be unlucky in the ones I've joined? Then yesterday, I read a story about a guy I follow and respect. He shared a story about leaving a community because: 1. It was only sorta valuable 2. It felt like anyone was allowed to join 3. It became a chore that he couldn't keep up with The plot twist: The community is run by a person that coaches others how to build communities. That's like, their thing. Not that one person leaving means much. But it was another data point for me. The reason I bring this up... Next year, I'd like to try building one again. I want to believe there's hope. So I'd love to hear from others. What's your experience been with online communities? What are some great ones (that you've stuck with for 6+ months)? What makes them great?

I still remember the first sale I made as a business owner. It was 2010. A guy named Dan was building a series of brick and mortar stores around the US. The stores sold high-end crafting experiences and products. To complement the stores, Dan needed technology to run the stores and a website to sell his products online. I had just launched my consulting company, New Haircut. In fact, I was still moonlighting as a contract Product Manager to pay the bills. New Haircut was weeks old. I remember walking into Dan’s fancy NYC offices. He escorted me through a set of double-doors. Inside, his executive team awaited to hear my pitch. My voice trembled for the first 10 minutes. I scurried through a shoddy sales deck. At a point, one of Dan’s team members interrupted me, “So, Jay, why should we hire you?” I stammered. I was honest about my company’s tenure. But I was committed to doing whatever was necessary to achieve their goals. Then Dan stood up and pushed in his chair. I was certain he’d be cutting the meeting short. I listened for the inevitable, “Thanks, but no thanks.” He walked behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and addressed his team: “We’re going to go with Jay for this project.” What?! I thought. ME?!! Are… ya sure? Dan became New Haircut’s first client. That first project went well. In truth, we lost money on it. In fact, if I was pricing it today, it would be 20x what I quoted that day. But that’s not the point. What mattered, which I didn’t grasp at the time, was that I had won my first sale. I crossed an invisible moat so many budding entrepreneurs drown in. Where you sit stuck, telling yourself you can’t sell. And even if you could, nobody would be stupid enough to buy from you... That mindset is not only unhelpful, it's untrue. New Haircut went on to work with Dan and his team for the next three years. We delivered on the promise I committed to in that conference room. When all was said and done, New Haircut grossed over $500,000 with Dan’s company. But none of it would have been possible without that first sale. Meanwhile, A friend of mine is working to productize her expertise and earn her first sale. One step closer to her goal of financial freedom. I just wrote up her story over the weekend. I hope you're as inspired by it as I've been. I'll link to the story in the comments.

How important is your reputation? What about your trust? Your attention? Your time? Each of these things are way more valuable than money. Because, once lost, they’re a lot harder (or impossible) to replace. Still, every day, we sell people to invest their reputation, trust, attention, and time in us. Then we go to start a business, productize our expertise, or offer coaching and what’s the first thing we trick ourselves into believing? That we don’t know how to sell. Bulls#!t. In tomorrow's deep dive, I'm sharing a story of a friend of mine who is overcoming her fear of selling. As a result, she's about to have a major breakthrough and achieve her dream: "To be financially free, so I can buy back my time and enjoy life again." I'm so excited for her. I couldn't pass up a chance to share her story with the internet. To read it, sign up for my free newsletter. Link in bio Jay Melone.

Here are my favorite 3 questions (+answers) from yesterday's session about growing a LinkedIn newsletter. +1 unanswered question that I'd love to hear from the marketers following along. ❓QUESTION 1 "How do you know if people are reading your newsletter posts?" LinkedIn provides rudimentary analytics of the cumulative views of your newsletter editions. For example, I've written 21 editions which have gotten 540 views in the past 7 days. But stats on individual editions is missing. Not great. Workaround: Since you send out each edition with a post, you can make some assumptions about it's impact based on the reach & engagement of the post. This is obviously a far cry from the deep metrics you get from email newsletter platforms like beehiiv: • Opens • Clicks • Unsubscribes • A/B testing results Plus you can mine through edition-specific data on the content your readers engaged with; e.g. polls, links, buttons, surveys. Another reason why I move LinkedIn newsletter subscribers to my email newsletter. ❓QUESTION 2 "Is there any reason to start a newsletter from a company page rather than a personal profile?" There are brands I adore: Nike, Apple There are tools I love using: Miro, Loom, ChatGPT Regardless, I will never read a newsletter sent from a company. I don't care how helpful the tips are or how much I can save on a promo. In the end, a company newsletter feels like I'm being sold to. That's the job for email marketing. Less so for a newsletter. A newsletter is about building relationships. And since relationships are personal, I would almost always recommend starting a newsletter as an individual. There are certainly exceptions. Lucy Keller manages the newsletter for Bloomberg Media. A brand and publication like that clearly needs to come from the brand. But if Lucy formed a business to teach people how to build a media brand, she'd probably do it as Lucy. And I'd subscribe. ❓QUESTION 3 "I'm concerned about cannibalizing my existing beehiiv newsletter subscribers. How can I prevent this?" My LinkedIn newsletter is composed of past email newsletter editions. They contain ~50% of the original email edition. Then I add a "Continue Reading" button that takes them to the email edition, where they're invited to subscribe to read the entire edition. Another attendee offered a great tip. If you write a daily email newsletter, you could write a weekly LinkedIn newsletter that curates the past week's email editions. ❓UNANSWERED QUESTION "You mention that you sorted out the duplicate content stuff. How?" This person was wondering what happens if your email newsletter and LinkedIn newsletter editions are clones that get flagged by search engines as duplicate content. Does LinkedIn win because of its massive rankings, or your email newsletter because that's where it was first published? Tag some SEO / Marketing specialists so we can get some answers. --- If you missed yesterday's session, I'm doing another. Link in comments.

Email is dead. Newsletters are dead. Email marketing is dead. Weird. I still check my inbox multiple times a day. Every day. My email newsletter is where I deepen relationships, earn trust, and, occasionally, sell stuff. But the reality is, only a small fraction of my email list buys from me. Which is why building it up with engaged readers is so important. But unless you're paying for subscribers, growing an email list is grueling. Luckily, we have discovery platforms like LinkedIn to accelerate that growth. Aside from consistent posting and commenting (which can be a lot), I've had great success leveraging my LinkedIn Newsletter to build my email newsletter. If you've considered building a LinkedIn Newsletter... Or if you just want to see how I'm doing it so you can get up and running faster... Join me TODAY for a free walkthrough → https://lnkd.in/ekaUUy5G 🎁 All attendees get a complementary guide with my complete setup. Can't make it? Hit me with questions below.

Clarifying your WHY before figuring out your WHAT is a good idea. But the opposite is also true. I've been iterating my 'why' since October by doing all of the "right" thinking and research: • Talking with customers • Running experiments • Iterating accordingly All helpful. I've learned a ton. But at some point, to find the north star I'll double down on, I know I need to move from thinking to doing. To take a stance on the stuff I'm going to create. How? Nothing has helped me shift into build-mode better than creating an action plan. Not some generic timeline. A real plan with projects, to-dos, dates, and money projections. That's exactly what I've been putting together the past couple weeks. I've never felt more certain of my next steps. And not just prioritizing everything. But saying 'yes' to the bets that will create the most leverage. I decided to dedicate this newsletter to sharing how I created that plan and what it looked like. If you appreciate learning by others showing their work, you'll like today's issue. Hit me back with questions. I'm an open book.

I was skeptical about LinkedIn newsletters. Happy I got over it. Here's 3 outcomes I'm pleasantly surprised with: 1️⃣ REPURPOSE My biggest hesitation upfront was the fear of having to come up with MORE content. I already write: • A weekly blog • A weekly email newsletter • 3-5 weekly LinkedIn posts Coming up with more content for a second newsletter on LinkedIn felt overwhelming. Instead, I repurpose content I've previously written in my email newsletter. It's still relevant and valuable. I'm just bringing it to LinkedIn. --- 2️⃣ LINKEDIN HAS GOT YOUR BACK When you start a newsletter, they let 100% of your connections know about it. Compare that with your typical post that reaches ~10%. That's a 900% improvement in reach. But the platform doesn't stop there. They push your newsletter out to new connections, and routinely promote it to 100% of your subscribers. LinkedIn LOVES that you're publishing consistent content on their platform and will do everything it can to encourage you to do more of it. Win win. --- 3️⃣ PROMOTE WITHOUT PENALTY We know that sharing external links in your posts doesn't work well. But it's all good when sharing links within your LinkedIn newsletter to your: • website • podcast • owned products • email newsletter Over-promoting will always turn people off. So be sure to balance your gives with your asks. I've learned a bunch more that I'll share this Thurs, May 9. 📌 Come see the playbook I used to hit 1,087 subscribers. It's free so long as your first name doesn't start with B, M, or T. Join free here: https://lnkd.in/ekaUUy5G