Productize Your Expertise with Strategic Co-Creation

Imagine toiling away on a product for a year or two (or three) in complete isolation. 

Even if you’re working with someone who has specific experience with that kind of product, to some extent you’re flying blind. Will the way you’re crafting the specific features resonate with the audience? 

What I just described to you is how business books and novels are generally created. “No one knows anything” is a popular saying in Hollywood, and it’s true. Until the film, book, or other product is released to the public, you won’t know if it hits the mark. 

There is, however, an “audience-first” approach to writing a business book that began back in the aughts. It was called “blogging the book.” 

Now, I do recall that Seth Godin literally did release a book of blog posts at least once. But that’s not what I mean. What I’m talking about is posting the primary concepts of the book, attracting an audience with those concepts, getting feedback, refining the content, and then releasing it in book form. 

One of the best examples of this involved the book The Lean Startup, released in 2011 by Eric Reiss. The book made the New York Times Best Seller List, and, according to the publisher, has sold over one million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages.

But before it was a book (and then a franchise of books), it was a blog in which Reiss published the core concepts of the Lean methodology — entrepreneurship as management, validated learning, innovation accounting, and build-measure-learn. Then he proceeded to measure, learn, and build his book. 

As you may now recognize, the Personal Enterprise Growth Framework incorporates an aspect of lean methodology that Reiss did not include in his book (despite using this strategy to create the book). And that’s audience first. 

Interestingly, I first used these lean principles, combined with audience-first, years earlier in 2007 for the first product I launched from Copyblogger. While it made sense to me as a smart and natural process, my business partner (and eventual COO), Tony Clark, explained what I was doing in terms of lean manufacturing (a decades-old practice from Japan) and agile software development. 

This is how I figured out my first product: Teaching Sells, a guide to creating paid content at the intersection of instructional design and direct marketing. And while I deduced that this is what the audience would buy based on scores of signals, the lean strategy also went into the creation of the course. 

I should say “co-creation.” Not only did I sell the course before it existed (this is how first-time cohort-based classes work) to quickly raise cash from customers to pay myself while teaching, but I also paid incredibly close attention to real-time student feedback to generate better lessons. 

Thus began my Copyblogger-era personal enterprise that ultimately became an eight-figure company. With the Personal Enterprise Growth Framework, however, you’re both compressing the time it takes to get to cohort-based training and strategically “co-creating” with the clients you work closest with. This is something I did the hard way — by observation only.

How to Productize Your Expertise 

In offline direct marketing circles, there’s an old saying: 

Start with the prospect, not the product.

In other words, what does the audience want in terms of existing desire? And related to that, can you reach that audience, and is it large enough to be worth your time? 

Too many entrepreneurs get it wrong because their business idea is something they think a certain target market should embrace, instead of what they actually want. Or there might be a good fit between product and market, but the entrepreneur struggles to reach that market. 

At this point in my career, it’s mind-boggling that people try to create products without the benefit of having an audience to guide them. Plenty of people give it a shot, though, and most of them fail. 

That’s not surprising because they don’t truly know what people want — they just know what they want to create. Egocentric product creation is just as bad as egocentric marketing. 

Probably worse. 

If you create a product that’s all about you instead of about them, and it succeeds … well, you got very lucky. Never confuse luck with the results of an informed strategy. 

As you know, I’m a firm believer in building an audience first so they can tell you what they want. And even though we’re not going to ask them directly what they want to buy, one way or another (or in many ways), they’re going to reveal it. And even better, you already have a relationship with them! 

That’s what makes the Personal Enterprise Growth Framework different. As an expertise-based business, you know what kind of product you’re going to create. First, group training that you teach (a cohort-based or community course), and then from that, a self-paced course with the same lessons, but no interaction with you. Or maybe a paid newsletter or other type of membership site.

But you’re still discovering the product — everything from the positioning and title to the features (modules, lessons), which in turn are driven by desired outcomes and benefits. And you’re still discovering these details thanks to a relationship with people who have already purchased from you.

Your first task is to “productize” your one-on-one consulting or coaching sessions. That means you’ll teach how others can do what you do without you, even as you’re there to do Q&As and provide other interactive access to each cohort of learners. ...