159: Build a Community to Sell Your New Product Invention

January 18, 2023

With Ashley Black, Founder of FasciaBlaster

Hosted by Kevin Mako, President of MAKO Design + Invent

159: Build a Community to Sell Your New Product Invention

Leading a multi-million dollar company that sells FasciaBlaster and other related products, Ashley Black has garnered a global customer base, generating impressive monthly sales. With a massive social media following of over 8 million, she has also authored two best-selling books, including her latest, “From Passion and Purpose to Product and Prosperity.” In this talk, she will impart invaluable wisdom on building customer communities, establishing a personal brand that resonates with your product, and achieving remarkable brand growth. Her insights are invaluable for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers looking to attain the enviable success of a “hardware startup unicorn.”

Today you will hear us talk about:

Strike a balance between driving product sales and fostering community engagement while developing your hardware startup’s brand.
Utilize advertising as a tool to achieve profitability.
Encourage product promotion by offering customers attractive deals and incentives.
Take up the mantle of product advocate and proudly claim your identity as the inventor.
Share your personal story and highlight your unique identity as the product’s inventor.
Stay true to yourself and your values while promoting your brand.
Avoid overthinking your strategy and let your authentic self shine through.
Demonstrate your full commitment by self-funding your startup.
Build a larger community to reduce customer acquisition costs.
Focus on a clear and unwavering goal, without entertaining a Plan B.
Display unwavering dedication to creating a legacy business through your product.
Seek out a community that shares your values and appreciates your product.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

2:05 – Consumer goods are one of the harder ways to build a business, but one of the most rewarding.
2:40 – Passion will make your product successful, both in the size of success, but also in how quickly you can achieve that success and the resilience of that success.
3:10 – If you have passion, then when failures come along the way, you will quickly overcome them.
3:40 – If you focus on your mission, the money follows.
6:00 – Ashley didn’t quit work right away, she worked through the idea first.
6:55 – Ashley had to educate the market that they needed this product, then sell it to them once they realized their need.
7:14 – The whole FasciaBlaster business was built and scaled all through direct-to-consumer selling.
7:30 – How a hardware product startup can build a community to help with selling their first products online.
7:45 – Facebook Ads that both sell the product, but also advertise the brand community.
8:15 – Once someone is in your community, the community speaks for you, and is more powerful in helping to sell your product.
9:14 – Ashley took out a $200,000 loan, after she had developed her product, to sell it.
9:50 – You need to build a product and start making money BEFORE you raise capital.
10:50 – Put in the effort to launch your business.
11:20 – Seize every opportunity to introduce someone to your product, to get a true feedback of your product, is extremely valuable in the early stages.
12:00 – Be an authentic spokesperson for your own brand. Don’t get someone else to do that for you, for many reasons.
15:30 – There is magic in an inventor, the person themselves, not just their product.
15:45 – You don’t have to be pretty, polished, etc., you just have to be genuine, so literally any inventor or hardware founder can easily do this, even if you are uncomfortable with it.
16:30 – People who resonate with your brand of weirdness will come out of the woodwork and love it.
17:20 – Being an authentic inventor behind a product is something that big corporate simply cannot compete with you on, and even further, is something that corporate buyers or acquirers will want to buy off you.
17:50 – Big corporate is spending less money on their own R&D, and more money on acquiring new emerging hardware product brands.
18:00 – Acquirers will want to know what your CTA (Cost to Acquisition) is, and you can reduce that cost of acquiring a new customer by leveraging your community and brand to make more sales with less ad spend.
19:25 – Your customers can also help you with your R&D for the next version of your product or even a new product you plan to launch with that brand.
20:35 – Being all in on your invention.
21:20 – If you are an inventor with an invention idea, and you are convinced that there are people out there who could benefit from your innovation, then it is up to you to put 100% in on making it happen, both for yourself, and for the world.
21:40 – Ashley bet absolutely everything on making this product work, and that is why it was such a big success, and so fast.
22:10 – You should not be comfortable with your investment, or stay in your “safety zone”, unless you just want the product to be a hobby business. Either is okay, but you need to ask whether you want this to be a life-changing business or just something on the side.
22:25 – Ashley built the product business to be her legacy business, to be her life’s work.
22:40 – People need to have permission to have an all-in attitude towards their product, because society has all this chatter about safety and such to keep people conformed, instead of doing something great for themselves.
23:00 – This is a huge planet of people. If you are authentic and create an authentic product to your vision, others will find you and your product.
23:45 – You get out of your product business what effort you put into it.
23:50 – Statistically, a person will only have 1 or maybe 2 major success ideas in their lifetime, so don’t let it pass when you have had the fortune of seeing a great opportunity, quite possibly the one opportunity of a lifetime.
24:45 – Ask yourself, if you don’t pursue this product idea, will someone else do it?
25:00 – Ashley felt like it was her duty to bring this invention idea to the world.
27:35 – Ashley says that she’s just a normal person who built an empire, so anyone can do it, and keep at it if you’re on the journey to building a new hardware product and hardware brand.

EPISODE LINKS

Ashley Black Links:
LinkedIn | Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

PTC Links:
https://www.ptc.com/
OnShape | Creo

Kevin Mako Links:
Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Partner: PTC’s best-in-class software solutions Onshape: The only cloud-native product development platform that delivers full-featured computer-aided design (CAD), integrated product data management (PDM) and enterprise analytics in a single system, and Creo: 3D CAD solution that provides designers with the most innovative tools to build better products faster, such as generative design, additive manufacturing, real-time simulation, IIoT, and augmented reality.

MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves.

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