Information products are dead…
…or so I thought.
Over the past few months, I’ve found a few enlightening discoveries. These felt like a 4-Minute Mile Moment – the point that a previous, concrete thought completely changed.
Backstory
Going back to the mid-2000s, I was following and studying some of the best information marketing and product developers at the time. Experts such as Eben Pagen, Perry Marshall, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Ed Dale, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson the whole StomperNet crew (extra points if anyone has any clue what that was ????), and many more.
This group of pioneering information product creators were putting together excellent communities, eBooks & video courses. This was an interesting and inspiring time in the internet marketing world. It was wild following their journeys and seeing how many of them were able to sell $1M+ of info products per year without a big team and with relative ease.
Many of these guys went onto do big things like start multiple SaaS businesses, buy big companies or brands and/or basically retire early.
Over these years, I always wanted to follow in their footsteps and create an information product driven lifestyle business.
However, during my agency building years, I never found the time or energy to focus on this endeavor. I might have built 20% of a dozen potential products, but nothing got launched.
After a while, I was convinced the information product business model was all but dead. I abandoned these side builds entirely.
That all changed when I stumbled up a few important, successful, inspiring people through social media that changed my mind entirely.
This was my 4-minute mile moment… where I rethought was was possible.
So, what do I mean by a 4-min mile moment?
Back in the early 1950s, breaking the four-minute mile was basically thought of as impossible. . It was believed to be beyond human capability until Roger Bannister broke the record in 1954.
In the following year 24 additional people would run the mile in under 4 minutes. A feat thought of as impossible, all it took was seeing someone break the record to empower 2 dozen more to do the same.
From my perspective, I had the same sort of inflection. I was convinced the days of the solo or small team startup / information product business were over. I think it was @TonyRobbins who first used this analogy and it stuck with me.
Sometimes, you have to see it to believe it.
Inspiring Entrepreneurs
There are tons of inspirational entrepreneurs on social media. I know I’m leaving out plenty… but here’s a short list of who I’ve found most inspirational.
Sahil Bloom (@sahilbloom)
Sahil writes one of the best weekly newsletters (the Curiosity Chronicle) w/ over 500K subscribers.
He’s built a huge following on Twitter & LinkedIn as well.
From Sahil, I’ve witnessed just how powerful and valuable a good audience can be.
Kieran Drew (@ItsKieranDrew)
Kieran Drew resigned from being a dentist to pursue writing online. He’s another great newsletter writer and inspiring information product developer. Kieran is very transparent on Twitter, showing his sales results and it’s awesome to watch the products getting built and succeeding.
Steph Smith (@stephsmithio)
Steph Smith was one of my first recent inspirations and the first episode of the @myfirstmilpod podcast I heard. I saw https://doingcontentright.com/ doing well and that really restarted my interest in info products / courses.
I highly recommend going back and listening to the MFM interviews, they’re great.
Justin Welsh (@thejustinwelsh)
Justin Welsh is one of the most prominent solopreneurs in social media. He’s has been extremely influential in changing the paradigm of the traditional entrepreneurial journey, typically full of big teams and VC funding to a very feasible and controllable (and profitable) 1-man-show.
Dan Koe (@thedankoe)
A fantastic content creator, writer and info product / course developer. Dan’s YouTube channel & newsletter are excellent. His tweets are full of bite-sized lessons and sage wisdom.
Matt Gray (@matt_gray_)
Matt Gray built a huge community and multiple courses. As corny as it sounds, check out one of his webinars – you’ll get a wealth of value. Matt, “The Systems Guy”, has built multiple courses too.
Brett Williams (@BrettFromDJ)
I had heard of productized services, but always had a bit of a mental block as to how it could practically work. Then Brett Williams’ Designjoy broke down that wall entirely. Brett is another solopreneur, reportedly pulling in over $1.5M/year with the productized design service and a course.
It can take a big push to change the way you see things. I followed most of these profiles for a year before it really clicked for me that there was a different and better way of doing things.
That’s what inspired me to start building https://marketingframe.works, https://ecommercefoundations.com, https://graystonetech.com, and many more behind the scenes.