Ep 25: Leslie adds a new product to her lineup

Learn about growing your product offerings.

Leslie Adds a New Product to Her Lineup

Featuring: President of Hot Taco Inc. Leslie Pierson and CXO and Dean of Rocket Club Academy Aicha Sharif

On Episode 25 of This is Small Business, Andrea discusses product iteration – more specifically how do you find out when it’s time to offer additional products? First up, President of Hot Taco Inc. Leslie Pierson (who’s running this business for her son who created a card game called Taco vs Burrito when he was 7 years old) walks us through the process of creating a second product and why they decided to launch a second game. Next, CXO and Dean of Rocket Club Academy Aicha Sharif explains how pivoting could help you replicate what worked in your first product while also making sure you create something new for your customers. Join Andrea as she points out all the key takeaways that will help you decide if you’re ready to iterate your product.

For more: Brand Protection Marketing for Transparency (www.transparency.com).

To Taco vs. Burrito case study.

Taco vs. Burrito available on Amazon

Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] Aicha Sharif: When I launch a new product with a founder, you know, we really focus on that minimal viable product, that MVP. Making your first sale is for me, one of the most important steps for a founder and new business owner. Don't get stuck on: I gotta perfect this. I gotta make all the marketing moves. I gotta create all the different parts of the business before I launch. You have to test early on because you really don't know what the customer is gonna respond to the best. Which part of your story is gonna echo the best with them.

[00:00:33] Host: Hi, This is Small Business -- a weekly podcast -- brought to you by Amazon and I’m your host, Andrea Marquez. This show is all about learning how to start, build and grow your small business - and because I know that could get overwhelming, I’ll make sure to call out key takeaways at the end of every episode.

So once you’ve launched your business and you’ve got this great product that’s really successful; naturally the question that comes to mind is: well, what’s my next successful product? [00:01:00] And how do I make sure that my next product is gonna be just as successful – or hopefully even more successful – than my first one? But then other questions start coming up like when should I even consider thinking about a second product? And how can I duplicate what worked in that first product, but also create something new?  

Coming up – I’ll talk to Aicha Sharif, the chief experience officer and Dean of Rocket Club Academy about when and how you should approach product iteration, especially if it’s your first time doing it. But first – I want you to meet business owner Leslie Pierson, the President of Hot Taco Inc. She’s running this business for her son who created a card game called Taco Vs Burrito when he was just 7 years old. And right now, Leslie is working on their second product, so she’ll be giving us a glimpse into what they’re doing and why they decided to start working on a second product.

But before we get into Taco vs. Burrito.  

Voicemail: I have a question about pivoting your business once you've been in business for a few years. [00:02:00] I have had my business for 10 years and it's very successful, but there's more that I wanna do, and I do have the time now that my business is so successful. I have the time to pursue this other option, but I'm not entirely sure if I should go ahead and go for it.

I started my business in Albuquerque by myself. I'm a single member, LLC, and I teach therapeutic horseback riding. Yes, doing it by myself was a challenge. I have some family support, but no one in my family is a horse person, so mostly I've been doing this on my own with my wife's help occasionally and this is a dream come true. This job is something I've dreamed of doing without having the words for it, since I was a child. I would love to explore how as a solopreneur you can pivot and maintain your original business [00:03:00] while attempting to pursue another interest. Like for me, writing kids books.

[00:03:08] Host: For those serial entrepreneurs out there. This question really gets at this issue of staying focused on your core values and core offering. It focuses on a question that many business owners may have. How do you know when it's okay to pivot your business? Is it even wise? Can you shift your attention somewhere else and feel confident that your initial endeavors won't evaporate or collapse. We'll be addressing your questions in future episodes, so stay tuned and if you wanna hear yourself on This is Small Business, click the link in the show notes and ask us a question or share your small business story.

[00:03:48] Andrea: Leslie Pearson, thank you so much for being on This is Small Business. It's a pleasure to have you.

[00:03:52] Leslie Pierson: Oh, it's so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:03:55] Andrea: So tell me about Taco vs Burrito.

[00:03:57] Leslie Pierson: We have a very strange origin story [00:04:00] of our game because it was invented by my son. So we're a big game family, so, Taco vs. Burrito is a card game, and we always played a lot of games when my son was very young. On a vacation, we would usually take one game for each day, like simple card games. And then at the end we'd usually ask him like, which one did you like best? What did you like about it? So I think that trained him into thinking about how to improve games or how to change games. So he'd be like, I like this one, but I didn't like this part of it, or I like this one or this is my favorite and this is why. So, you know, we back a lot of projects on Kickstarter, like games, a lot of games start there. And then one day when he was seven out of the blue, he says, I wanna make a game called Taco vs. Burrito, and I wanna do a Kickstarter. And I'm like, Um, okay, how do you play this game? And he's like, I don't know yet, but it's called Taco vs. Burrito and I wanna do a Kickstarter. And I'm like, [00:05:00] maybe you could just make it on paper for your friends. You know, I'm thinking, you know, seven years old, he doesn't get how the world works and like, you don't have to do it that way. You could just have fun. He said, uh, nope. I wanna do a Kickstarter. And I'm like, it's a lot of work honey. I come from making product. I'd done Kickstarters before and had a product that I had done, that we did, uh, Shark Tank for. So there was a part of me that wondered, did I mess him up by making him think he has to make a big game to do something that he wants to do?

So, yea, I thought it was just gonna be a little fun day cuz he said he wanted to know how to make the game happen and we sat down and we were just writing out like all the things he would have to do. And I thought, this is gonna educate him how you take an idea, and you make it a product. I was never thinking he was gonna do it. And um, so, and then after we finished that conversation the next day, he's like, he just started working on the list. Like each little thing. [00:06:00] And uh, it was fascinating. So we got really lucky because, um, we had a dog at the time he's passed, but we would always walk the dog on the weekend. So Saturday and Sunday, Alex and I would walk the dog down to the local, to a coffee shop that's about two blocks away from us and we would take one card game and then we would take the latest version of his game. And we just did that on Saturday, and on the way back home, he would say, oh, you know, we should change this, or we should add this. And we'd change it. It was all on paper, just card stock. After a while we just really enjoyed playing the game so much. We didn't even wanna play the other games. And so we were like, okay, I guess it's ready. And you know, people ask me sometimes like, how did you, how did you do it? And I was like, well, it was just meeting him where he was at. If he had lost interest the week after we talked about it, there would never be a game, like it was. I wasn't gonna push him. You can't really push a kid at seven. They'll rebel really fast.

[00:06:57] Andrea: That’s so amazing! [00:07:00] And then what happened once you got to the Kickstarter phase?

[00:07:04] Leslie Pierson: Yeah. So that was fascinating to me because I had done a Kickstarter before for my other product line, and I really thought, okay, this'll be fun. He'll see. We'll make one run of this. We'll do the Kickstarter, we'll make a few of the games, and then that'll be it. You know, like this is really a great little project and we were very clear in the Kickstarter. It was made by a seven-year-old. So I'm thinking, who's gonna give this kid money? They can't see the game. They can't play the game. I mean, they could see the game because we made videos, but they can't play it. So they don't know. You know, they're going on a gut if they wanted to back it, but I think people love to support young entrepreneurs. They just love it. So the first day we started the Kickstarter, we had started it in the morning, well, first off, we had this big moment where we're like, okay, honey, now you get to push the launch button for the Kickstarter. And he's like, okay. So he hits the launch button and then my husband was like, okay, I'm gonna go sit down [00:08:00] and I'm gonna be your first backer. And he goes to sit down and someone had already backed the game and I'm like, oh my God. Like this is crazy.  

So we go to pick him at lunchtime, because we were doing this thing at Comic-Con, there was, they had a little indie game showcase. So Alex was gonna play the game with other people. It was really gonna be fun. So we picked him up at ah noon and we asked him what he thought his sales would be, and he was just thinking, you know, like, mom, dad, and whatever. And it was fully funded by noon. He was like, over the moon, excited and in the end it, it made about $25,000 with no promotion really of any kind. People just really liked the concept, I think. I think also tacos and burritos are funny and people are very opinionated about which is better, so I think that helped.

[00:08:50] Andrea: I'm definitely a Taco fan -- BUT I also love burritos. Tacos just have a special place in my heart. This story is so so unique. [00:09:00] I love to hear stories about young entrepreneurs. Which also reminds me of Max Ash from our first episode of This is Small Business who created a mug with a hoop at age eight. So we previously talked about how you're getting ready to launch a new product based on the success of Taco vs. Burrito. Tell me a little bit about that.

[00:09:22] Leslie Pierson: Yeah, so we are, you know, we've had this in the works for a little while, but it's, we're doing a newer version of the game. So it's all inspired by a trip to Japan. So we had gone to Japan and my son was like, oh, this would be so fun cuz there's so much cool stuff in Japan to make a Japanese themed version of the game with a lot of food from Japan and you know, just some of the Kawaii cutie stuff. So we're really excited about that. That's gonna be so much fun.

[00:09:55] Andrea: I wanna dive deep into this particular topic which is adding a new product based on the success of the first one. [00:10:00] Did you decide to add a new product to this line because Taco vs. Burrito was a success? Or were you just kind of testing and learning and when you liked the idea of a Japan-themed game, you followed up on it?  

[00:10:13] Leslie Pierson: We are a little different than a lot of companies that sell on Amazon, where like if you were in the kitchen space and you're thinking, oh hey, here are some natural evolutions of your kitchen line of products, it makes a little more sense when you're like thinking, okay, what can we add that rounds this out? Really, to be honest, for us, our, our company is a little different than most in that we don't make anything unless Alex wants to make it. He's, he now 12, so he started this when he was seven, and he wanted to do a like fifth anniversary version of the game. So that's where it kind of came from. And building off of what already works seemed natural cuz it's what we love playing. You know, I think if you're your own customer and you do the thing that you love or you want. [00:11:00] It's a lot easier to get excited about all the work it takes to launch a new product. I find personally if I just picked another game to make that wasn't related and didn't feel as energizing, I don't think I'd put my heart and soul into it. And I think unless you keep that passion, I maybe – bigger companies with lots of people, it's different, but we're tiny. So, we don't have the ability to just kind of churn out product.

[00:11:26] Host: Part of the success story of Taco vs. Burrito and a super valuable resource that Leslie and her team used was Amazon Transparency to proactively protect her brand from counterfeits and ensure that every unit shipped is authentic. Amazon Transparency uses secure, unique codes that identify individual units and stop counterfeits from reaching customers, improve customer engagement, and give brands valuable insights to help organize supply chains. To learn more about Transparency and how it can help you protect and build your brand, visit: www.transparency.com [00:12:00] or visit our show notes at thisissmallbusinesspodcast.com.

For more: Brand Protection Marketing page for Transparency (www.transparency.com): https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency/?ld=aonatradsgnpm&ref=aonatradsgnpm and Taco vs. Burrito case study: https://brandservices.amazon.com/learn/case-studies/taco-vs-burrito/?ld=aonatradsgnpc&ref=aonatradsgnpc

[00:12:06] Andrea: I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a 12-year-old wanted to do a 5-year anniversary. Like that's branding at its finest. I also love that you are super supportive of his ideas and doesn't pressure him to do anything he doesn't want to. I think a key element to Taco vs Burrito and your story is making sure that you're passionate about your first product and making sure that it's where you want it to be before even thinking about moving on to the next one. Because you're doubling the amount of work.

[00:12:37] Leslie Pierson: Totally agree. I think the thing that used to work, so I, I've been doing product for a while and Amazon is always evolving, right? So there was a time, I think probably in the, you know, late. You know, maybe 2000 17, 18, 19, that I hear from other entrepreneurs that you could launch a lot of things and they hit, because Amazon was growing and [00:13:00] there wasn't as much competition. Now there's so much competition. Some friends of mine have said that it's kind of the end of product, the beginning of brand. Like you really need to think about what you want, be passionate about it, build a brand, think about it that way, versus thinking about just what, what's the next product we can do? Because it's a lot harder than it used to be. And it comes through authentically if you're passionate about it, you don't realize it, but it does, you know, I think people can see in a listing or in a product page, you can kind of tell when it's just kind of thrown up there and they're not passionate about it, or if they've really done a lot of work and really optimize it. I, I feel really lucky that our business only does things that Alex wants to do because it causes me to pause and really do as much as I can for the existing product before moving on, because we're not churning out a lot of product.

[00:13:56] Andrea: So as a small business owner, how do you think I would know when I'm ready to launch a second product?

[00:14:00] Leslie Pierson: I think if you think about what you're passionate about, so somebody with one product and a lot of passion might have a lot in the pipeline that they wanna do, like, you know, they're passionate about a specific area and it naturally lends itself to a bunch of products. So, I was listening to a podcast with Mark Deplass, he's a director, and he said once, I'm at a point – because he has a production company – any idea I have, I can do it. Doesn't matter what it is, I can make it happen. If I have the idea today, I can get it made. And he said, but that doesn't mean they all should get made. Right. So the way he does it, and I love this, he says he gives himself, when he has a new idea, he gives him myself, I think 48 hours, he calls it to make out with the idea. Like, let himself like let his creative juices go. Then he writes it down and he puts it in a drawer, and he says, after a month, if I forget that it's in the drawer. It wasn't meant to be. And I love that concept of kind of [00:15:00] allowing yourself to take a break and see if you just can't wait to do it.

And if you can't wait, go for it because you're in it, but for, for someone like me who has like quite a lot of ideas often. In other product lines, you know, with Taco vs. Burrito we only do what Alex wants to do. But if, if left in my own devices I could come up with a million ideas, it doesn't mean they're all good or that I should go forward on all of them, or that I have the passion it takes to sustain it from idea, to product, to launch, to growing it. So I loved that. And I think of it all the time when I have an idea, I'm like, I'm making out with, I like the making out with the idea part of it too.

[00:15:38] Andrea: That's great advice. How do you find that balance of replicating what was successful in your previous or first product, but also providing your customers with something new and fresh?  

[00:15:50] Leslie Pierson: I would say there are elements that you can duplicate and then there are other things that you can't be sure you can duplicate. And one example of that is going into a new market. [00:16:00] So Tacos vs. Burrito is now in Amazon, we're now in Canada, which when we duplicated what we had, it worked great in Canada. Very similar customer. We also went into the UK. That's a little harder cuz they're not passionate about tacos and burritos, so you can't rely on the same thing, so, so making sure you stay inquisitive, and you really don't expect you can copy paste because it doesn't work that way. There's usually some pivoting you're gonna need to do within it. Maybe it's the name or the, or the colors or the different kinds of things are needing to be looked at to make sure that you can try to recreate the success.

So for us, you know, we love Kickstarter because it builds a following before you launch. That is a beautiful thing about it. So we kind of have a model where if we're doing a Kickstarter, we do it in the Spring. So we'll do it March, April, [00:17:00] and then we will ship all the product to the customer and then we'll send it into Amazon. And that helps us build momentum pretty quickly. So that right now is how we've done it, that part has worked repetitively, but the other parts, things are always changing. Amazon changes. The way you launch has to change. The beauty of Amazon is they give you all the tools that you need to be successful.

The part that you have to bring to the table is the curiosity and the ability to pivot and keep trying when something that used to work doesn't work anymore. Let's try another thing and be, like I said, inquisitive and resilient. You know, some things won't work again, and it's depressing when they don't work again. I'm not gonna lie, when you think like you've got it all dialed in and it doesn't work the way you expected, it's not great, but then just take that moment to see what else can I learn? What's new? What am I not taking advantage of?

[00:18:00] Andrea: Making sure that you have those moments learned and doing a retrospective is really important. And doing that retrospective as these moments are happening or right when they end is the best way to do it, because if you let too much time pass, you'll forget all the challenges you went through, right?

[00:18:13] Leslie Pierson: A hundred percent. After any big event, like if you do a Prime day or a Black Friday to Cyber Monday, you know, taking the time to sit down and say what worked, what didn't work, can help you when you're getting ready to do a similar type of big event. There's a way to run a business called E-O-S. It's entrepreneurial operating system. We use that. And so we have to look at our business every quarter. What went well, what didn't go well? What are we gonna do next quarter? And we set our goals for the next quarter, and then we see what went well, what didn't go well. I think you're right on in taking that moment to look back and see what worked, what didn't work, and learn from it and just keep going.

[00:18:50] Andrea: Leslie, is there anything else you'd like to say.

[00:18:52] Leslie Pierson: One thing that works for someone else, doesn't work for another person. And so, you know, we might do Kickstarters to go into Amazon. [00:19:00] It might not work for most products; it works for us. It might not work for other things, it might not work for every product we do. So if I was gonna give any advice to someone starting out is just,  you're gonna need to pivot a lot and enjoy the ride. You know, there'll be highs, there'll be lows, but at the end of the day, it's a fun ride and it's a fun game.

[00:19:20] Andrea: Leslie, thank you so much for being on, This is Small Business.

[00:19:24] Leslie Pierson: Thank you for having me.

[00:19:27] Host: You're listening to This is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon. I’m your host, Andrea Marquez. That was Leslie Pierson, the President of Hot Taco Inc. You can find out more about Taco vs. Burrito in our show notes on our website: Thisissmallbusinesspodcast.com.

I love how supportive Leslie is to her son and was surprised at how much control he has over some of the creative decisions in the company. And Leslie also gave us so many tips when it comes to considering whether you should start working on that second product. She points out that as a small business with a small team, she can’t afford to be churning out products left and right, [00:20:00] so instead they have to focus on creating products that they're excited about. And of course, not every idea is a great one, so when you have a new idea, she suggests sitting on it for a little while – make out with it for 48 hours – and then forget about it for maybe a month or so. And if you can’t stop thinking about that idea, then it’s probably worth making.  

Did you know that nearly 60% of items sold in Amazon's store come from selling partners - most of which are small and medium-sized businesses? Taco vs. Burrito is one of the many small businesses selling in the Amazon store who have tapped into some of the tools and resources offered to help them succeed and grow. One of those resources is the Amazon Small Business Academy where you can find the help you need to take your small business from concept to launch and beyond. You can strengthen your skills at no cost with live and on demand webinars, Q&As, [00:21:00] events, and even find more This is Small Business content. If you don’t know where to start, you can take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www.smallbusiness.amazon.

You know, similar to Leslie’s 48-hour rest period, there’s also other ways to test out your new ideas and that’s why I’m talking to my next guest: Aicha Sharif, the chief experience officer and Dean of Rocket Club Academy. She’s also a serial entrepreneur who runs a small business called Aicha Sharif & Partners where she helps other small businesses build, launch, and scale their brands. I'm excited for you to meet her.

[00:21:40] Andrea: Aicha, it’s great to have you on the show. Tell me about yourself.  

[00:21:44] Aicha Sharif: So I actually grew up in Morocco and all my life there and left at 21. But what makes that particular snippet of my life special is because I, uh, learned negotiation skills from a very young age because I had to convince my family [00:22:00] that I need to go to high school and college, and I was the first woman to, out of a family of nine siblings, to make it as a girl to high school and college afterwards, and paved the way for my sisters who all came after me. And then afterwards, pretty much all the girls in my community, and then getting a scholarship to go to London and study international business. And then I landed a dream job with 3M in the UK in their product management team. And at the age of 27, I was leading a big department aerospace and automotive with a lot of people, with a lot of experience that know the culture very well. But I relied a lot on just the fact that I love working with people and I'm interested in people, and I can build systems, but I also can focus on the humane aspect of relationships.  

One of the startups or businesses that I am part of is called Rocket Club Academy, and I coach children seven to 14 [00:23:00] to launch their own businesses. It's magical. The more I coached and spoke to these children who are either seven or 10 or 14, it really, the age doesn't matter. They are so close to their source, to their identity. It's not foggy in their head who they are. Why do they wanna do what they're doing. And it's very wholesome. A lot of it is coming from: I wanna help. And at the core of it, everybody really, if you're starting a business to make money, you are gonna get tired and you are gonna do the wrong thing. That's a core value that I think for entrepreneurs is very important to me to share, is that you have to start a business to solve a problem.

[00:23:37] Andrea: So far, we've had two young entrepreneurs on This is Small Business, and the fact that there's even more young entrepreneurs creating small businesses and a school to help them and their parents with that is so cool. I can't wait to see what they create! But let's get into today's topic: Product iteration. So, if I'm a small business [00:24:00] and I created my first product, and it was successful. When should I start thinking about adding more products to my brand and how do I even do that?

[00:24:08] Aicha Sharif: I think that's a fantastic question. It's a question that a lot of founders toil with, and with small businesses, it's always a question of resources. Everybody has limited time. But on top of it, as a business, you know, that's small, you only have so much money for your runway. You only have so many people, and you only have, you know, so much access to extra help that you can afford. And so when I launch a new product with a founder, you know, we really focus on that minimal viable product, that MVP. Making your first sale is for me, one of the most important steps for a founder and new business owner.

Don't get stuck on: I gotta perfect this. I gotta make all the marketing moves. I gotta create all the different parts of the business before I launch. You have to test. Test early on because you really don't know what the customer is gonna respond to the best. Which part of your story is gonna echo the best with them? [00:25:00] Who you are? What's your brand identity? So that MVP really doesn't answer that. The MVP only does some initial validation that people wanna exchange money for your product. It's that energy exchange, right, that validates it. If nobody wants to pay for it, it has no place. And you have to go back to the drawing room.

The next step that I work with founders on is know what is that unique value? It's the U-V-P. What is it the unique value that you add that nobody else can do? Now you have to articulate that, and you have to position it well, and obviously you have to think about pricing the right market, the right messaging, the right channel for you.

And then finally it's, what is that lovable product? For a founder, before they think about, oh, I'm making enough money. Now I gotta go launch the next one. Is your product talked about? Do you have people who come to you and say, oh my gosh, I can't have enough, and it doesn't have to be thousands, a hundred people. You need to have a hundred diehard fans. When you have that, now it's time to actually start testing something else.  

[00:26:00] What I also believe is that it depends on the core values of a brand. A lot of founders tend to jump into a product launch, et cetera, but then they're constantly changing the personality of the brand, and I think that's dangerous. I think it's very important that founders early on do their homework and know their foundation in terms of who are you. Let's say you are a telehealth business that's just starting to venture into healthcare. If you know yourself and why you're doing it, and for example, one of your core values to reach, to bring health and healthcare to people who can't access it in remote places, then you are gonna go to the rural countries. Your strategy, your product, your market is gonna match that. And so it's kind of a long-winded answer to when you launch a product or how you launch a product, but it all stems from your core value as a brand. So then at that point, when you have your diehard 100 fans, you can take a group of those fans and say, I wanna test this. Can I do it with you? And you can find a structure where you test. It doesn't take too much of their time.  

[00:27:00] One of the things I warn founders about is retention versus new revenue. Experience is very important. So as a small business, you have your core team now that supported this growth, but now you wanna try something, you wanna add something new. What a lot of founders do is they add the same responsibility for discovering new markets and selling new products on the same people that are retaining this baseline of business. That is dangerous. That's where burnout happens. And I think that's when an ecosystem comes in where you're really structuring the team with jobs, responsibilities, accountability, and also bringing them into the vision of what's next. And that's fantastic because what's next could be a layer of another team that lives under the team that built the original product. A lot of that comes from the culture itself, comes from how do you use your resources and what's important to you. Because as a business, if customer service, for example, is the most important thing to you or how fast you are, you know, as a business, [00:28:00] then you are gonna put the resources behind that and that's gonna dictate what new product is gonna come next.

[00:28:06] Andrea: Following that thought, how do you think a small business owner should duplicate what is working while at the same time trying to balance something new? Because I think that you could run the risk of not being different enough or risking too much and being so different that you're moving away from what drew people to you in the first place.

[00:28:23] Aicha Sharif: It's not so much about, you know, what's new, it's the pivoting. If you're not pivoting, you're stagnant and you need to create new stories to talk to your customers. You can't be talking to them about the same thing over and over again. So creating those stories come from connecting with your customers that you've started with from day one. Those are the people that taught you who you are with you, and those are the people that helped you shape your product to be even better. Now, retaining those customers and also going to the next thing, innovating with the next thing. I think that's when conversations really are important and that's when the art of creating that attention [00:29:00] that the brand needs to stay relevant, but at the same time speaking with the authority and with the conviction about who you are, while you are also creating something new. And that doesn't necessarily have to be bringing a completely new product to the market. That could be, I'm partnering with a different brand, you know, instead of just one item, it's actually a package that solves this other problem. So I think that's when it doesn't always have to be customer facing. It can be behind the scenes. I think that's where it becomes very individualized and it depends on the business and what they're trying to solve and who they are going towards.  

And I think something that small businesses don't always do very well is partnering with other smaller businesses. We tend to focus on just what is, when is the next big client, when is the next, you know, campaign. But there is an art to develop in partnerships that can allow you to look innovative, creative, have a story to tell your product [00:30:00] increases in value without you having to reinvent the wheel, and so, you know, I always believe in growing organically, but whenever there is an opportunity to partner up with another business, I'm also open to that because I'm in love with the process of learning. And so as long as you as a founder, you're in love in with the process of learning, but you also are in love with the process of failing. Because that's when, you know, we don't tend to learn the greatest from victories. We learn from losing, you know, we tend to go back to the drawing room and what did we do wrong, et cetera. When we win, we just move on next, we're great. And so that process is really important and I think there is a lot of merit to pivoting slowly. Once you've established that core brand duplicating it could be a new market, could be a new channel, could be a new partnership. And then testing something new that's completely gonna position you in a different space. It has to be rooted in the core values because that's when you don't lose focus or consistency.  

[00:31:00] One of the things that founders have to build in very early on with their mindset is consistency. You are beaten today. You've lost a client. You couldn't, you pitched somebody, you didn't land it. How do you find that motivation to wake up the next day and do that again? Pivot. Slightly different, knock on that same door again. That's the consistency. Founders typically are very active minds. You know, it's a hundred things they wanna try and that's where focus and micro focus is really important. And something that I think I learned through Rocket Club especially is the micro focus. We don't try to do everything all at once. We try to focus our attention as a small team on one thing at a time. And so that really helps the whole team to rally behind the quarter or behind one campaign or behind one objective, and then move on to the next focus.

[00:31:53] Andrea: Aicha, thank you so much for being on This is Small Business.

[00:31:56] Aicha Sharif: It's my pleasure, Andrea. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:32:00] Host: That was Aicha Sharif, the chief experience officer and Dean of Rocket Club Academy. Thank you for listening today -- I’ve learned a lot from speaking to Aicha and Leslie and I’m looking forward to Taco vs. Burrito’s new game and seeing what the young entrepreneurs from the Rocket Club Academy come up with. Here are key takeaways I learned from Aicha and Leslie:

  • There is a lot of competition out there. So you really need to think beyond just your product and consider your branding. Leslie suggests working on something that excites you and consider what you’re passionate about, just like her son with Tacos and Burritos. Because when you’re passionate, authenticity comes through which is a big reason Taco vs. Burrito has been successful.  
  • When considering a second product and having new ideas, Leslie told us about making out with the idea for two days and then putting it aside for a while. And if you can’t stop thinking of that idea, then you should start working on it. And even though you definitely should sit on your ideas, [00:33:00] Aicha also adds that you shouldn’t let perfectionism stop you from launching your product.  
  • Both Leslie and Aicha talked about pivoting. You can’t just copy and paste what works. You need to think about what new things you’re offering your customers. One way you can think about what works and what doesn’t or what you can do better is by examining launches, or seasons through retrospectives. Where you can as yourself, what has gone well? What hasn’t? and What are we doing differently next quarter?  
  • And Aicha broke down 3 steps to thinking about adding new products, first knowing what your minimal viable product, or MVP is, which is the version of your product that isn’t perfect yet but is good enough to share with early customers who can provide feedback to help you make it better, then you think what is your unique valuable product, or UVP, the unique value you add that now no one else can do, and then your lovable product, is it talked about? Do your customers tell you how much they love it and why? [00:34:00] Because this leads to your die-hard fans.  
  • When you decide you want to create a new product – you really need to make sure you’ll be able to handle it. As Aicha said, there’s a lot of resources that go into creating a new product – like money and of course people! So you need to make sure you’re prepared for that.

I'm curious – Are you thinking of introducing a second product to your business? What led you to that decision? And if you’re in the process of doing that, I’d love a little peek behind the curtain! Let me know what you’re doing to make it just as successful as your first product. Reach out to us at thisissmallbusiness@amazon.com to tell us what you're up to. Or let me know what you think of the episode by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts – it’s easier if you do it through your phone. And if you liked what you heard -- I hope you'll share us with anyone else who needs to hear this.

That's it for episode 13 of season 2 of This is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon.  

On our next episode, we’ll be talking about how you can make sure you create your second product without breaking the bank [00:35:00] with the Founder of Princeton Popcorn Company, Robert Ralph, or as we like to call him Farmer Bob.

Until next time – This is Small Business, I'm your host Andrea Marquez -- Hasta luego -- and thanks for listening!  

CREDITS: This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by JAR Audio. [00:35:30]

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Brand Owner
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