Happy Saturday!
Today’s newsletter isn’t quite as long as normal, but it’s as dense as your grandma’s pound cake. I want to talk about taking products that already exist and marketing them to an entirely different customer segment for a different use. Think security cameras for people to check in on their pets.
Before we get into that, thank you to everyone that tuned in to my first Koerner’s Corner Spaces! How cool is it that I’m literally building it here in public, directly based on your feedback? I uploaded a very unedited video version to YouTube if that’s more your flavor. At the last minute I set up my GoPro on a tripod and hit record. It’s pretty raw. On the YouTube version I edited out the first 11 mins of technical difficulties as well as a 3 minute segment where we couldn’t hear a caller.
If you have any feedback on the Spaces, good or bad, please vote on the poll below. I’ll be doing it again next week at noon CST. Add to your Google Calendar here. Link directly to that Spaces here. Should I do a different theme every Friday? Such as
Or just open ended every week? Would love to hear your thoughts.
We all have a startup story that lives rent free in our heads. Mine is 5 Hour Energy. There’s a great How I Built This podcast episode with the founder that I highly recommend. Here’s the TLDR:
The founder wanted to launch an energy drink brand, but that category was already very saturated. So what’d he do? He reframed the entire category by placing it on the checkout counter in a 1.93 ounce unrefrigerated bottle.
It’s one of the most brilliant business moves I’ve ever heard of.
With that one reframing he achieved:
5 Hour Energy is a $1+ billion dollar brand today. Where would they be today if they were in the cooler with everyone else? Exactly, read that twice. (jk, don’t read anything I say twice. Every time I say that I’m mocking 17 year old Tiktok business gurus).
That’s what this email is about: the great reframe. Here is an Adderall-laced bullet point list of reframe ideas with a more thorough breakdown below:
Reframing is great for:
Cheap Sunglasses Idea
A good 8 years ago I toyed with an idea called Mellow Migraine. This idea stemmed from a conversation I had with my friend Grant about migraines.
He read a study that green light is proven to reduce migraines, and this worked for him personally. So what did Grant and I do? We ordered a box of cheap sunglasses from China that had green frames installed. These cost a few bucks each, including shipping.
Simply go to Alibaba and start messaging suppliers for samples.
I ran some FB ads to people suffering from migraines and sold a handful of them.
What happened next? I’m somewhat ashamed to say I moved on to some other idea. We didn’t even pursue this long enough to see if the glasses worked well or not. There may have been a more definitive reason, but I honestly can’t remember.
We totally could have scaled this to a decent sized biz, but we abandoned it. Why don’t you run with it? What’s your risk? A few hundreds bucks to China and some wasted time learning on the internet?
And plus, the reframe pun works extra well with this idea.
But my point is this: we didn’t sell sunglasses as sunglasses, we sold a slightly altered version of sunglasses as a cure to migraines. We reframed.
Nasal Screen Idea
A couple years ago I read a study that essentially said this:
“While road cycling is great exercise, the affects of breathing in car exhaust offsets a large percentage of the physical benefit.”
“Hmm…” I thought. It angered me a little to think that my time spent exercising was being offset by drivers trying to kill me with their cars in more ways than one.
Naturally, I started thinking of a solution.
“Someone needs to invest a face mask but only for your nostrils,” I thought.
Ahh, and someone already did! I guess it was even on Shark Tank, but I haven’t seen it. They clearly aren’t very popular in the US, but why not sell them to cyclists?
You could scrape a list of cycling races in the US and send the race directors free products to add to the swag bag with a QR code to buy more. How’s that for great, targeted marketing?
It also has a built-in virality aspect to it. “Bro, what is that weird thing on your nostrils?”
And a repeat purchasing aspect…
I actually love this idea and am tempted to delete this section and launch it myself…but I won’t. If YOU launch it, let me know and maybe I can help somehow. If you launch it solo and crush it, then I am genuinely happy for you!
All from a random free newsletter from me, business guru #45,884.
But you get the idea, right? We’re taking a product that you can just buy at wholesale and resell in difference packaging. No need for patents, manufacturing, etc.
Alternative to Franchising
My buddy Jon Matzner pulled off a brilliant move. After starting a garage organization biz, and doing well at it, he thought, “Hmm…I should franchise this.”
And then he learned that franchising is stupidly expensive. Like $1m+ expensive. And for what? So people can buy into your:
But in home services there are very few brand names to speak of, certainly none in garage organization.
So he took all of his processes, packaged them in a tidy Notion doc, and sells them for $20k + 5% of ongoing sales. Buyers also get access to a community of others launching the same biz.
The buyer doesn’t benefit from the brand name, and they are free to do whatever the heck they want. Jon has no control over them, and that’s by design. They can use whatever name, territory, website builder that they want. Jon is there to point the way, hold their hand and guide them to success.
But if were Jon to sell that SAME Notion doc as a course, it might be valued at $500 or so.
But when packaged as an alternative to $300-$500k franchise startup costs, $20k + 5% seems freaking cheap!
We are thinking of doing the same thing with the tree biz bootcamp and have had a couple calls already to gauge demand, and it’s going really well so far.
Reframe, repackage and repeat what someone else is already doing in a new way, and profit.
BTW, let me know if you want an intro to Jon. He’s not paying me to write about him, I just think what he did was brilliant and I want you to copy his playbook in your own special way. I didn’t even tell him i was writing about him today!
What else can you reframe?
Get creative! There’s a zillion other ideas out there.
Conclusion
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t start another sunglasses website. Don’t import nasal screens and try to sell to Walgreens, or worse, try and manufacture your own, better version. Don’t try and franchise your idea, unless it is really franchisable and a franchisee would benefit from your name brand AND your processes. Yes, there’s a place for franchising.
Get creative. Get on Twitter. Subscribe to everything. Say yes to all the things. Learn which ideas are stupid and which have merit. Learn from the right people. You can start by attempting to learn from every guru out there, and then deciding for yourself who is real and who’s a phony.
But we all know the best way to learn is by doing, so go build something. Tonight. Right now.
Top Tweets of the Past Week
As always, thanks for reading! Love you all. See you on Friday. Add to your Google Calendar here. Link directly to that Spaces here.
Chris Koerner
chrisjkoerner.com