Simple Changes Turn Duds into Studs

by Angela Hall · January 15, 2024

Imagine you’re speaking with a young entrepreneur from Tanzania who owns a small bread business in Dar es Salaam. After a year of selling his traditional local bread with a profit decline, what advice might you give him?

Here’s what he did – he introduced a new product that wasn’t common in his country – simple sandwiches. As he says, the response has been incredible. His daily profit jumped from $8 to $25+, and he even had the opportunity to employ another person.

Conversely, years ago I knew a sandwich maker who was having a terrible time turning a profit. But his customers kept asking if they could buy loaves of his homemade bread. Finally, he decided to stop selling the sandwiches and just sell the bread, and in a year his bread was in every store in his part of the country.

Maybe you’ve got a product that isn’t selling. Let’s say it teaches everything a person needs to know about starting and running a business. People who take your program keep commenting on the content of the 5th module. They LOVE the 5^th module and say it’s worth the price of the entire course. Because you’re savvy, you decide to make an entire course just about the topic you cover in Module 5.

Or perhaps you’ve got an information product on how to lose weight. It’s not selling all that well, but everyone seems to love your recipes. Maybe it’s time to focus on the recipes instead of weight loss.

Whatever products or services you might offer, notice if customers especially love one aspect of them. This might be the area you need to concentrate on.

Or perhaps your business is missing something. You might team up with someone else who can provide that missing ingredient or supply it yourself.

The point is this: You might be very close to having a huge success. All you need is find that small change or two and make it happen.