Hey
Eight years ago I was folding burritos at a fast food counter for minimum wage.
I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with four other guys because that was all I could afford. I was drowning in student debt. Every Sunday I watched six straight hours of "how to make money online" videos, got fired up, tried one thing for two weeks, then quit when nothing happened.
I tried drop shipping. Lost money. I started an ATM machine. Got robbed. I bought course after course. None of it stuck.
If you have ever sat there at 11pm feeling like the whole day got wasted, I sat exactly where you are sitting.
Then a business coach said something that changed everything. "Why are you trying to invent something new? Your roommates already ask you how you stay productive. Why do you not just sell what you already know?"
It hit me like a brick. The product was already in my head the entire time. I just could not see it, because everyone kept telling me the answer was somewhere more complicated.
So I built a simple digital product on productivity. Sold it for $500. Over the next 12 months I sold more than 1,000 units. That is half a million dollars at a 95% margin, from one product I built in my dorm room at 21.
Today I do this full time. A little over $6 million in the last 12 months, all from digital products. No inventory. No agency. No paid ads to start.
And here is the one truth nobody is saying out loud.
While everyone is chasing AI agents, AI SaaS, and the newest model, the real money in 2026 is still being made the same way it was in 2016. Through simple digital products. AI just made it dramatically easier.
The hardest part has never been building the product. It is the noticing. Most people are walking around with a digital product already inside their head. They just cannot see it.
Here are the five steps.
##### **Step 1: Pick the Most Obvious Niche in Your Life, Not a Clever One**
When I say niche, most people freeze. They think they need a hidden market nobody has found. That is wrong.
You need a niche where three things are true. The audience has a problem they are trying to solve right now, not someday. They already spend money trying to fix it. And the problem is emotionally loaded. Shame, frustration, fear.
Boring problems beat exciting problems every time, because boring problems are the ones people are quietly desperate to fix.
Will was an Uber Eats driver. No audience. He picked productivity for busy professionals because he was one. He knew what people Googled at 11pm when the day got wasted. He made $8,000 in two weeks.
Matt had a normal 9 to 5. He built a product on how to make friends as an adult. Sounds like nobody would pay for that. He sold it for $1,000 a unit and made $7,000 in 30 days. Because nobody talks about that problem, but everyone feels it.
One test. Are people in this niche already paying to solve this? If yes, it works. If they pay for nothing, walk away.
##### **Step 2: Find One Specific, Painful, Named Problem**
This is where most people mess up. They pick a niche, then try to solve every problem in it. The product ends up generic because it is.
You need one specific problem. Not "I help people be more productive." Try "I help busy parents stop losing two hours a day to phone scrolling."
To find it, go where your audience already complains out loud. Reddit threads. Facebook groups. YouTube comments. Amazon one-star reviews, because that is where people say what the book did not solve. You are looking for the same complaint coming up over and over. See it 15 times in a week, you found something worth solving.
My five-minute test. Open a notes app. Set a timer. Dump out every problem your audience deals with. When it hits, circle the three written in the most emotional language. "I hate." "I cannot stand." "I am desperate."
Emotional language is buying intent. People pay to fix problems that are eating them alive, not problems they feel mildly about.
##### **Step 3: Validate It Before You Build a Single Thing**
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is why people waste months building things nobody wants.
Validation is one question. Will somebody actually pay for this?
Two tests. The dollar test: can the person put a real cost on this problem? Missed promotions. Lost sleep that hurts their work. If they can attach a dollar figure, they will pay to fix it. The "already paid" test: have they spent money trying to fix this before? Books, apps, coaches. If they opened their wallet once, they will again.
But validation does not happen in your head. Talk to real humans. Ask three questions. What have you already tried? How much time have you spent? What is the most painful part?
Five people giving specific, emotional, dollar-attached answers means you validated it. Five shrugs means go find a better problem.
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##### **Step 4: Sell the Offer Before You Build the Product**
Here is where I want to be direct, because I have watched this play out a thousand times.
The person who struggles builds first, then prays. Three months on a course. A logo. A fancy website. They launch. Then they watch the silence.
The fastest operators flip it. They sell the offer first, before it exists. Then they only build when people pay.
Take the problem you validated. Write one pitch. Describe the problem in painful detail. Describe the outcome. Give the offer a name. Put a price on it. Then put it in front of people. No audience? Text five people in your phone. Email ten on your list. No product. No 12-page website. Just one clear offer and a payment link.
Say you validated that busy parents lose two hours a day to scrolling and hate themselves for it. Your offer is "The 7-Day Phone Detox for Parents." Delivered as a step-by-step guide with daily check-ins. $27 or $47. You do not pretend it exists yet. You put "delivery in 7 days" on the confirmation. People pay for the outcome, not the file.
This is not a gray area. Every Kickstarter works this way. Every pre-order works this way. It is called an MVP. If three people pay you $47, build it. If nobody pays, go back to Step 2. The risk is essentially zero.
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##### **Step 5: Build It With AI the Right Way (Most People Use It Wrong)**
Now the part everyone thinks is hard. It is not. But almost everyone uses AI wrong here.
The biggest mistake is using AI to write the product. You type "write me a 10,000 word ebook on productivity" and get a wall of generic content that sounds like every other ebook. Then buyers feel ripped off.
The reframe: the best operators do not use AI to write the product. They use AI to understand the audience. That distinction is everything.
AI does three jobs well. Audience research: feed it every Reddit thread and validated conversation from Step 3 and ask it to find the patterns. What words do people use? What have they tried and rejected? Structure and outline: tell it the problem and outcome, ask it to map the sequence of what someone needs to learn first, second, third. First drafts of connective tissue: you write the parts that need real expertise, your stories and frameworks, then let AI draft the definitions and transitions, which you rewrite in your own voice.
Do it this way and you build a high-quality product in a week, not three months. AI is a research and structure machine, not a writing machine. The moment you internalize that, everything changes.
The Move That Ties It Together: Let Results Sell for You
The last move is delivery, and this is where most people get sloppy. They think the work ends at the sale. It ends when you have a happy customer who got a real result and sends referrals.
Your first 10 customers are not customers. They are your case study factory. You over-deliver. You check in. You collect their wins. A screenshot. A voice memo. A video.
Remember the mentor in my story? He saw a product in my head I could not see. Your job is to do that for your customers. Notice the wins they are not noticing. Once you have three or four real, named results, you have everything you need to attract the next 100 buyers without convincing anyone.
Priscilla, a stay-at-home mom, built a product helping faith-based women earn with TikTok Shop. She showed her first customers' results. The next 100 signed up because the proof was undeniable.
Over $300,000 in lifetime sales. Sean, a full-time nurse, built a product helping people recover after toxic relationships. He showed real results. The next ones begged to sign up. Over $250,000.
These are not gurus. They are normal people who picked a real niche, found a real problem, validated, sold first, and let AI do the heavy lifting.
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##### **The Listicle Version (Save This)**
1. **Pick the most obvious niche in your life.** Not clever. Obvious. Where people already pay to solve an emotionally loaded problem.
2. **Find one specific, painful, named problem.** Go where they complain. Look for the same pain repeated 15 times.
3. **Validate before you build.** Can they put a dollar cost on it? Have they already paid to fix it? Ask five real people.
4. **Sell the offer before the product exists.** One pitch. One name. One price. One payment link. Three buyers means build.
5. **Build with AI the right way.** AI for research and structure. You for stories, frameworks, and voice. One week, not three months.
6. **Deliver the outcome and let results sell.** Your first 10 are your case study factory. Real results do the next round of marketing for you.
##### **My Final Thoughts**
This is simpler than people think, but not because the work is easy. The work is real. You have to talk to people. You have to validate. You have to deliver something that works.
It is simpler because the product was never the hard part. AI handles most of what used to be hard. A website takes an hour. Real results do the selling. The hard part is the noticing. Picking the right niche. Finding the right problem. Validating before you build. That is the entire game.
Here is the reframe I want you to keep. You are not selling a digital product. You are selling a solution to someone's problem. The PDF, the course, the video, those are just wrappers. What people pay for is the outcome. The weight loss. The skill. The income. The peace of mind.
That is why a 9 to 5 worker can make $7,000 in a month teaching people how to make friends. That is why a delivery driver can make $8,000 in two weeks.
They are not better than you. They just figured out that the digital product is not the product. The outcome is the product.
Start with the niche staring you in the face. The rest follows.
Stay curious, talk to you tomorrow.