We get a lot of questions about where people will spend money. We gave a ton away in our book, Efficiency, but we’ll give another one out for free. We’re giving it out for free because it’s a rapidly growing market, we have no interest in building a business around it and it has every single emotional item needed to sell well. This is essetnially everything you would want wrapped into one market… The market? “Brain Pills”. The brain pill market should see rapid growth so lets jump right in.
The Brain Pill “Sell”
Artificial Intelligence: With AI taking over a ton of the news articles nowadays, this brings up an interesting problem for your average guy. The average guy now thinks the “robots are out to get his job” so now he feels insecure about his own capabilities. He won’t admit this publicly but he’s worried to his core that his white collar job that requires data entry into an excel sheet may be automated. This doesn’t sit well, so he’s going to look for a solution. As always he’ll expect a magic product to solve his problems.
Belief in Genetic Intelligence: The vast majority of people believe that intelligence is genetic. You’re either born smart or you’re born to be normal. If there is a way to somehow take a product and become “smart” they will jump all over it. You see this today with a lot of people jumping on things like ModAlert and other grey market products. We’re going to see more and more people research this market. If you look closely, you’re already seeing these products infiltrate a lot of main stream websites (the advertisements are becoming quite common).
The Belief Others Are Cheating: This is the third major reason we see a large increase in demand for “Brain Pills”. With more and more people becoming aware of athletic drug use, they are going to immediately believe that people are “cheating” with their brains as well. We’re not saying it should be illegal, that’s essentially irrelevant, the real point here is that people “believe” there is a one stop solution. As an example, a lot of average people believe that a single steroid can make you a world class athlete. This defies all logic. But. This is how people think. Knowing that this is the trend-line people will be ready and willing to shell out tons of money for a “trick”…. If you can take advantage of all three of these things, you’ll be a multi-millionaire in practically no-time.
The Brain Pill “Product”
As usual, the product has to work. If it doesn’t work temporarily you won’t be able to sell them consistently. So lets go ahead and look at what products actually work for brain functioning.
Fish Oil: This is a natural product that helps your brain function (assuming you take a liquid product). Many of you are already aware, but the premise is quite basic. The human brain requires long chain polyunsaturated fats and fish oil essentially provides this. The most common term you’ll hear is “omega 3- fatty acids”. In short, by including “omega 3-fatty acids” into your product it will be easier to sell since your average person knows of it.
Blueberries: Doing some quick research you’ll find that blueberries are tied to brain functioning as well and they throw around the phrase “anti-oxidants”. In fact, we got bored and googled this phrase and found an article with the following: “According to James Joseph, PhD, lead scientist in the Laboratory of Neuroscience at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. ‘Call the blueberry the brain berry’, says Dr. Joseph.” In short, by including anti-oxidants with a blueberry angle will help and make the product easier to sell.
Caffeine: We’re going into greyer areas now, by including caffeine in the product you’re essentially using a temporary high to improve performance. Instead of saying “coffee” or “caffeine” pills you’ll want to keep the dose lighter. This means you’re going to use some sort of low dose caffeine that seems healthy. Clear answers include: Matcha Green Tea and Yerba Mate. Does it matter that caffeine is always going to be the same chemical formula: C8H10N4O2? Absolutely not! The key here is you want something that works, appears to be healthier and can be sold at a premium.
Adderall/Provigil (Modafinil): Now we’re into the real grey market area. It will come as no surprise to anyone reading this, but we don’t take either of them and don’t recommend it. That said both of them sell extremely well and have been shown to improve brain functioning. Adderall is significantly harder (worse) on your body and consists of dextroamphetamine saccharate, amphetamine aspartate, dextroamphetamine sulfate and amphetamine sulfate tablets. For this reason it is a controlled substance. Provigil (Modafinil) on the other hand is another stimulant considered to be weaker but “safer” than Adderall (specific chemical name: 2-[(diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl]acetamide).
LSD Usage: This is the last item that comes up consistently as a “brain enhancer”. LSD is borderline mainstream at this point, in fact, if you google search LSD and Silicon Valley you’ll find it on “Ted Talks”. When something hits “Ted Talks” level, you’ve reached the masses since that is the target market for Ted Talks in the first place (something that seems kind of edgy, but old news to people on the forefront). This is no longer “grey area” and we’re now solidly in the black. The primary ingredient is unsurprisingly… lysergic acid, acquired from fungus.
How To Compete
Ah yes, we’ll even give this away. If you’ve read the section above you now have enough ideas on how to create a solid “brain pill product”. The question is going to become “how will you compete”. You can compete on the product side, the marketing side or the process side. Product Side: If you want to compete here, you’re going to have to really think about a competitive edge. You buy all of the main brain products (one bottle each) and then think critically about how you can create more “power” out of each item. If you’re reading between the lines here, you essentially need to find a way to legally sell items that are approaching the grey market slowly but surely. Marketing Side: If you’re interested in competing on the marketing side because you’re a fantastic salesman… you already know what to do. You buy a brain pill product that is currently working, take the ingredients off the back, make a few adjustments… rebrand and market like crazy. Since you’re commoditizing the product, the secret sauce will be the sales section. Process: Since this is a newer market, there is a chance (a *good* chance) that the process of selling and distributing isn’t being done correctly. The type of item being sold, quantities and supply chain likely need improvement. Unlikely but a potential hole is here.
Now before we sign off we’ll answer the question you’re already thinking. “If it’s a good market why don’t you do it”. The answer to be honest is we couldn’t figure out the product side. If we look at the three ways to compete “Product, Market, Process” the *ideal* way to compete is by having the best product and hiding all the ingredients/secret sauce to the best of your abilities. We tried to figure this out and failed. We then looked at the marketing side and realized (at this point in our lives) it makes sense to simply buy other companies in the *same* markets that we are currently involved in (we don’t have to re-learn the marketing side). In short, we couldn’t figure out a clear competitive product edge to become a small monopoly in a niche market.
As always the truth doesn’t sell. We are always willing to try a new product (even a brain pill product) but it has to offer something different. We know the majority of the items in all the major brain pill products today and you won’t be surprised to find out… they don’t work long-term. We take one look at the ingredients and know it’s essentially a concoction of different “tag phrases” that don’t add any real value.
How to Improve Your Brain Naturally: For fun, if you’re looking at real ways to improve your brain power they are actually quite simple. 1) you want to drink/eat foods that increase blood flow such as pomegranates, beets and ginger (with cayenne if drinking it), 2) you’ll also drink fish oil daily – you won’t take tablets, 3) you’ll juice or eat blueberries and 4) you’ll use caffeine on occasions when you really need to focus, just remember it’s a temporary boost. That’s the reality right there and in that order. Once you consume blood flow items in the morning, move to brain functioning items and use caffeine as a boost you essentially have the right formula down pat. If you’re going to venture into the grey/black areas that’s your call and we don’t really have an interest in it anymore.
