Every lasting business begins with one thing: a great product.
Not a clever ad or viral campaign, but something that truly works, solves a real problem, and improves people’s lives.
When your product delivers genuine value, marketing becomes simple. It amplifies what already feels right.
Bad marketing can slow growth, but even great marketing cannot save a weak product.
“Build something so good that people can’t help but talk about it. That’s the only marketing that truly lasts.”
How Slack Went From Failed To A Billion-Dollar Company
Slack didn’t start as a billion-dollar company. It started as a failed game called Glitch.
The game was unsustainable and eventually failed, but the founders noticed something.
While building Glitch, they had created a chat tool to manage their own team communication.
It replaced long, messy email threads, made collaboration clear, and actually worked.
It solved a problem they all felt every day.
They decided to pivot. They stopped trying to make a game. They asked a new question.
- Could this tool help other teams?
- Could it make work simpler, faster, and less frustrating for others?
They started small. They went to the people who understood the pain first.
Teams inside their own network got early access.
They personally onboarded these teams, helped them set up workflows, and made sure it worked perfectly.
They listened to feedback. Every tiny improvement made the product more useful and more essential.
Teams started noticing. People shared it with other teams. Word of mouth spread quietly but powerfully.
No ads. No influencer campaigns. No hype. Just a product that solved a real problem in a way people could feel immediately.
Slack gave so much value upfront.
The freemium version allowed teams to run real work without paying a cent.
That generosity created trust. Teams adopted it naturally because it worked. They didn’t need convincing. They felt the difference.
As teams grew comfortable and dependent on Slack, paid plans made sense.
More storage. Advanced features. Admin controls. The upsells were not a hard sell. They were the logical next step. Teams didn’t feel pushed. They felt empowered.
Within two years, Slack went from a failed game to a billion-dollar company.
In 2021, Salesforce acquired it for 27.7 billion dollars. Not for ads. Not for hype. But because it had become irreplaceable.
The lesson: Influence does not come from marketing noise. It comes from solving real problems, delivering real value, and building trust.
Give generously first. Help people fall in love with your product. When you do, adoption happens naturally. Upsells feel right. Growth becomes inevitable.
The Hidden Power of Real Impact
When you create a product or service with the intention of solving a real problem, something that could genuinely improve someone’s life, the impact can ripple far beyond what you imagine.
Your work can inspire a customer to take action, change habits, or think differently.
That person goes on to influence their family, friends, and colleagues.
One thoughtful product can set off countless domino effects.
If you want to build impact into your product, start by asking:
• What emotion do I want to create in my customers?
• What daily friction am I removing for them?
• What shift in identity does my product make possible?
When you approach your work this way, it shows. You are no longer just launching a thing to make money.
You are crafting something that matters. Your care, attention, and obsession with quality seep into every feature, every interaction, every touchpoint.
This is where the idea of ‘Happy Money’, something Ken Honda talks about, comes alive. When you deliver real value, when customers feel the transformation or joy your product creates, the money they pay carries gratitude and alignment.
It flows differently. It multiplies your ability to serve and improves the experience for both sides.
Money becomes a signal. The more you give, the more people willingly invest.
And in that cycle, your work improves. You iterate faster, refine more carefully, and over-deliver because you understand the responsibility of the ripple effect.
Lead With Service
Humans are wired to sense whether you’re here to serve or just to sell. Trust grows when you consistently help people in ways that truly matter.
If your focus is only on making money, your product and interactions carry that signal. People feel it, even if they can’t explain why, and it creates resistance.
Real value comes from solving problems your clients experience every day, not just what looks good on paper.
When your goal is to serve, to create transformation, and to make a meaningful impact, everything changes.
Your product becomes stronger, your customer experience richer, and every transaction carries joy, gratitude, and alignment.
The ripple effect is immediate: clients experience real transformation, share it with others, and your product or service becomes something they rely on, not just consume.
Over-Deliver Without Burning Out
I’m a firm believer in over-delivering value. Give more than your customers or clients expect.
But hear this clearly: over-delivering does not mean exhausting yourself. It does not mean saying yes to everything or doing things you do not want to do just to prove you care. That is burnout, not generosity.
True over-delivering is intentional.
Look at what someone is paying and ask yourself, how can I give them ten times that value?
- Think through every stumbling block they might face and address it before they even realize it is a problem.
- Add bonuses, guides, templates, or resources that make their experience smoother, faster, and more transformative.
- Show up live when it matters, answer questions, celebrate wins, and guide them through tricky spots.
Record what you repeat. Automate what drains you. Build resources once and reuse them infinitely.
True over-delivery is scalable generosity, not martyrdom.
Over-delivering is not about sacrifice. It is about designing your work so that your clients feel supported, empowered, and transformed while you stay energized, inspired, and excited to keep creating.
That is how you build a business that grows through real results, real care, and real impact.
The Irreplaceable Growth Model
This is the staircase every founder, coach, and small business should build.
Here are three levels of products a client could engage with you.
- Attract
- Engage
- Community
Each step compounds trust, influence, and value.
Step 1: Attract: Free Product That Converts
Purpose: Build trust. Showcase your craft. Solve a problem people feel deeply. Make them want more without asking.
Humans are naturally risk-averse. We hesitate to commit to anything new because the unknown is scary.
A free product reduces that risk. It allows someone to experience your work, your value, and your method without fear of loss.
It triggers reciprocity. When you give first, people feel compelled to give back. That is psychology, plain and simple.
But it goes deeper than that.
A free product helps someone figure out whether they actually connect with what you offer and whether they connect with you. Are your ideas, your style, your solutions resonating with them? Are you speaking to the challenges they feel in their bones?
This is how alignment starts.
Offer a free trial, mini-course, template, or coaching session. Make it emotionally and practically useful.
Over-deliver. Give more than expected. Trust and loyalty ignite instantly.
Examples: My free book Live Big is a perfect example.
It isn’t another motivational read or collection of business tactics.
It’s an invitation to look deeper, to question what you truly want, to redefine success, and to create a business that feels meaningful and alive.
Step 2: Engage: Paid Product That Transforms
Purpose: Turn trust into transformation. Make the difference between their current state and transformed state undeniable.
People escalate commitment once trust is earned.
Paying is identity-shaping. They now see themselves as participants, not observers.
Align your paid product with your free product to deepen transformation.
Price for transformation, not hours or features.
Add guidance, coaching, or bonus materials to amplify results. Iterate based on real feedback to over-deliver.
Example: Our Mindvalley Certified Life Coach certification is a powerful example. Over four months, students receive world-class training, live mentoring, and real coaching practice. They gain the skills and confidence to build a meaningful career as a certified life coach while transforming their own lives in the process.
This is what true transformation looks like. It’s not just learning. It’s becoming.
Ask yourself:
• Does your paid product elevate the free experience or just monetize it?
• Are results so obvious people feel compelled to invest?
• Is your intention aligned with service, not revenue?
Step 3: Community: Create Belonging
Purpose: Build recurring value, trust, and a sense of belonging. Make your product indispensable.
We crave belonging as humans.
When a product connects people to like-minded others, value multiplies. Influence grows because members amplify each other’s experiences.
Build a mastermind, subscription, or membership with recurring content, coaching, and live sessions.
Encourage referrals and reward engagement.
Offer ongoing opportunities to over-deliver.
Example: My program, Greater Inside offers exactly that. It is a year-long guided coaching experience designed to help you rewire the patterns that keep you anxious, overthinking, and procrastinating, so you can move through life and business with clarity, confidence, and ease.
Most founders try to do it all alone and burn out in the process. Here, you’re part of a living, breathing ecosystem of growth, where ideas are exchanged, wins are celebrated, and breakthroughs ripple through the entire community. You’ll be surrounded by fellow founders who get it, who challenge you to rise higher, hold you accountable, and remind you that you were never meant to build alone.
Ask yourself:
• Do members thrive because of your system or in spite of it?
• Does the community deepen engagement and loyalty?
• Is your membership indispensable or just nice to have?
Reflect On These Questions
• Does your free product actually help people or just grab attention?
• Are you building for lasting impact or quick money?
• If your business vanished tomorrow, would people miss what you created or just the hype?
• Are you focused on serving people first, or just making a sale?
Founder Mindset
Great businesses aren’t built by chasing trends. They’re built by founders obsessed with service, craft, and meaning.
- Build what you wish existed.
- Care more than anyone else.
- Give until trust becomes inevitable.
That’s how you build something that never needs hype to survive.
Your Action Steps
If this resonated, and if you’re done chasing attention and ready to build something that truly lasts, I invite you to join my masterclass.
I’ll walk you through the exact framework to create products that sell themselves, not through noise, but through trust, service, and real results.
How Did We Do?
If this gave you a perspective you haven’t heard before, share your thoughts in the comments below. I read every comment — your feedback helps me create content that truly moves you forward.
Love. Ajit
