Is it possible to launch not only a product but an entire business and even a lifestyle? The short answer is YES and today’s guest is the world’s leading expert on launches. What’s working in launches today? What’s changing? What does everyone need to know about launching? This is one of the most exciting podcasts I’ve ever done so let’s jump right in.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
How to Build Trust and Credibility with Your Affiliates
How to Avoid the Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Why Your Affiliate Program is Failing (And What to Do About It)
How to Build Strong Relationships with Your Affiliates
How to Launch…Your Product, Your Business, & Your Lifestyle with Jeff Walker
Is it possible to launch not only a product but an entire business and even a lifestyle? Well, the short answer is yes. And today’s guest is the world’s leading expert on launches. And we talk about what’s working in launches today and what’s changing. What does everyone need to know about launching? This is, simply put, one of the most exciting podcasts I have ever done.
So let’s jump right in. Well, I have got something extra special for you today. This is a bonus podcast episode featuring none other than Jeff Walker, the inventor of the online product launch. And we’re going to dive deep into the world of launches. How to launch your products, how to launch your business, how to even launch your lifestyle. And Jeff is someone I’ve wanted to interview for a long freaking time, man, I’m excited about this.
He’s been a mentor. He’s been a friend, he’s been a client. He’s been a top affiliate for at least five launches. I mean, if I think about it, probably more like eight or ten launches that I’ve run over the years. But he’s never been on the podcast. And actually, when we talked I’m recording this just after we talked, he was like, have I really never been on?
He couldn’t believe it. How has that never happened? Here’s what I’ll say. It was worth the wait. The guy has almost two decades now, 18 years, as we talk about of experience in the Internet marketing world and the insights he shares. This guy has his finger on the pulse of what’s working in launches in online marketing.
He’s at the forefront of everything from launching a product to building a successful business to creating a lifestyle that you desire military. Now, guys, this is a gold mine of knowledge. So we’re going to talk about the secrets behind his product launch formula coaching program. We’re going to talk about how to leverage launches to transform your business, transform your life. The very end of this is so powerful. I mean, the whole thing is powerful.
You can’t just listen to the end, by the way. But the stories he shares at the end, talking about life transformation, man, I mean, so powerful. A little bit of his personal journey, the lessons he’s learned along the way, what’s working today, what’s changing, what’s new, what’s not working? How are things evolving? And we’re talking about all that. So without further ado or delay, let’s get right into it.
Matt: Well, Jeff, finally, 500 and some odd episodes in and we got you welcome.
Jeff: Thank you. Is this the first time I am on really?
Matt: It is. And that’s not by design. I’m so excited because I mentioned to my team when we scheduled this, you’ve been a mentor for well, I think I’m pretty open and honest about my age. You’ve been a mentor for a long, long time. You were the third person that I ever met, Corey Rudel, Alex Mandozian, and then Jeff Walker, the third person that I ever bought, like, an Internet marketing product.
And it’s still stuff that I go back to. I meant to tell you this before we went live, but we were talking about the structure of launches, those scripts, the scripts, and the notes that I took from the first time I went through PLF and mapped out my very first launch. I still go back to them like I still go back to them to write new scripts that are not only ever going to change, because guess what?
They keep working. They keep freaking working time after time. And it’s kind of like when I have a headache, I keep taking Ibuprofen because it gets rid of the headache. These scripts are the same way. So I’m so excited about this. I want to talk kind of start off with why launches?
Because of my experience personally, launches are hard, they’re fun, but there is a lot of work. I don’t think anybody would deny that. Why launch when we can be evergreen and we can do that? What’s the deal there? Let’s talk about that. The guy who invented this basically sell me on launches. How about that?
Jeff: It’s funny, I was just shooting a video yesterday. It’s actually going to be our second video in our master class.
And one of the lines I said is that there’s magic in a launch because it’s like the magnifying glass that just takes the power of the sun. So the sun’s really warm. But then when you take that magnifying glass and hold it onto a piece of wood to try to light the fire, which every kid seems, or seems like every kid does, it just focuses that power.
Yeah, it goes from while that sun’s really warm to like, it can start a fire. And I think that when you do a launch properly and you structure it right, it focuses the attention of the market on you and eventually on your offer. And I truly believe, just like events are magic in our lives.
Why is a wedding a big deal? Because obviously, two people are committing to each other, but it’s because we make it a big deal. Graduation is a big deal, a birthday is a big deal.
And you focus on that and yeah, evergreen is great. It’s fantastic. It doesn’t tend to convert as well, but it’s going all the time.
So that’s the good part of Evergreen. And we teach evergreen, and we do Evergreen, but there is magic, that buzz, that anticipation. There’s a reason that Apple doesn’t just like one day, all of a sudden the iPhone appears on the They said clearly they sell phones all year long, but when they do that release, it’s a big deal.
When a movie comes out, that movie is going to be watched for a long time, but when there’s a premiere, it’s a big deal. And it’s the same with launches.
Matt: Yeah, I think the movie example is relevant for the consumer, too, because Evergreen is sitting on the couch pausing when you go to the bathroom or grab some more popcorn.
But the energy when you watch a good movie, when you watch a bad movie, it actually works in reverse. But when you watch a good movie and you hear the crowd and you sense there’s this collective thing, like you’re all rooting for the underdog together versus watching at home. It is different.
It is different. I’ve never watched a movie at home and then wanted to run through a brick wall. I’ve left movie theaters wanting to run through a brick wall. And I think that’s the difference. To me, that’s a really good example of the movie idea.
Launches, they’ve evolved. This will be your, what, I forget, 14th, 15th launch, master class. Where are we now?
Jeff: 18th. Well, actually, it’s 18 years. There were a few years early on, like in 2006, and seven and eight. We’re doing two of them a year.
Matt: Okay.
Jeff: Probably more than 20. But this is the 18th year we’ve been doing them. All right. So the crazy thing, I don’t know if you heard me say this, but I’ve had over a million people go through this, which is just astounding to say, because you know me, Matt, we’ve hung out. I don’t have the biggest ego in the room, usually, but for me to say a million people have gone through anything I’ve done is just stunning. It’s ridiculous.
Matt: It’s ten of Tennessee’s football stadiums. There are states that don’t have a million people.
Do you ever think about that? I don’t know. There are probably about eight or nine states that don’t have a million people.
Jeff: Really?
Matt: Like Montana, all of Montana effectively has gone through probably more than that. I don’t know how big Montana is.
Jeff: Or 10% of New York City.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, it is when you think about numbers like that, it’s mind-boggling. I mean, I tell people all the time, I only have 5000 people registered. I’m like, that’s more people than go to the average division One NCAA basketball game.
You had 5000 people. Can you imagine 5000 actual people walking out on stage, how nervous you would be? That’s how many people just watched your thing. So never say only 5000, but a million is just mind boggling.
So 18 years. I want to ask you what are some of the biggest shifts you’ve seen from 18 years ago? Obviously, we have all kinds of new technologies, all kinds of new platforms. You launched in 2005. Twitter, it wasn’t even a thing. Facebook, like social media, who talked about that?
What are some of the biggest shifts you have seen?
Jeff: I think there’s a lot of shifts. I think one of them is that the market has gotten, in general, all markets have gotten more sophisticated. And so back in the day when you would do the launch, you’d give out some great free stuff. Free stuff, free stuff. And then it was almost like there was someone hiding in the closet that your offer was hiding in, ready to jump out at people and say, hey, buy my stuff.
Now pretty much everyone knows that there is an offer coming and you have to be super. I think the more explicit you are about that, the better. And so usually, like right in the very beginning, I’ll say, yeah, I’m going to give you all this free stuff.
I’m going to teach you as much as I can. I’m going to make this, I like to say, the second-best launch training in the world, and you’re going to get it for free. And then at the end of it, I’m going to open up my coaching program.
I’m going to invite you to what is the best. And so I think all markets have gotten more sophisticated and used to be this market that you and I sell in, which is teaching entrepreneurs how to grow their business, that was always more sophisticated than most of the other markets because we’re a bunch of marketers and we just like to see the trick. We can see the tricks happening behind the curtain.
But now it doesn’t matter whether it’s dog training or meditation or whatever, all the markets, everyone knows they’re in a funnel these days. Even if they don’t know what a funnel is, they know they’re in a funnel. So that’s one of the big changes, I think in the last few years, launches have gotten a little more compressed, so they’re happy on a quicker time frame.
It’s harder to keep people’s attention for a longer time. Another big change. As you all know, Matt, there are two big sequences. There’s the pre-launch and then the open cart. Pre-launch is where you’re delivering value, value, value, and open cart is where you actually open up and you start taking orders. The cart refers to your shopping cart.
So that’s the time when you’re actually launching. And it used to be the open cart was almost like, it was almost an afterthought. And it was never really an afterthought, but it was like all the effort went into the pre-launch and then the open cart was just a few emails.
Now open cart sort of became the star of the show, or a star. We’re delivering a lot more content during Open Cart. So that’s a big shift.
And we can talk about that if you want because there are some subtleties there, I think. A huge shift. And this sort of gets into platforms and tools but video and live broadcasts. Monumental shift. So, I mean, there was a time where you couldn’t do online video.
It just and then there was a time where it was really clunky and then it was where it was really hard. So he went from couldn’t do it to clunky and ugly. But then it was nicer, but it was really hard.
Now it’s a lot easier. And frankly, that, I think, has really moved the needle for a lot of people because it used to be all text-based. I mean, when I started out, it was all email and it was all maybe blog posts.
That was blogs were the latest technology at one time or sales letters. But now so much of it is done via video and via live broadcast. And even though I know a lot of people out there don’t want to be on camera and they worry about that, it’s still, for the average person, easier to speak to a camera than it is to write in a compelling manner.
And so that shift to video and that shift to video and live broadcasts was monumental. And I think it made launches and marketing in general more accessible to the average person.
Matt: I want to ask you, just because you touched on the ease of video, what are you seeing in terms of anecdotally?
We hear about attention spans shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. And that’s why TikTok and stories work so well. I know me personally, I get five minutes into a video and I’m like, I’m in la la land for the next and then I’ll have to go back for two minutes and listen again.
What are you seeing in terms of video length? I guess the second part to that is, okay, it’s hard to say everything you want to say in a seven-minute video, so it has to be longer. How do we keep their attention in those videos? What are you seeing in that world?
Jeff: Well, I think your videos, it’s no different from any messaging. It has to be compelling. It has to be good. You have to be good. And so it’s like, people are like, okay, well, anything longer than a tweet is not going to get read or something posted on threads is not going to get you 100 and whatever characters.
But you know what? Novels still sell pretty well. Better than ever, actually. So it’s like, you got to be compelling. And I think video is the same way.
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A couple of sayings or a saying is like, for copywriting, I didn’t invent this. I heard this long, long ago, and it’s very accurate. And it’s like your copy can never be too long. It can only be too boring.
And when you’re considering whether it’s boring or not, it’s for your target market. So, like, last night I was watching a 35-minute video about whitewater Kayaking, which is something I’m passionate about.
And yeah, I can watch a 35-minute video on it. There’s like one in 10,000 people in the world who would sit there and watch that video, but because I was very interested in it. Or I watched another one on skis, like breaking down how skis work and ski design, because I’m really into skiing or like, fly fishing, like the most arcane sport, literally in the world that I can think of.
And, I mean, you can just go so deep. I just had someone ping me on Instagram, and they’re trying to sell me on some package where I could buy a whole bunch of followers or I could get posted on their page and get a bunch of followers. And I’m like, no, I’m not really interested in that.
He’s like, why not? I could get you lots of followers. And it’s like, Well, I don’t care about your followers because your followers are not in my target market.
The game for me isn’t getting more followers, it’s getting more sales. And so when you have the right target market, they will watch a longer video. Now, all that being said, we just recorded videos for our first two pieces of pre-launch content for a launch master class.
And try as I might, I mean, I sat there with a script and I was literally working. So I speak about 180 words per minute. And the way I know that is because I’ve measured it.
And that’s useful because then I can look at a script and I can say, okay, how many minutes is this script going to be? So I do a script, and it’s like seven minutes. If it’s seven minutes, I’m doing everything I can to get it six and a half minutes.
Like, I’m going through that with a fine-tuned comb, trying to pull out a word here, a sentence there, a phrase there, insert a contraction here and saying, can we speed up the video in post maybe a little bit, just to get it down to six minutes or 15 seconds instead of stuff?
So I sweat every minute, but I’m going to tell my complete story. And I think in marketing, you always have to make the complete argument for your sale, the complete argument for whatever you want in these videos.
I’m trying to engage people in having a bigger future and seeing a bigger future for themselves and being able to create a business out of thin air or to grow a business that they already have, and you know what to do. That’s not an easy thing. We’re talking about behavior change, and behavior change is hard for humans.
And so I am trying to get them to see that they can put together a launch and they can take something that they’ve created in their head and put it out in the market with a launch and get paid for the thoughts that went through their head. But right now, they’re just thoughts in their head. So I have to convince them that they can do this.
It’s more than seven minutes so I’ve tightened it as much as I can. It’s tighter than it’s ever been. And we’ve taken those videos and we split them into a series.
So it’s like a Netflix kind of you binge-watch this thing. So the whole series is going to be like 30 minutes long, but it’s going to be a three-minute intro and then a five-minute video and then another five-minute video, another five-minute video. And every video is its own distinct piece and it does its best to sell the next video to sell the consumption all the way through.
So yeah, I mean, I work really hard and I teach that you gotta work hard to keep people’s attention. But if your messaging is on point and if you have the right people watching it, they’re going to watch it.
Matt: I agree. I heard a pastor talk years ago, was talking about sporting events and he was like and I think about this, I’m the same way, right? When my favorite soccer team plays at 8:30, I start listening to the pregame at 7:30. So I consume content for now.
Now I’m usually doing it. I’m cooking dinner, I’m washing the dishes, I’m cleaning the house. When I’m doing that, but still I’m listening, then from 8: 30 to 10: 30, roughly. I don’t care if I have to go to the bathroom, like when the game’s on, I’m not going.
Like halftime, we set a timer for 15 minutes exactly so that we will be back right at halftime to be able to watch. Then after the game, what do I do? I go to Twitter and I watch the highlights of the game.
I just watched and read the comments about how other people are saying the same thing, I’m thinking that was an amazing goal. Unbelievable.
That’s 4 hours of content consumption right there. So clearly I have the attention span, and we all do have the attention span when it’s interesting. So for you, that would probably not be soccer.
That would be kayaking. And you could watch them kayak, then go kayaking yourself, and then read about kayaking.
Jeff: Or I mean, I just know a couple of weeks ago I watched the finals of Wimbledon, the men’s singles. It was four and a half hours. It was riveting. I couldn’t step away. So it’s like if you have the right people watching now, that doesn’t mean you don’t want to be sloppy.
You still have to be compelling. But yeah, they will consume if interested.
Matt: So you said something in there I want to dive into. You mentioned though that they’re kind of the five-minute videos that you can binge-watch, but they’re like five-minute chunks. You are telling them kind of the stopping point so they don’t have to guess. So if they’ve only got 15 minutes, they can watch three of them go take care of the kids, come back, and watch another 15 minutes.
And that’s for each of the what’s the word sessions. Right? So there are three sessions.
Is that something you’re seeing that’s working for others, for yourself, or is that something that you’re testing out this year, quite frankly, to see if it works?
So you’re telling them the stopping points, like, here’s where to stop. Come back tomorrow, and watch the rest. Or come back later today, and watch the rest. Is this something that you’re seeing has worked for others?
Is this something you’re just trying out? I’m just kind of curious about where that came from. I mean, it lines up with what we’re seeing in the world, but yeah. Where are you at with that?
Jeff: Well, I’m blessed to have a lot of students out there doing a lot of really cool things. And two really amazing Masterminds between the two of them, about probably 60 or 70 people in them, they’re operating at a very high level. And one of them has been doing what she calls the biz flicks for a while, which are short video videos set up for Binging.
And she’s been telling me about it. I’m like, that sounds pretty cool. So last year in our launch Master class, we dipped our toe in the water and we tested it as a bit of a supplemental path for people to go through our content.
And it seemed to work really well last year. So what we’re doing this year is we’re going to release an entire series. And I think the first series has got maybe nine videos and they’re anywhere from two minutes to seven minutes.
And it’s like one plays and as soon as it ends, well, we’re still building out the pages and building out the technology, but theoretically it’s going to be just like Netflix where you’re watching it and maybe you see the menu over on the side, but you’re getting a video. And as soon as that video ends, then it’s counting down into the next video and the next video and the next video. So we’ve got a whole series of videos like that.
Like I said, I think it’s nine, it might be eight. And then a couple of days later, then we’ll give people a couple of days to go through those. I’ll also do a live Q and A where I’m answering any questions that people have so they can get on live with me.
And then a few days later, after that first series, we’ll drop a second series. And that one, I think, might be seven videos or so, maybe seven or eight videos again, just two, three, five-minute videos where it’s going through them. And I’m always testing and tweaking, but based on some of our students that have done similar and what we tested last year, I think I’m hopeful that it’s going to work.
Matt: Yeah, sounds like it will. I mean, it lines up with what we’re seeing in society. And I think you and I were talking beforehand about the biggest shift I’m seeing. And I was talking with a client just last week about this. I’m not saying live launches are dead, but the numbers that I’ve seen from our clients are, I mean, the show-up rates are wool. They’re not right.
Jeff: Show up rates, like getting to be a difficult thing. We actually started doing our launches completely, like live broadcasts. And I think it was in 17 18 19, we were doing these big productions and people were showing up then because we were very unique in the market.
There were not many people doing what we were doing. And then the pandemic happened and then everyone was home. So then everyone was still showing up because everyone was home for a year there.
But then everyone went online, everyone started doing these live broadcasts. And now it seems like in any niche, you could have three different live broadcasts on any given day that you can attend. And so it became much less special.
It just didn’t stand out and people are sick of it. And so this year, what we’re going to do is we’re going to video, but it’s also supported with the live Q and A.
Matt: Yeah, I love that because you can’t do Q and A not live. I mean, you sort of can, but it doesn’t have nearly the same energy. So those are going to be your people. If they have questions and you answer it, you know this, you’re closing 10% of the people who you answer a question with, maybe higher, you’ve overcome their objections.
And so that’s the perfect use of that, I think. Yeah. My theory was like the pandemic artificially leveled off or even increased the showup rates for live because 2019, like you said, was novel. You were one of 100 people doing it all year.
So, okay, pretty good rates. 2020-2021 even early 2022 It wasn’t a choice between watching Jeff Walker’s launcher go to the movies because they couldn’t go to the movie.
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There wasn’t anything else to do. Now they’re going to the movies, and let’s be honest, they’re not going to sit around and they’re anxiously waiting for your thing to come on at 02:00 p. m. That’s just not what we’re going to do. Also, people’s bosses are over their shoulders now, too.
That probably plays a little role in it. And knowing you, you don’t want to do it at 08:00 at night. Neither do I.. I love it.
Jeff: And frankly, for us, we can’t because my audience is so international. I mean, 40% of our people are outside North America. So I do it at a time where when we do 2 lives, we try to thread the needle. So it works for UK and Europe.
And also it’s late for them, it’s early for Australia and New Zealand. It’s sort of a pretty small window that you can actually do with it.
Matt: That’s what we found. It’s like you pretty much do it now or never. I want to go back to something you mentioned about open cart real quick, as you were right. Not just anecdotally, but I can speak for myself. We would put 100, 200 hours, man hours into the pre-launch content, the videos, all that, and then the open cart was like an afterthought and like, oh yeah, cart open tomorrow, we better come up with a plan.
And you said it’s probably closer to 50-50 now, or even 40-60. Like the planning for an open cart. What does that look like today?
And why has that changed, I guess is probably the bigger question there. Why has that shifted? And what are you seeing as working and not working in the open card phase?
Jeff: Yeah, I’m really not sure why I haven’t been able to put my finger on why that is. Maybe there’s not as much rabid consumption of the pre-launch, I’m not sure. But people are certainly taking more time to make a decision.
So it used to be back in the day, long ago, it was like clockwork that I would take my sales in the first hour and I would multiply that by four and that would be what I would end up as a launch result. And it would be 25% in the first hour, 50% on the first day, and 50% on the rest of the Cart.
And now that’s just gone completely out the window. And basically, the only reliable rule of thumb is if you close properly, then you’ll probably do 40% to 50% on your final day. That’s the one thing that seems to happen but stuff has shifted much deeper in Cart Week. The mistake I see people make with Cart Week is there’s so much teaching in one of these launches.
You’re delivering real value, real content that I want to change people’s lives whether they buy from me or not. But in Cart, once you get to Cart, anything you’re putting out has to move to make the sale. It has to move people forward in the enrollment conversation.
You don’t want to be dropping heavy content during that week. You can drop some lighter pieces that are standalone that people can consume in five or ten or 15 minutes. So they’re not bogged down with thinking through this new content because you want them to think about the offer.
We’ll go deep with case studies, we’ll go deep with FAQs. I’ll often do things like a fireside chat where I’m answering objections. This time we’re probably going to do a webinar that’s very on the nose in terms of it will literally be titled something like something about your top questions about the proclamation formula coaching program answered or something that’s very on the nose.
And we’ll do that probably either the closing day or the day before closing. We are actually at this point, it’s funny because we’re still playing with the last two days and exactly what we’re going to do on those two days. So here I am. We’re only, whatever, three weeks out from those closing days.
Matt: That’s too early for you.
Jeff: The thing is, we’ve built up enough experience.
Matt: Exactly!
Jeff: I’m not concerned about nailing it. The only thing I’m concerned with is our partners, because we’re going to have affiliate partners on this and our partners want to know the plan as early as possible and we want to let them know as early as possible.
We’re still playing with it. We’re also just a little truly behind the scenes. We generally have a five-day open cart and that’s what I coach, is to do a five-day card maximum of seven days.
It’s the mistake I see people make. They have a ten-day open card or a 14-day open card. If you do that, it ends up being a begathon. It’s just like all you can do is send out another email that says, please buy my stuff. Please buy my stuff. It’s horrible positioning.
Everyone gets sick of it. Everyone gets bored of hearing of you, so we usually do. I coach a five-day to seven-day max open cart. Historically, we do a five-day cart, but this year we’re going to do a four-day cart, which is a little, it doesn’t give you as much time to recover if something goes wrong. So that’s the danger.
And the reason we’re doing it is because just because of the way the calendar works, our open cart week is the week going into Labor Day, the Labor Day weekend here, here in the States. And for anyone outside the States, Labor Day is the last summer holiday here in the States. It’s a very big deal.
It’s a big deal in terms of people taking the time off. And so Labor Day is Monday, but on Friday people start checking out. They’re headed out on vacation. They’re headed out for the weekend. They’re all going to the lake or the beach or whatever. So I don’t want to close on that Friday.
So we moved our close to Thursday so that we end up with a four-day card. So that’s a little bit different for us.
Matt: Yeah, you sometimes just have to look at the calendar. To your point, we’ve seen that before. We’ve closed on even, like, the Friday before Memorial Day. We closed one year, and it was known, I work from home, like you I work from home. We homeschool. I don’t know when holidays are known, I don’t have kids out of school, so I don’t remember when Columbus Day is. Sometime in October.
And you know, when I find out that it’s Columbus State, when I go to the mailbox and there’s nothing in it, or when I drive to the bank and it’s not open, I don’t know these things. So and nobody on my team said anything. We planned this launch six, seven months in advance, and it was the Friday before Memorial Day. And Memorial Day.
To your point, for those not in the United States, it’s just like Labor Day, but it’s the kickoff to summer, because a lot of times the kids got out of school and boom, Friday they’re in vacation mode, or they’re in I’ve got so much work to do to get ready for vacation mode. They are not in oh, you have a deadline. I don’t care.
They’re just not in that mode, and it killed. You mentioned we see the same thing. Typically, 40% to 50% of sales are on the last day. We only had, like, 22, 23% of sales on the last day. It just destroyed our launch. I’m like, Oops, lesson learned, right?
So good points there. I’m excited to see how that works, though. I really am. I know you mentioned the compression, the stat I have from our clients, and just what we’re seeing is if you go back to 2015, the average launch was 17. 4 days long. In 2022, the average launch was 13. 8 days.
That’s half a week off. And I personally, as an affiliate, really appreciate that, because 17 days, like, is this thing ever going to end? And then the multi-week open cart. Lord help me. Glad we don’t have any of that. I think nobody is doing those anymore, thankfully, at least it follows you.
So as we wrap up here, I want to ask you two questions. Jeff, the first one, just what’s the biggest shift you’re seeing in Launch World? Notwithstanding the fact that we came out of a pandemic and live doesn’t work as well and the attention spans are a little bit shorter.
And all those things, I think they were band-aid by the pandemic again, because what else are we going to do but watch a three-hour live cast in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon? Notwithstanding that, what’s the biggest shift you’re seeing in the last year or so?
Jeff: Well, certainly one shift is AI. I think that’s not just a shift for launches and not even for online business, or not even just for business, but in general, it’s a big deal. We’re actually going to be speaking to that in this Master class. And I think AI, there’s a lot of different opinions. A lot of people feel a lot of different ways. To me, just trying to be dispassionate about this, it’s a great tool, just like Google has a great tool.
There was a time when people didn’t know how to use Google or use it effectively. I think AI, it’s great for a lot of the little tactics, and it makes it easier to do a launch. It solves the blank page problem. It can get you started on your offer. It can get you started on your content. It can get you started on your pre-launch content, on what an open cart plan could look like. It can get you started on a lot of that if you use it properly if you have the right prompts. And the thing it can’t do is strategy. It’s not going to build a business for you.
So I think the way we’re going to approach this and the way I feel about is it’s just a perfect fit with the Procludge formula because it makes it easier and faster to implement. But you still have to understand the strategy and you still have to understand marketing, and you still have to be able to recognize when your marketing is hitting the mark, because the content that at least at this point, that it’s putting out is not launch ready. It’s 70% of the way there.
But you need to make it better. And so I think it’s a great tool and it’s helping us launch faster. It’s helping our clients launch faster, get more work done. But you really do need a strategy to drive it.
Matt: Yeah, that’s the thing. The launch Masterclass is going to give people the framework. You can layer, chat, GPT, whatever on top of that, but you’ve got to know the framework, you’ve got to know the strategy. Have you written an open card email? Well, what does that even mean? If you can’t prompt, if you can’t condition it to do that, it’s not going to just go to say the card is open. Okay, great email. Thanks, ChatGPT.
Again, guys, I’ll just go back to, like we mentioned, this Master class. We’ll put a link in the show notes. We’ll put a link below the video. If you’re watching the video, click on that register. You can watch them in five-minute increments. Jeff says go watch them.
All the five-minute videos are guys is the same stuff that I learned when I had to sit there for an hour or more in a row. It’s the same stuff that completely transformed my business. And like he said, this Master class is the second-best training. I’ll just say it. I encourage you to get the product launch formula when it’s open.
We’ve talked about that. We haven’t tried to hide that. Like, oh, there’s a secret wizard with an offer back there. But if you go through the Masterclass and apply what Jeff teaches, here’s the thing.
If finances are an issue, don’t buy. Like, you’ll be the first. Don’t go into debt to buy. Know, go through the masterclass. You’ll make enough money in the next year, that when it’s open next year, you’ll be like, Boom. Sign up.
And that’s actually what I did. I don’t know if I ever told you that, Jeff. The very first time I went through the Masterclass, I didn’t have the money. I was broke. So I took what I learned in it, made enough money. The next year, I didn’t even go through the pre-launch content.
I just waited for the open Cart clicked on buy. So as we wrap up, the final question I would say is, if somebody is out there, I want to speak to the person who’s in that niche that they’re like, yeah, all this Internet marketing stuff, I don’t know if you can share the specific story you shared with me beforehand, because that might be proprietary, but tell me a
story of somebody. Give me an example of somebody who’s they’re in some obscure niche that people don’t even know. That’s a thing.
And they’ve used a product launch to really launch their business and launch their lifestyle, because that’s ultimately what this is all about, is a lifestyle. The type of lifestyle that you’ve lived where it’s not all about work. Just finish this up with one of those. I love hearing these. Hopefully it’s one of many. It’s funny how, like, a million to choose from.
Jeff: Well, people write in, and they tell me about things, and sometimes they have to Google them to figure out what they are. Someone wrote in about Dressage, which I thought was pronounced dressage, which is basically horses. It’s horse riding, like, where you’re jumping over stuff.
Matt: Okay. Dressage. I thought it was decorating horses.
Jeff: I thought that’s what no, it’s a crazy it’s one of those super athletic things where you’re jumping over all the different things and going through this stuff. And then there’s sort of like, dog agility, but horses and dog agility is another one. I have someone massively successful in dog agility. Curving wooden dolls, sword fighting, screaming, how to scream. Someone wrote in, I just made it. Did a six figure launch on how to scream.
I’m like, okay, so what’s that about? It turns out it’s how to scream. If you’re a heavy metal vocalist, you’re not born knowing how to scream.
Matt: No, not at all.
Jeff: A learned skill. So there’s just so many carving wooden dolls, reading Echocardiograms. It goes on and on. But the favorite one I’ve been talking about for the last year, I think, is Anne Lafalette. And Anne had a successful corporate career working for big retailers, I mean, very successful career.
And then in her late fifty s, one day, boss calls her in. This is like, executive suite kind of stuff. Boss calls her in and says, we’re limiting your job. Go to HR. We’re walking you out right now. Anne’s late fifty s, and she was devastated.
And then I think, like, driving home, she gets in a car accident, double devastated. She’s home, and her husband says, “Hey, you’ve had all those art supplies in the basement that you keep on buying, but you don’t do anything with. Why don’t you start doing some art?”
And so she did. And then she found this thing called surface pattern design, and she became really passionate about it. And that was one where I had to Google what’s surface pattern design, and even after I Googled it, I still didn’t know what it was. And it’s basically designing, like, I’m looking for an example. It’s like designing a repeating pattern that might go, here we go, here’s a journal. This is a surface design.
Someone designed that, and people can actually design this. And then you can make your own wrapping paper, your own fabric, your own mouse pads, your own phone covers, and you can actually license this to companies, and they’ll pay you money for your surface design. And so she did an initial launch that was like a proof of concept that made, I don’t know, a few thousand dollars and said, okay, this will work.
And then she leaned into it. She had no list, no product, no entrepreneurial experience, no following, nothing. But she just started spending like $5 a day on ads and started doing lives once a week.
And initially it was just her cousin was showing up. And then because she started to build this small list and she did that first launch, did a few thousand dollars, and then it just grew from there. And in her first full year, she did several launches that added up to $100,000.
In her second full year, she did three launches that ended up being $400,000, teaching people how to do surface pattern design. And she’s in her early sixty s now. She’s a few years into this.
Her business keeps on growing. She’s actually made it into my Mastermind. She looks like your grandmother. If you just close your eyes and said, show me. I want to imagine a grandmother. And that’s Anne.
And the people that follow her, she said, look like her. They’re all older people, mostly women, who just are looking for this hobby, and maybe they can even make some money at this. But mostly they just want to make these surface designs so they can make wrapping paper that they can wrap for their grandkid’s presence, no less, no product, no experience, no following, no never been on video, never been on a live cast. And within a couple of years and this isn’t typical, this isn’t average, it’s absolutely extraordinary.
But $400,000 to teaching surface design and you have another PLF owner who is crushing it in surface design. Bonnie Christine’s, 35 years old. She sells to 35-year-olds and sells to 50 and 60 and 70-year-olds. Because their voice is very much speaks to their people and they’ve attracted their it’s just it’s absolutely ridiculous.
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Matt: That was a beautiful lesson there at the very end. I don’t know if you realize how powerful that lesson is. That like two people teaching the exact same thing. They’re very different. They attract very different people. Bonnie’s probably never going to attract Dan’s audience and vice. So that’s a lesson for anybody who goes, oh, there’s already people doing what I’m doing. There’s no you, though. No you, though. Jeff that’s been amazing. Thank you so much for doing this.
I’m so looking forward personally to the launch masterclass because I don’t know why, man, but I keep going back. I just like watching how you do it. That’s, I think, the reason why. So I look forward to going through again for the, I don’t know, 11th time 2012 actually bought in 2013. So whatever this is, 14th, some odd time. Look forward to going through. I’m excited and I know people will benefit so much from it. So thanks for sharing a little bit about what it’s like behind the scenes today.
Jeff: Thanks for having me on, Matt.
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You can see why I was so excited to share this episode with you. We put this in. It was somewhat of a last-minute thing. We had an opportunity to finally do this. And so I hope you enjoyed this bonus episode. I would love to hear from you about your biggest takeaway, as always.
So shoot me a text at 260-217-4619 or message Jeff on social media and let him know that you heard him here. But if you text me your biggest takeaways. I’ll be sure to share them with Jeff.
Make sure you also check out the launch masterclass that he’s doing. The link is in the show notes. Guys, this happens once a year, one time per year.
Like he said, it’s the second-best training on Earth and it’s free. The best one is paid. I hope you join Product Launch Formula, but this one is free, so join the launch masterclass.
We have a link to that in the Show Notes. With that, make sure you hit subscribe as always, so you don’t miss the next episode. I said it last time.
The next episode is how to get affiliates excited to promote. Well, now that’s the next episode. Now that’s the next episode, we’re going to talk about how to actually get your affiliates eager to promote.
You think that money would be the best way to get affiliates excited. I talk about this in the podcast. The famous quote from Deutschevsky man never acts from a single motive.
Motivation is more than money. In fact, money is usually not even like in the top three motivators. So we want to make sure to listen to the next episode.
Best way to do that, hit subscribe so you don’t miss it. I’ll see you then.
Questions?
Text me anytime at (260) 217-4619.
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