214 - 4 tips to never have a FAILED launch again

[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to Growing Steady, the show where we help online creators like you build a Calm business, one that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an Un-Boring Business Coaching Program and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.

[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. Hit him with the intro, Carol. You got this.

[00:00:39] Caroline: Podcasts are great, dot, dot, dot. What is it?

[00:00:41] Jason: Nah. It's cool.

[00:00:42] Caroline: Gosh.

[00:00:42] Jason: Podcasts are cool because what are podcasts?

[00:00:45] Caroline: Cool.

[00:00:45] Jason: Dot, dot, dot. Hello and welcome back to our podcast. That's cool. Dot, dot, dot.

[00:00:51] Caroline: Dot, dot, dot.

[00:00:51] Jason: We are getting into...

[00:00:53] Caroline: This is our launch era.

[00:00:54] Jason: We're getting into some focus stuff time here with the podcast.

[00:00:56] Caroline: Yup.

[00:00:57] Jason: So we play it real loosey-goosey most of the other times of the year, but this is focus season here, which is weird for us because it's summertime as of recording this, normally we're taking a break.

[00:01:07] Caroline: I know.

[00:01:07] Jason: But our timelines are all over the place. But that's okay. Yeah.

[00:01:10] Caroline: Always. Sometimes you got to switch it up. This is a switch it up year, as you have heard.

[00:01:14] Jason: Yeah.

[00:01:14] Caroline: If you have been following since the beginning of the year. But yes, we are now entering what we will affectionately refer to as our launch era, where we, on the podcast, in the newsletter, we're going to really focus on launching for the next, not just launching a product of our own.

[00:01:31] Jason: Right. The topic.

[00:01:31] Caroline: But really trying to share our knowledge and expertise about launching digital products, because we've been doing that for over a decade now.

[00:01:40] Jason: Yeah. I mean, inadvertently for like almost 20 years.

[00:01:43] Caroline: And what is very funny to me, I think we touched on this in the episode where we talked about our strategic shifting of our focus2. We touched on the idea of why we're talking more about launching, but I just find it so funny. This is one of the classic things of running your own business, where things look so obvious in hindsight. But I'm like, we spend so little time launching. Like, yes, we come in here and we do our launch debriefs and things like that, but we don't talk that much about the actual act of planning a launch, running a launch, everything that we've learned about that, and yet it is the core of what we have developed that is a key to a successful and Calm business.

[00:02:23] Jason: Yeah.

[00:02:23] Caroline: And so, in hindsight, it makes so much sense to talk about what we've learned about launching, but it's just really funny that we haven't done that.

[00:02:30] Jason: I think it falls into a bucket of content that we try to avoid, which is the dream selling bucket of content.

[00:02:35] Caroline: Very true. Very true.

[00:02:35] Jason: And I think many people make their internet monies by teaching people how to make their internet monies. And we have danced around that a little bit. And I think that now we're just getting to the place where it's not really about that. Like when you will see this new product that we're launching, when you'll hear us talk about it in a few weeks, it's not positioned around dreams. It's positioned around having a business and a life that feels fulfilling and is right for you and is enough and all those things. And then money is the byproduct to helps all that stuff happen.

[00:03:07] Caroline: Definitely.

[00:03:07] Jason: But I think the thing that we have just tried to avoid is all these people who are like, "Here's how to have $100,000 a year business, or $100,000 per month business, or $100,000 per day business", or any of those things. Get on TikTok shop, make it all happen. Those are the things we just try to avoid because they're just people selling garbage. That's what's going on.

[00:03:26] Caroline: I think you're absolutely right. I think that's probably why we have, maybe not touched on it as much, but the irony is that when you really do come back to it and you see the positive change that has happened in the lives of our WAIMers and the business owners that we help and the solopreneurs that we help, the massive shift happened when they found an offer that works, that they can sell in a repeatable launch formula way. Right?

[00:03:52] Jason: I also do like talking about it, not to cut you off, but because I think we're the antithesis of what we've watched so many people teach over the years, which is they're like, "Get the Facebook Ads going."

[00:04:01] Caroline: Right, right.

[00:04:03] Jason: "Spend the money on that."

[00:04:03] Caroline: Do all the things.

[00:04:03] Jason: Get all the stuff. You got to do a live and you got to do with this, and you got to do a webinar, and you got to do a and you got to do a blah, blah, blah. And it's like, it doesn't have to be like that.

[00:04:11] Caroline: Totally. And so we would like to be the voices offering an alternative to all the tactics and all the hecticness and trying to, and needing a big team to run a launch. Like we've talked to you all about this. We're really trying to narrow in on people who are solopreneurs and who are wearing a lot of hats and doing it themselves. And launching can be very stressful if you're a solo creator, because you're having to remember all the things. And whether we want to believe it or not, launches are, they can be complex. And so Jason and I are trying to figure out a way that we can make it simple because launches feel calm on our side.

[00:04:47] Jason: Right.

[00:04:47] Caroline: And so we were trying to say to ourselves, what is it that has allowed us to feel in control, to not feel like we're a bunch of chickens running around with our heads cut off and still get sales and feel like we have successful launches without trying to do all the things. So, all of that being said, we're entering our launch era, and we are kicking things off with today's episode, which is our four keys to avoiding what we call a flopped launch. And we all know what that feels like, right?

[00:05:14] Jason: Yeah. And if you've never had a floppy launch, just know that it happens to everybody.

[00:05:17] Caroline: Ooh, a floppy launch.

[00:05:18] Jason: Yeah.

[00:05:18] Caroline: I like that way better than a flopped launch.

[00:05:20] Jason: If you are about to launch your first product and you don't know how it's going to go, it could get floppy, and that's okay. But what we're hoping to have you walk away from this episode and these next couple weeks is just a lot more launch knowledge and tactics and things that we have learned that you can use in your business. And then a couple of weeks from now, we will have a thing that can actually help you do this. But for now, you can just enjoy hearing all the free content and getting all the advice as we lead up to that.

[00:05:47] Caroline: Definitely. And here's the thing. Like, obviously, we can't sit here and guarantee you that you're going to get sales of your digital product in your launch. Right? Like Jason mentioned, there's plenty of people who are going to promise you that, they can't do that.

[00:05:58] Jason: Right.

[00:05:58] Caroline: However, I do feel extremely confident that, especially the things that we're going to mention in this episode, if you pay attention to these four things, you are going to give yourself such a better shot at getting sales and avoiding a floppy launch, as Jason says.

[00:06:16] Jason: Yeah.

[00:06:17] Caroline: And I really do believe that these are the four things that if you do them, you're set up for success in a way where it would be hard for you to get new sales. Okay?

[00:06:24] Jason: Yeah.

[00:06:24] Caroline: So that's what we're going to talk about. Everyone knows that feeling of working really hard on creating a thing and being so excited about this digital product you're creating. It's a Notion template, it's an online course, it's a coaching program, it's an e-book. And you're like, "I just have to get this out into the world. I want to help people."

[00:06:43] Jason: Yeah, the endorphin is pumping though. Like you're working on this thing and you're like, "Yes, everyone's going to love this because I have spent 600 hours on it."

[00:06:48] Caroline: Yes. And you've been thinking of all the cool things you want to include with it and the bonuses and this and that, and meanwhile you've just been like in your little creation cave working away.

[00:06:56] Jason: Yeah. Your Instagram, super quiet, your email list, hasn't been touched.

[00:06:59] Caroline: Super quiet.

[00:07:00] Jason: Your website, there's no new content on it.

[00:07:04] Caroline: But you're like, "This offer is so good."

[00:07:04] Jason: Yeah, but you're like, "I'm working 12 hours a day."

[00:07:05] Caroline: And when day one rolls around, and I let my list know that this is up and ready for sale...

[00:07:11] Jason: Yeah.

[00:07:11] Caroline: ...it's just going to come pouring in the sales.

[00:07:13] Jason: You know what happens instead?

[00:07:14] Caroline: Crickets.

[00:07:15] Jason: It gets floppy.

[00:07:16] Caroline: Gets floppy out there.

[00:07:17] Jason: Your launch gets floppy. So this is specifically for all of you who have experienced a floppy launch, but it's also for those of you who are on the cusp of launching and you want to avoid a floppy launch.

[00:07:27] Caroline: Jason, have you ever had a floppy launch?

[00:07:29] Jason: I have had a floppy launch.

[00:07:30] Caroline: Tell me about it.

[00:07:31] Jason: So I think this was actually my last floppy launch, was this application...

[00:07:36] Caroline: Okay. Yeah. Because we figured out what worked. We've been doing it for 10 years.

[00:07:39] Jason: Exactly. So I wanted to create, there was a calendar app called Sunrise that I absolutely loved. The design was clean. The aesthetic was minimal. It just didn't feel like a Google product, which we all use, Google Cal now, or an Outlook calendar. And it just feels very corporate. I loved Sunrise, and then Sunrise went out of business.

[00:07:59] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:00] Jason: And it left this hole in my life where I was like, I really love this app. Like, there's so few apps that when they go away, you're like, well, I guess I'm going to try and build it because I loved it that much.

[00:08:09] Caroline: You're like sad. Yeah.

[00:08:10] Jason: And so I assembled a little team, and by this point I had created Of course, books and Your Pack, with my friend, Paul Jarvis and a developer, Zach. And those two went pretty well. I had Spruce Metrics, which went well. But dawn was really the one where I was like, okay, I think this is going to be the big one because everyone who was using this at hundreds of thousands of users. It was a free app. That should have been the first thing.

[00:08:31] Caroline: It was a free app.

[00:08:33] Jason: It was a free app. And my genius thought was, I'm going to bring this app back almost exactly as it looked when it was there and existed, but it's going to be paid, and that's how it's going to sustain itself, because that's why I went out of business, because it was free, and you can't sustain a free product forever.

[00:08:48] Caroline: Yup.

[00:08:48] Jason: So again, I brought a little team together. We were working on it, and here's what we did. We worked in silence. We had meetings, we had calls, hours per day. We had mockups. Things were going blah, blah, blah. And then out of nowhere, I just decided to tell my email list, which at the time, I think was like 10,000 people. It's like, "Hey, I'm so excited to share with you all this new thing I've been working on in complete secret that you've never heard of."

[00:09:13] Caroline: But so hard.

[00:09:13] Jason: But for like, six months, I have been spending lots of hours on this with two, a developer and a designer. And here it is. You're going to want it. And we released it, and we said the first version was, I think was going to be like $10 a month, discount to five or something like that. I don't remember the exact pricing was. Not a single purchase.

[00:09:32] Caroline: Wow.

[00:09:32] Jason: Not a single purchase. It was so floppy.

[00:09:36] Caroline: So floppy.

[00:09:37] Jason: It was the floppiest of launches.

[00:09:38] Caroline: The most sad.

[00:09:39] Jason: And it wasn't ready to be used. This was basically our pre-sale to be like, okay, we have...

[00:09:43] Caroline: To validate.

[00:09:44] Jason: Well, yeah, exactly. Like we had already worked on it.

[00:09:47] Caroline: Be like, okay.

[00:09:47] Jason: There was a version that was going, but we finally decided we've got to get some customers saying that they want this thing. We were all very new to building products and making things, and I was juggling like, nine of the things at the time, so I didn't really have the time to focus in and be like, "Wait, what are we doing?" Like we haven't validated this. So anyway, huge floppy launch. We basically, I remember getting on a call the end of that week, and I think I sent two emails about it, which, again, was all the emails that I sent. And maybe we had like, three sales by the end of that. I thought we were going to have 500.

[00:10:17] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:10:18] Jason: And I remember getting on that call and we just felt so defeated, and we were just like, "Well..."

[00:10:23] Caroline: It really is, I know I'm skating over the feelings of it, but it really is so disheartening when you do pour so many hours into something and you convince yourself, because you have to, because you're working on it and you're passionate about it, you do convince yourself. I mean, some people are the other side of the fence where they have total insecurity of no one's going to buy it. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs, you're like, "Oh, this thing is so great." And you have this enthusiasm, and to have the market like slam the door in your face and be like, "Nope, we don't want it." It sucks.

[00:10:50] Jason: Yeah. And what's really wild is, I mean, I think we worked on it for like four or five months and it was part time for all of us.

[00:10:56] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:10:57] Jason: But that's four or five months, and in one week we basically gave up.

[00:11:00] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:11:01] Jason: And it just goes to show you when you don't validate an offer early enough, when you don't put plans in place, when you're not getting customers and people interested, and we're going to talk more about that, this is what it leads to. Will you fix your mic for me? Thank you.

[00:11:11] Caroline: Yeah. And like I said, it's so obvious in hindsight where you go, "Oh, well, obviously you didn't give people any reason of why they'd be interested, you weren't taking them along on the journey." Like, all these things become obvious in hindsight, but these are the lessons that you have to learn and step outside of it to figure out why the reasons for the flops.

[00:11:30] Jason: Yeah.

[00:11:30] Caroline: But I have a similar story, and I think I've told it on this podcast before, so I won't go too far into detail, but one of my best-selling courses was this Better Branding Course. This is several years ago, but I had this priced, I had a tiered pricing, and one of the tiers was just the e-book version of the course. And so it was like all the worksheets and basically teaching you how to design your own brand in an e-book format. And it had done really well, but it was falling off in sales. And so I decided that the secret to revitalizing my sales for this tier was going to be to just redesign the e-book.

[00:12:04] Jason: Which is a very interesting point when you think about, anybody listening to this, if you have a product where the sales are dwindling, it's good to zoom out and go...

[00:12:12] Caroline: Why?

[00:12:13] Jason: ...is this dwindling because I'm not putting attention toward it?

[00:12:15] Caroline: Yup.

[00:12:15] Jason: Or is it possibly also dwindling because customer behavior has slightly changed where, like a really long, in-depth e-book is not the buying behavior anymore.

[00:12:24] Caroline: Exactly. And it's so funny in hindsight, this is also how a trap that many creators can fall into when they convince themselves of something so that they can spend more time on the thing they enjoy and not the thing that's easy instead of the thing that's hard. So I'm making less money, and I decide I'm going to go and spend my time redesigning this e-book because that's what I love doing.

[00:12:43] Jason: Yeah. Instead of pouring tons of hours more into the thing that was currently selling well...

[00:12:49] Caroline: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:12:49] Jason: ...it was, "This thing is falling. I got to revitalize it because there's something wrong with it." There's not necessarily wrong with the marketing of it or...

[00:13:00] Caroline: And again, in hindsight like, "Oh, I really thought the sales were dwindling because the layouts were not as compelling."

[00:13:05] Jason: Exactly.

[00:13:05] Caroline: It's so weird. It has so much more to do with the information within and the outcome you get for someone, not the design of the thing. Right? We know that now. And so, long story short, I had given myself this deadline. I really was pouring all this effort into redoing all the hand illustrations myself. This was before iPads, vectorizing them myself, doing all these illustrations.

[00:13:27] Jason: Was this on a Wacom tablet?

[00:13:29] Caroline: Yes.

[00:13:29] Jason: Nice. Nice.

[00:13:31] Caroline: There's probably a Wacom tablet involved. I stayed up all night to meet this deadline for my launch because I didn't move it back.

[00:13:35] Jason: When you say stayed up all...

[00:13:36] Caroline: I literally didn't go to sleep.

[00:13:37] Jason: Didn't go to sleep. Yeah.

[00:13:39] Caroline: I literally didn't go to sleep.

[00:13:39] Jason: And this was as an adult person who own their own business.

[00:13:42] Caroline: An adult person. It's not like I had a test the next day and I was like a pulling an all-nighter.

[00:13:45] Jason: This is boss Caroline next day, told employee Caroline, "You better stay up and finish this sucker."

[00:13:52] Caroline: Yup.

[00:13:52] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:53] Caroline: Because I couldn't bring myself to, what? Send an email that said, "Great, you'll get the e-book by the end of the week." I mean, I guess that does speak to my desire to deliver on expectations. So there's that.

[00:14:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:14:04] Caroline: But the more disheartening thing is I work all night, I send out the launch email, because, again, have I been doing pre-launch content to why this e-book is going to get someone a better outcome or what I'm working on or why I'm improving it? No, you know why? Because I probably didn't have a good reason, Jason.

[00:14:20] Jason: Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:21] Caroline: And so I send out my launch email, and I get zero sales.

[00:14:25] Jason: Zero. That was both of us. The real floppy launches.

[00:14:28] Caroline: So floppy.

[00:14:29] Jason: Yeah.

[00:14:29] Caroline: But we share that to share, hopefully a little bit of relatability, to say, you don't learn some of these things without going through the floppy launches.

[00:14:38] Jason: Exactly.

[00:14:38] Caroline: Like, that's the only way that you walk away with these four keys that we're going to tell you about, of the things that we did wrong in those two instances and several other, those are just two examples, but several others, because we now have the comparison of launches that have gone extremely well to the point where we have the formula for ourselves and we know we're going to get a base amount of sales every time because it's that repeatable.

[00:15:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:15:03] Caroline: And so I think that it's that repeatable for us because of these four things that we're going to tell you in this episode.

[00:15:10] Jason: Do me a favor. This is the producer in my ear.

[00:15:12] Caroline: What's that?

[00:15:12] Jason: Just feel free to just pull this and just keep it right in front of your mouth and you move around...

[00:15:16] Caroline: Right there.

[00:15:16] Jason: Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah.

[00:15:17] Caroline: Is that better?

[00:15:18] Jason: Because I'm seeing you turn towards your laptop, and I know everybody wants to hear the awesome information you're going to share, but when you do this, and then the mic kind of swings to the side, no one can hear you. So that's just me being producer.

[00:15:27] Caroline: Good job.

[00:15:27] Jason: All right. Do you want to give a little preview of the overview here? What do you want to get into here next?

[00:15:33] Caroline: Yeah. So let's get into the tips. The first thing I do want to give a call out to before we get into it, because they're like, "Come on, you're yapping, let's get to the goods."

[00:15:42] Jason: Yeah.

[00:15:42] Caroline: Is if you are someone who is interested in all of this launching stuff that we have set up for you and that we're talking about, we are doing a four-week newsletter series over on our Growing Steady newsletter. So we're switching up our format for four weeks. We're calling it Calm Launch Fundamentals.

[00:15:58] Jason: We put the fun in a Calm Launch Fundamentals.

[00:16:02] Caroline: Fundamentals.

[00:16:03] Jason: Calm Launch Fundamentals, because fun...

[00:16:03] Caroline: Okay. We'll workshop that in fundamentals.

[00:16:06] Jason: We put the men in the alm...

[00:16:12] Caroline: Yup.

[00:16:12] Jason: ...of the Calm Launch.

[00:16:14] Caroline: Fund of calm... Okay, okay, okay.

[00:16:17] Jason: All right. It's all right.

[00:16:17] Caroline: It is a four-week newsletter series called Calm Launch Fundamentals. If you go to wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter, you can sign up for our newsletter. And we are going to be basically sharing the basics of running a more repeatable, profitable, and stress-free launch as we lead up to our WAIM Unlimited enrollment, where, as you've heard, we have a new thing coming to WAIM Unlimited, which is our Calm Launch Formula. So if you're into launching, wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter to sign up for that series.

[00:16:46] Jason: Cool. All right.

[00:16:47] Caroline: All right, let's get into it, Jason. So number one.

[00:16:49] Jason: Non floppy tip, number one.

[00:16:51] Caroline: Non floppy tip number one.

[00:16:52] Jason: Ooh, that sounds...

[00:16:53] Caroline: Is a little bit of an unsexy one. And you're going to be like, "Oh", you're going to roll your eyes. But I'm telling you, we're going to tell you why it's so key is planning far in advance.

[00:17:01] Jason: Yeah. There literally is no shortage for the importance of planning early for a launch.

[00:17:10] Caroline: It is, if you could do one thing from this podcast...

[00:17:10] Jason: If you can do one thing.

[00:17:13] Caroline: ...that's the easiest thing you could possibly do.

[00:17:15] Jason: If you're about to launch a product and it is two months out on your calendar, and you literally haven't started doing all the things like, the offer isn't even finished, you haven't told your email list about it, you got to move that calendar event.

[00:17:27] Caroline: Move it to three months.

[00:17:27] Jason: Like four or five or six months later.

[00:17:29] Caroline: And you are going to thank us because I'm telling you, we know what it was like to have hectic launches where the timeline is compressed. And it's not like we're immune to this. We've done it before, and we'll do it again. But the main differentiator between launches that end up being chaotic, and also that end up being floppier, because what happens is you don't have enough time and space to do the pre-launch content planning, to give your sales emails the time that they need to make your sales page absolutely beautiful and copywriting that is compelling, you end up having to skimp on all these things.

[00:18:08] Jason: Yeah.

[00:18:08] Caroline: And of course, you're not going to have time to both finish your offer and tease your offer to your audience at the same time when you're under a timeline crunch. So, again, if there's one thing that we could say that will contribute to a Calm Launch, it is planning early in advance. And your next question might be, how far in advance? And so we typically recommend that if you haven't sold this offer ever, in fact, if you're still working on the offer, you need to start six months in advance with a proper kickoff four months in advance, because those first two, you're going to be working on the offer. And I know that's hard to hear because we're all creators and we're all impatient, but I'm telling you, it's going to make a big difference.

[00:18:46] Jason: Yeah. It's the difference between, do you want to do a launch in two months? It's currently on your calendar, and it completely flops and doesn't make you any money, and then you just are really upset and that's a huge bummer. And then you have four months of scrambling to make money. So it's like a six-month wait anyway, or just literally put your launch six months out on the counter, give yourself more time, do the things that need to go into a really successful launch and then have the successful launch in six months and be at a better place.

[00:19:12] Caroline: That's exactly.

[00:19:14] Jason: Yeah.

[00:19:14] Caroline: Because I know it's compelling to want to do it as soon as possible. But if you end up not giving yourself enough time, then, yeah, sales are going to be lacking. So if you have sold your offer before, we typically, if it's an offer that you know does sell, it's just that you're repeating the launch and you're trying to get better at it, we typically do it three months out. So we'll have our kickoff meeting three months out and then we'll back out from there. So that's what you want to do is you want to set your launch window based on what we just recommended and then you want to work backwards, right? So one month leading up to your launch window, your open and close launch, you're going to be sharing all of your pre-launch content. Two months backwards from your launch date, you're going to be focusing on your sales page, your sales emails, all of that messaging.

[00:19:55] Jason: Did you hear that? That's two months before your launch date. You're going to be writing your sales emails. And we're not saying two hours before you hit send on the sales email. It's two months before. Yeah.

[00:20:07] Caroline: That's going to blow some people's mind.

[00:20:07] Jason: I know it is.

[00:20:08] Caroline: They're going to be like, "I don't think that's a good idea."

[00:20:09] Jason: "Wait, what? I don't think I'm physically capable of that." I think when I go into ConvertKit and I go, New Broadcast, it goes, "But is the sale tomorrow?" And I go, "Yeah."

[00:20:18] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:20:18] Jason: And they go, "Then you can keep writing." And they go, "Is it in two months?" You go, "Yeah." And they go, "Sorry, you have to wait 30 to 60 days."

[00:20:24] Caroline: And I know, listen, we're making jokes because we have been those people. We have written the launch emails the day of the launch, and it is the opposite of Calm. It is the worst.

[00:20:35] Jason: Yeah. It also puts you in such a tough mindset because you're already in the scarcity mindset. There's a scarcity of time, there's an urgency of, "I got to get this done. I have too many things on my plate." And that's why this is the number one tip in all of this is to plan far in advance. So just as a reminder, what Caroline said, one month before your launch date, you need to focus on your pre-launch content. Two months before your launch date, you're going to have your sales page and your sales emails written in your messaging is. Right? And then three months before that, that's when you're really kicking things off with the full plan. You're getting organized, beta testers, you're finishing your offer so that it's ready to go, and then you back out even further from there if you need more time, if you've never made this thing before.

[00:21:12] Caroline: And I just want to make another point here that's actually not in the notes, but it's more of a meta point.

[00:21:17] Jason: Sure. You didn't even have to tell me. They may not even have known we had notes.

[00:21:21] Caroline: They probably know that.

[00:21:22] Jason: Go back. Here, go back again, and just add it as a point.

[00:21:25] Caroline: Okay. One other point that I wanted to add.

[00:21:27] Jason: Nice.

[00:21:27] Caroline: It's more of like, a meta point.

[00:21:28] Jason: Yeah.

[00:21:29] Caroline: Is the reason that we're talking to you right now about launching is obviously because we have an enrollment period coming up in four weeks from now that is centered around launching. Right? But we would not have known or even had the thought to be strategic in being like, "Okay, we need to start talking about launching so that people who are interested in launching are going to be interested in our offer." Right? That's the classic marketing thing. You don't have the time and space to think of that strategy if you're still working on your offer in a cave somewhere and you're not even thinking about pre-launch content. Right?

[00:22:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:22:03] Caroline: Which we'll talk about in a second. So I just want to point that out. There's a little meta on meta there. All of you are smart businesspeople. You're under no illusions of why we're talking about launching right now. We're fully transparent. But that is the level of strategic preparation that you can put in place if you give yourself the time and space.

[00:22:21] Jason: Yeah. And then we highly recommend using whatever project management tool you like, whether that's Trello, Asana, Notion, to organize all of your tasks, get all of your thoughts down, get all of your dates organized, and then try and make it something you can repeat.

[00:22:35] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:22:35] Jason: So I think that's one of the things that you have brought to our launches that never existed before is we have a launch template in Notion where we just literally press like, New Launch and it creates like a whole list of things that we have to do. It has a whole bunch of tasks prepopulated for us. Also, if you want that, you're going to get a version of it if you join Calm Launch Formula in about a month or so. So you can look forward to that. But for now, just know that however you're thinking about doing a launch when you're writing out all these tasks, if you don't have a system for it now, think about how this could be a repeatable thing that you could use as a template moving forward, even if it's just duplicating the project, that's fine, too. But just like actually put that thought in your head for future.

[00:23:11] Caroline: I never thought about that. I mean, there was a time period years ago where we used to do launches just by the seat of our pants. Then we really grew up and we were like, "We should have an Asana. We're going to do an Asana launch." And the thing that I never, and then we graduated to Notion eventually, but the thing that I didn't realize at the time was, "Oh, I'm not just doing this so that I'm feeling more calm and organized, so that I'm not just like writing things on various notes and Google Docs and things." I'm doing it so that I can just duplicate it and then have a checklist going forward for every single launch.

[00:23:42] Jason: Exactly.

[00:23:42] Caroline: That never hit home for me. So that's a huge plus.

[00:23:46] Jason: Let me go ahead and share. This is my second story of a product that I launched, and I think it's might be my last story. So you can think, Caroline...

[00:23:54] Caroline: Ever? Like your last story you're ever going to tell?

[00:23:56] Jason: Oh, you guys can send your hate mail to Caroline if you wanted more stories and you only got two, but I want to share, for those of you who have not heard it or maybe haven't heard in a few years, because this was surprisingly nine years ago now was my BuyMyFuture launch. So this project was basically the culmination of...

[00:24:13] Caroline: This is the WAIM Unlimited origin story kind of.

[00:24:16] Jason: It really is. But it's also like it came after that Dawn app, because I had been working on these other things and so I had these other products that were going and some were working, some weren't, but I just had a lot of chaos. And I was like, I got to consolidate all this stuff down into one thing. And so that one thing was this idea for BuyMyFuture. But here is how that project panned out. And spoiler alert, I'll just save it because I actually didn't write in the notes, but the launch ended up being a $178,000 launch, which is the biggest launch I had ever done at the time. But here's how the thing came together, and I didn't even strategically do this. It's just how it worked out. And then we just repeated this over time. So six months out, I had the idea, and so I put the time on the calendar, six months. And I said, I need six months to build this thing, work on it.

[00:24:58] Caroline: And I just want to say, I think why you also gave yourself six months is because at the time, the idea for BuyMyFuture, it was like an offer that was so off the wall, right?

[00:25:07] Jason: Yeah.

[00:25:07] Caroline: Because it was like a lifetime subscription to anything you would ever create. And so I think your instinct was right, which is no one's really ever sold anything like this.

[00:25:15] Jason: Exactly.

[00:25:15] Caroline: I need to give myself time to come up with a strategy, but that's how every single solopreneur should be thinking.

[00:25:20] Jason: Totally.

[00:25:20] Caroline: Is let me just pretend that this offer is going to need time and space to be strategic so that I can build a compelling messaging strategy around it.

[00:25:31] Jason: So six months out, I created the big ass plan.

[00:25:34] Caroline: Yup.

[00:25:35] Jason: Three months out from there. So in those three months between there, I was starting to work on the offer. I was starting to do some things. We were doing design and branding stuff together. I was working with a copywriter for the first time ever. But three months out, I launched a waitlist, an email waitlist. Now, I would say that was probably like a little bit like it's a long time to have an email waitlist.

[00:25:54] Caroline: Premature?

[00:25:54] Jason: However, I paired that with two months out, I started writing a daily journal on medium.com, which at the time, in 2015, was actually a pretty big deal.

[00:26:03] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:26:03] Jason: So I was going where people's attention was and sharing things every single day just leading up to what I was building. So it was a behind the scenes journal written every single day, sharing, here's what the branding is looking like, here's all the stuff. And I had a code name for the project, so it built a little bit of mystery, and people just got really excited that all of those posts ended up getting 33,000 views. I had this written down, which is amazing for I'm not a professional writer. I'm just a guy on the internet. I gained 2,400 new email subscribers during those two months from the Medium posts. And then in every post I told people to go sign up for the waitlist if they wanted to find out what the project was. So 2,400 new email subscribers, and then I had like 8,000 total by the end of it. And of those people who signed up for the waitlist, 24 people bought, which is really cool to see, that ended up being $24,000 in revenue.

[00:26:53] Caroline: Wow.

[00:26:53] Jason: But also in that time, in that like three-month period, I was doing phone calls with people who were previous customers. I did 49 calls, and I just talked to them about the idea. So they found out what the idea was, so I told them what it was, but it was really great because this was the first time I ever did true offer validation where I said, "Here's what I'm thinking of selling." And I was just like, "It's a bundle. It's all my software, it's all my courses." And they were like, "Okay, well, is there a community involved? Can we come together as entrepreneurs who like interesting ideas and projects?" And I was like, "Oh, I hadn't really thought about it like that."

[00:27:26] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:26] Jason: And then I remember someone on one of the calls, they were like, "Oh, this is like me getting maximum value of you and you getting maximum lifetime value from me, the customer." And I was like, "Oh, that's really cool." Like, I don't know if that's compelling for a sales page, but in my mind, it really helped shape a lot of the way I talked about BuyMyFuture on.

[00:27:44] Caroline: And we're going to talk about that in one of the keys is speaking in a language that your customer uses.

[00:27:49] Jason: Exactly. And so what I started to hear was, I would say, "Bundle." And I would say, "Get all my products", but people would say, "A community and a place for me to hang out with other people who like interesting ideas."

[00:27:59] Caroline: Investing in you.

[00:27:59] Jason: Right, exactly. So out of those 49 calls, 33 people said on the call, because I asked the very last question, which was like, would you buy this? Do you think you'd buy it? 33 said yes, but only 16 actually did end up buying. So it's fun that I kept track of some of these things.

[00:28:13] Caroline: Yeah, I like that.

[00:28:14] Jason: But I did like that, if you boiled it down, for those calls, I basically made $653 per call.

[00:28:19] Caroline: Oh, nice.

[00:28:19] Jason: Was how that math worked out?

[00:28:20] Caroline: And how long were the calls?

[00:28:21] Jason: Like 30 minutes.

[00:28:22] Caroline: What? That's...

[00:28:23] Jason: Yeah. But pretty good money. I make 1,200 bucks an hour.

[00:28:26] Caroline: That's great money.

[00:28:28] Jason: Yeah. I did 26 podcast interviews in that time.

[00:28:31] Caroline: Wow.

[00:28:32] Jason: I reached out to 70 podcasters, and 50 of them basically said no.

[00:28:36] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:28:36] Jason: So that's just a note for you all to hear that if you want to get podcast interviews or you want to get your product out there, you're going to hear no's from people. But I was willing to hear no's because I wanted to get in front of other people's audiences so that I could get this thing out into the world. It was the first and only time I was going to be able to release this project and have the buzz that I could create for it.

[00:28:54] Caroline: Definitely. And I think something about that, too, is like, even though you weren't running ads and doing all the things or whatever, but having a waitlist, doing the behind-the-scenes diary, doing the podcast interviews, that's more than we do for launches now.

[00:29:07] Jason: Absolutely.

[00:29:07] Caroline: But I do think the thing about a Calm Launch is you can start when it's the beginning of offering something new for the very first time. You have your plan, right? And then you can see what really works. You can double down on what works. You can strip back what is not a good return on your investment, and over time, you can strip some of those tactics back so that it's much more efficient and you're not having to run around and do all those things.

[00:29:31] Jason: Yeah. And that's what I was going to say to wrap this up. So, first of all, even though there was a lot going on, when the actual two-week launch period happened, I felt so calm.

[00:29:42] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:29:43] Jason: Everything was done. Everything was ready well in advance. I had validated the offer a ton. I think I had even like, a couple people have been like, "Can I just buy this now?" And I was like, "Yes, that's fine." Which also really helped me learn some automation stuff. Like I had figure out because people are getting access to a bunch of things. But I'll never forget the feeling of the sales emails were all scheduled. The sales were coming in on day one. Like, it felt so awesome.

[00:30:06] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:30:06] Jason: And as you just said, the thing is, is since then, we have never done a launch that busy. We have never done, not like the launch period was busy, but like the lead up.

[00:30:16] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:30:16] Jason: We've never done 26 podcast interviews, 49 phone calls. We've never done that since then because we just decided that's not worth it. Like, we don't need to do all that. Like, we can have a launch like we have now, and they make as much money in total revenue.

[00:30:30] Caroline: Yeah. That's the enough mindset at work. Right?

[00:30:32] Jason: Exactly. But I just wanted to share that story because I think it's helpful to illustrate a lot of what we're talking about in actual execution, that's not just for our Wandering Aimfully business, but for something else.

[00:30:40] Caroline: Totally. And I think an important thing about that story, too, is what made you feel so calm going into that two weeks? It's a couple of things. It's one, you had already talked to customers.

[00:30:51] Jason: Yeah.

[00:30:52] Caroline: You had already validated your offer to a certain extent. You had already done all this premarketing and talking about your offer. So on day one, you don't have to have that uncertainty of like, is anyone going to care? Because you know that you gave it your all in the pre-launch phase, right?

[00:31:09] Jason: Yeah.

[00:31:09] Caroline: And so you're like, let the sales fall where they may. And that is what we want for people going into that day one of their launch, where you're not suddenly, it feels less like a roll of the dice and it feels more like, I trained for a marathon. I'm just going to show up on marathon day and I know I'm going to finish the race, and it's just a matter of what time am I going to run.

[00:31:29] Jason: Exactly. All right, so I think that wraps up tip number one in planning with my incredibly fun story of taking us back nine years to BuyMyFuture.

[00:31:38] Caroline: Amazing.

[00:31:39] Jason: And yeah...

[00:31:40] Caroline: So let's move on to number two.

[00:31:42] Jason: Okay.

[00:31:42] Caroline: Also, just a shout out if some of what we were talking about with the Notion and the launch dashboard and the tasks and the repeatable tasks. If that's interesting to you, email to, in the Calm Launch Fundamentals series, excuse me, is all about our systematic approach to our task list and repeating the same tasks, launch over launch. So again, if that is something that interests you and you're like, "Boy, I need a launch task system", then head over to wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter and make sure that you get the series. Okay, so let's move on to key number two, which you touched on.

[00:32:15] Jason: Yeah.

[00:32:15] Caroline: So we don't have to dive too far into it. But I'm telling you this, the lack of this is the number one contributing factor to a flopped launch. A floppy launch.

[00:32:24] Jason: Yeah. I think this is, if you were to say, you have to pick one thing, that's the reason why people have floppy launches.

[00:32:31] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:32:31] Jason: And it's because you don't do pre-launch content.

[00:32:33] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:32:33] Jason: Another way of saying this is premarketing we talk about as well. You can interchange the two of them, but this is where you get so heads down making your thing that you don't come up for air and share on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or on your podcast or on your email list or anywhere that you have anything happening. You then just show up on launch day with your thing and you wonder why people don't buy.

[00:32:55] Caroline: And it makes sense, right? Because you're pouring so much creative energy into your offer if it's the first time that you're making it, and even if it's not the first time you're making it, you're probably making it better. Maybe you're working on a new version of your sales page. You're just you're in the creation zone of everything that's behind the curtain. And so the last thing that you want to do is put your creative energy towards, "I got to come up with an Instagram reel. I got to do an Instagram story showing people what I'm doing for my launch." And then you also might be a little bit like, "Oh, it's not finished, or I don't totally know how I'm talking about it yet." You might have some uncertainties that might also be preventing you from creating content, but in doing that, you are really hamstringing your results in the long run, because the number one contributing thing to sales is going to be your pre-launch content.

[00:33:43] Jason: Yeah, there's something very self-sabotagy here when it comes to our own businesses that we do to ourselves, which is the most important time is leading up to our launch to be sharing good, helpful content. And arguably, we stopped doing that thing at the most helpful time.

[00:34:01] Caroline: Yup.

[00:34:01] Jason: And then it's like our launch time, and we're so tired that then we create the crappiest of crappy content.

[00:34:08] Caroline: Yup.

[00:34:08] Jason: And you wonder why it's not interesting to anybody to have your content consumed at all during that time.

[00:34:13] Caroline: Totally. And I think this is one of the main challenges of being a solopreneur, right? Is you're only one person, and you're a person who, if you're listening to this podcast, you want to grow steady, you want to live a well-balanced life. You don't want to be burning the candle at both ends. And we totally get that. This is why we started with tip number one, which is you simply have to give yourself more time and space.

[00:34:33] Jason: Exactly.

[00:34:33] Caroline: Because if you do start six months out, four months out, planning and being strategic, you can sit down and in a strategy session, plan out all of your pre-launch content. And also, we have an entire, we put together for Calm Launch Formula, an entire pre-launch themed weeks. So you just have to follow the rubric of here's what you talk about four weeks out. Here's what you talk about three weeks out. Like, we have done that for you. Because I know it's overwhelming to go, well, what do I talk about and what do I keep behind the curtain of my offer and what do I share and how much is too much and all of those questions, right? But if you give yourself time and space, you'll be able to sit down and strategically think about what that content is. And the thing about pre-launch content is it's not just about, in the case of your diary for BuyMyFuture, it's not...

[00:35:19] Jason: My personal diary.

[00:35:20] Caroline: Your personal diary?

[00:35:21] Jason: Yeah.

[00:35:21] Caroline: It's not just about building hype and anticipation, which is important. It's like us, every time I mention to you Calm Launch Formula like, yes, that's me giving you a teaser of what we're offering when WAIM Unlimited enrollment opens. Yes, it's about hype. Yes, it's about anticipation. But more importantly, it's about sending up a beacon to attract your ideal customer, who is going to be the right fit in your audience for this offer that you're going to sell with your launch. And when you create pre-launch content, of all the content out there, they get your email in their inbox and it's, in our case, it's about launching and they go, "Oh, my gosh, I just had a launch, and it was a flop or it was too chaotic. I need to learn how to do better launches." Like you're sending up a beacon that says, "Hey, are you attracted to this type of content? Then you're going to like this thing that I'm building." And you're putting them in the right mindset to be in a place where they can even want to take advantage of your offer.

[00:36:16] Jason: Yeah. And we have actually done this whether it was apparent to you listening to our podcast or not, many times over on this podcast.

[00:36:23] Caroline: Yup.

[00:36:23] Jason: And on our email, it's the same thing. And I think we're pretty transparent about it. So I think people get it. But the idea is just this pre-launch period is so critical to getting your audience warmed up, to making sure that the thing you're talking about is interesting to them, to also showing you that all the effort that you put in to make this product, people are going to be excited about it and you're not just going to show up one day, say it's for sale, and then everyone goes, "Wait, what? What are you talking about?" They go, "Oh, yeah, I've been hearing you talk about that. I'm really excited. You've been teaching me along the way. I'm ready to buy this thing."

[00:36:55] Caroline: Yeah. And so a lot of that content is speaking to the big problem that your offer solves for people. A lot of it is speaking to opening them up to the misconceptions they might have around the topic of your offer to soften them up to make a change, to make a transformation. So we will talk more about all of those themed weeks and our pre-launch content strategy in that newsletter series. So I think it's the final email in that four-week Calm Launch Fundamentals series.

[00:37:24] Jason: Cool. Exciting.

[00:37:25] Caroline: Yeah. So be sure to sign up for the newsletter if you want more info on that or if you're like, "Man, I have never been able to do pre-launch content before because I have no idea what to talk about."

[00:37:32] Jason: Yeah, yeah. We'll help you out. All right, so to recap where we are so far, tip number one, you got to plan far in advance. Tip number two, you need to have pre-launch content.

[00:37:40] Caroline: Yup.

[00:37:41] Jason: Let's move into tip number three, which we've already touched on a little bit, but we're going to talk about it more because it is very important, which is validating your offer.

[00:37:47] Caroline: Yeah. So you're a smart person listening to this. I know you know this. No amount of like...

[00:37:52] Jason: You're talking to me, right?

[00:37:53] Caroline: You are a smart person.

[00:37:54] Jason: Thank you so much.

[00:37:54] Caroline: You're so smart.

[00:37:55] Jason: Thank you so much.

[00:37:55] Caroline: You're so pretty and also fun.

[00:37:57] Jason: Oh, we don't need to do that.

[00:37:58] Caroline: You're really well-organized...

[00:38:00] Jason: Yeah.

[00:38:00] Caroline: ...and you are really...

[00:38:01] Jason: Like an IQ of like 1,000?

[00:38:03] Caroline: You have 1,000 IQ.

[00:38:05] Jason: Thank you.

[00:38:05] Caroline: You're very athletic.

[00:38:06] Jason: Anyway, anyway, moving on. Yeah.

[00:38:07] Caroline: Oh, okay. I was just having fun.

[00:38:08] Jason: I know.

[00:38:09] Caroline: You know this, listening to this right now, no amount of a strategic launch plan can make up for an offer that your audience simply does not want.

[00:38:19] Jason: Yeah.

[00:38:20] Caroline: There's just no way around it.

[00:38:21] Jason: I actually do have another story. Do you want a quick one?

[00:38:24] Caroline: Well, I thought you were done with stories.

[00:38:26] Jason: Can I have one more?

[00:38:26] Caroline: Yeah, you could have one more.

[00:38:27] Jason: Fantastic. Paul Jarvis and I, we were working on a whole bunch of things together back in the 2014 to 2017 era. We were working on all these projects, and I think it made like one or two software products at that time together, a couple courses together, and we're like we just want to do something fun. We want to do a fun idea that people can pay for. And people love the things that we make. So we're like, we're going to talk about this. It's going to be fun. And so I think it was for...

[00:38:54] Caroline: I know where you're going.

[00:38:55] Jason: ...three or four weeks, we started teasing this idea. We started building it. I had a live blog where we were working on it. We were recording videos, and it was a weird offer, so it wasn't like as normal of how you would go to build it. But for a month, we talked about it and promoted it and said the name of it and shared it, and we then opened up the doors to sell it. And I think seven people bought it.

[00:39:18] Caroline: Yup. Yup. It was a floppy launch, and it had nothing to do with not talking about it.

[00:39:22] Jason: This one had absolutely nothing to do with being in a cave and not talking about it. We talked about it a lot. We were both really excited about it, but it was a thing that just no one cared about.

[00:39:30] Caroline: Nobody cared about.

[00:39:31] Jason: So this is a perfect example of this idea was not validated.

[00:39:34] Caroline: Tell them what the idea was.

[00:39:34] Jason: So the idea was called emoji bombs. And you can always tell that I have been really early on emojis. I have always loved emojis.

[00:39:41] Caroline: Yes.

[00:39:42] Jason: And the idea was, I think this was my idea because it's dumb. Which was, every day, we would tell the behind-the-scenes story of the emoji. So imagine the sunglasses emoji. Like, his name is Roger. He's from the planet Saturn. Like, his whole story.

[00:39:56] Caroline: And in hindsight, what you were selling was a newsletter.

[00:40:00] Jason: Was a fictional newsletter about emoji.

[00:40:03] Caroline: What you were selling was a newsletter on the premise of short fiction stories based on emojis, which...

[00:40:09] Jason: Hey, just for everybody listening, out of curiosity, can you tell me how many short story fiction newsletters y'all pay for? Has that behavior changed?

[00:40:17] Caroline: I mean, it's like it could have been a Patreon. This is before Patreon.

[00:40:20] Jason: But even still. Even still.

[00:40:22] Caroline: I know, even still. You know that marketing phrase that's like, "It's not a painkiller. It's a vitamin."

[00:40:26] Jason: Yeah.

[00:40:27] Caroline: This is not a painkiller. It's not a vitamin.

[00:40:29] Jason: You know what it is?

[00:40:30] Caroline: It's just a...

[00:40:31] Jason: It's like a piece of candy.

[00:40:32] Caroline: It's a candy.

[00:40:33] Jason: But it's also like a piece of candy that's like a taffy, it's like no one really wants it. Yeah.

[00:40:37] Caroline: Yeah, it's a taffy.

[00:40:37] Jason: You're like, "Do I have to eat it?" You're like, "No, you don't." So anyway, I share that quick little story as an example of a lot of effort went into the premarketing of that idea. We talked about it a ton, and it launched to nothing because what we didn't do was actually talk to people and say, "Would you buy this?"

[00:40:53] Caroline: Yeah. And I mean, listen, I want to be clear there...

[00:40:57] Jason: Also, can I interject real quick, just super quick?

[00:40:59] Caroline: Of course.

[00:41:00] Jason: Not only did we not ask customers if they would buy it, and then we didn't find out that people wouldn't buy it, we were trying to sell something that literally didn't exist anywhere else.

[00:41:09] Caroline: Yes.

[00:41:09] Jason: So if you are like, "Oh, well, I'm afraid of talking to customers", or whatever, but if you're making a branding course, people buy branding courses.

[00:41:17] Caroline: Totally.

[00:41:17] Jason: So it's a validated offer in itself.

[00:41:19] Caroline: Totally. Yeah. Funny enough, my flopped validated offer was something that no one had made as well. So interesting.

[00:41:26] Jason: It's interesting, the crossover there.

[00:41:28] Caroline: It's interesting. But we try and it's worth it because that's the thing I was going to say is, listen, if you were just doing it for fun and for your own passions, and creators are always going to find themselves at this crossroad of personal expression and wanting to see their ideas come to life, but also wanting to make money with those ideas. And so for your own personal expression, the idea is king. Right? It's like I need this thing to be out in the world and I don't care if I make money. When you are making money, you have to be very keen to what the market wants. What does it need? And so it just depends on what you're using it for. For emoji bombs, you all did want to make money and you did not make money because the market did not want what you had to offer. And so all of this comes back to our tip number three, which is if you don't want a floppy launch, you have to make sure that your offer itself is validated. And so what do we mean by that? If you haven't validated an offer before, you need to find a way to make sure that your audience, as even as small as it is, if you're starting from scratch and you're building a small audience, you want to make sure that there is some amount of demand for that. So there's a few ways you can do this. One is you can be super informal about it and you can start just having a conversation and a dialogue with your social media audience, your email audience, saying, "I was thinking of making this thing. Would you be interested?" Of course, that's not a measure of if someone will pay for something. But I usually think starting vague and small like that is a good way to start because you just get the conversation going, right? Then you want to refine it. You want to do things like make a landing page for it, have a waitlist so that people actually can learn more about what it would be. They have to have some level of investment, meaning putting in their email to show you that they would be willing to be interested. Of course, the gold standard of validating offer would be doing a pre-sale. You could also do of some sort of beta test of it, offering a deep discount and seeing if people are willing to pay for that and give you feedback so that not only are you validating that people will pay for it, but also you're making it better by having real people go through it.

[00:43:25] Jason: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a very clear, if you see an offer out in the world that people are already paying for and you have a different version of that that you want to create and you believe should exist, there is some validation there. But you do have to go one step further to say, but also, do I have the audience that's interested in buying that thing? Because just because other people pay for it, doesn't mean that I have an audience of people who are willing to pay for it. So there's a big mistake there that you can think an offer is validated because it exists out in the world, but you don't have an audience that is actually primed and ready to buy that thing.

[00:43:55] Caroline: Yeah. My other floppy launch was, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I did a digital magazine subscription community online course membership. Yeah.

[00:44:09] Jason: It was all of that.

[00:44:10] Caroline: It was all of that.

[00:44:11] Jason: Yeah.

[00:44:11] Caroline: It was called Color Your Soul. And I was passionate...

[00:44:15] Jason: You should have called it BuyMyFuture.

[00:44:15] Caroline: I know.

[00:44:16] Jason: Yeah.

[00:44:16] Caroline: I was really passionate about it, but it was not a validated offer in any regard. A digital magazine meets a online course subscription meets a community, it was too much and it was too hard. And I had done nothing to check in with my audience about whether they would want this or not because I just decided I wanted to make it. And I'm glad that I pursued an idea, but did it help me financially? No, it did not.

[00:44:43] Jason: No. And I think that one was a great example of you had this idea, and I think a lot of people fall into this, and we obviously have, too. You have this idea that's unique and it has like a spin, and it's like, "Oh, well, I haven't seen someone do kind of bring these elements together." And sometimes it can be like, "Yeah, that's a good idea. Those elements haven't been brought together. That's a good product." But then there's an item of, there's a reason we...

[00:45:06] Caroline: There's a reason.

[00:45:07] Jason: ...brought all those things together.

[00:45:08] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:45:08] Jason: Because it's overwhelming for someone to be like, "Well, I'm in a community, but then I also get a course, but then I also get a digital thing, and then I also get a this", and then I'm like, "But wait, what?"

[00:45:16] Caroline: And when am I using this and why am I using this?

[00:45:18] Jason: Yeah.

[00:45:18] Caroline: So, which brings me to our fourth key, because I do think that that offer could have survived had I done this last thing.

[00:45:26] Jason: Which is the thing that I did during BuyMyFuture, which was so helpful.

[00:45:30] Caroline: Which is the difference.

[00:45:30] Jason: Yeah.

[00:45:30] Caroline: Because BuyMyFuture was the thing that nobody had really done before. So this is the difference.

[00:45:35] Jason: Yeah.

[00:45:35] Caroline: That's the only non-floppy launch among the like, no one's ever done this before of our ideas was the one that you did this, which is our tip number four, which is to get real language from real customers.

[00:45:49] Jason: What's very interesting, now that you say this and we're talking about, I'm sure we had this epiphany seven years ago or nine years ago or whatever, had you had actual conversations with your customers, like I did for BuyMyFuture?

[00:45:59] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:45:59] Jason: I bet very clearly they would have all been like, "Oh, can you just make it an online course?"

[00:46:04] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:46:04] Jason: "Or can you just make it a Slack community? Or could you just make it a this?" All of that is too much.

[00:46:10] Caroline: Yes. And I was guessing what people wanted instead of knowing.

[00:46:14] Jason: Right.

[00:46:14] Caroline: So in this digital magazine subscription, just to go with the example, I think I had I had a journal prompts and I had an inspo board of, it was really for artists to stay inspired every month. And listen, I can't even tell you what it was, right? It's years later and I'm like, what was it?

[00:46:32] Jason: But even still. Yeah, I think...

[00:46:33] Caroline: But it's like, and I had a calendar, I had printables and things, and I just threw the kitchen sink...

[00:46:37] Jason: Yes.

[00:46:38] Caroline: ...based on what I wanted to make every month. And it was too much to sell and it was too much to do. But had I gotten on with real customers and said, "Which part of this is enticing to you?" And they would say, "Oh, I really, really love the inspiration, the art every month. I find it so inspiring." So then it's just an art subscription. Right?

[00:46:57] Jason: Yup.

[00:46:58] Caroline: It's an online course and it's a little art pack every month, and that's all it is, and that's great. And it would've done much better. But this last thing is really about finding ways to communicate about your offer. Because I do think that copywriting and messaging is very undervalued in a launch, in a success of a launch. I think that we often times will focus so much on what the thing is, and not the problem that it solves for people, the transformation that creates for people. And so listening to real customers in the way that they talk about the transformation that they want is very important.

[00:47:34] Jason: I'm also going to call out some of you who are listening to this, and I'm so sorry to do this to you, but I know that it has happened. I know some of you have sold a thing that's like the mythical journey through sublimating all of your visions. And some are reading that in a sales page, it's like, what are you selling?

[00:47:53] Caroline: What is it?

[00:47:54] Jason: What's going on here? And you, in your mind...

[00:47:57] Caroline: I suffer from this, too, because I love being clever.

[00:47:58] Jason: ...are clever and creative, and you thought of a thing.

[00:48:00] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:48:00] Jason: But your customer literally is just like, "Can you just tell me what it is?"

[00:48:03] Caroline: Right.

[00:48:03] Jason: And I think that's a trap that people fall into when they don't actually talk to customers. And listen, I know the introverts listening to this, this is very hard for you to hear, but if you want to run a business, you have to know your customers, you have to know how they think, and you have to know how they speak.

[00:48:17] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:48:17] Jason: And that is why it's so important here in this fourth tip is to understand your audience fully, have conversation with them, and not just like pull things out of thin air that you think are going to resonate with people, because they resonate with you.

[00:48:29] Caroline: Exactly. Because I do think sometimes, because we're creative, we do this thing where we're like, I can just imagine this person, I can just imagine the problems that they encounter. Maybe, but you know what's even better is...

[00:48:42] Jason: The imagining.

[00:48:43] Caroline: The imagining is real people...

[00:48:45] Jason: Hearing the words.

[00:48:45] Caroline: ...who really want to buy your offer, who have real problems that they encounter during on a regular basis. And it's not just about knowing what problems they're encountering, it's about knowing how they talk about their problem, right?

[00:48:56] Jason: Yeah.

[00:48:56] Caroline: And so going back to what you're saying about the introverts, though, I think it is important to note, it doesn't have to be calls.

[00:49:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:49:01] Caroline: It doesn't have to be calls.

[00:49:02] Jason: Absolutely. So I was just going to say, surveys are a great way that we do this often, and we did one recently to our email list, and maybe you filled it out. And it was about launching, and it was about gathering information from people about how they feel about launches, their experience with launches where they get stuck. And one of our open-ended questions, which we do on purpose is to have them speak about the biggest problem they have had with launching, so that we can read through the words, which we put right on sales pages.

[00:49:29] Caroline: Yup.

[00:49:29] Jason: And writing sales copy. Because that's how they're talking about it like, we might say this is a streamline system to have a perfectly planned and well-executed Calm launch. And someone's like...

[00:49:38] Caroline: And they might be like, "I don't want to be a chicken with a head cut off."

[00:49:41] Jason: Someone's like, "Can you just help me have a launch template that helps me get the job done?" You're like, "Oh, okay." You start to hear those problems.

[00:49:48] Caroline: Yup.

[00:49:48] Jason: So yeah, I think you can definitely do some of this on social, you can have conversations in the DMs of people, you can ask people to fill out question cards or whatever. But I do think surveys are a really powerful thing that you can gather info.

[00:50:00] Caroline: Here's a secret tip.

[00:50:00] Jason: Sure.

[00:50:00] Caroline: Secret tip is Reddit.

[00:50:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:50:05] Caroline: So search whatever your kind of niche is or your topic, and you can even search it in Google, but just add "Reddit" to the end. Find the subreddits where people are congregating that are in your target audience demographic. See what they're complaining about. Listen, be careful out there because...

[00:50:21] Jason: Yeah.

[00:50:21] Caroline: ...Reddit can be a special place.

[00:50:25] Jason: You can say a-hole, I think that's what you were going to say.

[00:50:25] Caroline: A a-hole, a a-hole. Okay? Let's just be honest, a-hole. But hop in there and see how are people talking about the problems they're encountering. What are their gripes about whatever the status quo is in your industry, like you really can get into the mind of someone in that a-hole.

[00:50:45] Jason: Yeah.

[00:50:46] Caroline: But also, the same is true for things like Facebook groups or just anywhere online groups where people congregate.

[00:50:51] Jason: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I think the big takeaway for this last tip here is just the more you can hear from your customers in the lead up to your launch, and again, this can be done during the six-month planning period of getting your launch up and going, is you can start to craft the messaging, you can start to hear the things. Your sales copy will come together, your emails will come together, your product itself and the positioning of it will come together. And all that happens because you're talking to real people who are going to pay you money. Not because you're just thinking in a creative cave by yourself and hoping this is what people want.

[00:51:22] Caroline: Yup. So that is our conclusion there. You're going to plan for an advance, you're going to create strategic pre-launch content, you're going to validate your offer, you're going to use real language directly from your target customer. And again, if you want more on Calm Launch Fundamentals and basically our basics for creating a more repeatable and profitable and peaceful launch, then definitely head to wanderingaimfully.com/newsletter. The first email of that will go out, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, the following Monday.

[00:51:54] Jason: And if you are a smart cookie, and you're like, "I think you guys are going to sell me something here after this." You're right. We have mentioned a couple of times, but that is the Calm Launch Formula, which is going to be a course with a live cohort that we're going to take you through, which is going to be very exciting. So you'll hear lots more about that in a coming weeks, but that's just a little teaser of the tease that's coming. But our whole goal is to help make launches a lot more repeatable, a lot less stressful. And to not be so money focus, like launches are money focus, because that is the point of them, but it's also to feel like, "Oh, wow, I had all my ducks in a row many weeks in advance of my launch." And when it actually happened, I launched to a bunch of people that we're really excited to buy this thing from me because I had premarketing content, I've been talking about it for a while, it's a fully validated offer. And I'm getting sales on day one for the first time.

[00:52:41] Caroline: Yeah. And for me, like you were saying, it's not just about the money, it's what does a repeatable launch that gets you real money and sales do for you and your life. It creates more space for you to live well. It creates a predictable business where you're not having to stress about money, and when does it coming in the next month and all of those things.

[00:53:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:53:03] Caroline: I really do believe that, going back to what we said at the very beginning of this podcast, maybe why we've avoided it in the past is because it does require you to talk a lot more about sales, and money and revenue and things like that. But if I'm honest with myself, financial stability is something that has created the best backdrop for us to live a well-balanced life, and I want that for people.

[00:53:27] Jason: Yeah.

[00:53:27] Caroline: So if it means talking a little bit about money, we can do that, because I know that everyone listening to this has something that they can share with the world. And I want them to be able to create financial stability from that.

[00:53:39] Jason: Absolutely. All right, we hope you enjoyed this episode on floppy launches, and have an... so floppy.

[00:53:44] Caroline: Less floppy launches.

[00:53:45] Jason: And we hope you enjoyed our tips. We gave you four tips with our floppy launches.

[00:53:48] Caroline: Okay. It's getting... Hmm.

[00:53:50] Jason: Yeah, there's a lot here.

[00:53:51] Caroline: Hmm, interesting.

[00:53:51] Jason: This is a little bit of a long episode, but...

[00:53:53] Caroline: Jason...

[00:53:53] Jason: ...it feels like we came in hard, and we really delivered just a load of information for you all to listen to. So, you have anything to add?

[00:54:02] Caroline: No. I'm blushing.

[00:54:04] Jason: Okay, you're good? All right, that's it.