220 - Deconstructing our pre-launch strategy

[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. Tres, dois, um.

[00:00:39] Caroline: You said it's a nonverbal countdown.

[00:00:42] Jason: Yeah, but I did in Portuguese, so now we're going to keep it because it makes me sound like I know Portuguese, because we're learning Portuguese.

[00:00:46] Caroline: I can't keep up.

[00:00:47] Jason: Hey, can you just move them? I don't want to have to think about it the entire time. Your little...

[00:00:52] Caroline: Hey, ask nicely.

[00:00:53] Jason: Please move your toes away from the cords. Yeah. Thank you so much.

[00:00:58] Caroline: Now people are picturing how are her toes by the cords?

[00:01:01] Jason: Y'all wouldn't believe where Carol's toes end up in a lot of weird places.

[00:01:05] Caroline: Okay. Hey, that's for a different episode.

[00:01:07] Jason: Two preamble tops to go over before we get into it. They are both business-related. One is a quiz for Carol that she's going to fail miserably to begin with because I'm not giving her any things

[00:01:16] Caroline: So that's why I would be mad.

[00:01:18] Jason: Yeah, but then you'll pick it up after it. It'll be fine after the first or second...

[00:01:21] Caroline: Great. Can't wait.

[00:01:22] Jason: The second thing is, we have a new website, and so we want to talk about our new website.

[00:01:26] Caroline: We do have a new website. We transitioned our website from WordPress to Framer, and it just occurred to me before we hit record, we don't even have notes on this, but I was like I'm pretty sure we haven't talked about the new website.

[00:01:37] Jason: Do you think we should do a full episode about it then maybe?

[00:01:39] Caroline: Sure.

[00:01:39] Jason: Because there's a lot in there.

[00:01:40] Caroline: There's a lot in there.

[00:01:41] Jason: There's a lot to talk about.

[00:01:43] Caroline: But all you need to know for now is it was a huge undertaking, but so glad that we did it. We are using a tool called Framer. If you haven't heard of it, it's a game changer, especially if you are design inclined and you have used tools like Figma.

[00:01:57] Jason: Listen, I have to be the caveat police here because...

[00:01:59] Caroline: You can be the caveat police. Yeah. If you've never used the tool Figma before, don't use Framer.

[00:02:05] Jason: Exactly. This is the thing, when Squarespace came about many moons ago.

[00:02:10] Caroline: Yeah. Use Squarespace.

[00:02:10] Jason: I was like, "Wow, this is amazing. I'm a dummy. I can do this. This is great." And then something like Framer comes about...

[00:02:16] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Jason: ...and I'm like, "Hey, I'm still a dummy, can I use it?" And then I go in there and I'm like, "Nope".

[00:02:21] Caroline: They're just different tools for different things.

[00:02:23] Jason: Yeah.

[00:02:24] Caroline: But for someone like me...

[00:02:25] Jason: Exactly. If you know Figma and you can use Figma...

[00:02:28] Caroline: Definitely you should be using Framer.

[00:02:28] Jason: ...then you can absolutely use Framer because...

[00:02:30] Caroline: It's amazing.

[00:02:31] Jason: ...you build an entire website and like, the thing that blows my mind about it is watching you do the responsive screens.

[00:02:36] Caroline: The break points.

[00:02:37] Jason: There's no code.

[00:02:38] Caroline: It's the best.

[00:02:38] Jason: There's no nothing. It's just, "Hey, make a tablet size." It brings all the content over and then you just visually resize it.

[00:02:43] Caroline: Yeah. Have you realized that, like I have not written a line of CSS.

[00:02:46] Jason: A single line. Yeah.

[00:02:47] Caroline: And on our WordPress site, we were using a visual editor called Beaver Builder, but it would have limitations where I would have to write custom CSS for every page.

[00:02:56] Jason: Yeah.

[00:02:57] Caroline: And anyway, Framer is a game changer. I'm really happy with the website. This is just the beginning. There's still much more we want to do with it.

[00:03:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:03:03] Caroline: But because we now have a tool that's very easy to edit and update and just publish changes on the fly, I'm so excited for new things we can add to it.

[00:03:11] Jason: Do you have a favorite page do you want to send people to, to check it out?

[00:03:13] Caroline: Oh, yeah, wanderingaimfully.com/join.

[00:03:16] Jason: Yeah, the sales page. Yeah.

[00:03:17] Caroline: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:17] Jason: So even if you're not interested in buying WAIM, just go check out the new sales page.

[00:03:21] Caroline: There's also tons of little animations...

[00:03:22] Jason: Yeah.

[00:03:22] Caroline: ...that I was never able to do on our old website, which to me makes it so fun to interact with...

[00:03:27] Jason: Yeah.

[00:03:27] Caroline: ...because there's like little GIF stickers and animations and things that happen when you scroll up and down. So anyway.

[00:03:32] Jason: Yeah. And also, this is just a fun little hack for anybody who likes things like this. I finally got approval after a couple years to be able to purchase waim.co

[00:03:42] Caroline: For the... You sure did.

[00:03:43] Jason: So we have waim.co, is like a nice short URL. Any URL you can think of on our website will work with that URL. So if you're like, "Oh, I want to go to your About Page, you go to waim.co/about, and it will direct you to wanderingaimfully.com, which is very fun.

[00:03:56] Caroline: I'll save you several keystrokes.

[00:03:58] Jason: waim.co/join. You don't have to type in all those extra letters.

[00:04:02] Caroline: Well, let me try it.

[00:04:03] Jason: Aimfully? How do you type this? What do you do here? So it's my favorite thing because I use it all the time. For our WAIMers who listen to this, you can always go to waim.co/login to log into the Unlimited dashboard.

[00:04:12] Caroline: I just tried it, and it worked flawlessly.

[00:04:14] Jason: Yeah. Thank you so much. All right, I have my quiz here that I would like to share. This is my preamble...

[00:04:19] Caroline: You want to start with the quiz?

[00:04:19] Jason: It's my preamble quiz.

[00:04:20] Caroline: Oh, okay. It was at the end of the notes.

[00:04:22] Jason: No, I put it there so you wouldn't look.

[00:04:23] Caroline: Oh, okay.

[00:04:24] Jason: I didn't want to put the beginning because temptation will rule you and you will look, and then I'll find out later because you cannot lie.

[00:04:29] Caroline: Because I'm what? Nosy.

[00:04:30] Jason: Extremely nosy.

[00:04:31] Caroline: Extremely nosy.

[00:04:33] Jason: All right, I have a little bit of a quiz.

[00:04:35] Caroline: Yup.

[00:04:35] Jason: It's timely. As of recording this, our enrollment for WAIM Unlimited is open. And I thought it would be fun to share, because we're going to talk about our deconstructing our pre-launch strategy.

[00:04:43] Caroline: Yes.

[00:04:44] Jason: But I wanted to share some of the other strategies that we have used over the years to grow WAIM to get sales for our business.

[00:04:51] Caroline: Okay.

[00:04:52] Jason: So I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven things that we've done.

[00:04:57] Caroline: So this is a memory quiz.

[00:04:58] Jason: This is a memory quiz.

[00:04:58] Caroline: Okay.

[00:04:58] Jason: This is better for you than it is for me.

[00:04:59] Caroline: Definitely.

[00:05:00] Jason: It's seven, basically...

[00:05:03] Caroline: Tactics?

[00:05:03] Jason: Yeah. But they're like inflection points. They're like the big things that we did...

[00:05:07] Caroline: Okay. So...

[00:05:08] Jason: ...to promote WAIM and to get sales for it.

[00:05:10] Caroline: Okay. So I have an idea of one, you can just tell me is this what you're thinking?

[00:05:12] Jason: Let's see.

[00:05:13] Caroline: Test Drive.

[00:05:14] Jason: Fantastic. All right, so let's start with... I'm going to give you the dates.

[00:05:16] Caroline: Oh, you're giving me the dates.

[00:05:17] Jason: Exactly.

[00:05:18] Caroline: Oh, boy.

[00:05:18] Jason: And you're going to tell me what we did.

[00:05:19] Caroline: Okay.

[00:05:19] Jason: All right?

[00:05:20] Caroline: Okay.

[00:05:20] Jason: September of 2018. I'm not going to give you specific days. That's the time.

[00:05:24] Caroline: September of 2018.

[00:05:26] Jason: Yes.

[00:05:26] Caroline: We did the build diary leading up to the launch.

[00:05:31] Jason: Yeah.

[00:05:31] Caroline: And...

[00:05:32] Jason: The pre-order. This was the pre-order phase. This was the initial launch and the pre-order.

[00:05:36] Caroline: I think the pre-order was before September, babe.

[00:05:37] Jason: I looked it up. I reviewed this. I have the notes. And the reason why I know this is because I went back, and I cleaned up our journey to 330 post.

[00:05:45] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:05:45] Jason: Which was the public post that we were writing as we were building in public of growing WAIM.

[00:05:49] Caroline: Can you correct my memory? Because in my memory, we launched the pre-order and 15 people signed up for the pre-order, but we didn't have it ready yet. The website wasn't ready.

[00:06:01] Jason: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:06:02] Caroline: So when was the website officially launched?

[00:06:04] Jason: September.

[00:06:05] Caroline: Exactly. That's what I'm saying, babe. So we launched the pre-launch in April or May.

[00:06:09] Jason: No, no, August. It would have been August.

[00:06:11] Caroline: I don't think so.

[00:06:12] Jason: I think this was August. Anyway, the quiz is failing, but it'll pick back up here because these are correct dates moving forward.

[00:06:17] Caroline: But it wouldn't be a quiz if you didn't have like a sort of marital dispute over memories.

[00:06:21] Jason: Exactly. All right, next one.

[00:06:22] Caroline: Okay.

[00:06:22] Jason: October 2018, one month later.

[00:06:24] Caroline: So I got that one right. Just so we're clear.

[00:06:25] Jason: You did get it right.

[00:06:25] Caroline: Okay.

[00:06:25] Jason: One month later.

[00:06:26] Caroline: One month later.

[00:06:27] Jason: One month later. Because we were also on a monthly cadence of launching.

[00:06:30] Caroline: I know. I know we were on a monthly cadence. One month later, we did Back to Biz Basics.

[00:06:34] Jason: Nice. I had completely forgotten that this...

[00:06:36] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:06:37] Jason: ...was like a launch caret that we did.

[00:06:39] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:06:39] Jason: So this was a 30-day challenge where we were going through all the different foundational stuff of your business.

[00:06:43] Caroline: Because remember this was your idea. Your idea was let's do a content strategy where for three weeks... We basically do a pre-launch strategy every month.

[00:06:51] Jason: Right.

[00:06:51] Caroline: For three weeks we have a theme, and then we build it around that theme, and then for one week, we open up enrollment every month.

[00:06:57] Jason: Yeah.

[00:06:57] Caroline: And it turned out that was basically just launching every month, and it was too much.

[00:07:02] Jason: Okay, so we have initial launch/pre-order is the first one.

[00:07:05] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:07:05] Jason: We have a 30-day challenge. Back to Biz Basics.

[00:07:07] Caroline: Yup.

[00:07:07] Jason: And basically, we just ran that through a blog post and then sending some emails out.

[00:07:11] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:07:11] Jason: That was all we did. Maybe we did it on Instagram as well, because we were on Instagram at the time. All right. November 2018, one month later.

[00:07:18] Caroline: November 2018.

[00:07:20] Jason: Yeah.

[00:07:21] Caroline: So this would have been...

[00:07:25] Jason: I had no idea.

[00:07:25] Caroline: This would have been when I started not feeling great, when I had shingles.

[00:07:30] Jason: A little... Yeah, this was...

[00:07:31] Caroline: And so, you were kind of on your own. And so...

[00:07:34] Jason: We did do these two things together, though.

[00:07:36] Caroline: We did these things... Oh, oh, I know exactly what it was. It was... 

[00:07:39] Jason: Oh, no.

[00:07:39] Caroline: No, no, that was the next year.

[00:07:41] Jason: No.

[00:07:41] Caroline: Okay. I don't know exactly what it was. Okay. And it wasn't the Test Drive.

[00:07:46] Jason: Yeah. Do you want a one-word hint?

[00:07:48] Caroline: Yes, please.

[00:07:49] Jason: Sleazy.

[00:07:51] Caroline: Sleazy... Sale... Oh, we did a live workshop.

[00:07:54] Jason: We did two.

[00:07:55] Caroline: We did two live work... So we did kind of a webinar model.

[00:07:57] Jason: Exactly.

[00:07:58] Caroline: So we did how to sell without feeling sleazy.

[00:08:00] Jason: Selling without feeling sleazy.

[00:08:01] Caroline: Selling without feelings lazy. And then I want to say we did... Oh, we did coaching light. No, we didn't do coaching yet.

[00:08:08] Jason: No. No.

[00:08:08] Caroline: Wow. We've done so many things.

[00:08:09] Jason: Exactly. This was customer journey marketing plan.

[00:08:12] Caroline: Yes.

[00:08:12] Jason: That was the other workshop. So we did those two...

[00:08:14] Caroline: And we were trying YouTube, remember?

[00:08:15] Jason: Yeah.

[00:08:15] Caroline: And we were doing that on YouTube. Okay. Okay. Okay.

[00:08:16] Jason: All right. So those were the first three months of launching WAIM.

[00:08:19] Caroline: Yup. Also, just pause here.

[00:08:21] Jason: Yeah.

[00:08:21] Caroline: I hope this is a fun to just hear us dispute about things, but the takeaway that I think someone should take from this listening to this, is we have experimented with so many things.

[00:08:32] Jason: Exactly.

[00:08:32] Caroline: When you're getting started, you don't know what's going to move sales. And you don't know what you're going to like.

[00:08:39] Jason: Yeah.

[00:08:39] Caroline: You don't know if you're going to like doing webinars. You don't know if you're going to like doing challenges. So you need to taste things in order to be like, okay, this is my strategy. But go on.

[00:08:48] Jason: Okay. I was trying to remember...

[00:08:50] Caroline: Webinar model. I know it's next. Test Drive.

[00:08:53] Jason: Okay. So next up, we have January 2019, which is two months later.

[00:08:58] Caroline: Test drive.

[00:08:58] Jason: Incorrect. This was peak of your shingles.

[00:09:04] Caroline: Feeling bad. Yeah.

[00:09:05] Jason: You're starting to have the anxiety struggles. I had to take over and do...

[00:09:10] Caroline: Oh, I know. You changed a lifetime.

[00:09:11] Jason: No.

[00:09:12] Caroline: Oh.

[00:09:12] Jason: I had to take over and do a whole thing basically by myself. This is no...

[00:09:15] Caroline: Oh, Build Without Burnout.

[00:09:16] Jason: Build Without Burnout.

[00:09:17] Caroline: No, technically, we sold it at the end of 20... but you had to... 

[00:09:23] Jason: Yeah.

[00:09:24] Caroline: ...you had to deliver it at the beginning.

[00:09:25] Jason: January 2019 is what I have as the date.

[00:09:27] Caroline: Okay, okay, okay.

[00:09:27] Jason: So Build Without Burnout.

[00:09:28] Caroline: Build Without Burnout.

[00:09:28] Jason: That was like a whole signature course. And then you did the sales page in Squarespace. We moved our sales page in Squarespace.

[00:09:34] Caroline: Yeah. Okay.

[00:09:35] Jason: All right, we have three more. March 2019. So two months later.

[00:09:38] Caroline: Test Drive.

[00:09:39] Jason: That is the WAIM Test Drive.

[00:09:40] Caroline: I think also somewhere in there before that or after that, I think it was after you moved to lifetime.

[00:09:45] Jason: Yeah, I think it was March 2019.

[00:09:47] Caroline: Okay.

[00:09:48] Jason: I think that was when that happened.

[00:09:49] Caroline: Keep going.

[00:09:49] Jason: That coincided with that.

[00:09:50] Caroline: Yup.

[00:09:50] Jason: So the WAIM Test Drive was essentially like I built a Teachery course.

[00:09:53] Caroline: Yes.

[00:09:53] Jason: And just plugged in a bunch of videos and other things and random of like...

[00:09:56] Caroline: So you can taste what...

[00:09:58] Jason: We were still... You get just a bunch of stuff...

[00:10:00] Caroline: Yup.

[00:10:00] Jason: ...but there was no real system to it.

[00:10:02] Caroline: Yes, yes.

[00:10:02] Jason: Okay. So now, three months later... No. One, two, three, four months later, July 2019. What do we do in July?

[00:10:10] Caroline: That was... and thick it.

[00:10:13] Jason: May have been... may have been thick it, but those didn't really move the needle for us necessarily. So there's something else here that I had written down.

[00:10:20] Caroline: Okay. Well, it's not coaching because that wasn't until October.

[00:10:22] Jason: It's not coaching.

[00:10:27] Caroline: What?

[00:10:27] Jason: This was our first bi-annual launch. We decided the monthly launch cadence was too much. And so, we're just going to do two launches per year, and this was the first...

[00:10:36] Caroline: Really?

[00:10:36] Jason: Yup. This was the first.

[00:10:37] Caroline: What?

[00:10:38] Jason: July 2019. This was also when we realized...

[00:10:40] Caroline: We did it July?

[00:10:40] Jason: ...summer launches were not great for us. And what coincided with this was Make500.

[00:10:45] Caroline: Make500. That's right. That was a mini course.

[00:10:48] Jason: Yeah. So this was a mini course. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:10:49] Caroline: Because we tried everything.

[00:10:50] Jason: How to make $500 with a digital product.

[00:10:51] Caroline: Okay.

[00:10:52] Jason: All right. And then the last one on here, which you have already said October 2019. And this is what really turned the ship for us.

[00:10:58] Caroline: We launched coaching, monthly coaching.

[00:11:00] Jason: We launched... With a...

[00:11:03] Caroline: We launched monthly coaching with a six-month...

[00:11:05] Jason: Nice.

[00:11:06] Caroline: ...coaching plan, as well as WAIM Unlimited.

[00:11:09] Jason: Extra credit question...

[00:11:10] Caroline: Yes.

[00:11:10] Jason: ...to give you the first-place trophy over everybody who played the game.

[00:11:12] Caroline: What was our first coaching session?

[00:11:13] Jason: Yup.

[00:11:14] Caroline: Marketing bridge.

[00:11:15] Jason: Nicely done.

[00:11:17] Caroline: Thank you. Again...

[00:11:17] Jason: You know our business.

[00:11:18] Caroline: I mostly know our business. I would like to, again, say a note here, which is when we landed on monthly coaching and transitioned WAIM Unlimited from sort of like a bundle membership into a coaching program, we've talked about it many times on this podcast. That was the real inflection point.

[00:11:36] Jason: Yeah.

[00:11:37] Caroline: And everything that we mentioned in this quiz was a little bump at a time. These things did work. It's just there wasn't like a really hefty inflection point.

[00:11:45] Jason: Also, I can tell you, because, again, was just looking through, if you want to read it, waim.co/330. 330. I can tell you, it was like we went from $1,500 in monthly revenue to $4,000 in monthly revenue to $5,000 to $6,000 to $8,000. Like they were not big jumps at all...

[00:12:03] Caroline: Yup.

[00:12:04] Jason: ...in between those. So those things, and again, those of you listening might say, "I wish I could have a $1,000 bump in monthly recurring revenue." And we believe that that is very helpful. So it just takes experimentation to find...

[00:12:16] Caroline: Well, exactly. That's what I was going to say, is it took how many, seven things to get to the thing that was actually the needle mover.

[00:12:23] Jason: The bigger jump. Yeah.

[00:12:24] Caroline: And so, I think that's just, hopefully encouraging to be like, keep trying stuff.

[00:12:29] Jason: Yeah.

[00:12:29] Caroline: Keep trying stuff.

[00:12:30] Jason: And I'm pretty sure I'm going to get this correct, is when we did the first launch of coaching, we went from $9,000 in monthly recurring revenue up to $16,000 in monthly recurring revenue. And that was the single biggest jump...

[00:12:43] Caroline: Jump.

[00:12:44] Jason: ...in monthly recurring revenue. And that actually got us to a place where it was like, oh, this is a legit thing. Like we're not just creeping up really slowly and dealing with a lot of churn.

[00:12:52] Caroline: Yeah. The thing that's interesting, I think as well, that I just want to point out, is each one of those things that we tried wasn't just a random idea, it was a thing that we came up with in response to a hypothesis.

[00:13:04] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:05] Caroline: So one that comes to mind is you mentioned Make500. Make500 was this mini course where we said, "Hey, we're going to give you the information that you need in order to launch your first digital product and make $500 worth it in..." I think it was like four or five weeks, something like that.

[00:13:20] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:20] Caroline: And the reason we created that was because our hypothesis was that people were not understanding what the core outcome was of joining WAIM. And we thought to ourselves, we talk about this often inside WAIM Unlimited, how can you get someone a result like a smaller version of the bigger result that you promise in a short period of time? We call it like a quick win, we call it a first strike, we call it many things. And so, that was our hypothesis. We thought to ourselves, well, if someone sees for free that with our help, they can get their first taste of digital product income, that can give them the momentum they're...

[00:13:54] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:54] Caroline: ...looking for and to sign up for WAIM Unlimited. So it wasn't just a random idea, it was a hypothesis, right?

[00:13:59] Jason: Yeah.

[00:13:59] Caroline: Similar to Back to Biz Basics. It was like, okay, we have this hypothesis that if people have a reason to tune into our free content, then again, it's kind of similar idea. They'll have a quick win...

[00:14:10] Jason: Yeah.

[00:14:10] Caroline: ...and then they'll be more inclined to join. And so, then the coaching. When we decided on coaching, our hypothesis was in order for someone to stay onto a coaching program, they need something that keeps them coming back every month and that delivers value on a regular basis. And that ultimately ended up being our most correct hypothesis.

[00:14:25] Jason: Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty good quick catch up because again, when we were writing that Journey to 330 post, that last entry was the coaching one. And then we basically just started running our business full time and had enough revenue that we didn't really have a lot of extra time to be farting around and writing updates for things.

[00:14:43] Caroline: Right.

[00:14:43] Jason: And I remember when I came back to that, it was like two years later when I wrote the final follow-up...

[00:14:47] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:47] Jason: ...of like, "Oh, hey, by the way, we did hit this enough number. We hit at this date. And these are the things we did in between there." But if that was very interesting to you and you want a more thorough walk down the WAIM memory lane, I'm sure we could dig into some more things to share what we learned, send an email. Hello@wanderingaimfully.com, if you want us to do more of like a, "Hey, let's look at the full history of WAIM."

[00:15:08] Caroline: Retrospective. Because I think we have done our entrepreneurial journey, but we haven't done a tactical breakdown...

[00:15:14] Jason: Exactly.

[00:15:14] Caroline: ...of all the tactics that got us here with WAIM.

[00:15:16] Jason: What I think would be really fun would be to say, would we do this again? And would we recommend this tactic? Because there's certain things that I would definitely say like, oh, definitely do this again.

[00:15:25] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:15:26] Jason: And there are some that I would say...

[00:15:27] Caroline: It wasn't worth it.

[00:15:27] Jason: ...just don't waste your time.

[00:15:28] Caroline: Don't waste your time.

[00:15:28] Jason: Granted, it's different for every business.

[00:15:30] Caroline: Definitely.

[00:15:30] Jason: However, I just think it's fun. Also, as of this episode...

[00:15:35] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:36] Jason: ...it basically marks our 6th year anniversary of releasing WAIM, like WAIM existing...

[00:15:41] Caroline: It's cool.

[00:15:41] Jason: ...which is kind of wild to think about.

[00:15:43] Caroline: Let's keep going.

[00:15:44] Jason: The COVID time warp, though, really...

[00:15:45] Caroline: That's true.

[00:15:46] Jason: ...just like a couple years disappear in there. Okay, let's get into the actual episode, now that we've spent 15 minutes preambling.

[00:15:50] Caroline: That was fun.

[00:15:52] Jason: Fun little memory lane?

[00:15:53] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:15:53] Jason: Didn't get in trouble for the quiz.

[00:15:54] Caroline: You did not get in trouble.

[00:15:55] Jason: Yeah.

[00:15:55] Caroline: Good job.

[00:15:56] Jason: Sometimes it'll happen. All right, what do we want to chat about today, Caroline?

[00:15:58] Caroline: Today, we are talking about taking you behind the scenes of our pre-launch strategy for this enrollment of WAIM Unlimited. And so, this is less of teaching you about pre-launch and more about just how we went about pre-launch this time for this enrollment period and how it differs from our Spring launch that we did, because already we're getting better results. And I think it reiterated for me the importance of pre-launching because as we were building the curriculum for Calm Launch Formula, we were really solidifying our blueprint for pre-launching. And I just was communicating in that course how important it is to warm up your list, to really get them in the right mindset to be open to buying your offer if you're going to do a launch period. And so, we thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes of how we're thinking about that.

[00:16:49] Jason: I'll go out on a limb and say that I think this is the number one tactic that most people miss that leads to what we call a floppy launch...

[00:16:57] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:16:57] Jason: ...which leads to a crappy launch. Is that you're so focused in your creative cave of making your offer and building your thing, whether it's your course or your coaching program or whatever, you're just heads down, you're doing it, you're doing it, doing it. You let your email newsletter go. You don't send emails. You don't upload on YouTube. You don't upload a podcast. You're not posting on social. You're literally doing nothing publicly. You're just working, working, working behind the scenes. And then all of a sudden, you show up and you say, "Hey, I have this thing. And here's what are the things you can do."

[00:17:21] Caroline: And you expect people to be in the mindset to buy it.

[00:17:23] Jason: And people are like, "I haven't heard from you in months, first of all."

[00:17:26] Caroline: Totally.

[00:17:26] Jason: "And second of all, all you're doing is telling me that this thing has 12 lessons, and I don't understand what it's doing."

[00:17:31] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:17:32] Jason: And so, the whole idea of a pre-launch is to get people so excited about the problem that you are solving for them in the pre-launch, so they know as soon as the thing opens, it's not just that, "Oh, WAIM Unlimited is for sale." It's, "Oh, I can literally have a calmer business now because..."

[00:17:45] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:17:46] Jason: "...I have access to purchase this thing that I've been hearing about."

[00:17:48] Caroline: Exactly. And so, we're going to walk you through how the difference that a pre-launch can make, because we've all, for the past probably three years, we've had this... Well, even longer than that. We've had this basic formula. But I would say in spring of this year, we didn't really execute it on it as well.

[00:18:06] Jason: Yeah.

[00:18:07] Caroline: And you can see it in the numbers.

[00:18:08] Jason: Totally.

[00:18:09] Caroline: So just to give you, as of recording this, we're only two days into the enrollment period, but our sales number so far, it's a 225% increase from sales in spring of the first few days. And don't worry, I'll give you numbers. It's not like a bunch. That just makes it sound impressive.

[00:18:25] Jason: Yeah.

[00:18:25] Caroline: But Spring Launch, in the first two days of the launch, we had four sales. And in this Fall... And we're calling it Fall Enrollment, we all know it's kind of like...

[00:18:34] Jason: You finally got caught up to mine.

[00:18:35] Caroline: ...late summer. But just when I say Fall Enrollment, you know what I mean. 13 sales versus four.

[00:18:41] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:41] Caroline: So that's a 225% increase. But don't worry, I told you the real number. So it's...

[00:18:44] Jason: But yeah, I mean, that's three times the amount of sales, which is...

[00:18:47] Caroline: And it shows you that pre-launched matters because there was more excitement. And I think the biggest difference, and this is something we teach inside of Calm Launch Formula, is you can be so much more strategic with your pre-launch content if you give yourself more time to plan your launch.

[00:19:03] Jason: Exactly.

[00:19:03] Caroline: That is actually, that lead time is what leads to a Calm Launch. And so, if you're starting to plan your launch a month ahead of time, that is simply not enough time because a month ahead of your launch date is when you should be sending out your pre-launch content. And if you haven't thought about it up until that moment, of course, you're going to feel strapped for time. Of course, you're going to feel like there's too much to do and not enough time to do it. So our biggest tip is to start earlier and then you can build out this pre-launch strategy. But anyway, let's dig into what specifically we mean. And so, the biggest difference between this launch... Sorry, I hit the mic. The biggest difference between this launch and last launch, besides doing pre-launch, is we just got way more specific...

[00:19:45] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:46] Caroline: ...on who we're talking to and what problem we're solving.

[00:19:49] Jason: Yeah. And this was a hypothesis that I came into a couple months ago, which was WAIM Unlimited has gotten so big with the amount of things. I mean, we're at 60 coaching sessions...

[00:20:00] Caroline: Wow.

[00:20:00] Jason: ...now that are recorded in there, and they are very helpful. They literally take you from...

[00:20:03] Caroline: The gamut of...

[00:20:04] Jason: ...the beginning of your business...

[00:20:05] Caroline: Yup.

[00:20:05] Jason: ...to like figuring out your offer, all the way to executing a two-week launch, start to finish. And that's helpful, but it's really hard to market and promote because it's very difficult to say like, it solves all the problems in business.

[00:20:19] Caroline: Everything from branding to mindset to simplifying your business.

[00:20:24] Jason: To running a membership.

[00:20:25] Caroline: To running a membership.

[00:20:26] Jason: Yeah, there's just a ton in there. So anyway...

[00:20:27] Caroline: So much.

[00:20:28] Jason: ...the real hypothesis that we wanted to test was what if we just decided that the main thing, we want to help people do within WAIM is there is all this other stuff, but it's having a successful launch with less stress.

[00:20:42] Caroline: Of a digital product because we believe wholeheartedly, and I know we've talked about this idea of the Calm Launch trifecta on here. We really broke it down and we were like, okay, if the ultimate thing that we want for people is financial freedom, time freedom, creative freedom, if that's the real thing they're trying to get, we believe digital product businesses, online businesses are the route to get that. That's our experience. What does someone need in order to have a digital products business that's sustainable? First and foremost, you need to get the financial leverage.

[00:21:12] Jason: Yeah.

[00:21:12] Caroline: You just do. Right? Because if you don't have sales coming through the door, you can't carve out the time. You're going to have to go get another job or you're going to have to stay at your nine to five or you're going to have to divert your attention because you have to pay bills. And so, we said, okay, that's the first main piece is that you need an offer that sells to an audience that you can launch. Because we think launching is the best way to do that versus trying to reverse engineer evergreen out of the game.

[00:21:38] Jason: You can listen to our episode on evergreen versus launching from...

[00:21:41] Caroline: Right? So it really all started with this idea of, great, what's the ultimate goal? Let's reverse engineer what someone needs in order to do that, and let's break that down into one outcome we can get for people. And that's where the idea of focusing on Calm Launching came from. And then on the side note of that was also dialing in our audience and trying to get a little bit more specific there. In the past, our broad audience has been what we call intentional online business owners. Anyone with an online business who wants to also live life intentionally, cool. And we have attracted those people, but when you think about the outcome you're promising, if you're promising a digital products business, then who is mostly going to benefit from that. And so, we narrowed it down into this like solopreneur creator archetype, because solo because I do think that our advice is most applicable to people who are doing it by themselves. Maybe they outsource a few things, but they're not trying to hire a big team or build an empire. To me, that's a very different archetype than some of these other coaching businesses out there that are like, "Grow your team."

[00:22:44] Jason: Yeah.

[00:22:45] Caroline: "Build your corporate." You know what I mean? Kind of like girl bossy type of stuff, which is totally fine. It's just that's not the person, that's not the advice that is most aligned or that's not the person who's most aligned with the advice that we give, nor is it aligned with the experience that we've had. So we're not trying to teach some things...

[00:23:02] Jason: We outsource quite a bit to each other.

[00:23:04] Caroline: We sure do. We sure do.

[00:23:04] Jason: So when I need a designer, I'll phone in a friend.

[00:23:06] Caroline: And when I need someone to email, I go over to you.

[00:23:10] Jason: Exactly. Yes.

[00:23:11] Caroline: I actually, that was on my gratitude list this morning, babe, was, I'm so grateful that I have managed to find a job in life where I don't have to spend all day emailing. And it's mainly because you do it.

[00:23:22] Jason: Yeah, exactly.

[00:23:23] Caroline: And so, I love you for that.

[00:23:24] Jason: Yeah. And that's a necessary evil of running a business is like you do have to keep up with some of those things. But that's also where we talk a lot about in WAIM. There are certain times to outsource things, for sure. And there are certain times to take tasks off of your list that you just know they completely drain your soul, and they remove all of the joy that you have for your business. And that is where we do firmly stand in the place of like, yeah, outsource some things like it.

[00:23:49] Caroline: Totally.

[00:23:49] Jason: You don't have to hire someone. You don't have to have a full-time employee to do these things. But anyway.

[00:23:52] Caroline: Okay. So I just want to come back here. So the reason I'm going starting all the way back here at the beginning is because I just want to breakdown the thought process of what gets us to our pre-launch strategy. And it starts all the way back from go back and listen to our launch recap of the Spring Launch because that was like, it's our second to worst launch in terms of sales, not in terms of revenue.

[00:24:15] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:15] Caroline: And so, we were like, okay, well, what can we change for next time, right? So it all started with let's get more focused on what the outcome is. Great. Then from there, you start to go, okay, so what is going to be my messaging around this enrollment period coming up? What am I going to focus on in my messaging? Because that will inform the pre-launch content. And that's where we had the idea of adding Calm Launch Formula to WAIM Unlimited, becoming kind of that new cornerstone...

[00:24:42] Jason: Yeah.

[00:24:43] Caroline: ...signature offer inside WAIM Unlimited. Because again, it is the number one thing that we want people to do first, then they can build out this Calm business around it.

[00:24:53] Jason: Yeah. If nothing else...

[00:24:54] Caroline: Nothing's going to make you more calm than having consistent sales.

[00:24:57] Jason: Yeah. If absolutely nothing else, when someone joins WAIM, if three to six months after they join, they can execute a launch that just feels calmer than any launch has ever felt before. And with that, I think sales will go up because you have more time to think about other things. That, to me, is an absolute fantastic whim that our program hasn't been able to deliver on before. Now, people have done that because we've coached people through that.

[00:25:20] Caroline: And we have a coaching session on launching.

[00:25:22] Jason: Yeah. And there's plenty of experience of that happening, but we have not had a focused, dedicated thing that helps someone execute on that goal. And that, to me, is the thing that I think WAIM Unlimited has provided for us as a business that has completely shifted in the 10 years that we've been building things. I mean, really 15 for me, but 10 years together as we've been working on stuff that, oh, we now actually have a predictable business.

[00:25:45] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:25:45] Jason: We now have a profitable business. We now have, when we're not trying to build a whole new website and do a bunch of things, a peaceful business, because...

[00:25:52] Caroline: Totally.

[00:25:52] Jason: ...we just have to execute on this plan of two launches twice per year or... Yeah. And just focusing on these are the outcomes we want for people, and this is what we help you do.

[00:26:00] Caroline: Totally. So we poured all of our effort into creating that new resource. And as you can probably tell, that became a lot of the messaging that we would pepper in throughout the summer is we're working on this thing. If you've been listening to episodes, you will have heard us talking about Calm Launch Formula. When I say that we actually have poured the most love and care to date into a thing, into Calm Launch Formula, we really have.

[00:26:24] Jason: Yeah. And you see it, like our existing Wandering Aimfully members who got access to it a couple weeks ago, they're all saying, "Guys, this is incredible."

[00:26:32] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:26:32] Jason: "This is the best resource you've ever created." And what's hilarious is it's the shortest videos.

[00:26:38] Caroline: Yup.

[00:26:38] Jason: It's like the least amount of overall lessons. Not least, but for the type of program, it's not that much, but the thing is, is it's the classic simple, not easy.

[00:26:48] Caroline: Yes.

[00:26:50] Jason: The end result looks, wow, this is really simple. This is really straightforward. That takes so much time. And it's why like an iPhone feels the way that it does.

[00:26:59] Caroline: Totally.

[00:27:00] Jason: It's like this device feels so simple. And it's like, yeah, because someone poured thousands of hours to make it feel that way.

[00:27:06] Caroline: To edit it into that. Yeah. Totally.

[00:27:07] Jason: And so, for us, this program definitely feels that way because it's also just as we're talking about pre-launch, but it's everything else that's in Calm Launch Formula is 10 years of experience that we've whittled away all the stuff that didn't work and said, okay, but here are the core things that you have to do, and one of those is pre-launching and one of those is like, oh, we have just never talked about this enough to share with people. When you launch, the four weeks leading up are crucial, and you need to be there.

[00:27:30] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:27:30] Jason: You need to show up for your audience.

[00:27:32] Caroline: So now we get to the four weeks leading up to our enrollment period, and this is what we teach in Calm Launch Formula is your pre-launch period, four weeks. And what you're doing during those four weeks is you're telling a story, essentially. I use this word like readiness. You're trying to attract the ideal customer for your offer that you're going to open up during your launch. You're trying to make them aware of the problem that your offer solves. You're trying to build trust with them so that they believe that you're the right person to solve their problem. You're trying to create a sense of readiness that they are now in the mindset and place in their life where they're ready to do something a different way. Because at the core, your offer is offering someone what we call a new way. It's a new way to do something, right? They have their way of whatever problem your offer solves, they have their current way of solving that problem. And you're trying to convince... Not convince, but you're trying to...

[00:28:28] Jason: Yeah.

[00:28:28] Caroline: ...show them that there's an alternative and that they can achieve that alternative by using your offer. But that takes effort, because someone needs to be ready to make a change, if that makes sense. And so, the purpose of your pre-launch content is to get them ready to make a change. It's to build trust so that with the value that you're delivering to them in that pre-launch period, like Jason said, you can't just go dark for the four weeks before your launch. No trust has been built there that you're going to show up when it matters and deliver value. And then the third piece of it is excitement and really getting people hyped up about your launch and your offer. So again, this is what we teach inside Calm Launch formula. But to just now get more conversational and talk about deconstruct what we have been doing, which a lot of you, because your marketers listening to this, we're under no illusions that you haven't clued into the fact that, oh, they're talking a lot more about launching.

[00:29:20] Jason: Yeah. For sure.

[00:29:20] Caroline: They're doing all of their podcast episodes about launching. That's a big piece of it, right? Is you want to identify what is that core for us this enrollment period. WAIM Unlimited as a whole, helps you create a calm business. That's the problem it solves. But when you have a membership or a coaching program or something that is very broad, you have to make it more specific so that someone has something to latch onto. So again, what does that mean? Calm business. The first step to that is launching. So that's what we've been focusing on. And the way that we've done it is basically established like a theme every week. So the first week of pre-launch is the theme of what we call illuminating the big problem. You want to basically put up like a lighthouse, this beacon that says, "Hey, do you have this problem?" This problem being the problem that your offer solves. So for us, our first installment of our newsletter series, Calm Launch Fundamentals, is like, "Hey, do you feel like either A, you're launching a digital product to crickets, or B, do you feel like it is stressing you out every single time that you launch? Do you feel like you're overwhelmed? Do you feel like you have completely inconsistent sales? You don't know what you're doing?" That's what that first week is all about, not only in our newsletter, but in our podcast and our YouTube. Anything to add?

[00:30:36] Jason: There was an awkward pause there because I was thinking. And then you've stopped. Well, what I was thinking about was this, I think there's a limiting belief that we felt that I think a lot of people feel when you don't just sell like an extremely specific thing, you sell like a little bit of like a more vague or multi passionate thing.

[00:30:55] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:55] Jason: And for us especially, it feels so limiting to be like, well, we're only going to talk and focus about launching...

[00:31:01] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:31:01] Jason: ...leading up to those four weeks.

[00:31:03] Caroline: Honestly, really uncomfortable for us.

[00:31:04] Jason: Yeah. And so, I think maybe a lot of people listening to this can relate to that where you don't have an extremely laser specific thing that you sell, it is a little bit, maybe nebulous or there's multifaceted things to it. And I just want to give you permission that this is the mindset that we went into with was this launch in itself, like we talked about in the quiz to start this, is just one of our many experiments.

[00:31:26] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:31:26] Jason: And if it doesn't go well, then we know, hey, this pain point is not enough for positioning for people to buy WAIM Unlimited, but we won't know that until we test it.

[00:31:36] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:31:36] Jason: And I think anybody listening who is afraid to hone in a little bit or get really narrowed, really focus in on a problem that your business solves, it's very specific, I would just say squash that assumption by testing it, then see what happens.

[00:31:51] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:31:51] Jason: Because you're only going to know for sure that the audience that you have built wants or doesn't want that thing by putting it in front of them consistently and giving it a chance to succeed.

[00:32:00] Caroline: Yeah. And I think that people are so afraid of being pigeonholed into one topic or one niche or one something. I know we are like you just described.

[00:32:11] Jason: Yeah.

[00:32:11] Caroline: But I think with that fear comes this fallacy where you think, okay, the best way to combat, to make sure that I have as big a playing field as I want in terms of my brand and not just being known for just one little specific, narrow thing is to keep those boundaries as wide as possible. Right? So you just, you end up saying things really broadly, and you never narrow down because you don't want to be boxed in. You can't box me in. But I think the opposite strategy is actually a smart one, which is start narrow, because when you start narrow, your magnet becomes that much stronger. So think of it like the size of the magnet. Like the more narrow you go, actually, the stronger and bigger your magnet is because you're being hyper specific. So you're saying like, "I am this thing." And so, like I said, to use another metaphor, you're putting up a beacon and saying, "Hey, do you struggle with launching?" It's like a very specific thing. And suddenly all the people who struggle with launching see that beacon of light and they go, "I'm going to go towards the light. I struggle with that." Right? And so, that magnet becomes super strong, and then you have this narrow circle of, but you're building an audience that's very potent, and you can slowly, over time, broaden and broaden, because, again, that audience is so powerful, and that audience has already... That momentum of building an audience has already built. Now, we were talking with our friend Wayne about this. Right? Where it's like you get known for that one thing.

[00:33:39] Jason: Exactly.

[00:33:39] Caroline: And you feel fearful that you're only going to get known for that one thing. But that's when you can actually start to branch out, because the connection and the trust is so strong that people will allow you to do that. You have to do it strategically, and you will lose some people, and that's fine. But the opposite, I feel like, rarely works, which is you stay broad forever. Your magnet is so weak because you're just sort of like having to talk to everyone all the time, and your message becomes that much more diluted.

[00:34:05] Jason: And I think the easy way to position this in your mind or to overcome this is to think about who you follow or who you buy things from or who you subscribe to and why you do that.

[00:34:16] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:16] Jason: And it's because that person solves a specific problem for you and whatever thing it is that they're talking about.

[00:34:22] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:22] Jason: Or you follow that person, you subscribe to them or whatever because they talk about this specific thing.

[00:34:27] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:27] Jason: It's not because they talk about all of design. It's more, "Oh, this person is specifically talking about designing in Squarespace. And I use Squarespace, and so I want to learn from them because they're a go-to resource for that." If they started talking about funnels, you'd be like, "What are you talking about here? I didn't sign up for this. I don't care." And that can go in its own direction later on, but I think the key here is just trying to get focused in on something that's a very specific problem for people.

[00:34:54] Caroline: Yeah. So just going back to our, again, our pre-launch strategy and our weeks here. So week one, and I'm going to talk mainly about the newsletter because, again, that's our biggest sales vehicle content-wise, but we did have supporting content, which we'll touch on, too. But for the newsletter, week one, illuminate the big problem. It's where we launched our little lead up series, Calm Launch Fundamentals. And we said, "Hey, do you have this problem? This series is for you." By the way, in our Spring Launch, we didn't do a pre-launch series at all. We just did the newsletter with some pre SS leading up to it.

[00:35:23] Jason: Right.

[00:35:23] Caroline: And we made sure that the topics were...

[00:35:25] Jason: Yeah.

[00:35:25] Caroline: ...more around, but nothing as specific as like a series leading up to. And so, then week two, we move on to what we call shift. So the theme there would be shifting common beliefs or objections. And the idea is, like I said, your customer has a way that they're doing something, and they might have something that is holding them back from making a change, and it's your job to figure out what is that main thing that is keeping them rigid in their current solution. And how can you find an angle on that that you can, at least soften them a little bit to say like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of doing it a new way."

[00:36:04] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And I think the big thing for us here is just, and we've heard this over and over and over again from Wandering Aimfully members of the years, is, "Oh, I get so burned out after a launch." Or "I put all this time in the month before, and then I don't have a good..." And it's like, okay, there's a clear signal here. There's not enough time. And so, you're super stressed out by doing this. So the common belief here that we're trying to fight against is launching is super stressful. I get burnt out, and then I don't have good results.

[00:36:32] Caroline: And on top of that, I think because of that, people end up chasing evergreen instead. Right?

[00:36:38] Jason: Yeah.

[00:36:38] Caroline: That was our insight there is people think launching is actually so draining. They think it's chaotic. They think it's too much. And so, they would much rather try to pursue this dream of passive evergreen sales, going to sleep every night, waking up. In our experience, that's achievable, but a lot of people are doing that through paid ads. A lot of people are doing that through complex funnels.

[00:37:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:37:02] Caroline: And so, our job was to come in. So this was the week two of our pre-launch series. And it was sort of like, hey, you probably heard it on this podcast. If you listen to that episode, it was like, "Hey, evergreen isn't actually the simpler way." And so, it was our job to not just like, shit on evergreen, but to be like launching is not as chaotic as you think it is if you do it in this way.

[00:37:23] Jason: Yeah.

[00:37:23] Caroline: Launching can actually be super predictable if you do it in this way. And so, that is how we interpreted that theme of shifting common beliefs. Because if you're a customer and you've been chasing this evergreen dream, or if you've been thinking that launching has to be a certain way, you listen to that episode, you read that email newsletter, and you start to go, okay, actually, I think the way that they're talking about launching really aligns with what I want. And now, maybe I wouldn't have been open to the message of Calm Launch Formula before, but now I am. Do you see how this is a story that is moving them towards being in a place where they're ready to purchase.

[00:38:01] Jason: Yeah. Okay, so first week, illuminate the big problem. Second week, shifting the common beliefs and objections.

[00:38:07] Caroline: Third week, this is where we want to deconstruct a transformation. And so, this is where, if you have any case studies, if you have any results from clients or customers that you have helped, you want to build your content for this third week around that. Why? Because in the storytelling arc that we're going for here, we've just opened someone up to this possibility. Now, when you show them a result of a real person who got the transformation that your offer is promising, that builds trust, they go, "Okay, not only is this new way possible, but somebody, a real, tangible person has achieved this. Maybe I can, too."

[00:38:46] Jason: Yeah. The very first objection that comes up in this sharing a case study of a customer or what have you, a story. People all often would say, "I'm working on a new offer, so I don't have anybody to go through it." Great. So I just want to give you an example. You go to a clothing retailers' website and all you see are pictures of just shorts. There's not a person wearing them. It's just the shorts.

[00:39:13] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:39:13] Jason: And you're going to go, what? I can't see myself in those.

[00:39:18] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:39:18] Jason: I'm not going to buy these shorts because I can't see myself in them.

[00:39:21] Caroline: Yup.

[00:39:21] Jason: It's the same thing in the transformation. So the trick here is you have to get people through your offer...

[00:39:28] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:39:28] Jason: ...before you start trying to sell it. And this is a little bit of the chicken and the egg because people, we obviously know you need to make money, and you can't just run your business off of letting people go through your products for free. But it's also where you have to be a smart business owner and you have to go, okay, I have this new offer. I need to get some people to go through it. And we call these beta testers. And you can do that either through people paying you a very discounted rate to go through it, or if they're very much your ideal audience, they could go through it for free and agree to give you a testimonial afterwards. But the trick is you have to plan for this.

[00:40:00] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:40:00] Jason: So the clothing retailer example, they have to get models, they have to give them the shorts to wear. They have to take photos, they have to edit those photos, they have to put them out on the website. That takes time. But it is what is going to sell the shorts more than just seeing a pair of shorts on a website on a blank white background.

[00:40:15] Caroline: Totally. That's why we have an entire lesson in Calm Launch Formula about how to set up a beta test. This is also why if it's a new offer, your launch timeline...

[00:40:24] Jason: Has to be longer.

[00:40:25] Caroline: ...has to be longer.

[00:40:25] Jason: Yeah.

[00:40:25] Caroline: Because you have to build in time for that.

[00:40:28] Jason: This is where, again, I go a little bit of like business...

[00:40:32] Caroline: Tough love.

[00:40:32] Jason: Tough love business, dad. Where it's like, you can't launch a new offer one month after coming up with it. There's too much going on. You probably can't launch a new offer three months after coming up with it. You don't have time to build the offer, have someone go through it, build your marketing content, and have everything ready to go. You're going to set yourself up for failure. And if you're someone who has launched something before and it hasn't gone well, you're just repeating the same cycle over and over again. So to break that cycle, one of the easiest things to do is just give yourself more time.

[00:41:01] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:41:01] Jason: And I know that's really tough for a lot of you listening to this, who are like, "Yeah, but I need to make money now, or my business needs revenue." There are other ways to make money, and we have been in those positions before where back in the early days when I went over the quiz, of all the things we were doing, we were supplementing WAIM's income through lots of other different things.

[00:41:18] Caroline: You're taking on a client here, you're trying to do a test balloon out to your audience of like a consulting thing. You're trying to just...

[00:41:25] Jason: Yeah, I was doing public speaking.

[00:41:26] Caroline: Public speaking, like whatever the ways are that you've made money reliably in the past, it might need to be a little bit of that while you give yourself some time so that you have the best shot of launching this thing and having it do financially what you're hoping, and it'll work.

[00:41:40] Jason: And I think the biggest thing here is if you have to wait three more months, but that three months means that your launch is exponentially more successful...

[00:41:49] Caroline: Yup.

[00:41:49] Jason: ...isn't that worth figuring out how to bridge the three-month gap as opposed to launching too early, it failing, you believing this offer doesn't work...

[00:41:56] Caroline: Then you've burned your list a little bit in terms of, you can't just turn around and try again a month later. I mean, you could, but you've fatigued the list the list a little bit. Right?

[00:42:04] Jason: Yeah.

[00:42:04] Caroline: So it's like if you're going to use the collateral that you've built up, the trust that you've built up to do this launch, give yourself the best shot of being able to do some pre-launch content, have some of those beta testers who can give you testimonials and results.

[00:42:17] Jason: Okay. Week one, eliminate the problem. Week two, shift the common beliefs. Week three, deconstruct the transformation. Week four...

[00:42:23] Caroline: It's earlier you said shit the common beliefs. And like, yeah.

[00:42:26] Jason: Yeah, shit 'em.

[00:42:26] Caroline: Shit 'em. Finally, week four, this is the last week before your launch date. That is where you are going to set up your secret ingredient. So this is stage four of the pre-launch story here. And this is where you've opened someone up, they've seen the transformation that can happen, and now you're giving them a little preview of, we call it your secret ingredient, but the thing that is inside of your offer that can help them get the transformation. And so, for us personally, this was talking about our strategy of copywriting and how we approach copywriting in your sales emails, copywriting on your sales page, copywriting in your pre-launch content. And it all has to do with making the customer your hero. And so, we named this customer-led copy and talked about this strategy in the thing, which is something that we talk a lot about in the Calm Launch Formula. We even have a lesson called Building Your Customer-led Copy Catalog. And it's all about this like repository of copy snippets that you can pull from all the time to use for sales emails to use for Instagram captions, et cetera. And so, since that is all inside of Calm Launch Formula and that's what makes it kind of proprietary, you want to give like a little bit of a taste of that in this last email, because now you're making it tangible.

[00:43:47] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:47] Caroline: You're saying, "Oh, I'm not just promising you pie in the sky, calm business, calm launch. I'm telling you I have a proprietary process or framework or something that you have not seen before that is a major key to allowing you to do this."

[00:44:00] Jason: Yeah. And I think this is the culmination, this pre-launch strategy of these four themed weeks, like we in the past have done like a four-week lead up series, but it has never been this structured.

[00:44:12] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:44:12] Jason: And I think accidentally we have fallen into doing some of these things. But now having this structure, I think it just very clearly makes sense. And especially as we were building the Calm Launch Formula and we were like, okay, how can we teach this to somebody else so that they can walk away? And any type of digital product that you sell can illuminate a problem, can shift common beliefs, can deconstruct a transformation, can show off a secret ingredient, like those are all very repeatable things. And I think that to me is a winning formula to, "Okay, we're on to something." This isn't just going to work for us. This is a thing that anybody can use to lead their audience into a sale of a thing and get them excited about it, and also make sure they're the right fit for that thing.

[00:44:53] Caroline: Totally. And so, that I should have mentioned this before, but these pre-launch themes of the four weeks, they are more for, what I would say the meat of your content, meaning the value part of your content. So your newsletter, your podcast episode, your YouTube video, it's like whatever, you're still delivering value in that time period because that's part of the essential part of building trust. Now, what we didn't talk about is very important, which is then what we call your hype messages.

[00:45:21] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:21] Caroline: And these are the specific messages about your offer that are peppered in throughout this pre-launch period. So that comes in the form of, for your email newsletter, you're going to do pre S messages, meaning a little box at the top of your emails that say, "Hey." And you're going to have different messages every week that say like, "Hey, this offer is coming. Here's where my launch opens." Et cetera. So for us that was, yeah, we just do those little pre S messages at the top of our emails. And then you may have noticed we also do a pre-launch ad role on our podcast.

[00:45:54] Jason: Yeah, this is one of my favorite things, especially shouting out Transistor, which is our podcast host, where they just have these dynamic ads that we can record, and you literally record a minute long ad, and you build a little campaign, and you just press publish across entire library. And this ad now runs across every single episode of your podcast. And so, this is such a powerful thing because the great thing is then you just turn it off and then you don't have to have this sales message that sits in a podcast episode forever.

[00:46:22] Caroline: That's outdated.

[00:46:23] Jason: That's outdated. And so, actually...

[00:46:25] Caroline: We're just how we used to do it.

[00:46:25] Jason: Yeah. And when we moved over to Transistor, I actually took the time to go through and edit out all of those things.

[00:46:30] Caroline: I was just about to say, I didn't know you did that. I was like, that'd be so funny like if you...

[00:46:33] Jason: If it doubles up. Yeah.

[00:46:34] Caroline: Yeah, exactly.

[00:46:35] Jason: No, I edited out all of those...

[00:46:37] Caroline: Awe.

[00:46:37] Jason: ...messages so that we will have like a clean library of our podcast.

[00:46:40] Caroline: Right.

[00:46:40] Jason: And if you listen to any old episodes and you hear an old message...

[00:46:43] Caroline: Some weirdness.

[00:46:44] Jason: ...feel free to let me know...

[00:46:45] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:46:45] Jason: ...and I'll re-edit it again. But I think that this is one of the crucial features if you run a podcast that thinking about switching to a different podcast host, it doesn't have to be Transistor, but any host that uses dynamic ad insertion, like I wish YouTube had this.

[00:46:57] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:57] Jason: Like I wish YouTube had dynamic ad insertion across your library because such a powerful feature that you don't have to go back and do anything with previous content, you just reuse that content and have it be valuable hype messages for your launch.

[00:47:10] Caroline: Yeah. Super great that we started doing that. And so, yeah, you want to do the same thing in your YouTube videos. We've been making our YouTube content around launching and simplifying your business, those two themes.

[00:47:21] Jason: Can I jump in on YouTube for a second?

[00:47:22] Caroline: Oh, sure.

[00:47:23] Jason: I just wanted to share for YouTube, just in case you were curious. This is the first time in the history of our business where we have had 15 weeks of consistent uploads leading up to a launch.

[00:47:35] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:35] Jason: So essentially three months of content leading up to a launch. We've never had that before.

[00:47:40] Caroline: True.

[00:47:40] Jason: In the first 13 sales, two people, we have a little welcome survey said that the YouTube channel was how they found us.

[00:47:47] Caroline: Cool.

[00:47:47] Jason: So over time, our historical data has told us that 10% of the people who buy WAIM every launch come from YouTube. I'm going to be very curious to see if that increases.

[00:47:57] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:57] Jason: If it doesn't, then it just wasn't worth all the effort.

[00:48:00] Caroline: It's just what it is.

[00:48:00] Jason: But it was a nice little side quest to go on here. And then my side, side quest...

[00:48:06] Caroline: Yes.

[00:48:06] Jason: ...was that I used our... Had our editing service, BeCreatives. We've talked about them before on the podcast when we were doing our content extravaganza. I had them take a lot of our long form videos that they helped us edit and cut them down into shorts. And I gave them no direction.

[00:48:22] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:48:22] Jason: I just said, "What's the most compelling one-minute part?"

[00:48:25] Caroline: Really great.

[00:48:25] Jason: And they did a fantastic job. Shout out to Dominica, our editor, and we ended up with 27 shorts. And so, I said my side, side quest was we haven't posted any shorts content at all. I don't think it's going to do anything, but I just want to do it as well.

[00:48:39] Caroline: Especially because it wasn't created for shorts. They're like...

[00:48:39] Jason: Yeah.

[00:48:40] Caroline: ...chopped out of a video.

[00:48:41] Jason: Exactly. But I've been posting a week leading up to our launch every day.

[00:48:45] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:45] Jason: And I'm going to post every day through our launch as well. And I see that as like a mini retargeting, if you will...

[00:48:51] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:51] Jason: ...where it's like it's just showing up...

[00:48:54] Caroline: Like a reminder.

[00:48:54] Jason: Exactly.

[00:48:54] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:48:54] Jason: It's showing up in someone's feed, "Oh, Wandering Aimfully. Oh, I think I heard that their enrollment is open right now." Because we don't say anything in the shorts about it.

[00:49:00] Caroline: Right.

[00:49:00] Jason: But the point is not to do that. It's just to literally show up in someone's feed. So we'll see how that goes, but that is also a part of this journey as well, where, yes, we have our email list, yes, we have our podcast, but also our YouTube channel has been the thing that we have always lacked in consistency on.

[00:49:14] Caroline: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:14] Jason: And so, this launch was the first one where we've actually been consistent to lead up to the launch.

[00:49:18] Caroline: Mm-hmm. Speaking of content and our content extravaganza, this is yet another launch that we have done. No social media.

[00:49:25] Jason: Nope.

[00:49:25] Caroline: And to be perfectly honest, I fully intended on doing social media leading up to this...

[00:49:31] Jason: Instagram.

[00:49:31] Caroline: Instagram.

[00:49:31] Jason: Yeah.

[00:49:31] Caroline: Leading up to this launch. And in case you're like, "Yeah, whatever happened with that, your content extravaganza?" And like, "Did you ever post for Teachery?" And we will do an entire podcast episode just about where that went awry and how unexpectedly our summer has gone, probably.

[00:49:48] Jason: Yeah.

[00:49:48] Caroline: But life happens, and you set these goals for yourself and then sometimes curveballs hit you and you go, "Wow, whatever I thought my capacity was before is not actually what my capacity is now." And you have to adjust. Right?

[00:50:01] Jason: And what is the thing that can give...

[00:50:03] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:50:03] Jason: ...that's not important. So for us...

[00:50:04] Caroline: And we talk about that a lot.

[00:50:05] Jason: ...our email newsletter is a non-negotiable.

[00:50:07] Caroline: Right.

[00:50:07] Jason: So it's like even when shit hits the fan and things are going crappy, force is a very strong word, but we make sure an email goes out even if it's less awesome than we want. Because that is just the thing that it sustains our business over time.

[00:50:21] Caroline: Yup.

[00:50:21] Jason: It keeps our audience engaged. It continues to build on itself because people share it, which is really great. And without that, our business would not run, it would not be profitable, it would not be predictable. So social media, on the other hand, it's a very nice, nice to have.

[00:50:35] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:50:35] Jason: We don't need it at all very clearly. And so, I think that is an important thing. The other thing I wanted to mention here and our last few things that we've been doing leading up to the pre-launch was our affiliate strategy. We have a whole episode that we recorded a handful of episodes ago about our affiliate program and how we run it. But just to give you a quick little thing, we did eight emails mentioned being a WAIM affiliate to our Wandering Aimfully members in the two months leading up. So we had four dedicated emails that were just about being an affiliate and then four other emails where it was like the second half of the email we mentioned it. And then we will have three emails that will go out during the enrollment period to our Wandering Aimfully members. One will be a shared email and two will be dedicated WAIM affiliate emails. So all in all, it's 11 touch points over the course of two months.

[00:51:23] Caroline: You forgot to mention...

[00:51:24] Jason: The coaching sessions?

[00:51:24] Caroline: The coaching session.

[00:51:26] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:51:26] Caroline: So the two coaching sessions prior to the launch as well, we have a little section that we call WAIM Field Notes, where we tell you what's been going on in our business, take you behind the scenes. And the two months leading up to a launch is always, we have a section dedicated to becoming an affiliate.

[00:51:40] Jason: I say all of that... easy when you listen to someone talk about how they run their business, "Oh, we have an affiliate program", and blah, blah, blah. And it takes more messaging and more effort than you think.

[00:51:51] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:51:51] Jason: Especially to have other people promote your stuff for you. And you just have to plan for that.

[00:51:56] Caroline: Yes.

[00:51:56] Jason: That is just the same thing with the beta testers. It's like, again, business dad being a little bit grumpy, but you have to put in the work. If you want other people to promote your stuff, and I'm not going to name names, but there was someone who emailed us recently, he was like, "Oh, I feel like my affiliates are..." "Oh, okay. Well, how many times you emailed them?" "Oh, like one time."

[00:52:12] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:52:12] Jason: "What do you give them to be a resource to know about yourself?"

[00:52:15] Caroline: Totally.

[00:52:15] Jason: "Oh, I just, I emailed them one time." I wouldn't want to be an affiliate for that. It makes my life too difficult. I have to do too much work. We try and set everything up to be as pain free as possible and as easy to promote Wandering Aimfully for our affiliates. And it has been hugely rewardful for us in doing that.

[00:52:31] Caroline: Yes. And this is going back to the benefit of a repeatable launch is when we started the first launch, we did with affiliates, we started with we had no idea what we were doing. We had Google Docs.

[00:52:43] Jason: Very long Google Docs.

[00:52:44] Caroline: Very long Google Docs that were very convoluted of answering questions, but you do your best with what you have at the time. And the thing is you improve over time.

[00:52:54] Jason: Yeah.

[00:52:54] Caroline: So then the next launch we thought, okay, we got feedback. Here's where this was confusing. So then we upgraded to, "Oh, after two launches, then we did an affiliate hub." So we made a Teachery course where it was like, now we can just update it in one place. It's not just a Google Doc, it's like a little bit better of an experience. Okay. Then we did an affiliate guide. So now there's this beautiful Canva guide that walks them through all the details because the details change from launch to launch. Okay, now we're adding like email templates so that they can set... Making everything easier, creative assets so that they can better design their social media content to promote. I mean, you don't have to do that all from the beginning.

[00:53:30] Jason: Yeah.

[00:53:30] Caroline: It's just important to get started somewhere and then you can improve over time.

[00:53:33] Jason: Yeah. I think if there's one big takeaway that I just want everyone to have who's listening to this...

[00:53:40] Caroline: Is just have a pre-launch strategy.

[00:53:41] Jason: ...is to have a pre-launch strategy.

[00:53:42] Caroline: I agree.

[00:53:43] Jason: Is to have a bare minimum four weeks content leading up to selling whatever the thing that you sell.

[00:53:49] Caroline: You can ignore everything else that we said...

[00:53:50] Jason: Yeah.

[00:53:51] Caroline: ...and just make sure that your email newsletters the four weeks leading up to your launch are the four themes that we mentioned...

[00:53:58] Jason: Yeah.

[00:53:59] Caroline: ...with a pre S that says, "My launch is opening up on this date."

[00:54:01] Jason: Yeah.

[00:54:01] Caroline: If you do nothing else, do that and see if it improves your launch.

[00:54:05] Jason: Same with your YouTube channel, your podcast. And if you do social content, just focus on the four weeks leading up and show up for your audience and get them ready to buy.

[00:54:14] Caroline: Build that trust, give them that readiness and hype up your offer. And if you do those three things, then you'll be in a so much better spot to have the launch outcome that you want. And again, we're two days in right now. We have no idea how this enrollment period is going to end up, but early signs are good and we're always going to do a launch recap and be honest with you all, letting you know how it all shakes out, so.

[00:54:40] Jason: Yeah. This is not a lie. This is not planted. I just got a notification that we did have someone just signed up for WAIM while we were recording.

[00:54:44] Caroline: Yeah. That's got to feel good.

[00:54:45] Jason: So that is a game that we don't often get to play. We're like, "Oh, what happened?"

[00:54:48] Caroline: And the email hasn't even gone out.

[00:54:50] Jason: And our email hasn't gone out for the day. So we're doing something right. Things are working well. We're happy to share all the things that we're learning constantly with you. And like Caroline said, we will do a full launch recap for all you, nosy launch recappers, like us.

[00:55:03] Caroline: Wear my nosy Nellies.

[00:55:05] Jason: Yeah. We might also do it as a video podcast, too, just to play around.

[00:55:09] Caroline: Ooh.

[00:55:10] Jason: We talked about that.

[00:55:10] Caroline: Ooh.

[00:55:11] Jason: All right, that's it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed hearing about our pre-launch strategy deconstructed.

[00:55:17] Caroline: Behind the scenes.

[00:55:18] Jason: This was like going to a nice restaurant and being like, "Here's a cheeseburger." And you're like, "Well, I see a circle of bread that's about the size of a quarter."

[00:55:25] Caroline: It's a mustard gel.

[00:55:26] Jason: "I see a little poofy foam of meat. You're telling me that's meat?"

[00:55:31] Caroline: A dehydrated lettuce twill.

[00:55:34] Jason: Yeah. And then there's a leaf, but it's the color of cheese. And it's the flavor of cheese, but it looks like a leaf.

[00:55:40] Caroline: Mm.

[00:55:40] Jason: And I'm supposed to put all these items together and into a meal.

[00:55:42] Caroline: Into a deconstructed cheeseburger.

[00:55:43] Jason: Fantastic. That sounds delicious. Let's go eat there. All right, that's it. Talk to you soon. Bye.

[00:55:49] Caroline: Bye. Love you. Bye.