252 - Real-time FINAL launch update (2 of 3, Jason only)

[00:00:03] 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 unboring 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. Hello, friends. Okay, this is just Jason on the microphone only today.

[00:00:42] We unfortunately had a death in the family on Caroline's side, so she is not joining us today. And yeah, it was a very kind of weird morning. We got a call overnight and we really thought about it for a while of, should we just pause the launch?

[00:01:00] Should we stop? And I just, I really put the ball in her court because this is obviously her side of the family, not mine, and so she's closer. And I just said, whatever you choose is totally fine. You know, we can definitely pause. And she just kind of gave it space for a few hours and she said, you know, listen, we already have all the sales emails written.

[00:01:18] We already have, you know, the launch is like, at this point, you know, over 50% done. We've got Instagram reels already recorded. And, you know, unless we were to really share it, most people would probably not even really know. And with the pregnancy, Caroline's at 28 weeks as of this week. And, you know, the... as the, the weeks compress closer and closer to our due date, the last thing we want is to kind of like pause everything for a week and then it kind of pushes everything around and just causes more trouble. So we'll share more details. I think maybe next week's podcast episode, but it might just be me for, uh, this recap.

[00:01:57] Obviously, it's definitely gonna be me. And then the Thursday kind of like normal episode that will probably me as well. And then we wanted to do one more final just before the launch was ending, kind of like last day, you know, getting towards the end of the night our time, which still leaves about 12 hours of time in the... the launch. So I will probably just be your podcast host, but you can imagine Caroline with me in spirit here. So, sending lots of love and, and vibes her way downstairs in our house, which is kind of a weird thing to say now that I said that out loud. But yeah, I just, I feel very bad for her. And it's obviously sad to lose a family member.

[00:02:38] It's just, it's, it's just terrible. If you've lost a family member, then you know. If you haven't, then you know it's a very, very special kind of grief that no one wishes upon anybody else. But okay, let's smoothly transition now that I got that out of the way. And you are probably because you're nosy. As we did last week's episode and we heard from a handful of people that you were really excited to get the mid launch update.

[00:03:04] We know we like episodes like this so I think it's fun to record. Where we last left off which was the last Tuesday which was like 24 hours into the launch essentially, we had already had 24 sales which was really cool. So that was awesome. We were trending towards our low goal. Our low goal was 30 sales for this last launch of WAIM Unlimited and we ended up hitting that goal then just about like one day later, I think it was like 18 hours later.

[00:03:34] So we hit our low goal essentially in the like 48 hours after opening the cart, which is really great. Like that just feels amazing. And if you don't, if you didn't listen to last week's episode like this, um, I created a little sales tracker. Um, I vibe coded it for just using the terminology that's going on these days.

[00:03:54] Um, I used Lovable and I put together this fun little visual tracker. You can go to sales.waim.co. The link is in the show notes if you want to click through and I am updating that just a couple times throughout the day. It's not really when like every sale comes in because I'm actually updating it manually through a Google sheet.

[00:04:10] So it's, it's kind of when the, the moment hits me or when I feel like oh like you know, we had two sales come in so I need to go check that. But it's a, it's a pretty good, you know, fairly close and up to date way to see where the sales are and yeah. So let's get into what we've been doing since last week's episode.

[00:04:29] So obviously we are at the, the lull of the launch. So when you do a two week launch like this, the middle is always like the Sahara desert. It is where you like if, if fresh drinking water was sales coming in. It is where you believe that you will never have another sale coming in ever. You will never have water to drink ever again.

[00:04:49] But that's just a part of doing like a longer launch. And when you have a higher ticket offer, people need more time to decide if they're going to buy or not, which is why we've always done two weeks and it has always worked out. But that feeling never changes of, like, you hit the middle of the launch and you're like, great, here it comes.

[00:05:03] We're going to have our first day of maybe no sales or, like, it just feels super quiet when we're sending out a sales email or posting content. And then all of a sudden it like, starts to ramp back up. So we're right on the cusp of we're in the Sahara desert here at the halfway point. We haven't had water for days, which is not true.

[00:05:19] We've had sales every single day, which is great, but, like, not as many sales as you have in the beginning. And we know that there is an oasis being the end of the launch. I'm just taking this metaphor all the way down, coming, like, over the next dune here in the desert. So, anyway, what we've been doing since last Tuesday, uh, so we, we were keeping up with pretty much almost daily reel posting.

[00:05:39] Um, I believe so far we've spent $120 to boost those reels that we posted during the launch. And so I think those have amassed somewhere around like 6,000 views or something like that. Really cool, though, is we had one WAIMer who joined yesterday, and she sent me a message on our Slack channel, which was awesome to read.

[00:06:00] And she said, I didn't know about Wandering Aimfully before. Like, two days ago, I saw one of your reels in in my Explore feed that we had boosted, and I then went down a rabbit hole of all of your content on Instagram. I read through some of your articles on your site and I decided to buy. Like, you guys just seem like awesome business coaches.

[00:06:18] And I was like, this could not be a more perfect use case for like, boosting a post during the launch and it being worthwhile. So I... I don't know if, you know, I mean, I guess it is worth it, right? Like, if we've only spent about like a hundred dollars total and we've landed one sale that will end up being worth $2,000 when they finish paying their payments, that's a good return on the investment.

[00:06:37] Now, is it, like, all of the sales that we would like to get from the effort we put into Instagram? No, but we'll give more information on the sales that have come from Instagram when we do a full recap of the entire launch. We gotta leave some things for you to be desired. Okay, so let's talk about YouTube.

[00:06:54] We had one video go up last week and then as of recording today, one longer form video went up. And then I'm also reposting the reels that I'm making as YouTube shorts because they're basically, you know, set up for that type of content. And all in, I think like those videos combined have done like 3,000 views, which is like literally nothing in YouTube land, especially with the shorts.

[00:07:15] And we did promote one, I think I, when I logged in right before recording this, we had spent like $50 so far and it had brought in like a thousand of the views to that video. Um, but no specific, you know, data to say that that led to a sale or not yet, but it's just part of the plan of the first time ever that we are kind of like boosting or promoting content on Instagram or YouTube during the launch to get more eyeballs on it.

[00:07:41] So we will report back with more of that. Obviously at the end of the launch we'll do kind of like how much in total we spent. We've never spent money on this type of stuff before in any other launch. So it's just going to be very interesting and new data for us. And then we posted two podcast episodes.

[00:07:54] So last week the first recap episode like this and then a longer episode where we were chatting and then we did just our daily launch emails. So the only day we did not send an email during the first week of launch was Saturday because who's opening their inboxes on Saturday? And then we did do a Sunday last call email on a bonus offer that we had which is a one to one coaching thing.

[00:08:16] And that only went to people who had clicked through to the sales page, which was around I think like 250 people. So we, we collect data through Kit, which is the email marketing tool we use on who has clicked a link to the sales page. Like we track that all together and I think in total it's like 400 people have clicked.

[00:08:34] But then we had like opted out people. Some of those people are Wandering Aimfully members with a different email address. But we figured it out. So yeah, it ends up being around I think 250 people is what that coaching offer went out to. Okay, so those are all the things we've been doing since last week. So where are we as it relates to sales?

[00:08:52] So as of flipping on the microphone here, Tuesday, June 17th at 3:00pm here in Europe, we have amassed 47 sales, which is absolutely awesome. We are 67% of the way to our high goal, which is really good. Our high goal being 70 sales. And we are 39% of the way to our stretch goal, we, which is 120 sales. So we feel, I mean, at this point, pretty good about hitting the high goal.

[00:09:22] Just based on the fact that kind of our rule of launches is like a third of the sales come in the first 48, 72 hours ish, like two to three days. 30% of the sales come in like the whole middle of a launch. So that's literally like day three to day 11, if you will. And then 30, whatever left, percent 6, 36% come in the last like 48 hours.

[00:09:44] And that has held pretty true over a lot of our launches. We had one launch in 2021 where I think like 40% or 45% of the sales came in the last 48 hours. We never had that high. But it usually does follow those kind of rules of thirds. So if we just go by, you know, kind of what we've had now, you know, we had basically like, I think 32 sales in the first 48 hours.

[00:10:07] So that is trending us toward getting over our high goal of 70. So we will keep you posted. Like I said, I plan on recording an episode on Monday, the final day of the launch, in the evening our time to give you kind of like the most real time update of how many sales we have at that point and how close we are to our high goal or if we're, you know, past it and we're going towards our stretch goal, which would be amazing.

[00:10:31] So those are the numbers. So 47 total sales as of recording this and what is left on the launch calendar? So you might be wondering, we basically have, you know, just under a week left on the launch. This death in the Family does throw a curveball, mostly in just our Instagram plan, because Caroline is not ahead on her reels.

[00:10:51] So she was recording like these little roadblock reels, like sharing how we got over these different milestones and our revenue growth in growing WAIM. And I don't think that's going to continue at least for the next like 48 hours. I just, I don't think she's going to have the energy, nor should she, you know, kind of, you know, worry about that.

[00:11:11] So I already had three other reels fully filmed and edited and ready to go because mine are so much simpler. I'm able to do them quite a bit faster than Caroline's, which have like an incredible amount of what we call whiz bangs, which is just a lot of editing and fun stuff in them. So I think I know it's going to mess up our grid because we had a really nice like every other was like Caroline and then me and our little reels grid on Instagram.

[00:11:35] I think that's going to end up, you know, kind of breaking down. It's just going to be a lot of Jason face in there. But I think we would rather post the reels that I've made, be able to boost those to get some exposure and you know, so what? Who cares about the grid looking the way it does? Like we'll care for a few minutes, but we do want that content to get out there.

[00:11:52] So posting reels. I have three that are ready to go. I might, if Caroline does not feel up to it, which is totally understandable to record any more before the launch is over, I might record maybe two other kind of like simple ones in the way that I've been doing them. I am not going to try and pick up where Caroline left off in hers because it will just take me so long to try and like, you know, imitate her style.

[00:12:16] It's not going to happen. And then, yeah, I'm basically done with YouTube long form videos. I don't really have anything else that I wanted to record there. The only thing that I thought about doing was like a watch me build something in Lovable. But I don't know how strategic that is to getting someone to join WAIM.

[00:12:32] Like we do want to talk about using no code AI tools a lot more in the future, but as of like right now, there's not a lot of content that we have around it. So I'm still trying to figure that out if that, that feels right. And also now with this kind of like life curveball, I know I want to be supporting Caroline and I don't want to just be like filling my calendar with things to do if I don't need to do them.

[00:12:51] So at a minimum, I'm going to be reposting the reels that I've created for Instagram on YouTube as shorts, but may not have any other YouTube videos to promote. So the one that went up this morning will boost or promote that one for I think like another 50 bucks and we'll see how it goes. We have affiliate reminder emails going out, so I believe we have one that went out yesterday.

[00:13:12] I know because it went out yesterday. I believe we have one more on Friday and then we have one more on Monday. So that's more than we would really ever send to our affiliates. Like, we wouldn't really send three emails in kind of like the last week of the launch, but because this is the absolute last ever time that our affiliates can promote WAIM Unlimited, I do want to just make sure that people who are busy and they wanted to promote but they needed the nudges, they get those reminders.

[00:13:36] So we probably will send those emails out. And then we do have just our daily launch emails. So that's really all that's left. And we have two more bonuses that we're doing. One is a building your sales funnel for you using Canva whiteboard. So we'll essentially get a couple questions that we'll ask you about your business and then we'll build a custom Canva whiteboard sales funnel that walks you through your business essentially's sales funnel that we would create if we ran your business.

[00:14:08] So everything from like, how are you positioning your offer? To what is like the lead magnet that we think would work to then what happens after the lead magnet? Someone signs up for your for that lead magnet, they get on your list, like, what sequence are we sending them email wise? And then what's the bridge to a sales sequence?

[00:14:23] And then what are we sending as a sales sequence? And like, what's in there? So we're limiting that to 15 people. That offer just went out today as of recording this. So that's going to be up for people to check out. If so, if you're on the fence about joining WAIM Unlimited, definitely go check your inbox if you're on our email list and if you're not on our email list, we will probably have that bonus up on the website here on wanderingaimfully.com in a few hours, depending on how Caroline feels. 

[00:14:49] It's not too much effort to kind of change it because we already have the bonus section set up. But she has to do more stuff than I do because I don't know how to set all these things up in Framer as much as she does. And when I start turning things on and off in Framer, the site goes kind of wonky. So we don't want that to happen. 

[00:15:04] So, yeah, the daily launch emails, we have that Canva whiteboard sales funnel bonus. And then we have our calm creator roadmap that was supposed to be kind of like our big, you know, we had the unboring business roadmap before, but that was very static. This is very like personalizable and customizable to your business and you can kind of build a roadmap on the fly of like how you should work on whatever the thing is you're trying to work on.

[00:15:26] So if you're trying to make your first thousand dollars with your business, or if you're trying to come up with your first idea, or you're trying to go from just some side hustle money of like $1,000 a month to $5,000 a month, like, you know, maybe that'd be enough for a full time income. We generate these roadmaps through this tool for you based on where you are and it's really, really like fun the way that it's coming together.

[00:15:47] But I don't know now with this life curveball, if we're going to have time to put that preview together. So we just may have to live without that bonus at the end here. And that's just what happens. I think any, anybody who has done a live launch knows that when the curveballs come, you just have to kind of deal with them as they are and you have well laid plans.

[00:16:05] But when you don't have everything fully done ahead of time, like we just couldn't get with all the things we were juggling these past couple months, that's okay. So we'll see what happens with that. It might just be something where there's not going to be a preview and maybe I can just record a video kind of like using the roadmaps and that'd be enough to show people for that.

[00:16:23] So that is the plan. Like I said, daily emails going out through the rest of the launch, those are already all written. So there's really nothing more to do other than just like hit publish on them. And that's, that's pretty much it. I have like three questions here to finish this thing out. Two were submitted by one of our awesome WAIMers, Jen, and two were just kind of questions that I put in here for both of us to answer.

[00:16:47] But now it's just me to answer. So I hope you don't mind. So the first one was just how are we feeling about these current launch numbers? And I know that I can say on behalf of Caroline, like we feel really good. Like this is the... kind of like the exact position I think we hoped to be in. And even with all that's going on in the world, with the stuff in the US, with just like all of the craziness of the President in the US and everything that's going on, and then also the wars that are going on here in Europe and in the Middle East, like holy moly.

[00:17:16] There is so much distracting everybody and there has been so much distracting everybody for years, and I don't have to tell you that, but for our launch to be where it's at and just still going, I think that feels really great. And we, we do have this like little kind of like voice in the back of our heads of like, we should just pause this thing and we should just do it another time.

[00:17:36] But I think we all know like when's the other time at this point? Like it's just, it's just wild. So to answer that question, I think we're feeling really good about the launch. I think we obviously wish that so much wasn't going on now also in our personal lives, but there's just never a perfect time to kind of like get your business going.

[00:17:53] And so we're just kind of going by the rule that we live by, which is just like keep pushing forward, do what's best for us, trim down where we need to. So why we try and get everything done ahead of time if possible and we just keep going. So if you're a WAIM affiliate and you're still promoting our launch, just want to give a huge shout out to you and thank you so much because I think we're up to like 59%, 60% of those 47 sales have come from our WAIM affiliates.

[00:18:17] So that feels really good too. Just kind of speaking to the feelings thing. Like we really love that WAIMers bring other WAIMers because we know they're going to predict pretty much always be really well vetted, you know, kind of values based people that align really well with our community. All right, so I had a question on here.

[00:18:32] What is the current prediction for where we will end up? And we were talking about this in the car the other day and I think I remember Caroline saying like 76, like somewhere in that range. And I think my answer was closer to like 90. So by the rule of averages that means we will probably end up at like, 83, like just dead in the middle of those two guesses.

[00:18:54] But we'll see. So those were our kind of predictions. Caroline was on the slightly more conservative side as usual and I was on the slightly more optimistic side, if you will. So yeah, we'll, we'll see where those end up and you'll, you'll get another update again, like I said, the last day of launch and maybe I'll give like a last minute prediction as well.

[00:19:15] Okay, I have these two questions from Jen and then I'm going to wrap this up. So first question is... interesting to diving into together, which I'm just me, so I'm going to do my best, Jen. Is there any part of experiencing such a solid and emerging launch where you've both thought, man, I'm going to miss this in terms of selling, like a high ticket offer like WAIM, having excited new customers and like very stable, predictable revenue.

[00:19:37] And 100%, yes. Like, I think going into kind of the last of anything that you do in business, it never really feels like the last until it's over. And so because the launch isn't over, I don't think we have the real solid feeling of like, oh, we're never going to promote WAIM Unlimited again. Like, you don't feel that yet.

[00:19:54] Like, you know it in your head. But yeah, I definitely think seeing this launch going well and better than the last two launches that we had, it does kind of make us pause for a second and be like, are we making a huge mistake here? But I also think, like, we, as we've talked about many times, like, we've been doing monthly coaching for six years, like almost every single month straight.

[00:20:13] We've been running Wandering Aimfully kind of as you see it, for almost eight years. And it has done a really good job of what we wanted it to do. And I think we are just really excited to kind of transition into a different style of business that's not necessarily coaching, but it's more of us kind of like getting back into the building trenches, if you will, and just creating things and sharing things and less about teaching someone how to do something, which we do love to do.

[00:20:37] And we have really enjoyed that, but we're just feeling that itch to do something different. So I think we are going to miss it, to answer your first question here. But I know that we aren't going to really know how much we're going to miss it until kind of like, you know, a month or so after. But then we'll have a baby and then maybe we won't even be thinking about that because we're just going to have poop all over our hands, you know, just like, I don't know.

[00:20:56] Okay. And Jen's other question here. Obviously, ending WAIM is the right choice for you. I just wonder if this launch has brought up any feelings of, like, when a launch goes this well, it feels so good. And even though you've made the right decision, do you think that we will miss this business and like this style of launch?

[00:21:10] And yeah, I think I probably could have combined these questions together because I think I answered some of this one. But I do... I think I mostly am nervous about we're giving up, like, this predictable revenue that we have every single month. And it's the first business that we've had, like, really solid, good, predictable revenue for years on end.

[00:21:29] But I also now believe in the fact that we've been able to do this and we've been able to do it through Covid, and we've been able to do it through people saying, you know, digital products and, like, business coaching things are not selling anymore. Like, I think we'll be able to pivot into something and we'll be really excited about what's next, and it's going to give us a ton of fresh energy to do that.

[00:21:48] And, you know, now with the baby on the way, we're going to have constraints, so we're going to have less time to, I think, really, like, explore a lot of things. And we're just going to have to move faster to get things done, which I think in the current environment of just how things are operating, you kind of have to move faster.

[00:22:03] You have to know that the shelf life of everything you're doing is shorter. And so it is a little bit more of like a quantity game, unfortunately, because I wish it wasn't. I would rather just focus on quality stuff, but I think that's just kind of the way that it is. So, anyway, I think that's... That's long enough on this.

[00:22:19] I really appreciate, Jen, those questions. Always appreciate your questions. And if anybody listening to this wants to ask a question that you want me to answer, maybe before the end of this launch, anything about kind of like our final launch or how this is feeling, feel free to send those over to hello@wanderingaimfully.com and yeah, that's it for this episode.

[00:22:39] Hope you enjoyed the recap, you little nosy nellies. And I will be back probably just another solo episode here on Thursday, and I don't even know what that topic is. We have, like 10 or 12 unrecorded podcast episode topics in our list, so I might just pluck one out or I might just go rogue. I don't know.

[00:22:55] I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'm a wild man right now. I'm just kidding. I really don't know what I'm going to do, though. So you'll find out when I find out on Thursday what the episode is going to be about. Okay, we appreciate you. Bye.