76: Product Launch Formula Featuring Jeff Walker

The impact that we're able to make when we're just willing to show up and serve is incredible. I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. Yes, I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. Hi, everyone. Today I am welcoming a very special guest who has played an instrumental role in my own journey. I'm pleased to introduce you to Jeff Walker. Hi, Jeff.

Hey, Bonnie. I'm so happy to be here with you.

I'm so happy to have you here because for those of you who are listening and have been following along for a while, you likely know that I launched my first course back in 2018 and have been launching ever since. But what you might not know is that the blueprint that I followed and everything that I did for that launch came from one strateg and one man. And that is you, Jeff Walker. So I'm so excited to dive into product launch formula today, which is what I have used for so many years. And you're just a wealth of information and wisdom in that area.

Well, Bonnie, I'm looking forward to this and it's amazing to me, 2018, so five years.

Yeah.

In some ways that's a long time. But when I look at what you have done and what you've built in five years is just absolutely astounding.

It's not. It is a long time. And though it's not, but, you know, the fact that 2020 was in the middle makes it feel so much longer. We. You know, I came to PLF live in the fall of 2019, and I often think about that conference because it was just the best time and we didn't even know it, but that was like the last big thing I did before everything shut down was your conference.

Yeah, I remember. I remember you seen you in the audience, you were like stage right, right off the aisle? Yeah, 10 rows back or so. And yeah, that was. None of us knew what was coming. That's like the last time I've done a huge in person conference.

Nobody does it like you, Jeff. It is such an honor for me when I get to introduce people who have been so incredibly transformed, transformational to me, to my audience. So. So can we start at square one? For anyone who isn't aware of what PLF is and who you are, can you give us an introduction to it and what PLF is?

So PLF stands for product launch formula. And it's a way to. For anyone to launch their. If they have an online course, a membership site, a coaching program, a mastermind, whatever it is online, if you want to launch it, this is how you launch it. And I say hopefully I don't come across as too big an ego here, but if you've seen someone launch in a big way online, they either learned the formula from me or they learned it from someone who learned it from me. I've been in business online forever, since 1996, initially for about eight years, teaching people about the stock market. And then after I built up a lot of experience marketing, building businesses, then I started teaching people what's now known as the product launch formula. Started in 2005.

Yeah, because I really feel like you are kind of the father of this particular sector. Like everything that I see that gets launched online follows this formula. And it all comes down to what you created, Jeff. So actually love the, like the origin story of how you felt like things were being launched and how it wasn't working and how you kind of came up with plf. Would you take us back to that?

Well, yeah, so the mid-90s and back then I was, I'd been basically, I was a stay at home dad with taking care of two young children. My wife was supporting a family. And I wasn't a stay at home dad because I sold my business for $30 million or something like that. It was because I was a failure in the corporate world. I was a square peg in a round hole. I didn't fit. It just. It didn't make sense to me. I didn't know how to work in that environment. And so I quit, like probably a week before. I would have gotten fired from what most people would consider a good job in the corporate world. And so then I was home taking care of, you know, my two young children, wife, supporting a family, but we're trying to make it on one paycheck and we just didn't have a Lot of money to go around. So around that time, I came across this idea of starting to publish an email newsletter. So this was literally 1996. Not everyone had an email address. The Internet was really just getting going, especially the commercial Internet. And I published, Started publishing a newsletter about the stock market. Now, I had knowledge about the market, I'd studied the market. I had passion for the stock market. But I had no letters after my name. I wasn't an investment advisor or a commodity trading advisor or any. Any certified financial planner. Didn't have any. Any credentials other than I. I knew it, I had knowledge. And so I started publishing that. It started very humbly. I sent a newsletter out to everyone I knew who had an email address. It was 17 people. I do like to say that the first email I. The first newsletter went out to 19 email addresses because I added my second email address and my wife's email address on. Just so I could feel better about myself having 19 subscribers. And so it gradually grew by word of mouth, very slowly. And by December, I had several hundred on that list, on the distribution list. I don't remember the exact number. It might have been 6 or 700, something like that. And at that point, I was like, well, maybe I can sell some to these folks. And my only problem was that I had no marketing experience. I had no sales experience, I had no entrepreneurial experience. And I felt like these people really liked me. They loved me. It felt like they would write back to me. And I thought if I tried to sell them something, if I. If I asked for money, they would. They'd stop loving me. And so I had. And I just like the whole. I had no idea what sales was or how to do sales. And. And so I came up with this idea, if I'll just romance them, I'll give them even more free. Amazing stuff. And so I put together some reports and everything I could think of. And then in early January, I sent out. Back then, it was so archaic, an email saying, I'm coming out with this new enhanced version of this newsletter, a paid version if you want it. Send me a check. Print this out and send me a check. Because taking online payments, it was like rocket science. And so, amazingly enough, a few people did. And that. That launch, which we now call launch, did $1,650 in sales. And, and, and that was amazing to me. Everyone's got a different frame of reference on money, but that money, that was unbelievable for me. And. Yeah. And at that point, I thought, like, if I did this once, I can do it again and again and again, and I might even get better at it. And that's what happened, is it, It's. It did start to get better. The next launch did 6,000 and then 8,000. And then in summer of 98, $34,000 in a single week in sales from a new. Like, I came up with a new offer for a different newsletter, and it just kept on rolling. And that launch that, the 34,000, that was when I went, brought my wife Mary home. That's when we started talking about her leaving her job. And by summer of 99, she quit her job, came home, she was taking care of the kids, she was helping me grow the business, and it just kept growing. And then there's a pivotal moment in 2005. So now I'm like eight years into this or something like that. Eight or nine years. And this business that I built, which was now, I mean, we'd moved out to the mountains, to my, you know, dream hometown out in the mountains. Things were going well. And then I got a call from my. I had a content partner that I'd taken on, and he basically said, hey, I'm taking all of our. I've started a new website, a competing website. I've taken all of our subscribers there. And essentially he stole the business from me. Long story. It's the first time in my life I ever talked to a lawyer. And, and, and so at that point I was like, okay, well, I can either fight for this business or I can do something different. And by then I realized I just loved marketing and online marketing and business building and entrepreneurship. So I. That's when I started product launch formula and I started teaching and coaching. And it's been a crazy ride since then. I mean, just, just insane insane because like, my initial goal when I started out was if I can make $10,000 in a year, that would just change everything for my family. And then I found myself doing launches that did a hundred thousand dollars and then a million dollars and then multi millions. Yeah, and. And the, the number I'm most proud of, you know, I've said a lot. I took it from 1,650 into multi millions, but the. It didn't happen overnight. There's a lot of work involved. And the thing that gets me so pumped up is that my students have done over a billion dollars in sales, so. A billion with a B in every market you could imagine, all over the world, every language you could imagine. And they're just making huge positive impact in the world, whether they're Teaching people to meditate or to have better relationships or to do. To knit sweaters or to quit smoking or read echocardiograms or sell their art or. It's just. It's been a crazy ride.

So, you know, my audience is full of creatives. Many, many of them are women and mothers and artists. And I can. I can feel them squirming right now because selling is so hard. And marketing feels like, oh, my goodness, are we. What does that feel like? And what I love about you so much is that it's always heart centered. Meaning we're only. You're only teaching this for people who are making an impact in the world and doing good and doing good things. And when that's the case, you're really doing a disservice to your audience to not let them know about what you have that can help transform their life. And so I want to talk about how uncomfortable marketing is and launching and being willing to sell well. And I'd love for you to talk about the difference between launching something and what I know you call hope marketing, because I see a lot of people kind of have that philosophy of, if I build it, people will come, they will come. And people are not coming because we're not having any strategy behind it. So could you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. Hope marketing is this term that I came up with, which is. It's like you just, you. You put all the work in and you create something amazing, and then you just, you just hope that it's so amazing that people will just somehow magically find it and then decide to open their wallet and give you money, and it just doesn't work. You know, Bonnie, I don't know if I ever tell you this, but I. I'm. I've been a lifelong tennis player. I play tennis pretty competitively, and I've got these friends, and we'll. We'll call it like say, a. A ball. Someone hits you a ball and you think it might go out so you don't, like, make the play for it. We call it hope tennis. You're hoping the ball goes out instead of you. And that's like hope marketing. You know, hope is a great thing if you're shipwrecked at sea, but it's not a good marketing strategy. And, you know, you hit the nail on the head. Like, if you've put together something great, something that can help people, whether it's just it helps them move forward in their lives, or it just helps them feel better about themselves, like art does or it provokes an emotion or provokes a thought, like art does. If you're creating something cool, then you owe it to the world to put it out into the world and get it out in the world and have people actually use it and consume it. And I like to say no religion here, but it's your sacred duty. You're putting in the effort to create something amazing. It's your sacred duty to get it out into the world. And you know, marketing is, the way I think about it is it's basically, it's showing people the true value of what you're offering. It's, it's sharing something with the world and showing what, allowing them to see it in all its glory and all in its true value. And that's what marketing is. It's basically, it's storytelling. It's, it's, it's showing a narrative. It's telling the story of your client and their future success or their future transformation or the, the impact that your work is going to have on them. Marketing, it's about telling your story well and telling how that story is really the story of your future clients. And I, I get it. I mean like when I started out there was no training there. There was zero training in online marketing in 1996 there, it didn't exist. And especially there was zero training in sales and I had no experience in it. I was super, super uncomfortable. I was in the boy Scouts when I was a kid and we do a fundraiser where you sold donuts. And like I, every year I would sell two bags of donuts and one was to my parents and one was to like my next door neighbor who was sort of like a grandmother to me. I was scared to walk. Literally. You're a 12 year old boy Scout selling donuts. How hard is that to walk up to a door and knock? I couldn't do it. So I totally get it. But you know, where I'm at now is I know what my work has done, I know what my students work has done. So that makes me a whole lot more comfortable with selling. And now it's my goal is just to help other people who are doing cool work. I mean I consider, it's, it's interesting. I consider myself an artist. You know, we've talked about this, Bonnie. I've done all types of art all through my life. Never, you know, mostly dabbling. But truly my art now is the writing I do and in really the videos I make in a live performance, the live broadcasts, the live events, because it's all about taking. Creating movement for people. I want to take people from, wow. I have something. I have a skill. I have. I have this art, I have this knowledge. I have something that's transformational for people. And I would love to. To share. For. To share it, but I don't know how. And I want to take them from there to saying, now you can do this, and you just have to make the decision that you can do it. And once you make. Once you decide, then you're going to be unstoppable.

That's so beautiful. And, you know, I. I got comfortable marketing a long time ago, and I always have to remember what are the things that make people so uncomfortable with it? And it's a confidence in what you do and the problem that you solve. But one thing that I also really love to think about is the marketing that I enjoy. Like, you have marketing that you enjoy. Like, we love being sold to when we're sold to. Well, and so I just rip that apart and reverse engineer kind of like, well, what about that did I love so much? And that gives us permission to really market in the way that we love that.

That's wonderful. I love that idea.

I do. I love to be sold to. Just sell to me.

Yeah. Because, I mean, like, the way, like, what I. What lights me up is, is. Is when people unders. Open up to what is truly possible in their life.

Yeah.

And I just get so pumped up about that when. When they get switched on. And. And it is. And it's the thought that's going through my mind. I mean, we're leading up into what I call my launch masterclass, which we do once a year. And. And we've put a. And when I say we, it's not like the royal we. I've actually built up this significant team now. We've got 35, some people, 40 people, I don't know, somewhere in there. And so we have been gearing up for this launch masterclass. And so I'm thinking about it all the time, but the thing I'm thinking about is that. That decision. It's like when, you know, you decide, you know, Bonnie, you had a moment where you decided you were going to create a course. Yeah, but that was at one point, that was like a. A big, like, oh, my. You know, can I really do that? That sounds so complicated. So I've never done something like that. I've been an artist. I haven't been a teacher. But at one point. And then you started circling around that idea.

Yeah.

We have never had this conversation. But I know, I've seen talk. I know people. And so you're. At some point that idea first came to you and then you started a circle. What would that. Who would people really buy from? Me. Could I really put that all together? What, I've got this young family, and then at one point you're like, I'm gonna do it.

Yeah.

And that was the moment you became unstoppable. And which doesn't mean it was easy. What does it mean? There were. Were not obstacles, but there it became inevitable at that moment. Right.

Yeah. And just because, like, the things that are most worth it are not easy. They never will be easy. And the impact that we're able to make when we're just willing to show up and serve is incredible. Okay, picture this. Have you ever spent hours scouring through your video or maybe your podcast content trying to find that one place that you said that one thing? Or if you've forgotten or never found it and you had to re record everything. I've been there and it's so frustrating and honestly a huge waste of time. But it hasn't happened to me ever since I started using Searchy. Searchie is the software that I use for all of my videos and all of my podcast content because it not only transcribes it, but it makes it searchable by key word. And so for you to see this in action, I have an example set up for you over on BonnieCristine.com resources. Again, that's BonnieChristine.com resources and you can actually play with Searchie and see how it looks on one of our videos, because once you understand what it does, it's a game changer. I also host all of my workshop and my class, my membership and course material through Searchy as well. So students can search for any question that they have and go to the exact time and place where I talked about that one thing. And just imagine this. If I ever do a Q and A and they want to know if I answered their question, I all they have to do is search for their name and see if I did or not. It's literally like having your very own personal search engine for your content. So no more wasting time scrubbing through your video or audio to find that one golden nugget. With Searchie, you can easily find what you're looking for in seconds. Just type in a keyword or phrase and Searchie will pull up all the relevant content. It's a game changer for anyone who creates a audio or video content. But honestly, that's not all. Searches, new AI powered transcription and captioning tool makes it easy to create accessible content that everyone can get access to. And with their customizable player, you can embed your videos and your podcasts on your website or social media channels in a way that looks and feels so professional. So if you are ready to take your video or your podcast content to the next level, head on over to Bonnie Christ.com/forward/resources and just give Searchie a try. It's incredible. I think you're going to love it and I can't wait to see how it revolutionizes the way you create content. Jeff, I know a lot of people who are listening. They likely have smaller audiences and so let's say someone is just getting started or just getting their heads wrapped around an email list. Let's say they have a small email list like under 500 people, maybe even under 100 people, maybe even under 17. Maybe even under 17. Because I, we all start there and I launched to a small list when I first launched as well. And I think we love to think, well I have to be a certain size before I do this. And one thing that I love about what you teach is different ways to launch no matter what size audience you have. And it grows and evolves with you. So could you talk to me about what you would say to someone who has a very small list?

Well, the great. First of all, there's some real positives about a small list, super positive things about a small list because generally they're a lot more engaged. It's like this some law of the universe where people when they're, it's like when they're on a small list they know they're on a small list and they know that you know them.

Why is that?

Yeah, it's weird. Well, I mean part of it is there's, there is a literal marketing. I would, I wouldn't call it a law, but a marketing principle of recency which means if someone has joined your list more recently, then on average they're going to be more engaged. So I think smaller lists tend to be newer lists so that you tend to have that recency. But there is something that it's just weird. It's in inexplicable. It's weird that so small lists do tend to be more responsive and you know like when I started. So like this whole product launch formula world here's. I've now sold over $100 million worth of my teachings, trainings, coaching. It's ridiculous. It's Just. It's embarrassing to say the numbers are so big, but the first time that I ever offered is the prototype of product launch formula was there's like a couple hundred people and six of them bought, and that ended up growing into $100 million in sales. So small lists are fine. They. Yeah. I mean, if you've got a gigantic list. Awesome, cool. You're going to use a different strategy. But if you have small list, we do what we call a seed launch. And the seed launch is, it's the simplest launch, and it allows you to actually make your initial sales even before you create your course or your training, and then use those first few people that buy from you. And if not enough people buy from you, you can always figure out a way to comp some people in to get a bigger enough cohort. So you're now teaching to a bigger cohort and you're getting interaction, and that's how you create a great product, a great teaching, a great training. Again, like, I don't want to keep going back to me, but product launch formula. When I first came out with that course, I'd been doing launches for eight years, but I had never taught it. So I found, you know, I took those six people, I comped in a few more people. Now I had this cohort that I was teaching to. And when you're in front of a group of people and you're teaching them and in front of is usually like on Zoom or some other, you know, some other live broadcast. If when you're teaching, then you get the feedback and now you're not just trying to record a course in a vacuum, and it'll become a much better training. And whatever it is, it's a course or a membership site or whatever, so you can start small. We have so many examples of people that have started small. And in fact, almost everyone does. And it's, it's generally, it's a safer way because you're, you're, you're. Now, if you're going live or you're doing video or whatever you're doing, you're playing in front of a smaller audience, which it can be a lot easier that way. And people can be a lot more forgiving when they feel like they know you.

You know, I think a lot of people look at educators or people who have product launches that are really successful, and they, they just kind of wonder why or how, and they'll kind of go in and try to pick apart what they did and figure it out. And once, you know, product launch formula you like, oh, that's what they're doing. And it can look so many different ways while the strategy is the same and I, I love it every time I see it. I know it's exactly what you teach and it's just been, you know, portrayed in a different way. Do you have any, I know you have immense success stories. Do any come to mind or at least industries that come to mind in the creative realm? Me, of course, I also teach plf. You've come and taught to my mastermind before and we've had some incredible success stories from there. But I'd love to hear more from you.

Yeah, I mean there, there are so many. So if, if I had to guess at rough percentages, there's probably about 30% that are in some type of a, a hard businessy. You know, it could be business, it could be investing something about money. You know, maybe about a third of our folks are in there and about a third are would be like in some type of. Like they're one on one particular practitioners. They're either helping people with their mental health or their physical health or their trainers or their relationships or that type of thing. They're, they're, they're chiropractors and massage therapists. They're rolfers sort of like that, that people that were one on one practitioners and now are building up and about a third in either art or hobby or craft of some sort. So we have, I mean you came out to my mastermind. You know, you've met, you know there we got knitting, we've got needlepoint, we have drawing, we have painting of abstract painting, watercolor painting, you know, singing crystal bowls. Did I say needlepoint? Calligraphy? Yeah. And actually then actually selling fine, fine art, selling paintings for you know, 10, 20, $30,000. So yeah, it's just all over the place.

Let's talk about launch masterclass. It's coming up. It only happens once a year. I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I did your free masterclass one year. The year before I actually took PLF and I just took voracious notes. You teach this workshop like your life depends on it. It is amazing. It is so jam packed full of information. But I also know you do this thing called the bubble of awesomeness where this workshop just feels like you're in this bubble of awesomeness right there with you and it's coming up soon. I believe it starts on the 17, is that right?

Yep. Yeah. We're going to start registering for open registration on the 17th and registration is basically put your email address in and, and you can get text updates and there's gonna be a Facebook group and everything. But the bare minimum is put your email address in and then the 21st is we'll drop lesson one and lesson one will be a video series. You can binge watch the whole thing, short little videos, anywhere from three to seven minutes. And it will walk you through the core of the formula. So what we call a sideways sales letter, which is basically how to build out a sequence of pre launch content. And I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but the pre launch content basically builds into the launch and gets people excited, delivers real value, helps people out. They let some get to know you, lets them get to understand you know, what you're talking about. So the sideways sales ladder, then we have this thing called the PS path. And the PS path is how you deliver a lot of great content without giving everything away. A lot of times people are like, like if I give all this content away, what am I going to have left to put in my course or my training or my, my membership? So the PS path will take care of that and then it, and then also teach the mental triggers. And these are just, these are just cognitive, we could call them cognitive biases that things that are going that we all have in our brains that, that create influence, that cause us to act, that allow us to make decisions, that allow us to shortcut decisions. And so there's a bunch of mental triggers. And when you use those mental triggers, it'll have people fall in love with you, it'll have them pay attention to you and it'll have them want to know more about you and about what you have to offer. So all of that's like on that first lesson, it's jam packed lesson, that's the 21st.

Wow.

And then I think we're going to come, we're going to have a Q and A, a live Q A with me a couple days later. And then on the 24th we'll go through the three primary types of launches and help people find which one will work for them the best. We were just talking the launch, we're just talking about where you're just starting out. It's called the seed launch. Yeah. And we'll go in depth in that. So that's again another video series. Lesson two is a full video series. Again you can have access to the entire lesson right away. Boom. Immediately. Then we'll do a Q A from that and then we'll do a live broadcast. I'm going to pull up my calendar, make sure I get this date right. The live. The, the, the. The third lesson is going to be a live training and that's going to be on Sunday, August 27th. And that's where I'll go deep into really the two biggest sequences. And I use that word sequence. Don't get intimidated. The whole idea is just like you don't ever want to depend on one type, one piece of marketing. That's hope marketing. If you just put out like one email, it says buy my stuff. That's hope marketing. So you always want to work within sequences. And there's two big sequences, one's pre launch sequence and one's called open cart. And then that broadcast On Sunday the 27th will. I'm going to go over those sequences and expect with a big focus on the open cart sequence. And then the next, the following week is basically sort of it's bonus week. So that's certainly on the 28th and it'll go through the 31st and that's it's bonus week. It's bonus time. So you have time to catch up on all that trainings. Plus we'll have some extra bonus trainings coming during that week.

I really mean it that this workshop was life changing for me. The workshop alone and your like product launch formula, I can with certainty say has been the number one thing I have recommended over the last five years to people who are trying to get started or trying to scale or trying to go really big. I was, I don't think you know this, but when I launched this very podcast in November of last year, out came my plf. And you know what I did was I went to the shot across the bow and I sent the shot across the bow email. I know you know what I mean, but nobody else is going to know what I mean. But I use PLF every time I do something big in my business and I can recommend it wholeheartedly. So thank you for sharing your heart with us today. Thank you for sharing about the masterclass. We're going to make sure anyone who's interested in, in even just interested. The other thing that I think is so fascinating, Jeff, is that you're doing what you're teaching and to see it, to see it in that perspective is truly so incredible. So if for no other reason that you just want to go see how it's done and done really well, we want you to register for the workshop. Jeff, any parting words to those who are listening?

I Guess you know that last point you made, Super. It is, it's very meta. I mean, I follow my own formula. There's just no. It works so well. There's no way. I cannot. So this launch master class I do once a year, and it is a launch for my product launch from the coaching program. So I will make an offer. So if you attend, you'll get to see me actually make an offer for product launch formula, the coaching program. You'll see me teach product launch formula, the strategy all the way through. And you know, Bonnie, a few minutes ago you said some of, like, I offer this class like my life depends on it. And I'm glad that comes through. But I think of it like my, my students lives depend on it. And, and I don't want to be too overly dramatic. I mean, they're, they're gonna, they'll, they'll live. They'll do just fine without me. But, and I know a lot of people will just go through and take the free train just like you did. And in that, in that purchase, that's fantastic because I'm just creating more value in the world. And I know that, I mean, not to be too altruistic, but that's all going to come back to me if I create that value in the world. And yeah, I'm doing it like, like, like my viewers lives depend on it. Because I know what having an online business can mean. You know, we were, our family was desperate. Not, I mean, it was a long time ago, but I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were desperate. And I've gone from there to having great abundance in my life and being able to work with amazing people like you and so many others who are doing great work in the world. And it's just like, it's just such a gift to be able to have a business where you can help people and make an impact and make a great living and they have freedom. Yeah. Just remember, it's a decision. It's a decision. Whatever, whatever you're going for in your life, just decide.

You get to decide. That is so powerful. Thank you, Jeff. We'll see you next time. Bye for now.