Jeff Walker Interview On A Proven Product Launch Plan - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #161

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Everybody.

It's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And here we are. I Love Marketing with a really good friend of ours who we've interviewed a couple of times for I Love Marketing. At least I think we have. Who can talk about anything related to making money online and offline. And he has transformed the lives of literally tens of thousands of people and is in the process of even expanding that greater. His name is Jeff Walker. He is the creator of the product launch formula. Jeff, welcome to another amazing episode of I Love Marketing.

I am excited. This is the first time on I Love Marketing where I've got both of you guys. So I'm very excited about this.

Yeah. Which is good. Look, like I said, I'm going to ask you to explain who the heck you are to people that really are brand new to this and haven't heard of you. Because in the marketing world everyone knows who you are. We can talk about a lot of stuff. But the one thing I really want to focus on is the subject of your awesome, amazing. And at the time that we're doing this episode, brand new book called Launch an Internet Millionaire Secret formula to sell almost anything online, build a business you love and live the life of your dreams. So I really want to kind of dive into that and recommend that everybody get the book. Rarely do we do a plug this strongly right out of the gate, but I'm just going to tell everyone, you can go and get the book@thelaunchbook.com and if you buy the book and send in your receipt from Amazon, you get all kinds of free goodies from Jeff. So it's a total no brainer and more. So if you really want to learn and understand marketing, watch how the masters of it actually sell and how they do it. So I'm just going to just put that plug right in there. So that being said, that's the real education.

No, it really is, Jeff.

You don't charge. Yeah.

People are like, oh, you're just trying to pitch us on something. It's like, well, let me think here. Teach a man to pitch and feed him for a lifetime. That is really the deal. And teach a person to launch and you can feed their families, you can feed their communities, you can do a lot of stuff. So certainly we all have things that we offer, sell, persuade, influence people to do. But this is, you're an industry transformer with the whole product launch formula. So again, I have to stop myself from babbling. Who is Jeff Walker for people that don't know who you are and what do you actually do and what is this new book about? That sort of stuff.

Okay. Yep. So, yep. I'm Jeff Walker and I sell stuff online primarily. So I started in 1996. I started my first online business back in 1996. At the time I was a stay at home dad. And I've got quite a crazy story. I never sold anything. I had no marketing experience. One day my wife came home, she was out supporting the family and she came home and she was in tears and she said, boy, I need you to help support the family. And at that time that was like taking a knife right to the gut. I mean, it was horrible to have my wife there in tears asking me to help support the family when at that point I was just home taking care of a couple little kids. The reason I was home taking care of a couple little kids is because I tried to make it in the corporate world and I just was a square peg in a round hole. Did not fit in there. And so I. I came up with this crazy plan where I would start publishing a newsletter online. I was publishing about the stock market. I studied the stock market quite a bit, had no experience. I wasn't a stockbroker or an investment advisor or anything like that, but I spent a lot of time studying it. So I started publishing about the market and I built up a following. I was publishing via email, I built up a following. And eventually this is in 1996, in January 1997, I decided, well, maybe I'll try to sell something to them. And. And I had no experience in sales or marketing and I was literally scared to ask for the order back then. And so I didn't know how to ask someone to give me money. I didn't have any confidence that people would give me money. So I started romancing them. I just started giving them great content, all kinds of additional great content. And eventually I asked them to buy a paid version of my newsletter and sent out that email. I didn't have a website or I had a website, but I didn't have a domain name. So I didn't have a dot com. It was like my personal site, tildaj Walker. I couldn't take credit cards, I didn't have a merchant account, so I asked them to send me a check. And the amazing thing is that a number of people did. And that first launch, which I didn't know it was a launch then, but now we call it a launch, I did $1,650 in sales and my life. It's funny about money because for some people, I think 650 bucks, like, why even bother? Other people are like, wow, that would change my life. And at that point I definitely fell into that would change my life territory. I was doing backflips to $1650 in sales in a week's time. It was incredible. But what was really incredible was I didn't think people would actually give me money for anything I would create. And here they were. And. And I thought, wow, if I did that once, I can do it again, and I can do it again and maybe I'll even get better at it. And so that was one moment of clarity I had right there that, well, if I figure out how to sell something, I can just keep on doing it. I keep getting better. And that's what happened. The next launch did 6,000 and 8,000. Then I did 34,000, which I'm pretty sure was more money than I ever made in an entire year. And I just kept on getting better at launching these products, coming out with new products and launching them. Eventually started, I went to a marketing seminar. I thought at that point everyone was doing this stuff. It was just me in my basement. I figured everyone must be doing this, but turns out others weren't. So I started teaching others how to do it. And it just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I did a launch that $106,000 in a week. I just couldn't believe that that helped me buy my house. By this time, my wife had retired. She was home with the kids full time. Yeah, it was crazy. Eventually met John Reese, who an incredible entrepreneur, showed him some of my stuff. He did a million dollars in 24 hours. Showed it to Frank Kern. I think he did over a million dollars in a couple days. And then in 2005, I eventually started teaching people how to do these launches. And it's been crazy since then.

In 2005, can you believe how fast that's come around? We're coming up on very soon now. Next month is the 10 year anniversary, right, Of John's million dollar day.

Yeah, that was the day marketing stood still. You know, that someone could make a million dollars in sales from, you know, with no staff. I think he had one person helping him or something like that. And these are for. This isn't like he did a million dollars in real estate sales. You know, he did a million dollars selling an information based product. And so, you know, the margin is huge. And. Yeah, so Now, I mean, just long story short, I sort of went through. Usually I take an hour to tell that whole story. But I know we want to pack in as much content as possible. But at this point, my students and clients have done over $500 million. That's half a billion dollars in launches in every kind of market you can imagine. All kinds of different products, some of them products, services, some online, mostly online, but some offline. And it's just been a crazy ride.

Yeah, that's pretty. That's pretty awesome. Well, Dean, you want to say something? Because I've got a whole slew of questions I could hit Jeff with.

I see your list. So go ahead. Let's ask him the next question.

Okay, so. Well, first off, one thing I want to put out there for people that aren't in the information publishing expert business, book authors, coaches, you know, things like that, which is really totally relevant for my viewpoint is understanding the whole mechanics. And the blueprint you have is critical for any business. But I just want anyone that's thinking, well, I'm a brick and mortar business or I'm not in information publishing. How does this apply to me? What would you say to that?

Yeah, totally. Great question. The thing is, I call this the product lunch formula. What it is, it's this concept of providing great value and having that value put together into a sequence that naturally leads into a sale. So there's a lot of people out there that are all about creating value and delivering great stuff. And there's other people that are all out there, great salespeople about making the sale. And this is where you sort of put the two together. So I've had people, I've had doctors use this. I've had plastic surgeons use this. I've had dentists use this. I've had jewelry stores use it. We've had a guy selling marching band accessories use it. So it's definitely. I mean, these days we're in such a noisy marketing environment. There's so much coming at us. It's not like 20 years ago. We didn't have text and we didn't have email at the level we've got it. We didn't have YouTube. We didn't have social. We didn't have 500 channels on TV. We didn't have Netflix. We didn't have instant messaging. We didn't have texting. We didn't have advertising on airplane trays. It's everywhere. And so if you're going to cut through that fog, you don't cut through the fog just by Shouting louder. And that's what most people are out there just trying to shout, buy my stuff, Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff. And be just a little louder than the next guy. Doesn't work. What you need is you need to make a connection. I love marketing. Look at the amazing influence and connection you guys are making just by putting out fantastic content. And you guys almost never offer something, but when you actually do, it's like you got people begging you to give you money. And so that doesn't work just for podcasts or just for online or just for information products. All business is Internet business right now. And with the Internet, you can reach people, you can connect with people, and you can do it more quickly and interactively than any other media. And this is about taking product launch. Informing is about taking that and programming it, engineering it. So you create the message you want over a sequence, turn your marketing into an event, and bring them into your product. So they're predisposed to just love you and they can't wait to buy your product.

You know what's important though, about that too, Jeff, is that you see so many people just copy what they think is the mechanics of it. They'll send out three videos and then they'll ask people.

Are you there, Dean? Yeah, we just lost. We just lost you mid sentence where you said, ask. Dean sent out three videos and ask you. And then we lost.

We shouldn't even edit that. We should just leave it in so people can see that it's Dean's fault that we had that.

Dean is just so on top of it. But really behind the scenes, Dean, he's hanging on by his fingernails, right?

Exactly. Quit trying to be a big shot, Dean. Just say what you're gonna say and make it powerful for our listeners.

They copy what they see, they send out, they put up three videos and then they send out and expect people to buy. But what they're missing, they're missing the formula, part of the product launch formula, because it's not just send out three videos and then ask people to buy. I mean, there's, there's a very specific way that those videos are engineered to get the right message there. And that's what you've so brilliantly figured out, is the, the sequencing and the psychology and the communication that all builds to the moment when you ask people to buy.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if it's just a matter of three videos, you know, any YouTube channel with three videos would have this magic sale at the end. It doesn't work that way. I mean, It's a structured sequence, just like a sales letter has a sequence. I mean, it's what I call. This whole thing is what I call a sideways sales letter. And that's starting to get a little dated because people aren't using sales letters as much as using sales videos now. But a sales letter has a structure to it, and you got to start with a headline, and you have to make this promise and pull people in. And that's the way it is, that first video. So I'll just go through it really quick just so people know what we're talking about. That first video is really about what we call the opportunity. And a lot of people get squeamish about the opportunity. Another way to think about it is the transformation. What transformation is your product going to make in someone's lives? A lot of people are like, well, my product doesn't make sense transformation. And I'm like, well, it better if you're going to sell the darn product. Someone's life easier has to get. They have to get happier and enjoy their life more. You have to take away some pain from them no matter what you're selling. You could be selling golf clubs. It doesn't matter. I once had a live event of mine. I asked, okay, does anyone out in the room think that, like, your. Your product doesn't. Doesn't provide any transformation to people? And one guy raised his hand, you know, which is awesome. I love it. You know, he had the guts to say, yeah, I don't see. Like, okay, what's your. What product are you selling? And he's like, I sell private air travel. I'm like, oh, my goodness, wait a second. It's like, you sell private air travel and it doesn't change people's lives in any way at all? Like, give me a break. And he's like, well, now that you put it that way. So anyways, so all of us have to sell some kind of transformation. That's what people are buying from us. They are. They are buying. You know, I just got a. A solar wireless keyboard yesterday. I bought. I deserted the Apple brand. I was sick of replacing batteries in my keyboard. It's like, I'm taking batteries out. I'm like, it's just wasteful. And I'm like, I hate it. And I hate the hassle of having to change those darn batteries. So I bought this keyboard that has a little solar cell so I don't have to put in batteries anymore. Does that change my life? Yes, it changes my life. I feel better because I'm not being wasteful with batteries, and I don't have to go through this hassle of changing out batteries every few weeks or whatever. So whatever we're selling has to have some kind of transformation, some kind of opportunity for their lives, your customers, your clients, your prospects, lives to change. And so that first video really is about communicating that opportunity and really showing people that their life can change and making them believe. Because a lot of times they don't believe. I don't believe I can play the guitar. I don't believe I can ride my horse and win in horse ballet or whatever. So that's that first video. The second video is really. It is about that transformation and making that transformation real. Often we'll use case studies, we'll show examples, and we're delivering real content, especially on the second video, real meaty content. And, you know, it's like Eben Pagan, a friend of all of ours, says, you know, move the free line. That's the idea of the more free stuff that you give away, the more quality free information that you give away, especially in that second video, then the easier the sale and the higher price you can get in your eventual sale. Then that third video is what we call the ownership experience. That's where you actually make the pivot to starting to make the sale. You let them. That's when you overtly tell them something's coming. And then you're really showing them what it's like to own that product. You might even be, this is a great time to be doing demonstrations of your product. And then that all leads into the sales video at the end. The sales letter is actually the fourth piece. And that's a whole nother thing. But basically you're trying to draw a story arc through these three videos. And so it's not just like three distinct videos. It's like there's an entire story arc. And all the way through, you're building anticipation. You're hitting all these mental triggers right from the beginning. In that first video, generally you're hitting authority and reciprocity. And then as you get closer into the second video, third video, now you're starting to build. You continue to build authority, but towards that end now you're building social proof and scarcity and community. And there's all kinds of other mental triggers that would take us three days to go into. But that's generally the sequence early on. You're building authority. You're showing that you just by putting out great content, you're showing authority. It's like, I Am an authority here. I am. Look at this great stuff I'm giving you. And then you're building reciprocity by giving to people so that they eventually want to give back. You're building up interaction through comments, comments, community. Then towards the end, you're building social proof. All these comments keep coming in, people are excited. And then you move towards that social proof. And scarcity, scarcity being like, you know, if you don't give someone a reason to act right away, they're not going to act.

So.

Yep. So I know I just went through a lot there in a few minutes, but I just wanted to give everyone that grounding on what we're talking about.

Well, yeah, I mean, this could be broken down and we're actually going to do that a little bit because it'll make sense. And I want to talk about a couple of things that you had mentioned just right from the beginning, is that selling is not yelling. And that needs to be understood. One thing that I've been talking about a lot lately because for years, so many people have a resistance to the word sales and selling and the words marketing. And of course, me and Dean, we started, I love marketing because we wanted to, for lack of a better word, rebrand the way that people think about selling and marketing because we know how critical it actually is. Without sales and marketing, it's the same as not having oxygen for the human organism. A business can't survive without it. And it's that critical. It's as critical to the growth and thriving of your business as it is your body, as oxygen is. I've been saying the last couple of months that think of selling as influence and think of marketing as storytelling, there's nothing that's going to be bad about you becoming better at influencing. And there's nothing bad that's going to come out of you telling a better story. And if you're not getting the response you want, you need to tell a better story. Not only do you teach people that and how to do it, and that's one of the reasons why people really need to go to thelaunchbook.com and just watch what you say, what you do, how you do it, because they are going to see that process, but when they read the book, you take people through kind of like your blueprint on how to do this. And that is all incredibly valuable and useful. Beyond that, if you don't understand this and if you don't learn it and you still plan on having a website and you still plan on communicating to people via Social media or through email or however. I mean, you're putting yourself at a huge disadvantage to not learn and understand this. And it gives you an advantage on how to see whatever you're selling, Anyone listening to this, whatever you're selling, this is going to enhance how you think about it, how you sell it, how you present it, how you package it. It is a process. It is a process. If you install a better process into what it is you're doing or a proven process. Because this ain't like ideas here. This is something that you have, you know, like you mentioned, you know, half, half a billion dollars have been sold using this process. It's just going to give people that sort of power. And so one of, one of our jobs here, and I want to touch on this because you mentioned it, is how you actually show people how to give away and how to create, you know, give away some of their best stuff, teach people things, walk them through it, while simultaneously instilling all of these psychological triggers. You like, reciprocity that you mentioned. And that's what we did with.

I love marketing.

I mean, we never said anything about anything for selling. Me and Dean even had this conversation. We're like, let's just not mention anything about what we're selling and let's wait for people to just say, hey, will you guys try to sell us something? If people go back to the original comments on itunes, they start popping up. We're like, I don't get what the hell you guys are doing here. Will you please try to sell us something? We'll buy anything. Now the point I want to make about that, is anyone listening? If you're not getting clients responding to you that way, wouldn't that be really cool to know how to do it? And Jeff's the guy as it comes to product launches. He's the one that invented it, perfected this formula. Not because he even thought he would even be doing, writing a book on this. I mean, you just needed to run your business better. You needed to survive, you needed to eat. The commonality between all three of us is we're all converts of our own system. We never read a book and decided to sell a watered down version of that or a course or seminar. These are innovations that we put together from thousands of hours of studying and learning and running a company and trying to just figure out how to do it better. And then boom, once we learned that, we started sharing it with other people. And lo and behold, some of these people give us money for it. It's that sort of thing. I just wanted to kind of ramble.

About that, you know. Sorry, go on, Dean.

I thought.

One question to clarify something, Jeff. So if people go and they opt into your list, do you charge them extra for them to watch you launch your stuff?

No, no, I actually don't charge for.

Them to watch you do that.

Right.

Because that's.

I mean, Joe and I do that same thing. We don't charge people to watch them, for them to watch us launch stuff or to pitch stuff.

No extra charge for that. Right. Yeah. You know, the funny thing is, is like, yes, I basically, I'm that carpenter that has just got a hammer and so everything looks like a nail. Right. So, I mean, every time I roll something out, it's like, I'm gonna use my stuff. Do I use my stuff because I'm trying to prove it works? No, I'm using it because it works really well. And, you know, it's literally made me tens of millions of dollars. But, you know, every time airplanes go.

To fly, they don't try and invent new rules of aeronautics. They use the ones that are proven.

Yeah, right. Right. So, yeah, I consistently use my own stuff. And it can. I mean, with this book, you know, it's. It's. I've never written a book before. I consider myself a publisher. I've been in the publishing industry since, you know, since 1996. But this is the first phys. This is the first time I've used a publisher other than my own, than myself. And that's a whole other adventure that all of a sudden, I don't want to sidebar too much. But it's crazy because I'm used to having control and seeing all the data, and all of a sudden it's a bit out of my control because I'm using a publisher. But anyways, I've never written a book. I'm completely unknown as far as New York is considered New York publishing and all that. And with no media, with no tv, no radio, no ads, no pr, nothing, I basically, in the first week the book was released, I put it on the bestseller list. It's a number one best seller at Barnes and Noble. It's a best seller for marketing sales at Amazon and for small business at Amazon. It's on the USA Today best seller list. I've done that simply by following my process. You know, in my process, it's not. Product launch form is not designed to sell physical books. But I just adapted it. And, you know, I had. Frankly, I had some help, you know, Brendan Burchard who spent, you know, who studied my stuff and has done great launches using my stuff. He took it and he put in some tweaks for a book launch. And I basically said, you know, Brendan basically showed me all his tweaks. So I. I basically am using Brendan's version of my version of doing a launch, and boom, we're on the bestseller list.

You got to love it when other people learn your stuff and then they add improvements to it, and then you collaborate together and you keep adding more improvements to it, which is going back to Dean's comment about, you're not charging anyone to watch this stuff. One thing that amuses me more and more, and I'm becoming more and more vocal about it, is when there's people that throw up resistance to people that are in the business of teaching someone how to build and sell and grow and market a company or a product or service or whatever, and they're somehow like, oh, they're going to try to sell me something. It's like, would you ever go to someone who is going to teach you how to dance and the person would never dance? I mean, they would kind of talk about dancing around the side, but they would never really dance. They wouldn't show you how to dance. I mean, they just wouldn't, you know, they would just kind of. Because, you know, dancing, God forbid, that might be shameful, you know, I mean, no, if you're going to go learn how to dance, you want to see someone dance, you want them to show you how to do it. And the same thing here. So, I mean, I love watching people pitch. And what I'm looking for is in the process of them doing their thing, is it evoking an emotional reaction to me that makes me desire what it is that they're selling. And if you're not creating and instilling that sort of desire in the way that you do it, in the process that you do it, then there's something wrong. There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. There isn't any. And it doesn't matter how good your product or service is or what it does until somebody actually engages with you and gives you money for it. Now, that starts, Jeff, with building a list. You said it in the very beginning, when you were in your basement, you actually had started publishing information about the market and you started to build a list. So for all the people out there, I want to actually talk about that because, you know, having the greatest thing in the world is useless if you don't have, you know, it's like the best message in the world is useless if you shout it at deaf ears or you shout it at no one. So having a list is critical. So how does someone get started building their list? Because that's where your process really comes into play, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing is you're not in the game unless you've got a list. And frankly, unless you've got an offer, that's what you know, until you get there, you're just, you're just hacking around, you're just a complete amateur. And you know, there's, we know what Steven Pressfield and Mark Twain say about amateurs. I mean, you know, to get in the game you need to start building a list. And we're not talking about social media. You know, I mean I have helped out, let's see, I don't know, I think I've done, I lost count somewhere in the range of 13 or 14 or 15 consecutive million dollar launches, many of those multi million dollar launches. I have also gotten to see the inside of probably 100 other million dollar launches just by doing a little consulting or just coaching some friend, you know, friends through them. And you know, at the heart of every single one of them, without fail, 100% of them is an email list. It's not a social media list. It's not a YouTube channel, it's not Facebook fans, it's not people on Twitter. A person on an email list is worth a hundred times what someone following you on Facebook's worth. It all starts with building that list. Building a list is pretty darn simple. It's putting together a squeeze page which makes an offer for something of some value and in exchange for an email address and then running traffic at that. And frankly the game right now for that in terms of running traffic is Facebook traffic. This game changes over time, but right now Facebook's the quickest and easiest and cheapest way to drive people into your squeeze page. Then when you back that up with a good follow up that actually sells, eventually it could be a launch sequence is my favorite. Then you can monetize that, you can break even on that advertising really quickly and then you can just turn up that spigot. I mean it just comes down to math then. But yeah, list building is pretty darn simple. At the core of it, it's like what are you going to offer when people come to your site if they give you that email address? It's that simple.

You said a couple of really interesting things there. That an email list is 100 times more valuable than Facebook or Twitter. And you kind of went over that. You also said, right now, Facebook, the way that you're using it, is the cheapest way to actually drive people to your squeeze page. But the real emphasis on an email list. Here's one thing that I notice in people that really take action and people that don't. We all have a friend named Jer, and Jer has this line where he always says, for those that get it, no explanation is needed. For those that don't, no explanation will do. And I know a lot of people in the world that are more interested in being well known versus well paid. Now, if you ask them what's more important, money or a big following on Facebook, or accolades, or people that just think you're great, they'll say, no, no, money. Money is really important. But you just look at their actions. You look at where they spend their time. You look at their ego, you know, that needs to be fed in a certain way. And certainly, I mean, I think everyone, you know, that writes a book or teaches people stuff loves admiration and, you know, fans and all of that stuff because, you know, heck, if you didn't want to talk to anyone else or share things with other human beings, you wouldn't do any of that stuff. But that being said, it's keeping your ego in check and realizing that line that you said there. And the reason I'm making such a. A big deal about it to the point of redundancy, is that if you can't get that, you're completely screwed. I mean, you just, you're completely screwed. And I don't mean just like, you know, build an email list, but just knowing, you know, like, even the 8020 principle, like, where how are you going to interact with these people? I mean, you know, I don't have a ton of people currently on Twitter, but there's probably like 23,000. And when it comes to making money, like, if I need to, like, make money money, I can pull out 20 emails that I can select that I can assure you I'll get more impact with a message to those 20 people than if I went to 27,000 people on Twitter. It's night and day difference, and some people just cannot grasp that. So I wanted to just ask you explain that much deeper. Jeff, I know your book thoroughly goes through this and this is what you've taught people for years, but I just want people to really get that, because if they can get this, they'll see, see why they need to take the product launch formula process and put it in place if they can get that part.

But you know, the funny thing is, Joe, is that, like, if you want that popularity, the best way to get that. I mean, let's just say someone's like, yeah, I just don't care about money. I just want the popularity. I want people following me. Well, the best way to get that is to put your math together and build that list. And then, I mean, I. Yeah, you've got 23,000 people following you on Twitter, which is like, way more than most people. And you're getting that by all your other actions, by what you do via email and by your positioning in the market. I'm the same way. I don't know how many people are, I don't know, 30,000 something on Twitter. I've never done a thing with it, and it's just because of my positioning, and I have that positioning because of my email list. So the easiest way, if you want to have that social following, is to build a real business. And a real business is based on math. And the math is based on bringing people into your world. If someone looks at your Facebook page or your Twitter or a tweet or even your blog, the one thing for sure is they're going to look at it and they're going to leave it. They're not going to stay on your blog for the rest of their lives. They will, at some point click away from that blog, and once they click away from it, they will never come back, ever. 99.9% of the people. You are out of their mind. No matter how great your blog post is, there's 500 other great things happening that day to distract them. They will forget you. That's why if you look at your browser, you've probably got like 50 tabs open, right? Because the reason you got all those tabs open is because you're never going to go back to those tabs. So you don't want to close and you don't want to lose it, right? But eventually your browser is going to crash, you're going to turn off your computer or something. You're never going to go back to those, ever.

Ever.

But if when someone comes to your blog or someone comes to your Facebook page, you push them to sign up for your email list, now you've got permission to send a reminder that you exist. You're in control of the conversation, you're in control of bringing them back.

I got to say something to this, too, because you know our friend Tim Ferriss. Now, Tim, you know you're speaking at my Genius Network annual event this year, Jeff, which is awesome. Tim is going to speak there. Tim has this, you know, huge blog following and everything. And Tim captured emails right from the very beginning, but he never did anything with the emails. He didn't want to send an email out. He was apprehensive about it. Whereas you, you know, you've captured all these emails and, and I can assure you Tim is a very well known guy compared to you in terms of the public eye. And Tim is very smart. I'm not saying this to be critical of Tim to a degree because Tim has his, you know, people do things for their reasons, not my reasons or anyone else's reasons. You know, the bottom line is though, when it comes from money, Tim had, he communicated via email to all, including me. Because I remember when I first met Tim, I mean, I even helped him with, you know, his first book. Oh well, we've helped him with all his books. But you know, it's like I opted into his blog where, you know, he was capturing email, never received an email. And I would be, Tim, you know, why are you not, you know, I don't want to come across as, you know, whatever. And I'm like, well, you want people to read your shit, right? And he's like, yeah, you know, we'll send an email. And you know, now to this day, you know, for as famous as he became, I mean, I guarantee you there are millions, probably tens of millions of dollars that were never captured because some people were really hot on his blog. Then he wrote a subject about, you know, he went from the four Hour Workweek to the four Hour Body to the four Hour Chef and all that stuff. And a lot of people just drop along the way. And including myself, I don't always read Tim's blog, but I have a personal relationship with him. I mean, I, you know, I did a nine day vacation to Vietnam with him. I mean, I've spent a lot of time with the guy and I don't remember to go to his blog. But if he simply sent out an email saying, hey, I posted a new blog post, guess what, I would be a hell of a lot more engaged. But if it's a perfect example. Now I'm just saying that because a lot of people could be like, oh, I wish I could have a following like Tim Ferriss. Because if I did, I could make a lot of money and I could say, you know what? From a list standpoint, watch a guy like Jeff Walker. If it's about money, if it's about fame. If it's about speaking at Stanford, if it's about having a big blog following or whatever, then it depends on who you want to learn from. But, I mean, that's a perfect example. And I hope Tim actually hears this, because I would love to see Tim take his list, which he still has, and just start monetizing that darn thing.

Right? Yep. I remember talking to Tim. I think it was about two or three years ago, about this. I'm like, literally without. You know, you send like one email, like two emails a month, and it's going to be worth 5 million bucks a year to you. And that's without even trying. And, you know, I mean, he's made it work, but he's. He's the exception that proves the rule. He's like one in a billion and he's leaving at least 50%.

He could.

He could double his business if he started using email.

Totally.

Yeah. Some people just.

Maybe we should have an intervention in August here. We should. We just kidnap him?

Nah, he doesn't deserve it. I mean, why should we try to help him make more money anyway? I mean, I've, you know, I've pitched the hell out of Tim's stuff for him. I mean, like, as far as I'm concerned, you know, that doesn't matter.

I mean. Yeah, now we're on the pitch of my stuff. It's all about my stuff now. Yeah, enough about that. Well, let me.

Dean, were you going to ask him something? Because I can keep rolling here, as you know.

No, that was a brilliant. That was a brilliant point. The interesting thing is, once you've figured out how to get somebody to leave their name and their email address, that's really your first attempt at learning to think from their perspective. Because in order for somebody to give you their name and their email address, you have to go through the exercise of giving them something of value in exchange for that. So it gives you a good sense.

Of.

What they respond to, what they're interested in.

Dean, that's a great point. I think. I think that all of my success, and to me, the success I've had, again, people are funny about money. But for me, I literally cannot hardly. I cannot believe the success I've had. It's just crazy, because where I started, it was so humble. But in any case, I think all my success is due to two things. One is from day one, I don't know why, but I've always focused on building a list. And number two is I've always focused on Selling people and giving them what they want. And I mean, that sounds like, silly, but so many times people, like, they sit there and create this massive. They try to create this business or this product just out of their own head. They're just like, I think people are going to want this thing. And then they go and they spend six months or nine months and they create it. And it's like, well, that's not the way to do it. If you put up a squeeze page and no one is opting in for whatever the offer is on that page, then it's not a great offer. So you just learn something very, very valuable, and that's the way you iterate and figure out what your market really wants. What are their hot buttons? What keeps them up at night? What excites them? What are their hopes, their dreams? What are their fears? When you start speaking to those things and understand what those things are now you can start to put together offers that work both offers on your squeeze page, but then offers for your product. So that constant interaction and dialogue through watching how people react and what they write back to you, that is absolute genius. And I think that's what both of you guys are really genius at. And I guess it goes back to that comment, Joe, that you mentioned earlier. It's like we all sort of came up through the trenches and had to figure this out to, like, put food on the table. We were doing that for years and years, all three of us, before we ever started teaching any of this stuff.

Yeah, let me say something about that too, Jeff, because I think that's why so many people have gravitated to. I mean, all of our individual stuff is people that learn something with the intention of, I'm going to try to learn this trick and then I'm. Or this gimmick or this strategy or this process, it could be, you know, it could be reasonable or unreasonable. It could be, you know, good intentions or bad intentions. But when people want. What I mean is people want to learn this thing so that they can sell how to do this thing to other people tend to have a far different experience than people that actually learn something because they actually need a solution for themselves. And when you can create a solution for yourself and then start selling that solution or providing that solution to other people. Because the truth is, no matter how anyone wants to look at me, you and Dean or any of these launch guys, because there's a lot of people that always attack the top people in an industry because they're the most successful at it, all of the Stuff that you're selling, all of the stuff that we sell, even though we use pretty cool, systematic, methodical ways and formulas on how to sell it, most of the people that benefit from what it is we do never give us a penny. I mean, you put so much free content out into the world. Me and Dean put so much free content out into the world. I mean, there are tons of people that have transformed their lives and their businesses and their incomes in their industries that have never paid any of us a penny because of just the free content that we do along the way and the people that really gravitate to it. Plus everything we sell, we guarantee it. So, you know, someone was attacking someone we know. Well, I'm not going to mention his name, but he was literally getting attacked by a government agency. And now some people deserve to be attacked. I mean, they're just scumbags. They're unethical. They screw people over. Now this person has like millions of customers and 100% guarantees everything. And they were like attacking him about like, oh, he's doing this. And I said, you know, I'd love to have them go and do surveys of people that get college degrees, how much time they spend in college, how much money they spent at the college, and actually how many people actually got a result from it versus some information publisher, some seminar leader, some book person, and then compare the results and see who actually. Well, first off, it would always be better results for someone that's selling something, something that is good. But secondly, this person 100% guarantees everything that they sell. If someone doesn't like it, they get all their money back. What are you bitching about along the way? Learning what you have to do because you need to survive, you just develop a much different experience. I tend to trust people that are selling how to advice because they themselves needed to create a solution for themselves, and then they started sharing that solution with other people versus someone, because you've got a ton of knockoffs, too. How many people have tried to study the product launch formula, then hold themselves out as the product launch formula expert. I mean, you know, but it's like if you really want to.

What?

You know, Do I know what it is?

Yeah.

Well, I call it the difference between people who are giving book reports, which is they've studied something intellectually and then they're repackaging it and selling their own version of it, versus field reports, which are guys who've actually been out and done it, and sharing their reports from the field. That's far more useful. So that's kind of the parameters when you're looking at something is, you know, what's the, what's the evidence of that? Is it a book report or a field report? You know?

Yeah. So by the way, I went on a total, I went on a total tangent there, but I want to, I want to ask you about. Yeah, of course. What if someone doesn't have a product yet and what do you recommend they do? I mean, what if they're like, literally they're looking at this and listening to I love marketing or watching, you know, reading your book because they're trying to figure out what business they want to be in. They're a brand new entrepreneur or they're someone that wants to shift into another career or another industry.

Right. Yeah, great, Great question. I mean, and you know what? I was there because I. Boy, the first product I bought about marketing was called turn your computer into a money machine. And. Yeah, turn your computer into a money machine. It came on a floppy drive, a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. It cost $95 plus $4.50 shipping and handling, $99.50. And I got the ad for that thing and it came in via email. And I printed out that email. It's like five pages long. And I read that thing. I must have read. It was a sales letter. I must have read that sales letter 10, 15, maybe 20 times. Just over and over read that. I'm like. And it was basically taught the basics of information marketing. And I'm like, it's got to be a scam. This has got to be, you know, But I read it over. Then I'm like, could this possibly work? And then I started thinking, well, you know what? But at that time, I was studying the stock market, so I knew the Wall Street Journal had been published since like 1896. I'm like, if they've been publishing for 100 years, then someone must be making money off of publishing. And if they can do it, then why can't I? So eventually I bought that product, and it actually was a very good product. It's all the basics of information marketing. And that's what led me to starting to publish in 1996. Now the funny thing is, I went back and I looked and I actually bought that product. I think it was in 1995. So it took me a year of like, wow, I got it. I'm like, this is gonna work. And then just thinking and thinking and thinking about it before my wife came home and sort of. And she said in tears and said, I need you to help support the family. You need to do something. And then I got really desperate at that point, and that's when I said, okay, I'm going to move. I'm going to do something. Because I've been thinking about it for a year. For a year I've been thinking, what could my product be? What could my niche be? Even though I study in the market incessantly, the stock market incessantly, I'm like.

What could my product?

So I finally said, okay, I'm just going to start publishing about the market, and then I'm going to figure out the next thing from there. So, I mean, for someone who is, who is like, I don't. I just want to get started. I mean, you have to get. You have to get desperate, I think. I mean, you just, you really have to want it. And the reality is, I mean, what. The easiest way to create something is what I call the seed launch. And it's the most basic launch where you're basically going out to your. The very smallest following you've got or just generating a tiny little following. And it could be, you know, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred people, and then making an offer for a product. And what the product is, is a series of teleseminars or webinars. And if you can call, if you can use the telephone, you can do a teleseminar. And then you offer a series of five teleseminars on whatever topic you want to teach, whether it's growing big tomatoes or playing blues, lead guitar or horse ballet, or how to use your iPad effectively. But the beautiful thing is all you have to do is take your topic area. So, Joe, I'm answering this from an information marketing standpoint, but if you say, okay, I'm going to teach how to grow big tomatoes, you just come up with, like, split your knowledge into, like, five general topic areas, or maybe it's playing blues lead guitar. So, like, the first class would be, you know, playing pentatonic scales, and the second one would be alternate picking. And I don't know what the third, fourth, and fifth would be, but you come up with five major topics, and then you go through the sales process, which is very simple for this type of a launch. You go through the launch process, you bring in. You're looking to bring in anywhere from ideally 30 to 40 people into the program. The first time I did one of these, I only got six people to join, so I comped in another 20 or 30, probably about 30 more, so that I had some critical mass. And Then you do these teleseminars. But each step of the way, before the first call, it'd be like, hey, the first call, I'm going to be teaching you about pentatonic scales. What's your number one question about pentatonic scales? And so you survey everyone. They tell you what their biggest questions and concerns are, and then that's what you talk about on that call. So if you can get on that call and talk and answer questions for 40 to 60 minutes, then you just repeat the process for each call where you're basically saying, what do you need to know about this topic? Your people are telling you what they need to know. You're creating a product at this point. You're recording these calls. You can get them transcribed, but it's perfectly tuned to what the market wants. Because each step of the way you've surveyed people, after five calls, you've got a five hour audio product. If you did webinars, you've got a five hour video product. You've got, you know, a 70 to 100 page book, depending on how fast you speak, just because, just from the transcripts. And you're in the game. You are in the game with a product that's built for what the market wants. Yep, I know. I love it. Yeah. So just, just a capstone on that. I did that when I started teaching product launch formula. You said, I've been doing these launches, but I didn't know how to teach product launch formula. I knew how to do them, so I did this. But I was only able to sell six people into that program. Sold six people into that program. I comped in probably 30, maybe 35 people. So I got that critical mass. The critical mass is so people are responding to your questions and they're on your calls. And just six, just six sales. And now I've had about 11,000 people go through product launch formula. I've sold over $20 million of the product based on that first seed launch and six sales.

Yeah, see, there you go. I mean, you got to plant your seed somewhere and you got to nurture it and you got to grow it.

And you got to be what?

And that sounds really like almost sort of like. I won't even say, dean, don't let your mind go there. Seriously, God loves America. There possibly could be children listening right now. Okay, so just don't even go there. No, but what I always have to remind myself of is I learned how to do marketing selling carpet cleaning services. I mean, nobody wakes up every day and says, man, I can't wait till someone spills something on my carpet or the kids go back to school or whatever Thanksgiving comes around so I can clean the carpets. I mean, this is like selling something nobody wants to buy. And you have to. You mentioned this thing about maybe have to be. I don't know exactly how you phrased it, but you have to be desperate. You have to be operating maybe out of adversity versus desperation versus inspiration. And you're right. I think most of the time, I mean, sometimes people are doing really well and they're like, oh, I mean, boy, I just have an insight. But frankly, you have to tap into whatever stamina that you have given the choice of eating or starving. Most people won't starve if there's an alternative. And so wherever you're at, even if you feel incapable or whatever, to whatever degree, you can tap into that. That's where you have to go for it. And some people have the juice and other people don't. Some people, as our friend Dan Sullivan says, battery's included. Other people, battery's not included. So whatever you need to do. The amateur thing you mentioned with Steven Pressfield, you know, amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals do it with a headache. So a lot of this innovation that you're talking about here, people don't realize the sheer amount of effort and learning and struggle and hours and testing and tweaking and failure and, you know, wanting to give up and everything that finally, you know, made it work. And that's why there are certain books where even if there's a pitch set up in it, you're just wanting people to buy your stuff. What people don't realize is that what they can buy for. What the heck is the cost of the book? The list price on it, I think is like $17.95 or something, but the actual price of your book is, like, on Amazon or whatever, is dirt cheap. And they're literally getting a $20 million formula laid out for less than 15 bucks or something. If anyone that is listening to this is not motivated enough to go to the launchbook.com and get the book based on what I just said. What the hell are you listening to this for? Really? You're not having to pay me a deed to provide free podcast services here. So you're doing us a favor. This ain't like an affiliate thing. If you go and buy Jeff's book, he's not giving us a penny. It's just like we're doing because we want to help our audience and we want to help people with this. And, you know, all of us started in, you know, and lived in the trenches in order to figure out what it is we do. And as I say that, I'm just thinking people should be sending us money just because we're just such honorable beings.

And because we've got such great wit, we're so funny, we can just amuse ourselves at least.

All right, let's see.

Go ahead, Jeff. I just want to add one last thing. My life changed, literally, when I bought Turn youn Computer into a Money Machine. I mean, that changed everything. But even a step before that, something I learned, and it took me. It's embarrassing how old I was before I learned this, because I had nothing going on in my life. I was at home taking care of a couple of kids. And that's great, and that's honorable, and it's fantastic. But. But it really wasn't really going anywhere. And frankly, I wasn't even that good taking care of the kids. And then basically I bought Tony Robbins program off the late night infomercial. And those are the two purchases I made that changed everything. But what I learned from Tony, beyond all this really cool stuff, is that no matter where you want to go, what you want to do in your life, there is someone else that has dedicated the vast majority of their life to becoming a master at that. And all you have to do is you pay that person. You buy their book, you attend their lecture, you go to their class, you buy their whatever for pennies. You're tapping into their 10,000 hours of genius for pennies on a dollar. You can tap into so much wisdom, and it's out there. And I don't care if you want to play guitar, if you want to ride mountain bikes, you know, if you, if whatever you. If you want to have a more spiritual life, if you want to meditate, if you want to be able to identify food out. And when you're hiking in the wilds, doesn't matter what it is. Someone has invested most of their life into becoming an expert. And they're willing to teach you. Yeah. And. Yeah, just knowing that one thing will change everything in your life.

Exactly. It is because any problem in the world, someone else has figured out how to solve it and how to improve it. If they've not 100, if there's not 100% solution, and to not avail yourself of that, if you really are interested in that or want that, or want to produce the results in the quickest, fastest, most intelligent way to not, you know, avail yourself of that is just Total insanity. And so, you know, there's so much more that we could. We could ask you and talk about here, but I want to be cognizant of the time. Did I say that word right? Can you pronounce that word?

You nailed it, dude.

Will our transcriber get that right? Almost everything that someone would initially need to know about just understanding this whole game of product launches is in your book. Me and Dean gave you an endorsement for it where we said, it's on your book. This isn't a book as much as it is a recipe and a blueprint for changing you and your family's financial fortune. It breaks down everything from the. The seed launch where you start completely from scratch, all the way up to the mega JV launches that can bring in millions of dollars in a matter of days. The process definitely takes some work, but if you get the process down and use it, then you can have nearly instant sales and momentum in your business. Not only will following Jeff's formula make your success more possible, it will make it more probable. So buy Jeff's book. After all, he's the guy who sold a million dollars of his product in a single hour. Launch has both our full endorsements, and it can. Can change your business and your life. And so, again, the website is thelaunchbook.com and I guess the last thing I want to discuss with you is what is someone going to have? Like, where wouldn't this work? And what would someone. So that's the first question. The second is, where wouldn't it work? And who is this not for? And what's someone going to have to give up other than some of their time to read your book and learn the process, you know, because if someone, after listening to us, still is not motivated, there's some sort of fear or some sort of overwhelm or something that stands in their way of taking this on? And we would like people to take it on because, you know, as much as I goof around and me and, you know, Dean joke around and all that, I mean, we're here to change people's lives. We're not doing this stuff just for our health. And we, you know, have our own businesses and we don't, you know, heavily promote things on. I love marketing. We really do do it as a service because we get the psychological paycheck when people come back to us and say, hey, thanks for interviewing that person, or thanks for sharing that content because it changed our life. And so that's. So anyway, hopefully my rambling didn't cause you to forget the first question.

No, the first question is who it's NAF for is anyone who does like emergency services or commodities. So like, if you're a bail bondsman, if you are the Roto Rooter dude, if you are like an ambulance chaser lawyer, someone really needs you, it's an emergency and they're looking at yellow pages. Their basement flooded. Not for you. Because basically this is a process where you bring people in and you warm them up. So it's not like an instant reaction type of thing. If you're selling playground sand, you know, just something that's just a pure commodity. Gravel, you know, and I don't really know much about gravel, so maybe, I'm sure there's many kinds of gravel. But if you're just selling generic gravel, if you're selling. If you had a gas, if you're just a gas station, you're doing nothing but selling candy bars and gasoline. Probably not going to work for you. So those are big categories that it's just really not going to work otherwise. Even if, I mean, it's been used for real estate, it's been used for all kinds. It shocks me. Holstein cow embryos. I don't know how that dude pulled that one off, but somehow he did a launch for Holstein cow embryos. So something like that might need a little adaptation. But basically this core of creating value for someone before you ask for the sale, but having it built so that value systematically builds into the sale, that just works for everyone besides those, you know, the commodities and the emergency services. And the second question was, what are they? So basically, you know, the book, it's just under 200 pages. I did slave over the writing so it reads quickly, so you have to put in the time to read it. But I think it really is about the time. This isn't about a high budget really what it's about is it's about giving you the power of the kind of launches that Hollywood does and Apple does, but at almost no budget. I mean, many launches have been done literally without a budget. I mean, yes, you're going to need some type of an email list management service. So it might be aweber for 20 bucks a month. And you're probably going to end up wanting a website, you know, but even then it could be a WordPress site. So the actual to implement one of these launches. The tools are very inexpensive and frankly they're pretty simple to use.

And you're not a tech guy either. I mean, you're not like a super tech Guy.

Nope. Not at all. Not at all.

Nor am I. Nor am I. Which is why it's.

So that just leaves me.

Dean, before we get to your famous last words, I'm going to do one more plug for Jeff's book because he needs to. I want a lot of karmic debt here with Him. So. TheLaunchBook.com when you go there, you'll be able to watch a video from Jeff. You'll see how he is persuading you and telling the story about. And then if you get his book, you'll be able to, you know, if you go there right now, you'll be able to take the Amazon receipt and you'll be able to email it. And when you email the receipt, you'll not only just have the book, but you're going to get some bonuses, the $500,000 seed launch case study, you're going to get some full length training videos that walk you through the product launch formula. And he's actually going to create a launch book club which is going to be some live webcasts where he walks people through the book and even goes deeper into the strategies that have made over half a billion dollars. And again, I don't know what time you're going to be listening to this, but he is. It's his business. He can change any of this or take away this at any point in time. So go and get this right now while it's up. Watch what he's doing, get the book and change your life. So any final words from you, Dean?

That was great. You, you said it exactly like I told you to right at the end there.

So very nice. Yeah, if I wasn't, if I didn't have Dean coaching me, I mean, God knows what I do.

And just to clarify, there's no extra charge to watch. I mean, that's included. It's all included.

No, you know, you think about it.

Though, that, that for whatever the cost of the book is on Amazon, just the $500,000 case study right there is like a treasure map. You know, just like Jeff said, if you find somebody who's done something that you want to do and you just follow their recipe, you're, you know, shortcutting your success for sure.

Go do it.

Yeah, and I will personally even do this. If anyone really buys Jeff books and considers it a total waste of money, then you just let me know and I will personally give your money back. I mean, because it will just change your life. And I know how impactful this is. And also I want to help Jeff get this out to as many people as possible because he's worked his ass off and he's really figured out a lot of stuff and he's transformed a lot of lives and he deserves it. So people need to read the book and they need to go out there and learn this stuff because this is what gives you competitive advantage. And I love. Marketing is the place where we will help you, guide you to a bigger future and the people that can help get you there. And for those of you that are, we have a lot of Genius Network members that listen to I love marketing. So you're going to get to see Jeff give a talk at the annual event this year, which is going to be awesome. Anything else, Jeff? Anything we didn't say that you'd like to share?

No, no. You guys, this has been fun. I love this talk. I'm looking forward to August for the big Genius Network event. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be a challenge to fit everything into 10 minutes, but I'm looking forward to that. That's exciting. Yeah, it's great. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for helping me get the word out. Because this book, you guys know, I've got a very simple lifestyle and I. At this point, my business is about making an impact. And that's what this book is about. It's helping me make a bigger impact on more people and more entrepreneurs because they're the people that are changing the world, that are creating progress. And I love. Money's fantastic and I make a ton of money, and I love that. And I don't ever want to imply any other way, but the reality is, at this point, it is the thing that gets me up in the morning every day is making an impact. You guys are helping me do that.

Yeah, absolutely. Love it and thank you and happy to do it for all of our listeners. Please share your comments down below on ilovemarketing.com and if you know anyone that needs a boost in their business, then share this interview with them, Post it wherever you can on social media, and get a copy of Jeff's book for you and all of your loved ones, including the children. It might be better than a college fund.

Right?

There you go.

Perfect.

Bye.

Bye, guys.

Bye. Bye.