The One With Jeff Walker - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #85

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and. No Joe Polish today. It's the end of summer. Joe's off taking a little vacation. But I don't think you're going to be disappointed because we've got a really cool. One of my favorite people on the call with us today, Mr. Jeff Walker. Jeff, welcome.

Thank you. I'm excited to be on. I love marketing, and this is great. With Joe not here, we can say all kinds of horrible, nasty things about him.

That's exactly right. That's what I was kind of hoping.

That's what we're here for.

So, Jeff, just to give people a little bit of background about you, most people probably in the marketing world, know you best as the creator of the product launch formula, but maybe share just a little bit about, you know, who you are and what you do and where you live and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, sure, that'd be great. So basically, I've been selling stuff for 16 years, selling stuff online for 16 years. My. My products. I started in 1996. In fact, Dean, we're about three or four days away from my 16th anniversary of my very first email that I sent out my. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So. So 16 years ago, I was, wow. This is why I love marketing, because it's completely transformed my life. When I started, people often ask me, like, how I started, what I. You know, why I started. And it was the reason I started my business was complete desperation. You know, I was Mr. Mom. I was at home taking care of a couple babies. My wife was supporting the family. And one day she came home and she's like, we need a change. You got to figure out some way to support the family or at least help support the family, because, you know, she was just. She was in tears. She was sick of, you know, getting up in the dark, coming home in the dark, hardly seeing the kids at all. And, you know, my problem is I'd been in the corporate world, and I committed a career suicide by, you know, I just didn't fit in the corporate world at all. So I just one day up and left and went home and, you know, taking care of the babies. So back around 96, there's a big, long story where I'm gonna cut that short because we got so much other stuff to go into. But basically, I was. You know, when she said that, I'm like, the only thing I knew that I could possibly do. I didn't have anything. You know, my resume like the last five years was like, you know, feeding kids and changing diapers and stuff. It wasn't all that impressive. And so I thought I'd go back to school, but even to get into school, I needed a resume to get into school. So I thought, oh, I'm going to start publishing a newsletter and that'll look good on my resume and then I'll be able to get into school and then I'll go to school for two years and I'll get a, you know, go get a job back in the corporate world. I hate that was, you know, it's.

A pretty nice circular logic.

It was so messed up, Dean. It's just unbelievable. So anyways, I started publishing it. Back then I was studying about the stock market, you know, non stop because that was like my long term plan for, you know, getting out of this box that I was in. And so I started publishing about the stock market. I published a newsletter and it was a free newsletter, but I figured I put this on my resume. No one would know that I was just sending out an email newsletter and no one would know that it was free. It would just look cool on my resume. And so I sent that first email out to 19 people. And I exaggerated a little bit because it was actually 19 email addresses. But one of those email addresses was my second email address and one was my last.

19 subscribers. Including you. Yeah.

So it was really 17, but I felt a lot better to say 19.

Right.

So yeah. So anyways, I started publishing and this was before I had a website or anything. Just started sending out email, blind carbon copy email to everyone I knew who had an email address, 17 people. And it started to grow through word of mouth and people started writing back to me and saying, hey, can I subscribe? And I was like, sure, yeah. So I was adding more people before I even had a website and got it up to.

It went viral.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't call it viral. Every week or so one more person would write in to me and say.

Hey, let's say it went common cold. It went common cold.

Exactly. So yeah, after, you know, I had several hundred people by the end of the year. So I just thought, well, maybe I should try to sell them something. But I had like no sales experience, you know, just didn't know how to sell stuff. Didn't know anything about marketing really. I had bought at that point one product that taught a little bit about, about marketing, about information marketing in particular. And, and so I, I went through this process we now call a product launch where I romanced people. It took about three or four weeks. That just gave them really cool stuff. So it kept on sending more and more cool stuff. And back then I was just sending it via email because I didn't have a website or anything. So I went through this romance and then after. After giving them a bunch of cool stuff for about three or four weeks, I asked them to pay me for another newsletter. So basically I created a premium version of my newsletter.

What was your newsletter called?

Well, it was. The free one was called the Walker Market Ladder.

I like it.

I hate to say that in Polygon, someone's going to go Google that. And I'm sure there's like, oh, no, floating around somewhere. The Walker Market letter. I'm sure it'll be like this artifact in the Smithsonian or something.

There we go. It should be in the Museum of Internet Marketing History.

Yeah. And then the other one, I can't remember what the paid one was called. It was something. This trading letter. Yeah, it was. Let's just call it the Walker Trading Letter. I can't remember fully what.

Right, right.

And so, you know, I'm like, okay, I've been giving you this free stuff. You want to buy my new stuff? And I didn't have a sales letter. I sent a long email, which I guess is like a sales letter. I don't have a copy of that anywhere. It would be humorous to look at that thing right now. Right, right. I couldn't take. I didn't, you know, really have a website. I actually had a Tilde website by then. It was that. By Tilde. I mean, it was like the name of my. My service provider, slash, Tilde J. Walker. And that was my website, you know, couldn't afford a domain name and I couldn't take credit cards. And I said, if you want to subscribe, send me a check. And lo and behold, a few people did, you know, actually it was that launched at sixteen hundred and fifty dollars in sales.

Right.

And right then it was funny. So about that time was when I was starting school because I had gotten it, my plan actually worked. I put it on my resume that I was publishing the Walker Market Letter and I got accepted into school. And I went into school for my first class right. When I was doing the $1,650 launch. And literally I was sitting there looking around in that class, and I'm like thinking about going to school for two years, then going and getting a corporate job, and I'm like, oh, oh, my God. And Right in the middle of class, I got up and I walked out.

You had a moment of clarity.

It was a moment of clarity. And, and I mean, and I, you know, me, I'm not an impulsive person. Right, yeah. It's just like.

Yeah, exactly.

And because, you know, my thinking was I did this $650 once, maybe I could, I'm sure I could do it again. And, you know, maybe.

And you're thinking to yourself, I only had, I only have a couple of hundred people on my list.

Right, Right.

Yeah.

And, you know, I, who knows where this could go? And, and so quit. Quit school and just went after it, you know, full time. Even though I was still taking care of the kids, it was still, you know, I just was working all night on this thing and gradually building up that newsletter, the Walker Market Letter. We ended up having over 80,000 subscribers to that eventually. Wow.

Now how did you grow it to 80,000 people? Is there any lesson in that, what you did to continue to grow that.

Yeah, really what I did was I put out, wow, you know, this is before I really knew anything about marketing. But I sat there and I kept on just creating content and I kept on publishing. And occasionally I would create some piece of content that would go viral in a way in that it would. All of a sudden I'd be adding a few thousand people a day because I put out some really good charts and those charts would just through word of mouth, boom, boom, boom. And I did. And boom. All of a sudden there's 3,000 subscribers. And then I just created a lot of content on my site and started. This is before I was using squeeze pages, but I would do everything outside of squeeze pages that I could to get people to subscribe. So I was always tweaking my subscription process and I would, you know, eventually got the. Got it. So I was getting about 30 subscribers a day. 30, 35 subscribers. Subscribers a day. And that's a thousand subscribers a month. And that's 12,000. And I published this thing for, you know, probably six or seven years. And subscribers a month over six or seven years really starts to add up, especially when you throw in those viral pops every now and then.

And did you have a whole sequence for getting people to go from the, from the free one to the, the paid one?

Well, this was. So this was the secret that I stumbled on was for a long time we would do a free trial. And so basically I was publishing. It got to where I was publishing every day because we were publishing for short term traders. And so every Night we would publish and tell people what the stock market was going to do the next day. And for a long time I'd offer a free trial, like a 30 day free trial, and people would sign up and then after 30 days I'd say, your trial's up and you can buy or not. And if they didn't buy, then their trial expired. And what I did was I went from that to basically doing what I called a delayed service. And so someone would, they could, if they're in the delayed service, the trial service, then at the end of the trading day, they would get the email that I sent the night before and we actually had a great service and we're really, really good. And so every day they'd be getting an email coming in and it would say, you know, maybe it's Monday. At the end of the day the market closes and boom. The email that I sent Monday before the open shows up and it's like, holy cow, these guys were right again.

If I had done this. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And they could stay on that trial for as long as they wanted. And once we started doing what they.

Missed out on again, yeah, our conversions took off.

And here's a really key lesson that I've talked about this a few times, but only to my sort of high end coaching clients. One time I went back and I analyzed how long were people, of the people that bought, how long were they on my trial list. And as you would suspect, about 50% of the people that bought basically were on that list for about a week and about 25% bought within a month. So 70. So total of 75% in the first month they bought and then the other 25% were basically within the first three months. Sometime in that three months, pretty much 100% of the people bought. But I also found one guy who bought more than four years after he joined.

Oh yeah.

Now if you do the math, we were Pub. There's 252 trading days per year in an average year. And this Guy got over 1000 emails from me before he decided to buy. It's like, right then, that was such a crystal clear lesson that you just, you know, there's just no reason to give up on people, you know, especially marketing online. And it's not costing you anything. There's just.

Right, exactly.

And the close corollary is we all get, we all get sick of our own marketing before the market does.

Right? Everyone does it.

We sit there and we put together a promotion and we do that promotion and then maybe we do that promotion again. And then we do it a third time. We're like, oh, my God, everyone must be bored to tears with that. Now the reality is we're bored to tears because we're living inside of it. But this guy, it wasn't like he opened a thousand emails from me, right? It was like 950.

And maybe he did.

Yeah, maybe, possibly. But I bet 950 of them showed up. And, you know, he's like, whatever, whatever. Delete, delete, delete. And then like something clicked in him and the timing was right and he's like, wow, maybe I should open one of these up. And then he started opening them up and the timing was right and boom, he bought.

Yes. See, that's fascinating. Like when you talk about that and you say kind of modestly, that you didn't really know anything about marketing then, but when you look at it, that's really the best thing. You're just kind of sharing results and you knew how to get results and that's really what mattered. We just had Tony Robbins on last week. Oh, did you?

Good.

Yeah, yeah. And you know him, and we both really like him. And what really struck me, because we asked at the beginning, what do you love about marketing? And he said, well, you know what, I wasn't really a marketing lover, but I love people and I love getting results. And that, you know, there's just so much about that that is, you know, it's just a few words that he said, but there's something very powerful about that. It's like, you know, you just, like you are describing there, you were focused on delivering incredible content. And you know, these people are voyering in on that content that, you know, is useless now at the end of the day, but really supports. You know, they could see what would have happened if they had. Have had that information at the beginning of the day.

Right, right. Yeah.

No, that's a powerful. That's a powerful thing. You just. All you're focused on is the results here. You know, you want the result. You know, Mr. Prospect, here, here's some evidence that I've got the result for you if you want to subscribe. That's super.

Yep, absolutely. As I look back on it, it's sort of Dean Jacks Jackson esque.

But you and I have. I mean, we have such similar philosophies and approaches. I mean, in terms of the way we. We approach people and the way that we communicate and that's. I've always liked that about you.

Yeah. And you know what, Dean? I take that as a very, very high compliment because, you know, the way you do stuff is just so. I love it. I mean, and it's so genuine and it's so. It has so much humanity and warmth and it just is just unbelievably killer results. I mean, so, yeah, I take that very high praise.

But that, you know, there's. And so I don't want to underestimate or undervalue the importance of what we're really saying here that, you know, both of us are focused on the results first and then it becomes a matter of getting the message out there, you know.

Right.

It's so, it goes down there, you know. I missed you in New York, by the way, at Joe's thing.

Yeah, I was, I was actually at a music camp out. Camped out in the woods for a week. Yeah.

But it was, it was really kind of, you know, a powerful format. I think you would have really loved it. You'll be able to listen to the audios of it and stuff. But that was kind of a, you know, your, your approach there kind of resonates with, with one of the big. I did a 10 minute talk about, you know, what, what would you do if you only got paid if your client gets a result? And just asking that question forces you to focus on what could you actually deliver? What kind of result can you deliver? Do you have that much confidence in it? And you've spent all your time focused on making sure that the content you're delivering is getting results for your subscribers?

Yep. Yeah, I mean, we got great results. And I did have a partner there who was really, he'd help with the content and I was focused on the business and we did, we got great results for people. We had, you know, great stick once we got them on. And the interesting thing back then I was obsessed, like I said, with the stock market. And I would just study and study and study. And I was really got deep into the numbers and I was actually building these neural networks, this artificial, what do they call it, Artificial intelligence, case based patterns and stuff. I spent so many thousands of hours because I was so fascinated with that.

Back testing and all that kind of stuff. Testing your theories. Yeah.

But then I realized that the marketing, you know, I fascinated me in the same way. So I started to dig into the numbers so deep and I got way crazy into the analytics and you know, pretty soon I realized I loved the marketing a lot more than I loved the market, you know, the stack.

And what did you do with that information then? So now you've Been doing this you're up to now what, to 2001 or 2002 kind of thing.

Exactly. So basically, you know, just kept on getting better. The launches kept getting better and better and better. You know, did the $6,000 launch and the $8,000 launch and the $34,000 launch, which I think was more money than I ever made in my life in a year. And so, you know, the business is going along really well, and, you know, I was making more money than I ever thought I could. My wife was able to retire when this all started. We were living in the Denver area in Colorado. Around 2000, after my wife retired, we moved out to the mountains, to Durango, Colorado, because we could go anywhere we wanted once she retired. And, you know, I very much love being outside. Love mountain biking and kayaking and hiking and just being outdoors. So we, you know, moved out to the mountains. Great place to raise the kids. But I'm just still very much in my own little bubble, just doing my publishing and gradually growing the business. And then it was actually in 2003 where I went to a marketing seminar. It was actually Armin Morin's Big Seminar.

Big seminar. And that was your first. First one you'd ever gone to?

Well, you know what? I went to one of Jonathan Meisel's, I think, in 2001, and it was really great, but I didn't make a lot of connections.

Was that in Boulder? I think that's actually where we met for the very first time in Boulder. Yeah. Yeah.

Great. Great event. Love, Jonathan. Still stay in touch with Jonathan. But, you know, at that point, I didn't really talk too much about what I was doing. But then it. 2003, it was February 2003. This is the seminal Internet marketing event, because that's where I met John Reese, Frank Kern, Jeff Johnson, Ryan Deiss, Jeff Mulligan, I think Jason Potash. And we all sort of met there. And everyone I just named, we were all out in the audience, you know, watching other people on stage. Other people that at this point, 90% of them, I guarantee no one's ever heard of. It's sort of a funny thing, because these people, I guess, you know, this group that people now consider us gurus, but we were sitting in the audience listening. But at that event, I happened to mention that I just done this Launch that did $106,000, and that got a few people's attention, but I really. I didn't know it was anything special. I mean, obviously, $106,000 in the launch in A week when it was pretty much all profit except for merchant fees. I mean, obviously I was pretty happy with that, pretty proud of it. But I didn't think it was the kind of thing that would just like really open eyes in the marketing world. All of a sudden everyone's like, wow, that's really cool. I mean, I remember talking to Frank and Frank's like sitting there drinking a Corona, leaning up against the wall, looking as cool as Frank Kernow ever does, and he's like $106,000 in a week. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, so I ended up sharing like my methods, how I did it with those guys. And you know, for all I knew, first of all I was, I, at first I assumed everyone was doing it and then I went to this marketing conference, then I heard no one else was doing the stuff I was doing and then I was like, wow, maybe it only works for the stock market, you know. But then I ended up John, now.

When you from that were you kind of enhancing and following the same formula that you developed kind of accidentally the first time?

Absolutely.

And so you're just kind of, now you're understanding because that's often what happens, isn't it? You start to do something and then you see what happens and then you can go back and you can kind of analyze it and see what it was about it that using what you know, probably was the thing that worked and then you can improve it and test it again. So how many launches had you done? You know, from 96 till 2003, when you kind of are now able to articulate.

Well, probably a couple dozen. Probably a couple dozen at that point.

So you've done a couple a year?

Yeah, two or three or four a year basically.

Yeah.

And the funny thing is, so I just had this process, I didn't have any name for it, I didn't call it a launch, I didn't call it a product launch. I didn't call stuff pre launch content, all this stuff we have names for now and even I'll tell you what is a lot of people like, one of the things I teach in my training is the various mental triggers and you know, like scarcity and social proof and authority and community. I teach, you know, probably a couple dozen of them. But several of the most important ones, you know, are authority, social proof, reciprocity, scarcity. And people can read about them in this book called Influence by Robert Cialdini. And a lot of people, they think that when I created product launch formula, I went and read that book. And then I ended up creating product launch formula. What happened was it was at that first big seminar in February 2003, it was the first time I ever heard of that book. I remember Alex Mandosi had mentioned it on stage, and I went and bought it and, you know, read it by like May of 2003. And all of a sudden I was like, wow, this is the stuff I'm doing. This is what it's called. It's called social now.

You got a name for it? Yeah, yeah.

It's called scarcity. It's called authority. I didn't even know I was doing this stuff. So it was pretty fun because it gave me a way to talk about it and start to put names to the stuff that I was doing. And so then what happened was John Reese went and took basically what I showed him and I. He had a few phone calls and I walked him through some stuff. And then he mixed it with his. His marketing genius and he did a million dollars. A million dollar launch. That was a million dollar day. I think I remember that.

Yeah.

August 2004. I think.

Yeah, I remember because he had done his. He had done the live event before that.

Oh, that's. I actually helped him with the launch of the live event.

Right.

I gave him more than the million dollar day.

Right. Because that was really. The million dollar day was actually the DVDs and all that from what he talked about at the workshop.

So, John. So I did all my launches, and then the first test of my methods was when John did it with his first his event and then his million dollar day. And it's like, okay, I guess it does work in other markets or at least one other thing.

It took the six in seven days. Six figures in seven days to turn it into seven figures in 24 hours.

Well, the funny thing is, is John, you know, I mean, you know how John likes to tease people and how. How competitive he is. And so, you know, I had that six figures in seven days, which. That's sort of became my tagline. Six figures in seven days. And at his event, he. He like, he opened up the cart and he sends me an email. He's like, dude, I just did six figures in 12 minutes. I know, that's the thing, right?

He loves that. For the win.

Yeah, exactly.

He's not very competitive at all.

No, not at all.

No.

Michael Jordan isn't either.

Yeah. That's so funny though, because, you know, John and I had become really good friends right around that time, just kind of before his event. And so to be there and see that whole thing unfold kind of thing was pretty, pretty exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So then basically, you know, Frank followed up with doing a million bucks and I think in a couple days, and Yannick did a, you know, six or seven, I don't know, it's like many hundred thousand dollars launch. And I'm like, okay, this stuff works in a bunch of different markets. And all of a sudden people were calling me up, wanting me to help them with their launches. You know, the word was getting out because John was very, very gracious, telling people.

I was just going to say in all of those, like, you know, all the guys who were doing it are all, you know, happy to, to give credit and to, you know, source you as the, as the source of all of it.

Yep. Yeah, they were all very, very built.

Authority and credibility for you and social proof and all of those, all those good things before you ever kind of came out with it.

Right. Yeah, this is. I'm still publishing about the stock market. You know, every day I'm sending out emails about the stock market. Now people are calling into my office. I didn't have a staff. I had no. My wife by this point, when she would help with customer service, but I had zero staff. And all of a sudden, you know, John sent out a report talking about how he did his million dollars and he credited me with a big chunk of it. And that the next day, the phone was ringing off the hook and I didn't even have anyone to answer the phone. And I'm publishing about the stock market. People want me to help them with their marketing. And I, And I didn't. I never actually returned those calls. I feel bad about that because, you know, I try to be a pretty, you know, treat people well, but I just, like, I was so freaked out that people were calling me up.

Right, right.

And then, so then John. It was really John and Jannik. John Reese and Jannik Silver were the two. That's like, dude, you need to create a product to teach people how to do this. You really need to do it. Right. And then they said the magic thing and if you create the product, I'll promote it for you.

Right, of course.

And yeah, so then, so I created the product launch formula, rolled that out in 2005, and, you know, did $600,000 in a week. So that's a brand new business coming into a brand new market. I was essentially unknown other than those guys talking me up, but because I had helped them out and helped Frank out, helped John out, And helped Jannik out and others, they all promoted me. So I did $600,000 in a week. And all of a sudden I was in business and haven't looked back since then. Basically been publishing product launch formula constantly revised. And I think it very well, arguably is the most successful, the most sales of any Internet marketing product in history. I think.

I bet that's true because you keep going and going and going, and it's, you know, it's the same, it's timeless. You keep updating it, but you learn more and more. I mean. And you know what? Of all of the things I always keep telling you, every time I see you, how proud I am that you just continue to stick with the same thing and go deep with it, you know?

Yeah. You know, the thing. It's so satisfying to see the results that people get. I remember because I published it. It was October 2005, and then in March 2006 was sort of the first time I went to an event. Afterwards, I went to Yannick Silver's first or second underground event, and I walked in there and, you know, a bunch of people bought the product. Hundreds and hundreds, you know, by that time, 800 people bought the product. And. But I, you know, and people. I was getting these emails. People are really excited about it. They're, you know, real happy with it. But still, before you go out and meet the public for the first time, you just don't know. And you. You sort of walk into that conference room, like, are they gonna love me or hate me? You know, And.

Right.

And within, I was. I walked into this. In. Just into the lobby area, and within, I would say, under 90 seconds, one guy, it was actually Mike Dillard, walked up to me and he said, jeff, I just. I'm about to close the cart. We're doing over $100,000 on my launch. And that's back when he was.

And then story after story after story. Everybody that you meet.

Yeah. So basically, within about a half hour, I had about six people come up and tell me about their success stories. And they were extreme. Like, one guy had just, you know, bought this huge diamond ring for his engagement ring for his. For his fiance, based on what he did in his launch. And it was one after another after another. And I was just. I was completely blown away. I mean, it was the most, I guess, humbling but gratifying thing that ever, you know, just one person after another after another. By the end of the event, I happened to, you know, I had a video camera with me because I was this is the days before iPhones, of course. But I happen to have a video camera because I was going on vacation with my family right afterwards and I think I filmed like 10 or 12 case studies by the time I left. It was just amazing. And it's been that way ever since. I mean, it's just the results that people get and the stories about changing their lives and I mean, I've made a ton of money with this and so financially it's been wonderful for me. I've been able to build a really great team. But at the end of the day, the thing I get more excited about talking about my students and their success than, than anything else. It's just, it's so much fun where they've taken it.

Amazing. Well, what do you want to talk about some of the, the biggest lessons that you've learned over that, you know, for going through all this or what do you want to, what do you think could be valuable to share with people here?

Well, I mean, we could go in any number of directions and since you know me so well, I'd love to answer any question. I mean, we could talk about some of the fundamentals of the launch or we could talk about what I've done to keep extending it. We could talk about my business and what I've done. I've been in business online for 16 years. Marketing online for 16 years. About, you know, like one of our friends, Dean Graziosi talks about marketing stamina. Right? That, that's an awesome thing to talk about. We could go, what do you think? Any, any of those directions?

Yeah, let's talk about that. I mean that, that's because, you know, one of my favorite things is that, you know, you and I and Dean and Jannik and Telman and Joe, we've all been involved in, in the same strategic coach group now for almost three years, finishing up our third year here. So it's just, it's amazing. It's always nice to, to, you know, get together every 90 days and you know, it's kind of a, you know, a built in thing where we all get to see each other every 90 days and, and have those kind of experiences. But these are the kind of things that, you know, people would probably wonder like, well, what do you guys talk about when you get together? But it is, these are the kind of things that we talk about when we talk about this whole idea of marketing stamina and we talk about all the, all the things that, that we're learning and doing. And I just, I love that, that we all get to get together every. Every 90 days like that. But let's talk about that marketing stamina, because I know, you know, Dean's been really kind of talking about that for a while now, but what does that mean to you?

Well, you know, Dean is so freaking brilliant. Dean Grassy. Well, you are.

You can just say Dean. I like to just.

The deans, right? What are the deans?

That's why we always sit beside each other. So whenever they say dean and look, neither of us feels disappointed that he's not talking about us.

All I know is whenever they ask one of the deans a question, the whole room goes silent. Everyone just. It's like Merrill lynch speaks and everyone. Crowds have to say.

That'S funny.

But like, for me, like, marketing stamina, that lesson I learned about, you know, this dude was on my list for four years, got a thousand, more than a thousand emails before he bought that. I can't tell you how. I mean, I just. It blew me away. And I thought about that for days and it changed everything for me. So, like, for instance, product launch formula. When I published that thing, I probably knew 10% more than anyone else about product launches. But after I published it, then all my students kept coming back to me and tell me about their successes. And now all of a sudden, I knew 100% more than anyone else because I had this whole network of people coming back to me. So I love to create these feedback loops. I'm always with my clients and my students. I'm always building in ways for them to check back with me and for me to check back with them. I keep on giving them little extra bonuses just so I stay in their world, say that they report back to me, and that allows me to keep on making my product better and better and better. And, you know, I don't know if it's just me or what if I'm like the only person with a product that can keep on getting better or whatever. But, you know, it's been seven years and I keep on finding ways to make it better, and I keep on finding ways to make my sales message better and better and better. And one of the things, like, occasionally, like I'm going to be going into a. I'm going to be opening up product launch formula again. So that means I'm going to do a launch for it. And when I go into this, it's real easy for me to think, okay, the entire world knows all about product launch formula. And so I have to come up with some uber advanced thing that I, when I come up with my launch, when I come up with my pre launch, when I try to sell it, I have to do something super fancy and super advanced. But that's absolutely wrong thing to do because the people I'm selling to are the people that haven't bought from me yet and they still need that same story that sells the product. And so I'm just gonna, I just want to keep on getting better at selling it the same way I've sold it in the past. And when I say the same way, it's not the same look and feel. You know, all my pre launch content is all going to be 100% new and updated. But they still have to, you know, at the end of the day, I have to convince them at the beginning of my pre launch that this is a fantastic process that applies to their business and that they could do that. It's conceivable that they can do that. And then I have to show them why this works and why it works better than any other promotional method. And then I have to walk them through the different processes. And I've been doing that same thing since 2005. I've gotten way better at it and I articulate it much better. I have a lot more evidence, a lot more proof. But at the end of the day, I'm not teaching to like the marketing junkie who studied my last eight launches. That person's either bought my product or is never going to buy my product. But he or she is not the person I need to please. I need to show the person who either hasn't heard of me or hasn't studied my stuff in the past and show them why it's a great fit for them.

Right. And that, you know, it's so it's true what you say because so many times, especially if you have something that you really need known for and that you, you know, you're coming up on the seventh, seventh version of this now. Is that what that is?

Well, it depends exactly how you count. I've gone through three major revisions and you know, a dozen minor, you know, interim revision. So yeah, it all depends how you're counting.

But seven years, let's say for sure. And yeah, yeah. And so you look at it and you know, you're right that the danger often is that you're, you think that you're saying things that people already know and you're not speaking to the people who have already bought. That's really not who you're talking to. You are talking to the people who haven't and it's still all of those principles that attracted all the people who've bought in the past. They still hold true. I mean, you still have to have a list of people who you're. You're going to get a result for. You still have to have a way to kind of, you know, give them some value ahead of time in a sequential way. And you still have to have a way to get them, give them the opportunity to. To get it, to get the result. That's not going to change. I mean, that's, that's, that's the fundamental thing. And the great thing is that people watching you do it, it's easier. You're, you know, the greatest user of your method of anybody.

Right, Right. Yeah, it's sort of the, you know, I'm like, you know, if you're gonna like, say, for instance, be a teach copywriting, you better have a good sales letter. And for me, if I'm gonna teach product launch, I better have a pretty good product launch.

Yeah, yeah. I think I've always thought that same thing. You know, if you're gonna sell SEO, you better have a pretty high ranking on Google for SEO.

Right, Exactly.

That's pretty funny. But, you know, the whole. The thing that I've observed and you start to see, you know, that this model of what people would call the product launch formula, where they're sending emails, they're sending people to a video and, you know, to a sequence of videos and then they're opening the cart is sometimes people are doing this and they're misexecuting it. I mean, they think that the magic is in the mechanics of it. They think the magic's in. Well, I got to copy the look of this opt in page and the look of this, the videos, the way he does it. But they don't really understand the. The really deep psychology of what's going on behind the scenes there.

Right, right. And, you know, thanks for bringing that up. I mean, that's critically important. It's funny, I was just reading. I just opened a newsletter from Dan Kennedy. It was this info marketing letter. It was actually, I think from July. And it just talked about. A client of his just came in and told him. He just did like, you know, this launch to his list. Just to his list, an internal Launch that did $270,000. And Kennedy, he wrote, he did a $270,000 launch a la Walker. It's like a la Walker. Yeah, I love it. Okay. I made it. When Kennedy says. When he can refer to me Just by my last name, then I love it. But the thing, okay, so this is the deal. It's not about the mechanics. Pre launch now means in a lot of markets in the Internet, marketing space especially means three videos and then a sales video. And just by putting out three videos in a sales video, there's no magic there. The magic is in building a relationship. I think there's two core things. It's building a relationship with your market, with your prospects. And it's building this relationship in a sequential way that walks them towards the sales message and builds authority and removes objections along the way. And so before it's the BS detector, someone lands on your sales letter, they're not going to believe anything you've got to say. You know, it's like you walk onto a car lot, that salesperson walks out the door and you instantly are, you're not going to believe anything they've got to say. I mean, that's the way people view sales. And so this is a way of building relationship before you're in the sales environment. And so by the time you do send them to that sales message and sales video, yeah, their BS detector does ping up a little bit, but not as high as if you just sent them straight into a sales message. Dean, this is exactly the way. I don't know, you know, I usually, a lot of times you share with me some of your secret underground stuff you're doing. And it's the exact same process you do. You get, I know you pull people in and you get them involved. So building that relationship and building that authority and getting them involved and cutting through the marketing fog. In other words, there's, there's too many, everyone's getting too many messages, too much media. You know, 10, 15 years ago, we, we all didn't have, you know, text messages and Skype and you know, 500 channels on TV. And Dean, the other day I was going, I was in the airport, the handrail on the escalator had an ad on it. I mean.

There'S no escape. Yeah, I know.

You can't get away from it. And so there's so much marketing fog. People are not paying attention your message. Well, if you build this pre launch with great pre launch content and pull people in and get them engaged by telling them a story that evolves over the span of your pre launch. Now you've cut through the marketing fog. They're looking forward to what you're going to send them next. So that's a real key piece. And then the other huge key piece is the conversation. Because during a launch people will respond to you, they'll leave comments in your blog, they'll send emails back to you and you get a conversation going. And it's a, it's a heck of a lot easier to keep people engaged in a dialogue than it is in a monologue.

Absolutely.

In addition to being more interesting in that dialogue when they're giving you feedback, when they're talking back to you, they will end up telling you what they want and how they want to be sold. If you just listen to that and just give them what they want, sell it to them in the way they want. In other words, answer their objections that they're raising and engage in their hot points and keep on talking about their hopes and their dreams and their fears and their aspirations that they keep on feeding back to you, then you've got a winning combination. And that's what makes this whole thing work. It's the conversation and it's the relationship. And the launch gives you that platform to develop those things that other sales methods don't. I mean, it's sort of like if you're going to sell something to someone and your life literally depended on it, or your kids lives depended on it literally. Are you going to send someone an email? No. Are you going to send them to a sales letter and say buy this because if they don't, my kids are going to be murdered? No. You're going to go and you're going to sit down across from the table or sit down next to him on a couch and have a one on one conversation. That's the most effective way to sell someone is face to face. The problem with face to face is you can't leverage it. There's only so much time in the day. So what the launch in my opinion does is it gives you not the power of a one to one conversation, but it gives you a lot more power than any other mass media. And you end up having the benefits of the mass media, but you end up with a lot of the power that you get when you engage in a real conversation.

But you know, I believe that there is a lot of opportunity to have those one on one conversations with people, even by email, even if you're sending to thousands of people. And there's a completely different tone that people take when they're sending an email to one person as then they're sending one to a thousand or ten thousand people, you know, and that is an art. There's an art to that. And that is really something that I think has set you apart, that you have that ability to write emails that seem like they're going just to me, just to one person. That's certainly been the secret to, you know, the biggest breakthrough things that I've done is being able to have that one on one communication with somebody.

Absolutely. And I mean, you've shown, I've seen your emails and you're so fantastic at this. Your copy's amazing. And you're absolutely right. You know, the email is a very, it's a very personal medium. I mean.

Mm. It's an intimate medium. And here's the thing is that, you know, we, we were in Austin and you know, we were with, with Perry and Ryan and some other guys and you know, it was very interesting because I had really kind of been experimenting with kind of amping that up on the real personal kind of communications. And you know, I thought about it that a lot of times people spend all their time worrying about what I call behind the screen, things like deliverability rates and getting their open rates and all that stuff, kind of looking at it and analyzing that. And you realize that any email that comes to me from a friend that I know it's a personal email gets 100% open rate to me. And I know you're the same way. I mean, you look at, you know, you get anything, if your wife sends you an email or your kids send you an email, it's got a hundred percent open rate. Nobody. It's almost like it's not so much the issue that the emails aren't getting through, it's that the, the message isn't, isn't compelling, it's not, it's not riveting enough. You know, it's not something that they feel like they have to open. And it's kind of an interesting thing, but, but it's, it's the truth. You know, you just have to get better at creating emails that people want to open.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, if you, if you look at the. It's funny because so many people that are sending email for marketing are going towards these real fancy HTML layout.

Oh yeah.

And it's like, when was the last time one of your friends sent you an email with a fancy HTML layout?

That's exactly right. Never is when. Yeah, right, right.

Yeah. In fact, you know, like most of my emails, I don't use any caps in my, in my subject line because I'm looking at most of the emails that I get from my friends and most of them, they're not capitalizing stuff. You know. No, I am absolutely.

Why use like sentence case but not like often capitalizing every word or all caps or anything like that. Just like you would type it in a regular thing like I do, you know, after a period I'll put a capital for the next word and stuff. But not capitalizing everything or.

Yep. No, my goal is to basically look like a personal email and sound like a personal email and I want to write it like I'm writing to a single person. And there is like sometimes in a launch, there comes a time where you do have to pivot that voice a little bit. And it's usually right because you want them to be having an intimate experience with you. Even if you're writing to 30,000 people. But then, right, often before you open your cart, you want to start develop massive social proof, probably scarcity. So now you want to go from them thinking you're having this one on one conversation to them to oh yeah, there's, by the way, there's 30,000 other people that are really interested in getting this thing right. And that's building that social proof and authority and probably a little scarcity. So there's sometimes there is a little switch, you know, a little pivot towards the end, you know, when you, when you're about to go into your sales message where you do have to sort of, oh yeah, by the way, you know, there are, there's 13,000 other, 13,872 other people are getting this email. And you know, I've only got like three spots available. And so there is, there's, there's often a little bit of a pivot. But when I make that pivot, it is, it is absolutely intentional and something I think hard about before I, before I write anything. There's, if you go through, people have to pay attention when you're writing your email, you have to go back through every single line. And is there anything in here that doesn't add up to being a completely personal email? It's the case when you're writing to them. You're writing to them in the singular. You're writing from yourself as a singular. You're not saying we're about to open this thing up. It's like, I'm about to open this thing up. Because when you get email from your friend, he's not using we're about to do this. You know, it's like, I'm about to do this. Right?

And so, yeah, exactly.

If people took nothing from this call but went through their email with a fine tooth comb and Said, is there anything in the syntax, in the grammar in the message that implies that I'm writing to more than one person?

Right, that's. And I mean, you know, some of the things are these because I tend to write kind of short emails with, with one intention like and knowing what the intention of the email is. And I think that often people don't know they're trying to do too much with the email, you know, and having. Without really thinking through what is the actual result that I want from this email. Like if you're sending in your. In the beginning, your pre launch things, the actual result that you want, you don't want somebody to buy something. You're not trying to convince somebody to buy something. The only thing you're trying to get them to do is go and watch the video. So it's really about just clicking on that link. That's the only thing you're, you're. That's the only purpose that it has.

You know, I couldn't agree more. In fact we, I think we, if we just spent our remaining time on this and I think we could do people. Yeah service because.

Yeah.

You know, like when I go to. So four times a year I fly up to Toronto to long spend a day flying there, a day in Strategic Coach, a day flying back just because I get focus and clarity out of that day. That's what I get out of strategic coach. Focus and clarity. And that's the thing that drives my business. I think it drives everyone's business. So you at every. You always need in your marketing where every single piece you need to know the one thing that you're trying to get done. Ken Evoy calls us the most wanted response. When a visitor comes to your site, what's your most wanted response? That's why the Squeeze page works so freaking well. And here I am just happy talking to the father, the grandfather of the squeeze page. Squeeze page works.

Who's your daddy?

They work so well because you only give them one choice, one thing to do.

That was my big breakthrough then was realizing that if what I really wanted was the maximum number of people to leave their name and email address, as soon as I started taking away any other options, response rates went up. Because even if you give perf people one other option, you can leave your name and email or there's one other escape hatch that they could click and distract themselves. Don't delay that. That's what people would choose. And if you've got, you know, seven or eight things that people could click on, you've just reduced your chances by you know, seven or eight times that, that they're going to actually leave their, their name and email. So the higher the priority you put on it, it's like, you know that formula that I have is, that is eyeballs plus emails plus hearts equal faces. And so, you know, the first thing is that you got to get their eyeballs to, to the site. And if you're sending it by email, that's the only thing that you have to do. You're not trying to future pace or trying to sell beyond that email. And I've seen huge, huge breakthroughs just from eliminating all that other stuff and only focusing on the one thing. It's pretty routine to get over 30% click through rates on emails using this method. Not you know, 30% open rate, but actual clicks from the, from the page.

So yep, yeah, so you sit down to write that email and you have, you focus on what do I want to happen. And almost every time, almost every time it's to get them to click a link and okay, so let's walk through. Then they click that link. Then they're going to land on a page. And what do you want that page to do? You know, in a launch maybe it's probably going to land on a page with a video. So you want them to watch the video. So what's the first sentence in the video supposed to do? It's supposed to hook them in so they watch the entire video. And then what's the object of the video? The object of the video is generally to get, well, there's going to be some type of call to action at the end. So it's to get them to the video and to take that call to action which is often leaving a comment. And that will get them engaged. We're also going to set up hope that there's another video coming. But it's basically to get them through that video and consume your content, the entire thing and get them to leave a, you know, to leave a comment. And if you do that, you're marketing everywhere, every step. You know Dean, I like to, I love your emails and I'll often replicate like your really short ones, but I'll often have a really, really long email. I actually like to mix up my email some short, some long and I'll have an 800 word email. But that 800 word email, the entire thing is solely crafted to get them to the link, to click the link. So I might ask them to spend you know, two minutes or three minutes reading this email. But Basically the first line is just setting up the whole journey through that email, pulling them in to really suck them into that email, to get them engaged, to deliver them down at the bottom ready to click. And I'm going back through it and I'm running through that filter looking, is there anywhere I do this unconsciously now, but is there anything in here that implies where they're reading this that will take them to. It isn't just Jeff and I, I want them the world to disappear and then they're just, you know, it's just that person and Jeff sitting there having a dialogue in this email almost. So I'll scan it to take out any of those where you're referring to them in the plural or anything like that. And then it's like, okay, is there any words I can take out of this email that gets in the way? How can I deliver them to that link in the mindset where they're ready to click? If you could do that in every step of your marketing, your second pre launch content piece, get them to that, get them to click, get them to watch the video, get them to engage, get them to follow whatever action you're asking them to take at the end of the video and then the third one, then you come to the sales video, sales videos, just get them engaged, get them every single. If you could just be completely clear every step of your marketing on what is the one thing you want and never try to get more than one thing, then you're going to win.

It's so funny because when we talk about the before unit and the during unit and the after unit, in the before unit we talk about selecting your single target market as the first profit activator and then compelling them to engage, to raise their hand as the second profit activator and then educate and motivate them in the third profit activator and then present your, your offer, your mafia offer, preferably, you know, the better, the best offer that you can present and that totally fits with your, with your product launch formula. I mean it's the same kind of thing. The very first step is about, you know, compelling them to come and go to that page or to watch that video or whatever the first call to action is. And it's not about. This is a new distinction that I've been making, Jeff, is there's a difference between somebody being compelled to do something and somebody being convinced to do something. And a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. If I see people making mistakes, it's trying to Start convincing people before they really need to. It's so much more powerful to tap into the existing self interest that people already have and just kind of channel that. It's almost like getting in the jet stream, you know, it's like it's being already going in that direction. And we talk about this whole idea of mice, you know, being pre programmed with two prime directives. Get cheese, avoid cats. And you know, you don't have to convince a mouse to try some cheese. They're compelled to try the cheese. You know, they're compelled to seek out the cheese. And when you're talking about in any kind of launch situation, the cheese is the information, it's the valuable stuff that's already on their mind. The thing that they would are seeking out that they'd love to know. You don't have to convince them to consume valuable content that they want to know about. Your job is just to figure out what is that valuable content that they want to know about.

Yeah, you know, that's something I've been coming to in the last year or two. There's no convincing anyone of anything.

That's exactly right.

I mean if you're in a situation where you're having to convince, I just like shut up and walk away these days. This is not happening. People are in their own head and you know, maybe, you know, you'll plant a seed now that down the road they something, you know, might shift their thinking and they'll convince themselves. But you're not convincing anyone of anything ever. You know, it's like goes back to that Caples line, you know, you want to enter the conversation that's already going in their mind going on.

That's exactly it.

And yeah, so you know, I'm a big fan of leading by example, you know, of not lecturing, not trying to teach someone something. If someone comes to you and says please teach me, that's one thing. But you can't convince anyone of anything. So yeah, with the pre launch content we're dangling out something that's going to hook people in because they're interested in it and then they're going to follow along and then it's a matter, I mean it's just basically greasing the skids. So they end up landing on an offer page with an offer so freaking compelling. I call it a crushing offer. That's the technical term within product launch formula land is crushing offer. It's just a ridiculous offer that is going to do so much good for them and transform their lives and being able to Convey that message of transformation. And whatever you're selling, whatever you're selling, it's better be transforming someone's life in some way or else you're not going to sell it. It's basically dangling out that pre launch that is so scintillating and exciting and attractive and pulling them in with that story to drop them on. Eventually drop them onto a sales message with an offer that's just completely crushing, that is so compelling that they can't wait to buy it.

That's exactly right.

It ain't gonna happen.

That, that's exactly right. And once you do that, you know, and that really, it forces you to really focus on your, on your content, you know, comes full circle back to what you sort of accidentally were focused on in the very beginning. Just focused on the content. And that was doing, you know, that was speaking for itself. And now it's come kind of full circle as we kind of wrap up. That it really is about focusing on the content.

Absolutely, it really is. I mean, and the beautiful thing, and this can be intimidating when people hear about that, that you really want a great product. And I really do think you need to have a great product. And these days with everyone talking via social media, you need an excellent product, in my opinion, because if you do a launch and you sell a whole ton of product and it's a lousy product, you just, it's just a faster way to put yourself out of business. So you need a great product. But the great which can be intimidating when people hear that. It's like, oh, I don't know if I can create a great product. It's easy if you tap into that conversation. There is a conversation going on right now among your clients and your prospects. And these days it's out there in social media, it's still out there in forums. And if you just tap into that and be incremental, get your first product out there and engage with your clients and find out, you know, ask them, I love to say what went well and what could I do differently. It's a real disarming way to get feedback and then just take that feedback and make it better. And that's how, you know, before I even rolled out the first version of product launch formula, I taught it like in a very interactive over a series of teleseminars. I taught it once that way and that's how I learned how to teach it. And then I came back with that first version and the second version, third version. I just got better and better and better by continually engaging and continually asking my clients, how can I make this better? What did I do well, what could I do differently? So everyone can create a great product if you stay engaged with the market. I mean, you know, my messages are always about, you know, about relationship. I mean, this is what wins these days in business. It's about relationship and it's about conversation and it's about delivering value. The beautiful thing is it's easier now than it's ever been because there are so many ways to get feedback from your market.

So you're about to start up again this week with the product launch formula. So tell a little bit about that.

Yeah, so basically I teach product launch formula. Sort of like a college class where we all go through it together. I do Q and A calls and stuff like that. And so because I do it that way, I release it periodically. And so later this week we're going to be starting the pre launch and then we'll be opening up a new class. And this will be the first time in nearly a year we've opened up a new class. And so the cool thing is people can actually watch what I do. I mean, if you want the basic education, you can just sit there and watch my process because I'm pretty good at this.

I love to watch your process. I mean, it's so great. I may even make some commentary on your process here and we'll see how that goes. Because everybody's kind of like getting a behind the scenes look here in the things we've talked about, even today. So I think what I'll do, I'll set up a link@ilove marketing.com let's go. Ilove marketing.com PLF and I'll set that up so that people can link to follow what you're doing. Because it's just, it's an amazing process. People are going to learn from it. Just like you said, no matter, no matter what happens, it's worth just tuning in to, to see it in action and all the while thinking about how could this apply to me? How could I do this? How could I follow this model?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it's sort of like Brendan, another great mutual friend of ours, Brendan Burchard, he said, you know, most of the people, at the end of the day, most people are not going to buy from you. The majority of them are not going to buy from you. So why don't you just try to create some value in their lives, you know, along the way. And so, you know, I've got all new pre launch content for this thing that basically does a pretty good job teaching this. And it ends, actually ends in my. In the product launch formula blueprint where I sort of give away the whole store. You know, people can download the blueprint, they can video where I walk through the blueprint of pretty much how the whole thing works. So it's good stuff.

Fascinating. Well, Jeff, I could keep talking with you forever.

Hey, Dean, one last thing.

I love talking about this stuff.

I actually just realized yesterday I had an incidental, super happy, fun day.

Incidental without even really realizing it. But then you reflected on it until.

This morning, and I was going to talk to you, I started thinking about like, yep. That actually absolutely would qualify for a super happy fun day.

That's awesome. Well, one of these days, before us or after strategic coach, we need to have a super happy, fun day of our own together.

Absolutely.

All right, man. Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate you sharing everything. I'm glad we got you to come and share with everybody. I look forward to seeing you next. Actually. I'm going to see you this week. Coming up for strategic coach. That's right. That's the perfect thing, isn't it?

Here it is.

You've got this big launch starting and you're going to be strategic coach the day that it actually starts. I love that.

All right.

Thanks, Jeff. Go for a mountain bike ride or something.

That's actually what I'm going to do. Just going to jump on my bike and ride. Thanks a lot, Dean. Love what you guys are doing. And I love marketing.

I love marketing, too. Thanks, Jeff.