I Launched a $20,000 Digital Product in 24 Hours, Here’s How | 038

I'm here with Franny, who's built an incredible agency business. You've reached substantial scale. She has a launch happening right now.

You know, you feel like you just are so close to something. We've done a lot of course launches over the years and always felt like in hindsight we wish we would have done something different.

The two biggest launch mistakes that I see creators make: one, they don't have tiered pricing, and two, I want to propose a small tweak to this. You want to have a couple different types of scarcity in each launch to build momentum, limiting the quantity. And if I see a whole bunch of other people buying, it leans me from skeptical to enthusiastic.

We asked, can I make a to-do list over here?

Yeah, do it. We want people to have already made the decision to buy and then be like, okay, now I just have to get out my credit card.

I love how you just came in in the middle of my lunch, shook shit up a little bit, and I'm going home tonight and re-engineering, and I know it's going to be awesome.

That sounds great. Brandy, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Nathan Barry.

What is Ampersand as a business?

Ampersand as a business now, right now, today in 2024, is a full-service branding agency, and we serve small businesses here in Boise and We do work with clients outside of Boise for our agency work, but mostly our local business keeps us busy enough with our team. We have a team of 10 full-time in-house local creatives. And then Nicole and I also do a lot of brand coaching and consulting with, you know, people beyond Boise online.

So you've been running Ampersand Studios for how long now?

We just had our 15-year anniversary.

That's exciting.

Yes. And with the same business partner, 50/50 business partner the whole time.

It's basically a marriage.

Yes. Yes.

There's a lot that we get into there. But first we want to talk about how you got to this point, you know, scaling a team to some pretty substantial numbers, the split of how you're running the agency, but then really get into the digital products and what, you know, everything that you're doing from there.

Yeah.

So that's like a little bit of the teaser and we'll get up on the whiteboard and whiteboard.

Blackboard?

Blackboard?

I don't know.

Oh yeah. This is our own concept. But we'll map out like the exact revenue streams and where you're trying to go in the business. So in that, something that, you know, anyone watching the show is going to expect is that we dive into your business and talk about like, you know, what are you like, where are you at now?

Yeah.

Where are you trying to go? So we talked about things at a very high level, but if you're up for it, let's jump up to the blackboard and see, you say blackboard and it makes me think of chalk. This isn't chalk, but who knows? We'll jump up to the board and just map things out. So we have the, there's two aspects of, as I understand, the agency and then really the digital creative products.

Yes.

Right?

We call it like agency operations and then digital ops. So, okay, I'm assuming digital as far as, yeah, agency and digital, that works.

Okay, so revenue numbers, what do you want to talk about of like last 12 months? Is that just to set the stage of where we're at now?

I mean, year to date is more clean like numbers in my head as far as like—

So we're recording this July 16th? I don't know.

We're like halfway through the year. Yeah, yeah. And we're like just over, $425,000 right now.

On total?

Total.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so $425,000 total. How is that split between the agency and the digital?

So digital has only done about $20,000.

Okay.

So far. That is all completely all from digital products. It's called the Voice and Visual Brand Guide template, Canva template. And it's just, it sells for $67.

Okay.

It's on a, you know, Facebook ads funnel, and that is solely that revenue. We haven't done a course launch. We're in the middle of a course launch now, and next week I can tell you how much that does.

Yeah, so you're about to ramp up the digital side.

Yes.

Cart opens tomorrow.

Yeah.

Okay, that's exciting.

Yeah.

So, okay, and then the agency side, is there more revenue or can I just subtract out 4?

We could even just say 4 and 25 just for the sake of even numbers if you want.

$400,000 on this side, $20,000 here. So we're gonna end up, end the year, if things continue exactly, you know, at $850,000 or so.

Yeah.

But you're thinking, you know, a course launch, you have 1,000 people on the waitlist for it.

I have 1,000 people in the free challenge that we're running this week right now.

Okay.

And we're opening up a community tomorrow. And projections are really, really vague and impossible to do 'cause we haven't ever done, we've never launched a community before. We've done this same challenge. This is our 5th time doing this challenge. And we used to sell our signature course, the Unbreakable Brand. It's like a 2-day workshop. What used to be like a 6-week course, cohorts and everything. And so we used to do Brand Camp, which is our challenge, and then sell that. And we've had some success with that over the years, but this time we are launching a community instead. So I don't have anything to compare it to.

What's the price point on the community?

We're doing a special launch for Brand Camp members at $47 a month. If they do the annual pay in full for $564, they also get the Unbreakable Brand workshop included as a bonus, a painful bonus. And then we're offering 10 VIP, like one-on-one coaching packages for $3,500. So there's 3 tiers. Ah, yes.

One thing, I love pricing tiers.

Okay, good. I was like, you're gonna make me change my mind on this whole launch strategy. You're making me change it tomorrow.

So I wrote a bunch of essays about this, gosh, back 2013 to 2015 timeframe when I did a lot of packaging and pricing testing. And I just always found that if I added multiple price tiers, I would typically double and sometimes triple revenue. Okay, good to know. So you have, let's just map these out 'cause I think this is important for everyone watching.

Yeah.

So our tiers, our first one is $47 a month.

Yep.

What's the next one?

$564 annual, which it's the same thing as paying $47 12 times, but it comes with the bonus, which is a— $595 value. So it's actually an insane value.

And then you have—

And then $3,497 is the VIP coaching package that we have a cap of 10 people for that.

Okay. There's a bunch of things that I really like about this. First, you get to, by doing this, you get to price anchor the whole thing.

Mm-hmm.

This price anchoring, you know, someone's like, oh, $47 a month. Is that worth it? You know, and then you're like, oh, I get access to so much of this content from the kind of people who can charge $3,500 for VIP packages.

Yeah.

All of that. And so I love that approach. The other thing that you have going on here that I think is really interesting is a lot of people will discount the $47 a month if you pay annual, right? The most common thing in software is, monthly times 10 if you pay annual, so it's 2 months free. But by adding the bonus, you didn't have to, you got all your cash flow up front and you didn't have to discount the price, which I really like.

Another thing just to throw in here is like when you're talking about the price anchoring, our over here in the agency, like if somebody hires us for a 1-day workshop of brand consulting, it's $5,000.

Yep, okay.

With me or Nicole. And so that I'm gonna planning on kind of using to almost price anchor this VIP 'cause this is like direct access to us. Quarterly coaching calls. So it's not as much of like a deep dive, quick turnaround incubator style like that is, but just wanted to kind of throw that in there.

Yeah. Are you doing an open and closed launch? Yes. So—

For now. We're gonna open this up. We just don't have the next step plan yet. We're kind of like gonna decide after this closes what our next move is. So we're building the plane as we fly it a little bit. Like there's a plan, but then there's also like a, the plan is to change the plan. But we wanna open it up to a cold audience or to non-Brandcamp members. We are opening it up to this group first and closing it on Sunday. So it's only Wednesday through Sunday.

Okay.

It's a short window.

Yeah. So first reaction on the window is that it might be too short. Okay. What do you notice with engagement on your audience over the weekends? Are they pretty engaged or are they like, I work 9 to 5, this is a work thing?

It's honestly about the same. Okay. I send out my newsletter, my audience is used to getting my newsletter on Friday nights at like 8:00 PM.

Okay.

And I get quite a few responses over the weekend. More than I do during the week. Yep. My audience is entrepreneurs and we don't really turn off. We do not.

Yep.

But that's a really good point that I didn't fully think about, that maybe we should let the cart stay open a little bit past the weekend.

So we're going Wednesday to Sunday.

Mm-hmm. I also totally bombard people with emails during the cart open time.

Yeah, how many emails are you sending? In this case?

I have 8.

Okay. So normally when—

Like there's like 3 on the last day and then like kind of every other day there's like 2 on the first, you know, it's, but it's every day pretty much.

And so yeah, as we're going, and so you're hitting Thursday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I had to think how many days are in between. Okay, so 1 a day in the middle. I think that's a good cadence.

So I'm like, if I kept going, then I would feel like I would wanna, you know, maybe scale back to 2 a month.

Dial back to 2 a month, that kind of thing. So the 2 biggest launch mistakes that I see creators make is 1, they don't have tiered pricing, and 2, they don't send enough emails. I think you have nailed both of these.

Okay.

Like this is exactly where I'd want it. Great. Well, there's 2 things. I'm partially worried that your launch window is too short. At the same time, most of your sales are gonna happen here and here anyway. And so I don't know that you gain that much by stretching it out.

Yeah.

Okay, so then the third mistake that I see people make is they don't tee up the offer well enough in this pre-launch period. Our goal is to have as many people as possible have already made the decision to buy and not be able to buy yet. So that when this email comes in, it's not like, here's what the offer is, here's why you should buy it and all of that. It's like they're so, so excited and then it's just like, and there's the link to buy.

Yeah.

And you will actually do more than that. Mm-hmm. So what have you done to tee up the offer, right? Like today is Tuesday.

Yeah.

Do people know these price points?

No.

Okay.

They don't know the price points. They don't know what it is yet. They know we are going to be making an announcement. They know we're going to be inviting them into something. We have been positioning it like that from the beginning. It's like, yes, Brand Camp is a launch into something else we're going to be inviting you into. However, Brand Camp can stand on its own and it's super valuable by itself. Like you don't have to, you know, there's, and we've done it before. We have a lot of repeat people coming back to it that have been there before 'cause they know that there's a lot of value in Brand Camp. That's actually one of the things we've wondered is are we giving too much value in the free challenge? To where people feel satiated or they feel even overwhelmed with the amount of content that they got in a week. Because people start, we do these Q&As and people ask so many questions and we go into so much with them.

That's something that I feel like I've never personally been good at is finding that balance. 'Cause you wanna feel like, wow, or you want them to feel like, wow, I'm just being over-delivered. There's so much great value. But finding that line between, Franny gives me so much incredible stuff and Franny makes me feel overwhelmed because there's so much. I think that's personally hard and I don't know how to do that.

I know. Well, I'm really excited about the community because we've never had something like this to offer our audience. And I think this is actually really what they need is ongoing support or that accountability and those check-ins. Even our people who do this experience with us, at the end of that they're like, oh my gosh, you gave me this like amazing set of tools and now I know how to talk about my business and I know what my brand messaging is, but like now what? And then they're even kind of paralyzed in taking action part. So we're like, okay, even those people who were giving them like this literal like handbook still feel like they don't really know what the next step is. They need ongoing Like encouragement. So I'm excited about this because I think it'll feel more like we're not just gonna dump all this information on them and then leave them alone, which is kind of what the course maybe did as well. So I don't know, I guess I'm hopeful that this is gonna feel more like a partnership.

I think it'll be good. So I wanna propose a small tweak to this. What time did you plan to send this first email?

So the live training is at 1 o'clock Mountain Standard Time. And I will be going through slides and doing a little pitch for the community and then going into the training. So I'm doing that at the beginning of the call on Wednesday and then going into the training for the day, which is a brand audit exercise. And then I was gonna chunk out that part of the video and upload it to the sales page and then send out an email after I have that done. So I'm gonna take that, just that part of the recording out, put it on the sales page or link it in YouTube or something or both. And then send out the email, like the welcome email introducing the thing. Like Wednesday at like probably 3 o'clock.

[Speaker] Okay, so the thing that I wanna do is I wanna separate the moment where I learn what the offer is and decide whether or not to buy it from the moment where I have the ability to buy it. Because if you think about the friction. Oh, I see what you're saying.

Okay.

So let's say—

We're opening the doors for it tomorrow. We're telling you about it now, but you can't buy it yet.

This is exactly what to buy, what questions you have, are you in, all of that. Hit reply and say I'm in, any of those things. And then it's like, okay, I can actually buy it. Because if you think about, what is this, do I want to buy it, let me actually get out my credit card, and now let me complete the transaction are actually 4 separate steps. And so if we lump them together, there's more friction that happens in that. So if I'm like, I think I want to buy this, let me click through the checkout process. Oh, you know what, my credit card is actually in my wallet, which I left in the car. Oh, I'll do it later. And so you can avoid some of that. I might read the email on my phone. I'm not going to buy it on my phone, but I might read it on my phone, get really excited while I'm out doing something with my family or whatever else, and then I'm like, okay, Wednesday night at 7 PM, I'm going to be there to buy it. Okay. And the thing that throws a wrench in this is the live training, because you should sell on the live training.

Right? Okay.

And so maybe what I would, what I'm leaning towards, and this is a tight timeline, what I'm leaning towards is sending a full explanation email Wednesday morning and basically saying, today, let me tell you, you know we've been working towards something. Let me tell you, here's what it is. And then here's the details, here's the price points, here's some of the value. And you can work backwards. Hey, as you go.

But don't send them to the sales page yet.

But don't send them to the sales page yet.

Okay.

And you can work backwards in this email, right? You can say, hey, you know we normally charge $5,000 a day. We charge $15,000 if you want to do a 2-day offsite with us and our team where we do all this, right?

Yep.

One thing, as we did this, we realized people need the ongoing support. And there's these people that can't afford the price point or make that investment right now. And so you can work backwards into, these prices, which are really, really affordable.

Okay.

And so then you can get that engagement and interest.

Like, do you think I should send that email out today or tomorrow morning?

Have you sent any emails today?

I haven't. I've only sent the, like, don't forget to come to the training today, here's the workbook.

Okay.

Like a quick email. It didn't really have like any value.

You could either do today or tomorrow morning. If we weren't on the exact timeline that we're on, normally I would do—

I love this. We're gonna have to, you're gonna have to have me back to do like a debrief on how this went, like next week. And then you can add it to the podcast.

That'd be perfect. And so normally I would send it the day before and then first thing in the morning, if that's what my audience was used to from me, I would send the like, okay, now you can buy it.

Okay.

The other thing that I would—

Or I open it up to buy it on the live call.

Or on the live call. I mean, the live call is even better because then you're getting people to show up and engage and all of that.

So we were considering toying with doing like some giveaways on the live call.

Okay, like what would you give away?

Well, we're doing giveaways throughout the challenge for people who, you know, you earn points and badges and stuff for participating and doing the homework and referring friends and all these different ways. And so on Friday we'll be doing some giveaways for some of our digital products, like some business books, just some fun whatever. But I was kind of wondering about giving away maybe an annual membership or something in the call on Wednesday and letting people know that we're gonna do that so that they come live. But then I'm like, I don't know, I don't wanna give it away to somebody that wouldn't want it or like.

Yeah, you gotta think about it.

I don't wanna devalue it, I guess.

I mean, if we get into the types of scarcity, right? You want to have a couple different types of scarcity in each launch to build momentum. And so just running through the different types, first is a launch close, right? Like you cannot buy this after Sunday at midnight, right? Another form of scarcity is limiting the quantity. You have that, but only on the VIP package. And then the, I was gonna say the last type of scarcity, there's probably more, but the last one I can think of right now is some sort of like first mover advantage. You know, fast action bonus, that sort of thing. So the first, everyone who buys this gets the whole thing plus the bonus, but the first 25 people who buy it get this additional thing. Right? And so you start to build this momentum in the launch and then it lets you in this email be like, this is incredible, 50 of you already signed up. Or you get to the point.

Yeah, and then you have the social proof.

You have the social proof and the momentum. And then if you're doing it live and you open the cart, then there's a reason for someone to say, oh, I was the first to buy. I wouldn't do a bonus for the first to buy because that person's gonna buy anyway. You figure out basically what number do you think you're likely to get here, and then you try to bracket right in there to get those first, buying things because basically if we're watching a live training, the inputs that I have are my own feelings and experience as a viewer, whatever I'm reading from you as to your energy, excitement, all of that in the chat. And so I might be moderately interested. I'm like, oh, this sounds good, but I have, I don't know, who knows? And if I see a whole bunch of other people buying and commenting, that they bought, then I'm like, you know, it leans me, you know, from skeptical to enthusiastic.

Totally.

And so if you think about what's a bonus that you could offer, my gut feeling is the first 25 people to purchase, somewhere in there. You just have to make sure it's a low enough number that it will sell, like those will go during the live training. Right. Or you do two tiers of it, right?

I'm trying to think about what I would use, do for that.

Often what people do is if there's an additional template that comes that you use somewhere else in your business and you throw that in and you're like, look, normally we don't include this, but, or—

The problem is like putting all the tools that—

You already put them all in.

Well, then most of them come with this, like the brand guide template and stuff like that, that those tools are included in this course that you get with this. And so it's like a double. So I'm like, oh great, I have to create something.

Yeah. And on our timeline, it's probably not worth doing now that I think about it, because I think—

you know me, I'm like, now you're going to try to put it in. I'm like, first 25 people get a coaching call with Nathan Barry. A year of ConvertKit.

But so there might be something, right, of There's something. I have to figure out what it is. It might not even be something that you would typically do, or even that everybody could use. The first 25 people get an invite to our next happy hour at our studio in Boise. A bunch of people might be like, well, I'm not going to come from Virginia all the way. But there's still— it adds to that and that feeling of community. Maybe there's some teardown they get. Could even be the first 25 people get a special badge in the community.

Yeah.

And that might work.

Just like, okay.

Right? A founding member badge in Mighty.

Can I make a to-do list over here? Yeah, do it. Okay, new plan.

Yep.

Is I'm sending out an email Tuesday night.

Yep.

To like tease.

Yeah, we wanna tease all of these packages. We wanna give people all the information they need to buy, but not the option to buy. We wanna split those two moments.

Okay, and then on Wednesday, special offer or a bonus for first 25 or whatever we decide. Yeah.

Okay. I think at the beginning of the launch, those are two great changes that we can make. Okay. The other thing I would say that people often do as a bonus is it's like a, you know, access to a workshop or something like that. I think you have plenty of, you've plenty of bonuses, you have plenty of workshop-related material, so that doesn't stand out. But just for everyone watching, those are kind of the typical things.

Yeah.

That you would see.

I have seen people do this before and I kind of wondered about it. Like the, we're going to be opening the doors to this tomorrow. Thing.

Yep, here's all the details.

I haven't ever really like thought about it.

Why?

Like what's the psychology behind that? So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because basically a lot of decisions to go through.

We want people to have already made the decision to buy or like be 90% there and then be like, okay, now I just have to get out my credit card. Because the number of things, like the number of interruptions or whatever else that could happen between learning about it, making the decision to buy all this and trying to get that in a single session is hard.

Right. And then you're also kind of like, it feels good too, because then when I do the live thing, I can say authentically, like, you knew this was coming. Not, I'm not going to say it like that. You knew this was coming. But like, they have had a chance to kind of think about it or they don't have those objections of like, I need to talk to my spouse first or something. And they don't want to miss out on being the first 25 people to get that thing. Because they might actually just need to think about it for a second. And so it's kind of, it feels better, feels nice.

Yeah, I think that's good. Okay, so now as we move further through the timeline, there's different segmenting that you can do. And as you think about who's most engaged or not, and people are going to have, who don't buy are gonna not buy for many different reasons. One thing that I like to do right in here is, well, you can do it either way. You could do it Saturday or Monday. And you're basically asking, hey, I noticed that you haven't bought yet. That'd be bought yet or you didn't buy. Why is that? Hit reply and let me know. If you, these numbers, 1,000 people working our way through, say you might end up getting 40 to 50 replies to that email. That's manageable. If you had like 10,000 people in the challenge, what I would do is like—

Like a survey or something?

I would, yeah, click a link and let me know if it's pricing related, I didn't understand the value, that sort of thing. And then you can segment from there of what you want to go to, like basically the different offers. Right. 'Cause if it's price, then maybe there's something else that you can offer. I think you have the right range here.

Mm-hmm.

But one thing that I did in one of my books about software design was I had 3 packages, just the book at $39, I had the book plus some of the resources at $99, and then for $249, I had the book and interviews with experts and all the resources that I use as a software designer. And so what I would do is after I close the launch, I would never do a full close launch just 'cause of the style of product. In your case, I think it makes sense. But it was a discount that was ending. I would afterwards, I would ask why they didn't buy, and then I would send a series of emails that spoke to that. And I might offer a different packaging where, If someone's saying, you know, price with upfront cost is the concern, then the next emails that I say, I might have like a final offer Monday or Tuesday that's like, hey, for $47 a month, like we're actually offering a scholarship that is this and provides this other thing. You don't want to do it in a way that devalues the rest of the launch or makes—

Or feels like you're backpedaling or something. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's basically like, hey, I want to help every business owner have these outcomes. And so how can I—

It's a way to show that you're listening.

That's a great way to put it.

Like you're listening and iterating in the moment.

And then the other thing is this email, like let's say if we branch from here, right? These are only going to, well, let's say the concerns are timing, Price, and there's probably more, but for our example, value would be in there somewhere. But now, like this email, these emails went to 1,000 people. This email went to 200, maybe? Right, so you're narrowing it down, and that's the beauty of email, right? If you have the Instagram post, it's gotta go to everybody. But here you can talk to them very specifically.

Email's the best.

I mean, I'm a little bit of a fan. So then you can do that downsell and then you also have that information for the future. 'Cause you're going to, like you're going to learn from all of this and then do it again in say 6 months, maybe even 3 months. And so now like these sequences are mapped out and you'll have people targeted. Like maybe someone comes back, they didn't buy because of price, but they loved the challenge and so they're gonna come back and do it again. And you can actually know in these emails, hey, price is an objection before, and you could change the email automatically based on that.

Oh, that's like, yeah, that's definitely a deeper level of segmenting than I want to do.

That's like a 300-level segmenting.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, okay. I'll consider a downsell. I was just thinking like, I don't want to downsell, offer a lower price or anything, but what I could do, and I've seen some people do, is like, maybe you can get just a ticket to come to the coaching calls. Or like one aspect of the community that's not the full immersed, like.

Well, one version that you could do is like, okay, maybe you missed some of the live trainings. And so maybe for $47 one time, not monthly, right? You could get the live trainings plus this other template that we sell or something like that. Right, you've got them interested and engaged. They follow it all the way through. Okay. And it's basically looking for the people who, were engaged, clicked, opened, all of that, and didn't buy. Because there will be a segment of the 1,000 that never really engaged. And you can mostly just let them stay warm with your regular marketing. But basically, if you're engaged and didn't buy, I really want to know why and I want to do something about that. Yeah. And I love both the, the automated segmentation and the organic qualitative hit reply on the search.

Yeah.

It's going to be a good launch.

It's going to be so good. I'm excited for this.

Me too. You have this pretty dialed in. I like to think so. There's usually things where I look at a launch and I'm like, oh God, there's not enough time to change that.

A lot of it's been happening late at night this past week. It's been in the works and being planned for a long time, but coming to Craft and Commerce made us decide to switch to Mighty. So that was just a month ago and it's a lot of setup and a lot of work to get that going. We've been working with their team, they've been amazing. However, it's been a major scramble to change our whole plan from where we were going to host all of this and getting all of that set up. So yeah, we're in that launch energy kind of, you're sure I'll create a new set of slides to do for tomorrow and—

No problem. I would ask the Mighty team what they've seen for that initial bonus. What have they seen work well to make the first X number of community members feel really special? OK. Because they might say, actually, badges are incredible. Or they might be like, yeah, it actually then forever makes the rest of the community feel like they're not in the inner circle. It creates cliques.

Yeah, they have a lot of insights on that.

And so they'll know for sure.

Okay.

And then they'll give you more of a long-term strategy on like, oh, here's how we actually use achievements in the community over multiple years. Okay, so we've covered a lot of things here. You have a very tight timeline to implement some of this feedback. The good news is you have a lot of this going really, really well.

You know what? That's when I work best. It's—

Under pressure.

I'm serious. Like, I'm excited about it even though I'm like, ugh, like I have to go back and do so much tonight. But that's when I— get the most creative. That's when I get the most, I'm the most productive. I always joke, I say I'm not a procrastinator, I'm deadline-driven.

So, like, let's go. Like people in the launch will be. Let's sit down and just think about the kind of the details of what we talked about. 'Cause there's both, there's the launch that we're going through live, but then there's also just the takeaways for someone watching who they're planning a launch a month out, 6 months out, something like that. So let's start first with your takeaways and action items, and then we'll go make them a little more broad, uh, for launches in general.

My takeaways and action items are that, I mean, I'm feeling really good that you kind of validated the way that we've structured the packages. That was really nice to hear from you. And you know, you feel like you just are so close to something and you're so in it, you think you're doing it the right way. And we've done a lot of course launches over the years and always felt like in hindsight we wish we would've done something different. So it's really nice, even though we're already in the middle of this and it would've probably been smarter to workshop this with, you know, outside advice sooner. Um, I'm so grateful for your insights and it makes me feel really good going into the pitch tomorrow, feeling like we have it set up in a, in a good way. And you also poked some holes in some things for me and gave me some new ideas to chew on and implement. Literally today. So.

I love it.

Like teasing the cart open and letting people know the actual pricing and stuff ahead of time so that they have time to think about it. I never would've come to that, so.

I think it makes a big difference. So the things that I love about this launch, like first it's obvious that you've run a business for a long time and you've reached like substantial scale because there's a lot of things, you know, often when I'm criticizing a launch, we didn't even get into the design or all of that, but like I've looked at all of your work, you know, followed you for a long time. So I know that that's top notch. So that helped us to like really dive into the mechanics of the launch. And then, you know, looking through it, the price tiers is such a big thing. And so to see that you already have that in a good way, you know, being able to offer bonuses rather than discounts, I think as we talked, you know, at the beginning of the conversation about brand, are you a discount brand or are you a value-add additional, bonus type of brand. And like, that's very clear. That's a brand ideal and aesthetic that has come all the way through into a pricing decision. I wanna dive in on the branding side of things. This is something that a lot of creators find themselves in the business of branding unintentionally, right? 'Cause you're saying, oh, I'm just going to teach this thing. Let me put out content on the internet. And before you know it, you've built a brand, whether intentionally or not. What are some things that, you know, you would say to creators who have found themselves, maybe they've got 10,000 subscribers on a newsletter or a social channel starting to take off, but they haven't yet been intentional about brand, even though they've started to build fans.

My biggest thing is we just have to remember, I think about how you interact with the creators that you see on a daily basis, how many of them there are and which ones could I say by name who they are and why I remember them. Not that many, like honestly, except for the ones I've been following for a really long time. But if somebody pops up in my, say my Instagram feed or on YouTube or something once or twice, I start to kind of make those connections. Their face looks familiar, their message kind of sounds familiar. It takes a lot of times for that to be repeated and for us to see them and hear their voice and hear the same, almost the same exact message coming out of their mouth over and over again for me to go, Oh, and associate that name to the person, especially with so many personal brands out there where we're just using our names.

Right.

Like names are hard for me to remember anyway. Like, yeah.

When someone's standing in front of you, you're like, I can't remember the name. And then it's like, wait, you're supposed to remember this, you know, name and face that I saw twice on Instagram.

And sometimes they're really obscure, like hard to spell, like names that don't sound like they look and like, they're not like, you wouldn't name your business that. Right. Cause it's not easy for people. And so especially as a coach or a personal brand or creator, branding is important to think about in what am I doing to make those connections happen as quickly as possible and to make a great first impression and have people know me for what I want to be known for. Right. And I think so many people go out and want to just share about everything, which is, which is a way to do it. And I'm not saying you shouldn't. You know, touch on different points of your life, but we have to be intentional and deliberate about at least that one thing that we want to be known for and talk about it, like, feel like a broken record.

What's an example for you? What, when you think about your personal brand and then as it extends to Ampersand that, you know, you want to be known for, or how, you know, how you're going to show up?

So I just love, I love branding, I love online marketing, I love psychology of marketing and buyer behavior and like all of that stuff so much that I'm always kind of thinking about it or inspired by something in my daily life. So I tend to, with my personal brand, which hasn't really been like a, a growth like focus for me necessarily, but whenever I create content for myself, I went through a phase where I was like, okay, what do I wanna be putting out there? What do I wanna be talking about? The other day I had a thought that popped up while I was in a boxing workout. Yeah. And I'm, and I have those all the time. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my gosh, Disrupting the pattern was basically the lesson of the defensive movements we were learning in the boxing class. That's, even though I know the combination that's gonna be thrown at me, the 1, 2, 3, 2, or whatever, if we just kind of hold back and it's 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, and then it's 1, 2, 3, 2, just that little minuscule thing can throw off your opponent. So I'm talking about something I do in my life but I'm relating it back to the value I provide.

Well, and then even in that story, there's a bunch of things that I love about it. You're telling a personal story. It ties into marketing and branding and things you love to talk about, but it tells a lot about who you are as a person. Like all of a sudden we're like, oh, Franny is the kind of person that's into boxing for a workout, right? Like that's pretty badass, you know? And so that adds to the brand on a few different levels.

Totally. Branding and relating and connecting with people is really about like we connect with people that we have something in common with. So you can find that with anyone. You can find some commonality or whether it's a personal value that you have or, you know, your family lifestyle or something.

Right.

Like I love your content about your journey as a pilot.

Yeah.

Like I can't relate to that at all, but I really admire it a lot and I think it's so interesting and I'm so happy that you're sharing about that. And every time you post about it, it's like, it's this other little neural connection for me to Nathan Barry of, you know, not just that you're the creator of ConvertKit, not that that's a just. That's kind of a big deal.

One thing that I struggle with is the balance between consistency and maybe it's like casual authenticity.

Yeah.

I've been watching these creators on Instagram in particular who follow the exact same format for every video. There's 4 that I'm thinking of. One is Bimma Williams, who he works lots of time at Nike and Adidas working in sneakers. And so he talks about like brand collaborations and he wears the exact same beanie. The mic is in the exact same place for every show.

Does he just do the little motivational things where he's talking straight at the camera?

Yeah, so he's talking straight at the camera and he's explaining what's going on in the, like in the industry. And then there's another, he's a trial attorney in Texas, I believe. What is his name? His name is Jefferson. He's got like 5 million followers on Instagram. And so he is talking about like, here's conversational tips, here's how to argue, here's all of that. But he does every single one in his car, like same seatbelt on and everything. And even the format is similar. Here's what I'm gonna teach you. Here's 3 examples. Here's the conclusion. And all of those people, I think Bima has 100,000 followers, Jefferson has 5 million, on different timelines, but just the consistency. And I think part of what it is is when you come in, if you're scrolling through the feed, you're like, oh, that was good. And I watched that to the end. And the next time it's similar enough that you're like, oh, that's the same creator. And then the third time you come across, you're just like, oh, Bima always delivers. And so now I'm gonna come across it. And so I struggle with that super formulaic one, which I think from the outside works really, really well. And I think about this show, for example, of even the things that I'm trying to go for, right? Of standardizing, shooting in the same studio. I want it where people recognize it in our clips and thumbnails. In just a second, we'll get up and map out the business and get into numbers. But I want it recognizable in that way. And people know what to expect, right? They're going to get, somewhat of a casual conversation, and then they're going to get a dive into concrete business advice and numbers.

And I have plenty of time to figure that out.

Oh yeah, that's not till Monday.

I mean, I have like a solid 4 days to put something together. I think, you know— Oh, and the first, the rope drop. I'm calling it the rope drop, like, you know, at Disneyland, like the first.

Yeah, exactly. The rope drop is a good, so there's various ways. Even as we think about the terminology that we use internally versus externally, right? In a much more salesy, like direct marketing world, they'd call it a fast action bonus. A rope drop is really good branding and positioning on the exact same idea.

Yeah, 'cause it makes you feel like you're excited to just run in and be the first one there.

And now you can even start to, like fast action bonus, you're like, what do I put on a slide? Rope drop, you know exactly what visuals you put on the slide and what feeling you're trying to, to create.

It's funny cuz for me the visual is actually, have you ever done the, you ski, right?

I do. Yeah.

Have you done the rope drop at Bogus?

No, I haven't.

Yeah. Like when they open up the backside and back to Chair 3 on that side of the mountain, they do it right in the morning. The ski patrol literally like takes off the rope and there's like 100 people like on a powder day.

I'll, I'll just try to get back there.

And I'm like, that's, that's like my Disneyland, you know?

Yeah.

So I love that. Okay.

That's good.

I have some very actionable things to do here.

All right. So we'll dive in.

Yeah.

A couple things. I think as everyone's watching, if I was watching, the thing that I would want to know is like, so how'd it go? You know, like, uh, by the time this episode drops, the launch will have concluded.

Well, Nathan, in the spirit of manifestation, it went so well. We sold like 4 times higher than our goal. And, uh, It was seamless and so easy and everybody just was so excited to do it.

Exactly. So if you want the breakdown on that, uh, I think what would be fun to do is I'll dedicate an issue of my newsletter to like the lessons learned, the episode when it comes out, and then like how exactly the launch went. If you're up for sharing all the real numbers.

Totally. Let's do it.

Great.

It sounds good. So it'll hold me accountable to do a thorough debrief.

I like it. So if you go to NathanBarry.com, go ahead and subscribe there. The newsletter comes out every Tuesday morning and we'll do the detailed debrief and all the behind the scenes.

Oh my gosh. Okay. Sweet.

Franny, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me and thank you for your services.

Anytime. If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search Billion Dollar Creator and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video. And drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.