Launch Read online

  It’s also been used all over the world—I haven’t heard from anyone in Antarctica yet, but it’s been used on all of the other continents of the world. I have successful PLF students in dozens of countries, and it’s worked in more languages than I can keep track of.

  And it works with all kinds of products and businesses, such as:

  online courses

  home study courses

  physical widgets

  online membership sites

  online services

  offline services (dentists, tax services, etc.)

  estate sales

  ebooks

  coaching

  mastermind and networking groups

  consulting

  artwork (paintings, jewelry, etc.)

  B2B business system sales

  non-profit fundraisers

  board games

  getting people to church

  real estate

  travel packages

  software

  apps

  Again, this is only a partial list. But here’s the takeaway: along the way, Product Launch Formula and my PLF students have completely redefined the way stuff is sold online.

  It’s been a wild ride. I could never have imagined where that first newsletter I sent to 19 email addresses would lead.

  Enough about Me, What about YOU?

  So now you know the story behind the Product Launch Formula . . . but what does all this have to do with you?

  Can this formula work for you? Can you start an online business using my Product Launch Formula? Or if you already have a business, can it help you grow your business?

  In my experience, unless you’re selling a commodity (like gasoline or sand) or you’re operating an emergency service (like a locksmith or bail bondsman), then the answer is an emphatic YES. I’ve seen so many PLF Owners have so much success in so many different fields that almost nothing surprises me anymore.

  And in this book, I’ll be sharing some of their stories. You’ll meet people from many different walks of life . . . people with wildly different products and businesses. Folks like Susan Garrett, who teaches dog agility training. She started using PLF as a complete newbie and has since created an enormously successful business. Or John Gallagher, who sells products about foraging for edible and medicinal herbs and plants. John was on food stamps when he did his first launch, and now he has a six-figure business. Or Will Hamilton, who sells tennis instruction products and has used his product launches to create a strong enough brand so that he now partners with top-level tennis pros.

  All of this might sound like magic, or complicated, or just plain unattainable. Well, stick with me, and you’ll see that it’s not complicated, that it just plain works, and how and why it can work for you.

  I’ve organized the book to follow in a logical progression:

  In the first five chapters I’ll give you the foundational material, including an overview of the PLF process, along with email lists, mental triggers, and the Sideways Sales Letter™.

  In the next three chapters I’ll walk you through the launch process itself—including the pre-prelaunch, the prelaunch, and then the open cart.

  The final six chapters will be about fitting PLF into your business and your life, including the Seed Launch™ (this is how you start from scratch) and the JV Launch (how you can do those big mega-launches).

  Now just to be clear, I’m not saying that PLF is easy or automatic. There is definitely work involved. Like I said at the beginning, this is NOT a “get rich quick” scheme.

  But the reality is thousands of people are creating these types of small, underground, highly profitable online businesses. And with Product Launch Formula they are putting together super-powerful product launches (or entire BUSINESS launches) that are creating nearly instant sales and momentum for their businesses.

  Sound good? Are you ready to roll?

  In the next chapter I’m going to walk through the basic structure of Product Launch Formula, and then we’ll walk forward from there. Along the way you’re going to see why it’s so completely revolutionary, why it works in so many different markets, and why it works for so many different types of businesses and products.

  And soon I’ll get to the crazy story of how I made more than a million dollars in sales in a single hour. :-)

  One more thing: make sure you go to http://thelaunchbook.com/member/ to get all the extra training videos and resources that go along with this book.

  Food Stamps to Six Figures: The Product Launch Formula Explained

  Chapter 2

  John Gallagher was a busy man. He had a wife and two young kids, he was going to school to become an acupuncturist, and he volunteered nearly full-time at the nonprofit Wilderness Awareness School. When you meet John, you’re quickly struck by his earnestness and his passion—and that he’s not the kind of guy who sits around idle. But there wasn’t a lot of time or money to go around, so John relied on food assistance to help feed his family. He never thought he would have to go on food assistance—he wasn’t a “food stamps” kind of guy. But he did what he had to do to get by and feed his family. After all, he was sure it would be a temporary situation, because John had big plans. He had the entrepreneurial itch and what seemed like a great idea for a business.

  John’s passion is foraging for and preparing edible and medicinal plants and herbs, and he had created an educational board game with his wife that taught kids all about herbs. The game would be called “Wildcraft: An Herbal Adventure Game,” and it was time to bring the game to market.

  Of course, if you’re going to create a board game there are some big upfront costs—the minimum quantity you must order is quite large. But John pushed ahead, borrowing nearly $20,000 from his dad and placing an order for 1,500 games. Like so many entrepreneurs before him, he was willing to go deeper into debt to get his business started. Even though more debt seemed like a step backwards, he knew once the sales started to roll in he would be able to climb out of debt.

  Then came the big day when the games arrived at his home, and he started to realize just what 1,500 games looked like. As pallet after pallet was unloaded from the semi-truck, his excitement started to turn to worry. The boxes filled the entire garage. Then the spare bedroom. Then the second bathroom, even the shower stall.

  But John put his worry aside, because it was time to bring the game out into the world. It was a beautiful game, and he knew it would provide hours of entertainment and education to a lot of families . . . and it was the ticket out of debt and into prosperity for his family.

  So John planned a “launch party” and invited his friends and acquaintances and extended community. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was one scenario he wasn’t prepared for—total heartbreak.

  John Gallagher with some of his Wildcraft games.

  The Entrepreneurial Land of Broken Dreams

  Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than a great idea to start a business. In fact, this story is a lot like thousands of other entrepreneurial stories that end with a soul-crushing defeat. We see it all the time: a new store in the mall, a new restaurant downtown . . . suddenly empty and a “for rent” sign in the window. A beautiful new blog that starts enthusiastically but quickly becomes a ghost town, with no visitors, no comments, no new articles. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, because that’s not just a business—that’s someone’s dream. It represents hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars invested into a big vision—a big vision that failed catastrophically.

  In John’s case, the picture was especially dismal. He sold only 12 games at his launch party, leaving him with 1,488 games to sell. John faced a monumental low point in his life. Not only did he feel like he had failed, he was literally surrounded by his failure. He and his family lived in a home stuffed floor to ceiling with all the games he couldn’t sell. Those games seemed to stare at him every minute of the day, all day long. Even worse, he didn’t know what to do next. He had just dug himself into a huge ho
le of debt, he was surrounded by unsold inventory, and he had no idea how to even begin to climb out of that hole.

  Like so many other would-be entrepreneurs, John had seen his dreams nearly smashed to pieces on the rocks of what I call “Hope Marketing.” He created his product and hoped it would sell. And if you know many entrepreneurs, you’ve probably heard a very similar story before. However, John’s story has a different ending . . .

  Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

  At his wife’s urging, John went to Google and searched for help about launching a product—which is where he found the Product Launch Formula® (http://www.ProductLaunchFormula.com). And then, since my PLF Coaching Program is not inexpensive, he went to his dad and borrowed even more money. (NOTE: I do NOT advise borrowing money to buy any of my training materials. It worked out for John, but it’s not a practice I recommend.)

  John dove headfirst into PLF, and he intuitively saw that it would be a perfect match for his board game. Within a few weeks he had a new plan for his product launch, and was ready to put it in place. It’s worth noting that John spent almost nothing on his PLF-style launch. PLF is all about the method, not sinking a lot of money into the launch. John counted down the hours to his new launch with huge anticipation, wondering if it could possibly meet his newly heightened expectations.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The results were staggering—and an incredible contrast to his first failed launch. In just his initial launch period, John sold 670 games, bringing in sales of right around $20,000! Even more remarkable, since he spent almost nothing on his launch, nearly the entire amount could go toward paying off the cost to get the games manufactured.

  So for those keeping score at home, that’s 12 sales for Hope Marketing and 670 sales for Product Launch Formula. That’s an increase of 55 times. The game sold for about $30, so translated into dollar terms, the contrast looks even more dramatic: $360 in sales vs. $20,100. Now just to be crystal clear, John didn’t spend anything on advertising during his PLF-style launch. He didn’t have any new promotional partners. He didn’t get any media coverage. He used the same resources and assets he already had, and since his family was on food stamps he clearly didn’t have a lot of resources. In fact, he actually started out with a borrowed laptop computer and using the free Internet connection at the local library.

  John’s success with that first launch was truly remarkable, but he was just getting started. He’s now sold more than 50,000 copies of his Wildcraft game, and he’s launched many other products, including one of the most popular membership sites in his niche (HerbMentor.com). In fact, what he’s done since that first launch makes his initial success seem modest in comparison. I’ll tell you more of his crazy story a little later, because it’s such a great illustration of how one well-executed launch can set you up in business nearly overnight. But for now let’s just say that he’s the guy who went “from food stamps to a six-figure income.”

  One more note before we temporarily leave John’s story: the one asset John had in his launch was a small email list—people who had requested that he stay in touch with them via email. I’ll get to the magic of having a list in the next chapter. But the quick story is that when you combine any list with PLF, it’s almost like having a license to print money.

  A Warning about Those Big Numbers

  In the last chapter I threw some crazy numbers at you, like how I started from scratch, ran a business out of my basement, and eventually made $106,000 in a single week (with no employees, no physical store, no inventory—nothing but a computer and an Internet connection).

  Then I told you about how I taught one friend my Product Launch Formula, and he sold $1,080,000 in 24 hours—again with almost no staff, no office, etc.

  Next I just slipped in that part about my business growing to the point that I did more than $1 million in sales in a SINGLE HOUR (when I was still working out of my home and running things by the seat of my pants).

  After that I explained how my students and clients have done over $500 million (!) in product launches in all types of markets—selling all kinds of different products—and that many of those students were running micro-businesses with almost no overhead. And now I’ve shared the story of John Gallagher, who started when his family was on food stamps and went on to build a six-figure income.

  In fact, the numbers are all so crazy that I worry that I might lose you. I understand that when you’re just getting started, it can be hard to imagine numbers this big. But please remember two things: First, the numbers are all real. And second, I was a complete newbie when I started out. So was John Gallagher and many of my other students.

  If you’re like me when I began my business, then the odds of you coming right out of the gate and doing a million-dollar launch are probably lower than winning the lottery. It’s not going to happen when you first start out. But you need to know this: You can absolutely start from scratch just like I did, quickly build up your business, and quickly grow your results.

  I’m going to walk you through my formula for how to do exactly that, but first I have to introduce you to this “hidden world” where ordinary people are building extraordinary businesses—and they’re building them quickly and with nearly zero upfront investment.

  The “Secret” World of Online Marketing

  There really is a “secret” world of business that most people have never heard of—a world of colorful characters, real-world rags-to-riches stories, and nearly unbridled opportunity.

  It’s a world where businesses can be created from the ether—start with an idea and you could be in business in a matter of days, often with almost no investment.

  It’s a world where a seat-of-the-pants business that you run from home with a skeleton staff (or no staff at all) can become a multi-million dollar company.

  It’s a world that’s not limited by time and space. You can run your business on your own schedule, and you can pick it up and move it to Hawaii if you like (or the mountains of Colorado, like I did).

  It’s a world where you don’t need to invest large sums of money to get started, where you can “bootstrap” your way to success without having to raise any capital.

  And it’s a world that “scales”—because these businesses can grow independent of the time you put into them. That means you break free of the trap of trading your precious time for dollars. Your income becomes leveraged. It’s a world where someone in the 99% truly can get rich.

  This is the world of the entrepreneurial direct marketing micro-business. And I was lucky enough to stumble into it back in 1996, during the earliest days of online business. This world has transformed my life, and I’ve watched it transform the lives of thousands of other people. The history and evolution of that world is a crazy story, and maybe someday I’ll write that book, because it’s a story that few have experienced as fully as I did. But more to the point of this book, I’m going to have to bring you into this world to give you a full understanding of the Product Launch Formula and how you can put the power of PLF to work in your business and your life.

  But make no mistake: No matter what the size or type of your business (or your business dreams), this world offers something for you.

  Way back when I started in 1996, the Internet was expanding like crazy. The growth rate was exponential. Every month the number of users grew by a faster rate. The word “Internet” was starting to enter the collective consciousness, and suddenly everyone was talking about it—even if they didn’t quite understand what it was. But no one had really figured out how to use the Internet for business, and the question from every business-minded person was “But can I make any money from it?”

  The big corporations certainly didn’t have a plan. For the most part, the Internet was more like the Wild West than a normal business environment. And that’s not the type of arena the big corporations like to play in. But that’s exactly the type of environment the “little guy” (and by that I mean both men and women because MANY of
these early startups were run by women) can thrive in. And thrive they did.

  The Internet offered the perfect opportunity for the little guy to start a new business. These businesses cost very little to start, there were no set hours (since a web site is always online), and they were independent of physical location. Furthermore, there was no big entrenched competition, there was almost no regulation, you could have an instant global reach, and the Internet was growing every day.

  These businesses focused mostly on providing “information” that fell into two categories: information that solved a problem (such as learning to play guitar or installing crown moulding) or content that provided entertainment (such as jokes, photos, games).

  When I started my business in 1996, it’s impossible to say how many profitable online businesses were in existence, but there weren’t very many. My guess is that they numbered in the dozens, or possibly hundreds, but by any count, a pretty small universe. However, that universe or community quickly expanded because people found starting an Internet business to be quick and easy. Of course, the Internet didn’t reverse the laws of entrepreneurship—the great majority of those initial businesses didn’t last very long. But the sheer volume of start-ups meant a lot of those businesses would actually make it.

  And it would be those businesses that pioneered much of the commercial, for-profit Internet world. For instance, I can remember when Jeff Bezos came on a discussion list I was part of to ask about creating an affiliate program for his new online bookstore Amazon.com.

  This was the primordial soup of the Internet business world . . . and that’s where I created what would become known as the Product Launch Formula.

  The Formula That Launched a Thousand Businesses

  So by now you’re probably wondering, “What exactly IS the Product Launch Formula?” And, more important, “Will it work for me?”