Launching Your Dreams: From Newsletter to Empire with Jeff Walker

[00:00:00]

Tim Melanson: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the CEO of Internet Alchemy, and he’s also the author of the Product Launch Formula. So I’m really excited to be rocking up today with Jeff Walker. What he does is he helps people to launch businesses, launch products.

He’s very good at it. So this is gonna be a cool episode. Jeff, welcome to show.

Jeff Walker: Thanks, Tim. I’m, I’m looking forward to this.

Tim Melanson: So rock

Jeff Walker: I am ready to rock.

Tim Melanson: a good. So tell me a story of success. We can be inspired.

Jeff Walker: Oh boy. So, I mean. I, when I started, I was a stay at home dad. My wife was supporting the family. She had a good job, but there was myself and two young preschool kids. And times were, I mean, making it on one income’s tough and times were ti tight and so. I started an online business just as a as just to try to make a little bit of extra money to give ourselves some [00:01:00] security.

This was all the way back in 1996, and I started publishing a newsletter online. It was about the stock market, which I didn’t have any credentials, but I had a lot of interest in a lot of knowledge of it. So I wasn’t a broker or anything like that. A financial planner. And I gradually built up this newsletter.

It started when I sent a newsletter to everyone I knew that had an email address. And back then not everyone had an email address. Uh, so it was, uh, 19 email addresses on that first, for that first newsletter. One of ’em was my second email address and one was my wife’s email address, but it felt better to say 19 instead of 17.

Uh, and then I, um. I grew, I grew up grew. That free newsletter, it was a hundred percent free, but through word of mouth, gradually grew up and the several hundred people were getting it. And at that point I’m like, well, maybe I can sell them something. I had never sold anything in my life before. I wasn’t in, I wasn’t a marketer, I wasn’t a salesperson, anything like that.[00:02:00]

So, uh, and, and I was, I really didn’t know how to sell. I didn’t know how to market, and I was more than that. I was scared to ask for the order, ask to, to tell people that I had something for sale because I thought they wouldn’t love me anymore. They were loving me when I sent a free newsletter. And I was just worried about that.

I had all this crazy thinking about money and sales, so I put together this idea where I would romance them. I kept on sending ’em even more free stuff and even better free stuff. That led into me telling them I had, I had a new paid version of that newsletter and that first launch that was, I didn’t call it that then, but we call that now, that that was a first launch.

This was in early in 1897. And I actually made $1,650 in sales. And at that point, my goal was if I could make $10,000 in a year, it would be absolutely, that would, that’d be pivotal for my family. We’d start to feel more security and, um. [00:03:00] So $1,650, everyone’s got a different frame of reference for money.

But for me, that was like huge. I was like, no one had ever paid me anything other than a paycheck. No, no one had ever paid me for something that I created, and that just flipped the switch. That like, if I did this once, I could do it again. I can do it again, and, and I might even, it might even get better.

And that’s what happened. That, you know, four months later I did another launch. That one was $6,000 and then 8,000 and then a couple years later, and I’m gonna compress time here. This is so this isn’t get rich quick, but, but, but in 1998. I did the launch, that $34,000 in a week, and that’s when my wife and I started talking about her coming home and retiring and, and helping to support me in this, in this business and, and it just kept on growing and growing and growing.

In 99, my wife did leave her [00:04:00] job. She came home in, uh, 2000. I did the first launch that made six figures more. It was like about $104,000 in a single week. And then it just kept on going from there. And, and just that idea that just that I was able to start from absolutely nothing with this. Having no knowledge of marketing, no knowledge of sales, no knowledge of having a business, and to create something that could, you know, bring my wife home.

Now those, those little, those little kids, they’re all grown up now. They both work in a business with me. Um, and it’s just been a crazy, crazy journey.

Tim Melanson: Wow. You know what’s fascinating about that is that, that, you know, this is way back in 96, that formula that you just talked about, you know, giving the, the free content, you know, trying to nurture and all that. So that’s super relevant right now. People are still doing it right now. That’s, that’s the formula,

Jeff Walker: It is. It is. And you know, a lot. I just stumbled on it. You know, I, it wasn’t like I had some [00:05:00] grand master plan. I just, I didn’t know a better way to sell than to, like, if I just romance people, if I, if I show them what I’ve got, then maybe that will lead to the sale. And it was just that instinct, that instinct.

And the other instinct was to focus on building my email list from the very, very start, I just, I just had this sense that. And, and maybe it was because back then we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have podcasts, we didn’t have blogs. There was no other way you could put up a webpage, but it was like really hard to do.

And so email was like the one thing you could get those email addresses and mail and, and send a newsletter. And, but that led me this obsessive focus on building my email list, which frankly continues to this day.

Tim Melanson: wow. Well, so then how have things changed from then to now?

Jeff Walker: Uh, radically. Um, of course back then it was email is your only, only medium. Uh, you couldn’t [00:06:00] advertise. There was literally no way to advertise back then. Then,

Tim Melanson: a boatload of money, right?

Jeff Walker: I’m sorry.

Tim Melanson: Unless you spent a lot of money, you get a billboard or do you know, something

Jeff Walker: I’ll tell, yeah, I guess a billboard or newspapers or magazines, but, and I actually tried that. I actually tried magazines like in 1997 or 1998.

That didn’t go all that well, but you couldn’t, and then there were banner ads came along, but those. I mean, that was the only way to advertise. But things like, well, social media and being most social to advertise on on Facebook or Insta or what, whatever that didn’t exist. Um, like AdSense that didn’t exist or ad words, I guess didn’t exist.

So it was one of the things you could do. Back then was other people were also building email lists, and you could advertise in those email lists or do what they would call list swaps, where they’d tell their people about you and you would tell your people about them. So those things worked, but there’s just so many more tools and even building [00:07:00] pages, uh, webpage is like, well, you don’t even need to do it now, but it’s like that.

Um, being able to build an audience in social, uh, it’s just so much is, is there’s, it’s so much easier in so many ways. There is more competition. That’s the one, the, the one downside. There’s a lot more competition out there, but in general, all the tools have made everything so much easier.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and, and, uh, one of the things that I, I, I do think is, um, the same, I guess, is that email really is kind of still the, the, the king. I mean, you, you’ve got all these social media networks and I mean, we see every once in a while, you know, maybe they change their, you know, their, their. Policies, and next thing you know, you get de platformed or, or, uh, or the, the, the platform just goes down.

Now what do you do? Right? But, but email is one of those things that even now there’s more people. I mean, I, who doesn’t have an email address now, right?

Jeff Walker: Right. Yeah. E and you know, email’s having, it certainly it’s having its moment in the sun now, [00:08:00] uh, compared to even a few years ago. You know, here we are 30 years later and all of a sudden it’s the brand new thing. But if you just look at Substack is very email focused and so many people are focused on building.

Email newsletters, whether, whether it’s on Substack or somewhere else, but it, you, you see even newsletters are, are be, are getting acquired. Um, so it is, it, it, to me it’s always been the king. Well, since the beginning it’s always been the king and for the foreseeable future it’s going to be, continue to be the king.

You know, social is a great way to get discovery, to have people find out about you. But like you said, algorithms can change, policies can change. I per, I lost my personal Facebook account. Someone tried two, two and a half years ago, someone tried to hack my account. Instead of Facebook just blocking them, they actually shut my account down and they deleted it.

This is my personal account. They’re still willing to, to take money from me when I try. When I advertised ’em, I [00:09:00] paid

Tim Melanson: Of course they’re.

Jeff Walker: Shocking how that works. But, um, but yeah, so I just lost my account. I have a friend who lost his YouTube account for no apparent reason. You know, the policies can change at you just don’t own, you’re planning someone else’s playground and they can change the rules at any time.

So I personally think that social is a great place to get discovery, to build an audience, and then to send them to your email list.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. ’cause you’ve gotta own, you’ve gotta own that thing right In the end. I mean, if you don’t own it, then you know, I, I had my music page taken down. I had lost it for two years. I did end up getting it back, but it’s, it’s just, I, and I didn’t, I still don’t know why.

Jeff Walker: and they don’t, they don’t tell you Yeah. That the, they did that. Like Facebook can run a company of their size with essentially no customer service department whatsoever. It just blows me away.

Tim Melanson: It blows me away too, but you know what I mean. You’ve got a, you’ve got a system with email, you know, maybe it’s easier that way. At least now, you know, it’s, it’s, [00:10:00] it’s not that difficult to explain to people why you need to have something other than just your social media,

Jeff Walker: Right. Yeah. I think Tim, I think like five years ago, I’ve, I, I’ve been pounding this, the, the podium, uh, about email for 30 years now, and I think like five years ago people were like. Why would you do email? Does people still build email list? Yes. They, they email still is the king. It absolutely is the king.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, you’re right. There was a period, I think you’re right, about five years ago, where it was like, why do we even need email? Like, it just seemed like everybody was kind of going like, nah, nah, we, but, but then all of a sudden all these de platforms start happening and policy start happening and other platforms start popping up and now all of a sudden your, your market’s not everywhere.

I mean, some people can market on Facebook, some people use LinkedIn, some people use TikTok like. There’s no unified network anymore where you could just breach everybody. But email is unified, right?

Jeff Walker: Yep. Email is, and I think you know, the other one that I think podcasts, you know, you [00:11:00] own your podcast, right? And it’s distributed across multiple platforms. So to me, just in terms of the safety, and I know we’re talking a lot of people that might be earlier in their business journey and they’re just like, I just wanna get started.

I don’t care about, I’m not worried about safety right now, but. The years will go by and you’ll build something and it’s great to have something that can’t be taken away. And I think email is, is the number one, and probably number two is podcast.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So now, uh, I mean on this journey, I mean we, we heard, you know, pretty good success story, but I’m not sure, was it all sunshine roses or was there some, some bad notes along the way?

Jeff Walker: yeah, so the bad note. Which turned out to be the most amazing note ever. So that first business was all about the stock market. Like I said, I was just telling people teaching about the stock market and it was a great business. And I had a partner in that business, uh, who helped me with the content.

And then, so that went from 1990, well, I started publishing a newsletter in 96. We started making [00:12:00] sales in 97. That went until early 2005. And I one Friday afternoon, it’s a beautiful Friday afternoon in March and my partner called me up and he basically, he told me he was, he, he had started a competing website and he was moving all our customers over to that website. So he essentially stole the business from me. And, and this was, you know, this was my baby. I’d spent eight years building this, and alls he would do each day was he’d write a few hundred words about the stock market and send them over to me. They were sort of gibberish and I would take them and translate them and turn ’em into something readable.

And I, and I was doing. So I was doing a big chunk of the content and I was doing all the marketing, all the, every aspect of business outside of him creating those 300 words each day. And, um, so it this, I built this up, my wife was helping in the business and, and overnight it [00:13:00] was gone. And this was, it was, I’ve never been through a divorce before, but this is, I think this is a lot like what a divorce, divorce feels like.

And, and my, our income, our family’s income was gone overnight and I, it was faced, was starting over and at that point, you know, we had built this business where we’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It was more than I could have ever dreamed of. You know, when I started that, when I first started the business, I sat down and wrote the biggest goals I could imagine.

One of ’em was to make a hundred thousand dollars a year was the absolute biggest I could think of. And here I was, it was eight years later, but making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, I had loyal fans, you know, felt like we were really helping people and it was just gone overnight. Um, there. So it was time to start over and.

My thinking had evolved quite a bit in those eight years. I’d learned a lot. I’d learned a lot about running a business, about [00:14:00] growing a business, about marketing, and I’d become very, very good at marketing. I’d become very, very good at launching new products and services, and I’d made some connections in the, in sort of the online marketing industry.

And so I started over and I came, I, I, I, I did this first initial offer for something that I called the product launch workshop. And I, I had six people sign up for that product launch workshop. I taught them everything I’d learned about launching and the launches and, and those six people had a bunch of success.

So that about six months. So that I took what I had learned from teaching them because I knew how to do this stuff, but I didn’t necessarily know how to teach it. And I took what I learned from teaching them those initial six people. And I, I turned it into a course and in October of 2005, I came out with the product launch formula.

Um, which was it, it, back then, it was actually a [00:15:00] course we sent on books and CDs and DVDs. And in that first week we did $600,000 in sales. Yeah. And, um. Then since then, it’s just, I, I’ve, I’ve grown that brand and now it’s still, it, it became an online course in oh eight. I shifted from CDs and DVDs to online in oh eight.

It became an online course was the very, one of the very first online courses, high level online courses. It’s the, it’s the oldest longest running online course about, um, about online business in existence. It still exists to this day. And we just released a brand new, fresh version of it. Um, that product, uh, we’ve done crazy, crazy things since then.

I’ve had 23 consecutive million dollar launches. I’ve had many million dollar days. I’ve had two different times. I’ve made a million dollars in an hour. [00:16:00] Um, and that brand’s done about a hundred million dollars in sales since then. And all that’s bragging about me, but the reality is. My students and my clients are in every market, in every niche you can imagine, in every country, in literally every continent, including Antarctica, in selling, in ev, all more languages than I can count, more niches than I can count.

And they’ve done many, many, many times more dollars in sales than I’ve done a. So if you take that a hundred million and multiply it many times, that’s what, that’s what they’ve done collectively.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Jeff, I’m starting to think that that old partner was holding you back.

Jeff Walker: You know, there’s, the thing, Tim, is, I’m like a, I got the, I have this really deep loyalty streak and I just never would’ve left him. I, I would still be running that business to this day. I never would’ve left him. And it was the greatest gift. And, and in a, in a way when it happened, [00:17:00] like when he called me up, and this is the crazy thing, he called me up, and this is back when we had a wired phone, right?

It was still 2009. I picked that phone up in my office. He told me this. That’s, the conversation lasted maybe five minutes and I just hung up and I laughed and, and I, because I’m like, good luck. You go try to run that thing without me and just, just watch, watch what I’m about to do. So I laughed. But I will tell you then I was just, my emotions were just my, like my stomach hurt.

I was just. It was, it was hard. It was, I’d never talked to a lawyer in my life and, um, and I wasn’t even gonna talk to a lawyer then because, but because there were parts of the business he wasn’t able to take, he sued me. So all of a sudden I’m talking to lawyers and I’m trying to defend myself in this lawsuit because he stole the business.

It was, it was really, really a difficult time and it was the greatest gift I could have ever gotten. And yes, he was holding me back.

Tim Melanson: Oh [00:18:00] wow. Yeah. First. Sure. Yeah. Well, and, and I think, I think like another, uh, another lesson to take from that really is that sometimes people will spend a lot of time trying to fight to get that business back, right? They, they’d be kind of going, oh, it’s mine and, you know, I, I deserve that. And, you know, they’ll end up putting a lot of time, money, lawyers, all that into that.

All you did is took what you learned and started off something new and it far eclipsed the other one, right.

Jeff Walker: Right. Yeah. And you know, I thought like when I started the first business, I was, I was pretty passionate about the stock market. But over time, I found I was way more passionate about online, about online business, about building business, about, uh, entrepreneurship, about marketing. Uh, that’s where my passion was.

And, and. Also like in that old business we were publishing every single day that the stock market was open, which is 252 times 2, 252 days a year. So we were publishing 252 times one of my pa. [00:19:00] Another passion I’ve got is spending time outdoors, spending time in the wilderness. I love doing like long wilderness trips, um, on like either could be backpacking or, or will or river trips, and I always had to publish every day.

I couldn’t, I always had to have a connection and now. You know, I’m in two weeks from now, I’m headed off for a three week wilderness trip where I’ll be completely offline for three weeks. And that’s like, I couldn’t do that in my old business. So there, my life is so much better in so many ways because of that.

Um, and, and it was also a very emotionally trying experience that I don’t recommend to anyone.

Tim Melanson: It would be. Yeah. Well, I’m glad you came out on top. It definitely worked out well for you.

Jeff Walker: Thank you.

Tim Melanson: Um, so let’s talk a little bit about getting fans and I mean, we’ve, we’ve sort of been touching on this, right? There’s, the audience is everywhere, but how do you get them onto your email list?

Jeff Walker: At the end of the day, it’s you, you, you have to build. Um, [00:20:00] there, there’s a lot of ways we can answer this. The, the, the most, the simplest way mechanically is you need to come up with a great. A, a great lead magnet or a great opt-in offer that people will want to put, give you their email address in exchange for that thing.

So you need to, you know, one of the, and people overthink this, if you just look at the biggest problems that people have, like earlier, Tim, I mean. You’re like an actual guitarist, and I’m just, I’m a really good guitar buyer. I’m really, I’ve got some nice guitars, uh, and I, I play a little bit, but I’m better at buying guitars than playing.

But at the end of the day, like if someone wants to learn guitar, there’s certain things that are. You know, that, that they’re worried about, right? They, that’s like what songs to play, what guitar to buy, um, why their fingers hurt when they’re playing. So you create a, a, a, a lead magnet that if, say you were teaching guitar [00:21:00] and you wanted to teach beginners, you would, you would have a lead magnet that would answer a few of those top questions.

Um, often a great lead magnet is just something that gives people an awareness of their problem. It doesn’t even answer their problem. Like for me. Um, you, my business right now is teaching people how to launch their products and services online, so a lead magnet that gives awareness around the problems with launching the, the potential like the, the, the potential things that could kill your launch.

We had a, a lead magnet that was doing really, really well this past year called The Seven Deadly Launch Killers.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Jeff Walker: That’s an example of an awareness lead magnet where people come to your website and you’re just offering them, you’re not offering ’em to, to solve anything. You’re offering them awareness around what the problem is.

So that can be a great lead magnet. But you know, at the end of the day, building an audience is building a lead magnet or creating a lead magnet. Don’t make it too complicated. Creating a, an [00:22:00] opt-in page, what old school term is a squeeze page for that. A landing page where people come to that landing page and, and they are offered that lead magnet for in exchange for their email address.

So those are two requirements. And the third requirement is then to send traffic to that page and you can send the traffic to that page, um, like from social. You could do it by, in whatever social you’re in building. Building. I’m a big fan of always delivering value and building a reputation in wherever that social area is.

And then you start to send people over to the, the lead magnet just by, Hey, you know, I just put together this thing on the seven Deadly launch killers. Go check it out. Or, you know, the, the the top 10 easiest guitar songs to learn. Go, go check it out. So that’s just one way to send traffic over that lead magnet would be from social, you could also deal, I mean, there’s three primary ways.

The second would be [00:23:00] through paid traffic. Um, a lot of people just want to say no to paid traffic instantly no matter what. Um, you know, the deal with paid traffic is you, if you do it right, you make money from your paid traffic.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, of course.

Jeff Walker: So, you know, a lot of people just like, I don’t, how do I do this without advertising?

Well, don’t necessarily rule out advertising because if you can spend a dollar and make back a dollar 50, how often would you do that? As often as you possibly could. And so, and anyways, that, that’s a big discussion talking about patriarchs. That’s the second way. The third way is, I mentioned this briefly earlier, was like other people’s lists, other people’s audiences, having other people tell people about your lead magnet.

And then, and why would they do that? Because. You might either give them exposure or you can track any sales made to those people and then pay them a commission in those sales. And again, that’s a bigger discussion than what [00:24:00] we’ve probably got right now. But, um, those are the three primary ways. It’s all about building a lead magnet, putting up an op, uh, putting ’em opt-in page for that lead magnet, and then driving traffic to that page with one of those three, uh, uh, methods.

Tim Melanson: Okay, so for the lead magnet, I think this is something that people like, I just wanna be a little bit clearer with this. ’cause uh, number one, I’ve seen people like give away the farm on a lead magnet. It’s just like, you know, giant 40 page right document that does pretty much everything. Uh, and then I’ve also seen people be confused about, well.

You know, what, what do I give away? What do I like? How do I, you know, make this valuable enough for someone to wanna get on my list without giving them something that I’m trying to charge for? Like, what, what’s the difference between the lead magnet and the paid program?

Jeff Walker: Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, and, and Tim, I’ve got a woodpecker banging away out right out here, so if, I dunno if you’re gonna hear it. [00:25:00] But if I look distracted, that’s what it is. Um, so this is a great question. So first of all, what’s, whether people give, I, I just wanna parse this out because whether they actually give their email address to you doesn’t have anything to do with what’s in the lead magnet.

It has to do with the promise you make on your opt-in page because they haven’t seen the lead magnet yet. So. Yeah, so it’s more about the promise you make on that opt-in page. Now, I wanna be super, super clear here. You wanna be very congruent, like you don’t wanna over promise on that opt-in page and under deliver, because you’ve started off your, your relationship in the on the wrong foot.

Like you don’t wanna. Establish this, this reputation or, or this precedent of you underdelivering. So you do not wanna do that. But the what’s, [00:26:00] what the actual form factor of that lead magnet is, has nothing to do with whether they give you their email address. So, yeah, you just have to parse those out.

You’re, the first thing you have to do is you have to use some type of combination of reputation and copy to drive the click to the opt-in page. And you have to obsess about that a little bit. And I know like, you know, when you’re, when we’re teaching about marketing, we don’t wanna overwhelm people. But I’m also just want to be super clear about this.

You have to be good these days. You do have to obsess about these things. You have to obsess about what you’re. Whatever that creative is that is driving people to opt-in page and have that be congruent with what they see on that opt-in page and have that, then that promise be, be congruent and be enticing.

And then when they put their email address in what the form factor is, gen I’m, I’m usually agnostic about whether it’s videos or whether it’s a PDF or whether it’s a, a webinar or whatever. It, you know, it’s [00:27:00] all content is what we call fungible one. You. They can easily move between forms. You could deliver something in a PDF in a webinar, in a video series, in, in an online whatever.

It, it’s gonna be the same content that stretches or, or, or crunches together or whatever. So I, I know I’m going off on a basilion, different tangents, but I’m obviously, I’m deep in this world. I think, you know, usually it’s, it’s a bigger danger to overwhelm people with too much in the lead because you’re just building a relationship.

Like if I’m like, Hey, Tim, you know what I, if you go to my site right now and opt in, I’m going to give you the equivalent of a Harvard four year degree. It’s, it’s all there. It’s about 160 hours of video. It’s awesome. It’s the highest level you could possibly imagine, and you’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We just met.

There’s just, there’s just no way I’m going to invest 160 hours with you. [00:28:00] Right,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jeff Walker: right. It’s just the way, so it, it’s all about, I am so much, I’m all about sequences. Here’s the, you know, the secret behind product launch formula is, well, there’s a few secrets, but the biggest one is it’s, it’s always about the sequence.

We can’t become best friends overnight, you know, we can’t get married overnight. You, you have to lead people into your world. And so one of the ways I think about it, like say your, your product, especially 80% of the people that come into my world have a teaching or training kind of a product and. And the others are like either artists or authors or they have physical widgets.

But most, 80% of my folks are training courses, memberships, um, things like that. And if your course or your memberships, you’re gonna take someone from one to 100, you know, just give them this amazing, you know, you come into my world, [00:29:00] I’m gonna teach you how to launch. You know that, that we go all in, right?

If that’s gonna take people from one to a hundred, I want my lead magnet to take people from zero to one. And you’re like, well, zero to one. It doesn’t sound like much value. Jeff, you’re always talking about delivering value ahead of the sale and value before the reveal. Desire before availability. You’re all about this value.

Value What, what? Zero to one. What’s that? Well, zero to one is freaking huge. It’s given someone the vision that their life can be better, that they can have, they can have this change, that they can learn this second language, that they can lose, that 20 pounds, that they can find the love of their lives, that they can have a meditation practice, that they can get an extra 10 miles an hour on their first serve in tennis.

It’s, it’s huge giving them that awareness of the opportunity that even though they’ve tried to play a song on the guitar for the last three years, they can play some chords, but they can’t actually play a song and sing it at the same [00:30:00] time and actually give them the awareness that they, that you have a process that can take them to it and showing them what that process is.

That’s the zero to one. That’s really big. I think it’s a big service to the world that you’re showing people that their lives can be better, that you can take away some of their pain or you can deliver more pleasure. It’s huge. So that’s sort of the frame for me. It’s not like you’re giving away the farm, you’re not giving away everything and you wouldn’t want to give, if you gave away the farm, it wouldn’t do ’em any good because they’re not ready to become farmers at that point. Does that make sense?

Tim Melanson: Oh, absolutely. Like you’re definitely speaking truth. ’cause I mean, I can see that even in, in practice with music for sure. I mean, you gotta go one step at a time. If, if you’re looking at a course from slash you know, and you’re just a beginner. It’s overwhelming. You’re just, you’re gonna quit Right, right off the bat.

But, uh, I can, I can even think of myself, you know, um, you know, going on websites and seeing this, [00:31:00] this, you know, this opt-in, this lead thing and it comes in and it’s huge and I’m just like, do even bother. But the ones that I do read are the ones that are. Really quite short. And it’s just like you get something out of it and you’re like, oh yeah, okay, cool.

And then, you know, I feel like that’s like a baby step. And then the next one that comes in, you’re like, okay, well I, I got something from the last one. Maybe I’ll just read this one real quick. You know, people don’t have a ton of time and so something quick that just kind of gets them thinking about it.

Oh yeah. You know, uh, I got something out of this and you, you know, go about your day. Right. I think that that makes sense to me.

Jeff Walker: Yep. Absolutely.

Tim Melanson: And even more now than in 96. Right. But, but I mean, it’s probably very similar. I mean, we didn’t have potential spans back then either.

Jeff Walker: Right. Yeah, exactly. I, it’s like this idea where when you give them something great, a really big, you’re creating an obligation for them.

Tim Melanson: [00:32:00] Yeah.

Jeff Walker: Even if it’s just a psychic obligation, and this is even, this works for like what, what you’re selling as well. Like if you are, um, if you’re selling, like, like say you have a course

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Jeff Walker: and Tim would you rather have a course and, and, okay, let’s say this course is, is for advanced events guitar players and it is to play, you know, to play how to play.

Slashes 10 greatest solos. And would you rather have that delivered in a course with four modules or 40 modules?

Tim Melanson: Both sound crazy to me when it comes to slash but four definitely

Jeff Walker: I mean, you, you’d rather get the results faster.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Walker: I mean, it’s better to get the results faster. So just creating more and more and more and more. It just, it, it, it just, it, it, it, it defeats, it creates an obligation. It’s almost like saying [00:33:00] you, oh, you get this course, it’s got four modules and it’s got 12 coaching calls.

And it’s like, okay, well now I just gotta go find a place on my calendar for those 12 coaching calls.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jeff Walker: And, and even seeing 12 coaching calls. Does not deliver. That doesn’t sound like a value to me. Now, if you gave each one of those calls a specific name, like, you know, here’s here, you know. Here’s the, the Sweet Child solo, you know, mastering Sweet Child solo in 60, in 60 minutes, boom, that’s one of those calls, and you gave each call a different name.

That was, that had a result built into the name. Well now, now that sounds like value versus 12 coaching calls is an obligation.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. So Jeff, I mean, you’ve done some really awesome things. It’s very clear that you know what you’re doing. Uh, uh, the question I have for you though is like, how did you get here? Like, did you, did you have coaches? Like who, who taught you all this?[00:34:00]

Jeff Walker: Yeah. You know, it’s an interesting question. I it, so I’m a huge fan of coaching. I am a huge fan of coaching. There were not any coaches. Back in 1996. And so what I did is I went and studied, um, the, what they call direct old school direct marketing. So this is back in the day when people would run ads in magazines or, or newspapers, or they would send direct mail.

So snail mail, like a eight page. Sales letter via for whatever it is. Um, you know, one of the most famous, famous ones advertisements ever was, um, they laughed when I sat down at the piano. Have you heard this, Tim? This is, oh yeah. So that was, that was the headline. They, they, they laughed when I sat down at the piano, but then I began to play.

It was about a course for learning piano, [00:35:00] and that was like one of the most successful advertisements ever. So then people would, you know, write in from that new, from, from that newspaper advertisement and either buy the course or request some additional information. They’d get the additional information.

The additional information was then really a sales letter. And so this was literally a hundred years ago, they were doing this. 60, 80, a hundred years ago. And there, you know, people, there were, there were masters back then. Masters of copywriting, masters of Direct Marketing. So. This is one of those insights that, another one of those insights that just, I don’t know how it came to it, but it made all the differences since I didn’t anyone have anyone to learn from.

I went back and I studied that from 40, 50, 60 years ago, and there are books that were written. Literally, I think scientific advertising is right around a hundred years old now. That was one of the first books I ever read and all that stuff ended up, I realized [00:36:00] that would all apply to the online world.

And so that was my first coaching was just from going back to old school books that were decades old and then, you know, then as the state of the art started to advance, then I would just, I, well, one of the things is. Remember I told you we were publishing 252 times a year. Well, that was 252 times to our pain subscribers, but we also published 252 times a year to the people who are on our free list that were getting our free stuff.

And that meant every one of those emails was basically a marketing email. So that was like 252 repetitions a year. I had to write marketing copy and I did that for eight years. So you start to figure some things out. And then I was also doing two or three launches every single year for eight years. And then when I got into the online world and I realized what I, I [00:37:00] started to go to some marketing conferences and I started to meet some of the, you know, market other people that at that point, now, in the early two thousands, there were teachers, but I realized I was doing.

Bigger things than they were. And, and I started, and some of them were doing other things that were really cool that I was able to learn from them. But it was more, you know, we were trading knowledge. But at that point I was like, none of these folks have ever done a launch. No one’s done a launch and I’ve been doing this.

I’ve got like. Already got 30 of ’em under my belt at that point, probably, you know, between 25 and 30. And I’ve got also, you know, I’ve written four or 5,000 emails, marketing emails under my belt. And so, um, you know, at that, I think what I did was I really leaned into finding peers and we would just trade information.

I’m a big fan of reps. The more reps you can get in, and I know a lot of people, they might be earlier in their business journey, and one of the things I, I just wanna [00:38:00] underline is like the most important thing is getting started because your first business is probably not your forever business. Tim, I thought my first business was my forever business and I had it for eight years and things were going great and then it was gone.

And now my business is literally. 50 times bigger than that first business, not to mention my impact in the world and the joy I have in it. So your first business isn’t your forever business, so don’t be precious about waiting until you’re perfect. Don’t be precious about, you have to have the perfect logo and the perfect website and, and the perfect video.

Just, just get in motion. Start getting those reps in because your first website, your first. Uh, everything is going to be your worst. It’s gonna be horrible. Everyone’s is, and, but you’ll learn and your second one [00:39:00] will be so much better. So just start getting those reps in and you just never know where you’re going to go.

I mean, I’m sitting here, I have a number one New York Times bestselling book, right? I, you know, it’s like the idea when I started that I’d ever have a book much less that it would be. Number one, New York Times bestselling that it’s, it’s like in like 16 languages. It’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

It’s got 4.7 stars on Amazon. The, the thought that I would ever write a book, when I started the thought that I’d ever be on video, you know, I have millions and millions of views on my videos. The, the, the, no I could’ve foresaw any of this, but I got into action. I got into motion. I sent that first newsletter to 17 people.

Tim Melanson: What a great story. Okay, it’s time for your guest solo.

Jeff Walker: Well, [00:40:00] you know what’s, uh, so first of all, um. I, I still am wildly passionate about the work I do. Um, I think one of my strengths is that I don’t get bored easily. Maybe, uh, because it’s been 20 years now, when, when this podcast comes out, will be, will literally be the week I launched 20 years ago. Is is like October, middle of October was my launch.

October 21st, 2005 was this launch that. Literally changed the world. It certainly the, the marketing world and, and so, but I’m still incredibly passionate about it. I’m incredibly passionate about the work our students are doing in every market you could imagine. Um, I’m in Incre, you know, we have a mastermind that I, with just like 40 of my super high-end clients that I’m super passionate about.

Um, and we’re at a time now where the industry’s changing faster than it’s ever changed because of ai. None of us [00:41:00] are a hundred percent sure where it’s gonna go. So, um, I’m just really invested in, uh, shepherding my clients through what is gonna be a great big change. And then, you know, a crazy one is, you know, my kids are in their thirties now and they have very, very significant roles in the business.

I’m not getting any younger, amazingly enough. I don’t know how that happened. Seems like, like all the, all the, like all the old people around me that I hang out with, they’re like the same age as me. It’s like, what’s up with that? And um, so I think, you know, making sure this business continues beyond me, my son especially has been stepping into a major front stage role.

Um, and, you know, setting them up to carry this work on is something that’s super exciting. In fact, Tim, you, you should, you should have my, my son on. He, he, you would, you’d enjoy

Tim Melanson: I would love to. I would love to. That sounds awesome.

Jeff Walker: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: how do we find out more[00:42:00]

Jeff Walker: Um, product launch formula.com is the simplest way. Uh, we have all kinds of a crazy amount of free training there because, you know, I, I practice.

You know what I preach. And so, you know, the product launch formula, at the end of the day, it’s about delivering a great experience to people for free to opt in. They, it’s what we call value before reveal. So you’re, you’re delivering great value before you even reveal that there’s an offer. Um, it’s not like there’s, it’s hiding in the closet and it’s gonna jump out like some monster.

We’re very clear that this is part of a process and then we’re gonna make an offer to you. But first we’re going to earn your attention and we’re gonna earn your trust. So that’s, there’s a lot more to it. But that’s pro, that’s one of the cores of product launch formula. So we do that. We will, you’ll get all kinds of value, we’ll give you all kinds of training but’s.

What I like my I aspire to do is to give. My free stuff have this be the second best training in the world [00:43:00] on launches. And uh, and of course my paid stuff’s the best. So anyways, if you go to product launch formula.com, I, you’ll, this podcast is gonna live forever, so I don’t know what you’ll find there, but, but I will guarantee that you’ll find a lot of value.

Will, if you opt in there, you will get a lot of value and eventually we’ll make an offer to you. Um, so just, it’s that simple product launch formula.com.

Tim Melanson: So Jeff, this is often the hardest question of the of the day. So who’s your favorite rock star?

Jeff Walker: You know, I, I am deeply into music. I am deeply into rock. I I was a old hard school, or old hardcore punk fan. Um, back in the, like, the, the original, uh, you know, sex Pistols Clash.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Jeff Walker: Ted Kennedy’s, um, all of that. Also a huge Springsteen fan and a huge Rolling Stones fan. Um, so my, my [00:44:00] trilogy is, um, of, of is Keith Richards, Joe Drummer and Bruce Springsteen,

Tim Melanson: I

Jeff Walker: who, you know, they’re all telly guides and I don’t even own a telly, so I gotta, I gotta get a telly here, but, uh, yeah.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, this has been a ton of fun, Jeff. Thank you so much for rocking out today. This has been great.

Jeff Walker: Thank you tennis. A lot of fun. I.

Tim Melanson: Awesome to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time with the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.