 Hi, everyone. Welcome to this interview. I'm really excited to be with Tad Hargrave. If you know what you have been following my work for a little while, you know that I love to interview Tad. And we've got, you know, I've got several interviews with him on my channel. And today, what we're going to talk about is how to launch things well. I noticed a lot of you are, you know, you have like group programs you want to launch or courses or live events, or, you know, kind of coaching or consulting type things, you know, retreats, whether it's virtual or in person. Launching is one of those really, really key skills that you need to develop if you're going to have a, you know, viable and thriving business. And Tad has even more experience than me in launching things. And I'm grateful to be able to bring him here. We will pick his brain for a little bit on the stuff. Tad also has an upcoming course about launching stuff. So this is kind of a preview into some of the stuff that he's going to be talking about with his co-teacher Bradley Moore. Some of you know Bradley as well. Anyway, let me just stop talking for a sec, Tad, because I want to bring your voice on. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much. Yeah, I know we've only got about 20 minutes. So let's see how much we can fit in. Totally. Right. So if you're watching this and you've got a course, a membership, a program, something significant enough that you can't just, you know, send out one email that's full, or that is not an evergreen, just available all the time type thing, or somebody may need an injection, a boost on a regular basis, then these ideas are for you. And so launching is basically the art of putting something out into the world. How do you, how do you get it out there? The very first thing I would say is if you don't have to do a launch, don't. It's so exhausting. If there's a way you could do it without a big launch, you know, did a video recently, it's like, how much time and energy money should I spend on marketing? My answer was as little as possible, as much as needed, but as little as you humanly can. And so launching is, I would just say, on the larger end. And so if there's a way you can do it simpler, or just through word of mouth or through reputation, or if it's going to fill up anyways, great, you don't need this. But let's say you have a goal to hit numbers you've never hit before. You're pretty sure your own email list won't do it through just a few emails. This is, these are some thoughts on that. And the error that I see, and just maybe, again, if you're watching this to just see if you can see yourself in this, it's three weeks before an event, a program, a course, something you're launching, the numbers are nowhere near what you need to proceed. Now you know there's going to be a last minute rush, you hope, but you've only got two people or one or none signed up. And there's this question then of what do I do? It's three weeks out. And for some people that decide, I'm gonna cancel it. Okay, and I'll do it later. But the later one, they find themselves in the same position. I remember I went to Holly Hawk retreat center in BC, it was leading a workshop, and I went to apologize because I only got 12 people for the, for my it was a five day workshop. I said, Oh, it's okay. And first of all, Holly, I just forgot this is so hard to get to. I mean, it's a full day journey to get to it from, from Vancouver. And so it's just, it's a slog to get people to sign up. It's a real destination thing. So I got 12 people. And he said, No, it's fine. And he went through the catalog and he said, Yeah, these people went ahead without the minimum, this one went ahead without the minimum, this one canceled, this one canceled, that one went ahead with almost none of them, almost all of them didn't even hit the targets. And so this happens a lot, I see for people. And if you cancel all the time, you get this reputation as being flaky and people just stop trusting your, you know, sure, it's going to happen. And then if you go ahead without the minimum, it's not the full robust experience, it could have been for the participants, if there'd been more people in it, and you don't make the money. Anyways, I just see this where it's a constant, they're so behind, they never get caught up. And so the promotion, everything's so last minute, by the skin of their teeth. And they, you know, there's a lot of personal outreach and desperate last minute Facebook posts and a barrage of emails at the end. And of course, the consequence of this is it leads to a lot of unsubscribes. It leads to people being burned out with the requests. So this is one of the challenges. I mean, if you think of launching like a rocket launch, a lot of fuel gets burned. And the things that get burned in a launch like we're talking about, when you get burned out, that's one, because it can be exhausting. But two, your list can get burned out. And they just pay less attention to your emails now, because everything's a scramble. Everything's a last minute promotion. So yeah, so I mean, I suppose this is the thing Bradley and I are going to deal with. But I'd love to share some thoughts, some nuggets on this here. Yeah, Nan, this is really good. It is interesting when you say, if you don't have to launch, don't do it. But if you need to launch, if you want to fill, if you want to reach higher numbers than you have before, this is the kind of process that you and Bradley are going to be talking about in the course. And it's interesting because I'm thinking about, you know what, I haven't really launched anything in years. The way I do it is like, I mean, talk about marketing for hippies. I mean, the way I do it is like two emails, two gentle emails, two Facebook event page, two gentle Facebook posts that are boosted for reach. But yeah, man, I guess I'm spoiled by this point. But you have actually recently, I should mention, I think one of the reasons why you're so qualified to talk about this is you recently did a very full launch and it went really, really well. Do you want to just give us a one minute summary of that? Well, it's interesting because it's connected directly to the thing you said. So yes, I launched my membership program. We got 150 people on the initial launch. And then I did open it up to monthly. And that's just to say, that's enrollments, that's actually paid enrollments. Like my members, average, they paid, let's say 670 bucks. And then I got another hundred at the monthly level. 85 of those were at the $25 a month level and then 15 or so were at the $100 a month level. And so yeah, this is for the membership. And so I made about 120 grand in terms of gross on that launch, which is more than I've ever made in a month before. Yeah, my goodness. And it's almost like if you did that, you're set for the rest of the year, kind of thing. Sure, that's as much as I've made in one launch as in previous. So that's possible if you do a good launch, you can make as much in one launch as you did in the last year. That's not an inconceivable fight. And so launching for membership, of course, you're in a similar situation. It's a much more sustainable business model because because of that model of having membership, I don't need to do the launches to my list every time I do one of my quarterly 30 day events. I don't have to do that launch because it's mostly because it's only going to be for members moving forward. And I had to do a launch to fill that membership. That took a very thoughtful launch. And there may be things you may not be in a position if you're watching this to do a membership or that may not feel like the right model. So this is for you. So here's the most important thing I can say about watching. Number one, give yourself enough time. So first of all, I mean, start this thinking about this a year, six months in advance. This is not the month before start thinking about it. You plan it out six months in advance. And I did a video recently called the four rules of time. But just to give the close notes of it, four rules of time. See if I can remember them. Number one is the rule of one hour. The rule of one hour is in the period leading up to it. Let's say two months before one hour a day working on the launch, literally put it in your calendar, put it in your schedule. The second one is the rule of two months. And the two months before and the two months after, you're not promoting anything else. This is all you're promoting. There's not another program, another thing, you know, a few other things you want to offer before or after that window. But in that two months, two months, it's only this thing. Just you don't overwhelm a confused your people. Number three would be the rule of one week. And the rule are two weeks, right? But I think it's basically the week before and the week after clear the decks. Just don't have much else going on in your life, except this. And then there's the rule of two days, which is the day before and the day after the launch, just literally zero else. Everything is canceled. Because why glitches will happen. There will be last minute mayhem, almost guaranteed of some technical nature for which you are unqualified. So it's if you have a big important dinner the night of your launch, or you've got calls with clients that day, it's just an awful setup. So that's the most important thing I can say is that number two, have a plan. You've got to create a plan for this. Most people have no plan. This is the thing I've seen. And this is what we're I guess going to be going into the day with Brad helping people craft this plan. But even just the thought of having a plan, when I've asked people, so yeah, you know, raise your hand if you have a plan for you, and just no hands get raised. What that means is I'm going to do a bunch of stuff and hope something happens. I'm going to throw something at a wall and hope that something sticks. And there won't be any pattern to it, but there you can think this through. And as soon as you start to think it through, it becomes very obvious, the general flow will should go first and second. So for example, a general flow of this, I mean, Jeff Walker has his sort of, you know, layout, but generally, it might be something like this. The very first part of it, you need to make the case for you need to say, well, here's what's coming. Here's what it is that I'm doing, or here's the topic. So if I was doing the hub marketing, the first email probably just be what is hub marketing? What the hell am I talking about? The second email could be, here's why it matters. The third email might be here's some real life examples and case studies of hub marketing, you know, the fourth email might be here's some blunders and mistakes that people make the common errors in hub marketing. And then the fifth one might be, Hey, join me for a call about hub marketing, or let me do a hot seat for, you know, there's a number of things. There's a general logical flow to a launch of you're making the case, not for them to buy from you initially, you're making the case for this. It's like, look, whether you sign up for my hub marketing 30 day or not, take hub marketing seriously, and let me give you a lot of value. And so I guess that's number three is when you're doing a launch. It's, you know, Jay Abraham, who you and I both know, one of the God fathers of the marketing direct marketing movement. His marketing was and is so brilliant because his marketing was so educational. If you read a salesman from Jay Abraham, you learned something during one of his courses. And I thought this is such a great example of a launch. He was called his mastermind marketing training was around the year 2000. It was a $5,000 US train in LA, which I went to. And in his launch, he said, look, I'm going to be promoting this thing. I'm really excited about it. Sign up to be marketed to for this. Get on the email list, because I'm only marketing. If you join this email list, I promise you, you will get more real value, more profit producing, take home, money making advice and content of this, then you would get in most programs you paid for in the launch for free. And it was true every, every day. There was another email with a PDF from one of his colleagues or from himself. I still have some of them on my computer. I mean, it was phenomenally good, the content he got. So this being a generosity based business in the launch, you're saying, look, instead of it just being a commercial followed by another commercial, which is why people stopped, you know, that's why Netflix is doing so well, fewer commercials, saying, let me be generous in sharing my perspective and point of view and examples in the lead. And so another example of that, but not topic based, but with my membership, Bradley and I talked about because he really helped me design this launch. And we're wondering about how could we give them a taste, a genuine useful taste of what the membership would be like. So ideas we came up with that we did where I thought, well, you know, this membership is really to help people get more rooted in my perspective on marketing. So I took my day long workshop, which I'd never done online. And so I'm going to do it online for the first time. I also did it on a page can basis. So anyone was able to attend. I did that. I did a, I said, well, you know, during the, in the membership, there'll be weekly calls with me that people can get. So why not give them an example of one of those office hours calls. So I said, why don't you just call in and you'll get a taste of, you know, what does it like to work with this guy? Do you like it or not? You get a sense. I did a, I've done this a few times called stump the hippie. I said, you know, in the membership, you're going to have a chance to ask me a question. So on my Facebook page, here's the link to the post. It's called stump the hippie ask a question. And I'll do, and if I probably have a blog post and a video for it, but if you can ask something that I don't have a blog post or video for you stumped me and I promise I'll get you a response. So there was that, which of course, then it gives me good content to create moving forward, even if I don't have something. Yeah. And let me just pause for a sec, because I mean, you've shared so much good stuff already in this, you know, in the last 10 minutes. One of the things, yeah, it's like, you've totally reframed what a launch can be for an audience. Usually, people think, Oh my God, someone is launching, that means I'm going to start getting a bunch of sales emails and kind of like, you better join, unless you, you know, you're going to miss this deal or whatever it is, you better join, blah, blah, blah. And what you've done is to reframe it as what if the what if the launch was actually something that the audience was looking forward to, because they get so much value from the launch materials. And I think it's brilliant. And of course, you know, it's been done for 20 years plus. And so those of you who are thinking like, I have to have to create a bunch of great content. Well, you know, if you've been following along the kind of stuff that that I've been talking about, you've been creating content over the years, you could just take some of your best stuff from that topic and put it into the launch. And people now see it in one place or in one several weeks or whatever. One question for you, how long, how many weeks do you recommend a typical launch to be? Or is there a range that you like to see? I mean, I think 30 days is fine. But you know, you can be you can be seeding it. So for example, three months before you might just start teasing, saying something's coming. Hey, I've got something big. I can't wait. I can't reveal it yet. You know, the I did that with not as I wish I'd done more of this, honestly, but with a mentorship, I said, because I was launching out on November 11, so it was like 1111, I'm going to drop something big. So you could do that, and you know, even do a little boosted ad, you know, Facebook just to build the hype and the Oh, what's coming? I don't know, I just think it's fun. And then so you can be doing that in the lead up. And then you could just start, you know, you could drop a video or you know, saying, Hey, I've got a thing, and it's going to be loosely on this topic. I can't tell you too much. But you know, if you struggle with this issue, if you struggle with this problem, or you're craving this result, I've got something coming for you. So you can be doing that. And then the official launch, you know, maybe 30 days before, but you can be telling people book off this date, because let's say it's for a day long workshop or something, you can be three months before saying, look, I can't tell you why. Just book off this date. You'll be glad you did. I've got something that's dropping on that date. Book it off. You can do that well in advance. And just to go back to what you said, George, 100%, all my my launch for the hub marketing stuff, I was amazed. I had it all done. I had all the videos, all the blog posts, I have my ebook, that's 200 pages. I was able to go and cut and paste stuff from it, stuff I'd already done, but had never been laid out in that way. So sequentially, you know, publicly in that in a digestible way. And yes, they should, this is the goal. I don't know, do we ever achieve this or but it's a it's a good thing to aim for that they would follow along your launch and at the end say, wow, that was so worth my attention. I got something really useful from that, from the launch itself, not from the course. You know, I remember, was this Charlotte Jacobs, who said it or boy, I can't remember who said this, but somebody said, you know, if you're a holistic practitioner, their experience of being with you, let's say meeting you at a party is what they think it will be like to work with you. So if you're trying to pitch them and sell them and get them to get a massage from you at the party, they kind of think that vibe that pushy aggressive desperate vibe is what it will be like on the massage table or life coaching or therapy. But if you're a therapist and you meet somebody said, they said, what do you do? So I'm a therapist and you start talking. And in that conversation, you're really present. There's a lot of empathy and you're just asking good questions. And there's no pressure. They think, boy, that felt good. And I've seen that happen. And we've probably all received that. So with a launch, the experience that they get from you in the launch is what they think the thing will be like. Well, and in the case that what we do, it is aligned. There is integrity, you know, because in fact, the product, the kinds of products that you do offer are hugely aligned and an extension of all the value that you've been doing in the launch. Speaking of which, since we only have like three minutes left, this has been a good example of a launch of the launch of a small course about a launch. I want you to, yeah, I want you to invite people to this. So for all of you who are watching, Tad and Bradley are going to go into the details of this stuff in a step-by-step way. Tad, you want to say, give us a preview of that? Sure. So if you go to magicmedia.com slash presales dash. And I'll put the link below. Yeah. And by the way, I'm not affiliating for this. I'm not getting commissions for it just because we didn't have time to set it up. And I don't care because Tad's been so good to me over the years that this is one small thing I can do to help him. But I'm going to put the link below. And I'll, yeah. So those of you who are watching this, there is a link below in the notes or in the comments or both. But yes, what's it about? What can people expect in that day? So it's from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific time, April 12th. We're going to be going over how to craft a plan. You're going to get a templated Excel spreadsheet example that you could use and customize for yourself. You're going to be getting a lot of ideas of the different types of things you could include in a launch. And you're going to get some time to actually get started on all of this. So there will be time to really sit down and do some exercises. So it won't just be a content dump, but a chance to actively begin to plan. I think by the end of the day, you should have a, you know, the workings of a rough start of something that you could actually take and use. So if you've got something coming up or that you've been thinking about that you'd like to really in advance start the thought process on, this would be helpful. Plus we're going to walk through a number of case studies, including more exactly and precisely what we did on my launch. And Brad's going to walk through some of the other. I think his launch was at $500,000 last year. But anyways, the launches went very well. And certainly I know a lot of those people, it was the most money they'd ever made from something. So a well-constructed launch can generate so much income very quickly and faster than most things that I know of. Man, this is really exciting. So I'm really grateful that you guys set up the sort of the half day in a way that people are actually doing the planning right then and there. So that's really nice. The link is there in the notes below or the comments below the video. Tad, thank you so much for showing up and sharing this stuff with us. Those of you who are watching, if you have any kind of quick questions that Tad might be able to answer, feel free to comment below. Be sure to check out the link. And Tad, I'm sure I'll see you again before long. Thank you so much for doing this. Take care.