SFR 86: Lessons From My Very First Info Product

The good and the bad of my very first info product...

 

What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to the best podcast on planet earth in my opinion and in reality of course. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's your host, Steve Larsen.

Hey, you guys...

Hey, I'm excited for this episode. This is something that's been on my mind for probably four weeks now. I've just not ... I don't know. I haven't had the time to actually make it, but I've been making this list and I've been writing this list for a while.

I keep walking into my office, my home office, and I look over to the right and I've got whiteboards all over the place and quotes stapled to my wall. A huge black sheet stapled from the top of the ceiling down to the bottom of the floor. I've got big flood lights and film equipment.

I've got a whole set up in here. I got a whole studio, but all over on the side of the wall over there, I've been writing this big list down. Weird as it, whatever it is in the morning, my brain turns on real fast.

What's been on my mind for the last sort of while is kind of lessons from my first info product. When I first started coming up with this product idea, my little girl was about to turn four years old. Super excited. She's a cutie, a lot of fun. Love hanging out with her. It's fun though.

As she gets older and older, it's not that she wasn't fun before, but even now we can have like more conversations, which is crazy. She's only four almost, which is nuts. When I look at her too, I also remember weirdly enough this first info product that I launched is around the same time when we found out that she ... That my wife was pregnant with her.

My wife came running out of the bathroom one day and we were excited...

We were trying to have a kid. She ran out and she was like, "Oh my gosh. We're pregnant. Ha, ha." I was like, "Wow. Yeah. I'm so pumped." We were so excited. We're so excited. I have, how should I say this, almost the bitter taste in my mouth also during that moment. It has nothing to do with my excitement for the kid. I was so excited for my little girl, so excited for her to come, had nothing to do with that. What the bitter taste comes from still is that I mean we were just broke. I mean broke, broke.

I didn't know how to pay for the birth. I don't know how I pay for those. I mean it's one of the reasons I joined the army. I mean I always wanted to anyways, but it is one of the root reasons.

It was like, "Crap. I had not figured out how to sell stuff," despite the fact that I have been constantly trying. Up until that point I had been doing real estate, both commercial and residential, door to door sales. At that time I was getting into like eBooks and I was writing a lot of stuff, which I never launched one of them by the way. It'd be kind of cool to show and actually finish that one one day.

It's cool how on point I was four years ago when I was writing that thing. It's like right on point. All of it's still valid. I was like, "Oh my gosh." Anyway, different subject. It was hard because like I really just didn't know how we were going to live, how are we going to eat. I was trying to be fiscally responsible....

We didn't have expensive habits. Thankfully neither my wife or I we really had like super expensive taste. It's not that we didn't want to, but we were okay with the fact that we didn't have the money to...

Neither of us have really ever been concerned about the other spending a whole bunch of money randomly. You know what I mean? That's not ever been us, but at the same time, we just didn't have any money. I was in school. I did great in school. After a while when I learned how to learn that I started getting straight A's every semester almost, which is awesome. I was deep into school. I was trying to learn. I was trying to outdo my other peers. I'm very competitive on purpose. I was trying to beat them on everything.

I was trying to beat my professors even, my marketing teachers. I was trying to show them that they were wrong on a few things. I mean it's just my personality. I run. I'm a sprinter. I know that. Anyway, this product idea though came at a moment when I was really needing something the most money wise. Not almost the most. There was one more intense time than that. I remember I was sitting on the couch at 2:00 AM and it was freezing.

I was in our cold apartment. This is in Eastern Idaho, Southeastern Idaho, which if you don't know in the wintertime and even during the summer, like the wind just always blows there. I don't know what is going on over there, but it always blows wind.

I'm from Denver. My wife and I are both from Denver. It doesn't blow like that over there. Anyway, I had this idea and it's not like it hit me all at once. The core of it did, but it continued to develop over the course of several weeks. The idea was to create this info product that I could not find anyone else in this particularly industry creating. No one else had done it. No one else understood ClickFunnels enough to pull it off as far as I could tell.

ClickFunnels was pretty new. I'm sorry. Let's see. Yeah, okay. This was about three and a half years ago right after ... Timeline wise, ClickFunnels had just opened up, so not quite four years ago then. It's amazing how much has happened in that amount of time.

That's crazy. Holy crap. Anyway, I had this idea and I was excited and I didn't totally know what I was doing, but I figured that I needed to go create this product and then start to sell it because it was a blue ocean. No one else had really done it.

There was enough people that I could go funnel hack to get kind of an idea of the thing that I should create, like what would be accepted content wise, but I was going to deliver it up in a completely different way than that market had ever experienced before.

I was like sweet. Cool. I mapped the whole thing out many times. I wrote out the value ladders. I literally went page by page through Russell's DotComSecrets Ignite program.

It was a workbook that he gave for free. After the DotComSecrets book on the thank you page there, he was like, "Hey, I don't want you to sit around, wait around just being bored, so here's three days of this event and the workbook with it." I was like what? Oh my gosh. I took the workbook. I printed it out. It was like a hundred pages.

I got it spiral bound and I started hiding in the basketball ... On campus, the basketball stadium box office seats because you could jump through the front window and it was kind of like dark, really fast internet up there. No one would bother me. I would just kind of dodge security when no one was looking and I'd jumped through the window. That's literally how I learned this stuff you guys.

That's how I did it. I was just hustling my brains out. It hasn't really stopped. I just haven't stopped since then. I learned it around this entire product. This product was how I learned funnels. That's why it was so near and dear to me. Now I had created stuff before, but not like this. I promise I'll get to the good stuff here in just a moment.

Here's the back story with the whole thing, okay?

I went and I created the product and it took me eight months, eight months to make the thing, right? I was in school. At that time we had our kid. I had family life with a kid that had just started. I had started with the army. I went away for six months to basics training and all this other stuff and other trainings, pieces like that.

Six months I was gone. Anyway, in total, actually creation, took me eight months to make the thing and I launched it and I was so proud. I was so proud. No one else really understood what I was doing, but I was so excited to just have ... It was my first info product to really put out there and it was good.

I knew it was good. Nobody else was doing what I was doing and I knew that. I was very proud of the full thing, but the problem was a lot of stuff. There was just so many things. Oh my gosh. If I could go back and just like shake my three and a half year old ago self, I would. What's been on my mind the last few weeks here and now has been lessons from that first product launch.

I think the reason it's been popping back up is because I'm about to launch another info product here early January and I know there's another soul in planet that's doing what I'm doing. I know that there's no other one who's even pulling it off closely or even remotely similar to how I'm doing it.

I know it's a blue ocean. I have tested the crap out of it for the last year and a half to two years. There's on one else. I'm excited. Very similar scenario as that first info product I launched. When I launched that very first info product though, nobody bought it. I had not even thought about traffic. Looking back, so juvenile and now I'd be like, "Why on earth would I not think about that now?"

I just didn't know. I had no idea. It ended up making me like 50 grand just through like one or two traffic sources and it was awesome. It was great. Really, really cool. Well, now I'm about launch a second one and I'm so excited about it, but I wanted to go through a list of kind of some of the ... I wrote them all down here and I'm sure that there are others, but these are like the most stark lessons that I have gathered from that first info product launch and it's totally different this time. 100% different.

Like completely day and night different the way I've been handling this thing. Anyway, you know what's funny is I actually go through these with two comical coaching students as well and definitely did this with the latest fad event as well.

Went through a few different strategy on how you could pull off. Here's the number one lesson from the whole list. There's about five or six things. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to go through them real quick and I'll explain them as I go. I want to go through these because I need you to understand that if you're about to launch an info product and you feel stuck, I almost guarantee that it is because of one of these reasons.

Here's number one, lesson number one is create the revenue before you make the product. This is huge and it's totally counterintuitive to anything else you would ever expect. All right?

Even in my marketing classes, like even some of the early mentors I had, they were always like, "Look, go create something brand new. Create this cool thing and then go try and sell it." I was like no. It's totally the opposite. First, you sell it and then you create it. You're like, "Steven, that makes zero sense."

Let me tell you how to do it...

The reason why is because I spent eight months creating this thing that was amazing, but I did not get paid a dime for it forever. Luckily I created something that was cool enough people could pay me for eventually. I mean that was straight luck. I guessed my whole way to profits. Here's how you do it though. Let's say that you're selling an info product or even a physical product.

You can start selling the thing. I mean think about Kickstarter. That's exactly what that thing is. You are buying something that may not even be done yet. What does that tell the entrepreneur? It tells the entrepreneur it's a good idea, right? You currently as the entrepreneur do not create the creativity. You do not create the ideas. You do not have them inside of you. You do not have inside of your own being right now what it takes to make a million dollars from the market.

None of us do and I wish I had understood that ahead of time. What you do is you create the product with the first buyers. You create it with them. What I've been doing is I've been spending all my time. I mean I've created cool stuff.

I've created workbooks. I mean I've created lots of stuff that goes with it, but I still have not created or filmed the actual thing yet. It's because I am waiting all my time, all my attention, all my focus is on creating pressure, the actual sales message before I start to sell it. I'm not creating the actual thing first. Now if you see the way that Russell rolls things out, if you see the way Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels in general roll products out, a lot of times the way we do it is we sell the thing, we prove that it was good and then we start to ask campaign the buyers.

We prep them ahead of time, so it's not like a bait-and-switch. You know what I mean? There's certainly room where you could be really shady with that and we're not.

What we do is we say, "Hey look, classes start in two weeks. Buy now for your early bird ticket to get in cheaper," right? Then on the very first module or the very first training, you could do this for physical products too, whatever it is, then we start saying things like, "Hey, what's the number one question or challenge you have with X, Y and Z," and that's just for module one. Well, now we know what to create.

They told us what to make. Does that make sense? What's going to blow a lot of people's minds is when you realize that the product rarely sells itself. Rarely ever do you have a product that's so good that it sells itself without any sales copy, without you even trying, where their word of mouth is so strong that you don't need any sales message.

What's funny though is when people focus all their time on creating the product and no time creating the sales message, right? They think the product alone is what sells the product. That's not true at all. I have watched Russell sell products he doesn't even know what the product is. It's because he knows persuasive. He knows how to sell. He knows how to create offers.

He knows how to stack things. He knows how to create new opportunities. He knows how to invoke that kind of emotion from an individual, right? It's because he's gone through and he creates the actual new opportunity. He creates the sales message. It does not matter really what the product is. It does obviously. It can't be crap.

It's got to be amazing. It's got to deliver. It's got to be the coolest thing on the planet earth. You know what I mean? You're creating a brand new opportunity. It better deliver. It better be awesome. Do not deliver junk. That is not my culture. It should not be yours. Okay? What I'm telling you is that you can sell and make money before you actually start creating the product. Then what you do is you create the product with them.

You create it as you go. That's all we do. That's all I've done...

I have created so many freaking member areas in the last like year. It is ridiculous. My role at ClickFunnels has somewhat shifted. I'm not so much of a front end funnel builder anymore. We're not creating them any front end funnels anymore.

My role has shifted. I'm more like a members area, content creating, fulfillment guy now. I don't know why it's totally shifted, but I think that's why is just because we don't create that many front end funnels anymore. It's all about delivering these massive awesome members area. It's all built in ClickFunnels. I mean everything I do and everything I build is in ClickFunnels, but anyway. That's the first lesson is that oh my gosh, biggest thing, why did I wait eight months to collect any check?

Honestly, it took a while for word to get out because I hadn't thought about traffic, so really it was like a year. That was rough. Why did I do that? Don't do that. I'm begging you not to do that.

Anyway, number one, please know that you should spend most of your time on actually creating the sales message. Focus on getting paid before you make the product as much as you possibly can.

Then what you do is that first round through, that first group through who bought your thing, you create the product with them and you say, "Hey, guess what? It's all going to start in two weeks. Go ahead and get your ticket. Go ahead and buy now, so you can get the early bird pricing. It starts in two weeks. When you get in there, very first module, there's a little stop in there, go ahead and answer that questionnaire so that we know we are covering the things that you need most."

It's just an ask campaign...

Then when we're one week out, "Guess what guys? It starts in one week. Go ahead and get your ticket or go and buy. Then the very first module, get in there, make sure ... Guess what guys? It's starting today. It means you don't have to wait like the people who wait had to wait two weeks ago. Go ahead and get in. I'm going to extend the early bird pricing. You can go ahead.

In the very first module, you can go through and make sure you fill out the survey so we can make we're answering it and filling the products to your needs so we can make sure we're helping you the most. Guess what guys? It only started a week ago. That means you don't have to wait. That means you don't have to wait.

You can get in there and you can start right now, but go ahead and go to module two and to let us know what is it you're most struggling with. That way we know we can make sure we tailor the product to ..." You know what I mean? It's that same thing. "Guess what? It started two weeks go. Guess what? It started three weeks ago." Then whatever it is, let's say you have six modules and something, that first group through, they're creating it with you. You're making money.

You're seeing what works and what doesn't and you're no longer just guessing, creating an entire product, spending all this time and actually wasting a lot of time and frankly probably money that you could have been getting that you didn't.

Does that make sense? This is like one of like six lessons and I'm spending a ton of time on it because I just want you to know that. For the love, sell the stuff. Do a great job fulfilling on it. Don't be shady. Let them know that they're the first ones through.

You know what I mean?...

Let them know that they're going to be creating with you and then a really easy thing to do is let's say you go create module one. At the end of module one, let's say it's on a Saturday. Let's say you released module one on a Monday. Friday do a live Q and A call with everybody. Put the recordings back into the members area. That becomes a value-add. You can toss that in at the end of your stack. That lets you know what holes you didn't fill.

That lets you know where the people are not able to understand or follow what it is you're actually doing. Does that make sense? Anyway, what is that? 18 minutes for number one?

Let me go a little bit faster here, but I hope that makes sense though, okay? That's one of the biggest lessons I ever learned. Number two, here's the second lesson, let's say that you're hiring out support. Let's say you have a support person or you've got support people or whatever it is.

Let's say it's someone who's not totally vested in what it is you're doing. Let's say it is and they just don't understand what your product is. One of the worst things that can happen is when someone starts to ask a front line support person about your product because they may not know about it.

What I try to do, what I'm trying to do now is I'm trying to separate support where they are mostly transactional style questions, "Hey, I can't find my login. Hey, I didn't get my receipt. Hey, does this include this?" Right? It's more factual and transactional. I'm trying to leave support to do that stuff while I handle the question on my live Q and As about the actual products and how to use it and how to get the most out of it and how to go crush it.

You know what I mean? I'm trying to create that split right there and there's really a few things that I've been doing. I got this awesome guy. I want to interview him so you guys can all meet him sometime. He's so cool. He's awesome.

He's been going through and he's been taking a lot of the Q and A questions that I get, support questions that I get and he's making a knowledge base with the most common questions. I think we're using Freshdesk. He's creating a knowledge base with like the most questions and it's not a perfect process yet and it's not a perfect system.

I know that and I apologize if some people have gotten confused or frustrated if there's something that's been weird in there. We're still making it better. It'll be awesome. Anyway, that's where the knowledge base is sitting and a lot of transactional questions, a lot of like what things come with what questions.

All that stuff is I'm trying to separate that and put that to support and I'm trying to take the other questions about the product and how to use it, how to actually be successful with it. I'm trying to put those in a live Q and A that I'm going to be doing with this new info product starting January. I'm going to be doing that every single week live with a group of people.

I'll share my screen and we'll go through stuff. I'll take those things and I'll put them back into the members area so that people know what's going on with there. You know what I mean? That's the plan. The reason why is because there's been a few times where much earlier support people who were with me ... This new guy I have is amazing.

His name is Luke. Shout out to you, buddy. I want to introduce him to everybody sometime. He's been amazing. Anyway, very much earlier support people, they weren't as passionate about my stuff as I am, which you can expect. That's totally fine. They might make customers a little bit mad or whatever it is because they may not understand a strategy.

That should be something that I handle, not the support person. Anyway, okay, that's kind of a long answer there. Here's another lesson, well, I was originally funnels on SalesFunnelBroker.com for $100. I think they're still out there right now, but that's been changed. I just want you to know that.

When I originally was selling that stuff, there's a lot more stuff I had on there for sale for a hundred bucks also. When I was selling funnels, when I'm selling share funnels, things like that, and even with this other info product, when I was selling stuff for a hundred bucks, I did not like the customer that brought. That was way too intense of a product.

A whole share funnel and how to set it up, that's way too intense to be selling for only a hundred bucks. That's holy crap. This is lesson number three. Lesson number three is more money equals a better customer. Now I can understand having smaller physical products on the front end of your value ladder.

That's a lot cheaper. It's because it doesn't take as much to fulfill on that...

Not nearly at all. It does not take nearly that much to fulfill on it. That's a hard thing to screw up. You know what I mean? Like a book or something where it's cheaper and smaller and it's self-explanatory. That's way easier for a customer, any kind of customer, to come through and actually understand. When I was selling stuff that was cheaper that should have frankly been more expensive, that brought a kind of customer that was a little bit more needy.

Not that it's a bad thing, but there's a level of self-solverness. They are people who solve a lot of issues or problems on their own. Entrepreneurship is a self-solver kind of a game, right? If you're not in love with solving problems, you're probably not going to make a great entrepreneur.

Does that make sense? It's a big deal. All this game is going from one problem set to the next problem set, to the next problem set. The reason why Russell Brunson sometimes doesn't listen to a lot of stuff or go to a lot of other events anymore, he doesn't go to a lot of other people's things anymore, he doesn't read a lot of other people's books, the reason why is because he's on a much higher level problem set, right? He's not trying to figure out how to go from zero to a million or 1 to 10 or even 10 to 100 anymore.

He's trying to figure out how to go to a billion dollars. That really ups the kind of person he's trying to learn from. It's the exact same thing with this whole ... Look, more money you charge equals a better customer.

I could dive into that a lot deeper for other things too and show some other examples, but I'm going to move on. First lesson, make money first and make the product with the customer. That's huge. Massive value bomb right there. Number two, the live Q and As should be ... Anyway, I wish I had been doing live Q and As about how the product works rather than leaving that to support. That was a dumb decision on my move. Support should be more transactional stuff and creating a knowledge base.

Number three, when you charge more money, you get a better customer typically. Number four, I wish that I had first funnel hacked a really hot market and then created a new niche out of that hot market.

A lot of times it gets confusing for people...

Hey, go funnel hack someone...

Model them totally. Then hacks for secrets comes out which says, "Hey, create a brand new opportunity. Totally new niche. Something that's never been created before." You're like, "Wait a second. What? Where does funnel hacking come in and where does creating a new niche come in?" Right? Luckily, I guessed right on my first product.

Number one, you go find a really ridiculously bloody, bloody red ocean, right? Something where tons and tons of money is being spent. You find out what they're all doing, then you create a new niche out of one step out of that really hot market. That's one of the easiest ways to ensure a big win. I wish I had done that the first round I've been more purposeful with that, but I frankly wasn't.

I just didn't know. Next lesson, nevermind. That one doesn't make sense. Here's the next one, this is going to sound self-explanatory as I say this, but I just didn't understand this either. I wish I had created traffic sources prior to launching my first info product. I didn't even test anything.

Nothing...

I talk a lot about Tim Ferriss' book The 4-Hour Workweek and it's simply because it's really good, but if you know the story of how he actually wrote that book and put it out there, it took him like a year of planning and preparation and writing. He would drip out a little bit of it here and drip out a little bit there and write little pieces here and there. He did it over the course of like a year.

When he came up with the title, The 4-Hour Workweek, what he did is he brainstormed a ton of book title headlines, lots of ideas, a lot of book title ideas and he created an ad for each one of them and he threw them all out to the marketplace and he looked at which one had the highest click-through rate, which was The 4-Hour Workweek, and that's why he chose the title The 4-Hour Workweek.

That's why that book is called that. He tested like crazy. He PR'd himself like crazy before he ever, ever launched the thing. He primed the pump way before he ever put it out there, which is awesome. I love how the product Software Secrets was launched. If you hadn't seen the Software Secrets launched, it's amazing.

They made tons of money. It's amazing product. I personally use it. I personally bought it. I absolutely love Software Secrets. I think it's so cool, but what's cool about Software Secrets is that for almost a full year, in fact it might have been a full year, they had this podcast where all they did was document the creation of the product.

They included their customer in the actual creation of the product. Now when there was this new feature that popped out, they said, "Oh yeah. You guys remember the story behind this feature?" Then they talk about it, right?

That's cool because when they actually launched the thing, now they know the stories behind how hard it was to create this thing and the trial and challenge behind this one over here.

It's cool because they brought us on the journey. They basically were selling everybody before they actually sold the thing and that's why they did it. That's how they did it. I wished that I had done that before. I wished that I had created pressure and traffic sources prior to actually launching the product.

Oh my gosh...

Guys, if you can make the event of you launching the product feel like an event, it's like one of the easiest ways to ensure success with this whole thing. Anyway, I have been talking like crazy and I know this is kind of a long podcast. The last few have been kind of long, but I'm just excited to share a with you guys a few of these things that have been going on my head.

Anyways, if you're making a product, you're making something that's good, that's ... It could be the first one. It could be something that's also maybe not even your first one. Maybe it could be whatever it is you're about to launch something or you've already launched it, think through ... Okay. I'm just going to recap these lessons real quick. There's one, two, three, four, about five things here. Number one, figure out again how you can actually make money before you start creating your thing.

That's going to ease your pain like crazy because the guess work's not going to be on you. The market will tell you what it wants you to create, right? I just went over that. You don't have that inside of you of really knowing what it is to create.

You got to ask the market. You might as well get paid while you do it and you can. Start selling before it's ready. That's number one. Number two, separate what support's roles are with your roles. Your role is to sell the thing, make it awesome, help people learn how to use it, help people learn how to consume it. Support's roles in my opinion is more transactional. You know what I mean? It's more let's make a knowledge base.

Let's do the things. Let's answer the questions you're answering all the time, Steven. Let's answer all the questions. You know what I mean? It's that kind of stuff and again I'm going to introduce you to a cool guy here shortly. Stuff starts to roll out with this thing. The third thing, charge more money.

More money equals a better customer typically. More money typically equals someone who's willing to take more action. If someone spends more money, usually they're willing to do what you say rather than blame random stupid crap on you that it's not your fault, rather than just their own fault for not actually taking action. You know what I mean?

Anyway, more money usually equals a better customer. Fourth lesson, find the hot product where lots of money is, then take one step out of that as you create a new niche, right? Don't just create something new willy-nilly. Find out what's actually selling before and go create something new from it. Then the fifth and final thing is create some pressure before you start to sell something.

Find the traffic sources...

Do some testing. Figure out what is actually selling. Your job is to sell. Just sell. Don't worry about stupid stuff like business cards or office space. That stuff doesn't matter. Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Sell for a while and prove what the market wants, then we can kind of automate stuff because the market told you what it wants.

Anyway, I've been talking a long time. That was a freaking 30 minute podcast and I'm sorry that it went that long, but honestly, I just hope that you understand more of like ... Gosh, like so many headaches. I can't even tell you how many headaches would have been relieved if I had just done this. I mean this is over the course of like two years of me learning that.

Okay? I hope that that 30 minutes cut down two years of you learning how to do this stuff. You might even be amazing at selling that stuff and I hope that you and you probably are, but just the way you structure stuff with your support, with all the different things, all the different pieces, just know that like is ...

Those are for me the five huge lessons when launching an info product or products in general. When it comes to selling it, just ... It eases the pain like crazy. I kind of jumped into a lot of that stuff too with our last fad event and it went really great, but anyway. I'm excited to launch this thing. I think it'd be great.

I've got a lot more structure in place this time as far as the business wise goes, which usually I don't care as much about, but I'm trying to take you to a lot of the lessons I learned for the first info product.

I'm excited to launch it. It'll be early January. Anyway, it's going to be awesome. Anyways, get out there. Launch stuff. Just sell stuff and I'm excited for you and what you're launching. It's cool to hear all the stories. I love when you guys reach out and share with me what you guys got from these things too. It's really fun. Anyway, you guys are all awesome.

Get out there...

Create products...

Put stuff out there...

Time is a ticking...

Don't waste it. I'll talk to you later. Bye.

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