Will Russell 4:14

Certainly, yeah. So I mean, as you can probably tell by my by my accent, I grew up in the United Kingdom, and I moved to the US in 2009. After a little bit of of moving around, I ended up settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I mean, I’d always like a lot of entrepreneurs say I always felt like I was gonna do something along along the entrepreneurship lines. The idea of, you know, I when I was young, I’d see my dad on his suit and tie and get on the train into London and head to work and, and I admire and commend that. But I never felt that was established. For me. I always felt that I was gonna do something of my own. And so in 2016 I mean, I dabbled a little bit prior to that, but 2016 is really when I

made the made the jump and I quit my full time job in the Bay Area. And I started the trying to build our educational content around marketing, that didn’t work out very well. So about a year later 2017, I launched this business, the Lord’s marketing business, because during the year prior, I think I’d really come to learn what are the similar high level concepts. And then what are the nuances in launching across different spaces. Because I’ve worked in the nonprofit space, I’ve worked in public safety states, I’ve worked in the media states, and I’ve worked in a single product space. And so I, I was looking at any in my previous job roles, a lot of it was around launching families, which I haven’t really made that connection up till October 2017. When I didn’t make that connection, I decided, hey, this is really interesting. This is something that I can kind of productize I suppose it’s systematic, it’s repetitive, which is always advantageous with a service based business. And, and so I made that dive to launch this, this, this launch marketing company, and there was a good decision. So it’s been onwards and upwards from there. And as you pointed out, he starts allowing me the opportunity to write a book and publish that. And it’s given me the opportunity to start a foundation and do some work in a philanthropic space. So all in all, it’s been a heck of a journey. I, I empathize and feel similarly minded to a lot of what you said at the start with what that journey actually feels like, as an entrepreneur. But we’re both here today, and you’ve given me an opportunity to talk to you on this show. And that’s, that’s a that’s a checkbox, you know, that’s, that’s a success. And I’m happy to share with your listeners, as many bits and pieces that have got me today.

Josh Hadley 6:50

Awesome. Well, we’ll we’re super excited to dive into that. And you have a great, great background. You know, our listeners are established business owners, right, they’ve already found success. They’ve been selling products on E commerce channels. But one of the biggest strategies to continue to grow from a seven figure business to eight figures and beyond, is by coming out on a regular basis with new products. So launching new products, in my opinion, is one of the best ways for a business to continue to grow and to increase their revenue. So, Will, that’s honestly what your whole book is centered around. Why have you with your agency? It’s all kind of centered around product launches, right? And you’re not just focused exclusively in E commerce, you’ve done some events and other things as well. Right. And so what tell us, you know, Why the emphasis on product launches, so to speak?

Will Russell 7:54

That’s an excellent question. And one that I’ve toyed with many times in, in what is that positioning, I mean, the reality is, the system that we have this five step knowledge system is applicable to any sort of offer, whether it’s a free app, whether it’s signing up for an event, whether it’s a car, whether it’s a cheap water bottle, you know, the whole purpose of the system was that it was universal. And obviously, there’s going to be differences, but I wanted the concepts to be universal and applicable in different ways. Now, theory and reality changes, because in theory, that that’s great. In reality, most entrepreneurs coming to us aren’t in a super strong financial saving position, you know, this might be their first product, this might be their first business, this might be very early in their, in their progress, they might have just got some angel investment. And, and generally speaking, they’re not in a position to push a lot of money into a launch campaign without certain returns coming back to them with things like free events with things like X, even subscriptions, because let’s say $1.99 A month or whatever, it’s very, very difficult for us to put a system in place and with with a low cost app, for example, and at the end of our five, six month collaboration to be able to point to significant ROI for the client, because if they’re selling an app, and then you probably have folks in listening who have software and apps and subscription based products, that that lifetime value tends to deliver or that value tends to deliver more over a longer period of time. And what we do is condensed, it’s short, it’s relatively quick. So we can’t look at two three years out necessarily. And so consumer based products in particular products include price range, and maybe $100 to $500. That’s a really good sweet spot for a system like ours to deliver returns. So I think the concepts and and the ideas and the metrics that the system possesses, they will apply to any sort of offer. However, if at the end of that launch period, you need to have generated $3. For every $1, you’ve invested, there needs to be an order value of a decent level for the product itself. And so for things like acts and events, that may not be the reality, and so as an entrepreneur may not want to implement a system like ours together, or they may not want to hire us to do it, hence, why I published a book. And so consumer products is definitely our most common vertical, do work with others. But the main reason for that is because most entrepreneurs we work with need to see a return and the truth is product with the price point in that $100 plus area is more likely to generate that return quickly to something like that. Yeah,

Josh Hadley 10:57

yeah, very interesting. So we’ll let’s go ahead and dive into your book there. And some of those strategies that you would like to share with our audience, knowing that our audience is going to be launching a lot of E commerce specific products, right, a lot of consumer product brands. And so walk us through what the ideal Strategy would look like for an E commerce product launch.

Will Russell 11:23

Right, so I’m gonna let me share the five steps of our system. And then let’s apply those to these particular listeners. So the five steps the system, now step one is validation. And that’s roughly a four to six week period where we are collecting purchase intent around a specific offer. So we’re not necessarily selling a product yet. But we might be taking a deposit on a future product that doesn’t yet exist, something like that. It’s not a budget, it’s a relatively short test. And what that does is gives us enough data around purchase intent to understand okay, if we invest $50,000, or $100,000, more, what’s that going to look like in terms of profitability? And what are those projections going to be? If we can look at all that information, and everyone’s was very positive about it looks good to us, then we’re going to move into step two, if we realize this, this validation has identified a couple of red flags, things you need to fine tune in, we’re going to take that back to the client, and we’re going to share with them our recommendations for what we need to change and pivot in order to make the mathematics work, essentially. So that’s the validation period, super important, super easy in terms of the credit scheme of things, and introduced bypass a few years back, as it was a really good way of saving entrepreneurs money and heartache and timing, bad idea, you know, and it was a very effective way of doing that.

Josh Hadley 12:59

So step one metrics. So on that point, what metrics are you looking for to know if a product is going to be a winner? Right?

Will Russell 13:07

Yeah, there’s a few key metrics we’re looking at the most, the most fundamental ones are going to be acquisition costs per deposit. So most most funnels, we run in validation are going to require some sort of deposit, low deposit, maybe $5, maybe 1% of the product is fine. And, and the key metric we’re looking for there is is can we see a cost per reservation come in, that’s less than a third of the likely average order, by the customer. If we can get under that range of about 32% is the shoe cost, we feel confident moving forward. And then the second thing is, the metric we’re going to look at there is how many people that show interest in the solution also show interest in buying a product at a price point and your entrepreneur requests. So the funnel that we’re running in validation usually has a few different steps. And one of those steps is introducing solution. No price point reference, just the solution. And we’re looking for signals of evangelists. And then the next step for those that do express interest. We look, we introduced the price point more specificity around the offer. And we booked marketing. Okay, well, what’s the level of purchase intent now they understand more than what they’re going to get and what their custom and as we’re looking at how many people expressed interest compared to how many people showed the purchase intent, that specific transplant. And so it depends on the product bracket 5% is probably a good average there. If we can see 5% of people expressing interest and also putting down a deposit once they see how much it’s going to cost them. We feel good about it and we thumbs up. Let’s move forward and you feel that this is scalable and profitable.

Josh Hadley 14:50

Awesome. Those are some A good rule of thumb for people to be shooting towards and I know we’ll we’ll go down into some specific examples as well. But Let’s continue with step number two.

Will Russell 15:02

Yes. So step number two and step number three of our launch system, they happen concurrently. And that’s audience acquisition and audience engagement. So by and large, there are two things we want to happen. By the time launch day arrives. One is immediate traction and speed of traction, not just because we want the entrepreneur to have sales, but because the more the more data we can collect early on, the quicker we can pivot and make changes. So firstly, we want to make sure during step two and step three, we are preparing this launch attraction on day one. And then we are also looking to solve objections. So especially with a new product and a new brand, there’s going to be a lot of skepticism and a lot of objections coming out who I knew why say trust you, blah, blah, blah. And usually, if we’re looking to launch, and we need traction, we don’t want to stumble on all those objections on launch day, we need them resolved before launch, they happen. So step two, in step three of our system usually lasts about six to eight weeks, and is period where we’re acquiring prospective customers. So we’ve validated the idea. Through that validation period, we’ve understood audiences and messaging, now you can kind of pump the gas in and start bringing in a lot more people into our community, who are expressing interest in putting down deposits, and engage them and communicate with them so that they are number one incentivized and excited to take action when you do launch. And number two, they’re going to have all their questions and all your objections answered. So during that period, it depends, of course, on the budgets and other bits and pieces, but it’s really a ramp up period where we’re looking to build that community and have the entrepreneurial upline working with engage that community and really meaningful way. So that when they get to step three, or four, which is the conversion piece of it, which is phase three, that they’re going to have success, and they’re going to see a really nice launch day, and they’re going to get the data they need to move forward. So step four, is this conversion period. For us, we we kind of understand this conversion period, this is a couple of days. Now a launch period and of itself, when someone wants to have kind of launch sales period is probably going to last somewhere between one and three months, maybe a step four, this audience conversion step in our system, it’s just a couple of days, because it’s that early, immediate traction, what are we seeing happening right away? What’s the conversion rate on the product of what email open rates looking like, and so on, and so forth. Amazon paying on ads, product, page view, and metrics like that, and we’re looking at how is the user actually behaving in that purchase journey, because we’ve been there validation, we get a sense of, okay, people like this product people like this offer. But of course, until you’ve actually presented the opportunity to purchase it on a website where they can buy it, you’re not going to know exactly what’s going to happen. So we want to get that behavior and that flow as quickly as possible. So we understand where in that journey do we need to improve things. And then finally, once that first couple of days of the launch period is complete, we’re going to move into step five, which is scale, which is where we’re taking these learnings, both the learnings during the validation and pre launch and also his behavior, learnings at launch, to fine tune and expand and scale our existing strategies so that the entrepreneur can have a successful launch period as possible. That’s the system I can speak specifically to how your your listeners might want to consider some things to look forward to. And does that make sense? Are there any questions arising? Yeah,

Josh Hadley 18:43

no, I love that. So step number one in this process is the validation phase. Right. And then we talked about some metrics that you should be shooting towards there. Step number two is the audience acquisition. Right? So you start to kind of obtain a list of, you know, interested, your target market, right people actually using the product? Is that correct? Yeah. And then be using

Will Russell 19:09

the products maybe quite yet, because it might not exist yet. The target market? Yes.

Josh Hadley 19:13

Okay. So the target market audience acquisition for your target market? And then step three, remind me of that one.

Will Russell 19:20

audience engagement.

Josh Hadley 19:22

So we’re engaged engagement. Yep. So then you’re engaging with that audience, right. And then leading up to step number four, the conversion process where you actually put the product up for sale, right? It goes live, right for its first day and you’re trying to drive as much traffic those first few days, gain a lot of data quickly be able to pivot and then your final step is to be able to scale that correct. Yeah. So being able to do that on repeat. Yeah, so Exactly. I think it all makes sense. Now, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of like, how does this work? If Somebody is selling on Amazon, for example.

Will Russell 20:04

Excellent question there as well. So this is the interesting thing about sales channels these days is that there are so many and and people use lots of different sales channels to launch. And so Amazon is a great example. Obviously, Walmart now have their own marketplace, which is gaining a lot of interest. And then we have launch channels, just like a random Shopify website, we have a lot of folks who are coming to us for crowdfunding, because they haven’t got the product in development yet. And each of these requires a slight adjustment to the approach. But that said, the five steps and those high level concepts, they do remain the same, you know, they remain the same, what changes is really some of the features that are available to make new. So on one platform that may not be available on another platform, for example, I mean, for Amazon, their algorithm is gonna work slightly differently than what we might see on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. And so we’re going to probably want to apply an approach which is more focused in talked about in the news or verified reviews, if we’re launching on Amazon, we’re probably going to be building in a more comprehensive review request approach earlier than if we were launching on Indiegogo. So I’d say if the Amazon Amazon as well, obviously, there’s the organic nature of Amazon and an IU search ball, and so on, which, yes, that does apply to other channels. But if you’re coming up with a new Shopify store for a new phone cover, we’re unlikely to be pushing hard on kind of your SEO basics, or SEO fundamentals there. Whereas if you’re an Amazon, of course, it’s really important that we get those those key bits and pieces on the product page from the get go. So with Amazon, and we’re talking in our five step system, I can get the validation a client’s same way with Amazon, there’s going to be some additional bits and pieces you can bring to that validation, there’s a lot of great tools that you can use on Amazon for keyword research, product research and volume and stuff like that, which obviously aren’t going to be applicable elsewhere. And that’s going to play a big role in perhaps the offer you want to form or the accessories you might consider putting with your key offer. So I think with Amazon, you’ve got much more market research tools applicable to that particular launch platform than you do if you’re launching in any other manner. And then from an acquisition standpoint, with Amazon, I mean, our recommendation, in any case in a lot of money through the advertising channels on Amazon. Whereas if you’re launching on another platform, you’ve probably been earmarking most of that budget to google watermaster. So fundamentally, with Amazon, I think the process is condensed a little bit, you have some additional tools to help you validate and do your market research. And then you have a couple of other bits and pieces to be thinking about such as optimizations such as review requests, such as acquisition sources, and how that’s going to work that fundamentally then validation to acquisition to engagement to conversion to scale, that’s going to manifest going to remain the same in this high level concepts. And even the objections you’re going to be facing and you’re going to be resolving or some of the tactics you’re going to take to incentivize quick action, which is you went through a bunch, earlier discounts and limited time opportunities in this sound, the other those are going to apply to Amazon or Shopify or Keepstar to really want to go. So again, suddenly wants a different nuances here. But high level concepts and even a lot of the strategies are applicable to different platforms, it’s just going to be handled and go about it on a day to day basis.

Josh Hadley 23:50

Yeah. What’s the ideal maybe we can walk through maybe like a case study, for example, with a product that you’ve launched on just you know, a D to C website, right, whether it be on Shopify, or whether they had their own standalone sales funnel, walk us through, you know, each of those phases for a new product that was brought to market whether it was on Amazon, Walmart, the channel doesn’t matter. Give us an example of something that you’ve helped kind of create.

Will Russell 24:20

Yeah, one that stands out to me as a favorite isn’t necessarily well, by a long way, the biggest race, the biggest revenue that we generate on a launch, and it was a few years back. So I’d have to say that our system wasn’t as sophisticated in then as it is now. But the one that always comes to mind as such a great example of what I want my company to be, or to support the kinds of companies I want to support was chasing giggles which is a betting company, sustainable betting company that we helped launch on Indiegogo it was 2017 2018 here And then a successful 30 days on Indiegogo they did about $300,000, which is a solid amount. It’s, as I said, it’s not a big race for those platforms, but it’s very cheap. It’s most of the success. And I think most entrepreneurs, those kind of numbers are very healthy certainly spine watch, was we’re very happy with that launch. And then we continued working with them. So we continue to work with them for about 18 more months, as they build out their commerce foundations. And then we stopped working with them. And the reason ability is such a good example is we came in as a platinum, tell them to validate to help them drive a lot of age, interest and attention and build a big community around Franklin bedsheets, which is a really, really invested six, it’s really hard to enter that market, that the existing brands have such marketing budgets, it’s very expensive to run position athletes in those channels often and so on. So it was a tough space, the founder of She’s introduced Colin McIntosh, to solo founder kind of giving it his all, you know, super passionate, super excited, and so exactly the kind of entrepreneur you want to work with. And we took them through that. And we helped them partner with them through that key validation launch and early success. And then they went on to raise a lot more money, there’s a really successful company now. They took their marketing in house, and that’s okay, you know, I don’t see your, I don’t see us as a pawn for life for a company, I see us as a useful partner in this first early stages. And so that was a great example of that. So to speak specifically to some of the metrics, I can remember sheeps and giggles, so I can remember, back then, one of the key metrics we were looking at was landing page conversion, how many? What percentage of people were signing up and expressing their interest in the product, and I remember shooting people was had something like a 44%, it was in the 40s conversion rate, and our benchmark is 20. So we already knew, Okay, people like this slide, this idea that they liked this solution. They’ve seen more interested than average, in what this would be. So then we wanted to get a sense of okay, but are they engaged? And they really care? Because everyone needs bedsheets? So it’s very easy to just sign up on something. He said, Yes, sure. I like that sheets. So we need to understand how much they actually care about these issues, and are they actually going to end up being purged, and that it’s fine to do have that deposit function in place as possible, stressful. Instead, we actually looked at intent and a couple of other ones, we looked at intent to things like email engagement, we looked at intensive things like service engagement, what percentage of those leads, we’re going to complete our survey in the next page, and we’d have benchmarks to evaluate Mm hmm, based on those areas. And again, in both of those areas, the number of people completing surveys, I think back then our our metric was about 10%. And I’m not exactly what the CGS was, but it was well beyond that. And then we also saw with the image of engagement, and we had a Facebook group, and we saw the excitement, and the engagement and the communication and, and that was happening from his prospects. And so all those signs pointing in a very strong direction in the sheeps and giggles took them through that period. And I will say, and this, this is something I think that specifically can apply to, or should be acknowledged by those with existing companies, not just so size new companies, but what we see more and more nowadays, people care about the person or persons behind the product as much if not more, so that your product itself and she’s indeed was was well ahead of the curve on that and how pleasant and conversational and engaging the founder was with those customers, he wasn’t hidden behind a new manager saw a screen he wasn’t keeping his his his his hands clean and allowing others to do the work within those groups responding to those emails in a one o’clock in the morning in preparation for launch, conversing, home phone calls with these prospects to really engage in this community. And that, again, that users is really important. So with all these, all these data points, pointed to a successful launch and you said okay, people are interested, they liked the product, and they did launch and as I said, I think it goes somewhere that I think he wants you to assume that 50 60,000 would have been a successful if I recall correctly, I might I might be missing London, and he ended up doing about 300 So he was blown away on a great example of passionate founder. A very astute founder, very knowledgeable founder, implementing the right system and trusting the data trusting the right partners trust interruption and lose and essentially end Delivering a great product. And it was a great example much of the launch system in play, but also have the whole concept of validation pre order, because she’s, like I said, there was an Indiegogo campaign, but they went on to deliver a very successfully all products and build a very successful company from that. So it was just a great use case. And it was a great example of what I always went to for the clients. And in conversations like this, as to how to do it right. And, and what a light pole on, launch really looks like. And, and there, he has loads of great interviews as well. So if you want to see more, learn more about what TCP does did around their launch, you can just Google for a Macintosh, which is Google’s. And he’s got a bunch of interviews out there where he talks about it. But that, to me is just a great example of everything working smoothly, everything going well, everything, the recipe essentially working perfectly. And for me, it was one of the campaigns in the business. So it was very exciting to Tesla and basically important.

Josh Hadley 31:01

Yeah, what a great, what a great case study, I want to dive in deeper on a couple of these aspects when you talk about building an engaged, you know, audience, or, you know, building up a following what are what are the channels, or strategies to kind of build this following of people, before you’ve even launched a product.

Will Russell 31:26

By and large, most people are going to lean heavily into paid acquisition. And so that means paying Facebook or Google or Reddit, or ad space and driving traffic using those methods. Now, not everyone has big budget of sliding, sliding to do that. I always suggest paid acquisition because frankly, it’s the quickest and easiest way of getting from where you are to where you need to be. But I understand not everyone has the budget. So for those who don’t have those budgets, or for those who don’t want to rely entirely on his budget says a few other avenues and really look to one is key that. And so by piggybacking, we’re looking for partners, or like minded communities that already have the people we want. And we want to build a connection with the managers or the founders of those communities. And essentially piggyback on top of the success they’ve had to get access to these people. So examples of that might be maybe you don’t want to put $10,000 into Facebook ad campaign. But maybe we could purchase an advertising spot for in a particular media websites newsletter, or you could write a guest post, or you could do some sort of exchange where possible exchange with them over a period of six months where the front end of that relationship they’re helping you but then towards the back end, you’re going to bounce it out more on site, helping them in different ways. So piggybacking and looking at those kind of partnerships is a really good. Another effort we’re going to look to use by reality, it’s a tough one, because you know, they’re obviously elements to what makes something viable. And and checkboxes you can go through but there’s always luck there, you don’t really knows for sure, whether it be effort to go viral is going to work. And so it can be a bit of a risk, but virality. And lead could be things such as word of mouth marketing strategies, and thorough strategies on content and user generated content. Things like ambassadors or affiliate marketing might live in an intrusive influence marketing that self got the virality is certainly a good a good path to go if you don’t want to lean into pushing too much of your budget into paid ads. And then the fourth and longest one, I suppose, is the organic demeanor to people that don’t have big budgets, and they maybe don’t be sell, I don’t have any departments. So I don’t have I can’t make things the viral I can’t get free videos created. If they’re pushing back on a lot of different areas, then the way to deal with organic and that’s going to be slow and steady. But it’s going to be going through your social channels, posting relevant content and being an interested person in the HC brand. And over time, we’re then going to build up that community. If you’re going to get that reach, you wouldn’t be working with someone like us, because our whole point of working with us is we’re going into this quickly in a short timeframe. But organic is a perfectly good route to go. And many, many of the brands in E commerce did exactly that and have been very successful through that methodology. So if you’re not going to go paid, I wouldn’t go paid. That’s always my recommendation. But if you’re not gonna lose if Elumynt paid acquisition, then we’re always looking at piggybacking in partnerships and looking at virality and opportunities there and then also looking at how can we organically get visibility.

Josh Hadley 34:59

That’s our Some makes makes a lot of sense makes a lot of sense. Well, you’ve shared a lot of knowledge with us. And I love your five step framework here and process to launch new products. Is there anything that we haven’t covered yet that you think our audience needs to know about launching products and having success from the get go?

Will Russell 35:18

I think the main thing, I would note, and this is very applicable to folks that already have existing ecommerce businesses and existing customer bases, is to use them, you know, in a positive way, but your answers are bad. And, and if you’re a new entrepreneur, you do have to spend money to build up the audiences. If you already have an audience, because you already have a community, then you don’t need to invest that time and do it, you can run a validation with your own community without spending anything. And you can understand what is your community want, what products advances accessories, upsells? Are they interested in purchasing what’s missing existing products that people your people are seeking, you can do that through simple things like surveys, you can leave it to enjoy running traffic from an email newsletter to be able to turn pages and seeing what their intent is, and so on and so forth. And then to tie that back to something you mentioned earlier, Josh’s recently, products, and I think that that ties in nicely with the fact that it’s so much easier, especially in 2022, to sell more to a customer than to get a new customer if and that’s always been the case, you know, that’s something that’s just best practices existed for a long time. But I would say, especially in the last couple of years, we’ve dealt with the waiting to go on with the competitive costs of digital space. With some of the challenges we’ve seen this year, the economy in recession, and this and that is no one we see easier for you to generate more revenue from and provide more value to them, someone who knows you and trusts you. So when it is about launching your products, when it is about generating revenue, as you said, and I would point wholeheartedly to an existing community that you want to go through this launch system, and you have an existing community, you’re already so far ahead, the only entrepreneurs that don’t and the this is such a low costs and and verifiable intangible path to just rolling out new products. And like we spoke about before, you don’t even have to develop the product, you know, essentially reducing humidity, it can be a case of oh, we are thinking about XY and Z and whatnot in collecting feedback on those on those thoughts, and even put them down payments or deposits or pre orders. You are in fact getting that revenue before you’re even manufacturing the product. So that’s all to say, you know, if you have an existing community, or if you’re about to launch a business and in building a community for that business, and you’re thinking longer term, thinking about what those additional products you can add to that development timeline and using your customers to make those decisions for you is so important as a cost saver in longer term comfortability.

Josh Hadley 38:21

Yeah, well, I think you summarized things really well there. Especially for many of our listeners who are established business owners. This isn’t their first product launch, they’ve already got a portfolio or a catalog of products. Now we’ll, at the end of each episode, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. What I’m going to do a little bit differently today, though, is I’m going to take your kind of five step framework or model that you talked about, and really kind of apply it to our listeners that are primarily launching products on Amazon, and dive even deeper to kind of what you just recently talked about there with an existing audience. So number one, is you’ve got to validate that product. This goes back to the importance of creating product insert cards, right, so that when your customers with all of your existing products, when they when they get their product, and it arrives, there’s got to be some type of product insert, or maybe it’s on your product label or packaging, that shows a QR code with some type of hook or enticement to get them to join your email list or preferably their a text list because your SMS marketing is going to be much more responsive, higher open rates, higher click through rates than email, but you’ve got to start gathering your audience. So while you’re in the validation phase, you can reach out to your audience just like we’ll mention, and you can say hey, we’re thinking of Creating this type of new product, if you’re interested, respond or click this link or whatever it is, so that you can start to gauge interest. That’s a really, really good way. Then number two, you can use the validation tools that we all have on Amazon, go use Amazon brand analytics and go determine, right, what type of market market opportunity is there? How many keywords would be there supporting that type of product? What is the search volume for those keywords? And how many different keywords can you find that are truly irrelevant, that would drive traffic to that product? Right? Those are all the components that would comprise your validation stage, then you move into number two is kind of building up that audience. So again, as an established business, you should already have your target audience, you should already have a list of customers that have previously purchased from you. So reach out to them, like I mentioned earlier, and send them a quick email or text that says, hey, I’m thinking of doing this, complete this survey if you’re interested. And here’s one of the most powerful things in that survey, one of the best questions I would recommend that you ask is when it comes to whatever product this is, when it comes to using, you know, kitchen spatulas. For example, what is the biggest obstacle frustration or challenge that you face, right, and the let customers respond in their own words. And hopefully, you will find patterns in there that will then help you kind of pivot and even reformulate what your new product offering could be to truly solve the pain points of the customers. Then you move into engaging with that audience, one of the best things that we’ve done is Wolf, kind of follow that similar pattern in our own business, we’ll say, Hey, we’re thinking of creating this product, we’ll send it out to our text list. And we have people join a separate text list. If they’re interested, then we keep them updated with the product development. All right, so we’re thinking of coming out with five different types of variations or designs, or whatever it is, and we show it, we say, Hey, here’s 10, but we need to narrow it down to five, select your favorite five, right? And they feel like they’re part of this process. And then we ask them various questions. Do you think this needs to include any racer? Or does it need a marker? Or you know, what extra accessories do you think would would make this the complete package for you? Right? Ask all of those questions. And you’re building this engaged audience that is honestly going to be chomping at the bit asking, when is this going to become available, because they’ve been so invested in the product creation at the same time, then when it comes to conversions, specifically on Amazon, one of the things I would encourage you to do is, if you have a list of 100,000, email subscribers, or people that have or let’s boil it down to even 1000, right, because this, this applies to no matter the size of your list, but break them up into individual buckets. Because if you go back to the way, when we all were launching products, five years ago, on Amazon, there was that CPR number which still does exist today, that gives you like, here’s the average daily sales that you should be meeting in order to get ranked on page number one. And so spread out your launch over a seven day period, to say, Hey, I’m gonna send you know, I have 1000 email, you know, subscribers, break that up into, you know, I’m going to send out campaigns Monday, it’s going to go to 150 people Tuesday, it’s going to go to 150 people, so on and so forth, so that you’re continuing to prime that engine day after day. And Amazon will start picking up on that rather than seeing one huge spike one huge blip on the radar, which Amazon doesn’t really give a whole lot of love to at this point. So spread that out. And then last but not least, is being able to scale that. So that goes back into including product inserts on your new product to continue to engage and build with that new audience in preparation for your new launch. So those are some of my ideas. That’s how you can specifically apply it to seven figure sellers that are looking to scale to eight figures and beyond. Will What are your thoughts? Is there anything you think I’m missing there anything else you’d like to add on to those thoughts?

Will Russell 44:39

I mean, you saw on and we could could speak about each of those in in so much depth. The two things you said that I want to reiterate, because I think there’s so important you talked about collecting open ended responses and using that information to understand pain points and so on. I think along those lines, something we do a lot of is, is review search. And so we spend a lot of time on Amazon, reviewing competitive products and understanding what are people saying about those products and then reviews, and then using those those open ended responses, not just to help decide what exactly what product, what knowledge, but to actually speak about that product in the same language and include Buddhism’s that the customers have been using elsewhere. So I think that research period of clicking Open Ended answers is useful not just to help decide on what party you want to go to the specific copywriting you’re using in launch approach. So that was a very valuable insight you’ve added. And then you also mentioned, segmentation. And when you first mentioned it, I was thinking about it in a slightly different way, even when you said that, because you did apply very specifically to Amazon, which is that’s exactly how I launched my book, I had a list of 20 people 30 a day over that first week, when you’re thinking about launching in different ways you can consider segmentation perhaps and fund managers, for example, if someone was crowdfunding versus Amazon, then you aren’t going to want that bit. And so rather than thinking about segmentation, just in kind of chronology or the course of a week, we think about segmentation, those launches in terms of priority to convert are likely to convert. And if we do it over the course of the day, once a week. So first thing first segment is going to go out, it’s going to be the people who we feel extremely confident are going to convert the last few we send an email to that day or text message to that day, and the people that we think will be the least likely and and the reason that is is because those people who are least likely are going to need more social proof more credibility to make that purchasing decision. And so we want sales to come comments who have come in, you’ve used to come in before that segment reaches the page in the sales offer. So those are both very good. specific things you mentioned, Josh, that was

Josh Hadley 47:12

awesome. Thanks for tying that up in a bow there. Well, I think he did a great job even expanding on a couple of those ideas. It’s been a super fun conversation. Well, and before we finally wrap things up here, I love to ask each guest the following questions. So question number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read? And why?

Will Russell 47:35

You know, I talked in line 50? Yeah, I would have to say the English Michael Gerber’s Lumiant. I just think it’s, for me, I was launching with someone who was a marketer, and moved into launching a marketing business and the way that Michael Gerber speaks, and the ideas and the concepts that he brings up. I mean, when I read that book, before I launched my business, it was just one of those books that really opens your mind and makes you really think strategically about what it is to have a business rather than, you know what it is to kind of run a business my day to day basis. So I would like to say, I mean, there’s many, many, but the E-Myth is one that I think anyone can run from so even if by Michael God would be my choice. Yeah,

Josh Hadley 48:25

totally agree. That is a great book. Next question is What is your favorite productivity tool or software that you’ve been using that you think is a game changer?

Will Russell 48:36

So I think the one that comes to my mind, I don’t think it looks glamorous. However, the way I can use the years has just made it so powerful. So toggle is a simple time tracking software, that I’m a big challenge. And so since day, one of my business in day one of 2016, when I launched the business, educational training that didn’t work out, I’ve checked my time, everything. So I can now look back. And whether it’s looking at what over the course of a week, how I’m sending my time and every couple of years, I will assess my day in both how much time extending my wife, how much time instead of eating and so on. But that that dataset to look back on is so incredibly useful to see. Oh, wow. So I’ve been 2022 I just have this much time or business development in 2021. I spent this much time in 2020 is the business time, I spend this much time on team meetings, you know, that data set is so useful for me to improve my efficiencies and frankly, my my balance my life that I would have to say total to me is just the best productivity software and I’ve maintained use of it over all those years. Nothing else is kind of saying with me the whole time.

Josh Hadley 49:53

Fascinating. So toggle T O GG le

Will Russell 49:56

no UBN just to GDL All right.

Josh Hadley 49:59

toggle I have not heard of that one. But I really liked the concept that you talked about there. Because when I talk to other entrepreneurs about scaling their teams, one of the first things I recommend they do is do a time study, you have to understand where you’re spending the majority of your time, right. And so like you’re talking about, you know, business development, right? Now, if that’s your sweet spot, and you’re like, look, that’s my core capability, I’m really good at it, I love it. That’s exactly what I want to be doing day in and day out, then that’s well and good. But if you’re like, well, it is something I’m good at. But I do think that somebody else, I can train somebody to do it just as well as I can, then you start to outsource that, right. And you start to create processes around it. But you’re not able to understand, you know, where majority of your time is going if you’re not tracking it. So I’m excited, I’m going to be taking a look at that immediately after we get off this call. So thanks for that. Well, last question here is who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the E commerce space and why

Will Russell 51:04

this is this is a tough one. And I sat on this one thinking about bounciest when you send an invoice on Sony was coming. And one thing I really try and avoid nowadays is, I guess, comparing myself to other individuals. So when I first started out, and I knew it was all about learning as much as possible. And so there are many entrepreneurs, well known whether it’s Maurice Smith used to do a lot of meta work, or whether it’s micro salesmen, Social Media Examiner or Gary Vaynerchuk, illegal people at the time, Amy Porterfield, who ruined her MySpace, and I could learn a lot from them, especially since 2016. to Now we’ve all seen how social media and what we learn about online is just a small slice of what reality is for that person. And so it’s very dangerous game five for me personally, emotionally, as an entrepreneur to be comparing myself and studying other entrepreneurs in the E commerce space too much because all I see is success story, successful success story success story, how I generated $10 million in 30 seconds and and that makes me feel bad about myself, the only sequester yourself. So I, over the last few years have really tried to avoid following too many individuals out of sight. So I had a hard time answering this question. But one, one individual, not necessarily ecommerce that I found as much. Now a very useful resource is the podcast how I built this got going and as is the whole thing about how I built this is a podcast that I do still listen to. And as an entrepreneur I just found incredibly useful because the interview is such a different variety of entrepreneurs and all sorts of different senses. And so what you’ll see in about Josh, you know, hearing your customers speak about what they want, hearing what other entrepreneurs who are more successful entrepreneurs have done and what their journey has been like in their business, whether it’s an app, or a child brand, whatever it is, you hear the commonalities and you hear the trends. And so there’s, there’s a lot you can learn from those common conversations. So there’s no warning. There’s no influencer or E commerce expert that I really follow avidly nowadays. I do think Gary Vaynerchuk is a genius like him, but I think she’s answered a lot of smart things nowadays. And he’s a great guy to listen to. But if I was to recommend any single single resource or single person, it wouldn’t be the podcast, how I built this, I just think it’s such a wealth of knowledge in a very, you hear about integrating just in an interesting manner through these conversations.

Josh Hadley 53:46

Yeah. Awesome. What a great recommendation. Thank you for that. We’ll all right. To wrap things up. Well, where can people find your book, launch and five? And where can people reach out to you and continue to follow you on your journey?

Will Russell 54:01

Sure, well, that book available on Amazon, you can search for it on Amazon or Goodreads. You can also go to the website, www dot launching by book five with the number five launching facebook.com. And you can buy it directly from Neil, you can buy it from Amazon on that on that site as well in terms of contacting me or following me and you can find me on all those social media channels, Twitter, LinkedIn, I always welcome direct emails. So if anyone does have any questions, I’d like to come to me specifically then you’re always welcome to email me well, Atlas of marketing dot code says a great place to reach me directly and then just to check out a little bit more about the companies or what we talked about today. Our website Mind Mind launch marketing agency as bas Martin’s own, obviously the burden just went through launch if I picked up on and then for the foundation as well, which is a great initiative also focusing on early stage entrepreneurs system is so different in London As Russell gives the old so all of those spots would be a great place to learn a little bit more about what I’m about and what we do. And as I said, If anyone has any questions, ignore us continue to.

Josh Hadley 55:10

Awesome. Will, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. I, you know, recommend our listeners go check out your pick, give it a purchase, and help out another follow entrepreneur. So thank you well for coming on the show today.

Will Russell 55:25

Thanks so much. It’s been a real pleasure.

Outro 55:28

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