Mistakes to Avoid When Launching Your Product

Key Takeaways

the other thing is papyrus people not generating Revenue quick enough everyone's like oh we gotta have all these things then we can end up going out there and making them like why have you tried selling it have you tried asking people to pay for it Go and collect some money someone's probably willing to how do you think about the balance like I think a lot of Founders struggle with like there's these topics that we can find on platforms like exploding topics twemx taplio socialblade let's say that we know have viral potential that people are searching for and that they really care about on the other side of things from our own customers we're hearing what matters to them what their problems are and that more sort of like high purchase intent High problem intent type keywords and topics how do you kind of balance that uh or how do you think about that balance between you know these more like growth and trending subjects and then more of the subjects that are the real problems that your customers having and kind of how do you think about that as you're building your content strategy so marking you have top of funnel stuff that really just gets eyeballs and you have middle of funnel people are maybe doing research and they're interested in products in your space and then bottom of the funnel people are just like ready to make that transaction like you were talking about your goal should be to create content for all three of those buckets you can do a one-third one-third one-third split and create content that resonates with everyone that way you're continually building a new audience you're nurturing that audience and then you're converting that audience but you need all three because the top of funnel just allows you to get more and more people no that makes a lot of sense yeah you need that kind of top of funnel stuff just to kind of widen the funnel and get the growth going and that organic traction and then yeah kind of push them through uh with more intent based uh keywords and topics and kind of strike that balance I'm curious like there's a lot of Founders I work with creators I work with they've gotten their you know email list their newsletter to you know around that like 50 000 subscriber range but they have ambitious goals of getting to you know 500k a million like folks like James clear the hustle and what morning Brew's done uh you know they're typically using platforms like beehive or convertkit and you know they're they've gotten to a good stage but they're looking to kind of now bring it to the stratosphere I'm curious like how do you think about growing a newsletter from that 50k range to the million like to a million people easiest way is give away free tools when you go where free tools we talked about software earlier you can get people to opt in to continually use your free tools which will just cause your list size to explode that's what we do that's how we are list sizes over a million right yeah no I saw over the weekend you were saying that your list size is growing at something like 286 000 people a month I believe if I saw that right so yeah the free tool side is definitely one big unlock I'm curious are there so that's that's definitely one is there anything else that Founders can be thinking about in terms of growing their lists or any lower weight strategies then obviously building out a tool can take some time opt-ins free ebooks free guides driving paid traffic to a log uh but we haven't found really any of the other strategies to be anywhere near as effective as just giving away free tools probably not the answer that most people want to hear but it's the truth right and so when you think about that like kind of like a free tool to grow an email list like does it need to be some big robust tool from your standpoint or there any sort of like more sort of like is there how do you think about kind of building maybe a lean tool then to grow a subscriber list sure so the easiest way is you go to codecanyon.net there's Tools in almost every space you can white label them you can buy it for probably less than 50 bucks usually 10 20 30 dollars pop those on your site and go from there that's where I would say is a huge opportunity for most people that way you can get something that has a little bit more than the bare minimum of features that what's more than a minimal available product but you don't have to spend that much time building it at all yeah Switching gears here to kind of the mentor side of things like over the course of my career I'd say like 80 of My Success has been learning from people that are way smarter than me understanding their systems their approaches to hiring you know what mistakes they made and then translating those learnings to my current businesses to take them from where they are to where I'm looking to go and avoid a lot of the pitfalls and mistakes that um that they've kind of taught me to avoid I'm curious from where you're at right now getting into this kind of 100 million dollar per year range to you know a billion and being the most dominant digital marketing Advertiser in the world I'm curious what are some mentors that you're surrounding yourself with right now and and how do you look at kind of building out your uh right kind of like you know personal Board of advisors to take you from where you are to where you're looking to go yeah so uh I don't look at mentorship as like how can I surround myself with amazing people that would be great but sometimes it's hard to do because we all live in different places like I think right now you're in what median yeah yeah and it's hard to do that when you're traveling you may not speak the language you may not know a ton of people I'm in Las Vegas uh still building my network here what I love doing is a going to conferences because you can meet people uh in all parts of the world just like how we met at a conference actually two conferences now and the other thing I love doing is just learning from YouTube videos it's amazing on how much you can learn by just watching other people's videos and getting the knowledge without actually knowing them and that's provided a ton of mentorship for me over the years and uh in terms of like you know your own like productivity your own happiness you know uh Curious like are there any kind of core purchases when you look back over the last like year or two that really like helped uh helped you in a big way that you're like damn that was a great purchase that's something that like I'm very uh I'm grateful for can't really think of like a purchase that's really changed my life having a driver has helped a lot I can focus more on this work I hate purchasing homes that's probably one of the bigger mistakes I've made I would not recommend homes I'd rather just use a cash to grow a business uh to each their own though but I would probably say drivers really helped streamline like make it more efficient I can work even when I'm in the car so that's been cool yeah the driver's side of things definitely on the on the goals list I'm sure curious why do you think kind of uh buying a home has been a waste I hear this from a lot of people actually that you know they it was a big dream of theirs Founders had a big exit goes and finally invests in his dream home and later like a year or two after it's like damn like I should have just kept Airbnb travel in the world like I don't know this thing's just become a nuisance like explain that to me like why uh what's your thinking there well let's always have problems leaky rooms Garden the issues maintenance even if it's a new home they still have problems I've had new homes built with leaky roofs uh if you just take that money like everyone's like oh my home's building all this Equity I'm making all this money you got a mortgage well if you just take the mortgage and you give it to rat you take your 20 down you invest it in business I found that if you're good at what you do and I recommend People BET on themselves you typically will come ahead more than if you bought that home it's not like the home is going to appreciate like crazy in value yeah we're both Believers in this kind of concept of done is better than perfect I see a lot of Founders they get caught up in sort of over analyzing things uh getting lost in perfectionism and ends up just kind of make them feel stuck everything gets delayed in versus uh you know a focus on speed and getting things out there they're just kind of falling behind I'm curious you know as you're kind of building companies how do you think about that balance between building something that's quality and and Building Things For Speed how do you kind of foster that on your team so everyone's a little bit different I optimize for Speed I'm all about the quick and dirty and if something's working then work on making a great and amazing and perfect but I'm all about the quick and dirty and just getting stuff out there I I don't need a perfect I'm okay with things not being perfect I just want the results and if it's you know all taped together and tied up with some shoestring and some glue to make it work but it's providing the results cool then I'll go make it perfect and remove the tape and the shoestrings and the glue and make it amazing and people love it but I want to make sure it's producing the results first yeah no that's one of my biggest pet peeves is when I'm talking with someone and they've got an amazing thing and they keep on saying they're going to launch it on Monday but then Monday Tuesday comes along and they're just like oh you know I just needed to make this a little better don't feel quite comfortable yet but I'm looking at the product I'm like damn this thing's amazing already like ship this thing yeah I'm curious like any other kind of pet peeves on your side when it comes to the marking space and building a business that you constantly are seeing and you're like damn like why are we doing that uh the other thing is pet peeve is people not generating Revenue quick enough everyone's like oh we gotta have all these things then we can end up going out there and making them like why have you tried selling it have you tried asking people to pay for it Go and collect some money someone's probably willing to and get feedback and then go adjust from there I think people wait way too long before they try to collect Revenue yeah no I see that all the time too and I see one of the biggest misconceptions there is that too early on Founders think that oh I need to hire a head of sales and I need to build a sales team when it's like no you need to get out there and start selling this thing yourself getting real Market feedback talking to real customers and then implementing their feedback on the product and just getting the deal across the Finish Line I'm curious as you're kind of building out companies how do you see that balance between the founder selling the product and at what point does it make sense then start building out a team once you figure out the process if you don't if you're not willing to sell it how can you go hire someone and tell them hey this is how you do it when they you've never done it yourself you need to go there sell it experience the ups and the downs and the objections and figure out what processes and Frameworks you need to use to make this repeatable and then go hire someone and then GO train them and uh one thing more of a personal side currently uh building out founderwest.com about to launch a new webflow blog there be the de facto spot for Founders to find systems to scale their businesses to five million dollars plus how do you kind of think about the keyword research around a subject like that and building out like a good solid organic traffic infrastructure for a website yeah so I look at the keyword infrastructure as you need your keyword research you can use tools like ubersus to do that or answer the public and you can even put in your competitor URLs and it shows you all their popular Pages all their popular keywords that each page ranks for and what you want to do is look at the keywords that have a high CPC and volume High CPC means someone's willing to spend a lot of money for that keyword from an ad perspective so if a keyword has high volume and a high CBC it usually means it's a money keyword it's a keyword that can drive revenue and then you can look at your competitor sites using ubersest see what pages and content they're creating around those keywords and then you can map out all right if I want to get a lot of traffic what are the pages that I need to create the topics and what keywords I need to include in each of those pages and ubersus will show you all that for free damn you make it uh you make it sound so easy so yeah ubersuggest uh answer the public I'm curious are there any other marketing tools you started using recently that you're like damn this is a Hidden Gem you know I wish I had known about this sooner mid Journey although it may not be considered a marketing tool do you consider marking marketing creative tool I don't know what it's considered I guess just like yeah your intent in using it yeah if you're looking to use it for marketing creative ads and such then yeah it's a marketing tool and then uh I'm curious like on your on your personal side you're a guy that's like traveling a lot you're exploring the world I'm very similar you know I came to a point kind of eight years ago where I knew I really wanted to travel like explore the world and I had always seen life as this trade-off I either build a successful business in one place or I travel and live my dreams and there came a point where I just kind of had to look myself in the mirror and go like well why not both why not travel the world live my life explore new cultures meet new people live the life of my dreams inform my business my work my career around what makes me passionate how do you kind of think about that you're obviously traveling the world you have two kids you've got a home base in Vegas you got another home in Beverly Hills like how do you kind of balance like the the love of travel and exploring new places and meeting new people and and build your business around that well I I travel I'm on the road for call it 35 weeks out of the year so for me I already had to travel for work so I get experience needed things meet new people see new cultures uh and I think it's great like you're heading to Japan if I'm not mistaken in a few weeks right yep so it's like it's cool you're in Colombia right now you're going to be in Japan in a few weeks it's great experiencing new things new food new culture I don't understand why people can't do both it does get harder when you have kids and they're in school you can also homeschool kids and travel the world there's a guy named Jermaine Griggs I don't know if he still does it but he did that for a while that was really cool concept I think kids can get amazing education doing that versus just being stuck in a classroom and as you're traveling like is there something that's kind of stood out as you know I know over the years from traveling as I've kind of experienced new cultures experiencing things one of my big learnings has been like you know people are great all over the place you know and the more you just kind of put good energy out there into the world you know the more it kind of like comes back and people genuinely they want to help you you know it doesn't matter what culture you're in you know you give to people you help people out um you know reciprocity is a universal language I'm curious you know amongst your travels like of any kind of core learnings that really stand out as insights you've gleaned that have kind of maybe changed your philosophy on life the big thing that has changed my philosophy in life that I learned from traveling is there's a lot of basic necessity type of businesses out there that just make a ton of money you know being raised in California I thought oh Tech is where everything is Silicon Valley and I'm not trying to knock Silicon Valley there's a lot of innovation there but we tend to forget there's a lot of big businesses in the basics people need rice I was reading an article a few weeks ago there's a shortage of rice you know how much money there is just selling the rice or how much money there is uh removing dirt one of my buddies has a dirt moving company and it just moves it people do construction what do you do with that dirt or what what do people do with the garbage what do people do with you know HVAC like heating and air conditioning all these homes in some places it's really cool some people the place is really hot we forget how much money there is in basic necessity type of businesses and traveling has really opened my eyes to it because you meet a lot of entrepreneurs who are really well off and most of them their businesses are in basic necessities and it's not like something cool like I created a Facebook and sure these guys aren't as rich as Mark Zuckerberg but they've done really well just doing basic boring old school businesses that we all take for granted yeah no I see that all the time too we're always looking for that like that next shiny toy that cool tool that you know all our friends are going to be impressed with that we invented this thing and then you yeah as you're traveling around you're at different masterminds different conferences you just see these people that are just absolutely killing it off the most unsexy just boring basic ideas but yeah they're Necessities that people use in everyday lives and you know they're what kind of really can generate some serious market value and serve a ton of people so um I'm curious like on your side too I talked to a lot of Founders all the time you know I think I feel like like 80 percent of the battle sometimes is you're building a business it's not the business itself oftentimes the founder it's just your own mindset your own sort of like mental health mental Fitness you know you're someone that's working like 70 80 hours a week which for a lot of people is like a marathon a lot of the founders I speak with you know sometimes they feel stuck they feel overwhelmed depressed anxious you know they're many people are running a business that's running them into the grounds uh I'm curious like as you've been building your business how do you kind of you know when I when I see you whether it's like at the conferences we've been at or online uh you know you're always someone that I think has like a really infectious playful energy uh you light up the room you know you can tell that you're just genuinely having fun um you view work as play um and I feel like you bring almost like an inner child kind of energy to the conversations that you have the relationships around you um and someone that really stands out to me is like you're just here to help people you're just here to have some fun and you seem to have this very light energetic approach to building companies I'm curious your advice to those Founders that maybe are finding that they're in a bit of a lull they're taking things too seriously and how do they kind of lighten it up a little bit love what you're doing if you love what you're doing you typically will have a much more playful attitude and also take breaks every once in a while and whether it's go play at a park with your children or go play a game basketball with your friends if you do things that you genuinely enjoy you're just gonna be in a better mood especially when you work and if you love what you're doing while you work it also helps you be in a better way do I'm curious like I know a lot of Founders that you know they think about either buying something when they hit a certain Milestone or maybe like taking some awesome adventure when they hit some sort of Big Goal uh you know I'm kind of currently getting a bunch of my business on autopilot getting a bunch of systems offloaded bringing on a couple more operations people and then you know piecing off to Japan to go on a big adventure um and uh putting myself in a really uncomfortable time zone so that the business just has to kind of run on autopilot in the new ways I'm kind of automating I'm curious like how do you kind of think about uh you know rewarding yourself for you know things well done yeah and I haven't done the Japan thing in different time zone thing technically I have but I have CEOs and stuff who run the business side I don't really have that issue but from a reward perspective I used to try to buy things like I have Paddock the leaps like the watches don't really wear any of them uh bought cars bought a my buck a long time ago uh sold it during covet but the new Maybach I think last February and a new model came out um but I don't really buy much and the new buyer box it wasn't like a reward at that point I was just used to and I was like oh new ones out I don't have one want to drive her again everyone's going out and about and got another car and got a driver again but the rewarding like the watches and stuff like that doesn't really make me happy anymore giving and helping other people out that's helped out a lot that's uh put me in a really good mood seeing you know other people have a smile on their face because you helped them that's been one of the biggest rewards uh making money as an entrepreneur for me my wife you know focuses 100 of her time to help others I think that's great I'm not as you know as amazing of a person as my wife so I focus on making money she spends the time giving it away and we make a great combo but that really makes me happy to see other people come up in life because our checks up and we don't really make that much of an impact compared to like Elon Musk or Bill Gates or any of those guys who can really donate money but we try to do whatever's in our means is there like a moment in your life that you feel like your mindset sort of shifted around that where you're like you know I feel like this next watch or this car is going to bring me a level of happiness and then you maybe had bought that thing and you're like no you know what like my mindsets have shifted on this this actually maybe didn't bring me any more happiness it just brought me more problems yes uh not really problems but it shifted for me the moment I started buying more watches and it would be I'd be happy for a few days okay what's next now like if I buy a car it's like whatever I got a car I don't even care I got a legit car back from my dad we used to have a Honda Odyssey my dad took it for a few months gave it back to us because we needed her for our kids and like I love driving that thing that's awesome and amazing so when I'm not getting driven around uh and when I get driven around by the way like we have a Lincoln Navigator that a driver also drives like as a family car even if he's driving me in the Lincoln Navigator and it's just him and me I sit in the front seat so we can converse and stuff like that and like how's your kids and wife and you'll tell me stories um but yeah it's just I don't know and all this materialistic stuff doesn't make me happy even our house in Beverly Hills my wife and I are debating just getting rid of it had it for a year and a half and we haven't spent any time in it it's like might as well get rid of it and donate the money or use it for something else I don't want to buy another home or other just donate the money love it well um you know it's been a lot of fun and I appreciate all the insights over the weekend and here uh today on the show appreciate all you're doing to give back to the community and uh you know sharing all the knowledge you've done to build uh you know an incredible business incredible brand and so I want to thank you for taking the time today and excited to uh to do following your journey and seeing uh you build up the most valuable digital marketing agency in the world I'm gonna try thanks for having me