How to Create and Launch a Product
by Pat Rigsby
A little while ago I helped one of my former college baseball players launch his first InfoProduct.
I thought the overview of how this happened would be helpful to you when you’re considering whether going online is right for you.
Here’s the overview – step-by-step.
The Idea
A while back I was in Cleveland to attend a private Dan Kennedy workshop so I stopped over to see one of my former players, Brian Harrison, who was (and is) a coach at a local University.
He’d just led his team to the World Series and was really at the top of his game.
After talking for a bit we sat down and grabbed dinner…about then the conversation shifted from celebrating his successes to him expressing his frustration with the low ceiling of what he could earn in his current coaching job.
After 3 other jobs – where in each stop he was very successful – he’d finally been able to get a head coaching job at a good school that was just 5 minutes from where he grew up. He and his wife could raise their family in their hometown…but the drawback was that this sort of small college job would never pay the way that some of the premier Division One programs do.
He felt stuck.
We talked about various options and the conversation came up about him packaging up some of what he did so well as a coach and sharing it with others. The topic made for good conversation but I didn’t think it would go anywhere. I was not really in a position to help much as I was about to start a long transition from my then current businesses into my own new business, and, well…I’d had that type of conversation with at least 250 other people with something valuable to share and who were excited about the possibility of creating their own product or online business that never went anywhere.
We talked every month or two and the topic kept coming up, but I didn’t have much time to help…and truthfully, I thought it was mostly just talk.
Creating The Product
Then, close to a couple of months ago…actually on December 10th to be exact, he told me he’d filmed all the videos for a product and was going to try to get it to market. He was going to get some of the students at the University to put it together and he was going to try to write a sales page…and get this all done before he spoke at the biggest baseball convention in the country on January 9th.
We went to work turning this into a salable product…with the help of my team we had it ready to go on January 6th and it went live on January 7th.
Now he didn’t have his own list of subscribers or anything so we recorded the presentation he was going to give at the big Convention and gave it away as an opt in gift and then wrote a very simple 3 email sequence promoting the product to anyone who opted in.
The Launch
Then he went to work getting the word out.
He texted all his coaching buddies and told them it was live…he had an assistant coach drive the 8 hour trip from Cleveland to Nashville and he texted or emailed people one at a time the entire trip.
He reached out to people he knew who had lists and asked them to share it with their audience. He leveraged every contact in his network.
By noon on the 8th he’d sold about $4900 worth of the product.
Then, he spoke to about 6500 coaches at the Convention on the 9th and got in front of an entirely new crowd – where he was able to tell them to go download the presentation at the opt in page.
From there on, day after day it was $1000-$2000 in daily sales.
After 12 days the product was at $24,312 is sales. More than half his annual income from coaching.
Within his first month he generated over $31,500.
So why am I sharing this with you?
A few reasons I guess…
- First, I’m proud. He’s the best hitter and one of the most enjoyable people I ever coached. Seeing how he’s become an extraordinary coach over the past decade or so and now how he’s sharing his expertise with the world is pretty awesome.
- I’m biased, but I think he’s one of the most innovative…and for my money, one of the best hitting coach in the country. I think there are a number of people out there doing good work but I think he’s got some incredible (and proven) expertise.
- He deserves it. If you pour your heart and soul into something to become great at it…then you should be able to reap some financial reward from it. I don’t think that you should have to compromise…be great at your craft or make money…be well paid or actually be able to spend time with your family…I don’t think those things should be mutually exclusive.
And really I just wanted to show you how this actually works.
I don’t think the world needs any more ‘find a hot market’ crap where marketers who don’t have any subject matter expertise jump into a market and sell some ordinary (at best) product that is ghostwritten and it makes them a windfall of cash but leaves the customers worse off than before they bought.
I think it should work pretty much like it worked here.
Someone like Brian…and maybe like you…who has a passion for their craft and a proven expertise does great work with their own clients or their own athletes…
…then they decide to package that expertise up and start sharing it online.
Maybe they just create a single product and sell it to the people who are on their local email list and pick up a couple hundred additional dollars each month. Perhaps it’s enough to pay for a vacation or to start putting a bit of money away for retirement.
Maybe they build it into a 2nd business…what I call the Virtual 2nd Location. We see some of the best in the industry have their facility and then also have a successful online business where they package up and share what they’re doing. In many cases the Virtual 2nd Location becomes far more lucrative than the facility – but they still have the opportunity to actively coach, to keep learning and improving…and too often dial in who they’re working with and their coaching schedule as it takes some of the financial driven pressure off.
Or maybe they’re ready to get out of the in-person coaching business but still want to leverage the work they’ve been doing for years. I’ve run across people who are moving to a new town and don’t want to start from scratch, coaches who’ve been coaching for 20+ years and are ready to step back a bit and try something new…or people who just want a bit more flexibility.
I know plenty of people that have built 7 figure online businesses and a number who’ve even created 8 figure ones…but they’re the exception.
This, on the other hand, is the type of thing that I think is possible for anyone who has real expertise to share and is willing to do the work. Brian worked his butt off putting the product together…basically treating it like a 2nd job when it came to the creation of the product and the marketing during the launch. And it’s an extension of work he’s been doing for years…he’s spent years building a strong network and honing his craft…and both have been leveraged heavily during this process.
But now he’s made some real income…in this case already more than 50% of his annual salary. And he’s still got orders coming in daily. My guess is that he’ll make more doing this each and every year than he ever would running camps or giving lessons on the side to add income.
So if you want to create your own Virtual 2nd Location or simply launch your own product – this is a great blueprint to follow…one that is realistic, is built for a real coach who wants to grow and is reflective of the work involved and the potential upside.
And if you want help…Pat Rigsby has put his system together in one place to guide you through every step of the process.
Learn more and get your copy and Bonus here: Rapid Product Creation Course
