Lessons Learned From Our Biggest Affiliate Launch

It all started back in September 2019.

We were chatting with our good friends Jill and Josh Stanton from Screw the Nine to Five, brainstorming business ideas and sharing some of our biggest lessons learned from the year.

We got on the topic of affiliate launches – something we had considered teaming up on in the past – and a BIG IDEA came busting through the doors.

We should partner as affiliates for the Knowledge Broker Blueprint launch!

Partnering as affiliates on the Knowledge Broker Blueprint launch

John and I were heavily involved in the initial 2019 Knowledge Broker Blueprint launch, so we not only knew the program really well, but we had also built great relationships with the KBB team and the other top affiliates.

The initial launch was incredibly successful; in fact, it was the biggest course launch in online history.

We did very well with that affiliate launch

• We finished at number 6 on the sales leaderboard, which got us an invite to an unforgettable mastermind in Fiji with Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and the other top 10 affiliates.
• We have dozens of students who have used KBB to help launch their own masterminds, workshops, and trainings, creating a ripple effect that continues to grow every day.
• We saw our highest gross and net revenue for any affiliate launch we’d ever participated in by more than double.

With this success in mind, we thought “imagine what would be possible if we partnered as affiliates for 2020!”

The thought was that we’d not only get to partner with a super smart business couple whom we love – we’d also get to make an even bigger impact with an even bigger audience AND go bigger with our pooled resources than we’d ever gone before on our own.

The roadblocks were plenty

It was easy to come up with all the reasons why partnering for this affiliate launch would be great.

But we certainly weren’t going into this partnership blind.

We created a contract up front, and inked several commitments to make sure everyone was covered and on the same page. This is something we recommend you always do – no matter how close the friendship or how unnecessary a contract might seem.

With our combined business experience and having engaged in other partnerships in the past, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. There were so many times throughout our initial brainstorming sessions when we were getting slammed with roadblocks.

Questions like:

• Do we duplicate work and each promote from our own individual platforms?
• Who collects the leads and sends out the communications?
• What Facebook account do we use for ads?
• How do we make this least confusing for our audiences?

These are just a few of the dozens and dozens of questions and roadblocks that would continue to come up throughout this affiliate launch.

And honestly, we didn’t have answers – partnering for an affiliate launch was brand new for all of us.

But every time a new question or roadblock presented itself, we saw it as encouragement that we were doing something high-barrier. Meaning, not a lot of other people would be willing to do this, and therefore, we saw potential to net big results.

Now, to able to properly give you the full story I’m going to have to go a lot deeper into what actually went into this launch.

The hours, days, nights – the months – of preparation, research, learning, and practicing that we put into it…

I’m going to break the launch up into 4 parts

1. The planning phase (Oct 2019 thru Jan 20, 2020)
2. The pre-launch phase (Jan 21, 2020 thru Feb 26, 2020)
3. The launch phase (Feb 27, 2020 – Mar 13, 2020)
4. The post-launch phase (Mar 14, 2020 – May 11, 2020)

If you don’t care to read the whole story, you can also skip straight to our list of lessons learned.

The planning phase

Once we had collectively decided we wanted to move forward with partnering on the launch, things moved pretty quickly.

By October 2019 we were meeting somewhat regularly, and by November we had:

• Fully committed to going all-in on the affiliate launch as partners – with a signed contract,
• Brainstormed what our initial launch plan would include,
• Divided up roles and responsibilities among the four of us,
• Identified contractors we wanted to hire to help with certain aspects, and
• Started working!

The Initial Launch Plan

The initial launch plan was BIG.

We started with some pretty broad ideas, and trusted that with time we’d be able to narrow down what each of our strategies actually entailed.

We were also keeping in mind that the plan had to be fluid enough that we could make decisions and pivots on the fly without blowing the whole thing up.

At this point, we knew we still had a lot of time to figure out the fine details.

To start, our launch plan ideas included:

• Paid advertising & social media
• Messenger bots
• Email campaigns
• Content marketing (blog posts and podcasts)
• Launching a video series
• Hosting a 5-day challenge
• A bonus experience

Roles and Responsibilities

Dividing up roles and responsibilities wasn’t super black and white, but it was important to start developing these early on to help with the planning.

And the same way we went broad with our launch plan ideas, we started broad with roles and responsibilities, too.

Looking at the bigger categories within our launch plan, we were pretty easily able to match up an individual with a project based on our area of expertise.

There were also a few projects we knew would required all hands on deck (team).

• Paid advertising & social media – Josh
• Messenger bots – Gap – missing team
• Email campaigns – Gap – missing team
• Content marketing (blog posts and podcasts) – Team
• Launching a video series – Jill
• Hosting a 5-day challenge – Team
• Marketing a bonus experience – John
• Ops and project management – Kate

This also helped us easily identify contractors we needed to hire.

Who can we hire to help?

In talking through our launch plan ideas and looking at roles and responsibilities, we were able to identify gaps: tasks that none of us were expert at, or that we felt would take too much of our time and bandwidth to lead.

The 3 areas we identified as gaps pretty quickly were:

1. Messenger Bots
2. Copywriting
3. Event planning

We held off on the event planning since that wouldn’t come into play for months after the launch ended (we knew we wanted to host a live event as a part of our bonus experience for those who joined through our affiliate link). More on this later…

So we focused on the first 2, and we hired:

1. Paul Ace, The Messenger Bot Guy
2. Kate Dramis, The Launch Copywriter

We started out with 6 team members (the 4 of us plus Paul and Kate). In addition, we had collectively brought our virtual team members in on certain tasks to help with administrative roles.

As the days and weeks continued to pass we were holding weekly team meetings to dive deeper into the details and get an actual plan in place with deadlines and deliverables we could actually hit.

Bringing it all together

With Asana as our project and task management software, we started mapping it all out.

Our broader launch ideas became each of the individual projects, and within each project were the specific deliverables.

Since Josh and I are more of the planners, we sat down for 2 hours and knocked it all out, reviewing line item by line item everything required to accomplish each of the launch ideas we wanted to implement.

By the time we were finished, we had in Asana:

• 11 Projects
• 318 Tasks, which broke down into:
  • FB & Insta ads: 50 tasks
  • Landing pages: 29 tasks
  • Ccom (bots, texts, and sponsored messages): 77 tasks
  • Videos: 31 tasks
  • 5-day challenge: 19 tasks
  • Podcast episodes: 14 tasks
  • Email marketing: 21 tasks
  • Fulfillment: 11 tasks
  • Promo dates: 18 tasks
  • Admin & ops: 14 tasks
  • Important info & links: 34 tasks
• …and many, many more sub-tasks under every one of these!

Only thing left to do was to just start!

Starting the work

As you can imagine, looking at our projects, tasks, and the initial launch plan was a bit overwhelming in the beginning.

But we continued forward with just one small step at a time, knowing we could cut anything at any time if we felt it was too much.

We curbed our overwhelm and got straight to work, approaching our projects by priority using Asana as our guide.

At this stage it was incredibly helpful to put due dates on everything and assign each individual task to the person responsible.

Even though some of the due dates were just estimates – and even though some of the tasks were being assigned without knowing who would ultimately be responsible for that thing – this allowed us to go into Asana, sort our tasks by due date, and FOCUS on the most important thing right now.

Here’s a very small slice of what our Ccom project board looked like:

Full focus from January 2nd – 20th

All of the planning I’ve shared up to this point brought us to early January.

At this stage, we were fully focused on the following projects:

• Filming our video series (to drive traffic to our 5-day challenge)
• Creating the opt in page and messaging for the 5-day challenge
• Going live with our Messenger Bot series for the 5-day challenge
• Mapping out what the 5-day challenge would include
• John & Jill going to a mastermind at Dean Graziosi’s place in Arizona

Essentially, the 5-day challenge was our first push to warm up leads for the KBB livestream that would happen on February 27.

Even though the challenge wouldn’t kick off until February 19, we wanted to get our video series in front of as many qualified leads as possible via Facebook ads, which we agreed to start running on January 20.

But I’ll pick this piece up – and what happened once we started running those ads – in the next phase…

Filming the video series

To say Jill Stanton is impressive when it comes to scripting would be a drastic understatement.

This girl spent MANY hours putting together 3 scripts, each building off the previous one, and telling a story of how critical it is have the right mindset as an entrepreneur.

The 3 videos were:

1. The 5 Figure Mistake
2. One Chapter Ahead
3. 3 Beliefs We Had to Release to Claim Our Expert Status

The scripting of the videos alone made up days of work, not to mention the days we spent filming them.

The props, the b-roll, the staging, the different locations, the time of day…

In the end, we didn’t even film the final video because we simply didn’t have time. Each of these 5-minute videos took us an 8-hour day to film.

And then there’s the hours of editing…

Were they great videos?

Absolutely. But looking back, we probably could have been spending our time more wisely by creating videos that didn’t require so much production and post-production work.

Here’s a look at video 1: The 5-Figure Mistake

Opt in page, messaging, and Messenger Bot

Building out the opt in page was an easy task, and because we had Paul on board the Messenger Bot was taken care of.

The messaging on the other hand fell pretty flat in the beginning.

Originally, our 5-day challenge was called Think Like an Expert: Feel confident, attract the best customers, and make serious bank!

But as we started marketing the challenge, and diving deeper into what exactly the challenge would include training-wise, we realized we weren’t hitting the pain point on the head.

We kept Think Like an Expert as the main name for the challenge, but pivoted on our promise.

Instead of “Feel confident, attract the best customers, and make serious bank!” we changed it to “Find Your Expertise & Craft Your Perfect Offer!”

Knowing your ideal customer’s biggest pain point

The power of knowing the BIGGEST pain point your ideal customer is experiencing is paramount.

Without making this pivot, the challenge itself might have fallen flat altogether.

You have to be able to clearly state the outcome or result you’re going to give someone if they take the offer you’re presenting.

More on how the challenge turned out in the next phase…

What the challenge would include

Nailing down exactly what each day of the challenge would look like was a big task.

Luckily, Jill is pro at this. Plus, her and Josh had run a similar challenge a few months back, which definitely helped when it came to mapping this one out.

While the challenge would last 5 days, we also had a pre-party, an after party, and several days of continued support to get us through cart open and cart close for KBB.

Here’s how the 5 days were laid out

• Pre-party: “Get to know you” session
• Day 1: A Dangerously Effective Method For Finding Your Expertise
• Day 2: Defining What Makes Your Area of Expertise Unique
• Day 3: Identify Who You Serve and How to Find Them
• Day 4: Crafting Your Irresistible Offer
• Day 5: The Blueprint For Selling What You Already Know (Without Creating a Course)
• After party: The Money Mindset Masterclass

What was incredibly helpful in setting up the flow of the challenge was having set times for when videos would drop.

We decided we’d do the Challenge Action video in the morning (this is where we’d drop a CTA and have people take a small action to kick off that day’s training), followed by our LIVE training video in the afternoon, and finally, the mindset video in the evening.

Every day of the Challenge the times were exactly the same

• Challenge Action video – 7am eastern
• LIVE training video – 2pm eastern
• Mindset video – 7pm eastern

This allowed us to create consistency within the group and give participants a schedule to follow. This helped with higher show-up rates and engagement throughout the challenge.

Time with Dean

In the midst of all of this planning, filming, and strategizing we were also considering how to best leverage a huge opportunity Jill and John had: to go to Arizona for a mastermind with Dean Graziosi and other top affiliates for the KBB launch.

We started by mapping out everything we’d LOVE to be able to accomplish while Jill and John were with Dean. We called this our “BIG Asks” list.

This included videos, photos, and messaging tips for our ads, overall marketing, and the challenge.

While we didn’t get a yes for ALL of our BIG Asks, we were able to get some great material, including videos with Dean he agreed we could use inside of our challenge PLUS his buy-in to do a Facebook Live inside our challenge.

Us being able to bring this touchpoint with Dean into the challenge group was a huge win: it introduced our warmest leads to the person who would ultimately be selling them the KBB course.

The pre-launch phase

The pre-launch phase was the most intense part of this entire launch, spanning from January 20 until February 26, so just over one month.

While the goal of the pre-launch phase was to fill our 5-day challenge and drive as much qualified traffic as possible to the livecast opt in with Tony and Dean, we still had a lot of assets to create to help build interest and momentum.

Some questions we asked ourselves early on included:

• How can we liquidate our initial ad costs with the challenge?
• What type of content should we be creating for our ads after the challenge starts?
• What outstanding items need to become our priority right now, and in what order?
• How will we start seeding this early on to lead people into the livecast who aren’t a part of our challenge?

As you know from our first phase, the planning phase, we had already started recording videos, setting up our Messenger Bots, and prepping for our 5-day challenge.

Next step was getting the message out there with our first round of Facebook ads.

We knew the video series would be a great branding play, give us a lot of visibility, and also make it more likely that people would see our faces and hear the messaging around the challenge multiple times leading up to the February 19 pre-party.

A big lesson learned for us here: don’t start too early

In theory, it was a good idea to run an awareness campaigns with our video series for at least a couple of weeks.

In reality, 3 plus weeks was too long of a runway.

In our awareness videos we had a call to action to get viewers to opt in to our challenge Messenger Bot, which would nurture them along to eventually buying into the challenge.

This was a huge win because it gave us direct, ongoing access to those leads.

However, what it didn’t give us was any real urgency.

Plus, we decided we’d run all traffic through the Screw the Nine to Five Messenger Bot, which proved early on to cause a lot of confusion for our audience.

Throughout this awareness campaign we continued to receive notes from our audience like this:

“I think you guys have the wrong link – it’s taking me to a Messenger Bot for Screw the Nine to Five.”

Even though we were literally saying “click the link below to sign up for our Messenger Bot with Screw the Nine to Five”, this was a great lesson and proof that people aren’t always paying attention.

Face palm.

Furthermore, we spent a lot of money running these ads with the goal of liquidating our ad spend.

Over $40k to be exact.

But because of how long we were running the ads for, we weren’t able to make that happen.

Why a paid Challenge?

During our entire planning phase the challenge was meant to be free.

As we started mapping out our budget, we thought “What if we can liquidate some of our ad costs in the beginning, giving us more budget for ads as we get closer to the livecast?”

We had seen paid challenges work for others in our space, and so we made the pivot and decided super last-minute to charge $37 for the challenge.

We were very confident we could over-deliver, and we were excited to try something new.

A slow start for the Challenge

While filling the challenge was off to a slow start in late January, we were able to pick up some great momentum as the start date drew closer and we updated our messaging.

Within about a week of the challenge kicking off (again, the pre-party date for the challenge was Feb 19), we saw hundreds more join, and by the time we were ready to kick off, we were up to 960 paid challenge participants.

Despite hoping we would break 1,000 participants in the challenge and be able to fully liquidate our ad costs – neither of which happened – we were in for a very powerful lesson.

At the end of the day, our challenge participants converted at more than 400% over any of our other traffic lead sources for this launch.

But before we dive into how the challenge turned out, let’s look at some of the other tasks and strategies we were working on simultaneously during this timeframe…

Messenger Bots

Messenger Bots proved to be a big win for us, especially when it came to the challenge.

Our initial Facebook ads all drove to a Messenger Bot, so instead of sending people straight to an order page, we were sending them to a Messenger Bot to collect their email address and have the ability to send them additional messages.

Unlike a Facebook ad where someone clicks it, and then you have no control over what happens from that point on, the Messenger Bot gave us the opportunity to stay in touch with them, regardless of whether they bought into the challenge right away or not.

Here’s one of our Facebook ad videos we ran for the challenge

Paul Ace, our team member who led this strategy for us, shared some pretty awesome stats with us during our team debrief.

These stats showed the Messenger Bot for the challenge specifically (we had several Messenger Bots for this launch) had a 15% conversion rate of leads into challenge participants.

High-level breakdown of the challenge Messenger Bot campaign

Conversion campaigns (Facebook ads)

At this stage we had moved on from Facebook ad awareness campaigns and were focused on conversion campaigns.

With this switch we stopped driving traffic to our Messenger Bot campaign and started driving traffic directly to our challenge sales page.

There were a couple of things driving this decision:

1. Feb 19 was fast-approaching, and we wanted people to be able to join immediately without the Messenger Bot barrier
2. There was enough confusion from our audience around why they were opting into a Messenger Bot from Screw the Nine to Five that we figured we might be better off just bypassing it

These Facebook ad conversion campaigns included several short form video ads as well as images and text.

Email campaigns

We had plenty of emails lined up – and several already sent out – for the challenge itself at this point.

While we were relying on Facebook ads to drive a lot of traffic and awareness to the challenge, we were also leveraging our own email lists and platforms to share the opportunity.

But come late January we were getting pretty anxious about receiving the swipe files from the KBB team so we could get started on building out our full email strategy for the actual launch.

Kate Dramis was the team member on this tasks, and she was nothing short of impressive.

We didn’t end up receiving any assets until after February 1, but in the meantime we did get together to strategize what emails would go out and when.

Here’s what our email strategy looked like

• Livecast – 3 emails
  • General invite
  • Pain points / dive deeper
  • Last chance to sign up
• Cart open – 2 emails
  • Announce 24-hr fast-action bonus (100 Oh Sh*t Calls)
  • Last chance for 24-hr fast-action bonus
• Mid cart – 3 emails
  • Announce diminishing bonus (no more calls w/ John)
  • FAQ + objection buster
  • Last chance for diminishing bonus
• Cart close – 4 emails
  • New bonus drop (100 more Oh Sh*t Calls)
  • Bonus recap + book your call
  • Inspirational
  • Last chance

To put things into perspective – and looking back, it really is hard to put into words the amount of time and thought that went into all of this – this email strategy was just one of the hundreds of tasks we were managing as a team during this timeframe.

And as you can imagine, by the time we got the assets from the KBB team on February 2, Kate had a lot of work to do!

Recording podcast episodes

A big part of our strategy for leveraging our own platforms to get the word out about the livecast with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi was putting together a series of super valuable podcast episodes.

Like our email strategy, we had already published plenty of episodes on the podcast promoting the challenge. And while the largest chunk of our ad spend was geared towards getting traffic to the livecast opt in, we also knew we could drive a decent amount of traffic there ourselves.

On Entrepreneurs On Fire alone we published more than 12 podcast episodes dedicated to the challenge and livecast, and Jill and Josh published a handful of episodes on their podcast as well.

A big win for us was knowing that we’d be one of the 3 people to interview Tony Robbins on Entrepreneurs On Fire, and that coupled with both of us (EOF and Screw) being able to interview Dean.

The power of podcasting continues to be our central content marketing and audience growth tool for our business.

Physical postcards

Can you believe it?

Yes, we even sent out physical postcards to invite people to join us in the challenge!

As I said at the beginning of this recap, we committed to going all in and trying everything.

A huge downside: we were falling short with a lot of our strategies due to not being able to give any one of them our complete focus.

Being pulled in so many different directions and keeping an eye on so many moving pieces proved to be detrimental to the overall success of our efforts.

Never forget the 80/20 rule

A massive lesson learned for us throughout this launch: less is more.

Speaking of which, let’s get back to the Challenge and how that all played out…

5-Day Think Like an Expert Challenge

As you already know, we jumped into our 5-day challenge head first with 960 paid participants.

While Jill and Josh had already run challenges in the past for their audience, this was our first go at it.

Recap: We loved the concept, and were blown away by the results.

The challenge gave us so many incredible opportunities

• Pre-qualify people as buyers
• Segment them as interested in the topic (leading up to KBB)
• Build fast know, like, and trust
• Seed the livecast, our bonus experience, and KBB
• Help individuals break through some life-changing limiting beliefs
• Provide support and encouragement that propelled people forward fast

And when I say life-changing, those aren’t my words… they’re words straight from our Challenge participants.

Let me make this very clear: this challenge changed the lives of our participants – and it also changed ours. I don’t know of anything more powerful than this type of focused, concentrated value and engagement.

And it’s no surprise that the challenge was by far the best and most effective strategy we used throughout this entire launch.

Another lesson we proved through the paid challenge:

When people pay, they pay attention.

Fun stats from our 5-day challenge

We had over 13,500 comments on our live videos alone within our private Facebook pop up group. The engagement, participation, and openness to learning was frankly mind-blowing.

These 960 people truly showed up to learn, and they weren’t afraid to get really uncomfortable in the process.

While engagement did drop off slightly as the challenge went on, we still saw very consistent participation with our morning Challenge Action videos.

• Pre-party video had 848 comments
• Day 1 video had 644 comments
• Day 2 video had 312 comments
• Day 3 video had 1.2k comments (what?!… stay tuned for what the challenge action was!)
• Day 4 video had 299 comments
• Day 5 video had 384 comments

And also with our afternoon Mindset videos…

• How To Predict Your Future: 253 comments
• Your Thoughts are Lying to Your: 246 comments
• Where’s Your Focus?: 150 comments
• Success Tax: 182 comments
• Editing Your Circle: 140 comments
• Cutting a Check to go Faster: 133 comments

Our biggest takeaway in terms of pain points and struggles these individuals were facing coming into this challenge?

In one word: confidence

It’s the #1 struggle and limiting belief that this group told us they struggle with.

In fact, 62% who answered this question said that the biggest amateur belief they have is that their either don’t have enough knowledge and experience or they lack the confidence to be able to create and sell their own offer.

Oh, and that day 3 video that more than 4x the number of comments as the others?

It was all about promoting yourself, which I don’t need to tell you requires that you have the confidence to sell your knowledge and expertise.

How do you help people in less than 7 words?

In that day 3 video we taught participants how to come up with their Expert Escalator Statement.

Your Expert Escalator Statement is meant to create curiosity so that you can naturally share what it is you have to offer with people. You know… the opposite of being a business card pusher.

How do you come up with this statement?

By filling in this template: “I help _____ (your ideal customer avatar) do/have/create _____ (the result you give them)”

Promoting the livecast and our bonus experience

You can tell by now how central the challenge was to our overall marketing strategy. But we can’t forget the work that went into promoting the livecast and our bonus experience outside of the challenge, too.

More Facebook ads were definitely in our future, including video ads, image ads, and of course, more Messenger Bots.

Here’s a look at one of the livecast ads we ran

Communication breakdown

One pretty massive roadblock we hit leading into our 5-day challenge was unclear communication from the KBB team.

At one point we were told not to mention Knowledge Broker Blueprint until after the Feb 27 livecast.

Ummmm… that changes A LOT of our messaging.

This presented a huge challenge in two respects:

1. It’s kind of hard to not talk about the course when you’re trying to seed it in your marketing
2. It’s even harder to not talk about your bonus experience if you can’t talk about the course that will be offered

We found ourselves pretty confused at this point, especially knowing how impactful our bonus experience would be when it came to people choosing to invest through our affiliate link.

All of this confusion aside, let’s take a look at what our bonus experience included.

Our KBB Bonus Experience

Having put together an incredible bonus experience in 2019, we knew we had our work cut out for us.

If you haven’t heard yet, “bonus shopping” is actually a thing. This means buyers know that affiliates put together these bonus experiences to encourage you to use their affiliate link, so they will “shop around” until they find a bonus they want.

In 2019 our biggest asset in our bonus experience was a 3-day mastermind here in Puerto Rico for the first 40 people to join through our affiliate link…

…so we knew an in-person event of some sort would make our 2020 bonus experience a win.

Plus, we’d been chatting with Jill and Josh about hosting a joint event together anyway, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

A major pivot

It was just about at the 11th hour that we got a call from our good friend Nick Unsworth about the bonus event he was putting together for KBB.

Nick was partnering up with Bryan Dulaney for the 2nd year in a row to promote KBB, and he proposed an idea none of us had thought of, but that peeked our interests immediately.

What if instead of hosting our own mastermind event we invited our bonus peeps to Nick and Bryan’s event?

A very last-minute decision

We didn’t have a ton of time to decide whether to host our own event or team up with Nick & Bryan, but after a few very in-depth brainstorming sessions we decided to go for it.

Instead of hosting our own bonus mastermind event, we would attend and speak at Nick & Bryan’s event – and invite our peeps as a part of our bonus experience.

So here’s a full rundown of our bonus experience

• 24 hr fast-action: Draw to win 1 of 100 “Oh Sh*t Calls” w/ Jill or Josh (diminishing bonus)
• 8- min Strategy Call w/ JLD (diminishing bonus)
• Free Ticket to 3-day Mastermind event May 28 – 30 in San Diego
• 4 Week Mastermind Group with weekly live calls
• 4 Times per week live office hour sessions inside the mastermind group
• Interview JLD or Jill for your podcast
• KBB Cliff Notes from Kate
• Virtual Interactive Workshop: How to Sell out your first workshop, live event, or mastermind
• Cart close: Draw to win 1 of 100 “Oh Sh*t Calls” w/ Jill or Josh

In the beginning we had planned to add on additional bonuses throughout the cart open period to try and move buyers who might have been on the fence.

This is another last minute pivot we made: to take away bonuses instead of adding them.

John and I have done diminishing bonuses in previously launches of our own with great success, and we figured this would be a great way to add real urgency throughout the cart open period.

This being such a long cart open period, it was critical to find ways to keep our leads engaged and interested in the offer, and our bonus experience and diminishing bonuses definitely helped.

The launch phase

Here’s where we dive into a lot of numbers.

The anticipation leading up to February 27 – the day of the livecast – was intense.

Heading into that day we had been going strong with our challenge for 9 days straight (we had a running joke that our 5-day challenge really lasted like 247 days).

We had been running Facebook ads for over 5 weeks and had spent well over $100k at this point.

We had over 17,000 opt in’s for the livecast.

We had published over 15 podcast episodes on our two podcasts combined.

We had done post and video reviews of the Knowledge Broker Blueprint program.

We had sent out emails, Messenger broadcasts, text messages, postcards, we’d hosted over 9 Facebook Live videos into our challenge group – John sent out 17,000 Bonjoros to our opt in leads to get them fired up about attending the livecast…

And in less than 24 hours we were going to know whether or not all of the time, energy, bandwidth, and hard work would translate into sales.

The livecast with Tony and Dean

Heading into the livecast the opt in leaderboard was closing, and the sales leaderboard was opening.

We finished 5th place for leads (again, we sent over 17,000 leads to the livecast), which was definitely a win as it gave us a $2k cash prize.

What it didn’t guarantee was the quality of our leads…

Here’s a fun video we put together last-minute to get people to the livecast.

Tony and Dean were live for just about 2 hours that night.

The first 10 minutes were strong.

• They defined what a Knowledge Broker is: Someone who shares their knowledge or someone else’s with someone who needs it to create next level success and impact.
• They talked about the power of turning your mess into your message: Give others the shortcut so they don’t have to go through that same mess.
• They hammered home that when you combine mindset with tools and tactics, plus take massive action, then you move the needle.

All critical points and great seeding for the Knowledge Broker Blueprint course.

They continued on to share case studies of current KBB students who had seen great success since joining in 2019 and they dove into a few of the over 1,400 niches represented by their students.

The pitch

Tony told a lot of stories, Dean tried to keep the livecast focused, and after about an hour they finally pitched.

It started out by helping people self-identify as someone who needs this training.

I know I want to make an impact, grow my success… and I understand masterminds are the new way, I understand I can be the expert… and that I can turn my mess into my message.

Followed by the question:

What now? How do you get people to raise their hand to work with you?

After the pitch they brought on guests Jenna Kutcher followed by Russell Brunson.

By the time the livecast ended, we had just over 100 sales.

Controlling the sales pipeline

Not exactly the number we were hoping for, but we knew we still had a significant replay period ahead. Cart wouldn’t close until March 9 (that’s 12 days of cart open).

We decided on another last-minute video we could run ads with to try and get people to the replay.

This cart open was LONG, and it was tough to keep people engaged at this point – especially since we didn’t control the sales pipeline.

Another massive lesson learned: to the greatest extent possible, you should control the sales pipeline.

It’s tough to do with affiliate launches because at the end of the day, the entire definition of being an affiliate is that you’re sending traffic to someone else.

So when I say control the sales pipeline, I’m referring to the 17,000 people we sent to KBB and had absolutely 0 ability to engage and stay in contact with. We were leaving our fate in their hands.

With the challenge on the other hand – we did control that. We had direct access to those leads, and we were fully in charge of their experience as they approached going through the KBB sales funnel.

One-on-one calls

An offer that definitely helped us out throughout the cart open period was one-on-one calls with Jill or John.

We offered these up to anyone who had questions about whether KBB was right for them, and Jill and John’s close rate on these calls was very close to 100%.

The calls that didn’t close were ones they knew KBB wasn’t right for. A good reminder that not every program is right for every individual.

Sales breakdown

Alright, let’s get to the nitty gritty. Not much happened over the next 9 days of cart open.

We slowly saw sales trickle in, and we ended the launch with 254 sales. Our goal was 1,000.

As mentioned several times throughout this recap, the Challenge was our biggest win by far, and the numbers prove it.

Challenge numbers

• 986 Members, 116 Sales = 12% sales conversion
• $48,034 spent on ads, $31,020 challenge earnings, $104,168 sales generated
• $135,188 Gross revenue, $87,154 Net revenue = 64% overall net to gross revenue

Fire Nation numbers

This includes traffic from the EOFire website, emails sent, and our podcast traffic for both an opt in percentage plus a sales conversion percentage.

• Unique Hits: 1,631, Unique Opt ins: 720 (44%)
• 22 Sales = 3% sales conversion

Looking at only these numbers, things seem pretty great.

But these aren’t the only numbers defining this launch…

Other Facebook ad numbers

• 13,828 Opt ins, 55 Sales = less than 0.5% sales conversion
• $147,414 spent on ads, $49,425 sales generated = -$97,989

We got way too caught up in Facebook ads, and it ended up costing us in every sense.

Sales leaderboard

While we did get all the way up to 3rd place at one point, we weren’t able to hold onto it.

We finished 5th on the sales leaderboard, which again secured our spot for the mastermind with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi in Fiji. Definitely a huge win!

While the sales leaderboard did close out on March 9, KBB did something they didn’t do last year: they went into a cart re-open period.

For just 2 days they reopened the cart, which allowed us to hit 250 sales, and that gave us a much-needed prize bonus of $20k.

The post-launch phase

Despite not coming anywhere close to our sales and revenue goals for this launch, we consider our biggest affiliate launch overall a huge win.

You might be wondering how that’s even possible since we came really close to actually losing money on this launch with absolutely no backend or up sells to save us.

It was a huge win because we learned more lessons in a couple of months than I ever thought was possible.

What it means to go all-in

From October 2019 through early March 2020, we worked our butts off.

I’m talking all hands on deck for…

• Over 40 hours of filming,
• 20 team meetings,
• More than 30 FB Lives,
• 20 days serving our “5-day Challenge” group,
• 21 days of pre-launch promo ads,
• 9 days of driving leads,
• 12 days of cart open (plus 2 days of a cart reopen)…

And as I’m wrapping up this recap, we’re diving into 4 weeks of fulfillment for our bonus experience.

Going all-in is no joke.

You get tired.

Frustrated.

Inspired.

Hopeful.

You work harder than you ever thought possible.

You go to levels you didn’t know existed.

You ride the biggest roller coster you’ve ever been on.

Our launch debrief

On March 27 – exactly one month after the livecast – our team of 6 of got together on Zoom for our launch debrief.

As I prepared for our launch debrief – gathering numbers and stats and reflecting on how huge this project really was – I was feeling two polar opposite emotions.

1. Massive amounts of gratitude for the lessons learned; the impact shared – plus the connections made – with our Challenge group; and crazy excitement for those who joined KBB through our bonus experience.
2. Some frustration that it didn’t turn out the way we had hoped – that all the hard work and dedication we put into this launch didn’t result in us reaching our goal.

Our launch debrief

During our team debrief the 6 of us got together to share 4 things:

1. Biggest lesson learned from the entire experience
2. Biggest lesson learned in your area of expertise
3. One thing we could have done better
4. One thing we did really well

This is the first – or the last – time you’ll hear me talk about the power and importance of reflection. Actually taking time to reflect on the projects, tasks, and how you’re spending your time in your business.

It would have been a hundred times easier for all of us to just brush this entire affiliate launch under the rug at cart close.

Tally up some final numbers, figure out how to pay every back their expenses, and call it a day.

Instead, we’ve collectively spent hours looking back on the results, the numbers, the conversions, and sharing our lessons learned so that we can all grow from this experience.

Lessons learned from our team

I want to share the exact lessons learned that were shared on our debrief call with you. I hope this encourages you to start implementing some type of debrief system in your business after projects wrap and launches close, regardless of their outcome.

Kate Dramis – Launch Copywriter

katedramis.com

OMG the entire copywriting process and planning was seamless! This was the most organized launch I’ve ever worked on!

Biggest lesson learned from the entire experience and within my area of expertise

We should have separated out copy by brand. While it may have taken more time upfront, it would have saved the team time in terms of edits, and we could’ve gone deeper into individual tones for each business.

One thing we could have done better

Gotten clearer on the messaging for KBB.

In hindsight, I should’ve said something sooner about how unclear it was. The plus side of this was that we were able to rely on our own messaging with the bonuses, but it was a difficult offer in terms of being able to speak to a clear transformation.

One thing we did really well

I heard some rumblings about people getting the exact same emails from affiliates, so some affiliates were literally just using the swipe copy as-is without any personalization. As you can imagine, this created an icky experience for some.

I think we NAILED customizing our messaging and copy and offering our tribe a totally unique experience!

Paul Ace – The Messenger Bot Guy

AmplifyCcom.com

Paul opted to put together a few slides to share his biggest takeaways :)

Jill Stanton – Our Scripting & Video Guru

ScrewTheNinetoFive.com

Biggest lesson learned from the entire experience

Control the pipeline – this is a must. And seeing the power in paid challenges was the biggest win of this entire promo!

Biggest lesson learned in my area of expertise

I focused waaaaayyyy too much time on things that were “nice to haves” but that didn’t move the needle. For example, all the stylized and scripted videos with different shots and angles… other than a nice branding play, it did nothing to move the needle.

One thing we could have done better

We could have been better at trimming fat, simplifying, and staying laser-focused on the things that worked (although in hindsight, we all believed it was going to work so that’s why we did it!)

One thing we did really well

The challenge was hands down the best thing we all did. And the teamwork and communication was next-level!

Josh Stanton – Our Tech & Setup Go-to!

ScrewTheNinetoFive.com

Biggest lesson learned from the entire experience

Do less better (and it’s ok to do less)

Biggest lesson learned in my area of expertise

Facebook ads: leads do not equal customers

One thing we could have done better

Do a SCRUM meeting and follow the SCRUM process throughout. And run split tests.

One thing we did really well

Paid challenge FTW!

John Lee Dumas – Our Influencer and BIG Ask-er

Biggest lesson learned from the entire experience

We went all in, and we can’t be disappointed about that. I’m proud of how we all showed up; we left everything on the table.

Biggest lesson learned in my area of expertise

Leads don’t equal sales.

One thing we could have done better

Tracking stats and data so we know where we’re at with different strategies has to be a big part of the equation.

One thing we did really well

The Challenge was such a huge win. And overall, the fact that we all went all in on this… now we know.

Kate Erickson – Project Manager

Biggest lesson learned from the entire experience

It’s not about more traffic, it’s about the connection you’ve already built with your existing audience – plus the connection and value you can provide upfront to create a warm relationship – that makes all the difference. So many brands blow their horn about cold traffic and ads, but at the end of the day, that’s just not the type of business that we are personally in. It’s not a needle mover for us, and we lost sight of that.

Biggest lesson learned in my area of expertise

I should have taken a stronger stance from an overall project management perspective. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes or come off like I was trying to micromanage, but in the end I could have served us all better had I been more involved with what was going on, when, and by whom.

One thing we could have done better

Been more realistic about the time and commitment level of our entire project as a whole. I think we were trying to be in too many places at once. We didn’t have the structure in place to go as broad as we did.

One thing we did really well

Big picture: the fact that we went all in. No one held anything back, and it really felt like a true team effort. To me, the Challenge was the biggest win out of all this. The ah-ha’s, the connections, the value we provided… I’m so proud of the experience we gave people and I know it moved the needle for our sales big time.

Lessons learned (gathered from this recap)

We’ve covered a lot here, and I know that regardless of how much time I spent carefully piecing this recap together, there are probably questions, gaps, things that just don’t really make much sense…

That’s perfect, because it’s pretty much how we felt throughout this entire launch!

Sometimes things don’t make a ton of sense, and you will have a lot of questions.

It doesn’t mean you give up, or stop taking action.

I’m going to wrap up by putting this one single launch into perspective: if this was tough, what’s running an entire online business like?

More on that in just a second…

The many lessons we’ve shared

• It’s important to start your promotions early to properly build up to the offer, but don’t start too early.
• People aren’t always paying attention – no matter how clearly you spell things out. Make it easy.
• Less is more. Do less better. What would this look like if it were simple? (we could have greatly benefited from answering this question throughout our planning and implementation)
• When people pay, they pay attention.
• To the greatest extent possible, you should control the sales pipeline.
• Leads don’t equal sales. Just because you have a low CPC or CPL doesn’t mean you’re going to have a high sales conversion rate.
• When run well, a challenge is a very powerful strategy.
• Messenger bots can be a great tool.
• Delegate when and where you can.

Running an online business

Running an online business is hard work.

Whether you ever decide to make affiliate launches a part of your business, preparing for your own launches could very well look like everything I’ve just described – and more.

The consistency with which you must be thinking, creating, pivoting, and showing up is a lot.

Hopefully this massive recap of our entire affiliate launch for Knowledge Broker Blueprint, which shares:

• Every step we took,
• How we planned and executed,
• What we learned, and
• The final results

…helps put into perspective what it means to run a multi-million dollar business. And how critical it is to reflect on your actions so you don’t make the same mistakes twice.

I’ll never look at the 80/20 rule the same.

I’ll always be constantly reminding myself that in most cases, less is more.

Putting it into perspective

At the end of the day, we’re incredibly lucky.

We work very hard.

And we’ve created the exact business and lifestyle we want.

But none of it has come without stress, really long days, challenges we never thought we’d face, questions we have no idea how to answer, launches that don’t go as planned (like this one), and of course – some fun here and there ;)

So next time you head into a business project, an affiliate launch, or a new chapter in your life, take time to reflect. Learn from your mistakes, celebrate your wins, and have fun.