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I freakin' love Paul Jarvis. He's creative, he's unique, and he's Canadian.
Show Notes
I freakin’ love Paul Jarvis. He’s creative, he’s unique, and he’s Canadian.
Notable quotes
“When you work for yourself, your boss is an asshole” – Paul Jarvis
“I’m vegan so I’m always hungry” – Paul Jarvis
“I want to help people build their business online.” – Paul Jarvis
“It’s funny: people think that when they’re done school, they’re done with homework. Do a bit of homework! You’ll stand out.” – Paul Jarvis
“People don’t hire web designers because of skills. They want someone they trust.” – Paul Jarvis
“You gotta go to them: you got to go where your audience lives and where your audience spends their time.” – Paul Jarvis
“It’s all about who you know, and whether those people trust you.” – Paul Jarvis
“The only way to guarantee failure is to stop trying.” – Paul Jarvis
Show notes
Note from Justin
This interview is a smaller segment of a full-interview with Paul, available in Build Your Own Audience. It’s available here: justinjackson.ca/audiencecourse. You can also sign up to my mailing list.
Want to help the show? If you could go to iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb. Also: if you’re listening on Stitcher, please leave a review on there!
PS: By the way, I’m working on something new called Product People Club. Go to productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. I’ll have something to announce shortly!
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Alright. It is Thursday. Justin Jackson here. This is the Product People Show. And good gracious, I didn't publish last week, did I?
Speaker 1:I said I was gonna publish every Thursday. And last Thursday, I just realized this, I didn't have a new episode. Jeez. Sorry about that. There's been a lot going on.
Speaker 1:I actually just got a new job, and this will be interesting for long time listeners of the podcast. I got a new job with sprintly. Sprint.ly. They were a sponsor of this show as soon as we started, and they were a sponsor all the way through until I decided I was going to have sponsors for a while and took a little hiatus. And wouldn't you know it, now I'm working for them.
Speaker 1:And that's been pretty fun, actually. I was a fan of sprint.ly before they were a sponsor. I was one of their early users, and I still think it's the best way to manage software teams. And now, because of the podcast and because of everything else, I have a job. So do me a favor and help welcome me to sprintly.
Speaker 1:You can go sprint.ly on Twitter and say welcome to the team at m I Justin or you can check out sprint.ly by going to sprint.ly and just tell them that I sent you. So this week, man, there's a lot going on. First of all, product people club is really close to launching. We've had people in the beta now for over a month for sure. And I think you're gonna really like it.
Speaker 1:The feedback that's coming back is really good. So productpeople.club, sign up for the waiting list, and you'll be the first to hear when we officially launch. This interview is with Paul Jarvis, one of my all time favorite people on the web. He's just he's just a good dude. He says some people don't like him, but I think that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:He's an amazing designer. He's an amazing writer, and just a powerful creative force to be reckoned with on the web. This is a segment of a longer interview that you can get in my new course, Build Your Audience. If you go to justinjackson.ca/audience course, there's a full video case study with Paul. And I thought I would share open the curtains and share a little bit for you.
Speaker 1:So sit back, relax, turn on those headphones, and enjoy this conversation with Paul Jarvis. But first, let's listen to a little striker. A little bit longer. Oh, there we go. I'm here fellow Canadian, Paul Jarvis.
Speaker 1:How's it going, Paul?
Speaker 2:Hey, man. I feel like I should be saying like take off or hoser or something or we should both be like crushing a beer or something like that.
Speaker 1:That would be fun actually.
Speaker 2:Are you I've got my water.
Speaker 1:See, I was just are you a big drinker? You a beer guy or
Speaker 2:I'm allergic to alcohol so I'm pretty much the life of the party.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you are as clean as they get. You're a vegan and you don't drink alcohol.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no gluten either.
Speaker 1:No gluten either. Man. Yep. Man, oh man, oh man. Coffee?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that I live in Victoria because Victoria has amazing, amazing coffee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, we just have My buddy Andrew just opened a coffee shop here in Vernon. He's from the island so he grew up with all those great shops on the island. He just opened up a coffee shop called Triumph that serves first great coffee shop in Vernon basically. It makes such a difference if you're really into good coffee having someone that really is into that can find all the great roasters and all Yeah, exactly. And that was like when I went to Portland, I couldn't believe how much good coffee they have there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:It's unreal. I think we should do a big meet up in Portland, that would be fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, well WDS is happening I think next in two or three weeks but like a separate from that. Maybe a bit in the future because they can't get down for that but yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you do you go to WDS? Is that one of your things?
Speaker 2:I don't go to things.
Speaker 1:You just you just sometimes you can get you on a Google Hangouts chat, but that's it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I'll come to you digitally live, but that's about it.
Speaker 1:All right, so Paul, I know who you are, and I imagine some people in my audience know who you are, but for those that don't know, what are you kind of about these days? What do you do? What do you do for work? What do you do for a living? What's your deal?
Speaker 2:My deal? I'm glad I know what I do. Well actually I don't always know what I do. Right now I kinda know what I do. So the main thing that I do is, well I guess not really the main thing.
Speaker 2:What used to be the main thing that I did was web design. Mostly for creatives, entrepreneurs, that kind of thing. What I've been doing more lately is writing books, articles, courses, all that sort of stuff. And that's kind of taken up a lot of my time. So yeah, I guess I'm a web designer and a writer and a gentleman of adventure.
Speaker 2:Which is like the tagline I've been using lately.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting actually because I mean it's kind of funny, but what does adventure mean to you?
Speaker 2:Well, and we were talking about this at the pre show, like about getting outside and stuff. So I think adventure for me is mostly like getting outside by myself with my camera into the woods. I mean I live in Victoria so getting out to the ocean, getting out to the woods and just like going for walks, taking pictures and enjoying the life of leisure on the island.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. You know, we're going get into some product stuff later, but I think even that point right there, this idea of what do you want? And so how do you manage that? Because I think for a lot of us makers and creators, it's so easy to just get stuck in front of the computer and sometimes even just to like lie to ourselves and say we're being creative and productive. It's hard to get, you know, like to get outside and do all those things.
Speaker 1:So how do you manage that yourself? Like what is the balance for you in terms of making a living and then actually doing the things that you want to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a struggle, right? Like I'm being productive now, I'm on Twitter and Twitter's part of my business. Yeah. Little bit, that's the case. For hours a day, not really the case.
Speaker 2:So for me, it's like, and I think it's, the guy that works with Chris Brogan, Rob, I can't remember his last name, wrote something called Work Like You're On Vacation. And the premise is basically something that I've been following for ages. It's like, if you only have a tiny amount of time to get stuff done, then you're gonna be super productive. So for me, it's like if I can sit down for two hours and just bang out a few blog posts, bang out a few articles for some publications, and then go outside for a little bit, then that to me is being productive. And I find that the more I take breaks from work, the more productive I am.
Speaker 2:Which seems so counter intuitive, like why are you walking away from your desk when you have stuff to do? And it's like, if I only take ten minutes to stretch, or if I go for a walk for an hour, the work is still gonna be there when I get back, but I get back to it and I'm refreshed and I'm focused, I can just kind of get through it. So I think working with not thinking like, okay, I can work for twelve hours today, so I'm gonna sit at my computer for twelve hours today. There's no way you're working for twelve of those hours. But if you're like, okay, I'm gonna work for like four hours today.
Speaker 2:Then you're gonna get all your stuff done in those four hours and then go bugger off and do whatever you want. For the other like, how many hours are left in the day, eighteen minuteus sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. This is the thing, what's weird because I still work full time and when you work full time, there's an expectation that you're in front of your desk for eight hours, right? That's just kind of the way it works. But it's funny, even a lot of the folks like you that have made this jump to being independent, sometimes we still get stuck in that, don't we? You've to be in front of the computer for hours and hours when really, do you need to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we get trained, it's funny because we, like a lot of freelancers come from working full time for someone, right? And they like, oh when I work for myself this is gonna be so different, I'm gonna be the best boss ever. I wrote an article like, if you work for yourself, your boss is an asshole. And it's like, it works out that way a lot of the time. Like we think that we push ourselves and then we think that okay well I'm gonna just use all this time, know work all the time, you burn out and then you get, then you don't want to do the work that you're doing for yourself, well obviously for clients and stuff too, but you get kinda like, why am I even doing this?
Speaker 2:My boss sucks and my boss sucked before. But at least he was taking care of like dental. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1:exactly. You are the new boss and you don't even give yourself any benefits. Exactly. It's awful. Right?
Speaker 1:Like I imagine when you first went independent, you were just hungry, physically hungry. You needed to put some vegan food on the table, right?
Speaker 2:I'm vegan so I'm always hungry. I live on air and good intentions, and I starve.
Speaker 1:I mean, that How was it for you when you started, and how has it changed till now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I started, I had worked for, I dropped out of university for computer science and I went straight to an agency because I'd done, I built a product that got pretty big online, because the web only, there was only like six websites, so it didn't take much to get popular back then. Yeah. But so I made a website that got some publicity and an agency in Toronto where I lived was like, hey we think that our clients can buy websites, will buy websites off of us, we can build that into our like campaigns and stuff. You build websites, come work for us. And I was just like, I'm not enjoying school anyways.
Speaker 2:So I only worked there for a year though, and I kinda I realized how much I like working with people to help them solve their problems with my expertise, but how much I didn't like working for somebody else who didn't give a shit about that. Like my boss didn't care. Like he was unfortunately more interested in cocaine than in helping clients, which is a whole other story. But so I was like We
Speaker 1:might hear those stories man.
Speaker 2:So I was just like, this isn't why I'm doing it. Like I'm working with people at the company that I'm not stoked on, but I'm working with clients that I really like. So it's like, I just wanna cut out the stuff I don't like and just focus on helping clients. So that's really why I started. And then as I've gone, it's been more of a like, I wanna help people build their businesses online and do better with business.
Speaker 2:And now it's more of a focus on these are the type of people that I wanna help. So now I'm a bit more specific with my audience where it's like, I don't know where to start if it was just like, okay I wanna build websites for people that want websites. It's like, I don't know where to start, that's everybody. Whereas if I focus it a bit, and I'm like, okay these are the exact type of people I wanna work with, then it's easy to find out, it's like your story about the developer who wanted to build stuff for real estate agents. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like, do you hang out with them? No. Do you actually talk to them? No. Are you interested in real estate?
Speaker 2:No. It's like, I wanted to work with the people that I'm actually interested in talking to and working with. And I started doing that probably six or seven years ago, and it like a night and day difference. I started to work with people that, actually it was a bit longer than that. But I started to work with people where I cared about their work, I cared about their business, and I started to show.
Speaker 2:And it was just a matter of like, okay, well now that I've done a few websites for these people, and they're kind of industry leaders, and I'm that guy in that industry that makes websites for that type of people. And then it's just become like, I don't really People come to me like, Oh, I want a website from you and I have a waiting list and stuff. So it ended up working out fairly well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a thing that a lot of people struggle with is finding their audience. It sounds like you just said, you kind of narrowed that down over time. So who did you end up focusing on and how did you do that? Because this is seriously keeping some people up at night, this idea of like, and that's why a lot of people end up choosing real estate agents because everyone knows a real estate agent.
Speaker 1:How did you figure out who were your people?
Speaker 2:Homework. And it's funny that people think that when they're done school, they're done homework. I've always been a big advocate of like, you can be that top person, like whether it's a job interview, whether it's finding like a client to work with if you're a freelancer, it's like, you just do a bit of homework. Like you're gonna stand out. So the homework that I did was first focusing on why I do what I do, and then thinking about okay, who are the type of people that, who have websites that I like?
Speaker 2:Who are the type of people that have online presences or businesses that I really want to work with, like who, what's like the top five kind of people I want to work with? And then I started talking to them, and I didn't start pitching them on websites, I just wanted to get to know kind of what made them tick, and how they picked who they picked to hire, and kind of what they, like I was kind of paying attention, because I'm a nerd, so I was like paying attention to, and I'm kind of like a language nerd as well as a programming nerd, so paying attention to the words and the way that they describe what they wanted for the type of work that I do, web design. So listening to them say like, okay, well I wanted a web designer that could do x. I hired this web designer because x. And then from there, from that homework, it's just like, I've got the inside scoop on my industry now, so all I need to do is put that into practice.
Speaker 2:All I need to do is start talking to more people like that. I need to use writing and words on my website that reflect what they want. Like I was talking to, I had four or five people last week about why they hired the web designer they do, because I still ask people that, even if I'm not, I might end up writing a book or an article about it, but I'm still just always curious about that. And it's funny because I was looking at a bunch of web designers websites and they all talk about like, these are the skills that I have, this is the like, I'm awesome at flat design and skew morphism or parallax scrolling and stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I talked
Speaker 2:talked to to a bunch of my friends that all have like million dollar businesses, like they're all like top tier. I was talking to them about why they hired, who they hired, and none of them talked about skills. Like none of them gave a shit about skills, they were all talking about, okay well I want somebody that I trust, that I feel confident has my back with my business, because my business supports a lot of people, like a lot of them have like eight or nine people on their teams that they work with. And it's like this person needs to be that team member, not just like some person that comes in and like does a site and like yeah, this is good enough, here's the site kind of thing. And as I'm looking at the language, there's such a disparity between the way that freelancers talk versus the way that the clients that they want talk.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, if people just focused on this, it would be a whole lot easier, whether it's like products or just freelancing service based stuff. It's like, if you just do a little bit of homework, then you can go above and beyond anybody else cause they're not doing their homework.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of stuff I want to kind of jump on there. Let's just back up a little bit because you said one of the things you did was you kind of looked at like who are the people you liked online, you started reading their websites, that was part of your process in discovering who you wanted to find. Can you give us an example of that? What's kind of a typical customer you have right now?
Speaker 1:I know that your customers for your consulting side is probably a little bit different than your product side or maybe it's not, but how did you find, you know, like give us an example of like a typical customer, maybe for both, like for consulting and for the products.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for the kind of design and service based side of things, it was people that have businesses that I would like to have a business like. So it's a little vague, but it doesn't necessarily, because I don't know, like I don't know in five years if I'm gonna be writing books. But I know the type of business that I wanna have, it's the type of business that I have now, like reaching a bigger audience, or that sort of thing. So I was looking for people that are kind of like that. So the type of clients that I work with for the design and the service based side of things, are really entrepreneurs that are just killing it.
Speaker 2:Like that are just doing well. Like one of my biggest clients for the longest time was a woman named Danielle LaPorte. And she's like a best selling author, she has product launches that are like well into the 6 figures on the first day. And I'm like, this woman is like the smartest woman I know on the internet. And so it's just like, I started to we both were in the same city at the time, and I ended up I started working with because like you can't just if you start freelancing, can't just go for like the talk dog, like I wanna do your website.
Speaker 2:Like you gotta start somewhere. So I was working with other freelancers that were not at that level with their business yet, but it was still kind of the same kind of clients. So then she ended up finding out about me through other client work that I had done, and she came to me and at the time I was like, that's pretty awesome, that's a client. She's on that list of a few people that I really want to work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Part of it was because you began with intention. Like you said, that's the person I want to reach. I probably can't get to her right now but there's other people like her that are down here so I'm gonna start working with them and she, those people are in her circle,
Speaker 2:she ended up hearing about it. Yeah and it's a matter of like leaving comments on their websites, subscribing to their newsletter, and replying sometimes, or talking to them on social media, like just kind of being in that circle, and being in that kind of, it's just like if you're a web designer and you're not on like, like Layerball's designer news, some of these websites where designers go to talk, it's like well, what are you doing? Because like it's part of, or if you're into like content marketing and you're not on Hacker News or inbound.org or Growth Hackers or that sort of thing, You need to kind of hang out where your community's hanging out because they're not gonna know who you are, especially in the beginning. They're not gonna know who you are, so you gotta kind of go to them. You gotta go to where your audience lives and where your audience spends their time and start interacting with them there.
Speaker 2:And not being the like, hey come and buy my book, and like come and hire me, but just talking to them like a human being. Yeah. And offering help if you can, if they're asking for it, or just dialoguing. Like a lot of people that I've worked with are just people that I've started talking to on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is a good point because you know what this brings up because I've given that same advice and I just realized now why it's sometimes hard to give that advice, which is you tell people that and you can see in their heads and even in your own head you're like, Yeah but if you go just hang out, how do I sell a product and make a million dollars? You know what I mean? Like there's this disconnect. And what I just realized as you were talking is like, But yeah, but it's a process.
Speaker 1:You've got to like you said do your homework, you've to put in some hours, you've got to Like with any group, even if you were kind of a part of that group, it's going to take a little while for people to trust you.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Right? Like even if you're a good musician and you're a great blues musician and you move to a new city, it's not like they're just going to be like, Hey you, out of the audience, come play. They're going to want you to like hang out, show up at a few shows, maybe come to a few open mics. Then, you know, maybe you'll get some people inviting you to play with the band, but Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's funny because like that's what Like when I moved to Vancouver, because I've been a touring musician for a long time, it's like first thing I did, I knew I wanted to be playing more shows, was go support other musicians, buy them drinks after their sets. And eventually we ended up being like, doing fairly well in that city, and it was because we kinda made the connections. And it's funny too, because people think like, okay well, it's all well and good for connections as a freelancer, and that's really what drives business is connections. But if you look at top level businesses, and I know I have friends that own big digital agencies, and their clients are all from connections as well, so it doesn't matter what level the business is at. It's still all about who you know and whether they trust you and respect you.
Speaker 2:And if your name has popped up on their screen or in their head or at an event or something more than once. And then it's just like, oh I've heard of you. And that's a power, like that's a big thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You do seem to do, like I've noticed you do a lot of things differently. Like you write a lot of stuff for other magazines like Inc. And some other, what are some other ones? Is Inc.
Speaker 1:The primary one?
Speaker 2:I don't think there really is a primary one. So I write for Hoverning Post Inc, Forbes, Fast Company, The Next Web, couple Smashing Magazine, couple other ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so, why do you do that? What's what's kind of the benefit for you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's still it comes back to the point I made earlier. It's like, I'm I'm trying to reach other I'm trying to reach a bigger audience, right? So I'm going to where that audience is first. And then my byline always says, written by Paul Jarvis, here's his book, you sign up for his newsletter kind of thing. And then I can kinda see, and if I'm on top of things, I'll make like a landing page just for that publication.
Speaker 2:So I can track how many people signed up because of reading that publication, which I haven't done for the last couple because I've been off my game. But yeah, so I do that because I wanna reach a bigger audience. Like I'm happy with my audience, but obviously I wanna keep reaching more people. Books is really a numbers game because my books are like $10. So in order to make a decent amount of money, had to sell thousands and thousands of them.
Speaker 2:So I'm always trying to reach more people. Whereas with my freelancing stuff, I'm charging $10 for a site. I don't need to work with that many people a year. Like I have the group of people that I like to work with that can afford to afford that kind of stuff, and that likes and sees the value of my work. But with books, or with apps, or with things that cost quite a bit less, you need to, it's a numbers game, like it's volume.
Speaker 2:And I've realized that how different it is as marketing high end web stuff versus marketing $10 books.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's been an interesting learning curve there.
Speaker 1:And why have you gone the $10 book route as opposed to like, I mean you could write a technical book on You could write about a lot of stuff, like you could write about client funnels and all sorts of stuff. So why have you focused on writing $10 books?
Speaker 2:I think it's because, I've thought about this a lot, the reason that I can't charge the Nathan Barry amounts, like the $405,100 dollar is because his stuff is so specific and it's for such a specific audience. And a lot of the stuff that he does is for developers. And they have money or they can write stuff off, there's the value there. Whereas a lot of the stuff that I write is very it's still useful, but it's not as specific. So it's like these are my entrepreneurial stories in my book, Everything I Know.
Speaker 2:Or these are the habits that I see good creatives have in The Good Creative, or that sort of thing. So it's not as tactical for me, that's kind of where I like to write. And I would rather play the volume game, just because I don't think the books would sell in that model where they're like $40 or more. Because you don't see that like obviously I think there's benefit in them, but you don't have the like list at the end where it's like okay, can take this, apply it here, and make this money back. It's just like Brendan Dunn's W Freelancing.
Speaker 2:Like he could charge anything for that, it's so valuable. Could charge a thousand dollars for that and people would get their money back in a few weeks. But for my stuff it's not as tactical as that and that's just my writing and what I like writing and where I feel I provide value for the people that like my writing, so yeah.
Speaker 1:And have you been able to make it work? Obviously you have, I guess. I think a lot of people, the question they have is they think well, because especially in kind of bootstrapping circles, a low priced product is kind of looked down on. Like don't have a $5 a month web app and don't sell a product for less than $25.30 bucks. So how have you made that work?
Speaker 1:Have you been able to get the volume that you need and how did you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of it is the, like we were talking about earlier, writing guest posts, doing things. Because it's such a low barrier to entry, I don't need to have a sales page that's like six or seven pages long. I can just basically, here's a book blurb, here's an excerpt, click buy, and that's really Like my landing pages for the sales pages for books are a lot different than other landing pages for like $100 books, just because I don't really need to I don't need to show as much value, because they're not monetarily priced as high. But I think that I can just can More people are likely to buy those books because they're at the price they're at, and it's not like Amazon one click is such a powerful thing dude. When I put my books on Amazon, credit cards are already stored.
Speaker 2:So people just like, oh there's the book, bought. They don't have to enter in it. They don't have to find their wallet. They don't have to enter in their credit card. And when I put my books on Amazon, it's just like holy smokes, there's such a volume.
Speaker 2:And I mean obviously you need to bring your own people to the party. There's I think 13,000,000 books on Amazon. Uploading your book to Amazon isn't gonna you're gonna result in zero sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You need to like actually work and push it, but once people are there, there's such a small amount of friction. One, people trust Amazon, because most people have bought something from there. Then the second, one click is huge. And then people can see reviews, people can see like, okay one of my books has a 105 star reviews. So like okay, I think this guy probably knows what he's talking about because there's that many reviews.
Speaker 2:Obviously I only look at the one star reviews and I think there's three or four of them. And that's all I focus on. But as a buyer, a potential buyer, they're like, okay this guy probably knows what he's talking about. And there's a community built in, people can see the highlights, they can see that oh, like 500 people highlighted this one section. Some of the things people highlight and a lot of people highlight, it's just, it's interesting and it's a good insight for a writer to see that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But yeah, I I have been able to drive the volume. Like all of my books sell like over 5,000 copies each and they've only all been out at the most for I think three years. My vegan cookbook I think has been out for three ish years and then all my other ones have been out for two or less. And they've all sold yeah between five and ten thousand.
Speaker 2:I think maybe a bit more for one of them.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's that's actually really crazy. That is a lot of volume. Five to 10,000, that's more than I've heard. I mean that's more than I've heard a lot of regular authors, you know, real authors.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's because I've focused on my A lot of authors and a lot of It's so funny too. Like I know a lot of people that have publishing deals with big publishing companies, and they think that, okay, well now that I have a publishing deal, they're gonna market it for me. Unless you're like, whatever it is, Stephanie Meyer or whatever, unless they know their return on investment is super high, they're gonna do the bare minimum that they need to do to get your book out there. So for me, because I'm self published, I can do whatever the hell I want.
Speaker 2:So I tried crazy, like one of my books right now is free on Amazon, and I play with that all the time, because you can set it for free. Think the last time I made everything I know free, 41,000 people downloaded it. And I was just like, it's just, it's stupid how many people Not downloaded that many people read it, but like, you can play with things when your own product. Yeah. You can play, like for my first book I gave away llamas.
Speaker 2:Like, if you tweeted about the book, could win an adopted llama from the llama sanctuary that my wife and I support in Washington. So I gave away five llamas. And I think I got like a thousand people tweeted about it. Because I gave
Speaker 1:away and I think it
Speaker 2:was like $50 to adopt each llama. So I think I spent $250. We got a thousand people talking about the book the day that it came out.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Llamas man. That's the tactic. Yeah. Llamas,
Speaker 1:done. Now we're to have people that would be funny if everyone just started using that same thing, like that same tactic.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:'ll get a bit more into the tactical stuff in part two here but let's kind of end this section here with a question from Paul Gamble and he's wondering how do you deal with being discouraged, I think it's a question about discouragement. How do you deal with being discouraged from so entrepreneurial failures and being able to continue forward towards your goals? What's something you'd say to someone that's I mean this is something that comes up a lot. People have tried and tried and tried and that can be debilitating. What are some things you've seen work?
Speaker 2:War of attrition is basically, like you just gotta keep at it. Like the only way to guarantee, and it sounds kind of trite and motivational, but the only way to guarantee failure is to stop. And I mean it's not even like having a successful track record is a guarantee. I've started three startups that have absolutely flopped. And I still have, like I said, I have a successful freelancing business.
Speaker 2:I write books that lots of people buy, but I've tried other things and it hasn't worked. But I'm still because of my I guess it keeps coming back to the why, right? Like I know what I wanna do, it's just a matter of finding And I think that's important too, right? Like if you focus on the why instead of the exact specific, then maybe it's a different, like I didn't think I would be a writer, like five years ago, before I started writing. But I knew what I wanted to do was help people with certain things.
Speaker 2:So if writing hadn't worked out, maybe I would have focused more on a different avenue to get there. But the why doesn't go away. Like the why's always there, you just maybe have to find a different route to get to how you're using that why to make a living.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I agree completely. I think one thing to realize is we all face it, like we all have those moments where like just the other day I was walking with my wife and I was going, everyone hates my stuff, Nothing's working, all this stuff.
Speaker 2:I'll stop sending those emails.
Speaker 1:Paula just keeps saying that But you know what, it's funny what can turn that around because in this particular case I was selling my second workshop. First one sold out really fast. I was trying to figure out why is this next one didn't sell out and it turned out I think it was just because of two things. One, my timing was wrong, specifically when I sent the emails and two, the wording was wrong. The first email I sent out wasn't really specific and didn't actually ask people to register for the workshop.
Speaker 1:And so I was all down about this one thing because it's easy to kind of get down, could we try things, we worked. I was up until three in the morning trying to get this thing out but all it took was me trying again. I guess eventually you have to know when to stop, but trying again and then all of a sudden, bang, I sold out the rest of the spots. I've got other stories too of when I tried again and it didn't work and you just have to pick yourself up and try something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:It's funny how down you can feel, you know, and then how quickly that can change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. And I mean I think a lot of times too, like when people have seen that success and then it's almost worse when you've seen it and then it doesn't happen again. You know, Was that like a one hit wonder? What the hell is going on? Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Cool, man. Okay, so let's we're going to end it right there and anyone listening to the audio, you can go and check out Paul online. His website is pjrvs.com and his new book is The Good Creative, right? How's The Good Creative doing?
Speaker 2:It's doing really well. I did the Nathan Barry double launch.
Speaker 1:What's the Nathan Barry double launch?
Speaker 2:Released something, I can't remember. I think it was the last product that he had. He released it and then he cut it off after twenty four hours and then put it out to the general public like a month later. I was like, hey I'm just gonna do that for my mailing list. Like my mailing lists are my favorite people, so I was like, if you're on my mailing list, you can get the book a month early, everybody else, you gotta wait.
Speaker 2:I did a double lunch.
Speaker 1:Nice. Was it good like for other reasons? Did you get good feedback? Did you like, what other benefit is there to the double launch?
Speaker 2:Well I paid for all the costs of the book in the first couple hours of launch so that was good because it was so time sensitive. Everybody bought it right away and I was like, Okay, I've recouped the cost on the book. That's good. The downside was when I launched a month later, it didn't have as big of a splash because all the people that were super keen on buying it bought it, and then so sales have been slowly ramping up from that. So it's definitely something to learn, but it was fun those two days, because I think I did a forty eight hour sale and those two days were really, really were like the best product launch that I've ever had.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, so definitely check out the good creative pjrvs.com/creative and Paul has a few other experiments that he's done that I think you should check out. Well, his best experiment is his Sunday Dispatches newsletter. You can sign up for that right on his website.
Speaker 1:And then the other one, I'm looking for it now, is Write and Sell Your Own sorry, Write and Sell Your Damn Book. And that's is the email course for that still available?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. It's it it will live on forever as long as I pay for hosting.
Speaker 1:And is that at what is that at? That's a
Speaker 2:mydamnbook.com.
Speaker 1:Mydamnbook.com. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright.
Speaker 1:Thanks again to Paul for being on the show. Again, if you want the full unedited video interview, Paul and I get into the details of how he builds his products, how to build your online reputation, so much more. Go to justinjackson.ca/audiencecourse. And if you wanna help the show out and you're listening right now, if you're on iTunes, I need you to go to the iTunes, search for product people, and give us a nice review in iTunes Store. It really, really helps.
Speaker 1:Also, all of you listening on Stitcher, if you could search for the show on Stitcher and give us a five star review on there as well, we need way more reviews on Stitcher. We've been ignoring that platform, and we just need your help. So if you're able to help with either of those, that would be huge. Again, I'm Justin Jackson. You can read my stuff on justinjackson.ca or my newsletter, justinjackson.cainewsletter, or you can follow me on Twitter MIJustin.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week.