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A Podcast for Coaches shines a light on one of the most elegant, underrated business models in the world: one-on-one coaching. Mark Butler hosts the show, and he's been a coach and advisor to every kind of online business you can think of, having helped businesses earning everything from $0 to $25,000,000+. Although Mark believes every online business model has merit, he worries one-on-one coaching is viewed as a stepping-stone business for people who aren't ready or able to scale. But it's not true, and A Podcast for Coaches sets out to show people--through clear teaching and rich, current stories of successful coaches who love their business--that one-on-one coaching is one of the most gratifying and lowest "hassle-per-dollar" businesses in the world.
Hey, it's Mark Butler and you are
listening to a podcast for coaches.
Now, a few years ago, there was
a podcast called the Mark Butler
show that I produced something
like 60, 60 something episodes.
And I don't even think
it's online anymore.
I think I migrated it.
I think some of it was lost.
I mean, this is all very classic, very
typical of me to produce 63 episodes of
a podcast and then sort of lose them.
But in 2017.
One of the episodes that I published was
called why I hate the launch based product
marketing model, something like that.
That was almost seven years ago.
And as I sit down to record today, I think
to myself, well, at least I'm consistent
because this morning I was writing, okay.
Here's what's really going on.
I'm writing a book now.
Why am I telling you that I'm
writing a book in order to trap
myself into continuing with it?
That's the reason I'm telling
you that I'm writing a book.
, the working approach right now is
that every day I require myself to
write about 1200 words of whatever
I just have to get to 1200 words.
It has to relate to coaching.
My philosophy of the business of coaching
and the craft of coaching 1200 words
stored in a folder, move on with my life.
My confidence being that in the next few
months I'll have 50, words in a folder
and then I can go back in there maybe
with help and turn that into a book.
I'm saying that here because
I'm trying to trap myself.
So anyway, today's free writing
exercise was called the underlying
mechanisms that cause the launch
based business model to ruin lives.
Now look.
That's not what this episode is
called because that's dramatic and
it's hyperbolic and it's not fair and
it's not true and it's not accurate.
It's just me sitting down at my desk at
eight o'clock in the morning and trying
to get to my 1200 words and just writing
down what comes most naturally to me.
But at the very least, we know that in
2017, I wasn't excited about the launch
based model and in 2024, I'm still not
excited about the launch based model.
Business model, but at the very least, I
think in 2024, I'm prepared to be a little
bit more balanced and reasonable about it.
I don't think it actually ruins lives.
At least it doesn't ruin all lives.
It just ruins some.
In fact, the other day I was talking
to a client and I was telling her
that my favorite joke is When people
ask me what I do for a living, I say,
I comfort life coaches whose most
recent launch underperformed relative
to their goals and expectations.
That's my whole job.
What else do you do?
Nothing really.
I just comfort coaches
whose launches underperform.
She laughed because she recently
had a launch that felt like
her hardest launch ever.
And our conversation sparked this episode.
So I will admit my bias upfront.
Of course, I don't love
the launch based model.
It's not clear to me how it benefits
anyone in the equation, either on
the seller side or on the buyer side.
But as I've tried to work with it, as
I've tried to come to a new perspective
on it, I hope to be more balanced.
A couple of weeks ago,
I published an episode.
About how to read a sales page and
a compliment came in that meant a
lot to me from a trusted listener.
And the person said, I
appreciated the episode.
I thought it was very balanced.
That meant something to me because
I do have a great capacity for
snark and sarcasm and cynicism.
And that's not my favorite
version of myself.
My favorite version of myself
is someone who can say, I see
this thing from all angles.
I have a special perspective
on it based on my experience.
I do have an opinion.
I have a position, but I'm
not just yelling to yell.
I'm not just being snarky for clicks.
So let's talk about the launch based
business model and let's talk about
what I think underpins that model
and why I think it tends to do in
the long run more harm than good.
To the person who uses it in her business
for background, I've got to give
you a little bit of a hypothetical.
This is the hypothetical.
A coach starts her practice.
And I know I always say her, it's
because most of my clients are
women and most coaches are women.
It's just a shortcut.
We'll live.
Okay.
So she starts her business and
she starts to publish content.
And her content finds
some amount of resonance.
She has a way of talking about
the problem and the solution in a
way that people are attracted to.
They continue to tune in and
maybe they even share her work.
So her audience starts to grow.
Now, initially her business
model will probably be something
not quote unquote scalable.
It will probably be one on one coaching.
Maybe it will be very small groups.
Maybe it will be the occasional retreat,
but for the most part, it's not something
where she needs a whole bunch of people to
take a specific action at a specific time.
She needs one or a few people to
take a specific action occasionally.
So there's this very smooth Effect in her
business where she's consistently signing
new clients and maybe there's dips where
she doesn't sign any clients and then
maybe there are seasons where she has
a lot of clients signing up at the same
time, but there isn't really an offer in
her business where she has to capture a
bunch of yeses in a tight time window.
And what's happening in this whole season
is as she continues to publish content.
And as that content continues to
find resonance, the audience grows.
And so does the demand that's
built into that audience.
I call it latent demand or pent up
demand where the people in the audience
are having an increasing desire over
time to engage with her in another way.
Now, one of the biggest things
in play here, and again, this
is just my hypothesis, is
the principle of reciprocity.
If you read a book called Influence by
Robert Cialdini, Cialdini, sorry Bob,
I don't know how to say your name.
He wrote this book called Influence,
and in Influence, he talks about
how reciprocity is one of the most
powerful forces in human psychology.
And what drives it, I think the hypothesis
is That in order for humans to survive,
we had to figure out reciprocity.
We had to make sure that we could
maintain our social status and are
standing within a small group by giving
as much as we get so that we're not at
risk of being kicked out as a taker.
Reciprocity is so powerful.
When someone does something for
me, I have this conscious or
unconscious need to reciprocate.
The other day I was perusing YouTube as
I do, and there was this old SNL sketch
Saturday night live sketch where you
have these three men sitting around a
table at a restaurant and they're playing
this game where they say, I got it.
And when the bill comes,
they all say, I got it.
And then they try to make the case for
why they should be able to pay the bill.
And it's kind of funny, but it
illustrates this real thing in
human psychology where one of the
guys says, you got it last time.
It's my turn.
And that's real.
I have a friend, for example,
he's probably listening.
Hello.
You know who you are.
He never lets me pay for breakfast.
We go out to breakfast.
He never lets me pay.
I've never paid for a
meal in his presence.
And at some point I had to
switch off the reciprocity
function in my brain around him.
And I had to just go to this nice place
where I just accept and appreciate
his generosity and I love going to
breakfast with him, but in order
to feel good in that exchange, I
had to turn off reciprocity or had
at least to reframe reciprocity.
So that instead of viewing the
situation as, Oh, he's just buying
for me and I never buy for him.
I had to reframe it as
we enjoy this together.
Isn't it nice?
And what a great guy he is that
he always pays for breakfast.
But it's an interesting quirk of human
psychology that that was effortful for me.
I had to work to be okay with the lack
of reciprocity, not where his debt was
growing, but where my debt is growing.
Now come back to this new coach whose
audience is growing consistently.
The resonance is their follower
counts, subscriber counts.
They're growing in this
nice organic way over time.
And I've seen coaches
do this for six months.
I've seen them do it for a
year, for two years, for three
years, where the latent demand.
The pent up demand is growing in
proportion to all the deposits
that this coach is making into
all those emotional bank accounts.
The sense of reciprocity is
growing within that community.
Now, yes, I am generalizing, but I
think I'm generalizing in a useful way.
And you, you're welcome to push back
on my generalizations here, but I think
I've got a lot of evidence that points
to this mechanism working in this way.
So reciprocity is growing.
And then at some point, her
one on one practice is full.
She starts to see all the content
online that talks about scaling
and memberships and courses.
And she says, yeah, I love my
work, but I'd like to do more.
Detach my results from my hours.
And so I need to get into
a scalable business model.
And then she goes to do her
homework about how that's done.
And she talks to people in her masterminds
and she goes onto social media and she
reads sales copy and newsletters and
listens to podcasts and all the content
funnels her pun intended toward launching.
Launching now.
I'd be surprised if anybody in my audience
doesn't know what I mean by launching,
but let's just define launching as
the attempt to have a bunch of people
take a specific action in a short time
window and What usually drives their?
willingness to take a specific action
in a short time window is the promise of
Specific bonuses that are associated with
that action and also the the loss of the
bonuses But also of the experience if you
don't take action within a specific time
period that's what I'm calling launching
So she realizes I want to scale and what
that's going to require of me is launching
so now I'll build all the
infrastructure required for launching.
I'll have a different website.
I'll have certain pages on that website.
I'll have emails that are presented
in a, in an automated sequence.
I'll have sales pages.
I'll have expiring bonuses.
They'll be presented in a certain way.
Maybe there's a countdown timer in
an email or on a sales page or both.
And all of this is designed to have a
bunch of people say yes at the same time.
And in my experience, if she's a
person who has spent a long time.
Building a relationship with the community
and allowing that pent up demand to grow
and allowing that reciprocity that sense
of indebtedness that the audience has with
the creator and I've experienced by this
by the way There's a certain podcast that
I listen to now that it really bothers
me that all I've ever given him is my
eyes and my Ears, I I have this sense
that I need to send him some money or I
need to buy something from him because
We're talking dozens and dozens, maybe,
maybe at this point, hundreds of hours of
value that I have enjoyed from his work.
And I don't have a direct
connection to his compensation.
Yes.
I watch him on YouTube.
Yes.
That pays him, but that's
not connected enough to me to
quiet my desire to reciprocate.
So for me, this is a real effect.
I'm not immune to it.
I'm experiencing it.
And I think it happens in
coaches communities as well.
So her pent up demand is growing., her
sense of reciprocity in the community
is growing where people's sense of
indebtedness is increasing toward her.
And then she launches the
thing for the first time.
Now, depending on price point and
depending on how big the community
is and et cetera, and et cetera,
she could end up with a bunch of
cash in a short period of time.
At the very least, she probably
priced it in a way that it's a
lot of cash relative to what she's
accustomed to in her unscalable model.
And that's real.
And I've seen it over
and over and over again.
Sometimes I I've, I've kind of named
it sort of the first launch phenomenon
I mean, talk about a dopamine rush.
You have all the adrenaline
associated with the launches.
You're building up to this, you know,
countdown to midnight and you're
hustling and you're doing webinars and
maybe you're on, you're live on social
media and maybe you're doing one on
one calls as needed to make sales.
And it's just this adrenaline driven
thing that has pressure built into
it because at midnight the carriage
is going to turn back into a pumpkin.
And a bunch of sales happen.
Talk about intoxicating.
I do not blame anyone for
getting high on that drug.
And then it gets tough because if
I'm right, that what was harvested
in that initial launch was all
the pent up, the latent demand.
And if there was a big reciprocal
debt paid by the community to
the creator in that moment.
That all makes sense to me.
But what happens to that creator in
the moment when she's so high on the
drug, that is a successful launch is
she decides that that's the new normal.
And she says, this was amazing.
I think I'll launch every quarter
or sometimes if she's really
aggressive and optimistic, she'll
say, I'm going to launch every month.
And as I was thinking about that
this morning while I was writing,
I was envisioning myself as sort of
like the grizzled combat veteran,
like taking a long draw on a stubby
cigarette with shaky fingers and
saying, uh, it's always the new ones
who think they can launch every month.
You'll get killed.
You know, I'm very dramatic, but
it, it's this incredibly naive
position to take where you say, I did
this once and it's the new normal.
And what she's doing is she's saying that
the launch happened Not just in the launch
window, which was, you know, whatever
two weeks or seven days She thinks that
the launch Was created in the couple of
months leading up to the launch window
But that's where she goes wrong The launch
wasn't created in those couple of months.
It was created in the Months or
more likely years where she was
building pent up demand and building
reciprocity with an audience.
And then it was harvested.
And most of the harvest
happened in that initial launch.
If we imagine this as an auditorium,
When she launched the auditorium was full
of enthusiastic people a Bunch of those
people in response to the call to action.
They stood up.
They took the action She wanted and
they left like they purchased So for
the purposes of this particular offer,
they're no longer in the auditorium So
the number of people in the auditorium
just shrunk and she thinks to herself,
well, there's still a bunch of
people in the auditorium, so they'll
probably buy next month when I launch.
But if someone has said no before,
they're more likely to say no again.
Now, does that mean a person who
has heard your offer a hundred times
won't buy on the hundred and first?
No, they absolutely might.
That will happen, but
it won't be the norm.
Um, if it were the norm, I would
have done a lot less comforting about
failed launches over the last 10 years.
What's closer to true is that they
say no, and then they say no again.
And now saying no is a habit.
And in order to stay internally
consistent, they have to keep saying no
because saying yes, where they said no
in the past is internally inconsistent.
And that's psychologically expensive too.
So you might still have a bunch of
those people in the auditorium, but
with each successive offer, they
become less likely to purchase because
that's the habit they've formed.
So each successive launch gets harder.
The coach feels like she has to do a more
aggressive song and dance every time more
features, more bonuses, longer programs.
She's really hustling one on one calls.
More time on social media live.
And she's asking herself,
this is the way she says it.
This used to be so easy.
Why is it so hard now
where it used to be easy?
And my answer based on having been
witnessed to hundreds of launches
is that it was easy exactly once.
But it was such a strong emotional
experience that we anchor to it as
though it should be the new normal.
Now, is it always just once?
No, I've watched clients
launch successfully sometimes
for two years, three years.
They do have to work each harder with
successive launches, both in the launch
and in the period before the launch where
they're trying to refill the auditorium.
We'll talk about that in a second.
But there's this psychological thing
that happens where a coach decides
that because it was easy to launch
once, that it should be kinda like
that every time, and it's just not.
Now here's where things can get
really ugly, and I'm not being
dramatic, I'm not being cynical.
What happens is at some point in these
launch cycles, she realizes that she's
got to refill that auditorium and
again, she goes out into the world and
again, she is funneled pun intended
again, toward the idea that Facebook ads
are the way to refill the auditorium.
Facebook ads are the key
to successful launches.
And then that becomes true kind of for
a while because here's the next thing
that happens in the audience She's able
to take the existing audience and she's
able to create Similar audiences and
campaigns for those audiences in Facebook.
So if her warm audience, her organic
audience was the lowest hanging
fruit, a comparable audience on
one of the major platforms is
the second lowest hanging fruit.
And you can harvest it with a good
Facebook ads team, good creative
and using the words that were
resonant with your organic audience.
You take those same words and you use
them with An audience on Facebook and that
works and it can work very profitably for
a while What what it's allowing you to
do is take all the time That you spent
building the organic audience and compress
that time frame By going to facebook and
saying give me people who are like this
and then facebook can And now you've
created not quite the same amount of
reciprocity not quite the same enthusiasm
You But the people are similar enough that
you can Generate some reciprocity and some
enthusiasm in a much shorter time window
and that works for a while And that's a
huge relief to the person who's maybe her
second launch and her third launch didn't
go as well Oh, but her fourth launch
driven by these Facebook warm audiences.
Now that did pretty well.
Okay, this is the new normal.
What a relief but She notices that her
paid launches her advertising driven
launches They start to get harder, too
And then I hear people saying things
like well the ads aren't working like
they were working this is a classic
mental error where people think
that Facebook is this bottomless
well, this fountain of ideal clients.
And it, and it seems logical because
there are hundreds of millions.
I mean, I know there are billions of
people on Facebook or there probably
are, but there are hundreds of
millions of people who maybe fit their.
Demographic, financial
profiles such that they could
theoretically purchase the product.
But what you find is that with each
successive launch, you're harvesting more
and more of the people who might say yes.
And you're also growing the number
of people who have heard the
offer over and over and are more
and more willing to ignore it.
They're habituated to ignore it.
So then we get into another phase
and this is the phase where we
go from people who are kind of
warm to people who are more cold.
And we're still trying to drive
this through paid advertising.
Well then what happens?
It turns out that when you aggressively
advertise to people who don't have any
built in affinity and by aggressively,
, I don't mean negatively or deceptively
the same message that was so appealing
and so welcomed by the people who have
any degree of familiarity with you.
That same message will feel
aggressive, scammy, pushy to someone
who has no familiarity with you.
And if we get offline and think
about our regular everyday lives,
of course, that's how it works.
Think about saying the
same thing to someone who.
Nose likes and trust you, somebody
with whom you've built rapport.
You have long term trust and then
compare the idea of saying that same
thing to a stranger on the street.
Of course, they're going to react
differently, but as your ability to
spend more and more on ads stays high
and your willingness stays high, but the
people that you're able to access are
colder and colder to you, you don't just
get much higher costs per conversion.
You also get hate.
And I've tested this hypothesis by
talking to a few people and they've said,
well, we're kind of moving into more of
a cold audience phase in the business.
And I say, Hey, I have this idea that
as you get more and more into cold
audiences, you get more and more hate
in the comments, the comments on the
ads, the comments on the content.
And again, I don't have a massive
sample size, but I have multiple
people saying, you know what?
That's absolutely right.
You can't figure it out.
We're saying the same things in the same
way that landed so well in the past.
And now they're drawing all this hate.
I think there's a few
factors at play there.
I think the first time you did it, and
especially in a warm audience, not only
had you built rapport and trust, not only
was there reciprocity where they felt
some indebtedness to you for all your
hard work and serving them great content.
I think that as we become more and more
successful, we start to look the part.
Accidentally.
So we, we accidentally become
less relatable as we succeed more.
, if I've succeeded with launching,
especially over a period of years,
I am naturally less relatable in the
way that I look, the way that I dress,
the way that I talk, it just happens.
And I'm also taking that and giving
it to a less familiar group of people,
which can compound on itself to where
you get this effect of having a bunch
of people in the comments hating.
It's so confusing and it's,
it's really hurtful, by the way.
I mean, I, I am of the opinion that
there are certain online creators who
behave in a way that yes, they probably
should get some difficult comments,
but on average, I think we have good
people with good intentions, trying
to do good things who are confused and
hurt by the fact that they are getting
just demolished in the comment sections
on ads and on posts and et cetera.
But I think it's just because we want
to launch too frequently, too big.
We have the tyranny of making more
and all of that is combining so that
we have to be aggressive with people
who don't know us that well yet.
And you might pull it off once,
but each successive time that you
attempt to pull it off, whatever the
financial results are, I can promise
you that the mental emotional toll
that it takes on you will grow.
It will get harder and harder to psych
yourself up for the whole process.
And it'll be very confusing because
you're saying I'm spending more
than I've ever spent to get worse
results than I've ever gotten.
and I haven't even acknowledged the fact
that there are macroeconomic factors here.
If the economy is, is a certain way, then.
That is a factor.
If that's part of the public
consciousness, if the way people are
talking to their friends over lunch
and the way they're talking after
church and the way they hang out in
their Facebook groups, that general
discourse is going to make its way into
a person's psychology and it's going
to impact how they react to your offer.
So of course the macro
economic factors are at play.
We're almost four years
removed from COVID lockdowns.
I think there are still
coaches who are pining.
For what it was like to be launching
programs and products during and
after COVID lockdowns, when all of
us were sitting in our houses with
nothing to do it was the absolute
heyday for selling programs online.
That's a real macroeconomic thing.
We don't need to pretend it's not.
Okay.
So where does that leave us?
Well, in the worst case
scenario, it leaves a coach
who is exhausted, exhausted.
Discouraged, whose confidence is destroyed
because she cannot make sense of the fact
that the same fundamental set of behaviors
and the same good intention to serve is
now not only not producing results in the
way that it did once or twice or three
times, but she's even getting hate for it.
she's so confused.
Why am I getting hate today for the
thing that I was, people were shouting
my name from the rooftops two, three
years ago, what's going on here?
Well, you didn't do anything
wrong as in unethical.
I mean, you might've done
some unethical things.
I can't, I can't say universally
people are ethical and have good
intentions, but my experience is most
people are ethical and they have a
real desire to do good in the world.
Sometimes the pressure of trying
to make a sale today will.
Push their behavior into a place that
they used to say was definitely unethical.
And now they're kind of like, well, I
got to make these sales and it sneaks in.
But on average, I think
people are good, ethical.
I think they have the right intentions.
They want to help.
And I think it's very confusing.
So they've got this confusion, this
lost confidence, they have low cash.
And in some cases they have a lot of debt.
And if anybody thinks I'm talking
about one person, I'm not, I'm
talking about a bunch of people
with whom I have direct interaction.
And it is for all these reasons that
if I stop here, I would say the launch
based business model attempts to make
too many sales too fast, too often.
It violates principles of human
relationships and a human natural,
healthy human decision making.
And as a result, it ends up
ruining the lives of all parties.
That's where I got to put myself
in check and say, that's not true.
Necessarily the case.
So in what scenario could a coach
launch and not only have it not ruin
her life, but actually have it enhance
her experience of her business, create
great financial results, strengthen
the community that's around her.
That's gotta be the goal, right?
Why would anything else be the goal?
Now, how might that happen?, the thing
that got me even thinking along these
lines was the other day I was talking to
the same client whose, whose most recent
launch had succeeded, but had been harder
than any other launch previously and
less profitable than any previous launch.
And she said the most fascinating
and compelling thing to me.
She said, I have the strong sense that
our community loves it when we launch.
And I said, okay, you got to tell me more.
This is foreign to me.
I don't even know how to process
what you just said, because I'm
so, I admitted to her, I'm so
cynical about the launch model.
I'm so negative about it.
And I confess to her, I haven't
even shown you a 10th or a
hundredth of my negativity.
I can stomp around my house, slamming
doors, slamming drawers, shaking my fists.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
My poor wife has heard
me say a million times.
She's laughing and she said, no,
listen, when we launch, we infuse the
community with all this great energy and
enthusiasm and focus on a specific topic.
It's just this great thing.
We, we just all rally to an
idea and to a timeframe and
the comment sections light up.
And About how great this is about how
much fun we're having about how much
growth we're experiencing And I said,
okay, then if we're gonna launch it
all I want us to launch like that Now
where she and I didn't get is how?
She can feel confident that it's always
gonna be that way meaning That the
community will always love her launches
and be energized her launches As I've
been thinking about it in the day
since I have a couple of hypotheses.
You can decide whether my
hypotheses are of any use to you.
My first hypothesis would be that
launches have to happen less often.
However often you think
you can or should launch.
I have basically irrefutable data
that says it's not that often.
If you think you can launch quarterly,
I would say it might be twice a year.
If you think you can launch
twice a year, I would say it's
probably closer to annually.
And if you just do that, then you at
least give yourself a longer season
in which to make a bunch of deposits
into the emotional bank accounts of
old friends and new acquaintances.
It's an opportunity to
reestablish that latent demand.
It's an opportunity to support word
of mouth marketing in your business.
Do you know in what business it's hard
to have a lot of word of mouth marketing
it's one where when I recommend your
business, I have to disclaim about
your business before I recommend it.
I have to say, look, he's
got really good stuff.
You just have to be prepared
for a lot of sales messages.
Because nobody likes a
lot of sales messages.
Nobody likes a highly
transactional interaction.
So even when the stuff is good,
we feel like we have to disclaim.
But if I back off on my launch
schedule, now I'm making it easier
for the person who wants to refer
me to say, I love this person.
Their stuff is so good.
I love their vibe.
I love their way of being.
And they do sell sometimes,
but it's not that often.
And to be honest, I kind
of like the way they sell.
I, they do these launch, they do these
challenges or whatever it's called.
They're kind of fun.
It, it allows for word of mouth
marketing in a way that aggressive,
frequent launching just doesn't.
And that's my opinion.
And I wish there were someone here
who disagreed with me and I would
debate them actually until I died.
Like I will die on this hill.
Now, beyond launching less
frequently, I would say we'd be
wise to launch less aggressively.
I would say that we'd be
wise to relax a little bit
and allow for the fact that if I'm
back in that auditorium, the more
aggressive I am with today's offer.
The more strongly the person
who says no will react to me.
So i'm giving them a big ask and they're
having to give me a proportionately
big no And that no will be harder for
them to overcome on subsequent offers
So if i'm a little gentler in
the initial ask I still I still
make invitations directly.
I still say I want you to do this
and here's why and here's how I think
It benefits you But I don't try to
Pull on the FOMO lever quite as hard.
Then that person might
stay in the auditorium.
They might be ready for a future offer
and they might invite other people
into the auditorium to, . Speaking
of FOMO, I do want to talk about FOMO.
I think there's two major
psychological forces.
In these two approaches.
So in the approach where I launch less
frequently and less aggressively and where
my hardest work is outside the launch
window and not inside the launch window.
In other words, where I'm spending
every day thinking about how can
I be useful and of service today?
How can I make big deposits into
emotional bank accounts today?
For me, that's an approach
whose goal emotion is gratitude.
In other words, I want to give so
much that they feel grateful and
that their gratitude will kick off
all these other good behaviors.
I think a low aggression, low
frequency approach is more geared
toward gratitude in the audience.
I think a high aggression, high
frequency approach is more geared
toward fear in the audience.
And that's what my bonuses actually
are meant to do, by the way.
My bonuses are not.
Intended to actually build the value.
And I know you're good, ethical people.
And you're going to be like,
no, Mark, that's not true.
I want to make the, I want to
make the offer irresistible.
Well, the question becomes
why is the offer irresistible?
Is it because of all the value
in this thing that they probably
won't consume anyway, meaning
all these bonuses or whatever.
No, the truer thing is that adding
all those bonuses is designed.
To give them more to lose.
If you don't sign up by this date
and that time you lose these bonuses.
So we're triggering fear of loss.
Loss aversion is a powerful
psychological force in the human brain.
The study in the one book said
that people are more afraid to
lose a hundred dollars and they are
excited to gain a hundred dollars.
So I think an aggressive high frequency
launch approach is built on fear.
And I think a gentler, lower frequency
launch approach is built on gratitude.
In which one of those approaches would
you like to spend most of your time?
Um if you acknowledge the psychology
at play here, and if you take the long
view, and if you decide to launch less
frequently and less aggressively, and
if you make gratitude the emotional
foundation of your approach as opposed
to fear, and for those of you who
think that it's not based in fear.
Sorry, a countdown timer is
not a gratitude mechanism.
A countdown timer is a fear mechanism,
but if you'll launch less aggressively,
less frequently, and if you'll base
your efforts in the desire to generate
gratitude instead of tactics that
are effective at producing fear.
You will make selling
easier in the long run.
Short term results may suffer a little,
but you create an opportunity for
long term results that may go away
completely if you're too aggressive and
too frequent in pulling the fear lever.
So can we launch?
Yes, we can launch.
Do I personally have a desire to launch?
Yes, we can launch.
Given everything I've seen, not
yet, but I want to thank my client.
She knows who she is.
She might listen to this.
She has cracked the door
on the whole idea for me.
She's helped me to rediscover a little
bit of curiosity so that I can say there
may be a scenario in the future where
I have a training, where I have a book,
where I have something that I think
lends itself well to a launch window.
Thanks to her.
I would say I would
consider whether to do it.
I would ask myself, can I do it?
Can I do it in a way
that's pro relationship?
That's pro gratitude.
That's anti fear.
And if I can great, maybe it can
be of real service, but the FOMO
driven version of this ruins lives.
The only winners in the FOMO driven
version of this are the platforms,
Facebook, Instagram, Tik TOK,
only they win in that scenario.
The buyers and the
sellers both lose net net.
Do some people end up happy?
Yes.
Some people end up happy.
Do most people end up happy?
In my opinion, they do not.
So I hope I have given a.
Reasoned considered view of this
particular approach to making sales
at the very least what I would say is
Proceed with great care and caution if
you think launching is your next step
And I will catch you in the next one