Get monthly coaching and support to FINALLY gain momentum in your business without burning out in the process. 🦄 Learn more about WAIM Unlimited.
Let’s back up for just a moment and talk about where our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) journey began…
In October of 2017, we had a 3+ hour meeting where we brainstormed what would eventually become Wandering Aimfully. The two biggest parts of that brainstorming session were 1) combining our previous businesses together into one entity with an ethos you could get behind and 2) moving to a monthly membership (MRR) model and away from selling individual products.
We whiteboard’ed the heck out of that whiteboard!
You may already know how #1 (ethos) turned out since you’re reading this! If you don’t, feel free to check out our About page.
For #2 (membership model), we wanted to move from selling individual digital products to a membership model. We’d experimented with this in 2015-2016 as BuyMyFuture and in 2016-2018 with BuyOurFuture. With Wandering Aimfully, we wanted to try to capture more consistent and predictable monthly income (the coveted, MRR).
Selling our Wandering Aimfully Membership as an ongoing monthly membership product was a great experiment. And, all things considered, we DID grow our MRR from $0 per month in May 2018 to ~$9,000 per month in May 2019 (not bad, at all).
However, a monthly membership model, one where customers have to think about committing to pay each month, in perpetuity, is a BIG ask. And as we saw over the course of 12 months, a high percentage of our monthly members didn’t want to be paying us monthly forever.
Over a 12-month period, we sold 146 Wandering Aimfully Monthly Memberships but ended up losing 45 of those paying members. That’s a 31% membership churn, which isn’t good.
If you want to dive deep into the last 12 months of our business and our MRR adventures, feel free to read our extremely detailed “Journey to 330” post.
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but when we sold our BuyMyFuture and BuyOurFuture products, we only lost 4% of our customers (using a lifetime pricing model). That 27% difference was enough to get us to take a hard look at continuing to use a monthly membership model or to switch Wandering Aimfully over to a lifetime pricing model.
When we compared our monthly vs lifetime membership, the numbers were pretty damn clear.
The huge caveat here is that we don’t have 30 months of monthly membership data to compare with. That being said, we don’t need the full 30 months to make the right decision for us (we know what data we have NOW and aren’t interested in waiting around any longer to make a change).
The MRR and ARR numbers speak for themselves but when I broke down the customers acquired per month to reach each set of numbers it’s pretty incredible that it’s only a difference of TWO customers! Only needing two more customers to have 4x the MRR?? That’s crazy!
We’re 100% aware of the fact that this comparison isn’t perfect but it was enough data to show us the writing on the wall. Plus, there’s a whole other side of this equation.
When we sold our BuyMy/BuyOurFuture product with lifetime pricing I knew the person buying that product was committed to us. They were essentially raising their hand and saying, “YES! I believe in you Zooks… for life! 🙋🏻‍♀️”
When we sold our WAIM monthly memberships these past 12 months it felt more like, “Yes, I believe in you Zooks, but it’s probably temporary. 🤷🏻‍♂️” We absolutely LOVE our monthly members but there’s a certain reality based on the data and the high churn percentage.
Just that emotional shift alone was a factor worth exploring when it came to the idea of switching from monthly to lifetime pricing.
This was another big AH-HA moment when trying to decide to switch from monthly to lifetime pricing.
Because our cancelation rate was so low with our BuyMy/BuyOurFuture products, we had to spend a lot less time focused on retaining customers. We didn’t have to prove our value every month to a customer who was committing for life.
As opposed to our monthly membership customer, with each month they had to evaluate if the membership was still worth paying for. At the same time, we felt a bit like we were on a never-ending hamster wheel of content and product creation to retain our monthly customers.
Basically, us.
Keeping up with MRR is a royal pain in the ass when you’re selling something like a membership community and a suite of tools. It’s not a utility like, say, a software product is. It’s harder for someone to convince themselves to continue to pay monthly forever. Meaning, you have to spend a lot more time trying to keep someone a paying subscriber when they can’t see the immediate monthly value.
Starting May 2019 we are switching our monthly membership to a lifetime membership offer. The total investment for a Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership is $2,000.
Our customers get to decide how they want to pay for that membership. We offer a flexible monthly pricing plan ($100) or a buy-it-now option ($2,000).
We do not penalize people and charge you more if someone wants to pay via monthly payments. We also aren’t playing any psychological pricing games charging $99/month or $1,999 dollars.
How our Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership is different is that once you hit $2,000 you NEVER PAY US AGAIN. Ever. You will continue to get everything we make in the future at no extra cost. Be that in two years or 10 years, you’ll continue to get value from us… forever!
You get maximum value from us and we don’t have to continue thinking about monthly payments from you.
This is a bit of a tomato/tom-ah-to situation. As we outlined in the comparison above of the lifetime membership versus monthly membership, the revenue we generate still comes in on a monthly basis.
The big shift with our lifetime pricing model is that the lifetime value of a customer’s MRR is defined: It’s 20 months ($2,000). As opposed to our monthly membership which was indefinite and solely based on the customer’s decision to stay subscribed. This graph shows our average customer lifetime value (LTV) for the past 12 months:
Aren’t beautiful charts just great?
Anytime you can see an increase of 44% in business, you take it! If every member we sign up from this point forward has a lifetime value of $2,000, as opposed to $1,277, it’s a WIN.
In the grand scheme of things, there wasn’t a TON of stuff for us to change:
The biggest change moving forward will be how we sell the Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership.
I talk about this hybrid marketing and selling strategy starting at the 21:28 mark in this unedited meeting we recorded:
We’re going to continue using content creation as our main form of marketing. Our podcast, YouTube videos, Instagram updates, helpful articles, and hopefully some fun and weird stuff scattered in the mix.
Now that we’ve broken down the changes to our business model it’s a good time to see if this fancy Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership is the right fit for you, dear reader!
Is your answer YESSS to any of the following questions:
If you read through those and were physically nodding your head up and down, then we believe a Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership is right for you!
Running your own business is hard.
Creating your first product is hard.
Getting your first customer is hard.
Recording your first podcast episode is hard.
Sharing your art for the first time is hard.
Getting out of debt is hard.
Building systems and processes that continue to work for you is hard!
So many other things that have to do with owning your own business and generating revenue from your creative skills are just plain difficult to do alone.
But, you don’t have to do those things alone anymore. Whether you’re at the very beginning of your own entrepreneurial journey, or you simply want to start doing something with all that creative energy and all those ideas swirling around in your head, Wandering Aimfully is here to help.
If it was, not a single person would sit in traffic commuting to a soulless job. We’ve been there. We remember what is was like to spend hours in a car every day before podcasts existed (!), and constantly wonder if there was a way out of the grind of the 9-5 world.
We want to help you on your journey because we’ve been in your shoes (whether they’re loafers, dress shoes, or fancy heels – although, Jason is going to struggle big time in those heels).
We know what it feels like to want to chase a big dream. We remember feeling like we were meant to do something bigger than what a “normal” job had to offer.
It can feel damn lonely trying to chase your dreams. Your friends don’t get it. Your family thinks you’re crazy. Everyone you follow on social media is already succeeding and you feel completely stuck at the starting blocks.
That’s where we come in. That’s what we’ve spent the past 5+ years figuring out and working directly with thousands of creative folks just like you who want something more out of life (especially your work-life).
The Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership was created to help you earn more, so you can live more. Plain and simple we want to give you all the products, services, and knowledge you need to overcome any challenges that stand in your way. And most importantly, you’re joining a group of 500+ like-minded creative folks who are also on their own journeys. Oh, and we’re also in the Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership community, you know, if you enjoy chatting with us.
Learn everything you need to earn more with your talents including selling, business basics, branding, art, podcasting, writing, audience building, website design and more. These aren’t secondhand theories we read on other people’s blogs. We give you our real-world experience, lessons learned, and practical steps you can take right now to cultivate a wide skill set and avoid common mistakes. And as we create more resources, workshops, courses, etc in the future, you get those included and will never pay for them!
Knowledge is one thing, but it’s what you DO with that knowledge that counts. We’re ALL about taking action within Wandering Aimfully. You’ll take what you learn in our courses and video workshops and put them into practice with a suite of software products and step-by-step interactive roadmaps that will cut down on overwhelm and give you the clarity you need to start making real strides in your creative business. Included in your Lifetime Membership is a lifetime account to Teachery, the online course building software Jason created (which is $49/mo by itself!)
Want an accountability partner? Looking for someone who has experience with a problem you’re facing? This established community of amazing creative humans has your back. Think of Wandering Aimfully as group coaching, without all the pressure. Support and connection is the final piece of the entrepreneurial puzzle that will help you stay motivated and inspired to reach your business and life goals. That also means direct access to us whenever you need it, along with monthly live calls and behind the scenes videos.
One of the best parts about the Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership is that it’s not some shiny, new, unproven product. Since 2015 this creative community has evolved and grown. What started as BuyMyFuture, then turned into BuyOurFuture, is now the Wandering Aimfully Lifetime Membership and we want you to be part of it!
I’ve been writing launch emails since 2009, but until 2013, I didn’t even know they were called “launch emails.” Maybe you don’t know that term, either? That’s totally okay.
Super scientific, right?
(This is apparently how serious things get when I’m writing launch emails)
There are all kinds of resources out there that’ll tell you how to sell your products in 11 simple steps, or which 5 power words every successful marketer uses to DRIVE MASSIVE SALES, but ehh…that’s not what we’re doing here today. This is an article about how *I* write launch emails, but instead of just theory, I’m going to give you a personal case study, too. (You’re welcome.)
Everyone loves some social proof, so here’s mine: This exact formula for writing launch emails has generated over $500,000 in revenue for my various products and services. Yay for validation!
Before we begin, let’s take a short trip to DisclaimerVille:
This launch email formula is not guaranteed to work. And it’s not going to make up for a crappy product or service offering. But it is the formula I use and have used to build a sustainable online business over the last four years, and it should give you an accurate, honest, and slightly sarcastic framework to go of off when writing your next launch email. Once we’ve identified the 7 steps, I’m going to show them to you live and in action in a launch email I wrote last year.
Ready for the exact steps (and the sarcasm)? Let’s do it! Oh, and I’ll share examples of all of the steps further down in the article.
This is where you tell a story about how you’ve launched or started something in the past and had success with it. You can’t make the success story sound too great, or it won’t feel relatable. But you also can’t share a mediocre success, because that won’t inspire your potential buyers to pull out their wallets and throw money at you. There’s a fine line when it comes to sharing a story that’s approachable but also motivating.
Next, you need to tug on your potential buyer’s heart strings a bit. You can tell another story here, something that could be your reader’s very own story, and/or you can say things like:
Again, you want this section to be something the buyer can relate to.
This is where you want to start to lead them into whatever the thing is that you’re selling. You tease it a bit, and you make sure to tie any of your stories to this impending product and how it’s going to help solve their problems (as it solved your own).
You don’t just say, “Here’s the thing. Go buy it!” No, no. You explain the value of the thing. You explain all the components of it. You show the wallet/purse holder why your thing is worth their dollars, and how much effort you’ve put into it. Sometimes, this section of the email can get a bit longer and more detailed because, again, you want to show as much value as possible.
Boom. Buy the thing! It’s normally priced at X dollars, but if you (the potential buyer) buy within a certain amount of hours you get it for 50% OFF! Or, if you buy before tomorrow, you can acquire a nice shiny surprise. Or… this is a super-limited purchase opportunity, and if you don’t buy before Z-O’clock PM EST, you’ll miss out until next year (or—gasp—forever)!
This is where you lay it on thick. You say things like:
This is the place in the launch email where you can also refer back to heart-strings-tugging story as a reminder.
Make it happen! Click this link. Pay this amount of money. Get the thing!
Okay, okay, it’s a bit over the top the way I’ve written out those launch email steps and examples.
But truthfully, this is a basic blueprint for a sales article or email that compels people to take action and buy your stuff. Strip out all my sarcasm, and this formula works.
How do I know? Because I use exactly this process every time I write my own launch emails. I estimate I’ve written 15-20 of them using this formula, and it works when you do it intentionally. Like I said, it’s not guaranteed to work (even for me!), but it’s a solid formula to get you from 0 to launch. And truthfully? I’ve never sent a launch email that didn’t result in some amount of sales.
(Note: You wouldn’t typically see the numbering in a real email.)
Some of you may not know this about me (most of you probably do), but in the five years between 2008 and 2013, I made my living wearing t-shirts. I literally sold the space on my chest as advertising, along with my ability to make videos on YouTube, share about companies on social media, and accumulate a dedicated following that cared about what I had to say.
Now, I didn’t realize it when I started IWearYourShirt, but one year into this novel idea, when I officially got paid for the 365th day, one full year of shirt-wearing, it finally hit me that people weren’t buying ad space on just any t-shirt.
People were paying me because of me personality.
It was the unique spin that I brought to every piece of content I created — my jokes, my weird sense of humor, my strange ability to remember personal details about the strangers that showed up to my daily show, my confidence.
Once I made that realization, from that point on I started to use each and every bit of my own uniqueness as leverage in my business. Not just a small amount of leverage, like say, a crowbar. But a gigantic wrecking ball of leverage that swung at every twist and turn of my career.
That wrecking ball of leverage, which was just me being as authentically me as possible, led to over $1,000,000 in revenue and countless media appearances. I’m 100% certain that I never would have had the chance to appear on The Today Show or the CBS Evening News if I wasn’t a bit weird, quirky, and silly. It’s that personality that I’ve used to bolster the success of my subsequent projects like BuyMyFuture and SponsorMyBook.
Now here’s what I want you to take away from this realization of mine:
We all have skills. We all have the ability to create. As human beings we’re all fairly similar except for one glaring variable: our personalities.
Unfortunately we’re taught throughout our lives that fitting in is more desirable than standing out. Yet I’ve come to find that some of the people I admire most are the people who let their personalities shine through in everything they do (I’m willing to bet you feel the same way). That doesn’t mean these people are loud and obnoxious, it just means they embrace their quirks and what they believe in. The majority of those admirable people are weird, say bizarre things, and have personality traits that don’t allow them to fit the standard mold.
I want you to figure out what I figured out: Being your authentic self, embracing what’s unique about you, and letting your personality shine through gets you way more opportunities in life. It aligns you with the right people. And it can help you make you exponentially more money.
I already knew about the wrecking ball of personality leverage in 2009, but that wrecking ball morphed into something even bigger in 2014 when I met Paul Jarvis and read his Write Your Damn Book e-book. As I flipped through the digital pages, I learned so much about who Paul was as a person.
He was vegan.
He had pet rats.
He got tattoos on his knuckles.
He made fun of himself for being Canadian.
And he cursed, a ton.
But all those things drew me in! I wasn’t reading some boring e-book, I was learning how to write from someone that seemed like a super-interesting person.
I reached out to Paul after finishing his e-book and then buying his paperback book Everything I Know. After a few random emails, we hopped on Skype. After a few times chatting on Skype, we decided to kick off a project together. Every time I talked to Paul or read any of his writing it just made me want to increase the size of my personality wrecking ball.
I already knew it could work for me, but meeting him showed me I was only scratching the surface of putting my personality into all aspects of my business.
That’s where How Dare You (our most recent project) comes in.
How Dare You is the culmination of our experiences pouring our personal brands into every fiber of our businesses. There are two ways we want to help you start building your own personality wrecking ball:
1. Free bootcamp: Sign up for our 100% free Personal Branding Bootcamp. It’s being held on January 26 at 11am PST. You’ll walk away with actionable things you can do right now to add more of YOU into everything you do. Over 650 people have already signed up!
2. Get the full Workshop: Skip the bootcamp and just jump right into the full How Dare You Workshop. A workshop that includes five video lessons, 13 additional bonus video walk-through lessons, practical workbooks (that don’t suck), bad jokes from Paul and me, and a bunch more.
The workshop is $149, BUT, we’re doing an action-takers (and rat people) discount of $101 OFF for the next week! Use the code actionarmy to get $101 OFF the workshop!
(The $101 OFF offer will go away next Friday. Poof! It’ll be gone for-ev-er.)
I want you to see the benefits of putting more of your personality into every aspect of your business. I’ve seen the amazing rewards of doing that, and I believe every entrepreneur, small business owner, and creative person can benefit from doing the same.
Sign up for the free bootcamp or buy the full workshop (at $101 OFF). Let’s put more YOU into everything you do.
Some of you reading this article may have read that exact email when it went out to my previous Action Army email list last year. And some of you joined that workshop as a result. That’s just one example of how I know this formula works.
There’s nothing fake or contrived about a great launch email. It’s just true and valuable information structured in a compelling way and offering value to your customer.
The key element you may have noticed in this example is storytelling. Step 1 is the longest of all 7, and that’s on purpose:
The more relatable you are, and the more you can make your potential buyer feel heard and understood, the better chance you have that they’ll shove money in your bank account.
If you’re looking for the perfect success story for how to dominate Kickstarter and get your project fully funded, look no further than Web Smith and Kevin Lavelle from Mizzen+Main.
Their Kickstarter campaign for an athletic sport coat (aka: performance blazer) raised over $25,000 in the first few hours and ended up netting 3x their funding goal: $54,568.
If you’ve ever thought about doing a crowdfunding project, follow every move they made (and steal with pride!). This applies to Kickstarter, Indiegogo, other crowdfunding platforms, and even product launches on your own website.
The Mizzen+Main Kickstarter project launched at 8am on a Tuesday morning. As of 1pm on that same day, it was already over 100% funded. At the end of their first day they had double their initial funding goal. Here are some of the reasons their Kickstarter project was such an “overnight success” and how yours can be too.
But Jason, I’m starting my brand with Kickstarter. I want the world to meet me for the first time through my crowdfunding campaign. WRONG. No you don’t. And you know why? Because only about .001% of crowdfunding projects have zero existing brand, launch a crowdfunding campaign, and have it turn out to be successful. You want to have a much better shot at being successful right? Work on building a solid brand first like Mizzen+Main did (two and half years of work). They have a great logo, an easy to use website, they’ve sold products and received feedback from users, they’re active on social media, and…..
This sounds counterintuitive right? You’re thinking about using Kickstarter so you can build your first customer base. WRONG. Again, if you don’t have an existing brand, your barrier to entry is huge when it comes to crowdfunding. Even the Kickstarter FAQ says that “the majority of funding initially comes from the fans and friends of each project.” If you want to hedge your bets with your crowdfunding project, and you should, build a customer base first and then use a platform like Kickstarter as a marketing tool.
Full disclosure, I’ve known Web Smith from Mizzen+Main since 2011. We met playing pick-up basketball at SXSW and have stayed in touch ever since. We’ve both had other projects, have been busy, had our own lives, but we’ve stayed connected. When the Mizzen+Main Kickstarter launched Web shared it with me and I immediately backed it. Honestly, I didn’t need any of their awesome looking shirts or the cool looking 0-5 Blazer, but I believe in Web and wanted to support him in any way I could. I’m sure Web and Kevin both reached out to their friends when the project kicked off. I did the same thing when I launched SponsorMyBook. There were about 30-50 people that I emailed before the SponsorMyBook website went live and I shared the project with them. Why…..?
A quick stat directly from Kickstarter: 80% of projects that raised more than 20% of their goal were successfully funded. By getting some early momentum it shows other potential backers that they should also back the project. It’s the same thing bartenders do at bars/restaurants. They do what’s called “stuffing the tip jar” with their own money. Meaning, it already looks like people have tipped them, so when customers come to the bar they feel compelled to tip as well. Haven’t you ever seen an empty tip jar and thought “Hmmm… I don’t want to be the first or only person to tip these people. Why hasn’t anyone else?” After that, you start to wonder about the quality of product or service they’re offering. Early momentum is key with any project launch and should be a big part of your planning.
All-too-often people start Kickstarter campaigns with incredibly lofty funding goals. $10,000, $40,000, $100,000! Kickstarter says that out of 55,815 successfully funded projects, 48,949 of them raised $19,999 or less. And out of those 48,949 projects, 41,485 of them had funding goals of $9,999 or less. As soon as your goal is over $10,000 your chances of getting successfully funded decrease greatly. And if your goal is over $20,000, your chances are extremely low. The point here is that while you may want to raise $50,000 or $100,000, you should start with the ABSOLUTE bare minimum (and I mean minimum) amount of money you need to get your project going. My good buddy Clay Hebert is a crowdfunding expert and has helped 33 crowdfunding projects raise nearly $3M. I’d highly recommend signing up for his upcoming Crowdfunding Hacks course if you’re thinking about crowdfunding.
This goes along with getting momentum and building relationships. Media folks like talking about things that are interesting. If your crowdfunding project helps them write a great story that gets shared, it’s a win for them. And, if they write about your crowdfunding project and it gets fully funded (or way over funded), they look good for writing about it early. Reach out to any press contacts you may have and share your crowdfunding project. It’s especially good timing if you do it after the first day when you have some solid momentum rolling (go get ’em Web and Kevin!).
I’ve watched countless Kickstarter and Indiegogo videos that were just plain awful. Kickstarter is not the place you should be sharing the first video you’ve ever been in or ever filmed/edited. I completely understand if you’re bootstrapping and can’t spend thousands of dollars on video production. However, you can find college kids at a local university who are budding videographers and looking for work to practice on. And hey, if you want to film it yourself, that’s totally fine, just practice, practice, practice, and practice more. Get incredibly comfortable with what you’re saying and watch your video with other people to get their real reactions. If they get uncomfortable watching you, why was it? What can you learn from their feedback? Personally, I would look at the cost of your Kickstarter video as part of the initial amount of money you’re trying to raise. If you watched Mizzen+Main’s video, I think you’ll agree that it was money incredibly well spent!
Mizzen+Main did a brilliant thing by not doing a Kickstarter project two years ago when they first started their men’s clothing company. Instead, they spent two-plus years creating products and learning along the way. I bet even Kevin and Web would admit that the first products they made weren’t perfect and needed tweaking and redoing. Whatever the product is that you’re trying to get funding for, make sure it’s something great. And like any business or product you sell, it helps if your product solves a problem.
I backed a project on Kickstarter in December 2012 and didn’t receive anything from the company behind the campaign for over 2 1/2 years. Yowzers! This seems to be a common theme with Kickstarter projects, especially tech related ones. While I was trying to be patient and understanding, I always wondered why it took so long? I never ended up getting that product and eventually asked for a refund.
It may not seem like a huge deal to make your customers wait, but I’d be willing to bet a customer that gets the product they backed in a timely fashion is way more likely to purchase more products from that company and be a brand evangelist. An example of people not being happy about waiting is the pre-funded Lockitron project. You can ruin your brand’s reputation if you don’t deliver in a reasonable schedule. Mizzen+Main delivered the performance blazer within their initial delivery timeline (even beating it by a few weeks!).
My hat goes off to Web and Kevin. Not only have they built a business doing what they love, they’ve created a loyal customer base that was primed and ready to support their Kickstarter project. Learn from what they’ve done, and don’t go all-or-nothing on crowdfunding. Put in the work ahead of time and use crowdfunding as a marketing tool, that can also generate revenue and build your customer list.