How To Succeed in Zero To Launch - Amazon S3...How To Succeed in Zero To Launch Successful Strategies From Graduates of IWT 2 If you’re reading this, then congratulations. You’re

How To Succeed in Zero To Launch

Successful Strategies From Graduates of IWT

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If you’re reading this, then congratulations. You’re among the creme de la creme who’re just as motivated as you are to launch (and re-launch) a successful online business. As our emotionless loving surrogate Asian father has put it, we’ve got:

A proven step-by-step formula to to grow a multi-million-dollar online business.

“But if we’ve got a proven step-by-step formula...then why would we need a How To Succeed document?”

Ah, great question furry eye-browed grasshoppa. It was a question I’d asked myself when requested by the big R to put this together with the help of IWT graduates.

The Purpose of This Document

Help you create the best business you possibly can by learning from the challenges others have overcome. Within, they share their biggest wins, obstacles, how they overcame them and most importantly, how you can too.

Enjoy!

Welcome

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Contents

Positioning Switch From “Free Flights” To Aspirational Getaways

I considered giving up entirely on ZTL after my two “best” ideas flopped quickly”

“Made my first sale based on the ZTL material! No website, no marketing material, nothing.”

“With ZTL, You don’t have the urgency of a job you have to show up to on time. So how do you get it done?”

“Talking To 3 People In Person Taught Me To Better Qualify My Audience”

“Delivering a Product is Win-Win for both Parties -- Something people are grateful to have.”

“The specific language that your students, prospects, etc is invaluable for gaining insights into their burning desires.”

“Trust the system. Be patient. I’m slowly getting it. I hope this helps someone else.”

“Why Negative Feedback Can Be EXTREMELY Misleading and What To Do About It”

Most of us are stuck in the realm of what we know, but it can be very profitable to explore the rest of the market.

“Without the ZTL material I would have either assumed that no one was interested in the idea or that everyone was interested.”

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Disclaimer

The information provided in this guide is for informational purposes only and is NOT produced in any part by Ramit Sethi or I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

This information is provided with the knowledge that the publisher and author(s) do not offer any legal or other professional advice.

Every effort has been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there may be typographical and or content errors.

Therefore, this book should serve only as a general guide and not as the ultimate source of subject information.

No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this guide are the property of their respective owners.

Users of this guide are advised to do their own research when it comes to making business decisions and all information, products, services that have been provided should be independently verified by your own qualified professionals.

The author(s) and publisher shall have no liability or responsibility to any person or entity regarding any loss or damage incurred, or alleged to have incurred, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book.

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Positioning Switch From “Free Flights” To Aspirational Getaways

Alexander BarronZero To Launch Graduate (Beta)

Before ZTL, I was working on an online business related to free flights/travel hacking.

I managed to get about 70 people on a list, but these were all low quality leads. They had small goals like flying from Florida to Canada to see their “true love.”

These people would never buy my products or services. Why would they pay me $50 to $150 for a product or service to get them a free flight that doesn’t even cost that much? These were people who just wanted free stuff, and had small goals. I can’t help these people.

Ramit helped me switch positioning to focus on people with more aspirational travel dreams.

I started using the word “getaway” instead of “free flights.” I started talking about using frequent flyer miles to “vacation like a CEO in First Class.”

This switch in language totally changed who my customers were.

Within weeks, I was attracting wealthy people who had aspirational travel dreams like going to Japan in First Class, or flying to Africa in Business Class to visit their son doing charity work. One of my clients even lives part of the year on The World luxury cruise ship that perpetually circles the globe.

These people understand and pay for value.

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Big Win #2: Getting Big Website Partners To Send Me Traffic and Pay For My Writing

By reaching out and promoting my website, I was able to secure 2 partnerships with websites that have been around for years and get a lot of traffic.

I started working with them initially doing free guest posts where they’d send me traffic. Eventually, the relationship expanded to where they would send me qualified leads to my service business.

Finally, one of them liked my guest posts so much that he started paying me for every post I write for him AND those posts link directly to my service sales page.

“The single biggest obstacle for me was doing outreach to bigger bloggers.”

I convinced myself that I’d be annoying or spamming them by sharing my work with them. I’d find excuses to put this work off as long as possible. Eventually, I implemented 3 things to deal with this.

1. “I’m doing them a favor” mental framework

I reflected on how emailing other bloggers is not necessarily selfish or spammy. In fact, you can do them a huge favor by offering great content to their readers. Bloggers are constantly stressed about coming up with and writing blog posts.

I realized I can come in and help them tremendously by delivering content that their readers will love.

Understanding that there are bloggers out there who desperately want my help was instrumental in helping me get over the fear.

2. Write really good and personal emails

I didn’t want to be “spammy” and send out hundreds of generic emails. I really wanted to connect with people so I included a personalized note at the beginning of every

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outreach email to a bigger blogger.

I told them how they’ve helped me or people close to me. I thanked them for hard work. I flattered them. I always did something to make me stand out. Writing emails this way might not be the most efficient, but it worked great for me. In fact, it worked so well my response rate hovers around 50%!

3. Start with a low outreach quota

It’s easy to be tempted to come up with some huge goal like 100 bloggers per week, but this strategy doesn’t work for me.

Instead, I set small goals like 10 bloggers per week, sometimes even less than that. This way the goal is

manageable.

It’s just like someone who wants to start working out. The people who never workout and suddenly decide to run 5 miles per day will fail miserably. The people who ramp up gradually to 5 miles over the course of several weeks or months will have a lot more long term success.

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I considered giving up entirely onZTL after my two “best” ideas

flopped quickly”- Dave L

“Just because someone has a burning pain and uses the internet to seek

help for it doesn’t mean it’ll make a worthwhile online business.”

I had a horrible, embarrassing medical problem for over a year, and found nothing but bad information for the longest time (both from doctors and online).

I bought a $19 ebook on the subject and would have happily paid more for good information. However, other than this $19 ebook on one site (with no other pages or content), there is nothing on the internet devoted to this problem but a pile of crappy WebMD-style articles and a small forum.

There are no blogs or content-rich websites...and why should there be? After all, if you have some non-life-threatening medical thing befall you, you might google around a bit, or even look at a forum of people with the same problem...but you won’t keep coming back to a blog based on the topic.

“Your audience will eventually move on with their life as fast as possible, never to visit those sites again.”

You’ll eventually get some kind of effective treatment and move on with your life as fast as possible, never to visit those sites again.

Selling one-time ebooks on a medical problem doesn’t sound like the type of quality online business that ZTL is about.

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“This was not fun to learn…I considered giving up entirely on ZTL after my two “best” ideas flopped quickly -- but after a day or two, I realized that failure and learning are simply part of the process, and not really a problem in

the big picture.”

Luckily, ZTL is designed to get people back on track after an idea goes bust.

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“Made my first sale based on the ZTL material! No website, no marketing

material, nothing.”- Chris O.

After idea mapping I found that my nugget is teaching business skills.

During the immersion strategy I found that people don’t want concepts, but they want to know the “how” to do it. They want to know how to turn ideas into action.

What I encountered is that when I see a business problem I would suggest to someone things like:

You should read Lean Startup or visit the site of Jay Abraham and read Sticking Point Solution.

People don’t do that because it’s overwhelming for them.

I need to break it down in very small actionable pieces which are measurable and quantifiable.

I’m going to test and ask what my clients want/need. After that I can create a step-by-step guide. For example:

• So you want to build an MVP? • Have you identified a target customer? • Yes/No, if yes the next step is, if no the next step is.

Basically guiding them to the process step by step.

So instead, I told a former roommate, a young entrepreneur, that I’m researching to start a business around teaching business skills and turning concepts from business

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books into highly actionable content.

“He told me that it was a great idea so I asked him if he would be interested to join a test group for my course

material.”

He said yes.

In our Facebook community I noticed how Ramit taught us how to ask for the sale when someone tells us he is interested.

I proposed that he could pick my brains for 2 hours every month for 50 euro a month and I would create a mastermind with like minded people.

He agreed to these terms and I now have my first client!

I’m really looking forward to all the material that is coming, because this promises a lot!

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“With ZTL, You don’t have the urgency of a job you have to show up to on time. So how do you get it done?”

Primoz BozicZero To Launch Graduate (Beta)

As a testimony to his ability to “get it done”, here Primoz was, carving out time during a his ZTL product launch week to make our Google Hangout happen.

In our interview together we cover how he overcame several obstacles by making Zero To Launch as fun and exciting as possible:

• “It really helps me to be surrounded by people who’ve gone through the same things I’m going through. I like having bi-weekly calls with them to get new ideas and inspiration”. (4:45)

• “I like to do something really exciting in the morning, going into a bath and reading a book for 15-30 minutes to give me ideas and gets my brain going in the morning. Then it makes me want to work on Zero To Launch for an hour in the morning” (10:40)

• “I wasn’t sure what to do so I reached out for help” (24:15)• “It’s more likely you’re gonna get something done if it’s a huge goal that excites

you rather than some boring goal. All the things I do now are ‘what would be the most exciting way of doing something?’” (26:35)

• “I like to ask ‘what is an awesome thing I can do in this course tomorrow?’ How can I make this exciting. Whatever it takes, if even just going to a coffee shop, do whatever it takes to succeed. Find people you can have fun with!” (30:40)

• “Reach out to other ZTLers. These aren’t random people, these are people who invest money in themselves.” (39:30)

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“Talking To 3 People In Person Taught Me To Better Qualify My Audience”

Neil Sheth

Just when I was thinking “death by immersion” I learned 3 key take-aways

I went to my first business networking session where I actually got to speak to my potential target market in person.

I spoke to 3 people about my topic: online marketing for small businesses. I’ve heard some of these points before but strangely hearing them in person puts a different perspective on them:

• Do not have time to do any marketing, they are running their business.• Do not have a big budget to do marketing (and actually said I would probably be

cheaper than others as I’m one a man band - “Ok I thought”).• The same person who thought I would be cheaper than others, said that I should

let her know if her site is good.• They don’t really think about online marketing as not clear what the benefits of it

are.• One person let their designer do the SEO but could not articulate what it was

they did.

Takeaways:• I need to better qualify my audience, i.e. for info products my real target

audience are businesses already spending money/time on online marketing. I can however target these folks for services or consulting work.

• They want tangible advice, like actually “go do this...”.

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• I should have asked the person who asked me to look over their site if she wanted to hire me for a few hours - DARN! (still going to try to do this).

• They don’t know about online marketing...it was as if I was speaking to them in a different language...I felt like I could’ve said anything and it wouldn’t have been questioned.

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“Delivering a Product is Win-Win for both Parties -- Something people are

grateful to have.”Rusty G.

A few weeks ago...I spoke to a friend mine in London Animating on some big VFX movies there. Her boyfriend however, went to the same college as both of us and has failed to break into the Animation Industry on any front.

I smelt opportunity.

All Animation Watering Holes don’t have a place where Aspiring Animators discuss what really bothers them. The best way to dive deep anyway is to meet in person but since London is across the pond..I arranged a meetup on Skype that just ended.

Didn’t know him real well so we bs’d for about 10 mins then I shot the elephant in the room. I explained my issues with learning animation at the best online school there is and asked his own.

• Why was he unprepared for hiring? • What could they have done better? • Was the tuition worth it?

The conversation went on for an hour and I recorded the entire thing with camtasia for relistening.

In the end...we covered so many subjects I would have taken weeks...to think of on my own and it caused

solutions to pop in my head immediately.

In these moments, I told him how I’m out to provide these answers and how it will give him the best shot to achieve his dream of being an animator.

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His face LIT up with pure 3 yr old joy. The value was clear.

Coming off this call...I believe I’m now truly addicted to customer research. I envisioned how FANTASTIC it would be to help someone reach their dream. How grateful would he be...seeing his name on those Movie Credits a year from now...guess that’s a glimpse of what this feels like for Ramit.

Delivering a Product is Win-Win for both Parties -- something people are grateful to have.

Maybe this helps give you ideas on how to reach people, or even just inspiration. I’m off for Module 2 and asking people more questions.

Man I’ve got jet fuel.

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“The specific language that your students, prospects, etc is invaluable

for gaining insights into theirburning desires.”

Chris P.

My focus has been in developing a goals program since a lot of the feedback I have gotten from friends is that they are consistently surprised by how motivated I have been throughout the years.

Friends are always coming to me for advice, but I feel like I cannot help them in the way that I have helped students in my Taekwondo classes, advanced chemistry tutoring, or E1K experience.

Reading books and testing different approaches in goal setting / building systems has helped me tremendously and I want to share what I’ve learned on a professional level.

I did three 1-hour long surveys where I tried to ask high achiever friends about their personal development spend, goals, and barriers/ points of failure - then I let them know about my project.

“The response became progressively warmer from “I would have to see” to “awesome man, you should

definitely do that”…[but] then I listened to the week 2 master call…”

And listened to Ramit critique a student’s positioning.

I realized that I hadn’t been selling a course, but merely collecting feedback. So today I used all of the information above to call one of my old E1K students who I helped land a job and drastically accelerate his career.

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When I described wanted to him on the phone he said some of the highest compliments I’ve ever personally received and when I asked him to buy he said:

“Yes, yes, absolutely. If you make anything like that I will buy it and tell all of my friends to buy it too. If I had known what you taught me 3-years ago I would be so

much better off.”

I’d say that my biggest takeaways from this experience are as follows:

• Trust the system - Crafting client approach takes several iterations, and if you keep at it, you will get better.

• You can learn way more about yourself, content creation, and your students by talking to your students than doing “research.”

• The specific language that your students, prospects, etc is invaluable for gaining insights into their burning desires.

• This process is extremely rewarding.

This week I’ve invested a lot of time into catching up on coursework and it has paid off HUGE.

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“Trust the system. Be patient. I’m slowly getting it. I hope this helps

someone else.”John K.

I learned a lesson.

Ramit said to go through all the core materials and only then ask questions in here. I have to be honest - I did not do that. I’d only got through the Immersion Strategy when I posted a long question basically asking “don’t you need passion for your idea?” Then I fired up the Profit Playbook video and in the first 30 seconds, boom - there’s my answer:

“We’ve gone through The Immersion Strategy. We understand our target market and we’re getting deeper into their minds. At this point, you can stop, and pause, and ask yourself, “Does this interest me?

I’ve gone down the rabbit hole a little bit. I’ve discovered some other sites. I’m looking at what other people write about, is this interesting to me?” If yes, great.

Let’s keep going. If it doesn’t interest you, if you’re starting to realize this is a little too technical for me or I just don’t feel this, I’m not passionate about it.

That’s okay. Go back to Idea Mapping, choose something else and start again.”

Ah. That’s a novel idea.

Do ALL the core work first before wasting my and your time, energy and attention on something that’s about to be answered.

Trust the system. Be patient. I’m slowly getting it. I hope this helps someone else.

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“Why Negative Feedback Can Be EXTREMELY Misleading and What To

Do About It”Bee M.

Getting crapped on for giving advice in sub-reddits? Niche forums?

Read on.

I produced a niche how-to art product last year mainly for personal fulfillment purposes, but never uploaded it/marketed it.

I have a niche YouTube channel with tutorials on the topic and was getting a decent following (1,600+). That was my primary indicator for validation of need for product. (this product is not related to ZTL)

2 Days ago I freed up a few hours to actually uploading it up on to Udemy. I threw up a post on Reddit in the related sub-reddit just giving it out for free for launch (Classic formula for a disappointing launch I know).

Within 12 hours, I received some of the most toxic feed backs from the active members within that Reddit - Things like:

“Gtfo right now”“no toy (beginner) can become an expert from a video tutorial on how to do things if he doesn’t do it through

trial and error” (no duh)“Still anyone taking a course or paying for a class is

getting scammed.”

No positive comment - not even one.

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The product works well because of the testimonials I received for my other Free/previous content. So what gives?

Here’s the interesting part.

Within the first 24 hours I had over 250 students register for the course on Udemy.

Keep in mind this is a niche NICHE topic.

What’s more is that a good 20% of the students completed 50%+ of the course within the first day. The course is 2+ hours long of video content (this is a good number for free Udemy courses, let alone a free product).Day 3, still more students joining the program every hour.

What does this all mean?

(Prospective) Takeaway # 1People that are in need of your advice/product may NOT be social because they feel embarrassed about admitting their needs

Takeaway # 2When receiving a negative feedback - try placing yourself in to the shoes of the naysayer and ask “am I talking crap because I’m secretly jealous?” - If yes, then the person is not your target audience.

(Prospective) Takeaway # 3.1You are more likely to get an accurate feedback when communicating on 1 on 1 basis with a qualified, target customer. No need to be worried about “saving face” or other fears. (Like how I get testimonials through e-mail, but not on a forum)

Takeaway # 3.2 Search based feedback (YouTube - “you’re searching for this tutorial, here it is”) vs Promotional based feedback (Reddit - “Hey look at me, this is the advice I’m giving”) can yield very different results.

Good idea to try both before coming to a conclusion.

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Most of us are stuck in the realm of what we know, but it can be very

profitable to explore the rest of the market.

Abby P.

As we all look at our ideas & target markets, especially those focusing on relationships or social skills, be careful not to unwittingly eliminate a potential client pool because you worked from your own experience & assumed target market.

Check if your idea could apply to people NOT like you:

Dating product & you’re straight? Check with some gay friends.

Social skills & you’re just starting out? Check with some older people.

You might find a completely overlooked market that has been underserved & thus willing to pay an even higher price.

Test across demographics & against your own experience!

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“Without the ZTL material I would have either assumed that no one was interested in the idea or that

everyone was interested.”Adam T.

My primary field is marketing and my primary audience is currently artists and arts organizations. I have an email list of about 270 people on it with an open rate of 35%.

So generally speaking I have about 90 email readers who pay attention. Those 90 people are the base.

Idea Validation and Pay Certainty - After idea mapping I wanted to test interest in an online course on email marketing. I sent an email out to my list asking if people would be interested.

13 people (about 14% of the whole) emailed me back and said they would like to know more.

Based on that I put together a sales page and sent it out to my email list. I priced the course at $99. I sent it out twice.

Altogether 23 people read the copy and 7 actually purchased. Deadline is on Monday so I may get an extra person or two.

So you could argue that my conversion rate was that I told 90 people and 7 purchased (about 7.5%).

Since then 2 more people purchased making the final total 9 for a conversion rate of a nice even 10%.