Passive Income: Best Lessons from Our Launch
Last week, I shared some behind the scenes details of the lure (and myth!) of the passive income holy grail. And please know: my tone isn’t one of dismissal nor discouragement. It’s simply facts around the common misconceptions of passive income. The more we all know, the better we can do and prepare! So today, I’m continuing our passive income series, by sharing 3 passive income best lessons.
1. Sell a product that has multiple uses for your business.
I’m never shy to parade my scrappy superpower. Whenever I contemplate investing in anything, I always pose the question: “How can I get the most bang for my buck?” So when investing in something grand, like a new product, I want to ensure
a. it’s something that people need/want and
b. our business can get lots of mileage from it.
We knew that Designing Your Annual Plan was a tested, proven sequence and methodology that helps our Advisory Practice clients grow profit by 20% to 800% year-over-year. In other words: we knew that it worked and we knew that people needed it.
But here’s the real magic: this product is now an asset for our Advisory Practice too because having it in a digital, digestible format saves us (wo)manpower. It allows our advisors to use our time and brains on meaningful, creative work, in lieu of repeating the same information over and over. Now, when we’re doing annual planning with a client, they use this content to do pre-work at their own pace; and we get to spend our workshop time together on diving deeper and on the creative and customized side of the work.
2. A new product launch is a marketing campaign for your business (“I’ll have what she’s having”).
I have to admit that I did not see this one coming. Here was the fascinating thing that happened last January when we launched DYAP. It (accidentally – ha) became a marketing campaign for our Advisory Practice. Two things happened:
1. We were launching a new product and were therefore more proactively and specifically talking about it – as opposed to Ellevated Outcomes in general, which people we’ve known for a long time become immune to, in a way. Once there was a new, much more precise thing to share, we attracted renewed attention.
2. We’re never shy to ask for help; and we humbly asked our clients to help us spread the word. Then, a surprising thing happened: their colleagues and friends replied, “I’ll have what they’re having.” You see: they’d been watching the hard work and success happening in their friends’ businesses and wondered what had changed. It then became an opportunity for our clients to talk to them about our Advisory Practice.
As I think about this in hindsight, the irony is: we blew through our (financial) launch goal, but we sold a different product than intended. (Thanks Universe, I’ll remember this for 2022 goal setting).
3. It’s not about the product; it’s all about the marketing.
This last point can be used for good and bad. So please know, I mean to use it responsibly (and this is the danger of the passive income craze). The launch around any product (passive or otherwise), is all about the marketing. As we often cheekily say,
Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come.
Assuming that you build something great – exceptional even – people can’t buy it if they don’t know it exists. It sounds obvious, but when you’re inside it – when you’re the builder – it’s so easy to forget (guilty). You need an intricate, elegant, consistent launch plan. Not “hope marketing,” as Jeff Walker calls it.
So I’ve been studying up over the past couple of months to do much better for next January.
Once again, as with anything you want to earn an ROI on, it takes strategy, investment, and execution. This time around, we’re already at 75 hours into our new product work, and we’re 3 months away from launch. So in summary, what truly is the passive income best lesson?
The key to passive income, is ironically, being active.
