WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:08.459
Waitlist strategies have always been used to get customers ready to make a purchase. So today, we're gonna review some of the best waitlist launches and talk about how you can create your own.
2
00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:13.580
Now, the first thing I wanna get into here is just how important waitlist strategies are for startups.
3
00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:25.880
See, if you want your product to be good, if you want to raise capital, if you wanna have that billion-dollar exit, even if you just wanna have a profitable company, one of the smartest things you can do is make sure people want it before you build it.
4
00:00:26.620 --> 00:00:30.720
Anything online, I don't care if... I tell people this and they laugh, but it's the truth.
5
00:00:31.080 --> 00:00:39.840
If you're doing something as small as some e-book all the way up to hardware, like healthcare, the hardest things, you wanna make sure that people want and need this thing.
6
00:00:40.220 --> 00:00:48.820
You just trying to make it because you think they need it is totally different from them willing to, you know, give up their money for it, them willing to promote it to other people.
7
00:00:49.160 --> 00:00:55.940
If people are not willing to do that for your product, you do not have a good product. It's a painful truth, but it's just the reality of the business.
8
00:00:56.060 --> 00:01:07.490
Now, I've used waitlist launches myself over the years for a lot of different products like software, books, courses, all kind of stuff. That's how I know that it works. And my best launch was back in 2018.
9
00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:16.420
It was for a book on personal branding, and this is before any of the personal branding people that are doing it now were talking about it, even on YouTube. This was years ago.
10
00:01:16.520 --> 00:01:29.020
It probably was earlier than 2018, to be honest. I don't even remember. And this strategy worked extremely well, and I've since then used it for Vibe Coded products. Like, I'm using it now for something that is massive.
11
00:01:29.220 --> 00:01:33.120
I can't talk about it too much, but if you know, you know. So my strategy was simple.
12
00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:42.880
When I wrote the book, I said, "Okay, if I wanna put this book out and have a, you know, make a big splash, I wanna get it to people earlier to get feedback, to make sure I'm, can add anything I'm missing.
13
00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:49.360
I want to have people excited about it," right? 'Cause when you give people stuff early, they are more inclined to talk about it.
14
00:01:49.480 --> 00:01:56.840
You know, they have that excitement, and they have to go and talk about it, have to share with other people, which I'm fine with. I love that. I want you to do with the book exactly.
15
00:01:57.020 --> 00:02:06.780
I want you to do with the book, actually. And this was a very simple process with the book because if you have a book with, you know, 15 chapters or whatever, you just give away a couple chapters of the book.
16
00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:11.320
And again, before anybody else was using this strategy, it worked very well for me.
17
00:02:11.380 --> 00:02:19.400
Because not only did I give this away to people that signed up, there were some people I gave it to early, and they went and talked about it, which got more people to sign up.
18
00:02:19.420 --> 00:02:26.090
And all these people were signed up to my email list, by the way. Having people sign up to your email list early before you launch something is the way you get that big launch day.
19
00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:34.980
So giving away the chapters was my best strategy. It worked extremely well. I got thousands of people signed up for that on personal branding.
20
00:02:35.180 --> 00:02:47.620
Now, where things really took off was when I actually did the event for the launch of the book. This got me over 100 sales in one day, and I think that's the goal that a lot of people, you know, can reach, right?
21
00:02:47.700 --> 00:02:57.900
If you're launching whatever product, again, I think consumer is great for this. Um, if you have some kind of SaaS tool, it's just a perfect way. And I-- By the way, I wanna put this in here, too.
22
00:02:58.460 --> 00:03:10.260
Getting that feedback early on using a waitlist, people, is vital because if you get feedback from one person, it's, "Eh, it's one person." Feedback from two people, okay, that's a pattern.
23
00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:20.140
Once you get to five or more people saying the same thing, that's when you know you can build something incredible. And we don't talk about that part of bu- of building product, right?
24
00:03:20.180 --> 00:03:27.200
You want people to see things early, to check it out early, so then they can give you feedback early. And then you can iterate. You can make those changes.
25
00:03:27.240 --> 00:03:32.080
I heard Mark Andreessen say this years ago, and he said you gotta be customer obsessed.
26
00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:39.560
When he started talking about product market fit, when I learned about it, um, one thing I learned to go with that is the way you get there is by being obsessed with customers.
27
00:03:39.570 --> 00:03:49.440
So in the pre-sale, the pre-launch and everything, you're literally doing this with the waitlist. Once you get a certain amount of people on there, you start connecting with those people to get feedback on the product.
28
00:03:49.540 --> 00:03:55.540
Give them access to something early. I did it with a book. I've done it with software. You can do it with almost anything.
29
00:03:55.960 --> 00:04:07.240
And you let them know, "Hey, this is something I can give you for 50% off if you give us feedback on your experience," all of that stuff. Now, again, you do this with a, a handful of people, it won't be as impactful.
30
00:04:07.620 --> 00:04:16.670
When you execute this strategy with a audience, like, I would say 20 people or more, then you'll start to see patterns of what worked, what didn't, what you need to improve.
31
00:04:16.950 --> 00:04:23.620
Sometimes there might be some things in there, like I had a whole chapter in the book on, uh, some personal branding stuff, and people didn't care about it.
32
00:04:23.720 --> 00:04:27.400
I thought more people wanna, would want to write books at that point in time, and nobody cared.
33
00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:34.510
So I was like, "Okay, well, let me just delete that," [chuckles] 'cause if you tell me you don't want it and then 10 people tell me, pretty much everybody told me they didn't want that chapter.
34
00:04:34.510 --> 00:04:42.100
And I was like, "Okay, let me just delete this." 'Cause in my mind, it should've been there. But the audience tells me they don't want that. Cool, I'mma leave it alone.
35
00:04:42.260 --> 00:04:51.120
Okay, so let's break down how you can create your own waitlist launch because this is a strategy I think more founders should be executing. And let me talk about the why a little bit.
36
00:04:51.200 --> 00:05:03.000
If you go to an investor, right, if you come to me and say, "Hey, I built this waitlist of, you know, 100 plus, 500 plus, 1,000 plus people," that is gonna give you so much credibility in the eyes of investors.
37
00:05:03.060 --> 00:05:07.340
Now, to be clear, this is different based on the sector that you're in.
38
00:05:07.700 --> 00:05:15.620
If you're building a hardware tool or something in healthcare, all of that stuff, it'll be really, really difficult to get that many people on a waitlist.
39
00:05:16.020 --> 00:05:22.740
And because you're building such a bigger product, it's gonna be challenging to really establish yourself with that. You know?
40
00:05:22.830 --> 00:05:30.360
'Cause if you're in healthcare and you're trying to make some new medicine or something, you have some new medical device, like, it's gonna be hard to get hundreds of hospitals.
41
00:05:30.440 --> 00:05:38.500
But if you get two or three in that area, it's different. Same thing with hardware, deep tech, stuff like that. It's gonna be different in that category.
42
00:05:38.520 --> 00:05:47.380
But with where most people are, where most founders are building startups, SaaS, B2B, AI, enterprise, consumer, all of that stuff, you can build a waitlist.
43
00:05:47.760 --> 00:05:58.060
If people can go to your website and sign up for something, you can build a waitlist. It's that simple. And I think you as a founder want to execute at that level. You want to prioritize it that way, right?
44
00:05:58.140 --> 00:06:09.352
Based on the sector that you're in. So just a nice little caveat there. So how do you build your own waitlist launch for, hmm- So how do you build your own waitlist for your product that you have?
45
00:06:09.892 --> 00:06:17.172
Well, the first thing is to have something valuable to give your audience, something that you can give them access to early to start getting feedback.
46
00:06:17.872 --> 00:06:23.232
I think the most important thing founders can do early on is talking to customers, especially if you're trying to raise capital.
47
00:06:23.652 --> 00:06:32.752
Bro, go and talk to customers damn near just as much, if not it should definitely be more, than you talk to investors. Because that's the thing that builds your credibility with investors.
48
00:06:32.812 --> 00:06:41.732
If you come to me and you say you've talked to 100-plus customers in the past six months, I now know you're actually putting in the work, you're connecting with the customers.
49
00:06:41.852 --> 00:06:47.392
So even if you don't have a good product now, you eventually will have one if you keep talking to customers like that. It builds credibility.
50
00:06:47.432 --> 00:06:56.252
The second step is to get their name, email, all of the main details that you need, all of that. It's so important because that's how you stay in contact with them.
51
00:06:56.292 --> 00:07:05.972
You can't expect them to just see your content on social media or to remember to go to your website. No, get their name and email at the very least. This is why I say every founder should have a newsletter.
52
00:07:06.292 --> 00:07:12.752
This is 100 times easier if you already have a newsletter set up. Set up your newsletter if you're a founder right now. Like, simple.
53
00:07:13.092 --> 00:07:23.572
That is gonna be the easiest way to continue to keep your customers up to date, to sell to them, all of that stuff. Set up a newsletter. Do it right now. Do not wait. Do it right now.
54
00:07:23.732 --> 00:07:31.372
The next thing is you want to build an event date. What is a big date that you can focus on to really get a lot of people locked in on your product?
55
00:07:31.832 --> 00:07:40.862
And this is the thing, with a lot of product launches, you gotta realize that some are really, really big, and some are big within the community they need to be big in, right?
56
00:07:40.892 --> 00:07:46.492
For example, Beehiiv does an amazing job with their launches w- every time they launch a new feature.
57
00:07:46.612 --> 00:07:54.532
Every time they make updates, they will have these virtual events where you can just pull up on YouTube and live stream it. Apple is the best at this. They do it every year.
58
00:07:55.092 --> 00:08:04.792
Every year, they live stream this thing where they're gonna show off what they changed in the new phones and new computers and everything. And I'm one of those people that watches every year.
59
00:08:04.852 --> 00:08:14.192
When Apple says, "Our event is..." Remind me. I'm watching it, like, [laughs] every single time. Even if I'm not buying everything, I watch every minute, and I eventually buy something.
60
00:08:14.552 --> 00:08:24.932
That's the same thing you could be doing for your brand. I think it's smarter to start early versus waiting until you have, you know, a big product or you raise millions of dollars. Start as early as you can.
61
00:08:24.992 --> 00:08:32.632
Really, once you start building this business, you should be trying to work into those types of levels with those events 'cause then it keeps you connected to your people.
62
00:08:32.672 --> 00:08:38.192
The key thing here, too, is at the event, that's when you can sell. You can start selling at the event or after the event.
63
00:08:38.752 --> 00:08:48.432
And again, if you're still in that waitlist phase and you don't have the full thing ready to go just yet, that's okay. Don't panic. It doesn't have to be perfect, especially if you just are transparent with your market.
64
00:08:48.672 --> 00:08:52.052
Like, "Hey, we're working on this. We're making these changes. We're making these improvements.
65
00:08:52.112 --> 00:09:00.492
This will be available at this time, but we want you to pre-order this now," or, you know, sign your letter of intent or whatever it is. And you just con- continue to build that up.
66
00:09:00.532 --> 00:09:04.462
Gets little soft commitments from people, and over time that becomes a big commitment.
67
00:09:04.962 --> 00:09:12.972
Them giving you their name and email to get on a waitlist, going to the event, that, those are all little yeses, and it builds up to a big yes.
68
00:09:13.312 --> 00:09:20.172
I think every founder can launch their waitlist at some point, and if you need more help with this, make sure you join the Next Round community. It's completely free.
69
00:09:20.272 --> 00:09:26.892
By starting out, you can just complete the fundability assessment. This is a full-on breakdown of what you need to be fundable.
70
00:09:27.052 --> 00:09:33.551
And again, it's completely free, takes about five minutes, is linked, and is linked right up under this episode. I'm Chris, and I'll see you next time.
1
00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:08.459
Waitlist strategies have always been used to get customers ready to make a purchase. So today, we're gonna review some of the best waitlist launches and talk about how you can create your own.
2
00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:13.580
Now, the first thing I wanna get into here is just how important waitlist strategies are for startups.
3
00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:25.880
See, if you want your product to be good, if you want to raise capital, if you wanna have that billion-dollar exit, even if you just wanna have a profitable company, one of the smartest things you can do is make sure people want it before you build it.
4
00:00:26.620 --> 00:00:30.720
Anything online, I don't care if... I tell people this and they laugh, but it's the truth.
5
00:00:31.080 --> 00:00:39.840
If you're doing something as small as some e-book all the way up to hardware, like healthcare, the hardest things, you wanna make sure that people want and need this thing.
6
00:00:40.220 --> 00:00:48.820
You just trying to make it because you think they need it is totally different from them willing to, you know, give up their money for it, them willing to promote it to other people.
7
00:00:49.160 --> 00:00:55.940
If people are not willing to do that for your product, you do not have a good product. It's a painful truth, but it's just the reality of the business.
8
00:00:56.060 --> 00:01:07.490
Now, I've used waitlist launches myself over the years for a lot of different products like software, books, courses, all kind of stuff. That's how I know that it works. And my best launch was back in 2018.
9
00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:16.420
It was for a book on personal branding, and this is before any of the personal branding people that are doing it now were talking about it, even on YouTube. This was years ago.
10
00:01:16.520 --> 00:01:29.020
It probably was earlier than 2018, to be honest. I don't even remember. And this strategy worked extremely well, and I've since then used it for Vibe Coded products. Like, I'm using it now for something that is massive.
11
00:01:29.220 --> 00:01:33.120
I can't talk about it too much, but if you know, you know. So my strategy was simple.
12
00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:42.880
When I wrote the book, I said, "Okay, if I wanna put this book out and have a, you know, make a big splash, I wanna get it to people earlier to get feedback, to make sure I'm, can add anything I'm missing.
13
00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:49.360
I want to have people excited about it," right? 'Cause when you give people stuff early, they are more inclined to talk about it.
14
00:01:49.480 --> 00:01:56.840
You know, they have that excitement, and they have to go and talk about it, have to share with other people, which I'm fine with. I love that. I want you to do with the book exactly.
15
00:01:57.020 --> 00:02:06.780
I want you to do with the book, actually. And this was a very simple process with the book because if you have a book with, you know, 15 chapters or whatever, you just give away a couple chapters of the book.
16
00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:11.320
And again, before anybody else was using this strategy, it worked very well for me.
17
00:02:11.380 --> 00:02:19.400
Because not only did I give this away to people that signed up, there were some people I gave it to early, and they went and talked about it, which got more people to sign up.
18
00:02:19.420 --> 00:02:26.090
And all these people were signed up to my email list, by the way. Having people sign up to your email list early before you launch something is the way you get that big launch day.
19
00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:34.980
So giving away the chapters was my best strategy. It worked extremely well. I got thousands of people signed up for that on personal branding.
20
00:02:35.180 --> 00:02:47.620
Now, where things really took off was when I actually did the event for the launch of the book. This got me over 100 sales in one day, and I think that's the goal that a lot of people, you know, can reach, right?
21
00:02:47.700 --> 00:02:57.900
If you're launching whatever product, again, I think consumer is great for this. Um, if you have some kind of SaaS tool, it's just a perfect way. And I-- By the way, I wanna put this in here, too.
22
00:02:58.460 --> 00:03:10.260
Getting that feedback early on using a waitlist, people, is vital because if you get feedback from one person, it's, "Eh, it's one person." Feedback from two people, okay, that's a pattern.
23
00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:20.140
Once you get to five or more people saying the same thing, that's when you know you can build something incredible. And we don't talk about that part of bu- of building product, right?
24
00:03:20.180 --> 00:03:27.200
You want people to see things early, to check it out early, so then they can give you feedback early. And then you can iterate. You can make those changes.
25
00:03:27.240 --> 00:03:32.080
I heard Mark Andreessen say this years ago, and he said you gotta be customer obsessed.
26
00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:39.560
When he started talking about product market fit, when I learned about it, um, one thing I learned to go with that is the way you get there is by being obsessed with customers.
27
00:03:39.570 --> 00:03:49.440
So in the pre-sale, the pre-launch and everything, you're literally doing this with the waitlist. Once you get a certain amount of people on there, you start connecting with those people to get feedback on the product.
28
00:03:49.540 --> 00:03:55.540
Give them access to something early. I did it with a book. I've done it with software. You can do it with almost anything.
29
00:03:55.960 --> 00:04:07.240
And you let them know, "Hey, this is something I can give you for 50% off if you give us feedback on your experience," all of that stuff. Now, again, you do this with a, a handful of people, it won't be as impactful.
30
00:04:07.620 --> 00:04:16.670
When you execute this strategy with a audience, like, I would say 20 people or more, then you'll start to see patterns of what worked, what didn't, what you need to improve.
31
00:04:16.950 --> 00:04:23.620
Sometimes there might be some things in there, like I had a whole chapter in the book on, uh, some personal branding stuff, and people didn't care about it.
32
00:04:23.720 --> 00:04:27.400
I thought more people wanna, would want to write books at that point in time, and nobody cared.
33
00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:34.510
So I was like, "Okay, well, let me just delete that," [chuckles] 'cause if you tell me you don't want it and then 10 people tell me, pretty much everybody told me they didn't want that chapter.
34
00:04:34.510 --> 00:04:42.100
And I was like, "Okay, let me just delete this." 'Cause in my mind, it should've been there. But the audience tells me they don't want that. Cool, I'mma leave it alone.
35
00:04:42.260 --> 00:04:51.120
Okay, so let's break down how you can create your own waitlist launch because this is a strategy I think more founders should be executing. And let me talk about the why a little bit.
36
00:04:51.200 --> 00:05:03.000
If you go to an investor, right, if you come to me and say, "Hey, I built this waitlist of, you know, 100 plus, 500 plus, 1,000 plus people," that is gonna give you so much credibility in the eyes of investors.
37
00:05:03.060 --> 00:05:07.340
Now, to be clear, this is different based on the sector that you're in.
38
00:05:07.700 --> 00:05:15.620
If you're building a hardware tool or something in healthcare, all of that stuff, it'll be really, really difficult to get that many people on a waitlist.
39
00:05:16.020 --> 00:05:22.740
And because you're building such a bigger product, it's gonna be challenging to really establish yourself with that. You know?
40
00:05:22.830 --> 00:05:30.360
'Cause if you're in healthcare and you're trying to make some new medicine or something, you have some new medical device, like, it's gonna be hard to get hundreds of hospitals.
41
00:05:30.440 --> 00:05:38.500
But if you get two or three in that area, it's different. Same thing with hardware, deep tech, stuff like that. It's gonna be different in that category.
42
00:05:38.520 --> 00:05:47.380
But with where most people are, where most founders are building startups, SaaS, B2B, AI, enterprise, consumer, all of that stuff, you can build a waitlist.
43
00:05:47.760 --> 00:05:58.060
If people can go to your website and sign up for something, you can build a waitlist. It's that simple. And I think you as a founder want to execute at that level. You want to prioritize it that way, right?
44
00:05:58.140 --> 00:06:09.352
Based on the sector that you're in. So just a nice little caveat there. So how do you build your own waitlist launch for, hmm- So how do you build your own waitlist for your product that you have?
45
00:06:09.892 --> 00:06:17.172
Well, the first thing is to have something valuable to give your audience, something that you can give them access to early to start getting feedback.
46
00:06:17.872 --> 00:06:23.232
I think the most important thing founders can do early on is talking to customers, especially if you're trying to raise capital.
47
00:06:23.652 --> 00:06:32.752
Bro, go and talk to customers damn near just as much, if not it should definitely be more, than you talk to investors. Because that's the thing that builds your credibility with investors.
48
00:06:32.812 --> 00:06:41.732
If you come to me and you say you've talked to 100-plus customers in the past six months, I now know you're actually putting in the work, you're connecting with the customers.
49
00:06:41.852 --> 00:06:47.392
So even if you don't have a good product now, you eventually will have one if you keep talking to customers like that. It builds credibility.
50
00:06:47.432 --> 00:06:56.252
The second step is to get their name, email, all of the main details that you need, all of that. It's so important because that's how you stay in contact with them.
51
00:06:56.292 --> 00:07:05.972
You can't expect them to just see your content on social media or to remember to go to your website. No, get their name and email at the very least. This is why I say every founder should have a newsletter.
52
00:07:06.292 --> 00:07:12.752
This is 100 times easier if you already have a newsletter set up. Set up your newsletter if you're a founder right now. Like, simple.
53
00:07:13.092 --> 00:07:23.572
That is gonna be the easiest way to continue to keep your customers up to date, to sell to them, all of that stuff. Set up a newsletter. Do it right now. Do not wait. Do it right now.
54
00:07:23.732 --> 00:07:31.372
The next thing is you want to build an event date. What is a big date that you can focus on to really get a lot of people locked in on your product?
55
00:07:31.832 --> 00:07:40.862
And this is the thing, with a lot of product launches, you gotta realize that some are really, really big, and some are big within the community they need to be big in, right?
56
00:07:40.892 --> 00:07:46.492
For example, Beehiiv does an amazing job with their launches w- every time they launch a new feature.
57
00:07:46.612 --> 00:07:54.532
Every time they make updates, they will have these virtual events where you can just pull up on YouTube and live stream it. Apple is the best at this. They do it every year.
58
00:07:55.092 --> 00:08:04.792
Every year, they live stream this thing where they're gonna show off what they changed in the new phones and new computers and everything. And I'm one of those people that watches every year.
59
00:08:04.852 --> 00:08:14.192
When Apple says, "Our event is..." Remind me. I'm watching it, like, [laughs] every single time. Even if I'm not buying everything, I watch every minute, and I eventually buy something.
60
00:08:14.552 --> 00:08:24.932
That's the same thing you could be doing for your brand. I think it's smarter to start early versus waiting until you have, you know, a big product or you raise millions of dollars. Start as early as you can.
61
00:08:24.992 --> 00:08:32.632
Really, once you start building this business, you should be trying to work into those types of levels with those events 'cause then it keeps you connected to your people.
62
00:08:32.672 --> 00:08:38.192
The key thing here, too, is at the event, that's when you can sell. You can start selling at the event or after the event.
63
00:08:38.752 --> 00:08:48.432
And again, if you're still in that waitlist phase and you don't have the full thing ready to go just yet, that's okay. Don't panic. It doesn't have to be perfect, especially if you just are transparent with your market.
64
00:08:48.672 --> 00:08:52.052
Like, "Hey, we're working on this. We're making these changes. We're making these improvements.
65
00:08:52.112 --> 00:09:00.492
This will be available at this time, but we want you to pre-order this now," or, you know, sign your letter of intent or whatever it is. And you just con- continue to build that up.
66
00:09:00.532 --> 00:09:04.462
Gets little soft commitments from people, and over time that becomes a big commitment.
67
00:09:04.962 --> 00:09:12.972
Them giving you their name and email to get on a waitlist, going to the event, that, those are all little yeses, and it builds up to a big yes.
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I think every founder can launch their waitlist at some point, and if you need more help with this, make sure you join the Next Round community. It's completely free.
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By starting out, you can just complete the fundability assessment. This is a full-on breakdown of what you need to be fundable.
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And again, it's completely free, takes about five minutes, is linked, and is linked right up under this episode. I'm Chris, and I'll see you next time.
