Last week, I emailed 5 painful mistakes from my recent birthday launch.​

I don’t want you to think I’m a complete muppet. So today, I’m going to share 5 things that went well.

It’s a 5-minute read.

Let’s dive in.

Always have a ‘reason why’

As a reminder:

The launch offer was five exclusive interviews with 6-8-figure writers, including Erica Schneider, Olly Richards, Chris Orzechowski, John Bejakovic, and David Deutsch.

The interviews were free for High Impact Writing (HIW) customers and an incentive for non-customers to join them. There was no discount. But I threw in my other product, the Viral Inspiration Lab, for free.

This leads us to our first point.

You should always give people a reason to buy—an offer without a reason stinks of desperation.

Birthdays and business milestones are great, but opportunities are everywhere if you choose to look. For example, my product broke last year, so I turned that into a launch, too.

Kieran Drew @ItsKieranDrew A few weeks ago, Gumroad changed their fees. Then my product crashed due to API issues. Instead of hiding or complaining, I wrote about both. The result? 80 new customers, ~$7000. The difference between a problem and an opportunity is your response. 1:11 PM • Feb 17, 2023 5 Retweets 209 Likes Read 53 replies

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Now, for the birthday launch, I only sold 24 copies.

I painted this result in a negative picture last week. But there were a lot of positives, too.

Playing the right game

The 5 interviews were just a smaller facet of my evil mastermind plan.

Sorry, I mean long-term business plan.

See, my north star is creating fans.

Not the Dyson kind—but a group of people who genuinely love what you say and build. People who see you as an authority, not a commodity. People who support your success because you've supported theirs.

If every move you make can be measured directly by revenue, you’re not making the right moves.

These interviews were a gift to current buyers. As was giving High Impact Writing 2.0 for free.

I want my future offers to be no-brainers.

For example, I'm writing an email product currently—70% of those on the waitlist have purchased from me in the past. Considering I have 2,200 customers but 250,000 people in my audience, that's a staggering amount.

(You can hop on the waitlist by clicking here.)

You must prove you're worth investing in—this business is all about the long game.

Which leads us to the next point:

Compounding leverage

Over the past year, I’ve given 3 bonus webinars as launch incentives for High Impact Writing—if you bought during a certain period, you were invited to a training.

Original customers have them all, but most of my audience does not.

The webinars have a great story arc:

The first teaches you how to build your business. The second teaches you how to build your newsletter. And the third teaches you how to disconnect your time from results using leverage.

Now, leverage is a tool for getting more done without working harder.

It's why the internet is so damn powerful.

One example is these webinars.

I’ve filmed them once, but I can share them as much as I’d like.

So I packaged them into a ‘Writing Business Bundle’ deal and used Thrivecart to create an order bump on the checkout page.

44% of buyers added this purchase.

With 24 buyers, I didn’t book the private jet to Vegas right away. But I’ve sold 1850+ copies of High Impact Writing in the past year. If I sell even 1,000 in the next, that’s an extra $42,680.

Not bad for 30 minutes of work putting the deal together.

I also offered current customers to pick up the webinars if they missed them.

This grossed an extra $1,584.

Never underestimate the power of compounding leverage over time. The more assets you build, the more potential behind your business. I now have three products plus this bundle and use software (another form of leverage) to automate 90% of the sales and delivery.

If this interests you, I've written more on leverage here.

Anyway, back to the launch.

Including the figures above, we’re now at $10,654.

But that’s not all I did.

Build win-win-wins

An old client emailed asking how much I paid to arrange these interviews.

The answer?

Nothing. I pitched them as a win-win scenario—and probably a bit of blackmail since it was my birthday. The interviewees got access to a high-quality audience and my customers get behind-the-scenes knowledge.

But the best deals are win-win-wins.

Let me explain.

I’ve worked privately with each interviewee and know they’re experts in their field. I offered to promote their offers for them. Some arranged bonuses for my customers too.

At the end of each call I pitched their products, and included them in the emails too.

This generated several thousand more dollars in revenue—to everyone’s advantage. Interviewees get paid. Customers get to learn. And I, of course, increase the ROI from the launch.

In business, build a habit of maximising benefits to everyone involved. It only leads to more opportunities.

But I also ran these interviews for a selfish reason.

How to find the things you enjoy

I’ve spoken several times about starting a podcast.

But I wasn't sure if it was for me. Instead of launching one—which is a lot of effort—this was a level 1 experiment.

My thoughts:

The calls were amazing. Great fun, learned loads, enjoyed thoroughly.

But I hated having 5 booked in one month. I’m in a wild love affair with an empty calendar and I don't want it to end. Even though I enjoyed the calls, I my energy levels during the day were noticeably worse. For now, I prefer being a guest to a host.

You should experiment to find your competitive advantage.

Look for work that feels like play. When you find that thing, go all in. Because nobody can compete with the entrepreneur having fun.

For me, that’s writing. But I’d never know if I didn’t test.

Let’s wrap this up.

Building in public doesn’t mean winning in public

I’ll be honest. I had some sh*t going on in my life, which made this launch a non-priority. My heart wasn’t in the marketing (this will always impact your sales—even if you think it won’t).

But I was looking forward to the win as a pick-me-up.

Of course, it wasn’t as big a win as I expected.

At first, I was gutted.

But then I remembered how I built my brand: fumbling, failing, and bringing you along for the ride.

The secret to building in public isn’t just winning in public. It’s about being transparent when times are tough, too. It’s about sharing your experiments as they unfold, not just when they pay off.

This is the best type of content to share with your audience because it is unique, useful, and personal.

So whatever you're doing, write about it.

And I hope you enjoyed the two-part series; I sure did.

As always, I appreciate your attention,

Kieran.