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JACK BORN: “When you're using a deadline, we recommend sending at least two emails, but ideally three emails, on the last day to make sure that people don't miss the notification, the announcement, that this is the deadline, because people get busy. They forget. They might even see your email, intend to act on it, but they get distracted. It happens all the time. So the last twenty-four hours is that perfect persuasion window, and I call it this because all the metrics that you want to be going up and to the right, such as revenue per hour, revenue per click, revenue per email open, almost any metric you want to be going up and through the roof. And so your sales are higher on that last day than they were even on the cart open.”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small–but–mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step–by–step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
AMY: Now, you know I am a big fan of using urgency and deadlines when selling your digital course online. And I know that some of my students have some hesitation to use deadlines and urgency, for a few different reasons, which we are going to get into today. So today my guest is Jack Born, and he is an expert when it comes to creating urgency and using deadlines in your marketing. And he's going to talk about why you need to create urgency and how to use deadlines in a way that feels very authentic to how you do your marketing. He's also going to talk about the dos and the don'ts, which I think is really important as well. Jack has a really interesting story about how he got started, and, also, he’s going to tell you about how he kind of uprooted his entire life and shook things up, which I always find stories like that really fascinating. So I'll let him tell his own story. Specifically, Jack created a software called Deadline Funnel, which helps entrepreneurs boost sales and automate their businesses.
Now, today's episode isn't about software, and we're not going to talk about selling Deadline Funnel or anything like that. Today's episode is really about this importance of urgency and deadlines and how to incorporate that into your marketing. But just to kind of give you a little context around this, we use Deadline Funnel, Jack’s software, in our own business for our automated webinar. And so I just want to, in my own words, tell you what that means so you have a little context before we get into all the details around this really important topic.
So I have an automated webinar. It runs every single day, and at the end of the webinar, I sell my digital course, List Builders Society®️. And so Deadline Funnel allows everybody who actually watches my webinar to get into their own specific deadline. And so I can say, all right, if you buy within, let's say, the next three days, you get these special bonuses. But if you don't buy, you miss out on the bonuses. And so after the three days, if somebody in that specific funnel clicks on a link, that link, if it's after the three days, will go to a page that doesn't have the bonuses. So that's just literally very simplistic way of explaining how Deadline Funnel works. But why it's important to me is it's actually a real deadline, meaning I'm not just telling people the bonuses are going to go away, but then they click a link and the bonuses are still there. I really think it's important that we are honest and authentic in our communication around deadlines and urgency and moving people to actually take action. And so that's why we are huge fans of using Deadline Funnel. But again, this episode isn't about the software; it's about the importance of urgency and deadline in your marketing.
And so with that, I'm going to get into all the details that Jack has to share in terms of why this topic is so important and how to use these concepts in your marketing. And if you're just starting out and you don't have webinars just yet, this episode is important for you as well because it's going to boost your confidence and understanding around the concept so that when you do start to sell, you won't feel aggressive in your selling or too pushy, but you're going to feel as though it is authentic and it is real, and you are encouraging your audience to make a decision so that you can move them closer to the results that they are after.
So let's go ahead and welcome Jack to the show. Jack, thanks so much for being here.
JACK BORN: Hey. I’m so excited to be here.
AMY: I'm excited that you're here because this is an important topic. Talking about urgency and deadlines when you're launching, this is something that I teach inside my programs. I do inside my own business, but I haven't had a lot of conversations about it on the podcast. And I think it's time.
So before we get into all the details of today's episode, you have a really unique story. And I would love for you to share your journey of how you stumbled upon creating a platform that focuses on deadlines and urgencies for entrepreneurs. And don't leave out the part that you sold your house and almost all your belongings and moved out of the country. So I know I kind of gave it away, but tell me your story.
JACK: Sure, sure. So I'll try to hit just the main points because I've been in the direct–response marketing business since 2001, so it goes back quite a ways, so I'll give you the quick version. So the quick version was, if we fast forward to about 2010 or 2011, I was the marketing manager for Perry Marshall, but I also on the side had several businesses of my own, and one of those was an online–course business. And so I've been a student of direct–response marketing and persuasion for a long time. One of my early introductions to the power of marketing persuasion was Cialdini. And so I knew that urgency was a really, really strong motivator. So having a deadline, and I had seen that in my own business whenever I did some sort of big promotion, especially a product launch.
And I thought, okay, Perry does these, Perry Marshall—that’s, by the way, I should make sure that everyone knows. Perry Marshall is a thought leader who's been around for a very long time; really, really superb with Google AdWords and Facebook. So I was working with him. And so one of the things that—Perry wasn't huge into doing launches. He liked to bring people into his world through email; use emails to develop authority; know, like, and trust; and get clients that way. And so email marketing and follow up was a big part of what he was doing. And I was doing that as well. I was learning from Perry, and I thought, you know, it would be so amazing if there was a way to have a deadline at the end of just a simple email sequence. But I really need it to be authentic because I do not want to tell someone today's the deadline or tonight's the deadline, and then they come back the next day and they're like, “Wait a second. This is still available.” And I thought, well, surely someone has figured this out. And so I wasn't looking for an idea for some product to create, but I went around looking for this, just to figure out who's got the solution. And the more I looked, the more I realized, no, no one has this. Yeah, there's free countdown timers and even paid countdown timers, but I wanted something that did a whole bunch of things. But really, it all came down to, with the email–marketing follow up, when the email said today's the last day, I wanted it truly to be the last day, not just pretending that it was the last day. And so because no one created that, I decided, okay, I'm going to create this for me. I'll share it with a few people.
And then word started to get out. And so that's really the genesis of Deadline Funnel. And it grew and grew, and we got some really fantastic people that really championed our cause, including an early adopter was David Siteman Garland. Melyssa Griffin came on board and was an early adopter, and James Wedmore, some other really—gave us some great visibility, and so the word got out about what we were doing. And over the years, things grew to the point where my family and I decided, well, my family decided that we would like to leave the U.S. and go to Australia.
And the short version of that is I've got two daughters, and family is super important to me. My oldest daughter, who was twelve at the time, went through a bullying situation for about a year, and just the school system just really wasn't very supportive at all. And then my younger daughter, who was, I believe, six at the time, she was in a really, really bad boating accident when she was on a friend's boat. And so those two things really set off, basically wiped out our social network. It was a lot of turmoil. It was a very, very tough year. And we decided, you know what. I don't think life is supposed to be this hard.
And we had really enjoyed a trip that we had taken to Australia in 2015. And so my wife and I looked at doing a six–month trip, which was going to be super exciting. And then my wife came to me and said, “Guess what. I was shopping for tickets online. And one–way tickets were the same price as round trip, so I bought one way.” So I thought, hey, let's have a go at it. So about five months into our one–way trip to Australia, we decided, let's sell our house and all of our belongings back in the States, and we did that. And so now we live there full time.
AMY: And how long have you been in Australia?
JACK: We’ve been there a year and a half. And it's really just been amazing. And it really—our journey, I think, really encompasses what we as a company want to deliver for our clients. And I know from having listened to your podcast all the time that it's very similar to what you want to deliver for your audience, which is it's not just about, okay, how can we make more money for ourselves? It's really about, how can we live the life that we want to live, live where we want to live and be around the people that we want to be with and to just enjoy the adventure. And that's really—we've been so blessed to have clients, where they share the stories with us of how what we do has really improved not just their business, but they also share how it’s improved their life. And that really is incredibly satisfying. But anyways, that's the story.
AMY: Such a good story. And I'm totally with you that it's not just about the business, but how you can improve all areas of their lives with what you do in your business. And so I love that that's really important to you as well.
Okay, so let's dive right in and talk about using deadlines and urgency in your marketing communication. And I will tell you right off the bat—and I love that you actually said a word that I was going to bring up—this topic of deadlines and urgency is a little bit sensitive sometimes to my audience because sometimes they have a limiting belief that if they add deadlines and urgency, that their marketing won't be authentic and real. And you use that word authentic and how that's important to you. So I love that we're going to get into that.
And what I really hope for my listeners is that they walk away today with a really clear understanding of why deadlines and urgency can not only transform your launches that you're doing but also help your potential students take action now so that they can get the results that they're after. So there's so many benefits here. So can you talk to me about this idea of deadlines and urgency and why it's so important and how it all works?
JACK: Absolutely. And please jump in if you want to steer it in a different direction or focus me in a certain direction. Let me know. But let's start with really the whole origin story of Deadline Funnel. We didn't create the first countdown timer and, really, Deadline Funnel isn't just a countdown timer, and I'm not here to really just talk about that. But the reason why I wanted to—why I decided that this needed to be created was that I didn't want to use anything in my marketing that was going to make a promise that wasn't kept.
So there's the power of automation. And here’s what a lot of entrepreneurs, when they first hear about this, really get mixed up. They think, “Okay, wait a second. If it's automated, then you can't be using a deadline.” In my view, that's absolutely not true. I tell people the most important thing is when your emails are going out, whether it's a broadcast email that you're sending out to your entire audience or it's an automated email that say email number five in an automated sequence that they signed up for, what you're saying in your marketing, is it true? And if it's true, the automation only helps you build your business.
And I also believe that everything that you're doing in your business is either adding to your credibility with your audience or it's hurting your credibility with your audience. And so it's vitally important that everything that you do increases that credibility and certainly doesn't decrease that credibility.
So you mentioned launches. I think everyone knows that a key component of a launch is at the end of that launch—we're talking about live launch, here—at the end of a live launch, it makes sense to have a deadline. I can't imagine doing a launch and then just saying, well, you can buy any time. Typically, we call that the cart close, and I think your audience knows that.
And anyone who’s done a launch or helped someone with their launch has seen that there's two really big days of sales during that lifecycle of the launch. The first one is when the cart opens. And that's a big spike of sales if you've been building up anticipation, as you, hopefully, have. But then the biggest spike in sales is what I call the perfect persuasion window. And that is the last twenty-four hours before the deadline, when you say something to the effect of, “Look, this has been great, but all good things have to come to an end. Here's the deadline. There's your last chance to get the bonuses, et cetera.” And, hopefully, you're sending out more than one email on that last day, which is a big, big tip.
When you're using a deadline, we recommend sending at least two emails, but ideally three emails, on the last day to make sure that people don't miss the notification, the announcement, that this is the deadline, because people get busy. They forget. They might even see your email, intend to act on it, but they get distracted. It happens all the time. So the last twenty-four hours is that perfect persuasion window, and I call it this because all the metrics that you want to be going up and to the right, such as revenue per hour, revenue per click, revenue per email open, almost any metric you want to be going up and through the roof. And so your sales are higher on that last day than they were even on the cart open.
So anyone who's done a launch or has seen a launch behind the scenes knows that a deadline really drives a sale. Now, it didn't convince people—a deadline can't take a product that doesn't have an audience, doesn't have good marketing behind it, it can't turn a dead marketing message and bring it to life. But what it will do is that the deadline takes everyone who's been reading your emails, clicking the links, reading the blog posts, participating in the webinars or whatever your marketing is composed of, and it says, “Look, if you're interested in this, this is either the best time to get it or it's the only time to get it, at least for a long period of time. So there’s a deadline. You're either in or you're out.” And it forces people to pay attention, to put all other distractions aside, and make a decision, and that's why deadlines work. And there's a lot of studies behind some of the psychology of deadlines that we could get into, but fundamentally, it forces people to make a decision. And so that's the concept behind deadlines in a live launch. We could talk about the importance of deadlines in any promotion, but fundamentally, anyone who's done a launch or seen a launch understands the power of deadlines.
AMY: And I love what you said about the fact that a deadline will get somebody to jump off the fence and make a decision. And that's what I was referencing earlier, that deadlines don't only boost your sales, which they do—I can't even imagine ever doing a live or an automated launch without real deadlines and real urgency. So they help your marketing. They help your bottom line, for sure. No doubt. Our biggest days in the launch are when we put a deadline to anything. We have deadlines during a live launch for, let's say, a forty-eight-hour bonus. And in the middle of a launch, when there tends to be a little bit of a lull in terms of engagement if you have a ten-day launch, in the middle, we’ll put a forty-eight-hour bonus out there and boom, we see sales skyrocket. And so, of course, they work.
But what they also do—and this is, guys, what I really want you to hear from this—is that those people that are on the fence, it is so normal, human nature to procrastinate and to say, “I'm going to get to it. I’m going to get to it,” or allow yourself to just kind of think about it and kind of decide what you're going to do, and then you don't make a decision. So by you having deadlines, your audience, you're saying get into action, get into motion. If you're serious about this, the time is now. And if they take action, they, let's say, buy your digital course and they do the work, they're going to get to the results so much faster or get to the results, period; whereas, if you didn't push them to make a decision, they might not ever get there. And so there's a bigger picture around this that I really want you to get behind. My audience is very heart centric. They're very focused on how much they care about their audience, which I know, Jack, is what you're all about as well. And so I want to make sure they understand there's a win–win here, for sure.
JACK: I'm sure you've had plenty of people to contact you who said, “Amy, your stuff has changed my life. But I was initially on the fence.” Maybe their budget was tight, maybe they were concerned, maybe they had been burned before, whatever their situation was, they loved what you're saying, but they just needed that extra nudge to say, “You know what. I'm going to give this a go.” And then they come back to you and say, “I'm so glad that I did, because you changed my life.”
Now, let's just pause and think, how many lives would you have not impacted if you hadn't given them that extra little nudge, because your stuff does change people's lives. And so I tell anyone who is out there, heart centric, and isn't just doing it for the money, but they want to improve the lives of the people that they serve, if your stuff works, then you owe it to your audience to be as compelling as possible. And there's ways to do that. Maybe we'll cover this, but there's ways to introduce deadlines in your marketing, whether it's for a launch or whether it's for your automated promotions, where it doesn't feel pushy. But let's just pause for a moment and acknowledge that there are a lot of people that would not have come into the Amy Porterfield world or the Jack Born world if they hadn't had that extra little nudge.
AMY: Yes, totally agree. Actually, take me there right now. Let's talk about ways to use these deadlines and urgency, like you mentioned.
JACK: So one of things is that it's really, really important to have a killer offer. So let me just back up and say what I want to cover is, here's some ideas that anyone can use, whether it's a live–launch situation or in your automated promotions, to introduce deadlines and to use them in a way that is not pushy. I’ll also give you some ideas about how to make sure that they're believable.
So the first thing is that it’s less pushy if you really spend some time focusing on your offer. You really want to have a killer offer. So with a live launch, this is something that is usually where you start when you're putting together what you're going to put out there. It's not just about the actual course that you're selling or product that you're selling. It's everything that comes along with it that makes up the offer. And so spend some time crafting that killer offer, the way that you teach your audience, Amy. And then it's less pushy.
Another thing is that it's really helpful to have a reason why. Now, during a launch, it's super simple. You've announced that you’re going to be doing this launch that lasts for x number of days. So now we're coming to the end of it. This is the only time that you can get it. But it still helps to mention, “We only do this once a year or twice a year,” or “This is the first time we've ever done it. We don't know if we'll ever do it again. So if you're on the fence, the time to jump in is right now.” So having a reason why and communicating that is really, really powerful and important.
And the third one is a little bit advanced, but I think it's so very important for online marketers to get this, and it's if your audience is finding out that you have something to sell the same day that you're making your offer, then it can come off as pushy. So let me unwrap that a little bit. So if someone is going through your live launch or especially, let's say, that they opt in for a lead magnet and they're going through. They shouldn't be finding out on, let's say, day five of a seven–day email sequence that you actually have something to sell. There's actually ways to still deliver free content and great training, but kind of drop little hints and seeds so that they're not shocked that, “Oh, wait a second. You're selling something?” because a lot of new online marketers, I find, are thinking that, well, what I need to do is just teach, teach, teach, teach, teach the first several days, and then I switch. I put on my salesman's hat, and then it feels very unnatural for them because in their mind they’re switching from a mindset of teaching to okay, now I have to sell. So there’s ways that you can very clearly, but in a not pushy way, in the context of your emails, to let people know that you do have an online course or you're selling something.
And so just to drill down on that a little bit, to give some actionable ideas. When you are teaching, one thing that you can do that's very, very simple, is you can say. “I want to share with you today a really powerful concept that has made a huge difference for my clients who have been students of my x, y, z course. And I want to share that with you today because it solves x, y, z problem. You're going to learn how to do a and b and c and avoid x and y and z.”
And so now what I've done in that email is I've built up the anticipation and the value of what you're about to receive when you click through to get that information. But it's no longer a secret that you have students. It's no longer secret that you have an online course. You've made it very clear without being pushy. So that's just one way.
Another way is that when you introduce case studies, you should make it clear that this is someone who has gone through my training. You don't focus the email on the fact that you're about to offer them something. But you can drop little hints that you do have students. You've got an online course. You've got a membership program, whatever it is, and you want to share the story that shows how someone went from struggling with this situation and now through this mechanism that you're going to teach them today, here's the end result that they got. And so that's a great way to make sure that when you start to tell people about the offer that you have, it's not a shock, because you're not going from just free content without any mention whatsoever that there's going to be something sold to all of a sudden, hey, let me switch to selling mode.
AMY: Right. So, planting the seed, for sure is important there.
JACK: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And then the other thing that I hinted at that I want to circle back to is that you mentioned that during a longer launch, you like to add in a fast–action bonus. And that's really, really important, because I'm sure you've seen that when you do that, you get a spike in sales; whereas, if you hadn’t been doing that, you wouldn't have had quite as many sales.
The other thing that this does that I want to point out and make sure everyone understands is that by the time you get to the actual or final deadline of your launch, there's already been a deadline that you've enforced. And so people know that this deadline is real. So here's a really powerful tip that anyone can use, let's say, when you're putting together an automated sequence is that if you have a deadline, that's, say, a fast–action bonus—I know that you're a big fan of doing webinars. You and I have done some training gather on evergreen webinars—and so if there’s an automated fast–action bonus immediately following or during that webinar, even though it's on replay, then people will see that, in fact, they can no longer get the fast–action bonus. So that when you come to saying, okay, the special offer ends tonight, they know that it's real. They know that you actually enforce your deadlines, and actions speak so much louder than words. Remember, I'm a big believer, and I know you are too, in really walking your talk and making sure that you are 100 percent authentic and doing things that build your credibility, don't detract from it.
AMY: So good. I never thought about the fact that a forty-eight-hour bonus in the middle of a launch would actually build your credibility when you're closing the cart to say, “Hey, it really is closing. This offer is really going away,” and that that forty-eight-hour launch, when we took a bonus away, we proved that we are actually true to our word. I've never looked at it that way, but it's always worked so well for us. And inside my Digital Course Academy®️ program, I teach my students how to do these bonuses at different times. So I'll remember that next time I teach it. It's such a good lesson.
JACK: If I can share one more quick tip along this line.
AMY: Yeah.
JACK: So, as soon as you've done one launch or one promotion with a deadline, what's going to happen is even though you're going to follow my advice to send at least three emails on the last day, someone will have procrastinated and missed the deadline. So one of the things—and we should probably talk about what to do in those situations—but when someone says, “Hey, I missed the deadline in the email, your support,” something that you could do is that you could take a screenshot of that. Of course remove the person's name or any pertinent details such as their email. But if people see that there's this email thread from your team, where they're saying, “No, I'm sorry. The deadline passed. We’ll definitely put you on the notification list for the next one, but that deal is gone,” then what you can do in your next launch is that you can include that in a way of saying, “Look, I just want to make sure that if you're receiving this email, you haven't enrolled yet. And so I want to make sure that you understand that tonight the deadline is happening, and it is for real. Tomorrow, if you send us an email like this, I've told my team just not to let you in because I stick to my word.” And so that's another way that you can provide proof ahead of time that this deadline is real so that someone doesn't discount it and just say, oh, well, I'll just join tomorrow. They know that this deadline is real.
AMY: Yes. I totally agree with you. I’m behind you 100 percent on that.
So as you were talking about these different ways to create deadline and create the urgency and really also talk about it in advance so it's not a surprise to people, I was thinking, do you—and I'm guessing you do—do you have some things that you should avoid during a launch with a deadline, like some stuff to look at in terms of, don't do this?
JACK: Yes. So one real obvious one that I hope no one is doing is if you're selling something digital, never say that there's a limited quantity. I don't see that as often as I used to.
AMY: I used to see it all the time, like, ten years ago. But you rarely see that now unless it's—true. Like sometimes, really quick, I teach my students this. When I have a VIP offer. I'll only let 100 people in this special VIP offer. Totally legit. But typically, when you're selling a digital course, which is the majority of my audience, or they're looking toward doing that, you typically don't have limited quantities. So yeah, that one you got to be very careful with.
JACK: Well, in one way—if we could take just a side note—one way to add in a really powerful fast-action bonus is to have some sort of extra access to you, and so you could have group coaching or one–on–one coaching. And so it totally makes sense for you to say, look, I can only do this for five clients or ten clients, whatever the number is. Everyone understands you don't have an unlimited amount of your own personal time. And so that's a great way to say, look, it's for the first ten people only. Why? Well, because I only have enough time to really give the one–on–one attention to this many people.
So going back to things to avoid. A really big one, and this goes back to why Deadline Funnel exists, is that, especially with so many emails being read on mobile devices, you want to avoid making promises in your email marketing that your software stack, your software tools can't back up.
And so let me give you a real–life example. So if you decided that you just wanted to go with a cheap plug in or something like that, and you thought, well, that's going to be good enough, what can very easily happen is that someone will be on your email list, and they'll be going through your emails day by day, clicking through. And then, they're out at, let’s say, Starbucks, and they're standing in line, waiting to get their coffee, and they're thumbing through their emails, and they see yours. “Today's the last day.” They click through. And if your technology isn't set up to realize, oh, wait a second; this is a different device, even though it's a different device and they're a totally different location, totally different WiFi system that they're connecting through and all those sorts of things, your software needs to be able to recognize that this person only has a few hours left. It doesn’t reset.
So if someone were to click through on an email that said, “Hey, today's the last day,” and they see, say, a countdown that says seven days left, they’re going to say, “Wait a second. What's going on here? Why are your emails saying today’s the last day, but your page countdown timer on my iPhone shows that there's seven days left?” And so you really want to make sure that you are using infrastructure that's going to take care of that.
I did an interesting demo—going back to the whole idea of me going to Australia. So on our most recent trip to Australia, I started recording in the Jacksonville, Florida, airport, where I said, “Okay, here's me. I'm going as a new subscriber into this automated sequence. I'm getting on a plane to go to Australia.” So three days later, still recovering from jetlag, I get in the car with my daughter, and we go to the Apple store. We buy an iPad. On video, I'm unwrapping it. We hit the button that transfers everything over. I open up Gmail, and the countdown timer and everything is accurate. So totally new device, out of the box, totally different continent, and so that’s really what you want to have happen when you are automating your deadlines, because it’s really, really important that no one have that Starbucks experience that I just explained.
AMY: Gotcha. Yeah. These are really great strategies to think about in terms of what you should do, but also what you should avoid. And I love that you even touched on this idea of, again, being authentic, because that kind of leads me to my next question.
I know my audience has some reservations about this. And when I was putting together these questions for you, I was thinking about some of my students that, they just don't want to add the deadlines and urgency. And I think about what are some of the reasons that they bring up? And one of the things I've heard before is, “I just don't want to be pushy. I don't want to make them make a decision right now. I don't want to seem aggressive in my marketing. And so that's why I tend to stay away from this.” What do you say to that?
JACK: I mean, the bottom line is that they're leaving a ton of money on the table. And it's not just the money. There's a lot of people who click through on the emails, watch the videos, attended the webinars, and they just needed that extra push. And because that extra little nudge wasn't given, their life wasn't changed. They stayed exactly where they were, and they didn't get your solution.
So on the one hand, they're losing out on money, and that's important. Let me just talk about from a heart–centric perspective why that's really important. Everyone wants to get their word out. So if your training works, if your product works, then you owe it to the world to spread your message as far and wide as possible. Well, there's a lot of different ways to do that, but many of them require money. So Facebook ads would be one of them. If you're only getting, say, two–thirds or one–half of the clients that you could be getting, that's less money in your bank account that you could use to further expand your message.
It also restricts the amount of revenue and the stability of your revenue in your business to be able to hire on a team, which has been, honestly, the number–one way that I've been able to go from a one–man guy who's just trying to figure things out to being able to run my business more like a CEO or a chairman of the board and be able to go to Australia or go on longer trips and to run the business as a business rather than being trapped inside. And so teams require money. You don't want to bring on—if you find that A-player, if you're business is just run on launches or if you are not bringing in as much revenue as your business could, then you don't have the resources to pay that A-player or to know that you can hire them after the launch is over.
So when you have your business, especially your client intake, automated, and you're getting the maximum number of sales as possible, not only are you changing the lives of the people who said yes, because you give them that extra reason, but you also have the resources and the financial wherewithal to invest in things like Facebook ads, invest in team, to further expand your message and not just improve your life, but to reach more people. So for all those reasons, I really feel like anyone who doesn't have a deadline in their business is really missing out.
And if I could just share like—I've got story after story after story, but I’ll just share one.
AMY: Yeah. Give me one.
JACK: One of my favorite clients is this wonderful woman named Alanna Kaivalya, PhD. And she has an online course that teaches yoginis, yoga instructors, how to run their business, how to market themselves better, and how to run their business. So through Deadline Funnel and her use of evergreen webinars, she was able to 4x her profit. Now, this didn't happen overnight, but she kept improving various parts of her business, but it started with automating things. She bought out her partner, who really wasn't doing anything, was just kind of along for the ride. She won Entrepreneur of the Year prize, and she goes for multi–week trips with her husband, sailing on a sailboat around New York. And she sends me emails from the sailboat, showing me how happy she is. So that's what this is about. It's about reaching more people, changing their lives, and changing your life in the process.
AMY: Now, talk to me a little bit about this whole idea of deadlines and urgency with automation. Actually, I’m going to take that question back. Before you get there, is there a difference between deadline and urgency, because I keep using those, and I know we've talked about them, but are they essentially the same thing, or do you look at those differently?
JACK: I really look at them as hand in glove. I mean, the deadline is the method that you can communicate urgency, that people feel a sense of urgency to take action now. I mean, that's really what we want is for people to take action now. And again, you're not going to be—this isn't about convincing people who otherwise wouldn't be convinced. This isn't about fooling people. This is about, there's so many people who didn't—of all the clients that bought on the first day that your first email came across or the second or third day, there are twice as many people oftentimes that read your emails. They're leaning in. They’re like, “Man, I hope this is the thing for me, but I don't know.” They just have reservations, and then they get distracted. And then they never buy. They get right to the threshold, but they don't actually become your client. And so it's that level of urgency that's going to help pull them off the fence and get them to move forward and take action. So the deadlines are what—I mean, you can really use them interchangeably in my mind, but deadlines are what drive the urgency.
AMY: Okay, cool. And then talk to me about using deadlines and urgency in an automated strategy, because I know that's—and I talked about this in the intro—that's where we use Deadline Funnel, and it's become such a huge part of our business and how we do our automated webinars. But I just think it's important hearing from you kind of to paint that picture.
JACK: Sure. Let me just start with, you and I have talked about what would be the easiest thing for someone who’s not super advanced? They don't have a decade of funnel–building experience. What would be a simple thing that someone could do? And what I would say and where I recommend a lot of people start would be that once you have a launch that's worked one time, you can do what one of our clients, Nick Stevenson, did, which is to take that launch and instead of trying to rerun it more and more often, but manually doing that, you can take everything that worked in the launch—the same emails, the same page, the same everything—and you can set that up in an automated way where you've got a mechanism where someone comes in, they read the lead magnet, or they watch the lead magnet, and then your emails say, “Okay, this coming Thursday, we actually are going to start this program,”—the same thing that you would do to build anticipation for your launch. They go through the PLF content, and then you have the open cart, close cart, and you can automate that whole process. So that would be a really easy baby step from I've got a launch, but my revenue is very, very much boom or bust, up and down, based on whether I'm launching or not. So what do I do next? That would be one thing that you could do.
A lot of our clients also will have some sort of lead magnet or maybe it's a webinar that they're registering for. So that brings them into an automated pre-built email sequence, which I think everyone is familiar with. Someone signs up. There's emails that are pre–scheduled to go out. Well, just take that same concept. You've got these emails that are pre–written, pre–scheduled to go out. Well, you're going to have three emails on the last day of this promotion. So rather than just silence, you're going to have a deadline. So you're going to build towards a deadline. And so what our system will do is that it ties in with the most popular—pretty much every email provider out there so that when someone joins in, signs up, becomes a prospect, or gets a certain trigger in their email software, that starts our system at the same time. And so if they both start at the same time and end at the same time, the deadline is 100 percent authentic. And then our software does all the heavy lifting of making sure that—it tracks them from device to device, no matter where they are in the world, et cetera. And so that's the high–level view. I can go deeper if you want, but that's the high-level view of how an automated sequence works.
AMY: No, that makes perfect sense. And I teach my students that after you do a few live launches and you have it under your belt and it’s converting well, moving into evergreen and automation is a great idea because live launching can be stressful and nobody wants to do that over and over and over again, five, ten, fifteen times during the year. It's just, with live launching, you just do it a few times a year and you're golden. And so if you can supplement your revenue with automation as well, I mean, that is definitely the way to go.
The way my business is set up is I have one program on automation. We sell it through webinars every single day. And then we do live launching two to three times a year. And so I love having that mix in the business and putting deadlines and urgency to an automated promotion has changed everything for us. So beyond even the software, just this idea that with automation you can still have integrity with deadlines and urgency, I think is really important for my audience to hear because of the fact that without it, people stay on the fence and they never make a decision.
JACK: Absolutely, yeah. And you have a fantastic mix, as you mentioned, of you've got your live launches, your high–ticket programs, and then you have also a steady intake of new clients so that you know that you've got a baseline level of revenue coming into your business, which probably is going up month after month as you improve your ads and your copy and do those sorts of things. And so then when it's time to move into a launch cycle, the two really support each other because you've been able to build your list as these people come through the automated funnel. Even the people that don't buy, they're still on your list, and you've been in contact with them, so now when you do your launch, it just becomes such a much more powerful launch to be able do as opposed to if you were only doing your launches.
AMY: Exactly. So I think having a mix and having that be something you aspire to in your business, a lot of my listeners aren't there yet. They're not ready to add both live launching and automation. But I want them to hear this episode and understand how you could do urgency and deadlines in a live launch and then bring that into automation when you're ready as well.
So, Jack, thank you so very much for your time. I think this conversation is so important. I love that we did it in a way that my audience knows that you can still have deadlines, you can still of urgency, and be authentic and be honest with your marketing as well. So I appreciate you shining a light on that today.
JACK: Thank you so much, Amy. This has been a lot of fun.
AMY: Where can people find out more about you?
JACK: We’ve set up a page at deadlinefunnel.com/amy, and we’ve got an upcoming urgency, what I’m calling, Urgency Cookbook. These are hand-drawn recipes of how to add urgency in different types of ways in your business. It's just a way to get some ideas and think about, well, how could I start thinking about this, whether you're ready or not? And so we've put that together. Anyone who's listening, that's free for you to download. Just head on over to deadlinefunnel.com/amy.
AMY: All right. Thanks so much, Jack. Appreciate it.
JACK: Thank you.
AMY: So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jack and you're starting to think about how to add in more urgency and more specific deadlines into your launch. And when we open the doors to Digital Course Academy®️ again, you can be sure that if you join us, I will teach you how to create deadlines in your launch of your digital course so that it feels right and it feels good to you, but also gets your potential customers to make a decision so that they can get the results that they're truly after.
Okay, if you loved this bonus episode and you're looking for more, guess what. I've got a lot of bonus episodes coming down the pipeline. And most of them are not interviews; they are solo shows, where they're actually a little bit more casual than my typical Thursday episodes, a little bit more behind the scenes, motivational, inspirational. We’re just kind of shaking things up a little bit.
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Okay, I can’t wait to connect with you again soon. Have a great week. Bye for now.
