The First Two Purchases

It has happened. I officially have the first two paying customers for Project Galaxy. Here are my current emotions as told by emojis 😱😅💪

Let me set the stage for those of you who might be reading this Medium story before anything else Project Galaxy related:

About a month ago I decided to get on the phone with previous customers of mine. I chose a list of 135 customers who had purchased a product from me before (a much more qualified audience to get feedback from, because they’d already paid me money!). From the list of 135 customers, about 50 people said they would hop on the phone to hear about my new project. Of those 50, I probably ended up talking to 35. Not a bad conversion and a heck of a lot of phone calls. Good thing I have rollover minutes! (Ha, remember when that was a thing!?)

So what are the chain of events that led to the first sales?

I did the 15-minute phone calls.
I put these callers in a Google Spreadsheet and rated their interest level in the project by: Loved it, meh’d it, hated it.
I worked my ass off and the developer worked her ass off to get the Project Galaxy website up and ready one week early.
I decided that I wanted to do some pre-purchases.
I put time on my calendar to remind myself to send the pre-purchasers an email (yesterday).
I emailed 30 people individually with an “exclusive early access” opportunity. That email was personalized to each person and included an extra incentive that the general public would not get.
Also in the email I set a deadline for them to pre-purchase of Sept 18 and added a follow-up reminder (using followup.cc) so I could send them another email two days from now.

Boom. Two sales!

I’m extremely excited. Yeah, Wells Fargo isn’t calling to tell me their safes are overflowing with my money, but I’m pretty damn stoked that two sales have happened.

An interesting tidbit about the two buyers: One lives in Iowa and one lives in Austria. That’s pretty cool.

I will continue to add updates about the pre-purchasers. If I was a betting man, I’d put money on 10 people buying by the Friday deadline. We’ll see how that turns out.

Today’s Tasks

More Calls: Today I actually have 6 more phone calls with people who have purchased previous projects from me to talk about Project Galaxy. It’ll be interesting to share with them that people have already purchased and see what they have to say.

Bonus Guides: I mentioned this early on in the journal, but I’m building in some “surprise and delight” items after people purchase. I have three bonus guides that I’m pumped about. They’re essentially cliffs notes on three topics: Profit, Creativity, and Taking Action. Should be fun!

Slack Community: Ooooh, here’s a little nugget revealed... Project Galaxy will have it’s own Slack Community (happy dance!). My girlfriend Caroline is going to help set this up today.

Book Giveaway: I’m toying around with an idea of doing a secret book giveaway as a small marketing effort for this project. Not sure if I have the time to do it or if it’s worth the $500-$750 it will cost in books + shipping. I’ll make a decision one way or another today.

Daily Podcast: I got some great feedback yesterday about doing a daily podcast during Project Galaxy’s launch (Sept 22 — Oct 6). To be honest, it’s a good amount of extra work to do it at the level I’d like to have it done. I’m on the fence about this one still.

Podcaster Reminders: I’ll be emailing the 24 podcasters who I did interviews with to make sure everything is on schedule for those interviews to be released on Sept 22 (or around there depending on their podcast release schedule).

Two Articles: I need to write two articles. These will be featured on launch day and you might even see one of them on a popular Medium Publication.

PHEW!

To end this entry, I leave you with the first sneak peek of some of the Project Galaxy video footage:

<< Read Yesterday’s Entry

Day 56 >>

This entry is part of a 60-day journal I’m writing that will share all my planning, strategies, pre-launch efforts, and marketing tactics leading up to a big crazy project codenamed Project Galaxy. Start reading here.