213: The Proven Formula That’s Driven Over $1 BILLION in Sales with Jeff Walker

Today, I’m talking with Jeff Walker—the creator of Product Launch Formula® and the pioneer behind the modern launch model that’s driven over $1B+ in documented sales—to break down why product launches fail…

According to Jeff, it almost always comes down to one thing: the offer.

Not only does Jeff break down where failed launches miss the mark, but we pull on that thread to explore how launches have evolved over the years. What no longer works? What role does AI play? And how can entrepreneurs adapt as buyers get smarter and attention gets harder to earn?

Jeff’s been doing online business for nearly 30 years, and he’s watched tools, platforms, and tactics come and go—and still, he continues to produce results while others chase what’s new.

This episode is not only about launches, it’s about what actually holds up when you’re building a business over the long game. Check it out!

Mic Drop Moments

• “If the launch is going to go sideways, you didn’t get your offer right.” – Jeff Walker

• “A launch as I do them, it’s all about delivering value before reveal.” – Jeff Walker

• “Delivering that value before revealing where they feel like they’ve learned something, they’ve moved forward in their life, that’s just an absolutely huge thing that pulls people and gathers their trust and their attention.” – Jeff Walker

• “Adding more and more and more stuff into your offer is not a winning strategy. Everyone’s got too much stuff. So, I think we have to be more on point with our offers.” – Jeff Walker

• “Confidence is critical, but none of us are confident when we start. So, doing is absolutely the way you build confidence.” – Jeff Walker

• “Whatever you can do, wherever you can find the confidence to start and get moving, you got to do that and then you got to keep it. Every skill out there is just baby steps, putting one foot in front of the other and getting better and better and better over time.” – Jeff Walker

• 00:00 Why Most Launches Fail
• 01:23 The Offer Is The #1 Lever
• 02:59 What Takes a Launch from Good to Great?
• 04:16 Delivering Value Before Reveal
• 05:28 The Origin of Product Launch Formula
• 14:43 The Core Elements of Product Launch Formula
• 20:10 What Launch Tactics No Longer Work?
• 25:54 The Challenge Model vs. Product Launch Formula
• 27:19 Why People Still Swear by the Product Launch Formula
• 31:20 Making a Difference in Peoples Lives
• 34:22 The Role AI Now Plays with PLF
• 37:33 Adventures as a Relationship Amplifier
• 47:21 Why Jeff’s Leaving His Business to His Kids
• 48:21 Designing Wealth Around Freedom
• 56:45 Advice for New Entrepreneurs

Brad Weimert: Jeff Walker, thank you so much for joining me, man. It’s good to see you.

Jeff Walker: I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Brad Weimert: So, you are like the godfather of product launches. You have been doing this model for a very long time. What is the most common thing that experienced entrepreneurs f*ck up when they’re launching a product?

Jeff Walker: I think if a launch is going to go sideways, it’s generally because people mess up the offer. In reality, what I do comes out of direct marketing, which has a history that was 100 years before I ever started, and the people that are deep into direct marketing and understand direct response, there are three things you have to get right. Well, there are three primary components, and one will be copy or creative. The other is your audience or your list. And the third one is your offer. And we can sit here and debate this. Direct marketers who want to go down that rabbit hole will debate them but I think many or most folks think that the offer is the most important thing. I’m in that camp. I think the offer is the number one thing.

So, if launch is going to go sideways, you didn’t get your offer right, and that’s having your offer, first of all, focusing on how you’re going to change someone’s lives. What is the transformation going to be for them? And having a market-to-message match, which that’s a Dan Kennedy saying. I don’t know if it came, maybe it was before him, but that’s where I heard it, having the right message of the right offer to your market. And so, if a launch is going to go sideways, if someone’s going to f*ck it up, they’re going to f*ck up the offer, or they’re not going to communicate the true value of that offer.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I mean, the notion of having the offer right is super interesting across the board in business because so many people just try to launch something. And I mean it not in the sense of a true product launch, but like they start a business, and they never really clearly articulate what the actual product, what the proposition is, right, what the real offer is. And so, it’s a lookalike, and it just gets washed away in the midst of the world in general.

Jeff Walker: I’ve had a couple of times where people literally say this to me like in social or whatever, “Oh, you’re Jeff Walker. You can launch anything.” Or I was looking at possibly buying a business, and they’re like, “Well, you’re Jeff Walker. You can just launch it and make all this money.” And I’m like, “If you know how much work I put into making a launch look effortless, you would run for the hills. And that work starts with a huge amount of work on that offer. Who are you selling to? What are they just dying to buy? What transformation are they dying to have in their lives? And so, how can you promise that transformation? How can you deliver it? And then how can you make people understand that you can deliver it and they can have it?

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, that’s at the core. You’ve now seen so many launches. What are a few two or three little amplifiers that take a launch from good to great?

Jeff Walker: Well, let’s see. I think that’s a great question. Good to great. So, every now and then, you have something that just leaps out of the gate, like you open up cart. So, you have that pre-launch, and then you open up cart, and the sales just take off and accelerate from there. And I think there’s a piece that it’s like lightning in the bottle. How do you capture that lightning in the bottle? And I wish I could capture it every time. I’ve experienced, I don’t know, 25, 30 major launches that I’ve done and hundreds that I’ve witnessed, that it’s having the right audience, the right offer, the right message at the right time. And then of course, it’s all the block and tackling. I mean, it’s getting that sequence, right? I mean, at the core, a launch as I do them, it’s all about delivering value before reveal. So, that’s a catchphrase, value before reveal.

So, you’re creating value in someone’s life before you even reveal what the offer is. In the old days, before markets were more sophisticated or as sophisticated as they are now, you wouldn’t necessarily let people know right up front that there’s an offer coming. These days, this is one of the shifts in the last, whatever, 10 years. Everyone knows they’re in a funnel. Everyone knows they’re being sold, everyone knows they’re being marketed to, and in fact, they’re suspicious if they’re not. So, right in our launches these days, right from the get-go, we said, “Yeah, there’s going to be an offer, but first, before we get to that offer, I want to just deliver a huge amount of value to you.”

And so, delivering that value before reveal where they feel like they’ve learned something, they’ve moved forward in their life, that’s just an absolute huge thing that pulls people and gathers their trust and their attention. That’s a huge component.

Brad Weimert: Love it. Well, I want to talk about some of the other details and structural elements of it, and how things have changed over time. But I want to start at the beginning. So, I know you’ve told your origin story a thousand times, but there are lots of thousands of people that have not heard it. So, before we hit play or record here, you were telling me that you had an email newsletter in 1996 where you asked people to send you checks for payment. So, let’s start there and go into how you actually created the Product Launch Formula.

Jeff Walker: Yeah. So, I was actually a corporate failure. I was in the corporate world. I did not do well, quit right probably a week before they would’ve fired me. And so, I quit to be a stay-at-home dad. I was a stay-at-home dad with my 1-year-old son. And then a couple of years later, we had my daughter as well. So, now I’m at home taking care of a couple of babies, and really, actually feeling like a fish out of water there because I’m not a natural caregiver there either. And we were just desperate times. My wife had a good job, but she’s supporting the family, so one-income family, and we were desperate for money. At that point, I had been studying the stock market incessantly, actually, since I was a kid. I was super interested in the stock market. And I had a lot of knowledge about it.

And so, I started publishing a newsletter, an email newsletter about the stock market, the first email. Then the first newsletter went out to 17 people, but it gradually grew through word of mouth, and I created the most crude website. I couldn’t afford a domain name. Back then, domains cost a lot more than they do now. Couldn’t figure out hosting, couldn’t figure out any of that. So, I just had this email newsletter that I sent out through blind carbon copy, and eventually, after I had about 600 people subscribing to that, I thought, “Well, maybe I can sell something to these folks.” And so, I had zero sales experience, zero marketing experience, and furthermore, I had this belief that like sales was creepy.

The only successful thing that was going on in my life was this free newsletter. People would write back and tell me how awesome I was for sending this free newsletter, and I thought they’d hate me if I asked them for money. And so, there are all kinds of… Brad, my mindset was so messed up. It was just so messed up. And I thought this to myself, like, if I deliver even more value for free, if I romance them, then maybe they won’t hate me if I ask for money. And so, this was the origin of the first launch that delivering that value before reveal. And another phrase is that we use is desire before availability, building up this desire before something’s available. So, I increased my publishing schedule. I gave more and more. I put together reports and had it lead into this first launch, which started the newsletter in ‘96. The first launch was early ‘97.

But, yeah, taking online payments was rocket science then. So, I sent out this long email that said, “I’ve got this even better version of this newsletter, and if you write a check and mail it to me, then you can have this upgraded version.” And it worked amazingly enough. Well, it worked somewhat. My goals were very, very modest. My goal at that time was to make $10,000 in a year. Like, if we could do that, it would change my family’s fortunes. And that first launched at $1,650, four, no, six people bought, and six people sent me a check. Just blew me away that people would give me money for something I created. That was the first brick in the wall that I could create value, and someone would willingly give me money for that value I created. Before that, I just made money through going to a job.

Brad Weimert: Well, I want to highlight that for aspiring entrepreneurs right now, because I think the most common problem for any aspiring entrepreneur is themselves. Said another way, and I know how cliche this is, and I know how frustrating it is to hear when you’re a brand new entrepreneur, but your mindset has so much to do with everything. And the way that you get around that is by doing this sh*t anyway. I don’t care how you feel. I don’t care what you’re thinking, just go do something. And that’s such a beautiful example of you didn’t know how to put up a website, you couldn’t afford a domain at the time, you were afraid to ask people for money, you thought sales was dirty, and you pushed through and made something happen anyway, which is a beautiful origin story because it applies to so many people.

Jeff Walker: Yeah. No, it’s nuts to look back and see how your mindset evolves over time. I had a friend at one point in there when I think my business was doing $100,000, and it took me a few years to get there. So, I did hit that $10,000 mark, eventually hit $100,000, maybe, I don’t know, in ‘99, three years later. And I met someone out at a conference. He said he wrote this down. I had it on my wall for years, and it just said, “It’s just another zero.” It’s just another zero. So, I mean, to go from $10,000 to $100,000, right, it’s just another zero. To go to a million, it’s just another zero. And eventually you start believing that. And, yeah, it’s like that first dollar is the hardest.

And, Brad, I had a couple of thoughts early on that were actually really high-quality thoughts that set the trajectory for me. And one was when I did that first launch, it’s like, if I did this once, I could do it again and again and again. That was one thought. And the other thought was, “And I might even get better at it.” And that’s what’s defined everything. I’ve just been grinding it out ever since.

That’s really…

Brad Weimert: Turned out to be true.

Jeff Walker: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Weimert: So, eventually, as Laura has it, you were into your 18th launch before you released the Product Launch Formula. How did that come to be, and why did you decide you were willing to teach it? And let me actually set the frame of this by saying, thank God it was your 18th launch, because the number of people today that launch a product before they know what the f*ck they’re doing and just sell it is gross and it’s going to destroy the industry, and it already is. So, tell me about the 18th and actually finally launching that formula.

Jeff Walker: A hundred percent agree with you. The number of people that you see on social saying, “I’m at my wits’ end. I can’t make any sales. Give me some encouragement to keep going.” And then you go look at their website, and they’re selling how to make money online. It’s like, do you see what’s wrong here? So, anyways, what happened to me was I built that business. So, ‘97, start making sales, ‘96, start publishing, ‘97, start making sales. ‘99, hit the six-figure mark. Things were going well. I had a partner in that business. He was a content partner, and in 2005, he called me up to tell me that he started a competing website, and he was taking all of our clients.

Brad Weimert: Sweet.

Jeff Walker: Yeah. That was one of those phone calls. I remember I was sitting over there at my desk back when you had corded phones and picked up the phone. I had business, and then I didn’t have a business 10 minutes later. And so, that was ’05, in the spring of ‘05. And I was like, “Okay. Well, I built…” By that time, my mindset would’ve gotten a lot more bulletproof. And I’m like, “Oh, okay. Well, I built one thing. I can build another thing.” And I can either fight this out with him in court and continue this business I had about the stock market. But by then, I realized that I absolutely loved the market team and even more than the stock market. And I’d started to make some real connections in the online business and marketing world. And so, I said, “Okay, well, I’m going to just start over.”

And the thing that I really know how to do is put together these launches, put together these promotions. And so, that boom, that’s where I went. I’d met several of the key players who already had audiences who I’d actually helped them do launches, names I’m sure you know, many others wouldn’t know, but John Reese, Yanik Silver were the absolute kings of the online marketing world at that point, and I’d helped them do launches. So, they knew this stuff worked just out of the goodness of my heart. I didn’t charge them anything. I just, “Here, do this, do this, do this.” And so, they said, “Hey, Jeff, we know your stuff works because it worked for me. If you put together a course on this, we’ll promote it for you.” And that was the first launch of PLF was in 2005, PLF being Product Launch Formula.

Brad Weimert: Yes. Wild. So, for those that don’t know, and I think the structural elements are super relevant today, I do want to talk about kind of how things have changed. But first and foremost, what are the basic elements of the Product Launch Formula that apply to everybody?

Jeff Walker: Yeah, I think, I mean, first of all, just put a frame on it. When I talk about launches, if you think about the way Apple will launch an iPhone, it’s not just like one day that phone shows up on their website. We all know that when you say it, it’s a little silly. They would never do that. Instead, what they do is they, well, there are rumors that start a year in advance, and we know that those rumors are partially seeded by Apple. And then as they come down into their launch month, then there’ll be rumors about when their launch event will be, and then they’ll announce that this launch event is coming. Then they’ll have the launch event. The product’s still not available. Then all of a sudden, even though the product’s been announced, and demonstrated either video or live then they will start to like the reviewers.

The tech reviewers will start to get it, and then it will show up on their website, but you still can’t order it for another few days. They’ve built up this anticipation, that desire before availability. If you look at the way Hollywood does it, they’re very, very similar. And a movie doesn’t just appear one day. There are trailers, and there are actors on podcasts and TV shows that all build up to it. They build this anticipation. So, what the Product Launch Formula does is it takes that type of anticipation, that type of a sequenced engineered approach to a new product release, and it brings it to our kinds of businesses where we might not have that budget that Hollywood has or that Apple has.

So, I think of it, the three main things we talked about, the desire before ability, we talked about the value before reveal, but those things are deployed in through stories, through sequences, and through triggers, mental triggers. And the sequences are your pre-launch. There’s even a pre-pre-launch, but your pre-launch, which is the time before a product or offers even available to buy, but you’re releasing content that naturally delivers that value, but then builds into your offer being the natural next step for people to take. So, one sequence is that pre-launch, and then there’s your open cart sequence, so that’s like when you actually start taking orders. And then you’ll have an open cart period that could be anywhere from four to seven days, where people can get whatever the special deal is for the launch.

And there has to be an open to the open cart and a close to the close cart, and that close means that if they don’t purchase in that timeframe, then there’s some negative consequence. Either the price will go up, or the bonuses will go away, or the offer will come off the market entirely. And so, through those sequences, you’re using stories, and really in a big metaphorical sense, you’re telling the story of your client’s future success, of their future life, of how their life is going to become better, whether you’re teaching them to knit a sweater or have a meditation practice or speak a second language. There’s always this transformation that’s coming for them. And then the mental triggers are these things that create influence in our heads.

That book, Influence by Cialdini, gave me the language to speak about so many of these, but there are things like scarcity and social proof and anticipation and community, authority. And the launch gives you time to deploy all of those, or many of those triggers, as you go through your pre-launch in your open cart.

Brad Weimert: Love that. So, you used some good examples, and I want to highlight for people a couple of things. One is used example or used Apple and Hollywood as your two kind of everybody-knows examples. If you haven’t thought about this before, both Apple and Hollywood have been doing the exact same thing for every single product they’ve launched for the last several decades. It’s methodical. So, there isn’t really variance from this. There might be a different mechanism here or there that they test, but it’s the same process every time. And so, when you map this onto other industries, you’ll start to see it. What industries have you seen do a launch where people would be surprised by it and be like, “Oh, sh*t, I didn’t think about launching in that space”?

Jeff Walker: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the one that leaps out at me is the gaming industry. They’re just absolute masters, just absolute masters at it. I think you look at some of the folks in social that are selling, I mean, I think fashion, certainly. I think cosmetics. They do this super well.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, at this point, you’ve had tens of thousands of students that you’ve taught the Product Launch Formula to. This is collectively a billion and beyond in product launches and sales. What are the elements? You gave me kind of the strategy and the core elements, which I love, and I think that’s the evergreen stuff and probably why you talk about it. Tactically, what are some of the things that you used to teach that no longer work, and the new things that work today that couldn’t have happened before?

Jeff Walker: That’s a great question. So, I think of it as well first of, well, let’s see. I think of more as we keep on getting more and more tools. So, my first launch was email. There was no other tool, because I guess there was web pages and email, and web pages were really hard to create. I mean, literally to create a page was hard to do. So, it was essentially email was the only tool, and then we had blogs, and all of a sudden it became easier to publish on your website. And then all of a sudden we could start to put audio on our blogs, and we could put video, like ugly screen capture video, and then we could have… Then social media came along, and then all of a sudden it got easier to do like nice video, full motion video, like you’re watching TV.

And then it got where the tools got easier. We could do cinematic, beautiful, full-motion, narrative-driven video. Then mobile came along. Every one of these was a new tool we could add into the quiver. Did email still work? Of course it did. Would I still do email-only launches? I actually still would, but all these new tools gave us capabilities. Live broadcast. When that came along, it was an amazing new tool. So, all of these things, they just gave us more arrows in the quiver to use, depending on our capabilities, depending on the launch itself, what the offer was, what our audience was. Some of those might fit better for some people than others, for some launches than others.

I think things that don’t work anymore, I think the windows have closed or are tightened. I did a launch, my first launch for Product Launch Formula was a $600,000 launch. We had big-time tech issues. Otherwise, it would’ve hit that seven figures. But the second launch was in ‘08, and that was the one I made a million dollars in sales in 53 minutes, did 3.7 million in 34 hours, which is crazy. I mean, that’s like 11 years after I said I just want to make $10,000 in a year. And a million dollars in 53 minutes, it’s just nuts. That launch, the pre-launch was 27 days long. Because you could hold people’s attention for 27 days back in 2008. There’s a lot less noise in the market. These days the pre-launch window has shrunk, and it’s more like four to ten days, maybe.

The open cart used to be longer. That has shrunk down, and it should be maybe five days. If you’re advanced, it might even be three days. So, windows have tightened. Audiences have gotten more sophisticated. So, I think you do, right up front, you have to say to people, “Yeah, I’m going to have something to sell you down the road, but first we’re going to go through this process. I’m going to deliver a lot of value.” So, that’s changed. I think, within offers, there used to be this term, the thud factor. And the analogy was that there was the sound that when you shipped a box of your stuff, the UPS driver would drop the box on the front porch, and it would make a thud because there’s so much stuff.

And these days, adding more and more and more stuff into your offer is not a winning strategy. Everyone’s got too much stuff. So, I think we have to be more on point with our offers. They have to be tighter. They have to have less stuff. They have to feel easier. I think you can’t be tone deaf in your messaging. You have to be aware that there is a greater conversation. If you have a significant launch in your market or your niche, there is going to be a conversation happening about it in social or on Reddit. And so, just greater transparency, I think, in all marketing is necessary. So, those are some of the tweaks. I think one of the big tweaks in the last, since COVID, is that it used to be the pre-launch was the star of the show.

And you have this amazing pre-launch with amazing content, and then it’d be like, “Hey, we’re open, go buy,” and you send a few emails. Now that sequence, once the cart opens, it’s just a lot more important, and something’s happening every single day in open cart. Every day has got to be the best day to buy. Every day you’re giving incentive for people to show up live or to watch that video and giving them a reason to buy that day.

Brad Weimert: So, the Product Launch Formula, I kind of learned, I focused on marketing in that era. So, when you first launched the Product Launch Formula, there was sort of Mike Dillard and Frank Kern, and what I now refer to as the OGs of internet marketing, all selling products. And the Product Launch Formula was really formative, I think, for lots of them as well. Today, you see, we’ve got a whole different evolution of entrepreneurs, and the idea of “internet marketing” is sort of a ridiculous concept, right? Now, we just call it marketing.

Jeff Walker: Right.

Brad Weimert: One of the things that has spun out of this over time is the challenge model, which is the idea of architecting a challenge for people to engage them through the initial process of the launch to sell them something. How does the challenge model work with or differently than the Product Launch Formula?

Jeff Walker: Well, you might accuse me of being the carpenter only has a hammer so everything looks like a nail. But I think that a challenge model is essentially, it’s 100% mapped onto PLF, it’s Product Launch Formula. And you look at a typical five-day challenge, right? And what is it? It’s like three pieces of content and an offer and a couple of days of follow-up. And those content, the big deal with it, the difference in a challenge is that you’re giving something to do each day. That’s the challenge aspect. And I think it’s fantastic. I love it. But it’s essentially the same model with a different name. And I don’t know, maybe I’m doing an injustice, but I think it’s a great model. But essentially, it’s the same idea. It’s the value before reveal. It’s the desire before availability with this added piece of giving something, something to do each day, so they feel like they’re winning. So, it feels like they’re moving forward.

Brad Weimert: I love it. Yeah, I could definitely see that. So, one of the other big shifts, and this is more today than ever, but you went from an email newsletter to information products to PLF Live to a live event, which you’ve been doing for 15 years, which I think was the natural progression of people selling courses, right? It’s a higher dollar amount backend offer and community-driven thing. And that’s still going today. And by the way, I know people that have been participating in your mastermind for years and rave about it. Today, where information is everywhere, why do people still buy the Product Launch Formula?

Jeff Walker: Well, I mean, a gazillion reasons. I mean, the biggest reason is results, right? Yeah. You can go to YouTube and watch as many videos as you want about launching a product, and you’re going to get surface-level information, and it’s not going to be the entire cohesive system with coaching that takes you through the entire thing. So, the last time I sold PLF as a course actually was never. It always had some amount of coaching that was built into it. And these days, if you join Product Launch Formula, you get a full year of coaching calls with that. And so, you’re getting your questions answered. You’re getting a system that’s proven, a system that’s organized, a system that takes. It moves you more quickly to the result in a more sure way, and we take away all the fluff. It’s just this is what you need to do.

You’re buying insurance. You’re buying insurance that you’re just not watching someone on YouTube or reading someone’s blog that may or may not have done a launch. I mean, this goes back to that when you first asked me about that transition and the fact that I’d done all these launches. When you go and watch someone on YouTube or use someone’s blog, do they really know what they’re talking about? Here, you’re buying mastery. That’s why people still buy Product Launch Formula. They’re buying mastery and being coached through the process.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. I think that it’s sort of the same. I mean, I ask it, by the way, I ask that to everybody that’s coming from the info product background because I’m curious about how they all think about it and look at it differently.

Jeff Walker: I think it’s a great question we all need to be asking ourselves because we’re fast approaching the time where it’s not just you’re going– well, we’re already there. It’s like you go to your favorite tool, your favorite AI tool and say, create a course for me about how to launch this product that I want to launch. And it will do it. It’ll do it with great authority, so you think it knows exactly, it knows everything because AI’s really good at having that authoritative voice. And it’ll be pretty damn accurate. It will be strong and it will only get stronger. And that’s for all of us, and every one of us that’s selling any type of training, teaching, consulting, that’s the world we’re in where we do have to worry about that. So, I think it’s a fantastic question. It’s a question I ask myself just about every day because this industry is just changing so radically fast.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I want to get back to kind of the evolution of the product. I also want to accentuate that point by giving the– I think many people have said this or heard this, but if it was about knowledge, then we wouldn’t have so many fat people in the country.

Jeff Walker: Right. We’d all be like 30 pounds, weigh 30 pounds less, and be able to run a 10k in 40 minutes and have the most amazing relationships, love relationships with incredible kids, and our lives would be all perfect if it was just about more information.

Brad Weimert: Right. It’s execution and often that’s accountability and coaching that leads you there. Okay. So, I am always impressed with people that stick to something for a long period of time when in commitment that goes to that. You’ve been running this company for 20-plus years, the Product Launch Formula, in particular. Do you get bored talking about the same thing all the time?

Jeff Walker: I think actually, you know, Brad.

Brad Weimert: That’s amazing.

Jeff Walker: Well, first of all, I mean, it’s just an amazing game we’re playing, right? I mean, it’s just a crazy…

Brad Weimert: The game of business, is that what you’re talking about?

Jeff Walker: Yeah. It’s just a crazy game because it’s changing all the time. It’s been 20 years, almost 30 years in online business for me, over 20 years of PLF and what we’ve gone through a Great Recession. I went through 9/11, which was a big deal when you’re publishing about the stock market. We’ve gone through COVID. We’re going through AI. We’ve gone through video and mobile and social, and that’s how it keeps changing. I do think maybe one of my superpowers is I’m pretty good at not getting bored, and this may sound Pollyanna, but it’s been a long time since I had to work for money. I’ve done pretty well over the years. I mean, I forget how many million dollar or multimillion dollar launches in a row is, but it’s in the 20s, like 22 or 23. And remember I came into this saying if I could make $10,000 in a year, it’d solve everything for me. So, it’s been a long time since I had to work for money and I really do love the impact I get to make on people. Brad, have you done that StrengthsFinder thing? It was a big deal 10 years ago. and my number…

Brad Weimert: I love that.

Jeff Walker: Yeah. So, my number one strength and here I’m spilling the beans is significance. And when I read about that, I’m like, wow, it just sounds like I got a really big ego. It doesn’t sound like a strength to me. It sounds like I’ve just got this out of check ego, but I do love making a difference in people’s lives and this business gives me the ability to do that. It’s such an enormous scale. And then partly, it’s because I’ve been doing this for 20 years, but I’ve had over a million people go through my masterclass. So, every year, I do a free masterclass, and in my opinion, it’s the second greatest training in the world. I’m doing launches. And in other words, it’s my launch for Product Launch Formula. But I go all out and I teach and I teach and I teach because I know people are going to end up buying on the back of it.

But a million people have gone through that. And dude, I mean, I’m just this grew up middle class and middle America, nothing special about me, and all of a sudden, I’m able to reach a million people and to some extent, change their lives. It’s just, how can you not get thrilled by that?

Brad Weimert: That’s awesome. Well, 20 years in, I hear that you are redesigning recraft, the product course curriculum, et cetera. Tell me structurally, what’s different and tell me how AI is fitting into the Product Launch Formula of 2026.

Jeff Walker: Since 2008, I’ve been focused on making the course tighter and more consumable. We make it over and over and over, and every single time, it’s tighter, more consumable, meets people, ideally meets them where they’re at. It isn’t just a bunch of long videos. There’s all kinds of action guides and accountability built in and coaching built in. We were real early into AI. Actually, Brad, this is a crazy thing. So, I started publishing about the stock market in ‘96. I’d been obsessed about the stock market for a long time, but when I left the corporate world and started being a Mr. Mom, stay-at-home dad, that’s when I went deep, deep, deep into the stock market. So, I’d stay up all night long studying the market, then get up and take care of the kids.

And the studying the stock market was building neural networks to predict the market, and neural networks is what AI and LLMs are built on. So, I was geeking out on AI hard in the early 90s on like a 486 computer using Microsoft Excel to build, like literally pushing the limits of how big a spreadsheet you could build back then. So, AI’s been on my radar for a long time. So, early on, we jumped into AI. We’re now two and a half years into. We built a tool that’s integrated within Product Launch Formula that when people join Product Launch Formula, they get our launch sheet tool, launchsheet.ai. It’s not for sale to the public. It’s only for Product Launch Formula owners. And it will literally build out everyone’s launch assets.

And so, when you go into a launch, you need to create things like your pre-launch content, which is usually done in live broadcast or maybe in video. So, it’ll script that stuff out for you. It’ll script out, it will help you create your offer. It will help you really dial your offer into your ideal avatar. It will create all your sales collateral. So, we’ve gone super, super deep into that. Now, AI is not the answer to everything. If it was, we’d all be gazillionaires, but it’s a huge, huge shortcut, especially if someone’s first in getting into this, facing the blank page on like how to put together an offer, how to articulate what that offer is, how to create a series of pre-launch content, how to create an open cart plan launch. It just does so much of the heavy lifting. So, yeah, it’s just always been about making PLF easier to consume, quicker to execute. And now, with the AI tool, it’s just this next level.

Brad Weimert: All right, let me talk about, I want to hear about sort of lifestyle and legacy. So, you are 64. You could not do this. I know that both you and your brother John like to play in nature and go do fun stuff and go on adventures. I also have heard that you have intentions of keeping the business in the family, not selling it, but handing it off. How do you want to spend your time? And what do you want the future of the Product Launch Formula to be, and why?

Jeff Walker: Oh, Brad, you ask a lot of big questions. So, first of all, once I started to achieve success, I’ve always had fun being outside. Being outside’s always been a big part of my life, being out in nature. Athletics has always been a big part of my life. And I didn’t want to sacrifice that because I had a business. So, even from early on as I built my business, I’ll tell you what, in the first few years, everyone’s grinding. There’s just no way you’re going to get away from grinding when you’re starting out.

But pretty quickly, I remember that goal, $10,000 a year. So, when I started making $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, I had a part of me that wasn’t just about more. It’s not just about more money. It’s about what that buys me. And that buys me freedom to have the lifestyle I want. And I’ve been married forever, for decades. I’ve got those two little kids while they have grown up. And luckily enough, they’ve taken on my passions, which is the outdoors. We love doing wilderness river trips. We just did one, a three-week wildness trip a couple months ago.

Brad Weimert: Crazy, like, you were out in the wild for three weeks?

Jeff Walker: Twenty-one days in the wilderness. No connection.

Brad Weimert: Where’d you go? What was it?

Jeff Walker: It was a river trip on the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. So, 225 miles down the river through a lot of really big white water, a lot of really smooth, beautiful sections, all kinds of side canyons to explore, huge waterfalls, and it is just amazing.

Brad Weimert: Out of curiosity, there are different ways to do these trips. Some version of the Grand Canyon trip is I have run through the Grand Canyon, which is a different type of adventure. By water is super appealing to me. You can do these in really fancy ways or really rugged ways. Which direction do you lean on outdoorsiness?

Jeff Walker: So, in one sense, the absolute most hardcore way you could do it, and in one sense, pretty luxurious. So, basically, I know that sounds like a weird conundrum, but we did it without any guides, completely on our own, by ourselves. And so, it was a group of friends of mine and my kids, both my kids were on it. And then it’s a total 16 of us, and it’s what they call a private trip. So, there’s no guides, no outfitters. We’re 100% on our own, do it yourself. Bring all your own gear, bring all your own food. Figure out your own water. Figure out hauling out your trash. Figure out every little aspect of it.

And it’s literally, we had– and you have to win a permit, but there’s a lottery for the permit to do this, and the lottery is not easy to win. And then you win it and then we had 18 months to plan it. And it takes 18 months to plan this, to move 16 people down 225 miles through 21 days, where if you forget your silverware on the first day, you’re eating with your hands for three weeks. So, in that way, it’s as hardcore as it gets. And then within that, we’re traveling by raft, so you can carry a lot of gear. So, we have a full kitchen set up. We’ve got chairs we’re sitting on. We had mandolins and guitars, so people are playing music all the way down the river. So, it’s not like hardcore backpacking. You got a lot of gear you can carry.

And the meals are incredible. Everyone takes turns cooking the meals for the group. And so, yeah, but it’s fairly hardcore and that there’s no one taking care of us. If you screw something up– in 21 days, someone’s going to get hurt, there’s going to be challenges. In fact, I cut my foot pretty good and I cut my hand pretty good because you’re physical. You’re doing stuff every day. And when now you’re in a fundamentally unsanitary environment, you’re in the sand and in the dirty water every day, all day, and you’re trying to take care of wounds and it becomes something, the whole trip has to manage. but it’s part of the appeal for me is I love the challenge. The whitewater is an interesting challenge. Being in the wilderness, I love just being out in the wild. I love being disconnected. I love what it does for my brain, for my spirit, but I also love being with a small group of people where you’re working through common challenges and you’re sharing amazing joys together. I just love that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I do too. I really asked myself years ago why I like to go on adventures. And the thing that came to me immediately was because I can, because I’m f*cking tough, but on further inspection of those beliefs, you hit on it. Relationships are at the core of it for me, and that’s both relationships with the people on the trip and also the relationship that I develop with myself and also the relationships that I develop as a result of having the story about the trip. But without the adventure, none of those relationships flourish the way they do with the adventure.

Jeff Walker: Yeah. So, you’ve run it. Did you do something like, knowing you, you probably did like the rim to rim?

Brad Weimert: I did rim to rim to rim.

Jeff Walker: Tell people what that means. This is a big deal. It’s a big deal.

Brad Weimert: So, that’s running from one side of the Grand Canyon, down and up to the other and then down and back to the beginning. And it’s a 45-mile run the way that I did it and a lot of elevation gain as you might expect in the Grand Canyon. The bitch for me of that particular one was (a) I was a little cocky going into it, so I didn’t train quite as much as I should have; (b) 13 miles into it, I broke a bone in my left foot. And at that point, you’re at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. So, what do you do? Like, you either haul you out and you have an emergency helicopter meet you somewhere at the bottom of the Grand Canyon or you f*cking run out. And so, it made for a long 32 miles after that, but it was an adventure for sure.

Jeff Walker: The 45-mile, there are no easy miles in Grand Canyon. That’s not like you’re running on a road or a track. There are no easy miles. Yeah, that’s a big deal.

Brad Weimert: That’s fair. What was interesting about it for me too, to that end, what that really meant once I had hurt my foot was, all you want to do when you’re doing endurance stuff like that is zone out. Your salvation is in spacing out, right, is in getting lost in the endurance itself and time just passing. And when you have an injury like that, that’s not how it works. You’re thinking about every step. And when you have uneven terrain, all you’re hoping for is to land flat, right? So, you’re looking for a flat path, but there are no easy miles in the Grand Canyon. And coddling that foot ultimately rippled into devastation in the rest of my body. When I finished that, oh, I mean, both ankles, sprains in both ankles. And I was walking like…

Jeff Walker: Your shoulder because you’re carrying yourself different and your hips.

Brad Weimert: Totally, I was walking like I was 95 years old after that for multiple days. Actually, do you know Cole Gordon? Cole Gordon runs a company that teaches people how to close sales for high-ticket companies. Super, super interesting entrepreneur. He’s also been on the podcast. But I was having drinks with him the day after, and I just vividly remember walking from the parking lot into the bar. And I mean, it probably took me 20 minutes and it was like 100 feet. I was just moving so slow. And then I sat down and he was like, oh, where did you come from? And I was like, yeah, I just ran across the Grand Canyon back. And he was like, what? But it was a brutal endeavor. Very different type of adventure than the water, but…

Jeff Walker: It is, yeah. It is.

Brad Weimert: Yours sounds equally thrilling and differently dangerous.

Jeff Walker: Really, definitely dangerous. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, to be out in the wild for that long, you come out a different person and it’s a person that I like better, right? I love it. I just love that impact. And going back to your question about, yeah, my kids, they’ve grown up, they’ve grown up around the business, they’ve grown up in the business. My son has been working with me closely for 15 years, my daughter for five or six years probably, or even seven. And so, they have been both through significant roles starting at the bottom and working their way up and they both have significant leadership roles. So, yeah, they’re on path to take this thing over and I love to see them doing great work and succeeding. I love that we’re going to– if everything goes according to plan, that we’re going to continue to be able to support our communities. We have just amazing communities, our PLF owners, our launch club members or mastermind. And so, yeah, it brings me great joy just to work with my kids. They’re just bad asses.

Brad Weimert: I love that. I also know that basically, every entrepreneur I know loves the idea at least of an exit, and a lot of people build their businesses and sacrifice short-term gain for the promise of a long-term reward in the shape of an exit. How do you think about the opportunity to exit versus just handing it off and sailing off into the wilderness?

Jeff Walker: Well, Brad, I told you, like my origin story sounds like, oh, so humble Jeff. And the reality is, is that’s what– I had no big vision. I just wanted to make $10,000. I was desperate. I’m like, dude, it’s like now, I can talk about impact and legacy. We talk about all that and not having to work for money, but I was desperate just to make money. I was desperate for that $10,000. And I just want to say that because sometimes, like, people talk about impact and I talk about impact a lot, but the reality is there’s a lot of people are like, impact’s fine. I just need to put food on the table. And I remember that version of myself.

And so, that’s how I started out in business for years. And no one was talking about exits in the 90s or the 2000s. The conversation about entrepreneurship has gotten so much more sophisticated. So, I never really thought about that. And then I ended up building basically a personality-based business. And so, I had this, 2005 starts the PLF and it’s Jeff Walker and PLF. And I had this belief for many years that this was an unsellable business because it was so personality based. Now, since then, there have been my types of businesses, people have had exits. I think there’s not that many of them. They tend to be few and far between. I don’t think the multiples are that high, but the reality is I built a cash machine, a cash cow, just something that kicked off big profits every year, year after year, year after year. And I was fine with that.

And oh, by the way, I think a lot of people, once their income starts to expand, their lifestyles start to expand in a great big way. And so, cash generating machines don’t work for them. They need the exit. It’s like the exit is like enforced savings. But I was never that way because what drove me was getting out in the woods. It wasn’t a new car. It was having time off to be able to go skiing, to be able to go mountain biking, to be able to do river trips. I live out in the mountains in Colorado. Boy, I live in Durango, Colorado. We’re 300 miles from the nearest big city.

And I remember like one time, I won a Ferrari in an affiliate competition and I parked that car in my garage because I literally never drove it. I drove it to get new plates and that was it, for six months. And then I gave it away because I was like, I cannot be seen in this town driving a Ferrari.

Brad Weimert: Did you give it away in a launch?

Jeff Walker: I gave it away as a competition for our launch club in our coaching program. So, we’ve got this amazing coaching program. So, we said, person who does the best launch gets the Ferrari here, boom. It’s gone. It’s out of my life. But I’m like, I can’t be seen driving that because that’s not what this town’s about. What’s more important in this town is how many days you ski. That’s the scorecard. How many days per season that you ski or how fast you are climbing Telegraph mountain on a mountain bike? Like, those are the status symbols in this town. And so, I had this built into my life that, yeah, I do, I own some really nice bicycles. I own some really nice guitars, but dude, I drive a Chevy pickup. Because I would like to have a 911, but I can’t fit my mountain bike in it. And it’s not a great ski car for going up to the mountain with my buddies, right?

And so, anyways, long story, I didn’t grow my lifestyle. I live in the same home for 25 years. I have a few nice things. I travel really well. Sometimes, I fly private. So, it’s not like I’m a miser, but my lifestyle didn’t really grow, and so, I didn’t need that exit. And I know that’s not the only reason people go for exits, but I think that’s one of the reasons people go for exits because they grow their lifestyle so much that it’s like an enforced savings mechanism for them. Now, I’ve got this built in. My kids are ready. They are this close to taking it over. Dan has been a lot more front stage. In fact, he’d be a good person for you to interview him because…

Brad Weimert: I love it. I’m curious to hear his take on all this. I mean, it’s got to be fun for the family. I think that, first off, I applaud you for keeping the values that you had, and I think that that’s hard, especially when you’re living within the ecosystem that rewards something different. In the case of basically, every name I mentioned earlier with the OG internet marketers, lifestyle did increase and change, and with that, usually values change. And that’s not even a critique, right? I think that there’s opportunity to learn, grow, improve most of your life, including your values and your lifestyle if you want it. And there are good and bad points to any choice you make.

Jeff Walker: Yeah, I don’t want to interrupt you, sorry. But I will say like the folks you mentioned specifically are all dear friends of mine. And yeah, I would say, dude, the first time I ever went to a marketing or second time went to a marketing conference, I got off the plane and I got into– this is days before Uber, got into a– what was it? Park and ride or a super shuttle. Got on a super shuttle, right? Because I’m not going to pay for a taxi because a taxi would cost me like 30 bucks or something. I get a super shuttle for 12 bucks. Get on the super shuttle. And there’s only one other person on a super shuttle with me. It’s Frank Kern. We don’t know each other. We’ve never met. We will meet at that event, but he’s riding the super shuttle. Frank doesn’t ride super shuttles anymore. He drives Rolls Royces.

So, lot of the folks you mentioned, their lifestyles have increased, but their values, they are the same people. Frank is the same person he was back then. Brad’s the same person. Mike and Mike are both the same people. I said, Brad, sorry about that. Yeah, Mike and Mike, they’re the same people they were. And they’re wonderful people. That’s one of the greatest things about this business is like, I grew up in the OG world of online marketers, hardcore, we’re going to sell some sh*t. We’re going to make sales. We’re going to market. We’re going to build. And the reality is they’re just like the most giving people, the most cooperative people, the most supportive people you could ever imagine. And I’m just going to throw a little dig in here.

There’s also this parallel personal development world, where there’s people, like there’s us building worlds of we’re going to teach you how to build your business and there’s other worlds of people teaching, we’re going to teach you how to become a better person. And I love personal development and I love a lot of those people, but that world is nowhere near as cooperative as the we’re going to teach you how to make a million dollars world. It’s just a weird dichotomy. It’s counterintuitive.

Brad Weimert: Well, Jeff Walker, last question I have for you is, what advice do you have for new entrepreneurs starting out today?

Jeff Walker: Oh, well, geez, that’s a hard one. First of all, we started with mindset, right? It really is the answer. It really is. You got to get your head on straight. Confidence is critical, but none of us are confident when we start. So, like doing is absolutely the way you build confidence. Brad, when I started out, one thing I’ve done is, in addition to being like going down wild rivers on rafts, I also kayak, like whitewater kayak. And I did that in the 90s and started in the 90s back when the gear wasn’t very good and the instruction wasn’t very good, but I learned how to do and I became an expert kayaker. It was hard. It was difficult. It’s cold. It’s uncomfortable. There’s so many– and it’s just something I absolutely love too. But I learned how to kayak down difficult whitewater, and that was the first success I had as an adult.

And when I started my business, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’m like, I can learn how to kayak. If I can learn how to kayak down class 4 whitewater, class 5 whitewater, if I can learn that, I can learn business. And so, it’s like, whatever you can do, wherever you can find the confidence to start and get moving, you got to do that and then you got to keep it. Every skill out there is just baby steps, putting one foot in front of the other and getting better and better and better over time. And then I think you have to prioritize speed of learning is probably the most important thing there is, as you’re looking at any project, as you’re looking at any opportunity. What will I learn and how can I learn it faster is as important as how much money can I make? What will this do for my business? It’s like, what will I learn and how can I learn faster?

And then as you get more successful, I think, it all comes down to opportunity costs and understanding that every opportunity that you take, every pitch that you swing at means there’s another one you can’t swing at. My friend Dean Graziosi talks about getting an amazing book, and he’s like, okay, I’ve only got so much space on that bookshelf back there. And if I’m going to take this book, I have to take one of those books and throw it out, get rid of it, opportunity cost, and figure out what projects to take on, what opportunities, what to say yes to, which means you have to say no to 99% of what you could do. And as you become more successful, the opportunity cost becomes more and more critical in your success.

Brad Weimert: Beautifully said. Jeff Walker, where should we point people?

Jeff Walker: If you go to ProductLaunchFormula.com, this will live forever, this interview, or for a long time. I’m not sure it’s going to be there, but what will be there will be some great free training for you on how to do launches. And eventually, you go there. I’ll try to get you to buy something from me eventually, but not before I deliver some amazing value to you.

Brad Weimert: It’s awesome, man. It’s great to see you, great to hear a lot about the story, and looking forward to next time.

Jeff Walker: Thank you, Brad.