TEA 255: This Product Launch Strategy Cleared $100k+ in 60 Days

0:00SPEAKER_02In today's episode, I have one of my clients, Johnny Cox, here with Gold Spartan and another brand called Cross and Helm. And I'm so excited that Johnny's here for a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, he just told me this was his first podcast. So I'm honored. But second of all, Johnny is wildly intelligent and knows how to really really build demand for product and then execute marketing in a way that's just bizarre. So like you launched a second brand, Johnny, and and it the speed of growth

0:31SPEAKER_02and you're on track, I think, to your six-figure month in like month two or three or something like that, from zero. And it's amazing. And so I say that because I'm just gonna give a little bit of like, I'm trying to get anybody who's listening or watching right now to realize that you have some good stuff and your strategy for pre-launch is really good that I wanna dive into. But first of all, man, you've been here for like three or four days with us. We just hosted an event, Mastermind here. We had uh 21 or 22 clients all fly in for it. This is the Friday after the event.

1:01SPEAKER_02How do you feel being down in the dungeon on the podcast studio?

1:07SPEAKER_01I feel great. Awesome event, great talking with everybody. And you know, I've been listening to your podcast for a while, and so it's it's wild to be on it now. So uh yeah, I just feel honored.

1:16SPEAKER_02I man, I feel grateful that you're here. We started last night we did this, we did it was really cool. We did this 1920s themed, we rented this restaurant called the Luna, that's like it's a 1920s themed restaurant, and so we did a Gatsby theme, and everyone's dressed up, and Johnny looks so dapper. He's like the whole suspenders, and like it was just really cool. And I was giving out all these awards, and and you had just crossed like one year this month with us. So it's pretty crazy. Like one year ago, yeah, met you,

1:47SPEAKER_02and here we are one year later, sitting in the studio recording this because you've grown like crazy, and that's what I want to talk about. So, how about we do this? Can you just let everybody know, let's talk about Gold Spartan because that's the first business, and then it's it's now morphed to your secondary that has grown like crazy. Tell us a little bit about a little bit about Gold Spartan and what it is that you guys sell.

2:06SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, that was the business that I came in, you know, to your program with. And uh Gold Spartan, we do mainly silver, but also a lot of bronze statues, so little collectible statues. So we've got our gorillas, our bestseller, we've got Spartans and Dragons, and you know, we do custom and you know, just about just about anything we can we can make. And it it started off as just a hobby for me. I I had an insurance background before this sales background, and just did it to not burn out from that, and started off

2:37SPEAKER_01just doing silver bars and just stamping them myself, and then it it turned into more creative things, and then I got into you know what we do now, which is the full-on statues. And yeah, so started off just again as a hobby, and then as it started getting into some more serious money, I said, you know, I I think I could I can do this as a business, and you know, here we are.

2:58SPEAKER_02So you guys like so you pour all your own stuff and you do bronze, silver, and gold. Yes, you can do all three. I remember one time we're like on this, you had just told me you sold like a four you had a forty thousand dollar order order for like a statue or something crazy. Was it something like that?

3:14SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it was like a 20-ounce statue of 24 karat gold. Oh my goodness. And I think it was I think it was closer to like 80 or $100,000 or something like that at that time. And then I've had some big orders like that where someone bought 20 ounces worth of gold, but it was a bunch of one ounce and three ounce statues and things like that. So yeah, we we had a few big ones like that. That's that's just crazy.

3:37SPEAKER_02Just anyone listening in like $100,000 AOV with just bizarre. Now, obviously, you know, gold has less margin and it's a high cost of goods, and I totally understand that. So you guys pour the bronze or the silver or the gold. You have these custom statues. The gorilla has been you they you guys make like a ton of I mean, how many total different statues do you make? Because they're all made to order, right?

3:57SPEAKER_01All made to order, just because we have we have 400-ish different designs, five to six different sizes, and you know, two to three different metals. So if we were to have inventory, that'd be expensive inventory.

4:12SPEAKER_01So, you know, starting out, I had just a few, and then we just started adding more. And at the time, one of my strategies was I wanted anyone who hopped on my website to be able to find something that spoke to them. I didn't know anything about e-commerce or the pain that having so many SKUs creates, you know, it was just uh that that strategy at that time. But yes, we have a lot of a lot of different options.

4:35SPEAKER_02And you learned that Gorilla was your hero product for the most part, and although people would buy other things, you came in, we started working together and you went crazy on meta-ads. Like you just went all in on meta-ads. Is that right? Is that the thing that really made the most momentum for you in that business?

4:51SPEAKER_01Yeah, so in the past, in my sales background, I did a lot of shows and things like that for sales, and that was not my thing. So, and and that's that's kind of the only way that a lot of people in the silver industry sell their product. You know, e-commerce is not really a thing there, and then shows is is the other part of it, and I didn't want to do that. So it's like, okay, what's what's the other option? And and it was website, and then website led me to you know marketing. And when you do the research, meta-ads

5:22SPEAKER_01is the you know, kind of the top dog for that. So that's what had me start getting into that before I had met y'all, and then in that journey, you know, found y'all.

5:31SPEAKER_02So you go in on med-ads, and basically you attended every medads coaching session ever since then. You were like really hardcore in it, and when you which I love by the way, you obsessed over it. And I think it's a good thing to obsess over because obviously you you're here now with on a whole different side, and you're not going to trade shows, you're you're not going to these shows and things like that. Thank goodness, man. I feel tired just thinking about that. Especially because we are Johnny and I were having this conversation about being like introverts versus extroverts. And even as an extrovert,

6:03SPEAKER_02I don't know if I could be doing shows either. I feel like I'd be so tired from that, just sitting there talking to people the whole time. Yeah. And so you go on, you're aiming to crack this online. And tell me about you you come in mid-year. By end of year, where did you end revenue last year, this 2025, versus the previous year before that?

6:23SPEAKER_01So the the year before I got with y'all, and we did 840,000. Okay. And that was, you know, basically all organic. So a lot of that was me posting on Facebook and the different communities that that buy and sell silver. It was very uh self-driven. And then after switching to y'all and switching a lot of that to meta ads and and uh you know using the the website part of your training, which is I think the sleeper, you know. Oh, the sleeper, the the website aspect

6:53SPEAKER_01that that's obviously conversion rate, yeah, and and the pop-ups and the all of those things that you don't really think about being that important. They're huge. So it that that was actually the first thing when I did your training, I was like, oh, this is this is awesome. And I hadn't even gotten to the meta part yet. Uh oh, so you started with website stuff. I so I started with your ad labs training two years before I actually joined the MPM. Really? That's what got the Speaking of sleepers. Yeah, yeah. And then when you when y'all updated to

7:24SPEAKER_01Andromeda, y'all came back on my meta ads radar. So I'm also a product of your training because I'm a I'm a Facebook ad, you know, customer. Customer, yeah. And and then that's where I you know talked with your your brothers and and got in. And so yeah.

7:40SPEAKER_02So you implement that last year, if I recall, there was some point, I don't remember if it was the end of the year or it was like in the beginning of this year, you crossed two million in sales.

7:50SPEAKER_01So 2.3 million last year. So we went from 840 the year before to 2.3 million last year.

7:59SPEAKER_02What are you tracking this year?

8:01SPEAKER_01We are already over that 2.3 million mark now. And so just depending on how the rest of the year goes with Gold Spartan, you know, somewhere between three to four. Four is my goal. Okay. So that we can kind of double again. So we'll just have to see how the end of the year brings. But yeah, three to four million is what we'll finish at.

8:19SPEAKER_02Dude, that's amazing. And on top of that, I want to get to the the meat of what I really want to talk about. So, first of all, Johnny is really talented, very successful, very focused, able to take that 840k, 2.3 million. That's amazing by all standards. And then this year you're already tracking almost double that. That's really great. And then somewhere along the line, there is something that stood out to you that you wanted to get into, and that was cross and helm. And this is a completely different business. I'm actually wearing right now, I don't know if anybody on camera can see this. I'm wearing cross and helm. Johnny

8:50SPEAKER_02has his own cross and helm as well, right here. We're repping, actually, our whole team pretty much all of our team, the guys on our team have these necklaces, which are amazing. And if if you're listening, I just want to describe it as like like a Spartan, like a like a warrior helmet here, and then there's a cross in the middle of it. And it's really, really incredible. What prompted you to start this? Because you you had the idea for this, and from idea, or maybe you've been sitting on sleeping on that for a while, but from like deciding to go to launch, it was like two weeks or something, wasn't it?

9:20SPEAKER_01Yep. So a year or more ago, my church did a a series on finding, you know, God's given gifts. Well, what are your God-given gifts? And then and then the end part of it was are you using those for the kingdom of God? And and and so at the time I thought, well, gold Spartan, not not really. So I'd had this kind of desire in the back of my head of like, I want to do something, right, that that fulfills that part of that. And so, so that was that was as much as

9:50SPEAKER_01the idea had ever gotten. I had a few other ideas prior that just never really clicked. I didn't I didn't get motivated by it. And then one day, I so the the necklace I wore prior to the one before this, so two necklaces ago, was a cross. Then I switched it to a Spartan helmet because of Gold Spartan. And I always felt a little weird about that. So I wanted to kind of combine them. And and the whole thing for me, my my past, you know, six months to a year, is just relying on him more. I've always relied on me, right? So if

10:20SPEAKER_01I need something done, I do it. It's my strength, it's my grit. You know, here's my idea, I'm gonna go chase it. And instead, I just need to take a step back and and just ask for guidance. Even though I know I know which way I need to go. So that was what the the whole point of the cross was is that we're still we're still going through the struggles. We're still, we still have the grit, we still have the strength, but it's his strength, we're relying on him. So that was that was the point of creating the pendant. And when I saw the pendant, and and I I used AI, I said, here's kind of what I

10:51SPEAKER_01want, and and it threw a bunch of like little logo images out, and I saw this one and I was like, that's it. Not as a business, but that's the one that I wanted. But after looking at it, and then and then I had that idea connecting back to God-given gift, I thought, you know, I I think I can make a business out of this. And and and that's kind of where where it went from there. So yeah.

11:13SPEAKER_02So you started this, it was like two weeks, you used a lot of AI, you built the website, you built the mock-ups, and I remember you were like, hey, I don't know if it's gonna sell. We have you know now, obviously, new business means like new email account or new email marketing account, Clavy or whatever you use in, right? New ad account, everything is new. So you're like, do how do you season a pixel? Which by the way, I I don't know if I told you this or you've heard me say this. I use you as a great example of like the to def defeat the idea

11:43SPEAKER_02that you have to quote unquote season a pixel. Have you heard you heard of people saying, like, you gotta season a pixel? And I'm just like, nah, you don't got season a pixel. You just gotta literally get the right product or offer with the right ads to the right audience, and that's it. And you're a testament to that because you you had a great strategy for launching. And you did a pre- not a pre-order, you did do a pre-order, but before that, you did a lead gen strategy to basically gauge interest, right? And then you made you you went into the

12:14SPEAKER_02pre-order and all the sales. Walk us through your thinking and what you did to kind of build that demand. Because it was it was brilliant and it was executed pretty flawlessly, in my opinion.

12:24SPEAKER_01Thank you, thank you. So there's a book, and and I I forget the name of it exactly, but it's basically how to build a million dollar business over the weekend. And and one of the concepts he talks about is you know, he creates a uh just a cheap website with a with a sign-up list that goes over whatever product, and he spends just a little bit of money on on meta ads to push people to it. And if it does well, he uses that business and he he goes and gets the product and and starts the actual product side of it. If it doesn't do well, he shuts

12:55SPEAKER_01it down and and does it again. And so that was kind of part of the strategy in the beginning was you know, let me throw some some money at it in meta ads and see if people sign up for the list at all. And at this point, I hadn't even actually cast one of these yet. Well, they're just the mock-ups. I had the 3D model for it, and in and from Gold Spartan, I had some AI thing set up where I could take a 3D model and it would turn it into what my silver statues look like. And they were I I I asked my general manager to pick out which one

13:25SPEAKER_01was real and which one wasn't, and he couldn't tell. So I knew so I I had I had some images of what it would look like, but in the very, very beginning, I didn't even have the actual pendant yet. And so I I threw the website up. I think I started with $50 a day, just sent them to my homepage, and the the hero image was you know basically sign up for the launch. And we were getting about a dollar, and actually for a lot of it, we were under a dollar per lead. And then you know, it fluctuated

13:55SPEAKER_01over overall, but we ended up getting about 2,000 leads in like a two-week window, and I spent maybe you know anywhere between $1,500 to $2,000 to acquire those. Okay.

14:07SPEAKER_02Um you're just under just under a dollar lead. You said I'm gonna spend like two grand, basically testing a theory, right? Which by the way, I think it's a good way to almost think about something like this. Because this applies for anyone listening. I don't believe this applies at brand new business launch. This is like, do I want to prove that this product has potential? Because you could totally take this and say, hey, I'm gonna get some samples of product that that like order a sample of the product that you want to do, or even in your case, you just did a straight mock-up

14:39SPEAKER_02of the stuff and you didn't even make the real thing. Uh I mean, that's even next level. Now you have the control to make it, I guess, if someone else I knew I could make it.

14:46SPEAKER_01So it wasn't like, I hope I can do it. Like, you know, we've been doing this for seven or eight years, so I knew I could make it. It was just, do I want to en masse before it's proven?

14:56SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So some of you, some of you listen in, like, maybe don't mock it up if you don't know if you can make it. Um Johnny had the privilege of knowing he could make it. But the idea of taking that, and you're like, let's validate this. Like, let's make a $2,000 bet. Because if this $2,000 bet is right, it could be worth millions or tens of millions of dollars. And to me, that's a worthwhile potential bet. You take a take some of those bets. I I would I would take one of those bets every single month or multiple times a month to find the thing, and you invested two grand, it sounds like you get several

15:27SPEAKER_02well, 2,000-ish leads, and then you went to validate it. And I want to hear about this because obviously, if you're anyone's listening, spoiler alert, it worked. But this is a great way to validate because then from there you still need to say, are these people willing to pull out their credit card and actually give me money? So talk me through how you did that.

15:47SPEAKER_01Yeah, so once I had the list and I was ready to actually start getting sales, I'm actually what I what I ended up creating was what I called a founder's edition. And so this was the pre-sale basically, where you know, people because they're buying early before we're actually ready to ship, we're gonna throw in some bonuses. And this was uh 100% from Alex Ramosi. I actually used his AI little thing and like helped plan the whole thing out and went over all the bonuses and everything that should be included. And so the founders edition

16:18SPEAKER_01was you know the pendant that had a special engraving on the back, a special certificate of authenticity. We made bronze little add-on piece that was uh armor of God, had all these extra bonuses included. And so I did a basically a three-day pre-launch for that, and in those three days, we sold $12,000. So that was the last three days of May, and we did $12,000 in sales in those three days, and then and so that that paid for the marketing, that paid for everything

16:49SPEAKER_01and and you know, a good amount of profit already. Then we jumped to the the actual sale. So I had a basically it was a drop-down from the founders edition. So it was, you know, I don't I don't remember what I called it, but basically just your launch edition, you know, type of thing. Okay, and so you got you know, free shipping, you got another add-on, you just didn't get the founders edition part of it. And yeah, so from that point, you know, we we ended up doing $70,000 our first full month, and that's not including the $12,000 from

17:19SPEAKER_01three days prior. Yeah, and so that was our that was our kind of our first month, 70 70k.

17:25SPEAKER_02Man, that's pretty crazy.

17:27SPEAKER_01Yeah.

17:28SPEAKER_02Most people would say it's gonna take for a certain amount of time to get there, and you're gonna have to you're gonna have to figure out ads and season your pixel, and you're just like you, you defied the odds or the the common knowledge or beliefs that everybody has around that. And I think that's what's so cool. And that's why when obviously I knew you're coming here, and as soon as you started doing that, I'm like, dude, when you're here in July, we're gonna record this podcast and talk about this because this is a great launch strategy, I believe, if you're new product or you're just launching.

17:58SPEAKER_02I think this works across the board. Now, if you're just launching, the only thing you generally don't have is money to invest in that. Right. So sometimes like it might be hard if you're just launching and I had if you were starting from scratch and you had no backing on anything, it's sometimes it's hard to be like, I'm gonna take a $2,000 bet. But you have Gold Spartan over here doing several million dollars a year. You're able to say, hey, I'm gonna take a bet on this. And I think that this is a good lesson for anybody, for anybody that has an existing business and you want to test new ideas and concepts on things, and you're like, hey, maybe I want to take a bet on this

18:29SPEAKER_02different category of product within it, even if it's in the same website. I believe this is a strategy you can copy paste into like way other products, including inside of Cross and Helm. And I think that that's really neat. So to recap, so that you're like 2,000 in spend, you 2,000 people. From the 2,000 people, you produce $12,000 in launch sales or uh founder sales. And then how much was it in the launch? Uh do you know how much was in the launch, like in the first week of launch?

18:57SPEAKER_01I I don't remember exactly, but I mean we were doing anywhere between five to ten thousand dollars a day those first few days. Okay. Um and then it you know, then it averaged out to like three to four K, you know, beyond that. That's kind