Graham Cochrane (00:11.98)
Listen, if you're tired of the stress, the burnout, the feast and famine cycles of launching, I've got good news for you. There is a better way to sell your offers that brings in cash every single day without the pressure of big launches. It's called Evergreen Selling. And in today's episode, I'm going to break down exactly why it outperforms launching every time and how you can start making sales on autopilot. Let's dive in.
Graham Cochrane (01:21.102)
So when I got started selling online in 2009, technically I launched my blog in 2009, the recording revolution, and 2010, April, I launched my first digital product. It was an online course. Way back then, I didn't know what a launch was. Never heard of such a thing. Didn't even know what online business was or what an online course was. All I knew is that bloggers were making money, so I started a blog, because I was broke and needed to make money.
and I started a YouTube channel and people were finding the videos and getting value out of the videos and they were learning and they wanted more and I thought, I can't keep making free videos forever. Maybe I could make longer in-depth videos teaching something way in-depth, zip it up in a zip file and sell it on PayPal. And that's what I did. That was my first online course. And my first launch, quote unquote, was me emailing my little bitty list at the time and saying, hey, I've got this thing for sale.
check it out if you wanna buy it. And I sent them to a page I built on iWeb, which if you're old enough and have had a Mac for a long time, you know what that is. And that's how I had my very first launch. I only made a few hundred dollars, less than $500, but I proved a concept that I could create some online video content and sell it and make money. That was the beginning of my business career, but what I didn't realize is that most people were doing these big launches, meaning they would create an offer.
and they would gather leads, whether it's through ads or through organic opt-ins on a YouTube video or podcast episode like this, and then they would start to warm up that audience and they would do some pre-launch content. I didn't know who Jeff Walker was at the time. I'd never read Launch. I didn't know who Amy Porterfield was. I didn't know this was an industry, so I didn't know they were doing this, and then they would have an open-cart moment.
where all of a sudden their list who's been getting warmed up and primed for the last week or so can actually check out what the offer is, go to a sales page, read about it, watch a VSL, video sales letter type thing, and then buy. And then there was a close cart date or a moment where you had to purchase before Friday at midnight or next Monday at midnight, otherwise the offer is going away. I had no idea this was a thing. And what was beautiful about that is that I...
Graham Cochrane (03:41.72)
built my business as an evergreen business from day one. didn't know it was called evergreen. didn't know what evergreen meant. talk about it in a second. But functionally, I was creating courses and offers, making them for sale on my website, putting them inside of an email funnel so all my new subscribers who join my list and downloaded my free guides and were liking my content would begin to get these follow-up emails from the next day forward.
letting them know about my offers and then they would sell. I got to a point where I was having my online funnel, my first funnel of sorts, which is about 45 days and had about five offers in it, was making me about $50,000 a month effortlessly. I didn't do launches for like six years because I didn't know what one was. So,
What was funny was that when I discovered what a launch was and that that was what you were supposed to do, air quotes, I began launching because I felt like I was missing out on something.
But let me tell you something, launching works. Scarcity works. I've taught it here on the channel many times. I've taught it to my clients. Urgency works. Opening and closing the cart works. Let me tell you something else, launching is exhausting. And this was reinforced, I was at a mastermind, and just in a moment, I'm gonna share with you my formula.
my effortless income formula, okay? So stay tuned for that. I was at a mastermind and I was talking to two incredibly talented and successful entrepreneurs who have done multi-seven figures, if not eight figures in their business. And they were talking about upcoming launches and they were lamenting about how stressed out they were. Entrepreneur number one said that she does two big launches a year and
Graham Cochrane (05:43.456)
She does about four to five million dollars a year in revenue, so each launch needs to do roughly two million dollars per launch. That's where the bulk of her income comes in, was those two launches. And so she was just gearing up, she's done it a bunch of times, it works, she knows what she's doing, she's got a killer offer, great testimonials, but even then, as a multi-seven figure entrepreneur, she was just feeling the weight of this has to work.
And what if it doesn't? What if my launch doesn't do two million, it does one? I can't even celebrate a one million dollar launch because I won't actually hit my targets because of all the ad spend, the affiliates she has to pay out, all these are the things that generally make a launch that big on the top line revenue. And there's just a lot of pressure. If this launch doesn't do that well, then the next launch has to do better than it's ever done before. And she was exhausted. Entrepreneur number two was saying something very similar.
where he was coming out of a season where he had launched a lot of products, but he was so behind in profit that his launches were paying back missed profit from previous seasons of business. And so he needed to make a million dollars in his next launch just to get to baseline even. And just hearing them talk about this, it was sad and exhausting because here are two brilliant people, brilliant marketers who clearly have offers that people want and they are stressed out.
I was like, I don't want that. I don't want that. I have incorporated launches into my business generally when I bring something new to market, but I rely heavily, if not exclusively on evergreen selling. Why? Let me tell you why.
Graham Cochrane (07:47.576)
because launching is exhausting and limited, but Evergreen is effortless and limitless. Launching is exhausting and limited, Evergreen is effortless and limitless. I think what I experience in the online business space, in the marketing space, everyone launches, everyone tells you to launch, and the reason they say to launch is because it makes the most money. They say without,
scarcity, a date, a close cart moment, whatever, a deadline. Without a deadline, no one's gonna buy is what they say. And in a way, they are correct that deadlines, urgency, scarcity do drive people who are on the fence to make a decision to buy now versus later. It's not that you're convincing people to buy that shouldn't buy, it's the people that want to buy, but they got distracted or life gets in the way or they're like, I'll buy next week, but the next week comes and they forget.
So it's a great powerful tool to get people to take the next step and actually buy. So yes, launching does generate more revenue in the short term than evergreen. But the problem is twofold. One, it's exhausting. And I think everyone that's ever launched, especially legit launch, would agree, it's exhausting. It's hard on your team if you have a team. It's hard on yourself. It's hard on your list because you're constantly promoting it or you're constantly warming your list up.
or you're posting on Instagram and you're emailing your list and you're doing the webinar, you're doing the pre-launch content, you're doing all the emails that go out, you're following, it's a big push. I've never met a single person that would disagree with a statement that launching is exhausting. Where most people and I disagree is that they think launching outperforms Evergreen. But the reality is that launching limits the income you can make, not expands it. Think about this. When you launch,
Meaning you open and close the doors for someone to join your membership or buy your product. You actually limit how many people can buy.
Graham Cochrane (09:52.024)
Have you ever found someone online who is amazing, teaching something absolutely amazing, you're following down the rabbit trail of all their stuff, come to find out that they've talked about a course that they have or a group coaching program that they have, and you're looking for the link to go buy it or join it or sign up for it, but you can't. In fact, there's just a wait list or a webinar, but that leads to a wait list and...
You just wait until they let you buy it. How frustrating is that? I have now, I've got money in my hand. I want to pay you. I want to buy your thing, but you won't let me because the doors are currently closed. And we as marketers think, well, that creates pent up demand. So when I open the doors, they're gonna flood in. And the problem is, is you will get a flood of orders when those doors come in, but you miss out on the people in between who you think are gonna just wait patiently for you, but they likely won't. They're gonna probably go to a competitor who has something similar. I know, because I've done it.
I've done it and you've probably done it too. Think about how many other business models are like this. Can you think of very many, if any, other businesses in the real world that don't let you buy what you want to buy when you want to buy it?
Graham Cochrane (11:08.599)
There's not that many.
Graham Cochrane (11:12.493)
So it's wild that us as online business owners and marketers build our entire business model around only letting people buy when we say they can buy. And a lot of times for the big dogs, it's once to twice a year. How crazy is that? It's funny, I was just at an event and Marie Forleo was there. Marie Forleo runs B-School, one of the longest running, bestselling business building
programs, I think it's $2,500, and she's been in the business for 25 years. She's world-class entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, has a great show, and has just done this thing longer than most. She was at this event, she was sitting right in front of me to the right, and there's a bunch of seven, eight, nine-figure entrepreneurs, and when they asked everyone in the room, what do you want to get out of this event, what do you need to learn now in your business, where do you need to press into your business, she said,
I need to figure out evergreen because all I've ever done is launching. I'm addicted to launches and we only make money twice a year when the course is open. Outside of that, there's no money coming in and a bunch of the people in the room are like, this is crazy. She's like, I know, just, I don't know how to do evergreen. Which proves that you can't absolutely be successful launching. So don't mishear me, but it's exhausting and it limits how much money you can make. Whereas evergreen selling,
is effortless. You don't have to do anything. You set up the system and it sells for you, which is how I like to do it. That's how I'm able to work five hours a week or less. But here's what most people miss is that Evergreen is limitless. There is no limit. There's no ceiling to how much you can make because you've got stuff selling to everyone every day at any moment they're ready to buy.
So I submit to you that you will make more money, have less stress, and have more free time if you shift to an evergreen model of business. Let me show you how to do this with my effortless income equation. Ready for this? Five components that you need to structure your business in such a way that it's effortless. Basically by building an evergreen system that strategically sells for you.
Graham Cochrane (13:39.266)
The first component is your trust content. This is the podcast, the YouTube channel, your Instagram or TikTok, your blog, your newsletter, your sub stack, whatever, your LinkedIn, where are you building trust through free content? We all know this. I won't spend a ton of time on this, but the content you put out in the world, it should be optimized for building trust.
Not necessarily for making the sale, but building trust. If you build trust through your content, and we do this by adding immense value, real value, if you do that, if you build trust, it's gonna make everything else run so smoothly. Because once you have trust, you can sell anything to these people, because they trust you, they like you, they believe in you. I'm doing this right now. This is trust content right now, this episode of the Graham Cochran Show. Whether you watch it on YouTube, or you listen to it on Spotify or Apple podcasts, I am...
serving you to build trust with you so that hopefully you'll become a customer or client of mine at some point. Doesn't mean you will. 95 % of the people that engage with this content don't buy anything from me and I get to serve them either way. It's good for mankind to put good in the world. But trust content is the most important thing you'll ever make. I think you already get this, but a lot of people skip this. A lot of big marketers skip this. They don't have any trust content. The closest thing they have is an ad, but they don't really
focus on trust building, they focus on pain point, we can solve your problem, and it's just an ad to get them to buy a thing, which you can build a business around, but it's not gonna be as powerful, you're not gonna have longevity, and it's gonna be exhausting. So I do think all of us should create trust content. I think you understand that, so we'll move on. The second equation is an evergreen offer. This by itself is all you need to go evergreen. The next three I'm gonna show you take it to the next level, but at its core, you build trust with your content for free, and then you make an offer.
an offer that is evergreen, meaning like an evergreen tree, it stays green year round, meaning this offer is available year round. It doesn't open and close, it's not seasonal. They're listening to your show on the podcast, they watch your YouTube video, they listen to you go off on Instagram or TikTok, and you mention a product in that content or they opt into your email list and that email list leads them to an offer that is available right now, they can buy it right now. Or your website,
Graham Cochrane (16:05.025)
has your offer available right now, they can buy it right now. They liked your podcast, they went to your website, what does she have for sale? boom, there you go. Build trust, make up an Evergreen offer. This is the foundation of Evergreen selling. I think most people, if you thought about Evergreen, understand this, you might even have your trust content leading to an Evergreen offer, but the next three parts of the equation are what take it to the next level and set you free. Next is upsells. Never, ever, ever,
under almost any circumstance, have an offer without an upsell. And including upsells, I'll include order bumps, cross sells, down sells. Basically, when someone's ready to purchase something, they're liking what you're offering, they like your Evergreen offer, and they're typing in their credit card and they wanna buy something, always put something else in front of them and say, would you also like this? Every good business does this. When you're at the checkout line at the grocery store, what's in front of you as you're
your milk, your bread, your eggs are going across the conveyor belt. Boop, boop, they're scanning it in. What do you see? Gum, candy, magazines, mints, lottery tickets, whatever. It's right in front of you. That's called an order bump. An order bump is like, it's just right there. They don't even say anything. It's just right there. You're like, ooh, yeah, add that to my order. Really easy. An upsell is when you are at a restaurant.
and you order an entree and they say, would you like an appetizer to start? Would you like a salad to go with that? Would you like a cocktail, Mr. Cochran? Or when you're finishing your meal, would you like to see the dessert menu? Would you like, would you like, those are the three magic words. Would you like this? It's just an innocuous, gentle offer of, hey, you're buying this, you might also like this. If you don't make that additional upsell offer, you don't get to make more money. But when you do,
likely 20 to 40 % of the people are gonna go for your order bump, upsell or cross-seller down sell. Which can, if done well and priced correctly and if it's a good companion offer to what you're selling, you can 2X your average order value. You can double the amount of money you make at the point of purchase just by offering an order bump and a couple of upsells. So this is like a no-brainer to evergreen selling. This is how, and you should do this for the launch as well.
Graham Cochrane (18:23.767)
but you make an evergreen offer, have other offers there automatically put in front of them so they can say yes to more. Next component, this is the fourth one, is multiple touch points. Do not sell your evergreen offer in only one place. So think about where you have an evergreen offer right now. Is it in your funnel? Fantastic, that's a great place. Somebody opts into your list and they get some emails making an offer for an evergreen offer, fantastic. Let's also,
Put it on your website. Do you have a coaching page, a products page, a programs page, a store page? Put it on your website so they can buy it. Put it in the PS of your emails that you send out every week to your list when you send them your latest episode of your show, your latest video, or your latest newsletter. Have a PS which says, by the way, you want this? I've got this offer, it's at this price. You want this? I got this. You can put multiple offers inside of your PS. It's so simple, it works.
They're already reading and getting value and building your building trust in the email. You might as well offer them something right there. So in the emails, what about your thank you page? Somebody opts in for a free lead magnet or guide or whatever. Why not make an offer right on the thank you page? It's a hundred percent of your opt-ins are going to see this page. It's the most valuable real estate you have. Put an offer there to buy something.
to book a call with you for a discovery call for coaching, to check out the application for your group coaching program, whatever it is, put an offer there. You start to see what we're doing here. Everywhere you go, put your offer in multiple touch points so that they can't not see your offers and be reminded, yeah, she's got this offer, he's got that offer, I should check it out. So trust content that leads to an evergreen offer, at times that buy upsells,
plus multiple touch points, finally, to automated follow-up. Automated follow-up. So, there are so many powerful automations you can have in your email client, whether you use Kajabi or Kit or MailChimp or whatever tool you use for your email, when somebody buys something, trigger automations to follow up with emails to sell them other things. So for example, if somebody buys your course,
Graham Cochrane (20:47.091)
set them into an email sequence that starts in 14 days or 30 days and has a mini promo to them for your membership community. Hey, hope you're liking the course. You know what my best students join this community where I get to do live coaching with them, there's accountability and challenges and we drop new content every month. Check it out. Like this is kind of like an upsell but it's delayed by two weeks or 30 days. Automated follow-up. What if somebody,
opt-in your email list, seize your offer on the thank you page that you set up because you heard me talk about multiple touch points, but they don't buy. You can have an automated sequence that's already set up to go to send out to everybody that opts in that hasn't bought to remind them of that offer. Automated follow-up, automated follow-up. This doesn't have to be emails as well. This can be SMS or text messages if you capture their phone number and you have that capability. But the idea is just because they saw the offer doesn't mean
that they won't buy it the next time if you just put it in front of them again. And again, all of this can be automated. You do the work with your trust content and you've built the offer and you set all these things up, but you set up your evergreen offer once, set up the upsells once in the order month, set up the multiple touch points once, set up the automated follow up once. Now you just get to show up, do your thing every single week or day or however you drip out your content knowing that you have a system
that will sell for you, offer more, offer more places and follow up for the people that even after all that didn't make a purchase. You do this and you will sell more without working at all. So here's the simple takeaway for you. This is the effortless income equation and that is to make your business evergreen. Make your business evergreen. If you have a launch model right now, start
to transition to evergreen. If you have one evergreen offer, try to make more of your launch offers to be evergreen. What would that look like to make them evergreen? Slowly begin to move in that direction. What you're gonna see is maybe immediate income drop, because you're not gonna get those big hits. You won't get that magical day or week that just feels so freaking exciting. You do lose out on that dopamine hit. But it is just that, it's a dopamine hit.
Graham Cochrane (23:10.091)
The long game is to have a business that is always selling, always offering more value, always following up, always right at the right place at the right time when the right person needs it, and you're nowhere to be found in that equation. So that you can focus on coming up with new offers, servicing your customers and clients, creating valuable content that gets you discovered and builds more trust and puts more people into the system.
or just going on a three week vacation to Europe with your family and it sells without you or a team needed. Either way, you win.
Graham Cochrane (24:04.341)
And what I just showed you, the effortless income equation and this whole idea of going evergreen, is one of five pillars that I teach inside of my effortless business accelerator. This is a high touch group coaching program that I run for six and seven figure entrepreneurs. These are people that have already launched their business, they're making 10K a month or up, and they've figured out something that works, but they're exhausted. They're running into a plateau of their income.
They have a great business on the outside, but they feel a little bit handcuffed to it on the inside. They're not doing the things they love to do anymore in the business. And they wanna still grow, but they don't know how, because they're already exhausted. This is what I help people do. If this sounds like you, you're like, Graham, I need help going from an exhausting business to an effortless business. I need help going from a launch model to an evergreen model. Or I've got a bunch of one-on-one clients and I need to scale this thing up and it has to go evergreen. Or it's just not fun anymore.
then I highly recommend you apply. I'm going to link to it below in the show notes. It is application only and it is limited to people that are making a certain amount of revenue. But take a look at the page, see if it's a good fit for you. I would love to be your coach this year. It's a powerful program. I have an entire curriculum, the effortless business curriculum inside the program. We do group calls twice a month, hot seat oriented where we're just ping ponging around and I'm just serving you and your business. There's a private 24 seven chat with me and everyone in the group.
And then we do a live mastermind event here in Tampa, Florida, once a year. We're doing it later this year and we do it every year. You get that all included in your price. I'd love to have you check it out. Love to be your coach this year and help you go from exhausting to effortless, whatever it takes for you. That's my goal. So link to it in the description below. And if you have any questions, you can also drop me a comment below this video. And finally, let me ask you, if you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment and let me know, are you evergreen?
How much of your business is evergreen? What percentage would you say is evergreen? And what's your biggest takeaway from this episode? Drop a comment below and if you're listening on Apple Podcast or Spotify, message me on Instagram at TheGrahamCockren and let me know the state of your business. Is it mostly launch model, mostly evergreen, somewhere in between? And what's your next best step to shift from an exhausting launch model to an effortless evergreen model? Thanks for hanging out with me today. Have an amazing week and I'll see you on another episode.
Graham Cochrane (26:29.89)
real soon.
