From “Biggest Launch Ever” to a True Flagship Offer

Launches are thrilling (unless you're missing something important).

From the outside, Jon's launch was a win: strong reputation, a big audience on X and LinkedIn, a live cohort people raved about, and an on‑demand version of the course already making real money.

On the inside, he was a lot less certain.

“It was my biggest launch in terms of revenue,” he told me, “but it still felt like I’d muscled it over the line. One flat price, no structure, and I’m not even sure how many people actually finished the thing.”

He’s not alone in that. A lot of seasoned course creators hit the same ceiling: the product “works,” the launches “work,” but everything is built on instinct and effort instead of architecture.

This is the story of how we turned Complete Creator from that into a true flagship – with roughly double the average order value of his previous launch, stronger completion, and a system Jon can run again without white‑knuckling it.

Before: Success on the Surface, Strain Underneath

By the time we started working together, Jon already had more traction than most creators will ever see:

• Tens of thousands of followers across X and LinkedIn  
• Multiple live cohorts of Complete Creator under his belt  
• A self‑paced version of the course selling at $197  
• A subscriber list in the mid‑five figures

The problems were structural, not reputational.

1. Flat economics: There was one way to buy Complete Creator and one price. If you wanted to spend more, there was nowhere for that money – or that extra commitment – to go. There were no order bumps, no post‑purchase upsells, no tiers.
2. A course built from his head, not from a path: The on‑demand course was essentially Jon pouring his live cohort brain into a slide deck and hitting record. The content was strong, but it wasn’t engineered for completion, “wins per minute,” or a predictable testimonial engine.
3. Fuzzy ideal student: He was trying to serve beginners, hobbyists, and serious operators with the same product. His list reflected that. So did the questions he was getting. So did some of the refunds.
4. Post‑sale vacuum: Onboarding was ad‑hoc. Testimonials were mostly kind words in DMs. There was no deliberate way to turn happy students into proof or to keep buyers close between launches.

Underneath all of that was the human side:

• A tendency to white‑knuckle launches alone, then crash afterwards.  
• A strong people‑pleasing streak: guilt when he couldn’t overdeliver, worry about charging more, hesitation to “bother” bigger names.  
• The familiar question almost every good creator asks at some point:
  “Is this actually good, or am I just getting away with it again?”

He didn’t need more hacks. He needed one decisive, structural upgrade.

Why Jon hired me

Jon didn’t come looking for a new logo, a funnel in a box, or a “make 6‑figures this weekend” promo calendar.

What he wanted was:

• A flagship he could trust: a version of Complete Creator that could carry meaningful revenue for several years, not a few weeks.
• A clearer money model: something beyond “$197 or nothing.”
• A way to run a launch that didn’t require heroics.
• A strategic partner who would tell him, calmly and honestly, “this is enough,” “this is too much,” and “this part isn’t doing what you think it is.”

In his words:

“I’d proven I could have big launches. I hadn’t proven that my system was sound.”

That’s where we started.

Step 1: Decide Who Fits For Complete Creator

The first thing we did was draw a sharper circle around the ideal student.

We made some explicit decisions:

• Complete Creator is not for people who have never posted, anywhere.  
• It’s not for hobbyists looking for something “fun” to dabble in.  
• It’s not for people who want ChatGPT to do all the work so they never have to think.

Instead, we defined the core student as:

An experienced creator or expert‑operator who is already publishing and wants a leverageable creator business, not just viral content.

We didn’t leave that as a vague ideal. We baked it into:

• A simple one‑click poll in his newsletter: on‑demand vs live vs “community.” The result wasn’t close – on‑demand won by roughly three to one.
• Screening questions for the waitlist and for customer interviews.
• The way he talked about the course: fewer “anyone can start” promises, more “this is for you if…” boundaries.

This matters, because a clean ICP gives you permission to structure and price appropriately – instead of trying to make one course be all things to all people.

Step 2: Create the Offer Around the Flagship

With the student clarified, we looked at the economics.

Most people had only one choice: buy Complete Creator at $197 or don’t.

We sketched out a simple ladder:

• Base: Complete Creator on‑demand at $197.
  The core promise: learn to package your ideas into audience‑building content in a way that feels like you and that your market actually responds to.
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• Mid‑tier “implementation” offer:
  A short, tightly scoped engagement: for example, a 20–30 minute implementation call plus Loom follow‑ups where Jon reviews a student’s creator statement or positioning and leaves them with a concrete plan and revisions.
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• Top‑tier advisory:
  A very small number of 1:1 clients where Jon steps into a true strategic advisor role on their business. Fewer people, deeper work, higher price.

Then we added two AOV levers around the base course:

1. Order bump at checkout
   A low‑friction, high‑value add‑on – something like a compact template pack or mini‑training that doesn’t require heavy fulfillment from him but makes the main course easier to execute.
2. One‑time offer after purchase
   A more substantial product: in Jon’s case, an upgraded “365 days of content” system, powered by templates and AI prompts, for people who want a done‑for‑you starting point.

None of this was there to “squeeze” buyers. It was there so that when someone is genuinely serious and ready to move faster, they aren’t forced to stay at the entry level.

Step 3: Re‑engineer the Course

Next, we turned to the product.

Jon’s live cohorts work because he can read the room in real time, speed up, slow down, and spend 60 minutes on Q&A if that’s what people need.

Recorded courses don’t give you that luxury. They force you to front‑load the thinking.

We rebuilt Complete Creator around three principles:

One clear win per clip

Instead of long, wandering videos, each clip needed a job:

• What is the specific win here?  
• Is it an action they can take, or a mental model that changes how they act?  
• How will they know they’ve done it?

For some lessons, that win was tangible:

• “Draft your creator statement.”  
• “Build your initial Dream 100 / Waffle House list.”  
• “Rewrite this tweet to meet the standard we just taught.”

For others, it was conceptual but still testable:

• “You will be able to tell the difference between audience growth that leads to a business and growth that doesn’t.”  
• “You will know how to spot when you’re using AI as a crutch instead of a lever.”

The point was to turn a big, abstract transformation into a stack of undeniable, finished things.

Hooks and hand‑offs

We also changed how clips start and end.

• Openings needed energy and clarity: what this lesson is about and why it matters now.
• Endings needed hooks into the next problem, not “that’s all for today.”

For example, instead of:

“Okay, that’s it for this module on audience research…”

We aimed for:

“Now you know how to find the questions that matter. The next problem is what to do when you’re staring at a blank page anyway. That’s what we’ll tackle in the next clip.”

Done across an entire course, this keeps people moving without tricks. Each lesson makes the next lesson feel necessary instead of optional.

Slides and performance that respect attention

We also reshaped how the course looks and feels:

• Slides moved from dense, centered paragraphs to one idea per slide, aligned and spaced so they’re readable on a phone.  
• Examples that used to show four tweets at once were broken into single, high‑resolution case studies.  
• Screenshots that had a dozen visual elements competing for attention were simplified and recolored so the eye always knows where to go.

On camera, we worked on delivery:

• Slowing down the words while increasing the energy. (The line we used was “animate, don’t accelerate.”)  
• Using peaks and valleys – some moments more intense, some deliberately quiet – so the voice itself carries meaning.  
• Treating the camera like a different stage, not an inferior one: a place where a more thoughtful, structured version of Jon shows up.

The goal was that a student watching on their phone at 11 pm would feel like the course was built with their attention and reality in mind, not simply recorded from a desk and uploaded.

Step 4: Build Proof and Research Into the System

Instead of waiting for testimonials to show up, we designed for them.

We set up:

• Structured student interviews with recent buyers and bright‑spot students. These weren’t generic “how did you like it?” calls. They walked through:
  • What was happening before they decided to buy.  
  • What nearly made them not buy.  
  • The first concrete win they got inside the course.  
  • What’s changed for them since.
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• Simple testimonial “games” inside the course:
  • Unlockable bonuses for sharing that they’d joined.  
  • Clear, easy prompts for leaving specific feedback rather than vague praise.
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• A basic re‑engagement automation on his list so that people who drifted away were either reactivated or removed, keeping his metrics honest.

That gave us raw material for narrative case studies like this one, as well as short, visceral proof lines (“This gave me more clarity than the AltMBA”) that speak directly to peers at Jon’s level.

Step 5: Grow and Warm with Intention

On the demand side, we made a few important moves.

1. Clean before you grow.
   Jon pruned roughly 2,000 inactive subscribers. His list still climbed to over 12,000, but his open rates stayed around 50%. That told us the growth was healthy.
   
2. Use content and lead magnets deliberately.
   He dusted off a six‑day email sequence, tightened it, and turned it into a focused lead magnet. Rather than only linking it in generic opt‑in boxes, he embedded it in high‑performing posts where the context made sense. Over the course of a week, more than 300 new subscribers joined, and a disproportionate number of them engaged.
3. Treat the warmup as rehearsal, not spam.
   In the run‑up to Cyber Monday, he sent daily emails that did more than say “it’s coming.” They:
   • Taught core ideas (like his “mindwriting” concept, or why AI‑generated content often builds artificial audiences).  
   • Surfaced objections and answered them ahead of time.  
   • Set expectations clearly: “Here’s how often I’ll email you over the next four days, and why.”

A lot of creators are afraid to do that. Jon did it anyway. Unsubscribes went up, as expected. So did the quality of who stayed.

By the time the cart opened, he had a waitlist of more than 600 people who knew what Complete Creator was, why it existed, and why it might be for them.

Step 6: The Cyber Monday Launch (and what happened next)

When Cyber Monday arrived, Jon did something he’d never done before: he treated the launch like a system instead of an event.

He:

• Emailed multiple times per day, but with each email doing one job: a story here, a FAQ there, an explicit objection handling on another, a simple last‑chance reminder at the end.  
• Gave the waitlist a genuine head start and something extra for having raised their hand early.  
• Cleaned up his email formatting so that links looked like links, CTAs were easy to spot, and nothing structural got in the way.

A few highlights from the launch:

• One person managed to find a way to buy at double the course price before the cart officially opened. Jon had to go back and refund the difference, but it was a useful data point about pent‑up demand.
• Average order value was roughly double his previous best launch for Complete Creator.
• His subscriber list grew from about 9.5k to over 12k, while his open rates held steady around 50%.
• The waitlist more than doubled in five days during the warmup series.
• Students began referencing specific slides, frameworks, and phrases from the rebuilt course in their feedback, not just saying “this was great.”

Maybe the most meaningful change, though, was internal.

Jon no longer had to guess whether Complete Creator “counted” as his flagship. He had:

• A clear economic structure around it.  
• A course designed, on purpose, for completion and proof.  
• A waitlist and proof system he could rerun.  
• A sharper sense of who he serves – and who he doesn’t.

So now for future launches, he’s not starting from a blank page and a raw nerves. He’s starting from a tested architecture.

Jon’s reflection

Here’s how Jon has described the experience since:

“My last launch was the biggest I’d ever had, and I still felt like I’d muscled it through. This time, I felt like there was a backbone to it."

We roughly doubled average order value compared to my first on‑demand launch. That translated into multiple tens of thousands of dollars, sure—but more importantly, it gave me confidence that the course and the system deserve to exist.

The biggest shift, honestly, was permission. Permission to charge more when the structure supported it. Permission to ask for help instead of white‑knuckling everything alone. Permission to build something I can run again, not just something that ‘worked one more time.’”

If you recognize yourself in Jon’s “before”

You might be in a similar place if:

• You’re already an established course creator, expert advisor, or creator‑operator.  
• You’ve had “biggest launches yet,” but you know your flagship isn’t structurally as strong as it could be.  
• You care more about completion, proof, and the quality of your decisions than screenshots and hype.  
• You want one decisive project that upgrades your flagship and launch economics for years, not just for a one‑off promotion.

That’s the work Jon and I did together.