Online Business is Changing

What I Learned From a $300K Launch

If you’d like to listen to post instead, click “play” above and I’ll read it to you! Like a bedtime story, online business marketing edition.

Note: I wrote this post for you before the election and the results. Business stuff feels like the least important thing in the world at the moment… and I also know that many of us need to build our businesses to live our lives. As always, do what’s best for you. Save this for later, or use it as an escape. Either way, I’m here for all of you.

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Hi friend!

Going in to my latest live launch, I set my goals really low. Can you blame me? The odds were sort of stacked against me:

• We ran the promo 1 week before the election

• Meta ads were super iffy given all the political ads and climate online

• I was in Europe for 3 weeks prior to the launch — with Instagram deleted

• I didn’t record any face-to-camera reels for Instagram

• A few days before I was set to host the live webinar, I had just turned in my final manuscript for my upcoming book

2024 has been a year of getting back on the horse.

After losing both of my parents back to back in 2022 and 2023, I had cancelled a number of scheduled sales and promotions to take more time to grieve.

This year, my goal was just to run all of my normal sales and promos, even if they weren’t as big or as “good” as before.

Yet somehow, they were all bigger than ever.

How are we able to keep growing my business, getting more and more people to sign up for webinars, and make even more sales each launch given the changes we’ve seen (and felt) in the online business industry?

If 2024 has taught you anything, it’s that you’ve got to stay on your marketing toes.

Maybe you feel like things aren’t working like they used to.

Or you’re new to online business, but you’re so confused about what strategies to implement that will actually grow your business — not something some business coach tried once and can’t tell you how or why it worked for them let alone teach it to you.

Maybe you’re someone like me, who’s had a business for a while, but you don’t want to be on social so much (plus, you feel like social’s not really working like it used to, anyway). You feel called to live more of your life offline, but how do you do that when you’ve got an online business?

I agree, it does feel like the online business landscape has changed drastically in the past year.

I hear people say all the time…

• “webinars are dead!”

• “facebook ads don’t work like they used to”

• “SEO isn’t working anymore” (thanks Google AI summaries!)

• “people just aren’t spending money like they used to”

• “we’ll never get back to 2020-2021 numbers! Those were the days.”

• “nothing’s working for me on social media - it’s like crickets over there!”

And here’s the deal — some of those things are true.

But besides not being helpful — those sentiments don’t tell you the entire story of what’s happening online. And they don’t tell you what is working instead.

I truly believe you can still grow a profitable, thriving online business. Sure some of the strategies and approaches to doing so might have changed — but there are plenty of things that are working.

It’s all about being willing to pivot, test, and adapt. And personally, I’d rather spend more time focused on what’s working than sitting around talking about the good ol’ days. I don’t really see how that’s helping us at all.

Who ever said that you’d start an online business and everything would be the same forever and ever? As far as I know, being an entrepreneur is all about innovation. And that’s what this time in the online business space is calling us to do.

I’d be willing to argue that I sell one of the most boring products someone can sell (legal templates) on the internet. (Sidebar: I love what I do and what I sell - I’m a weirdo!)

If I’ve figured out how to get over 42,000+ people on my email list (& keep them!), optimize and maintain an evergreen funnel for 5+ years, and get nearly 5,000 people to sign up for my live webinar last week, I think I can teach you a thing or two about how to rev your marketing engines.

When you ask me “how are you doing what you’re doing?” or “how have you done it so well, for so long?” or “I want to understand why you do what you do,” I realized I had no place to send you.

I’m here to teach you just that. There’s no better place to do so than here on Substack.

With Substack, I can share my marketing strategies, practical tips, and guidance that will save you time, money, and energy — all with a built-in community so we don’t have to feel alone while navigating all these complex shifts.

If you also get my weekly legal email, Sam’s Sidebar — nothing’s changing there.

This community here on Substack, however, is changing. Moving forward, it’s going to be the only place you can find the nitty gritty marketing strategies from me. And I hope you love it.

We’ll kick things off next week (November 13) with part 1 of my Secrets of a $300K Launch Series.

In this series, I’ll show you exactly what I did in my most recent $308,000+ live launch including:

• timing and scheduling my launches to maximize awareness and sign-ups

• systems we use to run a successful promo behind the scenes

• copywriting tips that boost engagement and lead to highly converting sales convos

• whether you should be running Facebook ads

• what social media did in this promo (& where it flopped)

• how I got nearly 5,000 people to sign-up for my webinar

• the mindset hurdles I worked through, even as I hit my highest sales numbers yet

I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look into how I planned, strategized, and executed this live promo so you can take those strategies and apply them to your own online business.

If you want to know what I did, why I did it, and how you can do it too — you don’t want to miss my Secrets of a $300K Live Launch Series.

What’s 1 question you want me to answer in the series? Tell me in the comments!

Can’t wait to drop part 1 for you next week. Talk soon!

xo,

Sam

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My debut book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy: A Practical, No-BS Guide to Successful Online Entrepreneurship (Hachette/GCP, April 15, 2025) — now available for pre-order wherever books are sold — will teach you how to:

• build an email list full of engaged future-buyers

• create and sell your first $1 million digital product, and

• navigate the challenges of online entrepreneurship

As a thanks for pre-ordering, you’ll get immediate access to my new course, The Ultimate Email List Growth Toolkit, and a seat inside my virtual No-BS Book Club happening this May, where we’ll implement everything you learned in the book over 4 live 90-minute coaching sessions.