1084 – Here’s how you do it: Tom talks Preparing A Launch Part I

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Short Overview
This episode explains how Tom Antion is preparing for his first major product launch — promoting a documentary film about his entrepreneurial life. Part 1 focuses on building and organizing a launch team months before release, using personal outreach, multiple contact databases, and simple marketing infrastructure.
________________________________________
Key Takeaways (Bullet Points)
🎬 Background
• A documentary (“The American Entrepreneur”) has been in production for ~8 years.
• Tom is now acting as executive producer and responsible for promotion.
• The launch goal is to drive engagement, views, and awareness before the premiere.
________________________________________
🚀 Main Theme: Build a Launch Team Early
• Start months in advance.
• Goal: Recruit supporters who will:
o Watch trailer
o Comment
o Share
o Possibly promote using provided materials
________________________________________
🧠 Step 1 — Get Organized
Create a master document containing:
• Trailer links
• Outreach scripts
• Email subject lines
• List of audiences/databases to contact
________________________________________
👥 Step 2 — Brainstorm All Possible Contact Sources
Not just your main email list. Include:
Professional
• Students / customers / members
• Event attendees
• Podcast guests
• Groups you belong to
Personal
• Friends
• Family
• Vendors you pay
• Phone contacts
• Social media connections
• Gmail contact list
• People who engage with your posts
________________________________________
✉️ Step 3 — Personal Outreach Works Best
• Personal emails outperform broadcast emails.
• Use specific personal hooks:
o Mention spouse name
o Mention shared history
o Mention specific traits (“Hey bodybuilder…”)
• Makes email feel non-automated → higher open rate.
________________________________________
⚙️ Step 4 — Use Automation Tools (But Carefully)
Examples:
• PC → Macro / Shortkeys software
• Mac → Keyboard Maestro
Purpose:
• Speed up sending personalized emails
• Insert subject + body quickly
• Maintain personal feel while saving time
________________________________________
📱 Step 5 — Platform Realities (Facebook Example)
• Mobile users may struggle finding posts.
• Provide direct links to videos/posts.
• Ask viewers to watch videos to the end → improves algorithm reach.
________________________________________
🌐 Step 6 — Create Basic Launch Funnel Pages
He created:
1. Launch team signup page
2. Thank-you page → asks them to watch trailer & comment
3. Hidden page → trailer for people who hate Facebook
________________________________________
🎯 Step 7 — Keep Launch Team Engaged
Example:
• Let them vote on movie poster designs
• Quick engagement tasks maintain interest
________________________________________
🧩 Core Strategy Philosophy
• Don’t rely on publishers, platforms, or partners to promote for you.
• Promotion success = leveraging relationships, not just lists.
• Many supporters exist outside your main marketing channels.
________________________________________
📅 What This Episode Does NOT Cover (Yet)
• Detailed launch timeline
• Advertising strategy
• Full promotional rollout
• Platform-specific tactics (future parts)
________________________________________
One-Sentence Summary
Prepare for a launch by organizing early, building a relationship-driven launch team from every contact source you have, using personal outreach plus light automation, and setting up simple pages and engagement tools before release.

===

Episode 1084 – Preparing A Launch Part I
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1084 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about preparing a launch. Now this is going to be part one of a launch I'm preparing. And it's kind of funny because I've bragged for the 30 some years I've been online that I've never done a launch, and now I'm doing a launch, right. So I don't claim to be the expert on it, but you're going to see a lot of cool things that I'm doing to get ready for this launch. And it's for The American Entrepreneur film. So I'll tell you about that in a minute. All right. Hope you didn't miss episode 1083. That was fake schools. This is how you got to be careful when people call themselves a university or an academy or a school or a college and. And what you have to watch for so you don't get robbed. That was 1083. Anytime you want to get to a bad episode, you go to the episode number. That was 183. All right. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation book. It's. Free. And get version 3.0. And it's the latest. And I'll tell you what. It's going to save you a lot. A lot of time. And I mean weeks and weeks of time into the future. If you just use some of these shortcuts and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, and it is a school, and it is licensed by the State Council on Higher education in Virginia.
[00:02:03] But you don't have to be in Virginia because its quality distance learning. Okay, so don't claim that I'm one of those fake schools in episode 183, okay? What we're talking about now is a documentary that Hollywood came to me, I think, about eight years ago. All right. That's how long this has been going on. And they had been following me for a while and they said, you're the American entrepreneur. You've never had a job. You've built everything from scratch. And I thought, hey, I thought you had to be dead to get a documentary made about you. Apparently. Apparently not. So they, uh, they came to me and they said they started following me around shooting video at speaking engagements and interviewing me and interviewing all kinds of people that I've helped and so forth. So then the producers husband died, and it kind of got the thing kind of fell by the wayside. And after all these years, it's it's picked back up and it looks like it's going to premiere in a couple months. All right. So so I want it to be a success, of course. In fact, I had to take over as the executive producer because of, uh, the the poor lady that, I mean, she's done 36 documentaries and just really prolific. But when her husband died, things kind of slowed down.
[00:03:31] So I took it over. And now I'm responsible for making the premiere happen. All right. So? So, yeah, she's of course, going to be involved. And and of course, whatever, wherever it premieres is going to be involved. But, uh, it's just like when you write a book, unless you're a super celebrity, you have to do all the promotion yourself, you know, just because you have an agent or got a publisher, they're not going to do crap for you. So so I This is part one of how I'm preparing for this, and it's months in advance yet, and I hope you decide that you want to help out because we're getting a launch team ready. And this is what this episode's going to be about. Part one is getting the launch team and what you have to do to prepare to get this going. All right. So let's get into it. So one thing I'd like you to do and this will be in the show notes is go to facebook.com/americanentrepreneurfilm and leave me a comment and I'll respond to you personally. Now this is something interesting I found out as I started telling people to do this is that if you're on a cell phone, somehow you just can't find it. It's buried so deep in the postings you can't find it. And so I had to provide a direct link to it for people that, that, uh, are trying to look on cell phones.
[00:05:01] So that's something just to keep in mind, if you're using Facebook to promote some type of video. And the direct link is like really long with a bunch of numbers and stuff on it. Okay, so do that and uh, go over there, leave a comment that and let's talk about that. I'm telling people that it's only three minutes long, so it doesn't take a lot out of your day to watch the trailer. It's three minutes and 20s long. When I asked them, usually through email, I say please watch to the end and then in parentheses. A lot of people have heard it helps the algorithm. Every video you watch they said please like and subscribe. It helps the algorithm, it helps the algorithm, and it really does. But what that means is, is if people watch to the end, then Facebook says, oh, it must be pretty good. People like it. They'll start showing it to more people. So that's why you want to make sure people watch stuff to the end if you can. Now, if it's an hour long video asking them to do that, it's a little tougher. But three minutes and 20s is not bad. So if you're going to do something like this, ask them to watch to the end. The main thing I'm doing and what I'm covering in this part one and part two might not be for a while, so don't think that it's going to be like next week, right? Because I'm learning as I go through this.
[00:06:33] And so I want to pass it on to you. So the first thing is I'm trying to get organized. And so I made I'm doing mostly work on Macs now because of my podcast. So I have a whole station set up here where I've been a PC guy my whole life. But anyway, I made a mac. Note that for the people that I'm going to try to approach to get to help me with the launch, I called it documentary Promoters. And I have a link to the, the trailer and, you know, links that I'm going to be using over and over again right near the top. And then I listed all the, the places that I'm going to go to approach people. And so I'm going to tell you that now. Oh, also, I have my samples of my broadcast emails and my subject lines on this particular thing, and I'll send you one later. If you email me at Tom at com, I'll send you the, the ones I'm sending out. So the databases so this this is something that you, you really have to brainstorm on. Because sometimes you forget about places where you have people that may not be on your main email list, but people that know you and like you and would probably be glad to help you even though they don't get your regular email for whatever your topic is.
[00:07:58] All right, so I'm just going to run off some of mine. You won't have all of these, but you'll have some of them. My school graduates, my school attendees that haven't graduated yet. I have a meet up group of entrepreneurs in the Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach area. I've got my personal email. So just people that I know that you know, that are friends of mine that don't necessarily, you know, they work for a job, they don't want to be online or do any. They're just my friends. And they'd be glad to help me if they just knew what I was doing. You know? Because what I'm asking them to do is when the thing debuts, watch it when the go to the trailer and leave a comment, you know, so I'm not asking a whole lot really, from these people to help launch it. And then the ones that are gung ho, I'm going to give them. I haven't made all this stuff yet, but I'm going to give them stories and reels and and posts and, and sample emails if they're gung ho enough that they like me that much, then I'm giving them all the stuff to help promote the thing. Okay, now I want to go sidebar here on the personal emails and things that I'm going to do that aren't broadcast, like where I'm broadcasting to 100,000 people.
[00:09:23] One thing I've been harping on in your automate free ebook is Short keys. If you're on a PC, this is called a macro program where I can hit like A1 and it types in Antion.com or G1 is greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. So or if somebody asks me a question over and over again I can type B2 and it might type the whole answer for them. So it's a really big time saver. But since I'm on a mac, Short Keys is only for PCs. So I got Keyboard Maestro, which is much more complicated and does way more than short keys, but I had to get it installed because I need it to do these personal emails. And then I can make all my short keys in Keyboard Maestro for the Mac instead of short keys. But when I'm doing the personal emails, I don't want people to think that it's just one of my broadcasts. So I usually do a personal subject line, something that they they know is absolutely personal. For instance, I might send an email to a person that I know their spouse's name. So I may say, hey, Cindy, I want you and Jerry to help me out on something. So there's no broadcast. Emails include the person's spouse. Okay, so that's clearly a a personal email and is going to get opened. Another thing if I know something about them. For instance, I sent one out that says, hey, bodybuilder, I need a favor.
[00:11:11] So I happen to know that person is a bodybuilder, and they responded immediately and did what I asked them. Say the personal ones. Make sure they're personal. If you do have a broadcast email that that they may get so that they don't think it's, uh, you know, they can just blow it off because maybe they're busy that day. Personal. They'll open. All right. Another database you should have is your relatives. All right. The ones you like anyway. Or that. Like you. Okay. Then there's people that are not on my email list. For instance, the guy that cleans my pond. Well, he's not on any of my things. He's a churchgoing guy, works a job and cleans the ponds on the side. So he's he's not on my broadcast list, but I pay him money and I'm friendly with him. And if he watches this thing, it helps me. You see? So hit up people that maybe are not on your main email list, but you pay money to their vendors that know you and ask for a favor. I mean, they kind of owe you since you've been doing business with them. Especially since it's not that big of a favor to watch your deal or to, you know, to to tell somebody about your book or whatever you're doing. So, okay, now podcast guests, that's another one. I kind of did them a favor putting them on my podcast.
[00:12:36] So I'm going through the list of guests and hitting them up. And a lot of them aren't on my broadcast list. But the subject line is going to be, you were on my podcast, and then inside I'll put the episode they were on. But this is where the short keys and the keyboard maestro comes in, because I'm going to paste in what I want them to do. But most places, most PCs and Macs or PCs and Macs for sure only will put one thing in your clipboard. I don't want to copy and paste two things for each email. So what I do is just I put them in keyboard maestro or short keys and then I can hit A1. Boom. Subject line A2. Here's a message. And then hit send. And it makes it lightning fast to to get to these people. Now, like I said, you don't do the A1. If it's somebody really personal that you know. But you're on my podcast. You were on my podcast is something I can just paste in boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But I put it in keyboard maestro and then I don't have to do anything but A1, A2 all I have to do is put their email in, and a lot of times as soon as I start typing it, all I have to do is click and the email pops in there. See? So I can send these personal emails very fast.
[00:14:07] And the ones, especially the ones that are on my podcast guest list, because. And there's 500 of them. All right. So that's the one where I can use Keyboard Maestro to throw in the subject line, throw in the body as soon as I start typing. I've already corresponded with them. Sometimes it starts throwing in there and I can hit send. Boom. Okay. So uh, let's see Facebook friends. Now, the Facebook friends, you can't advertise to them or reach them all at once. So, you know, I got 5 or 6. I think you're allowed more than 5000 now. So 5000 friends. So there's there's ways to get around that, that I'm going to put in the later parts. But I can't reach them all at once just by putting a posting up. Because the posting I haven't done a lot on Facebook. And so it's not going to get any engagement and it's going to go nowhere. So there's other ways to get around it that I'll put in in future parts. Uh, your phone contacts. This is why people don't think of go through your cell phone contacts and say, oh, yeah, there's, uh, aunt Sally. She'll watch. She'll sit down and watch my my thing, you know? And so you contact them, either text them or email them or whatever, uh, Facebook stories. I look through that and I see, oh, I forgot about that person.
[00:15:34] They they owe me a lot. I helped them a lot like crazy. So Facebook stories you can sift through, and you got to do that over and over again because they disappear after 24 hours. So every day you can just sift through them and find people you forgot about. Now another thing is your Gmail contacts. If you have Gmail, just open your contact thing up and just go down through one by one and say, oh, I forgot. Yeah. That guy. Yeah, that's the guy that, uh, my electrician, you know, or that's the person that, uh, the landscaper, you know, whatever. Then here's another cool one. If they have liked something, a post of yours or like in my case, the trailer, when you hover over the likes, it shows you who liked it. And then you can you can go back and contact them to be on your launch team. Say any groups that you're in now, you can't go and advertise yourself on groups. A lot of times because they'll kick you out. Now, if you have your own group, you can now if you have a podcast, that's where my super trick is, is where you can interview the admin of your group and then make sure that you make them look good. But in the podcast you mention what you're doing, and then they put it at the top of their group. That's the golden tip I give to podcasters to get loads and loads of attention.
[00:17:04] Okay, so that's those are getting all your databases ready to to collect all the people in your life. You know, you could do the same thing from when I wrote the GoFundMe book or GoFundMe. How to how to get crowdfunding. Same thing. You're getting all these people together. Okay, so what else do you have to do to get ready? Remember, this is part one and all this will evolve as we get closer. So I'm months away from anything happening on actually the premiere. So there's three pages that I created. One is the sign up page to sign up to be on a special list of launch team. I want you to get on it. It's screwthecommute.com/LaunchTeam, so please go do it. And then there's a thank you page that pops up that asks you to go to watch the trailer and to leave a comment. So that's two pages and I just put the third page on when I found out that, first of all, some people hate Facebook. I knew that, but I mean, uh, a lot of people still have it, even if they don't like it, they don't like to go there. Or the people that are on cell phones that are just having a hard time to find it, and they still don't want to go to Facebook. I put a hidden page that has the trailer on it, so they can at least watch it and get excited about the launch, even if they're not going to comment or anything.
[00:18:37] All right. So that's, uh, that's part one of the preparing for a launch. Oh, one other thing I'll tell you about is that so we have to have a movie poster for where we submit the film. So I had four of them made up, and I'm getting some poll software, which I think we're we so far we're using menti.com. And then I'm going to have all the launch team members to keep them engaged and interested. And it only takes 10s to pick which movie poster you like the best. And then I'll get I'll start seeing which one gets the most votes, and then that's the one I'll use. All right. Okay, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you want the sample email that I've been sending people, just email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com and I'll send it back to you. And then hopefully you'll sign up and be on the launch team. And then part one will happen as I have significant information. But it won't be. It won't be right away. It'll be after I gain a lot of new stuff. So all right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Go to screwthecommute.com/LaunchTeam and sign up and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.