His $12K Launch Flopped - Here's What He Learned (That You Need to Hear)

Show notes for Season 1 · Episode 18 of Product Marketing for You with Zach Roberts.

A few years back, I'd just launched a brand new pod, and out of nowhere Zach shot me a DM just to tell me he was rooting for it. No ask, no agenda — just a kind gesture that ended up changing my life for the better.

Fast forward to now: we text almost weekly, he's my go-to PMM sounding board keeping me sane, and he's living his best life running his own agency, Scope and Sequence, and chopping it up on the We're Not Marketers podcast.

But it wasn't always smooth. If you follow Zach on LinkedIn (you should), he's refreshingly candid about the wins, the losses, and the painful lessons along the way.

One of those lessons is exactly what we get into on this one: he dropped $12k on a launch for his newly created offering, waited 30 days, and watched zero pipeline show up. The killer wasn't the offer — it was one objection he kept hearing on repeat: "AI can build that for us."

In this episode he unpacks exactly what happened with that launch, the research he did afterward, and how he's rebuilding his whole approach to AI workflows and product launches around intention and process instead of just chasing a hunch.

Here's what we get into

• The real signal buried underneath "AI can build that for us"
• Three reasons AI workflows stall before teams even get started
• Why "this feels hard" is a green light, not a reason to bail
• How to strip emotional attachment out of a launch decision so you know when to pivot
• The intention-plus-process shift he's carrying into what's next

Resources from this Episode

• Listen to Zach on the We're Not Marketers pod
• Check out what Zach's building w/Scope & Sequence

And a special shout out to this season's sponsor, PMM Camp - where product marketers build leadership range so they can move beyond execution to influence decisions, shape strategy, and build a trusted team.