[Transcript starts at 0:40]
Hello, hello, hello my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite online business podcast. If you are listening, if you are tuning in, if you are watching on the day that it drops, it is Monday, September 7th. Welcome to September.
Really, we're in it. It should be going so fast. I don't know about y'all, but here in SoCal, Southern California, the weather just… So by the time this launches, I'm not sure if it's going to have gone back, but we had a big heat spell.
It wasn't really the heat, it was the humidity and the fucking mosquitoes are still here. The humidity has gone away. It's colder.
I didn't want to wish it away because then the heat went away and it was like literally overnight. September 1st hit and it was like, and it's chilly. So hopefully it goes back up by the time that this episode drops.
But today we're talking about launching. It's not necessarily my least or most favorite thing to talk about, but it is something that I definitely have strong feelings and beliefs about. I've been doing it for so long now.
I know that a lot of other people have strong feelings about it, naming that they hate it. So we're going to chat. I pulled away from the online business space for a little bit, especially just Trump got elected.
Fuck that guy, always and forever. Now, always forever. And it keeps pulling me back.
Online business will always pull me back. And yes, I know this is an online business podcast, so hopefully it's pulling me back. But when it comes to online business, I tend to talk about the bigger picture, not the nitty gritty stuff.
But today I want to talk about the big picture when it comes to launching and the big rocks and what to do if you hate launching. I also got to say, because I just got to plug it, that I think part of the reason why I'm like, yeah, I'm excited to talk about launching. And I'm not like, ah, because Crew 52 is going so fucking well.
If you don't know Crew 52, it is my year-long consistency and accountability program. I launched it in August. I did a launch for it.
And the launch was great. It was fun. I enjoyed it.
And the program is fucking great. If you don't know what it is, we'll put the link in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney.
Thank you, JoJo. You can check it out. It's not open right now.
We just had our second call. And it explodes my heart. I think it's probably my best work.
I think that it is my best work that I've ever done. But back to the episode. Today, the episode is specifically inspired by one of my homies.
I'm not sure if this person listens. Sometimes I think that they do. You know who you are, homie.
And thank you for being my muse. But to start off, we're talking about what to do if you hate launching. First off, if you're not launching, how the fuck are you going to sell anything? What else are you going to do? You know this, but I think it bears saying because there are some fucking clever and shysty online business coaches out there, charlatan business coaches out there, who would have you believe that you don't have to launch.
How the fuck else are you going to sell? My guess is they're using kind of slick language and renaming the process and not calling it launching. But you're still going to fucking be launching. Because the other option is that you're going to be running ads all the fucking time.
And that is a completely different lift. I think it's a harder lift, to be honest, because you've got to put in big effort to get it right. And you've got to put in big monies.
That's big scary. So if you're not going the ads approach, we're not talking about ads. Yes, ads could be part of the approach we're going to talk about.
We're not talking about ads because that's out of my wheelhouse. But if you're not going the ads route and you are going to sell stuff, you have stuff that you need to sell, you're going to have to promote it at some point in some way, shape or form. And your best bet is to launch it.
So let's just define launching as a dedicated period during which you promote your offer or service launch. They can buy it during this time. Of note, longer is not better.
Better is better. So if we circle back to the title of today's episode, which is what to do when you hate launching, step one of what to do is figure out why you hate launching. Right.
Of note, I got two caveats here or two asterisks asterisks here. As we're going to this episode, I am presupposing that you want to keep doing business. You want to keep your business open.
You're not just like completely done with your business. You're not completely done with online business altogether. You're not hating business.
You're not hating, you know, online business in general. Well, if you are right, if you're hating your business and you're hating online, hitting online business, that is a very, very valid reason to hate launching. And if that's the case, you should shut it down.
Just stop doing all of it. Life's too short to be doing shit that you hate. The second caveat slash asterisk is, I mean, I'm thinking about everybody in my audience, right? I get not wanting to launch.
I get I wanted to sell because you're just like, I just want to deliver the thing. I just fucking love delivering the service. I get that.
And also it's not realistic unless you're okay with the pace of word of mouth. And also if word of mouth is working for you, right? And this largely only works with evergreen offers, right? Things that are something that's always available, like a one-on-one coaching, like a done for you service. Other things like a program, like people have to know that like enrollment is open for this thing because the program starts on a certain date, right? So if you're like, I have certain dates that this thing runs and I need people in it and I need more people to know about it than currently know about it, you will need to talk about your stuff in some way, shape or form.
And today we're going to cover launching, right? So when it comes to launching, there are quite a few different ways to launch, but there are typically, in my opinion, two reasons why you don't like launching, right? Reason number one, you're not making any money, right? You're not making any sales. No one is buying it. Reason number two that you hate launching, there is zero predictability, right? You have no idea what the fuck is going to happen and you're just like stressed out.
You're like, maybe I'll make a sale. Maybe I won't. I don't know.
All right. There is a third reason, but it really only applies to my more advanced business owners. So we'll go over that towards the end of the episode, but it still does tie into these two things, right? You're not making any money.
There's no predictability, right? Those are the two main reasons why, that I have seen. Everything kind of boils into that, boils down to those things. That's why people hate launching.
And maybe you're sitting there being like, actually, I don't like it because it's so much work. I promise you, if you were making bank or at least the amount of money that you felt you should be making for the amount of effort you're putting forth, you wouldn't hate it, right? You're getting the ROI. The juice is worth the squeeze.
The squeeze is worth the juice, whatever, whatever. I think the first one is the correct one. You wouldn't hate launching, right? So step one, if you hate launching, first thing to do is to identify why you hate launching.
It's one of those two reasons. Step number two is to take action to address that reason, right? So if the reason you hate launching is because number one, like this offer is not selling, okay? The launch ain't launching, the people ain't buying. You're going to go back to the very beginning of the online business wheel of prosperity, which is number one, build an audience, right? Do you have an audience? If you ain't got no one to sell this thing to, of course, no one's going to buy it.
So if you're like, actually, I don't really have an audience, it's very small. Okay, we'll start there. The reason no one is buying is because there's no one there.
So let's build the audience. If you're like, no, I do have an audience. Okay, let's go to the next super important step, which I've covered before, which is to ask them if they want the thing before you go and build and launch the thing.
I did a whole episode about this, maybe two episodes ago, maybe, called You Gotta Ask. Maybe it was last week's episode. I don't even remember.
I talk a lot. Either way, go check it out. So as it relates to asking, right? You have this offer.
If you never asked in the first place, then you have to ask. Be like, hey, do you folks even want this thing? All right, so you have an audience, but you didn't ask. Okay, you need to ask first, do you actually want this thing? No one says yes, don't fucking build, don't launch it, you're done, stop.
The second part here, the other part here is, if you have asked, right, you have an audience, you have asked them, you're like, yeah, I asked them in the past, you know, they said yes, and I sold this thing in the past, I'm trying to sell it again, then you have to confirm that there's still demand and desire for this thing. We're getting a little bit more advanced here, but you can handle it, because this relates to you. It's not going to relate to everybody.
You got to pick your, you know, choose your own adventure here, but you have an audience, you've asked in the past, you ran this thing, it did well, and now you're running it again, maybe for the second, third, fourth, probably typically, you know, their second launch may be the hardest, so we're looking at like your third time running this, maybe it's the fourth time running this, and you're like, maybe it's your fifth, sixth time running it, and you're like, this is not, it's not, people are not buying it, right? You could realistically just ask them again, but what I suggest, and how I suggest you ask, right, is an action that will help address the other reason why people hate launching, which is there's no predictability, right? So my suggestion here, if you've asked in the past, people have said, asked in the past, and people have said yes, maybe they bought, but now you're again, and it's not going so well, you got to corral attention, right? This is the second reason that people don't like launching, is that they felt there's no predictability, and I've talked about this a zillion times, right, and corralling attention simply means selling to people who have raised their hand and said, yes, I'm interested in this thing in some way, shape, or form. My favorite way to do this, and the most direct way to do this, in my opinion, is by building a waitlist or an interest list for this specific offer, right? You are telling people, right, this offer is coming, get on the waitlist, be the first to know, maybe they'll save some money, it's oftentimes the best way to get people on the list, you're guaranteed to not miss out, and then you sell to those people. Waitlist typically converted about 10 to 15 percent, right? Once again, that's 10 to 15 percent, why? Because people are people-y, they put their name on it, and then five minutes passes, and they're like, actually, I don't really want this thing, right? You must make a new list each time.
If you've been using the same list for the past five years, well, that does not count. You need to make a new one, a.k.a. you need to ask people again, right? If it's a super old list, right, where this doesn't have, it could be that you asked people for this round, but if you, like, asked them last year, it may not convert well, because they're just, people are, it's been, it's been a year, right? We can see this do better, this conversion rate do better, if people knew what they were signing up for when they joined that list, right? So if all the information on that page is like, yeah, I want this thing, and they're signed up for the interest list, then oftentimes you can see the conversion rates kind of at the higher end of that spectrum of 10 to 15 percent, right? But this creates predictability, because you can see how many people are on the list, and if you anticipate that, you know, there's a 10 to 15 percent conversion rate for this list, and you have 10 people on the list, well, you can expect maybe one person to buy, right? And from there, you have managed expectations, and you know whether you should even launch this thing or not, and you're not going in, like, well, I hope I get 10, and I'm working so hard, I only got one. The numbers told you, you're only going to get one, right? Of note, the 10 to 15 percent is just on average.
If you, if and when you run your offer multiple times, you will start to get your own conversion rate number, and it typically holds pretty true. Maybe it's above, maybe it's below, right? But you'll be like, this is my number, and then you can go in with that same approach, and being like, all right, well, I usually convert at 5 percent, I got 50 people on it, or I usually convert at 5 percent, you know, 10 percent, and I have 100 people on it, whatever, and you can go in with predictability and familiarity, right? For Griffity 2, I typically just go with that 10 to 15 percent, because I have never run this offer before, so I don't know what it converts on. I'm just going to start with the standard 10 to 15 percent.
I had 88 people on the interest list, and I was like, all right, if I get eight people in this, awesome. I'm going to launch. I wound up with 21 people, some people from the list, and some people from the public, but I went in with that managed expectation, and I wasn't like, man, this launch fucking sucks, because I don't have 100 people.
I was like, no, I've managed my expectations, and I have this corralled attention that I'm selling to. The other way to corral attention is via a lead magnet. This is Jill's shit, and we'll talk about this more at the end of the episode, right? Or we'll talk about Jill more at the end of the episode, but with the lead magnet, this is when you run an experience.
You have an experience, master class, webinar, challenge, something like that, and then you sell into your main offer from that experience. These typically converted around 5 to 10 percent lower if that people in that challenge or the people in that workshop came from ads, cold traffic, as opposed to they came from your current audience. Your current audience would be people on your email list, your Instagram folks, things like that, your current audience, right? For both of these, whether you are doing the interest list or the lead magnet, these are corral attention steps, and it is still a form of asking.
It's like, hey, are you interested in this thing, this general thing at least? All right, come hang out. If you don't get anyone on the wait list, if you don't get anyone in the lead magnet, if it's me, I'm not launching that thing. It's like, all right, I have my data.
I have my information on this. Otherwise, you're going to end up in that hope marketing territory, and that's when people cry. That is when they launch the thing, they're like, nobody wants, nobody likes me, and then they're crying.
So for those of you that have launched before and you're listening and you're like, but don't you also sell to the public and can't you make sales during that part of a launch? Yes, absolutely. I just told you that I made sales during the public launch of Crew 52, but I don't count on those sales because I'm always going in with managed expectations, and especially with that, I have no idea how many I typically get during the public launch. I never launched that offer before.
If we're talking about my intensive that I had run 17 times, 16, 17 times, I had a loose idea of how many people that I would get during the public launch, loose idea. But even then, I would just be like, anyone who buys in a public launch, that is icing on the cake. Maybe I'm not going to say icing on the cake because the cake's supposed to have icing.
It's just extra stuff on the cake, sprinkles or something on the cake. I always want to go with those super managed expectations. The main reason for this is that, again, you don't know, you have no control over how many people are going to buy during either phase.
But during the public launch, you have even less control over how many people see that you're even launching. Whereas when you're selling to the waitlist, the waitlist is via an email. You're sending that out.
If you're doing it via a lead magnet, you have the people in front of you. You've been communicating with them via email to get them to show up for this thing. You have a bit more control as opposed to when I'm selling in the public launch, I'm just putting it on Instagram.
I don't know who's going to see it. I have no idea. It's about that control.
You can't control who's going to purchase, but you can control the communication that you have. When you have more guaranteed communication, it's typically a better thing for your launch, by controlling that distribution, if you will. To recap, the two biggest reasons that I see people hate launching, number one, people aren't buying their shit.
You're not seeing the ROI. The second thing is no predictability. To address these factors, I suggest, number one, asking your people, do you even want this thing? Then number two, corralling attention.
That can be done via something like a waitlist or something like a lead magnet. If you just don't have the numbers, I don't have the numbers in the audience, I don't have the numbers on this waitlist, I don't have the numbers in the lead magnet, then it becomes about going back to the top of the funnel and getting the eyes, posting on social media, attracting the audience, and then going through those steps again, asking and corralling. Maybe you go and get the eyes via ads.
Again, that's outside of my zone of genius, but we see how there is and are solutions for each of these problems. Like I mentioned earlier, briefly, there is a third reason that I think that I've seen that people hate launching, but this typically only applies to my advanced business owners who have multiple offers. Typically, one is doing better than the others.
In general, they may have multiple offers, they've all done well in some capacity, so they still have these offers, but typically, the front runner emerges. What happens is an offer that they launched that used to do well stops doing as well, and suddenly, we're back to that ROI problem. The juice is not worth the squeeze.
I'm working so hard on this, and I used to get 25 people, and now I have five people, and it's like fucking pulling teeth. This can very well be that you've exhausted your audience, they've exhausted their audience, but maybe it's a really high ticket. This is oftentimes what I see, it's a really high ticket offer, whether it's high ticket because of the price, high ticket because of the time investment, it's like a six-month program, a year-long program, it's a couple thousand dollars.
There just aren't as many buyers for that, even for a big audience, there's just not as many buyers, and so maybe you've exhausted that audience. My recommendation for that person, if this person is you, you could do the steps and go and ask the audience, look to build the wait list, and then look at the conversion rates. I think for some of these people, I know for some of these business owners, they're already doing that.
They have the conversion rate, they know what it is, they see the list, and they're just like, maybe I'll launch it. I have 15 people on it, maybe, and then it's just like, you're in it, and you're like, this isn't worth it. My suggestion, launch less often, if at all, for that offer.
If you launch it four times a year, bless you, drop it down to three, drop it down to two. If you do it twice a year, drop it down to once. Maybe even put it on sabbatical while you focus on your other offers and the offers that lead into this thing.
I've absolutely coached people through that. The big thing here is to let it be easy. You have other offers that are doing well, lean into those instead of trying to hold on to what was.
Because again, the title of this episode was what to do if you hate launching. If you're like, no, I do, I did like launching, and I really enjoyed it, I want to figure out how to make it work. Well, then this episode, all of the stuff that happened that I've been doing, wasn't for you.
All right. I am going to wrap it up there, but I did throw a lot of stuff at you, so maybe go back and listen, maybe listen one more time. I know it's a lot of stuff, but another option for you, and I said this earlier, alluded to this earlier.
My bestie, Jill Fitt, she is going to be running a two-day personal branding bootcamp, personal brand building, I should say, bootcamp, and it's called Build Your Brand, Get Your Bag. I love it. It's basically two days of personal branding coaching around stuff like building authority, relatedness.
It's the first day. The second day is going to be more actually the business building. She'll be teaching things like messaging, types of posts to be putting up, creating your one-on-one coaching offer.
It is paid. It is a paid bootcamp. There's two tiers.
$37 is the lower tier, and then you have a VIP tier that's $97. We will put the link in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney.
Thank you, Jojo. That will take you to the registration page. It has all of the information on it because I can't remember all the information, but full transparency, this she's running is a lead magnet.
It is a lead magnet for her signature offer, her signature program, FBA, and I'm promoting it because she's my best fucking friend, but also I'm an affiliate for this. So if you use my link to register, I get a loan. I almost said you get kickback.
I get the kickback, but the main reason that I'm promoting it and having done the outline for this episode, and in full transparency, I did the episode first and then she had texted me and I was like, maybe I'll tag on the end of this. So it wasn't like I made this episode in order to promote this thing. It worked out well because I did this episode and I'm like, this is a lot of stuff, right? And this is what she's the best at.
Jill, we had a program together, Legacy, and I got to do like kind of the soft skill stuff and she is the strategy sensei or she's very queen. She just loves this shit. She loves being in people's businesses.
She is the absolute best when it comes to being in the weeds with the online business strategy, especially for beginners. I tend to work with a little bit more intermediate folks, folks that have been in the ecosystem for a bit. Jill is the best.
I do one-off sessions for beginners, but if you're looking for programs, I'm going to take you through this, hold your hand as you're actually building the initial phases of this online business. Jill is the best and she has the best program for beginners on how to get started. And it's FBA, but the first step of that is going to be the bootcamp that she's running, right? She's going to teach, you know, she teaches a strategy, but you don't fucking get this anywhere else.
Like I just, if you're thinking about it, just fucking do it. But she's your strategy. She's going to give you the framework.
You know, she will teach you how to make money, which is the big thing. She loves this shit. And again, this was probably the best part about partnering with her for Legacy because I got to do more of the soft skill stuff.
Meanwhile, she was like in people's business, in people's businesses, and, you know, helping them sell. So if this sounds interesting to you at all, the link is in the show notes. Again, thank you, Courtney.
Thank you, JoJo. And if for nothing else, real talk folks, sign up just to see and learn how she runs her launches, right? By being in it. I have absolutely done that before.
I've been like, let me go through this fucking funnel. Let me see what this person's going to do. I know they're going to sell something.
I promise you, you will still learn. You will learn something in the over, you will learn a lot over those two days, but you will also then get to see how she's running this launch and like, you know, 37 monies for an education like that's a fucking steal. So all that link in the show notes.
And that is, I'm looking at the time, it's a little bit of a longer episode. That is all for today. Again, I know a little bit of a heavier episode and I was speaking fast because I was excited about it.
Go back, listen again, go to the show notes, sign up for the bootcamp, and that's it. I'll catch you next week. As always, endlessly, endlessly, one more time, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you.
Until next time friends, Maestro out.
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MOTM #732: You Gotta Ask First
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