Four Launch Lessons

Sara: Hey, friends, so after being in business for almost seven years, five of them full time, I've definitely launched a lot of offers in launch along with different kinds of businesses until I actually fully landed on launch strategy and copywriting, which I've been doing for the last five years. Before that I had an e-commerce shop, I ran a green living blog, there are other little devils of things in between there. So I've launched a lot. And since becoming a launch strategist and copywriter, I've worked with dozens and dozens of clients to either help them take their idea from zero to launch or to relaunch an offer, optimize an offer, I've had my hands in a ton of launches. And over time, there have been a bunch of lessons that keep showing up over and over again, and I wanted to share them with you today. case, they help you have your next launch with more success.

And I'm not talking just about making more money or bringing in more people, I'm talking about launching in a sustainable way that doesn't really burn you out, make you really unhappy and make you want to really avoid launching again in the future.

So I'm going to start with sharing those with you today. And we'll probably come back to this more than one time, because there are so many lessons to launching. But these are my top four that I want you to take away.

So let's get into it.

So the first one is how to avoid burnout. And I want to bring this up right away. Because it's something I see so much on social media. And you've probably seen it too, people talking about just being so exhausted after launching or burning out, or like up all hours. There's this real like hustle mentality behind launching, there all sorts of sort of supposed to like high five and be like I hear you. And it's true, like a lot goes into launching, but your launch doesn't have to be like that. There's some ways that you can avoid that burnout and fatigue. So one of them, of course, would be to build yourself enough time to create the assets you need before you're actually opening your cart. So instead of writing your emails as each day goes out, so like on day one, your open cart email writing it that day, or you're writing your bonus email, the second day, your car closed email, as it happens, a lot of people do that. And that's okay to do. Because sometimes we have to just create as we're going in order to actually put the launch out. But it's also a recipe for burning out and getting exhausted. If you haven't cleared the space in your calendar for that, when you're launching, you either want to try to really do things ahead of time for yourself, so that you can still work with your clients serve your note your membership, or your other people in your course. Or you want to clear out your calendar for that launch period. So that one, you really able to show up, you have the capacity and the time to write emails if you need to do so and you just aren't feeling that need to stay up really, really late and burnout.

Now, if you can do both, I recommend that you've more writing all your assets ahead of time clearing out your launch weeks in your calendar, so that you can everything's going out. But you can also tweak things on the fly because sometimes you'll have created an email, let's say three months ago, or even from your last launch, and something happens in the world and you need to change it. Think about what happened with COVID-19 arriving this year, a lot of business owners had to go back and change the messaging in their launch emails because they weren't landing anymore.

The world was in different economies change, people were scared. And the message couldn't be the same part of clearing space in your calendar is so that you're available for when stuff happens. The other thing I want you to consider about a way to avoid burnout is to actually do things your way. I'm going to tell you a little bit about a client that I worked with for years and launching every time we launched so she launched through a live webinar. She really didn't like doing the live webinars. And every time a launch would happen, and we schedule these webinars, something would go sideways. Either she would get really sick. That's what happened most of the time. Once we even had like an ice storm, another time there was like freak power outage. So all these things kept happening during her live launches. So her these live webinars, she would end up like with this like terrible, yes, like sore throats. And every time after we, you know, this would happen, we would debrief and we'd say, How can we change this for next time. And yeah, she creates in space, or we would have some backup emails to go in case something went wrong. But when it came down to it, when we really needed to do and what you know, my client had to get on board with was the fact that maybe running a live webinar wasn't actually working for her, you know, she's a quite an introverted person, there's a lot going on in her life.

And so there's a lot of stress on showing up for those live webinars. Now, she was so amazing on sales calls, and in her facebook group for her people who came into her course, but something about that live webinar just triggered a massive amount of stress. So we really have to dig into the fact that it's okay to change off the path or go off the path of what people are telling you to do. Yep, even me as a lawn strategist. I mean, you can, I definitely encourage you to try these proven pathways. But if they're not working for you, it's okay to do something different. With this client, what we ended up doing instead was she pre recorded her webinars, we didn't pretend they were live, you know, we said it was on demand. But what she did was she showed up live in the chat. So there was a live component. And that's what we were really clear about and her landing page. And that worked for her, you know, she had had the space and the energy to bring it all to these, like, webinars that she was pre recording, and then to show up for people right in that chat, and have conversations and follow up with them on Instagram, DMS and through emails afterwards. And that created a space for her so that launching no longer had this energy that was making her literally physically sick and stressed out. So I want to give this Make this your permission slip to try launching in a way that feels good from you for you and protects you from burnout. You'll know what that is for yourself.

Launch lesson number two is to treat your launch like an experiment. This is something I've learned during my time. And James Wedmore is next level program. And he talks a lot about how every time we launch, we're either going to reach our goal, you know, that could be revenue, that could be number of people in our program, or joining our mastermind, whatever, or you're gonna learn the lesson you need to and your launch. Both are really amazing. Sometimes you hit that goal, that revenue goal. And sometimes no one buys even when you think you have a great offer. So there's something to learn there. The lessons could be you're either not bringing enough people to your offer, you could have maybe had something a little bit off in your messaging. Maybe like the language, the words you're using aren't actually quite resonating with the people that you want to serve, or your offer isn't right. And all of those things are things that you can totally improve upon. So that lesson is valuable, but you don't get it until you actually launch your offer.

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Today's episode is brought to you by the launch playbook club. It's a place for service based business owners who want to launch a course membership or group offer and are tired of trying to figure out all on their own. With weekly copy critiques and strategy calls for personal feedback, access to tech roadblock busting q&a sessions, monthly training around six figure launch strategies and templates for all your launch copy needs. The launch playbook club is your roadmap to accelerate the success of your next launch without burning out, become a member of the launch playbook club at www.saravartanian.com/launch-playbook.

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Lesson number three is to consider each launch a stepping stone to the next one. We can't do all the things right, especially on your own or even with a small team. And so this lesson was really driven home to me after being an affiliate for Amy Porterfield digital course Academy this fall. I believe it more than ever, she has a phenomenal team. And it caught me really thinking when I saw the behind the scenes of Amy Porterfield launch was that all those big launches we're all looking at right those like
high multiple six figures, seven-figure launches, they have teams working behind the scenes. So consider that each time you launch. You do what you can right now and that is the first that's like a foundational layer. You're adding on it. Stone is a stepping stone. And then next time you add on another stone or the other layer to your launch, you know. So first I would focus on your messaging, and then finding opportunities to connect with people and get them into your offer. Those are the first things you want to do. And that can be in really small ways. It doesn't have to be a 20 email sequence, and showing up in like a pre-open cart day or webinar day.

Boot Camp doesn't have to be videos, it could be simply emails, and I would tell you about what I did, and really doing the sort of approaching launch in a really minimal way recently, what I wanted to open up the launch playbook club this last summer, I was short on time, because I was already committed to the DC affiliate launch, when I decided I was going to go ahead with this membership. But I really didn't want to put it off because I knew it would be late fall by the time I got to it. And I wanted to learn the lesson, right, put out lunch, learn the lesson, see what happens so that I could move forward, make tweaks, etc. So what I did was I wrote the sales page, the launch playbook club, and then I thought of a few people who I really like to see in the club. So I thought back to some past clients I'd worked with or some people I had chatted with. And then I also considered a few places I could share about the club, like in a Facebook group from a thread type of thing. So I pulled together a list of about 10 people. And I sent each of them personal videos using Bom Bom, which is an amazing email video app. And I invited them to join, and so three of them did out of 10. And then one joined after learning about it on Facebook post.

It was a really low key launch. But it was the first step and it converted, right I got four people joining and I did 10 videos, some really great conversion rate. Now for the next time I opened the doors launched a book club, I'm going to be adding on a webinar. And right now I'm currently writing an open cart sale sequence, which I'll use along with sending personal video invites to specific people, I really highly recommend that the newer or untested your offer is that the easier and lower commitment you make to your launch, find out if people are responding to it before you invest hours and hours, lots of money into emails, your social or Facebook ads.

Lesson number four, remember to plan for after someone buys your offer. And this is a mistake I see show up a lot. When I'm working with clients, particularly when we're optimizing or tweaking their launch, so much time has been invested in creating the actual launch itself, making the plan making the offer, like actually creating your course right or the sales page, the webinar, whatever you have done, but not a lot of thought has gone into afterwards. So you spend like all this time charming, and converting people to buy. And once they do, they get access to the offer and nothing else. And it's really such a missed opportunity, those Customer Success emails, that after experience to cut down on refunds, or having people regretting their purchase. And then even helping to ensure more of the customers actually move through your offer and experience the transformation.

As a result, you might not even have your offer fully created yet, you know, perhaps you could be pre selling it. Or you're you know, creating it week by week, I've done that for sure with one of my courses. But you can still plan to send some emails or some customer touch points, some ways to reassure your new customer, that they made a good decision when they took that leap to invest in working with you. So if you're sitting there wondering like, hey, Sarah, what can I do for that customer experience? After they buy? I want to suggest that you first really think about that first email they get how can you make them feel super good that they purchased with you. So not that receipt, email, like they're gonna get the receipt email from whoever they provide, you know, whatever they paid by, but something that reaffirms like, I'm so glad you're here.

This is what's it gonna be like, here's the access. And here's what to expect next, even if what to expect next is, you know, we get started in three weeks, and I'll be in touch, but make them feel really great.

And then I would love for you to think about adding in an email, you know, once you get started telling them how to get success of the program, like what are the three to four things they can do right away. That is going to help them have success, no gets momentum, so they feel really prepared. And then you can consider adding in another email that addresses a roadblock that often crops up. Because let's face it, even if we try to take away all those roadblocks and all the barriers through our online offers. There are things that come up, you know, it could be like missing the calls. It could be fatigue, it could be a tech issue. You know, when I created my list building playbook course, that's why I included tech in there as like a bonus because people can create all their crazy lead magnet and they can write the welcome sequence, but they actually have to connect the tech and it was like a barrier from getting them to get the lead out to the world and start building our list. So call out a roadblock, address it and tell them how they can overcome it. And then you can also consider adding in an email. And it can be really simple like, go to Bom Bom. And you can send a create a video, or even just like a quick little note with a picture of you even or like a fun gift and say, how's it going? You know, where are you in the program? Is there anything I can do to help I'm right here I'm listening, and invite them to reach out to you. I don't want you to worry if you do that, that you're going to get like a slew of emails that you can handle, you know, likely if you're at that point, you know, hopefully you're going to have a VA to support you with that. But also, not everyone is going to reach out to you. But the people who are maybe feeling stuck or on the fence or unsure are going to feel that that door is open to reach out and get the support they need. So that brings me to the end of the top four launch lessons. But I want to share with you to help you make your next launch of success. I can't wait to hear which one resonated with you the most. 

So if one did, I'd love you to come on over to Instagram. Take a picture of this episode or DM me at Sara Vartanian and tell me which lesson Are you gonna take forward into your next launch? Or I'd also love to hear what lessons have you learned from your launches. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning in to the launch playbook podcast. If you want to get weekly launch secrets in your ears. I hope you'll hit subscribe on iTunes so you'll never miss an episode. Because who knows? It could reveal just a thing you've been looking for to make your next launch a success. And be sure to leave a five star review and iTunes telling me how this episode inspired your launch plans. Until next time, keep putting your big ideas out into the world. I'm rooting for you.