5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Launch Something
Have you launched something and it flopped? (*raises a hand, I have!) Or are you thinking about launching something soon? Before you hit that launch button, you need a little more info from me.
Because today, we're gonna get spicy. I'm gonna come right out the gate and say it –you're probably launching wrong! Whoever you are, if you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, CEO, or whatever you call yourself, chances are, you are having a problem selling the thing.
But I want to give you the tools to get you set up for a successful launch. Fun fact, it's probably not going to be what you think it is. It's probably gonna be a little different, a little unique, and a core problem you're unaware of.
But don't worry, I'm going to help you out. Today we’re diving into the 5 questions to ask yourself before you launch something.
Why I Told A Client To Stop Their Upcoming Launch
Let's start with a little story. I had a client who, before hiring me, wanted to launch something. We got to talking, and at the end of our initial conversation about business, I told this person not to launch the thing.
I know, I know but I'm going to tell you why I said this. When I asked why they were doing it, and we dug into the why behind their business, their core values, where they want to go in life, the things that excite them, the things they want to see happen in their career in their business –this particular offer they wanted to launch wasn't gonna get them there now.
I share this story because we live in a world, especially on Instagram, Tik Tok, where we get sold a story and a narrative around launching that is dishonest and doesn't address the cornice of what's really going on.
That’s why I want you to move through these 5 questions and be able to answer them about yourself before you even get to that launching space. Because the truth is, there's a lot of different ways to launch a thing and make money from it.
But you have to know why you're doing it in the first place. Because if you don't know that, then you'll never know when to get there. On the days when you are making $0, how are you going to be motivated to show up? As you grow and your team grows, and your business evolves, who's going to come buy into that if you have no clue who you are at the core as a business?
If you need help finding your why (with the exact steps to take), check out episode 115 of the Get Shit Done Podcast.
Yesterday, Matt said he wanted to start a business selling custom light up Christmas sweaters. That's the business he wants to start. My first question was, why? Why do you want to start a business? He's in a career he enjoys. The more we dug into it, it's about getting him to financial freedom, which is the end goal. But let me tell you, selling sweaters is not the best vehicle to get to that destination.
Now, I get it, you’re probably excited. You have this new thing, this product or service. But I want to catch you before you start to take action on the wrong launch to ensure we're setting you up for success in the first place.
5 Questions To Answer Before You Launch
To help you out, here are 5 questions that you have to be able to answer for yourself before you go put a thing out there. These 5 questions come from personal experience because I launched a course and made $0, and I am now a six-figure business coach. So I have learned some stuff along the way.
I did not realize what was happening in the moment, but now in hindsight, I can look back and identify that I didn't have the answers to these questions. I followed the advice–not always the right advice–from industry leaders, people you respect, people you look up to telling you how to do this. Build a course and a funnel and all of a sudden people just buy your stuff.
I'm here to tell you the honest truth. It doesn't just happen overnight. But that might not be the best way for you to deliver content and value to your audience. And that's okay. There are lots of ways to do it, and we're gonna get into how to do it.
So without further ado, I got five questions I want you to be able to answer before you launch anything.
Will the thing you’re launching actually help you execute your why?
Number one. Answer this question only once you’ve identified your why. If you haven't, go do that. When you know your why, will the thing you're launching actually help you execute on your why?
Here's what's wild to me, had I known my why before launching my course that flopped, I wouldn't have built a course.
I think about it all the time. Money and resources were wasted building this beautiful course –which exists right now, by the way, and is actually getting a rebrand. But the course came at the wrong time and with the wrong intention. If my why is to inspire people to take action, if you buy a course from me, how do I know that you took action? It's not guaranteed that I know.
When I was starting my coaching journey, my time would have been better spent getting clients to hire me so I can come alongside them and take action with them. Because then I know they're taking action. That's my why, that's what is important to me. That's what a core value of mine is. And that's why the course wasn't able to deliver that.
First of all, I didn't talk about it. Aside from that, it was the wrong vehicle to get to my end destination, which is to inspire people to take action.
I would say 90% of people do not finish courses. And that used to really bother me. But then I think of my own journey and there are a lot of courses I have bought and not finished, but I've taken action. So I've loosened up my criticism of that industry a bit. I think what it comes down to is connecting the right people to the right resources.
Now I will say, over two years of coaching, consistent podcasting, and running networking groups and communities, I am in a place where a course makes sense because people want to take action. And not everyone who wants to take action is in my target market with my current coaching offer. So now is the time for a course. But I didn't know that at the time.
That story I told you earlier of the person who wanted to launch something, they were in the product space. When I asked this person more questions about their why and what's important to them, and where they see their life going, I can see how products eventually could get there.
But they had a more immediate need to diversify their offering quickly. So that way, they can have more money, build more of a community, and then down the road, these products could be sold to people who want them. Right now, people weren’t aware of this person. So that's why we changed with this person launched.
That's why the first question you have to answer is, is this current thing you're wanting to launch going to get you to where you need to go? Is it the natural next step right now? Yes or no?
2. Do you need to make money right now?
Number two. You have to be honest with yourself about this. Do you need to make money right now? I'm gonna get some backlash from both camps for this. On the one side. I think manifestation, believing in yourself, having a belief that it will come back to you is important.
I also believe there needs to be some practicality with it. If you're literally the breadwinner, if you are responsible for half the bills, if you and your partner have had the conversation and they're not in a place to financially support you –you need to be real with yourself.
I needed to make money when I launched my course. So when it didn't work, it was extremely stressful. In hindsight, I can go back and see that my energy wasn't right going into it. I was desperate. I was so anxious and needed it to work. I was forcing it through and I think my audience could tell. My energy was very different then because I had to make it work.
So if you need to make money right now, and you're aware of your why, there might be a different first step you take before you launch this other thing that you're fantasizing about.
In a lot of conversations I'm having right now, people want to start a podcast or start coaching or workshops, or networking groups. It’s like it’s a grass is greener destination that people see and want. And that's why you have to know why you're doing it.
You have to be realistic about your current situation. Because if you cannot afford to not make money. The offer you have on the table may not be the right fit or the right time. Maybe you revisit it later. And that's okay. I just want you to be honest with yourself with that question.
3. Are your current people the right people for the thing you want to launch?
Number three. Are your current people the right people for the thing? When I tell the story of the client who pivoted their launch, when I talked about my launch not working, it's because I was saying the wrong thing to the wrong people.
For me personally, at that time, when I was launching the course, my followers, my community, my network were people who knew me as Kelsey, the hair salon owner. So they were used to seeing hair, photos, makeup, behind the scenes, a little bit of business here and there, because that was a big part of my brand at the time, too. But those were my people.
So when I started to try to sell a business course to them, they weren't the people who were gonna buy it. I naively thought they would. And it just didn't work out.
So ask yourself if the current people that you're around, that you're showing up for, that you're connecting with, are they the right people for this offer? If they're not, then stop right now. Don't launch a thing and focus on finding the right people.
But again, that's assuming you know your why. That's assuming that the offer that you're putting out there, the thing you're launching, is the correct thing. Based on those other questions we talked about now is where you're going to start to gather those people.
I have a client right now who is converting her in-person business to online. The interesting thing is, just because she has a thriving in-person business doesn't mean it translates to the online space. So she is hyper focused on building community with the right people. She's focused on converting as many people from in person to online. And it's a slow go. But it means she's being very intentional about the community she's building.
I know she'll be successful because of it. She secured an online client before she even launched because she just started targeting her messaging to that future business, that future offer before it even came out. And people resonated with that. That's because she recognized she needed to get the right people around. That's a constant effort that gets to happen in your business.
So ask yourself if you're around the right people. If you're not, find them. And if you went through this exercise, and you're like, Well, I don't even know what to focus on next. Don't worry, I got you.
I want you to really be aware of whether this is the right offer in the first place –yes or no? Am I engaging consistently with the right people for this thing? Yes or no?
4. Are you selling people what they want or what they need?
Number four. This key question that I did not get for the longest time. Are you selling people what they want or what they need?
This one humbled me, as if all the other stuff didn't humble me, but this one, this is a truth teller. There's a lot to unpack here.
What the question really is saying is how are you communicating your offer? If you already have a thing, are you promoting it? How are you talking about it?
So I built a course that was essentially business basics for the person who didn't go to business school. People don't want to buy that. It's not sexy. It doesn't feel good to admit that Kelsey is really good at doing hair, but has no clue how to run a business. And by the way, I've been doing it for 10 years. People don't want to admit that about themselves.
What I was marketing wasn't speaking to them enough for them to buy my course. My coach lovingly said, people don't buy themselves into something, they buy themselves out of something.
So the way I communicate the offer needed to shift, and odds are it might need to shift for you too. Now the funny thing is you actually end up delivering what they need. Again this is something that I didn’t understand until this last year of business. You deliver what people need, and you sell them on what they want. I know it sounds simple, but it's the truth.
So what do people want? Who I'm talking to in the coaching space, they want time freedom, they want their business to grow, they want to stop working 24/7. They want to feel more confident in how they run their business. They want a team of people, they want to impact more lives, they want to serve more people.
So when I'm messaging my offers, I speak to that, but what they get is business 101. What they get is the stuff I learned in college, and I've applied directly into my business. That's what they get.
They could go by the book about it themselves, but I am able to deliver and package it in a way that is selling them on what they want, but delivering what they need. So same for you, as you're walking down this journey and answering these questions about yourself, I want you to be really, really clear on how you talk about the thing.
If you're launching a course, people don't care if it's 3 weeks or 6 weeks. They don't care if it's $200 or $19. They don't care if it's virtual or in person or hybrid. They don't care if it’s zoom or a phone call. They don't care about that. What they care about is that they have a problem and you can help them solve it.
That's what we have to communicate in our messaging. How we deliver it, that's the cherry on top. If it's delivered in a way that's easy and digestible for them, that's it. It can really actually be that simple. That's something I did not get when I was launching my course.
5. Would you launch this thing for free?
This last question I have for you is going to feel a little contradictory. I talked earlier about having a mindset, believing in your thing, believing in yourself. I do think that's important. But would you do this thing for free?
What I really mean by that is, if nobody buys it, but you believe so wholeheartedly in what you're doing, would you still do it? Yes or no? That to me is a key indicator. Are you doing this out of desperation? Are you doing this for the right reasons? This is so important to be aware of.
From there, we can get into strategy. From there, we can talk about mistakes you make in launching and things to do differently, things to adjust moving forward. But if you don't know the answer to these five questions, you're really going to have a hard time getting your stuff out to the right people for the right reasons.
I have clients who are launching things as well and are at different stages of launch, whether they actually went through with it, or they hired me during it all –the common theme through all of it is that people are spending the wrong time in the wrong places. If all of them, myself included, had focused more on these five questions, then there's no doubt in my mind that they would be successful in their launches.
Why This Launch Roadmap Can Be Used Again and Again
These five questions are the roadmap I wish I had two and a half years ago. I would be in a totally different world if I had them back then. I don't live life with regrets. I'm thankful for all the lessons. But this is real, this is what matters. This is what you need to be able to answer for yourself before you put anything new out there.
What's crazy is I just lived this out again. I just rebranded the podcast. It used to be called The When I Grow Up Podcast, and now it's called the Get Shit Done Podcast, which meant a launch. And the launch was messy. It was duct taped, it was thrown together. It involved expanding the team rapidly, new types of content, new ways that we're putting all the pieces together, new team members who don't all know each other. Well, my business is also growing rapidly all at the same time.
But at the end of the day, I did this for you. I did this for you because my why is to inspire people to take action. So they live an authentic life with purpose. That action piece is where it's at for me. So my branding, my messaging, everything I do needs to help make things happen for people. That's why we did it.
So I hope you take the time to answer these five questions. Anytime you're launching something, it could be an event, a new offer, a new store, a new service, a new product, a new team member, a new location, a podcast, a blog –launching simply just means building hype for a new thing.
So anytime you're putting something new out there, I encourage you to go through these five questions. Once you can confidently answer them, proceed and move on.