5 Things You Absolutely Need Before You Launch
I'm coming in spicy and will immediately just let you know one thing: Your launch is about to flop and you don't even know it yet.
How do I know this? Because I was you.
To give a little context, launching applies to all of us. If you own a business, if you're having an event, if you're hosting a podcast, if you are creating a new offer, if you have new product, if you are growing your team, or opening a next location, guess what my friend? You launch, you just don't even realize you were doing it.
I want to help you succeed in launching because I got it wrong. And a lot of my clients that I've worked with have also done it wrong. Or maybe we've done it messy. Or maybe there are lessons we've learned along the way, whether they've done it with or without me, I'm here to transparently share in that journey because I'm a big believer that our experiences can help each other.
Today, we're talking about the five things you absolutely need before you launch.
The Story Behind My Failed Launch
Prior to me being a CEO, Coach, I used to have a hair salon. I had my own business. I had a team of contractors, and I naively thought all the things I did in the salon would immediately translate over to launching and growing my coaching business.
For the most part, they did translate. Because I had a business degree, I was able to pull from experience and education in order to grow my business to where it is today.
But there are definitely some things I got wrong. I'm going to share those first because we have to talk about how we got here.
Here's what I did wrong: I spent a long time Googling, focusing on the wrong things, and building the thing that I didn't understand. I needed people to sell it to on top of that. I needed a plan to sell it to those people. But I didn't get it.
I opened my hair salon in January 2018. Here's what I didn't realize, I was doing hair before that. Before that, I was in beauty school. So people knew me as a hair person. Prior to that, when I was in college, I was known for doing hair for fashion shows and photoshoots going out.
In my mind, even though I was a startup business, my audience, the people around me, the people following on social media, and the people who just knew me all knew me as Kelsey the hair girl. And that's important. Because I didn't realize I had been laying that groundwork for years.
So by the time I opened my salon, I already had people who knew me, liked me, and trusted me. They understood that I did hair and I could help them with their hair. So when I opened, I was immediately successful. I hit my goal in my first month. I hit six figures in under 10 months. And I was extremely proud of that.
But what I failed to recognize at the time is all that groundwork, all the years of being in that industry just working for other people, I didn't realize that would contribute to the success of my business. So that's failure number one.
When I transitioned into business coaching, I assumed the people who sat in my chair and asked me for business advice would be the same people who would buy my coaching services. Turns out they're not. So I got it wrong.
I want to share that honest story because I think a lot of us, especially if you're entering the coaching education space, we're sold this fairy tale that we can just monetize our knowledge and buy ourselves out of the industry. Share the knowledge with the next generation of professionals and be able to make money hands-off. I was humbled time and again in that in that process because it's not quite that simple.
What I didn't understand is you have to build a new community of people, even if you think the people will ride the wave with you, if you are changing industries, if you're starting a different business, most of the time, they won't. And that's okay. But that's what I misunderstood.
I'm sure you've heard this story before, but I essentially built a course on a platform called Kajabi, which I still use today. I still appreciate the platform, but it was not the right fit at that time for me. I hid away and spent a ton of time building a course that made exactly $0. I went from a six figure business owner to a failure pretty quickly.
It was extremely humbling and frustrating because I'd put my blood, sweat and tears into this course.
Here's what's crazy. The course I built three years ago is still what I teach today. It's just packaged differently, it's communicated differently. And honestly, the course could use a facelift. So we're going to give it a little facelift.
That being said, what I was trying to do was not wrong. I just didn't have the tools available. I wasn't prioritizing the right things to make that launch successful. So I failed.
I share that story because I think it's important to have the honest truth of a launch to know what it's really like. I've had other clients who have launched, and maybe they've only signed one client. I've had people who have launched and sold out. I have people who have launched and sold one client in real time, and maybe a couple of months later, it's still being consistent and showing up and communicating to their ideal people, they were able to get more clients down the road.
I share all those examples, because there's no perfect formula. There’s no precise launch plan that's going to save your launch for you. But I do believe these five must-have things are going to help you be successful. These five things are not sexy. There's no hack. There's no special hashtag to use. There's no special sales page funnel that funnels in perfectly with ads that you run seamlessly on the back end. That is not what we're talking about.
Launching can mean a lot of things. I liken it to “hype.” What are we building hype for? Is it a new thing? Is it a new podcast? Is a new offer a new location? How are we building hype? What is our plan to do that? That's what launch means to me. Maybe that definition can apply to you as well.
So now you have all this history, you understand why I'm very passionate about this topic, you understand where I've come from, and you've heard some of my client’s stories of successes and failures.
Today, I'm going to break down the five exact things you need to launch your next thing. These are honest, real things I believe you should focus on if you're launching something. By the end of this list, I want you to have laser clarity of what to launch.
So what five things do you need to launch?
Get Obsessed With What You’re Launching
Number one. You need something you're obsessed with, whether it's that podcast, a blog, an event, a mastermind, a course, a new service you're providing, a new location, a new team member who's taking on clients, or whatever the quote-unquote “it” is, you have to be obsessed with it. Believe it is a true solution for your people.
If you're not obsessed or don’t think this is the true solution, it's going to be very hard to sell it. So first things first, make sure you're launching the right thing. You have to be obsessed with it.
There are times I've launched things that I was not obsessed with. A great example would be this freebie I built. I built what I thought people needed. And turns out it's a little bit too broad.
At the end of the day, if I were to package up what I truly do for people, I help them take action. That's it. Whether it's a goal, financial goal, or a number of team members, they want to put something new out there, they're launching something and they don't know how to get from point A to point B idea to –I help them do that.
So moving forward, everything I do has that energy. For me personally, I'm excited about this stuff. It's not enough for me to just inspire people. What really lights me up is when I get those DMS, those texts, those messages of people who have executed on the thing and had success from it. That is like the best feeling in the universe to me.
Therefore, I have to give people the tools to take action, and then I have to come alongside them and help them to take that action if that's what they need.
2. Don’t Underestimate The Power of Community
Number two. This is what I royally did not get when I transitioned from hair salon owner to business coach, CEO coach, or whatever you want to call me. I didn't understand how important community was. I didn't get it. I did not realize the lens that the pupils in my life were looking at me through.
Everyone saw me as Kelsey, the hair girl, which at that time was what I needed. What I did not understand is it would take time if I wanted those same people to see me through a different lens, aka Kelsey the business coach, Kelsey the business consultant. And some of those people aren't the right people.
The other day I was on Instagram, one of my past hair clients recently got bangs, and I commented on the photo, “love the bangs,” and her comment back to me was, “oh my gosh, I'm thinking of starting a business just so I can see you again.” So someone who knew me so well as a hair person, a hair professional, now puts me in the box of a business consultant and business coach. And that's taken years, I would say a solid two and a half years of showing up as Kelsey, COACH KELSEY, constantly over and over and over again.
Now people see me as that. If people knew you and your quote-unquote, “past life” as something else, keep showing up until they know you as what you are today.
Say you're a photographer, and you want to become a photography educator. You think it’s the same industry, but it's not. Positioning you as an expert in the industry is very different. The person you are targeting, the person who you're trying to help, is very different than the person you photograph.
I think we really discount time, and consistency, and the value of giving ourselves time for things to adjust and catch up at some point. Having a community that loves you is so important. Not only do they need to love you, they need to love you for the thing you are putting out there.
I launched this podcast and it used to be called When I Grow Up Podcast when I launched it. I did an okay job. I built some momentum, I had some swag. I asked people to leave reviews, and I would mail them things. I did an okay job in building the hype for the podcast if you will.
What I didn't realize is it was unclear who it was for. That's why it took a while to grow. It also motivated me to change the name to the Get Shit Done Podcast. Now it’s hyperfocued on business owners who want to accomplish their goals.
So if you're a business owner listening and you are perfectly content with where you're at, you're like things are great, Kelsey, I don't need help. I'm totally happy with how things are going. I wouldn't change a thing. I'm making tons of money. I get to take vacations all the time. Life is great. Maybe not the podcast for you.
But if you have crazy goals, ideas, dreams, you're struggling, you're not getting the traction you want and need, then that's exactly why I built this podcast. All that to say, the podcast has grown with me. It would have been really cool to see how a podcast would have been received had I built a community first.
How can you build community? You can do in person events, you can do an online community, you can just simply post on social media consistently, or you could have a newsletter that you drop weekly with tons of value in it. There are so many ways to build community. For me, I just didn't spend the time doing it in the beginning. I will say now that I prioritize community, quite frankly, above almost everything else in my business. It has done nothing but serve me.
We don't do a great job talking about that. We, as business owners, specifically business coaches, don't talk about growing a community as much as we should.
If I were to go back in time, truthfully, no matter what I was doing, I would spend an entire year serving people. It means I may have to get a part-time job, or maybe I'm hyper-focused on one on one clients and just do enough to pay the bills. Whatever that may look like. But I would spend a solid year just serving people consistently showing up, connecting with them on a deep level. And then I would launch something. Because then I would have people who actually want to be launched to.
I naively thought my hair people would follow me along on this journey. Because a lot of them are entrepreneurs. But for the most part, I had to re-educate my existing audience and then bring on new people. And it was exhausting.
I also probably would have started over for Instagram and Facebook. I kept both accounts and just changed the name. I really think that actually made things harder for me at the time. But I didn't know. You don't know what you don't know.
So you must launch to a community who loves you. How do you know your community loves you? People come up to you and say, Oh, my gosh, I loved that blog. I love that newsletter. That post was great. You're speaking to me, this is exactly what I needed. When you're hearing feedback like that, you're doing something right. It means people are paying attention to what you have to say.
If you don't have the time, energy, or capacity to build your own community, then definitely get plugged into other ones. I have three right now that you can join. If you are local in the Washington State area, I have one in Seattle and I have my Get Shit Done Club, which is online and free. It’s for people who want to get stuff done. So come join us if that's something that would be helpful.
Just find community, build community, and get people to really love you. Especially if they can love you and understand what you do. It's not enough for someone to be like, Oh my gosh, Kelsey is great. That's step one. I want people to be like, Oh my gosh, Kelsey is great. She actually helped me do XYZ in business. That is where I am focusing on educating and bringing people up.
3. Have A Demand & Interest From The Right People
Number three. Demand slash slash interest of the right people. Again, I did not understand this. I thought people asking me for business advice while they were getting a hair wash would be the same people who would buy coaching services.
I really focused on shoving people into my offers versus just doing what I do and hoping that attracts the right people. Hindsight is 2020. That's how this thing goes. If I were to go back in time, I would spend more time just consistently posting content, engaging with people, meeting up with people, building community, and building connections.
Before I would launch anything in that process, I would pay attention. What are the common problems people have? What are they asking for? What needs do they have? What are they struggling with? Then I would build something that addresses that.
But what if you’ve already built a thing? Before you put it out there, I would focus on putting out content specifically talking to the rooms. If you're in-person networking or communicating, hey, here's what I do. Do you know someone who would need that service? Hey, what problems are you having in business right now? What things are keeping you up at night right now? Those are the questions I would ask. And I would pay attention to the answers.
4. Have A Launch Strategy
Number four. This one does not matter if you don't have one, two and three figured out. But I believe so strongly in having an offer you're obsessed with, having a community that loves you, and having clear demand and interest from the right people for your thing before you have a launch strategy. Because if one, two, and three are not done, it's going to make four really hard.
Here's the thing about having a launch strategy. It's going to take more than one post.
One thing I say all the time to my clients is that one post will not save your business. Unless the stars align or maybe if you're a product-based company and you post the right thing at the right time, and people can buy it from your store, maybe then. More often than not, we are putting together a puzzle for our clients.
A High-Level View Of The Steps You Need To Launch Each Week
So if we're launching something, there are different steps that have to happen in order to make that successful. I'm going to break down essentially what they are from a very high level.
Week of the launch: the thing is live. People can buy it, they can sign up. Whether that is an event, a workshop, a coaching service, a course, a new product, the podcast is live. whatever the quote-unquote it is, that is launch week. It's live. You want people to buy.
Ideally, if you've done steps one, two and three, you're gonna have an influx of people right off the bat when it goes live buying. But then there will be a lull and it's your job to create another level of hype or interest or demand at the end of it –whether you only have a certain number of seats available or something else. For me, I did a certain number of coffee mugs for the podcast launch or maybe you're taking a dollar amount off. Build excitement after it goes live and have an end date. Have a finish line.
When you're shopping at Target or a grocery store, and you're waiting in line about to checkout and there are those weird random items by the checkout. Every once in a while, you're like, Yeah, I do need that soap-saver sponge thing. That's what this is. But for your business.
We need to create those last-minute impulse buys. We want to create that energy for people who have been watching your journey, and they're at the very end, and they're about to not buy anything, and then all of a sudden, they're like, No, you're right. I do need that from Kelsey. That's your launch week.
One week prior to launch week: This is for your early birds. This is for your early adopters. This is for the people who have been begging you to launch the thing. They have been so excited and so ready for it –we want to reward those people.
Create an offer specifically for those early action-takers. Make it enticing. Maybe it's a discount, maybe it's a bonus coaching session with you. Maybe they get an extra workbook. What ways can we add more value for that person who takes action early?
A week prior to that week (2 weeks before launch week): Drop little hints. Something is coming. Start picturing the exact person we're targeting with this offer. We're starting to speak to them specifically. One thing I often say is that I would rather whisper directly to the right person than scream to the masses. This is that in action.
In your business or overall brand strategy, you may have no idea who you're speaking to as a full business. This is the time we are hyper-focused. For example, maybe I’ll make an entire coaching offer specifically for hair salon owners transitioning out of the salon. That's going to be so focused on my audience of people. That's only a really small percentage of people. But that's okay because the people who are listening, who fall into that category, are definitely going to understand the pain points. They're going to want that offer if I speak to them specifically.
I also got it wrong. In my first course, I tried to sell to anyone who stuck, anyone who was overwhelmed. It was two broad strokes. If I were to go back in time, not only would I have waited to launch, but I would have launched differently. And that's why I'm here today sharing this with you.
To recap number four, we broke down the launch, for the most part, in three-ish weeks.
The week where you're launching the thing
A week prior to that, you're building up hype, and you're launching to the people who are ready to take action
A week prior to that, you're building hype for the ideal person for that offer.
So, three weeks out, make sure you have a clear strategy only after you've done steps one, two, and three.
One more thing to keep in mind about launching. Picture throwing the biggest party of your life. If you don't launch, it would be like throwing that big party, not inviting anybody, and then being upset when no one shows up. That is what a failed launch is like. That's what it feels like. You would never do that. You would never throw a big party, not make invitations, not text your friends, not have a way to RSVP, not find a way to call or text to make sure people are coming. So why would we expect the same in business?
If you think of it from that perspective, it feels less intimidating and gives you some focus on where to focus your energy.
5. Commit To Consistency
Number five. To me, this one should be underlined, bolded, and highlighted: commit to consistency. Here's the unsexy truth of launching. It takes time.
Factors one through three will help lay a solid, healthy foundation. If you picture tilling the soil, getting the soil in the right place, and making sure it's level. Well, there are nutrients in there. If you picture launching and planting the seeds, consistency looks like watering when you don't feel like it. It looks like weeding. It looks like if you have an issue with rodents dealing with that. It looks like showing up every day, taking care of that plant to ensure it grows. That is the hard part. That's the part no one wants to admit or talk about –that you can't just talk about one thing one and done.
If you watch how people launch and how they do it successfully, they talk about it over and over and over and over again. They don't care that they're talking about it over and over and over again.
A little asterisk side note to consider in these five things that you must have to launch is the consistency piece.
Sure, it sounds good ahead of time. You think you’ll commit to posting every day. When you're in it, and you're launching, and no one has signed up for your thing yet. You're going to show up, then. When you're in it and you've spent 1000s of dollars getting new photos, updating your website and not one person has clicked on a thing –are you still going to show up? That is what I'm talking about. That is the part people don't talk about.
At a certain point, if you are a brand new baby business and you have built a community, maybe you committed to a couple of months of posting consistently. Then you launch the thing and no one signs up. It doesn't mean it failed. At a certain point, you just have to go and do it.
Sometimes we don't allow those failures to be lessons, but they truly can be. That's why I'm sharing mine today. Because I don't regret it. I talked about going back in time and things I would change but at the end of the day, the lesson I got from that was so valuable. It allows me to relate to people, it allows me to help my clients in a different way.
At the end of the day, you just have to go do it. Go put the thing out there. There are too many people sitting on ideas or new offers. At a certain point, you have to put it out there.
If you want to be successful in it, steps one through five are going to help you out. To recap:
Create an offer you're obsessed
A community who loves you
Demand and interest from the right people
Have a clear launch strategy
A commitment to consistency
Bonus Tip: Find Accountability
I'm gonna give you a bonus tip here, one I often think is overlooked. Find accountability. So much of what I do for my clients in my communities is hold them accountable because there's a lot of value in that. It's one thing to say, Hey, I'm going to launch that podcast someday, it's another thing to say, hey, Kelsey, I'm launching a podcast, will you hold me to it? I want it to come out June 1. You better believe I'm gonna follow up with you.
I believe launching is so important in business. If launching feels like too strong of a word, if it doesn't quite embody what you're doing, how can we build moments of hype throughout your business journey? How can we do it in a way that's authentic to you but speaks to the right people?
There's so much more that goes into launching –this is just the very high-level stuff. But I truly believe if you focus on these five areas (in that order) you will be successful in launching the thing.