Lessons From My Last Launch
One of my goals in 2019 was to be more transparent about my own business. Because, while I love to teach business and pricing strategy, most of what I’ve learned is by trial and error and from running my own businesses over the last 12 years. So while I tend to be the type that only teaches what I know will work, I also want to give you more of a real-time look into what’s happening in my own business and what’s working or not working right NOW.
So that’s why I’m sharing lessons I learned from my latest launch of Plan to Profit below. This information should be helpful to you if you’re someone who:
- Offers coaching
- Creates courses or any other sort of online educational or knowledge-based offers
- Is thinking about adding on coaching, courses or infoproducts to your business to expand beyond a 1:1 service-based offering
Sound like you? Then let’s dig in.
Here’s How It All Went Down
At the beginning of January 2019, I opened the doors to Plan to Profit, my ongoing monthly program that teaches you how to create a business roadmap and 90 Day Profit Plan. The program also helps you stick to your plan every week with monthly masterclasses, weekly sprints check-ins, encouragement, and more. I also opened up a few spots to my group coaching program, The Profit Accelerator at the same time.
Some background: For most people, Plan to Profit seemed like a totally new offering that I started offering. But it was actually just the next iteration of what I’d been working on and testing and tweaking over the past year. I first launched it as Profit Bootcamp, which was a 1-week workshop designed to craft your pricing strategy. And while that workshop was great, I got feedback from those who went through it, saying they needed more help beyond just a plan for how to price your offers. Instead, they wanted more guidance on how to plan the whole business strategy.
So I got to work crafting a more robust program and launched Profit Planning Bootcamp, a 6-week program to create your business roadmap last September. Once again, I had some amazing students go through the program, got lots of great feedback, but this time I also heard a lot of “But what’s next? I have the plan but I’m having trouble sticking to it. I need more accountability, more help prioritizing and focusing so I don’t chase all the shiny objects.” So I asked if my students would prefer a monthly membership component where they could receive ongoing accountability, support, teaching, and more. Pretty much every person I asked said, “Heck yes!”
So this was my first lesson (and it was a doozy): You don’t have to have the perfect thing before you put it out in the world and offer to people. Because it’s never going to be perfect or exactly what your audience needs on the first try. You’re going to be constantly refining it and making it better each time you put it out there and have more people go through it. Just put it out there now. And even if only 3 people sign up, great! Work with those three people, get their feedback, refine it, and try again.
Long story short: I launched my Plan to Profit in January using all of the knowledge I held from previous iterations. But of course, there are a couple more lessons to learn from this latest launch. Most of them are things nobody ever really told me about launches, so I want to share them with you.
My 3 Major Takeaways
Lesson 1:
As I mentioned above, the first (and biggest) lesson I learned was to just do the thing. Don’t wait for your program or your product to be finished and perfect before you put it out there! Because it’s not going to be finished or perfect and as soon as it’s out there and you have people going through it, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to make it even better! Stop hiding behind fear or the excuse of perfection. Just put it out there and see what happens!
Lesson 2:
Don’t be afraid to pivot (even if it’s mid-launch). Of course, you want to make sure you have information to back up this pivot. I did this after my previous launches and worked to make sure my audience came along for the ride. These pivots were necessary for me to launch Plan to Profit, but it didn’t necessarily come “out of the blue.”
Don’t just abandon your plan or keep changing things throughout a launch because that will confuse the heck out of people. Make sure your pivot is intentional. If you know something is off, do some digging and try to find out what it is so you can pivot and get back on track. It’s all just one big experiment anyway. You can also use what you learn to make your next launch even better.
Lesson 3:
Stop focusing on your revenue goals and your numbers! I did this myself with the latest launch, watching the numbers and registrations like a hawk. Instead of making me excited, though, it stressed me out. Was I going to meet my goals?? In the end, I learned not to look at the numbers so much.
Set your goals, map out your strategy, and then get to work serving and impacting people and following your strategy. If you’re constantly worrying and stressing about whether you’re going to make the money you hope to make, your mind isn’t on giving and serving your audience like it should be. And that’s going to be reflected in your launch and whether you hit your goals. So just show up and focus on helping, educating, and making an impact. You can’t put so much pressure on everything.
Plan for Profit… But Also Plan for Change
If you’re a 1:1 service-based business or offer coaching, courses, online programs, and online products, I’m hoping this resonated with you. I also hope it gave you something to consider the next time you put a new offer (or re-launch an old offer) out into the world. Really, I just want you to know that it’s most important to get whatever it is out there in the world, and then work on making it better.
Of course, if you want to find out more about Plan to Profit, you can sign up for the waitlist so you can be the first to know when the doors open again. And don’t forget to share this with one of your biz friends to help with their next launch.
