#202: 5 Lessons from Our Successful Launch

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia here to help you get excited about your course creation, your marketing, whatever you’re building right now to help you build up the course based business of your dreams. And we just wrapped up. I say we I mean, my dear friend Megan O’Leary just wrapped up our conversion copywriting Playbook launch and could not be more proud of the group.

We have our full class of 20 thrilled. They’re from all walks of life. We’ve got some team members, entrepreneurs, some writers, some of course creators. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I walked through some of the lessons that we’ve learned or I learned over the last few months of doing this launch, because it’s been a couple of years since I live launched and I do have some highs.

O’Leary and I were debriefing a little bit last week and I thought today, let’s talk about it. Let’s share. And I want you to learn from what’s happening right now in terms of live launches, what’s working and what’s not. And we’ll dig in. Now, before I dig in today, I have just officially started tennis lessons. Now, this might not sound like a big deal because I’m always talking about tennis on this podcast, but when it comes to tennis, it’s really about my 11 year old playing tennis and he’s been taking lessons for years now.

He has a pro racket, great shoes, all the equipment you could ever need. And he’s very good. Now, I am not I don’t really know how to swing when I hit with him. I’m a little bit of a disaster. So my friend Aurelia, whose son is also on Tristan’s team, and he’s incredible. So we’ve got two really strong kids, asked me to take lessons with her, and this was yesterday, and it could not have been more fun trying to figure out how to do a forehand and a backhand.

And I just had an absolute blast. And I was thinking my brain really had to work in overdrive to figure out what was happening because I would get kind of the swing right? But then I wouldn’t get the steps right, like the footwork or I wouldn’t have my other hand in the right place or I was supposed to be leaning forward.

So many things to remember, so many steps or so many pieces to remember at once. So my synapses must have been going like this. What a great experience for my body and for my brain. And I’m learning and it’s a challenge. And I can’t wait to get back on the court. And I mention this because when’s the last time you really stretched yourself by learning something new?

Right. As we get older, sometimes it doesn’t happen as much and we really need to stretch our minds and our bodies and how we work and how we feel. So hopefully my tennis lessons and trust me, I’m no Steffi Graf guys, but but I’m excited to play and I’m excited to hit with Tristan because my outcome was to just be a disc and hitter on the other side of the court for my kid.

That’s it. I’m not going to play tournaments, but I just want to be good enough that I can enjoy hitting back and forth with him. So anyway, hopefully that inspires you to go out. If you’ve been saying, I’m going to go take lessons, I’m going to windsurf or I’m going to paddleboard, or it’s enough to be a water sport, but whatever it is, please go for it.

 

All right. Let’s dive into five amazing lessons learned in our recent digital marketing launch. Number one, partner up. I’ve got to say, sharing the load with O’Leary was awesome. Now you’ve got to pick the right partner, obviously, and the right topic that lends itself to you teaming up with someone, but sharing in the workload, sharing in the collaboration was just huge for me.

We divided the load, I think, in a really brilliant way. Megan would say, I’ll jump in for this outline. I said, Great. All right, these emails or I’ll have the team work on this and that, it felt really equal. Now you’ve got to have the right partner, because I’ve heard nightmare stories of partnerships where someone is doing 80% of the work and the other person is doing like 20% of the work.

So you want to make sure you’re partnering with someone who’s going to dig in the trenches with you, who’s going to help you and collaborate with you. And this is really important. No ego, because with with O’Leary and I, we would pitch and catch on outlines, emails, messaging, and you can’t have an ego when you’re putting something out there and someone says, Well, what if it’s this?

Like we were just talking about the five steps for a second class? And I say, Oh, well, what if we’d made the second step like this? And she’s so receptive, and I’m receptive because there’s a trust and a love there that we know we’re just trying to get to the best outcome, to deliver the best value for our students.

So I think if you’re partnering up, that is very important that you have that kind of trust upfront. And by the way, if you do want to partner directly with someone on your course or your program or life classes, you could also just have a guest star or guest expert or two. So with the six week accelerator, if you take the six week accelerator, the Evergreen, you’ll see Megan O’Leary is in there for offer hours.

And we talk about messaging. And my friend Chris Holloway, who talks about filming and recording and editing in a great way. So I brought these guest experts in, my friends that are really smart to kind of lighten the load. And because I’m not exactly the expert in what they’re bringing to the table. So if you’re doing, say, interviews about the course, you can have somebody interview you inside your course.

You can have some of the interview as part of your launch and or marketing and lighten the load and make it feel a little bit easier for you. And by the way, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my awesome team helped me through the launch, too. Like it wasn’t just partnering with Megan. I had a view jumping in left and right to schedule emails and do landing pages.

My friend Ashley jumped in to polish the sales page for us. So we just have an incredible team along with the partnership of O’Leary then I think made launch a success. All right. The second learning is affiliates are awesome. Again, it’s about relationships. Maybe this episode should be about why relationships are so important in launches. And I already knew affiliates are awesome.

When I used to live launch a six week accelerator. I loved working with affiliates, so it’s been a couple of years. Again, like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I haven’t live launched in a couple of years, so I went out to some new folks this time a couple of old folks or a couple of people who are already friends who already launched or helped me launch a six week accelerator, but mostly new people.

Some people I had worked with before, some people I met on LinkedIn, some people I had got in front of their group and talked and it was just cool to have a different kind of group. As part of the conversion copywriting playbook. And then some people said, Oh, I’ll email my list. Some people showed up on LinkedIn, some people made videos for YouTube.

It was just a really cool synergy in terms of affiliate support. Everyone brought something different to the table to help get the word out. Okay. The third learning is to have the freebies and a free event and then free downloads. So first let’s talk about the freebie. Now, we didn’t have a freebie leading up to the CP launch and I would like to say in hindsight, I would have liked it.

I would have liked to have a download or a guide, say four months out, maybe a cheat sheet about copywriting and the power of it to transform your marketing or transform your launch. And I would have loved to get out to affiliates earlier as a run up to our launch. So I feel like those freebies are so important.

If you can get ahead of the game and you can put out something that really plants the seed of what you’re trying to talk about for the next couple of months, do it. And then if you can get it to affiliates earlier, awesome. Then they’re nurturing from the get go. And it’s not such a surprise when you’re saying, Hey, I’ve got this course or my friends got this course.

Then we did the free event. So important when you have affiliates because there’s nothing like saying to your audience, Hey, my friends got a free event, right? You don’t have to pay for it. You could check Gina out and check Megan out. You can get a sense of what the playbook is going to be like because as part of our live event, we said this is a test drive for CP.

We were not shy about it. Everyone knows now this is different for launching today versus say, five years ago. Everyone knows you’re going to pitch them something. They know that free class is eventually going to have a paid invite. So why try to fool people these days? We were very upfront and said, We are here because we’re hoping you’ll get into conversion Copywriting playbook.

This is a test drive if you like how O’Leary and I interact. If you like this content, this is very similar to how the class will be held. You’ll want to join. We were very transparent and I love that we were transparent upfront. Again, that’s something that I feel has changed over the last few years. Let’s just be honest with our people.

Like I think they appreciate that authenticity and the fact that we’re saying this is what we’re here for. We’re not trying to trick you. So again, having that free live event for affiliates to send to for you to put yourself out there and your expertise so they can get a sense of who you are. So important. The fourth distinction I made with this launch is your grassroots still rules.

Now we attracted new audiences, which was super cool. We had some people on the webinar or our live zoom that never heard of O’Leary and I before, but a lot of people who ended up inside the class were connections or connections to connections. We really worked our network because there’s already that trust factor and you could say, Hey, I’m putting something out live, new, fresh, I might never do it again.

And people are interested because if they worked with you before, they know the value you bring or they trust you because maybe they’ve been seeing you online. Don’t underestimate the power of your your network and who do you know and getting the word out and then using people you trust. One thing that I thought we did really well was asking our LinkedIn contacts, really our our friends and mentors to share on our behalf and help us get the word out.

So don’t discount the connections you have and your community around you and then if there’s going to be a fifth lesson, there is a fifth lesson. Launches are a lot. They’re tiring and you need to give yourself space to do it. You can probably hear the cold in my voice right now because I got sick during this launch.

Now, I did cuddle with my 11 year old in the middle of the night because he was sick and that most likely did it right. But it didn’t help that I was giving my all with this launch. So just know you’re going to put yourself out there in a big way. You’re ramping up your business. It’s an intense time.

Make sure you clear some time and space as much as possible to have an effective launch so you don’t get sick, clear your schedule, get the support and family and friends have a massage booked at the end of it, and just know that it’s a period of intensity that will end. But you have to take care of yourself because clearly I didn’t and this is why I sound like this.

But in the end it’s all worth it. But I should have done a better job in terms of recovery or in terms of clearing my space so I could feel really good at the end of it. But in the end it’s all worth it because I get to teach with O’Leary and we’ve got our incredible class. I can’t wait to teach them all we have to know about copywriting and think about these five lessons the next time you’re planning on launching.

I want nothing more for you than to go out there in a bigger way. If you’re not subscribed to this podcast, please make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one episode. And if this podcast has touched you in any way, please leave me a review. Next week we’re going to talk about something that I think is really hot in terms of courses right now, and that’s certification courses.

It’s something that I’ve been really excited about over the last few months. So we’ll talk more about that next week. And if certification courses are the right move for you until next week, go create be you and be brilliant and get it done.