#225: Launch Roadblocks: How to Keep Your Promotion on Track

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to help you take action to build up momentum with whatever you’re putting together, your online course, your group coaching your workshop, and put yourself out there in a bigger way. I am here for it. And today we’re going to talk about what might stop you or delay you when it comes to a course launch.

Now, this really gets me because the last thing I want for you is to feel delayed because I know how much time, energy, effort goes into online launch. It’s a lot. You are really putting yourself out there. And if we could avoid what these roadblocks are, then you’ll be better off. And I want you to take the experiences that I’ve had with different clients and students and make sure that you are having an efficient launch, that you were having a launch that really works for you.

So we’re going to break down four different roadblocks that I often see and how you can avoid them, how you can solve for them as part of this episode. Now, before we get any further, this episode is brought to you by our done for you, of course, creation and marketing. If you want high touch custom course creation, somebody walking you through the steps, someone honestly really taking the burden off your hands.

Of course, creation and marketing apply for our done for you services. We only take a few experts or small businesses or small business owners. A quarter go to a course creation boutique dot com slash course to book a call with me. And yes, it’s with me. Yes, you work with me. Okay. Let’s dive into some of the roadblocks that I see when it comes to launching.

And this is so relevant right now because I just had a done for you client who had to delay his launch by a month, a month and a half because of a snafu that we didn’t anticipate. Now, he had his sales page ready, his emails ready, messaging, marketing plan, everything. So the great thing is now we’re ready to launch and we’re ready to go.

So even though we hit this small snafu, which we didn’t anticipate, we are ready to go because we had everything else in place. So that’s exactly that for you, because some things sometimes with your launches, you’re not going to anticipate stuff like you have to leave room for the unexpected and the spontaneous. But as much as possible, let’s be ready for when that clears up like we are with this done for you client And I’m so excited to launch his course.

So let’s talk about few of the roadblocks that I see that come up in one is decision fatigue or inability to make a decision because sometimes you get stuck like, Oh man, this is a big decision when it comes to my course or I’m putting out an event or whatever it looks like. And some people get stuck with this, right?

Decision overload, delays, tasks, creates hidden launch drag. Now, what I love to do to solve for this is every time I do a marketing launch, I’ll work on a creative brief. We’ve talked about that in this podcast before. This creative brief has a lot of detail and strategy when it comes to the launch. How are we doing it?

What’s our outcome? You know, how how many elements or channels are we going to go out there with? Also baked into this creative brief our guiding principles that will help us guide how we are going to move through the launch? So if there are big decisions that need to come out, we’ve already decided them because we have these guiding principles, which is kind of like our star.

So if you think of a star in the different points, maybe there’s five points, right? That we have decided on that we are not going to compromise on. So I have a client and we do this all the time with her, like, Hey, here’s our marketing brief. And if a big decision comes up, I’ll point to this document and say, Hey, remember this creative brief we made two months ago?

We said we weren’t going to compromise on VIP, whatever the whatever the question is and the decision it used to be made, she’ll say, oh, yeah, right. You’re right. We did decide on that. We’re actually just talking about this the other day because I will launch with this client in the fall. And and we had to go back and look at we had we had decided two months ago and said, Oh, right.

We decided we weren’t going to sell to this group because of x, Y and Z. So I love these guiding principles because you forget sometimes, right? There’s so much that goes into a launch. There’s so many decisions that need to be made. And we had to go back to this document and say, No, we did decide this. We did make this critical decision already, and and we’re going to move forward because we didn’t have to stop.

So what’s great about it is we didn’t have to stop right before the launch started and say, oh, what are we going to do about this? It’s like, no, no, no. We decided this already. We’re going to stick to it. So sometimes it’s difficult, by the way, because you might waver. Like I have other clients, like I’ve got one client who every time she wants to approve something, she wants to ask seven people before.

And I get it. You want to get feedback that that’s delayed, right? You’ll will delay your launch if you do something like that. So Northstar document to help you with decision fatigue and to help you move forward. Okay. Here’s the second roadblock that I see all the time. And it’s perfectionism, right? And it’s the endless like, I’m going to tweak this loop disguised as an improvement.

And guys, I love improvements as much as the next person, but I’m also, in case you couldn’t tell a let’s get it done gal like, Hey, the clock is ticking. We’ve put money into this. What needs sit, what needs to go in order for this to happen? And I had one client who wanted to do a series of VIP days with me, so we did a VIP day on the launch.

Okay. She wanted another one. Two months later, VIP day on the launch, then another one. And finally I had to say to her, You will never launch. We will just have a series of VIP days. And like, Listen, I love having VIP days, I love having coffee and going to fund lunches and things like that. But you will never launch because you’re such a perfectionist, because you’re out of around three or four with your scripts.

There is no reason for that. You guys know I want minimum viable product, okay? You get the content out and your talking point you’re using chat CBT to help you and and you’re rolling and there’s always time to get it done later. We were just I’m doing a live course right now with the client and we happen to have a series of calls planned.

And I said, let’s record the course while we’re doing these calls. We have new people coming in. Let’s get these zooms done and they can go in the course. We can always redo it later, leave perfectionism out of it. And she’s a perfectionist. This person who was presenting and she did really great to say, Hey, you know what?

It’s good enough for now. And I know that’s so hard, especially when you are an overachiever. And if you’re listening now and you’re an expert, you likely are an overachiever. I just want you to get out to market. Okay. I talked to so many people who said, man, if I just got out to market sooner, I really, really more than anything, I want that for you.

Perfection and perfectionism will hold you back. So we’re not going to be perfectionists. We’re not. Oh, last story on this, by the way. I had another client who built a beautiful course. We built a beautiful course for her, and this was probably 68 months ago. Still isn’t launched because she’s been looking at the bonuses and really saying like, are the bonuses perfect?

And it’s like, no, they’re not perfect. They’re not perfect. They’re never going to be perfect, but you’re just going to launch and it’s going to be okay. So just trust me in that. Just trust I give you permission not to be perfect. I give you permission for your course not to be perfect and your bonuses. I just want you to go for it.

Okay. Here’s our third roadblock that happens, and that’s messaging fog or hazy messaging that doesn’t make sense or that isn’t attracting the right person. And guys, the worst thing is when you’re about to launch and you look at something and say, oh my gosh, this isn’t quite right. So. So I was about to launch a different version of a low ticket.

This is a different funnel that we’re doing for a client. And I thought to myself, you know, I should check these emails again. And I checked the emails and I thought, this is not right. The messaging is off. We are not talking achiever enough. And I had to flag these emails at the last minute. Now that’s on me, right?

We’re about to launch. We’re a few days out of launch and now we’ve got to take another look at these emails and do a rewrite because the messaging is not clear. It does not speak to this audience. So making sure that your messaging and pillars are locked in beforehand. Again, having going back to that creative brief part of that creative brief can be the pillars of messaging and how you’re talking to your audience.

We don’t want to be fuzzy. We don’t want to be hazy. We want to speak to them specifically, use their words, what they are looking to achieve, what are their dreams? How do they define their dreams? Okay, so that’s a third one. No, no fuzzy messaging and the fourth roadblock to your launch success is emotional burnout. Maybe you’re feeling fatigued from so much preparation or pass launched disappointments, and I just want you to feel that way.

And by the way, I am not the expert on burnout. I will link to a podcast I did with Brittney from and we feel she’s the expert on burnout. But gosh, speaking from experience, right. It’s it’s hard when you have a disappointment to bounce back. I do try to say to myself, okay, these are the great things that came from it, and I try to learn from everything.

Last week I had a I had a disappointment with a client and I said, okay, what have I learned from this? Because it was the second one and what do we need to do in the future? And then I felt better. I don’t know if you guys do this exercise right where it’s like, okay, what are we going to learn?

 

What are we going to take away? I was a Jalen hurts Eagles quarterback. You you win or you learn right so disappointments we win are we learn and from that I think burnout is less likely because if I treat it as a learning tool versus something that’s about me, right? So let’s not make it about us. Let’s make it about the experience base.

And every time I do a launch, it’s an experience. Every time a client does a launch, it’s a great experience. So we just want to avoid that by setting us up to win and not making personal and having those systems and teams in place I think are really important guys. Every time I do a launch now, I think, okay, how do I need to up my systems and who else, even part time or just a couple of hours do I need to bring on the team in order to do this effectively?

So I think thinking in terms of who can support you is super important in terms of not burning out with launches and going into it and saying this is a launch, this too will pass. Like it’s going to be kind of a stressful time. I need to support myself a little extra. I need to tell my family and friends so they can support me in a great way I think is truly, truly important when we are launching as entrepreneurs and experts.

All right. So if we are going to do a little bit of a momentum audit, which of these four roadblocks could you face or are you facing right now if you’re preparing for a launch, if you think about it like decision fatigue, are you feeling a little bit of perfectionism? Are you dealing with some hazy messaging or are you on the brink of burnout?

What’s one system or support that you can implement this week? How can you accept good enough and move forward and take action? And also, what’s one thing today that could reignite your excitement? Because a lot of times when we’re near burnout, it’s because we lose the excitement and we forgot why we’re doing this in the first place. So sometimes I just call my best friend and she reminds me, So whatever it is for you, let’s reignite that and let’s, let’s make you feel motivated and ready to go again so you can build up the momentum.

All right. Hopefully this was helpful for you. If this podcast has an impact on you in any way, we’d love for you to leave me a review. Next week, we’re going to talk about how to stand out in a sea of sameness, because I’ve been talking to a lot of people who are saying, Gina, how do I stand out?

I feel like I’m not unique in what I do in my industry. So we’re going to talk about that a little bit in the questions that I like to ask for you to stand out and to be unique in whatever you do in terms of your online marketing. Until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.