Episode 46: Preparing For Your Q4 Launch
Strategic Planning, Energy Management, and Avoiding Common Mistakes
Preparing a new product or service for launch is an exciting task that often requires the full attention of its creators. It requires careful planning and preparation to deliver a successful launch.
Willemijn Maas, a certified launch strategist, shares tips to help you prepare, avoid common mistakes, and manage your energy for a successful and profitable launch.
Connect with Willemijn:
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Podcast transcript:
Kiva Slade: [00:00:01]
Hello, and welcome to Collab With Kiva. I'm your host, Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing-themed office chair, I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a legislative director for a member of Congress, policy director for a nonprofit, stay at home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service-based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line or full of zigs and zags, join me and my guest as we share insights, hope, and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat. Let's dive in.
[00:00:55]
Welcome to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I am your host Kiva Slade. And today we are kicking off our series to help you get to where you want to be at the end of Q4. And today, we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics launching. Yes, if there were sound effects, they would be rocket ships flying off at this point, because you've probably heard me say, I think launches are great, I just don't like doing them. So, I think a huge part of that is the planning involved, and so today I am going to speak with a dear colleague of mine, Willemijn Mass, and she is going to talk about launching, not only just launching, but also energy management, because some of you are burning yourselves out and your teams as you launch. So, let's get ready to talk to her. But before we do a little bit more about her so you'll know she has the chops to talk about this topic. She's a certified director of operations, certified also as a launch manager and an online business manager. She is the strategic right-hand of online business owners who want to make an impact while managing their energy and health.
[00:02:10]
Apart from strategic consulting and operational support, she offers launch plan in a day intensives that guide the way to a successful six-figure launch without overwhelm and burnout. Can I get an amen? Willemijn also has experienced health issues in her previous career as a medical doctor, which paved the way for her to start her own business as an operations manager. She believes that energy management and nervous system regulation are crucial tools for business growth. Building a business in a sustainable way and growing your capacity to expand will show the world that you are here to last. When she's not working, you'll find her in her garden where she grows organic vegetables and flowers. She didn't tell me this, but I know it anyway. She also has chickens. So, that's another thing that we have in common. Gardens, chickens. I don't have mine anymore, but still, they're a very favorite part of our family when we did. So, welcome to the show, Willemijn.
Willemijn Maas: [00:03:18]
Thank you so much for having me, Kiva. It's such an honor.
Kiva Slade: [00:03:21]
Yes, I'm so excited. So, let's dive in. Let's probably get the big 800-pound gorilla out of the way. Because sometimes when people are launching, let's be honest, we're creative at times, we have an idea, maybe in a shower and we're thinking, hey, we can make this happen next week. When do you really need to start preparing for a launch?
Willemijn Maas: [00:03:47]
Oh, that is such a great one to start off with. So, obviously, there are so many creative entrepreneurs who have a big vision and they want to help their clients in the best possible way, and they come up with a great offer that they would like to get into the world like yesterday. And that is great, it's helping your clients and it's helping the business change and it's also helping the world change. So, it's actually amazing. However, a launch is an event. It's a big thing. So, I always compare it to a conference or a wedding or something like that where you know instinctively that you can't plan a wedding in two days. That's just impossible. There are so many things that go into that. You have the venue, and you have the dress, and you have the cake, and you have the guests, all of that. And you also have to give people time to plan for their attendance to your wedding.
[00:04:58]
So, if you say, "Okay, I'm going to get married tomorrow," then maybe 90% of the guests can't show up because they just don't have the time or they had something else planned. So, consider your launch to be an event like that. You really need to think through all of the moving parts that go into that specific event. What is it exactly that you're going to going to offer? What is exactly the way that you're going to launch this thing? What is your sales event, as we call it in the [unintelligible 00:05:34] space? What is it that you are going to message them with? What's the positioning of the offer? What is the runway? Do you need new tech? Do you need maybe a new team member? All of those are moving parts and it needs to come together at the exact right moment. Because at your wedding, you don't want the cake to be delivered the next day.
Kiva Slade: [00:06:03]
That would be horrifying.
Willemijn Maas: [00:06:06]
Yes.
Kiva Slade: [00:06:09]
Oh, my goodness. I absolutely love that. And I think that what you just continue to shed light on is that it is an event. It is not just, hey, we're going to do this and it's super easy. There are so many different moving parts that need to be considered. And the reality is, the more extravagant your launch is and or your wedding, you are going to have even more pieces that are involved if you're having affiliates that are also going to promote for you, like Marie Folios, like once a year or B-school [sounds like 00:06:47]. It's like, wow, you're managing probably more than 1000 people who are actually also sharing your message. Well, you have to give them the things that they need as well in order to make that happen.
[00:07:00]
So, I appreciate you comparing it to a wedding because even the best planner cannot do that in two days. And no one definitely wants their cake showing up the day after. That would just really ... Talk about a wedding nightmare. So, thank you for talking about that. I'd love to get your take on what do you feel about things that are free? And the reason I'm asking this is there's someone I listen to and I love what she says in that even if it's a free offer, you need to actually plan for that. Just because it's free doesn't mean that people will just want it. And so, do you think people should put time and effort into creating a launch plan, so to speak, for even something that's a free offer?
Willemijn Maas: [00:07:49]
Oh, that's a great question. So, obviously, when it's free, there's less risk involved. So, you could do that with a less sophisticated plan. Try a couple of things. Maybe it fails, and then it's really not that big of a problem. So, you can do more trial and error with free things. But for a launch where you know you're going to invest a lot of money into, in team or in tech or in asset creation or anything else, Facebook ads, whatever you're going to invest in, you really want that to have a great ROI because otherwise, you're just leaking money. So, for launch, definitely have a great plan in place. For something free, you can freewheel a bit more, but it makes sense to think it through. Like, what is it that I'm actually offering? How do I want to deliver that to my audience? Is it something that they actually want? Maybe I do need to do a survey first. Those kinds of things can be important because it's not only investment in terms of money, it's also investment in terms of your time and your energy. So, if you try a lot of free things and your audience doesn't want it or it doesn't really lead to any lead generation, it's just your energy pouring away into things that are not making a difference and not moving the needle. So, always think about it from that perspective as well. Is this costing me in terms of energy and in terms of time?
Kiva Slade: [00:09:26]
I love that. It's not always the money. So, what have you seen as the three biggest mistakes that lead to failed launches?
Willemijn Maas: [00:09:38]
Okay, now we're going to spill the beans, right?
Kiva Slade: [00:09:41]
Oh, yeah.
Willemijn Maas: [00:09:43]
So, the three biggest mistakes, I would say there are three. There are obviously a lot of things that can go wrong. There are also a lot of things that can completely fire off your results. So, let me just talk through the three biggest ones that I think are mistakes that are made a lot and people are not always aware of. So. The first one would be constantly launching something new. So, what I mean by that is you have an idea, you're going to launch it, but you actually did not validate the offer yet. That is a huge risk. Maybe your audience doesn't want it. Maybe it's not aligned with their current needs, especially when the global situation changes, the needs of your audience can change accordingly. So, it's extremely important to make sure that whenever you launch something new, you test it out, maybe in a small group, or maybe you test it out in your audience in a different way, but make sure your offer is validated when you are launching something new. And also when you launch something new every single time, you will never develop the flow and the mastery of delivering that launch and delivering that product.
[00:11:04]
So, it will take a lot of your energy as well to constantly pivot and change your messaging and change the positioning of the offer, change the launch assets, change the emails. You have to do everything over and over again. So, if you change your product, your program, or your offer every single time, that is one big risk that I would like to flag. So, that's the first one. So, the second one would be a lack of planning. And we already talked about a launch is an event, it's like a big wedding, you need to plan for this. And what I see happen a lot is that entrepreneurs really do not have a grasp of a realistic timeline for a launch. How much time does it take to create everything that goes into your launch? The graphics, the videos, the emails, the sales pages, the tech, everything needs to be lined up. And it just takes a longer runway, especially when you're launching something new.
[00:12:15]
So, I always say if you launch something for the zillionth time, you may need 4 to 6 weeks to prep for your launch when you have everything already created. When you need to create everything from scratch, you need to take a way longer runway for that. So, that is definitely something that I see, that there is a lot of a lack of knowledge about that realistic timeline. It will lead to problems. It will lead to tech breaking or it's not even built. It will lead to last-minute content creation. So, you as the owner who needs to show up for your audience, deliver value during your launch, during your open cart, you need to have conversations with people who are on the fence about your program or your service, and you don't want to be bogged down in the tech. You don't want to be creating the sales emails during that week. You need everything prepped beforehand so that you can show up with all your energy in your best capacity to serve your audience during that week. Having a great plan, having that realistic timeline, and having everything in place before that, makes a difference between a killer launch and an epic fail, for sure.
Kiva Slade: [00:13:45]
I love that, though. And I love what you said about during that time not being bogged down in those details, and building in time to literally test that things actually work and you're not trying to make it all happen the week of or the day of. So, that is awesome. So, what's the third thing?
Willemijn Maas: [00:14:07]
So, the third thing is something that I see a lot and that is pivoting the offer at the last minute. And we get it, it's just you are creating your launch and you're thinking about your offer, you're thinking about positioning, and then you get uncertain. There can be one comment from somebody in your audience, or that could be one coach doing something similar, or there could be one podcast that you're listening to and you get another idea and you're like, "Oh, my goodness, is my offer good enough? Is my product good enough? Is my idea good enough?" And then what happens is you start to doubt yourself and your nervous system will fire you right into fight-flight. And it's either flight and you create something completely new, or it's fight and you're putting your head down in the sand. But if you pivot at the last minute and you think about a completely different thing in the middle of your launch runway, basically what you're doing is you're saying, "I'm going to marry the other guy," in there in the middle of your wedding planning. Just don't do it. You have this guy picked out. You're going to marry this guy. You're not going to change it. You're not going to change your mind. You're going to follow through until the end. And then you will see what happens. The day after we will see, but we're not going to marry the other guy.
Kiva Slade: [00:15:46]
That is the best way I've ever heard that explained. Literally, I have this visual of walking down the aisle and like, "You know what? Can we trade him out for that dude over there? Because I think I want that dude over there." Oh, my goodness. Pivoting it at the left. And it also, I think shows I'm not 100% sure and confident that this thing that I'm trying to get you to buy is actually something that I can deliver or it's like I don't even know if I want to deliver it. Which causes a lot of hesitation, I would think, from a buyer's perspective because I'm like, "Well, do you believe in it? Because it doesn't really sound like you do you know. So, maybe I shouldn't believe in this as well." So, oh, my goodness, that's great. I'm going to marry the other guy. Okay. Let's talk about this a little bit more because you've mentioned it a few times. What is the importance of energy management when you are launching?
Willemijn Maas: [00:16:50]
Yeah. That's a really big deal ... energy management. So, obviously, a launch can be super intense. You're pouring your heart and soul into something and you're just hoping, crossing your fingers. Hopefully, you've done some calculations during the whole prep process. But it's something that is really stressful. It can be super stressful to launch something and not know how things will look on the other side of that. But there are a couple of things to keep in mind. So, first of all, you want to be able to show up for your audience and give them value and serve them in the best possible way. So, you need your energy preserved to be able to do that, to be the space holder, to be that container for their transformation so that they can feel safe and secure with your program. And if they feel safe and secure, and they trust you, they will buy from you. So, if you show up completely frazzled and stressed out and burned out. People won't buy. That's just a reality. So, that's one thing.
[00:17:58]
The second thing is when your cart closes, your launch isn't over because you have to deliver the thing that you just sold. So, if you burn yourself out during the launch runway and you get sick the day after or maybe during your launch or you have something else happening, (and I've seen this a lot like with health issues surfacing right after or during launches) you still have to deliver your program. You have to enroll your new clients. You have to give them great customer service, and customer journey. So, if you can do that because you burnt yourself out, you're doing yourself and your clients a huge disservice. So, I really think that energy management is important for that as well. And the third thing that I want to address is that stress in general can cause a lot of problems in how you handle triggers and how you handle uncertainty.
[00:19:10]
So, if you have a lot of stress, your brain is just not capable of handling things that come up like difficulties or maybe broken links or something that needs to be fixed now. Your brain can only come up with great solutions to problems if it's not completely stressed out and burnt out. Because physiologically, it doesn't function under stress. There's no way that your brain can solve a problem when you're stressed. And that is something that we tend to forget. So, I really advocate for taking breaks during the launch runway, but especially during your launch week. Plan for self-care, plan for breaks. Give yourself the time and space to come back to yourself, to regulate your nervous system so that your brain is actually capable of making decisions and solving problems as they come up. And then it's okay to pivot, then it's okay. If you feel like my audience is asking something else at this point, don't pivot the offer, pivot the messaging, pivot the bonuses. Do those kinds of things. Tune into them. But you can't tune into them, your brain just can't if you're completely overwhelmed.
Kiva Slade: [00:20:48]
Oh, my goodness ... that right there. I love two things in particular that you shared. One is that when the cart closes, that's not when the launch is over. Which is really an important reminder. But just that information that we all know is true. Stress is not called a silent killer for no reason. Literally, our brains do shut down when we feel overwhelmed. We get up, we go outside, we take a walk or we do something else because we actually cannot process at that point, we are actually overwhelmed. And I love what you're saying. It's like, hey, no, definitely build in those brakes. Build in that self-care and make sure it's part of the launch process, and it's not just something that you do like, "Oh, I'll get that massage," or whatever your self-care regimen is afterward. Because if you've burnt yourself out and then you're sick ... And I actually know of a colleague who went to the hospital during a launch. She could not finish the launch because her body just said, nope, we're done and just started shutting down.
[00:21:57]
And that is so key. None of this is worth it if you're not here or you're not physically able to actually do the things that you have set in your life, in your business. So, energy, and managing our energy is so critical for this process. And I think just life in general. We all need to do a better job of managing our energy. I know I need to do a better job of it. So, maybe the rest of you listening are experts and don't need to, but I'll talk to myself then for right now. I need to do a better job of it and really just prioritize the self-care that's needed and realize that there are a lot of ideas in the world, but we cannot execute and implement all the things. Our bodies and our brains need time to recover, and like you said, come back to ourselves. So, well, thank you so much for that. That was just a word for me. For everybody else, if it helps you, it helps you, but it definitely helps me. So, you have something exciting that you are offering to the listeners and you have going on right now. So, can you tell us a bit more about that?
Willemijn Maas: [00:23:12]
Yeah. I have created a free email series that people can subscribe to. It will talk about the things that we talked about today and also some additional things on how to prep your launch in a way that is actually sustainable, that will get your results, the things that you need to take into account. And yeah, people can sign up for that. So, I think the link will be in the show notes.
Kiva Slade: [00:23:36]
Yes, it will be. That is so exciting. An email series so you guys can get all of these just really juicy tips right there in your inbox to guide you through whatever you might be planning for Q4. And hey, maybe you're taking it easy for Q4. Use the tips for Q1, for whatever you have coming up for you and your business. It's just so important that we obviously plan well, but not only plan our launches, but plan our energy and what that's going to look like as well for ourselves and our teams. So, we want to make sure that we're taking care of those who help us do the things that we do as well. So, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here and sharing just all of these insights. I have one question for you. When you look back at your younger self, is there something that you would tell yourself at 20 that you wish you would have known then that you do know now?
Willemijn Maas: [00:24:40]
Oh, that's a great one. In my case, I would say don't become a medical doctor because you're not good at it.
Kiva Slade: [00:24:49]
Oh, my goodness. Okay, so you were just like, hey, I'm going to tell you now, in the future, you're going to think about this ... just say no. Oh, okay. I love that. That is awesome. So, thank you, thank you, thank you so much again for being here. Everyone, the show notes will include all of the ways in which you can connect with Willemijn. You can find her on Instagram, you can also find her on LinkedIn and she has a Facebook group. So, we will have those links in the show notes. Make sure you go check them out and sign up for that email series so you can have these amazing lunch tips in your inbox and that you can utilize them. So, thank you again for joining in. We will see you next week when we are continuing our Q4 series, giving you all the tools that you need to finish the year strong. Talk Soon. Bye.
[00:25:40]
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab With Kiva. Each of us has a different path. And I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. You are a small business owner ready to start making data-driven decisions in your business, and you know that without the data, you're really just guessing, make sure to visit my website, the516collaborative.com, and let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.
Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.