5 Elements for a Successful Launch

Please note this transcript is machine generated so it is not perfect and should be used for reference only, you will get the best from the podcast by listening to it in it's designed format

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If you looking to make your next launch a complete success, then make sure you listen to this episode. Hello and welcome to another episode of the expert unrivalled podcast. My name's Jen Hall and your business positioning coach and market leadership expert. And in this episode, we are talking all about how to launch successfully and more so the five biggest reasons it will actually fail and how you can avoid them. So I'm excited, as usual, to dive into the content of today's episode.

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Just before I dive into these five things that I want to talk about, I just want to really kind of banish a myth that goes on around why launches are so successful. Now, there are a few reasons behind this, and I kind of want to just get those out in the open, first and foremost, because your launch success really depends on these things. And these are really kind of separate to the five things I'm going to talk about.

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And the first one is a successful launch is really only going to be successful if you have an audience to sell to, if you haven't been building an audience or you're just kind of relying on a generic following that has been following you for some time. You know, it's not to say you're not going to get any sales. It's just not going to be particularly successful of the charts. Successful because you need people to buy. And if you're not able to nurture an audience along the same lines as what you're trying to sell and that you have a decent number by a decent number, it doesn't have to be hundreds.

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I mean, I'm talking you could have, say, between 10 to 30 amazingly perfect ideal clients. That's still an audience. But if you're just hoping just to kind of like launch something and hope that it works, then like I said, you know, I'm not saying that you're not going to get any sales. I'm just saying that you're going to find it harder. And there is the potential that you may not get any sales that way as well.

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So you do have to bear that in mind. That is key. You know, these massive launches that you see people have in terms of, you know, the amount of people that end up buying, buying that it really does depend on the amount of people that you have coming through your funnel. If you don't have a large amount of people coming through your funnel that you also might want to think about. Is my price point going to serve me in a financial way?

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Do I need to think about a higher ticket item? Because you don't need as many people, so you have to kind of look at where you are on your business journey and look at your audience and decide, do I need to think about selling either a higher ticket item or do I actually to think about more? So I'm attaching an audience building section time period before I physically go ahead and launch my product. And by launch, I'm talking about saying, hey, here's here's my here's my program.

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Here's my product. You know, it's ready to go before you make that announcement. You might want to attach some kind of audience building to that. Now, the second thing that I want to talk about, which is separate to the five things I'm going to be talking about in a moment, is that a lot of people think that, you know, successful launches is about this kind of like step by step, you know, ten contemplatives process.

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And just by following those steps, you're going to have a great result. Not true, certainly from my own experience and the experience I've had with many, many clients and the many businesses I've owned, it really comes down to building credibility, really positioning yourself as the one to buy from having that social proof. And obviously, if you're just starting out, you might not have that, but you've got to start somewhere. I'm not saying you can't sell anything without social proof.

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It's just going to be, you know, lower your expectations in terms of the massive launches. If you're just starting out, let's not try to run before we can walk. Let's focus on a smaller audience, you know, throwing out a beta program. Let's give them a special price, special deals and bonuses and be honest about the fact that it's new and you've got to be confident whether it's new or not. You've got to be confident in your ability to deliver.

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You could be your own best case study. So there's still proof. You still need to have proof that you've got someone through that. Otherwise you do need to be starting. Even the US is kind of like a whole other episode to talk about. But you need to think about, OK, if I'm that brand, the. Haven't ever proven that I can take someone through that process and I haven't ever had any clients that you might want to actually start by thinking, OK, maybe I'll take someone through in exchange for a testimonial versus money and start right back from the beginning.

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Either way, you know, just bring it back forward now to the more experienced business owner. We want to be demonstrating social proof. You want to be demonstrating that credibility and and having that positioning that positions you. Is that number one choice. Why would they want to choose anything else? You need to be prepared before you even think about launching with all of those things. What makes you and your business and your products unique out of everything else that they could choose that's out there?

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What's going to make them go? Wow. Well, out of all of the saturated market, out of all the people that I've seen doing a similar thing to you, I need to buy from you. What is that thing? You know, we need to have it productize again. If you're listening to the podcast the first time and you haven't heard me use the term productize UNB sorry, productize USPI or the UNB, which is the unique magic bullet, then do go back to the very beginning of the podcast.

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After the introduction, you'll be the first episode around how to create a market leading USPI. But you need to think about what is unique about you is not just unique, but what isn't unique benefits and how can we productize that? So it's easy for people to see that you are that perfect option. We need to have those things in place before we start just chucking things out willy nilly because people need to feel like they are going to be in the best hands and that they fully trust you to spend their money with you.

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You need to build that and you need to build it first before you get to the point of saying, here's my product. You know, you need to have done the beauty of a real great marketing is actually having that and convincing period removed entirely. And actually, you've done all of the hard work prior to actually saying here's the product and they're already gagging to buy from you before you, before you've even kind of like let the cat out the bag.

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They're like, great. This is all sounding fantastic. Now, how can I buy from you? Because I can see that your expert eye can see that you're the right person or the right business to buy it from. And I can see that, you know, what you're showing us is going to be brilliant. Tell me, tell me. Tell me, tell me. That's how you want people to get you want to have them buzzed up, ready to buy before you actually sort of open the car and say, here it is.

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OK, so that's really, really important. It's not to say it's going to be perfect if this is your first time launching, it's never going to be perfect. And I don't expect it to be. You know, I've had I've had failed launches from the offset and I've also had failed failed launches as an experienced business owner as well. Sometimes things don't work out as planned. So for anybody listening, know, trying to get it right, first time, as we said in the last episode with Lisa Orton, that great episode on procrastination and self sabotage.

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Stop trying to get things right. First time fail forward. You're never going to progress unless you actually take some action and at least try, you know, have have your basic structure, obviously plan it out and obviously take these things. I'm about to tell you into consideration. But don't be trying to run before you can walk. You've got to take things in steps as well. But we've got to help people understand, you know, we are the most confident, best choice for them.

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And so to do that, we have to do a bit of preparation beforehand to make sure that we're clear and all of those things so that we can do a great job of articulating that to your audience. Now, for those of you listening going, oh, God, how do I do that? How do I create that positioning? Your best bet is to download my seven figure market leader roadmap, which will show you the foundations that you need to build right now in order to have a successful launch right now.

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But also moving beyond that to six figure multi, six figure and seven figure and beyond. You need this foundation. So go to the show notes and download that right now because that's going to give you that basic foundation. So moving on from that, the five things are going to be really key. And the five reasons as to why your actual launch will fail if you don't do them. The first one is relevance. Relevance is absolutely key. So before I spoke about making sure that you actually have an audience of your clients.

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So that's really key, is that you actually have an ideal client that you want to, you know, to target. And the actually the thing that you're looking to sell to them is attracting the right person, because if you're content and Hook has no relevance to your actual offer or product, you're going to be attracting the wrong audience who don't have a problem or outcome that your offer solves and they won't see the need to buy. So when you are looking at, you know, the launch event that you're looking to, to launch off, often a lot of people try to launch just randomly, like, oh, I'm just going to just let my product loose.

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You need to build some form of tension and you need to build some form of buzz and education marketing before you actually go about saying, here's my product. And so when I see people trying to attempt to just chuck their product out there, it is. You know, again, this is kind of separate from the five things, but it will flop because you're not you're not building that journey for people. So think about things that you can do to really bring people together and engage them.

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So examples of those types of things could be a webinar style session. It could be a Facebook group challenge. You could run some kind of master class or you could even run some kind of special edition podcast episode that then people have to come in or you have to to come in and and engage with that content. You could create some kind of Facebook pop up group, but anywhere where you can really get people engaged into watching something and being engaged with a piece of content to educate them on what you're about to launch, that's really, really key.

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So that piece of content that you're going to use is the trigger for that launch. You need to make sure that it's congruent with what you're about to sell. So many people I see kind of come out with this weird hook around, OK, well, I'm going to bring people in on, you know, how to create great social media, for instance. Very broad, very generalized. But as an example of this would work and then perhaps at the end that they're trying to sell awesome.

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Supersize your sales like it doesn't it doesn't have a direct correlation. Yes, absolutely. You could have some link to that. There's an absolute link, you know, to having great content and being able to sell your stuff. But we need to see more of a congruency between those two. If they signed up to and how to create great content and they're actually being sold sales skills, it doesn't make sense to them as a buyer. So you got to make sure that it's relevant to them.

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Otherwise, that will absolutely flop for you. The second thing that you need to be aware of is desirability. Now, this kind of links back into what I was saying before around, you know, really understanding what your productize USP is, because if you don't have clarity, clarity on what makes you and you offer a unique, desirable, wanted must have, then you're going to have a hard time articulating to people that they should be buying your offer.

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So knowing why people would want it and what the consequences of not buying from you is going to be essential for your follow up content. So after you've launched, it's not like, here's the stuff, off you go. It's going to be great. You know, fingers crossed. You're going to get so many people buying from you as soon as you do launch. But, you know, the majority of people need deadlines. They need to know that.

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They know that they've got to take action and they need a little bit more information in front of them in order in order to make that final decision, particularly if it's a higher end offer as well. They're going to be, you know, parting with a decent amount of money. They're going to need to make sure that they're making the right decisions. And that happens when they have all their cards on the table when they go, okay, this is exactly what I'm buying.

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So understanding why people want to buy it is key so that you can make sure that your follow up after you've launched is going to be perfect, just as perfect, as perfect as the word perfect shouldn't if it were perfect. Let's erase that section of the podcast so it can be the best it can possibly be in showing them that they need to buy your product. So what are the consequences of them actually not buying it? What's going to happen to them in a year's time if they don't really understanding the impact of your product, both from a from a positive point of view.

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So if they do take action, what's going to happen and then in a negative way as well. So what's going to happen to them if they don't take action? Not necessarily even just to buy your product, but if they just stay as they are, if they don't invest in the future in the future version of themselves? How is that going to play out? How is that going to impact their lives on a on a wide scale? You've got to understand what your product gives them on on a much wider scale than just here's a product that does X.

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We need to think about the life changing experience that's going to be happening for them. So understanding that desirability is key. If you don't, you know, the sales are all in the follow up. They really, really are. And so if you don't have that information and even not even just in the follow up, when you're actually launching it and articulating that product for the first time and I talk about products goes by the way, I'm talking about products and services.

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When you're talking about that, you need to be able to articulate it well. So if you if you don't have that information, if you don't know it yourself, then you know you're not going to have the best experience. By the way, I was talking about this with one of my clients through the day who she said, I really need to write the sales page. And I said, no, you don't. And then there's a lot of people that say, you know, you don't need a sales page.

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No, you don't need a sales page. But you know what? It's a great exercise to do. If you want to get clear about what you're offering, when you understand how to put sales page together and things like that, you can go through it section by section and go, OK, so you know what I mean. What would I be writing here? It gets you so much clearer when you're able to articulate it in writing. You're going to be much more confident to do that when you're just talking about it.

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The third thing that you need to be aware of is a lack of ideal client clarity. If you don't know what genuine, painful problem that you are solving for your ideal client and what it is that they truly desire to achieve and who they are in in context in terms of who are you a specialist in helping, if you don't have that clarity, then it's very likely that this whole launch will be a complete flop, because you need to understand that information is the most basic but critical information that you could ever have.

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So if you're lacking clarity on who it is you're serving, what problem they have, what outcome they want at a very specific level, again, they're not going to understand, A, the importance of buying your product, and B, that you are a specialist in helping people like them. Your credibility begins at your specialism. You know, the minute that people see that you're an expert in helping people like them is the moment that they start to build trust with you.

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And if you don't have that, people are going to be questioning, will it work for me? Have you worked with someone like me? They need to know that you've worked with people like them and or that your your process, your services absolutely were designed around people like them. As soon as they hear that, they know that that service is going to fit them like a glove. And again, if you're if you are lacking things like social, social proof and things like that, you know, if it is a beta program product, then actually this is one of the best ways that you can start to build credibility, because it's to say, you know what, I've designed it for somebody, not you.

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I've I've done the market research. I've seen from through experience that you guys are suffering with X, Y and Z or that you desperately want to achieve these things, but you need to take into account, you know, these individualized problems that you're suffering from. And that's what it's been designed around, is the moment they start to realize that, wow, actually this is perfect for me. That's what you want them to feel. But if you don't have that clarity and you're not honest enough, then it's going to be a big, big problem.

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So that's something that you need to solve right away, literally stop. Any plans of a launch right now like anything that you're doing, just stop gap the clarity, then you can start thinking about launching. There is no point thinking about launching until you've got that number for misalignment. OK, now misalignment is a controversial one because, you know, being trying to be aligned to something is is almost like this divine moment where you start to just feel like I absolutely feel so confident, so amazing, so really kind of passionate and on fire about what I'm delivering.

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And I feel really clear about who I'm delivering it to. There's so many different cogs to actually becoming aligned with what you're doing, the fact that it's part of your mission, part of your purpose, all of those sorts of things.

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So I'm not going to say that unless you're 100 percent aligned, it's going to flop. That's not true. You know, we're human beings and I know I've actually written this in the past, and I'm going to go and find the information and I'm going to rewrite it because through experience, people can absolutely sell when they're not 100 percent in every area of line. It's not true that it completely sabotages, but at the same time, if if there were areas where you were seriously on the lower end of the scale of feeling aligned, perhaps that's in terms of I just don't feel credible.

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It might be in the fat terms. I don't I don't feel clear on who I'm selling this to. I'm not confident in the results. I'm not very passionate about what I'm doing. I'm not really looking forward to delivering it, if you will, sort of scoring zero zero to sort of four on that scale of of sort of one to 10 or even zero to five really on that end of the scale, then it's unlikely that you're going to be able to sell effectively, and that's because you're going to be holding yourself back and not going to be showing up with the right energy.

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I'm not particularly wew I do definitely are on or more on the side of practicality, as you know. But I'm also a firm believer and I've seen it with my own eyes, both from my own experiences and seeing it for clients and just even just like just observing other people who are businesses and things like that. Really, if if you are holding if you're deliberately holding yourself back and you're worried about something or something's really playing in your mind to the point of it, you know, it's not just like a minor.

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Not sure having I'm having a little wobble. If you're having a genuine big wobble about it, then you're going to hold yourself back from selling. You're going to show your energy when you show up to market. And it's it's not going to be a great experience for you or then. Now, some times this is a case of going, OK, so what can we do to deal with this wobble? If it's if it's the point of having some kind of imposter syndrome, we've got to address it.

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You know, you've got to go back and look at, OK, is this and this is genuine impostor syndrome. Okay, let's dig up the evidence as to why you're not an impostor and let's try and overcome some of that. It might not be completely cured, but it's going to at least take you from feeling like a four to at least like maybe between a six to an eight, which is going to give you a much better success rate.

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So at least address some of these issues. If it's a fact that actually, you know what? I just don't feel credible because I haven't taken people through it. One of one of the greatest business mindset minds I've ever come across is for someone called Heather Gray, who's absolutely amazing. And she always says, you know, if you're worried about something that's actually genuine, say like, well, we haven't taken anyone through this program. I am quite worried.

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Well, let's not lie and say that you have let's call it out. It's new. It's a brand new program. I've never taken anyone through it before, but I have taken myself to it. And I've know I've got results. And it this amazing rock bottom price, I'm very confident I'm going to get the results. Maybe you can offer some kind of guarantee in that whatever it is. But the point is, is to call out what you're worried about.

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When you can call it out, you're going to feel so much better because otherwise you're just going to feel like you're lying to people. And that's never going to come across as a very good energy. So make sure that you're in alignment with things you're putting out there. Don't necessarily need to be 100 percent, but you certainly need to be on the higher end of the spectrum of feeling like, yes, this is the thing. You know, you don't normally get that feeling of I feel 100 percent aligned until you've done it a few times, you know, until you've been serving people in that arena for a while, until you've run this launch a few times and you're just like, do you know what?

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I love delivering this program? It's absolutely amazing. I've seen the results. People go and and you just you fine tuned it to the point of the product is great. You fine tuned your launch process and that's great. You know, you're never going to be 100 percent, but at least try to make sure that you tackle anything that you think that you might end up self sabotaging on. And last but not least, is the awful feeling of feeling like a nuisance.

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If you start to feel like a nuisance, you're going to be holding yourself back from putting yourself out there. You're going to struggle to get sign ups for this trigger event that you're doing. You'll get a hold back on relationship building and you're going to hold back up on particularly on the follow up I see so many times that, well, I promoted it or I've put it out there or how many times? Like twice last week. That's not good enough.

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You know, behave behave like a Facebook ad.

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If you were putting money into Facebook, which you might be, does a Facebook heart care, it pops up every opportunity you possibly can to make sure that people see what they're trying to sell, to make sure that they're getting each other's in the right person's face, behave like a Facebook account. Because if you don't, you know, you're missing opportunities. If you're not posting and emailing, someone else is going to be you know, you have a right to be here and you've got a right to be heard just like everybody else.

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So put yourself out there unapologetically. Stop holding yourself back and feeling like a nuisance, you know? You were right to be on this earth, you are doing something amazing, you have a purpose, you have a passion, and you've got something that's going to be useful to the people that you're serving, you know, is a bit like saying, well, I didn't want to warn you about the car hurtling towards you because, you know, I don't want to be a nuisance, though.

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It's absolutely in the by the way, I just have to give credit to my sales coach. Just the Krimmer for that one that lit that little line, changed my view on sales. Rather, I was like, oh my gosh, yes, we are helping people. We are stopping people from getting hit by cars. We're saving people from going down the wrong path. If you were genuine and you have something that's going to help somebody, what on earth wouldn't you want to show it to them and say, hey, by the way, have you seen this thing?

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Like, if you were your own friend and you knew that you had this product as a friend of you, you'd be like Korshunova, my friend here, she's got this thing would be perfect for you, you know, start to reframe what you're doing and stop feeling like a nuisance because you totally deserve to be here. You deserve to be heard. And if your friends and family get annoyed with senior staff, won't let them get on with it.

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Mind, mind, do adequate frank conversation last year around. Just don't follow me like I like. Who am I here for? I make money out of social media. I'm not going to lie about it. And you know, I can absolutely have my family and friends and my business on those apps, you know, problem. All these people that say that you can't do that is rubbish. You absolutely can. But, you know, just think about it.

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You can segment people. I'm lazy. I'm just like, look, if you don't want to see my stuff just on funny to unfriend me, which is unfair. My my post, if you don't want to if you don't want to see my business stuff, you know, so don't feel like a nuisance, you've got to get out there. By the way, overseas posting on your Facebook personal page isn't necessarily the best long term strategy, but it's also nothing wrong with it either.

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You know, in terms of Facebook, you just need to make sure that you the majority of what you post on Facebook, on your personal profile is personal things. But the odd post around what you're doing at a particular time, well, for instance, a lot time period where you're actually looking to get sign ups and, you know, you've got all your clients and your friend in your network, then there's absolutely why wouldn't you, you know, stop, you know, stop worrying about other people and stop worrying about knowing your ideal client, because you won't.

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If your ideal client was ideal, they would want your thing. Right. So if they're going to get annoyed at the fact that you're trying to help them and they're not ideal and they can just go away. So think of it like that. It's not possible to annoy your ideal client, your ideal client wants to buy from you. OK, so stop worrying about it. Stop holding yourself back and get yourself out there. So I'm really hoping that this episode I don't want to create these five things to worry you or to put you in a state of, oh, my gosh, you know, like my launch could fail.

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There is a very real possibility that it could you know, it happens to everybody. Anyone who tells you I've never had a failed launch is is lying to you. You know, it's it's bound to happen at some point. This episode is designed to help you really ensure that you you cover all the bases where you possibly can. You plug all the holes. And even then when you do that, there's still a chance that it might not work.

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But there is also every chance that it will. And we want to give it the best opportunity it possibly can to thrive as much as possible by by making sure that those the holes are plugged in and that we've built those foundations in place. And like I said at the very beginning, you know, these big launches don't happen just overnight. You know, it might feel like it happens overnight. But actually, there's a lot of background work. There's a lot of time put in and not just for that launch, but over years of positioning, of, you know, proving of social proof and really building that and then putting money into things like Facebook and things like that to generate a lot of leads at one time.

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There is a lot of time that goes and there's a lot of work underneath the water surface that you can't see happening. That absolutely is and has been done. So stop trying to get it right first time. So try to be perfect. Stop trying to go large, like straight out the gate. You know, it's not it's not reasonable to think like that. Let's do the best that we possibly can and build those great strong foundations right now so that you can get your your self the best possible chance to launch.

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You know, when I first started out and again, I don't want to stop preparing things like I had it when I first started out, like a 10K launch, just so proud of myself. I was like, wow, this is great. But it was also because I did the groundwork as well. I didn't just kind of create an offer and chuck it out there. I did the ground, the marketing groundwork first and foremost. And then, you know, I started to build that, build the launch and then, you know, and sold all the things.

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So, you know, it doesn't mean to say you have to make no money, but depending on where you are in your business, you have to kind of be. I hate the word to say. I hate to say it, but slightly realistic with, you know, always be realistic about where you are now and. Have big goals and, you know, you can take leaps pretty fast, but you gotta you got to still take those steps.

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You still got to you know, just because you want to be at the top of the ladder doesn't mean that you can skip the rungs. You've still got to go through that, but you can go through them very quickly. You know, if you're too clever about it and you're diligent and you do the work, you can absolutely speed up those rungs, but you can't skip it. So make sure that you take that into account. When you're when you're thinking about your launch and you're getting a mindset around, it can be a very emotional time.

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It can be a roller coaster of emotions. But, you know, give yourself the best chance and think about these different things and make sure that you've got as much of that in place as you possibly can and then, you know, go for it. It is what it is, what happens, what happens. And if it doesn't work out the way you want it, all we do is look at it, review it and try again and make sure that we tweak things that we need to tweak.

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Make sure that you download that that seven figure market leader strategy, that roadmap, make sure that you download that so that you can get some of those basic foundations. Well, not even just basic foundations, just the foundations in place in order to make sure that, you know, you're going to be continually building a business that's going to be sustainable for the long haul. You're not going to be a big quick flash in the pan success. You're actually going to build a business that's going to be weathering any storms, any economical storms, any pandemic's things like that.

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Make sure you down. Not doubt that. My gosh. Download that right up in the show notes, because that's going to show you exactly how to do it. Anyway, I'm going to put my teeth back in and I'm going to get on this. I'm recording this on usually in the evening, so I don't know whether you can tell evening Jen is different to morning, Jen. I certainly can, but yeah, I'm just I feel like I'm stuttering.

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But anyway, I'm going to go and have a restful evening. I hope you guys have a fantastic week and I'll see you again in the next episode.