Launches that Convert Part 3: How to Execute a Launch Plan with Less Stress

Sep 21

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In part three of this series, Katrina talks about how to set up the execution of everything within your launch plan to avoid burnout and overwhelm. Get the scoop on how she used her timelines to batch content, host a successful launch event, and show up on Instagram feeling inspired instead of forced.

The episode:

Katrina Widener: Okay kids! Hello, hello and welcome back to the Badass Business Squad podcast. I'm excited to talk about the next stage of the behind the scenes of my launch process. If you have not listened to the other two parts of this four part series on the behind the scenes of my last launch, I highly recommend giving them a listen. They're really great at not only setting the stage for what we're going to be talking about today, but really just giving you the full picture of what it looks like and what it feels like to do a full out launch. As I mentioned in both of those podcast episodes, really my goal for doing this was well, one, you all voted and said that you would be really interested in learning about this. But also to just really normalize and break down exactly what I did in my launch and why I did it and how it all ended up working out. No gatekeeping, just really want to be super transparent and help you guys do it as best as possible for you.

That being said, today we are going to be talking about the third part of my behind the scenes of my mastermind launch. So just to again, give a little bit of introduction. This was my launch before how my launching culture is going to look in the future. So it was a little bit different than how I'm going to be doing it, but I've gone into depth on that in the last two episodes of why that is different, how it is different, how things will be changing. And I'll really be going in depth on that on the next one as well of what's going to look different moving forward. So in the first episode I really gave some insights on how to get started, things to think about, what you're going to need to plan out in terms of timeline and your buying culture and all of that.

The second episode, what I really went into was exactly what content I needed to create, why I chose the platforms I chose, how I chose it, how I actually sat down and created the list. What the four / five different stages of your launch are. And now in this third part, we are going to be going in depth on how to actually execute the launch plan that you've created.

So what I mean by this is really sitting down and figuring out how to build out everything in this plan without it feeling super overwhelming. Without spending those late nights up doing the work as you're going, et cetera, et cetera. Because for me, you know that one of the things I'm very, very passionate about when it comes to business coaching, when it comes to helping people, is actually breaking down how we can build a business that doesn't feel so overwhelming or intimidating. How we can build in ease, and how it can feel that way right here, and right now, and not in some magical made up date in the future. Because I know that that's very common for a lot of entrepreneurs, where it's this idea of "When I make X amount of money, or I've been in business this long, or I have achieved these things then I can build ease in, or then I can hire things out to make it feel easier."

Where in reality, it's being proactive and sitting down and looking at what you're doing and figuring out how you can make the day to day feel the way that you want it to feel right here and right now. Because that's actually the only way it will ever happen. If you're waiting to like make X amount of dollars in order for your business to feel easier, it's just never going to happen. Cuz our goal posts are constantly moving and evolving and that's just not the way that's going to work.

So when I say that we're going to talk about how to execute your launch plan so that it feels easier and it feels less stressful, where we really start on that is by building out the timeline of our launch even further out than these four stages. So if you remember from the first and the second episodes, I talked about the four different stages. The soft pre-launch, the hard pre-launch, the launch event week, and then the launch week/doors open week. And then I even like added in this after week, which listen to the second episode in this series and you'll understand what I mean there.

But what we really want to do in terms of the timeline is actually really be started looking at your launch a minimum of three months before you want it to end, if not even more. The reason why I talk about this is that your launch is a lot of work. Like let's just call it what it is, building out a launch, it includes the whole launch plan. It includes strategizing and doing your research. It includes doing the pre-launch work of figuring out exactly who your ideal clients are. There's so much that goes into the preparation for a launch. When you are actually sitting down and you've made this plan where you've figured out these are every single day that's in this launch. These are the things that I want to happen on these days. The next part is to really sit down and execute that.

So say on Monday, June 6th (I just picked a random date), this was a part of my launch event week. So I was really promoting the Hot Seat Happy Hour to get people in that buying relationship with me in that buying culture, getting trained and prepped to want to actually purchase. I had decided on that day I was sending out an email. I was doing a post on my Instagram. I was creating a reel. I was doing emails to my warm list and I was showing up in my Instagram stories. That's a lot of work! If I had showed up that day and I had none of that pre-done in advance? I would be staying up past midnight getting the work done, and I would be probably really, really stressed and anxious throughout the launch.

And I'm going to put this here because I want to really address something, or acknowledge maybe is the better word, that I understand a launch is going to be stressful for a lot of people no matter what. Because the money that you're making is really wrapped up in a launch, right? When you are talking about having this specific period of time where you are going hard on selling, oftentimes there can be a lot riding on that. You can feel like there's a lot on the line. And so I want to like remind everyone that it's going to be stressful no matter what in some way or form or shape. So really our goal is to alleviate as much of that as possible, and a big way of doing that is by doing the work in advance. That's why I'm saying even if you have an eight week launch, maybe you're gonna want to have a four month total time period, including prep for the launch. Because our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to do this.

So if I'm sitting down and I'm looking at all of these things that I had to do on June 6th, or I was looking to post on June 6th, I sat down and I wrote out almost all of the emails before we even got started. Granted, some of that shifted as time went on, there were a couple add-ons, a couple things that got taken out. But the goal was to do as much of the work before I could get started. This might go without saying but I'm going to say it anyway, the order that you're going to execute these things on is going to be the order that they occur on. So sequential order. When we were talking about planning out the timeline, I told you to work backwards. This is not a work backwards moment. This is a work forwards normal moment, because really what you're doing is you're giving yourself the ability to execute the things that are happening first as early as possible. So that then you can maybe even have as much as possible done before you get started, but also have the opportunity to have time to catch up on the later things or to add more things when you're actually in launch week or launch periods.

So when I sat down to start actually executing my entire plan, what I did is I took my handwritten notes, and this was helpful for me because I have Brittany who is my amazing business manager and was able to implement this in ClickUp with me, which is where I actually sat down and I created a to-do list for myself of everything that needed to go into the launch. So what I did is I actually sat down and Brittany and I went through the launch plan from a day-by-day order and talked about it together. She took notes to make sure that she understood what I was talking about, and then I went through said digital version of this launch plan and edited things, added notes for myself. And then we took that and we actually turned it into an executable to-do list. So when I say that we turned it into an executable to-do list, what I mean is that we actually went into my management system, which is ClickUp, and created a launch content to-do list that was able to be filtered by content category and by content date.

I hope I'm not losing you guys by getting like super technical on this stuff, but trust me it'll make sense. Basically what this means is that I said I have this many reels I need to create. I have this many feed posts I need to create. I have this many Instagram stories, Instagram lives and emails, and we put them in there with "This is the date that it needs to go out. This is the content categories, and this is the topic." And then we had a status where it could be marked as to-do, in process, ready to schedule, scheduled, published, et cetera. et cetera.

So really what this meant is that I was able to get really organized and have a place where I could look at, "Okay. What needs to get done for the very first day of the launch? And also what are all of the emails that I need to write overall?" So that then I could batch my content. So I assume most of you listening know what I mean by batch my content.

Really it means that like, say I'm in the email writing mode? I can just sit down, open up my task on writing this email and write it right there and write then and do all of them in one sitting or a couple sittings. Instead of saying, "Okay, today is Monday. What's everything I need to have done by today? Great." Instead that allowed me to say, "I can do all of the emails at once. I can do all of the posts or carousels that go on my feed at once." And it really, really made it much easier for me to organize it in my brain of what needed to get done and when it needed to go out and all that kind of stuff.

I know that I mentioned in the last episode that I'd give also a little bit of an insight into where I got all my inspiration for the different types of contents that I would do. A lot of it came from stuff I had done beforehand, but a lot of it came from pre-work. I do a landscape assessment with all my clients, and actually sat down and did that myself, and answered all of these questions about who my ideal audience is and what they're looking for, what their pain points are. So that then when it came time to oh, I don't know, create a reel around their pain points. I could either one, look at one of the pain points and get inspired by it. Or I could two, get inspired by a sound for a reel or like the audio online whether it was trending or not, and able to take that audio and say, "Oh, is there any pain points on this list that this would apply to?"

It made it much easier for me so that I wasn't just sitting there being like, "Do do do do do, what am I going to post about today?" I already had a very specific plan in place and inspiration laid out so that when it came time to be like, "All right I have a community focused reel that I want to put out. How can I get inspired about this?" I want to reiterate something that I mentioned in one of the previous parts on this launch behind the scenes, which was that I would aim to have 70% - 80%, maybe even 90% of your content created in advance. But I highly, highly recommend leaving time to get inspired in the moment and during the launch process, to add more as you go.

A big place where I allowed myself some of this time to get inspired in the moment was within the Instagram stories. I had some things laid out in advance. For instance "Hot Seat Happy Hour is coming today. Here's some examples of what we can do." I thought it would be fun to pull some business oracle cards. Which if you don't know what that looks like, I did that on Instagram. I've done that in the past beforehand, so I did that. I talked about why I was building it. I talked about intentional investments in my stories. So I had a lot of story ideas already set in place for my launch, but I also was able to then be like, "Oh, this is a cool question I got from someone, let me share that. Or, oh my gosh this person just joined and they made this comment and it sparked this idea in me. Let me talk about that too!"

And so leaving some space to always, always, always let your creativity shine through is not only going to be a way to really react in the moment and answer people's ideas in the moment. So it doesn't feel stale or doesn't feel like, "Oh my gosh, I'm talking about these things that actually no one is reacting to or responding to." But it also allows it to feel more fun because you'll be able to be like, "Oh my gosh, here's this cool thing! I can add this. I can add this. I can add this." And let me tell you for someone who did not do like TikTok or reels as hard in the past, that was something that ended up being really fun for me to play around with, and really easy to be like, "Ooh, I just did five more. Ooh, I just did a couple more." And it felt more fun as opposed to being like, "Oh my God I gotta do this thing." So just like a reminder to everyone, do a big chunk of the work in advance to save yourself on that time and energy, but you don't need to do all of it.

This is also stuff you can do without a business manager. Just even sitting down and organizing things by date, and then creating a list of all of the reels and then creating a list of all the emails or whatever it is, and it'll be easy to just pick it up and go from there. I know for me, it also feels really good to see my progress as I go. So being able to change everything to "This is scheduled, or this is in progress, or this is published," was really helpful for me to also stay like motivated and excited throughout the launch process. Because when you're creating it all in advance, or even when you're doing it in the launch weeks, which I don't love to recommend but if you have to, you have to, it can feel like there's this overwhelmingly huge amount of things to get done. But when you can really break it up and batch it out, it goes so much more smoothly. So I would really, really recommend thinking about when it comes to executing, how all of this is going to operate. Really think about actually mapping it out, possibly using a content management system. I use ClickUp but I know that things like Asana, or Notion, there's so many options out there. The Monday boards, right? That's going to be a huge thing.

I know that I've mentioned in the previous episodes, I'm moving to a buying culture with a wait list. But for this first launch for the new mastermind format, I didn't have a wait list because it was brand new. So I created for myself what is called a "warm list", and so part of how I executed this was also by keeping my warm list in mind. These were people who had specifically shown interest in joining the mastermind in the past, who had purchased from me beforehand or who I genuinely thought would be like the perfect person to come in. This is, like I said, in the future going to be replaced by a wait list. But having this warm list, and I'm calling it a warm list because it really was a list of already warm leads, was another way that I planned in advance and was able to execute this launch with some additional conversion and success.

I didn't do anything too crazy. I tried not to bug these people very much, but I just let them know like, "Hey I added you to the warm list because you have shown interest in the past, and also I genuinely think that you'd be a great fit. I think that this is how it would benefit you specifically. I think that this is how like your business would benefit, how you would benefit. I can see how not only the specific approach to coaching, but also the specific type of container where it's in a group setting and there's some experts, et cetera, et cetera, would benefit you specifically."

I really use that as a way to privately invite people, and again let them know, like "You get first dibs, you get the first slots. You're told about this an entire stage before everybody else." Because it, I mean it's coming from a very genuine place. Give them those elite spots in it because they were the people who I'd really wanted to work with. I would also say that regardless of what you are selling, whether it's like a product or it's an offer, if you don't have a wait list, thinking about having a warm list and using that to execute some of these parts of your launch is going to be super beneficial. Like for me, they were easy people to invite to the Hot Seat Happy Hour. They were easy people to just like, have an ongoing conversation around this. As opposed to trying to convert some of those colder leads.

One of the other things that I wanted to talk about in this execution episode was actually the "how" around my launch event. So I know that I've talked about this launch event a lot. I talked about it in the launch event week, right? Launch event stage, I should say. I've talked about it in terms of how I was working with creating this buying culture, how I was working with building this relationship with my potential clients and with my audience. So what I decided to do is, I'm sure you all have seen in launches or in sales funnel, there's some sort of a webinar option that converts at the end of the webinar, or there is some sort of like freebie and then you get the freebie and it brings you into an email sequence, et cetera, et cetera. And so really this is a great time to talk about how you can take these overarching strategies and really apply them to your specific business and who you specifically are and how your audience has learned to interact with you.

So if you remember from the previous episodes, I talked about how my previous buying culture was around a lot of free sessions, so like yes free consults, but also you get an hour with me and we do coaching one-on-one. Oftentimes when that happens, those free sessions were going to people who weren't ready to convert at all, and that's the way they were opting for a free session. So turning it into a happy hour event that was a little bit networking, a little bit of a "try before you buy, see what coaching looks like." also a "come and actually submit a question and I will do my best to answer as many questions as I can in this live happy hour event."

It really was my way of taking the webinar, freebie sales funnel version and making it feel like me. So I did this in a couple ways. One, I eliminated the heavily email sales funnel after the event, because that is not me. I hate emails. I hate having emails in my inbox. I will unsubscribe from every email I can. If you are a friend of mine and I have unsubscribed from your emails, it's just because I hate notifications. If you've seen my phone screen, you know this. I am not the person who has even email notifications turned on at all on my phone because I hate notifications. So having a sales funnel doesn't make sense for me.

Doing a static or evergreen webinar or workshop also doesn't necessarily make sense for me. I love to teach and educate, but this sort of service is not necessarily asking you to opt into a course or a regular way for me to educate you. Yes there's education in there, but it's a very specific, very personalized type of education where we are going into what you need and what your business needs and what your clients needs and how to make sure that you are positioning yourself in a way that is allowing you to make more money by doing less work, and that's going to be different for everyone. That's going to be a different strategy for everyone. There'll be different systems in place. There's different marketing in place, on a person by person basis.

And so doing a pure educational workshop or webinar did not make sense for me. Pre-recorded evergreen really doesn't make sense for me, even a live workshop or webinar in that sort of educational vein? It's just not aligned with me, and you know I talk about alignment all the time! So what my answer to that was, is doing a live interactive event. This is something that is 100% me because if you couldn't tell by the fact that I have a podcast, and if you don't know me in person, Hi, I like to talk. I'm an extrovert. I'm a social being. Also having a happy hour event, it sounded fun. It sounded like something where people can just like make themselves a drink and come show up and we'll just talk business and it's not going to be heavily sales. It's going to be high on the value, high on the community with a little conversation at the end of it.

You get a free replay and a little notification about the Badass Business Squad. With all of the marketing around the Hot Seat Happy Hour, being like "This is a try before you buy for the Badass Business Squad," it also meant that it wasn't one of those things where I'm directing ads to this " Learn my four steps to sales conversations that convert." And then you show up and it's four very overarching tips, and then there's like a 20 minute introduction to who that person is and a 20 minute like sales call at the end. So you really only get 20 minutes of content in the middle. I personally didn't want to do anything like that. I wanted it to feel like something where like, you got to know who I am, but you knew before you even came in that this was going to be leading you into the mastermind, and into conversations around the mastermind and around working with me.

That's really the way that I wanted it to look and I wanted it to feel, was that there's no like smoke and mirrors around what we're doing here, right? I'm not going to pretend that I'm not going to be selling the mastermind to you at the end. We're all going to know this from the get go. But what I'm also going to do is give you a shit ton of value on this call. I'm going to answer as many of these questions as I possibly can, and hopefully you get something out of it that feels really good to you. And even more hopefully at the end of it, you learn my coaching style and you get a little bit more familiar with the mastermind and you decide to come and join us.

So when I decided to do this prelaunch event, that was a live actual like interactive event, I had to also pre decide how I wanted that to look and how I wanted that to operate. And so what we ended up doing was having the invitation go to a place where you could sign up via actually Eventbrite and get access to a Zoom call. I would change some of how this launch event was set up. There was a password that for some reason, because Zoom was set up through Eventbrite, Eventbrite wasn't recognizing, and people were having to exit and go in through their phones or couldn't get in at all. The launch event had such a possibility to be way, way, way more valuable than it ended up being because we had so many technical issues and difficulties. But really what we did is we had people sign up. If you signed up, then you got access to the link. If you got access to the link, then you could pre-submit a question.

I believe I went through around 80% of the questions, so almost everyone who submitted a question was able to get the answer. I also then put those questions and the replay and sent that out to everyone, even those who could not get into the room. Which was a big bummer, but you know what shit happens, you live and you learn and the launch will look different the next time in terms of this launch event. But yes, everyone got a replay email and then attached to their replay emails was information about the mastermind, information about the signup bonus that was only available, if you remember, that first weekend after the Hot Seat Happy Hour event.

And it's going to be fun. This is going to be fun, and it was fun. Really the technical parts of how I did the event, I would just say you know what guys? Eventbrite, worked great. They gave people recommendations. The only thing that sucked was the password. So don't have a password attached to your Zoom room if it's through an Eventbrite, and you'll probably be fine. But honestly, even with having the technical issues, we still had a good amount of people who came. We still got a great amount of excitement around it, and it really accomplished what I needed it to accomplish.

On a more just like pure tangible execution aspect for the rest of the content as well, I was able to then take some of the questions from our happy hour event, give sneak peaks of them on our stories, give sneak peaks of them in my Q&A in my newsletter. And so it was something that really allowed me to bring more and more content to my audience, and have inspiration that I didn't have to go out and go searching for.

So the last thing I want to talk about in this stage three, is we did some posts, we did some carousels. Those were all things I could design in advance and schedule on Planoly so I could not think about them whatsoever the entire time we were going, which felt really great. Also just in terms of where I found the inspiration for the types of content that I created, and what I really want to say guys is just like lean into all of the work that you have already done around your services and offers. So I looked at things like my own webpage, right? My own sales copy, my FAQ that's on my sales page. I looked at all the pre-work I have done around ideal clients and their objections and their pain points, and just gathered all of this information and then sat down and just basically, you can just like highlight the shit. Or like write down and take notes the shit that is the most exciting to you, or that resonates the most with you in terms of this exact thing. And that also just utilize the breath of what is offered on the internet.

So there is so much out there that is amazing. I'm constantly saving things in my Instagram collections where I'm like, "Oh they talked about this in a cool way. I can do my own spin on this." Please never, ever, ever copy anyone. But what are things that provide something for you to respond to or get inspired by? I also reached out to some past clients or people who have done intensives, asked what their favorite parts of working with me. What made them choose me over a different coach, and really just took all of this information and turned that into my content plan.

And again, I'll talk about this a little bit more in the next part. I think in the future, some of the changes I would make in the content plan is I had a lot of reels around "This is how I feel about when someone signs up," and maybe I would do a little bit more of the educational reels around "This is what you're going to get out of it." But overall, even if the content part seems scary or seems overwhelming right now, In the future it doesn't have to. It can feel much, much better. It doesn't have to feel intimidating.

So I as always am very, very hopeful that this is helpful for everyone who's listening, and I hope that you'll tune into the last part in this four part September series, around the behind the scenes of my launch. Where I'm going to be talking about what I would do different next time. What plans I make. Some of this is going to be in terms of my buying culture, but some of this is going to be in terms of the analytics. So how things actually worked. Like what emails did the best? What types of Instagram content did the best? I will tell you that like flat out. What the results were, what are the things that I'm going to change up for the next time? And then just like some overall thoughts and overall tricks and tips. Really just giving you those final tidbits on what it's like to build a launch, and also what it's like to wrap your head around this launch process. Because I don't know, like I said before hand there's no gate keeping here. I just want it to feel as easy and straightforward for you as possible. So anyway, thank you guys for listening and as always feel free to ask me any questions if you need to.