3 Ways You Can Prepare For The Unknown During Launches
BOOM. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to warn anyone.
All of a sudden I was sitting in the dark, my computer unable to turn on, and my LaunchFlow Accelerator students wondering what the heck just happened.
Yep, that’s right – in the middle of a weekly LFA call, our power decided to go out.
These things always seem to happen at the most convenient times, don’t they? 🙃
As you can imagine, I was slightly panicking… I mean after all, we were in the middle of a lesson that these students paid for!
So, I grabbed my phone, sent them a Slack message, and tried to pull up Zoom from there – but you know how that goes.
We finally ended up having a fireside chat style call and my students were so gracious and understanding, but after experiencing this I started thinking…
What do you do when something like this happens during the middle of your launch?!
Of course you could never predict if the power will go out during your masterclass or workshop delivery, but you CAN be prepared if something does go wrong.
(And trust me… after 17 years of work in the industry, I can almost promise you that something WILL go wrong.)
It’s impossible to know what exactly will happen during your launch, but because of scenarios like I recently experienced AND because of some of the crazy stories I’ve heard, I always teach my clients and students to expect the best, but prepare for the worst.
Will you be able to plan for every possible situation? Of course not!
But you can plan for some of the most common things that happen in the online business world in general and when you do, you can go into your launch calm and collected knowing that you’re ready to take on whatever comes your way.
I like to refer to these “back up plans” as launch rabbits. 🐰🎩
They’re small strategies that you can pull out of a hat when or if you need them and you may or may not use them, but they’re there just in case.
Just like how now I’ll never start a call without having my backup laptop with a wireless wifi adaptor nearby – I probably won’t need it all that often, but it’s there just in case I do!
3 Common Launch “Freak Outs” and How to Prepare For Them
As mentioned earlier, I’ve seen a LOT when it comes to launching in my 17 years in the industry. Between hosting my own and helping clients create launches from scratch, there’s been a lot of lessons learned.
From those experiences, there are three common launch “freak outs” that are bound to happen at some point in your launch history.
To help you get ahead of the game and prepare for the worst, I have three “launch rabbits” that you can steal to give you a little more peace of mind as you plan your next launch!
- Plan for an encore or replay
There are many different ways that you can launch in your business and each method has its own benefits.
Some of the most common methods that I see are: webinars, challenges, workshops, summits, video series, email series, etc.
Each of these have their own pros and cons, but generally speaking they can ALL work! It really just depends on the type of business you have and what you’re selling.
If you’re hosting a launch that involves people registering and attending (which is the majority of these), a common fear as a business owner revolves around people actually showing up for the launch event.
For example, I recently hosted the LaunchFlow Workshop and people had to plan to attend and actually schedule the time into their calendar.
Of course when you’re planning an event like this, you *hope* that people will make the day and time work, but you never really know if they will for sure.
This is a super common concern for people and I’ll admit – the show up rate to events like this can be one of the trickiest things to navigate.
If you’re launching in this way and you want to plan for the worst possible scenario (aka people NOT showing up), you can proactively plan to host an encore or send out the replay.
Now, the key is that you don’t tell your audience about this up front. You want them to be there live the first time because that’s how they’re going to get the most out of it!
But in the instance that attendance is low – whether it be because the time didn’t work for people’s schedules, there was a time zone issue, the day wasn’t ideal, etc. – you can have a pre-planned encore that you can pull out of the hat to give people a second chance at attending OR you can send the replay to non-attendees.
ENCORE PRO TIP: If you decide to have an encore, plan it for a DIFFERENT day and time than your original event OR poll your audience for what works best for them.
REPLAY PRO TIP: Set up the replay to expire after a certain date and time so that you create a level of urgency for people to actually watch it.
- Create additional payment options
The entire point of a launch is to sell a new or existing product or service in a new way and a huge part of the launch planning process is determining your prices.
(P.S. This is something I help students do in LaunchFlow Accelerator and it’s one of the five core flows outlined in the LaunchFlow roadmap – if you struggle with pricing your offers, click here to download!)
Many people have different payment plan options that they offer and this is something that I highly recommend so that your potential clients can easily fit your product or service into their budget.
Typically, there will be a pay in full option and a monthly payment option that people can choose from and, generally speaking, this works very well.
You almost always have a group of people who want to pay in full so it’s off their mind, but there will also very commonly be others that need more flexibility.
Depending on the price of your product or service, you might find that the price is truly the thing that keeps people from buying.
You can only really know this when you have conversations with potential clients (more on that in a minute), but when or if you discover this issue, you want to be able to handle it effectively.
And NO, I don’t mean that you should lower your price! That’s rarely ever the real solution, especially if you’ve done the work to price your product fairly.
Instead, you can have a launch rabbit set up that can relieve this head on and that often looks like having additional payment options available if people need them.
Of course I don’t expect you to tailor payment plans to every single person’s needs, but there’s usually a happy medium that you can offer that people are more than happy with IF the price is their true objection.
- Schedule time for conversations
Lastly, you should plan to schedule extra time for conversations in case you need them.
Here’s why this matters: more often than not, one of two things will happen during your launch ⬇️
- You’ll host your launch event, sales will start flooding in, and you’ll be pleased with the results.
This is everyone’s launch dream and while it CAN happen this way, it’s very rare (regardless of how great you are at launching or how many times you’ve done it before) that it will go this way every single time.
- You’ll host your launch event, maybe have a few sales trickle in, but primarily talk with people who are interested that never buy.
When this is your scenario during launching, I know how defeating it can feel especially after all of the time and energy you’ve poured into it.
But before you get discouraged, you HAVE to recognize that this is actually an opportunity that needs to be seized.
If you’re talking with people who are interested, but aren’t buying, you have the chance to learn WHY and the only way you can do that is by having conversations with them.
And I’m not just talking about in the Instagram DM’s.
Get on the phone or get face to face with them on a Zoom call so you can truly LISTEN to what they’re saying because if one person is saying it, you can guess that at least 10 others are probably thinking it!
This means you can take their objections, hesitations, or concerns and adjust your messaging (in your emails, social posts, etc.) to address those things specifically.
This also gives you the chance to, not only adjust your messaging, but also come up with other solutions that make your offer an easy “yes” for people.
Need More Launch Support?
Launching in your business is a BIG deal and I’m not here to pretend that it’s all sunshines and rainbows all the time.
It can be a hard project to tackle, but I also believe that it can be done in a way that does NOT overwhelm or burn you out. I’ve seen and experienced what launches can do for people and when you do them right, that’s when you can win in multiple ways (not just financially).
To truly launch in a way that feels fun, exciting, and even energizing, there are 5 LaunchFlows that must be present when planning your launch and I walk you through each of them in the LaunchFlow Roadmap.
Click here to download your free LaunchFlow Roadmap to finally lean into the magic of what launching can REALLY be. ✨
After downloading, if you have specific questions about launching in your business, send me a DM on Instagram – I’d love to chat with you!