You don’t need to launch your offer, in fact it doesn’t make sense for most people to approach selling their offer through this method. At it’s core, there are helpful things to take from the basic launch model—but we must adjust based on leadership design, trauma, privilege, and lived experience.
Launching makes sense when:
-You have a large audience
-You know the right people
-Your audience already buys regulairy from you
-You benefit from a lot of privilege
-You have time privilege
-You have an offer that has a specific start date
-You want a cash influx
I know you see launch programs being sold to you for $2k, and I know the feeling they arise in you:
THIS will be the thing that supports my $20k launch or beyond.
Because I don’t believe in gatekeeping information, I want this post to do a few things:
- Walk you through the traditional launch model so you can understand it at it’s core, and pull pieces that might be helpful for you so you don’t have to pay $2k.
- Support education around other possibilities for selling your offer out without selling yourself out
Let’s dive in:
The Launch Model
There’s a guy named Jeff Walker who wrote a book called Launch. In it is the original model people use to launch their offer. I’ll be going over this model today. The $2k programs you’re buying are using his model—so let’s just go to the source.
I’m not this guy’s biggest fan, I don’t think the book as a whole is a good resource because it doesn’t look at trauma, privilege, or lived experience. And those are deeply important aspects we need to look at when selling your offer.
Like I said above, launching works for big time business coaches bringing in $50k months for a few reasons, but if we’re being honest—most of the time it’s because the entrepreneur knows the right people, and has them share their offer (this often happens in masterminds when everyone with big followings share each others content as a strategy that only works if you have the privilege to pay enough to be in the mastermind). Launches depend on a large number of people seeing your offer, and they also require your mental health to be prepared to withstand a between 2 week and 6 week ‘go period’ of being ‘on’. This is also assuming you have no trauma, or have completely healed all your trauma —and have absolutely no issue with being visible, vulnerable and being seen.
Not everyone needs to launch, most people in fact do better with a modified version of what I’m about to teach you or not launching at all.
Here’s the model:
Pre Launch—This is where you let people know something is coming. I’m sure you’ve often see people say things like:
-I did a thing and it’s coming soon
-I have a secret launching on the 31st
-Something top secret is coming
This is what we don’t want to do—the goal of a pre launch is to gain familiarity of your offer with with your audience.
A normal launch can last from open to close anywhere from 7 days to 6 weeks, so this pre-launch period can be anywhere from a few days to a month, it depends on your offer.
Personally, I like to aim for a month of this prelaunch period.
The goal is to talk about your offer with clarity on what it is:
- My new program the league is launching on ____
- Currently working on my new program, the league, you can get on the waitlist at the link in my bio.
Spend time on your email list PS section, your IG stories, your CTA (call to action in your posts).
The next part of a launch is open cart.
The open cart period is when your doors are open, and you start selling your offer.
A couple things can happen here:
- Maybe you open your waitlist first if you have one, so your open cart is private first before you open to the public.
- Maybe you open to the public and your email list at once
Your open cart period is a high period in sales MAYBE.
For some who have a strong audience, this may be one part of a high sales period. For those who are newer or have less of a strong audience—your open cart period might be pretty slow.
In an open cart, some people keep open doors for a few days.
However, that doesn’t work for most people.
If you suffer with your mental health, are queer, Black, NBIPOC, disbaled, fat, or neurudivergent a few days just doesn’t suffice.
Sara, my wife, and I also like to look at your leadership design when we’re exploring how long you stay open for.
There are four different designs, you can take the assessment here to see what you are.
A breakdown of how each launch:
- The visionary: really shouldn’t launch because they work in really high highs and super low lows. If they do, they should work in longer launch periods as this gives them plenty of time to move through their highs and lows.
- The nurturer: They are slow movers because deep connection is important to them. They don’t like fast action bonuses, or short launches because they need time to really connect with their audience. They work well in a medium to long launch period with little to no ‘bonuses’.
- The conductor: These are fast movers and focused on the end goal, they can rock any kind of enrollment period, however when irritated, they typically bail out of launch too early—the end of a launch is THE most important part.
- The analyst: These folks are also slow movers, they can do any kind of enrollment period as long as theres a strong plan. Because they’re slow movers however, they do prefer something a bit longer—the short few days launch periods aren’t for them.
Open cart can be really weird. When I’m launching a group program or 1:1, I keep open doors for 4-6 weeks as a visionary conductor with bipolar II. For me, I see a surge of people in the first few days, and then the close period. The in between is SLOOOOW.
This is the difference between a normal launch model and what Sara and I do—a normal launch asks for a small window to be open to keep momentum high—but as we can see so far, that just doesn’t make sense for most people.
So, when it comes to the open period—decide how long this will be for you based on a few things:
- Your mental health, do you need time to step away from your launch and not be ‘on’.
- What your leadership design is, this will play a huge role in how you launch. If you want to learn more on this, you can purchase my program UN-Launch right here.
- Your audience, are they strong and close to you? Or do you need more time to connect with them?
- Your privilege—what do you not have access to you that others do? How might this affect your launch?
- Your trauma and lived experience, not everyone feels available to be seen or just ‘show up and take messy action’.
The last phase is the close phase.
The close phase is the last few days of your enrollment period, the most important period.
The close phase is the last 2-4 days of your enrollment.
This is when you’re letting people know their sales process is coming to a natural end.
Normal launching says to say things like:
- If you care about your life/body/business you’ll sign up now
- I challenge you to invest in yourself
- I was scared to invest, but I cut my daily starbucks out and then I could afford it.
It encourages scarcity to motivate people to buy— we don’t like this. We don’t ever use shame, manipulation or our privilege to sell.
I believe in natural urgency, letting people know their sales process is going to come to an end is helpful.
It’s like Nike letting you know the sale is coming to an end, and giving you one final email to let you know, and remind you in case you forgot.
For me this looks like:
- Being on my stories and letting people know there’s 72, 48, and 24 hours left/
- Sending a few extra emails these days.
- Being clear on what the offer is, how it works, who it’s for, and what the outcome is going to be.
- Answering FAQ
- Doing live videos
- Sharing case studies
An important note: We don’t share ‘the transformation’. Making big promises is not the way to start a relationship with someone, instead I want you to say things like:
- Clients often experience feeling more connected to their bodies
- Each client experience is different and while I can’t make any promises, I can say that you’ll experience honest coaching, true collaboration and …..
Share what the connection will be like, what they might experience—in full honesty always.
Now what?
What if no one buys? What if you did all that work for nothing?
As much as I wish this didn’t happen—it’s totally normal if it does, especially when you’re doing a different kind of enrollment.
This can happen for a few reasons:
- Your offer is new and you didn’t spend enough time in the familiarity phase.
- How’s your offer? Is it clear?
- Did you talk about your offer enough? It takes people 6-9x of seeing your offer to even THINK about buying it.
Launching, or UN-Launching is all about testing things out—sometimes it takes a couple times to figure things out, and that’s so so normal.
Overall in your launching process you want to make sure you follow the four C’s:
- You move from consent
- You’re clear on what your offer is, how it works, and what people need to do.
- You’re in collaboration with your potential clients and never moving from a place of hierarchy.
- You offer choice in all your offers, wether this is in payment plans, ways to work with you, or ways to work inside of your framework that meets their lived experience.
What if launching isn’t for you?
You can….
- Do push periods
- Have an open enrollment
Push Periods:
Basically like HIIT for your offer, maybe you talk about your offer for 2 weeks, then rest for 3 weeks. Maybe you talk about one offer for one week, rest for 5 days, and talk about another offer the next week.
It could look like this:
Offer one is a small $79 offer, you talk about this for 7 days out of your month.
Once you complete this, you rest for a few days and normal email + educate.
Then you open up your 1:1 for 10 days.
Once you do that, you repeat the cycle until your 1:1 is full, or you reach your offers capacity, once you do this, THEN you might be ready to launch.
Open Enrollment:
This is where you keep all your offers open until they reach capacity. Maybe you make a plan like….
Talking about your 1:1, product or offer daily or 3x a week in order to reach your goals.
Again, the more you talk about your offer the better—so perhaps once you are in an open enrollment long enough your spots begin to fill, and then you can head into a launch model if desired.
Launching and selling your offer is so personal.
What worked once, might not work again—this is all about trial and error.
What you see done from big time coaches probably won;t work for you unless you hold the privileges they have.
If you want to learn more about how to sell out your offer without selling yourself out based on your leadership design—you can purchase UN-launch right here.
