Because I had the deadline, I made it happen. Without the deadline,
I would still be brainstorming it, I'd be outlining it, I'd be procrastinating
it. I would still be just twiddling my thumbs, waiting to feel ready,
waiting for it to feel perfect, and as we know, it never
does. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I
read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and did all the courses,
but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that my business had its
first million dollar year. Imperfect action is about doing things before you're ready,
prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not sure
you're doing it right. On this show, you can expect mindset advice,
actionable marketing tips, and strategies to build a business that brings you more profit,
more freedom, and even more joy. Are you on the list to
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at Steph Taylor dot co, forward slash DBB, or at the link in
the show notes. Hey, welcome back to in Perfect Action. This is
episode seven hundred and ninety seven. Today I am recapping and sharing a couple
of the lessons that I learned from the most recent launch of my brand new
membership. So I recently launched conversion campaigns for the very first time. I
have been sitting on a membership idea for like two years probably, and it
finally all fell into place after thinking about what it would look like, after
mapping it out, after a lot of procrastination. As I will mention a
little bit in this episode, I finally opened doors for the first time.
And doors were open for five days, and then I closed them, and
we'll open them again in May for a couple of days, two or three
days, to allow new members in. And the plan is ultimate to keep
doing this. So it's going to be open for a few days each month
and then it will close. So a couple of different lessons that I learned
from this very first launch, and I'm sure you know, two months,
three months from now, I will have even more lessons to share, because
it's always a learning process. Right when we're doing something new in business,
We're never going to get it right the first time round, and that's kind
of a good thing. Because you know, how boring would it be if
there was nothing else to learn. So the very first lesson that I learned,
I would guess I was more reminded of because this is a lesson I've
learned in other contexts in my business as well, and that is to keep
it simple at the start, otherwise you will never get it off the ground.
This has I've known this for a long time. This applied when I
was launching my podcast for the first time. It has applied for every course
that I've launched, every offer that I've sold, everything, And I fell
into the same trap that so many other business owners do when they're launching something
new for the first time with this membership. In that but I inadvertently overwhelmed
myself because I wanted to launch this perfect, final version of my membership.
I wanted to be like one hundred and twenty percent done the very first month,
rather than just getting it off the ground and then adding all some extra
things to it later. So I had these huge plans for all of the
things that I wanted to include in the membership. I had these ideas for
all these mini bonus courses that I wanted to include in the membership so that
when somebody joined, they could go down different pathways if they wanted to.
And basically I ended up overwhelming myself whenever I even sat down to start working
on it, whenever I even thought about the membership, I felt so overwhelmed
by all of the different things that I had to do to make this gigantic
thing come to life, and so I kept procrastinating it. There was just
so much to do, and I didn't know where to start, so I
didn't start. I had originally planned to launch this membership for the first time
in January, and then I pushed it to March, and then finally I
launched it in April because I had been so overwhelmed by all of the things
I thought I needed to do to get it perfect and ready to launch to
the world. But the version that I launched, my members who were in
it, they love it. They don't realize that there were four extra things
I wanted to at four mini courses I wanted to add and will still add
in the future as a surprise for my members. But to them, it's
it appears done right to them, They're like this is perfect. To me,
I'm like, this is seventy five percent of what I want it to
be. But it's going to get better. And I think the lesson here
is really just keep it simple, keep it simple, get it off the
ground, because you can help a lot more people with your offer when it's
off the ground than you can when it's still in your head and you haven't
done anything with it because it's not perfect yet, which leads me nicely to
lesson number two. It is never going to feel ready or perfect. Even
the day that we opened door to Conversion campaigns, I didn't feel like I
was ready to start selling it. I felt really anxious about like, oh,
what's missing. I feel like I've missed something, I've skipped a step,
or I've forgotten to do something. In all of our other launches,
and we launch a lot as a team, you know, this is like
our third launch for the year. In most other launches, we have a
process. We've launched Launch Magic like eight times, We've launched Freedom Fast Tracked
twice, so we know how to do all of these things. We've done
it multiple times. My team does a lot of it as well. But
because this was the first time that we were launching a membership as this team.
I previously launched a membership back in like twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen,
but it was a very different membership back then. This is the first time
we were doing it as a team, and it was the first time we
were using a different platform for this membership. So we use Kajabi for all
of our courses, but there was a one particular small feature that I was
really particular about that I wanted to have for this membership. So this was
the first time that we were using a completely different piece of software. So
I did a lot of it myself, and I was figuring out a lot
of it along the way. And because I didn't quite know how it all
worked and how it all fit together, I was really worried that I'd forgotten
something and that it wasn't ready to launch yet, and this was part of
the reason why I procrastinated it. But eventually I had the deadline and I
had no choice but to get it out there. And I knew that if
there was something I had forgotten, I could just fix it, or I
could add it later if I needed to, which also then leads me beautifully
to less than number three. These all quite related. If you hadn't noticed.
Lesson Number three was sometimes you just needed solid deadline to get it done.
I procrastinated this launch. I moved the deadline multiple times until I could
no longer move the deadline anymore. And as with somehow with every launch that
I had ended up doing, I ended up hopping onto a plane the week
that the launch happens. I don't know why. I don't actually plan this
intentionally, but it just happens every time that I launch. And because I
was hopping onto a plane the week that it launched, I couldn't delay the
membership launch any later without moving it into May and May just felt to me
like, oh, that's five months after I'd originally planned to launch it.
What am I doing? Surely I'm not procrastinating this for five months because I
had the deadline. I made it happen. Without the deadline, I would
still be brainstorming it, I'd be outlining it, I'd be procrastinating it.
I would still be just twiddling my thumbs, waiting to feel ready, waiting
for it to feel perfect, and as we know, it never does.
This is one of the reasons actually why launch Magic works so well for my
students who are launching things for the first time, because you have the group
launching it at the same time as you. You have a launch date that
you have set in stone, and you have the accountability of the group.
You've told people I'm launching on this date, and the group can keep you
accountable, and that means that you stop procrastinating you actually get it done,
Whereas if you don't have a deadline, it's very easy for things to just
take forever and then they never happen. You can wait to feel like it's
ready, you can wait to feel like it's done, and then three years
later you're like, oh, I wanted to launch a course three years ago
and I still haven't got around to it. That's because you didn't have a
deadline. Number four, The best way to figure out all of the little
details is to just start. This launch, like I said, was a
weird one because there were a lot of new Techi details to figure out in
this particular launch. All of our courses are in Kajabi. I love Kajabi,
but there was one tiny little feature that it was missing for this particular
membership. So I chose to go with searchy for conversion campaigns, and that
meant learning an entirely new platform connecting up all of the techi bits, because
it's not all in one like Kijabi is. It's a lot less intuitive than
Kijabi is. Figuring out little techi details like when somebody's payments. How are
we going to make searchy talk to Kajabi, which is where our email list
is. How are we going to make those two platforms talk so that they
get the follow up emails sent to them from Kajabi. And all of these
little things felt so overwhelming when I thought about them. But once I started
taking that action and implementing them, you know, imperfect action. There's a
reason why this show is called imperfect action. Once I started doing the things,
I figured them out. And if the techi things overwhelm you as well,
thinking about them more isn't going to help. You have to start taking
action, and you have to trust that you can figure it out, that
you will figure it out once you start making those steps. But thinking about
the more is just going to overwhelm you, which then is going to probably
make you procrastinate it like I did. Number five. This was an interesting
one. I learned that people will pay for a few months upfront if they
have a reason to I somehow assumed that most people would pay for the month
to month option, as that was a lower investment upfront, but I also
wanted to create an option. I was like, well, there might be
some people who want to pay for three months ahead and they can pay quarterly.
I didn't expect as many people to take me up on that offer as
they did. And the reason why I think so many people took up that
offer was because I rewarded the people who committed for three months. I offered
them a bonus quarterly planning and review workshop. So anyone who signed up for
three months gets like, a, well, they get a bonus workshop where
we're jumping on zoom, we're reviewing the last quarter, and we're planning for
the quarter ahead. I in my mind, I was like, oh,
this is a really easy bonus for me to deliver. I didn't think they
would find it as valuable as they did, and by far most people chose
this option. That was such a surprise to me, because yeah, I
really just thought, you know, people are everyone's saying that they are struggling
at the moment their businesses. The cash flow is not great at the moment,
so I thought, well, everyone's going to go for the cheapest option.
It's a brand new membership. You know, they don't know what's inside
it yet, They're going to just go for the easier, the cheaper,
lower investment commitment. But now that I know great people want to pay upfront
because this is a really good incentive to pay upfront, then I will offer
it again when doors open up again in May number six. There is always
going to be something that you couldn't have planned for in your launch. This
happens, you know, every launch. There's always something that I'm like,
oh, yeah, didn't plan for that one, And in particular in this
one, because it was something new that I was launching. I hadn't launched
a membership in a long time, six years. I had to wrap my
head around it. I had a whole bunch of different new things that I
needed to do, and I knew something was gonna go wrong. I knew
something would happen that I hadn't planned for. The thing is that a few
years ago, launch slip ups were like this big disaster for me, and
I would freak out if something didn't go according to plan. It was like
the end of the world. Fortunately, Most of this launch did go to
plan, but I did make a bit of a silly mistake. This was
the only slip up. It was so minor. But what I had was
I had an automated Instagram DM message set up where if somebody messaged me the
letters CC, it said you know, it sent them the link to join,
and it mentioned that the founding member price was thirty seven dollars a month,
when in fact it was actually thirty nine dollars a month. Tiny,
tiny mistake, but it did confuse a few people, and we had a
few people pointed out, these things happen, We make mistakes. The world
didn't end, would you believe it? And now I know that I need
to double check the pricing when I next set something live. And yep,
if you send me a DM with the letters CC, you'll get a message.
Now you can jump onto the waitlist. I'm there at Steph Taylor dot
co on Instagram. Send me CC and you can hop onto the weightlist for
when I open doors again in early May. Okay, number seven, final
one. This was probably the biggest lesson and it's one that I have been
reminded of over and over and over again, and that is if you can.
If you struggle to articulate your offer, your audience will struggle to understand
it. I always send out a non buy a survey after relaunch. We
set one out after this launch as well, because even though the launch was
successful, you know, we had quite a lot of people sign up this
round. Even though the launch was successful, I still want to know what
held back the people who didn't sign up, And some of the responses that
I got were things like, oh, I'm not making enough money in my
business, so that's why I didn't join, or I didn't join because I
don't have enough time. And this is really interesting because for me, when
I created conversion campaigns, I created it as the solution to not making enough
money and not having enough time. Because once you can generate cash injections,
then you can reinvest in the systems and the support, you can reinvest in
software, you can reinvest in virtual assistance to free up your time, and
the cash injections are creating more money in your business. But obviously I didn't
do a great job of connecting the dots. That's what these responses tell me.
They're like, oh, well, Steph, you didn't connect the dots.
Between how conversion Campaigns is going to help somebody to make more money and
free up their time. Now I know when I re launched again in May,
that I need to articulate that bit better. Another one that came up
was somebody said I don't have a specific offer, I just do one on
one and that was interesting to me because the whole idea with conversion campaigns is
that you are imperfectly testing new things you can offer in your business, and
you are testing new ways to sell your existing offers, and I'm giving you
the templates to do all of that. So I now know that I need
to improve how I articulate that as well. I also had a lot of
students who were in my other programs in Awful Less Sell More or Launch Magic
or Freedom fast Track. I had them reach out to me and ask if
there was any overlap between Conversion Campaigns and the program that they were in.
So now I know for the next launch, Oh, I need to make
it really clear that this is completely different from anything else that I offer.
So I guess the lesson. The other lesson in there for you is always
send those non buya surveys because the people who don't sign up, are going
to have such great insights that you can use the next time you launch,
whether it's a membership, a course, a program, literally anything. The
people who don't buy are going to tell you so much more that's gonna help
you to sell more of it next time. So there you have at seven
little lessons that I learned from this most recent launch. I will keep you
up to date with how the membership goes. No doubt there will be other
lessons that I learn in the coming months, so stay tuned for all of
those. If you've learned anything from this show so far, please leave a
quick rating and a review. I really do read every single one of them.
It means a lot to me because a lot of work goes into producing
this podcast, so it means a lot to know that people are listening and
that you are learning something from it. Thank you so much for listening.
Catch you next time.