Speaker 1: Even if you're not launching, you still have to be
selling in your business. Launching is just that limited time push,
whereas selling is something that you need to be doing consistently.
But launching you do it that one limited time push,
maybe twice a year for the same offer, or however
many times you want to, and then it's done. 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
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Every day, I'll send you a bite sized prompt designed
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Sign up at steptaylor dot co, forward slash DBB, or
at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back.
To imperfect Action. This is episode eight hundred and fifty two. Today,
I'm talking about how launching creates freedom and ease in
my business. Now, I know a lot of people believe
that launching is really stressful, and yeah, it can be
if you choose to make it stressful and you don't
do it the simple way. And I know that there's
been a real trend lately of people who are deciding
they don't want to launch and they want to go
straight to Evergreen or Always Available because they worry that
launches are just too stressful. But I'm going to share
a little bit today about how launching has helped me
to create freedom in my business, and mainly it's because
of the structure. The structure of launching. Structure creates freedom.
When we have these little constrained periods within our business
of showing up and selling this one offer, then it
allows for a little bit of downtime and flexibility in between. Now,
my business used to be anything but structured at all.
So when I had retainer clients, I had all of
these monthly deliverables, I had client projects all of the time.
I couldn't take any time off without preparing all of
my client work in advance for a few months. Right,
And even though I grew my agency to the point
where I had this small team, small agency creating client content,
I was still the person reviewing it. I was still
the person dealing with the clients. My team needed me,
my clients needed me. I was very much hands on
in the business, and I couldn't see a way to
remove my hands. And then back in December twenty seventeen,
when I realized, okay, I have location freedom. I can
go and travel a little bit, and I went off
to Europe. I actually was replying to a client email
in front of the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, that was probably
the worst. That was the low point, right where I
couldn't be away from my inbox long enough to go
outside seeing. One afternoon, and when I checked my inbox,
I saw an email from a client and I replied
to it in front of the Eiffel Tower. Even though
they were all of these you know, happy people around me,
all of the tourists, everyone's taking photos. I'm there on
my phone replying to a client email. And then mid
twenty eighteen, I was living in London for a brief period,
about six months, and it was great. I could work
with my clients. I found that a little bit of balance.
The only problem was that I had to take client
calls at three am because most of my clients were
on Australian time zones. So I had a little bit
of freedom, but I didn't quite have enough freedom to
really step away from my desk. And then in August
twenty eighteen, I took seven days off for the first
time in my business. I thought, Okay, I'm going to
take seven days off completely offline, and I briefed my team.
I had everything prepared for my clients. I told my
clients I was going to be out of office, and
of course I couldn't stay out of office for the
seven days. I had barely any phone reception, but I
was still checking emails whenever I could, and I was
terrified the whole time. I was so anxious about what
would be waiting for me in my inbox when I
got back. But then a whole four years later, between
August twenty eighteen and August twenty twenty two, a lot
changed in my business, and in August twenty twenty two,
I took two weeks completely off the grid to hike
through the outback. I maybe had phone reception on like
one or two days out of two weeks, but I
didn't feel the urge to check. I didn't have any
clients that I needed to be a acountable to. My
team had it all under control. Everything was planned and
ready for the launch that was going to kick off
three weeks after I got back. So what changed? Well, firstly,
as if you've been listening to this podcast for a while,
you'll know, I slowly started to let go of clients
and started to build up different offers in my business,
and through a process of creating and launching things and
then retiring things when I realized they weren't a good fit,
I eventually came to this point where I have this
beautiful office suite of offers that some of them I
live launch a few times a year. Others you can
join at any point in time, but they have some
kind of sales process to funnel people into that. And
through creating that structure in how I sell my offers,
I don't feel like I constantly have to be showing
up I constantly. I don't feel like I constantly have
to be selling except for when I'm in these little
live launches. So to really, I guess, to really explain
how launching creates freedom and ease, we need to look
at what is launching really And I don't think of
launching as what happened after doors are open and your
product is available to buy. Instead, I think of it
as this period of sixty to ninety days before doors open,
where you are sharing content that is nurturing your audience.
It's bridging what I call the magician's gap, the gap
between where they are now and where they need to
be to be ready to buy. It's then followed by
a limited time promotional period cut open, where that is
that limited time period where you are actually showing up
and selling the offer, and then there's some kind of deadline, right,
so you're not constantly having to show up and constantly
give calls to action twenty four to seven, seven days
a week. So launching is really just a sales process.
It's one way to sell your offers. It's not the
only way to sell them, but it is and I
love the structure that it creates so that it gives
me that kind of freedom in my business. And even
if you're not launching, you still have to be selling
in your business. Launching is just that limited time push,
whereas selling is something that you need to be doing consistently,
but launching you do it that one limited time push,
maybe twice a year for the same offer, or however
many times you want to, and then it's done. And
I was actually talking to a friend recently who in
her previous business, she used to launch twice a year
and she found it exhausting and stressful. So she in
her new business, where she's working one on one with
coaching clients, she decided not to do launches, which is
fair enough. But then when I was talking to her recently,
she said to me that she's finding it exhausting constantly
trying to find new clients, constantly trying to sell and
bring in new clients. So either way, you still have
to do the work. You still have to sell. Launching
is just a limited time period of hard work, and
then you can chill in between those launches. For example,
when I do launch Magic right, we launch Launch Magic
twice a year, then I teach it for twelve weeks,
which is live Q and A calls and pre recorded content,
and then in between the rounds, we archive the community,
so we're not having to keep up community management in
between the twelve week rounds. We don't have any calls
between the rounds, and then we repeat the process again.
Rather than you know, if it was always open, I'd
have to always be promoting it, always doing Q and
A calls, always managing the community, all of those things.
This is now just this beautiful offer that's in a
lovely contained block of time that we can organize around
everything else we want to do in the year. And
then when we do our planning as a team at
the start of the year, we plan our launches around school, holidays,
travel time, off all of the different things. It creates
that structure, so we've got we know when there's going
to be downtime and freedom, and we know when we
need to be showing up and launching. So that's how
life launching has created that structure and that freedom. In
my business. I know, the first few times that you
are launching a new offer, it can be so stressful.
But here's the thing. The more times you launch it,
the easier it becomes. And the more times that you
launch it, the more you create almost like a not
a template, but like a formula for how it runs
and your team starts to learn their roles, You start
to learn your role in the launch, and it becomes
this beautiful little repeatable sales process that you can do
over and over again, each time bringing in a cash
injection into your business from that same offer. All right,
So that is it for today's episode. I hope that
this has maybe shifted your perspective on launching a little bit.
If it's something that you've been shying away from. I
open up doors to launch magic It twice a year.
If you will wait list, pop on over to stephtaylor
dot co slash Magic, or if you're on Instagram, send
me a DM over there. I'm there at stephtaylor dot co.
Send me the word magic. Just the word magic in
a d M and I will add you to the
wait list over there. Thank you so much for listening.
Catch you next time