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Three Things I Do When In A Time Crunch

Three Things I Do When In A Time Crunch

by | Feb 11, 2025 | Mindset, Uncategorized

 “You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.”
~ Timber Hawkeye

 

I want to share with you three things I do when I have more things to do than time available to do them in.

I know that in crunch times, it’s all too easy to fall into a state of overwhelm but I learned long ago that overwhelm is a choice and so staying out of overwhelm is also, therefore, a choice. Here’s what I do instead.

 

I reject overwhelm

I’ve written about overwhelm as it effects business owners several times over the years and I always talk about my belief that overwhelm is a choice.

If you think about it, it makes sense. If it weren’t a choice, how is it that some people can feel overwhelmed having far less to do than other people who don’t feel overwhelmed with far more to do.

It’s a bit like rain, one person can look out of the window see rain and feel down, whilst another person (me!) can look out of the window, see rain and feel uplifted. It all depends on how we think about rain (or overwhelm!) I learned many years ago that if I succumb to feelings of overwhelm, they paralyzed me and make it certain that I will in fact get far less done than if I choose to think about things differently.

So rather than collapse into thoughts of “this is impossible, I’ll never get everything done!!” instead, I get strategic and practical and I breakdown my list into priorities and start to take focused and sustained action.

 

I manage my energy

When feelings of overwhelm and stress are circling, I know that the easy route is to try and bury those feelings in food, netflix and doom scrolling. Believe me when I tell you that I am in no way perfect and have taken the easy route more times than I care to mention. It’s precisely because I’ve been down that road and know where it takes me, that when push really comes to shove I know that I need to do everything I can to protect my mindset and my energy. Something neither of those easy options do.

So instead of checking my phone first thing in the morning, listening to the news while I make breakfast, and then rushing around trying to do a million things (all while feeling heartbroken at the state of the world), I actually seriously slow the f*ck down.

The busier I am the more likely it is that I’ll take the time to write in my gratitude journal first thing, then when I get to my office, I’ll burn some incense, savour my cup of coffee and listen to calming music, usually from either Satnam Kaur or Beautiful Chorus before I even think about work.

The impact this has on my ability to stay calm, centered and focused is huge. Only then will I allow myself to tackle my workload.

 

I bend time

Years ago when working with my first Business Coach, I was working on a email course for my audience and in a session, when my coach asked me why I hadn’t done all of my homework, I complained that the lessons for my email course were taking forever to create. I was at that point taking nearly a whole week to create each lesson’s email.

My coach, who was fond of giving me meaty challenges, invited me to create the next week’s lesson in just 90 minutes. As you might imagine, I laughed in response. “not possible” I argued but he persisted. He told me to put aside 90 minutes the following day and use my phone to set a timer, the goal was to complete the email lesson before the 90 minute timer went off. I agreed to try but I couldn’t help feeling like he was setting me up to fail.

The next morning, I did as he told me and something miraculous happened. I did it. I finished the lesson in 90 minutes. I was amazed, it felt like magic and I haven’t looked back since.

I later learned that this is a tool called time-blocking and I’ve been a convert ever since.

My time-blocking game has advanced over the decade since that first experience with it and I now follow the 52/17 rule.

This means using a timer, I spend 52 minutes working on a specific task followed by a 17 minute break.

When I am working I am 100% focused on the task at hand and if I feel tempted to do something else, like check my email or scroll on social media, I only need to look up at my timer and know that soon I’ll have a 17 minute break in which I can do anything I want.

When I’m lucky enough to get a whole day to work on things I’ll plan out my whole day like this using a time calculator. It’s a full day but with plenty of breaks.

And there you have it, 3 things I do to stop me falling apart when I have more work than I can possibly handle! Is there anything you would add to this list? Or anything on this list you would love to try, hot reply and let me know.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

The Most Important Business Decision I’ve Ever Made

The Most Important Business Decision I’ve Ever Made

by | Jan 21, 2025 | Business Growth

 “Every decision you make reflects your evaluation of who you are.”
~ Marianne Williamson

 

I want to share with you a personal story about a turning point decision I made in my business a decade ago now because it’s one of the most important decisions I think I’ve made.

I had worked for someone else my entire life. From the age of 12, I pretty much always had a job of sorts. From paper rounds, stacking shelves, call centres and cleaning jobs early on to a 12 year career in PR and Communications first and Project and Program Management later on. I was a good employee, I worked hard, I usually did more than was expected of me and I was always keen for the next promotion. I wanted to do well and I was motivated to work hard.

That is until I became completely disillusioned with my career in 2012.

At that time, I was working for one of the largest charities in the UK, in one of the most senior positions in my chosen speciality (programme management) and was earning more money than I ever had.

But I was miserable.

I hated the toxic working environment I was in. I felt like the work I did wasn’t having any real impact on the people we were supposed to be helping and to top it off, I had a gruelling 2 hour (each way) commute from Brighton to London. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to go to a job I loathed and I didn’t get home until after dark.

I spent my days watching the clock and my weeks counting down the days to Friday.

By early 2012, I’d had enough and knew that there had to be more to life than this. I quit my well-paid London job, sold everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand, armed with a backpack and a plan to build a coaching business while travelling the world.

It was an exciting time but my big dreams soon came up against reality.

Despite many years of experience of working in an organisation, I had zero experience of working for myself.

Despite being proud of my action-oriented nature and ability to get things done. I suddenly found myself procrastinating over every single aspect of getting my business off the ground.

Heading to the beach with my then best friend (now love of my life) or going to a local yoga class was far preferable to me than sitting down and working on my business.

So for 2 years I sort of coasted. I talked a lot about setting up my business, I did a lot of research about growing an online business and I waxed lyrical about my big business dreams, but the truth was I was stalling on taking any concrete action towards achieving them.

That is until a life and business coach reached out to offer me a gift coaching session and I jumped at the opportunity. He was a coach I’d been following for some time and for whom I had a lot of admiration.

I don’t remember the details of that session, but I do recall it was powerful enough for me to hire him for the next year (draining my savings and maxing out my credit card to do so!).

Around the same time (probably recommended by my coach), I read a book called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. If you haven’t read this small but powerful book, I highly recommend it.

Its content, combined with the support of my coach, helped me to finally make the decision to start taking my business seriously.

To, in effect, turn pro.

The book helped me to see how I was treating my business more like a hobby than an actual business. It showed me how I was selling myself short at every turn by behaving like an “amateur” (Pressfield’s word, not mine!) rather than a “pro”.

This booked pulled no punches.

And as a result. I decided that if I was going to make this thing work, I needed to take it as seriously as I had all of my previous jobs.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Allow me to share a little of what that looked like.

I stopped treating my business like something I could or even should do and started treating it like my job. My career. My livelihood.

That meant showing up on time, every working day and doing the work.

It meant doing the homework and taking the actions recommended to me by coach, even when those actions terrified me.

It meant switching my mindset from…”I’m not the kind of person who can…” to “I don’t know how to do that now but I’ll learn…”

It meant creating a professional working environment so I could show up powerfully for my clients, even while living off the grid, surrounded by swamp and jungle.

It meant making the work of making my business work my top priority.

For a year, Joan and I lived in paradise on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. We were housesitting an incredible property that sat on the edges of the Mexican jungle on a stunning beach, where just off the coast was the most incredible coral reef and the most perfect snorkelling spot.

I could easily have spent that year sunbathing and snorkelling but instead, having made the decision to turn pro, I spent a great deal of my time working on growing my Life Coaching business.

Do I regret not snorkelling or sunbathing more and working less? No, because the hard work I put in that year is what has allowed me to have the thriving business I have today.

The business that allows me to earn more than I did at the peak of my former career in London. The business that allows me to take long leisurely walks in nature before I sit down to my first session. The business that means I can take a long 2.5 lunch with my children in the middle of the working day and the business that allows me to set my own hours including taking the morning off if my kid isn’t feeling well and wants to stay home for cuddles with Mama.

Have I had to make sacrifices? Sure. Building the business I have today has required a lot of me. But I am so glad I made the decision to go for it. I’ve always been someone who hates the idea of feeling regret in later life. Now as I look back at that year in Mexico and all of the years that followed, I don’t regret the work I’ve put in to building my business, in fact I’m proud of it.

These days I regularly meet with business owners who seem to be struggling with the decision to really go for it with their business. There’s a lot of mindset issues, fears and self-doubt that come up but under those is a deep desire to have a business that can support them financially and fulfil them personally.

Most of the work I do is strategic but the mindset piece around the decision to really show up for your business has always fascinated me.

Over the years, I’ve analysed what it was about that book and the decision I made to turn pro that made it such a huge turning point for me and I’ve identified 5 key shifts I made.

1. I made the decision to turn pro (easier said than done!)
2. I examined and shifted my mindset around what was possible for me.
3. I became more aware of my habits and sought to cultivate habits that would lead to greater business success.
4. I made sure that my working environment (physically and digitally) was set up for success, and
5. I put in place solid systems and processes.

Together these 5 shifts, took the struggle out of business building and helped me to regain control of my days as a solopreneur.

And now I’m curious, can you relate? Have you made the decision to turn pro or does reading what I’ve shared here make you realise that you haven’t?

Get My Turning Pro Training

Given how important the decision to turn pro has been on my own business journey, last year I created a workshop that walks you through how to make these 5 key shifts to turn pro in your business.

This 3 hour training will give you a thorough understanding of what it means to show up powerfully in your business plus practical tools you can implement in your business to feel more in control of the backend of your business.

LEARN MORE

10 Website Mistakes That Might Be Impacting Sales

10 Website Mistakes That Might Be Impacting Sales

by | Nov 26, 2024 | Selling

 

 

“If you think math is hard, try web design.”
~ Trish Parr

You thought having a website would lead to sales but the truth is, it’s not. In this piece I share common website mistakes I see business owners making time and time again when it comes to selling their products and services online. Many of which are fairly easy to fix.

Normally, when meeting with new clients, I suggest that website won’t be one of our priorities. I think it’s all too easy to get bogged down by trying to get your website perfect, when it’s actually much more important to be out there having conversations with people and building relationships.

That said, there are instances where a website IS a problem that needs fixing and in today’s letter I want to share with you 10 mistakes I see many business owners making, that could be impacting your sales.

1. No clear problem that you solve (aka niche)

 

When we land on a service provider’s website, we’re usually looking for help with a specific problem or struggle we have. If we don’t see any copy that speaks to that problem, we’re unlikely to stick around or consider engaging in the services provided.

Let me put this into context for you. As a parent to a 4 year old who struggles with big emotions, I’ve researched parenting coaches and courses a ton. If upon landing on a website I don’t see anything that relates to my particular issue, I’ll probably leave pretty quickly.

On the other hand when I came across a parenting coach who talks a lot about “Deeply Feeling Kids” and offers specific resources and services for parents of children like that, I was all over it. I joined her list, I signed up to her membership and I bought her book. I just knew she was the parenting expert who could help me.

Many of the business owners I work with struggle to narrow down to just one problem and that’s fine. You can list out a number of problems you offer support with but you must be clear and specific about which problems your services best help with so that people know you can help them when they land on your website.

2. Broken links

I see this all the time. It’s not uncommon for me to be reviewing a new client’s website and find links that don’t work and important links to boot. Links to book a consult call or to connect, links that could and would potentially lead to a sale.

And I get it, I remember speaking to the largest audience of my business journey a few years ago and wondering why, after I got so many messages and great feedback, that my subscriber count didn’t seem to go up at all. Months later, I realised that my newsletter sign up link was broken!

So it happens AND it’s so important to check regularly that any links that people might click to buy from you, connect with you or stay in touch with you aren’t broken.

3. No clear CTA or sales page

I remember being surprised the first time I saw this and have since seen it several times. This is where people might have something like a services or coaching page that explains what they do but it doesn’t have any call to action (CTA) on it. So there is nothing to tell people what to do next if they are interested, nothing, for example that says, “buy now”, or “get in touch” or “book a call”. Leaving people to wonder or guess what they should do next.

Worse yet I’ve seen many people showcase their offerings with just a few lines of description. No sales page explaining who the service is for, what it might help with and what to expect. Just a brief description and on top of that no CTA.

Let me tell you now, most people won’t spend money on something that they don’t know enough about or that they have to go searching for a way to actually buy or pay. If you are selling a service to your customers, I would recommend you have a sales page with a clear call to action at the bottom of it.

4. Too many offerings

I typically work with multi-talented and highly trained individuals who work with a multitude of modalities and thus offer a wide range of services. The problem is people aren’t usually searching for a modality, what they want to know is whether or not you can help them to solve their specific problem.

If you have too many different services, each relating to a different modality, there’s a good chance that people will find and leave your website feeling confused. When we’re not sure which route to take, we typically don’t take any. So if you are offering people too many options to work with you, without clarity on why you would use one service over another, you will inevitably miss out on sales.

Usually when I’m working with a client in this situation, I’ll ask them 2 questions, which of your services do people rarely or never book? And which of your services do you NOT love delivering? If there are any services that fall into either category, I recommend they remove them from their website or at the very least from their top-level menu. This way when people land on your site they are presented with only your most popular services and those which you actually enjoy delivering.

Another recommendation I give is that when you have multiple services, do what you can to explain why a person would choose one over the other by making it clear who the service is for. Ethical Copywriter. Lauren Van Mullem does a great job of this on her services page.

5. No stepping stone — freebie or low cost offer

A good business model will offer buyers a journey from not knowing you to buying from you and from buying a low cost offer to purchasing a more premium offering. So, if for example, you are a coach who only offers high priced coaching packages, you are expecting customers to skip a necessary part of the journey — getting to know you better.

Giving people a free or low-cost way to get to know you better allows people to take steps along the journey to buying from you that don’t feel like a huge leap of faith.

My recommendation is that you have, prominently displayed, on your website a freebie (ideally a generous freebie) and/or a low cost (less than $50) product people can buy to better know how you operate. If you can wow people with your freebie or low cost offer, you’re much more likely to see those people come back for your higher priced products and services.

6. No way to “meet” you before they buy

If the services you offer include spending significant time with your clients, I believe it’s essential that you allow people the opportunity to “meet” you before they buy. I remember years ago wanting to hire a practitioner and the minimum spend was significant. What I really wanted to do was meet her so I could be sure she was the right practitioner for me but as this wasn’t an option, I decided against hiring her.

I can’t tell you how many times people have told me that they were 95% certain that they wanted to buy from me but the decision was made 100%, as soon as they spoke to me.

There are a few ways you can do this. You can offer a call (for me this is done on Zoom) on your sales page. You might have noticed that aside from low cost offers like my workshops, I rarely have a “buy now” button on my sales page. It’s much more likely to be an application form (which is followed by a call) or a link to book a call directly.

If you don’t want to offer calls to everyone who might be considering your individual offerings, then find another way for people to “meet” you before they buy. My colleague Lauren, offers craft and copy hour, where you can bring a craft to work on and any questions you have about copy to a group video call. Or another client who is an incredible book coach who offers free Q+A calls for people who are working on a book. Doing a group freebie like this allows you to meet several people at once.

7. No blog or an out of date one

This is, in my opinion, a biggie! Since getting serious about my blog circa 2019, I regularly have people finding me through Google searches, who then end up buying from me or enrolling on to one of my services. It’s important to note that this happens without me having spent a ton of time on SEO, rather just creating high value content that answers the questions that my ideal clients have and are searching for.

If you don’t yet post new and useful content on your website on a regular basis, I’d recommend starting there. People often think that the sales page is the most important copy on your website but people regularly tell me they are ready to sign up to 1:1 with me, because of all the content they’ve read on my blog and how sold they already are on my approach. Posting regular blogs allows me to share my most up to date thinking on business growth and share details about my approach, my best advice and my point of view.

8. No pictures of you

They say a picture tells a thousand words and never is this more true than on a website offering 1:1 or group services.

If people are going to spend money working with you (as opposed to just buying a product) then they will want to know what you look like. Having pictures of you on. at least. your homepage and about page works wonders for cultivating a sense of trust and safety for your website browsers and potential clients.

And for the record, it doesn’t have to be photos from a professional photoshoot, all the photos on my website were taken by friends or family and it shows!

9. An unclear message or lack of Point of View

This is probably one of the hardest to get right because it requires us to possess that clarity in the first place. If you do have clarity on your message or you do have a strong point of view about your work or industry, then do what you can to make sure your copy reflects that.

If you don’t yet possess that clarity, then my recommendation to clients is to explore your message and point of view through your content. People often think that in order to create meaningful content that they have to already be clear on their message or point of view but in my own personal experience, it wasn’t until I got consistent with content that my message became crystal clear.

10. Bad design

This is last on the list for a reason. I think many people get tripped up by this one, thinking that they’ll never be successful unless they spend 10K on fancy website design. That’s simply not true. These days with templates, it’s pretty easy to DIY a relatively good-looking website. Having said that, if your website is really out of date and badly organised or designed, it will inevitably have a detrimental impact on sales.

If in doubt go for minimalist, clean, with lots of white space. You’ll also want to avoid large chunks of text without paragraph breaks or subtitles to break it up. It’s human nature to give up when we see a large amount of text with no breaks in it so break down your copy into smaller chunks!

And that’s it, are you making any of the mistakes on this list? Can you fix them? I’d love to know, so if you feel called to share, hit reply and let me know.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Is This Stopping You From Taking Action?

Is This Stopping You From Taking Action?

by | Oct 13, 2024 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“Being detached allows us to stay balanced and free from the anxieties that arise from success or failure.”
~ Pundarika Vidyanidhi Das

 

I want to talk to you about something that comes up in my client calls all the time. The struggle to take action on important business activities. In today’s letter, I’d like to share one reason that I think that might be.

Take a moment now to bring to mind something that you want to do in your business but that, for whatever reason, you struggle to take action on.

It could be getting your content marketing up and running, launching a new product or service, reaching out to someone who you know could be a great collaborator or any other thing that you know will move your business forward, but, for whatever reason, you’re stalling on.

Now ask yourself this?

 

What outcome are you attached to?

Is it that the content you write is well received and impactful? Is that your launch goes really well and you get a certain number of sign-ups? Is it that the person you reach out responds enthusiastically?

Now take that outcome and consider the fear behind it.

Is it that people won’t like your content or that they’ll criticize it? Is it that no one will buy your new offering and it will look like you don’t know what you’re doing? Is it that you won’t get a response from the person you reach out to and worse still, they’ll be annoyed that you did?

Can you relate? Do you have these sorts of thoughts running through your head? Perhaps you’re conscious of them or maybe this is the first time you’re giving them attention.

The key is that many of us become attached to a certain outcome and the fear of not getting the outcome we desire then gets in the way of taking action.

I get it, I used to do this all the time and I can still fall into this same trap but I want to share something that really helped me.

Years ago, when Joan and I left our home in Mexico (where we’d been housesitting for a year) and moved to Valencia, Spain, we were both excitedly working on our businesses. Joan had, since meeting me, really got into personal growth and was keen to start his own coaching business.

In typical Joan style, he dived right in and decided to run an in-person workshop on stress. He found a venue, found a partner to help him promote it and set a date. On the morning of his workshop, I couldn’t believe how calm he was. “Aren’t you worried that nobody will show up?” I asked him. Well aware that if it were my workshop, that would be my greatest fear.

“Not at all” he replied and went on to explain that his only goal was to become a person who had run a workshop on stress in Valencia. Essentially, to have gone through the process of finding a venue, getting all the equipment, marketing the event, creating his slides, delivering the workshop and gaining all the knowledge that doing so would bring. “I’ll do the workshop even if nobody shows up.” he said with a smile.

I’m not going to lie, I was stunned by this and being who I am, I wanted to understand how he could be so calm, when I might be a nervous wreck. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that my stress in similar situations came from my attachment to a certain outcome. I realised that whenever I wanted to try something new in my business, I wanted to be sure that I would succeed and my fear of failure was often enough to stop me even trying.

Since then (that was 9 years ago!), I’ve largely got over this habit of getting attached to outcome. I’m much better at spotting the desire for success and feeling the fear of failure and going for it anyway. Knowing that who I will be on the other side of just doing the thing will give me more knowledge, confidence and true feeling of accomplishment (regardless of the results).

When we start to do things for the sake of doing them, rather than as a means to an end, we get to enjoy them a whole lot more.

Let’s go back to my earlier examples.

What if, instead of attaching to the outcome of people like our content, we created content because we enjoyed the process of creating? What if, Instead of worrying about what people might say, we focused on expressing our ideas and point of view through content, knowing that over time our content marketing skills would improve?

What if, instead of obsessing over how many people might sign up to our new thing or not, we focused on the skills we’ll deepen as we lean into launching and selling our gifts. One of the things I always tell myself when I’m launching is that nobody knows if it fails. I don’t have to announce that I didn’t get any sign ups and my efforts will likely have got some people ready to buy next time.

What if, instead of not reaching out to people for fear of rejection, we told ourselves that rejection is an inevitable part of the journey. Some of the greatest success stories in life have come about after countless rejections. I’m currently starting the Harry Potter series with my son and so it feels apt to share how the first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before an obscure literary agent took it on.

The truth is, if we adopt an attitude of play, experimentation and exploration in our work, we enjoy it a whole lot more and actually achieve success all the much faster.

Another truth is that while we’re worried about what other people will think, they’re not actually watching us and waiting for us to trip or fail because they are too busy worrying about their own potential missteps.

And let’s just say for argument’s sake, that we do fail spectacularly. What’s the worst that can happen? If you publish that piece and no one comments or someone writes something rude? In a few days you’ll have forgotten all about it — trust me I’ve been there. Or if you try and launch a new offer and no one buys, who is even going to notice?

The worst that can happen in my opinion letting our hopes and fears about what might happen stop us from even trying. So please, ditch your attachment to outcome and consider what might be possible, if you just did the thing for the sake of doing the thing.

Care to share with me the one thing you’ve been procrastinating about moving forward with? I’d love to know so feel free to hit reply and let me know.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Five Things To Include In Your Next Launch

Five Things To Include In Your Next Launch

by | Oct 9, 2024 | Selling, Uncategorized

“The future depends on what you do today.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

I want to share with you my 5 of my favourite launch activities, just in case you are planning a Fall/Autumn launch.

With launch season (as I call it) coming up, now is the time to be thinking about our launch plans if we are thinking of launching something in September or October. It can be tempting to leave it until the other side of summer but getting into planning mode now will make for much better launch results.

I teach a whole course on launching, which includes several activities I recommend you take when launching a new product or service but in this piece, I’m simply going to share with you my top 5 activities you can include in any launch to make it more successful.

Let’s dive in.

1. Conduct audience research

This one sometimes gets a few groans. Many people resist doing the research before getting too deep into launch mode because they either see it as a waste of time (because they believe they already know what people think) or they worry that the people will tell them things that they don’t want to act on.

The reality is that audience research is foundational to the success of any new offering. Conducting audience research in the form of calls early on in the launch process (aka the pre-launch phase), is a great way to do the following:

  • Test your idea to see if it’s really what people need and want. They might need something and not necessarily want it and therefore won’t pay for it.
  • Get the exact language your audience is using to describe their struggle or challenge. This is great for copy and sales pages.
  • Let your audience know what you are creating before you even begin asking for the sale.
  • Let’s your audience know you care about what they think and value their input into your creative process. This is great for building stronger relationships.

Check out the bottom of this piece for an example of how to invite people into research calls.

2. Use takeover graphics

When we’re in launch mode, it’s easy to think that we should be posting about our new offering all the time and yet as conscious business owners we don’t want to do that, because we don’t want to bombard our people.

My solution to this is to use takeover graphics on social media. What that means is changing the cover photo for my Facebook Business Page and Facebook groups that promote my offer with a link in the description to my sales page.

This is also possible on LinkedIn and for platforms that don’t use a cover photo, like Instagram, I simply change my bio so that it let’s people know I am launching something and links to the sales page. What this means is anyone visiting your channel can immediately see that you are launching something, without you needing to post that fact EVERY day!

See below for an example of my last takeover graphic on my Business Facebook Page.

3. Launch partners

This is one of my favourite launch strategies and probably the one that gets most overlooked. Whenever I start planning a launch, I think of a few colleagues, clients or mentors who I think might be willing to share about my new offer with their audience.

I then reach out to them, as early in the process as possible, to ask if they would be willing to support my launch by sharing details with their people. I do this early to give them time to plan it in and so that I can approach other people if they say no. I’m fortunate to have created some great relationships both with colleagues and former clients and in part I think this is because of my generosity in sharing about their offerings.

Having a small group of people supporting your launch can be the difference in a handful of people hearing about it and several hundred or even several thousand people.

4. 1:1 invitations

When we’re launching something new, it’s easy to become focused on our one to many marketing. Social media posts, newsletters etc. What I’ve found to be especially effective is actually taking the time to send personal and thoughtful 1:1 invitations to people who you would personally love to be involved (if it’s a live program, for example) or who you think might really benefit from your new offer.

We tend to think this will come across as pushy or salesy but when done with an attitude of service, with zero attachment to outcome it can actually feel like a compliment by the recipient.

Before I even get into launch mode, I like to think of 10 people would love to have in my workshop/program or who I think would benefit greatly from my new offering and if they haven’t bought as we get near to the end of the launch period, I might drop them a brief note to let them know that I’m offering something I think they’d be a great fit for. No pressure of course! I also never send any links and prefer to say something along the lines of: if you’d like to know more, let me know and I’ll send over details.

5. Final Call communications

I’ve been launching stuff online for a decade now and one thing I’ve learned is that people like to leave their buying decision until the last minute. I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve had a launch, only to get a flurry of sales on the first announcement and then nothing for the rest of the launch period and then another flurry of sales when I make the final call.

It can be tempting to think that if people have stopped buying/signing up that we’ve made all the sales that we’re going to make but sending a reminder to people that the deadline for purchase is approaching (if there is a deadline!) is often all it takes to have people make a decision. I would say that in most of my launches, an equal number of people sign up at the end as they do at the beginning.

Now gently reminding people is different to many of the FOMO inducing tactics we see online like countdown timers and messages like “last chance” and “don’t miss out!” Instead I prefer to send an email titled “Last call to sign up for xxxx” and I’ll also do some last call posts on social. That way hopefully those people who were considering buying but hadn’t yet decided get the opportunity to buy before the deadline passes.

And there you have it 5 of my favourite launch activities.

As I mentioned there are many other launch activities just like these that I cover in my 4 part training series but I hope that these 5 will at least give you some ideas to be getting on with. Hit the button below to access the sales page.

BUY LOVING LAUNCHES

That’s it for today, other than to let you know that you can comment and let me know if you have any questions about what I’ve shared in this piece.