Failed launch? Read this.

How I overcame a "failed" launch... ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   Most times when entrepreneurs wrap up their launches, they focus a lot on recapping their success. While sharing successes are amazing, the main reason why I created the Content Creator to CEO Newsletter is to also share failures. But more than that - specifically how to overcome failure. This past week, we enrolled 175 incredible new students in our program The BOSSGRAM Academy. Every time we enroll new students to our program, it is always a celebration and a moment where I am at my fullest capacity when it comes to gratitude. At the same time, public marketing campaigns such as live launches can also be one of the most stressful times for any entrepreneur, especially when launches don't go as planned. That’s why in today’s email I wanted to provide 3 lessons I learned during launch period, specifically when I saw things not going as planned. By the way, If you are curious to learn more about the behind the scenes of launches, stay subscribed as next week I aim to share a full recap of our launch and my learning lessons from Q1. For now, let me breakdown high level the top 3 lessons that helped me during my launch period, especially when I was seeing lack of results. Duun dunn dunn!!  🌱 Lesson #1: Your product is not your entire business. The first week of our launch was not going the way our team expected to. Our webinars were valuable, but conversion rates were lower than we anticipated, and enrollments overall in the first week were slow, with some days having zero enrollments. What was most scary is that for this launch specifically, I had invested the most money I had ever invested before: Hiring copywriters, graphic designers, project managers, consultants, ad spend, fancy webinar software, and more. So naturally when the results of the first week were not going as planned, I started to panic. So much so that I actually hopped on a SOS call with my friend, George Bryant, crying my eyes out saying things like: "I ruined my business!" "I'm going to go bankrupt!" "It's over for me!" Has this ever happened to you? Often times when a specific launch or product doesn't go well, we immediately tie it to our entire business not doing well. This is when George calmed me down and said: "BGA is not your business. You could poll your audience today, ask what they want from you, email your list, offer it, and I guarantee you'll make sales." Here's what I learned in that interaction: >> A failed launch doesn't take away from the brand you've built. If you've built a relationship with your audience, you could continue to launch new things and people will still buy. You could literally poll your audience today and ask what you could create that people would be willing to pay you for, and offer exactly that. Sometimes we get tunnel vision and think that the ONLY source of revenue comes from the one product we've decided to sell, without realizing that it's possible to always offer other things (even if temporary) to earn the income we need to make. Remember: There is always a way to make additional revenue. You just need to ask what people want. >> Selling your offers contribute to making revenue in your business, but a single offer does not define your business. We often think that if we don't hit our goals for the products or services we sell, it automatically means that our business is over and that we have zero control of the outcome. The truth is, you DO have control of the outcome. You can modify your offer, launch a new offer, or even re-launch the same offer at a different time when your audience is more warmed up. For example, just because an Ice Cream store owner launches a new flavour of ice cream and it doesn't sell the way he expected, doesn't mean that his entire business is automatically going to go bust. He can decide to sell the same flavour with better marketing initiatives, swap it for another flavour, or improving the taste by mixing additional ingredients. Bottom line: You have more control than you think. 🌱 Lesson #2: Aim for 1% improvements. Have you ever felt like you wanted to rip out your entire business and redo the whole damn thing? I have. Specifically, during the launch when we found the first 2 webinars we did were not converting as anticipated, I wanted to delete everything and rebuild it from scratch. But again - thanks to my friend George for knocking some sense into me, he reminded me that most times it's a 1% improvement that can yield the biggest results. And he was right. Instead of re-doing the whole webinar, I instead made the following changes, that helped us go from 10% conversion to 30% conversion (3x improvement!): - Removed some content: I was teaching too much on the trainings, which led to overwhelm. This was data we collected based on the chat box in the training where attendees mentioned that I was going too fast. So I removed some teaching components and simplified things further so I could slow down. This meant deleting a few slides, not adding more. - Emphasize the Payment Plan: During the portion of the training where we introduce the investment level BGA, we mostly led with our pay in full (PIF) option to emphasize how the PIF plan was the best value. We observed that some people would say that the offer was "too expensive", so for our remaining webinars, we decided to heavily emphasize our 10 month payment plan option, while also providing more testimonial examples of our clients making their money back on the program. These two changes took me less than 30 minutes to make, and gave us 3x better results. Learning lesson? It's tempting to want to rip everything apart and start over again, especially when you're in panic mode. But often times, all you really need to do is sit down, look at the data, and A/B test like a mad scientist to see what changes actually yield to better results. 🌱 Lesson #3: Visualize the impact you make. When running an online business, it's easy to forget the impact you make because you can't visually see the people that you touch. Followers and clients often feel like just numbers, and when we "only" have 3 clients or 50 followers, it can feel insignificant because we are conditioned to think that having hundreds of clients or thousands of followers is when we've truly "made it". If you have 25 followers, you've filled up an entire classroom. 100? A theatre. 1000? A large conference. 10000? A concert. What helped me during my launch was putting each of our newest enrollees onto sticky notes, like so: Each time I put a student's name on my wall, I sent a blessing their way and visualized what success would look like for them in the BGA program. I also spent many moments starting at my large wall of stickies, feeling grateful that each of these people had consciously decided that I would be the right mentor for them. It was a humbling experience to say the least. So the next time you feel discouraged about how many views, followers, or clients you get - remember that the work you do matters. Find ways to visualize your impact. And most importantly, don't let large social media numbers rob you of your gratitude. {NAME}, I hope you enjoyed this week's email where I outlined the 3 lessons that helped me overcome one of the hardest moments during my launch. My goal is to normalize "failure" at any level, and to also remind you that being a Creator and CEO is not always sunshine and rainbows - but the journey is well worth it if you are able to take a step back and enjoy the ride. Again, I am still processing a lot that has happened in the last 3 months, while still recovering from post-launch burnout - however I am extremely excited to share a full recap of Q1 in next week's email ❤️️ I hope that this email provided a nice teaser of the lessons to come! That said, if you enjoyed this email, please screenshot your favourite "a-ha!" moment and share it on your stories. Just don't forget to tag me @vanessalau.co on Instagram ☺️. And if you just so happen to be a new student of mine, I am so grateful and excited to have you inside BGA! With gratitude, Vanessa Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor   [Click here]( to unsubscribe if you do not want to receive further emails about the 'Confessions of a Content Creator to CEO' newsletter  Sent to: {EMAIL} [Unsubscribe]( Vanessa Lau International Inc., PO BOX 27371 Garden City PO, Richmond, British Columbia V6Y0E9, Canada