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What if launching a new product or service in your business could be an enjoyable, stress-free experience? In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on how I approach launching in my business and get ready — because we’re making it fun, simple, enjoyable AND stress free! We’re going to break down how to create launch plans for your current & new offers — and we’re diving into how to sell from the heart to make the process feel more fulfilling & enjoyable.

Imagine if you had the confidence to trust yourself during the launch process without following a rigid strategy? We’re delving into the importance of creating authenticity in your launches and I’m sharing lots of practical tips to help your products/services make a grand debut in your business. 

I can’t wait for you to dive in and share your takeaways! 🎉

IN THIS EPISODE, WE’RE TALKING THROUGH:

– How to launch authentically (from the heart)
– How to break the cycle of *excitement and creation* turning into *hesitation and procrastination*
– How to simplify your launch process (AND how to think about launching services you already offer)
– Making it FUN by taking yourself on a work retreat

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• The challenge information
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READ THE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hey there and welcome to the she Calls Her Shots podcast. Every week, we chat through different business building topics that will help you gain clarity around your goals, find inspiration in your journey and also help you create a life and a business that you love. My name is Krista and I’m a wedding and brand photographer and you’re a go-to, no fluff business coach. In these episodes, we talk through both the tactical strategies, habits and the mindset work that will help you take those really big leaps, and we always focus on the real talk and the behind the scenes of what it takes to create a sustainable and a thriving business, because, let’s be honest, the work isn’t always glamorous, but it’s always worth it. So, girlfriend, let’s make some moves and start calling our own shots. Hello, hello, friend, and welcome back to the she Calls Her Shots podcast. In this episode today, I really wanted to just break down how I’m going about planning my next launch, and the reason specifically that I want to talk about this is because, whether you are selling a service, like as a coach, if you are providing coaching services, if you’re a photographer providing photography services, there are some tangible things that you’re selling there and you might be selling albums or products or prints, but as service providers, we often launch things pretty regularly in our business. So if you’re a coach, you might be creating a new program or a new offer. If you’re a photographer, you might be launching family mini sessions, holiday minis, senior sessions, engagement sessions, right Like? We have these things that we start to offer and launch in our business, and so we’re launching pretty regularly. And what I found myself included is that sometimes we overcomplicate the launch process, and I’ve also seen this particularly with business owners that I’ve worked with who maybe are launching a new website or want to boost up getting more clients, so they want to host a giveaway or launch something really fun to get more visibility and find more ideal clients. And the launch process can be something that we can so quickly and easily overcomplicate to where we end up feeling so stuck that we either don’t really launch at all and then are disappointed with the results that we get whether we didn’t get as many clients we wanted, or we didn’t sell as many service or offers as we wanted or we can overcomplicate the launch process so much that we put all of our time and energy into launching this new service or offer and by the end of the launch process. We are completely burned out, like not even able to provide the best services to our clients, because we are so burned out from our launch process, and so this is something that I have.

I’ve launched many a times in my business, and so my launch process has very much changed over the years, and I wanted to have this conversation today because I want to let you in behind the scenes on what this next launch is looking like for me, how I’m approaching it and how I’m making it really fun, like I’m making it something that is actually enjoyable. And the reason behind wanting to share this is because my hope is that I can encourage you that in your next launch, and I want you to think out of the box about, like, what does launching mean to you? What are you launching in your business? Are you offering seasonal sessions? Are you offering a brand new package coming up soon? Are you launching a new website? Are you thinking of hosting a giveaway? As I’m recording this, we’re in November of 2023. So maybe you’re thinking of hosting a New Year’s giveaway or end of the year giveaway, right, like thinking about the things that you have coming up in your business, and I want to encourage you let’s make this launch process feel really fun and easy, so that it’s something that you feel excited about doing over and over again. Because here’s the honest truth the more fun that you can make launching, the more success you’re going to see in your business.

Why is that? Well, when we can get really creative about launching services and products, even if they’re services we’ve launched before, this could be something we launch every single year or seasonally right. But when we can think about, even for engagement and wedding photographers, there’s so much creativity that you can have here, right. Thinking about what are my couples looking for in different seasons? Right? So maybe during the holidays, there’s something that you can launch that’s like a proposal idea guide right. You can launch something for your ideal clients if they are thinking about proposing or if they think they’re going to get proposed too. You can launch an entire whether it’s a blog post or a video or some sort of product, service, tangible item that you could launch as just a fun little freebie for your clients that they can share with their partners If they’re, you know, like just thinking outside of the box of how can I make launching something that occurs regularly in my business? What service am I providing and how can I get really creative about making it fun, about making selling fun, and we’re going to talk about this a little bit in the episode. But I actually had a recent episode episode 119 that talks all about selling naturally, and the whole purpose behind that episode is making it really natural, talking about your services and offers.

Some of us feel so stuck when we think about selling. We think about it just feels icky, right like I don’t want to Show up online and just tell people that they should buy from me, right like that’s how a lot of us think about sales. And in that episode, in episode one nineteen, I really break down how you can sell from the heart. I know this about you. If you are listening in, I can. I just I’m picturing us right now. I have my little Ice coffee here next to me in my little three broomsticks glass little mug Harry Potter. I’m just picturing you and I sitting across from each other drinking coffee, and this is something that I know to be true about you you are a heartfelt business owner. You you’re at your core.

Your deepest desire is to provide services for your clients, because this is something that you are passionate about you, love serving, you, love what you do, and so in that episode, episode one nineteen I really dive deep into how can you take that heartfelt business side of you and bring it to your selling, bring it to how you’re inviting people into your offer, bring it into how you’re naturally talking about your services and the things you provide on a day to day basis. But coming back to launching, right like when we can learn how to sell naturally, how to talk about our business authentically, how to naturally talk about our products, it becomes so fun to then think about how can I play with launching now, right now that I don’t feel icky about, about quote unquote selling or trying to get people to buy for me, now that that you know weird feeling is gone and I feel super excited to invite people into my offers and services, how can I now play with this and have fun and launch regularly to Get more visibility, to get more people to find me and to reach out about my services? So, all that to say, I’m gonna dive into some some quick tips today on what I’m doing to prep for my next launch, how I’m making it super simple and yeah, I’m just. I’m really hoping that you can take these and translate them into your business and figuring out how you can make this work for you. And, as a quick side note, as I am recording and airing this episode as you’re listening in, if you’re listening live I have a few launches, spoiler alert, I have a few lunches coming up and so, first and foremost, my new website is gonna be going live, as I’m airing this, in the next couple of weeks. I’m so, so excited.

This is the first time that I have actually hired people to help me, both on the copy side and on the design side. I’ve been in business for over 10 years and everybody is on their own timeline, right. I for a while thought that I was behind and I should have done this a long time ago, but I have, as I’ve leaned into this process of hiring others to help me with this. I have just really Just leaned into the fact that I can feel that this is all in the right timing, right. So this is my little encouragement for you whether you have a website that you built yourself, or whether you’re investing in your, in your, in your first team to help you build it, just know that you are right in your own time but I have the new website launching. I have some new coaching offers launching. My new any a gram coaching offer is launching. I actually did a soft launch. For those that have reached out to me with interest, I did a soft launch this week and invited them into my any gram coaching offer. I’m so excited about this. Basically, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you might have heard me kind of hint about this, but I’ve gone through my any gram certification program and I’m kind of wrapping up with the final weeks of certification and then a grant. The any of them has been such a transformational tool for me To learn how to lean into my unique superpowers as a business owner.

If you’re familiar with the any a gram it is, you can think of it as a personality assessment. There’s a bunch out there. You might have heard of the Myers-Briggs personality like INFJ, nft things, all the letters and the letters, all the letters and acronyms and similar kind of similar realm to that. The thing that I love about the any a gram is that Other personality tests really talk about your behaviors, right, so they really kind of nail down are you an introvert, are you a extrovert, are you you know, whatever I forget the other acronyms, what they stand for, but they really just dive deep into your behaviors and how you behave as a person.

The Enneagram really dives deep into your motivations.

What are your core motivations as a person? And the thing that I love about that is that, as people, we are driven by our motivations. Our actions and the way that we show up in the world are driven by the things that we’re motivated by, and that’s going to be so unique to all of us, and so it really helps you get to your core of what is it that I’m chasing after? What is it that’s so important to me? How can I live this life that feels so authentically true to who I want to be and how I want to show up? And that’s what the Enneagram has done for me, and so now I am bringing that to clients and I’m so excited it’s going to be this beautiful blend of Enneagram self growth development. So, with my clients doing the coaching aspect, of helping them learn more about themselves, practice more self love, learn more what their gifts are, their strengths, their superpowers, identify their motivations and their core desires and then translate that into how they can use those to grow a sustainable and thriving business. So it’s going to be this beautiful blend of coaching and business building and I can just feel how much I’m going to be pouring into my clients and it makes me so excited. So that’s kind of the big launch that’s going to be coming up, and so, as I’ve been prepping for that, I will be honest with you, I found myself dragging my feet a little bit.

And the first thing I want to talk about here is, as we are thinking about launching something in our business, I’ve found there to be a cycle, and it’s this cycle of in the very, very beginning, when we think of launching something right, whether it’s a new product, a new offer, a new service, whatever it might be, there’s all of this initial excitement, right, because we just had this beautiful idea. We can already imagine how it’s going to come to life. We have all of these ideas of how we can implement it and we start getting to work in the creation phase and we’re just living and breathing off of this excitement. This is usually the phase where we’re staying up late, we’re waking up early, we’re just really in the work and we’re doing the things because we’re just so excited about this new thing that we want to offer. And so there’s that part of the cycle, and then the second part of the cycle is where we’ve done all the work, we kind of have some ideas in place of how we want it to look, and we move from the excitement and creation phase and we turn into this hesitation and procrastination phase. And I found that usually this happens because now it’s ready for us to actually, like, take action. Right, we’ve done all the behind the scenes work. We’ve started to form the thing right. We’ve already created our mini sessions. We’ve already created the sales pages, we already know the locations of where we’re shooting. We have created this new package that we want to offer clients. We’ve come up with our pricing, we’ve figured out the details right, like, we’ve done all of the work and now it’s time to actually take inspired action and invite people into it.

Because here’s the thing I’m learning time and time again as a business owner it requires so much trust, self-trust and just being able to live into the dreams that we have for ourselves. How easy is it I’m like I’m like raising my hand here because I’ve done this so many times how easy is it to dream into these big, big ideas, these big visions that we have for ourselves and then, as soon as we start to really feel ourselves dreaming into it, it feels like reality hits All of a sudden. These questions, these doubts, these fears but what if this? What if no one buys? What if I don’t price it correctly? What if I look like a failure? What if I make a mistake? What if, what if? What if? What if? All of these what ifs start coming up.

And I feel like the what ifs are really the basis of this hesitation and procrastination phase, because we have taken all of our energy and excitement into building this incredible thing. We’ve poured our hearts into creating a new offer, product, service, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, now all of our energy is shifted into this self-doubt, this what if? Energy. And I want to just bring light to this. First of all, because this does not go away.

As a business owner, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been launching things. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business. I will say that the more times that you launch and the more times that you practice having this self-trust, the easier it gets to shift out of this hesitation, procrastination, what if phase. It does happen quicker, but it never truly goes away. And so I want to just normalize this for everybody right now is that if you are feeling like things just are at a standstill, you have these ideas and these thoughts and these things that you want to dream into life, but you’re just feeling stuck in the I don’t want to do it wrong, or I don’t want to fail, so I’m not going to do it at all or the procrastination phase I am going to launch this but I’m going to keep putting things off, and then I’m just going to launch it at the last minute and just not really put a lot of energy into it. Right, like no matter how this looks for you right now, I want to just normalize this and again, we’re kind of going to dive into how to shift from this energy, because it’s usually this this is the core energy that I find behind launching excitement and creation and then leading to the hesitation and the procrastination. And the first thing I really want to make sure that we cover is let’s stop overcomplicating launching. And I’ll tell you a little bit of a story.

When I worked with my first business coach actually I think this was probably two years ago and I was in the middle of launching a new offer, something I had never done before, and I had poured a lot of time, energy, money into creating this and so I really had it in my head that I needed to launch it correctly right, because I had never launched this before. This is brand new. And so I worked with her to create a launch plan, and, let me tell you, it was the most detail oriented Google doc I have probably ever created, and I can also tell you that I had everything covered. I knew exactly how I was going to be sharing. I knew exactly the content. I knew what podcast episodes were going to come out as I was launching. I knew exactly how long the cart would be open for. I knew the emails I was going to be sending out to my community.

I mean, I spent a few solid weeks creating the most beautiful launch plan, and I can also tell you that by the end of the launch period number one, I was so burned out by the time I actually launched the new offer. I was exhausted. I had spent so much time and energy pouring into how to launch it that I forgot to actually enjoy the process. I forgot to let myself enjoy actually showing up and just being myself. Everything was so strategic. Every time I showed up on Instagram or in my stories, there was a strategy behind it, and that got so exhausting. And I can also tell you that the launch did not do as well as I wanted it to. It felt like a total flop, if I’m being completely honest, and so that didn’t help with my energy levels. But all of this to say, over the years, what I’ve learned.

So many of us search for strategy. We think that if we have a strategy that it’s just going to make everything better, we’ll know what we’re doing, we’ll feel confident, people will feel the confidence. We just have. This idea that that’s what we need, and I’m here to share with you from my heart is that oftentimes that’s not really how it works, and what I’ve learned is that when I can make launching feel so natural and authentic to me, when I can uncomplicate it, remove so much of the strategy that I thought that I needed, when I can detach myself from that strategy, I show up in a way that’s not only more authentic. People can feel the authenticity on the other side of the screen. Whether it’s Instagram, the podcast, it doesn’t matter. This podcast is a perfect example.

I’m not going deep into crazy strategy of all of these lists of things that you need to do. I have my intention for today. My intention for today is just get behind the scenes and share the real. Real, the heart behind it, the heart behind launching, how you can support yourself as a person, show up super authentically in a way that feels good for you and have that be your strategy. Let that be the thing that leads you. Yes, there are some things I’m going to talk about in a minute, actual tactical things that you want to do, but really it’s. How can I take this idea that I have that tells me that everything needs to be super strategic? How can I push pause on that idea and instead lean in and trust myself more, and trust that I will gauge my energy levels, I will be in check and in tune with myself and I will use that as my guide. The strategy is just a bonus. A strategy is something I can use as a guide to help me along the way, but, that being said, there is obviously some help in having a strategy, and so, first things first, if you’re launching something, something’s coming up whether it’s a brand especially if it’s a brand new offer.

It’s so important to actually create the list and break down everything that needs to happen. So for me, for example, with my Enneagram coaching offer, I spent months actually diving into obviously one, learning about the Enneagram and how to effectively use it with others. Even though I’ve been learning about the Enneagram for myself, I hadn’t done a ton of learning into how to use it as a coach and help other people. So I spent many months learning that behind the scenes. That was kind of skill number one that I needed to develop. And then I had to figure out well, how is it that I wanna offer this to clients? What do I want these packages to look like? So for coaches, this can be I’m creating a new offer. How many coaching calls do I wanna provide? If I’m providing any? If it’s a course that you’re offering, right, how many modules? How many modules? What am I gonna talk about? How long will the course be Like?

Figuring out, giving yourself space and time to figure out all of those details, is so, so important, and I know we’re talking about launching today, but I wanna just pause for a second, and I feel like I can’t stress this enough. When you’re in this phase of the process of creating a new offer. It is so important to give yourself time and space to really let your ideas come to life. This one is harder in practice, I’ve learned over the years. When we wanna launch something or when we wanna make something new, it’s so easy to just create it in a weekend and there is absolutely a time and space to create things quickly. Right, there are certain products, offers, things that you can theoretically just launch. Right, you already have it’s like, maybe you’ve been thinking about it subconsciously and you’re finally ready to actually do it and you can create it quickly.

But especially with a big new whether it’s a coaching program or, if you’re like completely revamping your offers or services, or if you’re redoing your website or any of these big launches you might be thinking about doing it’s so important to give yourself space to create the packages and containers and really sit with yourself to figure out how is it that I wanna offer this? What is this going to look like tangibly? Let me figure out my pricing structure. Let me figure out what I’m providing. Let me figure out how much energy is this going to require of me every single week or with every single client? So just a quick little PSA to make sure you’re giving yourself time to figure that out. But once you already have all of that figured out, you have your package created. You already know what this offer is gonna look like.

It’s so important to break down every single step of okay, great, now it’s time for me to launch this into the world, and I told you that I have been sitting on this new offer for a little bit of time my Enneagram coaching offer and the reason is because, as a coach, I want to make sure that I am providing the most value to my clients. And as a coach, I can tell you I still, like all of my clients, suffer every once in a while from self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Hello, we are all human right, like, let’s just normalize that as a part of the human experience. So I have been battling some feelings of self-doubt, but it’s interesting because it’s not necessarily always in the sense of I feel like I don’t know enough. Sometimes that’s a part of it.

But as a coach and as a heart-centered business owner, I it’s such a beautiful realization when you realize that some of your procrastination and hesitation behind putting forth a new offer is because I wanna make sure that I can provide the most value to my clients. I wanna make sure that this offer is going to be so transformational for them. And so some of us sometimes feel guilty around. Oh well, I don’t know why I hesitate so much, or I don’t know why it takes me so long, or I don’t know why I can’t just put this thing out there or launch this thing. And I wanna I wanna take a step back from that for a second and, first of all, just honor how beautiful it is when your hesitation and procrastination is coming from a place of wanting to serve to the best of your ability. Let’s not put guilt and shame around that. Let’s not make ourselves feel bad for not just throwing something out into the world. Right, we are pushing pause on it because we are so concerned about our clients or the people that we are serving, and wanna make sure that we can serve them in the best way that we can. And that’s so beautiful. And I wanna honor that and remove the guilt and shame. And I wanna encourage you that, knowing that you are coming from that place, knowing that your heart and your mission and your passion is to serve your clients, I can also tell you that it’s ready now to put out into the world.

There is no day where things are gonna feel perfectly aligned. There is no point where you’re gonna feel like it’s perfectly created and the offer is exactly what people need and it’s priced exactly where it should be. Like all of these perfect ideas that we have, you won’t experience any of that knowledge or understanding of whether it’s perfectly created until you actually put it out there. We won’t know any of this information until we actually offer it to people and actually get people in and we can pour our hearts into it, we can serve our clients and we can figure out does anything need to be tweaked, and so I hope that that A eliminates some of the guilt and shame that we sometimes feel about. I just wish that I could like take more action, or just put this out there, or I wish it didn’t take me so long to launch. Maybe you have holiday sessions, mini sessions coming up. Maybe you are creating your new website and you’re trying to get the perfect copy, or you’re trying to create new pricing packages of the services that you provide. We’re never gonna know how we truly feel about something until we actually have clients giving us feedback. So create your list. Get really clear what actually needs to happen.

In order for me to launch this and so for me, for example, with my coaching offer, there were some things that tactically needed to happen. I needed to have a sales page, like a checkout page, right. If someone is interested in joining the coaching program, I needed to have a page to send them to that has the checkout process to actually enroll in the coaching program. I needed to have onboarding emails set up. I needed to have you know, like actual structure of here’s what to expect, here’s what you’re going to get, like. I needed to be able to outline that in an email format I need to have specifically for the Enneagram coaching offer. I need to have typing sessions created, right. I won’t go into the details, but just note I had to have certain things in place so that when someone enrolled or wanted to work with me, I would have everything that I need already created. So get really clear on what you need to make and everything you need to do before. Obviously, you want to launch so, but the key here is breaking it down. Break it down into the smallest, simplest, easiest steps, clearest steps to help you take action.

I have a ton of episodes. I’m not gonna list them here, but if you are on, if you go on your computer and you go to either Apple podcast or Spotify and you do command F, if you find on the podcast page, on my podcast page, command F and find Like I’m just thinking if you can search. Actually, if you just like scroll through, there’s only 120 episodes, scroll through. I have a ton of episodes around how to get clarity around Like taking action. I have so many episodes that that talk about that. So if you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, this probably isn’t new for you. But the last thing that I want to talk about is make launching really fun, and here’s the key. We’re gonna end on this note.

I know I’ve talked a lot about launching, but if you take one thing away from this entire episode, I hope it’s this make it fun, because here’s what I learned as I am thinking about launching this new offer. I found myself again in the procrastination and hesitation cycle and I was like how can I eliminate this? How can I make this so fun that I don’t want to procrastinate? How can I make this so fun that I’m actually really excited about launching it? And so what I’m doing is I am doing another solo work retreat for myself To finish creating all of these little, the things that I need to create, what we just talked about breaking down the steps of what I need to have available. I’m creating this little solo work retreat I’m actually bringing a friend along, fellow business owner, but I’m going on a little retreat and I’m and I’m really taking action to do these final steps of what I need to create.

And if you listen into episodes 25 and episode 49, I really go into detail about what these work retreats are, how I plan them, what they look like, the intention behind them, the results that you get from them. It’s really about removing yourself from your day to day place. I so, for this retreat, we are kind of finding a cabin in the woods in this beautiful field. There’s vineyards and hills and trees and it’s beautiful in nature and it has beautiful space, spaces to work from. I’m creating an agenda for myself of exactly what I need to create and I’m putting myself in an environment that fuels my creativity, that makes me excited to work and, as I’m launching that weekend, I can also share because I’m in this beautiful, inspiring, creative place and so I can bring my clients along with me, I can bring my audience with me and I can say here’s what I’m doing, here’s what I’m launching, here’s the environment that I put myself in To be able to launch and talk about this right, like, how can we make this Something that feels so beautiful and fun to ourselves? And so again, listen into episodes 25 and 49.

I go really in detail about these solo worker treats. They have honestly been so transformational when I’ve done them in the past, and so I already know that this is going to be so wonderful for launching. I can already tell you this is going to be a part of my launch process moving forward. But I, in Wrapping up, I just the thing that I hope that you can take away from this is that it is so normal for us to experience the self-doubt that comes from Putting ourselves out there and launching something new. It is so normal to feel that and I can promise you again, because I know you you are coming at this from an approach of wanting to serve, of Pouring your heart into your clients this new offer, this new service, and I can promise you that, if you can just remember the deeper why of why you’re doing this. If you can think about how your life is going to change by offering this new service, how your clients lives are going to change from offering this new service. If you can practice Really natural selling again, listening to episode 119 if you can embody Inviting people into your offers, launching becomes so fun and so easy.

And you get to make it a fun game of how can I Launch regularly in my business to gain more clients, to get more visibility. How can I make this fun? And so I am just so grateful. Thank you for joining me today, as always, just if this episode was helpful, if I would love for you to share on Instagram, tag me in your story at hey, christa Marie, let me know what are you launching, how can I celebrate what you’re launching, how can we dream into this new launch of what it is that you want to create in your business? And, as always, please reach out to me, connect with me, just say hello.

It’s sometimes gets a little lonely sitting in here in my office, not gonna lie, recording my episodes, and I know that you’re here, I know you’re listening, and so don’t hesitate, come say hello on Instagram. I would love to just celebrate you and say hello and Thank you so much for listening in, and I will see you over in the next episode. One last thing before you go I’d absolutely love it if you left a review on Apple podcast, or if you’ve already left to review, I’d love for you to share this episode with your business bestie. I love getting to shout out my listeners on the show, and the more listeners that we have, the more that I can help others Create a thriving and sustainable business too. Thank you so much again for being a part of this community, and I can’t wait to hear your takeaways from today’s episode.