This past week has been super interesting, as I promoted my very first offer 'launch style' for my brand new True North Business.

Brought your popcorn? Today's edition is a juicy one! :)

There were a lot of 'firsts' for me in the last 2 weeks.

I have never:

• Written a guest post for anybody (writing has always been a lifelong weakness/battle/challenge/pain-in-the-ass problem)
• Launched and promoted an offer 'online marketing style'. I've seen and experienced plenty of launches in the last 10 years I've been online, so I have a sense of how other people do it.
• Had the support of any promotional partners to help me spread the word about my business. Business has always been a solo-hustle for me.

On top of the 'craziness of launching'... I was learning a whole bunch of new things all at once, amidst running a promotion.

I don't know why I do this to myself, but I tend to throw myself in the deep end and then learn to swim.

There is a part of me that *likes* to do this:

I only decided to set my challenge date to 3rd Sept (Thurs), as I rewrote my opt-in page on 24th Aug.

Originally, I wanted to start the challenge on 31st Aug (Mon), but thought 7 days was way too rushed. So I gave myself 10 days to do everything I needed to do to get people through the door.

Nothing makes you work faster than a deadline staring at you right in the face.

'Everything I needed to do' include:

• Writing, editing and finalising the guest post
• Asking people (friends in business who I thought served my audience) to help me spread the word. See if I could recruite additional promo partners.
• Writing social media posts and emails for promo partners for them to edit with their voice and distribute on their social platforms and email list (you need to make things easy for people to help you cus people are busy)
• Writing my own social posts and launch emails
• Creating graphics for social posts (for promo partners and for myself)
• Responding to promo partners emails, guiding them through my 'launch strategy' and helping them refine/edit their copy
• Creating "promotion tracking" in my notes so I can keep myself organised, track who agreeed to help me, what I've given them for posting, who I need to follow up with, all the content produced for the launch
• Continuing to network, make friends around the world and chat to people on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Writing the sales page from scratch
• Get a shopping cart, learn how to use it to take payments and integrate with email service provider (figuring out the tech)

That is all the marketing work required for me to "get some traction" with a launch cus I didn't have a targeted audience for my new business yet, so I have zero leverage.

Everything is built from scratch.

The only thing you have in the 'start up stage' of your business is your dream and your hustle.

One of my favourite quotes:

Dreams don't work unless you do.

True, right?

Here's what I did to make the Guest Post a reality in support of my launch...

In case you didn't know how this opportunity came about for me, you can read it on my Why You Should Write (Online) article.

=== Guest Posting ===

The ideation process started on 11th Aug.

I reached out to Steve from Publish Press, and told him I was finally getting ready to launch my challenge offer into the market.

After a few email exchanges on 'guest post ideas', he decided to give me free rein, and trusted my vision for the piece. That was huge.

I of course wanted to do a great job for him, so he won't regret offering me the opportunity to write a Guest Post on his website.

The article needed to do 2 things:

• To deliver massive value and serve his audience of 'wordpress publishers', while also...
• Call out the entrepreneurs/business owners I want to serve and get them interested in my 5 Day Challenge

During the 2 weeks, I stayed in communication with Steve and let him know where I was in my writing process.

I sent him my draft on 20th Aug for review, then did my final edit before he published it on 26th Aug (I was already 2 days into my launch by then).

That guest post became one of my 'marketing pieces' I used during my launch.

Now, onto my results...

=== The Launch Numbers ===

Business is a numbers game. So here are my numbers.

Drum roll please...

Opt-in rate: 24.43%

New subscribers: 32 (people interested in the 5 Day Challenge)

Email open rate: 50% (the average across 4 launch emails sent out about the challenge)

Sign ups: Big fat zero (FAIL!) lol

As a result of running this promotion, I have more than doubled my email list. It's a 252% increase.

=== What I Learned (Important Lessons) ===

Lesson 1: Launch period was too short for my offer

My challenge offer required a time commitment over 5 days. I didn't give people enough time to plan and block out time for 5 days.

I wanted to help people implement so I required them to "show up and do the work" so they can get the most out of what they learn.

I also needed to give people enough time to catch up on my launch emails.

People are busy. Their inboxes are probably chaotic and messy.

I know I'm not the only person in their inbox fighting for their attention.

Lesson 2: I goofed on the enrolment close date!

I completely forgot to tell people when enrolment was going to close, and only told them when the challenge was going to start.

I realised way too late, and closed enrolment at 2pm Sept 2nd (the day before).

I actually woke up with a headache that day, and knew I wasn't going to be on my A-Game when the challenge starts the next day.

Which means it was going to affect their experience with me.

I was actually kinda glad no one signed up before hand.

I rather not allow people to pay than forcing myself to show up and deliver a great experience when I'm not feeling 100%.

I also set the timer on my opt-in page and sales page wrong to the challenge start date instead of the enrolment close date.

People need deadlines to take action. Most people procrastinate till the last minute (myself included). That's why I put a timer on my pages.

In my case, I set the deadline timer completely wrong! So people thought they had more time to sign up than they really had. Doh!

Lesson 3: Not giving myself time to plan

This was good and bad.

Because I know I'm a chronic planner (strategiser and thinker), I have the tendency to over-plan, over-think and diving too much into the details. My brain loves details.

This is another way of allowing perfectionism to show up, and I end up not shipping as I continue to 'tinker away'.

Because, I understand this about myself, I needed to give myself constraints and use it as a 'forcing function' to keep myself moving forward and get what I need done.

So I threw myself into a madhouse for 10 days for 2 reasons:

1. Be comfortable with the uncomfortable (it's the only way to grow)
2. Force myself to take critical action and get my offer out ASAP

Throwing myself into the chaos of a launch was very uncomfortable for me, cus it's not how I naturally operate.

Because I was forced to do everything on the fly and basically "live in chaos for 10 days", I couldn't deliver a good 'launch experience' that I know I can with proper planning. e.g. messing up the timer for enrolment deadline.

I basically had to rely on my instinct and intuition to do everything that I was doing to try and pull off a launch as a 'launch newbie'.

=== What I did well (Things I'm proud of) ===

1. Adopting the mad scientist mindset.

Because I'm aware of the common pitfalls of the "start up stage" of business (feelings of doubt, uncertainty, spending too much time researching or looking for inspiration etc)...

The most important thing to do in the 'start up stage' is to validate your idea, concept or service. So it's absolutely necessary to get the idea out to the market.

This means choosing to go against my natural mode of operation (for a short time) in order to test my offer idea and get feedback from the market as fast as I can.

I silenced the 'inner chatter'...

"What if I fail and make a fool of myself?"

"What if people have no interest in what I'm offering?"

"What if nobody signs up?"

All the never-ending "what ifs"... I just decided to 'get it done'.

2. I managed to recruit 2 extra promotional partners in a very short time frame.

I was very glad to have designed my website in a way that 'fast-tracked' my relationship building process back in April. It was awesome to see the fruits of my strategy, labour and design come alive.

One partner was introduced by a mutual connection on email, and became a promo partner in less than 2 weeks.

The other partner I connected with initially on Facebook at the end of July. She became a promo partner on the day I started promoting. It was super last minute but I'm grateful for the extra 'reach' I got.

3. I wrote the entire sales page in 1 day.

Having a time constraint meant I had no time to 'dawdle'. I had to get a sales page up quickly and hook it up to the shopping cart.

This is another 'first' for me, cus I've never written a complete sales page and design it properly all in one day.

=== Plans for Improvement ===

Like any entrepreneur, of course I wanted people to join my challenge. I wanted to create customers just as much as any business owner.

But more importantly, the goal of the launch was to:

• validate my offer
• validate my target audience
• validate my pricing
• validate my business model

Now that I have data and insights (metrics) to see, I know what I need to do to improve on it cus I'm not flying blind anymore.

I know from the engagement I saw on the social media posts and my opt-in rate that my message is resonating with my target audience.

I know that even though no one signed up to my challenge offer this time, people still wanted to join. I received a couple of emails/messages asking if they can still join after I closed enrolment when they realised they missed the deadline.

I had a feeling that people couldn't commit to showing up for 5 days in a row to participate in the challenge, so I need to come up with a different offer to cater to those people.

I also know that some people may want to get their 'perfect lead magnet' done faster with my personal help, so I'm working on offering something to cater to that need too.

So that's what I'll be working on in the coming weeks!

Along with creating a better launch plan for when I open enrolment again for my next 5 Day Challenge.

Lots to do!

I don't know how people run launches all the time in their businesses, cus launching is a hell lota work, not to mention tiring!

I'm hoping the next one won't be as crazy.

Jen x

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P.S.

I have been staring at a huge zit on my forehead for a few days now from the 'launch craziness week'. 🙄

P.P.S.

I spent today with my family for Father's Day -- Lunch at my parent's place.

I made Japchae (Korean Glass Noodles) this morning, my sister brought homemade butter chicken and turkish bread (OMG so good), and my brother brought marinated chicken wings (2 different flavours).

None of our food 'go together', but we don't care as long as it tastes good :)

Some people get weird about that though! The whole different cuisine mixing thingy that we do... lol

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