the bossbabe podcast - 252. BBS: 4 Proven Ways To Achieve Stress-Free Launches

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Launches can be stressful + require a lot of your time. But what if they didn’t have to be? What if there was a simple, proven way to put your launches on autopilot and generate revenue at the same time? That’s exactly what we’re covering in this week’s episode of bossbabe business school.  Natalie interviews Danielle all about systems, playbooks and templatizing tasks that don’t need your time so you can get the most out of your launch. Apply these simple tips to either get your momentum going in a positive direction or keep it that way as you scale and hire support. Listen now. Highlights: Why you need a “launch playbook” + how to create one. The FREE project management tool we use and recommend for all business operators.  The 5 levels of a customer journey + how to address them in your launch. Links: Online Launch School (OLS) — Are you ready for the biggest online launch + cash injection your business has ever seen? Join Our Free, Launch Training + Coaching Call — Learn how to plan & execute profitable, repeatable launches with our 4-step formula. The Ultimate Pre-Launch Checklist — Get the EXACT checklist used at BossBabe to have profitable, successful launches – without all the stress. Highlights: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own version of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, Boss Babe co-founder and your host for today's episode. So quick question, when was the last time you felt 100% at ease about an upcoming launch you have in your business? If the answer is never, then this podcast

is for you. I really don't stress out about launches anymore. When I first started doing launches, I used to lose sleep. I used to feel this crazy intense anxiety. I used to feel like I was honestly running on a hamster wheel, not really knowing what to do, not really knowing how to get results and kind of throwing everything at the wall and just hoping something would stick. And after executing multiple really, really successful six and seven figure launches, I actually was able to distill a four-step formula that I'm going to share with you. That's going to help you to get your head around what goes into a successful launch that will help you scale your business and importantly, bring some major cash injections into your business. So in this episode

specifically, I'm going to teach you about the importance of creating systems and what that looks like, how to understand your customer journey, and then the key strategies for getting your launch going from start to finish. All right, it's going to be a good one. Let's dive in. We wanted to come in and just share some kind of realness behind the scenes of launching because I know for so many people, launches can be so overwhelming and exhausting. And I know we have definitely been there. We can be a testament to that. So we just want to come in and share some of our tips. And Danielle, I would love to be asking you some questions because you really are the queen at making sure things run so smoothly and being so prepped. So where did someone start with all of this? I feel like that's famous last words.

No, you're so true. Like I feel like the amount of times that we've launched now, we've really like honed things in and worked really hard on that because inevitably the launch has so much that goes into like the marketing side and the front end. But it's only really going to work if the back end runs well. And over the years, that's something that we've really perfected as well. And we've like created systems and we've created processes so that it isn't stress free. Because if you remember, like one of the things that people used to come to us for all the time was, oh my goodness, I hate launches. They're so stressful.

Like my adrenaline, I was like getting adrenal fatigue because I'm so exhausted. And that was something that we really, really wanted to avoid. And we found that ourselves too. And I think that now we've just really worked hard on making sure that we've tried, we've tested, we've learned and we've playbooked. We've made sure we've got it all written down.

So what does that mean to playbook it? Because I know there's a lot of people listening that really don't know what that is. Yeah. So a playbook is termed from football, actually, where it's like you run plays. And so there are things that happen in your business that you run. So almost like a overview of a system and it means that if something happens, it triggers something else, which triggers something else, which triggers something else, but it's all documented. So it's not all in my head, which is what first happened when we launched Boss Babe, right? We were like, okay, everything's in my head, everything's in Natalie's head, but that was never going to be scalable and it just led to us being stressed. So over the period, we started building out playbooks, which were exact processes that we needed to run the business that didn't

rely on us running them. And they're made up of things like systems. They're made up of things like resources and templates and processes. And it sounds super daunting, but actually it just allows things to run so seamlessly, take the stress out and allows other people to run or support you in running your business so that it doesn't always rely on you. And by creating playbooks, what we've been able to do is actually scale our launches stress-free so that we're not the only people moving the needle and that we can actually get support. And that's then in addition, allowed us to kind of see a formula to which we now run our launches, which means that we can not sit back because we're very, very heavily involved, but it does mean that we're not back in the day,

which I did do up at two in the morning, prepping stuff or coming on a webinar. Now we've got a support system to help. Another thing that I want to dive into, Danielle, is during a launch, all of the customer service can be a lot. So people asking lots of questions about it, people wanting to hop on a call and chat, like we're constantly being inundated with this. How have you been able to really streamline that for the business? I love this question. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take us back a little bit because I think prior to the customers coming on board, there's actually quite a bit that comes before the launch. And that starts with like planning. So I would say if you fail to plan you plan to fail because really one thing I see a lot of is

that people just go into a launch they're like oh yeah I'm gonna launch next week I'm gonna put all these content out I'm gonna speak to this content for a little bit and then it's all gonna go hunky dory. So people really need to be rather than just launching into things and going okay I'm gonna put this content out I'm feeling like producing this. I'm feeling about talking about this. They need to actually sit and go, okay, what is it going to take for my potential customer to go here and then to purchase? And that customer journey really looks like first of all, the awareness of first of all, about finding you and finding what product you're talking about, but then the research phase and that research phase is going, okay, yeah, I've seen them. I like them. I want to know more. And they're going to have questions come up

for them. And they're going to have things like they're wondering, okay, what is that course going to do? Like, how is that going to transform my business? How is that going to help me achieve the goals that I want to? So really kind of getting clear and prepping that in advance is so, so important because it's actually a strategy. Like there's actually a strategy at play that you need to be thinking about versus just going, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And so as part of that, I think what's really important is we have one pages in our business. We're like, okay, we're going to have a one pager, which is basically a summary overview

of everything that's going to be part of the launch, right? It's like the 15,000 foot view. It doesn't go into the nitty gritty details, but it does think about, okay, what are we selling? What price are we selling at? What bonuses are we selling at? And maybe the early bird processes and how are we going to deliver it? So a few of those things and just taking up into that planning point going, okay, right. This is what we're going to achieve. This is how we're going to deliver it. We're ready to let's go. And then I think the next phase that people need to go into is like the prepping phase, that like day by day launch, like what does that look like? What are the assets on the front end that are going to help you move people through that?

And when I say assets, a lot of people, like you say, you might be selling on social media, might be selling another capacity, but you can create templates ahead of time versus you just being in launch on that day going, okay, I want to create this. And we love, I'm just going to give a few behind the scenes tips. Like we love using Canva to create templates. And we also know exactly what we're talking to every single day. And so I think there's this misconception that we show up and we just on a whim going,

okay, we're going to talk about this specific topic today. Whereas actually it's very strategic to help people go from that awareness. And we're still moving into that research phase. They're going, okay, I'm getting more familiar with it. I'm getting those questions answered. I love that so much. And it really does all come down to that prepping. And how did you start to create templates that you could be giving to team to use? Like, how did you create templates that you feel really comfortable with team members using and knowing that they're giving our clients a good experience? That's such a great question. I think like this is one thing that a lot of solo entrepreneurs really struggle with initially. They're like, oh my goodness, why does my team member not just know that? But actually like

when you are building your business, it's really important to be documenting things, but like as you're going, and this actually also really helps with hiring later down the line, right? So a lot of people like wait so late to hire that then they become like really stressed with it. Whereas if you're documenting as you're going, it's really, really helpful. I love to do hours in like Google Docs so that everybody can kind of see it and access it. And then what we do is we put it into our playbook, which is in the form of like an Excel spreadsheet. Okay. I don't want this to be like super overwhelming, but basically I think that you can do different types of templates. So you can do those in a Google doc, which is literally, and I'll come to this talking about maybe customer service responses, things that are going to be coming up,

or you can be creating things like marketing pieces, which are like, okay, like I want to be creating this template Canva. You would go in there, you would create one. And then I would go do a loom video to my team going, hey, this is a template. This is what you can like add into it so that it's duplicatable. So there is a seamless across the whole business. I think that's like a really, really important way of doing it so that you're always asking yourself, like sometimes it's a little bit of work upfront to create it, but it saves you so much work on the backend. So then we document those places so that everyone knows where they are.

So we put those in a spreadsheet, which is the playbook and it links to, okay, here are your templates and Canva. Here is the one pager, which is in Google docs. And therefore they're able to find it and it's just listed under. So therefore everyone's like, oh no, I don't know where things are. They're like, okay, it's simple. The other place that we really utilize is Asana. And I would recommend anyone who doesn't have a project management software has one, even if you're like one person. Asana is free for under 15 people. And I was talking earlier about the day by day we put that in Asana so it's super super simple and you can go in there I'm like you can book a couple of hours out so you're like okay I'm in a really great headspace

now I really want to understand how I'm going to take that customer from being a potential customer to a customer and I'm going to map out that content in Asana and then I know exactly what I'm showing up every single day to do that, I think is really, really cool. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify.

And Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So, of course, I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business. You know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash

boss babe the other thing i think is really important to prepping and i was talking about this earlier with the customer journey so there's five points to the customer journey right there's awareness which i spoke about them first finding you there's research where they wanted to find a little bit more information from you then they go into revenue purchasing where they're like, oh my goodness, I am ready to purchase from you. Okay. So like, right, I'm ready. But to take them from that research to that purchase phase, you have to be pre-empting their questions. And so one thing I always do with the team is go, right, what are the things that are going to come up for us? What are the things that people are going to want to know? And we talk about those frequently asked questions. And in some cases, it's going to be really appropriate to put those on a sales page,

right? Because you want to be letting someone walk through a sales page. By the time they get there, they're not having any other questions and they're ready to buy. But that's not always the case. And so what we do in our launches is we put on live chat onto our sales pages, which is where anybody then can ask a question to a member of our team and they're there on the other end. But for them to be there on the other end, they need to be prepped in it. And that's where I help them create the templates. So again, I'm doing one thing once

that I'm duplicating my time because I'm actually teaching them so that therefore we've got questions already pre-written and answers already pre-there because we know some of those things that are going to come up and we're going to be able to support them. So educating like the customer experience team is really, really important from that live chat perspective, but also like from DMs, right? So many of us now, like hardly ever email companies. It's just going to be like, I'm going to slide into the DMs and I'm going to ask these couple of questions. And sometimes that's going to be you who's going to be able to answer them. But often it's not, you might just have one person in your team who's able to support you a little bit with that, but you need to know

that they're representing that brand, your brand well, and they're going to be helping and aiding your launch, not hindering it. And so just making sure that they have some like templates. It doesn't have to be word for word, but you definitely want them to be knowing that they know the stuff enough to educate people and help them convert on that sale there was so much gold and so many things you said and I just want to pull some of that out so one of the things you were saying was doing it as you go along don't think that you have to sit down before your launch and create this entire playbook and do all of these things but actually create it as you go so you're only having to do it once and just getting into that mindset of, okay, I'm going to create this and I'm going to save it in

a good place somewhere that I know so that I'm able to go and rinse and repeat. You also mentioned adding in live chat, which has been a total game changer. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, completely. I will. And just going back to what you were saying around like writing as you go, I think that's really good to emphasize that we did not have loads of procedures when we first launched, when we first did our launch, right? We were doing it and we were trialing it. But what we made sure that we did do was we did document it when we had time, whether it was during it or we made space for that afterwards, because it's the reflection that's actually really important to help your launches get better and better because your first launch is going to be amazing, but your second and third launches are going to be even better than that. So I think that's

really important. And then live chat. Yeah. So we actually use a software called live chat, which is kind of like most people will have come in contact and utilize them now because a lot of websites are, it's kind of like that bit at the corner. It's normally like a speech bubble that you click on and then you can be actually speak to a customer service member there and then now we actually they're really really easy to install like super easily like i can do it and i'm not even a tech quiz onto that site and basically you have hours that maybe you're on so our team just has it on the background so if you have anyone your team is helping you with admin they literally just work with it on the background when someone comes on to the sales page it pops up in the corner and says do you have any any questions? And if they say yes, your customer representative is notified there and then they can just have a good little chat with them around answering those questions. But we use the live chat one, but also Zendesk has their own one. There are actually so many companies. It's super, super cheap, but it really, really helps conversion. Because if you imagine, this is what I always like to do, right? I always like to put myself in the customer's shoes. And I think when you can do that,

you really see where you can support and nurture them a little bit more. And if I had any questions on there that I'm like, oh, I really just want to ask this, like going to an email, it feels like a lot more effort than just clicking a little button in the right-hand corner that's just going to pop up. And I'm going to be able to ask like, hey, just double checking, does this come with X, Y, and Z? Or just double checking, I want to have a question about this payment plan. corner that's just going to pop up and I'm going to be able to ask like hey just double checking does this come with x y and z or just double checking I want to have a question about this payment plan and that's going to allow me if I can get my answer there and then I'm like more likely to convert into a purchaser versus not totally we want instant gratification we want instant responses to what our queries are another thing you said was was preempting the questions that you might get and put some on your sales page.

And that's one of the things that you really need to understand and know your ideal client to be able to preempt these things. And you have to go and do research. So you have to give out your sales page or give out some of your marketing materials and say, what would your questions be?

What am I not answering here for you? And you'll get it to a point where you're able to actually predict those questions. And you don't just put FAQs on there to look pretty or because you think you should or to make it more of a sales ploy. It really is on there to make sure that, like you say, by the time someone is at the bottom of your sales page, there is no question in their mind about whether this is a good fit for them or not. It's very much a full body yes or a full body no and we want them to be clear to say I'm a full yes or I'm a full no because being a no is great it's great if you're making that decision that this is not the right thing for you we want you to have all the information for you to make that decision

and same with it a yes we want you to have all the information to know if it's a good fit for you or not I love what you said there because so many people think FAQs like these box standard things that you're just like oh yeah I'm just gonna answer these few questions but when you actually put the thought into them and when you actually analyze like your sales page and really read it and if you are not able to do this get someone your family to or get somebody who you know is your ideal client and that's actually even better way of doing it get someone you know is your ideal client and get them to read it and ask them like, okay, anything coming up for you? Anything else you would like to know?

And really just make sure those frequently asked questions are also in your language. Make sure you're still speaking to that person rather than it just being like, oh yeah, I've given up by this point. I'm just putting in a few answers to a few questions that might come up because actually the FAQs is a really, really key place

to do a lot of your conversion. And it's those people. So there's two types of buyers, right? There's an emotional buyer and the logical buyer. The emotional buyer probably is that gut instinct. Oh my goodness, I'm buying it. And some people are listening to this and they're going, okay, yeah, I'm an emotional buyer. And Natalie, you're totally emotional buyer, aren't you? You're like, yeah, I'm buying it done, right? Oh my God, I know. But I'm like a logical buyer. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to read this. I'm going to think about it a little bit. I'm going to be the person that goes to the FAQs. And that's why I know they're so important because that's where I'm going because I'm like, okay, I think this is a yes, but I need that little bit just of reassurance to get me over

the edge to purchase. And I think you need to realize that you always need to be working towards both of those people. And so the first part of a sales page is normally very much speaking to both of them, but more so with the emotional person. And then those FAQs is like, oh yeah, now I'm seeing like why this makes sense for me. Now I don't have any other questions that I want and I'm ready to purchase. But I think putting that emphasis on just thinking it's not an afterthought, it really, really does help get people over the edge of super, super porn. The other thing I would say as well is like, with regards to purchasing, to get someone from that research stage to the purchase stage, you have to make that really, really easy for them. And just going into a purchase site or clicking that button and then being bombarded by a load of other

pieces is also not what you want. You want to be able to go like, okay, a really, really simple checkout page that's like, okay, yeah, I take Visa. I take MasterCard. I also take PayPal, like really, really super simple. And I think a lot of people have the misconception the sale is just the marketing piece, but there's actually some really key bits that you can be doing on these like final stages just to get people over the edge and what I say whether that's live chat or those dms but also making sure that sales page and that checkout page is super simple and easy for them to purchase on like make it a no-brainer so true and you did around the faq so one thing that we did on this

sales page is normally I put the faqs at the bottom, but I was like, you know what? I just want to address this right away because I know there are two types of buyers. And I put a section on the sales page saying, but, but, but I hear you saying part of you is like, I'm so in Natalie, sign me up. But I know the other part of you has questions because I want to speak to the emotional and the logical. And some of the things I'm addressing is not your bog standard FAQs. But I don't have an audience, but I'm scared this won't work for me, but I'm not good with tech, but my launches always end up failing,

but I've tried everything already, but I'm scared it won't work for me, but no one can execute his launch as good as me, or, but I find funnels really overwhelming, or I don't have enough time to implement this. I'm not sure if it's going to work for my business or you've got millions of followers and a team behind you. Why do you think you can help me? Like I address every possible thing that I think someone could be thinking because I am that person and we've both been in those situations

and it's kind of like we put the cards on the table, like, okay, you're looking at our millions of followers and thinking, hmm, are we really going to be able to give them the strategy even if they have zero followers? And we want to address that because we know the answer is yes. And we want them to know before they just make a decision that we can support them. Yeah, exactly. You know, we had that honest conversation with each other. We questioned that in each other and

we questioned that on the sales page. And I think when you're able to pull out from what you're offering and look at that, that's when you see some of those things come up to you and go, oh yeah, I need to answer that question. Totally. I love what we covered here. And I wanted to keep this short because I know that there's so much information that we've just given and probably a lot of people are like, I just need to get to work and start creating a playbook. And so I really want to challenge people for the next week, whatever you're doing on a repetitive basis, start to make note of and think about what you could start to create templates or processes or anything for that you could playbook so you don't have to keep doing it from scratch because it's a good way to start

right just by slowly making note of these things yeah 100 so i always say you should ask yourself a couple of questions. So there's two ways because it's always about like saving time, right? We always want to make sure launches are like super stress-free. So one of the things to ask yourself is, am I doing this and is it actually taking like a higher brain power or is it like actually more of an admin job? If it's an admin job, create a process for it, stat, like do it quickly because the quicker you get that off your plate, the better and it's going to be really really easy for somebody else to replicate the other thing I always get people to ask themselves is like is this something am I getting two tech pieces to speak to each other

if you are then consider like integrating them or creating a zapier link or something that really really helps them communicate better and the other thing is I literally just keep a piece of paper next to me. And if I'm like writing anything down, I'm thinking, okay, this is something I'm ending up doing frequently. But like I said, it's really not that complicated or actually I'm doing it over and over again. That goes on the notes because if it's something I'm doing over again, I also want to be delegating it. So it's like three things. So it's like repeatable, some admin kind of tasks. It's not really taking much brain power,

or it's two tech pieces speaking to each other. Those things are the ones that you want to be playbooking and automating or creating a procedure around as quickly as possible. I love that. That's so tangible and helpful. And for anyone listening, I just want you to know that having launches that feel good and easy and energetic are possible because I know if someone had told me this a few years ago and probably you too Danielle I just wouldn't have believed. Totally 100% and like I said there's things that we've spoken about today that you're like oh my goodness I don't even know where to start with that like that's almost like a sign like oh yeah like let us give you the

roadmap that we have utilized because we've learned these things the hard way and it just feels so good to be able to like teach people and go, Hey, let us save you from all the tears and trauma that we went through and just let you hear, just follow this, go for it. It's going to work out. So true. So with that, I'm going to include all the links in the show notes below, all the links that you need. And then I just want to share a couple high level with you. So I've done a free training, which is probably my best free training yet was amazing. So good. So good, right? And it's sharing with you the four-part framework that we use at Boss Babe to have very profitable

and repeatable launches. And already, it has completely transformed some people's businesses. So make sure you watch it. You just go to bossbabe.com forward slash launch formula. And then also, we have an amazing launch checklist for you where we've put together everything you need to be aware of to have think what I love so much about our relationship is we cover the both both bases right I'm very still the marketing you're very operations and delivery and I love that we can share all of that and it's also why we want to create the course together because we have so much we can share from all aspects of the business that's going to

make their life easier yeah all in one making it easy love it okay well we will see you all we'll chat to you all next week bye thank you so much for listening and if you enjoyed this episode on the boss babe podcast then i'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our side hustle success kit. Your simple, no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie,

all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox. Bye.