If you’ve ever created an offer or announced that you’re taking online clients just to have exactly zero applications or enrollments… You have made one or all of these top launch mistakes.

One, you’re not alone. 

Two, that’s a terrible sales approach. 

Three, we’re going to fix that today. 

If you don’t know what a launch is or how it applies to your coaching business, this blog is for you. 

I’m Annie Miller and I teach you to build a profitable and sustainable online coaching business without butt selfies or selling your soul to vanity metrics. 

Prefer to learn on video? Watch here:

Over the past three years, I’ve taken 15 plus women one-on-one through launching a new program or service to their audiences and having success. 

Success could mean 5 enrollments or 50+… 

It just depends on the goal and the program model. 

What I can tell you is that the “feels” get so real during launches. Plus, I have seen that strategy and objectivity can help you stay grounded and confident leading up to and during a launch.

I have personally launched 13 offers over the past 7 years, which means I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes that I hope you can learn from in my eyes. 

There are 3 main sales approaches:

1. Launch
2. Do Pushes
3. Ongoing Enrollment

The goal with any of these or any sales for that matter, is to get your ideal client to invest in your offer, your service, or your product. 

I have tried all three, and it just depends on the offer. 

Today we are focusing on launches because…

A launch has a hard open and hard close date. The doors will literally close and someone cannot enroll, join, apply, or sign up after the launch is done. 

This is opposed to having a push where a product is up for grabs anytime. Then you draw specific attention to it via add-ons or a promo or just bringing more awareness to its existence.

Launches tend to be my jam for one-off membership and course style offers. 

Thus, that is what I teach inside my FitsPro Foundations course and what you will learn here today.

Now Let’s Get Into The Top 3 Launch Mistakes & How To Fix Them: 

These are the biggest launch mistakes that I see and how to fix them because I have definitely made them all myself. 

Launch Mistake #1: Not Preparing & Nurturing Your Mindset Before & During The Launch

Yes, we are starting with your brain before we get into any sales tactics. Why? Launches can be a huge emotional and mental roller coaster. 

It’s so easy to attach your worth, your value and desperation or codependency to your launch. All of which are not healthy or helpful for you.

There are very normal fears that arise when you are preparing to launch, and if you’re not careful, those fears will permeate your launch content. 

Fears that you’re wasting your time, that you did all this work and nobody’s going to join. Fears that your message won’t land, that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. 

I am no psychiatrist or mental health specialist, but what I do know is that beliefs drive feelings. 

Feelings drive actions, so we’ve got to address some of those feelings and beliefs before launching so that we don’t completely lose our mental shit during the launch. 

When I find myself or my clients in a bit of a downhill, I look to the following truths and questions to help with that. Realize that in your fear, when you let that spread, you’re in fact focused on failing.

You’re not focused on if everything goes well, if people love it, or if you’re messaging lands… In that, you’re robbing your potential clients of a perfect offer for them. 

This is not to say that you can’t feel afraid, but let’s acknowledge it. Ask questions, find some objective truth and move through it. Then reframe, can I focus on delivering the information the best I can and serving those who enroll versus focusing on myself? 

These next few are helpful. 

During your launch period, ask, “What do we know to be true?” 

If your messaging is clear, if you’ve defined who this offer is for what it does, how it helps and what people get, then we should have no problem inviting your audience into that. 

Get excited!

You have created something your humans will benefit from. That’s amazing. That’s why we do business. Own it. Welcome them in, educate them, communicate with them.

It is a relationship. Then you’re going to analyze. 

Expectations, lead reactions. 

It is vital that you have realistic expectations heading into a launch. 

Don’t expect 10 people to join, if you’ve only built a wait list of 15, it’s not going to happen. 

This comes down to proper preparation. 

Address Your Expectations Even If You Don’t Think You Have Them

You do, I promise. Your reaction to whatever happens is going to reveal what expectations you had with those expectations. Know that shit happens. A link is going to be broken. You’ll forget to do something. No one will join on day one. Expect hiccups. 

You’re more than capable of dealing with hiccups. Nothing is wasted. I repeat nothing is wasted. 

Cultivating growth and abundant mindsets might be trendy or buzzwordy, but also I do believe that their roots are pretty solid.

Here is where we observe our launch from an objective standpoint. Again, this is going to be during the launch. 

Observe: 

• What’s working
• What’s not

View your sales page views through Google Analytics. Perhaps people aren’t enrolling but they’re viewing the sales page daily. 

Keep showing up. Keep encouraging those people not out of desperation, but in order for them to learn about the product and for you to learn about the client. 

Small but important caveat here, take note. Marketing is simply communication and psychology. Listen, I get it. You need to make money. You know what I can promise? Stopping is not going to help and quitting isn’t the answer. Neither is holding back. 

None of those are going to improve your ability to communicate with confidence. 

We have had over 100 women in Built By Annie (BBA) for years now, but one woman joined BBA when I launched it back in 2017.

Her name was Emily, and that is who I based my ideal client on to this day. 

I created 12 months of programming. One year of strength training, my first program that was truly what I was meant to do and one human enrolled. 

I was stoked. I hadn’t failed. 

My email sequence messaging and sales page did something, so I served the shit out of that one person. One human trusting me, and my process was my first piece of evidence that my people are out there, something is happening. 

Now, we move forward and we improve. 

I worked full-time at this time, so I had other income, but the goal was to forever build that online side, which meant I had to keep going, learning, failing, doing better testing, etc. 

I hope that you can see that your mindset is key. Get your mind right and be willing to learn and welcome those new clients because they will undoubtedly be a part of your process in gaining more.

Launch Mistake #2: Not Having A Launch Plan 

This has to be the most common mistake I see with launching. People are out here willy-nilly talking about their offer one time and then being upset when they get no applications. 

Susan, come on. 

When I say launch plan, I am not playing around here. 

I am not talking about a little vague outline of a plan that lives in your head or in your notes app. NO. 

My kind of launch map, the kind I have proof that works is one where you know exactly what is supposed to happen every day of your launch every day from the lead-up to the end of your launch. 

Ideally, most of this is prepared ahead of time as well. So that when shit does hit the fan or you don’t want to have to “be live” (because launches can be very exhausting), you have the content ready to pick from. 

This doesn’t mean we can’t shift throughout the launch. 

That can absolutely happen, but having a legit thought out plan, what days you discuss who it’s for, what’s involved, results, pain points, questions, pleasure points, the process, etc… Allows you to remain steadfast through the madness that can tend to happen during those first few launches of a single service. 

The map I use and give to my Fits Pro’s is a single Google sheet with all of the dates and phases of the launch laid out. As well as space to track page views, applications, enrollment, revenue, whatever makes sense for your offer. 

I also want to make it so crystal clear that not everyone’s launch will be the same. 

So perhaps you hate structure and feel restricted by having a task to do every day, not me, but I get it.

What if you wake up and you want to talk about who it’s for, but today is supposed to be laying out the pain points of this customer. 

Great, do you. 

You’re allowed to have fluidity in your process. But we want to be sure that at the end, all of the boxes have been checked. 

Build out every piece you need to cover during the launch, but drip that out day by day as you see fit. 

It’s ALL got to happen. 

The info is laid out ahead of time, the emails are written, but you decide in real time or 2-3 days in advance what info will go out to your audience. 

What we avoid in having a legit plan and all of the pieces created ahead of time is you having to create content or emails on the fly during a launch while also having to be present on social media and come up with what you’re doing tomorrow.

That stresses me out just thinking about it. 

I hope you can also see the value in having a detailed launch plan and all of those pieces prepared ahead of time. 

That way you can simply execute the launch plan and have space and energy to be present during the actual launch. 

This also allows way more of that objectivity that we want versus riding the emotional roller coaster via a live launch. 

You can focus on the plan instead of your feelings. 

Launch Mistake #3: Not Building A Waitlist 

This next one is kind of a two part deal, but is part of having a legit plan in place. Sleeping on the warmup phase and not building a wait list is a big mistake. 

If you don’t know, I teach the anatomy and phases of a launch inside my FitsPro Foundations course. 

The first phase of a launch is the warm up (just like a lifting program). 

The absolute main objective of the warmup phase is to get people on the waitlist for when your launch goes live.

Why? 

If we can get our warm leads in one place, then we can have a much better expectation of how many people will buy or enroll. This helps in creating a healthier mindset before heading into a launch. A waitlist helps create objective numbers that let us know what actions we need to take next. 

Rather than blindly launching to 400 IG followers, you’re now launching to 30 waitlist humans or whatever number you have. 

Having a solid warmup phase can make a launch much smoother and way more enjoyable. 

The warmup phase gives you time to educate your audience on any VIP fast action bonuses, incentives, the offer itself, why you created it, who it’s for, etc. 

Do the heavy lifting upfront in order to make the launch more seamless and honestly predictable. 

People sleep on the warmup phase, half ass it, or they don’t do it long enough… Then they’re disappointed by the results of their launch.

The launch is won in the warmup phase, the pre-launch. 

Ideally, once you launch, your people should already have the info that they need in order to make an empowered decision to join or not. 

Do you know how many times someone has to see something before they join a list or take any action for that matter? 

Think about yourself. 

You literally do this when you’re debating buying a service or a product. 

Some Pro Tips Here: 

• The more expensive something is or newer it is to your audience, the longer the warmup phase you might need. 

• The more you launch something, the more familiar your immediate audience is going to become with that offer, so maybe you need less time.

Also, the people from the waitlist who don’t end up purchasing remain on the waitlist for the next launch. So you’re now starting ahead of where you started the last launch. 

That is it. Those are the top 3 launch mistakes and how to fix them. 

Get real with your mindset and review some truths. Create a launch plan, and or join the FitsPro Foundations course so you can have access to mine. 

Be sure to warm up your audience before the launch. Prep your audience for what’s coming. Always do a review afterward to get your next launch planned ASAP with new improvements. 

Best of luck, and by luck I mean putting this into action and seeing what happens. Godspeed.

I hope you enjoyed these educated gains and I will see you in the next blog.