Life Update: Course Launch & Exploring the French Riviera
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These last weeks have been a whirlwind. 🌪️
I launched my Square Secrets Business™ course!
I spoke at a Squarespace Circle event.
I had a fabulous vacation on the French Riviera.
I’ve been preparing for my upcoming visit to Necker Island. 🏝️
We have a lot to get into so let’s get started!
First, let’s talk about the launch.
A lot of business owners who sell digital products tend to stick to Evergreen because they think launches are too exhausting.
In general, launching does have a terrible reputation. But I have to say:
I LOVE LAUNCHING! 🤩
If you’ve done it enough times and know how to organize it properly, then it actually doesn’t have to be an awful, painful experience.
If you haven’t, then yeah… it can be exhausting, and overwhelming. In fact, by the end of it, you’ll feel like you ran 17 marathons in a row. 🥵
Trust me I would know - that’s how MANY of my early launches felt. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane…
The first time I ever launched a course was in 2018 in Bali, Indonesia…
That launch was extra difficult because I was in the opposite timezone of my customers. Plus, I ran the entire thing by myself.
The launch itself actually went really well but afterwards, I felt like I’d been hit by an emotional transport truck. It was brutal. 🥲
Fast forward: here’s how I run my course launches in 2024.
I host 3 live online trainings that are 100% free to attend. They take place on 3 consecutive days leading up to the actual launch. For my Square Secrets Business™ course, the training is called Profitable & Productive Web Designer Bootcamp.
We start promoting this training a few weeks beforehand. This way, people have more than enough time to register. This is done via our email list, youtube channel, and the help of our lovely affiliates. 💕
We create a Facebook group for the training attendees and keep it active during those 3 days of training and the launch. I post, comment, and do a few pop-up lives to talk about topics that I notice are hot in the group.
At the end of the third training event, we go into the actual course sale.
The whole launch process has become pretty “rinse and repeat” for us. This makes it a lot more manageable for my teammates and I.
One of my team members runs the customer service and the tech stuff. Another teammate manages the affiliates part of it.
My responsibility during the launch is to be active in the facebook group (pop up lives) and create content for + run the live training sessions. 👇
Even though i’m not in Bali anymore, the different timezones is still a slight inconvenience. 🕥
The trainings take place at a time that’s most convenient for my audience (who are mostly living in the U.S). So that means that we do the trainings at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time(9 p.m. Swiss time). The trainings plus Q&A panel last about two hours. When i finish it’s around midnight and I’m wide awake, wired from all the excitement (not the ideal evening routine🌛 ).
My launch day self-care routine 💅
Because of this not-so-soothing bedtime routine, I often end up sleeping in pretty late as well.
I like to keep these days leading up to the launch pretty laid back so that I have time to recharge and stay balanced.
This usually looks like going to the gym, playing tennis, and on the third and final training day, my beloved tradition of getting a massage from my favorite masseuse.
By the way, I am going to this new gym twice a week and I absolutely LOVE it.
It's a small group personal training gym. So you just have to show up and they pretty much take care of the rest. They make you a plan, they tell you which exercises you should do and show you how to do them. You don’t have to think about or plan anything which makes it super easy.
Steve Jobs always wore black turtlenecks because it meant that he had one less decision to make in his life.
I find that the more that I can automate and simplify in my day to day, the better. This means I can spend my brain energy (which I don’t have an awful lot of during a launch 🫠) on the things that matter.
Pro Tip: the more you can create these “ rinse and repeat” processes in your life, the better your productivity will be.
👆This is exactly what I’ve done with my my launches.
We have all of the promo materials planned, prepped, scheduled and ready to go. So we pretty much just reuse the same stuff over and over again. We don't change and rethink the launch every single time.
We only make changes to the launch process if something genuinely needs to be changed.
For example:
On day 2 of training this time around, only 270 people showed up to the live. That wasn’t nearly as much as on Day 1 and Day 3. This is a trend we have noticed over the past few launches - day 2 is just not so popular.
Why might this be? Well my theory is that it might just have to do with the name. The name of the workshop on day 2 is Skyrocketing Productivity with Processes. Doesn’t have the sexiest ring to it right?
So my solution:
Change the title.
Slightly tweak the content in order to fit the new title.
I actually think the content for this training is already incredible. The main point we address is super important. So it probably just needs a change of packaging.
One thing that was interesting about this launch was the abnormal registration numbers in the early stages…
Typically, when getting the word out about this 3-day training, our fabulous affiliates are our super stars AKA they’re bringing in around 70-80% of the leads.
This time, in the first week of promoting the event, this number was strangely low…instead WE seemed to be brining in the majority of the leads.
At first, we thought there must be something wrong with the tech. We we’re honestly pretty concerned that our system was just not attributing credit where credit was due and spent LOADS of time quadruple-checking the back-end settings.
In the end, it turned out there was no tech issue - the leads really were coming from our funnels. Also, the leads from our affiliates did roll in - just a week or two later than expected.
Overall, we still brought in an oddly large number of leads. I would attribute it to our YouTube channel (which I'm very happy about! 😊 )
There were definitely a few hiccups this launch:
We had a quick Thrivcart scare. Thrivecart is our main payment processing system and just hours before the launch, we heard reports that it was out of order. We found a backup system that we could resort to as a plan B but luckily, Thrivecart pulled through so we didn’t have to use it.
My teammate Helen (who lives on an Island) lost her power on the day of the launch. So she was working from a hotspot off her phone. Luckily she was still able to make it to the Q&A.
Launching means having a couple of weeks worth of customer service inquiries hit the inbox in one day.
To be honest, this was the most exhausting launch I've had in a long time. I'm not dying or anything, but it was definitely more demanding than the average PB launch.
At the end of it, we were 15 sales down on normal (which is not great, but not the end of the world either). Our January launch sale numbers were higher than normal so in terms of revenue, it evens out.
So business-wise it’s not the end of the world. It’s honestly more the emotional aspect of it that’s not so fun.
When a launch rolls as planned, it's really not that much work. when things don't go as planned, and you have to fix, change and add things, that’s when the real work happens.
What did I love about this launch?
All the thanks, and praise we received from new students and people who attended the training. People do always give us kind words but the level of appreciation this launch was exceptionally high. ❣️
I was so touched by the comments in the facebook group and inbox:
Im also very grateful for my team
I used to run this whole company fully myself. Now, we have so many more people who come to the event that it honestly wouldn’t be possible. I always have two of my teammates there to help me. When it came time for the Q&A, there were a few questions that people asked that I actually didn’t know the answer to. I have the privilege of being so out of the day-to-day stuff of the business that details like the exact date and time that a launch will end are often not even on my radar. Thankfully, my team members know these things and can answer those questions for me during the Q&A. 😇
Psst…Sad that you missed the free training? The good news is there will be another chance! Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter so that you’re the first to hear about it! 💌
Speaking at Squarespace’s Circle Live
So Squarespace asked me to speak on the topic of content creation that leads to conversion which I was THRILLED about (this topic is pretty much my bread & butter!)
I have to admit, I honestly didn't realize how much I knew about the topic until I started planning the talk on a Zoom call with some of the circle team members. It really made me realize just how much I’ve learned about content creation in the past eight years.
The talk itself went really well! It did happen to be on the day after the launch (the same day that I did the recap call with the team and packed for vacation since I was leaving the next morning). So not ideal timing but totally worth
Okay, and now the part you’ve all been waiting for…my escape to the French Riviera!
For this spring vacay, my husband and I were choosing between southern France and Greece.
In the end, we went with france (and in hindsight I will say this was a fantastic decision). I feel like people often plan their Europe trips for the summer months and then are always shocked that it's a heatwave + tourist zoo. But honestly, that’s just what a European summer entails. 🤷♀️
We figured Greece makes sense in high summer because we'll likely just be hanging out at a boutique hotel relaxing and swimming. The french riviera on the other hand has a lot of activities that we’re excited to do. So we thought it’s best to skip the crowd and go early.
Ready for a photo dump? 📸
We hit the road for st. tropez first thing in the morning.
on the way, we had a little lunch stop in Ticino.
It's just two hours from Zurich but it’s like a different world! and already SO much warmer. ☀️
After a long day of pretty chaotic driving ( Italy and France are a bitttt more stressful than Swierland 🚗 ), we arrived at Hôtel Lily of the Valley.
The hotel itself was lovely and so beautifully designed! Our room had a spectacular view, and we made good use of the peaceful pool area.
Since it was April, the hotel was still pretty empty. 🙌
After a good night’s sleep and breakfast with a view at the hotel’s cafe, we headed into St Tropez for a stroll….
The town is full of lovely shops and beautiful old buildings which still have this rustic charm to them.
I have to say, the town itself was already quite busy with tourists (isn’t it funny when you get annoyed by tourists and then remember that you yourself are in fact also a tourist? 😅 ).
So it’s busy enough in April, which means high summer must be a whole other level.
After exploring the town, we went to check out the beautiful beach Plage de Tahiti….
and enjoyed a tasty seaside lunch at Jardin Tropezina Beach club
Then we spent the afternoon relaxing and napping by the pool.
I hope this was a little nice sneak peek into the area for you!
If you haven’t already, I can highly recommend taking a trip there. Ideally around April - June. I would assume from July - September this place is an absolute zoo.
In other news, I took my last tennis lesson today before I potentially go play Richard Branson again….
As some of you might already know, I went to Necker Island a couple of years ago for a business trip and LOVED it. I have now been invited to go again! So why tennis lessons?
Well, Richard Branson is a freaking fantastic tennis player. I played him last time and lost…
The man has a couple of years on me but is significantly better at tennis. I mean he does have two tennis instructors and he plays twice a day (every day).
Anyways, ever since I found out I was going back to Necker, i’ve been practicing.
So stay tuned for my blog about that trip and to find out if Richard kicked my butt at tennis again!
In the meantime, check out my last vlog to hear all about how I hired my new assistant, my latest Sezane haul, and ski trip to Zermatt. 🇨🇭
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