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Hey there, it's Steph Crowder. Are you sick of the sales roller coaster I got you? Join me March 16th through the 20th at 2pm Eastern Time every day that week for the Sold Out Sales System Summit. This is a totally free 5 day live training that will get you fully booked and launch your groups repeatedly, consistently and with ease. You're going to learn how to build a predictable plan, create content that actually converts, growing, grow an audience that buys with you, and launch repeatedly without the panic. You can register right now@stephcrowder.com summit. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's. Hello there my courageous listeners. Welcome to the podcast. Today we are honoring day three of the upcoming Sold Out Sales System Summit. And on day three of the summit, we're going to be talking all about predictable launches. So if you are just joining us now, I am in the five weeks leading up to my first ever free summit, I'm spending an episode kind of diving into one of the days of the summit. So I've already done day one which was all about predictable plans. Day two is going to be predictable content. And that brings us to today. Day three of the summit is all about predictable launches. And so for today's episode, I really wanted to reflect on, I think, a topic that you might find surprising. It's been very counterintuitive for me this year, but it's been changing everything. And that is why boring launches are actually the goal. Okay, Your brain is going to fight you on that. But if you have had this like roller coaster relationship with launching, and when I say launching, I mean any kind of like sales campaign, a promotional window, you're trying to fill a group program, you're trying to fill an offer and you just feel like it's a up and down ride of dopamine, spikes adrenaline followed by a crash. You are not doing anything wrong, but you are possibly likely addicted to the drama of it. All. Right? And I want to call you out, but I kind of want to call you out. So that's what we're going to talk about in this episode because it really has taken me, like guys, an entire decade of practicing launching. And I've done a lot, a lot. A lot of launches have made over seven figures in launch based revenue over time. And I've had to call myself out in this. And I am on a journey to kind of heal this part of me. Because most people say almost all the entrepreneurs I talk to tell me that they want sustainability in business, right? They want a reliable business. They want a chill business. I've said those things too. But if you think about it, you're probably doing a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually match up to what a sustainable business looks and feels like in reality, right? Because what if I told you that the most successful launch that I've ever had was also the most boring? Like, the better I've gotten at launching, the more boring I've had to become. Not, not me being boring, but I've had to let the process become more boring. Right. There's been no all nighters, no overworking or less overworking. Right. No refreshing your stripe or Your email every 20 minutes to see if you have new sales, like looking for that dopamine. Right. No dramatic midnight pushing to hit my goal. What I've been focusing on instead and what I want to share with you is just having a plan and following it. I know, right? My brain has absolutely hated that to some degree. I mean, there's. I think I have a mixed relationship with it, but if you are someone who you can end up having a sort of toxic relationship with the drama that comes with the launch roller coaster. And I want to explore the idea of the adrenaline trap in online business that you may not have even really consciously realized that you are engaged in. Okay. It might just feel like your reality and you may not. I mean, for me, like, it was not so long ago before I ever even challenged that it could feel different. Like I said, I have been launching for such a long time that I really came to a place where I had accepted that launching would have to be dramatic forever. That that was just part of it, right? That it just feels amazing. High highs and then low lows. There's even been jokes in my Mastermind program, we have a day that we call Pavement day after a launch. And it. That was. That name was coined because it was me on day like two or three of a Launch literally lying on the pavement outside on my driveway as my kids were, like, riding their scooters around me and all I could do was lay on the pavement. That was normal. That was just, to me, like, that was launching. Right. And I think this is what happens. If you've been launching long enough, you start to unconsciously equate the drama with the realness of it. So the sleepless nights, the obsessive stripe checking, the emotional roller coaster that happens from open to close, it feels like proof that something important is happening. Are you with me on this? It feels like, you know, oh, like that's. That's what launching feels like. That's what launching is supposed to feel like. And so then when a launch, when you. When you then start to ask for launches that feel calm and predictable, your brain may register that as a problem. My brain has registered that as a problem. My brain is like, is this actually working? Like, should I be doing more? Something will feel off. Very, very off. If you are someone who is used to selling your heart out and pushing, pushing, pushing, and then you switch to following a plan and having things done in advance and just working your plan. When you're used to filling every down moment of a launch with the thought, like, I could be doing more, I could be showing up more, I could be posting more. I. You know, you're gonna feel like you're doing something wrong when you have open time on your calendar. I mean, I remember my last launch. One night I went to the theater with my husband, and I was very chill, and I was like, this does not feel safe. This does not feel safe to me. Right. What's happening here is that your nervous system somewhere along the way has gotten trained on the chaos. Okay. You got dopamine from the drama. I got dopamine from the drama. Right. The spike of a big sales day, the panic of a slow day, the relief when you finally hit your goal. Yeah, yeah. You're saying you don't. You want off the ride, but that cycle is actually addictive, isn't it? It masquerades as passion or drive or ambition or this is just what launching feels like. Right. But you're not doing it right when it's dramatic. Not really. What I've re realized is that you're doing it right when it's boring. When you wake up on day three of your launch and you already know roughly where you're gonna land because you've done it enough times to recognize the pattern. That is the goal. That's the whole ball game. Right there, right. The drama isn't just a feature of launching, it's actually a symptom of not having an overall system. Yeah. And just thinking about this in myself and where I am right now, my brain, this is where I am, where when I'm launching, it just sort of feels like executing a plan and yet my brain still tries to overcomplicate it, even right now. Right? Like my brain will look for problems, it will create urgency when there isn't any. It will tell me that I should be trying something new just to do something, just to busy myself. It will want to add something, it will want to change the entire plan midway through a launch. Right. And the trick of this, the actual skill here, is recognizing that as really recognizing those urges as exactly that, an urge recognizing it as noise and then just following the plan anyway. Because there is something almost anti climatic about doing it right. Truly for me, like the absence of panic when I want to obsessively check my numbers. That's how I know that it's working, even when it feels quiet. So when it feels quiet, it doesn't freak me out anymore. When it's going really well. Yes, it's exciting, but I'm not like in a state of mania. It's just even. And I know I've shared quite a bit here on the podcast and also on social media and all my platforms about how I'm trying to make my life more boring in order to reach my goal of a million in revenue in 12 months. I've shared a lot about how boring is one of my top words of the year. And that is because of this entire conversation that we're having today is that I want to put my energy towards doing the sort of more monotonous work. You know, in a lot of ways it's more exciting and even more fun to be in that high drama, high adrenaline cycle versus, you know, what I was doing? You know what I was doing before I recorded this episode? I was going back through launch emails that have worked for me in the past that have gotten higher open rates that people are clicking on. And I've read those emails and I've pulled those emails and I've put them into a Google document and given them some editing and assigned them to my assistant to be scheduled. It's kind of boring, right? You know what's less boring? Making myself write all of my emails from scratch every single time I do a launch and engaging in all of the dramatic stories of like, oh my God, I have no time. I have so Many emails to write. This is so crazy. I have to push, push, push, push, push. I have to exhaust myself. Like, that is in no way boring. That is chaos. And I wouldn't say that it's fun to be in that place. And we all complain about it and we're like, oh, I just. Like so many of my clients are like, I don't want it to feel this way. I want it to feel sustainable. I want it to feel reliable. I want to just feel chill. But ask yourself, why are you creating chaos? I know that this can be hard to confront in ourselves because you may want to be like, well, no, it's not my fault. It's that my kids haven't gone to school in two weeks because of the snow and the flu. It's because I, you know, don't know what I'm doing. It's because, like, you might have so many different readily available reasons or excuses as to why you've allowed for your launching to create chaos in your life. What I'd like for you to do is take a hard look at where might you not be letting it be boring, especially if you're somebody who's launched before. You know, for my clients who are doing my process for launching, which is called buzz blitz inside of the Mastermind, when they do their first buzz blitz, when they install this system, they customize the system, they make it their own. It's not going to be boring the first time because you're doing. You're literally like riding a bike for the first time. Let's. Actually, that's a great analogy. If you think about a kid who's learning to ride a bike for the first time, you already know it is messy, it is chaotic. There is falling, scraping, there might be crying. And none of us, like, see that as a problem. When your kids learning to ride a bike, you're just like, it's okay, get back up. It's all part of it. Like, this is normal. But before you know it, that kid is like, taking off on their bike and they're not falling anymore and the bike isn't wobbly and it's like, everything's steady, really steady on the bike. If you think about riding a bike once you know how it's sort of boring. I mean, it's. It's like, it's fun and it's relaxed. I don't know if boring is the right word, but it's. There's nothing chaotic when you know how to ride a bike. It's. There really shouldn't be any Chaos involved. I want your launches, I want you to think about working towards your launches, feeling that way. And if you're somebody who's hearing this and you're like, gosh, I feel really far off from that, please don't be discouraged. I think it takes a lot of practice to get to this place, but that should be your goal. And so if you've had a chaotic relationship with launching, that is something to look at. And my hope here is to give you, to give you some hope that you can get to a place where launching does just feel like business as usual. I mean, I was out sick like all last week and I didn't have to be on my computer. I didn't have to be, you know, figuring out how to be getting my launch activities done. Like these things just happen in my business now. And you know, we're three weeks out from the, the Sold Out Sales System summit. We already have a hundred people registered for the summit. Like, things are just going, things are just happening. Everything's on track. Boring as hell. I'm here for it. I love it. Okay, another thing we need to address if you want to have predictable launches. I was really thinking about, like, what prevents people from having predictable launches. One of the things is, what we just talked about is your relationship to chaos and the adrenaline and the dopamine that you're engaged, the cycle that you're engaged in. But another thing I want to talk about is something I hear over and over from entrepreneurs. They will say, but my list is burnt out. Have you ever said that my email list is burnt out. My audience is burnt out. One of the most common things that coaches and entrepreneurs, creators, teachers tell themselves when their launches feel hard. People are tired of hearing about this. I've sold this too many times. My list is burnt out. Here's the reframe I have for you about this. If your audience. First of all, it's probably not true. Just like straight up, okay? But let's just, let's just let you have it if that's your thought for just a moment. If your audience is dreading your launches, it's not a frequency problem. It's not that you've said too much or that you've been too loud. It is more likely a quality problem. A launch done correctly should be the most exciting time to be in your world and to be on your list. It should feel like, wow, something exciting is happening. There should be energy, momentum, valuable content, real conversations. It should feel new and interesting and high vibe. By the way, your launch can still be happening and being executed in a boring way and still generate all of those emotions, Right? I feel that way right now about my summit. Like, my energy in my personal life has been quite literally in the toilet. But I don't think my audience has been so excited about an event of mine in quite some time. And I haven't been so excited either. I don't need to be chaotic to be tapping into that high energy, right? Your people should be more engaged during a launch, not less. Too many of you are thinking to yourself, like, oh, people just glaze over when I start selling, right? Oh, that people tune out. It should be the opposite. People should be the most engaged during a launch. When you're doing it correctly, right? How about this? I thought about this and I said, oh, that is so true. The coaches and service providers who burn out their lists. You wanna know how your list gets burned out? It's when you only show up when you're selling. Oh, right. Have you ever gone quiet for months or have you been even better? Have you had the experience of being on somebody's list or being in somebody's audience and feeling like you haven't heard from them and suddenly they appear with their handout? Yeah, it doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good to be the person selling, and it doesn't feel good to be sold to. Right? When you launch with pressure and you launch with fake urgency, but without genuine value and connection, that is what creates launch fatigue, my friends. Not launching consistently. You can launch consistently. You can even launch back to back. If you are creating value consistently and predictably. But if you're only showing up when it's time to ask for money, everybody's gonna get burnt out in the equation, including you. Okay? When you have a real system, your launches feel like events that they can look forward to. They're like, oh, yes, like she's about to do her thing again, right? They recognize the rhythm. I know this because people will tell me this. They're like, I've been watching your last three launches. I'm ready. Like, I'm here. Right? They trust that when you open enrollment, something good is coming. That familiarity is not boring. It's not boring for them. Maybe it's gonna be boring for you once you get the hang of it. But it's not boring. It's safe. It's comfortable. Right? It's exciting in a reliable way. Your brain might get bored, but your audience loves it. And that's really what I want you thinking about the reason that most coaches and service providers feel like they're starting from scratch every launch is because they actually are. Okay? It's not because you lack effort or intelligence, but more likely it's because you have not identified the repeatable elements yet, because every launch actually has patterns. When you do this enough and you learn the components, you will see it and then you can't unsee it, okay? You get to know the things that move people, the moments that create sales, the timing that worked, and so much more. But if you're in survival mode every time, you'll be white knuckling your way through it and you'll be way too close to it, right? Think about being so close to something that it's fuzzy. You can't see it. You never get the distance that you need to be able to see the pattern. When you know how to launch predictably, there's no rigid script. It's not. It's not boring in the sense that it's like. It's like it's not interesting. That's not what I mean at all when I use the word boring. Instead, it's a set of patterns that you will understand well enough to recreate every launch, okay? You will iterate on them, you will spice them up, you will change things so the pattern will be recognizable to you. It won't be something that your audience is really picking up on, at least not consciously. They might recognize, like, oh, this is what she does when she's getting ready to open enrollment for her mastermind. But it won't feel repetitive, like, oh, my God, she's already said this, right? That's not the way that it will be read by your audience when you know what you're doing with this. So on day three of my summit, I'm going to do something that I think will be maybe a little uncomfortable for some people in the best way, and that is we're going to look at what a predictable launch actually requires. Okay? It's not gonna be scary. I'm gonna walk you through it, and I'm gonna help you identify exactly which piece you have been missing, okay? Because I have found, I have helped so many people with this, hundreds at this point get their launches going in the right direction and have repeatable sal. It's almost never that you're doing everything wrong, okay? I don't think I've ever said to somebody, you're just doing everything wrong. More typically, it's one or two things. And once you see it, like I said before, then you can't unsee it. You'll be like, oh my gosh. Okay, that's the piece that I need to tweak. That's the piece that I need to get a better handle on. So come, come to the Sold Out Sales System Summit. Come ready to look at your launches honestly. And if you're not somebody who is doing launches yet, you will learn so much from what I have to share with the people who are launching. We're going to be doing some auditing, some live coaching. It is going to be really unlike any other event that I've hosted before and I really can't wait to see you there. So once again, StephCrowder.comSummit is where you can go to get all signed up. I cannot wait to see you there. I'll see you soon in another episode and until then I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Are you ready to get fully booked and fill up your group program? Join the Sold out sales system summit March 16th through the 20th at 2pm Eastern. It's a free five day live training and I cannot wait to see you there. StephCrowder.com summit get all signed up and I'll talk to you soon.