Strategy du Jour: Launching (& the foundations you need first!)

This transcript has been automatically created and minimally edited/formatted. As such, there may be some errors in the text.
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[Episode preview]
There is no one right strategy for generating leads no matter what it seems like all the voices in the online business world are saying, and it’s by building your foundations within the context of your sustainable success system, you can then consciously make a choice about what strategy is right for you rather than getting pulled in what can feel like 1000 different directions by 1000 different shoulds, shiny objects and strategies. Du Jour.
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[Podcast Intro]
Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.
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[Episode begins]if I time this right, this episode will be coming out while I am mid launch for our comprehensive business training program expand if I don’t time it right then. Well, let me remind you of the conversation that we had a few episodes back about annual planning and we can all laugh together at the fact that I planned for this to come out during the lunch. That maybe isn’t actually happening when I thought it was going to happen. It’s fun if I do it right though and this is coming out mid lunch. I’m gonna be honest with you. I am very proud of myself because this will be the first time I think in my entire five plus years in business where I was actually able to plan more than a couple of months in advance and not only plan it but actually stick with it. And of course, also here’s my obligatory plug for said lunch. Come and join us inside of expand where you will be equipped to sustainably call in a steady stream of clients and stabilize your cash flow while building the foundations for a business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m sure I’ve got some cool bonuses or something like that going on for this launch. So head over to holdco media.com/expand to find out what those are and then of course, come join us inside of expand seriously. This program is amazing. You don’t even have to take it from me though. You can simply read any of the testimonials that are on the expand sales page as well as our client results page at PCO media.com. But also another reason to join us inside of expand and part of why I actually wanted to release this episode during our expand launch is that the entire program is foundations focused and self trust led. And what a better way to show you what I actually mean by that than by talking about one of the online business world’s favorite strategies and the foundations that underpin it that actually empower that strategy to be successful. Launching. Launching is one of those things that so many business owners think that they have to do. In fact, it’s one of those things that they don’t even think they have to do because it’s just been so normalized as the only lead generation strategy. And people just start to think, oh, that’s just what you do in business, you lunch. But the reality is is that launching is only one lead generation strategy. And I know a number of very successful business friends, business clients that I know that rarely if ever run a launch, simply because it’s just not the strategy that they’ve chosen. When I say that launching is only a strategy. What I really mean by that is that there are several foundations that must be in place in order to make a launch successful. The reason why launching is not necessarily a must in every business is because launching is a strategy. It is not a foundation of a sustainably successful business rather, it builds on top of and it utilizes those necessary foundations. And as such, it is only one way to utilize those foundations. Now on the expand sales page, which again, you can find at hco media.com/expand, you actually you’ll see a video where I kind of talk you through something called the whole co hierarchy of steps. If you’re a visual person, I recommend that you go and take a look at that, but I’ll do a quick digest here. And then of course, we’re gonna dive even more deeply into what it actually means in the context of launching. So picture with me a triangle that is split horizontally into four sections. So a section at the bottom and then a section above that and then that little tip of the triangle is another fourth and final section. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the idea of a food pyramid. But if you are, you can kind of picture like that kind of set up here. So in that bottom rung on that bottom, you know, really foundational piece there, you have the context next up. So one step up, second from the bottom, you have the foundations next up. So third up, now you have the strategies and then finally at the top that tippy top of the triangle, you have the tactics from the bottom up. It goes context, then foundations, then strategies, then tactics in order to build a sustainably successful business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. You want to start at the bottom of the triangle. With the context and then move your way up through the foundations, then the strategies and then finally, the tactics. Unfortunately, for everyone, most business owners skip over the bottom two tiers, the context and the foundations. And they start at this strategy level, they think I need to figure out how to get clients from my marketing, for example. And then they go and buy a course on how to get clients through reels. Now they’re learning how to create a hook, how to create the right type of video, how to find topics to talk about in their short form videos, how frequently they should post what hashtags they should use all of which are strategies, some of which are tactics and these are all within those top two tiers of the HKO hierarchy of steps. What shortens when you skip over the context, that bottom step in the foundations, that second step and go straight into the strategies and the tactics. Well, you very likely end up implementing that strategy to A T and still not getting the results that you desire. And I don’t think that I need to tell you that launching is one of those strategies where this regularly happens for online business owners everywhere. They follow some tried and true launch strategy to A T and they do not see results from it or they see some results, but then they aren’t repeatable results. This particularly happens with launching because launching is A lead generation strategy and the lead generation is deep into your sustainable success system. Meaning that there are a lot of contextual elements that must be in place first before a launch can actually be successful. Let me show you what I mean. First up, let’s talk about that very first tier of the HCO hierarchy of steps. The context, the context in question is your sustainable success system, a system which ties together every single element of your audience offers messaging marketing, lead generation and sales. Building out each of these contextual elements with of your sustainable success system is exactly what we do inside of expand. We start by building out your audience, then your offers, then your messaging, then your marketing, then your lead generation, then your sales. We work through each of these elements in order because every single one of them builds on top of one another. Every single one of them provides necessary context that allows each of the next elements to be successful. We start audience because your audience informs your offers, we build offers because your offers inform your messaging, we design your messaging because your messaging informs your marketing, we hone your marketing because your marketing informs your lead generation, we develop your lead generation because your lead generation informs your sales. And it’s only by going through each of these contextual elements of your sustainable success system. In order that you are able to fully build the next element, it’s only by building your audience that you’re able to effectively build your offers only by building your offers that you’re able to effectively create your messaging. Only by creating your messaging, they’re able to effectively create marketing only by creating marketing, you’re effectively able to create your lead generation and only by building that lead generation are you able to effectively sell? Which brings us now back to lead generation notice where it is inside your sustainable success system. Out of six contextual elements, it’s number five with only sales being after it. So it’s no wonder then that if people are jumping straight into how to launch, which again, launching is a lead generation strategy. Without then following the whole co hierarchy of steps, building out the foundations of each of the prior elements of their sustainable success system that they find it difficult to create reliable, repeatable or even any results from this chosen strategy of launching. We’re not gonna go into all the foundations of each of these contextual elements though that is exactly what we do inside of expand, which is why we call it our comprehensive business training program. But we have to start here by understanding exactly where the strategy of launching even falls throughout this entire business building process. Once we’ve built out the foundations, strategies and tactics for each of the five contextual elements before lead generation only then can we actually look at and begin building the foundations of lead generation there are three key foundations of lead generation, the hand raising opportunity, the pitch in the follow up, the main goal of late generation is to get people in your audience who are a right fit for a specific offer of yours to raise their hand and identify themselves as someone who is ready to work with you so that you can then of course, invite them into your work. Hence why it actually matters that you have already done your audience work. So you know who your right foot client is, you’ve already done your offers work. So you have a specific offer to meet them. Exactly when they’re ready to buy, you’ve already done your messaging work so that you can use language as a truck that right fit client into your right for the work and you have already done your marketing work so that you can get those right fit clients to even hear about your hand raising opportunity in the first place. So they can actually raise their hand and identify themselves as a potential client. There are many ways to get people to raise their hand. And as we’ll talk about in a moment, when we get to talking about the strategy level of the HCO hierarchy of steps. Launching is just one way to get people to raise their hand. And even within the strategy of launching, there are so many different ways to launch all of which still accomplish this foundational goal. Of getting your right foot clients. For the specific offer you are intending to sell, to raise their hand. But when someone has raised their hand, what? No, while the next foundation of lead generation is the pitch. Yes. Pitching your work to your right fit potential client or clients is a foundation of lead generation because without the pitch, you’ve gotten someone to raise their hands. But to what end now what, once again, there are so many different strategies for pitching, you could have a written pitch inside of a free PDF. It could be a live pitch that you do. Maybe at a workshop on Zoom, it could be an email sent individually to a prospective client. And again, even with every single one of these strategies for pitching, there are so many different subsets of each of them, so many different strategies for pitching. But you know what all of those strategies have in common, they all have in common the foundations of an effective pitch, how you string those foundations together and in what medium doesn’t actually matter. Those are strategy level questions. What really matters is that you have each of those pieces. After every solid pitch, there is the follow up. This is our third and final foundation of lead generation. Again, there are so many strategies for how you could follow up. Is it a sequence of sales emails? Is it an individual email sent a week or so? After having talked with a prospective client. Is it a commitment to check back in with this perspective, client in a couple of months when they’ve expressed that they’ll be more ready to buy and just like the pitch, there are foundational elements of a follow up and it doesn’t actually matter what order those foundations are put together in or what medium they are expressed through. They simply all need to be there as part of the follow up. The beauty of all of these foundations is that they are built within the context of five other elements of your sustainable success system, which takes a somewhat scary and confusing feeling topic like lead generation, many of our expander even come in to expand and admit to us that when they first joined the program, they weren’t even really sure what lead generation meant, let alone how to do it. But the fact that lead generation is the fifth element of your sustainable success system actually makes it feel simple to the point where you actually get to enjoy the creativity that is inherent and even required for lead duration to be successful because so much of it is just building on top of things that you have already done 1000 times before. For example, within just the foundation of the hand raising opportunity, which is one of our three foundations of lead generation. Within that foundation of the hand raising opportunity, you need to know what are some problems, questions and experiences that your right set client or this particular offer is facing right now. Well, by the time our expanders begin to actually build their lead generation foundations here, they have already created a list of problems, questions and experiences because they had to ask the exact same question when they were completing their marketing foundations. Next, you need to know how to structure your hand raising opportunity so that it can actually facilitate the intended result. I’m gonna talk more about that in a second. But let’s just say, you know whether your hand raising opportunity is going to be a free PDF that prospective clients drop their email for or a paid workshop that gives a taster of your work or a free four day challenge that facilitates some sort of breakthrough. None of that is the point. None of that actually matters what matters in all of these strategies is that you create the conditions within which your right fit client can reliably get the intended result of whatever strategy here you are choosing and how you set up an offer, any offer, whether it’s a free PDF, a paid workshop, a free four day challenge or even your actual work, your actual services, your actual packages. How do you set that up to reliably facilitate results? Well, our expanders by the time they step into the lead generation work, now, they’ve already learned how to build offers that reliably facilitate results back when they built their offer foundations. Now, they’re simply applying those same foundations to their hand raising opportunity as well. The next step is to create messaging that attracts right fit clients into this hand raising opportunity. And again, same exact thing here. Our expanders have already built messaging foundations before. So they simply get to use those exact same concepts to create messaging foundations or their hand raising opportunity. Basically, when you begin building out your lead generation foundations, it actually gets to be so simple because ideally, you’ve already built each of the contextual elements and their foundations prior to building your lead generation system. So what does this look like? Practically, I wanna actually walk you through building a hand raising opportunity here. So that way you can see what I even mean by all this foundation strategy, yada yada yada stuff. All right. So let’s say that you’re a mindset coach and a somatic healer and you want to build a hand raising opportunity to bring people into your six month one on one package. Well, we’re gonna start with exactly what I just said. We start with what are some problems, questions and experiences that you are right? Fit client for this particular offer, this six month 11 package. What are problems, questions and experiences that they are facing right now? Let’s just say off the top of my head, that one problem questionnaire experienced that your right fit client or this six month one on one coaching package is facing is a fear of speaking up for themselves. Again, that is just one thing that this right fit client is presently facing and there’s a lot of other problems, questions or experiences that we could build a hand raising opportunity around. This is just what came to mind for me. So that’s what we’re gonna go with. Ok. They have a fear of speaking out for themselves. That’s one of their problems, one of their questions on their experiences. Now, our next step is how can you structure your hand raising opportunity so that it can facilitate its intended result? Well, if you ever heard me teach on building powerful offers that transform and you know that there are several steps to this, this step is not just a one and done thing. There’s a few different steps, you have to start by asking where our right fit client is. Now, in this case, while they’re struggling to speak up for themselves. And because this is for a larger offer, which is probably a full transformation offer or phase six, if you’re already one of our expanders, because it’s a larger offer. This person definitely knows that they are struggling to speak up for themselves. They already have that self-awareness, but they also have a deeper layer of self-awareness. And they know that this struggle to speak up for themselves is tied to some deeper beliefs that they hold about themselves in the world. And they really wanna begin to heal those beliefs. OK. That’s our first step here up knowing how to structure a hand raising opportunity so that it can facilitate the intended result. Our next step after figuring out where they are now is figuring out where do they want to be in this case? And this example, maybe they wanna be able to confidently choose when to speak up for themselves because they’re no longer held back by those deeper beliefs about themselves and the world. Our next piece now of being able to structure a hand raising opportunity so that it can actually facilitate the intended result. Here, we know where they are, we know where they wanna be. Now, how do they go from where they are to where they want to be? Ok. Mind you context here, I am not a mindset coach focused on helping people heal their limiting beliefs. So I’m just gonna give kind of an idea of a journey here, but this may or may not be fully right, but it’s fine. This is just what I’m thinking of off the top of my head. OK. So the very first step to go from struggling to speak up for themselves, knowing that there’s some deeper beliefs, wanting to heal those beliefs. Two confidently choosing when to speak up for themselves and not as held back by those deeper beliefs, would be maybe exploring what they feel might be at risk if they were to speak up for themselves. Which then step two here would allow them to identify the sources of these fears and beliefs, which then they would maybe need to take the next step of differentiating between the part of them who is experiencing this fear and the part of them who is a well resourced capable adult in their present day. And then after that, they probably would need to resource themselves even further with specific tools to support themselves, to speak up in a grounded way out of a felt experience of safety in their bodies. So we know where our client is now, we know where they want to be and we know how they need to go from where they are to where they want to be in the next piece. Here. Again, all of this is stuff that our expanders actually learn how to do way back when they’re building their offers and now they’re just applying to their hand raising opportunity as part of lead generation. Our next step is to ask, how can we structure this offer so that we create the conditions within which our right fit clients can go from where they are to where they want to be. There’s a lot of different elements of a offer structure that you wanna think about. You gotta think about things like timing resources, assets, support systems, boundaries, et cetera, et cetera. And again, without going too deep into this, I would guess that in order to create the conditions within which their right that could go from where they are to where they wanna be with this hand raising opportunity. We’d probably want to make this hand raising opportunity. Maybe something like a five week live group program where you would teach each of these elements through weekly sessions. Maybe include a bit of time for some coaching in those sessions, maybe have some exercises that you do in between sessions, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe in that final session, you would invite them to continue this work with you across all elements of their life in your six month, one on one package, which if you’ll notice is where we are now pitching. We’re moving into that second foundation of lead generation, then you probably have some follow up as well, which again is our third and final foundation of lead generation. By the way, I do just need to say here, yes, hand raising opportunities can be paid offers. They do not always have to be something free like a free three day challenge or a free PDF or whatever it is. And then of course, after actually understanding what the structure is of the hand raising opportunity, you would then create the messaging that would attract a right fit client into this hand raising opportunity. And of course, then you would actually go into building out your pitch, building out your follow up and then beginning to actually set this whole lead generation system in motion and begin generating those leads for your six month one on one coaching package. The example I just shared about this mindset coach in somatic healer actually bridged the gap from the realm of foundations to the realm of strategy. We’re taking those three foundations, the hand raising opportunity, the pitch, the follow up and in going through the process of building them, we are now also making strategy level decisions. In that case, in that example, that looked like choosing that this hand raising opportunity was going to be a five week paid live course, which using paid live courses to generate leads for larger offers is a lead generation strategy. Alternatively, this mindset coach and somatic healer could have chosen to set this hand raising opportunity up, as let’s say, a pre-recorded course, which is another lead generation strategy. They could have chosen a completely different problem question or experience than the one we chose of struggling to speak up for themselves. And then therefore, they could have ended up creating a completely different type of hand raising opportunity if they’re gonna create a three day challenge or a free PDF or even offer a single paid coaching session. Yes, one of those strategies that they could have chosen as a hand raising opportunity here could have been a lunch event. And again, there are so many different ways to launch and so many different types of launch events. Are you gonna do a webinar, a multi day challenge, a paid boot camp, a paid workshop in all day virtual retreat. And then of course, to think about our other two foundations. It’s when and how and where are you pitching and when and how and where are you following up? Once you make these more strategy level decisions from those foundations, now you can then make more tactic level decisions. Like what time are you gonna host that webinar at or are you maybe even going to host the same webinar on three different days at three different times? How long is your webinar going to be? How long are you going to keep your cart open for whatever the offer is that you’re selling afterward? What bonuses or discounts or other incentives are you going to include for people who sign up from the webinar? Are you going to include any bonuses or discounts or incentives? Are you starting to see how all of these worked together? We have our context of our sustainable success system first and we build our foundations of that particular element of our sustainable success system and then we choose our strategy and then we get into all the little teeny tiny tactics and to do s and all those little detailed questions just in case it’s not totally clear, I wanna show you an example of what happens when you start at the strategy level with a decision of I want to launch when you start with. I want to launch the very first question you are going to ask is, well, how should I launch? Maybe you’ve seen people do a three day challenge with a one week cart open period afterward and you really liked that. So now you’re gonna do a three day challenge with a one week cart open period as well. Your next question is OK. Well, what I’m actually doing in those three days of this challenge, if you’re that mindset coach and somatic healer, you might come to that same idea of helping people confidently speak up for themselves. It’s a great idea. Right. So sure, run with it. Now, you are trying to figure out how do you help people speak up for themselves in three days and probably not even three days, but it’s more than likely 31 hour sessions. You’re probably going to find yourself getting a little bit confused and even frustrated about what to include in those three days and what to lean out because you only have so much time, even though you know that this topic is a big one and really can’t actually be covered in just 31 hour sessions. Now, you’re leaving things out that if you were to really pause for a moment and think about what someone would be to do to be able to constantly speak up for themselves, you would know that these things that you are leaving out are actually crucial details. And so even if you run this three day challenge and even if you enjoy it or you enjoy parts of it, maybe even you have great engagement. People are excited about it. What very likely will happen or be the result of this three day challenge is threefold. Number one, you’ll likely have attracted a prospective client to this three day challenge who is not ready to do the work that is required to transform inside your six month package. Think about it by making this launch event about confidently speaking up for yourself a three day event, you are inadvertently communicating that someone could confidently speak up for themselves after 31 hour sessions, very likely without any additional work. Certainly no integration time in between the person who is attracted to this three day series on confidently speaking up for themselves is looking for a fast fix. That is not the person who is ready for a six month 1 to 1 journey into the depths of their being. Therefore, you’re gonna put so much effort into this three day event. You’ll very likely see little to no results from it. The next thing that will very likely happen because you started at that strategy level is that you’re not going to be able to reliably deliver on what you very likely said in your messaging and marketing about this event. No, please. No, I am not judging anyone here for doing this. I have certainly done this myself. But when you choose the structure of an offer, any offer including a free one before you actually know what needs to happen in order for a participant or client to go from where they are to where they want to be. You almost always end up choosing a structure for the offer that does not give them the space nor the necessary conditions to achieve that intended transformation result or outcome. How many times have you gone to a free workshop that might have been great? But that ultimately the real solution that they provided was come work with me. Yes, this strategy works and business owners make sales this way. And what kind of experience are you creating for your audience and community and prospective clients here? If you are saying in your marketing that they will achieve some sort of outcome or result by the end of this three day challenge that in all actuality, it’s impossible to confidently speak up for yourself in three short trainings with zero implementation or integration time included. Finally, the third thing that I’ve seen happen again and again and again when business owners start at the strategy level, especially with something like lead generation is that they begin to either feel uncomfortable with or even begin to really hate sales and selling. There’s so many reasons for this. Both of the things we just talked about that happen when you start at the strategy level are big ones. But there’s also the fact that on some level, you know that you cannot deliver and what you say you are going to in this three day challenge. And that doesn’t feel good. And so marketing this three day challenge, pitching at this three day challenge, sending sales emails after this three day challenge are all going to feel forced, are all going to feel uncomfortable, are all going to feel inauthentic if not to your audience because maybe you’re doing a very great job of putting on a show but to you, which then means that it’s so much harder to want to sell or launch or whatever it is again in the future. Now, a lot of business owners, a lot of coaches course creators who teach from this strategy level would write off this discomfort with sales and selling as a mindset issue that you need to work through in order to be successful in business. But what if it’s not? What if this discomfort is your inner wisdom speaking saliently about the facts that something is off here. Those of you who have experienced this might not have been able to put your finger on what fell off mostly because I really don’t know anyone other than us here at HCO who are teaching from a true foundations focused level and who are equipping our clients to be able to use pretty much any strategy that they desire to because they have their foundations in place already. And I don’t say this out of any sort of like, you know, look how great we are. And really, if you know someone who is teaching from the real foundations, please, please please connect us. I would honestly love to know another like minded human who is doing and teaching this really important foundational work. But I say this because I want you to know that if you have been trying to in this case, generate leads and you’ve been trying and trying and trying to do so successfully from a strategy level rather than from a foundations level. It makes so much sense that things have felt so much harder for you, then maybe they seem like they are for other people. It makes so much sense that you haven’t seen the results that you desire even if you followed. So and so’s tried and true strategy to A t it makes so much sense that part of you feels really uncomfortable implementing from this strategy level without having the foundations first. Because without the foundations, you cannot ever really make informed decisions within your strategy, you can only make your very best guess and sometimes really through no fault of your own because again, really no one that I know is teaching this sometimes your best guess isn’t actually what it means to be. And again, I don’t say this with any judgment because I have been there. I have done the same thing I have made all of these mistakes so many times. And even still to this day, I sometimes find myself thinking on the strategy level first before building my foundations. So you’re not alone in that whatsoever. And I invite you to listen to that part of yourself that says something is off here and to build those foundations that allow you to make the informed decisions across all of your strategies and across every single contextual element of your sustainable success system. From your audience to your offers, to your messaging, to your marketing, to your lead generation and to your sales. If after listening to this today, you want to choose launching as your lead generation strategy. Amazing do that. If you don’t also amazing, do something else. There is no one right strategy for generating leads, no matter what it seems like all the voices in the online business world are saying and it’s by building your foundations within the context of your sustainable success system, you can then consciously make a choice about what strategy is right for you rather than getting pulled in what can feel like 1000 different directions by 1000 different shoulds, shiny objects and strategies, Du Jour. If you’re ready to build the foundations of each element of your sustainable success systems that you can get paid really freaking well to do the work that you most love doing in the way you most love doing it with the people, you most love working with come join us inside of our comprehensive Business training program expand. You’ll find all the details at hco media.com/expand that’s linked in the show notes. And again, if we timed this right, and I am actually for once in my life following the plan that I set out to do, and this episode is actually coming out while I am launching expand, which honestly is just gonna be amazing. I will bet that I even have some pretty nifty bonuses or other fun things that make joining expand right now, even more of an obvious. Yes, if you’re listening to this episode in the future, when I’m not launching expand, or if you know, I didn’t actually follow through on my plan. Well, you’re still absolutely welcome to join us in inside of expand and you can find all of that information at hco media.com/expand. I’ll see you there.
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[Podcast Outro]
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