Episode 189: Launching and Learning - Embracing Butterflies in Business

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Exploring the Online Business World

There’s a massive opportunity in the online business space. Whether you're getting into it or considering a shift, there's a lot to see, learn, and do. Over the years, I’ve shared countless tips and tricks on my social media and previous podcast episodes. But at the heart of it all, being in business means offering something for sale.

So, how do we do that effectively?

The Online Space: Opportunities and Challenges

The online business world can sometimes feel like a different beast compared to traditional business. Creating courses, coaching, and marketing ourselves often come with a steep learning curve. Recently, I started a side project—a micro bakery under the Colorado Cottage Act. This venture not only feeds my creativity but also serves as a reminder of the core principles of business.

Lessons from the Bakery: Bridging the Online and Offline Worlds

I’ve been baking bread for years, and starting this micro bakery was a way to reconnect with a skill I love. Initially, it was a personal project, but I soon saw parallels with my online business. Here are some lessons I’ve learned:

Embracing Creativity and Experimentation

Baking bread and creating online courses share a common thread: they both require creativity and experimentation. I started experimenting with sourdough four years ago, and this year, I decided to turn that passion into a micro bakery. Similarly, in the online space, I love testing new products and putting them out into the world.

Starting Small and Scaling Up

When I decided to launch my bakery, I started with a small, manageable goal—offering weekly deliveries through an app called Hotplate. The same approach applies to online business. Start with a small, scalable product and grow from there. Don’t let the fear of imperfection hold you back.

The Reality of Launching: Butterflies and Breakthroughs

Launching a new product, whether physical or digital, is always nerve-wracking. I remember putting out my first post about the bakery and getting those familiar butterflies. But here’s the thing: those butterflies are a sign that you’re doing something meaningful.

Managing Launch Anxiety

When you launch, you’re opening yourself up to scrutiny and feedback. It’s natural to feel vulnerable. But remember, putting your product out there is a huge achievement in itself.

Consistency is Key

In the first 12 hours of my bakery launch, I received three orders. It wasn’t a huge number, but it was enough to confirm that I was on the right path. The key is to keep going, stay consistent, and not get discouraged by initial results. Keep telling people about your product.

Applying These Lessons to Your Online Business

Here’s how you can apply these insights to your online business:

1. Embrace the Launch Process

Recognize that launching will always come with its challenges. Accept the butterflies and use them as motivation. Whether you’re launching a new course, an ebook, or any other digital product, the first step is to put it out there.

2. Set a Launch Window

Give yourself a defined period to promote your product. This helps create urgency and keeps you focused. During this window, talk about your product constantly. Remember, people need to hear your message multiple times before it sticks.

3. Iterate and Improve

After your launch window, take time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Use this feedback to refine your product and your marketing strategy. Each launch is a learning opportunity.

4. Stay Consistent

Consistency is crucial. Keep reminding people about your product and its benefits. Don’t assume that one post is enough—people need multiple touchpoints.

Your Next Steps: Take Action

If you’re sitting on an idea or product, it’s time to take action. Set a launch date, prepare your content, and get ready to share it with the world. And if you’re already in the middle of a launch, keep pushing and refining your approach.

For those who need a bit more guidance, my Toolkit program is here to help. For just $7 a month, you get access to launch plans, content creation tips, audience-building strategies, and more. It’s everything you need to build a sustainable online business.

Remember, the business of being in business is your business. So, take the leap, launch your product, and keep moving forward.

Stay inspired, stay motivated, and keep moving forward, FEMNation!

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Podcast transcript:

Welcome back, FEMNation, to another episode. I'm so glad you are here with me today. I'm Whitedove, your Bizbff and your favorite online mentor. And I am going to dive into the business of business today. All right, here's where we're gonna go. There are a lot of people that are working on getting into the online business world. There are a lot of people that are working on getting out of the online business world. There's just a lot of opportunity in the online business space. And so there's a lot you're going to find, there's a lot you're going to see, a lot you're going to hear. There's going to be many different ways to do things. I touch on all those things all over the place on my social media posts, on prior podcast episodes. I give you tips and tricks and opportunities and possibilities and ways to do this or that, or, you know, all the above. But the business of being in business is essentially offering something for sale, right? So how do you do that, and how do we remember to do that? Here's the thing. The online space gives us a slight disadvantage, and I want to emphasize that to some degree, because the slight disadvantage is the fact that we have this notion that the online business spin, creating courses, coaching, I guess essentially marketing ourselves, all of that is not understood in the marketing sense. Going back to that marketing, where I included that marketing there, it's not completely understood. And I've been reflecting on this to some degree, because, as some of you may know, I have started a project on the side, my bread bakery, my micro in house micro bakery, per the Colorado Cottage act opportunity, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can look it up online all you want, it tells you how you can go about doing that. Many states have that opportunity. but I decided, to feed my own creativity. I'm not going to dive too far into the nuance of what I'm doing. I'm going to parallel this to the online world in just a moment. But I decided to do this because it feeds my creativity. Bread baking is an old, old, old skill that I have. I bootstrapped and started my sustainable farm back in 2006 by baking bread. And so I've made probably thousands of loaves at this point. Right. This go round is, experimenting with the sourdough side of it, which started about four, four and a half years ago. anyway, that being said, I've wanted to do something with it, and not until I really kind of doubled down and said, let me put my nose to the grindstone and actually do this. did I sit down and figure it out? I love testing things. You probably know that about me. I love putting products out there. A big test that I've had this year is putting physical products into the Internet world along with my digital products, because I'm known in the online business space, space for course creation and coaching. Business creation. Now, that being said, I wanted to bridge the gap, and what better way to bridge the gap than to just actually go do that stuff myself? And so I started earlier this year with a little bit of art therapy. I would say it was more therapy for me than anything. And made some prints, off of my original three sisters collection. And then, you know, have the ability. This is the cool part of creatives, is then being able to have the ability to do many things with that, right. So I felt into that, I expanded into that space, and I fulfilled what my heart was calling for, to fulfill in that space. Since then, the bread thing kept coming up, right? It just kept it just, you know, what can I do with this? What do I want to do with this? I was making bread for my family, for, you know, relatives, you name it, I've been making it on the side, and, I've been a scratch cook. And, for my family growing up, you know, raising five kids, it kind of puts some financial perspective into place where it's, probably more economical, and easier done to just feed people, the children, ah, all in one fell swoop. And so, obviously, you know, I became a scratch cookie for that very reason. so baking bread is second nature to me. so then I decided to take on the project of building this into a micro bakery, and then figuring out, how can I sell it? How can I put it out there? What do you know? How is this going to work? How do I create it without strapping myself to bake days every single week? How do I meet the demand? All of those things that are going to come along with choosing, to, create something to sell. And so that was, I'd say, a definitive moment for me. And that was probably towards the end of April, I'd say as of the date of this recording, pushing probably four to six weeks roughly, right. The idea and then starting to put it into place was, the idea was in April, starting to put wheels into motion and planning was towards the end of April, and then going from there. Now, at this moment of this recording, I had just opened up, the opportunity for people to purchase on a weekly basis using an app called hotplate. I found that in my research and all my discovery, and decided that I was going to go that route as well. Another route that I am going to offer these items, these baked items in this project is, a bread cart per se, and I'll have more on that on my social. I don't want to go into the nuances of explaining it or trying to explain it on an audio, but, I'm going to do a bread cart which follow, along on that, on, the little spouse bread house, ah, Facebook page and Instagram, if you're curious as to what that looks like, because I'll be sharing more about that in the future. Now, I have evolved a tremendous amount in the last four to six weeks in this project, in this journey, and I have made rapid shifts, rapid pivots, rapid, you know, adjustments. what am I going to be my base products, what are going to be my add on products, what are going to be my shelf stable products, what's going to be my revenue generators, you know, all of those things. And bear with me, stay with me on this. I'm going to bring this to the online business space because most of you listening are coming from that world. So I want to parallel this so it makes sense. And I'm not just talking about this bakery project that I'm working on now. That being said, I am utilizing this to remind myself also of what, what it's like to, to offer something to the world, to put something together and offer to the world. And the disadvantage we have in the online space is that there is a disconnect between a physical product and what needs to happen from somebody who, for my instance, bakes my heart and soul out and makes amazing, shelf life. It has a shelf life products, right? So it's not a digital product, in the way that it can perpetually live and can be perpetually launched. But follow with me here. Same with my art earlier this year. Now, I'm not going to continue to paint the three sisters collection. That, that was for that moment. This is why artists do collections, is because there's something that draws them to it. And so obviously, there's a form of a shelf life there. When it comes to online products, the form of the shelf life needs to come in the launch window, right? There's, there's a, there has to be a launch window. Whether it's something that's open perpetually or something that is only open during a launch timeframe, where you're talking about that actual product itself. Now, here's the crux of this conversation. This episode today is that yesterday, I just, I said, you know what? I need to just go for it, and I need to put it out there on a weekly delivery and start there. I am limited on the capacity of what I can, what I can bake at any given time, especially with the choices of products that I'm putting on the market there. And so I needed to not worry about being perfectionist and trying to be fully scalable, understanding what I need to do to scale, doing my research in order to scale, but also recognizing I don't need to be able to do, you know, 15 times what it is that I'm able to start with. I just. I need to rip the band aid off and start. And I put a post out yesterday on my personal page. And this post on the personal page was because I recognize in the moment of launching something, whether digital or physical, that there are. I carry butterflies. I do that. I remember getting on stage, in studios in front of thousands of students at a time. Hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but wouldn't that be cool? Hundreds and thousands of students at a time. And I remember being able to control those butterflies now, same thing with the launch. I can control the butterflies, but the fact that I still get them when I'm getting ready to put something out there, I wanted to pay attention to that alone, and I wanted to bring that message to you. Why? Because when you go to launch something, you are going to have butterflies. When you go to launch something, you are putting it out there into the world to be scrutinized. Welcome back, Fim Nation. When you go to launch, you are giving people an opportunity to judge you, to have, opinions about you, to maybe even share those with you unsolicited. You are giving yourself an opportunity to be very, very, very vulnerable. And not in airing dirty laundry type vulnerable in. You put your heart and soul and worked very hard to get to this point, to have people say no, to have crickets, for people to decide it's not for them, for you to actually have success, because you cannot, and I've said this before, you cannot get to that point of where you are tempting to go to in your, in your business revenue without hitting those first measurements, those first benchmarks. And I'm not going to get this project to a point of revenue that I desire it to be, which I know it can be, with a lot of hard work and a lot of, you know, doubling down and working on it very, very consistently. I'm not going to get it to that point without going through the first growing pains alone. And so launching itself is a growing pain. It is where the rubber meets the road. It is where you put your nose to the grindstone. It is that moment, outside of all moments, that is the hardest for most people to sustain. Now, where do you go from there? So you, let's go back and say, okay, so you eat the butterflies. Not literally, figuratively. Right. You calm the storm within your belly, and you put it out there. Then what? Then what do you do? First of all, I want you to recognize that that is something that most people have and will never do. You did something amazing. On top of that, I want you to remember to be consistent over and over and over and over. And in 24 hours of me putting it out there that I have limited run, but I have a product that is for sale, and I know it's desired in my location, I know that there are people out there, but I'm also not leaning back on my name known in my community. I'm running under this separate brand. So I'm essentially warming my market. At the same time, I received, out of eight total sales in the first 12 hours. I received three orders. Now, let me tell you, it's a 10 product. It isn't much, but those three orders were amazing. And those three orders confirmed with me that I'm on the right path. Now, am I riding off into the sunset with those first three orders? No, but I'm not going to even get to the mountains where the sunset is absolutely beautiful and the weather is amazing and cool and calm and peaceful without crossing the desert. Right. And so I have to go through what I'm going through in order to feel what it's like to move in the direction of getting past the initial inertia, momentum push, and actually getting to a point of being able to be consistent. Now, can I sell out the quantity of eight that I put as a cap because I can safely and, and, doably offer eight? Right. Good possibility. But that means that I have to put it out there again that it's available. And that is something, number two, that most people don't do. They do not continue to tell people that they have this offer available in order to be able to say, hey, by the way, here's the thing. Hey, by the way, here's the thing. We can all give lessons inside of when we launch and on, my business profiles, you will see that I parallel a lot of lessons with it, but I worked an audience to this point that it is expected that I'm going to share the takeaways. From what? From doing something that a lot of people don't get a chance to do or don't, feel, feel as much conviction, to go through with for whatever reason. And I want people to recognize that it is an opportunity for everyone. You have a skill, skill sets, creativity, opportunities, you have those things. You have all of that in order to do it yourself. You just need maybe just a little bit of motivation or a reminder that you can do it. That's where I bridge the gap, is I bring that reminder back to the table. Now it is for me, though, to remember that I need to maintain consistency. There is not going to be a go out there and blow it out there and have some amazing amount of sales happen right off the bat. No. And nor could I actually maintain something like that. Nor could most of us maintain something like that. So we have to go through the growth phase. We have to go through starting it up. We have to go through building to that point. That's part of the growth phase. But you don't get to that growth phase. You don't get to see what that looks like unless you absolutely just rip the band aid off and say, I'm launching it, I'm putting it out there. So if you have a digital product, let's move this from a physical to a digital product. If you have a digital product, there is not a shelf life to the digital product in the same sense that there is with maybe a baked good. There is a shelf life with possibility of, elements changing beyond our control. Right. And then we would have to edit or adjust the product itself. The digital product itself, not a problem. You just edit and adjust and then you update or you relaunch or whatever that looks like. Thing is, is that if we wait till perfection, we won't ever do it because there will not be perfection. And there is a learning curve in the launch that I want everyone to experience because I also still experience the same learning curve every single time. And I've done this, guys, hundreds of times at this point. I have launched so many things, built so many businesses, created so many digital products across the business realm that I should be used to this at this point. I'm aware of it, but I don't think I, and I, well, I, let me, before I finish that. I'm aware of that. And I know, I know to expect it, and I can control it to some degree, but doesn't mean it ever goes away. That was what I needed to learn. And by launching something in the digital product space, you will learn that too. That course, that, opt in that low ticket offer, whatever that is, put it out there and look for the crickets, and let yourself be pleasantly surprised if it's not inside of it. If you find crickets, then don't let it deflate you. Don't let it move you back into doing nothing. Don't let it stop you from consistently telling people, give yourself a launch window, say, for this amount of time, for these two weeks, I'm going to tell everybody about this until people are sick and tired of hearing it. Trust me, it's not as linear as you think. For you, all your posts contain that, your thought process contains that. But for everyone else, it was a blip in the sea of social media. They're not being inundated with it. How many times have you gone to your email and said, oh yeah, I'm glad that person sent me that email again, telling me that the cart was closing or their offer was going away because I forgot about it and it's something I want or something that I need? How many times have you been a recipient of something that maybe that person thought was overwhelming and overbearing and saying it too many times and offering it to people to actually sit back and say, hmm hm, I needed that. I needed that final push, or I needed that, I needed that reminder, or I needed that thing. We're all busy. So it's not as linear as you think it is. It's not as linear as we put ourselves into the thought process of, it is absolutely imperative for you to be consistent and stay the course with it. That's why giving yourself a launch window, a timeline of when you open cart and close cart for your digital product, is going to be the best thing for you. Because you hold the line for that launch timeframe, even if it's a 7 product, you hold the line. Don't give up inside that launch window. Keep going, hold the line. And then when the launch window closes, then you can sit back and you can breathe and you can feel all the feels, and you can make assessments and, assumptions and judgments of your stuff, and you can pivot and edit and swap it out. But you learn something that you cannot ever, ever, ever learn without going through it. And for me, my friends, that was a reminder that the butterflies always exist for me. That launching will always give me those feels, and most likely it will for a lot of us. We can learn to manage them. We can learn what to do with them. We can also learn to expect them. But at the end of the day, it doesn't mean that you give up on it, on that dream, on that creation, on that digital product that's going to change lives or even a loaf of bread that's going to feed people. You don't give up on it ever. So my takeaway for today to launch, if you are sitting back and you do not have something open and an opportunity for people to be working with you at this point in time, give yourself a launch window right now. Sit down, say, when am I going to open cart on my next thing? When is that going to happen? When am I going to start talking about it? Till I'm blue in the face and sharing on social media. Until I think that the world is just saturated with this knowledge? When are you going to do that? I want you to sit down and I want you to put your nose to the grindstone right now and get it done. Feel the feels, you know, dive into the deep, into the pool, as long as you can swim, and make sure that you are moving yourself past this roadblock of not launching. Do it anyways. And if you do have a cart open, I want you to feel the feels and embrace the sales or the lack of sales and look at what you've got and say, how can I do it better? How can I adjust my marketing message right now? How can I add another piece of content? How can I talk about the, benefit of the transformation a little bit better or a little bit more or with a different angle or the different way? Because if you have a cart open right now, the balls are in the air, it's all go all hands on deck. Change the messaging. Add another piece of content. Add an, add two posts per day. Do a direct call to action. And if you're in toolkit, do a direct invitation. Just put one out there. I have this thing available for these people. Here is what it is. The rest of your stuff can be the messaging that you love in the voice and tone and brand in which people know you with. But then add something short and sweet. I've got this thing. Oh, he ate BT dubs. I got this thing. Tell people, like, your revenue depends on it. Like, your livelihood depends on it. Because if you're anything like me, it does. It does not. Sitting back on hundreds of thousands of dollars or even 100,000 as a buffer to not have to do these things. I'm with you in this. I'm scrappy, I'm resourceful. I know how to get it done. I also know that I can generate revenue if I put a call to action out there. If I launch something, I can generate revenue and that I am no different than you. So I want you to do it. If you don't have a launch window open, put one on the calendar and hold yourself accountable to it. Number two, if you do have a launch window open and you're knee deep in the fields and you have been hiding under the covers and taking naps, I want you to go write extra content for it and tell people you've got something amazing. And number three, if you have no idea what you just what you want to sell or what you are deciding to sell, then I want you to sit down and come up with something. Make it work for you. Because this business of being in business is your business, period. And you might know where I'm going with this. If you're not in toolkit for 7 a month, get in there. That is where you belong. I give you a launch plan. I give you content creation. I give you audience building, all organic. You cannot go anywhere else and get this full system online business building opportunity for a better price anywhere. My hundreds of thousands of dollars of investing in this world. I teach you everything I figured out that's going to be sustainable, organic and doable for you. No matter what your financial future or your financial moment looks like. That's where you belong, my friend. But as always, no matter what, keep moving forward.