"The way to get started is to stop talking and to start doing" Walt Disney

It is just over one week since I closed cart on the founder member launch of my membership The Joy Work Members Club.

It had been a long time in the making and I have been asked lots of questions about how it went, what I did, what went well, what didn’t and would I do it again – haha!

 I have launched a couple of things since starting my business in September 2023, but I had done them fast, getting them out there impatiently, to move quickly on to the next phase of the business with no real strategy in place but this launch was to be different.

I created a waitlist, I knew the members I wanted, I knew how I wanted to help them, and I launched. Swapping nights losing sleep to the babies to losing sleep thinking about content and messages and notifications. Launching isn’t for the faint-hearted but it can be lots of fun.

 1. I am Delighted

 I am over the moon with the results I got from the launch. I have the greatest team of business owners in the membership. Wonderful people in my world joined and I knew it was the perfect way for them to continue to work with me, and I was excited to continue our momentum, and some people were a lovely surprise. What it consolidated for me was I knew who my ideal client was, I was already working with some of them, and when you are getting visible, and marketing your offer there are always people watching who are just waiting for the right offer for them.

2. Just Do It

 I had been putting off launching my next offer for some time as I knew it was going to be a big one, big in that it was going to be an important step for my business. There were a million different reasons I could have come up with why this was the worst possible time for me to launch, and certainly the Universe was giving me a helping hand with this.

 I was then asked the question What was I waiting for? And the answer was I really didn’t know.

Until I had more time? Until I had more 1-2-1 clients? Until my children didn’t need me as much anymore (pray this never be thing)  Until somebody knocked on my door and asked to join my membership, the membership I hadn’t launched and they knew nothing about?

 So I set a date to open the waitlist, I set a date to open cart, I set the date to close cart, I set the date the membership would start and then I got to work.

 I had been prepping my audience for a long time for this, it was the natural extension of my free community The Joy Work Club.

 I was incredibly anxious and daunted with the tasks ahead but I knew what I wanted and what I had to do so I just kept going. My self-doubt (her name is Rachel) was persistent, but so was I and I managed to keep her in check.

3. Done is better than perfect

This was my beta, founder member launch I knew it was going to be far from the perfect membership that I had envisioned. But, I knew that I wanted a membership that was flexible enough to be shaped by its members, so for that, we just had to get going.

 I focused on the parts of the membership that were really important to me – what type of calls, content and connections would be created within the membership. What could the members be expected to be helped with and supported, and what results could they expect when being part of the membership.

 There were parts of the launch that went brilliantly, the waitlist was a huge success from a content point of view, email list building and successful sales. The first two days of the launch were great for content, engagement and sales; I found the middle days extremely difficult, engagement wasn’t great, I had less time in the business and the universe was throwing challenge after obstacle and it was difficult to stay on top. If at this point I had been constantly striving for perfection I would have felt like it was falling apart, but the focus was on getting the membership seen and finding those founding members and by day 3 of the launch, this was already a resounding success.

 Once cart closed, and it was time to get into the membership I made sure everything I thought the members would need was immediately available to them: schedule/calendar of call dates, links for all calls, and access to the hub and app. I offered a welcome/onboarding call with everybody to get to know them and make sure they were ok with the technology, understood where everything was, how the membership would work and answer any questions.

4. Get Visible

You cannot launch, promote or sell if people can’t see or don’t know where to find you. Being prepared to step out of your comfort zone and get uncomfortable is essential. I found that being fully clear on my messaging for my content was crucial here as it gave me the clarity and confidence to go live, talk on stories, create posts, reels and when I was on discovery calls with business owners who wanted to know more.

I then set a goal to talk, post and be seen in a minimum of 6 different places each day, which included: Instagram, My own Facebook group, Facebook profile and page, other Facebook groups, LinkedIn, and by email.

When you think you have been visible enough, go be visible some more.

 Repeat, repeat and repeat again – I can’t stress this bit enough but you have to feel like people are going to be sick of hearing you saying the same things over and over again and seeing you everywhere, but here’s the thing the only person hearing you again and again and seeing you everywhere is you.

 A prime example of the fact that not everybody sees everything is this: every day I received emails and messages asking questions that all social media posts and the sales page answered. I repeated again and again and sent multiple emails for when the waitlist closed, the first 10 space limited offer pricing were sold out, and when the cart closed at the end of launch week for the founder member price, each time I received emails asking if they had missed the cutoff.

5. Stay Blinkered

 The most successful entrepreneurs, the business owners I admire and the great success stories have two things in common the owners/entrepreneur were obsessed and they didn’t care what others were doing. More than ever during the two weeks of the launch I only paid attention to the content I was producing; I was aware of a couple of other membership launches going on at the same time and I knew if I allowed myself to be a consumer of the content that Rachel (my self-doubt) would come chatting in my ears and this would only throw me off course.

 Confused buyers don’t buy, if you do not stay on track with your messaging and the clarity of your offer, your audience will lose interest and the sales you were counting on won’t come. Stay focused on your mission, vision, messaging and plan, don’t let somebody else’s cloud your view.

6. Have a Plan

 Schedule, plan and organise as much as you can in advance.

 Best-laid plans actually allow for everything to go wrong and trust me it will. I was told just before and during the launch that the Universe will continually test me, almost as if it was asking me how much did I want this?

 We had child illnesses, a partner having to work away last minute, private issues, family issues, and my own illness that looked like a whole weekend in bed (although this meant I did get quite a bit of work done). The point is life will life, but if you have a plan and launch strategy in place then at least most of the activity and processes will happen. My whole plan did not go to, well, plan but because of the strategy I had then it still felt that I was giving everything the best shot which was all I wanted.

 Plan in spaces of time that you will need to deal with things going wrong, for more calls and conversations than you anticipated, for tech challenges and for writing emails – writing emails always takes longer than we allow time for.

If I could sum it all up in a sentence for you I would say, be prepared, know your messaging, get ready for discomfort, listen to the Universe but do it anyway, and be brave. Go for it, you go this!

Join the waitlist for the next doors opening of The Joy Work Members Club Here