Launch Like a Boss

Emily Thompson 0:00
hello and welcome to being boss episode number 63 this episode is brought to you by fresh books cloud accounting

being boss and work and life is being in it

Kathleen Shannon 0:16
it's being who we are doing the work breaking some rules and even though we each have to do it on our own

Emily Thompson 0:24
being boss is knowing we're in it together

Kathleen Shannon 0:27
last week we launched our brand new website which is being boss club and i would say it was a pretty crazy successful launch

Emily Thompson 0:36
yeah

Kathleen Shannon 0:38
i've also experienced launches and maybe you have to where you put all this work into doing something it goes live and then it's like crickets chirping actually that's how i felt whenever i launched breathe creative calm i mean it was really exciting but i did not know how to launch so that's what we're gonna talk about today is all about blockchain

Emily Thompson 0:58
but first let's talk about those folks at freshbooks all right

Unknown Speaker 1:01
as you know we're

Kathleen Shannon 1:02
about to head down to miami in april and we still have a little bit of room left for our miami vacation we haven't mentioned that yet we are renting a yacht that thanks to fresh books but anyway i wanted to mention that i'm starting to get content together for our miami masterclass so this is a class that we're hosting for our miami crew where we're going to be talking about specifically making money off of digital products so we're going to be talking about passive income and i thought it would be really cool to see what my breakdown is in my business for passive income versus one on one services what i love about fresh books is that i'm so easily able to just pull those reports and see exactly where my money is coming in from and also exactly where my money is going even if you're brand new in your business it is so smart to set up something like fresh books now so you can get into good habits of tracking your income and expenses you can easily pull reports to see what's making you money and where you're losing money you can try fresh books for free today by going to freshbooks comm slash being boss and enter being boss in the how did you hear about us section

Unknown Speaker 2:17
now let's talk about our launch

Kathleen Shannon 2:19
first let's talk a little bit about why we decided to change things up at being boss and why we changed the url from love being boss calm to being boss club

Unknown Speaker 2:28
emily why

Unknown Speaker 2:29
don't you share a little bit about that

Emily Thompson 2:31
oh because getting social media handles all the same is very difficult when you get right down to it no we had a lot of reasons that was that was definitely one of them i wanted that was probably the reason that really pushed us to make the change but you know a year into it and we were just sort of saying like a year ago i could not have even imagined being where we are now we just surpassed 9000 people in our facebook group which blows my mind were almost at a million downloads actually we may even be there now i need to check out

Unknown Speaker 3:07
i want a little badge on our site

Emily Thompson 3:09
right i want a badge on my forehead

Kathleen Shannon 3:13
enamel pin that says million dollar wait no we didn't make a million

Unknown Speaker 3:17
dollars

Unknown Speaker 3:19
same thing same thing

Kathleen Shannon 3:21
i want an enamel pin that says a million downloads there we

Emily Thompson 3:24
go me too we do i'll wear it on my lapel but i think a year ago we never would have imagined that we are now where we are or we would be you know what i mean and just in that year we've seen so much growth that love being boss was definitely something that goddess started but we want being boss to be more than a podcast and more than this like lovey thing we want this to be a party

Kathleen Shannon 4:00
you know honestly we threw we threw together our brand in about oh five days yes it's something that we really over thought i mean i'm so grateful that we chose the name being boss it was hard to find new url but really whenever it comes to really knowing the brand and this is something i tell people all the time whenever they have just started something and they want to hire me upgrade creative to do their full brand platform sometimes like tell them give it a year see what you grow into that way you're not just spending a ton of money investing in something that might change anyway so fortunately for us you and i are both experts in design and building websites so for us it was no skin off our backs to just create a really quick brand that looked good enough but we had grown to a point where we really wanted our brand to reflect who we are now and where we plan on going and the potential to grow so I think that actually the Facebook group was a big catalyst for us changing the name from loving boss calm to being boss club, because we started to realize that our podcast was more than just the podcast and that being boss is more than just being about working for yourself. Being boss is really an attitude about really just knowing what you want and going for it, we had no idea that there would be so many people listening to our podcasts that are still working day jobs and are hustling on the side to make the creative dream happen. So as we got to know, our own content, as we got to know our listeners a little bit better. And we started to be able to create a community for people and really has become quite a club. One of the first products that we launched with is a club house. And so because the Facebook group has grown so much to over 9000 members, it's not quite as intimate as it was we were we were launched and we really miss that intimate feeling. So it's something that we want to recreate on our own turf and out of Facebook. So that's why we started the clubhouse. And that kind of ties into the name being boss club. But let's talk about the launch and what makes for a successful launch. What do you think the first step to successful launches and Lee

Emily Thompson 6:17
not losing your shit? Okay, let's

Kathleen Shannon 6:21
rewind because it's not actually launch day. But to launch you have to create the thing that you're going to launch. Yeah, and I think that this is something that many people overlook, because there's a lot of excitement in launching things, as you know,

Emily Thompson 6:37
yes, there is a lot of excitement in launching things. And I think a lot of people get really caught up in this, you know, I want to launch something, I want to launch something but you don't know what it is that you're making, or at least or you do. And and this is the hard part like we both coach creatives on this all the time, they they have this idea and they ready launch it, but you got to do it, you have to make the thing you have to, you have to plan it out, you have to write the emails, you have to write the autoresponders, you have to write the sales funnels, you have to write the thing, you have to write the email to your creative pack, letting them know how to share it, and you have to create the social media graphics and write the tweets. And you have to do all the things that I feel like those are

Kathleen Shannon 7:18
the things that just go into launching it like to actually make the thing you have to build the website, you have to package the offering, you have to know what it is that you're selling and how much it costs and what the customer flow looks like who

Emily Thompson 7:32
the customer is. Yeah, exactly.

Kathleen Shannon 7:35
So that really leads up to a launch. If you haven't created the thing. Don't even worry about listening to this episode,

Unknown Speaker 7:41
come

Kathleen Shannon 7:42
back to it later, you got to create the thing first. So our thing to create was the website and Emily, how long would you say that we spent working on this website? Like I feel like it's been a year?

Emily Thompson 7:53
No. I mean, I think it's really only been saw, like, I think we started it just before Christmas, like it was a very light, like, you know, here's where we're starting, it's going to go somewhere. And then we were did Christmas and we came back and we didn't have brand yet. So you worked on brand for a bit. And we I think we really started like hardcore developing the site. And like designing at the same time. So this is another thing this, this launch was so outside of either of our like usual workflow, that I often felt like, I was going to explode or maybe just fall apart into little pieces, it literally

Kathleen Shannon 8:37
felt like we were remodeling a house together is not so typical, because usually what we do for our own clients

Emily Thompson 8:44
is go from the ground. Exactly. So it was it was very outside of outside of the usual. So I would say that we we really started working on it whenever we got back from Christmas. And we did you know, some branding and positioning first. And then we figured out some sort of website strategy things. And then we really got into website like design and development. And I feel like even then the development probably didn't really start hard core until three or four weeks ago. And then I mean, it's still kind of going on and the website's already launched.

Kathleen Shannon 9:22
You know what, that's actually a really good point. And before we get there, though, I'm going to talk a little bit about what you want to people to do whenever you launch. So like our website went live, and we had to know what it is that we wanted people on social media to do, and see how to really figure out your call to action. Do you want people to buy your product? Do you want people to sign up for your newsletter list? Do you want them to hire you one on one, you have to really know what it is that you want people to do on launch. So on launch, our big goal was to push our beating boss clubhouse. That's what we wanted people to do. And I think really having that focus is really important for knowing how you want to launch.

Emily Thompson 10:07
It certainly is. And I, and we had lots of meetings around in this. Granted, we're launching a website, which is not the same thing. But no, because we did launch a website, but we did also launch an offering. So whether you're launching a whole website and a new offering, or just a website, or just a new offering, like it all sort of goes together, and that you have to talk about strategy. I feel like so often. So often, you sort of, you'd know what you need. And so you go to someone and say, Hey, do this, but there's a disconnect between the needing and the doing, and that disconnect is call to action. It's strategy, it's what you want this thing to do. And it's having that completely communicated between the idea person and the actual, like, do person. And we had lots of those conversations, you know, what is the purpose of this website? What is the thing that we want people to do on it? How is it going to serve us? And how is it going to serve our community? But in the same respect with this new offering the clubhouse? What is this offering? Create a sales page? What are the pain points that it's addressing? Who is it for? How is it going to help them? But then what does that customer flow work look like? And how are we going to get people to it? Are we just going to be sharing things on social media? Are there going to be calls to action on the homepage? Are we going to do extra marketing around it like a webinar? So I think that there just has to be conversations. And the longer I'm in this business, launching websites for a living, which I'm totally questioning these days, like, why do I choose to do this over and over and over again. But it's all about laying it all out there. And I think, too often people go into websites, this idea of like, just give me these five pages, and this button that does this, when there has to be some strategy that goes into it. The same thing, if you're launching a product or a service, or an E book or an event, you have to, you have to have a strategy in place and across the board between yourselves and anyone who's helping you execute, to make things work the way they're supposed to. There's a lot of moving parts and in business period. Now, let's talk about keeping your cool during launch week. We all know that the more boss you become, the more you have to keep your calendar tightly wrangled to make sure you're always capable of getting it all done. For me, and especially during this launch week, setting some clear expectations around my availability was key to making this happen. Sure, I could have had email chains and vacation responses lined up to handle a tighter schedule. But instead, I used acuity scheduling to pare down my availability for the week so that my clients and online buddies didn't feel like they weren't getting the boot during my busy week. And it saved me a ton of time. Instead, they found a time for them based on my set availability. And it was easy as pie schedule clients without sacrificing yourself. Try your free 60 day trial of scheduling sanity at acuity scheduling, calm slash being boss. Now, let's get back at it.

Kathleen Shannon 13:18
One thing that I love about online businesses is I feel like really developing out your website and figuring out the architecture of your website really helps you figure out your business. So for example, we had the clubhouse and I wasn't having a hard time wrapping my head around it except like what is that customer flow? What is the user experience? So I started thinking about the clubhouse sales page, I started thinking about like, Okay, what am I telling people that they're going to get on the website. And that's actually how I kind of developed what they actually get. That's how we came up with the idea of having a book club in our clubhouse or having secret episodes in our clubhouse or having monthly q&a calls just for clubhouse members. That's where we really started to flesh out what it is that we were offering was kind of just by thinking about how does the person coming to our website, see what this is all about. And so this is me saying you don't have to entirely overthink the big picture strategy. Sometimes you just have to get in there and figure it out. You just have to kind of start thinking through the little picture and moving one foot in front of the other. And that's totally what building this website and building our offerings has been like. And honestly for me, that's how it's been my whole career. And I mean, that's really served me well and I'm ready to take it to the next level. So maybe that means more like big picture strategy, and I've even been talking to charge until a little bit about that. But that's a whole other episode.

Emily Thompson 14:53
All right, so as we've been working on it for we worked on it for probably a month and a half really hardcore I mean, like, I think core has put like 100 hours of development into this project like a huge, huge amount of work. And that's just Cory. And then you designing every piece of, of the imagery that's gone to the website. And even, like, I mocked up a website that was already designed like, just so we can figure out some of the finite details and then coordinating the whole thing like this is probably one of the biggest websites I've ever launched.

Kathleen Shannon 15:34
And you guys we like started from the template so that was another big deal. Moving from Business Catalyst to WordPress, it was definitely like,

Emily Thompson 15:44
yeah, so well, and and I, it was personally a big deal. I feel like there are enough people probably listening to this that know that I hate WordPress enough that I need to like interject and talk about why we decided to go WordPress because I've preached against WordPress for online entrepreneurs, long enough that I feel a little skeezy that now I'm using WordPress, but I have very good reasons. So being boss, whenever we were talking about what this website would become, we absolutely knew that it would become very content focus. So you know, in the past, we were just sharing show notes once a week, and had a couple of products on there. And again, just sort of getting a website going so that we could launch the podcast over a year ago, it was not something that we put a ton of thought into, like you said we had it design we had, we had the entirety of the first being balls website brand and website designed and developed in less than a month. So online entrepreneurs, I usually talk them off of doing WordPress, but we knew that the new being ball site would be very content focused. And really, when it comes down to content driven websites, WordPress is just kind of it. And though, though, we are selling products on WordPress, and that's usually the place where I get the most angry with WordPress, because their security isn't always the great WordPress sites get hacked and held for ransom all the time.

Unknown Speaker 17:06
Don't say that out loud. We have good it is.

Emily Thompson 17:09
Exactly so like knowing all those things, I've made sure that Korea has put some very strenuous and really great security in place to make us super secure. And and we'll continue to do all we can do. But it's also just sort of given me this whole other level of respect for WordPress websites, and just how robust they can be on a level that is still like to this very day, there will be very few clients in my future that I will actually put on WordPress, because I think that for the bulk of the people who are listening to this, WordPress really isn't for you, if you're wanting to sell services, and products, there are better platforms out there. But if you're wanting to create a content driven online presence where you are blogging, and sharing content and a mass kind of way, apparently it's WordPress because we're on it. So just needed to interject that because we have moved the being boss site to WordPress, which also in the scheme of launching things change things on a whole other level as well. Because even though we were doing things out of sequence, in terms of designing and developing for this project, because there were so many moving parts, was also a whole new launch sequence in terms of the things that we needed to put in place for it to launch seamlessly. So, you know, URL redirects, and having our SSL certificate done, because that's all that's not a thing in Business Catalyst like it's just there, you don't have to have to get that set up separately. So there were lots of things that we ran into with launching this site that weren't as expected. Because we did this, this is a whole new experience for everyone involved.

Unknown Speaker 18:51
Okay,

Kathleen Shannon 18:52
but let's talk about that a little bit. I'm going to talk about knowing when to launch because I feel like we pushed this launch a couple of times. And then there was a point whenever you said March 8, it's a new moon, we're launching a

Emily Thompson 19:04
new moon and a solar eclipse, like it was no joke. But also it was a Tuesday, which is always a good launch day. And it was the beginning of the month, and I could not let this drag out for another month.

Kathleen Shannon 19:15
But we launched without our site being perfect. Oh yeah, things that are like, I'll look at the design and it kind of makes my eye twitch a little bit.

Emily Thompson 19:22
I know but no one else. No One No One Else notices most of that, which is really nice. Because I'm right there with ya.

Kathleen Shannon 19:28
Please check me out is that like, you have to wait to launch until it's good enough. But don't wait until it's perfect because it will never be promo or website will never be perfect.

Emily Thompson 19:40
No, it won't. It will never be perfect. Things will continue to change. We'll add new content, things will break. We'll want to upgrade. Actually, I mean, just this actually yesterday on launch day, I was talking to Cory about phase two. So like it's launching and I'm already planning what's coming next so they will continue to grow and change and even this morning, we're at Talking about Okay, you know, the sales page is that for clubhouse, but I totally want to redesign it and I'm like, Yeah, me too. So um, so it will it will consistently change. And I think that's really important I think a lot of a lot of creatives have a very tight Bay like perfectionist personality, like, and especially if you're an entrepreneur, you want things well, and that's No, that's not true, not, especially if you're an entrepreneur, that is not a general claim I want to make. But um, but we do have a tendency to want things to be really perfect, or you know, as perfect as they can be. And sometimes you just gotta launch it. So now you just need to get it out into the world. And that's something I've learned. And you too, I know that you're the same, you know, you can't wait until things are perfect, you have to get things out there, and let them continue to evolve and fix as you go.

Kathleen Shannon 20:47
If we had waited until this was perfect, there would not be in being boss club right now. And probably wouldn't be for another six months, because we would pick at it until we were just blue in the face. You know, it's so funny because sometimes launching is just about making a decision and going with it. So for example, we decide to put being boss club on Slack, I'm sure that there are other forums or platforms that might be better for it. And we can always change. But to launch, you have to make some decisions and commit to them. So that's what we did. But speaking of the clubhouse, we should talk about testing

Emily Thompson 21:27
your shit all day, every day. Because Yeah, testing is part of our process at indie, like whenever we should be any web developers process is to test things. But even then, sometimes when you test things, shit still fucks up, which is something that we totally experienced yesterday. So the site goes live. And I had tested the car, and it was all working fantastically for me. And we had a couple of people sign up for the clubhouse. And then we started getting emails and tweets and Facebook messages from people that were like trying to sign up for a clubhouse and can't, and I go on, and I can do it. And Cory goes on, and he can do it. And we're like, well, what in the world is going on? Like, obviously some people can get on, I can get on what's wrong, and it took it took some serious trial and error to figure it out, which also just goes to show, we never would have caught that if we hadn't launched

Kathleen Shannon 22:18
like that, you know, what I love is that our listeners and our fans were so helpful in helping us troubleshoot everything and they were standing by us. They were letting us know like what browsers they were in, they were letting us know specifically what issues they were having. So we could troubleshoot on our end because we weren't. The scary thing about our launch yesterday is we weren't able to replicate the problem that other people were having. And if our developers can't replicate the issue, it's really hard to fix.

Emily Thompson 22:47
It's impossible to fix if we can't replicate the issue but but but with their help, we were able to replicate it and it was just very weird specific things you write in is actually yesterday on your periscope someone offered to like screenshare with with Corey did it and I was just like, that is so amazing.

Kathleen Shannon 23:06
And also the thing too, is that knowing I think it's easy for us type a perfectionist to get really riled up by stuff like that. And I almost felt myself going there whenever we launch whenever people are having hiccups, or things weren't working quite right. I used to get so riled up about that stuff. But I don't know, I just felt a little bit more graceful with yesterday's yesterday's launch, even with the hiccups and things like that, as

Emily Thompson 23:33
well. And I think you're always going to have hiccups, like I can't think of a single launch. And not that my team doesn't do a really great job because we do. But and sometimes I guess we do have like really great launches. But there's always something weird that happens. Like, I'll never forget, like even Paul and Jason, I think we're doing a podcast once on invisible office hours about launching, and they were talking about how they had launched a course or something once and they were having to manually add people to a list or something because like just this weird back end connection, where like the system wasn't working, and you have to wait on support for another system to get things to go, right. I've had launches where you know, where emails just don't send out and there's no reason except, you know, the domain DNS servers aren't propagating as quickly as they usually do, which is no one's fault. There are just weird funky little things that happen and I think in online business, there are a lot of people that get riled the hell up about stuff like that, but because I've been doing this for years, it doesn't bother me anymore. Like and my mantra during launch is it's just a website.

Kathleen Shannon 24:43
We're not saving lives here though.

Emily Thompson 24:45
I don't know you know, we might be we might be but but our website yesterday was saving no one's life. And and I feel like that's I feel like that's a really important mindset for for bosses to have, especially if you're doing it doing business in the online space is you have to have some grace about it like you can do not and cannot have control over everything especially when servers are involved and you just sort of have to let it go i think whenever actually and it's whenever i have really chill clients that launches go the best it's whenever i have high strung clients that shit hits the fan and i think that's i think that's probably just carved by getting after them but it is a thing like shit happens on launch day and the only thing you can do is just planned for it and we had cory on call all day yesterday

Kathleen Shannon 25:40
yeah that's i was gonna say as pro tip on launch day make sure especially if there's an online component to your business which there probably is if you're listening to this podcast but on launch day make sure that your developer has the whole day off to help you and make sure that you have your whole day off do not schedule meetings do not schedule anything but like posting stuff refreshing your instagram troubleshooting issues sending out emails popping champagne champagne just make sure that you and your developer have the entire day dedicated to launching

Emily Thompson 26:14
yes absolutely

Kathleen Shannon 26:16
another huge i want to talk about all the things now that go into marketing a launch because this is huge and my very favorite thing to market a launch is something that you do emily and that you've taught me to do and that i will always do for milan which is to send out an email to your wolfpack

Emily Thompson 26:34
yeah i love this so okay so let's talk about a couple of the things that we did to like to prepare for this launch so you know we had the website going

Kathleen Shannon 26:47
we asked for contribute like so one of the big things about our website is that we've launched a blog it's something that we haven't had and we wanted to create a platform for other creatives to contribute to so it's not just me and you blogging is people have heard enough from us i mean we are we are blogging once a week but we're getting so many guest requests for our podcasts and there's just so much good stuff out there we wanted another platform for sharing gifts and knowledge and we wanted another platform that other creative entrepreneur entrepreneurs could feel at home on so we started up our blog and i put out a call for entries for all of our bosses that attended new orleans with us i asked i just made an open invitation saying if you're interested in contributing to our blog let us know so that was helpful in getting content but also those people are going to help promote the website all the time because our articles are on it so that's one thing that you can do is get guest posters another thing that we did what are some other things that we did

Emily Thompson 27:53
um we put together sales funnels and set up email marketing lists and did all kinds of crazy things with that over the couple of days before launch that was one thing that we did just sort of prep to the site beyond the site for being launched that was something that we did a whole lot we also set up a webinar to sort of celebrate launch and to share more content and to get more people going but then we also did the wolf pack email which which is has been a very important part of my launch sequence for a long time if

Kathleen Shannon 28:30
you take nothing away from this episode i think the wolf pack email is where it's at so explain to us with that

Emily Thompson 28:37
sure so as you are doing your little online business and you start cultivating relationships with peers and clients and customers and mentors keep a wolf pack list i have a i have a note in my evernote that is just you know people that i've worked with mastermind people that i've been engaged with clients that i became very connected with and sort of peers and people that i've connected with across the board and there's no real relationship between any of them most of them don't know each other but just sort of cultivating this like online wolf pack of people who who influenced me in one way or the other and that i would call friends and part of my launch is to create an email where i just tell them what i'm up to so the one that we created was was an email telling them that we are you know relaunching being boss we've been doing it for a year we're really excited about the growth and we have a new website coming out and just worth telling them about it letting my people know what i'm up to and then also allowing them or asking them if they would like to share and not requiring it i always put it in there like you are not required like your support either in the past or in the future is just is exactly what it needs to be as it is but if you'd like to share we always include like a little link to a dropbox folder where we put some share graph And some cut and paste tweets and sort of messaging like share messaging, so that it's really easy for them to share if they want to So, so Kathleen and I both gathered our Wolf Pack lists. Between the two of us there were probably, I don't know, 40 emails that went out, maybe something around in there, and she sent to the email to her Wolf Pack, and I sent it to mine. And it's just a really great way to get your get your close knit community involved.

Kathleen Shannon 30:29
Probably I want to mention one thing about this email too, is that we templated it out. And I started feeling funny about that, like is this in personal. So I started trying to write an email from scratch every time to my wolf pack and realize that our email that we really considerately crafted was better than really recreating the wheel every time. And I guess I just have to say, I had to get over sending the same email to every people, or to everyone. And I think it's the thing that kept me from doing Wolf Pack emails in the past is that I felt like I needed to do that. And it just wasn't very efficient. So having just a standard email that says thank you for everything that you've done to support me along the way. And if you'd like to see what I'm up to now, this is what it is, and if you'd like to share even better, so sending that out to our Wolfpack, I just had no idea how powerful that was. And having people like Melissa Hartwig from whole 30 share our stuff. My friend Alyssa you hos has like a huge Instagram following my friend Becky Simpson drew up like a little custom graphic for us. Like, there's just some people want to support you, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, your friends want to know what you're up to. And they want to support you. So don't be afraid to ask for their help. And to thank them along the way.

Emily Thompson 31:48
Yeah, well, and I'll even tell you, like the shares are are amazing like, and obviously that's part of the reason is help us promote this thing that we're doing. But it's also two things. One is I send it to people that I would totally do the same for if anyone if my in my Wolf Pack were to email me, I would make sure that that shit was all over my social media. So so it is I do only email the people that I would definitely be sharing their stuff for. But I'll tell you the magic came for me. Not in well, definitely some of the sharing. So don't discount that. But it came in just sending the email and because that for me was the launch of the website. And we sent the email the night before. So it was the night before official launch. So these people got a sneak peek of the website as it was still being like done. They got a sneak peek of the website and it was for me that was launched. That was me sending it to the people who are closest to me and saying, here's what I'm doing. Please go check it out while we're still fixing the kinks. So don't judge too hard. Like my stomach. I felt all knotted up as I

Unknown Speaker 32:57
grow up.

Emily Thompson 32:58
Yeah, like but then what's so cool

Kathleen Shannon 33:00
as in waking up the next morning to an email from ya know, like Paul Jarvis and Jason Zook saying, we love you guys. And this is incredible. You've raised the bar for podcast websites, you know, stuff like that. And, and we wouldn't have never gotten that kind of support. I mean, it takes a lot of emotional support to put yourself out there like this. And so that kind of support I feel like carried me through the day. So absolutely so grateful for our wolf bag. Hey,

Emily Thompson 33:25
Amanda, that I completely agree the wolf pack, the wolf pack. Email has been it for me for a long time. And this one felt particularly magical to me. And that gut feeling was weird and good. But again, all of that recognition, not even that I'm here for the recognition though I am please I'm human. But the recognition and the appreciation and the love that we got from those responses. Like that's why we're doing this a cultivating those relationships because so many of them were bosses too. There were people that we met in Miami and not in Miami in New Orleans. There. Hopefully

Kathleen Shannon 34:01
we meet more people in Miami, which is still open for registration if you want to be on our

Emily Thompson 34:07
mailing boss club slash Miami.

Kathleen Shannon 34:10
Okay, so beyond letting your Wolfpack know, so these emails are really important, then you want to let your extended tribe know. So for me, this was sending out an email to my newsletter lists through braid, which is quite large, and letting them know that being basa launched. I kind of did it in a more subtle way just by linking to a lot of stuff in the email that we've done on our new site. But then also creating social media graphics. So we created Instagram graphics, we created new Twitter chat templates, we created launch graphics. for Instagram, oh new Facebook headers for our Facebook group. We're starting to get a little bit more strategic even about how we participate in the Facebook group. Now that we have our clubhouse for our more candid conversations. When else, what else do we do for launch, I think that basically covers it, but

Unknown Speaker 35:05
kind of, but also

Kathleen Shannon 35:06
a lot bigger than that. See, and,

Emily Thompson 35:09
and I think the thing that I want to point out here is all the things, all the things that go into launch, I feel like you know, so often. So often people just think, oh, I'll just get like a Squarespace template and start tweeting and honestly, you can like Do not let the fear of how big these things are. keep you from launching, like do a Squarespace template, send an email out to your 10 subscribers and tweet that shit like, get

Kathleen Shannon 35:36
free. Like I think that a launch can be I mean, even if if your tools were really basic, or if your offering was still really small, launching the shit out of it could take you places it can be rocket fuel

Emily Thompson 35:50
Exactly. And I always say this to my clients who were like, Oh, I just want to solve, launch and just sort of let things go or I want to do something big and whatever you decide is perfectly fine. But launches are only as big of a deal as you are willing to make out of them. Like it's your Amen, amen, it is your fuel to your fire, like you have to do this. So if you want to gather up all of your resources and get social media graphics, maybe then like we got on co schedule and just scheduled social media like a madwoman. Or if you want to have a developer build something from scratch, or use a template base like we did this time. Next time, I'm custom designing this website, just so you know, I think development would have went much faster. But there are there are no right or wrong ways to do it. It's just doing it, you have to do it. And we put a lot of resources into this launch, and have been blown away by what has come back from it. And just in our team coordinating to make this do because this was not just Kathleen and I by any means. It's just launching something is a huge moment in your business huge. And

Kathleen Shannon 37:02
you know what I learned from this launch? When is that to have a successful launch, you really have to commit to it. Hey, man, and I didn't know that before, even. So I think we've already recorded the minisode on what to do. And if I launch and I hear crickets chirping. And I even think that maybe on that minis that I said something like, it's nobody's responsibility to be excited about your launch. But you and I still think that that's true. But I think that the more you can commit to your launch, the better outcome you're going to have. I

Emily Thompson 37:35
agree. And I think it's I think it's committing in terms of energy, and in dreaming, and in some cases, resources like money and time. I think that it's pulling people in as much as you can, like God knows Kathleen and I by ourselves would not have been able to do this like this, it would have taken four times as long, easy if we had managed it. I think that you know, putting trust into your people. And I say this as a web developer who has clients like look at me funny all the time because websites are hard to understand. But committing committing to it committing to doing this thing is everything when it comes to launching and you can have asset all day long people have fast launches every day and some of them get ok results or you can put everything you have into it and blow your own damn mind. drop the

Unknown Speaker 38:31
mic. Dawn

Kathleen Shannon 38:35
I mean really though, I don't have anything else to say and I need to go to boxing.

Emily Thompson 38:41
I know go get some of that go get some of that stuff out. I know the the past three days. I have been like a Monday Monday I pulled a nine and a half hour day. Like that was a thing. I mean last night I stayed up until 11

Kathleen Shannon 38:58
behind and that excited about working a long time

Emily Thompson 39:02
right there with you I'm fine my like own thing. Yeah, well in me launches are hard launches are super difficult. And if it launches still going like Korea is still like mobile, optimizing the footer of our website. And we are planning phase two and and we're working on editorial calendars. I think that's another point that I want to make like you work really hard for launch. But if you're launching something good launches when the work begins. So there's that

Kathleen Shannon 39:33
I disagree the word way before right long, kind of like launches the prom to celebrate your work. Well I don't think prom is a good example like the the prom launches like the the why live

Emily Thompson 39:53
right to your right. So I agree your great use of words. No, I completely agree i know what you're going for though and i agree i think that you work really hard for launch and then and then things do keep going like and the work is just beginning in a lot of ways but for us and for everyone launches like the beginning of the next phase so you work up until this moment and then launch is done and you start the next thing that you're doing so milestone like definition of milestone there is the launch of whatever it is that you're creating and it's not something you should go into lightly you know roommate is someone who who has sort of drilled into our head like take the time to do things right and do something you're proud of and then whenever you launch things like that like that and you have that much energy behind them i think that's when magic happens and i'm i'm really ready for like the next phase of magic and being boss because i think i think we're building something amazing

Kathleen Shannon 40:55
i think so too i guess that you know here's here's what i think you're getting at and here's what i'm hearing and here's what i'm feeling is that launches the beginning of something new is the beginning of taking it to the next level and and that's huge and that's what whenever i talk about committing to launch you're committing to taking things to the next level yeah you also have bosses all about

Emily Thompson 41:19
well amen to that you also have to be ready for a delay like you can get ready for launch i think you have to be ready for what next i spent half my day yesterday crying like with a disgusting feeling in my gut and there's just david ruined my house that's a whole other thing he didn't he really were adding gutters to the house and i think it makes them ugly so i cried a little bit but it was also around the intense energy of launch day combined with this thing on my house it was it was a big day like launch days are really big and that energy can get all like crazy and it is the beginning of something new absolutely true that

Kathleen Shannon 41:59
all right do the work be boss launch that shit

Emily Thompson 42:03
yeah