How to Avoid Self-Sabotaging Your Launch

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0:39Let's get started, y 'all. Welcome to the Jasmine Starr Show. Today, we are going to be talking about business, but maybe not in the way that you are most accustomed to. So prepare your heart. We have a lot of good, juicy stuff coming about growing your business, as well as launching new products and services and doing it effectively. I mean, y 'all, it's just like chef's kiss what's coming in. However, I want to have a conversation about what I have seen and experienced in my personal experience as well as seeing a pattern in others. So before I get there, let's have a little bit of a backstory.

1:12So at the beginning of 2023, I hosted my first ever mastermind with 15 powerful entrepreneurs doing six and seven figures. And I falsely assumed that probably at their scene in the business, they were probably doing things very similar. I made the assumption that they had systems and processes set up around launching products and services in a way that I thought was normal. And boy, was I wrong. What we actually spent a lot of our time doing was assessing how to optimize the way that people are launching, offering, promoting their products or services. And I started looking at a lot of their systems, like how they were laying out.

1:50And I'm like, oh, we can make this tweak. And oh, what are you doing this? Why aren't you having that particular funnel? What about a downsell? What about a catch? What about an upsell? What about the VIPs? And so all of a sudden I took a start at it, taking a big step back, realizing that on the years of me launching products and services, I realized that we'd actually gotten to a very refined, very, very, this is like LMRFUD. I'm just going to keep on rolling with it. A very refined way of approaching our products or services. Now, a few months later, June, I am sitting on the inside of an executive group coaching program.

2:26And I'm sitting with my cohort and there's like eight or nine other guys. And I'm talking about a social curator launch we had just completed. And I was talking to the guys about how many leads we got and our conversion and how much cash on hand and projected revenue and what the lifetime value of these particular members were and at this launch and we're going down. And they sat there like I was speaking a different language. They come from the land of venture capital. They come from the land of fundraising, millions and millions of dollars for their businesses and I am one of two people who have completely bootstrapped their business in that particular cohort.

3:03So I do things very differently to how traditional venture-backed businesses do it. And so when I explained everything, they were like, wait, you got how many new users? You got thousands of new people to join? And wait, wait, wait, you did what? At the end of the conversation, I had four people in the cohort ask if my team would be able to run their future launches. is. That had me thinking a little bit different. So I made the assumption that people on the inside of the mastermind I hosted were launching a particular way. I was making an assumption that these venture-backed capitalists were familiar with the way that we were launching and doing our methodology of promoting a new offer or service and bringing in thousands of new people.

3:44And they were like, that does not happen the way that we do it. I thought to myself, okay, there's got to be a better way to share my experience and lessons. There's got to be a way to streamline these conversations because I kept on having a lot of the same conversations with very successful business owners to what I thought was normal was actually not commonly held practice. So there was a pattern that kept on appearing in every single conversation. There is a gap between where I am now and where I want to be in the future. And I started asking myself, how can I close that gap? Well, I'm not gonna spill the tea today.

4:21Here's why. I'm going to get into a full deep dive of how I believe the way that we've approached launching has radically transformed our business. And now what I teach other people to do and replicate. But before we get there, I want to have this conversation talk about a foretelling. Like, let me tell you what is going to stop your launch from being the most successful thing. So these are three ways that I want to help empower you to not self-sabotage your future launch. So I'm going to be sharing a framework. And these are three frameworks that I have learned over the years that I'm going to be sharing with you today because I want you to get better results.

4:58Now, I always think that the easiest way for us to remember new concepts and apply them in our business is by way of frameworks. And better yet, if the framework can create an acronym, then we're cooking with fire. It's like, okay. So the acronym, S-A-T, SAT, SAT. So I'm going to be talking about who you need to be to launch much bigger than you ever have before. Who do you need to be? S, you need to be a scientist. A, you need to be an athlete. And T, you need to be a technician. Who do you need to be to have your biggest launch ever? You need to be all three of these things. So let's break this down one by one.

5:41It's all about the science, baby. You are a scientist. So in science, there are variables. So what's a variable? A variable is a thing you can change to create a different outcome. A variable in a mathematical equation can change to get a different outcome. A variable in a cooking recipe, you can change the amount of salt you use to get a different outcome. In business, there are variables. There are things that you can change to get a different outcome. So when we do this, we want to ask ourselves, what variable can we change to get the most favorable outcome. And that's why I say when you launch, you want to be a scientist.

6:20You want to ask yourself, which of these variables am I going to get the outcome that I want? So when I first launched my very first course, it was called Insta 180. It was an Instagram for business course. Now, what I needed to do was just launch. I always say when people are like, oh, I have this product. I have this digital offering. I have a course. I have a membership. I have a PDF. I have videos. Okay, fine. What you need to do is get it out into the wild. Because right now, all we're doing is we have a hypothesis. We think that this is going to be successful. Awesome. Get it out in the wild.

6:53And then you get to assess what those variables are. So the first time we launched Insta 180, I'm going to tell you, we just hung on for dear life. Like it was like, we were doing all the things. I was like, I just need to go through the process. So I understand the process. I need to trust the process. So then I learned how to trust the process and then trust that I know what to change. So I'm going to tell you that we did everything start to finish on our own. And I say our, I have a husband and business partner. And here's an example of something we did that took us so much longer than we expected.

7:22Now, I wouldn't say that like we're particularly tech savvy, but I wouldn't say that we're like savants either. So it took us six hours to set up a lead acquisition page. Like sometimes they call it like a lead page, a squeeze page, like an opt-in page. It took us six hours to set up that lead page and connect it with our email service provider. Like that was one of 8 ,700 things we had to do. And that was how long it unexpectedly took us. So if you're looking at your entire launch of a promotion and you're seeing how long these things are taking you, this then becomes a variable. What can we change in the future to get a better result?

8:01Well, we know in the future, it took us six hours, but because we learned how to do the process next time, it's not going to take it six hours. Hopefully, hopefully it takes about six minutes. So these are variables. And as you're a scientist, so you don't self-sabotage, you have to tell yourself, we just need to launch. We just need to get out the first equation so we can go back and assess what variables we want to change. Now, whenever I say, okay, you have to assess what variables you want to change. What I hear often from people is like, it feels so slow. It feels so hardwiss. Like, I don't make me slow down.

8:35I want to go fast, fast, fast as an entrepreneur. And I completely understand that. But if you approach your launches like you're a scientist, you will then understand that your objective is not to launch fast. Your objective is to launch often and make small tweaks. That's a different formation in a mindset that you take going in because you will never look at a launch and saying, I'm going to launch it once or twice. Maybe I'll launch it thrice and it's just going to kill. Oh, no, no, no. Launching becomes a lifestyle so that you then learn as a scientist how to optimize. Now, I have come to understand that every time we launch, it's a test.

9:13We're going to be testing one new thing to see if we improve it. So now after eight years of launching, I can look back and be like, we've tweaked it. We know how to hit bullseye pretty dang often. Now, I always think that my experience has been that when you launch a product or offer, So let's say you have a new course. Let's say it's a membership. Let's say it's a series of videos that you want to sell or a series of eBooks or PDFs. What happens is you launch and then you put it out like maybe one or two posts on social media. Maybe you send a newsletter, you tell your friends and your family and it's out there.

9:45And then you launch it to pretty disastrous results. I've been there. I know that feeling. But what happens is that we often internalize the results of that launch as fear, failure, embarrassment. And so you don't want to put it out again because you don't want those same results. So after all of this work that you've done to bring this product or idea or offering to life, you put it out publicly and you don't get the response that you feel you deserve. And rightly so, it's a really great product. But all of a sudden, if you say, I have to put it out again, I'm going to feel a certain way. I don't want to go through those emotions again.

10:19You don't do it. But the only way you find success is understanding that each trial run is getting you closer to where you want to go. I have to tell you that we remember Alexander Graham Bell as the person who first patented and successfully launched a telephone. But what we don't often think about is how many failed attempts it took to get to that point. So I want to remind you that wherever you end up in the future of your business career, people are going to remember your successes and highlights. They're not going to remember how many times you put something out and tried and failed. If you know that, I want you to look at your business like you're a scientist, I want you to say today, I'm gonna be Alexander Graham Bell.

10:55I'm not gonna be looking for perfection. I'm gonna be looking for progress and I'm gonna make small tweaks to variables to get the results that I want. And actually, let me just quote Mr. Alexander Graham Bell himself. When one door closes, another opens. But we so often long for and regretfully look upon the closed door that we do not see the door that has opened for us. Come on. I mean, we want the other door to open and the door opens, but we look at the closed door and be like, I can't believe this door closed. Why? Look the other way the door is open. Do you have the humility to try going through that door again?

11:30So next up in our acronym of SAT is A for athlete. And I lovingly call this framework, the Serena and Venus Williams effect. Yes and amen. Okay, so think back to when the Williams sisters hit the tennis world. They were young teenagers. They were new to the game, like new to like the national game. and women, young and old, started feeling really inspired to pick up tennis, right? And so then all of a sudden you see when the Williams sisters first signed their Nike contracts, all of a sudden you started seeing women's tennis clothing and shoes and rackets skyrocket because people said, I want to be a Williams sister.

12:10Like, you know that feeling, right? Like you think, oh, I'm gonna pick up a racket and I'm gonna go on the court and I'm gonna feel that same way. And you want to feel like I'm invigorated and like maybe, just maybe I can look at them and I could be on the tennis court, kind of, sort of, a little bit like them. Okay, when we see Serena play tennis, a small part of us looks at her and feels, I want to feel that way. I want to do that. I want to succeed in that way. Ooh, that feels good. That dopamine, it's hitting us real good. But here's the truth. It takes decades and decades and decades to have the small chance of being that good.

12:50decades. How many of us are willing to work for decades before we even have the chance to hold the Wimbledon cup above our head? What we want is the moment of holding up the trophy. What we don't want or what we fail to overlook was how many years, seven days a week, seven hours a day for seven, 14, 15, 18 years before you get on that court. You have to understand that as a business owner, you are an athlete. If you want the Williams sister moment, you got to work like you will Williams sister. Facts. I have to tell you that this idea of working for 14 years without a championship title, that's what the Williams sisters did.

13:35This idea of working for 14 years without a title. Have you ever been in a situation in your life where you look at somebody and you're like, for no good, intents and purposes, I think I could do what that professional is doing. that happened to me. The first time I joined a mastermind, it's about 2015, 2016, somewhere around that time. And it's my first mastermind ever. And I walk into a room and everybody there is speaking a different language. I don't know what they are. I literally, you guys, I have no idea what they're saying. They're saying things like funnel conversions and tripwires and EPLs and CPLs and LTVs and returns on investments.

14:08And I'm like, what in the world? And I didn't know, but there's this thing called a hot seat in a mastermind. And what a hot seat is and is a mastermind is one person in the mastermind will sit in a chair. They will ask a question and then for 15 minutes, the group gets to pour in from their experience and tell you what that is. So the level and the caliber of the people in the room, they were asking next level questions. And so I got in and I think I'm asking a really robust question. Like, oh yeah, this is like, this is where the real gangsters dwell. I sit in the chair and I'm like, so what is a webinar and how do I do it?

14:41and everybody in the room, it's just silent. They're like looking at each other and they're like, is this a joke? How is this girl in this room asking that question? I'm sitting there and they're like, so a webinar is just an online class and you could do it online. So YouTube will teach you how to do it. That was my hot seat. Thank you for coming to the show. It was supposed to be 15 minutes. It was about 50 seconds. So why, under God's gray sky, do I think the next day when a woman who I don't know walks into the room, stands in front of us and proceeds to explain that she has done over$100 million selling a course on creating a course?

15:29Now, how does she sell that? By way of a webinar. Funny timing. I ask, what is a webinar and how do you do it? And then the next day a woman comes in and she says, I've done over a hundred million dollars selling this. And as of today, this woman will be making$20 million in the year 2023 selling a course. So why would I think when I look at her, I think, I think I can do that. I want to do what she does. Y 'all, I had a Williams sister moment. This is the Serena and Venus Williams effect. I look at that crazy thing. I'm like, I can do that. But the real question becomes on the back of that is she is the version of Wimbledon.

16:11And just in case y 'all don't know who I'm talking about, I actually have the permission to talk about her. It is my good friend to this day, Amy Porterfield. This woman came in as a complete stranger and I just looked at her. I'm like, I'm going to make her my friend. She has inspired me in so many big ways and she has inspired so many other people the same way that Venus and Cerellia, Cerellia, I got to slow down or do you need to catch up? The same way Venus and Serena have inspired people to play the game, Amy is inspiring people to play the business game differently. So I looked at that. I was like, I want to pick up my proverbial racket, but I had to ask myself before I could play at that level, do I have the chutzpah, the ganas, the audacity to practice for 14 years and keep my mouth shut before I could ever hold a championship cup above my dang head?

16:55That's the question I have for you today. If you want to launch and you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be a scientist and you need to be an athlete. Are you willing to practice for years and years and years? Are you willing to practice in the dark? Are you willing to practice in the cold? Are you willing to practice on the weekends? Are you willing to practice and make other sacrifices? Friends, that is what you have to do to live an Olympic caliber winning lifestyle. Okay. So we're going through the three mindset shifts that you need to make to not self-sabotage your future launch. Okay.

17:29So we went through S, that was a scientist. We went through A, that is an athlete. And finally, we're at T for technician. To be clear, a technician is a doer. You are a doer of small things and big things and glamorous things and awful things and boring things and tedious things. You are a doer of all the dang things. And whenever I get to this part about talking about what a technician does, this is where people are like, okay, okay, let's gloss over that part. And I refuse to. You have to embrace being a technician. And when you embrace being a technician, you're also saying to yourself, no one is coming to save me.

18:07Because if you don't believe it, I'm telling you right now, when you get into the game of entrepreneurship and you get into the game of launching a product or an offer, no one is going to save you. You have to save yourself. As business owners, when we do a launch, when we have a membership, we have a SaaS offering, when we have a course, you need to acknowledge a few things first. When you say, okay, Jasmine, I buy into the mindset shifts. I buy into being a scientist, an athlete, and a technician. When you say I'm going to be a technician, when you say I'm going to be a doer, you are going to be doing more than you've ever done and you are already tired.

18:40When you say you're a technician, you're going to be learning more than you've ever learned and you're going to have to redo your efforts. When you say you're a technician, you're going to be wishing for more help than you ever have before. And it will just be you. Make no joke. When you launch, when you put something out there, it will be the hardest, most complicated, frustrating things that you ever do. And it will also be the most rewarding, lucrative, and perhaps successful thing you ever do. When I started my business in 2007, I was shooting my very first wedding for$1 ,500. $100. And I was like, I am getting paid to be a photographer.

19:18I worked 11 hours for$1 ,500. And I was like, it doesn't get any better than this. And then 2015 comes around and I was making around$15 ,000 per wedding. And then I realized that I was trading hours for dollars. And I said, I wanted to learn how to create a course. And then I wanted to launch that course because I knew I had something more to offer in a different way. And I didn't want to trade my hours for just dollars. And I had no idea what I was... I had no clue. I had no idea what I was doing. Nothing. But I was getting small bits of information from the mastermind. Remember how I said I sat in that hot seat?

19:57And they're like, basically, we're here to help, but Google it and let us know where you get stuck. That's what I did. I spent all of my free time on Google. I was reading help articles from technology platforms. So I was a photographer full-time I was traveling the world with my husband and on the airplane. I'm studying how to do things on google I am reading articles and so we were traveling a lot for photography, but my heart was I loved photography and I loved my clients But I knew there was something more I knew I had the capacity for more even if I didn't have enough time Even if I didn't have enough knowledge, even if I didn't have enough help I knew that there was something more for me And so go back to this, it's like the peak of our career.

20:35We're traveling a boatload for what it is that we're doing. And so we had a wedding in Hawaii. And so JD had this great idea. He's like, I'm going to book us an extra two nights. Let's just stay there and relax. We could totally use it. It's at the end of the year. And I was like, yes, I love that idea. So we agreed to do that, except I couldn't relax. I had planned my first ever launch. And I was like, I'm going to make this happen. And I'm going to make it happen in this deadline. And I remember sitting there in Hawaii, and I was like cycling in a circle in a vortex of frustration, I wish somebody could come in and help me.

21:08I had no idea what I was doing. So I was wishing for the impossible. But guess what? Nobody came to save me. I had to save myself. Just like when you get to the position where you're like, why can't just somebody help me? Nobody will help you until you help yourself. So it was just me in Hawaii and I had 20 emails to write as part of an email funnel for a launch I was going to have. So I spent the entire day in a lobby of a hotel in Hawaii. And I'm going to tell you that that email funnel wasn't particularly amazing, but eight hours later, it was done. And I wanted somebody to save me because I didn't want to be a technician.

21:49Now, I want to be very clear. I am not saying to sacrifice your sanity or your vacation or your time to make it work. I don't say that. I don't advocate for it remotely. but it was a decision that I made for myself back then. You don't have to, but I realized that if I wanted to get to where I wanted to go in a particular timeline, I was gonna have to make sacrifices differently. I'm not saying you should or you need to. I am just talking about my hand to heaven, real truth. And what I learned through that is the ironic part of being a technician is that nobody will come in to save or help you until you save and help yourself.

22:21It is by learning on how to do everything that you get to hire somebody else to come in and help you do it when you start making more money. That's the ironic part. The same thing that happened in photography. I was shooting these weddings and then I would see these gorgeous, beautiful, glamorous weddings. And I'm like, how do I shoot those weddings? How do I get to those venues? I was never able to shoot those weddings at that venue, at that price until I learned how to take the simple and make it look beautiful. Just like when it comes to launching. When I wanted and dreamt of a team who would help me do these very things, I had to build the funnels.

22:53I had to build the launch. I had to build the sequences. I had to build the webinar until I could actually make enough money to have somebody come in and pay me. You have to have the humility to be a technician. So let's go back and review. That most of the time I meet entrepreneurs and I make an assumption that they know what it is I know. Wrong assumption to make. And when I realized that there's a gap of where we are to where we wanna be. Now, I believe that launching helps us fill that gap much faster. So if then I believe that, before we get to this idea that we can actually launch successfully in a very particular way, There are three significant mindset shifts we have to make because I am here to tell you that what you get into once you decide you're going to launch is, oh, we need to say, I am a scientist and I have the humility to take variables and test those variables.

23:40I'm not here to move fast. I'm here to move often and make small changes to get fast results. Can I get an amen? The second mindset shift that I need to make is that I am an athlete. I do not deserve to hold a trophy over my head until I have done the silent work and the dark work and the cold work and the weekend work. I get to train like an athlete so that when I'm standing on that championship and I hold the trophy over my head, I worked for it. And T, I wanna be a technician. I gotta do the work. There's nothing magical. There's nothing special. It's simply doing the work and following a specific way of doing it to then get results and assess those results.

24:19And it is only then and when, when you launch something and you get a new level of success that you have the revenue and the finances to hire other people to help you move the ball down the field. But there's like even better news because we're already at this point in the conversation with the podcast. It doesn't end here. We talk about launching and we talk about the lessons. And I want to show you the exact steps that I follow when I launch every single course, membership, SaaS offering product that I have ever done. I am hosting a free one hour masterclass, how to create a promotional launch plan to double your revenue in 60 days.