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Lesson Info

Dealing with Success & Failure

We're going to talk about dealing with success yeah and failure and we're going to talk about the importance of your launch because that plays into your success we're gonna cover all of that stuff we're going to talk about dealing with success and what happens if you have a lot of sails because sometimes people get nervous about that to what happens when my exposure goes up, what happens when I get a ton of sales and my going to be able to provide enough customer service all of those types of pieces and then dealing with failure and what to do when nobody buys and you're feeling really sad we're going to talk about the importance of your launch and what makes a successful launch and how systems make everything easier. I think this one is going to help a lot of you out, I hope so. So what leads to success going to give you some examples so that we can start to get in that success frame of mind? First of all listening teo your customers, for instance, jessica marquez from the miniature r...

hino, she listened to her customers who said, I don't want just that I don't want to order the kids I want just the pattern and that helped her create a digital product that you no longer had to ship out because she was shipping in the kids and that's a lot of work for her and she created the pattern so that people could just buy those attention to every detail as you can tell when we talked with my that's really important to you to her and that is one of her strengths is tio pay attention to every detail? In fact, when we do something together, she often points out things that I never would have thought about or picked up on and it's what makes us a great team developing a specific style? So there are so many examples for this actually from printable wisdom if you go to her at the shop, you're going to see that she has a very distinct style people come to her for her style of prince and that's why she has over twenty nine thousand sales one at sea bonnie christine from going home to roost if you've been to her website, you also know that she has this very distinct style it's very whimsical it's got a bit of charm it's got a bit of a vintage feel also my has a very distinct style juliet crane people who purchased her painting courses aren't just purchasing them tto learn how to paint they want to learn how to paint from her they want to learn how she does the work that she does and just come marquez she also has a very distinct style to her work if you look at her at the shop you're going to find that everything just matches everything looks like it's supposed to be there, you know that the shops that you go teo and things look out of place like a lot of stuff look similar and then there are those products that really stand out there like what? What is that doing here that looks off that takes away from your brand in the success expanding when needed an example of that is jackie rueda, who has the online photography school, and she teaches lots of other courses in inside of that school as well, but one of the things she realised is that my courses air selling out within ten minutes and I need to expand. I'm also feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of administrative work I have to dio I need to do something about it, so I need to hire people I need to get a team of people so that I can dio what I'm really good at and they can do what they're really good at selling quality products to get word of mouth traction. So my talked about how her planners in the beginning people just I really loved them and it was word of mouth traction that really helped her gain that mo mentum that beginning momentum that she needed emily from indy shop biography she also when you work with emily, she is a designer web designer she does a lot of also helping you with your branding and pulling all of the pieces together when you work with her you feel like where have you been all my life? You make this stuff so easy sometimes I have worked with have designers where I'm like I don't know what you're saying I understand and they will give me instructions and I have no idea what any of the words are I mean, I really I could the and a I get that but all the other stuff they're saying I really don't get and then I'll email them back I'm really dumb and I don't know what any of this stuff means that you want me to do when I work with emily it's so simple she makes things so easy for her clients and that's why she's booked for months at a time she's a quality products and people talk about her they tell other people you're looking for a lead designer you need to check out emily because she's going to be able to help you angie from angie makes when I interviewed her one of the things that she said is most of her marketing is through word of mouth I'm not sure if it started out that way but at this point in time most of it is word of mouth and when you get to spend less time on marketing and more time on the stuff you love fantastic doing what works. So juliet crane, the reason why she put together her painting her online painting course is because she saw the success of her article in the somerset studios magazine where she was featured and she saw people are loving this. What else can I do with it? So the stuff works? Do more of it instead of trying out something else, because you've done something with that particular, whatever it is. So if she had said, well, I've already done a magazine article on how to paint an owl. I got to figure something else out. It might not have been as successful because that's what her audience really wanted share without fear of copying or being taken advantage of in bonnie christine and her creative live course is such a great example of this. She really shared all of her trade secrets during that course, and if she had gone into it thinking people are going to copy me, they're going to take advantage of me in some way her course would not have been the same you guys, it would have been just would not be the quality that it is it's an amazing course, because she shares all of her secrets, everything she's, an open book and that's what makes it so great, so let's say you succeeded you so what happens when you have a lot of success? First of all if you've set up systems within your business it should run pretty smoothly it also depends on the type of product so if you have a thousand sales and it's a course where your are where you are offering individual feedback it's a lot more time if it's a thousand sales of any book it's like you have nothing else to dio you want to consider that when you're deciding on your product and you want to consider what systems you're going to need in place in case it goes really well do you need to hire a virtual assistant to help you if you have that many people do you need to hire a team do you need to have your web designer on call in case your site crashes when my and I launched connecting gabs we had emily on call so we had her cell phone and said at any minute we may call you we may need help and we did we called her about five different times because something technically didn't work like it was supposed to our customer was having an issue with something or the site something happened to the site because there are so many visitors on your launch day or whatever it is you wanna have that stuff you can't want to think about that stuff and what you're going to dio before it happens and also you're going to experience some growing pains the first time you have something really successful like that you're gonna learn a lot about what you need the next time and neither is right or wrong, so if you're creating any book or you're creating a course or you're creating prints were creating patterns or you're teaching a knitting class, whatever it is that you are creating it doesn't mean that because it takes more service for something that that's the wrong product to choose, you just have to figure out and know that that's what you want, I don't offer courses all the time because I know my energy level I know what I want the business to look like and so I plan it out very strategically so when I offer course in january and that course runs through march, I know that in april and may I'm going to be taking it easy because I'm gonna have been providing a lot of individual support and feedback customer service is key, so I mentioned this that if you received a lot of customer emails especially then you may need some customer support or an assistant or whoever especially during launches or courses hire out when needed and I'll tell you that it's not always easy to figure out when to do this specifically in my business right now I'm going through those particular growing pains because I like to answer all of my emails personally, I feel like it just gives that touch that a lot of other people don't give and it makes me different however I get so many emails that at this point I can't answer them all. So do I hire somebody to help me with that and be able to answer every e mail that comes through even the people who are just like hi blogger and don't even know what I'm doing? Do I really need to respond to those emails or should I just answer the ones that are a priority for my business? I'm really going through those growing pains and I've been thinking about hiring an assistant or hiring somebody to help me with customer service for about six months now I've been at that place where I'm like, should I? Should I not? Should I should I not and it's a real struggle, especially if you are somebody who does everything yourself? I hire out a lot of tasks, but I don't have somebody specifically working on customer service or my business full time or part time. So I think it's a really big step to go from one to the next and I've been putting so much thought into it, so this isn't something that is just an easy decision to make you really have to figure out what's best for your business and your brand and what's going to help your customers the most and what's important to you so it's not always easy to just hire it out but if you need teo I suggest it and if you were going through growing pains or you do it some point it happens to everyone promise so let's talk about if you are going teo hire it out first you want to find the right employees are independent contractors that makes all the difference if you pick the wrong people, it can become a nightmare and and without going into a lot of detail, I have experienced some of those nightmares and I have heard from some of my clothes friends about the nightmares so they have had from hiring the wrong people make sure that you you feel them out make sure that you check out their website, make sure that you look at their testimonials and I would even contact people who have worked with them beforehand and just say, hey, what was I'm thinking about hiring this person for so and sell? I see that you have worked with them before what's your experience. I know if I had done that I wouldn't have made some of the mistakes I've made when hiring out specific tasks so make sure that you take those extra steps because it it makes all the difference when you have the right person working on your business everything goes really smoothly and an example of that is my is launching a cookbook soon life is messy cookbook I'm really excited about it because I've seen some of the spreads beautiful, but she wanted teo put together a video for the book launch, and she looked into a lot of different people who could be the videographer for that, and she held out and held out and she finally found the right person. And when you guys see this video, you're going to know why and you're going to see that part of it is because she hired the right person for the project she's very whimsical and playful and all of that kind of stuff, so she needed somebody who got that and she had done interviews with people who didn't necessarily get it. You know, some people get us some people don't, and that can make all the difference for something like that pay attention to warning signs every time I've hired the wrong person for something, there have been warning signs in the beginning, and I should have just said, right, then you know what? I don't think you're the right fit for this particular project sorry about it, but I'm gonna have to cut ties and go with somebody else there are always warning signs, yes, there were some of the warning signs not responding teo emails within a decent time period not really like I could tell from the way that we would talk with each other, that she whoever itwas was not one hundred percent invested in the project, that that that it was just kind of like a for them instead of I want people who work on my business to be really excited about it and also let's see not responding, the emails timely, not really being one hundred percent invested, and then specifically, when I was hiring a web designer, one of my friends have the same web designer, and I had asked this web designer what happens if our site crashes? What happens if something goes wrong during the launch? This is really important to us. We've invested a lot of time and money into this, so we want to make sure that if something happens, you can fix it. And she said, absolutely, I know, how did you do all of that? I can fix it within a short period of time, and then I had a friend recite crashed, and she had hire somebody else to fix it, because that web designer I couldn't actually fix it, so that was a red flag, and that is when I said, you know what? I don't think you're right for this particular project, I'm gonna have to go with somebody else, but there are always those signs, you know, when you feel it in your gut when you're talking to somebody and you're like, this isn't exactly right. Instead of just hanging on and going along with it move, move to somebody else it's worth it. I know in the beginning it feels hard to do that feels hard to say to somebody that you're not the right fit. It also feels hard to start over and find somebody else but it's worth it in the long run spend the time to train employees, especially when it comes to customer service. You want them to know exactly how you respond to your customers, what you expect, what your expectations are that's really important because they're speaking for your business. And even if even though your customer knows it's, not you responding, because we'll say whoever it is, they associate it with your business. So if they have about experience, it reflects on you, even though it's, not necessarily you and when you have success. When you reach the launch in sales goals, take timeto one, enjoy it, get excited, have fun, enjoy the success, consider what made it successful because you want to do more of that. So look at what you think really helped in that launch and do more of it, I know that that sounds so simple. But I but I have worked with so many creative entrepreneurs who have had something successful and then they've done something else and it didn't really succeed, and I asked them about why they didn't do it the same way that they did the other one and they're like, well, I don't really know, I just thought maybe I had already done that and so I would try something different, you know, do whatever worked and I always take a break after a big launch or course helps me build up my energy. It gets me inspired and motivated for the next product or the next project. When I was deciding when I was going tio have another course for blacks for belle, I took into account this creative life course I'm not going to start a course in two weeks because I need time to recharge, and when you have a big launch or something, you definitely didn't need it no matter what you sell ah, launch takes a lot of investment of energy and time you don't think about it, but when all the pieces come together sending out e mails updating social media writing blawg post responded the customer emails, making sure that everything is going smoothly, it takes a lot of energy, so take a break afterwards, make sure your calendar reflects that and you don't always want to be selling that's also really important if you have a product space business this is you could be selling a lot more often but if you have a service based business you don't always want to be selling your audience you want to be giving them valuable information a lot of the time and then selling a smaller percentage of the time I have this year I have only I've launched the second edition of marketing for creatives I have done these two creative life course is the one that I did on blogging and this one here that's all that I have sold of my own stuff to my customer base and that's enough maybe in the beginning you'll sell a little bit more but once you build up that customer base you want to if you provide tons of value and then you sell to them it's going to be successful each time they're not going to feel like you're always overwhelming them with something new. Now what happens if it doesn't go as planned? Well, richard branson says business opportunities are like buses there's always another one coming and so true don't let it freak you out get you down it feels crappy no matter what, but don't let that stop you from trying again I have had a failed launch I have had things happen that have not gone the way that I think that they're going to go but I pick himself back up and move forward first, know that pretty much every entrepreneur has experienced this. I don't have any creative, entrepreneurial friends who haven't experienced some sort of failure where things went completely up, was it of what they thought was gonna happen. They didn't give up, though, but no, this happens to everybody. It really, truly does it's, not just you, it's, that you need to tweak things you need to finesse some more things. You need to look at what didn't work but it's, not just you, it's, not because you suck. I promise and cut yourself a break. Really, give yourself a break. Has anybody here that's, brave enough, experienced a failure within their business that would share? Yes, I did my first course launch this last fall, and I think I positioned it, not necessarily, I think. Part of the problem is I look at the law very different than my ideal customer does and so I think I was too stuck in my own head and how I wrote that sells page on so it didn't sell as well as I would have liked to and the people who bought it in the end they gave me a much better idea of how when I do it again how I would do it so that it resonates more with the audience but but I think that that was so it was a really good learning experience, but I had half the sales that I would have liked how did you get that feedback from from your participants? I sent them a survey event and said, you know what? What did you get the benefit? You know what did you see the benefits of this kind of asked them for their before and after and, you know, kind of what how the process helped them make that change I my failed launch was also because of the copy from a sales page and it just didn't resonate with my audience I didn't use the right language and when I changed it I re launched that course and it was much success it was much more successful I mean maybe five times the sales or maybe even more than that and that could be a huge difference if you're not talking to your people in the way that they want, you talk too, so that they understand that you get it and they know what they're getting from whatever they're signing up for, you know, like from hearing you that you're gonna have to just try it out, right? It's like you going? You can't know exactly all the right ways to do it until you try and then it may or may not work. Exactly. Yeah, a funny story that I got from emily from indy shop biography when I was interviewing her, she told me that she was really afraid that her first course was going to fail, so she didn't even connect it to her design business in any in any way because she was so afraid that it wasn't gonna work and it was gonna look bad to her design clients that she didn't connect the two she put up a separate website, she made it very different so that people wouldn't I guess look down on her if it didn't go well, and that might seem silly looking back on it now for her, but failure can be a real fear for some of us, and she says now that when things don't go the way that she planned, she just tweaks it and figures out how teo make it better, and that that no longer is there. But that's, because she's launched so many courses now that that fear kind of it lowers its always there. But it lowers as you go. And the worst thing that you, khun dio at this point is give up. So if you have something that doesn't work, don't give up. You've worked so hard to build whatever it is it's going to be okay.