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Happy Fourth of July weekend to those of you in the United States, and happy belated Canada Day to my Canadian friends! Given that a lot of us are celebrating one holiday or another, I thought I'd keep this weekend's edition short and simple by answering a few questions submitted to me on social media. Starting with some holiday-related questions...
Do you plan your work ahead to take time off for the holidays (scheduled posts, etc.)? Do you create any holiday-centric content/tie-ins, or do you ignore holidays?
— Katie G. (my sister!)
In an ideal world...yes. Speaking historically, not really. I've maintained such an intense publishing schedule for so long (1-2 newsletters/week, 1 podcast/week, 1-2 YouTube videos/month, social posts daily) that getting (and staying) ahead of schedule is hard. The exception here is Black Friday because, well, #business. But I want to get way better about this. Now that we're building a team, we've adopted a 6-week sprint cadence with associated Goals, Objectives, and Key Results. So we're getting a LOT better at thinking long(er)- term and aligning our efforts behind those sprint goals—you may have seen this with our recent Membership Summit and how aligned all of our content was on memberships. Our big looming deadline to get ahead for is parental leave for Mal and me. With a late-October due date for baby #2, we'll be planning for November and December, when I'm as unavailable as possible.
What did you learn the most from the Membership Summit?
— Jessica Lackey
This whole undertaking was the most intense launch I've ever been a part of. To put things in perspective, if I were to rate the intensity of this launch on a scale of 1-10...I would rate this like an 8. And in retrospect, I think my most intense launch before this I would give a 3 or 4 by comparison. Translation: It stretched us a LOT. It took a whole team (and even a third-party team). It was our biggest launch ever (by a long shot) and it's not even really over—we introduced a self-paced course offer on Friday which will be available until Wednesday (more on that below). Here are a few misc. takeaways:
- I should assume that the work involved in a launch like this is 5-10x more than initially assumed.
- WebinarJam was not a fun piece of software. We'll use a different webinar tool next time (Zoom, Circle, or Riverside — TBD).
- Using Telegram as part of the launch was fun and beneficial, but I think I'd go with WhatsApp next time.
- Cross-promotions from other creators were a minority of sign-ups, but a substantial minority. I could've done more of this.
- I gave a real, full-on pitch on the Day 2 webinar and it was way more effective than I expected. Virtually no one dropped off, and it was our highest day of sales.
- We emailed 3-4x more than I've ever emailed in the past. Not surprisingly, it led to a much bigger launch. It was uncomfy; some people got annoyed, but as a business owner, this was a good business decision.
- VIP tickets for the free event were REALLY popular. They converted at nearly 8% and accounted for nearly $12,000 in revenue.
- The effort here would be much more worthwhile if I planned to do this exact Summit again periodically. I'm not sure that will be the case — so I like the format, but wish I would've been more thoughtful about the overall content to align it with the overall Creator Science brand (rather than the narrower topic of memberships).
There's a lot more to share here, but I'll be doing a full retro with my integrator, Anna, on the podcast coming soon!
What are three things your team did to make sure your launch was kicked off smoothly?
— Liz Wilcox
We had the help of a third party who had prior virtual summit experience, and they really held our hand through this. In particular:
- They provided the pitch structure for Day 2. It was long, felt new and uncomfortable for me, but it was really effective.
- They set an expectation that I'd be sending a ton of messages. Email and Telegram — I sent 3-4x more messages than any other previous launch (and still probably only sent a third of what they recommended).
- They put a ton of effort into the webpages. Our webpages for this project were phenomenal. From describing the Summit, to pitching VIP tickets, to creating an interactive Toolkit, and creating sales pages, I was impressed and proud of this work.
We still came RIGHT up to deadlines way too often. Not their fault; we were just a little overambitious on the timeline.
What's one thing you've stopped doing that's made your business better?
— James "Ritzy" Bevins
Frankly, I need to explore this idea more. I think there's a lot of wisdom in the idea of "addition by subtraction," yet I often continue to pursue "addition by addition." I suppose the best answer here is that I've stopped gatekeeping so many areas in the business. I've handed over a lot of control to the team (repurposing some of my content, coming up with ideas, managing parts of the business) and that's certainly expanded our capacity and given ME the ability to be more purposeful with my time.
How are you doing?
— Max Pete
Well that's a complicated question. June was the best month (financially) in the business's history — and that's despite The Lab being closed to new members for the time being! From mid-May through this weekend, our team:
- Spoke at Press Publish LA
- Hosted our 2-day Offline event for members of The Lab in Boise
- Supported Circle as a partner of their Eclipse launch
- Ran the Membership Summit
- Launched our Build A Beloved Membership Live Cohort
...this is while we also put new flooring on the second story of our home. The results are this complicated mix of feelings. I'm super, super grateful for my wife, my team, and everyone who participated in the list of events above. We hit our internal goals of 1) Summit registrations and 2) launch outcome. And while it was our best month ever financially, I think it's also the most stressed I've been over ~5-6 consecutive weeks. Certainly the most I've considered the question, "Would having a job actually provide a better lifestyle?" That consideration was fleeting, but it did come up multiple times. This was not at all a season of balance and I definitely "touched the stove" again in terms of experiencing burn out. But...I went into this (mostly) knowing that would be the case. The timing of all of these activities was unfortunately stacked, but all of these activities were designed to give our team a boost leading into family leave later in the year. So... Mission accomplished. I'm so proud of and grateful for our team. I am also so very tired. Have a question? Submit it here for future mailbags.
AVAILABLE THROUGH WEDNESDAY 🚨
Save 50% on my best-selling course
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We officially closed the doors to the live cohort of Build A Beloved Membership earlier this week. But I heard two patterns of responses from folks who wanted to join us but decided not to:
- Poor timing
- Couldn't afford the price
So we're giving you another option to continue forward. It's the self-paced version of my course, Build A Beloved Membership. The course that's already had 300+ students work through it — students like Brian:
This is my entire playbook. Ten years of building communities, the same system I used to build my own membership to $250,000 in its first year, laid out step by step. From the first idea, to pricing it, to launching it, to keeping people in it for years. Every decision and every framework I use, in one place. It is the exact curriculum the cohort worked through, and you get all of it. It's yours, for good. You move at your own pace, you focus on the parts that matter most for you, and you go as deep as you want. And when your membership is live and you hit a new question six months from now, you come back to the exact lesson you need. It is not a four-week sprint you finish and lose. It is a reference you keep for as long as you run your membership. It normally goes for $399. Until Wednesday, July 8, it is half off (so $199). And if you grab it in that window, you also keep permanent access to all three summit recordings and the transcripts (if you do not already have them) — the ones that otherwise come down. One more thing, and this is new. For the first 50 people who grab the course, I am including a free 30-day trial inside The Lab's Basic membership. You activate it whenever you are ready. It is the best way to see how a membership actually runs from the inside while you build your own. → Get the course ($199) After July 8, the course will return to $399, and the recordings will be gone! Cheers,
Jay |
