134. The #1 Ingredient of ANY Successful Launch

When you sell online courses or coaching programs, you can outsource a lot of the tasks in your business– from your sales page to your emails, even your content creation! But there is ONE thing that cannot be outsourced for personal brand based businesses and how you approach this one thing will make or break your launch.

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If what you aren't talking about doesn't make sense to your audience and doesn't specifically speak to a problem that they're having. I do not care how warm and nurturing and how charismatic you are with your face and your body language and your voice. If what you're saying is not going if it doesn't resonate with your ideal person, they will not buy from you. Your message has to be solid, a clear message that speaks to a specific person's problem, but delivered in a mediocre way or a super fumbles the way maybe somebody who's just filler words, they get really freaked out by the camera so they turn into a robot. That person is on the other side is thinking, oh my gosh, this person's a little flighty. I don't know that I can trust them. Or they're thinking oh my gosh, this person is so fumbling or awkward or clearly they are not confident what they're talking about. I don't think that they can get me results. Confidence sells people confidence sells and that confidence comes out through our delivery. Well, hey, friend, welcome to another episode of the heather Sager show. It's me Heather Sager and I'm honored to be your speaking coach here today. In this episode, I've spent the last 15 years studying and building my communication skills to inspire and teach business owners and their teams from stages around the world. I've had the honor of speaking on more than 1000 stages on topics of leadership, premium brand positioning, sales, and of course communication. And now my focus is helping fellow online entrepreneurs become magnetic speakers, so they can make a bigger impact in the world, well growing their income. This show right here was designed to give you a dedicated space each and every week to grow your skills, and keep your big goals front and center. And if you liked today's episode, be sure to grab a screenshot and share on Instagram and tag me at the heather Sager so I can give you a shout out and celebrate the work you're doing. All right, let's dive in friend, it's gonna be a good one. Well, hey, friend, welcome back to another episode. I am so happy to be back today. Feeling almost normal. If you've been following along the last few weeks, my family fell down to the great old sickness that we went down one at a time. But I am starting to feel I'm not going to say normal again. I am still extremely tired. But I am feeling ready to be back in getting some kind of normalcy I don't know is that even a thing that's possible these days. But I am here a quick live update I shared on the podcast a few weeks ago that I was doing 75 Hard. Again, if you follow along last spring in 2021, I completed the 75 hard challenge, which is a super intense kind of bananas, wild challenge where every day for 75 days, you intentionally choose to hard path by working out twice a day, 45 minutes each one of them has to be outside. No alcohol, no cheats, you have to figure out some kind of meal plan to follow. You take a picture every single day. And you have to read 10 pages of personal development every day. I think I covered everything. Anyways, it's six items that have to do. I did it last spring, it was wonderful. And I decided to do it again. So I'd started it right after Christmas, and totally failed. I failed when I went down sick. But I am recording this today on day two, being back on 75 hard and I'm tired and I am sore. And I couldn't be more excited for the next 73 days. So you're gonna hear me talk about it. I have a podcast episode if you want to hear about my journey on the first round, I did 75 hard I did that with my friend Frannie who was the inspiration for me joining it help link to that in the show notes today if you're curious. Or if you want a swift kick in the butt to try to I don't know get yourself feeling great. It's not really about a health situation, although it does. Definitely working out twice a day and eating so clean. Definitely helps with that. But for me, it's more around having the mental. It's called a mental toughness challenge. But for me, it's having the focus to be able to follow through on the things that I deem to be a priority and sticking to my word and my own promises to myself and my business every single day. So that's what I'm doing. I'll keep you posted around actually I'll just share this with you now my vision is there's like a whole year program around this and I'm doing it this year. So it starts off with the 75 days. Then there's like phase one and phase two and phase three. And I'll bring you along every step of the journey. But yeah, I'm, I'm bananas on bananas. But that's just how I roll. So that's the quick life update. I've also got a couple questions around how is the puppy haven't talked about her in a while. So Luna, we got a dog, a new dog in was that in August, she was born. We got her in October. She's doing great. We have had to roll up a really nice rug in the living room because she likes to eat it. And she also likes to eat our couch saw our couches covered in sheets from my children's twin beds. were navigating but she's very snuggly, I have become her favorite person, her favorite human in her house. So she's constantly at my feet. And whenever I'm on Zoom, she wants to sit in my lap, and she weighs almost 50 pounds now. So that doesn't really work out. Well, but it is quite comical for my clients. Anyway, there's the quick, there's the quick life updates. I am bananas, and I am doing somebody have a heart again, and my dog is adorable as ever. And oh, and the last thing fun. If you've been following along since after Christmas, I finally got reals. On my Instagram account. Yes, I was the one person on the planet who still did not have that feature. And yes, I did try everything. But I haven't now and I am having a grand old time figuring out how to get my long winded rambles into 15 second sound bites. And you know how I figured out how to do it is by not talking and actually just lip synching to other people's audios. So following along on my rails journey, this fun, it's New Year, this episode's coming out the last couple days of January, I can't believe we're already one month into the year. But if you're listening to the show, I would imagine that you are an online entrepreneur, and you have a grand vision for your digital course, or maybe your coaching program. Or maybe you have a one on one service that you're wanting to sell more of this year. I mean, I don't know about you, but I for every entrepreneur I talk with, they have a goal to do more revenue this year than they had done last year. And that doesn't necessarily mean they want to work more hours or that it's all about money. But I would imagine you're still in growth mode in your business, still trying to figure out a way to make your offer land, have it be effective so that people are buying it on repeat, which is probably a reason why you're listening to the show. But I would imagine you have on your radar, some kind of launch happening this year. Now a classic launch a live launch. It's you're coming out of the world, bringing free content pulling people into an event style experience, whether that's a challenge, a three part series, whether that's live or recorded, maybe a webinar, I don't care if this is live, or evergreen, which means like on demand, or it's a live experience that you're doing. But a launch is where you pull people into an experience with free content. And then you pitch your product or program. So I would imagine if you're hanging out around here, you have plans to do some kind of live launch and give it a title of this episode, you were very curious to understand what is the number one ingredient of any successful launch because I would bet that if you have intentions of launching, you're not sitting here going, I want to have an average launch. Or I want to put myself out there and fall on my freakin face and flap of a launch. No, I don't think anybody outwardly intends on that. Although I think many of us especially as entrepreneurs, we've embraced the idea of there is no failing, it is learning. Although that's really beautiful to say and it looks really good on a quote card on Instagram. But let's be honest, it sucks sometimes to fail. You can learn and you can feel the sting of a quote unquote, fail. But what I want to talk about today is there's a lot of conversations doesn't matter what you do online, everybody has their opinion around what the secret ingredient is for a successful launch. I'm gonna go pretty ballsy today and say what I have to share with you is a non negotiable because if you sell online courses, coaching programs or services, whatever you're selling at the end of your launch, here is the fact you can outsource your emails. You can outsource your tech you can have somebody else build a landing page you can have you can hire a copywriter to write your sales sequence or your invites like that is fact you can outsource those things. And technically speaking, you could you could skip a lot of things in a launch and still sell. I know people who have launched successfully without saying sales pages, ie my very first online launch online launched about group program, there was no sales page. There was no sales page, there was a book a call with me and I did sales calls, and then a link to pay me money. Like you do not I know people who there are some people online that I know who have lunch programs successfully, their sales page was a Google Doc, or others who have literally just sent a PayPal link and said, pay me like you do not need to have all of the fancy stuff in order to be successful online, although those things can definitely help you become more effective. But the truth is, if you're being real honest with yourself, if you look at all of the elements that go into your launch, like I said, regardless if it's a three part Live series, and a Facebook group, or a three day challenge, or a live webinar, or a masterclass or a paid workshop, or whatever the heck is the vehicle for your live or pre recorded experience. There are a lot of elements. And if you were being really honest with yourself, not all of them are required. There are a lot of extra stuff that we add in, in hopes for our lunch to be, quote unquote, more successful. And by more successful, most people would equate that to more sales, ie more revenue, for just being real honest, chatting between us girls here, let's let like that's the goal, the launch is to sell something and hopefully sell more of that something. So you can outsource a lot of things you can get by taking shortcuts with a lot of things. But there is one thing that you absolutely cannot shortcut, or it will impact the results of your lunch. We're going to talk about your voice today because I believe your voice you specifically speaking about your content, your program, the price of your program verbally talking through these things. Again, whether that's on live webinars, whether that's in a three part video series, it's pre recorded, or you teach it live, little videos during a challenge. All of those things, the common through line is you showing up. Maybe it's just audio, you have slides on the screen, maybe you're doing video doesn't really matter what but you have to communicate to your audience. Now, it'd be really easy for me to sit here today and say, oh my gosh, it's so simple. Like it's it's, it's just like, you just have to have the right script or you just have to have the right structure that is the secret ingredient. But it's not true. People online literally sell the quote unquote best practice scripts for webinars. And yet so many online entrepreneurs follow them and they still flop on their face. Or there's other people are mine, myself included, who breaks all the rules for the quote unquote best practice scripts or webinars, and they sell a crap ton of their stuff. So you can't sit here and say that it is a script, or the perfect content that sells a program. We also can't sit here and say that content doesn't matter. There are two things that factor into your voice as an online entrepreneur. Number one, you have to think about what you are talking about having a clear message that speaks to a specific person's problem. I'll say that again, having a clear message that speaks to a specific person's problem that is one part of the equation. And if we're being real here, you tactically can outsource that to a copywriter. copywriters, especially conversion copywriters are specifically focused on the words that speak to and convert your ideal person. But if it were just that easy, that means that all copywriters would have hugely wildly successful live launches, it's not just about the words. That's piece number one. But piece number two is how you say those words, with your voice, with your facial expressions, with your body language with your hand gestures, how you communicate, is so freaking important. Now there's that very catchy phrase, I'm sure that I even said it many times where we say it's not about what you say it's about how you say it, but I'm going to tackle I'm going to tackle and call out BS on that today. Because here's the thing, if what you weren't talking about doesn't make sense to your audience and doesn't specifically speak to a problem that they're having. I do not care how warm and nurturing and how charismatic you are with your face and your body language and your voice. If what you're saying is not going, if it doesn't resonate with your ideal person, they will not buy from you, your message has to be solid, a clear message that speaks to a specific person's problem, but delivered in a mediocre way or a super fumbly way, maybe somebody who's just filler words, they get really freaked out by the camera. So they turn into a robot. Maybe they just they just go flat, somebody with really flat delivery skills. The person on the other end is thinking, I don't believe that you can get better results. When you have flat delivery skills, when your voice is monotone. When you are speaking so slow, or you're speaking so fast that you're not even taking breaths, that person is on the other side is thinking, oh my gosh, this person's a little flighty. I don't know that I can trust them. Or they're thinking, Oh, my gosh, this person is so fumbly or awkward or clearly they are not confident what they're talking about. I don't think that they can get me results. Confidence sells people confidence sells, and that confidence comes out through our delivery. But on the other end of the spectrum, a mediocre message, maybe one that's unclear, maybe one that is a little circular, maybe a little rambley. But it has phenomenal delivery, someone who is just so confident and charismatic and they're making you laugh, and they just feel good when they're talking. That is also not the solution. Because if you have phenomenal delivery skills, but your content is unclear. And or does not speak to a very specific problem or challenge your ideal person is having the other end there thinking, I don't believe that I can trust what you say. Think about the classic used car salesmen. I mean, they are so like when you think about the stereotype, they are so smooth, so confident they have studied themselves in the mirror, they know what their facial expressions look like, like they're good, but they're so smooth that you don't trust them. You think and we all think this right? When we see somebody who's just a little too smooth, we think that they're so smooth that there is no way that they're here for our best interest. So we're skeptical. So what I want you thinking about today is if you have a launch coming up in 2022, or whenever you're listening to the year doesn't really matter. The number one ingredient for any successful launch, is your ability to effectively and persuasively communicate with your ideal customer. As an online entrepreneur, your voice is the number one thing that you cannot outsource. So my question for you is, as you look ahead on this year, when you think about your launches, when you think about planning, whether you're on evergreen or not, when you think about all the ingredients that you have listed in your asana board, or on your Google Spreadsheet, whatever you have, that you're keeping track of all of these tasks. My question for you is where on the schedule? Are you actually working on the skill of persuasive communication? Chances are you have a line item for build webinar deck, or outline three part video series. And maybe you have a script to follow or you have a loose outline you learned somewhere in somebody's sales program. But you are not worried about that right now. Because you're like, Oh, I'll figure it out later. Well, here's the thing, what happens for so many of us entrepreneurs have so many things on our plates later becomes a rushing 11th hour, the week before your launch, we are scrapping together slides where you're posting a Facebook group going, oh my gosh, is it worth buying this template, it's slide deck. And then you rush online to find somebody else's template and you're trying to customize it to your font colors. You're trying to figure out how their questions work for your content, and you're left going, Oh, this doesn't really sound like me. But it's the template so I should follow it. And then you show up live on your webinar or on your three part video series or on your challenge. And you're fumbling your way through the slides that are quite frankly, written in somebody else's voice. So it doesn't sound like you. And when it doesn't sound like you. And you don't necessarily know if your content is going to resonate with your ideal person put those two things together. How can you expect that your ideal person is going to click and get it? You see, the big challenge that so many entrepreneurs face is they are so unclear with how their content maps to persuasive messaging that they just word vomit out and they hope that what they say will resonate to your idea person. But if you're unclear around the point of your message, and how to guide your ideal customer from where they are, to where they could go, if you're unclear of what that journey looks like, how can you expect your ideal person to follow that path? If you're unhappy with your launches, the only question you should be asking yourself is, how am I showing up and communicating during my launch sequence? How are you showing up to your webinars? How are you owning the virtual stage? How are you communicating to the camera? How are you leveraging stories? How are you being more mindful and aware of your vocality? When you speak? Are you pausing? Are you zipping your way through the webinar so fast, they get to the pitch that you take, take a breath, and then you just zoom right past through it because you want it to be over with so you can get to the point where you open the car and launch and watch the sales come in. But then they don't. And you wonder what happened. I've spent a lot of time over the last few months, auditing webinars, oh my gosh, auditing the webinars, if you've been following the show, you know, I did a three points, three part series on the podcast in November, all about non Smacky webinars and how to be more effective and authentic when you show up to speak, which led to an influx of private clients that I had come on board, book me for webinar audits. And it has been so fun. And so telling, working through all of these webinar audits, and let me let me share with you one of the huge, huge themes that I see in so many webinars. We think we are communicating so clearly on our webinars. And we think we are just because we've already talked about something with our audience, that they get it. But the fact is, in a launch, you have to be so freaking clear and simple, and repetitive. If you want your ideal person to follow you, to resonate with you and your teaching style, and to get them into action, you have to be simple, clear and repetitive. That's what a lot of this is about. So hopefully today I have persuaded you to start questioning how intentional you are being with your voice. How much of your messaging, you have been winging over the last year, two years, three years, if you're being really honest with yourself, have you been really intentional, or have you saved your webinar or launch content for the 11th hour, which if that's you don't beat yourself up that is totally normal. It's a very, very common thing to have practicing your webinar or getting your slide deck together to be a 11th hour thing, because let's be real here, the things that we feel have to happen is okay, we have to have a landing page for people to register for our launch, that kind of has to happen, then there has to be some kind of email they get. And then there has to be a sequence. And we have to have the Zoom Room set up or the Demio setup or the Facebook group set up. Like there's all these logical tech things that have to physically happen in our heads. And maybe they do have to happen, I don't know. But I would argue we can simplify things. But they have to happen. And there's only so many hours a day. At the end of the day. As entrepreneurs, we do trust ourselves, and we trust our knowledge. So we allow our live launch mechanism, whether that's Facebook Live series or a webinar, whatever it is, if we're being real honest, most people show up to those things and say, I can wing it. I'm naturally pretty good at speaking. I know my topic. I know I have the slides here. I'll figure it out as I go. And the question is, if you have been doing that, how's that working out for you? I know that's kind of direct, but how is it working out for you? If you have been winging your launches? And when I say winging it, I don't mean the full launch. I mean you actually showing up and talking to your audience. How intentional is the messaging on your actual training series on your webinar. And if you're sitting here and you don't have the sales, if you don't have the the conversion rates that you desire to have, instead of worrying about all of the ancillary things about the sales page copy about the emails, and sure those things can can impact it. But my big question for you is how do you get people in One, two, the actual live webinar itself, like how do you get people live to actually hear your message in your pitch? And then how do you convert the people who do show up and give you your time and attention? Those are the questions we have to be asking. And the big one that I'm focused on, obviously, today is the what happens when you're live? Or what happens when you're recording? How are you showing up with your voice with your face? Are you showing up with the RBF situation, the recipe not so nice person face if sell they're not going to buy from you. If you were so serious, or you're coming across as a little passive aggressive, or here's one I see a lot with, there's no warmth to your voice. Like imagine I did his whole webinar today, with a voice like this where I was so serious and focused, and evidently having a little bit of a Boston accent. I don't know where that came from. But if I was so like, authoritative, I guess without any warmth, in my voice, I probably piss you off a little bit today. And you wouldn't believe me. One of the things that I really have to do when I'm pushing you pretty hard on the podcast or on a videos, I have to add warmth to my voice. Are you adding warmth? When you speak to your audience? Are you adding so much warmth, where they don't see you as an authority, they just see you as a BFF that they want to hang out with and watch your reels online. Have you even considered this before? Is how you're coming across on camera? In how you communicate with your body language and your facial expressions and your casual illness? Is that screaming premium coach? Or is that screaming? A girl I want to follow and hang out with her reals. I don't know what the right answer is for you. But these are questions that we need to start exploring because communication isn't just the script that you write down, or the way in which you talk to your contractors, or your spouse, all those things, yes, have communication. But communication is what we say and how we say it. And that, my friends, if I were to make one pretty bold recommendation, which I'm about to that should be the number one skill that you should work on. If if you want to improve your launch metrics in 2022, if you're happy with where your launch numbers are, if you're happy with how you're converting, if you're happy with how you're selling is going well then you don't need to worry about that. And this should not be a should on your list that you should add. That's a lot of shooting. I'm a huge fan of not shitting on other people. But the question is, if you're an online entrepreneur, and you have online courses, you have a coaching program, or you have a product or service that you want to sell through launching. Okay, if that is you, and you are not happy with how your numbers are going with selling, while I want you to seriously consider getting better at communicating the problem and solution to your audience in a more compelling way. And if you do that, oh my goodness friend, when you are you able to articulate clearly to your ideal person, if you're able to put words to how they're feeling and the challenges they're having and why what they're working on is not working for them. And you're able to show them the pathway of what's possible, and help build their confidence that they can get there. And you're able to share with them stories of other people's successes and and paint a picture that's exciting and inspirational. And when you do that, and share with them that you have a way to help them get the results they want in a faster, easier, simpler, more supportive, whatever the way is that you teach, if you're able to lay that out. Having someone say yes, feels so much lighter, so much more exciting. And you can actually enjoy your lunches for what they are, which is a celebration of enrolling people into your program. So what do we do from here, what I want you to do is write down number one on your list. In 2022. I'm going to work on the skill of becoming a more effective and persuasive communicator. Then I want you to say okay, what am I going to do to get there? And hey, if you want some help with this if you want to understand the role of communication, specifically as an entrepreneur in this online space, if you want to learn to use your voice in a more compelling and persuasive way. Well, I hope that you'll join us for the speaking workshops, which are happening in February starting on February 17th. You can head on over to Heather sager.com forward slash speaking workshops. I'll put a link at the top of the show notes of this episode today and you can get on the waitlist. If the waitlist is no longer there. It'll take you to the actual page enroll in the speaking workshops that this is going to be a series where we specifically help you unearth the power of your voice as an entrepreneur to sell with ease. Yes, that is possible. And I'm going to teach you how in the speaking workshops, and hey, if this is not quite the right fit for you right now, and you're like, you know, I don't want to wait, I want to get my voice nailed down. Now I want to start putting some some skills to my intention of growing my online business. Well, that's what this podcast is all about. Y'all scroll back to some of the prior episodes. If you actually had about over to my website, Heather sager.com forward slash blog. We have all of the episodes on this show are tagged so that you can find them by topic. So if you head on over there, Heather sager.com forward slash blog. Every episode is saved as a blog post. Over on the far right, if you scroll down to the bottom, you can search by topic. My favorite topic is elevating your delivery skills. You can go search it and find all the episodes that are dedicated to that and you get a jumpstart at becoming more magnetic with your voice. Alright, today's episode was a well it wasn't so quick. It was mildly short. This is a shorter style episode. But I hope I got you thinking around how to improve your launches and more importantly, improve your confidence in how you're showing up for your ideal clients. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, be sure to take a screenshot share with me on Instagram and give me a shout out and tell me what you loved about today's episode. And we'll be back next week to keep the conversation going about helping you show up in a more magnetic way for your ideal customer. We'll talk that