This is how you are self-sabotaging your launches

Now you might not realize it, but chances are that in your launches, you are actually your worst enemy. You are one of the biggest reasons why your launch might not go as planned. Now, it's a difficult truth to hear, unfortunately, but I see it way too often and I've done this myself as well, by the way.

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7 ways you are self sabotaging your launch

I see it really often where somebody is launching and whether they realize it or not, they're doing these certain behaviours that are sabotaging their launches. And every single one of the things that I'm talking about in today's episode are behaviors that I have done myself. So this is not me necessarily calling you out. This is also me calling myself out.

 

#1. Too much planning

The first way that you are self-sabotaging your launch is by planning because it feels safer than taking action.

Now there's planning and then there's planning. There's doing enough planning that you know you've covered off on the right content for your launch, the launch event that you're going to have, like whether that's a webinar or a challenge or whatever your launch event's going to be. You know the timeline, the dates, the tasks that need to be done. That's planning. Then there's the planning where you sit there looking at your screen blankly procrastinating because that feels a lot more safe than taking action when you don't know what that action is. But here's the thing. Taking wrong action is better than taking no action. I would rather you started taking action and realized you were doing the wrong thing than sat there staring at your screen, because both ways you're wasting time. But if you're staring at your screen, you're not learning anything. Whereas if you're out there taking action, yeah, that might have been a waste of time because you did the wrong thing, but at least now you know it was the wrong thing and you're a little bit closer to doing the right thing.

 

#2. Procrastinating because you're afraid of succeeding

The second way that you are sabotaging your launches is procrastinating because it feels comfortable or because you are afraid of what actually success might look like. Now, this tends to look like leaving things to the last minute or not doing them to the best of your ability. Now, I know it sounds a little bit weird that you might be afraid of success, but I will be talking about this in the next blog on why you're self-sabotaging your launches, but just believe me on this one. We sabotage because we're afraid of success just as much as we sabotage because we're afraid of failure. I personally have done that a lot. Now, when I say leaving things to the last minute and not doing them to your best ability, you see this a lot with things like writing sales pages, writing card open emails, prepping your webinar, anything where there's a lot at stake.

If you're anything like me, you'll sit on it and be like, “I'm not in the right mood to do it right now.” Or, “It doesn't feel like the right time.” Or, “I'm just waiting to know more. It doesn't feel perfect yet.” And you'll procrastinate it, procrastinate it until the 11th hour when suddenly you have no choice but to get it done and put it out there. And then it ends up being not to the best of your ability because you rushed it. And guess what? Because you rushed it and it's not to the best of your ability, it's not going to get the results that you want and you've subconsciously self-sabotaged your launch.

 

#3. Waiting for perfection

Number three is waiting until it's 100% perfect to launch it. Now, you and I both know it's never going to be perfect. Waiting for it to be perfect before you launch it is like waiting for your grass to stop growing before you mow it. Your lawn is never going to stop growing. So you might as well mow it now because it's going to keep growing. I feel the same way with my puppy's haircuts. Every time I look at him, I think, “Oh, you need a haircut, but let me just wait for it to get a little bit longer before I take you to get a haircut because it's going to grow back so quickly anyway.” It's never going to stop growing. Your launch is never going to feel perfect enough to launch.

 

#4. Setting yourself up for failure

Now, number four is doing a bit of a half-assed job with your launch so that if it fails, you can pretend you didn't care anyway. Now, this will look a little bit like leaving things to the last minute. It will look like only putting up one social media post, only sending out one email because you don't really care that much about your launch anyway. But if you don't care about your launch that much or if you pretend not to care about your launch that much and you didn't give it 100%, when it does fail, we don't know if it failed because nobody wants it or because the messaging isn't aligned or because there's something wrong with your launch or whether it failed because you didn't give your launch 100%.

 

 

#5. Playing small with your launch

So telling people that you're just going to do a soft launch. I see this a lot, especially with people who've been around in the business space for quite a while. They have a reasonable sized audience. They're good at what they do in a service and they think, “Well, let me just put a product out there. It's just going to be a soft launch. I'm just going to test it and see what happens.” The problem with a soft launch is you also end up doing a bit of a half assed and then when it fails or if it fails, we don't know if it failed because you didn't try hard enough or if it's something that's actually wrong with the launch. So we can't go in and fix it and improve it.

 

#6. Giving up early

Saying nobody bought on day one so I'm just going to pull the plug now. Most people will sit and procrastinate until the very last minute and they'll only buy on the last day. If I look at all of my past launches, the majority of sales have come in that last 24 hours. Not in the first 24 hours. People aren't sitting there waiting for you. Yes, some people might be sitting there waiting for you to launch your product so they can buy it. They might be super excited, but for most people spending money is painful. So they're going to delay spending money for as long as they possibly can. And that's why they'll buy in that last 24 hours or so. So if you give up early, you're missing the opportunity to reach a whole lot of potential students and customers.

 

#7. Taking action from a place of fear

Believing that your launch is going to fail and taking action from that place instead of from a place of possibility. So if you think, “Well, nobody's going to buy anyway. So why would I bother putting all of my effort into creating social media posts? Why would I bother showing up on social media?” And because you're coming at it with that energy, your launch is going to fail. You're going to unconsciously create that thing that you're afraid of.

 

Seven ways that you are self-sabotaging your launches. There are a few other ways other than these, but these are the main ones, the most common ones that I tend to see. Now, if you are interested in why you're self-sabotaging, in my next blog I'll be diving deep into why we do these things.

 

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