BIRD WILLIAMS: You’re listening to Bird Means Business Episode 38.

Hey, party people, and welcome to the Bird Means Business podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Like I've said before, and I mean, with all of my heart, it means a lot to me that you take time out of your busy day, out of your busy schedule to share this space here with me. I love what I get to do through the Bird Means Business podcast. And so I'm just really happy and you know I'm really just feeling great right now. And I hope that I can get some of those good vibes through the airwaves to you. Despite all of the craziness that we are experiencing in 2020, there's still so much good and so much to be grateful for. This past week on Instagram in my stories I shared about how I had to really let go of a timeline that I had created that wasn't even something that I had to stick to for any other reason than it was just in my head. And I was putting all this undue pressure on myself to make it happen. And it just wasn't realistic and I was basically not taking care of myself, not sleeping, forgetting to eat. And anyway, I started to think about you know what I learned this week and how I kind of overcame that and moved past that and just what I was grateful for. And then I encouraged y’all to share what you are grateful for and I got so many incredible responses. It just made my heart swell. So I'm grateful for you. It means a lot to me that you're here and that, like I said, I get to be along your journey in this way. It really does make it all worth it. And again, that's why I'm here.

So, before we get started, I want to share a listener shout-out. His name is Van Ware of Ware the Heart is Photography. So, on Instagram, when I posted about last week's episode, Episode 37, “Should I Share Posts from My Biz Page to My Personal Page?” Van actually wrote on the comment on Instagram, a list of his takeaways about the episode and it was just gold. I really appreciated that he did that. And like I said, in that episode, I've been considering doing an episode on intentionally launching your business. And Van encouraged me. He was like, do it. So, here we are. You can find Ware the Heart is Photography on Instagram, and his shots are so, so good. So if you're in Houston and need a photographer, Van is your guy.

All right. If you are planning on launching your business, or you already have but you're not really sure if you have a comprehensive plan. I would love to help you out with that. Like I said, that's why I'm here. I want to be the resource that I wish I had when I launched my first business seven years ago. So, first things first, if you're not sure where to start, I have a guide for just that. It’s called “Ready, Set, Launch”. It's the first 10 steps to launching your business. Y'all, this checklist is exactly what I wish I would have known before I got started because I wasted so much time and money, and energy when I didn't have to. So if you want the checklist it's completely free. Go to launch.birdwilliams.com to get the goods.

All right. So let's jump into the episode. I wanted to do this one because I've seen time and time again. I've worked with clients and I've just noticed on social media even when people launch their business but they don't really have any strategy around it and it can really affect their business. So, like I mentioned in last week's episode, the question I was answering came from someone who said the reason why I'm forwarding every single business post over to my personal page on Instagram is because I realized that there are friends and family who didn't even know I launched a business. But y’all, that should not be the case. Okay, so before we get started I want to say very clearly that none of this is required. You don't have to do all of these things. We're all adults. We make our own decisions. And as an example, in Episode 23 I sit down with Brandi Lisenbe. Love her. She has an amazing hair salon here in Houston, and we talked about her hair salon startup, that's the episode. So she didn't even have a website when she launched her business. Not even a basic website. She just launched. There was so much demand. She was like, let's just do it. She got started and she was like, immediately booked out without even having a website. So it really just depends on the volume you're already kind of maybe getting in your business. She kind of just fell into this. So it depends on the traction you have before you officially launch. But in most cases, you want to have some kind of strategy behind how to get eyes on your new business, okay? 

So I'm going to start off by sharing some of the top-of-mind tips and suggestions that I think of when I think of you intentionally launching your business. And then I'm going to walk you through the launch of my first business, The League, which is a warehouse gym here in Houston, Texas, as well as the launch of Bird Williams. Because when I talk through those two launches I think it'll kind of help put all of what I'm sharing in terms of the tips into better context.

All right, so let's start off with some intentional launch tips. So what do you typically want to kind of have set up before you launch your business? So, first of all, I'm going to assume that you've already gotten the “Ready, Set, Launch” checklist and that you've worked through those steps because again those are the first 10 steps to launching your business, and it's much more thorough than what I'm even gonna go into here. So step one, get the “Ready, Set, Launch” checklist at launch.birdwilliams.com, and go through that list.

Okay, next, and this might be the most important. You need to have a business plan because y’all this pulls everything together. And I can't stress, really, the importance of this. Because when I tell you I truly believe it's one of the main reasons that my gym business, my first business hit six figures in revenue its first calendar year. It’s because we had a very thorough business plan, one that I even vetted with my director on Wall Street. I worked in New York on Wall Street as an investment banking analyst before I launched my business and I was going from that job to entrepreneurship, which I'm actually talking about in next week's episode. And I had my director look at my business plan for my new business because I wanted it to be solid. And that is so, so, so important because, again, you're proving your business idea to yourself as you're going through the process of pulling together the different four pillars of your business. So, for example, I have a Prove It Plan business plan program, my signature program. It's five weeks and it's where we really nail down exactly how the four pillars of your business work together. And one of those pillars is financial. And so I was with a client and we were in the middle of this financial session. And she just had an eye-opening moment where she realized that in order to not bleed money out of her business for literally years, she'd have to launch her business with double the capacity that she thought she would have to. So, imagine if she would have gone out and thought, this is my business, I'm excited to go, and I'm gonna go ahead and start getting equipment and doing all the things based on what she kind of assumed she needed, and then being really stuck in a really bad place down the road. So again, going through this process helps you uncover what you need in your business and how everything kind of ties together. Super-duper important. You want to have a business plan.

Next, I would say, before you launch, you want to make sure that your system, you know if it's a building, if you're in a brick and mortar, your packages and pricing, all of those things, are set up to where obviously people can buy from you. Right? You want to make sure that before you launch your business, it’s actually ready to buy. And we're going to talk a little bit about a nuance to that in a second. But basically, before you officially launch, you want to have all of that set up. And if you have a product based business, I want you to think about inventory planning. So, last week I had a strategy session with a client. And y’all, I love Saturday sessions so much. I literally got off of this strategy session and told my husband, Terry, like this just fires me up. Even before the session, I was reading through the questionnaire that this young lady had filled out. It's the automatic questionnaire you receive whenever you book a strategy session with me. And I was just so excited because I was being able to pull out so many ways that I could help her in just an hour. So, anyway, I'm on this strategy session, and we really dug deep into her inventory planning. There were four quick things. One, I wanted to make sure she understood, and she of course had thought through some of this. But we were able to work through it together and really was able to bring out more for her. One, what is the quantity of each item you need for launch. She had, I believe it was five different versions of her product. How much of each does she need to just launch? And then how quickly do you think you're going to run through that product just based on interest you're already kind of getting, and so on and so forth. Next how quickly she would be able to produce a new product to kind of meet demand because you don't want to constantly be selling out of product. Of course when you first launch you're going to have a much smaller batch, because you don't want to spend a ton of money, and have all this inventory just kind of sitting around. So my question was kind of around, what are you starting with? How quickly do you think you'll run through that? How quickly will you be able to produce new product? And then looking at ordering product components in batches, based on quantity. Like kind of understanding because there were like, probably six or so, elements to her product and pulling it all together. How do you order those in batches to where you can say okay I need to order, x of each product so that you can know this is how much it's gonna cost me for X amount of my product. I know that might be a little confusing but I'm trying not to give away her business. But it's just important that you really think through all of that. And like I said she'd already kind of started thinking about it, but we put it in an Excel spreadsheet. We really thought through the numbers. And when I have my 30 minutes follow-up call with her in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be able to look at it and see, okay, this is how this is going to kind of pan out. Because again, you want to be as prepared as you can. So, there's so much more that's really, really important in what you need to have set up before you officially launch your business. Like securing your money team which is your CPA and attorney. And I can't cover all of those steps here. But that's again why you want to make sure that you have the “Ready, Set, Launch” checklist. So that's definitely a first step, but I'm going to assume that you've done that because I don't want to dwindle it all down to just what I'm saying here there's so much more.

So let's just say, you've read the “Ready, Set, Launch” checklist, you have your business plan, and then your systems are ready. Everything's kind of set up for people to be able to go in and buy and consume your product or service. When and how do you start telling people about your business? Let's talk about your launch marketing strategy. So let's just keep it super-duper simple, and say that you're going to just have a website, and use social media. Now for the website. Like I said, this is not technically mandatory. Brandi launched her business without even having a website. But you certainly want a way for people to reach you, and also to learn about you, and either book with you, or buy from you. Okay? So that's why a website's great, obviously. Also, it's yours. It's something you own that you typically pay for in some capacity, whether it's like a Squarespace you pay monthly or if you get someone to build a website. It's yours that you own, and you can also track analytics and data in it. Another great thing about a website is that there's one hub that should be your hub for where everyone, you know. Yes, you have social media. Yes, you have email marketing. Yes, you have all this other stuff going on. But your website is your hub where everyone connects with you. So that's why websites are great. There are also a lot of great platforms out there. I mentioned Squarespace. There's Wix. There's WordPress. There's a lot of new ones that I'm not even hip to know. But you want to kind of figure out what works best for you and then lay out your content beforehand. This will help you not lose your mind. For real. And by content I mean, your photos, and your copy. When I say copy, I mean the words on your website. So you want to write out, some people like to do it on paper. I'm more digital so I'll do it in a Google Doc, where I say homepage, about page, work with me page, podcast or if you have some kind of video show or blog or in contact or whatever your menu items for your website will be. And then exactly all of the content in each page, each subpage. Write it all out, so that when it comes time for you to go into Squarespace or Wix or WordPress you are able to throw everything in. And it's not too crazy and because you can literally start to feel like you're losing your mind. But it is fun. I actually enjoyed it when I set up my business which I'll talk about in a second, setting everything up in Squarespace. It was actually kind of fun.

Okay, so you want to make sure you do that ahead of time. And then lastly, as it relates to your website. You want to have a photo shoot if you can. If you can afford it, have a photo shoot where you have fresh new photos or your website, and for social media. So again, if it's not in your budget to do, then you could always do a service for service maybe with a photographer. But it's a great added touch and it also just makes you feel good too to kind of have fresh new photos on your website and to use for social media. If you're in Houston, you can hire Van, Ware the Heart is Photography. But I really should do an episode on how to plan a photo shoot because there are a few components that go into it that could make it a lot easier. One is that you want to make sure that you think of your shots ahead of time, you create a shot list. And you're also going to lean on your photographer. If they're a good photographer they're going to have an idea of certain shots and looks you might want. But I mean I’d just be scrolling through Instagram and I'd be like, oh, I love that picture. I love how she's holding that or how she's leaning to the side or smiling and looking off of the frame or whatever it might be. And I just created a folder in my Instagram that was called photoshoot. Or even a Pinterest board. You can do it a lot of different ways. I was able to have, when it came time to meet with my photographer, like, Hey, here's some of the looks I like. And then also you want to make sure that you have multiple outfit changes so that you're not in the same three outfits on all of your pictures on social media. Even with my launch of Bird Williams, I wish I would have had more outfit changes so that there's just more variety on my page. So, again can learn the lessons from me. Have multiple outfit changes like a lot, as many as you can. And even if it's just that you're in a pair of jeans, that you're changing the shirt, different colors, it can look like a different look. So those are just some tips on a photoshoot really quick as we talk about your launch marketing strategy and your website specifically.

Next, let's move on to social media and we'll just do this one pretty quick. Social media is vast. What I love about it is that is free-99. So many successful businesses, including my own. We only promote on social media, and the business has done well. I mean, we're not having to use paid advertising, and the businesses are doing well. So that's the beauty of social media. I talked a little bit about the negatives behind it last week in Episode 37. One being there was like that blackout day where everything just kind of shut down and you couldn't post. And let's say you were getting ready to launch your business that day and you just couldn't. Or launch a really important product or service and you couldn't. If you only have social media, and you don't have email marketing or any other type of marketing or way to reach your ideal client, that's a bummer. So you're not going to just have social media. You're going to own your own marketing. And then also there's a lot of questions around the whole idea of pay to play where the algorithms on these different social media sites might boost paid content, people who are paying for ads for their social media over people who aren't. So again, social media is great in a lot of ways, but you don't want it to be your only element of your marketing strategy.

When you choose your platform for social media, think about where your ideal client would be. So what I mean by that, platforms: you have Instagram, you have Facebook, you have YouTube, you have Pinterest, you have TikTok maybe, you have Reels now with Instagram. Where do you think your ideal client would live and consume the content that you are putting out? That's where you want to focus on being. And there's a lot more that kind of goes into that. But again, if you want to talk through that, more specifically for your business, I'm happy to have a strategy session with you. Go to birdwilliams.com/strategy.  

Next, I get this question a little bit, like do I need to hint that something is coming before it's actually launched with a pre-launch phase. I would say typically yes but it's ultimately up to you. So when we launched The League, yes, there was this something is coming, like, hey we have this gym that we're going to launch, and it’s coming soon kind of thing. Also, I see this a lot with product based businesses. You start to put out there like, hey, this is happening, but you're not able to buy the products yet, but it's coming. You know people pre-sell books and things like that. If you do decide to start with something is coming. You want to make sure that you have a way to capture interest immediately. So what you don't want to do is say hey, I'm going to have this juice business, and then that's it. You want to have a newsletter where people can sign up to learn more or something where you can capture their interest so that you know who's interested and you're not just letting people see the exciting news and just leave a comment on your Instagram post and go on.

Now for Bird Williams, I didn't have any kind of pre-launch something is coming phase, because I really wanted it to be kind of like a powerful announcement once I launched that it was ready to go and people could book. I didn't want to lose the momentum and excitement with people who might be ready to jump on it right away. I was kind of in Brandi Lisenbe's, young lady I said that I had on the podcast who has the hair salon. I was kind of more in her stage where she was already working with people who were interested, and I already kind of had this base. And I felt like people might want to be able to book right away. And that is exactly what happened. In my first week, I booked a four-figure client. So, I was happy that it wasn't like a coming soon. It was just like, boom, let's go. You don't want there to be this big gap between when you, you know, start to tease your product or service, and when you're actually open for business, because of people's attention spans these days. People will lose interest so you want to make sure that you're very strategic around the timing for that. Okay.

Now the next and final kind of strategy around your launch marketing is having a launch team, and this gets me really excited. It's something that I've done for I believe all of my businesses. It’s where you ask friends and family to help you promo on launch day. Now, this could be the day you announce your launch party details, for example. And we're going to talk about a launch party in just a second. Or it could be the day that your product is finally ready to buy because you've been teasing the market. Or it can be like what I did with Bird Williams. It's the day that I'm announcing the business is live and people can buy. Really whatever works for you in terms of timing. But it's what you want to be most powerful because you're going to have other people, promoting your business, all on the same day.

Now, this is how I did it first, I made a list of my close family and friends and people I felt comfortable with. So it wasn't like my mom because she doesn't have Instagram or really have any way to promote it. But it was friends of mine who I felt comfortable with asking them to do this. I think for Bird Williams I probably had like 17ish people. I believe for The League we had a lot more people because it was my network and Terry's network, my husband, Terry, who I co-own The League with. So, again, whatever you feel comfortable with, make your list. And then this is what I told them. I just sent a text. I said, “Hey, I'm launching a business”. And many of them kind of already knew. Again they're close family and friends so they kind of already knew we were launching a business. And then I would tell them, here is what I'm doing, how we dealt the details about what my business did. And I mean not super-duper long. Just this is who I am. This is what I'm doing. This is how people can work with me. A few sentences, just so that people don't get anything wrong because you might have that friend who's so excited and they want to just start going on and on and on. It's like wait a minute, I actually don't do that. But just making it really clear and easy for them honestly, because again, they're doing this as a favor to you. So making it super easy for them to be able to copy and paste and then of course make it their own.

So that was number two. Number three is, I gave them photos from the photoshoot. I said, here are some photos that you can choose from to post. And I wanted it to be those photos because again, you're kind of trying to make a mini viral effect where all of these networks, joint networks are seeing the same pictures on this launch day. So I gave them like three to five photos. You don't want to give just one, necessarily, unless you do. You know unless you like I just wanted to be this one really awesome photo I have. For me, I wanted it to be a mix. But you also don't want it to be too many to where is not as much of the viral effect if that makes sense.

The next number four, I told them, here's the day to post. This is the day I want you to post. Make sure you don't post until this day. Make that really clear. And you might even want to get specific with a time of day to post, like if you want everyone to post at the same time. But remember you want to really express gratitude and to be flexible for them because this is a favor they're doing for you.

Now, this is number five, and it is the most important part of this text, at least for me. You want to make sure that you communicate to your launch team that they do not have to post if they don't want to. And I will love you know less. That's what I told them. You don't have to post if you don't want to and I will love you no less. I will not take it personally. And that's important to me because, personally, I don't like feeling pressure to post about anything really because I want my feeds to be organic and natural and I just share about people's stuff because I genuinely love it and want to share about it that day. It doesn't mean that they don't love what you're trying to do. It just might mean that they're in a place in their life or a moment in their life where they just feel like they don't want to share that right now, so you don't have to take it personally. I mean, I certainly love to share what my friends are doing and support and encourage them of course. But I want it to feel authentic. And there have been times when friends would approach me with something to share and it just didn't feel right. Maybe that day, I was planning on talking about something else or something poignant had happened in my life and I was going to share. Then to share about their business would just feel weird. And I don't mean to harp on that in order to make it a big deal. It's just, I think it's important to make it very clear that it's okay if they choose not to, and that they don't have to feel pressure to do this.

Okay, so once you have all of that set up, you have your launch marketing strategy, you're ready to have your launch. And what I like to do is a launch party. I didn't do this for Bird Williams, but I did for The League. And right now with quarantine, of course, it's hard to have a party, obviously, getting people together in a space. But you can even do this virtually on Zoom. A few things you want to think about is just encouraging friends and family to invite their friends. And when you're there, when you have your launch party, make sure that you share the heart behind what you're doing, because that's really important to really pull in like the meaning and the importance of it. But then also even having the people hear from your team. For The League, it was just me and Terry. But if you have a strategic team member, hearing from them so people really are getting buy-in into what it is you're doing in your business. You can show them your product or service, how it works. Maybe you share elements of a sneak peek into what you do, how you make or design your product, for example, or what the service looks like when clients work with you. This is what it looks like. Maybe you have some giveaways or a speaker or something fun. You want to make it just fun and engaging. Okay?

So those are just some thoughts around a launch party but the idea is that you want to be intentional. You want to make it known. This is happening. Then and of course you want to make sure in your launch party that you have a way for people to sign up. This is like, this is it. But they're able to buy the product or sign up for the service right then and there.

Now you may be thinking, what about paid ads or digital advertising, etc. While that may work, and it might even be important for certain businesses. You want to make sure that in the beginning that you've really tested your product or service before you kind of spent all this money on marketing and things like that. This does depend on overhead because it's kind of a different story with The League versus Bird Williams. With The League, there was so much more overhead associated with it. We had our rent. We had all this equipment we’d bought. We needed to make sure that we made money as quickly as we could. Whereas with Bird Williams, the overhead is much less. So I don't feel as much pressure to bring in revenue. So those are just some things to think about in terms of when you start to actually pay for marketing versus just using the free tools like social media or cheaper tools like having a website.

Okay, now I'm going to give you a quick story of The League's launch, and also Bird Williams’ launch, because I really think it'll help kind of really put all of what I'm saying into context a little bit more. Okay? So, with The League, you have to remember, I left my job in New York. Me and Terry had decided to launch the gym. This was December of 2012, is when we did our business plan. We got it rock solid probably by March and started going out to investors. We talked to investors for several months kind of right up until we launched. And at the same time, we were finding the space, securing the building and thinking about the equipment, and getting everything lined up with that so that once we got the capital from investors we'd be able to just go right into purchasing the equipment, the flooring, and all the things we needed. And we got right up onto our launch day. It's kind of a crazy story. I know I've shared it on the podcast before probably in the very beginning, I believe, one of the beginning episodes. But it was pretty wild. The Thursday before we were launching I remember it was madness, I'll just say that. It was crazy. So know that when it comes to launching your business, don't wait to the last minute to do all the things because there will be surprises. But we get to the launch. What had happened was, Terry was working at multiple studios around town and so we had to make sure that we were really strategic around when he would let them know he was leaving. Remember, I wasn't working in official capacity. I was like doing contract work for different startups. But Terry actually had these jobs and so we had a time when we would start marketing, cause we didn't want to start marketing, like doing like that pre-launch, teasing phase, until he notified his bosses and his company, obviously. So it was like boom, boom, boom. He let them know, hey, I'm putting in my two weeks. Right after that we opened the website and started to soft launch, and then we were getting ready to launch. So that's just one thing to consider if you do work a nine to five. Of course, you want to take all that into consideration. And we had a launch party, and it was amazing. The cool thing is Terry had built up such a huge social media following on Twitter actually TerrytheTrainer, and he'd been giving free content out for years to where he had amassed this huge following, and people wanted to support him. So for a launch party, of course, it was at the gym. We had a DJ. We had demonstrations of the workouts. We had giveaways. We had fun games. It was really, really fun and of course, I was at the front desk ready to accept people who wanted to sign up. So we had all this stuff going on and we had a huge turnout, more than we thought. It was like hundreds of people and it was people coming from Dallas and San Antonio, people again who followed him on social media, who wanted to come and support just because he had supported them for so long. So think about that too in your launch strategy. What are you doing to provide value to people already such that they're going to want to support you, naturally, when it comes time for you to launch. So we have our launch party, and this is the part I really want to make sure I say and I share. Our launch party was huge, right, like I said. But we only had six people sign up that day. So, number one, I don't want you to be sad or equate like low launch numbers with like, Oh my gosh, I failed, and this is not going to work. Because your girl was looking at the Excel spreadsheet like, what? I thought it would be a lot more. And, yeah, so don't think like, “Oh my god. This is a huge fail. What have I done?” It's actually very normal. I remember us telling that to another gym owner who had been kind of mentoring us through the process and he was like, oh yeah same for me, like, there were so few signups initially. Again you have to just keep showing up and keep putting in the work and it will grow over time.

I'll also just say really quick, think about the timing of your launch. We were launching a gym. So when is the gym most popular? The gym is most popular in January. Everyone's like new year, new me. I’m about to get fit. And so we were like, we don't want to launch in the month where we're going to be bringing on all this demand and kind of working out the kinks. So we launched our business, December 1, a month ahead of time. The thought was, we can kind of get in, get our feet wet, and ease into it, work out all the kinks so that once January comes we're able to handle and be excellent in our business as the demand comes in, and that was brilliant. And again, that might have had to do with why we had so few people sign up at launch because again this is December. It's in the middle of the holidays. People aren't really focused that much on fitness but they would be later and that's what ended up happening. January grew, really March was our biggest month. We began to realize that march was obviously a bigger month for us than January. But anyway, think about the timing of your launch as well.

Okay, number two. It’s likely that unless you have a big marketing launch budget or you can do paid advertising and attract people who aren't in your immediate network, it's likely that your launch party or your event, whatever that looks like will consist mostly of family and friends. We talked last week about how this is not ideal as a long-term strategy because your family and friends are not your ideal client. However, if your family and friend network, your immediate network, can help bring your ideal clients’ eyes to your business because they're sharing word of mouth or reposting, that is great. That is golden. And if your ideal client sees the numbers like, oh wow, this business is getting a lot of traction because again it's your family and friends it's your immediate network that's like hyping up your business, that's great too. So my point is just start with what you have and build from there. But don't keep your family and friends as a long-term marketing strategy. Just like we talked about last week with not always sharing your business posts to your personal page. Okay. I just wanted to make that super-duper clear.  

Next, I want to talk about Bird Williams’ launch strategy. So the backstory there was like I said I had friends and family who would come to me because of The League’s success, and say, “Oh my god, I want to start a business. Can you help me out?” And I loved it. And I was like, absolutely. And I would go in. And it got to the point where I'd be up late at night helping people launch their business and it was taking away from family time. You know, I have two small kids and of course, I'm still running The League and all this stuff. And Terry, my husband, was like, “Hey, you got to make this like an official business because it's getting to the point where you don't even have capacity. You're doing it for free.” And so that's really where it sparked the idea. It was something I thought I'd do years years years down the road but I was like okay I'm gonna do it now. I read a Rachel Hollis book that just gave me the motivation to just start. I was at lunch by myself, and a friend of mine, I texted her, like, hey, I think I want to do this. And she's a lawyer and she also has a background in graphic design, so she just like within days had a logo. I got the website. I was just like, let's just move it quick and make it happen because again, I already had potential clients. I already had experience working with people. So I just wanted to get it launched. So long story short I had decided that I was going to launch it in November. The timing for me wasn't as crucial as with The League. But I did want to get it started and this might resonate with someone. I needed a reason to start. I spoke at an event with an organization called Polish. It's an incredible organization. And I had been speaking at things here and there. But I told myself when I go and speak to those ladies, I want to be able to say confidently that the website was live. It was before I actually promoted on social media, so I guess it was a soft launch. But I wasn't sharing that publicly at all. It was the closest thing I had to like a soft launch. It was a week later, that I officially went out on social media. So that's kind of the story as to how I launched. But some of you might just need a kick in the butt. Some of you might think, well, I don't have to necessarily launch in any kind of timing. But if you keep thinking that way, you'll just never launch. You'll never pull the trigger. So give yourself a deadline and say, okay, this is when I'm going to do it. And, of course, give yourself grace if that timeline starts to not be feasible and you don't have to launch by a certain time. Give yourself grace there. But I don't want you to just twiddle your thumbs and never actually make it happen. Okay?

So one thing I'll say with BWC, I remember my big question being with social media. Do I need to have a bunch of social media posts in the backlog, so that when I launch with the social media page, it's like people can like binge the content? I ended up not doing that because it just felt inauthentic as I began to sit down and write the copy for those social media posts. I was gonna have like four or five that were just like about the business and all this stuff. For me, it felt weird to kind of talk about it, although it wasn't launched. It was weird for me so I decided to just start with my one post, and it worked out fine.

With the podcast, and if you listen to the episode, I can't remember the number. But it's how “I Launched My Podcast in 30 days with $9.99”. I share how I wanted to have content for people to binge when they launched I podcast, so I did do that. I had I believe four episodes in the holster so that when I launched Episode Five, it was like hey, the podcast is live. But there were other episodes for them to go back and listen to. And I think that's a really good and important strategy for a podcast because you want to give people a really clear understanding of what they're getting with the podcast. So, again, up to you, but just something to consider.

That was a lot to share. The podcast went a little bit longer than I planned but I hope it was helpful for you. I hope you were able to pull out some really good tips. And, again, there's so many ways to do this well. But the point is that you do something. You ever think like, why don't we launch intentionally? I thought that a lot now that I've been working with clients and I find that they aren't launching their businesses intentionally. And when I get down to it, it's honestly, they're just afraid of owning it like, yes, I'm doing this. I'm putting myself out there. I'm being vulnerable. I have a business. One woman I spoke with recently was saying, even just calling it a business makes me feel freakin’ scared. She's like, I'm having to own it, this is really happening. But y'all, this is happening. You're starting an incredible business that's going to change lives. It’s going to make this world better. It's going to make your life better. It's going to leave an incredible legacy for you and your family. So don't play small. Go for it. Put yourself out there. Yes, you're doing this. And see what magic comes from it. Okay?

Now if you're thinking through the best ways to launch your business, I'd love to chat with you. As you can tell, I get really excited about it. I get really detailed with it. It just brings me so much joy. So, if you want to book a consultation, you can go to birdwilliams.com/consultation, and that's where we just kind of talk about what you have going on and see how I can best serve you, and then we'll just go from there. Okay?

All right, well thank you so much again for sharing this space with me. Please, please, please, subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Spotify. And tell all of your entrepreneur friends about Bird Means Business. All right. Talk to you next week.