Launch Unfinished

Welp, I did it! Meat & Hair made it through its first full week, and I survived. Not only did I survive, but I’m having an absolute BLASTIE. Now that I’ve crossed “the perfectionism threshhold,” I can focus on optimization. (That’s the topic of this week’s secret column.)

But first, I want to talk about perfectionism & its claws, because holy hot Italian olive oil, can it be a BEAST. And if I experienced it? After a dozen years in the biz? After knowing what I am doing? (For the most part, so long as I don’t have to decode any Google Analytics.) (THE FUCK, GOOGLE? Can you make that for real people, please?)

Then I know this is something you probably go through, too.

By “perfectionism,” what I really mean is:

• When you stall launch because you ALSO want to have a shop ready in time!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO want to have a community people can join!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO want to have all of your service offerings perfect on the page! (You know, because people are SEEING IT NOW, so you have to capitalize!)
• When you stall launch because you ALSO need the perfect referral rewards for everybody!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO need the most amazing opt-in freebies on the planet! (People are judging!)
• When you stall launch because you ALSO need to have the most perfect Instagram grid on the planet! With perfectly lined up graphics that effortlessly flow from one post into the other!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO need to have your sales sequences perfect! And your upsells! And your downsells!
• When you stall launch because you’re so tired, your head just fell into your own crotch!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO realize you need to be charging sales tax on the physical items in your shop!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO realize that your referral rewards are way too aspirational, i.e. you’ll be broke in 2.5 seconds!
• When you stall launch because you ALSO need THE PERFECT double-opt in emails! (The generic ones just won’t do!)
• When you stall launch because, oh shit, you ALSO need a Linked In page!

You see where this is going: downhill into a giant puddle of spoiled sour cream.

While some of this is just a natural part of launching—like, right, get a branded email address, genius—most of this?

Is the result of being incorrect about what makes something great. (And then trying to live up to that incorrect standard.)

Because, here’s what we think makes a launch great: splash! big! bells! whistles! wow! whoa! and this! and this! AND THIS! And look at how smart they are! And how GREAT this is! Look, she thought of everything! I want one of everything! This is the biggest, most amazing, most exciting thing to have ever hit the internet. This is irresistible: I must share this immediately! I must tell everyone I know! I was addicted since the moment I laid eyes on it! THIS IS HUGE! THIS IS GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD! I’M NEVER DOING ANYTHING ELSE AGAIN, EXCEPT FAWNING OVER THIS BUSINESS! THIS IS MYYYY NEWWWW LIFEEEEEE!

So we overexert. We overextend. We try to have everything we could ever possibly have in place, ever, in time for launch, and we try to have this perfectly whole, full-fledged business that works with our eyes closed, because we put so much time and thought and planning into it from the beginning! Who needs to start small when you have the will of THOR?!

But you know what happens then, right? You never fucking launch. Or, you get so anxious about launching, that the more you pile onto it, the more overwhelming it becomes, and the more incapable you feel. And then it balloons into this big thing, and suddenly you are sitting there like, “It’s been months since I was supposed to launch this, why is this taking me so long, WTF is wrong with me??"

This totally happened to me with Meat & Hair. Because I know, very well, all of the components that go into a successful business, I was insistent on having them all in place. But moreover, when you have an audience of other humans, you also feel a greater pressure to make it PERFECT. Model-worthy. Admirable. It has to be everything you’ve ever said it should be, and more! It has to wow! It has to whoa! It has to be the greatest thing that’s ever been made! (And don’t even get me started on the copy.)

God, is it exhausting trying to make the greatest thing that’s ever been made.

So I had to really dial it back. Had to dial myself back. I had to literally tell myself, over and over in my brain, to do what I know to be smart—which is launch small and nimble, and then iterate forward—instead of doing what I felt emotionally compelled to do: LAUNCH THE GREATEST, MOST COMPLETE, MOST PERFECT BUSINESS RIGHT OUTTA THE GATE.

I had to literally give myself pep talks to “pull the trigger” on things I felt only merited a “B.” Had to force myself to launch unfinished, and put up placeholders. And most importantly, had to force myself to remember the most important thing of all:

Not only does “small, nimble, iterate” make for a do-able business, but it actually makes for a MUCH more profitable one.

Whatttttttttt???? What’s that, you say?!? A more profitable one, even though it’s unfinished? And undone? And small? With only one offering?

Ohhhhh yeah. THIS is perhaps one of the most important things I want you to know, and that I had to remind myself 1 million times throughout: When you launch big, you use up all the excitement in one day. When you launch small, however, you get to continually re-introduce excitement at intervals, with every new announcement you make.

It is much more profitable to start with one small thing now, and then do a series of mini-launches over time as you grow, because (a) you can actually manage that workload as a human 😂 and; (b) with every new product & service & feature you introduce to your audience, you reinvigorate your customers and add value to their lives and have yet another reason to show up and say, “LOOK WHAT I MADE!”

People can really only focus on one thing at a time: throw too much at them, and it’s also an overwhelming jumble of paralysis. And so god, it’s so important to remember this, because we all want to make this big, magnificent thing for everyone! But IT IS NOT SMART TO DO SO, so you’ve gotta tell your ego to knock it the fuck off and settle down.

Launch unfinished…on purpose.

Then, leverage the excitement of “new” at planned intervals, when you can roll out one thing at a time and get people pumped.

I mean, you shoulda saw me: I spent weeks on a fucking rewards program. I wanted to have THE BIGGEST, MOST AMAZING, MOST TALK-WORTHY REWARDS THE INTERNET HAS EVER SEEN. I was determined! I spent weeks! Weeks brainstorming, sourcing, math-ing, logistic-ing. And in the end, the lawyer was slow and we didn’t have the terms & conditions for it all yet, and I didn’t have it all set up in the shop yet, and I didn’t have all the rewards emails written yet, and I didn’t do a good enough job with the actual numbers to make sure we weren’t paying more for leads than the baby new company could afford, etc. - and I was letting it delay the WHOLE, ENTIRE LAUNCH. Like, cannot launch this until we have this one, seemingly sooooo important piece in place!

You know what I did in the end?

I gave “Ash the maker” a stern talking to as “Ash the business advisor,” and I told myself that, fuck you, you are launching this, and you are doing it with ONE thing. Just one, Ash! JUST ONE. No more than that, you’re not allowed! I will now allow it! And guess what? It’s going to be that gorgeous PDF booklet you paid the designer to design so beautifully, because that is the smart business move when launching. STOP TRYING TO OBSESS OVER DETAILS THAT DO NOT MATTER RIGHT NOW. Instead, focus on launching the core of the company—you know, where the profits actually come from???—and then do fancy add-ons as you go.

And I had to listen. But man, was it hard. But I HAD to just make myself do it: launch unfinished. And would you guess what? It’s been GREAT. It’s been wonderful! We had over 300 new referral leads in week one—brand new humans who do not know me from Adam, and who are not subscribing to Meat & Hair because of an affection toward me, the person, but because they saw value in the pitch. And that's because I put the rewards system in place...with only one perfect, amazing, awesome PDF that we have available right now.

Talk about a lesson in “STFU and launch.” Which might have to be the name of my next book. (Though honestly, “launch unfinished” might need to be a thing. It’s so true, and I really think we all need to hear this.)

So! Now that I have told you my deepest, darkest secrets (just kidding, it’s actually that I put salt on my pizza), I will tell you that one of the best parts of getting your OCD-filled ass outta perfectionism land, is that once you do pull the trigger? Once you launch, unfinished? Then allllllll that pressure magically melts away. And now, instead of worrying about making the best impression in the whole wide world, you can worry about what really matters: optimizing it to be the best product in the whole wide world.

Okay, maybe not the best product in the whole wide world, because that is also a lot of pressure, but it’s a lot easier to focus on making something better once it’s live, than making something perfect before it even exists.

And that’s where we’re at now!

So with that, in the second half of today’s column, I want to talk about how to make your business better. And specifically, I want to talk about one of my favorite kinds of offers. Because you know what the #1 thing that most people need to tweak?

Their mouth.

Kidding/not kidding. Because your mouth is how you ask for things, right? And too many businesses simply aren’t doing enough asking.

There’s this impression we have, when running our little businesses, that people are out there; that they’re seeing you; that they’re just not buying because they don’t want to. Or that it’s too expensive. Or that you’re doing something wrong. Or that—the worst—they don’t like you. And you are garbage. And your ideas suck. (That got dark fast.)

It’s so common to take a business problem and assume it is a personal problem, when in fact, it’s actually just a business problem—and you & your ideas are PERFECTLY FINE. In fact, not just fine, but fucking fantastic. Delightful! Wonderful! Five stars! More often than not, you simply need to make some tweaks when it comes to how the business itself operates.

And while I have the worst perfectionistic tendencies while launching, I’m actually a shark once something is launched: I view everything through a cool, analytical eye. I’ve got enough experience to know that everything is an experiment, and that’s how I approach growth. And most importantly?

I think about strangers.

I love thinking about strangers. (Isn’t this so creepy?!)

I think about strangers because I want to optimize a business for them: the people who have never read my book, who have never subscribed to my blog, who have no idea I exist. Because when you optimize a business for the stranger, you optimize it for everyone. You should always err on the side of “they’ve never met me and I’ve got 10 seconds to convince them.” Because it forces you to make a stronger argument; an objective one based in the value of the product itself. Not your name or your reputation or your brand, which does have value, but it belongs in a different place. When you’re creating the actual product, the business, you have to take yourself out of the equation. Does this product stand on its own two feet? Is it a good idea, independent of the fact that I want to do it?

One of the best places to test this out is your thank-you page.

(Woo, surprise twist!)

So, someone gets to your website and opts into your email list—great—but the real test is: will they buy? (That’s what a business is, don’t forget!) Email opt ins provide a useful metric but they measure something different: interest. Sales, on the other hand, where a person actually pulls out their credit card and says “yes,” measures action. There is a very big difference between interest and action, and it’s the difference between a profitable business “in theory,” and an actual profitable business that busts balls for breakfast.

This is where BAM-BIRGE’S THANK-YOU TEST comes into play.

• (a) I’ve never called myself “Bam-Birge,” but it might stick????
• (b) I totally hung out with Bam Margera in my early 20’s in West Chester a few times. Relevant.
• (c) Notice I called it a “test” instead of an “offer,” because again, it’s useful to think in more experimental terms; it takes the pressures off of you to be a genius, and puts the onus where it belongs: on the product itself.

So once someone gives you their email address, instead of just confirming that they have, in fact, used a keyboard correctly, use this as an opportunity to poke the bear.

Use this as a chance to test whether or not you’re hitting the right pain points with your product. Because every product is an answer to a problem, right? It’s gotta solve something, even if it’s mere boredom. Otherwise a product doesn’t pass the “WIIFM?” test, which stands for “What’s In It For Me?”

Oftentimes, however, a product just isn’t positioned correctly: it may be solving a real problem, but the way it’s presented doesn’t reflect that. And so you get a mismatch: there’s interest, but no action. And a lot of interest, but no action, makes for a broke, broke boo boo.

Therefore, you’ll see when you opt into Meat & Hair that, once you do, you get redirected to a special, one-time offer page where you can upgrade to Premium lessons for 30% off. This is an example of what I’m talking about: I’m able to quickly test the strength of the offer by giving a nice incentive and putting a limit around the offer, which in this example, means a deadline. On that thank you page, there is a 15-minute deadline active, and it’s all orchestrated through my FAVORITE company in the world, Deadline Funnel. Me and Jack, the founder, are tight - I LOVE THIS MAN. Most helpful dude ever, and he runs a company that helps people like me run successful businesses.

Here’s why deadlines are critical to your business—even though you’re going to resist because it feels like a “hard sale”:

People need to be asked to decide.

It’s that simple. It’s okay if they say no, but they’ve got to make a decision now. Is this value enough to act on…now? Otherwise, human nature is to put off everything, even that swanky new pair of shoes you really, really wanted, because that is how we roll. And then it really skews your testing, because who knows if it was the offer, or the timing, or the something else? But putting deadlines around your offers makes people pay attention FAR MORE than they would otherwise, when they believe they can buy your product anytime.

So this is a simple, but powerful, tweak you should make: you absolutely should be making an offer to new subscribers, right there on your thank-you page. Especially because new subscribers are at the height of their interest: they’ve just opted in, so you know they’re a strong lead (as long as your opt-in is targeted).

The BAM-BIRGE THANK-YOU PAGE TEST OFFER for Meat & Hair is not an optimal offer, and that’s because of everything I outlined above: launch first, then iterate!

But here’s what a thank-you page offer should be:

• A small, $7 - $49 product that’s an easy “yes” for strangers (remember: optimize for strangers! Strangers aren’t going to buy your $300 course when they have no freaking idea who you are or if they trust you to deliver).
• The product should soothe a specific pain point and offer immediate relief
• It should be offered as a one-time deal with a meaty discount or with a meaty bonus to incentivize them to take action now if they think this thing will help them
• It should have a deadline attached, so the offer expires automatically for new subscribers without you having to do anything.

Right? Alright, well, the current offer on the Meat & Hair thank-you page does not satisfy these requirements:

• Our premium product costs $60, with the one-time discount
• It doesn’t scratch an immediate itch, because it’s delivered every Saturday for 12 weeks
• It’s not targeting a specific pain point—yet. There are ways you can optimize products that aren’t specific, for example, by creating a specific landing page, buying ads, and then showing those folks a specific thank-you offer that all matches, but that’s further down the road.

However, we’re still converting well! I need to run those numbers to see what they actually are relative to opt-ins (more later on that), but I’d bet we are converting higher than the industry standard, which is 1.5% - 3%. Which seems like nothing, right?! Most newbies believe that they should be converting something like half of their subscribers who opt-in, and then get really sad when those numbers don’t even come close, but do not fear: that is just not reality. Ever. For anyone. It’s not how sales work (and hence why you need email campaigns afterward—more on those later, too).

I’m actually surprised we’re converting well, given the factors I listed above. They say the pricing sweet spot for a thank-you page offer is $17, and that, coupled with the above, has me brainstorming what type of offer I want to test next. And in order to get to that, you have to ask yourself:

What immediate problem can I solve?

In my case, it’s what immediate problem can I solve with creative writing?

This is a more difficult task than, say, if you were selling web design, because there are lots of small-ish, immediate problems you can help solve if you’re a web designer. Creative writing, however, is typically viewed as more of a nice-to-have product, even though I’m working very hard to reposition that in the marketplace and position creative writing as a real competitive advantage for businesses—one that I believe will soon become the #1 competitive advantage a business could have. So, I’m tossing around some ideas around a type of PDF playbook that will solve a specific business problem, right now, if you make these tweaks. However, that offer is also very narrow in its scope, and only applies to the folks who have businesses opting in: so that is also short-sighted.

The best solution? Would be to use a product like Right Message, which allows you to customize your offer based on which checkbox a customer selects at opt-in. So if they’re interested in creative writing for their business, they’d be shown an offer catered to business; if they’re interested in creative writing because they write non-fiction essays, however, then they’d be shown an angle with a variant on the offer that appeals to that segment. (There’s some really neat technology out there these days!)

So, I’ll be playing with that as we go, but the most important thing for YOU to remember is that you 10,000% should make your new subscribers a paid offer, and you 10,000% don’t have to have it perfect in order to get it going. Like me, who doesn’t have it perfect AT ALL yet, but is still running tests and still observing and still optimizing because this is what we do as businesspeople. We must test. And we must trial and error. And we must execute—even if it’s not perfect. And even if it’s unfinished. And even if it isn’t as optimal as you know it should be.

That’s okay.

Your customers aren’t going to be put at a disadvantage for it: the ones who do say “yes” are getting the best of your paid brilliance, and that is FANTASTIC. And the ones who say “no,” simply haven’t been convinced yet—but that’s okay, because this is all part of the process. And none of it is because you suck and your ideas suck. All of it is one big, fun experimentation in life, in money, in people, and in building the kinds of things you want to see exist in the world.

Next week, we’ll continue the convo: I have plenty more to say about things called “order bumps” (AKA how to increase your average customer order value), upsells, and email campaigns, too, because all of it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL and so, so cool, as we learn how to find that perfect intersection of the things that matter to us, and the things that help other people.

There is where your business waits.

Talk to you again next Friday.

I'M ROOTING FOR YOU! (And also the Caviar delivery person who's bringing me my Emmy Squared pizza tonight. It's my favorite! Any place that puts Calabrian chiles on their food gets one million likes from me.)

Ash