A Dozen Days to Launch

Day 12 – March 4, 2007

I’m a dozen days away from my official launch date of March 15, 2007. Thought it’d be interesting and educational to keep a journal of it for my blog.

Today’s Top Priority - Get spreadsheet of all projects together

Right now – today - my biggest concern is getting a spreadsheet done that shows all the projects I have both coming up and what needs to be done for launch. I’ve always liked the Big Picture, and that spreadsheet should be both simple enough to give me the overview of where I’m at, and detailed enough to let me know my target and where I’m at right now.

Objective for Launch Day – Have website posted with Ethical Bribes to entice people to leave first name and email address

My first priority is about building the list – prospects who are interested in the products I will be selling, and creating and selling. The “how to” of that is giving people enough free products, aka “ethical bribes”, to ensure they’ll want to leave their first name and email address to sign up for my list. Then, through the magic of autoresponders, I can follow up with them.

I can always add products once I have those up and follow up with subsequent emails, but for now, figuring out which products will be my ethical bribes and getting them up NOW is my top priority.

So, my first priority is to get all of these ethical bribes prepared, uploaded, and available on launch day.

Getting/Creating products with others

I find that what I love doing is interviewing and researching, vs. creating my own products. I have been a journalist/writer for many years, and it makes sense to take this approach. Besides, it’s a great way to develop massive amounts of content quickly. Jut work with others that have what my list might want.

The bulk of the products I am initially offering are coming through an association I have with a woman named June Davidson. She is/has created many of the products I will be using for both promotion and for sale – especially on the business side.

I also have two interviews I’m posting more on the transformational side. One is an interview with Diana Chapman, a woman who is one of the hottest up-and-coming transformational coaches around. Another is with Ben Saltzman, who teaches the Enneagram to coaches. We have a good 45-minute interview. I expect the offerings on this side to grow over the months.

Coming up with the Best Name for My Business

I had a big round on what to name my business. I’d originally named it Coaches Gone Wild, but that turned out to trigger a lot of people because of how closely it sounds like Girls Gone Wild. Given that probably 80% of my target market is women, probably not a good idea.

So I did a survey with esurvyepro.com and had several names suggested. There’s a great service called eSurveysPro (http://www.esurveyspro.com/) which has a phenomenally great – and easy – system for getting online surveys posted.

I was going to go with YourCoachingSolution, but then TransformYourCoachingBusiness.com came to mind, and that speaks well to both the business and the transformational side. In fact, there’s good crossover between the two. So that’s what it’s going to be for now. The name, while important, isn’t critical.

More important is to get those products created and posted.

Setting a Deadline and Going for It

The amount of energy I’ve put into this business has gone up and down depending upon my interest level. I forgot something I learned a long time ago, and is now coming back to serve me: There’s incredible power in a deadline.

A deadline forces you to marshal all your resources to a critical moment. It makes you get the big picture, see what the top priorities are, and then work through them as quickly as possible.

I used to work as the photo editor at a weekly newspaper. Our work cycle was tied around the deadline. By 3pm Tuesday afternoon, everything had to be done. All photos photographed, processed, printed, laid out and in the system. Nothing short of a UFO landing in our town could change that. It made for a manic work lifestyle. My “week” basically started on Wednesday (the day the paper came out), then it would build and build until the next Tuesday when, once again, there would be the inevitable last-minute crunch to get everything done.

It’s amazing how much work I and everybody else at the paper got done on Tuesdays. It’s also amazing how wiped out we were afterwards.

But for the past year – since learning about this business model – I’ve been putzing along with it. Lots of learning, research, dreaming, and – well – putzing around. It’s sputtered along like a British car in need of TLC.

A deadline is to getting your business started as entering a race is to getting your car ready for competition.

Without it, I’ve been more or less like a ship adrift. I can generally see where I want to be, but it’s like “Yeah, looks good. I’ll get there someday, but right now I’d rather just drift around a bit longer.”

What I’ve discovered is that someday never comes. It stays out there, visible through the mist, but not concrete enough to set my directional finder on and yell “I’m going there.”

So to get to my goal – in this case, an operational business - I’ve finally put my line in the sand. March 15, 2007 is going my launch date, no matter what the situation. If some products aren’t ready, so be it. I can to them later.

Part of being lithe and competitive in the information marketing business (and life, for that matter), is accepting good enough. Forget about getting everything perfect; it’s not going to happen. If you get obsessed on perfection, you’ll get stuck spinning your wheels in an inconsequential section of a bigger picture.

So that’s it for today.

The big lessons and action items:

· Make the A-list of what needs to be done by launch date.
· That list will include: Must have, should have, would like to have.
· Put them on big sheets of paper in my upstairs office.
· Start working from the desktop now.
· Migrate the websites and all materials to the desktop computer.
· Set up the recording system “good enough” so I can do a recording with Diana Chapman.
· Get all the recording software set up so I can clean up the existing interviews I’m going to do.
· Order memory for my desktop system – 2 gigs min, possibly 4. Call Billy tomorrow to find out what kind it takes.
· Let “setting up the network” wait until I’ve launched the business.
· Get roboform on the desktop computer.
· Get LogMeIn.com on the desktop computer.
· Make sure I work out often enough to keep my sanity.
· Post this blog.