Podcast

Episode 407: [Launch Debrief] 3 Unexpected Reasons Why Our PGSD Launch Completely Failed

The entrepreneurship space can be so glamorised, we hear alot about people doubling their business year after year and that can leave us feeling behind if we aren’t experiencing that trajectory of growth.

I enjoy being very open and sharing what most people aren’t willing to share and this episode is no different. I take you behind the scenes of our most recent launch sharing the 3 unexpected reasons why this launch completely failed and all of the launch numbers.

Regardless of the type of business you have, this episode is relevant for you because at some point, no matter what guidance you’re receiving, if you’re putting yourself out there and trying new things, you will face failure.

It’s important to know how to approach failure and be emotionally regulated in those moments so that you don’t make the failure mean something about you and then repeat the same mistakes because you were too ashamed to actually take a look objectively at what went on, in a really compassionate way. 

Failure doesn’t make you a failure. It doesn’t mean you don’t know how to run a business. Look at all the big startups – they often don’t break even for years. Even though we intellectually understand this, if your launches feel like a rollercoaster, you might be attaching your self-worth to the outcomes.

I love hearing podcasts like this because it’s the real stuff and everyone goes through it.

So I hope you enjoy listening to the episode!

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode407.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • The 3 unexpected reasons why the most recent launch of PGSD failed
  • Behind-the-scenes of our launch numbers
  • What to do when you experience failure
  • The clues my calendar gave me that I only realised after the launch
  • How I’ll make sure that we never repeat the same mistakes again

Featured In The Episode:

Listen To The Episode

Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 407 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!

Subscribe To The Perfectionism Project Podcast

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction

Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionist Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business. You can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

Sam Laura Brown

The episode I’m recording today is the kind of episode that I am obsessed with listening to. And I hope you find it really helpful, I am going to be chatting about why our most recent launch of PGSD, aka perfectionist getting shit done, which is my group coaching program for perfectionist entrepreneurs, why that failed, it failed, we didn’t hit our goal, we didn’t even come close. I’m going to be sharing why that happened, even though I worked long hours. And so to my team, we put a lot of thought and care into this launch.

And even though it’s the first launch that we have done for the program, with having a full time marketing manager on the team, I’m going to be sharing the three unexpected reasons why it failed. And I’m also going to be sharing a look at what my calendar looked like. Because there were clues in my calendar in my power planning that this launch wasn’t going to work. And I didn’t see those clues at the time, I can see them in hindsight for sure. But I didn’t see them at the time. And so I hope that by sharing those, you will get some awareness and just see if there are clues in your own day to day that are going to tell you if what you’re working on now isn’t going to pay off in the way that you wanted to.

And I’m going to be telling you as well how I’m making sure that we never repeat the mistakes that we made in this launch again. But I want to say in this episode, I am going to be sharing things that most people don’t share, especially people who are in the business space, people who are helping entrepreneurs, it can kind of be this thing where we end up just wanting to be like that fit personal trainer thinking that we have to be flawless for people to want to actually buy from us or learn from us.

And that if we show any signs of not doing exactly what we tell people to do, and things like that, they’re going to be like, Okay, well, I don’t want to work with you. I don’t trust you. The reality is I love hearing people share this stuff, because it’s the real stuff and everyone goes through it. And yeah, I just hope that it really is well this gives your nervous system a bit of an opportunity to calm down.

If you have been feeling behind if you have been feeling ashamed that you aren’t getting the results in your business, especially when it comes to sales, that you should be because of how long you’ve been in business or because you’re smart, then this episode is really going to help you just understand what can go wrong with a launch. Regardless of what kind of business you have. I’m going to be talking about launching a group coaching program. But it’s applicable to everything, every kind of campaign launch, it’s all going to be relevant to your business. And it’s going to help you really understand how you can avoid having a launch fail.

And also what to do when it does fail because it will fail. At some point no matter what kind of guidance you’re getting. If you are putting yourself out there and doing new things, and trying things that might not work, which is entrepreneurship, then you will be met with failure. And so you need to know how to approach that you need to know how to be emotionally regulated when you are experiencing failure. So that you don’t just make it mean something about you. And then repeat the same mistakes because you were too ashamed to actually take a look objectively at what went on. And to do that in a really compassionate way. And I’m going to be sharing with you the stats.

I love doing this. I’ve been doing this since day one, sharing the numbers that I’m going to be sharing, sign up numbers, revenue, podcast downloads, I’m going to be sharing all the numbers I can to really help you as well just get a feel for what kind of numbers there were, but also, just to help you really, I don’t know, just understand what it can look like behind the scenes because we hear a lot of marketing math, and we often only hear the numbers when things are going well. And we don’t hear the numbers when things happen. haven’t gone well.

So I hope that is really going to just give you a really good look at what this launch was, like, why it failed, and what I’m gonna do about it next time. And I also want to say that before I get into the stats, which is where we’re gonna start, that I’m not going to disclaim anything in this and say, like, okay, but the launch was actually successful, because yes, we make 10s of thousands of dollars, and all of that kind of thing. It is so important that we learn how to objectively look at things and be able to say, this failed, ie, I didn’t get the result that I had planned to get, because that gives us a way in to really understanding how we can improve.

And it’s when we think that failure means something about us as a person, that we want to interpret things in a way that we could only say it was successful. So we want to say, hey, well, I learned so many lessons. So this launch was a success. And I’ve made that mistake in the past of saying, Okay, we didn’t hit the numbers. But it was successful. Because look at all these lessons. And really, I think the most growth minded way to look at it, is to say, it failed, it means nothing about me as a person, like my value as a human being.

But there are skills that I can improve upon, there are more helpful thoughts, I could be thinking. And I’m gonna identify those and try again next time, and keep iterating and improving, and not to say, Okay, I learned a lot. So it’s not really a failure, it’s such a gift to be able to say, it failed. And this is definitely my favorite launch, because of the lessons that have come from it. But it did fail. And I’m not going to let myself off the hook about that by either dressing it up as success, or by beating myself up and going into self pity about it.

When we do that we let ourselves off the hook. We think that if we’re hard on ourselves, that’s us holding ourselves accountable. It’s not, that’s us letting ourselves off the hook, because then we don’t actually take a proper look at things. And we just get to be in this pity party of okay, well, I don’t really know what I’m doing. And this is a whole thing. And I don’t want to do that. It’s business, I’m learning to build one, there are going to be things that happen, there are going to be times where we have a plan, and it doesn’t work, period. That’s it.

So this launch failed, I’m going to be sharing with you the stats, and then the three unexpected reasons why it happened, and really having a good look at those. So let’s get into the stats. First of all, in case you’re not aware of what PGSD is just for context, it stands for perfectionist getting shit done. It’s a 12 month group coaching program for perfectionist entrepreneurs. And it teaches you how to plan properly as a perfectionist with power planning so that you can get out of your own way in your business.

So it’s for people who know what to do to build their business, but they’re just not doing it. And you can find out more about it if you want to at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. So the investments, I’m going to be going through revenue numbers, you need to know what the investment was. So the investment for PGSD was one payment of 4000 US dollars, or 12 payments of 375. US dollars. That was the last time that PGSD will be at that price. The launch structure format was that we had enrollment for PGSD open for one week from the 12th to the 18th of June. And we do a quarterly enrollment for PGSD.

The next one is going to be in September for our October cohort. So this year, we also did in terms of the marketing, we did a three part podcast series that was released on this podcast at the same time that cart open. And we also sent a lot of emails, I’ll be sharing like the exact stats with this up, but we did sales calls. And we posted a few things on Instagram. And we also ran ads. More on this later though, because there were some big problems with the launch format that we didn’t realize.

And this, as I mentioned earlier, was the first proper launch of PGSD with Renae on our team who is our incredible marketing manager. And just as a side note, I am going to be sharing my experience of this launch in this episode, and I’ve done a full debrief with Renae and that was so much fun and so insightful to just really have such a deep understanding of what went wrong and what we need to do differently. But I just wanted to say that I like anything. This is my experience of the launch. I’m sure if Renae did an episode about it, that she would have so many other insights but I’ve really taken into account as well the insights that we had together, and in this episode I’m sharing what were the factors that I believe really influenced the result, and they came from my brain, they came from me, I am the leader of the take the leader of the business, it all trickles down from me.

And yeah, I’m so obsessed with our team. And just to mention as well who’s on the team, because that’s an important thing. We have myself. I work three days a week, we have Renae, who’s a full time marketing manager, we have Daisy, who is client success in PGSD. We have Jen, who’s the tech VA, we have Michelle and Aditi, who are PGSD coaches, and we have Eloisa who does podcast production. And that is the team that we have.

And a lot of that team was built to facilitate me being able to take time away from the business to have Lydia and to have the boys and to really be able to have our clients in PGSD, and get results, whether or not I’m on the calls. And I’m there. And I am so proud to say that we have been able to do that in such a big way, which is so incredible. But that is a team that we have. And I’ll be talking more about a few things relating to that as we go on. But I have the best team. And yeah, they just they make having this business.

So much more fun and enjoyable than when it was just me by myself, even as an introvert. And they’re just incredibly talented. And I love them so much. So shout out to my team. So I wanted to mention too, just in case you’re not aware of what happened last year with the launches that we had just for comparison. So last year, we did for the launch structure, a five part podcast series that was released in the week leading up to OpenCart. Ie when enrollment was open for a week in the lead up to that we had five podcast episodes released. We weren’t doing ads. We weren’t we didn’t have a marketing manager. I was leading the marketing and have sales calls for four of those launches. I worked way less hours and they were still more successful in terms of signups then this launch was.

So let’s get into the numbers. What are the signups so the goal that we had in this flow down from our growth goal that we have as a business of 1 million in this year. And then according to the way we teach it in PGSD, that’s what we do as well. So it incrementally increases. So the goal was 100k in quarter one, which we exceeded and then 200k cash collected in quarter two and then 300, quarter three 400 quarter four. So our goal was 48 signups assuming 50% would pay in full and 50% would choose a payment plan option.

And I want to welcome we had 12 people sign up. So a big welcome to Theresa, Lariza, Hannar and Lee. Oh, sorry, Anna, Lee Ann, Amanda, Chelsea, Karen, Bianca, Jenny, Ashley, Mihiko, and Eva. So seven of those PGSDers signed up during our enrollment week, our OpenCart period, and five of those signed up in the weeks before that, as they were members of the power planning course, we aren’t offering that anymore. That power planning course is within PGSD, plugging that because we’ll talk about that a bit later.

And last year for comparison, as well in terms of revenue, our revenue was about 600,000 Australian dollars from PGSD. That’s the only thing we sell. We don’t do sponsorships, we don’t do brand deals like we don’t do anything else. We help perfectionist entrepreneurs get out of their own way in PGSD. That’s the thing we sell. And we had 105 PGSDers across five launches. And if you want to hear a full breakdown of those numbers from 2022. I do that in episode 379. And also I just wanted to mention that the most successful launch we had in 2022 was the January launch.

And I did a real time debrief of that launch. It’s episode 316 and 317 on each day during the OpenCart period, and then a few days before and after I picked up the microphone. It was like a vlog style episode or compiled together where I share in real time what happened in that launch. So we had about 50 signups in that launch for PGSD. So you can go and listen to those episodes if you like the style of this one and you want more.

So I want to share in terms of cash collected and lifetime value and I’ll share a little bit as well about ads and our starts with the podcast and that kind of thing. So cash collected was 38,850 Australian dollars, which is about 26,000 US dollars. And lifetime value as in when the people who have signed up with the payment plan when all of those payments are made was $75,000. And US equivalent was about $51,000.

And when I talk about lifetime value versus cash collected, so as I was saying, We’re the marketing math that a lot of people will just share, the lifetime value figure of everyone pays their payments. And part of business is that some people will default and that kind of thing. So we like to look at cash collected. And then we have our eye on what the lifetime value would be. But we’re focused on our cash collected, rather than just generating future revenue that we hope and expect will come in.

So expenses in the quarter as well. This is really important to mention, because you might have heard those numbers and be like, Okay, well, if you think that is a failure of a launch, then you would not think I’m doing well in business. And because I know my past self, like hearing those numbers, like those numbers, were so big to me, and they’re still significant numbers. But as I mentioned, I don’t want to be like, Okay, well, you know, that’s amazing that we did that. And so it’s really important, like, Yeah, we didn’t hit the goal. But it’s still a success.

Like, if we look at failure, as you have a goal, did you meet it or not, so that we have a way into evaluating and improving in a growth minded way, we didn’t hit the goal. And also, it’s important to look at the expenses that we have as a business as well. People often just talk about what their revenue is, what their top line is, like what is coming into the business. And to get a full picture, you need to also know what expenses were incurred to generate that revenue.

And were those expenses more than the revenue generated. And really just understanding as well, if you are comparing yourself to other people who might be producing higher quality content than you, or having bigger launches in you, especially if you’re just by yourself right now you just it’s you and a VA, that you are not comparing apples and apples by any stretch of the imagination, that if you are thinking that by yourself, you should be able to create the results that a team can create. It’s not to say that you can’t. But it’s to say that it’s really important to just actually look at the facts, and really take those things into consideration.

So in terms of expenses for the quarter, I haven’t got a full detailed breakdown here. I often share that in my growth goal update episodes that I do at the end of each quarter. But there was my salary, Renae salary. And then we have, as I mentioned, PGSD coaches, Daisy’s in client success, tech, VA, podcast production, we also have an ad spend as well, which we haven’t really had at all last year, I’ll talk a bit more about what that looked like.

But basically, long story short, the revenue generated from this launch didn’t cover our expenses that related to the launch. So in terms of the launch, like saying, Okay, well, that was a good amount of money, which it was that came in. It costs us more than that, to make that amount of money that is not sustainable in a business. And I’ll talk about why that’s been a problem in a second. I want to talk about the ad spend just so you have those figures.

So we spent 22,561 Australian dollars on lead generation. So we had 4278 new email subscribers through the perfectionism quiz that we created. And I’d say that creating that quiz was a big success in terms of just like being able to create something that really gives people the feeling of what I create, for example, when I’m interviewed on a podcast of the realization about perfectionism, and how it’s impacting your productivity and your business and making you get in your own way. So if you haven’t done the quiz yet, I highly recommend that you can go to samlaurabrown.com/quiz. It’s a free quiz. It takes like two minutes to do, and it’s really going to help you understand your perfectionism and see how much of perfectionism handbrake is making you get out of your sorry, get in your own way. And which of the five signs of perfectionism you have the strongest.

So we had the perfectionism quiz and also perfectionist power ups. So I will leave the link in the show notes, we can sign up for them, but every day I sent a very brief motivational productivity boost that is really gonna help you get out of your own way in your business. So those were the things we use to generate leads, we had retargeting ads, 1,354 Australian dollars, and the ROI. And Renae, don’t ask me, don’t give it to me if I get this wrong, but from what I can tell to date, no one signed up from those ads for PGSD.

And that’s not to say that people in the future won’t sign up for PGSD who found us through those ads, because they are, most of them are still on our email list, and opening emails and loving hearing from us and all of that. So it’s not to say that no one will become a customer. And maybe you came from an ad, you’ve heard me through an ad. And you’re now listening to the podcast and all of that. So it’s, it’s such a beautiful thing that we’re able to find people like pay to find people like that’s how much we want to help people.

We are paying to find people to help. And at the moment, no one has signed up from those ads, at least not in this launch from also the things with, you know, Facebook ads, and not being able to really track the metrics in a great way anymore. I won’t go into all of that. But it is hard to see if someone did sign up without having certain things set up on the back end. But a few other stats, and then I’m going to be sharing the three unexpected reasons why the launch failed, I’m just going to be running through the numbers quite quickly here.

But these numbers are just give you a bit of a feel in terms of how many people were aware of the launch, we’re paying attention and that kind of thing. So we had three episodes go out at the time that the doors open to PGSD. So for those three episodes, the first part had 1107 downloads, the second part had 1100 downloads, and the third part had 1277 downloads. And then the other episodes that went out during OpenCart, all had under 1000 episodes. And this is by the time that the close. So by the 18th of June. That is how many downloads we had on those episodes.

And I want to mention just very briefly why I believe we had more downloads on the third part because it is very unusual to have a higher number of downloads on part three than on part one. Typically, regardless of how engaging something you are creating is there will be drop off as it goes along. So with this, we initially didn’t say that each of the episodes were in part, it wasn’t obvious in the title. So I think people just clicked on the most recent episode as they normally would.

And we can’t tell how much of the episode they listened to if those people listened to the whole thing, or they clicked on it, and then they later came back to it. Unfortunately, with podcasting, you really don’t get great stats like you do on some other platforms. And we had, on average for the previous launches, two to 4000 downloads per episode and the podcast series that we have done to promote PGSD. And that’s at the time of close cart. So we had a lot less in terms of I guess, compared to the January launch.

In 2022, we had a quarter of the number of people downloading the podcast. And there’s a few different reasons for that. And I’ll get into that a bit more later. But just in context for the podcast, too, at the moment, we are at 2.57 million downloads. And our average downloads in the first 90 days of an episode getting released is four to 5000 downloads, just wanted to share that too, because as I said, like starts with podcasts, we don’t get many of them. But also you don’t hear many people sharing download numbers. And you’re just kind of guessing at what other people’s downloads numbers are. So I hope it’s helpful to hear that if you do have a podcast, just for reference.

So Instagram starts we posted once on our feed during the launch, and there were 27 likes, and we had approximately we have approximately 55,000 Instagram followers, Instagram is not our main marketing channel, the podcast is. But I just wanted to mention that especially if you post something and you get low engagement, so to speak, that that doesn’t have to matter. And also like the reason this launch spoiler failed isn’t because we had low engagement on Instagram, like that’s not the unexpected reason. So it doesn’t really matter that’s very similar to the amount of engagement we won’t have had on previous posts we’ve done about PGSD or during OpenCart period on Instagram and it’s a reflection of how we’ve showed up beforehand and all these different things. So yeah, that’s Instagram.

Email, so we sent 21 emails during that week. So we sent a lot of emails I love sending a lot of emails we also sent five perfectionist power up emails during that week. So in total, 26 emails, the average open rate was approximately 34%, which is pretty normal for us. And unsubscribes per email was about 20 to 30 people per email, our normal rate is about 10 to 15 people per email, I’m just sharing that stat we don’t look at that. Like that wasn’t unsubscribes isn’t part of what we look at. But I just want to share that in case you get unsubscribes, which, if you have any kind of opinion, and you’re sharing anything valuable, you will have unsubscribes.

And I hope this hearing that it’s normal helps you to be like, okay, cool, I don’t have to use metrics like unsubscribes, to determine what I should be saying more of or not like it really, if we don’t have unsubscribes to emails, there’s something wrong because it means they’re just so vanilla that no one’s even paying any attention whatsoever. So we also sent out an email after the launch to people who didn’t sign up for PGSD, we say, hey, we want to know more about why you didn’t sign up. So that we can understand why. And if the program is a good fit for you, we can help you really understand the value of PGSD.

So we have an email list as well, I didn’t get the exact number, but it’s about 12,000 people on our email list. So those are the main stats. And we are working on getting better data for our launches. And I will come back to this a bit later on with one of the mistakes that we made. But we really, it was really hard to compare this launch in terms of numbers to previous launches, because of the way that we had formatted and structured the actual launch itself.

So as I mentioned it as well, it was not a profitable launch, when we look at revenue generated and expenses in order to generate that revenue. But it’s not a problem, because we have about 200,000 a bit more than that. In terms of a financial buffer that we put aside, when we have money come in that we don’t just spend everything that we have savings, we have some room to have experiences like this. And I think that’s so important. And it really allows me especially as the leader of the business, to be able to try things that might not work and do things in a new way and innovate and test and experiment.

Because I know that even if we had zero signups for this launch, and the next launch, and the next launch, we would still be able to pay all the bills we need to pay. Obviously, you want to be at some point being profitable, we normally are. But there are going to be times when you’re not. And that doesn’t make you a failure. That doesn’t mean you don’t know how to run a business. If you look at like all the big startups, they don’t even like break even often for years.

And so it’s really important to understand, especially in a environment that we are in now with entrepreneurship being so glamorized and hearing a lot about people who double their business year after year after year. And seeing that as normal, and then feeling behind if you aren’t experiencing that trajectory of growth, that it’s normal to have periods where money isn’t coming in. I’ve done a few episodes before about planned profit loss and how to feel emotionally safe when money isn’t flowing in. And it’s really important to be able to just have an understanding of business, that it’s not about whether or not you’re valuable as a human and your business, your revenue isn’t a reflection of your worth.

As a person, I think we all intellectually understand it. And yet, if you have launches, it feels like a roller coaster, you’re attaching that to your worth as a human. So that’s how you can tell because it feels like an emotionally distressing or stressful situation. That’s when we’re making it mean something about ourselves. But we want to be able to set ourselves up so that we do have a bit of wiggle room so that we have the safety emotionally to try things. And to know that it’s not a matter of okay, well, if this doesn’t work, then I just have to pack it in.

So we do have that financial buffer. But as I said, we want to be pinpointing and really looking at and intentionally debriefing on like, Why didn’t this work? And we want to make sure as well, when it comes to really understanding the importance of debriefing and developing the skill set of identifying what’s working and what’s not, that our brains will miss attribute shat creates success, and it’s so intuitive, like there’s obviously so many factors that create success and also create failure.

And our brains tend to really catastrophize things or romanticize things or just kind of overly simplify them. And we want to be able to come out of a launch or any kind of experience and be able to say okay, here’s my theory, like I am going to boil it down to a couple of things because having it be 20 things that It’s hard to make actionable, I just want to know, okay, these are a couple of things I’m going to keep my eye on for next time. But really understanding that if we don’t have a debrief process, like what we talk about inside PGSD, and I’m actually teaching in full at the end of this month, as part of our challenge, I get out of your own way challenge, the debriefing process that we use.

But if you don’t have a process to follow, and you don’t have the, like, if you’re just reflecting in your head on how things went, and maybe like, No, I love looking at numbers. And I’ve looked at the data, but if you’re just looking at the numbers are not also looking at your brain, and the thoughts that you’re having, and how you’re interpreting those numbers and the way that our brain creates all kinds of dramatic, over, over exaggerated responses to things that you’re going to feel like the lunch was a failure, where maybe it wasn’t you feel like it was a success, when maybe it wasn’t, and you’re going to miss attribute.

So maybe be like, Oh, it was because I went on Instagram Live, every day that we had the number of sales that we had, and maybe it was nothing to do with that. But because you didn’t debrief on it, you weren’t actually able to pinpoint what created the success. So you want to make sure that you with your business and building your business is really seen as part of productivity, like reflection, understanding, having that self awareness, and really knowing that our perfectionist brains aren’t able to do that clearly.

Without some guidance, we will just really latch on to something and either just completely explain away like, oh, you know, I didn’t give it a full effort anyway. And like I was busy with other stuff. And like, No, that wasn’t the reason like just really looking at like, what was the reason and doing that in an objective and compassionate way. So when it comes to how I did this debrief and how I got to the conclusion that I’m about to share about the unexpected reasons that this launch failed. I did a time audit of my power planning, as well as self coaching. And then following the debriefing process that we’ll talk about inside PGSD.

And when it comes to, I guess, like, let’s get into the three things, when it comes to these. They’re all looking at what was upstream of the decisions, the actions, the like, the way that we did things, what was what was before that, what came before and influenced what then happened, because it’s easy to look at, okay, well, we had this conversion rate, or this amount of traffic, and those kinds of things, but they’re very downstream. They’re all the result of what ultimately, my self image as a leader, as a creator, as an entrepreneur, also, in my personal life, as a mom, as a wife, as a friend, my personal goals, my vision for the business, like all those things influence the vision that I have for the business, the goals that we have for the business.

So the big goals that we have for the business broken down to then our goal that we have for this year, which then gets broken down further into the goal that we have for the quarter, the goal that we have for the launch, then our plan for the launch and our strategy for executing that, then the decisions that we make about how to do that. And then the results that we get in terms of conversions, and what format we pick for the launch and everything like that.

And so it’s really important to look as far upstream as you can. Because if you only tweak the things that are downstream, for example, you’re like, okay, the problem was that I didn’t get enough traffic. So I just need more traffic. Well, like what caused you to be in a situation where you didn’t have enough traffic, or you didn’t know how much traffic you would need to hit that goal, and you weren’t able to create it. So let’s look at the things that influence that. And change those things.

That’s the kind of work we do in PGSD is we’re really looking at the underlying cause and solving for that. And our power planning is a way that we can identify that instead of just solving with tactics and hacks and all these different things that are really so far downstream that you can change those things. If you find that you’re changing a lot of things, or just so busy doing and you’re getting very similar results and you’re not getting the results that you know that you could be getting. It’s because you’re not looking upstream enough.

So I’m gonna be sharing the three or three of the unexpected reasons the launch failed. There was so many things that I got out of this launch so many breakthroughs and Aha moments and Insights and I really feel like it’s my favorite launch, but I wanted to really boil it down to three main things that I really feel influenced and created the result that we had for this launch. So I’m going to be sharing how this also manifested in my calendar, like, Where was my time going as a reflection of these mistakes that I was making the thoughts that I was thinking, and really just helping you see how this can all play out.

And also just, you being able to think about your own business and your experiences. And maybe some of the things that I was doing, you might be doing too. And so you can just have that awareness. And if you’re in PGSD, and you’re using power planning, so that you can use your power planning to get out of your own way to not make these mistakes that I made.

So first of all, the reason one of the reasons I think this was ultimately, like the most upstream thing, in a lot of ways, was that I put an immense amount of pressure on myself without realizing it. And I know we perfectionists. We know what it’s like to put pressure on ourselves. Like, that’s basically what we do for a living. And so you might think, okay, yeah, you put pressure on yourself big work. I do that too, whatever. That’s not really the cause. But let’s look at how this manifested, like what decisions that had me making.

So what was the thought that had me feeling pressure, because pressure is a feeling. And there’s a thought driving that feeling. So for me, that this thought, and this only came after spending quite a few hours, going through the debrief and really looking at okay, what’s more upstream? What’s more upstream, was that, and it feels kind of funny to say this thought because it just sounds like, I don’t know, it’s a bit cringy. But this is like, this unconscious thought that I was having that influence.

So many of the decisions that were made about the launch about where my time went about where the team’s time went about, like we changed decisions why that happened, like it all comes back to this thought was that I need to be supermom, and a good leader. So we can make a million dollars in the year that I have the twins, like kind of just almost like wanting to just desperately prove to myself and I guess it to others in some kind of way that you can I kind of have it all, like I wanted almost to just be like, yes, you can. And like I’m going to do that.

And it really like just having this pressure that it to me my experience was that I was doing things in a way that worked for me because I love working and getting to return to work when I wanted to after having the twins. And it’s normal to struggle with like trying to balance it all, so to speak. And all of that like, to me in the moment, I didn’t feel like I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, I didn’t feel stressed. I mean, I did towards the end, and I’ll talk about that.

But I wasn’t feeling stressed, I was feeling empowered, in some ways I was feeling and when I looked at it, in hindsight, it wasn’t really that. But I didn’t have the distinction without then having this launch experience that really had me be able to now tell the difference between when I’m really empowered. And when it’s just this kind of pressure that I’m putting on myself in a really sneaky kind of way. Because I think back in the day, when I put pressure on myself, it was quite obvious to me that I was putting pressure on myself, but new level new devil and when you’re constantly evolving as well that the self sabotage gets more subtle.

And it gets, in some ways harder to notice. And so it just seemed like I hadn’t even really like I wouldn’t have said I was putting pressure on myself. I really just felt like I was being true to me. And I was wanting to work because I really enjoy it. And even though people don’t return to work that quickly. And like at the time like Lydia’s just turned two so like having three kids under the age of two. Like I just I didn’t feel like I was putting pressure on myself. I just I really just felt like I was just doing things my way in a way that worked for me.

And I feel like what was really happening before I talk about how this all showed up in my calendar, and like the kind of warning signs that I didn’t see. And that I now can see in hindsight. But I really feel like I was going through and still am, to some extent a real loss of identity and kind of identity crisis from going from being a mother of one to a mother of three. And I think I really wanted to return to work and hit the ground running in a really big way.

I’ll talk about what that means in a second because I was making moves, but I really wanted to just feel like myself and working felt like the best way to feel like myself I can didn’t, I kind of knew that at the time, like, it was just an opportunity for me to just be thinking about the stuff I love thinking about. And in terms of personal development and business and all of that kind of thing, and just having something that was very familiar. And I would say, like, having the twins and having Lydia like, for us, it has been a like, as far as it gets, like a pretty smooth experience and transition, which I’m incredibly grateful for.

And I’m so in love with our kids like, so in love. And also, there’s a real loss of identity or just like, it changes who you are. And it’s hard to feel like, you can know who you are and feeling like yourself and really have like being connected to yourself. And there’s so many reasons for that. And it’s very common as well. But I hadn’t really realized what an identity crisis I was going through. And I think for me, going from no kids to having Lydia that I didn’t really feel that so much in terms of my identity, because we just brought Lydia with us. And it kind of, I don’t know, like day to day life was very different.

But also it didn’t feel that different. But now having three kids and just feeling like if it’s just me with the kids, it’s like hard to go out places. And I’m still figuring that out. And just figuring out like, okay, When can I see my friends and like, have time for me? And also I want to be with them? And like what does that look like and it’s just a recalibration. And I think that really, because of that as well, and the pregnancy. And just like, in terms of a twin pregnancy, it was a fantastic experience in terms of like, everything was very normal and straightforward, but it was so fucking uncomfortable physically, like, I just felt, I just felt like, I haven’t felt like myself for a long time, in terms of just like, feeling like my body is my own.

And just like all of that kind of thing. And so I feel like I just was in a big, big, big rush to have the twins and then to be out of the newborn phase in terms of being able to get sleep again, have more than a couple of hours sleep in a row. And just like this rushed, pressured vibe, was really like me coming from that place that influence so many that like all of the decisions that were made about what we did as a team, how we structured the launch what we did and didn’t do like it all came from me being in this place of like, okay, well, I have this big vision for the business. And I want to get us there. And I can do that, even though I have really young kids and all of that. And I can do it even though I have really young kids.

And actually this thought of, I need to be a supermom and a good leader, it actually took me out of recognizing that I was already doing that. And it had me be less present with my kids and with Steve and it had me be like a less empowering leader. I’ll go into the details. But it’s so interesting to just see like that thought of like I need to be supermom and be a good leader didn’t create the result that I was supermom and a good leader actually made me less so.

So how it manifested in my calendar, like what did this look like? So I was working three days per week instead of two days per week. So when the twins were born, I had a few weeks of not working a month before that, where I really wasn’t doing anything at all. And I was just like, I need to give birth, I need to be in my newborn bubble. But then I had I quickly went back to working three days a week. And my story was I need to create momentum.

Really, I think as I said it was me just wanting to feel like myself. But my story was I want to create momentum like two days doesn’t feel like enough. So I was working three days a week once the twins were six weeks old. That’s when that started. I was also on a hunt for an operations manager, we still are going to need someone to do the operations. But I had 22 calls with the recruiting agency that I use and nine Operations Manager interviews, because I was in such a rush to hire an operations manager.

I am going to do an episode about this soon if you want to hear the details about all of that. But that took up a significant amount of time and a significant amount of mental bandwidth. I also had a call with my accountant about leasing office space because working from home isn’t working for me anymore. I can. I will just like wanting to just feel I think like I could just have some space. It just kind of I was just really trying to just find myself. We didn’t end up getting office space yet more on that in a future episode. But so working from home.

What else are stress conversations with Steve about not being able to pump enough breast milk and not drinking enough water either, I was drinking about one to two liters of water per day rather than three or four for context with twin boys. They are drinking about two liters of breast milk per day that my body is producing. So just having stress conversations about that, listening to a lot of Leila Hormozi, I love Leila and Alex Hormozi as well. But I was really just doing that a lot while I was feeding the boys. So I couldn’t make the most of every minute like I was really in this mindset of like, I need to be productive all the time. And like, just again, in such a rush, that I really had this pressure on myself.

So not that I was a thing every time I was feeding, but there’s about 50 feeds per week that happened. So that’s a significant amount of time. And I was very much and I noticed this adding time that we haven’t gotten the result that was planned that I’m very much focused on strategy and that side of things rather than mindset and self coaching, and more of the feminine side of things that when I’m very, very masculine about it, and I’m just forcing and pushing, it doesn’t work.

I had three meetings with Renae to set KPIs for herself, and also for myself, as well. And it was really from a place of like, this isn’t a real business. If we don’t have KPIs, as I said, the thought I had was like, I need to be a good leader. And so I was very much like, Okay, what do good leaders do a good leaders would have accountability would have KPIs that were too late nights working until 1am spent updating the asana project, because the plans had drastically changed. We kept changing our minds about things, I’ll talk about that in a bit.

I had 35 Zoom meetings. So that we could my story was operate as a team, because we’re not already a team. So in the past, it especially it worked really well when I was having Lydia and then pregnant and then having the twins to do a lot of communicating as a team via loom where you can do a video recording and send it, it’s asynchronous. So you can do a video and they might like a text or whatever they’re gonna see at a different time. And then they’ll reply, it’s quite a bit less collaborative, because you can’t just interject and say, Hey, could you just explain what that meant? We kind of have to assume what they know, and different things like that.

But I decided like, Okay, we need to really come together as a team, and I need to be doing meetings. And I think like, it’s not that all these things were bad. And it’s really this is about the motivation behind these decisions is what made them not work, not the decisions themselves. And I think it’s so important when you’re looking at how someone else is operating their business to not look at what decision they made and trying to make the same decisions for yourself is looking at what was their thought process for that decision.

And what I’m really sharing in this episode is the thought process behind the decisions that will be made. It wasn’t a productive one. And someone can make the same decisions, to look at leasing office space, and to hire an operations manager and to work three days per week, and to listen to the strategic masculine kind of content, that that can be an incredible thing, if it’s been if those decisions, and those actions are being made from and taken from the right place, so to speak. And it wasn’t in this case. So I had 35 Zoom meetings. In the lead up to the launch, I worked 15 days in a row during the pre launch and launch period. Or that for me, it was like okay, warning bells going off right now like little lamb that me and also everyone else in the team was working way more than we normally do.

And if you are a regular listener of this podcast, you will know that I teach and preach a clean rest, which is wrestling without guilt time that you decide is off limits for business, for so many different reasons. There’s so many benefits. And this really brought home to me this launch, like why I’m so passionate about clean rest, even though I resist it. And my brain tells me that I need to be working all the time, because we worked so damn hard for this launch. And it was the least successful. And it just really brought home like hours spent. It doesn’t equate to getting the result you want.

And if you just work longer hours or work more or try more things, that you’ll get a better result and it’s really about simplification and subtraction. And really, truly just keeping things painfully simple. That when things are painfully simple, you don’t need to work 15 days in a row. So I also I had in my personal life, I really again was wanting to feel like myself. And I hadn’t been able to exercise because of my pelvic pain that I had during the pregnancy and also just being so large with carrying two big babies.

Like they were both when I’d say to people like, oh, yeah, they’re measuring like, large, like, oh, for twins, like, no, they’re measuring large for babies. And there are two. And so I wasn’t able to work out and exit, I just even doing yoga like I was so uncomfortable. And so I was just craving like, I’d look at people running and be like, I’m so jealous, I just can’t wait to do a run that is so hard. And then I when I’m running, and I’m like, Oh, I just want to stop running. Like, I was just craving that.

And so I actually set a goal for myself to be running five kilometers in a 25 minute period. By the time I’m six months postpartum, just like repeating that, that that like a such a rush, such a rush. And I did a few timed runs like a weekly timed run, and it was so good to just be able to start running again. But the last one that I did was on the 22nd of May. So I was doing that weekly. And then I decided to stop doing that, because I didn’t have enough time, I was so busy with the launch.

But also I can just say in hindsight, that goal was really set from this pressure a rush like, maybe if I do that, then I’ll feel like me again, like that kind of place. So 80% of the workdays that I had, Steve was either making lunch for me or putting my water bottle in my hand because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I did in the quarter 14 self coaching sessions. And so in 90 days, I did 14 Lots of self coaching. Normally I would be doing not 90, but I’d say like 70. And I can really track that when things have been successful with the amount of self quote gene I’m doing.

And I had this story like the number of times I said to Renae, like, I just I really want a business coach like someone that can coach me not just like marketing things, because Renae’s the marketing manager. So that’s not my wheelhouse anymore, even though I’m involved in that, but really on building the business and that kind of thing. And so I just had this story that I need a coach. And so I stopped coaching myself, I stopped, like recognizing that I have always been my own coach and I love having a coach, I’m still looking for a coach.

But I just that belief that thought I need a coach had me not recognize that, okay, but I can still keep coaching myself. And I also in that 13 weeks, including like the quarter basically, I did six weekly reviews. And I normally I would say I would do 11 to 13 weekly reviews in a 13 week period, and I did six. So most weeks, I was just like, I don’t have time for my weekly review. So that’s the third step in power planning. So I just don’t have time for it. And so all of that, like I was so busy with, with just trying to be in such a fucking rush, like, such a rush, oh my god.

And it really just helped me be less present and connected as a mom, as a wife. And as a friend. It had me not empower the team, it had me. Like, I’m not saying like, I’m so proud of myself for so many things. And I think this is really important side note as well that it’s like, it’s so important that we give ourselves credit. And I was coaching in PGSD yesterday. And the theme that came up with all the PGSDers I was coaching was just how we don’t give ourselves credit for what we have accomplished. And therefore we don’t actually embody that as an identity.

And therefore we don’t get the benefits of what we’ve accomplished. And we just give credit to other people of like, okay, well, I only did that because someone else was keeping me accountable. Or because whatever I had a team or anything like, we don’t take credit. And then we just have to keep forcing and wheeling ourselves there because we don’t actually recognize and normalize what we’re capable of.

And so I think for myself that I really when it comes to being a leader and also being a mum, that I hadn’t actually acknowledged myself for the ways that I do show up in those two areas, and that I have so much to be proud of and that I am proud of when it comes to how I am as a mother and how I am as a leader. And so I was just putting pressure on myself to like, basically try and be the person that I already was.

I hope that makes sense. I hope if you are someone who hasn’t been taking credit for your accomplishments like to just notice like, am I putting pressure on myself to actually just be who I really am and I just haven’t noticed how capable I am how resourceful I am how successful I am. And so that lesson for me just seen how much of a rush I was in, has really now for next time had me deciding. I’m already been implementing this like it’s safe to bring spaciousness back into my weeks.

I was really great at this in 2022. And I need to do this, especially because I have big goals, not like, Okay, well, I need to have more spaciousness in my week and time for super thinking and doing the things that I really do best when it comes to the business more on that in a bit. But especially because I have big goals. That’s why I needed to do it not like, okay, let’s lower the goals so we can take the pressure off. And I hope that you really can understand, like, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves.

And then as perfectionist, if we don’t have the tools like Power planning, to help you actually learn how to get into a growth mindset, we decide, okay, if I don’t want to put pressure on myself anymore, I just need to either give up on my goals, like completely reduce them make them more realistic and common, and like what everyone else could do. And I just need to like, just let myself kind of loose and not have any expectations. And you might have done this, where you kind of go back and forth between you have these crazy expectations. And you put a lot of pressure on yourself, and you’re like, I need to not put any expectations on myself.

And then you do it again. Because you’re perfectionist brain, like that’s what’s gonna happen. And then like, Okay, well, I just need to like not expect too much of myself. And then you just keep going back and forth. And it’s really about learning. And this is what I have learned, like, I need to give myself credit for this, I do know how to have spaciousness in my week, without overthinking. And I do know how to achieve big things without putting pressure on myself, I have really learned that.

And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t now more nuanced ways that I’m learning that and more subtle ways that it’s showing up. But it’s safe to bring spaciousness into your week, and to be able to just like, release your shoulders take a deep breath. And I was writing in my journal the other day, when I’m doing self coaching, like I have time to take time, like, I don’t have to be in this rush.

And this launch just really helped me see that when I was in a rush. It really, it didn’t help, it didn’t help us get a better result more quickly, it did the opposite of that. It meant that we changed our format for the launch, for example, so many times that I had to spend so much time on the back end, like communicating with the actual plan was and tidying that up, and then scrapping things that we’ve done and like, like, if we, if I hadn’t been in such a rush, then we would have just had a simple plan and executed it, which is what we’ve been doing in 2022. And so there’s other reasons for that, which I’ll talk about in a second.

But it’s not now beating myself up for being in a rush. But being like, I see myself I am have so much compassion for myself, like just going through that transition, which I still am in. Obviously, the boys is only a few months old, they’re gonna be five months old soon. So I’m still very much going through that transition. And really like getting to know myself again and feeling like myself again. Like I have so much compassion with past me and present day me now because of this experience.

And I don’t want to repeat that just because I have compassion for myself doesn’t mean I’m destined to repeat it. And so really important to know that as well. We think like, if I’m kind to myself, that means I’ll keep fucking things up. And that’s not actually what it means. So that was a big lesson. And really like that was that thought of like, I need to be supermom and a good leader. And like this needs to be the year that we get to a million in revenue.

And like, wouldn’t that be so amazing if we could do that. And I just need to like prove myself and everyone that that’s possible. I didn’t have that result. And it didn’t feel good. And I’m so glad I didn’t create the result we wanted. Because I don’t want to run my business. I don’t want that day to day experience. We really like there was a lot of overworking not a lot of clean rest. There was a lot of stress. And like, that isn’t success, regardless of how much money I’m making, or how much how many people were helping. That’s not success.

So the second reason. And this is really important, really important if you have been trying to clarify your messaging, and perfect it. So our what we were doing basically, our mistake, my mistake was trying to create the perfect messaging for PGSD. And actually thinking that we did it. And the mistake really about this. So there were a few thoughts that created it, but the mistake was really it was so anything, I’ll get into it, but my thought was that well now Renae’s here to do the marketing, we can actually create good messaging for PGSD because I don’t know how to do that.

Like I was really dismissing that I have been able to create nearly $2 million in revenue with me leading the marketing like I had completely dismissed that skill set that I had and kind of be like, okay, Renae is in charge. Now I need to be a good leader. So let’s leave it to Renae. And not to speak for Renae. But when we’ve debrief from this aspect of it, her thought was PGSD is about more than power planning. And the result of this was that we didn’t talk about power planning and planning properly, we really were focused on the epiphany of like, perfectionism that’s making you get in your own way.

And we completely missed all the messaging that had worked so well. And it’s really true to what we do in PGSD, about planning properly as a perfectionist, having a growth goal, having a power planning, and having a clean rest and persistence, login, all of that, that we kind of just completely ignored. We had something that was already working, and we were very much like, we had a lot of time brainstorming, creating new analogies perfecting our message, it felt so exciting, it felt so good in the experience.

And so in terms of as well, Renae sort about PGSD is about more than power planning. Last year, at the end of last year, I’d be like, Okay, maybe we take out the power planning element, we make it a self study course, because I really feel like PGSD can then evolve to the next level, and can be really the continuation of like, okay, you’ve learned power planning. Now you can really get out of your own way with it, use it for self coaching, use it to be more productive, like really master that, inside PGSD.

What I hadn’t realized, is really, that it wasn’t that PGSD is about more than power planning, which is what literally what I had told Renae, so then she’s like, Okay, well, it’s about more than palpating. But I don’t really know what it is. So I need to try and figure that out. And like, all of that, but it’s really, there’s more to power planning, and that tool than what is in PGSD. And I really, just since this launch, been able to see such a vision for the power planning tool that it is, and I just, I feel so clear, because of this launch on.

Really the impact that power planning can have when it comes to being a self coaching tool, being a productivity tool for perfectionist entrepreneurs, and ultimately for perfectionist. And I just hadn’t I’d been kind of in this place of like, okay, I just, like, not even feeling like I knew what PGSD was about when obviously, I do know, and it’s so funny that we do this, like I just, I need to clarify my message and I need to get like, I know, you know, like we know. And yet we kind of convince ourselves that because it’s not perfect, and it doesn’t feel crystal clear that we don’t know, it’s kind of this all or nothing thing of like, unless I feel ultimate clarity 100% of the time, then I have no idea what I’m talking about.

And it’s just not the case at all. So what actually happened as I said, Our experience was being really excited. And feeling like yes, we’ve got this and we went into the launch been like there’s no way we’re not hitting this goal like we are so like this, the way we’re talking about all of these concepts and perfectionism handbrake and turbulence, and last time and perfectionist blind spots, which are all incredible analogies and all true, that we hadn’t actually noticed that really the core planning properly of perfectionist, which is the solution. Like that’s how you get out of your own way, if you plan properly, in a way that works for your perfectionist mindset.

We just completely miss even talking about that. So if you look at like the episodes that went out before that launch, they were all about the perfectionism piece, and not actually about okay, well now what, and it’s so funny, because one of my biggest frustrations with people talking about perfectionism, and why I’m so passionate about what I do. And I feel like why the way that we talk about perfectionism really stands out is because everyone else is like, don’t be a perfectionist, that’s so bad, that’s toxic, just cut it out.

And it’s like, but that’s, that doesn’t actually work, like having the self awareness. Like there’s a difference between self awareness and self coaching and really being able to create change. And so just because you know, you’re a perfectionist, it doesn’t mean that you know how to get out of your own way. And so I’m just saying cut it out. Like, it’s a set of beliefs and thoughts, and your self image that is creating the result of overthinking and procrastinating and burning out and being on nothing and being scared of judgment. So you actually need a tool to help with that.

And we just missed talking about the tool that we have that works so effectively. And we’re just so focused on, okay, we know we need to create that epiphany of like, I’m a perfectionist, and this is making me get in my own way. And so all those episodes in the lead up were about that. And I just we weren’t talking about power planning and planning properly. During the launch. We ended up pivoting the emails and repurposing old emails about it, but really the time the doors open. We shouldn’t be educating anyone on here’s what power planning is. Here’s how PGSD works like that. All needs to come beforehand.

It’s like if PGSD is a party, and I love thinking of like marketing this way. But if you are inviting someone to a party once they say yes, like, once I’ve decided in their head, you still keep talking about the party and telling them about the party like, Hey, what are we going to wear? And who’s going to be there? And what are you drinking and what food is going to be there. And like, all of these different things, it’s so fun to talk about it. But also you share all the details about the party, the important ones that would help them to decide if they want to go you share that before the party or not when the party’s already started. And so we completely miss like talking about that earlier in the process.

So talking about my calendar and how it manifested when it came to my calendar, there was five days spent brainstorming new analogies with Renae to talk about PGSD. And the concepts we teach, talking about, we really focus on 100k. And getting to that mark, which is really what most of our PGSDers, they have a goal of making six figures, we have a track record of helping people create six figures and get there. But we spoke about that and not about power planning.

We spent no time discussing or understanding the marketing message from 2022 that worked, as I said, I told Renae like PGSD is evolving. It’s changing. It’s about more than power planning. So of course, she had no reason to go and look at that, because I just told her, it’s completely different now. And I was just dismissing that I actually was onto something, and was talking clearly about things. And so we just didn’t even look at what had worked. And we were really in this mentality of like, we need to create this base this foundation for future launches.

Instead of being like, hey, maybe last year when we did five launches, many of which were quite successful. Maybe that was actually the base. And let’s just keep iterating on that instead of I was like, Okay, well, now we have someone who actually knows marketing. So we should just completely scrap everything that amateur may did. And start fresh. Like that doesn’t make sense to do. But we didn’t notice at the time. And part of it, I was in such a rush. And I was spending my time trying to hire an operations manager and doing all these other things as well.

So I really didn’t have a lot of time to just like slow down, stop, have a look around, see what was going on and be like, huh, this is interesting. We’re just completely reinventing the wheel. So there are a lot of slack messages and Asana updates, clarifying Change of plans, because it was our launch, it was going to be a challenge with a bonus, and then a masterclass. And then at tenable podcast series, there was eight hours that I spent creating a document called the brain to communicate what the plan was for the launch to the rest of the team, as the plans had kept changing.

There was no high level planning or super thinking after the sixth of May, which meant I didn’t zoom out, and we just kept kind of chasing ideas. Like we were like, oh, that sounds amazing. Oh, yeah, that’s awesome. And not like, I need to zoom out and actually, hey, does this make sense in the bigger picture of things, and I just was in the weeds, and just kind of like chasing my tail. And I really missed that we changed so many factors for the launch, so that it would be really hard to debrief on.

And this is something to be thinking about as coaching, some of the PGSDers on this, when it’s like, well, you need to be doing everything because, like, I’m not sure, basically any one thing might work. So I kind of need to not have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. And so we end up in this situation often, when that’s a case of changing things, changing so many things, every time and so you can’t even actually tell what’s working and what isn’t. And it’s really hard to debrief on that is really hard to actually take away anything clear.

And often as well. So say for example, you might be scared to put in the full effort, because you want to make sure it pays off because we perfectionist hate wasting effort. And so then the only thing you can debrief on if you don’t go all in on your plans is okay next time I need to go all in because now I don’t even have enough data, like I didn’t try fully. So your only real takeaway is going to be I need to not have ass and next time and really show up fully. And this is why I like PGSD. I’m so passionate about it. Because we get you to a place where you’re able to show up fully.

So you can actually then get the data to improve. Because if every time you do something, your aha moment is okay, I need to get out of my own way and be consistent and whatever. Like it’s only once you start being consistent that you then are able to understand what’s working and what isn’t. If you think about like, you want to get more fit, and you go to the gym for a week, and then you don’t go for three months. How do you tell what part of your training program is working or not? Or if it’s working at all? You can’t because you did it for one week, and then you didn’t do anything for three months.

So your resolution will be okay just need to be consistent. We want to have you been consistent, like how PGSDers our so that you can then figure out what is actually working and what isn’t, and you can really be growth minded about what needs to change. So for us, I forgot all of that for this launch. And we changed the offer in the sense that we didn’t like it’s still PGSD, but the offer really changed in the sense that we weren’t talking about how We’re planning. And we’re talking instead about just high level releasing your perfectionism, handbrake and making 100k. And like, it really just was a different feel to like actually going to learn how to plan properly as a perfectionist, we’d change the price, we change the target client, so to speak, the person that we’re talking to and having to be someone who’s a bit higher self trust, and who previously spoken to, we changed the launch format.

Basically, we’re in a situation where during the launch, we were like, Okay, well, we can compare this to previous download numbers for the podcast. But actually, that was a completely different format. And the pre launch looked completely different because we told people ahead of time that this series was coming, instead of having it be a masterclass, and then a few days before changing it to a podcast series. And so we couldn’t even compare because we’ve changed so many factors.

And it’s easy, like, Okay, well, I want to iterate on everything each time, go slow to go fast. You’ve got to just iterate on what and this what I did last year, like you just really change one or two things each time. So you can tell what actually is working and what isn’t. So, we had, I had no high level planning or super thinking time, because I was in such a fucking rush after the sixth of May. So I really miss that we were reinventing the wheel and creating a launch that would be really hard to debrief on. I spent six hours preparing notes for the master class, which then became the podcast series.

And this is all from looking at my power planning. And during the time audit that I did, I spent four hours turning the master class into a podcast series and recording extra sections about power planning and the PGSD tools to insert that in. So if you listen back to those episodes, what you would have heard but maybe not realize is that those episodes were recorded at two different times and pieced together. So I recorded a one hour, I think it was just over an hour, a masterclass on releasing your perfectionism handbrake and getting out of your own way.

And then after I recorded that, and it just kind of sat with us, like, I didn’t even mention power planning. I didn’t mention clean rest, like it was kind of just those little alarm bells of like, okay, I talked about that a lot last year, and a lot of people signed up for PGSD based on that and got amazing results in PGSD based on these tools. And it kind of feels like if I don’t talk about that ahead of time, then it’s like almost saying like, hey, sign up for my workout program, I’m not going to tell you if we’re doing Pilates or hot yoga or resistance training, just if you understand how important working out is, then you should join and you’ll find out more inside like no, like, you need to know that it’s in alignment with your values that it’s going to fit in with what you’re already doing.

So knowing for example, what power planning is that you’re, for example, creating flexible structure. So if you’re someone who loves to, like, you tend to be like me working more on the masculine, like getting shit done side, but you also love like human design intuition, like that kind of flowy stuff that you can use power planning to bring those things together, like stuff like that, really understanding how it works. And that, yes, you work from a calendar, but it’s not in this rigid perfectionist way about it. And also, here’s why to do lists don’t work. And like all this other stuff that is so important to know, before you get in there.

Like this is the kind of goal that we set in PGSD, like people need to know that you need to feel like okay, this is at least in alignment with the kind of thing that I’m wanting to do. And I can trust that I’m not going to get in there. And they’re going to have me stop doing things that I really like doing. So for example, recently, we worked with a sleep consultant, and we were talking about, we were getting some help with the boys and figuring out between sleep and all of that.

And in the questionnaire, one of the questions was like, what are things that you like doing that you don’t want to change, and for us that’s using a pacifier using a dummy. And so it’s like, you need to know that kind of stuff. Like there’s things that you like about how you run your business that you don’t want to change, and you need to understand that whatever it is you’re going to be doing isn’t going to make you change something that you really like, without selling you on why that’s super important beforehand.

So I spent four hours turning that masterclass into a podcast series. And like piecing it together, it was so painful to do, it was so painful of figuring out okay, where will I slot this and I need to add this bit here and that bit there and then record an intro. So this then becomes a podcast series rather than a masterclass. So that was a whole thing for seven hours spent updating the sales page itself on the day before open cart so that the messaging and formatting was just right.

And I really felt like that day I was like, I feel like this is going to be like, it’s so clear. And I because we were so focused on creating the perfect messaging we missed that we hadn’t like it’s so crazy how it work that this like I need to create the perfect messaging kind of thought that we had driving us had us not do that. It kept us It made us further away from having messaging that really worked rather than closer. And so during that time, as well as like not really looking at my power planning. So like, I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I just feel like I need I really was just wanting that control. And that feeling of control.

I spent nine hours working on OpenCart emails during OpenCart. Because this was deprioritize. Usually that’s on three weeks ahead of time. I also spent 17 hours discussing why we weren’t getting signup numbers and what was missed. So that was time that Renae and I spent debriefing during the OpenCart period. On okay, why aren’t we seeing the signups we expected? Why aren’t we seeing the sales call number that we expected, like what’s going on.

So we saw how much time was spent trying to figure it out. It’s just so interesting. Like that’s one of the results of being in that rush, is that there’s a big price to pay in terms of time spent trying to clean up the mess that comes from being in a rush. So a few lessons from that I already know how to sell PGSD. And we can iterate on that versus his mindset. I was like, I really don’t know how to sell PGSD.

Power planning is a tool that gets PGSDers out of their own way. Like really, for me understanding like, as a coach, really getting that I have been able to, from what I’ve learned from other people in my own experiences, and from coaching, hundreds of perfectionist like I’ve been able to bring together something that is really effective. And there’s further iteration on it, which I’m so excited about. But that really is like we that is how we get the insights to be able to coach you to be able to see where you’re getting in your own way. If you are working from a to do list, it’s super hard to see why you’re overthinking.

And like all the especially if you have a lot of self awareness like there’s blatant overthinking, and there’s subtle overthinking, and we want to be paying attention as well to the subtle overthinking. So you’re not going to catch that unless you’re power planning. So it’s such a fundamental part of the solution that we provide. And so it really has just reconnected me with that. Also, the importance of keeping things painfully simple, like painfully simple. Not just simple, but painfully simple being willing to say no, to things that you know, will work and help so that you can be focused on one thing, so that you can keep the operations simple and easy on the back end.

And so that you can debrief on it at the end, rather than be like, Well, I tried 20 things, and I have the result I want and then it kind of reaffirms, I need to keep doing 20 things when really, probably 20% of those activities created 80% of that result, and you’re not able to even see that. So for next time, it’s really doubling down on the messaging that’s already been working, talking about how planning, planning properly, and really iterating and keeping things simple, rather than creating from scratch.

And it’s so funny, because I’ve talked about this before, but like having this lesson be so painful, because I was spending a lot of time working. And that was precious time I could have been spending with my kids, or even just sitting in my office by myself having some moments of peace and quiet. It was so painful to have all that time spent and to not get the result. And so instead of what pass me would have done, which is like have a big pity party about it and feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. And I should know better by now like, Oh no, I can actually really see by debriefing what’s going on.

So that was the second thing that went on. And the third was really ignoring the value of what I contribute to the business. This was for me such a, I think maybe I would say the most important breakthrough I’ve had from this launch is really just getting not just because it feels like I’m chatting, it doesn’t mean that what I’m doing isn’t valuable. And when I’m doing podcast episodes like this, I just feel like I’m chatting when I’m coaching. I just feel like I’m chatting, but really me self coaching and coaching and developing the tool of power planning and like using the podcast to kind of distill that down and iterate on that those ideas and develop that intellectual property like that really is the thing that I can provide to the business that no one else can in the same way.

And yes, I want to be a great leader and all those things, but like, really seen that as my contribution. Like, I’ve just been dismissing it so much, because it’s been easy. So I had a thought like looking at my time audit my power planning, like I didn’t have time to create content or to coach I need to be working on building the business and empowering everyone. And I really, as I said didn’t understand how I provide value to the business. And I’ve been thinking about like, what’s my zone of genius, all that kind of thing, but I really didn’t understand it.

And I just thought like, Okay, well, Renae is here to do marketing, unlike content is marketing. So now that’s all Renae’s domain and I need to empower her and so really as well like me not like we have the tools in PGSD. So I don’t need to be on the coaching calls and people are getting even better results without me in there and all of that. So just when I look at my calendar that really shows up and I’ll go through that in a bit but just seeing that what was going on was just me dismissing myself and maybe you’ve been doing the same thing where something feels super easy. So you just completely deprioritize Is it even though it’s such a big needle mover.

Like I love self coaching, I love recording these episodes, I love coaching. So I just spent no time on it, because I should be doing hard things because hard things, build the business and have a proper business. And my experience was really like, I’m I’m really doing business properly now, and empowering others to be operating in their zone of genius. So while this was going on, I didn’t feel like I’m ignoring, you know, the thing that I’m really good at, I felt like, now I have a real business.

And it’s, it’s just been such a revelation to like, for me having real business is just going to feel like I’m chatting. Like, I need to reconcile those two things sooner or later, because that is the truth of it, that there’ll be hard things courageous things I need to do. But as it relates to coaching and self coaching and sharing on the podcast, not having to force myself to be this good leader. So here’s how it showed up in my calendar, I spent 15 hours in total for the quarter on the podcast. And the most recent three episodes are repost episodes. Basically, I spent like no time thinking about the podcast, creating new ideas for the podcast, recording these kinds of episodes that I love so much. I was more recording like expertise style content, which I really personally don’t love consuming.

I think those episodes are super valuable, I still recommend listening to them, I still believe in them. But this kind of episode is the kind of episode I crave. And I love and I’m obsessed with creating. And if I wasn’t doing this for the business, I would still be doing it for my personal life. And I also do record episodes just for me to document my own things that I don’t actually share on the podcast as well. So it’s like, just like the thing that I love doing the most I wasn’t doing, I just been like, I don’t have time for that I have bigger fish to fry.

Also, as I said, 14 self coaching sessions, I started The Life Coach School coaching certification. And then I stopped doing it, I cancelled a few calls that I had that related to it, because I didn’t have enough time. And I’ll share more about this journey that I’m having with that and like figuring out how to make time for and all of that in a future episode. Because I’ve recorded some things about that in that process. But I was like, I don’t have time to work on my coaching skills. I’m busy building a business, not really recognizing the coaching. And not just like the coaching, but developing the coaching tools is the bit that really drives the business forward.

So I did no coaching calls inside PGSD. This was planned as part of me having the twins and not wanting to feel like I have pressure to be somewhere at a certain time. But also I did come back to work and like earlier than planned in a way that I could have done calls and I decided not to take on any calls. I had no time plan for super thinking about the tools or the concept like no time, Renae and I had a lot of brainstorming sessions, where we were talking about analogies to use for marketing purposes.

But for me, I really recognize it when I am. I have created a lot of great things from thinking about things in a marketing angle, but the best concepts that we use in PGSD and like power planning, for example, like that comes up from me trying things and then like, Okay, I’m planning this way. And I’m bringing that tool together and I need to iterate it this way. And like Okay, now let’s work with some people, like have some PGSDers try it and what are they thinking? Let’s iterate it from there. And like, that’s how it really develops. So there was no time on that no documentation of the launch, during the process, because I didn’t have time.

I didn’t have time to do my normal launch debrief. And I remember Renae was like, are you going to do episode that you do? I was like, I don’t have time. I’m too busy. when really it’s like it’s my favorite episode to record as well. And I just decided it’s not a priority. And I spent four hours as I said, turning the masterclass into the podcast series, five hours spent reimagining the challenge within PGSD. So during the launch, so we have a challenging PGSD that is happening this month. So if you’re a PGSDer, make sure you’re doing it, and it’s to get out of your own way challenge, but initially, it was called the 10k challenge.

And after we had the launch and invited everyone in, and then it was time to deliver the challenge. I was like, like, No, I have had these epiphanies and I really recognize what I do and what I’m best at. I just really want to like reimagine this challenge to be something that is going to be even better. So we have to get out of your own way challenge that’s happening via the PGSD private podcast and then PGSD forum I’m doing some one on one coaching calls as a bonus, like so many things that are so fun to know I’m having time spent on that but I had to spend time again this is like the flow on effect of rushing is that I then had to completely reimagine it and clean up the mess so to speak that I had created.

So from this lesson and and really as well like Renae and I figured out as a result of this launch like that there isn’t just like content. And that’s a marketing thing, really, that there’s intellectual property development, like developing the coaching tools, which is my thing. And then Renae thing is packaging them and making sure it gets out into the hands of a lot of people. So like, I’m recording the episodes. And it’s Renae’s responsibility as marketing manager, to get the podcast out in front of as many people as possible that might involve me doing interviews, and like me being part of that.

But I am creating not the content. And I think if you are in a business where there’s content, that term really has been disconnected from the power of what we do content, like, it just sounds so shit to be like, I’m a content creator, I create content, like content, it just like so really seem like it’s the intellectual property the ideas like and then these don’t have to be completely original, like no ones are, it’s really about bringing together all these different things that you have learned from other places and packaging it into something even better, so that someone else can then put that into their mix and package that into something even better. And that’s how everything gets iterated on.

So developing that and seeing that as part of what I do. And then Renae is really packaging that and sharing that with everyone else. And I’m delivering in PGSD. And that then influences the tools. And also me exploring that through my own self coaching through the podcast through PGSD, like it all kind of has just really become clear what I do. And where, like Renae and I work together. And I don’t think if we had had this experience, or if we’d had the signups that we had planned, like we wouldn’t have recognized that.

And I would have for sure spent the rest of the year being really focused on the business side of the business, which is still important in the CEO, the founder, I’m the person with the vision and who’s leading that. But I would have just continued to spend about 30 minutes per week doing the bit that is actually driving the business forward. And at some point, that would cause a serious plateau or decline in the success of the business.

So the lesson is, okay, if I just feel like I’m chatting, or I’m exploring what I’m interested in, that’s really a sign that I’m in my zone of genius. And that I, I do have a real business. And I talked about it recently in an episode about feeling not like having realizations about maybe one of the reasons I feel like I don’t have a real business is because part of my subconscious belief is that only men can have a real business because that was kind of modeled.

But also recognizing, I think a big part as well of me believing that I don’t have a real business, so to speak, is that when I feel when I’m creating the most success in the business, it’s always when I just feel like I’m chatting, and I’m just kind of more in that flow, and I’m not doing the proper business things. And I’ve just dismissed that and thought like an I need to feel like serious and professional, I’ve just kind of associated feelings, that feelings that create success for me, like when I feel professional, that’s not when I’m more successful.

It’s when I feel chatty when I feel flowy when I feel like, I’m just act like this, I’m just sharing the stuff that I’m sharing, because I forget that most people don’t share this kind of stuff. They don’t want to and like all of that. And yeah, it’s just, I want you to think about this for you like, it’s okay. If your business, if you just feel like you’re just chatting, or you’re just doing something you love or making art or whatever that looks like, or just building the business in your own way. Like you don’t have to be necessarily creative or have a creative type of business, though I know a lot of us in PGSD do, but just knowing it can just it can feel easy.

And that’s a lesson that I’ve needed to really learn over and over again in so many ways. But I feel like the pain associated with this launch in terms of the stress, I felt the pressure, I felt the time that I chose to not spend with my family, the impact that it had on my family to be working in a way that meant I wasn’t having clean rest, I wasn’t fully present with them. Like that was painful for me.

And I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to debrief on it and really pull out the lessons and not just chalk it up to like, Okay, well, it’s because we didn’t have XYZ, like it’s because of my thoughts, and I can change those. And I’m a human being and I’m going to have unhelpful thoughts again, but also like, I can’t I have been able to get the lesson and move on.

We all have we’ve all gotten a lesson at some point and been able to actually embody it. So if you’ve been thinking that, well, I’ve already learned this, like I should know better. Basically, like, I hope from this whole thing like I should know better than any of this, so to speak, because for a living, I help people to get out of their own way. And my perfectionism handbrake really was the cause of the the launch result that we had, and that’s okay, that’s part of it, it comes on in such a different way to how it did before.

And I’m not perfect. No one is that’s not even the goal. And so it’s recognizing that, especially if you are someone who is teaching something, and you feel some level of like, well, I’m not perfect at it. So maybe I’m not qualified to teach it. And you have that impostor syndrome, like, you’re the most like, I’m more qualified to talk about perfectionism than someone who doesn’t experience perfectionism, and who just like, can’t actually really relate and like develop tools of their own experience and all that like, recognizing that, regardless of what kind of business you have, that it’s, it’s so important that you recognize that being on the journey and sharing that journey is so empowering for others, it doesn’t have to be your business model, you don’t need to share stuff, the way that I share stuff, but that it’s okay, if you don’t feel like a serious professional.

And then you’re making that mean that you’re an imposter and you don’t have a real business. We’re all just figuring it out. As we go. We all often feel like we don’t know what we’re doing. And yet, we can choose to feel like we know what we’re doing, we can choose to say, I do know what I’m doing. Like for me, I do know that we will be able to get to our million dollar goal that we will be able to achieve the big goals we have, that is going to work. And there’s no reason that that’s more true for me than it is for you. I’m just deciding that, and I’m making this failure mean something about the way that we approached it and not about me as a person.

So this launch, as I said, is really one of my favorite, I’d probably say my favorite launch because I’ve had so many breakthroughs from it. And I hope it’s been helpful to hear me chat through it all, and share the insights, we’re going to be keeping things painfully simple. We’re going to be doing another launch for PGSD. So for the October cohort. So in September, that launch will be happening. We are working on that right now behind the scenes, we’ll be going back to getting that done ahead of time keeping it easy give you a debrief bubble, and doing all of that and I will be sharing a live like in the moment episode for the next launch as well.

But if you are wanting to be in PGSD want to learn about power planning, you want to get out of your own way. If you want to build a fulfilling business where you actually like working for yourself, then go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to sign up for the waitlist. And as I said, I’m sure if Renae did this episode, there’d be so many more like marketing things like okay, some of the ramifications of these thoughts were that we didn’t actually tell people ahead of time about what the dates were for PGSD. We only mentioned that really like we didn’t have a waitlist strategy for emails, we weren’t really emailing people on the waitlist, anything particular like all of that kind of stuff.

There’s that stuff going on, but most upstream from that, like the influential things of these thoughts that I was thinking. So I hope it’s been helpful and insightful for you. I hope that you do join us in PGSD if you aren’t in that already, once the doors open again. So we’ll have our October cohort and then we’ll have a January cohort so every quarter will be welcoming a new cohort. So go sign up for the waitlist. And yeah, I hope you are having a beautiful day. If you have enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot and please tag me on Instagram. I also never mentioned reviews but if you like this podcast, leave a review. We’d love to read it. So yeah, hope you having a beautiful day and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I invite you to sign up to receive a short daily perfectionist power up from me. These are little notes and reminders sent to you via email that’ll help you plan properly as a perfectionist and get you out of your own way. So you can go to Samlaurabrown.com/power to sign up today and you’ll start receiving motivating perfectionist power-ups this week.

Author: Sam Brown