Podcast

Episode 427: The Power of Keeping Your Launch Painfully Simple (Part 2: Launch Debrief)

In this episode I’m sharing a behind the scenes look at the most recent launch of my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD). This is the second part in a two part series that will help normalise the ups and downs of launching (regardless of what kind of business you have) and show you how to get out of your own way when you’re selling.

In this episode I talk about what painful simplicity is, why it matters and how to create it. I also talk about what our painfully simple launch looked like in practice and what I was able to learn about the business – and myself – because we kept everything painfully simple.

I also share something uncomfortable that I learned about myself and how to spot whether you have the same mindset issue that I did. If you feel behind, this is something you’re going to be able to relate to.

Plus I share all of the numbers (like our sign up numbers, revenue and whether we hit our goal) and behind the scenes insights so you can get out of your own way. Because releasing your perfectionism handbrake is essential when it comes to building your business, whether you have a coaching business like me or not.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • Whether we achieved our revenue goal for this launch
  • My biggest takeaway from the launch and how you can apply it to your business
  • The hidden mindset issue that I didn’t see until the launch was over
  • Updates I’m making to my content creation strategy based on this launch
  • All the numbers including revenue, email open rates, podcast downloads etc

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode427

Featured In The Episode:

Past Launch Debrief Episodes:

Announcement: PGSD will open for enrollment on 8 December 2023 to 12 December 2023

My program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) will teach you how to plan properly as a perfectionist so you can consistently market your business and achieve your goals. The doors to PGSD will open on 8 December 2023 until 12 December. To find out more about the program and be the first to know when the doors open, join the waitlist today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

Listen To The Episode

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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

This is part two of my two part series on the power of keeping your launch painfully simple. I’m going to assume that you have already listened to part one, which is the previous episode. So I’m not going to recap, launch details what I mean by a launch and all of that kind of thing. So go and listen to that episode, if you haven’t already. In this episode, I’m going to be talking to you about the launch period. But particularly what I’m going to be doing is sharing the debrief and sharing my biggest insight. My biggest takeaway, my biggest realization from this launch. And really, as you might guess, from the title of this series, it is the power of keeping things painfully simple.

And I just want to be honest with you, this is the third time that I’m recording this episode. I feel like every time I do a launch series, the lesson or like really, the theme of the launch is my lesson. And I get it in so many different layers. But for this launch, keeping things painfully simple, I got that during the launch during the debrief. And then literally, while recording the first attempt. And the second attempt at this episode, it was only after I recorded the second attempt, and I was at an hour and I still couldn’t fit everything in.

I was like, Okay, I just need to keep it simple, and just share my biggest takeaway, and really helping you understand what that is and how you can apply it in your business. Because this is really to help you and as much as I want to share so many things I have like, it’s 1500 words of notes that I had written for this episode, and I’m going to be sharing a lot with you. But instead of sharing so many different things, which could all be their own episode, I’m just going to really keep it simple. And keep focused on the main thing, which is about painful simplicity.

So that’s what this episode is going to be about. And yeah, we’re just gonna really get started, I have got here in my notes, some of the things that I mentioned, in part one, I want to make sure that I close those loops that I let you know, where certain things landed. And I also in these episodes, love sharing the numbers. So I’m going to be doing that as well, I think it’s so powerful to just be hearing about other people’s businesses and their real numbers. Because we can really romanticize what is going on for other people. And we really like to imagine that everyone else is always having a good easy time. They’re just doubling and tripling revenue every year. And that isn’t the case, really, for anyone.

And so just hearing about the ups and downs, I hope is really helpful for you. And just kind of like calms your nervous system a little bit to just know, like, you don’t have to be doubling your business every year to be successful. So the main thing that we’ll talk about is painful simplicity. So I just really want to start there, to make sure that you understand what this means and how it can help you in your business. So going into this launch, we were focused on really taking out complexity.

And coming off the back of the launch that we had in June, where we had been doing so many different new things, and I talked about it in the debrief episode I did for that launch, I’ll link it up in the show notes for you. But I was just putting so much pressure on myself, like having had the twins in February and still pretty much like being in that postpartum period. And like going through this whole identity crisis of going from basically like two years ago, not having any kids. And now I have a daughter and two sons. And so it was just a lot to wrap my mind around. And I just feel like during that launch, and it’s always like, I love a launch period. It’s just such a amazing container to really see yourself and see what’s going on in your mind.

And so I put so much pressure on myself and really was just in this mindset of like, we need to create this new foundation. And now that Renae is here, who’s my marketing manager and we finally have someone on the team who knows marketing because I didn’t know anything and really just not recognizing that I do know things about marketing. And I can trust myself and I don’t need to just like not trust myself anymore when it comes to that. But really like off the back of that launch where there was so many things going on and compared to last year when we had launches really been a simple process. Spawning up because it was me and Daisy and just a few other people who were helping to run the launch, I was working three days a week and I was pregnant and all these other things going on in my personal life, really great things going on.

But I had to keep things simple, I didn’t really have an option to not have things be simple. And so in the June launch, and us just having like, a lot more hours to put to our use when it comes to like the team working. We just added a lot of things. And really for this launch, I wanted to keep it simple and not do that. And I am so glad that we did I will go through the numbers. But I just really want to articulate what we were able to see from having the launch be simple. So when I say it was simple, this is specifically what I mean.

We did almost exactly the same launch that we did in January 2022. So we did five launches in 2022. January was the most successful in terms of signups we had I think it was 50 or 51, signups. And then the other launches, we had nine signups. And then it was like 22 22 22, for the other launches. So when we had in the June launch as well, we had really tried to think about, okay, what’s the messaging and like, all of these different things, which are helpful questions to be asking, but I talked about in that debrief episode, but because we had put so much pressure on the messaging, we kind of like miss some very key points. And they needed to be added last minute and things like that it was just so interesting that and maybe you can relate to this, when you’re in that mindset of like I need to get this thing perfect, you actually end up without even realizing it missing some very basic key obvious things.

So what we did was we went to the messaging in terms of talking about planning properly as a perfectionist, power planning and getting out of your own way, like all the things I usually talk about, but really focusing on planning properly. And the things that I talked about in that January launch, we decided that we were going to do this same messaging again. And really, I wanted to do this and do the same format with the podcast launch that we had been doing last year. So doing a podcast episode every other day, five of them in the lead up to open cart and then open cart where people are signing up that goes for a week. No upsell, no down sell. Like when the doors closed, a closed like very, very basic, we send out emails, there are some Instagram posts, there are some podcast episodes. That’s really it.

There’s nothing fancy about it. Last year, I decided to do the podcast episodes as the way to sell PGSD. Because that was easiest for me. People already listened to the podcast. And so that’s what I went with. And so when it comes to, yeah, really just keeping it simple, it was about, okay, let’s go and do that. Again, I really wanted us to be able to debrief and just see at the end of the launch, what went on because in June, it was so hard to tell, because there was so much chaos, there was so many moving pieces. So many things were different. We change the messaging, we had changed the format of the launch, we will make him really quick decisions that felt really inspiring and exciting.

So we didn’t notice it at the time, but making quick decisions and changing things. And there was just a lot going on, I really think that was coming from me just being in this like internal chaos and just calibrating it to my new life as a mom of three. And so that really, I think showed up in the business as well. And so we had the launch format messaging, a lot of the emails were the same as the January launch or like updated ones of that, but the same email just with a few minor edits to them. We just wanted to keep it as simple as possible. I redid the launch episodes, or sorry, not the launch episodes, the Planning series episodes, the five that went out before the doors opened.

And in hindsight, it would have been better to just keep them the same. I think the episodes that I did were helpful but I also think it wasn’t the thing that moved the needle for me to spend I’m about to work weeks thinking about that recording that being in drama about should I rerecord it again, because it’s not good enough. And what I really got from this launch and just us being able to do pretty much the same thing, as we had done previously, is seeing why we didn’t have the signup numbers that we had wanted to have.

And I’ll talk specifically again about that soon, we had a goal of 88 signups, and we had nine people sign up. And I know exactly why, because we kept this launch simple. So we could see what went on. And so really, this was about us not having enough traffic, like enough people seeing the launch. And also the people who were seeing the launch weren’t getting the value that they needed to get. And when the launch, we were changing the message and everything else, we couldn’t see that I definitely couldn’t see that maybe Renae like, she is able to look at things in a different way, to me, had a lot more awareness around that.

But for me, I was so focused on the launch, being such a big thing, and putting so much pressure on the launch itself, that I wasn’t thinking of the business as a whole, and the other things that go on that support the launch, and that really support the people that we are serving. And so what this looked like, was that when it came to podcast episodes, emails that were getting sent out Instagram, we just weren’t delivering the value that we previously had. And I could feel it. And also, like, I was so busy being in this mindset of like, I need to build the business bigger. And I need to be like, basically almost like, though, like content creation is beneath me. Like I wasn’t thinking of it in those words. But that is essentially the mindset I was in because I was like, you know, I’m going on to bigger and better things.

And now that I have a team, I don’t need to be in the content creation. Also, I really hadn’t recognized the value of what I do, even though one of my lessons from the last launch was understanding the value of what I do. I didn’t really get that lesson fully, until this launch, because I had been like, Okay, I’m creating intellectual property and new ideas, but really seemed like guests and content, like I’m doing that, but through content through the podcast episodes, through the Instagram posts in the Instagram Stories, through the emails. And even though we can repurpose things from the past, and even though other people can write an email like me, even though we can like pull things out and like put it together in those formats, that creating that content, and just bringing the energy that I bring to it when I’m really just in flow.

And I’m just like enjoying myself and nerding out on the personal development like that is so valuable to the business that I’d be like, No, I have to think about like the operations. But I was in this mindset too with it of like, I need to figure that whole thing out. And so I was so busy being overwhelmed by it, that I didn’t really even do any of it. And just really like in the early months, I think it was in May. And then in June, I was wanting to hire an operations manager, I spent most of my work time trying to do that. And then I looked through my power planning as well, like so much of the time spent in the lead up to this launch was on like getting ready to get ready like planning and high level thinking and like being in this question of like, what is my zone of genius?

And like, what is my value that I add to the business now that we have this team and and where do I fit in with this and all of that. And it was like, under my nose the whole time. And I just didn’t see it until I had this launch be simple enough. That instead of being like, well, maybe the messaging was awful. Well, maybe it was it’s like, oh, no, actually, because I’m not having any drama or changes with those other things I can just see. There weren’t enough people seen the launch. And the value that those people who were seeing the launch were getting wasn’t where it needed to be.

And I just wasn’t putting energy into it. I wasn’t putting effort into it really as well. I was creating content inside PGSD and it felt to me like I hadn’t even differentiated in my mind or really in my calendar that just because I am in this kind of zone that I’m in right now doing things for PGSD, creating the get out of your own way challenge, doing quite a few bonus one on one calls with PGSDers as part of that challenge and like loving that, that the people who aren’t yet in PGSD weren’t getting that. And that even though I was in that state, that that was just within PGSD, and that wasn’t being shared outside of PGSD.

And so when it came to our podcast episodes, I was doing the very last minute, like the day before it needs to go out or a lot of like, I don’t have an episode this week, let’s just repurpose something that we know is going to be really helpful or that was really popular. And that’ll still be good enough. And it is good enough. But it’s really like one of the biggest realizations within this that I got is about the power of and I guess it’s kind of like the compound effect, but the power of showing up.

And when you’re sowing the seeds, so to speak, like and future you is going to do the harvest, that I hadn’t realized that me in 2022 was harvesting a lot of what previous me past me had created, that I had been showing up sharing on the podcast, like hundreds of episodes on Instagram emails, and doing all of that kind of thing. And that even as I began to slow down with that last year, I wasn’t feeling the, like the pain of that the effect of that last year. And even I would say like the year before, I had slow down on that, too. I didn’t feel that until this year.

And it really took, I would say two years to feel the effect of me not showing up fully for the business when it comes to content creation and really putting my heart and soul into the podcast episodes. And really just giving them a lot of energy, I will say because usually I write just quick notes. And I’m really just talking to my own self coaching, the coaching that I am giving to my clients I’ve worked with now over 1000 clients through one on one coaching initially, and now through PGSD. So I love to sharing those insights and observations and my real experiences. And when I had been reflecting back, I’m pretty sure I could pinpoint exactly when I switched mindset.

I’m pretty sure it was April 2020, which I know coincides with COVID, and all of that. But what I was thinking about was, I want to have a baby. And now I need to start preparing the business for me to not have to be there for the for the baby. My business is really my first baby, for my business to succeed. And I really switched into this mindset of like, I need to figure out how to not have the business depend on me. And also by virtue of that, which I hadn’t realized was been in this mindset of like, because of that, I need to figure out how it can succeed without me, bringing the same energy to podcast episodes and without me creating new ideas and coaching tools and all of this kind of thing.

And so there was still developments over those three years when it came to that. But really, it was just I took a step back in my mind and went into like I need to be focused on operations and hiring and training PGSD coaches and like making sure all our PGSDers are getting even better results. If I am in my first trimester feeling really nauseous and like, not able to show up and all of that, like I want to have the business be able to succeed without me having to be moving everything for day to day. And I just really hadn’t seen the impact of that because I was still harvesting the seeds that my past self had sown and I’m so grateful for that.

And also in so many ways as well. I had this year been putting last year 2022 on a pedestal it was our or has been our highest revenue year we made 600,000 Australian dollars. I’m pretty sure of to my head, the expenses came to about 300,000 So about 300,000 in profit from last year. And I was not spending much time in the business comparatively to previous years, especially to beginning years where I was making no money and I was working all day long. So it just felt like I was like oh well I should be able to make that same money again and work the same amount of hours or even less hours now because I’m better and I should know better.

And just in this real state of entitlement, and that is really the only word for it. I know a lot of us don’t like that word, we don’t want anyone to call us entitled, but just actually being like, I have been entitled, and really starting to look around, like in all areas of my life and be like, Oh, I can see a lot of entitlement. Like I shouldn’t have to do that I should already be in this place by now or have figured this out by now. And I think it’s very common for perfectionist to be in this entitlement. And so I hadn’t realized that that was going on. And that I was feeling entitled to basically being able to have that year that I had last year or better. And also, I hadn’t actually zoomed out to consider as well 2021, the year before it, what had gone on that year.

Because when I just look at our 2020 into like that year was a hit and whatever. It it’s just not actually helpful for me to think of it that way. Because so much of what went down in 2022. And me being able to work three days a week, and to be just recording episodes and reposting some things and like all of that. And so figuring out so many things and making so many mistakes, and having it be our most successful year that so much of that I had laid the groundwork for in 2021 when nothing felt like it was working. And also the previous years when nothing felt like it was working.

And as those years went on, I was making more money. And I went from when I started my business in 2013. Being a full time law student and commerce student majoring in finance, I have an appointment friend do. But I graduated from that in 2015. I worked as an accountant for a couple of years I was doing the blog, that’s how it all started the blog, on the side of all of that, I left my full time accounting job in 2017 to go to a part time, like receptionist role. And I was able to leave that and go full time in the business in 2019 in July. And then as I mentioned, it was only like nine months after that, that I went into this mode of like, okay, now, even though I’ve only literally been full time in this business for nine months, I need to figure out how to have the business not depend on me.

And so really, I’ve only had nine months of being full time in the business where I have felt safe for the business to depend on me. And now I’m kind of going back into that mode of like, oh, it’s safe for me to actually be the one writing all the emails and doing all the posts and like, actually have the business be dependent on me, I think until I had the twins. So my second and third child, I had been in a state of like, well, I don’t really know if having kids will impact my drive to be involved in the business and my interest in business. And maybe that’ll change. I feel like now having three kids and just been in a situation that I might, okay, it’s safe to say I’m still going to be interested in business, even if we have more kids and all of that kind of thing.

And so I can also figure out during that time, if I get pregnant again and have another child and all of that I can figure out systems processes like I can trust future me to be resourceful enough to find answers that allow me in this moment now, to have the business be dependent on me again, and to show up for the business in the way that I do know how to show up for the business. But that I had forgotten because I was being entitled about it and thinking that I should be further along I should know better than this. And all of that has just had me spending so much time spinning my wheels and been like working the same hours or even like more hours when it was May and June because I was like just putting so much pressure on myself just to be back in to be like my normal self.

And I’d say three weeks ago at this point, I’ve had this like moment of kind of like, I feel like myself again, like I could just I feel like me again. And so that’s what was it. I think I was maybe seven and a half months postpartum that I was like, Okay, I actually feel like myself I’m getting much more sleep. Physically. I’m feeling like myself again. And so I just really not given myself any grace or self compassion? For just so far, it’s so interesting thing about hadn’t really give myself self compassion and grace and whatever. At the same time I was being really entitled about like, well, I should be able to do all of this. And I should be able to handle all of it.

And because of that mindset, I wasn’t able to access the resourcefulness that I needed to access. I wasn’t able to access the clarity that was available to me, because I was being in entitlement. And just being in like, well, you know, this is my 10th year in business and like, we made $600,000 last year, and so we should just be able to do more than that this year. And I just haven’t been delivering, that’s the reality. That’s the situation.

And I think like I feel growth minded enough now, to be able to say that without me beating myself up about it, or making myself wrong about it, or feeling shame about it, but just like, oh, like from this launch, being painfully simple, instead of me being here being like, Oh, we tried this new messaging, and maybe that was what was going on. And that was different or this or that. It’s like, oh, no, literally, there just weren’t enough people seeing it and the people who were seeing it weren’t getting enough value from what I was sharing. That it would make sense for them to take the next step which would be to sign up and be my client inside perfectionist getting shit done.

And so as I said, even though we’re doing podcast episodes, a lot of those were repurpose, or as during the very last minute, we were having some posts go out on Instagram, most of those were repurpose. Renae was in charge of those, I was kind of in a mindset of like, I’m just not gonna be like, I don’t have time for that basically, like I it is beneath me. And it’s just so funny now seeing that, like, it’s not, it is not beneath me, not like nothing is beneath me. And I feel like like, I want to say that I am like, I don’t want to feel like I’m some kind of entitled person. But when I look at it, like, I am like that mindset of like, well, I should be further along than that by now.

And then by not doing those things actually not getting further along. Also, when it came to emails, I really hadn’t noticed how much of our email strategy had changed. And then it meant that people who were receiving emails from us, were getting the perfectionist power up. So this is a daily email that I send out, that just kind of give you a little something to help you get out of your own way. They’re very short, sweet to the point. So we send those out and I have been writing some new ones. But a lot of those like I was leaving all of my content creation until the end of the week. And so sometimes it didn’t happen.

And so I would be in this situation of like, okay, we need to repurpose old ones and share like a perfectionist pad that went up out a year prior, so that we can have something go out because I haven’t done it because I’m so busy doing whatever else. And also, we were sending out an email every week to announce a podcast episode that had gone out. But what we hadn’t realized and really like, it’s funny, just, again, keeping it painfully simple, that what I had been doing previously, was just sending out an two emails every week one that shared like something that I was thinking about an epiphany, a breakthrough, like a realization, something helpful.

And then also another email on a Thursday that went out to the PGSD waitlist, and people who were on that about PGSD or about one of the insights from a coaching call, so that they can apply it to their business, while they are waiting to get into PGSD for our next quarterly enrollment. So I was doing that and people who are on our email list, we’re able to get value from that without ever having to go to our podcast, or without ever having to go to Instagram. But the way that we had it set up was that the email on a Monday would basically be talking about Hey, go and listen to the podcast episode. But unless you went to listen to the podcast episode, that email in and of itself wasn’t actually helpful.

Like it didn’t actually have the value within it, the value of that email was, Hey, go and listen to this valuable podcast. But a lot of people who are listening to email aren’t going to go and listen to a podcast. And also just for numbers we have about well, actually, it depends how you look at it. We have a lot more people on our email list than we have who listen to the podcast. And so obviously, not all of those are podcast listeners, or at least listeners of my podcast. I know that for myself, I’m very picky when it comes to what podcasts I listen to, I don’t listen to new podcasts lightly. I really want to like hear someone else being interviewed, for example, before I’m gonna go and listen to their podcast.

So we like I just hadn’t really noticed that we weren’t within email, actually delivering the value there. And the same with Instagram as well. And so I had just been in this mindset of basically, content creation is beneath me. For whatever reason, like I’m above that now I should I should be beyond that now. And also, just in this mindset of the launch is the main thing that matters, and not thinking about the system as a whole, and that people need to be coming in and finding us and what we do and who we help. And then those people need to be getting helped. And then we talk about PGSD and then of course I guess if the Planning series episodes that were there to help promote pdic and celebrate that we were opening that enrollment quarter or enrollment week or whatever it is the like, just recognizing that those episodes aren’t going to matter if they’re like 2% better if they just really aren’t enough people, listening to them.

And because I had built up an audience over an extended period of time, like I never had an experience where anything went viral, I had this sudden spike in traffic or in pageviews, or in podcast downloads, like very gradual and incremental. But because I have been at this for a long time, it has accumulated. And so I had just been really as well like, entitled of like, and this is literally how it was in my head of like, well, there are people who listen to the podcast, I hear from people that they really love it. PGSDers tell us that they love the podcast to like, so I’m just able to just show up, and basically like, whatever I put out will be good enough.

And that mindset isn’t a helpful one to be in. And even though like I was just in this place of thinking about consistency, and consistency is very important. But once you’re consistent, especially once you’ve been consistent with something, for example, publishing podcast episodes, for a certain period of time, let’s say three to six months, then it’s time to really start thinking about what you’re actually being consistent with. And improving upon that developing that.

So when and it’s really thinking about like your own business for a second right now, if you aren’t showing up consistently, the first thing you need to do is get out of your own way release your perfectionism handbrake, this is what we really help you within PGSD, to help you show up consistently, because if you are not showing up consistently, you can’t get to the point where you’re then fine tuning and developing and iterating, and all of that.

Because if you think about going to the gym, for example, if you never go, you can’t tweak your workout plan to make it more effective. Because it doesn’t even matter what your workout plan is because you’re not going to the gym. So you just need to get yourself there, something’s better than nothing. And then once you have been going consistently, then it’s like, okay, well does it make sense that I’m going on the treadmill every time maybe I should switch it up or whatever that looks like. But until then just getting yourself there. And showing up consistently, which is something perfectionist find really hard when that perfectionism handbrake is on, we want to optimize things before we even started them.

And so we, as I mentioned, spent a lot of time on getting ready to get ready and thinking about it and all of that kind of thing. So you want to get to the point where you’re consistent. And then and we see this with so many of our clients in PGSD, once you become consistent, you then have this moment of like, okay, and now what because I’ve been thinking that once I was consistent, it’d be rainbows and daisies, and butterflies, and everything would be working perfectly. And the only reason I wasn’t successful wasn’t was because I wasn’t being consistent. And if I could just be consistent, then I would be successful. If I had more time to be consistent, then I would just be successful.

And then you figure out how to manage your time, you become consistently like, okay, and now I can just drop some of that entitlement I had to like whatever I do will work as long as I do it consistently. And now I can actually be growth minded about it. And look at okay, it actually matters, like the content of that podcast episode. For example, in my case matters just because yes, we are still continuing to publish an episode every Monday doesn’t mean that it’s doing what it needs to do. Initially, when I first started, like, yes, just show up and share. That’s what I needed to do. And I hadn’t realized that it had switched into Okay, now I’ve been consistent for hundreds of episodes.

Now, I really need to be paying attention not just to being consistent, which is still important. I need to add the next layer to it, which is consistently producing high quality work, not perfect work. And I’m not gonna go into it in this episode. Maybe that’s one that would be good to do in the future, let me know actually send me a DM on Instagram @perfectionismproject, if you would like to hear more about this. But it’s not about we can really get him I just want to create valuable, highly valuable content and then be so perfectionistic about it.

And I mean, this is this is where I was at, which is like trying to just you know, when you’re trying to do something perfectly, and you end up not doing it at all. We don’t want to be doing that with the content. So we want to be growth minded about it, which means seeing it as a skill that we develop with practice and paying attention looking at the data, getting feedback I recently sent out and I’ll link it up in the show notes because maybe you’re not on my email list so you haven’t seen this. I recently sent out a survey asking for honest please put your people pleasing tendencies aside for a minute. Honest feedback your honest thoughts constructive criticism about this podcast like, it’s so hard as well with a podcast because there aren’t comments that there isn’t that like that interaction that you can really see what’s going on.

So I want to get feedback about it, I want to really develop this skill of podcasting. And everyone obviously have different preferences and tastes and whatever, when it comes to podcast, but I know that I can be creating more valuable content, a lot of times I know that just comes from me trusting myself more like that is key. And all of it is the more I trust myself, the higher quality content I create. And when I’m trusting myself, it usually doesn’t take a lot of time to create that content. Because I trust myself, so I don’t have to overthink it, I can get in my own way about it. I don’t overthink the creation, and then should I publish it? And how should I format it, I just allow myself to do it. I put it out there.

And I trust as well that future me will figure out if that’s not working and do it in a different way. So yeah, with the podcast, just seen that. The consistency, like there’s more to it than that. And with Instagram, because we haven’t been showing up consistently there, I haven’t been showing up consistently there. Because of the mindset stuff I’ve talked about in this episode, that I haven’t really, and still to this day, because of that inconsistency on Instagram, I haven’t really been able to see what works and what doesn’t work, because I haven’t been doing it for long enough for emails that has been very consistent. And so it’s easy to see. But this is part of the painful simplicity.

And part of getting back for me like this is my takeaway and like how I’m applying this is really just creating a painfully simple painful is such a key word in this like, until you’re in pain about the level of simplicity, it isn’t simple enough. But a painfully simple on entitled, plan for an meaningless meaningless I’m creating is basically just go on Instagram stories and share, go on the podcast and share, share on emails. And also I’m thinking about if someone only listens to the podcast, or they’re only following me on Instagram, or they’re oily on my email list, how can I make sure that they’re getting all the value.

So it’s not that we end up in a situation where people in the email is just getting told about the podcast. But that’s not valuable unless you’re a podcast listener. And maybe you’re already a podcast listener, and you get that in your feed anyway. And so that’s still not that valuable. So I’m just thinking about it in that way. And for me, like getting out of the entitlement, so that I can be unentitled about it is like, nothing is beneath me, nothing is something that I can’t do. And so just kind of going back into my like, showing up on Instagram stories. And even though in my brain is like I will that takes like so long to do not really, but it takes a long to do and so much time and I should be spending my time on other things, but just getting like, I need to be sowing those seeds.

Again, that is my job to sow those seeds. And part of it is just having a like prioritizing the content creation. That’s a really, really, really important part of my job, I have realized that now prioritizing that I’m not leaving at the end of the week and squeezing it in. I’m prioritizing that. And I’m keeping it so simple, that I just need to show up and do my thing and know that as I’m sowing those seeds, it might be a while again, maybe before the harvest comes. But I know from having this launch be painfully simple. The power of that. And what happens if you don’t have things painfully simple or in a painfully simple way and that the complexity, we love the busyness from it, we love the drama of it.

And it really, it just muddies things up. And it really creates a lot of defeat, it creates a lot of feeling deflated and inadequate, because things are changing so much and they’re so complex, we aren’t actually able to see like, oh, there’s not enough traffic and the traffic we have, like the people in our world aren’t getting the value they need to get and we could see that in the stats, just seeing like the conversion rate from the podcast to the sales page and different things like that. And also I just know, I know I know what it’s like when I’ve been really committed to my content and showing up here and sharing and I know what it’s like when I haven’t been and I haven’t been so I am in that mode again.

But it really is just about getting back to basics. Not trying to create some kind of fancy plan and not getting too far ahead of myself. And just wanting to be somewhere that I’m not somewhere that I think is going to be better than here. The irony being that where I am now is what past me was so desperate to be thinking that he would be better than there. So it’s really just about having that mentality of, I’m like, I’m just going to do the things that I need to do. I’m going to do the content creation, even if it takes ages. And I had a realization last year about Instagram that I shared on the podcast after I did a time audit of my power planning. And how much time was going into Instagram, I had this conclusion from that I was like, Okay, well, I just need to like not really do that anymore.

And yes, there was a lot of overthinking going on. Like, in my work, we, I was spending about 50% of my time, creating content, and it wasn’t like you could tell that from the outside, I was showing up and sharing. But that wasn’t reflected. Like that wasn’t in accordance with the number of hours spent there. It would take me sometimes like two to three hours to write a post and do the graphic for it and all of this kind of thing. And it just like it was more time that I needed. I was doing overthinking. But I kind of just like threw the baby out with the bathwater. And I was like, Okay, well, I need to be doing other things. And I really didn’t need to be doing other things. I just needed to not be overthinking that thing.

And other things that I was overthinking as well. So, so let’s get into the numbers for the launch. And there are so many other things I want to share about like clean commitment, particularly because I spoke about that so much in part one. It is of self coaching that I talked about as well. There’s just so many things I want to share. But I’m not going to share them all in this episode, send me a DM if you do want me to talk about anything more specifically, and I’ll do an episode on that. But I just want to keep it to the main thing, which is about painful simplicity. And for yourself as well, just to quickly now just like have you think about your business. Where are you creating complexity?

And this is really hard to see. And that question honestly probably isn’t going to help you find it. What I like to do to find simplicity or to identify where that could be the question I got from Tim Ferriss many years ago now, what would this look like if it was easy, and also just kind of having a plan. So say you are doing a launch? So you’re not whatever it is like looking at it. And just seeing like, what is essential? And what’s the stuff I really would not want to give up? And then being able to even just open the door on the option of not doing that thing the way you wanted to do it and like what could it look like if I did a different day? Or how could I simplify this? Or if I had half as much time to get it done? What would I remove?

Like that’s one of those questions like that kind of question of if I had half as much time or say you work five days a week, if I had one day a week, and I wanted to create this result, which parts of this plan would I remove and which parts would I keep? And it’s like the 80-20 rule that 20% of your efforts create 80% of your results. And so that’s what we want to get out with the painful simplicity. And is not saying like we don’t want to create this entitlement to if you are keeping things painfully simple your plan will work. What will happen is if you are keeping things painfully simple, either your plan will work or it won’t.

But either way, you will know so much more about why and have it have a better chance of working because you can execute it fully versus if you have a complicated plan that you can’t even execute fully anyway. And if you do do that, or even if you don’t, then at the end of it, you’re left scratching your head and feeling inadequate because it didn’t work. And you don’t know why or it did work. And it feels like such a fluke because you don’t know why. So I don’t want you to be in entitlement, like I have been about if you have a painfully simple plan. That means a plan should work. And the launch that we had in April, May last year. I was in this entitlement. I talked about it in the debrief for that. And I hadn’t even seen entitlement before it myself in that way.

And it was just like it wasn’t a new feeling. But I hadn’t wanted to see it in myself. And so I had it and I just I was in this entitlement about like if I get all my work done early and easily, then it should work then we should have the number of signups we want and it’s like with the content of what’s what that work is actually matters. The number of people seeing that work matters and so it’s helpful at times and this is what we had done during this launch has been in this mindset of like, well, you know, we want 88 signups and to have these people in PGSD, so we can help them.

We have more than that many more than that. Listen to the podcast. I’ll share numbers in a second but we have more than that listening to podcast. So we should be able to have that many signups again, like this entitlement of like should. And the reality is, that would be an insanely high conversion rate. If we had say for a launch episode, one to 2000 people listening to that and 88 people sign up.

That is a very high conversion rate for a program that cost a few $1,000. And so it’s helpful to be in that mindset, like once you’re in the situation where you’re selling, and you’re like, okay, here are the people and I’m just going to, I’m not going to focus on others or not people and whatever. But like in the lead up, just not noticing. Actually, there’s not enough people here for 88 signups to make sense. But because we hadn’t been and myself particularly hadn’t been in this clean commitment, prior, like in the months prior to the launch. And that had only been right before the launch. That the questions that we were asking, like, we hadn’t really given enough attention to that.

And we’re just very focused on the launch itself being so important, like, oh, maybe we need to write this email and have that one be a new one of like, regardless, there’s just not enough people seeing it. And I think it can just be so free to be like, oh, like, there is nothing wrong with me. And there’s just not enough people seeing it, and I wasn’t showing up. And now I’m going to do the personal development work needed to be able to show up fully, and to be like to create emotional safety for myself, being in front of more people being visible, like having more people hear this and more people potentially criticize it or whatever, that I’m going to create that emotional safety for myself to do those two things. And not just being this confusion. And just feeling like I don’t know what’s going on.

So for the numbers, and as I’m reading through my notes, there are so many things I want to mention the launch week, I was sick and unwell and just like all these different things, but basically, let’s go through the numbers and then I’m going to wrap it up because I feel like I have shared what I need to share in this episode. So as I mentioned, nine signups 88 was our goal. I’ll talk about goal setting the Growth Goal, all of that in my update that will be coming out in the next few episodes reflecting on my own quarter three milestone for my growth goal. But 9 out of 88, which was our goal, cash collected, that means 21,500 US dollars, which is approximately 33,300 Aussie dollars.

If you didn’t know I am Australian, I live in Brisbane and PGSD is in US dollars. Most of our PGSDers are in the States. But the company finances because it’s an Australian company are in Australian dollars. So lifetime value of the signups from this launch, which means once everyone has paid their payment plan so we had, as I said nine signups I think it was five paying full, or maybe it was five payment plan people and then four paying fulls. So once everyone has paid their payment plans that will be 38,000 US dollars, and 59,000 approximately Australian dollars. The expenses, I’ll talk about that more in the growth goal update. But the expenses were more than in this quarter than the revenue from the launch. So stay tuned, I’m going to be talking about that then the podcast downloads.

So I really hadn’t realized that since the beginning of January, or since January 2022. The downloads for the podcast series that were going out on the podcast, were decreasing. But because overall podcast downloads have increased, we’re at like 2.7 million, which is awesome. But podcast downloads have increased overall. But they have been decreasing again, like I have also been in this entitlement. And also like, Yes, life changes going on and all of that. But I hadn’t noticed like, oh, there are less and less people listening to the podcast slowly over time, like not a dramatic drop. But there’s less and less people. And it was kind of like just seeing like I have been sowing all these seeds. And we have been harvesting them and at some point there aren’t there isn’t as much to harvest if you have stopped sowing.

So in 20… So in our January launch in 2022, we had 3866 people listen to part one of this series by the time that the doors to PGSD had closed. So what I mean by all of that is just in the five part series that we do first episode, which has typically the most downloads of all of them. That first episode, we keep track of how many downloads we had when enrollment closed, and it was 3866 and then it went down. So we went back Renae went for me through this and compare the numbers going back through. And in this last launch that we had, we had 1940 downloads on that part one, so about half of the number of downloads, and also there are PGSDers who were listening to the podcast as well. So yeah, and there’s the people then who listened to the whole series.

So I think I’d have to go look up the numbers. But there were significantly less than that, who listened to part five where I talked specifically about PGSD. So I want to say maybe it was around 1000, who listened to that episode. And so when you look at the podcast is our main place that we get clients. And when there are 1000 people approximately, who are listening to that, and we want 88 signups, that is like one in 10, people who listen to that will sign up for PGSD. That is, as far as a conversion rate from podcast, to a program that cost a few $1,000.

That is a very high conversion rate. Also considering as well like the context of it, which was that I hadn’t been showing up and doing my usual thing, as well. And, yeah, just that it just, I don’t know, it’s just so funny with the clarity of a painfully simple launch. To just see like, I literally no, I would not, if we had done different, like not just done that launch and repeated it overall, I essentially pretended in our mind, the launch we just have was the one after that January launch, that I would be here saying like, Okay, well as like, we need to improve like the messaging probably, or we need to improve this or that. And like, they just I wouldn’t have seen there just weren’t enough people and I just wasn’t doing my job.

And now I can just have more people come in, and Renae be in charge of that. And I can do my job content creation wise. And it might take a minute, like not being entitled about Okay, so the launch that we have next, we should have, we should hit our goal or whatever. But just like no, I’m just going to do my job. And I’m going to stay focused with that and committed with that. And it’s going to be boring at times tedious at times, I’m going to want to waver. But that is the plan. Like I know what I need to do now. I know and this has all revealed it to me. So as I mentioned, total podcast downloads 2.7 million. And then when it comes to the actually, I was going to read the stats out for the podcast downloads just gave you a bit of context, I won’t go through all of them because we had the five Planning series episodes.

And if you want to learn power planning, start learning the basics, so you can start doing Power planning to help you get out of it. And we go to Episode 415. And listen to that series. I share so many helpful things in that. But episode 415 to 419 was a Planning series than we had two episodes going out during the OpenCart period, we had an interview with PGSDer Natalie Koons. This was an interview that we had published in I think it was the may launch last year. And then I did an episode with Renae answering your questions about PGSD. You can hear in the episode, I’m under the weather, but I was so energized by recording that episode and just like talking about it all, which was heaps of fun doing that.

And then we had a few like a special announcement episode, we had a normal episode go out at the end, how to escape how to escape indecision fatigue, which was a repurpose episode from whatever year that would have been from. And then I recorded a few mini episodes that went out during the open cart as well. So during Yeah, during open cart, I’ll talk about it in a second. But Renae and I were doing a bunch of things during open cart that we hadn’t planned, because we will just focus on staying present in the launch. And that was another really powerful thing about keeping it painfully simple, was being able to stay present and catch ourselves when we were trying to escape into future thinking.

But yeah, for the downloads that we had, as I mentioned 1940 downloads on that part one by the time the doors close to PGSD. For the OpenCart episodes, we had 1388 then 981 and then 712. And for the mini episodes that went out and this is all the numbers at doors close to PGSD. We had about five to 600 for those episodes as well. So when you look at those numbers and you look at the goals that we had for the launch. And again, I’ll talk about in that growth goal after like, why the goal was at eight. And what I would have done differently in hindsight and what we’re doing for our next goal for the PGSD launch, that is in December.

I can’t wait to open the doors again to PGSD. But anyway, all that to say, I will tell you more about that. But yeah, those are the episode download numbers that we had, in terms of sales pageviews, as well. We had approximately in terms of unique page views about I’m just quickly looking at it’s like 40 to 60, unique pageviews per day. And then on the final day, we had 83 unique page views on the PGSD sales page, some of those as well, it hasn’t been separated out which of those already PGSDers who on that page to log in.

So when it comes to I just wanted to really quickly mentioned about it, the launch period, because in the in part one of this I mentioned about like, okay, like Instagram stuff, like all of that stuff’s already going to be done. But because Renae and myself were really focused on like, let’s really be committed to this goal. And not in this like hustling energy and about it or like this inadequate energy about it. Same thing, or really just like how I had been, which is just uncommitted and like detached and just like not even really thinking about it, but like, okay, like, let’s be present with it, that we ended up during open cart, we added a bonus to PGSD the align marketing bundle, which was awesome. And we were able to do that because we have Renae’s expertise with marketing, so that we could offer something that had marketing specific things.

It was a workshop that Renae and I taught. And then the pgcs, who signed up got a one on one bonus call was Renae to have her eyes on their marketing plan that they had created during the workshop. And then they also get a bonus follow up one on one call with Renae as they begin implementing that plan so they can come back and ask further marketing questions. And Renae has made million dollar funnels for multiple businesses. So it’s just so fun to be able to offer that kind of thing to our PGSDers.

So we added that bonus in, we also ended up creating quite a few things. For Instagram, we sent out extra emails. And we also sent out a lot of personal emails as well, just to people that we thought might want to know that we had added that bonus to PGSD. So we sent out a lot of emails and we just like we have noticed, or I will speak for myself, I have noticed that I have a habit of just wanting to spend a lot of time thinking about the future as a way to escape the present. It’s like I feel like I have more control over this future point in time, where I will be better than present day.

And if I feel like things aren’t going how I want them to go. Or even like, even if things aren’t not going well. I just like love thinking about the future. And all the amazing things that are like Oh, like this is how it’s done. I have the best idea for the next launch, like, oh, this thing that I’m going to do. Like, it’s all just like, even if though I do do those things, I do do a lot of the things that I plan. But in a launch, it’s so important to just stay present or in anything to just not get ahead of yourself. And so during this launch, we were really focused on like, okay, let’s make sure we are staying present. And we both know, we’re gonna have so many ideas for future launches, and we’re gonna want to talk about them together.

We were working in person together, every day, I was working nine till two because I wasn’t well. And I didn’t have to work like all the core stuff had been done ahead of time. Part of keeping it painfully simple is that we can get it all done ahead of time. So that I had all been done, but I really wanted to show up for the launch. So I did that in a way that would also support my health and my family and not have me burning out. So we knew we’d be able to talk about stuff about okay, we’re not going to talk about the future and all our ideas, we have to park them and we will come back to them and let’s stay present like all the way so Australian time that was close at 2pm.

Like all the way to the end. We are staying present to this launch and not going into debrief mode, not thinking about the next one. We’ve just been in the here and now. So that was really helpful to do as well. I highly recommend that. So also just quickly the final stats that I want to share with you in terms of email. So we sent approximately 25 emails with a daily perfectionist power up email as well, the open rates were 31 to 33%, which is normal for us unsubscribes, about five to 20 people per email. So normal to have unsubscribes, especially in a sales emails, like you want to see those unsubscribes. So we had, what number is that 11,480 subscribers on our list at the start of the launch. As I mentioned, there were unsubscribes, we’re sending over email. So it was less than that by the end of the launch.

And for Instagram, we had 53.8 1000 followers, 17 posts during that time, an average of 10 to 500 likes per post, we’re mainly focusing on stories, which is 2 to 400 views. And I know like the one I have been showing up consistently on stories and not just showing up consistently but doing that and then sharing helpful things that our views have been about one to 2000 or 3000. So it was significantly less than that, during this because I hadn’t been showing up. So of course it was going to be that way. So that is really my debrief on the launch. I hope it’s been helpful to hear me chat through it. And it’s all just about bringing it back to painful simplicity.

How can I make this more simple, and then asking yourself that again and again, until you’re in pain, about the level of simplicity until it physically hurts, like you have that feeling of your stomach of like, oh like this, to have it be this simple. Like I’m really having to give up all these little bells and whistles and like you have to give up things that feel essential because your perfectionist brain is definitely going to overestimate what is required is so funny. Like we overestimate what’s required. And we underestimate how long it will take to do everything. That’s another I haven’t even talked about it in this episode.

Such a big benefit of painful simplicity is because so many of us completely like we have that fantasy self worth thinking about future us who’s going to be so motivated and just like, know exactly what to say and whatever that we really like, we can call it optimism. But it’s really just having unrealistic expectations and demands of yourself that we can really underestimate how long things take. So when you have a painfully simple plan, that’s the plan you’re able to execute. If it is going to be complex, then most likely, you’re not going to be able to even do it all. And so there’s no point fine tuning that plan or no matter how good it is. If it doesn’t get executed, then it doesn’t matter.

It’s not like school, where things it’s like about potential, and like how good you can be in the future and how much promise you have. Business isn’t like that. It’s about what are you actually able to create, and having an amazing plan that doesn’t get executed? Doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t give you any benefit. Because it’s all about application implementation like that’s what creates the results. So yeah, keeping it simple, painfully simple. Just ask yourself like, Am I in pain about the level of simplicity? And if not make it even more simple. What would this look like? If it was easy what would this look like? If I was more courageous? Is there a more direct way to get to my goal most likely there is just going to be a little bit scarier.

Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to show myself that I am capable of doing that? So with that said, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you are wanting to sign up for the waitlist for perfectionist getting shit done, go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to sign up. The doors will be opening again in December. And we are doing something special to celebrate the launch for PGSD. So I will be telling you more about that soon. Stay tuned. But yeah, until then, I hope you’re 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