Episode 107: Planning A Launch (Project Management Tips)

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Hey everyone, this is Julie. Hope you're doing awesome today. I want to talk about how I think through a launch project. Now I am aware that there are lots of types of launches, whether it's one, webinars, challenges, giveaways, events, but no matter what you're getting out into the world, there's a way to think about launching when you sit down to kind of archetype the project. Now, if you are using a project management tool like many people do, this is where I like simple project management tools that allow me to quickly make lists without getting bogged down by the details. So I think one of the issues that overwhelms people when, when they're planning their promotions is that there's a lot of dependencies like certain tasks depend on other tasks and who's going to do those tasks and when are the deadlines and all that kind of stuff. So here's sort of how I think about it. The first thing that I do is I actually pull up my Google Calendar. My Google Calendar is sort of just runs everything about my life and I have, you know, six, seven different calendars all layered on each other. And so I use the calendar to depict, all right, what is the date that I actually want this thing out in the world. Now for a launch, remember, sometimes there are pieces of the launch that are the pre launch. So if you have a coming soon page or you have a webinar registration page, for example, you're going to need those pages faster than you'll need the sales page. So you want to sort of identify these drop dead dates of when you need assets done. So let's say you're launching at the end of January. So January 31st is the date that your cart opens. You need your sales page, you need your order form, you need all that stuff done. That's like a drop dead date for a lot of things. But you know that you're going to start the pre launch right? Let's Say you're doing a webinar, you're going to start that on the 17th. So the 17th is really a secondary drop dead date for some of those earlier assets, maybe group cover photos, maybe Facebook ads, maybe a webinar registration page. So you want to come up with the those two drop dead dates in a launch. You may have more, but one is the pre launch drop dead date and one is the launch drop dead date. That way you can back into when all this other stuff needs to be done once you have those dates. And I like to choose Mondays just because it makes it easy for me to know that things have to be ready on the Friday before. And I would just sort of plunk that stuff down on your calendar and then you can always move it around, right? You know, if maybe, maybe your team does work on the weekends, for example. But for us, I know that if I'm going to start talking about a webinar on the 17th, everything has to be done on the 14th, right? That's that drop dead date for the prelaunch, the webinar registration page, the group cover photos, the Facebook ads, the ad creative and copy. So that's the first thing you do is come up with those dates. The second thing is that you want to make a list of all the stuff that you have to do. And I like to think about it in this order. First, I like to think about all of the copy. And copy usually comes before design. So I write all the different pieces of copy that I have to write, emails, landing pages, sales pages, fulfillment emails, all that sort of stuff. If you are launching a course that's never been launched before, you're actually going to also have to include any copy in sort of the delivery of it, like a welcome area, that sort of thing. Then after copy, I think about design. So once that copy is written, what design has to be built from it, right? Whether it's design a funnel or design a cover photo or make a product mock up shot or anything like that. So I do it all in the sort of the realm of copy first, design second. And then when it comes to tech, I think one of the things that people get really bogged down with is that they start writing out all the little pieces of tech that they need to do. And at this point in the planning process, I like to keep things sort of big picture. So I will make a to do item in Basecamp that says tech, you know, set up the funnel, tech, set up the automation, but I'm not going to sit there and rack my brain on every little step. Because your brain isn't in that mode, right? You're kind of in that bird's eye view. And this is where learning how to work with your natural, natural, like the way your brain naturally works is really helpful. So I'll just put tech there. Same thing with, you know, Facebook ads or marketing. Like, let's say Instagram. Let's say you're gonna, you know, do story promos every day leading up to it. I'm gonna do Instagram promotion, right? I'm gonna just do macro. And I'm thinking big picture. Because when you make that list, you're not really worrying about who's doing exactly what. You're not looking for the little tiny checklists. You're looking for just the big things that have to be done. And maybe you're just putting the dates. And again, I like to work with two deadline dates. Once you start having a million dates around there, it feels kind of arbitrary. You can always move it around later. But if you're like, okay, all of this has to be on deadline one, and all of this has to be on deadline two, then you can go back and be like, oh, well, the copy has to be done even before that, so that the design. Right? But you're doing macro. You're thinking big. The analogy that I like to use about this is when you go to clean out your kitchen, let's say if you're cleaning out your kitchen, you're taking everything out and you're sort of rearranging. You probably. Unless you get stuck in procrastination, you probably don't sit there and microscopically organize a junk drawer in the middle of redoing your whole kitchen organization, right? Because that's super micro. And so I know when I'm cleaning, let's say I'm cleaning the whole house, right? Or even just one room. I'm going to take. I can see, oh, look at all that stuff that doesn't belong in this room. I'm going to just stick it in a basket for now, and then I'm going to sort it out later. So think of it that way. In your project management tool, you're looking for all the big tasks. You're going through copy first and you're going through design, then you're adding, you know, tech or marketing promotions. You're kind of categorizing it according to these two key dates. And then you're going to go through each thing more individually. Like you would go through a junk drawer. Like you'd go through that laundry basket filled with crap. And you're actually going to figure out, you know, what of those little pieces have to be done and where those dates have to be arranged. So you, in that way, you go from macro to micro. And the nice thing is, is that as you're working in whatever project management tool you have, let's that one of your big tasks was make ad creative, right? So you're, you know, that's, you got to do creatives. Well, what are you going to need there? Right? You're going to need an Instagram post, you're going to need an Instagram story, you're going to need a Facebook post. Facebook story. Maybe you'll need a video. Now you're just thinking in that little context of that creative. And you can add all of those little notes in that task so that you have everything you need. So I hope this helps with your project management. I actually got the idea of this podcast because I'm working on a project for January, has to be done pretty quickly. And I did this exact process where I looked at the two key dates. I thought about the copy, then I thought about the design. I kept everything macro. And then I went through line by line on each of those tasks and wrote out the details and adjusted the dates accordingly if there were dependencies. So I hope that helps you. I hope you have a great start to 2022 and I'll talk to you soon.

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