Episode 44: The Silent Killer of Entrepreneurial Dreams Everyone Underestimates

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey everyone, this is Julie. Hope you are doing awesome today. I want to talk to you about the silent killer of entrepreneurial dreams that everyone underestimates. I am in the middle of a big launch. My partner and I, Kathy, launched Webinar Gorgeous this week. Webinar Gorgeous is a basically our spin on webinar training. So anybody who's doing an online presentation of any kind, we have combined design with these gorgeous themed PowerPoint and Google Slide slide decks, along with conversion strategy training to learn what to put on the slides, why they work, all that kind of stuff. So in getting ready for this launch, I set some goals. And one of the scariest parts about the whole launch was that I thought that I would document it in real time. And it's always safer to document things after the fact because you can kind of edit them and, you know, make them look better than maybe they actually are. But I thought, you know what? No, I'm going to actually do this in real time. So I did a pre launch. Kathy and I sent out emails to our Funnel Gorgeous list and got them all excited about Webinar Gorgeous. And on my email list I actually went through sort of a deconstruction of what I was doing behind the scenes. I haven't written another. I wrote about three emails and then we got sucked into the launch. So I haven't had a chance to write another one yet. And I will do a sort of a post mortem breakdown. But one of the scariest parts was that I was afraid to call my shot in one of my emails because I thought, well, gosh, like I could be so out of line here. But I knew that I knew conversion rates, I knew benchmarks, I knew like the history of the market. And so I thought I'm going to just set my goals and then I'm going to write them in an email for thousands and thousands of people to see. So I set a goal of getting 4,000 people to see our offer and then I thought, well, you know what? The average purchase rate on a launch is anywhere between 1 and 5%. I know that we're going to a very hot audience. I know that I'm a good marketer. I'm going to start with a baseline of 3% just because I know my history. So 3% of 4,000 people seeing an offer would be about 120 sales. 5% would be 200, and then 10%, which would be nuts, is 400 sales. And so I set those three goals, and I always do this. I set a minimum goal, I set an ideal goal, and then I set a crazy goal. I threw that out into the interwebs and then sort of panicked, and I thought, gosh, well, what if I'm completely off? Like, people are just going to think that I'm just blowing smoke. It got me thinking, because it's now. What day is it? It's now Friday. The cart's going to close on Monday. And as of right now, we have had not quite 4,000 people see the offer. We have crossed 3,000 people to see the offer, and we have another couple days left. So I'm thinking to myself, wow, 4,000 views for the offer was actually pretty. That was a pretty good estimate. And we are at 258 sales. And I had had my minimum goal at $120, my ideal goal at $200, and my crazy goal at $400. So I am currently, Kathy and I are hanging between the ideal goal and the crazy goal. And it got me thinking, which, by the way, this is, like, awesome. You guys don't even, like, I don't know what it is. It's a very high buy rate. We're approaching, quickly approaching $75,000 in sales for this launch, which, on a $197 product is a great accomplishment. But here's the point, and this is bringing. I'm telling you this entire story because I want to talk about that silent killer that crushes entrepreneurial dreams that nobody seems to, you know, estimate. We all underestimate it. And that is your expectation. So I am sitting here right now talking to you and explaining to you how awesome this launch is going. And I'm feeling really proud and satisfied, and there's lots of good emotion, lots of momentum. Okay? And why? Why? Because I'm looking at my expectation that I set for myself in my goals, driven by reality and math, and I'm looking at the fact that I am hitting my target and reaching and racing for my, like, heck, yeah, target. And that puts me in a really positive mindset. However, just a few days before I set these goals, Kathy, and I love her to death. Like, she is the most talented person ever. But her strength isn't numbers, right? Her strength is design and branding. And she's just like. She blows everybody I've ever met out of the water. But numbers aren't her thing. Spreadsheets aren't her thing. And so she was sitting down one night with me, and she's like, we should totally have $100,000 launch. That would be amazing. And I'm like, yeah, that would be amazing and completely unrealistic. And Kathy, who has been around the block a few times, didn't think that I was being a dream crusher. She was like, oh, all right. Well, what's realistic? And so then I went through sort of my number crunching. She's like, okay. She's like, I wish I could say it's 100K. And I said, yeah, and you'd be smoking crack. And it was just this funny conversation because had we just been like, oh, yeah, let's do a $100,000 launch, that'd be amazing, right? Had we set that goal, had we set that expectation right now, we would be feeling a very different feeling. We'd be feeling like failures, or we'd be feeling like we missed our goal. And so the silent killer that happens is. And this happens over and over and over again is that people set unrealistic goals and expectations for their funnels, for their products, for their services. They get disillusioned, they lose momentum, and they become completely and utterly vulnerable to shiny object syndrome or guru worship, right? Where you're like, okay, I didn't get it. I need to go find another shiny object. I need to go find another magic bullet. I need to go find another guru. And you become so vulnerable to that. Not only are you disillusioned, not only do you think your product sucks, but your expectations are just completely out of whack, and it kills more people's mojo than anybody would like to admit. And so what I would say is that when you are setting goals and expectations for yourself and in your business, use math. I love math. I wasn't super, super talented at math when I was in high school, but I love math. I love a good spreadsheet that helps me look at, realistically, what I can expect. Now, a lot of people would look at me, someone who has, you know, an email list of 32,000 people. I have a big platform, and they would think looking at my goals and I bet you some actually thought this, gosh, 4,000 people to see the sales page. Why does she think she's only going to get 4,000 people to see the sales page? Why doesn't she think she's going to get 20,000? I mean, she's got an email list of 30,000. She's got 10,000 people following her. She's got 27,000 people in her Facebook group. And people do like marketer math, not real math, marketer math. And they're like, oh, we can get 10, 20,000 people to see the offer, right? And they start out with a completely, like, ass backwards view of what they are actually capable of. And I blame bad marketers on this because we set these expectations and we see only, like highlight reels and ads and we don't understand that, you know, that real life, like, even if you have a following that big, it's hard to get 4,000 people to go to a sales page in seven days. And Kathy and I are going to hit it because we both have our own email lists. We have a funnel Gorgeous email list. We have Facebook groups, we have Instagram followings. We will come close to getting 4,000 unique human beings to see our sales offer in seven days. I am giving you that benchmark so you can say, all right, when you go to launch your thing, Julie and Kathy with combined email lists, I would say if you combine our email list and funnel gorgeous, you are looking at probably close to 40,000 people on our email list and a Facebook group of 27,000. We're getting 10% of our following to actually pay enough attention to go over to our sales page. So 4,000 views and we're hitting a 5 to 7% buy rate. That's high. I wouldn't necessarily expect that you would be able to hit that. I'm looking for 1 to 5%. And for anybody who's turning on like a funnel, this is another thing that I am always asking my digital insiders. What are your goals? What are your expectations? What's a minimum, what's an ideal, and what's a crazy goal? Give yourself that range. Base it in real, actual math. And what will happen is, number one, you will go into your launch or your ad campaign with realistic glasses on, which will help you actually create slow growth over time. You don't want super, super fast growth. A lot of people think they want super, super fast growth. And I don't mean slow like it takes you four years. I just mean steady growth over time. Because if you spike too fast, too high you run into all kinds of deliverability problems and then you end up with unhappy customers. So you want that steady growth math will help you get there. Like, I love math. Math for the win. Today's lesson is all about math. But math combined with setting expectations that are realistic so that when you enter into a launch or a funnel or you're doing something new on your business, you can actually, number one, feel really accomplished when you hit your minimum goal. Right? Everybody should be able to hit their minimum goal. If you can't hit your minimum goal, I would say readjust right. You actually kind of. It would be awesome to, like, blaze past your minimum goal and hit your ideal goal. I think that my goal setting for this particular launch was on point because I did what I knew would give us the most momentum, which is we hit our ideal goal, we're racing for our crazy. And it means that no matter what happens at the end, we're going to feel really solidly proud our product, and we're going to be able to give quality attention to all of our customers. And then we have market validation and we're ready to go off to the races to sell this in an evergreen format. So I hope this was a helpful lesson for you. And I would encourage you to use math to set your goals and expectations so that you can create momentum in your business. And inoculate. That's one of the words that my friend James Friel uses all the time. Inoculate yourself from disillusioned, reactive, shiny object buying when your expectations were sort of all messed up to begin with. I appreciate y'. All. I'll talk soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today. Sam.