MBA1697 Are You Launching Too Late? + Free Ride Friday

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Hey, today is Free Ride Friday, so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode here. Who won this week's Free Ride? Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. Just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that always got your back. Every day, our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn Are you launching Too Late? Whether you're launching a new product, a new business, a new website, a new service, many of us are not really sure if we're launching too late, too early. How do you know? How do you evaluate if you're taking too long to release whatever you've been on or your delays are justified? What's a process that you can use to really nail down if your launch timeline, your launch date, and sticking to it is best for your business. Many people worry if they launch too early, the product or the service or the site or whatever it is is not as good as it should be. If you launch too late, you might lose momentum. You might lose market share. You lose out on months of potential growth. Opportunity costs are really a factor here. So I want to share with you the process that we use at Webinar Ninja, our webinar software, to evaluate our launch to address these concerns. It's taken us years to get to this point, and instead of just keeping it to myself, I want to share it with you so you can feel confident that you're launching. Not too early, not too late. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business, guys.

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I want to begin by saying, whenever you are launching something new in your business, a new feature, a new product, a new service, or a whole new business, this is exciting. This is something that you want to celebrate. You also want to capitalize on this opportunity and this excitement because it's a chance for you to market, and chances like these don't come every day. Okay, so you want to do this right? Secondly, I want to make sure that we differentiate between launching a new business and a new feature or product or service within an existing business. Launching a new business where you have zero clients, right, where you don't have any customers yet, your risk is very low. Okay? You could afford to launch with a very minimal viable product or service because there's nothing to compare it to. Okay? You don't have existing customers that are used to a certain level of product or service, so something new needs to wow them or needs to be better than the existing status quo. But if you're fresh, if you're new, there's nothing to compare it to. So it's okay if it's simple, it's okay if it's minimal. So if this is a new business, a new product altogether, then you should err on launching as early as possible. Why? Because the earlier you launch, the earlier you're going to get feedback from customers to improve the product and make it better for them. The end of the day, your customers are your biggest stakeholders. These people are the ones that are going to drive your business forward. So you got to make sure that you get feedback as soon as possible. And getting feedback before you actually put something in their hands or for them to experience, even if it's just a website launch, is very hard. People really can tell you what they don't like. When something's not working, when something's not convenient, when it's not user friendly. That's very easy to defy. As human beings, we are wired to express discomfort, to express when something doesn't feel. Feel right. But if you're asking somebody to come up with what they want, that's a different story, and it's a lot harder. Your job is actually to deliver what they want based on their feedback. Sometimes people don't know how to articulate what they want. That's your job as the product creator. So the criteria when you have a fresh business, a fresh product that no one's ever used or heard of before, is really, what's the minimal version of this product that will work reliably to solve the problem in a minimal fashion? So what is going to solve the actual problem that I'm trying to solve here for my customer? And a good way to kind of understand what this means is to look at examples. For example, you can go and Google on the Internet and take a look at what the first version of Facebook looked like. The problem Facebook was trying to solve is trying to connect people on the Internet, to connect friends together. And in fact, in the beginning, it was just for college students. But the, the point here is that I can connect with other people. I can see their photos, I can see their posts, what they write. And that's it. That's what Facebook was. There was nothing else. Right. There was no status update even. There was no liking on posts. There was no ads, there's no marketplace, there's no videos, there's nothing. Okay? It was just bare bones connecting people. And that's where it started. And it takes time to build a behemoth of a product like Facebook. But even if you're not building the next Facebook, building the minimal version to solve the problem is going to serve you because it's going to get your product out there and get feedback as soon as possible and you can build upon it. This is just the beginning. The launch is just the beginning. And you can begin to improve the product over and over. We did this with Webinar Ninja back in the day. We solved the problem very minimally. And then we iterated improved over the years with different updates, different features, different versions. So that's your criteria. Ask yourself, what problem am I solving? Does the product solve that problem? If the answer is yes, that's the version. Okay, does it do other things other than solve that particular problem? If it does, then you need to cut back. You need to say, hey, I can launch those things later. Now, I don't know how many resources you have, how many people, how big your team is, so I can't give you an actual timeline saying, hey, you should only take three months to build your thing. I don't even know what you're building. Right. But the point here is that this is a good criteria for you to have so that you can plug that into the resources you have and say, you know what? That minimal viable product is only going to take us six weeks to build. Let's go ahead and do it and set the launch date then. Now what if you have an existing business and you want to introduce a new product, a new feature, a new service within the existing business, meaning you have clients, you have people that are paying you money, this is a different story. You have a level of standard of quality and a level of experience that your customers are used to. So you have to err on, hey, I gotta make sure this is solid. Minimal viable here is just not gonna cut it. You have to be a little bit more polished. Now, you do have the risk of going to the other side of the spectrum where you just analyze it to death and you just want to make it perfect. And it's never gonna be perfect, so be wary of that as well. But the point here is that what's the criteria here for launching a new thing within an existing business? Every existing business, whether it's a software product, you're an E commerce, you're delivering courses, whatever, you should have a document called the Critical Path. And this is something that we created at Webinar Ninja that has been a lifesaver. And it's a document that details the steps that your customer has to go through to get the result they have signed up for. So if they paid you money for your product or service, they have to do certain things to make sure they get the result. So, for example, I bought a pair of snowboard boots and bindings last season. These are new kinds of boots and bindings from Burton called the step on system. And basically, there's no straps. You just step into the binding and the boots just click in. Now, Burren's an established brand. They released a new product into the market, something they've been working on for some time. Their critical path would look something like this. You know, they go on our website, they click on the product, the bindings and the boots. They go to checkout, they check out, they put their credit card information, we process their card, we give them a confirmation email, we deliver the product, they open the products from the box, everything's intact. They install the bindings onto the board, they try on the boots, they click the boots onto the binding, and they go down the mountain with their snowboard and binding and boots for the first time. That is the critical path. I know that seems very granular, like going to the website and clicking on the product, but you need to write it all down to make sure that you know exactly the path your customer has to take to have success. Why? Because when you're making improvements, you're making, you know, changes to your product, your service, or adding something new, you want to make sure that no matter what you do, the critical path that you just outlined is not disturbed, that it's not broken, meaning that it's successful. People will have success. I highly recommend you create a critical path for whatever you do in your business today. So why is this important with launching? Well, if you have a critical path, you can keep it in mind when you're bringing in a new feature. I'm going to give you a real example, a real practical example with our own company, Webinar Ninjas. So we released a new feature. We worked on a new feature when it comes to webinar replays. We wanted to notify the user when their reply has been processed and it's ready for them to view or download. Now, after the webinar is over, the user see a message that says, hey, we're processing your replay. It'll be ready shortly. But we wanted to improve this experience by adding the feature, by notifying them. And there's a lot of different ways we can do this. So we chose the minimal viable way to get started, okay, so that we can actually have this problem solved. And to validate that, hey, this is not a problem. By going minimal viable, we go through the critical path. So we had many options. We said we could have put a little notification inside the app. We can Put a little pop up once it's ready. But we figured out the best way to do this and the most efficient way in terms of development hours is to email the customer and say, hey, you will receive an email once your replay is ready. And then we email them and say, hey, your replay is ready. Click on this link to access your replay. So in the critical path, we have our customers watching the replay, checking it out, making sure it's okay, and then going ahead and making sure that it gets sent out to their registrants. That's in our critical path. We went through the critical path, say, does this new feature actually make the critical path harder, more difficult, or does it actually improve it? And we realize, wow, this really does improve, doesn't break it, and is essential. So it's one of the steps on the critical path. So we said, we have to have this feature. Okay, so what does it have to do with launch? Well, we're launching a whole new version of Webinar Ninja with over 40 new feature updates. This is one of them. And in order for us to stick to our launch deadline, we had to make sure everything we release is actually helping. The critical path is actually helping solve the problem. Anything else gets shelved aside to not delay the launch gets pushed to after the launch if it passes that filter. We have to make sure that we choose the most minimal, viable way to do this to solve the problem and then allow it to be out in the wild so we can improve it based on customer demand. When you have an established product or service, your number one priority is quality. You want to make sure you maintain the quality for your customers so they have a great experience. And then the quantity, or I should say the size of this update, this feature, this launch you're doing, it doesn't have to be this big, massive thing. It could be something small that solves exactly what the customers want. You don't have to offer them so many features. For example, if you go back to the Burton step on bindings and boots, when they launched, they didn't launch in many colors. They launched in one color, black. One boot, one binding. Right? That's it. Then they came out with two boots, then they came out with three boots. Then they came out with two color binding. The point is that they iterated, but when they launched, you just had one color, which was unheard of in this space, and one type of boot. And that's it. Not only does this speed up launch, but it also allows them to get the feedback, hey, we want this print, we want this color. Instead of just guessing what customers want. I also want to add it's important to have a deadline. It's important for you to work towards a deadline. So one of the things you want to make sure is to have a firm deadline. But what you can do also is to have two dates. And what this does is it allows you to have a little bit flexibility, but it also allows people to have laser focus. So, for example, we have two deadlines and it, it could be a week apart. So you say, for example, you have a deadline for March 1 and March 8. You all as a team are working towards a launch date for March 1st. And a week before March 1st, you all as a team have a go, no go meeting. And you say, hey, do we go ahead on this launch? Are we ready? Are we confident? Are we going to be able to deliver? If yes, we go and we make announcements and we market and we email people and everything. If no, we have an alternative date that gives us a week. And this allows us to make sure that the scope is no more than a week away from being completed or a week off, I should say. So this, at maximum, delays things one week, which is not that bad. Remember, if you have an existing customer base, make sure that whatever you're launching does not hinder their current experience, their current enjoyment of your product or service. Meaning that if you launch early, you don't risk the fact that they're going to have a worse experience than they currently have. If it only improves it, then it's okay. You can launch a little early or feel a little bit nervous about it. It's okay. Have a date that makes you feel like, man, I hope we can hit it. The best thing is to be militant, to be really, really strict about being minimal viable with solving all the problems you're trying to solve in that launch.

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Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with some solid things to think about. Number one, if this is a brand new business minimal minimal viable. Get it out there as soon as possible. Get feedback. Doesn't matter if it's not perfect as long as it does the job and get feedback and improve. Number two if you have an existing business, have two solid deadlines one week apart and have a one week before the first deadline. As in go no go call date. Make sure you have a critical path. Write out what it takes to get to success in your product or service and any new product improvement feature service. Does it help that critical path? So does it hurt it? Does it break it in some way? If so, don't do it. Or if even if you risk breaking it in some way, you don't know if it's 100% before the deadline, don't risk it. But if it's not on the critical path is a nice to have. It's okay for you to go minimal viable. It's okay for you to go out there and get some feedback. Go as minimal as you can. One color boot, one color binding, things to remember and get it out in the world. Get feedback. You have to remember that if you release late, meaning you take your sweet time, you make sure everything's perfect, you're really losing out on a lot. And when I say a lot, I'm talking about opportunity costs here. Say, for example, you release something in your business that allows you to grow Your sales by 10% month over month. That update really does an amazing thing. That new service, that new product that really helps improve your growth. Every month you delay is 10% compounded month over month. This can add up to thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions in some businesses. And it's going to waste a lot of time where you could have got a lot of feedback to improve your business and beat the competition when it comes to fast iteration. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is 90mt. 90mt the handle on Apple podcasts says great single thought podcast. Great single incremental daily thoughts and action items. Just listen on your commute, find how it plays in your world and use it to move forward. Hopefully it never ends. Thanks for all you do guys. Well, thank you for the great review 90mt. We will keep delivering a as long as you keep listening. Your mission is to email me over at Omar at 100 MBA net so I can hook you up with the Free Ride to EZ course if you want to win a free ride. Just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review. Just go ahead and do that right now and you enter our weekly random draw. Just listen on Friday, see if you want. It's that easy. Thank you in advance for doing that. And don't forget, if you love today's podcast episode, share it on your favorite social platform. Let your friends and family know what you loved about the episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this don't wait for the perfect time to launch. There is no perfect time. Obviously you want to avoid like New Year's Day or Christmas Day, but other than that, launch when it's ready. Get it out there in the world and don't worry about making it perfect, even that launch date. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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