It’s day four of your launch. Sales have slowed down, the crickets are cricketing, and suddenly you’re wondering if you should drop the price, add a bonus, extend the deadline, or scrap the whole thing.

But a launch going sideways isn’t necessarily a sign that your offer or marketing isn’t working. Sometimes, you’re simply experiencing the very normal mid-launch lull.

In this episode of Growing a Deeply Rooted Business, Jess and Rachel continue the launch series by breaking down how to navigate those stressful moments without making panic-driven decisions. We’re talking about setting realistic launch benchmarks, planning your pivots before you need them, and knowing when it’s time to step away from automation and get more hands-on with your audience.

You’ll learn how to use your numbers as a guide—not a report card—so you can make intentional decisions during your launch, learn from what’s happening, and make your next launch even stronger.

In This Episode, We Cover

• Why the mid-launch lull is normal — and doesn’t mean your launch is failing
• How to set good, better, and best goals and reverse-engineer the numbers behind them
• Why you should pre-decide your pivots instead of making panic-driven changes mid-launch
• How to get manual with bonuses, Q&As, and personal outreach when the crickets start cricketing
• How to use your launch data and customer conversations to make your next launch even stronger

Meet Your Hosts

Jessica Walther is the founder and CEO of The Launch Collaborative and Sustainable Success Systems. As a launch strategist and systems consultant, Jess is dedicated to helping solo business owners and small-but-mighty teams build businesses that deliver both peace and profit. She specializes in creating sustainable growth strategies that align with her clients' values and lifestyles.

Rachel Lopez is the founder and CEO of Gal Marketing Agency, a boutique email marketing and strategy firm. With over a decade of experience, Rachel helps heart-driven entrepreneurs craft intentional marketing strategies that attract, nurture, and convert leads sustainably. Her human-first approach ensures that marketing efforts feel authentic and effective .

Together, Jess and Rachel blend systems, storytelling, and soulful strategy to help you grow a business that's deeply aligned with your life—not just your revenue goals.

Connect With Us:

• Jess Website
• Rachel's Website

Hang Out & Say Hi!

• Deeply Rooted Business Instagram
• Jess Instagram
• Rachel's Instagram

I want y'all to picture this.

2

It's day four of your launch.

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You've got maybe two people

enrolled with a goal of 12.

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You're sitting there refreshing

your dashboard so many times, your

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phone is glitching left and right.

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Somewhere around maybe 9:00 PM, you

start to write an email, you know, the

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one where about to drop the price, where

you're feeling like you should extend

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the deadline, or you mention, "Oh, we're

just gonna do a few more payment plans."

9

And you tell yourself, " Ah,

this is launch strategy."

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We're here to tell you that

that is not launch strategy.

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That is decision-making

made by a very tired, very

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stressed person around 9:00 PM.

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And what we want you to hear before

the rest of this episode takes place

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is that a launch going sideways or not

to plan is not a verdict or a decision

15

or anything based off of your offer.

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It's usually not even really

always about your marketing.

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It is data.

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However, it may be data arriving

at a very inconvenient hour.

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The problem is, is that you're

trying to receive the data.

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You're trying to make decisions

at an already energetically

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tense time, which is mid-launch.

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So, what we're gonna do

today is fix that sequence.

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We're gonna tell you how to know

your numbers before you go into a

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launch, decide your pivots before

you actually need them, and go manual

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in that middle lull when things

start to get a little crickety.

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Jessica: But before we do,

welcome back to another episode of

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Growing a Deeply Rooted Business.

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I am Jess, your systems and sustainable

growth strategist, and I'm here with

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our lovely marketing mastermind, Rachel.

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Before we get into all of our

launch, we wanna do a quick energy

31

check because we know that launching

can bring up a lot of stressful,

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tense feelings as you go into it.

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There's a lot of time, energy,

effort expended during a launch

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that you want to see that ROI on.

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And I think if you've ever had a launch

go sideways or go not the way that

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you've planned, you may have a little

tension or fear or resistance built

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up even thinking about launching.

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So I want you to kinda just bring

that to mind, take a deep breath

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in, and then exhale, let it go.

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Because I promise you, launches do

not have to be stressful, and there

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is a way to pivot gracefully and deal

with all the bumps and waves and fun

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adventures that launching has to bring.

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And today, we're gonna walk

you through all of them.

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So before we get into it, let's

talk about the emotional flow that

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the launches will take you on.

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We kinda see the same thing.

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It's not a unique experience.

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We see the same thing

across all of our clients.

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So what does phase one look like, Rachel?

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Rachel: Yeah, so phase one is

that open cart, big energy.

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Whether it is you just had a really

super successful masterclass or top

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of the launch event, You're getting

excited, whether that means, you hit

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send on that open cart and you're

checking your open rate, hitting

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refresh every hour, and you're like,

"Oh my God, people are engaging.

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People are converting."

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That is the top.

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That's what everybody kind of experiences

is that open cart, high energy moment.

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Typically, in the middle of the launch

is what we call phase two, the lull.

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And this is the part where despite

it being consistent across every

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single launch I've ever ran, people

are still always surprised about it.

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You're sending those FAQ emails.

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You're sending some sales emails that

are just not being received in the way

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that that initial open cart email did,

and it really kind of leaves you anxious.

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And I've heard so many people

in this space just think, "Oh

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my God, something's wrong.

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Something's wrong."

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And this is typically where either

people will abandon launches because

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they think something's wrong, and

it's not gonna work, or they will

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do some pivot that already destroys

a lot of that buying decision that

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people are marinating in mid-launch.

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Lastly is that phase three last call.

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These are where those deadline-driven

buyers actually show up.

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These are the people that are

genuinely intending to buy but will

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not move until they see those clocks.

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It's the final countdown kind of thing.

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That is pretty typical across

every single launch I've ever done.

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Jessica: Yep.

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And it is, and I will tell you, every

single client, we have to talk off the

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edge of not shutting the doors down

early, that those last sales will come.

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There will be some times where we're not

even seeing the numbers that we expected

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at that open cart, and we truly do have to

make some pivots and talk off the ledge.

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But I promise you, you will not learn

anything by abandoning midstream

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and not going that full cycle.

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I've had clients where it has literally

been crickets those two days, and I'm

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like, "Oh, we should just give up.

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I know cart's supposed to close

Tuesday, but let's break it down.

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I don't wanna think about

it over the weekend."

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And then Monday and Tuesday,

wham, 50 sales come in.

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People just.

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Wait till the last minute to do

things because that's kind of

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human nature and what we are.

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So today we're gonna talk you through

how to help navigate it and plan for

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it so that you can stay grounded and

intentional and not make emotional-based

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decisions, and still make the most amount

of revenue that you can in your launch.

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So step number one, we would love for

you to set good, better, and best goals.

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I have a client who sets must,

sweet, and God goals, but any kind

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of thing that you wanna call it.

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Basically you wanna set a

realistic goal based on numbers

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that are rooted in reality.

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Good is your floor.

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This is the number where it even makes

the launch worth running or where

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you're not losing a ton of money.

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It's covering your delivery cost, it's

covering your ad spend, it's covering

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your team if you have it, and it leaves

you with we learned something and

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we're gonna actually do this again.

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Better or sweet is where you want to set

your actual revenue goal and what profit

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you want to see coming in would really get

you jazzed and excited for this launch.

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And you would say, this launch is

a win and it's worth definitely

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repeating the same play.

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And then obviously best is your

stretch goal or your God goal.

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You gotta be careful here because you

don't want it to set too high because

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I know in the back of your head you're

like, "This God goal is gonna happen."

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And if it doesn't, That can get you down

in the dumps too, but you wanna make

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sure that it's still rooted in reality.

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It's a number that if everything

went well, you hit that highest

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conversion rate, you hit that max

number of leads you wanted to bring in.

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And if you stretched everything to

the limit, you could still fulfill

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it, so that it's not a trap.

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And then what you wanna do is

engineer those revenue goals, those

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conversion goals backwards so you

can see what should your registration

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goals be if you're running some

sort of live event or challenge.

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So you have, a clear goal and

milestones to hit along the way.

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If you're not running a live event,

a live challenge, it could be

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how many leads do you wanna grow

with a lead magnet before there.

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But the key here is setting

checkpoints so that you're not

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waiting all the way to cart open to

realize the walls have fallen off.

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If you're setting these little

checkpoints, you can make Tweaks and

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pivots along the way to make sure that

you're hitting the goals that you need

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to ultimately hit that revenue goal, and

not just get to the end of the thing and

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be like, "Oh, woulda, coulda, shoulda."

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Rachel: Yeah, and when you have these

core benchmarks, these good, better,

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best, can live at the registration level

because you have your enrollment level.

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So you can reverse engineer it down.

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You know that you have X% of conversion

from registered to live attendee.

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those are the things that you just

wanna have visibility before launching.

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You can give yourself a gut check, and

ultimately set yourself in reality when

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it's time to actually operate and not

sit there and being like, " Ugh, 100

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people are gonna register for this."

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Well, your email list, that would have to

be like a 50% conversion If your list is

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small in order for 100 people to register.

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So it really just keeps you

grounded in all of that.

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The data will never lie to you.

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That's where you wanna lean into.

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Still, we have a lot of clients

that are super-duper whimsy,

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super-duper in that woo woo space.

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Do all the things you need to do in

that space, but do this to keep you

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grounded and let the manifestation

also take you away, but at least

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you have one foot on the ground.

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And then step two after you establish

your good, better, best, and this

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is in addition, I like to tell my

clients to pre-decide their pivots.

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But this is in that

initial planning stage.

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If you're new to the episodes that

we're doing, which is the launch series,

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we broke down the launch timeline.

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In that ops and marketing timeline

where you're putting together all of the

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pieces, establishing your goals, really

decide, okay, if things aren't going

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well, what is our plan A, plan B, plan

C pivot that you feel comfortable with?

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This is a life lesson that I've been

taught over and over and over from my

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dad, where he says, "You do not make

decisions when you're emotional."

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And I think so many times when people

are in launches, and they have so much

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on the line for trying to meet sales

goals, and the excitement of like,

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"I just need to get this product out.

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I built all of this time around

it," there's a lot of emotion there.

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And so what you don't want to do

is make a decision when you're in

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that heightened state of emotion.

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So put that in the pre-planning

stage where you're saying, "I'm

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comfortable with adding five one-on-one

calls as a mid-lull giveaway.

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A lot of these different things that

you can do, and it really just helps you

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say, "Okay, these are already set, and

if I don't need to use them, even better.

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But it gives you a menu to choose

from versus panic mode you trying

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to decide, "How do I do this?

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What do I need to do?"

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All of those things.

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Jessica: for sure.

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She already talked about thinking

about additional bonuses that

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you can add during the lulls.

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Thinking about if you're maybe gonna

offer a more extended payment plan,

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if that's something that's feasible

for you, if you wanted to do it.

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And these are things you wanna think

through before because you don't wanna

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make it in that emotional state and

panic state and just do it and not

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think about repercussions down the line.

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Like, "Oh, I'm gonna give, free one-on-one

calls just so I can hit my launch number."

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But me later has to do

20 free one-on-one calls.

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So really making these decisions when

you're in a grounded kind of area.

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And then just thinking about different

things that you can do that you can

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pre-plan and just have in your back

pocket that you maybe don't necessarily

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want to execute 'cause a launch is

exhausting, but you'd be willing to do it.

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That may be offering another

Q&A call, or we like to do open

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house behind-the-scenes calls.

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Or maybe you are gonna commit to being

in your DMs and doing some personal

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outreach sprints or something like that.

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But you just kinda wanna think

about all the different ways that

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can accelerate your launch if it's

not going the way that you are.

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These aren't the most ideal things

to do, but these are some things that

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sometimes we have to pull out of our

pocket to make sure that, we stay on

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the profitable side of the launch.

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Rachel: So then that moves us to step

three, which is get manual, get in the

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weeds, boots on the ground, high touch.

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This is when the crickets are cricketing.

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You really want to move into relationship

building mode, like hand to hand.

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And so this is the part where

I have seen so much success in.

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I've seen also a lot of people

resist this part, but it works.

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And this is where you're

sitting there being like, "Okay,

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should I send another email?"

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Would it take an hour of your time?

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What I do for my clients, we pull

their warm list, where we say,

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these specific people have clicked

on the sales page more than once.

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Do they exist in social?

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Do they exist someplace

that you are aware of?

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Not just popping into them and being

like, "Hey, I saw you on my sales page.

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Do you wanna buy it?"

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This is not a sales pitch.

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It's a relationship building point.

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And Jess, I don't know if

you have more tips on this.

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But I think that this is the part

people feel icky about, but it

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does not have to be icky at all.

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Jessica: So one of my clients,

we are actually in the middle

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of implementing this now, where

his program's about $4,000.

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- One thing we've started implementing

is we've brought on one person,

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this is obviously a bigger client,

but we could do it on a small scale

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as well, as an enrollment advisor.

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It's a past person that has gone

through this certification program

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before that had a positive experience,

and she is available for people that

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are on the fence and wanna talk to

somebody that may have went through

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the program and get a real deal idea.

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So we do add an optional phone number

field on here so that we can text, call,

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reach out to them with their permission.

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They're obviously consenting on the

form that we can do this to them.

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We actually have on our sales page too

a secondary CTA, if you wanna speak to

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someone, if you have questions about this.

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And most of the time when the people

get on the phone, they really just want

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confirmation that this is the right spot

for them from a real human being talking

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to them, and on a one-on-one capacity.

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So she's not even having to kind of sell.

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Sometimes she's just showing the

people how to check out or- explaining

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some logistics of things like that.

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It's just been amazing to see as we

implement this, how many additional

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conversions, that we will get, 'cause

we're running a weekly webinar right now.

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I would say probably, we're getting,

a good 20 people a week, and eight

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people are converting on the call, two

people from the follow-up email, and

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then the other 10 are from them either

booking a call with her or her doing

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some outreach after the event to follow

up and see if they have any questions.

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So I think like Rachel said,

setting up that pre-tagging

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system of these warm people.

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They have clicked on the sales

page but haven't enrolled.

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I love to arm clients with other

intel- this is why we love quizzes.

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They've opted into a quiz and we

know they may have a specific pain

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point, so we can make that outreach

a little more personal to them.

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I think my clients have it

in their head, like, "Oh, but

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this should all be automated, I

shouldn't have to do any work."

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Yeah, that's not how a launch work

If you're, like, Tony Robbins,

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Amy Porterfield, and James Warren,

Boren, everybody knows your name.

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You've got that big brand built on trust.

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But if you're just a random person on

the internet, And you don't have that

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big, huge brand that they've spent years

building around them that automatically

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give them trust and authority, and you

want somebody to give you thousands of

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dollars, then they're probably gonna

wanna talk to a real person face-to-face.

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And you can do this either one-on-one,

but I've also seen group calls that

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are smaller and intimate with personal

conversations, where they're just

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chatting with you back and forth.

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You're not just doing your pitch

that you would do on a webinar.

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This is definitely something that you

should plan to implement, and you could do

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it if your launch isn't doing that great.

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You could do it if you really wanna

hit that sweet girl, but I've seen

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it work and help convert a lot better

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Rachel: Yeah, and this is also

phenomenal market research,

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direct from people's mouths.

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Even if people don't convert, you wanna

be documenting these conversations

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so you know what are consistent

objections, what are things that

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people are hesitant on, and you

can build that into messaging going

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forward so that you're covering these

bases proactively in the next launch.

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But this is amazing.

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Any data you can get directly from the

mouths of your prospects and leads is

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something you want to be documenting

and just having outside of your brain.

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Jessica: Love it.

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Love it, love it, love it.

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We just wanna leave you with this quick

mindset shift that, if your launch

277

goes sideways, if it doesn't perform as

great as you expected it to, launching

278

is experiment, business is a science.

279

There is always a way to look

at the data and improve upon

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the data the next go around.

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We will tell you over and over again,

your first launch probably isn't

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gonna be a banger right out the gate.

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Even if you see these people, like jessie.

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Yap Challenge girl.

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She had a really big launch.

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Looks like it was right out the gate.

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She's been in online business

for over 20 years and have built

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up skills to be able to do this.

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This is not her first rodeo, so

if this is your first rodeo, just

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understand it's gonna take time.

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You've gotta learn your customer.

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You've gotta learn your way of selling.

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But there is a way to get

better and better and better.

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Just don't throw everything out

and don't feel like a failure.

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You did the dang thing that

most people haven't done.

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And launches are going to be a

learning and teaching experiment

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every single time you go through.

298

Whether you make $20,000 or $3 million,

there'll always be places that you

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can learn, to improve in your launch.

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Rachel: Awesome.

301

So let's tie this all together

because we definitely went deeper.

302

Layers on layers on layers here.

303

So first, when it comes to a launch,

understand the structure of a launch.

304

That is typically the open cart has

a higher spike, it's more quiet in

305

the middle, and then the last minute

kind of surge typically happens.

306

It is very standard buyer behavior.

307

This is not a sign to blow

up your launch in any case.

308

Step one, set your good, better,

best goals before the doors then

309

open, and then reverse engineer

all of your various components like

310

registration goal and all of that

backwards from that and monitor it.

311

This will keep you from going crazy

halfway during the launch being

312

like, "Oh no, I didn't do that."

313

Step two is pre-decide your pivots

to take the emotion out of it.

314

In your planning stage, decide what you

are comfortable with and what future

315

you would appreciate to show up and

do versus making that panic decision

316

to sell 20 one-on-ones and then future

you has to actually execute that.

317

Step three is that when the

crickets are really making

318

some noise there, get manual.

319

Get hands-on.

320

Be relationship and human first, and

understand that this is not reaching

321

out and being icky to your entire list.

322

These are the qualified people that

are raising their hands that probably

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just need to talk to a human, just need

to hear from you and understand that.

324

And then layer into that is

that's all market research.

325

So understand that all

of this is just data.

326

Your numbers are giving you the right map,

and it's not necessarily a report card.

327

It is literally just a kind

of guide to where you can look

328

and what holes you can fill.

329

So enjoy.

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Jessica: All right, we hope

you found this episode helpful.

331

Make sure you send this to your business

bestie, you know, the one that's planning

332

her launch in October or November.

333

We would love for her to hear.

334

If you are launching, let us know.

335

We wanna follow along, cheer

you on from the sidelines.

336

Make sure you come back,

we'll be giving you one final

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episode for our launch series.

338

If you haven't listened to the episodes

before this, we highly suggest that.

339

We're really walking you through step

by step the whole launch experience.

340

And until next week, we are

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Rachel: rooting for you.