Have you ever looked at someone else's launch and thought, "That's what I should be doing"?

Whether it's a five-day challenge, a live masterclass, or a multi-day bootcamp, it's easy to assume the most successful launches are the ones you should copy. But the truth is, the best launch isn't the biggest one—it's the one that fits your business, your audience, and your capacity.

In this episode, Rachel and Jess break down the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when planning a launch: choosing a strategy based on someone else's success instead of their own reality.

You'll learn the different launch styles available, how to evaluate which one is right for you, and the four key filters every launch should pass before you ever build a sales page or write an email.

If launching has ever felt overwhelming, this episode will help you simplify the process and build a strategy you can actually execute.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• How to choose the right launch style based on your business—not someone else's
• The three most common launch styles and when each one makes the most sense
• How to evaluate your energy, capacity, and resources before planning a launch
• Why audience warmth matters more than audience size when it comes to conversions
• How to build and improve your launches over time instead of trying to create the "perfect" launch from day one

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

Most people don't choose a launch style, they typically inherit one.

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You know, when you've watched somebody

run a super successful launch,

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maybe it's a five-day challenge, and

you're like, "That looked incredible.

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The energy was insane."

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And somewhere you've isolated that

that's what a good launch looks like.

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And so when you're there planning

your future launches, you now have

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a run launch challenge sitting

on your future goals and to-dos.

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And every single time you

scroll past it, you get analysis

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paralysis, like where to start.

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Here's why you have that feeling.

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You picked a launch style that's based

on what looked good for somebody else,

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not based off your capacity or your

own audience, or actually how you can

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authentically show up for yourself.

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And the thing that nobody says out

loud is that the style that you

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pick matters more than anything

in how you execute your launch.

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It's more than your sales page, more

than your pricing, and that's because

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the wrong style doesn't fail at the end.

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It fails usually week two when you've

skipped that email or when you haven't

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quite executed to that full extent

that you were hoping and wishing.

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It's not one of those things you

can just catch up on a Sunday.

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So today we're gonna give you the five

filters to run your launch plan through

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first before you pick what style of

launch you're gonna do and we'll map

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those answers into the typical three

launch styles that actually work

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for a business that you're running.

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Jessica: But before we get into it,

welcome back to another episode of

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Growing a Deeply Rooted Business.

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If you are new here, welcome.

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Thanks for being here.

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Make sure you hit the follow

button so you can come along

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this launch journey with us.

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I'm Jess, your sustainable systems

and growth guru, and here with

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Rachel, our marketing mastermind.

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Today is gonna be a real collaborative

episode because this is actually

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something that Rachel and I collaborate

on a ongoing basis, is that we

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like to help do launches together.

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So I'm gonna be attacking it from more

of the project management, systems

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side, and Rachel's gonna be attacking

it from more of the marketing side.

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Now, we know that launches

bring up a lot of stress.

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Maybe you have a launch on your

calendar or you have a wish to do a

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launch before the end of the year.

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And probably if you've launched

before, maybe you're listening

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to this 'cause it didn't go the

way that you wanted it to go.

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And one of the things we

say over and over again is

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business is a science.

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Launching is an experiment, and you

really have to have a growth mindset.

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So we want you to come at this from

a place of growth and expansion.

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So take a deep, deep breath.

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And let go all of the stress

because I promise you when you

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choose the right launch style,

it's gonna feel a whole lot easier.

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Let's get into our first filter,

which is energy and capacity.

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Rachel, I don't know if we did

different types of launch styles.

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Rachel: You've seen those big, I call

them the live event launches, where

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you have that big pivotal live master

class, workshop, whatever the case may

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be, that kicks off the entire launch.

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Underneath that you could do either…

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This is typically what my clients do,

which is more just a email-driven with

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social support, so heavy on the content

and just amplification of the promotion.

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No real starting point and the

promotion just has an end point.

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You can also do a

challenge or a boot camp.

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These are big right now.

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Jessica: And it gets a little more

technical when you start to kinda

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combine the two I have a client, the

way we launch is we do a masterclass

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to a two-day boot camp, and then pitch.

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This typically works better if

you're using cold ads and you

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really need more time to work.

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We're gonna go into this later.

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But that's the three different launch

styles that you can have is like email

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only, really like a low-key launch,

masterclass webinar, or a combination of a

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couple of different styles of the launch.

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And one of the first filters that

you kinda wanna run when you're

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trying to choose what type of

style is best for you is really

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looking at your energy and capacity.

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I will say right now, multi-step

launches that go from a masterclass to

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a boot camp, that takes a lot bigger

team to execute and a lot more hours

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to execute than an email launch or

a masterclass that is just one day.

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So you wanna make sure that you are

being really honest about what can

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you take on or what kind of budget

you have to kinda execute this launch.

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Rachel: Yeah, and I will layer in too,

where a lot of the people we work with,

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yes, they're coaching, but we also work

with a ton of service providers who have

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actual clients, patients, things like that

that they're working outside of a launch.

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So you also have to consider what that

workload that doesn't move looks like.

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And so when it comes to these live

event launches, you're essentially

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doing two mini launches in one, right?

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'Cause you have to build up to promote

the actual live masterclass, but then

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you also, on the back end of that,

have to promote your product as well.

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So it's quite energy intensive.

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It is super successful.

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That's why so many people do it.

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But when you have those layers of client

work, Some of my clients actually go

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into a clinic and see patients in person.

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These are all things that you have

to take into consideration before

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you decide, "Oh, I'm gonna set up a

masterclass, a free masterclass, and

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we're gonna launch this," you can set

yourself up for failure big time if

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you don't put that into consideration.

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Jessica: it doesn't mean that

you can never do a masterclass

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or even a multi bootcamp launch.

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You just have to be really, really

aware of the energy and make sure

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you're giving yourself not only a

good enough runway to build that list

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if you need to, but also to create

everything before you get into live mode.

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When I'm looking at launches from an

operations perspective, what I'm really

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looking at is making sure that, all

of those assets get created before we

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start promoting even the live event.

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Because we know how energy taxing

those things are, and we don't wanna

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have to bounce back and forth between

clients, creating launch assets, and,

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trying to actually promote your launch.

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So trying to get everything done,

scheduled, ready to just kinda roll

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out automatically during your launch

so that you're not having to expend

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every single energy before you go.

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Rachel: if you're like,

"Yeah, I feel great.

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I got all the time in the world," I

think we transition to the second filter.

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Everybody thinks they want to run a

live master class, a live event, but the

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second filter you need to consider outside

of or next to capacity is audience.

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This truly is new eyeballs and shaking out

from your audience the actual prospects

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and leads from just your typical follower.

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The goal of the event is bringing

them forward into that kind of curated

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experience that will take them from

problem aware to solution aware

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super fast, which traditionally, if

you're doing, an email-only content

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launch, you really have all the time

beforehand to be drawing that lead

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magnet, pushing those people there.

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So if you're running that challenge, boot

camp, live event, having a significant

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amount of people sign up for it is a

success criteria in order to decide

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if your launch is going to convert

at a specific rate and all of that.

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So wanna make sure you have the audience

and the skills to grow and reach new

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people before your launch actually

takes place for it to be a successful

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component of your launch as well.

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Jessica: To put some numbers behind this

of what to actually be looking for is

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that if you are hosting a live event,

what we see as a typical show up rate

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for people that register is about 30%.

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So we've been doing weekly master

classes with one of our clients,

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and every week we'll have about

1,000 to 2,000 people register.

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But that doesn't mean that all 2,000 of

those people are showing up every time.

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We're typically seeing between

100 and 300 every single time.

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And because that these things are live

and they're so intensive and they require

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a lot of your time, you wanna make sure

that you are not setting yourself up for

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disappointment or not setting yourself

up for the reality that you may put

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all this work to build out this live

aspect, and only 20 people show up if

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you've only got 500 people to register.

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So that's when we start looking at

other things, like your email list

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size and what are our different

strategies to get that audience there.

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And a lot of that does look

into, growing through ads.

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If you have a smaller one, yes, you can

go through ads, but then that goes to

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filter number three with audience warmth.

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Rachel: Yeah, if you are planning a

launch and you're listening to this

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use these filters for qualification

to move on to the next thing.

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Obviously listen as a whole.

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Don't just be like, "Well, my audience

isn't growing, so gonna stop listening."

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One of the things from an audience growth

perspective, that you can do to decide

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is it or isn't it growing, is to look

at your list, look at your follower

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growth over the last, 90-ish days or

so, and kinda tell if you're steady,

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if you're growing, if you're shrinking.

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And that can give you a general direction

if this is a space in your launch

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plan that you have to accommodate in

order to continue with the idea of

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moving forward in a launch, in a live

launch or a challenge or a boot camp

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versus, an email or social-only launch.

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So then we move into we have

the audience and the audience is

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growing, what is our audience warmth.

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So warmth is not the same as size, and

it's not the same as growth, right?

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You can have gone viral and

grown your account by thousands,

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and they're definitely not

the right people on your list.

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Warmth is where in that awareness

cycle are they being able to make

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the decision that they want whatever

product that it is that you're selling?

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This is where you wanna make

sure touchpoints, right?

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We always talk about you have

to get 20-plus touchpoints in

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order to have a conversion.

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Is the core of your audience people

that have been incubating with you

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for a while, or are these brand-new

followers that you need to get to 20-plus

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touchpoints before your launch in order

for them to be ready when you open the

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doors, to be like, "Yes, I'm ready"?

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That's the difference between

warmth and growth here when

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it comes to your audience.

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Jessica: Yeah.

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So for example my client that we do

the big $3 million launch, we bring

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all of his audience in through ads.

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So they are coming pretty cold to

this launch, and that is why in

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order to get them to convert, we do

a five-day masterclass day and night

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for an entire week, and then invite

them to a two full-day boot camp.

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And then in between those

weeks, They're in a Facebook

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community where we're going live.

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So we're trying to get those 20

touchpoints in a matter of three

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weeks because we know that the

audience is really, really…

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cold.

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They need a lot of priming.

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The last Tony Robbins launch that I kinda

live hacked, I go through, funnel hacking.

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His stuff, is that prior to his big

summit event, he was doing an email

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sequence after you register and sending

you to a page that had pre-summit videos

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so that he could help maximize those

number of touchpoints in an automated

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way, which was really smart, before

you got to the actual pitch event

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Rachel: Yeah.

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And I think that that's where

some people can kind of get…

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I don't want people to

be negative here, right?

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But you can confuse a big

list with a warm list.

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You can say, "Oh, I had 10,000 or

1,000 people sign up for my workshop."

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But if that's touchpoint one, as

a launch person, that's not really

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something we would be excited about.

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We would wanna bake in some of those

nurture points between so that at

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the time they show up for the webinar

or the live event, they're ready to

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see you, and they're ready to hear

about your product versus being

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like, "Oh, what is this person about?

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I'm looking forward to their

intro," and all of that.

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So really just making sure that the

distinguishion of warmth, growth, and

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just overall vanity metrics are clear

when you're planning your launch as well.

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So you can decide like this

isn't really gonna work if I

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do the live launching route.

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Jessica: I think we have a whole ramp

up episode, but I think this is why

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your ramp up before your launch is

super important, and not going dark,

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exhausted as you may be after the launch.

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I had a client who I was supporting

from just a strategy perspective.

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Two weeks before a launch, she's on

every single day, da, da, da, da.

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And then the launch would end, and we

would bring in a ton of people, and not

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all of them would convert at that point.

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And she would get frustrated because

she's like, "Well, I just brought,

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2,000 new people onto my list.

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Why didn't any of them buy?"

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It's because they're really cold.

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But I guarantee you, if you keep

warming them up and you launch again

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a month or two from now, they're gonna

convert better because they've had

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more time to build that trust with you.

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Rachel: So then this brings us to

our fourth filter, which is the

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one that always disqualifies me.

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Well, I mean, depending on how many

times I've ghosted my audience then.

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But the fourth filter is what

actually sounds fun for you, right?

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If you ask me, "Hey, Rachel,

you wanna do a live launch?"

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Never in my dreams will

I ever, ever say that.

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So it's one of those things where

this will predict whether or

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not you follow through, right?

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You finish the actual launch because

the energy plus the rollercoaster of

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buyer behavior during launches, and

then you have to also be high energy

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as well because they can sense that.

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They can feel that.

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And so this is important because you

gotta get it to that, closed cart.

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You have to make it there.

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You can't ghost a launch.

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So just really understanding

that it's a lot of exposure.

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There's many, many components and this is

something too that launch clients hire me

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because they're like, "I just need that,

accountability to stay with it through to

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the end and make sure that all the pieces

that are moving are not my responsibility.

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My responsibility is the energy, is

the face, and then Rachel handles

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the emails, the engagement, the

analytics, all of those things."

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I would consider this probably

the most important filter.

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I don't know, Jess.

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What do you think?

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Jessica: Yeah, I mean, I think number

one, showing up in a way that feels

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really good and comfortable for you.

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People are attracted to energy, so if

your energy is scared or your energy

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is exhausted, people are going to

be able to see that in your launch.

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I also think this is the place where,

especially if you're new to launching, you

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can give yourself permission to do a 1.0

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and a 2.0

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or a 3.0,

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and layer it on.

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So maybe the first launch of

this project, if you have a good

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email list, is just sales emails.

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And then the next launch it's

like, "Oh, can we put a webinar

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in front of the open cart?

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Okay, this time can we put a lead

magnet in front of the webinar,

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in front of the open cart.

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Okay, maybe this one I wanna do

an open house after we open cart."

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So giving yourself permission

to get better every single time.

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I think people can watch a Tony Robbins

launch and see all the components that

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he puts into it, and like, "Oh, I need

to do all of this to make it work."

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Granted, he has, a 50-person team

probably just working on that launch for

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an entire year, so you're not gonna be

able to pull that off the first time.

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And you really kind of

just need to be strategic.

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You know your audience the best, you know

your energy the best, you know who's the

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people that are on your list the best, and

what do you need to do, say, to be able

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to convert them and shift their belief to,

this is the solution that's gonna solve

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problem that they're coming to you for.

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Rachel: and like we always say,

right, first launch is the hardest.

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Second launch, you learn so much from

the compounding efforts of just not

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going, for lack of a better term,

balls to the wall for the first launch.

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Your capacity will stretch as

you move into launch two, as

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you move into launch three.

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The emails that you've

written can be adjusted.

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They don't need to start from scratch.

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The copy, the videos, the

stories, all of that stuff.

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So as you expand into the amount

of times you launch, it's important

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to, one, not give up, right?

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Because launching is an experiment,

and it's telling you things.

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Everything is data here.

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But two, it allows you to do more

with less when you've stuck it out to

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that kind of later part at the end.

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So I think it's really important

to not hear this and just be

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immediately discouraged, but to

understand that there's building

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blocks foundational elements that

go into successful launching.

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And these people that are launching

millions of dollars of courses, that's

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most likely not their first launch

unless it's an anomaly, which in those

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cases, don't base your entire data

and launch strategy off anomalies.

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Jessica: All right, so let's

give ourselves, a quick recap.

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There are different launch

styles that you can do.

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We've seen email only, we've seen webinar,

we've seen masterclass, we've seen

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workshop, we've seen webinar to boot camp

to masterclass, and all of these things.

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And the key components is to make

sure you're running it through a

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filter: time, energy, and capacity.

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So what your realistic budget

for launching this, both in a

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time and a monetary perspective?

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You also wanna look at your audience in

terms of size, and in terms of warmth to

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really zero in on how many touch points

that particular group of people are

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going to need to be able to know, trust

you enough to invest in your product.

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And then number three is just looking

at how you like to show up, how you feel

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comfortable showing up, and then what

sounds fun and exciting for you to do.

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Launching can be very, very

stressful, so you wanna make sure

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it's something that you're actually

kinda jazzed about, and give yourself

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permission to just make it fun in

whatever way you need to make it fun.

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People wanna overcomplicate it, but it's

really just a more concentrated way of

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selling all the time, and it's a great way

to give yourself a big cash injection, or

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also to kinda circle back, and if you do

have, those evergreen funnels running, a

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way to sweep up the people that have maybe

went through that funnel that first time

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and weren't ready to buy at that time.

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But now you're gonna get their eyeballs

back on you and launch in this way.

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And that's where we see the

bigger coaches, creators that

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are launching in the industry.

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They're always doing a mix of

both because both are needed for

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different purposes and ideas.

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Rachel: Yeah.

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So if this episode hits home, we want

you to send it to your biz bestie,

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specifically the one that has that

five-day launch calendar on her

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September, October timeline, just to

make sure that before she starts to

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plan it and before she gets overwhelmed,

that she knows what she needs.

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We wanna hear from you, as we always do.

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Tell us which launch style, you typically

defaulted to, and if these filters

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have shifted the direction that you're

gonna start launching in the future.

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DM us on Instagram, TikTok,

or even just send us an email.

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We love emails over here.

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And then until next week,

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Jessica: We're rooting Yeah