Kasey's diving into the messy side of entrepreneurship: what happens when a launch doesn’t go as planned, and how you can pivot with kindness and confidence.

You’ll hear:

• a candid story about experimenting with offers
• what worked and what didn't with my marketing
• tweaks to a solid offer to make it something repeatable

If you’ve ever crafted the perfect offer, only to have it fall flat, you’re not alone. You might be closer to a breakthrough than you think.

Podcast tip of the week: Insight on cover art, whether you're making it for the first time or want to keep it fresh.

Check out Wild and Waking for inspiration!

Join the Kindly Confident Crew by subscribing to my newsletter.

Welcome to the Kindly Confident Marketing Podcast. I'm Kasey Brown, and I help creative small business owners cut through the noise with my podcast-centered approach. Here we focus on how you can do fewer things in your marketing, but create deeper relationships. As a business owner, you've already got plenty on your to-do list, so let's use your voice to earn real trust. I'm so glad you're here. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Kindly Confident Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Kasey Brown, and I am so glad you have tuned back in again this week. Today we are talking about what to do when you fail and how to stay kind and confident in your marketing through that.

Today's gonna be a little vulnerable. It's going to be great. Before we dive in, I would love if you would join my newsletter list because my newsletter is where you get extra behind-the-scenes stories. You get some fun photos, like the musical I'm in this weekend, Into the Woods. We have got the most gorgeous costumes and set, and I will share some photos in the newsletter over there. Check out my hot villain era that I talked about before. Check that out in the newsletter. You also get people-first recommendations.

So this is where I highlight other service providers that I know and trust because I know sometimes finding service providers can feel overwhelming. So I definitely highlight them in my newsletter as well. So check out the show notes, join my newsletter, come be part of the Kindly Confident crew, and I would love to have you and give you pep talks straight to your inbox. So today we are talking about what happens when we fail. And my example that I'm going to be telling you about is the Mike Hype Launch Squad. You may have heard the ad that I placed on previous episodes, talked about it, made a specific bonus episode to talk about it. This was the second iteration of this group that I was planning on launching. The premise of this offer is teaching a group of people because I really enjoy experiential programming.

I don't want a self-paced course. I do not want anything that can just sit on my desktop that I have the great idea of joining and then never really follow through. There's zero accountability. I don't want self-paced things. So this was a group that we would meet weekly. It was a group aspect. So you get feedback from other people. You got the camaraderie of, hey, we're all in this together.

We're learning this at the same time. We're building things together in a specific space. I fully believe still in this cohort, in this, in this program, but I did realize that the way I had structured this, this was a 12-week course. It taught all 4 Ps of my 4P framework, which are again, purpose, production, promotion, and partnerships. It taught all of those. And that is just too big of a container. Yes, I will be glad to work on all 4 Ps and to teach all 4 Ps. In separate instances.

But right now I realized that's not meeting people where they are. If they are trying to join that program, what they're looking for is help in launching a show. They don't need to know about partnerships or monetization yet. They're simply not there. And yes, we could talk about it and teach it and maybe build things with keeping monetization in mind. However, it's too much too soon. And it's just not necessary in that type of container. It also made the price pretty high because it's— there's a lot of value in that type of container.

I'm teaching a lot of things, but that doesn't necessarily make the price accessible. And that's not the point of what I want to offer either. I want this to be something that can be valuable and provide a high ROI to your business. So there were just things I needed to tweak to this whole container. I still very firmly believe in this offer and what podcasting can do for small business owners. None of that changes. It's just the structure of the container that needed to shift. I will be very honest in that I was hoping for, banking on filling that cohort to fill in my maybe 4th quarter income.

And so definitely adjusting that, which is fine. But so you make these plans with like business planning and capacity and financial projections. Mm-hmm. without knowing whether it's gonna land or not, right? So I had already run this cohort before and it was great. I loved it very much. But my very smart business coach also said that selling a container the second time can be harder than the first time. And I absolutely was expecting that to be the other way around. And the reason why she said that is because your people who are all-in yeses will sign up for the first one.

And so the people who maybe are a little more hesitant or have more objections or need a longer time to think about it or a higher trust level with you, they are who is left to join that kind of cohort or to say yes to that kind of container. And that was the information I needed to know, hey, this kind of thing is too big. I need to adjust it, which is all good information to have. It wasn't the outcome that I was hoping for because, like I said, I was making projections on, okay, if I have this many people in, that satisfies the financial obligations we have. Okay, that changes. So now what do I do? And so we're— I'm experimenting with this type of container in a different form. And so right now, I did have someone sign up for the Launch Squad. And she had listened to the podcast.

We had booked a mic check call before. It was exactly what the podcast is supposed to do. It exposed her to how I think about podcasts. It exposed her to how we could work together. We had chatted before, we got along really well. I adored her. her podcast idea. So the tactics are working.

So I'm still trusting in, yes, this is a good investment of my time. This is, it brings me joy. I like making this, but it's doing what it needs to do. So even if something doesn't go the way you want it to, it doesn't mean you have to scrap everything and start over. At this point, I'm realizing, okay, some of these things are working and that's fantastic. Other things need to be tweaked or shifted, and that's okay too. What I'm experimenting with, in full transparency of, so what is coming out of this so-called failure, she was still really excited about learning how to do this. She wanted the one-on-one guidance that I was able to offer her now.

We condensed the program. So now it's 4 weeks of instruction and discussion. The beautiful thing is I get to tailor it to her show. So I can give insights from what I have seen already with previous clients, with what I see just in my podcast industry research that is just a part of my life now. And we really get to tailor it to what she wants to build. We're doing 4 weeks of instruction and discussion, like I mentioned, but it's a Technically a 6-week container. So that way, she still gets some time to work on stuff because this is still me teaching her how to create this show and to do the ongoing production. So it gives her some work time.

It gives her access to, hey, as she's building this, some asynchronous support so she can reach out to me and say, hey, as I'm working on this, what do you think about X, Y, and Z? And I can give direct feedback. And so we're going to do 2 weeks of— today we talked about strategy and all the creative pieces that need to go into actual literal show creation. Next week, we're going to go over equipment and recording and vocal best practices, how to actually get your voice recorded, and then we're going to take a break. And so she can play with recording the trailer. She can play with making sure her cover art is ready, making sure her music is selected, making sure all of the written pieces are ready to go. And because honestly, as you go through creating these pieces, you're always going to want to tweak stuff. And that's okay. And this gives time To tweak those things, which is really, really cool.

As you dive deeper into episode creation, content ideation, sometimes you get clearer on things, and that can tweak your show description or your trailer or your intro or your outro or your objective. So as you work on things, that kind of helps clarify some things as well. So that gives time for that. And then after the break, we will go into Post-production. How do we actually put all this together? How do we publish it? Talking about all of that. Then we're gonna go into content workflows. How do we keep this puppy rolling? What kind of launch strategy makes the most sense for her? And, and really be able to create something really cool and bespoke to her for what she wants her show to do. Yeah, I've never taught a podcast launch one-on-one before.

I've taught it now to a group. I usually do it for many of my clients. And so it's the consultation without me necessarily creating the pieces myself for the clients. So she is my pilot program, my test. She will create the show, but I am guiding her through it. So she gets to avoid all of the early-on mistakes that I made when I was first launching a show. Because like I said, I've been in this industry now for 5 years. I do read a lot of those case studies and follow the trends.

And she doesn't have to do that. She can do her normal job and do what she actually enjoys doing. And so, I really am excited about this kind of shift. I think this might be something I'm able to offer more people to make launch guidance more accessible and still saves my capacity of— let's say I get 5 people who want to do this. I'm not actually creating all of those things because that takes me a lot of time, but I can still save them the time. By consulting with them, coaching them through that, giving them the instruction from all of my past mistakes and things that I have learned from my own client work. So I really think this could be something kind of cool. I'm hopeful.

So if this is sounding something that might sound good for you of, hey, you want to start a podcast, you don't mind doing it yourself, but you would like guidance, let's talk because now I have a way to offer that, which I didn't before. So I think this pivot could work. I'm finding so much of entrepreneurship is experimentation. And I find it so helpful when other entrepreneurs share some of their successes and failures and pivots and experimentations and just, and all the mental and emotional acrobatics that come with all of those. So I am happy to mind. And I think honestly, being able to kindly and confidently express this, share this with you, I mean, that is maybe the best kind of marketing. I am a real human. I am the person under the teal hat.

And even though I'm still figuring out entrepreneurship, I mean, Any entrepreneur is always figuring it out. There's no, hey, we've, we've got it. We're gonna lock and load and rinse and repeat and only do these things. No, I think we're always growing and we're always learning new things. And if me sharing what I have learned so far helps you skip a step, cool. I have taken that advice from other people as well. And we can all move forward together through this because entrepreneurship is really, really hard. really, really wonderful.

It can be really, really crazy. But it is absolutely worth it so far. And I am loving this. So here are some lessons that I've learned of what kind of data does a launch failure give you? What kind of feedback do you actually get? And some of that actually could just be a bit of intuition. Nobody outright told me hey, this program is too big. But when I talked to people about that feeling I had, they all said, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, why didn't you tell me that in the first place? That's okay. But it was a feeling and it was right.

And so that helps me know, okay, how do I break this up? How do I package it in different containers that is far more accessible? Still transparency. Working with me, You're still going to get the same experience, no matter what the container looks like. I'm still going to encourage you. I'm still going to give you as much practical advice as I possibly can. I'm still going to ask you questions. I'm still going to be your biggest cheerleader, and I'm going to give you pep talks, and I'm going to give you as much knowledge from my own experience as I can. So the experience of working with me will be the same. We're still going to create something really cool together.

And talking about it, I did learn that the actual marketing techniques that I'm using— so the podcast, repurposing some of the content, those 4 prongs, the channels that I use— are working. That in itself is really nice to see. It's not a failure. We're gonna, we're gonna pivot. We're gonna try some new things. And we'll go on this great adventure and see what happens. Let's grow your show with a podcast tip of the week. This week, our podcast tip of the week is what I was talking about today in— I mentioned we talked about creative pieces in my now one-on-one podcast coaching.

If you can think of a good name for that, let me know because I am struggling with that at the moment. Talking about COVID art. So whether you already have a show or not, there are some cool options. So obviously, if you don't have a show, there's plenty of things to consider in your cover art. But if you do have a show, there's some fun ways that you can play with customizing things. that are just fun ways to keep things fresh, whether your show has been around for a long time or not. So here are a couple options we talked about. One, seasonal cover art.

And I'm not saying like, oh, it's fall, let's put some leaves on it, though. I mean, you can. I have seen many fun reels about how to tell it's fall by white woman's attire. But what I'm meaning is like, so if one of my clients Just wrapped up her first season today, actually. And we've talked about she wants to tweak some things on her cover art, which is a perfect time to do it. But there's some other things that you could do to denote that the podcast has moved into a new season. And so that could be a color change. So like your background could just change colors, your font could change colors, or you could even just add like a little banner that says season 2.

Just something to show that it's a little bit different, that you've been around long enough that, yeah, this is season 2. This is something new and fresh and fun. So consider playing with something like that. Another option is if you don't want to change your cover art, you can play with episode art. And so there's the— there's a show that I really love the way she does this. It's called Wild and Waking. Check out her podcast. I really love it.

It's by Emily Rushell. And so her cover art is always the same. But she has this beautiful array of a color palette that she really utilizes well in each of her episode art. And so what I mean by that is, especially if you have an interview style show, You can absolutely highlight your guest in this with a headshot. But even her episode art is not necessarily a— it's not cut and paste. Each episode art has a different color palette within her overall color palette. It's just really beautiful. And even on her solo episodes, like she changes out her photography, she changes out the colors, the fonts are always the same.

It's very cohesive. But each are individual. But just go check out her show because it is a really beautiful way to be cohesive, but have individual aspects of it that differentiate each episode. It's just really beautiful. So again, that's called Wild and Waking, and it's by Emily Rushall. So though that's your tip for this week, even if you have an established show, you can play with your cover art or your episode art. So if visual Art gets you excited. There are some new ways to keep things fresh and to keep playing.

Thank you for tuning in again. I would love if you could join my newsletter list. Come be part of the Kindly Confident crew, and we'll share some stories. We'll share some photos. We'll deliver some pep talks via email, and I always, always, always welcome feedback. Email me at [email protected]. That's K-A-S-E-Y at Teal Hat Comms with two M's. Again, thank you so much for tuning in.

And until next time, talk to you later. Thanks for joining me today. If this resonated with you, I would love if you could leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Even typing just a few words is super helpful in getting this show into the ears of those who need it the most. And I really appreciate your help. If you want help creating or sustaining your own show, I'd be happy to. Visit tealhatcommunications.com and let's talk. This has been the Kindly Confident Marketing Podcast.

Thanks for being here.