Estimated read time: 7 mins

I’ve planned and executed over a dozen launches — with results ranging from ‘ugh we spent more money than we made OOPS’ to my own 6-figgy launches, to helping clients make multiple 8-figures.  

I am a lazy launcher. 

❌ Multiple live webinars? I’ve done it, but in this season of life, it’s a hard pass. 

❌ Big affiliate program? I see the merit but have yet to be organized enough to make it happen. 

❌ Going live and daily posting on social? I think I’ve gone live on IG once and I’ve had many successful launches where I didn’t post on social at all. 

Everything is optional. No two launches are the same. The rules are made to be broken. 

That said, I do have a few non-negotiables and a process for launch planning that will feel like an icy lemonade on a hot day if YOU want to up your launch game. 

Let’s get into it 🍋

What you’ll learn in this article:

🍵💲Why reverse-engineering your launch numbers makes planning so much easier

🍵💲How to effectively plan a launch (+ how long it really takes to plan, create, and launch an average course, program, or membership) 

🍵💲3 launch rules I love to break

The tea: launch planning for the lazy realist

You get the lazy part, but realist? What does that mean? 

It means there are no guarantees with launching! You never know fo sho how it’s gonna go. So we plan for that. We factor in ~the mystery~ and we start by knowing our numbers 🤓 

Because make no mistake, it IS a numbers game. 

Step 1: Know your numbers

The average conversion rate for a course, membership, or digital product varies by industry, offer, and brand but typically is around 1-3%. 

So if your goal is to make $50k and your offer is $1000, here’s how the math plays out using average conversion rates: 

• At a 1% conversion rate you need 5,000 leads
• At a 2% conversion rate you need 2,500 leads 
• At a 3% conversion rate you need 1,667 leads

Reverse engineering is the name of the game, friend. 

Once you know your numbers, the real fun begins! 

How are you going to attract those aligned humans? 

What can you do to make sure your conversion rate is as high as possible? 

How much time is it going to take to execute on the ideas you come up with in response to the above? 

Welcome to the weeds! You’ve gotta get granular before you can get ahead. 

Step 2: Braindump every task you can think of down to the teensiest detail

This will likely feel quite daunting and if you’re anything like me the final list will make you want a spicy margarita something fierce 🌶️

Step 3: Add an estimate for how long you think each task will take and who’s gonna do it 

If you haven’t launched before or you have but you haven’t tracked exactly how much time it took to pull everything together — ask ChatGPT or humans you know who’ve done this before. 

Once you’ve done your estimates, DOUBLE ‘EM. 

Especially if you’re steering this ship solo. The way it works out is some things will take more time, some will take less, it balances out. 

Step 4: Kill your darlings 

If you’ve launched before, you’ll have a sense of what actions you took that made the biggest positive impact. Focus your energy on more of that. This is where we get lazyyyy and eliminate the non-essentials. 

The thing is with any launch plan you come up with, you’re likely going to want to do a bunch of shiny fun new things but you can’t do it all. I don’t like to try more than one new-to-me strategy in a launch. 

Here’s an example: I’m in the pre-launch phase of my own launch right now and the one new strategy I’m experimenting with in this launch is a private podcast (you can check it out right here btw!) 

& guess what? Producing that puppy definitely took me twice as long as I thought it would. It’s a thing! 

Step 5: Find your time and sanity savers 

In lazy launch land, we don’t do it all. As soon as humanly possible outsource the stuff that you’re not that great at and don’t enjoy. 

The perk of knowing your numbers is you can way more easily budget for support. 

(Psst… My Lazy Launch Template Collection is pretty much the next best thing to hiring a conversion copywriter to write your launch emails, but like 1/100th of the price 💁‍♀️) 

Step 6: Make the plan, WORK THE PLAN 

No backpedalling and getting all twisted up in doubt. You have your plan, you work your plan. Follow through on your commitment to the experiment and remember: 

You learn by launching. 

No amount of coaching or courses can give you the insights that a real launch can. 

Launch rules I love to break 

📏 Writing emails beforehand — I usually write them week of, sometimes day of 😅 ( ← do not recommend but like, let’s be real that is how the cookie crumbles sometimes!) 

📏If I’m launching a new program very rarely is that program DONE when I’m in launch mode. 

I used to stress about this and think I was a very bad girl for not having it all finalized beforehand but if the important stuff is, the rest can come after. 

📏 Not using social as a primary traffic source. I’m changing this one but I have had many successful launches without social media. 

📏 I like a long launch window! It’s pretty popular these days to have a 3-5 day cart open but for bigger launches I like a 10-day window. 

Want my help planning your next launch? 

I have space for ONE private client in March. We’ll nail your strategy and I’ll coach you through the process of bringing it to life. 

Reply with INTERESTED if you want the deets. 

Sip on this…  

🧋This launch date calculator is the bomb dot com

🧋This is why we double how long we think it’ll take 🫣