So, you already know you don’t like launching, but you’re not sure if you’re “ready” to sell your course on auto-pilot?
Today I’m sharing the top 5 signs that you need to quit launching ASAP so your can start generating the consistent revenue that your business needs. Recognizing even one of the signs is a clear indicator you’re ready to make the switch, but I know from experience that you’re going to see MORE than one sign from the list I’m about to show you.
Remember, there is more than one way to grow a business and meet your revenue goals – so if launching isn’t your cup of tea – I’ve got you covered.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
Alright here are the top 5 signs that you need to quit launching and start selling your course on auto-pilot.
1. You’re Crunched for Time
As a small business owner, your time is a limited resource. You’re tasked with creating products, promoting those products, closing deals, and delivering a solid experience to your customers. The #1 way to expand your time is to build momentum and you can’t do that with the start and stop cycle of launching. Launching requires 2-3 months of intense list building and content distribution leading up to what’s called an open cart. Open cart is the period of time when you are allowing people to enroll in your course. It can last anywhere from 5-7 days. Then nobody can buy until your next launch, which is maybe 4 mos or a year later. What many course creators find is that when their launch ends, so does ALL the momentum they worked so hard to generate. And it’s radio silence for your business until the launch cycle begins all over again.
Thinking about doing business this way is an example of Linear Thinking, but selling your course on auto-pilot is an example of Systems Thinking.
If you want to build real momentum in your business, you’ve got to shift to Systems Thinking. This allows you to see all the parts of running your business (creating, promoting, selling, delivering) part of an inter-connected network. Each step is feeding into the next, building your revenue snowball faster and faster without your personal time and effort being attached to each step.
2. You’ve Got A Small Team (Or No Team At All)
In the first couple years of business when I was launching, I had so many different contractors I was working with – which was a HUGE expense for my company – and I know I’m not the only one. Now, we’ve got new clients coming in everyday who sometimes have teams that are BIGGER than mine and they’re generating 10% of the revenue that my business makes.
So, if you’re in the same scenario, you’re definitely not alone.
The problem isn’t YOU, it’s your model. Running a business with a launch model requires a much bigger team than you’d need if you were selling on auto-pilot. And doing that puts you in a very high-risk situation.
You’re hiring a big team of contractors up front to prep for your launch and you’re crossing your fingers, just hoping it’s going to generate some revenue.
Managing a team of that size is no easy task – you can’t just hand things over to someone and hope they’ll get it right. I’ll never forget one launch I did years ago that required me to spend $20,000 upfront. At the time, I thought that hiring this team of contractors and agencies would mean that they could do it for me and I didn’t need to be involved. I thought that because I was investing such a big amount it would almost certainly lead to a big pay off.
I was wrong. That launch broke even and I wasn’t even able to pay myself – which meant that I was actually losing money.
It wasn’t that the agency or contractors did anything wrong, it was that I didn’t know that working with other people is never truly “hands-free” and leaving them to figure it out on their own was an expensive mistake I learned never to make again.
3. You Want To Increase Profit
Big launches are a huge expense – and that isn’t talked about enough. To make matters worse, if your launch doesn’t go well, you’re stuck with your hands in our pockets until the next launch rolls around.
I get so many DMs from people every day who are smack dab in the middle of a launch and everything is going wrong. These are capable, smart, course creators – but the launch model isn’t suited to a business their size. Small business owners need to find ways to reduce risk, not increase it.
When you’re selling on auto-pilot and enrolling new students into your programs every day, not just a couple times a year – it puts you in a position where you can sustainably grow over time. Week by week, your marketing and sales improve because you’re consistently collecting data and can see in real time what marketing messages are resonating with your audience and which need to be refined. You have more opportunities to practice and get better.
It is infinitely less expensive to sell on auto-pilot than it is to build and manage a sales team – which is what you’ll have to do eventually if you’re stuck doing sales calls yourself.
When you’re selling a $3k or less offer on auto-pilot (and not running a high-ticket coaching business), you don’t need a big sales team because your Profitable Sales Engine™ is converting leads into customers for you.
4. You Have A Tiny Audience
Launching requires you to build a giant audience and a big list BEFORE you open the doors to your program, but this is not true when you’re selling on auto-pilot, where you are growing your audience AND generating money all at the same time.
Paying loads of money upfront to build an audience BEFORE you begin selling is incredibly risky. As a small business owner, it’s your job to look for ways to minimize risk when it comes to revenue-generating activities. The best way to build your audience over time is to create systems that allow you to get in front of more people and convert them into customers. These systems are doing the work of audience building FOR YOU.
And you can make slight tweaks and changes to improve your audience growth and conversion rates WHILE you are generating revenue at the same time. That’s because your Profitable Sales Engine™ is converting the sale for you, which frees your time for “big picture” thinking so you can look for opportunities to make small optimizations to your message that lead to big results.
5. You Hate Launching
Don’t fall into the trap of believing there is only ONE right way to do something. If you don’t like launching – you don’t have to do it. PERIOD.
This may blow your mind, but some people love launching – and that’s great for them. But, I see far too many business owners that despise it, but they feel like they don’t have any other options. That was me years ago – I thought launching was the ONLY way to grow my business.
…Even when it wasn’t providing the revenue I needed – I still thought it was the only way.
It wasn’t until I met someone who created and sold his own course on auto-pilot, making over $300k per month – that I FINALLY saw the light. All I needed to know was that ONE PERSON had done it before me. I had no clue that revenue levels like his were even possible without launching until he opened his spreadsheets and showed me his numbers.
Making the switch from launching to selling my own courses on auto-pilot was the best decision I ever made. It’s allowed me to build a business that continues to grow in a way that is sustainable for me and my family.
If you want to learn more about selling your course on auto-pilot, then I highly recommend signing up for my free masterclass.
I appreciate you being here and I’ll see you next week for another episode of Scale With Success® The Podcast.
Are you sick and tired of launching and looking for a proven method to generate consistent revenue from your online course on auto-pilot?
Sign up for my free masterclass, “How To Generate Launch-Sized Revenue Without Launching” and I’ll show you how our clients are making MORE money in LESS time than they ever did while launching.
If making sales everyday in a way that is completely automated and doesn’t require paid advertising sounds good to you, then click the link around this episode and sign up for my free masterclass today.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!
