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Britney Gardner

All right, sage, welcome to the no light control show.

Sage Polaris

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Britney Gardner

Yeah, very good. So I know we're gonna probably dive pretty quick into talking a little bit about making launches less crappy for lack of a better word together. But would you mind just giving us kind of a brief like summary on why this topic is important to you.

Sage Polaris

A 100%. So I 10 years deep into my business, I started out as a copywriter, who was mostly writing websites and doing branding, site style of writing, and realize that my clients had a need for wanting to scale their services, start doing courses, have memberships group programs, all the things I actually also have now for myself, and launching I have found can be exciting, fun and incredible. And also the bane of your existence, depending on where the planets are that week. And what's happening with you know, it's a people business at the end of the day, like what's happening with your team, all those things. And so, I have decided to give people tools to love up on their lunches more. So it doesn't have to be so stressful, difficult anxiety ridden, like those things. I don't want anybody's business to be that. So if I can share what I know from these 10 years, I'm gonna

Britney Gardner

Yeah, no, I love that love up on your lunch, though. You were did that. That was good.

Sage Polaris

Yeah, we got to start loving her lunch. Because, you know, it's also, for me, at least entrepreneurial journey has been a self discovery, self development journey as well. Like, we sometimes want to separate the business from ourselves. And if you're a personal brand, particularly how can you separate the two, like, your life informs your business and your business informs your life. So at least that's where I'm at. And I know everybody's in a different place with it. But it's a really nice place to be once you get comfortable and enjoy it.

Britney Gardner

You know, that's, so it's interesting that you brought that up, right? So I've also gone through several different launches. And I would probably classify myself as launch of verbs. Like, how can we do this without launching? How can we release this without doing that, you know, and I always look at it like that. And it's, it's more that I'm not willing to put in super intense weeks into my business, you know, if I'm going to be working really hard, it's behind the scenes things, it's not going to be a super intense front of scenes, you know, like spearheading, and that's just because of, you know, my personality styles, the way I like to work and things like that, I've worked on very intense launches for clients, where I'm, you know, no one knows I'm a part of the launch, and I'm fine with that fire, you know what I mean, but, but having to be very face forward for an intense period is rough on me just for my personality type. So I'm actually really curious what your thoughts are on that.

Sage Polaris

A 100%. And I was gonna say, let's start with acknowledge your personality, maybe you are not meant for certain launch styles. And that's totally fine. I am the type of person who prefers slow growth in my business. And for that reason, I definitely tried launching early on in my business, like year two, I launched a course for people bought to or affiliates, it was a flop. And that's fine, because I learned that actually, my strengths and skills are serving private clients doing their copy for them, like you said, being behind the scenes of a launch. And I went all in on that for like, the next five years, I didn't want to touch a launch, because I learned a lot about where my strengths and skills lied. And then something happened. And I like want to share this. And this may or may not land for some people, like around 2019, I realized that actually, I can have the same success my clients have, if I get there in a way that feels good to me. So I had plenty of time to think about what does feel good to me, right? Like I just kept serving the private clients for all those years. And the tipping point for me of deciding like, oh, actually, I want my work to be more accessible. Because those first like seven or so years of my business, you had to know somebody who knows somebody to hire me. And in 2018, I decided that wasn't okay. Like I didn't want to be only accessible by referral. And so what that meant for me, it was making a conscious decision about how I wanted to grow my audience. And people started asking me for things and they had been asking me like, Oh, I wish there was a way to access your work at a lower price point because working privately with me, is expensive. And so I started to look at like

What could those things be? And I kind of tiptoe my way in through a group program, a mastermind.

I feel like that's a tiptoe because what's required for that style of launch. And this is the thing I want everyone to start thinking about is like, a launch. To me, I can stretch the definition of that word, to mean, pretty much anything under the sun. But like, when I start when I want to attract private clients, that's a launch to me. And most people don't think of that as launch because they only think of courses. Right. So to attract private clients, I don't need much of a funnel. It's more like building relationships and connecting with the people who maybe have sent me business in the past or have been a client in the past and reconnecting with them. So I'm like one email away from booking, right.

Whereas like a group program, it doesn't take that much. We did a lot for that live event, because we sold from a stage and Niagara Falls for the mastermind and I had a business partner at the time. We did a lot for that launch, because we were both copywriters. And it was fun for us to like host webinars, do campaigns, because it wasn't just one person doing it was two people, right? And we had the same skill set in a similar size team. So we were able to pull things off. And I think maybe that's the other thing to ask yourself is, first of all, what is a launch shoe? Does it really have to be complicated? Are you really just one email away from a sale? You could sell out a mastermind by hosting a dinner with people right and like having a great time at a waterfront restaurant. And at the end of the night being like, Did y'all have fun tonight? Let's do this and make an offer right then and there, right? You don't have to do 100 person event like I did. So all of these considerations I take in strategically when I'm thinking about what is the launch to me, what do I want it to be what feels fun to me, what gives me the most ease and joy, my mastermind launches to this day are done by email only, there's no free event leading up to it, I might like get together people in an informal Zoom Room, and we'll all hang out. And I'll do I literally do like a money burning just for fun, because I like doing them even though I'm not like, you know, considered very much of like a spiritual healer, leader in that capacity. Like, I think we get stuck in the rut of what a launch has to be and all the rules that have been set out by people who we follow who are way far ahead of us in our business and have a much larger team. But if you strip all of that away, launches do not have to be complicated or hard, they can totally be fine and fit your personality and what you like to do.

So now they said all that, how do you feel?

Britney Gardner

Sorry, go ahead.

Sage Polaris

No, I just was like going into this, you felt like they were very, like not a part of your personality. But do you feel like now that I've said all that there might be some things that would like us?

Britney Gardner

Yeah. So I mean, I, I definitely pose that I am not. Yeah, I'll still stay on. But I'm not the traditional launch kind of person. Yeah, I've been around long enough. You know, even just yesterday, I was on the Zoom call with a client who's coming back to, for me to do some more work for her. And she was like, Yeah, I don't want to do group programs anymore. But I did just send out two emails to my list for one to one clients again, and I have 20, you know, incoming calls scheduled over the next month. And, you know, for her, it's perfect, right? She just transitioned. She just sold her house for 15 years and bought a van and she's going to be like the van life, you know, travel around the country kind of thing. And it's like a perfect fit for where she is. Right now. And and by your definition, that's a launch. I I would, you know, argue I would not have thought of that as a launch. But it actually is right. She intentionally sent out information saying I am open to this. Yeah. Yeah. And got response. So yeah, like That sounds pretty great.

Sage Polaris

Yeah. And I want to just help people unlearn all those things that marketing tells you, you have to do like you have to have a sales page. No, you don't I sell from Google Slides or google doc all the time, especially for a new offer, like remove those rules, because they're not true. And this is coming from a copywriter who makes a lot of money writing sales pages still and yeah, to stage in your business. It makes sense, right? Like, there are factors that go into that choice. One of the factors is how big is your audience? How much are you willing to personalize the pitch, that person you just told me was gonna get a call and everybody with everyone who was interested in her email that she sent out? That's an example of very personalized pitch that doesn't require a lot more than interfacing with someone and making them feel good about the potential of working together. So that to me are I like to think of those as launchers and the reason I do that, like I tried to change the definition for everyone. Is because

as a service provider, I feel like sometimes we get so busy doing the work that we forget that we do need to promote ourselves or tell people about our offer. And the more you talk about your offer, the more you're going to sell, like, look back at historical data of your business, tell me what you did right before you made the sale. And it's usually you talked about your offer. So I want people to think of that as a launch. And in a way service providers have an evergreen, like you're always selling, right? versus someone who might have a course where there's a season of selling, opens and closes, and then there's not a season of selling. And for my course creators, I'm like, Y'all need to look between your courses, and look at what you're doing. And I get that you just came off a launch, and maybe you want a break, and maybe the profits were enough to sustain you, but for how long? And what are you going to do in between? Because if you don't ask yourself those questions, you're gonna be one launch away from broke, which is something that Amanda bond talks about. And I think it's an important conversation, like, don't put yourself in a position where you can't sell in between. So for me, I think it's looking at all your opportunities to sell, seeing the capacity that you have based on your personality, and going with your strengths, and not following everybody else's strategies, making your own conscious decisions about what's going to work for you. And that takes time y'all like these overnight, stories of success, they rarely rarely, rarely happen. I do love when they happen for someone as long as they're not lying about it. And that takes time to build, you know, I have a decade of learning this about myself to be able to say all these things right now. So be gentle with yourself.

Britney Gardner

So you said earlier that you prefer for your own business, you know, slow and steady growth, and I think I'm in the same same campus that. And then, you know, just just a minute ago, you acknowledge that, you know, people coming off of an intense launch, they want to take a break, they're probably sitting on a pile of cash and you know, feels like they don't have to do much. But, you know, you're saying to my course creators out there, what are you up to doing between the lunches, you still have to do that. And I think that's one of the reasons for me personally, that I've I've struggled with, like the intense launch. Everything, you know, everything about the intensity, because I am someone who preaches consistency, right, like, you know, consistent content consistent showing up consistently being seen that that's like the backbone of everything that I do, and everything that I do for my clients and help them you know, accomplish. So if I or they, for that matter, were to commit to one of those more intense lunches, it would actually sacrifice some of the work that got them there in the first place, which is building the audience and nurturing them along the way. And if you have a large team, like very large team, you know, I'm talking like, you know, the, you know, Amy Porterfield in the world where, you know, there's like, you know, 30 people working on the lunch, maybe it doesn't seem as intense. I don't know, I've never been in one that big. But for regular people who are, you know, launching something to just kind of slip back into that normal nurturing mode probably feels a little bit jarring.

Sage Polaris

Yeah, it is jarring, I can speak to that specifically, through my experience. Like I just finished a launch for my business, we did a free no charge copy course, we had 3700 people signed up. And that's the largest I've ever done. Yeah, like super grateful to hold space. It's but I'll tell you what happens in my brain. A couple of things, though, that I use to buffer, what I'm about to tell you. First of all, I take four months off every year. And I've done that for the seventh year in a row. So when I know that I'm going to be sprinting with my team, and there's no doubt about it, it's a sprint, y'all is a sprint. And when I know that's coming, I build in the time off before we ever get started. Like that's the before the marketing plan for the launch to get the 3700 people I sit down and I say, y'all, this is my time off. That is how we started our meeting.

And I want to know their time off too, so that we can all get aligned for the marketing plan. But we have to start with time off because if we don't start there, then all of us are going to not live our lives.

And then the other thing that I do is I acknowledge this helps me a lot actually, I acknowledge that. For me, the no charge Copy Course is six sessions that I filmed live for all the people who signed up.

I know that that's a two week period, where I am mostly muted in front of my screen. So I go stay at an Airbnb be for any day that I have to be live, I can't do it from home, I have two young kids, it's not going to happen. I tried it once. And I vehemently was like never again, just because there was a situation going on where I couldn't leave. And so building in the space, so my environment has to be slightly different for those two weeks building the time off right away. And then something does happen in my head where I will take one week off after we finish the sixth session. So I noticed that I go from having to talk to a lot of people to cutting myself off from talking to so many people because we use a Facebook pop up group. And I love engaging with those people. And then we do Instagram DMS to help close them as well. Really, we're not trying to sell we're just doing customer services, though they are already a customer

Britney Gardner

that's answering questions and all that.

Sage Polaris

Yeah, exactly. But then I have to turn that off. And that switch takes me about one to two days, even if I've already blocked the time off. I have to start training retraining my brain to not get up in the morning and pick up my phone because I love to. Like that's it's one thing about my personality. I love all the conversations some people when I tell them what I do in terms of customer service before they're a customer, they're like, Nah, not for me.

But I can have 50 conversations in MDM and just have a good time I had my team start it. And then if they follow up, I follow up. And I'll get my roller skates on. And I'll go into my garage. And I'll do circles in my garage while I'm DMing people back and it's the most fun ever.

Britney Gardner

Please tell me that you have someone has like taken a video of you doing that and you've done like a little loop of you doing series one on my Instagram reels you can find it and people it's one of the most popular people love it.

That sounds awesome. Actually. This is also being said by a girl who like cannot wear roller skates. Last time I put them on I was standing still and doing nothing and was suddenly sitting on my bed.

Sage Polaris

Yeah, I've landed hard to but that's part of it. I want to be able to jam like to do dances on the skates. That's my bigger goal. Anyways, side note, but these are ways to inject fun into the lunch right like strategic it's I even though it's fun, and play is strategic for me. Like I find ways to build it in so that I can go swimming after I get off that live session and I'm in a pool and I'm just like, living my best life.

Britney Gardner

I like it. Yeah, no, that's great.

Sage Polaris

Yeah. And I wanted to give people permission to create whatever their play sandboxes when they're listening to us talk right now like, what would feel good for you taking your computer to the Baudin Botanical Gardens do it like use that as your office for the day even if you're only serving private clients and you don't have this big launch to plan for changing your environment is huge. And it's one that I want to give people permission to do more of hiking while you're responding to DMS. Like it's great, you bring that energy people pick up on it this is maybe the more important conversation is copy as what I love messaging is what I do strategies for lunches also great. The thing that's more important and underlying though is how I treat myself when I'm getting ready to do that work. And people pick up on that energy more so than anything I ever say to them in my opinion. And so yeah, do you have places you like to go play when you're working? I'm super curious.

Britney Gardner

You will Yeah. So you know before we started recording I shared with you that I'm now two weeks into not having a babysitter so it's been like a weird schedule in my house lately but we have a really nice back porch. It's covered like fully covered it's you know, like I think we actually measured it because we're trying to like put fans up for the summer. I think it's 24 by by 10 feet, something like that. So it's it's big and we have you know a nice little like loveseat lounge set on it and back in February we had several nice days now there were chilly because I'm in Portland Oregon and you know it's not warm in February but we had a lot of really beautiful days and I would just go sit out there and bring out like my fuzzy outdoor blanket and work it lasts for like an hour and a half before my hands got too cold you know, but I just did out there with my laptop and then we had a sadly and unfortunately a literally the wettest spring on record. This is not me exaggerating. This is like the weather people who've been tracking this for 100 years, right? And it's just been crap like, April May everything has been awful. And just like last week, we had two nice days in a row and I went back outside and sat out there and worked out there while I made my kids get like outside time And, you know, not be on top of me. And it was a really good reminder that I can work where I want to, and I can work when I want to. And it felt good, even though I was very much feeling stressed because I felt under the gun without, you know, consistent large blocks of work time, yes, I was still able to make it work. And it felt good. and lovely.

Sage Polaris

That's beautiful to hear, like making the most of whatever situation we find ourselves in, because I don't wish that on any of us. And at the same time, like, here we are, in what are some very uncomfortable times. And some days, you may not feel up to doing the things we're talking about. And that's okay. Other days, though, like, if you have the energy, these things are really important. You're reminding me to I have. So when the pandemic started, I was like, Oh, I really need a space that's not in my immediate home. And I started thinking about buying a outdoor greenhouse. They're like these cute little houses. And I was like, I want a separate space for me, like, I can't just have been in the same space with everyone all the time, like this is too much. And then I realized, oh, right, I have a separate garage that's not attached to my house. And it's really well done, like really well insulated. It's a beautiful space. And I was like, I'm gonna turn it into an office space, I hired a organizer, a home organizer to help me get the garage in shape. And then also to source some, like a really beautiful rug, a beautiful mosaic lamp. And we I told everyone in my life, I was like, call it Coachella. So the kids don't know that I'm out there, like same patella now. And so that's what we do. Like she's gonna tell you later.

Britney Gardner

Oh, that's fantastic.

Sage Polaris

I had to get creative, y'all because this life was pushing me. And then I had a hammock out on my other side porch. And those were my two spaces. Like, I just needed a space where no one could get to me. And it was hidden behind the apple tree. So like, my kids wouldn't know that I'm out there when I was out there. And it was everything for my sanity.

Britney Gardner

Yeah, you know, it's so funny, we just put, we have a good hammock tree, but we didn't have like the, you know, side piece like the other side of the hammock. So my husband just put in, you know, like a four by four, like, post and put a hook on it. And it's, we haven't had the weather to enjoy the hammock yet, but I have the option for the hammock all summer long. So that's actually a good reminder too. But, ya know, it's, I think what you're saying is really important to note that we we don't have to, like we've created these lives, right? Where we can work from anywhere, but so many of us, don't we just sit at our desks.

Sage Polaris

Yeah. Yeah, are we assume that we have to follow all the marketing rules that are out there. And I also wanted to kind of strip those back for a minute and be like, do you know is that what's going to serve you best? Because we love the success of what other people have. And then we sometimes wonder why what they do doesn't work for us. And I think it's this misalignment of knowing your personal strengths. And then also knowing that you can make when everyone else zigs, you can zag. Like, I hired a project manager for my private client work. And so trying to keep launching courses, like so many of my peers were doing, because they were burnt out on their private client work. But if they had just put that piece in place, and yes, it costs money, but you would spend money on launching a course why wouldn't you spend money on hiring someone to better serve your private clients? So food for thought?

Britney Gardner

Oh, I love that. I have one last question for you before we kind of close this out. And, you know, you mentioned like you book into an Airbnb when you do live and things like that. And I think that's a really good one to a certain status. But if someone doesn't have the budget to do that kind of thing, and they still have, you know, plans to move into a launch, what would you recommend as a good way for them to kind of move into it with a good headspace? And, and get the most out of it with the least amount of like, crazy stress?

Sage Polaris

Yeah, I love this question. Prepare your family. If you have one. Tell them what's coming. Don't just assume that they know what's going on when you sit down in front of a screen.

Your little ones and the adults who might be in the household like say, This is what's coming. I want you to see this coming so that we don't have to react to it when it gets here and instead we can respond now. I literally would take my husband on a daytime date and sit him down and be like, yo, it's coming like this is about to happen. I'm going to be gone quite a bit or if you're still in the house, like when you see me in front of the screen helped me like you can't have people interrupting me like I need support. Can they take time off to support you? Maybe Maybe not, but look at it as an option. Um, and then make sure you schedule in like all your hikes if you you know, aren't at an Airbnb, maybe you can at least schedule in that you're gonna go sit at the park for whatever days of the week that you know you're presenting because for me, I'm an empath I need to ground. So even just walking out off of my front of my house and go putting my feet in some grass. Even if it's as small as that, even if it's as small as giving yourself three breaths, like closing all the screens before you go live and laying on the ground. And taking three breaths, these things make a huge difference in the amount of presence that you have. And also your level of calm and how you can support people like be able to open up your heart to your community. They love that stuff. And it's the intangible things that we can just make sure overall that you're responding not reacting.

Britney Gardner

Wonderful. Thank you. Oh, that was awesome. And give me some some definite food for thought. Where can people find you if they're interested in continuing this conversation?

Sage Polaris

Well, I have a gift for your audience. If they go to Sage placedot com slash we love Britney.

Britney Gardner

I love that.

Sage Polaris

I have the triple email open rates. So that template is for anyone who maybe you have an email list already and you've ghosted them, no worries, I give you the three things you can copy, paste and personalize it. So it sounds like it's coming from you specifically, but it'll get that conversation reignited with them in a way that will feel really empowering to you. If you've had a list for a while you communicate to them regularly. You still want to use this triple email open rates because when's the last time you scrubbed your list like got rid of people who are not actually engaging this template will walk you through how to do that so that you only have people on your list who actually want to engage with you and it's a good thing to clear out old energy from your list. I am a big fan of it. So those are the the templates and you can go to the sage Claire site, comm slash we love Brittany and grab those.

Britney Gardner

Perfect Sage. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Sage Polaris

My pleasure. It was so fun. I appreciate you too.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai