I Thought My Launch Flopped… But I Was Just Too Exhausted to Show Up for It

Ever worked SO hard on something, only to feel too drained to actually see it through? This was me at the beginning of 2023 when I tried to do my first “real” launch. It left me exhausted af. I was so pumped to make it happen but the task list just kept going and going and the time I budgeted in to make it happen was clearly insufficient. On top of that, I spiraled into second-guessing EVERYTHING. I knew my stuff, my offer was good but literally everything else bubbled up to the surface as a question I hadn’t considered yet. 

You might have found a comprehensive training to help you but I was piecing together information from this coach and that. And I clearly was missing beaucoup chapters in between but since all the info is gatekept like a mofo, I couldn’t even determine exactly what I was missing so I could fill in the gaps.

When you dive into the throes of navigating an online business, initially, you might run into a lot of insufficient starts, false hopes and empty promises (hello “passive income”). 

I’m sharing my big launch “flop” with you in the hopes that you avoid making the same mistakes I did and that you make sure to do this one thing that makes the biggest difference.

What Actually Happened? (The Story)

I picked a low-ticket offer for my launch, a beginner’s meditation course, thinking it was the “right” way to start. I had followed the advice of some free and low-ticket trainings on creating and launching a course in my field of expertise and thought I had it in the bag. How exciting!

I did all the work. I outlined the course, recorded it. Created the onboarding email sequence. Created the live webinar to sell it. Oh, I had done some deep reflection and research and decided on my niche and so many other things.  

I drastically underestimated how much energy (and time) launching actually takes. I hadn’t yet understood about needing to warm my cold audience, so that wasn’t even configured into my timeline. 

Showing up over and over and over again on social media to share about the webinar completely zapped any and all energy needed to actually show up for my course launch. 

Not to mention the energy that was used up like a dirty rag on launching in a strategy-less way where I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. When it came time to keep marketing… I disappeared, not because the offer was bad, but because I had nothing left to give.

That meant I had zero ability to stay curious and see how it all would turn out. I was in launch burnout baby: I overthought, second-guessed, and let exhaustion win.

The Truth About Why Launches Flop

I learned from that “flop” experience that I truly needed to up my launch strategy game big time. But… It’s not only about strategy (though that matters a lot).

The missing piece? ENERGY MANAGEMENT—aligning your work and rest with your capacity to show up, problem-solve, and keep going. 

Here’s an example:
If you have kids and need Mondays to recover from fun-filled weekends with them, to manage your energy, you’d leave Mondays open to rest, recovery, and activities that replenish you. 

You wouldn’t schedule a live workshop or recording B-roll on Monday, you might activate your creativity and play with designing your sales page or write a creative blog post and give yourself longer pauses in between. 

—

Pushing to do things beyond your energetic capacity exhausts you and can lead to illness. On top of that, burnout leads to self-sabotage, second-guessing, and ultimately, stopping too soon.

How to Avoid This in Your Next Launch

1️⃣ Plan your energy, not just your content – Pace yourself like a marathon, not a sprint. Scheduling 10 must-do’s on one day? Maybe it can be done, but when push comes to shove, you don’t want that tight deadline to be your absolute and only option to make your launch successful. Things change and focus wanes. 

On top of that, you have to know, at least a little, about how your energy flows through the day and through the week. Are you a night owl who seems to be able to knock out sales pages from 10-12am? Do you feel like crap if you don’t have a nice relaxed Friday afternoon? 

Get to know who you are energetically and plan your launch tasks accordingly.

2️⃣ Anticipate self-doubt & decision fatigue – You’re a creative dammit and so you want things to look EXCELLENT and go off without a hitch (perfectionism much?). You’ll tweak that canva graphic and upload it into your page-builder 37 times if you have to. 

If you know this is how you roll, why not have strategies for when the overthinking kicks into overdrive and invites his buddies, self doubt and indecision, to hang out with you on a Tuesday.

When this happens, it’s the perfect time to take a break and practice self-care. Call and chat/voice-note-drop with your bestie. Grab a coffee and people watch. Take a nap. Catch up on a silly, juicy novel. If you honest-to-goodness let go of your work for a while, you’ll be able to pick back up with clarity, focus and confidence.

3️⃣ Build self-care into your launch strategy – As you saw in the example above–rest, movement, boundaries, and real downtime are launch necessities. When making all the big lists and plans, there should be actual line items and scheduled time for self-care. 

You don’t know how many clients I work with who definitely see self-care as a non-negotiable, but it’s found nowhere at all on their priorities lists, quarterly plans, weekly schedules…nowhere. 

When you’re starting your overarching launch planning and you have your large marketing category, onboarding category, leads category, and the like, make sure you include a self-care category among them.

TL;DR?

Want to believe that launching can be a fun adventure instead of a breakdown-causing calamity? It is possible. Your launch doesn’t have to drain you—it can and should be designed to support your energy as well as your business and financial goals.

That’s exactly what I’ll be covering in my workshop, The Missing Piece: Make Self-Care Part of Your Business Plan.

Join me on April 22!