A Cash-Injection Versus a Launch

Guess what? It’s absolutely possible to make a sale to the first person who opts into your email list.

How are you planning to sell your offer: a cash-injection or a launch?

There are positives to both methods, so why not take advantage of both?

You don’t have to choose one or the other. Tune in to my latest podcast episode and I’ll explain the difference between these strategies and how each has its own unique benefit to you.

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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey, risers. Welcome to episode 115 of Empathy Rising. Guys, I have really been loving the Summer Slow Down Series. We just wrapped up on workshop number two, and we will be starting workshop number three in a couple of weeks. And it has been so fun to just check in with this group of people, students, (whatever you want to call them group of workers) for this workshop, once a month throughout the summer and just see their progress. 

I also am checking in with them via email in between, and everybody gets access to the replays and all of the tangible assets like the spreadsheets, the workbooks, the scripts. And it's been really fun to just spotlight these three areas of hurdles. Once you get over these three hurdles or once you have these three things defined or refined, man, the sky's the limit with your side hustle, right?

These are the three things at once. You can make progress here. Everything else falls into place. I call them my three dominoes and it's just been so much fun. In workshop one, there was insight on how much money you can make and what types of programs help you reach your financial goals.

We focused a lot on the money side of things. And then workshop number two, we started positioning or transitioning into the impact side of things. Who do we want to help? How do we want to help them? Making sure that is different than therapy. That it's funner, more creative, lighter. A different kind of space.

If you're going to have a part of your income stream that involves working with other people, how can you hold a space or make a container, but have it be a different kind of container than therapy? So we've covered impact, we've covered income. And then in workshop number three, we're going to go back to both of these things, wrapped up into a way that we're going to bring those first dollars into your side hustle. That external validation, a little bit of some money coming in, but also seeing the process from start to finish and knowing that it's possible and you're capable of it. 

Man, when that comes to fruition, everything else just seems possible. If you can sell a workshop, then you can sell anything. So I cannot wait for workshop number three. What we're going to talk about today coincides with workshop number three, which is coming up soon. And that is the idea of sales. So sales is the good part that everybody wants to talk about and everybody wants to get to, how do I make this actually happen?

But it's the thing that comes last. It falls into place last, which is why I saved it for the last workshop, right? So we know we need to have a clear idea of what the offer is in mind. We need to have a clear idea of who it's for and what it does. Then we can go out and make sales from it. And that's what I think is going to be super fun on workshop number three.

 If you want to know more about this sales process, how do I actually register people for something, how do I actually execute an offer and make money from it and do the thing, you can still grab your ticket to Summer Slow Down over at marissalawton.com/summer. When you register, you instantly get the replay of workshop number one and the spreadsheet that comes up.

And you instantly get the replay of workshop number two and the workbook that goes with that. So you can be caught up with us before you start workshop number three live, and then of course you'll get the replay and the scripts and the bonus assets that come with that as well. So you'll really have the means to make money from your side hustle by the end of the summer.

So if it's interesting to you, make sure you register again. That's marrisalawton.com/summer.  So speaking of sales, I think this tends to be a little bit intimidating, and I think it's intimidating for anyone running a business, but it also tends to be the most misconstrued. And we're going to talk a lot about that today.

I think people get nervous about pricing their offers, right? What should I charge for this? Is it really worth a thousand dollars? Or can I get away with charging a thousand dollars? So pricing is one thing that people get a little worried about.

People also get nervous to share their offers, to talk about them, to say what they are, who they're for, or what they do. And people get nervous to straight up ask people to buy their offers. People get nervous to ask people to actually enroll in their course, enroll in their membership site. But here's what gets misconstrued while all of those are elements of making a sale: only one of them is the actual act of selling. 

Okay, so we talked pricing, we talked about sharing. We talked about inviting, all of those are part of making a sale, but only one of them is actually the verb to sell. Like sales is actually only one of them. Most of what people are intimidated by is marketing. The sharing of the offer, the talking about the offer, what it does, who it's for, how it helps. Getting clear on that and mapping all of that out, that can make people nervous. And that's when people start to have imposter syndrome. 

That's when people start to question if they can do it, that's when people start to question, can I charge this much, all of that. And then to actually stand up and talk about it or virtually post about it, once in a while, we're standing up and talking about it, maybe in an in-person setting. But most of the time it's virtual promotion. But promoting that, talking about that's marketing, that's not sales. A good way to think about this as marketing is what gets people to the door and selling is what gets people to step through the door.

I've shared this on the podcast before, so you can scroll back some episodes and look at the difference between marketing and sales. But I also use that golf analogy. Rarely when you're golfing do you stand up at the tee and hit the ball from the tee into the hole? A hole in one, that's very rare. It can happen. It happens more likely if you're Tiger Woods or those good people, those good golfer people. And you can talk about your offer one time and somebody could say, I want it, give it to me, and they'll buy it. That would be the equivalent of a hole in one.

But most of the time when we are marketing and selling, it's like golf in the sense that you hit from the tee, and then you hit again, and then you hit again, and then you put it into the hole. The putt is the easiest. I'm generalizing here, but the putt is much easier than hitting a hole in one, right?

Because you've done all of the marketing to move the ball further down the course, and so if you do it right the putt is like a little tap and the ball just goes right in the hole. Selling is so much easier when marketing is done well. So when marketing is done effectively, it moves that golf ball closer and closer to the hole.

And then all you have to do is just put it in. So sales can actually be really easy if you are effective at marketing. And so that's what we're going to tease apart a little bit on workshop number three, and as well as in today's episode: How are we going to sell something? And in the Summer Slow Down case, how are we going to sell a workshop? How do we do that in an effective and quick manner? And what is really the difference between launching something and doing a cash injection with something? And that's what we're going to cover today. 

So running with the golf analogy, right? We hit from the tee and then we hit again, and then a putt, right? That is a great way to conceptualize sales, but often it means that we take a long time to sell. Sales is often not only misconstrued and misunderstood, but it's also often delayed because we think we need to make so many steps before we can ask for the sale. We never quite feel ready. So even though the golf analogy is a good one and it puts into perspective, the difference between marketing and sales, you can swing for the fences guys.

Like you can swing for that hole in one. Why the hell not? Like you can try to get as close to that sale as possible from the very beginning if you know your offer and if you know your person. Workshop one, workshop two, then selling workshop three, (cough, cough) is not going to be that hard. The other thing that I always love to add in here is that knowing people, knowing their wants and needs, knowing their desires, this is what you do for a living guys.

It may look different, right? Therapy is not the same as selling. However, the understanding, the relationship, the interaction that you do in therapy is giving you all the knowledge, all the expertise to be able to sell well. So when sales are delayed, people are often waiting until they quote-unquote, feel ready.

And that's one myth that I want to bust for you guys right now. You're ready after grad school, after the hours to get your license. And however many years you've been practicing either pre-licensed, fully licensed in agency in private practice, all of that, you're ready. You are ready. You just got to do it.

So the other thing that delays sales is people are often waiting until they have a big enough audience. And yes, having that audience and warming them up, that's the equivalent to the golf analogy, right? That's the equivalent of get closer and then putt, and that's great for long-term growth, for long-term sustainability. 

We're going to talk about that in just a minute. However, you can absolutely make a sale to that first person who opts into your email list. There's no reason that you have to wait till a thousand people or 4,000 people or 10,000 people. You can have one or five or 10 people on your email list and you can make a sale. Of course, if you're selling something that's a hundred bucks, that's not going to be as much money as if you waited. However, this is where we go back to the question of impact. First income, a hundred bucks is still great if you're helping one person. 

Sales doesn't have to be delayed. Sales doesn't have to be "wait until we're ready". Sales doesn't have to wait until we have a big audience. We can have revenue coming in, perhaps in smaller pieces, but still coming in nonetheless way sooner than we think. The other thing that people wait for is for the program to be built. Which is a huge no. If you've been following me for any length of time, we never build our program before we've sold it ever. We don't build our program before we've sold it.

We always pre-sell. We're paying ourselves to create the program. And so if you are delaying the act of inviting people into your program, if you're delaying the act of actually asking people to enroll or buy or purchase in order to create your program, then you're doing it backwards.

So sales are easier to make than you think, and sales can happen a lot sooner than you think. And that's what we're going to dive into when you wait too long to make sales. There are a few things that are happening. The first is that you're foregoing that revenue. I mentioned this a minute ago, but it may be more than it, of a trickle than a fire hose, but sometimes the interaction from the audience, that one sale, that one little bit of money coming in is the thing that makes us keep going. 

I shared a few months ago or not a few months ago, I shared a few episodes ago about when I started in the mom coaching niche. And it wasn't a niche cause it wasn't defined, it wasn't refined at all. I was just throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying, I can help any mom that needs help with anything. And it wasn't effective. 

However, I did happen to make a sale. I made a $77 sale and I was like, oh crap. Okay. So this can happen. How do I make that happen again? And how do I make it happen better and faster? That's why I needed to niche. That's why I needed to learn marketing. However, that sale while it felt like a fluke to me, and it probably was a fluke, still happened. 

So sales aren't that hard. And getting that $77 to come in made me try again for my next sale, which was at full price, which at the time was 497, so $500. And then when that happened, I was like, oh, okay, how do I get serious about this? So I almost took the backward approach from what I teach you guys, I swung for that hole-in-one instead of taking the gradual steps and making the putt easy. I just was throwing it out there. Hey, who wants to buy my stuff? 

And even though it took six weeks to make that $77 sale, which is not what I'd want for any of you, it still happened. Okay, so sales are not as hard as you think. And a little bit of money coming in can be the thing that helps you keep going. The other thing that happens is if you're waiting for that big audience, your audience can go cold.

Often people are signing up for your email list or following you on social media right then because they recognize that they have a problem and they see you as a potential solution. They are further on the awareness spectrum. They know they want this problem solved. They see you as a person to solve it.

And so they don't want to wait one month, three months, six months, nine months a year for your programs. If you wait too long, they will solve their problem in a different way. They'll find a different coach, a different course, whatever. That's not to say they can't come back and buy your program as well.

However, if they're in need of something right then, they want it right then. I think about how many times I've gone to like Michael's or target or whatever, looking for something. And they don't freaking have it, but before even leaving the store I ordered on Amazon and we can talk about the merits of Amazon all we want, but it's that same thing, right? If that store is going to make me wait, I'm going to go somewhere else. So if you wait forever and ever to introduce the sale, no matter how qualified your audiences, they might not buy.

So when you're waiting to go ahead and sell, you're basically creating a perpetual hobby for yourself. You might be doing all of the work to build the business, all of the marketing, all of the creation, all of the everything, but you're not actually running a business because you have no money. You're not actually ever asking for the sale to be made.

But if you can ask for the sales sooner, which I'm going to help you do, I promise I will teach you exactly how to do this. If you ask for the sale sooner, the first thing that happens is those followers see you as a legit business owner and not just a free resource. I think that we accumulate followers and not buyers, and people who are following us can be in the mentality of a follower and not a buyer.

Oh, they give so much away. I'm just hanging out here, cause I can get everything I need. We need to make sure that they see us as a legit business. That doesn't mean they're going to buy from us right then. But they see us as something to buy from or someone to buy from when they're ready. Not just someone to follow along with.

So when you ask for the sales sooner, it sets that legitimacy in their mind. You also get to start making revenue sooner. You see the fruits of your labor. Sure, it may be a trickle, but it's coming in and I think that's important. You also get to make the impact sooner. So sales and focusing a lot on money, but we remember every sale we make is also a chance for impact. We can't impact anyone if they don't take our programs. So we have to have sales in there.

So when it comes to making sales in your online business, there's two ways to approach it. The longer process, which is known as the launch, this is what we were talking about with the golfing of hitting it off the tee and then hitting it again and hitting it again and then putting it in that is your launch.

I also like to refer to launching as a farming analogy. So I'll switch gears from golf to farming in just a minute, the other process is the quick process known as the cash injection, and that is hitting the hole in one right from the tee. Okay, so moving into this idea of hunting and farming or farming and hunting.

Launching, just like shooting, taking multiple shots and then putting in easy, is as if you were building your own farm. It's as if you're cultivating the land, you're prepping things, you're hoeing the rows, you're planting the seeds. You're watering the seeds, you're checking the soil, and as you do that, you're growing a farm that is going to sustainably feed you over the long term.

Okay, and that is great if you can delay that gratification or delay the need for food, a cash injection is like going out and hunting. There's more energy output, it's more immediate. You're tracking something down. You have this kind of maybe scarcity energy - oh crap, I gotta eat.

I gotta feed myself. So it's "if I don't come back from the forest with a deer or whatever, we're not eating". So there is a little bit more of that kind of frantic, frenetic feeling about. However, when it works, the results are immediate. Your family is eating that day rather than waiting for the corn to grow.

So I really do believe that it's actually what's best for any business. And an online business is a combination of the two. Having the skill set to go out and hunt when you need to go make that money, go get that deer, but also to be able to cultivate longer-term farms. Right back to golf to be able to hit the hole in one, but also to be able to take the methodical process and make sure that ball goes in every time.

One might be a little bit more risky, but it has an immediate payoff. One is a little bit more steady. One is a little bit more sure, and it has the long-term payoff that's going to last you for years. A farm can feed you forever as long as you take care of it. You take the seeds from the last harvest, you plant them, they grow and then you harvest them again and it's sustainable.

Whereas hunting, you get that deer immediately, but it feeds your family for a couple of days. And then you have to go back out and hunt again. Okay, so both have their pros and cons. The pros of a launch, hinted at this a bit, is that's the sustainable business growth.

That's putting in the work now to have the farm that feeds you in perpetuity forever, right in the long term. There's absolutely bigger revenue potentials, right? The deer feeds you for a day or two. The farm feeds you for a long time. 

So as you're launching, as you're systematically moving your followers toward a purchase, you are setting yourself up and your business up to have a higher impact because more people are going to buy, and you're setting yourself up to have a bigger revenue because more people are going to buy. So therefore that means more money comes in. Launches are also cyclical, so they give you periods of downtime in between, right?

The seasonality of farming we plant, we reap, we sow, we plant. It goes in a pattern, the same thing with a launch, right? You are nurturing your audience and then you're selling, which is like the harvesting. And then you're having some downtime where you nurture your audience again, and then you harvest again.

So it's nice to have some downtime in between. You're not in that hunter energy all the time, but there are some cons to launches. The first thing is the execution of a launch. You've got lots of softwares interacting. You've got lots of things you have to do on certain days, and it's a lot to keep track of.

You also have to be more highly visible during a launch, which can be harder for people who are more on the introverted side of things. So the execution of a launch when you're in harvest phase can be little. Cause while a cash injection and you're going out and you're hunting for a day and you're getting the cash and getting the deer or whatever farming that harvest period takes, probably I'd say three to four weeks when all is said and done.

So it's a high-energy output for a little bit longer of a time. And then you get a rest in between that. So the execution of a launch can sometimes be a con for a lot of people. And sometimes it can feel like everything is riding on one thing. It's all riding on that one launch.

It's all riding on that one harvest. Right? Thinking about the farming analogy. Sometimes you have a bumper crop and you're like, heck yeah, this is awesome. You're canning everything. You're freezing everything. But sometimes there's drought or there's bugs or whatever. Why do I use analogies that I know nothing about you guys? 

Anyway, hopefully, it's making sense. There's bugs, there's a drought, there's whatever. And you don't harvest as much as you could. And that can be scary when you think that your next harvest is a year away or several months away. So that can be another con of the launch model is sometimes it feels like it's all riding on one.

Add to that, we have the delay. The downtime is nice for restroom recuperation, but sometimes it's oh, I'd really like an extra thousand dollars right now. I'd really actually like an extra whatever. And your launch isn't till months away. Knowing how to run a cash injection on those off times can really supplement between launches. And you're not delaying your sales, your audience isn't going cold, and you're having revenue come in.

So on the cash injections, there's a lot of pros for this. The first is that we don't need to wait. There's no need to wait for a big audience. You can have a cash injection at any time. That first person that comes into your audience, start a dialogue with them. "Hey, so glad you're on my email list.

What made you decide to sign up for the opt-in? Do you have any questions about it? Now that you're here and you've made this progress, I'd love to let you know about such and such coaching package, or I'd love to let you know about such and such program. If you want more information, just let me know".

Starting a dialogue, and then they write back yeah, tell me more information. And then you invite them in, that can happen with the very first person who follows you on social media. That can happen with the very first person who joins your email list. The other thing about a cash injection is it can be automated, like a tripwire or an evergreen funnel.

So a tripwire is something that somebody signs up for your email list. And then right off the bat, they're introduced to a very low price program. I have this, I have my quiz. And then right off the back of my quiz, people are introduced to a one-hour training and it is completely automated. And every once in a while, like a $27 bonus just hits my account.

Cause it's not something that I'm like launching, but it's just cash. That's just dropping in. It's just injected in randomly on it. You can also have an evergreen funnel. So somebody grabs your opt-in they're on your email list. You said them a strategic sequence of emails. I usually recommend seven and in the sixth and seventh email, they're being invited to buy so very quickly after getting to know you, they're being invited to buy your program and that can be a cash injection, right? 

It can be money that just hits your account. Completely passive, completely automated. You also can have a flash sale. I just executed a flash sale in June. So you can take a program or a product or something that you've already done, and you can say, hey, for the next week, this is available.

You normally can't get it by itself or you normally can't get it in this month. I usually only sell it in the fall or something like that, but for the next week, you can go ahead and grow. That would be a flash sale in order to inject some cash into your revenue stream. Workshops are also a great cash injection.

You can certainly launch a workshop if you want to. You could go through the whole launch process for a workshop, but what's nice is the fact that they are a lower price. They can be considered in that kind of no-brainer purchase category. And so people don't need as much warming up and as much nurturing to buy a workshop as they might for a bigger program.

And so a launch isn't necessary to get people into your workshop. Ultimately, cash injections get you revenue sooner. And they can be really great for covering a surprise bill or wanting to take an extra vacation. You have a blowout on the highway and you need to buy a new tire. You take it in and they say, oh, you don't need just one tire.

You need all four tires. And you're like crap, I wasn't expecting that. Let me go have a flash sale real quick and I'll cover these tires. So a surprise bill is perfect for a cash injection. Let's say your partner comes home and they're like, oh, we have a surprise four-day weekend from work or something like this, we weren't expecting it.

This is something that happens in the army. This probably doesn't happen with normal people, but they come home and then all of a sudden let's go away for the weekend. It's okay, let me go and send two quick emails to my audience and see if I can get our hotel cover or something like that.

So cash injections allow you to be more spontaneous. They allow you to be more flexible in your revenue. Now there are some cons of cash injections, though. When you're doing a cash injection, you always end up being in chase mode, right? So if you only rely on cash injections and don't plan out the more methodical launches, then you're always going to be in chase mode and that's not fun, right?

Because it can feel like scarcity. It can be a "if it doesn't happen immediately, it's a problem. We're not going to eat today. If we don't get a deer". So always being in chase mode is not healthy. You do want to have that downtime. You do want to be able to rest, right?

So with a cash injection, you're also not cultivating the audience for the long term. When you're launching, you're cultivating and nurturing that audience over time. A cash injection, you don't need to do that. But if you never do that, then you're never going to be set up for the sustainability.

You're always going after the low-hanging fruit in your audience, like whoever's most interested in that moment and that can run out quickly if you're not continuing to supplement that with new people coming into the audience. Okay, you're probably not going to make a full-time income in a sustainable way.

That's not to say that you can't make thousands of dollars from a cash injection because you totally can. But remember it's like a short burst of energy. Like you just want... you don't want to be hunting every single day or you're never going to get rest. You don't want to be in pursuit of the money all of the time.

You don't want to be in pursuit of the cash all the time. You want to also cultivate cash. That's going to grow for you as well. So they can be lucrative, but you don't want to be in that hyper-aroused state all of the time.

As I mentioned earlier, what's great is that these two approaches to selling can really work together and give you infusions of cash early on in your business, as well as set you up for the long term. An example of this is that you can host a workshop as a cash injection and use it as a stepping stone to a launch.

So you can have 10 people join your work. And then you can keep those 10 people on a list, a segment of your email list that says these people are interested in X, Y, Z topic. The other thing that you can do is if you have 10 people in your workshop, you can invite them to take the next step with you right then.

And there you can invite them into a coaching package. You could invite them into your program. You could have a group program, ready to go off the back of your workshop. It would be a cash injection that is then setting you up for sustainability in the long term. It allows you to test your ideas and make money for them, as well as get you in the position to have more revenue down the road.

So I'm really excited to teach you how to have your own cash injection. During workshop three of Summer Slow Down, we're going to be covering how to structure your workshop as well as the strategies to sell it. So you'll finish workshop three with a list of places to sell a completed sales script. And you know how to go about this to make sure that people buy tickets to your workshop. 

You will have the method to make money from your side hustle by the end of the summer. If you've already grabbed your ticket for the workshop series, you're good to go. You'll start getting emails with further details soon. If you haven't gotten your ticket already, you can still join us right now because you'll get instant access to workshop one and its assets and workshop number two and its assets.

And then you'll be able to join us live for the training in August workshops. So there's still time to run a cash injection. There's still time to make money from your side hustle and start making an impact. Now get that validation coming in, get the revenue coming in that shows that your ideas are wanted and needed.

And it can be the jumping-off point to kickstart your entire side hustle. Remember, if you want to grab your ticket, just head on over to Marissalawton.com/summer, and you can still join us for the Summer Slowdown Series. 

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