Behind the Launch of Build Your Tribe

It’s 11:08 PM on Monday night.

Two hours ago the Build Your Tribe went live & I emailed my First Dibs list to give them the first chance to join the pre-sale of my newest program (and I’m super excited to say that people have already bought! yay! it’s working!)

But before I go into crazy launch mode I want to share with you some of the decisions underneath the way I’m launching this program – since they all came from huge mistakes I’ve made with launches in the past – so you don’t have to learn the hard way in your next launch.

The Why’s of How I’m Launching the Pre-Sale of Build Your Tribe:

1 – We only know if people want something by how they spend money.

You need to sell stuff that your people want to buy. Not what they need, not what you think they should have to succeed, but what they want.

The funny thing is that people will *tell* you that they want something, they’ll send in survey responses and emails and tweets telling you that they want something …

but you never know what people want until you ask them to buy.

Because sometimes people will say they want it, but they won’t actually spend the money.

So now when I launch a new program for the first time I don’t depend on surveys before I create the new product or service. I launch the thing first, before I spend the time and energy and money creating it.

And after they spend the money … only then do I go ahead & create the thing that delivers what I promised them.

2 – Reward the True Fans.

I didn’t just create a First Dibs list for Build Your Tribe so I could send people another email.

I created First Dibs to reward my True Fans.

My tribe inner circle, those people who support Live Your Truth, who believe in the message, who want to be part of what I create, who come out for the tweetups and twitter chats and livestreams and invest in my programs and RT my tweets and put my blog posts on their Facebook walls …

they get first dibs on joining me for anything I create. Especially if seats are limited.

Because my True Fans are the ones who make what I’m doing here possible.

3 – Help people make a decision.

Selling is not about getting people to buy.

Selling is about helping people make a decision.

To buy or not to buy. A yes, or a no. Anything but a maybe.

That’s why I’m only opening up Build Your Tribe pre-sale for 3 days.

Because I want to do people a favor. Help them not procrastinate. A deadline empowers them to make a choice.

4 – Don’t exhaust the list.

I’m in crazy growth phase. Which means I’m promoting and testing a lot of stuff. Some will work, some will not work. But it means a lot of emails, a lot of blog posts, a lot of tweets.

So I must be careful to not bog down my list with so many offers they stop paying attention.

Instead of a multi-week pre-launch/launch sequence, I’m doing this fast and dirty. Before today I hinted about the program, I put up the sales site (without the order page), I wrote a blog post previewing what I’m doing.

But tomorrow morning is the first solo email. The first day of a zillion tweets about this thing. The first big push.

And I’m only launching this pre-sale for 3 days – so my list will continue to pay attention.

5 – Fail fast.

As I said above, I’m in massive testing mode. Because I don’t know what will work. Some stuff already hasn’t worked, some stuff has launched pretty okay, and occasionally I’ve launched something that’s freaking awesometastic.

But the only way to find the awesometastic is to launch a lot of stuff. And to stop launching the stuff that sucks asap.

So I can stop spending my limited time & energy (and attention of my list) on the suckage and redirect it to the awesometasticness.

It’s all about speed. Speed in leaving the stuff that fails (or is mediocre), and speed in embracing the stuff that’s amazing.

So if you’re interesting in finding your tribe, creating and nurturing a community of people who resonate with (and buy from) you – join us for the Build Your Tribe program (only available for pre-sale until Thursday May 27, 2010).

Back to you – what mistakes have you made with your launches? What lessons have you learned?

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