Sara Mayer - Embrace the Buffet Year: Breaking the rules to Launch Differently

00:00  Hello everyone. My name is Sara Mayer and I'm very excited to be talking with you today about breaking the rules and launching a little bit differently by embracing your buffet year.
 
00:20  What if I told you that the traditional way of launching is simply broken? So let's talk about that. You've been told to pick one perfect offer before you start, map out a flawless marketing funnel before you sell, and stick to one thing until you scale. And yet, when people follow all these rules, here's what happens. They spend months creating an offer that sometimes flops. They build the perfect launch plan and get crickets. They feel stuck because they don't know what will actually work. So let's talk about a different way. What is a buffet year? Imagine walking into an all you can eat buffet. There are dozens and dozens of options. Do you load up on one dish without trying anything else? Launching a business or a new offer should be the same way.

01:22  A buffet year allows you to try multiple strategies without overcommitting, test different offers, pricing, models, and audiences, and find what actually works for you before going all in.

01:41  So what's different between a traditional lounge and a buffet lounge? In a traditional lounge, you're going to pick one offer, build a long complicated funnel, and honestly hope it works. And while this may work for entrepreneurs who have been doing things for many years, for newer entrepreneurs who are just trying to figure out what they want to do, this doesn't always work. So a buffet year launch tests, multiple strategies, it allows you to move quickly, and it keeps what works, but also drops what doesn't. So you might be asking how are you actually do this? So there are three key phases to of a failure.

02:26 The first one is to explore, the second to experiment, and the 3rd to expand. And that's really about testing, validating and scaling. So let's break all of these down because it's a great way to launch. Sorry, dropped my mouse. All right, so the first one is the Explorer. This is the phase where you're not locking yourself into one idea yet. Instead, you're testing different options to see what clicks. So this may be a different offer it could be a course, a coaching, a membership, a private podcast. It could be different pricing models, maybe a high ticket, low ticket or even a pay what you want.

03:12 And you may also test different platforms so it could be a webinar, a podcast, or you could sell on social media, in the DMS or directly on a phone call. And so the action for you is to pick three to four things to test this quarter. Now you don't want to test them all in one launch. You want to pick three to four over the quarter, so maybe one a month.

03:40 For example, if you're a consultant, instead of immediately launching a 5K program like everybody 's doing and then maybe not enjoying a 5K program or maybe it's too long, try a VIP day, a monthly subscription or a 297$ self paced course. So it's really about picking one offer, one pricing model and one platform, trying it out, and then maybe switching that up. Phase 2 is all about experimenting, and this is where you launch into micro experiments. So instead of overcomplicating everything, you want to run a beta test so maybe you sell something before you build it, Maybe you'll adjust your pricing so you're going to test a little differently and that is where you make smaller changes and see how they work.  

04:36 Yeah and I also encourage you to launch in a scrappy way you don't need fancy funnels, a website, all these things set up. People have sold in the DMS without a website for a very long time. At some point you might want a website, but when you're first starting out, before you commit to building everything, you want to make sure it works. So I challenge you to set a 30 day experiment for each of your ideas that you selected in the first phase. All right, Phase three is all about expansion.

05:12 So now that you've tested and validated, it's time to scale. For example, a free challenge might have converted better than your webinar. Do more challenges if your VIP days sold faster than your membership. Do more VIP offers if Instagram engagement was low but LinkedIn DMS booked calls. Focus on LinkedIn. And I know sometimes this seems oversimplified, but many times we keep doing the same things over and over because we want to make that one commitment to the niche 1 commitment to the offer and keep trying something if it's not working this experiment is all about making change before you expand.  

05:59 So I want you to really look at if you're already launching stuff, what can you drop that maybe is not working and go all in on what is. So focus only on the highest ROI strategies. All right, let's do a little example. So one of my clients, Lisa, she was struggling with her launch and that's because she thought webinars were the best and only way to sell. But when we experimented with them, we realized that Lisa hates webinars and it wasn't going really well. And so because of that, we realized that a podcast tour where she wasn't doing video would be better and she was able to speak on other people's platforms because she didn't have one.

06:53 And this is where we developed a low ticket self study version of her coaching program and we used a little bit of LinkedIn strategy for outreach. And guess what, we tried all those things we did different things on various different in various different ways and the podcast tour became her biggest revenue driver. That is what we expanded on for her. We picked something out of the buffet and then we did an experiment and then we expanded from there. So let's talk about some of the biggest mistakes to avoid. Now, when we talk about a buffet here, it doesn't mean that you're going to do everything.

07:38 We're not just randomly guessing instead of tracking. We're not quitting too early you want to at least test for 30 days. And we don't want to overcomplicate instead of taking action. We want to keep it simple because speed really beats perfection.  

08:09 All right, so now that you know some of the biggest mistakes to avoid, I want to give you your challenge. So first of all, you want to pick three things to test this quarter launch before you feel ready and break the launch rules and see what happens. So maybe what's 1 launch rule you're committed to breaking this year? Think about that. What's 1 launch rule you're committed to breaking this year? If this is your buffet year, make it count.

08:41 I want you to really think about how you can change it up now this is not about this is not about just throwing spaghetti at the wall. This truly is a scientific way to think about your launch. It's not about just following expert advice either so you want to really think about how can you go forward and ensure that what you're doing and what you're putting your time and effort into is coming back to you as you launch. I hope you truly try the buffet year. It's one of my favorite things. And one of the things that I'll say about buffet years is you get to choose you get to decide what you want to do and you get to decide what you don't want to do.  

09:40 And instead of investing all this time into something that maybe you won't even like, you'll get to change it up and decide what you are going to put on your plate from the buffet. All right, again, my name is Sarah Mayer i'm so excited to see what you create in your buffet year as you break all the rules and follow me for more launch strategies. We love working with our clients to see them launch businesses and offers that they are passionate about.