Full Episode!! Work in Public: The Secret to Launching with a Ready-to-Buy Audience

Hey warmies, welcome back to the warm up. Today we are talking about a very important subject, something I talk about all the time and a key to creating this trusted ready to buy audience and that is working in public, building in public, actually sharing the process rather than the finished product. And I will say before we dive in, if you're the type of person that has a bias toward messy action, if you're really good at just showing up as you are, being really authentic online, not needing it to look perfect, not being performative, you're going to really have an advantage when it comes to working in public and growing this trusted community. If you're someone who really struggles with this, if you have this attitude of why would anyone care, if you are super perfectionistic and like to be all buttoned up before you show up, if you're analytical, if you like to think through all the different scenarios before you can take your first step, this is going to be really probably a lot harder for you. But regardless of what camp you fall into or where you are on the spectrum, I really think that this episode is going to help you not only understand why it's important to work in public and why this is such an important tool for building trust with your audience, but also how to do it in a way that actually does make people care and is super easy and natural for you. First things first, when we think about working in public, we often are told to just document everything. Film your whole day, share it live, and this is actually bad advice to me. This isn't good marketing advice, it's actually kind of lazy in my opinion. This is because just simply marketing your day and passively sharing it isn't going to hook anyone. It's like when you see a day in the life real, right? Unless you really are already connected to that creator, the influencer, the person that's doing the day in the life, unless you really understand what they're about and their values, it's probably pretty likely that you just don't really care, right? What we need to do instead with working in public, what's really going to build that trusted community that wants to tune in to your day in the life to what you're up to, who really gets invested, is actually developing a story. It's all about building trust, creating momentum, and actually showing your community why they should care. And there's some methods to actually getting them hooked in. It's like a good movie, introduces a main character, gives you their backstory, tells you what's at stake. We really want to create that same momentum around our launch. So the work in public series, the things that you're sharing with your audience should really tell a bigger story about why you're doing what you're doing, what you're working toward, who you are and what you value, so that the people watching are like bought in and want to see every single step of the way, and really want to be part of your narrative as well. So today we're going to go through what that looks like. First, we're going to develop the main character story. You are the main character of your offer, so we're going to look at what that looks like, how to develop it, how to make sure that there's like a well-rounded personality behind the working in public narrative. Next, we're going to make sure we're telling our audience where we're headed. We need to set up some goals, something we're striving for so that they are invested in the journey and they want to see us get from point A to point B. Next we're going to create tension within the story. So what are the stakes? How are you creating momentum? What's going to happen if this does not work? We really want people to be sold in to the journey and that looks like having something at stake if it doesn't work out. If you're sitting there being like, this all feels like a lot, just put it into context of the bigger strategy of your launch, right? You're building up toward people wanting to invest in you and your service and what makes you someone that they want to follow along with, invest in trust. And it's really hard to do that if you're just constantly showing up at the finish line every single time. They're like, "Woo, good for you. You're launching something else again." Or, "Awesome, that's a beautiful finished project." What did it actually take to create that project? What were the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it? It would be like watching a cooking show and just seeing them take the cake out of the oven. Rather than watching them actually source the ingredients, put them all together, bake, tell you stories along the way, and finally present this beautiful finished product that they've been working on with you throughout the hour long program. I want you to think about your brand in the same way. You're all working toward a big launch around an offer, but for people to really understand it to be invested, they want to see the way that the cake is made. It's your job to make sure that you're showing them that. And again, you might be asking right now, "Coussey, why would anyone care about how the cake is made? Nobody cares." That's probably the number one objection I hear when I tell people to start a work in public strategy during their warm-up period before they even launch their offer. And my honest answer is, if you don't make them care, they probably won't. Like I said, there's a lot of people working in public who don't do the things that I'm taking you through today. They just post what they're working on for the day passively. There's no idea of what they're working toward. They share really sporadically without a new strategy, or like I said, they're just showing the cake coming out of the oven ready to eat, not actually showing the process of making it. In that case, people won't really care, right? They're not invested. They're not tuning in, like their favorite series. But when you do do it in a way that really gets people invested in cares, this is the best way to warm up your audience. This is the best way to get them to engage, to get buy-in, to get them really invested in you and the way that you do things, and not just see you as another brand designer or another copyrighter or another coach. People care when you tell them what you're working toward. When you let them see your personality, and when you share the messy, relatable middle of what you're working on, not just the shiny ending. We're in an era where the messy middle is raining supreme. People love to see the messy bits, the imperfect bits. We want to see the 10-part series. We don't want the cliff notes. We love the messy photo dump over the polished brand photos, and the same goes in this pre-launch period, the more that you can just show up as you are right now, the more people are going to be able to relate to you. No one is asking for perfection from you, except yourself. So before we dive into going really deep on the three-part framework, maybe take a minute to journal about what comes up when I say, "Just show up as you are." You might feel overwhelmed. You might say, "Oh, well, well, that look like how, how do I do that?" Right? That's usually a big thing. You want to know the exact way that you're supposed to show up in a way that is going to get you the most biggest bang for your time and the biggest impact for what you're doing. And the truth is there's no exact ROI on working in public. It's something that's compounding. It's something that takes time and it's something that's super individualized as far as the way that you show up authentically for you and the way that your audience resonates with that. Another thing coming up might be, "Oh, I just need to figure XYZ out first." The shift here is that working in public is literally the easiest thing that you could do in your day. You can literally just pick up your camera, tell people what you're doing right now, and be done with it. You're already doing. You just need to be taking us through what you're doing and why. Not just documenting, but again, really taking people through the reasons, the stakes, the ingredients that are going into what you're doing and eventually the outcome. You might be thinking, "Well, what's the point of this?" What is this actually fit into the bigger story of my launch? So many people are just sticking to this old launch method of teasing for a couple of days and then going on sale. That doesn't work anymore. People need time to warm up. That's what this podcast is all about. Trust building times with audiences are taking longer than ever. Consumers are more apprehensive than ever to actually invest in people. It takes time to build trust. So doing that traditional big reveal launch strategy, it's just outdated. We're living behind the scenes. We're living in real time. We're living in TikTok worlds. We're living in real world, Instagram world where you can't hide behind your process. Working in public lets people in before the launch. It gets them to start caring to start rooting for you to feel invested and seeing you as a real person, not just a skill set. And you're creating buy-in before you pitch, right? So many people just start selling and warming up at the same time and they're wondering why they're not converting. This strategy gets people familiar with your offer, familiar with you before they even have a chance to buy. That way when you do open doors, they're lining up ready to work with you. Hey, warmies. If you're ready to turn this audience warmth into actual sales, I want to tell you about my best selling program, Launcher Ownway. It's where I teach creative service providers how to create marketing campaigns that actually work for them. The formulas, no paint by numbers, just strategies that feel as good as the revenue that they generate. Because you're part of the warm up community, I've given you a special discount code. All you have to do is drop your email in the link in the show notes and it will be delivered to your inbox before you've been finished listening to that episode. Now back to our conversation. Part one of the framework is that you are the main character, as I mentioned. So we really need to think about what is your character? What is that compelling lead that's going to get people to want to continue to watch? We need your face. We need your voice. We need your values and your weird obsessions. We need to know you. Moreover, we really need to know your backstory. Where did you come from? What are you all about? How did you end up here? Think about your favorite books that you've read. You get not only subtle hints about the character in the first chapter based on maybe whether drinking or a comment from another character in the room or the narrator, but you also get seeds of backstory that tell you why they are the way they are. If you take me, for example, I'm always talking about being squiggly about getting moved in class, about talking too much, and about how that's actually become my entrepreneurial super power. It informs the way that I teach in my programs, it informs the way that I show up, and it informs the way that I just live and move throughout my life. Now you might be asking, okay, but why would your audience care about that? That's something that's important for you to do. Once you start excavating your character and the way that you are and the things that you want to tell and share about yourself, it's important to think where does it cross over with what your audience cares about. So for me, my audience is also very squiggly. They also maybe felt a little bit creative and different from their peers. They probably also identify with being disorganized and maybe that holding them back from their idea of being successful in life. So this plot point, this characteristic of me, of me as the main character of my brand, really helps people relate and hook in to my story because they resonate with what I'm saying so much because they feel similar to me. So what are those things that make you you? Everything to think about is your backstory and maybe journal on this, but what are the things that you learned and potentially past jobs did come from a corporate environment? For me, I used to work in the music industry and I'm always talking about how what I did there and what I learned there relates to what I teach now. I often talk about moving from a big city to a smaller town and what that's looked like over the last year. I'm always letting people know what I'm trying, what I'm doing to try to evolve my business in real time and how that might relate to things I learned in the music industry or how my life circumstances have possibly changed and caused me to have to change my business or pivot in some way. So what's some backstory that you can start gathering to also be sure that you're sharing? And these are things you can share through social posts so you could potentially have a series or you can share in Instagram stories, newsletters. If you're ever on podcasts, it's a great way to tell some fun facts, really give people an idea of who you are as a whole person. There's so many creative service providers I follow now who I just don't even have any inkling of who they are and what they're like outside of the fact that they design websites or their social media managers, but I don't actually care about them as a person because I don't know anything about them as a person. Therefore, I'm not invested in what they're doing or what their story is. Anything else to think about are what are the things that you do every single day that you could start sharing? Just to round out that character story a bit. So I think about my friend's aunt, the apple yard, she's like always making these beautiful breakfasts with cottage cheese and tomatoes. Or my friend Michelle from Hello Lemon, who is always making a smoothie every morning and like a really cute cup and she always films that. So what are like the things that you repeat every day that you can almost use as these anchor points in your Instagram stories, your TikTok stories that again tell us about your character without telling us too much about you, right? But they create this like recall idea of like, ooh cottage cheese, zanthy, ooh a smoothie and a cool cup, Michelle, do you have things like that that you could potentially repeat on socials that again just hook people into who you are and what your rituals and routines are? Again, you might be thinking who the hell cares if I go and buy myself a match every morning. That's a relatable point for people. You go on your walk, you get a matcha, it's this lovely ritual that we feel like we're a part of every day. That tells us something about your character. Maybe you always film yourself doing preschool drop off with your kids, again, your followers could be moms. So something like that could be really nice for them to see and relate to. So take a minute and think, who is my character? What is my main character story? That doesn't mean you need to overshare, it doesn't mean you need to tell every single thing. But it does mean that you need to anchor yourself in some sort of narrative where people understand a really well-rounded version of who you are. That includes your backstory, those daily anchors and obsessions, the things you care about, your personality traits and quirks, and write those down and start maybe noting the moments of your day that those come out or the ways that you could potentially tell those stories on social. And again, is there something that is my squiggly-ness that I could turn into an Instagram real series? Or is there something like me dropping me off at school every single day that I could turn into an Instagram story that I share? You go to Pilates or some sort of an exercise class every day. Do you go to networking events? Do you make dinner every night? These are all things that can add to your main character energy that you're already doing automatically, but you're not actually sharing. As mundane as they seem to you, those are the little things that are going to make us feel super connected to who you are. So once you step into your main character energy, I really want you to think about the next step of the working and public process. And again, it's not posting day-in-the-life content with no direction that just meanders on and on. Just like it wouldn't be enough to just post my smoothie every day and expect to have a huge trusted audience. We're building on that idea of the main character who actually also needs a plot. Just like any great book we need to know where the main character is heading and how they're getting from A to B. Think about Frodo and Bilbo. Bilbo? Frodo and Bilbo? Yeah, I think that's right. Think about Frodo and the Lord of the Rings. We are hooked in for three freaking hours to that movie because they are trying to get to Mordor. I think that's what it's called. I used to work at a gift shop. Maybe I should add this to my lore. My background's lore when I was like 13, I worked at a gift shop at a restaurant in a place called Ocean City, Maryland in a restaurant called the Hobbit. And it was literally like Hobbit memorabilia in the gift shop. And I learned way too much about this movie against my will. But regardless, if you want to hear more about that DM me, if you want to talk Elvis, shoot me a DM. Anyway, we want to know what your one ring is, like where are you headed? Give us a goal. So if you are working before a launch, you're developing your character online, you're showing up more, you have your series around like maybe your squiggly nature or whatever it is. We also want to know what you're actually doing it all for, why you're showing up, where you want to go. And that might look like sharing a big launch goal. My friend Sarah from between the lines copy had a workshop recently and she's like, I want a hundred people to sign up in a physical day. She was sharing us updates on how many people have signed up. Another creator I follow is working toward getting new and bigger brand partnerships. So she's constantly sharing her updates on the brand partnerships and where she's at and how she's pitching them. I'm working toward a $100,000 launch for my next launcher and way launch. It's always so meta. So I am talking a lot about how that looks and the things that I'm doing to hit that goal. So people know this is the goal that I'm working toward and this is why. This is really the part that gets people invested. They want to know exactly where they're going with you. Think about how boring that cooking show would be if we were just watching them bake over and over and over again, but never seeing that beautiful finished cake at the end, right? The two go hand in hand. Think about how boring Lord of the Rings would be. If Bilbo and Frodo and all those guys were just like walking through the woods aimlessly. No, we need a destination. What is your destination? It could be finishing a massive project for our client that you're taking us through. It could be creating a course from scratch. We want to see every single part of that course creation process, knowing that it's building up to finishing your first course ever. Maybe you're pivoting your brand design service. We want to know exactly what that new offer is going to look like, what you want to get out of it and how much you're hoping to make at the end. I actually just thought of like reels. I'm on like recipe reels a lot because I'm always trying to find things to cook. My amazing husband who you all were recently introduced to around Reels. It does most of the cooking. I'm very lucky. But I do occasionally like to cook and usually the first shot that they show you is the finished cake and then they go into how they made it with all the ingredients and the narration. So it's almost that same concept like here's the cake, here's the place that I'm going but come with me on the ride along the way. So part two of this framework, tell us where you're headed, tell us the destination. What are you building? What milestones are you chasing? What does the transformation look like? Maybe you don't really have a clear picture on that. Maybe right now you're like, I don't freaking know. That's a problem. And I would say that's something that launching really helps you figure out in your business. Because through planning a launch campaign, you are going to set goals, have a clear destination for yourself in your business and actually have something that you're actually sharing the progress toward in your own business, not just with your clients. I find service providers who aren't launching our running regular marketing campaigns find this really hard because they're like, I don't even know what the goal is. I'm just trying to get to the end of the next client project or I'm just trying to book a one more client, right? We want to move out of that energy. That is the reactive energy. That is the feast and famine energy. That is the roller coaster energy. We are the main characters. We have a destination of where we want to go. We have clear vision, clear goals. That's what's going to create warmth and buy in from our audience. And like every good story, having a destination is not enough. We need some tension. We need some stakes. We need a little bit of momentum that creates this like, oh, what if it doesn't happen? What if they don't get it finished in time? Think about like, I used to love project runway, did anyone watch that show Tim Gunn? The best. Remember that they had a limited amount of time. Again, this is why launching is so great. You have a beginning and an end to when you are doing this process. There is a limited amount of time. You know that you're launching on an X amount of date. So the countdown is coming for how long that you actually have to accomplish this goal. We're invested. In project runway, they have a challenge at the beginning. They get their materials. They come up with their idea. We're there with them throughout the entire thing and we are freaking invested. There's lots of main characters. They always have like, the best characters on that show. And then there's that moment where they're so close to tools down that you're just like, holy crap, they're going to have to staple the dress of the back if they don't hurry the fuck up. And then they're going to have to send something down the runway that's unfinished and they are going to get read to felt by the judges and maybe get voted off. So I want you to think about your work in public narrative really similarly. Not that you're going to get voted out of your brand or something like that. And there's no judgment, right? Like, we're not sitting there criticizing you for not finishing. But we need to know that there's something at stake, right? There's a date that you're working toward finishing. If you don't hit your finance goals, like, what does your business look like? What are you going to have to do? What happens if it just doesn't work? What happens if it does? What are you risking and what do you unlock if you succeed? We don't just want information. We want something to root for. We're already invested in your main character energy. We already know where you want to go. Now we just need a little bit of attention to really feel stuck into the narrative. When you're using this three part framework in your next launch, I really want you to actually write the entire framework out for yourself and actually plan some of these posts a bit more granularly. Maybe one is a series where you're actually taking people through what the launch is and what you're doing. A really great example of this series, not to shout out Michelle again, but she is really just OG. If you go to buy hello lemon on Instagram, she had a whole launch series that she rolled out over a recent launch, I think, like in the fall where she actually took us through launch updates and what she was doing and what she was working toward. That's an amazing series that you could easily replicate. Maybe it is as simple as sharing your smoothie every single morning with it to do list and some progress updates. Maybe it's a newsletter series where you're really taking people behind the scenes on a client project that you're working on or a beta launch that you're doing where you're really showing people what you're actually doing day to day and how it's working towards some bigger goal and again, what's at stake. The important thing with working in public is just consistency. Being okay with showing up every day and perfectly and knowing that this is actually the stuff that people really care about and want to see. This is how people get invested. If you want a great episode to listen back to to hear about working in public, I'd really recommend going back and listening to Alyssa from AT&N Design. She talks all about how she basically built a course with her students giving input, helping her make decisions. This is the kind of energy we want when it comes to your next warm up period before a big launch. So your next step, again, work through the framework. What are your main character plot points? Your main character back stories. Where are you headed? What destination are you taking us on? And what are those tensions and those stakes that are going to really help us be invested? What happens if it doesn't work and what happens if it does? And I'm going to challenge you if you're listening to this episode, start working in public today, right? When this episode ends, get yourself on Instagram stories, get yourself on TikTok and start the process. It could be around something new in your business that you're exploring. For instance, I'm introducing a new one-on-one offer for creators. So I've been slowly teasing out on threads and LinkedIn and TikTok about this offer. It's a slightly new audience that I'm trying to reach. And so I'm literally just taking people through what that's looking like, why I'm doing it. It could be around a launch you have coming up or a client project you're in the middle of that is going to be a really amazing case study for the next offer that you want to book. And more personal, like in 2023, I wanted to go to Europe for four months with my family. And therefore I wanted to pivot my business away from being a design studio and into more education, more scalable offers. I literally told people, I want to go to Europe with my family for four and a half months. I'm pivoting my business, come with me as I rebrand, come with me as I change my offers, come with me as I try to make this happen. And then what happened in the end, you saw me with a cocktail on my hand on the beach in Greece with my family. So it could also be more personal goals that are business related, that your business is supporting. Those are really great too. I'd love to hear your work in public ideas. I'd love to hear your work in public questions. The next episode is a Q&A episode. So if you want to submit work in public specific scenarios or questions, things that are unclear, mindset, things that you want to kind of work through in the process, definitely submit in the hotline and I'll get back to you. And just a reminder that Launcher Away is re-emrolling soon. We open May 6th. There's going to be super, super limited spots to the VIP because I don't have as much capacity as I will usually this summer because a big stick thing that I'm working through is going on Matt Leave. Again, I've been doing a series around that a lot and sharing a lot about that and how I'm prepping. I will be still running the Launcher Away program though, still doing office hours and all of that. I'm going to be a reduced number of spots. So if you do want to join Launcher Away supported VIP, definitely, definitely, definitely get on the wait list for that because they probably will sell out in the wait list based on how much interest I'm getting at the moment. As always, please share that you've listened to the warm up. It really helps people find the podcast. And if you could leave your feedback that would be amazing, I have a lot of really great feedback so far, but it really warms my heart and it really helps spread the word when you leave your feedback. Alright, good luck working in public, let me know how you go and I'll see you in the next Q&A episode. Bye!