Does anyone else remember the Robert Palmer song “Addicted to Love” with the women dressed in black with their hair slicked back wearing bright red lipstick? It’s a classic video. Well, I’ve changed the words for some entrepreneurs I know who seem to be addicted to launch.
Oh yes, many entrepreneurs are attracted to the new and the shiny. They swoon over creating that new product or service, diving into research, writing copy, evaluating technology platforms, and choosing fonts and color palates. It can be quite exciting and almost intoxicating.
They wake up in to morning ready to work. They keep jotting down ideas in notebooks or on their phones. It’s why they started their business. It feels so right!
After the initial hit of validation because the launch was successful (or falling back to reassess because it wasn’t), they can lose interest in the project that had all of their attention for weeks or months before.
For many entrepreneurs, the day-to-day running of the business takes more effort and discipline.
If your role within your business is to create and launch new products and services, you’re all set.
However, if you’re a solo or very small business owner, launching something is likely only a very small part of what you do.
I have had to ask many clients to reassess building and launching something just because they could. Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
Instead, you might want to consider some of the following:
Does this serve your existing client base?
Is this cool new thing going to help your current clients? Have they been asking for it? Will they be interested? Does it augment or complement your current market offering?
If so, it probably makes sense to explore the idea.
Will it help you enter a new market?
Is there another market that could be interested in your product / service? Maybe you’re ready to grow and scale, or maybe our current target market is saturated? That might be a good reason to do some research and testing.
However, if you are pursuing a new marketing because it is a shiny object distraction instead of focusing on the ongoing marketing effort you should be doing for your current target market, you should probably get back to that.
Are you repackaging something?
If you are in the information or online training business, repackaging and rebranding can breathe new life into something that has gone stale. Update the content and add a few bonuses of other things you have in the archives and you might have something to launch!
Repurposing thought leadership is a time-honored practice. It’s always worth taking a look to see what could be freshened up or updated in a different media format. Videos can turn into podcasts, blog posts into eBooks, presentations into online training, etc.
What you want to avoid is going completely rogue and creating something for a market that doesn’t make sense for your existing business or business goals.
As an example, I once talked a client out of creating a whole social media training program for authors and speakers that he was completely qualified to teach by reminding him that his goal for the next year was to work with corporate clients.
As I said above, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
(Might as well face it, you’re addicted to launch.)
