Want to Launch a Program in Q1? 7 Real Questions From Experts, Answered

If you want a program live in Q1, the deciding happens before the holidays, not in January. On October 15 I ran a live Ask Me Anything about exactly that. No slides, no pitch, and I went through the questions in the order people registered. Here are the ones that came up, with my answers.

"Where do I start to generate something that creates residual income, so I'm not trading time for money?"

Matt has been coaching for 22 years, word of mouth the whole way, and every hour is still an hour for a dollar.

First, the bad news. Passive income from courses and programs is mostly a marketing play. Even my clients whose programs run without them still have someone generating leads and running the sales system. The closest thing to passive income I know is a 401(k). So any time someone says "make passive income with a course," let your red flag go up.

The real goal is the one in Kiyosaki's cash flow quadrant: move from self-employed, where you own a job, to business owner, where you own a system that other people run. That takes time and it's not for everyone. Some of our clients just want to be self-employed (to own a job) with more leverage (they make more money for LESS time), and that's a fine place to stop.

Either way, step one is leverage in delivery. If you're doing 15 hours of 1:1 a week, three groups of ten turns 15 hours into three. There's real research that people work about 30 percent harder in a group than alone, so results go up, not down. Raise your 1:1 rate so there's a gap between the two, and most people who make this move end up making more.

And if you don't know where to start, get every idea out of your head and onto paper, then run the list through delegate, eliminate, automate. Eliminate what won't move the needle (park it, don't delete it). Delegate what someone else can do. Automate what you can set up once, like the email series a lead gets between booking a call and showing up to it.

Here's a framework from Rory Vaden for some more context.

"What has to be decided now, and what can wait? I'm just starting out."

Mandy is writing a book, and in the meantime she's been handed a pile of ideas by people in rooms like this one: a YouTube channel, a podcast, a journal app. She also has what she called an unnamed fear that she'll do something wrong and get in trouble.

Get the LLC. It takes ten minutes online and it'll make you feel better. (I'm not a lawyer and this isn't financial advice. I ran my business for years without one because nobody told me.)

Then the first real decision: what's the offer? What are you going to give someone, in exchange for money, that they actually want? The YouTube channel, the podcast, the app, those are stage-four strategies. You're in stage one. Stage one is deciding what you're selling and then talking to people about it. Work the phone.

And when eight people on a call say "I'd buy that," the answer is "let's have a call and I'll sell it to you." Mandy didn't say that, because she'd already decided it was a dumb idea. We create the very thing we fear. In fearing you won't have revenue, you put things between you and the revenue.

"I've lost the mindset. How do I get back on track?"

Pam was on track with her course, then life happened. Her daughter had a baby and she stepped out for a year to help. Now she's back, she's hired an accountability coach, and her next goal is to film the course badly within two weeks.

Faster and less perfectly. That phrase will serve you.

Then a journaling exercise. Make a list of every reason the fast, imperfect version is actually perfect. Everything that happens has equal parts good and bad if you look hard enough, and when you find both you get neutral, and neutral is where things flow. It works on the other side too. If there's something you want so badly you're gripping it, list every reason it would be awful to get it. There's a phrase: if your want is high, kiss it goodbye. I did this on a dream contract I'd been chasing since February, got neutral, and that week they said yes.

"How do I schedule Q4 so a Q1 program actually launches?"

Jen runs Lawyer Success Network and wanted to see what the Q4 calendar looks like when Q1 is the goal.

Launches work when they're planned in advance. Most of business does. I walked the room through my own content calendar, which runs on a Plant, Water, Harvest layout (my CMO Baillie's framework, not mine). Plant is awareness, Water is nurture, Harvest is sales. Every promotion is planned three months out, each one has its own email sequence, and every row has a ClickUp task behind it, because a calendar that only lives in a spreadsheet doesn't get done.

Two things I'd add. Put your life in the calendar first: the holidays, the football game, the kids' stuff, before you schedule a workshop on top of it. And set goals for every promotion before it runs, even the ones with no pitch. Once the plan exists I'm not thinking anymore. I'm executing, and the peace that brings is hard to describe.

"Why is the first part of the year such a good time to launch?"

Most people think January. I find February into March is better. In January people are nursing the holiday hangover and clearing their inbox, and taking something new on feels like too much. By February the New Year's goals click into place, the backlog is gone, and if you sell to consumers they've had another paycheck after holiday spending.

Business owners do their annual planning at the end of the year, when it's slow, and commit at the new year. That's why memberships and masterminds see their biggest enrollment then, especially for anything that was on the list the year before. It holds for most industries, B2B and B2C, and most of all B2C.

"How does linking our training platform to our website actually work?"

Karen's organization is launching a free four-course program for parents on Teachable, and wanted to know how it connects to their website.

Simpler than it sounds. A button on your website goes to the platform's checkout page. For a free program the checkout has no dollar amount, it just creates the login. One checkout page can grant access to all four courses at once, so whichever one they click, they see all four when they get inside. The only wiring behind it is a Zapier connection that sends each new login back to your CRM, so your email list stays in one place.

Her follow-up was where to reach people for a program like this. Step one is where your people hang out. Step two, the advanced version, is where they are when they're thinking about the problem you solve. That's why the freeway has billboards for injury lawyers.

Think hubs, not spokes: who is the one person who already knows all the individuals you want to reach? For a parent audience, that's parent groups, newsletters and accounts parents already follow. Partnerships over cold reach.

"How do I decide what format to launch?"

Maria couldn't make it live, so I answered this one in the last two minutes.

Three formats. An email launch: you email your list about the offer, and that's the whole launch. An event launch: a workshop, a challenge, a masterclass, a three-day virtual event, with the offer on the back end. A partner or affiliate launch: someone else mails their list for you, usually with a revenue share, sometimes as a swap. Event launches are harder, but they're usually the right first step if you want to drive enrollment into one program with a start date.

What nobody asked

Nobody asked what their course should be about. They asked how to stop trading time for money, what to decide first, how to get back on track, and how to get the calendar to actually produce a launch. Underneath every one of those was the same thing: the deciding is the hard part, not the building. What are you selling, to whom, and when. Everything else, the podcast, the app, the platform, the perfectly recorded lesson, is downstream of that. And if February is the goal, the deciding has to happen before the holidays.

Looking for support to map your Q1 Launch? 

Book a call with our team here, and ask about the Revenue Roadmap. That's the whole point of that offer.