This week’s solo episode comes to you from the launch lull… that strange, uneasy stretch between opening the cart on a launch and closing it, when everything is scheduled, there is nothing left to do but wait and the doubts creep in. Have I done enough? Should I have pushed out more content? Is there something else I should be doing right now?
This is only my fourth launch, so I am treating every attempt as a test, collecting data on what has and hasn’t worked rather than expecting overnight results. But sitting in this particular lull prompted me to reflect back to where it all began: the two years it took me to settle on what I wanted to teach, the seven months it took to launch this podcast and the very first webinar I ever delivered to two photographers in a Zoom room, after which I genuinely needed a shower to wash the anxiety away!
This episode is about the stories we tell ourselves that keep us feeling like imposters, the battle with a brain that is only trying to keep us safe and why ready is a decision rather than a feeling.
Shout out to the Queen of Launches, Teresa Heath-Wareing, for her encouragement and support without which I wouldn’t be launching anything!
Key Reflections:
- The uneasy reality of the launch lull and why treating each launch as a test rather than a verdict has made the process easier to sit with
- Why launching this podcast felt more possible than launching a photography course, and the realisation that being unquestionably a mum with a business was enough qualification to begin
- The brutal, deeply rooted stories that delayed the launch of Print Over Pixels for nearly two years, including the belief that the market was too saturated and everyone else was cleverer, more experienced and more confident
- The relief of finally landing on a subject that felt genuinely aligned, partly because nobody else in the UK seemed to be talking about it
- The first ever live webinar, delivered to just two photographers, and why it triggered a level of anxiety that ended in a much needed shower afterwards
- Why the brain treats new, vulnerable action like genuine danger, and what it means to override that instinct and do the thing anyway
- The realisation four launches later that the same webinar no longer feels dangerous, and what that reveals about how quickly we can expand our own comfort zone if we are willing to push against it
- Why motherhood, entrepreneurship and personal growth are so tightly intertwined, and how nurturing a business alongside a family often means confronting parts of yourself you would rather not look at
- The decision that no one else’s permission is required to take up space, and why that belief might be the most important thing to carry into any new, frightening endeavour
Listen If You’re:
- Sitting in your own version of a launch lull and needing reassurance that the uncertainty is normal
- Delaying something in your business because you have decided the market is too saturated or you are not qualified enough
- Waiting to feel ready before you take the next step, and wondering whether that feeling will ever actually arrive
- Someone who has talked yourself out of doing a scary but meaningful thing in your business more than once
- Curious about the psychological battle between comfort and growth that underpins so much of building something new
Favourite Takeaway for Mums in Business:
“Ready is not a feeling, it’s a decision. You don’t need permission from anybody else to take up space. The only person who needs to give you their approval is you.“
About the Host:
I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, charity co-founder, photography business educator, marketer and now podcaster! My career has wandered all over the place and is becoming a bit of a complex tapestry as I head into this middle phase of life, but I can honestly say I’ve loved every minute of it so far.
I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis! I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It’s a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams!
If You Enjoyed This Episode:
Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast – it helps other mums find us!
Share in your Instagram stories, tag @mummeansbusinesspodcast and let me know your biggest takeaway!
Share this episode with a fellow Mum in business who you feel would resonate with my ramblings.
Episode Transcript:
NOTE: This is the transcript from the original recording, rather than the edited episode so timings may vary.
Hello and welcome to this solo episode of the Mum Means Business podcast. This week I am in the launch lull. If you’ve ever launched anything online before, you’ll know it’s that bit in between the launch event, the webinar, the bootcamp, the challenge, whatever it is, and the moment you close the doors on your offer. Those days when your cart is open, everything is scheduled and there’s not much more you can do.
So you feel like you’re just sitting on your hands, waiting and watching out for sales. There’s this uneasy feeling and you ask yourself so many questions. Have I done enough? Should I have pushed out more pre-launch content? Did my emails land? Is there more I could still be doing? And when the sales aren’t flooding in, part of you wants to close the cart and put the whole idea in the bin. Alas, we must hold our nerve, because this is only the fourth time I’ve launched anything. I’m not expecting Jenna Kutcher results by any stretch, and I’m treating every launch attempt as a test, collecting data on what has and hasn’t worked, so I know what to focus on or tweak for next time.
I do want to shout out the queen of launches, Theresa Heathwaring, and her Grow Launch Sell programme, which I am always going back to and referring to, because there is so much gold in there when it comes to each stage of launching. If you haven’t listened already, go back to episode 28, where she and I talk about her early days in business as a single mum to her daughter, and how it all evolved to bring her to where she is today, supporting coaches, course creators and membership owners with their launch strategy.
I know I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without her continued encouragement and support over the past couple of years, as I put myself back together after it was well and truly rocked by early motherhood.
I remember how nervous I was doing my first ever webinar for the Print Over Pixels course back in January. It had taken me almost two years to, one, settle on what I wanted to teach, and two, get out of my own way and build the thing, because the stories I had told myself were brutal and so deeply rooted. Overcoming them felt like climbing Everest. It was such hard work and it took time. Who was I to teach anyone anything? Who would want to listen to me? What would people think of me if I started showing up online trying to sell yet another framework, or a system, or a strategy? Because what do I know about anything? God, looking back, I was so cruel to myself. And those stories kept me feeling like an imposter. They kept me afraid and stopped me taking action.
I had similar thoughts around starting this podcast. It took me seven months to get from idea to launch, which actually isn’t bad, and I’ve been reflecting on why that felt easier. In the end I landed on this: I am definitely a mum, there’s no doubt about it, nobody can say that I’m not, and I have a business, that’s true too. That business might have crashed and burned, although I rebranded that crash and burn as a pivot, during my double maternity in a global pandemic, but it still existed. So I felt qualified enough to start a podcast about being a mum with a business.
Was I qualified to teach photographers anything? Absolutely not. If you’re not familiar with the industry of social photography, it sometimes feels like there are as many photography educators as there are photographers. So the market was totally saturated, another story I told myself daily. And all the other photographers who were teaching were far cleverer, far more experienced, more confident, more wise and more wonderful than I was. There was no space for little old me with my 17 years of experience photographing people.
When I finally landed on my subject, or niche, as I’m supposed to refer to it, and it is pretty niche, I felt thrilled. Partly because it was something that had actually changed the game for me and I wanted to tell every other family photographer all about it. And partly because I couldn’t actually find anyone in the UK who was talking specifically about leading with print and why it matters in the digital age. It felt very aligned for me, which was genuine relief, because so much had felt out of alignment over the past few years as I’ve been trying to carve out a new path for myself that works around this big new role as mum.
Launching the podcast, scared and nervous, had taught me an important lesson that I’d heard people say but never really felt until that point. Ready is not a feeling, it’s a decision. It made me realise I could start something new imperfectly and refine as I went. Whilst I had dotted as many i’s and crossed as many t’s as I could, I was only one person, and I had created something that wasn’t perfect but added value nonetheless.
If I could do that with the podcast, what else could I do? Building out the Print Over Pixels course felt like a huge achievement in itself. Just like launching the podcast, I’d blame tech overwhelm for my hesitation, but in reality it was just a case of learning something new, and I was perfectly capable.
I remember doing my first ever live webinar and my god, I can’t remember a time I’ve been so nervous. In that one hour training, I came head to head with every single one of those stories that had held me back, and I had to persevere despite them. Here I was doing all the things my brain had spent years telling me not to do. And even though there were only two other photographers in that Zoom room, it was terrifying. TMI, but I remember jumping in the shower afterwards because I was literally sweating, in January, and I just needed to wash all that anxiety away and reset. My brain had treated that webinar as though it were a hungry lion on the hunt. It had done everything it could to keep me from doing it, to keep me safe, to keep me nicely cocooned or cosy in my comfort zone.
And this is the battle we must all fight in business, isn’t it? To battle with our own brain and our own stories, that we have internalised from thousands of experiences throughout our lives to date, is hard work. It’s labour, it’s therapy, it’s personal growth, and it’s absolutely essential if we’re going to grow our businesses.
Just four launches later, I’m pleased to report that I did not need to go for a shower after this webinar, because my sweet, overprotected brain has conceded that actually delivering some training to strangers online isn’t dangerous. But had I listened to it, I would never have taken the action to find out. This endeavour that I now feel so passionately about would not exist. I would never have found out what it felt like to sit in a launch lull.
We know from an evolutionary point of view that the brain is designed to keep us safe. It will always steer us away from potential pain, embarrassment or shame. And its definition of those things is shaped by every experience and every bit of patriarchal conditioning we have internalised from the moment we were born.
I often reflect on the extent to which entrepreneurship, motherhood and personal growth are intertwined. These are the threads that weave through everything we do. Motherhood turns our world on its head and forces us out of our comfort zone. It forces us to learn new skills at lightning pace and lifts a mirror up to our own behaviours, so we must see ourselves and all our talents and flaws in a way that can feel deeply confronting. And so, as we nurture and grow our children, we must nurture and grow ourselves at the same time.
As business owners, we have to step out of our comfort zone if we’re going to have a hope in hell of achieving any lasting success. We have to be willing to fail in public, to be embarrassed, and to feel shame when the thing that we thought would work doesn’t work. We have to be willing to override our brain and make the decision to start before we feel ready.
I am so glad I started this, because it’s teaching me so much. Not just about the process of packaging up your knowledge and creating an online course and community to help people overcome a challenge, although that’s been huge. It’s taught me that I can do brave things. And it’s not like I’ve never done a brave thing before, I’m 41 years old, of course I have. But I don’t know about you, I feel like the older I get, the more I need to remind myself of this. It’s taught me that it’s okay to add my voice to the conversation in an industry I’ve lived in but perhaps not always felt at ease in for 17 years. It’s taught me that I don’t need permission from anybody else to take up space. The only person who needs to give me their approval is me. And if that’s true for me, then it’s true for you too.
So if you’re waiting to feel ready to do something that feels completely outside your comfort zone in your business, perhaps sit with the fact that you might never feel ready. But if you start today, you’ll learn everything you need to know along the way.
And if you don’t want to take my word for it, then tune into next week’s episode, where I speak with a very inspiring mother, grandmother and entrepreneur who also firmly believes in getting your boots on the ground and starting before you feel ready.
I hope this has energised you a little to step outside of your comfort zone and do the scary thing you keep talking yourself out of in your business. And if it has, please come and tell me about it. You can find me on Instagram at @mummeansbusinesspodcast or @victoriaphippsmbe. As always, I love to hear from you. I will speak to you soon.