Ship in Six

Lesson #11 - Your Big Launch Day

Do you know what time it is? Well, I have no idea what time of day you're reading this… but I can tell you that it's been six weeks since you joined Ship in Six.

That means just one thing: Launch Day cometh.

The day that puts the "Ship" in Ship in Six. The day you've been working for, sweating for, dreaming of, fearing. Launch Day is the day this all becomes real and your dreams come true. Launch Day is the biggest, baddest, most important day in the life of your little baby Thing.

Or is it?

In some ways, your project changes the moment you launch it: suddenly That Thing you've been working on privately is separate from you. Suddenly it's interacting with the outside world, and the outside world is interacting with it.

You're probably dreaming about that beautiful day — one big push, and then it's all champagne and roses, oooh, and links and users and maybe customers and praise and everything shines and sparkles. If everything goes perfectly to plan.

And if it doesn't go perfectly to plan? Launch Day will still be one big push — off a cliff. One big push, and a tiny, sad little splat as your project hits the bottom. And dies.

Screw that noise!

I’m here to tell you that you don't have A Launch Day. Over the life of your product, you'll have A Thousand Launch Days.

This Launch Day: 1 out of 1,000.

Now, don't panic. Don't imagine Your Current Stress times 1,000. Don't imagine your head exploding in a magnificent kaboom. Pause for a second, and think about it:

If you have a thousand chances... you can screw up and nothing terrible will happen. You get 999 chances to make it right.

You can launch without a critical feature. You can get your price totally wrong. You can have a copywriting style that drives your users away. You can have a tiny list. You can have no list. You can botch your CTA. You can target the wrong people entirely. You can sell a crappy beta. Your site can go down. That Thing can have bugs.

You can do all of that... and you'll still be here.

You can take what went wrong, and do it better next time.

Your launch is only a flop if you quit.

The only person who gets to decide if you quit is you.

So if you're freaking out — that's normal. If you're imagining how much simpler life would be if you just buried That Thing in a folder and never showed it to anyone — that's normal too.

It's normal when you believe that that one big, splashy, perfect day is what makes a project successful.

But it's just not true.

You know that big success is made out of many tiny successes.

Every new feature or fix. Every new blog post. Every new tweet. Every new email. Every new link. Every conversation. Every little thing is a type of tiny launch. A chance for a tiny win.

Don't let the myth of The Big Launch stop you from launching.

This isn't your big launch. It's your first launch.

A journey of a thousand launches starts with just one.

Ship it, my friend.

Cheers,

Amy

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