The 5 Phases of a High-Converting Launch (From $5K to $2.6M)

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If your last launch felt like shouting into the void… it probably wasn’t your content, your emails, or the algorithm.

It was your timeline.

In this episode, Sam Garcia breaks down the real 5-phase launch process she’s used behind the scenes of 100+ online launches — from $5K launches to $2.6M campaigns — and why most entrepreneurs unknowingly skip the phase that matters most.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• The Pre Pre-Launch phase (the one almost everyone ignores) — and why your launch starts months before you open cart
• How to build real relationship and demand so your audience is ready before you sell
• What actually happens during Pre-Launch (hint: it’s not just “warming up”)
• How to run your Launch phase with clarity, consistency, and ethical urgency
• Why the Close phase is where most of your revenue actually happens (and why going quiet kills your results)
• The overlooked Post-Launch phase that turns one launch into repeatable revenue

Sam also breaks down:

• Why “posting more” won’t fix a broken launch
• The real role of urgency (without manipulation)
• How to reuse 90% of your launch assets instead of starting from scratch every time
• The difference between launches that feel easy vs. exhausting

If you’ve ever:

• Had a launch flop and didn’t know why
• Felt inconsistent with visibility between launches
• Burned out trying to “do more” during open cart
• Or want launches that feel clean, repeatable, and actually work

This episode will change how you think about launching — permanently.

And if you’re ready to implement this fully, Sam shares how she teaches this inside Launch Alchemy, her signature launch program.

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Join the Regenerative Business Ecosystem: my entire library of courses, live monthly calls, personalized onboarding, and a whole community of magical misfits building world-changing businesses—without selling their souls to the algorithm.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:56

In this video, I'm going to give you the exact launch timeline that I use and what I've used behind the scenes for over a hundred online launches. From $5,000 launches all the way up to $2.6 million launches. And we're gonna dig into the real timeline behind why some launches feel easy and other launches feel like you're screaming into the void. Because most people think that their launch flopped because they didn't post enough, or their emails weren't good enough, or the algorithm hated them. But more often than not, they skipped an entire phase of the launch process. And for most people, this is the pre-pre-launch. And we're gonna be going through all of these today so that your next launch can be your best launch. Also, if you want the full playbook for how to execute this without melting down and how to infuse your magic into this process, I teach this inside of Launch Alchemy, which is my full course on online launches. Most people talk about launches or see launches beginning right when they announce their free launch event or their webinar. But launches don't start there, like not by a long haul. Your launch starts way before that with whether you have been in relationship with your people or whether you've been completely ghosting them. Now this has to be mentioned because I see so many people put so much energy into launching, and then once the launch is over, they completely ghost their people. They don't post, they don't send emails until they're thinking about their next launch. What a shitty dynamic that ends up being. Because you essentially become that distant cousin that only texts you when they want something from you, when they want to borrow money, instead of your best friend or your parent or sibling who reaches out all the time, you're talking to them all the time, you're in relationship. Now, if you've done that before, you already know where this ends, and that is with really disappointing numbers in your launch. So today we're going to be talking about these four slash five stages of a launch. Starting with our pre-pre-launch, which is all about relationship building and planting seeds, then moving into the pre-launch, which is about desire and momentum and event signups. Then we're actually into our full-blown launch, which includes the open cart, the invitation, that daily sales rhythm, and moving into the close, which has clean urgency, last-minute buyers, that final push, and the other side of this that everyone misses, which is the post-launch, which is where we actually debrief, repurpose, and sometimes immediately turn your launch into an evergreen funnel. So let's move through these one by one, starting with this pre-pre-launch. So the pre-pre-launch is not warming up for a webinar. It is the all-the-time relationship building that you are having with your people. The nurturing, the connection, and also the audience growth. A big mistake I see people do, people who are incredible at what they do, who have very devoted buyers and people who love working with them, who sign up for their programs again and again. They're so good at what they do and they're so in love with their craft that they're just in relationship with the people they're already serving all the time. Now that sounds so great, but if you're not in between launches, calling more people in, magnetizing more people towards you and your business and your business ecosystem, your business is not going to grow. You could maintain, you could sustain, you can have that word of mouth slow build, but you could also have your business getting smaller and smaller year after year as people move on to whatever else they're moving on to. The pre-pre-launch is you being in a relationship with your people, engaging with your people, and also growing your visibility so that you have new eyes on your work when your next launch actually happens. This is a part where your people are like, oh right, I trust her, I like her, I like the way she thinks, I want to hear what she has to say. So in this pre-pre-launch, you are showing up consistently on whatever platform or platforms you're committed to. You're giving a valuable perspective, you're telling stories that build trust. You're not disappearing for three weeks and then expecting the internet to throw money at you. So the pre-pre-launch is you planting seeds. It's you creating fertile soil for your garden bed, for your business ecosystem, your watering, you're not harvesting yet. You're in this nurturing and caring and tending stage. So if you feel like your people or your audience is cold, quote unquote cold, this is a pre-pre-launch problem. And the good news is it's if you just stay engaged with your people and in relationship with your people, you don't actually have to think about the pre-pre-launch. It's just happening because it's already a part of your marketing rhythm. So if you are in pre-pre-launch right now, some things to be thinking about is picking one core problem or desire that you're becoming known for, or the one core problemslash desire that's related to your next upcoming launch, whether it's a few weeks or a few months away. You want to be publishing writing that teaches and builds desires, which can include tips, but ideally you're going deeper into that thought leadership realm. This is also a great time to invite people to take one step closer. So coming into your email list, opting into a free resource, joining your community, subscribing to your podcast. What is one step closer from where they are? And then if you've been quiet, the pre-pre-launch is for rebuilding that relationship and coming back online. And then inside launch alchemy, I give you a full pre-pre-launch plan, what to post, what to email, how to prime people without it taking over your life, especially if you've been inconsistent or you're coming out of a season where you were just ghosting. Okay, so our next phase is this pre-launch phase. Pre-launch is where you're building desire, you're starting to create momentum, and ideally you're getting people into some sort of launch-related freebie. Now, this is gonna depend on how you like to create content or give value, how your people like to connect with you, and the size of the offer that you have. This could look like challenges, multi-day video series for bigger offers, mid to high-ticket offers, but if you're launching a small digital product, this can just be a free PDF, a live stream that you do, or nothing at all, depending on the price. But this is the time where you're giving people a taste of your work, you're allowing them to get to know your ethos, how you think, your values, and seeing if they gel with you, and if your teaching style or embodiment style actually works with them. Ideally, this launch event is having your people think, wait, I want more of this. So, what you want to be doing in pre-launch is teaching a real problem, having people actually identify what is holding them back, why they don't actually have what they want, or why they're stuck in this one area. You want to be showing them a new way. This could be your method, your lens, your map, something they haven't tried before or haven't tried in the specific way or in this specific container. And then this ushers them into your actual launch event where they're going to actually be able to experience it on some level. Again, your launch event could be a live webinar, a pre-recorded training, a PDF download, three-part video series, workshop, a boot camp, whatever fits your vibe. But the goal is the same. They experience you and your work before they buy. And don't worry if you are in launch alchemy, there is a deep dive into how and why to do each of those kinds of launch events, even if you haven't done that ever before. Now, our phase three is the actual launch. What most people think of when we say launch is actually one part of this multi-stage process. Now, the launch phase is when you actually have your doors open or enrollment is open. They can actually buy from you. This is when you're actually inviting people in, inviting people to sign up. And ideally, you and your team have a consistent sales rhythm. Now, if you watched my video on simple lazy launches, you know that the point of a launch is not about posting more or doing a bunch of complex things. It's simply promoting something with a time constraint. That's the crux. That's what this phase is, the time constraint. Because a lot of people like to stay on the fence and not actually take their next step forward towards the transformation you're providing until they're forced to. I wish it wasn't so, but having seen so many people not decide to join a program until the very last day, like it's so common for me and my clients and my students where they'll see 40 to 80% of sales in the very last day, which is actually phase four. So we won't go much into that right now. But the power of the launch is in this time constraint. And even if you have an evergreen course where it's open all the time, you can still launch. It's just the time constraint is around expiring bonuses, expiring features, a special workshop that you have that'll only happen live once, or if you join for this week, they get a bonus one-on-one call with you. I don't know what it is for you, but it's a promotion with a time constraint. And of course, I'm talking about ethical urgency here. There's a lot of people in the bro marketing space that just fake urgency of like this is only available at this price until this date, or for the next 24 hours, and it's a complete farce. Doors are closing on this date. If your price is going up on this date, if a bonus is expiring on this date, that is ethical urgency. It's just you sharing a truth that's gonna happen. So during our launch phase, you are opening doors, you're making the invitation clear every single day on whatever channels you use, whether that's TikTok or emails or Substack or podcast. You are handling potential objections or limiting beliefs that people have. You are showing proof, telling stories, testimonials, giving case studies, sharing results, and you're continuing to point back to that deadline, the time constraint. And there can be a lot of worry about like, what do I say? What do I say during a launch? What should I say every single day? And this is why I really, really love templates. Now, some people hate templates, they hate prompts, they just want to go on intuition, and I love that for them. But for a good like 50% of my students or more, templates and prompts solve the problem of the blank page. You're never starting with a blank page, and it's so nice, that's how I am. I'm such an intuitive writer and marketer, but I still love a good template or a good prompt because it solves the problem of the blank page, and which is why I have so many templates and resources within launch alchemy. We have sales page templates for high and low ticket and mid-ticket. We have email prompts for every single day of a launch, recommendations for checkout pages, templates for reminder emails before a webinar. So you don't have to waste your precious brain energy on what to post. Okay, so then our final phase, our almost final phase, is the close. And this was supposed to be a hand waving like goodbye, but kind of turned out to be a fire, which both both work. Both visuals work here. So the close phase is when most of your people are gonna actually buy, as I've already stated. And this is probably the phase when you're not gonna want to say anything. Because you're like, oh my gosh, I've already sent 12 emails and made 20 posts and did daily stories and whatever you've done, and I did the webinar and the replay and shared videos. So at this point of a launch, you're probably really sick of yourself and sick of the topic, and second-guessing whether you're annoying. If people are annoyed by you, but you do not want to go silent on the close. And let's go back to you being annoying. If we just look at basic metrics for online marketing, the average email open rate is 25%. So one in four people are actually opening and seeing your email. The percent of people who follow you on social media, about one percent of your followers, will see your posts. So one out of a hundred people will see your posts. I mean, that alone. Even if you wrote a hundred posts during a launch, not that I recommend it by any means, but if you did write a hundred posts for a launch, someone will only see one of them based on social media metrics. So just because you are intimate with everything you've created for a launch, and you might be sick of it by now, your people are only seeing a small fraction of what you put out there, and you want to make sure for phase four for this close that they're seeing your stuff. So if you're thinking, oh my gosh, if they wanted it, they would have bought already. Wrong. As I mentioned, 50 to 80 percent. I see this very regularly. 50 to 80% of sales on the last day. So you want to remind people, you want to make sure it's in their awareness, even if it is like a one-sentence thing of like, hey, it's the last day, doors are closing tonight at midnight. I'd love to have you inside. Like, please at least send something like that out. And like maybe you can even play with the energy of this. You can like feel people who are like on the edge of making a decision and they're like waiting until the very last minute because they secretly love the feeling of urgency. You get to connect with them there. So, what to do during the close phase is you want to recap the promise of what your entire thing is about. You want to show more proof, you want to answer last objections, you want to give clean reminders, you want to make sure they have all the information they need to make a decision. And this is when we're giving people clean reasons to act. So tell them about the time constraint again, like doors are closing, cohort is starting, first call is tomorrow, price is going up, whatever it is. But also you can speak to where they could be in 30 days from now if they join this thing. Where would they be 90 days from now if they join this thing? Help them see what is possible for them if they start today. Okay, so now on to our real final stage, which is our post-launch. Now, this one is technically optional, but if you want to have more money on repeat or predictable revenue, the post-launch is where all the gold is found. The post-launch is where you make your next launch easier or even automate the entire process by making it evergreen. So this is where you debrief what worked, you document your best assets, you can turn your highest performing posts or content into evergreen, into evergreen content. You can decide what you're gonna repeat next time. The goal here is that every launch can build essentially a library, this vault of assets that you'll be able to use again and again, where each of your launches can essentially become a template in and of itself that you can reuse again and again. And this is where I can now use like 90% of past launches of mine again for the next launch. That means I am putting out 90% less effort than I did last time. And instead I get to lean more fully into my intuition and tune into the collective to see what they need, what other stuff, instead of having to start from scratch. And immediately after you close cart or within the first one to two weeks, that's when you have the best memory of what has happened. And you can check in with what did actually really work? What do you want to definitely repeat next time? What would you never want to do again? So if our pre-pre-launch is planting seeds and our launch is the harvest, our post-launch is when we're composting. You take what happens, you extract the nutrients, and you use it to make the next season richer. So for a little quick debrief, our pre-pre-launch is stop ghosting, build relationships, plant seeds. Our pre-launch is create desire, create momentum, and give people a taste of you and your work. Your launch is when you are opening doors, you are inviting people, you're handling objections, you're building urgency without burnout. And our close phase is expecting last minute buyers, using clean reasons to act, and making a deadline, making sure that deadline is unmistakable. And our post-launch, we're debriefing, we're documenting, we're repurposing, and we're making your next launch easier. So if you're listening or watching and realizing that, oh, I've been trying to do a launch without a pre-pre-launch, or oh, I've been winging it during open cart, this is exactly why I created launch alchemy. It is the system for running launches that are strategic, repeatable, and don't require you to burn your nervous system to the ground. And this is specifically for people who want to both marry the very strategic practical stuff with the intuitive spiritual magical, recognizing that both sides are needed for the most ease and expansion when it comes to online business. I wanted to share some stories from students in here. My student Jess sold out a brand new program before cart close without even being on social media. Her launch event converted at 34%. And when I surveyed her after the fact, her proudest moment was selling out my launch of a brand new program before cart close without being on socials. Like so cool. So you're the rebel who hates templates and wants to launch entirely on your own with full freedom to break every rule. I teach you the underlying strategy of online launches and energetics of online launches so that you're more like a chef in the kitchen and pulling ingredients and using your intuition. But then there's also the treasure map track because I do have students who are just like, Sam, tell me what to do. Just tell me exactly what to do. And so this is for the person who thrives on structure. So this is day-by-day, step-by-step, 28-day launch plan. So you always know exactly what to do next. There's launches in the wild, which is behind the scenes of successful launches. So you can see every post and lessons from those. There are 28 days of magical practice, which is kind of like 28 days of yummy snacks of magical practices, where there's a different one every day, lots of novelty, and leaning into 50% of a launch is energy. And also, let's highlight one of my students who wrote celebrating a 25k month, 500 plus people registered for her masterclass, new offer filled with perfectly aligned clients, and that the energy work works. So another student was fully booked with one-on-one clients and ready to scale, and she used launch alchemy to run a last-minute group program launch and enrolled three women at $3,000 each just from three Instagram stories. So, like please, please see the importance of the pre-pre-launch. That's how she was able to do it, is really going hard on the pre-pre-launch, so that after three Instagram stories, she was able to sell out and students having their best month ever, whether that's their first $14,000 a month, $25,000 a month, $6,000 a month. So if you want support through all five phases of your launch, come join Launch Alchemy. If you are listening to this in real time, so the week of March 23rd, there's a very special promotion going on for Launch Alchemy. Not only is the entire program deeply discounted, we're also doing the only live round of the year. So if you listen to this before midnight or 11 59 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, March 27th, then definitely check the link in the show notes for the link to the special pricing and your ticket to the live round. I would love to see you inside and on our live calls.