Launch more often, create less stress

Most people think I’m crazy for producing 21 books before releasing them.

However, I see it a different way. I see it as relieving the pressure from any single launch. I’ve spent $22,000 on one project before, and that was the most harrowing launch of my life. We made a profit in the end, but that was a really scary month.

In fact, most of my business life has seen me overreliant on too few product launches every year. Luckily they worked out for me and I’ve been able to turn a profit on every product I’ve ever made, but the stress level was through the roof. Every year, I would pin my business on 1-2 big launches, and then fill out my life with shows so that I could sell the remaining inventory of those launches.

It worked for me, but it was a harrowing ordeal. When I started launching a lot more products over the same time, it completely took the pressure off any one product being a smash hit. If you produce a daily blog, no one post has to win the internet. Some of them don’t even have to be that good, but it doesn’t matter because there’s another one coming along tomorrow. All I have to do is keep chugging along and bring people into my ecosystem.

It does take a change in perspective, of course. I can’t create 365 perfect blog posts when I’m doing it daily. I can’t produce 21 hardcovers, perfect bound, that are out of this world print quality books when I’m releasing something every three weeks. However, the books I can make are still excellent, and done within the financial constraints which means if they don’t blow up into huge successes, it’s okay.

It reminds me of my strategy for doing shows, actually. My friend used to get a double corner booth at SDCC every year for $6,000. It was the only show he did all year, and that meant a lot of stress was plugged into one show. I, on the other hand, looked at it a different way. If I took that same $6,000 and spread it out over 30 shows, then I could get better name recognition and amortize my costs over many shows, instead of just one. It worked for me, in the end, because I was able to keep making money throughout the year while he banked on one single show to make all his money.

It also meant my big shows were much less stressful because I had another one coming up in just a couple weeks. Did I need to make money? Sure, but I didn’t need to make a year’s salary in one weekend. These little mini-launches and daily blogs work the same way. They are much less stressful to my body than a weekly or month blog, and launching all the time takes so much pressure off my body it’s like I’m a different person.

I know it feels daunting to create a daily blog, or launch more often, but for me it’s freeing, because all of my eggs are no longer in one basket. If you are one who is prone to stress, you might be better going with a less stressful strategy, even if it feels like more work upfront.