3 Things I Learned Launching Three Times in 7 Months (During a Trust Recession)

I just wrapped my third program launch since restarting my business in late 2025 and I have a lot to say about it.

Not the highlight reel version. The real version - what worked, what flopped, what surprised me, and the thing nobody talks about when they're teaching you how to launch your coaching business or grow your offers online.

Here's what I've figured out after three launches in seven months: the strategy matters. And who you're being while you execute the strategy matters just as much. Your nervous system is either working for you or against you during a launch, and most people are white-knuckling their way through it without realizing there's another way.

In this episode I'm sharing the three lessons that changed everything for me - as a business coach, as an entrepreneur, and as a human being who refused to burn herself down in the process of building something she loves.

If you're a coach, healer, creative, or heart-driven entrepreneur who's launching an offer, growing a personal brand, or just trying to build a sustainable business without the hustle hangover — this one's for you.

What You'll Take Away From This Episode

• Why "just starting" is the most powerful business strategy nobody's actually using
• What's really happening in the online business space right now and how to work with it instead of against it
• The nervous system piece that most launch strategies completely ignore - and why it's costing you
• What different launch strategies taught me about selling authentically in 2026
• Why trusting the process isn't just a mindset platitude - it's a practical business skill
• How to release the pressure without releasing the momentum
• What it actually looks like to grow a coaching business, launch your offers, and still feel like yourself at the end of it

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, and welcome to Fuck Around and Get Paid, the podcast where fun, flow, and strategy meet to help you get paid for doing what you love. I'm your host, Jennifer Liss. In today's episode, I'm gonna tell you the three things that I learned launching three times in seven months during a trust recession. Let's dive in. Hi there, friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I am fresh off of a good cry because I just looked at my Instagram and there was a video about this dog that passed away a year ago named Moose. And I used to have a dog named Moose, and that has nothing to do with anything and everything to do with everything. Because you know what? I needed a good cry today, and the universe delivered me the good cry that I needed. And I knew it as soon as I started to watch that video and I started to check out from it. And then I was like, you know what? I think I should watch this. And I watched it and I had the best cry. And now I feel ready to sit to share some really good stuff with you. And sometimes that's what we need. We trust that the universe is always giving us exactly what we need, even if it's not the thing that we want to be feeling with or dealing with or doing right now. And I know this podcast is 100% called fuck around and get paid. And I am all about you having more fun, more joy straight to the bank. I'm telling you, the fun will come when we feel emotionally free. And sometimes that requires that we feel the full spectrum of life. And so that has been so much of my journey. And I'm gonna dive into that today because here's the deal. Seven months ago, I had a vision and a blank page. And tonight, as of recording this, I've got uh multiple programs that I have run, that I have packaged, that could be redelivered. I have a cohort of people right now that I genuinely cannot wait to start working with on Wednesday in a brand new offering. And I'm so like, I'm so jazzed to be offering this. And I never could have had this offer if I hadn't done the previous offers, all of the things. And I have uh a full community and proof that the thing that you keep circling is 100% worth building every single time. And so this episode, I want to share with you what it actually took to get me here. Before we get into it, just so that you know, is this episode for you? If you're building something and you're wondering why does this feel so much harder than it should, if you have launched before, if you have tried launching offers, if you've tried putting digital products out there and it has knocked you sideways, things didn't go the way that you thought that they were going to go. It was emotionally more than you thought it would be, all of the things. If you're thinking about launching and you're already dreading it, if you never want to launch again, this is also for you because what I want to share with you is genuine honesty, you guys. I just appreciate so much when people lay it the F straight. And so more and more I want to be working and sharing from that perspective of real time. My husband and I were just Joey and I were just talking about this, and we were talking about South Park. You know, South Park is real time. TV was never like that before South Park, other than the news, where something could be creatively turned around that quickly in process of news just hit. We're putting together an episode, we're writing it, we're recording it, we're putting it out there. It doesn't have to be perfect. Their graphics look like booty, nobody cares because the writing itself is so real time. That's more where I want to be sharing from is real time. And I don't see a lot of people doing this in the world. And so it feels really weird and feels really different and feels like this very meta experience that I'm launching a cohort of people and simultaneously sharing with you the lessons four days after cart close on it. But I actually think that's really important and it's what I would have appreciated that somebody might have done with me in the past. Like, let's get rid of the smoke and mirrors and just say it like it is. So that's what I'm sharing today. Okay. So honest debrief, debrief from somebody who has done this. This is my the 15th launch that I have been part of. It's my third since last fall. So I have launched over the past few years. I have seen many of them and I have seen how things have changed. And I know what it feels like to come out on the other side of many different experiences. So if you want to sell products, you want to potentially have the experience of launching, if you want to have a different experience of launching and you want to get paid without turning into scrambled eggs or burnt scrambled eggs in the process, which is how I have felt in the past, and I do not feel it this time. If you've done the hustle version of success and you're looking for proof that there is a different way to do it, that's what this episode is about. This is what I want to share with you is genuine, real lessons, real talk, and the stuff that nobody talks about. Because again, it's what I would have appreciated. So by the end, what here's what I hope for you is that you'll have a clear look at what's actually working right now, what could potentially work for you right now, what to stop doing, and why who you are being during a launch, and not just even during a launch, what happens in a launch is that we have a big expansion that is happening for us. There's a lot of things that you are doing when you're putting yourself out there, when you're inviting people into something, there is a whole human experience, emotional experience, energetic experience that's happening with that. So, in that process, what I want to share with you in the moment of expansion, whether it's a launch or whatever, who you are being matters just as much as any strategies that you do. So let's get into this. If this is for you, come dive right in with me. And what I do want to share with you, I'm sharing the high-level top takeaways today on the podcast episode, but I'm doing a big deep dive with my community on Thursday. So we're going to be diving in and actually helping you reflect for yourself on what would work for you on Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific time in my expansion circle in the expansion room. We meet every month and do this kind of work. Actual things that will help you in your business, thing, real things from the streets that I'm sharing with my community to help you grow your business alongside this other amazing cohort of beautiful unicorns. So if you want to come into that, it is $27. You can come join just this call, and then you can leave, or you can stay a while and stay for all of the goodness that we have happening in there. You can go to genlist.com/slash expansion. Again, $27. If you join for the year, it's only $250 and you get lots of goodies and always benefits of coming and being part of that when I offer other things. You get discounts, all kinds of goodies. Um, but you will get access to this exact call that I'm gonna be doing on Thursday. So if launching is in your docket, if expansion is in your docket this year, it's something I really encourage you to come to because I can't cover all of it here on this podcast episode in 20 minutes. We are gonna dive deeper. So if you're interested in that, again, genlist.com slash expansion, there's a link right in the show notes for you. So here's the deal. In the last seven months, I launched three times, three different programs, many different strategies, a whole lot of experiments and a whole lot of learning. And I did this on purpose. And along the way, I had to keep reminding me myself, I'm doing this on purpose. We are trying different things, we are following my instincts, we're following my guts, we're following what other people say works so that I can try and see what feels good to me, what feels good to people who I want to work with. So I tried things like a wait list launch. I tried things like a paid launch. I tried a free launch. I tried launching with incredibly relaxed energy. I tried launching with the all in, all the energy all the time, lots of emails, big strategy rolled-out plan. I tried doing bonuses. I did no bonuses. This last launch, you might have noticed, I did not add bonuses in, um, except for some internal things, but I much, much, much less than I've done in the past. I've done uh a little lever of FOMO, a little lever of scarcity, none. And I got to feel all of these things. How does that feel? And in the past mini launches, I've gotten a feel for many of those things too. But I wanted to feel what is that like in this current environment? What are people responding to? So I got lots and lots of feedback. But here's what I refuse to do. I refuse to do this full five-day rollout launch where it's just all, all, all in. That's too much to me. It's like, and I refuse to do any extreme hustle. Honestly, this is the truth. And I told Joey this the other day. I'm like, I would genuinely rather check receipts outside at a Kroger or Sam's Club or a Walmart or something than do extreme hustle. I'm just not doing it. That's not the life that I'm building. I'm building from this place of where I'm at right now, which is loving the shit out of everything that I'm doing and life. It's like this is the standard, and more abundance gets to roll in from here. And when it starts to feel like hustle, F that. I'm not doing pressure tactics that make my own skin crawl. I'm always happy to experiment with things, but I'm I'm just not gonna do the things that don't feel good. Or if it feels good, I'm not gonna do it again. So that's where I'm at with things. That's kind of the baseline that I'm working with. So, what I want to share with you today are my big three lessons from this big seven months of everything that I have learned. So, thank you for supporting me in my own integration and reflection. And I'm automatically sharing it right back with you. So, lesson number one is honestly, this is the biggest lesson. I can't say this enough. Just start. I didn't have a full, well-thought-out plan. And believe me, the corporate strategist in me wants to have, I want to know every move. I want to know what's coming next. Definitely found my brain wanting to get into that many times and redirected. But I knew that back in mid-summer last year, I had this thought. Actually, it came before that, but I had the thought of like, I really do need to do this, branch out on my own and teach this thing that I have learned, which is to teach women sales, to teach the things that I have learned about sales that are so sticky and are so icky. I felt morally obligated. I've told you all this, to get out there and teach these things that I have learned directly about sales. So I had this one thing, I knew I wanted to build it, and I had a loose sense of everything else that was coming. That's it. That is all that I had. I did not know exactly what everything else was going to be, but I knew I had this one thing I feel compelled to teach. I had this big, wide open space, that one thing, and I thought, okay, here we go. Let's just dive in and let's do this. And so, how did I do that? I listen to my body. I have learned the process. It's the process that I turn around and teach to all of you, which is to listen to your body, listen to what your body is signaling to you, know what an aligned yes and what an aligned no feel like in your body, know what joy feels like, what expansion feels like in your body. Very first thing you do when you come into the expansion room is your expansion ritual so that you know what expansion feels like in your body. Here is my openness, here is my receiving frequency. I know what that feels like, and I know what that doesn't feel like. So I know my yes and I know my no. And so with that, I could follow my joy from one thing to the next thing. And I had so many questions, so many questions. I didn't know if what I'm teaching is what I meant to do forever. In fact, people very close to me who know me well and know my gifts well questioned me very openly about the direction that I was going. I trust my intuition just thoroughly. I don't know exactly where it's guiding me all of the time, but it has always guided me to the next best thing over and over and over. I can tell you, it has guided me to the next best thing. And the same is true for you. You can trust the wisdom of your intuition. It ultimately, it might not always seem like the most strategic thing. It might not seem like it's the thing that's going to lead you to the next thing, but it is. It always is. You do not need to feel fully ready. You do not need to have your entire plan plotted out. And I know those of you who like to play mental chess, it's really good. And you might be a strategist by nature, and that might be part of who you are, and that's great. But when we are in expansion, we've got to let go of that control. Because now I look at what I have these months later, I would have never planned some of what is there. And there is literal gold. Like holy banana bread, Batman. There is literal gold in there that did not exist before I started. And I wouldn't have gotten to some of the best nuggets, would not have come out if I hadn't followed this. Even though it doesn't seem like it might be the path, even though I'm telling you, some of my most trusted advisors were like, What are you doing? I knew that it was the way, and it was for so many reasons. Okay. So that takes us to lesson number two. Trust the process. Trust the process. You already know this is the hardest one. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Trusting the process. People are not paying attention the way that we think they are. They just aren't. They are not paying as much attention as we think they are. And so when we go to put something out there and it's like it feels like it's immediately not landing, or we don't get the reaction that we thought that we would get, that is all part of the process. And so we have to remind ourselves over and over and over this is an experiment. This gets to be fun. I get to continuously follow my joy on this path. This is all meant for me. Because the people who it's like we see we see people 10 years in and we see them hitting it. We see them like they're they're on it. We haven't seen all of this stuff that they allowed themselves to do. Let yourself start before you're ready. Lesson number one, and then trust the process along the way. Because again, people just aren't paying as much attention as you think that they are. And they're not judging you as much as you think that they are. That's actually your own judgment that's being reflected back to you. So the thing that I have learned over and over and over in this trusting of the process is that you will do it wrong so that you can figure out how to do it right. And I actually am not a believer in right and wrong, but you do it the way that's like, ugh, that didn't feel good, so that we learn the way that does feel good. And that can feel like death to your nervous system. Your nervous system will be like, what the F are you doing? We're gonna get to our nervous system here in just a second. Because now more than ever, we need to be listening as business owners to what people actually want and not just what you think that they need, but sometimes it's the process of putting out there what you think that they need in order for you to discover what they want. I know it's like this like crazy mishmas of a maze, but every successful business owner is doing this. We're putting out there, we're putting out there, we're putting out there a lot of the ads that you see in the world are experiments that are being run by businesses. We think that, oh, I saw their ad and they have it all figured out. No, they're seeing if you click on that ad, and if you did click on that ad, then they're like, ooh, people liked that. They want more of that. That's what they want. So we're putting out there what we think, you know, it's like, oh, okay, maybe, maybe this, maybe this, maybe this. And then you get the feedback back that's like, oh, wow, that landed. I didn't know that. We'll flub this up all the time. That we will flub this up all the time, and that's okay because that's just part of the process. Another thing that I learned, and this was in particular in this last launch, in terms of trusting the process, is that the times that you feel like you really effed up, those are the times when you're going to learn the best lesson that you needed to learn. So one of the things that I learned is that I really need to wait, not just until I understand what it is that people want, like putting out the thing that I think people need to understand what it is that they want. That's part of the process, but I also need to wait until people are ready for me. Because I had this concept in this last lunch. I'm like, there are people who I would love to work with. And I thought I'm just gonna reach out to them and I'm gonna, it's kind of was a cold call. I just reached out to them and said, Hey, I would genuinely love to be working with you. And that was actually really great. I had some really good conversations with some people that did not land with a couple of people in the way that I shared it. So I learned so quickly a couple of things about sales that I actually I already knew, but I forgot in the moment because I was like, oh, I would love to work with this person. Let me share that with them why I would love to work with them, but I wasn't thinking about them and where they are at and what their state might be. They're not ready for me. I'm ready for them. I'm like, oh, I see the opportunity, but people are not ready for you until they're ready for you. So it's always about meeting people where they are and what they want right now, not what they might need, but what they want right now. So as a successful, successful business really gets this and we meet people in what they want. But again, sometimes you have to put an offer out there and realize that it didn't land or throw it out there in a bunch of different ways in order to start to notice the thing that is really landing with people. So it's a practice, and every business owner is still in it. And so there's so much more. There's so much more to say about this one in particular. And it's why I'm going deeper into it on Thursday and to help you reflect on what this means specifically for you and the work that you do. So I'm I'm gonna be sharing more examples and real-time examples of exactly what you can be doing and thinking about in order to help you trust the process. Cause I know that is a very vague description and we've all heard it. Trust the process. What does that mean for you? I I love going deep on that, and I'm looking forward to sharing that uh in this Thursday's expansion circle inside the expansion room. By the way, if you can't come at 10 a.m. Pacific on Thursday, the replays are available for 90 days for every call. And I also pull out really specific points that stay in there forever for you as sales tools. So um, lesson number three: release the pressure. Last week's podcast episode was all about pressure. You can go listen to that one if this is something that you are very familiar with. Here is facts hashtag straight truth. You're gonna feel like you're doing it wrong. I promise you that. You're gonna look at the numbers and feel like it's not enough. You're going to look at the signups and be like, oh my gosh, you're going to send an email and you're going to see people unsubscribe and feel like you are dying to your nervous system. It will feel like that. That is what happens. It will feel like full on rejection. It happened to me. I know this. There are people who are on my list. They will never buy from me. They got on my list years ago, and they're they're not meant to be buying the thing that I am selling right now. I have evolved and My business. I have evolved as a person. They there were people who left my list in this launch. That makes sense. I knew it was gonna happen. It makes every bit of sense. But to my nervous system, it literally felt like I was being rejected by my friends, by literally being rejected. And so what do you do? Because this is going to happen to everybody. And I don't care. There, there are people who this absolutely will not hit if you have no rejection sensitivity whatsoever, if that's not something that you experienced as a child, or if that's we all have our own things. But if you have any kind of, I didn't get invited to the party, or if I invite people to my party, will they come? If you've had any of that in your childhood, and there is, it is probably going to come up for you at a new level because it's something that you came to this earth to continuously grow into. And so it will happen to some of us. And that's okay. Eventually, maybe it totally we moved through it enough that it's not a thing. But in this process, if you're feeling it, it's it's simply something that you're meant to integrate, to process and to feel. And so, what did I do when those friends unsubscribed and I noticed, oh, ooh, something's happening in my body. I'm I'm feeling something. I'm noticing that I have thoughts cycling about that. I'm thinking about why did that happen? What did I say? What, oh, whoa, Jen, what's happening here? I paused, I told, I told my husband, I'm gonna go upstairs and I'm going to process this. And I went through my own oats method, the process that I have for feeling my what's coming up in my body, for receiving the message from it. I let myself try, I let myself feel the rejection. I used tapping, I used breath work, I used my processes to move through it, to integrate it, to alchemize that, and to come out with a more expanded system because now I feel nothing around that, where I was feeling very activated around that. So, spoiler alert, you're not dying when this happens, but your system will tell you that you are. And if we don't go in and witness what's happening, that will continue running the show. We have to come back to the perspective that you're okay, you're always okay, your soul is okay. It came here to have this experience. This is what it came here to do. Universe is training you. That's it. So this nervous system piece is real. If you are here to try new things, to experience new things, to do big things, if you have a mission that's calling on your heart that you're meant to bring into the world. And those of us, I think, who are here to learn this process of effing around and getting paid, you came here to learn some things, then this is the part that hardly anybody talks about, but it's really running the show, is the way that your nervous system is perceiving the things that are happening. I used every single tool that I teach during this process, and it all made a massive difference for me. How I have come on out on the other side of this is feeling more clear, more excited, and so much more comfortable in who I am as a person. What I came here to do, separate from some of my mentors, separate from some of my friends, separate from the other things that I'm seeing in the world, like standing in my own and what matters to me and the way that I want to show up in the world and just be really solid in that. And I would love that experience for all of you too, because it feels so good to just feel so good being who you are. And I believe that when you are, that's when the buyers show up. That's when people are like, oh, ooh, what's she doing? What's what's he doing? What's so different about them? Because you're you're in your own and you're so stable in that. And sure, you're going to keep expanding because that's just the person who you are. So sure, you might come up against it again, but you've got the tools to catch it sooner and sooner and sooner. So those are three lessons, big lessons that I have learned over the past few months, and specific to the process of launching, putting myself out there, opening the doors, having no idea if anybody is going to want it. And it would be okay if they didn't, but would my nervous system always agree? That's the question. And that's what we get to expand into and grow with. That something completely unexpected happened in this entire process. I did not expect to start a community at all. That wasn't something that I was doing, but it is something that I ended up doing and I love it and I'm growing it. And so that's what's next for me because it feels completely aligned in my body. I checked in with myself. It's like, wow, this is where I'm going. This is where I'm growing. And in the most unexpected turn of all turns, especially a year ago when we were separated, and I was like, this is going nowhere good. My husband is coming with me. So you might be hearing more from our Deudacorn, all the unicorns in the expansion room. And we've got a Deudacorn, and we're also welcoming more dudicorns into the space as well as he becomes more integrated in there. So you can come and join us for that experience. If you're not in there yet, we would love to have you join us later if that feels good for you. I do have this class happening on Thursday. So I personally am doing more and more of this integrated real-time teaching and seeing how that feels, seeing if this is something that we love. So you can let me know. Do you like this? Is this something that's helpful to you? Because I know that there is an art to the smoke and mirrors and creativity. And I love creativity. I love saying things in creative ways, but sometimes I just want to have it straight. And so I just want to share it straight with you. And that's what we're going to be unpacking on Thursday. So if this episode hit with you, you want to go deeper, you want to hear more about launching and what is working specifically in 2026, what definitely is not working in 2026, and how to do it in a way that genuinely feels good to you in your nervous system on Thursday. How to launch without losing yourself is the call that we're going to be doing for our expansion circle in the expansion room, giving a full debrief of everything that I've experienced plus actual hot seat coaching for anybody who wants to raise their hand and be coached on Thursday. So it's $27. It's $27 a month always for the expansion room. You can come get the recording, everything in the vault for the month, you can cancel anytime. I'd love to have you. So again, the link is in the show notes, or you can go to genlist.com slash expansion. If you are circling something right now, if you know that you want to launch, you want to uh welcome more money, you want to try a digital product, you want to try a digital course, here's what I'm telling you. And I know it's like it's a trust recession. Uh, there's people who are saying, I don't know what's happening with the coaching industry, blah de blah. I don't give a shit. If you want to do something and something feels fun, it's calling on your heart. Here's what I say to you. Just go, just do it, just try it, just put it out there. Start, trust yourself, release the pressure, and just let yourself have fun experimenting in this life, doing something that you feel called to do, and let yourself feel what is on the other side of that decision to just say go. If you loved this episode and if you learned something from it yourself, I would absolutely love to hear that from you. You can always send me an email to hello at genlist.com, or what would be even kinder and such a beautiful exchange is if you'd go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review of this podcast. I read all of them, and it means the world to me if you would take the time to do that. You can also share this episode with a friend who might need to hear it. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you in the next episode, my friend. Bye!