Launching anything, a book, a product, a service, or a whole business, comes down to six things. All done in the right order. Not budget. Not luck. Not some viral moment you can’t plan for (and yet secretly pray for). Six moves. And one of them is the one nearly everybody gets wrong. Get them right, and you’ll know exactly how to launch anything.

My book, Stop Hiding – Start Marketing, went live on Amazon and hit number one in a bunch of categories. Now, let’s be real for a second. Being an Amazon bestseller isn’t always the grand achievement it sounds like. You can shift 20 copies in some random category and technically call yourself a bestseller. Mine hit number one in categories that were relevant AND genuinely competitive, sold hundreds of copies, and went toe to toe with some of the most-read marketing and business books going. I’m not telling you that to brag. I am, however, 100% owning that I’m a number one bestseller. Because here’s the thing, if I didn’t know my stuff and hadn’t planned the launch properly, I’d be one of those “bestsellers” who flogged a handful and topped the charts in knitting. (Or something equally unrelated.)

The launch worked. That’s my whole point. It doesn’t matter how good the thing you’re launching is. Plan the launch properly, and it WILL land. Mine landed because I know my stuff and I planned it. You’re about to read how I did it, which means you’ll know it too, and that’s when your launch starts to work. (Or you get me in the room with you and, ta-dah, you don’t have to work it out on your own. But we’ll come to that.)

Don’t get me wrong, a launch isn’t a flawless performance where nothing goes wrong. Mine didn’t go to plan. Amazon had a technical blip which caused the whole thing to slip by a day. In hindsight, a blip. On the day? I was devastated and crapping myself. And even with that, it still worked. That’s exactly why I want to walk you through this.

BEFORE YOU LAUNCH ANYTHING, DECIDE WHAT IT’S FOR

One job. Not five.

And funnily enough, mine wasn’t a bestseller status. My one job was getting everything that lives in those “can I pick your brain?” conversations out of my head and onto paper. Whenever people asked me in the past to recommend a marketing book to help someone get started, there’s never been one that answers all the questions I believe need answering. So I wanted mine out there ot do just that. My business card, in a world that’s stopped handing them out. A lead magnet of sorts. Something tangible standing in for the very intangible thing I actually do.

The number one? It’s not that I didn’t care about being a bestseller. I detached from it. After 18 months quiet in my professional capacity, I genuinely wasn’t sure I’d sell more than a handful, and I had zero interest in a badge built on smoke and mirrors.

When you’re clear on your one thing, the hundred fiddly little decisions get easy. When you’re not, that’s where the analysis paralysis creeps in, and procrastination right behind it. So before anything else: what’s the one thing this launch is for? Write it down. (Go on. I’ll wait.)

HOW TO LAUNCH ANYTHING: BUILD THE RUNWAY BEFORE LAUNCH DAY

The thing that gets missed all the time? Sorry to break it to you, but this is where most launches fail. Weeks before they’ve even begun. Weeks before launch day itself. Why? Because they never built the runway. When did you last see a plane take off without a runway? Even a short one?

Your runway is your warm ground. The email list that already knows you. The people who’ve been reading your social media posts, nodding along, for months. The relationships you’ve actually nurtured rather than ignored until the moment you needed something. You cannot conjure this up on the day. You build it in the weeks and months before, one post, one email, one proper conversation at a time.

By the time my book went live, there was a list ready and waiting, and an audience primed to move. Launch day didn’t create that momentum. It cashed in on it.

And here’s how much that runway matters. I gave myself 5½ weeks. That was a risk, and I knew it. For a book, I’d normally want 6 to 12 weeks, and mine ideally should’ve had about 8. I lost the first 5 days of my 5½ just planning the launch content and building the assets for it, so the real runway was shorter still. I only got away with that gamble because of the strength of the audience I’d already built. Don’t copy the 5½ weeks. Copy the audience-building bit that made it survivable.

Because without it? No audience means you’re launching to an audience of two. And one of them’s your mum. (And that’s assuming your mum even buys. Funny story: I actually asked mine if she’d ordered a copy. Her answer? “No! Why would I? If I want to read it, I can borrow one off you!” Lesson: don’t assume your mother will buy your stuff. Support comes in lots of different shapes and colours!)

So build the audience before you build the campaign. Every time.

GIVE PEOPLE A REASON TO BUY ON LAUNCH DAY (AN HONEST ONE)

A launch needs urgency, and urgency has to be honest. If it isn’t, people smell it a mile off.

“Buy now because I said so” moves nobody. “Buy now and you get something valuable that you’ll actually want” That’s what moves people. With the book, every single purchase came with the Show Up Vault, a seven-asset implementation system, free. Not a flimsy PDF chucked in to make the offer look fatter. A proper set of tools people would actually use to do the work the book talks about. The book gets you thinking. The Vault gets you moving. And movement creates energy, so that bonus was built to create it on day one.

So ask yourself, what can you add that makes buying today better than buying whenever they get round to it? Make it valuable. Make it relevant. Make it available now.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR LAUNCH GOES SIDEWAYS (BECAUSE IT WILL)

Right, back to my wobble.

Amazon’s technical blip meant the book slipped a day. And so I had three options, didn’t I. First, quietly reschedule and hope nobody noticed. Second, say what happened, out loud, to everyone. Or third, the sexy commercial play. Spin it as a sell-out, drive the demand, and likely bump the purchases once Amazon lifted the block on buying. The smart, cheeky, commercially savvy and incredibly enticing option.

The truth is, that third option, I nearly did it. I talked to my publisher about it. But then considered my values and everything I stand for… and I wasn’t prepared to compromise them. It isn’t what I teach or the example I want to make.

So I chose option two and said it out loud. If something goes wrong and there’s a way to tell it honestly with a bit of spin, do it. And on a book called Stop Hiding – Start Marketing, this one wrote itself. Stop Hiding literally got hidden by Amazon. You couldn’t make it up. So I owned it, told people the truth, had a laugh about the irony, and moved on.

That honesty didn’t cost me the launch. It made it stronger. People trust what’s real so much more than what’s polished to within an inch of its life. When something goes wrong in your launch, and something usually will, don’t perform your way around it. Be straight. Your audience leans in when you’re honest. They switch off the second you start acting.

ONE LAUNCH, ONE MESSAGE, ONE NEXT STEP

A confused mind doesn’t buy. After a weak runway, this is the most common launch-killer going, too many asks.

Buy the book, oh, and join the list, and follow me here, and share this, and check out the other thing while you’re at it.

Stop.

Pick one action and repeat it everywhere. One link. One instruction. Every post, every email, every conversation pointing at the same place. Throughout the launch, the ask was simple and identical across all channels, so nobody had to figure out what to do next. There was only one thing to do.

Clarity converts. Choice stalls. Don’t make people think. Give them the logical next step.

LAUNCH DAY IS THE START LINE, NOT THE FINISH LINE

This is the big one. The one nearly everybody gets wrong. It’s the hardest bit, and it’s the difference between a nice little spike and an actual business.

Launch day feels like the summit. You’ve been climbing towards it for weeks, and when it finally lands, every bone in your body wants to stop, exhale and have a little lie down. That lie-down is where launches quietly die. The book hitting number one wasn’t the finish. It was the day the real work started, turning a burst of attention into something that lasts, staying in the conversation while people still care, keeping the movement going.

So plan the week after your launch before launch day even arrives. What are you posting? What’s the follow-up? Where do all these lovely new people go next? A launch that ends on launch day was a firework. A launch that keeps moving afterwards becomes an asset you can keep working on long after the noise dies down.

HOW TO LAUNCH ANYTHING: THE SHORT VERSION

Right, if you skimmed all that (I see you), here’s how to launch anything in one breath:

Decide the one thing it’s for. Build the runway before you need it. Give people a real reason to act now. Tell the truth when it wobbles. Point everyone at one clear next step. And keep moving after the day itself.

None of it needs a fortune. All of it needs the work done in the right order before you need it.

HOW TO LAUNCH ANYTHING: YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

YOUR MOVE

That’s how to launch anything, start to finish. From someone who’s just done it, live, and told you where the bodies are buried.

Everything above gives you the bones. My book, Stop Hiding – Start Marketing, puts more on them. It lays the whole lot out properly, and every copy comes with the Show Up Vault free, the seven tools to actually put it into practice rather than just nod along and forget. Grab it, put it to work, and launch your next thing like you mean it.

And when you want the meat on those bones, the version built around your launch, your audience, your one thing? That’s a conversation. That’s where I come in.