The "Imperfect Launch" Strategy

#030 Are you stuck in the "testing phase" of your candle business? Do you feel like you can't launch until you have the perfect logo, a $5,000 website, and custom packaging?

In this episode, we’re busting the myth of the "Perfect Launch." I’m sharing the story of how Garnet Beacon Candle Co. launched with a choppy, blocky Canva logo and still grew to over $550k/year in retail sales. Perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise, and it’s killing your momentum.

We cover how to let the market become your teacher and the exact "Minimum Viable Launch" checklist you need to start making money.

In this video, we discuss:

Why your logo and branding don't matter as much as you think (at first).
The danger of "Follow loops" on social media.
How to launch with a small scent collection (and why 10 scents was a mistake!).
The 6 Essentials you MUST have before launching.

The 6 Launch Essentials Checklist:

Safety: Candle testing must be locked in.
Legality: Business registration & Sales Tax setup.
Protection: Business Insurance (it pays for itself!).
Sales Channel: A working website (Shopify recommended).
Trust: A basic social media presence.
Retention: An email capture system (Klaviyo or Shopify Inbox).

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Transcript

Perfectionism Stalls Candle Launches

SPEAKER_00 0:01

So today I want to talk about what I see happen quite often inside of the candle community. There are so many makers that are past the making phase and the testing phase to make sure that they have a solid product. Because of course, we want to make sure we have a safe product to put out in the world. But they have that. And now it's taking them months and months, or even a year or two before they decide to start selling their products. So we're going to talk about some of those roadblocks today, how to get through them, and how to get your candles out into the world. Because perfectionism often is going to become procrastination. And procrastination kills momentum. So let's talk about some ways to get past that and get your brand out there. And what are the six things that you need to make sure that you have so that you launch successfully? So just a little bit of background story here. When we first launched Garzna Beacon Candle Company three and a half years ago now, close. Oh, we're almost hitting our four-year mark here, actually, here in here in a few months. Uh, that's kind of exciting that we have been doing this for that long and the growth that we've gone on. When we first launched, our logo was not the logo that you see out in the world right now. Our logo of the lighthouse and the water waves was actually a logo that we had created on Canva. We used Canva, which we're obviously big fans of them. We use it for a lot of our social media and things to create those assets. And that's where we gathered an image of a lighthouse and water and put together a logo. It was much more blocky and choppy than our logo today. But that's what we launched with because that's what we had. And we were past the making phase. We had tested and tested, and we were ready to go to market. We were ready to start recouping some of the money that we had been spending on all of these supplies, getting this brand put together. And it was right when we were having someone design some labels for us, because that was definitely outside of our wheelhouse of skill, that they offered and gave us back, without us even asking, a better version of our logo. And we were very, very thankful for them because we hadn't spent too much on printing materials and getting stuff together with that previous logo. But we were ready to go with it. We weren't thrilled with the logo, but we weren't going to wait anymore. And we knew that having a logo is not going to prevent our candles from selling. Sure, things can always get better. Um, but it wasn't going to prevent us from going into a market, from opening a shop online. We had friends and family that were, you know, following our journey, um, as I always recommend, is letting people go on that journey with you before you launch. So people were ready. People were ready to buy, and that choppy blocked logo that we had, that we had created ourselves, was not going to prevent us from having some sales. Our logo has evolved over time. We have started to use our wordmark even more rather than just our logo. And that's something that our fonts can change when we wanted to. So your brand is going to always evolve. So here's kind of the myth of the perfect launch. People believe that they need to have the perfect presentation. They need to have polished brand aesthetics, meaning their logo, their colors, their fonts, the imagery that may go along with your branding. Uh, they feel that they may need a big social media following. Side note, we're doing$500,000,$550,000 a year in just retail aside from our wholesale accounts. We don't have more than 4,000, 3,000 followers online. You don't need to have a massive following to do some decent sized numbers to run a business off of. So when we see brands and influencers and these numbers out there, right? Those numbers are vanity metrics that people are chasing after and that look good. It's this whole reason why people start these follow me and I'll follow you threads. That can kill your social media presence because then you're gonna have a bunch of candle brands following you. Those are never gonna be your customers, right? You want customers that are actually in your niche and who your target market is. So I always talk against that, but I'm I'm getting off topic here a little bit. Some of the other things that people feel they need to have dialed in and perfect, uh perfect when they launch, it's going to be a professionally designed website. You need to have a website, absolutely. You need to have a place to have a transaction take place, but it doesn't have to be perfect. You need to have some imagery out there, you need to have your candles out there, you need to, you know, have a product, but you can always continuously work on your product descriptions. You can always continuously work on your SEO, your search op uh search engine optimization. I highly recommend it. We talk about it a lot inside of the inner circle of how to do it and how to continuously optimize for that. And that's something that you're going to want to do. That is always evolving. Now in the age of AI, you want to redo your SEO to make sure that you're optimized for AI so that now that people are using AI as a search utility versus just looking and doing research that are like searching for products, you can actually now buy products straight through Chat GPT when they come up in search results. So it's fascinating. And you want to try to be ahead of that and get your brand on there. That's all going to take time and it's all going to evolve. So that's another thing that people think they need uh to do a perfect allance with. None of these are actually going to determine whether or not your customers buy. Your customers are going to, especially your first customers, your first customers are going to be your sphere, your friends, your family, your coworkers, your neighbors, people that have been following your journey. So you'll get you'll have some fresh organic as long as you have been posting on social media, like I recommend, letting people see the journey that you're going on. So none of the logo is not going to affect your sales that first day. Now, of course, over time, we want it to be better. We want it to stand out, but don't let any of that hold you back from launching. So those are all myths that you need to have all of that stuff. You do not need to have professional photography. You do not need to have your logo to the absolutely perfect design, your brand aesthetics or colors, fonts, things like that can be evolving as you grow. Uh, you do not need to have all of that. Let's talk about what happens when you do launch your business. So when you launch your business, your customers are going to tell you exactly what they love, what scents are resonating with them, what branding feels right, and what they're willing to pay. Those are all the things that actually matter as you're trying to grow out a brand. The market is going to become your teacher. So you're not guessing anymore. When we first launched our Garrison Beacon uh candle company, we had 10 cents. So we should have only launched with six. We would have launched a significant amount of time prior to that. Uh, we did go through our candle making and our testing and everything really quick because we were very, very dialed in on this. Uh, that's what we teach inside of our course, kind of how to go from A to Z as quick as possible, but making sure that we're putting out safe products is what we teach in our candle making course is basically the strategy that we use to this day when we are going into a scent development all the way through launching that uh and in the process and how quick it can be when you consider doing multiple things at once. And that's that's one of the things that we we lean in on. But when we first launched our business, we came out with 10 cents. Two of those cents were a complete disaster, complete bust. And they were one of those cents that I was like, oh, let's just throw this in there. Let's just throw this extra, let's throw this fresh linen in there and see. You know, I'm sure it'll do okay. We had tested it. I had something I personally like, but what delayed us was going back and getting labels designed for it, right? And all the work that goes along with that, and then building out the product for uh description and then having the photography done um on that. That all delayed us longer than we should have. We should have never put that candle in our brand. Um, no one, since we removed it, and there was another candle that we had removed that was like a very heavy, like on a lilac side, no one's ever asking us for those candles. I just assumed that people might want that. So I I threw in more than we needed to because I didn't think that having only six candles was going to be enough. Uh, but in reality, that would have been plenty. And then when people started telling me what they wanted, we could have added on based around that and listened to what our customers that are paying us um are requesting and letting them shape the direction uh of where we go. So what I would recommend is if you only have, say, four, five, six cents launch, that's perfect. If you are confident and solid with those, just go ahead and launch and you'll see what does well. If you have, say, four candles and you have a citrus candle, you have a masculine candle, you have like a spa-like uh relaxing candle. Um, and then let's say you have that um that floral candle that people enjoy, like a lavender, right? So you have four different categories of themes of scents there. As soon as you know which of those four do really well, then do another one in that. Most likely it's going to be citrus. Our top two selling candles are citrus themed candles. One is our sugar lemon, which is not what I have here in my hand. It is here in this hand, our sugar lemon. It's our number one selling candle. Year after year after year, it's our best-selling candle. We sell tons of that. And then our second best, uh, that's also citrus, is our Hello Sunsign, which is gonna be that orange peel, citrus agave kind of blend there. Um, both of those are top-selling candles, right? Let the customers tell you what they like and then make something that is right next to it, right? If a lemon is your number one selling candle, then also do a grapefruit, do a blood orange, do something that's kind of gonna be in that world and see how well that does. It may in fact do better than your original number one candle. So consider that. Consider starting with a smaller lineup and then growing based on the feedback that customers give you. So I want to talk now about what you do need to have set up before you launch. So these are the six things that are key, in my opinion, to launching your candle brand. It is what we are doing with our new without brand that we are doing. And it is what I recommend to people inside of our inner circle every week. Whenever we're talking during office hours and someone's just about to launch, these are the things that I am questioning. Do you have this set up? Is this in place? And if these six things are in place, I say go for it. So let's talk about it. Number one, your candle testing has to be locked in. You have to be putting out safe candles. They don't have to look fancy, they don't have to be great um presentation-wise, but they do need to be safe. And we all, we all, I think, recognize that. So make sure that what you're putting out there is very, very safe. So, number two is you want to have your business registered. Go to your Secretary of State's website, make sure you have your entity register, whether you're doing an LLC or another type, um, that's gonna be between you uh and the kind of business you're setting up and talk to a CPA definitely to get some advice if you need to. Um, but generally, people are gonna be setting up an LLC. So you want to make sure you have that set up. And then you also want to make sure that you're set up to collect and remit sales tax. So after you're done at the Secretary of State's website, you want to go to the Department of Revenues website and get all of your tax um sorted out so that you can collect and remit those taxes on behalf of your customer that's buying from you. This is separate from your income taxes. This is the tax that you are collecting on the sale of your product. Now, not every single state or locality has sales tax. Um, there are some where you won't. Um, so just make sure you check with your state and see what the requirement is. You know, here in Michigan, there's a 6% sales tax. So on every single candle that I sell, whether I'm out at a market, in my store, wholesale, I'm collecting that, and then I have to remit it to the state based on their schedule. And the schedule in Michigan is based on how much revenue is coming in. Uh, the more you grow, the quicker they want their money. When we first started, we only had to remit that you know once a year. Um, and then it went quarterly, and now it's monthly. So monthly I have to remit all the sales tax that I collected and give that to them because they want their money, of course. The next thing. So we have candle testing is locked in, your business is registered. Next thing is gonna be insurance. Now, legally, you don't have to have insurance. That's the legality is you don't have to have insurance, but you want to have insurance. You want to protect yourself when you're doing markets, when you are doing wholesale retail, if you're selling just on Etsy, it doesn't matter how you're selling your candles. If you are selling, if you have a business, you want to have insurance. You just you need to have it. The peace of mind is worth it. This is what I say. Insurance is gonna be less than 50 bucks. So let's just say$40 on average. How much do your candles cost? What is your profit per candle on these candles here of mine or our classic line? Our profit is about 1950 to 20, 2050. So uh say 20 bucks on average. So I gotta sell two candles a month to pay for my insurance, and we're all break-even. Break it down that way. Realize you you don't want to have a business without insurance. The next thing, you need to have a website that works. This does not have to be fancy. You can hire someone to design and make it really pretty later, but just to start selling, just have a website that works. One of the things inside of the inner circle is you get unlimited access to all the workshops we do. And our number one workshop that is viewed by all of our members is our how to build a Shopify store. I walk you step by step on how to build a Shopify store. I start from the very beginning, from like going out and making sure that uh the name is isn't taken out on, you know, that it's not trademarked already. Um, we go out to the Secretary of State's website, we get it registered, and then we get into Shopify and build it out. We build out the products, we build out the categories, we put all the tags in there. You can always hire someone to do a website, but then you're also going to have to hire them to come back and update it every time you need to be in there. And when we're first starting out, you're going to want to move stuff around quite often. You can learn that yourself pretty easy. You can watch a bunch of YouTube videos and try to figure out, or you can come and join us inside the inner circle, hang out for at least a month, um, and build out an entire website for 45, 50 bucks, you know, whatever the cost of the inner circle is uh right now. So that would save you quite a bit. And you'd also obviously get access to all of our other stuff out there. But you need to have a website that works because if you and I always recommend Shopify, I don't recommend going any other direction besides Shopify. It's just built for e-commerce. It's going to integrate with the shipping platforms and all of that very easy. So I recommend, I always recommend Shopify. And then when you want to go and do markets or sell in person, you just download the Shopify app and then you use your phone to collect payments. Uh, all of your inventory is all synced up, very easy to use. There's no additional cost with that either. So that's what I recommend. So you got to have some type of website to collect payments with. And the next thing is you need some social media presence. You don't need to have a massive following. You don't need to have some viral post going crazy. You don't need to have hundreds and hundreds of people engaging with your brand every day. You just need to have a place where people can look you up. Because social media is a trust factor, right? If someone is searching for a vanilla scented candle, they land on my website. Uh I need them to believe that I am a legit business, right? Because there's a lot of scams out there. One of the easy ways that people will decide is this business legit? Is go and find us on social media. So they'll go, oh yeah, this, yeah, what they have posts, they're posting once a week, once a day, once every 15 days, no matter what it is, that it's it shows that we exist. That's going to give them the confidence and trust that if they order from me, they're going to get their product. If my social media doesn't exist, they can't find me out there. Or if I have the social media out there but I haven't posted in six months, would you want to make a purchase off of a website and feel confident that you're going to get that product if you went to their page and they had nothing or they just didn't exist on social media? So you got to have a social media presence. Again, it doesn't have to be very much. We launched our business and we had maybe a hundred followers, maybe. Um, and it was just people that were friends and family. So you don't need to have a lot there. So that is something that um, you know, habit, but it doesn't have to be where you want it to go. And the last thing here, number six of what you should have before you launch your business, is a way to capture emails. I always like to throw this in there because capturing emails has been critical to the growth of our business. We capture emails and then we follow up with our customers. When they make a purchase, they get the receipt, of course. Uh, and then the next day, they're gonna get a thank you email from us. And then a few days later, they're going to get a please leave us a review uh email. And then a week later, they're going to get an email say, hey, here's 25% off. It's valid for the next seven days. That creates that urgency for them to come back and buy from us again. You want to start collecting emails day one. If you use a Shopify store, as I've recommended, they have it's called Shopify inbox, which is their built-in email. Uh, so that you can set up all these flows and they're all automatic. We talk about this in the inner circle inside of the email marketing workshop uh where we set it up. So everyone that has taken that has gone through and they've now set up all of their emails so that you have all these emails going out to your customers after the purchase. And you only have to set them up once, and then it's all automatic, right? So all the customers that are leaving us reviews or getting that coupon and coming back and buying from us again and again, it's all automated now. You can upgrade and you can get another platform outside of Shopify. And if you want to do that, I recommend Clavio. It's what we use. Clavio is free until you get up to a certain threshold. And I believe that that threshold is at 500 contacts. Once you have 500 people on your list, then you have to start paying for that. Uh, but you can just start with a Shopify when that's built in and completely free as well, until again, you get up to I think like a thousand or ten thousand contacts, and they're gonna start charging a little bit uh there. But it is important to have a way of capturing emails just set up, making sure that you're starting to collect emails from anyone that comes to your website. So making sure that you have a pop-up, even if they don't purchase from you when they go to your website, that you have a pop-up for them to give you their email address. That's gonna just be so important as you grow your business. All right. So if you are coastal launching and you're just still trying to figure out these last things, if you are searching for how to get custom printed tissue paper with my logo on it. That's what's holding you back, or if you're needing a stamp for the sides of the box that you're going to ship out, and that's what's holding you back from launching your business, then just set a date and launch your business. Don't wait any longer. You're going to realize a lot of this stuff probably doesn't even matter. In fact, a lot of that stuff isn't going to matter to your customer. Okay. So just because you see another candle brand or maker doing something with their business, and it seems like it's a great idea for you. Don't wait until you have all of those things in place before you start uh selling and promoting your brand. So get out there, do it as quickly as possible. Things are going to be messy in the beginning, and that's okay. That's how we learn. We learn so much more by throwing it out there, see what works, see what resonates with people. And then they will dictate the direction that you go. If people all love your products, but they're not buying, you might have a pricing issue. That's something to consider. Or maybe the scents that you chose because you saw other candle makers requesting those types of scents, maybe that's actually not what your customers really want. So just something to keep in mind. So if you're on the fence still, you're putting it all together, set yourselves a deadline. In fact, if that's you, in the comments below, set your date. Set a date out there for accountability. Let me know when you're going to launch, and I'll follow up and check out your candle business. Do the exact same steps here if you have a collection that you want to come out with. Get the things together and get it out there. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I invite you to uh comment below, uh, like and subscribe. That helps us out so much on the channel. Um, and if you are watching this on YouTube, you can also check out the podcast and take this on the go with you as well. So thank you so much. Have a fantastic rest of your day. And we'll talk next week. Bye.