Why your offer flopped

Hey there!

A couple months ago, a friend of mine (let's call her Melissa) launched what she thought was her killer offer: A done-with-you LinkedIn profile audit.

She spent three weekends building it, agonizing over her landing page, and connecting it to Stripe.

She sent one announcement email to her list of 120 friends and followers, and published one LinkedIn post.

1 week later, zero buyers. She then quietly shelved the whole thing and started building a brand new offer from scratch. No iteration, no follow-up. Just onto the next idea.

If you’ve ever abandoned a launch after one try, thinking the silence meant "bad idea, dummy," you’re in good company.

Today we’re breaking that pattern.

P.S. Toward the bottom is a little bonus I created to help you with your next offer launch. But you’ve gotta be a subscriber to get it.

OK so let’s break down this nasty little launch-and-ghost loop that you, me, and Melissa are guilty of.

Because, not only is it going to send you down endless rabbit holes, it’s the surest way to innovate your way back into a 9-5 job. ☠️

Going back to Melissa’s example above, she launched her LinkedIn audit and then interpreted silence from “her market” to be a death knell.

It flopped and so she retreated. Then she made it worse by overanalyzing the wrong things… Did I choose the wrong offer? The wrong niche? Maybe I shouldn’t even be a business owner!

Her biggest flaw was treating her launch like room service. She dialed up a single email and post announcement, and then expected sales to appear at her door.

Here’s the thing - a uniquely valuable offer WILL require a lot less hustle than an offer that’s just pretty good.

But an offer that sucks? No matter how buttoned up your launch is, it’s doomed from the start. Whether the offer is too generic, too complicated, or complete dog shit - expect to hear crickets, indefinitely.

In those cases, you botched a step (or several):

• You failed to pick an important problem worth solving

• You failed to understand who your ideal client is and their buying journey

• You failed to develop and deliver the solution your clients need

• You failed to communicate your offer’s value in a clear, compelling way

Go back and put the work in. Or let’s figure out together where things are breaking down.

But what if your offer is solid and you just fumbled the launch?

I see it all the time. New clients come to me, on the brink of giving up. They imagine the pain (and embarrassment) of having to start over.

But when we pull back the covers - lo and behold - the offer is well-done. And when that’s the case, the next place I start poking at is their launch.

Here’s what I typically see:

• They shared it once or twice with existing friends and followers

• They skipped the warm-up and dropped straight into the pitch

• They expected their audience to get it without context or connection

• They assumed silence meant disinterest instead of “not yet, but keep going”

It’s not that their offer sucked. It’s that they never gave it a proper shot.

And here's the kicker: your first idea is rarely your best.

Your v1 is decent but rough. It’s your prototype that needs time and feedback to become polished. Same with your first launches - you need a few cycles to find your message-market match, pricing sweet spot, and the language that actually converts.

But in your mind:

• You published v1

• Got low or no engagement

• Assumed the offer was dead

• Started building something else

But what if you didn’t pivot so fast? What if you disregarded your arbitrary timelines about how far along you should be? What if you gave it space to evolve?

Here’s what I tell clients:

Not only do you need to keep working on it, until it sings… You also need to talk about it again. And again. And again.

Talk about why you created it.
Talk about the pain it solves.
Talk about the tangible wins it delivers.
Talk about who it’s for and not for.

And yes, you’re going to feel like a broken record. That’s the point.

Because while you’re sick of saying it, your audience is just starting to hear you.

And if you’re thinking, “OK Jay, but I’m not a marketer… so how exactly do I structure a simple, effective launch?”

You’re in luck…

I took the 8-email launch sequence I use for my own offers - and is typically reserved for clients - and packaged it up for you to use.

(It’s for newsletter subscribers only.)