Launching your amazing offers out into the world can be stressful. Launches will always have a lot of moving parts, you might be doing new things for the first time, it can feel like a lot to deal with. As a launch strategist, I’ve managed a lot of launches of all sizes but if there's one thing that stays the same across as launches – it's this… planning it properly saves a lot of stress later down the line.

Here are my top tips for avoiding launch stress and overwhelm. You’d be amazed at how many people I meet that don’t do these simple things!

Create manageable chunks

Don’t try to do everything all at once! I get it, launches involve a lot of different things and if you’re thinking about these all at once it’s very easy to get completely overwhelmed. It can often feel like you don’t have enough time too and this makes it tempting to try to do everything in one go.

But by creating different priorities you’ll actually get more done because your tasks will seem much less daunting. For example, start with the Audience Building stage. Focus on that first and don’t even think about later stages (like Cart Open). Then, when you’re done with that chunk, move on to the next.

Take more time than you think you really need

When it comes to planning your launch, make sure to give yourself enough time. If you can allocate more time than you think you need to planning, great!

When you get to the customer-facing part of your launch, you don’t want to be encountering lots of nasty surprises that you didn’t plan for. The more you can plan behind the scenes, the better.

I'll be honest – doesn't matter how well you plan, you're always going to find yourself rushing round at the end (such is the nature of any project with a deadline!) but adding extra time on removes a huge part of the stress.

Include buffer days

Having said all of that, things will always go wrong on a launch. It’s literally impossible to plan for every single possibility. But it doesn’t have to spell disaster. Allow for buffer days within your launch.

Buffer days are essentially empty days with nothing planned. These are so important. They allow you to catch up, fix problems, and do things that you forgot about. More important than all of that, buffer days give you time to rest and re-energise. If you run yourself into the ground during a launch, you’re not going to be at your best for meeting your customers. I give myself one buffer day for every five that I spend working on a launch and this is always midweek.

Remember, part of a successful launch is about overdelivering and really wowing your customers. You can do this without getting completely stressed out and feeling overwhelmed as long as you balance planning with realistic downtime.

In summary,  give yourself lots of extra time to plan, build in buffer time and if the plan doesn't work out – just know that it's a completely normal part of launching (and business) and staying calm will resolve much of the problem!