Design your launch like you’d design your brand.
Sometimes I learn the biggest lessons with my clients, not just from them.
Kristina, the Brand Designer & DIY Educator behind Gem Creative Co., hired me two months before relaunching her signature program, Brand Ed. She teaches non-designers how to create a brand that feels good and looks good.
Kristina had launched Brand Ed before, but the systems were pieced together. She saw the systems I’d been building for other creatives—lean, strategic, no full-time VA needed—and she was ready to approach her next launch differently.
And all of this needed to happen before the holidays.
Kristina wanted to go on her family trip feeling prepared, not scrambling over a launch thousands of miles in the air.
📒 PRE-LAUNCH ALIGNMENT
Kristina already had amazing content and a clear message. But she was trying to juggle so many layers at once—Black Friday promos, affiliate partners, a new workshop, a quiz funnel, email nurture, paid ads…
All of it lived in her head, a Google Doc, and a few too many browser tabs.
So we kicked things off with a 2-hour plotting call to map her full launch timeline—from warm-up to waitlist to public enrollment—and built it all into a personalized Notion Launch Dashboard.
It looked a lil something like this ⤵️
→ Created email skeletons for her sales emails, so she wasn’t starting from scratch
→ Wrote + designed 30+ emails in Flodesk
→ Integrated her quiz opt-ins with ads + Flodesk workflows
→ Developed an email sequence with reminders for the Brand Wrapped Workshop
→ Built a Notion affiliate tracker with swipe copy + promo materials
→ Documented it all in a detailed SOP that she can use for her next launch
Instead of winging it, Kristina launched knowing exactly what was happening, when, and why.
She told me: "Not only was this a really formative experience for this launch, but it created a system to support me for future launches.”
👆👆👆 That’s the win I care most about. We didn’t just hit send on some emails. We set up a launch system that she can rinse and repeat.
POST-LAUNCH RETRO
Once the dust settled and the cart closed, we did the one thing most creatives skip: We ran a retro (aka retrospective).
We zoomed out to review what worked, what could be streamlined, and what to tweak for next time. Cuz shocker...
Launches don’t just get better by chance. They get better because you look back on purpose.
The retro is where it all clicks. It’s how you make your next launch easier, smarter, and more aligned.
Our one-hour retro gave Kristina something most creatives wish they had: A launch system she could refine.
No more starting from scratch. No more guesswork. Just a system that gets smarter every time.
Last pull quote from Kristina, she had so many mic drops, okay? “There is so much value in having a sounding board and another set of hands to get the ball rolling and lay the groundwork. Haley also thought of details that I probably would've forgotten about until the last minute."
See! Even creatives who’ve launched successfully before can still benefit from pressing pause, zooming out, and doing a proper retrospective!
📒 LESSONS LEARNT
Again, sometimes I learn the biggest lessons with my clients, not just from them. Working with Kristina reminded me of this: Prepared launches feel different.
They’re less chaotic and more intentional. There’s calm. There’s clarity. And most importantly, there’s space to focus on what matters: your people, your message, and your life offline.
That’s the power of the retro. It’s a tool to help you launch better, faster, and with more trust in your own process.
