This is something that’s been coming up lately in my Kitchen Table forum, and I’ve been seeing it in various other online places as well.

Someone launches a thing.

You know, a mailing list or a class or a program or a product.

And nothing happens.

No one signs up. No one buys. No one responds.

Here’s the fascinating part.

There is a huge leap that just about everyone makes from “no one has responded” all the way to “no one is interested”.

And man, I have a lot to say about this.

First the comfort.*

*Only if you want it, of course. If you’re not into the comfort thing, go ahead and skip to the next bit. 🙂

Oh, you poor sweet thing.

Ugh. Yuck. Miserable. No fun at all.

You must be feeling so frustrated and upset, because you need to know that you’re supported, and that all the hard work you’ve put into this wasn’t in vain.

So big hug from me. And a sympathetic look from Selma.

And recognition that you did something that can feel scary and vulnerable, and that you didn’t get what you wanted from it. Because that sucks. And I’m sorry you had to experience that.

Then the reality check.

You actually don’t know yet.

You don’t know that no one is interested in your thing because you can’t know.

There is not nearly enough evidence to justify that kind of conclusion yet.

And anyway, we already know that conclusions are often astonishingly ridiculous … and jumping to them? Even more so.

There can be all sorts of legitimate reasons for why no one’s going for it yet. Reasons that do not have a thing to do with whether or not people are interested.

So there are three questions (at least) that we absolutely have to be able to answer… and then we can figure out where to go from there.

Important Question #1: how many people saw the thing you offered?

Because you know what?

There’s a pretty big difference between a situation where three hundred people saw your thing but didn’t go for it and a situation where only two people did.

So the first thing you need to find out, is how many people actually got to the right page on your website.

Or saw the sale at your Etsy shop. Or read your blog post. Or received the invitation — or whatever.

For example, if you send out an email noozletter announcing your thing to your hundred and fifty subscribers and not one of them clicked through to your website… that’s hardly proof that no one is interested.

It’s possible, yes. Theoretically.

But it’s much more likely that it’s one of these things:

• Your link didn’t work. People tried to click on it and it didn’t take them anywhere.
• It wasn’t obvious that it was a link. Maybe you linked one word in the middle of ten paragraphs and people missed it. They’re busy. They’re reading fast. Understandable.
• There wasn’t a clear reason why someone should click that link. It was just a “hey, check this out if you feel like it at some point, though god knows why you’d want to” kind of thing.

And there are a bunch of other reasons I can think of, but in the interest of avoiding the longest post in the history of blogging, let’s just say this:

Before you can decide that people aren’t interested in the thing, you have to have gotten them to the place where they can say yes to it.

Important Question #2: did you answer their unasked questions?

• Is it going to work?
• What if I don’t like it?
• How long does each class last?
• What if I’m not ready?
• Is the shipping going to be really expensive?
• What are the other people going to be like?
• What about the wild animals?*

* If this makes no sense, read Mark’s wonderful post where someone actually asked, “Are there wild animals that will attack me?” and it was a perfectly legitimate, reasonable question.

We all want to know things. Because we’re curious. And scared. And hopeful.

And we need reassurance and safety.

But we tend to not like having to ask about the things we want to know, so you’re going to have to answer our questions for us before we can say yes to your thing.

Even if we are mostly ready to say yes to it.

Important Question #3: did you allow enough time?

One of my students recently announced a six week course she was going to teach… two weeks before it started.

It was her first class ever. And she was absolutely devastated when no one signed up.

After the designated grumblebug kvetch session and the commiserating, I pointed out that when I first started announcing programs four years ago, it would take me ridiculous amounts of time to fill them.

I learned to allow months for getting the word out. And even then I sometimes ended up teaching classes that had three people in them.

Now, finally, astonishingly, it’s gotten to the point where I can completely fill a class in a day or two. But that’s crazy. Not the norm.

The norm is that you want to give your Right People (and yourself) at least a couple months to get used to the idea that a course is coming …

That way, you have more time to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

And more time to plant gentle reminders. To answer more questions. To work on your own stucknesses as they come up. Stuff like that.

I know. This is a lot to work on.

And that’s kind of my point.

There is just so much to do and learn and work on before you can legitimately say that no one is interested.

Which means that when you find yourself leaning towards the “no one is interested in my thing” explanation first, that’s a clue that your stuff is coming up.

So there are two things you’ll need to focus on.

You’ll want to be consciously, actively working-on-your-stuff so you can start to destuckify your own issues around biggification. What I call working “in the soft”.

And at the same time, you want to keep using practical, measured techniques “in the hard” for the actual getting-people-to-say-yes part. You know, the M-word.

Useful resources.

• Mark’s post about numbers (how many people you need to reach) is very helpful.
• The M word. “Marketing” and other vomit-ey stuff.
• My “give me back my comfort zone!” rant.
• Mark’s post again on the 7 Necessaries for Filling a Course

One last thought.

All these techniques — all this non-sleazy “marketing”-ey work and biggification stuff?

It’s just the means to an end. It’s not the end itself.

The point of learning how to do non-gross “get the word out” work is to help you get to the place where you don’t have to do it anymore.

To get to the point where you don’t have to do it anymore.

At this point in my business, I don’t really spend time or energy on the m-word. I don’t write promotional emails and sales pages. I don’t even have a noozletter. I don’t launch stuff.

At most I announce it casually once in a while here or on Twitter.

So you take the time to learn techniques “in the hard”, and you work on your stuff “in the soft”, so that you can do the thing and help your Right People say yes to it.

But once those structures are in place, you can turn your attention back to working on yourself for its own sake instead of working on yourself to work on your business. Does that make sense?

That idea probably needs its own post, but I’m just going to stop here for now.

Comments …

So I’ve been practicing asking for what I need. And that way, if you feel like leaving one (you totally don’t have to), you get to be part of my experiment .

Here’s what I want:

• Stuff you’re working on biggifying.
• Stuff you’re thinking about in connection to these themes and concepts.

What I would rather not have:

• A lecture about how business is evil and promoting things is evil and no one should ever do it. If that’s your life philosophy, that’s fine — it’s just not helpful for the space I’m trying to create here.

My commitment.

I am committed to giving time and thought to the things that people say, and I will interact with their ideas and with my own stuff as compassionately and honestly as is possible for me.

Even though asking for what I want is still weirdly uncomfortable for me, I’m practicing!

Thanks.