In this episode, I’m diving into the fears that so many of us experience when it comes to launching—and honestly, why they’re completely normal. I share the six most common fears I see (and have personally felt), from fear of failure and judgment to worrying about being too “salesy,” showing up visibly, dealing with imposter syndrome, or even having the tech fall apart at the worst possible moment. These fears can feel very real, and they’re often the exact reason we either delay launching or go into it feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
But instead of letting those fears take over, I walk through how I reframe each one so it actually works for me, not against me. I talk about treating every launch as an experiment rather than something that has to be perfect, focusing on the people I’m genuinely here to help, and reminding myself that selling isn’t about being pushy—it’s about offering a solution. I also share some practical ways to build confidence, like starting small with visibility, keeping a “love folder” of kind words and testimonials, testing tech ahead of time, and making sure I have support when it matters most. The goal isn’t to remove fear completely—it’s to move forward with it and still show up with confidence.
3 Key Takeaways:
Fear is Normal—But It Doesn’t Get to Be in Charge
Every launch comes with some level of fear, whether it’s about failing, being judged, or things going wrong. Instead of waiting to feel fearless, I’ve learned to expect those feelings and move forward anyway.
Reframing Changes Everything
When I stop seeing a launch as a pass-or-fail moment and start treating it like an experiment, it takes the pressure off. Every result—good or bad—becomes something I can learn from and improve next time.
Confidence Comes From Action (Not Overthinking)
Small steps make a big difference. Whether it’s showing up a little more, preparing my tech in advance, or leaning on support, taking action builds confidence far more than waiting until I feel “ready.”
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa’s email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube
Transcript
Have you ever got close to launching or doing a launch and managed to talk yourself out of it, or you did actually launch and spent the entire time feeling sick while doing it? Then this is for you because I want you to understand that the fears you have around launching, I have them too, and my clients have them and I’m fairly confident the biggest people in the industry still have them.
So in this episode, I’m gonna name those fears. I’m gonna help you reframe them, and then I’m gonna give you practical advice to help you move through them so that you can go into your next launch with all the confidence you need.
Welcome to this episode of the Dream Business Podcast. My name is Teresa Heath Wareing, and if we haven’t met, or this is the first time you’re watching a video of mine, welcome. But secondly, I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online businesses, and in these videos and in this podcast.
Each week, I give you practical, strategic, actionable advice that you can take away and use in your business. And in today’s episode, I [00:01:00] want to touch on something that is really important because even though I am all about strategy, I’m actually a certified coach as well. And I do need to address some of the mindset issues that come into play when we launch, because one of the biggest problems I see.
Is people just not launching or they launch it doesn’t go very well and they don’t do it again. And that is honestly the worst thing that can happen for your business. We think the worst thing that can happen is if we do a launch and it doesn’t work, but actually. We don’t fail. We learn from that. The way we fail is by not doing it in the first place.
So in this episode, I am going to talk you through the fears that I hear the most. I’m gonna help you reframe those fears, and then I’m gonna give you some real practical, actionable things that you can do to help you move through them. So let’s start with the biggest and the one I hear the most, the fear of failure.
This is a real big fear that I hear all the time, and honestly, it [00:02:00] makes complete. Sense there is a real worry that we put ourselves out there, that we try and do a launch, that we go to sell and we just fail and it doesn’t work. And one thing I wanna share with you about all these fears is they are completely natural.
Our brain is hardwired to keep us safe. And when it knows that something is making us very uncomfortable, it is assuming. Wrongly, that that might be a lion trying to eat us. So instead of allowing us to be eaten by a lion, it then brings in all these things to help sabotage us so that we keep ourselves safe.
So the first thing I want to say is don’t be angry or annoyed with yourself that you have these fears. It’s perfectly natural. And if we didn’t have fears like this, potentially we could get eaten by a lion, and we definitely don’t want that. So that’s the first thing. Fear of failure. It’s perfectly understandable.
It perfectly makes sense. So how can we reframe the fear of failure? The truth is you can’t fail if you’re doing an experiment. An [00:03:00] experiment by its very nature is doing something to see what happens, and that’s how I want you to view every single launch that you do going forward. It’s an experiment.
Because from every launch, we’re going to learn something, and from that knowledge, we’re going to be able to tweak and improve and get better. But the truth is, if we don’t even launch in the first place because the fear is too big of failing, we are never going to get to the point where we actually know what works.
So you are only going to fail. If you don’t launch full stop, you’re not going to fail if you launch because it’s an experiment, and we will always learn from that Fear. Number two is the fear of judgment. When we do a launch by its very nature, we are putting ourselves out there. We are sharing our thoughts, our opinions.
We’ve created an offer, which inevitably is to do with us and our brain. We are sharing it with the world and we are saying, look, I know what I’m talking about. And that can be very scary because we’re basically putting our head above the parapet and we are basically saying, [00:04:00] look at me everyone. And sometimes the fear of judgment is completely valid.
So let’s reframe the fear of judgment. The truth is the people who are really judging you. If anybody is, which one of my other mindset things I talk about all the time is what do I know as fact? And we are assuming people are judging us, we’re assuming they’re going to say something, and honestly, in one way, that would mean they’re really paying attention.
So we could take that as a really good thing. However. We don’t know it by fact. And if we do know it by fact, if someone is judging us, they’re not our customers. They’re not someone who we are serving or who we are trying to attract. So those people are not people we should be worrying about. The people who are your customers are the ones who really want your help.
So they are never going to judge you for trying to help them. So a practical fix for you on this one is I want you to really focus on that person you’re trying to help and really think about the fact that. [00:05:00] Without you, they’re gonna be stuck where they are and you have something that can help them and that can move them forward.
So we’re not gonna think about the people that might judge us, we’re just gonna focus on the people who need our help. And if I wanted to take this a step further, I would say to you that we are doing them an injustice by us not showing up. So if we have a solution that can help someone, it’s doing an injustice to someone else for not.
Telling them about that thing that we can help them with and the offer that we have. The third fear is the fear of being salesy or pushy during a launch. Now, the way I’m gonna validate this one to you is if you are even thinking that that is a concern. You are not that person. Do you think the person who is genuinely salesy and genuinely pushy is sat there worrying, oh, am I being a bit pushy or am I being a bit salesy?
No. All they’re thinking is I want the sale. So the sheer fact that you might have this fear tells me you are [00:06:00] not this person. So the reframe for this is very similar to what I’ve just said by not sharing that you have a solution. Two, the pain or problem that they have is really doing them a disservice because they’re either gonna stay stuck and we don’t want that or.
Worst case scenario, they’re gonna go to someone else who is nowhere near as good as you all because we were worried about looking salesy and pushy, whereas that other person isn’t, and they’re definitely not gonna do as good a job as you. So we are doing your customer a disservice by not giving them the offer And the practical fix for this one actually.
Less of a practical fix. It’s more a reminder that if you are feeling this, you are unlikely to be doing it and you are offering them something. You are helping them make a buying decision, and some of the strategies that we use are to help them make a buying decision. You are not. Coercing or deceiving someone into buying something from you, you are putting an offer out there and you really must [00:07:00] put the offer out there because people need help making that buying decision.
Fear at number four is the fear of visibility. When you are doing a launch, you are making yourself very, very visible, and being visible can be really scary. If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs. One of our innate needs is to be part of the community, part of the gang, part of a group, and when we are stepping out and becoming more visible, it feels like a threat, and that makes perfect sense.
Again, our lovely brain who is trying to protect us, but doesn’t understand the difference between getting eaten by a lion and. Being visible on social media is trying to stop us from being visible. So it’s perfectly understandable that we would be nervous about becoming more visible. So the reframe I want you to think about on this one is visibility or being invisible is not helping you.
At all, and it’s not helping your audience. It might feel like it’s protecting you in the short term [00:08:00] because putting yourself out is scary. However, it’s not helping your business in order to sell something, which is why we’re in business. People need to know who we are, and if they don’t know who we are, they’re never gonna be able to buy from us.
The practical fix for this one is maybe start small. So maybe do it within a community or within people that you know. However, I would also argue that when you are starting on social media or if you are on social media, then there’s not that many eyes on your stuff. And the fear that people are gonna say stuff about us because we’re being visible is normally just a fear in our head.
It’s not actually something that comes true for many of us. Okay, so onto fear number five, the fear that we will have imposter syndrome. So just a quick validation for you. I have felt this, everyone I work with has felt this at some point or another, is someone going to find me out? Am I actually any good at the thing?
I say? I’m good at the reframe on this. Is first off, you just need to [00:09:00] know more than the people you are teaching and training. But in reality, you do know more than enough. This is your business. And often when we’re in our business doing our thing, we take for granted how much knowledge we have about something, and therefore it feels like, well, do I really know what I’m talking about?
I dunno about you, but when I then start talking or then I start sharing or someone asks me a question, sometimes at the end of that, I think, oh yeah, no, I definitely do know what I’m talking about. Also, another part of the reframe is there are other people out there who know way, way, way less than you showing up and doing the thing.
So I am confident that you know what you’re talking about and again, the fact that you’re worrying about this reassures me that you are fine. A practical tip on this one. Is create yourself what I call a love folder. A love folder is where you keep every testimonial, every case study, every nice screenshot that you’ve ever seen about yourself, every nice review, anything where someone has gone, you are awesome.
[00:10:00] Screenshot it, put it in a folder. If you actually have physical cards or letters, which I’m very lucky that I’ve had, then I literally have over my desk a board with them all on. To remind yourself that you are really good at what you do, because we all have these wobbles and sometimes we all need to remind ourselves that we are good at what we do.
And the final fear is the fear that the tech might go wrong to validate this fear tech does go wrong sometimes. It has gone wrong many times for me, but actually now we are way more understanding of tech issues because we all have them. So even the biggest and the. Most well-equipped people have tech issues, so the validation is that you might have tech issues.
The reframing this is that your audience are really forgiving and it makes us look more human like. People want to relate to you and they want to know that you are the same as them and that we’re all human. And sometimes when things go wrong, it really helps them understand that. A practical tip on this.
[00:11:00] Test everything before you do your launch. Also have someone on your launch with you to help you. So I will often have a team member with me. So if my sound goes out or something goes wrong as I’m doing it live, then they can literally message me in Slack and tell me that something’s gone wrong. And then if there is a backup plan that you can have, then great.
But honestly, 99% of the time you’ll be fine. And if you’re not, people are very forgiving. So there you have it. The six fears that I hear the most that stop people from launching. And I really hope that by going through them, by reframing them and giving you some practical advice that you won’t let any of these stop you from launching.
Because one thing I know from working in this industry for over 10 years and working with hundreds and hundreds of clients to help them launch and doing my own launches. The fear doesn’t go away, but we don’t let the fear stop us, and that’s the big difference. I want to remind you that everything you do in your business should be seen as an [00:12:00] experiment and therefore you can’t fail.
There is no problem. You just learn and then you can tweak and do it again. I really hope this episode has helped you reframe some of those things, and hopefully if you’ve been sat on the fence thinking I need to launch and you haven’t, then maybe this has given you the nice gentle kick that you needed.
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