Welcome (Back) to the Solutioneers Blog!

It’s been a while, and I know there are a lot of new faces here—so welcome! 👋

This is the Solutioneers Blog, where I share real-life business lessons for business owners and leaders who want practical strategies that actually work. No fluff, no theory—just insights from the trenches of running, growing, and figuring out business.

If you’re looking for ideas you can apply today to make your business more valuable, scalable, or just easier to run, you’re in the right place. And if you ever have a question or a challenge you’d like me to cover, hit reply—I’d love to hear from you!

Lessons from Launching: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What I’d Do Differently

At the end of 2023, my friend and OT, Phumla Motsa, and I decided to build a course: Grow Your Healthcare Practice. We ran it three times last year, and each time, we applied different strategies to get registrations. Some worked brilliantly, others… not so much.

Here’s what we learned from launching, testing, and tweaking our approach.

Strategy 1: Collaborate – Partnering with established networks

We worked with other healthcare training organisations, offering them a percentage of the course fee for any sign-ups that came from their audience.

✅ What worked: These organisations had already built trust with their audience. Their endorsement gave us credibility, and their mailing lists got us in front of people we wouldn’t have reached on our own.

❌ What didn’t: The logistics. Each partner needed their own unique link and landing page, which became a bit of a headache to manage.

Would I do it again? Yes, but with a better system in place for tracking referrals and handling payouts.

Strategy 2: Working with Professional Bodies – Tapping into industry authority

Since healthcare is so regulated, professionals tend to engage actively with their governing bodies. Some of these organisations allow accredited courses to be marketed to their members, so we tried advertising through them.

✅ What worked: We gained valuable insight into which professional bodies have the most engaged members and where our ads performed best.

❌ What didn’t: It was hit or miss. Some ads landed well, others barely made a dent. There’s a lot of noise in these spaces, and standing out isn’t easy.

Would I do it again? Yes, but only with the organisations where we saw real traction.

Strategy 3: Build a List – Email outreach (and what NOT to do!)

We manually collected contact details of healthcare professionals from public directories and sent them an introductory email, asking if they’d like to stay subscribed.

✅ What worked: Honestly… not much. But we did more than double our list size - which I now know is a vanity metric.

❌ What didn’t: Everything else. We got a wave of unsubscribes. After reading Jeff Walker’s Launch, I realised why: cold emails like this don’t build trust—they just irritate people. Lesson learned.

Would I do it again? Absolutely not. Instead, I’d focus on organic list-building through lead magnets (like a free guide or webinar) to attract willing subscribers.

Strategy 4: WhatsApp Advertising – The unexpected win

Every time we ran the course, we created a simple WhatsApp flyer and sent it to our healthcare friends, asking them to share it in their professional networks.

✅ What worked: It was free, easy, and effective. We always got at least one sign-up just from word-of-mouth sharing.

❌ What didn’t: Tracking was impossible. We had no way of knowing how far the message travelled or how many potential sign-ups we lost.

Would I do it again? Yes! But I’d add a dedicated WhatsApp group or broadcast list to keep potential participants engaged between launches.

Final Takeaways

• Trust is everything. Whether it’s through collaborations, professional bodies, or WhatsApp groups, the more credibility you have, the better your results.
• Cold outreach is dead. People hate unsolicited emails—don’t waste your time.
• Simple works. Sometimes a basic WhatsApp message outperforms a carefully crafted ad.
• Test and tweak. Every launch is a learning opportunity. We adjusted our approach with each round, and the results kept improving.

Next time, I’ll focus on building an engaged email list, doubling down on trusted partnerships, and refining our WhatsApp strategy.

Have you launched something recently? What worked (or flopped) for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Because I need help too.

Anne Gray

PS. When you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together:

1. I will be running a read along of Jeff Walkers book "Launch in March, so Join us in The Leaders' Library for that.
2. I offer business coaching and consulting services for small to medium businesses (including healthcare) who want to identify and address the problems holding them back from scaling.
3. I have developed an 8 hour a month 1-1 coaching program called "Kickstart Your Business" for start ups in the first 0-12 months of business that will help you get off the ground and in the air

Book a FREE call with me if you want to talk about how I can help you with your business transformation.