02 · LAUNCH | LAUNCH NAVIGATION
Bring your business model to market with a launch you can manage.
Your business has moved beyond the idea stage. Launch Navigation helps you coordinate brand, marketing, sales, and operations so you can reach first customers with direction, confidence, and a plan you can follow.
SELF-PACED COMING SOON
THIS STAGE ASKS DIFFERENT QUESTIONS
You know what you are building. Now everything feels urgent.
Your business model makes sense, but the launch list keeps growing: brand, website, pricing, email, social, sales, payments, and customer service. Every task looks important, which makes it harder to know what comes first.
A launch-stage business does not need more disconnected tactics. It needs brand, marketing, sales, and operations working together. Launch Navigation turns the list into a coordinated path to first customers.
By the end of Launch Navigation, you will have:
- A clear brand direction and value proposition you can explain without overcomplicating it
- An online presence plan matched to how your customers research and buy
- A focused launch marketing plan with clear channel priorities
- An initial offer, pricing approach, and sales process ready to test with real customers
- A customer journey that connects discovery, purchase, delivery, and follow-up
- Essential operating routines for customer service, orders, budgeting, and your time
- A practical soft-launch plan that turns preparation into coordinated action
Complete the final assessment and portfolio to earn your Certificate in Business Launch Strategy—an added recognition of the work you have completed—and continue toward the CEP designation whenever you choose.
THE LAUNCH PROCESS
Four launch maps. One coordinated plan.
Launch Navigation is designed around four maps. Each one focuses on decisions that must work together before you open for business.
Map 1 | MY BRAND MAP: Positioning and Presence
Shape your brand direction, value proposition, messaging, visual identity, and online presence around what your customer needs to understand and trust.
Map 2 | MY MARKETING MAP: Reaching the Right Customers
Choose the channels that fit your audience, build a focused launch campaign, and create a realistic content and email plan you can maintain.
Map 3 | MY SALES MAP: Turning Interest Into Customers
Define your offer and pricing approach, map the customer journey, practice selling in person and online, and prepare to respond to common objections.
Map 4 | MY OPERATIONS MAP: Delivering What You Promise
Plan how you will handle orders, customer service, budgeting, inventory when relevant, and the daily and weekly routines that keep the business moving.
Each map includes structured lessons, readings, workbooks, quizzes, and practical checkpoints that help you build each part of your own launch as you learn. Choose the self-paced course for lifetime access or join the October live cohort for weekly instruction and accountability.
SELF-PACED COURSE · COMING SOON
Self-Paced Course | $497
Get the complete Four Maps learning path and work through it on your schedule with video lessons, workbooks, quizzes, and practical action steps.
- Coming soon with lifetime access
- Revisit lessons as you coordinate your real launch
- Complete the final assessment and portfolio to earn your Certificate in Business Launch Strategy
Best when you want a complete path you can move through on your schedule once enrollment opens.
SELF-PACED COMING SOONPREMIUM SUPPORT · DIRECT ACCESS
Live Cohort | $1,749
Complete the same Four Maps with eight weeks of live guidance, direct weekly access to Kristi, and a peer cohort navigating launch-stage decisions alongside you.
- Eight weekly 90-minute live classes with Kristi
- Real-time teaching, questions, feedback, and accountability
- A supportive peer cohort moving through the same stage
- The complete course, final assessment, portfolio review, and certificate
Best when you want the complete course plus more connection, feedback, and accountability.
Next cohort begins Thursday, October 22, 2026.
Explore the Live CohortWHO IS BUILDING IT
Learn from someone who has taught it, led it, and lived it.
Launch Navigation was created by Kristi Mitchell, MBA, Professor of Practice in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Butler University and a contributor to Butler’s 2026 USASBE Award-Winning Entrepreneurship Program.
Kristi brings four decades of business experience and ten years teaching entrepreneurship at Butler, where she directs the Real Business Experience program and 56 student teams a year launch and operate real businesses. Her work connects university-level frameworks with the practical launch decisions founders make while building real businesses.
The goal is not to hand you a collection of launch tactics. It is to help you make connected decisions that fit your customers, your capacity, and the business you are actually building.
EXPERIENCE BEHIND THE PROCESS
40 years of business experience
Kristi brings experience from corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, company building, and teaching. Launch Navigation connects those perspectives so students learn how launch decisions work together.
TEACHING AND FOUNDER SUPPORT
Experience across classrooms, programs, and real business decisions
Kristi has taught entrepreneurship at Butler University for more than 10 years and has worked directly with founders through consulting, community programs, and My Venture Coach.
WHAT YOU’RE GETTING
Everything inside Launch Navigation
Both formats include the complete four-map course and the opportunity to earn your Certificate in Business Launch Strategy.
LEARN
The complete four-map course
Work through four coordinated maps covering brand, marketing, sales, and the operations that support your launch.
APPLY
Workbooks for your launch
Use workbooks and action guides to connect your positioning, marketing, sales process, and delivery plan.
DEMONSTRATE
Launch portfolio, assessment, and certificate
Complete the final portfolio and assessment to earn a Certificate in Business Launch Strategy you can share on LinkedIn and your resume.
Study from your desktop, tablet, or the Kajabi mobile app.
TWO WAYS TO LEARN
Same course. Choose your support.
Self-paced · $497
Move through the four maps on your schedule with lifetime access.
Self-paced enrollment coming soon
Live cohort · $1,749
Add eight weeks of instruction, direct feedback, and peer accountability. The next cohort begins October 22.
Add support when you want it
Coaching and Community are optional. Add either when you enroll or later.
One-to-one coaching with Kristi
Bring decisions about positioning, pricing, channel priorities, or launch sequence to someone who has built businesses and taught entrepreneurship for a decade.
My Venture Coach Community
Continue with peer discussion, moderated Q&A, a vetted resource library, and on-demand business skill sessions after the course ends.
WHERE LAUNCH NAVIGATION FITS
One course now. A path as your business grows.
Launch Navigation is course two in the three-course Certified Entrepreneurial Professional (CEP) pathway. Each course matches a stage of your business and earns its own certificate. Complete all three courses and pass the CEP exam to earn the designation.
WHEN YOU ARE TESTING AN IDEA
01 · Venture Mapping
Build an evidence-based business model you can explain and test, then earn the Certificate in Business Model Development.
YOU ARE HERE
02 · Launch Navigation
You are preparing to launch. Build a coordinated plan for reaching first customers, then earn the Certificate in Business Launch Strategy.
WHEN YOUR BUSINESS IS OPERATING
03 · Growth Mapping
Create a focused 90-day growth strategy with clear priorities, then earn the Certificate in Business Growth Strategy and Scaling.
Start with the business you have today.
If your business model has evidence behind it and you are preparing to reach first customers, Launch Navigation is your next step.
QUESTIONS? ANSWERED.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an evidence-based business model first?
How much time should I plan each week?
What if I have never sold anything before?
What will the Certificate in Business Launch Strategy represent?
What is the difference between self-paced and the live cohort?
What if Launch Navigation is not the right stage for me?
How long will I have access?
Ready to turn your plan into a coordinated launch?
Choose the support that fits how you learn. The self-paced course is coming soon at $497 with lifetime access. Or join the October live cohort for $1,749 and move through the Four Maps with weekly instruction and a peer group.
Prefer self-paced? Enrollment is coming soon.
Not sure you are ready? Take the Business Next Step Quiz.
Join the October Live Cohort