It’s not hard to remember the lead up to the birth of your first child. Forty weeks of sheer focus on everything from what cheese to eat—or not to eat, to a birth plan that read like a military operation. I always found it odd that there was a ten-point plan for every eventuality during the twenty hours of labour and yet we had no plan for how to navigate the next twenty years after that.

Giving birth to ideas is equally seductive. Thoughts about what it will feel like to see your idea (innovation, product, service, book, video, designs) in the world are what drives people to push through when the going gets tough. Often though that vision begins and ends with launch day, with most of your energy being focused on giving birth to the project.

Day one is easy to imagine—but what’s the plan for day two?

Below is a roadmap to help you start thinking about life after launch day. This is simply a template of touchpoints, it doesn’t become a plan until you begin to find answers to questions about what the future might look like. Which must be easier to predict than the first twenty years of a child’s life.

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Image by Chimpr.