Issue #426
Just ship it!
Being a perfectionist is extremely counter-productive. And it is bad for business.
Might seem weird to say, but think about it…
I have worked with a lot of people over the years. I’ve worked with a lot of folks who were starting from scratch and busy getting things ready to launch. I’ve also been involved in several membership build-outs for clients where the client has this instinct of over-engineering the site and dragging things out… all to try to make it just perfect for a launch.
I’ve seen folks who sent launch date targets WAY out into the future. Why? You can install Wordpress and a theme in less than an hour. So, why wait so long?
Or, you’ll see people who want to launch a product. They’ll plan out this entire funnel. Multiple upsells. Lot of fancy-pants parts and pieces and fancy tools. Sometimes they’ll even invest thousands of dollars into it. And the whole time… they have yet to even get subscriber #1.
Lots of preparing.
Lots of… procrastination.
It simply doesn’t work. In most cases, it never launches and they wasted all that time and effort. Or… when it does launch they find that a lot of that extra legwork they did didn’t even matter.
Truth is, most launches for new sites are quite uneventful. It isn’t as if people are waiting in the wings waiting for you. They’re not in line. So, sitting there trying to make everything perfect before you let it be public is often a waste of time.
That’s what perfectionism does, in reality. There’s no pride in claiming you’re a perfectionist. There’s a lot of failed businesses which looked pretty perfect.
I encourage you to look for minimum viable product. Look at those words…
- Minimum. In other words, the least amount needed to make it workable.
- Viable. It has to work.
- Product. It needs to be exchangeable for money.
So, shortest path possible to the point of “good enough”.
Yes, YOU may have grand visions of what it could be. But, nobody knows any of that. They don’t know about you or your ideas. So, just get SOMETHING out there for them to see. Bare minimum functionality.
Then, you iterate. That’s where the real magic happens. Small tests, small changes. Nobody said your imperfect thing has to stay that way, but you’ll never even have a chance if you seek perfection first.
First thing is to get something out there and let it meet the marketplace. Start getting feedback.
Just ship it!
Want my help to speed things up and get you ready for launch? You can either book a call where you and I will put together your action plan… or you can just have me build out your site for you so you don’t want a lot of time on the tech stuff.