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Want To Get Stuff Done? Then Release The Idea That Things Need To Be Perfect.
Perfection is the number one killer of any online business or entrepreneurial activity.
Because perfect doesn’t actually exist.
Hate to break it to you.
The sooner that you release the idea that you need things to be perfect before you start, or that you need to know what’s going to happen every step of the way from the idea to the end result, the sooner you’ll actually be able to get stuff done.
When you keep your focus on the planning side, or on the side where you create something but don’t release it, then no one is going to know who you are and what you’re doing.
You must put your content, your offerings, yourself out there, before it’s perfect, because it will never actually be perfect.
Because perfect doesn’t actually exist.
Release Perfection: Or You’ll Never Get Anything Done
Perfection is probably the number one thing that stops an online business-owner from actually getting stuff done.
Hands down, when I see people talking about the things they want to do, they always end it with, “But I haven’t started because it’s not perfect yet.
The people who are obsessed with getting it perfect are never going to let themselves get out there and find out if that product or service they’ve created is going to work or not.
They’re the people who are going to give any excuse as to why it’s not the right time to launch, not the right time to even start. They may think that they don’t know enough. They may think that it’s all been done before, so it has to be perfect if it’s going to be done now.
Those are all lies. Lies that your mind is telling you, because your ego is trying to keep you in the status quo.
It’s trying to keep you in what’s familiar. What you know, rather than what you don’t know, which could potentially be scary.
It’s really not scary, but until you take that action, you’re never going to know if the impossible is really impossible or not.
Release Perfection: Speaking Of Done, Done Is Better Than Perfect
Done is ALWAYS going to be better than perfect.
No matter what.
Finish a blog post? Publish it. Yes, you can do a final read-through or two, but just get it out there.
Created a pin to lead traffic to said blog post? Great. Download it out of Canva and get it up on Pinterest.
Want to create a Facebook group so you can fill it with your ideal client, but have never created a community before? Just do it. Learn along the way. You’re not going to get 1,000 people the first week, but you won’t grow it to 1,000 or more if you don’t start.
Want to create an online course but what never done it before? Do your research and get started. Once you’re done, open it up to a beta group, work out those kinks, and then launch.
The most important thing to remember is to get whatever you’re working on done, and getting it out there.
Nothing else matters.
You can’t improve on your content, on your offerings, on your online business if you don’t get your content out there and don’t drive traffic to it.
And you can have exactly what your audience needs, but they’ll never know if you don’t get your content out there and promote it. Remember, you should spend more time promoting your content, than you should creating your content. Content creation, especially creating consistent, high-value content for your audience is critical, but getting it out there is even more important.
Release Perfection: It’s The Internet, Nothing Is Set In Stone
I know that there’s the not-so-old adage that the Internet never forgets, but it’s also not going to kill you if you make a typo.
Put out a blog post and your headline is misspelled? It happens, and I’ve done it.
Send an email to your list that doesn’t have functioning links? That also happens (and I’ve also done it).
Publish a collaborative roundup and mis-typed one of your contributors’ names? Oops (and yes, I’ve done that too).
There is nothing that says you can’t go back and fix things.
If you launch something to crickets, that’s okay too. That’s actually great, because you can determine WHY the launch didn’t go well.
Did you not tease it enough through your content?
Did you not research to determine if the launch was something your audience actually wants?
Did you not get that launch out to all your social media platforms?
Did you not focus on the sense of urgency and high-value that your audience needs in order to get them to invest?
Did you not nurture your list before trying to sell to them?
All of these things provide valuable lessons that you can take into planning and launching the next time around.
What’s most important to remember is that a failure is not a sign for you to give up, nor is it going to follow you around negatively throughout the rest of your entrepreneurial career. Every online business owner has a launch or two that flopped, or that didn’t meet expectations.
It happens.
But if you focus on the positives, highlight the things that you do do well, then that is what your audience will focus on. You can use your failures as lessons to share with your audience, if you wish, or you can move on from them. Very rarely is anyone going to show up to a launch and say, “You had me convinced, except I did some research and found out that you tried to launch this product before and failed, so I’m not going to by now.”
That’s not going to happen.
Release Perfection: Focus On Getting Better
Back in the days where I worked in college sports, one of the coaches I worked with (and one of my favorite people) would talk to the media about getting just one percent better every single day in practice, and while I never really thought of how to apply that to online business, because it was years before I decided to create an online business of my own, I understood how important it was to college sports.
You only need to focus on getting just a little bit better, because if you do that every single day, if you put that effort in, it’ll eventually add up, and when you look back to the beginning of the season, you’ll be miles head of where you started.
Whether the athletes took that advice to heart or not, is a completely different story
But when it comes to online business, it’s important to focus on getting your work out there, and improving it through your experience and the lessons that you learn from releasing it to the universe.
The more you go and do, the better you’ll get. You’re not going to build exactly what your audience wants on the first try, but when you get the idea of what they could want, you get that out there, and determine if you hit it correctly or not.
Through action, and importantly through research, you can find out exactly what your audience wants (and do this regularly), so that you can continue to curate your content and your offerings to exactly what they need.
Release Perfection: Do Your Research
The best way to determine if your product or service or whatever else your launching is exactly what your audience wants?
Ask them.
Do your research.
Send emails to your list asking them what they need. Keep them short, with a clear call to action (like, hit reply or fill out this short survey).
Don’t have a large audience yet? Or maybe your audience isn’t engaged enough yet to start responding? That’s okay.
You can always join Facebook groups and ask people in your niche what their audience has been asking for, or check out the current best-selling books in your niche on Amazon to see what people are searching for and buying, look at what’s popular on Pinterest. Create a survey and put it in your Instagram stores. When you use high-traffic hashtags, people will find that story and could potentially chime in with the exact information you need to create the perfect product.
Whatever it is, research.
Find out what they want.
Be relentless about it. Ask regularly. The more you ask, the more information you will get.
In fact, in my free Facebook community, Content That Converts, the first thing I ask anyone who joins (which you can do by clicking here), is what their biggest struggle is regarding content creation. As a content strategist, that question allows me to tailor my content and future offerings to exactly what those people want.
Ready To Start Your Own Online Business?
Have a lot to talk about, but don’t have the website to guide your readers to? Now is the perfect time to get started.
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