Is your quest to make everything perfect with your membership website holding you back?
When you're at the beginning of your journey…
Or maybe even if you've been in business for a while…
The need to get everything right…
From features and tech to your content and community…
Can be all consuming.
So much so that it prevents you moving forward altogether.
You become stuck over-analysing, over-thinking and fretting over every little thing…
But it doesn't need to be this way.
Here's how to overcome perfectionism when starting a membership website…
What does perfection even mean?
Perfection is entirely subjective…
Because what looks perfect to one person will look flawed to another.
That's just a cold hard fact…
So, when you're trying to get everything perfect, the one question you should ask yourself is:
Perfect for who?
If your answer is ‘for every single member inside my community', then here's a wake-up call:
That's impossible.
Because everyone is different…
And we all have a different idea of what perfect looks like.
Your members won't be doing this…
Perfection is not binary…
It's not a point you reach…
It's down to perception, right?
Perfectionism kills progress
We see so many instances of people starting to build a membership…
Then six months down the line, they’re no further forward.
They’re constantly going back and forth, chopping and changing everything…
Fiddling and faffing about trying to get everything right before they launch and share it with the world…
This is exactly how perfectionism kills progress.
If you’re stuck in the same place, trying to make everything perfect before moving on…
You just won’t move on.
And by doing this, you’re missing out on business opportunities…
You could even be missing your window of opportunity to launch in your market!
The term for this is “opportunity cost.”…
So think about this way, what is it costing you pursuing this quest for perfection?
What could you be missing out on?
There’s a well-known quote from a guy called Jack Canfield who wrote The Success Principles who said:
“Don’t get it perfect. Just get it going. Babies aren’t born knowing how to walk.”
This is so true, and it applies to any type of business…
Done is better than perfect…
Launched is better than perfect.
Why perfection is unattainable
Perfection is already an unrealistic expectation…
But it’s downright impossible in the membership space…
Why?
Well, memberships, by their nature, constantly evolve.
When you build a membership, you’re not creating a finished complete product like a course or a book.
A membership is a living, breathing, evolving product.
And what you launch today won't look the same as it will in 12 months time, 2 years time or even 5 years time…
And that’s what your members expect…
They want something that’s always improving and changing for the better.
That’s why they pay you every month…
So if you create a membership that you think is perfect today, that's great…
But what about tomorrow and the day after that?
You can’t just leave it stagnant…
There are things you need to do after you launch to grow your site…
And always build on what you’ve done before.
Why holding back from launching is a big problem
You may find it hard to press the ‘publish' button and launch your membership…
But the problem here is that the very thing you need to improve your membership is to see it out there in the wild…
Because there are three things you won't have until you launch:
- Experience
- Feedback
- Data
As you run your membership, you'll gain more experience in the day-to-day aspects of managing your site…
Running your community, keeping up with your production schedule and content creation among other things…
Often what you're trying to get perfect before you launch…
And the priorities you have once the site is actually up and running differ greatly…
Because you have that experience…
But you won't know that until you actually launch.
Then there's the member feedback...
You’ll learn what they like or don’t like, what’s missing and what works for them.
Your members might dislike the features you're working so hard to perfect right now…
That feedback is like gold dust because it will help you shape the future of your site…
And will give you ideas that you wouldn't think of without their input…
It maybe even contradict some of the ideas of what you originally thought your members would love…
Things you're working so hard to perfect right now.
So, if you’re sitting worried about launching because it’s just not perfect…
You're missing out on the fuel you need to create the best membership you can.
It’s not just the feedback and experience you need, though…
It's the cold hard data.
We’re talking about the kind of data you get from your website…
How many people use it, what content is most popular, how people navigate your site and so on…
You can really dive into the numbers by using Google Analytics or other plugins to see what’s working and what isn’t….
The data never lies, after all.
You can’t always count on your members telling you when something is wrong or going well.
The data is there to fill in the gaps in your understanding.
By tracking the data and getting feedback, you'll be in the best possible position to improve your membership and tailor it to what your members really need.
So if you're striving to create the ‘perfect' membership…
Please stop what you're doing…
Because there's no such thing…
Even if you manage to create a version of your membership that you deem to be perfect right now…
It won't stay that way for long…
The goal posts will move as you gain experience, collect feedback and gather the data.
By recognizing that done is better than perfect and your membership will never truly be finished, you're freeing yourself up to focus on really matters…
Getting your membership launched and serving your members.
Your job, after all, is not to be perfect but to deliver massive value for your members to help them achieve their goals.
You can only do that by acting and moving forward.
So ditch perfectionism, embrace the messy, press the ‘publish' button…
And launch your membership site.
Your members will thank you for it.
