Hello, dearest! Turns out I don’t have the flu, just a nasty sinus infection. I spent most of yesterday lying down and I feel much more human today. Thanks for the sympathy and good advice!
The last few posts have been about perfectionism and how it’s a clever voice your fear uses to stop you from having to take the risk and publish. This also applies to the products and services you sell, of course; it’s even worse as soon as money and value get involved.
I’m as freaked out about this as anyone. I’ve been a corporate wage-slave so long that the idea that people will pay me directly for my expertise is really intimidating and I’ve had to sneak up on it sideways. Here’s how I’ve done it.
Launch a tiny product to get confidence
The helpful and kind Dave Navarro challenged his readers last year to produce a “beer product”: to turn an imaginary, beverage-assisted conversation with your customer into a quick and simple information product that solves one specific problem.
I used that idea and got a leeetle more elaborate, which is where the Website in a Weekend product came from. I wrote the outline on New Year’s Eve (at the Day Job, because oddly enough it was a really quiet day!), shot the video on New Year’s Day, edited and uploaded the next day, sales page and publish on the 3rd. I wasn’t expecting it to sell, but I did make sure it was worth the amount you paid for it.
I used it as a learning experience: to get used to screencasting, teaching via video, figuring out how to use Camtasia, uploading and sharing video securely, setting up a payment gateway… lots of new stuff in one weekend. Two weeks later I sold a copy (to the magificent and charming Laura) and I was THRILLED.
And freaked out! My first response was to try to refund Laura’s money. I mean, it couldn’t be worth it, it was just an accumulation of five years of learning about WordPress websites in one simple video series! It wouldn’t save hours and hours of fussing around trying to figure out which options you need! It…
Oh. Right. Shut up, insecurity.
Since then it’s sold a few more copies. This is immensely gratifying. I keep thinking I should re-shoot the intro video which used the old camera with crap sound quality, but other stuff keeps getting in the way.
Launch for free
The free Awesomeness Consulting sessions I did (and am still doing, there’s a couple more to get through) were wonderful. I feel in love with many of you (even more than I was before), I helped lots of people, built the brand, got a lot of followers and new relationships. Win win win.
Also, I was product testing. I didn’t put a lot of structure around the free sessions; I let the participants direct the conversation a lot of the time and answered whatever questions they wanted to ask. And then I created products from those conversations.
Soon to come (over the weekend), a bigger version of the same. It will cover goals, ideal visitors, conversion, and how to make your website both effective AND awesome.
Launch before you’re ready
The third realisation from the Awesomeness Consulting sessions is that a lot of you don’t have someone to talk to about All This. Not that you don’t have wonderful people around you who love and support you, but most of them aren’t budding webpreneurs and tend to look confused and lost when you talk about what you do.
So! The Awesome Chat is a monthly/maybe fortnightly chat session through phone and probably Skype and maybe streaming webcam, to ask me questions, ask Kevin tech questions and chat with us and each other about what’s going on. It’ll be held at an appropriate time.
Could I get any vaguer?
I could make all those decisions in advance, but they all depend on how many people sign up/I’ll never find out how many people would sign up unless I launch the thing. I could let this be an impossible Moebius strip of never-launching, or I could just say: sign up. Depending on how many of you there are we will have one, maybe two sessions that suit everyone. We will have tech that’s suitable for the number of people who join. I will figure it out once I know who’s in.
It’s done. It’s launched. The rest is figuring out details.
Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…
Announce something for sale today. Even if it’s just a page announcing that you offer one-on-one coaching or consulting and telling people to get in touch at this email address.
What do you have that people can buy? Tell me in the comments!