#38 Stop Tinkering & Just Launch
I write this newsletter from scratch each week – usually inspired by a conversation, something I read, or a client project.
This week I figured I could throw it back to an issue I wrote a few months ago when most of you hadn't joined yet... but then I read the archives.
Wow... *cringe* ... It made me think of ever cliché I've ever been told –"embrace the suck", "just start", "practice makes perfect"... (that last one was my Dad while I was learning piano as a kid).
Honestly... without those clichés I probably wouldn't be sending the 38th issue of this newsletter.
If you're sitting on a project making it "perfect" or waiting for the "right moment" to launch that new product – then this week's issue is for you.
You have probably heard of an MVP before –
Minimum Viable Product – a product that requires the least amount of effort but still provides value so you can learn from it.
MVPs are so over-engineered these days...
Too many features
Fully functioning
Beautiful
And yet they're not quite (or at all) right.
That's why the phrase "MVP" often comes with an *eye roll* or *sigh* in the product world.
I have seen too many delays to launch from TINKERING that end up in hundreds of thousands of sunk costs. Then you launch and realize everything needs pivoted and changed.
Let's take a look at a few businesses that launched their MVP the right way –
MVP Stories
Rent the Runway founders tested its online dress rental business model by providing an in-person service to female college students where anyone could try the dress on before renting them. This validated its riskiest hypothesis — that women would rent dresses — and served as a great concierge MVP that put the business in front of customers and got their feedback.
Airbnb founders put up a basic website "Air Bed & Breakfast" during an International Design Conference in San Francisco. They rented air mattresses or spare rooms solving the accommodation shortage during the event. The hands-on approach involved personally reaching out to potential users and sharing the platform's value.
Dropbox didn't develop a product at the beginning at all. He made a 3 minute video about how it would work to sync files across devices and store them in the cloud. He posted it to various forums online and gauged interest by allowing people to sign up for the waitlist. He learned from the comments on the forum and developed the "beta" version of the product.
The Lab (Jay Clouse's Membership) launched at 50% off before he even had a sales page in order to build the membership with his community. By offering it before building all the infrastructure or putting marketing effort behind it, he gauged interest. This membership brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Apply MVP strategies like the pros:
Do things manually: Is there a manual way to test the first version of your product? If it's a course, it might be teaching it live the first time.
Be the spokesperson: You will likely have to send personal invitations and be the spokesperson for the beta version of your product.
Gauge interest with landing pages: Gauge interest with simple web pages, social posts, and videos before you even build the thing.
Your Beta Membership Might Suck... And That's Okay.
It's what you do after that matters.
I talked to someone recently who was feeling heartbroken because she had launched a beta membership and was overwhelmed by all the feedback as to what could be better.
Her beta members shared how the membership didn't reach their expectations and gave her a laundry list of what they'd like to see included... a lot of which felt like a HUGE ask to her.
She felt like she had already priced the membership way too low especially if she added all these new requests to the offer.
Here's what I told her:
Feedback is a gift. It shows us the gaps and opportunities that exist, but you don't have to implement every request. Try to look at the responses for the ROOT reasoning. If they're asking for more events or more feedback, what is it that they really need? Is there another way to solve it? I'd suggest doing 1:1s with a few of them (3-5) to ask more about their challenges and pain points and see if you can find a deeper why (root cause of pain).
As you leave your beta phase, look at the feedback and come up with a list of ideas, and a plan that you feel good about if you were going to shift and update your membership. Then you can increase the price for future members. It's super common with a beta that they'd have a stupid low price forever.
Are there other ways to solve the problems your members have that you can't? Like bringing in a guest coach/speaker or partnering with another program/app?
My point is that you don't have to solve every problem with YOUR time.
Betas are meant to help you learn this stuff so that you can iterate, and make things better. And NO ONE gets it right the first time.
I'll leave you with some tough love to help you just launch.
Stop adding everything you think could possibly be needed to the first version of your product launch. You don't know enough yet about how the market will respond.
Stop iterating and changing everything before anyone gives you feedback on the current version.
Stop taking it personally when you get feedback. Feedback is a gift and all it does is help you make the product better. YOUR self worth is not tied to your product performance.
The smartest people in the world have more failure stories than fingers + toes. Your future self will be grateful you didn't care what people think and that you just put it out there to test it.
And for what it's worth... even though I know this stuff, I teach this stuff, and I help my clients with this stuff... I need to hear it myself too.
This shit is hard – luckily we get to do it together.
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