Escaping the ‘perfect’ trap: How to get your idea out there, fast

Are you able to ship fast and get your ideas out there? Or do you get stuck in the ‘perfectionism’ trap?

In today’s episode, Sarah is going to share how she launched a brand-new User Experience course and watched it take off, before she even prepared a single lesson.

It’s a great story of how to validate a concept before even putting pen to paper by listening to your potential customers, and how to enlist your early users into creating an even more successful final product.

You’ll get to hear from Sarah about:

• How losing a $5,000 a month client forced her to throw her perfectionism and impostor syndrome out the window and just launch with a concept that was ‘good enough’
• How she knew she was onto to something big just by sending out a single Google form
• How she sold out an 85-seat workshop with just 2 hours worth of work (and had to shut down registration early)
• The one survey question she asks that always results in the most valuable responses
• The need for authenticity and vulnerability in communications with customers
• How obsessing over the people you want to help is a must if you really want to understand them

She also talks about the power of giving to give instead of giving to get, and the value that comes from nurturing relationships directly with your early customers.
I had a great time talking with Sarah, and I hope you learn from her as much as I did.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:02:18] Sarah’s newsletter, The UX Notebook
• [00:02:35] Why Sarah started The UX Notebook
• [00:03:39] Sarah’s hobby as a marathoner
• [00:05:08] The definition of UX
• [00:07:29] How Sarah’s first UX course, the UX Portfolio Program, got started
• [00:09:32] What it’s like to lose a $5000 per month client
• [00:14:00] How Sarah started testing her portfolio program idea
• [00:17:28] How to get started finding an audience for your product when you don’t have a big email list
• [00:18:53] The differences between Sarah’s portfolio program and other projects she’d tried in the past
• [00:21:35] Advice for people dealing with imposter syndrome
• [00:24:39] The importance of getting feedback from early adopters of your project
• [00:26:54] How Sarah set the price for her beta program
• [00:31:27] The type of feedback Sarah ended up getting from her beta users
• [00:34:30] How Sarah’s portfolio program helped users
• [00:35:41] What types of survey questions to ask after a purchase
• [00:38:41] Sarah’s reasons for adopting a people-first approach
• [00:42:24] Resources that Sarah recommends