Are you putting off launching your website?
When I talk to yoga teachers who don’t have a website yet, here’s what I hear all the time:
“I know I need a website, but I need to get clear on my niche/branding/offerings first…”
“I’m still working on my website. It’s been 10 months…”
“Oh, my website isn’t quite there yet. There’s just something off about it.”
I’ve said things like this to myself. And I’ve made the mistake of delaying my own website launch because I wasn’t 100% certain that the website was perfect yet.
Many of us obsess over details in the name of perfectionism. And we prize our attention to detail as proof of our high-quality standards.
But here’s what I’ve learned. Progress is better than perfection. Launched is better than perfect. And if you don’t get started as soon as possible, you lose out on all the time to learn and grow and get better with real feedback from real people.
The truth is, perfectionism can often be disguised as fear. Wanting your website to look good is totally normal, but if your perfectionism is holding you back, ask yourself; what am I really afraid of here?
It may be fear of putting yourself out there or fear of failure that’s stopping you from launching your website.
Fear can also trigger the perfectionist side of you and convince you that your website is not beautiful or good enough to be shared. And let’s not forget about impostor syndrome. With your website, your business looks freaking real. Like “Who am I to teach this”.
If you are going through this situation, here are a few ideas to help you put perfectionism to rest and get back on track.
1. Start small
Instead of focusing on getting everything perfect from the start, simply get started. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have professional photographs yet or are not 100% clear on your niche. This all can come later.
Your website will never stop evolving. It will grow, you will change and add things all the time. And that’s great! Don’t wait until you have every single detail perfectly figured out, start with where you are and get your message out there for people to see. There will be plenty of time for you to improve the technical side later.
2. Focus on your mission
When you’re worried about getting things perfect, reconnecting with your mission, your WHY, will fuel that fire that got you started on this path in the first place. What is the real reason why you do what you do? Who do you want to support? When you come back to these core reasons, you’ll know that it’s time to stop holding yourself back and follow through with the work that you’re meant to do.
3. Connect to your intuition
If fears are holding back (and we ALL have them), my experience is that it doesn’t help to simply ignore them. Instead meditate on them. And then check in with your intuition. Is it telling you to go for it? Does it affirm that you’ve finally found your call and the world needs to know? If yes, it’s time to let go of fear and embrace everything that comes with entrepreneurship.
4. Stop comparing yourself to others
It’s easy to get anxious when you look at the professionally done websites of successful entrepreneurs in your niche. Maybe it makes you feel like you can’t launch anything until it’s as perfect as what others are producing.
But you are you. You don’t know where they started from.
Instead, compare yourself to… yourself.
What were you capable of last year? What have you learned since then? What are you capable of now compared to 5 years ago?
You’ve changed and you’ve grown, and you can only compare your progress to your past self.
5. Get support
While it’s great if you can hire a professional designer to create your website, not everybody has the budget for that. But figuring everything out yourself can take up a crazy amount of time and after all, you don’t want to become a website designer.
