Perfection can be a good concept, but when it costs you money, that is where the problem lies. Many first-time entrepreneurs make a mistake by not failing, but by waiting—waiting for the right product, or timing, or plan. In the meantime, competitors are taking action and opportunities are being eroded while the entrepreneur does nothing. When you create movement in your business, it helps to create companies as well as build the economy as a whole.
The Reason Why Waiting on ‘Perfect’ Is Killing Your Company’s Growth
Perfection breeds hesitation; that is, you are constantly tweaking, adjusting, and rethinking what needs to be done. All this ‘prep’ time is just fear dressed up in a professional outfit. If you want to have success in your industry, you must develop products that will adapt to the marketplace and improve as you go along. When you delay making a decision regarding an idea or a product, rather than receive immediate feedback or revenue from your idea or product, you lose your first-mover’s advantage in the market.
Growth without ‘Perfect’
Action > Overthinking, every time.
Entrepreneurs who take action sooner rather than later will gather much more value in terms of valuable insights from real-life experiences, rather than waiting until their ‘perfect’ product is ready to launch! You learn to do business through selling, missing your goals; and then figuring out what went wrong. This is when the real growth occurs.
For example, a person launching a small handmade online product business will not have a perfectly priced, properly packaged, or consistently branded product in their initially offered product line. The moment that potential customers begin providing feedback about your first product offering, you will have a valuable dataset and will no longer need to ‘guess’. With this dataset, you can make better decisions on how you are going to create and improve your product going forward.
On the other hand, if you had waited for the ‘perfect’ product to launch, you would have had no customers and, therefore, would not have had the opportunity to learn anything. Hence, having your progress be imperfect is much more valuable to you moving forward.
Long-Term Financial Habits to Build Success
Many early-stage businesses do not fail because they were not ambitious; they do not fail because they run out of money! Simple financial discipline is the best place to begin your business, so you should have a firm understanding of your budget; your cash inflow, your cash outflow, and your cash ‘wait’. In order to remain viable, clarity will always trump optimism.
One other huge benefit to reinvesting your profits
Instead of focusing on rapid expansion, many savvy entrepreneurs use reinvested profits as their foundation; they purchase better tools, better processes and enhance their customer experience. Growth that is funded by actual profit is generally more stable than expansion that has been driven by pressure. Cash flow awareness is also a requirement. Even if your business is profitable on paper, if you are not managing the cash properly, you can still put your business at risk of collapsing! Timing is everything—the date the cash comes in is just as critical to your business as the amount of cash you receive.
Next on the list is scaling your business
Many people view this as an exciting opportunity; in reality, if your business scales too quickly, your business could collapse. More inventory, more employees, more expenses etc…will all become unnecessary liabilities in the absence of consistent demand. In most instances, growth follows stability, as opposed to the opposite. There are many great resources available; Business Honor is one in order to get practical recommendations for building and maintaining a sustainable level of growth. They can also offer real-world experience without complicating the process.
Mindset & Economic Outcomes
Motivation can fluctuate, one minute you are highly motivated and the next you are not. The difference between being successful is consistency — doing what you say you will do regardless of how you are feeling. Taking calculated risks is a huge factor in determining who grows and who is not growing. Business decisions should never have guaranteed outcomes because every decision has an element of uncertainty. Instead of focusing on avoiding risk, successful entrepreneurs focus on managing risk.
Resilience is another critical component to success that no one really talks about. The path of growth will almost never be a straight line. During periods of slow sales, unexpected expenses and times that progress seems impossible to measure, many people simply quit. However, if you remain persistent through these down periods, those down periods usually set up the foundation for future success.
The same is true for economics. The modern economy does not grow because everything is rosy. The economy grows because human beings continue to build, innovate, and improve despite experiencing uncertainty within their environment.
Final Thoughts
Perfection is static while progress is dynamic
The majority of businesses do not develop in a perfect environment; they develop through trial and error, continual improvement and persistently applying effort. The successful entrepreneur does not wait for everything to be ‘perfect’; the successful entrepreneur begins, learns, and then continues to do so. Ultimately, whether in a business or an economy, movement—not perfection—creates strength.
