Just ship it

Being a perfectionist is extremely counter-productive. And it is bad for business.

Might seem weird to say, but think about it…

I have worked with a lot of people over the years. A lot of people in those beginning phases of business. And, often they spend a LOT of time PREPARING.

They’ll set launch dates for something as simple as a blog… but that date will be several months out. Why? You can install WordPress and a theme in less than an hour. So, why wait so long?

Or, you’ll see people who want to launch a product. They’ll plan out this entire funnel. Multiple upsells. Lot of fancy-pants parts and pieces and fancy tools. Sometimes they’ll even invest thousands of dollars into it. And the whole time… they have yet to even get subscriber #1.

Lots of preparing.

Lots of… procrastination.

It simply doesn’t work. In most cases, it never launches and they wasted all that time and effort. Or… when it does launch they find that a lot of that extra legwork they did didn’t even matter.

That’s what perfectionism does, in reality. There’s no pride in claiming you’re a perfectionist. There’s a lot of failed businesses which looked pretty perfect.

I encourage you to look for minimum viable product. Look at those words…

• Minimum. In other words, the least amount needed to make it workable.

• Viable. It has to work.

• Product. It needs to be exchangeable for money.

So, shortest path possible to the point of “good enough”.

Then, you iterate. That’s where the real magic happens. Small tests, small changes. Nobody said your imperfect thing has to stay that way, but you’ll never even have a chance if you seek perfection first. First thing is to get something out there and let it meet the marketplace.

Just ship it!

– David