Being a Perfectionist can Hinder Progress

In my experience one of the most important things in this business is speed of implementation. Because there are so many different things to work on - it is easy to never get anything for sale (especially if you are a perfectionist). So, the people who can crank out a product or website and improve on the fly as needed and be ok with it not being perfect - those are the ones that make the most money.

That's so true...but sometimes, especially when you have big expectations from something, it needs to be PERFECT!

Perfection is DEFINITELY a hindrance to marketers.

It's MUCH better to have 1 project that was "pretty good" and making money than to have 10 projects that "will be AMAZING" but aren't making a dime yet.

Have you read "The Art of the Start"? Brilliant commentary on exactly this issue. Think of where Apple, Microsoft, etc. would stand if they waited for that perfect final product as opposed to pushing out what they've got in good-enough form and providing updates/upgrades to their respective user bases over time. How many perfect launches have these companies had?

I absolutely agree!

I was the same to can empathise completely. My turning point came when a friend challenged me to make a 12 page mini site in an hour. I was putting pages up with just a sentence just to get a page up before moving on to another page. 2 days later all of my pages were indexed in google. My turning point right there.

Good luck to you moving forward

That's an awesome epiphany. I too had suffered from the dreaded "Perfectionist" syndrome in the past, until one day when I had spent nearly the entire day fixing a website only to have the client ask me to return it to how it was before I started working on it.

That's when it hit me. It made me realize that I was losing money being a perfectionist. The most difficult part was learning to become ok with being ok. It's hard but it can be done. As with everything, moderation is the key.

Great epiphany

What you might call perfect, someone else may not. Seeking perfection costs time (and money) and is nigh impossible to achieve anyway.. It's almost a more refined form of procrastination, would you agree?

Sometimes it's good to follow what I would call 'the path of least resistance'. While I have not had a good look at who you are and what you do, let's use a blog + content as an example. Yes, you can spend 90% of your time making your blog look perfect, nice colours, fonts, pictures etc, it all means nothing if you you do not have regular quality content for people to keep on coming back. If someone is reading this and is just starting out, know little about WP (for eg), most important thing is to get wp installed with necessary plug-ins installed, then focus on putting good quality content on the site. Making the site look pretty can be outsourced or done later. Focus on quality content, published on a regular basis. Aim low, 1 a month for twelve months, then 2 a month for another 12 months, then 4 a month + syndicated content for 12 months and etc. If this is done, even with a default theme installed, I am sure the site will do well.

Can I add that spending a lot of my spare time reading all these great posts hinders my progress towards the bigger goal. And I am the worst type of member, I read more than they post, but when there are so many good replies to a thread, and given my street cred, I don't think I can add any value. And not only am I not productive in my own journey, I am not even that active on these forums. I should stop consuming and start producing. Maybe I'll start with the stuff I have written above.....

I would like to add that outsourcing can also save you time that could be well spent on your business.