The Enemy of Success

There can be many barriers to success, but one of the greatest challenges for some people is perfectionism.

Perfectionism is the enemy of success. People who suffer from it will not ‘launch’ until everything is ‘just so’. Most often, they fail to launch at all.

I find myself wondering if the problem really is perfectionism and not some kind of fear. I have seen salespeople getting ready to prospect spend so much time ‘getting ready’ that they run out of time to make the calls.

Their lists had to be right, then there is a right time and a wrong time to call, and they had to clear all their other messages first… You name it, there were so many reasons why the time was not quite right to pick up the phone or to start knocking on doors.

I have seen people working on a project get to a point where it was almost ready to launch, but was not quite perfect. And so they tweaked… and they tweaked. And then somebody else came along with a less-than-perfect product, and stole the market.

If you suffer from perfectionism, understand that there is seldom a perfect time to do anything. Learn to launch, and fix things as you go.

When we rebuilt the Pittard website in 2014, it was far from perfect when we launched, but over time we got it to where we thought it was a useful tool for anybody looking to increase their income or agency profit.

We ran with this for 18 months, and again rebuilt it. And, again, it was less than perfect when we launched, but because we were now ‘live’ we had the advantage of user feedback that made our development much clearer and faster.

Most times, less-than-perfect launched now is better than perfect launched later.

That plan you’ve been playing with for months, those goals you’ve been going to set, but didn’t because the timing wasn’t right… LAUNCH NOW!

Whenever I find myself wanting to put something off until all the lights turn green, or until it’s just perfect, I remind myself of a winner’s mantra:

DO IT NOW!

These three little words might help cure your perfectionism, one of success’s true enemies.