How Being Imperfect is Better for Your Business

Jul 11, by Tanya Alvarez

You may not even realize that you are a perfectionist. You simply like things a certain way. The fewer flaws, the fewer weaknesses your business has. You tell yourself that you only have one shot at this, so make it perfect. But there comes a point when the goal of being perfect begins to actually harm both you and your business. It keeps you from completing your goals and moving forward.

Identifying the perfect problem

If you want to break free from where you are and go past the 6 figures you are stuck at, you have to stop your perfectionism. The focus of your business shouldn’t be on being perfect, but on being profitable. How do you know you’ve gone beyond being great at details to being stuck in perfectionism?

Have you found yourself in any of the following situations?

• Agonizing over small and insignificant details.

• Setting unrealistic perceptions of “good enough.”

• Procrastinating until you can do something perfectly.

• Overthinking and spending too much time making decisions.

• Delaying the release of a project to fine tune one specific detail.

If you find yourself doing these things, you’ve become a perfectionist and are risking the growth and success of your business.

Perfectionism kills happiness

Impact of perfectionism is HUGE. It may be the one deciding factor on whether your business grows or fails to thrive. Being perfect is based in the drive to succeed, but in a twisted way can actually prevent success.

Perfectionism destroys you through:

• Demoralizing your accomplishments.

• Forcing you to doubt your ability to make wise decisions.

• Paralyzing you into excessive analysis and procrastination.

• Causing depression and overwhelming sadness when goals are not achieved.

• Overworking you because you never reach the end of a project.

Striving to be perfect steals your motivation, your inspiration and your joy. It creates the imposter syndrome and results in fear of failure.

Perfectionism stalls business growth

Experts tell us that the 80/20 rule applies to perfectionism through the law of diminishing returns. Eighty percent of your outcomes are a result of 20 percent of your investment. This applies to time, money, research and innovation.

If you begin to tilt the balance of the 80/20 rule by spending more and more time on your investment and less time on your outcomes, the law of diminishing returns takes over. Your 40 percent investment now only results in a 60 percent profit.

For example, one OwnersUP member thought his struggle was with time management. His problem wasn’t with time, it was perfectionism. He would spend an entire month editing and perfecting every single detail for just one video. Once he set an accountability goal of finishing a four-minute video every week, his company began to grow and move forward. Instead of producing one video, he was producing four videos a month and increased his social engagement by 60%.

Breaking free from being perfect

Perfectionism is a habit that is difficult to break. Despite the fact that it creates chaos in your life, you keep coming back to it over and over again. You can end the perfectionism cycle by creating healthy business strategies.

1. Write down your goal. Make it a priority and ask yourself if what you are working on is moving you toward your goal.

2. Surround yourself with trustworthy people to encourage you to move forward. Pick non-perfectionists who can tell you when your project looks great.

3. Set time limits for the completion of projects. You can always improve things later.

Taking the focus off of you and putting it onto your goals and priorities will stop the loss of time and profits to perfectionism. Whenever you feel the need to obsess over a small detail or spend too much time in research, ask yourself what you gain and what you lose by being a perfectionist.

Remember, General George Patton urged action over perfectionism when he said,

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”