Make Imperfect Perfect
Seth Godin’s got a great post titled “While waiting for perfect”. From his blog:
You’ve permitted magical to walk on by. Not to mention good enough, amazing and wonderful.
Waiting for the thing that cannot be improved (and cannot be criticized) keeps us from beginning.
Merely begin.
He’s got another titled “Abandoning perfection”.
I really enjoyed these posts for their writing simplicity and their messages. I speak to many friends and new contacts who all admire entrepreneurs. They share daydreams of doing their own thing. Many of them are waiting… they’re waiting for a big client… they’re waiting for a great idea… they’re waiting to find a partner who can code.
Everyone’s waiting for perfection when there are so many ways enabling them to act now. They can act now, build something simple, and start learning. Waiting for perfection stops us from learning. Stops us from finding out if our idea even works. It stops us from potentially learning of an even greater opportunity.
I like Seth’s writing… a lot. I like that his blog is a bit philosophical, and I’ve been playing with the idea of posting my own stream of consciousness posts. So to that end, I’ll say this and add to Seth’s post: “We make imperfect perfect.”
That is, we may start an entrepreneurial endeavor short of our grander vision. We’ve launched a simple MVP (or maybe MLP?), but by doing so, we’re able to test traction sooner. When we do that, we learn, and we iterate. We put our names out there rather than sitting quietly with no notice. We pursue something that has been eating at us for so long.
As we iterate, we gauge traction, and we grow or pivot the idea… perhaps reaching the limits we once dreamed of, or perhaps greater. We make the endeavor perfect. We make some seemingly ordinary person that perfect someone. We make do with our situations and create perfect opportunities.
At that point, we’ll probably look back at our starts and laugh how it was all imperfect, but to get to where we are and who we are, we wouldn’t change a thing. We made those imperfect opportunities… perfect.
At that point, we’ll probably look back at our starts and laugh how it was all imperfect, but to get to where we are and who we are, we wouldn’t change a thing. We made those imperfect opportunities… perfect.