Last Updated on February 28, 2025 by Dave Schoenbeck
Many business owners struggle to achieve perfection or overcome their desire for perfection. This is understandable. After all, business owners pour so much of themselves into their businesses. So why wouldn’t they want to produce a perfect product or service?
As it turns out, the answer is that perfectionism hurts your business more than it helps. Here’s why you need to break free of the perfectionist trap.
Why You Need to Stop Overthinking
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” Unfortunately, to make things perfect, we devote time and effort to chasing an unrealistic standard when we only need to make something “good enough.”
Perfectionism can paralyze entrepreneurs. It leads to higher stress levels and burnout and results in wasted resources. In addition, perfectionists can be overly critical of themselves and their team, leading to reduced morale overall and a lack of desire to experiment with new ideas.
Perfectionists can also fall victim to the mentality of “if I can’t make it perfect, why even try?” This, of course, leads to many missed opportunities. Studies have shown that being a perfectionist does not make you a higher performer. So what gives?
How to Get Over Perfectionism
I understand the desire for perfection and have had to overcome my perfectionist tendencies. I once worked on a multi-billion dollar sales supply chain process redesign, and we learned quickly that we couldn’t wait for perfection to implement change successfully. The solution was to deliver “quick wins” in understandable and palatable chunks.
What is a quick win? The concept is sometimes referred to as a “minimally viable product.” The seller releases a product or service early to test viability, customer response, pricing, and design, allowing them to work out the bugs and make a profit.
A perfectionist might cringe at releasing a product or service before these features are hammered out. But look at the results: The perfectionist route would have required ongoing research and development to cement the finer details. The finished product might never even hit the market because meeting a perfectionist’s high standards is challenging.
On the other hand, the “quick wins” approach results in a finished product that’s good enough. It hits the market sooner and begins turning a profit, and customer feedback reveals everything you would have tried to find out in the research and development process.
This is not to say that you should purposely release a defective product or service to your customer base. Instead, you should rethink what it means for a product to be “ready.” For a true perfectionist, you might never feel ready. The key is recognizing when something is good enough and seeing what opportunities it can bring you.
Are you struggling with perfectionism in your business? If so, please fill out my contact form, and we can meet to discuss how to overcome perfectionism and what quick wins might look like for your business.
Coach Dave
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