Internet marketing maven Alexandria Brown likes to say “Success is messy!”
So often, my students want everything to be perfect before they take action…on launching that joint venture, sending out their first email newsletter or even committing to a specific market niche. They think all of their doubts should be resolved and every last detail of their project has to be in place before they can…or will… make a move.
This is a recipe for disaster.
Because let me tell you, in the words of Oprah, the one thing I know for sure:
everything will never be perfect, no matter what you do and how hard you try. There will always be loose ends, one more thing left to pin down, and uncertainty in your business. If you think otherwise you are deluding yourself.
People who are successful take action and then worry about cleaning up the mess afterward.
Now please don’t misunderstand. I am not advising you to just jump into everything without any preparation. But I am advising you not to wait until you have everything in order before you make your move.
A perfect example of this is what is happening in my business right now…this very second.
We have a big teleseminar series launch coming up…in fact, the announcement for that should have alread been sent. But because we are implementing something new that we believe will take us, and our listeners to the next level, we have had a bit of a delay.
First we had tornados…then a few days later, an unexpected Southern snowstorm…with attendant power and internet outages. Then the entire staff came down with a bug. To top it off, we are now grappling with a technical problem that we are working to get resolved today.
We will launch, one way or the other. It may mean that I’ll have to do a bit of rearranging and push the launch forward by a couple of days, depending on when we get this problems solved.
Do I get upset over these problems? You betcha!
Do I let these problems stop me from taking action on my dreams? No way!
Here’s the bottom line: prepare yourself the best you can and then take action. Correct your mistakes and do even better the next time. And remember…
success is messy!
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photo: massdistraction http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank You Ellen! What a fantastic reminder! Great advice and often difficult to implement, especially for someone whose life has been spent as a perfectionist. I’m getting over that and articles like this remind me that it is OKAY to make mistakes and begin even if everything is not “complete” yet.
Elen,
Thanks for the reminder. Sometimes we expect it to all go so smoothly and feel that we have somehow failed if it doesn’t. And the real deal is, it’s never perfect, rarely smooth, and always worth the persistence!
Great post,
Cindy
At a PwC Consulting world training event for new hires, someone asked one of the Partners during a Q&A how he had achieved his success with the firm. His answer was: “Repeated failure”. There’s probably some truth in that – it’s very possible we’ll fail (or at least get messy!) when we’re trying new things and stepping out of the box. As a perfectionist, it reminded me not to wait for perfect and not to stew over failures (and mess along the way!). We must keep going! Thanks for the post!