Conscious Entrepreneurs Balance Impatience and Perfectionism

We’ve covered some of the weaknesses and strengths of both impatience and perfectionism in past posts, but being a conscious entrepreneur requires finding the right balance between these two extremes. Here are a few strategies for walking the noble path to success:

If you tend to be an impatient entrepreneur, consider taking the following steps to course-correct:

• Write a business plan and refer to it on a regular basis. Update it annually with strategic planning sessions, but also re-visit it monthly and quarterly  to fine-tune strategies and make sure you are on track to achieve your business objectives.
• Research your competitors. Google is a great place to start, but depending on the type, size, and scope of your business you may need to go much further. Get in touch with experts in the industry your business is in to pick their brains about trends, pitfalls, and success secrets.
• Clearly identify your target market(s) and find out what they want. Remember, “everyone” is not a target market. The sooner you take the time to clarify the foundations of your brand, the easier it will get to target your marketing efforts to attract the kinds of clients you can add most value to and have the most fun working with.

 

For the perfectionist entrepreneur, consider the following:

• Build your Minimum Viable Product and launch it to get direct feedback from your target market. Ensure product demand and viability before you invest huge amounts of time and money in design, manufacturing and/or marketing. Building an MVP looks very different depending on the product or service you are selling, so you may need to seek expert help if you are not sure what this would look like for your business.
• Get an accountability partner. Whether this is a friend, business partner, mentor or coach, find someone who will hold you accountable for the goals you set for yourself (and ensure that you set goals to begin with!). Be cautious about using friends, family or spouses as accountability partners. They tend to be either too accepting or too judgmental of your reasons for delaying your launch or not hitting your milestone. The best accountability partner for a perfectionist is someone who is assertive enough to push you to put yourself and your product out there before you feel ready, but who has enough business know-how to advise you when you really do need to spend more time in the planning and preparation phase.
• Set time targets to “Ship It”. Marketing guru Seth Godin has created an awesome journal to walk the perfectionists among us through our fears of putting our work out there. You can find it here.

To read more about how to avoid the mindset minefields that can sink even the most conscious entrepreneur and thwart startup success, check out our ebook The Seven Sins of a Startup, available for download here.