Perfectionism is an emotionally complex way to procrastinate. You pay for it literally in missed revenue and missed opportunities for customer satisfaction.
And I do not care if you disagree with me about perfectionism: you’re wrong. There is no way to be better than you are. It’s impossible. And I dare you to find five examples of times perfectionism made a significantly better project. Dante’s Inferno maybe.
Fight me if you want, but it’ll just further waste your time as it’s still engaging with this content I made…
It’s like when people take the time to hate comment and down vote all my YouTube documentary videos and get their friends to do it because I upset them… YouTube doesn’t have a moral compass interpreting your reasoning: it just sees that you’re engaging with my videos. Yay! People “like” this! More impressions next week.
It’s also unpleasant. So why pay so much for something that sucks? Why not just do something fun like play video games if ultimately you’re just wasting time?
Seemingly Unpleasant Work Moves You More Than Perfectionism
Reality: marketing has to be done. Content has to be made and posted.
The only thing you can do is start right now just how you are. I find the best practice is do, study, do, study. Then reflect on how much better you a) can get and b) want to get. You’ll learn stuff as you do and if you study and do, then you have something to do with your learning: apply it! Plus, then you’ll know the things you actually need to study because it’ll be clear where you’re already successful.
NOTE: If “doing” is expensive, for instance running ads, you still need to do this process, just find a way to make it cost effective. Split testing several ads with intensely different angles is a really easy way to do that with ads… Messaging your list a promotion to see how well it pulls “for free” (in a sense). Run it in a small set…
Regardless, denying that work must be done is procrastination. I used to do this, which is why I know a ton of stuff!
But I’d have been better offer previously to focus on cashflow and getting things done, at least financially. Successes only come from adventures after all. Plus, when your business runs well, you can work a lot less than when everything is on fire. You might even live longer. This means you’ll have more time to study things.
But it’s also why I know there is no answer to the emotional feelings of perfectionism other than to just do the work as best you can and move on or work on the emotional blocks you have. And once you see perfectionism as another block, you’ll see that it’s just like any other annoying thing tripping you up like a flat tire or a bad sales call or Google making it super difficult for your business to get verified… You can whine about it, ignore it, or do something about it.
I’ve found that there is no (successful) option but to run directly into them or find a way to overcome them.
For instance, I need my car for this business and my side hustle. I ripped out the inner sidewall of my tire today (stupid South Powers unfinished shoulders!). It’s shot. I just replaced that tire a month or so ago. This cost me money because I really can’t be driving around on a donut as much as I drive so I had to take a couple hours off at least and cancel an appointment.
A tire for my car is between $90 and $150. I don’t want to spend that now and while I could have, I’d rather get it under warranty. (I think it’s covered, but we’ll see how easy it is…) I tried to get in today, but the tire shop couldn’t fit me in. I could get really pissed off and vent off all this anger and frustration and a therapist would probably tell me that’s okay sometimes. Just relax. And I did for a bit. I played some Playstation.
But in reality, I could also do one of the two hundred bazillion other business tasks I have like just sitting down and writing blog posts (like this one). In fact, after a bit of gaming and YouTubing news, I wrote three blog posts and drafted several others.
But what if I focused on how I didn’t have my “perfectly planned” day? I would have had a bad time.
Yet so many fellow Colorado Springs business owners run themselves in circles trying to do things “super duper gooder than everyone else”! And yes, gooder isn’t a word and it’s a stupid phrase: it describes a stupid behavior. Stop doing it if you think it’s stupid.
Reality: no one but you is intensely judging your content. Perfection is an unattainable ideal.
I mean, I might, but I’m a well-educated snob trying to sell you marketing services because yours could be improved… 🤣
Speaking of perfection, ever heard “Cleanliness is next to godliness”?
Have you ever considered what it means for something to be clean? I mean like really clean where you wouldn’t want to go back and fix something? If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen, you know that there is a “clean enough for this manager” sweet spot where you can stop and people are waiting on you to finish…
And you also realize that it’s impossible to actually make everything 100% clean. The moment people are in the room or you do anything, it’s going to get dirty again. Leave it alone after cleaning for months? It gets dirty on its own! Dust and spiders… The soap dish is the most annoying: how can the thing that cleans make something dirty? The soap’s home is a mess! Jordan Peterson, help Mr. Soap clean his room!
These are the kinds of things goofy things that normal, well adjusted people are thinking about. Think about what you think about when you’re going to buy something…
Are you like, “I want to buy that iguana over there and I would buy this iguana tank setup, but there’s a minor typo in the copy. Therefore, unless offered a discount, I will not take this inferior product!”
No, you’re like… “Do I really want an iguana?” “Bugs are gross. Do I have to?” “This would look nice in this part of the living room if we move…” “The kids really want this stupid thing… Bugs? EWWWW. Why?” Or one of several hundred other things.
People think about so many things at once when they make a decisions, they’re highly unlikely to be very focused on the quality of your SALES materials. In fact, it’s often disheartening how much time is spent making things perfect that often people could care less about. Perfectionism is very stupid. You want to make it appealing so it holds their attention then makes them want to buy your product.
Plus even if people do occasionally mock you, who cares? They’re either not your customers anyway or it might endear them to you. A lot of people really like to support the person down the street living the American Dream with their small business or just want to get something right now and want to make sure you have it.
And if you’re often labelled a nihilist like me, you might was well just own it with contentious things and not taking yourself too seriously. I’m a nerd who likes to mix things that seemingly don’t belong together to make something amazing. And a dork: I make really awful jingles that are a pretty good state break for my ads. If you happen to see them you will probably shake your head. But what do I care? I mean really? If someone makes fun of something that I purposely made with a bit of silliness, then they’re doing what I want anyway.
And if they make fun of me when I’m totally cereal, that’s okay too. #AlGoreAmericanHero
About Helping Colorado Springs small businesses with Marketing
Special Note On Photos And Videos:
Perfectionism-procrastination is so prevalent with photos and videos.
Reality: something is better than nothing and at least something can be improved. Imaginary things don’t exist and cannot be improved…
Your best customers also probably don’t really care that much about perfectionist stuff like professional lighting — though, it helps A LOT in many cases, don’t get my wrong. Just what specifically that help is is probably not that important at first for a local business in a smaller town like Colorado Springs, especially if you’re bootstrapping it.
Most people don’t even have the technical understanding to see that your photos suck, if they do.
Customer reactions to lighting or photo quality are a subconscious reaction more than a conscious one unless your customers went to art school of course, ha! And it’s a thing to worry about more when there is more competition and you have some experience making content and shooting photos and videos.
Also, with local SEO, sometimes there are basically no competition and keywords can be won with very little effort (example in next post and at the top of this one).
So it may be a situation where just doing something as well as you can currently will be far more beneficial for you than mastering a new skill before doing it. And with content, think logistically as you have the ability to schedule and batch create quite a lot of it. (For instance, if you want to professionally light your products for photos, dedicate enough time shoot them all at the same time.)
Until you figure it out and have the right equipment, it’s often really hard to pull off a professional look. For most people, the pictures your smart phone takes will be better than what you can pull off with the professional equipment anyway. Focus on bright, clear pictures that show the product well and look nice.
Having taken the time to get good+ at photography myself (a year and a half of film school even), I can say that the photos most photographers take with a DSLR will be less or equally good to the photos your smartphone takes for at least a year or two even with training. It’s also kind of hard to figure out aperture, focal depth, shutter speed, ISO, composition, lighting…
Plus, ultimately, it probably doesn’t matter all that much for local businesses in a smaller area like the Springs — and can easily be replaced later!
This isn’t to attack amateur photographers, but to help you to consider whether or not you really to hire a photographer or go to greater effort yourself. You might just be able to make a quick brightness adjustment on your phone and shoot photos and videos with little to no professional equipment needed.
This is a bit of an aside, but I know perfectionism, particularly about visual things, is such a huge roadblock for people. It’s mostly in your head. People, me included, waste so much time blah-blahing in our minds rather than just doing the thing. Get started. Make it better as you get better. Take it from a guy who spent a lot of time in intellectual caves to “master” things: if there were any money to be found in studying things to dead, I’d be mocking Jeff Bezos for his poverty compared to mine.
(I wouldn’t do that with that much money of course, just a funny thought.)
And if you truly need your photos to be professional quality, consider just hiring someone to do the photography for you or show you how to do setup a studio area or lighting basics. (For example, I could easily do that as I shot photos of thousands of items in a previous home business.)
But for those who want to take masterful photos, I recommend Motion Picture And Video Lighting by Blain Brown and National Geographic Masters of Photography by Joel Sartore. But please don’t chase perfectionism. Learn, use, master.
How can you get started with your marketing right now? We will cover this in the next post: The Local SEO Strategy That Works In Colorado Springs
And if you want a marketing consultant, coach, confidant, co-conspirator… call me (719) 425-9166
