Latest / The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson / The Perfectionism Trap: How It's Holding Your Business Back With Jennifer Ann Johnson
Transcript
- 0:38Jennifer Johnson: We're talking about something that sounds like it should be an asset, but often becomes one of the most dangerous threats to small business success.
- 0:47Jennifer Johnson: Perfectionism.
- 0:48Jennifer Johnson: I want to start with a story that perfectly illustrates, do you see what I did there?
- 0:53Jennifer Johnson: Perfectly illustrates the perfectionism that can masquerade as dedication when it's really sabotaging your business.
- 1:00Jennifer Johnson: A few years ago, I was working and launching a new service, and I spent months trying to figure out the marketing materials.
- 1:07Jennifer Johnson: I rewrote, tested, rewrote, tested.
- 1:10Jennifer Johnson: I thought it had to be perfect before I actually put it out into the world.
- 1:13Jennifer Johnson: And for me, I'm not a perfectionist.
- 1:16Jennifer Johnson: So that's the strange thing here.
- 1:18Jennifer Johnson: But meanwhile, a competitor launched something very similar to what I considered mediocre marketing.
- 1:26Jennifer Johnson: It wasn't really polished, and I remember thinking, well, wait until my perfect version launches.
- 1:31Jennifer Johnson: It's gonna blow theirs out of the water.
- 1:33Jennifer Johnson: But here's what happened.
- 1:34Jennifer Johnson: Well, I was perfecting, guess what they were doing?
- 1:37Jennifer Johnson: You're right, they were selling.
- 1:39Jennifer Johnson: Well, I was polishing, they were getting feedback from real customers and improving their what they were doing.
- 1:46Jennifer Johnson: By the time I finally launched my perfect service, they already captured a big part of the market share that I wanted to reach.
- 1:54Jennifer Johnson: That's when I realized that perfectionism, which usually people think of as a strength, was actually something that can really kill a business.
- 2:04Jennifer Johnson: I was so focused on avoiding any possibility of criticism or failure, I was avoiding the market entirely.
- 2:11Jennifer Johnson: So let's chat about how perfectionism shows up in small businesses, why it's so seductive and dangerous, and how to channel your high standards in ways that help you rather than hurt your business.
- 2:25Jennifer Johnson: So perfectionism is particularly tricky because it often looks like conscientiousness, high standards, commitments to quality, all the things that should help your business succeed.
- 2:36Jennifer Johnson: But understanding the difference between healthy and striving and destructive perfectionism is crucial.
- 2:44Jennifer Johnson: Most perfectionist entrepreneurs start from a positive place.
- 2:48Jennifer Johnson: They want to deliver exceptional value to their customers, build a great reputation, and avoid disappointing people.
- 2:57Jennifer Johnson: So the difference between perfectionism and excellence is excellent is about excellence is about doing your best work within realistic constraints.
- 3:06Jennifer Johnson: Perfectionism is about eliminating all of the possible criticisms and failures and imperfections.
- 3:13Jennifer Johnson: So there's a difference.
- 3:15Jennifer Johnson: Excellence says, how can I deliver great value to my customers with my resources?
- 3:20Jennifer Johnson: Perfectionism says, how can I make this so perfect that nobody could find fault with it?
- 3:28Jennifer Johnson: At its core, perfectionism is often driven by fear rather than a commitment to quality.
- 3:35Jennifer Johnson: Fear of judgment, failure, not being good enough.
- 3:38Jennifer Johnson: And they disguise themselves as high standards, but actually prevent you from taking the risks and learning from that feedback.
- 3:46Jennifer Johnson: Perfectionism doesn't just slow you down, it can systematically undermine every aspect of your business in ways that aren't immediately obvious.
- 3:56Jennifer Johnson: The most obvious way perfectionism kills small businesses is by preventing launches altogether.
- 4:02Jennifer Johnson: Products that never are released, never offered, marketing campaigns that are never executed because they were never, quote unquote, ready.
- 4:10Jennifer Johnson: It prevents the rapid iteration and learning that small businesses need to succeed.
- 4:16Jennifer Johnson: Real market feedback is so much more valuable than theory, but perfectionism avoids that feedback because guess what?
- 4:25Jennifer Johnson: What if they don't like it?
- 4:27Jennifer Johnson: And then it drains your resources.
- 4:29Jennifer Johnson: It's incredibly expensive in time, money, and energy.
- 4:34Jennifer Johnson: The difference between good enough and perfect requires a lot more resources, which ultimately just diminish your resources.
- 4:44Jennifer Johnson: And ironically, perfectionism often leads to worse customer service because it prevents businesses from responding quickly.
- 4:52Jennifer Johnson: Well, you're crafting your perfect response.
- 4:55Jennifer Johnson: Customers are waiting and frustrated.
- 4:58Jennifer Johnson: Perfectionism shows up in a lot of different ways across a lot of different aspects of businesses.
- 5:05Jennifer Johnson: Usually you see it a lot in product development because, oh, we just want to add one more feature or one more revision.
- 5:11Jennifer Johnson: And then you don't take your product to launch.
- 5:14Jennifer Johnson: Marketing, it shows up all the time there too.
- 5:17Jennifer Johnson: Oh, I don't know.
- 5:18Jennifer Johnson: Let's redo the website copy, let's read revise this and that and the other thing.
- 7:49Jennifer Johnson: And they're not perfect.
- 7:51Jennifer Johnson: Operationally, creating really complex systems and processes to try to eliminate all the possible errors.
- 7:59Jennifer Johnson: You spend more time perfecting your systems than using them to actually serve your customers, then financial, waiting for the perfect financial conditions before expanding or investing or taking on any business risks.
- 8:15Jennifer Johnson: And guess what?
- 8:17Jennifer Johnson: By the time you're ready, you're stuck.
- 8:23Jennifer Johnson: Customer interaction.
- 8:25Jennifer Johnson: It involves crafting every interaction to be perfect, spending a lot of time on routine communications and avoiding customer contact because you're worried that you're going to say the wrong thing.
- 8:38Jennifer Johnson: Understanding why perfectionism develops and even exists helps you address it a little bit more effectively than just fighting the symptoms.
- 8:47Jennifer Johnson: So there's the imposter syndrome connection.
- 8:50Jennifer Johnson: You've heard about that, people have talked about it.
- 8:53Jennifer Johnson: And a lot of entrepreneurs are actually driven by that because fear that they're not really qualified to be running a business in the first place is kind of where this starts.
- 9:04Jennifer Johnson: Some people that are perfectionists have a desire to control the outcomes and eliminate all uncertainty.
- 9:11Jennifer Johnson: If you can make everything perfect, you can guarantee success, and that's so far from the truth.
- 9:20Jennifer Johnson: It helps you avoid criticism.
- 9:21Jennifer Johnson: This is a good one.
- 9:23Jennifer Johnson: Because, well, if it's perfect, no one's going to criticize me.
- 9:27Jennifer Johnson: And then identity protection.
- 9:30Jennifer Johnson: If your identity is closely tied to your business, you can feel like this is a form of protection.
- 9:36Jennifer Johnson: You're protecting your business reputation, you're protecting your self-worth.
- 9:42Jennifer Johnson: Now, overcoming perfectionism requires strategies and mindset shifts.
- 9:48Jennifer Johnson: And you have to be really in tune to them and be really willing to be open to using these.
- 9:56Jennifer Johnson: So redefining done and good enough.
- 9:59Jennifer Johnson: The antidote to perfectionism is perfectionism isn't lowering your standards, it's refining what's done and what's good enough.
- 10:06Jennifer Johnson: So if it's not perfect, it means that you're, you know, you're ready for the next stage.
- 10:12Jennifer Johnson: It's good enough.
- 10:13Jennifer Johnson: Doesn't mean that it's sloppy.
- 10:14Jennifer Johnson: It just means that, hey, let's move forward with this.
- 10:20Jennifer Johnson: You can look at it like a minimum viable product mindset.
- 10:24Jennifer Johnson: So what I mean by that is, is what is the minimum that we are going to allow to be put out?
- 10:31Jennifer Johnson: Not perfect, but what's the minimum quality, for example, a product?
- 10:35Jennifer Johnson: What's the minimum product quality that we're going to allow out and go off of that springboard on that?
- 10:41Jennifer Johnson: Or the 80-20 rule?
- 10:43Jennifer Johnson: This often comes into play.
- 10:45Jennifer Johnson: So 80% of the value comes from 20% of the effort.
- 10:49Jennifer Johnson: The final 20% of quality often requires 80% of the resource.
- 10:53Jennifer Johnson: So for small businesses, it's usually better to deliver 80% of the quality to five customers than 100% to one.
- 11:03Jennifer Johnson: And then deadlines.
- 11:04Jennifer Johnson: Set firm deadlines for projects and stick to them, even if the work isn't perfect.
- 11:10Jennifer Johnson: And it's called sometimes called time boxing.
- 11:13Jennifer Johnson: It forces you to prioritize the most important elements and prevents all that refinement that you're going to do over and over and over again.
- 11:22Jennifer Johnson: And ultimately, it's about building that progress over perfection culture, which I embrace wholeheartedly.
- 11:29Jennifer Johnson: Celebrate things when they get completed or launched, not when they're perfect.
- 11:34Jennifer Johnson: Create recognition for taking risks and encourage things to happen a little bit more rapidly.
- 11:42Jennifer Johnson: And again, make failure and learning a normal part of your business rather than something that, oh my gosh, we can't do that.
- 11:50Jennifer Johnson: Oh no, no, no.
- 11:51Jennifer Johnson: We can't do that because we are going to fail.
- 11:54Jennifer Johnson: Failure is not failure, it's learning something.
- 11:59Jennifer Johnson: So a few strategies I'm going to share with you today.
- 12:03Jennifer Johnson: One is the two-week launch rule.
- 12:05Jennifer Johnson: For any new project, set two weeks as the deadline from concept to launch.
- 12:10Jennifer Johnson: It forces you to do the essentials and just get it out there.
- 12:15Jennifer Johnson: The 90% rule.
- 12:17Jennifer Johnson: When something feels 90% ready, launch it.
- 12:19Jennifer Johnson: Pull the band-aid off.
- 12:21Jennifer Johnson: Most of the time, the final 10% really isn't crucial to what you're actually doing.
- 12:26Jennifer Johnson: The feedback loop accelerator.
- 12:29Jennifer Johnson: Instead of perfecting things in isolation, get feedback early and often.
- 12:34Jennifer Johnson: That is going to accelerate the amount of time to get something to market.
- 12:39Jennifer Johnson: The good enough.
- 12:45Jennifer Johnson: Start with low-risk things and work your way up.
- 12:48Jennifer Johnson: It's going to build your confidence.
- 13:02Jennifer Johnson: So there's one thing when you're dealing with products and putting products out on the market, but there's another when you're working with customers.
- 13:08Jennifer Johnson: Focus on building authentic relationships with your customers rather than perfect interactions.
- 13:13Jennifer Johnson: There's a difference.
- 13:14Jennifer Johnson: Customers prefer to work with real people who occasionally make mistakes over people who are perfect and look artificial.
- 13:23Jennifer Johnson: Prioritizing problem solving over delivering perfect solutions.
- 13:28Jennifer Johnson: Again, customers care more about having their issues resolved than about how elegant or perfect the solution is.
- 13:37Jennifer Johnson: Communication.
- 13:38Jennifer Johnson: Communication is absolutely everything.
- 13:42Jennifer Johnson: Balance thoroughness with that efficiency and customer communications because they want clear, prompt responses over perfect ones that come late.
- 13:52Jennifer Johnson: And then frame customer service as an ongoing improvement process rather than a perfectionist pursuit.
- 14:00Jennifer Johnson: And then now that you've kind of got the tools in your toolbox, how are you able to make sure that this is actually working?
- 14:09Jennifer Johnson: Track your revenue, track your resource allocation.
- 14:14Jennifer Johnson: How much of what you're doing?
- 14:15Jennifer Johnson: Are you spending 80% of your time on activities that generate only 20% of your value?
- 14:21Jennifer Johnson: What has your customer acquisition cost changed because you're getting things to market faster, you're working with the customer faster, or you are responding to complaints that they have faster.
- 14:35Jennifer Johnson: And you know, you can build resilience through expertise or experience, I'm sorry.
- 14:41Jennifer Johnson: So deliberately taking calculated risks and learning from the outcomes, whether they're positive or negative, really help you build that confidence.
- 14:51Jennifer Johnson: And every time you make a mistake, just know it's not a mistake.
- 14:53Jennifer Johnson: You are learning something from it.
- 14:55Jennifer Johnson: So as we wrap up today's episode, I want to remind you that the goal isn't to eliminate your high standards or stop caring about quality.
- 15:03Jennifer Johnson: The goal is to channel your perfectionist tendencies in ways that serve your business and success rather than sabotaging it.
- 15:09Jennifer Johnson: The most successful businesses aren't the ones who do perfect work.
- 15:14Jennifer Johnson: They're the ones who do good work consistently and learn from all of their feedback.
- 15:19Jennifer Johnson: They understand that in business, done is often better than perfect, and that learning from real-world experiences is extremely important in their business.
- 15:29Jennifer Johnson: The entrepreneurs who build successful small businesses are those who learn to ship or do good work regularly rather than perfect work rarely.
- 15:39Jennifer Johnson: They understand that perfect is the enemy of good and that good enough launched is infinitely better than perfect and postponed.