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Perfectionism doesn’t always serve you. It can prevent you from getting products or services out into the world quick enough, getting valuable feedback from those people that matter most – your customers – to then create greater solutions. The real perfectionism is being nimble and iterative.

BRANDING BEFORE BREAKFAST EP31 – The real perfection: Get nimble and iterative

I am a perfectionist. I don’t like things to go out into the world unless I think they’re perfect. This doesn’t always serve me though. What this can mean is that sometimes I’ve got really great ideas, but I don’t actually put them out into the market because I don’t have time or energy to make them as good as I want them to be. So there is a missed opportunity. Or I might work on something and I spend so much time working on it to what I think is perfect and what I think is right for my customer, but I haven’t got it out early enough to my customer and got them to give me feedback and input. So maybe it’s not as great for them as I thought. And then I have to spend a whole lot more time working on it, which is wasted energy.

So as brand owners, we have to learn to get things out quicker into the world. Even before we think they’re ready. Why? Because when you get customers involved and get them to test things and give you feedback, then not only do they become part of the process and they can become great advocates for your products down the track, but also it means that you get very valuable insight into what’s working and what’s not working. You can apply that to your product or service and you can create something even greater. Google do this really well. They’re very nimble and iterative and they get products out there very quickly and get customer input and feedback, and then they make them even greater. So try as a brand owner to let go of this idea of the ‘perfect’ and make things more nimble, more iterative. That is the real perfection. That’s it for me. Time for brekkie.

Written by: Emma Scott
Published: October 10, 2019