Podcast Transcript – Perfect is the enemy of profit
I was doing a remote consulting session with a client and I said this phrase: “Perfect is the Enemy of Profit.” It was one of those serendipitous times where we say something we know, we just phrase it in a different way. In this case it was a client who was working on a new website and marketing materials and they were getting caught in the “it’s not ready yet” phase. I think most of us have been there at one time or another. The opposite of that is a sign in Facebook’s offices “Done is better than perfect”. Do you get stuck delaying new products, pricing, services, websites and/or marketing because it’s not quite ready yet – it’s not perfect? Listen to this 8-minute episode and find out how to get unstuck and reap the rewards of those new projects.
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
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Perfect is the enemy of profit. I said this phrase the other day when I was giving a webinar and I just, it struck me that so many things in our lives can be so much better if we didn’t strive for perfection. Take a listen to this episode and find out more.
Hi, it’s Alan Berg and welcome to the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. Today, I want to talk to you basically around the phrase, “perfect is the enemy of profit.” I said that to somebody today and she goes, “Oh, that’s good.” I said, “Yeah, it is because it’s true.” How many times have you waited to launch something? A new website, a new marketing piece, a new product, a new service, but it wasn’t quite ready? It’s not quite ready yet. It’s not perfect yet. The thing is it can never be perfect. As a matter of fact, I don’t want you to ever want to do something that’s perfect. Because by definition, perfect means it could never be better than that. I live by the philosophy that, I want to be the best I’ve ever been every time but not the best I can ever be. If I’m the best I can ever be, I can’t be better and where’s the motivation to try again?
I learned this when I was doing martial arts. I did Taekwondo for many years. I didn’t start till I was 39. I’d probably talk about that in another podcast episode about how it’s never too late. But I remember asking the master one time, he’d been doing this since he was 10 years old. I said, “Are you ever, have you ever done the perfect punch or the perfect kick or aren’t we trying to do the perfect punch or kick or form?” And he said, “No, no, because if you do perfect you can’t do better than that. I want you to just do better every time.” And the thing is I wasn’t trying to be better than the other men and women in my class. I was trying to be better than me the last time. So it’s the same thing for you. That person I was talking to today was working on a new marketing piece and she said, “We know we’re tweaking it. We’re tweaking it. I said, “Launch it. Launch it and then make it better.” It was going to be a PDF. It was going to be a digital document. I said, it’s not like you’re printing a thousand and then you’re going to have to recycle them because you found a mistake or something. Launch it, get some feedback from some customers, make it better, make it better, make it better.
Whenever I print something, whether it’s a marketing piece, a postcard for a trade show, a business card, a bookmark, anything like that, I print the smallest quantity that I can that I’m going to need soon. I want to run out because I always have another idea. I always have a way to make it better. I always have, “Oh, you know, maybe that picture, maybe I’ll change that.” Or a new product or service like this podcast. None of my marketing materials mentioned the podcast which means I’m in the process right now of recycling just about everything I have, to add onto it the fact that I have a podcast and where you can find it. So perfect is not what you’re looking for. You’re looking for better. I want it to be better the next time. I’m constantly tweaking my website. I was in there last night adding some stuff about the podcast in there. I created a page. I changed the menu at the top so it says “Podcast”. So I’m always in there tweaking to make it better.
And that’s what the key is. Is it better than it was yesterday? Can I make it better? And by the way, this is personally as well as professionally. Can I be a better husband? Can I be a better father? Can I be a better son? Can I be a better boss or partner? Or can I be better to my clients? That’s the key, can we be better, not can we be perfect. The search for perfection is a fool’s game because you can’t ever achieve it. And if you somehow could, are you satisfied? Are you satisfied that you can never be better than that? I hope not, because it’s the knowing that we can be better that keeps us going. I’ve been playing piano since I’m six years old. I play better now than I did last year or the year before. I’m more comfortable with it.
I taught myself Spanish. Now I’m learning French. I’m more comfortable learning languages now. I got a message today from someone in France, someone I had met at a speaker conference, congratulating me on the podcast, asking me to subscribe to his. And I said, ‘Well, let me write him back in French now.’ And it was uncomfortable, but that’s okay, because uncomfortable gets you to be comfortable. I was reading Seth Godin’s podcast, it’s not a podcast, his blog the other day, I get it on email every day and I was reading it. And he said that same thing in there, you know, this is what your goal is, right? Your goal is to be uncomfortable for, I think he said 30 days, you need 30 days of being uncomfortable until it becomes a new habit. Well, I want you to be uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable and then I want you to make yourself uncomfortable again. Uncomfortable leads to new things.
If you’re only doing the comfortable things, you’re staying inside this ‘safe zone’. I did a presentation at Wedding MBA on that one time, talking about staying inside your comfort zone. Everything big that you’ve ever achieved, you’d done by being a little bit uncomfortable, by working a little bit harder, by getting outside that comfort zone, by exposing yourself to something that you didn’t do before. Trying a new food, going to a new place, meeting new people, doing that uncomfortable, and then it becomes comfortable. It’s like raising your prices. That’s scary. And then when you do it, most people tell me that their biggest regret is not having done it sooner. Just be better. Just improve a little bit. Perfect is the enemy of profit because that new product, that new service, that new website that’s better than your old one, even if it’s not perfect, could convert traffic better, and you’re missing out on profits. Not raising some of your prices or redoing the way you sell whether a-la-carte to packages or however, is missing out on that profit.
One of my clients, we worked on packages and more people are buying their top package than they expected. I said, “Let’s change it again. Let’s make a package higher than that. So that this one is no longer the top. This one becomes the middle because some of those people that bought your top might’ve paid even more but we’re losing those profits because we could make this better.” Perfect is the enemy of profit. I want you to profit more.
Profiting personally is just being able to do things you didn’t do before, experience things you didn’t do before. Being again, a better husband, wife, father, son, daughter, boss, whatever. You can be better. You don’t have to be perfect. Just do something that you hadn’t done before. And again, if you want to use my philosophy, it’s fine. “I don’t want to ever be the best I can ever be. I want to be the best I’ve ever been, every time.”
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/weddingbusinesssolutions
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher: http://bit.ly/wbsstitcher
- Google Podcast: http://bit.ly/wbsgoogle
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora: http://bit.ly/wbspandora
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