Often in business, we hold ourselves back from making the next advancement because we don’t have the perfect plan on paper. We want to know every scenario that could happen and we want to be prepared for those scenarios. So, we do an overwhelming amount of research and oftentimes the same research several times. We waste countless hours on thought and planning that we delay the launch of ideas for months and sometimes years. Then we launch it and it fails.

There is a solid book on this subject called “The Lean Startup” . It discusses specifically the theory that the sooner you launch, the sooner you figure out what is going to work. Now, this doesn’t mean to proceed forward without a plan, but we adapt to failure and the faster we fail, the faster we adapt. There lies the secret to growing anything you are wanting to grow in business.

General Patton is quoted as saying,”A good plan, violently executed today, is better than a perfect plan next week.” So, we are not suggesting to barrel through with no plan at all, but give yourself the grace to allow imperfect plans to launch. It’s innate within our nature that we think things are perfect simply because we thought and planned on them for months. Then we launch said plan and it flops completely because it was routed in safety. Advancements require risks and risks are scary. So, what constitutes a good plan?

Developing a good plan is as simple as an idea to test. For example, a prepaid annual maintenance plan. This is something that we developed at Dirty2Dreamy. We launched the idea as a test pilot with only 10 clients allowed to participate. We did this because we were not sure if it was a great idea. The clients that participated loved it, but the bank account did not. We learned that the price and frequency of detail needed to be increased to make the details efficient. We launched version 2 with the same formula of 10 test clients. We again learned that the price was not enough. Version 3 of this is now a staple in our business that generates over 100k in sales by itself. It creates regular return business and regular referral business.

Final Thought:
Give yourself grace in your planning. Things don’t need to be perfect and you’ll never figure out every possible outcome. The moment you think you have figured out all the outcomes, a new outcome will present itself. Move swiftly and implement violently. You’ll get there in time if you just continue to take action.