You know that moment when you're about to share something - a new offering, a piece of content, even an email - and you find yourself tweaking it just one more time? That instinct to perfect everything before it goes out into the world is something I see so often in creative businesses, and it's something I've definitely struggled with myself.
Here's something I learned the hard way: sometimes perfect isn't just the enemy of good - it's also the enemy of profit. Let me share a story that really brought this home for me.
Back in my early floristry days, I used to spend hours perfecting every single arrangement, adjusting each stem until it was exactly right. While this attention to detail was part of what made our work special, I realized something interesting - clients weren't always noticing those final adjustments that took so much extra time. What they valued most was the overall impact, and the feeling our flowers created, and how well we understood what they wanted.
This insight completely changed how I approached my work. Instead of aiming for perfect, I started aiming for excellent-and-done. The result? We could take on more projects, serve more clients, and actually grow the business - all while maintaining the high quality our clients loved.
The same principle applied when I was developing our first online programme. I could have spent months (maybe years!) making it "perfect," constantly editing and tweaking, but instead, I focused on making it genuinely valuable and getting it out there. The feedback from early students actually helped make it better than any amount of solitary perfecting ever could.