Today I want to cover a topic that I won’t say is PLAGUING me, but is something I am working on RIGHT NOW, so I thought I'd share the insight with you!
I have covered a few topics in my mini-episodes that I personally need to work on, because for me, taking the time to write and talk about them helps me work on my own habits. Now, its not that I am perfecting each of them overnight, and some of them I am better at than others, but like I’ve said before, the important thing is making progress and improvement.
Today I want to quickly cover a topic that I’ve spent time preaching (I mean teaching) to my former team at my last job and it's a topic that is easy for me to talk ABOUT but a little harder to always DO, and that is the principle of shipping.
And the way I like to look at it is with this concept: 80% and SHIPPED is better than 100% on the shelf EVERY.TIME.
If we stop for a moment and think about it, we all know it's true. A product, an email, a blog, video, you name it, is worthless if it sits in your head, on your desk or on your computer and never reaches a customer or an audience.
Now this is being said by a struggling perfectionist and I’ll be the first to raise my hand: “Hi, my name is Brian, and I’m a perfectionist.” There, it’s out there in the open. PHEW.
But seriously. I have a vision in my head of what I want something to be like and work hard for it, and when it’s not quite there, I want it to be JUST RIGHT. But this can also cause me to hesitate, or wait, and iterate over and over to get everything just perfectly perfect the way I see it in my head, but the problem is if I never ship, it never reaches others!
Case and point - this show. It took a few months longer than I hoped to get it dialed in the way I wanted it before I went live and the week I pulled the trigger I was second-guessing it saying “its not QUITE ready” and “I just want to tweak this one thing or have the intro sound a LITTLE bit better.” Stuff that in all honesty, the things I was nit-picking over most of you wouldn’t ever notice and it's because I am WAY too close to the project and I see all its flaws.
Even now, I can have a tendency to want to hold an episode either in editing or concept and make it just perfect the way it is in my head before I let it go, but the reality is in most cases, the 80% version is perfectly ok to ship and again, only I will really notice its flaws because I’m so close to it.
As a creator, entrepreneur, dreamer, and doer, YOU know your product or project the best so you are the one who will nit-pick it to death! And literally! We will KILL IT. It’ll never live and see the light of day if we don’t send it off. You can always iterate and improve on something down the line, but you’ve got to get it out there.
I think that’s why it’s important to have people in your life, friends, family, whoever, that you let tell you like it is. And you know will actually call you on it and say, “Yo Brian. You are WAY overthinking this, just let it go.” And 99% of the time, they’re right.
So what’s the take-a-way?
SHIP.
Just do it.
Brian, just send it off.
I need this reminder as much as anyone, but thought it would be a good one to share with you today. Whatever the project, dream, goal, product, or organization is, get it LAUNCHED! And 80% and shipped will not only get the train moving down the tracks, but will also let you begin to tweak what you don’t like, often FASTER than if you hadn’t shipped at all yet, because perhaps you’ll be self-conscious about people seeing it, OR you may begin to get feedback that tells you that the thing you wanted to keep fixing your customer or audience doesn't care as much about as something ELSE and you need to shift your focus! But you won’t get that valuable feedback unless you do what??
SHIP.
So there’s what I’m working on right now. And if you’re hung up on something, and particularly if you’re hung up on taking the next step towards launching out, get out of your own head! Remember, 80% and SHIPPED is better than 100% on the shelf EVERY. TIME.