Done Is More Important Than Perfection — Especially For Entrepreneurs

This is a simple point — yet most entrepreneurs remain paralyzed not taking this under consideration. Take a minute to read this and it’s my hope that you adopt this mentality of finishing and pumping out work without the stress of waiting till it’s perfect.

I, fortunately, or unfortunately, have always struggled with reading and writing. I was diagnosed with a learning disability in 5th grade and I’m dyslexic — I mean back in the day I could read and write perfectly backwards and not even realize I was doing it (you’ll actually still catch jumbled up words and phrases all over my posts — and yes I know, plenty of grammar issues as well — I apologize ahead of time). The point in telling you this is that when I entered the world of entrepreneurship and began creating content — I was worried about my inability to be able to create professional content. I was worried that I would be judged by potential consumers or competitors would exploit my errors to their advantage — so for years, I stayed away from all things creative (that involved grammar :). I would instead rely on business partners, my wife Sarah Rose and others to make the content. This was fine for a while until social media became mainstream and individual branding and content creating emerged as the new form of advertising and marketing. So, I decided to stop worrying and stressing about what I knew was going to be poorly written articles and poorly organized videos and I just began creating — here’s what I learned.

I started a personal website, began posting on social, launched a youtube channel and then lastly — a blog-AND- I decided to create all the content personally. Guess what happened right away? Yes, the grammar police, friends, strangers and yes probably even you began sending me corrections on DM, text, email, and even through my landing page forms. A few times a week I would get:
“Just so you know, you used the wrong version of there….it’s supposed to be their. You should probably fix that on your website.”
or
“You realize you spelled recieved wrong — I mean first grade English I before e except after c.”

Ya — and to there point (just kidding), to their point, yes it was bad. So guess what I did? I kept creating and never went back to fix it. For whatever reason, I felt that I had years of procrastination under me and I felt like I couldn’t make content fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. More content, more corrective messages, more content, even more emails.

A few months into this process I got my first “lead” or interest in my business which came through a video I published that linked back to my website. I was shocked as it was the first indicator or non-offensive email I received up to that point. It was proof that what I was doing was starting to work — despite my inability to write or create proper grammatical material — or even fix the errors others were pointing out.

As time went on, more leads and more leads and more leads started coming through and it was off to the races for me. What started as just a brain dump without a thought about errors or judgments started to demonstrate tangible results. As more time went on — more leads, more growth, more customers and more expansion. Work I did years ago, still today benefit my business and those who I’ve partnered with over the years. It proved to be one of the greatest lessons I could have learned and my only wish is that I didn’t judge myself so hard and waste years. Despite my shortcomings-it proved to be valuable.

Over the years I’ve improved a bit and while my writing is still my weakest trait — I’m still committed to creating my own written content and trying my very best to improve on it every day. Recently I launched a blog at www.thestacklife.com as well as a personal blog here on medium. The blog I launched back in July of 2019 and within about 2 months I started seeing results from people finding and interacting with articles — which again, proves the point that done is better than perfect.

What to take away from this?

Create Now. Worry About the Details Later

I wasted years not producing content personally because of fear, worry, and embarrassment. Once I got over that and just started creating, it has made the single biggest impact over almost anything I’ve done in my business —and remember, most people would judge it as average writing at best! It was under most people’s standards YET it worked. (here’s a little hint I realized when you create online-you can always go back and fix things ;)
My advice: Launch that site, podcast, youtube channel — whatever-just START! Don’t worry about anyone, anything or any judgments. Do what you know is in your head and heart and create unapologetically. Don’t waste years like I did.

Information Frequency > Information Accuracy

What is better? A beautifully written article that took you 4 months to compose that many won’t see or 150 articles that are published that aren’t nearly as polished but get seen more frequently? A bit of a trick question but I will say the odds of gaining attention, building an audience and having that audience appreciate your content and want to come back for more will be more favorable for the individual who created more — it’s really that simple. Would you watch a TV series that gives you a 1 hour-long episode and then says — tune in 6 months from now for episode 2? No — you want to binge-watch it right? You want frequency even if the quality has to diminish a bit to meet the demand.

My Story Means Anyone Can Do This

This perhaps is the major point in this real-life experiment — I would classify myself as one of the worst writers and content creators out there — yet somehow that doesn’t seem to matter much. My attempt to help, to share, to offer support, to offer advice, to offer and teach what I know has reached those who found value and the overlooked the shortcomings in my creative. Now imagine YOU! You are probably 10x, 20x, 100x better at writing than I am. You may be able to create more frequently — you may have more skillset etc…Imagine if I have had incredible results what you could get applying your skill set to creating content?

From the world's worst writer, please create. Don’t wait. If you have a message, a product, a passion, a purpose-that you feel could help, inspire, motivate and make a meaningful impact on the world or even just a single person — that message deserves to be seen.

I hope this inspires you to just start and, if you thought of someone else you care about that needs to hear this, please share it with them as well. I can’t wait to see the impact we can all collectively make.

Ryan Stack

ryan@thestackgrp.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/thestacklife/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/ryanpstack

Co-Owner The Stack Group
www.thestackgrp.com
Web Design, SEO and Social Media Marketing Company

Co-Owner at The Stack Life
www.thestacklife.com
Inspiring & Teaching Digital Entrepreneurship