Make Mistakes and Make Them Fast
There is a saying in business called ‘fail fast’. Fail fast means get your first product out. Get experience on that product, refine it and put out an even better project. Teams that have done this generally find much more success than teams that perfect their product, often take longer and then usually put out a product that misses the mark with the users. The reason the first one is so superior to the second, perfection route is because they are gaining experience with the user.
A little confession though? I wish they taught this in elmentary- or earlier.
I don’t know anything about the education system but from early on, perfection is a goal. Get the problem right, get an A. Write a good paper, get another A. Do the project, exactly how the teachers asked, and keep those A’s coming.
I kind of feel like I grew up with perfection. Some from school. Some of it from… I don’t know where. But there were many years I stood still wanting to be perfect. And by waiting to be perfect- I did not do anything or move towards my goal.
What I lost by not making mistakes
For many years I had a goal of being a photographer. Other than being super shy initially and not wanting to tell people I was a photographer I wanted to be the perfect photographer before I went out and took pictures of people. The thing about this logic though is that I was not going to get any better… until I took those bad pictures of people. Waiting for myself to be the perfect photographer cost me YEARS.
With being a photographer comes being a business owner. Aside from photography I had no idea how to run a business. I would hear about things like Facebook ads so I would try them for about 5 days and then shut them off because they were not producing anything. Then come to find out later that Facebook ads (and others) can take alot of testing. You have to test that you have the best headline, then the best image, then the best content. Then if those are converting but you are not getting the traction from your goal like a lead page- you have to fix you lead page and that could be a whole host of other options to fix.
To be honest I don’t care too much or get excited about the tinkering- but it is amazing when it works. And I missed out on it working for years because I was not tinkering, making mistakes and figuring out the best product. I just tried an ad for 5 days and stopped. I am sure I have missed out on much business due to this delay.
You are not alone fearing mistakes
Circling back to my fear of not being the perfect photographer… as I learned more and more from other photographers I heard them talk about the fear. If they were photographing a celebrity, they might feel nervous or pressure. I remember specifically hearing one photographer mentioned there were so nervous photographing a president of the United States that almost all of their pictures were blurry.
I was like- Oh you too? You share that fear? And you are one of my favorite photographers that is not letting the fear of perfection from stopping them? Okay, then I can do it.
I say all this because I think alot of us are waiting for perfection to show up at the door. I think we are waiting for that magical burst and awareness of the perfect self image to show up. For motivation to come charging through the door. To know how to make $1 million dollars. When in reality none of us know what we are doing and none of us are perfect. It has been my observation that the ones winning the game- the ones with the great business, the ones with that seemingly amazing confidence or self image. They are the ones that are still playing it. They are making mistakes. And they are still going.
I hope whatever you have in your life you will know that making mistakes is okay and it does not mean anything about you as a person. If you have tried one photographer and did not like the photos- maybe it was a bad photographer. Try a different one. If you have a business idea in your head and are holding back because who are you? Well who aren’t you.
I used to get soooo upset by mistakes. But I have found it much easier to move along faster by being willing to make them. And I have found it much easier to learn and move on from them by knowing that generally there is a great lesson here. And maybe similar to how Thomas Edison says it- I am learning 10 thousand ways to not be human.