Page 222 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

The ‘80% is Good Enough’ Rule
I often use this philosophy in business, but many may disagree, as we all strive for excellence.
We sometimes need to compromise and accept that 80% is good enough or the action is good enough to get things started and underway. Otherwise it causes time delays, procrastination, conservativeness and deadline issues – or simply you just never do anything! Some people get to 80% and then spend 80% of their time working on the 20% without getting started at all.
A perfectionist often strives for 100%, as they don’t like failure and therefore say no to getting started. Everything has to be right so much so that it becomes a barrier to success – that fear of failure!
A good example is when one of my licensees in a bigger area needed to work more on his business and employ someone to help with the workload. There were only so many hours in the day that he could physically work. He said, ‘Paul, I won’t employ anyone until I have found someone who is 100% what I want.’ I said, ‘You will never find someone who is 100%. We all know how hard that is.’ So in the end, both businesses were compromised, and it led to tension, as we wanted higher performance.
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