If you’re like most, the pain of perfectionism shows up for you as late nights, endless tweaking, and work that never feels finished. There’s a constant buzz of anxiety that things aren’t just right, and all of this is just the surface-level cost.
The real, deeper cost is harder to see. I’ve watched business owners walk away from strategies that were working for others because the fear of getting it wrong loomed larger than the cost of staying where they were.
Some of these owners have never recovered. And if you’re a smart, capable business owner, you’re more vulnerable to this than you might think. Because the smarter you are, the better your reasons sound to you and everyone else.
The Advice You’ve Heard About Perfectionism Is Incomplete
Traditional advice about perfectionism tells you that you’re taking too long to deliver. Done is better than perfect. Ship it messy. Just do it.
This is great advice for those who’ve not started yet or at the very beginning. But, and this is a big one, it doesn’t do anything at all for everyone else struggling with the pain of perfectionism.
When perfectionism shows up while you’re deep in the mess of something, working through a strategy whose results aren’t yet guaranteed, this is when it’s at its most destructive. It starts whispering that there’s something wrong with the plan, you believe it because you’re smart and are used to finding problems, so your anxiety about the whole thing starts to escalate. You focus more on finding the problems, so you make less progress.
This is the most expensive version of perfectionism for business owners.
What Does Perfectionism Look Like Inside a Real Business?
It looks like finding reasons not to take action, or at least not complete, committed action. The kind of action that can actually build something.
I watched a business owner go through this. They decided to add a new line of business to supplement the one already running well. So, they invested about $50K in an opportunity, took on ongoing licensing fees, and spent 2 years in additional training.
The strategies for the new line were implemented successfully by many others, so they were proven. But every time this person had to execute, they found a problem:
- This person is too hard to get hold of.
- I don’t want to do this. It’s just going to fail. It’s not something I’m comfortable with.
- I’m not getting results, so I must not be any good at this.
- I don’t feel confident because I’m not getting results.
This last one is important. They weren’t getting results because they weren’t consistently doing what needed to be done. And they weren’t doing the thing because they didn’t feel confident.
This went on for two years.
While they were so focused on what wasn’t working, the pipeline for their existing business dwindled to a trickle. The real issue was keeping the main business in business, instead of focusing almost exclusively on the new line, looking for problems.
When the end arrived, it wasn’t a strategic assessment. The fear of having no income while still paying licensing fees was louder than the fear of imperfect execution. The louder fear won.
They lost both businesses and started over in an industry they had left years ago.
Why Do Smart Business Owners Quit Strategies That Work?
Usually, it’s because an imagined flaw feels safer than a real result or taking a risk.
When you find a problem with a strategy before you’ve fully run it, you stay in control. Sure, the flaw is hypothetical, but you can analyze it, plan around it, and talk it over. Doing these things gives you the illusion of progress, but real results are different. A real result is putting yourself out there with what feels like no safety net. You risk publicly being seen making a mistake.
Perfectionism is the comfort zone’s defense system. It’s way too easy to find problems with a strategy in the name of diligence when it’s really avoidance. You feel that you’re being rigorous, but you’re only spinning your wheels.
Smart owners are especially good at this. They spend so much time analyzing the strategies that they don’t do the things they say they want to do, and often, they quit without ever really trying.
This pattern is becoming more common. A meta-analysis of more than 41,000 people published in Psychological Bulletin found that every measured form of perfectionism has been rising steadily since 1989.
It’s virtually impossible to separate an owner’s patterns from the business’s success. So, the business’s growth will stall at the edge of your comfort zone because your business can’t outgrow you. If you want your business to grow more, you have to grow first.
But Isn’t Quitting the Right Call Sometimes?
Yes, it absolutely is. The difference between the right call and the comfortable call is the trigger.
I spent about five years building a divorce coaching business on strategies that worked in other industries. I tried things like speaking engagements, general networking, and targeted networking.
Here’s what I observed: People who are thinking about getting divorced don’t come to a speech about it. No one wants to hang out with the woman talking about divorce at a networking event. And most of the attorneys I met wanted to keep referring to therapists they knew instead of a woman offering something they’d never heard of before.
I didn’t see any of this when I started putting together my marketing strategies. I figured that if they worked for others, they should work for me, too. So, I ignored the data and kept plugging away.
Finally, after five years, I paid attention to the data and shifted my strategy.
And that’s the test. Quitting is the right call when your results from doing the thing say it’s time.
Both Kinds of Quitting Feel the Same
Quitting on evidence and quitting on discomfort feel the same inside your own head. Both have their reasons and sound strategic when you say them out loud.
It took me five years to get what my results were telling me. Now, I know what to look for, and sometimes I still can’t see what the data’s telling me.
Knowing you have a pattern doesn’t mean you’re aware of it when you’re following it. This is why smart business owners stay stuck.
The Bill Comes Due Either Way
For the owner who quit before committing to the strategy, the bill was $50,000, two businesses, and years they can’t get back.
For me, the bill was five years and the revenue those years could have produced. Neither of which I can get back.
The pain of perfectionism is the unnoticed compounding costs of impossible standards. And the longer the pattern runs, the more it costs.
How to Break Your Pattern
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to grade your own quitting, but someone else can ask the necessary questions for you to recognize what’s happening.
In my work with clients, one of the most valuable things I do is ask questions that support them in identifying fears and thought patterns that are keeping them stuck. Sometimes it also involves pushing them to stay with a strategy through the discomfort of uncertainty and growth. Sometimes it means confirming the evidence they can’t quite see.
If you’ve been struggling with the pain of perfectionism, let’s talk. A 15-minute call can tell you whether you’re a fit for my process.
About the Author
Karen Finn, PhD is an author and business growth strategist. Download a copy of her book, The Business Growth Plan, to get insight into the low-cost and no-cost strategies she uses with her clients to 2x-3x their revenues.
