Best Business Expert

There are a lot of differing statistics but most people can agree on the overall truth: Many (perhaps most?) small businesses fail within the first two years. I don’t know what the actual number is but it’s high. And with today’s economy forcing more people to consider self-employment because they can’t find work, that statistic could potentially worsen.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for small business failure. I want to talk about just one reason in this blog but I want to make the disclaimer that I don’t believe this is the only reason, nor is it necessarily the biggest reason. But I do believe that this can have a huge impact on small business success. The reason is this: Some business owners believe that everything has to be perfect before they can open for business.

So here’s what happens: They spend resources perfecting their business, they spend resources perfecting their product or service, they spend time perfecting their website. They’ve spent all this money and time and effort and haven’t even sold anything!

Businesses need to accept imperfection and embrace ambiguity. Business owners need to feel comfortable with not knowing everything. They need to bring their product to market at a point where it can be delivered confidently, but with still enough "wiggle room" to make changes as the market demands. The same goes for the business plan and the website and everything else.

Here are two case studies, both true (with some details altered for privacy) that demonstrate this necessity:

Trudy wants to import clothes from South America into North America. She finds stylish clothes at a great price and brings them in. But they sit in a warehouse while she tweaks her website and has brochures revised over and over again. She believes that everything needs to be perfect first. I’ve advised her to get out there and sell her clothes right now. Her market will tell her what they want, how they want her to communicate, and how her website should function. In fact, in her particular wholesaling niche, a website is secondary to the face-to-face contact she needs to be making. But those clothes remain in the warehouse, and have been there for four years, while she perfects her website and business cards.

Jason was in sales five years ago but hated his job and his boss and quit. He had a good design eye and a little bit of experience so he decided to get into freelance marketing. Cobbling together a really small portfolio, he went out into the marketplace and started pitching his services. No one bought in the first week so he made a few changes and pitched again. No one bought in the second week so he made some changes and pitched again. In the third week he acquired his first customers. Five years later, he runs a busy marketing consultancy that still embraces ambiguity.

Now, I’m sure to get some blog readers who will disagree, perhaps mentioning that ambiguity in the tech industry and in pharmaceuticals can be dangerous and costly. That is true: in some industries, for some products or services, or to some markets, a completed approach is required. But those are the exceptions.

Most businesses, most of the time, particularly if they are just starting out, should embrace ambiguity and allow the market to guide them.

Contemporary VA

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