Earlier this month, one of my partners and I started a new business venture. We started planning for it about ten months ago. We spent countless hours planning, developing strategy, performing market analysis. You name it we did it.

After doing so much work and dragging our feet I told my partner - “Okay, that’s enough, we’re launching it on Saturday.”

We went back and forth about not being completely ready and having done enough to get it up and running until I just said, “Let’s launch it, if it messes up - so be it.” And so it was, business venture number 54 was launched.

It’s been 4 weeks since the launch, so you’re wondering if it’s going well and was it perfect? My answer - “You’re kidding right?”

It has been a greatly executed, sometimes flawed, long hours, computer glitches, customers confused by certain aspects of the website, missed communications and frustration. In other words - It’s coming along just as I planned.

Many times people say they’re working on a business, but it still needs “tweaking” or I have to finalize some aspect of the business. It has to be ABSOLUTELY perfect before you can move forward or “pull the trigger”. One thing that I’ve learned it that sometimes trying to be 100% does nothing but delay your success. A number of people interested in starting a business believe much too strongly that a business has to be “perfect” before they can launch it. I need to have all the elements installed first. I need to have 3 suppliers “just in case” , the stars and the moon much align perfectly. In other words, it will NEVER happen OR if there are problems, they jump ship and stop before it gets out of control.

I find that we convince ourselves by worrying about things that may never happen or if they do, we believe that the business can’t rebound. All this is just another excuse to keep ourselves busy and fool ourselves we’re going to be independent some day.

The entrepreneur KNOWS that every business will have it’s challenges. There are times it will be great, other times, it will fail where we couldn’t have predicted. The pretender hides behind the idea that there is more work to do, and what happens, life gets busy and you can’t launch, delay, delay delay.

So if you’re really working on your plan, can you get to 75% or 90% ready so you can launch? Here’s an analogy for you yes, a car can’t move without the wheels, but is it okay if the cigarette lighter isn’t working?

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