There is No Such Thing as Perfect

I have always say to my students and entrepreneur clients, “There is no such thing as perfect.” It is better that they turn the work in for a grade or get their product on the market for validation and testing, than to wait until it is “perfect.” Perfect is really an arbitrary thing. It’s the place where reality meets with our ideal. This cannot happen without getting the work done or the product out for feedback. Feedback helps refine and develop our work into something better.

When my business partner and I started the yoga clothing business, Beckons Yoga Clothing, we wanted to use all brightly colored organic fabrics. At the time, organic fabric was limited to off white, green and various shades of browns and neutral colors. We asked our fabric supplier for super bright, happy colors and he was skeptical about the company’s ability to achieve the brighter colors. So, we found a nylon/lycra fabric in the bright colors to use for our samples and headed out to the tradeshow. Nothing we brought to the tradeshow was perfect, but it represented what we had in our mind. Fortunately, on the way to the show, we found out the fabric company could provide the colors we wanted. We sold a bunch of product and buyers had no problem envisioning the product in the correct fabric.

What we presented was good enough and then, we were able to make it better based on the feedback and orders we received. Honestly, in all twelve years of my owning the company, reality never matched the ideal I had in my mind; I never achieved a state of “perfect.” But we continued to refine and pivot, and when it sold, the company was well on its way to meeting the ideal I had set out to achieve. Meanwhile, we had gained great wisdom, knowledge and understanding of the industry, running a business, and life, in general. Perhaps perfect or ideal is merely the carrot that leads us down the path, but continues to move and change, the more information we have.