I’ve just started to reading this superb book called “Be Unreasonable: The Unconventional Way To Extraordinary Business Results” by Paul Lemberg. What I like most of all about it is how it encourages you to challenge the “norm” or what you might consider being “reasonable”.
It’s all about stepping beyond what’s expected and transforming yourself into something extraordinary. In fact this is a step-by-step guide to the rule breaking and destiny making mindset that helps you take control of your business future.
So what the heck has this got to do with website design you might ask!
Everything!
I want you to think carefully about the last website you designed…
As you were designing it were you saying to yourself “I’ve got to get this perfect” before I can upload it and finally launch it? Was there a huge list of things you just had to get done before you considered your creation perfect enough?
I want you to consider this… people have a tendency to get stuck in trying to think of the “perfect idea” and create the “perfect website”. Instead they’re always polishing, always making small changes here and there, knowing someday they’ll be ready to launch (just don’t hold your breath!).
According to Paul Lemberg “Perfection kills market place opportunity” and nobody knows this better than Bill Gates.
Why is it Microsoft has so many different versions of their software? you know version 1.003a or version 4.3.456b or some other long coded number. These numbers simply mean that Bill Gates isn’t a perfectionist, he’s a realist who understands the importance of being unreasonable to get things done and into the hands of his customers as quickly as possible, even if it’s not yet perfect.
His programmers don’t sit around endlessly polishing their software until it’s an absolute masterpiece. They gets his products created so Microsoft can make money.
So if you’re still working on your website design, polishing it, perfecting it I need to ask you a couple of question….
If you launched it today will it work? will it still be able to make you money, even though it’s not perfect yet? If your answer is “yes” and “yes” again, my suggestion is to “just do it”, get it launched and shoot for excellence by testing in the real world instead of looking for perfection in isolation.
Being reasonable tells you that things should be completed in every way with no defects before you can launch. Unreasonable people do the opposite and seek excellence rather than perfection. Perfection stops you making progress, excellence can be reached quickly.
So where do you see yourself in all I’ve said?
Being unreasonable doesn’t just apply to website design. When I wrote this post I didn’t spent hours perfecting it, I just wrote it, read it through, corrected a couple or errors then posted it.
You might even have noticed a few errors I’ve missed out on… did it stop you from reading? or for even getting this far? Of course not, I’ll just correct those errors later on.
This is exactly what Paul Lemberg means about aiming for excellence rather than perfection. If I aimed for perfection, I might never have even posted this article and you would never have known that you’re actually ready to launch your new website today!
Get Paul Lemberg’s book, read it from cover to cover, be unreasonable and get extraordinary results.
Increase your website sales by 275% or more...
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Because I am unreasonable I did not perfectly read to the end of your post before replying.
I concur with the central point though. Best remembered by one of the interpretations of) the adage:
‘the great is the enemy of the good’
On the detail of the case given however:
I had to point out to those that still feel that Bill has anything to do with the actual products at old MS, he’s had no project influence for years.
MSs products were, and are, often bought in & cunningly rebranded as they are assimilated. To their credit they don’t go the weigh-down-with-bloat route, apparently the only strategy which Adobe has, every time they have acquired a piece of software from a smaller publisher.
However make no mistake that just as in the record industry, the trend for the largest software publishers/developers to put the
‘love of elegant code’ & ‘cunning solutions’ second to the
‘love of money’…
and marketing means that their vice-like grip on the market is being loosened.
Web apps, Open Source & Web 2.0 startups together with the ‘big G’ are bringing this about with alarming speed for these ‘ancient’ beasts.
There’s no reason to read a book what’s known already. Do it now or someone else does it without you. I’ve learned from my mistakes, you have learned from the book, so will others