Perfection Is the Enemy of Profit

You do not need to wait until your business is profitable enough to implement Profit First.

You implement Profit First so that the business becomes more profitable.

And I think sometimes people hear the words implement profit first and then they imagine this giant slog of a Herculean task, right? You have to get into your car and go to your bank and set up five accounts and schedule the allocations and et cetera, et cetera.

When honestly, you don't need to do any of that, right? You don't need to implement the method perfectly in order for it to start working for you.

We've heard so many stories about that.

The point was never to create the perfect profit-first circumstance before you begin using the method.

The goal is to begin using the system responsibly enough that it can start adding value to your life right away.

And then you just work on improving it from there.

And of course, this definitely doesn't just apply to profit first.

This whole perfectionist thing is relevant in every area of your business and in your life.

If you keep waiting for the perfect time or circumstance or product or process or even social media post, you're going to spend so much time creating goals that just never end up manifesting.

Now, I do remember in the early, early days when I was in Miami with Arjan, we were recording the audiobook.

And we were talking in the car about a completely different project that I remember I was hellbent on perfecting.

And Arjon at one point looked to me in a bit of frustration and he said, obviously this is paraphrased, but he said, Carly, if you don't let go of your inner perfectionist, you're going to be useless to me.

You know how you know that you've started something the right way? This blew my mind.

He said, when you're on your fourth published version and you can look back at the original and it embarrasses you a little bit, right? If you launch the perfect project the very first time, that's how you know you waited too long.

right? And man, I took that to heart with this podcast and sometimes kicking and screaming.

But looking back at those first episodes just this last week, it was pretty cringe-inducing for me because the Profit First for Lawyers podcast absolutely did not begin with a full season content strategy or months of rehearsal.

It actually began with a fair bit of chaos.

Right.

Arjun had a book coming out.

It was called Profit First for Lawyers.

He'd thrown me a challenge as a very green member of his team that if I could sell 10,000 copies, myself and the rest of Team Arjun would all get a bonus.

And, oh, by the way, he was going to leave for Paris for an entire month and would not be available to help in any meaningful way.

So by the time the team actually came up with the idea of launching a podcast and asked me to host it, we had weeks, literally, before the launch to get it done.