People always ask what you do. If your company was Disney, let’s just say, it might be easy to say that you make movies, you run theme parks, and you manage merchandising. But what is the REAL thing you do, if your company is Disney?

You make people happy. All those movies, theme parks, and merchandising deals are designed for just one purpose….to lead people to visit Disneyworld, a place they call “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Why? So you’re happy. If you can’t visit Disneyworld or Disneyland, their merchandise and movies is designed to give people a piece of that happiness. That’s really what it is about.

If your company cleans carpets, what is the REAL thing you do? Can you put your carpet-cleaning mission into human terms and figure out what you REALLY do? How can you turn your stated purpose of building a profitable business keeping people’s carpet grime-free into something that people will get excited about?

99% of the world’s mission statements have long, dense-sounding language that the company’s legal team approved probably after five pages of footnotes. Chances are, the mission statements include the words “visionary,” “connecting,” or “integrity.” While you naturally strive to run your company with integrity, shouldn’t that be part of the experience people get from working with you? Shouldn’t your customers know you have integrity by the time they’re done working with you? Does it need to be in your mission statement? If it’s in your mission statement but people don’t leave your office believing it, it really doesn’t matter if it’s stated in your mission or not.

We stay loyal to brands because of their values, not their mission statement. We stay loyal because of the way the company treats us and the way the company makes us feel.

Remove the musty language from your mission statement. Write something that gives us a picture of what you do and why it’s worth doing. That’s how you write a mission statement that doesn’t suck.

If a product launches and no one hears about it, does anyone care? We know that not every product can drop with the hype of a new Apple iPhone. But a key to building successful sales and repeat customers is for as many people as possible to hear about a product launch. Not just when the launch happens, but before and after as well. How can you do that? How can you maximize your product launch? The best launches have some momentum you can build on.

1. Make sure people know your backstory. We touched on this in the post, “Introduce Yourself, Get Personal, Share Your Motivations.” If people know your story, then the conversation changes. It can go from, “Oh, did you hear there’s another product that does this?” to, “Oh, did you hear that the people who did this made a new product?” The second example makes the launch of the product not just about the product, but about the people behind it, and that’s ideal.

2. Get people talking before the launch. Leave some room in your budget for some pre-launch excitement. If you’re boosting on Facebook, you might boost some posts that give a little excitement or teaser of the product without revealing exactly what it is. If you know your product will launch in summer, when spring comes put something on your website to tease it. When you send out newsletters prior to your launch, put in a little house ad or photo teasing what’s to come. Check this link on Pinterest which has some clever examples of ways that images can be used in your newsletter, on your website and in your social media posts to generate interest on a product or service that is yet to come: https://www.pinterest.com/explore/teaser-campaign/

3. Get people talking, part two. Reach out to leaders in your industry and tell them that you have an exciting product launch planned. Get them on board to write reviews or articles about it when it’s ready.

4. Set the scene. When Apple launches a new product, they have closed their online store, so that people who visit their website know something exciting is taking place. Their customers almost have no choice but to listen. Can you instigate that level of excitement in your launch? If you, with your non-Apple-sized budget and your busy life, were going to really get people to pay attention to your launch, how would you do it?

5. Take pre-orders. There are many ways that this can work. You could invite people to pay $10 ahead of time for $10 off their order when your new flavor of smoothie bowl launches. You could sign people up ahead of time for an appointment as soon as your new service launches. Get some buy-in and harness some of that enthusiasm you’re hoping to create ahead of time.

6. Be different. Perhaps the main reason that Apple can sell 1.7 million units of an iPhone within the first three days of a launch is because the product that they offered was not only revolutionary. It also was marketed in a way that spoke to people. Steve Jobs didn’t just talk about how great the phone was. He talked about how it could make life easier for people. He talked about how it made common every day tasks easier and more convenient. That made people want it. And the phone delivered on its promise.

What room do you have to be different? Can you offer something above and beyond what anyone else in your niche is doing? If so, that’s what people will resonate with and that’s what they’ll buy. Something different. Something that helps them.

Would you rather the laundry be washed but not yet folded, or still piled up in the dirty hamper?

Would you rather have a 10-minute phone call with your best friend because you’re both busy? Or keep waiting for that hour-long phone call that never happens?

Would you rather have a card from your kids that has your name misspelled? Or no card at all?

Would you rather meet a goal, or never meet the goal because you were waiting until it was “perfect”?

Hopefully these examples show you that in many situations, particularly in business, getting something, even if it has room for improvement, is better than waiting until it is perfectly polished. Because it may never be perfect. When we start using new apps and computer software, we know they may be buggy. We use it anyway and happily install the updates when they tell us they’ve fixed a glitch. There’s no reason to choose whether you would rather be perfect or ready.

What matters is that you are working, and your work is evolving. It is fine to set a goal and meet it, with the realization that you have a chance to go back later and improve it. In fact, you probably should go back and improve it. If it’s perfect already, that doesn’t give you any chance to make it better.

Don’t let the goal of perfection be a roadblock to putting your work out there. The beauty of the world today is that you can update whatever it is . . . your website, your product packaging, your email, your hairstyle.

It’s better to try and fail and learn and find moderate success and improve than to have no success at all. As Seth Godin says, “Polish with your peers, your true fans, the market. Because when we polish together, we make better work.”