A good plan executed today is better than the perfect plan that you TRY to execute later. The keyword here is “try.” Why? Because usually it never happens.

Far too many of my nurse practitioner sisters and brothers are too hyper-focused on having everything perfect before starting a business, making a career change, buying a house, investing, scaling/growing a practice, integrating new services into a practice, and so forth… Every T must be crossed, every I must be dotted, every single regulation and law must be overturned and examined (even if it is from the year 1894), the business plan must be completed in full, every policy and procedure must be written, and on and on it goes. Essentially, everything must be PERFECT.

Remember, you will never be 100% ready for a variety of important things in your life… NEVER.

You will never be 100% ready for a child.

You will never be 100% ready for marriage.

You will never be 100% ready to start a new career.

You will never be 100% ready to start a business.

You simply will never be 100% ready for most important things in your life. That is why they are IMPORTANT. A lot of thought and planning must go into them. But the plan does not need to be 100% before going through with them.

This is why having a GOOD plan, where maybe 60-70% of everything that needs to be done is done, and going ahead and executing it is MUCH better than waiting for the plan to be 100% complete and perfect before diving in.

BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER GET STARTED!

It is like those people looking for the “perfect” partner…. They are still single in their 50s!

It like those people waiting for the “perfect” time to have a baby… Often, it never happens!

It is like the nurse practitioner who is SICK AND TIRED of being taken advantage of who wants to start their own practice, but they must have every single policy and procedure written down, reviewed by a lawyer, and archived in the Congressional Library… MOST TIMES, they never get the business started because they never get out of their analysis paralysis!

It is like the nurse practitioner entrepreneur who wants to hire employees, but they need to know every single labor law known to man, purchase HIPAA training modules, make sure they are 100% OSHA compliant, spend thousands on a labor lawer for ONE MEDICAL ASSISTANT, and so forth… IT TAKES THEM FOREVER TO HIRE THE EMPLOYEE. And 90% of the time once they hire the employee, they look back and say “well a lot of that was a waste of money and time… I could have hired someone years ago…”

I have never had a perfect plan. I have no idea what perfect is… Who has defined perfect for the plan you want to undertake? No one… If they say they have the perfect plan, then they are full of it and are just looking to take your money.

Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS IN LIFE AND BUSINESS.

Life throws you a curve ball that makes impact directly to the head.

Do you know how many times I have been punched in the mouth? (I have literally been punched in the mouth, but that is a story for another time… lets stick to our figurative speech).

My first business failed. My plan was a bad one… The biggest mistake was accepting insurance…

I have spent thousands upon thousands on stupid marketing ideas that failed. Advertising men’s health in a Bed, Bath, and Beyond was a dumb idea…

I have been divorced because I KNEW I married the wrong person when I was walking down the aisle, but I thought I had a plan to fix things… Ya, what a waste of a decade of my life trying to make it “perfect.”

I had a scary call from the Board of Pharmacy because what I was doing was not considered “within my scope.” But that blew over because I fixed the issue… (Supposedly you can’t dispense prefilled syringes of testosterone because it is considered repackaging a controlled substance and only pharmacists can do that, but I can dispense an entire 10ml vial, that is ok… the government…). They only go after people who are REALLY screwing around just FYI. Fix the problem, and it is nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

I was reported to the Board of Nursing during peak flu and COVID season a couple years back because I pressed to hard down on the tongue of an uncooperative toddler… Oh, and I was discriminating against the mother because she was disabled. Alrighty then… Again, that blew over with a nice detailed letter to the BON that was 6 pages long outling every single minute of the entire interaction. I never heard anything about it ever again probably because they got sick of reading the boring long letter and knew it was a BS complaint to begin with.

I have invested in questionable stocks that ended up causing a 100% loss… Ya, losing $10,000 hurts… But I learned a lot of valuable lessons from that.

And the list goes on and on and on…

I was never 100% ready to start my business. I was not even close to being 100% ready to open my 2^nd men’s health practice. I was not 100% ready to integrate vitamin injections or peptides into my practice. Hell, I am not even 100% ready to treat the next men’s health patient that comes through my door. Who knows what kind of punch will be thrown at me.

The point here is that you will never have a perfect plan in life my friends. You never will.

What you need to focus on is having a GOOD plan in place and more importantly: TAKING ACTION AND EXECUTING THAT PLAN.

Did you know 70% of strategic plans in business fail?

Did you know that 38-50% of Americans are not saving for retirement? How many of those are not because they “don’t have the perfect plan in place yet”???? I bet a lot.

Did you know, that 61% of Americans have an idea for starting a business? Yet, 92% of those people NEVER EXECUTE THE PLAN. Are you one of those?

Taking action and executing the plan is the most important part of this process… Action will lead to more action, and inaction will lead to more inaction…

How many times have you told yourself “I will do (X) once I finish (Y), (Z), and (W)?”

I bet every single one of us have. What happened? Usually you don’t even do (X)….

Instead, tell yourself “I will do (X) once I finish (Y), begin working on (Z), and think about what (W) will entail.”

That is how you get started. You knock out a few important things, and everything else can wait and be worked on throughout the process. Because you will NEVER have a perfect plan. There is no such thing. Instead, focus on having a GOOD plan and just get started. You can figure out the rest as you go. Read this and this article and listen to this podcast about prioritizing tasks in your business. It will help you develop a good plan. And remember, focus on the process, not the end goal.

Our courses help you develop a good SOLID plan. But you will never be 100% ready. You just won’t. I don’t care what business plan someone is trying to sell you; IT WILL NOT BE PERFECT. Remember the punches? Ya… You can’t plan for the unknown, and that is what happens in life and business. Nothing is static… our world is FLUID and constantly changing.

So remember, a GOOD plan executed today is 10x better than having the PERFECT plan that is executed 2 years from now… Because all you are doing is delaying your future potential and success. We only have a finite amount of years on this planet folks… So, get the good plan in place and do what the other 92% won’t do: JUST GET STARTED!