I hear it every day:

“I need to wrap my head around it first.”

“I need to figure out my strategy.”

“I’m researching and learning.”

Look, I get it. I’m the strategy guy. The 1-Page Marketing Plan is all about your marketing strategy…but…this is just your starting point.

Be honest with yourself.

Do you really need more information?

More data?

A more comprehensive strategy?

Or is it just procrastination and fear that's driving you?

If you consume information and plan forever, nothing can go wrong.

After all, nothing's actually happened.

It's all just theory.

It feels safe.

On the other hand, doing is riskier.

When you do the things you've planned, there's a chance it might not work out.

In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it won’t work straight out of the gate.

It’s scary. It sucks.

But it’s also the only path to success and mastery.

Every master was once a disaster.

In my new book Lean Marketing, I talk about an affliction that particularly plagues smart people.

“Too many smart people think they’re measuring twice and cutting once but often they never cut. They just measure forever.” (Lean Marketing page 24)

It’s easy to get caught in an endless loop of gathering more information, doing more research, and endless planning.

You know what produces the very best information?

Action.

A better path is to accept that your plan is imperfect and course-correct as you get real feedback from the market.

A scientist in a lab spends some time putting together a hypothesis (plan) but then spends most of their time running the experiments that generate the data.

What’s stopping you from doing the same?