This is a good thing. It's important to be passionate about your work and care about the quality of what you put out in the world.

But this can also lead major problems.

Along with this passion for excellence comes a natural affinity to get caught up in perfectionism.

I've seen so many clients, friends and colleagues get 95% done with products or marketing materials in a matter of days or weeks and then stall for months to get that last 5% worked out.

They proofread everything, re record audio or video because they don't like the way they sound or look or don't think the quality is high enough.

They ask for second, third and fourth opinions only to receive conflicting answers which tear them apart inside and make them doubt the whole thing.

In the end these poor friends of mine end up spending countless hours and tons of their energy and money on things that truly don't help them make more money or attract more clients (which is usually the goal of new products or marketing campaigns.)

By the time they finish the product or marketing campaigns (that is, IF they ever finish them,) they often aren't as relevant to the marketplace since so much has changed in the time they wasted perfecting them.

This happened to my client Allison. She had a new information product that was so close to completion. I was helping her make some edits and add some finishing touches, but even without my help, the content was valuable and I knew it would resonate with her prospects and clients.

But when the time came for the final review process, she got cold feet and decided to re record everything because she didn't like the way her voice sounded in the initial delivery.

I told her redoing it wasn't necessary. The quality of the content was there and the audio was audible and professional sounding.

She still went ahead and re recorded the whole thing. By the time her product was ready to go, she had spent hundreds of extra dollars on my time, had missed out on potential sales and had wasted many hours of her own time which could have been focused on more fruitful efforts like marketing her product, servicing her clients or simply doing something else she enjoyed more.

It's natural to want to make what you create perfect, but before you spend hours taking something from 90% to 100% of its perceived potential, ask yourself this question:

"Am I doing this for my clients or for my own ego?"

Frankly, many people are more focused on what they want their product or marketing materials to sound or look like rather than what their target market wants.

The longer you hang onto an idea without implementing it, the less viable it becomes. It's better to implement and learn from your mistakes than to obsess over it for weeks or months that you could be focused on more important things.

This principle of implementation and not obsessing over perfection can be applied to almost any area of your business, but it is especially relevant to information marketing.

My most successful clients aren't those who spend hours and hours reviewing every single piece of the material they write or record. They are the ones who leverage professionals like audio editors, copywriters, transcriptionists and other members of their marketing teams to work out any kinks in their campaigns or products before release.

The next time you feel the urge to perfect something that may be just as effective as-is, ask yourself, "Am I adding value or just wasting time?"