Jasiri
Done Is Better Than Perfect: Stop Planning and Start Building
There is a woman in your neighbourhood right now with fewer skills than you, less research than you, and ten paying customers. The only difference between her and you is that she started.
If you are a Kenyan woman who has been planning to start a business but keeps waiting for the right conditions, the perfect product, or the right moment, this edition is a direct conversation with you. Done is not sloppy. Done is brave. And this week, we talk about how to finally move from planning to building, right here in Kenya, with what you already have.
I need you to close your eyes for one moment and picture her.
She is in your estate, or your estate’s next one. She is on your chama WhatsApp group, or a Facebook group you both belong to. She started a business six months ago. She did not have more money than you. She did not study business. She does not have a degree in marketing or a cousin who helped her with the accounts. She has the same phone you have, the same school fees pressure you have, the same long commute, the same husband who is not entirely sure about all this, the same tired evenings.
And she has ten customers. Maybe twenty. And she made money last month that had nothing to do with anyone else’s payroll.
How? Not because she is special. Because she started before she was ready. Because she posted the imperfect photo. Because she sent the draft message to the first ten people on her contact list. Because she sold from a polythene bag before she had a box. Because she decided that the version of her business that existed in her head was never going to pay the school fees, and the only version that could was the one that existed in the real world, imperfect and visible and already moving.
Your business plan is not a business. Your customers are a business.
My sister, this edition is a direct word to you. Not to someone else. To you, with your beautiful, detailed plan that nobody has seen yet. To you, with your logo that has been redesigned eleven times but your shop has not opened once. To you, who knows your product better than anyone, has researched your market thoroughly, and has still not sold a single thing.
Done is not the same as sloppy. Done is not the same as careless. Done means the version that is good enough to exist, good enough to reach your first customer, good enough to learn from. Done is brave. And today, we are going to talk about why you are not there yet, and exactly how to get there.
Three Traps That Keep You Planning Instead of Building
Perfectionism is not a personality trait. It is a strategy your fear uses to feel productive while keeping you completely safe. Here are the three traps it sets, and how to walk out of every single one.
Trap One. The Planning Trap.
You have a Google document. Or a notebook. Or a folder on your phone. It is detailed. It is thorough. It has a mission statement, a target market, a list of competitors, a rough financial projection, and a name that you have been sitting with for four months to make sure it feels right. You have done real work. You feel, most days, like you are actively building something.
But my sister, let me ask you something. How many people have given you money for this thing?
Because here is the hard truth about planning: it feels like progress. It has the texture of work. It keeps you busy in a way that looks serious from the outside and feels responsible from the inside. But a plan is a map of a journey you have not taken yet. The map does not move you. Only your feet move you.
The planning trap is particularly dangerous because it is not laziness. Lazy women do not spend their evenings building spreadsheets. The women caught in the planning trap are some of the hardest working, most serious women you will ever meet. They are just working on the wrong thing. They are building the preparation for a business instead of building the business.
The exit from this trap is one decision: pick a date, this week if possible, and post your first offer. Not your finalised offer. Not your polished offer. Your first offer. The one you have been preparing to make. Make it now, before the plan is finished, because the plan will never be finished, and the market will teach you more in one week of actual selling than one year of actual planning.
Trap Two. The Branding Trap.
The logo is not right yet. The colours need to feel warmer. The name has three possible spellings and you cannot decide which one looks best. The Instagram page needs one more round of photos before you start posting. The packaging is ordered but has not arrived, and you cannot sell without the packaging because the product needs to look professional.
I understand this trap completely, because it comes from a good place. You want to represent yourself well. You have pride in your work. You know that in Kenya, presentation matters, and you do not want people to look at what you have made and think it is cheap or amateur.
But I need you to see what is happening underneath this. You are using the presentation of your business as a reason not to have a business. The logo is a reason not to sell. The packaging is a reason not to sell. The name decision is a reason not to sell. And while you are making these decisions, carefully and responsibly, a woman down the road is selling the same product from a plain brown paper bag with her number written on it in pen, and her customers are coming back for more.
Nobody has ever bought from a logo. They buy from a woman they trust who has something they need.
The branding will come. It will improve with every month, and one day it will be exactly what you imagined. But it comes after the selling, not before. The selling funds the branding. Not the other way around. Start plain. Start visible. Start now. The packaging can arrive next week.
Trap Three. The Right Time Trap.
January is a fresh start, so January. But then January has the school fees and the new year expenses, so February is more realistic. But February is short and people are recovering from January, so March. But by March the quarter is almost gone and Easter is approaching, so after Easter. After Easter is Madaraka Day, and things slow down in that week. Then it is the middle of the year and the children are home, so September when school resumes. But September is when things get expensive again because of back to school…
My sister, I have heard every version of this calendar. I have lived several versions of it myself. And I need to tell you something about the right time: it does not exist. There is no month in the Kenyan calendar that does not have a reason to wait. There is no season that does not have its inconvenience. There is no phase of life that does not have its demands.
The right time is a myth that your fear invented to protect you. And it is working. Every single month you wait for the right time, your fear wins without even having to fight. You have already surrendered, kindly and calmly and with a very reasonable explanation that everyone around you will agree sounds sensible.
The right time is not a date on the calendar. It is a decision you make. And you can make it today.
What Done Actually Looks Like.
Done does not mean launching a full business with a website and a stockroom and a team. Done means the smallest version of your idea that can reach your first customer.
Done is a WhatsApp status with your product and a price. Done is ten messages sent to women you know, saying “I am starting something, would you be interested?” Done is one plate of food delivered to one office, wrapped in foil, with your number attached. Done is one session, one service, one item sold to one real person who handed you real money and told you it was good.
That is your first done. It does not need to be more than that. From that one done, the next done becomes clearer. And from that one, the next. You do not build a business by planning the whole staircase before you take the first step. You build it by taking the first step and discovering that the next one is right there in front of you.
The woman who is ahead of you did not start because she was ready. She started because she got tired of not starting. Get tired of it, my sister. Get tired of the plan. Get tired of the logo. Get tired of waiting for January. Get tired of being ready, and start being started.
This is a calculation I want you to do right now, because money makes things real in a way that inspiration sometimes cannot.
Ask yourself: if you had started six months ago, and made even a modest KSh 5,000 per month from your idea, how much would you have earned by now? KSh 30,000. That is not a small number. That is three months of someone’s rent. That is a child’s school fees. That is the amount you have been saying you do not have enough of to start. And it is precisely what waiting for perfect has cost you.
Now extend it further. If you wait another six months, and then another, still planning, still perfecting, the number grows. KSh 60,000. KSh 90,000. Real money, real income, real financial movement, all of it sitting in a version of your life that you chose not to enter because the logo was not ready.
Perfectionism has a price tag. It is just paid in months and lost income instead of in shillings you can see. The day you count what waiting has cost you is the day waiting loses its power over you. Count it today. Let that number make you uncomfortable enough to move.
Pick one thing you have been waiting to do until it was ready. The post you have not posted. The message you have not sent. The first order you have not taken. The conversation you have not started. Now do it today, in whatever form it is in right now. Not the polished version. Not after you fix it. The version that exists right now. Post it. Send it. Say it. The world will not end. And you will discover that starting ugly feels better than planning perfectly. Every single time.
Everything will never be in place. That is not a pessimistic statement. That is the nature of building something real. Businesses do not begin when everything is ready. They begin when someone decides to begin, and then they spend the rest of their existence adjusting to things that were not in place when they started.
The businesses you admire right now, the ones that look polished and established and completely in place, were not in place when they started. They had a bad logo, a supplier who let them down, a product that was not quite right, a price they had to change. They began anyway. And the beginning, as messy as it was, is the only reason they have the “in place” you are admiring today.
You do not wait for the conditions to be right. You begin, and your beginning creates the conditions. That is how it has always worked. That is how it will work for you.
Same time next Saturday. Same honesty. More building.
Go and do the imperfect thing today. I will be here next week to hear how it went.
Know a woman who is still planning?
Send her this edition. The woman who is ready but waiting needs someone to tell her the truth. Be that person for her today.
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