Just do it!

It’s one of the greatest marketing campaigns in corporate history. Nike still uses the phrase, “Just Do It” in ads, and people all over the world use the phrase.

I think the phrase should be the internal slogan for every small business. All too often when speaking with business owners who are worried about the success of their business, I find the answer to their problems is: Just do it! If they would stop planning and brainstorming, and planning and brainstorming, and…

Then after the planning they tear apart all the reasons why something won’t work, so they start over.

Any business consultant will tell you that planning and brainstorming are important aspects of running a small business. At the same time, if you never take action on the planning or ideas you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.

Many business owners believe they need things to be perfect before they can implement a plan. Instead, they should test it, pilot it, or just start implementing it, and then perfect it based on the results of the test. To test, you have to take action and just do it.

A survey of top entrepreneurs quoted by many business schools and publications asked, “What is the biggest regret you have in starting and running your business?”

97% of the time the answer had to do with something they didn’t take action on rather than something they did take action on. This tells us that even if we take action, and make a mistake, it’s better than not doing anything at all.

If you don’t start implementing your plans today, the business growth won’t happen on its own.