No doubt the phrase “ready..aim..fire” has been drummed into your head as the right way to do things:
- Ready means prepare for action.
- Aim means to choose your target.
- Fire means to spring into action.
If each time you “fire”, it takes a lot of time or money, then
investing time/money preparing and aiming makes good sense. For
example, if you are thinking of building a custom home (which costs a
lot of money and takes a while to construct), you’d be prudent to study
what types of homes people are buying, design a home that fits the
market you’re going after, and perhaps even test market the design
before you even break ground.
But what if you are a one-person business, and you’re thinking of
doing a email blast to your mailing list? The cost for an email blast
is basically zero, so why spend a lot of time preparing it? This is one
of the principles of guerrilla marketing - try something, see the effect, try something else, continue. It keeps you away from analysis paralysis.
In Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game Of Tennis (and other “Inner Game…” books), he found a key way to quickly improve your tennis game is to have someone else tell you what the result of your action was. For example, if you’re practicing serving, hearing “the ball was 2 feet outside the baseline” creates a feedback loop. You hear the result, and your system naturally (and quickly) adjusts to achieve the desired result.
The key point is: After you “fire”, make sure you pay attention to
your results. Learn what works better, and continue to hone your
actions.