Standardize Before You Optimize: Put Systems First in Your Author Business
Make it repeatable before you get it perfect
Here are a couple non-obvious sequence matters authors, creatives, and small business people can get wrong in their enterprises:
They try to make things perfect before they’ve made them consistent.
They try to make things consistent before they’ve actually built them.
Standardizing before optimizing is a principle from operations and manufacturing that translates easily on to author businesses:
First, create a system.
Then, once you have something repeatable, make it better.
Perfection and polish are not preceding steps. They’re later steps—and they should only be considered once you have something to refine.
Build the System First
Don’t fret. Your author business systems don’t have to be complex or sophisticated. They just have to be repeatable.
System!? For business purposes, a system is structured “how-to” information, any set of repeatable processes, methods, tools, specific actions that work together to achieve a specific goal. How you process orders from your website. How you set up your booth at festivals. How you deliver your email newsletter.
Some examples:
Your first event checklist doesn’t need to be perfect—it needs to exist and give you a repeatable framework for every event you do. Run it once, see what you missed, add it for next time. That’s the beauty and simplicity of standardization. The optimized, polished checklist comes after you’ve run the rough one a few times. Borrow mine if you like for a head start.
Your first outreach email doesn’t need to be flawless—it needs to be sent. You can even start with my proven outreach formula to give you a repeatable structure to work from. Send it, note what gets responses, refine from there, and make it your own.
Your first workshop doesn’t need to be a master class—it needs to happen. Launch version 1.0 with real participants, gather feedback, build version 2.0 from what you learn. Remember the gentle principle: do something, notice what happens, take another step.
Your first sales table at a book fair doesn’t need to be a pièce de retail résistance—it needs to be set up. Run it, note what drew people in, what got ignored, what sold, and what didn’t. Write down the steps, incorporating what you learned, then start steadily optimizing. This is your system. Now you’re standardizing it, next you’re improving it through iteration, not pre-launch perfection.
Two Traps
When it comes to systems, it can be too easy to get stuck or overfocused on these two things:
Perfectionism before standardization. Waiting until the outreach email is perfect before sending it. Designing the ideal event checklist instead of running a rough one. Polishing the workshop curriculum before ever teaching it to real people. Perfecting the sales table display in theory before setting it up in practice.
Optimizing before standardizing. Trying to improve something you’ve only done once or twice, before you’ve even established what “standard” looks like for you. A/B testing subject lines when you don’t yet have a consistent newsletter schedule. Tweaking your event approach before you’ve run enough events to know what your baseline is.
Slow down and trust the process.
Applied to Your Author Business
Not sure where to start? Here are some basic places you can practice standardizing before optimizing:
Newsletter. Determined schedule, predicatable format, consistent length. Polish the prose, test subject lines, and refine your calls-to-action after you’ve established the rhythm.
Events. Repeatable before/during/after checklists, formulaic table setup, reliable sales process. Optimize display elements, refine your pitches and conversation openers, and experiment with pricing after you’ve run the system enough times to have actionable data.
Outreach. Consistent formula, habitual follow-up timing, select asks. Refine your language, test different approaches, and personalize more deeply after you’ve established what your standard outreach efforts look like.
Income streams. Get each stream to a repeatable, functioning baseline before you try to scale or improve it. A speaking income stream that generates consistent—if modest—fees is something you can build from, but an idea for a speaking income stream that you’re still perfecting isn’t.
Daily practices of your choice. For instance, spend 30 minutes a day on your top long-term project before you worry about whether those 30 minutes are optimally structured. The habit comes first, optimizing the practice follows.
This Is the Sequence
Standardize: Build it. Run it. Note what works and what doesn’t.
Optimize: Improve it. Run it again. Repeat.
That’s it. That’s the whole sequence for every system of your author business.
Creation of systems matters most. Perfection and polish can wait their turn. They’ll get there and you’ll get there. But only after you’ve built systems repeatable enough to improve.
Tell Us in the Comments
Where in your author business are you trying to optimize something you haven’t yet standardized? What system do you need to build first—rough, imperfect, and functional—before you can make it better?
Stop Perfecting. Start Building.
If you’re waiting until your author business systems are polished before you run them, you’re waiting for something that only comes from running them. My Author’s Business Accelerator is designed for published authors ready to build the repeatable systems—outreach, events, income streams, marketing, daily practice—that create a functioning author business first and an optimized one over time. In 8 sessions (with a flexible schedule to work around your life), we’ll identify which systems you need, build functional version 1.0 frameworks for each, and create the feedback loops that let you improve them through actual use rather than theoretical refinement. Not group coaching or generic advice—it’s a strategic partnership to build the author business that gets better because you’re actually running it. Learn more about the Business Accelerator.
Thank you for sharing this. It's hard to remember when you're at the keyboard, but perfect enough is the enemy of the good enough.