Starting a business can trigger the perfectionist in us, the person who wants to get everything done in exactly the way we envisaged it. In fact, it's often the rationale we use to mitigate the risk involved in launching a new venture: "if I do everything perfectly, I will have a higher chance of success."

The problem with this strategy is that it promotes a fixed mindset rather than the growth mindset that we need to flourish in business. When we stick rigidly to a plan or to a set expectation, and it doesn't work the way we imagined, we end up in a spiral of self-criticism and a sense of failure that knocks the wind out of our sails. Not ideal for the business or us.

Instead, we need to develop a growth mindset that encourages us to take a much more experimental test and learn approach. We still have a goal to work towards, but we are open to the best way of getting there by putting in place feedback loops that help us correct course in good time.

A growth mindset helps us relax notions of perfection and replaces them with exploration, curiosity and looking for the 'aha' moments that build our knowledge about what works best for our new company. It is a much lighter and kinder way of being a founder, which energises us through our discoveries and insight rather than the constant sense of striving towards a fixed outcome that can often deplete us.

So let go of the perfectionist and welcome in the experimentalist! Your business and your anxiety levels will thank you for it.