Sometimes we perfectionists have a hard time following through with our business plans simply because we’re trying to market and sell in the ‘fancy’ way. And because that’s so hard to do consistently, without burning out, we don’t do enough marketing and selling to make the sales we want.
In this episode I’m sharing why you want to build your business the unfancy way. And why this doesn’t mean you have to come across as unprofessional.
If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.
I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.
Sam Laura Brown
Okay, so welcome to today’s episode. Today I want to talk to you about doing it the unfancy way. That’s what I’m calling it. That’s what I found myself saying to so many clients and PGSDers, and this is a philosophy that I’ve had for so long in my business that has been incredibly helpful for me as a perfectionist entrepreneur. And so I want to share it with you and share it in this way, because I’ve shared it in different ways on the podcast over the years. It’s just such a cool lesson. But the way I’m going to say it today might hit differently, and I’ll probably say some different things to what I’ve said before. So I’ve just had recent experience with this today, which is why it’s so top of mind and important for me to talk about and to share with you.
So what I have found myself coming up against is friction with the podcast. And that’s part of why this episode is a couple of days late because of how I have been thinking, how my perfectionist brain has been thinking about the podcast. So what my thought has been, and regardless of whether your podcast or not, this will be relevant. What my thought has been, my perfectionist thought has been that now that I’ve decided that I’m going to be filming for YouTube at the same time as recording the audio for the podcast.
Now I need to make sure that I’ve got a good setup. And even though I haven’t made my office into a fancy studio or anything like that, it needs to look good. I need to look good. I just need to make sure the lighting’s all right and it’s not super grainy. And like all of this stuff I didn’t even have to think about when it was just audio only. I found myself thinking about and then thinking about in this perfectionistic way of, well, if I’m going to do it, then I have to do it properly, and doing it properly means doing it. Fancy doing it in the way that I see everyone else doing it. And of course, everyone else isn’t doing everything the same way. Perfectionist brains just like to be all or nothing and like everyone does it this way when like there’s no situation where everyone does something the same way.
But anyway, this thought of like, well, everyone does it this fancy way. And so for me to let it be known to the people that I can help, that I can actually help them with what I help them with, then I need to make sure I am in a setup that communicates that I’m experienced in what I do and like all of this kind of stuff. And so that produced a lot of friction to taking the action of recording my podcast. And when my podcast was audio only, there wasn’t as much friction because I didn’t have to think about anything in terms of what things look like. There just wasn’t even that that came up because no one could see me. No one could see the office, no one could see that what time of day it was, what the lighting was like, what I looked like, anything like that.
It just felt more free for me because I had less to think about and it felt a little bit safer as well, in the sense that like, no one’s looking at me as I’m sharing this stuff that I’m sharing. So that helped me to show up. I have over six hundred podcast episodes, but I do want to share on YouTube, and I want to have more people find out about what I do so they can get out of their own way in their business. But does this friction around, well, I need to do it fancy. And even if I don’t do like a proper podcast studio or whatever, I still need to make sure I look good in the background, looks good. And then all these rules as well in my head of like, and I need to be looking directly at the camera when I’m recording, I can’t just like do what I’m literally doing right now. So I’m filming this and I’m in my office and wrapped up in a blanket. I have my UGG boots on. It’s cold for Brisbane weather.
And typically as I do a podcast episode. So for like this, I don’t have any notes. I’m just kind of looking around the room, swiveling on my chair, like that’s what I’m doing as I typically record a podcast episode. But one of the rules in my head was that now that I’m recording it on video, I have to be looking into the camera and I have to be not looking around the room and not just recording in the way I normally record it. And I’m able to learn that new skill slash. It’s not really even a new skill because I do that all the time. When I’m on coaching calls. I’ve done lots of face to camera things where I’m looking into the lens of the camera, but there was just all of this friction coming up and all of these friction points. So not just one friction point, but within me doing video, multiple friction points. And then also, how do I get the video to go out on players like Spotify and Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Does it go to my video editor first and then my podcast producer? Or like, what’s the workflow of that?
And yesterday I was just like, you know what? I’m not gonna do it anymore. I’m not gonna film for YouTube anymore because this is just stopping me from even recording the podcast at all. And I have so much to say. And me now wanting to film it and have it go out on YouTube is just stopping me from being able to say it. So let me remove the whole friction point by removing video. And that’s initially what I did do. I started out, I think, first of all, so I did had a blog, then I went on to Snapchat and was doing that as well. I was also on Instagram, but I don’t think Instagram had video yet because they got that idea from Snapchat. It was just static posts. There wasn’t stories yet, which is crazy to even think about, but I had Snapchat and then I didn’t jump on the stories bandwagon right away. I don’t think I eventually did. Um, but then I had a YouTube channel and I did a daily vlog called three hundred and sixty five Days of Personal Growth, which you can still find a lot of that on my YouTube channel.
And then as I was doing that and I started filming my podcast to go out on YouTube, I was like, let’s just have this be audio only because I just love podcast audio only. I don’t watch the video. So I’m just going to do audio only remove that whole friction point. And I think that is a big part of why I have been able to be so prolific on the podcast and have so many episodes, is because it was a wise move for me at that time to just remove a whole friction point by saying, I’m just not going to do video, and I’m just going to focus on audio only and make it super easy so that I can do that. And people were telling me, I listened to your daily videos, just like there are podcast episode.
So I was like, okay, let’s just move on over fully to the podcast. Video podcasting wasn’t, I mean, it was a thing then, but it wasn’t a big thing the way that it is now. And so I found myself yesterday wanting to go into like, let’s just cut the whole video thing and I’m still going to do my vlogs, which I’ve been really loving doing, but I’m not going to do podcast episodes. It’s too hard. And then literally today, as I was doing my vlog and just chatting as I am now wrapped up in a blanket, just letting myself talk, I was like, this really doesn’t have to be different for the podcast because the vlog, how I do that and the podcast is so similar. It’s not really like a different style, if you will. Both. I’m just sharing my top of mind thoughts and things that I know will be really helpful when I’m doing it in a vlog. It’s more of like, here’s what I’m doing today.
And then as I’m doing that, I’m like, oh, and I helped a client with this. Oh, and here’s this thing to be aware of. Like I naturally do that. And a podcast episode sometimes is like that, like a personal update. And sometimes it is just more like this of like, hey, here’s something I’ve been thinking about that I think would be super helpful to share with you. And I have built a very successful business that’s very fulfilling to me from doing that. And so I was like, I can just, I can just do the same thing, but do it for YouTube and film it and not have to have these real rules. So instead of removing the friction point by just cutting it off altogether, I can actually just change how I’m thinking and look at somewhere that is easy for me to show up, which is the vlog.
Like my current issue with the vlog is I have so much footage because it’s so easy for me to talk and just, oh, I want to share this, or I want to share that, or I want to share that. it’s then getting that edited together and getting that out. And I have a process for that. And that’s in the works to have that go out every week. But it’s just so interesting with the podcast, which is very, very similar, just extra rules I’ve had around it. Once I started filming it of like, well, now I can’t do it how I actually like doing it. Now I have to make sure I’m, I’m meeting all of this criteria of like what a proper podcast does, even though that isn’t how I built my podcast.
So I hope that’s helpful to, to hear some of the insights I’ve been having about it because it’s the epiphany I just keep on having, which is that my perfectionist brain to try to stop me from putting myself out there will create all these rules so that it’s very hard to actually do all the things I need to do to put myself out there, and therefore I don’t have to put myself out there. So for example, with this podcast and with filming it. If it’s then okay, well, I have to have a nice background. I have to look nice, and then I have to make sure I’m looking right at the camera. I can’t just stare around the room as I gather my thoughts. And I have to this and I have to that then that all like having it all be perfect in that way is a great excuse for me to not have to do it, because now it’s so hard to do it that of course, then I run out of time to do it. I don’t have the energy to do it.
It’s not quite the right lighting to do it. There’s just the more criteria we have, the more made up rules we have for things, then the harder it obviously is to fulfill all of those, and the easier it is to get in our own way. And our perfectionist brains are doing that just because, of course it wants to do that. The whole thing with perfectionism, it’s less about trying to do everything perfectly, and it’s more about avoiding doing anything imperfectly so that we can avoid shame, judgment, and blame and all of those feelings. So perfectionism isn’t like, okay, you have the perfect podcast. It’s is produced every single week. Some perfectionists do it that way. Most do it okay, do it that way for three weeks. It’s unsustainable because they have so many made up rules and I’ve made it so fancy.
And then I’ve told myself I have to do it, fancy or not at all, that I then fall off the wagon after three weeks and I just can’t sustain it. And then there’s the burnout. And there’s inconsistency that happens because of these made up rules and trying to do it fancy and optimally. And just even like this is the other thing too, when people talk about like having things iterate and improve as you go, I’ve had that thought really caused some problems because then I’ve been like, okay, well, I have six hundred episodes now. Now is the time to do it fancy. Instead of like, well, actually, if I have six hundred episodes and they’ve worked really well, maybe I just need to keep doing what I’m doing. Like maybe I’m on to something and something that I’m doing is working.
So is the answer that I need to suddenly do it fancy or is the answer that I just need to get what I’m currently doing in front of more people? And I’ve shared this before, but Graham Stephan or Graham Stephan, if you have the the US pronunciation, not the Australian pronunciation of the name is he just said something in an interview that was like, I’m just doing the same thing I’ve always done in front of more people. And that just, that just landed with me so deeply because I had been in the mindset of, well, once I am doing something and it’s working, then I have to do a different thing to be able to get more people to see it, but to just have him and his very successful online to say, I’m just doing the same thing I’ve always done just in front of more people was just like such an aha for me.
And it’s the aha that I keep on having. So now I’m doing this podcast episode the way that I do it, which is I just let myself talk. I know exactly who I’m talking to. I know exactly what I’m talking about, and I do it from a place of self-trust. That’s the strategy plus business first principles. Understanding how a business grows, understanding why people decide to buy things or not buy things. Like all of that is baked in. But then with that, I can just riff around and let myself talk and trust that by letting myself speak freely, I’m going to be a lot more compelling and magnetic than when I do, when I’m just in my head trying to get it right and say the right thing and, and look nice and be nice and have a nice background and all of that kind of perfectionist stuff that we can get so caught up on.
And then I think as well, like it’s, it’s such a little echo chamber that like everyone else sees everyone else doing it fancy. And it’s like, okay, well, that person’s doing it that way, so I should do it that way. And we adopt people’s own application of business first principles as the actual first principles instead of seeing that’s their own application, that’s their own strategy. And like, what’s the actual fundamental? The fundamental is to be compelling and connected and convicted and to have something for sale and to sell it and to mention it. And all of those things that are just core across every industry. It’s why I love studying so many different industries and helping entrepreneurs with perfectionism in so many different industries, because the fundamentals are the same and our perfectionist brains just want to do stuff so fancy. So here’s the other area.
This has come up for me recently that I was making it fancy, and then I had to make it fancy. And now it’s going again is with Instagram. So an update on this as well is that I posted in March saying, hey everyone, I don’t post here anymore. Like I, I’m not going to be posting on Instagram. I haven’t been consistent. It’s just taking up all of this mental load in my head. Come find me on my podcast. Come find me everywhere else that I do stuff, but I’m not going to be showing up here anymore. And I just close that tab mentally. I took Instagram off my phone because I don’t use it that much as a consumer. I prefer YouTube personally in podcasts. So I took it off my phone and I just completely disconnected from it for a couple of months.
And then when I was doing the most recent PGSD launch, and it was the last time that people were going to be able to get lifetime access to the program, I was like, well, I’ve got to tell everyone on Instagram about it. Like, this doesn’t make sense that I’m not telling people on Instagram about it because I know there are people who only follow me there, and if I don’t mention it to them, they’re they’re not going to know about it. And if I follow someone on Instagram and then something like this happened and they didn’t tell me, I’d be annoyed because I’d want to know about the program and what’s happening because I’ve been thinking about signing up for it. So I just archived that post and resumed posting. I didn’t do like a. Actually, I did one post that was like, hey, I’m showing up here and sharing about this. Um, I didn’t have any like explanation of why I was back.
I didn’t have people being like, oh my God, you’re back. It was just like business as usual. I just returned to posting. So for anyone, if you haven’t been posting, just return as if you’ve always been there. It’s way better than just being like, now I have to announce it and explain where I’ve been. And like you don’t. You can just keep going as if you’ve always been going. So I, I have that post and then I just started posting again. And then I found myself because I was working with an editor for YouTube videos for my vlog and for the podcast as well. I noticed that I was like, okay, well, maybe I can do reels. And I’m now recording all of this footage so that I have so much to work with for reals. And I can like have this whole system and just trying to make it not even fancy, but like just kind of making it a bit more elaborate than it needed to be.
And so where I’ve ended up getting to, and that was a few weeks ago now where I’ve ended up getting to like today, I created ten reels in about an hour. I filmed them and then I edited them in Inshot, which isn’t a fancy. Like there are all these different editors. Inshot is just what I learned to use when I was creating family videos. It’s just like I bought a thirty dollars, like what’s the name of the course? It was really good. It was just like, make family videos or something that teaches you just how to make a really simple family video, how to do the edits, like how to film it. So it looks interesting, but not feeling like you have to film the whole time if you want to capture a moment.
So anyway, I learned Inshot through doing that and I was like, instead of me having to learn a different editing platform or have someone else edit it, and then I need to give all this feedback and all of that. Like when I’ve, I’ve had it be the simplest is when I just let myself talk and then that gets edited. But I’m not having to get this clip with like this super polished editing and I can just let it be out. And it’s more of a volume approach. And I teach this inside perfectionist getting shit done. We have a consistent content creation course called the Creative Cocoon, and part of that is about spark content, getting into creative overflow and having a higher volume of content.
So you’re less precious because when we try to create less but better as perfectionists, we then just go into so much overthinking and perfectionism about, okay, like I’m creating less. So like every piece of content has to be perfect, otherwise it won’t work. Whereas if you create a higher volume of things for me especially, this has happened for so many years as well, who’ve gone through it that you actually create better stuff because you’re a lot more loose and relaxed and just letting things flow, but also just through having so much more volume, you get to test so many more different angles. Like you just get to really get feedback about things instead of just doing like five perfect posts and then it’s unsustainable and then you goes.
So my approach has always worked best for me. And my perfectionist brain has been to create a higher volume of content and be less precious with it. So I was noticing for me, it was a friction point to have a real be edited and then for me to give feedback because the point wasn’t getting across sufficiently. And so it didn’t actually make sense the way it had been cut together. Like someone watching it wouldn’t understand the point. There’s a difference between like, oh, you know, can you cut that little bit where like, I don’t look good or whatever it was like the way that it had been constructed, the point of it wasn’t going to be communicated and it wasn’t going to make sense.
And I was just like, okay, what if I go back to doing what was just super easy for me when I did it the fancy way, which is I just go around the house and record stuff. And also if I had longer clips, I would just let myself clip it and like clip a couple of sentences I know really well, like just as I am skilled in marketing and sales, how do I identify a hook, how to identify a complete thought? Like all of that stuff. I know how to do that. And even as I’m talking now recording this podcast, I’m like, oh, that’s, that’s a real that’s a moment. Like, I know, I know, it’s like, oh, that’s a quote I can have or a perfectionist. Like my brain is just constantly like, oh, that, like, as I say it, I notice it.
And so I can just let myself use Inshot, which isn’t fancy, but it does put on an auto caption, and it also does AI cut where it will just cut out silences. If I have like a three second silence, which is fine for podcasts, but on a reel that tends to feel like 20s. So it just cleans that up. But otherwise I just let myself talk or I clip something really easily. I upload it to Planoly, which is not probably the best scheduling like app or whatever, but it’s what I know, and it’s sufficiently works because I can just drop things in there and have them ready. And then and this is again, I teach this in the creative cocoon is if you have creative overflow, it’s not like I have ten reels and I have to publish all ten. Now I have ten reels and I can then go, as with my marketing manager hat on, go, okay, I want to schedule this one for this day, this one for this day, this one for this day.
Those three I’m not going to do for now. I might leave them for a future week and I just end up being able to consistently create stuff, to talk easily and have it be created easily. When I do have someone editing, for me, it’s much more simple than like, hey, I’m just gonna leave it up to you to go into this and find this moment. Like, oh no, I know the moment. Take from this to this and do it in this really simple format. So I hope this is making sense as I’m just talking stream of consciousness, but I have just been going through figuring that out and just reinstating systems that definitely don’t feel optimal or my brain hasn’t like, well, you shouldn’t be doing the editing or you shouldn’t be doing this or like any of that. But the key thing is like, am I marketing and am I selling?
And this is one of the things that’s been coming up a lot recently inside perfection is getting shit done. When a PGSDer gets on a call and they’re like, I’m not making sales. Like I’m not making the number of sales I want to be making. I’ve been like, well, have you been selling? Like, are you actually selling? And so often, especially when people are earlier in their business. So, so, so, so often it’s like, oh no, I haven’t actually been telling people about it or I haven’t, I’ve like told people about it once or like, no, I’m not actually doing anything currently to market and sell. When that happens, we don’t make sales unless you have some kind of either. Like if you’ve been say for me, for example, with the podcast, I have six hundred episodes, so I don’t have to record a new episode for someone to spend the whole day listening to me and being like, oh my God, this is so helpful. The same with YouTube.
Like, there’s so many platforms with Instagram, wherever you’re creating, like you can have a body of work that you can have ads. It’s not saying you have to be working every day, but we want that body of work to be selling and to be telling people about what the next step is to take. And whatever you sell, whether it’s a product or service, like why that? Why they want to take that step today. Why it matters, why it’s important, why it’s worth overcoming any friction or obstacle in the way of that, or like being resourceful and figuring out the money. Like all of that needs to be in the content that’s being created. And this is another shift as well, thinking about not like content creation, but content marketing as in the content is doing marketing. It’s not just like content for content sake.
I think so many of us, when we’re in this like content creation kind of thinking, and if you follow a lot of people who teach content creation, it can be kind of lost that this is actually a form of marketing. It’s not just like creating content for the internet. Some people as well, this is, I guess, a bit of nuance, but some people, they might have a content creation model where they make money. You need to be thinking about this as you’re understanding and like comparing to other businesses, what their actual business model is. Because some people, when they create content, they aren’t actually selling any product within that. They have ads. So for example, Tim Ferriss. He isn’t selling a Tim Ferriss program. He might have books or things like that, but he makes money from the ad spots on his podcast.
And so his content strategy is going to be different to someone who is actually selling with their content, selling something specifically within the content, if that makes sense. So just for everyone, when you, when you’re comparing what someone else is doing to what you’re doing, just think about like, what kind of business model do they have? How do they make money? Because if they make money from ads and you make money from selling a product and not ads, then you’re going to want to do things differently and have it be reflected. But anyway, so I’ve just been going back to other times when business was the easiest, I felt the most self-expressed we were having the most ads come in. Like what, what was going on then? And I would just let myself speak and post it.
And I used Planoly to just like drop things into there and post it from there and have that visual layout of what was going out instead of just like, I don’t know, there’s something about the way it’s organized in there, and I can just see it all at a glance. That makes it for my brain way easier than having it all in. Like when I’ve tried to use meta, um, meta business scheduler, just like, I don’t know, it just you got to figure out what works for your brain and having that layout just works really well for mine. And so just letting myself edit it, just seeing how quick it is when I’m like, oh, I’m going to be creating a bunch of stuff. So how it started today, me recording those reels was I was like, I’m just going to, as I think my lunch was in the microwave, my chicken, or it was that or the kettle was boiling for a cup of tea.
So it was like something really quick that was happening. And I was like, I’m just going to record a one minute story about this question of what would it look like if it was easy and how. That’s one of my favorite questions and doing it the fancy way. So I recorded that and it was quick and short and I was like, actually, that would be a really good reel. So then I just went into Inshot. I edited it three minutes later, literally because I didn’t have to do much cleaning up. I find I normally have to just like drop the first 20s where I’m like, I’m gonna tell you about this. And I’m just kind of like warming up into it. I let myself say that, and then I just cut that bit and start at the point.
So I just edited that was super quick and I was like, huh, I wonder what else I could say today. I talked to my coach, one of my clients this morning. What was something that I was saying to her? And then I was like, okay, I’m just going to do a reel on that. And I just talked for I was like, I’m going to keep it to a minute and just think about the main point. Record it, edited that. Okay, I’ve got another reel. Okay. What else did I say to that client? Or like, what did I coach a pig’s ear on today? And then there was something I coached a PGSDer and I was like, okay, I’m going to do a reel on that and that all or nothing thinking? And then what else is like? What are some of the key things I say about perfectionism?
Okay, I’m going to do a reel on procrastinating because like every time people come into PGSD, we have an intake form that goes out that helps us to support you as best we can. And one of the questions on that is like, what, what in the messaging resonated with you the most? And so often it’s like this procrastination and procrastination and like, okay, I’m going to do a reel about that. And what does it mean to work with your perfectionist brain? Like, what are some of the core things I say in that I’m just going to like, have that be said? And then I was like, okay, well, the clip I recorded this morning for my vlog, I could feel as I was doing that, that there are going to be little snippets that I could just take and post. So I’m just going to go find those little snippets and it’s like a twenty minute clip. But I was like, I feel like if I just watch the first few minutes, it’ll be in there. So I did it was there. I actually got two clips from that that kind of similar ideas. But that’s okay. I can just post them like not one after the other and have two clips from that.
So within about an hour, I had ten reels created, ready to be published, and I’m just going to upload them into Planoly and then publish them, like schedule them out from there so that I don’t have this preciousness of like everything I say, if I record it, I have to publish it so that I don’t even want to record stuff because I don’t, I know if I record it, it has to go out. It’s just like I can record a bunch of stuff and never publish it. But but but but but but this is really important. And they talk about this in the creative cocoon because it’s so important. And I also did actually on the podcast, a free series, a content creation series or consistent content series that went out in July 2025. So I introduced it to a lot of the ideas in that series. So go and find that.
But we don’t want to just be like practicing content creation, never with the intention of publishing it, because then it is so easy to get in your own way with it because your perfectionist brain will be like, well, that wasn’t good enough. Well, that wasn’t good enough. Well, I need to practice that a bit more. And you never actually get feedback from the real world about what actually lands and what doesn’t. Because what you will find and what I have found and what our PGSDer is find is when you actually let yourself publish stuff and publish it, like more than just three things, you will find that the stuff people like is different to what your perfectionist brain said was good. And so that’s why I can do a podcast episode like this where as I’m recording it, my brain is like, this is not good. This is not making sense. But I know from so much experience with publishing my work that my brain, my perfectionist brain isn’t actually the best judge.
Because what my perfectionist brain is thinking about is do I sound smart? Do I sound good? Do I like it’s all about me. Instead of thinking about you, like my perfectionist brain is basically just asking the question, am I doing a good enough job? AM I doing a good enough job? AM I doing a good enough job? And that doesn’t necessarily correlate to the person on the other end, what their experience is going to be. But it’s only through publishing your work and publishing that consistently over time that you will start to actually see that your perfectionist brain, what it thinks is high quality, isn’t actually the stuff that’s going to resonate and build the business. So it might be very polished and very fancy. And what feels like maybe it’s an off the cuff thing or a random idea, or like something you felt like wasn’t succinct, that people are like, oh my God, that that was so good. Like, oh, okay.
And that’s why like this whole concept to bring it all together, of doing things the unfancy way, like that’s how I’ve arrived here is because I let myself publish things the unfancy way and over time saw that that actually, when I do things from this mindset of I’m just going to do it the unfancy way, like what would it look like if it was simple? What would it look like if it was easy? And then have the emotional capacity to sit with those feelings of feeling exposed and feeling inadequate, and all of those feelings that come with publishing as a perfectionist. If I can just let it be easy and then have the emotional capacity, I create a really compelling body of work. But if I just listen to my perfectionist brain, that’s like, do it fancy or it won’t work, then I either don’t do it at all because doing it fancy takes time. A lot of time costs a lot of money. There’s a lot of friction to do it fancy.
So it’s very hard to do it sustainably or to do it consistently. So I just wanted to do this episode really to share about this whole philosophy of doing it the unfancy way. And that doesn’t mean sloppy. That doesn’t mean reckless. That doesn’t mean that you have to do what I’m doing, which is sitting in my office without considering the lighting and just I’m in a blanket chatting away. That doesn’t mean it has to look like that for you. So be really careful. And this isn’t just when you’re listening to me, but to anyone to not think, okay, well, that’s the way they’re doing it. It’s the only way to apply that philosophy. Like, no, this philosophy can be applied to so many different things and it can have you produce something that, from the outside does look fancy and does look polished and does look professional, but it’s without you having all of this criteria and friction and perfectionist drama about like, here’s how it has to be. And if I can’t do it that way, it’s not worth doing it at all because it won’t work at all.
Like that’s not how business works. Business. Isn’t this all or nothing? If every single element isn’t done perfectly, then nothing works. It’s. It’s. If every single element isn’t done perfectly. But they are done sufficiently. And maybe a few things done insufficiently, then overall some things will be working and you will be making progress. And it’s just a game of troubleshooting things as you go along, and taking things from insufficiency to being sufficient and bringing as much to sufficiency as possible. And sometimes it might make sense to do something optimally, but the game is just like, can you get can you do things sufficiently?
And so for me, the most important thing and for any business is, are you doing a sufficient volume of marketing and selling activity? Because it’s better way better to do a sufficient volume of unfancy marketing and unfancy sales than to do an insufficient volume of fancy marketing and fancy sales, because people need to hear about what you’re selling a lot to be in a position mentally to understand what it is and why they want it, and to actually take that step, because they’ve got a lot of stuff going on in their life. They’re not just spending all day thinking about nothing, and then they hear you say something once like, oh my God, that’s it. Like that might happen sometimes, but very rarely. So it’s, it’s about having a sufficient volume.
And if you trying to do something, the fancy way is stopping that volume from happening sufficiently, then it doesn’t matter how fancy it is. And this is where it gets so frustrating, especially if you invest a lot of time and money and energy into doing it fancy. But the volume isn’t sufficient enough to be able to communicate to the person on the other end why they want it, why they want it today, and for them to like, keep hearing that message again and again and again until they’re ready for it, that then it doesn’t matter if it’s fancy because it’s not going to work. It’s not going to actually help you build your business. It might look professional, but the best way to feel like you have a hobby Business is to be doing an insufficient volume of marketing and sales, but doing it fancy because then you’re just going to feel like, oh my God, like I’m such a fraud because I’m doing it so fancy and it’s not working.
So there must be something wrong with me instead of it’s actually typically a volume issue that’s coming from perfectionism, stopping you from taking a sufficient amount of action around the marketing and sales in particular, is where it comes up a lot of times with delivery of services and products because of our the way our perfectionist brain works, we’re so scared of letting others down and disappointing people that we tend to not have an issue with taking action in that we tend to take too much action. But when it comes to marketing and sales, without perfectionist brains, it can just be very easy to not take enough volume of action to have it actually work, and then to draw these conclusions that you’re not good enough, when actually you just haven’t been doing it enough. Like, for example, if you wanted to get fit, if you go to the gym once a month, it’s just not actually a sufficient enough volume of working out to be able to build muscles, no matter how fancy that one workout is.
And if you have the best gear and you have like exactly the right exercises and like it’s in the exact right sequence and it’s at the most beautiful gym ever with the best equipment, it doesn’t matter because one workout per month is just not enough volume of working out. It’s better to do like going for a run in your back yard, like, or running up and down your steps a hundred times in whatever clothes you have, so long as we don’t get injured. But like in whatever clothes you have and doing that six times a week, you’re going to be way fitter than one fancy workout per month if you just like it’s just about volume and understanding. That doesn’t mean having to work all the time. And for me, when I do things on fancy, I create a high volume with a lot of ease and a lot of flow.
And my perception is that it’s low effort when I’m trying to do things fancy. It takes so much more time, so much more effort. It’s so much more frustrating because it’s harder to do a sufficient volume. So I’m having to work a lot harder and a lot longer, or I’m not doing that, and then I’m not seeing the results of that. So it feels like it’s all for nothing. And then it’s like, okay, well, I have to try something different altogether. So these are just some of my thoughts about doing it on fancy. And my podcast in general is just the best example. But everywhere that I’ve excelled in my business is by letting myself do it on fancy and seeing how that’s actually sufficient. My perfectionist brain, this idea that my brain has about like fancy and professional and doing it properly is just a way to try and keep me safe. And just it really feels so legitimate.
There’s so many people who will say like, no, you really have to make sure you come across as a professional. And I still come across as a professional. I know what I’m doing. I help people, I’ve helped over a thousand people inside perfectionist getting shit done. Like I’m a, I’m a professional at what I do. That doesn’t mean I need to have the perfect background to be a professional. And it doesn’t mean you don’t. You can’t have one either. Again, like this, isn’t this all or nothing? Like, okay, so now I can’t have a background like now I can’t do all this stuff. No, I’m not saying any of this. So you make up rules of like, now, now, Sam said, I can’t do this or that. What I want you to take home with you is what would it look like if it was easy?
And that doesn’t mean like, okay, if it was easy, I’d just do one post once a month and I’d have ten clients sign up. Like, that’s not what the question is. It’s if it was simple, if it was uncomplicated, if it was un on fancy, like if I just did it in the easiest way I know how, so that I can actually do what needs to be done. What would that look like? What have I already created that I could maybe repurpose into this or like take ideas from or like, was it an area in my life or in my business where I find things easy? And what is it about my thinking there that makes that easy? And can I transplant that thinking into this area like I did with the podcast and my brain being like, oh, we can’t record the podcast anymore, like film it.
And like, actually, if I just think about it like a vlog or if I just let myself have permission from myself to just literally pop on my camera, but then record how I normally record, not having to look at the camera and just being able to look around the room and like, maybe look up at the ceiling and up at my gallery wall in my office, then I can do it. It removes the friction and then I’m actually getting the message out. So I hope this has been really helpful and liberating. I know it’s, it’s like counterintuitive and not what is often taught. What is often taught is if you don’t do it fancy, it’s never going to work. And like just a lot of perfectionists, teachers, teaching other perfectionists how to do things in a way that looks professional.
And I’m not saying that’s not legitimate to have things look beautiful and all of that, but if it’s creating so much friction that you’re not actually able to do a sufficient amount of marketing and sales, then you really need to take a look at how you’re approaching it, because I want you to be able to market and sell consistently and sustainably without burning out. Ideally, in a way that actually feels like you, that you actually enjoy. Otherwise, you kind of may as well just be in a job working for someone else. So what would it look like if you could just do it the way that you actually wanted to do it, and have that as a starting point instead of, okay, here’s what I have to do, because I’ve seen everyone else do it this way. And business.
It just isn’t like business is the wild, wild West in the sense of everyone’s just figuring stuff out as they go. There’s no, there’s like the first principles of business and how a business works. But beyond that, everyone’s just applying the first principles of business and the the fundamentals in their own different ways. So if you see someone doing it like you’re seeing me do it in my own way, that doesn’t mean that has to be your way. But I hope by me demonstrating what it looks like to just take the first principles of business and apply it in your own way. You can start to think about, okay, what would that look like for me to apply that in my own way? And where am I making things fancier than it needs to be? And I’ll wrap up with this final example, which is that for the podcast, I have a editor, a video editor who I’ve been working with for the vlog.
Long story short, I was going to use descript to edit the vlogs together. It turns out, because there’s so many clips, it was just going to create a lot of back and forth that I didn’t want to have. So I hired a video editor to help, and then I was like, okay, you can do the podcast as well. But then what ended up happening is the podcast. The way that I do it. Like for this episode, there are literally going to be no edits that I need to give for my podcast producer. It’s literally Eloisa just putting everything together, putting the intro on it, putting an outro on it, and getting it out onto the platforms. There’s no actual editing. It’s only if I like am coughing or things like that. Like I don’t really say stuff. I just let myself roll with it. And so then for the podcast video, then we were having like all these edits.
So it would be I had this idea in my head of like, well, for video on, on YouTube, it has to be like more snappy and more like clipped together. And I can’t just like let myself think about something for three seconds and, and have a pause or whatever. Like it needs to be cut out. And that actually isn’t how I do my best. Because then it just created this friction of like then needing to review it or like even just the friction in the sense of then I’m paying for someone to edit it. And that is capital. That’s money that can’t be then used for something else in the business when actually, and this is what I’m going to be doing going forward.
I don’t really think any editing is needed for the podcast. It can literally just go out as one as one big file, because also that’s most consistent with my philosophies and what I’m teaching, but also like, it’s not a needle mover at this point to have that friction and to have the like video be a little bit snappier when if someone listens to my actual podcast, they’re going to hear it with me having the pauses and things like that. I think we cut out maybe like long pauses, but it’s not snappy. If you’re listening to this, like you’re hearing it very, very, very similar to how I actually talk. And I feel like in this episode, I’m talking a bit faster than I normally would, but it probably doesn’t come across that way. Um, who knows? But anyway, I just have been like, okay, in my business lately, like, okay, reinstating all these different things that have worked really well and bringing it all together.
Kind of like a chef on one of those cooking shows where they have all the glass bowls of different ingredients that are just all ready to be mixed together. That’s how I feel, which is nice, but also, like has been frustrating. I’ve just had to sit with my frustration of like, I’ve had all the ingredients and I haven’t mixed them together, but I have, and I’ve been figuring out the recipe and I have also been successful in the process of it. But anyway, so I’ve just been reinstating things and then looking at like, my brain wants to make stuff fancy and then making it fancy so I can actually do it and do it consistently in a way that. That feels like me and also in a way that really connects. So that is what I have been doing. And also on that note, while we are discussing this. So what I’m going to be doing is teaching a live workshop.
It’s going to be a ninety minute workshop for perfectionists who are building businesses, because that’s who I help about how to plan out your week properly as a perfectionist and why to do lists don’t work for perfectionists, even though we love them. And what else am I going to be sharing? The three simple steps of power planning and how to plan out even the most uncertain week so that you can actually follow through without procrastinating, overthinking, burning yourself out. Because I have just found time and time again, and from my own experience, that the follow through problems we have as perfectionists are like the procrastination, the overthinking, for example, that is just coming from setting ourselves up in our businesses in a way that makes it really easy to procrastinate and overthink.
But we’re not clear about where we’re actually going in our business, what they need and weavers are to get there when we’re actually going to get them done, what we’re going to do if there’s a change of plans, how much time we need to give for things, especially if it’s something we haven’t done before and we don’t know how long it’ll take, or we tend to overthink it. Like there’s so much follow through, so many follow through issues that perfectionists have that can be solved just by giving yourself flexible structure for the week that works with your perfectionist brain. So that’s what I’m going to be teaching you in the workshop. It’s free. You can go to sam dot com slash workshop to sign up for the workshop. If you can’t be there at the time I’m teaching it live, you’ll get the replay, but you’ll only get it if you’re registered. So go and sign up for that.
So that’s the main thing I wanted to mention as well at the end, since that is something that I have been teaching for so many years now, and there are so many people who still aren’t planning their week properly as a perfectionist and having all of these issues with following through on business stuff, simply because they don’t have a way to organize themselves that works for their brain. And so I want to keep getting the message out. I don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel on what I’m saying and what I’m sharing. And also I’m going to keep saying it in so many different ways and sharing so many different things as well. But the core tool power planning that helps perfectionists get out of their own way.
I am going to have to keep talking about it and keep telling more and more people about it, and keep telling you about it until your your power planning out every week and being able to really work with your perfectionist brain in that way. I want to keep telling you about it and inviting you to start power planning and just getting a perfectionist brain on your side so you can do the things you know you need to do to build your business. So with that said, join me at the workshop. Really excited for that. And I hope this has been really helpful to just hear about this constant epiphany for my perfectionist brain of like, just do it on fancies so I can get it done.
And I’m fancy actually really connects. And there’s, there’s just so much good, good about it. I’m just so much more me when I’m doing it that way. Instead of trying to be like newsreader me and like professional me, it’s kind of like when you go to a job interview and like you’re trying to be so professional, you get a bit weird because you’re not actually like how you’d actually be in the workplace after you’ve worked there for a month and you’ve relaxed a bit. So the best way to do a job interview is, is from a more relaxed place of like, I know what I’m doing, I belong here. Instead of like, oh my God, I hope you like me. But we tend to take that job interview energy into marketing and selling.
And the more you can be more like the person who’s walked in the job for a month or three months or a year, and it’s just like, hey, how are you going? Like, that’s so much more the energy, regardless of what kind of business you have. That is so much more connecting and magnetic because there’s so much more certainty that that person has and so much more confidence compared to when we’re in the job interview version of ourselves. And just like, oh my God, I hope they like me and I have to get this job.
And like, I have to say the right thing. And then we just kind of laugh funny or I don’t know. That’s what I used to do in job interviews. Like it’s not really how I am in real life when I’m in a job interview. So and they call it putting your best foot forward in a job interview. But I feel like my best foot forward isn’t actually a job interview. It’s like me when I’m not trying desperately to be liked and to get a job. So anyway, with that said, I will wrap up this episode. I hope you find it incredibly helpful. I hope to see you live at the workshop or to be sending you the replay link will be in the show notes and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.