Episode 408: My Growth Goal Quarterly Review For Quarter 2 2023 ($80,914 In Revenue)

It’s uncommon to hear detailed information about the breakdown of expenses in businesses. I hope by me openly sharing the numbers and providing insight into my business on a quarterly basis, it helps you to be growth minded and to not have your perfectionism handbrake on.

And it’s especially uncommon to hear a detailed breakdown when the quarter didn’t go to plan. We made $80,914 in revenue but after expenses we actually had a significant loss in Q2, 2023.

It’s so easy to interpret things that happen in our business in a way that makes us feel inadequate or incompetent. We can be in a habit of dismissing what is working and complicate things so that we can feel busy and deserving.

I’m excited for you to listen to this episode because you’ll hear how I interpreted Q2’s financial loss without attaching any negative meaning to it and making it mean anything about myself and my abilities.

I’ve made significant progress with my perfectionism so I’m wanting to share these insights with you incase you’ve been feeling behind, thinking you should have everything figured out by now and always be succeeding.

Our brains can convince us that the best way to create success is to put pressure on ourselves. Personally, I used to believe that if I didn’t put pressure on myself, I would be settling for less than what I’m capable of achieving.

However, the pain I experienced during my last launch of Q2 made me realise the detrimental effects of putting pressure on myself. In hindsight I can see that I was spending too much time doing things that essentially was busy work and sacrificed valuable time with my family. This has caused me to look at whats going on and notice where my mind was at so that I can make the changes in order to feel how I want to in my day to day life and create the kind of business I want.

In hindsight, how much pressure have you been putting on yourself?

By listening to this episode, you’ll gain valuable insights into reframing your mindset and approaching challenging situations with resilience and self-compassion. It’s an opportunity to shift your perspective and embrace a growth mindset, regardless of external circumstances.

I hope by hearing me sharing the numbers, how I’m interpreting them, why it’s not a problem that we had a loss this quarter and why it doesn’t mean anything about me it can help release any weight you might have had on your shoulders.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode408.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • How I interpret and handle financial losses in my business
  • How putting pressure on myself had a ripple effect on the decisions I made and the end outcome financially of our Q2 results. 
  • How my self-image shapes my commitment to my growth goal, even when things don’t go to plan
  • How to choose what energy you want to work from
  • What to do when you feel like you should be further along 
  • The new approach I’m taking to build my business without unnecessary pressure

Featured In The Episode:

Listen To The Episode

Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 408 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!

Subscribe To The Perfectionism Project Podcast

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction

Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionist Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business. You can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

Sam Laura Brown

I’m going to be honest with you, I felt a lot of resistance to recording this episode, which I wanted to mention, because you might be under the impression that I never experienced resistance or things like that, even though I talk about it all the time. But I was having the thought that with this episode, I’ve already covered everything in the launch debrief episode that was released before this. And also no one wants to hear what’s been going on. And even as I say it, I know that isn’t true. And even though I love listening to this style of episode, it’s just so easy, isn’t it to just convince ourselves not to do things?

In case you’ve been convincing yourself not to do something and creating all kinds of very real feeling stories about it, do the thing anyway. And trust that once you get started, you’ll actually be like, okay, maybe I will do this, maybe it’s worthwhile, because when I was prepping for this episode, and just looking at all the numbers and getting them from our accounting software, Xero, I got so excited to talk about the numbers and interpreting the numbers. And really, this is on the back of as well doing quite a lot of one on one coaching called inside PGSD.

I’ve been doing these as a bonus as part of the Get out of your own way challenge that we are doing this month in the program. And just hearing how it’s so easy to interpret things in a way that makes us feel inadequate, or incompetent. And we really have this habit of dismissing what’s working, of complicating things so that we can actually just feel busy and deserving. And all those things that we talk about on the podcast just coaching so many PGSDers I did eight calls today. And hearing some of these same themes over and over again, it had me just so excited to talk about the numbers from this quarter, especially since we had a loss in terms of money this quarter, when you just look at the quarter, I’ll be sharing more about that in this episode.

But if you just look at what was the revenue versus expenses, for quarter two, being the first of April to the 30th of June, we had a $48,000 loss. As in we spent $48,000 more than we made. And it’s just so easy to make that mean all sorts of shit. And the fact that I now don’t make it mean not, to me is such a sign of the progress I’ve made with my perfectionism. And I’m just wanting to share some of those insights with you in case you have been feeling behind in case you’ve been feeling like you should be making more money or you should have things figured out by now. Or you should always be succeeding.

I did talk about this a bit more in Episode 407, which was the launch debrief, I really recommend listening to that episode, because that was a major sales event of the only sales event that we had this quarter that was responsible for the revenue. Some of the revenue from this quarter is from payment plans from PGSDers who have signed up before so just for context as well. PGSD is perfectionist getting shit done my group coaching program for perfectionist entrepreneurs, it teaches you how to plan properly as a perfectionist and get out of your own way. So that is where our revenue as a business comes from from that program.

And we have all sorts of expenses associated with running the business. I’ll talk a bit more about the expenses. In this episode, when I do do these Growth Goal update episodes, I do share a little look at the expenses not every single thing. But some of the headline, like biggest expenses that we have just to kind of get a feel for what the business model is and what it looks like. And to help you just really understand as well, because sometimes we don’t that revenue. So say for example, if someone is like, Okay, I had a million dollar launch, that doesn’t mean they have a million dollars in their pocket.

A lot of times that million dollars mean some was cash collected, and some was coming later, hopefully, when people pay their payment plans. And then they might also have advertising expenses, team expenses, software expenses, tax expenses, there are so many expenses that go into things that we often don’t hear about. And so we kind of forget that that’s part of it. So I hope that by me sharing the numbers and really giving you in these episodes, a real insight into the business that I have and how we operate and what things are looking like on a quarterly basis that it can help you to just feel okay about the reality that your business isn’t going to be doubling quarter after quarter after quarter year after year after year.

We hear a lot of success stories, quote unquote, they’re deemed successful when a business is experiencing this rapid growth trajectory. But we often don’t have the full picture. And we often lose sight of the fact that most successful businesses have periods where there will be a loss. And it’s really about your ability as an entrepreneur to keep going and to be growth minded, to not have your perfectionism handbrake on but to be able to take the lessons and keep on going and keep showing up and not make it mean that you’re incompetent, not make it mean that you’re not cut out for business, not make it mean that you’re never going to be successful.

And all of these things that we like to make it mean about ourselves, but to just objectively be like, okay, something about that didn’t work, let’s figure out what it was and then update it and do something differently, or actually just double down on what was working and remove the bits that weren’t. So that’s why I share these episodes. And in case you didn’t know what I mean, when I say a growth goal. So in PGSD, we set a 12 month Growth Goal.

This is a 12 month revenue goal is designed to help you get your perfectionist mindset on your side, get into that growth mindset release your perfectionism handbrake, when we set SMART goals, ie ones that are realistic, it doesn’t bring up our perfectionism. So it actually just serves to reinforce our perfectionism because you can achieve those realistic goals without really having to get out of your own way without really having to grow. The reason a goal feels realistic, is because present day you can achieve it.

And what we’re about in PGSD is growing is getting out of our own way. And so we set a goal, that is just above what we believe is possible for ourselves, we don’t want to make it this big fairy tale thing that we’re just so optimistic about. But actually, there’s no part of us that even believes it can happen. So we don’t really do anything to move forward towards it. And we don’t want it to be so realistic. And that is not actually going to call into question some of the beliefs and our identity, like some of our self image stuff that is holding us back, we want to have it in that sweet spot.

And we help you do this inside PGSD to set your growth goal in a way that’s really going to support you getting out of your own way in your business and achieving not just your short term goals, but your long term goals too. And having you do that in a way that is in alignment with your vision for the business, with your values for your business, and for yourself as a person. So the growth goal that we have, as a company is $1 million Australian in revenue in the year 2023.

So from the first of January to the 31st of December, and in accordance with what we did inside PGSD. Those quarterly milestones increase each quarter. So quarter one is 100k. quarter two is 200k. Three is 300k. And four is 400k. So I shared in the Growth Goal update episode for quarter one, a breakdown of the figures for quarter one we achieved and I haven’t got it in front of me. I do recommend if you find this kind of episode interesting to go and listen to that one. But that that quarter, I think it was about $115,000 for the quarter.

So we surpassed our quarterly milestone that we had in that quarter as well, just in case you aren’t familiar with what I’ve been up to as well, in my personal life. I gave birth to twin boys in February. So they’re nearly five months old now. And I didn’t really work very much at all in quarter one, it was really the team that was doing everything in that quarter. And like I was in my baby bubble. And yeah, really just soaking that in in that quarter. But in that chorus called update, I share more about what that looked like how that revenue was made up and all of that kind of thing.

But I wanted to share with you in this episode, our numbers for this quarter. And also just how to interpret the numbers in a way that’s really going to help you to be successful and feel successful. And then I also just wanted to talk about what my focus is going to be going forward, based on my experience this quarter. So this as well, really, I guess I want to say if you haven’t listened to Episode 407, just hit pause and go and listen to that first because I am going to be talking about things that really flow on from realizations that I had, as a result of our launch that we did this quarter. And so I detail them in that episode.

So I’m going to just kind of assume that you have listened to that. So if you haven’t, I recommend going to listen to that. And then this episode is going to be even more helpful. So when it comes to the numbers of the quarter. So our goal for this quarter was 200k, as I mentioned, and we didn’t change the goal, because we had exceeded our quarter one goal and I’m going to talk about as well why we’re not changing the goal for quarter three even though we didn’t meet our quota to goal.

It’s really important to just keep those milestones the same, especially for the first three quarters and then at the end, you can make up any extra revenue but we don’t want to be in this like Okay, maybe I need to overcompensate or compensate for my lack of achievement last time. Sorry, my words today. So we don’t want to be in this situation and thinking that we need to add extra. And we also want to make sure when we are doing our growth course off. And this is really for the PGSDers who are in the program at the moment. And just something that I’ve been seen in the PGSD forum. And that Daisy who’s head of client success has been talking about with me as well, is that we’ve noticed that PGSDers will often and this is like, perfectionist in general, we will kind of set a goal that’s a bit bigger than what we want to achieve, because we believe we’re not going to get all the way there.

So we think, well, I’ll set that goal. And then if I fail to meet it, I might still get to where I actually want to go. And I know that might sound kind of crazy, but maybe you can relate to that when we’re like, okay, I need to just aim a little bit higher, like kind of like, shoot for the moon, and you’ll land on the stars sort of saying that we want to just have our growth goal milestones be a number that we’re committed to, we don’t want to be in this place of like, okay, maybe I’ll sign 10 clients, or maybe I’ll sign eight clients. But like, we want to be really clear.

Because when we’re clear, that’s when we’re able to plan properly. And we’re able to have the best coaching and self coaching insights possible. If we aren’t clear, it’s really hard to tell what success looks like if we’re succeeding or not, why we’re succeeding, why we’re not succeeding. And we love as perfectionist to be ambitious, but vague. So we love because we have such high regard for ourselves in a lot of way, even though we don’t in many other ways. We believe in our potential, we believe we’re smart, and that we have a lot we can accomplish. So we are really ambitious and optimistic.

And at the same time, we have this shame and inadequacy and feeling like we’re not good enough. And so to protect ourselves, we stay really vague with our goals, because we just feel like conscious or not consciously sorry, unconsciously, that if we’re vague about it, and we just say things like, I want to go full time with my business, I want to make 100k. But we haven’t set really a date, or really mapped out what that could look like. Like we just have these kind of vague ideas, that we’re not then held accountable to it, because it’s very, you can’t be held accountable to something that’s really wishy washy.

And that way, we never have to find out that we’re inadequate, or that we didn’t measure up or that we don’t know what we’re doing. The irony being that when we’re vague, we can’t actually create success. And if we do, we can’t actually feel that success. We want to be specific, so that we are able to be resourceful to be growth minded part of being growth minded is being specific. And this is why we have the growth goal set up in a certain way. It’s why we help you with your growth goal inside PGSD. And we review that for every PGSDer.

It’s so important to set goals in a way that really supports you when it comes to creating long term success in your business. And also long term career satisfaction. If we want to think about your professional development and your professional accomplishments. We want to have you been successful and feeling successful. And when we’re vague and we’re wishy washy, whether that’s with our big goals, like our goal for the year, or whether that is with the goals that we have for a launch, or the goals that we have for social media, if we’re just saying things like I want to be consistent, or things like that it’s so vague, that we get to feel optimistic about being productive.

But yet we’re not actually holding ourselves accountable or giving ourselves an opportunity to be able to objectively say, what is working and what isn’t. And then in that case, we just end up saying like our conclusion when things are vague can only be Well, I’m not good enough. Like we don’t actually get to really see what’s going on. So our goal for this quarter, as I mentioned, was 200k. And the revenue that we had for this quarter was $80,000. And the expenses for this quarter was $134,000.

Roughly speaking, we also received a government grant is called the export marketing development grant. If you’re an Australian, you have an Australian business and you have clients who are overseas, Google that and look into it. But I’m not including that in our revenue for this quarter. So it’s $80,000 and expenses were $134,000. So this quarter wasn’t profitable. It was a I think I said 48,000 Before I know that now the math is looking a bit funky but maybe $54,000 loss we didn’t make money, this caught up, we lost money this quarter.

And so it’s really important to be able to feel okay emotionally about that not in this kind of, like, I don’t even know I’m trying to think about explaining, I talked about this in Episode 407, as well, to just be able to say, we had a goal that we failed to reach. And to not kind of dress it up in this, like, oh, but we learned so many lessons. So it was really a success, like to just be able to say, we failed to meet our goal. And at the same time, that doesn’t mean anything about myself as a person, my ability to run a business, my ability to coach myself or others, I’m able to say at the same time, that the quarter like for our business, we didn’t make money.

And I can still hold that self image, that I am a successful entrepreneur, and coach and I say, coach, because coaching is really like the kind of business that we have, we have a coaching business. And so for myself, my self image is that I’m a coach, and I’m an entrepreneur. And so we want to make sure that when we just have these temporary times where things aren’t going, well, we’re not achieving our goals, that we don’t then bring that over into our self image. And we hold our self image where we want to be. I’ll talk about that a bit more later.

But in terms of expenses, just give you a little breakdown. So it was about $50,000 is Australian, between my salary. And Renae salary. Renae is our full time marketing manager, about $18,000 on contract work. So this is the PGSD coaches, our tech VA, podcast production, things like that, about $5,000 on recruitment related expenses. So something I spent a lot of time on this quarter, was looking to hire an operations manager for the business, I will do an episode at some point soon, on that journey. It’s still in progress. I have so many things, I want to say so many realizations about all of that, like so many things to share there. But about $5,000 on recruitment related expenses.

So that looked like the recruiting agency that I using sprint people, they’re based in Sydney, Naomi and Hannah, who are fantastic, paying a deposit to them for recruiting the position and also some other recruitment related expenses in terms of getting some advice on HR contracts and things like that $18,000 and professional development. So the Life Coach School certification, which I did sign up for long story short, I signed up for last year. But then for some reason, I think my card expired and they didn’t notice and I didn’t notice. So I need to make another payment on that.

So I made that payment in this quarter and also a program called How to CEO, by Kris Plachy and $23,000 on at. And the revenue, as I said is from PGSD, either new PGSDers coming in, or payment plans from previous PGSDers. So I want to talk about, as I said, that quarter this quarter of quarter two wasn’t successful in the sense that we lost a significant amount of money as a business, like we spent more money than we made in this quarter.

But I want to help you just by me doing it, zoom out and really see the bigger picture of things. Because we want to do that. And especially when I think about, I’m 32 at the moment. And hopefully, I am able to continue working for the rest of my life. And save that in that way. Because dad, he’s probably listening. But I have just had it modeled to me that you can love what you do and love learning and growing and working. And I’ve never really had it modeled to me that retirement is the goal. And that that’s something to be aiming towards. And I really would love to be able to continue. I know what the business is going to look like over that time period. But to be able to be having professional pursuits for a long time.

So let’s say like 50 years, if we were to say like, based on this one quarter, I should give up or I should seriously question things or whatever. Like it doesn’t make sense. And I’m only 10 years in to starting my business. And I say only 10 years in because quite a few of the PGSDers that I coach today we’re talking about like, Oh, I’ve been you know, I started my business so long ago and I should have made more money by now and I should be further along. And a lot of these PGSDers were already successful. And some of them just really had this idea of like, okay, everyone else is doing this.

And so I should be there by now and so much weight and shame from not being further along. And it’s when we zoom out, and we look at the bigger picture of our lives, and that longer time span, that it can just be so much easier to really have that perspective of this too shall pass, if it is a period of time that is more challenging. And also 10. Like I said, I’m only 10 years in because in the scheme of things, it is only 10 years. But when we’re very much focused only on the day to day, the week to week, the quarter to quarter, it feels like 10 whole years.

And so we want to really be able to calm our nervous system by zooming out and looking at the bigger picture. And really keeping that in mind. And really, by doing that, helping us to release some of the weight and shame we might have about not being further along, to really just get like, what does that even mean, to be further along, like, and then what you just sit there for 50 years at that amount at that level of achievement. I think a lot of times when we feel like we should be further along in my behind that we’re really only thinking on such a short term basis.

And it’s so valuable to zoom out and really see like, of course, we want to always be learning and growing and like having this big vision and moving towards that and having something that is challenging and rising to that occasion and like having fulfillment come from that. And it’s not about just like who can get to a million dollars the fastest. And then like for myself for so many years, I had this goal of a million, and I hadn’t even invited myself to consider what was beyond that.

So I found that I was unconsciously keeping myself separate from achieving that goal, because I hadn’t zoomed out to figure out what’s next. And so once I really started to create a bigger vision for the business, and in terms of revenue, and the corresponding impact that revenue equates to in terms of the number of people we’re helping, reaching 5 million in revenue in 2025, and 50 million in 2031. That has allowed me to really just not kind of keep holding myself away from what I want. Because it’s like almost feeling like if you are in high school, but you don’t know what’s coming next.

And of course, you’re going to like self sabotage. So you can repeat the year because your brain like wants to know what’s coming. But if you are actually I’m gonna go to college, or I’m going to start a business or there’s this and there’s this and there’s this, then there’s something to work towards. And so you won’t get in your own way as much when you actually know what’s coming next and that there’s more beyond your current goal. So with the year to date. So just to zoom out a little bit, we talked about the quarter. And in that launch day, we’ve episode I talk about the ins and outs of that, that launch and what that looks like and what didn’t work about that.

So now let’s talk about year to date. So this is the six month period we’ve had in 2023. So the goal that we had for being at this point by, you know, the end of June 100k plus 200k equals 300k. And our revenue year to date is $193,000. So one way to interpret this, as a perfectionist is to say how far short we are, it’s kind of like the glass half full and glass half empty. But with goals that I have noticed, a lot of perfectionist will really be focused on what wasn’t made like, Okay, well that means I’m $107,000 short of that goal. But we could look at it as we’ve achieved two thirds of that, like we know how to make that amount of money.

And now we’re just changing the timeframe for making that amount of money. We’ve made 3000 $300,000 before, in this year to date, we made $193,000. And I’ll share that 12 month in a second. But we know how to make that amount of money. And like we’ve if you make $193,000 You can make $300,000 Like I don’t think many people would argue with that. If you make $1, then you can make 10. If you can make 10 You can make 100 If you can make 100 You can make 1000 like inviting yourself to think about your goals that way. If you’ve had a client before, instead of being like, Oh, but I haven’t had one this year and they just came out of the woodwork and whatever to be like I know how to get a client.

Okay, cool. Let’s focus our brain on that. So the same when it comes to goals. So we know how to make money. We know how to sell PGSD. We know how to help people inside PGSD. And really just having that perspective is so freeing and it’s also very productive because it helps us actually to continue showing up and trying things and being growth minded about it. So we have, as I said year to date 193, our goal for quarter three is still going to be $300,000. We’re not going to then add what wasn’t made.

So we’re not going to say, okay, the goal for this quarter was 200k. So we’re at 180 120k. Short. So next quarter should be 300k plus that 120k. So 420k. I hope that’s making sense. We’re not trying to say, Okay, let’s add what wasn’t made this quarter to the goal for next quarter? No, we’re just going to keep the goal for next quarter the same. And then in quarter four, we invite ourselves to overachieve. On that milestone that we have. So that goal we have for where we will be by this time of the year. I hope this is making sense when I was a little numbers.

The goal was 300k, we’re at $193,000. In terms of our expenses, I have written down $22,000, which it wasn’t, it was 220,000ish it must have been. Because when I look at some of the major expenses that we have, oh, yeah, that’s right. So overall, this year, I hope you hear this. Overall, this year, we are at a loss in terms of revenue versus expenses. I just hope you hear that, too. If you are in a situation where you aren’t making the money you want to be making, like it’s not a problem. It’s not a problem. We want to be growth minded about it.

We don’t want to be in this like fairytale thinking about it. But we also don’t need to make that mean, anything about our ability to run a business, you’re probably not here listening to this and thinking like okay, well, Sam should probably just quit, like she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. You’re probably not thinking that maybe you are but you’re probably not. So don’t think that about yourself. So in terms of our expenses, we had about 105,000, this is across the six months between my salary, and Renae is about 36,000 on contract work.

Then we had the recruitment expense, the professional development expense that I mentioned before. And yeah, those the other expenses were pretty similar. And even though we’re an online business, and we have like a whole heap of software subscriptions in the scheme of things like our email client that we use, and things like that, they don’t really cost that much like not enough to be worth mentioning in this. So let’s zoom out again, and look at the 12 month period. So in the last 12 months, our revenue has been $545,000 and expenses $410,000. So this is approximately $150,000 of profit. Plus, there’s me paying myself as well on top of that.

And then there’s also the other expenses that have gone into it. So just knowing that it’s easy to look at like okay, this quarter, we had a loss. And this year, so far, we’ve had a loss. But let’s zoom out even further. And maybe you zoom out further and okay, it’s still a loss, or I’m still not making progress, it’s so important to just be able to not just zoom out and look backwards, but zoom out and look ahead and really see like, as I said, I started my business technically 10 years ago, in 2013. Actually, next month, it will be 10 years ago that I started my blog, which was called SmartTwenties.

And I wasn’t a coach. I didn’t know I was a perfectionist. And I was a full time Uni student I was also working pretty big hours as well in other jobs that I had. And I was so in my own way, like I can’t explain. I mean, I have on this podcast explained how in my own way I was, but crippled by perfectionism when it came to building my business. It’s why I’m so passionate about what we do in PGSD, and helping perfectionist entrepreneurs to get out of their own way. Because I experienced that firsthand.

And really me having the perspective of if I hadn’t been so in my own way, I wouldn’t be able to help people know how to actually get out of their own way. Because it’s easy. If you haven’t experienced that to be like, oh, we’ll just follow through with your plan and just put yourself out there and just tell a friend about what you’re doing, and just do this and just do that. But for me, it was like I knew that and I couldn’t get myself to do it. And I was smart and intelligent and ambitious and driven. And yet I couldn’t get myself to do it.

And then through understanding myself and now through coaching hundreds of other perfections entrepreneurs really understanding why that happens and creating tools, like power planning that actually help you get out of your own way. Like I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing today. If I hadn’t had a period of years, very painful years, so I didn’t make any money until 2016. Like, and even then it took me in 2019 that was when I had my first $100,000 here like in April 2019 That’s when in that I Think financial year, from July to the April in that period, I made $100,000. And I was like, Holy crap. But that was six years after starting my business. And so my hope through this work is that it doesn’t take you as long as it took me.

Because I’m able to now be able to help you get out of your own way not make the same mistakes that I made, like I didn’t have something like power planning, I didn’t have the Growth Goal and things like that to help me. And so I was just really figuring it out and piecing it together. But it’s so important. No matter what your story is, and what kind of business you have to just release any kind of shame that you have about not being further along, and not making the money you want to be making. And that you should know better to be in than to be in the position that you’re in right now.

Like what a gift that you are in the position you are in right now. It is happening for you, that is the mentality that we need to have. And not just intellectually, but really being in the place where we can look at it and just say, actually, what a gift like I truly believe that about my business about this quarter, about so many things. And that has really taken having those perspective shifts and being able to zoom out and see like, this isn’t just a matter of like what I want to be doing for the next couple of years like this is about my professional career, that’s going to continue for 50 more years.

And it’s so like when I look at it in that bigger scheme of things, then what’s a quarter that has a loss, like as long as I’m able to be growth minded about it, and to keep going like the mantra that has always gotten me through, especially in the beginning. If I persist, I will succeed. And within that having trust that when things aren’t working, I will be able to notice, and I will be able to make the necessary adjustments. But if I just keep showing up. It’s not that persistence alone, create success. It’s that persistence plus iteration plus being growth minded.

This is why releasing your perfectionism handbrake is so important. Because if you just persist at the same thing, but keep the same mindset, you’re not going to make the adjustments you need to make that thing successful. So that mantra of if I persist, I will succeed has baked into it, that you are resourceful that you will notice when something isn’t working, the best way to do that is having a growth goal and having power planning and having tools that actually allow you to objectively look at what’s going on and not make it mean something about you.

If you don’t have those tools, you are likely to make it mean all sorts of things about you all social media, or Mark Zuckerberg, or the economy. And to not actually just be like, Oh, hey, I can see that. For example. For myself, for this quarter, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself without really realizing it. And that had a ripple effect when it came to the decisions that we made, where we put our time as a business like everyone on the team, what we did do what we didn’t do the fact that we made the launch really complicated when we could have kept it so simple.

And all these different things like, okay, it’s just really like that pressure. And me feeling like I had to be a certain way to have a real business. That was what didn’t work. And now I can change that and have a new approach to building the business. Because even though even though my brain is very convinced that putting pressure on myself, is the best way to create success, the pain that I experienced with this last launch, not related to the money of it, but related to the overworking that I was doing the time that I could have been spending with my family that I was spending on the business and doing things that essentially were busy work that was so painful to me to have my time that I can’t recruit, go there.

And so it really caused me to sit up and take a look at what was going on and to notice where my mind was at and the changes that need to happen. So that I can really feel how I want to feel in my day to day life and also create the kind of business that I want to create. So when it comes to just looking at the quarter and the way to interpret that one interpretation is the business is going backwards. We’re losing money, we need to cut expenses, the bank account is dwindling or whatever. Another interpretation is I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not cut out to run a business. But this is the way that I interpret it.

A business can never go backwards. All businesses have ebbs and flows in their revenue and expenses as they experiment and learn. I know how to get this working. I’m going to keep trying until I figure it out. The more pressure I put on myself and the more rush I am, the less money we make. So I know it’d be onto myself when I feel that happening and to try a different way. Basically, I know what I’m doing, I’ve got this, and really be in that approach of this quarter has just given me and our team data that we really need it. And I’m so grateful that it didn’t work.

Because if we had hit that goal and done it from this really rushed and pressured place, then it would have just reinforced that that is the best way to do it. And if we had had a normal SMART goal, we can achieve those goals with this rush and this pressure and really having our perfectionism handbrake on. And then this is where we end up in the mentality of like, okay, well, I do things at the last minute, but that works really well for me, and I always do well, but it’s like, okay, maybe you just haven’t actually had a goal that really calls that habit into question enough.

You want to have a goal that’s actually going to have you examining things that aren’t working for you. And even though you might say, well, you know, it does work for me to do it, the last minute, is really looking at or what is the cost for you to do things at the last minute, if you truly plan to do it last minute and do it last minute, that’s not a problem. But if you in your mind, you probably already know you won’t do it until the last minute. But you’re thinking about it, it’s taking up a lot of mental energy, you’re getting stressed about it, then you put in this last minute effort, then you get burnt out and you’re in that cycle that is so expensive for your life, for your goals that you have for who you want to be as a person.

And when you have realistic goals, that that’s not going to be called into question because you’ll be successful, you’ll be achieving it. And I know that like I said this in the launch debrief episode past me looking at the numbers of like having an 80k, or I can’t remember what the numbers were actually for the launch for our revenue, but basically having an 80k quarter like, oh my god, that’s amazing. But looking at really going okay, but I want to actually have that be in a way that feels good.

And also now like, because I know what’s possible, when my handbrake isn’t on, and I’ve had a glimpse of that, I can see that when I put pressure on myself, my performance is lowered. But before when I’d never not put pressure on myself, I didn’t get to see what I was capable of when I wasn’t putting pressure on myself. So my interpretation of the result of this quarter is really as I said, a business can never go backwards. All businesses have ebbs and flows in their revenue and expenses as they experiment and learn. I know how to get this working, I’m going to keep trying to figure it out.

And I want you to take this same interpretation if you need it. For where you’re at right now, if you’ve had been feeling like you’re behind you’re not making the money you should be you should be further along, you should be on top of things you should be getting ahead and you’re not, to just really recognize that you know how to get it working, and that you’re going to keep trying until you figure it out. So when it comes to my focus for the remainder of the year, for the last six months of the year, I’m really taking the pressure off myself to achieve the goal that we have for the business of a million dollars. But I want to be so clear, that doesn’t mean we’re lowering the goal.

And it doesn’t mean I’m being uncommitted to the goal and going into this like, Okay, well, I just need to get into alignment. And I just want to spend time with my kids and all that, like, I do want to do those things. And I want to do those things, by achieving the goal. And by having that goal be something that teaches me how to show up in a way that is simple and easy. And it’s recognizing that like I have tried pushing myself to my goals, it has worked when I’ve had smaller goals. And even when I’ve had bigger goals, sometimes it’s worked even though it hasn’t actually when I look at the burnout and things like that I haven’t burnt out now in years.

But really recognizing thanks to my growth goal, not pushing myself and being in a rush to try and like I talked about this in the launch debrief episode, to be a good leader and to be having this more like professional, legitimate kind of business and like having things feel a certain way, because I wasn’t feeling a certain way that that doesn’t work. And I need to take a different approach. And something that I think is really important to note because I know for a lot of us that it feels really uncomfortable, to not be putting pressure on ourselves.

We think that we’re going to miss something important. We think we’re not going to achieve as much and a lot of us are in the mentality of like I’d rather achieve a lot and be feeling pressure and burn out than to not achieve as much as much as I think I could. The irony again being that when we put pressure on ourselves, we actually don’t reach our full potential. We want to have this kind of Like, healthy pressure, if we want to call it that, there’s probably a better word for it. But there’s a healthy amount of courage that’s needed and challenge.

We’re not saying that things aren’t going to be challenging. But often the most simple, easy way to do things, is the most challenging way to not overcomplicate it is challenging, because our brain wants to add complexity when we’re scared. It wants to keep us busy with so many different things. And actually, the most courageous thing to do it to the most courageous way to do something, is often the most direct way, the most obvious way to do it. And to be able to be with the discomfort of letting it be simple, letting it be easy. Any feelings we have about being undeserving.

Or what if people realize I don’t know what I’m doing, or what I’m going to do with all this extra time on my hands. And I’m not busy enough, and all of that to just do it in the most direct way. But what I wanted to mention is that, we think that if we aren’t putting this pressure on ourselves, that we are settling for less Am I capable of achieving. And what I recognize, at least for myself, or just talk for myself, the other day is that what is settling is never letting myself be happy and never appreciating myself that is settling when it comes to my life to not actually acknowledge myself to let myself be in a situation where I don’t feel acknowledged, because I’m not acknowledging me because I’m not seeing myself.

If you are feeling misunderstood by people, or unseen or unheard, like, that’s what you need to give yourself. And really, when I look at what it means to be successful, and we’ve been talking about this in the Get out of your own way challenge inside PGSD, like what would need to happen for you to be feeling successful, and also, in terms of like your lifestyle and things like that.

But if you were hitting your goal, what things might I’m trying to think of how I worded this, but basically, how could it be that you might still feel unsuccessful, like what might be going on that would make you still feel unsuccessful, even if you’re hitting your financial goals, and for a lot of PGSDers that we’re saying things like, Okay, well, if I, you know, if my relationships went to shit, then even if I was hitting my financial goals, I wouldn’t be feeling successful.

Or I didn’t have time for a certain hobby, or if I, you know, just wasn’t feeling aligned with my business. And I felt like I was doing something that I actually don’t believe it, and then I wouldn’t feel successful. And it’s really important to get clear on those things. And to know that, we are really able to create a business where we don’t have to feel this like pressure and rush from a place of, I’m inadequate, I’m incompetent, and I need to try desperately to prove to myself otherwise. But really being able to look at I can create success. And I’m not just thinking about that in terms of revenue, and like, Okay, well, I’d rather be making money. And, you know, people say like, you know, you’d rather be crying in a Ferrari than like out in the streets, or whatever that saying is that we want to look at, like bit seriously.

What conditions do you want to have, and making sure we check in on that. And we’re not like creating anything too honor us. But knowing that there are so many things that are important in our life, and really questioning our belief that says we can only have financial success or business success, if we are willing to be burnt out if we are willing to be under pressure, if we are willing to be incredibly stressed if we are willing to work long hours to really question all of that. For me, I have, especially in 2022, we made about $600,000, I have never worked less hours than I did in that year. And we have never been more successful or more impactful as a business.

But you only get to have those realizations when you create the opportunity to have those realizations when you actually take the pressure off yourself when you actually let yourself do things in a simple and easy way. So my goal, my work really for the rest of the year, is taking the pressure off. But not doing that, as I said, By lowering the goal or being uncommitted. I mean, like, Okay, well, I need to rethink everything or whatever. It’s the same goal. And it’s me approaching it in a more growth minded way where I’m not in a rush or trying to prove something to myself, or prove something to others, but actually getting comfortable being on top of things.

I’m going to talk about this in an upcoming episode. But now that I’m really focusing my time on self coaching and coaching and sharing those realizations and epiphanies, through the podcast and continuing to develop power planning and all of those tools that feels so easy. And I can feel myself wanting to complicate it, because surely I can’t just be chatting all day and then actually create a really successful business. And so I can feel the discomfort in being ahead of schedule, getting things done early and easily. Keeping things simple, and not feeling like I’m putting enough effort in.

And my work is to let that still be the way that I operate that I’m letting things be easy that I am really operating with simplicity in mind, and then doing the self coaching on what is needed. In order for me to continue showing up that way, versus keeping myself busy with all the over complication and all the ripple effect that comes from that. So really, as well, my work is in acknowledging myself wanting what I already have, and creating from that space.

So really, and this, especially with having my kids and the like, there’s so much in my life that pass me wanted, I know, this is the most cliche thing to say, but really pass me like being in the situation we’re in like the house we live in, the way the business looks, the like our family, and what that looks like, like, I have what I want. And yet, especially this quarter in quarter two that we’re talking about, I didn’t allow myself to just be present with the fact that I have what I want and letting myself want what I have. And just being in this rush for like bigger and better and the next stage.

And I really feel like just being able to work from this calm and grounded place. And being able to just acknowledge myself and appreciate myself, and what I have and know that that is the the most potent fuel for growth that we think like if we actually want what we already have, we’re not going to be ambitious anymore, that we’re going to get complacent that we are going to not reach our potential. And people talk about having this kind of, you know, you want to have this level of dissatisfaction with your life. So you can achieve more. But then what’s the point of achievement if you’re dissatisfied? Like it’s really questioning that whole construct of like, what’s the point of reaching your potential if it feels like shit on the way there and when you get there? Because it’s still not good enough?

Like, what is the point of that, and to really recognize, as people talk about, like gratitude and wanting what you have, and actually celebrating your success, and what’s working, and being really present with that, that really fuels you in such a it’s like this clean fuel that you get to use. And I know that for myself, when I really get pressed into that I only have more creative ideas. I have cleaner clean rest, I just like everything gets better. That doesn’t mean that aren’t obstacles and challenges and limiting beliefs and my perfectionism handbrake coming on and all of that.

But it just means that we can choose if we want to work from this pressure rushed, stressed inadequate place. Or if we want to work from a place of adequacy, sufficiency, and appreciating ourselves and acknowledging ourselves and knowing that if we do that, it’s not going to make us less ambitious, less lovable. Like that’s the reason we want to achieve stuff is because we have associated that with love.

And so really knowing that we are not going to be depriving ourselves of love, if we start putting pressure on ourselves that we are not going to be holding ourselves apart from what we want, if we actually let ourselves enjoy the process and do things that are simple and easy and get into alignment and all of those other things that come with actually figuring out and this is what we do in PGSD like how to actually really create a business that isn’t just a business you should create but a business you really want to create. And it’s just the shoulds that can be so heavy.

And I know that especially in quarter two, I had a lot of them of what I should be able to do what things should be looking like and it really feels shit and it doesn’t get me anywhere. And even if it gets me somewhere I don’t even appreciate it when I get there because if you think about like how you get there is the same kind of stance or posture or energy that you’re going to have when you get there. And if you’re not a appreciative on the way that you’re not suddenly going to switch into gratitude and switch into self appreciation.

We all know, because I know if you’re listening to this, and you can relate to me that you are someone who achieves stuff, that you, when you get close to a goal, you just set the next one, by the time you achieved that, and you’ve not even really celebrated on odors, because you’re already so busy thinking about the next thing. And so for me, my lesson really, from this quarter, quarter two such a big lesson, such an important lesson is just seeing, like, me putting pressure on myself, which I hadn’t even realized I was doing.

But putting pressure on myself being in such a rush, it’s meant not only have I had to spend a lot of time cleaning up the mess, of being in that rush, which has slowed me down meant that the pace were moving as much slower, I was just actually working from a common ground and place. But it just doesn’t work, ultimately. And I think for all of us, we will at some point, have an experience where something it feels like doing that and walking in that way works.

And then we get to have the gift of an experience where we learned that it doesn’t and that we don’t want it. And then when we have that chance, we really get to have the opportunity to learn from that. And there is a difference between self awareness and self coaching. And being able to say, okay, yes, I have the awareness that working from pressure doesn’t help. And then there’s actually been able to change your brain. So you stop working from a place of pressure, and your growth goal, your power planning, like what we do in PGSD. That’s what actually helps you do that.

Because you might be thinking like, Okay, well, I have the awareness, like I’ve had that kind of epiphany about like working from pressure doesn’t work. Or even if it does work in the sense that I achieve that goal. I don’t like it. But I just if you feel like you have that intellectual understanding, but your life looks the same. It’s because you don’t have that coaching, you don’t have the self coaching the coaching from others, like those mental shifts that are needed to have you turn intellectual understanding and self awareness into a different reality for yourself.

And I know so many people in the personal development space, talk about the importance of self awareness, and that a lot of us have frustration when we have self awareness without change, to create self awareness. With change. You need to have tools to help you need to have coaching, you need to be able to actually change the way you’re seeing things change the way you’re seeing yourself, change the way you’re seeing your business. And so if you just have self awareness, and you haven’t created change, don’t beat yourself up about that.

Because sometimes self awareness within that self awareness will create those epiphanies needed. But a lot of times it won’t. And we need to actually do the work to connect those dots for our brain that’s going to keep being like Yeah, but you know what, I do feel more comfortable working from pressure. Like I know what that feels like, even though it sucks, like I kind of know how the world works. I know what to expect. I have this sense of control when I’m putting pressure on myself.

So it’s going to take a minute to unlearn it. So when it comes to okay, what are my next steps with this? It’s really using self coaching, getting coached by others, using my growth goal using my power planning to do that, because it’s not enough to just say, okay, realize putting pressure on myself wasn’t helpful. Okay, but now what, what tools am I going to use, and unsurprisingly, that’s my growth goal and power planning and getting coached by others and doing my own self coaching, because that’s what’s going to help me actually not be putting that pressure on myself.

And thankfully, because of those tools, I have learned how to show up in a way where I’m not putting pressure on myself and just having this different season of life, where I had the boys and the businesses looking different and things like that, that it’s easy for that perfectionism handbrake to come back on into like when things are feeling uncertain, to want to have these this sense of control and to have those perfectionist tendencies come up. And that’s not a problem. And I hope that by me sharing that has happened for me when I’ve gone through a life transition that when you do the same, you are not going to beat yourself up about it.

But now what it’s not a matter of like, okay, I’m just going to tell myself Done is better than perfect. Or I’m just going to not put pressure on myself. Like I need practical tools to do that. So I’m going to be using the tools that I teach in PGSD. I’m going to be getting my own support and coaching and doing myself coaching. I do want to mention that we will be opening the doors to PGSD for our October cohort in September. So the enrollment period for that it’s going to be a one week enrollment.

That is happening in mid September. So if you want to join the waitlist for PGSD, it’s samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to get the details for that. But I hope that by helping me chat through this here about what the numbers are, how I’m interpreting them. Why it’s not a problem, that we had a loss this quarter Wait doesn’t mean anything about me, I hope it can help you just like, release some of that weight that you might have had on your shoulders into just give yourself the chance to say, okay, I can just not keep dragging the pause with me.

And all these shoulds of like, what I should have done by now, or where I should be by now to call myself good enough to call myself lovable. And I’m just going to let that be a gift. It’s been the perfect timing to ask your brain how that might be true. Why is this a perfect timing? To be recommitting to your business recommitting to yourself and ideally setting a growth goal using power planning like why is is the perfect time. And just knowing that in the bigger picture of things, that it’s all going to make sense that you weren’t further along by now that it’s all happening for a reason.

And that it’s all serving you and that there were lessons that you needed to have within that time period that are going to save you pain in the future, and that there are certain lessons that none of us get to avoid. And so what a gift that you’ve had some of those already. So yeah, hope has been helpful. If it has take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram, I’m @perfectionismproject. I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I invite you to sign up to receive a short daily perfectionist power up from me. These are little notes and reminders sent to you via email that’ll help you plan properly as a perfectionist and get you out of your own way. So you can go to Samlaurabrown.com/power to sign up today and you’ll start receiving motivating perfectionist power-ups this week.

Author: Sam Brown