
You have probably heard business advice around just doing the things you know you need to do, including putting yourself out there and telling people about your business (e.g. social media, another visible channel). And if you’re a perfectionist, it’s likely that you haven’t been able to do it.
This is something I’ve helped perfectionist entrepreneurs with, and I’ve also had to work on it a lot for myself when starting my business. In fact, I was so scared of putting myself out there that it took three years for me to make my first dollar in my business and six years to get to six figures!
If this struggle is something you can relate to, this episode is going to be a relief. Because I want you to know that there isn’t anything wrong with you – it’s just one of the ways perfectionism can stop your business from growing.
I share more about why that is + the three practical steps that you can follow to create safe visibility for yourself in your business. You can use those steps today to be able to show up and start putting yourself out there without freaking your brain out, or burning yourself out either.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode455.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- What safe visibility is and how it will help you put yourself out there
- The 3 steps to creating safe visibility
- The specific challenges that perfectionist entrepreneurs have with social media
Featured In The Episode:
- Free training: How To Plan Properly As A Perfectionist with Power Planning
- Join the waitlist for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) – samlaurabrown.com/pgsd
- Take The Perfectionism Quiz: samlaurabrown.com/quiz
- Sign up for daily Perfectionist Power-Ups – samlaurabrown.com/power
- Follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject
Free Training: How To Plan Properly As A Perfectionist With Power Planning
If you want to get shit done without burning out, I invite you to watch the free training I’ve created on how to plan properly as a perfectionist with Power Planning. By the end of the series, you’ll be ready to start using Power Planning today to get your perfectionist mindset on your side so you can get out of your own way.
Watch the Power Planning training here: samlaurabrown.com/plan
Take The Perfectionism Quiz To Get Your Perfectionism Score
If you’re not sure whether perfectionism is what’s making you get in your own way, I invite you to take The Perfectionism Quiz. It takes less than 3 minutes to get your unique result and be one step closer to getting shit done without burning out. If you love learning about yourself and you’re ready to get out of your own way, take the quiz today.
Take The Perfectionism Quiz today: samlaurabrown.com/quiz
Work With Me:
My coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) teaches you how to plan properly as a perfectionist so you can get out of your own way in your business. To find out more about the program and be the first to know when the doors open, join the waitlist today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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 455 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!
Subscribe To The Perfectionism Project Podcast
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts (iPhone only)
- Google Podcasts (Android only)
- Stitcher
- Castbox
- TuneIn
- Overcast

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
Today I want to share with you how to create safe visibility when it comes to your business. My hope for this episode is twofold. First of all, that this just feels like a warm hug because you have probably been surrounded by advice, that you should just be doing the things you know you need to do, and putting yourself out there and telling people about it and selling and posting, and you haven’t been able to do it and maybe be thinking there’s something wrong with you. So if that’s the case, this episode is going to be quite a relief. But I also want to share with you three practical steps that you can follow to create safe visibility for yourself in your business. And you can use those steps today to be able to show up and start putting yourself out there without freaking your brain out, or burning yourself out either.
So when it comes to a safe visibility, this is something that I help my clients with. And it’s also something that I have done a lot of work on a lot, a lot a lot for me when it came to starting my business. So I started in 2013, the biggest struggle that I had, and really ultimately, what made me realize that I was a perfectionist, and that perfectionism was actually stopping my business from growing was that I had such a hard time sharing what I was doing with people in my real life and being visible as the real me to them. Because I was actually sharing things on my blog. That’s how this business started as a blog, I was sharing things that felt so much like the real me that it felt very, very vulnerable and very risky to actually share that with people in case they laughed at me. In case they thought, Who do you think you are like, I just was so judgmental of myself that I projected that judgment onto everyone else around me and imagine that they were doing the same thing.
So I was just so debilitated by the fears that I had around putting myself out there that it meant it took three years for me to make my first dollar in my business, it took me six years to get to six figures in my business. And even though today I’ve made over 2 million in my business. And I have been able to do that by being visible and doing things like this recording a podcast episode. But it has been a journey to get here. And so I just want to say at the outset, as I’ve already briefly mentioned, that if this is something that you were struggling with that it doesn’t mean that you aren’t cut out for actually showing up online and sharing things.
And my guess is if you can relate to the things I share on this podcast, you are someone with a lot of ideas, you have a lot that you want to share with the world. But you stop yourself from actually sharing it, that you have this amazing flow of ideas, like lack of ideas is definitely not your problem. But you stop yourself from sharing them and from implementing them. Because of the self judgment you have. And because of the way that you think others will judge you. And so we want to make sure that we actually do the work to create safe visibility for yourself for your brain, so that you can implement the marketing strategies that you’ve learned so that you can actually do the post and do it consistently. And do that over an extended period of time in a really sustainable way.
If you don’t feel safe, putting yourself and your ideas out there, then you’re going to burn yourself out, you’re going to be on and off the wagon constantly, you’re gonna get stuck in research mode, you’re gonna get stuck in the editing phase of content creation, all because it’s scary to put yourself out there when your perfectionist brain is thinking about it in a certain way. So when it comes to social media in particular, I want to talk about this. But this can obviously come up in other ways as well. But this is just typically what I see with my clients. I work with perfectionist entrepreneurs, from a whole range of industries. A lot of creative entrepreneurs, like photographers and artists and writers, for example, I work with other coaches like myself, ecommerce store owners, real estate agents, dancers, there are so many different kinds of entrepreneurs that I work with, but most of them need to do marketing, all of the needs to do marketing, most of them don’t have someone else who is doing the marketing for them.
And for a lot of the perfectionist entrepreneurs that I work with, they are either the face of their business, or they are the person that has the knowledge and the wisdom to share with others. And so particularly if that is the case, then you might find that safe visibility is gonna make the biggest difference because if you are feeling unsafe putting yourself out there and you’re perfectionist all or nothing mindset has you feeling like an impostor like if you don’t know absolutely everything and you have all the Perfect qualifications and you don’t know anything at all, like, our brain can do crazy things to convince us not to put ourselves out there. And it’s doing its job. If your brain is doing that you have a very smart brain, but you need to outsmart your brain.
And so what I’m going to be talking about in this episode is going to help you really right size, those fears that you have around putting yourself out there and give you a few new perspectives, so that it feels safer. So when it comes to this topic of safety, I just want to mention as well that it’s really important to understand this. And I just, I really, if you don’t understand this the first time I say it, like, rewind and listen back, because you need to understand how your brain can play tricks on you. So when it comes to safety, there’s feelings of safety. And there’s circumstances of safety. So I’ll share an example to help you understand what I’m talking about here.
So I have a toddler, Lydia, I have two twin sons as well, Jack and James who have just recently turned one. But my toddler Lydia, when we are going for a walk, if there’s a thunderstorm, even if it’s just thunder, there’s no lightning and the thunder is very far away, she will tell us that she feels scared by the thunder. She’ll say I feel scared. And she’ll just kind of be body language wise, like she’ll put her shoulders up and try and crouch her head in. And she’ll kind of like walk in this very slow way. And she say, I feel scared by the thunder. She’s circumstantially in a very safe situation, the thunder can’t harm her. And yet she has very real and valid feelings of fear. And our brains do this that we can be circumstantially in safe situations. And our brain can tell us that it is unsafe.
So this is a concept we need to understand when it comes to safe visibility, because a lot of the unsafety, so to speak, like the danger that we perceive around visibility is the equivalent of the thunder. And that even though yes, there could be that lightning suddenly comes from the sky. And it happens to strike later and all of that, it’s so so, so unlikely, but our brain doing its job loves to focus on the danger, because it’s wired for survival. So it needs to be on high alert and be looking out for things. And so when it comes to visibility, and showing up and putting ourselves out there, if you are wanting to make, for example, six figures from your business, you are not going to need to be exposed to that many people.
And most likely, at least this is what myself and so many of my clients have found as well, that when you are zero to six figures, especially and even beyond that, that a lot of times people who follow you are so supportive, like we imagine the worst, but actually, they are so supportive, and they are so forgiving, and they’re not going to cancel you. But we just love to imagine the worst, because that’s how our brain works. Our brain is doing the smart thing to do that. So as I said, we need to outsmart our brain. And part of that is understanding that just because we feel unsafe in our body, doesn’t mean that we are circumstantially unsafe. This isn’t saying not to trust the feelings in your body, the feelings in your body are very important to pay attention to, to allow to process.
But we can’t believe everything we think. And we can’t believe everything we feel we want to hold space for that feeling without having to always react to it. Because the way that our brain is wired to keep us surviving, and doesn’t really care if we thrive or not. It just wants to make sure we’re surviving. If you are wanting to build your business and really create an extraordinary life for yourself, then you will need to put yourself in situations that your brain tells you is unsafe. And you will need to be able to talk it around and help it see that actually, it just has the wrong perception. It just actually doesn’t have all the information the same way that Lydia doesn’t yet understand at two and a half, that thunder can’t hurt her. It’s a loud noise. And she has a thought that makes her feel unsafe in her body.
Her interpretation of the thunder is what creates that physical feeling, not the circumstance itself. So we just want to separate that out. But I want to talk specifically as well about a few of the different platforms and things like that because they can bring up specific thoughts we have that make us feel unsafe. And you might be aware of some of these you might not be aware of some of these. But again, if you have been getting in your own way when it comes to putting yourself out there, you know what to do but you’re just not doing it, then it can be really helpful to know this because it will just help you understand how your perfectionist brain is interpreting certain things and why that is making you feel unsafe in your body even though you are not actually unsafe.
So when it comes to TikTok and Reels and those kinds of platforms, where there’s the opportunity for virality, and having a million or more people see your posts, that on the surface, like intellectually, you might be working towards having a viral post or having a lot of engagement and also with our perfectionist like people pleasing inside of things, and we want validation from others. And we like want the validation of the likes, and the comments and everything like that, at the same time, that possibility to have yourself thrust into the spotlight is how our brain is perceiving it. Even though that’s not the case, some people will see it, they won’t even watch the whole thing, they won’t really even care, they’ll just scroll to the next thing. But our brain makes it this massive deal.
And so if you find that, for example, when it comes to Reels, that you just get stuck editing things and you’re like, but I really like editing videos, and I definitely want to make sure it’s perfect. And that I’m really proud of the work that I’m doing, I really want to make sure I’m helping people this is really high quality, I want to make sure I have the right music, it’s a trending sound, whatever, whatever. That that is just your brain giving you lots of nice excuses to not post the thing. Because it is perceiving posting, as you risking a lot of visibility that you don’t believe currently you can emotionally handle, I won’t talk about it in depth in this episode. But perfectionist tend to have this self image that they can’t handle a lot.
And this is a really interesting thing to look at, because you probably believe you’re a highly capable person. And yet, you get overwhelmed evil easily and you feel like you actually can’t handle a lot and you’re scared to feel helpless. So if that’s the case for you that know that tick tock and rails and things like that, if you’re getting stuck with it, and maybe you’ve done a course or a program, about the how to have it, and you’re not actually able to get yourself to do it. Or you do it for a couple of days or a couple of weeks and you fall off the wagon, the distance relates back to safe visibility and not having it and your perfectionist brain freaking out and we just need to calm it down. So you can implement the strategies that you know.
Posting consistently. So the reason our perfectionist brain doesn’t like this, as much as it really, really, really wants to be consistent and to be showing up and posting is because posting consistently create a body of work that can be judged when we are posting really inconsistently. It keeps us safe because we’re never actually showing up fully. And for me in particular when it came to the early days. And I’ve done work on this at various stages of building my business. But when I had my blog in the beginning, that I was so scared to post consistently, even though that’s all I wanted, like it was just the biggest dilemma, because I just really wanted to be motivated to post consistently and to have that be easy for me. But I would stop myself because it felt so vulnerable to actually be giving a full effort and to create a body of work that could then be judged and criticized and ridiculed by others.
Social media. So just social media in general, whether that is Instagram or TikTok, or LinkedIn, any kind of platform that you are posting on, where as soon as you hit publish, the opportunity begins for someone to hit like or to not like it to comment, to leave a hate comment to not comment at all to send you a DM to not send you a DM like all of that when it comes to social media, in general, that our perfectionist brain that is so desperate for others to approve of us because we don’t approve of ourselves that we just feel like that social media, like if you have a love hate relationship, or maybe a hate hate relationship with platforms like Instagram, it’s often because of that instant feedback loop. And the opportunity that gives our perfectionist brain to judge ourselves to ridicule ourselves to tell ourselves that we’re not good enough that were not actually able to build the business, we want to build that, you know, we don’t look good enough and all of that kind of thing.
When it comes to showing your face on social media. And I want to talk about this specifically. Because this is something a lot of perfectionist entrepreneurs grapple with is there’s this extra layer of perfectionism that comes up when it comes to showing your face. So obviously there are certain platforms like YouTube, for example, where you are likely to be showing your face or maybe you’re doing Instagram lives and things like that. I’ll talk about live streaming and long form content in a second. But where you are showing your face that maybe it’s just on stories, it could even be somewhere like in a photo, for example, on Instagram or wherever else that having your face be there to brings up this extra layer of self criticism when it comes to your appearance and how you don’t look good enough or maybe you weigh too much or you need to get your teeth fixed or whatever personal insecurity as you have about yourself, showing your face brings up this extra feeling of not being safe on top of what’s already there.
Because you feel ripe for criticism, because you’re projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else you’ve also witnessed, probably, if you’re doing a lot of scrolling or social media, this does not help at all with this side of things. If you are scrolling social media, this is why I don’t. One of the reasons why. But if you were scrolling and you see other people getting judged all the time in the comments, and you’re reading comments, and maybe you’re judging other people yourself, then you are going to especially be projecting that onto other people as well. And when it comes to long form content, so say, for example, doing podcast episodes, or things like that, that you will feel like there are so many opportunities to make mistakes and say the wrong thing. And for people to find out, you have no idea what you’re doing that you either need to script every single sentence or you need to do a million tags of it over and over and over and over and over again, to be able to get it right.
So you might find that if you were someone who loves consuming long form content, and you want to create that long form content, that if you don’t have safe visibility, that you find that really challenging, and you get so bogged down in production of things, because you just haven’t created that safe visibility that I will teach you in this episode how to create. So just a few other ways as well that we allow ourselves. And I think it’s great that we do this, like our brain is really doing its job here. And it’s just got a few misconceptions and thought errors that has us thinking the visibility is unsafe, particularly the levels we’re gonna have. But our brain is trying to keep us safe. And some of the ways we do that, is we have insanely high criteria or expectations around what a good post is.
And we need to make sure we look as attractive as we possibly can, that we’re all put together, that we have makeup on that we have the best outfit we can have, that we say the right thing, that there are no mistakes, that we’re seeing something that is going to be original perhaps, and is going to be life changing for someone, but it’s definitely not going to trigger anyone or offend anyone. And it’s definitely not going to be controversial and therefore attract haters. And we just have all of this subconscious often criteria, then it comes to graphics and branding and color schemes and post formats. And we just have this really high criteria around what it means to do a high quality post, that is actually extremely excessive, and is just a way that we get to hide because it’s so hard to meet that standard. And it’s very, very hard to do it consistently.
So we can hide behind. Well, I just really liked doing high quality work. And I want to make sure that I’m really helping people, and that it really looks good. And I’m making a good first impression. That is just us hiding. We’re scared of this shame that we would experience if we are judged. And when we’re judging ourselves that so much of the fear of judgment, we’re just scared of self judgment, a lot of safe visibility work that we need to do is around changing the way that you talk to yourself and judge yourself. Because we are scared of the shame we will feel from our own self judgment. Perfectionism is a strategy to avoid shame. We think that if we just look perfect, and do everything perfectly, we can avoid shame, judgment and blame. And we inflict that shame on ourselves by judging ourselves. And we love having really high standards for things.
So that it’s really hard to actually create anything and therefore judge ourselves. Of course, the hard part is that if you are wanting to do something and you’re consistently not doing it, then you will begin judging yourself for not doing the thing. So I would much rather be showing up and putting myself out there and judging myself for that and learning to change that. Then not showing up and not putting myself out there. And then judging myself and feeling ashamed of it that way. Basically, if I’m going to have shame either way, I’d rather have it on the way to my dreams, then not doing anything at all.
Another way that we hide when we aren’t feeling safe around the invisible is that we’re constantly rethinking messaging and niche and target audience and product market fit and reading books about it and listening to podcasts about it. And just doing all these brainstorming sessions about it. We want to have this crystal clear clarity. And we think that we need to have that and we need to have this big vision in order to be able to put ourselves out there. We don’t want to waste any effort or time. Really, we’re just scared of putting ourselves out there. And part of entrepreneurship is being willing to evolve in public to be willing to update your ideas to update your product. And to not make that mean this is a really important shift you need to make as an entrepreneur.
Improving something doesn’t mean the past version of it was wrong. And this is probably why in a lot of ways you are resisting, actually like doing true self improvement, so to speak, like actually really changing your life because of how you’re going to make yourself wrong for not doing it sooner or having to be better because you weren’t good enough. And I love talking about personal development in the sense that it is not actually like there’s something wrong with you and that your broken, real true personal development is loving yourself as you are and then changing because you want to not change him because you’re broken, or you need to be better or be your ideal self.
We also love getting busy with learning things, also with all the tools. So there’s cameras and microphones. And maybe there’s like an auto prompt, or whatever you call it. I’m not someone that writes scripts for things. So I don’t really know all that stuff. But there’s things to help you with scripts, and there’s AI and ChatGPT, and all of that kind of thing that we get so busy perfecting the tools. So we don’t actually have to post and show up and put ourselves out there. We can convince ourselves like I just like editing, I just love editing videos, I find that really enjoyable. Do you? Or are you scared of putting yourself out there. And so often, like I’ve had so many of my clients say this, I’ve heard friends say this as well, that we’re just like, but I just really enjoy doing, I want to have a business where I’m doing things I love.
None of them are in a video production business. But of course it feels good to polish and perfect. This post you’re going to put out there instead of in that same hour, recording 10 of them and hitting publish or scheduling them for the next week, it feels so much better and easier. And I know I have done it myself to just be tweaking and like making those little changes that we think are going to make or break we’re in that all or nothing perfectionist mindset. So just be on to yourself when you’re like I like editing, I really love it. And another thing we do is not showing our face unless it is perfect. And so you might spend a lot of time on your appearance on doing your makeup and your hair and fixing that and trying to really make that better. So that you can actually do it. You can do filters and all those different things like you’re really just trying to make sure you look good, so that your appearance isn’t criticized.
And so that obviously is time consuming and mind consuming as well. And really, it just feels scary to post. So now I want to share with you three steps to create safe visibility for yourself. When it comes to your business. This is something that you will definitely get help with inside my program perfectionist getting shit done. But I want to lay out the steps for you in this episode, so that you can start implementing and creating safe visibility for yourself in your business. So the first step is to meet yourself where you are, instead of expecting yourself to be better and to be able to record yourself and put yourself out there in your face out there and do all these different things that you should be able to do by now especially because you’ve been in business so long and learning about it so long you’re so behind. Instead of that to actually meet yourself where you are and work with what you have got.
So inside my program, there is a bonus called the align marketing bonus. So that will really help you with this in particular. But if you are struggling to actually show up and be visible, a lot of it typically is that you are trying to do things you don’t actually want to do. Or you have strengths that you’re not actually capitalizing on, because it feels too easy. And if something’s easy, then you can’t trust it like, surely it can’t work, it was that easy. So you’re trying to do things the hard way, because that feels safer, as well. But we want to make sure that you are actually meeting yourself where you are. So just to share an actual example of what this can look like. And how I’ve done this in my own business, is that when it comes to, for example, the podcast, I have been incredibly consistent with this podcast.
I post when I say I’m going to post, we are now in 400 and something number of episodes is something that I do very consistently on the back end, I don’t create it every single week, I batch episodes together at times, like there’s different ways that I do that. So it’s not that to have consistent output, you have to have consistent input, you can figure out how to make that work for you. But really looking at okay for myself. And I’ve tested a whole lot of different platforms as well. And this is always constantly evolving, you can always update ideas. So don’t be thinking I have to figure out the perfect answer to this. But really like I tried blogging for a number of years, and doing YouTube videos, on Instagram posting quotes that I created on Snapchat back in the day, talking to the camera and things like that, and a lot of that really got me comfortable with talking so that by the time I got to recording my first podcast episode, it definitely wasn’t my first time trying to speak things out.
So I had that advantage as well when it did come to podcasting. But I was really able to, through all of that experimentation, figure out the business I actually wanted to make succeed. And that was me chatting on the podcast, I really knew if I could turn this into a successful business, that is what I want and personally I’m someone I love listening to podcasts. That’s what introduced me to business and coaching and everything. It’s just been such an important part of my life. I’m such an avid consumer of podcasts. And so when it came to figuring out how to do business, like what business model to have for myself, and also how to sell my program and things like that, there are so many different options out there for well, you should be on TikTok. And you should be doing this and that. And I just decided, I’m going to figure out podcasting.
And even when I was doing a YouTube channel, I was just literally like I made it. And this is also part of how I was meeting myself where I was, when I was doing my YouTube channel, I did a series called 365 days of personal growth. And when I was doing that I just talked to the camera every day when I was doing my makeup because that was something I was doing every day. And I just coupled that with the YouTube video I wanted to do every day so that it wasn’t an extra thing that I was the only way I already spend about 20 minutes. Standing at this table doing my makeup, I’m just going to turn this camera on on my phone. And I’m just going to talk to it and I’m going to post it I’m going to do it without editing.
And for me not doing the editing really, really helped me release my perfectionism handbrake and feel safer. And I know that sounds really counterintuitive. I had definitely tried when it came to YouTube, posting less but better, like less often but higher quality. And that approach really just turned my perfectionism handbrake on, I’ll talk about it in a second. But I’m such a big believer in quantity over quality until you’ve done enough quantity to be able to create quality, you need to do the reps before you expect yourself to be able to create high quality content. And so when I was in a mindset of okay, I need to get this right, and I have not really had any practice at it. So that’s even more stressful. It was really easy to get in my own head. And then I’d find myself recording YouTube videos. And I’d say two sentences, and then I mess it up. And then I’d have to say it over and over.
By the time I actually got to right. It was like my eighth attempt and I completely lost my train of thought I completely lost any steam that I had. And it just felt so harder than of course I had all this time I had to spend editing the video to be able to get it up. So instead, I just decided I’m going to post every day, I’m going to tie it in with a habit that I already have. I’m not going to be editing it so that I’m actually just like showing up as I really am talking to the camera and posting it so that it saves all this time on edetate. And of course it felt uncomfortable to do that. But it actually just by meeting myself where I was instead of expecting myself to have this amazing, highly produced YouTube video that I should be able to do. First take and that just created so much pressure I’m actually just going to do a higher volume and create a container for myself where it feels okay that it’s lower quality.
And I’m just going to do that consistently, and really set myself up. And there were other things that I did at the time, but really set myself up for success and work with my perfectionist mindset instead of against it. So this first step, meeting yourself where you are, you really need to be studying yourself and asking yourself, like, what would this look like, if this was easy? If this was maybe even enjoyable? What would this look like, and a lot of us stop ourselves there, because we think, Well, I could never actually succeed just doing that. But for example, when it came to selling, and once I launched my coaching services, I was in my own way about that for a long time. But once I got out of my own way, and I was willing to start getting paid as a coach, I decided I don’t want to do sales calls, I literally just want to sell via the podcast, and create value on the podcast.
And people come through that because I love that buying experience and finding coaches that way. And so that’s what I decided to make work. And I was able to do that and build my coaching business without doing sales calls. Because I decided I could, instead of thinking, Oh, no, everyone says you have to do it this way. well, actually, I’m just gonna use my brain, my intelligent brain to figure out how to make this work. Knowing there are so many different ways we can make things work. So as an entrepreneur, you really need to be in that divergent thinking, instead of like in school, and when you’re an employee, and you’re thinking there’s one right answer, there are so many right answers. And if you’re not thinking that’s the case, you’re probably just in a bit of an echo chamber online. And everyone around you is doing business in exactly the same way with the same marketing strategies.
And you think that’s the only way. And you just need to actually zoom out and broaden your horizons and see that that’s actually not the case, you need to meet yourself where you are. This will involve giving yourself permission to do things, the easy way to not do things that you think you should be doing. I love how we perfectionist we want to optimize everything from day one. And for example, like when not on TikTok as a business, I think we actually have an account and have posted randomly a different times. But definitely like, it’s not saying there’s a business we’re thinking about at all. And it’s because we don’t want to and we can make it work not being there. It’s not to say that in the future, we won’t be, but it’s not this idea will you have to be on every platform, I might prefer a constrained approach and just choosing a few things to focus on that my brain can actually more easily get on board with.
And then I’m able to create an environment for myself, where it feels as comfortable as possible to show up, knowing my brains are going to want to like let’s just talk about that for a second, my brain is going to want to show up and do the thing like when it comes to podcasting. This isn’t to say none of this is to say that every time I go to record an episode, but my brain is like, Oh, yay, amazing, we get to share all these ideas, like sometimes I’m on board fully. But often, my brain is not, it still feels scary to my brain to be just talking into a microphone and publishing it for anyone to listen to. And it’s very easy to judge myself and then project that onto others the same way that my brain had the pattern of doing in the earliest stages of my business.
Now I just learned like I judged myself way less. But I also learned that when I’m in that thought pattern, I don’t react to it and respond to it, I just let it be in the back seat, and not actually be the driver anymore. So I don’t want you creating the idea that there’s just some aligned, perfect way to do this at all feel no resistance, you’re going to have resistance. But let’s minimize it by creating and aligned marketing plans, as I mentioned, as a bonus in PGSD to help you do exactly that, and really walk you through the process. So the second step is to create a weekly plan that feels safe for you to follow through on.
So when it comes to this, and using power planning to help you to actually be able to show up and do that in a way that feels safe to your brain doesn’t burn you out and freak you out. There are quite a few things within power planning where even if you’re not actually thinking about them, that you will be creating the safest possible plan for your brain. But a couple of examples to share with you is first of all, to just give yourself time after your courageous tasks that you need to do. So what we will do, typically, if we are thinking, Okay, I’m really far behind and I really need to be motivated and like have these big bursts of productivity that we will put in our calendar on our to do list all of these things that are really scary for ourselves to do and then we will try to do them back to back to back.
And of course our brain is like no thank you. I would much rather check my social media stats, do some more sales page research, go and watch this online course module that I’m doing. Of course your brain is gonna say that and so again, the resistance is still going to be there but it’s so much easier to overcome when you have actually giving yourself real acknowledgement for that a task might be scary for your brain, a particularly if it’s a new task for you, but it might be when you’ve been doing for ages, and it still kind of freaks you out a little bit. And that’s okay. So for example, if you’re doing an Instagram Live, that you might actually give yourself an hour or whatever before that to go for a walk or whatever helps you get in the best headspace possible.
And then you’re going to have the time that you do it. And then after that, you are going to have some either like, you know, just free time to scroll social media, if you want to do that, or whatever it is you want to do afterwards, instead of expecting this, okay, now you need to write your email newsletter, and you need to do it perfectly. And then now you need to go on post this post and you need to do that perfectly to like your brain is not going to be on board with that. So instead, what you really need to do is make sure that you are planning your week in a way that creates safety for your brain.
So having either buffer time or just scheduled blocks of time, where you are allowing yourself to decompress and recalibrate after doing a courageous thing is a really important part of your power planning. Another thing as well, is clean rest. So when you’re doing your power hour, you will put your clean rest in your calendar before you put in your needle movers. And if you want to learn the steps by the way of power planning, you can find in the shownotes a free training that I have done that I share the three steps of how planning, so you can start power planning today. So if you’re intrigued about it, and you want to get started, then definitely make sure you sign up for that and watch that right away.
But when it comes to clean rest, this is really a way to help your brain actually have the emotional capacity to do courageous things and put yourself out there. Because if you know that there is a break coming at the end of the day, that it is much easier, still challenging, but much easier to muster the courage, and to not procrastinate and push off the scary things that you need to do. Because you know, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I’m not going to be doing this scary thing all day every day. But if you are someone and this is especially the case, if you are working from an over schedule calendar, or if you are working from a to do list, and you’ve just like highlighted the priorities or anything like that, that, especially if you’re always kind of working but kind of not working like you’re eating lunch at your desk, and then you’re doing a load of laundry while you’re working and things like that, then your brain thinks that every possible opportunity of the day is a time that you might have to do something that could threaten your life.
Like that’s how your brain is thinking about putting yourself out there, that is literally a threat on your life. And so you need to actually create a little container for your brain to say this is when we’re going to do the scary thing. And all of this other time is when we’re not doing scary things. And so I know you’re going to be a little bit scared when you’re doing this thing. But it’s going to be much more bearable, because you know that after that you can fully relax, you can go back in the cave to think about like, back back back in the day when we wanted like, our brain just wanted us to be in the cave, instead of like being out there. And like finding the saber tooth tiger or whatever, and like potentially getting killed by that. It just wanted us to be safe in the cave. It’s like giving your brain that opportunity to say, Okay, you’re going to do that scary thing. Whether it’s an Instagram Live or recording something that actually hitting points without over editing it and polishing it and perfecting it or whatever it is that you know you need to do that feels unsafe, maybe it is like delivering a service to your client or getting client work done.
Or just all those different things that here’s a time where we’re going to need to have some courage. And you can know that ahead of time and prep yourself accordingly. So it’s as easy as possible to do it. And then here’s the time. While you’re not going to have to be in flight or fight, you’re actually going to be able to relax because you can trust me to not put anything scary on your plate during that time. And even if you’re not resting the sense of like you’re lazing around in the sun or reading a book, like if you’re like me, and your mom or your parent and you have kids like it’s not like all your non business time is just you lazing around doing nothing. But you know, you’re not going to be having to do anything that freaks your brain out during that time. So it’s so much easier to actually do those things that you need to do when the time comes. And it’s much easier to find that motivation. Instead of pushing it off indefinitely, I’ll just do that later, I’ll just do it tomorrow doesn’t really matter or this other thing came up, we want to have you actually doing those things. And it just means you need to construct your week a little bit differently so you can get your brain on board.
And finally, number three, I have mentioned this already a little bit, but focus on quantity over quality to take the pressure off doing things perfectly. I know it’s very counterintuitive to take this approach. And there’s a lot of people who champion the less but better. They do fewer things and do higher quality things. And there’s definitely a time and a place for that. But when we’re talking specifically about content creation, or these kinds of things, particularly if you haven’t made six figures yet in your business, if you’re not yet showing up consistently and confidently putting yourself Add that you need to focus on volume to get your reps and you need to have that practice. And then once you are showing up consistently, you’re constantly putting yourself out there, you’re beginning to create a body of work, you’ve found your voice, so to speak, which comes through practice, then you’re able to optimize the quality of it.
But naturally, as well, the quality is constantly increasing, because you’re getting so much practice at it. But if you will focus on what I need to do, say, for example, I’m going to do two posts per week on social media. And I want to make sure they’re really high quality, that is going to turn your perfectionism handbrake on like nothing else, and you probably takes you like two to three hours to create those posts, you probably have a bank of all these posts you’ve created that you’ve never even published, like 80%, complete, but they need a few little things before you can actually post them. That’s what’s happens when in the beginning, especially we have this approach of less but better, it doesn’t feel safe to our brain, were judging that so harshly as well, we project that onto others. But simply, practically speaking, strategically speaking, you don’t have enough repetition to actually be able to create high quality work.
So while it might be pretty in terms of a graphic, or it might sound right, you’re not actually fully able to develop the ideas you’re sharing to develop your selling skills, and all those different things you need to develop as an entrepreneur, because you’re simply not getting enough repetition, you’re not getting enough practice. So you need to be focused on volume. And this is something that has really, really, really helped me when it comes to building my business and feeling safe to put myself out there. That when it came to my blogging days, for example, and that I was able to start posting consistently, when I just decided, okay, I’m just going to start posting every day for 30 days, not forever, just for 30 days, I’m just going to share a blog post that I like from someone else. And here’s a little bit about why I like it, or this YouTube video, like that’s literally all I did in the beginning, I wasn’t confident enough to even have an opinion of my own about what I was sharing, let alone to share it. So I’ve just shared links to other things.
But I just decided I’m just going to do it every day, for 30 days, because otherwise I’d post and then I go back and look at the thing I posted, I edit it and edit it again. And then maybe I deleted a repost, it was just so much drama. And I just needed to actually get myself moving. And so I did that when it came to blogging when it came to my YouTube channel. As I mentioned, I did a series a daily series that I did, because I wouldn’t have enough time to actually be able to be in my own way about it. Like I created a situation for myself where I had to get it done without overthinking. Because if I gave myself the chance of like, I have to do only one video per week. And it’s going to be really high quality. That’s when I’d spend like eight hours recording one video, instead of spending two hours recording eight videos, for example.
And just knowing as well, like when I think about being the person on the other end of that content, like I can tell as well as watching other people’s content when they think it’s so perfect. But a lot of times, it isn’t in the sense of like you can just feel they’re so in their own head that is trying to say the right thing. And I might prefer like a chatty vlog where someone’s just speaking their mind. And so it’s just knowing that it’s like, our brain just love to think about like what the perfect content is. And usually we’re just thinking about ourselves and how we’re perceived, and not the person on the other end of that. But I did it when it came to YouTube, when it came to this podcast as well. Initially, I did two episodes per week, because that helped my brain actually get consistent with it in the sense that I knew, Okay, if this episode is shit, there’s another one coming in three days or four days or whatever it is.
And so it actually allowed me to just share things that was top of mind for myself. And to just show up instead of being like, well, I need to do one episode a week or whatever, and it needs to be so perfect. It’s like okay, well, there’s another one coming in a few days. And there’s another blog post or a YouTube coming in a couple of days or tomorrow. So it’s okay, if this one isn’t great, because it’s going to be buried by my future content that’s coming at a high volume. That really helped me the same way we like Instagram, if you’re creating a high volume on Instagram or Tiktok, for example, that is gonna get pushed further and further down your feed or your profile or whatever.
So if you are creating a high volume, then pretty soon no one’s even going to see those things that you create now in a good way that that helps my brain get on board with okay, even though my brain say this really isn’t good enough to post and you should really rerecord that or whatever. I’m just going to post it and keep going. Instead of thinking like that my brain is telling the truth just knowing that’s my brain, of course, it’s freaking it out. And it doesn’t want me to publish things because that’s really scary. So another thing as well, just a final practical tip I want to share when it comes to this is that for podcast episodes in particular, but it might help with any other content you’re creating, sometimes my brain and less so these days, but it still happens, but particularly in the early years of it, sometimes my brain is so convincing that that whole thing that I just recorded is really, really shit. And we should never share that with anyone.
And so in those situations, what I did is that I would give myself some time away from it, usually like a day, but even if I didn’t have that time, if I was like recording at the last minute, for example, then I would listen back on double speed and get myself out of the mindset of like, looking for what’s wrong with it, or what could I improve about it, but just thinking like, if I was listening to this, and I’m listening at double speed, which is much more forgiving, and especially if you watch and listen to other people in double speed on podcasts, or like 1.5, or whatever, and you’re watching itself in one speed, like in normal speed, you’re going to find it painful to watch in comparison. But I love to speed it up and be like, Oh, that sounds completely fine. When I actually speed it up. It just helps me to interpret it in a different way. And it’s just knowing like, it’s so easy for my brain to be like that wasn’t good enough, don’t publish that let’s redo that, let’s stay busy with perfecting it or whatever, like last year as well.
When it came to podcasting, I shared a survey to get feedback on my podcast. But actually it was from a place of like, I don’t know how to record podcast episodes, and they’re not good enough. And I’ll do a future episode about feedback and what kind of feedback to get and to recognize the place it’s coming from. But just knowing that there are times that we just kind of freaked out, and we’re like, Oh, my God, I need this, I need to figure out what’s wrong with this. So I can fix it, when actually the whole time I’ve been able to do it at a really high level. And my work has just been getting my brain on board with the ease that I experience around it and trusting the ease and not overcomplicating things, and getting in my own way about them to literally just keep doing it in the way that I have been doing it that has been working. And that just because more people are listening doesn’t mean I have to do it in this different way. I could just literally keep doing it the same way.
So there’s all of that. But I hope this has really helped you think about creating safe visibility and give you some practical steps. So just to recap, you need to meet yourself where you actually are instead of trying to expect yourself to be the perfect you who can just show up in one take, do an Instagram story while looking perfect. And then you go and write your email newsletter in 15 minutes or whatever, to actually meet yourself where you are and really examine like, what do you actually want to create? Like why do you want to be showing up? What does that ideally look like for you if anything could work. Step two is to create a weekly plan that feels safe to follow through on so power planning. Here’s how to do this again link in bio slash description, whatever show notes for you to watch the training that I’ve done on how to do power planning in the three steps. I walk you through it in that training so you can get started with it. And then the third step is to focus on quantity over quality to take the pressure off doing things perfectly. So I hope this has been incredibly helpful and I will talk to you in the next episode.
Outro
If you want to get shit done without burning out, then I invite you to watch the free training that I’ve created on how to plan properly as a perfectionist with power planning. By the end of the training, you’ll be ready to start using power planning today to get your perfectionist mindset on your side so you can get out of your own way in your business. To sign up and watch the training. Go to samlaurabrown.com/planning.