Episode 471: [Follow Through Series] Getting Your True Needle Movers Done With Ericka Jenifer

Welcome to Part 3 of my 5-part Follow Through Series. A series to help you release your perfectionism handbrake and consistently follow through with your plans without burning yourself out.

Knowing your true Needle Movers is the secret to making more progress in less time – and being able to mentally switch off too. Most perfectionists think they know their Needle Movers even when they don’t. And my student Ericka Jennifer knows this better than just about anyone else. 

Once they identified their true Needle Movers, Ericka was able to start their own psychology practice and quadruple their revenue over an 18 month period. And they were able to do this while getting more guilt-free rest than ever before whilst also taking care of their parents. How? Tune into the episode to find out.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to take a screenshot and tag me on instagram @perfectionismproject.

And for the episode transcript and full show notes, visit at samlaurabrown.com/episode471.

In The Episode You’ll Learn:

  • Why you never have enough time to get everything done
  • How to prioritise when everything feels like a priority 
  • How Ericka created clear boundaries around their work time
  • The amazing things that happen when you start getting more guilt-free rest
  • The secret to getting your needle movers done

Featured In The Episode:

Work With Me:
If you’re ready to plan properly as a perfectionist so it’s easy to follow through with your plans, I invite you to join us inside Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD). Inside you’ll be using my proven productivity process to take consistent action on the most important things for your business and mentally switch off when you’re not working. 
Now is the perfect time to join as our 12 Week Power Planning Challenge gets started on 1 July. To join us for the challenge, simply sign up for PGSD by 11:59pm New York Time on Sunday, 30 June by visiting samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

Listen To The Episode

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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 (Custom Intro)
Today I have an incredible episode for you. This is part three of my five part follow through series that I have been releasing here on the podcast for you. And today I’m interviewing one of my students. Her name is Ericka. She is a psychologist, and she is just such an example of the power of knowing your needle movers and then actually doing them. She shares more in this episode, but she was able to transition to working for someone else’s psychology practice, to working for herself and becoming an entrepreneur. And then, with the help of knowing her needle movers and power planning and as well being inside perfectionist getting shit done, she has been able to quadruple her revenue, mentally switch off, be there to support her parents as well with any medical emergencies they have going on, it has just been so incredible to witness Ericka’s transformation, and I want to share it with you so that you can really focus on your needle movers and actually get them done. So without further ado, this is Ericka Jenifer, speaking to the power of knowing your needle movers.

Sam Laura Brown
Hi, Ericka. Thank you for coming on to the podcast to talk about the power of knowing your needle movers and the difference that that can make when you know what’s important and then you’re able to actually get it done. A lot of the people listening will either be thinking that they do know what’s important, there’s just too much to do, or they just can’t get it all done. And you are just the perfect person to talk to about this. Just the transformation I have witnessed as your coach, from when you joined PGSD and then you were able to start power planning and getting your needle movers done, and the way your business has grown and the way that you now show up for yourself and support yourself, I was reading yesterday in your persistence log just about the wins that you had with being able to adapt to an emergency that you had in your family and still being able to get shit done and also have time off and support yourself too. So I’m really excited to talk about it all. Do you just want to start by sharing what you do in terms of your business and then what productivity looked like for you before you were power planning and focusing on your need of movers.

Ericka Jenifer
So I’m a clinical psychologist, and I right now see people, one on one in direct therapy services. I provide counseling, and I’m also in the process of developing online courses and also a membership community to be able to help people maintain the gains they’ve learned from being in therapy.

Sam Laura Brown
Amazing. So before you were power planning, how did you go about getting shit done when it came to building your business?

Ericka Jenifer
Let’s just say sticky notes and pieces of paper were my friend. I had tons of to do lists that were all around, like piles of paper. I tend to write on little envelopes, anything you could find that was a scrap paper. I wrote a to do list on it. I also had, like digital to do lists in different programs. My email inbox seemed like a never ending to do list. I had a hard time letting things go in terms of projects like in terms of things being messy. I grew up in corporate cultures where, you know, we were expected to have, like, a perfect product produced, and that wasn’t working. And so it was really getting in my way to think of me being a psychologist and having my own practice as an entrepreneur. Knowing when good enough was enough, and being able to be messy and still get the work done and be able to move on.

Sam Laura Brown
Can you tell me a bit more about before you started power planning, did you feel like you knew your needle movers? Like what was most important to get done to build your business? Did you have too many needle movers? Did you not really know what was important like? What did that look like for you?

Ericka Jenifer
If you’d asked me back then, my past self would have said, absolutely, I know what my needle movers are. They’re everything.

Sam Laura Brown
I hear that. So.

Ericka Jenifer
When I first came to PGSD, when I did my brain dump and my power planning, everything had a star behind it. Everything was highlighted and nothing could be delegated. And that was a problem. That’s that was truly when I knew, like, Okay, I need to wrap my head around this, because I can’t do everything. Trying to do everything without making anything a priority. It meant that I absolutely wasn’t getting things done. My perfectionism was also showing up, from the standpoint of I was doing, like busy work or things that were easier tasks. I was working super long hours, and I was actually kind of feeling resentful because I was spending less time with my parents and with my partner.

Sam Laura Brown
And what were those things that you knew you needed to get done like you said your past self would be like, Yes, I know my needle movers, and there are just too many, but I do know what they are. What were some of those things specifically for you that you were like, I actually need to really get this done.

Ericka Jenifer
There were some things that were super important because they were tied to revenue. I mean, so those things, I could clearly say that, yes, this is a needle mover. It’s such as seeing my clients, writing my clinical notes so that I could bill for sessions. I was caught more so and were working like in my business, so I wasn’t really seeing like, I could tell you, Yes, develop an online course, but that kept getting pushed further and further and further and further, kind of down my to do list, which meant it never actually got done. So the things that would help me grow and to build my business and for me to be able to survive as an entrepreneur weren’t happening because I was considering other things, like, I don’t know, check email. Being in PGSD taught me that I can let email go. I now let my clients know that if you send me an email, just gonna let you know I probably respond within about a week. Email is a slower form of communication for me. If you need me, text me instead. But I never would have said that three years ago.

Sam Laura Brown
And why wouldn’t you have said that?

Ericka Jenifer
It was scary to not conform to conventional society, most people communicate via email this day and age. And for me to say, hey, you can email me, but you either need to text me to let me know that the emails there if it’s urgent, or just know I got it and I’ll respond within a seven day time frame, felt super scary to set that as a communication rule. I didn’t know anyone who was doing that.

Sam Laura Brown
And so many of us are so busy with all those little things, because we think that if we’re not doing that, the business will fall apart. And so what I see a lot is for perfectious entrepreneurs, because we’re scared to do a lot of the needle movers, or they’re just really tedious, that what we will do is we’ll try and just get all the little things checked off first, we kind of just want to get ourselves organized so we’re ready, and so it’s checking email and social media, just kind of like tidying up and preparing and getting ready to get ready. And then, ultimately, especially with things that don’t have a hard deadline, we just push off again and again and again. What difference has power planning made for you when it comes to needle movers, because you mentioned about you knew what things were actually important. But can you share a few specific examples, or just one specific example of with power planning, what a needle mover was for you that you previously weren’t getting done, and then when you started with power planning, you were able to get it done, and the impact that had on your business.

Ericka Jenifer
Absolutely, as a baby PGSDer my first three months of power planning, what I realized is how much time I spent doing things that weren’t really helping me either move my business forward or build my business. What actually really turned the tide for me was sitting down doing my weekly reviews, kind of realizing the importance of my why and having what I was doing connected back to a goal. So then I could say, Okay, if I really want to earn X amount of dollars this quarter to meet my annual goal, then I now can translate that into what I need to do every day. So yes, I can check email, I can do these other things, but that’s not helping me bring in clients. I actually need to sit down and do the scary thing, create my profile in Psychology Today, stop learning about marketing and actually like do the marketing task, write my bio. So those are the things that I actually did as a result of being in PGSD, because I could now say that they were tied to the money that I needed to make in order to meet my growth goal.

Sam Laura Brown
And what difference did that make for you in terms of revenue? You don’t need to share specific numbers if you don’t want to. But what was that growth like? Because a lot of times we’re just scared to really focus on those things, because we’re not convinced that if we do what will make a big impact. So what was that impact for you?

Ericka Jenifer
It was phenomenal. Around the time when I joined PGSD, I was contemplating leaving, contracting at two other psychology practices, and as a part of PGSD, one, I left and fully launched my own business and became an entrepreneur. So that was a huge thing. So I actually left, became completely independent, and quadrupled my revenue within 18 months. So I went from earning about $2,000 a month to about $8,000 a month on average.

Sam Laura Brown
Amazing, and how long did it take for you to be able to really feel the benefits, revenue wise, of focusing on your needle movers and using power planning and pgsd to support you to actually get them done?

Ericka Jenifer
It took six months for me to actually leave it took about a year for me to notice a significant change in revenue and and have that be a solid shift that I could count on. So one of the things that I learned is the things that I was doing were planting seeds, so I wasn’t necessarily reaping the benefit of them right away. Some of them I planted and I reaped the benefit six months later, like when I completely launched my practice in window dependent. Others were easily a year later, when I was fully booked in terms of clients, despite a lot of health issues with my parents, who were elderly, and me being there to support them, but I was able, because of PGSD, to be able to prioritize the things I needed to do for work, marketing, getting clients, seeing the clients, billing for the clients, and being able to care my parents.

Sam Laura Brown
I love what you mentioned about planting seeds, because I think that is one of the challenges of needle movers, is that for many of them, there won’t be an instant payoff or instant gratification. And so you need to know your needle movers, but you also need to get them done, even though you’re not going to have this kind of like, oh my god, it worked, feeling like the day that you do it, or even the week after you do it, or sometimes even the month or six months after you do it. But as you said, like you’re planting all of these seeds, and now you are reaping the benefits of that. And oftentimes we’re so scared that the seeds are never going to grow that we don’t plant them, or we plant them and then we don’t water them, and we end up just like being so busy trying to plant all these seeds, and maybe this one will grow today. Maybe this one will grow today. Instead of saying, okay, these are the seeds that I’m planting, I’m going to nurture this and I’m going to have it grow, and I’m willing to have the patience and the consistency to do that. So how did you actually do that? Like what kept you on track with continuing to do your needle movers when they weren’t instantly paying off?

Ericka Jenifer
One of the things that being in PGSD taught me and said, prioritize my clean rest. So if I didn’t have the clean rest, then I didn’t have the capacity to really be courageous, which is what my needle movers were requiring me to do, and I tended to avoid them. Like marketing is one of the things that I will avoid given the chance. And it was really when I literally sat down with myself and I said, okay, if I’m going to meet this goal, I need to just buckle down and focus doing the Get out of your own way challenge really, really helped me see that.

Sam Laura Brown
I’m wondering if you could speak to the transition you made to having your own practice, having your own business, and we’ve talked about the revenue in your business, but so many people listening are wanting to go from needing to work for someone else to needing to work for themselves, even if there isn’t a difference in the revenue that’s being made. But just that transition from being an employee to being an entrepreneur is, for me, like in my own life, one of the most impactful transition I’ve ever made. So when it came to needle movers for that transition, what did that look like for you?

Ericka Jenifer
That really looked like me deciding that it was important to spend time on things that were more infrastructure related and not directly money related. And that felt scary, because it felt like okay, I need to continue to see clients, and I have to rely on someone else to supply them in order for me to be able to make money. And I think again, kind of tying it down to our project, and then realizing that every all the pieces, all the steps in that project were my needle movers, and being able to focus on that as my main kind of business project was really kind of helped me get there.

Sam Laura Brown
What do you think would have happened if, like, you knew what to do, but you didn’t have power planning and that process as well around needle movers to support you to actually do the things.

Ericka Jenifer
I think I would have been too exhausted to get it done. And actually I was at the time, because I wasn’t getting the clean rest. It was the scramble of, we need to work all the hours. If there are 24 hours in a day, I need to be working 23 of them to make this happen. And I wasn’t. I wasn’t really being productive, but that’s when I was starting to do tasks that were unnecessary or things that felt easy. It definitely didn’t have the strength or the rest or the calm to be courageous around making the move for this practice. And so power planning showed me that, one, I wasn’t resting. Two, I wasn’t prioritizing. Three, how did I actually work? And so I learned that my life was really unpredictable around that point in time, because my parents were I could get a call any time of the day and have one of my parents basically say, can you take me to the emergency room? And I was dropping everything and running and going, and then the emergency room has no Wi Fi, much less, like you can’t really think when you’re there because you’re too upset anyway. So it wasn’t an environment to work, but I would try, and it didn’t really happen. So you see how that whole cycle goes.

Sam Laura Brown
Yeah, you’ve mentioned about clean rest and the power of that, because it is such an important piece of being able to actually follow through with needle movers. Do you mind sharing a bit about with your rest and time off and being able to mentally switch? Off. Like, what did that look like before you were power planning, and what does that look like now?

Ericka Jenifer
Rest, what rest? Sleep was the enemy. Yeah, I would work, work, work, work, work. And I would, you know, fall asleep working, or have things in the bed and fall asleep with the computer open. And it was awful. It was terrible. Now, my partner is like, you shut your computer, so I can actually shut the computer at night. You know when I’m done, I’m done. I’ve recently been setting like boundaries for my workday, so now I think I’m much better boundaried for me, and that’s important for my self care.

Sam Laura Brown
And I’m guessing your past self wouldn’t have ever thought that getting more rest would quadruple your revenue?

Ericka Jenifer
No, not at all. Heck no.

Sam Laura Brown
We think we have to work more and make the revenue and then we can rest. And that’s what keeps so many entreprenuers stuck.

Ericka Jenifer
Rest had to be earned. Yeah, that was the way I used to think about it before PGSD.

Sam Laura Brown
Yeah, and nothing’s ever enough, like there’s always more to do. As an entrepreneur, you know this, there’s always so many things that we can focus on that we never rest. And then, as you said, we never have the courage or the stamina to actually follow through on the needle movers. So then we try to do everything because it feels like nothing’s working and it’s just absolutely exhausting. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you have. It has been so incredible to just as I said, witness your transformation since joining PGSD and power planning and just being able to be there for yourself and your family and make that transition in your business, and then being able to quadruple your revenue, it’s absolutely incredible. So thank you so much, Ericka.

Ericka Jenifer
Thank you, Sam. It’s been a pleasure.

Sam Laura Brown (Outro)
Okay, so that’s a wrap on part three of the follow through series. Tomorrow, we are going to be talking more about courageous action, if you are wanting to show up consistently on social media and put yourself out there, or maybe you have a project that you’ve been working on that you need to launch to the world. Tomorrow’s episode is going to be incredible. I am interviewing another one of my students, Laura, about how to actually do the courageous needle movers, those ones that you were just really scared of. You keep putting them off time and time again. How do you support yourself to actually get them done, especially when advice like just do it or don’t worry about what other people think doesn’t work because it doesn’t so tomorrow, we’re going to be talking about what does actually work, the practical things that you can focus on so that you can confidently and courageously put yourself out there. I’ll talk to you then.

Outro
If you’re ready to start planning properly as a perfectionist so you can follow through with your plans, I invite you to join us inside perfectionist getting shit done. We will be starting a 12 week power planning challenge on the first of July, and it’s going to be perfect for you. If you’re in need of a mid year reset, or you love extra accountability and support, to join us for the challenge inside the program, all you need to do is be inside PGSD by 11:59pm New York time on Sunday the 30th of June. You can find out more about the program and sign up at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.






Author: Sam Brown