Welcome to Part 1 of my 5-part Momentum Series. In this series I’m going to teach you how to create momentum in your business in just six weeks without burning out.
If you’re feeling behind in your business or like all of the hard work you’ve been putting in is getting you nowhere, creating momentum is the cure.
When you have momentum you will find it so easy to stay motivated.
You will have tangible evidence that you’re on the right track, your efforts are paying off and that you can one day have a business that supports you full-time.
And you won’t have to work as hard because momentum will be able to carry your business forward when you aren’t able to be there.
Having momentum is the secret to:
- being able to navigate hard times in your personal life without your business suffering
- taking laptop-free vacations without having to compromise on your financial goals
- feeling successful in your business, even when you aren’t full-time in it just yet.
Tune into today’s episode to learn all about the 5 common misconceptions that perfectionists have about momentum so that any resistance or hesitancy you have around creating momentum can finally dissipate. I cover everything you need to know about the difference between being behind and having momentum.
You can create the momentum you want in your business before the year’s over.
Even if you’re busy with a full-time job, little ones or parents to take care of, a health condition to manage, studies to complete or anything else. All you need to do is hit play today.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to take a screenshot and tag me on instagram @perfectionismproject.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode490.
Work With Me:
Enrollment for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done begins on Friday, 18 October and closes on Friday, 25 October at 11:59pm New York Time. If you’re ready to do the things you know you need to do and get your business off the ground, mark your calendar and get ready to sign up.
Sign up in the first 48 hours of enrollment and you will receive a bonus 1:1 Decision Support Call with Sam so you can confidently make any big business decisions that have been stopping you from creating momentum. Find out more and sign up today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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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 Perfectionists 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.
Episode
[00:00:29] Sam Laura Brown: This week I have an incredible series for you on how to create momentum in your business, specifically as a perfectionist entrepreneur, specifically someone who was in the early stages of business, not yet full time or making a full time income in their business. I’m just going to be sharing a lot of things that I wish I’d known that I also help a lot of clients with inside my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done.
[00:00:54] I have not done a series like this before where I speak about the things that I’m going to be speaking about. And I thought this would be the perfect time to talk about this topic because the new year isn’t too far away. And we perfectionists can definitely with our all or nothing thinking, be in that mindset of like, I’m going to wait for the new year.
[00:01:14] I’m going to wait for that new year motivation. That’s when I’ll be able to create momentum for myself to set myself up to start being successful and I don’t want you to miss the magic of this final period of the year where you can create so much momentum in a short amount of time without burning yourself out and without having to show up perfectly like life can still be And you can create momentum in your business in only a few hours per week.
[00:01:41] So that’s what I’m going to be teaching you about in this series. I’m going to be sharing things and concepts that I have never shared before, and it’s going to be so good. So it’s five days. There are five parts and an episode will be released every day. And then on the final day, I’m going to be sharing with you all about my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done and we are going to be officially opening the doors to the program with a special bonus for those who sign up in the first 48 hours of enrollment and enrollment will be open only for one week.
[00:02:13] So I just really want to have you soak in this series. really get in touch with what it would be like for you to actually have momentum in your business. And then I want to invite you into PGSD if you are ready to get the support, the accountability, the full process around this, so you can start 2025 feeling so on top of your business, feeling like you have the wind behind your back, instead of starting the new year from a standstill, you will have that momentum to then be able to capitalize on when your new year motivation does come. And we know as well that new year motivation doesn’t last forever.
[00:02:50] So you’ll be able to keep going after that because you have momentum. So, with that said, today’s episode is about being behind versus having momentum in your business. I want to talk about the difference between those and a few misconceptions around momentum. In the second part, I’m going to be sharing with you how to stop treating your business like a hobby.
[00:03:09] If you are squeezing and working on your business around everything else, you’re I just want to teach you about how to actually treat your business like a real business, even if it’s not supporting you financially just yet. Then in part three, I’m going to be sharing three steps to creating momentum in your business.
[00:03:24] The strategies to help you actually create sustainable momentum so you can be making progress without burning yourself out. And then in the fourth part, we’re going to be going a bit more into detail about burnout because if you are scared of burnout, you will have a hard time. Creating momentum. So let’s talk about it.
[00:03:41] Let me help you get your mindset right about burnout and really understand what it actually is so that you don’t have to be afraid that if you have momentum you’ll burn yourself out or like burn your personal life down and neglect everyone and everything. And then in the fifth part, I’m going to be sharing how to create momentum before 2025 even begins. So I’m going to be talking specifically about the remainder of this year, what to do with it, and also inviting you into my program, Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. It’s my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs, and I’ll teach you how to stop procrastinating and take consistent action in your business without burning out.
[00:04:16] If you know what you need to do, but you just haven’t been able to get yourself to do it, this program is for you. So let’s talk about the difference between being behind and having momentum, because momentum is the cure to being behind in your business. And I have so much experience with that feeling of being behind and just feeling like I’m not on track.
[00:04:40] Like the effort that I’m putting into my business. isn’t actually adding up to anything. And like, I just felt like I just wanted to prove to myself, especially in the early days of my business, I’ve now made over 2 million in my business, but in the early days, I just wanted to prove to myself that I even had some kind of viable idea that could one day be something that I could do full time.
[00:05:03] And I just felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was spinning my reel. Reels. Wheels. Suck in research mode. I was just like tweaking my branding, polishing this, working on that, but not actually making progress and having that momentum. It actually took me three years to get to the point where I started feeling like I had momentum.
[00:05:25] And that wasn’t because it takes three years to build momentum. It was because perfectionism was so important. Stopping me from creating momentum. And it wasn’t until I started to overcome that perfectionism that I could create the momentum and then eventually quit my full time job and go to part time work and then quit the part time job and then go to being full time in my business.
[00:05:45] It was all because I was able to create momentum and not be behind anymore. So I just want you to reflect right now. Where are you at with that? Do you feel like you have momentum right now? Do you feel like you have the momentum that you want, that you know you’re capable of having? Do you feel like you’ve never had momentum?
[00:06:03] Do you feel like you had momentum, but then something in your life happened? Or do you feel like you had momentum, but then you got stuck? There was a decision you had to make and you haven’t been able to make it yet. And so you’re just in this standstill like, holding pattern, just waiting to be able to feel confident to move yourself to the next level.
[00:06:20] Do you feel like you have had momentum before, but you’ve only ever had it in spurts, and it’s only ever burned you out and been really unsustainable. Cause that isn’t momentum as we’re talking about it here, that is hustling, that’s not momentum. So, we are talking about momentum. And how to actually create that momentum in this series.
[00:06:40] Momentum in its truest form is sustainable. It’s a wave you can ride through the hard times, through the seasons of your life when you can’t show up as often as you want to be, or would like to be, that you can actually ride the wave of momentum. It’s not fragile. It’s not something that if you don’t show up for a week or a month, you’re going to lose it.
[00:06:59] And so I want to talk about some of those misconceptions as well, so that you really know what’s going on. What we are talking about here, but I just want to share with you too, what it’s like to have momentum in your business and what it’s been like for me particularly to have momentum in my business.
[00:07:15] So for me, if you’re not familiar with my story, cause I’m a coach, if you didn’t know, if you hadn’t figured that out, I am a coach, I’m a business coach for perfectionists. And when I started my business, that wasn’t the case because I’d never had a business and I never formally coached anyone. So I started my business in 2013.
[00:07:34] So it was called Smart Twenties. I was 22 years old and I was trying to figure out how to make the most of my twenties. Like what do I actually do in my twenties? Because I’m not like, where, where I’m broke all the time. And I’m not like, I have, my life is perfect. So like, what does it actually look like to genuinely be trying to make the most of your twenties?
[00:07:51] That was the whole concept. Like I didn’t have, a flashy one liner or anything like that. I was like, I just want to figure out about this for myself and I’m going to document and share my journey. When I started, I had absolutely zero confidence whatsoever. I’m not exaggerating that. I’m not like, haha, I wasn’t confident at all.
[00:08:10] Like I did not. tell anyone in my family, any of my friends about my business for a year. And because at the time I was a uni student, so I have a law degree and a finance degree and a diploma of French, classic perfectionist, to always have a full plate of commitments. So I was studying full time. And what I could do is I could work on my blog for a year.
[00:08:30] while I was meant to be studying. So it was quite easy to hide in that sense because I had time where it’s like, yeah, I’m just going to be studying. And I was just writing blog posts and like trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. But I felt so insecure. I was so embarrassed by myself. Like, who do I think I am to even think that I could possibly have Like, any kind of opinion that is worth sharing, any kind of impact on anyone’s lives, I was just sharing like, here’s this blog post from someone else that I found helpful.
[00:09:01] Here’s this YouTube video from someone else that I found helpful. Like, in the beginning, I wasn’t even sharing any thoughts. I didn’t even have any that I wanted to share that I could share. I was like, I’m just documenting things that I think are helpful. And eventually over time, I found my voice, but I, oh my God, I was just, I had so much imposter syndrome.
[00:09:21] I was so, so insecure about it. The thought of my friends and family, like people in my real life, finding out about my blog, like I had to have my Instagram account from everyone, like, the thought of anyone finding out and even being like, what’s a blog? Or like laughing at me, I was like, I just knew if anyone even asked anything about it, I’d have to shut the whole thing down.
[00:09:42] Like it was so, tenuous. Like I just, my self confidence was so, so shaky. And at the time I didn’t know that was because of my perfectionist thinking. That was because of my perfectionism handbrake. I just thought like, oh my god, what the fuck, like what is wrong with me that I’ve learned all these things about how to get email list subscribers and how to post on social media and like, but I can’t, I can’t get myself to actually Do it like I just I cannot bring myself to do it.
[00:10:16] And so over time I began working on My mindset my perfectionism specifically that was the biggest needle mover for me To not try and just get a better marketing strategy or learn more things Which is like the comfort zone for me as you know, as I just shared I was a student a law student fighter student like I liked learning as a lot of my clients do like lots of degrees and things like that.
[00:10:40] It’s so comfortable to be learning, but it was so scary to be doing. But I began to understand that as a perfectionist, like having breakthroughs, like, Oh, this isn’t actually a motivation issue. This is perfectionism. That’s why I’m overthinking. That’s why I’m procrastinating. That’s why I’m burning myself out all the time.
[00:10:55] And I’m just like, ah, it that all that I think mindset and the fear of judgment and the people pleasing was so intense. I realized it was the perfectionism. And then I started to try to figure out like a hate. If it’s perfectionism and it’s not me, then what can I actually do to solve for this and how can I actually get out of my own way and overcome this perfectionism so that I’m not debilitated because this perfectionism, I said that funny, this perfectionism is just completely stifling any creativity that I have.
[00:11:27] It’s making it so hard to make decisions. It’s making me over research, jump from idea to idea, compare myself to everyone else. Just like, I was spending so much time in my brain working on my business. I was constantly like, whenever I could try and squeeze it in, I was doing that. And yet I wasn’t actually, feeling any momentum.
[00:11:49] And so it took me three years to get to the point where I felt like I actually had momentum because I needed to do that work on overcoming perfectionism and getting my perfectionist mindset on my side. And then even after that I still needed to continue to do that work to create more and more momentum, but it paid off.
[00:12:08] off so incredibly beautifully. Like I’m so glad that I wasn’t just like, Oh, I guess I’m not cut out for entrepreneurship. Oh, I guess I just can never do this. Oh, I guess I could just never be successful. Like I just knew I had this deep desire of like, I know I can have a successful business and yet I’m getting in my own way.
[00:12:29] And I know now that that’s perfectionism. And so I’m going to figure out how to solve for the perfectionism. Um, So I can create that momentum so I can actually, and this was my ultimate dream, was to be able to go full time in my business. That was all I wanted. And now I have goals, like having a million dollars in revenue per year, and beyond that I’ve made over two million in my business.
[00:12:51] But, I just wanted to be able to not have to go to my accounting job or to not have to become a lawyer or do like the things that were on the path I was on. I was like, I don’t want to have to do that. I just want freedom. And for me that freedom wasn’t necessarily like I want to be able to travel and things like that.
[00:13:10] That’s important to so many of the clients that I work with. But for me, freedom was, Feeling free to be myself, feeling free to actually show up in the world as who I am, which is someone who loves personal development, who loves talking about the things I talk about on the podcast and not having to hide that part of me or save that part of me just for my personal life.
[00:13:31] Like I wanted to actually have a business that helped me feel more self expressed, not a career path or a profession that required me to be less self expressed in order to be like successful in that area. So that’s what I crave more than anything, just a full time business that I could make 60, 000 a year, a hundred thousand dollars a year.
[00:13:55] Even that it was beyond what I’d have to actually make to be able to live full time. I just, uh, my accounting job was making 60, 000 a year. I just wanted to be able to make that from my business. And because of the momentum that I was able to create because of what I teach in this series. So stay tuned.
[00:14:13] I was able to do so many incredible things and I didn’t have to always be available for my business. I didn’t have to burn myself out. When I’ve had the most momentum, I haven’t at this point actually burned myself out in about six years. It’s because of that momentum and being able to create it in a way that really supports me.
[00:14:34] There’s a difference between momentum and hustling. We’re talking here about momentum. That’s sustainable, that’s aligned. And I’ll talk about as well, a misconception that we have about as perfectionists, that we don’t want to create momentum unless we know exactly the direction we want to go. So I’ll talk about that in a bit, but for me, momentum in my business, having that feeling of progress, instead of feeling behind, like I did in the early years, meant I was able to quit my full time job.
[00:15:01] And I had the confidence to do that, even though in total, I’d only made 3, 000. But I knew that my business was on the path to success. So I could confidently take that step, even though I wasn’t yet making a full time income from my business. I could see the signs. I knew that that momentum was there and I was able to quit my full time accounting job, say goodbye to the corporate world, and then take a job as a part time receptionist at a local hospital.
[00:15:30] Then I was later able to leave that part time job and go full time in my business confidently. because I knew that I had that momentum because I knew that my business was on track to not only support me for a little while financially, but for the long term that my business was going to be able to support me.
[00:15:49] That was possible only because of momentum rather than stopping and starting and just having an unreliable business. I was able to have that momentum, which gave me the confidence to To go full time. And I did need a lot of confidence to do that. I wasn’t the person who was like, well, I’ll just leave my job and hope it all works out.
[00:16:07] Like, no, I really wanted to be sure when I left my full time job. And then when I left my part time job, I really wanted to be sure that I was actually taking a step in the right direction. And momentum helped me to actually do that. The thing I want to also underline about momentum and share with you. I think this doesn’t get talked about enough because the way so many people talk about momentum is that it’s so fragile.
[00:16:28] Like if you are showing up consistently and then you don’t show up for a week naughty naughty you’re going to lose all your momentum and you’ll just like it’s done it’s gone you have to keep showing up and like it ends up having especially for perfectionists it means that you’re going to put so much pressure on yourself and you’re going to stop yourself from creating momentum because you’re going to be scared you can’t maintain it but actually this is how momentum works.
[00:16:50] It allows you to navigate hard personal times because you can ride your business, can ride that momentum, that wave. If you are at a standstill, if you’re spinning your wheels and then you come up against a personal hard time, your business is left to fend for itself. It hasn’t got any momentum that it can bank on.
[00:17:12] that it hasn’t got the compound effect happening of the past actions you’ve taken. And so your business is going to have a really hard time. But if you have momentum, if you are able to show up consistently to take action, that doesn’t mean you have to show up perfectly. I have not shown up every single day for my business, that’s for sure.
[00:17:32] But if you are able to take action to not be in that perfectionist mindset, and I’ll teach you how to overcome that perfectionism, how to actually Really, truly overcome that perfectionism, get in that growth mindset, be able to take action even when you’ve been paralyzed and debilitated and at a standstill and spinning your wheels.
[00:17:53] I’ve helped so many people do this. So many people who have been frozen, who have been so stuck, so scared. to help them take action that they feel good about that’s sustainable. So I can help you do that too. So when you navigate a personal hard time, it’s so much easier when you have momentum in your business.
[00:18:11] So for example, for me, when I was pregnant with my daughter, so I have three children, my daughter, Lydia, who’s three, and then I have twin sons, Jack and James who are about a year and a half. So when I was pregnant with my daughter, Lydia, I’d been a full time in my business for about a year at that point, I didn’t have a big team or anything like that.
[00:18:29] Okay. And I need to have about a month off the business because of nausea and just feeling so unwell with the first trimester, feeling so tired, like not being able to work as I normally would. And I still did little bits of work here and there, like calls that I had, but for the most part I couldn’t really get anything done.
[00:18:50] And I had one of the most successfully, like financially successful, however you want to say it, months of my year in that month where I wasn’t actually able to work because of the compound effect of me showing up and taking action. I didn’t do everything perfectly, not by any stretch, but I had been able to show up, to take action, to put myself out there enough for That when I was going through a hard time personally, my business was okay because it didn’t have to have me there.
[00:19:22] It had the momentum there for it. Also, another example of this is just being able to take maternity leave and vacations without laptops. That’s something that I do that so many people like, Oh my God, I can’t believe it. But that’s something that’s very normal for me. And I’ve learned to do that and I won’t go into it too much here, but that’s a big part of like having momentum.
[00:19:44] It really creates safety to rest. It creates safety to go away and not have to have your laptop available to your clients, your customers, or your team all the time to not have to be posting, like recording yourself every day and posting it to social media. Like, I don’t like doing that. When I’m on holiday, I want to be on holiday.
[00:20:02] I’m not the person who’s like, Oh, great. This is content for stories. No, I just want to be so switched off. So I was able to have maternity leave with my daughter and then with my twin sons. And that was because I had momentum. In the business and I want that for you to having that momentum Is really what’s going to carry you to being able to have a full time business And then beyond that whatever that looks like for you Whether it is being able to have the freedom to have time off with your kids.
[00:20:33] I work three days a week That’s a lot in a lot part a lot part. My speaking today is amazing, but I know you’re understanding what I’m saying, so I will continue. For the voice part, that is thanks to Momentum. I do some other things like power planning that really support that, but Momentum. has really allowed me to be able to work three days a week, have weeks off, to be able to have those maternity leaves, to be able to just actually be engaged in my personal life.
[00:21:02] So I’m not just sitting at dinner talking to my husband and kids and I’m physically there, but I’m mentally not present. Like I’m able to be mentally switched off. Because my business has momentum that it can rely upon. It has momentum, the compound effect, even from the early days where I felt like nothing was working, it all compounds.
[00:21:20] And I’ve changed direction so many times in my business, and it still has created momentum that I am capitalizing on today. And I want that for you too, especially if you have been spinning your wheels. If you’re at a standstill, if you’re stuck on a decision. I really want to help you create momentum so you don’t have to feel like your business needs you there every single day.
[00:21:44] So you don’t have to push yourself to the limit so that you can take time off. You can rest without guilt. You can mentally switch off and you have the freedom to have the kind of business you want. Whether it’s like me and you want to have the freedom to feel like yourself in the professional aspects aspects of your life.
[00:22:01] Or whether you want to have the freedom to travel and to be location independent and have complete control over your time, which by the way, I do love having complete control over my time and when I work and when I don’t work, it is definitely a perk of being full time in your business. So I want that for you too.
[00:22:18] And having momentum. is crucial. Being able to show up and take action and to overcome perfectionism so you can do that is absolutely crucial. So this series is going to be helping you with that. I just want to wrap up by talking through a few misconceptions that might be stopping you from creating momentum in your business.
[00:22:36] So I was really reflecting on So many clients that I’ve coached inside PGSD conversations that I’ve had with so many different people as well. And also I was just doing some research about momentum and like the common advice out there, which was pretty dismal if I’m going to be honest and not to hype myself up.
[00:22:55] But I was just like, Oh, no wonder so many people are struggling with momentum when it’s like make the perfect decisions, get clarity and then move yourself on and show up every single day. And like, basically. If you don’t have any perfectionist thinking. You find it really easy to make decisions. You find it really easy to take action in a sustainable way.
[00:23:16] You find it really easy to publicly fail. You find it really easy to pick yourself back up again and keep yourself going. And like, if you are not scared of what people think, And you’re not scared of being judged and you’re not scared of disappointing people. Yeah, you can follow this advice. It’s out there about how to create momentum.
[00:23:36] But if you have that perfectionist mindset, if you are overthinking, procrastinating, and none of this is your fault, it’s not your fault that you’re thinking this way. You’re not stuck with that perfectionist thinking. I like to call it the perfectionism handbrake. If your perfectionism handbrake has been turned on and maybe you hadn’t even realized that, and it’s, it’s served you well, it feels like, that was my experience for sure it was like I, and one of my clients actually said this so well, I’m the most, she said this about herself, she said I’m the most disorganized organized person you will meet and that that’s the perfectionism, that she was so organized and yet so disorganized and that was me, that I was just, uh, like I, I used to think that perfectionists are perfect people and I was an imperfectionist because I was imperfect.
[00:24:25] And really, perfectionism is about the shame of being imperfect. We want to avoid imperfection. Yes, we want to do things perfectly, but what we’re most concerned with is avoiding imperfection. We easily splot. inadequacies and that makes it really hard to feel successful and to create success. It makes it really hard to actually feel like you’re good enough.
[00:24:50] And this is where that imposter syndrome comes in as well, that if you are really easily able to spot any imperfections in your knowledge and your experience, then you will feel like you aren’t sufficiently qualified when you are. So it really like, When it comes to creating momentum, if you’re a perfectionist, and I’m assuming you are, if you’re listening to this, you have to think about and take into account your perfectionist mindset.
[00:25:16] The way I love to talk about it is getting your perfectionist mindset on your side and working for you instead of against you. And then as you do that, you will naturally overcome perfectionism, but we want to have you really be Taking an approach to creating momentum that works for your perfectionist brain that doesn’t trigger your all or nothing mindset.
[00:25:36] That doesn’t trigger your desire to not get anything wrong and not waste any effort. And so I really I’m so passionate about supporting you to actually create momentum in a way that works for your brain. It’s going to be so much easier than anything you’ve ever tried. If you actually approach this in a way that works for your brain instead of against it, and you don’t have to be better.
[00:25:59] This is my probably favorite thing about this. You don’t have to be better or be more disciplined or be more motivated in order to create momentum. You just actually have to get your perfectionist mindset working for you instead of against you, and I’m the perfect person to teach you how to do that. So here are a few misconceptions stopping you from creating momentum in your business.
[00:26:19] The first is that momentum comes from getting everything right. The perfect messaging, the perfect niche, the perfect name, some signs that this is you, is you’re stuck in market research. You are always like tweaking and polishing. Either your branding, your Instagram bio. You’re just trying to get the wording right, the images right, the colors right, the names right.
[00:26:42] And you probably do a lot of brainstorming sessions. You probably do a lot of conversations with people. Like just in general, like researching, whether it’s on Instagram or using chat, GPT or whatever, you’re just trying to get that just right. And this idea that momentum comes from getting everything just right, stops us from creating any momentum.
[00:27:05] I was definitely stuck in that, like speaking from experience with all of this, that this used to be me, that I was just so busy. Trying to figure out the exact way that I wanted to do things forever more. And whenever I was in that thought pattern of like, I need to figure out the answer to this forever that I’m happy to live with for the rest of time.
[00:27:26] It puts so much pressure on me that it completely zapped any creativity I had. It made it such a big deal. It made it so much harder to make any decisions. I procrastinated on them for weeks, if not months. And I wasn’t able to actually create momentum because momentum comes from taking action from actually letting yourself do things.
[00:27:46] And inside PGSD, I will teach you my decision making framework and how to make decisions that you are really happy with, that you do feel confident moving forward with. But just know that as much as we want to think like, if I just make this perfect decision here, everything else will be rainbows and daisies.
[00:28:02] That’s not how it works. And it’s a good thing it doesn’t work that way. It’s a beautiful thing that it comes from taking action because action develops skill. It develops expertise. It develops your ability to actually handle your success. Because if it came, or if it was the case that you just make a perfect decision and then you have a successful business, you wouldn’t actually be the person who can handle that success.
[00:28:25] So the fact that you need to. Create that success through taking action, sustainable action, without bending yourself out. That momentum means you’ll actually be able to handle the success that you do create. The second one is that momentum comes from showing up every single day for your business. I have not shown up every single day for my business, not in the beginning, before I had momentum, not once I had momentum.
[00:28:51] And there were definitely times where I showed up more often and then times where I’ve showed up less often, but we can really be in this all or nothing mindset. And if you’re like posting on social media every day or not at all, or you’re just like creating a bank of, of content for yourself for social media.
[00:29:07] So once you start posting, you can keep posting consistently forever. It’s just really important to know that momentum comes from the volume of of efforts that you put in, not from it having to be the same volume every single day. So someday you might put a little more effort into your business. Other days, you might put no effort into your business.
[00:29:26] That’s totally okay. You can create momentum. And I’m going to be sharing later in this series, why you only need momentum. four hours per week to create momentum and why that only needs to be across four days of the week. So you don’t have to be showing up every single day. And as much as I think that people be like, you know, you have to show up consistently.
[00:29:45] That’s the key that when we hear that as perfectionist, what we hear is, You have to be perfect. You have to push yourself to the limits. You have to show up every single day. You’re being so lazy and you’re just never going to be successful. It triggers that all or nothing mindset and has us either showing up perfectly or not at all.
[00:30:02] And that doesn’t create momentum. So what you want to be able to do is to be able to show up more often than not show up when you plan to show up more often than not, as I just mentioned, and to be able to like, and I love this, like. touching your business every day if you’re in a period where you’re feeling like that would be helpful, like just do a little something for it every day.
[00:30:23] But what’s most important is really understanding that if you don’t show up every day, you can still create momentum. You’re not going to lose it. You’re not going to never be able to have it. And definitely like, if you look at my Instagram, I’ve never been consistent on Instagram. I’ve still been able to have a very successful business.
[00:30:44] So I’m going to teach you more about that in PGSE, but just know you don’t have to show up every single day. And I know that if you have maybe a full time job, a part time job, kids, you’re caring for your parents, you have a health issue. Like Life has stuff happening and those things are also important to you.
[00:31:02] You’re not wanting to be like, well, business is the only thing that matters and nothing else matters. Like, you have other things that are actually legitimately as important, if not more important than your business. And so what can happen is we think like, well, I have to be all in on the business, which means neglecting everything else.
[00:31:18] And if I’m not, like, I don’t want to neglect everything else, so I can’t be all in on the business. No, you can create momentum. It doesn’t have to be every day that you’re showing up, and I’m going to teach you how to do that. Number three, momentum will burn me out, takes a lot of energy and is really hard to sustain.
[00:31:34] So I just want to offer, and we’ll do in part four, I’ll talk more about burnout specifically. But for now, I just want to share standing still is what’s burning you out. Spinning your wheels is what’s burning you out. Having a dream that you aren’t acting upon as fully as you could be, is what’s burning you out.
[00:31:52] Holding yourself back due to perfectionism is what’s burning you out. It’s actually like, there’s this saying, like body motion stays in motion. It’s easier to be in momentum. It takes less energy to be in momentum. And we’re not talking here about hustling where you’re like pushing yourself to limits.
[00:32:11] You’re not working out, you’re not taking care of your health. You’re not actually spending time with your partner or your kids or your dog. We’re talking here about sustainable momentum. That is what I’m an expert in teaching and creating. That’s what I’m here to help you do. Overcoming perfectionism. So you can do that is the key.
[00:32:28] But momentum isn’t the thing that’s going to burn you out. It’s the indecision. It’s the waiting. It’s the procrastinating. It’s the overthinking. It’s being scared to put yourself out there because of what people will think. That’s what burns you out. It’s the having to prove energy. Always trying to prove you’re smart enough, that you’re capable.
[00:32:52] That is what burns you out, not the momentum. So you don’t have to worry about that. I’ll talk more about that in part four The next one I want to share is momentum should happen quickly. And we don’t even think this in such direct terms, but if you are someone that you have an idea, probably an inspired idea, you take action on it for a few days or a week, and then you, maybe even a few weeks, and then you fall off.
[00:33:19] Typically, there’s this thought under there is that if you don’t have that feeling of momentum or validation, the likes, the comments, the DMs, if you don’t have all of that within a relatively short time, or you don’t have this like amazing magical feeling that you’re on exactly the right path, and that everything’s finally clicked, then you aren’t on the right path, and so you should do something else.
[00:33:44] So if you’re jumping from idea to idea to idea, this is you. You are thinking that it needs to happen quickly. And this also puts so much pressure on decision making and picking exactly the right thing to do. So what we want to have you really thinking about, and just I want you to understand, is that with momentum, because it’s about the compound effect, and taking action, showing up in a sustainable, aligned way.
[00:34:10] I’ll teach you how to do that in PGSE. Showing up and taking action. There comes a tipping point where that starts to compound. At first, you won’t actually see it compounding. You won’t actually be able to notice it. And then, You will, and then others will, and then it will just become so plain obvious, but there will be a tipping point and inside PGSE I’ll be teaching you the tipping point equation so you can understand exactly where this is for you specifically.
[00:34:38] But when it comes to this tipping point, I found it one of the most helpful things, especially in the early times was really understanding that a big part of business is about endurance and being willing to keep going and And this doesn’t mean like I’m going to keep spinning my wheels for 10 more years, but to be able to actually show up and be taking action and to iterate and do all the different things as you go, I’m not just saying like beat your head against the wall for 10 years and then you’ll be successful.
[00:35:09] But even so it’s really important to just understand this got me through some really hard times in the beginning years where I really, because of the perfectionism, wasn’t taking action and wasn’t showing up. Then I was like, I just need to keep persisting. If I persist, I will succeed. Most people quit.
[00:35:28] Most everyone else quits. So at least if I can just Go for it on the endurance front and keep supporting myself to keep showing up and keep putting one Scared foot in front of the other I will get there and then over time Like that helped me in the early times then over time What I really came to understand is with any new project with any new endeavor whether it’s like the actual launching of your business or a new project within that or a new social platform or things like that, there will be a unique tipping point for each of those things.
[00:36:04] And that tipping point is always going to be a bit after our perfectionist brain wants it to be because our perfectionist brain is scared of wasting effort, scared of judgment, scared of looking dumb, unintelligent, and therefore unlovable. So it wants that momentum and validation to be super quick. And so there is going to be that discomfort between where you want momentum to be and where it actually starts.
[00:36:28] But when you understand the tipping point equation and where momentum actually is, it’s so much easier to actually get to the tipping point and keep yourself going and not quit prematurely. And finally, this is such speaking of wasted effort and the fear of wasted effort. This is a big one. I really want to make sure that you understand is that if you create momentum in a direction that you don’t like, you just get to transfer that over to what you do want to be doing.
[00:36:56] A big thing that keeps perfectionists from creating momentum is this idea that if I don’t have everything perfect, like if I don’t have it all the way, I want to have it forever. Then. It’s going to be this waste of effort to show up now. Like if I don’t have the name perfect, if I don’t have the niche perfect, if I don’t have the messaging perfect, if I don’t have the product perfect, like I need to wait until I have that perfect, otherwise it’ll be a waste of effort.
[00:37:23] I’ll have to redo things. I’ll just like, it’s better to just have it perfect from the outset and then I can. really create the momentum and then I can take action and then I can actually be showing up. But that’s not how momentum works. You just get to transfer it. Like when I started my business, it was called Smart Twenties and then I was able to just change the name later on and I could just transfer that momentum.
[00:37:48] So when I started The Perfectionism Project five years later, I had an audience of raving fans and there are sometimes you might transfer to something completely different, but what you get is. is the identity to bring with you. The self image of the person who shows up. You have the skills of taking action, the skills of making decisions, the skills of being the person you want to be, the identity of that, of being productive, of taking your business seriously.
[00:38:18] Because if you’re like, well, I’m going to treat this business like a hobby. Because I don’t know if it’s a business I want forever. If you do figure out the forever business, you’re just going to treat that one like a hobby too, because that is the person you are, that that’s the identity you’re in. But if through your current, whatever you’re doing.
[00:38:34] If you see that as an opportunity to become the person you want to be in whatever future thing you do figure out you want to do, it’s like, it’s just such a beautiful thing to understand and to know is that you can just transfer that momentum. If you name your business something and you get all these things printed with it and then you don’t like the name, You can change it and you’ll be further ahead than if you keep waiting to figure out the perfect name.
[00:39:04] And you will get feedback on it, and this is such a big thing too, is that when we’re in this idea that like, I don’t want to end up on the wrong path, so it’s better to not walk than to walk down the wrong path. Like, it is so much better to have momentum in the wrong direction than to have no momentum at all.
[00:39:22] because of the feedback that comes with that. If you’re like, well, I don’t want to start a social media account because I don’t have to share my whole personal life on social media. I don’t want to be an influencer. I don’t want to be recognized in public. Like a, you’re thinking like way far down the line that perfection is all or nothing thinking, but B.
[00:39:40] If you actually started, you would figure out, like, maybe you do actually love that. A lot of people do, like, love sharing their personal life. And maybe you didn’t realize that was you. Or, if you do accidentally become an influencer and you hate it, and you’ve seen many people do this, You just turn it into a different kind of business.
[00:39:58] You can take that audience with you and then you have a ready made audience for whatever else it is you’re doing. It is so much better to have momentum in the wrong thing than to have no momentum at all. Then to be standing still, then to be procrastinating, then to be waiting for the perfect decision.
[00:40:15] So many times, so many times it’s like just purely starting to take action will tell you everything you need to know. about that decision. But with that perfectionist thinking that can be so hard, which is why PGSD exists, why I teach you how to actually confidently take action and take those next steps.
[00:40:36] Even when your legs are trembling, even when you’re like, no, no, no, I really need to have my ducks in a row. I’ll teach you how to get your ducks in a row. sufficiently so you can confidently move yourself forward. But I hope it’s helpful to just hear all about momentum and why it’s not going to burn you out, why it’s easy to create.
[00:40:51] It doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s easy to sustain much easier, much easier than sustaining the standstill. That’s exhausting. That is so exhausting when you’re someone who wants to run. So I’m going to teach you. throughout this series and inside PGSD how to really create that momentum and really have you being that person who feels safe in momentum because it’s such an incredible place to be.
[00:41:15] So with that said, I will talk to you in the next part of this series.
Outro
[00:41:19] If you enjoy listening to this podcast, I invite you to join my productivity program for early stage entrepreneurs called Perfectionists Getting Shit Done, aka PGSD. Inside the program, you’ll learn how to overcome perfectionism and create momentum in your business in just six weeks without burning yourself out.
[00:41:38] It’s a lifetime access program with a simple productivity process, group coaching calls, private coaching calls, personal feedback, judgment, free support, accountability, and more. Enrollment will be opening on Friday, the 18th of October for one week only. And those who sign up in the first 48 hours of enrollment will get a bonus one on one decision support call with me.
[00:42:03] If you have been stuck on a decision, like your niche, your marketing plan, your business name, you’re in trouble. This bonus is for you on that call. I will lead you through a simple process that will have you make smart business decisions that you love. And if you’re not ready to make your decisions on the call itself, I’m going to create for you a seven day decision plan with follow up support.
[00:42:24] So you can confidently get those decisions made no matter how big the decision is or how long you’ve been stuck on it. This bonus will guarantee you can confidently get it decided. So to find out more about the program and sign up for the waitlist so you don’t miss signing up within the first 48 hours of enrollment, visit samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.