Podcast

Episode 497: Creating The Willingness To Go All-In On Your Business Even If It’s Scary

Today I’m sharing a message that I recorded from the heart. It’s all about what it looks like to create the willingness to go all-in on your business, even if it’s scary. It’s a chatty episode filled with personal stories, a loving kick in the pants and an invitation to step into who you know you’re here to be.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode497.

Doors closing soon for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD)

PGSD is a productivity program for early-stage entrepreneurs who are ready to overcome perfectionism and create momentum in their business in six weeks working just 4 hours per week on their business. 

If you are struggling to build your business due to procrastination, fear of failure or imposter syndrome, we’ve got you.

PGSD is a lifetime access program that teaches you our simple productivity process for perfectionist entrepreneurs and supports you with group coaching, private coaching, personal feedback, accountability and like-minded community. 
The doors to Perfectionists Getting Shit Done are closing at 11:59pm EDT this Friday, 25 October. Email any questions to support@samlaurabrown.com or sign up today at 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.

Sam Laura Brown – (Custom Intro)
This episode is one that I recorded a few nights ago, and it’s going to help you create the willingness to go all in on your business, even if it’s scary, if you are feeling like you’re just on the cusp of being all in you really want to get your business off the ground. You really want to create momentum, but you’re wavering. You’re having a hard time really going for it. You’re scared of burning out, you’re scared of being laughed at. You’re scared of failing. This is for you. This episode is for you. Steve was on a late shift. The kids were in bed, and I just felt inspired to pick up my microphone and record a message for you. I share stories in this episode. It’s a chatty one. It’s me just channeling what was coming to me. So stay tuned to the whole thing. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re like, I just really want to go for it, but I’m having a hard time going for it. This episode is going to help you create that willingness to go in. It’s going to help you create that moment of, okay, now is the time I’m actually going to do it. I’m going to figure out how to get out of my own way. In PGSD, we help you with that. So I’m going to figure out how to get out of my own way. And I’m going to actually do that. I’m going to start investing in my business, not just in marketing programs and knowledge, but I’m going to invest in learning the skills I need, which includes overcoming perfectionism and taking action. So with that said, I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Sam Laura Brown – (Start of episode)
I just wanted to pull out my microphone and record something for you, just to, I guess, just to clarify, something that I want to make sure you know, and to say in a way that I hope will deeply resonate and give you a loving kick in the pants, and also having you begin to show up, not from a place of hustle or inadequacy, but from a place of willingness, commitment, groundedness, determination and just wanting to create a new reality for yourself. So what I’ve been reflecting on is PGSD. Obviously, we are in our open enrollment at the moment. This is our final enrollment of the year, and I’ve been writing a lot of emails and creating content and just thinking about you, thinking about how I can help you. And if you’re wanting to join PGSD, if you are wanting to learn how to overcome perfectionism and create momentum, if you’ve been struggling to show up consistently, if you have been struggling to be all in on your business, but you really, really want to create it. You really, really, really want to, one day have a full time business. I’ve just been thinking about how I can help you, and how I can help you take the next step to sign up for PGSD and get our productivity process that we have that works for your perfectionist brain instead of against it, and also all the support we have inside the program.

And so it’s something to be reflected on, because the way we’re going to be doing the momentum project inside PGSD is that it is a six week project I’m going to teach you exactly what to do. It’s simple and easy to set up. There’s a few criteria it needs to meet, so that it is easy for you to achieve as a perfectionist, instead of you going into the all or nothing mindset, being really motivated and then burning yourself out. So there’s a few criteria it needs to meet to really support you. So I’m going to teach you what that is. It’s going to be a six week project, and all you’re going to need for your business each week is just four hours of business time that includes the project and everything else you need to do. So if you have more time than that, amazing, but I know there is a good chance that you are someone who is working full time, you are a parent as well, like you’ve got a health condition, you have things going on, maybe your wedding planning.

And I want to help you create momentum in just a few hours a week. It is possible, I know, because when I was creating momentum for the very first time in my business, I was working full time. Well, initially, I was studying full time. I was working part time, but long hours, part time. I had my boyfriend, my now husband, but then boyfriend, Steve. I wanted to hang out with him. I had health goals. I had friends. My family. I had a lot I wanted to do besides the business, but building the business was something that was really important to me. Even though I was scared shitless, even though I felt like, who do I think I am? Could I ever even be successful at this? I just had no confidence. I was scared to tell anyone, initially, for the first year, even about my business, and I didn’t tell anyone. It was my secret that I hid, and I worked in it while I was studying. So then I became an accountant, and I worked at one of the big firms in the city. I did that while also continuing to create momentum and build towards having a full time business. Then I transitioned to part time work so I could have more time for my business.

And then in 2019, six years after I initially started, I went full time, and I have been now full time in my business, comfortably for five years, while also having two maternity leaves for my three little ones. I have twins, if you try to do that math and just going through so many different seasons where I haven’t had a lot of time or energy or both, to build the business and create momentum. So I want to teach you, and I will be teaching you how to do that, especially as a perfectionist with a tendency to procrastinate and overthink and people please and be scared of judgment and be scared of failure and being wrong and making mistakes, all of those things. I am the perfect person to help you. So with that said, what I have been thinking about is with the momentum project, with getting shit done, with creating momentum, even though I can teach you how to do that in a small amount of time, what you do need to have, and we can support you with this and foster this inside PGSD, that is something we definitely do.

But you need to come into the program with a willingness to really have a go at building your business, with a willingness to even though it’s hard, even though it’s going to be inconvenient, even though you will need to sometimes say no to doing things you want to do, like I think of the number of times that I said no to doing fun things with my friends, because I wanted to work on my business that was not getting anywhere at that point in time, I hadn’t made any money, but I wanted to write a blog post and publish it for my two readers, but I just wanted to be the person who could one day have a full time business, and something that I see with so many people, and I just want to really speak to this, because it’s so important, it’s essential, is that you’ve got to be willing and have the desire to build your business. That might sound really obvious, but I think it’s just so good to check in with yourself, because it’s not a get quick rich scheme. Get rich quick scheme.

It is not a like instant ticket to freedom and flexibility, and I love teaching perfectionists how to loosen up some of the rules that we put on ourselves, how to be able to work in a more focused way, less procrastination, less overthinking, less people pleasing and saying yes to things we want to say no to and no to things we want to say yes to, And then mentally switching off, resting without guilt. I love teaching that. And also a really important ingredient is that you are willing to inconvenience yourself, that you are willing to do the work, that you are willing for it to be hard. And I love thinking about I think about it so often because on so many podcast interviews, people ask questions about hard work, and just talk about the philosophy of hard work, and what does this mean to you and things like that, and what I how I approach this, and what I think is really important, especially for early stage entrepreneurs, when you are just creating that initial momentum where you’ve been at a standstill or spinning your wheels and you were ready to get moving forward. Is that there is hard work that we can experience.

Is like working hard, where we are proving ourselves and trying to hustle and like, force our way forward, and there’s hard work because we are emotionally in a place where we are feeling supported and regulated, and we are just then able to do the genuinely hard things that need to be done, whether it’s boring. Or monotonous, or whether it requires courage, but we haven’t got the emotional drama. And I think that perfectionist in the beginning, when we are wanting to prove ourselves and we feel like we have to be working hard to be successful. So we make things hard by adding mental drama. And so this can then create and really exacerbate if you are feeling behind, and especially if you are then working hard by creating a lot of mental drama around whatever it is you’re doing, you might then feel the perfectionist entitlement to being successful. Well, I’m working so hard, I should be further along. I should have more followers. I should be making more money. I should have more engagement.

I should have more DMS, when actually you aren’t really working that hard. You are just really busy in your mind with all of the perfectionist mental drama that comes along with it. So what we want to do is, have you, and this is what I wish I had more support around if I’m so passionate about what I do. But have you been in the most emotionally regulated place possible, the most supported place possible, with community, with productivity tools, with entrepreneurship tools, mindset tools, all of that’s inside PGSD, having you be able to also not be trying to work all the time, and then be half on and half off, because you can’t work all the time, and if you’re constantly working on your business all the time, it is so hard for your brain to be well rested enough to generate and create, and then have you have the courage and the energy to follow through on those ideas.

So wanna have you been rested as well, even if you’ve got a busy life that you are able to get rest for your brain, and also, at the same time, there are going to be hard things you need to do. You are going to need to inconvenience yourself. And so, just as an example, when I was building my business, and really when I had in 2016 it was in April, I had my enough is enough moment like I am just done pretending to myself that I’m all in on my business, like I am thinking about it all the time, but my results are not reflecting that, and I know it’s because I’m getting in my own way, and I’m just so sick of getting in my own way that I’m going to get out of it. That’s what I started investing in myself. I started shifting over from thinking of my business as a hobby, to actually be like, this is a real business. It’s worth investing in. Not just money. I started investing money in it, but also time and energy.

And really, I have been working so hard on it, but I had been just really in a lot of that emotional and mental drama around it, just being so scared, so avoidant, perfecting things, polishing things. And then when I had that moment and I wanted to start finally making money from my business, I was going to create an online course about how to create a habit, as that is something that I had learned and been able to master myself. And so what I did was I decided that I was actually going to shift the way that I would approach, how I was doing my business and how I was building it, instead of trying to fit it in in the evenings. And I was always too exhausted. I would wake up at 4am and I talked about this, I believe in the momentum series, where I talked about the transition from a hobby business to a real business that was in part two, and the shifts that need to happen to make that a reality.

But I really just want to underline that you probably will need to inconvenience yourself, and you probably will need to, even if it’s not like actually inconveniencing yourself, but you might need to experience some emotions that are uncomfortable, that you might otherwise avoid by scrolling, or you might otherwise Avoid by eating, or you might otherwise avoid by doing all sorts of things. Maybe it is by working on your business and just being busy, busy, busy, that you are avoiding certain feelings that will need to be felt. And so when it comes to even the other day, I was coaching someone in the power planning course, and she is creating momentum in her business. She’s beginning to do that work. She’s learning power planning, how to plan properly as a perfectionist, and so I was coaching her on when to work on her business, because she is a mom of a little one. She has one that is the same age as my twins, so around 1819, Months, and she also works full time, and she also wants to have some me time, which I agree very important, and also hang out with her husband and have family time.

And what I coached her on was being willing to take away some of that family time and have it be business time. And I quid her. Also on how that’s going to serve her family overall, how her husband can bond with her son and really be able to create special memories together, and all sorts of things like that. But also to be able to say, Hey, I’m going to go work on this business that isn’t yet feeling like a real business, and I think a lot of us feel more comfortable prioritizing the business once it’s successful, but to be able to get there, you need to begin prioritizing your business before it’s successful. Financially, you need to make it a priority. Time wise, you need to make it a priority. Energy wise, you need to make it a priority. Doesn’t mean it needs to take a lot of time or energy or money, but it does need to become a priority and something that you choose to focus on and something that you are willing to work around.

So when I really started to create momentum, such a big part of that was being willing to inconvenience myself and say,okay, I’m going to wake up at 4am I’m probably going to be a bit snappy. It probably isn’t going to be ideal for everyone else around me, but I need to give this a real go. Ultimately, it is more ideal for everyone around me if I’m actually doing something that I want to do, if I’m pursuing the dreams that I have, if I’m becoming the person that I want to be and am I meant to be, that is better for everyone else involved than me being well rested, but just going along in an accounting job that I just see no future in, and I’d be happy enough there. I just knew I was being wasted there. I just knew that wasn’t what I was meant to be doing. And I just had that restless feeling that, like I’m never going to not want to try this. I just want to give it a real go. I want to see what I’m capable of. I want to figure this out.

And so waking up at 4am and I would work on my business for about an hour in the morning, and then I would also go to the gym as well. Then I would catch the train into my job. I would catch, I think it was like the 715 train start also amongst that, get ready for work. I catch the train. Oftentimes I would have my laptop on the train. I would be writing something like a blog post, typically, because I was a blogger, writing a blog post, go into work, and then I did another workout, typically at lunchtime, go to the the afternoon, part of my work, come home on the train, often with my laptop, and then I would hang out with Steve in the afternoon and or in the evening. By the time I got home, it was past six o’clock, and that would be the time that I would then sometimes be working on my business as well, but also I’d be doing other things, but I had to prioritize waking up early to do it, even though that meant also learning how to get myself up out of bed and do it even when I didn’t feel like it, that was essential, because when I was trying to do it in the evening, it just wasn’t getting done, and I needed to make that shift.

And so just what I wanted to record and communicate is really having you tap into the desire that you have to have a full time business one day, and that it is possible. I have helped so many people at this point do it. I have done it myself. Obviously, I have done it myself. And have been the person that was like, oh my god, I’m never going to get there. But I want it so badly. I just want to be able to have my own business, to be able to support myself from that business, to be able I didn’t even have big dreams beyond that, like that was really it, until once I was told I was like, okay, better sets the bigger goals, but I wanted to just be able to have that full time business. I listened to podcast episodes all day, every day, about how to be full time in your business, how to make that happen, how to make six figures. All of that, I was constantly feeding myself with motivation and inspiration, and then I had to start taking action.

I had to get out of that Learning Mode and just being inspired and hopeful and optimistic and move into a more vulnerable place, which is taking action and showing up and putting yourself out there and saying things that might be a little bit cringy to you and might feel a bit awkward. Awkward and just in public, if you’re showing up, like I was on Instagram and I had a YouTube channel and things like that, that it is embarrassing to our perfectionist phrase to do that, and also I was willing to feel embarrassed, I was willing to feel awkward, and I wasn’t ever pushing myself to any extremes, but I was willing to go to the edge of my comfort zone and then explore a little bit beyond that, and then have that become normal, and then go a little bit beyond that, and have that become normal to the point where things that used to scare the shit out of me, and now just part of what I do. And now just a normal day, showing up and going on stories or going live. I can do that like, if it was like, go live right now and talk about something, no issues whatsoever. But I know for so many perfectionists, especially anything live, because that brings up a lot a lot of feelings. So when it comes to being able to create momentum, yes, I can help you do that in just a few hours a week. Yes, I can help you do that in a sustainable way where you’re not burning yourself out. You are not pushing yourself to the limits. You are not exhausting yourself. But also, you need to be willing to go all in.

You need to be willing, and I will teach you how to go all in, and what the difference is between that and pushing yourself to limit. Because you might think I did that and I burned out, you didn’t go all in. And I don’t know if I need to even go into it in this episode, but typically, as perfectionists, when we say I went all in and I burned out, it’s I hustled. It’s I worked from a place of inadequacy. The perfectionism is what’s burning you out, not being committed. When we’re committed to the business we get the rest. We need to be able to keep going, because we know that it’s going to be a long road. So when we’re all in, we are also taking care of ourselves, and we’re all in on that, because that is 100% necessary. But as you’re learning what that looks like, you might have experiences with burnout, where you’re like, I was going to go fully for it, and I exhausted myself.

But if you went all in in an unsustainable way, you weren’t all in, because it takes more than three weeks or three months to be able to go from where you are now to full time in your business, of course, depending where you are. So the only way to be all in is to show up in a sustainable way, to show up in a way that gets your perfectionist brain working for you instead of against you, which reduces the mental drama, which reduces any extra hardness we put on top of what’s already hard, and makes it all so much easier. It’s still hard. You’re still doing new things, and I just want to make sure that you are able to tap into what you believe is possible for yourself, even if there’s no proof of it yet. There never was for me. I never had a past successful business. I never had the confidence to be different, to others, to just like, be myself. I remember in primary school, in primary school, in high school, on my iPod, and I was listening to indie rock music, and everyone else was listening to pop and whatever else.

And I remember just like hiding my iPod and not wanting anyone to see what I was listening to, even though it wasn’t even that unusual, but it was just different to everyone else. And I just wanted so badly to fit in. Some perfectionists, the fear of judgment and people pleasing manifest in different ways and really, really, really wanting to stand out. But for me, I just wanted to hide. I just wanted to blend in. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I just wanted to follow wanted to follow the rules and get it right and be smart and be successful and be loved and all of that. And I had to unlearn that to become successful as an entrepreneur. And that required a reinvention. And to reinvent myself required willingness, courage, determination, and I didn’t yet really know how I was going to keep going, but a willingness to just put one foot in front of the other, and to just have the bigger picture in mind, of being full time in my business, but also not overwhelming myself by trying to solve problems that I didn’t even have yet.

This happens so often for perfectionist entrepreneurs, when we are getting in our own way and scared to take action that we will try to solve for problems that aren’t even there yet or close it’s trying to solve for a. For example, like, what will I do taxes wise, when I’m making hundreds of 1000s of dollars and you haven’t yet sold anything, I need to figure out about an accountant and this and that, that we can just get so caught up in all the different like, if you’re consuming a lot of information about all the different levels of business, it’s really important to know that part of the reason you’re doing that is subconsciously so you’re too confused to take action, or too busy learning to then be able to take action. And so what we do in pgse is when you have that willingness to start showing up, to start getting shit done, to start getting out of your own way, to inconvenience yourself a little if you need to to be willing to invest time into a business that might not be bearing any fruit yet, it might still be a little seedling or just a tiny, little tree trunk, and no one else can maybe even see the tree yet.

And other people have all their other thoughts, and it’s easy when we’re not yet believing to buy into that. But if you have that restless feeling that I had and that I know our PGSDers have before they signed up, of like I know, even though there is so much perfectionism telling me that I shouldn’t do this and that I’m gonna die if I show up and I put myself out there and I sell and I build this business, I know if I never fully try it, I’m just always gonna have this restless feeling. I’m always gonna have this desire to have the business. I’m always going to have it in the back of my head, like for me, I knew, like it would just be easier if I didn’t have this desire, but I know, I know I’m just always going to be thinking about, what would it be like to have a business. I’ve been listening to so many business podcasts and learning about what was possible and being a coach and what that meant, I just had this deep desire, even though I also had a deep desire not to be seen, to hide, to follow the rules, all of that.

But just a little bit more, just a little bit stronger, was my desire to give it a go, and it doesn’t need to be this roaring fire, and we can help stoke that fire and keep it burning even if there’s a storm, even if it starts raining. We will help you with that. We know how to support you with that through the inevitable ups and downs of business, because having consistent, sustainable momentum isn’t about okay, everything’s successful, and now it will always only be successful. A big piece of it is the persistence and the resilience and the normalizing the problems and the hard times, because that is a normal part of business. That’s why it’s so important to have community and to have coaching. Because the number of PGSDers who come to a call or post in the form like, oh my God, this is happening, I feel so ashamed. Like, oh yeah, that’s normal, but your client ghosted you. Of course, that’s a right of pass it like, oh, okay, cool. Well, I don’t need to think this is a me, like, only me problem, or that I’m the problem is just part of business. Okay, now what’s next? So just having that is so powerful. I’m so grateful to have that for my own business.

There are so many things that I wanted to go into a shame spiral about that were completely normal, that were just like part of business that I hadn’t yet learned was part of business, because it’s not school where you just get a plus, a plus, a plus, and then Yep, cool, like it’s actually there are ups and downs. You learn as a cliche is you learn through mistakes and failures. And what we have you do inside PGSD is really shift into the place of wanting to learn, IE, wanting and being willing to make mistakes and to fail, because that is how you learn. And I even had a realization recently where, when I had one of my most successful years, I made $600,000. 300,000 in profit after paying myself. I was working three days a week. Had a toddler. I was pregnant with the twins. I got married that when I then, kind of like, was in this mindset of like, oh my God, I’m way more successful in my business than I ever thought I could be. I just $100,000 were like, Oh, my God, that would be insane.

So to make 600,000 and in the circumstances that I made it in, and just like feeling on top of the world, I realized, after the fact that I then was in this mindset of like, well, I should just be more and more and more successful now. There shouldn’t be any more ups and downs. It should just be up and up and up from here, revenue should be increasing every year, profitability should be increasing every year. I’ll learn skills like leadership and the numbers, but like, I hadn’t actually really been thinking of like, I’m going to learn that by fucking things up. I’m going to learn that by making some really painful mistakes and experiencing a lot of failure and feeling like I’m getting my ass kicked, but when I’ve really been and I’ve just stepped into this again recently, at an even deeper level of like, Oh, I’m willing not to just, like, intellectually learn things and understand concepts, but I’m willing to fail. I’m willing to make mistakes.

And that doesn’t mean because I know it says cliche thing of like, yeah, yeah, but I really want to get it right. If you’re a perfectionist, I don’t want to get anything wrong, but just being willing to go all in and really give it a go does mean you are willing to make mistakes and you’re willing to fail. But if you’re stuck in procrasti-learningand procrasti-researching and hoping in January, it’ll be a magic fix, which it never has been, but hopefully next year it is, or maybe when the kids go back to school, or maybe when your your ideal weight, or whatever else you’re waiting for that you hope will magically kick you into momentum and motivation in your business, instead of waiting for this future time that has never yet come, and most likely never will, that you say, oh, today’s the day like I have. There have been so many reinventions I’ve been through in my business where it’s been like, oh, today is the day I actually just changed the way I’m approaching it. Today is the day I shift from hobby business owner to real business owner, even if the business from the outside looks the same, even if I haven’t yet made a sense in my brain, this isn’t like, oh, some cute thing that I’m trying.

Hopefully it works. I am willing to figure out how to get this working. I am willing to make decisions. I might fuck some of them up, but I’m willing to make decisions and move myself forward, instead of waiting to have the perfect decision and then just being stuck researching and second guessing in the analysis paralysis to actually just step into I’m doing this. I’m gonna figure this out. I’m gonna be the person who gets that. I’m gonna be the person that one day has a full time business, even like me, if it was six years after starting your business, even if it’s been longer than six years since you started, and you feel like you’ve got a nowhere and you’ve been spinning your wheels and getting in your own way, second guessing. It’s never too late to change your approach. And to say, today’s the day I’m committing to taking action in my business and moving forward, not just learning more knowledge, but applying that knowledge, and in PGSD, we are all about supporting you to take action and apply what you have learned and learn through doing, to have you actually showing up and putting yourself out there.

The way that you learn that in business isn’t by watching things, watching reels, listening to people you can like in PGSD, you will learn things, and then you will apply them. We teach you how to apply not just, here’s some concepts, okay, go and show up consistently. No, we teach you how to show up consistently. That was always a frustration for me, when people like, just be consistent. Just go do it, just put in your calendar and do it like, but how like? That’s what we teach you, and then we have you do it, and we support you to troubleshoot anything that comes up, any emotions that get in your way of following through we support you with them, regulating through them, processing them, naming them is often even a hard thing for perfectionists, we live in our head, typically not in our body.

There’s so much we do in PGSD to make sure that you have a really simple productivity process for you as an early stage entrepreneur that works for your perfectionist brain instead of against it, and that inside the program you are so deeply supported that you were so deeply supported because we know you are someone who really wants to be able to one day be full time in your business and. You were also scared. You’re scared of getting it wrong, you’re scared of failing you’re scared of wasting effort on the wrong thing and turning down family time. If your business ever works out is that, just like all of those questions, there’s like, Okay, well, I’ll just squeeze my business around everything else because it’s not successful yet. I’ll teach you how to get shit done and not much time at all, but no more squeezing in mentality. It’s got to become a priority the same way.

And I’ve been thinking about this as well. That how I think with entrepreneurship, particularly the way it’s talked about in the last five or so years that it really can become this entitlement to, well, I posted for a week, why am I not making $10,000 a month? And that’s maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not that much. And we don’t think that way about any other careers. Oh, I went to, you know, I have a law degree and finance degree. I went to a term of law, a semester of law. Why am I not making $200,000 as a lawyer yet? That doesn’t entitle me like it just, I think it’s just really healthy to check in with any entitlement you might have, especially if, and this is where a lot of perfectionist entitlement goes on if you have been working hard in your brain, on your business, and maybe you’ve been doing things you’ve been trying to post consistently, and then you stop, or trying to show up in the new stop.

You have been doing things, but you’re not doing the things that move you forward because of the perfectionism and the getting in your own way that creates you’ve been doing busy work, prioritizing things that aren’t as important, or spending too long on the things that are important, not finishing them, not publishing them, changing your mind, changing your ideas. If you started your business long ago, in your mind, but you haven’t been showing up in a way that actually equals that result, like from what an outsider who hears what you’re doing, if you said, here’s everything that I’m working on, here’s everything that I’m publishing, here’s everything that I’m producing, here’s everything that I’m applying, that I’ve learned, would they expect you to be successful, or would they expect you to be right where you are? Would they expect well, yeah, if you change your mind about your niche every second week, you have the results that I would expect as someone who changes their mind on their niche every two weeks. It’s like if someone was going to a job like in my accounting job, and I was just dialing it in.

And not because I didn’t have the desire to do well, but often with perfectionism, we have such a strong desire to do well that the fear of giving our best and that not being good enough creates so much pressure and is so crippling that we don’t do our best and don’t give our best, so that we can at least protect that potential and feel like, well, if I did give it my best, I’d actually be able to be good at it. It’s a vulnerable act as a perfectionist to really be all in and not from this overworking place, because a lot of perfectionists go that way, being overworked, over prepared, perfecting ahead of time. If you’re like doing a podcast, for example, practicing it over and over and over and over in your head, or having a conversation, or things like that. That’s what we want to have you do. My tongue is getting twisted.

That’s not what we want to have you do. Either we want to have you be all in willing, committed, grounded, feeling your capability. You already have a lot of it, feeling that being willing to develop the skills that you need as an entrepreneur, not just in what you do, whether you’re a naturopath or a copywriter or a performer or a photographer or a coach like me, the skills in that, the skills in Entrepreneurship, having you be willing to develop those skills and get out of the indecision, out of the procrasti-learning, out of the procrasti-researching, learning, all the things. You’re very smart, you’re very knowledgeable. We know that. We have confirmed that about you. Now it’s time to get shit done. Now it’s time to do the vulnerable thing, the courageous thing, which is to move out of the hope and optimism that we get to stay in as long as we’re in the procrasti-researching and procrastinati-learning and indecision.

Oh, if I just decided. Then I’d be successful. Well, if I just had more time and I wasn’t so exhausted, then I’d be successful. If I could just figure out my niche, then I’d be successful. We get to be in a lot of hope when we’re undecided and when we’re stalled out, as weird as that might sound, because there’s the hope that once I do try, then I’ll be successful. Then I will be loved. But to actually get shit done and build a business and create momentum, you will need to be willing to move out of hope and optimism and into reality, and reality and being in I don’t mean reality in this, like, pessimistic sense of like, just that you can’t be hopeful in reality. But in reality, there are going to be ups and downs. It’s not black and white. You’re either successful you’re not successful. There’ll be things that you learn, things that you still need to learn mistakes that you make, wins that you have, and we want to have you move out of that, out of the hope, and into the doing, into the courage, into the action, also learning how to rest without guilt, also learning how to manage your time you’re going to have power planning, how to actually be able to find the time you want for your business and everything else, and clean rest. I know you probably feel maxed out currently, and there’s no extra time.

Good news is you don’t need extra time. We’re going to reconfigure what you have so it better supports you and how you use your time so it better supports you when your power plan you won’t be exacerbating the all or nothing mindset that has you feeling stressed about time and then wasting the time not a fun place to be. I’m sure you’re familiar with that feeling like, oh my god, it’s not enough time to get everything done. Oh my god, I’m so frustrated that I’m wasting it and I’m scrolling or I’m back Googling something else, or whatever it is that you do when you’re wasting time, fluffing around at night, staying up late because that’s your me time, because you never give yourself intentional me time. So you have to stay up late to feel like, okay, now the pressure’s off to be productive, and I can just let myself be. So we just reconfigure what you’re doing, make it more supportive, more aligned with your values, more aligned with your goals, but you will need a willingness, you will need some courage.

You will need that desire, even though you might have the desire to hide, to not be seen, you might feel really scared of failing, but if you have just a little bit more desire, just a tiny bit more to be able to say, I’m going to give this a real go, I’m going to create momentum. I’m willing to inconvenience myself if needed. I might not have to, but I’m open to that. I’m open to enrolling my family members, like whoever you live with, or whoever might be impacted by how you choose to spend your time, I’m willing to say, Hey, this is really important to me. I’m not going to be able to watch Netflix tonight. I really want to work on this and start creating momentum. I know it might not look like much now, but I really believe it can be something, and working on it regularly helps me with that belief, like I loved for me, like touching. I called it touching my goal every day, like touching my business every day, do something for yourself before you do something for your boss. I worked on my business in the morning as a way to signify to myself that that was my priority, even though, overall, if you looked at how I spent my time, my priority was my full time job in terms of time spent. But really I wanted my best energy for my business, and that was in the morning.

So I figured that out. I sold for that. It took some trial and error to figure out what that would look like. It took being willing to say to Steve, hey, I’m going to wake up at 4am probably be a little bit more snappy than I normally am for about six months. It was that way until I really started getting into a rhythm, and then I didn’t have to wake up early anymore. I had the momentum that meant I could choose a different time to work on it was like, hey, I really want to get this going, and so I’m going to be waking up early and I’m going to be saying no to certain things that I might have said yes to in the past. And I realized too, there were so many things in my life that no one was even specifically asking of me or wanting of me, but I just felt like, well, like, if Steve’s there, I should be hanging out with him. I’ve had to work on that too. Now having kids like, Oh, if Steve’s home and the kids are all home, it’s family time. Well, not necessarily. I. I can actually choose to not be in the mix of everything, if I want, and that can be a great benefit to my family, but even if it’s not me, actually pursuing something that’s really important to me is of benefit, even if they really miss me and wish I was there. So I just hope with this episode, I just want to stoke that fire, plant that seed, nurture it. You can do this.

You can have a full time business, even if you have been getting in your own way for a decade, even if it’s been a year, even within six months, however long it’s been for you, you can change, and you can decide to do that today. You can say, okay, like I did, enough is enough. I’m done pretending that I’m really giving this my best, and I’m going to invest in myself to learn how to give this my best, to learn how to get into my own way, out of my own way. I need to learn that, and I’m going to figure that out and get the support you’re at the point now, more knowledge about the algorithm or the niche or anything else isn’t supporting you. You need support around taking action and doing that in a way that actually works for your perfectionist brain. So I want to invite you inside perfectionist getting shit done. Enrollment is closing 11:59pm eastern time this Friday, the 25th of October. Any questions? Email support@samlaurabrown.com, I hope to see you inside, and I hope you’re having a beautiful day too. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

I hope you enjoyed that episode. The doors to Perfectionist Getting Shit Done are closing at 11:59pm eastern time on Friday the 25th of October, at the time of the release of this episode. That is less than 48 hours away, and I want to invite you inside So samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, is where you can go to sign up and find out more about the program. Get all the details there, get yourself inside so you can overcome perfectionism and create momentum in your business without burning out. You don’t have to keep struggling with procrastination. You don’t have to keep holding yourself back inside the program. You’re going to learn exactly what you need to do. The steps are simple. The support is judgment free. We are there for you, cheering you on, giving you a loving kick in the pants if you need it and if you want it, but we are there for you in PGSD to fully support you as you get your business off the ground, get yourself inside. Don’t miss this final enrollment of the year. We’re going to be creating momentum. Before the new year even gets here, you’re going to be in the best position come 2025 no matter how much life is going to be. Life in between now and the end of the year, I’ve got you, if you’re going to be thinking about your business, if you’re going to be working on your business, you may as well be creating momentum. So join us inside PGSD today at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

Outro
Okay, so that was my interview with Jenn, I hope you found it incredibly helpful. I am so grateful to Jenn and everything that she shared so openly and honestly about her journey and experience with perfectionism and productivity and building her business. And she is just such a great example of what it looks like to be getting into that growth mindset to be planning properly as a perfectionist to be releasing your perfectionism handbrake. So thank you so much to Jenn.


Author: Sam Brown