It took me 3 very painful years to learn what I’m sharing in today’s podcast episode. And it cost me hundreds of thousands in lost revenue to learn it. That’s why I want to share it with you, today, for free on my podcast – so you don’t make the same mistake I did. I’m honestly still licking my wounds from this mistake and it’s simply because I didn’t know what I share in this episode.
Today’s episode is on Sufficiency Cycles. I’m sharing what a Sufficiency Cycle is and why they’re so important for all perfectionist entrepreneurs. I’m sharing what happens if you don’t recognise a Sufficiency Cycle when you’re in one (like I was). I’m sharing exactly how this showed up for me in my business (if you’re not familiar with how I do my podcast – I share all the raw behind the scenes stuff as that’s most helpful). And I’m sharing the revenue numbers that reveal why this is so important for all perfectionist entrepreneurs to understand.
As a perfectionist building a business, you don’t want to skip this episode – it’s essential listening for all.
Featured In The Episode:
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- Follow me on instagram: @perfectionismproject
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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
I am really excited for this episode, because I have just spent the last maybe 15 minutes just downloading it all from my brain, and I naturally just found myself putting my hand in my drawer and getting my microphone, even though I haven’t actually finished writing the notes, I just always get to a point where I’m like, I’m just so compelled, I just will know exactly what to say as I record so this episode I am sharing with you, a lesson that was so hard one like I, if I could just put anything in my past selves brain. This is one of those key things that I would want to just impart on myself. I would just want to give myself this wisdom, because I really had to learn this in such a hard way. And I do think that part of like because part of how I teach and coach is through my experiences and me going through it, so that when I’m talking about myself, you feel like I’m in your brain, because I’m talking about my brain, and I know it so intimately through these experiences and through coaching myself and getting coached through these experiences, that I can articulate things that you are experiencing, that you didn’t even know how to articulate, or that you are experiencing them.
So I feel like these kinds of lessons are just always going to be part of my journey, and they always end up, in hindsight, happening in the perfect way. And I’ve been teaching on this concept for many years now, and recently in pgsd, perfectionist getting shit done, I have been coaching on this a lot, and I really wanted to formalize this into a clear concept, so that you have it as a tool. Giving a name to a concept to an idea, allows you to more easily access that in your brain in a moment of need, and to use that to help you. And that is, as a coach, one of the key things that I want to be doing on my podcast, in all of my content that I create inside my program, like this, is what I’m wanting to be doing, so that you can then use those specific tools whenever you need them.
So that’s what I’m going to be sharing with you today in this episode, and I’m going to be sharing my own story and experience with this, and I’ve written out all the details I can think of that are relevant. And I’m just going to, yeah, just really teach, teach this in a way that I really believe will land and will resonate and will help you put words to and have guidance and have a path for something that’s really important in business. I also want to mention that the time of recording this, if you want to picture me, if you follow me on Instagram, I’m @perfectionismproject. You might know what my office looks like with the gallery wall behind me. I’m at my desk. I’m standing up, so it’s a standing desk, because Steve is mowing. Cotton gets scared when the mower is on, because it backfired once, and he was close by, and that just scared the shit out of him. So he’s here a bit antsy, and he wants to be really close to me. And if I sit down, he jumps up on me.
So I’m standing I’m also watching Liam on the monitor. He’s nearly seven months old now he’s asleep, and so I’m going to be doing my best to record this, and we’ll chop it together. So I might mention it, though, so you just know, because I love just sharing, like I’m not in this, like, studio environment with no distractions, and all of these, like notes, and I’m recording it for video, and like, I’m doing audio only, which is how I want to do it. I have Liam on the monitor in front of me on my phone. That’s why not recording on that. Anyway, I am also, in my mind, managing my anxious dog and keeping an ear out for Liam. And probably because this episode, I’m guessing will be around 45 minutes to an hour, just based on how I’m feeling about it and things I want to say that I am probably going to be interrupted at some point by Liam waking up, and we will just chop that together, and I’ll come back and just finish recording wherever I get up to.
So that’s the reality of recording, I think this is such an important, important thing, maybe I can lead with this episode. It’s all about sufficient decisions, and why making a sufficient decision is better than making the right decision or an optimal decision or a perfect decision. This is one of the key lessons, as I said, and I think my podcast is a pretty great example of this cycle that I’m going to be sharing, which is, when you make a sufficient decision, you take sufficient action and create sufficient, or even more than sufficient, results, when we as perfectionists, when we make the right. Decision, or an optimal decision, or a perfect decision that creates spinning and overwhelm procrastination, doubt, we take insufficient action, and then we get insufficient results, plus a lot of frustration. But it all starts with the decision, and making a decision that is sufficient instead of one that is perfect, optimal, right?
So if and I just want to define with sufficient decisions, and I’ll talk about my podcast, and I’ll talk about the example I want to share. Sufficient, I looked up the definition. I love doing this, so I looked up the definition for the word sufficient. It means to meet the need. I will say that again, the word sufficient means to meet the need. Our perfectionist brain thinks a sufficient decision because it’s not optimal. It’s not going to meet the need. We think only optimal, only perfect, only right decisions meet the need. But a sufficient anything, and a sufficient decision, it meets the need literally by definition. So we’re not talking about making a substandard decision. No, we’re talking about a sufficient decision, which is literally, by definition, up to par. It is a decision that is sufficient, that meets the need.
Here’s some other definitions that I thought were really interesting. The definition for optimal, because you might think, and I’ve coached so many perfectionist clients at this point, there are different ways, different language we have for this, which is why I wanted to use a few different words. So you might be trying to make the right decision. Let’s say niche messaging, business type, business name, business model, offering, product, service, branding, packaging, copywriting, like you, name it. There’s many opportunities for decisions in business, you might be trying to make the right decision. That might be how you think of it, and how you literally say, like, I just want to make the right decision. You might say, I just want to make the optimal decision, like I want to do what’s best. Or you might be, like, I want to make the perfect decision, like, I really want it to be perfect. I don’t want to waste any effort. You might say, a mix of all three. A lot of my clients do that.
So I’m going to give you some definitions here for those, because when you see this, it really helps to be able to understand why a sufficient decision is better than the right decision, why a sufficient decision is better than an optimal decision, and why a sufficient decision is better than a perfect decision because of what happens downstream. So an optimal decision is something that’s the best or most favorable for a given situation. The definition of the word perfect or a perfect decision is having all of the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics as good as it is possible to be free from faults or defects. That’s where our perfectionist brain always shoots for free from faults or defects. Our perfectionist brain is constantly looking for imperfection and pointing out imperfection. This is why being able to understand sufficiency and act from sufficiency is so important, because your perfectionist brain is going to be constantly telling you and pointing out all of the insufficiency when there’s so much sufficiency there that’s meeting the need.
So the definition of right? And this is so fascinating, I just feel like writing this all down. I was just nerding out about it because we perfectionist try to get things right. And the definition of right is morally good, justified or and I can’t read my writing or acceptable. Morally good, justified or acceptable. And another definition for it had the word honorable. So it really becomes this moral thing, which is so fascinating, right? It’s like we’re not even trying to focus on getting the result. We’re just focused on being good and doing right and being honorable, if you will. Because we’re right, we think it’s it’s like the honorable thing to do is to be right and to be good so we can be loved. So if we just circle back and look at that cycle, so if you make a sufficient decision, you will feel clear, committed, calm, grounded, compelled. Those are the feelings convicted. Those are the feelings that creates amazing results in business. So if you make a sufficient decision that meets the need, that meets the need, again, we’re not talking about like make an imperfect decision. No, we are not here to do things imperfectly.
And I know for a perfectionist, when people like, just take imperfect action. No, thank you. Why the fuck would I take any imperfect action? Why would I do that? Because my perfectionist brain sees that as dangerous, sees that as irresponsible, sees that as wrong. So no, it doesn’t help me to tell me to take imperfect action, and we do not take that approach in pgsd, it’s one of the key reasons I’m so passionate about what I do, because everyone being like just take imperfect action. Imperfect action, that if you are actually a perfectionist, and your brain finds safety in perfection and avoiding imperfection, being told to take imperfect action, you might be able to muscle your way to do that a few times, but you will not be able to sustain taking imperfect action because it feels so unsafe to your brain and your body. So we focus on sufficiency, taking sufficient action, making sufficient decisions. It’s so important. So if we look at if you make a sufficient decision, you can take sufficient action, you will take sufficient action, and you will create sufficient results.
This is how I’ve been able to go full time in my business, make a full time income on part time hours, have four kids within four years, and be able to keep supporting myself financially from that business. Sufficiency. So much sufficiency there what we do, what that cycle is, when we try to make the right decision because of, and I’ll talk about this a little bit more with my example, because of what goes on for us with making a right decision, and how we feel after we’ve made a right decision, we then take insufficient action and create insufficient results. Super frustrating, because with that cycle, which I will tell you I have been in, and I have been recovering from that for a good couple of years because of the way that I had to learn this lesson in my boats, was for me to go down swinging. So when we’re in that right decision, insufficient action, insufficient result. We are working so damn hard, burning ourselves out, trying, trying, trying, shaming, shaming, shaming ourselves, and it’s just because of the type of decision.
So if we look at the definition for the word and this is the last one, last definition, the definition for the word insufficient, please listen in the definition for the word insufficient is too little to take care of what’s needed. Too little to take care of what’s needed. This is what we do. We do too little to take care of what’s needed and get a result that’s too little to take care of what’s needed when we try to make the right decision when we try to make the perfect decision, when we try to make the optimal decision. So with my podcast, for example, and then I’ll go into exactly what I wanted to share in this episode, but I think my podcast is just such a great example of this. And I didn’t realize I was doing it at the time, but now I deeply in my bones understand it. With the podcast, I made a series of sufficient decisions, and I stuck to them, because when a decision is sufficient, we take sufficient action, we get sufficient results, and it reinforces itself. So it’s all about the energy behind the decision.
So for me, for example, with the podcast, and if you’ve been listening long time listener, if you’re listening for a while, you might know some of these decisions I made. I decided, and I’m just thinking back to like initially I decided to do initially, it was one podcast episode per week, but then I decided to do two, because my brain just kept telling me how shit the episodes were, and my thought was, well, if there’s another one coming in three days, it’s okay to publish it if publish it if it feels shit. And that helped me show up, that helped me be in my spark and just share stuff. So I decided that two episodes, Monday, Thursday, that’s what I’m doing. I decided I’m going to hire someone from Upwork to publish the podcast using the process like I did the first, first 30 episodes myself, and then I noticed me doing it myself, really decreased my desire to record episodes.
So I decided I’m not going to find the best ever, most optimal situation. I am just going to list out here’s exactly the steps I follow. Are you someone who can follow these steps? If yes, apply here I found someone. Her name’s Eloisa. She still produces this podcast seven years later, or whatever it is, eight years later. And I didn’t keep questioning, what should I do with that? Should I? Shouldn’t I? I just stuck with that decision. I made a sufficient decision. I wasn’t trying to make the right decision. I made a sufficient decision. I also decided to and now this is so much more common. This is a whole other episode I could do about, like, making things fancy, especially when it comes to podcasting, or like, all the social media stuff. I decided to not make it fancy, and I made a sufficient decision, which was, I’m going to use I have an ATR or Audio Technica. I think it’s 2100 microphone. Tim Ferriss recommended it. I did no research. I just bought it. It was like 100 $200 he was like, this is a sufficiently good microphone. I said, Okay, I will get that one.
I’m literally just here holding it at my desk. I record on quick time. I don’t have, like, any kind of fancy podcasting thing. It’s so simple to set up. I’m not recording video. Trying to, like, optimize for all the different platforms, because these sufficient decisions are what has supported me to do 550 plus episodes and make over $2 million in my business with the podcast as the main generator of that. Also, I’m not going to script everything out, and I’ve tried all different kinds of ways of doing it to just test like, what works for me? Me just writing some notes and getting into my spark and connection and like, being really compelled to share stuff. Like, you can tell right now, I’m not reading from a script. I couldn’t write a script like this. If I was trying to write a good script, it would be a lot more like, just like, the energy wouldn’t be there. It would just be very, like, factual and like, when our perfectionist brains try to get things right and do it optimal, we missed the connection piece.
And the connection so important the episode I did, if you haven’t listened to it, a few episodes ago now, called connection first, strategy second, oh, my God. Like, biggest epiphany for me in the last five years, if not, like, the last decade. So so, so important. I’m still geeking out over that, over that epiphany, and have been talking about and coaching on non stop in pgsd and with my one on one clients as well. So really, just understanding for me, like with the podcast, I made sufficient decisions that I could stick to. I didn’t go fancy, and because of that, I have very sufficient results from doing that. The number of people I have seen who want to do a podcast, right? And so they invest 1000s of dollars into lighting into of course, I have to record it to be able to have it be in all the different places and all the different platforms. I need to have, like my own studio set up at home with branding behind me on the wall. I definitely need to have an interview podcast, because everyone does that. That’s another sufficient decision I made. I love solo podcasts. I’m going to do a solo podcast. I’m not going to do editing. I’m just going to trust myself to talk, and I’m going to develop the skill of just talking and holding a train of thought instead of thinking, well, I have to be interviewing people like I much prefer hearing the insights someone has in their own brain and them talking that out and doing it like this, like I’m doing it the way I love to listen to it.
As a consumer of podcasts, I know what I love, and I wanted to create a podcast that I would actually listen to and benefit from. So those are all the kinds of sufficient decisions where I’ve I have seen and witnessed so many people who are doing it so damn fancy that they just can’t stick to it. So they’re trying to get it right, all the setup, and then what ends up happening is they’re not able to take sufficient action. So if we look again, sufficient action or sufficient the definition of the word sufficient to meet the need. So from those sufficient decisions, I have sufficiently taken action and met the need, the need of you as a listener, the need of the business to invite you into the work that we do, to spread the word, like all of those things, it sufficiently meets the need. And the results, again, aren’t just sufficient. They’re more than sufficient. But when we try to do it fancy, and I again, I’ve seen so many people do this, and it’s so exciting to have a podcast studio and all the different all the different things.
And then they typically do about 12 episodes, and then they’re selling all their equipment from their podcasting studio, and they’ve decided to do something else instead, and it’s too much work and it’s too hard, and they’re just burning themselves out. This is what they say when they say, Hey, here’s why I’m stopping because they made a right decision, an optimal decision, a perfect decision, instead of a sufficient decision, and that meant, because they tried to make the optimal decision, they took insufficient action and got insufficient results. So let me share with you the experience I had that taught me this lesson in my bones. And I really want from this episode you to be able to come away from it and when you are in a decision making time. I have a few other episodes I want to do about decisions as well, especially one about decision points. And like how to know when you’re at a point to make a decision and and some things around, like procrasti-researching and procrasti-learning. And like how to know when it’s time to go and move forward.
But I want you, with this concept, to be able to think, okay, my brain’s giving me the optimal decision. But what’s the sufficient decision here? So that question, what’s the sufficient decision here, what’s the sufficient decision that I could make, and then making that, and that often requires a willingness to feel certain emotions. And I won’t go into that in this episode. I want to also do a separate episode on that as well, because there is an emotional basically an emotional willingness that needs to happen to happen to be able to make a decision. As a perfectionist, I won’t say anything more than that in this episode, because that is a whole separate, not separate topic. That’s a whole topic that is worth a whole episode. And I will do that one as well.
So coming back to what I was saying, that I want you to be able to think, okay, instead of yet my brain’s offering me, this is the optimal decision. I should have a funnel. I should do ads. I should do this. I should do that. I should do all the things. I should work more. I should work harder. I should work longer. I should be everywhere, all of that, and go into okay, but what’s the the sufficient decision here? What is the sufficient decision? So let me share with you another example of when I made sufficient decisions and then when I personally made the optimal decision. That’s what I was trying to do, trying really fucking hard to do, by the way, really hard to make the optimal decision, and the cost of that in terms of the revenue that produced, like I went and looked at my accounting software in Xero to find the specific numbers in the differences of those years.
From me making sufficient decisions in one year and me making optimal decisions the next year, because you’d think your perfectionist brain would think, Okay, if you made optimal decisions, well, you’d have better results that year. No, I did not. I had way better results, a much better time in business, much more enjoyment, much more connection, much more satisfaction, much more fulfillment, much more revenue, much more profit from sufficient decisions. And it took me, then a good few years to figure that out, and now I have come back to sufficient decisions, and I’m so excited as well for the podcast, because I’m returning to doing two episodes per week. I am going to be distilling down so many of the concepts that I have created and from lessons that I have learned in the last few years, last, really three years, and teaching them on the podcast and just sharing in the way that I love to share. I’m not going to be doing a video podcast and trying to optimize it. It’s just all coming back to the sufficient decisions. I’m just sending out emails like just very basic stuff, very sufficient stuff.
So let me take you back to the year 2022, so this was a year of such sufficiency, and yet my perfectionist brain at the time could not grasp that. And that’s why this is one of the lessons. I wish I could just like, go back to my far self and be like, This is so sufficient. What you are doing is really working, because my brain, and if you listen to episodes from that time, my brain thought, okay, a lot of it’s working. I know what I’m doing, but also there’s some things that are really not working here. And was really grounded in that, and it had a pretty catastrophic effect on the business and myself personally, to not be aware of this efficiency. So that’s why I really want to teach this concept, and have you be able to be like, grounding yourself in what is the sufficient decision here? And the sufficient decision is the one that meets the need which our brain, and maybe that’s a whole episode too, our brain wants to go into, like, only the optimal decision meets the need, instead of like, the sufficient decision is the decision that moves you closer to where you want to go, and it’s something you can actually stick to.
So here are a lot of to give an example, all the sufficient decisions that I made for the year 2022 so what I did, first of all is I zoomed out and I looked at the year high level. And I want to mention this because this is incredibly important. I wasn’t looking at like a week to week basis. I zoomed out, I did the bird’s eye view, and this is why. So, for example, in pgsd, we are doing in mid December, we are doing an annual review call as a community to reflect on the year and to extract all the lessons and celebrate the wins and find all the sufficiency so important. And then two days later, we are doing another session together. We are doing, I’m going to be leading it, a 2026 planning session, and doing this process, zooming out, doing some coaching too, but zooming out, looking at the high level view for 2026 and we are going to be making sufficient decisions.
So I’m going to tell you the sufficient decisions that I made in the year 2022, when I did this high level planning. And I’m going to go, Liam’s just woken up, so I’m going to go and get him, and then at some point later today, I am going to come back. We’ll cut it together. So you won’t be able to necessarily tell, but I wanted to mention it again, just to to, like, make sure you know what an actual like recording process can look like, and that you don’t have to have all this uninterrupted time and space and whatever, like, you could actually just make it work with what you’ve got. Make a sufficient decision. I could sufficiently record while Liam was sleeping, and now I just go and get him, and then I will come back and sufficiently complete the podcast when I’m able to. So with that said, I’m going to come back in what will feel like two seconds to you and keep telling you about all the sufficient decisions that I made in 2022.
Okay, I’m back. It’s actually like 10 minutes later. Steve is now looking after Liam, and if there’s a knock on my door, I will be feeding him, so I will keep going until that point. So my decisions in 2022 so I planned out the year high level, zoomed out. And this was so important too, because I realized that in the following years I didn’t really do that or because I was having babies. So I had one baby, Lydia in 2021 two babies Jack and James in 2023 and then another baby, Liam in 2025 so a lot of my years I have been mainly planning around like with the main event of having a baby, or having two babies. So in 2022 I had a six month old, and I wasn’t yet pregnant with the twins, and so I zoomed out high level, looked at the year and made a plan, and I made a bunch of sufficient decisions that I didn’t realize the value of at the time, but was so important and so valuable.
So I’m just going to run you through them and sufficient decisions, in case you’re wondering, like, but how do I know if I’ve made a sufficient decision or if this decision really is insufficient? So I’ve already talked a bit about that in this episode, about what a sufficient decision looks like. And one of the key things that we coach on inside pgsd and support you with is, and this is on coaching calls and in the material in the program, and we have frameworks to help with this as well is and also, really, everything in there helps you develop your self trust, which is really, really, really important for being able to make any kind of decision, especially a sufficient one, that everything inside the program is designed to support you to make sufficient decisions and to know exactly what that is. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that get yourself inside perfectionist getting shit done, to really have that support with applying this. But I just, in this episode, want to give you the concept and give you this as a framework that you can start using, but during PGSD to really get the full support and be able to really have that while you’re still in the process of building your self-trust, which you will do through pgse, through the tools that we give you, through the frameworks, through the mindset, through the philosophies.
Like everything in there is designed to help you trust yourself. Because perfectionist, we really struggle to trust ourselves, and we want everyone else to tell us the right answer and just so we can get it right and be loved. And so inside the program, we really, really support you with identifying and making sufficient decisions and then being able to follow through on them. So here’s all the ones that I made in 2022 they’re just listed in a in like as they came to mind. So decisions, I’ll leave marketing and sales for the year. I’m going to do a five part podcast series for the pgsd launches. That was something I hadn’t seen someone do. I just decided, well, if people are already listening to my podcast, why do I not just do the selling of pgsd on the podcast? They’re already there. I love being sold to on a podcast. So I just decided that from sufficiency, I wasn’t trying to get it right. I wasn’t trying to follow a strategy. I was connected connection, first. Strategy, second, I was connected to my listener, my client. I was connected to myself. I was connected to my program and how beneficial it is.
So five part podcast series, a launch every quarter and doing open and close enrollment. So there’s a week to sign up each quarter, and that’s it for the quarter. And I decided all the dates ahead of time. So I looked at the the year, and I mapped out, like when a different holidays around the world. I have a lot of clients in the US, so like when all the US holidays, and when do I want to have time off? I had lots of time off that year too. Where do I want to have time off? And I mapped that all out. So that was a very sufficient decision. I knew exactly when we were launching. I was only selling pgsd, no other offers, nothing else. That was my decision that I made. I’m not going to be focused on anything else that we’ll have a weekly email every Monday morning to our full list. Our email is a weekly pgsd waitlist email every Thursday morning, chatty Instagram stories. I’m just going to show up and chat. I’ll share the behind the scenes in the podcast. Particularly, like, if you go back to that time, I shared a lot of behind the scenes episodes. That’s really when I started doing my like, behind the scenes of launches and things which are like, Oh my God. If I could listen to everyone else do that sub episode, I would listen to that all day long. My absolute favorite.
So I again, it’s not like a strategy of, like, trying to be strategic, just like, I think that would be super valuable, because I love that, so I’m going to do that, and I love creating it. Three work days a week and extra weeks off. So I took quite a lot of weeks off just to be at home and, like, be around. I also got married in the middle of that year as well, and we had the wedding at home. So we were planning the wedding, and like getting the house ready for that, we did a renovation, a full house renovation, in 2021, and then there was still, like projects I wanted to around the house following that renovation. So I had, this is another thing too. I just I had sufficient decisions in the business, and then I was also sufficiently taking care of my personal life. Really important, really important. I what else I have one mentor, Stacey Boehman, who might have heard me talk about, so I just decided I’m just going to apply the philosophies that Stacey teaches. I’m not trying to, like piece together this person and that person and that person. I was just very focused on. I’m in her mastermind. I really resonate with the way she teaches and how she does things, and I will just have her as my coach.
Like, if I have a question, I will go to my coach or to someone else in that coaching container, like in that program, instead of trying to go to like, a YouTube video or scrolling through Instagram or like, I’m gonna get everything from one source. So. So important. Oh, my God, like that was such a powerful decision. I’ll talk about what happened the year after, on that front, in terms of my decision there and trying to be optimal power planning every week. And I was going through this as well the other day, and just looking at because I’ve done power planning now since about 2020, and so I have documented in my calendar what I did each week for the last five years and what I did each day and roughly each hour. If you hear that, you think, Oh, my God, that’s way too much. There’s so many days where all it says for the whole day is clean rest, and it’s definitely not to the minute. But roughly speaking, I know what I got up to, because that gives me such insight into my thinking, into my mindset.
And I can now, having been able to see the results of each of those years, or each of those months, I can look at my calendar and see exactly the actions and the thinking behind the actions as well that created that result, which is really a key part of how I’ve been able to understand the importance of sufficient decisions, and what it looks like for me when I’m in that cycle of making sufficient decisions, taking sufficient action and creating sufficient results, like when I’m in that sufficiency cycle, I know exactly what it looks like on my calendar, and when I’m in the insufficiency cycle, I’m trying to optimize. I’m trying to get it right. I know it also, from a lot of experience, exactly what that looks like. That tends to have me working a lot more, squeezing work in in different places. If I’m recording a podcast episode, I need way longer to outline it. I often start recording and then I re record it. Then I spend ages trying to find the right title. And, like, I’m just with everything I do. Everything takes longer because I’m trying to perfect it. I’m trying to get it right, because my brain is so focused on what isn’t right, and I’m not present to the sufficiency.
So all of this, like, I literally went through and like, I love doing this in my Empower planning I go through as an exercise and study myself and study the actions and mindset that create the results that I want and the results that I don’t want, so that I can create more of the results that I want in the time that I want to work as well. I want to work three days a week. I want to have every third Tuesday off I want to have, like, I have six eight, I have eight weeks off planned in 2026 plus, I have three weeks of holidays as well, like vacation. And I love working that really constrained way, and that requires me to be really sufficient with my decisions and really constrained with what I’m focused on. So again, that’s what I did in 2022 I’m replicating that. I’m replicating that. So power planning every week. When I went back into 2022 at the start of every week I have my Power Hour, I’d adjusted everything. So we do little tweaks, where you update your calendar to keep your plans workable and reflect, roughly speaking, what happened.
And then I did my weekly review, where I reviewed the week, studied myself and took the lessons and took what isn’t working, and use that to inform my plan for the next week. So I could make an even more sufficient, connected plan that I could actually follow through on. And would have mean that sufficiency cycle of sufficient decisions, sufficient action, sufficient results. So I did the pgsd coaching calls and was replying to everyone in the pgsd forum. I also had support as well. I believe in 2022 but I was the main leader of all of that. We kept pgsd the same. This is such an important decision. These could just sound like, ah. These could just sound like, Okay, well, I don’t know. It could just sound like I feel like it’s easy to think, well, Sam could make that kind of decision because she already knew. But like in my business, when I make decisions like this, before I have proof before I had results, because at one point I didn’t have any results in my business in terms of revenue.
And I had to start making sufficient decisions, taking sufficient action and creating sufficient results to be able to create sufficient results, I didn’t start by being successful. I had to start from zero, so to speak. I had to start from not having any proof. So being really constrained and focused with my decisions allows me to be very clear, and when I feel clear, I take sufficient action. When I feel unclear, I take insufficient action because I’m so busy trying to get clear all my time goes to trying to do all this, like procrasti-planning and planning again and planning again, and then researching and learning. And like, trying to reconcile this person says this And this person says that, and this person says that. And really, like, just being able to be constrained and focused and just say this is the decision I’m making, and I am going to figure out how to make that work has been like, like, is kind of like the definition, in some ways, of a sufficient decision.
It’s like, I’m just deciding that this is sufficient. It’s not like the world is saying this is efficient, like I’m deciding I trust myself to know and I’ve learned enough. I’ve learned things. I still have more to learn, but I sufficiently know enough to make this decision, to make this sufficient decision, this is my hypothesis, because anyone, no matter what level of business, we are, all just making hypotheses and testing them. Everyone, everyone, every level of business, that’s all we’re doing. It’s not school, it’s not a job. You don’t get told what to do, and then you do it, and then it works, and you repeat. There’s trial and error, there’s setbacks, there’s obstacles, there’s being creative, there’s been resourceful. That’s all part of entrepreneurship. So for anyone, it’s a hypothesis as to what is a sufficient decision, and you just need a certain level of self trust and the understanding and like emotional willingness to make a sufficient decision to be able to then take sufficient action and create sufficient results, which is what we do in pgsd. Perfectionist Getting Shit Done.
We help you to take that sufficient action through making sufficient decisions so that you can have sufficient results. Your power planning helps with that, your growth goal helps with that, your clean rest helps with that. Everything in pgsd, the momentum project, everything in pgsd, is designed to support you to be in this sufficiency cycle that has you taking sufficient action. So coming back, part of this was deciding all I’m selling is pgsd. It’s staying the same price. It’s staying lifetime access. I’m not doing any bonuses when we launch. I’m not adding anything new. It is staying the same. So much sufficiency in that it is sufficient as it is. It is sufficient as it is. And so if that’s true, then what else might I need to focus on to get the results that I want, instead of just constantly, oh, the messaging is wrong. Oh, this is wrong. Oh, that’s wrong, or that’s wrong. We end up, if we don’t see sufficiency, we end up, and I’ll tell I’ll show you exactly how this happened for me, if we don’t see the sufficiency, because I didn’t at the time, seal the sufficiency of this, we end up stopping doing what’s working and what’s sufficient, and creating so much insufficiency, where it’s literally coming back to the definition too little to take care of what’s needed.
So that was so powerful that I really just decided I’m going to keep it the same and I’m going to change. I’m going to change, like my mindset, in any ways that it needed to help me get out of my own way, release my perfectionism. Handbag being that self trust, selling, be able to show up and share and be visible and like, I’m going to change instead of, I’m going to change the offer every time. Or if people aren’t buying, okay, let’s lower the price because they say it’s too much. No, they don’t see the value. So what do I need to do to sufficiently communicate the value? Because maybe right now, it’s not sufficiently communicated, or there’s always going to be someone who says it’s the price, it’s the easiest thing to say, it’s also not going to be for everyone. So like, your marketing is going to come into contact with people that aren’t the person that you’re going to be helping. So, and depending what kind of business you have, I help a whole range of different perfectionist entrepreneurs, but there was so much sufficiency in that in I’m going to keep it the same. And I made that decision as well. Like a big part of of that was when I used to do Bikram yoga, which is a 90 minute hot yoga class, and it’s the same, I think it’s 26 postures every time with almost exactly the same wording. Different teachers will have a different way they say it. But there’s like a kind of, like a script of how you describe each thing.
And so what I learned through, I think, a good couple of years of doing that very regularly, like five or six times a week, is that the class was the same, but then because of that, I changed. Because it stayed constant, I could see I could really engage with it, and I could connect with the process, and I could see exactly what needed to change, and I could keep doing also what was working. So that, for me, was really just such a lesson in like, okay, like, imagine just like, keeping it the same, and then you change. And not like, change and be better, but like shift the mindset, shift the thoughts, shift the feelings, to be able to follow through and show up and create the results you want to create. So that’s what I did. I had a lot of success with that, and have every time I look at my business, every year that I had a leap in revenue that I like, did something that I never thought was possible. It was because of this, of what I’m talking about, of the sufficiency cycle, of making a sufficient decision, not an optimal one, not a strategic one. And that’s the other way it can be dressed up strategic decisions. Our perfectionist brain loves to say that. And for me, anytime I’m in like this strategic mindset, I’m often very disconnected. Because I’m trying like from what matters most, because I’m trying to get it right. I’m in the insufficiency, so I’m trying to improve it and make it better.
Instead of being in sufficiency. So what else, I decided no sales calls. We actually did sales calls for one of the pgsd launches in the end, towards the end of the years, but just like I we just sell straight from the podcast. Was a key decision. I also did that when I was just doing one on one coaching. Initially, I just decided, like, I don’t feel confident doing a sales call, so I’m just gonna, and I love buying from a podcast, and that’s how I love signing up for coaching, so I’m just gonna do it through the podcast. A sufficient decision. I just it wasn’t strategic, except for I got to avoid doing a sale call, because at the time, I didn’t feel confident to do sales call. Oh, I’m just going to figure out how to do it through the podcast, because that’s what I want to do. No one was saying you should do that. I just decided that’s going to be sufficient for me. I’m going to figure it out. And what else self coaching every day and getting coached super important. Those are sufficient decisions.
I’m going to get my brain coached up, and I am going to do that from myself, using my own coaching skills and also through my coach and other people that were in that coaching program as well, having them coach my brain, like having letting my thoughts come into contact with other people so that they could be like, wait, what do you mean? And like, different things like that that are so powerful. When someone when you say something that feels like the truth, and someone’s like, wait, that actually like, I don’t believe that. Do you actually think that’s true? Or different things like that? I would go into I probably, I think I want to do an episode as well about, like, what coaching is, because I’ve been getting a lot of questions about, like, what actually is coaching, and I know a lot of people who would benefit so much from coaching, but don’t really understand how it fits in two things. So I think that’d be really good. Anyway, I digress.
So from that, from all of those sufficient decisions, a very simple, constrained plan with no proof it would work, I made the business made $604,000 in revenue, 264,000 profit, and that was after paying myself a six figure salary on a three day work week with lots of week weeks off with a toddler also pregnant with twins. So I got pregnant halfway through the year, so pregnant with twins for half of that year. And and and and this is, this is, I will tell you where it goes off the rails, because I went from being the sufficiency cycle to being in an insufficiency cycle and seeing all the insufficiencies. So that worked beautifully that year. But because my goal was a million, my perfectionist brain instead of 600,000 my perfectionist brain went, Oh, my God, most successful year I’ve had amazing and it wasn’t a million dollars or something like that really didn’t work.
So here’s what happened. Let me flip over my notes and read you out what happened next. And really, this all began to happen towards the end of 2022 as I was planning out 2023 so my twin sons, Jack and James, were due in I knew I was gonna be giving birth if I made it all the way to my date in February, which I did. And so I was planning out the year, but with this big unknown, which was I’m gonna have three kids under the age of two, I’m planning to breastfeed, which I did, and I’m planning to be present as a mom and be there and have time off and like, and I have big goals for the business, and I want to keep growing it. And so like, how do I solve for that? And me thinking that something really wasn’t working in 2022 like, I got to figure out, is it the messaging that’s wrong? Is it like, is it the team? Is it like, what’s going on? Because something’s wrong. Because I should have, this was my thought, I should have bigger and bigger launches. When we had, we ended up doing five launches that year, and we had, I think, 51 signups, and then we had nine signups. We’d remove the payment plan for that one.
And then I was like, wait, why am I changing any pricing? We then added it back in. We had 22 signups and 22 signups and 22 signups for the next launch. We did an extra one in December, because I decided coming to the trying to get it right. I decided to close pgsd for sale, and I decided to do that after hiring a marketing manager whose job was to sell pgsd. So it all made sense at the time, and I have my own back on those decisions, and also, and I’ve done so much work to do that, because I had felt such a fear of making decisions, and this is why I went into the like, trying to get it right as well, like in 2024 and then, like, recovering from that in 2025 as well. But I really went into this I need to get it right, because I made myself wrong for what happened in 2023. So then I had to, like, recover from making myself wrong to then be able to get back into sufficiency.
So it has been like a three year cycle where at the end of 2025 and now into 2026 I’m like, Oh, I get it. Three years later, 2023 2024 2025 was me figuring this out through painful, painful, painful experiences in the business, but still being able to pay myself a six figure salary, having four kids within four years, like there’s so much sufficiency in it, just telling my brain that reminding myself of that so much sufficiency, so much success in what I’m doing currently, and, and, and, and now that I have the lesson on the sufficient decisions versus trying to make an optimal decision or right decision, and being in that insufficiency cycle 2026, away, I’ve been able to plan out the year that we’re going to guide the PGSDers through this process as well. The way that we’ve been that I’ve been able to do this has just been from what follows. So let me tell you, in 2023 because I knew I was having the twins at the beginning of the year, and I didn’t know what that would be like, and what it would be like to have three kids who couldn’t talk yet, because Lydie was 19 months when they were born, and so there was a lot of uncertainty there.
And this is really important to mention, because there’s so many different reasons in life we can have uncertainty. It can be health diagnosis, it can be having kids, and especially like, say, for example, a health diagnosis, typically, that’s something that’s unwanted. And most people would agree there’s uncertainty there when it comes to having kids, especially when, like we did, we intentionally became pregnant to have kids that it feels like, but like, yes, there’s uncertainty, but like, this is wanted, so I should be able to, like, not be disrupted by it, if you will. But there was so much uncertainty, and I found this every time, like, with having Lydia, then having the twins and then having Liam. And like, especially with the twins and with Liam’s pregnancy, they were both very uncertain pregnancies for different reasons.
And just like having a high level of uncertainty in my personal life, I noticed that my brain then tries to get things right in the business and go into this controlling mode, because it feels vulnerable. I feel have felt in the past, incapable of handling uncertainty in business and in personal life. So my brain wants to create a lot of certainty in business by keeping it the same or smaller than it currently is, so that I it makes it like to my brain feel like, well, I can handle uncertainty in my personal life, but only so much so if business is like booming, and there’s a lot of uncertainty with that, and then I’ve also got this big personal life change, like, that’s too much to handle. So my perfectionist brain, which is this is what our brains are designed to do. Like, this is a sign of a brain sufficiently working, is that it goes into protection mode, tries to create safety through making trying to make the right decision.
And so what I was doing outwardly was trying to scale to $5 million in a year in the year 2025 so like preparing for that, but inwardly, I was trying to stop the business from growing, because it felt so uncertain and unsafe to have uncertainty, high levels of it in my personal life, and high levels of it in the business. So I wanted to mention that because I wish, I wish I had had it said to me in a way that landed and maybe i Someone said it to me at some point I didn’t go into my brain that like we have to take the circumstances into account. This is so important, and I will digress here for a second, because it is so important that our perfectionist brains can be like, Oh, but the circumstances shouldn’t matter. This is what I did in 2023 this is a big part of it. Oh, it shouldn’t matter that I have three kids under the age of two. I should be able to still achieve all the things I want to achieve. And it’s not to say it’s not possible to do that, but when I was in the mindset of should and trying to prove and feeling insufficient, then it was really, really hard to do that. Really, really hard. I’m going to have a sip of my tea.
Oh, okay, so sorry. Just had a tickle in my throat. Okay, so all of that preamble to say, here are some of the decisions I made from the end of 2022 when I was prepping for 2023 and then within 2023 to contrast them with before, so I hired a marketing manager, and that was from the thought of, I’ve taken the marketing and sales as far as I can go. I need someone who’s actually knows what they’re doing. So there was a lot of insufficiency behind that decision like that for me was one of the biggest pieces of that insufficiency cycle, because of the knock on effect it would have, not because of the specific person that I hired, but because I then was completely dismissing my expertise in marketing, my expertise in sales, my expertise in my person, my ability to connect with them, my spark, my my passion, my tools that I created, like everything, and you’ll see a lot of these decisions downstream from that.
I was in the mindset of, like, I’m not fit to lead. I’m not fit to lead this key department in my business that I’ve already been leading for a decade and then I’ve had success in but because I was in the insufficiency cycle, and only present to the insufficiency of it and thinking, well, we made only 6000 100,000 instead of a million, instead of, holy shit, we made 600,000 something’s really working. And maybe there’s just not enough new people coming into contact with the message. Maybe the launches are sufficiently working. That was what I didn’t see. I didn’t see. I didn’t see the launch process that I had was so sufficient. The five part podcast series, the emails just written from me like, here’s what they need to hear, here’s what they want to hear, all of that. Sorry, my throat is just all scratchy now, but I will keep going all of the sufficiency I didn’t see it. So what we tried to do was create the perfect launch.
So a lot of time spent in 2023 and into 2024 was trying to figure out what’s the best launch format do we do? I did a three part podcast series. I did a webinar. I did another five part podcast series. It was still kind of like around the same theme, but like, we’ve got to try and figure out the messaging, because I was in this sort of, like, I don’t know the messaging, instead of, like, I just nailed it. Like, we know the messaging of pgsd, we know it. It’s like, it’s been tested, it’s been proven, and now we just need to get it in more people’s hands. They were like, Oh no. We actually have to figure out, like, create a really strong foundation. This was kind of the language, the strategic language that comes with trying to make an optimal decision. We need to get the launch right so we have this base to build this bigger business using ADS, which there’s nothing wrong with, like any of these decisions. It’s all about the energy behind it and the reason behind it.
And this is me, just like, scattering what we were doing and going from being sufficient decisions, really constrained, really clear, really focused. This is what we’re going to figure out how to make work to like, let’s just try everything and like, forgetting, basically in every department, forgetting a core truth about being focused, being clear and and just making a sufficient decision. So I also had this story like, I have to have a mat leave and I’m not allowed to keep working because I should do what other people do when they have a job. Doesn’t make sense. And I broke out of this belief for my third child, my fourth child, actually my third pregnancy and birth, that I was just like, I’m the boss. I can do what I want, but I was still in this like, oh, I have to be good. And being good means having a mat leave, like I should, so that I can be a good mum or whatever. Like, that kind of a societal, ingrained belief I have to have a mat leave.
So I have to figure out how to have the business be able to go without me. I can’t do there’s so much like I can’t and I should. From 2023 I can’t do pgsd coaching calls. So I was like, my brain won’t be able to function enough when I can do a pgsd coaching call in the middle of the night, if you wake me up and I’ve had like, 30 minutes of sleep in the last week, I could do a pgsd coaching call like it’s so in my bones, all of those concepts, all of that coaching like that is me in my flow ears, and yet my thought was like, I’m not capable of doing that if I’m sleep deprived. Whereas I can tell you right now, I am quite sleep deprived, technically speaking, like I am able to do this, like, this is just something I’m very capable of doing. So I had that. I also decided I can’t write emails, because you have to get the messaging right. We have to do it better. So I stopped doing podcasts. We had a lot of, like, started doing a lot of replays of previous ones. I didn’t record new ones because I thought my brain wouldn’t function well enough to be able to do it.
We just had, like, a lot of the key things that I didn’t realize were working, like, all the spark content that was really creating so much connection and so much demand for pgsd. This is one of the reasons I now teach spark content inside pgsd, and how to do that, is because I hadn’t realized that I had to learn through this experience how important that spark is, and that I had the spark, and that comes from me, and that I love, that I love being in the spark, and when I’m trying to get content right, it’s pretty stale and it doesn’t connect. And when I’m just in my spark, like I am today, because I know how to create that now on demand, now that I’ve learned this lesson about Spark content, that of course, I’m going to be creating the content and doing all these things, but I decided I’m not going to write emails. I’m like, I’m like, I’m not gonna do Instagram. Basically, I’m all I was trying to do that year. Was trying to be a good leader, trying to be a good CEO, trying to scale to seven figures, like trying to be someone that felt so far away, like trying to be someone I wasn’t.
As in literally, I have to stop being like I am, so I can be better. So I can. Different instead of Wait, I’ve already made at that point, like, $2 million in my business. I I know a fair amount I was in the insufficiency. And this doesn’t mean when we’re in sufficiency, we don’t learn. When we’re in sufficiency, we learn the most because we actually make sufficient decisions. We take action. And the best way to learn anything is through taking action. It’s not through, like, consuming more knowledge. It’s through action taking and when we make sufficient decisions, we take sufficient action and create sufficient results, hence more overall learning. So if you’re wondering, like, okay, but if I just, like, gaslight myself or delude myself that I it’s sufficient, then, like, I’ll just stop learning anything. And just like, say, as I am, no if you try and make optimal right decisions, and you might notice this, reflect on the past when you have been trying to get it right, get your messaging right, get your niche right, get the business right.
All of that has that resulted in you creating different results in your business, the results you want. Or has it just created spinning? Has it just created overwhelm? Has it just created you being in your own way? So I will just whip through the rest of the ones I wasn’t sharing, behind the scenes stuff I was trying to look more polished and together and like, trying to get it right, trying to get the messaging right. We did in, I believe it was in December of that year, we did a training for pgsd, like to promote pgsd .That was called the perfectionism reset. I really don’t know exactly what that meant, but we spent about four hours coming up with the name. So it’s just a good example of, like, trying to do things strategically, just like a massive waste of time, trying to figure out this perfect name, because the way I was doing it wasn’t sufficient enough. Like we didn’t I didn’t see that I was doing sporadic power planning. I was still doing it like, I still have always, like, bare minimum, I always update my calendar to reflect what actually happened.
So I always have that data because it’s so valuable to me. But I wasn’t, like, actively planning out my weeks a lot of weeks, and I wasn’t planning out, like, more in advance. Once you know how to do power planning for a week, you can start doing it for longer periods of time in advance. So I wasn’t really doing that. What else I was oh, I was very focused on, like, we have to use Asana better. We use Asana for managing, like, our team stuff. I have to do Asana better. And I signed up for a program about that. I didn’t have a mentor or philosophy that I was following. And I spent that year being like, I want to find a coach to work with instead of like the coach I had the previous year. Stacey was incredible for me, but my brain went into, well, there’s so much uncertainty with having the twins. I don’t know if I’m going to work and what I’m going to do so that I need to I basically decrease all the support around me. I’m going to not renew for that, even though it was super beneficial and I loved it, because I don’t know how much I’m going to work.
And then I didn’t just go back to like, oh, actually, I am working. I still have the desire to work, and so I’m just going to connect back in I instead went into like, I don’t know where to get help from. And then I was just like, in this kind of no man’s land, is how it felt. I love having just like, one mentor, one coach, one guide, like that, one person that I’m following and applying, and that’s such a sufficient decision to do. And I love like, I just see the best results from our PGSDers when they’re just like, Okay, I’m following the pgse process, and that’s what I’m applying, and I get incredible results. But when it’s more so, can I do a little bit of this? And then this other person says that, am I going to try and integrate it with this and do like, my god, it is so hard to create any results.
And I was saying this actually on a pgsd call, just to give a little analogy. I know I’m going off on all tangents here, but I’m trusting that’s this is all exactly what you need to hear. I was saying it’s like the way we do that, like most of my clients in pgsd either are college or university educated. I have a law and finance degree and a diploma in French. I went to university here in Brisbane, so like when I was doing that, we had, each semester, we had four subjects, I had five, because I have French as well. You had those subjects, and you have your teacher that does all the lectures they usually recommend, like one textbook, that’s the main one. You might have a tutorial every week, then you have an exam or an assignment or a mixture of the two. They tell you in advance, and that’s the format, that’s the like constraints, that’s the sufficient decisions around it.
And what we do in business, because there’s in in university, and I assume college is the same that and I went to, I went to university in Canada for a semester as well. So it was pretty similar there. When it’s that, like, here’s your teacher, and just like, learn what they teach you, and then apply that, and you’ll learn it’s just like already in the format, so we don’t really recognize it in business. It’s really powerful to do that as well. And I love having inputs from lots of different places. And also, I’m in a period of really wanting to grow and learn. I narrow it down to here’s my one that I’m going to apply. So the example I was giving is imagine if, instead of just going to your like, four lectures a week, let’s say you were like, today, I’m just going to sit in on 50 different lectures for five minutes each, you would not learn anything that you could actually long term really apply like you might hear a little bit of wisdom here and a bit of wisdom there, a bit of wisdom there.
But if you were just, like, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, or if you had like, 20 different textbooks, and every morning, like, I’m going to read one sentence from each one, which is kind of what happens when, like, scrolling, or you listen to a podcast episode and this, and then something completely different, especially if you don’t yet have results, or, like, have a basic understanding, if you’re just trying to apply so many different places, it is so hard to create results, and that’s because it’s part of that insufficiency cycle. It’s that procrasti-learning when we’re learning in a way that doesn’t allow us to actually apply it. When we’re learning contradictory information. I to caveat it again. I love learning like different opinions. It’s not to say not to have different opinions, but if you never let yourself go deep, and you’re always going wide and hearing a little sound bite from each person, or you’re following a process until you hit the first obstacle and then you go to someone else’s process, you’re not going to get you’re not going to get the results you want.
You’re not going to be able to get your business off the ground. You’re not going to be able to have a full time income. You’re not going to be able to have a to be able to have a like, really satisfying, meaningful business, if you aren’t able to sufficiently decide this is who I want to be my guide. And again, that’s why pgsd is who come in and like Sam’s it for me, at least for this defined period of time, for the next three months, for the next six months, I’m just Sam is the person I’m listening to. I listen to the pgsd calls. I ask the questions in the pgsd forum or ask a coach. I listen to replays on the pgsd private podcast. I listen to the lessons. I apply that like everything is centered around that. They get amazing results. They get amazing results. And if I listen to a podcast, it’s going to be Sam’s podcast, they get such great results instead of a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And recently, I had to really dial this in for myself, because I noticed that I had been in this mentality of like, a little bit from here and a little bit from there.
And like all different mentors that I love, but they all have very different philosophies, even though there’s some overlap, they all had different philosophies. And so I was just constantly feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, because I was trying to do too much. I was trying to do everything, all these different people were saying, instead of just having one philosophy to grab me. So in 2023 that was a really key sign that I was in that insufficiency cycle, is that I didn’t have, like, a mentor or philosophy, a guide that I was following. I was just trying to, like, do all the things, and watching, like, Alex Hormozi videos and then other different people who were also just like, in this very masculine energy, which is not a problem, but for where I was postpartum with three kids under the age of two, I like, it wasn’t what I needed for me to expose myself to people being like, just work harder and do all of that when I was like, I am really struggling, trying to figure out personal life wise, going from one child to three kids and just not being able to leave the house the way that I could before, and all these different things.
So there’s that I changed the we changed the pgsd price, and we changed between 12 months instead of lifetimes. With that, all of that just added in this uncertainty of, like, Okay, how do we sell it? And now we’ve got to, like, figure out a different way, instead of, like, actually, like the price that it is. People buy to that price. We know how to sell it at that price. We believe it’s way more than worth that price. Let’s just keep selling at that price and sell it to more people. So there was that we added different bonuses as well, did sales calls. Basically. It was kind of like, okay, everything we’ve been doing is wrong, so let’s make the opposite decision, or remove the decision without another decision in its place, and let’s just do all the things. And so in terms of actions, when I look back at my calendar, when I go back and study it that there was and I at the time, I was so frustrated. I was like, it’s taking us a month just to, like, talk about the pgsd launch, and then we’re rushing to get it done, when literally, we’re not working on anything else. And then, like, the day before cart opens is when we’re updating the sales page with the copy for that launch.
And again, changing the copy instead of in the year before. It was just like, the sales page stayed the same the whole year. But it was like, Okay, now we’ve got to change the copy and make it optimal, and we’re going to do that right before open cart, instead of like, people, if they’re thinking about it, are looking at it weeks and months in advance. And I was like, why is this happening? That it’s like? And I was, I was like, so frustrated, because I was like, I know that my thinking, this is all downstream from my thinking and me. It’s not a problem with anyone on my team. It’s a problem with my thinking, and I don’t yet know what that is. And this is why this episode exists, to share with you what that was, which was being in the insufficiency cycle and just seeing everything is insufficient. So let’s change everything.
And I stopped so many of the things that worked the podcast episodes, the ones like this, me coaching in the pgsd coaching calls, and then I’d be like, Oh my God, I have to record a podcast on this. And just like, writing three notes and then recording that and putting that out into the world as it is, with the title that I had in mind, and not trying to optimize anything like all of that was so sufficient. Me just showing up and chatting on stories, me just posting on Instagram, not having all these like workflows and all the different things I spent so much time in, in really, 2024 and 2025 being this, like, I need to figure this, like, I need to figure out, like, the systems, the systems I need to have, like, better systems, instead of like, I just need to be my spark again. And once I figured that out, I was like, okay, Spark is the thing. And then realize connection is so important. And then the sufficiency decisions, like all of this, I’ve just been like, getting these like clicks together of all these lessons for the last three years.
So I’m gonna have so many things to share with you on the podcast and in PGSD here, if you’re a one on one client of mine, like the lessons are just going to be flowing from me for a long time. So that was a really hard, frustrating year, because I felt like, like, even though it was such a hard transition one child to three, and I have such a supportive husband, he was able to stay at home for, like, quite a few months as well. Like I had so much support, and also it was so demanding and so relentless to breastfeeding and like all the life changes that came with it. But I think the hardest part for me of that experience was me feeling like I was failing in business after having had my most successful year. And so I wanted to give an example, not of like. Here’s where I made insufficient decisions earlier in my business, and then I made sufficient decisions and I became successful. And that’s that I wanted to show you, like I made sufficient decisions, and then I tried to get it right, and then everything went to shit.
Essentially, not everything. There’s so much sufficiency, and I have found all that sufficiency, but I have been licking my wounds, trying getting myself within my three day work week, and having another baby, and like navigating all of that. And like, in the three days, there’s been so many weeks where I’m like, I feel like, by the third day, I’m just getting, like, some momentum and wind in my sales. And then I have four days off, and then Tuesday, I’m like, coming in, like, Okay, I need a minute to, like, recover from four days with everyone and just, like, a lot of demands on me. And then I like, try and get momentum again. Okay, now it’s Thursday again, like so I’ve had to really as well with such constraint around time, and I want to say constraint around energy, but no, because I have been expanding my capacity like crazy. So I feel like my energy has been higher than ever before.
My capacity has increased in such an insane way. On Monday, we just had a really safe, a really intense day with the kids, just like he went for a run, I went for a run. We were like, doing Christmas shopping, like just doing these little life bits. And I was like, I just want to say, like, we have such capacity, the way we handled today. Plus they’re all having, like, high emotions, lots of little like sibling fights and things like that. And I was just like, look at our score, like the capacity I feel now as a mum of four, like the not because of that, but in some ways because of it, like I have had to learn how to increase my capacity, plus from the benefits of coaching and understanding mindset and understanding how capacity is created. And it’s not through taking a hot bath or whatever that can help it is through the way that I’m thinking and how I think increases my capacity. And I want to do a whole other episode on that, because I have learned so much about capacity. My capacity has increased in insane ways.
And when I was going through 2023 I just felt like I had no capacity. I like because I was telling myself, I’m so tired, I’m so tired, I’m so tired of failing. I’m so tired of failing. And when I was tired of failing, it put more pressure on me. My brain put more pressure on me to get it right and to stop failing by getting it right, and then I would inadvertently take insufficient action and create insufficient results. And that was so painful. I feel like I had to go through like an ego death to have like, what felt like such a successful year, even though I had a story around it that it wasn’t successful enough to then feel like I made 600,000 and now I feel like it’s a struggle to even have like 10 PGSDers sign up when we had, like, every even our like worst launch in 2022 was nine. That was like, what, where is everyone? Like, what happened to then be like, Oh my God. Like, five feels like a great result was like, what is happening? And I feel like I just got so disconnected from myself and like myself as a business woman, from my business and all the sufficiency of that.
And like me teaching and me sharing, and like just doing the basic things that create such demand, create such connection, create clients for me. I love, love, love, love, coaching clients dream job. I love recording podcasts, but even with this episode, so this is like my feels like my first episode back because I noticed with the podcast, and like, when I was studying my power planning, I was, like, my so for my podcast and email writing, Instagram on my power planning, it’s in blue. So when I have different colors, I talk about this in pgse, I have different colors so that when I’m scrolling, I can really just get a feel for a week, just from the colors and like this, pattern recognition with colors. So when I have blue stuff in there that That’s me and my sufficiency cycle, I’m just doing a sufficient podcast episode, a sufficient email, a sufficient Instagram post. I’m not trying to be a good CEO. I’m not trying to systemize. I’m not trying to write an SOP. I’m not trying to, like, do all these things. I’m just taking care of the basics in a basic, sufficient way.
Again, not to say other things aren’t needed at different times, but like they’re needed on top of the sufficient stuff, not in replacement. But I stopped doing podcasts, and I noticed, like, I love the episodes I’ve been sharing, the best of the podcast episodes, and I love that now, like all those episodes I’ve shared are ones that I constantly refer to. So I love that they’re now, like, the top of the feed for the podcast. And I’m like, I haven’t been recording podcast episodes. I haven’t been just, like, showing up on stories and chatting. I haven’t been writing emails like we had months without any other emails except the perfectionist power ups. I’m like, the just the core, basic things I had gotten disconnected from I didn’t see the sufficiency of that. So when I went back through my power plan, like I’m just literally planning out my week, how I was planning it when I was in this sufficient cycle, which is, it looks so basic, so unstrategic, Power Hour at the beginning of the week, first thing, Podcast episode recorded, email written, Instagram post created, client coached like pgsc coaching call, I wasn’t doing one on one, pgsd coaching call, pgsd forum replies, self coaching, coaching call, in Stacey’s program, like so basic.
And I compared it with my path finding more recently, which was just like, try and be good. Try and systemize this. Try and, like, I created a custom GPT for this, like, sales and marketing assistant thing. And like I have in the last year, and I want to do an episode on this. I just have so many episode ideas. I i love chatGPT, and I feel like, really, through all of these epiphanies, have realized exactly where it needs to fit in and where it doesn’t fit in, and like, where I had been kind of like, outsourcing things that I want to do myself in terms of, like, Okay, well, chatGPT can give me ideas for this. And like, help me. There’s so many ways it helps. And I realized, like, my brain wasn’t getting more valuable. It was just like, I have this worker who’s doing stuff for me, but it’s not actually creating the results. Like, it’s it’s because of the way I have been using it, which is, like, doing self coaching with it, and like, like, really doing my best to apply all the principles I teach, and yet I was going to chatGPT to ask a question instead of going to my brain, or I’d have chatGPT ask me the question instead of me asking my brain, what’s the question to ask myself?
And so now what I’m doing, among my constraints for 2026 is I’m not using chatGPT, and I’m not using the incredible custom GPT that I made. And if I teach that as well like I think there will be a time I’m like, Okay, now I know exactly where to use that, but I want to be connected. I want to be in this sufficiency. I want my brain to get more valuable and to for me to do the hard work to think of different ways. To talk about pgsd and to name these concepts and to to share with you all the things that I want to share with you. I’m going to do it unoptimized, because I’m going to do it sufficient. I’m going to do it sufficient. So that year 2023 was really frustrating. I worked and extra worked. I was like, oh my god, I just I haven’t got enough time to get everything done. I ended up working extra time, which made it even harder when they were getting less results, because I was in the try and make a right decision, then insufficient action, insufficient result, which doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing stuff. I was very busy doing a lot of comfort work, a lot of comfort planning.
So the results of that year was $307,000 in revenue, $190,000 loss. So I the business spent 307,000 plus 190,000 because I was also paying a full time marketing manager. I was paying myself as well, and I wasn’t making as much money as I kind of made decisions based on, okay, well, we’re going to keep going in the up and up. And then I stopped doing the things that were working, I didn’t say in that sufficiency cycle. And I have so much compassion for myself for going into the insufficiency and for for really, like in that uncertainty around the twins coming and that big personal life change that my perfectionist brain was like, whoop, turn that handbrake on like this. We are not safe to have the business grow in this time. And so instead of stabilizing the growth by continuing to do what worked and like having a very simple year of just continuing to do spark content on the podcast and Instagram and email, do a quarterly pgsd launch, get the word out to more people about pgsd.
Like that’s what in hindsight. Now that I know this and it’s i i couldn’t change it. All the lessons that I learned from the last three years in this key lesson have informed so much of what I’m now teaching, what I’m now able to coach on, what I’m now able to spot my belief in my marketing and sales ability, my ability to now coach specifically on those topics whereas in 2023 I was like, great, now we can offer specific marketing advice, because I’m not a marketing expert, so I couldn’t do that, but my marketing manager can, instead of like I’m actually more experienced in marketing, like I am the best person to coach the PGCD on the marketing so. So with all of that said, what I really hope you’re able to take away from this episode and for my PGSDers as well, because I know you guys listen to this podcast too. My one on one clients is that we want to be thinking, what is the sufficient decision here, and just noticing, like, what even comes up? Don’t ask chatGPT. Ask your own brain. This helps you to develop self trust.
What is a sufficient decision? I know my brain is giving me the optimal which is having the fancy system, the notion the custom GPT, just borrowing some things that I’ve, I’ve been doing, to hire different team members, like all these different things. What would it look like to do it sufficient, which is to meet the needs, because when we do that, we take sufficient action, and we create sufficient, or more than sufficient, results. When we try and get it right, because we are worried about getting it wrong, we end up putting so much pressure on ourselves. We create overwhelm, we create spinning we create disconnection, we get in our heads. We take insufficient action. This doesn’t mean you’re not busy, but you’re not taking sufficient action. You’re not doing the needle movers to tie it into that concept. You’re doing comfort work, and you’re doing a lot of it, and then you get insufficient results.
So that question, what would be the sufficient decision here, not the optimal one, pros and cons list. I don’t I don’t like pros and cons list. We have different decision making frameworks as well in pgsd that we teach. I do not like your pros and consists ever. I don’t think it’s helpful your brain, your perfectionist brain, will naturally just want to minimize cons. It will not it will just ignore the pros. It just wants to minimize cons, not helpful. So we want to have you really just asking your brain, what does that sufficient decision look like in this case, my brain says all this is optimal, but what does sufficiency look like? And the more you ask yourself that, the more you’ll be able to access that. And then in pgsd, we do so much coaching on that as well. So just hearing everyone else getting coached on that, like getting coached yourself, whether it’s on a call or in the forum, you will really start to be able to not just understand this concept, but be able to apply it, and to then make those sufficient decisions, take sufficient action, create sufficient results, which is how you build the business. That’s the process. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what you do inside pgsd.
So I want to shout out pgsd, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, because our next open enrollment is happening from the 30th of January to the sixth of Feb 2026, we’re open for one week only. So to go to the waitlist and find out more about the program, you can go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, that is where you can go to get the details. Sign up. You want to join the waitlist as well, so that you’re not only ready to join us when it opens, but you’ll also learn more about exactly what we do, the philosophies, everything inside that’s going to help. And I sent out emails as well that are going to help you in the interim, to be making those sufficient decisions, taking sufficient action and creating sufficient results, instead of the spinning, the overwhelm, the second guessing that comes from trying to get it right, let’s just have you get it sufficient. So with that said, I hope you’re having a beautiful day, and I will talk to you in the next episode.