As an entrepreneur, you are creating something that didn’t exist before. Which means you’re creative – whether you want to admit it or not. So what should your creative process look like? And what if it doesn’t look like everyone else’s? That’s what I’m talking about in today’s episode.
In this episode, I’m sharing what I’ve learned about creativity from more than 10 years in business and how I’ve leaned into my Connected Creative Process to create my best work. I share the specifics of my Connected Creating Process and what’s happened when I haven’t let myself follow what naturally works for me. I also chat about why I’ve stopped trying to have a neat and tidy creative process and why you don’t need one either.
If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.
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
Okay, so today I just want to come to you with some thoughts that I have about creative process as an entrepreneur and really just wanting to share my experience. I don’t have any notes for this episode. That is part of my creative process.
I don’t talk about that in this episode. I’m not saying you need to have the same creative process as me, but I think as perfectionists, we can think about being creative in this really linear way and for most creative people or most entrepreneurs and literally if you’re an entrepreneur, that means you’re creative because when you are an entrepreneur, you are creating something that never existed before. Like you are literally creating something.
It’s not about whether or not you’re good at art. It’s about creating something from nothing, being resourceful, being able to think in different ways. Like that’s really what it’s about to be creative and so regardless of the kind of business you have, you will have a creative process and I just want to talk about why that doesn’t have to be linear and share what mine has looked like because I have found that when I try to fit myself into a linear creative process, one where it’s very much like, okay, first of all, you write an outline and then you record an episode and then you edit the episode and then you publish the episode.
For example, if you look at YouTube, there are so many linear creative processes that are shared of like, here’s how to use notion to do your creative process and capture your ideas and then you take the best ideas and then you turn it into this or like here are the prompts and you take this prompt and then you do this and then you do that. There’s so much of that that I just want to counter that with another option. You have so many options.
This is another option is to really embrace a non-linear or atypical approach to your creative process and really start to lean into how you create, to really observe how you create. For me, I’ve really figured this out through power planning now for so many years that I can see in my calendar when I have a high level of creative output, when I’m feeling my spark, when I’m feeling like I have so many things to say and so many things to share. I can see literally, practically speaking, what my creative process looks like and I can see what it looks like when I’m trying to be linear or write about my creative process, like I’m trying to do creativity right.
I’m trying to create a podcast right. I’m trying to build a business right. When I’m doing that, I’m not in my creative process.
Everything is so much harder. Everything takes so much more effort. Everything I create resonates less.
It is so much easier in my experience to build a business and building a business is a hard thing. It is so much easier to do the hard thing of building the business when you work with yourself instead of against yourself. This is one of the core principles we have in PGSD, working with your perfectionist brain instead of against it and really just having a tool like power planning to be able to really observe yourself, to study yourself because it’s not just that you plan out your week in your calendar and hopefully you can force yourself to follow through with it.
That is what we do. Power planning is a flexible planning method designed to work with your perfectionist brain and not just that, but it gives you so much self awareness because not are you only planning out your week in a flexible way, following the process and making adjustments as you go throughout the week because life will be lifey and sometimes we get in our own way, like all of that, but at the end of the week, your calendar, thanks to the little tweak step, your calendar will be a reflection, roughly speaking, of what actually happened, where your time actually went and that will teach you so much. Oh my God, so much.
I have really been studying this for myself as I have been getting back into my spark, getting back into my creativity. You can probably tell from the episodes I’ve been releasing lately that I am so much more connected and energized and just in my creative process and it’s not on paper. If I could pick any creative process to have, I don’t think I would pick the creative process I have because it’s not the textbook thing that we’re told to do.
It’s not linear. It kind of jumps around. It’s different to basically anything else that I’ve ever seen.
It’s really me being in tune with myself, trying lots of different methods of creating things, trying ways that feel really flowy, trying ways that don’t feel flowy and just really figuring out for me what that looks like. I just want to share a bit with you about what my creative process looks like just to get your brain going and for you to have ideas. This is something that we support with on a really deep level inside PGSD.
We have the Creative Cocoon Course, which is all about creating spark content and safe visibility so that you’re safe to show up creatively in the world and to share the things you create and actually to create your best stuff and to do that without overthinking and without procrastinating. We have a whole process inside PGSD that we teach you so that you can be in your spark, be in your creativity, even as a perfectionist who wants to overthink everything, who’s scared of judgment. If you are the person that you just really have this desire to be creative, to be expressing yourself, to be putting yourself out there and yet you get in your own way, your perfectionism handbrake comes on, that is going to be so amazing for you.
PGSD is the place for you. I just want to share a bit about what that process looks like for me because as I’m currently recording the five-part podcast series that’s going to be coming out next week that I am so excited, oh my god, so excited to be sharing with you. I have really been leaning into what is my creative process and not just, and this is super important, and we’ve been coaching on this recently in PGSD, we can be in this mindset of like, okay, I have my creative process when I just want to be creative and be flowy and then there’s my process for making money and those two things are separate.
But what I love to do is really have those things support each other, like the process of how I sell and how I build my business is me being at my most creative. They are not separate things of like, well, I can either be creative or I can have a successful business. No, I build a successful business by being creative.
Being creative is how I do it. Being me, being expressed, feeling safe to be expressed, having that safe visibility that we teach inside PGSD, that is how I build my business is through being creative and instead of doing creativity the way my perfectionist brain wants to do it, which is to do it right, to do it in this very, as I said, linear fashion of like, here’s step one, then step two, then step three, looking at everyone else’s creative process and I should do it more like that, like, all day right out there, whole podcast episodes, so should I, like actually really getting in tune with how you work and part of this is the experimentation and trying all sorts of different ways and like just taking a sufficient volume of action, like this is another major thing we support within PGSD is taking sufficient action, like completing things sufficiently and taking a sufficient volume of action overall is so important if you want to develop any process, including a creative process. If you are avoidant, if you’re procrastinating, if you are overthinking, it is so hard to take a sufficient level of action to achieve your goal, so, so, so hard.
So we want to have you showing up and taking action and then through that you can figure out your creative process and I, again, just want to share a bit about what that looks like for me. So, this series coming next week is to sell PGSD. That is one of the core reasons I also love sharing incredible free content on my podcast, but also I want to sell you on PGSD.
I want to be your coach. I want to help you get the actual transformation that you’re here to get. I want to get you out of your own way.
Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, my program, is the best way I know how to get you out of your own way. So, I want to sell you on that. If you’re a fit for that, if you are someone, if you can relate to what I talk about on this podcast, a hundred percent, get yourself inside, but I want to sell you on that and I want to have a podcast series also that is something that I can refer people back to time and time again.
So, I want it to be on a topic that is something like, hey, go back and listen to this. So, for example, I did a planning series and we actually just re-released it at the end of last year. I did a planning series in 2022 that I so often refer people back to because it really shares the core of why your follow-through problem is a planning problem, why you need to plan in a way that works with your perfectionist brain instead of against it, what that actually looks like, what that takes, the things to be aware of.
I’ve really distilled down in that series, really the essential things to know about it. And in that as well as an invitation, get yourself inside PGSD because that’s where you’ll learn power planning. That’s where you’ll be able to get the tools and the support and everything you need to be able to be successful as a perfectionist entrepreneur.
So, this series is coming out. I am selling PGSD and inviting you inside. And I’m also wanting to create an incredible asset for the business and for you so that regardless of whether you’re inside or not, that that is something that is genuinely helpful for you, that is going to be something that really just gives you so many light bulb moments and that future me can refer back to and be like, hey, this is my podcast series on that topic.
If you want something for free on that topic, that is where to go. So, with this podcast series, what I have done sometimes in the past is try to be all strategic about it, try to get it right, try to, and you probably relate to this, right? Like when something feels very important and when something is something you care about, and also when something is part of you achieving your goals and becoming the person you want to be and like having this bigger picture vision for yourself and living into that. And you also genuinely want to help people and like be doing it in a way that’s in alignment with your values and all of those things.
Our perfectionist brains, we can make it into such a big deal. And so sometimes in the past, I’ve gone down this path of like, okay, I need to think about like the person on the other end and what topic would be best for them. And like, what is the way that I need to say like all these different things, what’s the different format and just trying to be so strategic about it.
And for me, and I’ve shared this before, whenever I’m trying to be strategic about something, that is just code for me, the way I think about being strategic for being a perfectionist about it. I’m trying to get it right. When I’m being strategic, I go into this mindset of trying to get things right.
That then puts a lot of pressure on me when I’m thinking that way, it then stops my creativity and it’s very hard to get anything right when I’m thinking that way, which gets very frustrating. But I will often feel this sense of confidence when I’m being strategic because there’s this kind of entitlement of like, I’m getting it right, so it should work. But ultimately, I know for me, when I’m being creative and when I’m doing my best work, I feel how I feel right now, which is feeling connected.
I don’t feel like, well, this should work. If anything, I feel like, well, this is less likely to work than anything else because I’m just chatting away. But I feel so connected.
I feel so connected to the purpose of PGSD. I feel so connected to you as a listener. I feel so connected to myself and all the lessons I’ve learned over the years.
So when it comes to creating this series, which earlier today, by the way, I’m doing a behind the scenes episode of all the launch things. So that’ll be coming after the launch. I know that there are so many listeners who love those episodes, so that will be coming.
But today I had in my power planning to outline the podcast series and a plan to record it all tomorrow. And so interestingly, I didn’t give myself that much time to outline it. I think I gave myself an hour, which I think is less time than I need to actually really let myself think about it in a spacious way.
So that was interesting that I gave myself less time. But I had that plan and my plan was, again, outline it, record the episodes. Then I typically will write the show notes and write the emails about it and then start creating all of the other launch materials.
But the main asset of the launch is the five part podcast series. But I know, and this is what happened earlier today, I know that when I am trying to be strategic and get it right and make sure it works, my perfectionism handbrake is on and my creativity is low. My resourcefulness is low.
My connectedness is low. I am just, even though I’m trying so hard to get it right, but it’s so much harder because of the way my perfectionism comes into play. And so what I did was this morning, I was just reflecting on like, okay, at this point, I’ve done, I don’t even know how many, at least 10 different five part podcast series on this podcast, I would say.
Maybe less, maybe more, not sure exactly. I’ve been doing them since 2022. And again, I’ve done it in all different ways.
So I was just reflecting on, okay, what podcast series do I feel the most connected to? I did an episode a couple of months ago about connection first, strategy second. I have been really living into that. We have been coaching on that so much inside PGSD as well.
Connection isn’t the only thing, like connection doesn’t entitle you to everything else automatically working, but it is absolutely essential. And so what I noticed for me, one of the things that worked really well about that planning series that I did was because I really felt so excited to talk on the topic, I naturally was telling everyone about it. I was just posting on Instagram about it.
I was sending emails about it. I was like, my thought was they want to listen to this. This is so important.
I want to make sure they hear about this. I want to make sure everyone in my world listens to this series. And then other times I’ve done other series, more so from a place of trying to get it right.
So for example, I’d say like the perfectionism series that I did in 2023 in June, I was like trying in this mindset of like trying to get it right and trying to say the right thing. And it still worked, but not nearly as effectively. And it was so much harder to promote it because I didn’t naturally feel connected to it.
And there are many people who say like, you don’t need to feel connected to it. And that shouldn’t really matter. And just like focus on what your audience needs to hear and say that.
But I know for me and my creative process and like my marketing and selling and when it naturally works best, what works for me is being connected, is actually being really excited and really passionate about what I’m talking about. And so what I did this morning, instead of thinking about like, what’s the topic I should talk about, I really just reflected on it. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days about like what topic do I want it to be just kind of in the background in my mind.
And then I was like, what do I want to talk about? Like what are the topics that either like we’ve been coaching on a lot recently inside PGSD that I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection and self-coaching on or getting coached on or that I’ve been coaching my one-on-one clients on. Like what are the topics for me that I just feel very passionately about? And I did a little brainstorm of like, what do I want to say? What do I want to share? Like what do I just feel compelled to talk about as a topic that I don’t have to be like, okay, you know, like what’s a story that I could think of and like what’s a hook? And I never think of like what’s a hook that just like that thinking, it doesn’t help me create hooks. I create hooks when I feel compelled and I just start speaking, I will naturally speak in the most compelling way.
So I was just reflecting on what I want to talk about. And I had a few things come up. One is what I’ve ended up choosing, which is talking about personal development, which is my OG topic.
Like that I started as a personal development blogger. Like that is the through line. That is what we talk about here, personal development and entrepreneurship and perfectionism.
Like that is what we do here. And I haven’t done a personal development series before. And I was like, oh my God, I would love to create a personal development series.
That’s really about how to build your business through personal development, which is the approach I love taking. And specifically as a perfectionist entrepreneur, what does that look like? Like not just like general mindset work, like specifically as a perfectionist, what is the personal development work you need to be doing? How do you know that you’re actually doing it? What does it look like to do it? What are the tools you need? What are the support? Like, what is that? Like, I really want to do a series on that. And my past self, my 2013 self, when I started my blog would, oh my God, just be so helped.
Like every version of my past self would be so helped by this series. And I’m so excited to put it together. So anyway, that was one idea.
Another idea I had was about increasing your capacity. I’ve been doing so much capacity work. I have been really increasing my capacity like crazy over the last couple of years.
And I have a lot to say about it. And I had to really increase my capacity in the beginning to be able to have a business while working a full-time job and doing other things as well. Like I’ve really had so many ways that I’ve needed to increase my capacity and to be able to have a business that I have while working three days a week and being a mom of four.
Like there is a lot of capacity I’ve developed and I have a specific way that I’ve done that. And we coach on that a lot inside PGSD. And I was just like, I’d love to do a series on that.
And there are a couple of other topics as well that I would love to do. And so they might be future topics that come out, but I just felt most compelled by talking about personal development and talking about really like as a perfectionist entrepreneur specifically, what does that mean? What does it look like? Like all these things I mentioned. And so that is my creative process for choosing a topic.
And maybe that doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but I know there are so many perfectionist entrepreneurs who think the process has to be, okay, you go out and you do market research. You go and ask ChatGPT. I didn’t ask ChatGPT a single question.
I asked my brain, what do I want to talk about? I let the answers come. It’s like, we think, okay, we have to have this whole like matrix for this, or do all of this market research on that, or like ask ChatGPT or like do all of, you don’t have to do that. That is one approach of so many.
And the approach that has worked best for me. And if you resonate with the way that I create, even if you’d create in a different way yourself, if you resonate with my connected way of sharing stuff, then most likely the best way for you to pick any topic to talk about is the one that you’re connected to. And what I do as well as I have a belief overall high level that if I use this method of creating overall, I will talk about all the things that need to be talked about.
Like I will say all the things that need to be said. I can trust myself to sufficiently cover everything that needs to be covered.
And also, because I’m sharing and publishing my work, we talk about in PGSD in the Creative Cocoon course, why it’s so important to not just create in private, but to be publishing things, even if you have a very small audience. Because I’m publishing stuff, I get feedback about it. I get questions about it.
And I have this feedback loop that comes with that as well, from me showing up in my spark, creating, connecting, putting myself out there, feeling safe to do that, creating the safety to be seen. We’ll talk about that in the series. And then I have the feedback loop.
And I’ve just developed as well, a level of self-trust that I will talk to everything that needs to be spoken to. And also, I have hundreds of topics I could do podcast episodes on. I don’t need to get to them all.
Do you know what I mean? It’s just like, I trust that I’m going to say exactly what you need to hear when you need to hear it. You don’t need to hear me say it polished. You don’t need to hear me say it in an articulate way.
You don’t need to hear me say it in this put together way. You just need me to say it in a way that’s connected, in a way that resonates, in a way that makes sense with how you think. And I know how to do that.
I can trust myself to do that. And I’ve developed the skills and the thinking to be able to do that as well. I’m not new to podcasting.
In case you haven’t noticed, I have hundreds of podcast episodes. I’ve been at this for quite a while. So when it comes to choosing a topic, even back, if I look like back to when I started my podcast in 2017, or even before that, when I was doing YouTube and when I was blogging, the best stuff I created was when I felt connected and I wasn’t trying to pick the right idea or the right topic to talk to, that I was creating from a place of being connected.
And even if I then went on to make it SEO friendly or whatever else, so it could get into the hands of more people, I ultimately first went to connection. Connection first, strategy second. For me, connection is a massive part of the strategy.
And so for the idea, the topic, that was how I chose it. And I just really wanted to share that because it’s really important to just know it doesn’t have to be researching this and doing that and putting this prompt into ChatGPT. And if you’re doing a lot of that and you find you’re creating a low level of output, you might have, for example, ChatGPT creates like 50 captions and you don’t post any of them.
So for output, I’m talking about published work that actually gets out into the real world. If you have a low level of that happening, first of all, get yourself into PGSD because that is what we help you with. How to take sufficient action and sufficient volume of action, get things sufficiently complete so you can be showing up and put yourself out there and feeling safe to be doing that and your business.
But really, ultimately, we want to have you when it comes to your business, we want to have you creating stuff and actually being able to be able to be connected and not have to have it be this like trying to do it this right way. Because you can spot a mile off when someone is trying to create content or anything with this idea of like they’re trying to do it right or like get the gold star or get the A plus or like do it how you should. It’s very stale.
It doesn’t tend to resonate. It’s quite stilted. Even if it looks great, it just doesn’t land and connect the same way as when someone is creating from connections.
So when I look back over all of my content creation since 2013 and everything else that I’ve created as well, I’ve created a lot of things that when I’m connected and when I just choose a topic of like this is what I feel connected to talking about, that is what resonates the most. It’s so much more easy to do it. Emotionally, it can be hard because it feels sloppier, messier.
Like emotionally, publishing an episode like this is harder than publishing a polished episode because the polished episode, it’s easy to have good thoughts about me. When it’s a bit messier, my thoughts about me often just default to being like, oh, I talk too much about this. Like my brain, my perfectionist brain sometimes just wants to tear it apart a little bit and that’s okay because I’ve built up the emotional capacity to publish it anyway and to create safety around showing up in the world that way and to create safety around being visible as myself in the world and making mistakes and doing all the different things.
So there’s that. But after creating the topic, I just want to talk about how I recorded episode one because it’s different even to how I’ve created stuff in the past and I think this is going to be really ultimately my new creative process, but it’s not really that new. So anyway, the creative process I had, so I was writing down the outline for the episodes, just kind of like jotting down what are my ideas that I have if the topic is personal development as a perfectionist entrepreneur and how to build your business by developing yourself and all that stuff.
Oh my God, I have a million things I want to say on that topic, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. I don’t want to say all the million things. I just want to say the things that you need to hear and you want to hear and that would be helpful for you.
And so I was just writing down all the different ideas that I have and like, okay, how do I want to structure the episodes and kind of like what I want to do? And then what I decided to do, probably not a surprise that I work this way, is that when I talk, that’s me gathering my thoughts. The same thing I do as well when I’m writing, if I’m like writing an email or back in the past when I was writing a blog post, like I think as I write, like writing and talking help me to think instead of thinking and then I write or thinking and then I talk, writing and talking helps me to think. And so I was starting to jot down ideas for different episodes and like, could I do on this and that and what would I want that to look like? And just reflecting on PGSDers that I’ve been going to recently and like over the whole course of the program and all the different things like that.
And what I came up with to do that worked so well, and this is part of what I teach as well in PGSD with Creating Spark Content, is ways to take the pressure off. And what actually happened, this is very not unintentional, but just I kind of sidestepped into this, is that I decided that to figure out what I wanted the first episode to be about, I would record an episode and just let myself chat about it. And then from that, I would be able to see what my thinking is about the topics and kind of like my essential thinking about the topics, because I have a million things I could say about it.
But what are the key things that if I had someone in front of me who doesn’t really know much about entrepreneurship yet or personal development yet or perfectionism yet, or they know a lot about those things, but they’re not getting the results they want, what would I share with them? And I just picked up my microphone and was like, okay, well I’d start with entrepreneurship and I was like, okay, and then next I’d talk about this. And I just created the whole episode and I didn’t even plan to, and I think I will most likely use that as episode one, even though I started a kind of funny because I’m just like actually talking to myself to verbally process. But that has then opened up, okay, instead of me spending any time outlining episodes, why don’t I just record the episode, which for me, depending on the topic, sometimes I’ve talked about this over the years on my podcast, like what my creative process is, but I’ll share it in case you haven’t heard me talk about that.
For the podcast that I’m talking about, the podcast, because that is our main marketing channel in the business, like that’s the main driver of business and sales as well of my program is the podcast. I think part of that is I just am so connected when I’m podcasting. I’ve done the personal development work as a perfectionist entrepreneur to podcast in a really connected way that resonates.
And I’ve learned skillsets around selling that like done the personal development work required to be able to sell. And so with my podcast, my creative process, I set up parameters initially to really support myself, which was that I was just going to talk and not try and be articulate or polished, but like have it be more like a real conversation that I would have with someone. So I’m not going to edit out the ums and ahs.
Basically, I’m not going to edit it. Maybe if I have a coughing fit, I’ll edit that out. Or if I like really get lost in the woods, I can edit that out.
Like I have the freedom to edit, but default, I’m not editing things. That really helped. Also doing a solo show that I just, I love solo show podcasts where people are just sharing their own thoughts.
I also love interview podcasts, but like for me, my favorites were always solo shows. So it’s like, I want to have a solo show. I’m not going to be doing interviews.
I’m not going to be editing it. I want to have the episodes be at least 20 minutes because I love long form podcasts and like hearing someone else talk then helps me think about things. And I love wandering off in my brain as I listen.
I don’t really want short to the point podcasts. Like if I want short to the point stuff, I would rather consume another like platform or another kind of content. I want podcasts, like give me ideas and inspiration.
I don’t want to have to find a new podcast episode every 10 minutes. I know everyone’s different on that, but for me, I was like, I’m going to create the podcast I would love to listen to. And also over the years, I’ve tried doing a brief outline.
I’ve tried scripting the whole thing. I’ve tried writing more extensive notes. I’ve tried using chatGPT to help with notes.
Like I’ve tried lots of different things and where I have really landed ultimately is picking a topic I really want to talk about that’s top of mind, either because I’ve just coached someone in PGSD or I’ve just coached myself on it or I’ve just had a breakthrough around something or I’ve realized something high level and I want to share about the epiphany. Like just recording from a place of feeling compelled and then doing like spark activities in my life that give me that spark, like listening to certain kinds of content gives me spark while other kinds of content, I won’t go into it in this episode, but other kinds of content, it’s more strategic how to will decrease my spark. I’m like trying to get it right.
And then I’m not being connected and like letting myself show up as me. So I have developed over the years, a creative process. And even just today being like, oh, I’m really just going to pick whatever I feel most compelled to talk about and share.
And I’m going to let myself do that. And then I’m just going to record an episode to see what my thoughts are and okay, I can just let myself actually use that as the actual episode, even though it’s an important episode in the business. Why wouldn’t I want to have that be such a flowing and connected episode? Like, of course I’d want that.
So anyway, that is what I’m thinking about today as I go through this creative process of creating the podcast series that’s coming out next week. Episode one will be released at 6 a.m. Eastern time on the 22nd, then there’ll be an episode released every other day. And then on day five, we’ll be opening Perfectionist Getting Shit Done for enrollment for one week only.
So if you are not yet on the waitlist, get yourself on the waitlist, samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. Go to the show notes underneath this and you can go to that link and add your name and email address to get yourself on the waitlist so you can find out more about the program and get ready to join us inside when doors open. So that is coming and I’m still currently in the midst of the creative process of it.
And how I’m thinking about it is I’m not putting pressure on myself to have it done quickly and have it done in a certain way, but I also do have a very real timeframe around it. I want to have it all completed by this week so that my podcast producer can upload it all early next week and it’s all ready to go. Plus I’m going to create emails and other things.
I need to have the podcast done first. My creative process is I create the podcast first because that’s me chatting about it and getting all my ideas out. And then after that, I would write emails.
Whereas some people, you might do the email first and then that sparks a podcast episode, for example, or a YouTube video or whatever it is you’re doing, an email pitch or whatever. So I think it’s just really looking at, for you, what helps you keep the pressure off? What helps you feel connected? What would it look like if you could just do it the way that feels easiest to you? Obviously, if you’re a perfectionist entrepreneur, there is self-trust required for this approach that you might not have. And if that’s the case, I want to invite you into PGSD if you’re like, well, there’s no way that could work and I have to do it this way.
And this person says that, and these experts recommend this. If that is you, you really want to get inside so that we can really teach you and support you how to do that personal development work required so that you can trust yourself, so that you can do things your way, because it’s entrepreneurship. It’s entrepreneurship.
This isn’t school of like, here’s how to do it, just do it this way, get the A+. That’s not what this is. And it’s not what we want it to be.
We want it to be full of positive, well, I guess positivity, possibility and creativity, and just getting to grow and getting to evolve. That’s why I love business. There’s so many different ways to do it.
My perfectionist brain just wants to be told, here’s how to get the right answer and just do this, and then it’ll certainly work. But over the years, I have been able to do the personal development work and now teach it in PGSD required so that as a perfectionist entrepreneur, I can actually trust myself to do things my way, and I know how to create results in my business. And I trust myself to do that.
And I don’t need perfect circumstances to do that. And I don’t need to have weeks on end in the cabin in the woods to be able to get myself to be able to do that. I can do that while life is going on as well.
So we want to have you just looking at, like, I really want to suggest, just look at your creative process. Are you trying to fit it into a little box or a little notion, flowchart or whatever that you’re trying to have? Okay, first I create the idea, and then I write down a little note for the idea, and then I turn it into this, or I ask to do this or whatever. If that works for you, and you have a sufficient level of output, and you’re getting great results in your business, amazing.
If you feel really connected when you’re doing that, if you have amazing ideas, and then you love sharing them with the world, amazing. But if you’re in the place, especially where you have like so many different processes to kind of like manage your creativity, and yet you’re not being very creative, like you’re trying to do creativity, right? And you’re trying to fit it into this box of like, well, here’s how this person has this success process for doing their YouTube videos, so I should do that. Well, maybe you have a completely different process.
Like for me, a lot of times, my process will be listening to, I said that funny, listening, listening to something that has me feeling connected. So an example of that for me is the podcast Armchair Expert, that it’s very connected, chatty, flowy. So I have so many episodes I recorded, where I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to record.
I’d go for a walk, I’d listen to that podcast. I would feel just from them being connected and like not doing it perfectly, so to speak, I would just feel very connected and be like, oh, I could just do a podcast episode on whatever I want, like give me this permission unintentionally. And then I just let myself show up and record.
So like part of it in my creative process is making sure I’m consuming things that support me to be connected rather than disconnecting me, rather than trying to have me believe or like maybe they’re not even trying to do that, but I just end up having perfectionist thoughts of like, I need to get this right, and I need to figure out the right strategy and get the right messaging and have the right this and the right that and the right this and the right that. When I’m in that kind of thought pattern of trying to get it right, I get it wrong. I get it wrong because I’m so disconnected from what actually matters most.
And so looking at what is your connected creative process and in PGSD in the Creative Cocoon course that we have in there, where I teach on safe visibility and spark content and creative overflow, like these are concepts that are so important to understand as an entrepreneur, because as an entrepreneur, you are inherently in a creative role, regardless of how good you are at art. You are in a creative position if you are building a business. So we want to have you feeling safe and feeling able to be creative and to have that look differently to how other people’s creative process might look.
It might look messy. It might feel a bit backwards. It might feel like, I don’t know that it really makes sense to do it this way, or maybe it’s double handling, but really looking at for you, what does it look like to be connected and be creative and letting yourself lean into that, letting yourself explore that.
And we support you with that so much as well in PGSD, really helping you own your own creative process that actually works for you and your brain and has you showing up in the world and for your business in the way that you want to. So I hope that’s been helpful just to hear about it. And what my plan is to do tomorrow is that I will follow the same thing.
I’m going to just write down a couple notes for each one, like literally like two minutes of notes, record an episode, and then just see if that episode will be the episode, if I want to do a different episode. And then I’m going to write the show notes, which is very brief, very basic. And then I will just be creating emails that we’re going out and Instagram posts that will be going out.
And that will be very easy for me because when I create stuff connected, I just want to share it. I want to show up and share stuff. And when I’m trying to create stuff from a place of trying to get it right, I don’t want to share.
I overthink, I procrastinate. I try and get it right. I try and create this fancy system on the backend.
So that’s what I’m up to. And I really can’t wait for you to hear it. So if you’re not subscribed to this podcast in wherever you’re listening, hit the subscribe button.
So you automatically get those episodes. They’re going to be coming out for free on the podcast. Episode one’s on the 22nd of Jan and then PGSD doors open on the 30th of Jan for one week only.
If you have any questions, DM me @perfectionismproject on Instagram or email us support@samlaurabrown.com. We would love to help you. I will personally reply to you, answer any questions you have about the program. We want to have you inside so you can get out of your own way in your business.
So you can do the personal development work required as a perfectionist entrepreneur to actually be able to get your business off the ground and to not just be successful, but to actually enjoy it, to feel successful, to not be beating yourself up all the time and shaming yourself and feeling so behind and feeling like no matter what you achieve, it’s never enough. In PGSD, we just shift you into a completely different way of thinking. So I want to invite you inside.
I want to invite you to listen to the series. I hope you’ve been enjoying the podcast. I’ve been getting great feedback on there being two episodes per week.
I have loved doing two episodes per week again. And also that has been part of my creative process, especially initially was to create more episodes because when I create more stuff, the way my perfectionist brain works and our PGSDers too, is the more I create, the less precious everything feels. And so when I do two podcast episodes, especially when I first started my podcast, I was like, well, if it’s another one’s coming in three days, like that is literally a key thought that has built this podcast is if this episode is shit, there’s another one that’s going to be coming right behind it in three days.
So it won’t be at the top of the podcast episodes for long. So that’s part of my creative process too, is to create more, to be in that creative overflow. And it feels so nice to be back in that because I feel like if I was doing one episode per week, it’s these kinds of episodes, I’d be like, well, that doesn’t feel like it’s worthy of a like once a week episode, but for a twice a week episode, I’m like, well, sure I can just show up and share stuff.
And I know this is my best stuff. And I’m so excited to over the course of this year, like my plan is for every episode to be a new episode and to just be sharing all the things with you that are going to be so insanely helpful. So I’m loving it.
I’m glad that for those of you who’ve given me the feedback that you’re loving it too, for those who are just lurking and listening, I hope you are enjoying it. And I hope this episode has been really helpful and just permission giving that you don’t have to have a linear creative process. It can be so messy.
It can be back to front. It can be sideways. It can be however you want it to be, to play around with it, to explore it.
You don’t need a fancy system with it. I write down ideas in my iPhone notes. I haven’t got this fancy system or I have a notebook in front of me.
I just like literally jot down ideas in my notebook. It’s not fancy. It is not fancy.
It is sufficient and it works and it is connected. So with that said, I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I recommend signing up for the waitlist for my program called perfectionist getting shit done, aka pgsd. This is a program designed to help you get out of your own way in your business, you’re going to learn how to release your perfectionism handbrake by setting a growth goal for your business. Planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning and getting regular, guilt free, clean rest, you’ll learn the skills required to get out of your own way and be supported every step of the way to do it. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist today, go to samlaurabrown.coms/pgsd.