What you do with your business time matters so much more than how much you have. And if you feel like you should be further along in your business or need more time for your business, this episode is going to blow your mind.
I’m sharing the difference between why you don’t need more time to be more successful. And what you do need instead.
Tune in as I share a bunch of personal examples of how stepping into greater responsibility in my personal life and in my business in the last 8 weeks has allowed me to not only build momentum but feel more like myself than ever before.
I’m also sharing two experiences I’ve had with throwing time at my business problems and why it didn’t work (thank god) so you can learn from my mistakes. And why taking great care of the business time you already have is so important (and how to do it).
If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.
WANT MORE?
If you want to learn how to consistently follow through with your plans, join me for my upcoming free live Power Planning Workshop. Get the workshop details and register today at samlaurabrown.com/workshop.
If you want to see behind the scenes of my journey of building my own business as a perfectionist entrepreneur, subscribe to my youtube channel: samlaurabrown.com/youtube.
Want a little motivational boost from me in your inbox every day? I call them Perfectionist Power-Ups and thousands of perfectionists love them. You can sign up for free at samlaurabrown.com/ppu.
My coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done is opening for enrollment on 17 June 2026 for one week only. To find out more about PGSD and be the first to know when doors open, sign up for the waitlist today at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sam Laura Brown
Welcome to today’s podcast episode. So I am actually, I have just finished a two hour live power planning workshop. And I had in my power planning to have lunch and then to do this, but I just wanna keep talking.
So I shuffled things around, I did my little tweaks and I am coming to you with an episode that’s just top of mind that I have been reflecting on a lot for myself personally. And I see this a lot with my clients, with PGSDers and with students in the power planning course as well. They are having the same thing happen.
So I wanna do an episode about it and just share with you my thoughts on this topic because I think it will be pretty revolutionary. And yeah, let’s just get into it. Also, if you haven’t yet joined me live for the power planning workshop, you really wanna do that.
It is gonna be so helpful for you. I’m teaching up my whiteboard, just like the very best of what I have to teach on perfectionism and business and taking action and following through. And everything I share is not the, just remember done is better than perfect.
Like that doesn’t work. You know done is better than perfect and you still want it to be perfect or you don’t do it at all. So let me just teach you how to actually follow through with your plans.
And it’s so good. It’s so good. So samlaurabrown.com/workshop is where you can go to sign up for my next upcoming live workshop.
Okay, so what I wanna teach you about today is responsibility and taking responsibility for your business success and why it is not up to how much time you have as to how successful you are in your business. So something you might’ve heard me say before is it doesn’t matter how much time you have for your business. What matters is what you do with the time you have.
And part of the reason that I deeply believe that and this also, this belief supports me to be able to work three days a week in my business is because I’m not in the belief, even though my perfectionist brain all the time is trying to convince me to just add more time, like throw time at the problem. This will be solved just by adding more time. But if I’m not using my time well, if I’m in that situation and I’m not using my time well, of course my brain wants to just add more time, that’ll fix it, but then I’m gonna add more time and waste it.
So what is really important to understand is when your brain is offering, I don’t have enough time, I just need more time. And typically we perfectionists go a lot into self-pity as a way to connect with ourselves, even though we might not admit it, but we don’t want anyone else to pity us, but we pity ourselves at, oh, I have it, it’s so hard for me. It’s so much harder for me than everyone else.
And whether you have a health condition, little ones, a full-time job, whatever circumstances make it harder to build your business than if you just had no responsibilities and nothing else to do with your time and endless amounts of money, if you keep blaming, well, if I just have more time, then we get to, as I just said, blame lack of time and not take full responsibility for the fact that we are the one building the business. And we are the one who is going to be able to create the results in the business or not. We want time to be responsible for that.
Either I need to work a lot, like I need more time, I need to work all the time, I need to work an extra day, like my brain constantly, as I’m rebuilding momentum in my business, is like just add in an extra day and here’s how we can figure it out. And it’s not that that’s right or wrong, but when it is done from the thought that more time is the solution, I’m not in full responsibility of me being the one that creates a success in the business. I’m thinking time spent equals amount of success.
And this is why if you feel behind in your business and you started it months ago or years ago and you’re like, I’m so far behind, I should be further along by now, oftentimes it’s because you are making time responsible. A certain amount of time has passed, therefore by now I should have a certain amount of success as if time and the passage of time create success. Or if I had more time each week and less other responsibilities, then I would be more successful, then I would be able to get there.
Instead of like time isn’t actually the determining factor, it’s the quality of your thoughts, the level of your belief and conviction and connection, to your goals, to the person on the other end of the marketing and selling that you’re doing, to your offer, to your product, it’s not actually based on how much time we spent. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have extra work time, you can work, whatever, it’s neutral. But what I’m trying to say here is what matters most isn’t how much time you have.
Throwing time at a follow through problem, at an action taking problem, like if you have trouble making the most of the time you have, giving yourself more time isn’t gonna solve that problem. And you might be like, well it will because then I’ll be less overwhelmed because I’ll actually have more time so I’ll be able to follow through. But what will typically happen is if you add more time to your work schedule from a place of giving this more time will actually be able to have me create success, from that level of thinking, you won’t actually use your time in a way that’s needed to create the result because you think just spending time working will create the result.
You won’t actually do what needs to be done. You won’t actually do your needle movers. You won’t identify them or if you do, then you’ll get confused about it a week later and be like, I don’t know what my needle movers are.
Your needle movers are your tasks and projects that when completed add up to you achieving your goal. I teach it in the power planning course and perfectionist getting shit done really, really essential. Your needle movers, knowing what they are, if you think if I just have more time then I will be able to follow through, this happens all the time and I’ll share a story as well where I really had this lesson so deeply and so painfully but if you think if I just have more time, I’d be more successful, we just say that to ourselves because we want time to be the issue, not our own intelligence.
We want time to be the issue, not our own capability, not our own potential. We wanna blame time but anytime we’re saying I just don’t have enough time, we are stepping out of responsibility and therefore out of resourcefulness and being the most resourceful we can be. We’re stepping out of what could otherwise be high quality thinking and we’re thinking lower quality thoughts which make it much harder to be successful.
I feel like that’s a whole other topic to go into that I’m not gonna go into in this episode but time, like just noticing for yourself when you’re like if I just had more time, I’d be more successful, that that is you not wanting to be responsible because if you are responsible, then you might actually not be being good enough. You might be making mistakes. Like it’s so interesting, we perfections, we love control but we often try to avoid responsibility.
We want control without responsibility because we go so quickly to blaming ourselves and shaming ourselves and making ourselves wrong. If we’re responsible for something and not living up to a responsibility and the irony is I’ve been thinking about this so much. The irony is that I would say everyone listening to this would self-identify as being a responsible person.
There might be areas that are dropping the ball but ultimately they’re a responsible person and I’ve noticed for myself when I’m in that identity, of I’m a responsible person, I actually don’t take on responsibility for fear that I won’t be responsible with the responsibility so I actually avoid as much responsibility as I can so I get to keep just only having on my plate what I definitely can feel responsible for. But I love responsibility. I am activated by responsibility.
This has been such a revelation for me in the last few weeks. I actually love being responsible, responsible for achieving the goal, responsible for making money, responsible for figuring things out, responsible for correcting mistakes and I can do that without going into shame. So I wanna share about a couple of things that have been the behind the scenes of realizing these things which is, and thinking about them and I’m just gonna ignore my brain that’s like this is all over the place and just trust it’s helpful.
So number one, in the last few weeks and months what I’ve been doing responsibility-wise and then number two is about the moment that I realized that more time, throwing time at the problem, like I actually need to take responsibility and then when I stepped into that, I created a massive change in my business. So in the last, I wanna say, what are we in now? We’re in at the end of May when I’m recording this. Probably the last two months, maybe the last three months I could look at my power planning to really see but I have been taking more and more responsibility in every area of my life and allowing myself to take on pressure and hold pressure and to put more on my plate not from a place of should but from a place of want and desire.
So for example, it’s been like lots of little things and big things too but a few examples are personal life-wise. I think one of the biggest dominoes was taking responsibility for my experience of my weekends. I am for the most, like most times, solo parenting Steve works from early in the morning and he comes home almost always after dinner and bath and books and bed.
So it’s just me and the kids and Lydia’s almost five, twins are three and Liam has turned one now but he hadn’t yet turned one when I was like, I actually want to take responsibility for my experience of the weekend because I feel like most people don’t talk about this but when I talk about to people one-on-one, it’s so common but people won’t tend to say this on like public platforms but I had a lot of dread about the weekend and also resentment but not from a place of I don’t wanna spend time with my kids but from a place of I don’t want the responsibility that comes from being the only one and being the one. I need to, every sibling squabble, I’m the one to be there. Every nappy, every meal, every mess, every meltdown, all of it, I’m the one and doing my life admin then, I don’t have any like non-business, non-parenting days.
So looking after the house, doing all the life admin for the six of us or almost all of it, like all of that, getting that done plus hopefully seeing a friend or a family member. I just had also in my mind, this kind of like idea that isn’t actually true that everyone else on the weekend doesn’t have to be the only one instead of there’s actually a lot of people in that situation and my brain just went into this self-pity of like actually I’m the only one who’s in this situation and I have four kids which I had by choice and I really wanted to have four kids and I love my children and then my brain, just because I don’t want the responsibility of it, even though I do, just because I don’t want the responsibility of it goes into this dread of like it’s gonna be so much work, it’s so tiring, it’s all on me and I don’t want it to all be on me and I wish I could be working because that’s easier, particularly as well, I think circumstantial, it was a really hard period, now the twins have turned three, they’re like a little bit easier, there’s still lots of emotions going on as there will continue to be but I think I can give them a little more free reign, like it’s just a little bit less close supervision compared to, for example, when they were one and they just started walking around and they’re walking around in different directions and all of that.
So circumstantially, the circumstance has changed but also I recognize like I actually need to take responsibility for my experience of the weekends and it’s not about I need to have the perfect routine and anything though I can use structure to support myself, I love flexible structure, I can use flexible structure to support myself and take care of things but it’s actually my thinking that is creating my experience. And me not wanting to take responsibility but so I started connecting with here’s all the reasons I love being the one, here’s all the reasons I love solo parenting and I love doing it with Steve as well but for example, when it’s just me, I get to choose exactly what we do, the moment I wanna leave the shops, we leave the shops, if I wanna go see a certain friend, I just go and see the friend with the kids as well or I organize the babysitting or whatever else would need to happen but there’s so much I love about it, I love that I get to be the one that has so much influence over them, I get to influence them with the way I think and my values and all of that.
I get to witness all the little moments like I really just started connecting with why I wanted the responsibility and where do I wanna take on more responsibility and I feel like it’s counterintuitive as well to be like when I actually feel like I’m at my limit because to me, the answer wasn’t okay, just coast through the weekend, what actually really started as well, making such a big difference was having like a little momentum project for myself for the weekend. So I’d give myself, I think one of the first ones I did was cleaning up the deck, we have a really beautiful deck and it’s exposed to the elements so there was like some kind of like mold going on the table, not too much but just like there’d been some rain so just this like fine layer of stuff, just like little bits of Play-Doh where it just, it wasn’t horrific but I was like this isn’t actually how I want it to look and so as a family project with the kids, I was like we’re going to have this weekend, you can either play with what’s out or you can help me clean up the deck and I had a clear project for myself in my brain, this is what I want to move forward this weekend, like having a momentum project really helped me not dread it as well because I actually felt like I was moving something forward so that’s an example of like a flexible structure I put in place.
So I’d give myself a little project that I could do with the kids awake, it wasn’t as I used to do in the past, I’m going to squeeze this into nap time, it was like this is what I’m going to do, Liam can crawl around next to me, like it’s going to take 100%, it’s going to take 10 times longer than if I was doing it by myself and that is okay, that is okay, I’m going to be constantly interrupted, that is also okay. So I started doing that, having little momentum projects and then just taking responsibility, not just for cleaning the deck once but for keeping it that way. And then for cooking, Steve does a lot of meal prep which is so good and instead of just only doing that and just kind of doing like the bare minimum, also from an identity of I’m not a good cook, like I actually, I want to know how to cook, I actually am already decent at cooking and I’m going to really be more intentional with what I want to cook, not from a place of I should do that because a good mom would but I actually want that. I have four kids, I’m going to be feeding them for a long time, I want that to not feel overwhelming or to not have any dread, like I want to actually enjoy that, James in particular loves cooking, they all do but James in particular.
I want to nurture that and like have cooking experiences for him to be involved with and so I started stepping up how I do that and again, not from a place of should I should do that because I’ve done it in the past from a place of should and I just couldn’t sustain it but doing it from actual, like I want the responsibility of that. I can hold the responsibility, I can take more responsibility than I’m already taking, I have just found it so energizing to notice all the little ways I’m not in responsibility or like taking a long time to reply to people just really because of the perfectionist thinking of like I don’t know what to say and then my brain going like, okay, then don’t say anything and I’m like, okay, well, I’m just going to actually say the answer now and reply. So just like all these little areas, taking responsibility and then business wise, really taking responsibility and connecting with like what is my goal and not just I’m going to try and work hard and hope I achieve it but really connecting with my growth goal, with my quarterly milestone and with the business, with the business finances in the last couple of months, I’ve been going through all the expenses and going through them, like canceling all these little subscriptions and things like there was so many things I could actually downgrade because I was paying for a plan that like we’ve changed things in the business, we didn’t need it anymore or just deleting things altogether, just like really taking responsibility for that, which I have loved doing.
I’ve been doing that personal finance wise as well, going through all of our personal finances and that has made me also business wise so much more motivated to know every dollar that comes into the business, in the business itself, it’s getting put to great use and then when it goes into my personal life, it’s also getting put to great use whereas before it felt like there was so many leaks and my plan was like, just try and like put as much water in the bucket and so the leaks won’t matter as much when there’s more water instead of like just actually taking the responsibility to plug the leaks has been and it’s been like a continuous momentum project that wasn’t like just sit down once and do it. I have loved taking responsibility, which to bring it back full circle is why I have loved thinking about responsibility in time and how whenever my brain is going into, I don’t have enough time, it’s actually me just saying, I don’t wanna be responsible, I want time to be responsible and I don’t want time to be responsible, I love having time like positive constraint from having a set amount of time, I love working three days a week, not just because I wanna spend time with my kids and my family and have a personal life outside of the business and many reasons why I wanna do that.
I love having constraint, it makes me really creative, it makes me really responsible instead of like, okay, well, I’ll just work extra and work extra and I used to do that and I just, I wouldn’t use that time well because it was a symptom of me not being responsible and me giving time the responsibility. So I have just been in the last few months, but really, I’d say probably the last six to eight weeks, taking responsibility for so many little things and now I’m like, okay, the next thing is like really taking responsibility for my exercise, I already identified someone who exercises consistently but I haven’t been because I’m like, well, it’s too tricky to fit in, well, actually no, I’m just gonna take responsibility for scheduling it and doing it and figuring out any logistics that need to happen and any mindset shifts that might need to happen as well and I’m using my power planning to support with that. So just I’m noticing, okay, here’s the next place to take responsibility, here’s the next part and like how much taking responsibility energizes me when I feel like when I was in seasons or feeling like there was too much responsibility that I didn’t wanna take, it’s like I was just so resentful of any responsibility that then I was still fulfilling the responsibility.
But it would take so much more energy and I just wasn’t doing as good a job of it and in it as a connected way as I’d want to do has when I’m actually like, I love responsibility, that has been such an identity shift really, it’s like actually recognizing, I love being responsible and not, okay, I love being responsible but I think I also make a lot of mistakes and I don’t wanna be wrong, so I’m gonna reduce my responsibility so I get to feel responsible without being responsible, I actually wanna have responsibilities and sometimes I will miss the mark, sometimes I will make mistakes and I wanna be responsible for that and own up for that and solve that, like that is when I feel my most connected, my most resourceful, my most alive, like that’s what I wanna model to my kids is taking on responsibility and relishing that rather than resenting it because I have been in resenting the responsibility, it is so tiring and it only ends up having every responsibility you have feel heavier and then you also have the consequence of not taking on responsibility fully which means you’re not getting the results you want, things are taking forever, there’s just so many side effects of not actually taking responsibility, overwhelmed because there’s so much to do because I avoided something that needed to be done and I didn’t do it.
I just really have been in my head like, okay, where’s the responsibility I need to take here? And I have been feeling so much more like myself and just seeing like things that I’d be like, oh, it’s not really a big deal about the deck or like, actually, it’s not about the deck, but also it is in the sense of like, this is our living environment. And I want to take care of what I already have. I want to take care of our house.
I want to take care of my kids. I want to take care of myself, my body and my mind. I want to take care of my money.
I think previously, like not wanting to take responsibilities, like once I have more of it, then I’ll take care of it. The same with time. Like, well, I’m not taking care of my time now, but once I have more of it, I’ll take better care of it.
Whereas the starting point is I’m going to take care of the time I have right now. So that’s time wise is I’m not adding extra time in my week, even though I feel like I would use that relatively well. But I really am taking responsibility for the time I have, and I can see quite a lot of low hanging fruit, actually, for how to not like use it better.
But where I’m like subtle overthinking is coming in or procrastination or like perfectionism happening, that is meaning that I’m getting maybe half of what I could get done in my three days. And so it’s not, I’m not allowed to add an extra day. It’s actually, I love having the three days as a constraint.
So I’m not in the mental drama of should I, shouldn’t I? I’m just, I’m deciding for now. I can update that decision at any point. I did an episode on updating decisions as well, maybe a couple of months ago, if you want to listen to that.
But I am deciding that I’m working three days and I have a goal of 500,000 this year in my business. And I have a plan for how to achieve that, that I love. And it will also take belief shifting, getting out of my own way.
Like there’s growth to be had for that plan to equal, like if I just continue executing it as I am today, it will not equate to that goal. I also need to shift. So I teach that in PGSD as well.
And I love always being a product of my product and practicing what I preach and always going first. So you get to have all the lessons from me going first. So really having the, with my goal, keeping the goal the same instead of like, Oh, I don’t want to be responsible for such a big goal.
And I’m not responsible for how I feel the goal decides how I feel. So I’m going to reduce the goal so that I don’t feel disappointed. And I actually need to do a whole other episode on disappointment because such a big realization for me is just seeing how, cause I’ve always been thinking like, why are we perfectionists like so adamant on not being disappointed? And I’ve realized such a big piece of that is because when we’re disappointed, we either make ourselves wrong and disconnect from ourselves or we make others wrong.
And disappointment is like the emotion of it is the triggering for, okay, something must be wrong if I’m disappointed. Oh, it’s me. I made a mistake.
And then, okay, I need to completely change the plan. Anyway, I’ll do a whole separate episode because I’ve had so many thoughts about that as well, about disappointment, but I’m just taking responsibility for this is my goal. This is the time I have to achieve it.
And also, and I have quite a few weeks of clean rest plan. And also I have four kids in daycare. If it goes how it has been going, there will be, there will be daycare bugs and unexpected things coming up as is life for everyone.
That’s not just a me thing as much as my brain might want to go into, like, it’s different for me. It’s regardless of the circumstance, we all have uncertainty. And I love that.
I was talking about this in the power planning workshop today, when there’s like the, you spend 80% of your time in the dip, which is when you aren’t motivated anymore, but you don’t yet have results. And if you think of like the dip of a roller coaster, like you get on the roller coaster because you like the dip. And I love roller coasters.
And I love going down the dip. And our perfectionist brain were like, I actually just want to be on like the equivalent of, you know, what, like what is it called a theme park or whatever, how they have the kids rides. And it’s like a train on a train track and the whole thing’s on flat ground.
And it just goes and like, goes along. It’s very boring for adults because there’s no dip because there isn’t that contrast because there isn’t any uncertainty in it. It’s very certain.
It’s very safe. It’s unappealing. And yet our perfectionist brains are like, I just wish everything could be a hundred percent certain, a hundred percent safe.
You don’t actually want, if you connect with it, you don’t actually want your professional life to feel like that kids ride on the train track. A hundred percent certain, a hundred percent safe, a hundred percent of the time. So boring.
If that’s a job, I’m leaving that job to get one. That’s more like the roller coaster where I’m actually challenged and I’m growing. And there’s more excitement and unfamiliarity and success and failure and contrast.
So connecting with like, you actually like that. You like a challenge. And I love the challenge of deciding how much time I have and having a clear goal, having a growth goal, and then applying myself within that time, shifting into higher quality thinking, releasing my perfectionism handbrake.
So that in that same amount of time, I can achieve a greater result. Instead of thinking time is responsible and if I don’t have enough time, well, I’m off the hook. So I just want to quickly mention the story I said about.
And then on the two thing I wanted to mention, which is my really painful realization around this that I had in 2017. So when I started my business as a blog, I was a full-time uni student studying law and finance as a dual degree. I graduated in 2015 and then I started working as an accountant in insolvency accounting, liquidations, bankruptcies at one of the big accounting firms in Brisbane.
And so I was full time. I go on the train, like, I think it was like the 7:17 am train. I’d get home at six and walk home from the train station.
And I was living with Steve and his parents at the time. And my whole day was taken up with the full-time job. And I just really was like, if I could just have more time, I would have a successful blog like the other ones I’d seen.
But I don’t have enough time because I’m so busy at this job. And so what I did, and I’m so glad I did this, but what I did was I left. And there’s a whole story around this as well.
I won’t share it right now, but I left that accounting job. I took a leap of faith and I went back to being a receptionist at a hospital in a job I’d previously had, like not the exact same job, but very similar, a similar role, because I wanted to have more time. If I could just have more time, then I will be able to be successful.
And I wasted that time for the first five months. I would try to motivate myself to, like, I typically found it as well when I was a student, I was like, I went to the uni library to study. Like I want to be out of the house.
I’ve now learned how to be incredibly productive at home because it’s come from my thinking, but the productivity, anyway, that aside at that time yet, I hadn’t learned that. So I’d changed my environment to try and motivate myself. So I go catch the train still into the city.
I’d work at a cafe and then I’d get the bus to my part-time job. And then I would get the train home. So I’d like added in a lot of extra commuting, but I could type on my laptop when I was on the train, I get too sick on the bus, but on the train I could do it.
And I go in and I just spent so much time creating Pinterest graphics, like mapping out funnels that I wanted to have, but not actually set them up or set them up, but not actually send enough traffic through the funnel or promoted enough to have enough data about it. And it was just like that for months. And it was so painful because I had been giving time responsibility.
And then when I did have more time to just actually see, oh wait, it’s still me that’s responsible. Time wasn’t the answer. And that’s a big part of why I was like, I actually need to figure out how to use the time I have instead of just like throwing time at the problem.
The same again in 2023, I’m just doing the math in my head on the years that I felt like, even though I was at that point full-time in my business, making multiple six figures a year, working three days a week, I just had my twins. So we had three under the age of two and I had a perfectionist story that wasn’t actually true that I was failing at the business and I should be doing more like all of this kind of stuff. And so I was like, I’m going to add in an extra work day.
And I, it was so frustrating. So I tried to throw time at the problem. And that was also really hard logistically having little ones and having a babysitter come and then paying a couple of hundred dollars to get the extra work day and all the logistics of handing over all of the kids and working from home often.
So he’s still being able to hear them, all of that. And then I found like there was one day I remember in particular, but normally to record a podcast episode, I do it like this, where I’m just like, I’m going to record now. What’s top of mind? Record something, put it out.
And I was like, I’m going to do this episode on the growth mindset, which is really important. And I want to be more articulate. So I was in this mindset of like, I need to do everything better than how I was doing it because the issue I have is I’m not doing things good enough.
And it didn’t sound exactly like that, but it was similar kind of languaging in my mind of okay, if I could just be a bit better and work a bit more, I will be able to be successful instead of like I was actually doing incredibly well. I just hadn’t seen it. Anyway, so I spent the whole day, like I went to the cafe, I spent like two hours trying to outline this episode, which I could just record top of mind from the top of my head because I know the topic inside and out.
Anyway, I was trying to get it in the perfect sequence and be professional and be articulate and whatever. And so I mapped it out. I came back home to record it.
I recorded it in our bedroom because like my office behind my gallery wall with all the prints and things is the living room and the kitchens out there. And it’s quite close to that was our bedrooms up the other end and is further away from the noise and distractions and kids coming in and all of that. So I recorded in there and I just would like get five minutes in and then stop because I was so self-critical and just like nitpicking myself that I’d stop.
And then I’d start again and like it just got worse and worse and worse with every attempt. And then I ended up, this happened for a couple of episodes. I know one of them, I did that.
And then it just ended up feeling so disjointed because I was just so in my head and it just got worse and worse as the day went that I ended up re-recording that episode. And it just felt like such a waste because normally if I had that amount of time, I could do seven podcast episodes. At that point, I already probably had 400 episodes and I know how to record a podcast and I know back to front the topics I’m talking about.
So it was just so frustrating to witness myself being such little self-trust and then feel like, well, time is the solution. So if I just spend more time on this episode, it will be better. Instead of that wasn’t the issue.
The issue was, I was thinking, I don’t know how to sell PGSD. The issue was, I was thinking, I don’t know how to market. The issue was, I was thinking, I don’t know how to handle this.
When I was handling it, I wasn’t actually seeing myself and recognizing myself. And I had a lot of perfectionist expectations on what it should be like to have a business with three kids under the age of two that in hindsight don’t actually make any sense. But at the time really felt like, like, no, I just like things aren’t work.
It was just, I was like downstream from the thought, the perfectionist thoughts that caused the, what we were experiencing in terms of decreasing revenue. Mainly I closed PGSD for sale. The main thing that I sell was not open.
And then I had a marketing manager. So I, instead of me being the one to sell it, it wasn’t open for sale. And then I had, I hired someone who then didn’t have anything to be able to sell.
Like there was just, that was all downstream of perfectionist thoughts I’d had in the previous year and decisions I’d made. But then to try and solve it, I just tried to throw time at the issue. And I am so grateful that in both 2017 and 2023 that that didn’t work.
Because when my brain, and it almost every week is like, we just need more time. We just need an extra day. Just imagine how, if we could just work all the time and have no responsibility, imagine where the business would be.
But I love my kids. I love having the responsibility of taking care of them through the day and through the night. I love being responsible for my business.
I love being responsible for how I use my time. I love being responsible for the house. And there’s a lot of responsibility Steve has as well.
It’s not like, well, only one of us can be responsible, but I love being responsible for all of it. And picking up responsibility where I need to pick up responsibility instead of, I think we’re taught lately, like a lot of like, well, you shouldn’t have to have so much responsibility, especially around motherhood. And just like, there has been just all this resentment that I see has soar in myself and in others of like this resentment of responsibility instead of this activation that comes from responsibility of like, I love being responsible for things.
But the reason I wanted to have kids when we had them was because we got caught in our Samoyed and he was up in the middle of the night and it was only for like a week. So it was very different to having human kids last a lot longer than that, the night wakes. But I was up in the middle of the night and I was standing at our back door and he’d gone out to go to the bathroom and and I just felt this, like, I love having this little creature to care for.
Like, I love the responsibility of this, even though it’s the middle of the night, even though I want to be asleep and he’s having a hard time settling in. So he’s not going to sleep. I love the responsibility and that love of the responsibility and just seeing how I actually loved having more responsibility.
I was like, I want, I’m ready. I want the responsibility of having kids. And then at some point along the way that got lost and it is also hard to have responsibility.
But what I’m coming to realize is it’s easier to be responsible and have the responsibility than it is to avoid the responsibility and to avoid, to either avoid taking on responsibility or to have responsibility and resent it. That is so much harder than just actually having responsibility and relishing the responsibility. And yes, it is.
It is a hard thing also. So it’s like holding both of those to be true. It’s hard to have responsibility, but it’s even harder to avoid it.
And it’s even harder to have it and resent it. And so as I’ve been connecting back in with all of the responsibility that I want to have, I have created so much momentum in my personal life. I’ve created so much momentum in the business and there’s still like, the more I see, the more I’m like, Oh, I get to be responsible for this.
Oh, I can take responsibility for this. No, there’s like, Oh, like there’s so much to do. Another thing we say when we’re not wanting to be responsible, like, Oh, I just need more time and like it to take nothing for me to be able to be successful.
I don’t actually find that engaging and fulfilling. I want it to be a journey. I want it to be like the roller coaster.
I want it to have contrast and uncertainty and all of that. And so this is just me riffing on time and responsibility and why you do want to be responsible. And if your brain keeps on offering you, it’s because you haven’t got enough time.
You just need more time. If you have more time that like that time will be responsible for creating the results. It is you don’t have it.
That’s why you’re not successful. To just know that, to just consider, is this me not taking responsibility for something I actually do want to take responsibility for and find how it is true in your life, how you actually love taking responsibility. And I think for me, business-wise as well, in terms of rebuilding momentum, and I’ve been documenting this now on my YouTube channel.
So if you go to samlorebrown.com YouTube or maybe you’re watching this video on YouTube. But if you go there, you can see my vlogs behind the scenes of my business. As I’ve been documenting and like as I’ve been rebuilding my business momentum, which I’ve also been documenting and loving doing that, that it has just been really coming to like I for a long time when I hadn’t yet stepped into responsibility, I had been in this like I just want to be saved.
I just want a hire to save me. Like I want a marketing manager to save me. I want to have like I just want to have more time to say like I was just always wanting something to save me even though I wouldn’t have said it that way because I felt so willing, so committed.
I was fighting for my business and I was continuing to make progress in a lot of ways at the same time as well, but I was wanting someone to save me and I want to mention too because this episode from my coach Stacey was so helpful. I probably listened to it like 10 times. It’s called, I want to say it’s called like Saving Yourself and Finding Resilience.
Something like that. If you type in Saving Yourself, her podcast is Make Money as a Life Coach. If you’re not a life coach, who cares? I highly recommend listening to it as well.
She talks about her having like a kind of going through the same thing and hearing her articulate it really opened my eyes to it and I heard her say that when I wasn’t yet fully ready to hear it, but something about it I was just like oh like this, this feels like an important piece to me and then I one day like maybe it was the end of last year or earlier this year.
I was like it just popped into my mind and I went and listened to it and then I was like this is part of where I’ve been getting stuck is I’ve been wanting to be saved when actually I really want to save myself and I want to be the one and that’s what I’ve been connecting with like for example with Liam. He still wakes up overnight for a feed and going into my brain and so like oh like I wanted to sleep like no I want to be the one and if I don’t then I need to organize accordingly instead of resenting doing it if I’m like I’m so tired I just want to sleep and like lamenting about it with friends or organize like I either need to stop resenting it or have someone else do it.
And I could have Steve do a bottle or we could there’s other things we could do but I want to be the one and when I’ve just stepped into like I want to be the one who’s responsible it has like I can’t see any downside because it’s not this like I’m going to be responsible and everyone else is irresponsible so I like the perfectionist way of like no one else can do a good job so I have to do it that’s not the energy of it it’s I love responsibility I love getting to be the one I also love other people being responsible too like it’s not this hopefully you can tell by the energy I’m in as I’m saying it it’s not this like all or nothing like I’m the only one who can handle it kind of thing it’s just like I actually love feeling responsible.
I love being responsible I love having a lot of responsibility I love rising to responsibility versus I have a lot of responsibility that I shouldn’t have or that I don’t want and versus when we’re in this mentality as well with responsibility if it is like no one else is capable just give it to me but like I want the responsibility and everywhere in my life as I’ve stepped more and more into that I have not seen a single downside from that and I’m still navigating like it’s not this perfectionist fantasy of like okay then I just take responsibility and that’s how to move on.
It’s like with each of them there’s been a like figuring out say with the weekends with the kids okay I’m taking responsibility for my experience of that okay what do I actually want the weekends to be like okay what what am I thinking that is making me dread it because it’s not the kids it’s my thinking and I’m taking responsibility for shifting that thinking not needing them to change they didn’t change as I mentioned like they’ve gotten older but like fundamentally I could still be having all those same thoughts in that same experience.
But I have such a completely different experience now so I hope that has been helpful to hear my voice now after the two-hour workshop and this recording is saying it wants a break so I’m gonna go do that but I want to invite you to the power planning workshop so samlaurabrown.com/workshop is where to go to sign up and also perfectionist getting shit done is opening for enrollment for one week only on the 17th of June so you can go to samlaurabrown.com /pgsd to get on the wait list and join me inside when the doors open.
I hope it’s been helpful to hear my top of mind thoughts about time and responsibility and loving responsibility it has actually just been the biggest shift and I’ve been loving it so much. So with that said I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I will 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.com/pgsd.