818: Why Waiting for Perfection Is a Waste of Time

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2:19I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven-figure online business that feels even better than it looks all from my house in small town Minnesota with my family. Here, we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain.

2:56Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. We've all heard that saying, start before you're ready. But how often do we really take that advice to heart? Today's episode is a little different and it's honestly really special to me because I'm taking you inside of chapter 15 of my book, How Are You Really?

3:36In this chapter, I dive deep into the fear of starting imperfectly, finding the courage to take that first step towards your dreams and why taking messy, brave action despite your doubts is the secret to growth. Whether you're launching a new business, starting a podcast, or pursuing a passion that's been on your heart, this chapter is all about embracing the imperfection that comes with the journey. And trust me, I know a thing or two about that. Starting this podcast was anything but perfect. But here we are over 800 episodes later, proof that action creates clarity. If you've been looking for permission to start imperfectly and courageously, this episode is for you.

4:14And if you want to grab a copy of How Are You Really, head on over to howareyoureallybook.com to get it. Now let's dive on into this chapter and learn how to start embracing the beauty of imperfection together. With smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky high expectations, growth is feeling really painful right now. But HubSpot is here to help. They just announced more than 150 major product updates that'll make impossible business growth feel impossibly easy. Like Breeze, HubSpot's suite of new AI tools that'll help you say goodbye to busy work and hello to better work. There's Breeze Co-Pilot, a sidekick to assist with all your tasks and boost productivity.

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5:34Just one step. Where to start and how. Reinvent yourself over and over and over and over and over until you find home. There is no timeline for the soul. Malebo Sapodi But how do you keep showing up imperfectly? A girlfriend recently asked me. I laughed. My first response was, is there another option? Because in my experience, life isn't going to give you one. Waiting for perfection will have us waiting forever and wasting a whole lot of time. Waiting for perfection might mean staying in a relationship, a job, house, or a city you know you outgrew long ago. Waiting for perfection might mean missing out on a beautiful, bold future to stay comfortable in a narrow view of now.

6:32There's an old Voltaire quote that I force myself to cling to when my perfectionist side wants to take the reins. The best is the enemy of the good. Straightforward. Hard to ignore. Cuts me to my core. These eight words speak volumes to me in the moments I want to freeze up before I can fail. Because in all of this stalling to make sure there's no risk, I don't even get a chance to try. My friend Emma knows a thing or two about this quote. Emma's what you'd call an idea girl, bubbling over with business plans and smart inventions and million-dollar concepts she's constantly mapping out in her head.

7:15From visions of facilitating local events to empowering and connecting women across the world, Emma's ideas are beautiful and bold and powerful. But they are just that, ideas. Merely thoughts that live in her head without the world knowing or being able to experience the dreams she holds. I first met Emma at a business retreat a few years ago, and we bonded in the hotel lobby over a shared love for hot lemon water. A few days into the retreat, she asked if she could pick my brain about a few ideas she felt stuck in. So on the last day of the event, we met for an early sunrise walk before catching flights back home to our families.

7:58As we sipped our morning lemon water tonics from paper cups, she described every obstacle that stood in the way of her. Dozens of ideas. We talked and I listened. And in the first mile alone, it was clear to me something bigger was at play here. She was afraid. She wanted a fail-safe. She wanted a 100 % guarantee that every action she took moving forward would work. She wanted to know that if she really went for it, she'd stick the landing. Most of the obstacles she described that could potentially hold her back were what-ifs living in her brain, bottlenecking her thoughts like rush hour traffic, paralyzing her from taking action.

8:42This wasn't just an Emma problem. This was a human problem. I've seen it time and time again. She was essentially over-complicating her plans as a means to keep waiting a little longer to act on them. A goal of perfection leading her to procrastination that delayed any form of her progress. The vision stayed so big that they might as well have been a mission to Mars. Listening to her, I felt my hands start to get sweaty, and it wasn't from the sunrise hike. Just thinking about how many ideas take residence in incredible human minds like Emma's made me feel a fraction of her anxiety. Her fear of failure was holding her back.

9:26And fear? Well, the sources may differ for each of us, but the feeling in our bodies is usually the same. I'm getting anxious listening to all of the ideas you aren't taking action on, I told her. You're letting potential problems and your desire for perfection be your excuse to procrastinate on your dreams. What if you picked one thing that was easiest for you and just started? It doesn't have to be your life's greatest calling or an idea that will go on to change the world, but right now you need to prove to yourself that you're capable of taking imperfect action, of simply getting started and making progress.

10:06She nodded, wide-eyed. We both knew where it was she wanted to end up, but we also both knew she'd never get there unless she moved forward with just one step. So many of us often complicate this first step. We zoom out until it looks like an insurmountable task, at least for now, at least until we get our life together, until we have the money we need, until we can clear our schedules, until, until, until. We work on the idea itself rather than doing the work that turns the idea into the thing. We let ourselves believe that the idea is so big, we need to become an entirely different person before we can even approach it.

10:50But when we do this, we forget to look down there at our own two feet, our shoes, the ones we laced up this morning, ready to take just one step, a small one perhaps, but a step that gets us just a tiny bit closer. And maybe on the fifth step, we trip. Maybe on the 12th step, we fall pretty hard. Maybe on the 38th step, we stumble. But we keep getting up because falling doesn't adhere us to the ground. We can turn our ideas from a giant mission into a day-by-day journey simply by doing the thing. That thing could be anything, whether launching a book club in your neighborhood or launching your own book into the world, whether adopting a child or adopting a new life philosophy, whether changing up your diet or changing up your hair.

11:42Every new path begins with one single step, one action to inch you closer, to scooch you further, to move you onward in the direction of your dream. But here's the catch. No one can take action for you. You have to be the one to take it, even if it's with trembling knees. Unfortunately, life doesn't always present us with a smoothly paved route or perfect rhythm every time we're running down a dream. We don't always know what the proposal is supposed to say, how to fix our marriage, or what to do about the scary diagnosis. We get flustered, we get lost, we start making excuses, and we miss out on the grand adventure, having never made any progress to pursue a better path.

12:31The position you're in this very moment is one you can leverage to get you to the next spot. The tools you have within your reach are the ones you're meant to use to create your rough draft, your round one, your prototype's prototype. Over the years, I've learned that most of the time we don't get to have the grand experiences or even the shiny things if we aren't willing to utilize what we're working with right now. Your million dollar life may come, but until then, go ahead and start with your hundred dollar life. this podcast is brought to you by mercury banking that helps entrepreneurs do more with their money okay i remember in the early days of my entrepreneurship journey clients would literally mail me checks and then i would have to drive all the way to the bank to deposit them it took me literal years to make things go digital and i am ashamed to admit i still have a filing cabinet with paper contracts because i'm way too afraid to throw them away but that's the beauty of growth, right?

13:33Like you learn what systems serve you and which ones hold you back. Mercury is one of those systems that just works. Where traditional banking websites and apps are clunky and hard to use, Mercury is meticulously designed to make doing just about anything with your money feel effortless. And the best part is it flexes to fit all types of businesses. Ready to see what powerful banking can do for your business? Visit mercury.com to apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. For important details, check the show notes. You know, I only share stuff I'm genuinely obsessed with.

14:10And so when I kept seeing Bolin Branch sheets all over Instagram, I was like, okay, are these actually worth the hype? Drew and I have been using their sheets and duvets for over a year now. And honestly, our bedroom feels like a completely different space. The moment you touch these sheets, you'll get it. They're incredibly soft to start, but they literally get softer every time you wash them. They're made from 100 % organic cotton, so they're super durable and they're breathable, which is perfect for piling on cozy layers without turning into a furnace at 2 a.m. This is hands down the best bedding I've slept on and I'm so genuinely excited for you to try it.

14:46Start building your sanctuary of comfort this fall with Bowl & Branch. For a limited time, get 20 % off your first set of sheets plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com slash golddigger. That's BollandBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash golddigger to save 20 % and unlock free shipping. Exclusions apply. Trust me, I'm no stranger to scrappy first steps. When I launched my very first podcast episode, I was sitting in the front seat of my 2008 hybrid in the car parked in my garage with a microphone and two spare bedroom pillows balanced over my steering wheel. I hit record. That podcast now has hundreds of episodes, tens of thousands of monthly listeners, and millions upon millions of downloads.

15:36To this day, I can remember what that first hour felt like. I can smell the leather of my seats as I sat freezing into a human popsicle during that Wisconsin winter, determined to not open the door until I had finally started. I had no high-tech microphone, no previous experience, and no clue what production value was. I simply hit record, and that was the day The Gold Digger podcast was born. The day that I decided it was time to gather up all the guts I could to simply hit the record button on my first episode was the day my idea finally came to life, even in the midst of my hesitation, even though I had no idea what I was doing, even though it was nowhere near perfect.

16:25Sure, starting a podcast may have been a calculated guess, but it was one that felt right. One I didn't hitch my identity to in terms of numbers and money. One idea that had me curious enough to try something new with zero guarantee it'd work out. On that day, I decided success for me was just hitting record and saying a few words. Truth was, I was so insecure about my own voice, literally and figuratively. Would I come across as someone who had something to say that other people would actually want to hear? Would I say um, 8 million times? Would I lose my train of thought or forget how to form a coherent sentence?

17:08It didn't matter. Because sharing my thoughts, my ideas, and the things I've learned with the world, that was enough for me. That was the imperfect action I encouraged myself to take. My podcast could have failed, flopped, or fizzled out. I could have tried for 10 episodes and found out it wasn't for me. But even then, it wouldn't have been a failure. I wouldn't have counted it as a loss. Failure, like success, exists only in the ways we define it. Who gets to decide what counts as a success or a failure? We do. It's safe to say my podcast is nowhere near perfect. It is riddled with mistakes, even to this day.

17:53Time and time again, life has gently reminded me that this notion of perfect is just that, a notion, an illusion. It's not even real. As simple as that is for me to type, it's not at all easy for any of us to learn. It's easy to say humans make mistakes, but what happens when you put your name in that sentiment and make it personal? Jenna makes mistakes. Yep, apply it directly to you. It stings a little bit more, doesn't it? But it's true. You make mistakes. I make mistakes. I'll bet even Oprah makes mistakes. Maybe, although I can't really bear to think of that. Mistakes aren't just something to fear or something to hold us back.

18:41They arrive with knowledge that propels us forward. If you choose to not embrace your ever-evolving, ever-learning, ever-mistake-making self, you're withholding those potential gains from yourself. But you're also withholding that knowledge from everyone else. You're letting those around you carry on without your contribution. You're existing in your own shadow, safe and sheltered from all mistakes, but never stepping out to feel the sun or experience the fun of taking risks. When we allow ourselves to experience the fun of taking risks, everything becomes an experiment. We become the mad scientists of our own lives.

19:22We lose the desire to label everything as a success or a failure. Instead, everything we do yields a result that gives us information. and information empowers us to make decisions on the next action we'll take. I'll be honest, I've always been a done is better than perfect kind of gal. Imperfect action has always been my way of movement even when I don't know what results the action will yield, even when it sounds easier to stay still and avoid the risk. But avoiding risk and staying safe aren't the same thing, are they? What if by staying safe, you're risking never evolving, never growing, never trying, never creating your own happily ever after.

20:08Don't get me wrong. There are certain situations in which I would love to know the ending before I read chapter one, where I'd love to know that everything is going to be okay, that I'm going to be okay, but ideas don't always become realities that way. It's perfectly reasonable to want a master plan for every starting line of life. And when you're embarking on something new, you're likely going to crave an immaculately detailed blueprint or at the very least a syllabus. But when you're learning or attempting something new, you're accepting the mystery. Along with the unknown, you get the full right to say, hey, I've never been here before.

20:50I have no idea what I'm doing. You get to poise yourself as a beginner, open and willing and teachable, fully ready to launch off the starting block to find out if the water below is tepid or icy or absolutely perfectly finally refreshing. So what do you do when there's no countdown or starting pistol going off telling you it's time to begin? You refine the vision. You ask for help. You bring people into your conversations. Read the feedback. Hit record and see what happens next. You might feel it's not going to matter. You might want to close up shop after day one because of the belly butterflies.

21:33You might need to nervous pee because of the sheer feeling of doom that you're going to let other people down. Do your thing anyway. Find your footing, choose your pace, and honor that part of you, however small or hoarse voiced it is, that is asking you to try something just a little bit scary. These days, we tend to want to fast forward the getting better part. We don't want others to see us trying. We only want to show the success. It's like our digital lives have become a peer reviewed journal and we'd rather stick to what we know than risk failing or worse, failing publicly. We worry about people seeing us try something new.

22:17We worry about the judgment. We worry about not getting it right or not having an Instagrammable outcome from day one. But there's a reason the old grid is made up of many, many squares. If there's room for square 4 ,351, there's room for a square one. With every major pivot in my life, I'm brought right back to square one. I love being reminded of what it felt like at some of my own starting lines because I know I have many more awaiting me. The fear, the feeling that I'm not worthy of the race, the wonder of what results my experiment will yield, and in spite of it all, getting into the starting position and running like crazy anyway.

23:02When I recorded that first episode in my car, parked in my dark garage, I wasn't thinking about episode 500. I had no idea what topic I'd be covering years from then. I had to narrow my focus, lower the stakes, and keep my sights on the first episode. I had to take the first step, the one I could control in that very moment, hitting record, talking about the thing I'd planned, exiting the garage, eating soup for dinner, and maybe laughing at the whole ordeal with Drew over said soup. I just had to let my courage be louder than my doubt for one hour, one single hour, then I could hit stop, get out of the car, and go back to wondering what the heck I was doing or if it'd work out.

23:47That's how progress begins, with one brave hour. Moving forward is knowing that you can commit to just one step at a time and then deciding to take another and another. Like when you're in a thigh-quaking, back-tweaking workout and you know you're not even halfway done, but you're 99 % ready to give up and call it a day. Then the trainer yells at you, you can do anything for 15 seconds. and you take a deep breath and actually believe them? Imperfect action feels like this. And if you're like me, it comes with the same amount of sweat. There are countless stories that teach this one simple truth.

24:29So many of life's greatest journeys involve winging it, giving it the old college try, just doing the dang thing, walking toward a bend in the road without knowing what's ahead, but with 100 % assurance that it's better than being stuck where you're at. These tiny actions and small steps are happening everywhere, all around us this very minute. World-changing, best-selling novels are being scribbled on the corners of napkins or in the margins of another book. Billion-dollar companies are sprouting up from folding tables in garages. Future comedians are making people laugh around their own dinner table.

25:09Fashion designers are learning their craft with hand-me-downs and scissors. Get scrappy. Get resourceful. Get creative. Get going. What will your first step look like? Will you type how to get a grant in your search bar? Will you ask your midwife what books she'd recommend on learning homeopathic healing? Will you join your local Toastmasters to brush up on your public speaking skills? Will you borrow your neighbor's power drill and build a bookshelf? I've met many humans over the years who have told me about all their ideas that are in the works as they await the perfect time for them to be launched into reality.

25:52Truth be told, most of those ideas never enter the world. They simply stay ideas. Actually, strike that. I wish that were the case, but the reality can be far more painful. More often than not, those unexplored ideas become a source of shame, stress, and pressure as they become unlived dreams. Resentment doesn't need much of an invite to start to seep its way into our lives. It's far more common than not for women to feel like the good days are behind them or that they're only busy with living unfulfilled lives. If you're there right now, don't shut out these thoughts even though they're painful.

26:35Plunge your arm deep into the dirt and wrap your fingers around the roots and start pulling them up. Look at what seeds they sprouted from. When we were young, we dreamed of castles and fairy tales. And as we grow up, those dreams might shift into building something real, like starting a business. You need a website, payment systems, a logo, and a way to reach customers. It can all be overwhelming and confusing, but thankfully, that's where today's sponsor, Shopify, comes in. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all U.S. e-commerce, from big brands to folks just getting started.

27:14They offer beautiful, ready-to-go website templates so you don't need design skills to look professional. Their AI tools help with product images, descriptions, discount codes, and more. Shopify also makes it simple to run email and social campaigns so people can find you. And if you ever feel stuck, their award-winning 24-7 support is always available. Turn those dreams into... And give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash gold digger. Go to shopify.com slash gold digger. Shopify.com slash gold digger.

27:54Anyone who knows me knows that I'm all about creating spaces where people actually want to be. So when we started hosting on Airbnb, it honestly felt like the most natural thing in the world. And it's turned into one of the best decisions we've ever made. Over the years, we've hosted hundreds of couples in our little spaces. We've had so many repeat guests come back and we've created this incredible community, not just with our guests, but also with the people who help us care for our space. whether you've bought properties as an investment or have unused rooms waiting to be shared hosting on Airbnb is a practical and profitable choice and just think about it if you've put a ton of time effort and work into your home someone out there probably would love to experience it while they're traveling so next time you're planning a trip or want to make some extra income from your spaces you should definitely host on Airbnb your home might be worth more than you think.