Today I’m talking about how perfectionism is slowing us down and keeping us from the important lessons we need to learn. 70% perfect is the goal and 100% perfect is failure because then you’re missing all the gold in that other 30%.

I’ve seen a lot of people get stuck thinking about perfectionism. A mentor of mine says “70% is perfect is perfect and 100% perfect is failure”. The reason he says this is he values speed and taking action. Seeking perfection is keeping us from moving forward and getting the results that we want. You can’t learn and figure out if you do not take any action to figure out what’s working and what’s not. You may think about a lot of things such as “Do I need X to get Y?” or “I cannot do this unless I have that.” To get to a goal, you can take courage to doing things despite not being ready and taking messy action.

One example is starting Women of Substance Podcast without a logo. I was thinking that I couldn’t start the podcast without a logo, but I did. Eventually somebody contacted me saying she loves what I do and created a logo for me. So taking action actually created the connection I needed to get that logo.

I want you to think that 70% is the goal whenever you want to start anything. When I started gigging, I didn’t know how to play while singing, but I did it anyway. I did make mistakes, but got the courage to book more gigs after that. Once I started gigging, I practiced more to improve my craft more. I did the same with my Academy. I launched it without having anything in my course. The students knew about it and they were willing to build it with me.

I don’t want you to hold back just because you feel like you don’t have the ideal equipment, ideal website, ideal content, etc. You can easily make changes in the first few months of your goal. You can build up all the skills and find the right connections you are worrying about once you start taking action. You need to do it and kind of suck then improve from there.

The sooner you can be okay with 70% perfect and that being your goal, the faster you will reach your true goal. Start saying this mantra, “70% perfect is the goal. 70% perfect is perfect. 100% perfect is failure because that means you would have wasted so much time.”

Links mentioned in this episode:
Female Musician Academy Waitlist