Embracing speed over perfection

Transcript

Welcome to Meaningful Work, Remarkable Life. I’m your host, Brook McCarthy and I’m a business coach,  trainer and speaker living and working on the unceded lands of the Cammeraygal people here in Sydney, Australia. In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money, magnifying your impact and doing work you feel born to do. We explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work. 

Welcome. It is time to talk about speed and more importantly, why you may not be moving as fast as you could be moving.  And of course, how to do this without burning out because that’s kind of a prerequisite, right? It’s almost not worth mentioning. 

I’m going to mention it anyway because people tell me this all the time, business owners tell me this all the time. I want to earn more money, but I want to work fewer hours. I want to earn more money, but I don’t want to burn out. Fair enough. Who is winning when you’re making more money, you’re building your business, you’re growing, but you can’t enjoy any of it because you’re barely holding it together? That’s a pointless undertaking. 

So let’s just take that as a given and talk a little bit more about why we need to embrace speed over polish. So you’ve probably heard this before, but let me say it again, because it bears repeating.  Perfectionism is procrastination. Trust up as conscientiousness. It’s snobbery in disguise. I don’t hear that many people say that to me anymore, but certainly for a number of years, a number of business owners would say to me with some hint of you know, humble pride. It was like, they’re trying to pretend they’re humble, but they’re not really. Because the worst part about this brag of being a perfectionist is that the snobbery is actually against yourself.

So speed is necessary in business because it creates momentum and momentum makes everything so  much easier. But also, momentum creates feedback, creates data. Once we get momentum, once we do the thing, once we launch the thing, we get data. We get how many eyeballs saw this thing, how many people signed up, how many people paid, you know, all of that stuff. What’s the click through rate? What’s the conversion rate?

All of that data is useful and we can use that directly back into iterating. And of course, the ultimate experiment, the ultimate data that we are seeking in business is will people pay at that price point? The ultimate experiment is will people pay for this thing that I have launched? 

And of course, I’m talking about service-based businesses. So I’m talking about businesses that in effect sell promises. We don’t have tangible items that people can pick up and sniff and tap and look at and compare and hold up to the light. So we are selling promises and it does require, especially on the internet, a leap of faith on behalf of our new clients. And so what we’re trying to do in our marketing and branding and in our sales process is to make that perceived risks seem less. Yeah, because if we are selling services, we are selling promises. 

Now, when it comes to embracing speed, when it comes to creating momentum, when it comes to running more experiments more often, you can also do this without a set goal. And I want to say this because I know a lot of people get their knickers in a knot about setting goals. You know, I work with  business owners that tend to be sensitive, they tend to be emotional. Maybe it’s something to do with me. Who knows? Maybe like attracts like, who knows? But for a lot of business owners, I know that goal setting is a bit of a vexed undertaking. So I want to state clearly that you can run an experiment without  a defined goal to see if something worked, but it’s not an experiment if you don’t do the debrief afterwards.  

And this is part of what we do inside of my Momentum Mastermind that I’m going to be talking about in a moment.  

You can run an experiment without a set goal to see, to have a go and see what happens, to see if something worked. And to see if something worked at this particular precise moment in time with your current audience, with your current message, at your current price point, with your current reach, with your current level of visibility in the current climate. It doesn’t have to be you do something once and you go, wow yhat was underwhelming. I think it didn’t work. Let me never ever mention it again. That is not the point of an experiment, right? 

Now the other part with speed is not just in creating the thing  and getting it out to market. And really, you know, there is absolutely no good reason why you cannot have an idea in the shower and launch it that afternoon. There are many, many times that I’ve done exactly that. There are many experiments that we can run that are low risk, low lift. They don’t require, you know, giant prep and lots of hours spent. They don’t need that, right? Because we’re doing it without the polish. 

So speed is not just about creating the thing and launching the thing and selling the thing. It’s also about distributing the thing and distributing the thing. There is a stupendously simple, stupendously simple strategy that is very relevant to 2025 that goes hand in glove with this. That is, not the ultimate strategy, but it’s certainly  self-evident. And that is you create out loud. 

The people that are doing really well on the internet right now, the business owners that are selling consistently, that are having big sales months, that are making things, creating things, shipping things, and making a real impact on the lives of hundreds or thousands of people are the owners that are creating out loud and that is their marketing. They’re not polishing, polishing, polishing the perfect, you know, absolute perfect wording and expensive photo shoots and the professional videography. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things, but they’re not using those things as a reason to slow them down. 

They know that momentum is created through the act of creating out loud because there is something very, very attractive and interesting about watching people create out loud. I mean, look at the number of the other night I turned on Grand Designs Australia. You know, how wonderful is it to watch television? Another one is Queer Eye, where you can see a process. You can see something in process. You can see something in motion, in momentum. You can see the beginning, the middle and the end,  not just here’s the end.

All right, so let’s talk about why we don’t do this. Let’s talk about the things that, know, why it hasn’t happened for you yet. Why perhaps you haven’t created that momentum, you haven’t created that recurring monthly income. It has nothing to do with your abilities. It has everything to do with these very real things. So let’s talk about it so that we know what to do differently. 

So inside of Momentum Mastermind, my brand new mastermind that we are kicking off in August. The sooner you join, better the price because you better believe the price always goes up. It does not come down. The first thing we do is we look at four distinct pillars. The first one is scalable, stackable, recurring revenue.  And a lot of that relates to what I was just talking about with getting those experiments live and the ultimate experiment is will people pay?  

So this is not about designing the perfect offerings suites, the perfect service suites, the perfect offerings ecosystem. This is not about that. Yeah. In fact, for me as a business coach, that is a big red flag when I talk to business owners, brand new business owners who are busy in the weeds of, you know, prepping all the things for their perfect offerings ecosystem. And it’s like, dude, you have got the cart before the horse. You’re doing this back to front and sideways. That is not how we do things. Yeah, because you are creating in collaboration with your market. 

So scalable, stackable, recurring revenue, what you are selling is the first part of that. And for a lot of business owners, the reason why this hasn’t happened yet, is because you’re selling services that aren’t defined. Everything is custom. Everything takes longer to deliver every single time there is a lack of leverage. And partly because of this, and partly because you haven’t given yourself permission to go nuts  and have fun and chuck things out and start over and stop selling things, your offerings ecosystem is out of date and you’ve fallen out of love with it. Because you’ve fallen out of love with it, you’ve lost that enthusiasm. 

It shows. You’re not selling enough because yes, you might be saying, but Brooke, I am, I am. going through the motions. I’m posting on the internet. I’m diligently putting posts up there asking people to work with me. But it’s clear and obvious that the energy that’s through, that’s being communicated through the screen is a business owner that’s lost that loving feeling. You don’t have the enthusiasm for your offerings. Perhaps you’ve outgrown your ideal client group. And again, this all feeds back into burnout, right? Because if you don’t love that custom service where every single business client that you get, you know, feel is making a giant big deal about how they need to be treated like a queen. And  everything needs to be done from scratch and every process, every one of your processes is pushed back with your terms and conditions. They try and negotiate or they trample on. Of course, of course you’re not wanting to sell, right? Cause you’re sick to death of your ideal client group. You’re sick to death of your target market. You’re sick of the nitpicking and the low paying clients. So of course you’re not selling. Of course, you’re not enthusiastic. 

The second main pillar in our Momentum Mastermind is marketing momentum. And this is making business and marketing that much more powerful and effective. So this is stacking events, stacking launches, stacking campaigns, stacking offers, one atop the other. Rather than doing things in isolation where we have an event perhaps that we’re sponsoring or that we’re speaking at, or that we have some kind of, you know, some offer and that happens, but we don’t really know how to capitalise it. And we don’t have anything that’s coming next or coming after that. 

Now, the first time I heard of this idea of stacking events and launches and campaigns and offers one atop the other, to be honest, it made me feel like I needed a good lie down. I was like, I can’t, I cannot be doing that. I was in the middle of a launch at the time. And I remember just like, oh, it is all I can do to do what I’m doing. I can’t do anymore. Now there were two reasons for this. 

Number one is because there were certain marketing activities that I just did not want to do. I had a visceral dislike and disinterest in doing those marketing activities. And the second part was, I didn’t have the checklist or the operating manual to make it achievable and straightforward and simple. 

So you do not have to do things that you do not want to do. Of course, but it bears repeating. Yeah. There is nothing that obligates you to sell or to market or to launch or to run a campaign a particular way. And to look at what other people are doing and go, oh,  I don’t want to do that. Great. 

That’s not an excuse to do nothing though. Yeah. Cause that’s the lazy person’s way out. They’re like, oh, that looks hard. I don’t want to do that. Okay. I’ll do nothing. Great. Goodo. On ya. 

So that marketing momentum is about creating that irresistible avalanche of visibility and reach and offers so that people can actually see you and see the offer. And everybody thinks that they’re bothering people. All business owners at one point or another have confided in me, know, oh, it’s too much. I’m just in everybody’s faces. You know, it’s too much. It’s too much. It’s too much.  And you are the only person who knows exactly how much marketing you are doing.  

Every single time I run any kind of marketing campaign with a deadline, there is always at least one person after the deadline who pops up and says, huh, what? Deadline? Oh, I’d like to be in that. Oh, I missed a deadline, did I? There is always at least one buyer who missed 90 % of what you said, including the key point, which is, you know, the deadline. 

So the third pillar of Momentum is visibility momentum. And this is the strategy that I have been doing and using for 17 years now, which is borrowing other people’s audiences to grow your own and oftentimes getting paid in the process. So in effect, you are being paid upfront to grow your email list, to grow your social media, to grow your reach and to find new paying clients. 

Now this is a big one and it’s one that we tend to not do because we’re overthinking everything. And this is really probably the major handbrake on all speed and all momentum, right? We burn out not because we’re burning the midnight oil. It’s not because we’re working 15 hour days. It’s not because we, you know, are chained to the chair and are getting deep vein thrombosis. That is not the reason why we burn out. 

We burn out because we know we are doing things we’re not meant to be doing. We are constantly doubting ourselves. We are constantly overthinking things. We are constantly undermining our self-esteem and letting business undermine our self-trust rather than booster it and rather than booster our confidence. 

Now, if you don’t do this, I’m kind of hesitating. Do I say this out loud? Yes, I’m gonna say this out loud. I’m sure I’m gonna be misunderstood. I’m sure I’m gonna get some pushback, but great, let’s talk about it. 

If you don’t take this seriously, it is quite possible that being a business for yourself will hinder your self-confidence, not help it. If you don’t take this seriously and you don’t decide, and that’s, this is literally what it is. It’s deciding. You don’t decide. I’m going to take charge. I am not going to be an order taker. I am not going to be bossed around by my clients. I’m going to dictate my terms and conditions. I’m going to set my minimum viable conditions for working with me. I’m going to put a velvet rope up and make it harder for people to get in because I am valuable, my energy, my enthusiasm is valuable and it’s limited. And people don’t get to participate in this  unless  they respect the boundaries and they respect the terms and conditions. And this is how we grow our self-esteem and self-confidence rather than letting it be diminished over many, many years. 

All right. Wasn’t planning on talking about that, but never mind.

So the other point with Momentum and why this might not have happened for you yet. Again, it’s got next to nothing to do with your actual ability. You might be the best person with all of the talent, but that doesn’t correlate necessarily to a business that’s highly profitable and sustainable and enjoyable and fun.

So if that hasn’t happened for you yet, another key reason is that alongside overthinking everything way too much, you’re attempting to reverse engineer other people’s businesses. And this is especially for those, I’m talking especially to those who’ve been in business for a few years. 

If you’re brand new to business, of course it makes sense that you’re attempting to reverse engineer because this is how we learn, right? We look, we emulate, we attempt to emulate, we copy, we model. And you know, we get better. 

That’s how we learn. But if you’ve been in business for yourself for more than a couple of years and you are still attempting to funnel hack or reverse engineer other people’s business, you’re still looking for the bossy person, the loud person to tell you exactly what to do. You can’t do it this way. You’ve got to do it that way. You couldn’t possibly do it this other way. Yeah. Then you’re deluding yourself, it is a misleading, misguided way of doing business. 

And it is not what we do in business coaching at all. Because the correct answer to any question is pretty much always, it depends. It depends!

How can I give people one size fits all advice? It wouldn’t be a useful thing to do. It would be an idiotic thing to do. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I was telling people, yes, you just have to do it this way. This is the only way to do it. And we’ve got to get to a certain point in our business where we mature  our, you know, our thinking and understand, okay, what are my strengths? Where do I thrive? Where do I shine? Where do people tell me I’m magic? Where am I charming? What’s my particular charm? Charms, everybody’s got charms. Specific particular charms. And also, where are my liabilities? Where am I a liability? Because we’ve all got weaknesses, right?

And the point isn’t necessarily to try and improve those weaknesses. You can, you can totally do that. But that becomes an inefficient way of doing things, right? If you’re constantly fixated on your weaknesses, and I blame the self-help industry for this, very quickly, because I got into yoga and meditation pretty young. I did a religious studies degree and kind of adjacent to that is the self-help industry. And fairly quickly, I realised at a young age, the self-help industry just undermines your self-esteem because you’re constantly fixated on your weaknesses. Yeah. And whilst we have weaknesses and we want to be aware of our weaknesses, we don’t want our weaknesses to turn into major liabilities to try and make gains in that area. They’re going to be very incremental. 

So instead of that, we want to think about how do we actually design our business in a way that makes the most sense for our personality type. You know, case in point, small example, some business owners  love the idea of a team. They want to have a team. They’ve always wanted to have a team from day dot. They want to be mentoring people. They want to be providing opportunities for other people. They want it to be a collective. They want people they can bounce ideas around with. You know, that really lights them up. That is them at their best. 

For other business owners, the idea of growing a team is like hell on earth. Yeah. 

One way is not better.  One way is not worse. It’s just the way that fits for your particular personality type that brings out the best in you that works to your strengths, where your strengths are actually revenue generating and is also, you know, a contingency for your weaknesses or your hindrances. Yeah. 

The same goes with how many hours you’ve got. A business owner who’s got, you know, five hours a week or 10 hours a week to work needs a completely different business from the business owner who wants to work 50 hours a week.

So the last part, number four, the fourth pillar of our Momentum Mastermind is operational momentum. And this is what I use with the marketing momentum and the visibility momentum and to an extent the offerings ecosystem as well. It is the underpinning of everything else. And this is where technology, this is where AI, this is where software, this is where automation can do the heavy lifting for us so that we are not stuck in the weeds and getting slowed down and becoming the bottleneck towards our speed and momentum. Because when we’ve got the operational momentum, then we can free up our time, free up our energy to focus on the stuff that’s most important, which is the messaging, the relationship building, which is the partnership creation, which is the sales. This is where our focus needs to be. 

If we are to actually grow our business, yeah, we need to be keeping as many hours as possible for the high value activities and as fewer hours as possible for the low value activities, which include admin. Yeah. 

When clients tell me, Oh, I’ve got so much admin to do. I’m like, what are you doing? Like, show me the admin. How is it that you’ve got so much admin to do? Yeah. Because if you’ve got so much admin to do, then almost always you could be absolutely definitely overhauling your operations, using technology more smartly, using AI for speed so that we can outpace ourselves and let the tech do the heavy lifting. 

Remember the first time I heard about all of these things, you know, the first time I heard about the marketing momentum specifically. How can I stack events? How an I stack, you know, online events, content events, maybe face-to-face events as well, launching things, marketing campaigns, offers, you know, some kind of special limited time offer. How can I stack them one atop the other? Because I’m already the bottleneck in the business. I’m already the one slowing everything down. 

Well, this is where the operations momentum comes in. So another key reason why you’re not yet there  is that you are the one that’s slowing things down. And again, this has nothing to do with how technically brilliant you are in your business. I know nothing of that. You may be, you know, the most proficient person in the world at whatever it is that you do. 

Yeah, this is different from the business of business. This is different from the marketing, different from the sales, different from the momentum and speed, different from the money making. If you have done the courses, hired the coaches, you’ve got the software, you’ve got the tools, you know what you need to do, but you’re just not doing it this is where I come in. 

This is where coaching comes in. This is the gap between knowing and doing, yeah?

Because you can’t delude yourself forever.  Right? It’s way more, business is way more than reading a book or taking a course or knowing what the key steps are and having, you know, the intention or the plan to do it. The plan is useless without the execution. 

So another key reason why people slow themselves down is that they’re not recycling enough. And when we talk about leverage and certainly this is what we’re doing in our scalable stackable recurring revenue,  but also in our marketing and visibility and also in our operations, what are we doing? 

Creating leverage, we’re recycling. We’re iterating, we’re recycling, iterating, recycling, iterating. We’re running experiments with the system to back it up and make it easier, and to tweak and tweak and tweak so that every single time is slightly better, 3% better than the last time, 2% better than the last time, 1% better than the last time. 

There’s a sense of progress being made because of that iterative thing. We can’t become brilliant and excellent at something if we’re doing all these scattered tasks and scattered activities. We’re not repeating anything and anytime that I sell anything, I am desperate to do it a second time. 

I do it once, I want to immediately do it again. I did that with my Ignite Visibility Accelerator. The moment I finished, I started another round. I started promoting the next round. I couldn’t wait to do it a second time because the second time is always 87 % better than the first time.

Yeah, there’s always a massive improvement between the first and the second. And we’ve got to keep iterating if we’re going to create leverage, there has to be recycling in our marketing, recycling in our visibility, recycling in our efforts, recycling in our activities. 

The best time to sell something is when you’ve just sold something. The best time to market something is when you’ve just marketed something. 

So, a lot of what we’re doing inside of Momentum is an attitude reboot because I can give you the best advice in the world. I can give you the Momentum operating system, which is what we’re doing. 

You’ve got one of my team members who’s actually giving you the Momentum operating system, setting you up inside of Notion or inside of Asana. And then what, if you don’t actually change your attitude and make that decision that I’m going to do things differently, that I’m going to prioritise speed over perfection, I’m going to embrace momentum over polish, then the whole thing is a waste of time and money, right? 

So we’ve gone in all kinds of different directions. Speed is part of the future. We cannot deny that. 

This is not a justification for overwork. Please, I’m about to get on an aeroplane to go to Bali for two and a half weeks.

I have the next holiday planned in October and the one after that in November. This is not some fancy way of justifying working all the time. 

This is about moving faster and creating massive momentum. 

Real quick before you go, if this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited, or has you changing the way that you do business or life, would you do me a super quick favour and write me a short review? Your podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values-based business owners just like you  to find this show, which is a fantastic gift to me.