Where To Begin When You Don’t Know Where To Begin Leave a comment

If you’ve ever sat down to work on your business and thought “I don’t even know where to begin”, this episode is for you.

Not knowing where to begin isn’t a clarity problem – it’s a perfectionism problem. In this episode, I walk you through a real client story and the three simple steps that took her from “I don’t know where to begin” to getting started, following through and achieving her goal.

If you’ve been circling your ideas, second-guessing your next move or telling yourself you need a better plan before you start then this episode will create an important shift for you. If you’re a perfectionist building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.

READY FOR MORE?

If you want to learn how to plan properly as a perfectionist so you always know what to work on each week, join the waitlist for The Power Planning Course at samlaurabrown.com/planning.If you’re ready for coaching and support to take consistent action and grow your business, join the waitlist for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.

I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.

Sam Laura Brown
Today’s episode is on where to begin when you don’t know where to begin. This is something that I’ve heard a lot of recently in the last week. So we have just wrapped up our most recent launch for Perfectionist Getting Shit Done.

We do an open enrollment for the program once a quarter. And when I was talking to people who were interested in signing up and then did sign up, one thing that I heard so often was this phrase, I just don’t know where to begin. So this episode is going to be all on that topic, really practical to help you know and have you know exactly where and how to begin.

If you have been spinning, if you have felt overwhelmed, if you have a vision for what you want to do, whether it’s a clear vision or whether it’s a bit fuzzy, but you just don’t know where to begin, you don’t know how to get started, you don’t know how to take those first steps, whether it is for a big project, whether it’s for a new business, whether it’s for a new task that you need to do that you haven’t done before. If you are having that thought, I don’t know where to begin, this episode is for you. So let’s talk about why we as perfectionists have this thought, I don’t know where to begin.

Number one, there are so many steps to take. Often to do anything, there are multiple steps required to have that thing actually be completed. We also as perfectionists have the belief, have the identity that I have to get everything just right for it to work.

So not only are there multiple steps to achieve what you achieve, whether it is a task, a project, launching a new business or a new venture, but we as perfectionists also have this standard, this requirement that everything has to be just right for it to work and for us to feel good about the work that we’re doing. So that creates a lot of pressure and a lot of overwhelm. We also feel like we don’t have time to take all the steps perfectly, because who does, right? If you need to do multiple steps and they all need to be perfect, that is a very overwhelming prospect.

How are you going to have all the time alongside your job or looking after your kids or looking after yourself or a parent or everything else that you’ve got in your life? How are you going to have the time to do that, that you’re already doing? Plus take all of these uncertain multiple steps that need to be perfect. And we have that all or nothing perfectionist mindset. If I can’t do it perfectly, I’d rather not do it at all.

And so what tends to happen when we have this thought, I don’t know where to begin, we end up researching and procrastinating and procrasti-researching, as I like to call it, because we’re trying to figure out where to begin, where to begin. And I’m going to tell you in this episode, a story about one of my clients, one of our PGSDers inside perfectionist getting shit done, because she’s just such a great example of taking on a really big project of launching her business, launching her acupuncture business, multiple steps involved, plus a mom of two, plus keeping up her current practice that she had. And she was able to launch it and not just like break it down into little steps, because that advice sounds lovely, but then we’re like, oh my God, there’s so many little steps.

What do I do with the little steps? If you’ve heard that advice before, this is why I talk about working in a way that works with your perfectionist brain instead of against it. Because when we hear things like just break it down into little steps, our perfectionist brain goes, okay, let me break down all of the things I need to do that I have to do perfectly to a level of detail that I’m now so overwhelmed that I’m not able to take action. So it’s not actually helpful to approach it that way.

And in this episode, I’m going to tell you what to do. But this is what happens when we are in that thought, I don’t even know where to begin, that we don’t begin. And we continue not knowing where to begin, because when we’re in that mindset, we are approaching research and learning in a way that doesn’t actually help us know where to begin.

Oftentimes, if you’re listening to lots of different advice and lots of different people’s opinions, or you’re learning a very intricate process to do something, it just feels like the more you learn, the more you realize there is to do, the more you feel like you don’t know where to begin. So inside perfectionist getting shit done, we teach you how to begin. This is one of the skills that we teach inside the program, because it is so essential for building your business.

If you don’t know where to begin, it is going to be impossible to build your business because you won’t begin. And whether it is launching your business for the first time, or whether you’ve already launched your business, and there’s a new project you want to start, whether it’s a task that you need to do. If you are not knowing where to begin and then not beginning, or you have a burst of inspiration, you start taking action for a few days and it fizzles out, then you want to be inside my program perfectionist getting shit done.

So this is why it’s so hard for perfectionists to begin. Here are three reasons. Number one, we don’t like doing things imperfectly.

We don’t like witnessing ourselves being imperfect. And whenever we’re working, especially if it’s something we’ve never done before, we are risking seeing ourselves do something imperfectly, and then being very self-critical, and judgmental, and nitpicking, and feeling inadequate. And we want to avoid that feeling.

We already, as perfectionists, the way we think, that perfectionist thinking and mindset, we already feel inadequate. So we don’t want any extra inadequacy on top. So it makes sense that when you watching yourself working perfectly brings on self-criticism and inadequacy, that you put it off, that you don’t begin.

That makes so much sense. Number two, pressure goes on once we get started. So what happens is we have these, and I’m going to tell us in number three, we have this hope that everything is going to be amazing once we finally do begin.

And what happens is once we do begin, we then start telling ourselves a story that now we have gotten started, it has to be perfect. Whereas when we haven’t gotten started yet with something, say for example, my client that I’m going to tell you about, when she hadn’t started yet building her acupuncture business, she didn’t have the pressure to do it perfectly. I’m sure she did experience pressure, but not nearly as much as once we get started with things, our perfectionist brain is like, okay, now’s the test.

Now let’s see if you’re good enough. And that pressure can feel so hard to manage that we again, avoid beginning in the first place. And number three that I mentioned is that when we begin things, the hope is gone.

The optimism is gone. And what we do as perfectionists to try to escape the inadequacy we feel is we like to picture our future self doing things perfectly and that we will be able to have all our ducks in a row and we’ll be able to get everything just right. And it will work right away.

And so when we begin, when we start taking action and when we start taking action consistently, we are then shattering that illusion that our future self is going to be perfect. So that can feel very uncomfortable. If you are escaping your current inadequacy by dreaming about future you being so much better, of course, you don’t want to begin and potentially see that future you isn’t that much better.

So it all makes sense. If you have been in this pattern of, I don’t know where to begin and then not beginning and spinning your wheels. And this is so frustrating.

If you’re a smart person, you’re very capable. Our clients inside PGSD, a smart, capable college and university educated, typically working in careers, very successful. But when it comes to their business, they feel like they don’t know where to begin because of this perfectionist thinking that I’ve been talking about.

So I want to tell you a bit about one of our PGSDers because it’s just such a great story and such a great example. And then I’ll walk you through the three steps that she followed or actually it’s four, it’s three main steps with a bonus that is really important. They’re all very important, but I want to walk you through what my client, what her experience was with going from, I don’t know where to begin to going into, I’m beginning, I’m doing it, I’m succeeding at it.

I did it. And she did that inside perfectionist getting shit done. So when my client, Shiopei and you can see her success story on the PGSD page at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

When she signed up for PGSD, she had the goal of opening her own acupuncture clinic. She had signed the lease and she had three months before she could begin operating in that space. So she had a long list of things to get ready.

And she was also continuing to run her current practice and learning to do social media as well, beginning to build out a professional network for referrals and a mum of two and having a normal life going on as well. She was very scared and felt very overwhelmed because there was so much to do. And she was saying that she was a first in her immediate family to be an entrepreneur.

So she wasn’t able to have, I’m sure her family was supportive in general, but she didn’t have anyone else around her in her life who actually got it, who actually understood what it’s like, not only practically speaking to build a business, but also emotionally to really go for it, to risk having it not work out. That’s part of entrepreneurship. That’s part of what you need to learn how to handle is some risk, not being reckless, but it’s not the same kind of situation as if you’re working in a job and things are more guaranteed.

So she was scared, the first in her family, and she had delayed it by six months due to the fear that she was having, due to the perfectionist fears of what if I fail? What if this is so embarrassing and so shameful and it proves that I’m not good enough. She was saying everything felt so important at the beginning. Everything just felt like it was absolutely essential to do and it all needed to be done right away.

And her pattern was to rush things to the last minute and then do it well, but burn herself out in the process. And I see this so often with our PGSDers, and it was my story as well, that I and our PGSDers would just be in this cycle of procrastinating and then rushing and then procrastinating and then rushing, which created a lot of burnout. So that was where she was at, and I want to walk you through the process that we guided her through in PGSD.

That allowed her to, six months later, and I was going back through her persistence log inside PGSD to get all these details, so that’s where it’s from. She opened her clinic doors, she had all the furniture set up, all the tech set up, she hired an employee, she did interviews, then she hired her first employee, and then they had to leave, and then she had to find two new employees. So she did all of that.

She built up her referral network with local professionals, she launched her social media ads, she got a print deal in the local paper, and as I mentioned, she’s a mom, so she was looking after her kids, she was being present at home and taking care of herself and personal life as well. So these are the steps that we have you follow in PGSD, because it works, but these are the steps to follow if you don’t know where to begin. If you just feel like, I have this goal, I have this dream, I have this vision, and maybe even like Shiopei, I’ve started taking steps towards it, like I’ve signed the lease, the wheels are in motion, I have started, but I don’t really know where to begin with all of the next steps that I need to do.

And so how do you navigate that? So I’m going to walk you through three steps plus an extra one. So the first step is to set a growth goal. So all of the things that I’m going to mention in number one, two, and three are all very specific and for, let’s be real, everything on this podcast is specific to you as a perfectionist entrepreneur, but everything that we teach inside PGSD and that I talk about on this podcast is designed to work with your perfectionist brain instead of against it.

So the first step, the very first thing that she did when she came into perfectionist getting shit done was setting a growth goal. So you need to have a high level look at where you are going, and not just in this vague, I want to open my own clinic kind of way. As I mentioned, she had procrastinated for six months when she didn’t really know where she was going.

If you were having a hard time knowing where to begin, a big part of that is that you don’t quite know where you’re going. It’s very hard to know how to get somewhere that you’re not even sure where you’re trying to get to. So having clarity on where you’re going in a way that works with your perfectionist brain instead of against it is incredibly, incredibly important.

So she went through the process of setting her growth goal, which is a 12 month revenue goal, which is designed and set up in a way, because we perfectionists without all or nothing thinking, we either want to have this like crazy, crazy, crazy big goal, or we don’t want to have any goal because we don’t want to be disappointed, or you want to have 17 different goals. And all of those approaches are just going to turn your perfectionism handbrake on. Ask me how I know.

I have been there. I have done all of that. And I have coached at this point.

We’ve had over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs inside PGSD. So I have seen it all. So many PGSD is coming in with all different goal setting methods they’ve used in the past, and how that approach has made them procrastinate and overthink.

It has brought up that all or nothing thinking. It has unnecessarily, it has brought up the fear of judgment that perfectionists have. It has put them into a pattern of burning out because the way the goal is set up, when you have a massive goal, that’s just kind of this fairytale goal that’s so hard to connect with, or you have a goal, like three goals for every area of your business, or you’re like, fuck it.

I am done with goals. I’m done with disappointing myself. I’m just going to trust the universe and see what happens.

And I love manifestation.

I love manifestation so much. It is hard to manifest if you don’t know what you’re manifesting and so you set your growth goal which is designed so that you grow into it. It’s a bit above what you believe is currently possible for you so that you grow in order to be the person who can achieve it.

That’s what we do in Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. We help you and your business grow, not just stay the same and do what’s realistic which is continuing to be in your current reality. We want your business to actually grow.

That’s what we help you do inside the program. So your goal is going to grow you without turning your Perfectionism handbrake on and then causing you to go into that analysis paralysis and overthinking and procrastinating and then burning yourself out and in all of those Perfectionist patterns. So that’s the first thing that she did.

She set her growth goal. Number two is she started power planning. So when you join PGSD, you will begin power planning right away.

It’s a simple process to learn. You can start doing it the same day that you join the program. So there are three ways this is so helpful in this situation.

Number one, it gives you structure for your work week especially if you are doing things other than your business. But even if your business is your full-time thing and you don’t have many other commitments, if you’re just in a season of like I’m all in on my business, then having structure for when is on and when is off is going to really help you be able to start having it all be so much more manageable because when every minute of every day is time that you are telling yourself I should be working on my business, you are going to have a lot of resentment, a lot of bitterness towards your job, towards your friends, towards your family, towards working out, towards things that are very supportive for you. For example, when I didn’t have power planning before I developed it and before I approached things this way, even when I was meal prepping healthy meals for the week, I felt guilty that I wasn’t working on my business.

Literally when I was doing something that was so supportive for me and would help me work on my business during the week, I was feeling guilty. So power planning gives you structure for your work week and takes into account everything that you have in your life. It’s going to be incorporated into your plan in a way that you can actually follow through on so that you know when is on and when is off because you have to stop thinking about I should be working on my business every minute of every day.

That’s just going to exhaust your brain and when your brain is exhausted, it is very hard to begin something new. As I mentioned, the way our perfectionist brain works, when we are doing something new, if you have the chance to witness yourself being imperfect, that is something that we are trying to avoid. So we need to have every support possible because when we begin taking action, there are going to be some emotions that come up that are going to be uncomfortable.

So we need everything working in our favor to be able to continue working with those emotions present. So number two, when you are power planning, you will identify your needle movers. These are the things that will move you to your goal.

So I mentioned with Shiopei that she had so many different things she wanted to do. With having her own physical space, there was the furniture and tech to set up and having that, painting the walls, doing all of those things with that, plus hiring team members, plus building out the marketing side with ads and a referral network of professionals in her local area. So it’s hard to know where do I begin because there are so many important things to do right now.

When you learn power planning, you will learn how to identify your needle movers and the things that will actually move you to your goal. When everything feels important and everything feels urgent and when your perfectionist brain can only see imperfection and wants everything to be done, like just gets so focused on all the little details and wants everything to be done just right, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and the things that actually move the needle. So you need to have your needle movers identified and when you are power planning, one of your needle movers could be research.

It’s not to say research is a bad thing, but when you’re just researching because you don’t know where to begin, it’s not helpful. But when you have your growth goal and your power planning, you can then say, okay, here is my needle mover. I need to research this specific thing and then I’m going to take action on it.

So that’s where it would fit in, but you need to have your needle movers. That’s going to allow you to have something that actually goes from just being this big hope and dream to something that you can actually do. You need to know what’s important.

And then self-study. So when you’re power planning the way it works, you will be able to figure out what does work and what doesn’t work for you when it comes to structuring your week, when it comes to what kinds of things to put where, all of that you will learn from planning out your week, following through sufficiently. We aim for 80% follow through, resting without guilt, which I’ll talk about in a second, and then making adjustments each week.

So it is easier and easier every week to follow through on your plan because every week you are learning more and more about yourself and you’re implementing that into your planning so that, and this is the whole point with planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning, is that you can actually follow through on your plans. Your business requires follow through for it to grow. Consistent action is a requirement for business growth.

So you need to know how to take consistent action, which is what we’re talking about here, which is what I teach perfectionist entrepreneurs to do. The growth goal gives you the direction and the clarity and your power planning is flexible structure for your week and a flexible plan for your week that is clear and that takes into account the goal you’re working to, the time you actually have, what’s most important, what’s not important, so that you’re not doing what I like to call comfort work because you don’t know where to begin and so you try to comfort yourself by doing something productive to feel better. So having that planning method there to support you to actually follow through on the needle that get you to your growth goal is what is going to build your business.

If you aren’t able to take action consistently and to follow through on the plans that you make, then you’re not going to be able to build your business. Action is a requirement. Consistent action is a requirement.

To take consistent action, you need to be able to do that in a sustainable way without burning out and the way I teach our PGSDers how to do it and I teach you this podcast is to work with your perfectionist brain which is why the growth goal and power planning and clean rest are all really taking into account in ways that are too nuanced and advanced to explain in this episode. It takes your perfectionist brain into account so that instead of doing for example classic time blocking where you have a calendar and you plan out your ideal week, you put in everything that needs to be done and you plan it down to the T, it’s beautiful, you’re ready to go and then by Tuesday afternoon you’ve completely forgotten about it because it was so unrealistic. You fell behind within the first few hours of trying to follow through on the plan.

You forgot to take into account the fact that there’s a commute or you have lunch or you need to sleep and so power planning gives you clarity plus structure plus flexibility in a way that supports you and a feedback loop, the self-study in a way that works with your perfectionist brain so you can have your goal and then actually follow through on it instead of having a goal and then you give up on the goal a month or so later or really a couple of weeks later because you have to be so motivated and disciplined to get there. With power planning, you don’t have to be motivated, you don’t have to be disciplined. It’s really supporting you as you are today to be able to follow through on the things that need to be done to get you to your goal.

So, Shiopei was power planning and then getting clean rest. So, clean rest is guilt-free rest. It is time that you are getting rest for your brain.

You are recharging your brain so that you can keep taking consistent action long term. Your brain, whether you have a brick and mortar business, whether you have an online business, no matter your business, your brain is the engine for the business. Even if you have systems in place, your brain is such an important part of growing the business.

We want it to be functioning at the highest level possible. If your brain is exhausted, it can’t function at the highest level possible. So, when you’re power planning, and I teach you this in PGSD, you will be putting clean rest in your power planning and following through on it with the same seriousness as following through on a business task.

It is the fuel for the follow through. It’s not the reward at the end, it is the fuel. And then the fourth thing that I mentioned, which is really important, and this was something that Shiopei really leaned on a lot, which is incredible, is coaching and support, specifically around perfectionist fears.

So, Shiopei used the persistence log in the PGSD forum, and she also got coached on coaching calls and listened to replays of other perfectionist entrepreneurs getting coached on their perfectionist fears, on their struggles with taking action, on their struggles with knowing what their needle movers are, and them getting coached and having the shifts they needed to have, so they could actually see, okay, I know exactly what my needle movers are. Okay, I know exactly how to take the next steps I need to take. Okay, I can see my fear and I actually now believe something different.

Not just I intellectually understand something different, but I actually feel different. So, now instead of getting stopped by that perfectionist fear, I’m able to take action. So, that was such an instrumental part of being able to achieve what Shiopei achieved.

So, she had her growth goal, her power planning and clean rest, as well as coaching and support with her perfectionist fears, and also someone, many people there to cheer her on, to celebrate her, for her to share her wins, especially as the first entrepreneur in your family, which I am for me, that if you don’t have other people around you who get it, you really aren’t able to even celebrate fully, especially once you’re achieving certain kinds of goals. It can feel, it can bring up perfectionist fears to celebrate with people in your real life, that you’re going to alienate them, or that you’re bragging, or that you’re trying to get attention. And so, having a safe place, a supportive place, where we get you and we are following your journey to be able to share the wins and to share.

And I was just reading the post before I recorded this, as I was putting this together, to share like, I opened the doors to my clinic, and here’s all the other things I did. And like, just sharing all of it is incredible. It’s so important.

That’s a really important part of normalizing the growth and normalizing going from someone who isn’t getting shit done, to someone who is getting shit done, and doing that without burning out. Celebration helps to lock that in. And so, you need somewhere to celebrate.

So, that is how to go from not knowing where to begin, to beginning, to doing it, to having it actually be done. And so, I want to invite you into perfectionist getting shit done. And I actually have something really special to share, a special announcement.

We haven’t done this for… When was the last time? September 2024. So, we haven’t done this for basically a year and a half, which is we are opening the doors to my course called the Power Planning Course, where you can learn power planning. You can learn as well how to set your growth goal and how to get clean rest.

So, there’s also going to be a special bonus with some coaching and support as well to go with the Power Planning Course. So, I won’t yet announce when we are opening the doors for the Power Planning Course, but you don’t want to miss it. So, where you can go to join the waitlist is samlaurabrown.com/planning. I will leave the link in the show notes below.

So, go and click the link and put in your name and your email address and you will be on the Power Planning Course waitlist and you’ll be the first to know when enrollment is going to be happening and when we are going to be opening the doors to enrollment. And if you have been having a hard time beginning and taking the next steps, if you keep getting stuck in overwhelm and in procrasti-researching, you have dreams, you have potential, you are smart and you are capable and yet you have been spinning your wheels and just stuck in not knowing where to begin, then I want to invite you to join the Power Planning Course when we open. So, samlaurabrown.com/planning is where to go to sign up.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I’ll talk to you next time.