You are not a perfectionist because you have high standards. You are a perfectionist because you have been categorized wrong before and you are not willing to let it happen again.

What This Episode Is Really About

Perfectionism gets dressed up as excellence. It sounds responsible. It feels strategic. For fast thinkers, it is almost always something else: identity protection. The fear of being misunderstood, miscategorized, or reduced to a label you have already outgrown.

Jess sat on this podcast for over a year. Not because she lacked the skills, the ideas, or the technical ability to launch it. Because she had built a brand before that stopped fitting, and she was not willing to land in the wrong bucket again. That is not a discipline problem. That is a protection strategy that has outlived its usefulness.

The uncomfortable truth underneath perfectionism is this: you are not delaying because you are not ready. You are delaying because you do not want to be misunderstood. But misunderstanding is part of momentum. Clarity about who you are and what you do does not come in isolation. It comes from motion. Exposure is the mechanism. Done is the method.

In This Episode

• Why perfectionism is not about excellence: it is identity protection disguised as quality control
• The podcast origin story: a year of sitting on it, the wrong-bucket fear, and what finally broke the hold
• The ops-girl-to-visionary shift: why being reduced to a category you have outgrown is a real and specific fear
• The course that has never seen the light of day: fully built, never launched, and exactly why
• The difference between delay and development: refining in private vs. refining in public
• Why clarity follows exposure, not the other way around
• The 80% rule adapted: 80% done by you is still 100% awesome, because 80% shipped creates signal and 100% hidden creates silence
• Three practical shifts: the 80% rule, the exposure rule, and the version rule
• Why perfectionism is not just delaying a launch: it is delaying compound interest
• The one thing to do before this week is out

The Big Idea

You cannot think your way into confidence. You act your way into it. Every version you refine in private is a version the world cannot respond to. The signal that creates clarity, the feedback that builds confidence, the momentum that compounds into scale: none of it is available until something ships. Perfectionism feels like preparation. It is actually just a very sophisticated form of hiding.

Memorable Lines from This Episode

"Done is louder than perfect."

"Perfection isn't excellence. It's protection. It's protection from being misunderstood, from being miscategorized, from being reduced."

"80% shipped creates a signal. 100% hidden creates silence."

"You cannot think your way past unknown variables. Unknown variables only reveal themselves after something has been put in motion."

"Hustle protects intelligence. Perfection protects ego. Both of those feel smart, but both of those are going to keep you small."

"You don't need more time. You need more exposure."

Resources

Book: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell — https://amzn.to/4aSVaPG

Your One Thing This Week

Pick one thing you have been over-refining. Apply the 80% rule: if it is clear, honest, and useful, ship it. It does not have to be brilliant or airtight. Send the idea to five people, publish the thing, let reality respond. You are not building a monument. You are building momentum. Done is public. Public is where the signal lives.

Connect with Jess

If this one landed, come find me at BigIdeasMadeSimple.com. That is where the newsletter lives, where everything I am building is taking shape, and where you can connect directly. One idea in your inbox every week, nothing else. And if you know someone who keeps refining in private instead of shipping in public, send them this one. The right idea at the right time changes everything.

Follow Jess: @thejesswebber on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook

Key Themes

• Perfectionism as identity protection, not excellence
• The cost of refining in private vs. the compound return of refining in public
• Clarity as a byproduct of exposure, not thinking
• Confidence as a trailing indicator: it follows action, it does not precede it
• The wrong-bucket fear and why it is a real strategic problem
• Done as the precondition for signal, momentum, and scale
• Version one thinking as a practice

Welcome back to the Big Ideas Made Simple podcast.

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If you listened to my first episode, I talked a lot about hustle, not grit or effort, not

discipline.

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In it, we really looked at hustle as decision avoidance or motion without commitment.

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My favorite line from it though is fear without good pot.

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And today, I want to poke at something even more socially acceptable, perfection.

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And so I want to challenge this concept and state that it's a lesson that I am personally

learning still to this day, but I believe that done is louder than perfect.

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And if you are a fast thinker, this might sting a little bit for you.

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Because you're not lazy or incapable and you're not unclear, you are careful.

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You're strategic.

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You think in chess moves three steps ahead of everybody else.

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You anticipate objections before anybody ever says them.

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And you can spot weak points in your own ideas before that idea ever sees the light of

day.

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And because

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you have the ability to think like that, you probably try to fix all of those spots before

you make your first move.

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Because to you, that feels responsible.

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And it's protection for yourself.

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So perfection isn't excellence, it's protection.

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It's protection from being misunderstood or...

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protection from being miscategorized, or even perfection from being reduced.

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Now, let me make this concrete.

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I sat on this podcast idea that you're listening to right now for over a year.

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Not because I didn't know how to talk or teach, not because I didn't have ideas, or even

the technical skills to make it happen.

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I had never done it before.

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And that was part of one layer.

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But the deeper part of it was this.

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I did not want to put myself in the wrong bucket again.

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You see, I previously built an entire brand that no longer feels aligned to who I am now.

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I stepped into the coaching and consulting space as an ops girl.

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right, the systems girl, the Google tools girl, the integrator, right?

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And I do love systems.

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I am so good at them, but I didn't want to be reduced to them.

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You see, I am an interesting character in the fact that I am both a visionary and

integrator.

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And what I have fairly recently come to discover about myself is that I prefer

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to be the visionary with integrator skills more than the integrator with visionary skills.

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And so for me, the name of this podcast had to be right.

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The container had to be right.

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The positioning still had to be right because I felt like if I launched this thing wrong,

that I might get categorized incorrectly again.

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If I got categorized incorrectly again, I was going to feel stuck again.

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And I say again, because this happened time after time, career after career, industry

after industry to me.

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And so my perfection isn't about perfectionism, but it was a desire for quality and

quality as identity protection.

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It's not about perfectionism.

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It's about quality.

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And for me, that is identity protection.

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And I found myself disguising it as refinement because I told myself it needed to be more

clear.

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It needed a stronger angle or it needed a better strategy.

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But what I recognized and have now found to be true

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is that clarity didn't precede the action.

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Clarity for me followed the exposure.

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So the first time I recorded an episode for this, I basically read the script.

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I sent it to a few trusted people, gathered their feedback, and then re-recorded it.

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And after that second recording, I stopped.

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I didn't ask for more opinions.

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I didn't ask.

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different people for their feedback or anything related to that.

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I didn't even feed the transcript back into my AI co-pilot.

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All I did was make the decision to ship it.

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And the feedback I have received so far has given me so much clarity that in a week, I

feel more clear and aligned than I did in 12 months of thinking.

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want to challenge you because confidence for me didn't show up before I launched.

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It showed up after the world responded.

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that's the part that most fast

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thinkers resist.

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You want to feel certain before you move.

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And you forget that you will feel certain after you move.

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So it's funny, I think about a concept in the book, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel, that

is incredibly useful here.

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In his book, he talked a lot about delegation, about how 80 % done by somebody else is

standard.

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is still 100 % awesome for you.

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And his point is that if you wait for someone to execute something exactly the way you

would, it'll bottleneck your growth.

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So you have to accept 80 % of your standard or your execution because the alternative

there is stagnation.

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And yet, it's funny, I've taken that and pivoted it for myself.

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So instead of 80 % done by somebody else is 100 % awesome, for me it is 80 % done by me is

still 100 % awesome.

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Because 80 % shipped creates a signal.

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100 % hidden creates silence.

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And so fast thinkers believe that if they just tighten it or tweak it one more time, they

can prevent future pain.

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You cannot think your way past unknown variables.

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Unknown variables only reveal themselves after something has been put in motion.

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And so this concept of perfection is honestly just a fantasy.

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It's an attempt to control the future.

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you are, when you're stuck in perfectionism, trying to solve for problems that don't even

exist yet.

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And while you're solving these imaginary future problems, you're honestly delaying the

opportunity for real world feedback.

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Let me give you another example.

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I have a course fully built, and I've had it built, around simplifying your time inside of

your email inbox.

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your calendar, your task list.

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It's practical, it's tactical.

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It's what I do to run multiple businesses in very few hours every day.

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It's gone through probably 10 different name changes since I first built it out.

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It has slide decks, it has assets, it has complimentary PDFs.

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The whole dang thing is done, except for one thing.

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It's never seen the light of day.

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I never launched it.

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And I'm sure you're probably sitting here listening and going, why?

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That sounds amazing.

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My email strategies alone save people 10 hours a week.

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But I never launched it because I realized I didn't want to be pigeonholed as the tech

girl again.

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I did not want to reinforce a category

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or a label that I had already outgrown.

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And so instead of testing it publicly and letting the positioning of it emerge from

feedback, I kept changing it and refining it privately.

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Because I wasn't protecting the quality, I was protecting the category.

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And here's the uncomfortable truth.

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You don't delay

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because you aren't ready.

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This course is a perfect example of that.

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You delay because you don't want to be misunderstood.

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But the key here to remember is that misunderstanding is a part of momentum.

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Clarity about your positioning is not going to come in isolation.

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Clarity comes from motion.

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And now, I mean, this is where it gets a little bit nuanced.

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There is a difference between delay and development.

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When I didn't launch this podcast a year ago, it wasn't that I was sitting still.

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I had begun hosting weekly episodes on the I Love Coaching podcast.

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So I was teaching there.

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I was teaching live on Zoom and in classrooms across the country.

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I was testing frameworks that I was starting to build in real conversations, in real

keynote.

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So I was verbally processing or refining my thinking out loud.

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I wasn't though refining this podcast in private.

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I was actually refining myself in public.

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So when this puzzle piece finally clicked for me, the brand architecture, the made

framework, the mothership concept, it wasn't because I waited long enough.

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It was honestly because I had gathered enough signals from the world.

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My clarity didn't come from thinking harder or better or longer.

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It came from doing more.

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You can refine in private all day long or you can refine in public.

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I'll be honest, both are probably gonna feel productive, but only one of them is going to

give you traction.

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So here's the math.

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I know that's probably not everybody's favorite word if you're listening to this.

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I promise it's easy.

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If you spend a year refining privately, you have one version and zero signal.

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If you spend a year refining publicly, you have 52 versions and real data.

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Momentum compounds, signal compounds,

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Confidence compounds.

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Waiting does not compound.

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And that is where perfectionism quietly steals from you.

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Because perfection isn't just delaying a launch.

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It's delaying compound interest.

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So what do do about all that?

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There's honestly three simple shifts, and I want to share those with you.

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The first is that 80 % rule.

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If it is clear or honest or useful, ship it.

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It doesn't have to be brilliant.

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It doesn't have to be airtight.

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Clear, honest, useful.

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That's not that hard.

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Y'all can do it.

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The second is the exposure rule.

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So if you have touched something,

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for let's say more than 24 hours without another human seeing it or giving you feedback on

it, you're probably starting this process of hiding.

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Send the idea to five people.

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Publish the article, do the thing.

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Let reality respond to you and that way you have the ability to gain that feedback and

that momentum.

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Okay, thirdly, the version rule.

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Train your brain to recognize that everything you're doing is just version one.

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It is not the final version.

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Because you're not building a monument, you're building momentum.

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Perfect is always private, but done is public.

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Public is where you get those signals, and those signals are the thing that can create

clarity for you.

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And clarity is honestly what gives us all the confidence.

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And confidence is even what creates the scale.

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So you can't get to scale without starting with done.

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You can't reverse the order.

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You can't start with scale.

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You cannot think your way into confidence.

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You act your way into it.

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Let me say that again.

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You act your way into it.

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Hustle protects intelligence.

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Perfection protects ego.

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Both of those feel smart, but both of those, honestly, are going to keep you small.

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So I'll challenge you.

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Done is louder than perfect.

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And if this hits close to home good, go head over to bigideasmadesimple.com.

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That's where I'm putting some of these tools, the frameworks, the resources, the course I

mentioned.

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ah To help my friends, you fast thinkers, move from idea into action without losing your

creativity or your identity.

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I'm gonna challenge you today.

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Pick one thing that you have been over refining.

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Apply that 80 % rule and ship the thing.

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Let the world respond.

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because you don't need more time, you need more exposure.

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Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.