In the latest episode of “Lessons from a Quitter,” the focus is on overcoming the fear of not being ready to pursue new projects or dreams. I emphasize that the feeling of readiness is often an illusion, driven by fear and the desire for perfection. I encourage listeners to take action despite feeling uncertain or unprepared, as true growth and success come from iterative learning and pushing beyond comfort zones. I also share personal anecdotes and practical advice on embracing imperfection, managing fear, and taking actionable steps toward achieving your goals.
Why You'll Never Feel Ready
Ep. 314
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Hey, welcome to Lessons from A Quitter, where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are, if ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.
Hello my friends, and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. I'm so excited for the topic today because I think so many of you are waiting until you feel ready. You are waiting to start that project to go after your dream, to just try something to experiment. And you constantly tell yourself, or your brain tells you very convincingly that you're not ready. You're just not ready, right? And so we run around and we, we need to learn more information and we need to take another course.
We need to, you know, make sure we Google everything and read all about it. And I'm not saying that some preparation isn't important, but I want you to stop waiting until you feel ready to take that step because it will never come. And I'm gonna explain to you why. When you say, I don't feel like I'm ready, I want you to think about that for a second. It's not a feeling you'll never feel ready. That's not a feeling that you have. It's a thought. You have the thought, I am not ready, right? So it's not like I don't feel like I'm ready. I think I am not ready. And when I think that thought, I feel really, you know, uncertain and fearful and whatever other feelings come up from when I tell myself I'm not ready. And the reason that it's really important to understand this distinction is because when you think that thought, I'm not ready, and you feel uncomfortable as you will and you feel like uncertain, and you take that as a sign to mean, okay, I'm not supposed to get started, you will never get over that feeling because whatever you are doing that is outside of your comfort zone, that is something new, that is something that you've never done before.
That's something that you haven't mastered yet. Obviously, when you are pushing outta that comfort zone, it is by definition uncomfortable. If you knew how to do it and you were comfortable doing it, it would be in your comfort zone. And so when you are pushing out of that and you are feeling uncomfortable, you're going to feel crappy. It doesn't feel good to feel uncomfortable. And yet it's the only way to go after big goals. Go after big dreams, try new things, put yourself in, you know, harm's way, fail at things, whatever you wanna call it. And so it's going to feel bad. And when it feels bad, you interpret that as, I'm not ready. Like, oh, this doesn't feel, this feels uncertain, this feels stressful, this feels like anxiety. That means I don't know what I'm doing. And so when I interpret it like that, and then I keep telling myself, see, like because I have this feeling because it doesn't feel good, I'm still not ready.
I feel scared. So I'm gonna go do some more research. I'm gonna go ask more people about their opinion. I'm gonna go read more. I'm gonna go perfect this, I'm gonna keep working on it. I'm gonna make it, you know, so that nobody can ever say anything bad. And then I never actually put it out there. I never actually take action. And so I just want you to be onto yourself that you're doing this, that this is where this belief, this thought, I'm not ready as if you need to be ready in order to do something. Like what does that even mean? Who determines what readiness is, right? I want you to like really ask yourself, how would I know that I'm ready? And I think for a lot of us it's, oh, I would feel certain, but how could you ever feel certain about something that you're doing that's new? Or how could you ever feel certain about something that is uncertain, right? When you're starting a new project or a new job or you know, whatever it might be, going after a passion or just experimenting, we don't know how it's gonna turn out. Of course there's uncertainty. Of course there's doubt. And if I interpret that like, well I don't have this certainty in this, then I will never feel ready. And I will spend year after year after year in this kind of holding pattern in this spin cycle, never actually taking a step.
And I want you to just know that that's just your fear talking, right? Your brain is afraid because you are doing something out of your comfort zone. Your brain is designed to keep you alive. That's it. That's all it cares about. It doesn't care if you're going after big goals. It doesn't care if you're happy. It doesn't care if you're, you know, in love with your life. Your brain's job was evolved to keep you alive. And one of the best ways to keep you alive is to not do scary things, is to do things that are predictable, is to do things that you already know what's going to happen so that you can feel certain. So that we know we're not gonna get, you know, attacked by a tiger when we leave the cave. For a lot of us, we don't do anything new because we think like, oh, this fear means something.
But it doesn't, not in our current world, when you try something new, you are not in danger of being killed. You are not in danger of being eaten by that tiger, but your brain doesn't understand that, right? So your brain is like, this feels scary, this is new. We have no idea what's gonna happen with this. So I'm just gonna keep turning up this belief of like, we're not ready, we're not ready for this. We don't know how this is gonna go. And you have to just get comfortable with that discomfort. You have to get comfortable with the fact that like, yeah, I, I'm not gonna be ready 'cause I've never tried this. How would I know how to do this? Of course I have to try and fail in order to figure this out. Of course I'm not ready in that sense, right? I want you to again, really think about like how would I define ready if it's feeling certain or if it's like I know how to do this thing, that means you can never do something that's new.
How could you know how to do it if you've never done it? If you're just learning how to do it? I want you to really understand that this idea of wanting to be ready is really just a disguise of our fear of like failure. And our fear of being judged when I say I'm not ready is because I think if I can make this perfect, if my perfectionism can come in and I can hone all the skills I need around this thing that I'm working on, then nobody can judge me or I increase my chance that it is a success or that everybody you know loves it. And the reality is, is that you will fail when you're doing something new. That's not the problem. Of course you'll fail. That's the only way truly to learn something. Nobody ever starts something new and is like, you know what?
I just succeeded my whole way through. Never had a problem, never hit an obstacle. That doesn't happen. You try something, you fail, you learn and then you do it again and you get better and better as you keep failing forward, right? As you keep failing towards learning how to do it. And so when we've are stuck in this, I'm not ready because I don't wanna be judged, I don't wanna fail. We will never get started, right? And ironically then it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will never feel ready because we will never give ourselves the space to learn how to do the thing in order to be good at it.
I am so glad that I didn't wait to be ready. I really think back now about my journey and I've been thinking a lot about this now that I've started posting videos on YouTube because I just noticed the same thought patterns kind of coming up that have been coming up for five years. So when I started the podcast, gosh, more than five years now, six years in 2018, I definitely did not feel like I was ready. I mean, I knew I wasn't ready. And I remember spending some time trying to perfect the podcast, the recording spending so long like recording a podcast episode and so long like making the artwork perfect and what's the intro gonna be and whatever. And all the stuff. And all of it was because I was terrified to put it out there because I was terrified to be judged and I was terrified of it failing.
And I was terrified of what everyone was gonna think and what all of my ex-colleagues were gonna think and you know, all this other stuff. And I remember even at the time, I'd given myself a deadline and I'm so glad I did because if I didn't, I would've kept thinking I'm not ready. And I kept telling myself like, you have this many months and like we're gonna publish by this date. And I remember I almost had a panic attack the night before I had to publish. And I almost pulled the plug. 'cause I kept thinking, I'm not ready. I'm not ready for this. It's not good enough. It doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound like those podcasters that you know have professional teams and sound amazing. And look, of course it didn't, right? And of course in the beginning it was terrible because I didn't know what I was doing.
And I remember thinking like, you're just gonna have to feel nauseous and do it anyway. You're just gonna have to feel the fear and do it anyway. It doesn't matter if you're not ready. It doesn't matter if it's not ready, it doesn't matter. If it's not perfect, just put it out there. 'cause otherwise we'll never do it. And I did. And the reason I say I'm so glad about this is 'cause now in hindsight, like looking at it, I still don't feel ready to be honest with you. I still don't feel like my podcasts are great or the episodes are, you know, I'm always like, I've just lowered the bar . I'm like, can it help one person? Does this concept help in some way? Am I articulating it the best way I possibly can? No, I could take a lot more time and outline much better.
And I could do, you know, the Gary V strategy of having a larger piece content and making it an SEO blog and then breaking it out into a podcast and then doing, and I'll do doing all that stuff I could, but I'm not going to. 'cause I don't have the time or the capacity to do that or the money that I wanna put into it. And so if that was my idea of like what ready looks like or what it would be to be good enough to be out, I would've never gotten started and I would've missed out on so much. And I look back and I'm like, God, I created a really successful business on B minus work, right? On things that weren't ready on things that were just like, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna throw this against the wall and see what sticks.
I'm gonna see what happens. I'm gonna learn a lot, I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna make my sound better. Like over time, over the five years I upgraded my microphone, I upgraded my sound equipment, I spent more money on certain like contractors that were gonna help me. I did certain things that I changed up, I learned a little bit here and there. I'm still learning. But still if I look at it, I'm like, I don't know if I feel ready. I don't know. Like it's just such a strange nebulous concept, right? Who determines when I'm ready? And the reason I say that is like now I look back and when I started posting on YouTube this last couple of weeks, I've put off YouTube for years. Obviously I knew it was there and people had told you to put your podcast on, but I didn't want to have to do a video because I couldn't take on that capacity, right?
And I knew at the time like, I wanna make it as easy as possible for myself. And for me a podcast was the easiest way to do it. 'cause I could just do it for my house. There wasn't a lot of barrier to entry. And I kept thinking like, I don't wanna have to learn YouTube and I don't wanna have to do all this stuff. Then when I decided that I was gonna do it six years in, right? And even now I was like starting to get set up and I realize like this thought process kept coming back in. Like I'm not ready to post yet. I'm not ready to upload it yet. 'cause I haven't learned enough about YouTube and I don't know the best practices and I haven't taken all the courses and I don't know what the thumbnail is supposed to look like and I'm not doing da da, whatever.
And I was like, oh, here go again. I'm never gonna feel that ready. 'cause I'm not gonna put in that time and energy and money to learn everything. I'm not gonna like become an expert on YouTube right now, but I can learn it as I go. I can just start doing it. I can let it be imperfect. I can let myself kind of fail and pivot and try again. Otherwise I'll never get started. And I know again with this like it's not gonna be perfect. I'm not ready. I'm not doing it right and yet I'm gonna get more results than I ever would if I kept putting it off waiting and waiting and waiting to be ready. And I look back at that and I think of that for my whole business. I think about with the podcast, I think about that with coaching. I think about that. When I started the group programs, I think about that with my membership. At every point I kept thinking, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not ready to sell a product. I'm not ready to coach people. I'm not ready to take that on because I was scared. 'cause I kept thinking, what if I fail at this? What if I don't do a good job? What if I'm not good at this? And so then I kept trying to convince myself that I'm not ready to do it.
But then when I realize that it's just that fear, that's just those thoughts and I can manage those thoughts and not feel ready and still do it anyway. And I can learn and iterate as I go. I ended up creating a business and creating a platform and creating an audience and growing that audience. And I did that all imperfectly, constantly failing my weight there, right? And I'm still doing things terribly wrong. And there's people that are light years ahead of me. There's people that started way later than me that like have surpassed me because they maybe had a team or maybe they knew certain software better or they did it a certain way, okay? But I'm running my own race. And I think about if I had allowed that belief of like I'm not ready to keep me stuck for year after year, how much I would've missed out on beyond the fact that I get to work for myself and that I get to have this business.
But just the people that I've met and the lives that I've impacted and the lives that I've impacted me and just so much beauty has come from this podcast and the work that I get to do. And I just think like, what a waste that would've been if I kept myself small and afraid. 'cause I didn't feel ready. And so I guess my message to you is like, you don't need to be ready. What if that's just a lie? What if none of us feel ready? Just do it anyway, right? What if you could not be ready and still do it? I see this with so many of my students in the Quitter Club in my membership. So many people that want to go after that dream that, you know, know the business they wanna build or you know, have all the idea or have the product or want to go after that job or wanna get the new skills to, you know, take on a new uh, type of position or whatever it might be.
And they just keep holding themselves back because they don't think they're ready. 'cause they don't think they're in a place where they can do it now or they don't think they have enough skills to do it. Now they don't think, I mean whatever, they're just afraid that it's not gonna work out the way they want. And if you think about the way startups work in like Silicon Valley, you think about tech companies, they have what they call like an iterative model where the whole point is to get the minimal viable product as they call it, is like the minimal version of that product that is working. Get it out into the market, okay? Get it out into customer's hands, let it break. See what breaks, see what people like, see what people don't like and change it from there, right? And then you iterate and you come up with a second version and a third version and a fourth version.
And you will get so much further faster than if you wait until it's perfect, until you think all the parts are perfect because you're gonna put it out there. And the things that you thought were a big deal are not a big deal at all. And something that you never even thought of is what's a big deal, right? It's the same with all of our lives. Like I think about that now. Like people tell you this all the time, but when you start a podcast or you start a you know, YouTube channel or you start a business or whatnot, you think certain things like you think people need help with x and then you get out there and people are like, actually I don't really need help with that. This is what I need help with. Or this isn't actually a problem for me, but could you help me with something else?
And you're like, I didn't even realize that was a problem. But you would never know if you don't put it out there, you know? And so I want you to think about that iterative model or that minimal viable product for yourself, for your projects, for the things that you wanna try is like what is the minimum baseline? Not, I don't need to feel ready, but have I gotten it to a minimum baseline? Have I gotten into a minimum viable product that I can just put it out there to get feedback, to learn, to let myself just experiment, to let myself try things and take it from there? 'cause when I do that, then I can pivot. If I don't, by the way, you have to learn how to manage your mind. Because what's gonna happen is if you don't manage your mind, you're gonna put it out there.
And if it doesn't work on the first time, you're gonna sit and think like, see, I knew I wasn't good enough. I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm telling you, people in Silicon Valley aren't sitting around thinking that when their product doesn't do well, they think like, okay, how do I get back the data? How do I take this, input it, and then see what I can change, right? It's not that I don't know what I'm doing or I'm not good enough, it's that I didn't do it this way and I need to change one part of it. And maybe I need to like work on this, or maybe I need to add this. And then you start getting that feedback and you change it and you get an actual successful project or product or whatever. But you can never get that if you're waiting to feel ready.
So I want you to think about what is that minimum viable product for you where know that you won't feel ready, know that you will feel vastly unready and like very scared and super doubtful. And it'll be very uncertain and you should still put it out there and you should still take up space and you should still let yourself experiment and you should still let yourself be a full human. And through that process, you will learn who you are and what you wanna say and what you wanna do and what you wanna go after. And you'll keep iterating on it. And I promise you, you likely will still never feel ready. I know I don't even as I try this. What's interesting is when I started the podcast in 2018, I sat on it for two years. I wanted to start it in 2016, and I didn't feel ready for two years.
I kept telling myself, it's not time. I'm not ready to do this. And I sort of just got sick of myself. I got sick of my own crap. And I was like, you know what? I just have to put it out there 'cause I can't think about this anymore. And so I did. And I think about that time that I wasted. But I think about this now, like even with, you know, putting my videos on YouTube, I look back and I'm like, what was I waiting for? What took me so long? Right? So it's not to say that like we all do it and I can sit and dwell on the fact that I was likely ready to do this years ago and I didn't. Or I can be like, okay, well now no more wasting time. I still don't feel ready. It still doesn't feel good enough and I'm gonna take the next step and the next one and I'm gonna keep doing it and I'm gonna keep growing from there.
It's the only way to grow my friends. You have to drop that perfectionism. You have to know that it's simply a cover because you are afraid and it's okay to be afraid, but do it anyway because that's the only way that you're gonna build that life that you want. And I want that for you. And if you want help with that, I want you to join me in the membership in the Quitter Club because that is where we do this work. This is where I will help you push yourself even when you don't feel ready. I will help you with your thought about I'm not ready. So you can see it for the lie that it is, so you can actually get yourself into action. Because that is where the clarity comes from. That is where the iterations come from. That is where the gold is.
That is where you build, that is where your life is. And I want you to get you outta your head and into action and into that life. So you can go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and join me there. And if not, then I want you to just push yourself to do the thing without feeling ready. What if you never needed to feel ready anyways and you get to still do it. It's a pretty cool skill to learn. I hope this was helpful and I'll see you next week for another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.
Hello my friends, and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. I'm so excited for the topic today because I think so many of you are waiting until you feel ready. You are waiting to start that project to go after your dream, to just try something to experiment. And you constantly tell yourself, or your brain tells you very convincingly that you're not ready. You're just not ready, right? And so we run around and we, we need to learn more information and we need to take another course.
We need to, you know, make sure we Google everything and read all about it. And I'm not saying that some preparation isn't important, but I want you to stop waiting until you feel ready to take that step because it will never come. And I'm gonna explain to you why. When you say, I don't feel like I'm ready, I want you to think about that for a second. It's not a feeling you'll never feel ready. That's not a feeling that you have. It's a thought. You have the thought, I am not ready, right? So it's not like I don't feel like I'm ready. I think I am not ready. And when I think that thought, I feel really, you know, uncertain and fearful and whatever other feelings come up from when I tell myself I'm not ready. And the reason that it's really important to understand this distinction is because when you think that thought, I'm not ready, and you feel uncomfortable as you will and you feel like uncertain, and you take that as a sign to mean, okay, I'm not supposed to get started, you will never get over that feeling because whatever you are doing that is outside of your comfort zone, that is something new, that is something that you've never done before.
That's something that you haven't mastered yet. Obviously, when you are pushing outta that comfort zone, it is by definition uncomfortable. If you knew how to do it and you were comfortable doing it, it would be in your comfort zone. And so when you are pushing out of that and you are feeling uncomfortable, you're going to feel crappy. It doesn't feel good to feel uncomfortable. And yet it's the only way to go after big goals. Go after big dreams, try new things, put yourself in, you know, harm's way, fail at things, whatever you wanna call it. And so it's going to feel bad. And when it feels bad, you interpret that as, I'm not ready. Like, oh, this doesn't feel, this feels uncertain, this feels stressful, this feels like anxiety. That means I don't know what I'm doing. And so when I interpret it like that, and then I keep telling myself, see, like because I have this feeling because it doesn't feel good, I'm still not ready.
I feel scared. So I'm gonna go do some more research. I'm gonna go ask more people about their opinion. I'm gonna go read more. I'm gonna go perfect this, I'm gonna keep working on it. I'm gonna make it, you know, so that nobody can ever say anything bad. And then I never actually put it out there. I never actually take action. And so I just want you to be onto yourself that you're doing this, that this is where this belief, this thought, I'm not ready as if you need to be ready in order to do something. Like what does that even mean? Who determines what readiness is, right? I want you to like really ask yourself, how would I know that I'm ready? And I think for a lot of us it's, oh, I would feel certain, but how could you ever feel certain about something that you're doing that's new? Or how could you ever feel certain about something that is uncertain, right? When you're starting a new project or a new job or you know, whatever it might be, going after a passion or just experimenting, we don't know how it's gonna turn out. Of course there's uncertainty. Of course there's doubt. And if I interpret that like, well I don't have this certainty in this, then I will never feel ready. And I will spend year after year after year in this kind of holding pattern in this spin cycle, never actually taking a step.
And I want you to just know that that's just your fear talking, right? Your brain is afraid because you are doing something out of your comfort zone. Your brain is designed to keep you alive. That's it. That's all it cares about. It doesn't care if you're going after big goals. It doesn't care if you're happy. It doesn't care if you're, you know, in love with your life. Your brain's job was evolved to keep you alive. And one of the best ways to keep you alive is to not do scary things, is to do things that are predictable, is to do things that you already know what's going to happen so that you can feel certain. So that we know we're not gonna get, you know, attacked by a tiger when we leave the cave. For a lot of us, we don't do anything new because we think like, oh, this fear means something.
But it doesn't, not in our current world, when you try something new, you are not in danger of being killed. You are not in danger of being eaten by that tiger, but your brain doesn't understand that, right? So your brain is like, this feels scary, this is new. We have no idea what's gonna happen with this. So I'm just gonna keep turning up this belief of like, we're not ready, we're not ready for this. We don't know how this is gonna go. And you have to just get comfortable with that discomfort. You have to get comfortable with the fact that like, yeah, I, I'm not gonna be ready 'cause I've never tried this. How would I know how to do this? Of course I have to try and fail in order to figure this out. Of course I'm not ready in that sense, right? I want you to again, really think about like how would I define ready if it's feeling certain or if it's like I know how to do this thing, that means you can never do something that's new.
How could you know how to do it if you've never done it? If you're just learning how to do it? I want you to really understand that this idea of wanting to be ready is really just a disguise of our fear of like failure. And our fear of being judged when I say I'm not ready is because I think if I can make this perfect, if my perfectionism can come in and I can hone all the skills I need around this thing that I'm working on, then nobody can judge me or I increase my chance that it is a success or that everybody you know loves it. And the reality is, is that you will fail when you're doing something new. That's not the problem. Of course you'll fail. That's the only way truly to learn something. Nobody ever starts something new and is like, you know what?
I just succeeded my whole way through. Never had a problem, never hit an obstacle. That doesn't happen. You try something, you fail, you learn and then you do it again and you get better and better as you keep failing forward, right? As you keep failing towards learning how to do it. And so when we've are stuck in this, I'm not ready because I don't wanna be judged, I don't wanna fail. We will never get started, right? And ironically then it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will never feel ready because we will never give ourselves the space to learn how to do the thing in order to be good at it.
I am so glad that I didn't wait to be ready. I really think back now about my journey and I've been thinking a lot about this now that I've started posting videos on YouTube because I just noticed the same thought patterns kind of coming up that have been coming up for five years. So when I started the podcast, gosh, more than five years now, six years in 2018, I definitely did not feel like I was ready. I mean, I knew I wasn't ready. And I remember spending some time trying to perfect the podcast, the recording spending so long like recording a podcast episode and so long like making the artwork perfect and what's the intro gonna be and whatever. And all the stuff. And all of it was because I was terrified to put it out there because I was terrified to be judged and I was terrified of it failing.
And I was terrified of what everyone was gonna think and what all of my ex-colleagues were gonna think and you know, all this other stuff. And I remember even at the time, I'd given myself a deadline and I'm so glad I did because if I didn't, I would've kept thinking I'm not ready. And I kept telling myself like, you have this many months and like we're gonna publish by this date. And I remember I almost had a panic attack the night before I had to publish. And I almost pulled the plug. 'cause I kept thinking, I'm not ready. I'm not ready for this. It's not good enough. It doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound like those podcasters that you know have professional teams and sound amazing. And look, of course it didn't, right? And of course in the beginning it was terrible because I didn't know what I was doing.
And I remember thinking like, you're just gonna have to feel nauseous and do it anyway. You're just gonna have to feel the fear and do it anyway. It doesn't matter if you're not ready. It doesn't matter if it's not ready, it doesn't matter. If it's not perfect, just put it out there. 'cause otherwise we'll never do it. And I did. And the reason I say I'm so glad about this is 'cause now in hindsight, like looking at it, I still don't feel ready to be honest with you. I still don't feel like my podcasts are great or the episodes are, you know, I'm always like, I've just lowered the bar . I'm like, can it help one person? Does this concept help in some way? Am I articulating it the best way I possibly can? No, I could take a lot more time and outline much better.
And I could do, you know, the Gary V strategy of having a larger piece content and making it an SEO blog and then breaking it out into a podcast and then doing, and I'll do doing all that stuff I could, but I'm not going to. 'cause I don't have the time or the capacity to do that or the money that I wanna put into it. And so if that was my idea of like what ready looks like or what it would be to be good enough to be out, I would've never gotten started and I would've missed out on so much. And I look back and I'm like, God, I created a really successful business on B minus work, right? On things that weren't ready on things that were just like, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna throw this against the wall and see what sticks.
I'm gonna see what happens. I'm gonna learn a lot, I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna make my sound better. Like over time, over the five years I upgraded my microphone, I upgraded my sound equipment, I spent more money on certain like contractors that were gonna help me. I did certain things that I changed up, I learned a little bit here and there. I'm still learning. But still if I look at it, I'm like, I don't know if I feel ready. I don't know. Like it's just such a strange nebulous concept, right? Who determines when I'm ready? And the reason I say that is like now I look back and when I started posting on YouTube this last couple of weeks, I've put off YouTube for years. Obviously I knew it was there and people had told you to put your podcast on, but I didn't want to have to do a video because I couldn't take on that capacity, right?
And I knew at the time like, I wanna make it as easy as possible for myself. And for me a podcast was the easiest way to do it. 'cause I could just do it for my house. There wasn't a lot of barrier to entry. And I kept thinking like, I don't wanna have to learn YouTube and I don't wanna have to do all this stuff. Then when I decided that I was gonna do it six years in, right? And even now I was like starting to get set up and I realize like this thought process kept coming back in. Like I'm not ready to post yet. I'm not ready to upload it yet. 'cause I haven't learned enough about YouTube and I don't know the best practices and I haven't taken all the courses and I don't know what the thumbnail is supposed to look like and I'm not doing da da, whatever.
And I was like, oh, here go again. I'm never gonna feel that ready. 'cause I'm not gonna put in that time and energy and money to learn everything. I'm not gonna like become an expert on YouTube right now, but I can learn it as I go. I can just start doing it. I can let it be imperfect. I can let myself kind of fail and pivot and try again. Otherwise I'll never get started. And I know again with this like it's not gonna be perfect. I'm not ready. I'm not doing it right and yet I'm gonna get more results than I ever would if I kept putting it off waiting and waiting and waiting to be ready. And I look back at that and I think of that for my whole business. I think about with the podcast, I think about that with coaching. I think about that. When I started the group programs, I think about that with my membership. At every point I kept thinking, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not ready to sell a product. I'm not ready to coach people. I'm not ready to take that on because I was scared. 'cause I kept thinking, what if I fail at this? What if I don't do a good job? What if I'm not good at this? And so then I kept trying to convince myself that I'm not ready to do it.
But then when I realize that it's just that fear, that's just those thoughts and I can manage those thoughts and not feel ready and still do it anyway. And I can learn and iterate as I go. I ended up creating a business and creating a platform and creating an audience and growing that audience. And I did that all imperfectly, constantly failing my weight there, right? And I'm still doing things terribly wrong. And there's people that are light years ahead of me. There's people that started way later than me that like have surpassed me because they maybe had a team or maybe they knew certain software better or they did it a certain way, okay? But I'm running my own race. And I think about if I had allowed that belief of like I'm not ready to keep me stuck for year after year, how much I would've missed out on beyond the fact that I get to work for myself and that I get to have this business.
But just the people that I've met and the lives that I've impacted and the lives that I've impacted me and just so much beauty has come from this podcast and the work that I get to do. And I just think like, what a waste that would've been if I kept myself small and afraid. 'cause I didn't feel ready. And so I guess my message to you is like, you don't need to be ready. What if that's just a lie? What if none of us feel ready? Just do it anyway, right? What if you could not be ready and still do it? I see this with so many of my students in the Quitter Club in my membership. So many people that want to go after that dream that, you know, know the business they wanna build or you know, have all the idea or have the product or want to go after that job or wanna get the new skills to, you know, take on a new uh, type of position or whatever it might be.
And they just keep holding themselves back because they don't think they're ready. 'cause they don't think they're in a place where they can do it now or they don't think they have enough skills to do it. Now they don't think, I mean whatever, they're just afraid that it's not gonna work out the way they want. And if you think about the way startups work in like Silicon Valley, you think about tech companies, they have what they call like an iterative model where the whole point is to get the minimal viable product as they call it, is like the minimal version of that product that is working. Get it out into the market, okay? Get it out into customer's hands, let it break. See what breaks, see what people like, see what people don't like and change it from there, right? And then you iterate and you come up with a second version and a third version and a fourth version.
And you will get so much further faster than if you wait until it's perfect, until you think all the parts are perfect because you're gonna put it out there. And the things that you thought were a big deal are not a big deal at all. And something that you never even thought of is what's a big deal, right? It's the same with all of our lives. Like I think about that now. Like people tell you this all the time, but when you start a podcast or you start a you know, YouTube channel or you start a business or whatnot, you think certain things like you think people need help with x and then you get out there and people are like, actually I don't really need help with that. This is what I need help with. Or this isn't actually a problem for me, but could you help me with something else?
And you're like, I didn't even realize that was a problem. But you would never know if you don't put it out there, you know? And so I want you to think about that iterative model or that minimal viable product for yourself, for your projects, for the things that you wanna try is like what is the minimum baseline? Not, I don't need to feel ready, but have I gotten it to a minimum baseline? Have I gotten into a minimum viable product that I can just put it out there to get feedback, to learn, to let myself just experiment, to let myself try things and take it from there? 'cause when I do that, then I can pivot. If I don't, by the way, you have to learn how to manage your mind. Because what's gonna happen is if you don't manage your mind, you're gonna put it out there.
And if it doesn't work on the first time, you're gonna sit and think like, see, I knew I wasn't good enough. I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm telling you, people in Silicon Valley aren't sitting around thinking that when their product doesn't do well, they think like, okay, how do I get back the data? How do I take this, input it, and then see what I can change, right? It's not that I don't know what I'm doing or I'm not good enough, it's that I didn't do it this way and I need to change one part of it. And maybe I need to like work on this, or maybe I need to add this. And then you start getting that feedback and you change it and you get an actual successful project or product or whatever. But you can never get that if you're waiting to feel ready.
So I want you to think about what is that minimum viable product for you where know that you won't feel ready, know that you will feel vastly unready and like very scared and super doubtful. And it'll be very uncertain and you should still put it out there and you should still take up space and you should still let yourself experiment and you should still let yourself be a full human. And through that process, you will learn who you are and what you wanna say and what you wanna do and what you wanna go after. And you'll keep iterating on it. And I promise you, you likely will still never feel ready. I know I don't even as I try this. What's interesting is when I started the podcast in 2018, I sat on it for two years. I wanted to start it in 2016, and I didn't feel ready for two years.
I kept telling myself, it's not time. I'm not ready to do this. And I sort of just got sick of myself. I got sick of my own crap. And I was like, you know what? I just have to put it out there 'cause I can't think about this anymore. And so I did. And I think about that time that I wasted. But I think about this now, like even with, you know, putting my videos on YouTube, I look back and I'm like, what was I waiting for? What took me so long? Right? So it's not to say that like we all do it and I can sit and dwell on the fact that I was likely ready to do this years ago and I didn't. Or I can be like, okay, well now no more wasting time. I still don't feel ready. It still doesn't feel good enough and I'm gonna take the next step and the next one and I'm gonna keep doing it and I'm gonna keep growing from there.
It's the only way to grow my friends. You have to drop that perfectionism. You have to know that it's simply a cover because you are afraid and it's okay to be afraid, but do it anyway because that's the only way that you're gonna build that life that you want. And I want that for you. And if you want help with that, I want you to join me in the membership in the Quitter Club because that is where we do this work. This is where I will help you push yourself even when you don't feel ready. I will help you with your thought about I'm not ready. So you can see it for the lie that it is, so you can actually get yourself into action. Because that is where the clarity comes from. That is where the iterations come from. That is where the gold is.
That is where you build, that is where your life is. And I want you to get you outta your head and into action and into that life. So you can go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and join me there. And if not, then I want you to just push yourself to do the thing without feeling ready. What if you never needed to feel ready anyways and you get to still do it. It's a pretty cool skill to learn. I hope this was helpful and I'll see you next week for another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.
