Hey, creative. I want to talk about the power of small actions, the power of small actions to help build your creative business, taking small actions, consistent small actions in your business. I can’t overstate this enough. Too often in business, and I don’t know if this is everybody else, but I know creatives, I know the creative brain is that we are obsessed with perfection, <laugh>. We just, we want everything to be exactly the way we see it in our head, whether that’s a painting or you’re a cake decorator, or you’re a interior designer, your wedding planner or your whatever it is, video producer. We are so obsessed and so afraid to send anything to anybody that is an absolutely perfect, and sometimes that sort of tyranny of perfection in our brain will stop us from taking action in the first place. You’ll say, well, if I can’t be perfect at it, right outta the box, I just, I just won’t do it.
I just won’t do it. And what we do when we talk to ours, we ourselves like that. We, we will almost always compare ourselves to somebody else and we’ll go, well, this person does it. And man, they, oh my gosh, they’re just perfect. They’re so great and they can’t, and I can’t ever be like that, okay? Which is complete garbage, but it’s, this is what we do to ourselves. I’m not saying that the human brain were irrational, but I want to tell I you two examples, um, that I always go back to when I start to feel that, when I start to feel that para, the analysis paralysis, is that what they call, is that the catch term where you get inside your head and you’re like, oh my gosh, this isn’t perfect. I can’t, I can’t show this to a client. I can’t put this in front of, I can’t put, it’s on social media.
I can’t, it’s not, it’s not perfect. The power of small actions, the power of at some point, taking action and moving forward. Um, two great examples I always go back to, um, the first one is Lauren Michaels with Saturday Night Live. The guy who created Saturday Night Live and produces it, and still does to this day, as far as I know now, uh, Saturday Night live’s been on the air more than 50 years. They go on every Saturday Night Live right there in the name. So there’s no redo, there’s no take two. It’s like you go out live and there’s a phrase attributed to Lauren Michaels, I hope he said it, if he didn’t, doesn’t matter, but it applies. He said, you know, we don’t go on the air Saturday night at 1130 Eastern because it’s perfect. We go on the air because it’s 1130 eastern on Saturday night, and we’re Saturday Night Live, right?
You ever seen a Saturday Night Live sketch, uh, sketch that where they break up and laugh or it’s not that good or whatever? Of course you have. Yeah, it’s not perfect. But when you think about Night Live, what an impact it’s had. How on your life, on my life, we all have our phase, you know, our, our era, the, the ones we like the best on Saturday Night Live. Do you sit around worrying about the ones that were not perfect? Of course you don’t. Sometimes those are the better ones. Sometimes those are the better ones. And so sometimes, think of it like this, when you’ve fretted over a problem, you worked on it, and you can’t, and you get hung up, take an action. It, it’s 1130 on Saturday night, and it’s time to go on stage, move forward, take the action. You will always be glad you did.
Always be glad you did. Sitting around waiting for perfection is not, is not going to happen. It doesn’t exist. It certainly doesn’t exist in the creative world, and so you just make it better. And I, I know we’ve heard that a bunch of times, but what I would like to do is tell you to take a small action. Do something small that moves you forward. Do something, get outta your head and do take an action. It’s 1130 on Saturday night. Um, you know, in the marketing sense, if you’ve never heard of Seth Godden, G O D I n, I’ve talked about him on this show before, everybody who’s never heard about, uh, read much about marketing. You know, Seth Godden and Seth Godden calls this shipping your work. He says, sometimes there, there is a point when you’re developing say, a product, um, and this, this is true of services or anything else.
Sometimes there’s a, there’s a point where it’s time to ship your work to the customer and see what they think about it. You just gotta ship it. Now, that doesn’t mean we want to be half-ass about stuff. It doesn’t mean we’re gonna cut corners. It doesn’t mean we don’t care anymore. It means we have to move forward or you’ll never grow a business. But here’s the thing about the Lauren Michael story and the Seth Golden thing. Shipping your work or going on stage at 1130 is remember those people that you look at, you compare yourself to, and you think they’re so great and they’re so perfect. If you talk to those people, I guarantee you, they will show you 28 things in that song that they thought were not perfect, or in that painting or in that sculpture or in that cake, they decorated. I promise they will.
They will look at that and go, ah, there’s 30 things in there I wish I could change. I saw a buddy the other day, um, co-owns a brew pub in my hometown called El Weirdo. It’s an amazing brew pub. If you’re ever in Panama City, you should go to El Weirdo. And I saw Tim Whaler, the co-owner, and I’m like, and they had just opened a few weeks before, and I was like, dude, that place is amazing. He goes, oh my God. There was like, there was like 28 things that I wish I could have gotten done before we opened, but you know what, it was opening day. Here’s the secret though. I didn’t notice any of those things. This is the dirty little secret of being paralyzed by inaction is that most people don’t even notice the mistakes that you and I see. You and I are looking at our work so closely. Nobody ever, nobody looks at our work as closely as we do, nobody.
So they don’t see those things. And even if you don’t tell them, they almost never notice them or they never come up in the, in the first place. So work as hard as you can to get better at your craft, to move along, to be top notch, to be excellent. This is not an excuse to be less than excellent, but this is also not an excuse to sit around and not take action because you’re waiting for perfection to happen. It’s 1130 on Saturday night, and it’s time to go on stage. You can do it. I love you.