What is Imperfect Action? This is why it’s been the secret ingredient in building my business

I've learned that there's a lot more to a successful business than knowing “how to optimise your Instagram profile” (an episode I shared in 2018), the things I feel called to talk about on the podcast have changed.

I realised that I can give you all of the tips, strategies and tactics in the world… But unless you take action, I'm not helping you.

Imperfect Action? It's about doing things before you're ready. Starting imperfectly, and refining as you go.

Today I'm talking about what imperfect action means to me and why it's been the superpower in building my business because that's actually where the name came from. 

 

How we tend to make up stories about why we can't do something yet.

When I was brainstorming what to call this new show, I kept coming back to what has been my superpower. What is one thing that I think would make a huge difference to anybody's business? And for me, that has been taking action before I have it all figured out. And learning from my mistakes, refining, experimenting, and trying over and over again. 

This has been what's moved the needle in my business and also in my life, there are loads of things I would never have done if I hadn't done them perfectly. Quitting my job before I was ready and learning from that mistake when I ran out of money. Starting a podcast despite being afraid and figuring it out as I went episode by episode. 

Learning how to drive a massive campervan, when I went on a van trip just with me and my dog. Learning how to drive that by driving it. I was terrified. It was a very long van. Launching my signature course before I started it before I even started creating it and creating it as I went each week. 

All of these imperfect actions have brought me to where I am in my business. And my life. And even though I made a lot of mistakes along the way, I wouldn't be where I am right now. If I was sitting around waiting for it to be perfect before I started taking action. It's also what I have noticed from working with hundreds of businesses.

The ones who are successful, take action. Those who don't take action, they stay stuck. Good intentions are great. You can intend to do certain things in your business, but your intentions don't decide where your business ends up with your actions. You can intend to start a podcast. Weekly blog posts, and publish long videos. But those intentions won't deliver the results. The action will.  

We tend to make up a lot of stories about what we need to do before we can take action. We make up these stories about all these things that need to fall into place before we can take action. I need to decide where to host my course before I can create it. I need to set up my social media presence before I can start selling my services, et cetera, et cetera. And we start adding all of these little things up in our head and it feels overwhelming. And the less action we take, the more overwhelming it feels. 

 

The myth about feeling ready to do something—and how to actually become ready.

Imperfect action is the cure for overwhelm simply starting to chip away at your to-do list. That will begin to build momentum and starting to take action on that big scary project will make it feel less overwhelming. With momentum, overwhelm disappears. Seth Godin talks about the question of what needs to happen for the rest to matter. 

Where you host your online course, that doesn't matter if you don't have an online course. Your social media presence doesn't equal a business if you have nothing to sell them. And once you created your online course, you'll be so excited to get it out into the world. And you'll figure out where to host it. 

Once you have services to sell, you'll want to sell them. And so you'll figure out how to sell them. James Clear talks about “start now optimise later”, he says an imperfect start can always be improved. But obsessing over a perfect plan will never take you anywhere on its own. And I love that because we can sit and we can think, and we can plan, but we can never plan for everything that's going to happen until we take action. 

Once we start and we take that action and it's imperfect, but we can improve it now. We'll never be able to improve it if we're just sitting there thinking and planning forever. 

So we often wait until we are ready to take action. But we forget that you're never going to feel ready to take action. We become ready by taking action. You don't suddenly become confident enough to do something. But you build that confidence by doing it. Waiting until you're feeling 100% confident to take action is like waiting to feel fit before you do your first workout, all like saying that you will start to cook more when you're better.

You don't get fit until you do that first painful, sweaty workout. You don't become a confident cook without cooking a couple of questionable meals along the way. Nobody is ever going to hand you a certificate declaring you qualified to take action. 

You're not going to wake up one morning, suddenly free of all self-doubt. That's never going to happen. And the only solution is to do it before you feel ready. 

 

Why we can't confuse action with productivity.

Now, one other thing I do want to touch on is that let's not confuse action with productivity. So when I'm telling you to take imperfect action, I'm not saying you need to do more things. I'm not saying you need to be more productive. You probably have a lot of things on your plate already. And action and productivity are not the same thing. You can be super productive, but not take any action that moves the replying to emails, reconciling a bank account, posting to Instagram all the time and interacting on social media all day long. 

You can do less. But the things that you do are things that move the needle. And that's what the focus of imperfect action is really about. I don't want you to do more things. You already have enough on your plate. I want you to do less. But I want you to become more intentional about what you do too. 

And prioritise the things that will move you forward, even if they feel scary, especially if they feel scary because the scary things are usually what lead to your growth. So on this new and improved podcast, I am going to be covering a couple of different things in the episodes, things that I didn't do in Socialette. 

So I'm going to be answering a lot more listener questions and rather than doing them as long Q and A episodes where I'm answering everybody's questions that I'm going to do maybe one episode per question. 

I'm also going to be doing live coaching. So where I'm working with somebody to workshop a challenge in their business. And at this stage, I'm only working with my existing students. So my Launch Magic students, my Boost Your Brand Super Fans students, and past clients for these live coaching calls. But if we run out of people, then I may open them up later. But right now I have more applications than I can handle it. But you are still going to learn so much from listening in on these coaching calls because a lot of the people I'm coaching have struggles that I've noticed come up across most people's businesses. I will also be doing solo episodes like this one, like the ones that I've done previously, really actionable ones with a focus on designing and building a business that feels good. 

So I will obviously give you marketing strategies. I am a marketer. I do love talking about marketing. But I'm also going to focus on general business, like how to build that online business, that doesn't just look good on the outside, but that brings you a lot of joy and that feels really fun. The feels really balanced that you enjoy showing up day in and day out because you didn't start a business to serve it, you built a business that serves you.

And then I'm also going to be doing interview episodes every now and then probably fewer than I have done in the past. And these ones are going to be really focused on highlighting people I look up to in business, people who have great stories to share about how they have taken imperfect action and how it's led to the businesses that they have built. Now as always, this show is for you, my listener. 

 

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