Cindy Donaldson Show S3 E1
00:00:00 Cindy Donaldson: Hey there, welcome to the Cindy Donaldson Show. I am your host, Cindy Donaldson, and it's been a hot minute, but it's now season three, episode one, and Yeah, I've taken about a year off and we're going to talk about it. But I really just want to start this episode with setting the scene of what we're going to chat about today. That perfectionism is a dream killer. And not just business dreams. I'm talking life dreams, relationship dreams, leadership dreams, all of it. I know because I've been there. Hell, I am there a lot. I'm there than I want to be. Let me paint a picture. When I first launched this podcast, I was really excited about it. I had a previous podcast called Entrepreneur Masters and I would interview Seasoned entrepreneurs, really from small businesses to kind of learn what made them successful, where their struggles were. And I shared it. It was really popular. And then I got bored with it. I took some time off. Working with my business mentor, he's like, Cindy, you should really do a podcast about your life. Because it's kind of fascinating, you travel in the RV, you do a lot of different things, and people are fascinated with how you do what you do. you should call it The Cindy Donaldson Show. And I did it for about, I don't know, I had a couple seasons. Got a couple thousand downloads. I wasn't really set out to be a big podcaster by any sense of imagination. But I also did video with it. If you're noticing, this podcast is just audio. Season three. We're starting off different. But I would sit in my RV and I would record and chat for about a half hour. I did bring on a couple guests. And then I would just upload the videos to YouTube because from a marketing standpoint, YouTube is a great place to be. And the visual is important. And a lot of this was happening during COVID when I couldn't do live speaking events. So it just kind of made sense. And I never edited them, edited, I never did any edits to the, to the video or the audio. One, it felt kind of weird watching them again, if you know, you know. It's kind of like, uh, movie stars who never watch their movies. It's kind of cringy to watch yourself. But I also didn't want to kind of see the audio. I mean, see the video. Because I'm not a video editor. And that was okay for a while. And then I made a bold move. I was out drinking with some friends one night and Mel Robbins, I'm a huge fan. I love her podcast. I love the rawness of her content. I've read all of her books and I think a bourbon in, I said, you know what? I could, I could be Mel Robbins. And my friends are like, you can't be Mel Robbins. I'm like, of course I can be Mel Robbins. And they're like, well, she, you know, is an attorney. She has a lot of connections. You'll never be that popular. And I said, listen, I have a story. I have a following. I don't need to be an attorney to be Mel Robbins there. I mean, I don't need to be an attorney to have a podcast like Mel Robbins and I have a pretty deep network. I can do this. And it was kind of cool. It gave me a lot of energy and it also inspired me to go back and think about writing my book that I've talked about for ten years. But what happened on the downside of that is that I started really cuing into her podcast, specifically her video. And she had this beautiful podcasting studio in Boston that she built. She had the mic with her name on it, the perfect backdrop, and she had people editing it. And her emails that went out always had the breakdown like tune in at minute 3.08 and learn this little snippet. Now I know her staff is doing that. She isn't. But I started comparing myself deeply to Mel Robbins' podcast. And then I made the mistake of going back and watching my videos. And I was like, oh, the lighting is horrible. I, you know, didn't edit out all the ums and the ahs and the likes that I know I do. And I just decided, okay, I'm going to learn how to edit video. And my ADHD ADHD brain started Googling stuff. And I found software to edit video, all of which I have on my Mac. I have Adobe creative suite. There's, I have everything that I need. And I was overwhelmed that lasted about thirty minutes. And I was talking to my business mentor about it. And he said, Cindy, sometimes you just need to power through. Like, this is something that you could teach yourself to do. And I was like, okay, I'll give it another try, another half hour. And I was like, I'm done. I'm not going to do it. And then I thought about hiring somebody to edit my videos. One, it's very expensive, but unless I've worked with someone a very long time, they aren't gonna know What parts of the podcast I deemed important, like what snippets. So I still had to go through all of the video and write down, cut this out, highlight this, all of that. And again, Complete overwhelm set in. And so I put the podcast on hold. That was a year ago. And I kept telling myself, I'm going to bring the podcast back. I'm going to bring the podcast back. I'm going to put in the budget. I'm going to hire somebody who gets my voice. I tried using other softwares like AI type softwares to upload my My audio and my video too to see if they could come back and it was just consuming my life. And so I just kept putting it off. I was frozen in perfectionism. And that, my friend, is what this episode of The Cindy Donaldson Show is all about. My brain went into, like, I want to edit video. I want to, I'm going to, I'm going to be like Mel Robbins. I can do this, the superpower thing. And then I faded. Perfectionism isn't excellence. It's procrastination in a sparkly disguise. Like, I just kept telling myself that I could do this even though I know I didn't want to do it. I know it's not in my wheelhouse to do it. And I wasn't really striving for greatness. I was really kind of. Trying to avoid judgment. I put out to the world that I was going to be like Mel Robbins. And all my friends told me I couldn't be like Mel Robbins. And if you know me for a hot walk, that's when I dig my heels in. How that mindset that kept me from hitting record is such a bigger issue in our lives, in mine, and it's probably keeping you from fully leading your own life. And it all comes down to leadership. Now I do a lot of training, corporate training around leadership. I do keynotes around leadership. I do workshops around leadership. It's something I'm really passionate about. And my angle on it is usually vastly different from a lot of other people who teach on leadership because mine usually comes from leadership starts from within. Like, you have to learn how to lead your own life before you can lead anybody else. You have to learn how to lead your thoughts, lead your decisions, lead your direction, your energy, and your actions. So why do we do it? Why, why do we get so wrapped up in this perfectionism genes? Like, why do we compare ourselves? Like, why did I stop my podcast for entire year? Because I didn't have a fancy mic cover that said the Cindy Donaldson show that I didn't have a podcast studio. Like, why did that matter so much? Well, let's break it down. Let's talk about it. Perfectionism tells you a few things. If it's not flawless, it's not worth doing. Right? Like, you have to be perfect. You have to be the best that you can be. I mean, we've heard so much about that. And there's, there's a lot of Content creators, there's a lot of self-help books that, you know, the power of being great and how just being mediocre is like a death wish and all this crap. And we get in our head that. We have to be perfect. Now there's nothing wrong with pushing yourself to be better. There's nothing wrong with trying new things. There's nothing wrong with sometimes just being okay at something, right? There's nothing wrong with that. Yet, as a society, I think it's really prevalent in my generation. I'm a baby boomer. I'll be sixty-three this year. Like, we were taught to, you gotta, you know, go be the best that you can be. So if it's not flawless, it's not worth doing. You have to look the part, right? You have to look the part. And there's a lot of, I mean, I remember being, I don't know, in college and, and I remember How they would have these like, you know, seminars where you could go to excuse me, um, and talking about you dress for the part that you want. So, you know, you have to wear a suit if you're going to work in corporate America. And I took a job with an insurance agency at one point. I was their director of marketing and sales. And Chris, my old boss, I hope you're listening to this because he'll probably get a chuckle out of it. But I had a big meeting at one of the larger insurance carriers here in Connecticut with their marketing team. And we were an agency, we were one of the first to do social media and we kind of stood out. And this carrier was a little interested in the things that we were doing because we were very successful with our marketing efforts. In any event, they invited me to come up to be on a think tank. And my boss, Chris is like, you have to wear a suit. I don't own a suit, Chris. He's like, you have to wear a suit. I was like, Chris, I don't own a suit. And he kind of wore me down and I went and bought a pantsuit. It was still kind of funky, but I bought a pantsuit and I went to that meeting and I got there and I was like the only person in the suit because there were a bunch of marketing people there. Marketing people are funky. And the head of the marketing team at this point, he came into a meeting in Like, I don't know, just kind of a casual Oxford shirt and jeans. And I came back to the office and I was like, I was the only person in a suit. And he's like, well, you were professional. So you don't have to look the part. Is my point. Like looking the part and it's not a fake it till you make it thing. You have to just be you. Like so many people try to pretend to be somebody else because they feel like that's what they need to do to get where they want to go. And you don't. You just need to be you. There's nothing about looking the part. You're not ready. That's, that's a big thing that a lot of people hide behind. And, and ask any parent. Like, you're never ready to have kids. You have kids and then you figure it out, right? You're never ready. I don't care how many books you read. I don't care how many siblings you had. You're never ready to have kids. You're never ready to Take that first job out of college. I don't care how many coaches you work with. You're never ready for that adjustment. You're never ready for any really big things, the scary things that you do. You have to trust that you can do hard things. Someone else already did it better. This kind of goes back to my Mel Robbins thing and if you are a Mel Robbins fan, you'll know that she put off starting her podcast because she felt like, oh, The podcast market is so saturated now, like, what do I have to say that fifty million people haven't already said, yet it was a big scary thing that she wanted to do. And she's famous for doing scary things. She left her law practice. I mean, she's very public about when her husband's business, restaurant business failed. And I love that about her. I love that she shares that she was never ready for half the stuff that she did. She's also an ADHD girl, which is another reason I love her. So she's kind of all over the place like me. Maybe that's why it's like, I'm going to be like Mel Robbins, but you know, the, the, Facade that someone's already done it better and so you shouldn't do it is so crazy because people connect with you because you're you and you will always bring something different to the table. So it doesn't matter that a million people have already done it. What you want to do should go do it. And here's another one. If you mess up, everyone's going to know that you're a fraud. And this comes back to imposter syndrome, right? It's, it's putting yourself out there and trusting that you can learn how to do things. And I've done that many times in my life. You know, I remember the first time that I did a marketing strategy for a client. I did not major in marketing in, um, college. I took one marketing class, I guess. And I didn't even remember taking the marketing class, but a college friend was like, yeah, you did take a marketing class, Cindy, and you did really well. I was like, okay. But I was, um, a print broker. So I, I had worked for a printing company and then I went off on my own with some business partners and that business failed miserably, miserably, but that's a whole other podcast. In any event, we had marketing in our name and I had a client who I was selling printing to and she said that it was a medical group and she said, we need a marketing strategy. How much would you, how much will you charge for that? And I said, $5,000, And she said, okay. And I went back to my business partners and I said, I just sold a marketing strategy for $5,000, And they're like, we don't know how to do a marketing strategy. We are marketing. I'm like, well, we have marketing on our name. And this person is willing to pay us $5,000, which is pure profit. And so I went to the, this is a long time ago. My Google wasn't as brilliant as Google is now. And there was no chat GPT. So I literally went to the library and took out a book on marketing on how to write a marketing strategy. And they use that marketing strategy until they sold to another company and That marketing strategy is still there. It is still a printed book in their office twenty-seven years ago. Like how crazy is that? So you know what? I just did it. I said yes. And was it perfect? I have no idea. But they used it and they were successful and they were able to sell their company to somebody else and some of those employees are still there and it still sits on a shelf. So I guess I did okay. Does any of that stuff sound familiar to you? Do you ever let that shit get into your head? We all succumb to the nasty little lie. Perfectionism tells you it's about standards, but it's really about control. It's about trying to control the outcome. Control what people think. Control your image. It's ego. It's fear. It's a full-time job that doesn't pay very well. Listen to that again. It's a full-time job that doesn't pay very well. I had a client once, her name was, let's just call her Sarah. She sat on a business idea for over two years. She had the name, she had the concept, the audience, and she had her, her product, her offering, and it was brilliant. It was, I, I knew that she was going to do really well with it, but she didn't launch because The logo that she and I were working on, she never really liked it. And if you've ever had to design a logo or branding for your company or for yourself, it's a very subjective process. And she got hung up on You know, comparing her logo to others in the industry, like hers was a little funky cause she was funky and it kind of had her colors in it. She wasn't a traditional. You know, blue and white or green and white logo person. This was kind of a thing that she was doing in the financial services industry and insurance. Conservative, kind of like me being told to wear the suit. And so she was comparing herself and she felt uncomfortable. I was like, Sarah, you need to feel comfortable with this logo. It's a piece of art. It's something that is used. So if you don't like it, we'll keep tweaking it. But I want you to be very clear on why you don't like it. You're comparing yourself to other people in the industry and what you're offering is something very different. So it doesn't matter. Like, you need to feel comfortable. Just like me going to that meeting, I didn't feel comfortable in the suit. If I were allowed to wear something that was more Cindy, I would have felt much more comfortable. Instead, I was kind of, you know, squirming around and Kind of constantly just fixing my jacket because that's not who I am. But she spent two years putting it off. Finally. Finally, it got to a point where people were asking her for her services. She just launched and went with the logo, the last version that we had. And you know what happened? It wasn't the logo that people commented on. It was her message. It was her authenticity. It was her knowledge. It was her honesty. And she told me later, it was like I gave myself permission to exhale when she finally did it. Deep breath out. And she realized, yeah, okay, just being me is what really matters. It had nothing to do with how perfect her logo was. It had nothing to do with How perfect her pitches were. Her brain is what really mattered. And that's what we're after here. So how do you catch yourself when you're in this perfectionism quandrum? Because It happens. It happens a lot. So here's a little framework I use with my coaching clients when they're stuck. And I actually just recently used this on myself. Number one, it's all about awareness. And if you've been with me a hot minute, I talk about this a lot. And I talk about this all the time when I'm doing leadership training. I talk about it in my coat, my keynotes. I talk about it in my content. It all starts with self-awareness like if you are not honest with yourself Just stop listening to it because the rest of what i'm going to talk about isn't really going to matter like you have to be at a point in your life where You're not happy where you are It's almost like a rock bottom thing. If you're not happy with you are where you are and you want to get to another place, you have to be honest as to why you're stuck where you are. What are you avoiding by staying in this planning mode? What are you avoiding by staying in a job that doesn't make you happy? What are you avoiding by staying in a relationship that doesn't make you happy? What fear is under all of it? You have to be honest with yourself brutally honest. Like I said, this exercise. Is futile. And you will be stuck where you are forever. You just will. Because you're not willing to ask yourself what you're doing wrong. You're not willing to advocate for yourself. You're not willing to make promises to yourself and keep them. So two, it comes down to ownership. You have to remind yourself. And I just had this conversation with a coaching client before I sat down to record this. No one is coming to give you permission. You either lead your life or you don't. You have 100% control. 100% control over how you react to any situation. You choose to move forward. Or you can choose to stay where you are. It's no one else's fault. You have to own it. You have to own it. And, you know, I hear so many people who, um, will just constantly make excuses. Well, and it kind of goes back to, you know, I need to wait until I lose weight or I need to wait until I have enough money. I need to wait until I get, you know, my MBA. I need to wait. I need to wait. I need to wait. Or you can wait, but you're going to be there forever because none of that other shit matters. No one's going to come save you. Like you have to own where you are right now. And again, it comes back to this rock bottom thing. And you know, I was recently coaching with a client and he kind of reached this space of this rock bottom. Like I'm no longer willing to put up with the crap in my life. Like I, I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to. You know, take ownership of where I am. Number three is being willing to make one messy move, right? Like, when you're willing to make that one messy move, you know that you're on the upside of all of this. So what's the one imperfect action that you can take today that moves you forward? And it's just one. It's just one. If you're like miserable in your job, maybe the one messy action is to work on a resume. Or maybe the one messy action is to actually talk to that recruiter who's called you fourteen times. One, one little thing. One micro movement can change your life in dramatic ways. Back to Sarah. Her messy move? Launching a business with a logo. She couldn't decide if she liked it or not. The results? She got clients and revenues. And I don't work with her anymore. I don't even know if she still has that business, but she, you know, for as long as I was working with her, she had the logo and then the marketing part of it just became secondary because she was on a roll and it didn't matter anymore. My messy move was recording this podcast with zero video. Just a microphone and my Beats headset sitting in front of my laptop in my pajamas. That's my messy move because that's where I am right now. Your messy move, you get to decide that. So I would be remiss if I didn't really talk more about leadership here because like I've said, I, I do a lot in this space and um. But my leadership take is just very different. I'm fascinated with why certain people excel and others struggle. And so much comes back to this inner work and that mindset. And yes, letting go of perfection. People think leadership is about having all the answers and I'm going to tell you what it's really about. It's about having guts. It's about having grit. Great leaders go first. They're not afraid to jump off the bridge because they know that There's enough water at the bottom. They've done their research. They know their stuff. They're willing to go first. And if, and if they fail, it's okay because they know how to start over. They show up when it's messy. The show is when it's messy. And as my friend Dee Morris always says, the magic's in the messy. They say the hard things to themselves, to other people, to their teams, and they own it. They admit when they're unsure. They model real human behavior, not robotic perfection. You know, I think about the people that I admire most in my life and They're often the ones that have fallen flat on their face and gotten back up and said, okay, here's what I learned. Let's keep going. I have fallen on my face more times than I care to think about but like the damn weebles and I'm dating myself now those are those little toys that you push them over and they come back up. I always get back up. I always got back up. Is it always easy? No, it's not always easy. But I realized that life's too short and that dwelling on the negative shit in the past isn't going to get me anywhere. Staying stuck where I am. Is it going to get me anywhere? And so the future is full of possibilities. And so if I, if I lay on my back and claim defeat, then I'm not going to have forward motion. And I have. Claim defeat a few times and I stay in that space for a while. And then again, that kind of rock bottom thing happens and I decide, okay, it's time. And I want to share a story about, um, Some perfection and self-doubt that happened in my career and it was a really pivotable moment. Pivotable. I can't even say that word. Pivotable moment in my career. There was so much negative crap happening and I was sitting in a, um, a restaurant having lunch with my then business coach and I'm actually meeting her for cocktails tonight. She's in town. So it's a great time to share the story. But I was faced with one of my biggest, biggest deals in my career. And it kind of goes back to when I was working at that insurance agency. And remember, I said, I Was asked to go be on this think tank. And, um, it was the same person. It kind of trickled down from there. I had left that insurance agency and started a consulting firm. Anyway, um, I was Getting ready to pitch a massive contract and I stumbled over my words, the self-doubt, the negative crap was invading my gray area at warp speed and this guy called me while I was having lunch with my friend Robyn. I wanted to quote probably 10% of what my business coach said I was worth. And she was like kicking me under my table, under the table at the time. And she literally wrote down on a piece of paper, this is a six figure deal. And she was mouthing it to me. And finally I had to, Say to this, I'll call him Joe. Joe, I'm going to need to call you back. And she was lashing into me. She goes, Cindy, this is a six-figure deal. This is a huge Fortune 500 company. They can afford you. And you have something that they need. Like, they need it. This guy admitted that he pitched something to the CEO and And now he doesn't know how to deliver it. You know how to deliver it. And he needs you. And he sees value in you. Like, this is not a $10,000 job. It's not even a $100,000 job. It's at least $150,000 job. So I called him back and I said, Joe, this is about $150,000 job. And he wanted me to work with three of their big clients. And he said, how about we work with two clients for a hundred thousand dollars? And I was like, okay, I have to think about that. And I got off the phone with him, called my friend Robin back. And she's like, that's a fair deal. That's a fair deal. But you're going to be very clear on what those deliverables are. And so I wrote up a big whole proposal sent it off and I didn't hear anything for two days. And I was like, Oh my God, like I blew it. Like I blew the deal. And then all of that imposter syndrome started coming back all the self doubt all of that shit. And then I got a phone call. I landed the deal. I pitched it. I waited. I got the call. I landed the deal. And Joe told me, he's like, you called us out on and told us things that we didn't want to hear but needed to hear. We need you to fix this for us and you are more qualified than we are. You're the only person that I know that can do this, Cindy. So I'm hoping you're going to accept we have $100,000 in this. And I did the, did the work and they actually hired me a couple of years after that to do other things. Um, and it was my first big gig with a fortune 500 company as a consultant. And it was such a defining moment in my career, not because of the money, but because I wasn't polished. I didn't think I was ready. I almost gave my talents away. And thank God I had Robin who pushed me to say, it's a six figure deal, Cindy. And I didn't really know, but I learned so much during that process because it was a lot about, I had to learn about digital marketing, analytics, something that was new to me, but I was like, okay, I'm all in. The lesson in that is you don't need polish, you just need grit. And same goes for your life. You can wait until you have the perfect resume, the perfect house, the perfect body, relationship, bank account, or you can start where you are and lead anyway. You're really unstoppable, but only if you move. Um, this is kind of my new thing now is you're unstoppable. Recently I attended the Connecticut bankers, um, association women in banking event, and I wasn't speaking. I've spoke at the event two years. Prior. But I was just attending this year. It was kind of fun to come back as an attendee. I sponsored the event and I handed out 350 journals with handwritten notes inside that said you are unstoppable and signed my name. It was my current business coach's idea and I was swearing him up and down as I was sitting the night before signing the last 175 of them, but. It was all worth it. A woman came up to me afterwards, a little nervous to talk to me, but she looked pretty emotional and said, I needed to hear that more than you know. And I just smiled. I gave her a hug and Sometimes it's the little micro moments that have the biggest shifts. Signing those books was a pain in my ass, but I'm so glad I did it. Somebody needed to hear my voice in their head that day. So yeah, you too are unstoppable. But only when you get out of your own damn way. Only when you stop letting perfectionism dictate your next move. Only when you lead your life, even if you're scared. You have to show up for you. You have to do that inner work on you. So let me leave you with this. Perfectionism, it's not protection. It's paralysis. Leadership, it's not a role. It's a decision. And your life, it's waiting on you. So go. Take the messy action. Hit publish. Make the call. Record the thing. Ask for the six-figure deal. Say the words. And trust yourself. You can do hard things and you don't need to be perfect to do any of it. You just need to start. I'm Cindy Donaldson, and this is The Cindy Donaldson Show, sending you big, big love, and until next time, stay bold, stay messy, and go lead your life like it matters, because it does.
