008: I Don't Want to be Perfect – And Neither Should You!

The Modern CEO Podcast Episode 8 hey, have you heard the news? There is a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, impact and family. Her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on wall. It's a kitchen table, your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor surrounded by kids and in my case, baby dolls or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Hey, it isn't always gonna be easy and Lord knows it isn't always pretty. But it's a lot more fun when we're in it together. And I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the Modern CEO podcast Foreign hello. Hello. I'm your host, Amber McHugh and I am especially excited to be here with you today. You see, I am sitting down to record this episode on Monday morning. And you know, I usually like Mondays anyway. I like the people that I work with. I like the work that I do. I like connecting with you. But I had a week and you guys and I'm really extra happy. Monday is here. And if you can't tell by my voice, it was not one of those weekends where I was sitting by the pool finishing book after book reading magazines this weekend. No, my weekend was instead full of temper tantrums and freakouts and plans not going as planned. It started on Friday. I had a little bit of a headache, but it didn't look like it was going to go full blown migraine. So I was still optimistic but I had to get it under control. Control. So Friday night, okay, we made it Saturday. There is still hope. Maybe we can go stand up paddle boarding. But no. My husband went down for the count on Saturday and it was evident very early on that I was going to be flying solo with our two girls on Saturday. And just the idea of me being on a paddle board with two of them, one of them I can handle, no problem. Two of them. I was sure one or all three of us would be ending up in the water. So instead we just dec. Hit the beach. We spent the morning at the beach, had breakfast on the beach, dug in the sand. I had to get in the water, which it's still a little bit cold here so I try and avoid that and send Matt in with them usually. But I was in the freezing cold water hanging out and swimming. Then we went back, we came Back home about noon to grab some lunch, power up, recharge before we took off for the afternoon. And in the afternoon, we had planned to go get my husband a father's day present Saturday. And then the next Sunday was father's day, and the girls dec that they needed presents, too. And usually I might use this as a teachable moment to say, no, no, no. We're just gonna get gifts for dad because tomorrow's father's day. It's not time to get gifts for ourselves. But I'm not gonna lie. I was flying solo. So I thought maybe, you know, a toy for each of them would keep them distracted in the afternoon so we could recharge before we figured out what we're gonna do in the evening. So we went shopping, and we got Matt's present. That was awesome. And then Audrey, um, it's one of those birds where you can push the button and record a voice and it'll talk back to you. And then it chirps and does all sorts of other stuff. But we had. We had fun playing with that. And then Harper wanted another baby doll, you guys, she has, like, a bazillion baby dolls in her room. She has the baby dolls that talk and the ones that crawl and the ones that go to the bathroom, and then the ones that you just cuddle with or that you feed with a bottle. She's got them all. I mean, every spectrum possible of baby doll that you could think of. Chances are Harper has it. But she wanted another one. She has a deep love for baby dolls, so. Okay, are you sure, Harper? Are you sure this is what you want? And yes, she was pretty stinking sure that that's what she wanted. That it was. It was great. That plan worked out really well. The kids were playing with their dolls, and we were playing with the bird all night. They fought a little bit because Harper wanted. I tried to talk her into the bird, you guys. No, no, no, no. She was not having it. So then we went out for ice cream that night, and Harper soon realized that her new baby doll, who she named Ruth, needed a friend. Mom, I want a new baby doll. I'm like, oh, here's. Here's your doll. No, I need a new baby doll. Like, but don't you like her? Yes, she needed a friend. I did lots of exploring. I'm like, what is going on? Why do you need this new. Another one.

I need another one.

Oh, my gosh. Full on meltdown. It was literally crazy. So got her off the idea of her needing another doll. So we could wind down for the night and sleep. So we got there. We got to that point, after a little bit of battling and figuring out what is going on. You have a new doll. But, no, I need another one. Sure enough, you guys, she woke up on Sunday morning remembering that Ruth needed a new friend. I was floored. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me, Ruth? You need another doll? And she was hysterical about it. She must be, like, going through that terrible three phase, which I try not to call it terrible three. You know, terrific threes, terrific twos. But, oh, maybe it's terrible twos, isn't it? Well, was. Okay, so terrific threes. But we were having a not so terrific start to our day, and every rational parenting bone in my body said, no, no, no more dolls. I mean, we're trying to minimize. We're trying to downsize in our life. Adding more dolls does not quite align with our goals and with our vision there. But, yes, she wanted another baby. So my husband and I debated. We know she doesn't need this, but what are we gonna do? And our day is going to be so much easier if she just gets this, because, you guys, I mean, it was hours, hours, hours, hours. And we had things that we wanted to do Sunday since we lost our Saturday together. Still had fun with the girls, but we lost that day together. So between temper tantrums and all of the crazy, we threw perfect parenting to the wind. And yes, believe it or not, we bought her another doll. And this doll, you guys, it's just a slightly different skin tone than the first doll that she got, but it's actually wearing the same headband, and it might even have the same dress on it. I know, I know, I know, I know. But we had to save ourselves. We had to save our sanity. So it was a far from a perfect parenting moment. But how many moments do you have like this? And you're like, I. I know we shouldn't do this. I know we shouldn't do this. Or, I know I should fix all of these things before we do this. Or, you know, okay, let's give some of your dolls away before we get you this new dowel. But, you guys, we threw perfect to the wind, and we let go of it so we could keep moving forward with our day. So this all brought up for me a lot of like, oh, my gosh, this isn't the type of parent I want to be. This isn't how I want to be showing up. We should use this again as a teachable moment. And no, we threw it to the wind. We threw perfectionism to the wind. And as I was thinking about this a little bit more, of course, you know, I did some research, and good news, good news for all of you who are thinking about throwing perfectionism to the wind as well. But people who do work towards perfectionism or find themselves in that place where they're working towards a level of excellence that someone else sets up for them tend to have higher levels of anxiety and fear. Asking for help, and in fact, asking for help is one of the things that we need to do more of so we can have more of you in the world. So what can we let go of in our lives that, you know, is this really going to matter at the end of the day? And instead, we need to pivot and focus on the handful of things that really will start to get us results and actually do matter and have big impact. So guess what? After we bought Harper that doll, we were in a bookstore that was loaded with toys. Why all the toys in a bookstore? Was my big question. I wanted to keep her focused on a book. But we did draw the line there. No new tea set. And she totally melted down. I'm telling you, she was just having a day. And I did, in that moment, have to draw the line and took her out of the store without buying the tea set. And she was screaming the whole way. And I was surprised I didn't get more looks than I did. I got some smiles and some nods of, oh, we get it, we get it, we get it. And I was so grateful for that empathy that people were throwing my way. And then some other people just looked and didn't really care, didn't bother. And I was like, oh, okay, no real dirty looks. All right, all right. But put some nods and some support. So you've got to know, when do you need to let go? And then where do you draw the line? Yes. Know your bottom line. But there's a whole slew of things that are happening in between that you can probably let go of to get where you want to go faster. So let go of that perfection. Let go of friends who are holding you back and who may be full of negativity when you need high vibe positivity, high energy things happening in your world right now because you are trying to do something pretty difficult that not a lot of people are doing. You know, maybe there's something on your to do list that's been there for a while that you might just be able to delete because it. It doesn't matter. It's not having an impact, or maybe you've got revenue streams that you've been thinking about working on that really need to be saved for another day or guys. The other thing I let go of last week was finishing a book. I was reading a fiction book. I really wasn't that into it. So I read the ending on Wikipedia and I don't have to finish that book now. I let go of finishing, you know, feel free to mess up. Or what do you do? How do you let go and release the energy when you get some negative feedback from a customer or. Or from someone you don't even know that's reading your stuff online and saying negative things, how do you let go of that faster so you can start to step into the space of high vibe energy that gets you to where you actually want to be going, right? And I'm not saying let go of everything. I'm not saying fully give up on your quality of services and products or don't let go of all of the ideas that you have, but potentially give them a home for another day. Because you need to focus on the most important things right now, right? So what are those things for you? And first up, I gotta tell you, when I am feeling stress about these things or when I'm feeling anxiety in this space, one of the things I do first and foremost is step into a space where I can give back to someone else, because that helps remind me, oh, this is what matters. And my husband and I, as we were debating, do we buy this doll? Do we not buy this doll? We just got her one yesterday. You know, what really matters here? What really matters in this moment and give yourself permission to change, right? We changed our mind throughout the day. We're going to give in in this moment because priorities and values and we let her know, this is it for the day. We're not buying anything else. These are our plans for the rest of the day. And so then when we got to Teapot, because we made that commitment and we said no more, we wanted to stay true to our word and the situation had changed. So we had to. We knew our bottom line, right? We knew our bottom line and we had to stick to it then. But give yourself guardrails and give yourself space to let it go and move on up, right? So my challenge for you is to let something go so that you can take yourself to the next level, so you can move to the next level and really start to focus on the things that truly matter, right? We're not going to get it all done it's not all going to be perfect. And when we have that reality, when we move forward with this idea that, yes, doing the best that we can, and that is okay because you can bring in other people to help you with those things that. That you aren't the best at. Right. And that so you can start to move forward and get traction. And that's ultimately going to get you to your goal faster than if you stay in this place of perfectionism. Now you have an opportunity to identify something that you can let go of so you can move to the next level. And it doesn't matter how big or how small it is. All of these things that you're doing and all the steps that you're taking in your business, big or small, add up. Just like the things that you let go of, big or small, it starts to create space for the things that really matter so you can move on up. Speaking of moving on up, how about a little throwback to the Jefferson theme song?

To a delightful continent in the sky? We're hoobin on now. Moving on up to the side.

We.

Finally got a piece of the pie Beef don't fry in the kitchen Beef don't burn on the grill Took a whole lot of triang or just to get up that hill now we're out in the big league Getting our turn that back as long as we live.

It'S you and me, baby I'll catch you on the next episode.