The Only Wrong Move in Business Is Doing Nothing

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie Chenell, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. Today I want to talk about the one wrong move that you can make in business, and it isn't picking the wrong name, it's not launching the wrong offer, it's not the wrong marketing strategy. The only wrong move in business is doing nothing. And this is a recurring theme in my work with clients, both one-to-one and in group. And I notice that the idea of something, the planning of something, the learning of something, are all cleverly disguised ways of not actually doing the thing. But the case I want to make today is that a messy attempt, an imperfect attempt, half-baked, even the wrong attempt is going to work in your favor. I want to start by talking about a client who was in my Voxer this past week, and she's in a real personal crisis. And her question to me was like, how do you keep going when things are really intense at home or with your kids or what have you? And she has a tendency to overthink. And it's one of those types of overthinking where it's sort of like if you give a mouse a cookie. If I say, okay, go do this, go reach out to this person and close that retainer, she immediately thinks of the 3 things that she has to do before she does that. And then those 3 things have 3 things that have to be done before that, and before she knows it, she has a list of 9 things and does nothing. And the reframe I had to give her was that any action at all, even the most imperfect, dumb action, and I'm talking opening your email, looking at your email, and closing your email, that action is better than doing nothing. And The reason I'm saying that, because you might be thinking, well, gosh, nothing is actually getting done really. But what I'm trying to do is interrupt the brain's way of keeping, in this case, her safe or you safe, right? It's safe in planning. It's safe in learning. It's safe in ideating. And once you actually put yourself out there, there is a risk of failure. There's a risk of rejection. If you have a tendency to overthink or you're in crisis, like the stakes are going to feel so unbelievably high that you will do nothing. And what that will do is it will tell your brain that it was a good thing. It kept you safe from that failure, and it'll reinforce it, and it'll continue to compound until one day you look and you see that there's been 5 weeks or 5 months that have gone by, and you haven't gotten anything done yet. And it's because you've just recycled that same idea of inaction over and over and over again until you've got such a well-worn path in the brain that it's going to be extraordinarily hard to do anything else. I hosted a call last week and we've been talking about podcasting and the idea of getting a podcast out because it's a great way to create core content. And the first week we did a breakdown of like how you would build a podcast workflow, how you would use AI to assist you in that workflow. And this past week was week 2. And I asked everyone how they were doing, how it was going, if anyone had gotten their podcast out. And those who didn't have a podcast said no. And I said, okay, well, where did you get stuck? Because I had written out all the steps and I assumed that, you know, the steps maybe around the tech got them stuck, or possibly, you know, the fear of failure or the fear of you know, putting yourself out there. Most of them got stuck all the way at the name, and they hadn't even started with step 1 of the podcast workflow because that's where they got stuck. And I said to them, you know, when it comes to building a podcast show, if you're not doing a, you know, a show like on YouTube, it's just an audio podcast and you're a personal brand or you're a coach, which in this case, the room, we're all coaches. I said, You know what podcast name fits you really well? Your name. And I said, okay, everybody's podcast is their name. Done. Step 2. And you know, the step 2 was, you know, create the COVID art and podcast ideas. And I realized in that moment that if I had to let them go, none of them probably would have taken that next step. And I said, you know what? I'm going to put down my teaching hat and you are going to build your cover art right now, live on screen. It was gloriously messy. We had people with frozen screens. We had lost tabs. We had people who couldn't find pictures. We had folks that were feeling really tech scared and feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm going to hold the room up. And that felt really uncomfortable. And I was managing a room of people having their own fears and feelings. And I was even accused, not by anyone in the room, but by someone who watched the replay back, of being a little rude. I watched it back and I thought, yeah, I can totally see how someone would see that, would see that I was being rude. But what I was doing was being so laser-focused on taking action instead of getting stuck, that it required me to shut down every time there was an overthinking loop or a question or something that was irrelevant or an apology. And when you have a room of people that are, you know, have a tendency to overthink, I'm not just dealing with one person's overthinking, I'm dealing with a room of 10 people's overthinking. And it felt like, you know, almost a violent shutdown of every little thought. If you have enough presence to watch yourself, you will start to see the same pattern. You will sit down to do something, to take action in your business, and a couple things will happen. You'll think, you'll do the "if you give a mouse a cookie" problem that my first client had, where 3 things sort of spawn off of each thing. You'll start to notice your brain. Like, if you just witness, pretend you're like stepping outside yourself, and you'll be like, "Oh wow, look, I said that I was going to write this email, but I have to go change the landing page. Oh, and the landing page doesn't have an updated picture. I really need to get pictures done. You're gonna, it's gonna go so fast, your brain, you're not even gonna recognize it until you stop. That's one kind of overthinking. The other type will be similar to what was happening in this group where it was, I don't know about the name. I don't know about the picture. I don't know about the tech, right? Some of those hiccups were actually true obstacles. Maybe they didn't know how to set up their podcast player, for example. And you're going to then have to take that really messy, uncertain action where you're not sure if you're doing it right. But what that's going to do is teach your brain that staying safe is not in paralysis. And that's important because every time you take action, the brain is gonna go, huh, I guess that wasn't really that important, so maybe I will not worry about that anymore, or maybe I'll not send that signal anymore. And, you know, I have a few clients, very few, who have the opposite problem of overthinking and inaction, and they have the, "I take action so fast." and do so much, and then I'm spinning and I'm not really where I wanna be. But I would say that's maybe 10 to 15% of people. The other 85 to 90% of people are in this paralysis. Here are a couple tips. Number 1, when you are thinking about taking action, I want you to shrink the next step until it's impossible to fail at it., right? So for someone who's nervous about writing, you know, an email to a lost lead, maybe the action is opening up your email. That's it. Just sit down and open up your email. Don't try to argue with the feeling that's coming over you because it's just a feeling and your brain is trying to keep you safe. And just open the email and then close the email. And that repetition of shrinking tasks until they're impossible to fail will at least start to train you to take action. Another thing is perfectionism is such a dastardly problem because it's what stops so many people from putting things out there. And yet 99% of people are completely invisible online. They are completely obscure. There are hardly any people watching. And whatever you put out, there's a high likelihood that those first few messy things are not even going to be seen. You're not even going to get to the point where things are better unless you put out the bad stuff first. And that can be a way— I mean, sometimes perfectionism is really lodged inside of you, and it— you need help, you know, you need someone to kind of support you because it's going to feel really uncomfortable, but Like they say, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, did anyone hear it? That first podcast episode that you're putting out, no one is probably going to even know that it got published, and maybe 3 people will listen to it by the time you announce it. Maybe, right? And perfectionism is over here, you know, making you feel like you're about to be on stage with 4,000 people. Besides, you want to be bad while you're obscure. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being bad when you have a lot of traffic? Imagine you put something out, it goes viral, you end up with 100,000 followers and you've only put out one piece of content. Now the next thing you have to put out has so much pressure, right? So embrace the fact that nobody's paying attention because that is going to really soothe the fact that probably No one is going to care.

All right.

Well, I hope that was helpful. I want you to pick out something that you've been planning for weeks and do the small, like, ugliest version of it in the next 10 minutes. Could be recording a voice note, grabbing a photo, hitting publish, and then come into my DMs. If you're listening to this, come into my DMs. Tell me that you actually did it.. I want, I want to know that you took action. And as always, if there's something you want to chat about on Million Dollar Grit, just hit me up and let me know. Have a great week.

And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. Your Stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.