You don't have to be perfect

Yo, yo, yo. Hello and good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, coming to you live on The Facebooks, on LinkedIn, YouTube, and over here on my phone on Instagram. Hello. We're a little duller this evening. Not. Not personality wise, I hope, but I've discovered. Oh, hi, Lauren, Welcome. I've discovered that when I go live later in the evening. Hi, Kelsey, Welcome. And hi, Jo Gibbs. Welcome, everyone. I've discovered, as I'm just describing, what happens when I use my ring light later in the evening. I've been doing a lot of research about, like, sleep and how people with adhd, like, do sleep differently. And what was interesting is that apparently our circadian rhythms are a lot more sensitive. So what I was finding is when I would go live in the evenings, like between 7 to 9, and we're just past 9pm right now, so it's really late in the whole live game. But on those nights, like, I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until like 1 or 2 in the morning. And I couldn't figure out what was going on. Like, what was the big thing that was making a difference. And it was the light. The stupid ring light. It. Honestly, it's so bright that it tricks my body into thinking that day has been extended. So I'm trying this new thing where later in the evening, I don't use the ring light. I don't know if I like it though that much. We might just put up with shitty sleep. But anyway, and. Hi, Joshua. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Anyway, tonight I want to talk about why being perfect is overrated. Because so often when I talk to new business owners, especially business owners who are providing a service. Okay, so, like, you're a marketer, you're a copywriter, you're a coach, maybe you're a lawyer, and you feel like for people to trust you, like, for anyone to see you as valid, like, you know what you're doing, you have to be perfect in what you do for yourself. Right now, for a lot of coaches, this is like, oh, well, I have to have my life figured out. I have to have everything perfect. I need to have really good work, life, balance before I can tell other people about this stuff. Bullshit. No, you do not. You do not have to be perfect at doing the thing to be really good at helping other people do the thing. Okay? That is not how that goes. Whenever I hear coaches talking about this, I point to the fact that Tiger woods, who I think has won, what, 37 different PGA tournaments in his career, maybe more. I might be completely misquoting that he's had three coaches throughout his entire career. Okay, three or four. It's. It's definitely less than four. It's more than. It's three or more. I don't know. So three or four. Amongst those coaches that he's had, you know, how many of them or how many wins, tournament wins they have shared between the four. The three or four of them. I'm terrible at quoting, like, facts and stuff. Look it up. It's legit. I'm, like, I'm accurate. Ish. I promise. Talking about imperfection. Out of all of his coaches that he's had in his golf career, the coaches have had one win. Amongst all of them, only one of them has won a tournament, and it wasn't even a significant tournament. Okay. I don't know much about golf, except for the fact that my cousin's a pro golfer. He would be very embarrassed about me by me right now, anyway. To help other people strive and become their best, you don't necessarily have to be the best. Right? There was no way for Jeff Bezos to become Jeff Bezos. There's, you know, so many, like, acting coaches out there that help incredible actors and actresses have incredible careers, even though the acting coach themselves. Themselves didn't actually, you know, make it anywhere in their career. You know, a lot of people talk about, like, those who can do. Those who can't teach. You know, I mean, to a degree, but, like, we discount the fact that teaching is an actual skill. Like, it is an actual skill. A lot of people who are really talented doers are terrible teachers. There's no way in hell they could turn around and help the next generation up, okay? So if you think that you need to have your life perfect, you don't. There are heart surgeons out there who have a cheeseburger for dinner every single night. Okay? There are therapists that. That help people, like, recover from PTSD who have PTSD and they're. They're struggling with it themselves. There are relationship coaches who are divorced. Like, it happens. You do not have to have the perfect life in order to be really good at your work. All right? So when you're thinking about getting started, if one of these fears around, like, well, I'm not good enough yet, comes up, honey, I just want you to know it's so normal. It's so normal. Everyone feels this way. And, sure, like, you can absolutely hold out for being perfect, but it's. It's not going to happen. Like, perfect is is a made up concept that we've created to make ourselves feel bad, to keep ourselves from doing the actual exciting thing that we want to do with our lives, right? Perfect isn't a thing. And the other thing about perfect, so say you are on social media, you're promoting your business, and you project this, like, perfect, I have everything figured out Persona. And, you know, you. You don't let anyone see the cracks. You don't let anyone see any of the times you're struggling. You don't share anything about, like, like what you've had to go through in order to get to where you are, you know? You know, no one's going to trust that people have really good meters. We really do. Hi, Gorn. And I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, Jorn or Gorn. To be professional does not mean to. To doesn't mean to not be human. Those things happen. Yeah. 100. Yeah. We're humans. And here's the beautiful thing about being humans is that, like, we're around other humans who want connection with us as humans. They don't want connection with us as, like, this perfect, idealized version of ourselves. You know, the example I always like to point to because, like, I'm a woman, I was trained from a very young age to be ashamed of my body, to find things wrong with it, to, like, criticize myself, to, like, always have something that I'm not happy with with my body, like most women, right? And, you know, when you think about, like, who are you comfortable talking to about your insecurities about your body, like, you always think of people who also talked about having body insecurity, right? So, like, the example I always talk about when I'm, you know, bring this example up is like, Amy Schumer and Kim Kardashian, right? If I'm feeling uncomfortable, like, with my weight or like, maybe, like, I don't know, like, I had a breakout or something, like, and I had these two women to choose from to talk to about it. Not that this would ever happen in reality. There's no way in hell I'd want to talk to Kim Kardashian. Like, no. Like, have you seen that lady? Like, she's airbrushed constantly. Like, I, I wouldn't know if walking into that room, if I would just get shame, if I would get, like, I don't know, lectured about my diet, lectured about my skincare routine. Like, what is she gonna say to me? Whereas I know walking into the room with Amy Schumer, she'd be like, sit down, girl. Like, yeah, let's talk about this stuff. Like, like the fact that she's gone there first, right. And she is open about it makes her that much approachable. Right. So oftentimes, like, let's say you're a relationship coach and let me see. Oh, Jordan is totally fine. Okay. Thank you. I'm always. I'm always thrown. I think they're called umlauts. I'm always thrown by them. Let me see. Kardashian also got bullied, further cementing the need to be perfect. Yeah, 100%. You know, it's so sad. It's so sad. Like, I. I feel generally bad, genuinely bad for a lot of that family. It just doesn't seem like a natural way to grow up and live your life. But that's a completely other different conversation for another time, you know, you, You. Oh, sorry. Back to the example. So if you're a relationship coach and say you've really struggled with relationships in the past, maybe that's why you became sexual, such an expert on relationships. Right. Maybe you were raised with, like, a really warped belief about how the dynamics of a relationship function, and you ended up in some really bad relationships, and that just kind of led to you doing a lot of personal work, going through coaching, then becoming a coach yourself. You know, you're gonna be far more qualified to help someone who's having really negative, toxic relations, relationship dynamics. You're going to be far more qualified to help them out of that and into something better because you understand what it's like to be there. Right? You have this natural capacity to know all these things because you had to go through that yourself. Right? There's lived experience there. You know, let's go back to body stuff because it's such a great example. Like, let's say, you know, someone wants to lose £50, and it's like £50 they've already always carried, and it's more than what is technically healthy for them, and they're just ready to lose the weight and they go out and they look for a personal trainer slash nutritionist who can work with them. You know, are they going to go to the person who's always been £120 soaking wet and has never, like, struggled with their weight a day in their life? Or are they going to go with the person who is still technically 20 pounds overweight but has gone from much higher, lost some weight, gained some back, lost it, like, understands the pitfalls? Often they're going to go with the latter one. They're going to go with the person who has had some struggles and is not perfect right now, but because there's connection there. Because like they, there's this ability to say, oh, this is the person who will really understand what I'm going through. Thanks for sharing. Oh, I'm so happy. Thank you for being here. Yeah. People want to be understood. We want to be around other humans who won't make us feel more shame for what we're already going through. Right. So you being open about what you struggle with in your life, you being open about what it took for you to get here, there's nothing to be ashamed of that. Right. It's all things. They're all things that like feed into your credibility. You know, every time I talk to a client and they're struggling with this bit, like they, they're struggling because their life isn't perfect or they're not way where they want to be right now and they can't really, they don't feel grounded in helping other people get to where they want to go. I always have them go because all my clients have self help books in their house. I always have them go to their bookshelf and pull like five, five self help books. Right. And we go through and it's usually like the forward or the, the first chapter and it's like the introductory portion of the book. And it's always, always, always, always the story of how the author completely crashed and burned their own life in some way, shape or form. It's always that. It's always like, I was so bad with money, I had terrible relationships, this happened, lost my house, my dog ran away. Like all the things that could go wrong did go wrong. And they're telling you this, that they can build trust and it works. There's a reason why people go on to read the book because. Oh, cool. Well, if they climb themselves, climbed out of that deep of a hole themselves, they probably know how to help me get out of my little hole. Right. 15 point Katie. There's actually a reality show where fitness coaches gains the same amount of weight that the people are trying to coach. So I could lose it with them. Oh, my God. That sounds, I mean, I kind of like that, but it also sounds so unhealthy, like going up and down and weight like that. But that's fascinating. I had no idea. Let me see. Ex drug user helping current drug user. But when it comes to psychologists, therapists, coaches, they have to be perfect. Yeah. You know, there's a. I think, I think you're using that as an example. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the 12 step programs are such a great example of this as well. You know, it's not like they bring in mentors who have never been an alcoholic, who've never been a drug user, who've never had a gambling addiction. Right. Because someone who hasn't gone through that won't understand what it's like to have an addiction like that. Right? 100%. Yeah. But I mean, like, you know, for a therapist, for a coach, you don't necessarily have to have gone through that to be able to provide your service. But again, like, you trying to put on this face that you're perfect doesn't necessarily help you any anymore in your business. Let me see, let me see. Love, overtake process, but built a courage you can strengthen. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Anyway, anyway, so being perfect is completely overrated. Like, yeah, you want to look nice, go for it. You want to sound well versed in things. Absolutely. Study. Absolutely. Learn your stuff. You, you know, want to have perfect grammar. You know, download some kind of app that can check your grammar. Absolutely. Go for it. But do not worry about glossing over, you know, struggles you've had in your life. They are not things that you need to hide. Okay. You don't have to bear any vulnerable bits that you do not want to share. But I don't want you to feel afraid that someone might find out that, like, oh my God, like, you had a bad breakup once and now you can't be a relationship coach. So screw that, of course you can. Anyway, anyway, I'm gonna keep this short this evening because I'm tired and it's after nine and it's late. And I appreciate you guys for being here at Joe, Kelsey and Lauren, thank you for being over here on LinkedIn. I'm sorry, on Instagram. And I love, love big. Thank you for being here over on YouTube. Jordan, thank you for being here on, on LinkedIn. And Andrea, Celeste, thank you. And Joshua as well. I hope this is useful. Short and sweet tonight. Go be gloriously imperfect, everyone. Go, go and just be yourselves. The best thing about this is that the people who are, like actually lying to you when they sense that you're being yourself and that, like, they can be themselves around you. They are going to be so much more broad into your brand. Like, they're going to be so much more invested because they feel like they have a deeper connection to you. Right. When you only try to present your perfect bits, you don't get them. You don't get them. Because they sense that there's no authenticity there. Carlos. Yes. Thank you. It's funny. It's funny. No, no, no. It's no big deal. I just did. I was going off your username, but, yeah. Car. You look more like a Carlos than a Love. Big. Anyway. Anyway. But I will be going live every day this week. Earlier in the day, hopefully, if my schedule works out and permits. Anyway, thank you for being here, everyone. I am Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and I will see you all soon. Bye.