Mark Kohler says perfectionism paralyzes people. He ran a janitorial business in the 1990s, bidding on city contracts he didn't know how to do, then learned on the job at Home Depot. Start messy, figure it out as you go.
Chapters
Building the airplane in the air. That's a term that's used a lot out there in sometimes good ways and sometimes bad ways. And I want to use it in a good way. So many people get into procrastination and take no action at all. They're just like, I don't know what to do so I do nothing. Or it's got to be perfect because I'm embarrassed. I can't go on social media and say I'm doing this because I'm going to look like a failure. Or we have all these self judgments and issues that hold us back from just taking action. People, it's okay to build the plane in the air in this situation. You've got to. I'll give one example. So when I was a janitor for eight years, I owned a janitorial business when I was going through undergrad in law school. And what was funny, this was back in the 90s, pre YouTube. But I was still so confident that if someone called up and said, hey, can you wax this floor or can you paint this or can you fix this wall or can you do this? I remember the city would have bids to go out for different things. And back then you'd go down to the city and get this report that would say, do you want to bid on this job? And there were so many times I had no clue how to do it, but I was like, I'm going to figure this out. So I'd go to the Home Depot and I'd say, how do I do this? And learn how to do it on the job. And sometimes it took a little longer, but I still made money and figured it out along the way. And so it's okay, you don't have to have the plane built before you get going off here. Go just figure it out. YouTube University it's pretty cool.