Season 1, Episode 6 - How Perfectionism is Blocking You From Your True Potential and What To Do Instead

As entrepreneurs, we can be really tough on ourselves in an effort to make everything “perfect.” You may think being an overachiever is what it takes to be successful, but in Jamie's experience, it can hinder success instead. Perfectionism, or the good girl mentality, can quickly lead to burnout! 

In the sixth episode of The Limitless Podcast, we will discuss how the good girl mentality affects how we do business and stops us from achieving success. We cover how you can stop trying to be perfect by tapping into nourishment, consistency, imperfection, and energy. Allow yourself to be human and accept that you don't need to appear perfect all the time! 

If you want to learn how to show up to your business on your own terms, this episode is for you.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode:

1. Learn how perfectionism harms your well-being and your business. 

2. Discover how to overcome perfectionism with Jamie's five tips. 

3. Understand that you’re human — imperfect and free to grow. Embrace your imperfections to create the perfect business and strategy suited for you.  

Resources

• Replace the good girl with the thriving rebel. Release perfection and show up in a sustainable way defined by you! Join my 6-week program, Social Expansion, focusing on your brand's freedom, growth, and resilience through social media. Learn more here!

• Sign up for Jamie’s 3 Steps to 30 Days of Content FREE MINI-COURSE today! 

• Sign up for Jamie’s 12-week Marketing Mastery business activation program today! 

• Setting Boundaries Will Set You Free by Nancy Levin

• Season 1, Episode 2: The Myths About Niching Down and Why You Should Create An Ideal Client Instead 

• Connect with Jamie on Instagram and Twitter

• Connect with Jamie on Linkedin: Jamie Ratermann

Episode Highlights

[03:38] What is the Good Girl Mentality? 

• The good girl mentality is when women feel that they have value only when they’re perfect, accomplished, and productive. 

• This mentality is often held up as an example to follow, but it can create limits for us. 

• In Jamie’s experience, people who have this mentality are the same people who usually hide their flaws, feel crushed by mistakes, and cannot get over failure. 

• They are also usually the type who will put others first before themselves.  

• Womanhood should be about leading people to a better world and being supported by a strong community. It's not about being a martyr and forgetting to take care of ourselves. 

[07:24] Stop Trying to be Perfect

• Working through the good girl mentality starts with perfectionism. Jamie shares having sprinters who spend two and a half hours on just one social media post! 

• It's not about having perfect posts all the time; it's about showing that you're an active creator.

• Perfectionism tells us that people will judge us if we're not put together all the time. 

• Meanwhile, some people may be achieving many things in their life, but they end up forgetting to take care of themselves. 

[10:57] How to Know if You Have a Good Girl Mentality

• Jamie knows someone has a good girl mentality if they say they need to figure things out before joining a program. 

• This mentality can stop people from seeking help because they see it as a weakness. 

• People with this mentality also tend to be people-pleasing. However, this can easily lead to burnout and overwhelm. 

• If you continue having this mentality, you will feel caged. 

[13:56] How to Change Adrenaline into Nourishment

• Jamie wants to help entrepreneurs uncage themselves from the good girl mentality so they can prioritize themselves and lean into what they want to do. 

• Adrenaline is all about the hustle and posting as much as you can. It commonly manifests in our to-do lists. 

• Every day, you will have four hours of deep focus. Yet, we expect ourselves to work optimally every hour of the day. 

• Instead of trying to accomplish 20 things on your to-do list, limit it to a maximum of three tasks. These should honor how you’re feeling and nurture you. 

• Start the day with this question: what is the one thing I can do today that will make me feel empowered? 

[20:13] It’s Not Always Positive

• You don’t need to feel positive and good all the time. Sometimes, it’s good for you to feel negative feelings. 

• If we ignore our feelings, we’re not going to be as productive or creative. 

• Anytime you’re hesitating to do something, ask yourself where the need for perfectionism is coming from. 

• Jamie recommends sitting with this feeling for at least 3 minutes without distractions. 

• Choose nourishment over adrenaline. 

Jamie: “Achieve at the best you can, at the best mental capability that you can be productive — because you're taking care of yourself, not because everyone else is being more productive than you are.” - Click Here to Tweet This

[23:05] Consistency in Your Own Terms 

• For masculine energy, consistency is about the output and doing as much as possible. 

• On the other hand, the feminine energy is all about what will move the needle for you and help you show up every day. 

• Gurus would teach posting every day, and some would even post more than once a day. For them, consistency means giving up time for content. 

• Instead of trying to post as much as you can, Jamie recommends just posting five days a week and seeing whether it works for you. She also recommends batching your content. 

• Content creation is a marketing habit, and you need to define accomplishment and consistency on your own terms. 

[28:14] Remember that You’re Human

• Remember that your products and services can change over time. You can redefine your ideal client; it doesn't need to stay the same forever. 

• If you’re trying to please people, you will be trapped in the thinking that you can’t change anything in your business. 

• Remember that you decide your future and how you want to create it.    

Jamie: “You decide your future. You decide how you want to create it. No algorithm, no audience member, no client is going to change it because you're the person that shows up every single day within your business and you want to make sure it feels good to you.” - Click Here to Tweet This

[31:18] Lead with Energy Rather Than Strategy 

• A strategy may be helpful, but it will not win people over. Energy should come first. 

• You may have the perfect strategy, but if you don’t feel good about it, you won’t be able to show up consistently. 

• Know how you want to show up and the impact you want to create. 

[35:01] Imperfection is Freedom

• None of us have everything figured out. 

• Imperfection allows you to grow the most. If we’re “perfect” all the time, we won’t learn anything. 

• Challenges are part of the journey. Instead of feeling defeated, ask yourself what you can learn from the situation. 

• Accept your imperfections and be able to laugh about them. In the full episode, Jamie shares how you can release expectations with a simple exercise of taking photos. 

Jamie: “Imperfection is key. The challenge is the journey — the challenges you face are going to exponentially lead you to success versus never having a hair out of place.” - Click Here to Tweet This

[38:52] How Jamie Wants to Help You

• Jamie launched the Social Expansion program to coach people on using multiple social media platforms. 

• Rather than creating the perfect strategy, Jamie helps clients create an empowered ecosystem around their business. 

• She guides clients through deconstructing the good girl mentality, coming back to who they are, and how they want to show up in their business. 

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Transcript

Jamie Ratermann: One of the main things that I get from this “good girl mentality”, when people are trying to work through this, is perfectionism. My sprinters, at least one sprinter every round is like, “Oh, I can't figure it out perfectly.” I've absolutely had sprinters come through who will spend a full two and a half hours on one post.

Whether it's the visual, whether it's the copy, they will be in there going, “No, this word needs to be this, oh, what's not working with this way,” and knowing that they are just creating this hard moment where they’re like, “The only way I'm going to post is if I don't think it could ever be better.”

You're listening to The Limitless Podcast, where we dig into all of the possibilities that exist when you lean into the big vision for your life and your business. Hi, my name is Jamie Ratterman, and I am a holistic business coach, meaning I am just as invested in growing your health as I am and growing your wealth. With 11+ years in brand and social media marketing, I help rebellious entrepreneurs master marketing, embody leadership, and say “fuck it” to the hustle.

This show is here to encourage you to become radically aware of your self-imposed limits, to break free of your shoulds, and to expand your brand into a movement led by you. The way I see it, marketing is a way of spreading your mission, social media is a gift for connection, and sales are where you build your strongest relationships. Let's dig in.

Hi, all! Today's episode six of The Limitless Podcast. We're going to dive in deep. We're going to be talking about what I call the “good girl complex” and how it shows up all the time for entrepreneurs who are trying to grow their business. So knowing that, today's episode, we're going to be diving into the mentality behind it, how we want to deconstruct this silly thing that might be blocking you from your next big growth, your next big explosive expansion. Cannot wait to chat more.

Hello, lovelies, and welcome to episode six of The Limitless Podcast. I am so excited to be here. It is so fun to do this. It's so fun to be able to share my own musings, the things that are happening within my coaching containers, the things that I want you to know, as entrepreneurs, as leaders in business, as people who are making big impact and big change in the online world.

Now, I want to encourage you to absolutely share what you find to be really insightful, what you find to be helpful, or even things that you agree with, to your Instagram stories, to Twitter, if you'd like — whatever is your platform of choice, as long as you tag me. Tag me at @jamieratermann.

I'm happy to continue to promote you for sharing and listening in on this podcast. It's really important that if I help you, I can help other people like you. And by sharing just a quick takeaway, that will be so helpful. So an easy way to do that is to simply just take a screenshot of this podcast and share one small thing that you found to be really helpful. That thumbnail of me giving you that big ol smile, it's there for a reason, so allow that to be something you share. It would really help me as I continue to build this audience and help as many people as I can.

If you haven't rated or reviewed this podcast yet, please go ahead and do that as well, as I will continue to be dishing out new episodes all the time and I will absolutely be reading your feedback so that I can make this a better place. So always, always trying to optimize, of course. So please do that sharing. I'm so excited. Let's dive in though.

Today, I am talking about something that plagues every aspect of the entrepreneurs in my business. Everybody who's come through my door has in some way, shape, or form dealt with the concept, the complex, the mentality that I'm going to be talking about today. So today, we're talking about deconstructing the “good girl”.

The good girl is a mentality where we as women find value in being perfect. Being role models. Not letting ourselves show when we're sweating a little, when we're having a little bit of a bad day, whatever it might look like. So different definitions of the good girl are, you know, the Type A student, the one who always has her shit together, the one perfect role model, the one who shows up without a hair out of place, the one who always is there for everyone.

In general, it's this A+ student that we have been able to take from childhood and continue into our entrepreneurship, our career, all of the above. But it's this idea that women have value only when we are accomplished, valued, productive, and that we're not allowed to show imperfections. So knowing that this good girl mentality has so many places in society that really hold us back, that create limits for us.

We hold it up like it's a really great example like, “Oh, she's Type A, she's always got everything organized.” Those words are flowery and they're beautiful, right? That by all means, but they're just like a cage in disguise.

In my world, whenever I have somebody who's a little bit of a perfectionist, who was once an A+ student, who was doing all the things, she also happens to be the one who wants to hide her flaws, feels a bit destroyed by a small mistake, cannot get over failure, or has a little bit of a tough time bouncing back, who can not get started. She wants to have everything figured out before she gets started. Things have to be perfect, not a hair out of place. Figuring things out before they get started.

What I really want to dive into is that they want to be a martyr for their friends. They will put themselves last for their friends, for their clients, for their family, and feel resentful for it. That's a part of it. That's a big thing. Whenever you aren't taking care of yourself, whenever you are realizing that you would drop anything for anyone that needs you, you're a martyr. And I wrote this in an email — a really wonderful engagement from it saying like, womanhood is actually us leading people to a better world, a better impact. Womanhood is absolutely supported by a strong community. And within that community, we get to create this really warm, strong connection and ripple that out. That's what womanhood is.

We just we tend to have friendships, we tend to want to have sisterhood in our growth, and it’s something that's great, right, because friendships, relationships — for all the men out there, most women have at least two to three really strong relationships as they get older. And we end up living longer because of it. It's part of the Blue Zone studies. But also too, we know that it's better to do this together, right. But when we take on the martyr role, when we take on motherhood as martyrdom, or, you know, being the “mom friend” as martyrdom, right, we forget what we need, we forget what we really want, and we put the image of us or how we can think that others view us higher than the standards of what we need for ourselves.

The good girl complex is something that I would love to dismantle because it absolutely can slow people down from making big change from going towards that big vision. So that's what I'm in the business of. I want you to see your online business through this big vision that you have for not only your life, but the kind of movement you want to make, the kind of people you want to help, and understanding that the more we can put your message out there, in a potent way that feels honored to you.

The more energized you're going to be within your business, the more likely you're going to enjoy the fruits of your labor, the wealth of being able to go travel, see friends, do whatever you need to enjoy all the work that you do. That is something that is important to me. But before we can really create these amazing offers, this amazing strategy, all of these things that are going to really move the needle for you, there's always an energetic piece, there's always a mentality and mindset we have to work through. And the good girl is definitely that.

One of the main things that I get from this “good girl mentality”, when people are trying to work through this, is perfectionism. My sprinters, at least one sprinter every round is like, “Oh, I can't figure it out perfectly.” I've absolutely had sprinters come through who will spend a full two and a half hours on one post.

Whether it's the visual, whether it's the copy, they will be in there going, “No, this word needs to be this, oh, what's not working with this way,” and knowing that they are just creating this hard moment where they’re like, “The only way I'm going to post is if I don't think it could ever be better.”

I can tell you: one, putting up posts that are B+ work is absolutely going to do you better over and over again, than trying to hit an A+ every single time. Mostly because the more we can put out, the more we can have out on social media, the better we get at being content creators. So that's a part of this.

Perfectionism really is us having a bit of doubt that if we don't show up as this perfect role model, as this organized professional, frickin rock star at all times, that we're going to be judged or we're not going to be considered quote-unquote good enough for what we do. And that again, goes back to this good girl, how do we rank against what others would validate us? So that's one.

In general, I've absolutely noticed the people that seem to have everything figured out, everything's working for them, they're literally from morning to evening, completely filled, feeling like they are just kicking ass — you know, when you see them from the outside, they're like, “Wow, they're doing a lot.” Those are the people that end up forgetting about themselves.

They might be doing a lot on the to-do list, they might be doing a lot within their business, but they forget themselves. They're sleep-deprived. They're forgetting meals. They forgot to see their friends. There's a lot that's happening. So the good girl usually will forget herself, so that she looks put together. So knowing that that's a part of this.

Now, the more I say these things, the more I get to look at this and be like, “Wow, I've been through that stage. Yep, I've been through that stage.” And these things get to be things I get to grow through. So know, as I'm speaking about this, I'm just thinking to myself, “Yep, I remember the first time I like lost my mind what I was going to put on IG live.”

The first time I went live on Instagram, I had a mini-meltdown, like, “What’ll people think of what I look like? And how does this,” like there was absolutely that moment. Even when I would do all-nighters or work through that instead of what it must feel like to allow myself to position my health over anything else.

The next thing we’re working on with this is that whenever I have somebody who I can tell wants to impress me before they join a coaching program has this common phrase, “I need to figure things out first,” in quotations, “Need to figure things out first before I seek help.” There was one time I had somebody in my Instagram messages going like, “Oh, before I join Marketing Mastery, I have to figure out my website, and I got to figure out my content and what my offers are going to be. And I got to figure that out before I join your program.”

I was like, “Well, wait, what?” My reply was, “Do you know that is one of the main things that my program does? We build a converting website, we create content that's empowering to you, we make sure that your offers are on point, like that is exactly what this program is about.” So like her response was like, “Oh, yeah, right.” But this idea that before she's allowed to walk into a program like that, that would be supportive and helpful, she wants to feel accomplished before it's there.

Knowing that sometimes the good girl doesn't want to seek help, because seeking help can feel like a weakness in some way. So knowing that's one part of it. The next one is a doozy. So the next one, whenever we're thinking about the mental hurdles that come through, what a good girl goes through, is people-pleasing. So people-pleasing is absolutely something that we could dive into. I'm sure there's an upcoming episode, we'll be talking about boundaries and all the things. But in this realm, it goes back to putting themselves last.

People-pleasing is where you're going to prioritize everyone else's feelings, everyone else's energy over yourself. And it can really turn into problems not only for you, but for others. So one example of this is that I will have somebody on my team who I will be handing over, you know, “Hey, will you handle this for me, I have four things I want you to do this week, can you handle that?” And they're, you know, their face’s a little bit scrunched and they're like, “Yeah, I can do it.” And I'm like, “Are you sure?” And they're like, “Yeah, of course, of course.” And then I find out two days later, they couldn't do that they were already overloaded.

That people pleaser does not only affect you, but can affect the people that you're saying too many yesses to. People-pleasing is essentially us forgetting to set boundaries that are going to support us. I'm actually currently reading a book called Boundaries Will Set You Free by Nancy Levin, which is fantastic. And it absolutely dives into all of this, which I'll definitely be talking about more in the future.

Really what it is though, the good girl, if you subscribe to it, if you continue to want to look this way, appeal as this good girl, this Type A, someone who's always in control, the one who's really looking for validation in a lot of places, you're going to feel caged. Going to feel caged in the fact that you are only going to follow the path that you know is going to work, you're only going to follow the path that you've seen others do and what it feels like for them. But ultimately, I am in the business of helping rebellious entrepreneurs.

I want you to rebel against what mom, dad, brother, sister told you you should have been when you were younger. What it means to be a good girl means instead now for us uncage you from that, for us allow you to prioritize yourself to lean into — the most craziest thing you want to do within your business, that's what it means to be rebellious. To do something that everyone else is going to say is overwhelming, is hard, is difficult and you're like, “I'm going to do it my way. I want to handle it my way.”

A big part of the way in which I coach entrepreneurs and I want to help people is for us to decide what we want our lifestyle to be like, us to, of course, become more limitless — hello, podcast name. But knowing that some of these internalized behaviors, internalized standards limits, processes can affect us the most. So here's a couple ways to think through and deconstruct the “good girl” as it applies to your business, as it applies to being online, we're going to dive in.

First and foremost, I want to talk about how there's a side of the way we've been taught of how to be productive, and how to put things out there. For this one in particular, I call this the one here, Leaning Into Adrenaline Versus Nourishment. Adrenaline versus nourishment. So adrenaline is trying to put as many things out there and really kicking your ass and spreading posts all over the internet and putting out every offer you can possibly think of and ignoring anything else until the work is done. The hustle, the hustle, the hustle.

Whenever you are in like this adrenaline state, you're making sure you post like seven times a week, you're making sure that you are putting things up, you're going to ignore that it's 12:30 at night, because it's the adrenaline, the adrenaline and then you're like, you're going to be really eager to see what happens. You're like, “I put all this work in. People must come, people must make this work.”

This adrenaline feeling, you're going to find it's going to be like mentally fatiguing. I always know when I'm in a pseudo-adrenaline state, because I'm like, “Have I breathed yet today? Like, I'll have like, do I need to take a breath? Yes, I do.” I'll walk away, or even when it gets to like 4:30 at night, it'll usually be my note to be like, “How many times I've gotten up for the desk today? Now's the time; 4:30 will be that moment.”

Adrenaline is a large part of capitalism, of productive culture, of putting out as much as you can, no matter how it makes you feel, acting like we’re machines. So leaning into accomplishments, versus how we're feeling, or how we can nourish our best brainpower to be able to show up in the way that we want to.

A perfect example of this is the to-do list. The to-do list is a thing to keep us organized and focused and being able to get through the week and being able to create steps towards the bigger movement, all the things, but I know each and every one of you, now you tell me, you let me know, you can DM me on the gram, I want to hear all about it — how many things you regularly put on your to do list.

What do you expect of yourself on the day-to-day, because I can tell you and this is always surprising to people, we have four good hours of deep focus, four good hours of deep focus a day. Doesn't mean we can't have you know, a call, some admin work here and there that we’re a little bit distracted. But as far as your creativity, problem-solving, really feeling dedicated and sharp, you have four good hours.

Now I'm going to just share where this came from. I was sitting on a therapist’s couch when I talked about this. I was going like, “Well, you know, I'm just not, I'm behind. I'm not working. I can't get all this done. And everyone else is just more productive than me. Sometimes I just work until, you know, nine o'clock and I'm trying to work through it.” And she goes, “Nine o'clock. What do you mean, is it quality work?” And I just looked at him like “what”, and she and she shared this fact: you only have four good hours. Four good hours of deep focus.

Clearly, there's something wrong, we all have eight-hour work days, it's the normal, right? That's the norm, we have 40-hour work weeks, and we're expecting ourselves to push to hit the to-do lists as much as we can. So this is where really making a change can help. So instead of forcing yourself to get to the 20 things that you would love to get through today on that to-do list, bring it down to one, bring it down to no more than three.

If it turns out that you can get to four or five, six after those first three, power to you. But really what it comes down to is honoring how you're feeling, honoring how to nurture your mind and your body so that you can put out the best that you can. So this is where deconstructing the good girl comes in.

Being over-accomplished, being an overachiever, being the one that checks off everything on their to-do list every day does not actually coincide with how your mind works. It's not something that's going to help you longevity-wise, it's not a resilience thing; you're going to burn out if you try to be the good girl each and every day. So a quick way to think through this is in a positive setting whenever you wake up every morning instead of going, “Oh, here's the 20 things I got to do on my to-do list,” ask yourself the one question: What one thing, if I did one thing today, would make me feel empowered? What's the one thing? And put that first.

If it's something with work of course, make sure it's the first thing you do before you open the email. Another thing I have clients do is to take the five minutes after they're getting out of their grogginess in bed and just envision kind of hour-by-hour how they’d like their day to go, leaning into the feels of the day.

What do you want the morning to feel like okay, you're going to get a workout in, you want to feel really focused, no distraction with work. The afternoon is client calls, you want to make sure you're intentional and really listening. Being able to envision each part of your day, you're leaning into the feel of how you'd like it to be. And you're going to be more likely to adjust to that.

On the other side of this, when you're having a negative moment, instead of forcing yourself to hit the to-do list no matter what, lean into the feel. So one in particular thing, when it comes to even the coaching and positive mindset, all the things that are out there around this is that sometimes you have to feel the negative feelings, sometimes it's going to be better for you to sit in the shit, than to try to work your way around it, because it's going to come back anyway.

If you're feeling fear, and you're just feeling this fear over and over again, instead of like, shoving it down and go like, “Nope, I'm just going to do things and that'll be fine.” You want to lean into your nervous system, you're going to hear me talk about this a lot, the more episodes you listen to. Our nervous system controls us. If we ignore emotions, if we ignore feelings, and we don't let them process themselves, we're going to in general, not be as productive, not be as creative, not feel as energized as we can.

Let's say you're in the state of fear of perfectionism, just like I was mentioning before, right? Going, “Oh, it's not perfect. So I can't put it out there.” If you just keep trying to fix it and change it until it's perfect. Instead of sitting back and going, “Okay, what is really coming up here? Why do I want this to be so perfect?” Maybe it's because you're comparing yourself to somebody else. Maybe it's an old story from when you were a kid and you didn't get on the honor roll, maybe it's your timid because it's the first time you've ever done something like this, whatever it might be, you want to sit back and ask yourself the question: Where is this need for perfectionism coming from?

I will sometimes put on a timer, I will put on a timer for three minutes. And I will sit, no distractions, no music, none of it. And if I'm feeling these negative feelings, I want to allow myself to feel them, sit with them. It's not easy. It's not fun. But it last three minutes, I get over it,  bounce back a lot faster. Versus past me, past Jamie, who would be working in the late hours in the evening going, “If I do more then I'll never feel this way again. If I do more, I will be better than anyone else.” And that's just not accurate. So making sure when we're thinking about how we want to conduct ourselves, conduct our week, you want to lean towards nourishment, you want to nourish your feelings, you want to nourish your body and your mental capabilities over that feeling of adrenaline. Productivity for productivity’s sake — no, that's not what we're going for.

We're releasing the good girl in this context, it's not good to be an overachiever, it's not good for your body, it's not good for your mind. Instead, achieve at the best you can at the best mental capability that you can. Be productive, because you're taking care of yourself, not because everyone else is being more productive in you are. Allowing that to be important.

I can't talk about the good girl without talking about consistency. So consistency is the next one here and how there's different levels of this. So this is where a little bit of the masculine versus feminine energy come in. I'm sure many of you may have heard about this. But masculine energy is again, that output over ritual. How to do as much as you can, how to lift at the heaviest push you can; trying to think of how this relates — versus what's actually going to move the needle for you, what's actually going to allow you to show up every single day.

There's a lot of Instagram gurus out there that are going to tell you that you should post seven days a week, I've absolutely met content creators that are posting 5+ posts a day, which I — there's just a lot, that's just a lot of content. But knowing that there is a culture out there of — consistency means literally giving up so much time to making sure you're putting out tons of content all the time.

Now, you're entrepreneurs, I assume. Most of you are entrepreneurs who are going to be listening to me. You have a business, on top of the content you create, you are a leader, you are the person that is creating products or creating services. So you need to bring your energy in there just as much as what it means to be a content creator. So what this can look like, is the fact that if you're trying to hit these seven-post goals, if you're trying to just get everything out there as much as you can without intention without creating a ritual, it's a recipe for burnout.

I usually like to recommend if you're trying to grow on Instagram, shoot for five days a week, five days a week you post in the feed in some way whether that's a reel, whether that's a carousel, static posts, whatever it might look like — try to getting out five posts a week. As I say that, during sprints, during anything else, I immediately follow up with, And you can also tell me to fuck right off. You can also tell me that nah, Jamie, five posts a week is not going to work for me.”

This is where you have a deeper inner knowing of what it means to be consistent for you in this moment. So five is great, it's a recommendation, there's definitely other people that will tell you to post more than that, I like to say five, because it allows you to create a really wonderful goal. But as I say that there are times where I post three times a week, and that's fine. Really what it means as far as algorithms are concerned, if they see you as an active member, meaning you are showing up week over week, they're going to see you as an active user. Instagram is absolutely that thing. So if you post seven times in one week, and we don't see you for the next four, that is going to not perform well for you. But at the end of the day, it's also not you honoring that this is a new creative ritual for you.

Content creation is absolutely a marketing habit, you're creating a habit of promoting your message, your business, what it looks like. So this is where you define what it means to be accomplished, what it means to be consistent, instead of what everyone else is telling you. Like I'm saying, deconstructing the good girl, we're not going to play to what everyone else tells you to do, you're going to say what feels good to me, what is right to me, and also honoring the fact that you're going to change from season to season.

It's Aries season right now, as I'm recording this, in general, feeling that fire — if you're not an astrology person, in general, we have more daylight in the day, we're not slumbering and cold weather, we're going to be more energized, more activated, so it's going to be easier for me to put out content a little more often. And these months, as a small-team entrepreneur, that is something I consider going like, “Okay, maybe it's five right now, but it's going to be three in the fall.” And even within that, combining, batching your content and flexibility.

Honoring the different levels of consistency, batching your content, knowing your content ideas in advance can allow you to show up more consistently. But also, it gives you freedom, freedom to say “Nope, I don't want to post that today, something else is weighing heavily on my heart right now.” So that is something to consider, to know that you can create flexibility by accepting that you're not always going to be on, you're not always going to have creativity every single day. So if you batch, you can always have something you can post. But if you decide that that's not what you want, and you're feeling really creative, you're feeling the juice, you get to change it.

Whenever I'm talking about consistency, as it relates to the good girl, is defining it for yourself, not allowing outer validation to be there. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm here as a coach, I'm here as somebody who will share what I recommend for others. But my goal is to allow you to choose that for yourself.

You're going to find once you feel like you have that control, these are the few things you can control, right, you can't always control how much engagement you get. But if you can control, “Okay, my desire is to put out three posts a week,” and you hit that over and over again, one, the algorithm will appreciate you but two, you're going to find that you trust yourself, you're proud of yourself for hitting that over and over again. So getting really to define consistency for yourself.

The next piece is knowing that we are human, and we get to evolve. So this came up at a Marketing Mastery call the other day where clients of mine were thinking about their different offers, what they want to do. And they were talking about how there's a silly notion that memberships are a quote-unquote time suck. Someone said that to them. And I just did this like, “Oh, okay, what was your experience with the membership?”

Clearly, I'm a little biased, I run my own membership. And I enjoy it, I enjoy every minute of it. But within that, what the real question was, was saying like, “Oh, well, if you put out the offer, you have to be consistently doing the same thing. We have to do it over and over again without change.” And let's just put it out there. Bullshit. No, if you are an entrepreneur, and even too if you're a bigger business, you have every right to change your products or services whenever you want to.

Knowing that, the question within this was when memberships come up, you want them to evolve, you want all of your offers to evolve, you also want your content to evolve. So going back to Episode Two, and we were talking about niche, and how — what happened, as soon as I said that, called it a niche on Episode Two, I'm now using that word more often, your ideal clients.

Once you define your ideal client, you can change it later. It doesn't always have to be the same thing. You get to change your ideal client as you want and you get to make sure you preserve your energy. So this is the same thing that goes for your business, for your offers. If tomorrow you decide “I'm not going to run it the same way, we're going to get rid of these lessons, we're going to do something new,” sure.

If I decide tomorrow that the product that people love the most, I'm going to have it retire after this season, you can do that, you have every right to do it. So when this came up during this coaching call was me going like, “I have every right tomorrow to retire the sprint if I want to, I don't plan to, because I absolutely optimize, evolved, and change them. And will continue to, because I want that for the people that have been along with me. But also too I will not stay stuck.”

This is where people-pleasing comes into play. So I'm if I'm trying to be the good girl, I want to people-please at the expense of my own well-being. I want nothing to ever change, that everyone likes my offers, even though I'm not feeling the energy around them. So knowing that this is a key thing where you get to evolve. A good girl doesn't exactly get to evolve, she caters to others. You as the rebellious spirit that you are get to choose how you go into each of these things. But also, you decide your time. And within that, you decide your future.

You decide how you want to create it. No algorithm, no audience member, no client is going to change it because you're the person that shows up every single day within your business and you want to make sure it feels good to you. So get rebellious about what that looks like.

The next piece is around the fact that — I think this might be a little bit surprising, is that you want to lead a business more with your energy than you do with strategy. I have 11 years of strategy in me; I know this one really deep within my heart here. But whenever I am talking about what it means to build a marketing ecosystem around your offer, what you're promoting strategy is important. It's helpful, it's a foundation, it's a structure, but it's not going to win over low energy, over you know, not feeling passionate about what you're doing. So energetics is the lead. Energetics first, strategy second, always.

You can have the most beautiful email list sign up, you can have the great content strategy, you can have a website that you love, you can have the offer suite that you want to put together. But if you don't feel good about any of those, you don't want to show up consistently towards that content strategy, then it's not going to happen, it's just simply not going to happen.

You're not going to have the — how content creation is absolutely an energy exchange, that is going to fall flat, even though you might have the right formula for your copy, the right formula for your carousel. So I can share those things. But if you're like, “I'm just like putting it out as I'm supposed to, this doesn't feel meaningful, passionate to me, I'm not understanding the mindset of the audience,” it's going to fall flat.

Part of this really also comes into kind of your launch expectations. When you're launching a new product, strategy might tell you that you're going to get 30 people on the program, no problem. Strategy might tell you that you're posting enough, you're doing all the things, people are going to come right on in.

You have this control, you believe like, “If I do this, then I absolutely get this result.” Now I can tell you, that's just not how things work. But strategy is there to allow it to be easy for the person who is energetically aligned with you, who's been loving the content, because they know it's passionate for you to come in. But you can't put these expectations on it.

Sometimes it's important to put, you know, a desired goal out there, a desired, “Okay, you know what, I would love to have 12 people in this program, that will be really fantastic. I'm going to detach from that though, I'm going to show up because this is the meaning of my program. This is why I'm doing this. I want people to use every aspect of the internet. And just show them that is not difficult. It is something that can absolutely be empowering. For an hour a week, I will show up and talk about social expansion like that every day.

If I sat here and was like, “I want this many people in the program, where are they, how's it going to be,” I'm not going to want to show up as much, I'm not going to want to talk about it in the same way, I'm not going to have the energy behind it. That's what you want to think about when you go into a launch. That's what you want to think about it about how this works.

This plays into the good girl complex for the fact that you are only accomplished or if you are actually this organized, not a hair out of place person, everything runs smoothly. Nothing can ever fall out of place. So strategy is absolutely a place that you might find yourself wanting to control or really think that if you can, you know white-knuckle it, that people will come to you. This is where you need to release it.

Allow it to be like, “Okay, energetically I feel like these people are going to come to me, I have everything set up the way I’d like to. Alright, what's the point? What's the meaning? Why do I want to show up today? What kind of impact am I making?” That's how you switch that energy and allow it to be a purpose within you, versus “I must do this or people will think less of me”, allowing that to be freedom for you.

The last piece is to really talk about the fact that imperfection is freedom. Imperfection is lovely. But part of it too, is that we're all hot messes. We all have hot mess moments, none of us have everything figured out. You DM me, the entrepreneur that you think has never had something bad happen imperfectly happened to her, I will share with you the things that I witness, each and every one of my entrepreneur circle has had hiccups, but I like to call them hot mess moments, because all of us are a little bit of a hot mess. All of us are a little bit of a hot mess.

Why this is important is that imperfection is going to allow you to grow the most. If we all were perfect examples of what we wanted in our day-to-day, if we all never slipped up and never had a hiccup, we wouldn't learn shit. We wouldn't learn how to get better. So the challenge, the challenges you're facing is the journey.

Sometimes whenever things are just not working really well for me, and I know this is true for others, is that instead of sitting there going, like, “Why me? Why is this keep happening to me?” I flip it and go, “What is the universe telling me I need to learn right now?” or just simply going, “What am I supposed to learn from this situation? How is it supposed to be for me?” So that is what you want to lean into.

The best part of this too is that have you ever had a full-on giggle fit, laughing at yourself, how the best laughter is at yourself. The best laughter is laughing at how silly you are, how you're working through things, trying to figure something out. Laughter is such a reward when it comes to accepting that imperfection will happen.

A really great example of this is I like to challenge my clients, if they've never taken photos of themselves, or they've never even done a brand shoot, all of the above to, on a regular basis, take their own photos of themselves.

I know this sounds crazy, because you know, I would definitely tell you that brand photographers can be really helpful and amazing. But when you walk into a photoshoot, after you've been taking your own photos for a while, there's a whole different level of confidence, there's a whole different level of you get to laugh things off, and allow yourself to feel free about it. And this is why I like to do a self-portrait challenge.

Whenever I have a client who will be creating these portraits, the number one thing that I get back from them is like, “Oh my gosh, I have laughed so hard at myself for the last hour. I've got some good photos, I think this is a lot more fun than what I thought it was going to be.”

Taking off this block, this limit that if you take photos of yourself, they're going to look like crap. Or you're going to really be thinking like you look crazy, whatever it is, and go like, “Let's have fun with this. I'm sure I'm going to look silly, stupid, whatever it might be.” But then you take them and then you go like, “Oh, wow, that's pretty good,” or, “Oh, that was fun,” and it becomes this exercise of accepting your imperfections, accepting that this gets to be fun when we stop putting the bar so high, when we take the pressure off.

Imperfection is key. The challenge is the journey. The challenges you face, are going to exponentially lead you to success versus never having a hair out of place, versus never putting out a post that doesn't get as much engagement, versus never having a bad launch, we want to have the challenge so that we get to bounce back bigger, better all of the above.

This is just a couple of ways to think about the good girl complex. I will talk about this so much because again, I deal with it all the time. And one of the big things that comes up for this is that I'm somebody who wants to show and teach and coach about how to use multiple platforms online — website, email, but right now, of course, social expansion.

Social expansion is me showing you how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, in addition to Instagram, to grow your business, accelerate your growth, really feel that freedom. Why this is really important is that the number one thing that usually gets asked me is like, “Oh, wow, that sounds like a lot,” but what's actually happening is somebody telling me like, “Oh, I think I have to show up perfectly on every account,” or, “I have to put out as much content as I can,” or, “This strategy doesn't work for me, I want to give up on it.” All of these things are built into this good girl mentality that if I don't do this perfectly, it's not worth my time. And this is where I want you to challenge that.

I want you to think about what it would feel like to create an empowering ecosystem around your business. To understand that if you're feeling stuck using one platform or wheezing, like or just being able to not really think about how one message gets to be expansive, this is where you change that. So if you're feeling stuck in thinking that everything must be perfect, you got to show up all the time, and got to be overly consistent, you got to beat the competition, whatever it might be. This is where you come back to who you are.

This is where we break this down and allow you to change that going, “Alright, I'm going to show up knowing how to do this, I'm going to show up imperfectly and get better at this,” and that's exactly what the six-week program is about. We always start with deconstructing the good girl, always start with knowing that if I'm telling you to use Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter, I'm not telling you to try to spray as much content as you can across places, we're diving into the strengths of those platforms, and allowing you to expand in a nurturing way, not an adrenaline way, expand in a way that you get to evolve with. You hear what I'm talking about here, right?

I want to invite you into this six-week program, we're starting soon. So this is my push before we begin, if you want to learn how to do these things, if you want to just add one hour a week to expanding your message across the internet, this is what the six-week program is about. So this is where I make sure that we essentially master the emotion behind being a solopreneur and making sure we create freedom, growth, and resilience for your business. So I'll drop it in the show notes. We'll keep talking about this. Let me know what you think. Rate and review this, all of the above, but I'll make sure that we have that in there and you can get started.