Dealing with Perfectionism and Overwhelm with Brian Kavicky

Brian Kavicky [00:00:00]:

If I'm somebody that says I need to make a perfect plan before I execute the plan, your assumption is that you have a plan in you that is going to be perfect and that is very arrogant. You're basically saying, I'm a mind reader, I know the future and I'm going to prepare for that instead of going in and being present and being human in that conversation and not rolling with assumptions or trying to make your plan happen. So it's actually an arrogance killer to have you go in unprepared because you'll show up with humility and curiosity.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:33]:

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:37]:

Awesome roles in life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:38]:

Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy and ever since, my husband, junior and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you too. I’m Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared Confident.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:15]:

Today's conversation is another one in our monthly ongoing series with Brian Kavicky. If you were to stop and ask me about some of the most influential people in my life, those who have truly changed the trajectory of my business, my life, and my understanding of how the world works, there is no doubt Brian would be on that list. So who is Brian? Well, his title is VP sales management consultant at Lushin, which is like, really not that helpful. His clients say things like, Brian and the team at Lushin have been an invaluable resource as we scaled our sales team or Brian has helped our organization in ways I couldn't have imagined and has become a vital part of our team. And I look forward to working with him for years to come. As I have scaled my own businesses, my mindset, and my abilities, Brian has been a front seat partner to me in my own growth. So if you are struggling to grow your business, your profits, your people, or your business is growing, but you feel like you're kind of getting trampled in the process, Brian is a voice you have got to tune into. Okay, so enough with the backdrop.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:02:25]:

Let's get to the conversation. So I'm pumped for today's episode. We're going to talk about two different topics that are related we think could be, but these really came from listener questions when I asked my audience, hey, what's hard in life right now? One of the things that I got back a couple different times is the idea of I'm battling perfectionism. I get this, like, as an achiever, wanting to, like, do all the things, demand. Excellence is one of my personal values. It's good in concept, but it can be a trap. So, Brian, help us. When somebody says, what's hard in my life right now? And they say, battling perfectionism, where do we go with this?

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Brian Kavicky [00:03:02]:

The first thing is to realize that that is a self imposed standard that nobody said, you have to be perfect. Nobody's asked you to be perfect. You've decided that perfect is the only standard to hold yourself to, and therefore everything comes after that. So you're holding yourself to a standard that nobody else is. Nobody. And on top of that, nobody wants you to be perfect. If you look at leadership, one of the key ingredients to building trust with your team is vulnerability, which is admitting you don't have all the answers. So what happens is you put on this perfectionism armor.

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Brian Kavicky [00:03:37]:

You say, I have to have this on. Everything has to be perfect. I have to be perfect. And then you're carrying the weight of that armor with you everywhere you go, and it's impacting others because you're holding them to some standard. So for you, if you say, well, I have a value of excellence, excellence is okay. Excellence is we're meeting the expectations that we've set and agreed to. Perfectionism means we cannot find a flaw. And so as long as you're not getting stuck in being flawless, you're probably okay, and that can be productive.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:10]:

So where does this come from? And specifically, my audience is predominantly women. So why does perfectionism show up in your line of work with people? And where does this come from? If nobody's expecting this of us other than ourselves, where does it sprout? Like, how does it start to take control?

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Brian Kavicky [00:04:29]:

I think part of it is it's natural to us in human beings to say, we're out to please, but then we add things on top of that. My parents needed me to be perfect. They needed me to be a good student. They demanded it. Well, that was for them, not for you, because your performance was what they were basing their identity on, and they asked you to do that. It wasn't always in your best interest. So it could come from your parents, it could come from your environment. Maybe you're playing the comparison game and you're saying, hey, my friends, my peers, everybody around me is doing better than I am.

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Brian Kavicky [00:05:07]:

I have to do better. So you set the standard that this is what I'm supposed to do. And what you haven't done is you haven't looked at why those people are doing what they do. To know if it's healthy or unhealthy to make those decisions for yourself. It could be from your spouse, and the spouse is saying, this is what I need you to be, but they're telling you what they need, and you're interpreting that as, I have to be perfect, not what they actually said that they needed from you.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:35]:

I feel like early in my career, this started because I was like, I knew I was less qualified than other people on the street. That's at least how I interpreted it. Because I was so young, I didn't have a marketing degree, I hadn't worked in an agency. And so I felt like if I was more prepared, like, just more. Whatever the thing was, that was how I was gonna win. And I remember you telling me that I had to start going into meetings unprepared. Was that a tool to help get this unstuck? Or is that not a related.

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Brian Kavicky [00:06:10]:

So perfectionism is arrogance in disguise. If I'm somebody that says, I need to make a perfect plan before I execute the plan, your assumption is that you have a plan in you that is going to be perfect, and that is very arrogant. So in the context of going into a meeting where you're selling or meeting with clients, and you're going in going, I have to prepare, and I have to get ready for everything that's going to occur, you're basically saying, I'm a mind reader. I know the future, and I'm going to prepare for that, instead of going in and being present and being human in that conversation and not rolling with assumptions or trying to make your plan happen. So it's actually an arrogance killer to have you go in unprepared, because you'll show up with humility and curiosity.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:56]:

But I can see myself, and I wish this person who'd written this could sit here in this conversation with you to say, like, in my healthy self, I can hear you say, that's super arrogant for you to say that you have a perfect plan in you. But if I'm in a place where my mind is stuck in perfection is, it's like, well, how dare you? What do you mean, I'm arrogant? Here's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to provide for my family. I'm trying to be my best self. I'm trying to get as far as fast as I can. I'm trying to get a promotion because that's important for XYZ. I'm trying to be present for my kids in the way that I want to. Like, how dare you say that's arrogant.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:34]:

It's not serving me to be perfect. It's in the service of the people around me. At least that's what my brain might tell me.

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Brian Kavicky [00:07:43]:

Yeah, but what's interesting is how you phrase that. So you phrased every single thing as I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. Which means, you know you're not. And it comes from a place of insecurity. If I know I'm not and I'm trying, then I don't think it's in me to do those things. And so you're masking your insecurity by putting on the armor of I'm going to be perfect when in your heart you know you're not and you can't be, and that not everything is perfect and you're not just admitting I'm not perfect. I don't have all the answers. I'm doing the best I can, but that's all I got, and I got to run with that.

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Brian Kavicky [00:08:21]:

And that's very freeing to admit that you're doing the best you can with the skills, the abilities and experience that you have and roll with that as opposed to pretending that you're someone that you're not and holding yourself to a standard you cannot possibly achieve, because then.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:35]:

It creates this mental failure cycle that starts to screw with your confidence. Yeah.

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Brian Kavicky [00:08:40]:

Yeah. Because if you're striving towards perfectionism and you're never going to hit the perfectionist, you're always living in the gap of I'm not good enough, I'm not any of those things. And you're feeding your insecurity of, see, I'm right about myself and you didn't want to admit it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:57]:

So how do you stop it?

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Brian Kavicky [00:08:59]:

Is hold yourself to a standard that is real and achievable and in reach. So instead of saying, I want to leap this foot, leap this inch and say, if I am making progress towards something, I can give up on perfection, if I am seeing incrementally that I'm growing, if I'm seeing that I move the needle in a little bit, if I'm seeing this metric go up, if I'm seeing evidence in my life that things are getting better, even if it's small, I'm going to latch onto that small and go, see, there it is. It's progress. It's not perfection.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:35]:

I feel like in this world of perfection, because I am like re experiencing this in my body as you're talking in a world where you're trying to live in perfection. It is a world devoid of things like forgiveness, of growth, of asking questions like, I don't know how I would. You're just not open because you're in this tight command and control environment. And I remember you. I would never use the word perfection. That word is not like a way that I think about myself. But as I look back in my own journey, it's like it was this desire to control things. And when you helped me understand, like, look, you might screw up, you might totally not know the answer.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:18]:

So then you're going to have to go tell the client you don't know the answer, and then they're going to have a choice to make. They're going to ask you, well, you think you can figure it out? Or they're going to ask you, do you think we should go find somebody else who can't? And I was like, yeah, I guess that won't be so bad. But it was like, literally I imagined them just like firing me in my face and not being able to handle that rejection and then being like, well, then I got to fill that revenue. Like, it just would become this crazy cycle.

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Brian Kavicky [00:10:49]:

Part of our survival instinct is our brain goes to worst case scenario as default. So whenever we're faced with something difficult, our first thing is we're going to die. Like, if it's like, I'm going to jump off this cliff and you're seeing 2030 people do it in front of you and you'll go, but if I do it, I'll die. Well, yeah, that's worst case scenario. Or I'll be injured horribly. And so you don't do it because you're like, despite the evidence in front of me, I'm going to go to worst case scenario. So you have to uncover, like, that's not a big deal. So in your example of you're thinking worst case scenario, the client's going to fire you, or they could have a nice conversation and you can get a result.

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Brian Kavicky [00:11:25]:

That is also a possibility, but we ignore the possibility when we're in that zone of perfection.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:11:32]:

So when somebody comes to you, they might not be able to say yet to them, I'm stuck in perfection. But what does it look like when you're like, ah, this is where you are.

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Brian Kavicky [00:11:42]:

So you'll know if you're in perfection when you're demanding things out of yourself that you aren't working on getting better. So how it will look is that you're holding yourself to a standard, but you're not doing anything to learn how to achieve the standard at all. You're just in this cycle of, I just got to keep trying. I got to. You're not asking the question like, can somebody help me get to this standard? So that's one indicator. The other is that people around you are frustrated because they feel like they can't do anything right because short of perfection is everything else. So they're going to get feedback that they're not correct, that they didn't do enough, that they didn't have enough, that they're missing. So you're lacking positive feedback for people.

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Brian Kavicky [00:12:27]:

You're in that cycle of perfection, or you're beating yourself up because all you can see is what's wrong in that same way instead of what's right.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:38]:

I remember you teaching me this 80% rule that related to this.

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Brian Kavicky [00:12:43]:

Yes.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:43]:

Can you share that?

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Brian Kavicky [00:12:44]:

So, as a rule, 80% done or good enough is enough to be effective. The last 20% has a diminishing return. In other words, it almost doesn't matter. So if you look at the 80 20 rule, you've heard the 80 20 rule. As you're spending 80% of your time worrying about 20% of the things you're spending 80% of your time of. Clients aren't even good clients. But the reality of that is that when we're going for perfection is we're trying so hard to make something better or work that has no hope to do that. And it's just a frustration maker and time waster.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:22]:

Well, it was a big theme as I was trying to scale the organization and, like, hand things off. I was like, but I can do it better.

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Brian Kavicky [00:13:30]:

And you could.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:31]:

And then you would say that to me, yes, you can. And I would say, yeah, so that means I need to keep it. And you would say to me, if they can do it 80% as well, you have to let that be done, because then you can go and do new things. You can work on growth initiatives. You can do things that nobody else can even do 80% of. And it was like a reset of what done was. And of, like, all the little details that I could see, I had to be okay with. That's okay.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:14:03]:

80% done can be done. And let me watch to see if it means that our client churn rate increases. Let me watch to see if it means that our deliverables get a lot more expensive. Cause we're in lots of revisions, like, did any of those business things happen? Because I was able to just say, fine, you're right, I don't have to touch it because that's where I think perfectionists and ego can really and just the need to be needed. And being like, see, I knew I could do it better. It's this accidental thing that you do. By you, I mean, I. By we, I mean, if you're okay with.

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Brian Kavicky [00:14:42]:

I believe I can do it better than other people. You have evidence that you're right about that. You can prove that. So why not just accept it? And the 80% tool is meant for you to accept that you are better so that you can accept other people's standards of excellence, of 80% as good as yours and sort of hold your ego intact. Because the first step to applying that is, well, they're going to do the 80% and I'm going to put the final touches on the 20%, but at least I'm only doing 20% of the work later. It's what you just said. I got to let go of the 20% and say, it's good. There's no return for it.

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Brian Kavicky [00:15:21]:

It didn't matter. I was adding finesse to things that didn't matter.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:25]:

Yes. Looking for a place for my creative energy.

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Brian Kavicky [00:15:28]:

Yeah.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:30]:

Hey there, podcast listeners. It is no exaggeration to say that the work my companies and I have done with Brian and his team at Lushin have been absolutely game changing. I would not be where I am today without their experience and guidance. If you're struggling to grow your business, your profits, or grow your people, or maybe your business is growing, but it just isn't getting you personally to where you want to be. You have got to schedule time. Give Brian 1 hour of your life and I promise that you will see the way forward a little bit more clearly. If you're interested in scheduling, there's a link in show notes. I promise it will help.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:10]:

Now back to the show. Okay, so let's take a look at a version that I think could be related to this concept of perfectionism. And someone else added. How do I manage all the balls and not let stress overtake me to the point of breakdown? How do I climb back when I get kind of buried underneath all this stuff? All the stuff comes crashing down. All the stress overtakes me and I feel like I don't know where to start. And, you know, you hear people say the word overwhelmed a lot, too. So how is this related to this concept of perfectionism? Or what do we do when we're in that kind of space, personally or professionally.

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Brian Kavicky [00:16:54]:

So language bears fruit in our actions. So you said, try, try. That bears fruit. And you're not accomplishing overwhelmed is a signal of I'm not taking action. It's another version of confused. So I'm overwhelmed right now typically means we stay there. So when it's, I have all the balls in the air, it goes back to, who told you you had to manage the balls? Who told you you were responsible for all the balls? Who's holding you accountable? And a lot of times, if you're a leader, the only person that told you that was you. So you're.

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Brian Kavicky [00:17:29]:

You're saying I have to hold all the balls. It goes back to command and control, and you're holding yourself to a higher standard. So first look to that, and then, well, why do I feel like I need to be the one to do that? And are the things that I am saying I have to juggle? Are those the things that are actually important in my life or to my business or not?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:55]:

I remember I would say a long list of stuff, and you would be like, so just stop one of them. I know. It'd be like, but you don't understand. And then you'd kind of be like, yeah, but you're not doing all of them right now. Right. So just pick which one is going to drop and plan for it. Fair?

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Brian Kavicky [00:18:11]:

Yes. Because the fear of dropping something is that you find out later that it had meaning that it didn't have, because you've been doing it a long time, so you've assigned a meaning. But if I drop it and nobody notices and I've been wasting my time, or if I drop it and it's a big deal, then I chose wrong. So there's a fear to. I gotta cling to that because it's important. But that always comes from not setting priorities of what is important. So you know what? You're managing all that stuff, too.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:18:41]:

We need to stop on this, because I remember in season of my own life, when junior and I would start discussing something and he would ask me a hard question about anything. Like, it probably wasn't even hard. It just seemed bigger than I had the capacity. And I would just kind of start getting teary and be like, I don't know. I just feel so overwhelmed. And it was like my response to everything when it started to get hard and not automatic was like, I don't know. I'm just so overwhelmed. And I recognize this is such.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:08]:

You just said this. It's a state of, like, there's no inertia. You are in a reactive state when you are overwhelmed. I want to say that 40 times. You are in a reactive state when you are overwhelmed. And the world is not going to sort that out for you. It's like a you problem. I had to get to the place where I had to own.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:27]:

I am the only one making me feel overwhelmed. I want somebody else to fix that. I want somehow the conveyor belt of responsibility to slow. I want somebody to tell me what I should work on and what's not important. Like, you don't say that stuff out loud, but like, you're kind of waiting for somebody to come sort that out. I'm fixturing, like, one of those silly dinner plates that you eat out of, like the cafeteria. Like, what is a big compartment and what is a little compartment? Because you can't see it when you're just in it. So it is connected to not having your priorities clearly defined.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:20:03]:

So give examples. I have, like, some in my own head, but what do you mean when you say priorities? I feel like I know this because I've lived it. And once you start to get clear, it's like, no, this is actually the thing. Like, listen so hard to this. If you are overwhelmed, it is not a function of your time.

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Brian Kavicky [00:20:19]:

Actually, no, it is in what. Your understanding of what time is. So if I am overwhelmed, and you said it's reactive, that also means that you're making a choice. So the sick feeling is, you mean I'm choosing to be overwhelmed. Yes. And partially you need to be overwhelmed, because if I'm overwhelmed, I don't have to take an action. Because a lot of times the actions are uncomfortable, or they require work, or they require effort, or they require you saying no to something else. And so I don't want to do that.

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Brian Kavicky [00:20:51]:

So I'm going to claim and choose overwhelmed, and I'm going to live in that stress as a choice to deal with something else. Because the fix is very simple, is start the inertia. So if. If I'm overwhelmed by my storage closet, because it's just got so much junk in it that I walk past it and I ignore it, the first thing that I should do is to pick one box. But if I'm overwhelmed, I'm not gonna pick one box at all. So it's the. I don't wanna deal with it because something's gonna be hard, and so I'm going to choose. That is a big mechanism.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:21:31]:

I find this, that people get so comfortable with their current state, and they'll tell themselves that it becomes familiar. And so, like, overwhelmed is actually where they've accidentally chosen to live, like what you're saying. And I'll say things like, outsource your laundry. Like, just get rid of it. It's like, for like, $30 a week, just get rid of your laundry. And then they start protecting, like, well, and I'm going to do it wrong. And what if something gets lost and it's like, all these protectionist vocabulary. I know those are my words, but how would you describe.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:01]:

It's like, why is it worst case.

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Brian Kavicky [00:22:02]:

Scenario all of a sudden? It's worst case scenario. The default is going to be worst case. If I give somebody else the laundry, then that means they're going to destroy it. Really? Their business is doing it 100% and yours is not. They're going to destroy your. I think they might be able to do it better, but our brain just goes to, nope, it's bad.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:20]:

So what does this look like in the professional capacity? We've used some home examples like, this space is driving me crazy. I don't have time. And I'm like, just stop doing your laundry, please. But when business owners like me come to you, when sales leaders come to you and say, hey, we're stuck. We're in a place of no inertia, what's happening oftentimes? What does it sound like?

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Brian Kavicky [00:22:48]:

So what it sounds like is a lot of excuses. So if somebody goes, we just have a really hard time retaining clients. Okay, what's the reason? Well, our customer service team is terrible, and the leader is not effective. Okay, why don't you hire a new one? Well, we can't because. And then it's all the, here's why we can't. Here's why we can't. Here's why we can't. So instead of dealing with the hard thing of, hey, maybe I need to replace that leader and fix the team.

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Brian Kavicky [00:23:18]:

They live in this space of, well, we're trapped and we can't do anything about it. And there's so many ways that makes this wrong that we're just going to live in this because then we don't have to do the hard thing. And another would be, we're not getting enough business. And the cause of not getting business is you're not really pursuing business. You're just kind of going through the motions of hoping it shows up in some way, shape or form. And so when you go, well, so what do you got to do to get it? It's like, yep. Yeah, but you know, it's hard right now. The environment's tough, the competitors are tough.

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Brian Kavicky [00:23:51]:

Da da da. Well, why don't you deal with that stuff? People don't want to deal with it because it's change, it's difficulty, it's effort, it's time. It's all those things. So it's easier to just say, we can't.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:24:02]:

I think when we were kind of doing some prep for this, you said all of this falls underneath this umbrella of I have to do it all. There's like a hero complex inside of that that I can relate to. It feels very noble at face value, actually, but it's pretty poisonous when it plays out.

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Brian Kavicky [00:24:23]:

So if you have the mindset of, I have to do it all and I have to be the one, what value are you placing on other people in your life? Because they're sitting around going, let me help you. Let me participate, let me do this, let me provide resources, let me. And when we say, hey, I gotta do it all, who's gonna mess with you? Who's gonna tell you, no, you don't have to? Because that's gonna be a blow to your ego because they're basically saying, hey, no, you don't have to. And you're like, no, I have to. Cause you've self assigned that. So you're negatively affecting people. Cause you're not allowing them to bring value into your life. And you're building this wall so that nobody can give you that feedback to say, hey, you don't have to.

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Brian Kavicky [00:25:13]:

It's okay. You don't have to be everything to everyone.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:16]:

It makes me think. When I went through my fear journey and I came up with this fear statement that helps me kind of orient to, like, my real purpose in life, my fear statement is, I am for others. And I think in my whole life that's been true. But in my early career, it looked like this of I have to do it all, meaning I am for others. In a way that means I want to try to make your life as easy as possible. I want to try to do the hard work so that you don't have to sweat and you don't have to work late and that you don't feel the weight of the stress of not having enough business or needing to lay people off. Like, the way that I was for others was through this lens of, I have to do it all, even being for your kids. Like, I'm going to try to make your life comfortable, make sure all your stuff is done, get your laundry done, your lunch prep.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:26:04]:

Like, I want to make your life easy. Is one interpretation, one way of living out. I am for others in this version of it, it's understanding that actually queuing up things that are hard to solve and giving people the Runway to have the confidence and competence to be able to do that, is actually my gift to them. It looks different. It's not about giving ease to everyone. It's about queuing up their resources, their Runway, the environment for them to be able to grow. And I see that in my personal life with, like, my nanny. Like, it has given her such a soft landing at this season in her life, to be able to be in our house.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:26:44]:

She's got income that she can definitely rely on, like, all these kinds of things. It's like she is helping me. She's part of my team. I don't have to do it all. And I'm creating an awesome opportunity for her. I look at that inside of the business. It's like a different color of the same underlying motive that allows for so much more scale in my life today.

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Brian Kavicky [00:27:07]:

But the motive was good. The motive is, I want to serve others. I want to make it easier for them.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:27:13]:

And I think that's what I want to try. This idea of I want to have to do it all is not always in this maniacal, egotistical way. It can come from a place that actually is intended to serve and care for the people you love.

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Brian Kavicky [00:27:26]:

Yeah, but there's the unintended consequence of not seeing that through. One of the things is you listed off. Here's what I want to provide is the most important one, which is, I want to provide a place for, say, failure so that people can grow and develop. But if I have to do it all and I have to protect them, failure is not an option, and I'm going to prevent their failure instead of allow it so that they do grow.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:27:52]:

But that is a perspective shift. I think that is important, especially as we think it about this audience of, like, I started to realize my job is to create scale in my time and my financial resources. And if I want to do that, mastering this idea of 80% completion of perfectionism is not an outcome. And that overwhelm is a place of no inertia that becomes like this. You remember that, like, Simon game, where it was like, green, green, red, red. That's what's coming to my mind, where it's you. You have to be able to play that song so that you stay ahead of, I think, what can become really paralyzing mental patterns.

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Brian Kavicky [00:28:36]:

But you've also systematized your life. So it's one thing to play a whack a mole. It's another. Like in the Simon game, that's your example. It's first red, then it's red green. And once you know the pattern, you can keep up with it. And then it gets all of a sudden fast, and you're like, whoa. But you were good for a while because you knew what was coming.

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Brian Kavicky [00:28:56]:

If you systematize things and you go, oh, I know that if I do this, it'll happen, but with a lot of people, they need permission to do that. Like, if I'm a perfectionist, I don't know that I have permission to fail. I don't know that I have margin in my life that I can mess up or be vulnerable or any of those things, because I'm just juggling the balls. You have permission, it's okay. And people around you want you to be okay with that.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:29:22]:

The other story that's coming to mind for me, when you talk about being comfortable, being vulnerable and failing, I remember us fighting about when I was, like, trying to figure out what goals to set, and you were like, how many can you do well? How many calls to make, let's say, in a week or something like that. And I was like, twelve. You're like, so then it's twelve. I was like, what do you mean it's twelve? How do you know that that's going to be the thing that I could this and elevate to this goal and this conversion and get to $3 million of new business? How do you know? Mad at you. He's like, I don't know. I don't know. And I was like, well, kind of like, well, then what the hell am I hiring you for? And you're like, if that's what you have the capacity to do, that's how we have to start. And then we'll start learning what that gets.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:05]:

And then if we want to calibrate your time or move something off, but, like, just start. And I was so stuck in, like, needing to know the answer to, like, 14 different numbers that were literally, there was no human way of getting the answer to those until I just behaved something. And I was, like, so annoyed that it was so simple to just start. And I think that's what you helped boil so many things down for me of, like, I'm mad. That's all I know. I feel behind. It's not working. I'm mad cause I'm scared.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:39]:

Let's be clear, right? And so you being like, this is a simple place to start so that you can begin getting some inertia towards where we're going. And that's how we're gonna do this.

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Brian Kavicky [00:30:52]:

Yeah. Cause the mad was the overwhelmed, and the I just want the answers, which means I want the perfect answer, not the well, I'm gonna see how this goes answer. Yeah. And it's a high expectation that you put on yourself.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:07]:

Yeah. Cause I wanted to solve. I needed to solve the whole problem. And you're like, you might not be able to.

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Brian Kavicky [00:31:13]:

Not all at once.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:14]:

That's right. That's right, that's right.

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Brian Kavicky [00:31:17]:

So if you think about this year, we have the economy on the eve of recession almost all the time. We have high record inflation. We have interest rates going up. We have unemployment rising again. We have a presidential election looming with a lot of drama that's occurred along the way. And it is easy to take the position of all of this is outside of my control, and there's nothing that I can do about it. And I'm going to throw up my arms and say, I'm overwhelmed. Or you could throw up your hands and say, I need to wait.

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Brian Kavicky [00:31:54]:

I need to figure out. I need to come up with the plan. I need to do this. Where you enter command and control, the important thing is you realize is that you are in a state of chaos that you are choosing to be in right now, because in every one of those areas, there is an opportunity to take advantage of that, because you're in that state, you are not seeing. And if you look through a different lens and take some inertia and say, hey, what if I did this? Or what if I took this step? Or what if I explored this? Or what if I did this, that you would actually find the progress to give you confidence to get through the rest of it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:32:36]:

I always love these conversations with Brian because I feel like I go from looking through a microscope to, like, a wide angle lens where suddenly I can, like, I have courage to be able to start. And I have confidence of, like, one thing that I can do to start getting me from a place of, like, reactive state of existing. Because as a leader, I always feel like I might not know the perfect place to start moving. But if I start moving, my people can draft behind me. And if you are feeling yourself stuck right now in this perfectionist state or in overwhelmed, I hope that this conversation has given you somewhere to start. Because living in a still reactive place is no place to live life. And if you're unsure of where you're at right now. Like, after this conversation of where to take that step forward, please give Brian a call.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:33:37]:

Like, literally, this is how I spent a decade of my life, growing my life, growing my business, growing my own capacity is by having the courage to ask the scariest question out loud and being willing to have my perspective challenged with a wide angle lens instead of the microscope that I was looking through.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:33:59]:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:34:08]:

I will.

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