Perfect is Not a Standard

I almost didn’t release this episode because, no matter how many times I hit record and started over, it still didn’t feel “perfect”. This moment led me into a deeper reflection on the middle ground that sits between perfection and sloppiness, and why most of us confuse perfectionism with excellence. 

Drawing on my experience building a franchise system, I share the lesson it’s taken me a long time to learn: excellence is something we practice, not something we perfect and the fear of being judged for failing or acting sloppy should never hold you back from taking action on your dreams and goals. Your self-worth and value aren’t tied to how your work is received, but it is your responsibility to learn from your messy moments, act with integrity, and adapt to feedback. If this conversation landed with you, please leave a like and review. I’ll see you next time. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Found Her, the podcast for women who build empires, break barriers, and blaze trails all while fighting themselves. These are bestie level conversations from behind the scenes, the real work, the messy middle, and the wins that last. I'm Kimberly Hebert, founder, franchise builder, wife, mom, and Grammy, and a woman who has done the inner work while building the outer winds. Here we talk business, identity, relationships, and the kind of growth that cracks you open, then puts you back together. Stronger, better. This is your space to rise as a founder and as your truest self. Let's dive in. Okay, ladies, the very thing that I'm trying to record, this is ironic, the very thing that I'm trying to record a solo episode on is the pendulum between perfectionism and sloppiness. And I just realized I have restarted the recording of this episode five times because it's not coming off quote unquote perfect. And while I wouldn't say, you know, perfect is never what I strive for, I didn't think so, until I started being challenged between this perfectionism and sloppiness. And when I, as I look back, I kind of just like caught me the other day, and I thought I would um do a little episode on it, and now I find myself doing the same thing. Is really this stuck between this place of like wanting it to be so perfect because I want your experience listening to it to be so like I don't know, earth shattering. It's crazy. I don't know what that is. It's as we put ourselves or extensions of ourselves, so I'm gonna keep this in the confines of business. As we put that out there, we really are like, it's like extending a version of ourself. And while we think internally, well, I'm not perfect and I'm not trying to be perfect, but if you watch your behavior around anything you're producing and inviting others in to see or be part of, there is, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say there is a piece of perfectionism in every single one of us. And so today I want to talk a little bit about how perfectionism or being perfect or perfect is not actually a standard. However, we seem to disguise excellence with perfectionism, and there's a huge difference between the two. And then I find myself going between perfect and sloppy, and somewhere in between there, as a business that's especially as a startup, and especially as a franchiser, I need to put something out there because I need my franchise partners to go through my system. Um, and so I know at the beginning it is not going to be quote unquote perfect. And as we've been doing this over the last few years, there was a part in the early years where perfect is what I was going for. I wanted the process to be so seamless and perfect that we overbuilt a system. We, when I say overbuilt, it will be good in a few years. So some people would say you're building into the future, but we overbuilt or built such a robust system with all kinds of aspects to it, but it was unnecessary at the time. It was an unnecessary use of resources, and it also was a bit of a distraction for us. However, it also was the way in which we learned, and that's why I'm coming to you now at this place, realizing that having what I call an MVP, which is a your minimal viable product, is super important in business because, and this is the hard thing. Some people who are still wrapped up in perfectionism will absolutely die with an MVP. Their minimal viable product, that's not a thing. You either have to have it dialed in and 100%, or it's not ready. And both those things, if you're too sloppy, though, if your minimum viable product is too sloppy, you risk running a poor experience or a misrepresentation of your product, your business, your whatever it is you're doing. And so I do think that there's a little bit of a balance in there. But what I really want to kind of break down or break apart is this whole idea of perfectionism being a standard of excellence, because it's not. Excellence in its own self is a standard of striving for the best, the most optimal. That to me is excellence, is optimized and optimal. That's excellence. That's going above the standard of just barely or whatever your minimal. So your your minimal viable product, your MVP, is the lowest standard. It's not sloppy, but it's the lowest standard. And then we move to excellence as we optimize and kind of go step by step by step. But here's the thing when you put your MVP out there, you have to be prepared for the feedback. You have to be prepared for people to misunderstand or misrepresent. You have to be prepared for that. But here's the funny thing is if you if you hold off to that that MVP and wait till it is quote unquote perfect, you're gonna put it out there and it's still gonna get feedback misunderstood. You're still gonna have to deal with what that feels like when somebody misunderstands your idea, your product, your service, your the extension of yourself is really what you're showing. And so there's this big pendulum swing between perfectionists and sloppiness. And when we get sloppy, it's usually because we're overwhelmed. And we just have to get things moving, and things are piling up, uh, we're moving fast from one thing to another. So we don't have enough time to really look critically at what the product is, or it really comes from a place of pressure. And so finding the balance of removing perfectionism, understanding excellence is a process to achieve, not perfectionism before we go. I believe excellence is achieved by a process of doing. So you put your thing out there and you get the feedback and you start tweaking and you start optimizing. And as you go, it's the experiences of all of that that start to create the excellence standard that your you end up your product, your service, your experience, your, you know, even in this podcast, these, even in delivering this podcast, you know, if I wait until I'm absolutely perfect at delivering messages in a clear, succinct, powerful way, how will I get there? I won't get there unless I start with the MVP, with I start with my most viable product, which is these episodes. And then as I lean into building excellence in what I'm doing, I take the feedback from everybody listening. I take the feedback from the downloads, I take the data, I listen back to my own episodes, and I start to identify the areas that are sloppy, that need to be cleaned up a bit, that that will help me strive and reach excellence versus the perfectionism. I almost did that with this episode, like I said. I tried to record it five times. I kept stopping it and stopping it. I'm like, it's not good, it's not good, it's not good. And I was like, this is so ironic. And so now I'm putting it out there. This is the recording. I'm not holding it back from perfectionism. I have a standard of excellence that I'm trying to achieve. And I will only get there as I continue to put it out into the public, have it come back to me, and so on and so forth. So today I really um want to encourage you to be really reflective in what you're doing. Are you holding off on delivering something, whatever it is, when you're when somebody knows this from you? Are you holding off because you feel like something's not not exactly right? That it's not quite perfect. Well, I want you to, I want you to kind of lean into that and think, what is it that's making you want it to be perfect? Why do the stakes feel so high that if it's not perfect, what's gonna happen? Judgment. Doom, doom, doom, doom. And so when we spend so much time focused on the external and getting things really super perfect, I would encourage you to reflect back inside and ask yourself the question what am I attached to? What story is going on here that I'm attached to? The longer you wait, the bigger the stakes feel in your head. This is usually all in our head. And you have to really trust that you have to really trust in your vision, you have to really trust in leaning into the experience and the process versus versus the judgment of what somebody else might be having. So if you're judging your work so critically, I am guessing that you also do that to yourself internally. And that is where the heaviness of perfectionism, the fear of judgment, the fear of rejection, that there is something like that tied up in it. That has been my experience. And when I get to the place where I'm like, okay, in franchising, for instance, there was there is such a need when you're an emerging brand and people are watching, there is such a need or such a desire to be perfect. And when one of my franchise candidates has an imperfect experience, it takes a bit. I've I've gotten better over the years, but it takes a bit to kind of work through that, like that they're not happy or that something isn't clicking for them, that it's not a perfect experience. And I have to lean into and remember that every single time it's a process, it's not um a state of being. Yet perfectionism and is so tied up into our own identity. And franchising is no different. I would say, in fact, I would say franchising is is the stakes are even higher because you have can't you have partners that have joined you, uh invested in your vision and in your system and in your uh process. And so if it's not perfect, then what does that mean about your system and you and what your vision, right? It means that you're not perfect. And guess what? Spoiler alert, nobody's perfect. And so as I started to really lean into this pressure of feeling perfect, especially in my franchise, building my franchise, uh I started to realize that this is also affecting my team. Because while I try to be like, we don't need perfect, I need it done. Other people in my team will be look like, no, if it's got my name on it, it has to be perfect. And the problem is then, is it holds up, it holds up progress, it stalls things, it creates a bottleneck. And so having the intention of doing our best and creating excellence in the moment and state that we're in is really more important. And then when it goes out, and if somebody gives some feedback or you see an error on it or something's not quite right, now I'm not talking about legal things, that's different. But uh I'm talking about just getting progress rolling in your business in a way where you can be open to excellence, not sloppiness, not perfectionism, but excellence, and know that excellence is a state and a progress that we aim to, and you can set what those mean to you. Everybody has their own. And then we build our team and our work from that place. Is this excellence for us and where we are at the moment? Could it be better? And do we need it to be better? Or are we just wanting it to be better? And those are kind of some of the things. Excellence, like I said, it's not a personality trait. It's a practice, it's a progress. It's something you choose on purpose. So I think it's about being intentional with your level of excellence and trying to make sure that your excellence is not being disguised as perfectionism. You do not have to be a perfectionism, a perfectionist to have standards. You don't have to lower. This is the other thing, is I've seen this in my own team and others, is when you ask, because like I said about the MVP, I push now for an MVP. And for the those in my team that still struggle with perfectionism, that's challenging because they're like, this isn't good. This isn't good enough. This still needs to be. And I I I'm pushing it, I'm pushing it, I'm pushing it because I want to make sure that we're getting things out that we're being timely. Um because at the end of the day, it doesn't, if you wait too long, then the idea or the thing dies or somebody else does it. But you still will get have to get feedback and impact. So why do all this work, put it out there, wait for the impact then and the feedback, and then have to go back to the drawing board. Do it bit by bit, little by little, in this stage. What is excellence? What is the standard of excellence for where we're at? And is this, does that meet that? Okay, and then let's put that out there and then let's get some more feedback back before we as we continue to build this thing. So, like I said, this is the one thing right now in building a franchise that I'm really working on letting go is really finding the excellence and where we're at, and what is our standard of excellence versus perfectionism or sloppiness. And I know in the franchise industry, there's a lot of sloppiness. There's a lot of we'll go sell it. Well, I think this happens in a lot of businesses. We'll go sell it now and then we'll build it later. And while there are parts to that, see, for me, as my own standard of excellence, of integrity, I could not build, I could not bring in a franchise partner, tell them that I have a system and a process and not actually have that. To me, that that that is not excellence. That is deceiving. And so for me, I would not, I would be so stressed out if I didn't have a system with assets and processes for my franchise partner. Now, for our first franchise partner, was it perfect? Absolutely not. Did I have the conversation with them? And all five of them at this point has had I've had the conversation with of like, we are new at this. This is what we have. We will still need to work some things out because it's not optimized, it's not perfect. It is viable and hits a first standard of excellence for us to get some market feedback on. And that has been a godsend to me. It's been a what do you call uh I've been transparent and it feels good then when my franchise partners are experiencing some bombs that we can have open conversations because I didn't make it perfect and say, here's my perfect franchise system. And so I think when people are candidates are looking into different franchise systems, they are looking for perfect because to them, perfect is a guarantee of success, and it's not. Perfectionism is not a standard. So to wrap this quick little podcast episode up, I want to ask you to pick one thing sitting in perfectionism right now. Something you have been working on that has done enough to exist in the world. Set a date to send it. Not when it is perfect, but a real date. This week, ideally. And if you've been on the other end and you've been moving fast and cutting corners, pick one thing you can clean up: a follow-up, a revision, a conversation. Thank you for being here, for listening. I would love to hear your feedback on what your struggle between perfectionism and sloppiness is. If you have a messy middle moment of that, I know I do. And I, as like I said, as a franchise or I work on that a lot because I want to be excellence. I want to be in the standard of excellence, not in perfectionism, and not in sloppiness either. So again, thank you and till next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Found Her podcast. If you've enjoyed it, please, please, please leave me a review, subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes, and more importantly, please share with your business bestie. You can join our newsletter, find me on Instagram, all the places. I would love to hear your feedback and connect with you during your journey of building your legacy.