Don’t Be Perfect. Be One Big Inspired Mistake

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Don't Be Perfect. Be One Big Inspired Mistake.

Today I want to talk about making inspired mistakes instead of being perfect. Instead of going for perfection. Because one of the things about trying to be perfect is that people hate you if you are and they want to knock you off your pedestal.

So in a media interview it’s much better to make mistakes and be casual than it is to be perfect and slick.

Also the worst thing that you can probably do is to read. I was just media coaching a client the other day. He’s a CEO of a large corporation, and he was saying, “You know I really need to learn that these sound bites that we’re creating and I really want to get them down.  And I want to get them right. I said, “Yeah, I really appreciate that and you don’t want to read them. Even if you have them in front of you, you still want to make it sound like casual conversation and that can be an art. You have something that you want to communicate and you want to communicate clearly and crisply and yet like a casual conversation.

I was listening to an interview with Peter Guralnick who wrote a book called Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll. He said that Sam Phillips, who is the founder of Sun Records, "didn’t care much about making flawless recordings." He said, instead Phillips "rejected perfection in favor of spontaneity and individuality."

I am totally with Phillips, who said, "I hate the word perfection. It should be banned from the English language." Guralnick said that Sam Phillips “didn’t care about mistakes; he cared about the feel. Sam was looking for something far beyond perfection: It was spontaneity, individuality. When Carl [Perkins] said, "But Mr. Philips, I made a mistake," and Sam said, "Nobody's going to notice that mistake, you had the feel on that." And Carl would say, "But it's a mistake," and Sam said, "That's what we are at Sun Records. That's what Sun Records is: We're one, big, inspired mistake," and he believed that. That was his artistic credo.

It’s my credo too. To be a big inspired mistake and care more about the feel than you do about the perfection. It is about the spontaneity of individuality and keeping your quirks and really allowing yourself to explore those and have fun with those kind of mistakes that happen in in the moment.  Really learn to really enjoy them. One of the most important business mantras is to fail fast. That's how start-ups succeed. They are practiced at failing fast and often.

I was just talking to a woman today who wanted to become my client and one of  the things that she said to me is “You really got me. You really understand who I am.”

And all the other coaches and branding experts were trying to put her through a system and trying to put her into a box. She said, “I rebel against that.”

Sam Phillips is the same way. It’s not about trying to be like somebody else or about following somebody else’s system. But it’s about really finding out what it is that makes your own individuality happen. That’s what we’re going to love you for. In the end it’s your individuality, it’s your quirks, it’s being the one big inspired mistake.

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Are you enjoying the Podcast? Then I invite you to hop on over to iTunes to subscribe, rate + review it. Here’s a quick video on how to do a podcast review on iTunes. (It’s simple if you follow these directions). Note: It can take up to 24 hours to show up on my Podcast. You're welcome to send this to anyone you think it would delight. May good fortune always follow you!

Want to know how to subscribe on your phone? Watch this video.

Want to be a guest on my Podcast? Jet me an email with your topic and a link to your bio here.

Send Susan a Voice Message!

Click below to send me your voice message with a question or topic you’d like to hear more about in my upcoming podcasts! I will answer the most pressing and popular ones in a future episode. (I’ll mention your first name ONLY to protect your privacy.)

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