A Quick Note to the Perfectionists from an Experienced Blogger…

“People don’t relate to perfection” – Courtney Gould

I heard the quote posted above from Courtney Gould, co-founder of Smart Pants Vitamins, over the weekend while at BlogHer. As soon as the words left her mouth, I grabbed my pen and quickly wrote it down in my notebook.  “People don’t relate to perfection”….how true!

Think about the last time you saw a perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, perfectly made up woman walk into a room. Now if you are like most people, you look at yourself..in your stained tee-shirt, mom bun hair and barely made up face and think…‘yeah…I can’t relate to that’…so you turn around and continue talking to the moms around you that you can relate to.

Now let’s apply this quote to your about-to-be-launched blog or a project you’ve been thinking about.  How many times have you convinced yourself that you aren’t ready to launch yet because of things like,  “I’m still in learning phase” or “I’m trying to find a designer to design a logo for me” or “I’m waiting to take some new pictures”. Sound familiar? Of course they do! It’s very vulnerable to put ourselves out there…and one of the ways we try to protect ourselves from criticism is to make sure that things are PERFECT. But guess what? None of the reasons I listed there are valid reasons to be procrastinating. You’ve got to do just do it!

Launching a new blog or project is going to be messy and imperfect and you’ll definitely have a huge learning curve…but at least you’ll be learning..you’ll be learning by doing and when it comes to blogging, that’s the best way to learn. And another thing..not to knock you while your down..but when you first start a blog..you are likely going to have the LEAST amount of readers that your blog will ever have..so you might as well figure it out while there aren’t as many eyeballs on you.

Experience breeds confidence

Want to know a secret? The best way to gain confidence in a new venture is to do that thing repeatedly. It’s true! The only way that you are ever going to feel confident about doing something you aren’t confident about is to experience it over and over again. Think about when you first started driving. You were probably pretty nervous right? Parallel parking. Looking over your shoulder when changing lanes. Abiding by the speed limit. These are all things that you only learn by doing…and you only gain confidence by doing over and over again. Blogging is the same way. You can read a billion blog posts on how to blog, but the only way that you are every really going to feel comfortable is by DOING IT.

So what I want you to do right now…is stop procrastinating, stop talking yourself out of taking the next step and launch your blog or your project. Put it out there for the world to see and let them watch you build your empire. They will be far more impressed if they see how far you’ve come!

P.S. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to set up a blog!