This One Is For The Perfectionists (you know who you are)

I hit send on the first issue of Untapped! with a shaky finger.

Before that moment came months of wanting to build something, a real resource for the leaders I work with every day. I had outlines. I had conversations with friends. I had a few stalled starts that went nowhere.

I wanted it to be good. Worth your time. Something I’d be proud to put my name on.

The problem was it was my name on it.

I’d spent years championing brands I believed in, marketing ideas I was proud of. But those were someone else’s vision. This was mine. My POV. My ideas. My credibility on the line every single week.

That’s a different kind of scary.

I Did The Only Thing That Was Going To Get Me Unstuck.

I shipped it anyway.

And then I did it again the next week. And the week after that.

Somewhere in the early issues, I found a typo.

It was uncomfortable. And I’m still here.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: I couldn’t have gotten better at this by thinking harder or outlining more. The only thing that was going to teach me was shipping.

What Shipping Actually Did For Me

I thought the weekly commitment would pressure me. It did, but not in the way I expected.

My husband calls me “story Laurie.” I can talk all day.

Writing is harder for me….

Early on I realized that if I was going to keep shipping, I needed help. So I hired a professional writer to teach me the fundamentals and be my guide. Someone to help me stop jamming too many ideas into one issue and get out of my own way.

I’m wired to start, not always to finish.

But what kept me finishing was knowing you were expecting this on Friday morning!

That’s a powerful forcing function.

Because there’s no time to swirl when you have to ship.

Over time something unexpected happened.

My writing got better. My writing got easier. My voice more confident. The skills I was building every week started showing up in everything else I was doing.

That’s the learning curve paying off.

Just ship it stopped being a push and started being a practice.

What Are You Sitting On?

Most of the leaders I work with have something they’re not shipping.

A conversation they keep rehearsing but never having. An idea they keep refining but never launching. A change they know needs to happen but feels too big to begin.

Here’s the truth about that learning curve you’re staring at.

You can’t think your way over it. You can’t prepare your way over it. The only way through is to ship something. Imperfect, a little scary, good enough. Let the doing teach you what the planning never could.

Every issue of Untapped! taught me something the outline didn’t. The typo humbled me. The responses surprised me. The weekly commitment changed me.

That’s not a side effect of shipping. That’s the whole point.

You don’t need to be ready. You need to be in motion.

What’s the one thing you could ship this week?

Laurie