3 Ways To Eliminate Perfectionism (The Ultimate Confidence Killer)
Apr 24, 2025
Have you believed the entrepreneurship myth: If you can get everything perfect in your business, you’ll feel confident and your business will thrive. So you do everything you can to get everything just right and create that perfect image on the outside for new clients and customers.
But realistically there will be many times when you can’t get things 'perfect'.
Life happens. Tech issues happen. People let you down. You might let other people down. And when you can’t hit that perfection target, it will cause you to leak confidence all over the place.
The truth is that aiming for perfection can’t give you the confidence you’re hoping for. It will do the exact opposite.
So how do you even start to eliminate that need for perfection? It starts with embracing you're human.
“Confidence doesn't come from a place of knowing all the answers. Confidence comes from a place where we understand that whatever we know how to do is not tied to the value of us as a human.”
-Kim White
-Kim White
Here are 3 practical ways to embrace your human-ness as an entrepreneur so that you can start eliminating perfectionism in yourself and grow in confidence on your business adventure.
Admit You’re Still Learning
“I wish we could all walk around with a sign saying: I’m practicing all the time because I’m human.”
-Jill Olish
-Jill Olish
Think about it: no person in any field will ever reach the point where they know everything about what they’re doing. And that means everyone is still learning, including you.
So you don’t need to pretend you aren’t.
“I don’t want to be out-ed for not knowing everything. I'll tell you myself so we can solve that problem upfront.” Kim White
Being honest about where you are at will make your clients or customers trust you more, which will build your confidence as an entrepreneur.
“As long as we’re human we’re going to be just practicing because we can always get better at what we’re doing.” Jill Olish
When you admit you are still learning, you give yourself grace to not have to hit that perfection target. And it will stop you from leaking confidence when you can’t.
Remember Where Your Value Lies
When you can accept and admit that you are still learning, it will be easier to embrace another part of being human: failure.
“If my business is failing that doesn't make me less important as a human. but we tie that success in with our personal value and it's just not true.” Kim White
Your confidence can take a huge knock if you are placing your value on success. A lot of people will give up on being the entrepreneur they could have been based on one failure.
But temporary failures don’t make you bad at business. You always learn something.
When you have failed, and then struggled to figure it out, and then found a way, it gives you more authority than if you got everything right the first time.
“When you fail, it makes you relatable to others who have struggled with the same thing. And it opens the door for them to ask you for help.” Kim White
If you are aiming for perfection, then any small failure will make your confidence leak out.
But if you’re embracing being human, you can know that your value is based on who you are and not what you do, or the success you have.
Knowing your value as a human will keep your confidence from leaking when those temporary failures do come.
Find Other Humans
Entrepreneurship is not a solo adventure. But be careful who you surround yourself with.
The community you choose will have a direct impact on whether you build confidence or leak confidence.
If you only surround yourself with people who are new to business and inexperienced, you're in trouble. You're going to aim for unrealistic perfection, get bad advice from each other, and you're going to leak confidence together.
“You want to surround yourself with people who are confident. It doesn't matter if it’s not confidence in what you are doing.” Kim White
Surround yourself with other humans. People who know their value. People who have failed and figured it out. People who know they are still learning and will always be learning.
When you take the entrepreneurial adventure with confident people, it’s easy to see where perfectionism is creeping in, and confidence is leaking out.
So embrace being human by staying connected to other humans, and watch your confidence grow exponentially as you learn from each other.
Nobody is perfect. And everybody is human. So why pretend?
”Being perfect is too much pressure to live under. But when we take that perfection off and allow someone to see our "human" it changes how they can trust us, view us, and connect with us.”
Kim White
If you missed the conversation about this between Kim and Jill on their podcast Buckets and Boom Gates, you can catch it here.
Our Groundwork Brigade is a home for entrepreneurs who want to build a business that they own and that doesn't own them. It’s a community of like-minded entrepreneurs finding freedom in the entrepreneurial adventure by practicing putting the right things in the right order.
It’s a safe space to learn how to build a relational business using irresistible marketing strategies, tailored to your individual needs, in a group setting, with lots of accountability and support.
To connect and find out more about Kim or how to create a sexy business for a sexy life, you can reach her and the My Sexy Business Team atwww.mysexybusiness.com.
And to connect with Jill Olish go straight to her websitewww.mamaoutspoken.com and you’ll find her there!
