Transcript

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[00:00:00] My oldest son is 16 right now and he is going through a phase where he is struggling to find A new hobby or something he’s really interested in that he wants to do on a regular basis. So, I watch him try out something new and instead of approaching it with fun or curiosity, he gets really tight and he puts in a huge effort to do it perfectly and then when he doesn’t immediately do it well, then he doesn’t want to do it anymore and he quits.

And I get so frustrated. Why on earth would you think that you’re going to be great at something the first time you try it? Have you ever heard of practice? Do you think professionals started off perfect at this, or do you think they had to work hard for a really long time? You are being totally unrealistic, and then I realize, I see myself doing [00:01:00] the exact same thing.

So it must just be human nature, right? For instance, when I started doing YouTube videos. In 2016, I decided I was going to make a video and put it on YouTube. And I did! And it was hard and it took forever to set up. There’s not even any audio. I’m not talking. You don’t see my face. It’s just my hands showing how to cut up onions.

It was so hard and it took so long that I did it once and quit. So that was 2016. In 2017, I did a video for my food blog about roasting nuts, and I had different recipes, and how to do it, and demonstrated, and the camera was on me, and I had the kitchen set up, and all the ingredients, and the finished product, and I’m eating nuts.

And it was hard, and I did it once. And that was 2017. In 2018, one video. [00:02:00] 2019, I was on fire. Five videos. I had to recover. 2020, none. Not one video. In 2021, I posted one in January, and then, like we do January, right? As so many times before, I fell off. Then in May of that year, I decided I was going to commit.

I knew that video was going to be the best marketing for my business, even if it was hard, even if it took time. I mean, really, what doesn’t take time, right? And I knew that when it came to putting them out, the most important thing was just to do it consistently. So here’s how I made it work. And if there’s something you’re struggling with, with learning, maybe improving your cooking skills to start your personal chef [00:03:00] business, or something that you want to implement in your business, something marketing like Facebook or whatever, This might work for you, too.

I really looked at what I wanted to do, the most important thing. And that was weekly videos. So why had I failed in the past? And what was the delta there? What was the difference? What was in between me and getting a video put up every single week? And the biggest thing I decided, for me, Was time. I could come up with the idea, write it down, record me talking about it, and publish it.

That was like, for me, a reasonable amount of time. But I didn’t have the time to edit. I didn’t want to have to put on an intro, and an outro, and special effects, and fades, and all the other things that honestly make a really good looking, polished video. Perhaps you’ve seen them on other channels. [00:04:00] So I decided I don’t have to.

What if I don’t care about having the fanciest perfect video? Because that’s not my main objective, right? My main objective is to put out a video every week that will help passionate cooks who want to start a personal chef business. Would they care more about getting my help every week, or would they care more about the quality if I could put out one a year with all the editing and all the fancy effects, which one would they want more?

Well, since I’m not teaching how to create videos, or video editing, or movie making, or even anything remotely related, What if the only thing I committed to was putting out a video every week? Could I do that if I didn’t have to edit? Probably. So then, sometimes it took me a really long time to [00:05:00] write out a script that I thought was long enough.

So I thought, well, what if I didn’t put a time restriction on it? What if I didn’t say a video needs to be this long? What if I just said whatever I had to say, no matter how long or short it was? Okay, I can do that. I can let that go. What else? Well, the setup to film took a lot of time. Cameras, multiple lights, tripods, sound buffers, cleaning the kitchen, all of it.

Well, what if I just used my phone? AirPods? Ugly overhead lights, it won’t look as good as it could, but what’s the most important thing here? All right, I let go of all that. So in May of 2021, I started doing videos with my strategy of just minimum viable product, doing the bare minimum to just be able to get The content every week and [00:06:00] for the rest of 2021, I did it.

I didn’t miss one week. Then, I decided I wanted to get fancy. I had six months under my belt. I was a video making machine. I’m gonna go all in. I wanted lights. I wanted editing. I wanted words to fly in and emphasize by talking. Maybe with my cat. and a rabbit and a bat and a 6’4 Impala. But I didn’t. I looked at the most important thing, being consistent, and I just kept going.

Because as much as I wanted those things, I knew I didn’t have the time or bandwidth to do it. And that was okay. Because the most important thing is I’m getting the content out every week to you. So 2022 went by and I got a video up. Every week, and halfway through 2023 here we are, video, every week, and now, not having [00:07:00] editing still drives me crazy.

Not having nice polished videos with intros and outros and music and sound effects and visual effects and a filter that makes me look like I’m 20 years old and Dolby Atmos quality sound, all those things. But you know what? Now I’m committed just to improving 1% each time I do a video. If I’m not learning editing and spending all that time to make next week’s video Spielberg quality, I can do something, just any little thing 1% better.

And every single week that adds up. And it’s easy! and super doable. Now, I’m pretty sure at this point, I’m never going to have super fancy videos. And at the end of the day, I’m a personal chef teaching passionate cooks how to create a spectacular personal chef business, not a film editor. Or a movie maker, but I have learned that it can be good enough just [00:08:00] to get the job done.

And instead of killing myself on the upfront and then quitting because I’m not being realistic about my time, my mental bandwidth, and everything else. I can improve a little bit all the time, and you know what? It’s pretty easy. It’s easy to get a little bit better when you’re doing something consistently over and over and over again.

Practicing. Not expecting to be perfect right out of the gate. Oh, maybe deciding that you’re not going to waste time being perfect at all. It’s, you know, great. It’s good enough. Even being 100% good with it, because. That is not the most important thing. I know my hundreds of subscribers here are perfectly good with the fact they would rather have my content than they would have me struggling to make a perfectly beautiful video [00:09:00] and then do that once a year.

So think about what you might be doing with this in your personal chef business, right? Is it something you’re struggling with implementing like Facebook and you keep trying to consistently post and you go in saying you’re going to do 30 posts and you really struggle with making them beautiful and what you need to say and all this and it’s hard and you end up quitting and you’ve done that over and over and over again?

First, let go of being perfect. If you just start out committing to something that you can realistically do, it doesn’t have to be a post every day. It doesn’t even have to be a post every week. Because once you start with just the simple commitment of doing it, once you do it for long enough, that opens up being able to get better at it, being able to get the practicing, getting your reps in, improving, getting stronger.

Improving 1% at a time, getting a little bit [00:10:00] better by then, then, you know, how it works, you start getting some more creative ideas because you’re not dreading it all the time because, you know, you’re committed to getting one up and it might be great and it might not be the best one you ever do, but you’re going to keep going and you’re going to keep going.

And then, you know, what happens? The craziest thing, that’s when you start seeing results from your effort. Not in the beginning. When you go balls in trying to do it perfectly and you don’t and you quit and you never do it again, that’s exactly how you don’t get results. Just committing to getting it done in the beginning.

We’ll get you through to getting the results, whether it’s getting your personal chef business started or whether it’s getting the marketing done to get your next client, because I’m telling you, the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.

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