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As I look back at the years I've been doing business, which is almost seven years now, I can tie everything and every mistake back to really one thing that I didn't do in business. And that thing that I didn't do was I didn't give people feedback. A lot of the problems that stem in the first few years of business actually come from the leader not giving feedback. My first few years in business, I was more concerned with being liked than I was being respected and more concerned with being liked than I clearly was. Making sure that my employees and my teammates were growing because people don't grow without feedback. What I often hear is like, layla, I'm not the right person to be giving feedback because I feel terrible when I do. I get super nervous, my hands sweat, I can't sleep the night before. Like, all these things, all these emotions, the first thought that I have is like, oh, my gosh, I was the same way. Giving feedback, if you do it enough times and if you have a structured way of doing it and you practice can actually become something that you like doing rather than something that you hate and avoid doing. So the first belief that I've developed about feedback that's helped me is that feedback is the number one retention tool for top talent. Top talent is wants feedback. What they don't want is to be in the dark about what you don't like about what they're doing. In any job that I had, I was constantly craving feedback from my boss, and if a boss didn't give it to me, I felt disappointed. I was like, I'm not growing. I'm not getting invested in. They don't even care. They don't even pay attention to what I'm doing. And then you're like, what, not paying attention. I see all of it. I'm just fucking terrified of giving you the feedback. And so once I realized that feedback is actually a retention tool for my teammates, that was when I was like, oh, wow, the best people on my team want this feedback. The second is that I realized that feedback is an acceleration tool for the speed of my company. If you look at companies that move quickly, the reason that companies move quickly is because they have fast feedback loops within all sectors. They have fast financial feedback loops in terms of, like, they get their financials quickly, they have fast customer feedback loops in terms of they survey and they gather information from their customers quickly, and they have fast internal feedback loops, which means they constantly are collecting information from their teams and getting feedback quickly. As the boss, the one that you have to really set the tone for is the internal feedback communication loops, getting feedback constantly from the departments. How are they working well together? How are you working well with your direct reports? If you don't know if people are doing well or not, and if they don't know if they're doing well or not, then everything's going to move much slower because people are afraid to take the next step because they don't know how well they did in the last step. And then the last belief that I had to embody was that if I don't give my team feedback and if I don't ask for feedback, then I will constantly be in the dark about my company problems and my company will move slower and be less successful and I will have less concise information for making decisions. If I give feedback to other people on my team, they're going to give me feedback. If I don't give them feedback, they won't give me feedback. And then I won't know what's going on with my company just because I didn't teach them that we can give each other feedback. Whatever you want from somebody on our team is obviously what you need to give them. Feedback is a way to have visibility into things, because if you give it to somebody, they're going to give it right back to you. And that's how you get visibility into departments without sitting in on every meeting, without looking at every KPI, without looking at every spreadsheet. And so it's much easier to run a company if you can actually create a culture of feedback than it is if you don't do that. And so one thing I'll say before I go into the framework for giving feedback, one person I want to give credit to is actually Matt Mokery. I was in a business group and he came on, he talked about feedback to us and he gave a framework very similar to what I'm going to share with you. And so I've iterated on that and combined it with a couple others that I found through the many books I've read. And that is what I've used and I've taught my teams. So I call this framework the five A's. The first A is ask for it. So what I would do is I would sit down with my team and I would explain to them that giving negative feedback or critical feedback is cherished. It is not punished. We're building up that muscle of courage to basically tell someone something that we know they don't want to hear, despite the fact that they need to hear. It there's two questions that I really like in order to ask people for feedback. The first one is, if you were CEO of this company, what would you do? Because oftentimes what you're really asking is, what do you not like that I'm doing? That you would do if you're running this company. And I like to gain everyone's perspective, so I like asking that question. The second question I like to ask is, what is something that you're afraid to tell me? Oftentimes people, you say, hey, can you give me some feedback? And they're like, oh, I don't really have feedback for you. They're like, how could I be a better boss? It's like, well, they don't know how you can be a better boss, but they do know what they're afraid to tell you. A lot of people tend to hesitate because they're afraid to tell you. And you're supposed to say, listen, you're not going to hurt my feelings. I just want to know what you're afraid to tell me. So that's the first way that you can ask for it. Now, once you've asked for the feedback and they've given you a feedback, the second thing you want to do is that you want to acknowledge it. You don't want to react to it, you want to acknowledge it. So you basically want to repeat back to that person what I heard you say. So say, I asked someone for feedback. Hey, Layla, I think that sometimes you're too nice and you don't give enough feedback. I would acknowledge it and say, okay, I think what I heard you say is that I don't give you enough Unsugar coated feedback and that you would like more of that. Is that correct? The third a is to appreciate it. So as soon as you acknowledge and they've confirmed that what you just repeated back to them is the feedback that they wanted to give you, then you want to appreciate it. You want to say, thank you. I really appreciate you giving me that feedback. You know, it's something I didn't know. It's something that I've actually been trying to even work on to a certain degree. But hearing it from you is really helpful because I didn't even know it was showing up in that area of the business. And so you want to show them and you want to reinforce their behavior to give you feedback. If you thank someone for doing something that was scary for them, then they're much more likely to do it again versus if you just continue on with a conversation. I Sometimes like to thank someone in a conversation and then I like to ping them on Slack or via email later and tell them again, like, hey, I just want to let you know I really appreciate you doing that. The fourth piece is to accept it. So sometimes what you're going to see is that people give you feedback and it's absolutely true and it resonates with you. There's also going to be times where someone gives you feedback about some decision you're making in the business, but they might not know that there's something else going on. And because they lack that context, you may not actually accept that feedback. There was a time where we were in the middle of selling gym launch. An employee came to me and gave me feedback about me not showing up as many meetings. Little did they know I'm trying to sell the company, which means I'm not going to be as involved in the company meetings anymore. I couldn't accept the feedback that they were giving me because they didn't have the context that we were selling the company to know why I was doing that. So sometimes what you have to do is you have to educate people so that they understand why you don't accept that feedback. And then the last piece is to act on it. Giving feedback and accepting feedback are great, but if you don't do anything about it, it doesn't really matter. You want to inform them of what action you're going to take next. So say that someone gives you feedback about how you're not giving them enough feedback, right? Then you're going to say, listen, here's what I'm going to do after this meeting, I'm going to set up time every two weeks just for us to meet. Just 10 minutes. And we're just going to use it as a feedback only session. I have five minutes to give you feedback. You have five minutes to give me feedback. Does that work for you? You actually acted on the thing that they gave you feedback on. Take this video, go over it a few times and then tell your team, hey, I want to start using this. I want to normalize feedback in our culture. Let's watch this video together. And then on our next team meeting, what we're going to use is we're going to go to breakout rooms and we're going to each give each other feedback. I do a timer for 15 minutes and then we do switch. This is something that I like to do at quarterly meetings. It's something I like to do on team monthly meetings. If you don't normalize giving feedback and accepting criticism, then your culture will never be one of feedback. But if you push people to be uncomfortable, eventually it will be comfortable to them. It'll become a normal part of your culture. What I want to talk about today is how perfectionism ultimately can cost you your business. How I experienced this, and some tips that I have in terms of how you can change your beliefs so that this doesn't happen to you. So I was talking to a founder last week and he was somebody that applied for acquisition.com and I'm not going to name names or talk about the business itself, but this person had basically with brute force, gotten their business to about 15 million a year. And obviously 15 million a year is like no joke. But the issue is, is that oftentimes what we do to get our business to one level is what prevents us from getting the business to another level and about this all the time. Perfectionism and standards of excellence to a degree, are what get people to, you know, multiple eight figures, but they will prevent people from getting to nine figures. And what that is, is that we have a huge level of control over our businesses. And guys, I know this because this is what I did with my business. I was able to get our business to 30 million a year by holding on incredibly tightly. But in order to get past 30 million, I had to learn how to let go. And so when I realized I was talking to that founder, I felt like that person almost had too many limiting beliefs for us to be able to work with that person. And the reason for that was because the beliefs that person held around standards of excellence, what they need to oversee in the business, that they need to be quality controlling every single department, to every little detail of everything that everyone did every day, though that had gotten them to 15 million, that was the exact reason why this person was hitting a ceiling and had flatlined for the last year and a half. And that was the exact reason why I didn't think they were going to be able to get to 30 or 40 million. Because a lot of that has to come down to self coaching and, and understanding ourselves and being okay with letting go and not being perfect. And I think that a lot of the times what it stems from is that we identify with the business. And especially if it's your first business, it's like your identity is meshed into the business. And so if the business makes a mistake or has a problem, we identify as being a mistake or having problems, when in reality they're two separate entities. And if you can separate yourselves and you can Develop healthier beliefs around what is perfect, what is not, and perfectionism in general, then we can grow our businesses. And so I think a lot of the times what it is is that it takes a relentless amount of execution, perfect execution with tight controls in order to get a business to 10 million, 15 million, and even sometimes 20 million. But if you want to get your business past that point, then you have to let go of controlling. You have to let go of the idea of perfectionism. And then I got slapped in the face with reality when I realized that my business wasn't growing because of my tendencies, because of my need for perfection, and because of my need to feel good about the business in order to feel good about myself. So what happens is that if you can relate to this, if you feel like, oh, I kind of am a perfectionist, I never want problems in my business. I never want to make mistakes. Right. It's typically that we're looking at things as problems that are actually conditions of business. Okay, so let me give you an example of what this means. Say that you think an employee is complaining or employees aren't getting along, and you think that's a problem. I see that as a condition of business. Now, old Layla would say, that's a problem. People aren't getting along. The snap, blah, blah. Layla now says that's a condition of business. It might be that one month you have low sales, and you might think, there's a huge problem. In my business, Layla might think, maybe there was a holiday, maybe it's seasonal. There's so many other reasons for a slump in sales. What I'm trying to show you is that there's a lot of things that we control in order to get our business to one level, but we have to let go of those expectations in order to get to the next. Because the reality is that with every upside. So if you want to grow your business further, you also have to accept the downside. Right. That comes with that. And I think a lot of the times we aren't willing to accept that downside. And so we hold on tighter and tighter, and then our business starts to flatline, and that's what we see. And so what I want to share today are just really the three beliefs that I actually broke of myself and the three new beliefs that I learned to embody in order to grow my business past that point that I had flatlined. So I hope you can do the same. The first old belief that I had was, if my business is not perfect, then I'm not good at business. Replace that with the new belief, which is if my business is not perfect, it is a business. Listen, businesses are not perfect. And it took me a long time to realize this. I used to think it was a problem if my business wasn't perfect and everything wasn't going well all the time. Problems in business are normal and to be expected. If you're not experiencing problems in business, it's probably because your business isn't growing. It is that we try to have no problems, which actually creates no growth. But if you can accept problems, your business will actually grow. And so there are no perfect conditions or solutions in business. An example of this is that back in gym launch, in the old days, we had a time where customers were extremely upset about the cost of Facebook advertising. And we had an entire research and development department where basically they were constantly testing new ads, new creative, to get the cost down as far as possible. The reality was, is that the cost of the platform was going to go up no matter what. And despite specific spending, almost $100,000 a month in tests, we couldn't fight the fact that the platform was getting more expensive. We could get it down, but we couldn't get it to where it was a year, a year and a half ago. I was so upset over this because I felt like I was doing a bad job. I felt like I couldn't control this situation, and therefore it was a problem I needed to fix. The reality was that what I needed to do is I would need to accept the fact that the platform was increasing over time and that there was only a certain amount of things that we could do to a reasonable extent before it actually was more of a deterrent. So I spent, you know, I think there was over a year that we spent trying to fight the fact that this platform was increasing. And I think about the amount of attention that I lost to that because I couldn't accept the fact that my business wasn't perfect. Right. It's almost like fighting gravity. I was like, we should be able to get lower costs despite the fact of the platform rising for every single other person. It's an unreasonable belief. And so if we can trade our beliefs for believing that if we have an imperfect business, there's something wrong with us or we're not good at business. And you can understand that if you have an imperfect business, that it's probably growing and that it is just a business and that's a condition of business, then you'll have a much easier time growing, getting past the part that you're stuck at. So the second old belief that I had was that if I do not perform perfectly as the CEO every day, I will lose the respect of my customers, my employees, and my team. And I used to really think that. I used to think that if I didn't show up absolutely perfect every day, I didn't say everything perfectly every time, I didn't act perfectly every time, I didn't remain completely composed every time, that people would ultimately lose respect for me, and they wouldn't want to do business with me or work for me. The new belief is that if I don't perform perfectly as a CEO, that I will give other people the space to also understand that they are imperfect humans and that they, too, cannot show up perfectly every day, and that people will be more transparent with me, and I'll probably have better working relationships. I used to think, gritting my teeth through it, showing up perfectly every day, pretending like I wasn't a human, basically being like a robot, was a strength of mine. But what I realized was that showing up like that actually prevented me from having authentic relationships with my team and with my customers, because not showing my mistakes made me unrelatable. And so maybe you feel that maybe you're growing your business and you feel like it's the first time you've done it and you're terrified. So you don't want to show up. You don't want people to think you're human. Right. We want to think that we're above everyone else. We're better than everyone else because we're the leader, we're the CEO. But the reality is that you're human just like everybody else on your team. And if you can not hide things from people, then they won't hide things from you. And so the more likely you are to have a better relationship with everybody on the team if you can just be yourself. And here's the thing that I realized is that teams that aim for perfection and aim to hide things from each other will always move more slowly, and they will always be more judgmental of one another, and there will always be less trust. And I saw that because I looked at the culture that we had on our team, and I said, why are people hiding things from me? Why are people judging themselves so harshly? And then I just looked in the mirror, and I realized it was because I'm doing that to myself. And so I realized that if I wanted to change the culture of my team, to have a team that was more cohesive, that moved faster, that wasn't, you know, afraid of being Seen in a different light. If they were having a bad or off day, then I need to accept that about myself. And so once I realized that being imperfect was a better goal than being perfect in terms of how I show up as a CEO, I was able to move so much faster, and I was able to have more transparency and better connection with everybody on my team. The third old belief was that if my business is not exactly where I want it to be right now, then I'm just not good enough to be there. Right. I used to think if I'm not at a billion yet, it's because I'm not good enough to be at a billion. Here's what I realized. If my business is not exactly where I want it to be right now, it might be that I have unrealistic expectations and I need to be more patient. So a lot of people judge themselves, and I'll see them come to me. And I see it. I think that seeing in others has actually helped me see it myself more is they'll come to me. They'll be like, layla, I've been doing this for two years. I'm only at 20 million. Why am I not X, Y and Z yet? Et cetera, et cetera. Like, I don't understand why I haven't gone faster. What is it? That's a deficit in me. And they're constantly searching for, like, what the deficit in themselves is in order to grow and move. And I look at them and I'm like, dude, there's no deficit. You're literally doing all the right things. I feel like you have all the right character traits. And it's just a fact of the matter is, is that these things take time. If you look at most of the billionaires in the world, and the people have made hundreds and hundreds of millions. Yes. What we hear is all the stories of people who blew up overnight, but Most of them, 90% of them, it takes years and decades to get there. And so oftentimes, what actually prevents us from getting there is the fact that we think it should be going faster. So we try to go faster and we try to speed it up. And by doing that, we actually work against our plan. And then we actually take longer to get there because we've taken so many routes or detours from our route. And then we steer off the road because you're actually distracting yourself because you think you should be getting there faster. And so the reality is, oftentimes the way to get there faster is to move slower and just stick with the plan. But we judge ourselves for the pace. We judge ourselves for why we're not there yet. And the reality is, a lot of the times, and I see this, it's just that we just need time, and you need to give time time. It's like a good example of this is like, I could judge myself and say, like, why am I not at a billion yet, Layla? Well, I sold majority stake in my other businesses, and now I've started a new business which is only 7 months old. Is it reasonable to think that a business that's seven months old should be at a billion dollars by now? No. Is it exceeding the goals I've already set? Yes. We've already surpassed our yearly goal, yet I'm still not satisfied. And so then I just tell myself, like, oh, I'm just not being patient. And I see that so much in other people. The thing is, is that you don't need to feel patient in order to act patient. So just because my business isn't where I want to be yet, and I can think things like, oh, I may not be good enough, like, I should go fast for all these things, I don't need to listen to those thoughts. I can just continue to follow the plan. I can just behave as if I'm a patient person. Because the reality is actions speak louder than words. And so if you can act patient, it doesn't matter the thoughts that occur in your head of wanting to go faster. If you act that way, then that is who you are overall. What I want you to get from these three beliefs is the understanding that there is no such thing as perfect. And if you continuously try to attain perfection in your business, you're actually going to prevent your business from growing. The fact of the matter is, is that if you spend more time trying to move the business forward and not trying to be perfect, you will actually go faster in the long run. And how I define perfectionism in this context is the refusal to accept standards that are anything short of perfect. Perfect meaning complete and without problems. And so then I would go there and say, perfect is unrealistic. It is an irrational belief to believe anything could be perfect. Because the thing is, is that we're making up the standards in our mind. And so, like, I could say that this dinner is perfect, and the next person could say that the dinner is imperfect. What is the standard based upon? It's not based upon anything rooted in reality. It's based upon our perception in our brain. So even if you try to make your business perfect, you can't, because it's only perfect to your standards and nobody else's. So a lot of people ask me, layla, how do I know that I should be patient in the current vehicle I'm in? Like, how do I know that I should be being patient versus doing something else? And the question is, what supports your argument to be patient? Do you have evidence to support that the path you're taking is logical and will lead to the outcome that you desire? Times what people use as a reason to not be patient is emotion, not logic, right? They're like, I don't. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel fast enough, right? But if you look at the evidence, have you laid out your business plan? Have you done the projections? Have you studied the market? Have you supported it with the fact that you like it? And it's something you're strong at? And if you've done all the work ahead of time to lay out logistically all the evidence as to why this business should succeed, then you should continue to follow that path. Now, maybe if you haven't done that, then maybe the answer isn't to be patient if you haven't done any work ahead of time, but if you've accumulated all the evidence ahead of time to prove to yourself and to prove to the market why this is a good business, the answer is patience. So if you're wondering, like, if the vehicle you're in is when you should be patient with or you should change what you're doing, I have a video where I talk about how to figure out what business to start and how to figure out if the business that you're in is right business for you. And you can go check it out here.