Episode 001: Less Optimization & More Execution!

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the episode podcast right here. Thank you so much for listening again. My name is Khadirah Muhammad.

I am the founder of Succeeding With Systems Academy succeedingwithsystems.com, where we teach in everybody learning how to leverage automation, technology, and systems.

So you can automate your way to freedom. Give back your time. Freedom, increase your financial freedom and overall live the life that you've always wanted to live.

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So let's get right to it. So today I wanted to speak about the power of just doing and not trying to over optimize, which might be really, really interesting because I'm an optimizer by nature.

I am a planner by nature. I organize by nature. These are the things that I really enjoy to do, but when you run into this trap of over optimizing and over organizing and overplanning, now you're stuck in this cycle of creating, but never executing of thinking and planning of ideating, but never actually executing.

And that's a recipe for a disaster. And that's something

I had to learn to take myself out of. Right? I had to learn how to run with the mistakes. I had to learn how to run, not even just run with them, run to them, run to mistakes, run to failure, run to mishaps because it's only when you run to them.

Do you actually get to the other end where you can actually find success? What I've seen a lot of new entrepreneurs do, however, is we get stuck in the idea phase of things, right?

I get this idea for this. I have this idea for that. I have this idea for this. I wanna make this business, I wanna create this product.

I wanna offer this service and they're great ideas, but like,

when are you actually going to do something with them? when are you actually going to do something with them? When are you actually going to bring it into fruition?

I will give you a great example. I'm in this process and you guys are, are seeing this I'm, I'm documenting my process of building an audience organically for the most part from scratch.

Okay. And what I mean by that is I'm finally stepping in front of the camera versus being behind it versus being behind the scenes for my clients, being their operations arm for their businesses.

And I'm actually doing it for myself content wise. And that requires a level of me coming outta my comfort zone.

It requires me to show up more than I ever really intended to do in the beginning because the goals that I, I have require for me to step out in that way, but the only way I'm actually gonna be able to do that is if I actually do it right, I, I was I took about maybe an hour or two, and I had to do a, a quick mind map because my thoughts were kind of everywhere.

I had a lot of ideas. I finally figured out, oh, I can do this.

I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. Right. And so then I took the time to mind map it. Okay. I might try to put a shot here, if you're watching a YouTube video of his podcast, you might be able to see a shot of my map that created.

And it was just me figuring out that, you know, I can do my live streams on Facebook. I can turn them into podcasts episodes, and then I can turn those into little sound, bite, Instagram videos, Instagram reels, which I can then also post on YouTube as YouTube shorts as well as Pinterest pins and Pinterest stories.

And then I can also take the transcripts from my podcast and turn them into blog posts, which is all, all in all.

It's a great idea. Fantastic idea. A lot of people actually, I won't say a lot of people do that, but it's not necessarily brand brand new.

Right. But I needed to map it out for myself so I could see how that worked for me because where I focus my social media content on and where I post on, it's not necessarily gonna be exactly the same as everybody else.

So that was important for me to map it out, but then I had it mapped out. I could see it.

I'm like, okay, I see how all this works. Okay, great. I have a good idea on how this process can actually work, but then I had the task of, okay, I need to execute on this.

I need to do something right now. So literally after I made that map, I had a quick lunch break and then I came back to it, had a client meeting and I was like, all right, we need to actually do this.

So that way we could take what we just took out of our minds. We put it on paper. Now we gotta put it out here.

Right. I gotta actually do this now. Right. And then also means I need to be making podcast episodes. And I need to be doing live streams, unlike Facebook and whatnot.

And what I did is I scheduled out live streams and a bunch of Facebook groups that I'm a part of.

I already scheduled them out. I made events for them. I put them on my calendar and I created the events in the Facebook groups themselves.

So people could start getting aware of it, cuz Facebook is gonna remind them of my event. Okay. And now what I also did was like, okay, I don't wanna have to wait for all that to happen.

So what I'm also going to do is I'm going to just record some podcasts. I watched one video of, you know, how to create a podcast so on and so forth.

And you know, right before I made my, my, my podcast, which is literally this video right now, it's like the first one that you're you guys are, are, are, are watching again.

If you're on YouTube or listening to, if you're on, if you're listening to the podcast on the Go, before I even recorded anything though I was on YouTube searching, like, how do you create a podcast?

Like, is there anything super special? And people were talking about, you need this mic, you need this camera, you need this software, which is cool. Like I think if you are at that point where it makes sense to get and invest in those things, that's amazing.

You should eventually I will get a mic. Eventually I will actually get a real camera and not just my phone's camera, which honestly, my iPhone, even though Apple's trying to destroy me and low key apple is trying to destroy me by making my phone be a little bit, you know, harder to deal with every single time.

I'm still gonna use my iPhone. Right. Cause it's still good quality. But at, at some point I will get my own mic, my own camera, you know, we'll have a better setup. You guys see my background here again, if you're watching the videos, I'm gonna also improve my background by my desk.

So we're gonna do all of those things, right. But boy, I was watching these videos. I started getting levels of anxiety because I'm looking at these videos and I'm like, wait a second.

I gotta get a mic. Okay. That's money. I gotta pay for a mic. I should pay for a camera, but I don't know how to use mics and cameras.

To be honest, I used to know how to use like my can cameras way back in college. I say way back as if I didn't just graduate three years ago.

Sorry. Not way back. It was a few years ago. That's it? but I used to know how to use cameras that, well, I guess I'm like, okay, I gotta learn how to do that again.

They're talking about this software. I'm like, I don't really wanna learn how to do podcast software. I don't wanna do any of that. So I'm listening to this and I'm like, wait a second, hold on. This is too much information, right? TMI too much information.

Not because it's bad, but because it's too much. And my goal right now is just to execute. It's my goal right now is to just it's just to do, cuz if it's one thing about me, I'll create the process later.

And I really believe that the ability to execute on plans, oftentimes it's more important than the plan. Now, most entrepreneurs, I think are a bit of the opposite of me.

You all go, go, go. And then you'll plan later, which can still bite you. Right? It can still, it can still have a negative consequence attached to that, but you also don't wanna over plan and have no execution.

You gotta test stuff out. So jumping back to that video that I was watching, I turned it off. I went on my computer, I jotted down 10 podcast topic ideas.

That will be great for the succeeding with systems podcast. And I jotted down those ideas. I picked the first one I found the most interesting.

And it's this topic that I'm actually talking to you all about. This is kind of inception, honestly, you know, it's a little bit inception, right?

Because I jotted it down. I'm making the video talking about how to execute. And the video is proof of my execution, right?

And podcast is proof of my execution. None of this is perfect. I'm learning on my phone. I have a tripod that I, you know, I didn't steal for my best friend.

I just may have took it. And I said, you know, we we'll do a trade off somewhere else. You know?

Like it's a tripod for the video, but it's really just a phone and that's it. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna edit the video.

Like I edit my other YouTube videos using an app on my phone. And then once the video's done, I'm gonna extract the audio and then that's gonna be it and I'm gonna upload it to the anchor probably.

And that's how you all are probably listening to this this podcast right now, right? If you're not on the YouTube, you don't wanna over optimize when you haven't even started.

I had somebody else who reached out to me and I might, I might make another episode about this later. I had somebody who reached out to me and they were just in beginnings of starting their business.

And they were talking about, they haven't really started either. They haven't really gone anywhere. They haven't really done anything. And they were reaching out to see if I could help them with their processes.

And I told them, I said, look, I can't help you one on one, because you haven't even started. There is no process for me to build around you.

Haven't started. Now, if you are a veteran entrepreneur, right, you've owned multiple businesses or you've been a part of a multiple businesses.

Then maybe it makes sense to hire somebody like me to go ahead and jumpstart your processes because, and in that case, you know how the entrepreneurship and business game works.

So you're not learning it from scratch while the person I was speaking with, they didn't really know the business world like that.

They were trying to get it up, which is nothing wrong with that. I had to tell 'em. I said, look, you need to just go ahead and do some stuff, cuz you gotta figure out what works.

I just got back from a mastermind in Atlanta. And I'll talk about that. In another episode, I'm more in depth, but I went to a mastermind in Atlanta.

And one of the things, the the speaker said was that you, your first year in business is a fluke. You don't, you can't really make any real decisions in your first year in business.

She said, truth, truth. Be told you can't make any real decisions about your business until three years in. And I was like, wow, cuz I'm actually, this is my fourth year in business.

And I still feel like I'm just starting. There's just so much that I could have did better.

There's so many things I'm trying to fix. There's so many things I'm trying to start now and it'll keep going, cuz you know, this is just what I love to do.

But she said the first year in business is a fluke. You just gotta try a bunch of stuff and see what works and not everything's gonna work.

And some things are gonna work better and then some things are gonna work, but you don't like it. I'm not doing the same thing that I didn't my first year, even though some stuff in my first year worked, but it doesn't match with what I really wanna do back then.

It was good right now, about three and a half years into it. Now I don't wanna do that anymore. So you really, really have to just go for it and do it Because everything's gonna change.

It's a constant pivot. Don't try to over optimize. Don't allow yourself to get stuck in analysis paralysis, where you cannot do anything.

And you're just, you got so many things you're analyzing, but you're going too deep. A lot of times you just gotta do it, find out what works later and you'll get there.

So I hope you guys enjoy this episode of succeeding with systems podcast. This episode, number one in the first season of this, of the podcast.

If you wanna learn more about what we do and if you also wanna read the show notes again, you can go to succeedingwithsystems.com/podcast.

So you can read the show notes and just go to the website, succeedingwithsystems.com in order to learn more about how you can leverage automation, technology, and systems.

So you can scale your way and automate your way to freedom and get back the time that you've always been wanting to have.

I appreciate you all. I am your host Khadirah Muhammad and I was here. Next steps. Bye.