You're Better Than 'Good Enough'

This is the unsolvable problem in my marriage. And honestly? I think I'm right.

Learn why 'good enough' is costing you more than you realize — especially if you're a content creator, podcaster, or service-based entrepreneur building a reputation on your work.

Key Takeaways:

• The hidden tax of consistently shipping work you're not fully proud of 
• Why your first idea and your best idea are almost never the same thing (and how to tell the difference)
• How the AI content flood is making originality your single biggest competitive advantage 
• The one question to ask yourself before you put anything out into the world

You are better than good enough and deep down, you already know it!

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom.

Transcript

Welcome Freedom Seekers

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, Freedom Seekers, and welcome back to another episode of the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast, the show where we question the default, we ditch the template, and we figure out what freedom actually looks like for you. Because it looks different for everyone. I'm Sam, and today, Freedom Seekers, I am spilling some tea about one of the biggest unsolvable problems in my marriage with Jared, who is also my business partner. We have done several entrepreneurial things together. We wrote the long-distance relationship activity book. We have been contracted to plan company retreats together. We have an Airbnb business. And most recently, we launched our nonprofit

The Unsolvable Marriage Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:45

venture, Conscious Kitties. And guess what? This unsolvable problem, this issue that I'm spilling the tea on today, it has shown up every single time. And when it does, we completely question our compatibility as business partners. Now, fair warning, this is not gonna be one of those episodes where I share how we figured it all out and we now have harmony. No, this is more of a listen to why I know I'm right kind of episode. I mean, not in all settings, but in the ones that I do think are most relevant to you. This is an important message for my fellow service-based entrepreneurs, content creators, podcasters, anybody who's building a reputation based around their work. And the message today that I'm sharing is the good enough trap. I'll paint the scene by sharing with you the latest debate that Jared and I had. We found ourselves in this situation we've been in countless times. We were in Whistler, we were planning our annual retreat. This is an event we put on. We've done seven of them now. It's a multi-day retreat in Whistler for our conscious kitties community. And naturally, I push myself to make each one of these retreats different than the last one, and ideally, even better than the last one, which means we're often starting from scratch when we are creating the programming. And this is one of the first disagreements that Jared and I have. He wants to build things that are repeatable, that are scalable, which I totally get. But the problem is that half of the people who come to our retreats were at one of the

The Retreat Planning Standoff

SPEAKER_00 2:20

past ones. And surely they deserve something new. We can't just rinse and repeat. I want to surprise and delight everybody. Surely our loyal returning kitties deserve something new, don't they? And my intensity for innovating and delivering my best, it doesn't just end there. And neither does the tension between Jared and I. Because when it comes to actually going ahead and planning these sessions, this programming that I insist on starting from scratch, we also approach that part differently. For example, I'll throw out an idea, right? Just like the first thing that comes to mind, a starting point for a session. And Jared will often reply, okay, good, let's go with that. And I am literally appalled. I mean, how could my first idea possibly be my best idea? That was V1. Okay, I now want to analyze this idea from all angles. I want to hear your ideas and how you can make mine

Your First Idea Is Never Your Best Idea

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better. I want to fully play out the situation and experience. And then likely I want to throw the whole idea out because I found one flaw in it. Okay, I admit I sound unbearable to brainstorm with, but it is just my process. And it's not that Jared was wrong in saying my suggestion was good. It was more that I knew, like I knew it just wasn't my best idea. It was my first idea. And those things are very different. So I make us sit there, I make a sit there for hours. We go deeper, we push farther, we throw things away, we start over, and then we finally land somewhere that feels genuinely new, that feels great, something that I immediately am like, I'm proud and excited to deliver this. Now, obviously, I love my husband, but more than that, I respect him. He is a brilliant COO. He is one of the most productive humans I have ever met. He is currently going so deep on AI and unlocking a whole new level of efficiency. He honestly blows my mind regularly when it comes to work and the way he approaches things. His instinct is to move quickly. His instinct is to ship things and learn along the way. And that works so well for him in a lot of the work that he does that doesn't involve the projects that we do together. And not only am I just naturally wired differently, I truly don't believe that his approach works in the world that we're building in. And I want to talk today a little bit about why. Why choosing good enough should very much be a deliberate choice. And it is one that is worth examining carefully, depending on your goals and depending on the type of work that you do. So here's what I mean. If you're a content creator, podcaster, service-based entrepreneur, somebody whose business is based on a personal brand, build on your reputation, efficiency shouldn't be your most important metric. Okay. Depth, quality, often originality, those are the things in this space that are really important to prioritize. Your audience, your customer, your prospective customers, they're not just consuming your content. They are deciding whether or not they're gonna trust you, whether or not they're gonna come back for more, whether or not they're gonna recommend you to somebody else. And every single piece of work that you put out there is either building that trust or it's eroding it. You don't get to be average and unforgettable. You have to pick one. So back to Whistler. Jared really believes that hey, the last retreat went so well.

Who This Episode Is Really For

SPEAKER_00 5:50

We had amazing feedback. What worked then will work again. Why reinvest the energy? Why start from scratch? Let's iterate, let's improve, let's ship a V2 of last year's session, which again, for a COO who is used to optimizing systems and processes, that is a completely solid approach. But I've always felt in my gut that especially our returning attendees, they do not just deserve a tweak. I want them to have that exact same experience that everybody is having who's coming to our retreats for the very first time. That sense of, ooh, I wonder where this is going. I wonder what's gonna happen, that open-minded headspace, the idea of discovering something new. I want everybody to be on the same page. I want there to be like a cohesive feeling in the room. And I always want it to be the best possible version of anything I've ever done. So I make a sit there, we stay in the room until we get there, until we get to that moment where I feel it. It's a very specific feeling where I know I've pushed past the obvious ideas and I've really arrived somewhere that I just couldn't have arrived in the first hour.

You Either Build Trust Or Erode It

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Now, Jared will tell you, and I do appreciate his honesty, is that he's not even 100% sure that every single attendee even notices this extra effort. And that's a fair point. How do we ever really know? Like, there are some details that I've put a lot of effort into and they don't exactly show up in the feedback form. Like, did our attendees notice that their worksheets, I mean, they could have just been printed on simple black and white, average printer paper, but no, I had thick cardstock, full color, fully branded experiences for them to be filling out worksheets that I hoped would be genuinely fun and aesthetic and beautiful to look at. Did they get any different results based on these highly branded worksheets that I created? Did they even notice that, hey, I had to put in an extra two hours probably to design those and go to the special printer and make sure everything was set up for them? Hard to say. Or what about our opening remarks? We kick off every single event with a dinner. We stand in front of the room, all of our kitties are sitting in front of us, ready for us to kick off the event. Do they notice how much effort I put into those opening remarks and that script? I mean, I've got rules. I gotta make them laugh within the first 30 seconds. I wanna call out specific people in the room. I wanna have vulnerable storytelling, I wanna be inspirational. Did they notice, or could I have just said, thanks so much for being here, now let's eat? And we would have had the same results. Did anybody notice that? Did anybody care? It's hard to say. But here's what I know for sure is that I needed to do that for myself. Something I've really learned about myself and have also observed from several clients now that I've had the benefit of coaching and the privilege of watching other people go after their dreams and build their personal brands, create podcasts, launch businesses, build reputations, go sell themselves. I have really noticed a pattern here, which is that you need to feel proud of your work if you're going to confidently put it out there. If you're gonna market yourself, if you're gonna ask for the sale, if you're gonna tell the world, here's something I created and it's amazing, please go consume it. You need to be proud of it. And since I'm a Virgo and I bring a lot more intensity

The Worksheets Nobody Noticed

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than just the regular person, I tend to take it one step further. I need to do my best work to even enjoy delivering it. When I stood in front of that room on the first night of our retreat this year, I was genuinely excited to share what I had to share because I knew I had prepared something that was the best I had. I knew it was original, I knew it came from my own deep thinking, I knew I hadn't settled for my first idea. I had so much more fun. I was alive in that room, I was more present, I was more confident. And not because the audience knew the difference, but because I did. And that matters. Your relationship to your own work matters a lot more than I find people talk about. People are often discussing today the importance of consistency, putting yourself out there on a regular basis. It's a numbers game, spray and pray, posting on the internet every single day. Don't be scared to be told no, just get 50 no's and you'll get the one yes. There's this emphasis on quantity and this emphasis on speed. But those who are listening to the show, I know that you made a shift, you are a freedom seeker, you designed your own version of the freedom lifestyle because you were chasing a feeling. You wanted to feel free. You were done doing obligatory work that you were not passionate about. You were done doing work that didn't align with who you were. Whether you are deeply in tune with your feelings or not, you did make a change because how you felt in your old life wasn't how you hoped you would feel if you made a change towards this new one. And you can feel this way, but doing work that you're not proud of, that's not the vibe. That's not the way that we get that feeling of true freedom and satisfaction that I know we're all chasing as we embark on our own versions of the freedom lifestyle, launching our businesses, putting our ideas out there, becoming content creators, building our personal brands, having a reputation that is unforgettable, not one that is average. Putting something out there just for the sake of shipping it and seeing how people respond, that is not the vibe. Okay. I have seen firsthand when people make that the norm. You know what they do? They start shying away from sharing their work. They stop

Your Confidence Is The Product

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talking about their business, they stop promoting their content. When you're not confident about what you're creating and selling, and you're not genuinely believing that what you've built is valuable, of course you're gonna hesitate putting it out there. Of course, you're going to resist the task that you have on your calendar for today to do a bunch of cold outreach or to post on social media or to attend an event and talk about what you're doing. Of course, you're gonna hesitate because you don't actually believe what you've built is great. And if you don't think what you've done is great, you're gonna do the bare minimum to tell people about it. I have seen my clients do this time and time again, where I give them homework, they get on a call with me, we come up with really specific strategies for them to go out and market and sell themselves and get that next customer or get that next viewer for whatever they're creating. And they agree to doing the homework, they agree that it's a great idea and great strategy, and they come to our next call and they haven't done it. Or they've done a very bare minimum job of it. And when we get to the root of it, it's never because they're lazy. It's

Why Clients Stop Promoting Their Work

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never because they didn't have enough time. It is always because they didn't fully believe in what they had built. They weren't confident that it was worth telling people about. And that is the cost of good enough. And not only do you hesitate, but when you put it out there, your audience can also feel your lack of confidence and your lack of belief in what you've built, even if they can't fully name what it is, they pick up on that. And even if you're listening to this or watching this and you're like, Sam, I have no issues with that. I can create average things and tell everybody about it. I have no issues with fully proudly putting just good enough work out there. Okay, well, I'll challenge that. What is the cost of you doing good enough on a consistent basis? What is the tax on that approach over time? It's probably a lot more, it's probably a lot more than you think. So, this is something I want you to really think about because we are living in a moment where AI can produce good enough content faster and cheaper than ever before. A good enough blog post, a good enough social media caption, a good enough script. These things are now essentially free to generate, which means good enough is about to be the complete norm. We are gonna be in a world flooded with average. And it's gonna be the people who are willing to go deeper that stand out. Those who are genuinely creating original things, putting out an actual point of view, sharing their true lived experience and sticking around until they come up with their best possible thinking and refined it. Those are the people who are going to be memorable. Your originality is not a nice to have, especially for service-based entrepreneurs, content creators, people building a personal brand. This is your entire competitive advantage. So even if you don't suffer from the mindset challenges that I've been mentioning, you will start to see this in your results if all you do is good enough. Your reputation is not going to be built on the volume of work that you put out there, but it's gonna be based on the work that people actually remember. The podcast episode that someone shares with their friend and says, Oh my goodness, you have to hear this. The retreat experience that somebody tends and for weeks later are still talking about it, thinking about it, looking at old photos with a sense of joy and happiness. That kind of work doesn't come from your first idea and it doesn't come from shipping something that is good enough to just get off your plate so you can move on to the next task. It comes from caring enough to sit in the room a little longer, to ditch efficiency and to embrace

AI And The Flood Of Average

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excellence, even if it takes longer. So, this is what I want you to sit with. This is the question I have for you. Think about something that you're currently working on, something you're creating, building, something that you are preparing to put out into the world. And ask yourself honestly is this my first idea or is this my best idea? And not to make yourself feel bad, okay? But just to notice because sometimes your first idea is your best idea, and that's wonderful. But a lot of the times there's a quiet feeling underneath of knowing that you could do better. And I really am encouraging you to trust that. Your best work is worth waiting for, your reputation is worth protecting. You are better than good enough. When I think about the podcast that I've created for you, freedom seekers, over the years. Am I somebody who has put out an episode every single week since I launched the show in 2017? Hell no. There was a time where I took an entire year off because of COVID, and people were telling me it's not appropriate for me to have this type of content. And I listened. I still kind of regret that. But still, my point is, is I have never chased quantity. And the few times I have, I always regret it. What I know for sure is even though I don't have a weekly episode that I put out to you, I wish I could. I do know that when I put something out to you, I really believe in it. I'm really proud of it. You don't want to be in a situation where you cringe when somebody says to you, Oh yeah, I was on your website and I was reading your latest blog posts, and you secretly are like, I really hope you didn't get to that part of it because I kind of just like quickly put that out and didn't really do a second draft of it, and it's not that great. That feeling sucks. And that's why I fight with Jared. That's why I put this strain on my marriage because I know him and I are capable of excellence together. And every single event we've done from Conscious Kitties, I really do believe it was my best possible work. Even if people didn't notice, I knew it. And that allowed me to show up in that room with a level of confidence and an excitement that I also think really mattered. And that is so important. So that's why I fight with him. And if you're worried about my marriage, don't be. We have an entire year before we have to plan the next retreat. We just did it. So we're on a break now.

First Idea Or Best Idea

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And we're also getting better at using our natural instincts to our advantage. Sadly, what this has meant for us is doing a lot more work separately. We've really been dividing and conquering. I spend a lot more time on the vision. He spends a lot more time on the execution. It does make me a little bit sad that we can't do it all together. But when we have this approach, it creates a lot more flow between us. It really allows us to respect each other's different ways and know that they're both right as long as you're using your way at the right time. And I share this as an invitation to you because maybe there's somebody that you're working with right now that you're really butting heads because your approaches are so completely different. Maybe you can find a way to just apply each other's different instincts to the right areas of your business. That has been so helpful in allowing us to continue to be business partners, but also a married couple. We have just celebrated 10 years together, which is a milestone that I am so proud of. Definitely my longest relationship with a human lover. Um, and if we continue to respect each other and harness one another's gifts in the right ways, I know we're gonna be together for a

How Jared And I Actually Make It Work

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long time. And so maybe that meant is meaningful to you. Maybe this is just me bragging that I made it to 10 years. But either way, that's all I have for you, friends. Until next time, enjoy your freedom.