If you’ve ever delayed launching something because it didn’t feel quite ready yet, this episode will probably feel very familiar.

As solopreneurs, we often tell ourselves we just need a little more time to refine things. A little more tweaking. One more round of adjustments.

It feels responsible. Thoughtful. Strategic.

But sometimes that refining process quietly turns into hiding.

We stay in research and development mode. We keep polishing. We keep adjusting. And before we know it, months or even years have passed without actually putting the work into the world.

In this episode of The Solopreneur CEO Podcast, Carin and Marcia talk honestly about momentum, what it actually looks like in real life, and the tension between refining something and over-tinkering.

This conversation comes straight from the messy middle of building the Solopreneur CEO Summit and reflects on the mindset shifts that happen when you choose to move forward even when things aren’t perfect yet.

This episode isn’t about productivity.

It’s about participation.

Listen to the Episode

In this episode, Carin and Marcia pull back the curtain on what it actually looks like to build momentum in a solopreneur business. They share the behind-the-scenes reality of developing ideas, launching projects, and navigating the mental loops that can show up when you start putting your work out into the world.

You’ll hear reflections on the temptation to keep refining things instead of shipping them, the internal resistance that shows up when visibility increases, and the importance of testing ideas in real time rather than waiting until everything feels perfect.

They also talk about building in public, promoting your work instead of staying the “best kept secret,” and why momentum often comes from action rather than clarity.

The conversation includes a behind-the-scenes look at how the upcoming Solopreneur CEO Summit came together, and why creating something your own way can generate more alignment and energy than trying to follow someone else’s blueprint.

This episode is a reminder that momentum rarely looks polished while it’s happening.

Most of the time, it looks like doing the thing anyway.

What We Talk About In This Episode

• Why momentum often comes from action rather than clarity.

• The difference between refining something and hiding behind perfection.

• Why solopreneurs often stay in “research and development” mode too long.

• How building in public helps normalize the messy middle.

• The internal resistance that shows up when you start sharing your work.

• Why promoting your work matters if you don’t want to stay the “best kept secret.”

• The mindset shifts that help solopreneurs keep moving forward.

Key Takeaways

• Momentum is created through action, not preparation.

• Perfectionism often disguises itself as productivity.

• Visibility requires courage, even for experienced business owners.

• Testing ideas provides better feedback than endless refining.

• Building something your way can create more energy and alignment.

• The messy middle is a normal part of leadership and growth.

Continue the Conversation

If this episode resonated with you, you’re invited to continue the conversation inside the Solopreneur CEO community.

It’s a thoughtful, low-noise space for solopreneurs who want support, perspective, and real conversations about building businesses that work without burning themselves out.

🌿 Join us at thesolopreneurceo.com

And if you’d like to go deeper into these conversations with other solopreneurs who are building real businesses, you can learn more about the upcoming event here:

🎟 solopreneurceo.com/summit

Episode Transcript

Solopreneur CEO Show Episode 11: Below is the full transcript of this episode for those who prefer to read or want to revisit specific parts of the conversation.

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Marcia:
We're going to talk about momentum and how creating and doing is usually what can provide that clarity.

In business you need momentum. You need to be constantly evolving and making sure that you are relevant, right?

Because the attention span and the timeline and everything that we're in, it's, it's going very fast.

This should be a really good conversation.

So Carin, can you just repeat everything you said right before we recorded? Because I was like, You know, isn't this a contradiction to what we've been saying?

And you brought something up and I just thought it was so great, so I would love for you to share that.

Carin:
Yes. We could never talk enough about momentum and what it really means to create momentum, have momentum, be in momentum, all the things about momentum. But yes, it does feel a little contradictory.

Where we're like, don't tweak, don't over tinker, don't mess with things too much. And then we're like, but you do have to play around with it. You do have to iterate.

It can feel like two sides of a coin.

But one of the challenges, and what we talked about before we hit record is, you can't use the research and development and creation process as a cover to stay in the cave. It's not ready yet. But I still have to tweak this, but I still have to work on that.

That's when it becomes a challenge where you're actually stripping away the momentum. Because you have to be comfortable to a certain degree with building as you go.

That's why we thought this was such a good topic to talk about because we have our Solopreneur CEO Summit coming up, and we are in the messy middle right now. We thought, why wait until it's all polished and pretty and, and ready to go. Let's talk through it while we're in it.

You might have heard people say share your scars, not your scabs. That's a little dramatic of a comparison but the point is that you want to share when you're on the other side, when things are all healed and great and it's all good.

But sometimes it can be more helpful to people to see the scab. To understand how you're moving through the scab, how you're dealing with the scab.

Again, a little bit of a dramatic example because we're not talking about some huge life journey here. But we thought in comparison to us building and creating this summit, it would be cool to talk through this topic while we are in the middle of that versus once we're done and it's all pretty and polished and ready to launch.

Oh my God, the mind stuff that happens when you have an idea. And you start to run with it, you will have like 2,800 ways to not do the thing. To not follow through. That was stupid. What did I, why did I think that was gonna be good?

There's so many things that will pop up.

I'm not ready. This isn't ready. Oh, I should push it back a week.

I just did a workshop over the weekend that I have been working on for about a year. Yes. Crazy, ridiculous. I did other versions of it. So this was not the very first time I did it, but I did it I think two or three times last year.

But I didn't like any of those, so I kept messing with that. I kept tinkering, I kept perfecting it. And I even pushed this back. It was supposed to be February 14th, and then I was like, no, I'm not ready.

So I pushed it to March 7th. What we want you to get from this episode is, one its totally normal…hello, welcome to being a solopreneur. And then two, there are other ways to work through it.

That's what we're going to talk about as we are working through it. So this is the fun behind-the-scenes, pulling back the curtain, getting an inside peak.

'Cause a lot of times people don't talk about stuff until they get to the other side.

Marcia:
I was in your workshop yesterday and so I saw the final results of it and the feedback that was given live, people were saying, this is so concise. It makes so much sense. Other people who I've heard talk about this they do it from their lens as opposed to like an overview that goes over everything.

I thought that was really good, but I have been kind of involved with the behind the scenes with you because you, me and Kim are on a text thread. So you'll share some of the stuff and so we'll be your second and third set of eyes.

Doing this at a grander scale, I think with sharing on the podcast what we're doing and what we're going through, and what we're building and creating and the tweaks that we're making, it's going to help anyone who listens to be like, oh, okay. The text threads that I have with my buddies, that's what other people are doing.

Yeah. We're all doing that, man. We all need support!

It's weird to think that we've been in business and have been doing this since, the first podcast was 2017, and it wasn't until we relaunched in January that we had completely niched down.

We had been getting those signals between the two of us about who we should be talking to specifically.

And we always say trust the timing. So sometimes it can feel like you're in a slog and you don't know what you're doing. I think that's kind of working on your intuition. And knowing when things are a way of hiding and a way of not putting yourself out there as a form of protection because maybe you are going through something in your family life.

This week, put me through a doozy man. Like there was a lot going on and last night with the time change and my kid who was up until like 2:00 AM I did not get good sleep. Last night I was having all of those thoughts that you were saying, it was like, wow, you know, you really should be further along now.

People talk about the devil. That's the devil talking. I will tell you some really mean things were being said in between my ears and I hate that and I don't like it, but then I wake up and get my coffee and things start to seem better.

But it's difficult. When we have stuff happening outside of our business, it can become very overwhelming because we're constantly stretching and growing and expanding our businesses and the impact that we're having and trying to fine tune and tweak. And sometimes that's not easy because you do have the external stuff going on.

Carin:
That's such a good point because life is always gonna life.

There's no magic button for life to just take a pause, like, let me get my shit together.

You'll always have a reason, is the point I think. You'll always have a reason why you could delay something or you could keep working on something or it's not ready yet.

What we want you to take away really is you can only get the answers through action. I could have only gotten that feedback of how great my workshop was from an attendee by doing the workshop. What excitement it could have been to have that last year if I had actually put this version out when I first thought of it, instead of tinkering with it for six months, you know?

But the momentum comes from the doing. We know we're talking to seasoned people who have been in business like we have for a long time and so you're no stranger to doing stuff, but you probably, if you're honest, have done a lot of stop start, start stop, and you probably get annoyed with yourself.

I'm just going to speak from my own experience. I annoy the hell out of myself when I do something, and maybe it works too well.

And I'm like, Ooh, I don't know if I can keep that up. So let's pause. Let's pause. And then next thing you know, it's been a year, you know?

Or you're so busy, maybe you have a lot of referrals coming in, or your clients love you, they keep coming back.

You might just be so busy with the clients that you really just don't have time to pay attention to the other parts of your business. And so it's like, do I really need that? I mean, I have all the referrals. But it's dangerous when your lead bucket is one bucket, right? You want to have different sources.

It's not really optional to pay attention to the other parts of your business, but you might tell yourself, I don't really need that. I don't really need that because I'm good. Like I got all the referrals coming in. The clients stay with me for a long time. I'm good. My membership is rocking.

Whatever it is. So the momentum can feel like, I'm good. I don't need to pay attention to that other thing. And we're not saying get distracted by shiny objects, but there are some core pieces in business that should be in place. Especially around how people come in and how they get to know you and how they get to work with you. That you can't ignore and you can't over tinker and not do that.

That's what we've been thinking about, right? How do we get people in?

When we first launched our Success Secret Society, we got the amount of members we wanted right away and were like, this is great.

We had some ideas around how we would promote it and how we would get more people into our world and it fell flat because the brand wasn't right, so then we fixed that part. We niched down and we relaunched in January as Solopreneur CEO, and we thought, yeah, we'll have a community.

We have all these ideas. We'll have a community, we'll do this, we'll have that, we'll do this. And some of them have not been the best result, which is fine because we had to try it to know what the result was going to be.

You can't just have the ideas and hold onto them, like your little idea babies that you don't want to let grow up.

Some of the ideas weren't the best. And then, Marcia had this idea for the summit and we thought, yeah, let's do it. Why not?

And we're doing it our way. You probably see summits all the time that are three days or there's a lot of moving pieces, there's a ton of speakers, a ton of information, and you're like, I don't even know what to pay attention to.

We decided we're doing a one day summit. Everything is prerecorded. We've got some cool things we're going to do to encourage conversation around the topics. We thought we can do it our way. We don't have to do it the way we've seen every other summit done.

I've talked about before, everything works, just figure out what works for you. It's your business so you get to do it your way, but you do have to be doing it regardless.

Marcia:
I'm so glad you brought that up because that's part of my personal professional ethos, to be an individual.

That's what we're doing with the summit. It's what we can handle capacity wise and we're going to do it.

We're going to get data and based on that we'll decide what we want to do from there. I'm excited!

It all came together as we were working on it because before we were like, the presenters can be live and then we'll have some prerecorded.

Then I was having a conversation with one of the speakers and she was like, I'd feel better if I could actually provide a recording. And we were just talking it through and I was like, you know what, this actually makes a lot of sense for everyone. Because then, we have the ability to create promotional content from the prerecorded sessions and we can get it out that way.

It's been pretty cool how it's unfolded. I like looking back and seeing what we've done and what we've created and what we're iterating.

Carin said this just a couple days ago, 'cause we have our quarterly workshop coming up and she's like, it's getting stale.

We thought about it and we're like, yeah, we don't know that this is great for our current members or that it will attract potential future members.

So we're working on that. The data does point out if things are working or not, like attendance numbers. We ask people like, can you provide us with feedback?

That's why the founding members got locked in at a really good rate. They know that they're helping build it with us.

Back to building momentum. I read all these books about, not super high level, quantum leaping and collapsing the timeline. And I think when you are building and you're doing things that are in alignment and are perfect and right for you, that's when things can just magically start to snowball.

And you're like, oh my God! I love that because I like it when I'm doing something and then there's feedback and progress. Instead of my brain trying to personally attack me!

I prefer the ease and the growth and all of that. We're moving forward.

Imposter syndrome comes up for me because I've jumped around so much. But then I look back and I'm like, have I really though?

Every move led to where I'm at now, but it just feels from my personal stance, it feels like I've been doing the most. But then I'm like, no, it was all connected.

Returning to full-time work, I had to do that for my family. It was a two and a half year blip and I'm sure at the end of my life, I'll be like, okay, that made so much sense. That was my R&D to figure out what really works for me, and what doesn't. I got a lot of data from that.

It's building in public, but also not being afraid of being seen as a flake.

Because people really aren't paying as much attention to you as you think they are. Carin's not even on social media. She'd be like, oh, I forgot about so and so, what are they up to? And I'll know because I actually enjoy social media, so I spend time on it.

For me as an introvert, it's a good way for me to stay in touch with people, even if they don't know I'm in touch with them because I'm just keeping up with what's going on.

Carin:
I love that you talked about the flakiness because I do think that can be something we want to avoid. Right?

When I was working on my bio, this was like earlier in the life of Chat GPT. I was working on my bio and it was like "the Queen of the Pivot". I was like, "really?".

Because I have had so many different business ideas and I've had different ones that I've explored, but I was like, am I the queen of a pivot? Damn. I definitely had a reaction to that because I was like, I don't think I'm pivoting that much, but also can't that be normal?

When I look at my journey, I can see where I pivoted and why. I know it wasn't like, oh, I just was hiding or staying in a certain mode of business that I didn't want to grow. I can be honest with myself.

And I think that's what's important for anyone, especially a solopreneur. It's just you, yourself, and you. And you should be honest with yourself. Even if you don't want to put it out in public or tell your significant other, or your business partner or whoever. But you at least should know the real truth about why you do what you do and how you really feel about it.

Never hide from that. I love a good journal. A good cup of tea, candle and journal, will set you free. That is part of leadership, that is part of being in that CEO mode. To have that radical self-honesty about what you're doing and why and at least you know, and then you can work through it.

If you are self-sabotaging or having imposter syndrome, you need to know that and you need to name it and you need to work through it. Otherwise, it'll keep showing up. I don't talk a lot about my full-time job, but I work with executives all day.

Our organization at one point was 25,000 people. So we're not talking small anything. I mean multiple levels. We have like 3000 managers and about 75 executives.

Or we had, I think we're down some. We all know why that happened. Anyway, even now we have like 15,000 people in our organization. These are people who probably started from the bottom, almost everyone, career executives, started from the bottom, right?

They worked their way up, they went through all the levels. They had to earn their stripes and they still will not feel like they are executive enough. Do I really have the answer? Can I make that decision?

I'm like, you’re an SES, if you can't do it, I know I can't. Again, I think it's nice to incorporate perspectives from other industries, especially when you're a solopreneur and you're in your cave, in your head.

Look at other industries, big tech or other companies and it's all the same. Every person who is a leader has those same thoughts. I also coach in the government because they had a coaching program. I was like, yes, sign me up.

So I coach managers and leaders and it's just the same. It's almost wild how the same it is. The thoughts, the wanting and not wanting to decide yet. Wanting to still figure everything out first, not ready to get feedback.

Because I'm not sure if I put the right outfit on my baby yet, so let me keep changing the outfit before I let you see it. That is just so normal across the board with leaders.

The more you know that, it can just help you be okay with it. It's not just you. Even if they don't say it online, they're all thinking it and feeling it and dealing with it a hundred percent.

Marcia:

So good. Being a business coach is probably like being a therapist where it's kind of like, oh, here we go. Childhood trauma, again. Is it Maslows the triangle or pyramid of needs or whatever. Anyway, we can think that we're special and we're the only ones that are trying to blow up our lives or improve our lives or whatever, just given the day and the time.

It's funny because when you were talking about your Chat GPT experience and being called out I had a similar one where I was like, Carin, and I love building. We really just love foundation building.

I put that in and Chat was like, stop building, start selling.

Just the way that it called us out. It was like, yeah, foundation building is fun, but like you already have everything that you need, so how often are you promoting your offers?

And I was like, okay, whatever. Rude.

Right? But it's true, like you have to be promoting. We had immediate success with the Success Secret Society and we got the number of people that we wanted to join, and it was a good core group. But then we did the relaunch and now we're doing the summit.

We know what needs to be done, but like there is a limited amount of time and attention and everything. We do need to be making that invitation to more people.

When you're not doing that and when you're not making progress, then that can make you shrink back even more.

Because we haven't had new members in a while we can think, oh my God, maybe our baby is ugly. Maybe we shouldn't be bringing our baby out in public.

But that's not the truth. It's we haven't been promoting it because our attention has been divided and that's fine. Carin and I are doing what we want to do, and we're growing at the rate that I think is appropriate.

I'm feeling very called out by this episode.

Carin:
That's when it's doing a good job. That's when you know.

You just need to tell more people, right? Like they just need to have an opportunity to even know about it and be able to join. Yeah.

That's probably the same for a lot of people, right? You probably just need to tell more people.

Marcia:
Yeah. Stop being the world's best kept secret, right?

It's like this secret society that literally no one knows about except for the people who are in it. We're not cloak and dagger. We want more people. So come join us! LINK