Episode 26
Ready Is a Story You're Telling Yourself (And It's Keeping You Stuck)
Jess filmed two videos in her car last week with no script, no editing, and no plan. Both outperformed everything she produced on purpose.
What This Episode Is Really About
You have an idea you've rewritten in your head so many times it doesn't feel like an idea anymore, it feels like a debt you owe. A caption, a business offer, a book, a message to someone who needs to hear it. You're waiting for the version that sounds finished before you let anyone see it.
Jess just watched the opposite strategy win, twice, in the same month. Two videos filmed in one take in her car, no notes, no editing, no AI-written caption, beat every piece of scripted, curated content she made that same stretch of weeks. Not by a little. This episode is her walking through why, and what it actually means for anyone sitting on something unfinished.
This isn't a social media episode. It's an episode about the gap between having a thought and doing something with it, and what happens in that gap if you let it sit too long.
In This Episode
- Why the two most unscripted posts Jess has ever made outperformed everything scripted and produced this year
- The real story behind the parking lot video: a Zoom coaching call, a stoplight, and one sentence that wouldn't let go
- Why the car and the shower are Jess's two best idea locations, and why 3am thoughts rarely survive until morning
- The forgetting curve, first mapped by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, and what it reveals about why unfinished ideas need to be captured immediately, not perfected later
- Why posting half-formed ideas is functioning as live research for the book Jess is currently writing, not a shortcut around writing it
- The real 2026 Instagram organic reach numbers, and why the fear of repeating yourself is a math problem, not a communication problem
- Seth Godin's argument from The Practice: proof comes after the work, not before it
- The Feeling Audit, a three-step tool for moving through the fear that shows up right before you hit publish, speak up, or send
The Big Idea
Unfinished, unscripted content isn't a lesser version of the real work. It's a research method. And most of the time, the actual block isn't a lack of clarity about the idea, it's an unnamed feeling standing in front of it.
Memorable Lines from This Episode
- "Ready isn't a milestone that you hit. Ready is a story that you tell yourself to explain why you haven't started yet."
- "Repetition isn't laziness, it's math."
- "That gap is exactly where most ideas quietly go to die for myself and I'm sure for you as well."
- "You don't need an AI to hype you. You need humans to give you the feedback."
- "The finished version of any of those things doesn't exist yet, and they will never exist by thinking about it more."
Resources
Book: The Practice by Seth Godin — https://amzn.to/4c7QPs3
Your One Thing This Week
Pick one idea you've been sitting on, something you haven't said out loud publicly because it doesn't feel finished enough. Run the Feeling Audit on it first: name the feeling, trace where it's coming from, flip the frame. Then give yourself sixty to ninety seconds, say it once, unedited, and put it somewhere someone else can actually see it or hear it. It doesn't have to be public. It can be inside a community or a mastermind group. Just get it out of your head and into reality.
Connect with Jess
If this one landed, come find me at BigIdeasMadeSimple.com. That is where the newsletter lives, where everything I am building is taking shape, and where you can connect directly. One idea in your inbox every week, nothing else. And if you know someone who's sitting on an idea they haven't said out loud yet because it doesn't feel ready, send them this one. The right idea at the right time changes everything.
Follow Jess: @thejesswebber on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook
Key Themes
- Raw versus produced content
- Content as live research for a book
- The forgetting curve and idea decay
- Organic reach and the repetition myth
- Fear as a treatable feeling, not a verdict
- The Feeling Audit framework
- Readiness as a story, not a milestone
Transcript
Welcome back to Big Ideas Made Simple.
Speaker:I'm Jess Webber and this show exists to connect you with the knowledge,
Speaker:tools, and resources you need to live a life that actually feels like yours,
Speaker:not one that just looks good from the outside.
Speaker:So I want to take you back a few days.
Speaker:I had just wrapped up a coaching call on Zoom.
Speaker:And by the time I was like 10 minutes into the drive,
Speaker:one sentence from that call kept rolling around in my head.
Speaker:It would not leave me alone. I had told a client that
Speaker:I am extremely anti-time management in the traditional productivity sense of it.
Speaker:And somewhere around one of the stoplights,
Speaker:I realized that that sentence couldn't just die in that conversation.
Speaker:And that person being the only other person who heard what I was thinking.
Speaker:So when I pulled into the parking lot at my son's school,
Speaker:I propped up my phone, hit the dash,
Speaker:I propped up the phone and hit record.
Speaker:There was no notes, no script,
Speaker:no plan, just what was in my head heading straight out into the camera.
Speaker:And what is so interesting about that for me is that that video
Speaker:did better than almost anything else I had posted in the last month.
Speaker:Not like a little bit better, but exponentially better.
Speaker:And so today I want to spend some time talking about why the least prepared,
Speaker:least polished thing that I have posted is outperforming a ton of things that I've
Speaker:spent real time trying to create or produce.
Speaker:And I want to preface this by saying this is not a social media episode.
Speaker:~ it's just the space that I have the example from and where I was doing work
Speaker:in public.
Speaker:So I can show you, you know, the numbers and the receipts and all of that.
Speaker:But the lesson that I wanted to talk about,
Speaker:the big idea, applies to anything you're sitting on that doesn't quite feel finished
Speaker:yet. So again, I want to give you actual things because I don't want it
Speaker:to feel like a vague feeling I had one week.
Speaker:I have two posts in the last week,
Speaker:both filmed in one take in my car with no editing besides trimming it down.
Speaker:From me, you know, putting the phone on the dash and things like that.
Speaker:Nothing was written by AI. It was just me typing with my thumbs
Speaker:on the phone and hitting post before I walked into the school building.
Speaker:So you heard the first one that came out of a coaching call,
Speaker:not anything refined, research-based.
Speaker:I said something and then I rolled with it.
Speaker:The second one, same thing in the same week,
Speaker:came out of a book I was reading.
Speaker:And that was research for the book that I am working on writing.
Speaker:And it was one of those things where I kept noticing the same pattern show
Speaker:up over and over again. And this idea that if you're not obsessively following
Speaker:a rigid routine or waking up at five in the morning,
Speaker:that you're somehow falling short.
Speaker:And I sat with that idea while I was driving.
Speaker:And so when I got to where I was going,
Speaker:I had to say it out loud before I lost it.
Speaker:And and the reason that that matters is because both of those beat anything that
Speaker:I tried on. Not by a little,
Speaker:but it was more engagements, more conversations,
Speaker:more DMs, more organic reach and growth than anything that
Speaker:I had ever made with intention and curation
Speaker:and ~ some level of performance behind it or editing or anything like that.
Speaker:So
Speaker:The reason I bring this to you is because it wasn't a one-time fluke.
Speaker:It wasn't something I was cherry-picking out of my world for a podcast episode.
Speaker:It's something that I'm noticing keeps happening.
Speaker:And it's something that shows up within both those stories because
Speaker:neither one of them happened in the desk where I'm recording this episode.
Speaker:They didn't happen when I was trying to fill a time block that said social media.
Speaker:They happened while I was driving,
Speaker:unoccupied, letting my brain do what it does best.
Speaker:And it's not a coincidence,
Speaker:and I know I'm not the only one.
Speaker:My best thinking happens in two places really when I'm awake.
Speaker:The car or the shower. And after that,
Speaker:it's 3 a.m. thoughts in bed, which is probably the second worst
Speaker:or third worst venue, depending on your ability to take down ideas.
Speaker:Because
Speaker:You know, when you're sleepy, you you really don't want to reach
Speaker:for the phone because you know that you're gonna either end up awake for
Speaker:the rest of the morning, hyperfixated on something,
Speaker:or it's gonna read like a ransom note when you try to reread it later.
Speaker:but what matters here is there's well-documented pattern
Speaker:in memory research called the forgetting curve.
Speaker:And this was first mapped out by a psychologist,
Speaker:Hermann Ebbinghaus. And the short version of that is that we lose something close
Speaker:to half of a new thought within about an hour if we don't do anything with it.
Speaker:Not because the idea is bad, but because the brain can't hold on to things
Speaker:if we aren't given a reason to keep them.
Speaker:Which means that the version of that time management idea that existed
Speaker:in my head during the drive.
Speaker:Was probably already halfway gone by the time that I would have sat down
Speaker:to write it properly. Which means that the version of time management
Speaker:and the ideas I had around it would have been at least half gone if I
Speaker:had waited to sit down at my desk to properly write something out.
Speaker:If I had just stalled a little bit for the right conditions:
Speaker:the quiet office, the aesthetic,
Speaker:~ a good lighting, a mental space,
Speaker:whatever.
Speaker:I wouldn't have lost the idea because it wasn't good,
Speaker:but I would have lost it because I had given my brain permission to
Speaker:let it decay because I needed permission to produce it.
Speaker:And the only reason that either of the two posts exist is that I had a phone
Speaker:in my hand in that moment and that thought was alive and I used it.
Speaker:I acted on it. Not because phones are magic.
Speaker:If anything, they're the opposite of,
Speaker:but
Speaker:They collapse the gap between having a thought and doing something with
Speaker:it down to next to nothing. And that gap is exactly where most ideas quietly
Speaker:go to die for myself and I'm sure for you as well.
Speaker:Here's what I think a lot of people would take from this lesson
Speaker:and probably turn and twist it in a way that I'm not intending.
Speaker:My intention is not that you take away the idea of be more casual
Speaker:or film everything. It's
Speaker:It's deeper than that. It's not that surface level kind of,
Speaker:~ yeah, okay, that's a nice platitude.
Speaker:But you have to really think about what's underneath it.
Speaker:And that's something different that took a a hot minute for me to name,
Speaker:even for myself. Like I said,
Speaker:I'm in the midst of researching a a book that really has become
Speaker:a big passion project of mine.
Speaker:And it means I don't have every answer yet.
Speaker:I'm still formulating the depth of my thesis.
Speaker:I still have ideas turning over,
Speaker:you know, those half-formed thoughts that I'm not sure will make it to
Speaker:the book or make it in the way that I initially thought of them when I
Speaker:sit down to write it eventually and turn it into something coherent.
Speaker:But what I'm realizing is that posting some of these unfinished ideas,
Speaker:it's not a compromise on the book.
Speaker:That I'm making because I don't have time to produce something polished,
Speaker:but because I'm learning that it is one of the fastest research methods
Speaker:I have access to. So when I say a half-formed thought out loud to an audience,
Speaker:I get a reaction that I can't get by sitting alone in this office.
Speaker:No matter how long I sit there and how quiet it is,
Speaker:and how, you know, perfect the sensory experience is for me.
Speaker:It's not going to change the way that I get feedback because comments,
Speaker:DMs, those are tell me what actually landed.
Speaker:I love opening up my phone and seeing somebody shoot me a message that's seen
Speaker:the content. And it might be somebody that I went to high school
Speaker:or college with that has found value in something that I've put out there
Speaker:and I haven't talked to them in decades.
Speaker:If I only waited until I had my print book in hand,
Speaker:then I would be crafting all of this blind,
Speaker:and I wouldn't have that source of knowing what resonates with an audience already,
Speaker:because I wouldn't have tested it in public.
Speaker:And that could cost me everything.
Speaker:So there's a number that has really changed the way that I think about.
Speaker:Social media content. And again,
Speaker:I told you this isn't intended to be about social media.
Speaker:It's me talking through my learning process with you as examples.
Speaker:So industry data on Instagram puts average organic reach somewhere between
Speaker:three and a half and seven and a half percent to people who follow you.
Speaker:It's down from like the 10, 15,
Speaker:20% that it was a few years ago.
Speaker:And and so
Speaker:Bloop that back 10 seconds if you need to.
Speaker:Not even 7.5% of your followers are seeing every piece of content that you put out.
Speaker:It's that high, 7.5%,
Speaker:if it's really good content on a really good day.
Speaker:Only of the people who chose to follow you.
Speaker:Which means the version of you that is worried about repeating yourself,
Speaker:worried about saying the same idea too many times,
Speaker:worried about being predictable,
Speaker:or
Speaker:Being a problem that nobody else can see,
Speaker:you should not. You should stop worrying because you are the only person that
Speaker:is gonna get bored with your own message.
Speaker:And it's gonna happen way before anybody in your world feels the same.
Speaker:Because you're the only person who sees 100% of everything you're creating
Speaker:and putting out. Everybody else is catching fragments,
Speaker:seconds of it, if they're catching it at all.
Speaker:So if you are somebody who has an idea,
Speaker:refining it in your head for the 427th time because
Speaker:you already felt like you said it before and it didn't land,
Speaker:I want you to know that statistically,
Speaker:most of the people who need to hear it,
Speaker:the second, third, fourth, all the way up to 427th time,
Speaker:never actually heard it the first.
Speaker:Repetition isn't laziness, it's math.
Speaker:I know why this is hard, even though the math is the thing that creates
Speaker:a clear path forward. Putting something out unfinished,
Speaker:especially for like a high achiever,
Speaker:feels like admitting that you might not know what you're doing yet.
Speaker:It feels unpolished or subpar.
Speaker:It feels like walking on a stage before you've memorized the lines of the play.
Speaker:And there's fear.
Speaker:That if people see the rough draft version of you thinking,
Speaker:they'll make the assumption that that's the best you've got.
Speaker:And that assumption will follow you.
Speaker:But here's the thing that I keep coming back to when that kind of fear shows
Speaker:up in my world. Nobody is sitting there keeping a running running tally
Speaker:of every unpolished thing I've ever posted.
Speaker:Most people see a small fraction of whatever I'm putting into the world.
Speaker:So the risk.
Speaker:That I'm protecting myself from by waiting for that finished,
Speaker:polished version is smaller than it feels in my head.
Speaker:And the cost of never testing is way bigger.
Speaker:So I'd rather find out that an idea doesn't work when it's a 90-second video that
Speaker:cost me literally nothing, but maybe a smidge of embarrassment,
Speaker:than find out that an idea doesn't work after I spent a year writing a book.
Speaker:And you know, it makes me think of ~ Seth Godden's book,
Speaker:The Practice. His core claim in that is that most of us have been trained to wait.
Speaker:We wait for permission, we wait for proof,
Speaker:we wait for the feeling of readiness before we start doing anything that
Speaker:actually matters. And in the book,
Speaker:he flips that script completely and says that the work itself,
Speaker:the act of
Speaker:Consistently showing up and shipping something,
Speaker:no matter what state it is in,
Speaker:is what generates the proof for us,
Speaker:not the other way around. I didn't need proof that the time management video would
Speaker:land before I hit record. I needed to hit record and then the proof showed
Speaker:up afterwards in the comments,
Speaker:the DMs, the way it keeps getting engagement.
Speaker:That flip is the thing that is a hard pill for so many people to swallow.
Speaker:Especially my friends who are planners.
Speaker:And I get it. I like having a plan.
Speaker:I play chess in my head with everything.
Speaker:So I want to know a few moves ahead.
Speaker:What is gonna happen? I want to try to predict the outcome.
Speaker:Thank you, ADHD pattern recognition.
Speaker:And I want to know the odds before I make a commitment.
Speaker:But I am telling you, as somebody who struggles with acting.
Speaker:Before I get all the the knowledge,
Speaker:that instinct has been working against me for years.
Speaker:And I am sure it is probably playing into you as well.
Speaker:So let's widen this again. Cause again,
Speaker:I said I don't really want this to be about social media.
Speaker:It's about anything in your world that you're working towards or building towards,
Speaker:whether or not anybody is watching it.
Speaker:So it could be a business. ~
Speaker:It could be a business idea that you haven't launched because you're still sitting
Speaker:there trying to refine it for the fifth time.
Speaker:It's the book you have an outline for or a title for,
Speaker:but you haven't started drafting because you want it perfect before
Speaker:you write a single sentence. It's a message you keep rewriting in your head before
Speaker:you ever send it to the person who needs to hear it.
Speaker:The finished version of any of those things doesn't exist yet.
Speaker:And they will never exist by thinking about it more.
Speaker:I'm saying this to myself, y'all,
Speaker:and I'm saying it to you too because you're my friends.
Speaker:It will never exist by being thought about more.
Speaker:It only exists by putting the unfinished version somewhere it can
Speaker:get tested against reality. Yeah,
Speaker:I know it's uncomfortable. It's also,
Speaker:as far as I can tell, the only way to actually find out if the thing you're thinking
Speaker:about is as good as you think it is.
Speaker:You don't need an AI to hype you.
Speaker:You need humans to give you the feedback so that you don't spend
Speaker:a year making changes on an idea.
Speaker:Ready isn't a milestone that you hit.
Speaker:Ready is a story that you tell yourself to explain why you haven't started yet.
Speaker:I need to give you something practical here because I know for a lot of
Speaker:you and for me too, the block isn't understanding the idea.
Speaker:It's the feeling that shows up right before you hit record or before
Speaker:you raise your hand to speak or you hit publish on the thing you've been sitting
Speaker:on or send on the email. I don't care what it is,
Speaker:but here's a a micro, you know,
Speaker:moment, an audit that you can run,
Speaker:no matter whether you're looking at a podcast,
Speaker:a talk, a class, a caption. I don't care.
Speaker:But it's three steps. It's easy to use and I hope that it helps you.
Speaker:with that emotion. So first thing I need you to do is name the feeling.
Speaker:Not I don't feel ready, right?
Speaker:That's conclusion. That's not a feeling.
Speaker:The feeling is dread or embarrassment or fear that you are gonna fail
Speaker:or be judged. Get specific on it enough that you can say it out loud
Speaker:to somebody else. Not that you have to,
Speaker:but get that clear around the feeling.
Speaker:Then the second step is trace where it's coming from.
Speaker:Because most of the time it's not actually about the thing.
Speaker:It's not about the content. It's about who you think is watching or
Speaker:the version of yourself from years ago who got burned by saying something unfinished
Speaker:out loud. And I want you to ask yourself whether the fear is about this idea
Speaker:or about something that's probably a whole lot older than the idea itself.
Speaker:When you can do that, then you can move on to the third step and flip the frame.
Speaker:Take the story you just told yourself and ask what a different,
Speaker:truer story would sound like. Not,
Speaker:I don't know enough to answer that yet,
Speaker:but try something like, I know enough to say this statement today,
Speaker:and I will know even more when people respond to it.
Speaker:That is not lying to yourself.
Speaker:That is replacing a frame that was never truly the one that you should actually have
Speaker:been using.
Speaker:So I want you to just take a moment.
Speaker:Run that audit before you act on the next thing that you're actually actively
Speaker:avoiding. Name it, trace it, flip it.
Speaker:And then do the thing anyways from that fripped flipped frame instead
Speaker:of the original one. Pick up one idea you've been sitting on,
Speaker:something that you have not said out loud publicly because it might
Speaker:not feel finished enough. Run that feelings audit on it first.
Speaker:And then give yourself 60 to 90 seconds,
Speaker:say it once, unedit it, and put it somewhere someone else can actually
Speaker:see it and hear it. It could be inside of a community or or mastermind group.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be public on social media,
Speaker:doesn't have to be public in your email list,
Speaker:but go take action on this. So I'm still sitting with what
Speaker:the parking lot videos are teaching me.
Speaker:The version of me that was worried that I wasn't ready enough.
Speaker:And it's apparently a version that a lot of people want more of.
Speaker:If that's true in my world,
Speaker:then I would bet that it's also true in yours.
Speaker:And I mean, if you want to see this in real time,
Speaker:unfiltered, still figuring it out,
Speaker:Jess, come find me on Instagram specifically at @thejesswebber,
Speaker:double S Double B. So I can hit the goal that I have of having
Speaker:a thousand followers. Because
Speaker:When you have a thousand followers,
Speaker:you're able to go live on Instagram.
Speaker:And that gives me more time to go real,
Speaker:raw, unfiltered, authentic, because I'm not capped by the time duration of a reel.
Speaker:And so every follow gets me closer to that.
Speaker:And it means that I can keep showing up in the unedited jest space.
Speaker:And I would love to support you on your journey if that's something that you're
Speaker:doing too. So let me know. Thanks for being here.
Speaker:And if this landed.
Speaker:Send it to somebody else who's sitting on an idea they haven't said out loud.
Speaker:And subscribe for more. I'll see you next week.
Speaker:Thanks for listening.
