Stop Thinking. Start. (The One Move That Closes the Gap)

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Welcome to Big Ideas Made Simple.

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I'm Jess Weber, speaker, entrepreneur, and someone who has spent a significant amount of

time being very, very good at thinking about anything and everything.

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Doing the things that I've been thinking about though is a completely different

conversation and that's really what I want to talk about today.

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So every episode I take one big idea, strip it down to what actually matters, and hand you

something that you can use before you're even done.

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So no fluff, no filler, just that thing.

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And so let's get going.

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Now I want to paint you a picture and I want you to tell me honestly if it sounds

familiar.

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You've done the work, not surface level work, but like the real kind of work.

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And you've gotten clear on who you are, what you carry, what your thread actually is.

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So you can say it out loud now.

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It might not be perfect, like the words might be not quite dialed in yet, but you know

what you're pointing at.

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And that's not nothing.

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It's really a lot.

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But yet here you are, still thinking about it.

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You're still refining the language in your head or waiting until the framing feels

airtight.

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still running mental simulations of how conversations might go before you actually have

any of them, or telling yourself that when you have it just exactly right, you will then

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start sharing it, or building it, or moving from it, but not quite yet, because it's not

quite ready.

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Does that sound familiar?

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Here is the thing that I want to name clearly before I go any further.

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What you are experiencing is not laziness, it's not a discipline problem, it's not

evidence that you are not ready or that your thing that you've been thinking about isn't

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real.

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What it is is a thinking silo and the only way to get out of that silo

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is by not thinking more, but by connecting with the real world outside of your brain.

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Because I believe you cannot think your way to momentum.

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You have to move your way there.

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So in today's episode, really wanted to spend time talking about what actually lives in

that gap between knowing and doing, because a lot of people treat it like a character flaw

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when it's actually a completely normal phase of building something real.

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And more importantly, I want to give you one move that closes it.

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Not some 10-step framework, but one move before I'm done here.

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So here's the reframe of this.

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And I think you do probably need to sit with it because it will change the way that you

talk to yourself about that gap.

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I know for me it took quite a while to get here, but when I finally saw it, I realized

that clarity is not your finish line.

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It's the starting point, the gun at the beginning of the race.

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And it's the opposite for most who treat clarity like the destination.

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They think if they can just get clear enough or organized enough or articulate enough that

the doing or the momentum will follow naturally.

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And there's a version of that, which is probably true.

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mean, clarity does matter.

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Naming your thread matters.

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And we've spent the last several episodes on exactly that.

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But here is what nobody tells you about clarity.

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Getting clear on something true and big about yourself does not automatically produce the

ability to act from it.

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All it does is produce, all it does is produce your new starting point.

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And starting points require something really obvious.

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They require you to start.

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So the gap,

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between knowing and doing is not discipline, like I said, it's not a problem in that

respect, but it is in terms of integration.

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And integration is a very specific thing.

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It's the process of knowing, moving from your head into your identity.

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It's adopting something that you understand intellectually and

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transitioning it to something that you can stand on or move from or introduce yourself as

and build with.

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And here is the uncomfortable truth about integration.

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You can't do it alone.

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You cannot integrate something by thinking about it more carefully in the exact same room

where you've started thinking about it.

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You have to start by taking that knowing outside of your own head and letting it connect

with somebody else.

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You have to bring it out into the real world and have a conversation that's not only with

yourself.

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See, the silo is not the problem.

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It's a symptom.

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The real issue is that you've been trying to probably think your way into a confidence

that can only be built through action.

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So, Phil M.

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Jones, who is an incredible speaker and author,

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Several of his books have been on my bookshelf for a while, signed copies of each of them,

because you know that's the thing that I do now.

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And I was just recently rereading Exactly Where To Start, where he writes that being brave

enough to start is all the chance that you need.

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And then in that book he says something that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

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And it's once you master the ability to make a start, you earn the ability to start over

as many times as you desire.

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That's it.

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That's the whole thing.

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Starting is not just the first step, it's the skill.

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And every time that you practice it, you get more of it.

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Every time you take something out of your head and put it into conversation, into a room,

into the world, you aren't risking the thing, you're refining it.

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And refinement is how the language finally becomes the thing that you can carry.

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So I also want to talk about something that happened to me this week because I think it's

funny, but it's also a perfect example of what I'm talking about here.

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I finished the book, which for me was actually an audio book and a re-listen, because I

already have my signed copy.

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And my brain immediately started synthesizing the information while I was listening.

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and I sat there thinking, you know, I love his books Exactly Where To Start and Exactly

What To Say, And now based on everything that he's discussed in these, I really wish that

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he had a book called Exactly How To Think.

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And instead of, you know, DMing Phil or emailing him or saying it to him, I leaned into my

AI partner in Notebook LM.

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and gave it, you know, the premise of the two books that I found online and said, hey, I

would really love for you to take everything you know about his two books and all of his

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behaviors and ways to articulate mindset and build me the framework for Exactly How To

Think.

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And so notebook LM made me like a 20 minute podcast, an outline of the book and even a

fabulous PDF as a functional tool to to think about the strategies of the

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Exactly How To Think.

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So this is apparently what happens when you give an ADHD visionary a good book and a

functional AI tool to use at the same time.

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But the most useful idea that I pulled from the whole thing was that you just have to

start.

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So it's not about perfection.

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It's not about it being ready or, you know, prepared for market.

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It is truly just starting because the start itself is the skill.

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And I want to talk about that specifically to where I think a lot of people that I know

personally are sitting right now.

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because you're not at the very beginning, you're past that, you've done a lot of the work

already, but you know more than you are acting on.

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And the gap is not a lack of clarity.

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It's about getting that thing out of your head.

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So what does getting out of your own way and getting out of your head actually look like?

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Because I do not want to just tell you to go talk to somebody and leave it there.

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That's not what I mean.

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The specific thing that I want you to understand about how

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integration actually works is that

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It is not through grand public declarations or it doesn't require you to have a massive

stage or a launch plan or even the perfect elevator pitch.

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It literally just happens in the smallest, most trusted, low stakes conversations where

you are allowed to be authentically yourself.

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you can show up in that space unfinished.

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And most people who are stuck in a thinking silo are waiting for something to come out

fully formed.

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They wanna walk into the next conversation with the language perfectly dialed in, the

positioning airtight and the confidence already intact.

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And that's exactly backwards.

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The language gets dialed in through the conversation and the confidence gets built by

having the conversation.

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Think about what you're actually looking for when you test something with someone you

trust.

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You're not looking for permission.

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You're not looking for a grade.

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You want resonance or the moment that the other person says, yeah, that makes sense.

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I see that.

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I already knew that about you.

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Why has it taken you so long to get here?

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That resonance is what moves the knowing in your head into your body.

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And it allows you to go from feeling

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ah like you understand a concept to truly owning that concept.

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And here's what makes that trusted person so important.

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And that's why I'm saying it can't just be anybody.

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It needs to be someone who knows enough of the real you to reflect back what is actually

true, rather than cheerleading something that sounds impressive.

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someone who will tell you honestly if the language isn't quite landing yet, and not to be

discouraging, but because they care more about you getting it right than about making you

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feel good in the moment.

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And someone who is safe enough that being unfinished with them doesn't feel like you're

taking a risk.

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And that's a very specific kind of person.

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If you're lucky and have one or two, that's amazing.

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But start with one to get out of your silo.

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And once you have that first conversation, I'm gonna tell you something starts to shift.

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It's not always dramatic.

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There's no little cartoon that pops up with fanfare, right?

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Sometimes it's just a small adjustment in how you start to kind of sit with that idea.

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A word that gets swapped out or a sentence suddenly feels more true than the one that

you'd been using.

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A moment where you hear yourself say it and think, oh, that's it.

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And then when you take that language to the next person and the next room, and each time

the language gets a little bit more yours or a little less tentative and a little more

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like something you can stand on rather than something you're figuring out.

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That's what I mean when I say integration.

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It's not just a moment or a light switch.

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It's truly a whole process that starts with the willingness to be unfinished with one safe

person before you're ready to be seen by everybody else.

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And here's the other thing worth naming.

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The imposter syndrome you are feeling right now is not evidence that you are not ready.

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It's evidence that you care about getting it right.

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and caring about getting it right is not a reason to wait.

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It's a reason to test.

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Imposter syndrome is what lives in the silo.

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It thrives on isolation and enjoys blocking the door on the way out.

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It loses its power the moment that your idea makes contact with somebody else who can

reflect back to you in real time.

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You cannot think your way out of imposter syndrome.

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You can only act your way out of it.

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One small, safe, unpolished, unfinished conversation at a time.

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So here's an example of what that looked like for me, because I think that specifics

matter more than the principle when it comes to this particular thing.

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Big Ideas Made Simple existed as an idea for me for well over a year before it ever

existed as a brand or a podcast.

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Over a year, I had this concept.

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I had a thesis, a general shape of what I wanted it to be.

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And I also had about probably a thousand reasons why it was not quite ready to be real

yet.

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The language wasn't right, the positioning needed more work, I wanted to figure out the

format, the structure, the cadence.

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I thought about it constantly, but didn't move on it because I was stuck in my own head.

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There was definitely imposter syndrome blocking the door of the silo.

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And coupled with that was fear of failing again because of the fact that I had built an

entire brand before that flopped hard when my sweet husband gave me the feedback six

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months later and said, well, that's dumb.

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And so fear, imposter syndrome, all of that.

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was keeping me in a space of not moving forward.

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And what broke me out was not like some grand strategy session or a brand workshop or a

moment of sudden clarity.

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It really was a series of conversations with one of my closest friends.

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She's one of just a few people in the world that knows like the full authentic version of

me.

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and part of her specific unique.

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being able to hold up a mirror when I am stuck in my own head and helping me see what's

actually there versus what I've been telling myself as a narrative is there.

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And you what's crazy is we live in different cities.

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So these conversations usually happen between visits when we're actually in the same city

at the same time for an event.

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So it happens over meals, on walks,

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And what happened across the conversations around Big Ideas Made Simple was not that she

gave me the answers, it's that she asked the right questions that got the answers out of

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me.

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So every time that I said something out loud to her,

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something else got clearer in me.

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Not because she was there validating it or cheerleading it on, although her honest

reaction did matter, but because hearing myself say it in a real conversation with a real

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person who was genuinely listening and was so different than hearing it in my own head

voice where I was the only audience.

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And at some point,

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something clicked and I realized I needed to stop refining it with her and start feeling

ready to say it to other people.

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Not because it was perfect, but because it was mine.

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It had gone through enough contact with the real world, even just starting with that one

person, that I could start to carry it without falling apart the first time somebody asked

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me a hard question about it.

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And let me tell you a pro tip here, y'all.

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If you don't have at least one good friend, although I have three, that ask really hard

questions, go find yourself one of those because they will change the game for you in this

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space.

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when I went from that one friend to those other friends and I started telling other people

about it who validated my idea, their responses gave me the next level of confidence.

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So I started taking it to more places, bigger rooms, less deep relationships.

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And each time, each level actually made the idea more real for me.

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That's what I mean when I say the integration process.

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It was not building a website or a launch.

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It started with one honest conversation in a safe space across from some pancakes, and

then it built from there.

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So the version of Big Ideas Made Simple that exists today was not downloaded somewhere

fully formed.

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It literally was

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into existence, conversation by conversation, room by room, until it became an idea that I

could stand on.

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And I genuinely believe that is the only way anything real gets built.

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Not in silos, but in contact with other people.

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So here is your one thing.

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And I mean it when I say one thing because I know exactly what happens when I give people

lists.

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Then they add it to their list of things that they're thinking about instead of doing.

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So.

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I want to challenge you this week, go have one conversation, not a presentation or a pitch

or a carefully prepared speech to someone who might hire you or fund you or validate you

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publicly.

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Just go have a conversation with one person who knows you well enough to reflect back what

is actually true.

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Tell them what you've been sitting on, not that polished version, the working version.

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Give them the mess.

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Give them the unfinished thing.

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And say it out loud.

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So, and then shut up.

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which I mean, if y'all have noticed, I do like to talk.

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It's a hard thing to do.

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But stop talking and listen to what comes back from them.

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That is it.

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That's your whole assignment for the week.

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It's not a post, not a launch, not a public declaration, not a built website or a Canva

graphic.

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It is one conversation with one safe person where you give yourself permission to be

unfinished.

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And if you don't have that person,

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feel free to find me on socials or bigideasmadesimple.com and we'll start the

conversation.

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Because here is what I know about people who find their way to this show.

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You're probably not lacking your ideas or your clarity and you're not even lacking

courage.

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What you are likely lacking is permission to move before everything else is perfect.

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And so I'm sitting here today giving you that permission right now.

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Phil Jones is right.

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Being brave enough to start is all the chance that you need.

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Not brave enough to be perfect, not brave enough to have it all figured out, brave enough

to start.

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And the start does not have to be public or loud.

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It just has to be real.

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One conversation, one person, one moment where the thing leaves your head and enters this

world.

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That's how big ideas made simple became real.

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And this is how your thing can become real too.

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So I'm gonna challenge you.

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Get out of the silo and go have a conversation.

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That's it for today's episode of Big Ideas Made Simple.

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Like I said, if this one landed for you, I hope it gives you a reason to pick up the phone

or send a text to one person today.

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And if you need a person, come find me at bigideasmadesimple.com.

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Remember, that's also where my newsletter lives and where everything I'm building takes

shape and where you can connect with me directly if you need me.

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So if you know someone who has been sitting on something real for longer than they should

have, send them this episode.

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Sometimes the right idea at the right time is the only permission that people need.

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I'll see you in the next one.

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Thanks for listening.