Hello, everyone. Very good day and welcome to the PPS podcast. I'm Kevin Mitchell from Professional Pricing Society and today we are going to explore a topic that's a little bit different from our usually pricing focused revenue manage focus discussions, but one that we feel is very, very important for the PPS community. So today we're going to actually be talking about perfectionism. As pressing professionals, we are expected to be perfect all
the time. We have to make precise, data-driven decisions and make sure that everything is exactly right. And all of that pressure can be overwhelming. So sometimes we have perfectionist tendencies that slow us down. It can be stressful and that can limit our innovation. We probably have all heard the adage that sometimes perfect can be the enemy of the darn good. Enough for right now. So with that, I'm very excited for our discussion today. Our guest today is Janelle Villiers.
Janelle is an author, a coach, she's the founder of Janelle Villiers Partnerships, and she's going to share her expertise on how we can overcome perfectionism by addressing toxic thinking, shame and imposter syndrome. So today we're going to talk about how we can embrace authenticity, build resilience and move forward towards our personal and our professional goals with a lot more self-awareness and a lot more compassion. So we're going to be talking about developing A mindset
that's going to help us thrive. And we're going to go a little bit beyond pricing strategy today, but we are going to talk about some things that definitely have a good Venn diagram overlap with revenue management and pricing as well. So with that, Janelle, welcome to our podcast today. We are so happy to have you. Thank you so much for having me and I'm truly honored to be able to have the discussion with you. I, I hope that it provides a lot of value for you and the
listeners. I'm really excited. All right. I'm sure that it will and we are very glad that you're with us of course as well. So have a couple questions for you that we have pre selected from our audience here and one of them is Janelle. Perfectionism is something that many professionals struggle with, but often it flies under the radar.
From your experience, how does perfectionism show up in the workplace and what are some of the signs that a pricing professional, a revenue management professional, might be struggling with the concept of trying to be perfect and everything around perfectionism? I love this question, it's one of my favorites. I think there's some people who either are in denial about their perfectionism or I think that being a perfectionist means like, it's a good thing, right?
They almost like wear it as a badge of honor. And so in between those two, there are a lot of people who are like, I don't know, am I, is this something that I may like identify with? And so I have a 5 questions that I'm going to put out there for, for you and the audience. And the answers are either going to be A yes, always, B sometimes, C rarely, or D no, never. So, first question, have you ever felt a deep sense of embarrassment or humiliation when others witness a mistake or
failure that you've made? Yes, always, sometimes, rarely. No Never question 2. Do you often avoid taking risks or trying new things because you fear judgment or ridicule from others 3. Have you ever found it difficult to share your achievements or accomplishments with others due to a fear of being seen as boastful or arrogant? 4 Do you frequently compare yourself to others, focusing on their successes or positive attributes and feeling inadequate or inferior as a result?
And lastly, when faced with criticism or negative feedback, do you tend to internalize it and feel a deep sense of shame or unworthiness? I don't know about for you, Kevin, but I know for me, the first time that I was asked those questions, I was saying A&B for like all of them. Yeah, I would agree. I have a lot of A's and B's. I do not think I have a single D from amongst your five questions. I would concur on an awful lot
of that. Well, for you and those who are also trying to take stock of those questions, I just want to say welcome to identifying yourself as a perfectionist. You are not alone. And that's number one. I just want to put that out there. This is not a phenomenon that exists where in in isolation. And I think having a conversation around this is one of the first steps that we can do to changing our mindset without, you got to name it attainment, right?
So if you don't, if you're not aware that this is even happening for you, then you can't really progress. So number one, I think those questions are really helpful and identifying something that you might be struggling with that you didn't even know was being a part of your life or kind of like your your mode of operation, like behind the scenes subconsciously even. Interesting.
And what's also interesting I think with that is when you look at the questions, even though they're very different questions, when we talk about, you know, comparison to others, how we deal with negative feedback and the other things there are the questions are very different.
But I feel with a lot of us, there would be a tendency to have very similar answers throughout those five questions, which might get down to the point that you were trying to make where this is something that we definitely do have to deal with. Also, I'm thinking off the top of my head that in a lot of cases within pricing, within revenue management, the answers that we come up with can be a number. It can be a dollar amount, a euro amount, a yen amount or whatever.
And numbers are always interesting because typically you can have a difference of opinion on connotation versus denotation or something like that. But generally a number is either right or wrong. So there's that extra element of pressure on this has to be perfect because I put a number out there, I put a price out there, I put a contract out there to my largest customer. And if it is not 100% right, then that means it might be seen
as 100% wrong. So another question in pricing and revenue management where all of our decisions basically directly impact a company's revenue, which means jobs, which means people salaries, which means people bonuses. We have this constant pressure as we were talking about to get it right. So in your view, how can perfectionist tendencies affect decision making and a professional's ability to execute effectively? Analysis paralysis immediately, right?
You're thinking analysis paralysis for if you have a managerial role, you may see some of the people on your team and think, are they procrastinating? Like what's happening, right? You might see it might look like that to you on the outside, but really it's analysis paralysis. It's this fear of getting it wrong.
A lot of times when people are identifying in their perfectionist thinking, there's the identification part is what's key to fail, to be wrong, to fail is, is there's now an identification of no, I made a wrong decision. It is I am wrong. I am a failure instead of this thing that I did failed. It is an identification of self and that to me is the most important thing. It's one of the things that that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about this topic.
Because if you, if you identify yourself as the as a failure instead of just recognizing a decision you made or something you did was wrong. Do you know how many dreams that kills? I mean, yes, decisions and you know, moving forward and movement, yes, but like ultimately, like trying new things and being innovative. All, all that is dead in the water because you now are identifying yourself as a failure. You're never going to move forward and move past that.
So for me, this is very, I'm very passionate about this because of this factor. It's the identification of being a failure instead of recognizing, oh, it's a decision that I made. And I would say a lot of it comes from top down. It's a culture that you see from the top. If the expectation by those at the very top is that you always are going to do something right, then of course everybody else is going to be an analysis paralysis and scared to even try things new.
I think, I mean, not to get too ahead of myself, but I really think the key is is to create a culture in which people recognize that it's OK to get something wrong because we've built in structures where we can, we can pivot, we can navigate, create a plan A, a Plan B. Maybe you have based on all the data that you've been looking at, all the research that you've done. This is the most likely thing. But if not, then we can quickly move to the next idea or the next thing.
So it's not you, it's it's a learning process, the learning what went wrong by the wrong decision, the wrong price given, the wrong number given only is data that we can now take and learn from that. So that way we can quickly move to what might be closer to the right number or, or indices. It's not a, it's not a proclamation as to who you are right. It's, it's just you're receiving information. So that way you can move on. And OK, so if that's not correct, then let me see.
Like maybe I wasn't looking at it the right way. Maybe there's some other thing that we need to look focus on to head us in the right direction. Understood.
So when we talk about analysis paralysis, we can kind of get into a situation where as you mentioned, we don't think or sometimes we do think, but perhaps we should not think and we need to get away from I'm right versus I'm wrong versus this decision, this process, this standard was perhaps more correct or less correct that it could have been. And we will adjust and get better for next time.
So understand that even though we do internalize it and that's a toxic way of thinking that really it's about the outcomes and about reaching a better outcome there. And it shouldn't be so much of a personal impact on who we are as an individual. It's just a one small facet of it in doing our jobs that we're trying to move forward.
And when we talk about toxic thinking, and this is something that we've touched on and mentioned a couple times, so for our listeners who might be stuck in a cycle of analysis paralysis, of overanalyzing, of second guessing themselves, what are some practical other steps that they can take to interrupt those patterns? So I have three steps. It's a three-step framework that I give often.
I do like workshops on this. Number one, we have to all identify and claim that we are not perfect, whatever this idea is of perfect that we have also PS like built in our mind, we've created what a person, a perfect person is, but it's not real, right? So whatever that is, we just have to accept that I am imperfect and beautiful because of that and just as worthy because of that. Not that, not that you're now less valuable or have less innate worthy just because you have imperfections.
No, no, no, I am. I'm imperfect and that's what makes me like a great person. Some it's OK, people can hang out with me with all of my imperfections. Step one, Step 2 is gaining resiliency from shame based thinking. And I have a framework specifically for this because this is to me the most important and deepest dive that needs to take place.
Bernie Brown was probably one of the most famous shame researchers has this saying where when perfectionism is in the passenger seat, shame is driving the car. Interesting. So really quickly the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame is I'm sorry I am a
mistake. So if you have shame driving the car and it's basically thinking if I can say it perfectly, act perfectly, do it perfectly, that will shield me from the criticism from and judgement of other people. But here's what the reality we try and shoot after this perfect magical thing that's not real. And guess what we miss. And who does the judgement and criticism come from? Ourselves. Ourselves. Exactly. And so see, this just proves it. I'm a failure. I'm not worthy, I'm not good.
No one's going to want to be around me. I'm unlovable, whatever. All of the things, right, all of the things that you're thinking. And so This is why shame is the driver because that's those are the shame based thinking thoughts. But if we need to gain resiliency for the shame based thinking to kind of bounce back from that or and then the third thing is radical self
compassion. There are many ways in which we can do this, but a lot of it is just includes being present in the moment, recognizing you're doing the best that you can with all that you have and you're you made the best decision in the in the moment. Sorry, this reminds me this was not a part of her questions, but it's still reminds me of a book
that I read. Essentially, it's how to make, how to make decisions when you have the least amount of information available to you, how to make good decisions. I think it'd be really good for for this particular audience. It is written by a professional poker player and she describes, I mean, in poker you have limited information and how do you decide one thing over the other.
And one of the things I love that she points out in this book is people look at the results of a decision and think that because of the results of the decision, the decision was bad, right? So given all the data that you have, you think, OK, I'm going to, you know, whatever, swing the bat, make a decision to give this particular price, speak to my child this way, whatever, right?
Like you make a decision based on the limited data that you have and the result turns out your child is like, you don't love me. How could you say that to me? You swing the bat completely missed or you know, it's a foul or whatever. You, you make that decision with the price and completely wrong, right? So now you have this result that is in like bad, right? As everyone agrees this is a bad result.
Didn't like this, but that doesn't necessarily mean the decision was bad given all of the different factors that were around. You were making the best decision with what you had, and that's OK. I think we, again, it's one of those things where the self compassion comes in. It's like, man, I made the best decision with what I had. It didn't go the way that I wanted. The result wasn't what I was hoping for. But what can I gather from this? How can I learn? How can I grow?
How can I move forward based on what just occurred? But yes, it's that idea. It's the idea of self compassion is recognizing you're we're all here just doing the best that we can and giving yourself grace when the result isn't what you expected. All right, so just to go over the three things that you mentioned there.
The first was to identify that we are not perfect and of course we all know people, be they either in public life or in our personal groups who say that they are perfect and we know that that is an outright lie. Our second one was to make sure to gain resilience from shame based thinking. And one of the things that you mentioned there was think of it
as I made a suboptimal decision. I made a mistake versus I am a mistake, which are completely, completely different when you talked about shame versus guilt there as well. And the third was radical self compassion as well. But one thing, Janelle, that you mentioned when you talked about those 3 is you really concentrated on the second one of those gaining resilience from shame based thinking.
So if we talk about shame, if we talk about imposter syndrome, and I know that a lot of our members have mentioned me, when they get great new jobs, they feel like impostors. You know, maybe they were an analyst. And the next thing you know, they have progressed and they're leading A-Team. And imposter syndrome is one that I hear all the time from our members.
So if we talk about shame, if we talk about chain based thinking, overcoming shame and we talked about the imposter syndrome, these are two things that perfectionism tends to feed on. So in our field in revenue management, when you're constantly presenting strategies to leadership, these can definitely creep in. Imposter syndrome can be all
over the place. So what are some ways that people can shift their mindset and approach these feelings with, as you mentioned, more self compassion, more empathy, more caring for themselves internally? How can we deal with some of these shifts and some of these feelings that can come up? The framework that I have built around this, I have an acronym called A life for it. So the A stands for awareness first. We just need to have awareness around what's happening.
Fantastic. Congratulations, you're all aware. Step 1 and #2 is for L for life and you need to look within because that leads to I, which is identify your triggers. In order to do that looking within, we have to look to our past. Where were the messages that we received or when? It really is really the better question, when were the when did we receive the messages? Typically it's in our childhood that we weren't good enough, that we were unworthy, etcetera.
This these messages could seem super benign, but we don't even recognize that they if without being addressed, they can continue on through adulthood. So these are things like you got all A's and 1B on your report card. You get home and your parents are like, but the B though, right? Like they only focus on the B, not not all the A's, right? And a child could interpret this as unless I'm perfect, I am unworthy of love, affection,
attention, etcetera. Another one that I think is interesting is and again, it's it's benign, but sometimes a parent will not talk about what their child is good at because they think like their head will get too big. So if they're really good at sports, they won't really tell them. They'll just say like, oh, they keep getting better. Or if they're good looking or attractive, they won't tell them that they're beautiful or
handsome. Or if they're smart, they won't really tell them that they're smart because they're like, oh, well, they already know that. I don't need to like, you know, make their head big. And so the kid doesn't hear it though then they don't hear it from like the people that are, you know, they would expect to hear it from.
And so they might grow up thinking like, oh, I must not be beautiful, I must not be smart or I must not be really good, whatever that is. And again, if I was, then I would get the love attention, etcetera, etcetera. Now you can imagine there are some messages that might be stronger than others and you would be correct. So I'll just, I'm just going to list all of those and I will list the three strongest one is, or I should say the two
strongest. The second strongest might be surprising, but it's actually emotional and physical abuse. This is probably very obvious, right? Like, oh, I must be bad. Something must be wrong with me because they wouldn't hit me that way or they wouldn't say those mean things to me if I were good enough, right? So that's the message that child could interpret as but actually even stronger than that is divorce being put in the like Child Protective Services and things like that or being
adopted. And there is a strong abandonment message that could be received. And the idea behind that is if or the message that could be received or interpreted is something must be wrong with me like to the core, because otherwise my mom or my dad would want to be with me. Even if it's divorced, they would want to be around me. They would want to like, you know, be with around me. So.
Obviously something is wrong with me and then even further so I can't let other people get to know the real me because if they did they would abandoned me to looking within and identifying your triggers. What are those things that were said to you when you were younger that could possibly still be existing today as an adult that you just never addressed once? We are here now. We've identified our triggers. F is find your good mirrors.
These are the individuals who in your life who can hold up a mirror to you and remind you of who you really are. I love this analogy. This is an analogy from Tim Fletcher. Shout out to Tim Fletcher if he ever hears this. He's a pastor out from Canada who talked about good mirrors. I love his analogy. So you all know funny mirrors, right? When you go to a like a fun house, right? And like you look at a mirror and it totally distorts you.
Now imagine somebody who has had a lot of shame based thinking from when they were little. And the only mirror in their house is a is a funny mirror. So they see themselves as three feet wide by three feet tall, but it's the only mirror that they have in their house. So that's that's what they have to see themselves as, right? Like they're like, yeah, I'm 3 feet tall by three feet wide. That's it.
And then they go over to a friend's house and the friend has a normal mirror and they see themselves and look, look at this. I'm actually 5-7 and slender, right? Like, and they look at the mirror and they're like, friend, something's wrong with your mirror. And the friend is like, no, no, the mirror is fine. Like that's what you look like. No, no, no, I am three by three. This is not right. And then the other friend's like, no, right.
Like trying to convince you. And this is what it's like when you have Shane Bay's thinking you only had that one mirror. And so it's sometimes it takes a while to recognize who you really are for that reason. But you need those friends. You need those friends who are your good mirrors, the friends who can show them, pull up a mirror to you and say you are amazing. Look at all that you've come through and you've not only survived, you thrived.
Which gets me to E for empathy. Empathy is the kryptonite to shame. Shame cannot exist where empathy persists and true empathy is only provided when you share and you're vulnerable with people and you tell them what's going on. How else are they going to be able to show, you know, be a good mirror for you and show you who you really are if you're not vulnerable and you share like these really crazy thoughts that are going on.
But I get it, it's hard. It's hard to be vulnerable, especially when in a society that tells you don't do that right? Like, being seen as weak is like the worst thing that you want to do, right? And I think a lot of people associate vulnerability with weakness when the truth is it requires a great deal of courage to be vulnerable. And honestly, the empathy that you receive from that not only kills the shame, but then also creates community, creates authenticity.
You are now being your true self and being accepted as such. Thank you for the explanation. I like your discussion of awareness of how we need to look within, of how we need to identify the triggers which might be from the past that affects us, how we can find good mirrors. And of course empathy being the E in that, in your word there. But also from our members perspective. I know that empathy and sympathy are very, very important because we have internal pressures and external pressures.
We have to deal with challenges from within our own organizations and our own teams, also with our marketplace, with our customer base. And also we are in the rather unique position, particularly right now where there is a lot of change from a macroeconomic perspective and a lot of progress. Also right now within pricing, within revenue management, we have AI, artificial intelligence taking over some tasks and doing some things, creating new, new
models, shifting markets. We have from a April 2025 perspective, we have tariffs which change everything that we do and change our cost structures, our customer structures, our profitability and a lot of things there. So we have a lot going on within our little part of the business world. So how would you recommend that we look at embracing progress over perfection in order to stay agile and in order to be an innovator instead of getting stuck in our old ways of thinking?
So spoiler alert, right? Like I saw some of these questions before and when I was thinking about this, I thought to myself, this is so interesting given the current climate, everybody's searching for certainty in an extremely uncertain, volatile moment of time and probably feeling a bit helpless in how you can navigate through that. Like what can I do to make this more certain? Not just I mean like in your life, but also in your business, in your in your job. And you might feel like you
don't have agency in that. Like these are, these are just so many factors that are just out of one little person's control. And so I can understand that it must be extremely anxiety provoking. And God forbid if you are a perfectionist, there's like no way out of this at this point. It's like nothing's going to be right, people. Nothing's going to be right. So one of my thoughts was number 1. I think what we need is we do need more connection.
I'm going to continue to advocate for more connection, more vulnerability, more collaboration of thoughts of thinking instead of I have. So that that means you must not have or I win, which means you must lose. Creating more win, win relationships where everybody is winning, where everyone's on board. Honestly, right now that is revolutionary to even have a mindset that like, no, we can all win with, with a new idea or a thought if we look at it a different way.
And it might be again, it seems risky to, to do something in that way, but I also think it's just the more human way to do it. So it goes. I mean, let's think about AI, for example. AI takes the emotion out of all the data it receives and just gives you an output, a decision, a number, etcetera. And then if it's wrong or the outcome of what it just said, it doesn't go in the way that like we all hoped, it just collects that data, puts it back to itself, and then like spits out
a new thing. So I think it's only going to it just to me, it further demonstrates why it's so important to see outcomes, not as like you are a bad person or something is wrong with you, but just information to take.
And the quicker you can pivot, the quicker you can navigate your entire crew, your team, everybody to now move into this another, another direction is going to make you more nimble in this in this frame that we're in like this, this moment in time that we're in. Because it's easy to want to be conservative and to not do things that are risky because everything else just seems to be all over the again, like it feels like we have no control over anything, but we do have
control over is how we react to things and just just again, giving grace. I mean, we're going to have to be really human with each other and see each other, be empathic with each other, see each other as all just trying our best. And when it doesn't work out, if a result is not what you want, the best thing that we can do, I mean, it's to adopt AI tactics, but essentially like take the information as data and then move as a team thinking, OK, that didn't work.
So how can we now pivot to this next direction, this new way of thinking, a new thought that can just help us navigate through the time better? Understood. And yeah, that's very good advice. Thank you so much, Janelle. And really, there are a lot of things that you that you centered on, that you concentrated on, but empathy, sympathy, realizing the difference between shame and guilt, and realizing that a mistake does not mean that you are a mistake.
It means a decision that may have been suboptimal there. So definitely appreciate that. And we're going to go ahead and wrap up before our listeners who are looking to overcome perfectionism, to embrace authenticity, and to approach your work with greater confidence. I do think that Janelle's methods offer a great, compassionate, empathetic path forward. So, Janelle, thank you very much for your time with us today and please share with our listeners how they can connect with you.
Absolutely. So I am on all social media platforms. The best place to find me is probably Instagram. That's Janelle Janelle under score villi V as in Victor ILL i.e. I also have a YouTube channel Janelle Villiers partnerships or part of the better way to look it up is called the other side podcast where I talk about the other side of mental health, how we can build resiliency to things like shame based thinking. I also do a bit of coaching in
terms of how to write books. So if that is also like in the back of your mind, like one day I'd like to write a book, I did give a lot of advice about how to do that too. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate that and would definitely encourage our members to reach out to Janelle with your questions and your search for insights there on some of the things that we talked about.
So thank you very much, Janelle. And also for our members, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in Dallas in May at our conference. And also we will have other conferences with CPP workshops and a lot more will be in Las Vegas in October, will be in Barcelona in December. So look, look forward to seeing everybody there and also keep an eye out for a lot of new information from our team about some of the things that we've been talking about today.
We've got great information on AI and tariffs and lots of other things for you and your team as well. But Janelle, thank you very, very much. It's been a pleasure having you with us today. And for our audience, thank you for tuning in. We will see you next time. Have a great day everyone.