Every career I've built started with me being embarrassingly bad in public.

I’ve reinvented myself more times than I can count: import model, touring musician, travel writer, content creator, author, and memoirist. Every one of those careers began the same way. I tried something before I was ready, let people watch me struggle, and learned as I went.

Perfectionism says, “Don’t let anyone see your work until you’re flawless.” Every success I’ve had came from doing the opposite.

I didn’t set out to become brave about failure. I’m simply not much of a perfectionist. I have a habit of half-assing things, which sounds terrible, but it has also allowed me to begin. I don’t need to feel fully qualified or completely prepared before I put it into the world.

I was far from the most attractive girl, and I had stretch marks on my upper thighs, but I still dreamed of becoming a pinup model. My boyfriend took poorly lit photos of me, and I submitted them everywhere. It was embarrassing. I got tons of rejections, but eventually I got better.

Embarrasing buy ultimately hilarious early “modeling” gig

Then there was singing. I had dreamed of being a singer since childhood, even though I was an average singer with very little stage experience. I finally had the opportunity to pursue this dream after I had built a large following on Myspace, which meant I sometimes got booked based on my name before I had earned those stages with talent.

I remember one of my first shows at a nightclub in Downtown Disney for Climax Global. I hired an expensive choreographer from Millennium Dance Complex and four backup dancers. It cost a small fortune.

The problem was that I had zero dance experience. I had hired a choreographer whose work was far too advanced for me, so all that money was wasted on choreography I could only perform as elementary movements. That show was in front of thousands of people, and it was so bad! I embarrassed myself regularly on stages around the world until, slowly, I got better. Eventually, the show became good.

It also took me a while to learn that I should never do choreographed dancing. I still wish I could dance hip-hop, though. It would be so badass.

Luckily this is not a video so you cant see the bad dancing

I was also a writer with zero experience who decided I wanted to become a top travel journalist, mostly so I could go on the most luxurious comped trips around the world. I took a pitching class and a feature-writing class, hired a coach and started cold-pitching editors without a portfolio. I’m sure those first pitches were terrible, but I kept improving. Eventually, I landed bylines in some of the biggest publications in the world by pitching them cold: The New York Times, National Geographic, Condé Nast Traveler and many more.

During the pandemic, I had zero followers on TikTok and plenty of time on my hands, so I decided I was going to master the platform. I started multiple channels and posted four or five videos a day for a year.I didn’t promote the accounts to my Instagram followers, and I didn’t have friends or family following me. It felt like I was posting into the void, which gave me permission to experiment fearlessly.

My friends will often here me saying, “Let’s wing it,” or, “Let’s just send it and see what they think.” TikTok gave me permission to do exactly that. Eventually, some of the videos went viral.

A lot of jumping happened in my early TikTok videos

Around the same time, I had an idea for a book. A top literary agency found me through TikTok and asked me to write a proposal. I spent about a month writing sixty pages and sent it over. Then they stopped replying to my emails. I sent the same proposal to other major agencies, including CAA and WME. No one replied.

Finally, I showed it to a friend, who told me it needed major work. This time, I spent months rewriting it and getting feedback. When I sent the new version to more than thirty agents, I received three offers of representation. I ultimately signed with my killer agent, Amy Bishop, who got me my dream book deal with Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

So why was I able to keep doing this? After falling on my face endlessly it was clear that no embarrassing moment has ever ruined my life. After years of strangers telling me I was ugly, untalented and should die, I noticed something. Nothing happened and I still built significant careers. The comments felt enormous at first. In time they just became noise.

I later learned there was a name for what I’d been doing all along: putting imperfect work into the world, getting feedback, improving, repeating. Years later, when I was working at a Chinese startup, my boss asked me to read The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses Playbook.

Instead of spending months polishing something in private, you put out the simplest version that works. Then you let real people use it, view it, read it. Their feedback tells you what actually matters, and you improve from there.

I realized that’s how I’d accidentally built every career I’d ever had. I never waited until I was “ready.” I put something imperfect and raw into the world, learned from the response, improved, and repeated. Rinse and repeat.

If there’s one thing all of these careers have in common, it’s this: People will judge you whether you try or not. So you might as well build the life you want while they’re talking. Anyways, negative comments are just engagment!

Looking back, I don’t think the minimum viable product only applies to businesses.

It applies to people.

• My first photo shoot was my minimum viable model.

• My first concert was my minimum viable singer.

• My first travel pitch was my minimum viable journalist.

• My first book proposal was my minimum viable author.

• My first TikTok was my minimum viable creator.

We think we’re supposed to become the finished product before anyone sees us. But every career I’ve built started as a minimum viable version of myself.

So here’s a challenge if you’re stuck. Think of one thing you’ve been putting off because it isn’t “ready.” This week, make the minimum viable version.

• Send the imperfect pitch.

• Publish the short post.

• Post the experimental video.

• Apply before you meet every qualification.

Just do it! You’ll get that momentum going and probably learn a lot along the way.

Message me and let me know when its done!