65. with CREATING FOR LEGACY, not likes | The danger of early monetization, the beauty of unfinished work, and trusting slow growth

Ever feel like the pressure to make something good is holding you back from making something real?

In this solo episode, Teresa unpacks the difference between being a business owner and being a true thinker or creative. From Trudy LeBron’s thought leadership to the origin story of OpenAI, this one is a love letter to the dreamers who crave depth, not just deliverables.

We’re talking:

• Why monetizing too early can limit your best ideas

• The difference between emotional burnout and overwork

• Building a body of work vs. chasing one perfect piece

• The tension between legacy and virality

• How to get obsessed with the journey, not the polished outcome

Whether you're a creator, founder, or just someone who thinks too deeply for your own good—this one's for you.

Connect with Teresa

⁠⁠@teresaajean⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@becomingobsessedpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

👉⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get my FREE email mini-series to BECOMING OBSESSED with your life!⁠

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
If you want to build something great, something impactful with
an impact that goes far beyond anything you could ever do
yourself, you need to let go of good.
You need to let go of good in the search of great.
There's so many ideas that are coming to me, coming together

(00:22):
for me right now as I'm writing one of our sleeked marketing
clients e-mail newsletters and Iwant to try and put this
together. I'll start with a quote from
Trudy LeBron, who is a guest of Becoming Obsessed.
I've recorded with her at this moment.
The episode isn't live yet, but Trudy said something that has

(00:44):
stuck with me for months. She said if you want to be a
thought leader, you need to let go of trying to market and
package the idea before you've really gone into the idea.
You can't go deep. You can't dive and have depth
and an idea. Explore it while you're in the
bounds of trying to market and sell it.

(01:05):
If you are so worried about how to make money from it, of how to
get it in people's hands, of howto get people on board, well,
then you aren't letting yourselfdig into what the idea, the
product, the thing actually is. And I'm working on a piece of
this newsletter that's talking about Sam Altman and Open AI.
They are going through a huge restructuring.

(01:28):
Basically, Open AI is a nonprofit.
They're now having a for profit arm that's going to be managed
by the nonprofit. All this kind of legalese of of,
you know, what needs to happen to make this thing happen the
way they want it to happen. OK, whatever.
What does that mean? Why am I talking about it?
Because in their press release, in the article they released,

(01:50):
they actually just have a letterfrom Sam Altman, the CEO of Open
AI, and he tells the story and he says it this way.
He says we were just hanging outaround a kitchen with no idea
what this would be a decade ago.They just started the research.
They started digging into this idea without knowing what it

(02:12):
would become or where it would go, and least of all how they
would monetize it. And if you know anything about
AI, it is taking a lot of resources, not just dollars, but
energy, land, water. That's a whole nother side of
this story that I ethically don't know all that I want to

(02:34):
know on it yet. But it takes a lot of resources,
e-mail that you put in asking for it to draft your response
for you. That is taking water energy.
And it is all happening in huge warehouses, basically data farms
if you've ever heard of them. But at some point, you can't
worry about all the factors whenyou're deep in the idea, when

(02:57):
you're a true thought leader, when you're inventing something
totally new. It's kind of like the Internet.
You could never invent the Internet and spend the trillions
of dollars that it takes to invent the Internet if you're
worried about how you're going to monetize it, because you
won't, right? Like the research, it takes too
much money. You're not getting your money
back, which is also why government funding, government

(03:21):
funded research is so valuable and important and is the reason
we have the Internet, which again gets into this
consideration of how so much research is started in the
military. But again, I digress.
I think it's really easy to lookaround and feel like you need to
monetize, feel like you need to develop an offer and just put it

(03:44):
out into the world before you'veeven gone and dug into the idea.
I am all for entrepreneurship, small businesses, but it's
really hard for me to watch so many small businesses pop up
that are just selling another Teemu product with quotes they
found from the Internet. It is an entryway to being
creative. It is an entryway to doing

(04:06):
business and if it can help women find financial freedom, I
am for that. But even within
entrepreneurship, even within starting a business, there are
so many levels of are you going to do something that everybody
else that there's other people doing and do it the exact same
way, put a different logo and color on it?

(04:26):
Are you going to take it a step further and become a coach and
sell your skills just because that's what you see people are
doing? You can teach something so you
jump into it? Or are you craving something
deeper? Because maybe the reason we are
so burnt out doesn't have to do so much with the work or the
level of work, the hard work, the productivity.

(04:50):
All of those things have actually like the motion, and it
has more to do with the emotional burnout and the
emotional disconnection from what we're actually doing and
the feeling that there is more and the feeling of it not being
enough. And I don't think that's
everyone, but a lot of people inmy circle, a lot of the people I
find myself around that I'm gravitating towards, they want

(05:13):
something so much deeper than anoffer that makes them millions
of dollars. And that is why to bring this
around. I am really obsessed with Trudy
LeBron and the way that she is showing up and thinking and the
thoughts that she's putting out there because it's helping me to
differentiate just being a business owner, being an
entrepreneur from being a true innovator, thought leader,

(05:38):
disruptor, which is not a word. I, I kind of laugh at that word,
but it's because it's used so often in such a mediocre sense
instead of in this true depth ofdestruction.
And all of this is opening me upto actually believe my dreams
are so much bigger than I ever imagined.

(06:00):
I've been saying lately, and part of me wants to qualify it
as a joke, but it's not that. When I die, when I'm no longer
here, what do I want to be knownas?
And I would love for that to be a philosopher, A thinker.
I don't even have to be known assomebody who had good ideas, but
somebody who really went deep inunderstanding what the human

(06:25):
existence is, what it is in our lifetime, in our culture, what
the implications of what's goingon right now are, how that's
affecting me, the people around me.
And not just going halfway and trying to monetize it, but going
deep into the thought for the sake of it.
I think this idea of monetizing things can push us, but I also

(06:45):
think it is really holding back so many of us from truly
stepping into what we think, what we believe, what we can
create. I've lately been caught up on
this idea that so many names we know through history, they were
not well known in their own time.
Or maybe they weren't accepted in their time, or maybe they

(07:05):
were accepted 100 years later and now they're not.
But so many artists, philosophers, thinkers, they
didn't have an impact or they were poor and weren't making
money in their own time because they were doing it for the sake
of it instead of the glory. So what if I adopted that
mentality? What if instead of making one

(07:26):
piece of art that I hope goes viral, I focus on creating every
single day? So I leave a legacy of work.
And again, it doesn't have to begood.
It can be explored as an artifact of this day and age, of
this time, of this moment in history, of this century.
Does that sound crazy? Because it feels a little crazy

(07:48):
to think that way, but it also feels really liberating.
I just recorded a podcast episode with Mattie McGuire, who
I freaking adore. I think we are best friends now
and I want as much of her in my life as I can have.
And we were talking about this same concept, about how there's
so much pressure for this one thing you're creating to go as

(08:09):
far as it needs to go and be thefull success.
When in reality, it is 1000 grains of sand that make one
piece of a beach, right? It's showing up every single
day, creating over and over and not making it good, not being
your best, whatever that means. It means literally nothing.
Just continuing to show up, to create, to think, to go deeper,

(08:32):
to ask questions, to explore. Instead of perfecting and
finalizing and tying stuff up with a bow.
I would rather have 1000 half done pieces of work than one
perfectly polished. A perfect way to sum up what I'm
thinking is it's the journey, not the destination.
How many times have we heard that?

(08:52):
It's funny because often when I record these, I'll sit here
silent for 3-4 or five minutes and there's just not any more
thoughts that come to mind. I don't have a way to tie this
episode up with a bow. All my quotes and references
have come together for now, and I can't wait to see what other
pieces come together next. Let's go get obsessed.