You're Not Unprepared, You're Afraid to Start | Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes, host of The School of Greatness, examines the fear of starting before the feeling of readiness arrives. The episode argues that preparation can become a sophisticated form of procrastination, and that confidence follows action rather than preceding it. Examples include his interview with Tony Robbins, a Kobe Bryant interview booked the night before, and the launch of The School of Greatness.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This bonus episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. If you've ever started a big project, you know, one of the hardest parts is figuring out where to begin. You might have research in one place, notes in somewhere else, feedback coming in, and a bunch of ideas you're trying to make sense of. ChatGPT is moving beyond answering questions and helping people get real work done. Later in this episode, I'll share a simple workflow that shows how, starting with a clear goal and the information you already have can help turn scattered ideas into meaningful progress on your biggest projects. Today, I want to talk to you about something that I still experience from time to time.

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  And I also think a lot of people who are very ambitious experience this as well. You have something important in front of you. You have a big project, a conversation that's important, a business that you want to start, some side hustle, or maybe like a big presentation that you have to give, or an opportunity you've been waiting years for. And instead of starting it, instead of getting on that task, you freeze up. You freeze and you tell yourself that I need more time, I need more information. You need to think about it a little bit longer, you need to do more research, you need to get organized, I need to clean my room first. You need to feel more ready before you begin. But sometimes the problem isn't that you don't know where to start. Sometimes you know exactly where to start.

• 1:28Lewis Howes?

  You're just terrified that when you actually do begin, you're going to find out that you are not good enough. And that is what I want to talk about today because I've spent years interviewing some of the most successful people in the world. We're talking about Olympic champions, billionaires, scientists, bestselling authors, world-class entrepreneurs. And if there's one thing that I've learned from watching people perform at the highest level, it's that the work doesn't start when the camera turns on for me. The work starts long before anyone can see it. And I think that's the secret that most people miss. The people at the top aren't always more confident than you. They aren't always more talented, smarter than you, things like that.

• 2:12Lewis Howes?

  But they have learned how to move through the moment when they don't feel ready. I've done thousands of interviews at this point. And people sometimes assume that means that I can just walk into a room, sit down with anyone and have an incredible conversation. But that is not how I think about it because every time someone sits across from me, I feel a duty, a responsibility, I feel a privilege. This person has a story, they have a background, they've spent years, sometimes decades, learning or mastering a skill. And I want to try to pull out as much great information that can serve you and the entire audience watching or listening on how to improve based on their story.

• 2:56Lewis Howes?

  And I might have one or two hours to find the part of the story that could change someone's life. And for me, that matters to me. And the more something matters to you, the easier it is to become afraid of getting it wrong as well. This is why so many people have a goal or dream that they care about and they wait years to get started because they're afraid. What if it doesn't work out? What if it's, what if I bomb? What if I get criticized or embarrassed myself? And I remember the first time I had Tony Robbins on the School of Greatness. It's probably, I don't know, nine or 10 years ago, we've had him on many times now. But the first time, he was like a big, a big guest that I really wanted to get for the first few years. And I'd been working on trying to book him and I finally booked him.

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  And he had a book coming out. And I was like, I need to do as much research as possible because I was a little bit nervous. I was a little intimidated, I was still early in my career, I was still early in the interview game. And for me, this was like a, a big individual in the industry who had decades of experience and someone I really wanted to interview. And I remember reading the entire book, and this was like a 500-page book. It was huge and I'm a very slow reader. But I was like, I want to find out what are two or three things that most people wouldn't know to ask or wouldn't be thinking about? What's something that people never ask Tony Robbins? Because I'd seen a lot of content, seen a lot of interviews, and a lot of people were asking the same thing.

• 4:27Lewis Howes?

  So I was like, I need to find a two or three things. And I remember in that interview, I was impressed that the fact that he said, man, no one's ever asked me that before, no one's ever asked me, I think he said a couple of different times, no one's, what a great question, no one's ever asked me that. And my whole, and this is not to toot my own horn or anything, but my whole goal was to say, how can I get him thinking outside of the box of what he usually talks about? And if I could get him to say, huh, let me, let me think about that for a second, I was like, then that's a win for the audience, not necessarily for me, but for the audience. Because it means that we did the research to try to get him off of the script that he normally shares. And here's what I want you to notice about that. From the outside, it looks like maybe a preparation problem, like I have too much information.

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  I spent all this time reading a 500-page book and I prepared a lot. I don't know what to focus on, I don't know yet, enough yet, and I need to keep reading more, I need to keep preparing, I need to keep watching more of his interviews and doing all these things like I did. But underneath that can be something completely different also, it can be fear. Because preparation can become a very sophisticated form of procrastination. And this is the thing I hear from a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs that reach out to me or that want coaching from me. It's like they just continue to prepare without launching, without starting, without acting.

• 5:51Lewis Howes?

  It's like, you know, okay, I could have read one more article about Tony, I could have read another book of his, I could have watched more videos. I could have had one more day to think about it or to review it or to obsess about the preparation. And this can feel very productive because you're doing something, you're researching, you're learning, you're developing, you're gaining more information. But there's a difference between preparing to do the work and preparing so that you never have to begin the work. I've done both and maybe you have too. And in this instance with Tony Robbins, I think the beautiful part about this is there was a deadline, there was a deadline of when the interview was happening. There was a scheduled time, I flew to New York City, there was an hour of time that we had.

• 6:37Lewis Howes?

  So I needed to prepare, but eventually I had to take action and sit down even when I was afraid, even when I was nervous, even though, oh, I felt like, ah, I still don't know everything I need to know about Tony to do a great interview. I had that feeling. And so if I didn't have the deadline, if I didn't have it scheduled, I maybe would have just kept preparing for as long as it took and would have never felt ready. Today's bonus episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. And one thing I've learned over the years is that great work usually starts with a lot of information coming from a lot of different places. And maybe you're preparing for an important meeting.

• 7:16Lewis Howes?

  Maybe you're researching a new business idea or you're working on a creative project and you've got notes, you've got feedback and ideas scattered everywhere. The hardest part isn't collecting the information, it's figuring out what to do with it. That's where ChatGPT work comes in. You start with your goal and the context from the apps and files you choose to connect. And ChatGPT can help organize that scattered information into something practical, like a strategy brief or a project outline that gives you a clear place to begin. And what I really like is that you're always in control throughout the process. You can review progress, answer questions, change direction whenever you want and approve important actions before anything gets moved forward.

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

  It helps you spend less time organizing information and more time focusing on the work that matters most. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. Think about something that you've been circling in your life right now, something that you've been thinking about, something that you've been really, you know, obsessing over, not something you don't care about, something you really want. Whether it be like, I want to launch a business, I want to do that book or this project, or I really want to do this side hustle thing. I want to, I want to make a new career change. I want to have that conversation with that person who's going to help invest in me, whatever it might be.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  The project that has been sitting in your notes app or sitting on your heart for months or for years. And the real question for you is, what are you waiting for?

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  Seriously, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting to have more information if it's the right thing to do? Are you waiting for more time, more confidence, more skills, more permission? What is the thing that you are really waiting for? I honestly want to know, what are you waiting for to start the thing? This doesn't mean you have to complete the thing, but starting it. Are you waiting for the moment when you can guarantee that you will not fail? Because I'm telling you, that moment does not exist. And I think this is where so many people who are extremely smart, extremely gifted, extremely talented, get stuck.

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  People say, "I'm not ready yet." But what this really means is, "I'm not certain I'll be good at it." "I'm not certain I'll be good at it, that it will succeed." And of course, you're not certain. You haven't done it yet. You cannot have the confidence that comes from doing something before you've actually done it. Just thinking about doing it doesn't give you confidence. You've got to put yourself out there and do, and learn, and fail, and make mistakes. You have to move first. The confidence comes after. And this is especially hard for high achievers, because you know what it feels like to be good at something. You know what it feels like to work really hard and accomplish something.

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  So being a beginner again for a new project, a new idea, a new thing that you're really excited about, it doesn't feel good. You would rather prepare for another year. Think about it. Ask friends. Do research. Use AI to learn more about it first, before actually taking action. But you cannot become great at something. You refuse to be bad at first. And you cannot think yourself into the experience that only action can give you. So here's what changed for me. I stopped believing that preparation was supposed to remove fear. It's not. When I had Tony Robbins on, I did all this prep. I read a lot of books and watched a lot of content, and I could have done a lot more, but I was still nervous.

• 11:04Lewis Howes?

  You can prepare for weeks and still be uncertain, and still be on edge, still be a little nervous. You can have every note in front of you. You can have all the preparation and still wonder if you're good enough, and still wonder, "But can I do this? Can I be good at this? Can I succeed? Are people gonna like this when I put it out there?" And the goal is not to eliminate uncertainty. The goal is to trust yourself inside of it. That is a completely different way of working. Because when you don't trust yourself, you're trying to prepare for every possible outcome. "What if they say this? What if that doesn't work? What if somebody asks me something that I don't know the answer to? What if the plan changes? What if I fail? What if I get criticized?

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  What if no one buys from me?" But when you trust yourself, you don't need to know exactly what is gonna happen. You need to know why you're there. And I remember a time I had an opportunity to interview another huge guest that was on the School of Greatness, Kobe Bryant. And I didn't have time to prepare. I got a call the night before the interview was gonna happen. And it was maybe 5 o'clock at night, and our team was on the phone with Kobe Bryant's publicist, who said, "Hey, we want to come on the School of Greatness, because Kobe has a new podcast, and he wants to promote it." But his only time was available like a month out.

• 12:34Lewis Howes?

  And I told one of our team members who was on the phone with the publicist, I said, "Don't get off the phone until you get it confirmed and book it the first thing tomorrow morning. I'll go anywhere he is." I knew he was in Los Angeles where we were at the time. And we got the interview for the next morning. Now, I didn't have time to prepare. I just got the call the night before. I didn't have time to prepare. I did as much preparation as I could within, you know, that night, and then on the drive that morning to his office. But I didn't have the normal preparation time. And it ended up being one of my best interviews as well.

• 13:17Lewis Howes?

  Because I wasn't focused on trying to be overly prepared. I knew that I needed to trust myself in that moment. And that's the paradox. The more I trust myself, the more present I can be. And I'm not desperately trying to prove that I did my homework. I'm listening instead. I'm curious. I can follow something that I didn't expect. And I think this almost applies to anything. And listen, that day when I interviewed Kobe Bryant, it was chaos also. There was so many people at his office. There was a team of publicists that were like, "Here's everything you can't talk about, lists, you know, all these questions and topics that were off limits." I had a time crunch. I only had 20 minutes.

• 14:02Lewis Howes?

  There were more production companies setting up for interviews the rest of the day. It was kind of like overwhelming and a little unsettling. And I just said, "You know what? I'm gonna show up and give my best, even though I'm not fully prepared, even though I didn't have the time I would like to have had. But I'm going to be as genuinely curious as possible within this timeframe." And I think this applies to almost everything. Preparation should give you the confidence to be flexible, not the need to control everything. And the top 1% prepare differently. There's a lot of people that I know who prepare extremely well. But then they trust themselves enough to let go. And this is something we do.

• 14:46Lewis Howes?

  I have notes of information that my team helps me prepare for every episode. I do my own research as well. But at the end of the day, I may not ask any of the pre-planned questions that were on, you know, my list. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. But the goal is to be prepared enough so that I can pull out something whenever I need to and really be present in that moment. And there's another part of this that I think a lot of us miss. Before you ask, "How do I do this?", ask instead, "What am I actually trying to create?" And those are two very different questions. Because you can spend an enormous amount of energy

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  doing things that have nothing to do with actually what you want. And I know I've done this before where I'm just like, "Okay, I'm gonna have busy work." You can be incredibly busy and still be avoiding the one thing that matters. You could have this thing listed on your screensaver, and on your Notes app, and on your journal with your goals and your dreams and all these things you wanna do, but for whatever reason, just be distracted by so many other things. For an interview, my goal isn't to prove that I read every article about the person or know everything about their backstory. It's not to act like I'm the most intelligent person in the world by asking some, you know, awe-inspiring questions. It is to create conversations that serve you.

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Literally, my goal is to think about when I'm sitting across from a guest, "How can I be of service to you? What are you experiencing in your life right now that I can pull out of this guest that will help you, that will improve your life, that will make your life easier, happier, healthier, more abundant? And I'm thinking about you." Yes, in some ways, I'm thinking about me, of how can I learn how to apply this to my life? But I'm also thinking about the comment that I got from you a couple of days ago and what you said you were struggling with. And I'm going through all those comments and conversations or emails I get from people or when people come up to me on the streets and say what they're experiencing or what they're challenged with.

• 16:59Lewis Howes?

  I think, "How can I apply this to the next interview to serve you, the person watching, the person listening, the person that constantly shows up here?" And it also changes a lot of what I can let go of. Because when the goal is clear, when I have a clear intention, a clear vision, you don't have to chase everything. You don't need every piece of information. You don't need to spend years of getting all the certifications possible in order to launch. You don't need every possible answer. You need to know what you're trying to create. What is my intention? What is my vision? And how can I bring that to life energetically?

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  And that is one of the biggest differences that I've seen between people who consistently do great work and people who are constantly overwhelmed by their work and constantly delaying their goals or their dreams. So I want you to go back to that project that I was talking about and I asked you to think about a little bit earlier. The one that you've been circling, the one that you've got on your app, the one that you've got on your gratitude or dream or goal journal, whatever it might be. The one that you talk to all your friends about constantly, but you haven't acted on yet. Imagine you stopped asking yourself or others, "Am I ready?"

• 18:23Lewis Howes?

  And instead, you started asking, do I trust myself enough to begin? Because once you actually start, something changes. The project stops being this enormous elephant in your mind. That's like, ah, I don't know how I'm going to tackle this thing. Instead, it becomes real. And there's a first page that you start writing. Or a first phone call. You start having with someone to get them enrolled in your goal or your dream or your vision. There's a first draft, there's a first conversation. And real things can be improved. You start to get feedback. You start to see what you need to continue to work on, what's working, what's not working. And imaginary things can be only worried about. And that first version is allowed to be pretty bad.

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  It's allowed to be rough. It's allowed to fail. It doesn't have to be perfect. And this is one of the things that I see so many people struggling with. Is that they feel like it needs to be perfect before they put something out there. But I'm telling you, greatness starts with giving yourself the freedom to fail. It starts putting yourself out there, knowing it's not going to be perfect. Knowing it's not going to be exactly the way you want it. And if I think about this podcast, for example, I had no clue what I was doing when I launched this show. I had no clue about audio equipment, video equipment, interviewing people. I didn't know how to prepare for interviews. I literally just thought to myself, I need solutions to challenges in my life.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  And I ask a lot of people in my mind, what I thought were just kind of silly, basic, dumb questions. But for me, I needed to ask those questions in such basic dumb ways that would give me the answers so I could understand things. Because a lot of things in school were so complicated for me to understand. I needed someone to simple them down, to make them easy to understand. And the more I asked those questions, the more I got incredible answers from people and incredible information that I was like, oh, I can apply this to my life. I can apply this to my relationships, my business. And the more I took action on those things from this show, I got exponential results.

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  And I started to see that, oh, people enjoyed the way I asked these questions in a certain way that I did. Because I was trying to understand how to simplify things in life that felt so overwhelming, so hard, so challenging. And that experience becomes evidence. You start, you survive, maybe you even do well when you start doing this thing. And for me, that's what I did. I started, I had no clue what I was doing. I was like, let me record on my iPhone, let me ask these silly questions. Let me put it out there the best way possible. It wasn't edited the best, it wasn't, you know, the best design, none of those things. But it got started, then I got feedback. And then I improved it every week that I did it. And I said, how can I be better? And oh, I made a mistake here.

• 21:24Lewis Howes?

  Let me take the feedback from the audience and see how I can improve. And now the next time your mind says, you're not ready. You have something to answer it with. And I've been here before, I can figure things out. I did this in the past, in this project, in this process, in this goal. And I wasn't ready for any of them, but I figured it out along the way. And that is how self-trust gets built. Not by promising yourself that you'll never fail. But by proving to yourself that failure doesn't get the final word. Failure doesn't own your confidence. Failure doesn't stop you from going after what's on your heart and on your, on your, on your, on your mind for who you want to be and what you want to create in the world.

• 22:09Lewis Howes?

  So here's the simple version I promised you. The simple version is this, you already know the two hard parts. You get clear on what you're trying to create and use what you've already have instead of waiting for more. And the third part is the one that actually changes anything. And today, I want you to take one real action on it. Not a plan, not a list. One thing that turns this from something in your head into something that exists. So here's what I want to leave you with. There is something in your life right now that you have been preparing to start. This is something we talked about from the beginning of this. You've been circling around, you've been thinking about, you've been ruminating, you've been telling friends and family,

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  you've been telling your audience online, I want to do this thing. And maybe your preparation has been great, maybe it's real. And maybe there are still things that you need to learn to, to master this. But I want you to ask yourself one simple and honest question. Am I still preparing because the work requires it? Again, if you're trying to be a doctor, of course, you've got to go through certain things until you are officially a doctor so you can start practicing that. But a lot of people here have things they want to launch that don't require that type of preparation. That's not what we're talking about here. And the other side of it is, am I still preparing because it requires more work?

• 23:38Lewis Howes?

  Or because preparing feels safer than beginning? And if there's something that you're trying to put out into the world that maybe emotionally or psychologically blocking you, feeling like you need to prepare more. I'm not talking about law or being a doctor or something like that. I'm talking about something that your heart wants you to launch that you know you can do, but you're just afraid of the emotional, psychological baggage that might come from failure, from criticism, from it not being in this perfect way in your mind. And you will know the answer, you'll know the answer. And if the answer makes you a little bit uncomfortable, then good. That means you found something. You do not need to know everything. You do not need to control the outcome.

• 24:22Lewis Howes?

  And you do not need to become fearless to start. But you do need a clear enough reason to begin. And enough trust in yourself to handle what happens next. I'm not saying that launching this goal or this dream on your heart or your mind that you've been thinking about for months or years is all going to work out right away. Maybe it doesn't. And you've got to be okay with knowing that it's not going to work out in this perfect timeline, the way I envision it. Maybe it does also. Maybe it's better than you can ever imagine. But I need you to think about that thing you've been waiting to start and name it. And then ask yourself what you keep claiming you still need before you begin. Do you actually really need that thing?

• 25:05Lewis Howes?

  Or are you just trying to protect yourself from the possibility that you might try? And you might try something you really care about, and it might not work out. Because courage is not knowing that something will work out. Courage is deciding that it matters enough to try without the guarantee that it will. And the people you admire didn't start because they knew they would win. They knew they would look great, they knew they would make money from it. They knew that they would have everyone cheering for them. They started, they failed, they learned, they adjusted, they got better, and they improved.

• 25:43Lewis Howes?

  And somewhere along the way, they become the person they were waiting to become before they actually started. You can't build momentum while you're standing still, while you're ruminating, while you're thinking, while you're just wondering when you should launch this thing. You can't build self-trust by thinking alone, by thinking about what you might do. And you can't become ready for something that you've never allowed yourself to experience. So my friend, I want you to start before you feel ready. And it doesn't feel good a lot of the times. It doesn't feel exciting a lot of times. There might be some excitement, but then there might be real fear and terror of like, ah, what's going to happen when I actually put this out there?

• 26:29Lewis Howes?

  Start while there are still questions. Start while part of you is still afraid. You don't have to see the entire path or the final outcome. You just have to trust yourself enough to take the first step. Because the moment you do, you are no longer standing at the starting line. And sometimes that is the entire breakthrough. It's not standing there and waiting to begin. It's starting your race and seeing what obstacles you need to overcome and figuring out who you become along the way. As today's episode comes to a close, I want you to think about that project you've been meaning to move forward, that goal, that dream, something you've been thinking about.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  And maybe you're organizing ideas for work, or you're building something new, or trying to make sense of information that's spread across different places. Every ambitious project starts with a clear goal. And having a way to organize your ideas into something actionable can help you make meaningful progress while staying in control every step of the way. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.