Love The Imperfections

I was on a Zoom call last week, meeting someone for the first time. As we both got on camera, I couldn’t help but notice that her eyebrows were perfect: right shape, right color, on point. They were a striking feature of her face.

As we began our conversation, her internet became unstable. She continued talking, but her eyebrows began moving at a different pace than the rest of her face. They were functioning like a separate unit, slightly off from what the rest of her face was doing. 

That’s when I realized that she had enabled the Zoom “touch up my appearance button” and elected the eyebrow option. But without internet stability, the eyebrows were moving independent of her. It was so distracting, and the entire time I kept wondering, “Does she see what I am seeing?” 

Thankfully our call was brief. As I hung up, the funny experience stuck with me and I wondered, why do we work so hard for perfection? Why do we blur our image to make our skin look flawless, and blur our background to conceal our less-than-tidy home background? What if we all decided to just keep it real, rather than apply a virtual Magic Eraser to our faces, our backgrounds, or even our social media posts?

There’s a reason Zoom added filters to make us look better, or why we as advisors feel the need to over-explain concepts to “prove” our expertise, or even why some folks feel compelled to lease a luxury car even when they'd rather just drive their well-loved SUV. I believe it's all in the pursuit of perfection.

Let’s be honest—perfection is exhausting. And worse? It’s not fooling anyone.

I think about the time one of my coaching clients lost a big investment prospect when his presentation didn't go well. He was pitching alternative investments as a diversifier to their existing holdings. It was a great idea. But he had prepped a 58-slide PowerPoint presentation for a 60-minute meeting. He had tried so hard to impress, and not surprisingly he lost the prospects in the minutia of his slides. Afterwards, I suggested he ask them for feedback. They were very candid in their email response: “Jake, you seem so smart, but we wished you had just talked to us. We would have preferred a more authentic conversation rather than a TED Talk!”

It's so humbling, isn't it? 

I think about the appointment I had with a successful surgeon. I was a young advisor presenting a financial plan over coffee. I should have been solely focused on the client. But instead I was more concerned with my words being perfect, and with not having coffee breath. Before he sat down, I popped an Altoid into my mouth. I nervously began my presentation, explaining that I was going to share the planning analysis I had done for him. I stumbled on the “p” in planning, and spontaneously spit my Altoid onto the cover page of the report I had so carefully printed and bound. I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. Instead of acknowledging my humanness, I picked up the Altoid, put it back into my mouth, wiped the spit from the cover, turned the page, and kept going like it never happened. (He also never became a client.)

We work so hard— sometimes over-engineering our words, our presentations, even our online appearances— because we want to be seen as polished, knowledgeable, successful. But in our quest to appear flawless, we sometimes lose what makes us most valuable—our humanness.

The truth? Clients don’t expect us to be perfect. They'd prefer us to be real. They trust us not because we have the fanciest sports car or the most complex explanations, but because we listen, understand, and show up as our authentic selves.

They’d rather hear:

✔️ “Here’s the simplest way to think about this…” instead of a TED Talk on market efficiency.

✔️ “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” rather than an overconfident answer that’s… well, wrong.

✔️ “Don’t mind my shirt, I had a coffee disaster,” rather than opting for your camera to be off on Zoom.

Perfection is exhausting. Authenticity is refreshing. Sometimes, we strive ourselves crazy in an effort to be more, do more, and have more.

So here are questions to really ask yourself:

• Where in your life or business are you trying to be perfect when being you would actually be more engaging?
•  Are you filtering yourself—whether in conversation, decisions, or even the way you present your expertise—when authenticity would build deeper trust?
• If you knew that your realness was your greatest asset, how would you show up differently?

 At the end of the day, your clients are not investing in a perfectly polished robot. They’re investing in you. The real you. The one who cares, listens, and brings expertise with warmth and confidence.

So feel free to drop the filters. Simplify your explanations. Drive the car you actually like. Because the best way to build trust, loyalty, and success isn’t by being perfect—it’s by being you, including your imperfections.

Today is Valentine’s Day: May this be your reminder that the world loves the real you, not the perfect you.