Perfectly Imperfect: Lessons From Building Without a Manual

by Ashley Cheung, Principal & Founder, VPG & Chief Vision Architect, Urban Raccooons Creative Hub

Entrepreneurship doesn't come with a manual. There are butterflies in your stomach and trust you must place in yourself before anyone else believes in you. I've spent years balancing an evidence-based legal industry with the need to trust vision and find what Seth Godin calls a Minimum Viable Audience (MVA): the small, right group who sees you before the crowd ever does. Admittedly, that's incredibly hard to do if you struggle with people-pleasing tendencies as I do.

Along the way, I've learned to accept other people's behavior, own my strategic miscalculations about what's worth investing in, and to stop taking any of it personally or accept accountability. People reveal who they are, and my job is to LEARN, not to be surprised.

The upcoming October 29, 2026, events have taught me this firsthand. I invested personally, believing both the causes and the speakers are powerhouses. When someone asked what my goal was, the honest answer surprised me: it was never really about the money; I hope to break even and share both Arivee's and Sasha’s light with our ever-growing community.

During the process of cultivating my own MVA, each "NO" used to make me quiet and guarded. Now I know. Each experience and each person offers me a lesson. As an entrepreneur, I MUST keep showing up until they do, or as Seth said, you are still in the game “until time and money are running out” in This is Strategy: Make Better Plans.

A few things rejection has taught me:

• Disappointment isn't the opposite of progress: It is data.

• Every “NO" reveals where my expectations were too rigid, my timing was off, or my idea was unfinished. Yet with each rejection, I move closer to my goal, because I am stepping out of my comfort zone.

• The sting is real, but I sit with it briefly and ask: what is this redirecting me toward? All the NOs turn closed doors into opportunities for new collaboration.

• Closed pitches can spark ideas I would have never reached alone.

• Holding vision firmly while holding outcomes loosely is where the energy lives and elevates.

• Each pivot doesn't drain me for long; I don’t allow it. Instead, it recharges me, usually leading somewhere more creative and honest than where I started.

This is the mindset I'm bringing to Beyond Burnout: Sustaining High Performance with Arivee Vargas, who is an incredible speaker for the Lunch & Learn, and Creative Brand Experience for Women in IP with Professor Sasha Strauss: Doodle Your Essence on October 29, 2026. Two events in one day, same venue; thank you to Robert Half for offering the space and having faith in us. On this day, we are making sure the room is built for exactly this kind of alchemy: turning setbacks into shared creativity and inviting different minds, different markers, and different perspectives to build something new together.

Perfectly imperfect. Always pivoting. Always creating. Always learning!