[accessally_user_firstname], let me tell you a story…About 8 years ago I had recently moved to New Zealand and was getting ready to relaunch my business from that side of the world.I really thought I had it all nailed.I hired an expensive web designer, hired someone else to create a database of 5000 people I planned to introduce myself to, created an email sequence designed to entice them to a teleseminar that was going to be my launchpad for a year long coaching program that I had written all the content for in advance.

There were 3 different streams to the Entrepreneur Academy (which was the program).

I had spent a fortune on graphics, trademarks, web development, and I had spent months writing and pulling it all together, at the expense of working with clients.

But it was ok because I had taken a short term contract as an engineer to tide me over. (I had even hired my daytime PA to help me in the evenings with this venture.)

I fiddled and I tweaked. I went back and forth with my web designer and I spent more and more. And eventually, sitting on the couch one evening, my long-suffering husband turned to me and said,

‘So, are you going to do this, or not?‘

I was crushed. Couldn’t he see how much work I was putting in to make it perfect; to make sure that it worked? Didn’t he realise that I knew exactly what I was doing this time, because I was following my gurus to the letter?

Well that kick in the pants was enough to get me to launch and so I pressed GO!

We sent the initial email and I waited for the sign ups to roll in, just as my mentors had said they would.

But it didn’t happen. Not only that, but I got more feedback from people who were angry about my offer than people who were happy about it. Gutted!

Nevertheless I continued forward and ran the teleseminar to one person – my assistant.

What went wrong?

Well this one story encompasses 4 of the main pitfalls that I fell into, and that I see in my clients every day. And in this lesson we are going to look at all 4.

First up Procrastination.

Procrastination is a tricky one for us as entrepreneurs because the image that it conjurs is one of someone being lazy and avoiding tasks. But the thing with procrastination is that it can hide in busy-work. I worked for hours on end on that launch, but what I was actually procrastinating about was doing things that made money. My goal was to leave my contracting job and work from home to be near my kids, but what I was actually doing was taking me further away from that goal.

A close bedfellow of procrastination is Perfectionism.

We want to do our best right? But when does good enough become perfectionism? I would say long before we realise it. I heard a great quote from a long time mentor recently, “Version 1 is better than version none”. It is soooo true. Done really is better than perfect. I have spent considerable cash on coaches and mentors whose presentation was far from perfect, but they had a compelling reason for me to work with them and so I did. Watch out for procrastination and perfectionism – we know from the Coaching Cornerstones Masterclass that they are signs of self-sabotage.

Leading on quite nicely from that is the good old chestnut of Visibility.

In my launch I was trying to do everything without becoming visible at all! I literally wanted to do everything from behind my laptop screen. No video content, no stories, nothing. Just a picture on the banner of my website. Nobody knew who I was. We know that visibility is inherently dangerous to our primal brain, so there has to be an element of people seeing you to be able to hire you. What is great about working in today’s climate is that it is easier than ever to become visible safely.

And one more major pitfall that I fell into in this launch??

I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching.

I wasn’t doing all the things that I expected my clients to do, and in so doing, I couldn’t connect to them at all. My market wasn’t refined enough, and I didn’t understand their pain well enough because I wasn’t in the trenches with them. Knowing is not the same as doing, and I think that was probably the toughest lesson I had to learn in this experience.

That whole launch experience was painful for me to go through, and it has taken me until now to fully own it. I really want you to avoid such a painful and expensive detour on your way to success, and so the quest I am inviting you on is to create a list of reasons that you really, really want this adventure. As many as you can think of, but at least 50.

And, I want you to really understand the cost of waiting to get things perfect before putting them out there. What are the costs of perfection? It could be stalling your progress, or stopping you from being seen.  It may be missing out on opportunities because you think you’re not ready.

Remember, done is better than perfect, every single time!

And finally, get familiar with the signs that you are procrastinating. Maybe you ‘procrasti-plan’, or ‘procrasti-design’, or ‘procrasti-tweak’? Understand those behaviours are keeping you from what it is that you really, truly want.