116. Planning, Perfecting, and Procrastinating - Confessions of a Podcasting Solopreneur

Do you struggle with perfectionism? I sure do! In this episode, I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the planning, tweaking, overthinking, and yes, procrastinating that went into launching my podcasting membership. Tune in to hear the mindset shifts and tangible techniques that helped me to finally get over this hurdle...they might work for you too!

Check out the Podcast Growth Collective: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/collective

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

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Transcript

Hey. Hey. And welcome back. This is your podcast teacher, Julia Levine, and you're listening to podcasting for solopreneurs. The show that helps online business owners grow their podcast to get more listeners, leads, and sales. Today, we're talking about perfectionism. And if you've been around here for a while, you know that I've talked about this before, and I'm talking about it again today because it's something that I really struggle with and that I'm continuing to work on. I've heard from many of you that this is a struggle for you too.

So today, I'm going to get a bit vulnerable and share some behind the scenes of what's been happening with the launch of the podcast growth collective, including how perfectionism has caused significant delays and the techniques that I have used to work through it. I definitely don't have it all figured out, but I feel like each time I go through a major perfectionism quote, unquote episode, I get a tiny bit better at handling it. Before I dive into the whole story of how I made it happen, I do want to make sure to let you know that the doors to the collective are officially open at a special founders rate. If you join now, you can log in the lowest ever rate and still have access to all of the amazing things to come, just head to the podcastteacher.com/collective to learn more. Alright. Let's start out by acknowledging that a sneaky thing about perfectionism is that it usually does not present itself as a bad thing. We usually have good intentions, right? We want to make the best possible program or offer for our students. We want to have visual and audio content to support different types of learners.

We want to have handouts and workbooks to help them implement, and those are all worthy goals. But as a result, we can spend weeks and months fine tuning, but never putting it out there. Or we rewrite a script over and over and over and over but never record it. This is what's been happening with me and the launch of the collective. I had this vision of the final product and as I was creating materials, there was still a gap between the current version and my final vision. So I kept pushing the opening back further and further to allow me the time to make it better. But, as I'm sure you can probably guess, more time did not solve the problem and that's because perfectionism is a mindset issue. Planning, creating, and perfecting are safer activities than publishing and putting the content out there.

Because once I put something out there into the world, it's real. People can see it. People have opinions about it. And that is vulnerable. So I stay in my Google Doc tweaking, adjusting, overthinking, and telling myself it's just not ready quite yet. And then of course, procrastination is the result. So, let me share three mindset shifts and two tangible techniques that have been helping me during this process. The first mindset shift is that done is better than perfect.

I literally have this written on a post it that stuck to my computer. It's a phrase that I have been working to embrace for years. It's easier said than done, but it's true. Done is better than perfect. The perfectly polished version that never gets published does not help anyone. But the imperfect version that goes live, that's the one that starts conversation, that connects with people, that builds momentum. So say it with me now, done is better than perfect. Alright, mindset shift number two is that action creates clarity.

I am the queen of overthinking and very thorough planning, but action is where the magic happens. You get clarity as you move forward. I was at a retreat recently and the presenter shared that airplanes are off course 90% of the time. I did not fact check that, but her point made sense. The pilots are constantly course correcting and adjusting to get you to your destination. It's the same thing with the GPS in your car. I'm sure that you have made a wrong turn at some point and have had it tell you that it's recalculating, but it doesn't do that until you make that wrong turn. You have to be on the journey in motion in order for it to help you course correct.

The same is true for business. So if you're sitting around waiting for the quote unquote right idea or the perfect strategy, you're probably gonna be sitting there a while. So start with what you have, then adjust and recalculate as you go. This is probably the mindset shift that I have been working the hardest to embrace and it's also the one that has been the most helpful. Alright, and mindset shift number three is that perfectionism is fear in disguise. As I mentioned in the beginning, perfectionism is sneaky. We like to dress it up as being thorough or being professional. But if we're being honest, it's usually just fear.

Fear of being judged, fear of not being good enough, fear of no one enrolling in our program or listening to our podcast. But I encourage you to think about fear standing for false evidence appearing real. Our mind is so powerful, and it does a really good job of convincing us that something is truly dangerous or threatening when it's not really in reality. By recognizing that fear is often based on false evidence, we can challenge those negative thoughts and make more rational decisions. So, I've started asking myself, what is the story that I am believing here? Is this actually true or is this just fear dressed up as logic? Alright, so there are the three mindset shifts that I have employed during this particular bout of perfectionism and honestly mindset is more than half the battle. But I do have two tangible techniques to share with you as well. So, I had originally planned to launch the collective in February of this year. Now that goal was quite unrealistic given my travel schedule that month plus other work commitments.

However, I think failing to meet that initial goal was one of the first dominoes in the perfectionism spiral. So going forward, I intend to be more realistic about timelines. So anyway, once February came and went, I set the goal for March. I was hard at work on it during March, but I got caught in that perfectionism trap, and I ended up pushing out the date to April. April is where I really started implementing that mindset work that I just went over and the tangible techniques that I'm going to tell you about in just a second. And I am happy to report that I opened the doors to folks on the wait list on April 30. I might have squeaked in just under the wire, but I made it happen. So let me talk about what happened in April that helped me to actually open the doors rather than pushing it out yet again.

First, I embraced the idea of an MVP, a minimum viable product. This tangible technique was a prompt from one of my business coaches. What is the minimum product that I can put out into the world that will help the people who enroll to get results? In this case, I decided that one instructional module and the podcast help desk feature made up the minimum viable product. I knew that one instructional module would give students in the collective items to work on that will certainly move their podcast forward. And the help desk feature of being able to submit any podcasting question to me at any time would help those that have needs beyond that first module. There are three other instructional modules to come as well as live events, but one module plus the help desk is the minimum viable product. Along those same lines, I also embraced B level work as a tangible technique. You may have heard to embrace C level work or something like 70% is good enough, And as a former straight a four point zero student, I just cannot go there.

That bar is too low for me, but I can get on board with a solid 85% b level work. So, while I created the first module, it does not yet have slides. The module currently available is about SEO, and it's a really, really powerful module. There's a lot of super tangible information that you can apply to your podcast, and it's good enough without slides. I plan to add them eventually, but for now I am happy knowing that students can get results from the module just the way it is. If you are in a similar situation stuck in planning and perfecting and therefore procrastinating, I encourage you to work on your mindset. Remember that done is better than perfect, action creates clarity, and perfectionism is fear in disguise. Fight that fear and take action with a minimum viable product and B level work.

Get it done, don't wait for it to be perfect. And if this episode resonated with you just know that you are not alone. This is something that I work on constantly every single day, and it is something that we can talk about inside the Podcast Growth Collective too. Because, yes, we talk about podcast strategy and SEO and content planning, but sometimes the biggest growth happens when you start believing that it's okay to move forward before you feel 100% ready. You don't need to be perfect, you just need to be in motion. Until next time, happy podcasting.