 I've noticed that a lot of people don't move forward in their business because they are always preparing to get out there. In this video, I'm going to encourage you to just get out there because that is actually the best way to learn and actually know what you need to do the next time to as you get out there. So here's what I mean. A lot of people think there's this kind of train of thought before I fill in the blank, like before I launch my business before I create some more content before I do this. I first need to fill in the blank. I first need to get this other training. I first need to acquire the certification so that I will feel more ready, more confident to actually get out there. I don't know if you've ever felt that way. So feel free if you'd like to comment below. This is such a dangerous train of thought because preparation sounds so logical. Of course you should prepare well before an important journey, right? Of course you should make sure that you've got your ducks in a row before you launch your business or before you launch that next thing. It sounds logical until you realize that you have been preparing already for months, probably years, and still you haven't gotten out there. Or at least gotten out there in the way that you know you need to in order to actually make a bigger difference. So here are some ways that I see people preparing, preparing, preparing, preparing for months, sometimes years. So the first way is, I've already mentioned this, I just need to get this other training. I just need to buy this course and study this course or acquire this certification, and then I'll be ready. The problem is that there will always be another, like, fine, you get your PhD, right? There will always be yet another training or certification you feel you need to get ready. And this is especially true for those of us who like to rack up certifications and trainings because we want to prepare, we don't want to look bad. Who wants to look bad? Who wants to look unprepared? Who wants to embarrass themselves? Nobody does. But then the problem is, as you get another certification or training, you realize at the end of it, you still don't feel ready. And it took you six months or six years, and you still don't feel ready because the illusion, and I should say, you know, I am part of the industry, and I have to admit it. And please, you know, let me be one to say, don't let me prevent you from getting out there. Don't say you need another one of my courses before you do XYZ. Okay, I'm part of the industry of education. And so people like us tend to, in our marketing, create gaps in your mind to make you feel fear of missing out to make you feel like you might make a mistake if you don't take our training. And I'm being honest with you about that. I try not to create this kind of FOMO as you may know from the way I do business, I try to do things in a more honest and life giving way in a more holistic way. But the fact is, you know, those of us who sell courses and education and certifications, our income is tied to having people sign up for it. So of course, our marketing tends to create this feeling of, well, people need to buy my thing in order to feel ready to feel complete enough to go and do the thing that they want to do. Well, let me tell you, you will learn faster, you will learn more in a more grounded way by taking action, learning from your reflecting from your action, etc. And that's actually what I'm trying to build in more into my programs, starting this year. I've been trying to do more bite sized chunks, get people to take action, report back, etc, etc. And I will keep trying to do more of that going forward. But bottom line is this, you, those of you watching this, I'm going to, I chances are you really have enough certifications and trainings to get out there. You really do. Now the fact is, there is this illusion that somehow filling your head with knowledge makes you more ready when what I've discovered the reality of learning and maybe you, you may have seen this too, is that as you fill your head with more knowledge you realize there's so much more you don't know. So the irony of learning, studying information is that you realize, wow, there's even more that makes me feel like I'm not ready, because now you understand what the knowledge gaps are, versus, if you, you know, start out so called ignorant and take action, you might actually read, or you might actually get further than the person who keeps studying for years, because you actually learned in the real world, and seen what the reactions are, and that's the best way to then adjust yourself to say, okay, let me try this, or now I realize as I take an action, I need to learn this very specific thing. So that's one common way is got to learn more when, oh, last thing I got to say about this very important thing. This is very, very important actually, learning more by watching videos by studying books, okay, by getting knowledge in your mind feels like you're making progress. It feels like you're getting something done. That's the danger of it. You need to break this illusion, you need to break this connection between learning, and making progress in your business. Let's talk specifically about business because that's what most of you here watching this are trying to grow your self employment, etc. Learning is not the same thing as moving forward in your business. In fact, like I said, learning can be stalling. So you have to break the chain learning is only something that's supposed to help you do something to get out there to share your message with more people, to ask people they will buy from you. That's what you need to do to have your business move forward. Please stop thinking that learning is doing learning is not doing. Learning is only oftentimes stalling from doing, because you feel like you're being a good student. Being a good student is just being a good student. That's like in school. And that may be where you have gotten this pattern is growing up, you know, be a good girl, be a good boy, and study. And that's all you need to do. You need to study, and then you take a test, you regurgitate what you learn. You didn't really, you know, make any breakthroughs in your career. You just studied, studied, studied and regurgitated in business. It's not the same. In fact, a lot of the successful business people are not very, they don't have PhDs and things, right? A lot of successful business people quite, they dropped out of school. They would rather, they realize, oh my gosh, what am I doing stalling here? I'd rather do stuff in the real world, ask people to buy stuff, talk to people about what they want to buy, ask people to buy stuff and then see what happens. You want to buy that? Let me try asking you, what would you like to buy? Oh, you want to buy that instead? Okay, let me create something. Would you buy that instead? That's really what business is about. It's talking to people about what they want to buy and then selling them that. It's not about taking another course from me or from anybody. So break that chain. Stop learning thinking you're doing something. You're not. You're just stalling. I'm sorry to say. That's one common way that people keep, by the way, another common way is to keep watching my videos. Now, of course, like, I'm using myself as the martyr here. I mean, watching anybody's videos, taking anybody's courses, right? Watching videos is not getting anything done. You probably already know the stuff. Yeah, maybe you need some inspiration, but inspiration can also become a stalling mechanism. You need to get more inspiration, more inspiration, more inspiration. And then once you get inspired and then you're like, oh, now I'm tired, I gotta go have lunch or now I gotta go take care of my kids or now I gotta, you know, do some chores. Now I gotta, whatever. It's like the very time you spend watching this video, you could have gone something, done something in your business. Again, not just my videos, anybody's videos that you're watching, anyone's books that you're reading, any blog posts you're reading. So just be very careful, be very stingy about the time you spend learning, right, about the time you spend learning. Okay, so another common way that people prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare forever, is they say, I need to first develop a full proof clarity about my framework, about my whole message. And then I will feel ready to share content with the world. I don't want to embarrass myself by maybe having to publicly revise my ideas later. You know, I often hear people tell me, Well, Georgina, I'm not like you, I don't have all my ideas ready and ready to share. Are you serious? Do you think I somehow either studied enough or I was smart enough to now have all my all these ideas perfectly in the right sequence and bestow upon you my well formed ideas? Did you know that I'm making it up as I go along every day? Oh, you didn't know that. Okay, you thought that you had to have everything ready? No, I don't have, no, it's not, it doesn't work like that. Like, like, readiness to create content isn't knowing what you're going to say. It's turning on the video camera and then seeing what comes out. That is if you are an okay talker, if you find just talking to people, but if you're not fine just talking to people or turning on the camera and just sharing some ideas, then okay, fine, you spend half an hour preparing. Okay, in this video, I'm going to talk about three things. Thing number one, thing number two, thing number three. Okay, ready? Okay, half an hour. That's all I need to do to prepare. When I first started making my videos, I didn't take half an hour to prepare. I took about 15 minutes. I made my videos in the park. Some of you may remember my earlier videos, they were done in the park. Why did I stop doing that? By the way, you might say, George, I liked it when you were in the park. I know, I know. Most of you prefer me to be in the park walking and it looks nice and everything, but after a while, after I built an audience, I'm like, I want to just take my park time for my park time. I don't want to think about work when I'm at the park. So that's why I now make boring videos in my office all day, you know, all the time, sorry. But yeah, when you are first starting to build an audience, you may want to make your videos look more interesting by going to the park. But after you have an audience, you can be a bit more lazy like me and just make boring videos like this. Okay, so. So, no, it doesn't work to create clarity about your content before you, like in terms of the entire framework, like, okay, here's how everything connects in my mind, because the fact is, when you start working on your content framework, your whole set of ideas, you will realize, wow, there is a lot here that I'm going to have to really dive into really have to connect even more dots before I'm ready. So essentially, knowledge, the development of knowledge is an eternal activity. Did you think that you would be able to come to the end of finally figuring everything out into a great framework. I don't know who told you that but let me be one to break the secret to you. Knowledge development, getting to the full proof clarity about your framework is an eternal endeavor. I didn't even say lifetime goes past this lifetime, because every time you create knowledge you realize, wow, okay, there's more that this is connected to. Oh, there's even more here to explore. What do we do? We can't wait until we figure out the connections of all our knowledge before we share, because it never happens. New understanding will always be unfolding. There's always deeper understanding. There's never I now I got it. No, it's always deeper, deeper, deeper. The minute you say something, you know you share something, and the class ends, let's say you're teaching class I this happens to me all the time. In class the class and I'm like, oh, I forgot to tell them about this. I don't sometimes realize right away sometimes realize this days or weeks or months later oh I should have told them about this. I didn't even explore this in depth enough. I didn't make this connection. That's the real that's the, that's the journey of creativity and understanding. So please stop trying to create the full proof framework before you start creating and to create content on a consistent basis. Just start teaching just start writing knowing that it's going to just keep getting deeper and more connected over time. Okay, so that's, that's the second way people keep preparing third way. Now this is this is this third way I had to say I don't have personal experience with but I know a lot of you do, which is people say, I need to wait until my kids are older. Before I'm ready to, you know, build my business I need to wait until my parents no longer need my caretaking before I'm ready to build my business now. I don't have personal experience with this yet, because my parents gratefully at this time don't need my, you know, constant caretaking. I don't have any human children I have a couple of animals. So I know that taking care of kids is so much energy so much work much more than I can even even imagine right now being someone who doesn't have children. However, what I do know is that I have had many clients over the last 12 years, who have had children, or who are currently taking care of their, their aging parents, and yet they continue to make progress in their business they continue to carve out at least a couple hours per week to work on their business and I'm so proud of them. Some of you right now are doing that. Please don't. Here's the danger of saying no no I gotta gotta finish my kidney on my kids gotta be fully back in school that whatever right now I'm recording this during the summertime oh I gotta wait until my kids are back in school, then I will. But I wait until my kids are out of the house then up. The thing is, you might end up blaming them one day not blaming them it's your fault. You, but you might say like God I wish I would have started my business sooner. I wish I would have been more consistent in building my business, even while my kids were at home. My parents were alive, even while whatever. Okay, so just carve out a couple of hours and you know what I do is I use focus mate and also I know the, the people who are parents, or caretakers, they use focus mate, I use focus mate on a daily basis. I show up because there's somebody waiting for me to work. They work on their thing I work on my thing but we check in for a minute in the beginning and a minute at the end. So that focus mate means you have an appointment with somebody. Right. So you got to tell your kids. Mommy can't help you right now because I have an appointment. Right. Daddy can help you right now have an appointment I have a business appointment. I schedule those appointments schedule five hours of focus mate per week. If you can, because then it'll make you show up focus to work on your business so that's a that's another common way that people delay. Finally, another common way people delay is George, you understand, I need to finish my website. I need to, I need to either finish my website, or I need to completely revise my website it's so outdated. I'm ready to kind of really launch again or really to get out there again. I see this so often. And here is the reality. Of course, yes is a Jordan I've heard about a couple people tell me that they're confused about my website. Those couple people who told, they might not even be the ideal clients okay so here's the reality of it. I need to update one webpage at a time don't feel like you have to update the entire website. That is such a common misconception. And I'll tell you reality of what's happened to me recently. I paid a friend of mine, a good amount of money, 2000 bucks to handhold me into fully revamping my whole website. And you know, we started by doing some good work. But there were there were delays for different reasons. And then during the period of delay I realized, maybe I don't need to update my entire website. Sure, my branding is not great. Sure, I can rewrite certain things, but I'm just going to follow my own advice and stop preparing preparing preparing and just continue to launch. I'm going to launch products program services etc. So guess what, I decided to stop the website project and say, thank you for the good work but I'm going to stay with my old website. So I decided not to revamp my home I was going to go to work press finally I'm on wix right now or not. I'm on Weebly right now those be some of your own wix somebody on Squarespace or whatever else kajabi. I'm on Weebly which is really outdated really not something I recommend anymore. A lot of some of us are still in Weebly and it's still okay but I was going to finally take the professional move and go to work press and you know I decided. No, I'm not going to. I'm going to keep things really simple. What I have right now. I'm just going to update one page at a time just over time just taking an hour a month, something like that just one hour of month just to update one page at a time and in the hour of month I can't update the graphics it's okay I've just got an update a few paragraphs during that hour that's it. I'm just going to update the page, each time, whatever I'm launching next, whatever it is I'm going to promote next. I want to make sure that page is updated, for sure. And then if I have additional time on my update another page, like for example this month I have additional time so I'm updating my about page. In the coming weeks you'll see my about pages slightly updated or you know moving some paragraphs and just moving things around. But really you don't need a fully formed website you just need. I've written about this before I encourage you go and that's it's a video why you only need a one page website. Yes, a one page website I have a video about it just go to my video channel and search one page website and you'll find it. And really, some people launch their businesses quite successfully in the beginning with a one page website and I think it's brilliant. And I think it's very simple and I think it's it's a great way to go that doesn't it's not intimidating because ultimately and let me let me kind of conclude the video by saying this. Ultimately, making real progress in your business is about three things I'm just going to keep it real simple for you and say three things. Okay, one is to continually let your network know what it is you're currently selling. A lot of you aren't even doing this. Again, because of the different reasons of delay that I've just talked about websites not fully finished all, you know, kids are out of school right now or whatever whatever maybe now again I'm not saying don't spend time with your family. It's not what I'm saying I'm just saying that you probably carve out a couple hours of focus time per week. Anyway, so you need to let your network, your friends, your colleagues, your family, your, your peers, you need to let people know what it is you're currently offering on a regular basis, how regular, at least once a month, make a post on social media on your Facebook on your LinkedIn on your Instagram, wherever you're on social media, once a month at once a month is a very good rhythm. Make a make an announcement saying hey everyone. I'm going to let you know I have some space right now to take on some new clients. What I love doing is to help people, you know, solve this problem or reach that goal or help people learn about this or whatever it is that you, you love to do with your clients. Once a month, you need to make that social media post. Okay, and once every six months, you should email individually, not a mass email dear friends and colleagues that that's not very polite. But once every six months individually email your greatest supporters in your life, your best friend, your, your, your business colleague, your, you know, past client, whatever. Once every six months, email them to say, Hey, I want to let you know I have some space right now. You know, in my business and I'd be grateful if you happen to know anybody who is looking for this right now. Even if you do it once a year. That's more often than a lot of people keep in touch about their business. So that's what a lot of people aren't even doing. You're not even letting your, your network know on social media once a month, and via individual emails once every six to 12 months. You have to email if you don't do that then how how are any of us going to know what you offer. We don't think about your business until we see your post about it really, we really don't. We don't do business all the time. We don't, we forget what you offer, until we see the post. So help us remember. Got it. Okay, so that's the, that's first continual action, let your network know. Second continual action is to continually share your knowledge about your field, share any tips that might be helpful. Share any stories of transformation in your own life, or in the lives of the people you've worked with, of course, keeping them anonymous, unless they give you permission to share their name. But continually create as you as you know I talk about all the time. Share content continually create content. Remember that remembering that content creation which is writing up blog posts or making videos content creation is a way to grow yourself. That's really the first and foremost, it's a way to learn how to communicate more effectively you're practicing. It's practicing communicating about your knowledge, your field. It's growing yourself first and foremost and secondly, it may help somebody. You may benefit someone's life, even if they don't buy from you wouldn't you like to benefit other people's lives, whether or not they buy from you of course, you are a person of service. So do that continually create and share content, because it's good for you first and foremost and second it's good for the world. And third, it keeps your network remembering what your field is. Now they're not going to remember what your services. That's step one I told you you got to constantly let them know, but step two at least they keep reminded of what your overall field is. Okay, and they keep reminded that you're there. Now yet, still got to tell them what you offer but that's that was step one step three or or third habit third behavior to continually do is to reach out to your colleagues to your peers people who have a similar sized audience as you, you only have 100 Facebook fans. It's okay reach out to somebody else with between 50 to 200 Facebook fans. Someone with a similar sized audience has between 50% to 200% the size of your audience. You've got 300 Instagram followers reach out to somebody with 150 to 600 Instagram followers, collaborate more with your peers. The simplest way it's to say hey, I really like your content. And I wonder if, if it would make sense for us to support each other, maybe occasionally we can share each other's content whatever you like of mine and whatever like of yours. It would be a delight. I don't want to share content anyway, but I'd be honored to be be open to sharing mine every now and then. Here is one of my best posts, you know you give them a link. Here are three of my best posts recently, but I'm going to be sharing yours. You know, so just a simple way is just to share each other's content. Anyway, so I think that's that's good enough for now you've done, you've done preparing by watching this whole video. I want to encourage you to go and do these three actions I've said, do at least the first action if not the first two actions. One, let your network know what it is your current offering is knowing that of course you're offering to keep evolving and changing over time but there's already something you can do to help people, whether or not you charge for you don't have to charge for it right now if you're really really in the beginning to say hey folks, hey friends, hey peers. I would like to give you guys. I love providing this kind of service I don't think about charge for not. I'm not I'm not sure I'm just getting my feet wet, but please allow me to do this for you. Let's schedule a time so I can do this for you and you can tell me what the feedback is. If you already have a service you're charging for please let your content your network network. I don't want to and watch those three the three actions again but you're done preparing. Go out there and do it. Break the pattern of delay. The actual progress you make in your business is by doing these kinds of things not by learning more watching more videos, etc. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. I genuinely hope you will make progress this week. I'll see you next week in your business. And as always I am very happy to see your comments below. If you have any questions that I might be able to quickly answer or you want to share your progress about breaking the pattern of delay I love to see that in the comments below if you'd like to share. Thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next video.