MMP #086 - Perfectionism Procrastination

Perfectionism can feel like “high standards,” but most of the time it’s just procrastination wearing a nicer outfit. If you’ve been stuck tweaking your lead magnet, researching cameras and platforms, or waiting for the perfect plan before you post, I’m walking you through a faster, calmer way to build momentum and land dream clients from Instagram.

We start by calling out the most common perfectionism traps I see with health and fitness experts: inconsistent content, doom scrolling instead of creating, and needing every piece of the puzzle before taking the first step. Then we zoom out and map what perfectionism is weighing down in your online coaching business, and we dig into what’s actually attached to it: fear of choosing wrong, fear of wasting time, and the past experiences that keep whispering “what if it doesn’t work?”

From there, I share how I use MVP thinking to break the pattern and ship version 1.0 without making it a “beta” apology tour. You’ll learn how to separate money-making activities from perfectionist busywork, use imperfect action like exposure therapy, and track the inputs that drive real outputs like leads, opt-ins, sales conversations, and clients. We also talk accountability, including coaching, body doubling, deadline windows, and when social accountability helps you follow through.

If you want simpler execution, more consistent posting, and a business that grows because you publish, not because you perfect, press play. Subscribe, share this with a coach friend who’s stuck polishing, and leave a review so more fitness entrepreneurs can find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And What We Solve

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Make Moves Podcast. I'm your host, Clayton Moves, and this is the podcast for all health and fitness experts to land dream clients from Instagram and learn marketing and sales that doesn't feel salesy. Alright, let's dive in. Welcome to the Make Moves Podcast. I'm Clayton Moves and I'm here to help you land dream clients from Instagram. So this episode, I want to talk about perfectionism. So I am a recovering perfectionist and a ton of my clients are as well. So a lot of the upfront what work that we do when I'm working with a client is to identify what perfectionism that they're wrestling with and to tackle it and address it head on. So if you procrastinate because you want things to be perfect before you launch something into the world, this episode is for you. So in this episode, we are going to cover the following big topics. Um, ways that I see clients procrastinating with perfectionism. Um what is perf what perfectionism weighing down in your business? You want to identify what is attached to that perfectionism. You want to break the connection of the thought and the perfectionism, and you want to identify money-making activities versus perfectionism procrastination, and you want to learn how to take action and what that looks like for you, and tracking progress and weaving in accountability to this whole thing. So let's dive in. So the ways that I see a lot of uh my clients procrastinating with perfectionism, it shows up like inconsistent posting, tinkering with lead magnets, researching things like cameras, microphones, which platforms to run, like circle or school or Kajabi, um training apps like Coach RX, trainerize, true so many. The TrueCoach, um, Coach RX, um deciding on the editing apps, right? So a lot of this is just putting more decisions in front of you in order to like do the damn thing. Okay. So um the other thing I see is consuming way more than they're creating. So that equation of um create more than you consume is is completely out of whack. And so they might not post for uh a week and they are just doom scrolling all day. So that will mess up your brain and your mental health and just drain your nervous system and your dopamine stores, and you just won't feel creative. You'll feel like you're behind, you'll feel like everyone's got stuff together, um, and it it's uh it's a slippery slope. So again, you can go ahead and consume content, you can do and scroll, you can do that, but like you've gotta make sure that you're creating in an equal or uh a greater amount. Um, and needing all the pieces of the puzzle before they can start putting it together, and waiting until things are perfect. And newsflash, things are never perfect, right? Whether it's like things going on in the world, or your schedule, or the timing, or the economy, or whatever it is, like there's never going to be a perfect time, so you might as well just do it. Like the best the there's a saying, the best time to um plant the tree is now, and or there's a saying there about planting trees and doing it. Just plant the tree now, start growing it now. So, next thing here is what perfection is what is perfectionism weighing down in your business? So, what I want you to do is to list out all of the tasks or projects that you can think of. So these are going to be like daily tasks you keep putting off. They could be on a weekly, monthly, monthly, or quarterly tasks. Um, and then any big projects you're you're doing, like launching a membership or a course or a product or a group coaching cohort or some new app or whatever you're you're trying to birth into existence into this life here. Um and you want to identify what is attached to that perfectionism. So think of like peeling back layers of the onion. What ideas or thoughts come to mind when you're looking at the identifying something that you're you have a ton of perfectionism around? So what what thoughts come up? Like, well, what you know, why, why do you need to spend more time on that? Why do you need to research more of that? Um, and you know, what are the what are the feelings that pop up around that? Like maybe there's a fear of like, well, what if I pick the wrong platform? Right? Like there's no wrong answer, and all of these thoughts and feelings are valid, but you need to just bullet point list them out or like you know, do a voice memo and just think out loud and and capture these ideas. But they're all valid, but if we can't identify and pinpoint like what we're actually hung up on, then you you're never really gonna move forward. Um, and you'll just keep spinning your wheels, and it's super, super frustrating. So, you know, maybe you're you're dragging ass on picking which you know uh coaching app to go with. Do I do Coach Rx or do I do trainerized or do I do true, you know, true coach? Like, what do I do? And you know, the the feeling might be attached to something in the past where you made a um you made a decision on something and then the platform kind of sucked. Like maybe you went with think if, but then it ended up not being what you wanted. And so you spent all this time and effort building all this stuff out only to not use it. And now you're thinking of like, okay, well, do I switch to gajabi or do I switch to teachable or do I switch to circle or school? And so then there's this like past experience just kind of got a grip on you that you're like, well, it's gonna what it's gonna whisper in your ear, like, well, what if it doesn't work? What if you spend two months building it and you know then you don't end up using it or whatever, whatever, you know, like those are the things that are gonna keep you stuck. Um, so when I'm working with someone, like make moves coaching is all about just like execution, identify the next thing you do want to want to do, make a decision, implement it, and do it fast. And it's not to induce like this kind of like anxious, hurried feeling, but it's just helping people like building momentum and inertia and not just you know like having all their ideas and thoughts just living in idea land. Like when you when you are in that space, you you might have all the ideas and all the intentions in the world, but you're never gonna bring them into reality and make it a real thing if it just lives in idea land, if it just lives in between your ears and your brain. So the next thing here is you want to identify like any thoughts, feelings we talked about, and if there's a memory from the past experience that bubbles up, like just brain dump, list everything out that comes to mind when you are in that state of that perfectionism. And next you want to break the connection of the thought and the perfectionism. So um a lot of this comes down to action. We'll talk about that in a second here. But a lot of what I want you to think about is a minimal viable product, an MVP. So if you are launching a lead magnet, right, for example, like let's say you wanted to build a low back pain lead magnet, right? You might have all these things like, well, I gotta put this in there and that in there, and I gotta do this video, and I gotta do that video, and I gotta do this, and I should probably have information on that. Like, just film one video and put it in a lead magnet and then start getting into people's hands, right? And when you make something live, like when you launch something and it's public and it's in like people's hands, um, and they have it, there will be this fire lit under your butt where it's like, I gotta make it better. Like they they only got version 1.0, like I need all this other stuff. So you will just hurry to get the better version or the fullest version or all the videos in there that you want into those people's hands because they're sitting with like the imperfect only version 1.0, right? Um, so it's kind of like this little, you know, um hack that you can use to just like get something out there, and then you have this kind of social accountability, social pressure to make it better. Um, but if you just keep tinkering with it and it just keeps living in your on your computer or in your notebook or in your brain, like years can go by. So like I have people in my leads in my DMs who have been wanting to say they've been wanting to work with me for a long time, and they're still like wrestling with the same thing, right? They're still deciding on a platform or they're still building out their course, or they're still, you know, tinkering with this or figuring out the pricing strategy for that. Like I just just do it. Like, I think of like that shot of the buff, like, just do it. Like that whole thing where he's like kind of crashing out. Like this is like 10 years ago. It's like he's in front of a green screen, but it's brilliant. Anyways, the the the thing that I want you to think of is just like just put it out there and you can always make it better. Okay. And a lot of what people wrestle with is because they aren't posting a ton or they're not consistent, or they do have like crippling perfectionism, is they're thinking about making a leather-bound book that they're running 5,000 copies of, right? And if there's an error on page 53 and there's a typo or a page missing, oh no, those 5,000 copies, you just wasted tens of thousands of dollars running that book, and now you've got to recall all them and run it again and republish it. And that takes a lot of money. But in this day and age, in this digital age where like you can create something like I can have a idea for a training, and I can create a Loom video and embed it in a Notion Doc, set up the mini chat automation in 20 minutes from start to finish and get it into people's hands on Instagram, and I can generate 50 leads from one post, and those can turn into sales calls or sales conversations or paying clients right off the hop. Right. So no longer, uh, and again, if you come from the corporate world, I I worked as a health coach for this big corporation for 13 years, and I had so many ideas for for, you know, maybe like a part of our stress management program or launching a podcast or doing these different things. And it moved so slowly because it had to go and be approved by marketing, it had to go and be approved by legal, it had to go be approved by so-and-so, it had to go up and down the chain across to the different silos. And and then it probably never happened. Or like one time I made something where it's like we we wanted to make this uh PDF about stress management and things people can do on the fly. And we worked on it. It was like a team of like three health coaches and I, and we worked on it, we put a lot of stuff together, and then I just never heard anything back. And I swear to God, it was like a year later, and they're like, good news, we got this thing. And I was like, What thing? And like the thing you worked on. I was like, a year ago? Like, are you are you are you kidding me? Like, what what and it was just like a PDF that again you couldn't edit, like it, I couldn't make any changes, I couldn't add stuff to it. It was just here's the resource, and okay, it's already a year old, right? From the idea we had, like, we may have new stuff we'd want to put in there. But again, that is like the benefit of working for yourself and being a sole entrepreneur and being able to make resources that clients and leads actually want and do it in a way that makes your brain happy and leans into your strengths. So, uh, again, too, like I can't emphasize you need to think of like building your business, whether it's a piece of content or a lead magnet or a course or anything. Think of it like Snapchat as opposed to a leather-bound book that you're running 5,000 copies. Okay, so this is a moment in time, whether it's a training, a piece of content, whatever, it's a moment in time. And it's it, you know, there's so much content that goes out on the internet now that like people's attentions are so fragmented that you know, like it if there's a typo or you know, the closed captioning has uh the wrong word, or like you made a mistake or stuttered or whatever, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, I mean, if anything, in the age of like AI where everything is so like hyper per perfection, like you are gonna stand out because they're gonna be like, Well, this is a real human, right? I can tell. So um next thing is it think of it like sets and reps. Like you, the more you hit post, the more you hit publish, the more you actually put out into the world, you not it not only do you find your voice, right, and and your style, which becomes your brand, but you are doing sets and reps and sets and reps, and you build the muscle through the repetition. And through that, you also build the confidence. Okay. Like, think if you wanted to like build a ton of muscle. You're not gonna just like do one rep of a bench press and then send it to your personal training coach and being like, hey, let me know if my form is good. It's like, no, just keep doing the whole do the all the sets and reps and then send me the video. Like, do the whole workout, right? Like that I think a lot of people are just like tinkering and and not implementing, and that's gonna just keep you stuck forever. So the next thing I want you to think about is money-making activities versus perfectionism procrastination. So again, list out all of the tasks that you do for your work, for your business on a daily, weekly, monthly, and even quarterly basis. Okay. And from that list, I want you to put a star next to the ones that if you do it, it would generate you leads, sales, or revenue. So again, those are the money-making activities. And this could be directly or kind of like an indirect. Um, so case in point, um, the reason I've been so inspired to bring back this podcast is uh you know, I podcasted for I think two and a half years straight, and then I took a year off. There was a lot of life, life was lifing. Um, but you know, I took a year off and I tried to bring it back. I think I did three episodes, and then I was on another year hiatus, but that is not happening again. This is the podcast is back for a long time, so don't you worry. But uh again, the reason I brought it back was because when I looked at all of my things I do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis, the thing that I realized about podcasting is it it was long-form content and it gave my listeners a chance to really get to know me, connect my message, listen to some powerful storytelling, and just spend time with me, essentially. And so by the time there'd be a sales call on my calendar and we'd hop on the call, everyone I was talking to in this call would be like, I do I love the podcast. I've been I've been listening to it, I've been binging it. Like, I I love this episode and the name dropping all these things I talked about. I was like, sweet. And looking back, like those people were pre-sold. Like the sales call was just a formality. So it I had this light bulb moment where it's like, if I'm doing podcasting consistently, it is pre-selling my leads and generating really, really powerful leads. Um, so that is uh that is why when you can identify these money-making activities and then you can prioritize them, like things will change very rapidly for you and your business. Okay, so now that you have all those starred items, like are you doing them consistently? Okay. And how many of those starred items are you putting off because they're not quite ready, it's not perfect, or you don't have the exact strategy or the exact videos you need, you know, dialed in. Like, how many of those are you putting off because of that perfectionism, right? Hey friend, this episode of the Make Moves Podcast is sponsored by me, Clayton Law. And if you are sick of trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together with how to land dream clients from Instagram, I'm here to help you. There are two options that you can choose from. Option one, join MakeMoves Nation. It's an online community with full access to all my trainings and courses. You work at your own pace, attend monthly community calls, submit questions to the community, share wins, get inspired, and gain momentum and clarity. You can say as long as you'd like, and feel free to pause the membership and rejoin whenever it's less than a dollar a day, with the membership access being$30 a month. The link to join is in the show notes. Option two, you can do one-on-one coaching with Clayton. So this is for you if you're ready to quit messing around and you're ready to do the work. Weekly Zoom calls with me, Monday through Friday support, voice memo and text, custom Loom video tutorials, custom GPS action steps for what you need to do and when. And it's a way to fast track your way to success to generate leads every day and clients every week. And if you're ready to explore one-on-one coaching and discuss your goals and have me lay out a game plan for you, you have two options that you can do. Click the link in the show notes where you can schedule a free Zoom call chat with Clayton, or option two, DM me the words make moves on Instagram, and we can text and voice memo back and forth, answer any questions you have that you might have before I send the payment link your way. Now, back to the show. And then I want you to start prioritizing these tasks over the other, you know, procrastination tasks. Okay, and then the next thing here is taking action. So I want you to think of it almost like exposure therapy. Okay, so um, a lot of times, like the bigger a project feels, like, oh man, this is gonna be it, I'm gonna launch this, it feels big, it's gonna be on this thing, and like the more you make it this big mountain in your mind, probably the harder it is gonna be to climb it. Whereas, like, if you kind of reframe to your mind being like, yo, I'm gonna launch 1.0, here we go, minimal via product, let's go. First, first iteration, I'm gonna put it out there, right? And again, you don't have to publicly call it version 1.0 or beta, like don't call it beta version or like, you know, trial, like, because then again, you're kind of cutting your legs out from underneath you publicly, saying, like, hey, aka, I don't know what I'm doing, and this is the first version. Like, you know what you're doing, and you've been doing what you've been doing for a long time. It's just the first like new format of doing what you're doing. So that might be new, but what you're doing and how you help people is not new. So remind yourself of that. Okay, and the the sets and reps. So each time you do something that you've been, you know, paralyzed by perfectionism, each time you actually go through that and finish something, it weakens the bond that perfectionism has on you. And so I want you to hit post. I want you to publish the articles, I want you to publish the podcast, I want you to um announce coming soon, right? I want you to have imperfect, messy action. I want you to post the bad take, I want you to post the video, even if you know there's a mistake. I want you to not take, you know, 10 takes on a piece of content. I want you to do the first or second one and just be okay with that. Like sit with that imperfection. Like um, it is gonna be uncomfortable. But the cool thing that happens is if you do enough of that, if you publish enough imperfect content or imperfect stuff or imperfect lead magnets, and something good happens from it, like you get a client from it, or you get some positive feedback, or the post gets a ton of traction or a ton of lead magnet opt-ins or it goes viral, or whatever the outcome is that you're you're looking for, you know, then it can again start to break the imaginary connection that perfectionism has on you. Um and again, think minimal viable product version 1.0. It'll help you a ton. Next thing you want to do is track progress. Um, so you can get as into the weeds, nerdy, you know, data-driven Excel spreadsheets as you want. Like, I'm not an Excel spreadsheets guy. Um, I'm not like super data driven. I mean, I I look at like what are the main levers I need to pull? And I make sure I pull them. Those are the important parts, the inputs, and then I look at the outcomes, right? So, yes, I do track certain metrics, but I'm not like getting lost in the sauce because again, too, for for some of you out there who are super data, you know, geek, data driven, like how many hours you spend in spreadsheets, like, is it really productive, or are you just procrastinating with perfectionism? So, again, too, it can be a form of procrastination, is is getting into the data stuff. So I keep it super simple. I track the inputs and the outputs. So you want to track the the money-making activities that you start and you want to track how often you do this. Um, I I love paper habit trackers, so I have one. If you want it, just DM me on Instagram. Um, but I have a paper habit habit tracker that I basically derived from Atomic Habits from James Clear. And I just put my make moves logo and um some other stuff on there. And I basically track those money-making inputs that I want to hit on a daily or weekly basis, and I track how much I do them. And I can then at a glance, you know, of the the month, look down. Well, you know what? I didn't s I didn't send any emails to my email list and my newsletter. Well, how come, Clayton? Like, why not? Right. And I and I examine it. And I was like, well, you know, what what what felt sticky about that? Why did I put that off? Why why is this feel so difficult, right? And can I make it easier? Can I make it more, can I make create less friction for me doing that? And um, one of those things was just like uh create a template that I can you know operate from. So I I had a template, but it was kind of dated. And so just making a new template that was more streamlined and you know, just simple uh allowed me to like being like, okay, cool, I can I can do this. And then with working with my ADHD coach as well, um, I realized that anytime I have any vagueness, you know, on uh on an action item or a task, my brain will just put it off because I I can't think of how to enter that task, right? So for example, with the podcasting for launching it, I knew I wanted to have five episodes in in, you know, in the barrel. And I knew that I wanted to like talk about this topic and this topic. And then so when I scheduled on my calendar, I was like, okay, episode 89, perfectionism is killing your business, right? Episode whatever, whatever. And then, you know, so then I knew exactly what I needed to do to do it. So just the thinking out loud, probably the reason why I'm not publishing uh, you know, any newsletters or sending emails to my email list is because I'm not sure what to the topic to write about. So I just need to come up with some level of specificity where it's like, hey, each week I pick one Instagram post that I put out and then turn that into an email, right? That could be one of them. Or I could just figure out like what's the podcast episode for that week and then you know put that in an email. So again, there's there's so many ways you can do it, but just find out why you have resistance to a certain thing and try and weave in a pathway that helps you do it. And then test it, right? Like don't like, you know, I have this theory of like, okay, if I get more specific on the email, then that can help. But again, it's just a theory. And until I test it, and if it starts working and I see my habit tracker filling up with days and days and days in a row of sending out emails, then awesome. I've solved it. If not, then you know, try something else on. Um, and then you want to track the outcomes, right? So track how many leads you got, how many clients, how many views you got, how many lead magnet opt-ins you got, how many you know, new followers you got from your new follow out, or like whatever you want to do, but you want to track the outcomes so that it kind of reinforces the inputs that you're putting in there. Last thing here is accountability. So there's a couple ways to do this. First one, hire a freaking coach, um, and they can help you stay accountable. So I can't emphasize this enough. I I've you've probably heard me talk about this in my content before, but it I put years and years and years off of hiring a coach, and then when I finally did hire a coach in 2023, my business absolutely exploded. Um, and it was just it broke my brain. And then I took some time off of not having a coach, and then again, my business kind of just was stagnant, kind of flatlining. It wasn't growing, it wasn't decreasing, it was just staying the same. Um, and then I was like, okay, I'll hire another coach. And then boom, another little spurt of growth and putting another piece of the puzzle together. And so now I do not hesitate to hire a coach. I'm almost always working with a coach and paying them a good chunk of money every month to work with them because it just helps my brain, helps forward progress, and helps me stay accountable. So in the age of information, you you most likely don't need more information. The fact you probably need less information and you need more implementation. So hiring a coach is great. If you want to work with me, just DM me on Instagram, make moves, and we can have a chat about where you're currently at and what your goals are, and I can lay out a game plan and how I can help you. That's the easiest way. You can also book a call. Um, there's a link in my bio on Instagram. Um, you can do it that way as well. But I love talking with people. So if you want to talk first, you know, you can have a DM that can turn into a call, or we could just chat right in the DMs and see see what's what. Um, next option here is texting a friend or a fellow business partner or um a spouse or family member something about like what you want to get done and some sort of deadline accountability. So in the ADHD world, this is called body doubling. So again, you don't have to have ADHD to benefit from having some sort of accountability. Um, setting a deadline. Um, so I uh just worked with this with my coach, and you know, with like launching the podcast, I was like, all right, well, do I just pick some arbitrary deadline um and then just try and lever leverage anxiety of you know finishing it or not finishing it? Um but what I found was it's like kind of reverse engineering, right? So I listed out every episode, I listed all the tasks I needed to do, and then I scheduled on my calendar, and then it looked like, okay, on this date, I should have it all done. But if you have kids, um, you know life can be kind of unpredictable. So I kind of wove in some unpredictability buffer in there. So I think it was like one to two weeks of just like, hey, if you know a lot of these work days or times I had it set aside just turned to a dumpster fire, then I have a nice little buffer. So I like to hit a uh deadline window and not a deadline target. So you that might sound like the worst idea for your brain, and that's fine. But for me, that's very comforting, and I can try and hit that first deadline, but then I know I have uh a little bit of a window so that if life is lifing or if I just can't get it into gear, I at least have a little bit of wiggle room where I can kind of hit that more of like a moving target kind of thing. Um, and then consider social accountability. So this might not be for everyone, but just like publicly announcing uh a launch date for something, right? Um, and I wouldn't recommend doing this if you if if you're brand new to launching something, like let's say group coaching cohort or launching a new service or something that you need to film a shitload of videos for, right? Like don't paint yourself into a corner that you can't, you know, that you can't back up. But if you're like, you know, 50% done or 75% done, or at least far enough in that you know, okay, here's how much time it takes to build this stuff. And then again, if it's like a cohort or if it's something else like that, where you can kind of drip content out, you can just kind of stay ahead of that drip. Like when I was filming uh full Kin Search classes for this 16-class product, like single purchase product I was selling. I think I launched the product and I had like three more classes to film. So you can do stuff like that. That's that's fine. But you can consider uh that a social accountability with announcing on Instagram, announcing it to your email list, announcing it wherever. And then that kind of like social pack, that handshake, can motivate you to actually just get stuff done and put your perfectionism in the backseat. So lastly, here, just to wrap up, if you even found just a tiny bit of value from this episode, please do me a favor. Step one, take a screenshot of the podcast. Step two, post it on your Instagram story. Step three, tag at Clayton.moves, and step four, write one sentence about what you loved about this episode and how it helped you. This takes 30 seconds, and it's a free way to support my podcasts and help connect this episode and this podcast to other health and fitness entrepreneurs, help them change their lives and improve how they market and sell online. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being here. I appreciate it. And now go enjoy your walk, your car ride, spending time with your kids, getting out into nature, and go make some moves.