I was afraid of doing Facebook Lives until very recently. Before that, I slayed my personal dragon of launching an online course for the first time in my life. Before that, I was afraid to launch a Podcast. Before that..well, you get the idea.

What’s So Scary

Ok, I’m not actually an extravert. Despite the 19 TV appearances, or the 50 or so keynotes and breakouts I’ve done. Despite years and years of experience public speaking and speaking my mind. But I was still quaking in my size 8 shoes when I thought about doing new and highly visible things to grow my business. When I look at the new statistic about perfectionism that I read about this morning, it makes total sense.

Rise of Perfectionism

In a study of thousands of college students across various countries, they found that self-motivated, social-motivated as well as somebody-else motivated perfectionism (ie. wanting to be/do the best) have all increased drastically over the last two decades. Sadly, the highest increase was the the socially motivated one at 33%! Funny how that coincides with the rise of social media, don’t you think?

Hurting Your Business

Everyday, I see my clients who are smart, successful and experts in what they do, struggle with the new visibility plans we make for their business growth. Sadly only 10% of my clients will do something like public speak or do an Executive Roundtable without giving it a single thought, right away and do it in the way that I’ve taught them to do it. Most are afraid, like I was. Most make excuses. They delay. They fuss about the details so they can never face up to the music. They disappear. And each time, it’s because of the fear that they won’t get it perfect. It’s because they’re scared to lose face and credibility in the eyes of their peers.

The Antidote

Strangely, the only antidote to my own fear of doing new and publicly visible scary things has always been to stop caring about the outcome. Just do the best I know how and it always produces some sort of result. Sometimes amazing results, sometimes not so great ones but at least the fear is gone. And what I’ve found is that the more I obviously do the thing that I’m afraid of, the easier it is to do.

So I challenge you to take the next step to deliberately do something to grow your business that scares you. Your accountant will thank you for it!

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