When I was just a wee little kid, one of my favorite cartoon heroes was Superman. Of all the comic book heroes, what attracted me most about him, was that he seemed almost perfect.
Superman was a flawless hero. He was super strong, he was faster than a speeding bullet, he could fly, and there was very little that could kill him (with exception of a little green rock from his home planet). I mean, this guy had it all. He could do it all. You could shoot the guy with a bazooka, and he would survive!
All of the other “super heroes” were limited. Batman didn’t have powers. Just a utility belt with some cool toys. Spiderman needed his web shooters to sling through the city. Captain America needed his shield. Green Lantern needed some crazy green ring. And AquaMan That guy was just sad.
As I got older and wiser (middle school years), I slowly realized a superhero who could do everything, was just not realistic. A hero who had to use wits and technology to his advantage on the other hand, became more believable.
Batman used his intellect, fighting skills and some cool gear to help overcome his limitations. But he didn’t always overcome his adversaries. There were times when he took a beating, despite all of his high tech gear. He was human after all.
Despite those early lessons, I still struggle at times with wanting to be Superman. As an adult, we can call it perfectionism. Perfectionism can sound virtuous, but it’s far from it. In fact, it can kill your chances of success in any business if not dealt with.
A perfectionist will get in the way of their own success by insisting that everything look just right or sound flawless before putting it out. This is something I’ve dealt with regularly in the past when it comes to writing and producing podcasts.
Early on in podcasting, I would waste so much time re-pressing that little record button, and re-editing in order to make a sure an audio recording was just right.
Anytime you put yourself out there to the public, there’s a tendency to want everything to be perfect. But that’s never going to happen… and the paralysis that keeps you from putting it out because of perfection, not only hurts your business, it deprives your audience of the information you need to share.
Here some ways to overcome perfectionism if your a content marketer:
1. Focus on the Big Picture – When you creating content, it’s important to focus on the big picture. You’ll have a number of podcast, or videos that aren’t great. You’ll have some blog posts that don’t get as many reads as others. But don’t let that sidetrack you. Focus on the big picture – building your platform.
Peyton Manning who will one day be in the “Hall of Fame”, has had many bad games throughout his career. He once threw 5 interceptions in one game. That’s bad. Not to mention that terrible showing in last years SuperBowl. But those bad games don’t define his career.
2. Ignore the Criticism – You’ve got to block out the complaints. They can paralyze you if you let them. I’ve had messages and comments from time to time about small aspects of my show’s quality – whether it was something minor like clearing my throat, or the audio level of guests, or even a comment that was made that someone did not like. That’s going to happen. I try to take constructive criticism the right way, and improve where I can. But I learned along time ago that it was impossible to please everyone; nor should you try to.
If your message is good, most people will overlook the minor mistakes. I remember financial expert and bestselling author Dave Ramsey years ago talking about the first book he every published – Financial Peace. He had to self publish it himself, and it was full of typos and grammatical mistakes. But people loved the book because of the message. People were desperate to change their financial future, and he had a message of hope to share. They didn’t really care about all the typos.
3. Be Satisfied With “Good Enough” – Dan Kennedy and Bob Bly are two of my favorite “marketing mentors”. I have purchased so many training products from them over the years, and one thing I’ve noticed is that they don’t focus on the packaging aesthetics of their products, nor do they make audio high quality a big priority.
They focus on the quality of the message. Many of Dan Kennedy’s early info products were about as bland looking as you can imagine. His 3 ring binder sets had no fancy artwork on the cover. Just a black title font on a white cover. That’s it. The audio CDs that were included were often some of the worst audio quality in my opinion. But these info products resulted in millions of dollars in sales for them.
People sometimes focus too much on the look of a website or a book cover; They analyze the quality of the video or sound and forget it’s the message that people really want. If someone gave you a map to hidden treasure that was on used napkin, would you care what the napkin looked like? Exactly!
4. Use Tools To Help With Consistency – Developing consistency can help you overcome perfection. Invest in digital and technological tools that will help you get content on a consistent basis. Remember my saying “Consistency Trumps Quality”.
Be like Batman. He uses tools to help him overcome his deficiencies.
Here are some digital and tech tools I recommend for helping you overcome perfection and procrastination and build your platform:
Digital Tools:
Freedom – Freedom is one of my favorite new programs for helping you get more done, with less distraction. It locks you away from the Internet so you can be more productive.
HARO – Help a Reporter. This site alone will help you grow your platform by giving you plenty of regular guests.
Tape a Call – Tape a Call is a great little app to have if you’re away from the office and, can’t use Skype for interviews.
Fiverr – Fiverr is a great place to start delegating the stuff you don’t need to be doing like – video & audio editing, graphic design and graphic design.
Evernote – Evernote is one of the best note taking software programs around. I use it all the time to store crucial information, that can be pulled up instantly with a quick search.
We Scribe It – WeScribeit.com is my favorite place for having audio content transcribed. They’re not the least expensive but they are super fast, and the quality and accuracy of their transcriptions is the best I’ve seen.
Tech Tools
a Audio-Technica ATR2100
a Zoom H4N Digital Recorder – This recorder is almost essential for producing quality audio content.
a Rode smartLav lapel mic for your iPhone or Android phone – This is a great lapel mic if you want to record presentations, and speeches. I used it recently to record a presentation on “publishing” to a small business group. I switched my iphone to “airplane mode” and then pressed the “record” button on the Rode app. It works great also for recording audio content during drive time.
Sony DSC-RX100 – In addition to your smart phone – you should have a small point and shoot camera that also offers some great video quality. This little camera offers video quality equivalent to my bulky, and much more expensive DSLR camera.
I wrote recently on the importance of having a mobile production studio, so you can get content out regularly wherever you are.
5. Delegate as Much As Possible – Perfectionists have a hard time doing this. They want to do it all themselves, like Superman. They have a hard time trusting anyone else to do the job like they want it.
You’ve got to get comfortable delegating and letting go as much as possible. You should focus on building a small production team that will allow you to simply focus on producing the content. You don’t need to do the audio or video editing. You don’t need to do the graphics. You don’t need to do the proof-reading and editing for your blogs posts and books.
If you’re on a budget, just a build a Fiverr team. I’ve mentioned before that I keep an Evernote list of my favorite Fiverr freelancers with links to their Fiverr pages; so whenever I need a job done, I just click on the link to their page and order up a specific job. I also have a list of my favorite website coders, ghostwriters and proofreaders to call on when I need them.
Perfectionism is impossible. Trying to have everything just right will drive you to paralysis. Strive to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Get it out there and then move on.
The post 309 – Why Perfectionism Will Kill Your Business, and 5 Ways to Overcome It appeared first on The Beginner Internet Business Podcast.