VFV Ep41 Transcription Hey, it's time to crank up the truth. I'm Val Selby. Over the decades of working online, I've learned the most important lesson: mindset owns your business. If procrastination, imposter syndrome, and a lack of focus have been blocking your biz, then I'm here with Val Full Volume ready to help you see choices that you're making. Get ready to own your personality and use your expertise to create the business of your dreams. Now is the time to make changes and live your best. So let's get to it! Hey, how are you doing? How's the procrastination? Did you already figure out some things that you can kind of tie in? So, today, I told you we're gonna hit procrastination hard. We've been hitting it hard in the group. I hope that you have joined in there and hung out so we can get to know each other much better. So today I just really wanna talk about red flags. It's pretty much gonna be a laundry list of things that I know are red flags for me. I don't think I have anything that my clients add as red flags, that aren't red flags. I already have, like I said in the last episode. I'm really good at procrastination. I've been doing it for a really long time. Back when I was a personal trainer, I used to tell all of my clients to bring it on with the excuses because there was never ever a single excuse that they could ever give me that I hadn't used myself. So I'm like, bring it. It's okay. Same thing with procrastination. It's, it's pretty much the same thing. It's excuses, right? So plenty of times I'm just like, yeah, let's bring it, let's talk about it. Because it's all shit that's been in my head too, or is still in my head. Thankfully. I noticed some of the, the flags; it took me a little while to notice some of them—quite a while, actually, cuz some of them are so easy to put off as well. This is a positive. So it's a positive thing, so we, it can't be procrastination or an excuse because it's a positive thing. Like for example, like I said, it's gonna be a laundry list—folding the fucking laundry. If I am folding the laundry, I am hiding from something else. I guarantee it. Guarantee. Go look at my list. What am I hiding from? If my house is clean, I hate house cleaning, I hate it. It's just gonna get dirty. I don't even have kids, but my house is still gonna get dirty again right away, and I hated it. So stupid. It doesn't even hardly make me feel good when I'm done with it. So if my house is clean, go take a look at my to-do list. What the hell am I hiding from? 100%. I am hiding from something. Those are just two. I got a list. I got a list here. Are these any of the other things that you can pull up as a red flag for yourself as well? Do you do any of these things just like. Clean house, folding laundry. I don't mind doing laundry. Doing laundry doesn't matter. It's cool. I like it. I like to have clean clothes, but I just also like to just throw them in the chair somewhere, or, you know, I have no problem just picking through the clothes. I don't; it wouldn't bother me. So those are, but those are kind of like positives. I mean, you think about it, the house doesn't really need to be cleaned. So if I'm cleaning the house, it's a good thing. I like right now, oh my gosh, I think I need to go change the filter because there's a lot of dust going on in my house, which just having had all of the allergy issues is not a good idea for me. So I can easily put off things that are on my to-do list. Like even recording this, I could have easily put that off and said I need to go clean. I easily could have done that today because it really does need to happen. But I know that I need to get this stuff done first, and then I can go do the cleaning. Otherwise, it's just procrastinating. And then the recording would have to happen tomorrow cuz then my husband would be home and then the dogs are going crazy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So even though it's a positive thing that the house would be getting cleaned, it's not a positive thing for me getting my work done, which leads me to another positive. Working out, working out—our health is important, and there are times that the health needs to be at the top of the list right now. Absolutely. My health is at the top of my list of all of my to-dos. I'm way overweight. I'm way unhealthy right now, and so it is at the top of my list, but it's on my list as a priority. It's not like I've done in years past of, okay. Well, when I, especially when I was run training, it was really easy for me to. Not do my work and go, well, it's, I'm just gonna move my long run day to today, and then of course I'm too tired, and then I don't get the work done; that was procrastination or hanging out at the gym even longer. So again, it's a positive experience. We need to move our butts, especially when we are sitting in our desks as much as we do, but it has to be because that's on our list and it was one of the things that was gonna get done. We can't use it as a way to procrastinate, no matter how positive it is for us. Okay, so those are three. So those are three positives. right off the get-go. Are those things that you have caught yourself doing as well? Just check in. I'm not telling you not to do any of those things, but check in. Check in if you're doing it instead of work that you don't wanna be doing, you know? And the last episode, we talked about, you know, why you might, may not be doing things, but this is, this is like the legit flags. Like I catch myself doing this, and I'm like, oh, boom. What am I ignoring? So the other one, and I caught myself doing this last week, It is another go-to. I could probably stop saying that right now because all of these are my go-tos. Uh, I have a lot of go-tos, so, like I said, I'm world-class procrastination. I'm, I'm really good at it. Maybe I'm an expert at procrastination, which is why I am going to talk to you about it so much. It's why we're diving deep into it. I know a lot about procrastination because I've been a lifetime procrastinator. So another thing that I do—and do you do this? I will go find workshop. Well, I need to go learn this, or, well, I could go find this. I could go be better at this. I go outside looking for the answers. We don't need to go outside looking for the answers, son. We know what we need to be doing, and we know enough of the basics to get it done. And if you go out looking for all the workshops, there are times where we do need to go learn, right? But if that's the case, then it needs to be on your list as a priority that you already planned this. You already know that you need to go and do this. Not, uh, look at your list, and you're like, um, so yeah, I need to go learn to do this better. So I'm gonna go look through all of my coaching, all of my workshops, and all of the stuff that I've gotten from every bundle. I'm gonna go search through at all on my emails to go find workshops to tell me exactly how to do this. Yeah. Like I wrote in my email last week, I could have had an outline done for the trip wire in the time that I took to go look through my coach's workshops to go find something about it. I don't need to go get a trip wire workshop; give me a break. I caught myself doing that and went, what in the world are you doing besides procrastinating? It's the only. I was just procrastinating. Just, just do it. Just do it. Do it ugly. Do it ugly. That's fine, because once you start doing it, we know this, right? Once we start doing something, it becomes a little easier. We roll through it, and all of a sudden, it's done. What you think in your head is gonna take you all day. Oh my God, this is gonna be forever; is really 20 minutes to an hour. You know, like my coach says, put a deadline on it. Tell yourself how long it's gonna take. If you tell yourself it's gonna take two hours, it's gonna take two hours. If you tell yourself it's gonna take 20 minutes, it's gonna take 20 minutes. That helps me a lot with my And writing more emails helps with my emails as well, but that helps me a lot. I do not give myself the opportunity to sit there and write for hours. I don't have hours. Gosh, no way do I have hours to do that. So searching for workshops, the answers out there; I need it. I don't know what the answer is, and I don't know what it is that I don't know what. There's obviously a workshop out there that I need to be taking, and I need to go pay attention to it, and I need to go and take it. to go and get the exact steps for doing something that I already know how to do. Yep. Procrastinating from actually getting the project done. Another way I procrastinate graphics. I'm not a graphics girl. In fact, graphics was the first thing that I learned to outsource appropriately because there are so many people out there that will. I can't even quantify how much of a better, better job they will do than I will, and they will do it so quick and I can spend hours on very basic graphics, even in Canva. It's just, it's just not my thing. So if I find myself all of a sudden going, oh, I need to go and add some graphics for, I don't know. Name something, , name something, anything. I mean, I could have pulled up a file, and all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, those graphics are horrible. I'm gonna go create new graphics for that. Why not even be relaunching it? But we're gonna get new graphics for it. What in the world? Yeah. and that leads you down the whole rabbit hole of looking at at pictures and fighting the right pictures. And then that's a really easy way to spend the whole day. You can waste a whole day doing that. Or is it just me? I can waste a whole day doing that and not really even come up with anything great that I'm gonna use. Usually what'll happen is at the end of the day, I will be like, yeah, these suck, and I don't even like them. And then I go and contact my graphics lady, and I'm like, would you go and do these graphics for me, please? And then I get 'em. right away. So for me, I know that if I am in Canva and I didn't get into Canva for a very specific reason, like I'm doing a product launch, here we go. I'm gonna go create all the graphics, different story , different story all together. Then I'm hiding from something red, flag, total red flag, another red flag, opening up my PLR files. I have over 20 years of PLR. I could spend months sifting through my PLR and sorting, reorganizing, and moving around. oh, let's use this next, let's use this next. And mapping out my entire year with the P L R, oh, let's use this in this month. Let's do this and this one. That's not how I, I'm not gonna use it like that. That's just not how I do it. And I know this. It's a red. It's a red flag. If I am coming up with an idea for a product already and I'm looking at my to-do list and I'm like, okay, we're gonna go do the outline. And then I find myself searching through my PLR red flag. My brain has told me you don't know what you're doing. This is gonna be too much work. Let's just shut this shit down. Let's go get P L R, and it'll be so much easier. It's not always easier. If I have an idea and already know what I want to be delivering, it's not easier for me to go into my PLR. That's backwards for me. Don't know if it works for you, but that's backwards for me. You know, sometimes after I've got everything outlined and and working, sometimes I will go and look for like a checklist or something that I can add in and edit up to the content that I've already written. Having my ideas, even having an outline, and then going to my PLR is 100% me procrastinating. Do you find yourself doing that different story? If I don't have an idea, I don't really know what I want, and I'm in my P L r, that's a different story. That is me going in my P L r looking for ideas of what I wanna do next, but again, If that's going to be the case, I really need to make sure that it's on my to-do list as a priority of, okay. Dig through your PLR for the next great workshop that you wanna do, not just randomly. Oh, let's go see what we can do next. No, no. Red flag, procrastination valve, stop. Now, here are some of the instant ones. And I know, I know I talk to a lot of people about doing these ones. First one that I busted, I don't do this anymore. I still get the urge; I still get the feeling that I need to go and do it. But for the longest time, one of my big procrastinators, or, you know, putting things off, was working on my website. Websites are never done. They're never perfect. They never will be. They are. Work in progress at all times. So it's very easy to tell myself, oh my gosh, let's go work on that. This needs to get done, and it possibly does need to get done. I mean, right now I've got some pages that are a total, they're not even a hot mess. Hot mess is like somewhat cute. They're a disaster, and I need to work on them purposely, so they need to go on my Purposely, but previously I, there were times where I would redo my website three times in a year. That's how much I was procrastinating on getting anything done, and you remember me saying that I'm not good at graphics. Well, that meant that I was either contacting my friend to get me new graphics or I was creating my own, which we know how that goes, right? I'm not happy with it. So that basically is why there were times where I'd be working on my website three times a year and redoing the entire thing. New theme in my WordPress, completely new. Maybe even new colors. I mean, just a complete redo because, obviously, the reason that nothing was working was because my site is ugly, so it needs to be fixed. That was something that thankfully led me into catching red flags. That was one of the first ones, cuz it was really obvious. I'd be talking to friends, and I could still even remember this so much. I'd be talking to friends, and the last time I really, really went down that rabbit hole of having to change things, I had friends; they're not friends anymore. At the time, they were friends, and they're like, "That's not even you." "What are you doing?" And I loved it. I still love it. It's like, actually some graphics that I'm probably gonna go pull back up. It's been, it's been talking to me. That's why, that's why this is even popping up. The old graphics that I had for a certain website have absolutely been calling me. They're hand-drawn by a friend, and they're gorgeous. But I was constantly asking everybody: what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And every time you ask somebody, you're gonna get a different opinion. So hence, my head was constantly going, oh my God, I need to do this, I need to do that. I need this, this, this, this. And change, change, change. This is the reason. It's like, no, this is not the reason. I know people still to this day that have the ugliest fucking sites you've ever seen; they haven't updated. They still look like 2002, and they make a lot of money. It's not the website. Yes. Having a nice website now, especially, is much easier, but it's also not a hundred percent the reason why things might not be selling. There are reasons why function could be coming into play—you know, that kind of stuff. But an ugly website is never 100% the reason. So you catch yourself having to redo your website constantly. Take a look at why is it a red flag that you're hiding from other. Could be that you're not putting that coaching package together because gotta get your own page. Go on, right? You gotta get this going. You gotta do that. Gotta grow your list. Meanwhile, your coaching package is not getting done. I know somebody just heard me on that one. You know I was talking to you. So new themes, are you finding that you're constantly having to revamp your theme and come up with something new? Red flag? Take a look at what you're not doing. because you decided that you had to do that. And like I said, especially if it's not on your list, if it's on your list, totally different story. If that is on your list as the priority and you've deemed it to be the priority, totally different story. It's when you've got your list and it's not on your list and you're like, eh, I'm gonna go do that right now. Yeah, that's procrastination. Another one that I like to do instead of working on my to-do list at times is cleaning on my inbox. I could spend a lot of time doing that every single day. I have multiple Gmail accounts and a ton of emails that come to every one of those hundreds, to every one of those, those Gmail accounts. You know, I, I manage giveaways. I manage bundles. I manage summits. I've been doing that hardcore since 2018. I didn't have a system for my emails back in the day. I was having everything go to one Gmail account. I have a hot mess of Gmail accounts. It's something that I could sit and work on for a month to get it under control and better. So there's always, there's always emails in there. Inbox zero for me is very, Very, very rare. Even with all of the systems that I've sent in place, I do a lot of different sy, not a lot of different systems. I have the folders, you know, I have the organizational system in place, but there's just so many emails that come in that I could easily every day spend a couple hours on it every day trying to get a better under control, which means I wouldn't be doing anything else. And when I find myself doing that, it means I need to take a look at my list, and what am I, ignor? because I'm taking care of that, and that's not important. In the scheme of things, it's not as important. So red flag: when I'm trying to get my inbox to zero, I need to take a look and see if I am ignoring something or if I completed my list like a good girl and I'm just doing that instead. Totally different story, right? Another one. How about. Do you need to go and search out new platforms because the grass is greener on the other side? And for sure, if we had the perfect platform, our sh*t would be working appropriately. It would be selling like hotcakes. It'd be so easy. We would have so many workshops out there. We'd have so many products out there. If we just had the right platform, I'm gonna go search for the right Or even switching to another platform when we have this stuff. No, I did that. I've done it twice now. Done it twice now with the membership. The first time I switched, I switched to podium, Padia; I don't know how to pronounce it. Podia. I switched to podium, and I stayed there for a little while. I liked it for a little while. I couldn't get things to change around. I've used WordPress exclusively since 2004. Why am I thinking I'm gonna go use some other platform and it's going to work like WordPress? Duh. It's not, it's not made to work like that. It's made to work. Like Po Padia, po . It didn't work for me. It works for a lot of people. Uh, so I left that because it dawned on me it was stupid. I was. Too many different platforms at once. Then the universe told me that I was not gonna use Kajabi. I was gonna switch to Kajabi when I opened up the new membership last fall, or not, not the new membership. When I relaunched the membership last fall, and I was gonna do it in Kajabi. As a user, I have some memberships, and I love it in the backend. I love it. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna learn it. I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna bite the bullet. It's fucking expensive. I'm gonna bite the bullet. This is going to make my membership perfect. Perfect. I mean, my brain was even telling me that this is the experience I want. 100% I got. Yeah. Brain doesn't wanna learn new things when you've got COVID, or my brain doesn't wanna learn new things when I have COVID. I've had it twice now, so I know this, and I just finally had to realize that that was, I, I had to give up, you know, I, I got into it. I did the trial. I think I even had a 30-day trial through somebody and. I got COVID. I was trying to come out of COVID. I was busy, busy, busy with, with the stuff that I didn't get done. And I'm finally like, "This is dumb." This is me procrastinating on getting the membership out. And you know, I had to make a list of, okay, what do I want the user experience to be? And what is it that Kajabi's doing that I can't do with my stuff? And I finally just had to look at your pain for this, this, this, and this. And they all work together. You know how to work them. You do not need to go and use another platform. This is you procrastinating on getting this out. So it was weeks, you know, which I guess kind of worked because I had COVID. So it was good that I didn't launch before I got COVID again, but it was extra weeks that I put off relaunch. the membership because I decided I had to go and use another platform. Absolutely. Absolutely. Procrastination a hundred percent. And that didn't even matter that it was on my list, cuz it was 100% on my list that I was gonna learn. Kajabi, of course, that was. Part of the problem with it too is it would be on my list. Learn Kajabi. Yeah, what? Learn. Kajabi . It's like, how? How do you even start that on a list? Sorry. Talk about setting myself up for failure. But it was a red flag that I had decided that the only way that this was going to work is if I changed to a platform. And so hopefully, now that I've done it twice, hopefully that'll be it. Hopefully, I won't feel like I need to go get another platform. Time will tell, I guess. But red flag: are you looking for the perfect platform, and then you'll do this perfect platform, and then you'll do that perfect platform, and then everything will flow and work a hundred percent. Perfect. There's no platform out there that's ever gonna do that. None. None, none, none. Believe me. We all have different needs for our business, different wants, and different things. , we can wrap our brain around that. Make it easy. You know, that's why there are so many platforms: our brains all work different. So if you've got stuff that is working, figure out how you can make it work better to do what you wanted to do. Or if you have to have another platform, make sure that you are paying attention. Is it a real reason that you want another platform? Need another platform? Or is it you procrastinating putting it off? I mean, I know people that have come into the new group, and they have even written down in there. You know when one of the questions is I ask, you know, how long have you been in your current business? And there are times that some of the women are putting on there that they have been learning and doing research for a year or two years. Not even kidding. That's some serious procrastination. That is 100% procrastination, cuz you can be up and running in days. Absolutely in days. Believe me, I've done it multiple times. You can get yourself up and running in days. So if you're putting years into it, months into it, even you are procrastinating for sure. Time to jump. So new platform. Here's another good one. I love to do new biz ideas. Oh my gosh, you guys would have no idea how many businesses I have in my brain at all times. No idea. I do have multiple sites. I also have put some on the back burner. and they call me. They call me. One of them's calling me right now. Big time. I haven't decided what I'm gonna do with that call, but I'm getting called, and not only am I getting called, but I'm getting like requests from people. Please come back and running into past podcast interviews are randomly. It's not random. The universe did it. Past podcast interviews are coming to me through other business connections, and they're like, oh my God, I miss your podcast, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, Hey, I'm not going to procrastinate on this stuff on my to-do list by being pulled away to that site right now. I need to continue what I'm doing. And it's hard. It's hard. We're entrepreneurs. We're creative people. That means we have a ton of ideas. I have not counted my domain names in a really long time, but I know I just got noticed that like three more of 'em are up. I'm like, I can't let them go. I just can't let 'em go. So new business ideas, you know, sometimes I have to get 'em outta my head, and that works great because that helps me with procrastination to just write it all out, write down all the ideas, set it aside, you know, it goes into my Trello or my Asana. I, you know, I'm moving over to Asana. My brain dump is still all in Trello, you know? And it helps. That helps get it off my head. It's like, okay, I know I'm not working on this right now, but all of these ideas are just floating around, driving me bonkers. So I do go through and sit down, and write it all out. Right? But other times, like.. . All of a sudden it just pops up and I'm down a rabbit trail. The next thing I know, I'm in my name cheap, and I'm, I'm looking for domain names because it was so perfect. I have to go by the domain name before somebody else does. Oh my gosh. That is so procrastination. There's no way to do every business. There's just no way. Even if I won the lottery, I don't think I'd have enough. I mean, I can't even quantify how many people I'd have to hire to get all of these ideas. That I have, so I have to pay attention when that happens. Of the new biz ideas, what am I hiding from? Because usually, usually that one is I'm hiding from something really big and scary very often. That is what's happening when I'm all of a sudden looking for new biz ideas because my brain is going, holy sh*t, this is too much, too big, too scary. Let's go start something new because we know how to start new businesses and we can do that so easy. Let's go do the easy thing. Instead of the hard thing. So I really have to pay attention when I get getting in that and domain names and all of that too. It's, it's all, all right there. So do you find yourself doing any of those? Are there other things that are red flags to you that I didn't even mention? I mean, I wrote this list out in under 10 minutes. When I , I decided I was gonna talk about the red flags, So I am positive that there's a lot more red flags, and I mean, go goodness knows. How many red flags do I not even know are red flags yet? You know, these are just the ones that I know. I hit, and I hit 'em frequently, and immediately when it happens, I'm like, whoa, what are you doing, lady? Stop it. Stop it. You're doing it. Stop it. So figure out what your red flags. , are you cleaning the house when you don't like cleaning the house? Cuz you're not gonna do the stuff on your list, you don't pay attention. What are your red flags? And if you have red flags I didn't mention, I'd love to hear yours. We can commiserate over our stupidness, over our red flags. So join us in the group. We are talking about procrastination for weeks. , it's going to be a thing four weeks. So join us in the group and let's talk about it. Uh, the more we talk about it, the more we work through it, and we will figure out that we wanna get stuff done instead of procrastination. All right. Let's do it. Scared. Let's do the scary stuff. Let's do the boring stuff. I guess we got we gotta do some boring stuff too. It's part of owning a business. There's gonna be some boring stuff we don't wanna do. All right. And talking at you for a while. I will see you. I will chat at you next week. Thanks for being here, Le. Thanks for listening to Val Full Volume. If you are done spinning in circles and procrastinating, check out my quick workshop. 14 Biz Actions Action: create Change Now. Go out there and create the biz of your dreams.