1. Use Public Accountability to Spur Action
It wasn’t until I publicly stated that I was offering a free webinar and a premium follow-up course that I started really producing the information materials for my site. I’m great at setting deadlines for myself, but that public accountability piece really kicked it up a notch, taking me from the land of imagination to the Land of Production. Lesson: Speak your dream out loud in concrete terms and then follow up and do it.
2. Don’t Let Perfectionism Paralyze You
Nothing is ever going to be perfect. Get over it. Once you do, you can embrace what you do have, what you have created. You can celebrate it! I look at my first videos and I see how crazy amateurish they look and I just feel so sweetly toward them, and myself. They soften my heart! Lesson: Just start where you are, right now. Don’t wait to be perfect.
3. Plan Extra Time and Money for Everything
The phrase, “Everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you think it will” is a cliche for a very good reason: it’s true! My web designer lives in a cabin in the back woods of western Canada, 3 time zones away. Just the time difference alone slowed everything down. I changed my mind mid-design, that increased the price. And on and on… Lesson: Don’t budget to your limit, scale back if you have to so you have both a time and money cushion.
4. Expect Mistakes, and How Plan How To Handle Them
Everyone makes mistakes, you and the people helping you will, too. Affirm who you’ll be when mistakes happen. Will you be calm, determined, empowering, and tenacious? Will you freak out and want to quit? I’ll tell you, I’ve felt both ways. When I discovered that I hadn’t advanced the slides properly during my first webinar, I was devastated. All that work and prep and practicing! I just wanted to crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head. But then I remembered that I had this affirmation: “I follow through to excellence.” So the next day I got up and redid the webinar, and made it better. (Watch my free Chakra Healing HERE.) Lesson: Give yourself and everyone else permission to be human, then go the extra mile to guarantee excellence.
5. Ask For Support from the Right People
Whenever you start something new, there’ll be lots of people lining up to give you advice, support, criticism, and ideas. Be very choosy about who you tell your plans to and who you ask for advice. Only share with people who really get you and your mission, and have no agenda of their own where your project is concerned. The most important opinion to listen to is the one from your own heart. Lesson: Respect your dream and protect it.
5. Focus on Your Strengths, and Delegate the Rest
I wanted to do everything on my own for my website launch, but quickly realize that there wasn’t enough time to do it all myself, and have it be done in this decade. I needed to focus on my unique contribution to what had to be a team effort. For example, I had no intention of becoming a WordPress website designer, so I hired one and focused on what ONLY I could do, which was make design decisions and create content. I have since learned to do almost every technical task, from editing videos to posting blogs, to setting SEO goals, but at launch time, I hired two professionals to operationalize the site by the deadline. They saved my sanity! Lesson: You can do it all, but you can’t do it all at once; hire people to help you reach your dream.
7. Plan Recovery Time
The lesson I keep relearning is that once something is launched, the work isn’t over, it’s just begun. But at the same time, launching any big project (a business, a move, a baby) takes a huge toll and requires some real recovery time. It’s important to plan a slower pace for the immediate period post-launch, because you can’t keep up the intensity and stay healthy and in balance. (And don’t forget your self care during launch time, too!) Lesson: Plan to slow down and actively recover after a period of high performance and intense stress.
Do any of these lessons apply to you right now? I’d love to hear about that, or if you have other gems from big projects you’ve undertaken. Leave your comments, below.
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This is so perfectly timed for me (I pretend you do this for me haha). I am days away from my own website launch and reading these reminded me of so many things that can easily be forgoten when you’re in the thick of it. I especially appreciate the reminders to be gentle with myself and perfectionism and to ask for help from the right people. Thank you, as always, for sharing your insights and being an inspiration. See you at “Road Map to Successful Online Marketing”!
I’m so glad these were helpful to you, Devon. I WAS thinking of you when I wrote it! Looking forward to seeing you at the workshop in 2 weeks.