The Hidden cost of waiting - Why thinking isn't the same as progress

Have you ever spent months thinking about your business but still don't feel like you're any close to actually moving forward? Perhaps you've got the feeling that you're filling your days and feeling busy but not actually productive. And you might be consuming so much advice, saving and bookmarking so many posts and listening to podcasts, but not actually implementing the advice. One of the biggest growth killers that I see for female founders is strategic paralysis.

And this often looks productive on the outside, but thinking about your business isn't the same as actually growing your business. So today I want to unpack three major challenges I see repeatedly and what to do about them. Welcome to the How to Spark Success Show. I'm Liz Hamlet.

I'm a business strategist and coach who helps you to uncover the hidden treasure already there in your business. so the first major challenge I see all the time with people coming to my sales calls and starting to work with me it's the visibility problem that's really a confidence problem so when prospective clients come to me and talk about some of their pain points that they're experiencing what this actually looks like is inconsistent leads they're relying a lot on referrals and recommendations.

If they're posting at all, they're posting sporadically and they don't have any clear marketing strategy. And this often leads to feeling totally overwhelmed with social media and sometimes just not posting at all for months on end. And the common beliefs that are holding them back is that they don't feel like they know enough about marketing. When they look at other people, they seem like everyone else knows what they're doing and I need a better strategy before I even start.

but the fact of the matter is these business owners it's not that they have a marketing problem but it's that they have a consistency problem and this is usually what's linked to confidence or lack of it so a bit of a challenge for you if you're listening in and you're a business owner which you probably will be given that you're listening to this podcast I want you to ask yourself if someone else looked at your content for the last 30 days would they know exactly what you do?

And another one that might hit home is have you been waiting until you feel more confident before becoming more visible? Because the thing about waiting for this is that opportunities come from being visible. And these opportunities, once you start getting them, build your confidence. But it's not that confidence comes first, it's the visibility that helps to lead to feeling more confident.

So the next major challenge I see for female founders, normally service place founders, but not only who come to work with me, and that's strategic paralysis. So this is when planning and business planning becomes procrastination. So the cycle of this looks like they start to think about needing to be more strategic in their business That leads to them doing some research and looking at perhaps what other people in the sector are doing looking at your competitors and then you start to over analyze what they doing and what you not doing and of course what comes then you end up comparing yourself to others you get that comparisonitis you start to second guess yourself feeling bad for yourself all the things you haven't started doing and then you feel like you want to start again and that cycle goes round and round you start thinking, researching, overanalyzing, comparing, and then second guessing and losing confidence.

And when founders find themselves in this strategic paralysis, they're usually telling themselves that it's just that I need more clarity, or I need to have some time to think this through because I don't want to make the wrong decision. But the reality of the matter is that many business owners aren't stuck because they don't know what to do. They're stuck because they're afraid of committing to one direction. And so the easiest thing is to just not take any action.

And if this is sounding a bit familiar, here are a few signs that you might be in strategic paralysis yourself. And the first one is that you've had the same business goal for months, but you don't feel like you're moving any closer to achieving it. You're still discussing and rolling around the same decisions and perhaps not even making those decisions. And your home life is starting to be affected by constantly worrying about the business.

And this is the position I often find people coming to me when they start to work with me one to one, they're worrying that they have got stuck, you know, then they're stuck in this paralysis. But the fact is, when you're looking at this from a coaching perspective, there's really one perfect decision. There's just a decision committing to that and moving forward, obviously weighing up the pros and cons. But it's actually the moving forward, the momentum of moving forward that creates clarity.

And sometimes you go down paths that don't feel right and you correct the course. Because this action reveals more information than thinking and research ever can. So a challenge for you, if you feel stuck, if you feel like you're in this paralysis, is asking yourself what decision have you been avoiding for the last 90 days? And what would progress look like towards making that decision in the next week?

So the next major challenge I see is why so many experts undersell themselves. The pattern I see all the time is these amazingly expert female founders doing incredible things supporting their clients seeing great outcomes for their clients but when they are asked what they do many founders say I just or I'm I'm only this I'm only a ed tech founder I'm only a wellness brand founder or they will say oh I kind of help people to xyz and why this matters is that if you minimize your expertise your audience are going to too I once gave some feedback to a client who on all her videos was talking about how bad she looked or that she was looking messy or scruffy and she maybe spent the first minute of the video making excuses for that and by the time you got to the really juicy stuff the really good advice or point of view on a video you'd lost interest because it seemed like she just wasn't confident and clients come to you because they buy confidence, they buy clarity.

And not only that, of course, they buy into your unique personality or your unique way of doing things. And another error I see happening is specialists frequently assume that what they do is obvious. And a lot of their content doesn't help point people to how they help them or, you know, what their experience is, because all these years of experience for you might become visible to you because they're normal, but they're certainly not to your prospective clients. So an action point might be to imagine introducing yourself as if you were your biggest cheerleader, your biggest advocate.

So looking at things like what results do you help to create for your clients? What problems do you solve? What would your absolute favourite best client say about you? and I don't want you to describe what you do.

I want you to describe the transformation you create. And this might seem obvious, but I see so many people focusing on the XYZ steps of their one-to-one program. You know, what you get, the support in between sessions, the, you know, so many one-to-one sessions, but what they're not focusing on is what you can expect to see as a result of that. Another area I see is practical excuses that are keeping my clients stuck.

So this might be, you know, no updated photos, so not starting work on improving your website, or not enough clients yet, or needing another qualification. That's a big one. People putting off, putting themselves out and being visible because they feel like they need another qualification under their belt or that they feel like they need to make more money first before taking action you know perhaps that might be booking on a one-to-one program or investing in something that's going to help them to grow the business and this also feels like waiting for the perfect time but most successful businesses I see starting perfectly.

For example, you know, if they don't have a premises, they're offering things online, or they might be renting space when they need it. They're testing offers before scaling. So not spending months and months designing an offer, they're putting something out as a founding offer or test offer and tweaking that and improving that as they go. And they're starting before everything was ready.

And always think like the website example, your website always feels like painting the fourth bridge If you in the UK you know what that means there a very large bridge that they have to paint almost before they get to the end of painting it one time they need to start at the other end repainting it because such a big job and I often see people waiting for the perfect time to update their website or feeling like it needs to be absolutely perfect but the fact of the matter is your website's a bit like your fourth bridge I don't think I know one single business who is fully 100% happy or feeling like they've got the perfect website, it's always something that they're testing, they're testing of, you know, where people are dropping off or what, you know, how people are using the website.

Are they finding the right solutions that they're looking for? Is it easy to navigate? So what I want you to think about is actually building the next version, but not necessarily this being the final version. And another challenge I see for people is that they're asking themselves, am I too small for support?

Am I too small for booking a coaching program, for example? Some of their common concerns is that, oh, I'm too early stage or, you know, perhaps I should wait until I'm making more money. I want to reframe if you're in this position I want to reframe this for you because the biggest value of coaching often comes from the times when you're feeling stuck you're isolated particularly when you're lacking clarity as we've spoken before when you're struggling to make decisions because coaching isn't about business size I support founders from anything from solopreneurs right up to leaders of big multinational organizations and it's not about the business size.

It's about shortening the distance and the time it's going to take between where you are now and where you want to be. So if I left you with one message, it's that you can refine, tweak, update continuously a strategy. You can update an offer, you can adjust it, you can improve on a plan. But the thing you can't do is you can't grow while you're standing still.

so final reflection question what's the one action you've known you need to take for weeks but that you're still avoiding i want you to take one step towards that decision today because as i said before progress and momentum creates confidence it's not that you need to wait for confidence before taking action it's the other way around action creates confidence thank you for listening today click the follow button to hear more about how you can uncover your hidden treasure as a founder and if all of this has been ringing true and you'd like the eyes of an expert business strategist on your business why not book one of my what would liz do strategic reviews for 350 pounds this will give you the exact steps i'd take if i was ceo of your business for the next 90 days.

So remember the hidden cost of waiting because thinking isn't the same as progress. What's your one action you can take today towards that decision?