Living The Red Life - Is Perfectionist Syndrome Killing Your Business?

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Is Perfectionist Syndrome keeping YOU broke? Many entrepreneurs are unsuccessful because they try to get everything done perfectly. As a coach to thousands of businesses, our Man in Red sees the problems associated with Perfectionist Syndrome rear their ugly heads time and again. And today Rudy is helping us do something about it!When you’re cooking up your next business idea are you agonizing over every piece of spaghetti, or are you throwing that spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks? Rudy is reminding us that done is better than perfect – if you stall for too long deciding on each piece of spaghetti, you’re never gonna eat!Where are you over-obsessing? How is your Perfectionist Syndrome hiding behind a limiting belief? And what can you do, today, to get your Minimum Viable Product to launch?You need eyeballs, clicks, sales, and traction before you iterate on your idea, improve your brand, and beef up your product offering. Rudy is kicking us out the door, telling us that it’s time to get a move on. Otherwise, we’re just killing time. Wonderland will be here when you’re done. Come and get it. “How do I get that correct blend, that correct balance, between good products and good marketing? Versus obsession around a product that may never even see the light of day.” ~ Rudy MawerIn This Episode:Why experts/industry leaders fall victim to Perfectionist SyndromeWill your market even notice the small edits you obsess over?How to create your Minimum Viable Product (and start impacting lives)Where are you over-obsessing? What are your limiting beliefs?Creating a personal sense of urgency to get things doneRudy’s t-shirt example to unpack your perfectionism as an entrepreneur Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

I really encourage you to live with some urgency. I try and live like every day is a challenge to get stuff out. Every week I want to push and push and get more stuff done. Why? Because I know over years that's the difference. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life. In your earpiece, every single week, if you're ready to start living the red life,

ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we're going to talk about why perfectionist syndrome is keeping you broke. Yes, I said it. Perfectionist syndrome makes many entrepreneurs unsuccessful and it makes most people broke. Why? Because people will spend way too long obsessing over the wrong stuff. I've seen this in my own career for about two, three years. I suffered from severe perfectionist syndrome. I didn't know it at the time and you're sat there probably going through it right now and not truly understanding it. And now I see it more than ever because I coach thousands of people under my coaching programs. I have an elite coaching team, about 10 staff where they just coach full time, all they do. So over the course,

just for context, of a given day, we see about 150 businesses. So if you do the maths on that over five days, that's what about, you know, we're probably about a thousand a week, right? So 4,000 a month, which is about 50,000 almost a year. So we see a lot of businesses, right? We see the problems businesses have, how businesses are doing, how people are successful, and where businesses are failing. Now, there's probably about three things that over those 50,000 say businesses that we speak to, a reoccurring theme comes up. One is the money mindset, their mindset around money and success. Number two is strategy. They don't know what they should be doing and how to actually get

it done. And then the third and final one, which we're talking about today is perfectionist syndrome. They obsess over the little details. And I work personally with a few businesses, right? I have my celebrities, which I work one-on-one with, and then I have people in my higher level programs, the 50 and the 100k programs I run, where they get a little more access to me. And during even those 50 and 100k programs, which generally means they're somewhat successful, right? If they're investing that amount of money into their coaching and consulting with me, I still see the perfectionist syndrome repeatedly coming up. I still see those different tiers coming up and slowing people down. And what's ironic and interesting is I see this perfectionist syndrome coming up in some of the

most intelligent people. And actually some of the most intelligent people that care the most are some that are the most guilty and suffer from the perfectionist syndrome. Why? Well, if you think about it logically, an expert, someone with high integrity, someone that really cares about how their brand looks and feels, cares about their customer, someone that wants to be the best, they're actually more susceptible to perfectionist syndrome than someone that doesn't have great standards, someone that doesn't care, right? And so these experts, some of the best people I know in different industries, they fall for perfectionist syndrome because they care so much. Now, what I had to learn myself over two or three years of not getting anywhere and failing was,

and I learned this eventually through books and personal development and mentorship, is eventually I realized that what I felt someone needed, a customer needed, was way over the mark versus what they actually wanted. And I realized, hey, if I spent more time getting out there and helping people and using my time and energy to promote my brand and reach those people. Even if the product I didn't spend as long to develop, I'm going to impact more lives. Right. And here's how I look at it. Say you spend hundreds of hours developing your product and you sell it to 100 people. How many lives have you changed? 100. Say you have a good product, a great product,

but you haven't spent hundreds of hours revisiting it, going backwards and forwards on it, giving it a thousand different edits. It's still good, but it's not 400 days later of good, right? It's draft one. Okay, let's refine it a little. Okay, it's pretty decent now. I like it. It looks good. Let's get it going. Let's test it, right? Imagine it's it's draft one. OK, let's refine it a little. OK, it's pretty decent now. I like it looks good. Let's get it going. Let's test it. Right. Imagine it's that type of good.

But that product helps 100,000 people. Who did you help more? The 100 people or the 100,000 people? Obviously, the 100,000 people. And for no second am I saying put out a crappy product right but what you have to understand is most people with perfectionist syndrome you're actually making edits adjustments iterations that your customer will never even notice your customer won't care about if you gave them draft one versus draft 127 after perfectionist syndrome has rewritten it and changed it a hundred times they wouldn't really, they wouldn't really care. They wouldn't really know. It's all in your head. And I learned this. I spent months and months

and months and months developing different products, different courses, different programs, and they never saw the light of day. They didn't actually sell. They didn't really get to anyone because I didn't spend time on sales and marketing. I just spent time on the product. And I was led to believe, which I think is false, that great products will always win. That's not the case anymore. Okay. Great products with great marketing and branding will always win. Okay. So I realized over time, how do I create what we call a minimum viable product? And when I say minimum viable, I still mean good, right? And then how do I get it out there and start impacting lives? Okay, testing the market,

making sure it's great. And then once I've established that it is great, that it's loved, that customers like it, it hits their pain points, it hits their desires, it hits their need. How do I now take that and make it even better? Right? So that's what I focused on. I started looking at how do I get that correct blend, that correct balance between good products and good marketing versus obsession around a product that may never even see the light of day. And again, I'm not saying you can't adjust your product, you can't edit it, you can't come back and make it better. That's not true. Many of my products that have sold millions of dollars, I've come back and I'm constantly adding to.

The innovation and the development of the product for me never ends. It just isn't front-loaded. Perfection is front-load everything. So they'll spend all the time I've spent developing my products over two years, they'll spend it for two years before launching the product. Whereas now I'll launch it after a week or a month and then spend two years making it better and better and better and better and better. Because the cool part about doing it this way too, is I'm getting real experience and feedback live from consumers versus theory. Okay. Cause when it's theory and you're thinking about it, half of it's not even true. When it's live in beta or it's being sold and you're getting people through it, now it's real feedback. So it's theory and you're thinking about it, half of it's not even true. When it's live in beta or it's being sold and you're getting people through it, now it's real feedback. So it's

actually going to make the product even better. So a lot of you, right, listening today, I promise most of you, if you're making less than a million a year, probably most of you have perfectionist syndrome. You think about an idea for too long. do too much market research you then spend too much timing and why it won't work and then eventually when you get over why it won't work and you figure out okay i'm gonna do this and something motivates you says let's get it let's do it i'm just gonna make it happen right eventually when you get to that point you'll now spend two months figuring out the funnel the landing page the website tech. You'll then spend two weeks thinking about the video you've got to film and why you're not good on video and the angles aren't

right and the lighting and the camera. And you need to now find a studio. Then you've got to find a person to film and then you've got to get the editing done. And now you're six months into this project that I would have launched in six days. And you're six months in, you haven't even gone live. Right. So this perfectionist syndrome starts in the product ideation. Right. Actually, the idea. And it takes you months and months. And then eventually when you get through that product development often takes weeks or months. And then when you get to the marketing promotion side, it takes weeks and months, right? So now you've took a process that I can do in a few days or a week and made it maybe a year or six months, right? Or maybe even three months, okay? Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more

time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes, and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram at rudymorlife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30

second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review, and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys, and let's dive back in. And the problem is after that year,

half of your ideas are going to fail anyway. I teach this. I have an Instagram video on this and a podcast on this. Half your ideas won't work anyway. So why would you spend a year when half the time it won't work versus a week, right? So I want you to start thinking about where am I falling for this perfectionist syndrome? Where am I over obsessing on how this needs to look? Where are my own limiting beliefs getting in the way, right? And sometimes they're disguised as perfectionist syndrome. Sometimes saying I need to edit this, it's not quite ready, doesn't feel quite right. They're actually limiting beliefs that you disguise as perfectionist syndrome. I want to

make the product better. I speak to entrepreneurs all the time, even my own staff. I say, when's this ready? Why can't it be? Why is it not tomorrow? And they go, well, well, well, I've got to do the thing, you know. I've got to go and back and blah, blah, blah. Right? That's the reply I get. I go, what would happen if you launched it tomorrow?

Oh, well, I guess I could. That's how the conversation goes. Okay. So I really, and my staff still think I'm often crazy, but I really encourage you to live with some urgency. I try to live like every day is a challenge to get stuff out. Every week I want to push and push and get more stuff done. Why? Because I know over years that's the difference. It's like the person that goes to the gym every day, the person that pushes it off and goes to the gym once a week. Over two years, you're going to see totally different two people, two different outcomes, two different biomarkers of health, blood work. One has a six pack, one doesn't, right? One's maybe better at running, one isn't,

right? So you're going to see complete changes because of the daily actions that take place. It's the same in business. So if you have perfectionist syndrome in all you do, and I don't, right? I'm going to get a hundred times more things done than you are. And then what happens over time is you don't realize it's perfectionist syndrome. Stuff's just too slow. So you don't get traction. You don't approve stuff quick enough. You can't make any progress.

You can't get stuff working because you're not throwing enough spaghetti against the wall because you're looking at every single noodle, right, every single piece of spaghetti before you even throw it against the wall, right? I'm just grabbing it and lobbing it, grab it like a snowball fight. That's how I'm acting. But you're analyzing every little piece of spaghetti and saying, oh, I can't throw this piece against the wall. It's not the exact length of the other pieces, right? That's how it is. But it doesn't matter. It's just the initial phases are often just throwing spaghetti against the wall. No one cares if the noodle is a little shorter out of some of those pieces of spaghetti. OK, so get into this habit of moving fast.

Get into this habit of focused on beta testing and get into this habit of saying to yourself, it's OK, this is minimum viable product. It's OK. This is just a test. Let's see if it gets traction. Let's see if it gets traction, right? And I even do this with some of my big celebrities. I create what we call a minimum viable product that will move into a pre-launch where we can now launch it before it's even, before the minimum viable product's even done. And then we beta test through the pre-launch is this being successful and then we also see how successful is this being because then we figure out okay what exactly we do we need done by the launch if it's not that successful out the gate then we have more time if it's ultra successful

then we need to get a few more things in line before the launch and then once the launch has gone on often especially in like consulting, coaching, education, we drip the content. Now, if it's e-commerce, obviously there's a physical product, you need to have the product ready, right? You can still pre-sell and I highly recommend that, but eventually you need the product ready when you say the product is going to be ready. Now, this doesn't mean that your first 500 sales, you're not going to go and adapt to make a version two and a version three and a version four and maybe different models. If you look at most companies out there, they have an original version and then it grows. That's Apple's model. Every year there's a new

iPhone. Okay. If you look at, I just bought a new mattress from one of the big mattress companies. They started with one product. Now they have like seven, right right and it's one of the mattress in a box and most areas of supplementation a lot of supplement companies start with one or two supplements they listen to the demand of the market and they expand most clothing lines start with a few signature pieces they don't have to be printed they can just be mock designs you make a t-shirt um gone fiber you can get a t-shirt mock-up in 24 hours. You can build a website in 24 hours and you can launch some ads 24 hours later. In three days, you can go from, I want to start a t-shirt brand to, hey, I've got my t-shirt brand live selling

it with ads. And then you can do print on demand, which means they'll print it for every one sale you make. You go, well, rudy i don't know about the quality guys if you have free sales it's gonna be okay you can do a product test yourself most of these print on demand places have like two thousand five star reviews on a t-shirt so you know the quality is okay now eventually go well rudy i want this special blend of silk and wool and cotton all it's like great we'll sell a few hundred, get some consistency and use that money to go and do a custom order of 2,000. What most people do is the opposite. I'm going to spend three months, let's use the t-shirt analogy,

I'm going to spend three months on the logo. I'm going to spend three months flying around China, testing the t-shirt, finding the right blend of silk and cotton from wool okay now i'm going to spend three months trying to do the website stuff with a big website firm or figuring it out myself i'm going to get lost do a bunch of edits change the banner a hundred times i'm nine months in now i've spent fifty thousand dollars on these t-shirts that may not even sell that's not a smart entrepreneurial way to do business, right? Now, eventually you can go do all the things I just said. Once you're launched and you're selling a bunch, you can go and spend in the background months making a new logo. It's called a rebrand. Every brand does it. Go Google Nike logos over time. Go Google Apple logos over time. Go Google Netflix logos over time. Go Google Amazon logos over time. Go Google Netflix logos over time. Go Google Amazon logos

over time. Happens to the biggest companies in the world. And then you can hire someone to go fly around China and find you the best t-shirt. Or you can have a VA reach out in a more realistic setting and get a bunch of samples sent while your t-shirts are selling. And then you can do a website rebuild on the back end while your current website you threw up in a day is running. And then you have this beautiful $50,000 or $20,000 website built by my team or a big team. It has all the bells and whistles. It's amazing.

It's going to last you for five years as you scale to tens of millions, hopefully. That's real business. That's a real life example I just gave you that I would run based as a smart entrepreneur and business owner that's built not one, but about $10 million plus companies and helped thousands of students launch successfully. That's how it should be. So don't let perfectionist syndrome get in the way. Don't let it become something that gives you, that covers these limiting beliefs you have. A lot of the reason you're not successful right now is you're too slow. You overthink

everything. You have this perfectionist syndrome, okay? So be real with yourself. Say, no, no, Rudy, this is me being a perfectionist syndrome. Stop. Let's just get it going, okay? And if you need help, reach out to me and my will push you will will who will push you out i say i kick people out the front door all the time my job all the time is say let's get it going yeah that's enough now let's just get it going right and i see it all the time well really should i move this video up or down is this color fun i'm like guys just get it live you don't even had a single click yet okay stop stop that's what I have to tell my members all the time on Zoom. Stop. Let's just test it. Okay. Don't worry about that. So don't let these things get in the way. You have greatness inside you, as Les Brown would say. Your product's

probably amazing. Okay. Right now, you need to focus on attention, eyeballs, traffic, right? Branding, ads, getting it to more people okay and then over time you can make it better and better and better okay so that is an overview of perfectionist syndrome why it kills so many entrepreneurs because it's the slow splinters it's the slow death that will disrupt you over time okay so time is your biggest race right it's the one thing we can't get back and the most successful entrepreneur moves swiftly, moves swiftly with speed because they know time's their biggest competitor, okay?

So have some more hustle, get rid of perfectionist syndrome, get stuff going, because I promise you'll have more motivation, more momentum and more money to fix any problems you have. I hope you enjoyed today's session. Keep living the red life

and I'll see you guys soon. Take care. My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in wonderland and change your life.