We’ve been watching talented, capable financial coaches hold themselves back from doing their best work, and it has nothing to do with skills or caring.
Here are some examples that might sound familiar:
“I created a freebie, but I never really put it out there.”
“Someone asked me about my coaching, but I didn’t really follow up.”
“I have an opportunity to present at this workshop, but I don’t think now’s the right time.”
There are all these opportunities, things they can do. But somehow, for some reason, they aren’t following through. It’s not that they don’t want the result on the other side. It’s not that they’re not capable, even if it is a little scary. So why aren’t they taking action on the things they say they want to do?
At the root of this is a fear of failure, and it’s showing up in ways that might surprise you. It’s creating this cycle where you’re avoiding taking meaningful action because you’re terrified about not getting it right.
The Fear of Failure Epidemic
We really do live in a culture today where everything feels permanent and public. Social media makes it so that your mistakes can just follow you forever, and there’s this pressure to have everything figured out before you even start. This really creates this paralyzing perfectionism, where people would rather do nothing than risk doing something imperfectly.
We see this constantly with financial coaches who spend months researching every possible certification instead of just starting to help people. This fear shows up as endless preparation, constant second-guessing, and what I’m going to call productive procrastination – staying busy with tasks that feel important but don’t actually move your business towards your goals.
Another way this manifests is through comparison paralysis. People look at others who seem to have it all figured out, and they convince themselves that they are not ready to compete at that level. And then there’s also this myth that if we’re doing something right, it should feel easy, so when the work feels difficult or uncomfortable, we assume that we’re on the wrong path or that we’re doing something wrong, instead of recognizing that growth involves discomfort.
How Our Environment Makes Avoidance Easier Than Ever
We are surrounded by more entertainment options, information sources, immediate gratification opportunities than in any generation in history. When something feels hard, there is always an easier alternative just a swipe away. This constant connectivity means that we’re never truly focused on one thing for extended periods of time.
Social media distraction creates this illusion where we feel as though we are being productive, but it might be because we are consuming content and that feels like we’re working on our business. For example, you might spend hours watching videos about marketing strategies without ever actually implementing a marketing strategy. This can definitely trick us into feeling as though we are working, but then feeling very dissatisfied or confused about why we aren’t getting results in our business.
The Learning Trap
People fall into a learning trap where you can get addicted to taking courses, reading books, attending webinars, because it feels like progress without the risk of failure. You’re out there learning, improving, but there’s no risk of people seeing you doing something wrong, making a mistake, putting yourself out there, being told no. So it feels very comfortable to continue doing this over and over.
You fall into this pattern of continued learning, with this illusion of being productive or making progress in your business, and at the same time feeling totally stuck and frustrated that nothing is happening.
The irony is that you are reading a blog and learning right now—so please keep reading, but also go and do something afterward. Go and take some real action. We don’t only want to be consumers of information.
Decision Fatigue and Distractions
The abundance of choices we face every day really does create decision fatigue, and so by the time you get around to doing important work, you’ve likely already exhausted so much of your mental energy on a lot of smaller decisions that didn’t really move the business forward.
Working remotely, which most financial coaches do, can cause huge distraction when we are trying to get things done, because we can look around our space and think about how we need to do the dishes or do laundry or pick up after the kids, and those things feel more urgent or more important than our longer-term big picture goals with our business.
The Vicious Cycle of “Safe” Busy Work
The result is that it’s really, really easy to stay busy, but never feel like you’re actually making progress. That reinforces this idea that maybe you’re not cut out for it after all, because you feel as though you’ve been doing so much, but you’re not seeing any results. Do you see how this is a vicious cycle?
Fear makes us choose the path of least resistance, which usually means staying in your comfort zone rather than pushing yourself to grow. You will work really hard on tasks that feel safe, rather than tackling a challenging task that could transform your business.
An example: You would probably be more likely to spend three days writing the perfect email nurture sequence versus spending three hours picking up the phone and calling potential clients or referral partners. Why? Because one of those things feels safe and the other one does not. If you write those emails, you don’t really have to put yourself out there, because if you write emails, no one could potentially reject you.
But at the end of those three days, you will feel as if you’ve worked so much, but you won’t even be one step closer to having a new client. You’ll have done 10 times the amount of work as compared to if you picked up the phone and made phone calls, and you will not have another lead.
The Real Reason We Avoid Taking Action
When you catch yourself going down the rabbit hole, learning more things, researching, rewriting, rethinking, absorbing all of the information and not doing or applying any of it, what is it that you’re doing? Is it just your brain getting in its way, trying to protect you, trying to keep you safe?
This is the “I know I should be doing X, Y, Z, but I just can’t motivate myself to do it” thought. This is just one more way that your brain is keeping you safe, because if you never actually do it, if you never actually try or never really put yourself out there, then you’re never going to fail. You can always blame your failure on something else, something that isn’t you.
Because how would we feel if we really gave it our all? If you really went for it with your business? If you gave it all that you’ve got? If you faced the scary things and you did them anyway? And if you really put yourself out there and did all of the things and then it still didn’t work? Well, that would be too painful.
So instead, we quietly reach the same results, but we’ve got some scapegoats. We act like we are busy. We do a lot of things, but we avoid the things that will most move the needle. And then, when we don’t get clients, or we feel burnt out, or our time is too crammed with so many distractions, we can blame our failure on everything else. The social media algorithm changed. My schedule got too busy. My kids were home from school. Even this one: I didn’t really try.
That is easier to accept than “I put myself out there. I did everything I possibly could, and it still didn’t work.”
Embracing “Loud Failure”
We are so afraid to fail that we allow ourselves to just quietly fade away, hoping no one will notice that we’ve just created for ourselves the very thing that we’re trying to avoid, which is failure.
I really wish we could all embrace this mentality of failing loudly. I would rather fail out loud than fail by quietly shrinking away and not doing the thing that I said I wanted to do.
This idea means that instead of shrinking, avoiding, and not taking action, you commit to loud failure. We are going to decide that we aren’t just going to shrink away and quietly let ourselves fail, but that we’re going to fail by actually putting ourselves out there.
If you’re going to fail either way, one way or another, either by not doing the things that you need to do to make your business successful…well, I would rather fail by at least letting people know what I’m trying to do to begin with.
And wouldn’t it be so cool if, because you were okay with embracing this idea of loud failure, that it meant that you were doing the hard things, not the quiet things, not the researching more, perfecting more, quietly working alone by yourself more. Instead you were talking more, presenting more, offering people to help them more, and maybe just maybe, those things would actually make you successful?
Breaking Through the Fear Barrier
The good news is that fear of failure doesn’t have to control you and your results forever. There are some things that you can do to push through these barriers.
Redefine Failure as Feedback
Start by redefining failure as feedback. Rather than judgment on your worth or your abilities, you can look at it as a way that is teaching you some valuable information about what works and what doesn’t work, which is going to get you closer to the thing that works.
Break Big Goals into Smaller Actions
Break those really big, audacious, amazing goals into some smaller, less intimidating actions. Instead of setting a goal of making $100,000 in your business this year, what if you commit to having five Q&A calls this week? The smaller step feels less intimidating and more approachable. And quite frankly, five Q&A calls this week is probably the thing that you need to do to work toward earning $100,000 this year.
Practice “Good Enough to Move On”
You want to practice taking imperfect action consistently. I was at a leadership conference almost a decade ago, and one of the speakers talked about embracing the idea of GETMO—”Good Enough To Move On.” He said, “I finally figured out that perfect was not the place to get to. I wanted to get to the place where it was good enough to move on.”
We want to get it to a place where it’s fine, it’s good enough. I can come back, I can work on it and make it better later, but it’s good enough to move on. That is the goal. We don’t want to get it to perfect, because that will hold you back forever.
Build Tolerance for Discomfort
We want to build a tolerance for discomfort, because discomfort is good. Discomfort is a sign of growth. You are never uncomfortable if you’re in your comfort zone. Instead, learn to dance with your fear. When you feel that fear come up, when you feel that discomfort come up, lean into it and embrace it and tell yourself, “This is a sign that I am growing,” not “This is a sign that I should not do this thing.”
You can ease into some of the things that you’re doing. If making three hours of phone calls feels like a big leap, maybe start with three phone calls, and then the next week, do four, and the next week five and so on.
Create Support Systems
Create accountability systems that make it more difficult to avoid the important work. Find someone who can hold you accountable. Share with them what your weekly goals are, whether it’s another coach, a business friend, a family member, just someone who understands that you’re trying to accomplish things.
Set boundaries for yourself and limit your information consumption and focus on implementation instead. Choose one strategy, commit to testing it and then moving through and onto the next thing. We don’t want to just keep learning and learning and learning and not implementing and taking action.
Your Action Plan for This Week
Here are a few things that you can do this week:
- Identify one important task that you’ve been avoiding because it feels risky or uncomfortable. This is probably something that could significantly move your business forward if you just did it, and it would probably take a lot less time to complete than what you’re building up in your head.
- Break that task into the smallest possible first step and commit to doing just that one thing today. When you get done listening, think about the thing that you’ve been avoiding. Break it into the smallest viable task to get started with and do that thing today. Don’t worry about doing the whole project. Just focus on getting started.
- Set up your environment to support focused work. Try to block some time this week where you can clean up where you work. Make sure that it is somewhere that you can be focused. Put your phone in another room when you’re working. Use website blockers so you’re not getting dings and notifications.
- Choose one source of business education and stick with it for the next month instead of jumping between different things. I see this all the time with coaches who feel very distracted or very overwhelmed. A lot of times, it is because they are consuming so much information, getting so much coaching and direction from all these different sources, and it really is bogging their brain down.
- Start tracking your progress on those actions, even if you’re not quite getting the result yet. We want to see that you are taking action and not just quietly working behind the scenes, doing things that aren’t actually going to move you forward.
Remember: Courage Isn’t the Absence of Fear
The goal is not to eliminate all fear. We are all going to feel it. It does not go away. We might overcome it in one area and then it pops up in another one. So don’t be surprised. But it’s just really important to keep doing the work despite the fear.
Courage is not the absence of fear, it is taking action while still feeling afraid.
Every successful business owner has failed multiple times. This road is not easy. It is not for the faint of heart. We all have failed at things, and really what matters is that you get back up, you keep working despite those failures, and you don’t let them stop you.
Are you up for a little experiment with loud failure? I would love to see every entrepreneur embrace this mentality. I think it would dramatically change the success rate for small businesses, but the choice is up to you.
