#518: Advanced procrastination tactics are on the rise - #Tashmas Day 9 - Tash Corbin, Heart-Centred Business Podcast

Full article and show notes available at: tashcorbin.com/518

Welcome to another episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast! Today, I want to shine a light on something that might just hit a little close to home—especially if you’re a business owner who sometimes finds themselves stuck, spinning wheels, or endlessly “preparing” instead of actually doing. We’re diving deep into advanced procrastination tactics, and why they’re suddenly everywhere I look.

And make sure to check out your gift with this episode of #Tashmas—it’s a game-changer for anyone who’s tired of letting advanced procrastination get in the way of their big business dreams.

Wait… What is #Tashmas?

I do it for both my birthday (1-12 March) and pre-Christmas (1-12 December) every year! Every day from now until my birthday on 12th March, there will be a new daily podcast episode, with a hot tip or practical strategy as per usual… but you ALSO get a gift! I love sharing the birthday vibes, and what better way to do that?! The daily gift could be a freebie, a special offer, a competition… but there will be something for YOU every single day.

Why Simple Works (And Why We Overcomplicate Everything)

I spend a LOT of time talking about strategy with clients—inside my group programs, on retreats, in social media DMs, or one-to-one with my VIPs. And something I’m hearing a lot at the moment is, “I just need to get everything sorted before I...” (fill in the blank: launch, sell, send the proposal, pitch the offer).

I have a bit of a superpower for cutting through the noise and getting laser-focused on what actually matters. It’s not about being harsh or bossy—actually, a lot of it comes from my self-confessed laziness! If there’s a way to get results without busywork, I’ll find it. I’m ambitious and lazy, which, trust me, is a magic combo when it comes to making things happen with less effort.

But here’s what I’ve noticed recently: the simple strategies are suddenly much, much harder for people to execute. Even when I cut the fluff and give clients a clear, doable plan... something gets in the way. People get stuck on all the “shoulds” and “maybes”—and convince themselves they have to do a thousand other things before doing the thing that actually matters.

...read the full article at: tashcorbin.com/518

Join us in Noosa at the Heart-Centred Business Conference in September!

Find out more and secure your ticket at: tashcorbin.com/conference

Transcript

1:35

In today's episode of the Heart Centered Business Podcast, I am making an observation that I think might hit a little close to home for a lot of you. And what we're talking about today is advanced procrastination tactics. My observation is that they are on the rise. People are like tying themselves in knots in order to allow themselves the opportunity to procrastinate, and we're going to get to the bottom of it. This is episode number 518, which means you can find all the relevant links and the show show notes of today's episode over at tashcorbin.com/518. And it's also day 9 of Tashmas, and I have an epic gift for you at the end of today's episode. So make sure that you grab that link, tashcorbin.com/518, and that you go and check out the details of this gift. It's a juicy one. Let's dive into advanced procrastination tactics because we need to cut this out. Let's do it. Hello, I'm Tash Corbin, a business strategist and mentor based on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. The mission of this podcast is to help heart-centered entrepreneurs to make more money, and in doing so, change the world for the better. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gabigabi and Jinabara people. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. As a business coach, I have a lot of conversations with people about their strategy, about what I recommend they move forward with. We have a lot of conversations, whether it's in group programs, whether it's just in social media chats or emails, whether it is VIP clients, people who are participating in my retreats and events. I talk to people about their strategy all the time. And I think one of my superpowers, and I have had this reflected back to me a lot recently, is being able to cut through the noise and focus on what actually is going to make a difference. I facilitated a pre-retreat masterminding session for a group of 3 spectacular businesswomen, and they were encouraging me actually to record myself in coaching sessions and just share the types of things that I say out online because they were blown away by how simple I made things. They were blown away by how straightforward their strategies became when we actually unpacked what was going on, what wasn't working, what was working, and therefore how to fix the gap that had shown up in their business, how to fix the issues that they were facing as quickly and effectively as possible. Now, some of that comes from my laziness. I am very, very proud of the fact that I am a very lazy person. If there's a way to get a result without having to work hard, without having to do much, I have found it. I'm super ambitious and super lazy, and it is a spectacular combination. Interestingly, I feel like this superpower has become more and more needed over the years, and it was only when I was facilitating for that retreat mastermind that I had it spelled out to me so spectacularly clearly, and it kind of set off a little part of my brain to start looking at this through a slightly different lens. In the past, when I have given someone a simple strategy to follow through and they haven't, I have probably given a little bit too much grace and a little bit too much leeway to if they didn't get it done quickly. Well, you know, everyone's busy, life happens, you know, there's just a lot of stuff that gets in the way, um, and probably a little bit too much flexibility around when they say, oh well, I just want to get my website done first because it just would make me feel better. I'm like, okay, cool, if it makes you feel better, great, go for it, but like, let's not delay this too far. And I was probably a little too gentle, um, and the more and more that I see this these days, the more I realize, oh my gosh, like, you're actually just procrastinating. Oh my goodness, why is it that you don't want to do this first? What if we just did first? Like, yeah, you're gonna do your website, that's fine, but like, what if we just made you some money first? And actually, something that I've been doing quite a lot this year so far is saying, yep, yep, that's good, let's get you some money. Yep, yep, great idea, let's also get you some money. And so rather than labeling it as advanced procrastination and making a whole big song and dance about it, rather than making it a big deal, right, I'm finding more and more strategic ways to be able to say to people, I understand what you're saying and I understand why you would want to do that first or why you would want to get all your ducks in a row first before you did this thing, but it's costing you money. And so what if we get you money and you get your ducks in a row? What if we get you money whilst you get your website updated? What if we get you money and you do that other thing as well. And the more that I am leaning into this and the more that I'm calling this out and the more that I am not going into the conversation about which order to do things and instead just saying, this is priority number one, I don't care what you do with the rest, uh, the more that I am seeing people getting huge results. Some examples of that are the Kickstart that we did at the start of this year. This was part of the reason why Kickstart was so spectacular this year and has like so monumentally improved. It was brilliant last year, but this year it has monumentally improved because the, oh yeah, but what abouts just didn't get the time and space that they previously had got. The, oh yeah, yeah, I want to do that too, but in setting myself up for the year, I want to do A, B, and C first. I just didn't give space to them. And I was like, yep, cool, that's fine. It's totally up to you. This is the thing that's going to make you money in the short term, and this is the thing that's going to make you money throughout this year. Should we just do those first? And I've been far more specific and far more, yep, yep, get it, that's up to you, this is what I recommend, and it's working. Same thing happened at virtual conference. Same thing has happened with some of my VIP clients. I have a VIP client who had their first session of a package of 6 with me 6 months ago, and I have been following up every month saying, hey, just checking in, have you done the things? Is it time for us to book your next session? Hey, it's time to book your next session. And every time I get an email back saying, yep, yep, gonna get it booked, just got this thing to do. Yep, yep, gonna get it booked, just need to implement this thing. And my packages have expiry dates. So in December, I sent the person a message and I said, hey, just to let you know, I need you to book a session in January because if we don't get your package underway, these sessions are going to expire and I would hate for you to waste your money. So she booked a session for January. She turned up to the session in January and said, I don't know if there's anything we can work on because I still haven't done the things that I know I need to do to be ready to do this second session. And that session completely flipped everything on its head. And it flipped it on its head in such a good way because she was actually just procrastinating. She was creating perfectionism. She was stuck in all-or-nothing thinking instead of just taking the action that we agreed on. And that is something that's quite challenging for me because as a higher-level one-to-one business mentor and strategist, that can sometimes be what happens for people who work with me when they don't have the additional support, the additional mindset practitioner, or consistent access to me in some other way. So I do mostly these days only have VIP clients who are also in my Accelerator or also in my Takeoff program. But I, from time to time, do have VIP clients who don't participate in those other programs. And so when they have just a one-off session or when they have just a few sessions with me, because and hand on heart, like, I accept it. I charge very high rates compared to some other mentors and strategists and coaches. I mean, I'm also teeny tiny rates compared to others, but because of the extent to which people invest to work with me, there is a risk that in the session, in the work that we do, in the strategy that we agree on, in the steps that we decide are going to be the right next steps, I'm not there following up and holding their hand. We're not doing weekly sessions to make sure that they've followed through on it. We're not doing the, the consistent regular contact to ensure that they are actually going to do it and to address all of the procrastination techniques that pop up. And so I'm recording this podcast episode as a little bit of a selfish thing because if I can get as many of my clients as possible, whether VIP or in group programs, or whatever to listen to this episode and learn how to spot advanced procrastination strategies, then the likelihood that they're gonna actually implement and the likelihood that they're not gonna get sucked into this trap is so much higher. And therefore, the results that they're gonna get from actually doing the things that we talk about, it's gonna be so much stronger as well. It sucks for me to recognize that I am human, and as a very ambitious but very lazy person, I have limited capacity and limited time. And so therefore I cannot be, you know, getting in touch with every single VIP client every day saying, what are you doing today? Are you doing the job? Are you doing the work? Right? When people work with me, they do come in with that understanding of shared responsibility. They come in with that understanding that if this is their only session, they need to have strategies and supports in place to be able to ensure that they implement moving forward. Um, they do have the opportunity to ask me follow-up questions and get in touch over email. But ultimately if they are sucked into some of this advanced procrastination stuff, there's not a lot that I can do about it and that makes me very cranky. It makes me very sad. It makes me feel a little bit helpless sometimes. So this podcast is going to do the job for me. So here are some of the ways that I am seeing procrastination being disguised and that's why I call it advanced procrastination. It's not like the type of procrastination is, you know, necessarily like some fancy version. It's just that it's procrastination in disguise. It's procrastination disguised as simplifying, but that simplification is just a delay tactic. So, it might be the brand redesign or the entire redesign of the business or the offer redesign. It's not being done because it's needed for results. It's being done because it tickles your brain, because it makes you feel more worthy, because it makes you feel like you've got your ducks in a row. And you have a belief that in order to be worthy of the success you desire, you must be organized. You must have your ducks in a row in order to be worthy of high-ticket clients, you must look like a high-ticket business. In order to be worthy of making good income, you must look like a fancy brand. In order to be able to attract and convert clients into the 3 different types of business or 3 different types of services you offer, they must be delineated with new branding, new websites, new content strategies, when ultimately in a lot of cases, those very people who are telling me these stories about what they have to do before they're allowed to make money have everything that they need to be able to make money while they do it. Yes, they could absolutely be redesigning their website and they could be following up hot leads. Yes, they absolutely could be creating a new social media content strategy for a new sub-niche that they want to engage with. But they could also be making money out of that by using one-to-one client attraction strategies. Yes, they absolutely could be growing their list with far more people with a better lead magnet, but they also haven't told anyone about their 6 existing lead magnets in months. And it's just advanced procrastination. You are trying to prioritize getting simplified, getting ready for that connection, for that audience, for that growth, but you're not doing the thing that would actually generate that audience, generate that connection, or generate that growth. Let me be clear, this is not my theory about what's going on. This is an observation. I have seen far too many people distract themselves and get caught in advanced procrastination with projects and things that they think are going to be very strategic, magic. They are being very mindful and very thoughtful about how they're moving their business forwards. But at the end of the day, when we talk about why they're doing that first and what they're not doing in order to go on this side quest, it becomes very obvious to me that they're using these side quests as a way to procrastinate on what's actually going to generate results. They have created a belief in themselves that an overcomplicated strategy is a more advanced strategy. That an overcomplicated strategy, that a complex way of generating audience growth, generating leads, and growing their business is going to be smarter. It's a more mature way of doing things. But in reality, it's just procrastination disguised as simplifying or preparing. Another way this shows up is in automations and systems. I've seen people spend hours and hours over the course of weeks setting up automations for something they've never sold yet, that they've never validated, that they have no idea whether it's actually going to make any sales at all. I even had someone who had delayed working with me because they wanted to work with me on building out their marketing and sales strategy for their VIP packages. And they were concerned that if they made too many sales of their VIP package, they wouldn't be able to handle all of the admin of invoicing and onboarding their clients. But when we had a conversation 4 weeks after our initial consult about them being ready to go, they were still talking about setting up all of this new client onboarding. And when I asked the question, well, how long does it take you to send the invoice, to send the onboarding emails, to check to make sure the invoice is paid? It worked out to less than 15 minutes per person. And then I said, well, how many clients are you expecting? How many clients are you able to take on? And she said, 6. 6 clients, 15 minutes work per person. That is 1.5 hours of manual handling that we were waiting weeks and weeks before we could get started on making the money because she was worried she would be overwhelmed by the admin. Now I am all for automating processes. I am all for systemizing things, but at the end of the day, if you are systemizing something that you don't know works, that's probably advanced procrastination. If you're automating something that you don't even know is validated, it's probably advanced procrastination. I've watched someone overly work on simplifying their brand so that they can expand their business, only to see that their new simplified brand was just un-niching. It wasn't actually making their messaging any more resonant, It wasn't actually making their products and services any more appealing. It wasn't doing anything to improve the extent to which they attracted and converted clients. If anything, I feel like it just made everything harder. Their brand became more vague, it became unniched, and it just looked really bland. But it was a convenient 8-week distraction that That to me just looked like advanced procrastination. I've even seen people redesigning their packages before they've ever been validated with sales. I've seen someone mapping out imaginary client journeys, mapping out imaginary client issues and how they're going to overcome them and how they're going to deal with them along the way, all in order to avoid actually having clients. Actually dealing with their lead generation gap, actually following up with the leads that they had conversations with 3 weeks ago and who are still waiting to be followed up. Have a look at your own last 12 months. I want you to be honest with yourself. Where are the side quests? Where are the little adventures? Where are the spaces where you have stopped yourself from taking the strategic, powerful action in order to go and do something that seemingly feels like it's strategic, seemingly feels like it's important, but in hindsight was actually just a delay tactic. It was actually just complexity for complexity's sake. I am done with watching so many of you crafting and recrafting, planning and replanning, organizing and reorganizing, designing and redesigning, working so hard to delay yourself. Working so hard to avoid facing up to the reality of your business, the core strategy that is simple, straightforward, and effective, and becoming diligent in scraping away all of the distractions, all of the diversions, and just focusing on what is your core strategy. It's that difference between all-or-nothing thinking versus your minimum viable product. Learn how to sell what it is that you're selling before you do all of the systemizing and the automating and the design work and the preparations and the client journey mapping. You do not need all of those things. Ask yourself consistently, what is my minimum viable product? And what is my minimum viable marketing and sales strategy? And set about getting those things nailed as quickly and effectively as possible. And here's a little bonus takeaway for you. The more you scrape your strategy right back to its simplest form,, the faster you will accelerate your expansion of your mindset and your capacity to receive. The faster you will look for and find all of the ways where it's actually mindset stuff that is blocking you. One of the things that I have been talking to a few clients about recently is that I feel like in 2012 and 2013, when I was considering and then starting my business, it was almost assumed that every single person who was starting a business was working with a mindset practitioner. And part of the reason for that was because it was so much easier to see when you were experiencing mindset blocks and barriers because there were so few options available to us from a strategy perspective. We didn't have all the different social media channels. We didn't have all the different ways of doing funnels and lead magnets and launches and all of those things. Most people, when they started an online business, started with one-to-one high-ticket services. The reason being that it was the most simple and straightforward thing to offer, and it was the one that you could offer without having to do any pre-work or have any money behind you. Back in 2012, if you wanted to create and launch an online course, you had to hire a website developer to literally build out out the technology in the backend of your website for you. There weren't plug-and-play options like Udemy and Teachable and Skool and all of those things that are available these days. And so the way to be able to do that was you needed to generate income. You needed tens of thousands of dollars to create and build a course. And I actually think that that barrier of entry into the passive and leveraged income model at that point in time meant that we had to front up to our mindset blocks far quicker because we didn't have the luxury of saying, oh, I think actually what I need to do is create a low-ticket course, and then get ourselves all distracted and go off and create and launch an online low-ticket course. We didn't have the money to do that. We had to make the money to be able to do stuff like that. To be able to do the more advanced strategies. And so that strategic simplicity meant that if we weren't doing what we knew we had to do, we knew we had a mindset issue. And the options of what we could or should do as a strategy were so much more limited. If you wanted to grow your audience for free, you had to post on your social media channel and jump into Facebook groups. If you were creating and launching a webinar to be able to sell your packages and your services, and you weren't getting the organic signups for it, either you had a messaging issue or you had an audience size issue, and there weren't many options. To fix the messaging, you just had to fix it, or you could hire a copywriter. And to fix your audience growth, you either had to pay for ads, but if you couldn't afford to pay for ads, you just had to go and find people to partner with. You had to go and pitch yourself as a potential interviewee for people on their YouTube channels. You had to approach other business owners and arrange for a swap of I'll share with your— you with my audience and you share me with your audience. And so because there were so few options to choose from, if you weren't taking action on those, then you knew it was between your ears that the problem was. You knew that it was yourself that was holding yourself back. And I think actually strategic complexity these days is responsible for a lot of people going around with unrecognized self-imposed barriers, unrecognized self-imposed mindset blocks, because they can consistently and far more broadly tell themselves there's a strategy issue, and they can spend years and years running around the internet trying to find someone who has the right strategy when their first strategy was good enough. Any strategy can work. If you work it, any strategy can work. The problem is that people are spreading themselves so thin trying to do all the strategies, trying to be on all the platforms, trying to have all of the price points available, and all they're doing is confusing their audience. They've got far too many offers for the size of audience they've built, and they are stopping themselves from ever facing up to the reality that perhaps the limitation is actually self-imposed. Imposed, that the reason they are not following up with their leads is because they're worried that their leads are going to reject them. That will not be solved by writing fancy sales pages for a $25 course. If you are finding yourself feeling very called out by this episode, I want you to receive this with the love and compassion with which it's shared. I absolutely understand. That we can get ourselves convinced that there's 1,000 things we need to do before we're allowed to make money. There's 1,000 things we need to do in order to be ready to earn money. But ultimately, anyone who is feeding you more and more and more things on your list does not have your best interests at heart. One of the things I share on some of my sales pages and promos is that a great business mentor does not not add to your workload. They refine your workload to be the things that are strategically imperative first. So if you need to timestamp this part of the podcast to come back and listen to it over and over again in the future, I reckon that's a good idea. Because you are worthy of making money now without having to overhaul your brand. You are worthy of attracting leads and making sales right now without having the fanciest client onboarding system ever, ever, ever imagined. You are worthy of bringing in high-ticket, super excited clients to work with you now without having to create an 18-step funnel. You are worthy of focusing on the things that are going to bring you results in the most simple and most straightforward way possible. You do not need complexity in order to scale. You do not need complexity in order to generate a livable income from your business. You do not need complexity in order to be worthy of the type of price that you want to charge. You do not need complexity in order to be seen as the level of business or brand that would command the kind of price that you want to charge. And ultimately, even if you do need a more elevated brand in order to be able to charge twice the rate you're charging now, let's actually validate that you can get the price you want today. Because far too many people do not have solid foundations underneath them in their business. And instead of fixing that, they're running around the internet looking for more and more complexity, adding more and more to their load, adding more and more types of things that they need to get sorted before they're ever allowed to get to the kind of results and income that they're looking for. And we are done with that. No more advanced procrastination tactics. Really focus on creating strategic simplicity, dealing with any self-imposed barriers and limitations, building up your sense of resilience and worthiness because you are worthy of being paid amazingly sooner rather than later, and creating the processes or the planning or some kind of self-management that doesn't allow you to continually hide behind your giant to-do list. It is the giant to-do list. It is the long list of projects. It's the side quests and the detours that are stopping you from focusing on what really generates results, that are stopping you from focusing on the very things that would fast-track you right to the point where you realize you've got a sustainable, profitable business that is actually viable and validated. To that end, my Tashmas gift for you today is all about your planning and your productivity. I want to help you to zero in on what those mission-critical projects and tasks actually are and eliminate the rest out of your field of vision. I have an amazing free bundle for you today. It's called the Productivity and Planning power up. Not only that, but if you sign up for the PPP during Tashmas, you are going to be able to participate in my Q2 Challenge. It starts on the 1st of April, no April Fools here, and it will be exclusively offered to participants in the PPP. So make sure that you come along and sign up for PPP over at tashcorbin.com/ppp. 518 because this is episode number 518 of the podcast. And we are going to have so much fun doing the Q2 Challenge. So I'm setting up this challenge for all people who have the PPP for quarter 2, and it includes the giveaway of a VIP session with me to allow you to create that sense of strategic simplicity and momentum. So in order to be in the running for that VIP giveaway, you need to make sure that you grab your Tashmas gift before Tashmas is over. Head to tashcorbin.com/518, and I cannot wait to see how you go with the planning and productivity power-up. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I'll see you tomorrow for Day 10 of Tashmas. Remember, you are worthy. Right now, your business is worthy. Your package is worthy of making sales. Your business is ready. You do not need to keep yourself derailed, and you certainly don't need a super complex 108-step strategy in order to be able to make really good money from your business. Let's keep it as simple as possible. Stop those side quests and stay focused on what's really going to generate your results. I'll see you inside PPP, and until then, I cannot wait to see you shine. Bye for now.