Renegades – Just begin
I’m going to share with you my complete four steps to “Just begin!” that will help you quickly and easily take your first couple of steps to building your business and achieving greater results.
My “Just begin!” guide consists of 4 different steps. Firstly, stop hiding. Secondly, choose quantity over quality. Thirdly, build your sales funnel, and lastly, get a coach.
Step Number 1 – Stop Hiding
It’s easy to be intimidated in the first couple of months at a new job, especially when you’re sitting on a trading desk on Wall Street. That is where I learned this lesson as a 24-year-old living in New York city for the first time.
Part of the early initiation experience is calling up a client, whom you’ve never met, and pitching a stock. Invariably this is a hedge fund manager, with a 9-figure balance in his personal bank account and 30 years of experience in sensing fresh meat (me) to chew up and spit out.
When my boss asked if I’d received an answer from the client, I said: “Not yet, but I only sent the email 1 hour ago.”
I immediately knew by the cold stare and chilling silence that something was very wrong.
“How hard is it to pick up the phone and call?” (Colourful expletives have been eliminated to make this PG) and he subsequently grabbed the phone handle and lifted it to his ear. “Like this!” Then he slammed it back down. Then he lifted it up to his ear again and slammed it down again…another 3 times. And at no point did he lose eye contact.
Although this story happened 16 years ago, I’ve found myself recently sending an email again when I should have called my prospective client.
I was hiding again…and I’ve spent some time since contemplating in what other ways I hide. Here are a few:
- By emailing someone instead of calling them directly (avoiding confrontation and rejection)
- By avoiding early pain and hoping there will be no pain later (which btw never happens)
- By doing what’s easy first and making excuses to delay getting to the difficult or the uncomfortable
- By immediately dismissing a new idea and killing it because my current results (not my potential results) don’t allow me to see how it could ever be successful
The ways in which we hide is most likely a blind spot for many people, including myself. It’s therefore so important to have a mentor or coach in your life that can point out the things you can’t or don’t want to see.
My four ways of hiding all point to one thing…
Being scared of sticking my head above the wall in case people take a shot at me. In other words, there’s an inherent fear of walking into the middle of the arena and exposing my work and my heart/passion. Instead I’ll hide because I’m afraid of being known.
John Maxwell said, “I can only be loved to the extent that I’m known. As long as I hide, if someone says they love me my soul will whisper, ‘They wouldn’t love you if they knew you.’
You can never find yourself and be successful until you know you’re hiding.
I decided to step into the arena and make myself known. There’s too much at stake not to…will you join me and make yourself known?
Key question: On a scale of 1 to 10 what’s the likelihood you will step into the arena and make yourself known? If it’s less than a 9, what obstacles are holding you back? What is one step you could take out of hiding today?
Step Number 2 – Quantity Over Quality!
George Bernard Shaw said, “A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed, he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.”
And for the first 4 years as part of JMT I was unwilling to make a fool of myself.
I always wanted my speaking, my facilitating, all my presentation to be perfect…from the start.
And it wasn’t until my 7th training…that I decided I would go for it. I would get on stage during the IMC with Roddy Galbraith and stick my head above the wall.
And you know what the difference was? I heard a story that changed the way I thought about it.
“There was this ceramics teacher who announced on opening day of the semester that he was dividing his class into two groups. “All those on the left side of the studio”, he said, “will be graded solely on the quantity of work produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.” (So, on the left Quantity and on the right Quality)
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group (those on the left): fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality” (those on the right) needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, come grading time and a curious fact emerged (PAUSE and SIT): the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity (on the left). It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorising about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of unformed clay.”
Reid Hoffman the co-founder of LinkedIn said: “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’re launching too late.”
So, whatever’s on your mind to create…now is the time…it doesn’t have to be perfect, you just need to do it, and by doing, soon enough you’ll be creating pieces of the highest quality.
Key question: Where have you spent more than 3 months trying to create a new product or service? What could you start doing, instead of theorising or planning?
Next Month- I will discuss in detail how the last 2 steps will help you to get past the parts that keep you from beginning, building your sales funnel and the importance of finding a coach.
