Do you ever have those moments where someone asks you to do something or you have a great idea, but it’s almost too good to actually do? Maybe someone asks you to give a presentation at a huge event, maybe you have an idea to start creating and selling something, maybe even something as simple as making a big fitness goal. What I mean by too good, is that the possibilities of the outcome are so great that you are scared to even dream that big.
Whether it’s because you are afraid that you will fail in getting there or that you will let someone down, or that you’ll look like a fool. Whatever the reason, we so often sell ourselves short in these situations. We decide that we are much more comfortable where we are, hiding inside our bubble, so we pass up on some amazing opportunities. Not only opportunities to improve our value creation mindset, but to actually create value in others lives.
I think we often think we are doing this under the guise of humility. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I’m not experienced enough to start a business” we say. What if we instead, we said this – “I know this business could really benefit some other people, but I’m not willing to take the risk of looking like a fool and possibly failing.”
Now, I’m not saying that you should take every opportunity that ever presents itself to you. Learning to say no is an important skill to have as well. What I am saying, is that if there is a particular project that really seems to be scary to you, maybe that’s the one you should take. Those are the kind of projects that you will probably grow the most in. If you only ever do projects you are comfortable doing, you really aren’t going to gain much from each project.
For me, this looked like yet another side project to add to my Portfolio Project. I heard a former Praxis participant talking about a podcast they had done, and they explained that to get a lot of people interested and subscribed to their mailing list for the Podcast, they cold-called 150 different people to see if they could drum up subscribers. I was instantly intrigued by this. This would not only help me gain some skills in the cold-calling world of sales, but it also helps to get others involved in the content I am putting out there.
So, long story short, I added a new goal to my project. I am already halfway through the month, so I decided to set my goal at 100 cold calls by the end of the month. I started today by calling 21 people in the space of two hours. Out of the 21, I got 6 answering machines and 15 conversations. Every person I talked to subscribed to the mailing list, and while I was calling, I sent out a few cold emails as well. I received 3 subscriptions through that.
I will do a future post in more detail about these calls, but let’s just say that cold calling people you know seems to be much different from cold calling people you don’t know. I am going to be pushing it getting this many calls in before the holidays, but I am committed to making this the best possible project, so I am putting in whatever hours necessary to make this happen.
3:00 am nights, here we come.