25 years or so ago I left a good paying corporate job to get into my own business. In order to buy it, I had to put up my paid off house as collateral against the loan.
My first job was to sell 30 seats for $3000 a pop to attend a leadership course that I also had to teach (and knew next to nothing about). Some of you were there; sorry about that 🙂
This was pre-internet. I had pages of cold leads to call through, many of whom told me to bug off and quit being a pest, but I had to keep calling anyway. I HAD to make those sales.
The alternative was to go home and tell my wife that the business failed, I had to find a job, oh, and also that we had to now move out of our house and find a rental to live in.
The upside was that I could generate $90K in just a few week’s work and gain some breathing room before attacking the next task.
This kind of pressure has a wonderfully clarifying effect on the mind. It was also my most effective sales time ever, although I’ve been in sales for a long time. I should add that I sold all 30 seats. What choice did I have?
The reason this worked is because I had two critical components that every successful person needs to have in order to win.
The first one is fear. If you don’t feel any fear, there’s nothing driving you. You need to be – at least concerned – that you could fail, look stupid, get fired, or in my case, be homeless and a failure.
The next component is hope. You also need the feeling and certainty that you could win. You could be praised, move up, make more money, make a difference, or whatever it is that defines a win for you.
If you’ve lost hope, you’re not going to move forward.
If you’ve lost fear there’s nothing driving you to innovate, get busy, and be productive.
What’s missing for you or your team? Do you/they have appropriate levels of fear (not paralyzing, but motivating). Do you/they have the hope that they could crush it and be heroes?
If it’s all fear, it isn’t going to work. If it’s only hope, it probably won’t work either. You need both.
Diagnosing this will make a big difference in the productivity levels of both you and your team.
Getting ahead is about getting started.
