In an interview with stand-up comedian and actor Daniel Lawrence, a.k.a. Larry The Cable Guy, he said that in order to make a name for himself and get his career off the ground, he called in to 27 radio stations 5 days a week for 13 years straight in character, coming up with new material EVERY single day.
Joe Rogan started recording his podcast 15 years ago, shooting the episodes from his living room, interviewing only other comedian friends of his on a very low budget, getting a friend of his who was a self-taught video editor and employee at Gateway 2000 computer store to do video production. Today, Rogan has produced over 2,000 episodes and says he had no plan or vision for what his podcast would become when he started. He just started it, paid attention to what people liked, what videos got the most traction and continued to make adjustments to dial it in.
When I initially launched TMT, I had zero budget for marketing, so I relied on cold-calling and networking to secure speaking engagements (in person and via teleseminars and webinars), to get new clients. At the time, I had ZERO speaker training or experience. I didn’t know how to sell from the stage. I didn’t have a professional keynote designed. I didn’t know how to present with confidence, so I talked too fast and looked and sounded nervous. I didn’t know how to pace my presentation, so I ran over my time and was a general mess onstage. But I kept putting the reps in, practicing out loud, writing out every presentation word-for-word, getting slightly better each time, until I could present with confidence to a large audience.
Point is, many of the highly successful people you see today in business started from VERY humble beginnings, zero budget, no talent, no resources and even NO PLAN for growth. They simply put in their reps FOR YEARS and finally figured it out. The proverbial “overnight” success that only took 20+ years to build.
If you look at any highly successful person in their prime, they look supremely confident and capable, leading many to think they were “born” with the skill you see onstage today – that it must be effortless for them to do what they do. Going back to Joe Rogan, many are jealous of his success and indignant that he’s making multiple millions of dollars for simply “sitting and talking to people.” They think it looks EASY to do, and therefore he shouldn’t make “so much money,” given the “simplicity” of what he does. They don’t get it – he’s making it LOOK effortless because of his confidence and capabilities developed from YEARS of putting in the reps. If it was that easy, then why don’t they do it and make millions? Exactly.
My friend Dan Sullivan has a great framework for getting to CONFIDENCE he calls the 4 C’s – Commitment, Courage, Capability and Confidence. Simply, most people feel they need confidence to take action on something new and difficult – to do a webinar, to host an event, to start in sales, grow their MSP to $20 million+. They believe they could “never” be successful at something because they’re measuring their current capabilities against those of someone who’s been doing what they want to do for YEARS.
The reality is, you START with making a commitment to a goal or mastering a skill, which then requires courage to take action and do it poorly, embarrassing yourself, screwing it up and potentially losing money UNTIL you’ve done it enough to develop the knowledge, experience, skill and capabilities to get it right and produce the results you want – and it’s from those earned capabilities that you finally gain confidence.
The problem is, mustering up the courage to act, repeatedly, while you’re screwing it up and doing it poorly, doesn’t feel good. You feel overwhelmed and confused as you launch anything new. You get frustrated because you constantly screw up. A LOT. You don’t know what you don’t know. You have self-doubts all the time, wondering if you’ll ever get it right, questioning if THIS is the best path to what you want to achieve – and THIS is where most people tap out. They never made a serious enough commitment to learning how to deliver a speech, make a great sales presentation, hire and lead a productive sales team, getting their ad campaign to work and pushing through UNTIL they achieve success.
Such commitments to develop sufficient capabilities and confidence may take YEARS, stacking up your experience one brick at a time to build a solid foundation and accelerate your speed to results.
Here’s a final thought I’ll leave you with that is extremely important: The extent to which you are willing to tolerate the “pain” of learning and growing, being seen as an incompetent idiot, embarrassing yourself, being criticized and ridiculed, falling on your face again and again while you get your “reps” in, directly governs the extent of accomplishment, personal wealth and success you achieve in any endeavor you undertake. The more you try to avoid the former, the more you slow your roll toward the latter, which may totally prevent you from EVER accomplishing it. This is the path of ALL highly successful people in business. Fall forward again and again. Eat dirt, ignore the insults from the sidelines, dust off, slap a Band-Aid on your scuffs and scrapes, and go again…UNTIL.
Icons like Joe Rogan and Larry The Cable Guy built their success brick by brick. Ready to do the same for your MSP? Join us at the MSP Marketing Roadshow to learn how to get more done with less, build a solid foundation for success and connect with industry leaders who have been where you are. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to transform your business and achieve sustainable growth.
