#240: Fly Closer to the Sun

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love or or better Client this episode is a little different and much shorter than usual rather than my typical 45 minute format. Today I'm sharing a quick tip with you and this is part of the regular audio insights that I publish for my private coaching clients. I just thought you'd find it helpful. So here we go. I hope you enjoy it. You might be surprised to hear this, but I've always been somewhat shy. As a kid, I was very, very shy. I remember fear being a dominant feeling throughout my childhood. I had a great life and I had amazing parents. Really. I mean, I have nothing to complain about in that regard. I was very blessed. But I was always afraid to try things for fear of failing. I wasn't good at organized sports, and the interesting thing about that is I was pretty good when it came to pick up baseball games among neighborhood friends. It was just the formality, the attention of an organized sport that really just kind of brought out the fear. I was also terrified to ask a girl out once I got into middle school and high school. And looking back, it's funny how these childhood fears and insecurities stayed with me at a deeper level as I became an adult. For many years, I played it safe. Not because the risks in front of me were high, but because I carried all that baggage with me from my childhood. And that baggage weighed me down because they weighed a ton. So I majored in finance in college, but thank God I didn't get some kind of analyst job in an office. Instead, I ended up in sales. Probably the thing that I feared the most. Not probably. It was the one thing I told myself I will never do. And the reason I'm thankful for my sales career is that it forced me to get out of my comfort zone. It forced me to take calculated risks every day to talk to people who terrified me because they would probably say no to meeting with me or to giving me a shot. There are mornings when I couldn't find the motivation or courage to leave the house. I would make up all kinds of excuses as to why I couldn't leave on time. Sometimes it'd be noon or early afternoon before I visited customers and did my prospecting. I was paralyzed with Fear. At one point, this fear turned into what I now realize, looking back was depression. I'm not sure how mild or severe it was, but I know it was very debilitating. Not doing what I was supposed to do led to poor results, which got the attention of my boss, which just made things worse for me. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I know what helped me get out of that funk. And it was a set of audio tapes from the late motivational speaker Jim Rohn, who is a mentor of Tony Robbins and many other big names that you've heard of today. They were all mentored by Jim Rohn and Ron's ideas and philosophy and his style and his encouragement helped me take baby steps out of that dark place. Those steps led to positive results and those results boosted my confidence and sped my courage. I started leaning into my fears little by little, and I approach huge prospects that I would have never approached before, even before this low period. In fact, there was a huge company that my boss was just obsessed with and they had never bought from us because they had a very strong, something like a 30 year relationship with their competitor. And this is a business that's very much relationship based. Other reps from my company had tried to get in the door. We're talking about guys who were way more experienced than I was. They were older, more established, and no one had even gotten as much as an appointment with the owners of this company. Now, I'm not going to bore you with a story that's for another time, but I found out where the owners, who were two brothers, I found out where they hung out every morning and I got the information from their receptionist whom I befriended. So, you know, I got to know her first and would stop in every week. And she liked me and she eventually gave me that information. And after two weeks of trying to get the attention of the owners, they finally gave in. They allowed me to take them out to breakfast. And by the end of that breakfast meeting, I had an order. It's hard for me to explain how much courage and persistence this took from me at the time. Just thinking about it right now brings back those memories of fear and inner resistance. And the fear was truly paralyzing. But I did it. And that win fueled my confidence to the point where I started approaching other prospects I had been avoiding. My results improved dramatically and the president of our division put me on a fast track path to management. Now, I tell you all this not because I want to impress you, just really because I want you to know that fear is getting in your way right now. I know. I know it is. It happens to all of us every day. And I'm still not immune from that, by the way. There are outcomes I bet you would love to get, but the steps to get there involve some level of risk. But here's what I've discovered. The more risks you take, the less risky it feels to take the next risk. The fears that were stopping you lose their grip on you, and you're able to take that next step, which gives you the result you want, which confirms your original belief that you could reach that objective or outcome, which in turn makes the next risk appear much milder than it did before, and that makes it more palatable to take the next steps. And so the cycle goes. It's like a muscle. So that's why I'm such a big proponent of taking smart, calculated risks. Not because of the outcome of the financial reward you'll get. And yes, those are nice, but they're not the biggest benefit of taking risks. It's important because of the person you become as you continue to push the boundaries of your comfort zone. Having said that, I do have a warning for you. It's important to understand that there's a plateau to this process. There's like an optimal window or sweet spot. And if you push yourself beyond that sweet spot or plateau, you risk moving in the wrong direction. You could fall prey to hubris and foolish pride, and that's always a destructive path. So you have to be careful. You want to keep inching your way up that curve of personal growth, pushing your risk tolerance without flying too close to the sun. Then again, I know this much. Most of us don't fly anywhere close to the sun. So heed the warning. But also know that there's a good chance you have a ton of leeway here. The sun is nowhere near as close as you think.

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