How Do You Gain Self-Confidence In Business?

Cool. So the next point I kind of wanted to touch on is all about confidence. And there's a lot of people that are writing in, and one particular person said, I'm 19 years old and I have no self confidence at all. How do I even get started developing confidence in what I can do?

The, the important thing to know is that you don't. You're not like, born with confidence. You don't just have confidence. And when you start something new, you definitely don't have confidence in it. Like, we could find a very confident person and if I asked them to fly an airplane, like to Australia, they're not going to have much confidence.

Right.

You know what I mean? So, like, people think, oh, I'm just supposed to be confident. But it takes practice and you need to get good at the thing before you have confidence. Like, otherwise no one's going to just be confident doing something they've never done. So that's the first kind of mind trick that people do to themselves. You know, they might try business for a day. They don't feel very confident in it. So they feel like, I'm just not good at this or I don't have the confidence. And they might say that the confidence is the thing stopping them from doing the business, but it's not. They need to keep doing it. Keep doing it and then they get it. So the key really is practice. Like, you know, it's like, let's say you wanted to be good at basketball or football or whatever, or swimming. You know, it takes practice and that's like, you know, hours in the pool or hours on the court or, you know, the amount of, like, miles you've run. If you're training for a marathon or whatever, like, you need to practice and you need to practice a lot. And pretty much someone's confidence is in direct proportion to practice. So, you know, why, you know, why is some pilots so confident to land in, you know, really tough airports? Because these airports around the world, like Hong Kong is one of them where it's like really hard to land in Queenstown and New Zealand, that's another one that's really hard because of the mountains and everything.

Oh, God.

You know, people like, they're the pilots that have done the most hours and they're the pilots that have, you know, flown in really tough situations. That's how they gain confidence. And you know, why, you know, why was that dude willing to walk across that wire between the twin Towers?

I didn't know if someone did that.

Yeah, well, like when the Twin Towers Were there. There was a wire that went between them and a dude walked across it like a tightrope.

Got it.

It's like a documentary man on wire or something. It's really good. But why was he confident to do that? Would like, would you or I be confident? No way. Definitely wouldn't because he practiced that his entire life. That's how he got the confidence to do it. So I bet you the person asking that question, like, how do I gain self confidence? Well, in what? You know, that's the first question, right? And then once you've defined that, then it's practice of that. So it's how if it's like, how do I gain self confidence in business? Like, how do I gain self confidence to be able to sell to people? Well, practice, Practice doing that. And it doesn't have to be a good cheat to get around like the actual thing. Because sometimes a lot of people think, oh, in order to get good at sales, I have to just do sales. But it's easier said than done because you're petrified of sales. So how can you do sales to get good at it when you're petrified to even start? So you get stuck. It's like a stalemate. And one thing that I figured out when training our students in the consulting.com programs is I could teach them how to sell really well. And for some people, that gave them the confidence they needed to start. But still for most, even if they knew what to do and they had the script and they knew who to do the calls with, they still didn't have the confidence to do it. So I thought, how can we get around this? And the best way to do it was like, you know, I just thought about sports. There's a lot you can learn from looking at sports and then business because in sports they have practice, they have mock games, they have drills, they have different exercises that they do so that they're confident when those situations happen during the game. And if you think about a live sales call with an actual prospect as the game, then you want to start thinking of what can be a good practice environment. And the best way I've found so far is to get is to pair the students up. So say we tell everyone in our program, post in the Facebook group and look for someone who is willing to practice the sales script with you. And then what happens is people pair up and they role play. Someone will be the the prospect and then someone will be the consultant and they'll go through a mock conversation and then they go through levels of like, intensity. So if someone's brand new to selling, you know, the, the prospect will be easy on them, but as they get better, the prospect gets more and more like, difficult to deal with to practice. And at first I had my reservations about doing this because I was like, will this really simulate the real world environment and everything? And it definitely did. Like, people would just do these practice calls and then after they did enough of them, they weren't scared at all to do the real ones. So it seems silly to practice something like a sales call, but it isn't. Because just think about it, like in sports, no one just goes out and jumps into an NBA game without a whole lot of practice. And no one goes and competes at the Olympics without four years of preparation for that one race. Like, you know, behind an Olympic race is four years of prep and then probably a whole lifetime before that of practice as well.

Absolutely.

So to answer his question, I mean, self confidence in what? Because no one is just self confident in everything. And if they are, they're an idiot because they're going to get burned. You shouldn't be self confident in everything.

And then it becomes arrogance at that point.

Well, it becomes stupidity because the person can't fly an airplane, so he's gonna die. And so that's why you don't have self confidence in everything. And so in what is the question. And then once we know what that is, then the answer is practice. And if he's too scared to practice with the real world environment, simulate one.

What if they're too scared to even reach out and ask someone else for a practice?

Well, then that's a good question. And the stage before that is learning. So you can't practice until you know what to do. You know what I mean? So the stage really before practice is learning. And that's just reading and just being a sponge and sucking up information. So you want to read books on sales. I'm assuming here, like, let's just say for this conversation sake that it's sales, because that's a big one.

It probably is.

Pretty much everyone's afraid of sales. I was. And a lot of people are. So, you know, you're not going to be confident practicing until you know what to do. So read sales books. Like, you know, read at least five books. Once you read five books, you're going to know quite a lot and then figure out how sales is done for your particular thing, which you're doing. And then once you know all the information, then start practicing in a simulated environment. Once you're good there. Go to the real world one.

Got it now on those sales calls too. So I agree. I think they can get through just about anything and then even the prospects can ask more difficult questions where they have to objection handle and whatnot. But what about the actual taking of the money? I feel like when people go to make an ask for money, and I had this problem early in my career too is like there's always that slight hesitation when you want to flip the corner and then you're going to make your offer. And I see it time and time again with people in the community too is when they drop the price, it comes something like this, they're like, and it's $3,000 for the service. How did you get over the fear of asking people for money yourself?

It's a good question. And you can't just get over it like it takes time, right? Because it's really conditioned in you like from not having money and not being able to buy things that because when someone's young they can't because they don't have lots of money, right? So they're used to not being able to afford anything and being let down when the price is small. And so you're like conditioned this way. And so it takes time and it's a gradual process to get over it more and more and more and more and more. But the best way really is to get so good at what you do and what you're selling that you feel like you're doing the person a disservice by not selling them your thing so you turn it upside down. People think they're doing a disservice by taking someone's money. Well, I think that I'm doing a disservice by not taking someone's money and giving them what I've got. Because you know, if someone takes it, gives me their money and they take my training program and they actually do it, they're going to make way more money than what they gave me. So it's a no brainer for me. And like I, I have that actual mindset. I don't feel an ounce of guilt at all because I know what I've got is good and it's proven in everything. And so the best way to change that belief is to make your thing insanely good. Just keep working on it, keep working on it, keep working on it until you're really confident in it that you have that belief.

Now I know we get people come up to us too. And maybe another factor too is like people Always say, oh, that's too cheap, you should be selling that for more too. Do you think that you should strategically price what you have a little bit under what people perceive the value is? Just so you have that confidence that what you're selling is not only great and gonna have the results, but it's also way, way more valuable than you could potentially have by increasing the price. Say like people are like, I'd pay five times that amount. What's the right price? Is it okay to sell something that someone only gets 1.5 times the amount of value from investing one in? And like what's that ratio that you can just have extreme self confidence.

It's so speculative price that like there is no formula and I don't think there ever will be because it's just one of those things. It's what someone's willing to pay and you know, it's like what is, you know, what is a particular painting worth? I think last week someone bought like a famous painting for like 400 million U.S. you know, is that how can we prove the value ratio on that? You know, so like price is a very weird thing. And the best way when you're starting out is to really look at what other people are charging and kind of price similar to that. Because like when you're starting out, your price isn't the main thing, you know, when you're starting out, getting started is the main thing and doing it because from there everything else happens. And so you don't want to be too scientific about all of this stuff because over time everything's going to change. And the main thing when you're getting started is to start. So. So if I think back to my first things, like when I was selling, one of my first ever things was that online job board. I just looked at what like other job boards kind of charged and I priced below that. And then, you know, with my property inspection software app, I looked at what the market was charging and I just kind of positioned pretty much around that. And there was no science behind that. But that wasn't the main thing. The thing I needed to be improving on was just doing it. And then over time the price morphs and changes and it gets to the right base. So I think when starting out, just look at what other people are doing, kind of match that. And also a good value ratio is really like look at the value someone can get from what you provide. And I think a real good sweet spot is like 10 to 1. So if you help someone with a service and they make you know, they make $10,000 or if you charge $1,000 for your service, that's insanely good value. And a person who gets 10 grand from one grand in services, they're gonna recommend that to their friends, they're gonna do all of that. And the higher you can get that ratio of value to price, the more viral your things gonna become. You know, like the iPhone, it's got a lot of stuff for like the 600 or $800 price that it's got. Like it's really good value and that's why people talk about it a lot. They could probably price the iPhone at like 10 grand and they'd still have a huge market. But you know, they want it to be down there so that people just rave about it because then the net effect is they're going to make more. And that takes time and practice to play with and everything. And I do think it's always better to have people rave about it and price cheaper than it is to price expensive, make more money, but not have it spread like a virus.

Right, got it. Yeah, it's a better long term play. I agree. And then also, I guess going back to the confidence thing too, when you were starting, what was the biggest break point where you had to jump out of your comfort zone? Like what was the situation you were terrified and how did you overcome? Like if you had to think about business wise, the most terrified you ever were in a certain situation.

There's lots of them. Probably one of the first ones I ever had was like sales calls, you know, when one of the very first ones I had was when I had that job board business. And that didn't require sales calls, it required like marketing. And I had no idea how to market anything. So I thought, well, I'm just gonna go to the universities on foot and just hand out brochures. So I spent like pretty much the last 500 bucks I had printing brochures, like this huge box of them. I think I got 5,000 of them. And then I was like, yeah, I'll hand out 5,000 easy. And then I arrived there in my car with this box of brochures and I was so nervous to get out that I didn't go the first day. I just sat there. Then the second day I came back and I somehow like mustered up the courage to start handing them out. No one wanted them, so it was like even harder. And I definitely remember that. That's vivid in my memory. And that business didn't work out. And then the next sort of business I did required like five phone calls to try and sell websites and things to people. And I remember I was petrified of that. I'd put it off, I wouldn't get out of bed and I'd tell myself I'll call them at 9am when they get into the office. But then 9am would come and I'd be like, oh, they're probably just getting into the office. I'll let them kind of get their things under control, then I'll call them. Then mid morning would come, then I'd think, oh, they're probably getting ready for lunch. And then it would get to the end of the day and then it would be the next day. And the more I put it off, it was, that was really hard. Like that that really got me like the sales calls probably way more than the, the, the brochure thing was the first one, but the sales call one was way worse. Yeah, because the first cold call I ever made, the guy just hung up on me straight away. So like, oh, that was so hard to get around because I had such a bad start and I tried everything, even having like couple of beers before, like doing the phone calls and man, that was a tough one.

But have you ever dialed someone then hung up before they could even answer?

I can't remember probably, but I remember when I was calling I was always just hoping that they actually didn't pick up.

They go to voicemail.

Which is kind of messed up because you're really trying to sell things but your brain just plays tricks with you.

That's funny. So what, what was the, the tipping point there? Was there any moment you can remember where you're like, maybe it's starting to get easier if it was a gradual process or there was one moment where you're like, okay, I got this. What, what was that point?

It's just practice. Honestly, like nothing really changed. The amount of people who would like hang up, hang up on me or, or not listen to me or whatever was still the same, but I just done it more so it just kind of rolled off my tongue easier and I just got hardened to, I got hardened to like, to the rejection and everything. And over time you get hardened. Like you know, you get once you've like a good way to put it might be, you know, if you've spent time in the cold, like out in snow and everything like that, when cold comes around, you're not, you're alright, you're like, I've been here, this is fine, this isn't even cold. But the first Time you have it, you. You think you're gonna die. Like, I've had friends come over from Florida and I'm like, they're freaking out, like totally freaking out. New York. And one of them won't even come. Just, just no flying in in the winter because they're petrified of it. And so it's just like that, you know, you're just not used to it and you're not, you haven't been exposed to it, so it's going to scare you. And you know, another one, another good example might be like the window washes that I see out here, dude. I look at them and they, I like, I'm scared for them and I'm uncomfortable. I'm like, I'm like getting sweetie and stuff just looking at them because it's so high. But you know, they've just done it enough times. It's not scary anymore. And phone calls is just like that. Like after you do it. And the amount that it takes to actually, for the fear to kind of disappear, it isn't that many times. It's just that initial hump. I would say after, probably, I'd say after two weeks of actually doing it daily, the fear kind of started to disappear.

Got it. It's just a matter of just when you woke up knowing that you had to do that and you were going to do it no matter what. Like, because on some of them you said you would procrastinate, like 9:15. Would you eventually call those people or would you just kind of call it a day? Once I hit 5pm and just pick.

Oh yeah, in the beginning I'd just call it a day. And. But once I started, you know, consistently doing it daily, that's when, that's when I started to conquer the fear. The key is consistency. It's because once you let it slip for one day, it's like one day becomes two, two becomes a week, a week becomes a month, month becomes a year. Like an avalanche happens from one small thing. And you've got to be extremely careful of that. Like, you can't lie to yourself because, you know, even now, like I think about it with, with going to the gym in the morning, if I let one day go, I know what's gonna happen. Like it's an avalanche. You know, one day is gonna become the week. And all of the same with diet, if you let your diet slip or any of these things. So the key is to consistently do it and not lie to yourself and think, oh, this one day doesn't matter, right? Yeah.

And also we had someone who wrote in this is very similar to what they were kind of experiencing. They said what they're struggling with is the fear of knowing what they must do. And I'm guessing that what they know they must do is probably the sales call. Like, they know that that's what they need to do in order to make money and make their whole business work. And then doing something without knowing if they'll be able to pull it off is their biggest fear. Like, how do you get past that? Of like, they know they got to do it, but they're just sitting there paralyzed, not knowing if they're going to pull it off or not.

Well, you never know if you're going to be able to do it or not. Like, you get a higher level of possibility of being able to pull it off over time. But it's dangerous to think that you're going to pull anything off because that, that means that you, you know, you've broken like the universe and that you can. You control the world pretty much. So, like, you know, even the best investors in the world, they say the times which they've lost everything is when they think they know everything, right? So you, you're never going to get to that point because it doesn't exist. You just get a slightly more confidence each time. But like, to answer his question, why is he afraid to do the thing he knows he must do? It's honestly messed up. That's like, that's the, that's like the human condition. He's asking like the question which is, which could like, fix the whole world? But like, why do people really. What I've noticed and observed is that people's choice of daily actions totally misalign to their desired future. So someone might have this desired future for themselves in their life, and then their choice of daily actions is pretty much the exact opposite of that. So, like, I used to have a, you know, a vision and a desired future to have, like, a successful business and all of this. But it was very hard to change my daily actions of, you know, partying, drinking, going out with friends and going out for lunch and keeping up social appearances and things like that. And really it's just, it's a misalignment of like, future and current and present. So the present, you've got to break habits. That's the problem with the present, the future, you can change your vision out here. Like, it's very easy to change your vision, but the hard part is to break the habits that make the vision. So I'M guessing that whatever his vision is, the habits he's got now don't equal that. And he's got to break those things, right?

So oftentimes, I remember you mentioned before, you had to change your environment before you could even do that too.

That's the easiest way. It's like a hack, it's like a computer cheat. Like if ever you want to change your habits, just change your environment. Because then pretty much it all goes, right?

So for you, how many times do you think you've actually changed your environment in a big way through the course of your career so far?

One, the first one was moving out of my parents actually before that I, I used to have roommates and stuff and we'd be renting when I first was at college and everything. And then to start my own business, I actually had to move back in with my parents because I had to sacrifice the being cool and having the freedom and everything. I had to sacrifice that to have the money to start the business. So that was the first environment change. And while the environment was, you know, moving back home, it meant there wasn't parties and everything. I mean there wasn't always people to talk to. But it was also a decision to sacrifice something. So like I was purposefully putting myself in a worse situation so that I could win in the future. And that was a good decision. Like I was sacrificing now for the future. And it was, it's like putting skin in the game, you know. That was the first environment change. Then the second one was moving out of there and into my first like apartment, which I had to myself. And that was a big jump because that involved like having a lease to commit to.

Right.

So I'd been, I, you know, I'd grown my business up to the point where it was making about five grand a month in my parents garage and having no actual real obligations. You know, my parents, it didn't force me to pay anything and all of the expenses we had could be cancelled within a month. And this was my first like it was a two year lease and it was like I was like, am I going to be able to make money consistently? I'd never thought about my five grand a month. Is that really good? Every month. And so that change there put me on the hook for something and that was really good because it lit a fire in me and I, that's where my business took a big jump because all of a sudden I was on the hook and so I moved. I, you know, I, I worked harder and then the Next one was probably the biggest jump I've ever done was moving from New Zealand to New York because you know, you bring New Zealand dollars to New York and you bring New Zealand dollars to America and they're just cut in half and then everything's in New York is the most expensive new the world. I mean that like my power bill here was like per month was like pretty much more than my rent. So that was one hell of a jump. And that scared the out of me and everything was so expensive and you know, I moved straight into this place which is really expensive and all of a sudden everything just got way more expensive and my money got cut in half and I was in a foreign country. So logically that means that it's a stupid decision, but what happened in reality was it just lit a massive fire in me and I just worked harder than ever and that's when I made the biggest jump I've ever made. So sometimes in the beginning I think it's good to change your environment. Sometimes you've got to move backwards a bit because you know you've loaded yourself up with too many personal life expenses which you don't need. So the first one is a decision to sacrifice and then once you've sacrificed and you've gotten started, it's a decision to play at a bigger level. You know what I mean?

Right? Yeah. And then at this point too, so like you always hear the phrases of people that say like always live within your means. Like that doesn't, it's good advice but it doesn't always work and it doesn't always get you to where you need to go if you're wanting something more out of life. I suppose.

Yeah. I think in the beginning most people live outside of their means and that's their problem. You know, most people I know that have a day job and wish they didn't, they spend all their money every, every month like that. When they get paid it's like, oh, we can go out tonight, like to the pub. And these people are my age and some of them even make like six figure salaries. Right. It's, it's. That sort of behavior is not going to help you ever. You should never live like that. It's not the way to live. And it's because it's no self control and it's not saving anything for a rainy day and it's pretty much thinking that it's always going to be there and it's not. So that's a bad way to live. I think most people need to Learn first to go within their means. It's a bit of self control. And then once they've mastered that, though, there's like decisions of playing at a bigger level. And that's, you know, that's deciding to put yourself on the hook for big expenses and things, knowing that by doing that, it's gonna like light a fire on you to stretch there. Yeah.

And it doesn't have to be necessarily like a living situation too. It could be like a business investment as well. Just like something that they're leveling up their playing field. Maybe it's like rent for their office or a business loan because they need the inventory to cover a purchase order that they just purchased. Something like that as opposed to generally.

If it's a smart business decision. But it stretches you. That's like a good one.

Got it.

You know, you don't want to be stretching yourself for like a Lamborghini. Although, you know, sometimes even things like that can make someone work. Like there was, I read a book on psychs, like psychology, and they said that if you gave someone a sales rep a Ferrari and then said if you don't meet your quota, we take it back. They work really hard.

Yeah.

So, you know, once someone has it, once someone's achieved a level, they will never want to let it go. So like, sometimes even weird things like that can make. Can light fires in you. But I think in the beginning, most people are too used to living outside and they've got to pull it back.

Got it.

And then comes the sort of the increase.

Got it. That makes sense. Cool. And then alternatively, so that was like a person saying the fear of knowing what I must do. Then alternatively, there was someone who I thought was interesting, said that the fear of knowing what to do. So it's like the exact opposite. It's like someone who is. They know exactly what they do and they're just paralyzed. But then someone who has so many options, they're also paralyzed. Both people are equally paralyzed. What do you do? What did you do about putting yourself out there in the beginning and feeling insecure about the different things you were considering? Like, what's the best possible situation for someone considering a lot of things?

Sure. Well, the. You really learn in life like that you can't. You can do almost nothing. Like, you know, with the amount of time you have, the amount of, you know, in your life, and then the amount of time in your days and weeks and years, I mean, you can pretty much achieve nothing unless you just go all in on some one on one thing and even then it's hard. So I think a lot of people think like starting multiple businesses and having a side gig here and a side gig here and all, like it never works like that. The people who do good at things just do one thing and that's it. Like Michael Phelps daily to do list was wake up, get in, pull. I love that that was it. And pretty much mine is wake up, go to desk. But that's pretty much all I do. I don't really do anything else. So then that's how I get good at it. And really you've got to understand that to get good at things you're going to have to sacrifice everything that isn't that thing. Like I think a lot of people, they think that they can start a business and keep their social life as it is and keep like their drinking life if they like going out and partying and keep their video game life and keep, keep all of these lives like while starting this business. And it's not really true like it. But starting a business and becoming, you know, you can, you can start a mediocre business with a whole bunch going on, right? But to get really good at something, you got to sacrifice it all. Everything's got to get cut. And I mean you can, I'm not saying like, you know, you can still have a family and a relationship and those things, but all of those other things which you're probably used to, like they're going to get cut. So I would just, if I was that person asking that question, I would think what do I truly want? Like one year, three years, five years, what do I want? Like where do I want? Maybe they can't answer it specifically, but what sort of life do they want? Where do they want to live? What do they want to do? Like how much money do they want to have? Kind of paint that picture in the future and that will dictate what they need to do now. And then they just, they need to you know, practice like non attachment to all of these things because you need to get rid of it all. Like I had to get rid of everything because you carry around so much like baggage of things that you need to just drop it all and just channel everything in.

So if someone's considering, let's say three different businesses and they're like I'm going to do three at once, which obviously is most of the time a bad idea. How, what, what's the better way to evaluate which of those three businesses they should do? Should they just pick one and then go after that, randomly, like, flip a coin, or should they maybe evaluate each one separately, kind of learn a little.

Bit more about it. Method I've ever seen for it. Gun to your head.

Gun to your head.

So just imagine that you're, you know, someone literally pulls a gun, puts it to your head, and they're like, you have to choose the one business that's going to be successful. And if it isn't successful and you choose it, you get killed anyway. But if you don't pick one in the next, like, two minutes, you get killed anyway.

Right, Right.

And be serious about that decision. And, Pete, sometimes I get people to do this and they're like, oh, no, but I can't do that. I'm like, but then you're dead, so you have to. And they still can't get their head around it, but they did. Yeah. So you have to choose one. And then they're trying to use logic and all of this stuff, but you don't have time for that. You don't have time to evaluate pros, cons. All of that stuff's pretty much bullshit anyway. Like, when you're put in a situation like that where it's life or death, you make really good decisions. So, you know, that's the. That's what I would do every time. Gun to your head. What is it? And then start with that. Because the beauty of it is, if that's wrong anyway, it doesn't matter because at least you've started now. You can start on the second one and you've already got the momentum. And pretty much the first thing people start with is never the thing that's successful. So the key is just to start. But a lot of people get paralyzed at the start lines trying to find the right business. I mean, the people who. When I first started, the people who were paralyzed there with me, they're still there now. And I've done 12 wrong things and found the right one. Yeah. So. But they still haven't picked the right one because it's impossible. So the key is just do the gun to your head. Exercise whatever it is. Start it. If that's wrong, it doesn't matter. Start the next one. Play your gun to your head again and just keep going.

I like it.