Leave Your Comfort Zone for a Better Life
Being an introvert sucks! At the same time being an introvert is a massive advantage because it allows you to step out of your comfort zone so easily. The success you want is outside your comfort zone. So no matter if you are an introvert or an extrovert you will be going outside your comfort zone to have success in the network marketing industry.
I hated speaking to strangers when I first started. However, I loved hearing successful people saying that the path to success was to step out of your comfort zone. This allowed me to always feel I was headed for success.
The first big action I took in building my business was to go around my neighborhood in North Bondi in Sydney, Australia putting up A4 printed papers on lamp poles that said something like, “Make $25,000 a month working from home.” Guess how many people called me... That is correct - NONE!
Doing this was super scary to me because what were other people going to think of me putting up these on public lamp poles. Also, what if someone actually called me what was I supposed to tell them. I had no clue. Luckily, no one called. I would have been like "...uh yeah the average is this…I have not made a single dollar but this is the average. No clue how to do it but you should join me!"
The next big mistake I made was to place an ad in the Sydney Morning Herald for about $300. It was a tiny ad, similar to something I had read in Your First Year in Network Marketing by Mark Yarnell. 12 people answered the ad but somehow I never actually ended up speaking to any of them. Another one of those thank goodness moments as I would have had no clue what to say.
When I moved back to Europe which was only about 5 months after starting my network marketing journey I once again had to face my fear of talking to people. We decided to be a part of a group of distributors who exhibited at one of Germany’s largest health shows. For four days I would ask every single person who walked by our stand if they spoke English. If they responded in either “yes” or “nein" I would start my pitch and drown them in antioxidant scanner talk. From that show I had about 12 people who were open to more information long term. The problem - I would not dare call them because I had no idea what to say. So I asked my best friend, Jannik, who was a sideline (needs another blog to explain that one) to call these people for me. I was a total chicken $hit and would not dare call people who actually wanted information. For the next 6 months I was afraid of that phone. Even when people called our house I was afraid it was someone who I had spammed on Alibaba explaining about our amazing products.
A big take away from the previous paragraph is to never barf info on people or to spam. Instead find people who are open and then listen to them.
A few months later my brother and I decided to step out of our comfort zones once again. We got clipboards and questionnaires and went to the biggest shopping center in the country - Auchan.
Our clip board had something similar to this:
Do you speak English?
Do you care about your skin?
Do you want to look younger?
Would you like to see our wrinkle iron make you 10 years younger?
I was super lucky once again in that no one actually ended up wanting a demo, got sweaty just writing that. However, my brother did sell one of our wrinkle irons to a customer through this - his skin is 1000 times thicker than mine. The key to this though, was once again stepping out of my comfort zone. I did not die doing this…maybe my confidence died a bit. I did feel that if I could survive this then speaking to more people would not be that bad.
After a couple of years of not succeeding in Luxembourg I finally moved to London. At least I spoke the language there. I was desperate at this point to make this work. I had lost the confidence that I could succeed from everyone including my father even hinting I should try something else.
The first thing I did in London was start walking streets and going into salons and would just scrape by monthly with my points in sales to salons. This was so out of my comfort zone which was at least bigger now than when I started. Every time I pushed that door open to go in to see if they could be open to a demo of our amazing technology I wanted to cry. However, I did it and kept on pushing through.
A few months later I was able to bring some people on my team to do the same. Then at least I had the luxury to show them how it was done on the first one and then make them do it on all the subsequent places.
Even today I would be a bit scared doing this. A big hint in making it easier is to just imagine one of the next three places are going to love this. You are going to be able to introduce them to a better business model and they are going to thank you forever.
Keep pushing! Get out of that comfort zone. You will see magical things happen. You will not only grow your confidence and make new friends but also end up making way more money. If you are afraid of public speaking just go for it and do it over and over again. One day you will be proud of yourself because you pushed yourself outside that comfort zone and as a result you have grown as a person and your business has massively grown and therefore helped many more people have success.
A few things to help you step out of your comfort zone.
Read Eat that Frog
