The Cost of Doing Nothing

The Lead - The Cost of Doing Nothing

In just under 3 months of entrepreneurship, I’ve come face to face with several of my “tendencies” that I would consider to be limiting (speaking kindly to myself).

None of these things are new to me, but as the captain of my own ship they certainly get amplified. Chief among them is a tendency to over-analyze. I’ll research, refine, rehash things over and over again in pursuit of increasing my odds of success.

This tendency is obviously well intentioned. But it’s not hard to see how this cycle can frequently delay action. Is this something you’ve experienced?

There are a few ways this has manifested itself for me over my sales career. When I sold business insurance, I would excessively research accounts to see what helpful information I could find. I still wrestle with trying to craft emails and content (like this newsletter) perfectly. I slow myself down.

I think there is an inherent fear of failure that lays beneath the surface. If I convince myself that my effort just needs a little more fine-tuning, then I delay the potential discomfort of attempting and being unsuccessful.

I doubt it will come as a surprise that I observe this same inaction when it comes to outbound efforts specifically. To many, it’s a “new” thing. Doing new things can be intimidating, trust me I get it.

If you find yourself in this place of feeling like your paralyzed in the “analysis” of what to do, how to do it, then I’m glad to be an encouragement here with a couple things I know to be true about outbound, as well as a couple stories.

First, a couple things I know to be true. The success or failure of your efforts depend more on your prospects timing and need, than your ability to craft the most perfect approach.

Does having a good approach help? Of course. But if we’re considering reaching out to a “cold” prospect, there’s only so much information we can really have about this person and their circumstance. You want to tilt the scales in your favor as best you can, but you have to release yourself of the need to convince anyone of anything.

The other thing I would say, is that until you take action you’ll have plenty of beliefs about what might work without any evidence to support it. You don’t know what is going to resonate with your prospects. You don’t know if Investor Steve is more likely to respond to an email or answer the phone. There’s really only one way to find out.

Now a couple stories:

• Biggest deal I ever sold in my insurance career - one cold email got the discovery conversation booked. Nothing fancy, right place right time.
• Current client - less than two months on the job, outbound salesperson cold calls and connects with a FRBO prospect who’s about to purchase 6 new properties and is interested in talking about management.
• Current client - sends 10 cold emails as a test, picks up an owner with 7 doors.

I’m not telling you these stories to say “expect these results all the time”. I’m sharing these stories because all of these successes began with simple action. I couldn’t even tell you what I said in that cold email I sent to get that meeting booked. I was blissfully ignorant of all the best practices that I could’ve employed.

Forcing factors can be helpful for this. For example this newsletter. When I launched BrightReach, I thought I needed to build an audience first. The newsletter was a “I’ll do it when the time is right” type thing. Then one day I threw together the registration page, and announced it was going live on x date. Guess I have to write a newseltter now.

For you, it might be setting a calendar block, or telling a colleague/peer that you’ve set a goal for a certain activity. Someone that you’ll have to report back to is definitely a good way to make sure you actually do something.

I’ll spare you the cliches about missing shots you don’t take. But if you take away one thing from this newsletter, hear this: trying and failing is better than doing nothing. Getting really clear on why the effort is worth undertaking will ultimately reveal the cost of inaction.

Big Announcement Next Week!

We’re cooking up something really cool. I’m fortunate to call Kristen and Kandise over at PM PathBuilders good friends. As a solo-preneur, I can easily find myself in my own little echo chamber. So it’s really exciting to get the opportunity to partner with really great people to work on big ideas.

I’m not going to say anything else for now. But I’ll commit to sharing the news directly here with you next Wednesday!