Turning Fear into Success

Rejection isn't the end of the world, not by a long shot.

A big part of my current business model is that I reach out to people that I look up to, to celebrities, to other business people, to other products and companies all the time to say, Hey, I'd like to work with you. I'd like to do a project, or have you as a sponsor etc.

And they continually reject me. 90% of the people I reach out to reject me.

I've had people whose podcasts have an audience that could best be described as middling and microscopic compared to mine.

And some of them take the time to write really mean emails to me to say, we would never have someone like you. You're not nearly well known enough. You're not nearly famous enough. You don't have a big enough audience.

And I say, well, my audience is 30 times bigger than yours.

I've had the same email from someone whose audience is a hundred times bigger than mine.

So it doesn't matter the size of the audience or the celebrity of the person who's rejecting you. It happens all the time.

People who are struggling to make ends meet and millionaires both reject me, so I could think about that as an end result.

The part I'm afraid of is the rejection. It feels bad.

But instead I focused on the process.

As the first part of the process is find a hundred people I want to reach out to and make a list of those hundred people. Then I find and make a list of their contact information.

So right now that's all I'm doing. I'm not thinking about the final result where I might get rejected. So I'm thinking about that. I build that list.

Then I say, okay. I want to find what they're most well known for, whether it's their blog or podcast or their favourite topic to talk about, or a book.

And I make a list of that and then I make a bullet point about each one of those things so in my email, I can say one thing that's specific about them, and then I take my email template and I send them out one by one.

And sometimes I use a piece of software that lets me write an email template, and then it fills in the blanks with those four pieces of content so I can email all those people at once.

It's all process. So I don't have to be afraid, because by the time I'm sending the emails, I've already written a hundred and I don't think about it.

But if I just did it one by one, I'd be so afraid. I'd be so terrified.

And there are people that I've sent emails to, I go, this person would never respond to me. And then they do.

And there are people that have rejected me and then a year later reach out to me because they don't realise I'm the same person that they rejected.

And if we circle back to our previous lesson about micro loops and micro successes, it makes sense because we can break down a process into small pieces and give ourselves rewards.

I can say, Oh, I've got my list of a hundred people. Check. Feel good about yourself. You accomplish the goal.

Oh, I have all their contact information, whether it's linked to their contact page or their email address or their social media platform where they do most of their conversations. Check. I've accomplished a goal.

And at the end of the day I can say, wow, I accomplished all these goals.

So the benefit of this process is twofold.

Number one, I'm so focused on the current step that I don't think about the things I'm afraid of.

And number two, each time I achieve success, I feel good.

Which means by the time you get to the part that's scary. I've already had 17 successes and it just becomes an 18th success in a successful series, and that's very powerful.

PS. Take whatever process or whatever thing you're afraid of right now, and break it down into smaller pieces. Just make a list of the steps.

It could be bullet points, whether it's five steps or 20 steps or a hundred steps.

The more steps the better. And then circle the steps you're afraid of.

If you break down a process into a hundred steps and you're afraid of three of them.

That means you're only afraid of 3% of what you thought you were.

97% of the things you're afraid of just got eliminated. It's that powerful.

To Your Success!

Steve.

Master Online Entrepreneur