Let your fear of RISING TO THE OCCASION go!

[NeoDialectic]

Another 2-part post here. Part 1 being advice to beginners and part 2 asking for people with experience to check in.

Part 1​

There is so much talk of providing value, that it seems many are paralyzed in the value creation phase instead of letting their ideas fly and actually providing the value.

My advice is for you to put together a decent product/service/offering and as soon as it is functional you should put it out there and focus on getting the first sales.

So many of you are worried about failing or worried that you will over promise and under deliver. I get it. Everyone hates that guy! My advice is not to over promise. Rather it is to promise big and then rise to the occasion to deliver. Fight like hell to make it happen.

If you look through the introductions of successful people both on this forum and elsewhere, many of them will echo this very thing. They will talk about being over their head at some point or biting off more than they could chew. The difference between them and the guy that over promises and under delivers is that they stepped up and rose to the occasion.

But most importantly.....there is no occasion to rise to if you don't make the sale first.

I fully empathize with the hesitation as I too strongly believe living by the creed under promise, over deliver. But there are key moments in your life that you need to make a leap of faith and run for the stars.

TL;DR

STOP focusing on perfecting your product/service before launch and just launch. Then fight like hell to deliver the best value you can.

Part 2​

If you have ran a business of some sorts and have experience with this, we would all love for you to chime in.

1. Can you remember a time you bit off more than you could chew and instead of buckling you rose to the occasion and made it happen?
2. Are you glad that you did it?
3. Do you think you would have achieved what you have, if you played it safe all the time and only delivered your value when you where 100% competent and experienced enough to do it?

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Another 2-part post here. Part 1 being advice to beginners and part 2 asking for people with experience to check in.

Part 1​

There is so much talk of providing value, that it seems many are paralyzed in the value creation phase instead of letting their ideas fly and actually providing the value.

My advice is for you to put together a decent product/service/offering and as soon as it is functional you should put it out there and focus on getting the first sales.

So many of you are worried about failing or worried that you will over promise and under deliver. I get it. Everyone hates that guy! My advice is not to over promise. Rather it is to promise big and then rise to the occasion to deliver. Fight like hell to make it happen.

If you look through the introductions of successful people both on this forum and elsewhere, many of them will echo this very thing. They will talk about being over their head at some point or biting off more than they could chew. The difference between them and the guy that over promises and under delivers is that they stepped up and rose to the occasion.

But most importantly.....there is no occasion to rise to if you don't make the sale first.

I fully empathize with the hesitation as I too strongly believe living by the creed under promise, over deliver. But there are key moments in your life that you need to make a leap of faith and run for the stars.

TL;DR

STOP focusing on perfecting your product/service before launch and just launch. Then fight like hell to deliver the best value you can.

Part 2​

If you have ran a business of some sorts and have experience with this, we would all love for you to chime in.

1. Can you remember a time you bit off more than you could chew and instead of buckling you rose to the occasion and made it happen?
2. Are you glad that you did it?
3. Do you think you would have achieved what you have, if you played it safe all the time and only delivered your value when you where 100% competent and experienced enough to do it?

@NeoDialectic Really enjoying these posts by you and this answers my question from last night even more, thanks.

 

[NeoDialectic]

If you have ran a business of some sorts and have experience with this, we would all love for you to chime in.

1. Can you remember a time you bit off more than you could chew and instead of buckling you rose to the occasion and made it happen?
2. Are you glad that you did it?
3. Do you think you would have achieved what you have, if you played it safe all the time and only delivered your value when you where 100% competent and experienced enough to do it?

I'll go first.

1. There have been several times in @fastlane_dad and I's business where we made a decision to keep selling when we knew it could lead us to selling more stock than we had. Frequently it was associated with us pushing an advertising campaign that could have went bust or boom (and it went boom!). We would either have to pause/delay a campaign or risk over selling. Campaigns were never paused as long as we thought there was any way in hell we could make it happen if needed.
2. Absolutely. It can be a bit bittersweet when you are excited about a recent success, but know before even doing the math that it's actively digging a hole faster than you can fill it. We always did. We would make phone calls to all suppliers and if needed paid ridiculous amounts of money to make sure everyone was happy getting us what we needed when we needed it. That could at times mean paying for faster production and then paying to sent PALLETS worth of boxes UPS overnight to us. Then overnight to warehouses. Which could sometimes make the entire campaign questionable return wise. But it would ensure our momentum remained and over the long term it always paid off.
3. No. Maybe this specific example wouldn't be make or break. But playing it safe and not occasionally biting off more than you could chew would have drastically slowed us down.

 

[Goodfella999]

I'll go first.

1. There have been several times in @fastlane_dad and I's made a decision to keep selling when we knew it could lead us to selling more stock than we had. Frequently it was associated with us pushing an advertising campaign that could have went bust or boom (and it went boom!). We would either have to pause/delay a campaign or risk over selling. Campaigns were never paused as long as we thought there was any way in hell we could make it happen if needed.
2. Absolutely. It can be a bit bittersweet when you are excited about a recent success, but know before even doing the math that it's actively digging a hole faster than you can fill it. We always did. We would make phone calls to all suppliers and if needed paid ridiculous amounts of money to make sure everyone was happy getting us what we needed when we needed it. That could at times mean paying for faster production and then paying to sent PALLETS worth of boxes UPS overnight to us. Then overnight to warehouses. Which could sometimes make the entire campaign questionable return wise. But it would ensure our momentum remained and over the long term it always paid off.
3. No. Maybe this specific example wouldn't be make or break. But playing it safe and not occasionally biting off more than you could chew would have drastically slowed us down.

Im sure you've answered this before, but were you doing private label on both your own site and amazon?

 

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[NeoDialectic]

Im sure you've answered this before, but were you doing private label on both your own site and amazon?

While we have used private label products to temporarily test markets, none of our actual end products were ever private label. They were always unique formulas created by our company.

 

[SiuLung]

Another 2-part post here. Part 1 being advice to beginners and part 2 asking for people with experience to check in.

Part 1​

There is so much talk of providing value, that it seems many are paralyzed in the value creation phase instead of letting their ideas fly and actually providing the value.

My advice is for you to put together a decent product/service/offering and as soon as it is functional you should put it out there and focus on getting the first sales.

So many of you are worried about failing or worried that you will over promise and under deliver. I get it. Everyone hates that guy! My advice is not to over promise. Rather it is to promise big and then rise to the occasion to deliver. Fight like hell to make it happen.

If you look through the introductions of successful people both on this forum and elsewhere, many of them will echo this very thing. They will talk about being over their head at some point or biting off more than they could chew. The difference between them and the guy that over promises and under delivers is that they stepped up and rose to the occasion.

But most importantly.....there is no occasion to rise to if you don't make the sale first.

I fully empathize with the hesitation as I too strongly believe living by the creed under promise, over deliver. But there are key moments in your life that you need to make a leap of faith and run for the stars.

TL;DR

STOP focusing on perfecting your product/service before launch and just launch. Then fight like hell to deliver the best value you can.

Amazing way to put in words what many of us feel without being able to put the finger on it. Thank you for showing us that success lies beyond our comfort zones.
I must admit I'm guilty of this. Sometimes I try to think about how such and such business started, and I can't help but think that the person who started it miraculously got a request to provide the product/service for which he had the exact mix of needed skills. I know this isn't true, but through the lenses of a "wantrepreneur", the mind finds this realistic.

Part 2​

If you have ran a business of some sorts and have experience with this, we would all love for you to chime in.

1. Can you remember a time you bit off more than you could chew and instead of buckling you rose to the occasion and made it happen?
2. Are you glad that you did it?
3. Do you think you would have achieved what you have, if you played it safe all the time and only delivered your value when you where 100% competent and experienced enough to do it?

I'm not a business owner but I kind of experienced this as an employee.

1. My former job was being an inside sales rep for a modular construction company. We weren't manufacturing anything, we sort of like "brokered" between eastern and southern europe manufacturers, and we had 2 preferred manufacturers. Sometimes very big or very technical projects came our way and we weren't sure we would be able to make a proper offer to the customer. But we looked for solutions and suppliers until the very last moment, and we would only tell the customer we wouldn't be able to make an offer if we investigated all the solutions available to us or if the deadline was over.

2. At first, this wasn't really enjoyable because it was a bit stressful and it made me feel like an impostor. But this was a good way to get me out of my comfort zone. I must admit that if my employer didn't make me do this, I wouldn't have done it by myself.

3. I wouldn't have closed as much sales as I did if I didn't apply this way of doing. Our strength was that we could provide bespoke modular projects, but competitors often limited themselves to standard specs (because it was easier) so while they had to compete on price, we had the advantage of being very flexible with our products' characteristics. Plus I learned a ton of things regarding the design of modular structures.

----

@NeoDialectic Did you have this fear too, or is this something you never suffered from? How did you overcome it?
Did you wait to feel comfortable selling your product/service, were you knowledgeable about it?

Thank you for the enormous knowledge you're bringing to the forum.

 

[Goodfella999]

If you had to do it all over again. Would you do ecomm?

 

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[Johnny boy]

This post is right where I'm at right now

I had figured I would be growing my company pretty slowly. Get more customers, buy more trucks, purchase land, hire more people, etc. And 10 years later I would be opening up a few locations.

Then I talked with people from here that said I was being a pussy and could grow faster and should franchise. So that's what I did.

I wasn't ready for that but I still did it.

It forced me to change our systems and use more automation and to hire our first location manager. A lot of firsts happened this year.

Then one of our franchisees said "I hope your system will handle a shit ton of growth next spring, we are going to be spending a boatload on ads, better be ready" and "hey I brought on two other people that want to be franchisees, can you take it on?"

"......yes"

I am NOT going to be the lame boomer that never wants to grow. I realize that the nervousness is just excitement, that everything I ever want is on the other side of that feeling, so I lean into it as much as possible and don't say no to good opportunities. You gotta say yes to change and that's easier said than done.

I fully believe in committing first and letting pressure force you to get it done, I do it with most things in my life.

Now, we've got a full blown app hitting the app store soon, an automated system for instant quotes and a bunch of api that onboards them into our systems automatically, and we're hiring more sales people and appointment setters in the spring. Never would've needed to do that if I wasn't forced to grow.

The easiest way to force growth is to delegate it.

That means if you're lazy and don't call enough people and do enough sales appointments, hire an appointment setter, you won't blow off a meeting, and their job is to set appointments and they don't want to get fired so they will make tons of calls. It's a magic combination. But when you do it you sit on the couch and think "man, I should work more I wish I was more disciplined."

Someone else is helping us add locations, they are ramming them down our throat so we have to grow quickly.

Someone is hired for setting appointments and making calls, so leads are coming in hot.

And the employees do the work, there's no "I don't feel like it today". It means the jobs get done.

But when it was just me...."eh...I'll call them later" "eh...I'll head home early today".

It's like the conveyor belt from I love Lucy

It's why there's conveyor belts in the first place, to force you to hurry the F*ck up.



No conveyor belt = do it at your own pace = 1 MPH

conveyor belt = hurry the F*ck up = 100 MPH

So now, I only need to have balls once. It's when I say "it's time to grow" and I put someone in charge of creating that "conveyor belt" in our business that forces us to rise to the occasion. I don't need discipline. Franchisees are coming in. Leads are coming in. It's "hurry the F*ck up" mode and the pressure causes me to improve without even trying.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Amazing way to put in words what many of us feel without being able to put the finger on it. Thank you for showing us that success lies beyond our comfort zones.
I must admit I'm guilty of this. Sometimes I try to think about how such and such business started, and I can't help but think that the person who started it miraculously got a request to provide the product/service for which he had the exact mix of needed skills. I know this isn't true, but through the lenses of a "wantrepreneur", the mind finds this realistic.

Dead on. You need to be ambitious, willing to learn, take risks and willing to work hard at it. We all see opportunities pass by us and think "wow if only I knew X, Y, Z I could seize it." Someone just does and then learns along the way.

I'm not a business owner but I kind of experienced this as an employee.

1. My former job was being an inside sales rep for a modular construction company. We weren't manufacturing anything, we sort of like "brokered" between eastern and southern europe manufacturers, and we had 2 preferred manufacturers. Sometimes very big or very technical projects came our way and we weren't sure we would be able to make a proper offer to the customer. But we looked for solutions and suppliers until the very last moment, and we would only tell the customer we wouldn't be able to make an offer if we investigated all the solutions available to us or if the deadline was over.

2. At first, this wasn't really enjoyable because it was a bit stressful and it made me feel like an impostor. But this was a good way to get me out of my comfort zone. I must admit that if my employer didn't make me do this, I wouldn't have done it by myself.

3. I wouldn't have closed as much sales as I did if I didn't apply this way of doing. Our strength was that we could provide bespoke modular projects, but competitors often limited themselves to standard specs (because it was easier) so while they had to compete on price, we had the advantage of being very flexible with our products' characteristics. Plus I learned a ton of things regarding the design of modular structures.

----

Thank you for sharing the experience. This fits the mold exactly. It may feel bad to say you will do something when you have no way of knowing if you can...... But think about it..... If you guys weren't gonna take it WHO WILL? Someone has to solve the problem. No one else is stepping up because it's high risk and unknown. Atleast you are trying. If that isn't providing value I don't know what is.

@NeoDialectic Did you have this fear too, or is this something you never suffered from? How did you overcome it?
Did you wait to feel comfortable selling your product/service, were you knowledgeable about it?

Thank you for the enormous knowledge you're bringing to the forum.

I appreciate the kind words.

I am someone that really feels "under-promise over-deliver" to my core. It is my biggest pet pieve when people aren't just up front with me. Since I try to live by my values, it is for sure a BIG fear. I think my eagerness to learn and can do attitude helped me override some of the feelings in my youth.

The primary way I overcome it is by being honest and taking full responsibility when something doesn't go according to plan. That doesn't mean I can't look on the bright side and be optimistic. From my earlier example, taking responsibility meant that I overpaid insane amount to get the products delivered on time. So much so that it may not even be making me money. No one said responsibility is the fun part!

A more everyday example may look like this. If I was a plumber and someone called me to fix a leak that I've never dealt with before and may require a few men I don't even have. I would tell them I have never had to do this particular type of leak but it's nothing that I shouldn't be able to handle. I can do it Friday at 2pm for you for $xxx. I would then start my search for people and start learning how to fix that type of leak. I would show up and do my absolute best. But if after everything I couldn't fix it, I wouldn't charge them for my time. I would apologize for wasting their time and give them a referral...... On the upside, let's say I did fix the leak. Now I am experienced in it and I have a team as well. I check google and see no one is advertising for this type of rare leak. Turns out that in a city of 5 million, rare happens all the time. Now I am charging thousands a day fixing this type of leak and my old plumbing biz is on the back burner.

Hope that helps.

 

[Andy Black]

This post is right where I'm at right now

I had figured I would be growing my company pretty slowly. Get more customers, buy more trucks, purchase land, hire more people, etc. And 10 years later I would be opening up a few locations.

Then I talked with people from here that said I was being a pussy and could grow faster and should franchise. So that's what I did.

I wasn't ready for that but I still did it.

It forced me to change our systems and use more automation and to hire our first location manager. A lot of firsts happened this year.

Then one of our franchisees said "I hope your system will handle a shit ton of growth next spring, we are going to be spending a boatload on ads, better be ready" and "hey I brought on two other people that want to be franchisees, can you take it on?"

"......yes"

I am NOT going to be the lame boomer that never wants to grow. I realize that the nervousness is just excitement, that everything I ever want is on the other side of that feeling, so I lean into it as much as possible and don't say no to good opportunities. You gotta say yes to change and that's easier said than done.

I fully believe in committing first and letting pressure force you to get it done, I do it with most things in my life.

Now, we've got a full blown app hitting the app store soon, an automated system for instant quotes and a bunch of api that onboards them into our systems automatically, and we're hiring more sales people and appointment setters in the spring. Never would've needed to do that if I wasn't forced to grow.

The easiest way to force growth is to delegate it.

That means if you're lazy and don't call enough people and do enough sales appointments, hire an appointment setter, you won't blow off a meeting, and their job is to set appointments and they don't want to get fired so they will make tons of calls. It's a magic combination. But when you do it you sit on the couch and think "man, I should work more I wish I was more disciplined."

Someone else is helping us add locations, they are ramming them down our throat so we have to grow quickly.

Someone is hired for setting appointments and making calls, so leads are coming in hot.

And the employees do the work, there's no "I don't feel like it today". It means the jobs get done.

But when it was just me...."eh...I'll call them later" "eh...I'll head home early today".

It's like the conveyor belt from I love Lucy

It's why there's conveyor belts in the first place, to force you to hurry the F*ck up.

View attachment 45599

No conveyor belt = do it at your own pace = 1 MPH

conveyor belt = hurry the F*ck up = 100 MPH

So now, I only need to have balls once. It's when I say "it's time to grow" and I put someone in charge of creating that "conveyor belt" in our business that forces us to rise to the occasion. I don't need discipline. Franchisees are coming in. Leads are coming in. It's "hurry the F*ck up" mode and the pressure causes me to improve without even trying.

Reminds me the story of two brothers who owned a vineyard. One promised he'd sell all the wine his brother made. The other promised he'd make all the wine his brother sold.

 

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[NeoDialectic]

This post is right where I'm at right now

I had figured I would be growing my company pretty slowly. Get more customers, buy more trucks, purchase land, hire more people, etc. And 10 years later I would be opening up a few locations.

Then I talked with people from here that said I was being a pussy and could grow faster and should franchise. So that's what I did.

I wasn't ready for that but I still did it.

It forced me to change our systems and use more automation and to hire our first location manager. A lot of firsts happened this year.

Then one of our franchisees said "I hope your system will handle a shit ton of growth next spring, we are going to be spending a boatload on ads, better be ready" and "hey I brought on two other people that want to be franchisees, can you take it on?"

"......yes"

I am NOT going to be the lame boomer that never wants to grow. I realize that the nervousness is just excitement, that everything I ever want is on the other side of that feeling, so I lean into it as much as possible and don't say no to good opportunities. You gotta say yes to change and that's easier said than done.

I fully believe in committing first and letting pressure force you to get it done, I do it with most things in my life.

Now, we've got a full blown app hitting the app store soon, an automated system for instant quotes and a bunch of api that onboards them into our systems automatically, and we're hiring more sales people and appointment setters in the spring. Never would've needed to do that if I wasn't forced to grow.

The easiest way to force growth is to delegate it.

That means if you're lazy and don't call enough people and do enough sales appointments, hire an appointment setter, you won't blow off a meeting, and their job is to set appointments and they don't want to get fired so they will make tons of calls. It's a magic combination. But when you do it you sit on the couch and think "man, I should work more I wish I was more disciplined."

Someone else is helping us add locations, they are ramming them down our throat so we have to grow quickly.

Someone is hired for setting appointments and making calls, so leads are coming in hot.

And the employees do the work, there's no "I don't feel like it today". It means the jobs get done.

But when it was just me...."eh...I'll call them later" "eh...I'll head home early today".

It's like the conveyor belt from I love Lucy

It's why there's conveyor belts in the first place, to force you to hurry the F*ck up.

View attachment 45599

No conveyor belt = do it at your own pace = 1 MPH

conveyor belt = hurry the F*ck up = 100 MPH

So now, I only need to have balls once. It's when I say "it's time to grow" and I put someone in charge of creating that "conveyor belt" in our business that forces us to rise to the occasion. I don't need discipline. Franchisees are coming in. Leads are coming in. It's "hurry the F*ck up" mode and the pressure causes me to improve without even trying.

Love it. Thank you for chiming in with a perfect example. Does your vision have some vague end point where you think you will let others takeover operations while you move onto greener pastures, or is it currently just pedal to the medal for the foreseeable future?

 

[Johnny boy]

Love it. Thank you for chiming in with a perfect example. Does your vision have some vague end point where you think you will let others takeover operations while you move onto greener pastures, or is it currently just pedal to the medal for the foreseeable future?

a haiku

No greener pastures
Ima take this to the moon
Pedal to the floor

 

[Stepan]

Another 2-part post here. Part 1 being advice to beginners and part 2 asking for people with experience to check in.

Part 1​

There is so much talk of providing value, that it seems many are paralyzed in the value creation phase instead of letting their ideas fly and actually providing the value.

My advice is for you to put together a decent product/service/offering and as soon as it is functional you should put it out there and focus on getting the first sales.

So many of you are worried about failing or worried that you will over promise and under deliver. I get it. Everyone hates that guy! My advice is not to over promise. Rather it is to promise big and then rise to the occasion to deliver. Fight like hell to make it happen.

If you look through the introductions of successful people both on this forum and elsewhere, many of them will echo this very thing. They will talk about being over their head at some point or biting off more than they could chew. The difference between them and the guy that over promises and under delivers is that they stepped up and rose to the occasion.

But most importantly.....there is no occasion to rise to if you don't make the sale first.

I fully empathize with the hesitation as I too strongly believe living by the creed under promise, over deliver. But there are key moments in your life that you need to make a leap of faith and run for the stars.

TL;DR

STOP focusing on perfecting your product/service before launch and just launch. Then fight like hell to deliver the best value you can.

Part 2​

If you have ran a business of some sorts and have experience with this, we would all love for you to chime in.

1. Can you remember a time you bit off more than you could chew and instead of buckling you rose to the occasion and made it happen?
2. Are you glad that you did it?
3. Do you think you would have achieved what you have, if you played it safe all the time and only delivered your value when you where 100% competent and experienced enough to do it?

Thank you for this, will definitely remember this

 

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