Of Small Beginnings, and Starting From Scratch

Beginnings.

You gotta hate these guys.

*Read for free*

You can’t say it, but you know it’s true:

• You need your first client…
• You need your first sale
• You need your first member of the group
• You need your ​first follower​

I’ve always been afraid of escalators, especially when going down. At the university, I always preferred stairs, or lifts when going to higher floors.

But do you know there are buildings that actually don’t have stairs in higher floors or working lifts?

Apparently, there are and one day I found myself at the top of such a building.

Instead of hopping on those plates like normal people would, I retracted to a nearby wall, leaned on it for a while as I watched kids and adults alike step on those plates without fear whatsoever.

As if they were made for them…

I wasn’t ready to make that first step.

I must have stood there for nearly an hour contemplating on the next move.

You see, in my head, I always thought that I might fall and tumble down the escalator.

Turns out there’s a name for this: Escalaphobia

The plan was simple: Not to mistime the steps and the handrail as well as figure out how to get on and off without slipping.

I eventually made that step, got my balance, clenched on the handrail as if my entire life depended on it, and finally stepped out.

And guess what? It was no big deal…

That said, I still only use escalators where there are no lifts

The fear of selling

For some, asking for that sale feels a whole lot like standing at the top of the escalator, nauseating on the fear that you may tumble down.

It’s okay to feel that way.

These ‘firsts’, like anything else we know, (Escalators and heights) are scary.

With the sales, it’s often because we know, deep down, that we are bad at selling.

Let’s face it: we are creators.

That’s what we do. We write, we design, we develop, we integrate, we automate, we create systems. We imagine, then we become.

Selling is just not in the list of things that we are good at.

Overwhelm

Another reason, is perhaps, overwhelm.

We know that we gonna need more than the ‘first’ to break through this industry.

• First sale ain’t gonna cut it.
• First follower will not make you a social media sensation
• First client isn’t gonna make your business thrive

So, we need 100 sales, 10K followers, 10 clients monthly…

But wait, who are these 100 people who gonna trust us anyway? Let’s see…1, 2, 3.

So to get 100 sales we gonna need to build a list of 2000 people.

Perfect, how many years are those again?

I quit.

As a result of being afraid, we’ve stalled and even halted most of our projects.

Thinking in terms of sales you have to actually make for your business to be profitable can be intimidating.

So instead of thinking of the 100 sales, let’s just concentrate on that first sale, that first client, that first Facebook group member.

Get there as fast as you can.

Then from there, apply what you learn and start working on your ‘second’, then the third…

If you can make one sale, you definitely can make another. These compound overtime and before you know it, there is a growing steady number….

But the magic happens, only when you make that first move to get your first customer.

Send the pitch!

Get comfortable with selling

I’m learning the art of sale. I’m learning, that, taking stairs up the 7th floor isn’t worth it if there is a working escalator around.

I was never comfortable with selling, especially coming from a point of running a mentorship organization.

I’m a creator at heart, and that’s all I wanna do. Create. Not sell, Not drive traffic to my website. Not ‘keywordify’ my content…

But I’ve learned, that in order to continue creating, I have to be comfortable selling. And to do so with Empathy. Being good at selling is itself, a piece of art that we can all perfect as creators.