Fear, Showing Up In Person, and Long Shots and Cheap Bets
Fear
There was a point in time when I feared failure. Where the thought of losing all I had terrified me. However, over the last year, the fear has dissipated. I think theres a few reasons why.
I know that no matter what happens, I will be okay. Take my company, take my money, take my car, even take my shoes; no matter what, I will survive. I’ve lived off rice and beans (for a couple of years, lol), and I can do it again.
The skillsets that we have developed over the last 7 years of building our companies are valuable and can never be taken away. You can repo my car, you can’t repo my brain. I can say with near certainty that if I had to start over today, I would be exactly where I am today, significantly faster than it took me to get here.
Most of the time, fear is a stupid emotion. The fear of failure will hold you back from taking risks, which may have a positive outcome. People’s lives could look totally different if they weren’t so afraid of failing. How many people stand on the diving board of opportunity, too scared to jump? What’s the worst that could happen?
Show Up In Person
One of the things we’ve been very intentional about over the last few years is taking every opportunity to attend the events when we produce the merch for it (for context, I run a custom apparel manufacturer: QuokkaPrints.com). We do this for a few reasons.
It’s an amazing excuse to go to a concert, marathon, or festival.
It builds stronger relationships with clients by being able to spend time with them.
Meet potential clients who come to these events and be able to show them exactly what you do.
Let me use an example. This past November, we worked with a medium sized Marathon. Their order was decent, not huge, but not small. We helped them sell the merch we produced by going to the race and working at the merch tent. Through this, we were able to meet the operator of one of the largest marathons in the United States, who is now a client, and another individual who is the operator of 50 races across the US and is also now a client. By going to the event, it changed this from a 5 figure opportunity into a 6/7 figure opportunity. All it took was us going the extra mile. I think people really undervalue this. Do good work, know your business, put your face behind it, and find ways to show up in person.
Long Shots and Cheap Bets
There is a concept in “Great By Choice” called shooting bullets before cannonballs. Essentially, it is about taking small calculated risks before taking large risks. We’ve employed this pretty consistently, and it’s been great for us. Recently, we’ve shot two bullets. The first is related to government contracting. Over the Christmas holiday, I was perusing sam.gov (the US governments website for posting bids and contracts), and realized that there were a number of contracts we had the means of fulfilling. So, we spent a few hours going through them and eventually submitted some bids. This was a long shot, due to the fact that it was our first time, and it is quite a confusing process, so it wasn’t something we felt confident in dedicating a ton of resources to right off the bat. Flash forward to today, and we officially won a contract. With this proof of success, we hired someone whose core focus will be submitting these types of bids. The flow was: small test → proof of success → further investment.