Elevate is a networking community organized to help our members make more money through structured collaboration and referrals.
And I want to talk about being afraid and for those of you that have been a member for the last decade, you might remember that I sucked at networking and was quite afraid of making mistakes at the beginning of my networking journey.
So here’s a story for you…
This past week I ran into a close friend as we were both leaving the tennis courts. They were brokenhearted that they were getting dominated in their tennis matches. And true story, they were literally on the verge of tears.
We both started playing tennis twelve years ago and at first we were evenly matched.
We both practiced 2 or 3 times per week and hit a couple of million tennis balls with our respective coaches over the last 10 years
But we haven’t played a match in the last 9 years because they are no longer competitive with me.
And in this conversation, they were bemoaning the fact that we used to be equal with similar advanced athletic backgrounds in other sports, and they couldn’t understand how I got to be a much better player.
And then I asked them how many matches they’ve played in the last 10 years, and the answer was 200.
And therein lies the problem because in that same time, I’ve played 2,000 matches and have hit over a million tennis balls … under pressure.
And then I asked why didn’t they play more matches?
And the answer was that losing hurt too much and that they were afraid to endure more emotional pain, so they avoided playing too many matches and they mostly played with people they could already beat.
And what they didn’t realize was that I lost the great majority of my early matches and that my ego was often devastated in those early years but I challenged myself to play matches with people that were better than me.
So how does this apply to us at Elevate?
While practice is great, you actually have to get in the game and challenge yourself if you actually want to improve your tennis game or your networking skills.
And while it might hurt now to get into the networking game and fail, I promise you that with every year that goes by without improvement, the pain will get worse.
And there’s one more truth here: If you don’t practice and you don’t challenge yourself while risking failure, while risking the pain of a hurt ego, you just can’t get better at networking or anything else.
Remember pain is temporary, while pride is forever.
Some come practice with me once per month at Elevator Accelerator, and then get in the networking game to test your skills, and I guarantee you that you will get more comfortable with doing these things, get more referrals and make more money.
