Full transcript
So, even though I knew what I needed to do and why, I wasn't doing it. I had paid good money for an outreach strategy from the best in the game. I've seen the proof, I've done the training, I've got all the tools and I have all the support but I was not doing it.
And it wasn't a discipline thing. I'm very disciplined, I'm highly motivated, self-motivated, I'm accountable to myself, I've got an accountability buddy. But a simple truth that I have found in this challenge is that doing something that I resist requires a lot more energy and that creates fatigue, not to mention friction in flow. And of course, things are always better when they're in flow. Now, this is one of the first Psych Hack experiments of mine in strategy execution. So what follows, what I'm about to share is what I tested, what came up weak, what changed that same day and what didn't change at all.
So Inbound has always been enough for us. We've always had one or two good inquiries every week plus referrals. So we never actually had to do outreach. I had no serious need. But I had done it in different ways over the years because it seemed like the thing to do was always trending and we were managing it for some clients as part of ongoing marketing support. The muscle had kind of been worked a little bit, but never fully strengthened, not to the point where it needed to be when things changed.
Now, those Inbound leads dried up, maybe due to the economy or because AI changed how people search, which I think it is, but also because AI has changed the way people perceive what we do. In any case, Outbound business development became an urgent need. In my own business, it's always been my role to convert Inbound, which I enjoy, but waiting for referrals or Inbound inquiries no longer cut it because it simply wasn't working for my business. It doesn't work for a growing business. So that became an urgent part of my role. I had to become the king of Outbound, the king of generating new business when it was something that I'd never mastered.
So I found the master of it. I paid the premium. I questioned the shit out of him. Yeah, look, I've got to know everything about what I'm doing. So in short, I got the strategy, I got the training, I got the tools, and I got the support. So I had this proven outreach strategy that I paid good money for, that I know works, that I've seen all the proof of, that I understand consciously, I know it.
So why wasn't I doing it? I knew it was vital for my business. I knew what I meant to do. I simply wasn't doing it. I was letting excuses get in the way, things like, I'm not quite ready yet, I'm not prepared enough. I'll just do this one thing to set up first and then I'll have everything in place. Any of those sound familiar? There were more, of course, but I was finding myself preoccupied, prioritising things that weren't this important role. I wasn't making the calls. I wasn't sending the DMs. I was prioritising actions other than starting the new conversations that were needed. There always seemed to be something else that was a little more important to do or a little more urgent, so prioritising other things. So I was running out of time, even when these things were on the calendar, even this urgent, important thing. So we can make time. Like I said, I was putting it on my calendar, blocks in the calendar to protect for outreach, but then I was finding things that were important to get in the way. Not intentionally, of course, hindsight is a bitch, right? I definitely wasn't leaning into the work with vigour, with passion, with any degree of flow. The resistance was real.
Now, the thing is, I love conversations. I'm comfortable and confident having conversations on the phone, online. I know my shit. I know the value that we provide one-on-one, but an awesome conversion rate when there's a real need. And this is just relationship building. I love relationship building. I love people. I love meeting people. I love learning what they do. I love talking to people. So what the fuck was the resistance?
Now cold calls and outreach have never been my strength. And I was never forced to look at why, right? I was in a comfort zone. And that's the part worth sitting with. The pipeline. My pipeline was doing the work, so the question never got asked.
So when I did the work, there were 26 statements that came on the table, 24 of them tested strong. Beautiful. It wasn't about being unprepared. It definitely wasn't a confidence thing. But two important crucial statements came back weak. And they were, "I am a generous initiator and my outreach is a gift. And I protect my sacred daily slot for outreach." Now here's what I love about Psych-K. At one point in the session, yes, those two statements tested weak. But by the end of the session, they were strong. It's just as strong as the others. Now that subtle shift eliminated my resistance.
Now the thing is, doing something that I resist doesn't just take more energy, but it creates fatigue and it creates friction. And the difference isn't simply just a matter of pushing through. That flow thing is real, right? My resistance was messing with my flow hard and pushing through it occasionally. It produced uninspiring results. But that uninspiring result doesn't compound in a good way. So you can have the right strategy. You can know exactly what to do. Have all the training. Have the right protocol. You can understand exactly why you respond the way that you do, yet find yourself back in the same pattern.
Now that afternoon I sent something like 60 messages. Now I had a backlog and I just smashed through it. The difference is that I actually enjoyed, I enjoyed it. I was feeling light. I was feeling in flow from the first to the last, positive, fearless, curious. There was simply no resistance. I had gotten in the flow and I enjoyed the task, so this is something I was resisting. The outcome of this experiment was that that resistance was gone. And right now I can just open up whatever platform, drop someone a voice note, do it with confidence and enjoy the process. It's frictionless. There is zero friction, zero resistance, and nothing gets in my way.
I do owe you some full transparency here. Our strategy has since changed. My teammate follows a different process for outreach and qualification, so that the people that come to me are qualified first, and there's less of them. And I'm focused right now on a higher priority, which is the system for our business, working on our business, not so much in the business. And of course I'm spending a day on this a week. But what I can tell you is this, when I do the outreach that's required, when I do the voice notes, the DMs, there is still zero resistance in there. I did a couple this morning, and I still enjoy it. Now while changing the belief and eliminating that resistance enabled me to do the work that I was resisting and enjoy it, the strategy that we had has changed. It wasn't as solid for our business as it ought to be, so it didn't produce the right conversations. So I'm not just saying eliminate resistance and do something with our strategy. We had skipped the step that we should have done prior. I went for the easy option, a volume thing, but now we've stepped back, we've gotten the guidance that we originally needed that I avoided, and our strategy has been refined. So if I look at this experiment and think, what would a failure have been? That would have been the ongoing resistance pushing through with a guttural negative feeling to do the work, and getting still uninspiring results. That's not what happened.
Now the truth is, we can know what we need to do, we can have all the clarity in the world and the tools, but something within us creates that resistance that we might not see, because we're never forced to see, and we're busy doing important shit. But life is better when we eliminate that resistance, and we get those things done that were painful with passion. It is way more enjoyable to work that way, and business can be way more profitable as a result. If it's you or someone in a team that's banging up against resistance, it doesn't need to be there.
So if you've got something that you're resisting, I don't know, let's smash it. Book a discovery call and we can talk about how. Or just follow along on this journey, and drop me a subscribe on YouTube. That would be really helpful. Bye for now.