Earlier today I was listening to an episode of Jeff Goins’ great podcast The Portfolio Life.
If you haven’t heard of Jeff he wrote a book called Real Artists Don’t Starve, debunking the cliche of the starving artist. He also creates brilliant content on how you can be a writer or an artist and make money from it today. Check him out.
Anyway, Jeff came out with a great observation that really made me sit up and take notice. He said—when it comes to reaching out to people when you’re trying to build your dreams:
‘No is not your job’.
That right there is a great way to approach not only business, but life in general.
Think about it this way. If you’re building a personal brand online than, as I’ve said before, you need to put out new pieces of content continuously for your audience—blog posts, articles, videos, photographs, podcasts. Whatever it might be.
Each bit of content can be seen as an ‘approach’—you’re putting your head above the parapet, offering your wares and seeing if anyone bites.
(In the case of online content, ‘bites’ might be the number of views you get, comments, likes, retweets etc.)
Frequently, people won’t put out content because they are afraid their target audience won’t like it. That the people they’re trying to reach will say ‘no’ to them.
Well, they might. It’s a possibility. But no is not your job. Your job is to make the approach (by creating and publishing the content). Your job is to get your message out there. If some people want to say ‘no’ to it (and some will) then they can. That’s their right.
But don’t do so for them in advance.
When we think ‘I won’t publish this / speak to that girl / approach that new business contact’ because we fear the we’re going to be rejected, we are shutting down an opportunity for success.
Because it’s just as likely that they are going to say ‘yes’.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, whether from dating or from business, it’s that you never really know what’s going to be a ‘hit’ and what isn’t. On that basis, it’s far better to put yourself and your content out there r and then leave it up to your target market whether they want to say no or not.
After all, that’s their job.
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