The Big Secret: Personal Risk

Until you’ve come completely okay with failing, it’s going to be really hard to succeed.

On today’s episode Russell talks about how people are scared to take a risk because of the personal responsibility if they fail.

Here are some of the interesting things you will hear in this episode:

• The biggest reason people are afraid to take risks and why it’s so scary.
• How Russell’s mission for the Mormon church helped prepare him to cope with rejection and failure.
• And why we shouldn’t be afraid of people seeing us fail because people only pay attention to themselves.

So listen below to find out why you shouldn’t be afraid to take some risks with your business.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody, welcome back to Marketing In Your Car. It’s a rainy, rainy day here in Boise. It’s like a monsoon outside, it’s kind of fun. But it’s still spring break so I’m going to go get some stuff done for the next three hours and then I’m coming back to go roller skating with the kids. And our kids have never been roller skating before, so it’s going to be kind of a big deal and really hard, I’m sure. But it’ll be fun.

So I wanted to share with you guys today, something, a kind of cool interesting thing. I had my call with Tara a couple of days ago and on there we were talking about some of the things that make people successful and unsuccessful. There’s a lot that goes into it, but one of the things was really kind of interesting and fascinating, as we were talking about it. It is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t have success, and it has to do with….can you guys guess? Drum roll please…..

The personal risk involved. It wasn’t just risk, because there’s risk in everything. “What if I lose all my money?” there’s always a risk of whatever you’re going to try, but it’s a personal risk. How will I personally cope with this if I fail? What’s going to happen to me as a human being? What are people going to think about me? That’ll be the worst thing in the world. It’s interesting because, maybe it’s because most of you all know at this point, hopefully, that I am Mormon. So I spent two years on a mission. I was in New Jersey, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and a lot of people telling me no. A lot of people yelling at me, a lot of people cursing me out in their native New Jersey tongue and it was fun.

It was scary at first though, not going to lie. I remember my very first day on the mission, I went out there with my companion and we started knocking on doors and I always assumed I was going to watch him knock for three or four weeks, then when I was ready I would go and do it. But that was not the case. The very first door he knocked on. He did his little thing, and the next door he knocked on the door and said, “You’re up.” And then stepped back.

I was like, “What? No.” So I’m like, all nervous so I say, “Hey my name is…” and I’m totally stuttering through this thing and about half way through, it was this cute little old lady who’d answered. I was like, she’s going to be so nice, we’re going to teach her and it’s going to be so great. Then boom, she slammed the door in the middle of my thing. Mid sentence, mid word probably. I’m like, “Huh, well that’s awkward.” And I remember at that time, I turned around in the driveway and we were walking back out and there were these cars driving by, and they started honking. And I was like, “Oh.” Because you guys remember, I grew up in Utah,  there’s always people when missionaries drive by, you honk and wave, “Oh it’s the missionaries.”

So I hear this honking and I’m like, “Oh cool. I’m a missionary now. This is so cool. They’re going to wave at me.” So I look back and these guys are waving at me, but not in the same way that I was used to do when I saw missionaries. They were honking and they were sticking their heads out the car and flipping me off,  and like “Go back to Utah!” I was like, “Oh man, these people hate us.” And at first it was really, really hard. But then, we knocked on more doors and more doors and eventually, thousands and thousands of doors, I stopped, I was so ashamed of myself with rejection. They’re not rejecting me, they’re rejecting something else, whatever, it’s all cool. And I was fine with it.

It’s interesting, if you look at, this is a side note for those who wonder. If you look at network marketing, or door to door sales, you notice one common theme. 90% of all the network marketing companies are founded in Utah, and 90% of all direct, door to door, like Cutco knives, alarm systems pest control, they’re all founded out of where? Utah. The reason why is because they have all these Mormon missionaries who have spend their whole life knocking on doors for 2 years and getting rejected. They have forgone, they no longer care, they don’t have this personal fear of rejection. So they’re able to do those things.

So I think maybe I’m kind of lucky because I have that so many times, being rejected, that I don’t really fear that much anymore. That’s what keeps a lot of people back. Just that fear of “What are people going to think if I try this and I don’t succeed?” All the personal risk of putting you out on the line. It’s scary.

It’s not so much the financial, I think sometimes we hide behind the financial. “Is it going to make sense? Or not make sense?” In fact, it was funny at Grant Cardone’s event, after we came back off the stage and I was in the back and he was all excited about the presentation and everything. And then he was like, “I’m going to get out there and tell everyone to buy. If they don’t have money, they should buy anyway, if you’re already broke, what’s an extra $1000 on your credit card. It doesn’t matter, just buy it.” I was like, at first kind of laughed, and I’m sure that’s one of his closing techniques. But I was like, it’s so true. If you’re already in debt, what’s an extra thousand bucks. But it’s the personal risk of what if I try this and fail. That’s the real fear. It’s not like, “My credit cards are almost maxed out.” Who cares? That doesn’t really matter when all is said and done.

It’s that personal risk of “What if I try this and it doesn’t work. I tried all these other things and it didn’t work.” In fact, I think that I have a lot of friends and family members who have gone through a lot of school. They keep going to school and they’ve got their bachelors and their masters and they keep going on and on and on. I think part of it is they like learning, but they’re so scared of jumping in and trying that they never do it, right.

Being an entrepreneur is less about learning in a formal setting. Formal setting’s is the safe happy place. Nothing could possibly go wrong. You study and learn and you take a test and fail or pass or whatever. But there’s no personal risk ever. So people stay in there forever. Being an entrepreneur is the opposite. You’re out there with no shield, no breastplate, no nothing. You’re running out and people are shooting arrows at you like crazy. And if you’re so scared of personal risk, you’re not going to be willing to run out there. You’re in trouble because it’s tough. Honestly.

It’s funny, the problems you have when you’re small versus the problems you have when you’re big. I remember being smaller and trying to figure out how to make more sells. Now we’re so big, it’s like how do we slow sales so we can keep up with customer support and the technology. There’s a whole new set of issues that come. But every single day there’s something. I remember I heard, I think Dan Kennedy said, once every month and entrepreneur faces a decision that either bankrupts their business or takes it to the next level. And that was back, direct mail days, radio, or TV. Stuff like that. Now days, I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a daily thing. Every day it’s like, alright. Put it back on. What’s the choice?

And I take personal responsibility. This is my choice, I think it’s going to work, I don’t know but let’s just go. Boom, we take it and we go and we go and we go. And I think instinctively you get better, but I make a lot of mistakes still. But instinctively get better and better at it. It’s interesting, in some of my coaching programs, one of the biggest things that people, I let everyone in my Inner Circle vox me. What’s interesting, most of the voxers that I get are people telling me, “this is what I want to do. Do you agree with that?”

It’s interesting because what they’re looking for is confirmation and again, there’s nothing wrong with this, I’m just explaining it. It’s interesting as I watch it. What they’re looking for is somebody else to hand the personal responsibility to if it fails. They want to be able to say, “Russell said this and so if it goes wrong, Russell told me this.” As opposed to “This is my business, my life, I’m going to try it out.” I’m okay with that. I don’t mind it. In fact, it’s what keeps me sharp, keeps me going. It’s really, really fun. I enjoy it. So I’m not saying it’s negative, I’m saying it’s interesting that that’s what most of the questions are that come to me.

It’s more like, they know the answer, they just want to be able to get me to approve it so that way if it goes wrong they’ve got somebody besides themselves to place the personal responsibility on. And it’s just fascinating to me. Even at the higher levels, there’s still that fear of personal responsibility. The personal risk. Those things that go into it. So I don’t know the right answer to that other than you should all get door to door sales jobs, or become Mormon missionaries and go get rejected for two years. I know for a lot of you guys, that’s not the right answer. But it’s becoming okay with that and realizing what’s the worst case scenario? If I try this thing and it fails, does anyone really know.

It’s like the credit card thing. An extra thousand dollars on your credit card. Does it really matter? Does anyone really know that even exists besides me and maybe my spouse?  That’s, again, I don’t know the right answers to that, but it’s becoming okay with that personal risk, because you have to do that or else it’s going to be really hard to jump. Otherwise you’re going to be stuck in this learning mode. People always tell me  they have information overload, what I’ve found with pretty much all of them, it’s because they’re scared, so scared of the personal risk involved. They like the safety of learning so they study and they learn and they study and they learn and then they don’t do because they’ve learned so much that the information overload is the way to take personal risk off of them. “I’ve got so much stuff from all these people. I don’t even know what to do.” So they claim information overload and it gets them frozen in the spot. So they keep learning, “I gotta learn through this information overload.” And they’re just stuck in a safe place that the school system screwed us up, giving us.

And I think you gotta get out of that. You gotta get out of the learning and that concept and just jump. Just running and jumping. So for you, and I’m talking to you, who’s listening to this. Not everybody listening, just to you. You’ve gotta be okay with that. If you fail, it’s not that big of a deal. Nobody else even knows it’s happening besides you. That’s what you gotta understand. We all think everyone is looking at us, the problem and the reality, is that everybody is looking at themselves. We’re all self conscious. I’m as guilty as everyone else. We’re all self conscious of ourselves.

So we dress the way we do, and we do our hair. We do all these things because we’re so self conscious and we don’t want everyone else to think something about us. But the reality is everyone’s doing that. Everyone’s looking at themselves, nobody is looking at you. So when you understand that, I hope that gives you permission. Nobody’s actually looking at me. Nobody really cares. I have people come up to me and they’re like, they start confessing all their failures to me and I’m like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they have all these things.

In fact, it was interesting I was at Boise State was wrestling UVU and the head coach at UVU was my old high school Greco freestyle coach. One of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him like no one else.  So we’re at the tournament and Boise State beats UVU. After the match I run down and I’m so excited to see him. I’m like, “Greg, how’s it going?” and he looks and he’s like, “Well you saw how bad it was.” He just starts kind of justifying why they lost. I was just kind of smiling. I was like, “I didn’t even watch the match. My kids were running around like crazy. I didn’t even see the score. I’m just excited to see you.” And he was like embarrassed they lost and trying to shift that personal risk on, “Here’s the reasons why we lost.” Trying to justify. I’m like, I just wanted to see you. I don’t even care. I couldn’t have cared less who won. I was just excited to see you.

And ij think that’s what we all gotta understand. Nobody else really cares about you and what’s happening that much. It’s all you and you’re putting this stress and pressure and all those things on you. If you take that off a little bit then you’re okay. If I risk and if I fail, what’s the worst case scenario? Who cares? No one really is looking that close. It’s you. It’s you becoming okay with you. Because that’s a big part of it too. You’ve got to become okay with you. It’s interesting, the personal risk and responsibility is more like you becoming okay with yourself. Because nobody else really cares.

Anyway, I don’t know if that helps or not, but I hope it does. This rain outside is now shifting to snow. It’s crazy. The weather is insane. Everything is turning green here in Boise between the cold winter and the long snow in the winter and then this. Kind of fun. Alright you guys I’m going to go in and get stuff done before I go roller skating. Appreciate you all, I hope you have a great day and we’ll talk to you soon.