“What if nobody gets it?”
A story of fear and being far too British for my own good…
Earlier this year I was asked to be on The Shut Up Show, an episodic web interview series run by Phil Gerbyshak and Berni Xiong. It was thanks to the ever-awesome Brandie McCallum that I’d been invited to take part.
I’ll be honest; at the time, I felt like a fraud.
On reading the list of names that had preceded me — Chris Brogan, Mars Dorian, Erika Napoletano, AJ Leon and many more — I wondered how on earth I’d been invited to feature on the same bill and talk about my experiences, thoughts, feelings and fears. But then that’s the thing with us Brits, isn’t it? We’re not known for being self-congratulatory at the best of times, and I’ve learned over my considerable years that being humble is better than being cocky.
The lead up to the recording of the show made me take stock of what I had achieved over the last 26 years in sales, marketing and running businesses. I soon realised I was being a little hard on myself. Why shouldn’t I be on the same bill as these awesome people?
I ran my first company when I was 21. I’ve been a top-performing salesperson all my business life. I’ve trained over 3,000 salespeople. I’ve been part of an Executive Team that took a business to a successful multi-million dollar exit. I’ve sold, marketed, project managed and implemented enterprise-class solutions to more than 50% of the Fortune 500 and Times Top 1000 and I’ve contributed to several business books.
Now, in my latest role, I’m heading up an amazing new product — Salesformics — that I fell in love with when I saw an ‘alpha’ version demonstrated to me over a year ago. The Shut Up Show came at the perfect time for me to talk about the product, but it also exposed my deepest fear about Salesformics.
What if nobody gets it?
At the time of the interview we had a very raw product. It was rough around the edges, pre-beta and lacked some of the functionality we really needed to include, so this fear was more palpable than ever.
Phil and Berni are great interviewers — passionate about their show in every way — and you can sense their energy from the very first instant. They took the time to ask me about my past, find out why I moved on from a fairly routine and ‘safe’ role to something as risky as a startup and delved into the things that I’m really worried about. At the time, I was particularly concerned that the ideas we had back then for Salesformics just weren’t going to translate to the small B2B organisations we were targeting.
It was a great experience being interviewed by Phil and Berni and, of course, we kept in touch since. In fact, I continued the chain of referral started by Brandie and recommended Ian Cleary of Razor Social for a future episode, which was subsequently published in November 2013.
Of course, things have moved on a lot since the show with Salesformics. The team have been honing, polishing and improving the product at a vast rate of knots. In fact, I’m downright blown away by what we’ve produced.
The lesson I learned throughout this process? Don’t be so stereotypically British and use your fear to fuel a better result. Humble still beats cocky in my book, but you can advertise and discuss your strengths (and those of the team you work with) without crossing the line between confidence and arrogance.
Many thanks to Brandie for the introduction, and to Phil and Berni for the wonderful interview.
[Photo Credit: LWPrencipe]
