Over-Confident Entrepreneur Struck By Panic Attack On His First Day

Today, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about an acquaintance of mine, who was just getting into business. His aim was to become an entrepreneur, travel the world, and he thought it was going to be awesome.  I was really happy for him, and I gave him some advice (I gave him a system to use).

Anyway, the first day hits, and his plan was to do some cold calling. So the first day, he picks up the phone, and he says: “there was this resistance you couldn’t believe”. It was like his whole arm was frozen in fear, and eventually he dials the number anyway, the lady on the other end said: “hi”, and he puts down the phone, he was just too scared.

This fear, built up over the next few hours to the point where he nearly had a panic attack. It completely paralyzed him, to the point where he couldn’t do anything for the rest of the day. He spent the rest of the day procrastinating, and this lasted a week (he didn’t actually tell me he spent a week procrastinating, but I can imagine he did).

I talked to him after a week, I asked him where his sales were, because he had his whole system laid out.  He didn’t have any sales as you can imagine, because he didn’t do one single phone call after the initial one.

A real hustler would handle this differently. A member from the daily business hustle started his business, and he had his whole process all laid out, he was ready to go. He had his leads all prepared in an excel sheet (he had his sixty leads ready to go).

The first day, he starts calling, and he freaks out, same as the other guy. Then he looks at his process again, and realizes that he can do this no matter what. The second day, he does double the number of phone calls (he did 60 calls, compared to 30 the day before). He did double the calls, because he actually implemented, and he learned a shit load from doing that, because that’s how you really learn, that’s how a real hustler handles it.

You can implement this. When implementing a new process in your business, focus on having to do one specific thing, on the day that you start. Prepare a whole list, prepare whatever it is that you need (If it’s a list of phone numbers, for example). So on the day that you implement, you have to do one single task.

Learn one single skill that you’re going to have to use, for the rest of the time in your business.

In his example, he had his list, he had everything ready, the numbers of the companies, and the name of the decision makers. He was ready to go, sat there relaxed, picked up the phone, and just get through each phone number.

I really think that this second guy is going to succeed, and I would call the first guy border line arrogant, because he’s like: “I have this all handled, it’s all automatic, I’ve done business before”.

Well you have to stay humble, you can’t just assume it’s going to go well.

I personally haven’t done a cold call now in two months. For myself, if I had to pick up the phone now, I would have to go through the process, the same one any newbie would have to go through, just to get warmed up, because it’s hard, this shit is hard.

You need to do the process, you need to follow the process, no one is above the process, and if you want to start a business, layout a process, have a business model that you follow up on, that’s specific, with specific tasks. For example, which day you’re going to do it on.

We also do this in the daily business hustle, when someone joins. We tell them when to call, who to call, etc. If you have this, you’ll see your success rate go up. That anxiety, that panic attack, that will go away, and you’re going to wake up, and you’re going to realize that you can do it.

It’s a matter of trusting in a process, and following the process. If you have any questions, or similar stories, please share them below.