Welcome to Radical Urgency. I'm Cam Gallant. Here we talk about how to love a life full of energy, abundance, and fulfillment.
Okay, so picture this. You walk up to the register and you place your order.
"I'll have a large coffee. No, make that a latte. And that bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich."
And the lovely gentleman at the counter asks you for your rewards number.
And then you go; you grab your latte - you have your bacon, egg, and cheese. What a wonderful way to start the morning.
Four hours later, you get a random text. And it pulls up on your little preview and it says,
"Hey babe, do you want to go out with me?" And at first you're like, who is this random guy?
This must just be a spam, I mean... And then you remember that guy asking you for your rewards number.
When I think of the Creepy Fast Food Guy, this type of feeling that we would get from that, it's the same as what a lot of us think about when we think of sales.
We're like, "Who am I to have this information and then to use it to reach out to someone out of the blue and to ask them for something?"
All of this is coming down to fear of being inadequate.
And when we think of inadequacy, we're really thinking of not being able to provide what someone is hoping for.
Not being able to provide value. Not being able to be the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend or to provide a product that's good or to be the person who people expect of us.
That's what we're thinking about when we are imagining our inadequacy.
Let's talk a little about value. Sales breaks down into two things.
The perceived value and the actual value.
Perceived value is the value that you think that you're getting when somebody reaches out to you.
We call something a scam when the perceived value is a lot higher than the actual value.
So for example, let's say that grandma gives her bank account password over to a friendly chat agent because her grandson is stuck in a Nigerian prison.
The perceived value is getting her grandson home safely.
The actual value is minus $5,000.
So with that big gap, that is very, very clearly a scam.
Now let's look at the other way around.
Turns out that that amazing creepy fast food guy wasn't a creepy fast food guy after all.
He was Ed Sheeran in disguise.
He's filming a new music video and he wants you to be part of it.
Wow. The perceived value was creepy stalker dude, but the actual value was 500 million views on YouTube and a personal date with Ed Sheeran.
What we're trying to do is offer enough perceived value that somebody will give us a shot and then to over deliver on actual value.
So how do we make this actionable?
Maybe you have a certain set of KPIs that you need to meet.
Maybe it's a personal goal that you want to put yourself out there more and be exposed to more people and more new ideas.
Whatever you're trying to get, how do we get that?
And how do we let people give us a shot?
Right?
I see things on LinkedIn where people apply to hundreds of jobs and they're getting nowhere.
It's spinning their wheels and it sucks.
You know; it sucks to be rejected, but more so it sucks to be ignored.
So how do we not be ignored and get what we want?
It comes down to three things. Your numbers, your demographics, and your reputation.
It starts with reaching out to more people.
If you know that your offer can benefit and positively transform somebody's life, then you better make damn sure you get that offer to that person who needs it.
We need to shamelessly expand the pool of people that we reach out to, to maximize the amount of benefit that we can give to others.
Somebody somewhere is going to be interested.
But it's not just reaching out to everybody because there are roughly 8 billion people in the world and we don't have time to reach out to everybody.
And we also want to make sure that we're adding value.
Your services are not for everybody.
They're for a very particular group of people.
There's actually a wonderful article by Kevin Kelly called 'A Thousand True Fans'.
And it's talking about how in today's age of connectivity, it can be quite reasonable that you can find a thousand people interested in what you're doing, even if it's something super niche.
So our goal is to reach out to as many people as possible, but to consider the demographics.
Again, it's our numbers, demographics, and our reputation.
If I think of buckshot, basically it's a big tightly packed container that has a bunch of different little balls in it.
So when the gun goes off, all those balls spread out and give me a wide range that hits along the target.
But if I aim that gun with buckshot in the entire opposite direction, it won't matter how many times I fire it.
And it won't matter how many balls are in each of those little buckshot packages.
Makes no difference; I'll never hit my target.
So in addition to reaching out and increasing your quantity, you've got to have some semblance of your demographics - of who could plausibly be interested in what you are offering.
When you're sending out an application and it's through a traditional application process, a recruiter is seeing the resume out of thousands of other resumes.
So the perceived value of any one resume is very low.
Conversely, if you direct a message, the CEO or some C-suite person, maybe the CTO, depending on what you're applying to, and you can demonstrate value to them as an applicant in a pool of one,
all of a sudden you've fast-tracked all of those other processes.
If you really niche down and know exactly who that person is - who that ideal client is - then your numbers won't need to be anywhere near as high as they would otherwise.
And that's really it. The third one is a little special and a little different. It's our reputation.
The more that we raise our numbers and the more that we accurately target, the more that our reputation grows.
And our reputation is that name recognition that helps us show that we are offering value.
Reputation increases our perceived value because we have a track record of offering value to people.
We have a good product. We do what we say we will. And people hear about that in time and are more likely to want to work with us.
And as this grows, money is just a byproduct of value provided.
So if you're looking for more money, or you're looking for more love, or you're looking for more of anything in your life,
expanding those numbers, and targeting those demographics, and delivering on that value promise is going to get you there.
And the amount of time it takes to do this matters more on your numbers and your demographics than it ever does on the clock or the calendar.
The faster you do this, the faster you'll see results.
And the more that you self-censor, the more that you convince yourself that you're just going to be viewed as a creepy fast food guy.
You're just going to be not understood. Then you're not going to get anywhere.
And you're not actually going to make the change in the world that you want to.
So it's time to be brave or to close your eyes, pinch yourself and just go for it.
Because the world needs you. The world needs to hear your voice.
The world needs to get your inventions. The world needs to hear your ideas.
And you have a lot to give. And right now, most of that is hidden inside your head.
That's what I got for you for today. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend.
Screenshot this, throw it on your Instagram story.
The more people who share this, the more that platforms like Apple podcasts and Spotify share this with others.
And the more that we can get this message out to more people.
So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it.
And I'm going to leave you the way I'm going to be leaving you each episode here.
I hope that today is uncomfortable for you.
Discomfort helps us grow.
But I also hope that today is fulfilling.