When I was in NYC last month, a friend of mine was telling me about his plans to take his personal training career to the next level.
He currently works with individuals, and also does group training through his friend’s health centre. But he wants to branch out on his own, and offer more holistic health and wellness training that focuses just as much on mindset as it does on the physical component.
He’s very experienced, he knows who his ideal clients are, he gets results for them, and he has a burning desire to positively impact more lives.
So I asked him: “Why haven’t you done it yet?”
And he replied: “I just don’t feel ready!”
So I asked: “Ok, what needs to happen in order for you to feel ‘ready’? How will you have to feel?”
“I guess I’d have to feel confident in my ability to do it.”
“What level of confidence would you need, on a scale of one to ten?”
“Umm..I guess a 7 or 8?”
“And what level of confidence do you have right now in your ability to train and coach people and get results for them?”
“Umm…an 8 or 9.”
What??
It didn’t make sense to me. His self assessment revealed his confidence levels in himself were higher than the confidence levels required to take action.
So that clearly wasn’t the problem.
I probed a little deeper, and he revealed he didn’t know much about creating websites, social media and online marketing in general. He said he wanted to learn online marketing from his tech-savvy friend first before he attempted it for himself.
That I could understand. When I created my first podcast, it was very overwhelming, so I invested in a 4 week course to learn the ropes and surround myself with other podcasters who were going to kick my ass if I didn’t take action. If I hadn’t done that, I would have procrastinated for months.
I had done enough research to know the basics of podcasting, but I really didn’t know much when I got started.
Everything I learned, I learned by doing.
Same with this blog. I got started with a simple WordPress site (it was originally at kipsandkale.wordpress.com), and learned as I went about domains, hosting, themes and ways to improve the blog. If I had waited until I was ‘ready’ to build a super duper blog, I probably would never have started! (And it’s still not ‘super duper’ by any means)
So I offered the same advice to my friend.
Instead of watching how his friend did it, I suggested he ask her to help him set up his own website and marketing strategy. Even if it was very basic, but hey, at least it would exist.
Do you ever feel like you’re not quite ‘ready’ for something?
Maybe it’s starting a blog, podcast or business. Or maybe it’s going for that big promotion or switching careers. Or maybe it’s leaving everything behind to travel the world.
If so, I want you to ask yourself these questions:
What needs to happen for me to feel ‘ready’?
How would I need to feel?
What level of confidence would I need?
How confident do I feel right now?
If there is a gap (re: confidence) between where you’re at and where you want to be, ask yourself: How do I get to that level of confidence? What do I need to do?
And when you’ve pinpointed that thing…write a list of the steps required to get there, and take that first step.
You may even discover, like my friend, that you already have everything you need to get started. You may not need to know every step (for example, to get to point A to point Z), but you know enough to get from point A to point B. Does that make sense?
Now, if you’re particularly risk-averse, I’m not saying you have to dive in blindly — it is important to learn from mistakes of others, copy successful people etc.
However, if your endless ‘research’ on how to get it right is holding you back from starting, it’s not helpful. At some point, you’re gonna have to bite the proverbial bullet and start. You can do all the research in the world, but nothing will teach you more quickly than actually doing it for yourself.
So stop waiting to be ‘ready’. You will probably never get there. Instead, get started. Get from point A to point B. And when you’re at point B, you’ll figure out how to get to point C, and so on. And soon, you’ll find yourself doing the very thing you never thought you’d be ready for 🙂
