Turn Rejection into Revenue

All right, so I’ve been here in Austin for two days. It’s my first time ever spending any time in the downtown area as I’m here speaking at a friend’s event. And I love walking around downtown areas and just looking up at the big buildings, all the different businesses, the energy, the vibes. It’s pretty cool. And this is one of the reasons why I live in downtown Minneapolis. But I’ve observed something really interesting since being here in Austin, which is that the homeless people are incredibly aggressive in asking for money in Minnesota. Like, I live in the downtown area, and I probably spend at least an hour walking through the city every single day, because I just like walking and thinking. And it’s rare that anybody asks me for money.

Like, I. Maybe once a week, a homeless person will come up, or they’ll be sitting on the side of the road, and they’ll say something, hey, sir, can I have a dollar? Or could you help? Or whatever, right? Not to say we don’t have homeless people. They don’t ask nearly as much. Whereas here, I’ve been here for two and a half days. I go outside at 06:00 a.m. for a walk. Because walking outside in Austin, Texas, anytime outside of 06:00 a.m. seems to be like just walking through a swimming pool set to 92 degrees.

It’s so goddamn hot and humid. So I’m out there at 06:00 a.m. i’m the only human, and it’s just me and the homeless people. And, like, four or five people as I walk the streets will stop me and ask for money. I’m like, jesus, everybody. These homeless people are aggressive, and they’re asking. That’s maybe just a cultural difference. I don’t know what exactly that is, but it got me thinking about the fact that as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, one of the reasons a lot of people are struggling to scale or to grow their business is because they’re not making enough offers.

They’re not asking people enough to buy the thing. And I was like, man, if more entrepreneurs had the Austin homeless person’s energy to just, like, ask every single human that’s walking by them, hey, are you interested in buying this thing? Your business would probably, like, quadruple overnight. Truly, like, the thing that’s separating you from the growth that you want in your business is getting in front of more people and actually asking them to buy the thing. So you need more of that. Homeless Austin, Texas energy is the message here. You don’t want to be like the Minnesota homeless. Now, all else to say is that I didn’t give any money, so their pitches didn’t work. It is a numbers game, right? Like, I felt bad after the first person, the first day that I was here, but by, like, the 15th, I’m like, okay, it’s a good thing I’m not feeling bad about this anymore.

Cause I would be dead broke at this point. But you have to keep asking. That’s the moral of this story. And, you know, if I was homeless, I would be asking every single person walking by, but I wouldn’t just be asking them, hey, can I have a dollar? Can I have $0.25? I’d be working on my pitch. Like, if you’re going to be asking people, it’s a numbers game. The quantity, the sheer volume of people that you’re asking, that’s number one. The second part is the conversion rate. Like, how good are you at asking for the thing? How good are you at initiating building rapport? Getting past that initial objection? I did door to door sales when we built our window washing company, and that was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life, and simultaneously the worst, because it’s brutal.

But it was a skill set that served me really well to figure out how do we overcome that initial objection that every human has, which is, I don’t want to be bothered. So I don’t know what kind of business you’re rocking. Probably some kind of digital business at this point where your customers are online and you have the ability to get in front of them. So it’s a much easier environment, I think, to go for the ask rather than standing face to face with another human and asking them for the thing. That’s a lot more intimidating. So there’s really nothing stopping you from just reaching out every single day to a 100, 100 potential customers and just making the offer. This is why cold DM’s, cold emails, they work. It’s a share volume game if you reach out to enough people.

But the thing is, a lot of businesses that I’ve worked with over the years, they just don’t spend enough time advertising to try and bring in more leads. Or just, they maybe do a couple reach outs every week. And it’s like, no, you need to be doing hundreds of reach outs a day. And if you do that, you will grow way faster than you could ever even manage. And then you probably need to bring somebody in to help on the fulfillment side and then bring some more people in on the outreach side. And that’s the game is just continually solving for whatever the biggest constraint is in the business at that moment, unlocking it, moving on to solve the next one. But for a lot of people listening to this, my guess is you would like to have more customers, you’d like to have more money coming in the door, and that starts by getting in front of more people, making the offer, and not being afraid of them saying no. So go harness your homeless Austin energy, and we’ll catch you guys in the next episode.

Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.