This weekend, our new block had a block party.
About 75 strangers – our new neighbors – all in one place.
I walked in and completely owned it. Worked the whole block. Didn’t think twice.
And the whole time, I couldn’t stop thinking about a conversation I had 17 years ago.
————————–
“Kevin, I would rather have an unanesthetized root canal than go to a networking event. I’ll cold call all day long, but don’t ask me to go talk to strangers.”
That was me, talking to my then-branch manager, about 17 years ago.
We were in the throw-it-at-the-wall phase of building my business. And a tried-and-true prospecting method is networking – joining the Chamber of Commerce, hitting the SF Business Review annual extravaganza, rubbing elbows with anyone who might need an advisor.
After all, we knew then what we all relearned after COVID: face-to-face human contact just hits different.
The only problem? Walking into a room full of strangers absolutely terrified me. I was already decent at public speaking – most people’s nightmare – but introducing myself to a stranger? Hell no!
And yet…
My Type A took over. I already knew the place of most resistance is usually your most important path. (Steven Pressfield wrote a whole book about it.)
So I read The Art of Mingling. (No, seriously. My ex-wife never stopped laughing at me for that one.)
But having some kind of strategy to confidently walk into a room full of strangers was the starting point I needed.
And then I got lots and lots and LOTS of reps in.
Seventeen years later, I’m the guy who owns the room.
Whenever I flex that muscle now, it’s hard not to think back to before – when I was Steve Rogers before he became Captain America.
——————————-
The reason I’m sharing this is that it’s particularly relevant to a lot of our Financial Zen community.
We work with a lot of people who walk in the door saying “I’m bad with money.”
And our job is basically to hand them the FZ version of The Art of Mingling – give them a solid starting point, then coach them until we start hearing things like:
“When people brought up money at parties, I would always slink away because I felt so dumb. Now I’m the one leading the conversation.”
That’s a REAL quote from an ACTUAL member.
It all starts with one small word.
Carol Dweck calls it the power of yet – and she’s right.
I’m not good with money…yet.
I’m not good at meeting strangers…yet.
Yet is a subtle but powerful frame shift. It doesn’t change your situation. It changes your story. And the story you tell yourself is the one you end up living.