Taking The Wrong Action is Better than Taking No Action

I remember being broke and looking to pay my bills. I was a dating coach back then and had pretty comfortable hours and a lot of freedom – just not enough clients! I wasn’t great at marketing back then, or thinking of ways to describe my service in ways it would appeal to my clientelle.

So I decided to look for a job. Since I wanted to keep coaching, a job in a café seemed like it would be the right idea. I had no experience, but thought that wouldn’t matter.

For a while, I tried to postpone that decision. I tried to brainstorm ways to get people to get my services. No luck.

So I took a day and walked around St Kilda road in Melbourne, and handed my CV to a lot of cafés there. It was a hot day and I was getting tired.

When I went into one place, the shift manager looked at my resumé.

 

Shift Manager: “You’re a life coach?” (that’s how I used to describe it)

Me: “Yeah. Just looking for some extra income.”

Shift Manager: “You know, we won’t be paying much. Do you really want to do this? You’re a coach!”

 

I told her that I did. She said she’ll consider it and might call me later. Right.

 

Leaving the store, I felt a lot of frustration. No one seemed to be interested in hiring me. Sure, I had no experience. But being rejected over and over still felt bad, even though I understood it.

On the walk home, I was thinking again about ideas for my coaching business.

And suddenly one came to me. A Conversation workshop for guys, with a focus on talking with women. A lot of guys would be interested in it. I knew I could teach it.

That single idea became the most successful workshop I ran. I taught and helped dozens of guys and ended up netting me 5 figures worth of revenue in dollars off of that single idea. It was what allowed me to keep coaching back then!

And it took going out to get a job to think about it.

Why couldn’t I think of that idea before? I was at home trying to brainstorm. I was actively saying “I want an idea to help me make money from coaching”. But nothing came to me.

The universe rewards action. Any action. Even the opposite action to what you think you want.

 

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

 

I wanted to make money from workshops, so I went to look for a job. And it came to me.

 

Trying to write this article – I failed. Multiple times. I erased it, wrote it and re-wrote it.

I made a lot of mistakes, and wrote a lot of versions which were full of fluff and not worthy of reading.

 

In my online businesses, I made a lot of mistakes which cost me thousands of dollars. Investments that I made that didn’t work out. I remember a lot of them.

But I’ve also made more money than that, on much better decisions, in retrospect.

 

Advice:

Stop thinking about the wrong or right thing to do. If you’re stuck in analysis-paralysis – the thing that would give you a breakthrough is to take action. Any action.

Go.