To Provide Better Business Help, Share Your Fears

Sharing your fears and life experiences is a good way to connect with someone on a very personal level

. But, how hard is it to share that you are afraid of something? Isnt that like admitting weakness? I believe that it just makes you a real person. People like to do business with real people. People do business with those they know, like and trust. And when you know people better, you can help them more effectively.

So, to help you get comfortable with this idea, I will start the sharing. I am afraid of heights. Terrified in fact. I know that Im afraid of heights because I have watched a lot of Mountain Dew commercials. They always take the camera and look over a huge cliff or out of a plane right before they skydive and it makes you fell like you are about to fall to your death. It literally makes me loose my breath, and its just a commercial.

But years and years ago I had another fear, the fear of public speaking. When I was 19 years old, I went to a tiger school. This was the first time I was involved in the insurance business and this was a training workshop for insurance agents. There were about 600 of us and most of them were much older than I was. I think most were probably teachers who retired and decided to go into the insurance business.

They put all of the names of the attendees in a bowl, and told us that each day of the six-day training, they would pull out a name. On the first day they pulled out a name and that person had to spend three minutes summarizing the first day. On the second day the person who was picked had to give a six-minute speech summarizing the first two days. The third day, they had to do nine minutes on the past three days, and it went on like this through all six days. Each day I prayed they would not choose my name.

At the end of the sixth day, they drew my name. How much preparation do you think a 19-year-old might want to have to speak to a group of 600 for 18 minutes, summarizing the entire conference? I got up and presented, and finished 18 minutes later. To my surprise, people said, Man that was a great presentation. An older fellow said, You were kind of nervous werent you? I said, I have no idea what I just said for the past 18 minutes. I was so scared the first time I ever presented I couldnt even tell you what I said. I just shook my way through it.

Then that same older fellow came up to me and said, I want you to start counting right now, because youre going to make over a 1,000 presentations in your lifetime. He was coaching me. So as of today I have made a total of 1104 presentations, primarily on business help topics. What have I learned? Ive learned that you can overcome your fears. And as long as there are four people in the room other than myself that counts as a presentation to me. If you ever see me present to a group now, you might think, This guy is pretty confident. But just remember the 19-year-old scared out of his mind in front of 600 strangers.

Not every story about fear has a resolution that ends with, and that is how I overcame my fear of X Im still terrified of heights, and have no intention of jumping out of a plane 1,000 times to overcome that fear. What are you afraid of? If you share it with someone, you connect with that person. Sharing your fears and your experiences makes others more comfortable sharing about themselves with you. Develop deeper, authentic connections with people. It will often reveal opportunities to provide personal or business help to them in a more meaningful way.

by: Earl Kemper

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