EP 63: Why Playing It Safe Won't Scale Your Business
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I'm your host, Jenny Wright. And today we're going to get a little bit bold because we're going to be talking about why and whether you should be playing it safe in your business. And maybe just maybe.

It's not the thing that's working for you. And if you're like me, I'm a little risk adverse. You might have at some point or another felt a little bit stuck in the comfort zone, hanging back because, well, it's actually very comfortable to stay there. And it's time for some tough love. And I'm the person to give it to you. I don't mind being the person that gives a little bit of tough love.

a little bit here and there. I've been told that I do it, so I'll just be that person for you today. And I've got three reasons for you today why playing it safe isn't just going to cut it if you're serious about scaling your business. And I'm here to help you try and break free from that cycle. So I'm Jenny Wright. I'm a list building lead generation strategist, and I help people get off social media and grow their lists and engage with their leads. And

And the Acquire podcast is all about list building, lead generation, online events, and sales, all that good stuff. So let's talk about it. And the first thing that I think we should talk about is I'm not telling you to...

Do a 180 right now. I'm not telling you to take all of the risks and do all of the things that are going to actually potentially put your business into trouble. Right. So these are, you know, and again, I'm risk adverse, everybody. I am not the person that jumps off and does crazy things exponentially.

except when I ski. I love being a little bit of a crazy person when I ski. It's a lot of fun. But when it comes to business, I really do like to play it a little bit more safe than a little bit more daring. And so you might identify with that. And the first thing that we're going to talk about is safe choices lead to predictable and small outcomes, right? So if you're playing it fully safe and you're not doing anything outside of your comfort zone,

then you're leading yourself down the same thing over and over again, and you're really not getting any change, right? So we call that the comfort zone trap. And what we kind of break that down is playing it safe means sticking to what is familiar, whether it's keeping your prices the same, not showing up live because you're worried how you will be received, right?

Or sticking to the actual, like the same topics all the time because that feels less risky. The problem is when you're doing what's comfortable and you're not changing things out, you're not pushing those boundaries, you're not learning and you're not developing, you're not expanding. And growth really happens right on the edge of discomfort where nothing feels easy. Because when you do it, when it feels easy, that's you in the comfort zone.

And I, I mean, this is me. Okay. This is me to a T I have to push myself to be outside of my comfort zone on a regular basis. And I have ever since this business started. Uh, and I mean, I can tell you this from my own experience that, you know, when I worked in corporate before 2012, I was an investor relations and communications specialist basically. And, uh,

I, you know, I was translating things into four languages. I was running conferences. I was doing AGMs. I was sending out press releases. I was writing speeches for the president and CEO of the company, so on and so forth. I did all this kind of stuff, right? Things I had never done before. And then when I left that job, and I've talked about why I left that job, I

I guess my confidence really took a hit and I felt like I had to put in effort into building up my online repertoire. I'd never worked in the online space. And so I became a VA. Okay. And I mean the lowest paid VA you can think of. I worked on Fiverr. My first gigs are obviously a $5 gig, but the gigger makes $4 and 33 cents or less for

per gig, right? And I did that just to get started and learn the online space. Obviously, quickly, I got out of that. But I stayed a VA for a very long time, longer than I should have, because it was comfortable. I could make money doing it. I knew how to do it. I didn't have to do a ton of work on the social media side or the content side. I honestly didn't even have a website. Like, how dumb is that? I did not have a website. I mean, retrospect, right? Hindsight 2020 and all that. And

The issue is it was just easier for me to be a VA than to push outside of my comfort zone and do anything else. It was also a heck of a lot easier to do that than raise my prices. And I learned that the hard way because the business went stale and it happened pretty fricking quickly. Okay.

And then all of a sudden I'm like, crap, I'm not happy. I was resenting my clients. I mean, it was palatable, not only to myself, but to the clients, which meant my clients were happy. I wasn't happy. I was really, really struggling at the time. And so something had to change.

And I thought, okay, well, I'll become an OBM and then I'll become a coach. Neither one of those things felt like a great fit either, if I'm quite honest with you. So what felt natural yet pushing the boundary was the strategy side. And so I really have to expand myself. Every time I create a new strategy for a client, I'm living on the edge of uncomfortability. I know things that work because I've done them before. I'm always testing, right?

I'm always learning. And then, you know, because I'm trying to try new things and I'm listening to what the client needs and I'm not pushing clients into doing something completely cookie cutter. I'm always trying to do something bespoke.

We're always expanding. I'm always learning. And so I'm not in that space anymore. I'm not being in the comfortable zone trap anymore. And my business has grown leaps and bounds because of it, right? I get opportunities to speak. I get opportunities to travel. I get opportunities to be a CMO in one business. And then the next business I'm, you know, being a chief of operations, right? So it

You continue to expand and get out of that comfortability and your business will absolutely grow. I promise you. It doesn't mean you have to go jump off a cliff or bungee jump or anything like that. It just means you have to expand past your comfort zone and do things that can feel a little bit frightening and scary, but the trade-off can be big. Now I will tell you that not all of the things will work out. I was not, I was not meant to be an OBM.

I just wasn't. I have project management experience. I love project management. I do it for a lot of my clients in an operations aspect, but I wasn't the candidate for that. Right. And so I had to learn, I did OBM for like six months and I'm like, this is not for me. So you have to do a little bit of trial and error. Growth does happen on that edge of discomfort. Remember that. Now, if you've had a tried and true formula that was working for you for a very long time, but you're starting to feel now that

that it is not working for you, then we want to talk about right now, I want to talk to you about the fact that you're sticking to that formula and you're getting in your own way. Okay. In a sea of lookalike entrepreneurs and everybody doing something similar, standing out and, and is important. Sticking to standard practices isn't going to make you stand out and it's not going to make you shine in the world of just people copying and pasting, right? Everybody

Everybody at some time looks at somebody who's further down the road from them, like an Amy Porterfield or Marie Forleo or somebody, you know, Jamie Starr, all those kind of people. And they say, if I do what they are doing, it'll work for me.

And that's, it's basically the problem of copying somebody else's blueprint, right? So copying somebody else's business practice, copying somebody else's structure saying, well, Amy Porterfield does three months of really distinct podcasting episodes. Then she does a bunch of webinars and she does a masterclass. Then she sells her course, right? And this is a rinse and repeat for her. If you take that exact formula, do you really think it's going to work for you?

Do you really think she did it 10 years ago or eight years ago when she first started, when her audience was like a one 16th of the size and did it work? No.

That's her formula now, but it wasn't her formula when she started out and it wasn't her formula when she was hitting a multi-six figure. It is her formula now when she's selling like tens of millions of dollars. So by copying somebody else's blueprint at the stage where they are at right now versus the stage where you were at, which is completely different, you're setting yourself up for a big problem.

You're not going to have the same results, obviously, but even just copying somebody else's stuff is not going to work for you. Now there is also the problem of rinsing and repeating your own best practices or your own blueprint, right? So a lot of people I'm finding this right now. And again, you know, I talked about this on the last solo where I was talking about the fact that I'm going through all these applications and we're launching many bundles and

And we're seeing a lot of cookie cutter landing pages. I'm seeing a lot of cookie cutter language, a lot of chat GPT. And so when you're doing the same style of landing pages, you're sticking to the same style of list building tactics, typical funnels that everybody says are quote unquote proven. Here's the thing.

Everyone is following the same playbook and it starts to look and feel the same. Everything turns to vanilla and everybody's wearing beige. Okay. Your audience is not going to remember you and you're not going to stand out because you're just not giving them something that is unique and something that they can latch onto that feels distinct. And you have to change that.

So I just went through a rebrand earlier on this year to change up my logo. And I changed up my brand colors. And I gave myself a new tagline for the business and so on because I needed to refresh. Now, I've also changed how my funnels look. I've also changed my list building tactics. And I employ all those practices with my clients. You've got to change it up. And again, that doesn't mean doing a 180%

and trying something completely different. It just means you need to be evolving at all times and working on that. So I'll give you, I'll give you a, an example that is really poignant actually. And it is, um, about being bold with a summit. Okay. So one of my clients was, uh, had done a couple of summits they had with somebody else. They'd done them on their own or with another, with another producer. And so they'd done about four summits and

The first summit they did okay. The second summit they did incredibly well. The third summit was like blowing their socks off. And the fourth summit, everything started to decline. They actually had a almost a 40% decline in registrations as well as sales. Okay. And

They were basically rinsing and repeating the same summit from year one as they were in year four. Now we're in year five. I'm on board the team. I'm looking at it. I'm looking at how it all looks. And I'll tell you that they were just doing the same speaker format, the same interview format, rinse and repeat all the way around. Basically the same landing page. They changed the dates. So I changed it up. I shook it up. I turned it on its head.

enough, right? So we turned a traditional summit into a live, highly interactive series of workshops where attendees could ask questions, get immediate answers, and have a back and forth with experts. We also did include some of the traditional pre-recorded, we did have a VIP or an all access pass, we did include some of those traditional things, but we found that

People weren't really listening to those pre-records for this particular person. So again, changing it up, something had to happen, right? So these highly interactive live workshop style interviews were a game changer for this client. The engagement went off the charts. She doubled her subscriber rate than the year before. It actually was even better than the year before that. So she beat her year two. She beat her year three numbers, right?

and she beat her year two numbers, right? So remember, year one was pretty good, year two was really good, year three was like really, really good, and year four was poopy. So we did better than her best year, okay? So she doubled the subscriber rate

easily compared to her best event in the past. And then she also did really well with the VIP. So, you know, we saw a really big increase there. The key was breaking the mold and not being afraid of breaking that typical flow that she had created and people kind of expected and turning it on its nose and doing something different. Right? So I'm, I'm encouraging you to find your unique voice. I really want you to find something that's uniquely you. If you want to do a summit or a bundle or a webinar or a seminar or a workshop, um,

Don't make it cookie cutter like everybody else. What is different about you? So for me, my difference is I can do hot seats in the moment, no problem. And I can help somebody on their business because I've done so many blah, blah, blah. So my webinars or my workshops are like through the roof, highly interactive. I will do a hot seat right there in the moment, get all the information I need from the person on the, on the webinar and give them tangible solutions right there, which is awesome. That actually helps my close rate.

Whatever it is that you can do to be unique in the way that you're presenting your information is amazing. Standing out is really about making your business as genuine and a real reflection of who you are and what you can bring to the table. So everything needs to revolve around that and make it really, really like visible. Okay. Cause nobody else has your perspective, your energy. Nobody has the same story as you. Right. So it can be completely different.

And then the other thing that we should talk about is if you're playing it really, really safe, you're not building additional relationships. You're not growing your ecosystem and allowing vulnerability and new connections to help grow your business.

So I fully get and I fully endorse the fact that putting yourself out there is incredibly terrifying. It's insanely terrifying for me. OK, I'm a behind the scenes kind of person. The fact that you're seeing me on camera or listening to my voice is only through an arduous process of getting over my own crap. OK, I have a massive, massive,

fear of vulnerability. I have a massive fear of being judged. I have a massive fear of people looking at me and thinking, what the crap? She should not be on camera. She's got a great voice for radio or listening to me thinking I can hear a slight lisp or in something that she talks and then realizing not that anybody would know, but realizing I have no feeling on the left side of my face because I had a nerve severed and I had to relearn how to talk. Right. So I have a lot of fear of judgment. Right.

And so when we get to the power of vulnerability, we always want to present our best selves. We want to look polished and professional. We want to put it all together so that there's nothing that anybody can pick out and criticize. But you know what really connects? Not that. All right. And I'm not going to say it's completely being messy and showing up, you know, however that looks to you, whatever that mess might look to you. But the behind the scenes moments are

where you share something that didn't work, share something that you're trying to figure out or you're struggling with, or that you have that she's just like everybody else moment, that vulnerability is what makes people trust you and really turns followers into admirers, which conveys loyalty, which helps with sales. Okay? And so if you ever hear me talking about the runway to a summit or the runway to selling your product,

This is where you can use that power of vulnerability to your advantage with showing people the behind the scenes, right? Really giving them the behind the scenes of what it looks like to build these things out and how it's affecting you. I had a client, I think it was about two or three years ago, we were building a summit and she was in the middle of an interview and literally her ceiling collapsed completely.

Right in front of her. There was water damage apparently that had been building up in the ceiling. Nobody knew about it. It was from the bathroom upstairs and the ceiling in her living room literally collapsed in front of her. She could look up into the bathroom upstairs.

She was recording an interview. She literally turned the camera around and filmed that stuff. And she was like, this is the reality of building a summit, right? Like the most insane things happen at the most inopportune moments. And she, you know, that post actually went viral. And somebody, you know, I think it was a local contracting company even reached out and offered to do some work for her just to help her out and something like that. So vulnerability can really help you.

And then sharing the struggles I think is important. I mean, I've shared the story over and over. How about my first summit went incredibly wrong. I did everything wrong in my opinion from tech issues with speakers to

to speakers dropping out last minute, to nobody promoting. I mean, it just wasn't pretty. But what happened after I shared that story is I had people reaching out to tell me that they had been through something similar, that my honesty made them feel like they could keep going on despite all the challenges. The point is people really connect with real and real isn't perfect. I've also told the story of how I had a eviction notice on my door back when I was renting an apartment.

I'd say almost a decade ago. Well, yeah, it was a decade ago and I couldn't pay my rent at the time. I'd missed paying rent for two months. I'm incredibly like, I'm so upset that that happened. And I am actually incredibly embarrassed that I let it happen, but it is part of my history. It is the beginning of this business. It's the career of building this business and that happened. But what came from that was,

is, I mean, I told it as a story of transformation because I couldn't pay my rent. I had an eviction notice. It forced me to book a boatload of sales calls and I closed a ton of them. It actually was a thing that helped me change my mindset that

I had a reset button. I developed a reset button from that and it allowed me to be better on my sales calls and not let people feel like I was desperate because desperation really stinks. Like it actually practically smells and people can pick up on it like nothing and it can ruin a sales call. So yeah,

The vulnerability of showing the struggles has helped my business and it's made me more relatable, which was a really big challenge when I left corporate. And it's something that you might identify with. Okay. And then I think what would be a good plan from here is for me to sort of like challenge you to do something that maybe you've struggled with in your business journey and share it.

you know, share what that struggle has been. If there was one, it could be a failed launch or a really scary moment, or just something that you're currently trying to figure out and you struggle with. You never know. Sharing it with your audience could be the thing that helps propel you forward. You might even find somebody that can help you, that relates to you. Watch how your community responds. You'll actually start to see that being a little bit vulnerable goes a long way,

And building these incredible relationships that actually last, not only with people that you are peers with, but also potential clients. You know, I think I can repeat this safely that, you know, growth doesn't come from safety. It comes from risk. It comes from vulnerability and from putting yourself out there, even when it's terrifying. And that is something I have to keep pushing myself to do. I'm sure you do too, but I really want to encourage you to do the things that feel right.

hard, that aren't playing it safe, that aren't keeping you in the same place at all times, because if you do that, things get really stagnant. Okay. Taking calculated risks, not just wiggly niggly risks, calculated risks. Okay. Whether it's trying something new where it's stepping out of your everyday mundane formula, if it's showing the real you behind the scenes and

This is where you can find those magic moments. This is where the business can have those really cool opportunities where things change. Because if you play it safe, you're playing it the same. Everything stays the same. Nothing changes. So take a risk and see how you grow. I think you'll grow like crazy. I know I did. I know a lot of my clients do. And I really encourage it. So if you're ready to stop playing small in your business, then I really want you to look at this. And if you're struggling with what that looks like,

then let me help you create a personalized plan for this authentic, bold growth that you can do in your business and book a call with me. You can grab a link on the show notes or from my website at JennyWright.com and let me help you get out of that comfort zone and push you and propel you forward. Okay. So

So I really appreciate everybody listening to the Acquire podcast. This is my baby and I enjoy it so much. Thank you for being here. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please make sure you do hit subscribe so you don't miss anything that's coming up. And as always, the Acquire podcast is brought to you by the Oddphonic Podcast Network. And we'll see you all soon. Take care. Bye.