I’m sure if you’re here, you’ve seen this drill before: Take out a piece of paper and start writing down the names of everyone you know, everyone you’re related to, all of your friends, the lady that cuts your hair, the guy that mows your lawn, everyone. Now, go out and pitch your business to those people.
If there was ever a better recipe for disaster in starting a business, I don’t think I’ve heard of it!
Why is that? Well, I’ll give you a couple of reasons.
Reason #1: Your immediate warm market (friends and family) likely have no need for whatever product you are selling or opportunity you are pushing. If they DO become involved, it will only be to help you out a little bit initially. And that’s only if they’re not the type of people that fall under reason #2.
Reason #2: Your immediate warm market (friends and family) likely do NOT want to see you succeed. They will do whatever they can to crush your dreams so you go back to the grind with everyone else.
Ouch… That’s a tough pill to swallow, but believe me it’s true. But, I hear your brain churning around saying “but aren’t those the people that should want me to succeed the most?” Externally, yes, you would hope those are the people that want to see you succeed the most… Internally YOU should be the person that wants to see you succeed the most.
Here’s why they don’t want you to succeed: They don’t want to see what your success would represent. Here are the horrible things they see:
- You do something you really enjoy.
- You do something you’re good at.
- You do it on your own time and don’t answer to anyone.
- You make more money than they do.
- You have more time to spend doing the things you want to do.
Why should you be so lucky to enjoy all those benefits and they don’t? Why do they wake up at the crack of dawn to work a job they hate for too little money, but you get to enjoy what you do and make much more than them? Why did they take all that time going to college for their degree in whatever, hustle for months or longer to find a REAL job, and you want to get rich but barely made it out of high school?
So, why on earth would they want to help you out? Unless all your friends and family are die-hard entrepreneurs, which probably isn’t the case for 99.9% of the people out there, then they don’t understand your dreams, and most importantly, the possibility of success runs completely congruent to what they’ve been working towards the entirety of their lives! To put it quite simply, they don’t understand what the hell you’re doing!
Just avoid them. They can’t help you, and they don’t have your best interest at heart. Or possibly, they do have your best interest at heart, which is to stuff you into a little box in which you do everything like it’s “supposed to be done”. To paraphrase the great Mike Dillard, “Don’t approach your warm market until you don’t care whether or not they buy.”
Instead, concentrate on developing your own business leads. Make these leads into what I like to refer to as “warmish” leads: Get to know them, provide them with some value, and if they happen to become friends along the way, great, at least your goals are aligned. If not, that’s ok too, at least you can hopefully help them in some way to reach their goals. Either way, it beats getting beaten down by the people who love you.
