The #1 Reason You Can't Scale: Thinking Big is Keeping You Playing Small

Sometime in 2009 my good buddy, Bob and I were chatting. During the conversation I mentioned to Bob an idea I had. We would hold a meeting once per month on a Friday morning where people could come and not only network but learn as well.

I would do speaking training with live, on-stage coaching and Bob would do personal development training with meditations and other exercises. We would give local entrepreneurs an opportunity to be guest speakers and we would provide an excellent breakfast for as low a fee as we could arrange.

At our first session we had 18 people attend. Within pretty short order we were getting 70 to 80 people attending. Even though it was costing me money every month to run the event, Bob and I both loved the experience. For Bob it was about the people and the social equity. For me it was also an opportunity to try new material, get some video footage and get my name known in the area.

Attendance seemed to stall at about 80 attendees and then, after the first couple of years it began to decline.

I could soon see the event was beginning to stagnate, so I thought we needed an injection of interest from a new audience. I started thinking bigger!?

I found out that a local Chamber of Commerce was meeting at the same venue and on the same day as Your Stage for a single session. Not only was it at the same venue on the same day, but their meeting was in the very next room to ours. They were expecting a couple of hundred people in attendance. Their meeting would end just as mine was starting. That gave me an idea!

I contacted the organizer of the Chamber of Commerce meeting and I invited the entire Chamber of Commerce to attend Your Stage immediately after their meeting as my personal guests. They loved the idea! In fact, not only did they announce the invitation to their entire database two weeks before their meeting, they even invited me to join their meeting and provide a two-minute live invitation right before they closed.

I was so excited!

I announced to our entire Your Stage database that the next meeting would be super-sized. We had invited the entire Chamber of Commerce audience to join us and this would make for an amazing opportunity for networking, connecting and learning. It would be epic!

As the day approached, I could envision the room filled with 200 or more people, maybe 300 or more!

I arranged to have the venue set up the room for 200 people but had them stand by to add chairs when the room filled up.

I rented bigger sound equipment to handle the much larger crowd. I ordered extra coffee for everyone, planned my content for the morning and found the strongest guest speakers I could find.

A few days before it was all to happen, Bob informed me that he could not attend. Something had come up and, as much as he wanted to be there, it just wasn’t possible. He felt horrible, but it just couldn’t be helped.

No matter, I knew how to do everything, so I had it all planned out. We had a volunteer to handle the regular Your Stage crowd. I would find a volunteer to generally manage the mingling at Your Stage while I ducked out to the Chamber of Commerce meeting next door, made an appearance and extended the personal invitation to join us at Your Stage.

At 8:00 AM my volunteers were in place, the room for Your Stage was set up, I had set up the sound gear, breakfast was ready for my Your Stagers, the extra coffee was ready to be served. Everything was set!

At Your Stage people generally started arriving at about 8:10, the room was usually filled by 8:30. They would mingle, network and enjoy a buffet breakfast until 9:00 when the formal program begins. This would give the Chamber of Commerce folks time to exit their meeting, use the restrooms and join us at Your Stage during the networking and maybe grab an additional plate of breakfast if they liked.

It was perfect!

As I was sitting in my chair at the Chamber of Commerce meeting, I could hardly contain my excitement. I knew that we would have a record crowd at Your Stage because of the excitement of having the entire Chamber of Commerce join us, and I knew that room beside me would fill up fast!

I made my announcement to the entire Chamber of Commerce audience, invited them to join us as my personal guests to experience the mighty Your Stage! I would be there at the door to welcome them as soon as their meeting adjourned. In a few minutes, as the Chamber meeting came to a close, I headed out the door and made my way over to Your Stage.

As I walked into the room, I thought I was going to die! It was a record-breaking crowd! Never in the history of the event had we ever seen, or even imagined an audience of this size.

Eight people! That was it! A measly eight people showed up for Your Stage.

As my guests from next door stepped up one by one, they peered into the huge empty room, turned around and left.

I was devastated and humiliated. But I was also a professional. I was obliged to provide an outstanding experience to each and every one of those people who did show up, and I did. I gave everything I had left to make that meeting the best it could possibly be. Those who did stay told me how much value they received because of the intimate experience and the focused discussions that occurred.

On that day I decided to close Your Stage for good. It was only after I vented to a friend of mine who convinced me to keep going that I reconsidered and decided to try again. I’m not sure where that fortitude came from, it was just there.

Bob and I continued to offer Your Stage for the next several months without much effort or initiative. We loved doing it. It became a hobby. But that didn’t last long for me. I needed more. I needed forward motion. I needed something bigger.

Over the next two years, Bob and I tried many things to take Your Stage to a whole new level.? I couldn’t stop thinking big, trying everything I could think of to make it what I knew it could be. But nothing seemed to work and I had no idea why.

Then something really interesting happened.?

I noticed a local event planner’s reputation began to grow and by extension her business began to grow too. I was curious about why she never came to any of my events. I asked her, “Why have you never been to my Your Stage event?” She told me if she went to my event, Your Stage, she would be associated with my small brand. She said, “I can’t afford to be associated with a small, local meet-up event.”

My head reeled, and I thought to myself, “Okay, I thought I was doing myself a favor by creating this event, but she’s right! The people in the marketplace perceive me as a small local guy doing small local events.” I just couldn’t understand why. I would go to other people’s events where there are 300 people, and I go to mine and there are as few as eight. The reality was my brand was being propagated this way. Thinking big and failing repeatedly has kept me playing small for years!

As hard as I tried, I simply couldn’t break out of this pattern. Not just with Your Stage, but with every project I embarked on.? I would think big, but end up playing small.? It was exhausting!

Then I met Jayne.

Jayne and I became partners in life and in business.? Jayne is very business savvy and together we took our business global and well into the 7 figures.? But I didn’t really understand what I was doing differently...I really had to figure that out!.

One night I was lying awake and like a bolt of lightning it struck me.??

I got up, grabbed a pad and drew a diagram of what has become my brand; a system I call “Deep Thought Strategy?.”?

Deep Thought Strategy? is a methodology that I developed by accident. It’s a specific process I was using to attract new clients. It was working like crazy and I wanted to understand it better to make sure I could duplicate it on purpose.? Once I did, I was able to package it up and teach it to others.

Deep Thought Strategy? is not a new way to compete for business. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of that. It’s a method to get more business by NOT competing. With Deep Thought Strategy? you literally disqualify your competition by positioning yourself as the unmistakable authority in your field.

You see, if you keep trying to sell more of what you sell, you’re competing.? That’s what I was doing! Each time I tried to think and play bigger, it was all about selling more; selling more seats at an event, selling more programs or more books. That meant competing more. And I hate competing! I know I can help my clients achieve amazing outcomes, I don’t want to have to compete to get that chance. Deep Thought Strategy? positioned me to disqualify the competition so I can serve those I was meant to serve.

Here’s the angle: Thinking big isn't about selling more; it’s about becoming more important. It’s about being the most important person your prospect needs to solve their problem.? You need to become so important in the mind of your prospect that there is literally no competition. To do that, you need to shake your prospects’ beliefs, rattle their paradigms and bring their awareness to a problem they never knew they had. You need to change your prospects’ perspective about their situation and present them with an entirely different way to look at their problem.

When I started doing that with Deep Thought Strategy?, more people started coming to my events; hundreds of them...then thousands. I began to be asked to speak at larger and larger events. Those event planners who wouldn’t come to my events, started asking me to train them to speak at their own events.

Within a single year my coaching fees increased by a factor of ten.

I began sharing stages with the greats like Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, Kevin Harrington from Shark tank and Les Brown.

I? became a featured speaker at events around the world from Canada to New Zealand to Singapore to the UK and back again.

In July 2021 I was elected president of the Global Speakers Federation with a reach of over 52,000 professional speakers around the globe in a multi-billion dollar industry.

My clients now are entrepreneurs and thought-leaders, some of whom pay over $100,000 to learn how to use Deep Thought Strategy? to present their unique solutions to their investors and their market.

All of this has happened because I stopped thinking big and started becoming more important.? Now, thinking big and playing big happens all by themselves.

I see so many entrepreneurs who try to think big and get stuck playing small making the same mistakes I made;? by trying to sell more. Thinking big is fine, but thinking big can sabotage your business, and your spirit, unless you first think deep and learn to become more important.

That’s what Deep Thought Strategy? does.

To find out more about Deep Thought Strategy? and how it can help you play a bigger game, go to https://stevelowell.com