The Number One Action You Need For Success in Your Online Business

In this article, I want to talk to you about discomfort. We all know that to be successful in anything in life, we have to go through discomfort, but I was out running the other day and I was in particular discomfort, (because I'm not very fit at the moment), and while I was coaching myself through the pain, a thought popped into my head:

Growth comes from actively engaging in discomfort.

Now, I don't know if I've read that somewhere or if I just created it myself, but it was the actively engagement in discomfort part that I hadn't ever considered before.

We actually have to embrace the idea of discomfort and welcome that idea to actually have success in our business.

So, I was thinking about it a little bit more, and I thought it's a little bit like, you know when you go to the beach, and you'd put your toe in the water and it's a little bit colder than what you had anticipated, and the sun's beating down on your skin, you're really really hot and you want to go for a swim but the water is icy cold.

And there are three ways you can deal with that icy cold water:

1. Don't go swimming at all.

2. Creep into the water, little by little, but, you never get used to the water temperature and it's just really excruciating the whole time.

3. Run straight in and dive through a wave and be embraced by that cold water. 

Now, what happens when we dive into the water is that that icy cold embraces us, and we're gasping for air, because it's so cold, and you come up to the surface and you're breathing and you're panting and you're gasping and you think "What the hell did I do that for. I'm so uncomfortable." And then something weird starts to happen...

All of a sudden, it becomes less uncomfortable and more invigorating. And then what we realize is that the water is actually not that cold anymore, all of sudden it just feels really good, and you feel really alive. And that's exactly what it's like within our online businesses if we embrace discomfort.

One of the ways that I know our clients get really uncomfortable in their online businesses is looking for their own clients online.

We teach them strategic organic techniques to be online looking for their perfect clients and they get really uncomfortable with it.

There are three things that they can do: One, they either don't do it at all; two, they kinda half-heartedly do it and they never really get good at it, it's always really uncomfortable; or three, they just dive straight in, and they immerse themselves in that discomfort.

They get in there and then they get better at it. And then, all of a sudden it's not uncomfortable at all.

They realize that what they're doing is helping people. And the people who are out there that are looking for them, are finding them and coming to them, and all of a sudden they're booking people, onto their calendar, and booking people into their program.

So that's what happens when you embrace discomfort - you get growth!

Now I want to talk about what happens when you don't embrace discomfort.

In his book Principles, Ray Dalio talks about something called the "Order of Consequences".

Whether you don't do something, or you choose to do something, there's a series of consequences.

There's the first order consequence, the second order consequence, the third order consequence and so on.

For instance, the first order consequence of deciding not to go swimming at all, or not to do what you need to be doing to find prospects online for your business, is that you feel really good. Okay, the thought was stressing you out and you just felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. So you decided to not do it at all. And then you felt really good, it's like "Thank God, I don't have to do it".

Second order consequence, probably, is positive as well. You wake up in the morning, you turn your computer on, and you don't feel stressed.

However, the third order consequence is that you don't have people to talk to, you don't have people on your calendar, you don't have people finding you, because you're not out there, right?

Fourth order consequence is that your bank balance is going down. Bills are starting to pile up and then you're starting to get stressed now for a totally different reason. You are no longer stressed about having to talk to people. Now you're stressed about the fact that you don't have enough money.

Fifth order consequence, your house is being repossessed. You can't look your family in the eye because you know that you chose not to do the hard thing, and that's why you're in this mess.

Now let's reverse that. Let's look about the Order of Consequence if you do number three, you dive right in and you embrace that discomfort.

Yeah, you're gonna feel like crap, initially. It is uncomfortable, that's what embracing discomfort is all about, getting out of your comfort zone. So you get a bit, "Oh my God, did I say the right thing? Did I sound like an idiot? Did I come in too hard?"

I remember when we started out our organic strategy, I made three comments in a group, and then, I got blocked from posting on Facebook for 24 hours. To this day, I don't know what I did. Really, I felt like crap that night. I was like, "I can't do this!" But, as soon as I got unblocked, I got back in there.

So the first order consequence is that you don't feel great. You're awkward, you're uncomfortable, you're not sure what to say.

Second order consequence, you don't want to get on there and do it. But you make yourself do it because you know that that's how you're gonna find your perfect client.

Third order consequence is that people start coming to you and asking you for advice. People start messaging you and asking you what you're doing. People start asking you for help and you start getting to make offers.

By putting yourself out there, by diving straight in, you're putting yourself out there as the person that could help them, they're gonna start to come to you.

Fourth order consequence, people are booking on to your calendar. All of a sudden you're really busy.

Fifth order consequence, you got a thriving business, you're too busy. You're having to outsource, bring other people in to help you.

Sixth order consequence, you got more money than you know what to do with. You're taking your family on fantastic holidays, you upgrade your house. You get a beautiful new car for your wife or husband, and they don't have to work anymore if they don't want to.

That's what happens when you actively embrace discomfort. So, don't think about the short-term consequence, think about the long-term consequence.

Some of you reading this might be thinking, "You know, I wanna do that." "I wanna embrace discomfort, but I just don't know what I'm doing". Or you've been actively embracing discomfort for so long but obviously what you're doing isn't working because you're not landing any clients online.

If that is you, I'd love to have a chat with you to see if I can help. That's what we do. We help online coaches by teaching them how to get clients online using both organic and paid strategies.

SO if you would like a free Strategy Session with me use this link to jump on my calendar: https://go.oncehub.com/DonnaJoy