What's Stopping You?

Do you ever stop yourself from doing something because of the potential negatives that might come your way, if you do it?

Do you worry about what other people might think about you?

Do you let the fear of the unknown prevent you from trying new things?

Do you find yourself holding back on new ideas, in fear of the thought that they might not work out?

I'm sure all of these are normal feelings, and most people to some extent, would probably answer yes to each question. I know I do. If you don't, then good for you!

I experienced it just recently. CVP wanted to start doing a live broadcast online every Tuesday, as you may have read about on the 'inside GRAF UK' page a few pages back. Each week he will interview a member of our team and will alternate the product group, so we get to share content on all 3 of our water management product groups; wastewater treatment, stormwater management and rainwater harvesting.

The software he's found and learnt, allows us to go live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube simultaneously, which helps us to reach several different audiences all at the same time. Plus, even if people aren't watching live, the recording of the live broadcast remains on each platform for viewers to watch whenever they want.

From a content production perspective, it's a brilliant idea, as long as the content of the videos and the interviews themselves are useful. Each 20-40 minute broadcast every week, will provide us with between 5 & 20 short clips of video that we can then repurpose as individual videos to share in our social media marketing. As long as the main conversation & questions and answers provide some 'really useful content' to our audience, then we're creating lots of helpful videos for us to share in the future.

But, it's got to be good.

And, it's live.

Plus, all of our main customers could be watching.

This is where the fear kicked in for me! What if something gets said, even if just by accident, that could upset a customer or confuse or put off a potential customer?

How can we prevent this from happening?

Well, when it comes to live video, you can't. You just have to have faith in the people on camera. You've got to trust that the questions, answers and conversation will all be helpful to our audience and customers.

Would it be easier not to do it? Sure it would. This would remove all risk. Especially because we don't really know if we're going to get anything useful from it anyway. It's always easier not to take the risk and just try nothing new.

But that's no way to live, is it?

Stopping yourself from doing something that might actually help a lot of people, just because you're worried about what a small group of people might think, if stuff doesn't go as well as you hope.

If you've ever been here, I hope you pushed through and did it anyway.

As you know from our dates section on page 8, we pushed through and we're already 4 weeks into our weekly live broadcasts. And so far, we're very happy with them! They're helping, they're creating new and useful content, and they're exposing our business to more people to raise our brand awareness.

If you're letting fear stop you from trying something new right now, just do it. Focus on the positives, be optimistic and go for it. You'll be glad you did.