Are you afraid of breaking rules in life or business?
If you are, I totally get it. Rules are comforting.
They allow you to feel safe, and they possibly even make you feel that if you follow the rules, you’re bound to experience success.
I’m here to tell you that, as a successful entrepreneur, rules will be broken.
I would wager a guess that if you were to approach one of the most successful entrepreneurs out there, like Russell Brunson, and asked if he sat back and followed every rule in order to achieve his level of success, he’d tell you NO.
Obviously, I can’t be certain because I don’t know him personally, though I’d love to chat with him, so if you know him, send him my way, but I bet that there are rules he’s broken 😉
I have always been of the notion that you ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Meaning, that whatever it is you want to do, you should do it (let’s just keep it legal). If it’s wrong or if it pisses someone off, apologize afterward. You’re not always going to please everyone!
On my YouTube channel, The Pitch Queen, I’m doing a series about 100 ways to ask for different things. It’s a fun way to show you that always following the rules isn’t necessary.
For one ofthe series, I recently went to Costco without my Costco card. Yep! I went to this giant superstore that we all believe requires you to have your membership card in order to buy things, without my membership card.
What did I learn? You can actually go to Costco, sans membership card, and buy alcohol or anything from the pharmacy. Isn’t that crazy!?
Another option would be to borrow someone’s card that is waiting in line behind you at the checkout and use their membership card that way, but regardless, when you don’t follow the rules, you can actually learn new things.
I have about 11 or 12 episodes up of 100 ways to get a YES and I would love for you to check them out and share them with others. Let’s show the entrepreneurial sales world that we should stop taking NO for an answer.
Don’t Let Your Self-Confidence Rule You
The first rules you need to break are with yourself. Our self-confidence keeps us trapped and oftentimes holds us back from taking huge steps in our business. We fear what the outcome might be or what others may think, but NONE of this is important.
If you truly believe in yourself, your skills, your products or services, then the opinions of others do not matter.
My guest on Success Unfiltered, Laura Roeder, has always looked young for her age, and she has often struggled with this when she attended conferences and other networking events. At the age of 22, she attended an event that provided a 15 minute coaching session with the purchase of your ticket, Laura excitedly signed up.
In that 15 minute session the business coach told Laura that she needed to change how she dressed, her hair, basically her entire look. She thought Laura’s voice was too high and feminine and that she should start practicing speaking in a lower tone.
The coach believed, and shared this with Laura, that she did not stand a chance of being taken seriously unless she did these things.
I’m sure you’re all thinking how awful it is for a business coach to rip apart Laura, when she was actually just asking for business advice, but the kicker is that all of the things the coach mentioned were insecurities of Laura’s.
Having another person say all the things that Laura was afraid of was tough. Laura did eventually breakdown and cry over all the things the coach said, but thankfully with the help of a friend she was able to overcome what she was feeling, and realize that what the coach said was terrible advice.
The benefit of this experience was that now Laura felt free! It took so many of her fears and insecurities away because she realized, it didn’t matter if someone else was thinking these things of her, she wouldn’t die and the opinions didn’t matter.
Laura quickly moved on and created the highly successful company, Meet Edgar, which is a social media tool. She stopped worrying about her insecurities and the other things that people thought of her.
She broke the rules!
Create Your Own Choices
Laura’s business is successful, she’s generating about $5 million dollars a year in revenue. However, there was recently an event that she wanted to attend, but it was only supposed to be for those businesses that are $10 million in revenue and over.
Laura refused to allow that rule stop her from making the choice to still apply for the event.
Laura was upfront and honest, letting them know that she wasn’t quite at the $10M mark, but that she wanted to be a part of their community and learn from these other incredibly entrepreneurs.
By putting herself out there, Laura gave herself the mindset of freedom. That she no longer had to be limited by others constraints, and that she could do things that were better for her.
Curious of the end result?
The event was happy to invite Laura to attend. They actually even told her that they wanted some smaller businesses that were on track and in their growth stage, to attend!
This is crucial to understand…
If Laura hadn’t put herself out there and asked to attend an event that was slightly outside her reach, the answer would have been NO. Instead, she applied and the answer was YES!
Sure, she could have applied and heard NO, but that’s okay. Hearing NO won’t kill you. Hearing NO won’t end the world, it just means you’re on the right path to getting your YES.
In Conclusion
Don’t be afraid of breaking rules. Just ask for forgiveness later!
There have been plenty of times in the last 20 years that I’ve pushed the envelope, but I truly don’t care. Because over 80% of the time, when I end up breaking rules, I end up getting what I want.
I’d love for you to tell me, what rule you’re going to break today!?
