Kissing Frogs

In business, you are often told that the hardest daily trial is not working out "What to do" but "What not to do".
The difficulty in this is that opportunities tend to arise either on their own or because of the work you put in. It happens every week, you get a call from someone asking to meet over a coffee or I get introduced to someone who isn’t the right person for me to do business with. It may seem easy to ignore these types of meetings, discard them into the "What not to do" pile, but in my experience, sometimes it is exactly these meetings you should be going to. In my experience, you shouldn’t be afraid to "kiss some frogs".

Hope is a not a strategy, therefore the key for this to be successful is not having any expectation that something will happen, but that it more than likely will not.

Some of my most valuable confidents, friends, partners and long term clients have originated from these first engagements. I used to get in trouble with my boss years ago for wasting “prime selling time” on pointless meetings but now I honestly believe that this has made my career and the companies I have worked for have all benefited from my approach. I don’t spend all day every day sipping lattes with strangers, talking about unimportant topics and lining the pockets of Starbucks investors but I equally don’t shy away from it! If I aim to help others with useful introductions and advice then more often than not so do they. We all know of a really well connected or networked person, who can pick up the phone and speak to people you could never dream off. These people often never have a bad word said about them and manage to positively influence everyone around them.

The simple truth is that they have worked very hard to get to that point and probably they too kissed some frogs on the way.