networking

Being an introvert doesn’t mean that you can’t have a social life.

Ever since I learned about introverts and extroverts in my high school psychology class, I considered myself an introvert.

I was always the person sitting in the corner quietly whenever I met new people.

I felt better when I was alone or in a small group of people, and I felt drained if a stranger wanted to talk to me and asked me a lot of questions.

That’s EXACTLY how I used to feel when someone would ask me to go out.

The only situation in which I could really talk to people was with people who I’ve already known for a long time, like my friends and family.

And even there, I would struggle with it unless I got really excited about something.

I still remember when I read my first non-fiction book. It was the book called I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi.

I was very enthusiastic about reading it because it helped me completely change the perspective of how I looked at personal development.

It felt like I discovered secrets that nobody around me knew, and I wanted to share these secrets with everyone around me.

So I did…

And here’s what they said.

“You’re reading a book called I Will Teach You to be Rich? Wow, you’re so greedy, all you think about is money”

When I tried to explain that it was actually a really cool book that will help me save money and consicously spend it on the things I love, they didn’t really care.

“Well, you know, there’s more to life than money. People who earn a lot of money tend to become douchebags.”

It didn’t matter if I talked about specific systems and strategies that could help them save thousands of dollars immediately with very little effort. They didn’t trust me.

What do you think happened when I told them that I went on to spend $1000 on an online course that was supposed to teach me how to start my own own business?

They thought I was crazy, and that I would get scammed and my credit card information stolen for sure.

They just didn’t get it.

Even as I went on, started my own business and began to earn decent money with it, they still wouldn’t support me.

“Why can’t you just finish university and get a job like everyone else? That’s much more secure.”

I was frustrated.

The people who I trusted the most, my family and friends, didn’t trust me and didn’t believe in me.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t change their opinions.

Has something like this ever happened to you? Did you ever get really excited about something, only to find out that the people around you don’t really support you in it and don’t want to talk about it?

If yes, keep on reading.

As I realized that my approach wasn’t working, I decided to try something new.

Instead of desperately trying to change the people around me, I decided to find other people that might just understand me.

So I started looking around to find like-minded people.

I looked for a while, even asking other people around me if they knew where I could find other people who had the same weird ambitions as I did.

I didn’t manage to find anyone.

And even if I did find someone, I probably wouldn’t reach out to them because my social skills sucked and I had no idea how to get them to have coffee with me or what I would even say to them when we would meet.

So I started working on my own business and isolating myself from other people.

In a way, that was a good thing because I wouldn’t waste my time and energy by convincing others to support me.

It allowed me to stay focused and put in a lot of work, which was good, but on the other hand, I always had a feeling that I was missing out on something.

I missed going out and partying and hanging out with friends.

Nobody wanted to drink OJ with me like this.

I wanted to share my knowledge and experiences with others.

I knew that there must be other people out there that were similar to me, but I just didn’t know where to look to find them.

Eventually, step by step, I started to get it though.

I started to understand why I can’t find anyone to talk to.

It was because I made it all about me.

I wanted to learn from others.

I wanted to talk about things that interested me.

I wanted to have someone to talk to when I had a problem that I couldn’t solve.

I, I, I, me, me, me.

I was putting myself in the center of my universe instead of others and they could see right through it.

When I changed my perspective and started focusing on how I can help other people without getting anything back in return, my communication with people started to improve.

I could see that when I stopped talking so much and started to listen to them and pay attention to what they say, I would be able to connect with people much better.

I also stopped looking for people that were EXACTLY like me.

Of course it was hard for me to find another productivity consultant in Slovenia, but it was much easier to find other freelancers and entrepreneurs, as well as people who were at least remotely interested in self-development books.

And I started looking outside of Slovenia.

I started reaching out to other people through the internet as well and scheduling video calls with them.

With time, I met a lot of other people who considered themselves as introverts, but had a lot of friends who they could talk to all the time.

They showed me that social skills aren’t something that’s pre-defined, it’s a skill that anyone can learn and even master, if they put their mind to it.

In fact, here’s an interview that I did together with one of those people, my dear friend Raj Bandyopadhyay where he explains how he moved from being a shy software engineer to leading a meet up group of over 1200 people.

So, after I did the following:

1) Changed my focus from “me” to “them”
2) Stopped looking for a person that was exactly the same as me
3) Realized that socializing is a skill that can be learned, and not something that an introvert can never to

Everything changed.

Now I’m talking to at least 5 different people each week about our new business ideas and the productivity systems that we’ve developed over the past week.

AND IT’S NOT WEIRD.

In fact, they love talking about it. They love sharing their stories and helping each other improve.

They love talking about things like writing blogs or hosting online webinars.

Around them, I can really feel like myself and even if I just met them twice in my life, I can talk to them for hours!

I don’t feel like an introvert anymore.

Having lunch in San Francisco with friends and people who “get” me.

After working on helping others as much as possible, a lot of new opportunities have opened up.

I frequently get e-mails like this where I get introduced to other successful and inspiring people.

An e-mail introduction from just two days ago.

I have mentors that help me save hundreds of hours of figuring things on my own by giving me feedback on my business.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Ramit Sethi actually flew me in to San Francisco to record some video together with him.

San Francisco video shoot with Ramit Sethi.

None of these opportunities would have happened if I kept the “I, I, I” focus.

They all came out of just wanting to help other people in any way that I can.

And the best part is, you can do this too.

You can find people that will help you get that six pack that you always wanted or to run a six figure side-business.

But you probably still don’t have a clear picture how to do it, right?

I mean, I told you what worked for me, but how can you actually implement this by yourself?

How do you find the people that would want to talk to you in the first place?
When you find them, how do you reach out to them and ask them to meet you?
And when you finally manage to meet them, what do you say to avoid the awkward silence?

I use a system that will answer all of those questions and help you find the first 3 people who “get” you.

This system hasn’t worked only for me, it has worked for hundreds of other people that I’ve met in the past.

And a lot of them used to consider themselves as introverts just like me.

If you join me at my upcoming Free 5-Day Success Bootcamp, I will show you the exact system that I used to add massive value to Ramit Sethi and get invited to grab lunch with him in San Francisco. I will also show you the scripts and strategies that my friend Jaka used to expand his network and land a job that he loves.

Join the Bootcamp!

-Primoz

How to crush your goals in 2014

By Primoz Bozic 3 Comments

The year is coming to an end. You’re browsing through your computer and find a document called “yearly goals”. You open it and think to yourself… “Damn, I totally forgot about my goals again. Why does this happen to me all the time?”. And then, feeling a bit frustrated, you draft the goals up for the next year. This time will be different. But as the year goes on, the document gets lost on your computer and you slowly forget about your goals.

I know how you feel, it has happened to me many times before. I would set a ton of goals, whether they are yearly, monthly, weekly… Only to give up on them when things got a bit tougher, or to simply forget about them.

A year ago I was sitting down and planning my goals for 2013. 2012 was a great year from me, and it was hard for me to expect to repeat the results in 2013. But I did it. And I crushed some of the goals in ways that I didn’t dare to imagine beforehand.

But how do you do that? How do you make sure that the goals that you set for 2014 won’t be just another new year’s resolution that you forget about by Jan 7th?

Today I will share with you some strategies that I used which worked very well for me in 2013.

Setting Yearly Goals, Not New Year’s Resolutions

First of all, why the hell are we setting goals NOW and not on the 1st of January? Well, because around that time, it’s so easy to get lost within all the other BS new year’s resolutions and “trying harder”. Another reason is that if you want to be up and running in 2014, you’ll need to make some preparations first.

The key with setting yearly goals is to make them big, exciting and even unrealistic? Why? Because if the goal is big and exciting, it’s much more likely that you will reach it, even if it is slightly unrealistic. On the other hand, if the goal doesn’t excite you, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s realistic or not, as you won’t reach it anyway.

Another thing that people often forget to do is set up a system to actually review these goals frequently and evaluate your progress towards them. I mean, how many times have you set goals in the past only to forget about them after 2 days and focus on something else?

This system doesn’t need to be complicated. It can be as simple as setting up a monthly calendar reminder in Google Calendar every 1st Monday of the month.

Now let’s put this into action – you can do this NOW, in 5 easy steps.

ACTION STEPS:

Write down 10 BIG things that would really excite you in 2014
Select the top 3 of those things that are the MOST EXCITING and make them your yearly goals
Set up a Google Calendar event on the first Monday of 2014, at whatever time works for you (it’s 1pm for me)
Copy the yearly goals in the event description
Set the event to repeat 12 times, on every first Monday of the month.

Thinking DIFFERENTLY And Taking Massive Action

So, how did I actually manage to crush my goals from 2013? Was it simply by using the approaches from 2012 and putting in a lot more hours? Sadly no, it’s not that simple. Just “trying harder” didn’t work.

Instead, I was always on the look-out for new strategies that I could experiment with, and whenever I learned something new I would instantly implement it. Don’t believe me? Look at one of the comments on a mastermind group that I’m in – it’s from my friend Jarrett who I met last week in San Francisco:

Everyone can consume information and take advice. But few are the people who actually implement it. It turns out that those are the people that usually excel above the mediocre masses.

And I want YOU to be the next person who snaps out of the reading mode and takes immediate action. If you haven’t done the action steps above yet, do them now. They will only take you a couple of minutes. If you don’t want to do them, or think you will “do them later”, the truth is that you most likely won’t. Later, you will find another e-mail to read and you will forget about this post. And then, you will again see no progress at all.

Once you’re done with those action steps, let’s move on to the new ones (yes, I’ll get you to do a lot of work today. But you want to improve, don’t you?)

ACTION STEPS:

Identify ONE thing that you wanted to do recently but just never got around to doing it. It can be a new exercise plan. A productivity technique. Or setting up a party for your friends.
Take 1 minute to break down this thing into smaller, actionable steps. What do you need to do to get going?
Take a small, quick step towards finishing that thing NOW. You want to host a party? Call your friend if he wants to co-host it. Want to start doing a new exercise plan? Print it out.

The cool thing about taking action is that it gives you momentum. Even taking small steps can translate into soon taking bigger and bigger steps, which eventually lead to massive changes in your life.

There is also a big mistake that many people make when it comes to taking action. Many people say to themselves that “this won’t work for them” in advance. So they don’t even try to implement something new. Or, they try but give up after a few minutes when they don’t see the results immediately.

In order to overcome this issue, you need to shift your thought process from “I’m not sure if I can do this” or “I’m not sure if this will work for me” to “I’ll try it out and to my best to MAKE it work for me”.

Something that worked for someone else might not work for you immediately, but with a few adjustments you can quite easily implement almost any system in your life.

Don’t Do Everything On Your Own

The third thing that made probably the biggest difference for me was connecting with other like-minded people. I joined some mastermind groups of people who were working on the same goals as I was. I’ve found myself new mentors and advisers. And I’ll show you how you can do this as well in a minute.

There were two main benefits from connecting with like-minded people – I would constantly get new inspirations and ideas for my projects from them, as well as a different point of view that would often solve my issues when I was stuck.

When you are reaching out to others, you should focus on reaching out to people who are at least a level above you in a certain skill, whether it’s working at a job, entrepreneurship, nutrition, exercising or productivity. I personally prefer to find people who are the best at what they do, but I know that this might be a bit hard to do at first.

One thing that you need to understand about reaching out to other people is that it’s not about you getting something from them. Of course this might eventually happen, but often you won’t get anything in return immediately. So instead of focusing what you can get from people, think about what you can give to them.

Luckily for you, one of the biggest value adds is in something that pretty much everybody is capable of doing – in implementing advice and thanking people for it. This is because so few people do this. I give out advice to many people, and the majority never implement it. Some implement it but don’t let me know about it. The people who implement it and do let me know about it are the ones that I will always happily help in case they get stuck because I know that they won’t waste my time by not implementing the new advice that I give them.

Let me give you a script that you can use right now to reach out to others. They can be busy people who are very successful, or people who are working on the same goals as you are. You need to be a bit careful with asking for help if you are talking to a super busy person like a very well known entrepreneur, but if you’re just talking to someone who has similar goals to you, you can generally ask for more, at least a short Skype call or a coffee. What the hell, I’ll make your life easier and just give you scripts for both.

SCRIPT – REACHING OUT TO A BUSY PERSON

Hi [NAME],

My name is Primoz and I’m a productivity coach for entrepreneurs. I’ve followed your last couple of blog posts closely and implemented the concepts from them. The concept that I really liked and that made the biggest difference for me was X – I was very lost in those situations before, but since I’ve implemented your advice, I managed to achieve X, Y, Z.

Thank you so much for writing those blog posts, they made my life a ton easier!

I have a couple of questions on topic X – would you mind if I sent them your way to get some feedback on them?

Thanks,

-Primoz

Notice how I didn’t ask for anything committing in return yet. You’re dealing with a busy person here and their time is very valuable. So instead of sending them 10 questions right away, ask them if they would be willing to help out. If they say yes, you can send them the questions and I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll get a good answer back.

The next step after you get the reply is pretty simple – implement the hell out of the advice and let the person know about how it went. Do this for a while and you’ll pretty soon develop a good relationship, in fact you might even get a mentor out of it.

Let’s move on to the next script.

SCRIPT – REACHING OUT TO SOMEONE WITH SIMILAR GOALS AS YOU HAVE

Hi [NAME],

My name is Primoz and I’m a productivity coach for entrepreneurs. I’ve followed your blog for a while and I really liked the posts on X, Y, Z. I actually implemented concept A from post X and got these results, so that really worked well for me!

Since you seem to be really good at A, would it be possible for us to set up a short 15 or 30 minute Skype call where I could ask you a couple of questions on this subject?

If you’re up for it, my Skype username is: *******, and I’m free at the following times:

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 4pm-8pm CET (use their timezone if you know it)
Sunday and Monday all day
Tomorrow at 5pm would work best for me.

Are you in?

-Primoz

Notice how I used a specific time and made it super easy for the other person to accept this invitation? And honestly, if you were in their place and someone sent you an e-mail like this, would you ever decline it? I don’t think so.

One thing that you can do (if the call goes well) afterwards to build the relationship is to keep scheduling Skype calls. I usually talk with my friends on a weekly basis and after we finish a call we immediately schedule another one (I use Google Calendar for this).

To get the most out of relationships like this, make sure that you are constantly adding value to the other person by actually implementing the advice that they give you, just like you did in the coach scenario.

Now that you have the scripts, it’s time to put them to some use.

ACTION STEPS:

Brainstorm 3 people that you really admire and want to reach out to
Send them the e-mails using the scripts above

And you’re done with action steps for today! How does that make you feel? If you actually completed all of them, pat yourself on the shoulder because you deserved it.

Today we’ve covered what you need to do to make sure that you crush your goals this year. If you want to build momentum and start working on your goals as soon as possible, check out my FREE 5-Day Success Bootcamp. In the Bootcamp, I share specific systems that will help you turn your dreams into a reality, including a framework that my friend Paula used to go from an idea to taking action and creating a yoga workshop.

Join the Bootcamp!

-Primoz