The Power of Showing Up

In today’s world of Zoom, and Teams, Facetime, and Google Meet – and all other sorts of ways to “meet” with someone without meeting with them – let’s talk about the power of showing up.

I was working with a college student recently about her business goals after Furman University. She wants to go into sales, which is a great entry point into business. She tested well for sales and has, for lack of a better phrasing, a “sales personality.”

Now here’s the kicker, she wants to get that first job somewhere overseas and dare to be different. Easier said than done, but doable. The first thing is to narrow down to a specific country. She chose Australia partially because they speak English and we all know it is a cool place. 

A next step would be to use ChatGPT to find the top 10 companies in Australia for new salespeople and start contacting the sales leaders in those companies using personal connections and LinkedIn to see who is interested. That is a pretty traditional approach and can work, but takes time. If you think it is easy to ignore someone who just contacts you remotely, imagine that person is 10,000 miles away.

A better approach would be to go ahead and buy the ticket, burn the boats get on over there and start meeting people in person. The competition for possible American hires will dwindle down to low digits when you show up. She is doing the remote contacts now and we will see how it goes from there. I bet she ends up getting the job she wants one way or another. Someone will want that crazy American that just showed up with no job and snagged a position with Hubspot, or Oracle or maybe Pfizer, or just a cool startup that wants an American on the team to sell back to the States. 

Showing up works for all sorts of scenarios, even more so now since fewer people do it. We coach the showing-up tactic all the time for things like:

• “Need to pick up a check for accounting and in the neighborhood. Can I pop by?”

• “We have been meaning to get that contract signed. Can I come over Tuesday and answer any questions before we sign it and get rolling”?

• “We have been discussing our service for awhile now. How about I come over and we talk through any last issues so we can get this done one way or another”?

• Or one of my favorites: “I am going to be in St. Louis the first two weeks in February. Can we book an hour anytime during those two weeks so we can meet and discuss what we might be able to help you with?”

Since we can indeed work remote so easily now, I have no problem camping out in their town to meet in-person for a while and working remote.

People are busy and often distracted with what is right in front of them. Your thing may be important, but just not that important to rise to the top of the pile – until you show up.

Originally posted on Upstate Business Journal