Have you ever put your time and energy into something that ends up falling seriously short of your expectation? Well, that’s exactly what happened with the very first Virtual Summit I hosted back in 2014. Today, I’ll share with you that time NGNG almost didn’t make it.
I remember it was a Saturday morning when I woke up with a lightning bolt of inspiration. I was going to host an online summit that I called The Authentic Business Success Summit. Imagine a conference, but virtual (… remember, this was still way back before the online world was what it is today). That morning, I thought, “ I’m going to stick my neck out there and do this!”
I focused all of my time and energy on ensuring that this summit was a summation of all of my education and experience.
I designed an Authentic Business Success Summit website, I reached out to friends and colleagues for interviews, I had contests for the best content, for donating to charity, for selecting my final speaker – the whole shabang.
When the Authentic Business Success Summit launched, I was very strategic with how I got the speakers involved to do mass promotion along with my own marketing for the event. And at the end of the launch, I was on a high. It was SO much fun!
…but I have to tell you at the very back end when we closed down the launch and calculated our earnings… I missed my sales goal by a lot. Like, a lot a lot. The kind that you don’t even want to say out loud to people because it’s that painful.
I won’t lie to you. It was a real oh sh*t moment for me. I put all of my eggs into one basket with this summit thinking I was going to hit it big and I didn’t. It was a huge (and very painful) learning moment for me because it completely destroyed my confidence. I thought, “Wow, other people can do it but I can’t.”
Have you been there?
At the end of it all, our cash reserves had gotten down to a point where I was actually having conversations with my dad about where I would get a job. Can you believe that?
I felt like I had completely failed – that I was a failure.
I was scared. I called my coach and mentor at the time who told me, “Amber, you’re gonna have to dig into the trenches and dig yourself out of this. You can do this.”
That is when I decided to suck it up and do some cold reach outs. (Did you cringe when you read that? Because I was definitely cringing in that moment). But I did it. I did what I had to do in order to save the business. It wasn’t the sexiest work, but I got it done. I was able to scrounge up enough web sales and coaching packages that helped get me back where I needed to be.
(If you’d like to know more about how “specifically” I conducted those cold reach outs, click on the video!)
I wanted to share that story with you because it’s not always rosy over here. I mean every business is going to go through some really, really scary moments. And you’re going to learn a lot about yourself…but it’s up to YOU how you’re going to respond. You get to create the ending.
And funny enough, fast forward to year 2015… THAT is when my profit and success hit. Whereas at launch it felt like crickets (ok, not exactly but in my mind it did), a year later people were raving about my success and the invites, the sales, the glory started pouring in. Just because we don’t see or feel instant success, it doesn’t mean it’s not right around the corner…
So remember, when times get tough just remind yourself… No Guts, No Glory!
