I know you can do it alone, but more often than not, you shouldn’t.
Bit of an introvert? Happy when the party is over and you get to go home and curl up in bed? Maybe with your favorite book? I’m with you. There have been parties where I even “accidentally” left and forgot to say goodbye to even the hosts because I just didn’t want to be with people any more that night. If you don’t know this feeling, you’re probably thinking I’m a weirdo. If you do know this feeling, you’re nodding and possibly wondering if you’re a weirdo, too.
But then I have phone calls like I did yesterday.
A friend turned me on to a colleague of hers who was looking to interview people for her new podcast. Her main topic is the journey from “Blogger to Author.” In other words, if you have lots of content, you should turn it into a book.
Before I met Beth on the phone yesterday, I literally said to myself, “Gee, I have 1,600+ posts collected. I should put at least some of them together and make a book. Or two. Or three.”
Get out of the house
I didn’t have to talk to Beth. I didn’t have to come onto her podcast as a guest. I could have just as well stayed home and, I don’t know, wrote some more. But I made a connection. We had so much in common, so quickly into our call that it was clear that we were just going to have to put an end to it at some point or her 4-month old baby wouldn’t get to eat and I wouldn’t get back to … not working with partners and doing too much on my own.
Remember 1 + 1 > 2?
It’s true math. One plus one is usually more than two. Fine, go arithmetic on me, get out your calculator and prove me wrong. But I’m no longer talking about addition. We’re into at least multiplication by now if not exponential powers. Talking with Beth brings out ideas in me that I didn’t know I had. She answers a question and even hears her own self say something that is new to her. I respond in a way that I wasn’t expecting. We have overlap. I can help her with this. She offers to help me with that.
It’s back and forth and it’s more powerful than addition. She knows people I’d like to meet. I have a course her audience would love to take. I can directly help her earn passive income. She can get us new students.
Yeah, that’s all great, but it’s still more than that. Conversations with others bring out sides of us we may not have known. The connection of two people, especially two people who previously didn’t know each other, can turn into an uncountable possible outcomes. Here’s a little more math. How many possible outcomes are there if we didn’t speak? It’s an easy one: zero.
How many are there if we do talk? Easy: more than zero.