I signed up for my first booth as Profit Pathways, and then I sat and stared at the quote and nearly talked myself out of it.
Today I stared at a price quote. Not a cleaning quote, not one of the hundreds we send from Just Peachy every week. This one was for a tablecloth, a banner, and business cards. For Profit Pathways. Because I signed up to be a vendor at an industry conference this September, and I am trying to get my ducks in a row.
And as I sat there looking at that quote, my mind just started racing.
Here is the thing. Profit Pathways is still new. Two years old this November, and I really did not start pushing it until the end of last year. So this is scary. I have done a million vendor shows for Just Peachy Clean. This one is completely different, and it took me a minute to figure out why.
Cleaning was never the scary part
Cleaning is a trade. It is a skill. I go out, I do it, I am good at it, and honestly, being good at it was never that big of a deal to me. But Profit Pathways is me. It is my ideas. My trainings. The things I sat down and built with my own brain and my own two hands. Putting that on a table for a room full of strangers to judge is a whole different kind of scared.
So the questions came, fast. What if people think I am foolish? What if they think I have nothing to offer? What if my booth looks cheesy and I clearly do not belong there? What if someone who has been in this industry twice as long as me looks at my setup and thinks, what could she possibly teach me, she is a baby in this business?
And I will be honest with you, because pretending I am fearless would not help either of us. Last year I had a call with someone I really respected. Past tense. And on that call, this person basically asked me what I could really offer anyone. That comment is still sitting in the back of my brain. I know it is, because here I am bringing it up to you.
The negative always sticks
That is the part that gets me. We clean hundreds of houses a week. Hundreds. And all it takes is one single one-star review, one person who calls in unhappy, one comment about our pricing, to knock the wind out of you for a minute.
In cleaning, I have built up a callus for that. I know my worth in that space. I know everybody has good days and bad days, and when we bomb a clean, we own it and we make it right. But this is tender, because it is new, and because it is me. This is me being vulnerable and saying, hey, look at what I made for you. And the “it is cool, please buy it” part feels so awkward I can barely say it. Thank goodness my friend Nicole already told me she is going to plant herself at my booth and pull people in, because otherwise I would probably just stand there.
Nervous and excited are the same thing
Here is what is carrying me through. I heard someone explain that nervousness and excitement are actually the exact same feeling. The only difference is the outcome you are expecting. When you are excited, you assume it is going to go well. When you are nervous, your brain is stuck on the unknown. What if I bomb? What if nobody listens? What if nobody buys and I just set fire to a pile of money on a fancy tablecloth?
Same butterflies. Different story I am telling myself about them.
And here is the story I have decided to go with instead: I will not walk away from this with nothing. I genuinely believe everything happens the way it is supposed to. So if I show up and bomb, then I was supposed to bomb, and I will learn from it, and I will be better for the next one. It might be an expensive lesson. But how else do any of us learn, if we never jump in and do the thing?
So here is my question for you
What are you sitting on right now that you will not move on, because you are scared of what people will think? The post you will not publish, the price you will not raise, the offer you will not launch, the booth you will not book. The thing where the fear is really just “what will they think of me?”
Because that fear is not a stop sign. It is the receipt that you care. I would rather show up scared than stay comfortable and small.
I am doing it. In September, I am setting up my first Profit Pathways booth, and I am doing it terrified. If you are going to be at CleanCon, come find me and say hi. Tell me you actually watch these. That is honestly all I want out of any of this, to make a difference for every one of you.
I will be the nervous one at the booth who is so, so glad you stopped.