I Need To Step Out Of My Comfort Zone More Often  – This Is How I’m Going To Do It

Here’s a short list of things I KNOW I missed because I didn’t step out of my comfort zone in the last 3 years:

1. Growing my company faster

2. Building a stronger company at the present 

3. Giving talks to 3 of the biggest brands in the digital world

4. Over 100K$ (at least) in selling digital products and missing business opportunities 

5. Traveling abroad more

6. Stronger brand awareness 

7. Meeting some of my biggest heroes

This is only a real partial list. 

During the past month as I was on some kind of a ‘Paternity leave’ (more on that in another post) I had some time to think about my life, my business and how i’ve been living them so far.

Yes, I’ve achieved some very cool stuff  at my young age (both on a personal and business levels) but I know it’s only a friction. 

Why? Because I got carried away with worrying about the wrong themes and having self doubts (even Tim Ferriss has them, so it’s OK) and being too self-aware and self criticizing. 

How bad was it? Until last Friday, I never took a ‘selfie’ and posted it online! Thank you Gary Vaynerchuk for giving me the final push to do so

I HATE BEING CRIPPLED BY THESE THINGS!

So I’ve decided it’s time to handle it one step at the time. 

Here are some of the things I’ve done:

1. I talked with 3 friends that I feel are doing things I don’t have the guts to do.

2. I chose three programs / frameworks / challenges that to complete them I’ll have to step out of my comfort zone. 

Here are the 3 things I will be doing:

1. I never launched a digital product, or lets say, never really ‘sold’ something that aren’t my services. 

WHAT I’M GOING TO DO: 

I got an email from Gumroad telling me about an email course on ‘how to build a digital product’. 

Now, I’ve built tens (if not hundreds of them) for my clients, so I know how to do it successfully, but I’ve never done it for myself. So I’m going to follow through with Gumroad’s course just to give me structure .

In 14 days, I’m going to launch an email course to help startup marketers start and grow their company’s Twitter account. 

2. I’m not an ugly guy. I’m no Brad Pitt, but I’m definitely not the most ugly guy to take a selfie. So why is it so hard for me? I don’t know. 

Taking selfies with clients, thought leaders or generally in locations and event worth mentioning is a strong branding tool. It’s 2015, not using this, doesn’t make any sense. 

WHAT I’M GOING TO DO:

In the next 7 days I will take a selfie with 3 different people and post it to Twitter / Instagram. Just to get used to it. 

3. Tackle video / live streaming – I gave talks in front of hundreds of people. I don’t have stage fear of any kind, but video has always been hard for me. 

At the beginning I thought about making a short video and posting it online, but then I understood I will have too many excuses for not US it. So I found an alternative. 

WHAT I’M GOING TO DO:

I’m going to leverage the fact that i’ll be releasing the Twitter course, and i’m going to announce it using Meerkat (The live streaming for Twitter app). Why live streaming? Because it’s one take – one chance. No time to over complicate it.

This will happen in the next 12 days (Assuming the course will be ready in 14 days as planned). 

This isn’t ground breaking 

I know, these are simple stuff that people do everyday right? I could’ve been the worst teenager ever, right? 

There are so many things I need to tackle out of my comfort zone, but I wanted to start with 3 rather easy ones, so I could achieve my first small wins, meaning I will be more motivated to tackle bigger challenge later on. 

How To Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone In 3 Steps

Here’s the framework I’m using right now to step out of my comfort zone – so you can use it too if you’d like.

1. Decide on 3 ‘issues’ you can easily do that are right now out of your comfort zone. Start with 3 simple things because getting those quick wins will get you motivated in tackling the bigger things that take more courage or willpower.

2. Define them in the most specific way: I didn’t just say “sell stuff online”, I actually looked for a very specific thing I can do in a very specific time frame. “3 selfies in 7 days”, “email course in 14 days”, “live streaming the product announcement using Meerkat”. The more specific I’ll get, the more I’m likely to actually do it.

3. Tell the world – If I’d only announce it to myself, I can easily back away from it, right? I’ll make up the same excuses I’ve always used and never do it. 

By announcing it I now have people watching me and expecting me to overcome my fears. Backing away right now will force me to “shame” myself or disappoint someone. 

Now, over to you 

When did you last leave your comfort zone? What would you like to do that you don’t have the guts to do now? Let me know in the comments.

You can also tell me on Twitter (@roypovar) lets do it together! 

This is the real problem with hiring content marketers

In past 3 years i’ve helped quite a lot of startups hire and train their content marketers. In recent year, growing my own agency, I had to hire content marketers for my team to work with our startup clients. 

The biggest problem when hiring a content marketer is not their writing skills.It’s not even creativity or past experience in similar roles. 

You Need A Brand

When I share a new blog post to growthhackers.com or even on Facebook / Twitter, the feedback is almost immediate. Traffic starts pouring in, shares and retweets starts occurring, even suggestions for guest posts etc. 

When my new employee, my new “content marketer” shares her own well written blog post  – she has to work twice as hard and 1/5 of the results. 

She’s an amazing writer. I taught her almost every trick in the book and she does it pretty well. 

The biggest difference is that she hasn’t build her personal brand yet. 

When doing content marketing, if you really want a post to become wildly spread you need to have a recognisable brand – either the company brand, or your personal brand.

One of you has to dominate the niche and to be an active contributor to your community. 

If you’re a nobody and you’ve just written a blog post for Buffer – it’s still going to go big. It’s Buffer! 

If you’re nobody and you are writing a post for an unknown company, well, good luck with that. 

This is what you should be looking for

If you’re about to hire a content marketer you need to look beyond writing skills, strategic thinking etc. 

You need to find someone who’s either already well-known in their niche (which should also be your niche), or someone that can easily understand the niche, audience and needs and easily become a part of it. 

The problem with hiring someone who’s totally new – is that now you have to give them space to build their brand for 3-6 months before they become valuable to your marketing team. 

If you’d give me two options: Hire someone from within the community with B level writing skills or someone who’s an amazing writer / content creator but has nothing to do with your niche, Go with the first one. 

Here’s why I don’t follow this rule when hiring new people

There are two sets of expertise most startups who are looking to hire a content marketer don’t have that I do:
1. I can teach almost anyone how to be an amazing content creator

2. I know how to create personal brands within a niche . This means that it will take me third the time to take someone from “who the hell are you?” to “Hi, I love your content!” on almost any niche. 

My employees work with different clients over time and they have to adjust themselves and become a valuable community member in different spaces. 

I took the time to deconstruct the minimum viable steps to become a community member and I know how to teach it to my employees. 

If you don’t know how to teach these two things, you need to stick what I’ve wrote earlier – find someone from within the niche. 

Conclusion and some tips

If you’re about to hire a content marketer, here’s what you should care about:

  1. She / He are well known in their niche.
  2. They really understand the audience.
  3. They have a community instinct in their personality.
  4. They are creative.
  5. They aren’t emotional about their writing – just about the results.
  6. They understand quality comes before quantity. 

P.S Writing a short guide on how to become an influential part of a community in under 40 days can actually be a good blog post… If you think it’s  a good topic let me know in the comments and i’ll write it up.