I’m a fraud and a liar

There were six of us including myself sat round a table in an exclusive London members club, with a prominent millionaire business owner at the head of the table. We had won a private full day’s workshop with him. He is an author, business leader, influencer and a great speaker. He is also focused, disciplined but calm and approachable. Many of you would have read his books, even bought his classes and seminars. I was still pinching myself that I had managed to win some time with him. I assumed that there had been a mistake. That I was here by accident. No way did I deserve to spend time with this group of people. I’m a fraud and a liar The workshop was a pretty intense look at our businesses, finances, sales and messaging. It was as exhilarating as it was revealing. There was nowhere to hide, hence my fears about being “discovered”. To even get into the wider membership, I had to lie about how much my business was making. I was already out of my depth and then when I won the private workshop, it was a feeling of excitement mixed with blinding fear. What I was feeling, I was later told, is called “imposter syndrome”. The phenomenon that people will uncover you as a fraud and expose you to the wider world. What exacerbated the feeling of being a fraud and imposter, was that the competition to win the private workshop wasn’t even based on pure luck. If I had won because of pure dumb luck, like my name being picked from a hat, I could feel a little better. I wasn’t in control of that. Instead, I along with everyone else in that room, won because I did a small work assignment based off the larger program I was a part of. We were all members of a larger 10-month program. There were a few hundred participants in this particular cohort and of that entire group, me and five other members won a private group coaching session. The rules to enter were pretty simple. Set up five partnership calls or meetings to promote your product or service. That was all. They didn’t even need to pan out. You just needed to get the ball rolling. I just had to reach out to five different people and partner with them on SOMETHING to help my business. And therein lies my problem. Setting up those partnerships took less than one hour. I made a list of people I wanted to partner with, emailed/ texted/ messaged them all and waited. We had one month to complete the assignment and submit our results. I sent about 20 different people messages and two got back to me within the hour. Another two by the end of the day. The last one was a few days later. I took screenshots of the conversations, emailed it to the program leaders and a few days later was told I had won the workshop. One of those partnerships was Dave Foy who wrote the forward to my last book, Five Figure Funnels. Two of them landed me speaking events where I would give a talk. The other two were promotions for my products via webinars to their audience. I was overjoyed that I had won. But I was hit by a stark realisation that there had to have been some mistake. I didn’t have to work that hard. It wasn’t a grind. It was literally a few minutes work. So I started to panic. I worried that they’d mistaken my conversations as huge multi-million-pound deals. Or maybe they got my name mixed up with someone else. Or what if they thought each screenshot was another new partnership? What if they thought the people I reached out to were bigger deals than they really were? I was swimming in hypotheticals and when the day arrived and it became my turn to talk, I presumed that they’d tell me “Mike, you need to leave. You don’t deserve to be here.” Instead, I was asked “so Mike, how can we help your business?” As the day went on we all worked on our own and each other’s businesses. It was so powerful, so constructive. Later at lunch I built up the courage to ask how I managed to win. I didn’t have to work hard. It was easy. Clearly there had been a mistake. “Mike, you and the others here were the only ones that entered.” I couldn’t believe it. Out of HUNDREDS of members, almost all of whom were way more qualified than I to make use of private time with one of our idols, there were six applicants. 6/200. That’s a 3% submission rate. I literally stood there, mouth agape at the answer. He continued “it happens every year. I don’t take it personally anymore. If anything, it’s proof that people idolise me and put me on a pedestal. They don’t believe they’re worthy or capable of spending time with me, or even winning, so they don’t try. That’s the strange thing about being at the top. They say it’s lonely, but that’s because no one else even tries.” Lonely at the top He went on to explain the phenomenon of competition bias. If we covet something, we assume that everyone desires it and therefore, we believe we don’t have a chance to get it. Even just thinking about the odds of winning, we believe that there is so much competition out there for the top spot or “for the win” that we don’t even give it a go. Coupled with our own insecurities where we tell ourselves that we don’t even deserve a place at the top, we write off our chances of success before we even start. Finally, he explained that most people assume that other people don’t want to partner with them, so they never try. Despite never seeing any evidence or rejection, most people assume that partnering with bigger names/brands is something other people do. He also asked me to look back at things which people are impressed with, when I show them or tell them. Interviewing Ryan Deiss, getting on a call with Mark Cuban, getting a book published. My answer to all of them was “I basically sent an email.” No tricks, no hacks, no hidden networks. I don’t have a wealthy family or a well-connected friend. I just did the first thing that I thought would work. Tim Ferriss in his book 4 Hour Work Week writes about talking to a load of Princeton students on getting interviews or emails with super-wealthy successful people. He gave a similar competition to that class and explained he would buy a round-the-world ticket to anyone who got an “elite” to answer three questions. Out of 60 students who Tim spoke to, 20 met him to get the rules of the challenge. How many people won a free ticket? Zero. No one even tried. Excuses were either belief that there would be too much competition or that the task was impossible. The key takeaway for me there, is that higher peaks have fewer climbers. If I wanted to make life easier, I’d need to set my expectations unreasonably high. It was during that day’s coaching that the phrase Sell Futures, Not Features was canonized. I had been playing around with it and testing it in a few places. But when I spoke the words, the phrase just clicked. From there it’s grown into a book, course, software, speaking events and workshops. It’s created an income and lifestyle for me that allowed me to take 9 months off during 2021 to recover from testicular cancer. People bring products and services to me which they know work, and can get results. But they struggle to convince other people. They struggle to convince customers that this product is perfect for them. The business owner plays down the impact to some extent and doesn’t like to “hype” what they’re doing. They want more sales, but they don’t want to seem overly confident, pushy or tacky. After spending a few minutes with me using the Sell Futures, Not Features framework, they can see the depth of their product. They become excited and enthusiastic about it again. Maybe for the first time. They stop building their sales approach by what the product is, and start selling by what it does for the lives of their customers. Businesses have a weird competition bias for their own products and services. We all have imposter syndrome about our own businesses and what we sell. I was a bag of nerves when I pitched the idea of Sell Futures Not Features, because “who am I to tell people how to sell their own products?” What I learned is that 90% of people are never ever ever going to care or even hear about you. 5% will love you. 5% will hate you. No matter what you create or produce, even if it helps people and saves lives, you’re always going to have Zeds who are negative towards you. But you will also have super-fans, influencers, creators and evangelists who love what you do and always will. Sell Futures Not Features is my method for helping YOU overcome your fears of rejection, find people who love your product and uncover hidden desirable benefits, to your products and services, that are SO compelling, you can’t help but sell them. I later learned that everyone in the group felt the exact same way I did. Everyone thought they were a fraud for being there. Everyone had imposter syndrome. We all suffer from a small doubt that our products and services aren’t that important. But from years of research, teaching and creating, I can tell you that what you sell DOES help people. You’re changing lives. You’re making people’s lives easier and better. And that is what you should be promoting and talking about. It’s 100x more interesting to talk about your customer’s future and life, rather than your own product.And yet that’s also the best sales method around. Three years later I still meet with that same group, every Friday morning on Zoom to talk about our businesses and work with each other. I see first-hand how a small group of people are changing lives across the world (literally) and in their own homes. This book is to help you create better futures for your customers and network. I don’t have doubts about your ability to deliver or do the work. Most people are amazing “workers” and deliver amazing products, but they struggle to make the sale. That’s what I’m here to help you do – sell futures, not features. Throughout my book, you’ll find exercises that will help you build out your products, messaging, sales process and sales copy. Click here to get your copy >>[( Have courage, commit and take action. Mike Killen P.S. Here's some ways I can help your funnel business double it's revenue. 1. Buy the book [Five Figure Funnels](. It'll help you sell a marketing funnel project for $25,000+ 2. Join the private [Sell Your Service Mastermind Group](. You'll meet other funnel builders looking to double their revenue 3. Have me or one of my coaches on a [free 1:1 call]( to show you exactly what you need to do to double your revenue here. 4. Join [Seven Figure Freedom]( - showing you how to double your revenue in 90 days (and get back 10 hours a week) for funnel builders Copyright © 2022 Sell Your Service, All rights reserved. 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