10 Early Lessons for Thriving in Business Development

10 Early Lessons for Thriving in Business Development

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 37 of the Business Development Podcast, and on today's episode, we're going back to the beginning. That's right. I'm gonna list 10 things that I wish that I would've known when I first got into business development all those years ago. I think you're gonna like this episode. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get. Expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca . Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 37 of the Business Development Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today on our lovely business development adventure. It's always amazing showing up to this show week over week and just watching it grow and watching it expand. It's, it's really taken on a bit of a life of its own and it's really due to you guys.

It's due to my, my lovely business development podcast listeners, and I just wanna say, If you're enjoying this show, if you're listening, if this is your first time or if this is your 37th time, I really hope that you're enjoying the show. This show is really built with the idea of building business development.

I, I really feel like business development has been underrepresented in business in general. I think it's been overlooked quite a bit of the time. It's been thrown in with account management and sales, and with this show we're really trying to just. Make people aware of the value of business development and what it can do for your business, and really just draw some light to your amazing business development people, whether you know you're marketing your own business, or whether you're doing business development for another company.

It's an amazing job. It's an amazing career, and I'm very proud to have been in business development all these years, and I'm very proud to be able to give back in this way now. And yeah, if you're listening to this show and you're enjoying it, I thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming back week over week.

Thank you for following us, subscribing, sending me reviews, and telling your friends. It's it's really, really amazing. It really is amazing. And thank you for allowing me to come back week over week and be able to contribute to you and your experience and your business. And I hope that we truly bring a ton of value to your life.

I wanna start this episode out today just by saying a gigantic thank you to Joel Magalnick. He was our expert interview guest for last Sunday. He owns a company called North Then West, and they help with your value proposition for your company. I really enjoyed talking to Joel. I've met Joel a couple of times before he came on the show and I always enjoy talking to him. He's very knowledgeable, he's very smart, and his company is just super cool. I'd never come across a company that was just solely focused on value proposition. I thought it was such a great idea, especially coming from. The business development world where you see challenges with value proposition quite regularly.

But yes. Very awesome. Joel, thank you so much for coming on the show. His episode was episode 36, discovering your Company's True Value Proposition with Joel Magalnick. It's an amazing episode. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, I would highly, highly recommend you go back one episode here and listen to episode 36 with Joel cuz he drops a lot of value.

With regards to helping you with your company and its value proposition, just some updates on the show itself. We are sitting at a little over 41,000 downloads of the show and we're sitting just over four months. So we're kind of just past our four month mark and we've had over 41,000 downloads of our show so far, and that's just on Spotify.

I haven't really had a chance to mix it up with Apple Podcast and figure out the rest of them, but just from the main one, Spotify we're over 41,000, which is. Really amazing, and we could not do it without you. Between our Apple Podcast and our Spotify, we're sitting at just under 500 followers as well.

So if you're listening to this show, you listen to us on Apple Podcaster, Spotify. My goodness, I would love it if you would follow us and keep up with our current episodes as well as, Please tell your friends and leave us a rating. It really helps us to improve our reach and find new business development podcast listeners.

And really it's word of mouth, guys. That's really how these shows spread. So, you know, tell your friends, tell your friend tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues. It helps us immensely, and I appreciate it, and it's really one of the best things that you can do for me and the show if we're providing value to you.

This one, this episode. My gosh, I've said it before. Some episodes are just harder than others, and I struggled a little bit with this one. In all fairness, I have a very busy week coming up. This is a crazy week for Capital. We got a lot of things going on. I'm gonna be back and forth from Calgary for the Global Energy Show, so there's kind of that, there's work obligations, but just in general, life seems crazy busy right now.

I don't know about you guys, but. I dunno whether it's summer or what, but life is really picking up and yeah, it's been a busy one and sitting down to do my, my meeting notes cuz whenever I, whenever I sit down and I'm gonna do a show, I always have my notes. I sit down and I kind of jot out the show and things I want to talk about.

And this particular one I found quite challenging. And I think I found it challenging because going back to the beginning is tough. It's a long time ago for me. And I think the flip side is, is that I always look at life in general as I would not be where I am today without the order of events that got me here.

So even though there's a lot of life lessons that I'm gonna impart on you today, if you're marketing your own business for the first time or just need some help marketing, or you're just a new business development rep, or a season business development rep looking for some new tips, they're gonna find a lot of value in this episode.

I think I hope that I. Leave you today with some inspiration and some great ideas and some structure to help you be more effective. But you know, I also realized that the business development podcast, you know, Capital Business Development, my company would just not be a thing if certain things didn't happen in certain ways and life lessons weren't learned the hard way.

In a lot of cases, that's the way my life lessons have gone. I've, I've had to try things and fail. That has definitely been the way of learning for Kelly Kennedy, but, I hope that I can save some of you, some effort, some fail, some fails that you don't need to have, and we can impart just a little bit of advice for my new business development people or people that need a little bit of help marketing their business.

So if you're at the beginning, if you're at the beginning or you need some help, this show is for you. And I have 10 things. That would've helped me immensely in the very beginning. So hopefully these help you. Number one, organization and structure. When I first got into business development, I was not a very organized or structured person.

Once again, my apologies about my dog. He's in here with us recording quite regularly, and He gets a little antsy sometimes. So my apologies about the bark. If you hear any barks or weird noises, it really is my dog on the floor. His name's Hunter, by the way. Okay sorry guys. Back to number one, organization and structure.

Okay, so when I first started out in business development I was quite young. I was actually 22, just about 23 when I first started out in the business development world. I was quite young. I was a bit of a youngin getting into it, and I was just not a very organized young man. I had, I think I told you guys in the beginning, we used to have business cards thrown all over the place.

We track things with Excel. I didn't take notes. I, I did not take notes yet at that point in my life, I guess I took like jots or whatever, but I didn't have organized notes. Okay, so my number one tip to all my new business development people, all my people marketing your business for yourself. Make sure that you have a notepad with you, okay?

I keep a notepad with me. Whenever I'm doing any type of business, I, I have a notepad next to my laptop, which I write my top things to do today. So I always have a to-do list for the day, and I always have a top things that I want to get done that day, and I order them from the things that I. Maybe I don't want to do up to the things that are maybe easier.

So I try to start my day with the things that are a little bit harder that I wanna get off my list, which, you know, might be my cold calls. It might be, you know, just any type of tedious tasks that I just know I need to do today that'll bring the most value to my business or my client's business. Try to structure those out so that those get done first.

So we wanna have a notepad. We wanna keep detailed notes of who we're talking to, what was said. We wanna keep a top 10 list, you know, it doesn't have to be top 10, but just have a top things to do today, list and at least mark out six or seven, you know, there's always six or seven things you should be doing today.

Put them down on a list and I think you'll find that as you complete them and you check them off, it will motivate you to get more done in your day. If you have a note list right next to you, showing you what you have to do today. Okay. Alright, number two, CRM guys. You know, I nail CRMs all the time. We use pipe drive here at Capital.

I recommend pipe drive to all my clients and we implement pipe drive at all my clients because it's just easier to do that way. CRMs will change your life. They really were. They really will. If you are not currently utilizing a crm, a customer relationship management tool in your company you need to implement one, especially if you're doing outbound sales calls, you're trying to track customers you're doing follow up calls you got things to do.

You're doing LinkedIn, digital introductions, like we talk about in this show. You need to have a place to enter all this data that is your crm. It's like your central tracking system. And if you keep detailed notes inside of your CRM, you keep your customer list updated, you have a proper good flow to it, you take good notes.

It's going to serve you incredibly, incredibly well. I did not use a CRM when I first started in the business development world. They probably did exist. I just wasn't aware of them. I really was kind of flying by the seat of my pants back then. And When I finally did find one, I'll be honest, I still didn't use it properly.

It took me many, many, many years, and I hope that you guys will do better than me in this. And you will just implement a CRM and you will follow it, and you will update it, and you will treat it with the respect it deserves because they really are amazing. They keep your life organized, and they allow you to keep structure and organization to your calls, to your customer contacts, and eventually right down to your meetings.

Okay. So we want to update a crm. We wanna make sure it has proper flow. Okay? If you guys want information on how to do proper CRM flow, I actually have a show. You can go back to it on how to set up your CR M. Okay? Okay. Number three, keep to BD tasks and don't get pulled in other directions. And I understand that this isn't necessarily your fault if you're a business owner or if you're in bd.

It's very common that you get asked to do 15 different things. You know, you, you're wearing many hats. Sometimes if you're in bd, you get asked to do some sales stuff. You get asked to do some account management, maybe you're even doing some operations. And what can end up happening is bd. BD takes a backseat, okay?

BD takes a backseat to what you need to be doing. And unfortunately, what that always means is, is that BD gets neglected, and when BD gets neglected, New business stops, the meetings stop. All the things that you need to be doing really start to grind to a halt. And in order to do effective business development, you really have to keep it to a structure.

And you always need to be focused on, okay, where can we make new business connections? Where can we make new new connections on behalf of the business that might be beneficial to it? You need to always be thinking in that mindset. So I guess what I'm trying to suggest is, is that if you are a business owner, And you have the ability to separate out your business development team from your account managers and maybe even from your inside sales.

You really want to do that. You want your BD people focused on business development. That is what is gonna give you the best value. And on the flip side, you want your account managers focused on account management, cuz that is what's gonna keep your clients the happiest. And so you really don't want.

Your BD people trying to do the account management, your account management, trying to do the bd, because what happens is one thing gets neglected. I'll tell you which thing that is. Business development, new business development will get neglected when you do that route. So I would highly recommend separate them out.

If you are in business development and you're being asked to kind of do multiple things, maybe make the pitch. That it would be great if you could get some help in the account management side, so you could do more focus on new business development. Or maybe if that's not your thing and you would rather do account management, maybe you make the pitch that you get moved to account management and you guys hire somebody specifically for bd.

But trust me, in the long run, that is going to be the most effective for you and being able to focus on new business development. New business development only is going to give your company the best possible results with regards to generating new business revenue. Okay. All right. Number four, stay structured and disciplined.

Okay. So I talked to this a little bit in organization and structure that episode. It's a great one. Once again, if you guys want more on that, I have an episode on it. However, what I want you to do is hold yourself accountable to a call cadence, right? Like you definitely wanna set your week up in a structured way where you are consistently making a certain amount of phone calls and follow ups.

You're sending a certain amount of LinkedIn digital introductions, which you guys know, if you hear me talk about it all the time, you wanna add a hundred LinkedIn invites every week, or you wanna send a hundred LinkedIn invites every week because you can. And if you don't do that, it doesn't renew, so you lose those invites.

So you always want to be making sure that you're sending your 100 LinkedIn digital introductions every single week. That way you're getting that many more new lead opportunities to put into the digital introduction space and eventually move into that weekly contacted space. Right. But we wanna have structure, which means what I want you to do.

Is, decide for yourself. How many calls can you commit to on a daily basis As a business development rep, I don't think it's unreasonable to commit yourself to 15 or 20 calls per day and just say, look, every day, no matter what, I'm gonna make these calls and I'm gonna leave that, that I'm gonna leave whatever, 18 messages, or I'm going to ask for five meetings.

But the reality is, is that if you wanna get to meetings, which you guys know, that's where we want to go. We wanna get to meetings cuz meetings is where we sell. Meetings is where we build relationships. Meeting is where the deal happens. It doesn't happen over the phone, it doesn't happen over email, and it definitely doesn't happen over messages.

But we have to do all those things to get to the meeting, to ask for the meeting, right? So we have to hold ourselves accountable. How many calls are we gonna make every day? And let's hold ourselves to it. And if you, if you hold yourself to. A structure like that where you're making, who knows, 50, 60 calls a week on behalf of your customer or behalf of your company, you are going to get meetings.

And if you get meetings, guess what? You're gonna close more deals and you're going to build better relationships with your clients. Okay? So we wanna keep structured, we wanna keep disciplined, we wanna set a call, cadence and stick to it. And we wanna do the harder tasks first thing. Why? Because if we can get those hard tasks out of the way first, we're just going to do better.

Do you know why? The harder tasks in your day are the ones that you avoid. However, they also tend to be the ones that would be the best for your pocketbook, for the revenue of your business. Ironically, the tasks that you don't wanna do are typically the tasks that would have the greatest benefit for your business, which means.

We gotta get good at the tasks we don't like. And the only way you're gonna get good at them is to stop fearing them and just get to it and get them done. Get them out of the way first. But if you're getting those hard tasks, the tasks you don't want to get done out of the way first, you, your company is going to do better.

You are going to do better. Mark my words. If you do the things that you do not want to do first, you will excel. Mark my words. You will excel, trust me on this. All right. Number five, attitude. We have to keep a positive attitude. And you know, like I feel like I've always been incredibly positive. Like Kelly Kennedy has always been an incredibly positive person.

I've always tried to stay optimistic, you know, but I get it. Life, life happens and we have shit days. We really do. And I've talked to, I've talked to people on interviews and are, you know, I talked to Tash Jefferies about this actually. Where I just mentioned like it's really hard when you're in outside facing business development or sales.

And you know what? My BD reps listening to this, you guys can attest to this, we have to put on a face and whether or not we're having a great day or the shittiest day of our life, if we are at work and we have client meetings and we have calls to make, we are compartmentalizing and we are getting the work done.

And I get it. It's not easy. You know, I've had plenty of incredibly hard days in my BD career where. I just put on a smile and I got it done. But positive attitude is absolutely critical to being successful in any business development or any relationship generation, right? You're just not going to call back.

The person who you can tell is having an absolute crap day over the phone. And it, it's, it is what it is. It sucks, but it is what it is. And so, I talk about this all the time. When we're making phone calls, we need to be doing it with a smile on our face, right? We need to be in a good mood. We need to be leaving messages in a way that you would actually wanna call that person back.

Because if you're leaving very boring, monotone voicemails like, hi, I'm John from a ABC company and we are selling X yz co, x, y, Z product and I think you're really gonna need it. And if you could give me a shout back, please, that would be great. You're never calling that guy back, right? We're never calling him back.

We are calling. Hey, it's John with X, Y, Z company. It's absolutely amazing to connect with you. We have X, Y, Z product. I think it's gonna be great for your business. I think you're going to like it. I would love to chat with you a little bit more about it. Give me a shout back. You might call that guy back.

Why? Because even though he screwed up a little bit on the pitch, I didn't have time to rehearse. I'm winging it. He did it in a kind and energetic way. He said it in a way that you would actually want to call that person back. Right. And so it's very critical cuz especially considering 80% of the calls we make go to voicemail.

So it's very critical that if 80% of the calls we make go to voicemail, that we are leaving high energy. Kind smile on our face messages because you need that person to call you back. And the more you leave, the more messages you leave that are kind high energy you can tell this person is happy. You are going to get more calls back and that is what I want for you.

I want you to be successful. The way to success really is a positive attitude and the positive attitude translates outside of the phone as well. It really translates into the way that you interact with the world, and I get that. It's easier said than done. But if you can be a person that people want to talk to, you are just going to be more successful at business development.

You really, really are. I remember somebody asking me once, like, when you hire for business development, what do you look for? Do you look for like, you know, university? Do you look for a whole bunch of sales background experience? And it's like, no, that's not it. The most important thing is I like that guy in the first five minutes.

You know, whoever I'm interviewing. I need to like them in the first five minutes of that conversation. I need to like them almost immediately. Why? Because if I like them almost immediately in the first five minutes of a conversation. So will my customers, so will their customers, right? Ironically, with business development and any type of like relationship type job, being likable is truly the mo, the most important skill.

So a positive attitude plays a gigantic part of that likability, and you can tell really quick if you're going to. If somebody's going to do well in business development, just by, just by having a conversation with them and sh and seeing what their attitude is like, seeing how you feel around them. If they make you smile, if they bring up positive energy in you, they are going to be very, very great at business development.

Okay, number six, confidence. Okay? You need to believe in yourself. This is a funny one. I actually had a conversation earlier this week about this very topic and how critical it is to business development. Believing in what you sell and having confidence in the value that it will provide to your customer is actually a bigger selling point than any of the talking points on the product itself.

Ironically, like if you truly believe and you are. You are just shining confidence. You are just exuding confidence in your product, right? Like when I talk about capital business development and I'm talking to a company that I'm 100% positive that we can, we can help, we can do an amazing job for I am 150% confident.

I just, you know, I stand up in front of them and I say, look. I know what we can do can help you. We can provide exponential value to your cost, and I am excited to sell your product. I actually can't wait because I know how well this is going to work out. And if you can show up with that level of confidence with whatever you're selling, if you're a business owner selling your own products, if you're selling somebody else's product or service.

If you can exude confidence in the interaction with your customer, that is what is going to sell that product or service. It's your confidence. It's actually almost more important than the product or service itself. It's whether or not you believe in it. And so my advice to you is, You need to sell products or services that you believe in because if you can get up on a stage and you say, you know what, I 150% believe in this product or service, guess what?

Everyone in your crowd is going to believe it too. If you can't believe or you or you're struggling with confidence, It doesn't matter how good that product or service is, it really doesn't because you are not going to be able to articulate it in a way that people will buy. You need people to buy you before they will buy that product or service, and you get them to buy you by being confident in the product or service that you are selling.

So confidence is another one. And yeah, it took me a while to, it took me a long time to learn this. It really did. I probably went. I probably went two or three years before I recognized the importance of confidence in business development, but it truly is, it's critical to your success if you are a business owner and you are struggling, you know, let's say you're selling a service and it's your service and, but you are struggling with your own confidence.

Believe me, your customers are picking up on that. So you need to work on yourself. You need to sell yourself if you are getting up, if you're struggling with confidence in your product or service. Stop selling other people. You need to look at yourself and sell yourself on it. And if you cannot sell yourself on that product or service, you need to move on to something you can sell yourself on.

Because if you're, if you don't buy it, no one else is gonna buy it. And so I feel like one of the key takeaways, no question from this, this talk today is confidence. I really want you guys to take that to heart and really ask yourself, do I believe in the product or service I'm selling? And I sure hope that answer is yes.

Because if that answer is yes, then you can easily work on that confidence aspect and you can exude it in your next product or service demonstration or your next meeting. But if that answer is no, I need you to think long and hard about whether or not what you're doing is maybe the right thing for you.

Because there's guaranteed a product or service you would believe in. There's guaranteed a product or service that you would've pride in selling or you wouldn't feel bad about selling. And you know what, like, and I'm not hating on car sales people because you know what, like, I started my career there too.

But that is an industry where I definitely struggled in because I did not necessarily believe in the, the process, the sales process that we were going through at that time to do that, and that the product was the right thing for the people that we were selling them to. I, I definitely struggled with that.

And you see it, you definitely see it in that industry where, There's a lot of salespeople who don't really believe in the product. They're just there to make a paycheck, and that's that's a tough place to sell from. Okay. No hate to my car salespeople. I was one of you. I totally get it. And I know that there's good versions of you out there, so I'm not hating on you.

I'm just saying, like, in my experience when I was a kid and I went through it, it did have some shady aspects. I, I know that it's cleaned up a lot, but. Yeah, understand. I'm not hating on you. I'm just saying like in that particular industry, it has a bad rap and it has a bad rap for a reason. Okay. All right.

Try new things. Okay. Do not get stuck in old ways. Don't be afraid to adopt new technologies or processes if it can help you. I know we got stuck in this, in business development, in sales, in operations. Almost any aspect of a business can really get stuck in its ways. The problem with getting stuck in its ways is that the, the world is always changing, right?

The world is always changing around us, and new technologies are coming up, and you have to be open. You have to be open to change, okay? If you, if you're in sales or business development, or if you're a business owner, or if you're in operations or most aspects of a business, Don't get closed off. Don't get stuck in your ways.

Just because something has worked for 20 years does not necessarily mean it is still the best way to go about doing things. Efficiencies are changing all the time, and to be competitive, you have to be adopting technologies, processes, you know things as they come along to help you improve your program, your process, your efficiencies, because if you do not, your competition probably is, and what ends up happening is.

You get stuck in a time capsule and eventually you get left behind. Okay. I struggled with this. I'm gonna be honest. I was one of the people in, in an older business that I worked at that really hated change that in some ways pushed back against change. It really took me starting my own business, going out on my own and seeing how things were happening, and to really open my eyes to realize that like, you know what Kelly?

You have to be open to change and now you know. Now I sit down with my employees and I say, look, if you guys see something that looks game changing, I want to know about it. If you think that it can improve our efficiencies of process, I want to know about it because I don't want to be behind the curve.

I want to be ahead of the curve. And I think that all of you need to think about that as well. Try and implement things that keep you ahead of the curve. And no, that doesn't mean be the early adopters of everything. Not everything is worth adopting. It has to have a true value in your business. It has to provide a, a tangible efficiency or value or process improvement to your business.

And it has to make sense, right? Like financially it has to make sense, but if it meets those criteria financially, it makes sense. It'll, it'll improve efficiencies in your business. It is worth looking at and most likely also worth implementing because the more efficiencies that you can save, the more time that you can save means the more time that you can invest elsewhere in other things that maybe.

Add more value to your business, right? So be open to new ideas. Be open to new processes, and don't be afraid to try new things because yeah, they probably aren't all going to work, but the ones that do work might be game changing for your business. So try new things, try new things. Don't get stuck in your ways.

Okay. Number eight, learn. Learn and learn some more. This kind of goes back to the other one. Don't stop learning. You know, I, I'm an expert in business development. I've been doing this an incredibly long time, and I'm still learning every day, and I'm only an expert to today. Okay? I'm only an expert today.

Tomorrow is, there's something new that I don't know. There's something new that I don't know, and I know that, and if you're a business owner, I need you to, to adopt a mindset that's similar to this because yes, you probably are amazing at what you do today. You're probably, it took, you know, an entire lifetime of learning to get you to where you are today.

And yeah, you are an expert in what you do. Definitely. But remember, you are only an expert up to today. Technology changes tomorrow and you gotta change with it. You gotta adapt. You gotta be open to change. Okay. Like, which kind of takes us back to the last point, but you guys need to be constantly learning.

So what do I recommend? Listen or read lots of books, right? I'm, you know, we're a business development or we're business owners. We're, we're probably traveling quite a bit. We have lots of meetings to go to, listen to audiobooks, listen to educational podcasts like this one. Listen to things that will improve your game, that will, that will keep you thinking, that will keep you innovating and striving to be better.

Because there's always something to learn. There's always something you don't know. And if you keep that mindset and you're constantly learning, you're just gonna get better and better and better at what you do. Take courses. Never quit learning and stay curious. Stay curious guys. There's always something new to learn.

There's always a new better way. There's always something new for you guys to figure out, to stay ahead of what you do. Don't stop learning. It will. It'll do nothing but improve you. This was nailed into me by by a mentor and boss Selva Nadar, Selva. If you're listening to this, you know, the reality is I would not be where I am today without your mentorship, without your guidance.

And, and working for you was always a pleasure. So I just wanna say a big shout out to Selva Nadar of Engrity Inspection Services in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He's an amazing man. If you guys need any type of inspection services, that's definitely a place to go. All right. Number nine, strive for greatness in everything you do.

You were born to do great things. If you're listening to this right now, you were born to do great things. People that were not born to do great things, don't listen to shows like this. You know, they go home at night and they watch, you know, reality television. Don't get me wrong, I love reality television too, but you know what I'm saying?

Like, You want to do better? You just listening to this podcast shows that you want to do better. Like people that don't wanna do better don't listen to shows like this. They don't listen to educational audio books. They don't listen to business books. You want to do better? You were born to do great things.

Believe it. Believe in yourself cuz I believe in you. If you were listening to the show, mark my words. I believe you were born to do great things. You were born to change the world. Do it. Do it. Stop waiting. Take action. Be the best. Be the best at what you're doing. If you're listening to this show, when you're starting a new company, be the best at whatever service or product you guys are marketing or selling.

If you're a business development person, don't settle for second best. Go be the best. Be the best in your company, and then when you beat that, be the best at a different company. You can do it. I believe in you give 110% because you are born to do great things and you can do great things. Don't let anyone tell you differently.

You 150% can and will do great things. Find a product or service that inspires you and sell the crap out of it. You know, build an amazing enterprise, build an amazing business. You can do that. Don't let anybody tell you differently. I don't care whether you didn't graduate high school. I don't care whether you got C's in college.

I don't care if right now you're the worst performing person at your company. That's all mindset. It's all mindset. That is not who you are. You are good enough. You can be the best. Just take action, mark my words. Take action and you can, you can do whatever you set your mind to. Because I grew up, I always had a lot of people on my side, which is thankful, but you know, I made a lot of mistakes growing up.

I did. I made a lot of stupid mistakes growing up, like I'm sure many of you did. I ended up where I am despite stupid things that I did. You know, despite being not so great at school, and not that it wasn't that I wasn't so great at school, it was that I just didn't apply myself once I recognized later on in life that shit, all I had to do was apply myself and I could be a leader, I could be a thought leader, I could be a business development leader.

I could do amazing. I could build a great company. Once I stopped limiting myself, it was self limitations that held me back and it's self limitations that are holding you back. Mark my words. If you are feeling held back or like you can't do something, it is not someone else's fault. It's self limitations.

And once you let go of those self limitations and start believing in yourself because you are good enough, you can do it. No matter what you set your mind to, you can do it. Once you get rid of those self limitations, the sky is the limit. Mark my words for you. The sky is the limit. Take away the self limitations.

Strive for greatness. In everything you do, you can do it. And number 10, this kind of goes back to this as well, imposter syndrome. Okay. You are good enough. We all struggle with imposter syndrome. I struggle with imposter syndrome. I think from time to time I still struggle with imposter syndrome. I'm up here talking to you on a podcast.

I'm not, I didn't start out a podcaster. I'm a business development person, right? Like that's my background. That's, that's like what I live and breathe. I love business development. I really do. It is one of the greatest things that has ever come to my life. And I really love it. And because I love it, I'm great at it.

And because I don't hold myself back and I know my capabilities, I am really great at it. But you know, imposter syndrome happens to all of us and it really comes down to self limitation. Okay. It's self limitation. Imposter syndrome has a funny thing if you do the thing that makes you feel like an imposter.

And yeah, the first 1, 2, 3, 5, maybe 15 times, you still feel like an imposter. But one day you get up and you do that thing, and you no longer feel like an imposter anymore. You believe. You believe, okay. The whole thing about the imposter syndrome was you and self limitations. But once you've done it 15 times and you did it, and you did it great, your body can no longer tell you that, oh, that's not you.

That's not who you are. Why? Because you've done it 15 flipping times. So do the thing. Do the thing that makes you feel like an imposter and do it until it feels normal. Cuz mark my words, it will feel normal. One day you'll get up in front of a podcast mic, if you're me, and you won't feel like an imposter anymore.

I feel like a podcaster now. Yeah, it took a lot of episodes. Mark my words. It took a lot of episodes, it took a lot of self-doubt, a lot of fear. But mark my words, if you do something enough times, You will no longer feel like an imposter, just like I no longer feel like an imposter podcaster. I've made it.

I've made it here. I, I've, I've, I'm where I need to be. I'm doing something that I was born to do. Business development, podcasting, teaching the world business development, inspiring you. That's something that I was put on this earth to do, and I'm very proud of that. And the thing that's holding you back or the thing that you're afraid of, mark my words, do it 15 times.

Do it until it feels normal. But one day you will wake up and it you will no longer feel like an imposter. Okay. Another part on this that I wanna talk to you is anxiety. You guys know I have an entire show on anxiety and stagefright, right? Why? Because I suffer from anxiety and stagefright. Okay? I, you know, I've been to probably a thousand business meetings and I still at times get anxiety and I still at times get a little bit of stage fright.

Once again, it's one of those things that it goes away, right? It, it never stays very long. I had a really great interview with Tash Jefferies and Tash Jefferies said. If you didn't feel anxiety, something's wrong with you because anxiety shows you care and she hit the nail on the head. The reason you feel anxious is because you care about the result.

You care about the outcome. Okay? And that's a great thing because if you didn't care about the outcome, why are you even there? Right? It was a funny conversation if amazing interviews. By the way, if you guys have not heard my shows with Tash Jefferies there's two of them. You need to listen to both of them.

She's amazing. She's. Incredibly, incredibly smart and inspirational, and she, she puts on amazing episodes, but she genuinely was talking about how anxiety, it's almost critical. Like if you don't get a little bit afraid, if you don't get a little bit of stage fright, if you don't get a little bit nervous, you probably don't care enough to be doing what you need to be doing.

So use it, guys. Use it. If you're feeling anxious, don't let it cripple you. Use it. And what you find too is that if you go to those meetings, They get better. They get better, okay? You don't stay in that anxious state for long. It's typically like a minute, two minutes, or if you're on a stage talking to people, it's typically a minute or two minutes, but, but it, it subsides and then you feel normal again, and you will be okay.

If you believe in yourself, you can and should be there. That's all you have to do is just believe in yourself. Trust me, you know, this is like the key takeaway from this episode today. Believe in yourself. You can do it. You can do anything you set your mind to. You just need to beat up those self limitations cuz that's what it is.

The, it's those, those those voices in your head telling you you're not good enough. It's bullshit. It's all bullshit. You are good enough. You can do anything you set your mind to and you can be the best at whatever you want to be the best at. Especially in business, especially in marketing or sales.

Believe me, you can do it. Just believe in yourself. Okay? All right. I think that's where we're gonna leave off. Believe in yourself. You're amazing. You guys can do this. You can do this, and I don't care whether it's entrepreneurship, business development, marketing, business ownership. You can do this. Just believe in yourself.

Okay. All right. Shout outs this week. Antonio Mejia, Derek Pinciaro Tyler Rebkowich, and Jamie Sexton. Thank you so much for the kind messages that you guys sent to me on LinkedIn. Absolutely amazing. Always appreciate that, guys. If you're enjoying this show, you guys can always follow us, like, subscribe on your platform of choice.

If you can leave us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, it helps us a ton, or follow us in Apple Podcast, Spotify, it helps a ton. Please take a minute outta your day today to give us a follow on Apple Podcast or Spotify, wherever you're listening. And if you could leave us a review on our website, my gosh guys, it's amazing.

If you just head over to www.businessdevelopmentpodcast.com or.ca and leave us a review. It helps an absolute time guys. It helps a ton. And we post them all on our website cuz I love them. I love seeing the reviews from the show. If you are enjoying this show and you have a question for the show, Please send it to podcast@capitalbd.ca, subject line community questions.

And when I get enough community questions, I'm gonna have an entire episode just answering business development podcast communities questions. And I hope that we can help a whole bunch of people that way. So I'm waiting for about eight questions. I think I'm sitting right now at about two or three.

So yeah, if you got questions, shoot them over. Podcast@capitalbd.ca, subject line, community questions. Okay. Thanks for listening. Just a heads up, this show is brought to you by Capital Business Development Inc. I am the owner of Capital Business Development Inc. Capital Business Development is a Business Development Firm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

We service all of Canada and all of the United States. Mind you, through the United States, we can't quite do as much, but we can definitely do a little bit. If you guys have any business development needs, you want, you want someone to come and take a look at your company, you want somebody to maybe establish a business development program, maybe even put a person on that business development program for six or eight months or a year to really help provide you exponential growth to your business, introduce you to a boatload of new companies, get you a boatload of new meetings.

That is what capital business development can do. I'm looking pretty soon at starting a consultation side where we will start to do some hourly consultation to give you some one-on-one for your specific business. We'll be able to do that at a reduced cost, so expect that soon. But yeah, Capital Business Development.

If you guys need any business development support, I would love to help you. You can always send anything over to us at info@capitalbd.ca. Thank you so much for listening. This has been the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website@www.capitalbd.ca . See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.