It’s easy to dismiss one person with an idea, but not a bunch of people.
Have you ever been in a room with a speaker and a question was asked to which a raised hand was requested in response? Not some simple question like “who loves their kids?” Of course everyone would raise their hand. I’m talking about something that is a little deeper and reflects a belief or situation in which someone might be judged by another. Being a speaker I get to see this often because I enjoy asking a question that rattles the mind a little. Here’s what happens…a few people (those who are strong in their conviction) raise their hands immediately….then a few seconds later a few more go up…then depending on the question, a bunch of hands go up! You see, the more hands that go up, the more it is clear to some of the people that their thinking IS right, so they raise their hands.
This is a little like critical mass or as I like to call it “self-evidence.”
The Little Dance…
This past weekend, during one of our Saturday Business development workshops, Polly Welliver shared a little story about Bees. To give you a quick background, not long ago during a workshop I was talking about lessons we can learn from Ants. As I was wrapping up Polly pipes in that Bees are really cool too and that we can learn from them as well. At that moment I invited Polly to do a little homework and share a lesson about them for our next workshop. Saturday Polly came through bit time!
She shared some really cool stuff about Bees, and one of the lessons was about how they figure out when to move to a new location. The female bees send out a few scouts to look for a new place. When they come back, if they have found a place that looks good…they do a little Bee dance. This little dance is there way of saying “oh boy, I found a great spot!” So now a few more bees go check out the potential location and if they come back and do the dance too, then some more check it out. The magic number is fifteen. If fifteen bees are all dancing about the new location…everyone packs up and moves!
Dancing your way to Critical Mass
This is how it is when you are developing a networking business too. At first you are the one who is excited. You are doing your little dance in front of other people and hoping they will begin dancing with you too. Many don’t, but if you dance in front of enough people, soon some begin to dance too. This is kind of like being at a party or a function and it takes a few people to start dancing before others will hit the floor also. After a while, as you assemble more dancers, more people become interested in dancing and join your business. This is because your business is becoming self-evident.
You see it’s easy for someone to put your business down when it’s just you. But as your business grows now they have to look at a lot of people doing the business and their internal discussion changes from “what’s wrong with these people, can’t they see that this won’t work?” to “maybe there’s something I am missing?”
This parallels the growth of almost anything new in the world. So dance your dance and don’t stop. The other dancers will come if you dance enough. The bees are a great role model.
