"Excuse me..."

One of the things I'm enjoying about this work is the opportunity to take some time for self-improvement. I realized early on that the skills I needed to develop to succeed in network marketing are actually skills I have needed to develop for myself anyway - stuff like talking to people, whether on the street or on the phone. I've been a freelance writer for over 15 years and still have trouble making myself pick up the phone and introduce myself to people who might want to hire me. Which pretty much meant that unless I fell into some work, I was out of luck. So learning to talk to and develop a rapport with people has always been high on my To-Do List. It's just never gotten To-Done.

Not anymore.

I'm much, much better on the phone. (It helps that I've got an awesome product that can benefit just about everyone - which I know because it's benefited me.) But I'm still working on the face-to-face contact with strangers - check that, face-to-face contact with people I have not yet met. So last week, I made a deal with myself. I had to spend the day in New York City, which meant I would be surrounded by people at the train station, on the train, on the street, in the subway, and I was bound and determined that before I got home that night, I was going to Make Contact.

For some people, talking to new people is just like, I don't know, pouring a glass of water. It's effortless, almost second-nature. My partner is one of those people and I used to think she was crazy - now I think she's a genius. She will even talk to celebrities, which always makes me cringe. For the longest time, if I spotted a famous person I would only tell her after either the star or we had left the area. I hated it that much - enough that I would deny her a small pleasure to save myself a cringe.

But I digress. Back to my day of Making Contact: It was not easy. I got all the way to my early-afternoon meeting, and I still hadn't had anything that I thought qualified as a conversation. So when I left the meeting and headed to the subway, I gave myself a stern talking-to. I vowed that I was going to talk to ONE PERSON before the train arrived. I walked past people on the platform, looking for the perfect person to talk to. And there was this man standing by himself, out of earshot of anyone else - so if I made a fool of myself, at least he would be the only person to hear me. I decided he was The One.

I had already planned my opening line. "Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me. I'm taking a class and my assignment is that I have to talk to people. So can I talk to you?" Okay, so the "taking a class" part was not exactly 100% true, but I was engaged in serious learning. So I walked up to the man - who was standing with his back to me - and said, "Excuse me."

And when he turned around, I saw he was...a celebrity. Well, not a celebrity like a nationally known guy, but an actor. An actor I recognized, whose work I have seen many times and enjoyed. It was like my worst nightmare come true. I wanted to run away, but I was already committed with the "excuse me," so I decided to pretend I didn't recognize him (it's just my mind playing tricks on me) and follow through with my story about the class.

Well, he couldn't have been sweeter. He picked right up and started asking me questions - the best way to draw out someone who's shy - about my "class," about where I was from. I asked him questions back, and eventually got him to give me his name. (It was him. Cringe!) I apologized for "not recognizing" him and reeled off some of his performances that I've enjoyed, looked down the train tracks "Is this train ever going to show up?" and escaped.

It took me a day or two to let the shock of this experience work through my system. But I think that one conversation with the kind of person who's maybe the scariest for me (famous) was the equivalent of 20 or 30 conversations with regular folks. In fact, later that afternoon - though I was still shaking inside - I struck up a conversation with a shop clerk and got his phone number. I wouldn't say I've completely mastered the techniques yet, but I'm a lot farther on than I was before. And that's really good to know.

Awesome month

I'm having a great time doing this work! I've already written about how much fun it is to be talking to people for a living - in my writing work, generally my only steady companion is the puppy and though she's adorable and incredibly smart (her teacher says she has "unlimited potential") she's not much of a conversationalist. Honestly, it continues to surprise me just how much fun it is, even talking to strangers.

I'm also enjoying exploring new skills, getting to flex a different side of my brain for a change. My mentors and business partners are fabulous people and I'm learning a lot from them.

But probably the most fun is developing an income stream that's not connected to the vagaries of corporate America. Maybe it's not a "stream" yet - just a cute, babbling brook - but it'll be wide and deep as the Mississippi one day.

9 people on my team to date, and counting.