The Game of Numbers

My friend Nick Murray is an advisor and guru to financial planners, i.e. the guys and gals who manage your investing portfolio if you’re lucky enough to have one.

Nick wrote a book a few years ago called The Game of Numbers. I can’t recommend it highly enough to you add me—artists and writers and creative people of all kinds—and NOT for any advice about money.

Apparently in the financial planning biz, a huge part of the game is COLD CALLING. You gotta pick up the phone and pitch yourself to potential clients.

Can you guess where this is going?

Resistance.

My copy of “The Game of Numbers”

Financial planners HATE cold calling. It’s agony. It’s rejection. You feel like a cheap hustler.

Many aspiring planners avoid it. Result: their business stalls or even fails.

Nick’s advice to these young planners:

Make three calls a day, no matter what.

Take no notice of your success rate.

Keep making those calls, no matter how much you hate it.

He calls this “the game of numbers” because as the number of calls pile up, just by sheer attrition you will get a few successes. Then a few more. And a few more after that.

The trick, Nick says, is to trust the numbers. Keep dialing. Keep cold calling.

The ability to do this, Nick believes, is the difference between success and failure.

I love The Game of Numbers because it applies absolutely to you and me as writers and artists.

Keep grinding. Keep showing up. Keep putting in the work.

Take no notice of how “good” your stuff is at the end of each day. Just get up the next day and keep striving, keep hammering, keep working.

The Muse is watching. When she sees the numbers pile up day after day, she smiles. Ah, she thinks, this gal or guy is for real.

And sooner or later, just like the financial planner making cold calls, the numbers begin to pay off. The work gets better. Our stuff begins to be noticed. We ourselves begin to believe, “Yes, I AM an artist. Indeed I AM a writer.”

Michael Jordan did not learn to shoot the turn-around fadeaway from the corner by magic. He played the game of numbers.

Get Nick’s book. It’s a life-changer. The Game of Numbers by Nick Murray.

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