There is a very good chance there is a room somewhere right now that needed you in it, and you talked yourself out of walking in. This post is about how to be more magnetic, and why leaving the house matters more than anything you’ll ever put on a business card.
Twelve years ago I was at church and saw a woman sitting by herself, off from everyone else. I could tell she was upset. A thought went through my mind, go talk to her. And I pushed it away. She doesn’t know me, I told myself. What could I even do to help. So I left.
I still think about her. Twelve years later, I can still picture exactly where she was sitting.
What I Was Really Saying
For a long time I thought that story was about being too shy, too unsure of myself to walk over to a stranger. But it isn’t really about shyness. It’s about believing I had nothing worth offering. That whatever I might have said or done would not have mattered enough to interrupt her pain.
I was wrong about that. I don’t know what would have happened if I had walked over. Maybe nothing. Maybe something. I will never know, and that not knowing is exactly the cost of staying small. It is not only what you lose. It is what the people around you lose too, the help, the encouragement, the connection they needed and didn’t get, because you talked yourself out of believing you had it to give.
Five Years Behind a Screen
I spent five years building this business mostly from behind a screen. I had clients, but most of them were not local. Growth was slow. I told myself I was doing the work. In some ways I was. But I was also hiding, the same way I hid at that church twelve years ago, telling myself my presence in a room would not matter much anyway.
Then I joined the chamber of commerce. I started going to mixers. I started walking up to people I did not know and introducing myself.
I doubled my business that year. I am on track to double it again this year.
It was not a better website or a smarter strategy. It was leaving the house.
How to Be More Magnetic
When I talk about being powerful, I do not mean loud. I do not mean forceful or intimidating.
I mean magnetic.
The kind of woman who walks into a room and something shifts. People look up. Conversations pause, just for a second, not because of what she is wearing, though that is part of it, but because of what she is carrying. The belief that she belongs there. The quiet certainty that she has something to offer. The absence of apology.
That quality draws people in, the right people, the ones who know somebody, the ones who can open a door or make an introduction you needed. But a magnet only works if you leave the house. It cannot do anything for you from the corner.
If you are wondering how to be more magnetic without changing who you are, the answer is simpler than it sounds. You already have it. You just have to be in the room.
Find the Room
Here is what I am asking you to do this week.
Find one room. One meeting, one event, one gathering of people who share your goals or your community. Not to sell anything. Not to perform. Just to be there as the woman who has decided she is worth being seen.
When you get there, find one or two people you have never met. Do not stay by the people you already know. Cross the room. Introduce yourself. Have the conversation.
Keep their information. Follow up. The magnet does not work in one conversation. It works in what happens after.
Going Back
I cannot go back to that church and talk to the woman I left sitting alone. That chance is gone.
But I can walk into the next room. And the one after that. And I can stop assuming, before I even try, that I have nothing worth offering the people in it. If you’re still asking yourself how to be more magnetic, start there, in the very next room you’re tempted to skip.
You have something worth offering too. Somebody in the next room you walk into might need exactly what you have.
Go find her. And if you want a wardrobe that walks in the room with the same confidence you already have inside, that’s exactly what fit refinement is for.
If this resonates, I made something for you. It is called Stop Making Yourself Smaller: A Guide for Women Who Are Ready. You can get it here.
— Beth