What other people will think about your decision to bet on
yourself, to build a side business, to share your
expertise, to be confident in the fact that you are who the hell you
say you are, that's got nothing to do with you. And it's not where you
should be putting your energy. But if you have something that you want people
to know and, or you think that other people could benefit from, and the only
reason you are not saying it is because of what some probably
irrelevant white dude is gonna think on the other side, that is
not a reason. We can do things scared. It doesn't mean you're not scared.
It doesn't mean that you're not worried about things. It doesn't mean that people won't
have opinions. But in my experience, the people who matter don't have time to
have opinions other than positive ones about what you're doing.
Boom! Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken Network,
a podcast about how you're not too much. Space
expands, so let's fill it.
There are very good reasons for not starting your own
business or not starting your own side business, whichever. There's
super good reasons for doing it. You have a job, you don't
want the stress of owning your own business. You don't want to be responsible
for all of the details and minutia of running a business. You don't have
time. You don't have energy. There's so many good reasons and there's nothing wrong. There,
there are lots of people who advocate for starting your own business who make it
sound like there's something wrong with having a job, like working for someone else is
somehow embarrassing. No, you have to pay your bills. If you're in
the US, you have to get health insurance. You have to take care of your
family. And if you're doing that through a job and you're doing the damn
thing, you are doing the right thing. So I am not an
advocate for big middle fingers towards your full-time job
or not having a full-time job or whatever. I don't believe that.
So if the reason that you're not starting your business is
I don't have time, I'm worried about the finances. I
have some sort of non-compete with my full-time job. I
don't want to create conflicts with my full-time job. Like,
all of that's valid. And if the safety and security
that your full-time job gives you is important to you or something that you need,
100%, I'm totally on your side. However, if the reason
that you are not starting your business or
positioning yourself as an expert in your field is
because you are worried about what other people will think,
that is not a reason not to bet on yourself. Put
plainly, other people can get bent.
What other people think about you is not your business.
What people say about you when you're not in the room has nothing to do
with you. If people are shitty and talk about you when you're not in the
room or have nasty things to say about you, let them. That's their breath
that they're wasting on something that has nothing to do with them. But what other
people will think about your decision to bet on yourself, to
build a side business, to share your expertise, to be
confident in the fact that you are who the hell you say you are, that's
got nothing to do with you. And it's not where you should be putting your
energy. And I mean that in a lot of ways. Should you not wear a
thing you want to wear because you're worried about what other people will think?
Fuck them. Should you not try a
new hobby because you're worried that somebody else will think that it's silly or
stupid? Fuck them. Like, the opinions of other people
should not be interfering with what you want to do. So when I say,
what is stopping you? What is stopping you from
fractionally helping other companies? What is stopping you from
building yourself or creating content or doing things around what you know
and how you can help other people and things that you think other people should
know in whatever way you're comfortable with. It doesn't mean that you have to
start a vanity project podcast just so you can talk into the microphone every
week and drive your producer crazy. Like, I'm not saying you have to do that.
It doesn't mean you have to do video content all the time. It doesn't mean,
it doesn't mean anything. But if you have something that you want people to know
and, or you think that other people could benefit from, and the only reason you're
not saying it is because of what some probably irrelevant white
dude is gonna think on the other side, that is not a reason. We
can do things scared. It doesn't mean you're not scared. It doesn't mean that
you're not worried about things. It doesn't mean that people won't have opinions.
But in my experience, the people who matter don't have time to have opinions
other than positive ones about what you're doing. They don't. The
people who matter are not spending the time and
calories on thinking about what you are doing at all.
And if there's anything relatively negative that they have to say about it, it is
a two-second blip before they go about their day. They've completely forgotten about it.
So what is standing in your way? Is it money? Is it
capital? That's real, but you'd be surprised how
many consulting businesses you can start without a dollar. There's so much
good information out there, and a lot of it is already stuff you know.
You might need somebody to push you in the right direction, but it's already within
you. Is it not having the right connections? Is it not knowing where to
start? That's an easy fix. Just go make some friends. Find
people in your, in that industry. Make some friends. Genuinely make some friends.
Do not make transactional friends who you want to make money off of.
Make friends in that industry. And you know what? Make
friends, meet new people, foster older
relationships. Because I get a ton of referrals
to my business every day— knock wood— and a lot
of the referrals I get are not even from people who are in the
field that I'm in. It's just somebody who knows
somebody, and they call and say,
hey, I have this friend and he's starting a startup and and knows nothing about
healthcare compliance. Can you help him? He's never billed before. Can you help him?
He's never done this before. Can you help him? That person's in like underwater
basket weaving, but they just know that I do healthcare things.
And so you will get referrals from people who are not even
in your ecosystem, but they run into somebody who's in your ecosystem
and they remember because you told them, “I am now doing
consulting in bowling alley maintenance.” And they're gonna meet somebody who
runs a bowling alley and they're gonna put you guys together because this person probably
needs bowling alley maintenance. I have no idea what bowling alley maintenance is. I just
made that up. I assume it's a thing. I'm gonna guess it's different now
that everything's automated, but I also, if anybody is an expert in bowling alley maintenance,
I would love to hear from you because I wanna know what it is now,
but it just came outta my mouth. So if what's stopping you is your
network, go build a network. If I can put on
pants and shoes for three days and
talk to a bunch of strangers at an event like I did recently.
You can message people on the internet unless you're a white guy
being creepy. Don't do that. Or any guy being creepy. Don't do that. Keep it
about business. Be nice. Be authentic. Don't tell people they're cute
unless you're another woman commenting on a woman's hair. That's
fine. But like, there's a lot of creeps on LinkedIn who think networking
is saying things about women's bodies. And it's not, it's not, it's never been. Don't
do that. If there is an expertise within you, and I know there is, I'm
certain there is. If you need help finding it, you reach out to me because
I will help you find it. I guaran-damn-tee you, someone
else who is less qualified is getting paid to
teach people about things you know way better. And the things that are
stopping you should not be the opinions of
anybody else. Because those people are not going to pay your bills.
Those people are not going to help you build a business by having a negative
opinion of anything. So when that pops into your head, I want you
to literally out loud tell those imaginary
people or those people who you are putting words into their
mouths to get fucked and go do the thing.
Go do the thing. One, you can bet on yourself.
But two, I know you have it in you. Do not stop what is in
front of you because of the imaginary or
perceived or sometimes real, and if they're real,
thoughts of jackasses that you are either
conjuring or giving way too much airspace to. Tell them to get
bent and get to work. Ask L2. We
have a question from Deborah. I hired someone
to take the admin off my plate, and I've spent three weeks
secretly redoing their work at midnight. Am I a bad
boss or just a bad delegator? I don't wanna say it like it's a
little bit of both because that's not the case. I don't think you're a bad
boss. You might be a bad delegator. It sounds to me like more than
anything, you just aren't sure how to communicate what you actually
want or need, but there's also a world where it's just not the right
person. Like, in my experience, when it's the right person,
after you've done the training part of it, they'll
know when to ask questions to get
the parts that they need so that they're doing it right. And so
this is not a criticism of that individual by any means, but like, sometimes it's
just not the right fit. The people who do well
managing me, and it requires a lot— I'm, I am a mess. I
need a lot of people to manage me. It, like, figure out pretty quickly
that sometimes it's not asking me, sometimes it's telling me.
Sometimes there are things that make perfect sense in my brain
that don't translate well, and they have to come ask me questions.
Sometimes it's putting time on my calendar and scheduling
so that I actually do the thing that they ask me to do. And they'll—
I had somebody who worked for me for a long time who did this, who
would put time on the calendar, make sure I showed up to the meeting. And
then when I showed up to the meeting, say, I just wanted to make sure
you did this thing. Bye. And leave me there. And that meant
that she blocked the time so that I actually looked at the things she needed
me to look at. But like, those are ways to get through to me. That
doesn't mean that's the type of stuff that you need. But first off, I would
try to communicate a little bit harder. And if you're making changes, you need to
be communicating those changes back to the person. Because if they don't get a
chance to do it the way you want it because you've never told them, then
that's a problem. But if you tell
them, but you still have to make those changes, then it's not the right person.
So first is communication. Communicate more. I get
overwhelmed when I have to communicate a bunch of instructions to people. And so I'm
much more comfortable writing out the instructions or making Loom videos
to show them how to do it. And then answering questions, like a limited amount
of questions that they might have after getting the whole visual. That's how
my brain works. That's how I learn better also. And so that's how
I tend to set those things up because the idea of like sitting on the
phone with somebody for an hour and talking through all of the things like that
sounds like my nightmare. I'm not great at that. But
on my own time, putting together training documents and
giving you the full brain dump of everything that I anticipate that you're gonna need
to do and showing you all of the weird
intricacies of different systems so that you have a version that you can
reference back to at any time. Like, that I love, and then I can
answer the other questions in the meantime. You gotta communicate with this person,
and if you're fixing things, they need to know that you're fixing it, not because
you wanna tell them they did something wrong, but because you wanna tell them the
right way to do whatever it was. And then if you
keep having to fix things after having communicated, or that person is
not taking enough initiative and requires that much supervision to do
every task, it's not the right person. That's not a criticism of them. It's just
there are some people who are not made for certain jobs, and that's okay. I
had an employee once who was somebody we all liked
so much, like literally one of my favorite people in the world,
and I enjoyed working with him so much,
but he could not answer chats
from users to save his life. We would
get chats and emails and he would answer them incorrectly every time.
And it got to a point where we were having to have him answer them
and then go double-check them before he could send them, which meant
responses were going out hours, sometimes days later,
because we had to have the bandwidth to double-check his work, which wasn't working.
And then it got to a point where we just started
taking things away from him because we were doing weekly coaching
sessions. We were walking him through everything that got responded to incorrectly. We
were giving him the resources. We were building new resources. We were pouring
so many hours into getting him where we needed him to be to be able
to do this role, and it just wasn't working. And that's not a criticism of
him. It just, for whatever reason, was not information that his brain received
well. And so, like, he wasn't the right person for that job.
And did it suck? Absolutely, because I deeply loved this
person and I thought he was the best. I thought he hung the moon.
But at this one thing, he sucked. He was bad at it, and
that was not good for the business. And so
first and foremost, always communicate, communicate, coach,
support, document, figure out whatever way you share information
back at this person. But then second, if that doesn't work,
assuming you are the problem, maybe there are things that you can do better, but
assuming you are the problem when you are doing all the work
instead of finding somebody who can work in that
ecosystem, it's going to be a lot of time of you trying to fix that
without getting the actual support and help that you need. So it might just be
you have to move on to somebody else. Thanks for being here, guys.
Have a good day. Love you, mean it.
Dude, if we get people who respond about bowling alley maintenance, we are putting them
on the air. We're gonna do a whole episode about bowling alley
maintenance.