I called up my family member and I said, I don't think I can
go back to work. I think I have to find a way
to work for myself. And I don't know what that looks like,
but I think I can do it. I don't know what that looks like. I'm
not saying that having a job is bad. I'm not saying that you should start
your business over having a job. I'm not saying any of that. I am
saying that you are worth betting on and I would bet on you.
And so you should bet on you too. Boop. Hi
everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not Broken,
which is our podcast on exactly that, that there are a lot of people
in this world walking around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different
and that's fine. I've owned
a consulting company for like 5 years, maybe 6. Ooh, 6 years. Yeesh.
Yeah, I guess it's like 6 years now. That's scary. How's that possible? But yeah,
I've been consulting with other companies for 6 years. I've owned my own companies, a
consulting company, and also other companies in the meantime, but a lot of what I
do, even while owning other companies,
is working with startups and building their businesses and stuff.
I don't know if that was ever the plan. It's just kind of where I
ended up. That's not really the important part of
it. My consulting company started kind of accidentally after
I left a job also almost 6 years ago, 5 and a half years
ago. That was just atrociously bad for me. And
the transition out of that job felt like
it was a very bizarre combination. There was this initial period where I was like,
I'm gonna die and my life is over and
I'm never gonna find another job and everything's terrible. And
that was a very real part of it. And I won't say that it was
quick. I found some version of a backbone fairly
quickly. Because I was presented with a problem and I was gonna fix it,
right? I had just left a job. I felt terrible
about the fact that I lost this job. I was embarrassed about the fact that
this job ended, and I was definitely going to
save face and make it so that nobody could ever say that this
was something that I did wrong, right? And so
I did what I always do, which is just started moving. I just started
doing things. I just started talking to people. I just started doing— I had no
idea where I was headed, but I just started doing things. I don't know if
anybody's noticed this, but that might be how I manage my stress, is to
touch things and get into trouble by trying to do
too much. That's a thing. And I had this thought because that was
such a traumatic experience. It really was. It
started out as what I can Genuinely describe as what felt
like the best job in the world, and then 5
years in was like Chernobyl
would be like, whoa, that place is toxic. It was that
bad. And I kept it all inside. I kept it to myself.
I didn't really tell anybody. I had a couple of colleagues who we talked about
with it, but like nobody knew how small I felt, how insignificant
I felt, how— Yeah. How bad it had been for my mental health, how much
I had let them believe, how much I had let them let me or make
me believe about myself. I really hadn't communicated that to anybody. I don't even know
that I had really understood the full depths of that at the time. And when
I left, it's not like my husband and I sat down and we made a
plan that this is destroying me and I've gotta get away
and I need to go do something else. The CEO said something
shitty to me at 8:00 AM. And I
resigned by 8:30. There was no giant thought
process. There was nothing. It was, I physically
can't do this anymore. And so all of that to say
that as I started to better understand the reality of what was happening
in my life right then, I felt this like
crushing sense that I could not go back to another
job. Now, some of that might've been burnout. It definitely was burnout. Yeah.
Some of that might have been a really shitty sense of identity at
that time and trying to both distance myself and hold on
to this identity that I had for so long. I don't even know what,
but I just was like, do I start my own business? And I wanna be
clear, I didn't know what that business was. I did not know
what that business was. It's not like I was like, I've done this thing for
a million years and I'm gonna do that thing. thing instead of going
back to work. I just was like, maybe I start my own business because
I don't think I can work for anybody again. And I had some family
members who had been incredibly supportive during that period, who
had let me call and cry, and who had my back
in trying to figure out all of the things that you figure out when you
have a huge life change that precipitates grief. And that's what it was— it was
definitely grieving this thing that I thought I was gonna have that I definitely did
not have anymore. And so I called up one of my family members and
they own a business. They've owned a business for a long time. They get small
business. In my mind, I was talking to the right person. And I called up
my family member and I said, I don't think I can go back
to work. I think I have to find a way to
work for myself. And I don't know what that looks like, but I,
I think I can do it. I don't know what that looks like. And
I don't know what I expected in return, but what I got in
return was not whatever that was. Because I think
out of, I don't know, maybe being protective, maybe
it must have been being protective and trying to keeping in
mind that I have kids. But the advice that I got back was,
no, no, that's a terrible idea. And it was like shocking to me because this
person owned a business. This person had been in their own business for a long
time. This person had supported me in all of
my challenges in a corporate environment. And I just went,
what do you mean? And they said, think about it, your skills are in demand
now, but they might not be if running a business doesn't work and you have
to go back to the workforce. He was like, you should probably just find a
job. I don't know that not finding a job is the way to go. It
took every ounce of
cobbled-together confidence that I had managed in the
days since this thing had happened and
sucked it right out of— like, all of the air was gone from the universe.
Everything— I felt so small. I felt so
stupid. This person who runs a successful business is telling me that I would
never be able to run my own business, or that running my own business will
probably be a disaster, and then I won't be able to get a job. My
kids are gonna starve. I'm being selfish. Just go find a job.
It didn't feel as bad as the environment that I
had been in before, but it felt pretty terrible. It was the first day that
I felt like maybe I had some sea legs under me. It was the first
day that I thought maybe there's something out there that is more than
a job that sucks your soul dry. Maybe I can go find that
thing. Maybe I can create that thing. And to have somebody
who was so close to me and who felt like they were 100% in my
corner for whatever came outta my mouth an hour ago say,
no, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think you should bet on
yourself. That's what I heard. I don't think that's what they meant, but that's what
I heard. I don't think you should bet on yourself. I accidentally
ignored them. It was not my intention. I don't know what
my intention was. I think my intention was to take a little bit of time
Figure out what was next, meet some people, shake some hands, kiss
some babies, find whatever's next. And to
their credit, I did find a job
that was in the skill set that they told me I should be focusing
on. So I started accidentally
consulting. Very genuinely, my consulting company started on accident.
I was just networking with people. Because I didn't know what was out there.
I hadn't looked for a job maybe ever. I'd
never been in an earnest job hunt, like, except maybe during college.
It was not anything that I was used to. To me, like, every
job that I had gotten, I got introduced to somebody, and I just honestly happened
to be in the right place at the right time. So this idea of an
earnest job search was, like, completely foreign to me. And so I was like, let
me just— like, there's tons of stuff happening out in the world that I have
never had time to engage with in this digital health world that I work in.
Let me go see, let me go meet some people. And so I started to
meet people, I started to build some relationships. I started— for reasons I
to this day can't explain, people find me shockingly credible. Literally, I
cannot explain it, but whatever. That's not a complaint, it
works to my advantage. I just don't understand it.
You know, I would meet with people for a couple of— well, like one time,
and then I'd get an email a week or two later, hey, we're working on
this thing, do you have any thoughts on it? And then I would end up
working on that thing And it happened a couple times and they were relatively small
contracts, but that's not a complaint. I'm fine with that. So
I found myself accidentally consulting.
At the same time, this other company came to me
and said they wanted me to do a short-term consulting contract with them, but it
was like a full-time engagement. And then because of
some internal issues that they had, they were like, you know what, it would be
way easier if we bring you in as a W-2. So do you want to
just work for us? And I said, sure, because I thought that was what
I was supposed to do. I was told by somebody who cared about me a
ton that was what I was supposed to do. And they knew that I had
other consulting work that I was doing. They were fine with it. There was another
fractional thing I was looking at. They were fine with it. I was transparent about
everything. All good to go. So I took the job.
I was there 3 months before All of
the corporate nonsense started sliding
downhill, for it became very apparent that
the CEO's wife was an emotional
terrorist. Girl-on-girl crime was bad there. It was bad. And
if you know me, that's— I don't have the stomach for it. I don't. I
do not pit women against each other in the workplace. There are only
so many of us, and If we can't enjoy working
together, I don't wanna work with you at all. There was a lot of
typical VC-driven healthcare
bullshit, and I hated it. I
hated it. I had told them when I took the job that
I'm not big on travel. Now, mind you, this was the first year of
COVID This was early COVID. They basically
had open offices at that point. And they wanted people to be there in person
all the time, but they were across the country from me. And so I did
travel there one time and it was great, but I had 3 days
there where I got no work done because all I was doing
was running around and schmoozing with people, which I hated. I just
wanted to do the work. That's what I was there to do was work. And
all I could do was go to this meeting, meet with this person,
go to dinner, whatever. So like literally it costs them money to fly
me out there. It costs them money for me to be there. It costs them
money because they lost almost a week of productivity from me in the
process. And they were like, okay, well, can you be back in 2
weeks? And I'm like, if you need somebody here that often, why don't you hire
somebody who's here? So between trip number 1
and trip number 2, there was a variant of COVID that got really bad.
Everybody was sick again. We had a very short break. Where everybody was
vaccinated and things seemed to be tamping down. And then we went into whatever this
first wave of a new variant was that got everybody sick again.
And at the time I was basically the primary caretaker for my mom and
we couldn't bring in an outside caretaker because of COVID And so I
said, I just can't keep getting on a plane. I said, I can't get this
variant cuz I can't give it to my mom. And
my boss there said, It's not if you get
it, it's when. So I just wouldn't worry about it. And
I was like, well, we're done here. Thank you for the
opportunity, but you just encouraged me to try to kill my
mother. And if I do that, it's going to be a way more interesting way
than giving her a strain of COVID I've got bigger plans than
that, but you're certainly not going to tell
me To not worry about a global pandemic that
has killed many people, many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people,
when I'm the primary caretaker for somebody who, by the way, just had an
organ transplant. So actually, now that I think about it, they fired
me. They fired me because I wouldn't travel. I have a memory that I quit,
but they fired me. And listen, firing gets a bad rap,
right? Getting fired gets a bad rap because it's embarrassing.
Please. Let someone pay you to go away. There is
no greater joy in life than getting
paid to go away. So they paid me to go
away. I went away, but I was like, this is
bullshit. This is bullshit. Your corporate
perspective was at a healthcare company, mind
you, a healthcare company. The pandemic's not that big a deal.
You being here in person, even though you're less productive, is more important
to us than the public health risk. And I was like,
I'm done with that attitude. I can't, I'm done. I'm spent. The
next day, literally the next day, and I had
zero information about either of these things before it happened. The
next day, I got 2 offers to consult
at 2 different companies for quote unquote Full-time engagements— that
doesn't necessarily mean you're working full-time— and replaced all of that income and
some, and have consistently been getting work like that for
5 years, except a brief period where I wasn't accepting new work.
I make a shit ton more money than the person who told me not to
start my own business. Like, a shit ton. And I don't say that to brag.
I say that because Somebody else's faith in you
should not determine whether you bet on yourself or not. I don't
think he was trying to be mean at all. I don't think he was trying
to be harsh. I don't think any of those things. I think they
thought they were protecting me, that they were keeping me safe,
that they were doing what was right for me. But guess what
they don't understand? They don't understand my industry.
They don't understand startups. They don't understand fractional
work. I didn't even understand fractional work at the time. Had I
listened— and I did try to listen, I did try
to listen— and it was exactly what I said it would
be. It was exactly what I was trying to get away from. But when I
bet on myself— I don't even know if I bet on myself as much as
I let the universe point me in the way of whatever the thing was. When
I did what felt right to me. I want to say it that
way because I don't know that I ever bet on myself, because at no point
was I like, I'm gonna find more work, contracts are just
gonna come to me. That has never been my attitude. I'm
always maybe a little bit too much in scarcity
mindset. I'm worried that the next thing is not going to come, even though it
has consistently come. So I want to be clear that I don't wake up in
the morning and I have an abundance of work, and I am
always going to be able to feed my family. That's not how I'm wired. You
could pay me to not worry, and I would still worry. That's just the
way I'm wired. But somebody else's
doubt in what you believe to be true
should not be the determining factor in whether you do that thing or not.
They could have good intentions, they could have bad intentions, They could be on your
side, they could be your biggest foil, who knows?
But lots of people are going to tell you you can't, and if
you think you can, odds are you probably can. And also,
you might fuck up, and you might fail. Those 2 things can exist
at the same time. They can! If your brain and your body are
telling you that you need something else, and you are waiting for a
sign from someone else that it's okay to do it,
stop. What do you need? What do you need to set up
to get to that place? What do you need in your corner
before you feel comfortable doing that thing? You don't need
somebody else's permission. Like, talk to your partner first if you have a partner.
Don't do what I did and quit your job without talking to your partner first.
That can go over poorly. I'm very fortunate. Let me put it this way. If
my husband had quit his job without telling me, I
would have lost my shit, and you might have found
him in a shallow grave. He wins. He wins
that part of our relationship by leaps and bounds
because I went up to him and said, I might have just quit my job.
And a day or so before, he would have been like, can you please
not rage quit your job? We need an income. We need
your income. And I was like, I'm not gonna rage quit my job.
And then I rage quit my job expecting that he was gonna be
really unhappy with me. And I swear to
God, he looked at me and said, if they
don't see how great you are, we don't need them.
And acted like we had not had a conversation the day before
where he was like, Can you not quit your job? He wins because
I would not have been so gracious as I would have been like, what
are you doing? This is the end of the world. And he was like,
you'll figure it the fuck out because you always do. Life is different if you
have a biggest fan in your corner. I'm just saying. But anyway, even
people who love you are going to give you bad advice
sometimes, and that's reality. Even people
who love you Even people who know their area of business
really well might not know your area of business.
Be careful where you get your advice from. Be careful when you ignore your gut
to listen to somebody else, even if they mean well. Take in
opinions, let them influence your perception,
but don't let them make the decision for you. It's time to go out on
your own. Let's do it. We can do anything
scared, we should not have to do anything unsafe.
If you're scared, let's go. If you're unsafe, that's a different
story. Let's figure out how to get you safe, and then we can do the
scared thing. You are worth betting on. And that does not mean
that you should quit your job without a plan, that you should throw caution
to the wind, that you should make a bad decision. No, we do certainly are
not in an economy where we could easily recover from that. But I'm not
saying that jobs are bad. I'm not saying that having a job is bad. I'm
not saying that you should start your business over having a job. I'm not saying
any of that. I am saying that you are worth betting on,
and I would bet on you, and so you should bet on you too. Also
buy my consulting program. Let's be honest, that's what I'm really
saying. And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's
Small Talk. So we have a Small Talk here from Tamara
in Louisiana, she asks, when my son was diagnosed
autistic at age 5, my mother-in-law told me I was letting doctors
label him. My father said I was looking for
excuses. My husband believed the diagnosis immediately and
has been his biggest champion ever since. I don't know how to sit
at a family dinner with people who love my kid and still somehow refuse
to see him. How do you love someone who won't do the work of
understanding the person you love most? Don't sit at the table with
them. Don't. Just don't. I get it that you love these people, but they
are not loving you back in the way that you need to be loved. So
don't sit at the table with them. And if they want you to come back
to the table, they have to start to understand your perspective and
approach things differently. They can't not acknowledge a huge part
of your child's existence and the way that he needs to be communicated with and
the way that he needs to be supported. And think that you're gonna continue
to have the same relationship with them. It would be like somebody else saying,
hey, I understand that you're deathly allergic to strawberries and you'll die
if you have strawberries, but here's this strawberry pie, and if you actually appreciate me
as a friend, you'll actually eat it. And it's like, no, that— you are directly
ignoring a very important part of somebody's identity that actually, like,
defines how they interact with other people, how they can interact with the world. What
services are acknowledged and available to him? No, don't
sit at the table with them. You don't have to go break bread with people
who deny some of the most important parts of your existence or your kids' existence.
No, I know you love them, and that is great, and you are still
allowed to love them. There's a boundary there that I think you probably need to
set. And maybe I'm just so burnt out on
family nonsense that I'm willing to drop the hatchet. And like, maybe there's
a conversation first. Maybe you don't have to just like stop going to dinner with
them, but say, hey, If we're going to be part of your life, then
you are going to acknowledge these things and you are going to get on board
with these things. And if that's not possible, then we need to take a break.
But I can't imagine having somebody in my life who
was so dismissive of something that is a
really important thing about somebody who is so important to you.
But I say this about maintaining relationships like this a
lot because I went through Not something similar, but there was a hard boundary I
had to put up with a family member. And it— first I felt bad
that I had to do it, and then I felt bad that I didn't feel
bad, which is a whole
nother side of guilt that we throw on ourselves, which is a little bit
bullshit. And from the feeling bad
about not feeling bad part, I realized that as far as
the people who are allowed in my daily existence are concerned, I have
an infinite amount of love, but a finite amount of
space. The love is awarded whether
you want it or not. It's yours. Once I give it to you, I will
not take it back. The space is awarded on a merit system and you
gotta earn it. That doesn't mean I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I
don't want the best for you. It doesn't mean that I won't be there if
there's something catastrophic that you need help with. But for
day-to-day stuff, This is not good for me. This is not okay.
I need to set this boundary and it's, it's gotta hold. And so
I'm looking at your merit system right now and it doesn't look like they're earning
their way in. And it sounds to me like they need to do something different.
Also, good for your husband. Good for your freaking husband. Thanks
for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you, mean it.
That was way longer than I meant for it to be. I know that's terribly
shocking. I know you're so shocked, Neil.