Overcoming Lies That Can Kill Success

Business Brain, the Entrepreneurs podcast, episode 419 for Friday, January 27, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain. Welcome back to Business Brain. If this is not your first visit, Business Brain. Here we are, the show where we take our business brains and filter all of life through them to make things more efficient, more productive, more profitable and happier. And we can help make you happier if you send in your stuff to feedbackusinessbrain show. And by stuff, I mean comments about the show, comments about your business, questions about the show, questions about your business, what really? Anything. If it's something that is worthy of being included in an upcoming episode, then you are entered into our drawing this year to win a MacBook Air. So feedbackusbrain show here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm coming from Lafayette, California. I'm Shannon Jean.

Yeah, man, it comes and it goes, you know. Yeah, it's chronic, I guess.

I don't know. That's a good thing.

As long as it keeps coming, that's an easy come. Easy go. That's what I say about money. You know, I'm okay with the easy go if the easy come continues. So that's.

I love it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, I'm really. I'm also loving these shorter episodes, these 1520 minute little bite sized episodes. And we've been getting some good feedback on them, posting them a couple times a week, like on a Wednesday, which is our normal publication, but also adding a Friday bonus to fit them into your podcast app. And we'd certainly like some feedback from you on, you know, what you think and if you find them useful in a smaller format.

Yeah, I think as a listener, I would like this. So.

Yeah, me too.

I'm hoping that I'm not the only one. And I know I'm not. Yeah, yeah, I know I'm not. We've heard from a few of you already, so.

Yeah, so today I want to. What? I want to talk about an article that I found up@inc.com that really caught my eye. And it's in the title of it is seven brutal lies that kill. That kill your success and how to stop believing them.

Okay.

I would, I would say they could kill your success, but after you listen to us, certainly you do not believe these things are true. Okay. We're gonna. And we're gonna tear them apart right now. Anyway, the first one is I, like, everyone will laugh at me, you know, which is fear of embarrassment. Right. And fear of failure.

Fear of public failure at the very Least.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I think that, you know, they have some interesting ways that to deal with it. But, you know, the one thing I would tell is if you're worried about, you know, people laughing at you, being embarrassed, you have to realize that most people are so focused on their own life that they're not too worried about what you do. And, you know, we all are in this bubble of self importance and, you know, things. So.

No, Shannon, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in that bubble.

That's right. Nobody cares. Just face it. No, nobody cares what you. I shared this with you earlier this week and slack this quote, nobody cares what you do. Everybody cares what you do for them.

Yeah.

So, you know, nobody cares if you fail. So just do it, you know, and, and give it a shot.

We have a. We have a Bitter Pill song. It's one of my favorite songs off the new record that we put out this year, last year called Living ain't cheap, dying ain't free. And the, the name of the song is nobody cares that the full title of the song is nobody kills cares till you're dead. But it's, it's, you know, like it's not false. So there's a reason.

Not false.

It's a good song. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And. And number two is won't be good enough or I won't be good enough. Right, right. And it's again, thinking of other people's standards, I think. And you know, we've often one of my favorite things to tell people is, hey, let's figure out how you can make a hundred bucks, you know, 50 bucks. Show me how you can make money with this idea, this product, your service, whatever. Because if you can make a little bit of money, then we can figure out how to scale it, make it more efficient, make it better.

Yeah.

So not good enough. It's just. Should not be in your sphere, your frame at all because it could be successful at all different levels. It could be that you tried to start a business and it turned out that, you know, the part you thought was going to be the best part is just one little part. But something else came along and you got a new idea and it took off. And so because that stuff happens all the time, things never work out the way, you know, plan for them 100%. So keep it, Keep an open frame for what the definition of success is.

Yeah, this is. I would say that that number two here, this. It won't be good enough. That's not a lie. That is a universal truth. There is nothing more correct than saying it won't be good enough. Of course it won't be good enough, but it's probably still going to be okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Y. Yep. Y. Y that's good. Number three is, you know, it's too late, you know, I've missed the bus on this thing, or I'm too old, you know, and that. That's just nuts, you know, you're listening. I. I've been doing this for a long, long time, since I was, you know, a young kid. And I do have a note on my desk. It's actually printed on my monitor. It says, you don't have much time, but that encourages me to get more stuff done. But, you know, just think of the wisdom packed into people that are older and have been through all kinds of different things. And, you know, we try to share our knowledge through. From one business to another and well beyond that in our personal lives every week on the show. You just got to get it going. It's also the measure of success. I mean, if you. Maybe you just want to start something small and get it going and make a side hustle, make a little bit of money or learn something new, that. That becomes the success. And it's never too late, and you just gotta get moving on it. And action. You know, it's not.

And maybe a good way to sort of combine the note you have on your desk with this is it's not too late yet.

Oh, I like that. Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Yeah. Do it now because otherwise you will it with any of these. You will prove yourself right if you want to.

So, yes, you know, that's true. That's true. Number four.

Except maybe the next one. You might not be able to prove yourself right about this.

Yeah, we've talked about this. We did a whole episode about. About why it was important to empty the trash at your. At your own business. And number four is that I'm too good for this. And, you know, I. I've. I think every one of these I've thought about, and even now, you know, like, I still have this handbag business and it's done great. You know, it's. It's done fantastic. And over time, but I still catch myself once in a while thinking, what am I doing this for? You know, but it's just a great side gig that takes an hour or so a day and generates great revenue. And, you know, you just have to get beyond it. You have to think about it as the daily grind, the work that has to be done. And yes, there are. Maybe you can help me put some better words. Dave, we've talked about, are you doing $20 an hour work or, you know, thousand dollars an hour work? Certainly you want to push yourself towards higher those higher dollars, but doing the grun its real benefits as well.

It does. And I, I would say, you know, I, I've, I've, I came to this realization, what two years ago, this phrase popped into my head that being an entrepreneur is a blue collar job. You have to be, you have to be willing and, and excited often to do grunt work because oftentimes it's only you, man. And if you're the one, then if it needs to get done, you just do it and think about how great it is. Like you're running your own business. You have trash cans to empty, you have data to enter. Like go do that and then build your business up to where yeah, someday you can hire somebody to do the data entry. Someday you can hire somebody to take out the trash if you want, you know, but like be excited that you have these things to do. And I need to remind myself of this regularly because I wind up doing things that run the whole spectrum. And if I've hired someone to do the $20 an hour work, then great, then I do whatever I can to make their job easy and possible and all of those things. But if I have not yet hired someone to do a specific piece of $20 an hour work, then I do it. And I have to remind myself sometimes that I'm glad that we have this work that needs to be done here. And yeah, I've chosen not to hire someone, so I'm the one doing it, but I'm glad that we have the work to do.

So. That's right. I agree.

That's how I wrap my brain around it anytime I need to. Yeah, yeah.

And especially if you have people around you that are watching what you do. You know, I've talked about cooking, you know, barbecue and lunch for their employees each week that we did forever. And you know, it's a great way to connect with people when they see you doing these things that even in their frame of things are like, oh, that's the owner, the boss that's out there cleaning this up or picking this thing up. So I think it's good. Number five is, you know, they say I can't. The author says, I can't afford it, I don't have the money, this kind of thing. Well, if you can Get a credit card, you can start a business. And are you going to build a multimillion dollar business with that first investment? Probably not. But you start, you can get things going. This is another of what I call the onces, where you put an excuse in front of say, well, once I get this, I can do that, I can do X. Once I get enough money, once I get this new computer, once I get a better space that I can do it, I can start a business. Once I get this knowledge, once I do, you got to avoid the onces.

And beware the ones. I like this.

Beware of the onces. Yeah, you just have to start because you're going to fumble around and, you know, when we started recording this show, I think almost eight years ago now, Dave wouldn't even let me talk on the air. I was so bad. Maybe I still am. But, you know, he was like, we just have to start.

Shannon, they can't. They can't hear you. I go back at night.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's this whole time, it's just Dave. Yeah.

Imagine how smart they think I am. No.

Yes, that's exactly right. And so you just have to start and you have to fumble around and make some mistakes and you'll learn. And if nothing else, you're going to learn a lot. You learn some great lessons. So avoid the onces, that's for sure.

I like it.

Number six. Somebody else probably already thought of it. Well, ridiculous. Yes.

Correct. They did. We're not the first podcast. I wasn't the first website. You weren't the first Poshmark store. You weren't the first, like, of course not. Like, you don't need. I'll say it again because I love to say it. If you want your idea to be worth $100, write it on a hundred dollar bill. If you want your idea to be worth a million dollars, go do the work. That's all. That's it. That's the fairy dust. There's your secret.

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Number seven is the saddest one to me because I've met so many people that have done this where they say, oh, I've already tried that. I failed, so I'm done. Right. I've. I tried to start a business. I died. I'm finished. And that is the worst frame about it is you got to think about, okay, instead of I failed, well, what can I do to improve the way I did it before? Right.

Or what did you.

How do I. Yeah, yeah. What's the post mortem on it what went wrong? How do you adjust? Hopefully you try to catch that adjustment before everything goes to hell and now you.

But if you didn't, you can still learn. It's okay.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I tried to start a software company and I ended up writing a book about how to do something completely different than I ever did. Because starting the software, it never worked. My partner went sideways on me and I had all this massive content. I'm like, okay, well, maybe I should just publish a book. And when I put it all together, I had like 300 plus pages and it was a great experience. And I became an author and I really, I learned this whole self publishing thing. And so the takeaway, you know, you can spin it as part of your story, which I talk about on the show all the time. You gotta learn from it and adjust and don't. That mindset that I've tried, it failed. So I'm done. You just have to let that go and change your frame of how things are. So.

I agree. I agree.

Yeah, so, so, you know, avoid the onces. Go read this article. We'll put a link in here in the show notes. Let us know what you think. Feedbackusinessbrain Show.

We want to talk about feedbackusinessbrain Show.

I think so. Okay. God, it freaked me out when you said that. Stop recording me now.

Yeah, but send in your emails there. If we feature your email in an episode, you will be entered to win a MacBook Air. And listen, if you get featured in an episode in early February and then in mid February, you get featured again, guess what happens? You now have two entries in the thing to win a MacBook Air. So it's not one and done. It's every email we feature, regardless of whether it's from the same person or whatever. Like you could, you could hedge your bets and all, but guarantee yourself a MacBook Air by December. It's that simple, folks. That's.

Yeah, this, this, I'm not a huge contest guy, but this contest, the odds are going to be like Katniss would say, forever. Ever in your favor.

Forever in your favor. I'm thinking about sending in some emails to us. Shannon, I could use another air.

Try it. Give me some ideas.

All right, folks, thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for sending in your stuff to feedbackusbrain show. And hey, do me a big favor over the weekend here. Keep living that charm life, did you? I'll see you next week.