The Alter Ego Effect

Business Brain, the show for entrepreneurs, episode 5:30 for Wednesday, March 6th day of the Dude 2024. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas, we dissect them, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains so that each and every one of us can increase our ability to lead those charmed lives. Speaking of leading charmed lives, our sponsor at go squared away.contact ghost. Sorry go squared away.com contact. That's a much better URL to visit go squared away.com contact empowers highly educated military spouses to become your trusted remote executive assistants. Talk more in depth about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm still out here in California.

Dave, how you doing?

I'm good. I, I'm. I'm good. I'm comfortable. Shannon, I don't like that.

Oh, yeah, Comfort. Comfort crisis.

I think so. I don't know. I mean, there's always things that I have. There's pressures. I. It's not that I'm comfortable, it's that I'm uncomfortable and the issue. So maybe a little business therapy to start today's episode. Sounds great. When I. There. There have been times. I'm sure there will be times again in the future. I just haven't experienced them yet where I have been either panicked or had a chip on my shoulder or something that drives me to really like get down to the grindstone and push the business forward. Businesses forward.

Pressure.

Pressure, right. Whatever it is, pressure. But it could be like there's that chip on the shoulder. Sometimes it's like I gotta prove something to that person. Right? You know, it's the ego, right. And other times it's like financial pressure or, you know, something that really just kind of puts instills a little bit of panic that drive whatever it is that makes it easy for me to, to just push harder than I normally do by default. And that state of being can last for months or even years and then it sort of retreats a little bit. It doesn't mean that I sit around and do nothing all day. I still do all my things. No, it's a feeling, but it's that feeling isn't there. And I know that when I have that feeling, I am more productive in growing the business than I am when I don't have that feeling. And I, you know, I've, I've explained on this show before the willpower points or discipline points system idea that I have where we all Wake up with a certain number of willpower points, and you have to be careful what you spend them on because you only have the fixed amount. And once you've spent them, you, you know, you can't double dip that well is dry until the next day. And so the idea is to come up with a series of brain hacks that get all the things done and do the things that you need to without, by. By wanting to do them instead of using willpower to get them done.

Right. And you get to do them.

You get to do them correct. And when I've been in those pressure, panic moments, whatever you want to call it, you know, I wake up and it's like, oh, man, I get to work on the things that grow the business. I get to do that stuff. And sometimes it can just be, you know, the ego of being able to grow the business. Yeah. And. And then other times, like now, it's not that I'm. I'm. I don't want to grow the business. It's. It's that I'm not. The drive. The amount of drive waivers. My guess is the amount of drive that I have now is. Is probably higher than, let's say, the average. But I don't even know what that means.

I would. I would definitely agree with that, you know, But.

But it's still. I know that I'm capable of more, and I'm trying to figure out how to unlock that all the time at will. Right. It's like you've told me before, you see the ego. Ego isn't bad. It can be one's downfall if it rules you, but if you use it like a tool, it can be great. And I think this is related to that, like finding a way to turn that drive on and off and use it like a tool. Yeah. There's a lot of. I don't. I don't know the magic answer to this yet, though.

The ego thing is learning how to ramp it up and.

Exactly. Yeah.

You ramp it up because as entrepreneurs, it's often lonely and you need to pump yourself up frequently and learn to pat yourself on the back and recognize your skills and the wins that you have and ramp it down so you're not a jerk and you can be humble and you could cert, like, you know, lead through service and helping other people and that. That kind of thing.

Yeah.

But I would say your. What you're talking about is very common in people. I think entrepreneurs that get to the point in life that we are. Right.

Yes.

Had some success, built some wealth. My suggestion, if the bank account looks good, if your investments look good, stop looking at them. The other thing is, what is your next zero? What are. Can you start at zero at again? Something you know nothing about. Not a music thing. Yeah, whatever. Something you know. And you probably went through it when, you know, other businesses that you started in the last few years. Like, I know nothing about this.

Oh, yeah, that.

That's the challenge. I'm in the pro. You know, when I sold Tech Restore and didn't know what to do, and all of a sudden there was no one around but me.

Yeah.

I was like, what do I do? And I talked about it on this show.

Yes.

Okay. I'm gonna start a business just using my phone because. And I'm gonna get involved in social commerce. I don't know anything about this. I'm gonna start at zero. And I was super nervous and, you know, anxiety. It's like, how do I do it? What do I. What do I even do? But that's starting at zero.

It.

It is the challenge. I. For me.

Oh, no. I'm. I'm thinking this is it. The. The When. When my back's against the wall, like, that's the. That. But. But if your back feels too much against the wall, like, and we each have a different, you know, a different le. Different tipping point of this. But wherever that. Wherever that is, you can get to a point where you're, you know, paralyzed. And that. That's not what you want. But. No, but a little bit of that drive, like, that hunger, you know, it was like. Like Steve Jobs loved to quote the. The words on the back of the whole Earth catalog. Right. That from Stuart Brand. It said, stay hungry, stay foolish.

Exactly.

And. And that's to your point, right? What's your zero. What don't, you know, go be hungry about that?

That's right. And I think it's also to try to identify your motivators.

And.

And this may sound kind of silly. We have a wonderful life. We've. I've. You know, like you. We've been grinding for decades to build this charmed life that we lead.

Yes.

And I do. I do recognize that. But I also recognize that I'm still trying to impress my wife after 30 years.

Yeah.

I want her to be proud of me. I want her to see me working hard. And now a lot of that, I've shifted to my kids. I want them to see me achieving something new. Like I've talked about on the show here. I'm trying to build something on the X platform.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Grow. And I started at zero not too long ago and figuring this out, and I've discussed my growth on the show and different things, and I've been sharing it with my kids and I always joke around. I'm like, oh, I'm going to be an influencer or whatever, but I'm putting it out there and I want to be sure they see me succeed. They're my big. You know, they always say, you shouldn't worry about what other people think. I totally worry about. About what other people think.

Yeah.

And I'd be the first to admit it. The people that mean the most to me, that's who I. I mean, I don't stress about it, but they're the most important people that I want to impress.

Yeah.

So those things starting at zero, don't look at your bank account and your investments if you're already. If they're good, hopefully.

Yeah. If you're looking for motivation. Right. Yeah.

If they're not good, you should look at them every day because that'll motivate you.

Right, Right. Right.

To hustle.

Right.

You can take that advice if you're in your. Your 20s or 30s and just getting going and you, you want to look at it and go, man, I gotta hustle. Well, that motivated the heck outta me.

When I. Yeah, of course.

But of course now I don't look at it now. Cause I'm like, okay, it's just kind of got momentum. It's doing its thing. There's nothing I can do. You know, I'm focusing on this. And it's also hard to give up something that's working. Like, I built that social commerce business and I should have given it up, you know, a year ago or a year and a half ago maybe.

Yeah.

But I kept on to it. I kept on to it because it made me feel good to ship something every day instead of putting the time in to build something that may take me a year to build, but it's going to have five or six years of Runway where the social commerce business was on the. On the way out.

On the way out.

I was bored. I did it. I built this. You know, I sold $3.7 million worth of stuff and did it with my phone, all this kind of. But I was like, okay, now what? Yeah, so don't look at your bank. Find out who you want to impress. Give up something that's you don't. They don't. Doesn't need you anymore. And start again at zero. That's my four tips.

I Got to. I got to find out if you take my insurance so that I can see if you qualify for me to just give you a copay for this. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah.

That's great.

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I do have something on my mind. So we're talking about starting over at zero, which I'm in the process of doing right now, trying to build a following. I don't know anything about that. You know, getting. I mean, we talked about this thousand true fans concept on the show. Bunch of times. I'm like, okay, you know, I've never done that, so why don't I try to do that and also share my knowledge? I feel compelled to give back and to help other people that are. That are getting started because I would love to have somebody help me.

Yes.

And of course, yeah, I want to monetize it because it's a good measuring stick with what if it's working or not. But when you're building a following and you're putting your name out there. There's some risk involved in it, which is fine. I like risk.

But also risk can be one of those drivers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. But also, like your personal. We're talking about ego, you know, like, okay, let's say on Twitter, wherever you're building it, Instagram, if you're building this following, tick tock, whatever.

Yep.

You're gonna have a lot of people that are going to come out and want to criticize you, talk bad about you, troll your, you know, post, tell you you're an idiot or whatever, of sure. F foul things. So as I was looking at this, I was like, man, some of these, when I first, you know, I've probably been working on this since September.

Okay.

And some of those early comments that I got from people were like, oh, that kind of hurts, you know? Yeah, you take it internally. So I started looking around and trying to study people that had like hundreds of thousands of followers and, you know, whatever. How do they deal with this? Yeah, everything. And so I, and I came across a book called the Alter Ego Effect by an author by name of Todd Herman. And Todd was an advisor, like a coach with, you know, high end athletes and.

Okay.

And stars and this kind of thing. And, and the. His concept here is that if you're going to be in the public light of at any level, really business athlete, you know, some kind of a, you know, performer.

Yeah. You.

You should build an alter ego that protects your personal self from those types of criticisms that I just mentioned, but also protects you from going crazy with I'm so great or whatever. And I'll give you a couple examples. So one of the examples he mentions is Beyonce. She hasn't. She, you know, when she's up on stage and everything else and she's like, well, that's not me, that's Sasha Fierce. And she invented this character to protect her. And this guy breaks it down in this alter ego effect. One of his most famous clients is Kobe Bryant.

Okay. Yeah.

And Kobe was having the same problem, like feeling really vulnerable and trying things. And so they came up with this alter ego called the Black Mamba. The snake.

Sure.

And so he would just say. And there's some great interviews if you go to on the way link it. But the alter ego effect.com you can see some of the interviews and all this stuff. And there's Kobe saying, he's like, well, I go out there and I have nothing to fear because that's not Kobe Bryant, that's Black Mamba. And so by building this separation of a Character. And one of the things I love, too, is Herman talks about. You think, oh, Clark Kent. Well, his alter ego was Superman. No, no, it's the opposite.

The opposite. Yeah.

Superman, the alter ego was Clark, you know, to protect himself. And it just. Even in business, I think this could be very important because many times, like, I'll lay it out here, like, when I was younger, I actually wanted my business not to be where my friends saw it, because I was worried if I failed, they would think I was a loser.

Right.

And I think that drove me into this kind of wholesale B2B. A little bit gray, murky, you know, business versus. I'm going to build this huge retail or whatever.

Yeah.

And I'm going to have all this exposure. I never had that. People always ask me, what do you do? You know, instead of, oh, I saw your trucks and I saw your building and. Because that was way more vulnerable for.

Me to ask, oh, no, I'm the same. I'm the same way. Yep. I'd rather. Like. I never built a business that my friends would use. I'm always surprised. I mean, after, you know, 25 years of the Mac Observer's existence, I'm less surprised now when people say, oh, yeah, I know about that site. It's like, yeah, I know you do. Right. Like, but. Yes, but everything else. And even that at the beginning was not built for people that I knew. It was built for other people. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it kind of drove me. So this. I'm really. I'm about halfway through the book. I'm. I'm really enjoying it. I'm going to do this. Is develop. And I think I would have been a better business person, and maybe even I took a lot of risk. I have taken a lot of risk in my business career, and I still do it, but I. Probably, looking back, it's very easy to say this, of course, but maybe I would have felt less vulnerable if I had this kind of other alter ego sitting out here that was like, well, that's not me. That's whatever, you know, and, you know, I just. You could pick. You could make it up. You can pick a character, you can do whatever. And, you know, the author kind of walks you through developing this concept and why it's important and. And, you know, it helps you do more things than you otherwise would see.

I think this might be the answer to my question in the beginning of the show.

Could be. It's one more tool in your toolbox, right?

Yes. Not, yes, it's not like the end. All Be all but correct. This could be an answer, not the answer. Yeah, yeah.

And, and figured out. So I'm going to do this like, you know, today I've had my first post on X that's got over a million, you know, views.

That's awesome. Yeah.

And, and thousands of comments. It's a silly post.

Sure, sure.

But there's lots of people trying to tear me down in there.

Oh yeah.

And I have gotten very comfortable with like, oh, that's whatever. This is just a character. And, and it's, you know, it's my thing and I've got. Okay, what am I gonna. I don't know. I'm not even sure exactly what it is yet, but I know it's there.

Yeah.

And, and it's kind of shielding me from a lot of that. Those arrows that, that people want to shoot at, at people that are successful and I'm going to be successful here. There is no doubt in my mind.

Yeah.

Because I feel the energy and, and I actually, I'm gonna, I want to love to talk about that in our next show about how the energy works and how that's a good sound.

Great.

But yeah. So anyway, Alter ego effect dot com. Take a look. You know the book Todd Herman. And I'm going to try to reach out to him once I get finished with the book. Who knows, maybe we can get him to come on the show and talk about it.

That's great. There's a, there's a great line in the opening song, a great lyric in the opening song of a musical called Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Very off the beaten path musical. But the, the song is called Tear Me down and the, the, the chorus of it ends with, you want me, baby. I dare you. Try and tear me down. That's right.

That's right. Take us home.

I'm taking us home, man. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thank you for. Actually, thank you for sending in all your stuff. It's been a while since we've read any of your comments and questions on the show. We will have some of that next week, I promise. Feedbackusbrain show. Check out our sponsors. Gosquaredaway.com contact and make sure you sign up for our newsletter at BusinessBrain Show. You can also send us feedback at feedbackusinessbrain show. We'll see you on Friday. Keep living that charmed life.