Evan Carmichael explains why coworkers get jealous of your side business and offers four ways to handle it: imagine them as a baby to build patience, don't brag about wins, share your struggles when you do talk about it, and ignore the haters. Surround yourself with other entrepreneurs and inspiring stories instead.
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How do you deal with jealous coworkers? If you have a full-time job, if you're working somewhere and you have a dream to start your own thing, you're going to find that the people you're working with often will be jealous of what you're doing because they want to do the same thing, but they don't have the guts to go out and do it. Some people will be supportive and others will just be flat-out jealous. You can't let their jealousy, their hatred, their negativity towards you hold you back from making something great. Their opinions are irrelevant. I got a great question from one of my readers, Corniel, who wrote in with that problem. She has a full-time job, starting a filmmaking business, and all of the coworkers are really jealous of what's going on. And the question is, how do I handle this? How do I handle the ignorance and the awkward jokes and the jealousy that come from my coworkers? So I want to share with you a couple of coping mechanisms that can help and, and what helped me when I was starting my business. One nugget of wisdom that was shared with me a long time ago by, by a friend, when dealing with people who you're having an argument with, is try to imagine like they're a baby or really, really old person. Because we tend to have more patience, right? If there's, if there's a baby who's yelling at you or a 3-year-old who's yelling at you, who doesn't understand the difference necessarily between right or wrong, you have a little bit more patience. So somebody's coming at you with a lot of negativity, try to just imagine them as being an ignorant 3-year-old and have a little more patience. So that's first. The second, you can decide not to share, right? I mean, it's great that you are starting your business while you're still at your job, right? It's, it's a great way to start a business, make sure that you're going to earn an income from it, and then move off and eventually become full-time on your own. But in the meantime, If people are hating around you, then just don't share. Don't share what's going on in your business with them. Don't share all the big wins that you're having because it's only going to cause more negativity. The third option is if you're going to share, don't just share the good stuff. Show them the pain. Show them the vulnerability. Show them that you're scared. Show them that you have no idea what you're doing. Show them that you're in way over your head. Nobody wants to beat up on somebody when they're down. Right, they're jealous of you and they're throwing punches at you because they think you're off to a better place. And they're jealous, right? They want to go with you. They want to do that for themselves, but they're not able to do it. They don't have the guts to do it. Shatter the illusion that this is a perfect world, that this is so easy and you're making tons of money. Like, this is really hard and you're scared. And if you share that with them, it's really hard to get on somebody and make fun of them if they're sharing that they're really scared about something. But if you come in and you're acting all tough and you just landed this big deal and you're bragging about it, then of course people are gonna hate on you and they're gonna be really jealous and make jokes. But if you're being really vulnerable and really real, then it breaks down the walls a little bit and they won't be as quick to criticize you. Okay, the last option here is to just ignore them. You know what, you're doing your thing, you're building your dream, you're doing the right thing, you're passionate about what you're doing, you're helping people. You know you're not going to be there for very long at that job, you're going to have your own company doing great things. Ignore the haters because you're going to have them always in your business. If it's not the full-time people who you're working with, it's going to be other people around you. There's always going to be people who are jealous of what you're doing. It has nothing to do with you, it's their own insecurities. And you can laugh them off and ignore them because you know you're doing the right thing. One thing that really helped me when I was getting my business started, I was in university and I had a really tough decision as to whether I should start my own business. I was running it already part-time. I didn't know if I should jump into that full-time or if I should go get a job. And I had interviewed with some really successful companies and thought maybe I should go work for them. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with my career, and all of my friends were going that route. They were all getting jobs. And so it's really, it's really hard to go the other way, you know, when your friends are all doing one thing and you're the only black sheep. It's really hard to have the courage and fortitude to go a different direction. And so what I did was, you know, some friends were really encouraging and some friends were jealous. And thought I was stupid for doing my own thing instead of taking a high-paying job. It's really important that you create an environment for yourself that builds you up, that lifts you up, and that's from the friends that you hang out with, that's from the family members who are around you, that's from the books you read, the websites you visit, the things that you listen to, and the people and the information that do not support you you eliminate for your life. You know, if you have friends that just keep hating on you and saying what a bad idea this is, maybe they shouldn't be your friends anymore, right? What kind of friend does that? Now, you may not have a whole lot of options right now if these are your coworkers, and hopefully eventually you're going to move and become your own boss and not have to deal with people who you don't want to deal with. But at the same time, build up a network around you of people who do believe in what you're doing. Talk to other people who have started filmmaking companies. Hang around those guys. Read biographies of people like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and how they got started, and let their wisdom help guide you. Because it can be hard if you're by yourself and you have people just hating on you and seeing what a bad idea it is and making jokes, and you're by yourself. It takes a lot of guts confidence to keep going. I don't know if I could have done it. What helped me through was reading those Shameless Entrepreneur stories and realizing that those guys struggled and that there is something, and I'm building this for the right reason. And it just gave me more confidence to keep going, to keep going one more day, one more day, one more day. And seeing that they struggled in their early years made me feel like I could make it too. If they could make it, I could make it. So those are a few strategies to help you deal with, with the coworkers and also really encourage you to build that supportive network around you because that can make all the difference in you deciding whether to go for it or not or whether to continue or not. And if you really believe in this, if you think you can make a difference as an entrepreneur, I want to see that you have the opportunity to go and do it. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I'd also love to hear what you have to think. Please leave a comment under the video. I will answer each one. I promise I'll make a video reply for those where it's warranted. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
