221: Busting Self Doubt & Criticism In Business - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast, I help coaches, trainers, mentors, and thought leaders scale their businesses and make six, seven, and even eight figures. It's over $10 million online. That's the track record of what we've created for coaches, mentors, trainers, and thought leaders in the online space. And I want to help you get there as well. Now, today, I am on my treadmill right now because this is where I find the most inspiration currently in my life. And so if you hear a little bit of the treadmill background noise, I do apologize for that. But hopefully the iPhone should be able to pick this up pretty well. Those of you wondering, can I record this? I just press record, right on my own, my iPhone. I'm here in my garage right here, and we're recording the podcast episode like this. You know, I'm really inspired to share something with you that I think is going to help you. It's this. It's this level that I think that we have to cross over if we want to be successful as a coach, as a mentor, as a trainer online that, you know, I notice a lot of people are really hesitant to cross over into. And it separates those that are financially successful from those that aren't. Okay. You have to become free from other people's opinions about you. Okay. I just did a presentation this week, this weekend, and I had a person on the presentation tell me that my methods that I teach, which if you listen to my podcast, if you join my trainings, you know what I teach, you know that it's effective, that it works. And she said that what I teach is disrespectful and rude to other people. Now, this got me thinking, like, wait a sec, is it disrespectful and rude? Right? I have empathy. I want to look internally, see, is there something I can learn here from this? And at the end of the day, I realized, no, actually, this lady, as you know, as much as I want to honor her for her own unique individual perspective, I completely disagree with her. Her. Her. Her thought process on this, to the point that, like, if she thinks bad things about me because of that, I am okay with that. And I do not need to prove myself. I do not need to defend myself. I do not need to create some kind of campaign or narrative to prove that what I say is right and she's wrong. I don't need to fight this. I don't even need to go so deep into judgment of what she's saying, and what a. What I found is, is that the perspective was, is this, is that if you send too many emails to somebody and it wastes their time that you're harming that person and you're rude and disrespectful. And I disagree. I send emails twice a day to my email list. It actually got me to the point where I was almost afraid to send emails to my list over the past 24 hours. Like, like me, who sends emails consistently, has a consistent business that makes multiple six figures, has a track record of two decades, and then the opinion of one person got me to almost completely change the behavior of my business out of fear and worry of what this person thought. Now, obviously, I snapped out of it, but this goes to show you that even somebody like myself who's been in this for this long, I am susceptible to opinions, thoughts, and things that other people say. And I'm just gonna be real vulnerable with y'. All. I am actually very guilty of this. Over the last couple years, I have made decisions in my business a couple years ago that were not healthy, profitable decisions for my business because somebody made a comment to me that triggered me and I went completely 180, doing behavior that. That would not produce success in my business. I had somebody write me the other day, tell me that I post too much on my social media and that I need to stop or they're going to hurt me. Okay. Like, am I going to stop doing that? No, I'm not afraid of that person. And you have to give up the fear and worry of what other people think about you or even what they're going to do. And this, this catastrophizing what people might do to you that will stop you from being successful. I've talked with a handful of my clients in our coaching group. They won't launch an offer out there because they are afraid of disappointing other people if they don't, quote, unquote, get the result that they promised. And then that person coming after them and physically attacking them because of their disappointment or. Okay, and so, like, this fear of people's opinions and what people will do to us and changing our behavior off of the opinions of a public that's out there and shifting our business decisions in a direction that are unprofitable, that will not make money, that will prevent us from making money in order to appease a very small percentage of the marketplace. That is unhealthy behavior. That is not a healthy way to operate, to think and to live. And that's a Prison. And it's a trap. And it's a trap that many people fall into. And it's a trap that many of us have been groomed for, that many of us have been taught, many of us have been raised that way. We might even be in relationships right now. We with a friend or a spouse that is constantly telling us that we need to worry about what other people think. Here's here. How did that come in for me? Honestly, it's how I grew up. Some of you all know my story. You know, my mom, she's a fireball, amazing, fearless businesswoman. She wasn't that way growing up. And she really imparted a lot of fear in me about other people's opinions as a child and my behavior as a child. I was raised to be terrified of what anybody thought about us, to always worry about making the perception of our family be perfect in order to protect our family, to protect different things like that. And we've come to realize now that behavior is not rooted in anything that's healthy. That behavior is not rooted in anything that will serve you to reach your goals. You know, growing up, we used to be afraid that because my mom homeschooled me that I, that she would be taken to jail. And so we would shut the blinds during the day to make sure that people, neighbors going by wouldn't see that we were homeschooling inside of our house. Now, some of y' all might say, well, that's wisdom. Well, that's, you know, that's being wise. I, I, I, there's a level of that 99.9% of the time, though, that's. It's not wisdom and it's not coming from a wise place. It's coming from a place of letting fear run you, letting the worry of what people might think run you. I saw, I met somebody six months ago. She refused to spend $300 out of her nine million dollar portfolio out of fear that if she lost that $300, that she would be judged as a bad investor by her friends. And so she refused to test something out in her business out of fear of appearing incompetent to others and how they would judge her and how they would come after her and what they would say. And so here's the thing. We have to develop thick skin. We have to grow to a place where we do not make our decisions in our business based off of what other people might think, might say what the, and we might not, we don't have to agree with it. Like they could be so off base. We don't have to defend ourselves. We don't have to protect ourselves. We don't have to make sure to make sure that they don't do the thing that we don't want them to do. Right? This person who came to me on my call, it's not my job. I don't need to make sure that people like that don't show up on my call. They're going to show up if part of the territory that we're in. I don't need to make sure that I please everybody who becomes a customer of mine. I don't need to make sure that every single person likes me and approves of me. But that's what our, that's what our society tells us. It tries to convince us that we have to be worried about how we're perceived by others, what people think about us. We have to manage our reputation hardcore to make sure that nobody thinks anything ill of us. I'm sorry, but that's a load of crap. I don't buy it. And in my experience in the last two decades, it does not help you, especially in the coaching, mentoring, thought leading space to be successful. It's kryptonite. It's one of the number one things that will keep you from making the kind of money that you want to make. And I stand by this so firmly, is that we have to divorce being concerned about other people's opinions about our actions in business. Not everybody's going to agree with you. Not everybody is going to buy into your standards. I've had people attack me for numerous things. I don't need to go into it. I just scratched the surface today. Okay, I'll talk about one of them. I had somebody get so angry that I said that you don't need to invest in massive graphics design in your business in order to be successful. And turns out he was a graphics designer and he felt that I was destroying his industry and was a threat to him and his family. And he started to come after me physically and start and threatened to hurt me if I didn't stop talking about this the way that I did. I just blocked him on social media like that. You got to realize the people who are doing that are not healthy mentally. Okay? They're getting some kind of validation by scaring other people. They're getting some kind of validation by threatening other people. Okay, Now I want to share this with you. You know, back in the day when I felt like I was a powerless person, I used to make verbal, not, not threats, but I would say things that would scare people because I felt powerless. And so I have empathy for this, that as I've grown to realize that I'm not a powerless person, that I'm not just sitting in a boat and life is passing me by, that I am actually the master commander and, and I am steering the ship in my life, that other people are not steering the ship in my life. Once I realized that, I no longer felt the need to say things if I felt threatened by other people to make them back off or do things. And so when somebody does that, when somebody comes to you in business and they say something that's scary, it's because they feel powerless. It's because they feel that you have something over them and that if they can stop you, then they've won and protected themselves. That's the only reason why people do that. And so I want to encourage you in this. You do not have to protect yourself from attackers and people coming after you and trying to protect yourself from the opinions of, of people that are out there on the Internet. When you run your offers, when you put your offers out there, you're going to get a wide range of feedback from people. Not everybody's going to like it. Not everybody's going to agree with you. You could do all the right things and still have very negative, rude, mean, and even threatening people come after you out of the woodwork. It's not your job to protect yourself and prevent that from happening. And it's also part of the business of coaching, mentoring, training, and being a thought leader. It is. You're not going to be able to avoid it. And so to this person who has told me that I am rude and disrespectful for what I'm saying and, and that I, you know, whatever story that she's made up, I fully like. She can think whatever she wants about me. I don't need to prove myself. I disagree. But that's where it ends. I don't need to validate my position to anybody. I don't need to bring people over to my side in order to feel safe. I don't need people to agree with me in order for my business to thrive. Oftentimes what we really do is we shrink ourselves down to the level of other people's judgment. We shrink ourselves down to the level of what other people have told us that they don't like us crossing that line. And then when we operate inside of coloring inside of the lines of other people's opinions, it becomes nearly impossible to make a Profit in our business. Why is that? Because business is about taking risks. Business is about pushing the envelope. Business is about doing the things that most people are terrified of doing. Why are most people terrified of doing those things in business? Because they're afraid of other people. Because they're afraid of it going wrong. Because they're afraid of it not producing the result they want. So when you go out there in your business and you're saying, I'm afraid of doing anything because I'm afraid of it not working out, and I'm afraid of it not producing the result that I want, and you literally stop yourself from the very thing that. That will set you free financially because you are afraid. You've let everything else win. And you have become a victim in your life to outside circumstances, to outside influences. You have become a victim in your life to everything else around you. I dropped my phone. You become a victim to everything else around you in your life, and you can change that with one decision. Most people never will. Most people never do. Most people will go through the motions of victim blame, scarcity, lack mentality, and then they'll get a little bit of inspiration. They'll. They'll hear a podcast, or they'll. They'll hear a preaching, or they'll go through a course, or they'll go through a training, or they'll go through a coaching program. They'll feel inspired. And then they go back to their real life and they get influenced by their friends, their family, the news media, their social media, and they shrink themselves right back down to the little tiny box of their fear. The little tiny box of I am terrified to push the envelope. I am terrified to even do the very thing that I'm called to do. And it's a choice that you got to make to not let those things control you. It's a choice that you got to make to not let fear and worry and doubt and other people's opinions stop you from doing the very thing that will move things forward for you in your life. And so if that means me sending an email out twice a day and it pissing off 1% of the people who sign up on my email list, and they're just angry at me, you know what? I'm okay with angering that 1% of people. They can unsubscribe. Not my job to manage, maintain, or control how they feel. It's just not. Not my job to make other people think things about me that I agree with. What's my job is to focus on what can I do to grow my business, to impact people, to help those that love me, that celebrate me, that are connected with me, and to connect with more of those people so that I can bring impact into their lives. And that's why I'm here on this podcast. That's why I'm here on this treadmill today. That's why I'm here talking to you about this so passionately. That's why I don't stay silent on this, because I care about it. And I know that when you get this and you start to apply this in your life and your actions follow and you do something, the first time that you make a decision to do something that goes against. Against what everybody else around you is telling you to do, and you even have people telling you, stop or I will stop you. See, that's crazy. And that's an experience that you may have to reach where people will literally tell you, I had a lady tell me four years ago, jeremiah, it is my mission to make sure that you never succeed at coaching. And I will do everything I can to make sure you never do. And I blocked her on social media, and her friends came after me, and I blocked her friends on social media, and guess what? They didn't stop me, and they can't stop me. And the people who threaten you won't be able to stop you. You cannot let other people's opinions stop you from reaching your goals. Want to know why she told me that she was going to stop me from doing that? It was the very thing that I'm actually teaching you here today is the very thing I'm actually teaching you here today. She told me that this message that I'm teaching you of not being afraid of other people's opinions was too dangerous for the world to hear in public, that it was too threatening to society, and that if my message that I'm teaching you today got out, it would do too much harm to the world as a whole. And guess what? I'm still here today, teaching it. I'm still here today sharing it publicly, boldly, not holding back, because I know that it'll change your life like it has mine. And I'm excited for those who grab onto this, who really have ears to hear, who really start to apply this in their lives. You're gonna see breakthrough grow your life. Everybody, we'll talk soon. Have a good one.