Nobody Told Me...

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories, it's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey, good morning, this is Julie. Welcome back to another episode of Million Dollar Grit. Today I'm answering a request from one of my clients. She said, Julie, can you 'Can you do a podcast episode titled Nobody Told Me?' and all about all the things that nobody told you that you learned the hard way in the last decade of business. So that's what I'm going to do today. This is titled Nobody Told Me, and I'm gonna just sort of riff on the things that shocked me about my climb, my very rocky climb to success between like 2014 and today. So the first thing is nobody told me that more money would mean learning an entirely new skill set of wealth preservation. I think when I would daydream about making lots of money, I always left off the daydream how much money and time and skill it would take to preserve the money once I had it. And there's just this unexpected complexity that shows up in your life once you have more money. And if you've heard the phrase "more money, more problems," you know, that's kind of like a quip you might hear out in the land of, you know, society, but it's usually in reference to celebrities who make more money and then they get into trouble, right? They take drugs or they gamble their life savings. And so we associate it with like moral corruption. More money means more temptation, more access to bad things that could ruin you. But it's not really just about that, because even if you continue in a moral straight line, if you will, there is this skill set of building wealth, managing money. I talk about this phenomenon, I call it the cushy bank account syndrome, and when your bank account starts growing and you are used to seeing 4 figures, right? You're used to seeing your checking account have $2,000 or $4,000, and then all of a sudden your bank account has 6 figures, right? Now your bank account has $120,000 in it. When you go out to dinner and you spend $150 or $200, it doesn't even hardly register on the numbers, right? But when you only have $1,000 in your bank account, it makes a big difference because you go from 4 figures to 3. And so when you have squishy bank account syndrome, what happens is you start to— the, the impact of your financial choices is not felt. And on the one hand, that feels great because you, you want to go to the restaurant, you want to go to the grocery store, you want to be able to spend whatever you spend and not feel it. The downside is that your habits can run away with you because you're not feeling any pain related to your spending. And so your spending habits can get out of control, and there's such a lag between when your spending habits get control, and when you start to finally feel it in your finances— like, it could be years even, right? And all of a sudden you turn around and you realize, oh my gosh, I'm spending $3,000 a month on food because my spending habits and the lack of pain associated with those habits allowed that habit to get really big. And so that is something that nobody warned me about. They also didn't warn me about the legal cost of preserving wealth. So when you are, you know, writing a will or you're getting a prenup or you're valuing your business or you're looking for legal protection, there are so many costs associated with protecting the money that you have, right? So if you have a $20 bill, you can stick it in your mattress. Fine. If you have $200,000, now you need a much much better protection. And so none of that gets taken into consideration when we are sitting there imagining what financial success looks like. We don't look at all of those things, and it is a lot. And if you've never had a good financial education, you can get taken out at the knees. And this is what we see a lot of times. This is one of the reasons why when people win the lottery, almost all of them end up bankrupt and broke. And you just think, How is that possible? And it is this, it is this principle that more money means learning an entirely new skillset of wealth preservation. So that's a big one I'm gonna kick off with. So number 2, nobody told me that my nervous system would be my biggest barrier to success. And I know that somatic work and nervous system regulation are a little bit trendier now than they were maybe a decade ago. But when I say nervous system, I am talking about that part of you that reacts intuitively or instinctually versus the part of you that can make really like logical strategic decisions. So if we look at this, your nervous system is attached to the part of your brain that is like all about survival, right? So your brain, your brain's number one job is to keep you safe. And so your nervous system reacts very quickly because if it had to wait until your prefrontal cortex could like logically assess danger, you'd be dead. You'd be eaten by the bear. So we have this very complex, very intelligent system that works faster than we can stop it. And so what happens is all of these like habits and patterns and belief systems have created this intricate path, all these intricate pathways. And so as you grow in business and things happen to you, you are being run by a system in your body that is not about anything other than survival. And so the more success you have, the more dangerous everything appears because of what you're protecting. So think of it this way: when you are single and you are 23 and you don't have a spouse and you don't own a home and you don't have kids, right? You're going to take more risks because there's not a lot to lose. You know, yes, of course you could lose your own life, and that's really important, but it doesn't feel like the stakes are so high. Now, once you have a home and a spouse and children and you have all of these people depending on you, or you have a business and you have team and employees, the stakes are higher. And so what I didn't realize is that the higher you climb on success mountain, the more danger it appears to your nervous system. And so if you are not actively working on letting your nervous system be calm and regulated so that you can make those decisions, you are going to get more and more anxious, more stressed. You're going to— it's going to lead to burnout, OCD, paranoia, all of these things. And you can see this happening with people who over time, they get more successful, then they get really paranoid and You know, some people might say, oh well, that's because once you're successful or once you're famous, you know, you need bodyguards. And, and yes, but even if that's not the case, like even if you're not like visibly successful in like a celebrity way, there is still a perception of more danger because you have more to protect. And so your nervous system is going to do what it's going to do unless you actively work to center it and calm it. Okay, number 3: Nobody told me that the healthier you get, the lonelier it gets. And this isn't necessarily tied to like financial success, but if you, if you think of success not just in finances but also in personal development, when you make personal development or becoming the best version of yourself an important priority in your life, it's going to get lonely because you're going to realize how many bad habits and dysfunctional coping mechanisms you function under and how few people are actually able to do that good, healthy work. And so your circle gets smaller and the number of people you can trust gets smaller. And this is not just about You know, this is not just about paranoia. This is just a recognition of there's going to be a small circle of people that you can trust, and there is going to need to be protection from people that are not in that place. Not in an exclusive, I'm not, you know, you're not worth my time sort of way, but just in a protective, I need to preserve my sanity and my health and I can't engage in that situation. So it's definitely lonely the more you go down the path of personal growth. Okay, number 4: Nobody told me that 80% of the work you do as a business owner would be not that important. And this is an interesting one because It goes on the principle of 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your effort. It's the same principle of 80% of a team's success is usually dependent on 20% of the team members, right? So the principle is there's a small percentage of work or people that makes the core difference, and everything else is sort of busy work. And that realization is difficult if you are someone who gets off on having lots of checklists that you can mark off, if you get a sense of accomplishment from being busy, if you are not comfortable with boredom or space or quietness, if you thrive in chaos and pressure, you're going to create a huge storm of work and complexity and ideas and yet 20% of what you're doing is actually changing the bottom line. And so if you— this kind of goes with the one I— the, the two I said before about getting healthier in your nervous system. Over time, what I'm recognizing is a lot of the things that I thought were helping me be successful are actually not really as big of a deal as the 20% of the things that I'm doing that makes a big difference. And so This is sometimes hard to decipher, but, you know, I think back to the amount that I traveled in the past, or this idea of like, you know, who I need to talk to and connect with, because I understand that I need to make connections in order to get, you know, more visible and get a bigger audience. And yet, as I slowly have stripped away some of the stuff that I used to do a lot of that I'm not doing as much anymore, And my bottom line isn't being eviscerated. It's a realization that 80% of what I was doing was not really critical to the success of my business. And what is that 20%? And this is going to be different for everybody in every business, so it's not like I can sit here and say, do this, this, this, and don't do this, this, this, this, this, this, right? And also, like, your personality comes in because you're naturally going to bend towards certain activities than others. But this 80/20 rule is very powerful and is true across the board, both in teams and in your personal, like, life. Number 5: Nobody told me that consistency matters above everything else. And I, I think that maybe, maybe people have told me this in the past, or this is sort of something we hear a lot in health. Right? With working out and diet, we hear consistency matters above everything else, but I don't know that we actually believe it. And maybe that's the difference. You've heard it, but you don't believe it. And doing the basics consistently beats chasing the next big thing or the next shiny object. And consistency is so boring because it's consistent and there's nothing new, but it really is the key, because if you can consistently show up on social media, for example, even if you don't follow the trends and the tactics that are on each of the different platforms, you will gather an audience over time, just out of consistency, right? Maybe it'll take you a little longer, maybe you won't go viral, maybe your audience will be slow to grow, but You will continually see people gathered around you if you remain consistent. And consistency is really dependent on believing everything I already just said, right? Because if you don't believe it, then you won't be consistent because you're looking for an external reward, right? So consistency will happen naturally if you believe that you have to continue doing those 20% revenue-generating activities, right? That I talked about with the 80/20 principle. Consistency will happen if your nervous system is regulated. So consistency matters above everything else. It outperforms every trend and every tactic as far as I'm concerned. Number 6, nobody told me, uh, that I'd have haters and drama every single day once I hit a certain threshold of notoriety. And I've talked about this on social media before, that there was a moment in my life where I woke up and I found myself having almost like a PTSD reaction as I picked up my phone. And I thought, it's so weird, like I'm getting agitated just holding my phone. And it was because I knew that I would open my phone and whether it was Facebook or Slack or Voxer or email, somewhere tucked in one of those communication channels would be someone either criticizing me, engaging me in a conflict, sending me unsolicited feedback, threatening. It didn't matter, right? And it's just a math equation, really, because even the most well-loved person in the world is going to have approximately 50% of the population hating their absolute guts. Right? Because humans are going to just have different perspectives. And so if people like the Dalai Lama or Jesus, or, you know, people that are like known in the world as being like these pivotal figures, are going to have millions and millions and millions of haters, why do I think I'm exempt from that math equation? I'm not. So 50% of people are going to be annoyed with me if I take a stand anywhere. And so every single day, without fail, I know that there's going to be some fire in my phone that I have to deal with. And so this is really changed how I, how I have a relationship with my phone. This has been one of the most difficult things I've had to learn. You know, it started by turning off all notifications. I have zero red badges. I have zero notifications that show up on my phone ever. Never, ever, ever. And so that means I have to intentionally engage with a platform, with a message, in order to, you know, because I don't want to be reacting And number 2, it requires me to resist the pressure to open up my phone and do work when I have deep work to do, because I know how fast I get derailed. And for some people, it doesn't derail them. For someone who's empathic and intuitive, like, a bad comment can derail my entire day. So I have to get all the work done that I need to get done before I open my phone, understanding that I can't really control what's going to be on the other, other end of the phone. So that's a hard one. And number 7: Nobody told me that most opportunities in the form of partnerships are not what they seem. And this is a tough one because collaborations, partnerships, we want to, you know, we want to do things with other people. We see people who have skill sets, and I would say 95% of opportunities that came my way were not what they seem. And I'm not just talking about a business partnership. I've had business, you know, I've had, see, 4 business partnerships maybe, and one has stood the test of time. I have had multiple opportunities to collaborate with people in JV relationships, affiliate relationships. Licensing arrangements, you know, profit sharing agreements, and almost all of them have not been what they seem. So I now approach partnerships with a much— it's not that I'm not willing to partner with folks or do those kinds of collaborations, but I approach it with a much different mindset because the more successful you get, the less opportunities there are for something that's truly a win-win. And that might sound backwards because you might think, well, gosh, the more successful you are, the more opportunities you have. And on the one hand, you do have more opportunities in terms of investments like, you know, funds and different ways that you can invest your money, that there are more doors that open up when you have cash available. But it is very rare for someone to come to me with a partnership idea, a JV relationship, where I am not going to be the one who overextends. I almost never see an opportunity where it's a really solid win for me, and that's been hard because I love the idea of partnering with people, and I love the idea of collaborations, but the math is telling me that I need to approach it with there's a high likelihood that this is not a good idea, and it's a very small likelihood that it is a good idea. And so if you are being pitched an opportunity or you have a collaboration and you're very excited about it, I would take a critical look because oftentimes they are not what they seem. So this podcast is getting long, so I'm going to stop it there. There's many other things nobody told me, but I hope this is really helpful, and I hope that it's given you some insight, and I'll talk to you soon.

And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.