Why 'Knowing Enough to Be Dangerous' Can Hurt Your Business – and How to Avoid It!

Hey new listener, thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Do you know just enough to be dangerous? Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weenie Cast. When you think of someone who's dangerous, you probably think of someone who is maybe a member of a gang or a hitman for the mafia or a drug dealer. You know, someone who rides a Harley motorcycle and has a lot of tattoos and a leather jacket that tells you he's part of a group that has a scary name. You rarely think of someone who got their coaching certification from a five hour Udemy class, or a copywriter who read a book once about how to write sales copy and thinks that because they have that training, they can go and sell their services. Like, sure, a hitman is pretty dangerous. We don't want to spend any time around them. We certainly don't want to know anyone who associates with them because then, like, what if you piss them off? But we also don't want to end up around people who know just enough to be dangerous. And I want to acknowledge that we all have areas of our life where we know just enough to be dangerous. I personally worked in hospitality in restaurants and hotels for 10 years. From age 15 to 25. If I wanted to, I could absolutely start selling my services as a hospitality and restaurant consultant. Because sure, I worked in room service. Sure I was a hostess, sure, I did customer service, sure, I waited tables. Sure I, you know, was a sommelier and I helped people decide on their wine. But I have no experience running the business. I know enough of the doing from day to day to be dangerous, to know the language, to be able to kind of fake my way onto the scene. But I personally don't think anyone should hire me to help them start a restaurant. I wouldn't be good at it. I've never done it. I've never been a part of doing it. I've only ever been boots on the ground. And let's be real, I was a terrible waitress. If you were ever at one of my tables while I was waiting tables, I apologize. I probably forgot something, didn't I? You probably still remember it. One of the hardest things about starting a business is that you're often starting a business on something that you are still learning to be good at, right? And because you're still learning to be good at it, you might have had all the training in the world, but you haven't done it for other people yet, right? So you might have had a lot of training on how to be a coach. Maybe you went to a really renowned coach training program and you went through their certification process and you understand how to do it, and you're, you're really, really talented at doing it, but you've never done it for clients. Or perhaps you went through a really intensive writing program and became an incredibly talented copywriter, but you've never done it for another business. Perhaps you worked within a company where you helped them implement really technical solutions to different departments. You did basically internal consulting. But now you're wanting to start a business and you have to figure out how to offer this to other companies. Whenever we learn how to do something, there are really four stages of it, right? There is unconscious incompetence, right? So this is when you're a little kid and you're sitting in the backseat of the car and you know that mom and dad, whoever's driving, can make the car go forward, backward, left, right, whatever. But you don't understand how it happens. You just know that it happens. You don't understand that there are petals that do different things and that there are different gears for things. All that is beyond your knowledge and you don't even know to question it. You just think mom or dad is this magical being that can move this machine around with their hands and their mind. Then, of course, as you grow up, we move into conscious incompetence, right? We start noticing that when they move the gear stick, different things happen. We notice that their feet do different things with the pedals. So we get to that point where we're consciously incompetent. We know that there's stuff that needs to be done, but we don't understand how to do it. And then we get to consciously competent at it. We know how to put the car into reverse. We know how to put it into drive. We know how to stop, we know how to turn. And yet it doesn't feel natural to us. We have to really focus, focus on it. We have to really intentionally do each and every part until we get to the point with unconscious competence where we've done it enough that we just get in the car and all of a sudden, 10 minutes later, we arrive where we meant to go. We didn't consciously put the car in drive. We didn't consciously speed up and slow down as the as the speed limit changed. We didn't consciously use our turn signal. Unless you're one of those parents whose kid's in the backseat being like, dad, you gotta use the turn signal. You're turning. You have to tell other people. Then you might still be conscious about that. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. You can leave your comments in Apple Podcasts, castbox, Spotify, and Podchaser. Just go to weenicast.com reviews and scroll till you find the chosen app. That's weeniecast.com forward slash reviews. To be good at doing something, yes, you need to practice doing it. And you also need to be the person who's on the receiving end of it. So to do teaching, to do coaching, to do consulting, you also have to put yourself in situations where you are the one who's being taught, where you are the one who's being coached or consulted. Because you need to have the experience of being the student, of being the client, to understand what works and what does not work. If you're, you know, starting a business and wanting to grow the business and you're not spending money on receiving some variation of the service you provide, you're actually not improving. You're not putting yourself in the shoes of your clients with other people so that you can perceive what helps and what doesn't help. When a client comes to me and they want to start a group program and they list off all the terrible group teachers they've had or group coaches they've had in the past and what they didn't like about them. My answer is cool. You are uniquely qualified to run a group because you are able to identify those things. The point being that if you're worried that you're not delivering a high enough quality service to your clients, I can guarantee you you're offering a better service than the person who knows enough to be dangerous. Because that ability to introspect and point out the things that you do well and that you do badly and where you need to improve, the fact that you have that level of intelligence to even identify it means that you also have the level of intelligence that you need to be able to deliver at the level that you hold yourself to the standard of the hard part about starting a business is understanding where you are on the ladder and what makes you not dangerous to your clients. There are folks who know just a little bit about the little thing. And they think, okay, well, this is enough for me to go and be useful to other people. And what ultimately happens there is, without meaning to, I'm being gracious here, without meaning to, they end up kind of scamming people. They know enough to be dangerous. They know enough to use the right lingo to get people to pay them money to do a thing. But they're not good at it, and they don't understand that they're not good at it. There's this great John Cleaves quote that I saw on Instagram not too long ago.

If you're very, very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you're very, very stupid? You'd have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid. A wonderful bit of research by a guy called David Dunning at Cornell, who was a friend of mine, I'm proud to say, who's pointed out that in order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place. Which means, this is terribly funny, that if you're absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you're absolutely no good at it. And this explains not just Hollywood, but almost the entirety of film Fox News.

It's so true. It's so true. You know, I can't tell you how many clients I've had who come to me who, you know, are signing one on one clients. They're effective with their one on one clients. They do really good work and they really want to start a group program, and they start it, and then they completely ambush themselves and throw themselves off track because they're afraid. And when I ask them why they're afraid, they're like, well, I was in a group program once and it was awful and it was damaging. And the coach or the person who was teaching did this and this and this, and I hated it, and this made me feel terrible. And on and on and on and on. And what they don't realize is the fact that they're able to identify what worked and what didn't work in that other person is what actually makes them superiorly qualified than that person to deliver a group to be able to teach something to many people. At the heart of it, if you have a desire to do this business and to help people with the problem that you solve, be it health, be it their careers, be it their relationships, whatever it is, the fact that you have that desire to Help means that you are uniquely qualified to help them. And the fact that you have sought more training on how to be that help, maybe you've gotten a certification, maybe you went through like an intensive training program. Whatever it is, maybe you went and got a degree in it sets you up to be beneficial to the people you want to help. Like that drive is often enough to get you what you need to be qualified. And the fact that you're admitting that there are bits that you don't know, the fact that you're admitting that you're not sure how to run a group or how to teach in, in seven different ways in one sitting. And the fact that you're reaching out to advisors, maybe you're wanting to work with me. Maybe you're wanting to work with someone else who is further down the line than you, who can mentor you and show you how you can work with clients. The fact that you are admitting that actually allows you to have a far greater impact on your world and in your community. It allows for you to help more people. Some of the best presidents and political leaders we've ever seen in history don't walk into office and say, you know what? I know everything. I don't need a cabinet. I don't need people who are experts in these areas. I can just decide based on what I have in my brain hole right now. No. The best leaders amass an incredibly robust team of the greatest minds who are the experts of their respective fields. They don't assume that they know everything about education. They hire someone who knows so much about education and educational systems that can really help that department be its most effective. They don't assume they know everything about climate and the environment. They hire scientists who can help advise them and help and support them in making the right decisions in those areas. The fact that you are walking into this business wanting to make a difference with your clients and saying, you know what? These are the pieces of the puzzle I have. I still need other pieces of the puzzle so that I can help this be like the greatest help to my clients possible. That right there means that you are uniquely qualified to help your people. That openness to growing yourself so you can be better for them. It's not a deficit that you don't know everything already. It doesn't mean that you're stupid, that you don't naturally know how to run a group program and roll into it, teach a bunch of people a bunch of different things at the same time. That is a skill set that you get to develop. No one comes out of the womb knowing how to speak three languages. They have to learn them. And they don't learn them on their own. They learn them from other people, from resources created by other humans. Here's a gift if you're a coach or consultant and you want to attract your Dream Soul clients, you want to make more money and you want to have more free time in your day to live life on your terms. I've put together the five components of a high ticket offer so you can see exactly what you need to include in your program or your offer to your ideal clients so that you can make more money, have a greater impact for your clients. So they write rave reviews for you and have to spend less time doing it. And to grab it, you want to go to weeniecast.com forward/high ticket offer. That's weeniecast.com high ticket offer and the link is in the show Notes I worked at a yarn shop for years and years and years. I worked there like one Saturday a month. And then I taught a beginning knitting class. And in those classes I had between seven and 10 people. And let me tell you, no one person learns the same way. And so on the fly, I had to not only figure out how to explain how to do this finicky, fiddly little thing with two sticks and a piece of string, but I had to figure out what's a metaphor that works for this one person and what's the way that I can show this other person how to do it when they're not understanding it looking at me from this direction? And how do I guide this person's hand so that they can experience doing it? Because they learn by doing and on and on and on and on. And how do I also read the room and be able to see and identify when I'm losing people? And how do you go over to them and explain it in a way that doesn't make them feel like they're dumb, like they're behind, like they're less capable than everyone else in the room. That's not something that I learned in coach training. That's not something I even learned in the leadership program that I was in. It's something I learned by not only being a knitting teacher, but also being a knitting student and being in classes with people. And it had an impact on how I teach everything. Someone who doesn't know how to run a group wouldn't even notice how those things were detrimental to your learning. Just like John Cleave said, if someone's that stupid, they're not going to be aware that they're that stupid. The fact that you have the skill to identify what works and what doesn't work is what what's going to allow you to do better. But here's the thing. You can't identify it by not being in it. You can't understand what works to explain money mindset stuff unless you're also in classes talking about money mindset. You can't do a creative project for someone like writing the copy for their website if you don't also understand what it's like to be the client, talking through what matters to you and your ideal client and building that trust and what it takes to build that trust for someone else to write in your voice. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode. I don't think I've ever talked about this before, but I actually do not work with people who come to me and tell me that they're the best at what they do. Because the fact that they say that they're the best at what they do, I know that they're either a narcissist, a sociopath, or they're genuinely just that person who knows enough to be dangerous. They don't know enough to be able to point at their own weaknesses. They don't know enough to be able to point at other people, other colleagues in their world, and say, here's what I like about this person's service or offering. And here's what I don't like about their service and offering. The fact that you have this fear of being good enough tells me that you're beyond that point of knowing enough to be dangerous. You know, it's like the teenager who hasn't figured out how to ease on the brakes, who just slams on the brakes every single time they have to stop, right? They know it's a problem. They're aware that it's not a comfortable way to come to a stop, and they're aware that they spill their soda every single time this happens and they're going to improve. But it takes some time. It takes doing and it takes watching how other people do it. It takes noticing when someone else is driving, where they start slowing down, when they come up on a stop sign, when someone's in my program and they're wanting to work with clients one on one or Launch a group program. My advice to them is literally just copy what I do that you like and don't do what I do that you don't like. Right? Because you are your ideal client. And if there's something that I don't that I do that you're not a fan of, A, please tell me because I want to improve and give you the experience that you want. But B, like, if you don't like it, your ideal clients aren't going to like it either. And it doesn't matter that I'm teaching business and you may be teaching Pilates. Teaching is teaching, is teaching. It doesn't matter that one coach that you're working with is helping you with your relationship with your spouse. The fact that you're coaching people on their career, it's still going to be a similar dynamic. I'm super suspicious of coaches, consultants, teachers who aren't also doing some kind of work on themselves, doing something that puts them in the. In the seat of the student while they're growing their business. And it doesn't necessarily have to be that whole pyramid scheme of, like, oh, well, coaches have to have a coach, right? It's not all the seasons of our life are helped by having a coach. Some seasons require a therapist. Some seasons require a pottery class. The point being that if you're worried that you're not delivering a high enough quality service to your clients, I can guarantee you you're offering a better service than the person who knows enough to be dangerous. I met Dave Chappelle. He came into the Mandarin when I worked there. And he, like, he was supposed to have a pseudonym that we had to call him by to, like, protect his identity. Although it's Dave Chappelle, everyone knew he was. But, like, he would order stuff and then just sign it Dave Chappelle. He wasn't playing along with his own game because I think he was like, Mr. Smith. And he was like, no, Dave Chappelle. And I'll never forget, he came to the bar, I was waiting, and he asked me if he could order a bottle of Fiji Water through us. And of course, like, an $8 bottle of water. And he tipped me $20 on it. Ha ha ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha ha, ha, ha ha.