In this 5‑10 minute solo podcast episode, Steve Lichtman warns listeners about the hidden costs of "playing small" – the habit of delaying action, hiding behind excuses, and protecting one's ego from being seen or rejected. He argues that playing safe is not neutral; it costs potential clients, momentum, and self‑confidence, effectively abusing oneself. Lichtman illustrates the point with a client story: a highly qualified coach who kept postponing her launch, first waiting for a website, then for testimonials, using those as excuses while her deeper issue was a lack of belief in her own value. He explains that the core of playing small is ego protection, which kills growth. To break the cycle, he promotes his RISE framework and an 8‑day "Fuck It Switch" (Effort Switch) challenge available on his website, urging listeners to take immediate action. He ends with a practical exercise: name one area where you’ve been playing small, state it out loud, and make a concrete move today. The episode blends personal anecdote, psychological insight, and a direct call to action.
Chapters
All right everybody, today, episode 36, no fluff, man. It's gonna be another no fluff day. It's, it always a no fluff day. It's kind of always me just ranting like a lunatic about something and hoping that you take a few notes and, and it guides you and motivates you in 5 to 8 minutes in a direction that helps you do something better for yourself in the day. Uh, today we're gonna talk about the price you pay for playing small. And it's just something that I've been sitting with and I think a lot of you probably just need to hear this right now. This is one of those things where the sticky note that was stuck on my monitor that said, like, in quotes, stop playing small. And it sat there for months and months and months. And then I took that one day, I took it and started fleshing out an idea, a little bit of an idea. You know me, my podcast episodes here are always under 10 minutes, so I try to keep 'em 5 to 10 always. And just a brief idea to, to tell you, there's a price that you pay for playing small, and most people will never calculate it. You think that playing safe is free. They think that staying quiet is being neutral, and they think waiting until they're ready will cost them nothing, but it's not free. It costs you clients who needed you and found someone else. It costs you the momentum you would've built if you just started 6 months earlier. Think about everybody. If you started 6 months earlier than you did today, wouldn't you be 6 months ahead of where you are now? It costs you your own confidence. Because every time you hold back, you teach yourself that you can't be trusted to follow through. You're abusing yourself when you do these things. And yeah, I get that it's being dramatic, but it's business abuse at the very least, if not emotional and mental abuse, that you're sitting there grinding your ass off and working your ass off and bust and hump every day, and you're looking at the same end result and you're like, why isn't it growing? If you're stuck like that, well, a lot of times it's the price of playing small. And look, here, I'll give you a great example. I had a client about 3, 4 years ago. She was absolutely brilliant. All the credentials you can need for what, what she did for a living and totally a real deal type of person who had been quote unquote getting ready to launch a coaching program for poof, well over a year before I met her. And she told me she was waiting until the website was done and it was one of the reasons that we had gotten connected cuz she had heard that I would help her make it more fantastic and give it more punch and impact and, and really brainstorm with her the idea behind what we're doing with the website. Like, I don't want, I'm not a web builder by trade. It's, I can build them, but it's not what I do. I'm, I'm the person that gives the idea, that builds the, the whole brainchild of what we're gonna do with it. Now with technology these days, I could actually speak that into existence now, which is so much cooler, but that's not here nor there. That's not today's point. Today's point is this was a person who said they were waiting for their website to be done till she had more testimonials. That was the next thing. So the website was done and she goes, I'm not ready yet, Steve. I need more testimonials. Okay, we got them. The next excuse was, you know what? Doesn't feel right. Something's off. And I'm sitting there thinking, I mean, this is This lady looks absolutely killer on this website. Like, she is a destructor of all things in her universe. She is the giant marshmallow man of Ghostbusters. She's got it all. She's ruling the city. What the hell? That's another excuse. But you know what was actually holding her back? She didn't believe in her own value at the end of the day, and the website just became the excuse. And we got to that after a few weeks. I mean, I'm pretty blunt, so I will let people be themselves, of course, because I believe that's the most important thing that we could all be honest ourselves and be who we are. But after like a month or so of it, I had to call it out because we were talking every other week. So, you know, by the third time of that, I was like, oh yeah, you know, look, I think maybe the website's an excuse. You know what the bigger issue here is that you're not, you don't wanna own this. And she realized it. And, and you know, the truth is this, here's what playing small actually is. It's protecting your ego from the risk of being seen and rejected. And that's exactly where she was. And I get it. We all feel that way. The fear is real, but the cost of just not dropping this out to the universe is 10 times realer. Because here's a great example. I record this episode right now, episode 36, Unfiltered and Unshakeable, and I never post it for whatever reason. Why the hell did I spend the last, well, 4 and a half minutes already recording this then? I'm just wasting my life then if I don't actually put it to action. And that's one of the things when, when I flipped my own personal effort switch a while back, I realized that this has gotta be the time where if you're creating stuff, you have to share it. If people hate it or people think it sucks or you don't have an audience, who cares? Keep going forward. Not everybody wakes up and has a million-person audience that is built with thousands and thousands of 5-view, you know, pieces to get you there. You're not gonna make one post and hit it out of the gate unless you have a marketing and advertising budget that's through the roof. Roof that I could spend, right? That's the truth for everybody. If you gimme no marketing budget, you're only gonna go as far as you work and hustle and grind. That's facts. Like 'em, leave 'em, doesn't matter to me. Those are still facts. You can't deny that. So when you're playing small and protecting your ego, cuz you're afraid to be seen, you're afraid to get rejected, and you're afraid that people are gonna say you suck, that fear is killing you. It's ruining your growth because you're sitting there strapped by the fear. So you need to use Rise. You need the reset more than anything. You need to go watch and take my 8-day challenge of the Fuck It Switch Challenge on my community. You 100% need to go take that now. Go to stevelichtman.com, click on community at the top. I got a brand new website. It was something to see. Look, I was somebody who I used my website as an excuse, but the reality was I truly hated it. I built what I thought everybody wanted, and then I looked at it and I was like, oh, I fucking hate it. That was how I said it. I remember I was looking at the final product. I'm like, oh, this sucks. I don't want this. And I thought about it while I was busy with other projects for about a month of what I wanted it to be. And then I was like, I just want to deliver the news, man. I want to be the anchorman. I want to be anchor. I want to be Will Ferrell from Anchorman and just, I just want to deliver the news. Um, and the news is going to be whatever news I see fit as far as marketing, AI, You know, being yourself, using my RISE framework. I'm just, everything that I believe is what can help people live a happy business life and do it in a way where they could love what they do. They could be fucking empowered to hell and back, and they could do it with a smile and do it without being miserable and do it in a way where you don't give a flying you know what when somebody doesn't like you online, because nobody's gonna love you all the time everywhere. That's the internet, man. It's nothing you can do about it. So let's reset. Go take the course. Go take the Effort Switch 8-Day Challenge. It's 8 days, 8 videos, usual 3 to 5 minute videos. I don't, I don't keep it long. I get right to the meat, you know, meat and potatoes kind of guy. So we get right to it. When you reset, that's when you step out of the fear state, right? For just that second, and you could see the truth. That's when you have something real to offer. And withholding, it's not protecting you, right? You're never protecting yourself by doing that. It just delays the version of your business that's actually possible. Like, you are literally stepping in front of yourself and delaying the inevitable when you play too small. So I want you to think about this now, and we're gonna end it. What's one thing you've been playing small about? Name it outright. Like, say it out loud. If you're sitting in your car, if you're sitting in the train, write it down, whatever. Just say it out loud. 'Cause that's your identity, right? Or actually, that's your ident— that's, that's actually not your identity. It's your identify. Right? Once again, my brain works faster than my mouth does, which is ironic, but because it moves pretty fast. But that's your identify, right? Your identify is, is the one thing you've been playing small about. So go make one move on that today. And today's riff is gonna be this: playing it safe isn't neutral. It has a price tag, but are you looking at the bill? Sounds like the opening to a Megadeth song. Do you know the price for peace? All right, we're gonna leave it with that. I am Steve Lichtman. This was Unfiltered and Unshakeable. Thank you so much, and remember, guys, don't play it small. You are tall.
