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The Solopreneur's Secret Envy Problem · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: What if the thing you're jealous of is something you never actually want? In this episode, we get into the strange sting of watching someone announce their tenth hire and their new funding round while you're quietly thrilled about an empty grocery store at 2PM. We really dive into this, and we also have a challenge for you, so be sure to stick around. You're listening to the Life-First Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries, and my cohost Joe Rando and I spend every episode with Solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen.
• 0:35
  We like to say life first, then business. let's get right to it. So Joe, the conversation we're having today, you and I have actually already had offline, which is why I wanted to bring it online because I thought it was a helpful conversation. I actually wrote a newsletter blurb about it in one of our newsletters a couple weeks ago. But I was looking at LinkedIn a couple weeks ago and a gal that I used to work with, we're the same age, we're buddies.
• 1:06
  She posted this thing on LinkedIn and it was like, she just received this new round of funding. She just hired her tenth employee. Her comment section was just blowing up and there are emojis. And now that LinkedIn has GIFs, there were GIFs that were like, well, this is so celebratory. And I had a really weird reaction In that was I was kind of envious.
• 1:32
  But it's weird because I don't want that. I don't want funding. I don't want a team. I want to tuck my kids into bed at night. I want to bake a friend an enchilada casserole for her newborn baby.
• 1:46
  Joe Rando: I mean, newborn baby's eating an enchilada casserole. Wait a minute.
• 1:49
  Carly Ries: Not for her newborn baby. For the family. While I'm like after I put in some work, then I'll take a break and do that and do more work. I want all those things, but nobody celebrates those things. And it's weird because I feel like in corporate, you work, work, work, then you get the promotion or the recognition. Nobody gives you an applause for going to a few meetings, baking a casserole, and then getting head down work done. Nobody's like, oh, that's great. Congratulations. But that to me is what the success is. And at first, I was like, am I showing up wrong?
• 2:25
  And I don't think so. I think there are two legitimate parts of a person in conflict. The ego that wants to be seen, validated, ranked, and then your values where people first solopreneurs want autonomy, time, and peace. And it's a really weird feeling when those two are at odds with each other. Have you ever felt that way?
• 2:48
  Joe Rando: Yeah. Just a few times in my Typical month. Yeah. You know, it resonates with me so much because, having gone through I mean, I went through the .com boom. I was working on a startup that I started right before the Internet became a thing, and the Internet killed my startup. And I was watching these people become millionaires because they jumped on the Internet wagon. And here I was trying to do something that didn't use the Internet, and it was the Internet was killing me because people weren't putting money into what I was doing. So, yeah, I felt it deeply then, and I've felt it many times since. it's funny you talk about that whole raising money thing. I remember seeing people on LinkedIn raising venture capital and celebrating. Oh, yeah. I just raised $10,000,000, blah blah blah. I remember at one point with my trade area system startup, we went to this process of trying to raise venture cap.
• 3:57
  We thought that was a good play. And at one point, it looked like we were gonna get it. I was the CEO, and I had a dream one night that I was sitting there, and I was at the head of this long conference table, there were all these people. it just seemed to go on not forever, but really far. And these all were my new hires and existing hires and all the people that worked for me, and I was there to kind of give them instructions as to how to go forward spending this money that we had raised. it was kind of a nightmare. It was kind of a nightmare, and I realized I didn't want that. I didn't wanna scale in that way because it was like, as soon as you take that money, you're on the hook. You know? You've gotta make it fly.
• 4:41
  We were bootstrapping until then. It was hard, but it was kind of on us, and it was kind of on our time frame. Now you got somebody with a clock. So, yeah, I get this idea of thinking you want something, feeling envious, and yet going, really, I don't. I don't want that.
• 4:56
  In the society, we celebrate these things. And when you see other people celebrating, you kinda wanna join in. I'm not really a soccer fan, but, especially if you're in one of the countries where soccer is huge and the World Cup is going on and you wanna celebrate with them because it's just they're celebrating. You wanna join in and you wanna be part of it, and it's human nature.
• 5:20
  Carly Ries: Yeah. and I think solopreneurs are especially vulnerable because , and I think this is what I put in the newsletter. The analogy is you opted out of the scoreboard, but the scoreboard is still visible and part of you still keeps the score. I think that's the best way to think about it. But I just want listeners to know, wanting recognition doesn't mean you made the wrong choice.
• 5:42
  Like, you were saying, I think that's just innate. You wanna be a part of the celebration. And the ego isn't the villain. I think it's just like a signal. there's that recognition hunger that often points to real unmet need, which would be like meeting, contribution, being valued.
• 5:59
  And I think people need to just do a values check-in with that. again, it's what they have for in the past, but does it align with their values currently? I think that that's really important for people to just have regular check ins.
• 6:18
  Joe Rando: Yeah. You gotta pull yourself back and say, hey. I've chosen not to do this. I've chosen to have some control over my life because I've seen it, with family members who have raised lots of venture capital, and you stop owning your life. It's kind of like working a really high powered, high paid one of these high paid jobs where when the CEO says jump, you say how high.
• 6:44
  And Sure. It's a perfectly valid legitimate path to take in life, but it's not one that certainly I would ever choose .
• 6:55
  Carly Ries: yeah. I think you need to distinguish, like, healthy pride. It needs to go from I need others to rank me highly, to, I did good work that I'm proud of today. And we talk about this all the time. You need to return to your why. Why you chose life first, freedom, the presence of sustainability. Nobody will give you a pat on the back necessarily for those things, but that's what you want. And I think the hard question people have to ask is, would you actually trade back their freedom for the recognition? I know for me, it's no. But if it's yes, then maybe you should not be doing a Life-First business.
• 7:34
  Joe Rando: Go be an entrepreneur and, get some seed capital and, you know, build an empire. It's a legitimate way to go. Absolutely.
• 7:45
  Carly Ries: And freedom is a form of success that's invisible, to the audience, but I think it's so obvious in your daily life. Like, nobody's gonna give me LinkedIn emojis, but it's fun to meet up. It's fun to take my kid to a swim a lesson at 10:45 on a Thursday and see people.
• 8:07
  Joe Rando: What if... just making me think here. So what if we started posting on LinkedIn, those kinds of wins with a Life-First hashtag and see what happens?
• 8:19
  Carly Ries: Did you see my grocery store one?
• 8:21
  Joe Rando: No. I've been heads down the last couple of days.
• 8:25
  Carly Ries: I posted one, and I was like, I'm at a grocery store at 2PM and it was an empty grocery store. I was like, for some people, success is a million dollars. For me, it's going to a grocery store without any one else.
• 8:36
  Joe Rando: So you did it already.
• 8:37
  Carly Ries: Win.
• 8:38
  Joe Rando: Maybe we should start doing that and see if see if we can get some people to celebrate.
• 8:42
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Or like Monday moment. yeah. We're gonna have to think of it a little.
• 8:46
  Joe Rando: Hashtag life first or life first business. Or hashtag life first then business. I don't know. But we'll think about that.
• 8:55
  Carly Ries: Listeners, if you have an idea, let us know. But I think, you don't have to kill the ego. You just have to redirect it. You have to find recognition that doesn't cost your freedom. I could even be like, find a small community that sees your work, reward yourself with client outcomes. Maybe it's mentoring a person to give you that validation. I think it's okay to have an ego. It's just not okay to compare it to things you wanted in the past.
• 9:24
  Joe Rando: You know, last week, I had to take, every day from Monday through Friday, had a car ride three hours out of the day to drive my granddaughter to a soccer camp that we signed her up for because she came out from Vegas and stayed with us and needed something to do during the week because, the whole family was here but people were working. And I could do that. I mean, it wasn't as productive a week as I've had other weeks, but I was able to do that because I don't have a boss telling me I can't, and I don't have a situation that is so stressful that I couldn't take that time. And, let's face it. When you've got a teenager, driving in a car is a really great way to connect. It really is a fantastic way to communicate because for some reason, driving in a car opens things up. I was just blessed to do that. And like I said, if I put it on LinkedIn, I probably wouldn't get, a whole bunch of GIFs and emojis, but, maybe I will.
• 10:19
  Carly Ries: Yeah. We can start directing people to George's post that he's doing right now. One of the contractors on our team, he's moving and he's posting his moving journey, but he's running his own business while moving. And you can't do that in corporate. I don't know how you can do that in general, but he's superhuman and can pull stuff like that off.
• 10:40
  But, yeah, that's a great one. It's okay. So, Joe, that will be our challenge. We'll post on LinkedIn, some of the wins that aren't typical. But I also have a challenge for our listeners.
• 10:49
  And I think if you're running into this conundrum, you need to write down your own definition of recognition. what it looks like when it comes from a source that doesn't require you to sacrifice your freedom, even it that's a, that's so cool that you can pick your friend up from the airport while they're flying in to visit for this awesome experience. My husband just had one of those. I ended up getting his friend, but it was cool that I was able to go get his friend from the airport so they can have this amazing experience. And they acknowledge that I could do that.
• 11:22
  I don't know. Just little things like that where it's not the big things, but just the little pats on the back like, it's cool that you're here right now.
• 11:29
  Joe Rando: And present. Can I throw another strategy at you for this?
• 11:33
  Carly Ries: Yes.
• 11:34
  Joe Rando: something that might work? It comes from a friend of mine who used to smoke three packs a day and quit cold turkey years and years ago. I said, how did you do that? he said, well, I just imagined myself in the hospital with a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer.
• 11:53
  And I imagined, what would I be thinking? he said, I would be thinking, wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to smoke. So I did.
• 12:00
  Carly Ries: That's powerful. Wow.
• 12:02
  Joe Rando: And I said, interesting thinking. But, if you thought about something like me, getting to drive my granddaughter or whatever it is, you know, spending time with your kids or doing something cool or whatever, and then go imagine your life if you were either, a super scaling entrepreneur or working in corporate and weren't able to do those things. How would that feel? I mean, maybe a little bit of thought experiments around that might drive some things home that we don't appreciate. And so you're not gonna get any kudos from the masses maybe, but, to think about your life in the context of how it would be different if you were doing things differently, maybe it'll make you appreciate, the Life-First business more.
• 12:53
  I don't know. I just thought it was an interesting way to kinda think about the what could have been and rethink how you feel about life now.
• 13:03
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Absolutely. Alright, listeners. Those are your marching orders. But listeners, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 13:11
  We are loving having these Life-First discussions. It's really making us reflect on our own values, how we want to approach things, and we have just loved hearing your stories and your feedback. It's just been a really fun, I don't want to say experiment, but it's just been a really fun journey to be experiencing all of this with you guys. So if you know somebody that wants to start building a life first business, please send them to our show or have them listen to it.
• 13:39
  They can subscribe to the show on any podcast platform, including YouTube, which definitely YouTube because it's really fun to see those numbers continue to go up from a selfish standpoint. Don't forget to leave that five star review. It really helps us build more credibility, even more credibility, and spread the word to other Life-First Solopreneurs. We will see you next week on Life-First Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone.
• 14:08
  In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. Why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.