Latest / You're Not Too Much / Bet On Yourself (Even When Nobody Else Will)

Transcript

Bet On Yourself (Even When Nobody Else Will) · You're Not Too Much

0:00
I called up my family member and I said, I don't think I can
0:04
go back to work. I think I have to find a way
0:08
to work for myself. And I don't know what that looks like,
0:12
but I think I can do it. I don't know what that looks like. I'm
0:16
not saying that having a job is bad. I'm not saying that you should start
0:18
your business over having a job. I'm not saying any of that. I am
0:22
saying that you are worth betting on and I would bet on you.
0:26
And so you should bet on you too. Boop. Hi
0:30
everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not Broken,
0:34
which is our podcast on exactly that, that there are a lot of people
0:38
in this world walking around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different
0:42
and that's fine. I've owned
0:46
a consulting company for like 5 years, maybe 6. Ooh, 6 years. Yeesh.
0:50
Yeah, I guess it's like 6 years now. That's scary. How's that possible? But yeah,
0:54
I've been consulting with other companies for 6 years. I've owned my own companies, a
0:58
consulting company, and also other companies in the meantime, but a lot of what I
1:02
do, even while owning other companies,
1:06
is working with startups and building their businesses and stuff.
1:10
I don't know if that was ever the plan. It's just kind of where I
1:13
ended up. That's not really the important part of
1:17
it. My consulting company started kind of accidentally after
1:22
I left a job also almost 6 years ago, 5 and a half years
1:25
ago. That was just atrociously bad for me. And
1:30
the transition out of that job felt like
1:35
it was a very bizarre combination. There was this initial period where I was like,
1:38
I'm gonna die and my life is over and
1:42
I'm never gonna find another job and everything's terrible. And
1:46
that was a very real part of it. And I won't say that it was
1:49
quick. I found some version of a backbone fairly
1:53
quickly. Because I was presented with a problem and I was gonna fix it,
1:57
right? I had just left a job. I felt terrible
2:01
about the fact that I lost this job. I was embarrassed about the fact that
2:04
this job ended, and I was definitely going to
2:08
save face and make it so that nobody could ever say that this
2:12
was something that I did wrong, right? And so
2:16
I did what I always do, which is just started moving. I just started
2:20
doing things. I just started talking to people. I just started doing— I had no
2:24
idea where I was headed, but I just started doing things. I don't know if
2:27
anybody's noticed this, but that might be how I manage my stress, is to
2:31
touch things and get into trouble by trying to do
2:35
too much. That's a thing. And I had this thought because that was
2:39
such a traumatic experience. It really was. It
2:43
started out as what I can Genuinely describe as what felt
2:47
like the best job in the world, and then 5
2:51
years in was like Chernobyl
2:56
would be like, whoa, that place is toxic. It was that
3:00
bad. And I kept it all inside. I kept it to myself.
3:04
I didn't really tell anybody. I had a couple of colleagues who we talked about
3:07
with it, but like nobody knew how small I felt, how insignificant
3:11
I felt, how— Yeah. How bad it had been for my mental health, how much
3:14
I had let them believe, how much I had let them let me or make
3:17
me believe about myself. I really hadn't communicated that to anybody. I don't even know
3:21
that I had really understood the full depths of that at the time. And when
3:24
I left, it's not like my husband and I sat down and we made a
3:27
plan that this is destroying me and I've gotta get away
3:31
and I need to go do something else. The CEO said something
3:35
shitty to me at 8:00 AM. And I
3:38
resigned by 8:30. There was no giant thought
3:42
process. There was nothing. It was, I physically
3:46
can't do this anymore. And so all of that to say
3:50
that as I started to better understand the reality of what was happening
3:54
in my life right then, I felt this like
3:58
crushing sense that I could not go back to another
4:02
job. Now, some of that might've been burnout. It definitely was burnout. Yeah.
4:06
Some of that might have been a really shitty sense of identity at
4:10
that time and trying to both distance myself and hold on
4:14
to this identity that I had for so long. I don't even know what,
4:18
but I just was like, do I start my own business? And I wanna be
4:22
clear, I didn't know what that business was. I did not know
4:26
what that business was. It's not like I was like, I've done this thing for
4:29
a million years and I'm gonna do that thing. thing instead of going
4:33
back to work. I just was like, maybe I start my own business because
4:37
I don't think I can work for anybody again. And I had some family
4:41
members who had been incredibly supportive during that period, who
4:45
had let me call and cry, and who had my back
4:49
in trying to figure out all of the things that you figure out when you
4:53
have a huge life change that precipitates grief. And that's what it was— it was
4:57
definitely grieving this thing that I thought I was gonna have that I definitely did
5:00
not have anymore. And so I called up one of my family members and
5:04
they own a business. They've owned a business for a long time. They get small
5:08
business. In my mind, I was talking to the right person. And I called up
5:12
my family member and I said, I don't think I can go back
5:15
to work. I think I have to find a way to
5:20
work for myself. And I don't know what that looks like, but I,
5:23
I think I can do it. I don't know what that looks like. And
5:27
I don't know what I expected in return, but what I got in
5:31
return was not whatever that was. Because I think
5:35
out of, I don't know, maybe being protective, maybe
5:39
it must have been being protective and trying to keeping in
5:43
mind that I have kids. But the advice that I got back was,
5:47
no, no, that's a terrible idea. And it was like shocking to me because this
5:51
person owned a business. This person had been in their own business for a long
5:55
time. This person had supported me in all of
5:59
my challenges in a corporate environment. And I just went,
6:03
what do you mean? And they said, think about it, your skills are in demand
6:06
now, but they might not be if running a business doesn't work and you have
6:09
to go back to the workforce. He was like, you should probably just find a
6:12
job. I don't know that not finding a job is the way to go. It
6:16
took every ounce of
6:19
cobbled-together confidence that I had managed in the
6:24
days since this thing had happened and
6:28
sucked it right out of— like, all of the air was gone from the universe.
6:31
Everything— I felt so small. I felt so
6:34
stupid. This person who runs a successful business is telling me that I would
6:38
never be able to run my own business, or that running my own business will
6:42
probably be a disaster, and then I won't be able to get a job. My
6:45
kids are gonna starve. I'm being selfish. Just go find a job.
6:49
It didn't feel as bad as the environment that I
6:53
had been in before, but it felt pretty terrible. It was the first day that
6:57
I felt like maybe I had some sea legs under me. It was the first
6:59
day that I thought maybe there's something out there that is more than
7:04
a job that sucks your soul dry. Maybe I can go find that
7:08
thing. Maybe I can create that thing. And to have somebody
7:12
who was so close to me and who felt like they were 100% in my
7:16
corner for whatever came outta my mouth an hour ago say,
7:20
no, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think you should bet on
7:23
yourself. That's what I heard. I don't think that's what they meant, but that's what
7:26
I heard. I don't think you should bet on yourself. I accidentally
7:30
ignored them. It was not my intention. I don't know what
7:34
my intention was. I think my intention was to take a little bit of time
7:38
Figure out what was next, meet some people, shake some hands, kiss
7:42
some babies, find whatever's next. And to
7:46
their credit, I did find a job
7:50
that was in the skill set that they told me I should be focusing
7:54
on. So I started accidentally
7:58
consulting. Very genuinely, my consulting company started on accident.
8:02
I was just networking with people. Because I didn't know what was out there.
8:06
I hadn't looked for a job maybe ever. I'd
8:10
never been in an earnest job hunt, like, except maybe during college.
8:14
It was not anything that I was used to. To me, like, every
8:18
job that I had gotten, I got introduced to somebody, and I just honestly happened
8:22
to be in the right place at the right time. So this idea of an
8:25
earnest job search was, like, completely foreign to me. And so I was like, let
8:28
me just— like, there's tons of stuff happening out in the world that I have
8:31
never had time to engage with in this digital health world that I work in.
8:35
Let me go see, let me go meet some people. And so I started to
8:39
meet people, I started to build some relationships. I started— for reasons I
8:43
to this day can't explain, people find me shockingly credible. Literally, I
8:47
cannot explain it, but whatever. That's not a complaint, it
8:51
works to my advantage. I just don't understand it.
8:55
You know, I would meet with people for a couple of— well, like one time,
8:57
and then I'd get an email a week or two later, hey, we're working on
9:00
this thing, do you have any thoughts on it? And then I would end up
9:02
working on that thing And it happened a couple times and they were relatively small
9:05
contracts, but that's not a complaint. I'm fine with that. So
9:10
I found myself accidentally consulting.
9:14
At the same time, this other company came to me
9:18
and said they wanted me to do a short-term consulting contract with them, but it
9:22
was like a full-time engagement. And then because of
9:26
some internal issues that they had, they were like, you know what, it would be
9:29
way easier if we bring you in as a W-2. So do you want to
9:32
just work for us? And I said, sure, because I thought that was what
9:36
I was supposed to do. I was told by somebody who cared about me a
9:39
ton that was what I was supposed to do. And they knew that I had
9:43
other consulting work that I was doing. They were fine with it. There was another
9:47
fractional thing I was looking at. They were fine with it. I was transparent about
9:50
everything. All good to go. So I took the job.
9:54
I was there 3 months before All of
9:58
the corporate nonsense started sliding
10:02
downhill, for it became very apparent that
10:06
the CEO's wife was an emotional
10:10
terrorist. Girl-on-girl crime was bad there. It was bad. And
10:14
if you know me, that's— I don't have the stomach for it. I don't. I
10:18
do not pit women against each other in the workplace. There are only
10:22
so many of us, and If we can't enjoy working
10:26
together, I don't wanna work with you at all. There was a lot of
10:30
typical VC-driven healthcare
10:33
bullshit, and I hated it. I
10:37
hated it. I had told them when I took the job that
10:41
I'm not big on travel. Now, mind you, this was the first year of
10:44
COVID This was early COVID. They basically
10:48
had open offices at that point. And they wanted people to be there in person
10:52
all the time, but they were across the country from me. And so I did
10:55
travel there one time and it was great, but I had 3 days
10:59
there where I got no work done because all I was doing
11:03
was running around and schmoozing with people, which I hated. I just
11:07
wanted to do the work. That's what I was there to do was work. And
11:11
all I could do was go to this meeting, meet with this person,
11:15
go to dinner, whatever. So like literally it costs them money to fly
11:18
me out there. It costs them money for me to be there. It costs them
11:22
money because they lost almost a week of productivity from me in the
11:25
process. And they were like, okay, well, can you be back in 2
11:28
weeks? And I'm like, if you need somebody here that often, why don't you hire
11:32
somebody who's here? So between trip number 1
11:35
and trip number 2, there was a variant of COVID that got really bad.
11:40
Everybody was sick again. We had a very short break. Where everybody was
11:43
vaccinated and things seemed to be tamping down. And then we went into whatever this
11:47
first wave of a new variant was that got everybody sick again.
11:51
And at the time I was basically the primary caretaker for my mom and
11:55
we couldn't bring in an outside caretaker because of COVID And so I
11:58
said, I just can't keep getting on a plane. I said, I can't get this
12:02
variant cuz I can't give it to my mom. And
12:06
my boss there said, It's not if you get
12:10
it, it's when. So I just wouldn't worry about it. And
12:13
I was like, well, we're done here. Thank you for the
12:17
opportunity, but you just encouraged me to try to kill my
12:21
mother. And if I do that, it's going to be a way more interesting way
12:25
than giving her a strain of COVID I've got bigger plans than
12:29
that, but you're certainly not going to tell
12:33
me To not worry about a global pandemic that
12:37
has killed many people, many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people,
12:41
when I'm the primary caretaker for somebody who, by the way, just had an
12:45
organ transplant. So actually, now that I think about it, they fired
12:49
me. They fired me because I wouldn't travel. I have a memory that I quit,
12:53
but they fired me. And listen, firing gets a bad rap,
12:57
right? Getting fired gets a bad rap because it's embarrassing.
13:00
Please. Let someone pay you to go away. There is
13:04
no greater joy in life than getting
13:08
paid to go away. So they paid me to go
13:12
away. I went away, but I was like, this is
13:15
bullshit. This is bullshit. Your corporate
13:19
perspective was at a healthcare company, mind
13:23
you, a healthcare company. The pandemic's not that big a deal.
13:27
You being here in person, even though you're less productive, is more important
13:31
to us than the public health risk. And I was like,
13:35
I'm done with that attitude. I can't, I'm done. I'm spent. The
13:39
next day, literally the next day, and I had
13:43
zero information about either of these things before it happened. The
13:47
next day, I got 2 offers to consult
13:51
at 2 different companies for quote unquote Full-time engagements— that
13:55
doesn't necessarily mean you're working full-time— and replaced all of that income and
13:59
some, and have consistently been getting work like that for
14:03
5 years, except a brief period where I wasn't accepting new work.
14:09
I make a shit ton more money than the person who told me not to
14:12
start my own business. Like, a shit ton. And I don't say that to brag.
14:17
I say that because Somebody else's faith in you
14:21
should not determine whether you bet on yourself or not. I don't
14:25
think he was trying to be mean at all. I don't think he was trying
14:28
to be harsh. I don't think any of those things. I think they
14:32
thought they were protecting me, that they were keeping me safe,
14:37
that they were doing what was right for me. But guess what
14:40
they don't understand? They don't understand my industry.
14:45
They don't understand startups. They don't understand fractional
14:48
work. I didn't even understand fractional work at the time. Had I
14:52
listened— and I did try to listen, I did try
14:56
to listen— and it was exactly what I said it would
15:00
be. It was exactly what I was trying to get away from. But when I
15:04
bet on myself— I don't even know if I bet on myself as much as
15:07
I let the universe point me in the way of whatever the thing was. When
15:10
I did what felt right to me. I want to say it that
15:14
way because I don't know that I ever bet on myself, because at no point
15:18
was I like, I'm gonna find more work, contracts are just
15:22
gonna come to me. That has never been my attitude. I'm
15:26
always maybe a little bit too much in scarcity
15:30
mindset. I'm worried that the next thing is not going to come, even though it
15:33
has consistently come. So I want to be clear that I don't wake up in
15:36
the morning and I have an abundance of work, and I am
15:40
always going to be able to feed my family. That's not how I'm wired. You
15:44
could pay me to not worry, and I would still worry. That's just the
15:48
way I'm wired. But somebody else's
15:52
doubt in what you believe to be true
15:56
should not be the determining factor in whether you do that thing or not.
16:00
They could have good intentions, they could have bad intentions, They could be on your
16:03
side, they could be your biggest foil, who knows?
16:07
But lots of people are going to tell you you can't, and if
16:11
you think you can, odds are you probably can. And also,
16:16
you might fuck up, and you might fail. Those 2 things can exist
16:20
at the same time. They can! If your brain and your body are
16:23
telling you that you need something else, and you are waiting for a
16:27
sign from someone else that it's okay to do it,
16:31
stop. What do you need? What do you need to set up
16:35
to get to that place? What do you need in your corner
16:39
before you feel comfortable doing that thing? You don't need
16:43
somebody else's permission. Like, talk to your partner first if you have a partner.
16:47
Don't do what I did and quit your job without talking to your partner first.
16:50
That can go over poorly. I'm very fortunate. Let me put it this way. If
16:54
my husband had quit his job without telling me, I
16:58
would have lost my shit, and you might have found
17:02
him in a shallow grave. He wins. He wins
17:06
that part of our relationship by leaps and bounds
17:09
because I went up to him and said, I might have just quit my job.
17:13
And a day or so before, he would have been like, can you please
17:18
not rage quit your job? We need an income. We need
17:22
your income. And I was like, I'm not gonna rage quit my job.
17:25
And then I rage quit my job expecting that he was gonna be
17:30
really unhappy with me. And I swear to
17:33
God, he looked at me and said, if they
17:37
don't see how great you are, we don't need them.
17:41
And acted like we had not had a conversation the day before
17:45
where he was like, Can you not quit your job? He wins because
17:49
I would not have been so gracious as I would have been like, what
17:53
are you doing? This is the end of the world. And he was like,
17:57
you'll figure it the fuck out because you always do. Life is different if you
18:01
have a biggest fan in your corner. I'm just saying. But anyway, even
18:05
people who love you are going to give you bad advice
18:08
sometimes, and that's reality. Even people
18:12
who love you Even people who know their area of business
18:16
really well might not know your area of business.
18:20
Be careful where you get your advice from. Be careful when you ignore your gut
18:25
to listen to somebody else, even if they mean well. Take in
18:29
opinions, let them influence your perception,
18:33
but don't let them make the decision for you. It's time to go out on
18:36
your own. Let's do it. We can do anything
18:40
scared, we should not have to do anything unsafe.
18:43
If you're scared, let's go. If you're unsafe, that's a different
18:47
story. Let's figure out how to get you safe, and then we can do the
18:51
scared thing. You are worth betting on. And that does not mean
18:55
that you should quit your job without a plan, that you should throw caution
18:59
to the wind, that you should make a bad decision. No, we do certainly are
19:03
not in an economy where we could easily recover from that. But I'm not
19:07
saying that jobs are bad. I'm not saying that having a job is bad. I'm
19:10
not saying that you should start your business over having a job. I'm not saying
19:13
any of that. I am saying that you are worth betting on,
19:17
and I would bet on you, and so you should bet on you too. Also
19:20
buy my consulting program. Let's be honest, that's what I'm really
19:25
saying. And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's
19:28
Small Talk. So we have a Small Talk here from Tamara
19:33
in Louisiana, she asks, when my son was diagnosed
19:37
autistic at age 5, my mother-in-law told me I was letting doctors
19:41
label him. My father said I was looking for
19:44
excuses. My husband believed the diagnosis immediately and
19:48
has been his biggest champion ever since. I don't know how to sit
19:52
at a family dinner with people who love my kid and still somehow refuse
19:56
to see him. How do you love someone who won't do the work of
20:00
understanding the person you love most? Don't sit at the table with
20:04
them. Don't. Just don't. I get it that you love these people, but they
20:08
are not loving you back in the way that you need to be loved. So
20:11
don't sit at the table with them. And if they want you to come back
20:13
to the table, they have to start to understand your perspective and
20:17
approach things differently. They can't not acknowledge a huge part
20:21
of your child's existence and the way that he needs to be communicated with and
20:25
the way that he needs to be supported. And think that you're gonna continue
20:29
to have the same relationship with them. It would be like somebody else saying,
20:32
hey, I understand that you're deathly allergic to strawberries and you'll die
20:36
if you have strawberries, but here's this strawberry pie, and if you actually appreciate me
20:40
as a friend, you'll actually eat it. And it's like, no, that— you are directly
20:44
ignoring a very important part of somebody's identity that actually, like,
20:48
defines how they interact with other people, how they can interact with the world. What
20:52
services are acknowledged and available to him? No, don't
20:56
sit at the table with them. You don't have to go break bread with people
21:00
who deny some of the most important parts of your existence or your kids' existence.
21:04
No, I know you love them, and that is great, and you are still
21:07
allowed to love them. There's a boundary there that I think you probably need to
21:10
set. And maybe I'm just so burnt out on
21:14
family nonsense that I'm willing to drop the hatchet. And like, maybe there's
21:18
a conversation first. Maybe you don't have to just like stop going to dinner with
21:21
them, but say, hey, If we're going to be part of your life, then
21:25
you are going to acknowledge these things and you are going to get on board
21:28
with these things. And if that's not possible, then we need to take a break.
21:32
But I can't imagine having somebody in my life who
21:36
was so dismissive of something that is a
21:40
really important thing about somebody who is so important to you.
21:44
But I say this about maintaining relationships like this a
21:48
lot because I went through Not something similar, but there was a hard boundary I
21:52
had to put up with a family member. And it— first I felt bad
21:56
that I had to do it, and then I felt bad that I didn't feel
21:59
bad, which is a whole
22:03
nother side of guilt that we throw on ourselves, which is a little bit
22:07
bullshit. And from the feeling bad
22:11
about not feeling bad part, I realized that as far as
22:15
the people who are allowed in my daily existence are concerned, I have
22:19
an infinite amount of love, but a finite amount of
22:22
space. The love is awarded whether
22:26
you want it or not. It's yours. Once I give it to you, I will
22:30
not take it back. The space is awarded on a merit system and you
22:34
gotta earn it. That doesn't mean I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I
22:37
don't want the best for you. It doesn't mean that I won't be there if
22:40
there's something catastrophic that you need help with. But for
22:44
day-to-day stuff, This is not good for me. This is not okay.
22:48
I need to set this boundary and it's, it's gotta hold. And so
22:53
I'm looking at your merit system right now and it doesn't look like they're earning
22:56
their way in. And it sounds to me like they need to do something different.
22:59
Also, good for your husband. Good for your freaking husband. Thanks
23:03
for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you, mean it.
23:09
That was way longer than I meant for it to be. I know that's terribly
23:12
shocking. I know you're so shocked, Neil.