3 Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves
If you are a struggling entrepreneur or just someone who isn’t getting the results you want as quickly as you’d like, this blog is for you.
I love working with entrepreneurs because they are smart and sassy adventurers who want to forge new paths. But entrepreneurs are still humans, and as humans, we all lie to ourselves. [Did you just say ‘I don’t lie to myself!’? You just lied!]
We might not consciously know it — in fact, most of the time, we aren’t even aware of the sneaky ways our brains creates these smoke screens.
The 3 main lies that entrepreneurs (and honestly, any person who wants something different in their life) are so common, that as soon as I reveal them to you, you’ll probably notice that your prospective clients, friends, and others in your community tell these lies to themselves too.
So you’re not alone.
The Three Lies
But if you want to get different results, you must think and do differently. The first step is to understand these lies, their causes, and how to stop them from getting in the way of what you want.
Lie #1: I don’t have the money.
I always like to preface this point by saying that there are circumstances in which someone really may not have the money to invest in their business or in transformation. This would be someone who can’t pay their rent or is struggling to get food on the table.
And if this is true, they shouldn’t be starting a business, period. Poverty is real and I’m one of those liberals who thinks $25/hr should be the minimum wage.
But most entrepreneurs I consult have some stability in their life and “I don’t have the money” is a knee-jerk reaction that so many of us have been conditioned to use as a reason for not having what we want. This lie is SO common that it has been named the #1 objection in sales trainings.
Note that I said objection, not truth.
The question isn’t about having the money, but the willingness to find the money.
And this is when I can gauge how committed someone is to their business.
Getting resourceful is uncomfortable and it takes commitment. It is much easier to say ‘oh I need an assistant to grow my business but I don’t have the money’ or ‘I need to hire a marketing expert but I don’t have the money’ than to take the risk involved in stepping out of our comfort zone to get the resources we need.
Most people just don’t want to be faced with the fear of rejection of asking a relative to borrow money or the inconvenience of talking to a spouse about budgeting so they can invest in their business.
I have a client who raised $25,000 in a month by just asking investors to believe in his vision. I’ve had clients who took the loan a family member offered and others who went into the bank and got a loan to support their goals.
The question here is “What is it going to take to find the money?” We can’t lie to ourselves that there aren’t options when we address it from this perspective.
Lie #2: I don’t have the time.
In the time management module of my Build a Business program, I added up the hours in a week: 168. If we subtract a generous 8 hours of sleep per night (56 hours), an 8-hour work day plus 2-hour commute (50 hours), going to the gym every day (12 hours) and personal hygiene/eating (20 hours) that still leaves you with 30 extra hours a week.
The entrepreneurs I coach only need 5 hours a week to get transformational results.
Time isn’t the issue. Boundaries are.
We make time for the things that we think are important. The problem is, most of us are prioritizing our Facebook feed, Netflix and gossip.
And especially with women — the demographic I serve — we tend to take on more than we need to. The old conditioning of being the all-in-one super hero leaves us exhausted and filling those 30 hours with a lot of things that we could outsource.
A lot of mothers use their children as an excuse for why they can’t work on their business. Do you ever hear a man say they don’t have the time because they have kids?
I’m not trying to get too feminist here, but once again it comes down to resourcefulness. It won’t always be perfect because life with kids is unpredictable but it isn’t impossible either. Just ask the many successful momma entrepreneurs.
They learned to set boundaries and create time management structures to give them BACK the time they needed.
Lastly, if your business is hurting and you don’t “have the time” to do what it takes to improve it, then it is best to tell the truth: Your business just isn’t important enough. What if every time you said “I don’t have the time,” you said, “It isn’t a priority.”
How would that shift your relationship to those items?
Lie #3: I can do it on my own.
I’m all for independence and resilience. But this lie has become the most hurtful for human beings.
I know this one personally. Just ask my husband who has witnessed many a breakdown when I realize I have unconsciously stepped back into an old pattern of taking on too much and finally come to him in tears asking for help (when he was there the whole time).
Asking for support doesn’t come naturally to most people (didn’t for me!). There is also a myth about entrepreneurs being known for their “strappiness”.
Yes, there are a lot of things you can do on your own but at a certain point, if you really want to up level and accelerate your success, you’ll need others to take you there.
You can sail a tiny dingy by yourself. But if you want to cross the Atlantic quickly and not end up like Tom Hanks in Castaway, you’ll need a bigger boat and a team.
You can’t build a business from a book or a whole bunch of free webinars. Your business is unique. Your vision and goals require a tailored strategy.
Since when has it been a ‘good business decision’ to take 3x as long doing it yourself, climbing a long learning curve, when you could get results quickly with the help of an expert??
A common fear is that if we give up control and outsource or request help, things won’t get done the way we want and everything will fall apart.
Know this: things won’t get done the way you want. But if you learn strong leadership skills and team management, nothing will fall apart.
Would you rather have everything done to your ‘perfect standards’ at the cost of your health and wellbeing or have it ‘good enough’ and be able to spend more time with your children or have a mai tai on a beach with your spouse?
An Uncomfortable Truth
So what’s really going on behind these lies? Why do we tell ourselves these untruths?
What’s really being covered up is FEAR.
If these lies weren’t true, we would be held accountable for having what we want. We would have to actually step up. We would have to be vulnerable. That is scary for the brain. The brain wants you to stay ‘safe’, even if safety is in the misery you know. At least the brain can predict that.
So dear reader, you now have a choice. Which is more important? The discomfort of stepping through your fears, outside your comfort zone OR the discomfort of staying stuck where you are looking at a predictable future of same same?
Know this: you are stronger than you think. There is no shame in confessing that you are afraid.
When you choose to no longer tell yourself these lies, everything you need to help you reach your goals is available to you. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is being afraid and acting anyway.
Leap.
