Same feed. Same me. New name.

If you subscribed to Different, Not Broken, you're in the right place and there is nothing for you to do — this show is now called You're Not Too Much, and it lives on the Different, Not Broken Network alongside everything else we're building. Same host, same voicemail line, same everything. Just a name that finally says what the show has always been about.

Now. On to it.

There are extremely good reasons not to start a business. You have a job. You don't want the stress, the minutia, the responsibility. You have a non-compete. You have bills, and in the US you have health insurance to think about. All of that is valid and I am not one of those people who acts like having a job is embarrassing. If you're paying your bills and taking care of your people, you're doing the right thing.

But if the reason you're not betting on yourself is what somebody else might think — that's not a reason.

What other people think about you is not your business. What they say when you're not in the room has nothing to do with you. And in my experience the people who actually matter don't have the time or the calories to hold an opinion about what you're doing that isn't a positive one. If a negative one does turn up, it's a two-second blip and then they've forgotten and gone back to their day.

So the critic you're performing for is imaginary. You built him. Tell him to get bent and get to work.

In this one: why "I don't have the connections" is the easiest problem on the list, why the referrals that actually land come from people nowhere near your industry, the fact that someone less qualified than you is already getting paid to teach the thing you know better, what networking is and very much is not, and my new career in bowling alley maintenance — a field I invented mid-sentence and now urgently need to know about.

Then Ask L2, which is what Small Talk is called now. Deborah writes in: she hired someone to take the admin off her plate and has spent three weeks secretly redoing their work at midnight. Bad boss, or bad delegator?

Not a bad boss. Possibly a bad delegator. There's a difference, it's fixable, and I go through exactly how — including how people successfully manage me, which takes a lot, and the employee I genuinely loved who was in completely the wrong job.

Space expands. Let's fill it.

— Voicemail line — Ask L2, brags, fights: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail

— Quirky community (free): https://alwaysquirky.com

— What The Fractional: https://whatthefractional.com/

What other people will think about your decision to bet on

yourself, to build a side business, to share your

expertise, to be confident in the fact that you are who the hell you

say you are, that's got nothing to do with you. And it's not where you

should be putting your energy. But if you have something that you want people

to know and, or you think that other people could benefit from, and the only

reason you are not saying it is because of what some probably

irrelevant white dude is gonna think on the other side, that is

not a reason. We can do things scared. It doesn't mean you're not scared.

It doesn't mean that you're not worried about things. It doesn't mean that people won't

have opinions. But in my experience, the people who matter don't have time to

have opinions other than positive ones about what you're doing.

Boom! Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken Network,

a podcast about how you're not too much. Space

expands, so let's fill it.

There are very good reasons for not starting your own

business or not starting your own side business, whichever. There's

super good reasons for doing it. You have a job, you don't

want the stress of owning your own business. You don't want to be responsible

for all of the details and minutia of running a business. You don't have

time. You don't have energy. There's so many good reasons and there's nothing wrong. There,

there are lots of people who advocate for starting your own business who make it

sound like there's something wrong with having a job, like working for someone else is

somehow embarrassing. No, you have to pay your bills. If you're in

the US, you have to get health insurance. You have to take care of your

family. And if you're doing that through a job and you're doing the damn

thing, you are doing the right thing. So I am not an

advocate for big middle fingers towards your full-time job

or not having a full-time job or whatever. I don't believe that.

So if the reason that you're not starting your business is

I don't have time, I'm worried about the finances. I

have some sort of non-compete with my full-time job. I

don't want to create conflicts with my full-time job. Like,

all of that's valid. And if the safety and security

that your full-time job gives you is important to you or something that you need,

100%, I'm totally on your side. However, if the reason

that you are not starting your business or

positioning yourself as an expert in your field is

because you are worried about what other people will think,

that is not a reason not to bet on yourself. Put

plainly, other people can get bent.

What other people think about you is not your business.

What people say about you when you're not in the room has nothing to do

with you. If people are shitty and talk about you when you're not in the

room or have nasty things to say about you, let them. That's their breath

that they're wasting on something that has nothing to do with them. But what other

people will think about your decision to bet on yourself, to

build a side business, to share your expertise, to be

confident in the fact that you are who the hell you say you are, that's

got nothing to do with you. And it's not where you should be putting your

energy. And I mean that in a lot of ways. Should you not wear a

thing you want to wear because you're worried about what other people will think?

Fuck them. Should you not try a

new hobby because you're worried that somebody else will think that it's silly or

stupid? Fuck them. Like, the opinions of other people

should not be interfering with what you want to do. So when I say,

what is stopping you? What is stopping you from

fractionally helping other companies? What is stopping you from

building yourself or creating content or doing things around what you know

and how you can help other people and things that you think other people should

know in whatever way you're comfortable with. It doesn't mean that you have to

start a vanity project podcast just so you can talk into the microphone every

week and drive your producer crazy. Like, I'm not saying you have to do that.

It doesn't mean you have to do video content all the time. It doesn't mean,

it doesn't mean anything. But if you have something that you want people to know

and, or you think that other people could benefit from, and the only reason you're

not saying it is because of what some probably irrelevant white

dude is gonna think on the other side, that is not a reason. We

can do things scared. It doesn't mean you're not scared. It doesn't mean that

you're not worried about things. It doesn't mean that people won't have opinions.

But in my experience, the people who matter don't have time to have opinions

other than positive ones about what you're doing. They don't. The

people who matter are not spending the time and

calories on thinking about what you are doing at all.

And if there's anything relatively negative that they have to say about it, it is

a two-second blip before they go about their day. They've completely forgotten about it.

So what is standing in your way? Is it money? Is it

capital? That's real, but you'd be surprised how

many consulting businesses you can start without a dollar. There's so much

good information out there, and a lot of it is already stuff you know.

You might need somebody to push you in the right direction, but it's already within

you. Is it not having the right connections? Is it not knowing where to

start? That's an easy fix. Just go make some friends. Find

people in your, in that industry. Make some friends. Genuinely make some friends.

Do not make transactional friends who you want to make money off of.

Make friends in that industry. And you know what? Make

friends, meet new people, foster older

relationships. Because I get a ton of referrals

to my business every day— knock wood— and a lot

of the referrals I get are not even from people who are in the

field that I'm in. It's just somebody who knows

somebody, and they call and say,

hey, I have this friend and he's starting a startup and and knows nothing about

healthcare compliance. Can you help him? He's never billed before. Can you help him?

He's never done this before. Can you help him? That person's in like underwater

basket weaving, but they just know that I do healthcare things.

And so you will get referrals from people who are not even

in your ecosystem, but they run into somebody who's in your ecosystem

and they remember because you told them, “I am now doing

consulting in bowling alley maintenance.” And they're gonna meet somebody who

runs a bowling alley and they're gonna put you guys together because this person probably

needs bowling alley maintenance. I have no idea what bowling alley maintenance is. I just

made that up. I assume it's a thing. I'm gonna guess it's different now

that everything's automated, but I also, if anybody is an expert in bowling alley maintenance,

I would love to hear from you because I wanna know what it is now,

but it just came outta my mouth. So if what's stopping you is your

network, go build a network. If I can put on

pants and shoes for three days and

talk to a bunch of strangers at an event like I did recently.

You can message people on the internet unless you're a white guy

being creepy. Don't do that. Or any guy being creepy. Don't do that. Keep it

about business. Be nice. Be authentic. Don't tell people they're cute

unless you're another woman commenting on a woman's hair. That's

fine. But like, there's a lot of creeps on LinkedIn who think networking

is saying things about women's bodies. And it's not, it's not, it's never been. Don't

do that. If there is an expertise within you, and I know there is, I'm

certain there is. If you need help finding it, you reach out to me because

I will help you find it. I guaran-damn-tee you, someone

else who is less qualified is getting paid to

teach people about things you know way better. And the things that are

stopping you should not be the opinions of

anybody else. Because those people are not going to pay your bills.

Those people are not going to help you build a business by having a negative

opinion of anything. So when that pops into your head, I want you

to literally out loud tell those imaginary

people or those people who you are putting words into their

mouths to get fucked and go do the thing.

Go do the thing. One, you can bet on yourself.

But two, I know you have it in you. Do not stop what is in

front of you because of the imaginary or

perceived or sometimes real, and if they're real,

thoughts of jackasses that you are either

conjuring or giving way too much airspace to. Tell them to get

bent and get to work. Ask L2. We

have a question from Deborah. I hired someone

to take the admin off my plate, and I've spent three weeks

secretly redoing their work at midnight. Am I a bad

boss or just a bad delegator? I don't wanna say it like it's a

little bit of both because that's not the case. I don't think you're a bad

boss. You might be a bad delegator. It sounds to me like more than

anything, you just aren't sure how to communicate what you actually

want or need, but there's also a world where it's just not the right

person. Like, in my experience, when it's the right person,

after you've done the training part of it, they'll

know when to ask questions to get

the parts that they need so that they're doing it right. And so

this is not a criticism of that individual by any means, but like, sometimes it's

just not the right fit. The people who do well

managing me, and it requires a lot— I'm, I am a mess. I

need a lot of people to manage me. It, like, figure out pretty quickly

that sometimes it's not asking me, sometimes it's telling me.

Sometimes there are things that make perfect sense in my brain

that don't translate well, and they have to come ask me questions.

Sometimes it's putting time on my calendar and scheduling

so that I actually do the thing that they ask me to do. And they'll—

I had somebody who worked for me for a long time who did this, who

would put time on the calendar, make sure I showed up to the meeting. And

then when I showed up to the meeting, say, I just wanted to make sure

you did this thing. Bye. And leave me there. And that meant

that she blocked the time so that I actually looked at the things she needed

me to look at. But like, those are ways to get through to me. That

doesn't mean that's the type of stuff that you need. But first off, I would

try to communicate a little bit harder. And if you're making changes, you need to

be communicating those changes back to the person. Because if they don't get a

chance to do it the way you want it because you've never told them, then

that's a problem. But if you tell

them, but you still have to make those changes, then it's not the right person.

So first is communication. Communicate more. I get

overwhelmed when I have to communicate a bunch of instructions to people. And so I'm

much more comfortable writing out the instructions or making Loom videos

to show them how to do it. And then answering questions, like a limited amount

of questions that they might have after getting the whole visual. That's how

my brain works. That's how I learn better also. And so that's how

I tend to set those things up because the idea of like sitting on the

phone with somebody for an hour and talking through all of the things like that

sounds like my nightmare. I'm not great at that. But

on my own time, putting together training documents and

giving you the full brain dump of everything that I anticipate that you're gonna need

to do and showing you all of the weird

intricacies of different systems so that you have a version that you can

reference back to at any time. Like, that I love, and then I can

answer the other questions in the meantime. You gotta communicate with this person,

and if you're fixing things, they need to know that you're fixing it, not because

you wanna tell them they did something wrong, but because you wanna tell them the

right way to do whatever it was. And then if you

keep having to fix things after having communicated, or that person is

not taking enough initiative and requires that much supervision to do

every task, it's not the right person. That's not a criticism of them. It's just

there are some people who are not made for certain jobs, and that's okay. I

had an employee once who was somebody we all liked

so much, like literally one of my favorite people in the world,

and I enjoyed working with him so much,

but he could not answer chats

from users to save his life. We would

get chats and emails and he would answer them incorrectly every time.

And it got to a point where we were having to have him answer them

and then go double-check them before he could send them, which meant

responses were going out hours, sometimes days later,

because we had to have the bandwidth to double-check his work, which wasn't working.

And then it got to a point where we just started

taking things away from him because we were doing weekly coaching

sessions. We were walking him through everything that got responded to incorrectly. We

were giving him the resources. We were building new resources. We were pouring

so many hours into getting him where we needed him to be to be able

to do this role, and it just wasn't working. And that's not a criticism of

him. It just, for whatever reason, was not information that his brain received

well. And so, like, he wasn't the right person for that job.

And did it suck? Absolutely, because I deeply loved this

person and I thought he was the best. I thought he hung the moon.

But at this one thing, he sucked. He was bad at it, and

that was not good for the business. And so

first and foremost, always communicate, communicate, coach,

support, document, figure out whatever way you share information

back at this person. But then second, if that doesn't work,

assuming you are the problem, maybe there are things that you can do better, but

assuming you are the problem when you are doing all the work

instead of finding somebody who can work in that

ecosystem, it's going to be a lot of time of you trying to fix that

without getting the actual support and help that you need. So it might just be

you have to move on to somebody else. Thanks for being here, guys.

Have a good day. Love you, mean it.

Dude, if we get people who respond about bowling alley maintenance, we are putting them

on the air. We're gonna do a whole episode about bowling alley

maintenance.