This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome to a new week and a new classroom episode. Hey everybody, my name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being part of Side Hustle School. We have an awesome community of people all over the world doing all kinds of very cool stuff.
And I am just thrilled and honored to be able to produce this show for you. 1269 episodes and counting. And for the first half of this year, which is 2020, at least at the time I'm making the show, hopefully you could be listening years from now and this is still relevant. Well, this topic in particular, I'm pretty sure is always gonna be relevant, but just about everything I do, I attempt to keep it relatively evergreen or timeless. So this in particular though, we're gonna talk today about unsupportive family members.
Okay, so before I jump into that, you know, last week I did a recap or a summary of what all of our first half of the year classroom episodes have been about. They've been coming out every Monday in 2020. And going forward, we're gonna focus much more in these episodes on marketing or getting the word out about this new product or service. Because aside from questions about creating your first project, that would be probably the number one topic or category of questions I get. Then I hear more questions about marketing than anything else.
However, this week I have something different for you. As mentioned, I wanna talk about this question. What if your family doesn't support your side hustle? Now you might be out there and say, well, my family is amazing. And you know, they've actually been nothing but supportive.
And if that is the case, awesome. You know, I'm not saying every family member is unsupportive, but I also know, you know, because I hear from people all the time in different situations, this is actually kind of a common question. It's not as common as the others about marketing and such, thankfully. But the reality is that not everyone has a supportive network around them all the time. And sometimes it's the people that we love who might not be so supportive of our dreams, of our dreams, our goals, the things that we want to accomplish for ourselves, which, you know, ironically might actually help us be, you know, better caregivers or providers or partners to them.
But, you know, as I said, this is a reality. And so you might be around people who don't understand why you wanna do this in the first place. Or they just think it's not possible. They think it's all a scam. Or they are just downright negative.
So what do you do? Well, that's what I wanna talk about today. Got a couple of tips I'm gonna share with you. And I also want to share, maybe as the framing for all of this, an analogy that I have borrowed from Laura Sims. Laura is a friend of mine.
She is a career coach, full-time career coach now living in Atlanta. But she was an actor for a while in California. And then thought she wanted to be a designer before finding what she loved the most in her role as a career coach. So she's been down a few different paths in the normal process of, you know, finding the work you're born to do. You can check out her work at yourcareerhomecoming.com.
By the way, I will link it up in the notes as well. And this analogy that she uses, I heard it several years ago and I thought about it several times whenever people say, what if your family doesn't support you? You know, I try to talk to my family about my project and they've just always so negative. And the analogy she uses is borrowed from the theater world, like the world of acting, the world of putting on a play. And she talks about the difference between a dress rehearsal versus opening night.
At the dress rehearsal, things are still a little messy. Like the actors might make some mistakes. The director might change something that they realize doesn't actually work as well in practice as they thought it might. Maybe something isn't perfect with the lighting or anything else like that. And not just in the rehearsal, but at any point, like there's always the possibility that something can go wrong in the theater world.
That's part of what's, you know, exciting about it. And it kind of keeps you on your feet. But during the rehearsal, it's almost welcomed. It's like during the rehearsal, you want things to go wrong. I think about this in terms of producing live events as well, like when you practice, that's when you want things to go wrong.
So you can figure it out and then work out the kinks. Like get it wrong during the rehearsal so that it will be smooth on opening night. Now that's the setup for this analogy. And Laura says, invite your family to opening night, but not to the dress rehearsal. So if your friends and family might not be supportive, don't reinforce their negative expectations by taking them through the process.
Like you don't have to tell them, hey, I'm trying to start a side hustle or I'm trying to start a little business. They might say, well, who are you to start a business? What do you know about that? Why do you think that's going to work, et cetera? So you don't even have to go through that, right?
You just kind of work on it on your own, like work out the kinks, learn as you go along, right? Take whatever time you can for yourself to work on the project. And then when your thing is ready, it's almost like, hey, I made this thing. Not like I have an idea to do something, but I actually did something. And look, here's my website.
So that's what Laura did for herself when she made some of these career transitions. She didn't talk, I think it was to her mom in particular. She didn't tell her mom about the whole process and the behind the scenes. It's not like she was keeping something from her. She just didn't talk about that.
But then when it was ready, she said, hey, mom, check out my new website. Like I've been working on something and I'm making a change. And then at that point, the process is already well underway. So it's not like somebody couldn't say something negative at that point, but it's harder to do so because you actually have already made something happen. So this dress rehearsal verse opening night analogy that I have borrowed from Laura with credit to her is to embrace the messiness, create order from chaos without the distraction of being judged or increasing whatever insecurity you already feel.
Like you've already got enough to deal with. Why add those negative comments or that perception or that sense of being judged or shamed or whatever it is to it. Like why not just worry about your own stuff instead of adding something else to it? So that's the analogy. When we come back from a sponsor break here, I'm gonna give you three quick tips.
All about this broad topic of how to deal with unsupportive family members or even let's say close friends. [Music]
So here are a few tips. Or the first two actually might be more like observations, but I think if you consider the observation, it can be helpful in its own way. So therefore it's kind of an observation slash tip. The first one is, remember that if somebody is being negative, and this is true about a lot of things actually, if you ever get criticism about something that you have put out in the world, remember that if someone's being negative, quite often they are projecting something of themselves onto your experience.
So just remember that. And I think this is actually true of unsupportive family members as well. Maybe in some ways they're envious. Maybe they actually want to do what you're doing or they tried to do what you're doing before, but they didn't see it through. They got stuck and didn't work it out.
Maybe one of their projects failed, which is okay and normal, but they didn't try another one. They didn't get up and brush themselves off and keep going. Or maybe as I said, they just don't see it. They can't picture it working because they haven't experienced it working themselves. And so that's frustrating to them.
And that's what they're projecting. So first observation, just remember that. Second, sometimes people just need to see the proof and then they'll come around, which is also why I think that dress rehearsal, verse opening night analogy is helpful because sometimes people just need to see, okay, you actually did this while you made a website. Oh, people are actually signing up for this thing. Oh, you sold something on whatever platform it is.
Oh, you have a client. Does this client pay you money? Oh, okay. So when they see the proof, even if they've been negative before, the proof kind of negates their criticism. I mean, some people will always be negative, that's true.
But others, I think, like once they see the proof, they're kind of like, oh, that's actually really cool. You might actually end up inspiring them to start their project. So you just need to see the proof. And then number three, if your family or your friends really aren't supportive, like no matter what, then I think you need some new friends. Okay, so you can do this one of two ways.
Toxic people, I think it's okay to let go of toxic people in your life. Now, I understand that you may not be able to, depending on the situation, of course, if it's your family member and such, then you just need to distance and establish boundaries and et cetera. And that's a whole topic we could talk about in another podcast. So if it's not possible to let go of that toxic person, whoever it is, then you need some new additional friends. So you're not necessarily writing off your family or that friend that's been with you from childhood or whatever, but you also need other people in your life who don't judge your dreams and are there to provide encouragement.
And one of the reasons why I do a lot of things I do, whether it's the book tours, when I'm able to do that, these Zoom calls we've been doing every other week for people who've read "The Money Tree" and are just trying to get feedback on their ideas. It's one part feedback, but another big part is just encouragement. And so anyway, one of the main reasons why I do all this is because I know a lot of people don't have a lot of support. And I want you to know that you're not alone in your goals of building financial security. There are a lot of people out there who feel the same way, but don't have a supportive network.
So we're now also building out groups for the third way, the concept that I wrote about in "The Money Tree," in addition to those online meetings and such. You can always learn more about that at moneytreebook.com. And of course, it's not just me. If you're further along in this entrepreneurial journey, ask how you could provide that kind of support for others. You know, what can you do for other people who are maybe in a situation that you were in a year ago or however long ago it was?
So my assignment for you this week, I know this was a little bit of a different kind of episode, but like I said, I hear from people who have this issue. So my assignment for you this week is to consider if there are any negative or discouraging voices in your life. And then consider what you can do to block them out. Okay, again, not necessarily writing off that individual, but what can you do to remove or at least minimize that negativity? That is my encouragement for you.
I know it's not easy, but I also believe it is very much worth it. You can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. And of course, we have much more coming up, lots of stories this week. Got a great throwback Thursday episode coming out, one of my favorites of the entire year. So that will be out conveniently on Thursday.
And of course, much more is to come. Thank you so much for being part of this community. Thank you for listening and look out for yourself out there. There is something you can do. There is a way for you to move forward.
And I hope you do everything you can to find it. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
