3 embarrassing moments that changed my life

alright today i'm gonna talk about some embarrassing stories that happened to me these are three moments where i felt that sting of embarrassment but something changed in me because it was it was so painful as they say sometimes the wound becomes the door i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal less travel head i think in every social situation i am fundamentally at some level just actively trying to avoid embarrassment i'm probably even more than trying to avoid like pain and death because i don't even think about those but i definitely think about ways i could be embarrassed and yet embarrassment seems to find me and it finds me you know somewhat often and and you know there there is an upside to the embarrassment after the the sting wears off and the pain is gone there is usually some sort of learning some sort of growth some sort of benefit but even knowing that i don't go look for embarrassment i still actively try to avoid it so the first story i recently sold a company and made more money than i've ever made my life and with that gain comes the obnoxious problems that nobody wants to hear about where you're just sort of like a i don't know what to do anymore and so i hired this coach this sort of like life direction coach and he has me take a personality tested at the beginning and he tells me his personality has gonna be kinda weird not like a normal one but he's like don't worry just answer all the questions so i'm answering all these questions some are about work some about personal life summer about relationships i answer all these questions i thought it was pretty straightforward pretty easy and i tried to answer them as honestly as possible it's few weeks later he says you wanna see the results of that test yeah absolutely he pulls up the slide like there's like all these categories and i have low scores in all these categories and there's one score where i'm off the charts and i sq and i lean in to zoom to see what it is and it just says na i had no joke a hundred and ten on the scale it was over a hundred on the narcissistic personality tendency score and as a narcissist i was like that's right i went and so i'm like what is this and he's like yeah so you scored very high on this thing is this guy calling me an asshole and like arrogant and narcissistic and am i wait i kinda am what does that mean and so on my head is swirl i'm not even listening to him for the next five minutes i'm just again thinking about myself and proving his point and i actually learned something pretty valuable about myself and i'll share with you the the lesson probably most of you won't score a hundred and ten or a hundred fifteen on the na scale but maybe some of this might apply to you so the thing about this trait is it's not a judgment or an insult but it is something to be aware of okay so he was like people who have this trait what it means is that they feel like they are special and their life and their life is gonna be special and that the norms of the world the averages the rules of the world don't fully apply to them sound familiar let's like yeah yes actually i remember filling that in on the test absolutely i've always taken great pride in that of not wanting to be ordinary i wanted to be extraordinary i wanted to have a special life of feeling like you know great you can tell me all the averages that those don't apply to me i'm the outlier and he goes that's served you hasn't it i said yeah well what served you can also screw you the dose makes the poison if you believe that to be true then you're not going to accept you know that you you shouldn't go start a business ninety percent of businesses fail well i'm special i'll be different and it'll tell it'll get you to go take action but the thing about it why it's called na system instead of just self confidence or self belief is you don't know what it is that special about you it's a vague sense that there's something special that something is gonna happen anywhere but you don't have any specificity on and because you don't really know it and really understand it and really understand the specifics of it it's fuzzy and when it's fuzzy you go searching for validation in other places meaning you want others to c you as special because it validates that that thing inside you that you felt was special about cheap so you might be more active on social media creating content or public speaking i'm like well yep yep check you know that definitely have have oriented my entire life around that that sounds sounds correct there's a danger in that and seeking that validation of your special from others because you'll get a high high when you get it but you'll get the a lower than normal low when you just lack it not even somebody says something bad about you but they just don't you don't feel seen as special does that sound familiar and i thought about i host this event with thirty of the most unbelievable people on earth you know founders of the biggest companies in the world but every so often in this event i feel this pan of insecurity and i want them to know how how awesome i am and how special i how great i am i don't say this out loud but deep down that's what bothers right like that's that's the part i'm feeling feeling bad about because everything is going great at the event but i am feeling bad i've gone to heaven and i've i'm feeling hell and a man could do that you can you can make hell out of heaven if he guys you're not careful if you're in your own head and i said well is there something i could do about this he said well yeah you can you you know first step is just being aware of it noticing when that might be happening catch yourself before you fall down a a trap but the second part is get clear get clear about what it is that is about you so you don't need it from others when you fill your own water cup you're not waiting you're not sitting around waiting for the waiter to come back i think that's a very powerful idea many many of you probably like me where you seek some external validation some external praise some external awards some external whether it's grades or money or praise or whatever as a substitute for just filling in the cup up yourself and when you fill the cup up yourself because you understand what makes you great you could just kinda be comfortable in your own skin which i think is one of the greatest feelings on earth is when you feel totally comfortable with your own skin you don't feel like you need to be anything more than you are and i don't think i've achieved that yet but i've definitely taken the wound of seeing the hundred and hundred and ten or whatever on the na scale and saying okay that's a somebody held up a bit of a mirror and i can maybe i don't love what i see but at least i see i see what it is and now i can you know i can adjust accordingly the truth is such a rare gift one time i got a call from scott harrison of charity water and i know scott but we're not friends like we don't call each is the first call i've had in ten years from him you got a minute yeah yeah i got a minute scott what's up hey man i was listening to your podcast you know you do a good job but you wanna be great at podcast right this is like your thing you really care about podcasting i was yeah man that's my thing you gotta stop saying like you say like all the time dude you're say like all the time you say like like five hundred times in an episode oh yeah yeah yeah that's true man i should i should work on that yeah yeah you really should you could do it you could fix it it's not that hard just pay attention to it and do it and you'll you'll be so much better at it you're doing so many other great things but this light thing's is crazy and i i just wanna tell you that man because i know that this is important to you and i wanted it to make sure you're aware of you might not know and you know at first you know i'm simultaneously having two two reactions the embarrassment of getting called literally called out on saying the word like too much as a podcast on the other hand i really appreciated it i was was thinking man who how many people in my life could i count on to tell me the truth in a way that is completely uncomfortable for them and not self serving in any way but they just literally he came by and just dropped something off in my door that would be helpful and so scott thank you for that and i'm i'm still working on it hey let's take a quick break you know that feeling when strategy is done the brief is written everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow well the breeze assistant from hubspot can help it works right inside hubspot you can draft campaign copy blog posts emails all in your brand voice all using your actual customer data so you don't create just content you create content that converts check out hubspot dot com the agent customer platform for growing businesses alright i'm gonna give you the second one i'm twenty one years old and me and my buddies have had this brilliant idea to start a new restaurant concept we think we're gonna be the next chipotle the next subway the next five guys and we're gonna do it in the world of sushi now am might be wondering how does somebody who looks like me started a sushi chain many people wondered this many of the investors we pitched wondered this and there really was not a good answer i was not a foodie i was not a sushi chef i had not grown up eating sushi in fact before i had this idea before this moment of embarrassment i had really tried sushi like three months prior five months prior or something like that but i had the confidence that a beginner has you you know when you're young you do have one great asset but you lack experience you lack knowledge you lack skills but you do have the beginner mind and the beginner confidence where you don't know what you don't know so i think at this stage i think i know what i'm doing and why do i think that because i had won a business plan competition i had written a business plan and we won this competition so we cold email the founder of chipotle we called email the founder of quiz we cole other the founders of all these different companies and one replies to us the guy from noodles and company if you've ever been a noodles and company and so he invites us out to lunch and we get to go and and show them our plan and we're hoping for some great advice so for the last three months before this i had been working on bringing this business to life and in my mind what that meant was take that business plan that won the competition really flesh it out leave no stone un unearned i really subscribe to this kinda of hard work grind mindset mentality but my version of hard work was what it is for many people where we you avoid the actual work and you instead do the the flavor of hard work that you feel more comfortable with that your if you feel safe and for me that was plan planning and so we were writing our plan we're creating forecast financial models we were planning everything from like what our employees would wear and how our managerial system would work where somebody would get promoted and what would that would take planning and we thought that was a symbol of preparedness and so we walked in ready to impress this guy we printed out this binder it was like this thick and i it i think it's like a two hundred fifty page business plan which is if you know anything about business you already know where the story is gone the last thing you wanna do is a founder is build something that nobody wants you might dedicate years of your life just building building building only to find out at the end that nobody even wanted the thing in the first place the better way is to validate your idea as you go earlier the better so the team over at starter story which is part of hubspot has made a guide for validating business ideas it's templates and case studies to learn how to validate an idea and how to start doing that before you build too much and it shows you how the best founders test their ideas before wasting months building the wrong thing you can get the guide for free you could scan the qr code on the screen or click the link in the description below alright back to the episode and so we go we sit down and he says so tell me what are you guys doing i said well i could tell you i could show you and i felt this business plan on the table dramatically and i say take a look at this this is a business plan that we've been writing up and i think you're gonna like it and so he starts flipping through and i noticed he's not really reading it he's flipping through and and pretty quickly he's just trying to rock like what the hell could possibly be in this three hundred page binder and i'll never forget because i've i've already realized at this point that it's not going well and i'm bracing myself for rejection but you know i as a entrepreneur i was prepared for rejection i had actually experienced a little bit of rejection through trying to sell trying to pitch investors so i was hardened to that i was ready for that i brace myself for that but it was like i thought someone was gonna hit me in the face and then they just punched me in the gut because he did not reject us or say anything mean instead i could see on his face he was trying to work out how to be nice to us because we were so hopeless that it was not rejection it was pity and he didn't even really know what to say so he started trying to just be like look guys you know you've put a lot of thought into this he goes down that road and you know halfway through i'm like hey man you could just tell it to a straight and he goes okay i'll give it to you straight this is nothing you well i don't know what you're doing i don't know why you were doing this but this is not how you start a restaurant you start a restaurant by going around finding a location paying a lease you know you putting down a deposit and you know saying we're gonna open the doors in the next ninety days and getting going and start serving customers and start figuring out how to make them happy that's what it means to start a restaurant not this so we kinda go home with our till between our legs and i just remember we didn't even get in the we like got in the car but we didn't drive we just like had a moment of silence the three of us friends who were c founded company and we didn't even really talk we didn't know what to say it was very it was it was just a embarrassing i was like okay we didn't lose anything except for our dignity like that guy i didn't he wasn't a part of our life the day before he's not gonna be a part of our dive day after but like wow we really thought we were doing something right and we just got smack so we go home and we procrastinate we turn on just a great episode of seinfeld filled like where george walks and george sits down and he goes jerry i don't know what been doing follow that with my life you know he's like i don't know where i went wrong i was a promising young man he's like and here i am and he describes the state of his life you know he's like i'm single i'm baldi i'm blah blah and he just starts to describe how his life has his life did not go the way he wanted that's how i felt in that moment too life was not going the way i wanted it we're living in trevor ant patties basement we're no closer to the restaurant than we were five months ago we've just been wasting our time with this plan the guy who's done this before told us this is nothing don't even do this and so like george we were i we we realized we had gone far wrong and in that episode the waitress comes up and she's like can i take your order you know the usual george yeah yeah i'll take the chicken salad and then right before she walks away he goes no wait everyday a chicken salad and chicken salad has got me here today i'm doing the opposite what's the opposite of chicken salad tuna on toast i'll have the tuna on toast and and so he changes his order right there and she's like okay she leaves and then he sees this beautiful girl at the at the counter sitting there she kinda of was looking at that and you know it elaine like a george she's looking at you c talk to her he goes well talk to her my why when she talk to me i'm a i'm a loser who's bubba and then she goes let's what the old george would say so what's what's the opposite he goes an opposite i was i would approach her and i would tell her and so he goes up to her and he says i'm george i'm single i live with my mother you know he's he's introduced himself as a loser instead of playing himself up and she loves it and so that day i was like okay same as george from now on i'm doing the opposite so i went from a i said well what were we doing so far so far we were planning everything we were trying to be buttoned up to impress people like this guy from noodles and company forget it we're not gonna be it's not gonna be about planning it's gonna be about action it's not gonna be about impress others it's gonna be about doing the thing actually doing it so that you know i don't who cares we don't need their approval we're we're no longer in school this is the real this is the real world now we're out we're actually graduated we're in the real world now and i gotta change my approach and so from then on i decided to become a man of action and i became religious and i worship at the church of action and i everything just became about action and so if there was ever a choice between action and and action i had to be tune on toast baby i had to take action and that really served me a year later we met this mentor you gave us some advice and like forty eight hours later we came back to him them and we're like cool so we did those three things and did this is what we learned and here's where we're right now you know here's what we're thinking next let us know if you have any ideas and he was pretty blown away and we just did that like three times with them and then he wrote this blog post for the world to see he said i met these founders recently and i don't know if their ideas any good or not but they have the highest bias for action of any founders i've ever met and it was sort of the validation of the the you know going from chicken salad to tuna on toast so the embarrassment once it wore off it had had some some powerful effects on me base podcast guests is brought to you by my friends at mercury they make the world's best banking product i think you know this already i used mercury for all of my businesses i think i have like maybe seven or eight businesses we use mercury as our business banking across all of them and now they actually just launched a personal banking account so i have my personal account there i moved off of wells fargo in chase i'm just all in on mercury why i like products that are easy to use i like products that get me and the problems that have so like it very easy to make a joint account with my wife very easy to spin up virtual cards one click and i get savings yield it just has all the stuff that i need in one place so if you're looking for the best banking product on the market it's definitely mercury i will fist fight anybody who disagree disagrees me on that go to mercury dot com slash personal and learn more mercury is a fintech not an fdic insured bank banking services are provided through choice financial group and call them an a members fdic can we give you the third story you may not know this because now i'm a talker for a living but i was very shy growing up i remember once my sister pointed this out you know i have a older sister she like to make fun of me and she called me the laugh track because you know like in a sitcom you have all the characters you have the the main character that you have his love interest and you have the the the buddy the side kick at school i was none of those characters i was literally the laugh track the background of the background not even a background character i had a few friends but i i i was basically just this kind of npc that i was walking around school and i really like this girl and you know it's pretty scary as a teenage boy to go tell a girl you like her so i thought okay i'm gonna write this note so i wrote this note i'm calling you note is probably a poem but that's even more embarrassing so i'm just gonna call it a note for now and it was basically like describing this girl and how much i liked her but it was like describing her in an abstract terms like yeah i didn't say her name i just wrote this girl she said great you know blah and so i the new testament the old testament and i wrote the cringe testament so i have it and i kind of like planned for her to see it her her locker went next to mine it and so i'm like at the locker and like have the note and like drop the note over whatever if she picks it up she like what's this and i was like oh it's this note i wrote for the squirrel and she opens it up and like oh and she reads it i'm i'm friend zoned at this stage so she's just a muse like what sean doing so she reads this note and she realizes it's this like very like this love letter basically and fourteen fifteen year old me is sitting there i'm waiting for the reaction i'm waiting for her to to to love it i was so far in the f zone that her reaction was who's this for like she couldn't even imagine that this was for her certainly this must be for somebody else because like the the feeling i had and the feeling she had was so far apart and so in this moment she asked who's this for and i immediately you know embarrassed and i'm like i should just say it's for you and just see what happens and just face music but i'm a coward and i don't do that and i say it's this girl i met and i make up this fictitious girl that i'm met at some you know some competition that weekend from oh she goes to another school i literally did the girlfriend girlfriend at another school the not even girlfriend just a girl i like i have another school and she's like that's so sweet and then for the next six months i basically had to keep up the appearance how it's going with this girl because she would ask me for updates and i dug the the lie so deep in fact if she's listening to this today she probably now just now is realizing that that note was about her because i never came out of the hole i just doug doug doug doug doug until my family literally said we're moving to china and i moved from houston texas to china in in tenth grade and so as now i'm moving into china and i've i've you know basically decided i guess i'm just ce it and like you know it's just not it's not for me my sister who called me the laugh track and knows that i was not particularly popular or successful at school definitely not successful with girls she has this conversation with be on the plane and she says you know the school you're going to nobody here knows you you're gonna go in and they're all gonna know each other they're not gonna know you and i was like wow like thinks her you know piling it on older sister and she but she was actually going from a good place she goes so you know what that means right i go what and she goes you could be anybody i go what does that she's like they don't know you're left track they don't know who you are so be a different guy and she's was like who is who is the coolest guy at your school like the guy if you were him you would wanna be him and i was like oh it's this guy casey priest and i was like was casey prison is was just the class clown he was athletic he was nice guy he was nice to everybody and i just love this guy i was like yeah he's a great guy she was like well when you get off this plane you could be him you could just go to that school and you could be him they don't know that you're not him and i realized that life really is that simple you actually don't have to move to china for this but you can reinvent yourself like that you can literally reinvent yourself today you can say you know that yeah that's who i was well now i'm this other guy now i just do this other thing and it's literally a it starts with a decision the decision is upstream of all action and when i went to this new school i just decided what would he do and i would just do that thing in that situation and you i first felt a little uncomfortable or otter like i was acting but pretty soon i just realized like well i can just do those thing things that can be me and so i've realized the power of reinventing yourself and i've since reinvented myself several times and i've take it stripped off labels off off me and put new labels on you know before i started this podcast i was an entrepreneur i was a tech entrepreneur that's what i did and i got my value and my worth from that and my friends that and that's what i introduced myself and that's what i thought i would do every day and the one day i decided you know what i think i wanna be tim ferris i think i could say things that i will entertain people and will contain enough insight that to walk away being like i kinda wanna listen that guy again and i just decided that i i wasn't that yet but i believe believed it and i decided it and so the next i just thought well it's ferris you today he probably wouldn't go to meetings i don't think he does that and so i created a show and i booked a studio and i got my friend to be my first guess and that became episode one of my first million if that's how this podcast started just by literally reinventing myself with the drop of a hat so those are three stories of embarrassment where the wound became a bit of a door and wanted to share those with you today i hope you enjoyed them hope you take something from them if nothing nothing else a nice laugh at me but maybe there's something from your own and maybe there's maybe there's a moment either upcoming or you could remember hey yeah i might have lost something here i'm might have lost a little dignity but what did i gain there is a gain that the question is of what and when you start to answer that question you know you start to grow from it alright that's it amount i feel like i could rude to world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a less travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about marketing school it is a podcast that's part of the hubspot podcast network and it is run by neil patel and eric sue and these guys are both marketers who are running businesses and so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it this is the podcast for you check it out wherever you get your podcast