Starting is Hard

Why we block our own way

How to Turn Adversaries Into Allies

Welcome to the Beginning

Starting is hard. It took me 6 months of psyching myself and buying an expensive camera that I don’t actually use to film my TikToks, before I was able to post my first video. Almost a year later, and now I film a few days a week, the filming has gotten easier, I no longer cringe when I edit my work, I have over 1,000 followers on TikTok, and I’ve even had a video with over 12,000 views.

We fear how we’re perceived. Even when we know people are too busy to even bother paying attention to us, we are still convinced that they will see something wrong and judge. This is known as the spotlight effect, and it keeps us from doing things we want to be doing.

My point, go do the thing. My early TikToks have maybe 40 views. That’s not a lot of people seeing me embarrass myself in the grand scheme of things. And I guarantee you, no one stayed through those whole videos, so in reality, it was just a commercial of me flipping by the viewer. I leave those videos up because why not. The content is still valid, even if the filming was awful and I was looking at the wrong spot.

What to Expect from this Newsletter

I’m going to cover topics that come up from my talks, workshops, and daily life. This won’t be as formal as a blog post, but it will be deeper than a LinkedIn post. I’ll be sending it out once a month for now.

If you’re interested in hearing what I have to say more often, I do videos that are around a minute or two long on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube a few days a week. I cross post the same content so that people can see my posts on their preferred platform. There’s no need to follow me on more than one.

Handling Carbon Monoxide on Your Team

Whether it’s posting your first video or leading a skeptical team, perception is what holds most of us back, ours of ourselves, or others’ of us.

Something that has been sitting in my mental archives is what to do when you have someone who is carbon monoxide on your new team when you’re a leader. You know who a carbon monoxide person is, the one who smiles and agrees with you in person, but spreads doubts about everything you do when you’re not around. Often this is the person who wanted your job before you got it, or someone who has butted heads with you in the past. They could have worked for someone else previously, and feel like showing you loyalty would be disloyal to their own boss. Whatever the reason, you have 2 choices: you could work to get this person off your team, or you could work to get them on your side.

Most people choose the route of kicking the person off the team. I prefer the approach of winning them over, or at least trying that first before letting someone go. My preference is due to the fact that someone you win over to your side is a significantly stronger allie than someone who has been on your side all along.

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

— Abraham Lincoln

So how do you do that?

Let’s call the problem person CM, for carbon monoxide. You use the Benjamin Franklin effect, a heuristic which triggers several of our happy chemicals (hormones), aligns with our self-description of being a good person (heritage) and changes how we perceive our own history with a person.

Explained by the man himself in the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (specifically, Part Two), Benjamin Franklin talks about a political enemy, a peer in the Pennsylvania legislature who opposed his all of Franklin’s initiatives.

“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days.

He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour.

When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.

...This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.’”

How does this work for the modern day? Everyone has something they are good at, and proud of being good at. Find out what this thing is for the carbon monoxide person on your team and ask them for help on that thing. Compliment them after.

Closing Reflection

You can’t control every skeptic on your team. But you can influence the chemistry, both literal and social, that builds trust. Start small. Ask for help. People support what they help shape.

The pictures in this newsletter are by me when I went back to my hometown of Huntington Beach, California in August to bury my mother. I laid her to rest next to my father, 35 years, minus one day, after he was buried. Go hug your loved ones.

Thank You

If you like this newsletter and you’d like to support it (thank you!), here are 3 ways you can do so:

1. Share this newsletter with your friends.

2. Hit reply and say Hello!

3. Bring me into your company to speak or give a workshop.

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