Getting Your Loved Ones on Board With Your Business
“How do I get my family or my partner to be more supportive of me and my business, or maybe even get them to be proud of me?”
I get this question all the time, and one of my favorite responses is, “You want your partner to be proud of you? Go buy them a car.”
Of course, I say this in jest, but, in all honesty, there’s a tidbit of truth in this statement.
Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of expecting their family members and partners to believe in them unconditionally from the start of their businesses.
They want their loved ones to encourage them to buy the programs that they need in order to learn the skills, to be excited to hear about everything they’re learning and planning.
But 90% of the time, maybe their loved ones are this excited at the very beginning, but their excitement wears off pretty fast.
Because what we fail to realize is that our partners, friends, and families have their own fears about what we’re getting ourselves into as entrepreneurs, so their support can only reach us through the filters of their own worries.
Starting a business, especially if it means transitioning out of a secure job, is a decision that makes most people very deeply uncomfortable.
Many of them don’t have the patience or the understanding of your timeframe to sit through the 12 to 24 months that it takes you to really get your business off the ground.
Most of your loved ones are likely accustomed to automatic fulfillment – to taking a job, doing the work, and getting the paycheck – and businesses, unfortunately, aren’t like that. When they see you putting months or years into your business, they think, “Why isn’t it working sooner?”
So how can you work through this? The most important thing to remember is to take their comments, reactions, and support (or lack thereof) with a grain of salt. Understand that they may never understand your decisions.
And that’s not just your decision to start a business, but your decision to buy a business program, hire a coach, register for an event, join a mastermind, or fly across the country to hear a speaker. They may never understand those decisions, and that’s OK.
But here’s what they will understand, what they will celebrate: results.
Monetary results.
When you start getting clients, when you start selling products, when you start generating income, they’ll not only start to support you, but they’ll also see your own confidence grow.
Now, I know that may sound superficial. I know it’s annoying. It’s hard, because you’re asking yourself, “Why can’t they just love me now? Why can’t they see the potential here? Why can’t they see how smart I am?”
In a lot of cases, they can see all those things. They can see your potential. They can see how smart you are. They can see your vision. But the logical parts of their brains are telling them that they need to protect you from deluding yourself.
I also find that there’s timing involved here. If you’re an entrepreneur who’s been running a business for five or ten years without solid monetary results, chances are that your family may be running out of patience, even if they were supportive at the beginning.
If you want unconditional support? That is where other entrepreneurs come in.
I call this your Fabulous Five: a circle of at least five entrepreneurs whom you can text or call at any time to talk about your business.
These are friends who give you inspiration and love, but also a kick in the pants when you need it. They believe in you and your ideas, but they also don’t let you whine or rant for too long without moving forward.
Start with just one person, and soon you’ll build up to five, maybe even to fifteen people. A great way to find these friends is to join a high-level mastermind – one that you’re paying a good amount of money to join.
Now, I’m not saying this to try to sell my own group or to be manipulative in any way – it’s just that people who are willing to pay money to join a mastermind are the kind of highly motivated, inspired people who you want on your support team.
So my invitation to you this week has three prongs: number one, if your partner or family doesn’t fully support your decisions, make the decisions anyway, and be OK with that; number two, focus on getting the monetary results – not just for your loved ones, but for yourself as well; number three, think of one way you can start to foster a relationship with another entrepreneur who could potentially be part of your Fabulous Five.
And just in case you’d like some more support in getting those monetary results – it all starts with a plan – and crafting that plan is exactly what we’ll be doing together at The Big Comeback Event.
Join us (virtually) December 8-10 to create your 14-step Certified Revenue Breakthrough Plan, and get ready to show yourself and your family that 2022 is going to be the best year yet.
