Episode 439: No one cares (as much as you think)
In this episode, Fiona dives into the importance of overcoming overthinking. Discover how to shift your mindset by remembering that no one cares as much as you think they do. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Overcoming overthinking in business
Realising that others don’t care as much as you think
Examples of when expected outcomes didn't match reality
The importance of taking risks in business
Strategies for dealing with public speaking anxiety
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Welcome to episode 439 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is a quick tip episode, and this is an important one, particularly if you are like me and tend to overthink things. You're a bit of an overthinker, and I think a lot of people in small business are. If that is you, then keep reading. And if it's not, maybe keep reading anyway, because I'm sure you've got some overthinkers in your life that could benefit from the information that you glean in today's podcast. Before I get stuck into that, I want to let that if you are in Melbourne and you would like to come and help me celebrate my book and also celebrate the first book, I never got to do anything because of lockdowns. I am having a book launch for business to brand, but also for Passion Purpose Profit
If you are in Melbourne and you'd like to come, it is free to come. You'll need to register so that we can keep track of numbers and make sure that we have enough food and everything else you'll need to register. And you can do that at mydailybusiness.com/booklaunch. I also just want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge where I wrote most of this book and the traditional owners and custodians of these lands. And for me here in North Warrandyte, that is the Wurrung and Wurundjerii people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
Are you somebody who overthinks things or worries about what other people will think, what other people will say if you're going to be judged? And these people may be people that. They might be people that you don't know. They might be peers of yours, they might be people in the same industry. They could be people you once worked with. They could be your family, it could be anybody. But if you are somebody who thinks a little bit too much sometimes about what other people are going to think and you allow those worries or just thoughts to stop you from doing things in your business, then I want you to think about how you could move past that. And one of the ways that has helped me and has helped many of my clients is to realise that nobody cares. I know that sounds super harsh when it's just said like that.
Nobody cares, but nobody cares as much as you think. To live to this and remember it, especially when you are thick in the stress and anxiety and potentially overwhelmed by launching something new in your business doing something that you've never done, or maybe just showing up on social media in a new way that you haven't done before, and you're worried that people will be like, who do you think you are? Or What is she wearing? Then I want you to use this idea that no one cares as much as you think. It's important to remember that as much as you think because people do care. But in your business, the stuff that you are doing is huge and exciting fun in front of your mind for you. But for most people, even your most loyal diehard fans, it's not the major priority in their week in their day in their hour or the minute that they happen to be looking at social media and seeing your latest post.
What I want you to do is think about the moments in your business or in your career if you haven't been in business very long where you expected something big to happen and it didn't. It could have been a great thing that it didn't. It could have been a depressing thing that it didn't. But I want you to just pinpoint three times that you expected something to happen that didn't, because this is going to remind you that it's okay to take chances. It is amazing, and it's part of what being an entrepreneur is to take chances to try something, to experiment, to do something different. And it doesn't matter necessarily what other people think about that, even if it's something big like you launch a collection and people don't buy it. Okay, what can I learn from that? What can I learn? I'm going to go through three instances where I was worried about a particular outcome that didn't happen.
It just never happened. And this is the problem. Often we are telling ourselves that what we are going to do is going to be in a spotlight that everyone's going to notice and everyone's going to have their opinion. often we forget, it's maybe in our spotlight, like we have a spotlight on it, but no one else does. in the same way that we can be huge supporters and advocates and encouragers and cheerleaders for our friends, our family, or fellow business owners, and yet we don't see every single thing that they're putting out. I work with a lot of small business owners and I hear about what they're up to, but they may do something big or special or exciting or whatever it is on social media, and I might not see it, even though I'm very familiar with their business.
I have a cap on social media of about 15 minutes a day. Sometimes I'll use that up very quickly. Other times it won't be used up, but it means that I'm not always seeing things. And I often, of that 15 minutes, I would say, 14 minutes, is spent in the DMS. I'm not seeing things all the time. That's something to keep in mind, if you're trying something new, chances are not everyone's going to see it and they're all not going to see it at the same time. And then they're not going to necessarily get all wound up and tell you everything that they think about it straight away as well. What are the three things that I have experienced in my business where it's been a reminder that nobody cares as much as you think the first and all of these, I should say, are not negative by any means.
Some of them are just a reminder that, okay, you do things and then life keeps going. In those famous words from Robert Frost, everything I've learned about life can be summed up in three words. It goes on. The first one was my website. I created that website myself. I built it in Squarespace. My current website is in Squarespace. I love Squarespace. If you're listening, we'd love to do something together. But remember, I'd spent months on that. I was so excited about it, but I was like, I'm going to launch it and this and this and this will happen, and it'll just be such a big thing It was a big thing in my life. It was a big thing. I was spending a lot of evenings working on it. I was excited about it. I'd got a photo shoot, I'd done everything.
We've got this blog, we're going to do this, that. And I launched it and I got and I sent an email about launching it because, of course, it was important to me. And I got a few replies to that. I got some people over the next month or two being like, “I like your website.” Then over the next few years, got people saying, I like your website, who designed your website? Or whatever. And I'd of course suggest they use Squarespace if they were in an industry that that works well with Squarespace. That was it. It wasn't necessarily this massive anti-climax, but it just reminded me that, yes, it's important to me and it's going to be a useful tool for people, but it is not front and centre for them.
It's not the biggest thing in their life. That was the first one. That was the big one. I remember just thinking, is that it? It's like, okay. Not in a negative, like I said, but just I was expecting this outcome. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it was very quiet originally. Like I thought, it'll be like a big thing. But it's not. It's not for other people because as this whole topic is talking about, no one cares as much as you think they do. The second one and I've talked about this before as well, was my worry around my first book, that somebody would say, you are not an accredited business coach. You have not gone through the International Coaching Federation. You do not have a stamp of approval.
Being a business coach, it is an unregulated industry. And there are good business coaches who know their stuff. Some people are not so great in the industry, like a lot of industries, especially unregulated industries. I put this book out and I was worried that somebody would say, “You're not an accredited business coach.” I went and I spent $7,000 on doing the Certificate of God. I don't even remember which one it is. But with the International Coaching Federation, I can say I did not enjoy that. I felt that it was very scripted that it treated people like robots. It was very much stuck to the script, do not be human, which is against everything that I stand for. I got my little certificate, it took me 18 months. I just railed against it the whole time.
But again, not a single person has ever asked me about that, ever. again, it was, no one cares as much as you think. I was letting my fears and worries blind me, and it wasn't a complete waste. That education, I don't think education is ever a complete waste. We can learn things from everything, but if I were to do it again, I would've probably spent that $7,000 on going towards a family trip somewhere that we would have amazing memories from rather than that. That was the second point. And the third thing that I will talk about is whether it happened while I was running my business, or before, I think it meant, no, it did happen whilst I'd started the business. I can't remember exactly. Anyway, very early on my business journey, I did an event with my friend Kate, who is wonderful.
We did an event at Vivid Sydney and we packed it out, we sold it out. We had incredible people there in the audience, incredible people up on stage. And I froze. I had that worst possible moment. Whenever you do a speaking gig, and even if you've done loads of them there's always this fear that your mind will go blank. That you're in front of a stage, you're on a stage, you're in front of a whole bunch of people and you forget what you are saying. Now, I was opening up this talk. We had flown somebody in from the US. We had some other incredible people from Australia on stage. As I said, we'd sold it out. It was 220 people, completely our peers in the space. I was opening it up, and for some reason, my mind went completely blank.
If ever I'm advising people who are doing public speaking, I will say, you just need to get at least the first three minutes down. If the first three minutes, you'll get into a flow state, and you will, chances are get into that state and be in that state and be able to deliver your talk. But I, at the last minute had decided to change the order of what I was saying. When I started, instead of going into my usual way of starting a talk, I just said something else. And then I completely fumbled my words, could not understand, like I could not under, I just, it's like my mind just couldn't grab the next step. I couldn't get the words out. And I froze. I froze, and I freaked out. for about God, it probably was about 10 seconds, but it felt like an hour.
I was just standing on stage looking out into this sea of people that were staring at me like, is there something else that she's going to say here? And I froze and I freaked out. And what I wish I hadn't done was that I berated myself for the rest of that talk in my head. I had to get on with the talk and interview people and all of it, but I sat there just not being in the moment, just fixating on this idea that, I stuffed up and everyone saw me freeze. Afterwards, I asked a couple of my good friends who were in the audience and people that I trust to just say it. And I was like, did you notice at the start how I completely stuffed up? And they were like, no. Like no. I tried to catch myself, but at that moment when I was freezing, there were still some people coming into the area.
I was like, welcome, come in. But in my head, I was like, what the hell am I saying next? But the point was no one noticed, because let's say it again, no one cares as much as you think. When I'm launching something new, when I'm doing something new and I find myself getting into that headspace of worrying, what I do is try to go back to these instances where no one cared. Two, I'm so over all of the things now. I can laugh about that moment now, but lots of people that came to that event, if I've ever brought it up, they'll be like, what? You didn't pause. I don't even remember that. Please let this be your sign that if you are waiting on doing something, if you're worried, if you're letting the idea that people are going to say X, Y, Z, or that you are going to somehow look like an idiot or whatever it is, just let my experiences help you.
And chances are you have your own experiences that you can look at and think, it wasn't as big of a deal as I made it out to be. That is it for today's quick tip episode, to remind yourself no one cares as much as you think. And as I said, if you're in Melbourne and you'd like to come to our in-person, launch of my second book Business to Brand, or if you are somewhere else and you'd like to help us launch, we will also have an online launch party, which will be super fun later in the year. But you can register for both of those or for one at mydailybusiness.com/booklaunch. I look forward to connecting with you. Thanks for reading. Bye.
