Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <silence>
Speaker 1 00:00:01 Hey there. Welcome back to Rogue Startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt here with a solo episode to talk about a topic that is really sensitive, and I think nobody talks about it. Certainly not enough people are talking about it. And it is accountability to you as a founder for the failures in your business. I don't mean to be a buzzkill here, but, but I see all the time podcasting and social media and all these places, people talking about how great they're doing. And, and I'm guilty of this too, right? I don't talk about the bad stuff as often as I probably should. And, and really all of us probably should, whether you're talking about it publicly on social media or podcasting or YouTube or, or you're just talking about it with your teams and your advisors and your mentors and your investors, um, talking about the bad stuff and really not just talking about it, but admitting that at the end of the day, like, man, it's you.
Speaker 1 00:00:54 It is all me. The good and the bad is all me, right? I'm the founder of the business. I'm the c e o. I'm not the only person here, but, but I certainly am the one with hopefully the vision and the strategy and the goals to, to get where we're going. And, and I think a lot of us say, I did so great because we got to this point, or we raised some money, or we got to a million dollars in a r, we got to 5 million, or we sold the business and we give ourselves the credit when shit goes well, right? But when stuff doesn't go well, it, it's hard to point the finger at yourself and say, why? Screw it up. I'm not good enough. I'm not successful. I'm not smart enough. I wasn't good with strategy to really nail this. And, and I don't mean this to be negative, but, but it's empowering, right?
Speaker 1 00:01:43 Because instead of blaming the economy or blaming creators or blaming your industry and cost per click prices, or the fact that LinkedIn doesn't work anymore, you can just say, fuck it. Like, this is my world. I own this. Good or bad, I'm in control. And I think that a lot of us, uh, allow ourselves to ascend in the positive direction, but we don't point the finger back at ourselves and say like, my lack of success is due to my inadequacies at some level. And, and it, this is not meant to make any of us feel bad, but, but more so to, to give you the grace to say, if it's just you, then you can change it. Like none of us are gonna change the economy and interest rates and inflation, right? But, but we can just do a better job of marketing and selling and creating product and aligning with our customers.
Speaker 1 00:02:37 And, and I think that's, that's just how I'm feeling. You know, I got this from, from my coach and Hi Mike. I hope you're listening. Um, but, but Mike was like, Craig, like you're really smart guy and you have a successful business paying the bills. You have employees, all this kinda stuff, but, but the fact that you're not where you want to go is just because you don't want it bad enough. You haven't worked hard enough to get where you want to go. It's not anyone else's fault. It's not any of this shit that we try to assign blame to. It's really just us. And that was really hard to hear when Mike, Mike, when you told me that, that was like motherfucker, like <laugh>, who does he think he is telling me that I'm not good enough? But what he was really doing is saying like, it's not anyone else's opportunity to fix.
Speaker 1 00:03:20 It's yours. And you're totally in control of the path from where you are today to, to where you want to go. And so, uh, I hope that this is just like, um, a little empowering to everybody. 'cause it certainly has been for me to say, like, stop blaming all this stuff that you have no control over and start believing in yourself. And, and maybe even like taking a little bit more critical look at yourself as a founder and an operator, or a sales marketing person or a developer or wherever you are, and say, I have the power and the potential to make my destiny without getting too woo woo. But like, you really do, right? It's all entirely up to you. The world we live in is amazing where fucking internet and AI and social media and podcasting, YouTube and email, and all of these things are going for you, and you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 And, and I think the first thing is just understanding and believing that, and that's been really transformative for me, is to say, I can be a badass. You know, I can have the Maserati and the house in Vail and <laugh>, the chateau in France and all that kind of stuff. It's just me working harder and smarter probably to, to get there. And sure there's sacrifice and trade-offs and all these things between, you know, our ideal and what, what the reality is of getting there. But, but there's nothing, if you're not watching on YouTube, I'm over here with all the negative restriction stuff in my right hand there, there's none of that, right? It's just you. And, and over here on my left hand, it's just you who have the opportunity to create the, the reality that we all want. So I'm still kind of grokking this internally, and I'm still really trying to understand what this means, but just, just since I've started unraveling this, it's been pretty empowering to say like, I, I can grow this business.
Speaker 1 00:05:08 You know? Um, and y'all have been, you know, following for a while, know that like growth is slowed for us, and it's really fucking frustrating. And I think what Mike is saying is like, don't blame any of this shit over here, right? Just say, I can do this and I can. And so I gotta figure out a better way to operate as a owner and a marketer and a salesperson to, to, to make this business what I want it to be. And, and in, you know, kind of six weeks since we had that conversation, like a lot of stuff has changed. We're growing quite quickly in a couple of ways. And, and that's really exciting. And so I just wanna share this with you, that like, don't be afraid to point the finger at yourself and saying, the, the reality that I'm living in is not what I want and it's my fault, but it's also, I'm the opportunity to change from where I am today to where I want to be.
Speaker 1 00:05:55 Um, and, and so I, I hope this is helpful. It was really kinda helpful and inspiring and, and informative to me and gave me the permission to say like, fuck, hell yeah, let's do this. <laugh>. Let's, let's go build the thing we want. Let's be audacious and ambitious to go chase those dreams and those goals that we have, because I am the person that can make them happen. Sure, we have a team and all this, but like, I can make team happen. I can make systems and processes happen. I can lead by example and elevate kind of everything around me. Uh, yeah, I, as you can tell, I'm pretty jazzed about this and just wanted to share this message with you because that's what this podcast is all about, is me learning, sharing with you, hopefully making you and your business better, more profitable, more scalable, and living a better life, uh, on this journey together.
Speaker 1 00:06:39 So, uh, I hope you enjoy this, uh, back with another episode next week. In the meantime, any questions, shoot us a message. Podcast rogue startups.com. And if you wanna connect with me on Twitter, I am the Craig Hewitt. I'm also on LinkedIn, enjoying it there. Either way. Look forward to connecting with you and really like, let me know what you think of this, right? <laugh>, let me know, drop a comment in below on YouTube, uh, if you're enjoying this kind of stuff, me sharing mindset, um, kind of aspects of this journey. I think we talked a lot about tactics and strategy, mindset's really, really important. And this in particular has been quite helpful for me. So I hope you enjoy and we will see you next week.
