Family and friends support - they are not business partners, but always there

Lesson Details:

Video Transcription – A certain type of co-founder that you get whether you like it or not is your family now they might not own the business but they're there every day in some way if you have a spouse or children especially and they can be a source of either a lot of stress a lot of stress or support and that can be such a tremendous differentiator and you have to be considerate are there people who are financially dependent on you if there are that's a really strong argument for maybe taking on a lot risk than if you're a single person single person you can be okay just reducing your spending and living like a poor person until your business takes off if you have children or a wife can't do that and it's very reasonable to not get into business for those considerations or get into business at a much slower pace because those considerations are more important than business than money now if you are getting into business it's really good to set expectations with your family especially immediate family because if they're kept in the dark they're gonna be calm they're gonna get stressed out themselves they're gonna wonder they're gonna imagine worst-case scenarios if you communicate with them and keep them informed they are not going to imagine the worst-case scenarios well ironically they're gonna live the worst-case scenarios right there with you where at because usually you don't succeed right away I mean most businesses don't succeed right away they have tremendous ups and downs and your friends and family they don't want to see you suffer they don't want to see you struggle but struggle is a part of growth so they just it's weird right it's part of it it's gonna be part of it but they're gonna feel terrible when they see you struggling and they're gonna be like well maybe you can go back to a job and they will always always well in most cases tell you to go back to a job before you're done with your struggle period because they don't want to see your struggle it hurts them more than it hurts you so you're gonna get a lot of advice what you should do what's one thing to keep people informed and abreast of what's happening then to allow people to control your business you must set boundaries so boundaries are you're open to listening to advice and things but it's not necessary that people are going that you're gonna take the advice and you have to tell that to people because I've had a lot of times where I'm like well yeah of course I'm very open to listening about to your people suggestions and then five minutes later they come back and like so have you taken my suggestion how is it going for you and I'm like thinking to myself I'm not planning to take your suggestion it wasn't that good but you cannot tell them that so you have to professionally say it's in my to-do list I'm still thinking or you can say I'm still thinking about it I'm still evaluating I'm very busy there's only so much I can do let's talk about it later or you can politely say if you really want to be straightforward it's just not something that's priority for me at the moment I'm having other directions I'm considering other things I'm not pursuing that advice at that suggestion at the moment and you have to be polite but strong about it because people will think oh you're such a jerk you're not taking my advice my amazing advice which they think it's amazing but it's not that good that's gonna happen all the time and that's the gray area where you keep people informed then you feel like a part of it and then part of your support group which is great but they try to help you and give you advice and that's such a close relationship there that it's almost always going to be like they're gonna give you too much advice or are they gonna give you bad advice and then they're gonna get mad but you don't take their advice so you also have to set boundaries and just make sure that you explain to them ahead of time it's gonna maybe take longer than we want there's gonna be some trials and tribulations and as long as people have those expectations their pain tolerance is much greater actually the struggle becomes intolerable mostly when expectations don't match reality but if you make sure that people's expectations match reality should be much better off.