The Price You Pay for Playing Small

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All right everybody today episode 36 no
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fluff man it's gonna be another no fluff day it's always a no
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fluff day it's kind of always me just ranting like a lunatic
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about something and hoping that you take a few notes and and it
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guides you and motivates you in five to eight minutes in a direction that helps
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you do something better for yourself in the day today we're going to talk about
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the price you pay for playing small and it's just something that i've been sitting
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with and i think a lot of you probably just need to hear this right now this
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is one of those things where it's a sticky note that was stuck in my monitor that said,
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like, in quotes, stop playing small, and it sat there for months and months and months.
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And then I took that one day, I took it and started fleshing out an idea,
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a little bit of an idea. You know me.
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My podcast episodes here are always under 10 minutes, so I try to keep them five to 10 always.
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And just a brief idea to tell you there's a price that you pay for playing small.
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And most people will never calculate it. You think that playing safe is free.
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They think that staying quiet is being neutral. And they think waiting until
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they're ready will cost them nothing.
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But it's not free. It costs you clients who needed you and found someone else.
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It costs you the momentum you would have built if you just started six months earlier.
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Think about everybody. If you started six months earlier than you did today,
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wouldn't you be six months ahead of where you are now?
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It costs you your own confidence because every time you hold back,
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you teach yourself that you can't be trusted to follow through.
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You're abusing yourself when you do these things. And, yeah,
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I get that it's being dramatic, but it's business abuse at the very least,
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if not emotional and mental abuse,
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that you're sitting there grinding your ass off and working your ass off and
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busting hump every day and you're looking at the same end result and you're
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like, why isn't it growing?
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If you're stuck like that, well, a lot of times it's the price of playing small.
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And look, I'll give you a great example. I had a client about three,
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four years ago. She was absolutely brilliant.
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All the credentials you can need for what she did for a living.
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And totally a real deal type of person who had been, quote unquote,
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getting ready to launch a coaching program for, poof, well over a year before I met her.
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And she told me she was waiting until the website was done. And it was one of
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the reasons that we had gotten connected,
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because she had heard that I would help her make it more fantastic and give
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it more punch and impact and really brainstorm with her the idea behind what
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we're doing with the website.
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Like, I'm not a web builder by trade.
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I can build them, but it's not what I do. I'm the person that gives the idea,
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that builds the whole brainchild of what we're going to do with it.
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Now, with technology these days, I could actually speak that into existence
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now, which is so much cooler.
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But that's not here nor there. That's not today's point.
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Today's point is this was a person who said they were waiting for their website to be done.
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Till she had more testimonials. That was the next thing. So the website was
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done. And she goes, I'm not ready yet, Steve.
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I need more testimonials. Okay.
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We got them. The next excuse was, you know what?
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Doesn't feel right. Something's off.
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And I'm sitting there thinking, I mean, this is, this lady looks absolutely
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killer on this website. Like, she is a destructor of all things in her universe.
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I mean, she is, you know, the giant marshmallow man of Ghostbusters.
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Like, she's got it all. She's ruling the city.
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What the hell? Like, that's another excuse.
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But you know what was actually holding her back?
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She didn't believe in her own value at the end of the day. And the website just became the excuse.
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And we got to that after a few weeks. I mean, I'm pretty blunt.
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So I will let people be themselves, of course, because I believe that's the
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most important thing that we could all be honest with ourselves and be who we are.
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But after like a month or so of it, I had to call it out because we were talking every other week.
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So, you know, by the third time of that, I was like, oh, yeah,
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you know, look, I think maybe the website's an excuse.
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The bigger issue here is that you don't want to own this. And she realized it.
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And, you know, the truth is this. Here's what playing small actually is.
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It's protecting your ego from the risk of being seen and rejected.
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And that's exactly where she was. And I get it. We all feel that way.
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The fear is real. But the cost of just not dropping this out to the universe is 10 times realer.
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Because, like, here's a great example. I record this episode right now,
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episode 36, unfiltered and unshakable.
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And I never post it for whatever reason. Why the hell do I spend the last,
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well, four and a half minutes already recording this then?
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Just wasting my life then if I don't actually put it to action.
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And that's one of the things when I flip my own personal effort switch a while
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back, I realized that this has
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got to be the time where if you're creating stuff, you have to share it.
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If people hate it or people think it sucks or you don't have an audience,
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who cares? Keep going forward.
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Not everybody wakes up and has a million person audience. that is built with
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thousands and thousands of five view pieces to get you there.
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You're not gonna make one post and hit it out of the gate unless you have a
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marketing and advertising budget that's through the roof that I could spend,
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right? That's the truth for everybody.
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If you give me no marketing budget, you're only gonna go as far as you work and hustle and grind.
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That's facts. Like them, leave
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them. Doesn't matter to me. Those are still facts. You can't deny that.
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So when you're playing small and protecting your ego because you're afraid to
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be seen, you're afraid to get rejected, and you're afraid that people are going to say you suck.
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That fear is killing you. It's
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ruining your growth because you're sitting there strapped by the fear.
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So you need to use Rise. You need the reset more than anything.
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You need to go watch and take my eight-day challenge of the fuck it switch challenge on my community.
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You 100% need to go take that now. Go to stevelickman.com, click on community
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at the top. I got a brand new website.
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You know, it was something to see. Look, I was somebody who,
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I used my website and it's an excuse, but the reality was I truly hated it.
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I built what I thought everybody wanted. And then I looked at it and I was like, oh, I fucking hate it.
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That was how I said it. I remember I was looking at the final product.
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I'm like, oh, this sucks. I don't want this.
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And I thought about it while I
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was busy with other projects for about a month of what I wanted it to be.
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And then I was like, I just want to deliver the news, man. I want to be the anchorman.
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I want to be Will Ferrell from Anchorman and just, I just want to deliver the
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news. And the news is going to be whatever news I see fit as far as marketing,
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AI, you know, being yourself, using my RISE framework.
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Just everything that I believe is what can help people live a happy business
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life and do it in a way where they can love what they do.
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They can be fucking empowered to hell and back.
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And they can do it with a smile and do it without being miserable and do it
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in a way where you don't give a flying you-know-what when somebody doesn't like
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you online because nobody's going to love you all the time. everywhere.
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That's the internet, man. That's nothing you can do about it. So let's reset.
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Go take the course. Go take the effort switch eight-day challenge.
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It's eight days, eight videos, usual three to five-minute videos. I don't keep it long.
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I get right to the meat, you know, meat and potatoes kind of guy. So we get right to it.
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When you reset, that's when you step out of the fear state, right,
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for just that second, and you can see the truth. That's when you have something real to offer.
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And withholding it's not protecting you, right? You're never protecting yourself by doing that.
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It just delays the version of your business that's actually possible.
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Like, you are literally stepping in front of yourself and delaying the inevitable when you play too small.
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So I want you to think about this now, and we're going to end it.
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What's one thing you've been playing small about? Name it outright.
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Like, say it out loud. If you're sitting in your car, if you're sitting in a
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train, write it down, whatever. Just say it out loud because that's your identity.
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Right? Or actually, that's actually not your identity. That's your identify.
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Right? Once again, my brain works faster than my mouth does,
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which is ironic because it moves pretty fast.
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But that's your identify, right? Your identify is the one thing you've been playing small about.
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So go make one move on that today.
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And today's riff is going to be this. playing it safe isn't neutral it has a
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price tag but are you looking at the bill,
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it sounds like the opening to a megadeth song do you know the price for peace
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all right we're gonna leave it with that i am steve lichtman this was unfiltered
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and unshakable thank you so much and remember guys don't play it small you are tall.