FBC – 33 – Are you Getting / providing The Right Support?

In this episode we are going to talk about the different types of support that people need. Have you ever asked yourself if you were getting the right support for you?

If you are looking for a solution to earn more and scale your business while working less, then you are in the right place.

I have a subject that I wasn't planning on talking about but it's just happened to me like 10 minutes ago and I figured it would be a great subject for the podcast. So the subject is the level of support that you get or you give to entrepreneurs. The level of support you're getting from your friends and family and stuff.

So my girlfriend is starting a brand, to start selling bracelets and jewellery. And I've been trying to help her build the brand and everything to well basically make it a success. OK. So it's not something she's familiar with. And I was basically supporting her in whatever she does right. That's what you do when you're with someone.

And so we had a chat today, like half an hour ago and she told me that she wasn't getting any support from me. I was like “what do you mean you're not getting support from me? I'm doing everything I can and I'm trying to support you the best way I can and the best way I know how”. So I have experience in online marketing and things like this and that's what I was giving her, but I just realized that now by talking to her, I was giving her the equivalent of tactical support and operational support.

What I was giving her was the different steps she needs to go through to make it happen and the different steps that she might come across. Because you know this is what happens when you have a mentor.

The mentor can give you the answers, or maybe the best thing is for them to ask you questions so that you think about the answers for yourself. So this is basically what I was doing for her was to give her my experience of stuff like that. For me I was doing a good job but apparently I wasn't. From her perspective I wasn’t.

Are you Getting / providing The Right Support?

So you know people are different. My motivation comes from inside. So that's the reason why I'm not looking for like you know, emotional support or something or motivation from someone else. And I've always been like this. So I don't have problems motivating myself to start something and do it. But anyway that's you know based on who you are. It doesn't come natural for me to give emotional support which is what she wanted.

And since she didn't get that from me her impression was that she wasn't getting any support at all. So we had a chat and I just I just realized that all she needed was the emotional support. I think she needs both right. But I need to change my approach. And instead of being like called operational I need to be more like emotional support and encouragement and stuff.

So I mean maybe you guys had similar experiences with a lot of the friends or a spouse or something that you felt that these people were not encouraging you or that they were even like bashing your stuff.

And so basically what happened is that she wanted to ask for advice from someone who's really expert in branding and I told her “you know what? I think we should wait before we go and ask that person for advice because at this point this person is going to have to ask you a bunch of questions and you need to have the answers before you go see her. Otherwise basically you're going to waste her time because this is what the expert needs to know.

The work that you need to have done before you can go and ask them some questions. I was trying to help the best way I can. So I was trying to give her the information about what lies behind the “wall” but that's not what she heard. She basically heard “I don't trust you or anything and you're doing a terrible job. Don't go waste people's time” right?

So if you're the one who requires the support, you need to understand who is in front of you and do the kind of validation system that that person has. Right. And the kind of person you have in front of you. So let's say if you're with someone who's like me who's giving you operational support, but this is not what you need, then please don't think that the person is giving you zero support.

No the person is giving you as much support as they possibly can but they're just doing it in a language that you don't understand and it might not be what you expect, but from their perspective they're doing everything they can to help you right.  And if you're the one who's giving the support then you need to identify the needs of the person in front of you. Because otherwise you're going to end up falling out!

And you know having that conversation actually opened my eyes to the fact that you know despite my best intentions maybe I was doing that wrong and I will need to adapt. I don't know how I'm going to do it because it doesn't come natural to me but I will definitely do it.