116. Why Smart People Fail: The Importance of Being The Dumbest Person In The Room

Are you the dumbest person in the room?

Let's find out.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the weeniecast.

The three phrases that are hardest for people to say are one, I love you.

Two, I need help.

And three, Worcestershire.

Worcester Worcestershire sauce.

Worcestershire sauce.

Okay, I'm fucked with that last one, but anyway, we're not talking about I love you, although I do love you.

On this podcast today, we're talking about the second one, saying I need help.

Because there is absolutely no way for you to build a massively successful business, to launch a seriously impactful nonprofit, to have a really successful career without admitting that you don't know what you don't know.

The most successful people in the world have one thing in common.

They admit when they need help, they're okay with not being the smartest person in the room.

Oftentimes, they're actually the dumbest person in the room.

Their intelligence and their potential for success lies in them realizing that they the best way forward is to bring in the best brains that have knowledge and experience that they will never acquire to do the things that they can't do.

So I've noticed something in my clients that seems like a paradox.

My clients who come from fine careers, careers where they did good work but didn't reach a certain pinnacle of success, actually have an emotionally easier time building their businesses than my clients who had very, very successful careers.

I'm talking they were in the C suite, they were professors at renowned universities, they were given awards for certain things.

But the difference is the person who had kind of a ho hum career, that was fine, they made good money, but, you know, it didn't reach those higher levels.

They were used to not being the smartest person in the room.

Right.

Because often they were the person that had their sphere of knowledge, they were the expert on their little area, and they were in rooms with other people who had their own sphere of knowledge and were experts in their own little areas, and they were advising the person who was in charge.

My clients, who have been so successful in their careers, who reached the pinnacle of whatever it was that they were doing and then decided, hey, I'm not happy here, I wanna start a business.

The leap is so dramatic.

The client who was the top of their field, who then has to jump down into being the beginner in starting a business, it is incredibly jarring to their psyche to go from being the expert in the room of all the things to being the beginner in the room of all the things, they're also usually hyper independent.

They're used to being able to figure out every single thing themselves.

If they're ever in a situation in their previous roles where they were outside of their own depth, they didn't understand all the nuances of the thing.

They would just delegate the project to someone else.

They didn't have to dive in and be the person who's trying to figure it out, who's information gathering and then trying to be an expert where they have no experience.

So it seems like from the outside, the people who are super successful in their careers before starting a business should be the ones that are most successful in starting a business.

But often the hit to the ego is the thing that holds them back.

The most smart, independent, capable people set themselves up for failure every single day because they look back at their track record of doing hard things and being able to figure it out and overcoming, and they think, okay, cool.

Well, because I've done it here, here, and here in my life, I should be able to do it here.

And when you're starting a business, yeah, absolutely.

There's stuff you can figure out.

You can figure out how to get a few clients.

You can figure out how to use social media.

You can figure out how to put together a proposal.

The question is, how long is it going to take you to figure it out?

How much trial and error is going to happen?

And do you have the time?

Do you have the confidence to spare?

Because it will eat away at your confidence, and do you have the money to invest in all that trial and error?

And I'm saying this like, I'm perfect at it.

I'm not.

There are a lot of areas where I think, oh, well, I've never done this before, but I'm smart and I'm capable, and I've figured shit out before.

I should be able to figure this out on my own.

I recently did this.

Well, recently, over the last year, in launching this nonprofit that I've recently finally launched.

I talked about it a couple times, the Gay Birthday Club.

It's a nonprofit where we call folks in the LGBTQ community who do not get phone calls from their loved ones on their birthday.

And we sing them happy Birthday.

We're the family who gives them a whole bunch of, like, really cringy love.

It's a pretty simple concept.

And so when I had this idea and thought, oh, my God, I'm going to.

I'm going to start this, this nonprofit.

This is going to be where I'm going to have some Impact outside of my business, I figured, cool, I'll order some books on Amazon.

I'll read some stuff.

Yeah, I can figure this out on my own.

After about eight months of half reading these books and half kind of searching online and not really making any progress because I was so intimidated by the fact that I didn't know what was best, I finally decided to reach out to my lawyer and ask for a referral to a lawyer who specializes in launching nonprofits.

And really, we only made progress in starting the nonprofit when I reached out for help, when I invested in it, When I admitted, I need help, I don't know what I don't know, and I am so glad I did.

In what they were able to accomplish in a matter of weeks, I couldn't even get close to starting in two thirds of a year.

Imagine if I had been dead set on trying to figure it out myself.

I don't think the nonprofit would have ever happened.

I don't think it would have ever launched.

It would have just been one of those ideas that I was, like, constantly talking about for a while and then realized I was only ever talking about it and gotten embarrassed about because I never launched it and then hoped that no one ever brought it up to me again.

If you're starting a business or a nonprofit and it's kind of just this hobby thing that you're doing for fun, you're not taking it seriously, and you don't really care about it being massively successful, then sure, figure it out on your own, Play around trial and error, buy the books to kind of read about how to do the thing, and then try it from there.

But if you want it to be massively successful, if you want to run a business that eventually makes multiple millions of dollars a year, if you want to launch nonprofits that change lives, that actually have influence and reach, the only way to do it is to let yourself be the dumbest person in the room.

In my very cool and hip twenties, I was a knitting teacher.

I taught women.

I'm.

I mean, not just women.

It's just no men ever signed up for the class how to knit.

And invariably, the first lesson, they would, you know, get their supplies and they'd sit down and I'd show them the first couple steps, and here's how you do this.

And everyone would go from zero to a thousand on the frustration scale, getting so angry with themselves for not being able to do it perfectly, this skill that they literally just sat down to start learning 15 minutes before.

I found myself constantly saying, you didn't learn how to use a fork overnight.

How many of you can use chopsticks?

Couple people would raise their hands.

Everyone else couldn't.

So here you are using two sticks very much like chopsticks and a piece of string and trying to make a piece of fabric out of it.

Why are you expecting it to be easy?

Why are you expecting yourself to be inherently good at something that is actually quite complicated?

And not only that, there's the understanding of it and then there's the doing of it.

It's not just understanding the concept of knitting, it's developing the dexterity to do it with your hands.

Many of these women had tried to learn how to knit on their own.

They'd bought a beginner knitting book and tried to follow along with all the little graphics.

Some of them had gone to YouTube University and watched videos online trying to figure out how to do it.

Guess what?

They still ended up in my class because figuring it out on their own was not working.

Now you might be like me, where there are some things that are really hard to admit that you need help with, and other things you're like, no, no, no, I'm not even touching that with a 10 foot pole without hiring an expert.

This podcast is the latter.

There was no way on this earth I was ever going to try to do a podcast without the help of a professional.

And thankfully, on my first try, I got one of the absolute best professionals in the business.

Which, if you are thinking about starting a podcast, I cannot recommend my producer, Neil Valeo, enough.

I don't brag on him enough.

He's incredible.

And when he and I work together, I am absolutely the dumbest person in the room.

I don't understand half the things he tells me about this podcast.

The numbers.

Cool.

I like numbers.

That's nice.

How different podcasting platforms work.

Awesome, dude.

I have no interest in even learning about any of it.

All I know is I show up and I talk for about an hour or two every week.

He does his magic and he turns it into a podcast and you guys listen to it.

Which thank you for listening, by the way.

If you enjoy this podcast, if you wouldn't mind going and leaving us a review wherever you're listening, we'd really appreciate it because I'm good at admitting I'm bad at stuff in some areas.

I don't always catch myself when I'm being stubborn and assuming I should be able to figure it out myself and others.

One of the most humbling experiences since I've started the nonprofit has Been running the board meetings, my board, which I love.

I love every single person on my board.

Several of them are former and current clients.

And I can't tell you how hard it is for my ego to be leading a meeting and realizing I don't know what we should be doing next.

Because I've never been on the board of a nonprofit, much less been the president of one, whereas multiple of my current and former clients have been on boards before.

Advise boards, Right?

But the power dynamic is so weird for me because I'm used to being the person that they turn to for all their answers.

And here I am.

And I have to admit, I don't know what I'm doing.

And I have to ask them, what should I be doing?

I wish I could give you an exercise that would solve this for you.

I wish I could tell you, here are those three steps to make it easier to ask for help.

To admit that you don't know what you don't know, and to turn to experts and say, hey, listen, I need you to guide me step by step through what I should be doing here, because I don't even know where to start.

And I hate that I have to tell you that really, for you to get better at it, you have to just go and do it and do it again, and do it again and do it again and show your nervous system that it's actually safe for you to admit that you don't know.

Right?

Because what's actually happening for you on a chemical level is because it's so unfamiliar to you to not be the expert.

Your nervous system is telling you this is dangerous territory.

We're not in charge here.

And you're so used to being in charge that.

That not being in charge feels like life or death.

The only way we train our nervous systems to be okay with, with things that seem life or death, that aren't is to just go and do them over and over and over again and show ourselves that we won't die by doing that.

I'm so sorry that that's the answer.

I wish there was a hack to make it easier.

But I will tell you this.

You do have a choice.

And that choice really boils down to one question.

Which matters more?

Does it matter more to you to be the smartest person in the room all the time?

Or does it matter more to you that this business, this non profit, whatever this project is, this thing that you want to be massively successful, does it matter that you really reach your goals with it and it's absolutely okay if you get real with yourself and you say, you know what?

I really value not looking stupid more than anything else.

Cool.

You know what?

This is your life.

You get to do whatever the fuck you want to do.

You get to be whoever you want to be.

If you want to be always the smartest person in the room, good on you.

Own it.

Make that your life.

But if you want to achieve more, if you want to do work you love that actually changes lives and helps people on countless levels and be massively successful doing it, then I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're going to have to commit to being the idiot in the room.

Welcome to the club.

If you enjoy this podcast, if you wouldn't mind going and leaving us a review wherever you're listening, we'd really appreciate it.