Camille: Today you're gonna be really excited about this topic. We are gonna talk about humility and ego in business for better or for worse.
Camille: Why would we even talk about this? Is this even a problem?
Camille: I just thought this would be a really great topic to unravel because I think if we can have more awareness around how humility and ego that interplay of those two ideas are working with us in life and in business. I don't know if people recognize always how it's really directly affecting some of the ways that they're going about their day.
Camille: Like, Oh, maybe that was me getting a little ego in my way. Or maybe I'm not being humble enough, or I have too much humility. I wanna talk about how the soil plays out and maybe broadened our understanding of these topics.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores what you really need to know about building a successful small business.
Camille: I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille: So humility is freedom from pride or arrogance. The quality or state of being humble is not proud or hawty, and also insignificant or unworthy. So this is that sense of humility got these pros and cons in it. I like the freedom from pride and arrogance, but it can also have this feeling of insignificance or unworthiness.
Camille: That's one of the reasons I wanna talk about it, is it has both. So that's when you look at humility through the description of that.
Camille: And then if you look at ego: ego by itself is just the self in contrast to other aspects of the word. So the word ego, we use it as a negative trait, but technically the definition of it, there's no negativity of it at all.
Camille: It's really egotistical that starts to become the negative aspect, which is having showing or rising from this exaggerated sense of self importance. So when we say the word ego in this podcast, we mostly mean this sense of self importance. That's generally how we use the word ego in life: that guy's got a big ego.
Camille: We're talking about how self important you feel. So just like everything we talk about in life this just isn't as black and white as we might think it is. And I was talking to someone the other day and I think I realized one of my pet peeves is when people just have to have things in these black and white terms.
Camille: It's so frustrating to me. Like life is not like that. Nothing is that black and white.
George: We should never talk to people like that, ever.
Camille: You're gonna be such good examples of all the stuff that we don't want people to do.
Camille: Good job, George. Good job.
George: So proud of myself right now.
Camille: You should be proud of yourself. So there's pros and cons to both of these, humility and ego and how you deal with your business and how we're going about things.
Camille: We're gonna dig into this because awareness of these two elements, being able to spot them, how they're affecting how you are responding to things or decisions that you're making. I think this will give you an advantage in your business as you think about them and help you to be more successful.
Camille: That's the whole premise for today.
George: One way I think of these two words is like guardrails as I manage. This vision of a bowling alley and I'm trying to stay on track and I do think about humility.
George: Let's start with humility. Dig into the better or worse of that. When we think about this concept of servant leadership, there is humility built into that. It is a key trait of a servant leader.
George: But they're not one in the same. So being a humble leader is not being a servant leader, but to be a servant leader, you need to be a humble leader. Does that makes sense?
George: So humility is part of the deal when you're being a servant leader. I do think we should just do like a whole episode just on humble leadership and how it fits into coaching and all of that.
George: But we'll just focus on this concept of humility for this discussion. So I wanna contrast when does humility work to our advantage? So humility for the better and humility for the worse.
George: Okay.
Camille: When I think about humility for the better, when you're doing this in a positive way, having to create positive outcomes in business and life, it's where you know your strengths and your weaknesses and then you are using both of those, that's working to your advantage.
Camille: You acknowledge that you don't know what you don't know, which I think is a really big, difficult thing to recognize. There's this pile of something that I don't even know enough to know what I don't know.
Camille: As opposed, I definitely know I don't know how to do this skill. So there's also just acknowledging that truth.
Camille: Which then leads to you having this open and learning mindset. So therefore, I'm open to learning things because I realize even if I feel like I know everything, I have enough awareness to know that that's never true. I don't know everything.
Camille: And then you also will then understand that the more that you learn, the more you discover there is yet to learn.
Camille: As you go down this path, it just keeps expanding the possibility of things that you can go learn and improve and all of that stuff. That's I think where the joyful part comes in is you never get to stop learning, which is the fun part of going through this thing what called life. And it's definitely what helps you amp up the performance of your business is that you're constantly learning and getting better at things.
Camille: So that's what I think about when I think of humility for the better. What else do you think about when you think of when humility is working well?
George: When I think of examples of humility for the better, I can think of role models. Thinking of a couple of role models in my past where their attitude when they're talking down the management chain, so to their direct reports and their skip levels, and people like that where they will not really talk about themselves that much.
George: They'll point out strengths in others and how in a conversation with people down the management chain, what's they're learning from that person down the management chain. And you get the sense they truly are learning. It doesn't matter who, even though I'm several levels up the management chain from you.
George: That's the clearest thing that comes across to me when I think of sh humble leaders.
Camille: Yeah. And I think of how easy it is. Kids to be humble. They just keep asking questions. They don't have any problem with the fact that they don't know what they don't know.
Camille: It comes naturally when you're a kid and then as you get older you start to feel this need to assert some authority and be the person that knows stuff. And so that's where our humility gets challenged. And so we might stop seeing it as a strength. So I think we have to work a little bit at seeing this humility for the better is definitely a strength just as a human being, but also as a business owner and as a leader.
Camille: When humility goes to the worst side, it's when you then also turn it into a negative perspective on yourself. So you turn it into this lack of self-confidence or self-worth.
Camille: You're being so shy and timid about it that it eventually turns into like, I don't know if I'm even worthy. And that's not true humility. It turns into this other lack of confidence space. So people might call it humility, but it's really become something.
Camille: It also shows up if you are reducing your importance in a way that actually weakens your own position. And so maybe this is where you're deferring decisions to what other people think. because you're not trusting your own judgment enough and you're doing it consistently all the time.
Camille: So I'm always just doing what I think other people think I should do instead of actually listening to my own gut instinct or Yeah, leveraging any of my own knowledge or experience. Absolutely. Or thoughts. And you just give it away.
Camille: That is not humility, that is just abdicating. So all of this humility for the worst is where it starts with this idea of humility, but it becomes something else.
Camille: So if you're, you know, not able to make decisions without everyone else's approval first, that's when humility has become this other thing.
George: What do you think that's all about, by the way, that behavior?
Camille: It's complicated, I think it comes from a couple of things. I think there's just a fear of screwing stuff up. So yeah, if you are about to make a decision, it's easier to accept if you've made the wrong decision, if you just did what everyone else said. You know what I mean? It's like, well, I just did what everybody said I should do, and , it's not my fault that it was wrong.
Camille: So I think it's a way to skirt around taking responsibility for your decisions. Yeah. I don't think that's what people think they're doing when they're doing it. Yeah. I think it's subconscious. That's what we're doing.
George: I think people pleasers fall into this trap too. They really wanna please us and they think I gotta, I gotta please everybody.
George: And this is the way they think they're gonna do it. And realizing you're rarely gonna be able to please everybody.
George: Yes. And be okay with that.
Camille: I think that's true too. I think it's the fear of making the wrong decision, which is connected to fear of judgment of others and fear of people not liking me.
Camille: Wanting to be a people pleaser, it's all founded in all this same stuff. I don't have enough confidence, I fear everybody's judgment. I want everybody to like me. That's a big one. We just want everybody to like us, even if we're not connected to the people pleasing, but there's just that sense of that.
Camille: And then it can lead to people just giving up too soon. You're just like walking away because you don't have enough confidence in what you're doing to push it forward.
Camille: Again, I don't think what I'm describing is humility itself. I think it's when we mistake humility for something else. Where you mistake being humble for giving other people more power over the decisions than us and not using enough of our own judgment. I think it's when we're giving away too much and it becomes something else.
Camille: So that's the humility for the worst.
George: Totally agree. I think for me, I'm a pretty humble guy. I'm probably the most humble guy you'll ever meet in your life. I'm the best at being humble. But seriously for me, I know exactly when this serves me wrong.
George: I notice myself using this phrase at work where I'll be in a meeting and all say, I'm probably stating the obvious, but, Or usually what will happen is I will hold back from making a comment in a group because I just feel like I'm just stating the obvious and then sometimes I'll tell people afterwards.
George: You know, I didn't say something or else, or I don't plan on saying something or else in an upcoming meeting because I just feel like I'm saying the obvious. Everybody in this meeting knows. They're like, No, they probably don't. Fight that impulse more often than you think. I don't care if you think you're stating the obvious, say it anyway. because more often than not, you're not. This is where his humility for worse hits me.
Camille: That's such a great example because I think that's a very common thing to occur is for people to say, Well, people already know this.
Camille: And I've had that too, where I'm like, I don't know. Do I need to state the obvious here? And then you realize, yes, you need to state the obvious. Yeah. And one of the things that's helped me most really lean into that since getting into running my own business is it's attached to, for me, this idea of, in marketing, you have to keep repeating the messages over and over.
Camille: So even if they have heard it before, they need to hear it right this moment. And you don't know who needs to hear it in this moment. Yeah, but even if what you were gonna say in the meeting, other people have thought of, they might not be thinking about it right now. They might have heard it before, but it didn't land the same way because it wasn't a different scenario or situation.
Camille: So the repetition of messages is important in all things in life. Including parenting, how many times do you deliver the same message and until it counts on I every time. Yeah. , he's perfect every time. It's just human nature, this is what we need.
Camille: So I have a little story I wanna share. About where my approach to humble leadership went too far in my past job. I was great about elevating my team, championing my team, giving them credit for all the amazing stuff that we did, but it led to me not tooting my own horn enough. And I actually hated the idea that I would even need to do it.
Camille: I remember this lovely leader that I worked with and pointed it out. He literally said to me, You need to toot your own horn more. And I just was so mad that he said it. I was so mad. I was like, why should I have to do that? And some of this is a little bit more challenging for women specifically in leadership.
Camille: We're just not really brought up to do that. But it was also my sense of it was complicated. It was my sense of humble leadership and what I was serving my team, and all these things were playing into why I just thought that was awful.
Camille: But it, it wasn't helping me in my career. I was doing a good job for my people, but I had so much humility in that I was giving my team all of the credit that I was having them outshine me, which meant I was doing myself a disservice. So you can't do it to the detriment of yourself at that level. You are sacrificing some stuff for them in some way, but I was overdoing it.
Camille: Yeah. You can't give yourself too much. And so I wasn't taking care of my own career. When I started running my own business, that's when I actually realized, oh, I really should have been good at this back then. I still have to work on this. Like I have to toot my own horn as a business owner if I want people to work with me, and I still find that uncomfortable to do, but I get better at it every time I do it.
Camille: So it takes some effort to do this, but for me, this is a story of being careful about not hiding behind humility as a reason or an excuse to not showcase your own capabilities.
Camille: And I think that's a tricky balance because we've all seen people who do it in a way that we're just cringing. Like it just doesn't feel right. And we don't wanna be that person. And so we hesitate to do it and we don't wanna feel, especially as business owners, we don't wanna feel salesy and spammy.
Camille: And most of the things that we're being guided towards and advised on to do feel that way. And what it makes us do is we swing the pendulum all the way to the other side of just not doing any of it, which is also not a great answer. So being able to walk that line is really important.
George: This reminds me of when you were telling me about what was going on years ago. I remember some of these incidents very clearly. So as a manager myself at work, particularly with women, I see this behavior a lot and I will tell women it's an uncomfortable conversation for me, but I will tell 'em: look you're great and if you want, I will help you promote yourself in how to get ready a new role.
George: But you have to know, let's just be honest, you're starting out behind the starting line. You're at a disadvantage because there's prejudice. And even with my help that I'm promising right now, that's not enough.
George: You're gonna have to own this yourself. Sorry, you have to do it. There's no choice. It's not fair. Let's just give that on the table right up front. Which actually don't know if it's that helpful to say or not, but it's the truth.
Camille: I think it's helpful. I mean, I think if somebody had said that to me back then, like, Hey, recognize that you are at a disadvantage.
Camille: I think I inherently knew that, but I wasn't really connecting the dots on those. Yeah. I think every woman would hope that in business, whether they're running their own business or they're working as a leader in business, that they could hope to have a male advocate.
Camille: because that's actually what we need is we need you to help us get at the table with you as an equal. Right. But we have to do the work to earn our spot there and we have to get out of our comfort zone and be in a different space to do it. But we also need people to open that. And it's basically saying, Please help set the example that we want to all people in this room to have for the women in this room.
Camille: Which also speaks to people's of color.
Camille: Anybody who's disadvantaged. Who's not coming from a position of privilege.
Camille: It sets this lovely example for how we expect what we should treat everybody, and that yes, we should give some extra help in this space because they're already coming from a position of disadvantage.
George: I'm experiencing this now myself. I'm running for our local school board and so it's putting me way outside of my comfort zone in a couple of ways. And one I didn't realize till we're talking about this now is how much I have to explicitly promote myself.
George: So I like the two ways it's really making me uncomfortable, are asking people to do stuff and promoting myself to these people. But it's getting beaten outta me, these bad habits.
George: What I'm seeing is I'll be at an event where I see a bunch of other candidates for this office and other office and I hear how they talk about themselves and they will latch onto the smallest accomplishment and make that the whole subject of their talk.
George: And I think, wow, normally I would hate hearing about that. But I get, if you don't have much to speak about and you're trying to get votes, you really make it absolutely overly clear what you've done. So people latch onto that. Another thing is when you're . Working with other people, they got a lot of stuff in their head.
George: What you think is like three to five clear things that you've done, maybe only one of them is gonna stick with the audience. And so you have to be like overly explicit about stuff. And so maybe a way of looking at this is if you're being humble, you're just not speaking loud enough. You think you're speaking forte, you're really speaking piano, you know, soft.
George: A way to think about it is really emphasize your good traits more than you think you should because it's attenuating as it gets to the audience's ears.
Camille: I was just thinking as you said that, you can speak loudly and boldly with humility.
Camille: Those are not mutually exclusive things. I can talk about my level of confidence in what I do and how I do it and my capabilities, and still have humility in it. It's all in the delivery. It's all in the way that you talk about whatever your capabilities are, whatever you're doing.
Camille: I think the delivery part of that is really important. So your choice of words, knowing your audience, all of these things matter. There is a right time and a right place for how you speak up, but if you're catching yourself holding back from speaking up, I think it's a point of asking yourself, am I being too timid? Is my humility holding me back right now instead of stepping me forward?
Camille: That is so tightly tied in with. This feeling of self confidence and all these other things, so it's more complicated than just humility, but just focusing on that one aspect, if you're falling back on that, I think it's knowing that humility can still be in a sense of boldness.
George: I have a little trick I've forgotten about. So let's say I need to promote myself, but when I think about the things that I talk about, they seems like trivial accomplishments or trivial actions that I've taken.
George: My trick is if I'm wondering about whether I should tell somebody about this action that I think is a small thing, ask myself: Well, did anybody else do it? If nobody else does it, then talk about it.
George: For example, when I'm talking about school board stuff, I will talk about some of the volunteering things I did last year.
George: And there's one particular thing, it wasn't that big of a deal to me, but it had an impact. But nobody else in the 20,000 person school district did that thing and it made things better. So, Okay. Talk about it. There's my trick.
Camille: I love that. That's a great trick. Had never thought about that before.
Camille: And by the way, nobody else is gonna know you did it unless you.
George: Yeah, for sure.
Camille: And it's important information and back to something we talked about before was you never know who's gonna get really curious and, and interested in that and what that could then could lead to in other conversations too, if you don't have any of that information come outta your mouth, then you're guaranteed, nothing's gonna happen.
Camille: It's basically like the old premise of if you don't ask, the answer is always gonna be no. You've gotta ask.
Camille: And it's okay if it doesn't do anything. Again, it's all about the delivery and sometimes you just have to test this stuff out.
Camille: Even just the idea of experimentation, which I love and is just the common thread in all the work, the way that I think about it is most of this is just you gotta run some like experiments and try some stuff out and see what works.
Camille: Bringing this idea of humility back to the core of the business owner. Obviously you all wanna be humble in your businesses, and yet I don't want you to be too humble and let it hold you back. Because you really need to lean into owning and running this business. And this is why when we talk about having a long term strategy and a vision for your business and why this matters, is that if you don't have that, you are more at risk just taking other people's advice and following that slide from humility into, I'm just gonna do what other people say and not put myself at risk.
Camille: If you start sliding in that direction, if you don't have a strategic plan or a vision that you can hold those decisions up against to see if they're right for you, then you might just choose to do what other people are telling you to do instead of making the right choices for you, which is really the essence of being a good business owner.
Camille: You want all the input and feedback, so you want the level of humility where you're asking people. You're asking for feedback, you're getting opinions, you're getting expert advice. You need to take all that stuff in, but it's gotta go through your own filter of decision making. And in business that is essentially your strategic plan. How does it hold up against that plan and or how does it help inform and improve that plan?
Camille: That's how you end up in the quick fix trap. You're like, I don't know. I guess that idea sounds good I just heard from this guy on this podcast, so I'm just gonna go do that, without running it through your own filter.
Camille: So this is all this balance of the pros and cons of humility, being able to take all those ideas in, but then own them and translate them into the right choices for you.
Camille: So let's talk about ego. Okay. Your favorite topic! Back to that concept of a servant leader, they will set their ego aside and put others first. And so we just talked about where, maybe you could do that.
Camille: I just gave an example of when I did that and it was to my detriment, yeah. So, but when you're doing it as a servant leader, you're not doing it in a way that's detrimental to yourself and your own contributions and your own value. You find a balance of that.
Camille: But the reason that servant leadership is talked about and raised up is that oftentimes we think of leadership as being in control of stuff. We talked about leadership and how we confuse leadership with power, and I think that's where ego leads into this. Ego for the negative, not positive. Yes.
Camille: So first, the positive. Let's just talk about ego for the better. Yeah. Which should not be confused with this egotistical, exaggerated sense of self.
Camille: Your ego can be a very positive thing in your business. And I really wanna emphasize this because I know business owners struggle with imposter syndrome, they struggle with their own self confidence. Can I even do this? And it's really hard to find the right support and the right resources to build a business, and to take all of that in. Because you have to now learn the mechanics of all of business, which can feel overwhelming. So when you're leveraging your own ego for the better, it means that you feel confident.
Camille: You are okay with tackling tough situations. You embrace the idea of problem solving. You're resilient, and you're able to hold a position in terms of your own thoughts and beliefs. So this goes back to, I'm not just gonna do what everybody else is telling me to do. I have my own perception and my own thoughts and beliefs about this. I'm gonna take in their ideas, but I'm not just gonna adopt them.
Camille: Others are drawn to you because of this strength. Nobody wants to be around a little negative Nelly. You're positive. So that's when your ego is working for you. And I think business owners should own that. But then they need to temper that.
Camille: When it goes for the worse, that's where you start to believe that you know all of it, or you know enough. And so you don't need to learn anymore.
Camille: And this happens a lot where we get into these positions, especially if you get into achieving more success in business, you can see people start to feel like I've figured this out because look at me. And so ego starts to take over. And of course that means then they start to lose some of their humility.
Camille: So they're overly confident and this can lead you to take really dangerous risks without really evaluating them. Because you're so sure of yourself, you're so sure that you know what you're doing, which is a really dangerous thing to do in business.
Camille: You might resist slowing down and reflecting on different situations because after all, you've got all the answers. Why do I need to stop and reflect and look at this thing? I just need to keep going.
Camille: You and I've definitely worked with those leaders where you're like, we just like pause for a minute and they're like, Nope, we're just gonna keep going down this path. And you're like, Wow, okay. I guess we're not gonna stop and learn anything.
Camille: And then others' opinions and their ideas, they're just never as good as yours. And so they don't matter as much. You find yourself maybe arguing against or it's almost like your own biases have just taken over.
Camille: And you can't even see that that's what's happened. So you don't really ask for help and you have this, I'm the boss mentality. And so you might even lead into, you'd start having some of those poor behaviors. And we talked last time about being consistent and you start being less consistent because these poor behaviors come up.
Camille: And sometimes this shows up when we see some of this bro marketing that we talked about a few episodes ago with Michelle about marketing. Where it's just this overly confident bragging, I got it all. I got all the answers, and blah, blah, blah . Yeah. So this is where it goes off the rails.
Camille: Some of this can look really extreme, but for some people it's happening to them and they don't know that it's happening. It's very subtly occurring and really confusing them as a business leader. And they don't recognize that this is what it's coming from. Ego is starting to get the best of them, and it can happen to the best of us.
George: There was a guy in a previous company who he ran an organization and ran it well, and he was increasingly ambitious.
George: But he didn't take himself too seriously. You could make jokes at him all the time.
George: But he would always really promote himself as the cornerstone of his organization. And he would tell upper management, You need me, you need me to do this job, you need me to do this job. I'm the one who does this job best. I'm absolutely the best person for this job.
George: And he would keep saying that message. But then later on he was trying to angle for some different position, some higher level position, and our executive vice president of software eventually told him, No, I'm not gonna give you this position. And the guy was, was like, Why?
George: This EVP said, Well, apparently I can't do it because I can't take you out of your existing role. According to you, nobody else could possibly do it. Nobody on your team is a reasonable successor. Nobody else could be recruited for this job. You're the only one who could do it, and I need that job to be built. So you're stuck! Can't give you a new job. He ego painted himself into a corner.
George: When the others of us heard this story, which is absolutely true, he did no succession planning. He thought only about himself at the expense of everybody else. He didn't really give credit to other people. It was all about him. He was trying to get people to equate the organization with him, and it worked , and then he was stuck!
Camille: That is like the ultimate level of ego.
George: Isn't that hilarious?
Camille: I do love hearing the stories when the ego comes back to bite 'em in the butt later. You're so myopic in this one thing that they're thinking about and not thinking about the big picture.
Camille: Very self-centered, like the ultimate self-centered.
George: The EVP of software at the time was an ex Navy fighter pilot. Smart guy. Like, I don't know what this guy was thinking, how he was gonna get one past the ex Navy fighter pilot.
Camille: I have my own lesson learned about ego. It's a little different spin on this. So part of my work in the past and still currently is working with leaders and supporting leaders in developing them and helping them learn better ways of leading, so leadership coaching.
Camille: There's scenarios where I get brought in and they're asking me to help with X, Y, and Z leader. And I used to think, yeah, I can help anybody become a better leader. So my own ego would have me take on any situation believing that I could make a difference.
Camille: Because I'm a really good coach. And I am a really good coach, but that is not true. I cannot help anyone, because you cannot coach somebody who does not want to be coached.
Camille: Yeah, if you don't want to be a star soccer player, all the coaching in the world is never gonna turn you into a star soccer player, because you're never gonna actually execute any of the things the coach is guiding you through. You might go through the motions, but you're not gonna put your all into it. And the same thing applies in leadership coaching.
Camille: If that leader is not open to it, if their ego is so in the way that they're not willing to learn and learn from somebody else, and they're just resistant to all the change and everything that you're trying to bring there, there is no amount of coaching that I can do to break through that.
Camille: So my ego about that against their ego about not needing that like total recipe for disaster. Thankfully, I learned this early in my coaching career, wasn't a recent aha, but it comes up often. And now it's great because I can use it as a guide for me to choose who I work with.
Camille: And even within companies, if somebody says I have a leader who had asked me, what kinda solutions do you have for this guy over here in my team? And I literally was just, I don't, I don't have a solution. And I think you know why. And he did. And he ended up removing him from that leadership role.
Camille: Wow. Because he wasn't coachable. There was nothing we could do. The guy just was like, I've got this. And we were like, You don't, so you're out. Right. And unfortunately sometimes that is the solution. That's pretty rare that that happens. Most people I find, actually really want to learn and engage in that conversation.
Camille: Yeah. But every once in a while you run up against these people who don't want to do it. So my point here is check your own ego and being able to A, either just overcome any situation on your own. Even as I am coaching someone else,, I can't transform you as a leader, or help you in any way on my own. You have to participate in that.
Camille: And the same is true as you're running your business. If you start getting to a space of being a know-it-all about your business and you find you're not going anywhere for feedback or help or support or anything, you're not asking constantly for some bit of input somewhere, you are going down that slippery, scary slope of building up too much ego about your business, and it's gonna come up and bite you in the butt.
Camille: Yeah, and it can be a hard thing to see. It can be a hard thing to see, that you're going down that space. But this is where I think the best way that you can check yourself is just ask yourself, where am I getting input into my business? Where am I inviting feedback?
Camille: And it's uncomfortable a lot of times. I don't necessarily want a negative review from a client or some consultant to tell me what I'm doing wrong in my business. That doesn't feel good, but if I don't do it, that thing that's wrong is still wrong. I've just chosen to ignore it and let it fester and grow into a bigger problem.
Camille: So why are we talking about this? Well, I wanna emphasize that I think most successful business owners really have a nice balance of ego and humility.
Camille: I'm bringing this up because it takes work to keep that balance, and as your business gets more successful, it will become more challenging for you. So pay attention to it and know that as you're going into this, you're definitely confident enough to dive into those risky business of starting a business.
Camille: So you already know there's some confidence there. So if you ever struggle with your level of confidence, just remember that. It took some balls to do what you're doing. You've got already a foundation of some confidence and just starting. You're also humble enough to get some help. I mean, you're listening to those podcasts. That's a way of getting help.
Camille: Start reaching out and asking for more if you don't feel like you're doing enough of that. But always check yourself on these things. Am I asking for enough help and do I feel confident enough in what I'm doing? It's never gonna be a perfect balance. So you really just have to work at balancing these all the time and just checking yourself, Do I need a boost to my ego today and a boost to my confidence?
Camille: Or do I need a healthy dose of humility? And it may vary depending on the scenario and what you're doing and how you need to show up. Being aware of how you're pulling on both of those in your business and using them to your advantage.
Camille: That is really why I wanted to bring this up around why it's so important, why we wanna talk about ego and humility.
Camille: Any last closing thoughts about ego and humility in general in business?
George: We covered a lot. When I think about my own self and not making it about me, but not making me invisible either, I think it's really important. I think a lot of people make one of those two mistakes. It's either too much about them or not enough about them.
Camille: I have a few questions that I wanna put out there for people as you're thinking about navigating the humility and ego space. Here's some questions that you can ask yourself.
Camille: The first question is: who should I ask for help from and is there a new unexpected place for me to go in this? So maybe not asking for help from the traditional places.
Camille: Am I learning from the right experts? Have I vetted them properly? This is really challenging. Specifically, I think for small businesses. There's a lot of people claiming to be able to help us that really don't have the expertise we need. I don't want you to be closed off to them helping or get into an echo chamber around that. Just know your expert's expertise before you hire them.
Camille: So learning from the right people is important and by holding back on the next stage of my business because I don't feel confident that I can handle it, or I'm overly worried about maybe how my team will handle it. That's a great place I think to ask yourself too.
Camille: If you just ask these few questions of yourself every once in a while, coupled with the idea of: is today a day where I need a healthy deal of humility or is today a day where I need to boost my ego and my confidence? Just reflecting on those will help to keep you in check and help keep things moving in the right direction. And create as much balance as you can between those two.
George: Absolutely.
Camille: I have one last note before we drop off the pod today, which is we have a new way for you to reach us. We realize all we've had is this Instagram account, and most of you're probably like, Eh, I'm not in Instagram.
Camille: So we're gonna try a little experiment. We have set up a way for you to leave us a voice message, so there will be a link in the show notes. But if you just go to our website, thebeliefshift.com, if you go there, you'll see there's a little widget says: leave a message. Click that and you can do, I think it's up to 90 seconds of a voice recording and you can leave us a message about if you have topic ideas, if you wanna comment on a particular thing.
Camille: If you wanna argue with us. I think you said that like episode one, George, we're like, Even if we don't wanna hear it, we wanna hear what you think.
Camille: So, If you have counterpoints to what we've said, if you want us to elaborate on something, like say more about this topic that you barely touched on , we would love to hear from you.
Camille: Drop us a little message, communicate with us, let us know what you're thinking. We would love to hear all of your thoughts. If you choose to, it can be anonymous or you can leave an email and we'll get back to you if you have like a actual specific question.
Camille: So we're gonna test that out for a while and see how that works for us.
George: Use it. Send us messages.
Camille: I know we wanna talk to you. The only part about this podcasting that bums me out is I actually just wanna interact with people. That's why you're here because otherwise this would not be happening by myself.
Camille: I have to interact with somebody.
Camille: That's all we have for today's episode. We will see y'all next week.
George: See you later.
