Ep453: Tim Hyde – Don’t Conform to People’s Expectations of You

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community we know that to win in investing you must take risk but to win big you've got to reduce it join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive the risk reduction checklist I created from the lessons I've learned from all of my guests and also get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return in the community you can also get a super special discount for podcast listeners on my six week valuation masterclass boot camp, the boot camps for those who want to learn exactly how to value companies like a pro and advance their careers in finance, just go to my worst investment ever.com and join the community for free fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Tim Hi, Tim, are you ready to rock?

Tim Hyde 00:58
I am indeed. When you said radio host Wow. That's impressive. I love it, Andrew.

Andrew Stotz 01:05
Yeah. All right. Well, I want to introduce you to the audience. Tim Hyde is a fixer, a business growth strategist, an Infusionsoft certified partner, and is Australia's leading authority in sales and marketing automation for small business. He works with business owners on their sales and marketing strategy with a particular focus on optimizing their sales lifecycle and marketing automation. He provides the advice, support and tools his clients need, so that their business gives them more time, money, and freedom, Tim, take a moment and fill in for the tidbits about your life, because that description is so juicy.

Tim Hyde 01:46
Thanks. Thanks, Andrew, for that incredible, incredible welcome. I think one thing that I've realized throughout my life, and I had my first business when I was six, was that when we get to adulthood, we have all this pressure and expectation upon ourselves from our business. But we've almost lose sight of the fact that our business is just there to give us the lifestyle that we want. And in fact, even just this morning, I was having this conversation about this, this idea that the harder we work almost becomes a badge of honor. Like, you know, how many hours did you do this week? I did 70 hours? Well, I did 90 and I did 92. And it's completely stupid. We actually lose sight of the fact that business is there to serve us and our lifestyle, not the other way around. And often we get caught

Andrew Stotz 02:34
up. The billionaires are all sitting around going, how few hours did you work this week, throat, yeah, seven on Damn, man, I'm worth 12, I got to get better. I want to get down to six.

Tim Hyde 02:48
But it'd become this switch that think at some point during our business journey, that we suddenly realized that our businesses better serve us. And it's, you know, it's taking away from our ability to kind of live our life and create the experiences, we work for ourselves, for our family, the impact on the world around us that we want to create, whether it's just you and your family, or your friends, or the greater, you know, for the greater good, a lot of us go into it for this impact. And we lose sight of that a certain point. And then we wake up this lightbulb moment we say we go this is not what I signed up for either change or we exit. And this, I think this is perpetuated myth we have about business that most small business owners fail within the first five years. I don't believe that to be true. And if you actually look at the real statistics about what constitutes a failure, it's actually businesses are close. And I think businesses closed for all sorts of different reasons. Some of them, they sell them, we move on, we decide to go back to a day job, but more often than not, we burn out. Because we aren't working too much in our business, and we're serving our business and businesses not serving us. And certainly as I got into adulthood, and you know, shifted out of this sort of fun stuff I was doing as a, you know, as a kid and as a teenager when I was, I guess exploring this idea of entrepreneurship. You know, one of my biggest idols was, as a young person was Uncle Scrooge was diving into his money pit. Now people lost sight of that, and it became You know, this, this ongoing pressure to make the thing work and wrangle it, you know, by hook or by crook to deliver this outcome for us, we lose sight all the other stuff that we're doing.

Andrew Stotz 04:30
So, you know, to the listeners out there, you know, who's, who's being overcome by their business right now, by the intensity of it, by trying to keep the revenues going by trying to, you know, all those different things, who's gotten you know, if you've gotten like overly involved in your business, when the business is not providing you with the lifestyle that you thought you were going to have when you did your business. You know, check out Tim and one of the best ways to Check him out on LinkedIn. But also I have everything in the show notes. But I think I'm excited to learn a little bit about your story. So now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Tim Hyde 05:19
I think it was, I think it was to be honest, at around expectations. I live in a public service town where literally half the populace population works for the government. And then there's a bunch of people who work for organization to deliver services to government. And so it's very easy to fall into this expectation of working, you know, as an employee, I don't think anyone in my family, if I think about it, is in business at all. They're all employees. And that comes with a certain mindset that comes with this, this safety blanket that I'm going to get this paycheck every second Thursday, and it's going to turn up on my bank account, and I'm gonna do my thing. And that, that comes with a certain level of comfort, I guess. My parents are both public servants. My mom was a teacher and dads and agricultural scientists, they're both retired now. My grandparents, you know, worked with my dad, my grandfather, my dad side was a security guard and his wife, my grandmother was a nurse on the other side, you know, my mom's side diplomatic family. And so my grandfather was a diplomat, and, and my grandmother and so I was a stay at home, you know, diplomats wife, I guess. So this idea that, you know, you could build something of your own industry was, was something that was completely alien, I guess, to my, to my family, and to my upbringing, right, it was the expectation that, you know, you went to school, and then you went to university, and then you got a job working for someone else. And I see a lot of the education system is very much like that, it's still to this day, very much geared towards, I guess, creating employees. I even look at my son, I've, you know, I've spent his in your team right now. And I've spent, I could not tell you how many 1000s of dollars that I have spent, you know, educating me through the private school system in Australia, who was largely teaching him how to be an employee. And yes, they do is more stuff like that. But when I reflect back is he said, I, you know, you look at this stuff, and you don't recognize your worst investments until afterwards. And you go into them with the best intent. And I certainly found myself. You know, as I say, as I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of my teenage years building the civil side enterprises and the side businesses, but I was still way down with this familial sort of expectation that when I finished college, I would go on to university and, and then I would get myself a job. And, you know, if, like, I kind of kept, I guess, falling back to this expectation of who I should be, rather than really being true to myself. And I think about the my worst investment, my worst investment was probably the nine years I spent at university trying to meet the expectations that other people had of me. But all that I, to be honest, that I thought the other people had of me. And I recommend we go through our whole life, trying to fill the expectations that we think other people have of us, not that they have this or not even that we have of ourselves, but we the expectations that we think we have of other people. And if I, if I reflect back to, you know, those nine years of university, and I do, did actually have something to show for an IT degree enough and finance degree, those sorts of things. But as I look at right, throughout my career, when I spent, you know, I spent 20 years working in government and corporate and thinking, you know, again, chasing this expectation that I thought other people's other people ahead of me that I think, you know, there are probably only two subjects I did at uni that actually relevant in any way to what I'm doing now.

Andrew Stotz 09:21
So how would you describe the lessons that you learn from this experience?

Tim Hyde 09:27
I think there are two things there. I think there's this expectation of education, if I could take those nine years back right now. And I was to invest those nine years in what I'm currently doing, and learning experientially through other people. Not from books, not from university. If I had kind of listened to myself earlier on and what felt right to me, not what I thought other people wanted me. I probably would have a saved nine years of uni And other than how many countless hours of study and tuition costs and all that sort of stuff at all times can I kind of reinvest, I'd be that much further ahead in what I'm doing now. I think I'll probably be a lot happier

Andrew Stotz 10:14
for it. Yep, as well.

Tim Hyde 10:19
And not that I'm not happy now, but I'm not going to necessarily regret those choices. As I said, we can't really look at this for 2020 hindsight. But I kind of look at that as a massively lost opportunity to be 345 1020 steps further ahead on from where I am now, because I'd kind of done this. So, you know, to sort of simplify that and answer the question, what was my worst investment ever? My worst investment ever, as much as I'd love to say it was the nine years I spent at noon, my worst investment ever was probably is trying to conform to other people's expectations, you know, a long period of time. And I look at as a lost opportunity to really explore and express who I am and the impact I could

Andrew Stotz 11:09
got it. Maybe I'll just summarize some things that I take away, I mean, I wrote down some things I wrote safety blanket, you know, it's part of the biggest challenge that we have in our life is, you know, we seek safety, we want safety in our life. But if we want to get something, we're going to have to take a risk. And so there's a balance there. And sometimes when it's so like, I went, when I was 17, almost 18, my mom and dad said, you know, time for you to move out. And they didn't provide the backstop for me to come back. They didn't, except that they said, Have you, you know, run out of food or something come in, you know, have a meal with us, but there's nothing, there is no going back. And so that safety blanket was removed, and I had to create my own. And now that, you know, maybe into a different person. Second thing I wrote down was creating employees, you know, like this. Manufacturing Consent, you know, is the concept, I think that it's just so common. Just to just to make average people do average things, you know, and take a person like myself, who was disruptive in class and, you know, had questions and you know, didn't didn't handle authority very well, and say, I'm the bad apple, or I'm the, the attention deficit, hyperactive, blah, blah, blah, get them on some medicine. And, you know, what I've often thought, as I've gotten older is, wait a minute, the 99 kids in that room that are just sitting there listening to a boring as hell lecture and not moving? Not, you know, not doing anything. That's abnormal. So, should be. Yeah, sure. And then, the last thing I wrote down is talking about expectations, or, you know, you said that I thought other people had for me. And I think the point you were making is that we create all kinds of things in our mind of what other people think of us, or, you know, that type of thing. And the reality is, is that that's all in our mind, you know, because people are thinking a lot less of us than what we think those are the three things that I kind of took out of what you talked about, is there anything you'd add to that?

Tim Hyde 13:37
No, absolutely. I think you summarized it really well. The safety blanket one for me is a big one. And I look at implements that I have in my son, and he's thinking, I think he's one of those. He's the one in 99. He's got the ADHD doesn't perform well, it's at school. And it's not that he's not intelligent. He's not empathetic, for, you know, for people around him, it's just that that is not the right environment where he is enabled to thrive. And we need to be, I think, really cognizant of the influence that we have on our children and the choices we make with them. I'd lost him when he was seven, we just moved to where we live now. And at the age of seven, he decided to go door to door sales door knocking. And of course, my wife came home and said, Where's our son? I've got I think he's in his bedroom. And of course, he wasn't, you know, proud, proud parenting moment. But when he finally came home, which was much too much relief, and presented all this money on the table that he'd made from doing door to door sales, he'd done something that most adults can't do from fear of rejection, because it just didn't know what people couldn't do. Had no expectations. And I found myself on the verge of saying no, don't do that. And Change that moment had that epiphany to say hi, maybe there's rather say no, maybe just say, hey look, what did you learn from that? Is there a better way to execute that next time. And, you know, there's any lesson I want to leave people with from this podcast is to look at what you again, your expectations of others and your influence on your children. And their thought processes is really influenced the people that they grow up to be, and whether they think things are possible, or not possible.

Andrew Stotz 15:33
That's a great story, thinking about him coming home with some cash. Just tell him, go back out there and do it again. Let's go. But I love that story, because it's just like, you know, he didn't know that you're not supposed to do that. Well, what if we couldn't deliver on what he ever you said he was selling? And what about this? What about that, you know, all these things? What are the neighbors gonna think? So? Now let's go back and imagine a young person in a situation where they feel the pressure from their parents, from their community, from their society, to go to university or to do whatever, and it's not really, you know, we don't want them to end up looking back and saying, Man, nine years long time, doing something that maybe really wasn't me. So based upon what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn what what action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Tim Hyde 16:30
I think I guess two things. You know, when you look at yourself in the mirror every single morning, just go Who is the person I really want to be in? Am I being true to that? And just being aware of whether those are your expectations of yourself or your perceptions of what you think other people expect from you? First and foremost, be true to yourself? And then enable, the second one would be look at your, you know, how you project your expectations on others? And is it your expectation of what you want for them? Or is that you enabling them to be the best that they can be?

Andrew Stotz 17:14
According to the book, the road less traveled, Scott Peck said that true love is to help someone along in their spiritual development, even if it's not what you want.

Tim Hyde 17:27
Well, that's right. Yeah. I think that's my favorite poem from Robert Frost and as you know, the road less traveled to pass conversion of wood and I took and I took the road less traveled by and that made all the difference.

Andrew Stotz 17:40
Alright, last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months

Tim Hyde 17:45
my number one goal for the next 12 months is to number one goal. There are so many I think my number one goal is is to I think and it always comes back to this is to you know, enable other people to be their best now whether that's through my you know, through my business, and helping people build more resilient and more effective businesses, particularly over the last 12 months I guess so many people have been affected in their ability to do that but also to be more inspiring to the people around me to kind of live their best life so you know, look at ways that I can give back through through podcasts like this one or you know, I coach kids rugby as well and I look at the influence I have on those on those young men to be to you know, to not only support their teammates to deliver the adversity each and every time I think we can be better if we put it wants to win.

Andrew Stotz 18:48
Great well listeners there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you my listener, reduce risk and increase return in your life. To achieve this I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com also if you join you get a special discount on the six week valuation masterclass boot camp. As we conclude, Tim, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Tim Hyde 19:26
Look, just as I said, take advantage of the resources around you to live your best life and leave a legacy

Andrew Stotz 19:34
beautiful, and that's a wrap on another great story to help us create grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.