Transcription
Why does one's own social circle actually begrudge success much less than some strangers on the internet? This is somehow so counterintuitive because people who genuinely like you, who love you, support you less than people you've basically never seen before. And I've actually thought about this for a long, long, long time, for many, many years, because I've also repeatedly noticed that the people who no longer support you still somehow always find out everything, you know? They watch your stories and somehow you have the feeling they are totally informed, and when you then look at your comments, at your likes, nothing happens from them. And I believe I now know why this is, why this happens, and why focusing on it is somewhat dangerous for your own business and can actually slow you down or even ruin you. And if you truly understand this, you will eventually see your social circle a bit differently, and especially your business differently. But you will also create completely different content. Of course, I don't know how far along you are in your business by now, but let's just say you've just started your business and you notice a little bit that your social circle still supports you strongly. Everyone is somehow a bit excited, everyone is a bit hyped. You notice that people still like and comment, friends also comment, and everyone is still a little bit, you know, a bit over the top, you know, as if it were the biggest thing in the world, and for many people, starting a business is indeed the biggest thing in the world, but your friends, acquaintances, family, everyone still supports you. Yes, your posts are shared in stories and so on, and perhaps you've experienced this before. Yes, so maybe you've been self-employed for a while, then you will certainly have experienced this in the beginning, but at some point it also flattens out again. And I used to be totally happy when my mother, my father, or some buddies shared my posts in their stories, because then I knew that it would reach completely different people, you know, if you are reposted by me now, for example, or by someone else in the business niche, then it's the case that you reach these people very, yes, in detail. But one's own social circle, the private social circle, often has people who might, I don't know what kind of business you have, perhaps also become your customers. Yes, if you have e-commerce and sell candles, then you are totally proud and happy and pleased if your friends also buy something from you, and they like it, and they also leave a positive review, and so on. And as I said, I always try to see it a bit from my bubble, but I know that many people listen here, many people watch from the most diverse niches, but just from a feeling, it's already nice to see when friends and family support it. For me, it's now the case that I've been self-employed for many, many years and I always have the feeling that if someone from my family or my circle of friends becomes self-employed, then I always support them a lot, and then I look at my posts and don't see those people there at all. So really, even the closest family members, I just don't see them there anymore. And why this is the case, that will become clearer to you in the course of this video. They don't mean it maliciously, but subconsciously, yes. So subconsciously, there's a bit of, ah, a bit of meanness in there, but we'll unravel all of that in a moment. Because if you start becoming more successful and better and better at what you do, then your topics also change a bit, right? So your target audience avatar doesn't normally appeal to your friends very much, and you notice it very slowly, yes, the likes become a bit less, the story shares become fewer and fewer, the comments are completely gone anyway at some point, and somehow you really notice that your own family, your own best friends appear less and less on your profile. But they still see all your posts. But they are simply not as hyped anymore. And if you then go to a village festival or something like that, in my case, you see the looks from people, and you know exactly, you watched my story. Why don't you ever interact with my posts? If you want to have a beer with me now, and then, especially at the beginning of self-employment, this question often arises: Am I somehow too much? Is what I'm doing embarrassing? Should I not talk about it so openly? If you know my recent videos and generally follow me, you know that I also talk about money very often. And money is already a topic in Germany where, I don't want to say you should speak cautiously, but where you definitely don't get an extremely positive response, especially from your own circle. And I know this from personal experience. Yes, I've been self-employed for about 12 years now, and in the early years, of course, I struggled. Yes, I earned my first, I don't know, thousands of euros a month. Yes, thousands of euros, maybe 2, 3,000 euros gross, and theoretically couldn't really make ends meet. That was all the beginning. Yes, the first years were simply difficult. I've also told you in another video that I didn't make a single sale on my first launch back then, which was ages ago, absolutely nothing. I worked on it for weeks, hyped, hyped, hyped, and always thought, yes, the sales will only come in the last minutes and so on, and waited and waited, and really nothing happened. That was a shock for me too, and meanwhile, I've now told you a few times that with my online business, I've earned well over 2 million euros just with digital products, not counting all the coaching and mentoring, but really with online courses or online programs, over 2 million euros. I earn on average somewhere between 30, 40, 50, 100,000 euros net per month. And I'm self-employed solo, which means I have virtually no costs. Yes, so no employee costs. I hardly run any ads. Let's say I have 5,000 euros in costs per month, and the rest is margin, right? So I can live extremely well from it now and earn, I don't know, more than a chief physician. Yes, so I don't want to have a discussion about whether that's fair or not. It is simply as it is, and it has grown incredibly in recent years. Maybe a quick tip, if you want to know how I always do it, you'll always find a link to my free workshop under my videos or in the podcast show notes. You can take a look at it. There I explain how I build my evergreen system. Because I also work very little, only about 15 hours a week, and exactly, let's get back to the topic. I was definitely with a buddy, yes, in my garden, we talked a bit. We used to meet very regularly until he had children, until I had children, and so on. And that was the moment, that was a while ago, I already had about 10,000 euros net left per month on average. Yes, so it was already over 20, 22,000 euros in revenue on average. Yes, so there were better months, worse months, but the average was somewhere around 20,000. And that was the time when everything became extremely expensive, yes, when utility costs became expensive, when prices exploded, when inflation was really high. And he was telling me, he went shopping and, yes, butter is now somehow 1.30 euros more expensive than before, and cheese costs, I don't even know the prices anymore, let's say 5 euros instead of 3 euros, and he didn't know how he would pay for it all. And I'm sitting there thinking, yes, okay, I can absolutely no longer relate to that. So, it was really a real barrier between the two of us, where I didn't know what to say, because first of all, I don't know what butter or cheese or anything like that costs, because I've never paid attention to it. Yes, in my entire life, even when I had little money, I never paid attention to what things cost, but I buy what I want, and then at the end of the month, there was often no money left. But I've never really restricted myself. Yes, that led to problems at the beginning of my life. At the end of my life, I say already, but now it's relatively irrelevant to me. And I just buy, yes, so amounts are irrelevant to me. Recently I thought, my headphones broke, so I immediately got the new AirPods. That's at some point, you know, when you earn 15, 20,000 euros net per month for a long time, then you just don't care anymore, and then you can no longer identify with these normal everyday worries of your girlfriend and your family. And then I think to myself, because he expected an answer from me, my dear friend, I don't want to name any names, you know what I do on the internet, because you watch every story of mine, and if you know, for example, that I've won awards here for millions of euros in revenue, then it should also be clear to you that this might not be such a good topic for both of us. And instead of complaining that everything has become so expensive, because I know the friend would also like to be self-employed, he could have simply asked me, because we've known each other for 15 years. Listen, Sebastian, what you're doing there, I'm so excited about it. Can't you somehow help me? I love it when other people become successful. Really, I have such a drive to always talk about business and to help other people move forward. Yes, even in my private life, it always revolves around this topic. But instead of asking something, we talk about butter prices and other trivial things. The most obvious question in the world is always, Sebastian, I saw you have these little awards back there, they're not so visible in the picture. You've won marketing awards. You're one of the best marketers in Germany. Yes, so I've won such awards multiple times by audience vote. Please help me. No, that doesn't happen because Germany has some kind of thing going on with successful people. And I have to talk about Germany in general for a moment. I am myself through and through a kind of stuffy German. Yes, I go on vacation in the Netherlands or in the mountains. I sit at home a lot, I love my garden, I have a single-family house with a garden, a child, and a dachshund. Yes, so totally typical. And yet, I think I differ extremely from at least my social circle in one thing. I don't know about you. Write me in the comments now what you think about it, because sometimes I feel really alone. Listen, when I talk to people, yes, they are mostly proud of the low interest rates with which they financed their kitchen or that they have recently taken out debt and still got another loan. And when you then say, well, I don't need a loan at all, I can buy it like this, then you get a strange look. So the more successful you are, the stranger you are looked at, and the more unsuccessful you are and the more you complain and grumble, the more respected it is. So, I also know these bubbles that sometimes settle in my comments, which I usually block because I don't want discussions, who then grumble, are always grumbling, always shifting the responsibility away from themselves. Yes, they say, yes, this is shit, this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. To which I always think, self-responsibility, maybe not everything else is shit, maybe you yourself are a bit shit. I know that not everything is going well, but if I manage to go from zero, really from zero, I don't have rich parents. 8 or 9 years ago, or wait, yes, 8 or 9 years ago, I was broke, 0 euros in my account, or even negative, I was overdrawn. If I manage to become a millionaire through my own efforts from my basement, which was significantly smaller and looked different before, to become a millionaire in a high-tax country, why can't others do it? Probably because I never wanted to admit or admit that it couldn't be possible. Yes, and I also pay far too many taxes. I know that, and of course I could optimize a lot there, and yet it somehow works. Yes, so I still managed it. And then I always think to myself, why are we in Germany like this, that we don't celebrate successful or rich people? A friend of mine lives in Bangkok or Bali, Bangkok or Bali, and he says the culture there is completely different, not just there, but also in America and almost every other country, when successful people, especially those who are bootstrapped, meaning they built it up themselves, are celebrated immensely. In Germany, you are envied immensely, and envy is so ugly because it triggers nothing in yourself except anger, and not in the other person either. And I find it really a shame that we can't manage to simply celebrate other successful people. So, that's a very brief excursion in this direction, because I think it fits quite well with what's coming next. So I want to explain to you why the whole topic of friends eventually stopping interacting with you really happens. So, why do people eventually stop interacting with you? This is actually the case with everyone I know. Eventually, only the mother or father still likes your posts, otherwise almost no one else. Because strangers, people who may not know you yet or only know you from the internet, they see your potential, and your social circle knows your real, true, long history. So they know you before you were successful. So they don't interpret it as, he's always been a marketing pro or something, but they see, ah, that's Sebastian, I had a drink with him in May, and we both stumbled home drunk. The fact that this stumbling, drunk person might also harbor a marketing genius, that doesn't bother them at all. They don't see that. Other people who don't have that, they see it, and that's why, and I personally find this quite good about my personal brand, I've heard that I come across as somewhat unapproachable in my posts and videos, and that's actually a value in my personal brand. I want to be inspiring and serve as a role model. And if we two were to talk on the phone 24/7, then you would eventually see me like your friends do and no longer be inspired by my words. This sounds totally strange now, but I'll give you another example. If you have a musician you adore, you don't actually want to meet them privately, if we're being honest, because either they're a huge asshole or they're not as divine as you think the musician might be. They go to the toilet like all of us. They have a normal everyday life, they're probably a bit out of touch, and that would probably annoy you more as a friend. But if you only see their genius in their music, then you are much more likely to be a fan. So, and now, turning this around to your friends. Friends can't actually become fans of you. Fans shouldn't become friends of yours. Friends who know you from the past don't judge your business or what you post, but they always put it in the context of what they know about you. And then they think, but he's just a normal guy. What does he think he's qualified to talk about something like this? You know, so this thing that your social circle, with whom you've had a drink before, whatever, they think, what does he think he's entitled to? And in my case, it's even more extreme because I talk about money, I talk about freedom, I talk about how easy and pleasant my life is. And for me at the moment, I actually feel that everything is perfect. I have a house, I have no debts, I have a lot of money, I have a super healthy and sweet daughter who I just had, a few months ago. I have a wife I love, with whom I enjoy being. I truly have everything I've ever dreamed of, and then other people see that things aren't going so well for me, and with others, they would be motivated by strangers. But with someone they know, only a feeling arises. I want that too. Why does he have that? And very, very few people are truly inspired and motivated by friends to build something of their own. The only question I sometimes get, I still have to laugh when I think about it. At some point, a friend of mine, an old friend of mine, asked if he wanted to do the same thing as me. He wants to do training in it now, if I could do that. Then I think to myself, there is no training in what I do. So, you have to be able to do copywriting, you have to be able to do funnels, you have to be able to do marketing, you have to be able to create content, you have to be able to design, you have to be able to do video. What kind of training would that be? There is, of course, training, more or less, my program on how to be successful with your online business, but that takes time. You need an incredible number of skills for that, and so on, it's not done overnight in training. And that's it, then I said, yes, but it's not that easy. It's a lot of work. You have to put in a few hours every day. Oh, no, then it's too strenuous for me. Okay, then it's too strenuous for you. But then don't envy my success. Strangers on the internet don't know all these backstories. They only see what you do today. Yes, especially if you're encountering my content for the first time today, then you think, what is this guy talking about? And then you might, because it's good or because you're interested, watch another video. Then you might go to the workshop, then you look on Instagram, then you notice, ah yes, somehow we vibe, and maybe you'll become a customer, maybe never. That's all perfectly fine, but friends will never become customers. So, in all the years I've been self-employed, there's only been one instance that I'd like to highlight briefly. I wrote a book in 2019, and my father-in-law, who is now 84, was 77 seven years ago, I think 77. He bought two books about online marketing back then. Yes, it was about Instagram and conspiracy theories on Instagram, nobody like that. Yes, he bought them and said, Hans, why? I can also give them to you as a gift. Then he said, no, I'll definitely buy them. I want to support you. And he hasn't read the books to this day, because of course they don't interest him in the slightest, but he bought my books to support me. And I think my rest of the family didn't buy any, neither my mother nor my father, nor my sister. I don't blame them at all, but you notice that this thought, ah yes, I could support him, doesn't occur to family members, because my family then of course also knows, well, he has enough money, so I don't need to buy anything else there. Quite the opposite, they wanted one as a gift, which I of course also did, but just to illustrate this picture that an incredible number of people will not support you from your circle of friends and family in the long run. Especially not when it doesn't interest them at all. And now comes the bombshell, because this whole social environment, this whole framing, all that you perceive, it can destroy your business. It doesn't stay private, it creeps into your business. It eventually creeps into every piece of content, into every hook you write, into every story. What do you think about how many people write to me, I want to start faceless first, so without a face, just my voice. Then I say, why? Yes, my partner doesn't like it, or I don't want my neighbors to see it, or I don't want him to see it, I don't want them to see it. And that's where it starts. I'm not blaming anyone, but you notice at that moment, or in that moment, you notice how incredibly strong the influence of the social circle is on one's own success. This confirms everything I said before. You're afraid of becoming successful because you're afraid of rejection, you're afraid of failing and then everyone saying, I told you so, this was a crazy idea with this crap. Better get a 520 euro job again or whatever. People don't understand that. Or not all people, but most people don't understand that. And when you're just starting out, you're not yet in this business bubble. Among other things, that's why my program always has a community. So that you at least have a few people who are doing the same thing as you and who celebrate it, you know? So that you can exchange ideas. And I've noticed that myself for years, that I've repeatedly thought about what I can even say on the internet. What kind of hooks can I even create so that my social circle doesn't think I've lost my mind? And for years I've kept silent about how much money I actually earn. I always, ah, I always, yes, I used to only do Instagram content anyway, but when I started doing business content, you know how it is in Germany, people who do successful business content also mention how much revenue they make. That's also for proof reasons. Yes, if you now know, okay, I have no employees, I don't run ads, and I still earn 50,000 euros a month, then that's initially something where you think, okay, he's alone, he works little, how does he earn so much money? That's not a bad goal to achieve, is it? Yes, we agree on that. How I did it. Whether it's for you is another matter. But the point isn't bad at first. So, and now communicate that to your friends and family. Yes, to your buddy who earns 3,000 euros a month gross, or let's say 5,000 euros. He earns 5,000 gross, but has a mortgage, has one or two children, and has 200 euros left at the end of the month. Now tell him that you work 15 hours, earn 50,000 euros a month, so ten times as much as he does, and if you break it down to an hourly wage, you actually earn 30 times as much as he does. Explain that. He won't understand. And then I started with videos like, I got rich when I understood this, or 1 million euros per year in revenue, and people from my circle came and said, ah, is that necessary? Do you have to post it like that? Do you have to say it like that? It's embarrassing for me. I don't want my neighbors to know, or I don't want my friends to know that I have anything to do with you, and so on. I thought to myself, what's actually going on? What's wrong in Germany? Be proud that I have a buddy who earns so much money. No, no one is proud of that. And this whole topic, that you don't dare to say it yourself anymore, usually leads to extreme price limitation for many people out there. I know coaches who charge 300 euros for coaching, for something that would definitely be worth 3,000, 5,000, or even 10,000 euros. But they say, and I found that interesting too, they say to me, yes, I can't sell something for 5,000 euros while my husband only earns 3,000 euros a month. I've heard that, no joke. I had a client who said, well, we have to stop scaling now, otherwise I'll earn more than my husband. I'd like to leave that hanging in the air for a moment, because it makes me angry. Not just because of the huge mismatch in the relationship, we're not going to talk about that, but generally that the entire, ah, I don't even know what to say. Honestly, why do people limit themselves to fit in better with others? That annoys me. And if you observe this whole topic in your social circle, in your immediate circle, there are different types. You've surely noticed. First, there's the benevolent one, who genuinely means well for you, yes. He finds everything you do great. But he doesn't really ask questions. He doesn't really care. Be successful, it's all cool. And I personally find that the worst kind of social circle, and it's very common, especially in partnerships. That's the skeptic. He always has a smile on his face. He always says, yes, let's see if it works, or I've heard that often, especially from women in this topic, yes. Yes, she's built up a small side business. Fortunately, I earn enough, and so on. Yes, I think these are by far the worst people, because they have such a toxic effect on everything. And these people, these skeptics, are actually the people who want to do the same thing, if you break it down. Yes, because I've observed this strongly in recent years. If someone was very skeptical at the beginning, then they are the ones who eventually ask, can you help me? I don't know if you've observed that too. It's definitely struck me. And then there are the invisible ones. That's the majority of people. They watch everything you do. They know everything. They might even talk behind your back about your business and what you're up to. Yes, but only if they are asked, of course. They're not gossips, but they're simply invisible, but don't interact with you. And I think we could work a bit more on this base in Germany. That means, if a friend of yours becomes self-employed, give a like, comment something nice, and that's it. I have so many people in my circle who simply don't do that, and I, I accept it now, but I still can't understand it, because I'm completely different, and for years I've thought, screw it, come on, I have to rise above it, that's just how it is in Germany, and that's just nonsense, because in reality, no one permanently stands above the opinion of the social circle that surrounds them most closely. We need people in our environment who know how it feels, who can also understand what a launch is like, simply how much work it is, how much emotional work is involved in a launch, and how frustrating and at the same time happy and oh my god it is during this entire time, who understand that if you launch 30, 40, 50,000 euros in a month, it was months or years of work. We need these people, and the solution isn't, as many do, yes, change your social circle or whatever, yes, you can't easily, you can't easily cut off your entire social circle, you don't have to. But you should build a second social circle that reflects these exact vibes to you and with whom you can really exchange ideas. When you talk to people who are either further along than you or who at least have the same ambitions, then it's simply a completely different, awesome vibe, you know? I have a few people with whom I always exchange WhatsApps, including voice messages, and if they tell me, wow Sebi, I've now earned, I don't know, 300,000 euros in a launch, I think I'll try to scale to a million a year now, then I don't say, ah, but don't you think it's enough already? Then I say: "Wow, what are you planning? Can I help you somehow? Can we look at this and that?" And then we just talk about how it might be possible to get there. All these online things you can buy, the most important thing within these products, so, yes, even in my product, is the community that forms out of it. People always write to me, I'm still in contact with so-and-so, whom I met in your coaching four years ago. That's what carries you in the long run. You need this second social circle of people who are just like that, at least have similar ambitions to you. And you know what's crazy? The more successful you become, the stronger both become. Because you grow, of course, yes, you have more reach, you have more revenue, you have more people, you have more strangers celebrating you, and you increasingly notice who from your old social circle absolutely no longer fits you and perhaps never did. That's also completely normal. Yes, people develop very differently. People develop at different speeds in different directions. That's perfectly fine. You will never like all the people you like now in 30, 40 years. Perfectly normal. But your judgment about your current situation must never be shaped by these people, whom you might not even have in your circle in 10 years, because then you will also never grow out of your own social circle. What's important is to stand by yourself, to stand by what you do, and to grow from it. And the question of whether this is all a great decision, what you're doing right now, will always come up. I also have weeks where hardly anyone signs up for my workshop, then no one buys again, and then you think again: "Oh shit, then suddenly no posts perform anymore. I have weeks where LinkedIn suddenly crashes, Instagram crashes, and YouTube suddenly crashes, only to then go full throttle a week or two later, and I have another outlier. An outlier is a viral video in relation to the size of the channel. Yes, so if I have, for example, 1,000 views here on YouTube or in the podcast, and then I suddenly have 10,000, then that's an outlier. And that happens again and again, because reach is also so volatile. Yes, so we always have a curve in reach. The only important thing is that it points upwards in the long term or that stronger trust is built within this curve in the long term, so that you can win customers from it. And if you're sitting there asking yourself this question, then you have a voice in your head. And it's important to consider, who is this voice coming from right now? Is it from someone who knows where you want to go, who is perhaps already there, who knows what it all costs? Usually not. The fastest way to fail is to listen to people who are not in a position to judge what you are going through.