EP71: Stuck in the Middle with Denial

On this week’s episode of the Marketing Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank continue their conversation about the middle phase in the creation of every startup or new product — being stuck. That’s the stage when things aren’t working out the way you’d envisioned them. That’s when prospects aren’t embracing your concept as you’d hoped they would. That’s when you have that sinking feeling that this whole project might be a terrible, terrible mistake. Something’s wrong! Panicking isn’t going to help the situation, but neither is denial. That can lead to faking that everything is just fine — when you know darn well it isn’t. Listen to Chris’ warning: “It’s hard to be honest once you start faking it.” Corey and Chris encourage you to face the truth, because as they say, “The truth is the boss!”

Come listen to how to use your resources to get an honest assessment about why you’re stuck so that you can start moving toward getting your project back in flow. You’ll learn these details and other great advice in this week’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Stuck in the Middle with Denial.”

 

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The complete transcript of this episode is below:

Chris Beall (01:40):

Oh, yeah. But what do we do when we're stuck for too long? We go back and we fake flow?

Corey Frank (01:56):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (01:56):

That's what we do. We fake flow and faking flow is the death knell of a start-up. You're dead if you fake flow because where you're going to go is somewhere and where the gold is somewhere else.

Corey Frank (02:08):

And also you have these quarterly or every eight weeks or so meetings with your board as a start-up, right. And we both been there where you got to give him something, you got to shoot a hostage, you got to give him some red meat, you got to make a virgin offering or something or you have to fake it. And that's the worst because you're an ear inauthentic in all of those and it sounds like... Which is probably going to butcher it. I think it was Lao-Tzu who had this Zen syllogism he says, "I know nothing, I know everything, I know nothing."

Chris Beall (02:46):

Yes, yeah.

Corey Frank (02:46):

And the stages that folks go through, right. And some folks will never get past the first or the second stage. So when you look at that from the makeup of a start-up so we drill a little deeper here. That has to be a safe place for Cherryl to be able to go to the CEO of the company in this new position she's in and say, "Hey boss, I'm just not feeling it. I think we need," "What do you mean it's not feeling it?" Right. And then there's got to be a level of humility there to incorporate other folks. So how do you, you mentioned earlier that a start-up of one it's a tough and lonely proposition to do and arguably you could say that the success curve is a little more elongated than one with multiple folks but what are you doing to kind of surround yourself with those kinds of folks? We talked early on and at some of the earlier episodes last year about politics and bcc'ing emails and all that kind of stuff.

We don't have to go into it now but right now if I'm going to start-up and I don't necessarily have those types of folks, what can I do to get it? How can I navigate those waters to showcase folks that, "Hey, maybe I'm stuck and we need to break out of this otherwise we are faking it".

Chris Beall (04:04):

Yeah. I think that the trick to start-ups is like the trick to everything. One is tough, one person it's a tough business, right. I used to be as you know pretty serious rock climber mountaineer. That's a very, very, very dangerous game to do alone. Not only because there's no rope to catch you but primarily because you can't trust your mind and you think you can but where are you going to check it, right. Where are you going to check it? Where are you going to figure out whether you're doing something based on fear, on self-induced bravado, on you're tired you just don't want to think about it anymore so you're going to try it. It's a dangerous, dangerous world. Start–ups are a lot like that, we did an episode in which you brought up the Free Solo your pitch, right. Alex, up there climbing a El Capitan's-

Corey Frank (04:56):

El Capitan's, yeah.

Chris Beall (04:57):

Free Soloing it. Well, if you watch the movie you see that he's not really alone, alone in that endeavor, right. He's got people that he talks to, he's a kind of guy who can trust his own mind by the way almost but he's too smart to trust only his own mind. So he has other people to talk with and I think that even that kind of thing it's not the rope, it's the relationship that allows you to go. And what do you have to have? You got to have somebody who sees the world a little differently from you is on your side. And is sincerely going to come