Espresso: The Messiah vs. Imposter Complex - Charlie McVeigh

0:06quite often if you're the founder you know the ultra-prender every founder both has some some kind of blend of messiah syndrome but also imposter syndrome right oh yeah so so so and like the dial is moving all the time between messiah like i know all the fucking answers and how dare anyone challenge me uh and then the other one is imposter syndrome i don't really know what i'm doing i haven't done this before you know i'm really worried because we're running out of money. And it's just a shit show, the whole thing. And what am I going to do? And I don't really know how to ask the question. And when you're in that side of the dial, you can hire people because you think, oh, well, they've done, you know, this guy has been the operations director of Wetherspoon, right?

1:00Or Mitchelson Butler, another huge pub co. And so he must know what he's doing, right? He has to. He's done it before. And I don't know what I'm doing because I'm just making it up, right? And then the guy comes in and to your point, he kind of wrecks it because he tries to remake it in his own way. And you're kind of like standing off. You're going, I'm just going to let this guy run it. And obviously, everything I've done is shit and everything he's going to do is brilliant. And of course, he understands the brand and everything else. Of course, he gets the team. And then it's all horrible and you end up firing him.

1:34and you get into a huge you know huge like you know just massive clusterfuck and then you have to somehow get out of that situation get some of the people back who've left you know that kind of pull it all back together again uh if you can't or maybe you go bust you know at that point so i think that is that that that you know whereas richard instinctive first of all he's humble so he so as a person uh so he listened uh i think he realized quite quickly a lot of what i was saying was shit but but you know he still listened and then he he was very respectful of the brand uh and uh and but together you know the the the two of us uh and then later rfd you know we did we did make it a better business you know through systematizing it but also through being respectful the brands are evolving things over time not wrecking the whole thing on day one not trying to completely change everything day one so yeah i think it was i think you could go you know but but hiring the right person and there there is always probably always going to be an element of luck in that because you know a lot of people are very impressive in interview and they might have great references but they may not actually just be the right guy for whatever reason and you need there's there's there's like you need the right guy for every role if you're going to be successful it's scary how much you need that you can't have people who are a bit shit or not quite right uh and then and then you have that the the other dial on that is okay so left side of the dial is i give them a chance and see see how they do maybe maybe they can they can get a bit better right side of dial is fucking firing right now you know and that's a rough dial that one because you don't know and the longer they're there that person is not quite right the more everyone who works with them is like getting pissed off uh and if they're not improving it's like it's cancer and then you just think yeah why didn't i do that yeah but you don't know some people turn around so it's difficult and making those decisions is difficult quick one guys Espressos have got a brand new sponsor Unleashed Unleashed is inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use Unleashed daily islands I bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins no way your stock is don't miss availability look your favorite brands literally use Unleashed as their backbone Candy Kiddens Tiny Rebel Trip always religiously Look there's a link In the show notes Please feel free To book a call With Josh And his wonderful Sales team at Unleashed They're amazing Even nothing comes of it And even better news You'll get your first Month free If you reference Hungary Thank you What you said about The pendulum swinging And I think You've hit this You've so hit The nail on the head Charlie With this Messiah Versus Imposter syndrome I mean I feel like I feel like that Pretty much every day whereas women i'm like i know zaya what i'll fucking do it the next room i'm like what am i doing and what's that um and so so but i think i think brands start and there's a huge healthy beak dosage of naivety and i really believe brands are a bit like um i see the brand progression is like as a as a journey of almost like a toddler growing up so as a toddler you're super curious you walk around try stuff and then as you get older i.e scale you almost become like that insecure 30 year old at the school disco i.e the imposter syndrome the hot licks of imposter syndrome come piling in and you're like fucking hell like someone else like someone tell me what to do like tell me what to dress like tell me what to and i've seen that happen and then the as you say and this is as you say the pendulum swings because it's one minute the founder's like right this person's coming in from wherever and they're gonna set a place when fire will listen to them and then but then then they've got to defend the team of the old guard i.e and be the messiah a bit and it's you get this as you say cluster cluster fade from where we said and um i think what's what what you said i'm really trying to get into the nuance of so many people listening to this we're trying to we'll be going on that journey and as you say if you don't get the right person the right role then it could go bust so so with with um richard you you said he was super humble so that's a good thing to look for he listened top his nails i mean i i richard Richard's ears will be burning.

6:17I'll have to tell him that he's being mentioned, and we'll see what he thinks about it. But he's a tough guy, but he was humble, you know, in the sense that he listened.

6:30And, you know, together, you know, we made that. We made the business what it was. What was your messiah slash imposter syndrome? Like, how did you navigate that as the founder? um i well i definitely thought and i and i only really realized this quite a long time after i sold the business i definitely thought that i was the only person who could run the business right i thought there was something special about me you know in terms of i don't know tone of voice and on on i wrote all the copy for example yeah the business and i thought that i only i had the right tone of voice and the copy no one else could do it whenever anyone else did it it was shit uh and you know that i was even though you know i've been talking about you know how you delegate and how you how you create systems to allow the business to grow i'm still in everything so there was no decision that i wasn't it you know i mean that's that's that's caused a huge exaggeration i wasn't ordering every part to be a supplier but but any any anything any decision particularly one that i thought was a fun decision like we had to get involved and even if it was someone else's job to make a decision it's like yeah i'll deal i'll deal with this you know this is really this is going to be really cool you know i'm just gonna i'm just gonna get involved here and just throw my weight around you know uh and uh i mean there's a there's a great uh i was i was talking a friend of mine runs a coaching business she she she has uh like 12 making us she's got 25 coaches and so she really she really knows about all this stuff And she said, one of the questions you need to ask a founder of a business is, do you want to be rich or do you want to be king?

8:22And when you work with someone, it's interesting. I mean, obviously, once again, talking about a dial or the pendulum, nobody's exclusively one or the other. but but um you know king is someone who has a court uh yeah everyone's around them is looking after them they make all the decisions it's topped out it's like putin's putin's army you know ultimately you know there's no decision making going on on the ground um it's all being made it's all topped out you know uh and so delegation uh and uh and there's also a big ego thing going are, right? Whereas rich is how do we make this business incredibly efficient and scalable so that it can grow and I can make lots of money.

9:12And every decision I make is going to be about how do I make more money out of this business? Of course, that can also kill the business. Because if you're forgetting to the earlier conversation, if you're forgetting about the soul of the business, the brand or whatever. If you make too many sacrifices on that front, you can lose it. So I think these are all interesting things to think about when you're either thinking about investing in a business or helping a business in some way or running a business. What am I? What are my instincts? And if I was to go under a bus tomorrow, what would happen?

9:50It's a good question to ask yourself. thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having ya if you want the full episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please leave friends as well means the world to me