665: (Solo) Why Waiting Until You Feel Ready Is the Biggest Mistake You Can Make

0:01Hey founder fam, before we jump in, I want to take a quick moment to talk about our sponsor OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students and members of our platform for a while now because it just works. So whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling it to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get results. And did you know, on average, OmniSend customers make$79 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And if you're already on another platform, here's the thing.

0:35In just five days, you could actually be paying 35 % less without doing an absolute thing. OmniSend will move every flow across, list, and template. You just show up when it's done. And finally, because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code FOUNDER50. Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder and that's founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump in the show. Hey guys, Nathan here. Welcome back to another Founder to Founder solo episode. These are quick solo episodes where I share lessons that I've learned building founder and also interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation building founder for the past 13 years.

1:19So today I want to talk about something really simple, but I've been thinking about it, which is super powerful. And it's something that I think it holds a lot of founders back way more than they realize. And that is the fear of embarrassment, the fear of putting yourself out there, the fear of getting it wrong, the fear of people watching you fail. And I've actually felt this at every stage of my journey. And it's something I hear more and more in our community, how scary or uncomfortable it can be to put yourself out there for your business. But here's the truth. If you want to build something meaningful, embarrassment is the price of admission.

1:54Nathan Chan:Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:08So I'll tell you guys a story. This is quite topical. So one of our Founder Plus members, her name's Donna. She's an all-star. She's just an absolute all-star. She created this brand called Junie and she's been part of our community, I'd say for about six months. And I've just seen her really active in the community building out Junie. She only just launched like two months ago and she's on it, right? Like she's putting herself out there. She's never built a brand before. I remember even asking these combos around founder-led content and she put herself out there and she was able to get one of our local founder friends, Brittany Saunders.

2:42If you haven't checked out our interview with her, she's incredible. how she's built fate and she's built like many multiple seven eight figure brands incredible ddc founder anyways britney saunders shouted out her brand and she literally sold out over a couple of days and her business world her business life has completely changed and it wouldn't have happened if she didn't put herself out there and i remember like even some of the conversations that i saw because i think donna came to one of our live events and you know joined founder plus and then she was really kind of nervous about this idea of putting yourself out there.

3:16And when people look at successful businesses, they see the brand, they see the growth, they see the success, but what they don't see is the awkward beginnings. They don't see the things that didn't work. They don't see the moments where things felt incredibly uncomfortable. And I'm so passionate about this idea of founder-led content where you put yourself out there and no one's going to see. And even if you suck at it, no one's going to see it. And then as you get better, more people will see it, right? So it doesn't really matter. But building anything from scratch requires visibility. And visibility comes with risk.

3:47Like I still remember the day that I launched Founder. After all that work, all that effort, I was so embarrassed to like write about it. Like on my personal Facebook page. And then I remember we made$5.50 on the first day that we launched. And I remember my housemate had got home from work. And I'm like, man, let's go out for dinner. And so we walked down the road to the local fish and chip shop. and his girlfriend was with me at the time. And I said, yeah, guys. So I launched the magazine and I made$5.50. It was on my first day of launch. And his girlfriend laughed and was like, ha, is that all?

4:23And I remember being like kind of embarrassed and also quite jaded. And, you know, you have moments where you think, is this working? Is this completely wrong? What are people thinking right now? Is it worth it? Do I need to keep going? And that moment, as uncomfortable and as embarrassing as it is, that's the starting point. And what people don't realize is that feeling, it actually doesn't go away. It just shows up in different ways. Like even more recently, we ran our first, like founder does a lot of live virtual events now. And we get like sometimes 10, 15, 20 ,000 people registered for these events.

5:00And there's like thousands and thousands of people live. And we started doing a couple of years ago. And I remember the first one we did in 2024, it's something we'd never done at that scale before. and I'm going to be honest with you, like there were teething issues. Things didn't go perfectly. There were moments where it felt really uncomfortable and I was thinking, oh my God, all these people here watching me and like, I've got no idea what I'm doing, but we did it anyway. And now we run events regularly. We've had incredible founders featured. We've built something we're so proud of and it's changed how we do business, but it all started with stepping into something we hadn't mastered yet.

5:32So most founders think visibility is about confidence or personality or being good on camera, but it's not. It's about reps. The more you show up, the more comfortable you get, the better you become and the less you care about how you're perceived. I remember when I first did some camera work because we were launching a program. It was our first ever program and it was around Instagram and I was so bad. But then over time, I just got better and then eventually get to the point where you don't even know the camera's there, right? And here's the bigger problem. When you avoid embarrassment, you avoid growth because the things that grow your business usually sit right on the other side of this discomfort.

6:10Posting content, launching something new, testing a new channel, putting yourself out there, hiring that person, asking for that partnership, pitching that influencer like Donna did, right? If you wait until you feel ready, you'll be waiting too long. And in today's world, this matters more than ever because founders are expected to create content, show up online, build a personal brand, communicate their ideas. And that means being visible, which means being open to mistakes, to criticism and to things not landing perfectly. So go and check out one of our members. Her brand is called Junie and you'll see that Donna's putting herself out there and it's amazing to watch.

6:46And that's what we do at Founder. We help you guys. We help you guys build and grow successful brands. So the next time you think to yourself, what if this is embarrassing? I want you to ask, what if this thing actually moves my business forward because every time you post every time you launch every time you try something new you're actually building a skill that compounds over time so the takeaway today if you want to grow your business you have to get uncomfortable being uncomfortable you have to be willing to put yourself out there before you feel ready because embarrassment isn't something to avoid it's part of the process it's the price of admission as always if these episodes resonate with you if this one in particular did please share it with another founder we work so hard me and the founder the team to find you the most craziest founders that are growing their brand so fast to help you learn and grow your business and we hope that you can share it with another founder we hope that you want to join our community in some way shape or form and as always guys we'd love to hear feedback if you could rate review the show on spotify apple podcast or wherever you're listening with me in the world thank you again i'll speak to you soon