Why Your Parents' Advice Is Killing Your Business

Welcome to the Paul Vette podcast. I'm not going to talk about how things should be done, but mainly about who you need to be. I challenge you to become the owner of your true identity. Time for your breakthrough and enjoyment in your business. Never listen to your parents' advice, never do that. Many entrepreneurs still carry voices of their parents with them - dad in the back of their head having an opinion about something, or mom having an opinion about something, or even asking permission or discussing their business with their parents, or not even discussing their business with their parents, but when they're with their parents, then they have opinions about it. And then you take that with you, both consciously and unconsciously. But truly, never use that advice. Simple, you know why? You are not your parents. You just aren't. You're not a copy of them. No, because you have 2 parents and you came from them. So that means you're not a copy of your dad and not a copy of your mom. That means that your parents' advice 99 times out of 100 doesn't align with your path, with where you want to go. Look, when you're a child that's still useful, right? But the moment you're an adult, those guidelines your parents give are not at all fitting for the person you are now. Check this. Often when you speak with your parents, your parents often still look at you or even treat you like some kind of fourteen-year-old. You feel it, they make you smaller. And that's logical, they know you through and through and they know your patterns through and through. But they're going to sort of combine that and fix it onto a person that you actually haven't been for a long time. Because they've just seen that from you for so long and find it very difficult to take the change along in their minds, they will always still address you as an older person. Not the person you are and certainly not the person you can be. So you really have to set aside your parents' advice. In fact, it often works even better to get their advice and then do exactly what they don't say. Especially if your parents aren't entrepreneurs and you are an entrepreneur. That definitely doesn't work. If they are successful entrepreneurs, then you can still adopt certain strategies, but you must always test whether it fits you at the core, in who you are. Does the behavior you then have to display, does that fit you? Does the story you tell yourself then fit you? Do the emotions you need for that fit you? The environment you then have to put yourself in - does that fit you? Because the moment they give advice, that might be correct. But that doesn't mean it's correct for you. Because as an entrepreneur you have to determine your own life and determine your own business. It could be that if your parents say, jump through that hoop and the result is this, and you do it and the result is there. You think yeah, but they're just right. What they say is correct. It is correct based on the result. But how do you feel about the path you have to walk then? How do you feel about the result? And not every parent has the same amount of influence on your life. I myself grew up with my mother because my parents divorced when I was 1.5. So my mother had much more influence on me than my father. That means I'm actually even more removed from who my mother was because when parents divorce, then the oldest son, in my case an only child, becomes the support pillar. So then that becomes my mother's counterpart. Yeah, then I really shouldn't listen to my mother, who by the way passed away 10 years ago. But truly, just don't listen to your parents. Just don't do that. You're an adult, you have to make your own choices and you have to lay down that path that fits your core 100 percent. And if you don't do that, then sooner or later you'll notice that it starts to chafe, that you get tension, that you get stress. And if you're still someone who gets advice from mom or dad, then you'll notice that it only starts to chafe more. Even though you can keep going for a while because you're already used to following the advice. Then that path they've laid out for you probably aligns in that line too. But it doesn't fit you. And the bigger that gap becomes between who you are in reality and how you behave, the more tension builds up. Suddenly it snaps. Suddenly you collapse, suddenly you burn out. Suddenly you're just done with it, you feel like selling everything and saying 'screw it, I'm out of here'. And those kinds of signals are often already present in entrepreneurs, and not because of the shit you get as an entrepreneur. Because you choose problems yourself. And the bigger the business, the bigger the problems. And you have to fix those. And then I understand that you sometimes think yeah shit, I'll sell everything and just go sit on an island. I can well imagine that. But that happens much faster when you're not walking your own path, but someone else's - dad's or mom's. So leave them behind you. Just know okay, from the moment you're 18 years old, maybe 22 years old, but definitely after that. Just leave them behind you. Don't let them interfere with your business. Don't let them interfere with your life and instead connect with your parents in other ways. Because you shouldn't cut the bond. I'm not in favor of that. But just leave them behind you in the past. You, you're supposed to go further than where they stopped. That's really, really important to realize. You're going further than where they stopped. So where you're standing now and going to, they'll never get there. They don't think of that either. They're from a different generation. They'll already be deceased by the time you're there. They're not involved with that at all. Not in that way anyway. So leave them behind you. Keep the bond good, but don't listen to them. Your growth is further fueled. Ready to take full ownership? Then check the link in the show notes. --- This transcript has been translated from Dutch.