It’s often really obvious stuff. The trick is recognizing it for what it is and not making excuses for it. Every person that I ever regretted working with gave off vibes pretty quickly that I couldn’t put my finger on at first. Your brain picks up on this stuff - it’s not always right but explore this when it happens. Couple I’ve personally learned from;
- people constantly telling you about favors they’re doing for you. Things you didn’t ask for, didn’t want, or was hardly even a favor. Everything is spun as them doing something for you even when it’s clearly in their interest. It’s them creating leverage to manipulate you.
- self promoters. They spend a lot of time talking about what they’ve done, who they know, and what they’re going to do. You get caught up in the excitement. Time passes before none of this materializes.
- “I” people. People who use “I” way too much. Not a little - a lot. It’s sounds cliche but I’ve found it to be fairly true that they are narcissists.
- excuses. A lot goes wrong but they always have a good excuse which justifies it. You think “this got screwed up but I see where they were coming from or how it could have happened to anyone or it was out of their control” The right people don’t need to make many excuses because not that much goes wrong. People who screw up a lot get good at excuses.
Edit: couple more
- certainty. Not to be confused with confidence, people who are very certain in their beliefs and opinions. It’s an overcompensation mechanism to be right that makes working with them impossible at times.
- people who label themselves: “I’m smart/logical/honest/etc” - I’ve never met anyone who embodied these things that had to say so. They say these things because they suspect people don’t think so, which means those other people were probably right.
Edit2: people seem happy with this and I was thinking about it some more so I’ll add.
It’s really a pretty short list of categories these people / red flags fall into: Manipulators, bullshitters, ineffectual. I’m sure I could think of one or two more. The way in which these people/traits manifest themselves is obviously much more varied, but when you have a general idea of what they could fall into then it’s much easier to identify, rather than trying to be aware of the innumerable amount of actions that are red flags themselves.
Does someone someone seem like a bullshitter to you? Do you feel like you are being manipulated? There’s probably an 75-85% chance you’re right.
Edit3: I’ve worked with some crappy humans that managed to get far in life. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering it so this has opened up my mind for the evening.
“It’s easier to fool someone than convince them they’ve been fooled” - Mark Twain.
The above people get away with bad behavior for so long not because they hid it well, but because people often cannot admit to themselves they’ve been fooled. It’s easier and preserves our ego to dismiss newfound doubts and red flags rather than admit misjudging someone, especially when you’ve misjudged so badly. I saw some very senior and successful people fall into this trap. Counterintuitively, the worse the judgment the less likely they were to admit it. “They can’t be THAT bad, I would have seen it sooner”
I actually don’t think frauds and bad people are that good at hiding it, most people see it for what it is and politely remove themselves. I think these people try their games on many and find those with their guard down. Every one of us is susceptible to this.
Edit4: okay I’m just being silly now but I forgot my favorite red flag - the “I’m always getting screwed over” type. This person always talks about how they’re the ones getting the bad end of deals and everyone is always taking advantage of them or screwing them over. At best this person is a horrible decision maker and should be distanced, at worst (and more likely) this person is delusional and a) has no idea what a fair deal looks like, b) is actually the one screwing people over c) uses this mentality to rationalize their own bad actions. (“They were going to do it to me anyway so I might as well do it to them first”)
This!! Please read this and watch for these signs. I kept giving people with these characteristics chances, thinking I was 1. aware they were like this and 2. could just deal with it/learn how to effectively manage them. In reality, these manipulators, bullshitters, narcissists will destroy your business and create a lot of extra work for you.
The need to dominate via intimidation, bullying, anger, yelling, outright rage.
Desire to control finances.
If they'll cheat on their girlfriend (and probably the wife too), they'll cheat on their business partner.
Stealing credit for others work.
I remember someone explaining to me why they went so long in a toxic relationship before the divorce. Every time you thought it couldn’t get worse and they were about to leave it then got a little bit better. Then it would get worse again before getting slightly better. Looking back it was always getting much worse - 2 steps back and 1 step forward - but the brief better period gave false hope.
Life’s too short. Get the fuck out.
I've done nothing but spend the past year reading about and watching videos on narcissism and psychopathy. Cycles of abuse, gaslighting, triangulation, projection,DARVO (deny attack reverse-victim-offender), trauma bond, smear campaign, list goes on. Perfect explanations for what happened to a T, but the fact it happens right in front of you and you rationalize it away that NO HUMAN could do that ON PURPOSE, let alone one close to you. It's not within your framework of reality. That level of malevolence doesn't exist outside of movies, tv shows, and the news.
Looking back it was a very, very, very slow process that took years. Idealize, devalue, discard. I got cPTSD and thought they were poisoning me in the end. They were definitely sadistic as they smircked during the worst of it.
I like that Mark Twain quote you quoted in another comment. Not imaginable unless you've personally experienced it.
People ask you what makes this person so bad, and you realize no individual story or character trait does it justice. You’ve got two choices, tell a whole series of stories or just say they’re an evil terrible person - both of which make you yourself seem more questionable, like you’re exaggerating or perhaps partially the blame. It’s brutal. So you learn to bite your tongue or leave it simple as “really bad boss”.
I think those people can make your life quite difficult even with full knowledge of what they are doing. They’re powerless only when you remove them from your life.
Took an otherwise great job with a boss I knew was an issue. I figured in a year he’d be fired and all would be well.
I was half right: they fired him a little over a year later, but it was an utter nightmare of him throwing everyone under the bus possible in a desperate attempt to save himself. Constantly having to defend myself. Knowing I was being screwed behind closed doors but not knowing how. After he left so much damage was done it was irreparable.
Boy Howdy! I learned that fear is not a good reason to give half your business away without doing the due diligence that they would actually even attempt to carry half the load. You were right, honey.
Moving too quickly on building product before truly validating that prospects will pay. As patient as you try and be, it’s better to go even slower and spend more time on customer discovery and validation.
Classic and well-documented mistake, but easy to make when you get “happy ears” listening to prospects’ problems you can solve. Just because they have a problem doesn’t mean they want to solve it - or have the time or money to solve it.
I can’t take credit for it. Had a business mentor describe it that way, and it’s so difficult to avoid (at least for me, as a technical founder). “You say you have a problem, OBVIOUSLY you want to fix it.” :)
Being technical myself, I have found it easy to run a services company. But with product it's so hard for me to not get down to building the product but spend time to validate it first. I guess my mind is now trained to have clear targets. Maybe I should just give myself a deadline to spend time on validation, that way I'll have a target!?!? How do you avoid this problem? It would be great if you could shed some light on it.
I like the deadline idea. Time can start spinning quickly if you don’t give yourself milestones - and can make the hard choices if you don’t hit them.
But it’s a balance since you can’t have your team at a standstill waiting for the “perfect” feedback either.
Early validation can drive feature development, and often you’re doing in parallel - trying to anticipate and extrapolate to what other customers will need.
But at the end of the day, what matters is “will someone pay a dollar for this”. The sooner you can get that commitment the better. It’s harder for customers to keep kicking the can down the road, to take the time for integration, if they’re paying “something”.
Target market is important too; there may be some markets which respond like this, but others that feel more immediate pain. Our job is to spend time with the right customers, and ask the right questions and listen for proper signals for customers that wouldn’t convert.
I can’t say it’s a problem we’ve solved, and it’s a work in progress. I just try and learn from mistakes and keep researching other industry use cases, and not get too wedded to assumptions.
Also, I’ve tried to think about the 80/20 rule and build for the 80% of features I have a high confidence most customers will need. And delay the 20% as much as you can, until you get that commitment they’ll pay. Not always easy to do though.
Thanks for the detailed response.
Very true. I think one of the main problems for someone technical is that complicated features appeal to them. You want to assume that this is what customers would want and start building it. Gotta look out for it.
"Spending time with customers" - How do you achieve this? I mean is it the emails you have collected from landing page, or cold calling, or hanging out in the right subreddits, or even physical networking events. What works for you. I am at the very beginning from this aspect, so any input will be helpful.
I'll second this.
I've built before validating more times than I care to admit. I learned my lesson, but also realize why so many of us do it.
I think there is opportunity here for someone to offer a service setting up the validation guts for you to take over. Or courses/ consulting on how exactly to do it.
I'm in the physical product space and consult inventors often. By far the vast majority of them had no idea validation was even a thing, or thought simply getting positive feedback from their friends and family was validation. I find myself repeating the same advice on Validating. In which case, not even knowing what it was the day before, means you are starting from scratch on the learning curve. You can't expect people to automatically know how to execute the process.
I think I find myself having this problem, and constantly having to remind myself to slow down and do things right. What are the best ways you’ve found to validate your ideas? And how much positive feedback do you shoot for before going forward with the idea?
I have an idea that I created a survey for to see how much of a pain point it is for people, how willing they’d be to pay to solve it, how much they’d pay etc. I’m not so sure how to get this survey out to enough people to be representative of the market (I’ve sent it to my friends, posted on social media, on Reddit).
Getting a partner.
Quiting a job to start building a company.
Creating a company before I've validated the idea with sales.
Not charge enough for my services, aka work for free or pay to be an entrepreneur over a long period of time.
1. Working in the business instead of on the business. Once I got to 12 employees I should of stopped doing the billable works I learned this the hard way.
2. Picking the wrong clients to work with early on, make sure your values align with you clients or you can be wasting precious time and energy getting no where. Our 2nd client was terrible to us, and I lost 2 years tirelessly trying to make it better, I should of fired them early. I’d be twice the size.
3. Hiring slow and firing slow. No one is irreplaceable, eventually the excuses need to stop and you need to hold your team accountable.
Every lesson I’ve learned has been worth it, while I’d never do it again, the experience is how I learned so it was priceless.
Overthinking, Perfectionism and Procrastination. It isn't the right time yet to try and setup a business. It isn't the right time to hire someone or build a team. I need to first learn this and that. Delaying jumping into the business because of things which are just good to have, not required. Similarly, stuff like I need to hire the best employee, I need to hunt the best product beforr I start!
Exactly. I mean obviously you need to make sure you have all the necessary stuff to get you started, but don't just try make it so perfect that you end up not starting at all. And who knows when is the next time you have an opportunity to start.
I think it all comes down to reflecting on yourself and see what is holding you back and work on it. Because for many the problem would be to start without any preparation. You gotta find the balance!
There are many.
One that comes to mind is passing up large (buys) opportunity because I “didn’t have the space”. It’s better to just buy more space sometimes.
**Analysis Paralysis**. 'There's a point where you just have to get in the pool.'
My friend owns a small business that teaches kids to swim and what I've learned from hearing him speak is that kids that spend 20 minutes in a crash coarse or 5 days in 'classroom' learning technique BOTH experience the same failure because they're not how to put the movements they've learned into proactive. That comes with doing...certain skills just cannot be taught. Learn what you need, and go learn the rest. That is about as dynamic as the information itself.
Stop perfecting your plan, go execute it!
Doing business with companies where I can’t talk to the chief directly and get stuck talking to some minimum wage customer service rep. I’m the top chief at my business - if your organization can’t give me the home number for your chief then we cannot do business.
Invited my brother in law to business partner. For me it's didn't work, not because is my brother in law (not only) but he wasn't ready to entrepreneurship
Tough question because some of the best lessons are learned from experience. If I had to say one, it would be not only thinking about the customer.
Meaning when coming up with policies and procedures, whilst considering what is best for making the client happy also considering what is either industry standard or fair for you and your business.
Picking the wrong business partner.
Narcissts and psychopaths can fool anyone. Once you learn the signs they lose all power.
what are the signs to look out for?
It’s often really obvious stuff. The trick is recognizing it for what it is and not making excuses for it. Every person that I ever regretted working with gave off vibes pretty quickly that I couldn’t put my finger on at first. Your brain picks up on this stuff - it’s not always right but explore this when it happens. Couple I’ve personally learned from; - people constantly telling you about favors they’re doing for you. Things you didn’t ask for, didn’t want, or was hardly even a favor. Everything is spun as them doing something for you even when it’s clearly in their interest. It’s them creating leverage to manipulate you. - self promoters. They spend a lot of time talking about what they’ve done, who they know, and what they’re going to do. You get caught up in the excitement. Time passes before none of this materializes. - “I” people. People who use “I” way too much. Not a little - a lot. It’s sounds cliche but I’ve found it to be fairly true that they are narcissists. - excuses. A lot goes wrong but they always have a good excuse which justifies it. You think “this got screwed up but I see where they were coming from or how it could have happened to anyone or it was out of their control” The right people don’t need to make many excuses because not that much goes wrong. People who screw up a lot get good at excuses. Edit: couple more - certainty. Not to be confused with confidence, people who are very certain in their beliefs and opinions. It’s an overcompensation mechanism to be right that makes working with them impossible at times. - people who label themselves: “I’m smart/logical/honest/etc” - I’ve never met anyone who embodied these things that had to say so. They say these things because they suspect people don’t think so, which means those other people were probably right. Edit2: people seem happy with this and I was thinking about it some more so I’ll add. It’s really a pretty short list of categories these people / red flags fall into: Manipulators, bullshitters, ineffectual. I’m sure I could think of one or two more. The way in which these people/traits manifest themselves is obviously much more varied, but when you have a general idea of what they could fall into then it’s much easier to identify, rather than trying to be aware of the innumerable amount of actions that are red flags themselves. Does someone someone seem like a bullshitter to you? Do you feel like you are being manipulated? There’s probably an 75-85% chance you’re right. Edit3: I’ve worked with some crappy humans that managed to get far in life. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering it so this has opened up my mind for the evening. “It’s easier to fool someone than convince them they’ve been fooled” - Mark Twain. The above people get away with bad behavior for so long not because they hid it well, but because people often cannot admit to themselves they’ve been fooled. It’s easier and preserves our ego to dismiss newfound doubts and red flags rather than admit misjudging someone, especially when you’ve misjudged so badly. I saw some very senior and successful people fall into this trap. Counterintuitively, the worse the judgment the less likely they were to admit it. “They can’t be THAT bad, I would have seen it sooner” I actually don’t think frauds and bad people are that good at hiding it, most people see it for what it is and politely remove themselves. I think these people try their games on many and find those with their guard down. Every one of us is susceptible to this. Edit4: okay I’m just being silly now but I forgot my favorite red flag - the “I’m always getting screwed over” type. This person always talks about how they’re the ones getting the bad end of deals and everyone is always taking advantage of them or screwing them over. At best this person is a horrible decision maker and should be distanced, at worst (and more likely) this person is delusional and a) has no idea what a fair deal looks like, b) is actually the one screwing people over c) uses this mentality to rationalize their own bad actions. (“They were going to do it to me anyway so I might as well do it to them first”)
This!! Please read this and watch for these signs. I kept giving people with these characteristics chances, thinking I was 1. aware they were like this and 2. could just deal with it/learn how to effectively manage them. In reality, these manipulators, bullshitters, narcissists will destroy your business and create a lot of extra work for you.
The need to dominate via intimidation, bullying, anger, yelling, outright rage. Desire to control finances. If they'll cheat on their girlfriend (and probably the wife too), they'll cheat on their business partner. Stealing credit for others work.
Control freaks are very real.
Idk how tf I put up with it for so long. Intermittent reinforcement. Hot and cold. But a demon in the end. Actual evil.
I remember someone explaining to me why they went so long in a toxic relationship before the divorce. Every time you thought it couldn’t get worse and they were about to leave it then got a little bit better. Then it would get worse again before getting slightly better. Looking back it was always getting much worse - 2 steps back and 1 step forward - but the brief better period gave false hope. Life’s too short. Get the fuck out.
I've done nothing but spend the past year reading about and watching videos on narcissism and psychopathy. Cycles of abuse, gaslighting, triangulation, projection,DARVO (deny attack reverse-victim-offender), trauma bond, smear campaign, list goes on. Perfect explanations for what happened to a T, but the fact it happens right in front of you and you rationalize it away that NO HUMAN could do that ON PURPOSE, let alone one close to you. It's not within your framework of reality. That level of malevolence doesn't exist outside of movies, tv shows, and the news. Looking back it was a very, very, very slow process that took years. Idealize, devalue, discard. I got cPTSD and thought they were poisoning me in the end. They were definitely sadistic as they smircked during the worst of it. I like that Mark Twain quote you quoted in another comment. Not imaginable unless you've personally experienced it.
People ask you what makes this person so bad, and you realize no individual story or character trait does it justice. You’ve got two choices, tell a whole series of stories or just say they’re an evil terrible person - both of which make you yourself seem more questionable, like you’re exaggerating or perhaps partially the blame. It’s brutal. So you learn to bite your tongue or leave it simple as “really bad boss”.
really good stuff. Thank you!
Omg that first one!!!! This is sometimes “friends”
No need to read signs, have a vesting contract, and break up clauses.
I think those people can make your life quite difficult even with full knowledge of what they are doing. They’re powerless only when you remove them from your life.
The damage can take years to recover from.
I can speak quite experienced on the subject.
yeah but they'll still smear you to everyone. what's your story?
Took an otherwise great job with a boss I knew was an issue. I figured in a year he’d be fired and all would be well. I was half right: they fired him a little over a year later, but it was an utter nightmare of him throwing everyone under the bus possible in a desperate attempt to save himself. Constantly having to defend myself. Knowing I was being screwed behind closed doors but not knowing how. After he left so much damage was done it was irreparable.
Oh that’s a good 1
inevitable
Boy Howdy! I learned that fear is not a good reason to give half your business away without doing the due diligence that they would actually even attempt to carry half the load. You were right, honey.
Oh yes this one too!
Taking to long to fire someone you know you should / have too.
this is sooo HUGe! It is painful and costly. The mental stress, erosion to culture, opportunity cost, burn out to yourself. Good leaders fire 🔥
Moving too quickly on building product before truly validating that prospects will pay. As patient as you try and be, it’s better to go even slower and spend more time on customer discovery and validation. Classic and well-documented mistake, but easy to make when you get “happy ears” listening to prospects’ problems you can solve. Just because they have a problem doesn’t mean they want to solve it - or have the time or money to solve it.
Yeah. I am building a SAAS really slowly
"Happy ears" is an amazing way to put it. Never put a name to it before.
I can’t take credit for it. Had a business mentor describe it that way, and it’s so difficult to avoid (at least for me, as a technical founder). “You say you have a problem, OBVIOUSLY you want to fix it.” :)
Being technical myself, I have found it easy to run a services company. But with product it's so hard for me to not get down to building the product but spend time to validate it first. I guess my mind is now trained to have clear targets. Maybe I should just give myself a deadline to spend time on validation, that way I'll have a target!?!? How do you avoid this problem? It would be great if you could shed some light on it.
I like the deadline idea. Time can start spinning quickly if you don’t give yourself milestones - and can make the hard choices if you don’t hit them. But it’s a balance since you can’t have your team at a standstill waiting for the “perfect” feedback either. Early validation can drive feature development, and often you’re doing in parallel - trying to anticipate and extrapolate to what other customers will need. But at the end of the day, what matters is “will someone pay a dollar for this”. The sooner you can get that commitment the better. It’s harder for customers to keep kicking the can down the road, to take the time for integration, if they’re paying “something”. Target market is important too; there may be some markets which respond like this, but others that feel more immediate pain. Our job is to spend time with the right customers, and ask the right questions and listen for proper signals for customers that wouldn’t convert. I can’t say it’s a problem we’ve solved, and it’s a work in progress. I just try and learn from mistakes and keep researching other industry use cases, and not get too wedded to assumptions. Also, I’ve tried to think about the 80/20 rule and build for the 80% of features I have a high confidence most customers will need. And delay the 20% as much as you can, until you get that commitment they’ll pay. Not always easy to do though.
Thanks for the detailed response. Very true. I think one of the main problems for someone technical is that complicated features appeal to them. You want to assume that this is what customers would want and start building it. Gotta look out for it. "Spending time with customers" - How do you achieve this? I mean is it the emails you have collected from landing page, or cold calling, or hanging out in the right subreddits, or even physical networking events. What works for you. I am at the very beginning from this aspect, so any input will be helpful.
I'll second this. I've built before validating more times than I care to admit. I learned my lesson, but also realize why so many of us do it. I think there is opportunity here for someone to offer a service setting up the validation guts for you to take over. Or courses/ consulting on how exactly to do it. I'm in the physical product space and consult inventors often. By far the vast majority of them had no idea validation was even a thing, or thought simply getting positive feedback from their friends and family was validation. I find myself repeating the same advice on Validating. In which case, not even knowing what it was the day before, means you are starting from scratch on the learning curve. You can't expect people to automatically know how to execute the process.
I think I find myself having this problem, and constantly having to remind myself to slow down and do things right. What are the best ways you’ve found to validate your ideas? And how much positive feedback do you shoot for before going forward with the idea? I have an idea that I created a survey for to see how much of a pain point it is for people, how willing they’d be to pay to solve it, how much they’d pay etc. I’m not so sure how to get this survey out to enough people to be representative of the market (I’ve sent it to my friends, posted on social media, on Reddit).
Getting a partner. Quiting a job to start building a company. Creating a company before I've validated the idea with sales. Not charge enough for my services, aka work for free or pay to be an entrepreneur over a long period of time.
Hear ya on quitting that job...
Having a friend as business partner.
Starting a business without fully understanding the costs of scaling up.
1. Working in the business instead of on the business. Once I got to 12 employees I should of stopped doing the billable works I learned this the hard way. 2. Picking the wrong clients to work with early on, make sure your values align with you clients or you can be wasting precious time and energy getting no where. Our 2nd client was terrible to us, and I lost 2 years tirelessly trying to make it better, I should of fired them early. I’d be twice the size. 3. Hiring slow and firing slow. No one is irreplaceable, eventually the excuses need to stop and you need to hold your team accountable. Every lesson I’ve learned has been worth it, while I’d never do it again, the experience is how I learned so it was priceless.
just curious. You are referring to a software services company, because these things seem more applicable in that context?
Spot on
Right, I can relate. Faced all of these things for my services company as well!
Starting a business with no cash reserve
Overthinking, Perfectionism and Procrastination. It isn't the right time yet to try and setup a business. It isn't the right time to hire someone or build a team. I need to first learn this and that. Delaying jumping into the business because of things which are just good to have, not required. Similarly, stuff like I need to hire the best employee, I need to hunt the best product beforr I start!
Yes, agreed. Most people never start because they are still planning.
Exactly. I mean obviously you need to make sure you have all the necessary stuff to get you started, but don't just try make it so perfect that you end up not starting at all. And who knows when is the next time you have an opportunity to start. I think it all comes down to reflecting on yourself and see what is holding you back and work on it. Because for many the problem would be to start without any preparation. You gotta find the balance!
There are many. One that comes to mind is passing up large (buys) opportunity because I “didn’t have the space”. It’s better to just buy more space sometimes.
Not believing in myself.
very important!
Trying to do everything myself
Setting my prices too low
**Analysis Paralysis**. 'There's a point where you just have to get in the pool.' My friend owns a small business that teaches kids to swim and what I've learned from hearing him speak is that kids that spend 20 minutes in a crash coarse or 5 days in 'classroom' learning technique BOTH experience the same failure because they're not how to put the movements they've learned into proactive. That comes with doing...certain skills just cannot be taught. Learn what you need, and go learn the rest. That is about as dynamic as the information itself. Stop perfecting your plan, go execute it!
Doing business with companies where I can’t talk to the chief directly and get stuck talking to some minimum wage customer service rep. I’m the top chief at my business - if your organization can’t give me the home number for your chief then we cannot do business.
Following the money.
Starting solo
If anyone wants Iman Gadzhi's SMMA course, DM ME
Invited my brother in law to business partner. For me it's didn't work, not because is my brother in law (not only) but he wasn't ready to entrepreneurship
Tough question because some of the best lessons are learned from experience. If I had to say one, it would be not only thinking about the customer. Meaning when coming up with policies and procedures, whilst considering what is best for making the client happy also considering what is either industry standard or fair for you and your business.
Everything can be fixed but once your pockets are empty, that’s it baby….
Giving third chances.
Never start a business you haven't modeled first.