Today we're having some reflection on the episode with Matt Hughes, the King of Video.
Now interestingly, we delved into an area with Matt about running a business with his wife, and for a period of time or even now when trying to ask him, he was trying to find a way on how he could talk about things that he's always viewed as negative because they're things that he doesn't value.
But actually, upon reflection, the things that are so important, because actually he doesn't value, they're things that he misses.
So, things like quality control, for example, Matt was saying about like him, in his social media posts and things, he doesn't worry about spelling and quite the tone of how things come across.
And yet his wife's great at picking up on that and saying,
“If you're not reflecting your brand in your best possible way because this is how you are not looking like you are all over things."
And people that then may be concerned and go,
“Oh, if you post your own stuff like this, when you are helping us with our own say, Our own videos, are they gonna go out with error and mistakes and everything in them as well?”
And if obviously, it was still challenging then to try and come up with those words in a positive way.
And I've reflected to say, I viewed Sam, my wife and business partner in a similar way for such a long-time and it was things like, I would always come up with ideas and Sam would always be going,
“Oh no, that's, no, you go straight back into that.”
I was gonna say,
“Oh, that's a rubbish idea.”
That isn't what Sam would say. Sam would question me on whether that idea was good and what was good about it. I would come to the conclusion and fill in the blanks and go,
“Oh, she thinks my idea is rubbish now.”-Probably 8 out of 10 of those were rubbish, okay?
It's definitely what I needed to hear.
I wasn't in the right frame of mind for a long period of time to be accepting of that.
And then as I say I read the book, ROCKET FUEL Book by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters and within the first few pages, or the first couple of chapters, it explains how a visionary view an integrator and how an integrator views a visionary.
And it just fell into place. I just started to go,
“Hang on. Yeah. These things that I view as frustrating within Sam. So, I viewed her as, she's always saying negative. She's always putting my ideas down. She can't see the positive way forward.
All of these frustrations I had, I started to view it to go,
“Ah, see where she's coming from?
Sam's looking at quality.
She's looking into the detail.
She's looking at how if we're not focusing on these little bits, then things can fall through the net.
She's focusing on how do we have solid foundations so that when we build and we grow and we move forward, and that everything underneath doesn't just crumble away.
Then,
I suppose it meant that actually I could see so much more positive.
I wasn't looking for somebody to be like me anymore, which is what I was definitely looking for beforehand -that mini me.
How do I get somebody who does everything that I do in the way that I do it?
I didn't really need that.
I was just looking for an easy life, and that wasn't really an easy life.
It was easy on the outside, but not.
Really deep down, because actually if I had somebody like me, all these other bits were never going to get solved.
And what we're going to do is we're going to grow and we're going to move forward, but there's still going to be these rocky foundations upon which were built.
And this really hit ahead as we rolled into around sort of 2020 when Sam sort of went, we're not advertising anymore.
We're, we're not taking new clients.
And that was when it went against everything that I believed at that moment in time.
But actually, we'd run into quite a few challenges.
A few cracks were starting to appear, so we were like, okay let's just trust and see, if that can be within the right way.
And
I was like,
“Okay, let's really focus then and allows them just to manage things forward.”
And she did.
She built all those foundations. She's got all the processes and systems and everything in place for everything that we needed it to be.
I suppose we had these strong foundations and we were working on different aspects, but at the same point, it really gelled and glued and came together in such an amazing way.
I think for a long period of time, I probably told people that if they're going to go into business with somebody, they should think long and hard.
I still maintain that to be true but I think I was coming at it before from the angle of going,
“No, don't do that.”
Whereas now I think I come from the angle of going,
“Look, you can potentially be twice as good if you get the right people coming together. You talk about the way things will end at the start to have absolute clarity of that and know what your roles are and what you are going to be bringing to the table.”
If that's the case and you get that completely right and there'll be challenges, there's bound to be challenges along the way, then I think you'll just have potential.
But two minds are actually better than one.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Do you think that running a business as a partnership, is a better option?
Or do you think that actually you're better off on your own because then you get your own way?
Let me know.
