We’re all familiar with this situation:
Hot stove. Curious kid. Concerned parent.
Kid gets precariously close to the glowing red coils, and the parent says, “be careful, that’s hot!”
Then maybe the kid looks at the parent quizzically.
A quick back-and-forth glance between dad and imminent danger.
Kid touches stove, gets burned, screams bloody murder.
Most of us look at this poor sucker and shake our heads, admonishing the crying kid with, “he told you not to touch the stove!!!”
But here’s the thing.
You’re the kid.
Shitty clients and poor business decisions are the hot stove.
And I’m warning you that that. Shit. Is. Hot.
But it doesn’t really matter that I’m warning you… because you won’t understand what I mean until you get burned.
In other words, getting burned is part of the process. It’s how you learn what works for your business, and what really hurts your business if you do it again.
So the next time you feel like berating yourself for, “but my mentor told me not to do that… and I did it and it was stupid!”
Give yourself some grace. Maybe you didn’t know what “hot” meant before.
Now you do.
Time to bandage up your burnt paw and learn to handle the stove without direct contact with hot surfaces.