I checked today’s Ballard Street daily cartoon and here it is. Fitting. Given that this weekend I’ve been thinking of how sometimes people think our vision of the future is nonsense. We come up with ideas, plans, and strategies that we’d like to execute only to find somebody (maybe a whole bunch of somebodies) who don’t think our idea has legs.
In the last few years, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how important our beliefs are. Beliefs that our idea is valid. Beliefs that our execution will work, and if it doesn’t, that we’ll figure out a better execution that will. Our beliefs in ourselves and what we’re pursuing. 
Small business owners aren’t immune from caring what other people think. Generalizations about every group or segment of the population abound. But the truth is, we can’t lump everybody in the same pile by ascribing the exact same traits to everybody. 
Entrepreneurs come in every possible shape and size. Physically, emotionally, personality and any other way you’d like to measure folks. Introverts. Extroverts. Highly educated. Quite undereducated. From happy childhoods. From abusive childhoods. For every measuring stick you can find (or think of), there are successful business owners at each end of the spectrum. What binds us together is our humanity. In show 5053 I talked briefly about being human. A good human.
Last night on 60 Minutes there was a story about Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos deception. It’s a story of greed, lies, and boldness to appear as something other than what you truly are. Raising millions and millions of dollars, the founders took the company to a one-time valuation of $10 billion. Today, it’s worthless and facing an avalanche of lawsuits and government investigations. It’s a story of intentional deception to orchestrate what people think so they’ll invest. To say it’s poor human behavior is a gross understatement. It displays the depths some people may go to in order to foster a persona that is completely fabricated. Dishonest.
Contrast that story with you. Not raising any money or looking for big outside investors. Working hard to build a profitable sustainable business that you and your family can be proud of. Serving your employees, customers, and community. Committed to doing the right thing. Overcoming all the hurdles presented by the market, regulators and whatever else would kill your enterprise. A good human being. Battling whatever odds are against you. Because YOU believe. Deeply.
And now somebody – somebody you care about and who cares about you – is expressing their disbelief. We all have people in our lives who love us – or claim to – but they don’t really believe in us. Or our idea. Or our execution. 
We’re business people. Sure, we’re dreamers, but we’re not *just* dreamers. Like Neal in that Ballard Street cartoon, we take action. Okay, I don’t advise any of us to follow Neal’s choice, but he’s making the point pretty well. He stops thinking about what other people think. 
Because we’re good people we care what others think, especially the people closest to us. That doesn’t mean they dictate our lives, but they may – more than we’d like to admit. It certainly means thoughts creep into our head when they express hesitation or outright disagreement with our plans. We can begin to doubt ourselves. Or not.
But there’s an even more practical daily application in our businesses. Thinking about what other people think can negatively impact our daily work. Not that others disbelieving in our work isn...