Believing your own b*ll$h*t
Look at my CV on LinkedIn, and I had a very average Estate Agency career.
Yes, I was a decent Lister and ran two decent sized branches, yet I never made it to Area Manager level or ran my own agency.
a point now 5 years later, I have created just over 2,000 video interviews.
On this journey of creating the videos, the admiration and positive comments from those videos were awesome.
It became like a drug.
Who doesn’t like smoke being blown up on one’s backside?
Being mentioned in the same breath as some of the kings of the estate & letting industry was amazing
It was around 2019 in it started to go my head – I started to believe my own bull$hit
It led to dangerous levels of self-assurance, brashness & confidence — all great qualities in measured amounts, yet too much of them and the feeling of invincibility creeps in.
What I learned was the feeling of being invincible is was the thin edge of the wedge to nearly losing it all.
I will share my solution in a second...
I would like to share some knowledge with people jumping on the personal branding journey like I did in 2017.
You have had the balls to start doing videos.. and I know many of you have had great success.
Yet take from someone a few years further down the line, this personal branding and video stuff may give you great business growth, but without plenty of self-awareness, it can just as easily lead to your own downfall.
Yes, you might have thousands of people hanging on every word, yet if you don’t learn to see further than your own bull$hit, you could destroy or impair the very personal brand you have worked so hard to create.
The true enemy of the truth isn’t lies, it's bull$hit.
Thank God I had a wife that knocks it out of me, and yes it can show its head every once in a while and I get it wrong (she knows the balance of keeping me simmering without boiling over).
I have learned it's a balance of self-confidence and being humble.
Humility is the awareness of one's own self and confidence in what you as a human being can do to contribute to society.
As Gary Vee says, "humility isn't at conflict with self-esteem and conviction"
Yet I have chosen to make these two commitments to myself,
1. one by nurturing strong self-awareness of myself
2. to rise above my ego.
I believe these two skills are compulsory in order to act in the best interest of yourself and the business you have worked so hard to create.
Thank you all for taking the time and trouble and spending your time watching my videos and posts. I hope they are of use and you enjoy them just as much as I do making them.
If I have struck a cord and you want to chat about anything I have said, email me (christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk), and let’s have a chat.