Notes From a Neuro Nerd: The Science Behind Living Your Best Life
Welcome to Notes from a Neuro Nerd, where brain science meets practical tools for living with purpose, clarity, and joy. Join Monica—a certified life-purpose coach and neuroscience enthusiast—and her partner, Austin, as they explore the mindset shifts, habits, and tools that can help you build a fulfilling life.
Tune in to uncover the ‘why’ behind your thoughts and behaviors and get actionable, science-backed strategies to boost your well-being. If you're ready to design your best life, you’re in the right place!
Notes From a Neuro Nerd: The Science Behind Living Your Best Life
88. What's the WORST Piece of Advice You've Ever Been Given?
Have you ever been given good advice? What about bad advice?
Join us, Austin and Monica, as we share your responses to the question being asked to entrepreneurs like us, "What is the worst piece of advice you have ever been given?"
This episode isn't just about us though; it's a mosaic of experiences from entrepreneurs who've paved their paths at various life stages, proving that age is just a number in the business playground.
We're talking real-world insights into marketing, competition, and the deceptively simple concept of value. Plus, we're tossing bad advice out the window and replacing it with the keys you will need to become a success!
Read along on the Reddit post.
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Hello and welcome to the Profitable Nomad Couple podcast. This is a show where we share all of our secrets about building a sustainable, location-independent lifestyle.
Speaker 2:We're Austin and Monica. We're a digital nomad couple here to help you develop an entrepreneurial mindset, ignite your passions and develop a purpose-driven online business.
Speaker 1:Get ready for weekly insights and inspiring stories to empower you to live life on your own terms.
Speaker 2:So are you ready to unlock the nomad mindset and embrace a life of limitless possibilities? Let's dive in. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, monica and I are going to be doing something well, really something we've never done before. It's a little bit similar to something we've done.
Speaker 2:One of our favorite style podcasts that we've done in here is like a collaborative style, where we ask a question to our audience and we get people to share and submit some audio back to us and we compile all that audio into a podcast, and we wanted to do something similar, but we're putting a different spin on it. So what we want to do today is we have a question that's been asked on a Reddit thread or a subreddit, I guess and we want to read through some of the top comments on there, and we thought a really good topic would be as an entrepreneur, what is the worst piece of advice that you've ever gotten? And I think this is really good, because we hear a lot of really bad advice out there. Monica and I have received and followed some very bad advice that has led us down some rough roads, and so we want to go through the top comments on this question and we're gonna just share our opinion and our experience in the business worlds related to what people say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really excited for this. I've lately gotten really into like the Reddit story style podcast episodes, so it's kind of fun to be doing our own. So, without further ado, the first piece of bad advice.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just. This is in the subreddit entrepreneur, just so you know. If people want to go find this on their own, okay, the first, worst advice is don't start a business. This is related also to another one later down the line of it's too risky, it's just not worth it. Don't start.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I got lots of thoughts on this one. A lot of times people tell us things like, oh, it's too risky, or don't start a business because of their own fears that they have, and a lot of times it comes from a place of love. Honestly, truly honestly, people want the best for you and this is something that scares them because it doesn't seem like a quote unquote, sure bet or whatever. It is sad to me how many people put off starting a business because of advice like this or get scared off because there's a lot of people who are like, oh no, this is terrible, you're never gonna make money Like this is so different from the norm and the idea is that by staying quote unquote in your lane, staying in the norm, not breaking free from this, that all of a sudden you're gonna be safe. But it doesn't take into account that, like your happiness or your ability to live a fulfilling, fun life might not be able to happen within that quote unquote norm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing I've wondered before is, first of all, it is risky, like we're not saying it's not. There is risk to starting a business. But I think another thing to consider is what's the risk of not starting a business? What's the risk of living your life where you're at? You know, if you're starting a business because you're not happy with your current job or you have this brilliant idea that you really want to turn into a business and take to the world and you feel like you can improve people's lives through it, like, what's the risk to your happiness, to your fulfillment, to your enjoyment in life, to your family, if you don't take that risk and put yourself out there and try it? I think that's definitely something that needs to be considered as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think another thing is that people who are giving you this advice are normally not business owners themselves, and so don't take advice from people who aren't on the path that you want to be on. But also, a lot of people are looking at the numbers, like eight out of 10 businesses fail or something like that, and if you look at the numbers, like the numbers are designed to scare you, but if you look at that same statistic the nine out of 10 businesses fail you can also see okay, well, in that case then I'm going to need to go through nine iterations of my business to find the most successful business.
Speaker 2:It can be a very like encouraging statistic as well that it might just take you a couple times to to really be successful I will say not eight or nine out of ten businesses fail, but that that one time that you win, the one time that it succeeds and it goes right and everything goes really well, so worth it. The change that you experience as a person personal development, change you go through, but also the fulfillment and the amount of pride you have in the work that you've accomplished and seeing what you've created. It's an incredible feeling and I think that makes all the other failures worth it. Personally, Definitely.
Speaker 1:I definitely think business is one of the biggest catalysts for personal growth that there is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just one last thought on this. I think a lot of times this comes from a place of concern about financial security, like it's too risky, you're going to lose a lot of money, you're not going to make enough money. I have this whole soapbox that I like to go on often about job security and what that really means. In fact, I think we did a whole podcast episode about that, so we can link that below if you're interested in my spiel on job security. But I think that's a bit of a hoax, because you can be in a corporate job, you can be in a salaried employment position and get laid off unexpectedly. It's happened to a lot of people that we know personally friends and family. You never know when that's going to happen, and so there's really not any more security built into that than there is in taking a risk on yourself and jumping into entrepreneurship. It's they're all risky in different ways, I think.
Speaker 1:So true, it just depends on society's definition of risk, I feel. Anyway, that was really good. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Okay, the next top or the next comment worst business advice that you've received is the general mindset of having to build something that is completely novel in order for you to be considered a true entrepreneur. This one's interesting. This isn't one we've come across as much. I feel like this is maybe something that I felt internally, without really realizing it until I read it here, until I read it.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that why they call it Reddit?
Speaker 2:I think that's why it's called Reddit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting. Tell me about your thoughts that have come up after reading this.
Speaker 2:I think there's this general stigma or perception of an entrepreneur that it's someone who has this brilliant idea that no one's come up with. You are an innovator and you are going into the marketplace with a new solution that no one's thought of before and you are making the like. It's not quite it. Like you can go into entrepreneurship doing something that other people have done. Like you and I started as virtual assistants.
Speaker 2:We were not the first virtual assistants and then we pivoted to web design. We were decades behind the first web designers. Now we're coaches, but we are definitely not the first coaches. Like, what we are doing isn't necessarily groundbreaking as far as it's a brand new idea, but it doesn't have to be to be considered an entrepreneur and you can go into an industry and a career that's not necessarily like, not unique and it's not original, but bring your own spin on it and your own background and perceptions and experience with it and make it unique in the fact that you are teaching people through your own point of views and that makes it unique in the fact that you are teaching people through your own point of views and that makes it unique in that regard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, definitely. I think an entrepreneur is simply someone who sees a problem and comes up with a solution. I liked, actually, one of the comments underneath this one is that someone said this is true one of the more successful entrepreneurs I know cuts my grass. His secret seems to be finding multiple houses on a street that needs his services, so he spends more time mowing and less time loading, unloading and driving. So that is such a good example of like. Entrepreneurial spirit is just finding a service that needs to be done, finding a need these people need their grass cut and then finding a way to make it unique, make it more efficient, make it really, really work for them. And this person was able to find a way to make this a really efficient system. So he's making good money doing this service.
Speaker 2:I think something else behind this advice is oversaturation in the market and, like you hear of these really big business people who, like the reason they are so well known, like you think of people like Elon Musk or I don't know why, he's the only one coming to my mind right now but you think of like big name business people and you think they made it in business.
Speaker 2:They're successful because they came up with the solution that no one else had created before. So you think you have to be original and we think of like you need to find an empty space in the market that's not fulfilled, and you and I, monica, have recently been talking about how a lack of competition can actually be a red flag in some ways, because that can be an indicator that there's no need for this new idea. If no one else is doing something and there's no competition in your marketplace, that might tell you that it's actually not a solution people are looking for, it's not a solution people are willing to pay for. There are some instances where you do come up with this super original, innovative idea that no one else has come up with, but I think that's kind of the outlier, to be totally honest, and seeing competition in a marketplace can be a good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think if you are the only one out there talking about this service or this product that you are offering and nobody else is offering anything close to it, a lot of people are gonna be really skeptical, because that's why we buy name brands right, it's something that we can know and we can trust and has proved effective in the past. And so, all of a sudden, you're asking people to take a chance on something that they've never heard of before, never seen before, and that's where, like it can feel risky for people. All right, so the next one is if you build it, they will come. Actually, I think we did a whole podcast episode on this.
Speaker 2:I think we did on this one too.
Speaker 1:We'll have to link it down below, but just a little like snippet of our thoughts. This is a big fatty myth that a lot of business owners have. I think this is something that they take on themselves. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone explicitly say maybe a little bit actually.
Speaker 2:It's not said like that, but I do think there is this teaching of like oh, it's so easy, all you need to do is set this up. I feel like a really prominent example of this is like affiliate marketing. Like, really prominent example of this is like affiliate marketing. Like, oh, you just need to set up some links and once you have links to amazon products or links to these platforms, then you're going to start making money. And that's not the case like in that instance, for example. You still need to build up an audience, you need to have traffic to your links in order to make those links make you any money.
Speaker 2:And I think there's this unfortunate idea perpetuated that if you just set something up, people are going to come and buy from you. You and I did this. Like you said, we already talked about this in the other episodes, so we won't go too deep in it, but we were virtual assistants and put up some posts about how our sales are discounted for spring, and we put up a post and waited for people to come and no one did. And I think it takes a lot more active marketing, active selling and intentionality into putting yourself out there than people think. It takes a lot more active marketing, active selling and intentionality into putting yourself out there than people think it's going to take.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is something that shifted a lot in the online marketing space has shifted a lot, a lot, a lot. It definitely takes more touch points and more human interaction than maybe it did in the past when it came to online businesses and things like that. So definitely go check out this other podcast episode where we dive into that a lot. Actually, your comment, austin, was a really great segue into the next bad advice that someone was given, and it was to discount all the time and just always be running sales in their business, and this is something that we've been burned with you guys.
Speaker 1:We actually had a mentor who their biggest piece of advice for us was hey, like, give a month off your services and drop all your services down. Like, just offer this free month and you'll get tons of clients coming to you. And, yes, we did get some people who were interested in it, but we didn't get a single new client who signed because we were offering a discount. People were just coming because they wanted a free month and not because they wanted to invest heavily in our services, and what we ended up doing was discounting our current client and kind of grandfathering them into this the sale we had going on and we ended up losing money from this whole thing instead of it bringing us in new clientele, like it was supposed to.
Speaker 2:On paper.
Speaker 2:The idea is, if you discount your services or your products then it's going to be more attractive, you'll get more traffic, more people coming in the door and, although each individual sale might be a little bit less, you're going to have a larger influx.
Speaker 2:But I feel like the problem with this is it undervalues what you do and so by decreasing your price, you're opening the doors and you're attracting the wrong types of people, and it teaches people that the biggest factor to consider is price, and price is definitely a factor, but there's a lot more that goes into pricing. There's a lot more to pricing strategy, and if you are primarily searching for people who are looking for the lowest price, you're not going to get the highest quality of clients and the highest quality people. So I think that was an unfortunate mistake we made, but we learned a lot from that one for sure. And we're not saying that you can never discount things, you can never offer sales and things like that, like there's a time and a place for those things. But as a primary driver for selling more, I feel like there's some flaws to that idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will say that this could work better, depending on your business type. If you do run more of a product-based business, these kind of sales might be good for getting repeat customers. I do see here in the comments that somebody is talking about oh well, it might help retain customers if you have loyalty programs like buy one, buy five coffees, get one free, kind of thing. So, depending on your kind of business, this could work. But for our purposes, when we're talking mostly about online service-based businesses, it definitely teaches people that you don't value your work and that they shouldn't either.
Speaker 2:Maybe, Monica, we should do a full episode on pricing strategy or the theory behind how you set your prices.
Speaker 1:Actually, that would be a great one. Let us know if you, as a listener, would be interested in that.
Speaker 2:Okay. The next piece of bad advice is you are too young to start a business. This is also one that I don't know if I've heard, in our circle at least, spoken of a whole lot, but I think maybe the one that we've heard more, at least in the digital nomad space, is you're too old, especially because in the digital nomad space, there is a certain baseline tech knowledge that you need to have, and it's really basic. Let me tell you like you don't need to know a lot of tech to be a digital nomad, but because all of your work is online, you have to know some very basic computer skills, and a lot of times we get people who feel like they are just, you know, not a tech person, or they're too old. They didn't grow up in the digital age, so it doesn't come as naturally to them and that creates a big barrier. So age on either side is sometimes used as a deterrent, and I feel like the truth is there's no best age, there's no too young, there's no too old at all.
Speaker 1:That is just a limiting belief that we take on, or people assume that we should take on, and we definitely should not be listening to it.
Speaker 2:One thing that could be really fun to do and I've done this before is if you Google successful people who were super young when they became successful, people who were in their early 20s, their late teens, you'll find a bunch of really cool examples. You can also find if you Google people who became successful later in life, people who were 60, 70 years old, and that's when they had their big success and when they were able to change their life around and grow a successful business or become famous for something. So you can find good examples on either side of the spectrum. So it just comes to show that there is no best age for any of this.
Speaker 1:All right. This next one definitely made me laugh In 2004,. This person got the advice that they should not go into computer programming slash tech because there are not many jobs anymore.
Speaker 2:That was a big lost opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, seriously, this is really fascinating to me because it kind of shows the mindset of society in general when there are new innovations and new things coming out and there kind of tends to be this resistance to change and kind of feeling like it's not going to create as many opportunities as it tends to do and this feeling like it's just going to be a passing fad and then it'll just, it'll just be over, which obviously, in hindsight, 20 years later, we can look back at this comment and it is very comical because obviously we know that computers and tech is still one of the biggest leading industries today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes me think of that guy. I don't know exactly what it was, but I think it was like in the 80s or something, and he was talking about television. He's like, yeah, televisions aren't going to sell, well, no one's going to be interested. It's going to be a fad that dies out. And man, how wrong was that guy. So the last one I think would be really good to touch on is do what you love and you won't have to work a day in your life. There's a quote by Thomas Edison that I hear often, where he's talking about how he never had to work. It's basically this like he felt like he never had to work because he absolutely loved his job, his inventions, his creativity. He was so wrapped up in it and that was his advice to people is, if you find what you love to do, you're never going to have to work. What do you think about this one, monica?
Speaker 1:Well, good for him, you know. I'm glad that he never felt like he was working. But most people do not have this experience. There are always parts of your job your work, your business that you are not going to like, but you need to do them anyway, and it is. It is hard work, I actually really. I was reading through some of these comments and I really liked this comment underneath this advice section where he says oh man, does this resonate In my experience the more you love what you do, the harder you work, and I definitely think that's true. I think you and I have loved this business we build, we love the coaching we do, we love our clients, and so we work longer hours.
Speaker 2:We work harder.
Speaker 1:We definitely put way more into it to build this business and provide really stellar resources for people.
Speaker 2:I agree. I feel like if you are searching for the perfect job where you love it so much you don't feel like you're working at all, then I feel like you're going to be searching your entire life. There's always going to be some aspect of work. No matter how much you love what you do, no matter how passionate you feel about it, there's work that has to go into it, and so if you're searching for that job that doesn't feel like work, good luck.
Speaker 1:You're going to be searching for a long, long time.
Speaker 2:Well, you guys, this was the top bad advice from the entrepreneur subreddit. I thought this was the top bad advice from the entrepreneur subreddit. I thought this was super fun. If you guys are interested in reading more, you can go on to the entrepreneur subreddit and search for the question. As an entrepreneur, what's the worst piece of advice you ever got? There's some other really good ones in here. And read through the comments of the ones that we talked about. There's a lot of really good input from from other entrepreneurs on the subreddit. Yeah, so thanks for doing this with me, mon Monica.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. This is a really fun episode.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining us here on the Profitable Nomad Couple podcast. We appreciate you listening to us today.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this episode, share it on Instagram and be sure to tag us at Austin and Monica. Together, we can inspire others to embrace a location-independent lifestyle.
Speaker 2:And while you're there, we'd love to connect with you, so make sure you follow us for more tips and inspiration on living your dream location-independent lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Until next week, remember that you have the power to shape your own path. So stay curious, stay adventurous and stay connected.
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