The Perfectionism Trap: Why It's Really Just Shame in Disguise

Sean Weisbrot: Renee La Tour is the owner of Ticket to Freedom, which helps coaches learn to build their business while traveling. And she's also the Director of operations for Dow Financial Solutions, which provides equipment financing and leasing solutions for small businesses.

Sean Weisbrot: So, Renee, why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your two businesses, and how you got to where you are right now, and we'll go from there.

Renee La Tour: I took the entrepreneurial plunge back in 2016. I was working a very basic nine to five kind of run of the mill type life, and I just. Burnt out. Really. I didn't know what to call it at that point in time, but that's what happened. I burnt out and I decided to take the entrepreneurial route, and my partner and I launched a finance company.

Renee La Tour: We are loan brokers, so we basically broker loans for I. Small businesses back in the US took that remote, and realized we can run the business from anywhere back in 2017 and became completely location independent in 2019. So it was around last year that I realized there were a lot of other entrepreneurs who wanted to be location independent and that's when I started my Ticket to Freedom program.

Renee La Tour: So I basically help entrepreneurs do the same thing that I've done with our finance company. but Obviously customized to their business and making sure that they continue to serve their clients at the highest level while they're essentially removing themselves from their business and doing other things that they enjoy in life, like traveling.

Renee La Tour: So I travel full time and I really enjoy it. It's. An interesting lifestyle, not for everybody, but I am really passionate about sharing a nomadic lifestyle that I live and how traveling really does expand you as a person, and that's why I'm passionate about helping other people do the same thing.

Sean Weisbrot: All right, great. Thank you for the intro. I'm curious, where are you right now? What country are you in?

Renee La Tour: Yeah. Right now I'm in Lima, Peru, and that was not planned.

Sean Weisbrot: That's how I like to go. So I'm, this is, it's December 9th when we're recording and I decided, like, I was talking with a friend of mine from Columbia and I said, I, your mom's from Guatemala, right? Yeah. When are you going to Guatemala? I don't know, in January. Great. Like, let's book a ticket and go. And he is like, okay. So, so I'm, I'm booked. I'm booked for the middle of January to go. And I've done a bunch of planning, but I only bought a one way ticket. That's how I am, that's how I travel. So I don't know how long I'm gonna be there, but I just know when I want to go.

Renee La Tour: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I'm all about it. I'm all about the one way tickets, even like. When I have people come meet me wherever I am, like for example, last year I flew my mom out to South Africa and she's like, okay, how do I book my tickets? And I said, don't worry about it, just book one way. 'cause you might wanna stay here for two weeks.

Renee La Tour: You might wanna stay here for two months. Who knows? Like to be open to it. And. She's a rock star. She's 72 years old, and she was like, okay, heck yeah, I'll do that. and so I always encourage people to just look at it one way, like, it might be a little more expensive, maybe a couple hundred bucks, but just that flexibility to kind of just go with the flow if you have the ability to do so. It's, it's really freeing

Sean Weisbrot: if your goal is to help entrepreneurs to become more flexible and more location dependent. What's the hardest thing that you have? What's the most difficult objection you get from them, even though they come to you wanting help? The thing that's stopping them from actually getting started?

Renee La Tour: The biggest thing is fear. I'm sure you know all about this. A lot of times our decision making is rooted in fear and they might not say that like, Hey, I'm really scared, but what they're telling me is. If I let someone in my business and they make a mistake, that's gonna be really costly. I really can't afford to lose a client.

Renee La Tour: Or, if I'm traveling in a different time zone and I'm in Asia and there's like this crazy 16 hour difference, what if my client can't reach me right away? And are they gonna, are they gonna fire me as, whatever it is, whether their consultant or coach or whatever. so those fears keep people from.

Renee La Tour: Realigning and redesigning their business to be what they want it to be and fit into the lifestyle they want. And so instead that fear dictates how they run their business and they feel like that is the only way to run your business. And I obviously make the argument that that isn't the only way to run your business, and you can actually decide.

Renee La Tour: To not run your business in fear, and to step through some of those things that are holding you back. So the objections are so many, like usually it comes down to risk, trust, again, afraid to lose clients, but it all is rooted in fear, really

Sean Weisbrot: sounds like things I've heard people say. As to why they're, they don't want to start hiring a team, or they don't, they don't think they can take their business from 2030 K to a hundred KA a month, even though they want it. They, they just, they're afraid of X or Y or z. Which is funny because as an entrepreneur, our goal isn't to live in fear. Our goal is to live in abundance and growth and, and this, this goal of, of expansion, so that we can help more people with the problems that they have. And yet these people seem like they're stuck at a point where they want to have a change, but they're not really living and, and existing as an entrepreneur.

Sean Weisbrot: They're kind of. Like a freelancer, like I need to hold onto everything I have. So it's, it sounds like you're, you're not just helping them to run their business remotely, you're also helping them to become less of a freelancer and more of like an entrepreneur.

Renee La Tour: Yes. Right. And a lot of that comes from action. I'm a huge believer in overcoming these fears too. Push yourself. And I'm not pushing, pushing yourself like in an ah, hustle. Get it. Grind it. I'm not talking in that kind of way. I'm just talkingof the realization that the fear is there.

Renee La Tour: Okay, I see it and can I embrace it and step through it. And how do you do that by taking action. So a lot of times it. It's really small steps that get people to make bigger steps. And like in your example, okay, I know I'm at 50 KA a month, I know I can be at a hundred KA a month, how do I get there? And that seems like. A huge leap. And really it starts with real small steps. and I think that's one of the bigger things that when you are working with someone else, that other person can help you do.

Renee La Tour: Because when it's just you in a vacuum it's really hard for you to have that. You have that big vision, you know that you're capable of it, but how, what do those small steps look like? and that's where, working with another person like yourself, that's where that's really. Valuable and helpful because you have to have those small steps to push through that fear. It's only through action.

Sean Weisbrot: So what are some small steps that are actionable?

Renee La Tour: So well gimme like a specific example like someone's trying to do

Sean Weisbrot: X company has more sales than people to serve the clients and they aren't sure what's going wrong.

Renee La Tour: Okay, so sales, you mean like they have a lot of leads coming in. They have a lot of, they're making a lot of sales, but they don't have enough people to serve their clients. Like they don't have enough, staff basically. So they need to expand their team. Everyone has a different way to go about problem solving. For me, you definitely wanna pop the hood and see what's really going on because even though it seems on the surface, oh, it's just a staffing problem, there might be other things going on.

Renee La Tour: there might be an opportunity for them to. Restructure what they're offering. Maybe they can increase their pricing for one without having to increase their staff. they could do both. They can increase pricing while increasing staff, so there's not so much of a cost for onboarding those new people.

Renee La Tour: I would go back to how they hired those amazing staff people to begin with and follow that same mold. A lot of times people try to do new things, like they're going different routes to recruit people, and it's like, wait a second, how'd you get the first group of. A A players, how did you get all these great salespeople who are bringing in all this business do that same thing over and over again?

Renee La Tour: Like don't, don't fix something that's not broken. So those would be like the first really simple steps that I would start with. In just this given example,

Sean Weisbrot: The thing for them is they're providing tech services, so they're like an IT outsourcing agency. And so. The way that they find their salespeople is different from the way that they find their tech people. And it's hard to find tech people for the specific languages. And so I was like, I I, I ended up telling them, look, you probably should not provide that service if it's so hard to find those people because you're, you're pissing off your clients 'cause you're making the sale, but you can't perform.

Sean Weisbrot: And it, as a result, they're asking for their money back or it's taking too long to onboard and, and this just makes you look bad. So. but then I also said, look, you're your sales thing, sure. You should increase your price and you should probably pay your developers better to make it more likely that they're gonna wanna come on. And so there, there's a lot of other things, in involved in that

Renee La Tour: for sure. Yeah, exactly. And you see that once you pop the hood. okay. Now, okay, now I have a little more context. So it's the tech staff that's providing the support and those tech staff were hard to even. Acquire in the first place. And that's kind of like where the bottleneck is. Interesting,

Sean Weisbrot: right? The salespeople were closing faster than they could hire people who hire tech people to serve the clients. So I was like, you have a great problem. You have too many sales, raise your price and maybe consider firing one of the salespeople, even though you have that higher price. But then, do you know how many calls each of these two people are taking on? Do you know who's the more efficient one of them? Who has the higher close rate? Who has the higher, like, ah, we don't have that information. Okay, well, that 's your problem. You don't have any data to make decisions from,

Renee La Tour: right? YY yeah. What are you looking at to make those decisions? And then, of course, analyzing what's going on in the tech side. Again, I, I, I realize that it's probably hard to find those tech people, but that shouldn't just be like, oh, it's hard to find 'em. Don't go find them. Like if you have, if you have people banging down your door for business.

Renee La Tour: Try to fill those seats. Like I would, that would be like my number one. Like yeah, definitely try to fill those seats instead of training customers away. I mean, you could always, like, there's nothing wrong with wait listing. There's nothing wrong with getting a client onboard and saying, Hey, we actually don't have the capacity in the next three months.

Renee La Tour: But if you sign on today, you pay your down payment, or you pay the total amount or whatever, in three months we're going to be able to serve you and you'll be the first one. 'cause you're on this wait list. So that could also be a way to just give yourself a little breathing room and then all, evaluate the situation, figure out how you can get more tech people on board. And then also, Build demand, like have a, have a sense of scarcity. And it's not fake scarcity, it's real scarcity. And then also, you do not have to like, give people refunds. I mean, in a worst case scenario, once those three months have arrived and you still haven't figured out what's going on with hiring tech people or whatever that might be, then at that point you could give a refund, right?

Renee La Tour: Like, you still have options, you still have a way out. But in those three months, if you haven't figured it out, there's probably. Bigger problems there. Like you said, not tracking what's going on and there's a lot of stuff there going on.

Sean Weisbrot: One of the other things I had said to them was, you should probably think about for the long term, if there's not enough people that can have these skills, you should probably find a way to teach people these skills. So like, let's say you've got someone that has an adjacent skill, they can code and they're interested in this thing and it's a hot thing. So you find a way to create a course program, have your, your best people, create it. And, and administered and management and the people who do the best can get the job at the end of the day. and maybe they end up paying you for the pleasure of having the, going through this program and then you, you refund them if you, if you hire them at the end.

Renee La Tour: Yeah, no, that, I think that's great. I mean, it's thinking outside of the box, and I would say like, as far as going back to your original question, like what would be the first step is think about. How could this be really simple? Like, how can I keep this very simple, like not complex, don't try to copy someone else. Don't try to find it in a book. Like really how can I cry? How can I address this problem and find a solution in the simplest way possible? And that usually leads people to either think outside of the box or just like dumb it down.

Renee La Tour: Like don't get too crazy or complicated. Or think that the problem's bigger than it's,

Sean Weisbrot: You mentioned fear already. Are there any similarities between fear and shame, would you say? And if so, what?

Renee La Tour: Yeah, I would say definitely because a lot of the biggest fears that people have are making a mistake. Like, oh, I'm gonna misstep, I'm gonna make a mistake.

Renee La Tour: And a lot of times that's tied to what other people will think. and when there's focus on. How I'll be perceived, what other people will think there, there lies a lot of the shame. And there, when you get to the core of it, that's where the shame is living. And that's where kind of the shame is breeding. Is I going to feel embarrassed or I'm gonna be ashamed, or, what will people think or what will people say?

Renee La Tour: And so I feel like they're definitely really, tightly. Close knit, depending on what that specific fear is, if that makes sense.

Sean Weisbrot: So how can you tell the difference between fear and shame in a client or if they have both one or the other, when you're doing your discovery or after you started working with them so that you can hit it and destroy it as quickly as possible?

Renee La Tour: I feel like, I'll give you an example 'cause this is one that comes up a lot is perfectionism. So it, it's, it's such a big issue in the entrepreneurial space because entrepreneurs are typically, high achievers are typically people who make things happen who are very independent and have a high standard for themselves.

Renee La Tour: And with that, there's. Always a lot of baggage that has driven a lot of that high achievement, a lot of that. I wanna do my best. I wanna be the biggest, I want the most. It's not always healthy emotions that are driving that. And when we talk about perfectionism, that's usually what it looks like on the surface is perfectionism and what, usually.

Renee La Tour: Makes people very unproductive andtakes too long to do something and makes sure that they cross every t and dot every I before something goes out of the door. and just, and, and not really being very agile, in their business because they're just trying so hard to make sure that it is creme de la creme.

Renee La Tour: And underneath that is shame. And underneath that is a lot of. Childhood traumas, and it's really a lot to be unpacked. And again, when I go back to work with my clients, I'm not gonna sit there and say, Hey, this is a shame and we need to really bust through this. And it's like, no, it's not.

Renee La Tour: It's not really how that works. It's more of just, an invitation to a client to, Hey, I can call it out like this doesn't need to be perfect. Like, done is better than perfect. This just needs to go out. This needs to be done. Don't overthink it. It's kind of like simple things that we can coach each other on.

Renee La Tour: and then to get under the surface is just opening the door and the invitation to have them do some self-discovery is like, what's really going on underneath that? What's driving that, that, perfectionism, what's driving. The need to really make sure that this is perfect and without any errors.

Renee La Tour: And you know when, when someone kind of sits with themselves and evaluates that, that's really where they're doing deep work. And that's kind of. On the sidelines of what the work that I do is like, let's get it done. Like, we are actually doing things like we're hiring people, we're getting things out the door.

Renee La Tour: versus some of this stuff that's living in the background and why I wanted to chat about this because it's a real problem that I feel like we need to talk about as entrepreneurs. Like, oh, we're talking about the seven figures and making money and scaling the business and hiring it, all these things.

Renee La Tour: Oh, network marketing. Yeah, it's great. But let's really talk about some things that are living underneath the surface that we should pay a little more attention to. Because the first step is acknowledgement. Like just having that awareness like, oh, what's really going on under that? Perfectionism instead of just saying, ah, it's perfectionism, bust through it.

Renee La Tour: Like that's a temporary bandage versus let's get to the root of it. Oh, there's some shame there. Where did that come from? Hmm. Maybe it was how I interacted with my mom as a child, or maybe it was something that happened to me in the seventh grade that made me feel really crappy about myself.

Renee La Tour: And it's just like those things that come out in therapy. But they come out in the entrepreneurial world, they come out in business and I feel like, So many times we don't address it. And why I really wanted to talk about this, today, because it's under there and I think it just starts with awareness.

Sean Weisbrot: I've discovered that the best therapy is entrepreneurialism. Like if you wanna learn about yourself, start a business, and if you wanna really break through all of the bullshit in your life, start a business. Because if you refuse to deal with those things, your business won't succeed. So you have no choice but to deal with those things if you wanna succeed.

Sean Weisbrot: And oftentimes people don't realize that coaching is basically therapy without a lot of the psychological talk with all. They would say the psycho techno B, whatever the, because as you just explained, you never once in your explanation used the word fear or shame. So you have to navigate. The issue without saying what the issue is directly to their face or else you'll trigger this like desire to close up so that they can avoid dealing with this thing that's very deep inside of themselves.

Sean Weisbrot: And I think it's fascinating because of my background in psychology and I was a teacher for many years. And after going through multiple businesses, it's been apparent to me that I'm just cut out for being a coach, an advisor, whatever you want to call it, because of those two passions of education and psychology where you wouldn't normally think that until you experience it and you go, oh, actually like teaching plus psychology.

Sean Weisbrot: Cool. Helping people to become better with. Real science behind it to make sure that they actually make those changes and improvements as long as they're willing to do the hard work. And I dunno, I just, a little rant, but I, I think it's really interesting.

Renee La Tour: No, no, no, no. Not ranty at all. I, yeah, I totally agree. Aven to that, like, entrepreneurship is the quickest, maybe not quickest. It's a long, long, marathon, but it is a great way to learn about yourself and really face it. Those, those, thresholds of growth because to expand, like you were mentioning earlier, I really feel like to expand, you do have to shed.

Renee La Tour: Old layers of yourself, and you have to let some of the old habits, the old mode of operation, you have to let a lot of that stuff die. And it's difficult. It is a death and birthing process that you go through internally when you are birthing businesses. And I truly believe this is why I'm, I'm so passionate about it.

Renee La Tour: And I feel like what you're saying as far as I like. When you're talking to a client, whether you're coaching, consulting, whatever, you're not gonna say it right out like, Hey, you have shame. Like you, you have some emotional intelligence to not come across like that. But I think a lot of development can happen in this space, whether it's with your clients or even something like this.

Renee La Tour: Someone's listening to this podcast by just us sharing our stories and us sharing like, Hey, I. Feel shame. I have this shame that's underneath, this perfectionism that shows up in these ways. And I feel like sharing that helps other people realize that they're not alone. Realize that they can get comfortable with it.

Renee La Tour: realize that they can have the acknowledgement to embrace it. Like I said, that way they can move past it. That way they can step through those fears.

Sean Weisbrot: So I'm gonna share the last time I felt shame. And then I'm gonna ask you to share yours. So get ready. And this happens sometimes to me. It, it, it's, it's a reoccurring thing that happened a few months ago in the last iteration.

Sean Weisbrot: so I was part of, or I am part of a Discord server that's about entrepreneurship. There's about 12,000 people in it for you to join. One of the best servers I've ever had, or one of the best communities I've seen online.

Sean Weisbrot: And so I joined it with the hope of finding clients. Really, there's a lot of voice channels on there, and every day there's 5, 10, 15, 20 people on the voice channel just chatting, sharing their ideas, their struggles with their business, people giving each other advice and all that.

Sean Weisbrot: And I thought it would be a good way for me to be able to, Add value and, and show what I could do without being salesy. And, actually got a number of people reaching out to me, privately to see about my services based on advice I was giving in the voice channels. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job with it, but apparently I was coming across as arrogant because I get really passionate when people.

Sean Weisbrot: Talk about their business and my own businesses and all that, but the way that I was telling them that their idea wasn't right or whatever was kind of in your face a little bit. And so I was kind of putting some people off, but I wasn't aware of it. So I ended up getting kicked out of the server because multiple people ended up complaining about it.

Sean Weisbrot: How I was handling this situation, but I wasn't told why I was just banned. Luckily, I know the founder, so I was able to send him a message and I was like, Hey, man, like, what's going on? You know? Oh, multiple people are complaining about you and the way you communicate with them. What are you talking about?

Sean Weisbrot: And so we ended up having a chat and he explained, and I was like, look, I would love the opportunity to be able to talk to some of the people in the server and, and just kind of see what it was that I was doing because I'm, I wasn't aware that, like I don't think I'm a bad person. My goal isn't to, I know.

Sean Weisbrot: Come on and tell people that they're idiots and like, obviously I wasn't saying they're idiots to their face. Like obviously there's a disconnect because I'm not a bad person, right. I'm not like, my goal isn't to hurt other people. My goal is to help and if I. If I wasn't being helpful or if the way I was saying things was not being helpful, then I need to know about that because that's not who I am.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. So he gave me another chance. I got to be able to speak to some of those people and I was able to learn from that experience. And I felt really ashamed for like a week or two. I was really like, like, talking down to myself, and that's not really healthy either, but I was just realizing I need to be more humble.

Sean Weisbrot: Because I came into the server with a lot of knowledge and experience that a lot of other people there don't have yet. I'm one of the oldest people in the server and, and that's one of the reasons why I've just had more years on my belt and I guess the way I was talking to these people wasn't becoming of an advisor or. Or a consultant. And so when I was able to get that opportunity to go back in, I started explaining to people, look, I, I was just going through a rough time and, I don't know how that happened. It's not who I am. And, some of the people said it was as simple as just asking questions instead of telling, right?

Sean Weisbrot: So, instead of saying something like, oh, you shouldn't be doing it like this, you should be doing it like this. Just ask, be like, well, have you considered doing it like this? Right. Something so simple as just showing, inquisitiveness and curiosity is, is enough to, kind of get rid of that tension and make them feel like you're not looking down on them or talking down, which again, from the start, my goal wasn't to do any of that, but, but I was quite ashamed of it because that's not who I am.

Sean Weisbrot: and sometimes we say and do things without realizing it, and that was a huge lesson for me and. And ever since then I've been a lot happier thinking about the way I communicate with other people. So what's, what's the last time you felt shame?

Renee La Tour: That's a great story and a great example. And I love how you shared how you used it as a learning experience. And I think again, it goes back to having the openness and the awareness of. I feel shameful, but I'm not gonna let shame run my life and just run from it. I'm going to ask, like, like you said, thankfully you knew the founder. You could ask him personally, like, Hey, what's going on? Why was I kicked out? Instead of just blaming, right? Like, ah, they're a bunch of losers. I don't know what they're doing. That's why I'm too good for them, whatever. and then like you said, asking like, Hey, how could I have helped you better? Oh, just. A small tweak to how I was phrasing, how I'm helping, instead of telling you this is how you should do it, asking as a question.

Renee La Tour: I think that's really beautiful that you had that whole, I mean, this is a simple example, right? But this is something that you used as a learning opportunity and now you're back in the group and you're a better person because of it. You're a better communicator because of it.

Sean Weisbrot: What was your ex's last feeling of shame?

Renee La Tour: Let me be clear. it's an. Maybe not daily. It's like a weekly battle. I could talk about travel, I could talk about the one that comes to mind. I could share multiple. Let's see how much time we have. One that came to my mind that was interesting was LinkedIn. I. So I use LinkedIn just to post, just to have community with people, get, obviously get new leads by, having a conversation with people.

Renee La Tour: Very humanistic. It's not like I go on there and I'm just like, Hey, hitting the pavement, trying to get people into my program. I really go on there because I wanna connect with coaches, I wanna build relationships. See what they're struggling with, see if I can help. so I'm posting content and doing all of these things.

Renee La Tour: Well, of course I'm connected to people that I previously worked with. In my old nine to five job, I'm connected with people that I work with in my finance company because as you, as you, explained when we first introduced me, we have a finance company and that company didn't go anywhere. That company basically runs itself.

Renee La Tour: so I'm doing this in addition to the finance company and I'm on LinkedIn and I'm still connected to all of these other prior connections. And if I feel like this level of, Self-doubt or even perfectionism of thinking, oh, what will people think? 'cause I'm posting about how to automate in your business, how to delegate, and what it means to be a leader.

Renee La Tour: I'm posting a lot of information about my consulting services. I'm not, Obviously, and they don't know. They're kind of keeping up with what I'm doing in business and what I'm doing in life. And I got a message like, so I'm, I'm doing this, I'm posting whatever. I got a message from a previous boss that I had, goodness, this is like eight years ago, nine years ago, like a long time ago, you know?

Renee La Tour: And so she messages me and she's like, oh my God, you have a consulting business now. Like question mark, question mark, exclamation point, you know? And then like when I saw that message, I got this total like. Oh my God. Like this, it kind of freaked, freaked out, like, ah, this is really uncomfortable.

Renee La Tour: Like I have this level of, kind of shame where like, oh my God, now, everyone's looking at me and my, and my LinkedIn and judging me or, or trying to figure out what I'm doing and like, I had this, these really weird, icky feelings all about, how other people are gonna perceive me and having shame around that.

Renee La Tour: So I sat with it for a little bit. And I was thinking, okay, what's the best way to go about this? Like, and I talked to somebody about it, like one of my colleagues, and I was like, yeah, I'm kind of feeling kind of weird because I'm posting my link LinkedIn and other people you know from my past are seeing my, my content and they're curious about what I'm doing and all this and that.

Renee La Tour: And so he said, well, just delete 'em. Just delete all those people. Like, why are you connected with them anyways? Like they're, you can't help them, da, da, da. And I, and I said, no, that's not the answer. Like, I didn't even think about it for a split second about deleting them or anything. I said, no, that's not the answer.

Renee La Tour: The answer is to embrace it. Like the answer is like, I just have to sit with these icky feelings and figure out what's going on there and how I can. Continue forward. and so I wrote her back and I said, oh yeah, I started this consulting business. It's really fun. Like I'm helping these coaches, their businesses, da da da.

Renee La Tour: And so, I wrote back to her, we had a really nice exchange. I told her how much I really loved her as a mentor, like when I was working with her and stuff. And she was like, ah, I wish you would come, work with me and da da da. And so it was really a lovely exchange, but I had to step through that shame, like feeling some kind of weird way because.

Renee La Tour: People from my past. And the funny thing about that is. First of all, nobody really cares. People are always just focused on themselves. Like we always think people are thinking about us and they're not like, so it's just like this constant reminding like, nobody cares. Nobody cares about you. Like they are just caring about themselves.

Renee La Tour: secondly. The answer is not to run or to hide, or, oh, I'm not gonna connect myself with these people anymore. because first of all, a lot of those people might need your help. and a lot of those people you have relationships with, and it's such a small world, that there is always a way that you can connect with people.

Renee La Tour: And so why would you, just remove people from your life or from your. Ecosystem. so to me that, that, that's just one that's really coming to my, to, to my mind in business and, and actually even still, like, it's still kind of something like when somebody from my past kind of messages me and they're curious about what I'm doing, it kind of comes up and then I get to step through it like every time.

Renee La Tour: so that's kind of one of my examples that I wanted to share.

Sean Weisbrot: Also a pretty good example as well of how you learned something from that and didn't run away from it. I'm curious though, is there some experience you've had with a client or another person where they couldn't get through the shame?

Renee La Tour: The example that's coming to my mind is, I've worked with a client who had a lot of.

Renee La Tour: A lot of traumas around victimhood and falling into that victim role and always wanting to be in that role of the victim instead of the creator. And I know that there's a lot of shame around that. I know that that's kind of a form of not facing. ownership or taking leadership in your business.

Renee La Tour: and it's a lot easier to blame than to say, oh, it was because that person I hired, or, oh, that client, didn't respect me. And it's always, pointing the finger outward and instead of taking ownership and saying like, Hey, I'm actually in control. There might be some things going on underneath and not wanting to address that.

Renee La Tour: it's really difficult to unpack again. There's only so much we can do, right? Like people really do need to seek life coaching or therapy or whatever it might be. When I'm helping people in business, these things come up and I try to push through that again with action. And I'll give you an example, like this particular client always being in that victim role, always being in that eye, comes.

Renee La Tour: That whole victim thing of these people is out to get me, of course that attracts it, that it attracts a lot of that energy and then puts out a lot of that energy. So, she was very risk averse. So one thing that I helped with was hiring someone of course, because the goal was removing her from the business.

Renee La Tour: Starting off small, like starting off with a really small project. Like I, I'm a pro freelancer by the way. Like I'm all about the gig economy and for most roles you don't need a full-time employee. And so this, this was one of those cases where it was a freelancer and to kind of start stepping out of that victim mentality, was to just take those small steps.

Renee La Tour: Like, okay, this. With this particular freelancer, we're only giving her access to this small area of your business. And we're gonna do a small test project to get started and see how that goes. And, you can't beat everybody. It's like, again, everyone's kind of in their own journey and I feel like there's still just this struggle that she has with being in that victim role.

Renee La Tour: And sometimes, I mean, I'm okay with it. Saying, Hey, I've done everything that I can do to try to get your business moving into a certain way. But again, like we're talking about, there's a lot of work there that needs to be done interpersonally. taking the time to sit and say, what's going on here?

Renee La Tour: Like, why am I always pointing outward and not taking the leadership role and really owning what I'm creating in my life and what I'm attracting. And I could do everything that I could do on my end, but. It was just too thick that, protection and wanting to, always have someone to blame and always play the victim and underneath that undoubtedly was shame for sure.

Sean Weisbrot: One thing that a lot of people don't realize when they're running a business is if anything goes wrong, it's always your fault. Even if someone else made a mistake. It's your fault because you didn't give them the support they needed, or you didn't give them the training, or you didn't hire the right person, or you didn't have enough documentation or whatever.

Sean Weisbrot: It's always your fault. And if you can't take responsibility for that, then you shouldn't be running a business.

Renee La Tour: Yeah, and you bring up a good point because I think what happens a lot of times is like you're taking responsibility, you have that self responsibility, and there's a line that you don't need to cross to like.

Renee La Tour: Berate yourself or beat yourself up over it. Like, you wanna learn from mistakes that you make, and continue to move forward. But I think that there is, there is a, the other side of that, and there is a pitfall that people can fall into where they, they. Are almost like too responsible and like almost too accountable where they're now trying to control the situation and then now when something doesn't go as planned, it's their fault and they feel really nasty about it and they can't get over it and they can't move forward.

Renee La Tour: So I totally agree with you, but then I just wanted to mention that there is. Kind of like a flip side to that, where if it's in excess, it's really harmful and it's not helpful at all. So I feel like there's, yeah, I feel like there's a spectrum to everything and there could be almost too much self responsibility and almost too much of feeling like you're in control when.

Renee La Tour: People are gonna do crappy things. Like people are gonna come in and affect you in some way and life is happening and it's bigger than just your, your little, vacu your little world and things are happening and it's all about how you're gonna respond to that. So you do have to be okay.

Renee La Tour: It's not about blaming, but it's like, yeah, that person was kind of shitty and there's not a whole lot I could have done about it, could have done about it. And then you move on. So. It's not all black and white, it's just what I wanna throw in there.

Sean Weisbrot: I guess the learning lesson for me is every time a mistake is made. It's a way to improve the business, right? So if you find that that person was shitty, chances are you messed up your hiring process, you hired the wrong person. How can you make your hiring process better? What rule do you have to put in place? What process do you have to fix? Et cetera, et cetera. And this is something I learned from my partner, Mark, who was a COO for my last company.

Sean Weisbrot: Because he would always go, yeah, we made a mistake. All right, let's. Let's fix it. Right? So one another shameful experience. Sorry, sorry. Another shameful experience for me was when I would come to a problem sometimes of anger, right? If I saw that someone on the team did something that I thought wasn't right, I would get angry and I would show that anger to them.

Sean Weisbrot: Not a good way of running your business. I learned from that to come with curiosity instead and, and information, right? So. So what my partner would point out was, you think there was a problem, but you don't have enough information to make that determination because you're not involved in everything.

Sean Weisbrot: So let's find out what happened. Let's find out why it happened, and let's come up with a solution with that person so that it won't happen again. Therefore, any mistake that happens is a,and is an opportunity to fix the business and make it better.

Renee La Tour: I think just first, going back to. What you were saying with identifying what role you played. I agree completely. So even if the person was awful, you did play a role in that. What was that? you don't have to own the whole 100% of the situation. There was another person involved, but what, what role did I play? And then also just really be mindful. 'cause we'll help it, it gets tricky again, it's, I see some clients who.

Renee La Tour: They want to have rules and they wanna set up a system based on a bad apple. Again, I'm just gonna keep saying a shitty person. So, and this can come to not only hires, but also clients like, oh, this person, I'm gonna use a silly example. Oh, this person didn't show up for a call because of this reason.

Renee La Tour: So now I'm gonna add another question on my call booking page that says, Hey, if. No do, do not set up your systems for the shitty people. Like, don't do that. So like, it's like a balance of the two, like knowing how to structure it in a way so you can avoid those problems, but also not setting up your systems so that you're avoiding all of these bad apples that are really.

Renee La Tour: Not, those are more far and few in between. I really do feel like 99.9% of people are, are cool and they're fine. so don't set up your systems for those bad apples. So that's one thing I just wanted to mention with that. And then going into your second piece about. Like how you interact with your team.

Renee La Tour: It's funny that you bring that up because I was just talking about that today. Someone on my team made a mistake, and again, like you said, you can go at it with a kind of anger. Like, we need to make sure this never happens again. Like this was a very costly mistake. and so instead I took a step back.

Renee La Tour: It's always like, oh, my answer to almost everything is just give yourself some space. Just give yourself a little space, like close your laptop, put down the phone. Like do what? Go on a walk. Like, give yourself a little space so that you can let that emotion kind of subside a little bit, and you don''t have that in the driver's seat.

Renee La Tour: That emotion can be a passenger in the backseat, but not the driver. And so instead, I like to go to it with curiosity. Like, it's so funny. I was just having this conversation and said, Hey, I just wanna know, like this is exactly what I did.

Renee La Tour: Like, I just wanna know what your thinking was behind. What happened? Like the conversation, like tell me what, what, where you were, what you were thinking, what your train of thought was. Because like you said, I did not have that information. Like, so I could just be like, oh my God, we cannot let this happen again. Like, and be really frantic about it instead of just like, let me get the information.

Renee La Tour: And then I saw, ah. It was because he thought he had this information, like part of our standard operating procedures. Like part of this SOP wasn't clear. Like, it just wasn't clear. And so he told me like, oh, because of this piece of the SOP, this is why I thought da da. And I'm like, ah. So now I know what the problem was.

Renee La Tour: I know where he was coming from. all of those emotions have completely dissipated because he had an explanation like this is exactly why he did it. We could change the SOP, we could fix the problem and move forward. It's not gonna happen again. Instead of being a hot mess and having this really terrible interaction with a team member.

Sean Weisbrot: It happened enough times for me that I had to learn from that finally. 'cause I, I couldn't keep letting it happen. similar to the whole thing with this community, but different where I wasn't, I wasn't coming to something with anger because. Yeah, it was a different situation, but, but the solution in both situations was just to be more curious.

Renee La Tour: Yeah. I think that's a great solution. And then I think also, again, it's not so fun or pretty, but digging a little bit deeper, like where is this anger coming from? Where is this? It looks like arrogance, but maybe it's actually just excitement or, or knowing that I have the answer or what some refer to as toxic positivity.

Renee La Tour: Like where is that coming from? What's underneath that? It could be shameful, it could be something else. I think just a little bit of digging, to really kind of see what's at the root, I feel like it helps also. Build awareness when we are faced with these kinds of situations.