Ever heard of Jack Ma’s wisdom?
When doing Sales, the first people who will trust you will be Strangers, Friends will be shielding against you, fair-weather friends will distance from you. Family will look down upon you.
Jack Ma
Let’s take it from the person who literally went through everything to get to where he is now. I admire this individual. He has so much will to achieve his aspirations in life. And I connect with his ideals, not because I’m as grand as he already is, but because I’ve experienced most of it just the same.
So here are some reasons why you shouldn’t consider telling friends and family about your new business ideas.
They are only interested in big results
They don’t care about the conception of your idea. To them it’s just an idea until it hits big. Even if you’ve already started, they’ll remain skeptical until you show them what to them is “real numbers” as if they are “real investors”. Your small profits won’t mean anything to them even if it means so much to you. This is a really big downer. You don’t want to get that when you’re starting up and you know you dream big. They’ll just unconsciously or intentionally crush your idea down with your dreams.
There are a couple more reasons to that. Either they don’t trust you, they want to keep themselves above you, or they’re simply not interested. But, everyone gets interested in something once it’s already big, even if it’s not their thing. So it’s a big no-no. Especially if the discouragement will come from your family. That’s an absolute downer. And you can’t help it. Because not everyone is built for what you want to achieve. But maybe you are! So go build your dream! If you need help, look for a person who’d really be interested in what you’re planning and potentially support you all the way.
Your dream could be their dream
But if they failed, they probably don’t want you to succeed either — at least not with them not being the star player of the game. Some people don’t consider you as equals. Crab mentality is a really toxic attitude. They could at least support you but they choose not to. They want it for themselves, sometimes, unconsciously. They could maybe offer help, but they want the bigger piece of the pie. When it comes to money, people either change or show their true colors.
They don’t like your idea
They think they have a better one or they think it already exists, and that what you have has nothing to beat the odds of going side by side with the big ones or has the potential to reach the top. They are basically pessimists. They’re gonna knock you down with everything that’s not good enough in your idea. “Not good enough for them”, that is.
They’re not interested at all
It’s not that they don’t like the idea. They’re just totally disinterested, so they won’t even bother to support it.
They are less structured than you are
You’ve probably thought of all this idea already and laid everything on the drawing board, visualized your end goal and have a high level outlook of the fundamentals that make it up. But your friends and family are great what-if-ers. They worry too much about the details and enter into brainstorming without framing the bigger picture first. So before you could even get their approval, they already say no because they worry so much about mitigating risks that haven’t been fully planned yet. But you’re still just on the vision, mission, and goal statement!
Unfortunately, you’re the only one who think this way. A lot of your friends or family probably think you need to have a working prototype first before you pitch to them and that it should already foolproof.
They don’t want to invest on you
Did I already say they don’t trust you? How many more permutations of reasons can you come up with on why they don’t want to invest on you? I have one, THEY DON’T TRUST YOU.
Will you invest on someone you don’t trust? Of course not! You’ll choose someone you trust. Even if it’s a stranger, you’ll dig up the person’s background, portfolio, personality and capability. You’ll want to know if the person can be trusted. It’s just like hiring an employee for a company. In short, you need to establish trust before you invest in someone or on something. It’s the same thing as trying to choose your friends as your first audience for your fresh business idea! because you already trust them.
But hey, do they trust you? Maybe in other things, but on your business proposal? Maybe or maybe not. It’s probably a 1% chance to find that guy in your circle of friends and family who will really match your aspirations and help you with it. So if you have a hundred friends, find that 1 guy and hope you’re not wrong.
Conclusion
Let’s say, not all, but most of them will be like this. So, should you or should you not tell your friends and family about your new business idea? Well, I’m not gonna answer that for you. You have to figure it out. But I’m giving you the reasons on why you shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean you can’t. There’s still a chance they’re not the type of people I mentioned in this article. But that’s up to you.
My advice is, if you plan to, don’t tell them all about it and don’t tell everyone. Choose the right people. Even if they are the kind of people I mentioned, don’t be discouraged. You still have you. You are the most important piece of your idea. Without you, it wouldn’t even be an idea. Cheers to that!
In My Opinion 