The Secret Club of Admitting You Suck
Or the time I almost moved to the middle of nowhere
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About a year and a half ago, I almost moved to a tiny island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, Deal Island. We were very serious, like..found a house and took our parents to see it serious.
True story.
I wouldn’t have said this at the time, but in retrospect, yes, I was obviously trying to run away. I was a first-time manager and was screwing it up at every turn. I felt like a failure every single day, but I refused to admit this to anyone.
I couldn’t admit that I sucked.
It’s crazy, right? I was so terrified of admitting I sucked that it actually seemed easier to convince my partner to move to a place where the top job options were prison guard and crabber.
Thankfully I had an incredible boss/mentor/friend at the time (shoutout to Tristan Handy) who realized that “I’m moving to an island” might be code for “I feel like a failure.”
I started admitting I sucked. I learned how to say things like:
- “I’m so frustrated and I’m not making any progress.”
- “I fucked up.”
- “I have no idea how to fix this.”
And then, when I started to say these things out loud, I realized I wasn’t alone. Nobody called me an idiot or wanted to fire me. Instead I discovered a secret club of people who, rather than maintaining the facade of having it all together, are actually better at their jobs because they are so willing to admit they suck.
Hiten Shah believes so much in the power of admitting you suck that he actually made it a company value:
We had a value at Kissmetrics, we still do, it’s called: be better than yesterday. Think about what you are most focused on and ask yourself every day, “Am I getting better at that?” And if you’re not, ask, “What can I do tomorrow to get better?”
He recommends supplementing this daily self-evaluation with two supporting actions:
- Find someone who will be honest with you and ask them for critical feedback.
- After an experience with someone, mentally review it to explore where you went right and wrong, and what you could have done differently to improve it.
“I’ve met with thousands of founders and the way I got better at giving advice was thinking a lot about whether I was effective or not.” Hiten says. “It’s a simple practice. Get out of your own head and think about how you could have done a better job.”
That’s it: get out of your own head, admit where you came up short, think about how you could have done a better job. It’s 100% guaranteed that you suck at something, and the people around you probably already know what that thing is. But if you refuse to admit it, how do you expect to get better?
Admitting you suck is incredibly powerful, and there’s a whole secret club of people who know this and are just waiting for you to figure it out and stop pretending like you have it all together.
Of course, the other option is to just run away. In which case, I know a beautiful little island where you can get work on a crabbing boat.
If you’re interested in more no-BS-insights from Hiten Shah, check out his recent appearance on The Growth Show where he talks about building organizational awareness, shares his perspective on what makes a great founder, and doles out parenting advice to Kipp Bodnar.
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