27 | In Need of Help?: You Might Be a Tim: The ‘I’ Breakdown

Feeling overwhelmed as a self-employed entrepreneur? Unlock the secrets to managing stress and avoiding burnout in today’s episode of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. We dive into Tim's journey, a self-employed individual navigating the rough waters of running a small business. Get ready to discover why mainstream business advice often misses the mark for folks like Tim, who are driven by passion and necessity rather than chasing multi-million dollar dreams. We’ll share practical strategies tailored specifically for the self-employed, helping you find balance and reclaim your enthusiasm for your work.

As we wrap up, we draw a powerful connection between Tim’s struggles and the universal challenges we all face. Whether you’re a small business owner or just someone feeling “tired, in need of help, and muddling through,” this episode is a reminder that you’re not alone. We encourage you to share your experiences and questions at voicemailstotim.com. Your story could inspire others and even be featured in future episodes. Tune in for your daily dose of inspiration and optimism, designed to get you and Tim back on track.

If you are self-employed or run a small business and feel more like you're self-annoyed then get in touch, visit the website www.theannoyinglyoptimisticshow.com where you can submit a question or problem and start your journey to becoming self-enjoyed! 

The majority of 'business advice' out there isn't aimed at self-employed or micro businesses, following it leaves you frustrated and chasing quick fixes. I specialise in tools, systems, techniques, inspiration and help specifically designed for YOU, the person who has to do it all, who doesn't have a team of people, unlimited resources or the time to spend months learning complicated techniques. 

Transcript

Tim's Struggles as a Self-Employed Entrepreneur

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey there, listeners, it's your annoyingly optimistic host here bringing you another season of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. Welcome to Season 2, voicemails to Tim. Now let's meet Tim. He's been running his own small business for almost three years now and let's just say he's hit a bit of a rough patch. You know how it is Sometimes you get so stuck, you make yourself busy and just avoid finding the real problems. Well, that's Tim. So, as a good friend, I decide to leave him a daily voicemail, if I can't get hold of him, filled with nuggets of inspiration, insight and wisdom and downright brilliant ideas to help get him unstuck Every day. In just under 10 minutes, I'll share some tips, tricks and a healthy dose of optimism to get Tim, and maybe even you, back on track, because, let's face it, we're all a little tired, in need of help and muddling through. So here we go. Oh wait, never mind Tim's being busy. Here's the voicemail I left him today Hi, tim, hope you're well Now, as promised.

Speaker 1 0:58

Hopefully, if you are listening to this, you managed to catch my other voicemail about being tired and what that really, really means in in in the world of Tim. So what I want to talk about today is the I of Tim in need of help. If you haven't listened to tired, go and listen to that and then come back and listen to this in need of help. So what does this mean? Because in most things in life, we're in need of help. So what does this mean? Because in most things in life, we're in need of some kind of help. As children, we learn things as we go through our kind of life. There's often things that we need help with day to day from friends, family or whatever. But what is it specific about being self-employed that makes you, tim, tired, in need of help and muddling along? And, specifically, what is that in need of help, what it means? So what this is and inspired by you, tim is the fact that there is a massive amount of advice and help and YouTube videos and TikToks and reels and books and audio books and podcasts. You know hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. Everywhere you look for business marketing, branding, any kind of main strand of business help, and there are countless things out there, but many, if if not most, and certainly most, of the ones that I've come across and you know I love my books and just acquiring knowledge and using that knowledge but the majority of those are based on and this is a subtle difference but I think it's so important is they're based on business help and there is an assumption in business help.

Speaker 1 2:49

Now, without getting too in the weeds of the definitions technically a micro business is is something with kind of I think it's 10 to 50 employees, a small business is 50, you know. So you know businesses are big and most of the advice are big. Now we get this amazing advice from entrepreneurs, people that started on their own and kind of changed the world, but most of the advice that comes back from that is ways to get kind of bigger and better. And it neglects not because these people aren't amazing and their advice is amazing, but it neglects a group that I am particularly passionate about and that is the self-employed people. These one person, dynamos and and I spent a long time researching and looking into and reading all about this term self-employed and it often gets kind of hijacked with something like solo entrepreneur and I don't think there's a single person that I've worked with self-employed person that runs their own business and some of them been running their own business for 30 plus years that would ever describe themselves as a solo entrepreneur. They don't see themselves as an entrepreneur. Basically, they had a passion and, rather than work for something else, somebody else, they wanted to create a job for themselves. They wanted to be self-employed, they wanted to employ themselves and they've stayed within that and they've got phenomenally successful businesses, but never ones that are going to be six figure, seven figures. You know, you see, all these things of you know turn your business into a seven figure business. The only way a lot of the businesses I work with can ever hit seven figures is by including the two numbers after the decimal place, um, to get to seven. There's some of them who couldn't even do that. So this isn't about bigger and better and shareholders and selling this on and becoming a millionaire and growing and being all around the world and things like that.

Speaker 1 4:55

And so much of the business advice is aimed at this kind of bigger is best and that your route, if're successful, has to be to expand and franchise and add staff and things like that. And the problem is with that is that when you are struggling, you're tired and you've got things you know mounting up. As I said in the last one, you start to look for that help and you look for, oh oh, this has got millions of views. This, oh this has got 10,000 reviews on Amazon and the book oh, I've heard of this person and you, basically, you gravitate to this big help and you try and find something that can resonate. Now you absolutely and this is the kind of the caveat with this you can absolutely find every piece of help from any of these gurus and these amazing people and I could list off 20 now of people I've learned so much from and who I've used that information to help others.

Speaker 1 6:01

But it's the using and the phrase that I use is as a catalyst, because if you just take that knowledge at face value, if you don't put it through a filter and kind of condense it down and pull apart and get to the real nub of the idea and then make that relevant to you as self-employed, often that advice will just cause you more worry. It'll cause you more tiredness, more stress, because you're then going well, this has worked for these amazing people. I'm clearly must be not very good at this because I can't make it work for you and it can often make that sense of tiredness worse because you are just looking for a scattergun approach of I need help, and it could be in a say, big things like selling or marketing, or you know organization or time management, or you know some of these big kind of fields and you're just going right. Well, who's the best? Who are the biggest ones? I can find this okay, I'll follow that advice, and it just does not work. And this is something that it took me many years to to realize that there is this big disconnect between a lot of the say, the majority of the advice out there and the self-employed people. And this is where I mentioned it last time.

Speaker 1 7:26

Being Tim and identifying as this as being tired and need of help and muddling along, the answer is Steve. Now, again, I'm going to tease Steve a lot again, but it's, it's a system for doing this and it's, it's what I do, you know, it's that fundamental thing. Is that part of what I realized? My passion in acquiring this knowledge, understanding what these great, amazing people have done and their achievements and how they talk about things and how they think about things. It's just stunning. They are these big thinkers, they are the people that the world needs.

Speaker 1 8:03

But then what I do is I take that knowledge and I combine it with other bits of knowledge and I basically and I can't work out whether I'm kind of condensing it, whether I'm ch't work out whether I'm kind of condensing it, whether I'm chipping away, whether I'm kind of melting it and reforming it, whatever kind of metaphor you want to use but basically it's taking these big ideas and breaking them down so they become manageable and they become acceptable, and a level of access to self-employed people to use some of these amazing principles, but at a level and that works for you rather than that works for big business. And that's something that I spent a long time with imposter syndrome, thinking, well, all I'm doing is, you know, riding on the shoulders of giants. And then I realized that, no, that I will always reference the amazing people that these core ideas have come from, but I'm adding something to that, I'm widening it, I'm making it more, you know, approachable, you know, and one of the analogies I've come up with, many over the time, but one of them was thinking of and this is me a bad one, but often I'll go to food if I can't think up a great analogy you know, you have a great farmer who, you know, has a herd of cattle that are looked after, fed really well, producing great meat. You see, I'm going down the steak route. It's kind of a stable thing, but producing this great meat Now that great meat you know, cooked you know, let's say it's Wagyu or whatever you know cooked in the finest restaurant with the finest chefs and the preparation, and aged for 60 days before and served up with an ambience and a great restaurant, with perfect wine to go with it and flavorings and all the rest of it, all of that elevates that, that steak, um, and makes it fantastic, because on its own it's still a great steak, but not many people can access that because they can't go and buy it directly from the, you know, from the guy that that grows the meat, um, and and takes that, you know, takes that through.

Speaker 1 10:15

So that's kind of where, in that clumsy analogy, where I see myself, um, as as a bit of a kind of a, a business chef, um, or actually more of a business willy wonka, and taking all these little bits, these best little bits, and and putting them together in different ways, unique ways, with a different kind of spin on them, so that they become palatable, they become something that you can use. And that's where this in need of help comes from, because one of the biggest struggles I see that self-employed people have is that they know they need help but they don't know where to turn. Do they go to YouTube? Do they go to TikTok? Do they go to Skillshare? Do they go to Fiverr? Do they go to books, audio books, podcasts, whatever? There is just this kind of you know, almost like, ah, where do I go? You know you're in need of help, but you don't know where to turn.

Speaker 1 11:13

And when you do start going down that route, you will often get advice which just makes it worse, um, just makes it harder, and that's really where the Steve framework comes in and that's where I come in. You know, yeah, I've got some original ideas of my own, some original con, you know, concepts and things like that, but it's about taking these amazing ideas and making them accessible, giving breathing new life into these amazing people's work and sharing those. Because, again, you know I go on about the books and and over the years, I should have had an Amazon affiliate link, because the number of people I've sent away to go and buy the books when I've worked with them on a particular principle and said, look, this where this comes from, you know, go and go and buy the book, you'll give it a deeper understanding. But I'm there to give them that the understanding at the level they need for a self-employed person. So that's what in need of help is about.

Speaker 1 12:08

It's about it's really difficult when you identify that there's something missing, something that you need, but you don't know where to turn. And when you do start turning, that help is not generally geared towards you, it's not there to help you, not from anything that these amazing people have done, but just because it's not focused on the self-employed person, because we are a specific breed with specific demands and specific things that we need. And that's where this comes in. That's where the Steve framework comes in. So it'd be less less Tim, less tired in need of help and muddling along and more Steve. So you'll hear about that again soon. But that's what the in need of help is all about.

Speaker 1 12:49

And again, I hope that resonates with you, that you realize, yeah, you've listened to some stuff, read some stuff and really kind of struggled to actually then apply it to your business again. You are not alone if that then piled that pressure on you and piled that extra tiredness on you. You're not alone in that either. And this help, this puts this vicious circle. And what are we talking about next is m for muddling along, because that's the last thing which then just puts that loop all the way around. And if you identify with these three things, this is where we can make some difference. So hopefully that's helped him, um, and hopefully in need of help, that kind of makes sense, combined with tired, and next time I'll leave you a message all about muddling along.

Speaker 1 13:35

Bye for now, and that's it for today's episode of Voicemails to Tim on the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. Now, remember, tim might be busy, but we're all in this together. Whether you're tired, in need of help or just muddling through, tim is here for you. Because, well, tim is you. Yes, you heard that right. Tim isn't just my friend, he's a reflection of all of us who are struggling to make it work. T-i-m stands for tired, in need of help and muddling through. So if you're feeling like a tim, you're not alone for all those ambitious listeners. If you've got a burning business question, a quirky thought or just want to see if you can leave an even weirder voicemail, head over to the website voicemailstotimcom, submit your question and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear your idea in a future voicemail to Tim. So until then, stay annoyingly optimistic, keep pushing forward and remember if life gives you lemons, leave a voicemail about it.