Why ‘Must Be Nice’ Is the Most Dangerous Thing You Can Say to Yourself

  Sam Vander Wielen: You’re in the thick of building your business, doing all the things, showing up everywhere you’re supposed to, saying yes to everything because it feels like you have to, and then you hear somebody like me say, “I’m barely on social media anymore,” or like, “I just decided not to do that anymore,” and your gut reaction is like, “Lady, that must be nice.”

I get it. I really do. But I wanna talk to you about the must-be-nice reaction today because I think it’s costing you more than you realize, and because the story you’re telling yourself about why I can say no to certain things and you can’t, I don’t think it’s actually true.

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So I’m more nervous to talk to you today about this episode than I have been in a really long time, because this is something that, I guess, like, just something that’s really been bothering me behind the scenes, and I haven’t really talked to many people about it let alone talked about it on an entire podcast for the public to hear.

But lately, one of these things that’s started happening, um, kinda behind the scenes in the comments, in the DMs, in the tone and the judgment behind the questions I get, is that all of a sudden I’m getting a lot of ‘must be nice’ type of comments, right? And so whether it’s that I’m sharing about my latest launch or I say, like, “Oh, here’s how I’m trying to spend less time on social media,” I’m getting comments along these lines.

And I’m definitely not here to shame anybody who’s felt that or said that to me before. Like, first of all, I’m sure that I said and thought those very same things before, um, when I was newer in my business and I saw people, uh, with big businesses saying, like, “I just leave my phone at home and I don’t do anything.”

And I’d be like, “Well, I, I can’t,” right? Like, I’m not in that situation yet.

But I’ve also been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think for one, it was just kind of important for me to, like, name it and talk about it. And I also know that you guys like hearing about the, like, real stuff that comes up behind the scenes and, like, what it’s actually like to navigate a business of this size.

And one of the things I guess I kind of always find funny about getting comments like this is, you know, the people who are making the comments are other business owners, and I think that they’re probably trying to build a business or want a business that’s, like, this size. So I’m like, “Aren’t you trying to, like, head in this direction?”

So, like, you’re saying it must be nice, but also, like, that’s gonna be nice for you. And I used to be you, so, like, I used to be in those shoes. I didn’t just, like, land here. Like, I didn’t drop onto Mars, right? So I built this business all the way, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that, like, my attitude and my mindset in deciding this early and kind of stepping into who I wanted to become or what kind of business I wanted to have is really what led me to having it and building it So I want to provide you like a couple of concrete examples of things that I’ve heard lately.

Um, like I can be off of social media because I have a team posting for me, for example. Well, yeah, that’s partially true, right? That is very true. It’s like, yeah, I have somebody now who posts the content. Um, but for one, guess who creates that content? Hence a lot, um, so that’s me.

Um, there’s no AI clone of me. But yes, it’s true that like, yeah, I’ve created a system where I can conceptualize the content, uh, script the content, record it, uh, do all the things I have to do to get the assets for it, and then yeah, someone takes that content and they post it for me, which is a huge, huge help, and it definitely lets me get off of social media.

People always say to me now that I can say no to things because I make money already, which is super interesting ’cause I guess that the thought process there is that if you say yes to everything, you’re going to make more money, and I’m like, “Actually, I think that when you say yes to everything, you make less money.”

So I think that’s just an interesting thought process. Or other people will say things to me like, “Your advice doesn’t apply to somebody who’s starting now versus, like, when I did,” for example. Like, basically accusing me of being a dinosaur and saying, like, you know… It’s like when my dad used to get mad at me, and I would- I’d tell him that me and my best friend Steph wanted to go to the movies, and he’d be like, “How much does it cost?”

I’d be like, “$10.” And he was like, “When I went to the movies, it cost a nickel.” And I was like, “Well, it doesn’t cost a nickel now, so I’m not sure how that helps me.” I feel like that’s kind of how like, that’s kind of the type of comments that I’m getting now that are like, you know, things are different. And if you listened to my last episode, then you know that I talked about, you know, what like, selling digital products in this economy and how my product not only continuing to be successful but actually growing isn’t because I just started early and I, like, got ahead of the pack. It’s also because I’ve adapted and changed with the times. So, like, I’m not immune to the changes that are going on online.

I’m very much having to adapt with them. It’s just that because I’ve been around for a long time, I’ve also built up a lot of trust with the people in my audience as well.

So the assumption underneath the whole like must be nice thing is that the difference between me and you is resources, that I have money, I have a team, and I have time, right?

And yeah, those things are real, and those are true. Those are things I have, and I’m not going to pretend like they don’t exist and that they don’t make my life and my business a heck of a lot easier. But here’s the thing, here’s the honest thing, the nos came before a lot of the resources did, right?

So like me saying no to things and being like, “I can’t spend as much time on social media,” that came before I made a lot of money in my business. The betting on myself came before the revenue, and the hustle came before it too, right? Like I hustled my ass off before I ever made a whole lot of money. I didn’t start like making a ton of money and then just sit back on the beach, right? So it’s, it’s really like I think it’s just a little bit different than maybe what people assume.

More than anything, I would say that the permission came first. That’s like the part that people don’t see. I talk about this a lot when I talk about like future-proofing, and how like the concept of future-proofing is that instead of you waiting for your business to be successful to start having the habits or the daily actions of somebody who has a successful business, you actually start doing those now so that your business ultimately becomes successful.

So it’s essentially just like paving the road for yourself that you’re already headed down. And I think that’s what a lot of people don’t know when they make the must be nice comments is that there… I, I was… There was a time before there was a whole lot of revenue coming in, before there was anybody working for me, before I had more time and flexibility, when I was saying no more often.

There was like a, I would say almost like this scary teetering point, right? Where I didn’t have the money, I didn’t have the clout, I didn’t have an audience, I didn’t have any of these things, but I was saying no like I did, right? And I think that’s what people don’t understand is like I didn’t wait for.

It wasn’t like all of the sudden I started controlling my consumption behavior and getting off social media more. I would actually argue that getting off social media more and focusing on making my own content was what led the business to ultimately being successful in the long run. So the shift did not happen because I hit a certain revenue number.

It, truthfully, it happened because of things that were a lot harder than making money online. Because the truth is that grief is what changed what felt urgent to me, right? So when I lost both of my parents, um, my relationship to like what had to get done and like what was important and what mattered and what metric I was tracking shifted permanently, right?

Forever. It b- it hasn’t ever gone back. And things that used to feel mandatory to me back then, like I have to be on Instagram stories every day, I have to do this, I have to do that, started feeling, hmm, well, stupid, let alone optional from my perspective In other words, I would say that my grief and the grief burnout, I’m gonna call it grief out, uh, that happened afterwards of, of losing both my parents changed what felt worth it, right?

And I learned the hard way what was actually moving the needle versus what just felt like noise that I was performing for. And watching my business actually survive the nos, like saying no to things, turning things down, uh, not doing everything everybody else was doing, not following the trends, taught me that it was okay, it was safe actually, to say no moving forward.

So I would actually argue that saying no back when I couldn’t really afford to made it feel safe enough that not only it got me to a place where I could afford it, but even now, like with the business being bigger and making more in revenue and whatever else you might think about my business, like it that, that skill, that ability to feel safe saying no doesn’t just pop up overnight. So that was a skill I had to like develop over, over the years of building this business, and it wasn’t just something I like acquired or like got access to. It wasn’t like a level of a video game that I like accessed once the business got to be a certain point.Like I needed to have it with me the whole time

The first time that I skipped something or said no or didn’t get on Clubhouse or whatever, nothing, and nothing burned down because of it, that was data. That was like showing me like, oh, look at what happens when I say no. Nothing happened. These stories that I had for myself about like I have to be on Instagram Stories every single day, I must be active on this platform, I have to post every day, I have to do this every day, I have to do that thing however many times.

When I stopped doing that and just said like, let me see what happens. Before, I had a lot of revenue, right? When I did that, that was data for me to take in and see like, oh, this story that I have about these things that I have to do that other people don’t have to do, it’s actually not true. So I’d say that the internal shift happened first, and the external changes followed thanks to those internal shifts.

And I would argue too that the money, making money in my business didn’t give me permission to protect my boundaries. You have permission to protect your boundaries regardless of how much money you make. People… It’s not like people who make a lot of money are the only people who deserve to have boundaries or take care of themselves.

Now, there’s a very real conversation around this of like, yeah, but you need to live and you need to survive. I think what’s getting confused here is that, like, overworking, over-hustling, over-posting, over-producing are the things that you need to do because you’re not making enough money, and that simply is just not true.

That might make you feel, the truth of it, if I could give my, like, Philly big sister energy truth right now, the truth of it, truth of it is that it might make you feel like that’s what you’re doing because you’re not making enough money in your business yet, and, like, overworking and posting and scrolling and over-everything, um, might make you feel like you’re, like, essentially scratching that itch, and that’s what’s going to be the thing that helps you to ultimately grow your business.

But I bet you it’s actually hurting it in the long run, and that pulling back, having better boundaries, taking better care of yourself, producing less but better, higher quality content would actually move your business forward much faster.

Now let’s talk about what the real cost is of the mindset that someone has when they say something like, “Must be nice,” or, you know, we’ve all thought it before, like when we think that. The thing about it, when I sat down and thought about this, is that I realized that like the saying, “Must be nice,” it kind of feels like it’s just an observation.

But in reality, it actually functions as an exit ramp. It is essentially a way of letting you out of applying something to your own situation by just deciding already that it doesn’t apply to you, right? And so what I always think is so interesting is like when people say to me like, “Must be nice that you do this or that in your business,” I’m thinking, that’s one way to look at it.

That’s interesting. Another way, as a business owner aspiring to have a more successful business, is to look at what somebody like me is doing or somebody else who you admire and be like, “How can I make that apply to my business?” Right? How does that apply to me and where I am at? If that’s where I wanna go, what are the habits I need to do now or stop doing now that are gonna get me closer to that situation?

And you hear me on the podcast and elsewhere talk a lot about like stealing business strategies from big, big, big businesses like corporate America, like looking at something Target’s doing or thinking about the Olive Garden mentality of how they treat you like you’re family. You know, once you’re here, you’re family.

Like, taking little things like this. Do you think that I think I’m an Olive Garden business? Do you think I don’t look at Olive Garden’s revenue and go, “Hmm, must be nice,” you know? Must be nice to have a restaurant in every city and like just have people be able to walk in whenever they feel like it and be able to sell alcohol, which is a huge upsell.

Must be nice. No, I’m looking at the business model and I’m saying, that’s really interesting that for this like dinky little Italian restaurant, they are making people feel like once you’re here, you’re family. Does anyone truthfully go to Olive Garden and feel like once they’re there, they’re family? No, I don’t think so.

They don’t treat you like you’re family, except actually at our local Olive Garden, I stopped to tell the manager the other day, ’cause I go there on like my most depressed days when I miss my dad a ton, and I went there the other day like crying into my salad bowl and I told the manager, “You guys are so nice here.

You are always so nice.” They really truly are. They always like welcome you. Anyway, I digress. Maybe they do make you feel like family. The point is, you can steal strategies from people, not like intellectual property steal, but you know, get inspired by strategies from people, and you don’t need to be in their shoes.

I am inspired by Lindsey Vonn’s workout routine. I am never going to be Lindsey Vonn. I tried skiing for the first time this year. I fell flat on my face getting off of the ski lift. Like, I don’t need to be Lindsey Vonn in order to be inspired by the things that she’s doing and sharing online. And I don’t need to comment to Lindsey Vonn, “Must be nice that you came out with this world-class gene of skiing and that your parents got you skiing really early.”

It’s like, no, I just wanna know, like, what are, what are little things that I can take away from her?

Even just like respecting the craft of being like, oh, Lindsey Vonn didn’t just like wake up and be Lindsey Vonn. She was li- little Lindsey Vonn from all the way from the start and worked so long, and worked again and tried again through so many injuries to come back, right? So there’s always something that we can apply from somebody’s situation who is ahead of us, who’s where we wanna head, to our own situation, regardless of where we’re at.

But if you wait until you hit some number, whether that’s revenue, followers, subscribers, years in business, number of clients, whatever, before you give yourself permission to protect your time, your energy, boundaries, et cetera, then that’s going to be very dangerous for you.

And actually, I would make the argument that you won’t end up where you wanna go if you don’t start learning those skills now. And yes, maybe you have more ability to say no in the future. Maybe you have more of an ability to unplug from social media in the future and, you know, be off the app because somebody else is posting for you.

But if you don’t start adjusting your relationship with social media now, and saying no to it now, and having a healthier boundary with it, then you’re never going to end up in a position where you can even afford to hire somebody to take over your social media. Nobody is going to hand you that permission when your business grows.

In fact, it will only get harder. I think that’s what people don’t recognize is that, you know, having a business that’s a little further along doesn’t make it easy for me to say no. I would say it’s harder. I’m saying it more often to bigger and bigger things. I turned down an invite this year to a, to a mastermind that I’m still, like, you know, kind of regretting in a, in a way, and just in the sense that it gives you a lot of FOMO and you feel like an idiot that you made, uh, the wrong decision, but full of, like, the best women in our industry that are at the top of their game, that are New York Times bestselling authors, that have the biggest podcast that you’ve heard of, right?

And I said no to it because I didn’t wanna add something else to my plate. That’s not just saying no to something ’cause I can afford to say no to it. That’s also a huge risk, right? ‘Cause that’s a huge benefit. That could be a huge benefit to me, and it gets harder. I would say that these nos get bigger and they get harder as you go along.

Now, I wanna talk about something that I get accused of often by both people in business and in my friend group, uh, which I fully accept, which is that I am out of touch, okay? So I want to acknowledge a very big, real elephant in the room. I am in a different place in my business than most people I know who have businesses.

I get that. I’m very aware of this entire thing. I actually think about it a lot ’cause it’s not necessarily fun, to be honest with you. It’s a little bit lonely. Um, and it’s kind of weird to start businesses alongside people where now you’re in a very different place. Some of those people have gone back to their jobs.

Some of their businesses have closed. Some of their businesses have just kind of remained the same, and that’s not always a bad thing. Some, some of them want to do that, right? Not everybody wants this kind of business, by the way. This is not, like, a, a status symbol, right? And so being here, I think, like, at this point, doesn’t make my journey, though, irrelevant.

And so although, yes, I might be in a different place in my business, and you can look at me and make up stories about, like, “Oh, it must be nice,” or, “You can do this because… You can’t do that because…” I built this from nothing. I would encourage you to remember that. And I’m not saying this from, like, a defensive place.

I’m, I’m hoping to say it more from, like, an inspirational place that gives you permission and knows that you know that you can do this, too, you know? But I know what it felt like back then to look at people who had businesses that were where I wanted to go. It has not been very long for me, so it’s not like this, like, dis- distant memory decades ago.

Like, this is a couple of years ago. And I think what’s really interesting to mention as well is that, like, with the business that I have now, there are so many people who I look at, and I think like, “Oh, I don’t have that. I don’t have this. I wish my business had that. I wish my book was this,” right? Like, I have so many of those things just, like… I feel like the goalposts just kind of shift, and they change, and they evolve with you. It’s not like… I think a lot of this conversation that we’re having today is based on this idea that when you get somewhere, you will be happy, right? Like, so this is literally why I titled my book what I did, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy, because it’s really based on that when-then virus, as I call it in the book, or really what’s known as the arrival fallacy, that once you got to a certain point in your business, then you would feel like you could say no.

Then you’d feel like you’d have boundaries because then you’d be happy and fulfilled enough that you’d be able to say no. But the reality is that you get your business to a certain point, and in, in most cases, it still doesn’t feel enough. Uh, I think it’s not that it actually doesn’t feel enough. I should say that differently.

Like, if you make a lot of revenue in your business, it’s not necessarily that you’re like, “That’s not enough money.” Like, you’re not a money piggy. But what actually ends up happening is that you’re like, “Oh, it wasn’t the money.” Like, that, that’s the bigger shift. You’re like, “Oh, I thought that if I made a lot of money, I’d feel fulfilled,” but making money actually doesn’t.

Um, and also making money is really, really hard, and it costs a lot of money to make money, and then you have to keep working to keep it up. So, like, there are, like, a lot of things that people don’t take into consideration, um, when they think that the answer is going to be making a lot of money, or you think that having a lot of followers is gonna be the thing.

It’s not that… I mean, yeah, sometimes I remember when I got to, like, 10,000 followers, I thought, like, um, that’s, like, the pinnacle of success. And then the moment that you get there, you were like, “This is nothing.” Like, so many people have so many more than this. Like, this doesn’t matter at all.

But also, it was that more like ex- more importantly, it was that more, like, existential crisis where you’re like, “Who cares? Followers, that’s not what matters. This isn’t what’s important to me in my life.” And so the things that actually got me here and to this point are not the things that require a big bank account.

They require a particular relationship with your own judgment and your own enoughness and deciding on what matters to you, how far you’re willing to go, what you really truly want, and what you think that that’s gonna do for you. What do you think that making money is gonna do for you? What do you think that getting off social media is going to do for you?

Because a lot of times what happens is that you do that thing, and you realize it wasn’t it So I’m not here to say, like, “Ignore your constraints.” Like, it doesn’t… We’re the same. Like, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a budget. Like, you can do whatever you want. That’s not, that’s not the case. I’m not encouraging you to, like, act like you have a million bucks in the bank and, and make decisions from that place.

There are very real things, and very real challenges, and sacrifices you have to make along the way. Uh, I was one of them in doing that as I was building the business and, and certainly making decisions from that point. But I am inviting you to take one thing that you might be saying, like, “Must be nice to,” or you’re making a, a thing that’s, like, not for you, not something that you can do, not something that applies to you and your situation, and saying, “What can I do to get there?” Instead.

What’s one step you could take today that applies to you, where you’re at, and where you wanna go? Like, what’s one little nugget you can take away from somebody? I think, in general, so many of us would be better off if we stopped taking every single piece of content that we see online and thinking that it was supposed to be 100% hyper-customized to us, as if it was a Starbucks latte, right?

So not every single thing that we all talk about… I might talk about something that you’re like, “That doesn’t apply to me,” right? And people will say to me, like, “Well, you gave this tip, but you don’t have kids.” That’s true. Have you taken care of a dying parent? Call me when you have, right? You probably haven’t done that either.

Have you tried to figure out how to get someone health insurance when they already have a terminal illness? Good luck. You know? So yeah, sure, maybe I haven’t dealt with your exact scenario. But I bet you I’ve been in your shoes more than you think, and vice versa, right? I make… I do the same. I make stories up about why this person can do that or the other thing, and the truth is, I have access to certain things that they might not, right?

And so we all have things in our life, um, that we could probably say must be nice to. Um, and I think sometimes it’s, it’s real and worth… You know, I mean, all feelings are valid, and it’s, like, always worth acknowledging these feelings. I certainly do this quite a bit when I, um, when I see other people who have parents, for example, and I’ll be like, “Must be nice,” like, if I’m having a particularly bad day.

But then I look at, like, where I’m actually ignoring love and relationships in my own life, ’cause it’s true. I will reject certain things, or people, or experiences in my own life, and then sit around and say, “Woe is me. I don’t have parents, and these other people do.” Um, some of those people don’t have spouses like I do, right?

So, like, there’s, there’s, like, a… I don’t know. I could play this game all day long and make, like, a mix-and-match game of, like, who we all have and what we all have, and I think that’s just sometimes an important perspective to come back to.

So with that, I didn’t really have any nice, neat tip for today other than encouraging you to think about where you might be saying mu- must be nice. I would love to hear from you and what came up for you in this episode, good or bad. I would just be curious how you felt about today’s episode. I really appreciate you listening.

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