



2 Steps to go from Weirdo Loner to a Successful Entrepreneur
Watch NowHey everybody! Welcome to "You Know Ted." I hear a lot of people feeling lost and alone, like they don't belong, which makes it hard for them to live their best life. If that's you, well, you're not alone. Today, I share with you how not belonging, being left out, being an awkward weirdo made me a better person, marketer, and entrepreneur. I talk about how getting into fist fights actually helped, so be sure to stay until the end for that.
Growing Up a Weirdo Loner
Like many of you, I'm a child of immigrants, born from one culture and grew up in another. Growing up in Suburban Canada, I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't know my parents' culture well enough and spoke a lot of broken Cantonese, and was only one of two Asian kids until about middle school. And there was a lot of weird food. If you think Chinese food was weird to white kids, try to explain mac and cheese to Asian grandparents. I wasn't smart enough to be a doctor or a lawyer, and I broke a lot of rules both at home and at school, which meant I got into my fair share of fist fights and almost got suspended from school twice.
2 Steps Summary: Embracing the Suck & Reframing
- Embracing the Suck: Don't get me wrong, I moped a lot, wrote a lot of emo terrible poetry, listened to a lot of Nine Inch Nails, and was angry a lot of the time. But I also learned to laugh about it, and once I started getting comfortable with it, people started noticing that this didn't bother me, and thus it didn't bother them anymore. In my youth, I started dying my hair, getting weird piercings. Weirdos have tribes too, and so I found my weirdo tribe. I learned not to give a damn, and that was very freeing. In business, rather than saying "embrace the suck," it's embracing "it is what it is," and that helped me move quickly to solutions. In marketing, look, sometimes campaigns don't work. That's just the nature of business. Rather than mope about it, we've learned from it. Ballistic Arts, my company, actually changed from a creative agency to a lead generation digital marketing agency just so that we can help solve these problems for our clients.
- Re-Framing: Rather than saying I don't belong in either culture, let's reframe it to being a bridge between cultures. I remember joining a business group full of young leaders, and I was the only one that was a marketer entrepreneur; everyone else there was a corporate suit-wearing professional. I was the kind of crazy weirdo cowboy that walked in. However, because I stuck out like a sore thumb, they remembered a lot of things that I said and actually considered my opinion and made the group more diverse over time. And you know what? I'm still friends with them today. Let's reframe "weirdo loner" to "weirdo leader." They do say it's lonely at the top, right? So I think I got a lot of good practice.
Being Punched in the Face: Business Lessons
As I got older, well, in business, you metaphorically get punched in the face all the time. This is why when I started the business, I had literally half a page of terms and conditions, and now my terms and conditions are 22 pages long. You learn from your mistakes, you learn from experience, and that's what fistfights and getting punched in the face really teach you. So remember, you got to embrace "it is what it is" and reframe "don't belong in either culture" to "bridge between cultures" and "weirdo loner" to "weirdo leader."
Well, there you have it. Being a not belonging, awkward weirdo has done wonders for my life and business. What do you think? What experiences do you have? Put it down in the comment section, and remember, if you like this video, please like, subscribe, and share. Thanks for watching. I'm Ted Lau, and this has been "You Know Ted." Bye.