146- Entrepreneur dilemma — being liked vs being effective

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In this episode of The Struggling Biz, we discuss a theme that can have effects on your own personality and that of your business as an entrepreneur.

During the week in October, 2021, Todd Henry delivered a brief idea in the form of his Daily Creative podcast via email. The theme was the following:

“You cannot pursue being liked and being effective simultaneously. To be effective, you will occasionally have to do things that aren’t liked by your team. However, making the wise choice, according to principle, will earn respect. (And, you may be liked as well.)”

So in this episode, we will briefly discuss this theme and how it can be an entrepreneur’s dilemma — especially if one of the greatest traits an entrepreneur may have is being sociable, having great friendly relationships and securing the “likes” of people (which could be the first of the three maxims in marketing and sales and gaining followers: “people have to know, like and trust you.” And for many entrepreneurs, this may be very difficult in the area of being liked vs being effective. This is the target that is hit by the email podcast episode from Todd Henry.

Now, for this entrepreneur, I have had success and failure in this aspect, as many leads and prospects not only liked me personally and allowed me to start a good business relationship with them, but there were also some that did not trust me and disliked me (and they showed it in terms of feedback and reviews of my podcast episodes, especially in my Struggling Entrepreneur podcast show, where it was clearly seen in a couple of negative reviews with the lowest rating and inflammatory comments — which I attributed at the time to ignorance, jealousy or being a competitor that wanted to throw me under the bus; and that show has podfaded a couple of years ago).

So at this time, our discussion goes into some quotes from the email episode that Todd Henry delivers, along with some philosophical approaches given by different authors in business books — and you may not agree that there is a dilemma of being liked vs. being effective (in fact, you may argue that you are BOTH today, and that this may not apply to you — and power to you if that is true in your business world).

So we end up with the question posed to you, as an entrepreneur, to decide which road you should put some effort in order to strengthen your personality in business. We wish you the best in gaining success, regardless of whether you choose to be liked more than be effective — or vice-versa.

Thank you for your attention.