How to Overcome the Visionary Curse of the Entrepreneur with Dave Young

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Dave Young and I discussed the visionary’s curse, especially with entrepreneurs. Dave is the co-host of the Builder Nuggets podcast, a business coach and entrepreneur. He realized that he was experiencing the curse when he was developing an imposter syndrome.

Dave was really good at developing ideas and coming up with strategies, but really struggled when it came to taking action and following through with the strategies. He had lots of good ideas, lots to share with people but he would get frustrated because he didn’t know how to make the ideas come to life. This problem hit home for him while sharing a new idea with a close friend. Instead of supporting Dave’s idea his friend said, “Don’t even tell me about this, I’m sick of hearing about stuff that you’re not going to do.” Dave told me that in one way it was a punch in the gut, while at the same time it was the gift of a wake-up call.

Dave started to wonder if he was delusional. When you have great ideas, sharing them kicks off a chemical stimulus in your brain. You’re feeling something and you’re excited about sharing a big idea. The downside is that you’re so focused on sharing the idea that you’re less compelled to make it happen because that’s when the real work begins.

How can you solve this problem? By partnering with integrators – people that love to get stuff done. They’re going to want exciting projects to work on and meaningful work in general. This doesn’t have to be a paid position, at first it might be a mastermind group that you can confide in or friends to help you in their spare time.

One thing will hold true with solving that problem: You have to be vulnerable. You have to ask for help. You can’t just “fake it until you make it” because if you project everything as “all is well” then nobody will offer to help you.

We also discuss:

Why you should work on your strengths and not your weaknesses.
The implementor’s curse and how to overcome it when you’re the visionary.
How to “elevate and delegate” instead of just assigning tasks to your team.
How to include vulnerability in your presentations to get more support for your ideas.
…and more golden nuggets of advice!

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Dave grew up in a small town on Georgian Bay, Ontario Canada but always had big ideas and dreams. As a teenager he became fascinated with Real Estate and bought his first apartment building at age 25. While developing a real estate portfolio Dave launched a real estate technology company to help shift the organized real estate community.

A chance phone call in 2013 led to Dave becoming a Regional Partner with upstart custom home building network, Alair Homes. Today he’s the regional partner and business coach in 5 different Alair Homes regions covering North Carolina, South Carolina, Manitoba, and Eastern Ontario. In 2021, Dave and co-host Duane Johns, launched The Builder Nuggets Podcast. Each week they bring together thought leaders to help contractors everywhere build more rewarding businesses.

Dave has been married to Terrilynne for 17 years. They have three teenage daughters and live in Newmarket, ON, Canada. The family enjoys spending summers in Muskoka and escaping to the Exumas, Bahamas in the winter. Dave loves playing hockey, skiing, boating, going on spontaneous adventures, and ‘thinking about thinking’.

Connect with David:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveyoung13/