Take Your Business Seriously. Just Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously

In June, I started rethinking how I described YATM.

For 18 months, I’d positioned it as ‘the home for professional misfits.’ I liked the idea of bringing together people who wanted to do things differently and weren’t interested in following the conventional route.

It made sense to me. Until Michelle Goodall challenged it. Michelle pointed out that ‘misfit’ is a word that needs to be considered, where it could feel uncomfortable for people. It made me question why someone would want to identify as an outsider when we’re trying to create a place where people feel welcome and can see opportunities for themselves.

I can now look back and see where I went wrong. I’d been trying to communicate belonging, but the words I’d chosen distanced people before they’d even had the opportunity to get involved.

Rather than defining people by what they didn’t fit into, I wanted to communicate what they could become part of.

Over six weeks, through conversations, feedback and reconsidering what I wanted YATM to represent, the positioning changed.

Today, the direction is ‘More Together.’ YATM is a learning community for people building something of their own. We learn together, shape our businesses together and do fun things together.

It better reflects what YATM has become and what people want to be part of.

It wasn’t about finding better words. I had to accept that something I’d believed in needed to change.

There is an expectation that when you run your own business, you should know what you’re doing.

You’re responsible for the decisions, finding customers, delivering work and making sure everything keeps moving forward.

We present the best parts of what we do. We like to step on LinkedIn and share successes, explain why we know better, show the finished work and talk confidently about what’s happening next.

Behind the scenes, we’re often figuring out as we go along. We might be uncertain about our direction, struggle to attract customers or wonder why something we’ve spent months developing isn’t working.

Admitting that is uncomfortable, particularly when it’s your business and your name attached to it.

I’ve found that when you invest time and energy into what you believe in, it becomes easy to get attached to your decisions.

When someone questions your idea, your instinct is to explain why you’ve done it that way. I’ve spent much of my life doing this, wanting people to understand my reasoning, rather than considering whether they might have a point.

I could have spent another six weeks explaining why ‘professional misfits’ was the right description. That wouldn’t have made it any more meaningful to the people who didn’t identify with it.

Taking our work seriously should mean wanting to make it better, rather than proving that we were right in the first place.

When we’re surrounded by people we know and trust, it can become easier to admit that something isn’t going well. We can share an unfinished idea or ask for another perspective without worrying so much about how we’ll be perceived.

This is where I see the importance of the lighter side of YATM.

There are Lunch Clubs, Friday morning sea swims and opportunities for people to spend time together without a defined business agenda.

Not everything needs a business outcome. A sea swim doesn’t have to become a business development session. Most of the time getting into cold water, having a laugh and enjoying other people’s company is enough.

The fun and friendships matter in their own right.

What I’m learning this year is that these relationships can also make different conversations possible.

The people who have seen us laughing and enjoying ourselves might be the same people we turn to when something isn’t working. We know each other beyond our job titles and the usual updates about how well things are going.

That familiarity can make it easier to talk about the challenges we’re facing and listen to perspectives we might otherwise dismiss.

Being comfortable with people can help us become more honest about our work.

There’s a difference between people who make us feel good about our work and people who help us make our work better.

We need encouragement as it’s good when people celebrate our progress and support what we’re trying to achieve. What happens when everyone agrees with us?

Someone might tell us an idea is great when they don’t really understand what we’re trying to communicate. I’ll never understand LinkedIn polls asking strangers to judge an idea without knowing the person or their work.

There’s a difference between someone criticising your work to make themselves feel important and someone offering an honest perspective because they want to help.

I don’t want to build a community where everyone feels they have to agree with me. I want people to feel comfortable contributing their own thinking, including when they believe I’m getting something wrong.

We should be able to question someone’s ideas without making them question their worth.

When we trust someone’s intentions, it becomes easier to disagree without feeling that the relationship is at risk. We don’t have to accept every suggestion, but we should be willing to consider that another person might see something we’ve missed.

What is front of mind for me at the moment is how the relationships within YATM can connect directly to the work we’re all trying to do.

Recently, Nick Whitnell suggested bringing people together within YATM Club to focus on building stronger businesses for 2027, through an ongoing cohort. 

The intention is for people to bring something they’re good at, something they want to improve and a willingness to help others.

What interests me isn’t simply the knowledge people can exchange. It’s creating an environment where we can be both the person offering help and the person asking for it.

Someone with years of experience can offer valuable advice while still struggling with an aspect of their own business. They might be the person sharing their expertise one week and learning from someone else the next.

We’re only at the beginning of this idea, but I like the intention behind it.

It’s not about making everything within YATM more serious. It’s about giving people opportunities to make progress in their own work, with others around them who want to help.

I have mapped out this balance between ‘fun’ and ‘opportunity.’

I want YATM to be somewhere people can enjoy being together and feel that they have others on their side.

I also want it to be somewhere people can talk openly about their work, share what’s difficult and challenge each other’s thinking.

The two belong together. 

The six weeks I spent changing YATM’s positioning reminded me that honest feedback doesn’t improve our work on its own. We still have to decide what to do with it.

Taking our businesses seriously means caring enough about what we’re building to recognise when something could be better. We can value our own ideas without becoming so attached to them that we’re unwilling to change.

We need people who make us comfortable enough to be ourselves, but care enough to challenge us to become better.