The People Who Feel "Behind" Are Often the Ones Actually Building Something Real

**Matthew Gottesman** (0:02)
Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.
Welcome to episode 839 The people who sometimes feel behind are often the ones actually building something real. Let me say this clearly, you are not behind. If you are in it, you are building, you've got a big vision. It's going to take time. There's so many aspects to it. The vision is still taking shape. And maybe in a very high visual input world, you're seeing everybody quote unquote making it. You might feel behind. You might feel behind if you're 20, 30, 40 years old, 50 years old, 60 years old. It doesn't matter. God's timing is always better than ours. Period. It's always better than ours. You're not behind. Maybe you're building something very real and it takes time. And maybe the lesson is actually in the becoming and in the journey. Listen, it wasn't until more recent years. I'm in my 40s. It wasn't until my more recent years where I realized how much I love the journey more than the destination. I love doing the work. I love it. I love getting to know myself deeper in my craft. I love getting to know God deeper. I love the excellence and dedication and devotion and to the mastery of the work. I love it. I love it. I do it every day for the rest of my life, and I will. You know, meaning like, no matter what, I do it free. I do it paid. I do it anything. I love it, right? So be careful. The timelines that the world may use to measure you are rarely accurate to what's actually happening. Let's have that conversation. In today's episode, I want to talk about why the feeling of being behind is one of the most common and misinterpreted experiences of the modern era. Listen, social media is probably painting a picture. Oh my God, look how good they're doing. Look how big. Also be very, very careful of numbers. Like what I mean by numbers, like, oh, this business made this amount of money. We don't know how it's operating. You don't know the expenses. You don't know how many team members there are. You don't know the actual profit and loss. You don't know operational costs. There's a lot of things you don't know. You're just making an assumption. And that's why I'm not always a fan at all with the marketing that says, you know, how to make X number of dollars per month, or, you know, here's how much money this company that I did made. It's like, well, you're using a metric for marketing, but like, you didn't tell me the net. You told me the gross, the gross profit or the gross number. You didn't tell me the net. You didn't tell me the operational costs. You didn't tell me the profit and loss, the P&L. You didn't tell me anything. You just showed me a number. And what happens is everybody gets all giddy over the number or comparative, right? They start comparing. You may compare your life. Like, oh my God, look how much money they did. Like, you don't know. And here's the other thing. Like, again, I have friends online that make like half a million to a million a year, and they have more in the bank in investments than people who built $100 million companies. And some of you are like, how is that possible? Because in business, it's different. First of all, some of my friends that are building online, what they're building has very low operational costs, like maybe like 10% to the rest that they're making. They have to just obviously make good decisions with it taxation-wise and whatnot and have write-offs and all that. But they're using technology and subscriptions to the technology and whatnot. It's low operating costs. I know people who built $100 million companies who have 150, 200 employees, who have a lot of operational costs and insurances, and benefits and manufacturing and distribution. And so you see $100 million company go, oh my God, like they must be making more money. Well, they're producing to generate sales of that. How much is staying in? We don't know. It's a different route. It's a different path. So that's why you have to be very careful of numbers, right? Also, I want to talk about how the timelines we've inherited are almost entirely borrowed and often unrelated to the actual work of building something real. I want to talk about why the people who are building something meaningful almost always feel behind while they're doing it. It's a very natural thing for you. Don't worry. I want to talk about the difference between measurable progress and structural progress. Very different. How to reinterpret the feeling of being behind as evidence that something real is being built because it is. And finally, we'll talk about what becomes possible when you stop measuring your life against timelines that were never yours because guess what? They weren't. God has God's plan for you. So, the people who feel behind are often the ones actually building something real. And I think that reframe is very important for all of us, right? Because it'll land differently than the noise of we've been hearing from every corner of culture, right? We've been told that if you feel behind, it's evidence that you actually are. No, it's not. Or move faster, build bigger, achieve more. Next milestone, next milestone, catch up, catch up. You got to catch up. You better start now. You better start yesterday. Yes, I do think there's diligence to getting in the game as, you know, fast as you can in terms of just putting yourself into the position of doing the thing. Yes. Outside of that, though, comparing yourself about where you should be, how can we do that? Every soul has a different path. All right. So let's jump into the first one. The feeling of being behind is one of the most misinterpreted experiences of the modern era.