Alright, let me walk you through this thing that happened a while back. It really drove home how the real world just doesn’t buy the whole ‘Miz’ act sometimes, you know? That whole ‘I’m awesome, believe me’ thing works great in the ring, not so much when deadlines are real.
Setting the Scene
So, I was working on this project, a bit of a side hustle actually, developing a small app for a local community group. Nothing huge, but they had specific needs. I’d talked a big game initially, maybe oversold my speed a little. Classic mistake, right? I got caught up in the excitement.
The “I’m The Miz” Moment
Weeks went by, and progress was… slow. Slower than I’d let on. They scheduled a check-in meeting, and frankly, I didn’t have much to show. Panic started setting in. Instead of just owning up to it, I got this dumb idea. I thought, “Okay, channel The Miz. Go in there with absolute, unshakable confidence. Tell them it’s practically done, just ironing out tiny details. Be awesome.” I figured if I projected enough confidence, they’d just believe me, maybe even get excited.
Walking Into the Meeting
So I did it. I prepped my little speech, full of confidence, brushing off potential issues. I walked into that meeting like I owned the place.
- Started off strong, talking about the ‘great progress’.
- Used confident language, maybe a bit too much jargon I thought sounded impressive.
- Glossed over the parts that were totally unfinished.
- Basically, I put on a performance. All style, very little substance ready.
Reality Hits Hard
It completely backfired. They weren’t buying it. Not even a little bit. One of the committee members, this older lady named Carol, just looked at me calmly after my spiel and asked, “Okay, that sounds good, Mark. Can we just see the user login feature you mentioned was nearly finished?”
Oof. That was one of the parts I’d barely started. My ‘awesome’ facade just crumbled. I started stammering. Tried to deflect, talking about server configurations or something vague. But they saw right through it. They weren’t hostile, more… disappointed. They’d trusted my initial pitch, and now this performance felt dishonest.
The Clean Up
The rest of the meeting was awkward. I had to backtrack, admit I wasn’t as far along as I’d pretended. I showed them what I did have, which wasn’t much. It felt terrible. Way worse than if I’d just been honest from the start.
Ended up having to apologize, reset expectations properly, and put in a ton of extra hours to catch up. They were decent about it, thankfully, but that trust took time to rebuild. Learned a big lesson that day. The real world, unlike maybe the wrestling world, usually asks to see the receipts. You can’t just say you’re awesome; you actually gotta deliver the goods. That whole Miz persona? Yeah, didn’t fly. Just made me look silly.
