Are You An Ept?

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot diggers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make over our greatest contribution.

Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how.

While the rest of the world strives for average, and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there can be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters. Clearly, the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be. Are you an EPT?

I've recorded over 160 episodes of the Podcast and still every once in awhile someone will say, "Alex, I've listened to a ton of episodes, but I still sometimes think maybe I'm not an EPT."

Well, I want to help you understand once and for all that you are one of use because I believe either that or you're very close to one of us because anyone who is listening to this Podcast, and who has the staying power to continue to listen to me and understand these things and want to know more, is an entrepreneurial personality type. But I want to help you with this qualification system that I've used so that you can prove to yourself who you are.

I want you to go through the four types of people in the world with me, and with each one of these, I want you to ask yourself which one you are, and let's see which one you qualify as.

When I look at the world there's four distinct types of people. I've done a ton of research and experience and watching and seeing and leading and looking at tons of stuff on personality types and epidemiology and how people are, what makes us who we are.

When I look at the human race I see four distinct tribes.

The first one is the caretakers. Now these are the people who like to take care of other people. You may think you're one of these. In fact, when I speak on this, entrepreneurs will raise their hands when they hear caretaker because they know they want to take care of other people, but let's be honest, as entrepreneurs most of the time we like to take people from afar.

You see, a caretaker appreciates and likes the act of actually taking care of someone.

There's a simple disqualification question for each one of these tribes and so I'll ask you, the caretaker, one first to see if you qualify for this tribe. The question is, do you enjoy changing bedpans? Do you like to change a bedpan? See, you might have laughed when I said that or you might be thinking, "What is he nuts?" Well, nobody likes to change bedpans. You'd be shocked that that isn't true. I have actually been around a caretaker who has changed a bedpan before and I watched them doing it.

For me, watching human beings, it's like when they go watch the animals in the wilderness, because so often human behavior confuses me. I watch somebody changing bedpans, they don't look disgusted, they don't look frustrated, they don't look upset, they don't look like they want to run out of the room. I want to do all of those things just watching them change it.

Then I'll ask the question, excuse me, do you enjoy changing bedpans? I've had a caretaker look at me and say, "If that person needed help and I was here to be of service and I feel fulfilled, yes, this is what I do, this is why I'm here, and I'm sitting here thinking I'm so glad you exist, because man, does our human race need caretakers? Absolutely. People like us would just let the bedpan fill up, but we're so much different because I would never feel fulfilled doing that over and over again every day? Never.

Now when we look at our evolutionary tribe, did we need caretakers? Absolutely. We needed them then. We need them now. In evolutionary time people like us would not have been taking care of the other people so this is by far the biggest segment of the tribe.

So if you're not a caretaker, let's move on to the second segment. These are the communicators. Now communicators enjoy, they like the act of communicating. But, communication for the sake of communication, that's funny. A lot of entrepreneurs when they hear communicator, they'll say, "Well, that must be me because we have blogs and podcasts and we like to communicate and lead teams and speak and be heard, but with a purpose." You see, the communicator just likes the act of communicating.

The disqualification for this one is, do you enjoy small talk? I laugh because I just hate it so much. Like the second small talk starts I have two thoughts, like where's my escape, and should I fake a heart attack because I'm terrible at it and it's not just that it frustrates me, it makes me uncomfortable. I feel awkward. I don't know have to have small talk. I don't know how to pretend like I care about the weather or the game or whatever this person's telling me that doesn't really have a purpose.

However, when you see a communicator, they love small talk. I mean, you put two communicators at a water cooler and they can have a 45-minute conversation about a 30-minute TV show. How the hell does that happen?

Communicators love the act of talking. They like to share.

Now, do we need these people? Absolutely. We needed these people evolutionarily. They carried on oral tradition. They told us what was safe, what wasn't safe, where we should be, where we shouldn't be, what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing. Like, don't go over there, there's a cliff and be careful, don't eat this, somebody died when they did that. We need the communicators who are just willing to talk and talk and let everybody know what's happening, and our evolutionary tribes survived in part because we had these different types of people. Communicators were a big part of that picture because before the printing press we had to tell each other what was going on. That was the only way that we carried on what we learned.

So if you're not a caretaker and a communicator, let's move on to the third one. I call these the coordinators. And coordinators, my nickname for them is the memorizers, organizers and the memorizers. These are the people who love the details. They like order. They like rule. They like law. They like contracts, not because there's a deal, but because there's a contract.

And the disqualification question for a coordinator is, do you enjoy being on committees? Now when I ask the average entrepreneur if they enjoy being on committees, their face tells me before their mouth does that they don't. Because people like you and I don't like committees. It's like the slowest way to get anything done. We don't like group decision making. We want to just have an outcome and go make it happen. We want self-determination. We want to be able to do it ourselves. We don't want to have to get the approval of a crowd. Committees drive us crazy, and typically the only committees that we're ever on are the ones that we form so that we can lead them.

The fact is, that for people like us, we feel like it's just ineffective and slow, but coordinators love committees. They get off on committees. In fact, my stepfather-in-law who I don't really get along with, he's a bit of a coordinator, and he will proudly tell you he's on 26 different committees. When he told me that one time, I got a pain in my stomach just thinking about 26 committees existing, much less being a member of all of them.

But coordinators love that stuff. So when you look at like the people who make the laws and the rules there's not a lot of entrepreneurial personality types there, is there? Because have you figured out which one you are yet? If you're not one of these three, let's go to the fourth one.

If our evolutionary tribe has the people who take care of each other, the people who communicate, the people who coordinate, what are we missing? When I ask people this question when I speak they say things like the people who make new things, the innovators, the leaders. Aren't those the evolutionary hunters? Because our tribe needed the person who was willing to get up in the morning, create a new reality, imagine that something could actually happen, like a kill, go out on the hunt and make that imaginary future that they created in their minds come real in the present, and keep this human tribe alive. We are the evolutionary hunters, and the question for this one is, can you turn it off?

If you're like me, the answer is no and you don't know why anyone would want to. Because it's that drive, that motivation, that ability to go forward when everybody else is falling by the wayside. It's the ability to keep concentrating, focusing, making more happen, to see a bigger future, to see a bigger outcome. That is who we are.

Evolutionary hunters are completely different from the rest of the tribe because we are that small fraction of the population that like I said, goes into the future, imagines a new reality, comes back to the present, and insists it become real, and we have been for millennia.

We are those who get up and bear the ambiguity of not knowing what will come next and go through the criticism of being the person out in front who's trying to change things, and listen to the challenges that people make against us because we're trying to do more and be more and create more, and what type of person is hardwired to do that? The hunter, the person who has been evolutionary conditioned to get up, drive forward, make things happen and keep this tribe alive. That is who we are. We are the evolutionary hunters who are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

So which one are you?

I'm gonna make the assumption that like me, you associate with the evolutionary hunter, and while I've made it clear that we need every one of these other personality types, every one of these other tribes in order for our human tribe to survive and thrive, I want to confirm a suspicion you may have had. Because I think every person like us at one time or another has felt like someone, something, a group, an organization, has been out to get them for no other reason than they are themselves. Have you felt that?

I know, I felt like I was criticized for saying what I really meant. I know I've been told to sit down and stop talking and shut up and quit making everyone else uncomfortable most of my life. I know that I've been told on more than one occasion I'm too intense and I scare people and freak them out. When I look at all of those qualities, doesn't it make sense that an evolutionary hunter would be wired exactly that way?

The fact is that when you look at our tribe versus the other three, we are the only tribe that lives for the future, that exists in the future, that insists on a new future and makes it real.

Because when you're a caretaker, a communicator or a coordinator you literally live for the day, and the moment and what you are doing. And if you have any doubt that you're not one of these other personality types, let me just share with you how the rest of the world thinks and behaves.

At 7:30 every night there's a show called Wheel of Fortune that plays on a network television station, and if for any reason, that show, Wheel of Fortune, that's been on forever doesn't play, thousands of people call the network, sometimes tens of thousands of people, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people call to say where is Wheel of Fortune?

If you're an evolutionary hunter, not only can you not imagine making that call, you can't even understand the rationale behind the call, but the rest of the world is not like us. They live for the present, they live for today. They live for the moment. Caretakers, communicators, coordinators are in the present and that's why we scare them. Because while the rest of the world clings to average and clings desperately, strives for average, and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the evolutionary hunters. We get up every day and say how can we do more, be more, create more and make more happen here.

I hope this cleared things up for you, and you understand more about yourself because evolutionary hunters have consistently evolved humanity, have consistently forced us to all become better, and everything in our lives has been created by one of us.

When you look around you, from the device I'm using to the one you're listening on, to the car you're sitting in, to the house you got up in this morning, to the air conditioning you're experiencing, to the lights on in your home, our world was created by entrepreneurs.

Thanks for listening.

If you haven't yet, especially after this episode, you should download a copy of my book, The Entrepreneurial Personality Type. Go to Freemomentumbook.com ... You know what, I've never done this before, but I'm gonna give away the book and audiobook today. You can go to Charfen.com/bookandaudio. There's not a fancy page or any type of conversion device there. In fact, that's a link that I use to give away a free copy of the book and the audiobook to friends of mine or people that I meet at events. So it'll take you right to a cart. Go grab a copy of my book and audiobook before we change that link and take it down. So Charfen.com/bookandaudio, and do me a favor, let me know what you think.