Momentum Podcast: 19

Discover Your Momentum Equation

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Any successful person can explain to you how they created momentum and achieved success. For those of us who can extract the lessons from their stories and apply them, this is useful. I have found it is infinitely more useful to show entrepreneurs how they individually create success. As we examine your momentum equation, we will discover the exact path you individually take to create momentum in your life and your business. As you go through the exercise in this episode, you may be surprised to find that there is a consistency to how you create momentum. What once seemed like random periods of your life where you created massive forward progress, are now easily identifiable, and more importantly repeatable.

Full Audio Transcript

Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Personality Type podcast, the podcast created for empire builders, game changers, shot takers, world makers; those among us who can't turn it off, and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and obsess on creating momentum, so that we can roll over bureaucracy, and make our greatest contribution.

Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so we can bend, break, and rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. While the rest of the world strives for average, and clings, desperately, to the status quo, we are the minority, the few, those willing to envision 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, the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Personality Type podcast episode 19: Your Momentum Equation. The fact is, any successful person can tell you how they create momentum, or how they have created success. In fact, the books, and anthologies, and biographies, and life histories, and third party accounts of successful people are almost endless. And form an individual's perspective, them telling you how they create success, if you're able to take that information, apply it, and be able to see how it fits in your life, then you can use that information to create massive results and massive success. And I've done that for most of my life.

But as I obsessively studied success, here's what I found. There's a simple way to draw out the equation for success that each entrepreneur has, and have you prove to yourself how throughout your life you have created those periods of momentum where everything in your life has changed, where you've made massive forward progress, where you've changed the world around you and created a new reality. If you know what I'm talking about, if you understand that feeling, if you know what that was like in your past, then I wanna help you identify those periods in your life, for one simple reason. If we can find the commonality of how you've created success, and we can find the equation through which you, specifically, create those periods of your life with huge forward gains, then here's what's so important: When you know your individual success equation, when you know how you create success, then you can repeat it, and you can create momentum at will. You can do it over and over again.

And I'll tell you how I found this equation, and how we've tested it over and over again. When I read about the lives of successful people, again, when you look at just a few, they look completely different. They look haphazard, they look unique, they look like they've each done something different to create success. But when you look at thousands of successes over time, what you find is, there's a clear commonality, and clear commonalities, in how people like us get into momentum, and stay there. In fact, I would recommend to you, or present to you, that there's an actual equation to it.

After I read, and I saw this momentum equation spell itself out in the recorded histories of people throughout history, I also started observing. And as I became a consultant, and started working with some of the most successful people in the world in my career, and I was around people who move the world around like puzzle pieces, what I saw was that they too had a similar obsession around how they created momentum, and they had ultimate clarity as to their own equation. And then, in the past decade, in exercises with thousands of entrepreneurial personality types, we were able to prove this concept over and over again, that there's a clear consistency to how we create success. And I wanna help you with that now.

Now I'm gonna do something unique for a podcast, I'm gonna request one thing, is that either right now, or sometime in the near future, while you're listening to this podcast, you grab a pen and a sheet of paper and write a few things down. Because if you can record your specific momentum equation, everything in your life will change. If you can unlock the Rosetta Stone for the combination of items that you must have in your life, qualities that must be there so that you can create momentum, we can make certain that you have it from this point forward. Because, like I always tell people like us, momentum for us is not a fleeting period of time, momentum for us is not something that should come and go, momentum for us is how we are hardwired, and I want you to get into momentum, maintain that momentum, and create as much forward progress as you possibly can. Let's start the momentum equation exercise.

So to start, what I want you to do is take a couple deep breaths, in and out through your nose. Get present, and then draw up the timeline of your life that you remember. Draw up the timeline of your life that matters to you to be remembered. What are the things in your life that you think about when I say, what are the periods of momentum you had in your life, what periods of momentum can you remember? Now, people normally say things like, "Medical residency," or, "Going through school," "Starting a new business," "Getting a new job," "Having a new baby," "Running a marathon," "Training for an event," "A new relationship," "A new opportunity." What was it for you?

For the purposes of example let me share with you the first period of momentum that I can remember in my life, of real sustained momentum, where I knew I was moving forward, where I felt like things were changing. I was 13 years old, and up until that point I had had what most people would call a disruptive school career. I was not the best student and I didn't really find anything that I cared about in school, and it was difficult for me to pay attention to what other people thought was important when I didn't. But at 13 I met someone who changed my life, who still works with me today, who has been my coach for over 31 years; his name is Rick Lara, and I got into high school, was put into his speech and debate class, and it started a period of momentum in my life that lasted for the entire time I was in high school.

I went from being a shy kid who stuttered a lot and had a hard time talking in class, to being able to speak in public, debate in public, winning massive amounts of awards and doing incredibly well. And I remember being in that class, those four years in high school, being an unbelievable period of momentum for me that changed my life. So for you, right now, identify a period of momentum. If you're driving, or you're listening to this while you're moving around, then identify it in your head, and then go and listen to this episode again and write this down later, because it will change your life and give you clarity around how you, individually, can create momentum for today and moving forward. Write that period of time down.

Now, for some of you, you're going to wanna write years, for some you'll just wanna write the name of the period, like, as an example, I could write, "From 1986 to 1990, while I was in high school," or I might write just, "High school speech class." That's step one. What was that period of momentum for you?

Now the second question, underneath that, is what were you trying to achieve when you started that period of momentum? I can tell you with 100% honesty, here's what I was trying to achieve: I got put into a speech and debate class, I was a quite student, a shy kid, I had a hard time communicating in class, and when I did I was unbelievably awkward. So what I was trying to achieve at the beginning of that period of momentum was simple, I was trying to survive a speech class. That's it. I was trying to not embarrass myself, I was trying to just be present, show up, and literally survive. What was it for you, at the beginning of that period of momentum?

If you felt a period of momentum when you were running a marathon, then it was just finishing the marathon. If you felt a period of momentum when you were getting married, than it was probably just getting to the wedding, or getting married. What were you trying to achieve? Periods of momentum typically begin with humble outcomes. So write down those two things: One, the period of momentum. Two, what you were trying to achieve.

Now the third question I have for you is, how did you know you were making progress during that period of momentum? How did you get perspective? What was the scoreboard you used? When I was in Rick Lara's speech class I had two different ways of getting perspective and knowing that I was achieving. One, I had feedback from him. But two, we also had grades, and a scoreboard in the class, and there was objective feedback from the other students, and so I was constantly getting information as to whether I was moving forward or not. What was it for you in that period of momentum?

If you were running a race, maybe you were following a training routine. If you were getting married, maybe you were checking off items on the checklist getting to your wedding. If you were going through residency then you had the periods of residency and understanding where you would get out of residency, and what you had to do to survive it. If you were having a new baby, you were probably counting down the months to when your child was born. So how did you keep track of your progress? What was it there that gave you perspective? In other words, what was the scoreboard?

So you should have three answers in front of you, or in your head, right now; the period of momentum, what you were trying to achieve, and how you knew you were making progress. Now the fourth question is crucial. Who helped you, and who did you help? See, every period of momentum for people like us has mutual contribution, where we were helping other people but we were also getting supported and helped, and sometimes those people may not even be present. We might be reading books, absorbing materials, getting the shortcuts that other entrepreneurs have left behind. But in order for us to be in momentum it's near certain that we had those we were helping, and those who were helping us.

So let's review what you have either written down, or thought about, to figure out exactly how you create momentum. The first is, the period of momentum. The second is, what was the outcome at the beginning, that humble beginning that started your period of momentum. The next one is, how did you know you were making progress? What was the scoreboard? And then the last one is, who helped you, and who did you help?

When I was in Rick Lara's speech class I got help from him, from the other students. I also became one of the speech team captains, I ended up coaching other students. It was an incredible period, where I received massive contribution from those around me, but I was also able to make a massive contribution to those around me. When you were getting married, maybe the person you helped and the person who helped you was your spouse. If you were training for a marathon, maybe you were using somebody's training program, you had a running partner, you knew that you were going to make yourself healthier. And so, you were running to improve how things go for you, and how your life is.

So in each period of momentum, let's review, we have a clear outcome, a clear scoreboard that gives us perspective, mutual contribution; and that creates momentum. So I'll say it again, for every historical period in our lives, or the lives of any significant entrepreneur, they had three things: A clear outcome; "I'm going to turn night into day," Thomas Edison. A clear scoreboard; "I tried over 10,000 times to make a light bulb." And mutual contribution; I'm doing this for the good of humanity, I'm doing this for the good of the world, I'm doing this with my lab partners, and we are going to create a light bulb. And what happens is, you create a period of undeniable momentum that changes the world.

Now here's one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs today, and maybe you're experiencing this in some way. It's that as we create more success, as we've had periods of momentum, as things get better and better for us, we start making this very complicated. In fact, instead of asking, "What is that simple, humble beginning that may put me into momentum?" we start asking two questions that tear us apart at the middle. The first one is, "Where do I want my life to end up? What do I want my life's accomplishments to be? How do I want it to be when I'm all done?" And then the second one is, "What do I do today to get there?" If you've never experienced the symptoms of OCD or bipolar, just keep asking those two questions and you will soon.

And one of the biggest struggles I see for entrepreneurs today, especially those with the experience, with the time in the seat, with the wherewithal to actually create massive success, is that so many are sitting on the sidelines, trying to figure out what next step will be important enough, what next step will get them to that outcome at then end of their lives, what next step is going to create that massive success that they way. And as a result, they stay on the sidelines, thinking about creating momentum, rather than aggressively creating it and making it real.

I want you to get unstuck. I want you to get into a period of momentum. If you worked through this exercise with me in writing, I want you to do it three more times. Identify three periods of momentum in your life, and write down what was the outcome you had when you started, that humble beginning that got you there. What was the scoreboard that gave you perspective, and then what was that mutual contribution that created that period of momentum. Because here's how easy it is to reverse engineer this equation back into our lives.

Today, what is that next interim step for you, that's clear, that's easy to measure towards? If you wanna help a billion people, that's great, but measuring towards helping a billion people, unless you've already helped several million, is just going to cause frustration. What's the next interim step that's easy to measure towards, that you can see is achievable, that you know you are going to crush, that you can tell is going to be something you can get to? What is a clear scoreboard? If you don't have a scoreboard in place, without measurement there is no momentum. Let me say it again. Without clear measurement, there is no momentum.

And then third, and just as importantly ... I called it contribution in the equation; who are you contributing to, and how are they contributing to you? But when it comes to business, we can just switch that to accountability. Who are the people who are accountable to you? Who are you accountable to? What is that contribution that's being created? Because in a business, when we examine do we have a clear outcome, do we have a clear scoreboard, and do we know who's doing what, we change everything.

I'll share with you a place where I saw this contribution equation applied in an incredibly dynamic way. And it would surprise me every time, because there was this massive consistency to how widely successful people analyze situations. As you already know, I've had the opportunity to spend time around some of the most successful people in the world, the privilege to sit hand it hand with billionaires and watch how they think, and there was this consistency to how all of them diagnosed situations, figure out what went wrong, and always, always, look like the smartest person in the room. They would walk into any conflict, any challenge, and very quickly ask the questions that would determine what were we trying to achieve, what was the outcome? How were we measuring success, what was the scoreboard? And who was responsible for what, what was the mutual contribution or accountability?

And I watched as they would ask in different ways, but they were always determining the same thing; do we know where we were going, do we know how we were measuring success, and do we know who was supposed to do what. And as soon as you figure out which one of those three is missing, or maybe two, or three of three is missing, as soon as they would figure that out, they would diagnose the problem, and just as quickly prescribe the solution. "Let's add a scoreboard. Clear up the outcome. Make sure everybody knows exactly what their responsibility is." And by doing that, it would create momentum in the process for the people around them.

So here is my challenge to you. Sit down, and write out this exercise, determine exactly where you, as an entrepreneur, have created momentum in the past. What was that humble beginning, that clear outcome? What was that scoreboard you had? What was that mutual contribution, the accountability to the people around you? Because that's how we create periods of momentum. And, for anything in your life today where you are committed to creating momentum, simply make sure you have a clear outcome that's easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand. Make sure that you have a clear scoreboard that is tracking your progress and success around the way that you know exactly where you are. And then, maybe most importantly, make certain that there's mutual contribution, that there's clear accountability as to what you're doing, and what other people are doing, to create that momentum and success.

This is the path that every great entrepreneur in history has followed, to create those periods of time in our life where we shoot at a humble beginning, but we get massive forward progress in the process. Because I want you to do one last thing with this exercise. If you're repeated it three times, like I suggested, I want you to go back to that humble beginning, that simple outcome that you had at the beginning of each one. Like mine, I wanted to survive a speech class. And then I want you to write down everything you actually achieved during that period of momentum. For me, I learned how to speak, I learned confidence, I understood now I could be a leader, I understood how to lead people. I realized and recognized how I could move people in a direction, how I was someone who didn't have to sit in the back of the room. I gained confidence, I gained skillsets. In fact, I often joke with people that everything I learned that I needed to be successful I learned in Rick Lara's speech class.

So for you, how does that equation work? For you, how did that create momentum for you? Because what I want you to see is that humble beginnings give us massive outcomes. But when we aim at a massive outcome, when we overwhelm ourselves at the beginning, we often stay in place, taking little or no action at all. So if there's an area of your life where you want more momentum, sit down today and reverse engineer this equation. Once you've figured out those periods of momentum in your life, look at the area where you want momentum today and ask yourself three questions: Do I have a clear outcome that's easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand? Do I have a scoreboard, measurement, that's showing me progress moving forward? And, do I understand what I'm doing, what people around me are doing, what I'm expecting from others, so that I can create momentum?

The momentum equation will change your life once you understand it. Because when people like us get into momentum, we have this magical personality that allows us to learn what we need, absorb what we need, move in the direction we want, and create even more.

Thank you for being here on this episode of the Entrepreneurial Personality Type. It is a absolute thrill to share these with you. And if you want more information on our personality type and exactly how we create momentum, and to understand the strategies, the tactics, the information I share with my private clients to keep them there, go to MomentumMasterClass.com and check out the opportunity we have there for people like us, to physiologically, cognitively, and even chemically, create massive momentum intentionally, on a day to day basis.

And in episode 19 of the Entrepreneurial Personality Type podcast I will be going through how you and I can offload where we are uncomfortable, so that we create even more momentum on a daily basis. Because when people like us get into periods of massive momentum, that's when we create the outcomes we want, create the successes we know we should, and that's exactly when we make the change in the universe we know we were put here to create. Thanks for being with me.

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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