The Symptoms of Sabotage

Alex Charfen: As entrepreneurs, when we get overwhelmed, when there's too much going on, when the pressure and noise gets too high, we start to sabotage our success. I want you to know the symptoms of sabotage and how to stop it.

Every entrepreneur I've ever coached, ever worked with ever been around has been there and so have I. You get to the place where when the pressure and noise gets too high, when you don't have clarity, when you don't really know what your next steps are, you start having a hard time creating momentum and moving forward and you start invariably sabotaging your success. And what does sabotage look like? What are the symptoms of sabotage? Procrastination, not doing what you need to do, not understanding what to do, hitting that day where there's so much going on in your business that you know you should be doing something, but instead you're stuck. You don't know what to do next.

See, when the pressure and noise gets high enough for people like us, we will start sabotaging our success. We will make bad decisions. We will spend time on things we don't need to. We'll procrastinate. We'll waste time, we'll do things that actually move our business sideways or even worse backwards, and we'll start to actually hurt our business and this looks like all kinds of different things. It looks like not doing what you should be doing. It looks like picking a fight with people around you. It looks like mouthing off on social media and having people judge you. It looks like doing anything that isn't actually moving you towards your goals and here's why we do this. Here's why the symptoms of sabotage pop up, and by the way, there's more. I want to just give you a little bit more clarity.

It's also when we're not drinking water. When we're not breathing. When we're not eating right when we're skipping meals. When we're not actually taking care of ourselves. All of these things begin to sabotage our success and why does this happen? It's because we don't have clarity of purpose and we don't know what to focus on and we end up in a place where we're trying to do everything all at once and right away. And that's when, for people like us, sabotage sets in. We get to this place where we procrastinate. We don't do what we need to do. We aren't pushing the ball forward and why? Because we don't have full clarity.

I sat down with an entrepreneur last night, I haven't gotten permission to share her story, but I will. And she actually was at an event that Jon Morrow threw. I did a podcast from the event last night, so if you haven't listened to it, you should. I actually sat down with her. She ended up joining our program and we were talking and she's grown her business like crazy. She's got some help in the business, but here's what she's missing. She doesn't have a strategic plan. She doesn't have a clear communication system to help her team understand what that plan is. And she doesn't have clarity around how to build her team right now.

So as a result, she's gotten to the point where, and I asked her, I said, "Have you hit that day where you know there're things you need to do in your business. There's so much going on, it's completely overwhelming, but then you find yourself not doing anything for an hour or two, literally wasting time because you don't know what to focus on first?" And she looked at me with this shocked look on her face and said, "How do you know that?" Well, here's how I know that I've worked with thousands of entrepreneurs. I've helped people grow businesses to scale and understand exactly what they need to do next. And it's happened to every single one of us.

Just about a year ago, I remember talking to a doctor friend of mine up in Canada. Whose grown and grown a massive seven-figure practice, but he had grown his practice and then he was growing an information products company, a coaching company at the same time. And I remember we were talking and I said, "How are things going?" He said, "It's good, but I've got a lot going on. This is all new territory for me and I find myself not doing what I know I should be doing." And I said, "Well, what do you know you should be doing?" He said, "Why I should be growing my business." I said, "Okay, then what is it exactly you should be doing?" And he said, "Well, Alex, I really don't know. I know I should be doing something but I really don't have clarity." And I said, "Well, if you had clarity, wouldn't you put your pedal down and go all in?" And he said, "Absolutely."

That's what I asked last night of the entrepreneur I was sitting down with at Jon's party. I said, "If you have clarity and you know exactly what's going to move your business forward, aren't you all in 100% pushing with everything you have at that point? It's not hard to focus and doesn't procrastination go away?" And she said, "Yes, absolutely. I've been there. I've been there when I was growing the business. Can you tell me how to get back?" And I said, "Yeah, I mean that's what we do. That's how we help entrepreneurs. We will show you how to do the three things I just mentioned."

One, have a clear forward-looking strategic plan. I talk about this all the time and I can't stop talking about it because only 1% of businesses, and I think that that figure is an exaggeration, it's probably less than 1% of businesses ever create a real strategic plan that they communicate to their team that everyone knows what's going on and everyone's on the same place. It just most businesses don't have it.

Two, you need a communication system, a cadence, a structure, a process through which you consistently communicate to your team so they always know what's going on. They're not waiting for word from on high. They're not begging for information. Number one complaint in entrepreneurial companies is we don't get communicated with enough. Number two complaint is we changed directions too much. When you have a clear strategic plan and a communication cadence, you eliminate the top two complaints that entrepreneurial team members have. That's worth its weight in gold. That changes your company. That makes you one of the few companies where people are actually excited to work not just because they like you, but because they're winning.

And then three, you need a system, a consistent system to evaluate your company, evaluate your opportunities, choose the right ones, and then build the infrastructure in both people and process around you.

When you do those things, everything in your business will change and the symptoms of sabotage will go away because it's not your fault. See, here's something that you have to understand as an entrepreneur or not have to. I want you to understand as an entrepreneur is that sometimes when you're sabotaging, sometimes when you're just sitting there, sometimes when you're not doing and achieving and pushing things forward as hard as you can. The reason is because you don't have clarity and somewhere in the back of your mind you know that if you just keep pushing, you're going to break things. In a lot of ways you're holding back, You're not pushing, you're not trying to do everything at once, is actually a protective measure for both you, your clients and your company. That's not both, that's all three, but it's a protective measure for you, your clients and your company.

When you get clarity, that's when everything changes because here's what I know about you, me and every other entrepreneur I've ever worked with. When we have clarity, when we know exactly what to focus on, to move the ball forward, when we put in effort and we see immediate results, when we have an understanding of what we need to do next and it moves our business forward, we go all in. We stand on the accelerator pedal. We go forward as fast as we can, and that's when we make the greatest outcomes in our lives, the biggest achievements that we have, and that's when we actually, in fact, change the world. I want you to avoid the symptoms of sabotage. I want you to move away from them as fast as you can and I want you to create as much momentum and more than you ever thought possible.

If you want to understand exactly what we do as a company, we have a new presentation we put up alexcharfen.com. Go fill out a simple application. As soon as you're approved, we will give you access to a private presentation idea with a small group of entrepreneurs that will show you exactly how you can scale your business from six figures to seven, from seven to eight and from eight and beyond. It's a short presentation, you have to apply to get it. One of my team will actually approve your application, go to alexcharfen.com, and within 24 hours, if you qualify, you will get access to a private presentation about exactly how to scale your company. alexcharfen.com