Stop Fighting Transition

As entrepreneurs, we have committed to a life of transition, to a life of growth, to a life of momentum and moving things forward. However, we have also committed to a life of constant change, so if you're an entrepreneur, you have to stop fighting the transition and just lean into it and make it happen.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is The Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, 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 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 could 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.

One of the challenges I hear most often from entrepreneurs is, "Alex, I'm in this massive transition. It feels like everything is unsettled. I feel like everything's going in different directions." Those types of sentiments are what is shared by entrepreneurs, and I want you to know I've been there. When I was younger, and even in recent history, I have grown businesses fast. When you grow a business fast, what happens is it causes you, as the person running the business, to go through transitions, transitions that you want to go through and, let's be honest, transitions that you don't want to go through, but as you grow your business, your transition is absolute. You're not going to be able to avoid it. You will start making changes, growing, changing, and adjusting to this new level of growth that your business has created for you.

Now here's one of the biggest challenges that I see entrepreneurs having is we fight the transition. We fight the growth. We're uncomfortable with it. We want to slow it down. We don't want to transition. We don't want to change. Here's the issue with that. If you look at The Billionaire Code ... If you haven't listened to him yet, go back to Episode 180 of the podcast, it might be on the archive, and listen to The Billionaire Code all the way through. There's 10 episodes there. Sorry, there's 20 episodes. There's nine episodes that are the actual titles of The Billionaire Code levels, and then there's episodes that tell you what you need to do in each one.

Here's the fact of being an entrepreneur. When you look at what it takes to go from zero to just starting up an idea to getting to $100 million, here's what you have to understand is that the transition you will be going through will be constant and absolute. It will be happening 100% of the time, and you will be changing everything because to go from startup to long-term growth, you literally have to change 100% of what you do. One of the most futile and most challenging things we do as entrepreneurs is we try to fight the transition, and I want you to know I've been there.

When I first started in business, I had this aversion to managing people, to leading people, to having people on my team, so I did everything I could to fight having to have a team. I used contractors. I grew my team slowly. I got help slowly. I didn't ask for as much help as I needed. Then there was finally this day where I realized I was throttling my business. I looked up, and I realized I couldn't do it all myself. I had passed that point of no return where, if my team wasn't doing it, I couldn't do it. If people on my team left, everything would not get done anymore. It was this awakening that said, "You now can't go backwards."

I feel so fortunate that, in that time, in those moments, I had read enough, heard enough, had good enough mentors that the thought that I had was, "Okay, then I have to go all in building a team." I didn't do it well. I didn't even do most of it right, but I committed to the transition of going from somebody who did everything on their own with support to somebody who accomplished everything through other people. That is a massive shift and a massive change. When I stopped fighting that transition, and accepted it, and started believing that my ability to lead and direct people and to grow a team was going to be the biggest fulcrum on which I could push a lever and create massive success, everything in my business changed.

I want you to know that, up until then, I was fighting it. Up until then, I was like my fingernails dragging across the floor as I was pulled out of the room saying, "No. I do not want this transition." It felt violent. It felt difficult. It felt like it was intimidating. On a daily basis, I felt like I was in over my head, and I felt like I was at the point where everything was going to break. Does that describe what you might be feeling right now?

See, as entrepreneurs, when we get to that place where the transition that we're in feels overwhelming, feels unbearable, feels like there's just no way we can do it, when there's too much going on, too much happening, and we just don't feel like it's all going to come together, that is where we must rewire our thinking and understand that because of who we are and what we attempt to do in the world, because we are the biggest catalyst for change in the world, because we are the individuals that get up every morning, go into the future in our minds, imagine a new reality, come back to the present, and insist it becomes real, that that feeling of hitting the wall, that feeling of not being able to do it anymore, that feeling of the transition's too big, it's too overwhelming, we should pull back, stop, go home, and give up, that feeling is exactly the feeling that lets us know we are doing it right because, as entrepreneurs, when we grow our businesses, when we grow the level we are operating at, when we begin to build a team, when we put our trust in people, we grow more in months than most people do in a lifetime.

When we commit to achieving through other people, when we commit to working with our team, when we commit to making a bigger impact and a bigger contribution in the world, everything in our lives change. Who we are becomes about what we produce in the world, so I have a message for you. If you're feeling the transition, if you're feeling the overwhelm, if you're feeling the pressure, if going forward feels like it has far more pressure than pulling back, and you're thinking about throwing in the towel, I want you to consider something. You're not going to turn it off. You're not going to stop. You're not going to give up. You're going to continue and, even if temporarily you let yourself off the hook, it's only going to be days or weeks before you put yourself right back on.

If you feel like everything's too hard, like you're not going to make it, like it's just at a place where there's nothing else you can do, I want you to know something. You are on the brink of something amazing because that's exactly what people like us do. We stretch ourselves to the point where we finally make a breakthrough, and that's where we change the world.

If you're ready to understand yourself better, create more momentum than you ever have, and leap through the transitions that the average entrepreneur gets stuck in, download a copy of my book The Entrepreneurial Personality Type. I want you to understand yourself better than you ever have. Sorry, don't download it. Buy a copy of the book. Go to freemomentumbook.com. In fact, you don't even have to buy it. Pay for shipping and handling. I'll pay to send it to you. Freemomentumbook.com.

The book is called The Entrepreneurial Personality Type, and it will explain you to yourself in a way that, probably, no one ever has before. It will give you insight into how people like us create momentum on demand, and we stay in that place where we are achieving, making things happen, and the world is following in our wake. Freemomentumbook.com. Don't fight the transition. Learn how to use it to your advantage, and go even further.