Recently, I got a really interesting Facebook question. Somebody asked me, "Can you do a podcast on why people fail when they join your program?" I thought it was a really interesting idea, so this is that podcast — the people who fail when they're working with us.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum podcast. Made for empire builders, game changers, trail blazers, 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. 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.

I was really intrigued when I got this question through Facebook. I think the person asking ... I know the person asking it actually had a genuine interest in understanding, in a program like ours where there's so many people that have experienced phenomenal success, life changing success. For some of them, they've changed their own lives and the lives of their children and future generations of their family. That's how significant some of the outcomes have been in our programs. We've helped people go to tens of millions of dollars at very high level of profitability and it doesn't take a long time before that is completely and totally destiny changing.

But at the same token, there's people who have not been successful in our program. There's people who have come to us, told us they wanted help, and have gotten through our interview process, have shown up like someone that we felt like we could help or we wouldn't have accepted them, and then they've joined our program and have failed to be successful. In fact, I can think of one or two right now.

At first, I wasn't going to record this podcast because I didn't see any value in it until I started thinking about it. Now, I think this could be one of the most valuable podcasts I've ever recorded because so many entrepreneurs go out and join programs without really understanding why they're doing it, what they're getting, and even more importantly, without creating an intention around the program and without creating the commitment to the program. Because there's not a program in the world that will help you if you are not intentional about it and committed to it and actually participate. You can spend all the money you want, you can join all the masterminds you want, but if you're not committed to it, if there's not an intention behind it, it just isn't going to work. I've watched this for years, I watch it over and over again. We see it in our own programs.

So here's what I want you to understand. We have a clear track record of helping people, but when I look at the people who have joined our program, who were the right avatar, who had the opportunity to make it work, but then failed to make it work. There's very few, but when I look at them, there are some commonalities. In fact, I spent some time on this and what I came up with was three commonalities for why people get into our program and they don't work.

I want you to understand, this was a big thing for me to actually accept. I don't like people to fail. Cadey and my information product that we had before this, the certified distressed property expert designation in real estate, that was a 599 online product, they earned somebody a designation. We sold 49,500 units and change. We had 47,600 people actually graduate. Our graduation rate was in the high 90 percentile. So what we do is we put together programs and experiences and learning experiences where people succeed. We're obsessed with it. We actually got our return rate for the CDP down to less than 2%. Find any information product out there that has a less than 2% return rate. There was no tricks. We had a no questions asked money back guarantee if the product wasn't what you wanted it to be. That was it. You didn't have to fill stuff out, there wasn't a performance thing you had to do, none of it. We still had less than 2% return rate, so we are exceptional at putting in ... and our teams have been exceptional ... at putting together products that actually get a result.

But when I take a step back, I had to actually come to terms with the fact and energetically accept that not everyone's going to succeed, that some people are going to join your program, some people are going to come to us for help, some people are going to look like someone we can help, and then they're not going to succeed. Here's the hard part. I had to learn how to let go of that outcome. I had to learn how to be okay with that outcome because here's what I've discovered after selling information products since 2007 and being in business for over 30 years, is that some people don't want to succeed. Some people are in a mental place, an energetic place, a spiritual place where they don't want to succeed, and so you have to be able to deal with the fact that not everyone's going to win.

This was hard for me to get over, and then focus on the people who are going to win and that's what we do today. We have a massive success rate. But here's the commonalities with the people who don't succeed. First one's easy, so clear. Implementation. You know, even today, we have people join our programs, spend a tremendous amount of money, make a massive commitment, and then do nothing about implementation. Like literally, implement nothing in our program. If you don't implement something in an information product or a coaching product or any ... if you just join and you don't take the appropriate steps to actually get the value out of it, let's be very real — nothing in your life will ever change. It's not going to improve. It's not going to modify, like without implementation, you have done nothing more, but make a commitment and break it.

Here's the issue with doing this. I want you to have an awareness of why this is so challenging and why it bothers me so much when people do this. Because what you're doing is if you join an information product and you don't follow through, what you've done is you've made a commitment to no one but yourself and you're now letting yourself down. It's like when you set your alarm clock in the morning and you proactively choose to hit the snooze button, that's your first failure of the day. That's the first acceptance of failure of the day. You had an intention to get up and then you hit the snooze button. Well, the same thing. You join an information product and you're not implementing, you are actually creating the outcome where you are guaranteed to fail.

It's incredibly frustrating for us as an organization, so much so that we asked people on their way in, "Do you have the time to implement?" "Are you going to be able to apply these concepts?" "Do you have the help to implement?" We are very careful with who we accept, but still, infrequently, we'll get someone that comes in and is just so committed to being in the place that they are that they don't implement, they don't participate, they don't actually take advantage of what's there. So that's number one, first and foremost, easiest one to pick off, is the people who don't implement.

The second one is interesting. I think the second place where we have challenges is, and we've only had this once or twice, is where people are getting way too much advice. We've had people that have joined our mastermind and concurrently joined another mastermind and are working with a personal coach and are working with a finance coach and are working with way too many people because they don't have a large enough business to be getting as much input as they're getting and they're completely confused and they get paralysis from too much input.

We've watched this, like just too many answers, too much input, too much advice, and they freeze. They actually failed to go in any direction because there's too much input that becomes overwhelming and that overwhelming just ... or the overwhelming and put stops you in place. You can't make a decision. You don't know which direction to go. You end up literally standing in place because there's so many opportunities. If you, you know, the people who we've worked with have actually gone out and paid a bunch of different people to give them advice and the advice doesn't line up perfectly ... there's not massive conflicts, I don't think we've ever had massive conflicts with anybody else's advice. Maybe once or twice, but most of the time, it's similar but different and that in and of itself causes paralysis.

So if you're trying to grow, if you want to move forward, join a program and then commit to it. Don't commit to five at once because they will compete with each other and overwhelm you and you will stay stuck.

Now here's the third one and this one is probably the one that I see most often, is when someone is emotionally stuck in overwhelm. I want you to understand something about stress and overwhelm and fight or flight. It's addictive. Being in fight or flight is addictive. Being in fight or flight is an altered state of consciousness. You have additional adrenals going on, you have a totally different chemical mixture in your body than you would that if you were in a calm state. You are accelerated, there's a rush to it. It actually cuts off some of our processing to be in fight or flight. It narrows perspective. It shortens the future, it brings everything closer and closer. Unfortunately, all of those things are completely and totally addictive to people with our personality [inaudible 00:00:09:36].

Being in that emotionally overwhelmed state is addictive, so much so, I'll just use an example to demonstrate this. You know, we work with entrepreneurs that are running businesses that are either multiple hundreds of thousands or in the seven figures or eight figures. What often happens is we have an entrepreneur come to our program because they're overwhelmed and there's too much going on and they can't get everything done every day. They want to calm the noise and get clearance, quit feeling like all the pressure is on them. Those who do implement and those who aren't getting too much advice will come to our program, start implementing, and within a very short period of time, sometimes as little as 90 days, certainly within six months if they're implementing our stuff, here's what happens. There is a massive and very rapid reduction in overwhelm. There's a reduction in noise. There's a reduction in all the expectations that that entrepreneur is feeling from everyone and or she's feeling from everyone, and here's what we'll often hear. We'll get messages and what people say, "Hey, you know, things are going better now. I don't feel as much pressure. I don't have to do as much for the company. I'm bored. Am I doing something wrong? How do I make it so I don't feel like this?"

Why? Well, because people come to us saying, "I don't want to be overwhelmed. I don't want to be stressed. I don't want to be ... I don't want to have to do everything anymore." But then the second that that pressure is lifted, we want it back. We want that feeling of being needed. We want that feeling of significance. We want that feeling of certainty that we are needed. The second it goes away, just a little in an entrepreneur's life, we start missing it. What we've watched over and over again, with very few people, is that we've had some people come in where they aren't willing to work on themselves. They aren't willing to work on what's happened to them in their past. They're not willing to look at their childhood trauma. They're not willing to look at the reason that they are completely overwhelming themselves on a daily basis with so much noise that they can barely see straight.

When someone's in that situation where they are committed to keeping themselves in overwhelm, it's very difficult for us to help them because here's what happens. When they start applying our materials, when they put our stuff in place, overwhelm will recede and go away, and what often happens is that causes a massive panic in the people who are addicted to overwhelm and those who are looking at who they are, answering the questions they have about their life, being introspective and understanding what's really happening with them.

So the three reasons why people don't succeed are simple for us. It's implementation, they're getting too much advice. Or they're just emotionally, spiritually stuck in overwhelm and not really willing to look at it.

So here's what I want you to know about moving forward in your life and going out and succeeding in a program rather than failing like I've just detailed. So number one, before you make a decision, ask yourself, "Am I going to actually implement this?" A good friend of mine, Angela Lauria, just announced that she is no longer going to be coaching people on writing books. She's got an incredible personal development framework where at the end, you write a book. It's something that I've always wanted to do with her, and Angela recently announced she's retiring, she's not doing it anymore, so I jumped in and I'm part of her last cohort, the last class that she's ever going to teach to write a book.

Angela runs the Author Incubator. She's one of the most unique and extraordinary entrepreneurs I've ever had the privilege of being around. When I looked at her at jumping into this group, first I talked to my team about it and I made sure that I was going to have the time to personally implement what I needed to do. I talked to Cadey about it, explained to her why I wanted to do this and she's going to help me create the space to do what I want to do. So I made sure, before I got into this program, that it was really what I wanted.

Now, second, as an entrepreneur, buy what you need when you need it. If you haven't yet, go to billionairecode.com and download the Billionaire Code Matrix and the ebook, Billionaire Code Decoded. It will show you, the two will show you exactly where you are as an entrepreneur and what you should be focused on right now.

So if you're a $300,000 entrepreneur that needs to generate enough leads so that you can consistently convert them and get to a million, you should not be taking classes on how to lead a team because it's not going to help you right now. You shouldn't be taking classes on advanced leadership because what you should really be doing is going in and absorbing everything you can on lead generation and conversion so you can get to a million, then 2 million, then 3 million, and then start talking about having a team. So buy what you need when you need it. Look at what you're actually doing so that you understand what you need.

You know, I recently made a massive mistake on this. I went to a speaking event where I thought it was going to be something where I could understand how to go get more speaking, how to get out there in public, how to to share with people. I knew almost right away I was in the wrong room when the two people, two of the people at my table who introduced themselves didn't have businesses. They didn't even have an idea for a business. They were in the room to understand the idea for the business and to work through it.

I immediately realized this is the wrong purchase. I left, I actually left. I knew it wasn't right for me. I didn't stay there and being one of the people that wasn't going to implement, I left and I let the person know that it was running it like, "Hey, I made a mistake here. This was not the right program for me."

Then three, get clear on why you're buying something so that before you buy it, you're already committed to putting in the effort. Don't buy because you want somebody to fix everything for you. Don't buy because somebody's sales letter is cool. Don't buy because a friend of yours decided to buy it. Get really clear on how this is going to change your life and then you'll put the time in to implement. You'll shout out all their advice. You'll make sure that you move forward and you're not stuck in overwhelm.

Here's what I want you to know. Me, any other coach out there, any information, product, any book, any way you are going to grow, it's not going to work until you commit to it, until it means something to you. You're not going to accidentally grow by buying something. You're not going to grow through osmosis and absorbing the material just through making the purchase. Nothing will help unless you are fully committed. The more committed you are, the more dramatic a result you will get and that's why it's so crucial to make sure upfront you commit to these things. You know that you want, what you're buying. You know you have the time for implementation and you're actually going to grow.

Like I said before, if you haven't yet, go to billionairecode.com and download a copy of the Billionaire Code and the Billionaire Code Decoded ebook that explains the nine levels you go through from zero to $100 million as an entrepreneur and what you should be focused on at each level so that there's never any confusion and you know exactly how to grow at the maximum rate. Go to billionairecode.com, check out our free report, the Billionaire Code Decoded. Do me a favor. If you end up doing this, share on social what you think, let me know, and tag me. I love to get your feedback. See how the Billionaire Code Decoded works for you and understand how you're going to apply what you downloaded. billionairecode.com.