Process Calms Entrepreneurial Anxiety

This is the Momentum Podcast.

Eddie Kirk: When you're facing panic or overwhelm, there's one constant that keeps entrepreneurs like you and I present, grounded, and magnetic, and that's process. Process is what sets you free in your business, your personal life, in your relationships, and it's what's going to put you into momentum when you're facing challenging times. My name is Eddie Kirk with Alex Charfen's team, and in this episode of the Momentum Podcast, Alex is going to break down the simple yet powerful steps that we teach entrepreneurs around the world to implement in order to put themselves into momentum and keep their businesses protected in moments like these. I hope this episode brings you hope in these troubled times, and remember, process will save you.

Alex Charfen: 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.

What's up everybody? I wanted to jump in really quick before I get on my 9:00 a.m. Leadership Huddle and talk about what will calm your neurology, what will calm your body, what will get you focused and centered and aware in this crisis and that is process. I know it sounds crazy for me to be talking about process in a crisis because there's so much going on. I want to show you what I mean by process cures entrepreneurial anxiety. This morning I sat down with my kids and Reagan is sitting here with our momentum planning system and so each morning we sit down and Reagan writes out what is her intention for the day, where was she uncomfortable the day before, and then what is she going to get done today, and what are the top three things she's going to do? And then for the day before she also writes out what she's grateful for, and where did she win? Kennedy does the same thing, right Baker?

Baker: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alex Charfen: And here's why we do this every morning. We also, all three of us, well, all four of us, go through a morning routine. We get up in the morning, we go through literally a checklist morning routine. And what does morning routine help you do, Kennedy?

Kennedy: It helps know what you're going to do and it helps you get more calm and focused.

Alex Charfen: There it is. From a 10 year old. There's your coaching for the day. Routine helps you get calm. It helps you get focused. It helps you know what you're going to do. Because here's what's going on for entrepreneurs all over the place. When there is a crisis, when there's high pressure and noise, here's what happens to our evolutionary hunter brains. High pressure and noise, it's like a crisis on a hunt. It's like being attacked and we want to attack back and so what happens is we have high pressure and noise and we want to move directly to action. We want to move to doing something, to getting something done, and as a result, here's what happens in crisis all the time. In fact, science has proved this. It's called emotional contagion. We get into a crisis, we start making decisions too rapidly. We don't analyze what we're doing. We're not careful about the decisions we're making, and before we know it, we've created an environment where we're making decisions back to back.

They're piling up on top of each other. It's hard to get perspective as to what's really going on and we end up in a place where, instead of creating progress, we are making more noise for ourselves. So here's how we should all be doing this. We are in a crisis. Do not make a irrational or split decisions. That's one of the ways that entrepreneurs do this. The other is freezing and doing nothing. Are you going to freeze or are you going to make a rational or split decision? You should do neither. Here's the process to use in any crisis to create momentum, to protect yourselves in your family and to make the right decisions. First, analyze what's going on. Sit down and write down what's happening, what's going on, what are the decisions you could make? Then prioritize out of those things that you could potentially do. Sit down and ask yourself, what's most important right now? What order should I do these things in?

In a crisis, order is critical. If there's a triage situation, the order in which you do things is exactly what you need to get clear. Then prioritize, analyze, and here's a big one, especially in a crisis, commit. Commit to what you're doing. Here's what we see people doing in crisis far too often. During the 2008 crisis, Cadey and I coach hundreds, well, thousands of business owners through that crisis to successfully, not just navigate it, but to win awards like we did. This is 2011, '12, and '13. These awards were earned during the height of the real estate collapse. And the way we did that was we showed people how to commit, how to actually commit to something. Stop waffling, stop making decisions over and over again. Stop changing your mind. Just commit. And then the last two steps, execute what you committed to and then review and renew.

So analyze, prioritize, commit, execute, and renew. Those five steps, in a crisis, will save you. Because here's what most entrepreneurs do, here's what most people do, in a crisis. We abandoned process and we start acting emotionally. If we are willing to commit to process, it will calm our anxiety. So here's my suggestion. Just like my kids and I do every morning with our momentum planners, sit down and ask yourself today, what is your intention for the day? Not what's your to do list, but what do you want to get out of the to do list? Let me share with you my intention for the day. This is what I wrote down this morning. Be the example of our content. Show up grounded, calm, and magnetic so that we can lead our team through this. Launch our strategic members support plan. We are about to step up our membership support like crazy. And here's what else I wrote. I wrote, launch our strategic members support plan and get info out to our clients and then share with our team the plan and the speed to execution that we need right now.

Every day I sit down and I write an intention and here's why. The intention is so much more important than that to do. It's not what I'm doing, it's why I'm doing it. And then I also write down where I was uncomfortable yesterday. And you know what I wrote down yesterday? I wrote down, Cadey and I were both accelerated instead of calm, present, and aware, and we accelerated our team and the people around us. I won't do that again. See, by every day sitting down, especially in a crisis, the reason that I wrote this down and the reason that I use this every day is that in a crisis we are going to have behaviors we're not really excited about. In a crisis, we're going to make decisions we're not really excited about. In a crisis, the hardest thing to maintain for people like us is actually perspective.

And by sitting down every day and offloading where I'm uncomfortable and creating my intention for the day and making sure I have my top three, that's how I stay in momentum. And I didn't show you this on the girls planners, but let me show you on mine. Also, on the day before, right here, we write down, what am I grateful for and where did I win today? So each day, what am I grateful for? Where did I win? What's my intention? And where was I uncomfortable yesterday? By using process like this, by following a daily process, a daily structure, even a daily morning routine, here's mine, every day, same daily morning routine, process calms anxiety, process calms ambiguity, process creates massive focus and awareness, and if you're the entrepreneur using process throughout this crisis, here's my commitment to you. Process creates magnetism. If you are using a process, you will be more calm and aware. If you are more calm and aware, you will be the person who is magnetic in this crisis I know.

I led 49,500 real estate agent members through the last crisis. The U.S. Treasury credited us with bringing the foreclosure crisis forward five to seven years. How did we stay present and aware and ready to execute in the middle of a massive crisis where everybody's finances were falling apart? We followed process. We followed daily morning routines, daily personal planning process, planning processes in our business, and that is what created the momentum to keep us moving forward. If you run a business right now and you want to make sure that you fortify it against anything that's going to happen in this crisis, that you recession-proof your business, that you put the right process and systems and structures in place so that you can move forward, go to predictablebusinesssolutions.com right now so that you can connect with us, understand how we can help you, create the right processes in this crisis, and not just survive this, let's get real, every crisis, every recession, every depression, every collapse in the history of finance, economics in the world has created massive opportunity.

A lot of the multi-billion dollar organizations that you and I know today were created in the middle of the depression, not just the recession, and Cadey and I did this as the world around us fell apart and went bankrupt and went into foreclosure. We were able to hit the INC 500 List three years in a row and help solve the country's foreclosure crisis. What are you going to do? As entrepreneurs, it is up to us to step up, create awareness, create presence, get calm, and go out and change this, because entrepreneurs are the most consistent source of positive human evolution, and we always will be. This time will be no different. If you want some help, if you want to join the best community on the planet to get through this predictablebusinesssolutions.com, and remember, process calms anxiety, especially in a crisis.