This Is What Unstuck Entrepreneurs Look Like

This is the Momentum podcast. People often come to vastly different conclusions based on their limited perspective, so I'll pose this question to you. Do you have a limited perspective on what's really happening inside of your business? And if you can't see what's really happening inside your business, how are you supposed to hit your long term objectives? We've been talking about this concept of entrepreneurial blindness as the main problem most entrepreneurs are facing. They don't have clarity around where they're going, so they have no idea if they're actually taking steps on the day to day basis to get there. So let's take a second and imagine what life is like for entrepreneurs who don't have entrepreneurial blindness. What are their lives like? Being healed of entrepreneurial blindness improves your life in three distinct areas. We call them the three C's. And in this episode of the Momentum podcast, Alex is going to take you through each one in detail.

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.

I look at the entrepreneurial world today.

Here's what I see is one of the biggest challenges that people have, they are living in this state of entrepreneurial blindness and that they're living in this state of not knowing where they want to go next, how they're going to get there. But most entrepreneurs, if you talk to them, especially in an event or at a mastermind, they will tell you exactly where they want to end up. And so this this challenge that we have as entrepreneurs where we live in the future, we create the future, we crystallize that future. We get more and more excited about it. We have to create a path so that we can go from that future down to the day to day and make it real. And when you have clarity, confidence and commitment around what you're doing, you can do exactly that. And I want to share that with you in just a moment to show you how to get there in just a second. But first, I want to share a parable, a story with you. Now, as with most parables and stories, we have to suspend some disbelief around this one. I when I was younger and I would hear a parable, I'd always argue with it, like, how did they do that? Why couldn't they see? Why didn't they look around? Well, this is the parable of this realignment. And the way the story goes is three blind men each approach an elephant from a different location and from their perspective, feeling around and touching around, they each feel something completely different. One finds the elephants table a tail and thinks that he's grabbed onto some type of a cable or a cord or something like that. Another one grabs the elephants trunk and he is convinced that he has a hose of some sort and another one walks right into the elephants leg and thinks he's touching a tree trunk. Same exact object. Three people experience a different complete perspectives. And that creates confusion. That creates frustration. If we don't have clarity in the moment of exactly where we want to go, if we don't have confidence in where we're going, if we don't have commitment and where we're going, we're going to have massive challenges. So if you listened last week, I identified didn't identified entrepreneurial blindness as one of the main consistent problems. Entrepreneurs have that condition of knowing where we want to go, knowing the outcome we want to achieve, having an idea of what we are. We want to end up, but not knowing how to get there on a day to day basis. And the the distance in between can be covered with a plan. When we plan, when we sit down and we understand exactly where we're going. Everything changes in our business. I want to take you through the three C's that we share with our clients, clarity, confidence and commitment. And I want to show you how each of these will help not just eliminate entrepreneurial blindness, but give you an advantage. And here's something I want you to know. And I'm going to say this upfront. You've probably been blaming yourself, even shaming yourself for not doing what you should be doing, for not getting enough done, for not creating enough momentum, for procrastinating, for not doing what what you know, will move you forward. Here's something I want you to understand. If you don't have clarity, confidence and commitment, those are the symptoms of exactly that condition. When you don't have a clear plan, you will you will procrastinate. When you don't know exactly where you're going, it will take you time to figure out your next steps. You will not create the momentum you are hoping for until you eliminate the condition of entrepreneurial blindness through the creation of a clear plan and a structure to get there. That is what we help entrepreneurs with. And so I just got the comment. Yup, exactly. Me. Well, you know what? It's almost every entrepreneur. We talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs a month through social media, through the calls that we're on, through strategy sessions, through the group calls it. I go and speak in other areas. And I would say less than one percent of entrepreneurs have a clear written strategic plan that changes everything. In fact, let me show you exactly how it changes things. Let's go to the first point clarity. We call the three C's clarity, competence and commitment to key to entrepreneurial success. And here's why. When you look at clarity, when you don't have clarity as to where you're going, here's what happens. You end up frustrated and anxious and feeling like you should be taking a step, but you don't know which one it is.

In fact, when I think back through some of our clients, I think of this extraordinary entrepreneur that I've had the privilege to work with. His name is Justin Dyson. He had an e-commerce business called Kenson Such hat. I'll tell you why he had it in just a minute. It's kind of an awesome story.

When we started working with Justin, he was basically doing everything and on a day to day basis, figuring out what to do next. He had a couple of people working with him that he was managing through transactional management, which means telling them what to do, checking that it got time and telling them what to do. And yet he was frustrated and feeling kind of beat up by his business. And we helped him create a strategic plan that created massive clarity. He was able to transition from transactional management, telling people to do, checking that it got done and telling them what to do. Again, the transformational leadership, which is giving people clear outcomes in the form of a plan, coaching their success along the way and getting exponential results when you do this rather than this everything. Your business changes in back in the time that we were working with Justin. He went from being anxious and frustrated and sometimes had a hard time deciding what to do next to having the clarity of exactly what he should do next. And he didn't just grow his business like crazy. When we were working together, he actually offloaded a lot of what he was doing, got a lot of his time back, and then eventually, as we were working with him, sold his business and had a multi million dollar exit. When you have clarity, that is when you manifest what you want, when you have clarity, that is when you move forward with with all the confidence in the world when you have clarity, that is when you know your next steps and you are going to move forward and create the outcomes you want as an entrepreneur. Clarity is crucial. Let's talk about the next one. Confidence now. Confidence is one of the most important things for us as entrepreneurs. We put ourselves out there, we make ourselves vulnerable. We declare ourselves a commodity the day we say we are entrepreneurs and when we don't have confidence. Here's the challenge. You already know how this works in an entrepreneurial business. Everyone is counting on you. If you're the one in charge, if there is a problem, it all rolls up to you. You carry the business on your back. You feel like you're doing too much and throwing a bunch of things on the wall to see what sticks. But if you don't have confidence, if you don't know what you're doing next is getting you to your long term outcome, you will execute poorly. You won't be excited about what you're doing. You'll put things together, but maybe you don't get the results you want if you have any of these symptoms. Again, this is a symptom of not having a clear strategic plan, but it's even an additional symptom of lacking the confidence to move forward. As an entrepreneur with all of your energy, you know so much about energetics and entrepreneurship. If we are energetically excited about what we're doing, if we have the confidence in what we're doing, if we know our next steps, the energy we put out to the world is magnetic. We will attract the customers we want to us. We will attract the team we want to us. But if we are unclear and we lack confidence, that's the energy we put out into the world and.

Energy that's unclear, energy that lacks confidence is not magnetic, it's actually repulsive, it actually pushes people away. You know, so many people ask me or tell me, I've done all the work, I've done the funds, I did the product, I did all this stuff. But nobody's buying from me. And I often ask them, how confident are you in your plan? How confident are you in what you're doing? How confident are you in your execution?

And if I get any type of a doubt or delay, that's why people are buying. You know, we often as entrepreneurs try and say this is what's going on and this is what it's causing. But oftentimes that's not how it works. Oftentimes this is what's going on and it's not a direct line to what's causing it. You know, procrastination, lack of progress, lack of numbers, lack of sales, lack of the business you want. A lot of people think they're not using the right tactics. Oftentimes, it's something much more strategic, like a plan that gives you the clarity and the confidence. And I'm going to move on to my third point commitment actually made some notes over here because I wanted to make sure I shared exactly what I wanted to do about this. See, when you see the path, clearly your level of commitment skyrockets. That's crucial.

But when we move forward as entrepreneurs and we have clarity and confidence and we are committed to what we're doing, that's when we get into and stay in momentum.

That's when we take the accelerator pedal and match it to the floor. That's when we move forward like crazy and we create the outcomes that we want in the world. That's when we change the world around us. You know, your perspective creates your reality. So reality is yours to create. Let me say that one more time. Your perspective creates your reality. So reality is yours to create. And what that means is if your perspective is cloudy because you don't have a plan, if your perspective is unclear, because you are in that space of entrepreneurial blindness, if your perspective is not crystallized as an entrepreneur, it will affect you everywhere. And when we look get confident commitment. If you're not committed, there are tons of symptoms like distraction is the lowest level of commitment. If you're distracted from something that is the lowest level of commitment to it. And if you're if you don't have that higher level commitment, you will stay in distraction. You will just be distracted by your goals and outcomes. At this level, you're going to be frustrated and irritated causes anxiety. There's a ton of noise that goes up and makes us feel tactical pressure in the moment. Do you know I'm talking about when we don't know where we're going, when we're unclear, that noise that goes up makes us feel stuck. It makes us feel constrained. It makes us feel like we can't move forward. It makes it gives us that frustrating feeling of standing in space and not creating anything.

Now, on the contrast, when we create a plan, we have clarity, confidence, and then that third big one commitment.

When we have that commitment, we start transmitting that energy to everybody around us. When we have commitment, we start changing the world around us. Oh, man, I have such an incredible story of commitment in the past year. You know, 20, 20 obviously was not the year any of us expected. In March, we shut down for a global pandemic. And I had several members in my coaching programs that literally were shut down. One of them was made Lori Noga, who is. One of the most extraordinary entrepreneurs I've ever been able to work with by trade, she's a dentist. In reality, she is an incredible off the charts visionary. I guess you can combine those two. So she's an off the charts visionary dentist who is who is changing dental practices and that three practices out of Washington. When the coronavirus hit her entire business with Shut-Down clarity, confidence, commitment, were out the window. It was done. She like, what are you going to do? Well, Laurie didn't allow herself to get distracted.

She didn't allow herself to get sucked into that vortex of energy that is just not going in the right direction.

She actually was looking at options, understanding what to do next, and then started planning for when she was going to be able to open again. Not only did she open all three of her dental practices, but within weeks she was over one hundred percent of the booking that she had before. Why? She created a clear strategic plan. She communicated with her team. She got ready for business to be back open as soon as it was. She already had everything in place. Her team came back in, her customers or her patients came back. They started getting the dental services that they need to have been delayed and her business expanded and grew in the middle of an international pandemic. Now, I want you to know that's not how it always is. There's actually some contrast here I can give you. You know, at the same time, I was talking to Laurie, who's in our membership, that was talking to somebody else that I've known for years, not in our membership, just someone that I know. We're friends online and we've been in several events together. Interesting, though, he also owned three practices, not dental practices, functional medicine practices. And at the same time that Lawrie's practices were blowing up, I asked him how how was he doing? And his answer was the absolute opposite. He said, you know, Alex, he's got to understand what this can damage. Nobody's coming back. Our business is down about 30 percent to 60 percent depending on the location. We might have to close one of them. And I said, well, what's your plan to fix? He said, you know, we're waiting to see what the government does.

And I remember thinking, what incredible contrast. Here's one entrepreneur with three practices who did not allow distraction, created a plan, was waiting for the day she could open the doors back up and then execute like crazy.

Here's another entrepreneur who's waiting for someone to tell him what to do and might lose one of his practices, maybe even more. When you lack clarity, confidence, and then the big one commitment, you will end up in this situation much more often than you're in the situation where there is growth. And when you have clarity, confidence, you can overcome just about anything, including an international pandemic that shuts everybody down so you can come back even stronger and go out and make a bigger impact. And create more momentum for everyone, and so the 3D clarity, confidence and commitment are here to help you see the difference between why some entrepreneurs struggle and some always seem to get ahead, win and go out and make an impact. As entrepreneurs, what we want to do is help people. We want to make an impact. We want to change the world around us.

And we owe it to ourselves to create the clarity, confidence and commitment that allow us to do that. And the way that you do this is through creating a strategic plan that you and your team can execute. That's easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand and has everyone going in exactly the right direction. So I want to thank you for being here with me today. And if you're interested in getting more information about what we do and how we help entrepreneurs create a strategic plan and create massive momentum in the world, here it is, Charfen dotcom, go to forward, slash, build momentum.

Check out what my teams put together for you. Thank you for being here with me. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate you being here. And we'll see you next week.