Why Do Entrepreneurs Tolerate Too Much?

This is the Momentum podcast. Allow me to share a little bit of truth with you, if you're a visionary entrepreneur leading a business, you're probably tolerating too much. And here's the thing. At times we can get so busy that we may not even realize that we're tolerating too much until it's too late. You have a choice. And in this episode of the Momentum podcast, Alex is going to show you the ways where you can offload those areas where you're uncomfortable. If you're looking for ways to offload and maximize the effectiveness of your daily productivity than this episode is for you. By the end, you'll be able to identify when you and other Ebbetts around you are tolerating too much and also be able to offload those discomforts by using the tips.

Alex shares, I hope you enjoy.

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.

Welcome. I'm excited to be here today because I think that if you're an entrepreneur, this concept, what I'm going to share is absolutely life changing. I know it was for me. Here's why did I want to talk to you about why, as entrepreneurs, we tolerate too much and what it does to us, what it does to our business, what it does to our potential.

Now, if you're wondering why, why I'm tying entrepreneurs and tolerating see, I think that tolerating too much or what we're willing to tolerate is one of the clearest path to success for us as entrepreneurs. Let me just say that again, what we are willing to do, limiting what we are willing to tolerate, understanding what we're tolerating, getting clear on what we're tolerating and then moving it aside is one of the fastest paths to success as an entrepreneur.

In fact.

As entrepreneurs, here's why we tolerate too much. Let me let me share with you, in fact, here's what I want to share with you in this video. I want to go into three things why we tolerate what it costs us and then how you get yourself out of this, how you get clear on what you're tolerating that you don't need to so that you can actually create the forward progress and the momentum that you want. So let's start with why we tolerate too much. Now, I'm going to take kind of a second to explain this to you in a way that only entrepreneurs understand. See, here's what I know. And maybe not only entrepreneurs, but only people who have our life experience. Understand. Here's what I know about every entrepreneur I've ever worked with. And there's been thousands and up close and personal, probably over a thousand, at least hundreds, where I've been one on one with entrepreneurs. I've known their intimate thoughts. They've shared with me things they don't and they don't share with other people in Kojm relationships and consulting relationships. And here's what I know about us. When it comes to our life experience and our success, let me show you how our life experience and success makes us tolerate too much. So what I know about every entrepreneur I've ever worked with is this and see a pressure test tests like try this on for size. Let me know if this makes sense to you. If this relates to you.

What I know about every entrepreneur I've ever worked with is that we all have a period or multiple periods in our lives where we were trying to get to a destination. We were trying to get to an outcome. We had gone into the future, created a new reality, come back to the present, and we were doing everything we could to demand it becomes real. And we're looking at that future outcome. And in the present, we didn't have enough resources. We didn't have enough time. We didn't have enough experience. When we weren't old enough, we weren't good enough. We weren't we hadn't done it before. Like, do you remember that period of time in your life where you heard all those voices in your head and telling you all those things, but you can still see the destination and you persisted and you you kept pushing things out of the way and you kept overcoming and getting through, and finally you broke through and you got to your destination. After all of that difficulty and challenge, you finally got to the place where you probably proved who you are today.

Can you relate to that, that place of going through that challenging, excruciating, sometimes debilitating in some ways time, but still making it to the destination and succeeding every one of us as entrepreneurs has been through that.

[00:05:19] And it truly can be what defines us. For a lot of us, it is exactly what defines us. I know I am who I am today because I went through those times. Now, here's the challenge as entrepreneurs, when we're going through an emotional journey like that, when we're going through difficulties, when we're going through challenges, we imprint like crazy.

And imprinting means there is a psychological imprint on us that as we're going through this really difficult challenge, we created success. So what happens is entrepreneurs is we tie together. I need to go through really hard, difficult things in order to be successful.

We convince ourselves quickly it doesn't take much.

This is, again, psychological conditioning, and it doesn't take more than more than a few times when you're in a high emotional state that when we go through this type of an issue, we actually link tolerating what is going on around us with our future success. We link going through pain and being in pain with being successful.

And the reality is that in some ways those links are real. But here's the issue. Once we've been through that journey, once we have increased how much we can tolerate, we put our thermostat for what we're willing to put up with is way higher and then we start going out for another success.

And here's the issue. We go after that next target and now we start tolerating things that are unnecessary. We start tolerating things we don't need to tolerate. We start putting up with things around us that we shouldn't be putting up with. We start allowing pressure and noise in our lives for the volume to go up to the place where it slows us down to the place where we don't feel like we can move forward to the place where it robs us of our momentum because we continue to tolerate and put up with and let things happen around us because we have this psychological conditioning that tells us that's how we're going to create success. But the problem is, as an entrepreneur, you have to get to the point where you are no longer willing to tolerate the pressure and noise around you so that you can actually be successful. Here's what it costs us. See, there's a simple four part equation that every successful entrepreneur has used throughout history. If you've heard my podcast before, you might have heard it. I share it all the time. It's called the contribution equation. I remember the day that the contribution equation downloaded to me.

It was completely overwhelming.

I was like, what can it really be this simple? Is this really how it works? See, as a entrepreneur, as a as a person, I've read a ton of books. Entire house is covered with books and I've read a lot about success. I brought a lot of my personal development, but I've read a ton of life histories, personal accounts, biographies, autobiographies, stories of successful entrepreneurs. And in those stories, here's what you find over and over again. Entrepreneurs followed the contribution in equation to success in their lives and what they did. And here's the here's that that equation. It's lowering pressure and noise for so lowering the pressure noise in your life, increasing the protection and support so your strengths and abilities will show in a way they never have. And you can go make your greatest contribution. I say one more time, you lower the pressure, noise, live, increase protection and support, your strengths and abilities will show and you will go make your greatest contribution. And see, the issue here is that our early lives teach us to tolerate. They teach us to put up with pressure, noise. Our live our life teaches us to it teaches us to put up with pressure, noise. We go through these experiences where we start to correlate. The more pain I'm in, the more successful I am. Who can relate to this?

I know I've done it.

It took a tremendous amount of research and learning and seeing the stories of successful people and consolidating all of those stories into this shortcut called the contribution equation, where here's what I realized. When people in the world who we remember we remember when the people who mattered to be remembered did the work they are remembered for. They did those four things. They radically and dramatically lowered the pressure of noise in their lives, for some, this meant they stopped being around people, places and things that were difficult for them. For some, this meant they focused like crazy and got rid of everything else in their lives. For some, this meant that they they changed their environments. They went somewhere else. They changed the people that they were around. They first lowered pressure and noise. The second step was they got real, they got vulnerable. They got clear on what they really needed. And they increased protection and support by transparently telling the people around them what they needed. And as they did those things, lower pressure noise and increased protection and support, their strengths and abilities just show up. As entrepreneurs, we think we need to go out and fix ourselves. We think we need to go learn stuff so that we're better. We think we need to to to improve ourselves in order for us to get to where we really want to go. And in some places, in some cases, where we need specialized knowledge. That may be true, but.

If you take a different approach and you lower the noise in your life like crazy, you you shut it out, you get rid of the people, the places, the things that are slowing you down, and you increase protection and support in your life. You transparently let the people around, you know, what's going on. You stop letting people meet your representative where you're using a veneer and not telling them what's really happening. And you actually tell people what's happening. You will show up in a different way in the world. Your strengths and abilities will show and you will go out and make your greatest contribution. I want to be very clear when I say that.

I'm a business coach and I believe in enterprise.

I'm a capitalist and I'm one of the the deepest rooted capitalists that I've ever met. I actually believe capitalism is one of the most incredible, transcendent systems in the world. Capitalism allowed us to create fiat currency where I can give you money so that you can give me value and contribution. I can pay you to help me with shortcuts, to get something faster, to get a product that I can't get to have resources. Prior to the capitalism, I had to take that by force and one of us was going to lose. Capitalism has allowed human beings to exchange value across the entire world.

I am a one hundred percent capitalist and a passionate wanted that it beganto.

So when I say lower pressure noise, increase protection and support your strengths and abilities, show you'll go make your greatest contribution. The way I look at it is in a world where people vote with their dollars, capital flows to the greatest contribution. So go make the contribution, the greatest contribution you can, and you will have all the money you ever needed. Every person I know who has extraordinary wealth has helped a huge amount of people capital flows to contribution. Unless there's like governments and bureaucrats and red tape involved, then sometimes capital flows to crap. But in a world where people vote with their dollars, whereas entrepreneurs were out there, capital flows to the greatest contribution.

And so when we're tolerating too much, when we're putting up with too much, it costs so much. It actually when we tolerate the pressure of noise in the background goes up. And here's what I know about us as entrepreneurs. When pressure and noise is high in our lives, everything we do is more difficult for us. Think about that when you have been overwhelmed by the day when there's too much going on, when there's been an accident in the morning or a challenge or an issue, or when you have too much tactically coming after you, isn't everything in the world harder? So doesn't it make sense that if you lower the pressure noise to the point where you've never had it so low before that everything in your life will get easier? That's how this works. The less you are willing to tolerate, the faster you move forward, the more momentum you create and the easier what you're trying to achieve becomes. Not that it will be easy, but it will become less difficult so that you can actually move forward and get to the destination you want. Now, the question I always get whenever I share this with entrepreneurs, I try and share this as often as I can so that we have these realizations of about ourselves, so that we understand who we are, so that we understand we have that tendency to tolerate too much that we have to keep an eye out for, or we're going to put ourselves in situations where we're not creating the success we want. We're not creating the contribution we want, we're not creating the impact we want. We're not earning the income we want. One hundred percent of the entrepreneurs I work with want to make a massive contribution. They also want to make a massive income. And anyone who says money doesn't buy happiness just hasn't given enough away. So don't ever believe that.

And as entrepreneurs, when we tolerate too much, it literally stops us from doing what we're capable of.

And so here's and so when I go to share this, the question I get is, OK, so how do you know when you're tolerating something you should and when you're tolerating something you shouldn't? And how do you eliminate those things? Well, here's here's how I here's how I help everyone I work with. First, I think you need to do an inventory. You need to look at the people, the places, the things in your life and ask yourself, are these things giving you momentum or are they taking it away? Are these things moving you forward or are they holding you in place? Any of those things that are not giving you momentum? This is binary. It's either on or off. They're either moving forward or moving backwards. Don't even try and tell me it's one of them is neutral because they're not. You're fooling yourself. And so the way to move forward, the way to help this, the way to create the next progress you want is to eliminate the things in your life that are not giving you momentum. This may be hard. This may be eliminating some relationships in your life. This may be eliminating some places that you go. This may be jettisoning some stuff in your life. But if you lower the pressure noise and you get rid of those things, you will be shocked at how quickly you start moving in the direction you want. You've been carrying around a boat anchor of all of those things and they're slowing you down. And that's just the first step. The inventory is the first step. The second step is if you don't have a process in your life to offload where you're uncomfortable, you will start tolerating too much again. If you don't have a process in your life to offload where you're uncomfortable right now, you are tolerating too much. Here's what I mean by that or this. As entrepreneurs, you already know this about yourself. I know this about myself. I'm the eternal optimist. Of course it's going to work out. Of course we can do that. Of course, that looks easy. We can do it faster than we think. Right. I always think things can get done faster and better and with more features and with more benefits and with less team involved.

I'm always optimistic we know this about ourselves and as entrepreneurs.

What that does to us, it gives us the fortitude, that optimism, the strength of that optimism, gives us the fortitude to go out into the world, declare we are entrepreneurs, tell everyone we are going to make this a better place in the way that we are working on. And our business creators would turn ourselves into a commodity and then go out and actually make it happen.

That optimism gives us that.

But on the flip side of that benefit of optimism, it also makes it so that as we go through our day to day, we will tolerate too much. We'll put up with the broken light switch, we'll put up with the person around us that we don't really want to have around us that just showed up. We'll put up with our desktop not being at the right height and with and this is all kinds of different stuff. The car that we drive we don't like. We'll put up with the person who keeps it in our neighborhood who's irritating us.

And we keep seeing all of those things we will just put up with become optimists and charge past without trying to change them.

See the inventory that you do once. You'll make some serious changes, but you need a system to consistently inventory where in your life you're uncomfortable. So you can ask yourself, is this necessary or unnecessary? And if it's not, you can get it out of your way over and over. Like I said, I always tell entrepreneurs, if you don't have a system in your life to identify and offload where you are uncomfortable, you will tolerate too much. So here's how I do it now. This is this is a suggestion that comes out of our momentum planner.

Thousands of entrepreneurs around the globe have bought this product now and well, maybe not thousands, hundreds. We're putting it out there to where it will be thousands very soon. And I'm so blown away and so proud of the results they've gotten in. A big part of it is that because a big part of the result is that part of the process with the momentum planner is that on a daily basis, right here in step two of daily planning, you answer the question, where was I uncomfortable yesterday? Every day you sit down and you answer, where was I uncomfortable yesterday, where yesterday our house had a major leak, we had water coming in. I wrote down. I was uncomfortable yesterday that I was exhausted mentally and physically. We had house issues with water. I didn't feel like we were adequate, adequately prepared. And I want to do better next time. But I wrote all of that down and where I was uncomfortable. Why? Because I had a hugely uncomfortable day. I put it down. I validated myself. I made sure I kept an inventory about it. And you know what's going to happen because I wrote it down longhand, because I have this daily discipline of identifying where I'm uncomfortable today. I have my daughter's already working on what supplies, what do we need, how are we going to do better next time? We're already assembling a family plan. You know, I was going to do that because that's how I think now. But I can tell you, there was a time where I would be like, the water's fixed. There's no more water coming into the house. Let's just move on. Let's go to the business. Let's do the next thing. I'm going to make sure that this doesn't happen to us again because I wrote it down. And when I go back and I look at this like a couple of days ago, I was uncomfortable with the contract we had. I was uncomfortable that we were snowed in. I was uncomfortable. There was triangulation in my company where two people were talking and they talking about a third person. They should have just been talking directly to that third person. So and I write this stuff down every single day so that I become aware of where I'm uncomfortable and I can offload it, move it out of the way. I don't use that eternal optimism to make it so that I start tolerating too much again. You know, I was once asked, what is the biggest difference between billionaires and everybody else? And I was asked that question because I've had the opportunity in my life. It's incredible opportunity to to work up close and personal with multiple billionaires over and over again. And here's the difference. I can tell you, when somebody reaches that level of status and success, billionaires are the tiny percentage of people that will tolerate none of what everybody else will. They will only tolerate one percent of what the rest of the population will put up with, and because they tolerate nothing, because they don't, because they demand more from life, because they offload where they're uncomfortable, they become radically productive at a level that is I don't mean, in my experience, otherworldly. It's incredible to watch people like my friend Dave Levinger, who used to run Remax, was a founder of Remax, went from CEO to chairman and now is retired. But watching him maneuver a ninety five thousand person company was incredible. Dave had no appetite for tolerance. In fact, he would routinely become very intolerant in public appearances and panels that he was on, but. And he did not tolerate noise in his life anywhere that I could see when I spent time with him and watching him navigate that huge organization was incredible. And the way he did it was lowering pressure, noise, increasing production, support, ladies and strikes and the ability to show and going out and building the biggest real estate company of all time at the time he had it. I think it's still the biggest real estate company of all time and. That equation that not allowing yourself to tolerate that offloading where you're uncomfortable, I've washed it up close and personal and. I've applied it to my life, and the more that I refuse to tolerate the things I don't need to, the more success I have and I've applied it to our coaching, the more we show our members how to to offload where they're uncomfortable and stop tolerating too much. The more our members go from million dollar companies to over 10 million dollar companies to a protein on their way to one hundred million dollar companies. And so this is an equation I've watched over and over again. When I teach my team to offload where they're uncomfortable, they become more productive. They do more, they show up in a better way and we get more done as an organization. This is a universal filter for you to put on your life and ask yourself, how do I eliminate what I'm tolerating? How do I stop doing this? And so the the process to use this to everyday sit down and ask yourself where I was uncomfortable yesterday, do not type it into a computer, write it down with a pen. Doesn't have to be a big, huge pen like this one I was trying to grab a better problem can be a pen like this one, but write it down with an actual pen and write down. Here's where I was uncomfortable. You don't really have to do anything with it. If you write it down, you will start to take action. You don't have to sit there and say, I need to eliminate it all. Sometimes it's just recognition. I actually wrote down yesterday that I was uncomfortable with all the snow, sleet and ice and Texas and the fact that we were shut in and I couldn't take a walk. Is there anything I can do about it? No, but I'm building the muscle, the muscle memory of writing down every day. Where was I uncomfortable so that I can identify it, get rid of it and move forward with massive momentum. So I. I know that if you're willing to apply this simple concept to your life and if you're willing to think about that contribution equation and stop tolerating in the day and start writing down where you're uncomfortable, your life and your business are going to radically improve and so will the relationships around you as entrepreneurs. Those are the three things that are really important to us, our relationship with ourselves and what we're doing in life, our relationship with others. Usually the most important is our spouse and our family and our relationship with our business. If you stop tolerating what you have been and you lower the pressure and noise in your life, your relationship in those three areas of your life is going to radically improve. Thanks for being here with me today. If you want more information, you know, the more you tolerate, the more pressure and noise there is, the more you can't see the forest for the trees. You are blind. And if you want some more information, if you go to Charfen dot com forward, slash blind, Charfen dot com forward, slash blind. In fact, I'm going to drop a comment right there and. You go over there. My team has prepared some information for you. We have more information on how to move forward as an entrepreneur, how to create momentum. And all you have to do is, again, go to Charfen dot com forward, slash blind and remember, as an entrepreneur. We put up with more and go through more and tolerate more than the average person does in order to create the success we want because we are driving our lives ourselves, that does not mean that you should universally put up with everything in your life. It actually means you should guard your focus like your life depends on it because it does and make sure that you are eliminating anything you don't need to tolerate so that you can move forward, create momentum and go out and make your greatest contribution. Thanks for being here with me today.

I appreciate it. Like crazy. Go to Charfen dot com forward slash blind. Thanks for being here today. Appreciate all of you. And we'll see you again soon.