Four Fears All Entrepreneurs Face (And How To Conquer Them)

This is the Momentum podcast.

If you're an entrepreneur, it can seem like you need to keep up an outward appearance of success in order to maintain it in your life from the outside, it can look like things in your business are going great. But why does it feel so hard? When you first started your business, you thought that when you got to where you are right now, things would be sailing smoothly. You thought you would grow quickly, you thought you could scale with ease. But it turns out more revenue and bigger teams only lead to more complexity with different struggles and bigger challenges. If you're there, I'm willing to bet now more than ever, you're worried that the growth of your business is only leading to damaging your closest relationships, failing and losing your business, letting your clients down, or damaging your reputation because you can't deliver what you're promising. In this episode of the Momentum podcast, Alex is going to talk about these four fears that all entrepreneurs face and how to conquer them without sacrificing yourself or your family along the way.

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. And talking about this, this topic is which I think is so crucially important to entrepreneurs, so what Eddie and I did, Eddie's our marketing manager on our team, and what Eddie and I did was we looked at what are the top four fears that we see entrepreneurs having and not just what are the four words, what are the four fears that entrepreneurs almost universally have? But because these are such threatening challenges, because these are so challenging for us as entrepreneurs, these are for fears that we rarely talk about.

And I would go as far to say as we rarely acknowledge. Now, here's what I mean by that. Like as an entrepreneur, here's what I know happens to us. I've worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs. I'm an entrepreneur myself. I wrote the book, The Entrepreneurial Personality Type about our personalities. And I wrote that book to explain myself to myself. And I also wrote it so that every entrepreneur out there can understand themselves better. And when you have the entrepreneurial personality type, there are some. Some challenges we have around facing fears, in fact, here's what I know about people who are ABCDs. Here's what I know about the entrepreneurial personality type. When we have fears, when we have huge fears. Here's what we typically typically tend to do with something that's causing anxiety or frustration as frustrating as or bothering us when it's one of those big issues in our lives or our business. We do want of two things. We either mentally obsess over it, energetically obsess over it. We're thinking about it all the time, or we're trying to ignore it all the time and trying to repress it all the time. And either way, we are burning a massive amount of psychic energy in either of those pursuits. If we are just mindlessly obsessing over a fear or we are trying to avoid the fear or repress the fear that is burning a ton of energy, energy that we could be using if redirected, and if trance transformed or transmuted from those obsessions, we could be redirecting to grow in our team, to improving our relationships, to building our business, to having more creative ideas, to opening ourselves to all the opportunities that are around us. And when we understand our fears, when we admit our fears, when we get real with our fears, that's when we can actually do this.

That's when we can transmute those fears into something else. And here's what is so important. If we're willing to slow down, actually find and acknowledge our fears, feel them and then find a solution, all of the energy with which we were feeling that fear is going to be transmuted into the solution, into creating momentum, into moving things forward. Energy doesn't just disappear if you have a lot of energy around the anxiety, the frustration, the fear, then that energy, when released through finding a solution, will be all redirected towards moving you forward, creating momentum, increasing the impact you're having, increasing your income, all the things that as entrepreneurs we want to do. And so today I want to go through with you the four fears that Eddie and I identified and the ones that we feel like we see most most often and the ones that we feel like we see repressed most often. And so I want to jump in and I want to go through these. And here's what I would appreciate. If you would do if you felt one of these fears, just tell me in the comment like, yes, I have felt this first one, damaging close relationships.

As entrepreneurs, we have a fear of damaging close relationships. If you've had that, let me know in the comments or if you've felt that, let me know in the comments. And here's where that fear comes from when we are growing our business and there's a lack of clarity there, there's a lack of insight as to what comes next. There's a lack of forward plan. What ends up happening is the mental ability it takes from us to create momentum in our business is massive. When we have to get up every day and figure out where things are and figure out how things are going and then figure out how to move forward. It is incredibly draining. And it's not just physiologically draining. It's not just energetically draining. It is psychically draining because we are constantly in our heads trying to figure out what is the next move, what am I going next? What's happened, what happens next? What's the next right move? And what ends up happening is that obsession, that time that we're spending in our heads, trying to figure out how to move our business forward. Creates the fear of damaging close relationships because it's real. Let's just be honest, it's real if we're in that place where we don't have clarity as to what we're doing every day in the business, and we're in that place where we don't have clarity as to what each member of our team, that member of our team is doing in our business. We are in real jeopardy of damaging close relationships around us and I mean close relationships with our spouse, close relationships, spouse, or significant other close relationships with our kids. This is a really big one for me. My daughters, they're 11 and 14 now. There's a level of innocence there. If I go and energetically communicate with them in a place where I'm really stuck, where I'm overwhelmed, where I'm trying to do too much than I am, I they feel that.

They know that I can feel that. They feel that I don't want them to feel that. And it's not just our spouse or our children, but it's close friends, people in our business when we are in that place of of overwhelm, when we're in that place of decision making fatigue, we can damage close relationships. So here is the anecdote. And by the way. I want to show you how for all four of the fears I'm going to talk about today, and these are probably the most prevalent fears we have as entrepreneurs, there's one solution. And I know that that sounds like an exaggeration, but there is simply one solution to each of these. So let me outline the fears and I want to go into how do you get past this? So the second one is entrepreneurs that I know, especially at the entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs who are in entrepreneurship to make an impact, to make a difference, dare I say, the entrepreneurs who are in this to change the world. If you're one of those entrepreneurs, let me know in the comments I want. Just say I'm in it. I'm in it to change the world. And if so, you're one of those entrepreneurs that your business means that much to you. Then letting clients down is one of the biggest fears we can have, because when we let clients down, you know, we challenge our ability to grow our business and we feel it. I don't know about you, but I mean. Almost every entrepreneur I've ever worked with, when a client is let down, they feel it, they feel it in their chest, they feel it in their stomach. It's like if there's one thing that will trigger me more than anything else in my business and I can't stand being triggered. And I, I work on understanding triggers and and I relieve pressure and noise so I don't have them. But it doesn't matter what's going on if I feel like we've made a commitment to a customer. And they made a commitment to us and we let them down. Oh, that is like one of my biggest issues. And the third biggest challenge or the third biggest fear, the repressed and unspoken not talked about fear is damaging your reputation now, again, damaging your reputation. Is this real? Absolutely. Should you have this fear? It's probably well founded and grounded because when you damage your reputation as an entrepreneur, it is hard to recover. You can, of course, recover, but damaging your reputation, having people talk negatively about you, having people talk behind your back. For a lot of us as entrepreneurs, let's get real. We were not the cool kid in school. If you're an entrepreneur and you were the cool kid in school, you're the exception.

There's probably other places that you had challenges when you were a child. And for most of us, we were the kid that was different, that was unique, that got made fun of maybe a little bullying. They got talked about behind our backs. And when we feel that damage to reputation, that takes us all the way back to that childhood experience of gossip and people saying things about us and being made fun of and being challenged. And if it's like if it if your childhood was anything like mine, then you probably had the experience more than once of walking into a room and realizing that everyone knew something you did. Does that land for you? And so that fear of damaging reputation invokes all of those fears we have from our childhood and then the fourth one and this one's big, is failing or losing your business. You know, failing and losing your business is probably the biggest and most unspoken fear that entrepreneurs have. Rarely do you hear an entrepreneur say, you know what, my biggest issue right now is? I'm afraid of losing my business. Really, most of the time what you hear is I'm just having a hard day is challenging. Things are not going that great right now. But let's get real. If things aren't going well and you have challenges in the business, there is a baseline or maybe above baseline fear of losing that business into us as entrepreneurs when we're in love with the business that we're running and we're excited about the people we're helping when we can see the change that we want to create in the world when we get up in the morning, travel into the future, create a new reality that we're excited about, that we're passionate about, that we want to see materialize and then we come back to the present and demand it becomes real. If we see that it's not going to happen, if we feel like that business is going to fail or close, it is one of the most energetically psychically challenging places for us to be. So we often pretend like it's not there. We avoid it like crazy. And so when you wrap up these four fears, damaging relationships, letting clients down, damaging your reputation, failing or losing the business, all of these indicate that these fears would be driven by some level of overwhelming the business, by some lack of clarity, from some lack of commitment. You don't have what you really need to move the business forward if one of these or in a lot of cases. We see all four of these officers present in the same entrepreneur because the business has become overwhelming because the business is maybe growing out of control, because the business is not growing enough, because the business is taking too much of their time. They know that those conditions are going to create a condition where they can potentially damage relationships, let their clients down, damage their reputation, and then eventually lose the business.

And this cascade of feelings and emotions completely deleverages who we are as entrepreneurs. And by deleverage, what I mean is it makes it so we don't have the energy in the world that we need to do what we need to do. It makes it when we wake up, we feel repressed as we are getting out of the house, as we are getting these days. What do we want to get out of the house as we're going to work? We feel repressed, we feel stressed. We feel like we actually have less decision making capability. We have less creativity than we normally have. So these four fears can all be addressed with a single solution. And it happens to be the solution that we work on with entrepreneurs most of the time we obsess over this. See, in any business, when you create a strategic plan, here is the massive, energetic shift that you create. First, you and you can when you have a strategic plan that tells you where you're going, tells you what's happening next. Number one, you can anticipate what you need when you as an entrepreneur and a place to anticipate what you need. You have clarity as to what you have next. You mean next you have confidence as to what you need. Next, you will create a commitment around moving forward and you will absolve the fears that we just talked about. The second thing that a strategic plan gives you is you will actually create certainty when you as an entrepreneur are working without a strategic plan, certainly needs certainty, needs to be conjured up one minute at a time. If you're an entrepreneur, nobody can explain this dynamic to you. Let me explain it to you so that you can understand it, so you can feel it. When you don't have a strategic plan, then you are in constant decision making and you are in constant decision making to create certainty. And I would present to you that that's not a moment by moment basis when you're working in your business. If there's not a forward plan, if there's not clarity about what comes next, you are constantly creating that certainty. If you create a strategic plan for your business, whether it's in writing, everyone knows what it means. It's easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand. Every person on your team knows their role. You will absolve these fears when you create a strategic plan, you actually create a plan or stated future versus an improvised future. But that one land, it's big as an entrepreneur, would you rather be pursuing some improvization or a stated future with certainty that includes the level of impact you are going to make when we create a strategic plan? We actually have the ability to sit down, plan forward and create the future.

We are going to have to create the future. We are going to be and create that future. That is of that we wake up in the morning and go out and see and then we want to come back and make real. And when you have a strategic plan, it creates a bridge from your vision to the activity that you and your team should be doing each day. Let me repeat that. When you have a strategic plan, it creates a bridge from that vision to the activity you and your team should be doing each day. So how leveraged will you be? How excited will you be? How motivated will you be? How how will your team be with all of those? When they know that everything they're doing on a day when you know everything you're doing in the day is going to get you to that future you and your team want. They created the strategic plan actually creates that bridge and it makes it absolute, it makes it so we believe and it makes it so we trust it. And then this is the maybe the biggest one. You know, there's a lot of talk about manifestation in the entrepreneurial world today that's been going on forever since that movie The Secret came out. And while I love a lot of the concepts in the movie The Secret, I don't love what happened after it because a lot of people started to think that manifestation meant sitting around and staring at the wall and trying to conjure up what you want. In my world, manifestation comes when we are clear, when we are committed, when we are certain, that is when the world will create the manifestation of what we want, that when we are clear and we're confident, we're committed and we're doing things in a way that is creating momentum and changing the lives of the people around us. When we're creating that impact and income, we will manifest the future we want. And then in manifesting the future we want, we manifest the present we want.

And as entrepreneurs, if you're not where you want to be right now, then you are lacking in the tactics of manifestation. The tactics of manifestation mean we are getting clear, we are getting committed, we understand where we're going next, and we are confident in our plan, that is how you manifest the future. And so when we look at these biggest fears of damaging personal relationships, letting clients down, damaging your reputation and failing or losing your business, when you create a strategic plan, you're not going to damage relationships because you will have clarity. Process protects relationships, process protects marriages, process protects your children, process protects your team. Process is the key to unlock your future as an entrepreneur and the process of creating a strategic plan, executing that plan, updating that plan and then doing it again with your team is a process that will create so much momentum for you. You will be blown away at how fast it works and then letting your clients down. When you have a strategic plan, you actually predictably build the infrastructure of your company one step at a time. See this clarity as to where you're going in the future, create massive clarity as to where you are in the present. And often we let clients down because we're not clear about the present. We're not clear about what's going on here. Why? Because we're improvising things and making them up one step at a time, one moment at a time, one day at a time. When we get clear on our future, we also create clarity in the present. In fact, creating a strategic plan for the future has the gift of absolute clarity in the present. And when you do that, you will not let your clients down. Damaging your reputation is a, like I said earlier, a valid fear, but if you have the fear of damaging your reputation and you create a strategic plan, here's what happens. The plan creates performance. The plan creates the outcome. The plan protects your clients. And you will not damage your reputation when you have a strategic plan. You know, recently in the online world, there have been a number of influencers who have severely damaged their reputation for one reason or another. And when I look at those influencers, I think a lot of why they're damaging their reputation as they are in overwhelm. A few of them have had serious issues in their personal lives and they just keep going out and trying to be an influencer. A few of them have had been caught with some incongruities and some issues, and they just keep going out and trying to be an influencer. And what I see and everything they're doing is reactivity in the moment, decision making, overwhelmed entrepreneur, just trying to make it right, just trying to make it better. And you know what they haven't done. They haven't sat down and said, hey, where am I really going? What is this all about? What is my plan and what do I really want? Because if they did in the present, they would be clear.

Remember what I said? If you create that strategic plan for the future, the gift of a future plan is absolute clarity in the present. When you have absolute clarity, you communicate in a way that is magnetic, not in a way that is controversial. You communicate in a way that draws people towards you, not in a way that draws conflict towards you. And you communicate in a way where people see you as the light that they can follow to move forward, not as the controversy that is causing people anxiety and frustration and pain. And then the last one, this is huge, failing or losing your business, this is probably the biggest. And like I said earlier, most unspoken fear of entrepreneurs. And when we have a when we have a strategic plan, here's what happens. A plan creates certainty. A plan actually creates a stated future. The plan resolves the overwhelm and it takes that energetic overwhelm and it turns it into confidence. So all of the energetic in your business, in your life, that you're feeling around the overwhelm of not having that clarity, that certainty, that commitment now shifts into massive confidence so that you can move forward as an entrepreneur. And here's what I know about you, me and every other entrepreneurial personality type I've ever been around, had the pleasure of spending time with or worked with or known. Is that when you and I have clarity and confidence and commitment about our future, we will take the accelerator pedal in our life, slam it to the ground, go as fast as we possibly can, achieve as much as we can make a massive impact in the world, change the lives of the people around us and make our dent in the universe. But when we don't have clarity, our foot comes off of that accelerator pedal. And you know what happens most of the time when we take the foot off the accelerator pedal? You already know this. We blame ourselves. We blame ourselves for procrastinating, we blame ourselves for not doing the right thing. We beat ourselves up.

We go listen to personal development stuff. We try and get motivated. But here's the reality. It doesn't matter what you do until you create the clarity, confidence and commitment that foot's not going to go down on the accelerator pedal. And the way to do it, the bridge, the transition, the gift is to learn how to create a strategic plan in your business, to analyze what's going on in your organization, prioritize what should come next, commit to those things open in execution period. You and your team go get them done, then come back and renew, which means review what happened and create another strategic plan so that you can do it again. And when you get into this planning cycle of analysis and prioritization and a commitment to actually and then a commitment and an execution period where you can renew, see what you and your team were capable of and come back and do it even better. That planning cycle, that execution cycle, that commitment cycle actually raises the vibration of the entire company because collectively you have perspective as to what you said you were going to do and what you're going to do and whether that perspective shows you the you said too much or you said too little. You said just right. You know what it does? It creates clarity. It creates commitment and it creates certainty. And in a business, people will buy your certainty. And if you want to have real certainty, not created certainty, not fake to certainty, not not presenting as certain when you're really not. Create that planning cycle, understand how to create a strategic plan, and within a few cycles, you will be certain that you have a plan where most things are going to get done, where there's going to be massive momentum created, where from the time you committed to that plan that you open an execution period to when you're renewing and seeing how things went, there is going to be massive changes and massive momentum. And when you have a strategic plan, you don't have to do it all yourself. Your team can get out in front of you and make it happen with you instead of you having to be the mechanism of action, the catalyst, the doer, the person who makes everything happen. This is life changing for entrepreneurs and as an organization, this is what we help entrepreneurs with and in just a few weeks we have a new emersion product coming out. A course on strategic planning is called predictable planning system. And the predictable planning system is going to show you how to do exactly what we just said, analyze all the options you have available, prioritize what you should include in your strategic plan and in what order those things should be achieved. Commit to that plan so that it is ironclad, so that you know you're going to do it, so that you don't mess with it, so that you focus on committing to executing the plan, not on what you're going to do. Every day we remove that decision making. We take the overwhelmed out of the room. We open an execution period where you and your team with perspective can see what you're doing and then you execute that plan, come back, renew it and make it even better for the next time. It is absolutely life changing. You will see yourself become a better entrepreneur. You'll see every member on your team improve in the positions that they're in. You will actually get a higher return on investment for every penny you're putting into salaries or expenses in your company. Once you have a strategic plan, everything starts to give you a higher return because you've eliminated the overwhelm the uncertainty, the lack of commitment that you feel. And now you're one hundred percent. And it is that simple. It's creating the plan, executing the plan and doing it again. And so if you're interested in understanding more about the predictable planning system product when it comes out, you can go to Charfen dot com forward, slash standby.

We have a waiting list there. It's Charfen dot com forward slash. Stand by. And I'd love to see you in the program when it comes out. It's just a few weeks away. Thanks for being here with me today. Look forward to seeing you next week.