Momentum for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type (EPT)

As the CEO of a business, when you go around your team members, you create fear and uncertainty in your team. I've seen this pattern in hundreds of businesses, and it took me years to create systems to break those patterns myself. What you have to see is that you have no idea of the position and stature you have in the lives of the people who work with you, especially if you are hands-off in opera...

When you stop taking money from the wrong people, your entire business will change. Early on when you try to sell to everyone, you will be challenged. You will endure pain and suffering by taking money from the wrong people. While it may work for you in the beginning, eventually you will realize you are not getting consistent results. When the product doesn't fit the avatar, the product doesn't ha...

As you grow your business, there are going to be times when it feels like you've hit a wall.  This is especially true if you're a fast growth business. It's so normal to hit a wall and it's something that happens to every entrepreneur out there. The key is learning how to deal with your challenges in the right way and not let the struggles you feel push you into making bad decisions. When people a...

I feel like one of the most important things I can do for you, is quite simply, share my mistakes. There is no such thing as the perfect career, nobody wins all the time.  As an entrepreneur, if you are successful, you are going to make mistakes so give yourself some grace and let yourself off the hook. So many of my challenges over my career have come from dealing with people. I used to hire for...

I call it the entrepreneurs dilemma -- We know that we need more help than the average person to reach our full potential but, any request for help makes us feel vulnerable and exposed.  Ask for help and building a team is hard. Then you have to take it to the next level where you are actually helping your team to grow themselves.  You have to help your A-players develop so that you don't end up o...

A question that I get often is, "Alex, how can I work one on one with you?" Today, the option to work one on one with me other than at some points through our coaching program is very rare. The reason I can't do one on one is because I've scaled a team around the result that I get for entrepreneurs. The reason that I can consistently get the results for my clients is because of my team and the pro...

Success creates deficits and growth creates complexity. As your business grows and scales things are inevitably going to become more complicated.  Don't make the growth period harder than it needs to be. This week I've been at the StoryBrand Conference and the biggest thing I'm taking away is the idea of simplicity.  Simplicity in messaging, execution and delivery.  How simple can you make your bu...

This week Cadey and I are attending the Donald Miller Storybrand conference. We're only one day into the conference and we have already gained so much.   You'll often hear me talk about lowering the complexity within your business.  This is something that has been reinforced for me this week. Simplicity is the key.  There's an epidemic today of entrepreneurs who are doing too much. When you spread...

"Fake it until you make it" You've probably heard this phrase, it's said all the time.   It's one of the most toxic phrases thrown around in the entrepreneurial world today. When you fake it, you are putting up a wall between yourself and the people around you who can actually help you. When you fake it, you repel the people around you and drive them away. When you're real and grounded, people see...

You want to protect yourself from salespeople who try to close every single deal.  You don't want a salesperson who tries to sell ice to Eskimos. I know this sounds counterintuitive but stick with me. As an entrepreneur, you want to sell to the right people 100% of the time.  Not everyone is the right avatar for you.  When you sell only to the right people, you get consistent results. When you bui...

Protect your focus like your life depends on it because it does.  I avoid fishing expeditions like the plague and you should too. They are an absolute waste of your time. Stop allowing people to fish and have you be something that they catch.  Here's what you should do. Create a strategic plan, know where you're going, commit to it and understand what it is you need.  You should put up barriers to...

What's the real price of success and how can you afford it?  Most people will not tell you that you need a lot more money than you think to build a successful business. It's just a fact of growing -- you're going to need cash. The more money you make, the more challenges you have and those challenges require money.   The information that I want to give you before you have to rudely learn it for yo...

We are all part of the social media experiment.  We live in this world that is so overexposed, social media has created an entirely new dynamic to the way that we interact and communicate with each other.  Entrepreneurs now feel multiple types of pressure. There's the pressure to succeed but there's also the pressure to appear successful on social media. We now feel that we need to be putting out...

You need to get over building processes. Here's what I mean, too many entrepreneurs see processes as rules and red tape.  We don't want someone to tell us how to do things over and over again the same way.  The challenge is, if your team doesn't have processes then you are going to get stuck permanently in transactional management. That is brutal, it feels like you have more people on the team but...

The more you can simplify your business, the faster you can scale your business. When you first start out everything looks like an opportunity. You take on too many different options and before you know it you're running an overly complicated business with far too many deliverables. What you have to realize is that to grow a long term successful business you have to learn how to say yes to the opp...

At the end of each week do you wonder where the time went and what you actually achieved? In our company at the end of the week, it feels like it's been a month because my entire team just gets so much done each and every week. It feels like we're in a time warp. When you don't drive pace through process, any momentum you get will be temporary. Having a strategic plan that your whole team sees and...

Reaction time has been a focus of mine for most of my life. If you're ever feeling triggered or upset or if something has provoked you, you should slow down your reaction time.  When we're triggered we want to move through it as quickly as possible but when you're an entrepreneur and you're dealing with other people, you need to take a deep breath and actually slow down. By responding to issues wh...

My team and I have just completed our quarterly planning. Planning is not easy for me and it's not easy for most entrepreneurs.  There's a reason that it makes us uncomfortable. When you are in the act of planning, you are making the admission that you do not yet have a clear outcome.  This is why so many of us avoid planning. It makes us feel frustrated and out of control.  If you can get used to...

A lot of the business advice that I give is unconventional.  I give advice that's different, people think I'm different, and that's okay.  Like other business coaches, I want you to achieve ultimate success but, I do not believe in any way that you should sacrifice yourself along the way. I want you to build your empire and live a life free from pressure and noise. There's this perception that if...

Don't we all wish we had the upper hand?  I know that I always want to hold the advantage in my market and in my everyday life. There is a simple way that you can start building your daily advantage.  It's a simple concept that you might have heard about before, but maybe not explained in this way.  I want to talk to you about morning routines.   If you have a morning routine that supports you and...

What's your overwhelm equation? Overwhelm comes from increased pressure and noise and unknown outcomes. The fastest way to get yourself out of overwhelm is to actually admit you're there.  Write down everything that's going on, look at it visually and ask yourself what is the logical next step.  Work out the first priority and create a partially known outcome. This is incredible and it works every...

One of the hardest things for people like you and I to do, is to reach out and ask for help. When you do finally ask, I want you to ask the right person, for the right kind of help. Accountants are terrible business advisers, they should not be a go-to for advice.  Now, you may think your accountant is the exception to the rule, they may be the one in a million, but I don't believe it. We're curre...

I'm excited today.  I'm excited personally, professionally, and I'm excited for you. I'm joined by a very special guest, Marley Baird - CEO of Marley Baird Media. Marley was the first member ever to join our Billionaire Code Accelerator program nearly a year ago and she is one of the most talented entrepreneurs that I have ever met. Marley recently said she now feels like she has a real company. A...

When your team is fighting for your time, it's a symptom that there's a lot more going on. I remember how challenging it was when I was running businesses in my early twenties, to prioritize and have enough time for everyone on the team.  Back then I didn't have the systems, processes, and clarity to be able to feel like I was in control. The question of having enough time comes up often in my ent...

When you get a complaint or negative feedback what do you do? Do you just delete the message and move on? Maybe you block the person if it's online?  I take a totally different approach to complaints. Back in 2009, I had a complaint made about me online. The person who made that complaint is now a great friend of mine and I'm grateful to him for making that complaint years ago in a way that was cl...