I Am Scared Sh*tless - Dealing With Uncertainty As An Entrepreneur

The truth is, I'm scared shitless right now. That doesn't make me look good. That is not sugarcoating it. I am scared shitless about a couple of projects going on right now because they are forcing me to grow, and they are forcing me to think bigger. I had a morning recently where I woke up feeling nauseous and anxious because I have some projects that are really stretching and really challenging me right now. And they're not challenging me in the way of, like, the numbers are so big. They matter to me. They're important to me. I care about them. I want them to work out so much that I have worked myself into beating up on myself when I doubt myself. So that morning, I woke up and I threw up. So seven times. Seven times. I think that was a record for me. I don't think I've ever thrown up seven times before. I didn't have food poisoning. I wasn't sick with anything. I was just nervous. I was just scared. And I'm sharing all of this with you because we as entrepreneurs go through these cycles. Every entrepreneur goes through times where they doubt themselves because we are wired to grow. And when we grow, we can't not have the old thought patterns come up and. And try to prevent us from doing things that could, as the brain sees it, hurt us. But the game is. The entire game is working through those. I have some real bullshit thoughts coming up in my brain right now. There are things like, I'm not good enough, or I don't know enough, or I'm gonna let people down with these projects, or what happens if I fail? What are people gonna think of me if I fail? Truth is, they're not gonna think of me. No one's gonna care. But. But these thoughts feel so real to me in the moment, and if I give them too much power, then they will prevent me from moving forward. And the game is, as an entrepreneur, the entire game, not part of the game, all of the game is recognizing those thoughts and working through those thoughts, and it's recognizing that those thoughts are indeed bullshit, and that if we listen to them, they will prevent us from moving forward. And what I have realized in my own work and my own personal life is that I have to sort of honor and recognize those thoughts, but I can't take them too seriously. And when I do that, when I recognize that, all right, I have some bullshit thoughts going on, so much so that I feel nauseous and I threw up seven times. But that doesn't make them true. It's just another Data Point. It's just another option that I could or could not consider. The three projects that are in front of me right now. The first is I'm buying back my old company. The company that I sold in 2017, Sheer Strength Labs. I'm buying it back because the private equity group that bought it ran it into the ground and I wanna resurrect it like the Phoenix from the ashes. And I wanna build an eight figure company again. I love that thought. And I'm raising capital for it and casting a new vision and hiring a CEO for it and doing these things that are right up against the edge of my comfort zone. And number two, I just launched this NFT called the Capitalist Pigs. It's this community of rockstar entrepreneurs and investors. Like, the group is really fricking incredible. I'm already so proud of this group that I have built. But in my mind, I've already committed to three years of creating value for this community. Even though wasn't priced that high, I committed for three years to add value to this community. And I'm treating it in my mind like it's a $50,000 a year mastermind. I'm thinking about it like that and I've just put a lot of pressure on myself for it. You know, I'm not an NFT guy. So the doubts in my mind are coming up about that. And then the third thing that's on my plate is capitalism.com's growing and the expenses are growing and the level at which we're playing is growing and we're getting more customers and the content's starting to pop a little bit and it's exciting, but it's also a new level. And I'm thinking about management and empowering team members and stepping away from things. And all three of these are just pushing me right at the edge of my comfort zone to where it's exciting half the time. And half the time I want to get into the fetal position and cry. Which by the way, is not a popular thing to say in the entrepreneurial community. Like that's, that's not. That doesn't make me look good in the entrepreneurial world. You're supposed to have this Persona of you have it all figured out and you know exactly what you're doing and we don't. We are all guessing, we are all figuring it out. And this Persona of us knowing exactly what's going on, I think keeping up that Persona causes a lot of stress. And I don't have it all figured out. I don't Know what I'm doing half the time I just have conviction about what I'm creating and I'm moving forward and toward what I have conviction for. And I believe that I am capable of becoming the type of person who is able and worthy to have these successes. I don't feel like I'm that person right now. The idea of me buying back my old company and restoring it back to an eight figure business without my old partner, I don't feel like I'm capable of building a $25 million company in that space right now. But I am convicted enough about it that I want to become that person. This is the game and this is, I think, what determines people who are sitting on the sidelines for a long time thinking about it and those who are just in motion doing it. I'm in motion and I'm scared shitless. I'm in motion knowing that I am not today the person that I need to become in order to build a $100 million NFT project or a 25 to $50 million a year supplement company, or $25 million a year publishing company that is capitalism.com. i am not capable of being that person today. But I am willing and committed to becoming that person over a certain period of time. And along that way I am going to bump up against limits that are thought limits. They're not commitment limits, they're not conviction limits. They're not even talent or time limits. They are thought limits. They are limits in my brain of things that I doubt about myself, of things that I'm not sure are possible. And I am just willing to observe them and work through them, which is not fun. They make me throw up, they make me scared sometimes. They make me wake up and feel anxious. Sometimes they make me unable to sleep because I am allowing those negative thoughts to process so that I can work through them on the other side of them. And that means questioning them, wondering if they're actually true, finding evidence for the opposite, looking for the objective story that doesn't have all this emotion tied over in my brain. And, and all that's really hard work. It's really hard work to go through that. And yet it is what determines whether or not you move forward. Because we rarely surprise ourselves. We rarely doubt that something is gonna work out and then are surprised when it does, because we never get to that point. We instead doubt it. So we do nothing with it. And then we create exactly what we expected was that it's not going to work out. And so the work is creating the Grooves in the brain that allow you to move forward. And right now, my grooves look like taking messy action towards things that I have some doubts about. But I know that I will become the person capable of them now or in a year or three years or 10 years. But I'm going to keep going and I'm going to do the work to get on the other side of them. And I think most entrepreneurs see this gap between the heroes and the gurus in the space, and they say those people have it all figured out. I don't. And I need to figure it all out to close that gap. And that's just not how it works. It works by you being willing to bump up against those limits and those ceilings, work through them, new level unlocked, and doing that for a very long period of time. You know, as. As weird as it sounds, the difference between me and Jeff Bezos is the thoughts that we think is now weird to think about that. That's the difference between he and I or you and I. It's the thoughts that we think and practice. And you can say things. Well, there are natural interests that he has that I don't that lead him down that path yet. But if he has thoughts that prevent him from actually taking advantage of those, then he'll never become Jeff Bezos. And that's the game. The game is putting yourself in the position to where what you want is believable to you and that it is compelling enough for you to do the hard work. Moving through it. And where that puts me right now is scared shitless. And I'll be scared shitless for a little bit. I might be scared shitless for the next three months. I might be scared shitless for the next year, but I won't always be scared shitless. I won't always be thinking about failures. I won't always be thinking about what could go wrong. I'll have glimpses of my own power and confidence. I will have glimpses of my own capabilities. I will have glimpses of opportunities that come through. And I'll say, there I am. That's the real me. That's me. When I know this is possible. And those will become more. And they'll become more common and they'll last for longer until that is my normal. And the things that seem impossible to me right now are not only possible, but they are here and real. And at that point, I will set a new set of goals that scare me shitless. I think we put too much energy into. Into the goals themselves. And then we compare ourselves to where we are now to the goal that we have and we feel bad about it. And then I have this negative thought loop about, I'm not good enough, I'm not capable enough. But in reality, it means nothing about the goals it is about. That goal is an anchor point for me to become something more. It's for me to develop myself into being a type of person.

Along the way, I'm gonna deal with a whole lot of bullshit thoughts that I need to overcome and change because I work with so many entrepreneurs that have followed my content for years and are still sitting on the sidelines because they're taking their thoughts so seriously. I was telling a friend recently that something broke in my house, that H Vac broke in my house. And I never for a second took that as a personal failure. I wasn't like, oh, the H Vac broke. I'm a miserable person who loses money in my house. No, I was like, oh, it's a problem. We fix the problem. Hire the right person, they fix the problem, we move on. But in my business.

Every time there's something broken, I see it as a personal failure. Wow, that was a big insight. And I think that's very common in the entrepreneurial space. You have a setback in your business and you doubt yourself, and it becomes a reaction, enforcing a loop that you're going to fail and you're always going to be stuck. Those are bullshit thoughts. So I hope this video gives you permission to have bullshit thoughts and recognize that they're bullshit and know that the game of entrepreneurship is becoming the person capable of having everything that you want and you can. It just requires that you deal with this and be okay. Saying, I'm scared shitless right now, because I am. I just told all of you people, thanks for watching. See you next time.

And now a quick word from Jared, one of our members in the 1%.

I was bankrupt and crippled to making a million dollars in a year. And then I grew that business and kept growing it, so, like, my whole world changed financially very quickly. It was amazing how fast it was able to transition and, like, turn once things got rolling. Ryan in capitalism.com pretty much taught me everything I knew about E commerce and specifically branding was the biggest thing that I think capitalism really does well. And they focus on teaching their students about building a brand and just teaching business to people. Like, everything he teaches is stuff that he's done. You know, it's not like from theory that you're going to learn. So it's like all stuff that he's done. So I think the biggest thing that capitalism.com helps you with is that you're getting to learn from somebody who's done the exact thing that you want to do which is the most important thing in the world. Like that's how you fast track your results. So if you want like the fast lane and to get your results really quickly, you go to capitalism.com and you have them show you what to do so you don't make all the mistakes and you get there really quickly. And it was the best money I ever spent because I went from bankrupt and crippled and all this other stuff to a million dollar a year business in one year, which is exactly what he teaches. And I was like holy crap, this stuff works. So I was a, it was a very healthy exit and was able to let me focus on many other things in my life and not have to worry about that stuff anymore.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go Deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. One, you can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits you can get plugged in@capitalism.com 1. And third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell you, you can work closely with us inside the capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do. Over at capitalism.com inc. That's capitalism.com incident.