This is a live-transcript of a YouTube presentation (introduced by Joe Polish) in which Alex Charfen describes an 'entrepreneurial personality type' (EPT). Charfen argues entrepreneurs often recognize their difference early in life (common awakening moments), characterized by three awakenings (intrinsic/extrinsic motivation toggle, a drive for impact/contribution, and a momentum-based force) and shared traits such as future-focus/visionary thinking, perceiving unique connections, high processing speed, experiential learning preference, and sensitivity to social cues. He frames EPT as a distinct, under-recognized meta-personality that science and conventional institutions have missed, and emphasizes practical implications (need for protection, support, and recognition of momentum). The tone is informal, rhetorical, and contrarian with humor and audience prompts.
Chapters
Sit still, stop talking. Can't you just stay focused? Were you ever told that as a kid or now as an adult? Anyone? Yep. Other than probably most of you in the room, some of you were. And your next speaker, our next speaker, Alex Charfen, certainly was. Instead of seeing those behaviors as negatives, you can embrace them as part of the entrepreneurial personality type that Alex calls ept. Alex has helped thousands of entrepreneurs grow their business by using his momentum based strategies. Get set. For a man with enormous energy and a contrarian perspective, speaking about the entrepreneurial personality type, please welcome my friend, Alex Charfen.
Thanks, brother. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Appreciate it, man. You guys didn't take that hug out of the time, did you? So I need everybody to come back to the room because I need your help to demonstrate a discovery we've made. And I know right now you're all trying to convince yourselves either A, you don't have brain damage, B, you need to go to the Amen clinic, or C, you're really scared to see what he would show you if you went to the Amen clinic. And you don't want to become a demo in a room, right? So come back. I've got a question for you. So, Garrett, how old were you when you knew you were different? Five. Five years old. David, how old were you? Six. Six entrepreneurial parents. Yeah, a lot of support. How old were you when you knew you were different? Eight. Eight. How many of the room knows that year when you knew you were different than the people around you, you had that cognitive awareness, you were different. How many? Hands up high. How many of you have this? So it's this innate motivation. See, psychology tells us that there is intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Have you heard this inside you, outside of you? How many of you hit that time period in your lives where it turned on and you couldn't turn it off anymore? Right? Remember that time and the switch flipped? It wasn't inside you or outside of you. You can't turn it off. How many of you know exactly when you were that time? How many of you have it right now? How many are pushed right now on a daily basis? The last one is the call of contribution. And you've all heard this. It starts quietly in the back of your mind and it says, hey, there's something more for you to give. There's something more here. You should do more. You can give more, change more, help people, make a contribution, do something bigger. How many of you are hearing that? How many of you, on a scale of 1 to 10. That call right now is a 10 or more. Isn't it funny that you're all members of the 1% that take too much, don't want to give back, right? This is what entrepreneurs are really all about. We call these the three awakenings of the entrepreneur. Now we know entrepreneurs also have similar traits. You tell me how many of you are future focused, you're visionaries, you see the future. It's so clear how many? Because you also, this is the thing that got called you a daydreamer, you know? And they told you, apply yourself. Remember that? I have no fucking idea what that means. Apply yourself like shit. That I want to do is easy. I can't apply myself to anything else. Who's with me, right? There's other traits. Like we perceive unique connections. Everyone in the room is seeing things one way, one solution. Can't get out of their own way. You see it differently and they adopt your strategy. How many of you are there, right? That unique connection gets pushed a little too hard and we start seeing weird stuff. Everybody in our life becomes suspicious. How many of you have had that time? You don't have to raise your hands. I read body language. It's all of us, right? The next one. What about high processing speed? Like you have this capacity to absorb information and people around you tell you, you heard this when you were younger, your brain works faster than your mouth. How many of you heard stuff like that, right? You have the solution before anybody knows there was a problem, right? That's an advantage that gets us anywhere we want in life, but it also gets us called adhd, add, all kinds of other crap. We know that this works for us. How many of you have gained advantage that drives you from a young age? You knew you had to get ahead, right? Got a secret from you. When you're screwed, you know you have to get ahead. And we were all screwed. Because when you have gained advantage, you're the kid who wants to push ahead. You're the one they're telling, sit down, slow down, stop. Yeah, you have a physiological response to that, don't you? Because we're momentum based means. See, we also have this experimental experiential need to see something to believe it. How many of you are skeptical of anything you haven't actually seen, right? Aristotle knew this. He said we learn when we do. We forgot about this. We are experiential, we're experimental. But the same thing happens to us that gets pushed too far. We trust nothing, we see nothing. And guys, not everyone is like us. I know because there were kids in school who could memorize like crazy, and I couldn't. We're different. And what if we really were different? It wasn't just entrepreneur, but there was an entrepreneurial personality type, a meta personality type, different from everyone else. And science has missed it. Maslow missed it. Everyone missed it. Freud didn't even miss it. He was doing way too much blow. But we're different. And you know, you're different. The entrepreneurial personality type is not like everyone else. It's this type. Do you think science could have not, you know, you have any doubt this could exist and science didn't miss it? Understand that until about five years ago, every drug trial at the FDA excluded women when it didn't work, included them when it did. And if you guys did really crazy shit like menstruated, they just threw you out. So every prescription you've ever gotten was wrong. We just figured that out. We've missed this for far longer because this type that has these attributes is a fragile type. See? And we don't understand the rest of the world. You know this. They break us because they say shit to us like this. Sit down. Hey, calm down. You're a little overreacting. You want to punch me right now, don't you?
Right?
Right? How many of you have heard stuff like this? And their systems suck because you reach out for help, you go to a therapist, you sit down on the couch, and what do they say? How? How are you feeling? Like I want to fucking kill you. It doesn't work. And schools. Schools hold us in place today. The systems and processes in schools give us no relief from constraint. We're held in place. And watch this. How many of you have ever volunteered to be on a committee where you could work with other people to gain consensus in a big bureaucracy? One. That's why our kids are fucked. Because there's none of us in the committees that are running schools. And they're only going one direction, to more constrained. See, the fact is we don't understand happy, sad. In fact. How many of you have been told you feel the wrong way? You don't feel enough. You feel too much. You're too intense. You're not intense enough. Ladies, how many of you have been called a bitch just because you were trying to get something done right? How many times have your frustration or confusion been confused for anger? How many times have you even been parked in front of that fucking poster with all the faces on it that say, how are you feeling today? So that you can stare at it thinking, I have no idea. And that's not helping, because we don't feel like the rest of the world. See, we're different. The foundational principle of our personality type is momentum. How many feel that? How many of you really have a physiological response to momentum? See, here's what momentum is. We have three states. We're in momentum. That is flow. That is Zen. That is where we want to be. What does it feel like? What does it feel like when you're in momentum? Great. Fuck that. It's so much better than that. What is it? It's a drug high, right? How many of you know that when you're in momentum, in that flow, you are physically stronger? You are chemically charged, you have a chemical high, right? And you are cognitively smarter. How many? Now, here's what's weird about our personality type, guys. When the world shows up and the cards are down, it pushes against us. Here's what we do. We show up how many of you when the stack, the cards have been stacked against you. That's when you show up. Now, here's the only thing we can't deal with being held in place. It drives us crazy. In fact, the same way that momentum gives us a cognitive boost, being held in place challenges us chemically, cognitively and physically. We show the signs of depression. We show the signs of bipolar ADD and all kinds of other fucking labels they use to talk about people like us under constraint. Because when the constraint disappears, what happens? So do all of the symptoms. And you know this. So how do we move forward? See, success leaves clues. We all have pressure and noise. We all have things in our lives that are weighing us down as operational drag. We all need protection and support. The challenge is the day you declare you're an entrepreneur is the day you are a product and a liability. And we stop asking for protection and support. We stop telling people transparently what we need. And when we do, here's what happens. We lower pressure and noise by increasing protection and support. And our skills and abilities will show. And here's why. See, we call this the contribution equation. We think for people like us, it's the meaning of life. Because if you lower pressure and noise daily, you make it your prerogative to get healthy, hydrate, eat the right foods. You can't have a cheeseburger on the way into the gym. That's bullshit. Not for you, but for all of us. You have a moral imperative, because we're all in this together. We are the entrepreneurial personality type. The rest of the world is our market. So pull together, because when you do this, you lower pressure and noise by transparently asking for protection and support. Your skills and abilities will show you've seen them here today. You get them when you need them. And throughout history, we have heard this from every theology, from every entrepreneur. They call back from the end of their grave, go faster, the end of their career saying, do more. Be around the right people and move forward, because you will go make your greatest contribution. I want you to know one thing. There is nothing wrong with you. And you could tell by the raise of hands you are not alone. Thank you. Thank you. It.
