MBA2212 How To Use Frustration To Overcome Fear + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 10 min
Podcast episode (Dec 30, 2022) of the $100 MBA Show hosted by Omar Zenhom. The episode's main lesson: use frustration as motivation to overcome fear and make necessary changes. Key tactics: wait 48 hours to confirm persistent frustration, then make a decisive irreversible action (examples: resigning to pursue entrepreneurship, announcing price increases) and immediately act on the new direction while informing stakeholders. Omar illustrates with his experience as acting chair at a university who resigned after prolonged frustration. Episode also includes sponsor ad reads (USAA, Dell, ADP) and the show's Free Ride Friday giveaway (winner named 'Candice' who wins a lifetime EasyCourse membership).
Chapters
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Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey, welcome to the $100 MBA Show Business Lessons you can on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the Real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Riot Friday. On Freeride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. It retails for $500 over at EasyCourse Co, or you can win it for free. Just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like right now to see if you won. It's that easy. In today's lesson, you will learn how to use frustration to overcome fear. One of my favorite quotes from Jim Rohn is the day that turns your life around is the day that you say, I've had it. When you get to that level of frustration, it might be painful, it might feel like it's horrible. But it's actually a blessing in disguise because you can use that frustration to overcome your fear of taking a leap to the next step in your life, the next stage in your life, the next stage in your business. Maybe a new business, a new product, a new direction to move in. If you get to a level of frustration where you just can't take it anymore, this is a great tool, a tool of motivation to get you out of this situation and into a better place. And in today's lesson, I'm going to explain how to do it. I'm going to share my own stories of how I've done it over and over in my life in the last 20 years and how you can too. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
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I decided to record this episode today because usually by the time we get to the end of the year, like today, the last day of the year, we're pretty burnt out, we're pretty frustrated, and some of us are at the brink of just wanting to quit. Even when I decided to take that leap into full time entrepreneurship, it was because my frustration outgrew my fear and it motivated me to to take that leap. A big scary leap. Because I was great in my job. I was a teacher at a university. I was highly respected. I was ahead of department as well. I was getting paid really well and I was very good at what I do. So for all intents and purposes, it didn't make any sense for me to leave my job to quit my career, for crying out loud. But at the time, I was actually fulfilling somebody else's role. For over 18 months. I was fulfilling the role of acting chair of the department. The chair of this university and the department I was a part of left and worked at a different campus. And I was doing this person's job. I wasn't getting paid for it or getting the recognition or the title, but I was in this role and I was crushing it. I was doing amazing. But it really was bothering me that they were just kind of stringing me on 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, doing the job and not officially giving me the promotion. So I decided to go and have a chat with my supervisor, which was the dean of the. I sat down with her and I said, hey, I've been doing this job for 18 months. Wouldn't you agree I'm doing a great job? And she was like, yeah, you're doing an amazing job. I was like, okay, awesome. Why haven't I gotten the job? Why haven't I gotten officially and got a pay rise and a permanent position in this role? And she just looked at me square in the face and said, basically, I can't lie to you. I know that the director of the university wants to make an outside hire to fill this position. And in that moment, I was so frustrated. I was angry too, because I felt like I had no power, like I could do the best job ever. I can bust my gut. I can work as hard as possible in this position and achieve so many levels of success. And it doesn't matter. Somebody else is going to decide if I get the job or not, regardless of my contributions or how hard I'm working. And at that level, I decided to use this frustration to overcome my fear of taking the leap into becoming a full time entrepreneur. By that time, I was building businesses on the side side hustling for 10 years. And I started to build confidence as an entrepreneur. But I still wasn't sure if I should leave my job. And this made it clear to me, this level of frustration allowed me to say, anything's better than this. I'm going to bet on myself that if I work just as hard or even a little bit more than what I'm doing at my job, I'm going to just fine as an entrepreneur and at least I'll be in control. Now, there's a couple of things you gotta keep in mind to use this frustration. I had a rule. 48 hours. I gotta give myself 48 hours. And if I still feel the same way, I have to make a decision. In fact, I have to make a decision regardless of how I feel. Yes or no, meaning I want some time to pass by, I want to sleep on it, I want to see if I still feel the Same way after 48 hours. If so, this means it's time for a change. This is just not worth living like this. And I decided I'm going to take that leap and become a full time entrepreneur. I put in my letter of resignation and the decision was done. Now if after 48 hours I felt better and I was like, that's an irrational decision or it's not that bad, or maybe I have a different idea, that means it's not painful enough, that means the frustration wasn't painful enough, or I don't have enough compelling reasons to do it. And this is important why? Because it's gonna be tough. Whatever you dec. So for me, it was going into full time entrepreneurship. And that road ahead is going to be challenging. A lot more challenging than I've ever had in the past. Right? So I need a strong enough. Why I need to be able to feel compelled. I had to do it. I have to make this work because I don't want to go back to that frustrated state. So if you're in your business right now and you're frustrated with something, maybe it's the customers you're serving, maybe it's the business model, maybe it's the amount of money that you're making. Let that frustration fuel you. Give yourself 48 hours. And if you still Feel frustrated. You're still upset about it, you're still annoyed by the situation. Make a decision to change. Make a decision to raise your prices. Make a decision to change your target audience. If you don't like your customers. Make a decision to change how you charge or the business model itself. Maybe you want to move to reoccurring revenue. The point here is that you have to make a decision and you need to act on that decision immediately. What does this mean? Let's say, for example, you're going to change prices. You have to do something that you can't kind of take back so you can get the ball rolling and that you can continue to move in that direction. You basically have to make a pivot. Listen, when you're doing something for a very long time, it's like a boulder rolling down the hill. There's so much momentum going in one direction and if you want it to go in a different direction, you got to use a lot of force to push it in that direction as it has that momentum to change direction. So in my example of leaving my job as a teacher, I took a really strong action by putting in my resignation. Now that my resignation is in, I now have to start planning. I had six months because I had to give six months notice. As an educator, you can't just leave in the middle of the year. And I had to start planning and start working on my exit strategy and start working on my full time business. That's going to have to be a reality in six months. Now my direction is completely being moved and my tension and my time is being used in a different way. So if you want to change your prices, do something big where you have to move in a different direction, like sending an email to your customers and saying, we are raising prices on this date. More details to come. You can send in the details, but let them know you're raising prices. Now that it's out there, you have to work on those new prices. You have to change how you're charging. You've committed and now you're moving in a different direction. I know this sounds a little scary. I know you might be thinking, wow, this is going to be really hard. Of course it's going to be hard because you're making a change and change is hard. But in my experience, it's these changes that you don't regret. It's the changes that you're so thankful you made because it changed the direction of your business, of your life, of your well being. And the only thing you're going to regret is that you didn't do it sooner. So again, let's talk about the steps. You're feeling frustrated about a situation. Let 48 hours pass. You still feel just as frustrated. You feel that something's got to give. All right, make a decision. What's the change you're going to make? And then put an action against that decision so that you're moving in the right direction. And then start moving in that direction. Start doing the actions to fulfill that new direction.
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To wrap up today's lesson. What I'm sharing today is the reality of growing as an entrepreneur. You're not going to find this in an online course or even some books. This is just the experience that I've gone through. And I know that you will, because this is a rite of passage. And you'll continue to go through these stages and these levels of frustration where you need to make a shift in your business and life. And it's going to be uncomfortable. But that's what growth is, uncomfortable. I remember when I was between 11th grade and 12th grade in high school, I grew 6 inches over the summer. I went from 57 to 61 in just a few months. And it was really painful. My limbs hurt, my feet hurt. It's because I was growing very quickly at a short period of time. And the same is going to happen to you emotionally, mentally, when you go through a change and the people around you are not going to like it. Maybe your team members, maybe your co founder, maybe even your own family members, because you're going to have to start doing different things to achieve different results. So this is why it's important to communicate any changes to those who are close to you, whether it's your team members or family members. The point here is that you're going to change things around a little bit. So it calls for a meeting. Hey, I'm going to be changing things majorly in this way. These are the things that I'm going to be doing differently. These are my hours. This is what I'm being focused on. I might not have as much free time as before because I'm working on something new. I need your support. You need the people around you, whether it's your team members or your family members, to support you in this change. Because you need all the help you can afford that you can get. Because it's going to be challenging as it is. You don't need external challenges. You need everybody around you to be helping you get through it. And you will get through it. And you're going to look back and say, I can't believe I was worried about making this change. And if you need more motivation and this is going to sound really strange and maybe a bit dark, but go to a cemetery. I know this sounds crazy, but by going to a cemetery, you're going to realize you're not going to be here forever. The clock on your life doesn't just keep going on forever, right? The clock's going to run out. So life is too short to live in a frustrated state, to be unhappy, to live with what ifs. They say people regret more the choices they didn't make versus the ones they did make. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. Hope that was helpful. If it was, let me know. Leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and we would love to hear what you think. If you're on Spotify, just hit the follow button so that you can be able to give us a star review. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride and the winner is. Candace Mn Candice says I love the insights into reality. Five stars. The episode on Funnels versus website ended the chatter and I made a valuable decision for my new company. Invaluable info, Candice. Thank you Candice for that amazing review. Your mission is to email me over at omar100mba.net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to easy course, our $500 course that you just won for free that teaches you how to build your own online course in 30 days. If you want to win a free ride just like Candice did, just go ahead and leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see if you want. It's that easy. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This is our last episode of 2022. Monday is our first episode of 2023. Tomorrow is going to be New Year's Eve. You're going to be spending time with friends and family and enjoying it. And I'm here to say enjoy it. This is what you're working hard for, these moments. This is what life is all about. Enjoying the fruits of your labor. Another year has gone by, and another year is going to fly by again next year. So as the year rolls on, remember, take the time to look back and enjoy your accomplishments. This is what you're working hard for to spend the rewards, the fruits of your labor, with your loved ones. Thanks so much. I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
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