The 5 Silent Killers Of Success (How To Avoid Them & What To Do Instead)

As a small business owner, you wear many hats. You're the owner, you're the marketer, you're the seller, you're the hire. I remember in the early days I was doing pretty much everything. I was writing, I was bookkeeping, I was selling, I was marketing. I was doing a lot, but lucky for you, you have LinkedIn. They have the tools to help you boost your visibility, find prospective customers, and find the best team for your small business all in one place. So while LinkedIn can hang up all of your hats, it makes it easier to wear them all. Learn more at linkedin.com/mbashow. You know that feeling when there's a spark building inside of you that you were meant for more? That's your own drive pushing you towards what's next. Capella University gets that. With their FlexPath learning format, you can set the pace and earn your degree without putting your life on pause. You've built experience and you know what you're capable of. Now this is your time to turn that momentum into more. The only real question is, what can't you do? Learn more at capella.edu. Here's something that most people don't want to hear. Most people fail in life and in business because they let it happen. They don't get wiped out by a competitor. They don't get crushed by bad luck or a bad economy. They fail because of 5 things. Every single one is internal. The worst part is that these 5 things, these 5 patterns are so ordinary. They're so disguised. They're so easy to justify within yourself. That most people carry them for decades without even knowing. I've watched them quietly end careers, stall businesses until they go out of business. I've seen these 5 things crush people's personal lives where they normally could have thrived. And I know them all very intimately because I have experienced all 5 of them myself. I call them the 5 silent killers to success. And in this episode, I'm going to name them. I'm going to show you exactly how they work in your life and in your business and give you the antidote for each one. Let's get into it. Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhom, where I deliver practical business lessons 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. I got a quick favor to ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff, practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey. I wanna start by just explaining why I use the word silent killers, because these killers don't just announce themselves. They don't look like problems. In fact, they actually look like a good idea. They actually look like caution. They look like thoughtfulness. They look like being patient. They look like humility. They disguise themselves as virtues, and that's what makes them so dangerous because you can't fight something that you can't see. Wasn't it Muhammad Ali that said, you can't hit what you can't see? Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. He was right. So the first step is seeing these killers clearly, like day, so you could understand and recognize them. Now I'm gonna tell you right now, some of these are gonna make you feel uncomfortable because you've experienced them and you kind of ignored them, but we're not gonna ignore them anymore. Let's get into it. The first silent killer is indecision. Oh, this one is number 1 for a reason, because it's what kills most dreams and most businesses and most goals and aspirations in life. And it looks like this. You tell yourself things like, I just need a little bit more information. I want to be thorough. I want to make sure I'm getting this right. All those things sound really reasonable, right? Sounds logical until you realize you've been saying them for 6 months. Indecision is not caution. Caution is thoughtful and time-bound. Indecision is endless. It's you delaying making a decision, making a commitment. And in business, indecision has a cost that most people never calculate. They don't think that making no decision is bad. Every day you don't make a decision, you're making a decision, right? You're making one. You're making the decision to stay still. You're deciding that discomfort or uncertainty in this decision is preferable to the discomfort of commitment. That is the truth. Some might even say this is like indifference, like you're not sure either way. And that's why it's so important to have a vision. Somebody who's a big believer in this is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He talks about this all the time in all his speeches and all his books that you gotta have a clear vision for what you want out of your business, out of your life, out of the next year. What does the end of this year look like in your head? The reason why this is so important, because if you have a clear vision, then you can't be indecisive. You have a clear understanding that, hey, this is my destination. Does this decision help me get to that destination? Yes. Easy decision. No, I don't do it. In business, indecision is even a worse crime because what you realize as you start building your entrepreneurial muscles and start building businesses and start selling products and services is that You need to start making quicker decisions. And at the end of the day, you can't spend hours and days and months wondering if you should pivot at your pricing. You just need to just try it. And everything needs to be seen as an experiment. You need to experiment with everything in your business to see what's the best optimal way to run that part of the business, whether it's pricing or finance or marketing or sales or customer service or whatever it might be. And by getting in the habit of doing these experiments in the different areas of your business, you start not worrying so much about whether this is the right decision or the wrong decision. And it stops you from indecision because you're just seeing it from a lens of, we're just doing a little experiment. We're going to see what happens. So what is the antidote to indecision? How do you fight this silent killer? Well, it's very easy. I talked a little bit about when I said experiment, but the bottom line is you need to set a deadline. A decision deadline for any significant decision you've been sitting on. Give yourself a date which you have to decide, not research, not discuss, decide and move forward. Take steps towards that decision. The deadline forces your brain to stop looking for information, stop collecting information, start synthesizing the information and start taking steps towards what you're going to do. And I'm telling you right now, most entrepreneurs that I've seen, they don't delay decisions because of lack of information. They delay them because of lack of commitment. They have a fear of commitment. And this is why you have to have an experiment mentality. I'm going to make some experiments and see what happens. It's not going to be the end of the world. And remember, not deciding is a decision, and it's probably one of the worst decisions because you don't get anything out of not deciding. At least if I make a decision, even if it's the wrong decision, I learn that didn't work. I learn that is not what I should do, right? I have some information now. They say failure is feedback. So make sure that every time you need to make a decision, you set a deadline for yourself. So there is no room for indecision. And by the way, the world's not going to wait for you. Okay? You can't just wait forever till you feel like making a decision. You got to start making decisions so that you can start living the life you want. Silent killer number 2: worrying. Okay. By the way, if you come from an immigrant family, uh, this is probably something that you are very familiar with because worrying is like a hallmark. It's almost like a badge that we wear for, uh, you know, as a badge of honor. But I see worrying as something that is very, very subtle, but it actually has a lot of negative effect on your progress and success. What does this look like? Well, worrying looks like this. You have an idea, a really good idea that you want to pursue, whether it's a new business idea, a new product. Maybe you have an idea in your personal life, like to get healthy, something that really excites you. And then the worry starts. What if nobody wants to buy this thing? What if I put all this time in it and it doesn't work? What if I look stupid? What if I fail publicly? What are my parents going to say? What are my family members going to say? Oh my gosh, I can't put that on Instagram. People are gonna make fun of me. And so instead of testing the idea, you just worry about it. Worrying is a fascinating phenomenon. You either can do something about it, take action and figure it out, or you can't. Worrying really has no place. Worrying doesn't solve any problems. It's the biggest time waster. It's an energy sucking device. And worry does this thing where it takes away your time and your mental energy, and it takes the space of where action should be. Here is what I want you to understand. This is really important. Worry is not preparation. It feels like you're being, you know, getting ready and being prepared. It feels like you're doing something responsible, but you're not. You're just experiencing the stress of not knowing for a fact what's going to happen next. I'm going to tell you, in my own life, I used to have a huge worrying problem. I used to worry about everything that you could possibly think about. It was really a problem in my life. And then I started to realize that most of the things I worried about, probably about 98% of the things I worried about, never happened. I spent so much time and energy and anguish on things that never happened. And once I started to see that data in my own life, I started to realize, uh, this is probably the biggest waste of energy, time, money everything that I've ever experienced. And the funny thing is, is that when I actually worried about something that actually happened in those 2% of the time, like, you know, I launch a new product and it fails, right? I've had flops before. And when it fails, it's never even close to as bad as I thought it was going to be. It's actually not too bad at all. Every single time, every single time something I thought was going to happen actually happened that I was worried about. It's not that bad. I survived it. Not only survived it, I learned from it and I became a new version of myself because of that experience. So what do you do? How do you fight the silent killer? Well, replace worry with what I call a Minimal Viable Test. Whatever you're worried about, ask yourself, what is the smallest version I could try this week? Not a full launch, not a finished product, not running a 46K marathon or whatever, how long a marathon is. Just going for a jog around the block, right? Just do a little test. How would that feel? What does that experience look like? What results did I achieve? Run that test, get some data. And what happens is when you start giving yourself a chance to see truth, real information, real data that you're gathering, you start to silence the worry. The worry doesn't have a voice anymore. So here's the bottom line with worry. Worry is the price of not trying. When you don't try something, worry fills that gap, fills that space. So just try it. Okay? If you fail, it's okay. You're gonna learn something. One of my favorite quotes by Anthony Bourdain— I'm probably gonna butcher it here, but he traveled the world, he ate exotic foods, he met amazing people in different cultures, and he used to say that you have to be willing to eat a few bad oysters to be able to find really good meals. You just got to be okay with eating a few bad oysters once in a while if it means that you're going to have a life full of great, delicious meals. Self-directed investing, trading, full-service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning. Phew. And to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage, or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. So you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more. This episode of The $100 MBA Show is brought to you by Booking.com. If you're looking to grow your vacation rental business, this is the place to be. Booking.com is one of the most downloaded travel apps in the world, and for good reason. Since 2010, they've helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay. But here's the thing: most vacation rental hosts don't even realize they can list their properties on Booking.com. And if you're not on the platform, your rental is basically invisible to millions of Booking.com travelers worldwide. After all, they can't book what they can't see, right? I book all my travel, personal and business, through Booking.com, and it's for good reason. I love their Genius program. So because I'm loyal and I use Booking.com, I'm a Genius Level 3. Yeah, I say it with pride because it gets me the best prices. I also love the fact that they give you all the details about all the hotels or the apartments that you're booking, so I know exactly what I'm getting before I check in. Does the place have a gym? Does it have a hair dryer? Does it have a fridge? What about a washing machine? I know because the listing is always accurate, and their app is easy to use. So when I'm dead tired after a long flight and I'm trying to check into my accommodation, it's super simple. Just pull up my booking and show it to the host. So if your vacation rental isn't listed on Booking.com, it could be invisible to millions of travelers searching the platform. Don't miss out on consistent bookings and global reach. Head over to Booking.com and start your listing today. Get seen, get booked on Booking.com. Silent killer number 3: inconsistency. Everything I have achieved in my life, in my business, Everything is due to consistency, is due to the fact that I pick and stick. And I'm not saying this to beat on my chest. I'm saying this because I know how hard it is. And I have to trust the process of consistency to know that it's going to pay off. This is the one that kills the most promising businesses, not the struggling ones, the promising ones, the ones that have an idea that is solid. The founder is talented. They have early signs that they're on the right track. They have product market fit. They validated their product and service, and then they're inconsistent. They don't allow enough consistency to get some wins under their belt. When we launched this podcast in 2014, there's a lot of podcasts that launched the same time that were incredible productions, really great production value, amazing content, good host. They would show up on other podcasts as well and promote their show. They'll be all over social media and they were doing amazing. They were ranked very high on all the charts. Then life gets busy for them. Some other opportunity presents itself. They see another shiny object. Uh, all of a sudden that podcast is not publishing regularly every single week. They don't show up. They don't do all the marketing they should be doing for their podcast. And today those podcasts are dead. No one even knows what they're called. They never even listened to a single episode. They're irrelevant. They had an opportunity. They were doing something. They built something incredible, but they just let their foot off the gas. See, the thing about business and in life is that success is really boring. When I say that, I mean getting to success. The secret to getting to be successful requires you to do a lot of boring stuff, which means doing the same thing over and over again and not giving up. Even when new opportunities arise, just remember, your attention is your value. So if you lose your attention and you get distracted every single time something new comes out and you don't continue to do what you got you your success, you don't continue to build upon what you have, then you are asking for trouble. You are asking for you to be derailed because you're distracted by other things out there. I want you to think of anyone who is successful, was successful, that you admire. It could be an artist, could be an athlete, could be a musician, could be an entrepreneur, whatever. The through line you will see in all of them is that they are consistent every single time they show up. Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players of all time, was known for the fact that he would go and practice in the gym about 3 hours in the morning, 3 hours in the afternoon, And he would basically shoot the same shots over and over again. The most basic fundamental drills. It was the most boring thing in the world and no one really thought it was special, but he continued to do it. And then when it came to the game, it was easy because he was consistent with his practice. Michael Phelps, known for saying, hey, I wake up 4:00 AM in the morning and I look at some blue line in the bottom of a pool and I just put my head down. It's freezing cold and no one thinks this is special or fun. Or interesting, but I'm consistent with that, and therefore I get to have all these gold medals. Michael Jackson, who you see behind me here, okay, he was known for the fact that he was obsessive about perfecting his performances. He would do his dance routines, his spins, over and over until his feet would bleed. He was maniacal about how consistent he was to make sure he nailed it and it was perfect. If you want to be great, you have to do what the greats do. And the minimum you got to do is be consistent. Choose something you want to be great at. I chose podcasting. I chose the fact that I want to become the number one resource for people that want to start, grow, and scale a business. This is my mission, and I'm going to continue to be consistent with it until I hit it. And when I hit it, I'm going to keep doing it because I want to still be on top. This is why we have over 2,700 episodes. Okay. We've been publishing consistently for over a decade. We haven't missed a single beat. Every week through sick days, through holidays, through the hardest years of my life, through running another business, episodes went out consistently.

Why?

Because I was committed. You can't expect to be successful if you are not committed in anything. You got to be committed to a marriage if you want to have a successful marriage. You have to be committed to your health if you want to be healthy. Consistency is not glamorous. Okay. It doesn't get celebrated, but it is the soil that allows a tree to grow big and strong and allow you to have the fruits of that tree that a lot of people look at like, oh, this gorgeous fruit. It's amazing. What a beautiful tree. They don't realize the fact that all the work was done in the foundation, being consistent every single day. So in your business, your customers, your audience doesn't need you to be brilliant every day. They need you to be there every day, to commit to them and to what you deliver. Listen, if this episode is landing for you, subscribe to the show. I have an upcoming episode that I'm working on right now that you'll absolutely love. I tell the story of how I found my co-founder, Nicole Baldino. If you're wondering, find your co-founder, you might be surprised with the advice that I give. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but in my opinion, it's actually really, really helpful. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Sign killer number 4: Not knowing your numbers. Let me say something that makes a lot of creative entrepreneurs uncomfortable. If you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. Full stop. That's it. By the way, business is numbers. Business is money. If you don't have money, you have no oxygen. And if you don't have no oxygen, your business dies. That's just the truth, the facts. The sooner you admit it, the sooner you'll have a healthy business and life. By the way, knowing your numbers applies to anything in life. If you want to get in the best shape of your life, you need to know your macros. You need to know where you're starting out with your weight. If you want to lose weight, you need to know your measurements. If you want to change your body composition, as Peter Drucker says, what gets measured gets managed, and you need to know your numbers in anything. If I want to be the fastest sprinter in the world, I need to know how fast I'm running the 50-yard dash right now. I need to know how fast I need to get by a certain period before my next competition, my next meet, in order for me to do this. If you've ever run any kind of marathon or have done any kind of, uh, competitive sport, you know what I'm talking about. You know that, oh, you know, I have a goal, I need to hit it, I need to know where I stand. You need to know your numbers. And in business, it's just as important, if not more important. I met entrepreneurs who couldn't tell me their monthly recurring revenue. They don't know their churn rate. They don't know their cost to acquire a customer. They don't know their net profit margin, their average customer lifetime value. They don't know these numbers. And by the way, these are not like a billion numbers. They're basically 4 or 5 numbers that you need to know that are crucial to the health of your business. And by the way, if you're intimidated by numbers and you've never kind of like how to profit and loss sheet. You don't know how profitable you are. We have a free template, by the way, that you could just download for free. There's nothing that you need to buy. Just go to 100mba.net/templates. It's there for you. It's part of a package of templates that you can download for free. In those templates, we also have a dashboard that you can use as like a spreadsheet so you could see the health of your business. Now you might be fine. That's good. You need to know if you're fine or not, and you need to know by the numbers, you need to know the facts. You know how fine you are. How much runway do you have? How much leeway do you have? Do you have any extra cash so you can reinvest in the business? Maybe you want to invest into marketing or make a hire, but you don't know any of this if you don't know your numbers. And it's important to know all the important numbers, not just revenue. A lot of people just look at the revenue and like, wow, I'm making all this money. My business must be amazing. But they don't really see their profit margin. How much money are you actually keeping? What do your costs look like? How much does it cost to get a customer? How much does it cost for you to be able to make a hire? How quickly are customers leaving me? You know, am I just having a leaky bucket in my business? I met a business owner who was doing $800,000 in revenue and genuinely felt successful. Like, I'm almost hitting $1 million in revenue. I'm rocking it. Until we sat down and we actually looked at the numbers and their margins were 12%. 12% margins are very thin. Any crisis that happens, an economic crisis, a health crisis from them and their family, right? There is no room for error. Their customer acquisition costs have been quietly rising over 18 months. Their top 3 customers represent 60% of the revenue. That means if one customer leaves, there goes 20% of the revenue. They are just one bad quarter from a serious crisis, but they feel like they're on top of the world. The business looked healthy to them because they didn't know their numbers. The numbers told a different story. You need to know the truth about your business so that you can make the right decisions and know if you are winning or not. I always equate it to like playing a sport like basketball, for example, and you don't have a scoreboard. How do you know if you're winning if there's no scoreboard? So what do you do to fight the silent killer? You need to schedule 30 minutes a week, just to look at your numbers. Same time every week. I do this on Monday mornings, no exceptions. Pull up your revenue and expenses, your P&L sheet, that template I just shared with you. That's free that you can download and use for yourself. It has all the equations in there. You get to see your margins. You see how well you're doing. You can understand where you can save some money, where you can invest more money. You have a clear picture of the health of your business. Look at the numbers. Don't judge, understand what's going on and make decisions to improve it. That's it. What's great about this is that you'll start feeling responsible. You'll start feeling like you're doing the right thing for your business by just dedicating 30 minutes a week. 30 minutes is nothing compared to the importance of numbers in your business. Silent killer number 5 is disbelief. I saved this one for last because I wanted to give a really valuable one to those who stuck around to the end of the episode. I also saved it for last because it's the most personal. And because it sits underneath all the other ones I talked about. Disbelief is the belief you have about yourself that you never say out loud. It's what lives under the surface. It's the thoughts that run through your head at 2:00 AM in the morning. You know, those thoughts, those thoughts that ask questions like, who am I to do this? People like me shouldn't be building things like this. Um, what do I have that can be special or people really care about? I don't have what it takes. What I'm doing is kind of being done already by somebody else, and they're probably smarter than me. I don't have connections. I don't have a lot of experience. I'm not charismatic. That voice, I'm talking about that voice that goes on in your head, and we all are familiar with it. I know it. I experienced it for years, and I'm here to tell you that no one, including your customers, is going to believe in you until you start believing in you. You have to believe in yourself. Because if you don't, no one will. You have to be your biggest cheerleader. You have to shut that voice out. You have to tell yourself things that you might not truly believe in. You gotta be slightly delusional sometimes in business to be successful. Yes, I said that. You have to tell yourself that, hey, I am worthy. I am smart. I can do this. I am the right person for this job because it starts with you. You have to start believing in yourself so others can believe in you because that That aura, that charisma, that confidence is not going to just display itself magically. It's going to come from your belief in yourself, and people are going to see that and they're gonna be like, wow, I gotta learn more about this person. I gotta figure out what they're doing. What's this business? What's this idea? Mm, that sounds interesting. That's something I need. But if you don't have that, it's going to be very hard for you to convince anybody else. That's just the truth of the matter. There's another side of disbelief, and you might know these people intimately. There might be your family members where they just pessimistic. They just roll their eyes at everything. And, you know, that's not, you know, a million-dollar idea or a billion-dollar idea. Oh, these people are cancer. I'm sorry, but they are. And you need to not infect yourself by being around them. In order for you to believe in yourself, you have to be very active and very vigilant about the negative energies in your life. You have to believe in yourself, but you have to believe in something. You gotta believe in your vision. You gotta believe in what you're trying to provide for the world through your business. You gotta believe that it's possible that you can make a change. And listen, it's okay to give yourself a pep talk in the mirror. It's okay for you to just have a moment with yourself and say, I don't feel 100% confident, but there's a part of me that believes that this is possible. I could do this. So a good exercise as an antidote to this silent killer is to build a win list. Literally a running document. It could be a Google Doc or on your phone in a notes app, or it could be a piece of paper, okay, in your journal. Record every time you have a win, every piece of positive feedback they gave for your business, every moment where you did something where you weren't sure where it was going to happen or if you're going to be successful and you actually won and you actually did well, where somebody paid you a compliment, where you got a good customer review, where maybe somebody bought your product and then told a friend and then your friend told you, hey, they told me about your product. That's pretty cool. Write down every single win. It might seem tedious. It might seem insignificant, but you need that document. Small wins count. They count enormously. Read that list when you have disbelief. Okay? You need to show yourself solid proof that you have a reason to believe in yourself. That you are doing something positive, you are winning, your brain will naturally start to quieten that disbelief, quieten those negative thoughts, and start believing the facts that people love what you're doing. Disbelief is not a verdict on what you are capable of. It's just a belief, and you can change that belief. It's just a habit that you've been in over and over. So change that habit by having a win list and start believing in yourself through evidence that you are worthy of success. Those are the 5 silent killers: indecision, worry, inconsistency, not knowing your numbers, and disbelief. None of them show up with a warning bell, right? They feel like you're being cautious, but they're actually pretty dangerous and they're holding you back. Now that you see them, don't go back to ignoring them. Okay? Use the antidotes I gave you. Use the activities that I prescribed to you because they work I know, cause I had to use them so that I can get past these 5 silent killers. And you don't have to do all 5 right now. You could just pick one and work on that today and then work on the next one, maybe in a couple more days, just get started, be active. If this episode hit home, then you're going to want to check out another episode that I recently published called 20 Not So Obvious Truths I Wish I Knew in My Twenties. I just recently shared this episode with, uh, some of my nieces and nephews. Who are all in their 20s, early 30s, because I really felt like it would tremendously help them because I learned these things the hard way and I don't want them to learn the hard way. And it was kind of like a little bit of a love letter to them as my family members, as people that I really want to see, uh, succeed and win. So this is my gift to you. Even if you're not in your 20s or even 30s, you're going to find some value in it. Go check it out and I'll check you in the next one. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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