SELF-SABOTAGE cost me $30,000,000 [the cure to self-sabotage]
In this video, the speaker recounts how his reluctance to fire underperforming employees caused his fast‑growing company to lose roughly $30 million in growth and time. He identifies the root cause as an irrational belief that firing people would make him a bad leader. To address this, he introduces the ABC model from Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy—Activating event, Belief, Consequence—and walks through a concrete example of his own situation. He then presents four disputing questions (evidence of being a bad boss, evidence to the contrary, absolute‑thinking check, and projected harms of maintaining the belief) that he used to challenge and replace the belief. The speaker emphasizes daily practice, journaling, and using the framework for other business challenges such as delegation and skill gaps, arguing that belief change, not skill acquisition, is the primary driver of rapid growth. He concludes with actionable advice on how to embed the process into a routine and encourages viewers to apply it consistently.
Chapters
What is up? In this video today, what I want to talk about is how I self-sabotaged my company and cost us nearly $30 million. So this actually stemmed from a conversation I had with a different entrepreneur who was talking about why he could not scale his company. And, you know, in talking to him, he essentially said, like, I'm just not able to fire people and I can't get rid of people and I have a really hard time having any kind of hard conversations. And so, you know, I was like, can I see your org chart? 'Cause you can tell a lot about a business if you look at the org chart. I looked at the org chart and I was like, holy shit. Like, I mean, I think they had probably 40% too many people working there. The reason for that was he's just like, I don't wanna fire people. I just, he kept saying like, I can't do it. Like, I just can't. It actually reminded me of myself, I wanna say 5 years ago. And that was just the first year that we started in business and we had to hire a lot of people. And I knew that the business was growing so quickly that a lot of those people that were there weren't any longer going to be a fit in 6, 12, 18 months because of the size of the business, not because of anything with them, but like, I can't train you. I don't have anyone that could train you and you don't have the skills 12 months later. It's really hard for them to continue to be a fit for the business. And so that's just kind of the nature of fast growth companies. Now, my, the reason that I sabotaged myself, the reason I sabotaged the company was because I held a belief too tight that wasn't serving me. But it was protecting me from what I thought would be worse. That belief was that I am not a good boss, a good leader, if I fire these people. I remember sitting at my desk at one point in time, and there were so many things falling through the cracks. And I kept thinking to myself, like, crap, like, I just know that, like, half the people on our leadership team just aren't competent. It's not that they're bad people. It's not that they aren't in the right position. It's that the company's grown too fast and they no longer have the competency to rise for that skill. But I was so terrified of what it would mean about me if I fired those people that I kept delaying it. And so, you know what happens when you delay firing a few people? Those people continue to hire people on their teams and they're not hiring with the right frame of mind, right? Because those people shouldn't be on the team. Why should they have the authority to hire anyone? But I didn't stop it. And so this multiplied and it became, you know, the one day I looked at the team and I was like, mother, I was like, like, most of the team shouldn't be here. And not most of the team, I want to say like a third. And I was like, crap. I was like, I let this get out of control. I should have taken care of this when the problem was small. And it all stemmed from the fact that I was sabotaging myself because I had an irrational belief. And so what I want to share with you is how I identified what that belief was and then what I did to act against it. Because here's the thing, most of the times in business, it's not all the fancy marketing and finance and acquisition and sales and like all that stuff that's going to fuck you if you don't know it. It's going to not understanding your brain, how it works and what beliefs you're operating with. Those are the things that end up fucking you at the end of the day. And I can tell you that from talking to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs, as well as talking to people who are way ahead of me, right? And they can identify the same reasons that they falter at times, they fail at times, or times they haven't been successful. It's almost always having an irrational belief that you are acting in accordance with. And so this is a little bit of psychology and a little bit of business mixed in too, because I do believe that's what holds us back the most. And so that's why I'm excited to share with you today. If you're trying to identify what the belief is that's holding you back, there's a framework that you can use. And let me tell you, there are a ton of people out there right now who are teaching this framework in one way, shape, or form. It comes from ancient philosophers. Nobody fucking made it up nowadays. Okay? It's like, uh, you know, How do you respond to situations? Okay, it's called the ABCs, and that's what Albert Ellis coined it. So he said it's the ABCs of essentially cognitive behavioral therapy, or rational behavior— rational emotive behavioral therapy. And so what that is, is it's a therapy that you can do on yourself. And so I'm going to walk you through a piece of it because honestly, this is the key that can unlock how you can change your own beliefs, and you don't need to rely on someone else to do it for you. What a lot of people have spun off different ways of talking about this or doing this is just the ABCs. And so I'll tell you what they stand for, okay? You've got the A, which is the activating event. You've got the B, that is the belief you have about that event. And then you've got the C, which is the consequence of that belief that you hold on that event. Okay, so let me explain what I mean here. In the scenario where I'm talking about where I sabotaged our business, and the reason I'm saying that we— that cost us $30 million is because it set us back an entire year. You know, we didn't— we weren't able at one point to make barely any fucking progress because I had to redo half of our leadership team. And it took a long time. Let's look at the activating event, right? Activating event was my team fucked up and I looked at the team and said, oh crap, you know, like, I feel like I need to let go of some people. And that was exactly what happened, right? Okay. So activating event, team messed up, they dropped the ball. Belief about that event that I held at that time was crap. I am not a good leader. If I fire them, I'm not a good leader. I can't fire anyone because that'll mean that I'm a bad leader. Okay, and then C, the emotional and, uh, you know, thought-provoking consequence that belief creates in me was anxiety, stress, fear, feeling like a failure, you know, low self-esteem, whatever, right? Just feeling like shit. And so that is what the belief did. And so it created this perpetual cycle where I felt worse and worse about myself, and so I put it off longer and longer to take care of, you know, replacing those teammates and bringing in people who were more skilled. If you hold a belief like that, right, if you can relate to this and you're like, I have things that I believe and I know that those beliefs are holding me back from getting to where I need to go in business or making the moves I need to make in business, right? Then I want you to do this. I want you to take the ABCs and write that down. Okay, what's the activating event? What's the belief? And I'm going to say irrational belief that you hold about that event. And then what's C? What's the consequence? How do you feel holding that belief about that event? Here's how you dispute that belief. Okay, so here's how I change beliefs for myself. Think about this. All day, when we have an irrational belief, or when we have something that's not serving us, is all day we loop in our minds all the reasons why that belief is true. So we just continue to collect evidence. You've probably heard Tony Robbins say, you know, if you want to find brown, you'll find the color brown. If you look for brown, you find brown. If you look for reasons for your belief to be true, you will find reasons for your belief to be true. What we don't do is we don't practice the opposite. We don't dispute in our own heads with ourselves why that belief may be false. And so I'll give you the example of how I disputed my belief and got myself to finally take action to revamp that team, fire the people I needed to fire, and get through it. Okay, the irrational belief that I held, okay, the IB, was that I am a bad leader and boss because I need to fire these people and I haven't yet. That was my irrational belief, okay? I'm a bad leader because I haven't done this yet. Now there's 4 questions that I like to ask myself to dispute a belief. And I took these from, I think, one of the workshops or worksheets from a workshop from Albert Ellis Institute. And this is what helped me overcome that belief. Okay. Number 1, is there any evidence that I am a bad boss? Okay. Is there any evidence? Hard evidence, not opinion, but hard evidence. Oftentimes you will find that there is no evidence. Evidence is a fact. Everyone else would be able to say the exact same thing. There are opinions that exist. I may have the opinion that I am, maybe someone else has the opinion, but there is no fact to say that I am. Okay. So that's the first question I asked myself. And when I came up with that question, I was like, well, shit, no, there's no like hard facts to show it. Right? There's not like a test I can take to say you're a bad boss. It's just how I feel right now. Second question, is there any evidence to the contrary? Is there any evidence that I am actually a good leader? Okay. And when I asked myself that question, I actually realized that there was a lot of evidence that I was a good leader. If I looked at the feedback surveys, if I looked at all the Slacks I was getting from people, if I looked at our OfficeVibe results, if I looked at the retention we had on most people, if I looked at the results from why people came to work for us. Okay. So there was actually a lot of evidence that I was a good leader. Okay. Fair enough. Now the third question, is there any evidence that I'm absolutely no good at all? Okay, because much of the time in our minds we have absolute thinking, right? Which is we go one extreme or the other. We're like, I am all or nothing. So is there evidence I am actually just a horrible boss and nothing else? Well, no, there's no evidence to support that. In fact, I would say that's not true. Okay, I don't even believe that. Okay, fourth question: what bad things will happen if I continue to hold this irrational belief? Okay. So I think all day we're telling ourselves all the bad things that will happen if we let go of this belief. But what we're not doing is saying, well, if I hold this belief, what does my life look like? What does my business turn out like? What happens to me? And so I asked myself that and I was like, well, shit, if I don't change this belief, I will literally never fire anybody. And I will end up with an incompetent team and I'll end up with a mis—, you know, I don't even know what kind of culture, right? Like a hodgepodge of whatever the fuck ends up with, right? And I will not have the company that I want to have, the company I would prefer to have. And so that question right there was what did it for me. I was like, fuck, if I continue to operate under this belief and not act against it and not think against it, then my company is fucked. And so in that moment, I realized I can choose the misery of continuing to dwell in that belief, or I can choose the, you know, fear, anxiety, stress, etc., that comes with changing that belief. You feel like shit either way. And I can tell you this from experience. I felt like shit not changing it. I felt like shit while I was changing it. On the other side, though, you get confidence. And so that is how I disputed that belief, and that's how I overcame that, and I stopped sabotaging myself in business. And so I've been able to take that. I've been able to do it with pretty much every area of business. People always ask, like, how do you grow quickly? How do you do these things quickly? I don't think that Growth is— I don't associate it as much with skill set as I do with your ability to change your beliefs quickly. And we can do that for ourselves. You don't need a therapist, you don't need medication, you don't need to watch a million or read a million books. You can just apply these things, right? And you just practice, practice, practice, practice. Like I said, the 4 questions that you want to ask yourself, okay? Is there any evidence that this is true? Is there any evidence that I should be a certain way, or that things should turn out a certain way? Is there any evidence that I am no good at all? This situation is no good at all. This person is no good at all. And then what bad things will happen to me if I continue to hold this belief? Okay. Those are the questions that I ask myself. So you can take this and you can apply it to anything. I would say that a lot of people hold really irrational beliefs around firing people, People hold irrational beliefs around delegation. People hold a lot of irrational beliefs around being the only person in their company that can do something or conduct some sort of, uh, tactical task. People hold a lot of irrational beliefs in business, and they think that it's that they lack the skill, but it's actually that they lack the belief. Because you can learn how to delegate if you just Google how to delegate. I have 2 videos here on how to delegate. You know how now, but you're not doing it for some reason. It's because you have an irrational belief that you're holding on to. And so if you can practice this, And I would encourage you to do it every day when you're trying to change a belief. Just set aside, and I time myself when I'm trying to, for at least 10 minutes a day, which I usually end up doing it for like an hour, but 10 minutes gets you started. Then you will soon see that even if you are unsure, and even if you don't 100% believe yourself, right? Because belief is binary. It's not binary. It's on a continuum. Like you might believe 10%, next day you might be 11%, 12%. What if, what, are you at 1% every day? And then in a year you completely believe it. Right? But even if you can just get yourself over the 50% line, enough to take action against that irrational belief and actually move yourself and move your business forward, then you're making a ton of progress. And so I hope this is useful. Um, I'm not even kidding, like, this is what I do all the time. This is what I practice. This is what I journal. This is what I do to make sure that I can continue to move forward in business, is whenever there is something that I am not doing or something that I I know I should be doing and I'm not doing, or there's a strong emotion around a situation, I just take this out. I go ABC. What's the event? What's the belief? And then what's the consequence? And then I dispute all of that and I write it down. And so you could do this on the notes on your phone. I usually do that. Like typically I'm not like a writer downer, um, or you could journal it or you could write it on your computer, do whatever works for you. But I highly suggest this. Um, you know, guys, it's not, it's not the skill stuff. Um, that's going to continue to advance you, or some of the skills that are going to be like, hinder you from growing your business. More than often, it's just the beliefs that you have. And so if you can grab those beliefs, change those beliefs, and continue to do that over and over again, you will be a much more successful business owner. So with that, I hope you have a fantastic day, night, evening, car ride, walk, exercise, et cetera.
