Are These Four Words Holding You Back?

There’s one phrase that holds back pretty much every entrepreneur at some point – including me.

And it’s a sneaky one.

If it was something obvious like

 “I’m not ready yet”, 

or “I need a bigger audience before I launch”…

It’d be easy to spot.

But this one’s sneaky…

It sounds perfectly reasonable and rational – and that’s why it flies under the radar. 

But the more you repeat it, the more you limit what’s possible in your business… and kill your chances of success.

The good news is, once you hear it – and eliminate it – amazing opportunities start opening up all around you.

(They were there before… you just weren’t seeing them.)

In this short video, I share what the four-word phrase is – and how to free yourself from it…

Hey, it’s Jeff Walker, and today I want to talk about something that holds people back. In fact, this holds everyone back at one point or another.

It’s the idea of: “My business is different” or “That works for other people, but it won’t work for me.”

And that’s an excuse. You know, I teach people how to build their businesses, and I teach a super effective way to build your business. But when I’m out there – I first learned this when I was out there trying to sell people – frankly, because I got this great solution. And people would say, “Oh, I can see it works, it’s great, but my business is different.”

Anyone who’s selling any type of business advice – or any type of advice, period – whether you’re selling weight loss, or dating, or meditation, or guitar playing, it doesn’t matter – your people are going to be saying, “Yeah, well that might work for everyone else, but it doesn’t work for me.” Or like I said, “My business is different.”

Maybe, since you’re watching this, you’re probably an entrepreneur, and you’re thinking, “Well yeah, but my business is different.”

And we all do this – I’ve done it before as well. But this thing really, really holds you back. Because the reality is that 99% of the time, it will work for you, and it will work in your business. You might have to tweak it a little bit – whatever it is.

I’m not talking about my training or my products or any of my stuff – we’re talking big picture. We’re going meta – it’s way beyond your business, it’s everywhere in your life.

The quickest way to shortcut your growth and your learning process is to find good models. But if you’re out there actively disqualifying every model because “I’m different” – well, you’re just holding yourself back.

Here I am shooting a video. Twenty years ago, when I started my business, the idea that I would actually be regularly shooting video – it was the farthest thing from my mind. You have to evolve. You have to grow.

But I’ll tell you what – when I first started shooting video, all my buddies, all my peers – they were all out in Southern California on the beach with these beautiful beach scenes. And I’m thinking, “Man, I wish I could shoot video. But I don’t have a beach, I don’t live on a beach. I can’t sit there and show them I’m living on a beach.”

And that thought was actually in my head. How idiotic is that? I mean, look at these views. I think you probably get a nice reflection here, right? I live in this beautiful spot – but I didn’t see that, because I was thinking, “I’m different from them, I don’t have that asset that they do.”

We all do this. And to the degree that you do it, you hold yourself back.

And if you’re saying, “No, I don’t do that – I’m different.” Well, yeah – you do do it. We all do it. But you’ve got to stop. It’s something you want to cut out.

You want to cut out the “It won’t work for my business.”

Now, the one place you do want to focus on that – if you’re looking at a model, something someone else is doing, a technique, a strategy, whatever – and you think about employing that in your business or in your life, somewhere you have to say, “Well, does that align with my values?”

Because – well, I’m thinking about my business and marketing – there’s all kinds of things you can do that I don’t feel comfortable with. No value judgments – they’re just not the things I’m going to do in my business to drive sales. I have discomfort with some things, so I’m not going to take those things as a model.

So in that case – my business is different.

But in general – one of the quickest ways you can grow within your business is look laterally. Look at businesses that are not in your market, not in your niche. Maybe they have a completely different style of marketing. Maybe they’re completely different.

But if you look and say, “What do they have that I can use?” – instead of saying, “Well, they’re having great success, but it’s not going to work in my business.”

Look at it and say, “What can I take from that business?” You can have incredible, incredible learnings.

One time – I used to, and I still do – put out tons and tons of case studies. And I had one case study of someone who taught guitar instruction – taught how to play guitar.

And I remember getting a question from someone who said, “Well, that’s great, but my business is different.”

I said, “Okay, well, what’s your business?” They said, “I teach how to play piano.”

And I’m like, “Really? You really see that as being different?”

That’s the level that most people are at. Even though something is right in front of them, they say, “My business is different.”

So don’t do that – unless it’s a complete values conflict. Look for what you can take. Look for what’s similar. Look at someone who’s having success and take inspiration from that success – instead of saying, “Well, here’s my excuse why that won’t work for me.”

So there you go. This really holds a lot of people back – it holds all of us back at one time or another. And the more you can work to eliminate it from your life – the better you’re going to be.

I’m Jeff Walker. If you’re watching this anywhere else besides on my blog at jeffwalker.com – head on over there. That’s where all the goodies are. That’s where the discussion is.

Scroll down, leave a comment. Give me a thumbs up button or a thumbs down button – whatever – just give me some reaction. Like my page. Subscribe to my channel.

And let’s go get ’em this week.