The 3 C’s To Execution

"I'm stuck and not sure why.."

"I know what I should be doing, but I'm not doing it."

"I've been procrastinating on this for a while now…"

"I'm underperforming, and I'm not sure why. I should be achieving more."

Real mindset work is about getting to a result. It's not about making people feel better in the moment.

It's about giving them the tools to get unstuck, perform at their best, and effectively execute the life and business they want to have.

Last weekend, I was challenged to be better. One of the guys in The Arena Elite told me that I wasn't making it easy enough for people to understand how I think and how I can ask the right questions to steer them toward impactful actions.

I'm giving people fish when I could be doing a better job of teaching them how to fish.

Firstly, I appreciated him challenging me, and secondly, I agreed.

So here it is. A simple 3 part framework to help you coach yourself to be an elite performer and crush your goals.

But before we break down the framework, let's understand why it's necessary.

Random Tools Will Get Random Results

First, let's clarify why most "Mindset" or "Performance" programs don't create much impact.

Having a list of "Mindset Hacks" such as ice baths, motivational books, or a big inspirational "why" is nice, but there's a reason it's called a "hack."

These things can give you a temporary boost, but they won't solve the root problem of why you're not executing. They don't fix the actual problem.

They're kind of like trying to out-exercise a poor diet.

Most people ask, "I'm stuck; what should I do to get unstuck?"

That's when solutions like watching an inspirational YouTube video or waking up at 4 AM pop into their heads.

The pro question to ask is, "Why am I stuck?"

By asking yourself, "Why?" you allow yourself to get to the root of what's holding you back.

You go from simply trying to press harder on the gas pedal to recognizing that you've had the handbrake up this whole time.

You focus on fixing what's slowing you down instead of just trying to muscle through it.

But to do that, you must know what the handbrake is for you.

So here's the framework I use with my clients to quickly assess what's holding them back.

The 3 C's

"The strength of the chain is determined by the weakest link, then the first step to improve an organization must be to identify the weakest link."

 - Eliyahu Goldratt

If you can't identify what's holding you back, you'll likely fix the wrong problem.

Here's my 3 part framework to identify what's holding you back and why you're not performing at your best.

Now, these aren't just 3 random steps. They build on top of each other. So, if you have yet to nail in #1, do not proceed to #2; if you haven't nailed in all parts of #2, don't proceed to #3.

The 3Cs in chronological order are:

1. Clarity
2. Course of Action
3. Commit

Let's break them down.

Clarity

First, you need to get Clarity on two subjects:

1. Life - What do you want out of life, and how can you optimize around your life goals?
2. Seasonal focus - What part of your life or business should you focus on for the next 3 months to move closer to your desired outcome?

If you're not clear on what you want out of life on a high level and your ultimate end goal, then it makes sense that you'd get stuck when life gets a little challenging or complex.

If we can't answer the simple question, "Why is this thing outside my comfort zone worth doing?" We can't expect our fearful, safety, and comfort-seeking primal instincts not to take over and prevent us from moving forward.

Before proceeding to the next step, make sure you've got Clarity in life.

"What do I want all of this to build towards?"

Second, get clear on what your next Season is. You must accept that you can only have one true focus to be at your best.

Too often, entrepreneurs are underperforming because they're overdoing.

It's not that they're not capable; it's that they're spread too thin. And while the reality of entrepreneurship is that you often have to wear many hats, the problem of being spread too thin is often self-induced.

We want to win at everything, so we focus on… Everything. But the reality is that if you focus on everything, you won't focus on anything.

You'll just be scattered. Not a way you'd describe an elite performer, right?

Elite performers have the discipline and a long-term vision to commit to a season. To say, "This is the current bottleneck holding me back from the life I want. I'll keep everything else at a certain standard, but this is the specific baseline I want to raise."

So, if you feel stuck, ask yourself:

1. Clarity - Am I clear on what I want out of life?
2. Season - What bottleneck should I focus on for the next three months to move me towards that? 
   1. Have I accepted that I need to prioritize focusing on that bottleneck?

If you want my help to get extreme clarity on what actions would make all the difference for you and your business go HERE.

Case study:

At a recent conference, one of my former clients introduced me to a friend of his. Let's call him Jeff.

Jeff was in his 50s and already had a nice exit. He also had a lucrative cash-flowing business that didn't require any management from him. It all sounded great, but he had a problem: Jeff wasn't clear on what he wanted to focus on.

He felt pulled to try to push the business forward. "It seems silly to take out all these profits instead of figuring out a way to reinvest them and make even more… But for some reason, I'm just not doing it."

And that was a logical statement, but it lacked context.

Jeff wanted to spend more time with his kids before they turned 18 and left the house. However, he was neither fully present with them nor fully committed to growing the business.

He was in an unproductive no-man's land.

After talking to him for a couple of minutes, two things were clear:

1. Jeff was one of the most caring and family-oriented entrepreneurs I'd met.
2. He hadn't decided what this next season of his life would be about.

Just speaking it out loud, he realized he needed to decide on his next seasonal focus. For him, that was to spend more time with his wife and kids.

But he still felt resistance. "It feels silly to have this money lying around and not to focus on doing more with it."

So I asked him, "When you're 80, what would you think was more silly, to make more money that you don't really need or to focus this period of your life on your kids before they leave the house?."

He laughed, shook my hand, and we parted ways.

Jeff's Clarity was family, and his Seasonal focus was spending time with his kids before they left the house.

It was clear that he needed to accept that leaving some money on the table for now, since he already has more than enough, was a non-issue…

Jeff needed to be reminded about what he wanted out of his life and his next seasonal focus.

For him, the baseline he wanted to raise was his connection with his kids before they left the house. For you, it could be your health, your relationships, or a certain part of your business.

But the key is to have the emotional maturity to accept that you can't be at your best if your focus is scattered in various directions, like Jeff.

You'll end up at that unproductive no-man's land, wondering why you're not getting much accomplished, feeling frustrated, and not really raising any baseline in your life or business.

Course of Action

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." 

 - Sun Tzu - The Art of War

Once you're clear on what you want from your life and your seasonal focus, you must reverse-engineer a course to get there.

Sounds obvious, right?

But it's surprising how common it is to see entrepreneurs stuck and not taking action because they haven't reverse-engineered a straightforward course of action to execute.

There are two main ways this kills your performance:

1. Creates ambiguity
2. Gives space for random and unproductive actions

Dealing with the uncertainty of entrepreneurship is already challenging, but trying to go about it without any game plan is a great way to end up overwhelmed, overstressed, and stuck.

If you haven't reverse-engineered what you need to do to see success in your next Season and have a clear and intentional course of action to follow.

Then, don't expect yourself to take clear and intentional action.

That lesser version of you that's naturally fearful, safety, and comfort-seeking, will take over and stop you from moving forward.

And that's just on an emotional level. Even if you are taking action because you're disciplined or motivated, you'll still be underperforming because you lack strategy.

You're getting up and doing, regardless of whether your actions are impactful.

Here's a better way to perform at a higher level.

Once you're clear on your next Season, you can ask a simple question:

"What would I recommend someone in my situation do if they wanted to crush my next Season's goals?"

If you're not clear on that and haven't boiled it down to clear rules of "Do X" and "Don't do Y," then you're leaving a lot of performance on the table.

This is sometimes annoyingly simple. Here's the easy formula:

• If I want XXX, I don't do YYY
• If I want XXX, I do YYY

If I want to focus on growing the business, I should do Y amount of daily outreach.

If I want to have a more peaceful life, I don't hang around these people anymore.

If I want to feel prouder of myself, I do need to commit to having the hard conversations.

If I want to get my health in order, I don't eat junk I know I shouldn't be eating.

These might be simplified examples, but if you can't answer the question, "What do you need to commit to doing and not doing to achieve your desired outcomes in the next season?" Then, this is your current block.

Case Study:

Nathan had a clear goal. He wanted to raise his baseline on his monthly profits.

He was already well-known and respected in his field but felt uncomfortable setting certain boundaries and going for higher targets.

In the past, when people wanted to buy his consulting packages, he didn't have clear guidelines on what to do. So sometimes, the discomfort of the negotiation would pressure him to decrease his price.

Not only did he make less per each deal, but the feeling of frustration slowed him down from going after bigger ones.

The moment he sat down and stopped thinking, "What should I do here?" and asked himself, "If someone with my reputation and abilities wanted to crush their next season of growth and break six figures a month, what should be their clear do's and don'ts?" everything changed.

He came up with two clear and simple rules to follow:

1. I have my prices set, and when potential clients get on calls, I unapologetically tell them the full price
2. I don't let myself fall into scope creep because I don't feel confident.

Something as simple as clarifying a course of action on what to do or not do gave him a clear path to success.

And the result? $200k in less than two months

Here's what he messaged me…

Now that you've gotten Clarity on what you want and reverse-engineered a clear Course of Action, you can move on to the last step of the 3 Cs:

Commitment

There are two parts to commitment:

1. Confidence - Understanding what feelings could deter you and if they're valid
2. Courage: The commitment to act regardless of how you feel

The thing that destroys people's confidence and causes them to avoid following their pre-planned course is often nothing more than an unexpected feeling.

They're on track and doing the right thing but suddenly feel something they didn't anticipate, think something might be wrong, panic, and backtrack.

The reality is that you will have feelings pop up along the way.

Some will be valid logical concerns, and some will be feelings, like discomfort, that you must learn to live with.

If you can anticipate what feelings you will feel along the way, you can differentiate between valid logical concerns and those that are nothing more than feelings. By doing that, you'll avoid getting surprised and backtracking when you shouldn't.

Yes, sometimes you'll need to backtrack, but more often than not, people hold themselves back because of invalid fears. They get nervous, intimidated, or scared, and they panic.

If you commit to doing the work to anticipate what feelings you'll meet along the way, you'll be ahead of the game.

You'll still feel nervous, intimidated, or scared when you go through those moments, but you'll know they're just feelings you need to push through.

You stress-tested your course of action and know there's no valid reason for you to back away or backtrack.

That knowledge that you both expected to have these feelings and that they're not valid reasons for concern will give you a great deal of confidence to keep moving forward.

Then the courage part of commitment comes into play.

Remember the story about the prince who waited until he felt entirely confident and had ideal conditions before he went to rescue the princess?

No one else does either.

Yes, you want to do the work and have the confidence to know what feelings to expect and whether they're valid reasons to stop.

But regardless of what you logically understand, doing something big will still feel scary.

You can't let the presence of fear or discomfort dictate what you do or don't do in life.

You've already nailed in:

1. Clarity: What you want out of life
2. Season: What you should focus on for the next 3
3. Course of Action: What you should or should not do to execute on that
4. Confidence: Understanding what feelings could deter you and if they're valid

And now you have to be a pro and act with courage.

Courage is simply the commitment to doing what's required regardless of your feelings.

If you've done the work to know the right action logically, and it still feels uncomfortable, then it's courage time.

Avoid the temptations of the amateur idealist who hopes to do enough "inner work" so that one magical, fluffy day, things won't feel hard anymore.

Decide to be a realistic pro. A pro who accepts that despite doing the inner work, doing new and BIG things will be challenging. And that just because something is challenging isn't a valid reason to avoid it.

Accept and expect that sometimes it will still feel clunky, scary, or hard… But decide that feelings aren't facts, and you'll execute regardless.

Commitment comes down to two main things

1. Confidence - Understanding what feelings could deter you and if they're valid
2. Courage: The commitment to act regardless of how you feel

The person who does those two things will get results and win.

Case Study:

David was sitting on a gold mine. But he hadn't pulled the trigger for months despite wanting to retire his wife.

He had a giant list and a business perfectly suited to take advantage of it.

Also, one of his friends, an expert in the field, gave him a clear blueprint for success. "If you just do X, you'll have 4x your profits this month."

He hadn't pulled the trigger despite:

1. Having a clear goal (to retire his wife)
2. Being gifted a course of action to make that happen (the blueprint his friend gave him)

Despite David going to therapy for years and it making him feel generally more at ease, it wasn't helping him execute the better future that he wanted for his wife and their family.

He was stuck.

Some internal resistance was holding him back from executing what he knew would serve him and the life he wanted.

So, instead of asking general questions, I asked him a very specific one.

"What do you think is holding you back from wanting to do this?"

We dug into it, and after recognizing that it wasn't a concern about additional workload or management complexities, it came down to one thing.

He had a fear of making more money. Or, in his words, "Making money is greedy."

That was step #3. We uncovered the exact resistance he had to execute his game plan.

Despite logically knowing that retiring his spouse was good, he had an internal voice scaring him away from taking action.

One that came from his religious upbringing and the fact that he was already more financially successful than anyone he grew up around.

Subconscious voices of guilt and shame dictated his actions and kept him and his business small.

David quickly realized that this blindspot around money and guilt was holding him back from growing the business.

He replied no when I asked if he thought making more was greedy.

He said, "Making money allows you to be extremely generous and giving."

He accepted that the belief that "Making more money is greedy" wasn't a true black-or-white statement. That voice in his head was trying to hold him back, but it wasn't a logical concern. It voiced an emotional discomfort from him going against what he saw growing up.

Even after all that, and even though he logically understood what was going on, he still resisted actioning the blueprint he had.

Why? Because that's life. Overriding 40 years of conditioning doesn't feel natural or easy.

As obvious as it might sound, we sometimes forget that when we step out of our emotional comfort zone, that feels… you guessed it… uncomfortable.

So what did David do?

He committed to being an adult and acting with courage.

He didn't wait to feel 100% at ease. He stepped up and committed to doing what he knew was right regardless of how it felt.

And within a month, he 4xed his business and retired his wife.

Disclaimer

This is a framework to make achieving big hard things as least difficult as it needs to be, but now you have to decide who you'll be:

1. Someone who sits and waits until they finally feel warm and fuzzy enough to take "confident action."
2. Be a pro and accept that doing big things will still be challenging.
3. Accept that the discomfort you feel in your growth zone is something you can overcome because everything you want is on the other side.

Accept that if you've done the work to get Clarity on what you want and have a Plan to make it happen. Now, you must Commit to being someone you can always be proud to be.

Who dares wins,

Itamar

P.S. If you want my personal help to walk through the 3Cs, get unstuck, and conquer new heights you can apply for coaching HERE or learn more about it HERE.