We’re Back! And Why Momentum Can Be Dangerous | Elite Performance Podcast #85

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:21:28
Itamar Marani
When you're in momentum, you lose your ability to evaluate clearly. You're not asking, should I still be doing this? You unintentionally start asking, how do I do this better? How do I do more of this? And those are completely different kinds of questions. Momentum doesn't feel like a trap. Again, it feels like traction. And that's exactly what makes it dangerous.

00:00:22:00 - 00:00:43:05
Itamar Marani
Momentum is one of the most powerful forces in life and business. But as with anything powerful, it can also cause great harm. Yes, momentum compounds your wins and keeps you moving, and it makes execution feel effortless. But it also has a shadow side that almost nobody talks about. Momentum can also keep you locked into the wrong things. Long past the point you should have stopped.

00:00:43:05 - 00:01:02:12
Itamar Marani
And the scariest part? You will not even feel it happening. And what I mean by that is that it won't simply go unnoticed. It'll actually feel like progress. And today I'm going to break down how to tell the difference why I made the decision to stop almost everything in my own business earlier this year, when things were going well, including this podcast for a couple month.

00:01:02:14 - 00:01:25:14
Itamar Marani
And the question you need to be asking yourself right now to avoid getting sucked into useless activity. All right, so earlier this year, a few things started happening. After the book launch. New opportunities started opening up, things were moving, but I was also tired and recognize that I can't keep putting more onto my plate. So I decided to cut a lot of it out, even more than the absolute necessities.

00:01:25:15 - 00:01:48:08
Itamar Marani
And here's why. The book was a long execution season. Head down. Writing and delivering. That mode has its place. It's how things get built. Once you're clear on the strategic direction, but execution mode and strategic decision mode are not the same thing, and you cannot do both well at the same time. So when you're deep in execution, your entire frame of reference is the work in front of you.

00:01:48:10 - 00:02:08:06
Itamar Marani
It's how it should be, and it's what lets you finish things. But it also means you're not in a position to make clear, high level decisions about the direction of the business or your life, or whatever it may be. The momentum of what you're already doing is too loud. It drowns out everything else. The book closing was a natural break, and I decided to take advantage of it.

00:02:08:07 - 00:02:27:19
Itamar Marani
I knew that if I didn't use it to actually step out of execution mode and into decision mode, I just slide into the next thing on the list because again, that's all momentum does, for better or worse. It always has the next thing ready for you, and it pulls you. Now when you're in momentum, you lose your ability to evaluate clearly.

00:02:27:24 - 00:02:50:20
Itamar Marani
You're not asking, should I still be doing this? You unintentionally start asking, how do I do this better? How do I do more of this? And those are completely different kinds of questions. And while the second type of question can create incremental gains, it can move you forward. The first question is what enables those giant leaps? And the sad thing is that most people never notice that they stop asking the first one.

00:02:50:22 - 00:03:13:16
Itamar Marani
Again, execution mode is built for the second question. Decision mode is built for the first one. And too many high performers spend almost all their time in execution, which by definition means they're getting better and better, doing things they've probably never properly decided to keep doing. Or they simply hold on to the biggest leverage point. Now, the tricky part is that momentum doesn't feel like a trap.

00:03:13:16 - 00:03:32:21
Itamar Marani
Again, it feels like traction. And that's exactly what makes it dangerous. Now I have a chapter on this in the book. The concept, we called it performance anchors. It's the things in your business or life that are quietly dragging on your performance, even when they look fine on the surface. The hard part is in understanding what a performance anchor is.

00:03:32:23 - 00:03:53:21
Itamar Marani
The hard part is spotting one when you're in execution mode because everything feels connected, everything feels necessary. And stopping to examine any single piece feels like I'll disrupt the whole machine. I'll ruin my momentum, or I'll just get a pinch of that sunk cost fallacy. Now, that's not clarity. And we want to justify the decision, but it's simply momentum talking to you.

00:03:53:27 - 00:04:22:11
Itamar Marani
And obviously that's why it's also helpful having an external coach on your side. Because they can see that for you when you're stuck in that unhelpful momentum. And I was fortunate to have my wife basically send me down and say, hey, this is absolutely the time where you can take a break and think things through. Now, most people never create enough of a pause to actually get back into proper decision mode, so they never get to really find out what's serving them and what's this dead weight they've learned to carry on automatically, not even notice.

00:04:22:18 - 00:04:45:16
Itamar Marani
This is also why one of the very first things I do with any of my clients after the exit is to not allow them to do anything else right now. Instead, we calmly take a step back and go into a season of strategic exploration where we stop being execution mode and we go into decision mode. We stop and we really break things down from first principles and try to understand what are the best possibilities in front of them from this new high ground.

00:04:45:16 - 00:05:09:12
Itamar Marani
This establishes with their new skills, their new contacts, their new funds. We basically try to figure out if you weren't just doing things, what should you actually pursue, and what is the biggest opportunity that you currently have the ability to go after? Now, what I actually did is that I pause this podcast. As you might have noticed, I also close two ongoing support programs for arena alumni, and we're even moving houses a full clean slate of life, basically.

00:05:09:15 - 00:05:25:12
Itamar Marani
The goal was to get completely out of execution mode so I could think clearly without the current state of the business distorting my answers. I had to really stop and think, what do I actually want? What does the business need to look like for that to be a reality? And what am I doing because it's January, right? And what am I doing?

00:05:25:12 - 00:05:49:22
Itamar Marani
Because stopping feels uncomfortable. Because it feels like I'm acknowledging that it's something that I shouldn't be doing, but I've already done basically, what do I really want the five and ten year vision of the business to look like? And while I'm not ready to disclose it publicly yet, I think I've made a decision on what I think it could be, and it's something that I'm genuinely excited about that I think get to nine figures in ten years, which again, I'm cautiously and realistically excited about.

00:05:49:24 - 00:06:14:24
Itamar Marani
Now those questions and thoughts, they require decision mode and you cannot get there while you're still mid execution and everything else. And that's why we had to take the pause. So why are we back? One of the answers I kept coming back to. Was this podcast alumni had reached out to clients mentioned it, and honestly I also enjoy the format, the long form conversations, the depth, the ability to actually get into something properly.

00:06:14:27 - 00:06:33:07
Itamar Marani
And it's where I also get to learn from my clients. When they come on, they share their perspective on their results and their transformation, and oftentimes they get surprised. So when I evaluate it from decision mode with no momentum behind it, the answer was still yes. And that's how you know it's real. That distinction matters more than it might seem.

00:06:33:09 - 00:06:54:05
Itamar Marani
A lot of what we do, and perhaps even most of what we do, survives only because we never stop to actually evaluate it. And this podcast, it passed the test. So what we'll season to look like going forward. There will be two lanes. This podcast stays what it's always been. Long form conversations, but sharp and practical. No fluff, no theory.

00:06:54:05 - 00:07:11:03
Itamar Marani
And perhaps just a little bit of more dark humor spliced it. We just got real people, real situations, and real lessons you can actually use. We've already recorded a bunch of episodes, and I'm excited to share them with you guys in the coming weeks and months. Shane came on and broke down how he finally cracked eight figures after being stuck at the same ceiling for years.

00:07:11:10 - 00:07:27:13
Itamar Marani
Natalia came on and shared what enabled her to make her first major business acquisition, and her perspective on what made it possible was the exact opposite of what I had going in. And I think it'll surprise you as well. And we also had a couple of guests basically flip the script and start interviewing me a bit, which was interesting.

00:07:27:16 - 00:07:43:26
Itamar Marani
And that's going to be the tone for the season. Conversations that go somewhere. Guests who have done something real and can tell you exactly their process to do it. You can basically cheat and have the answers for the test. And aside from that, we also have a brand new and separate YouTube channel. And the link is in the show notes below.

00:07:43:28 - 00:08:02:10
Itamar Marani
I'm also generally excited about what we're building over there. We brought in some of the best YouTube coaches available. People who really know what they're doing and the content we're creating is some of the best I've put out. It's a very different format, more quick hitting, but the same standard. And if you haven't checked that out yet, please go do that by going to the link in the show notes below.

00:08:02:12 - 00:08:27:26
Itamar Marani
Now, how does this come back to you, and what's the question you can think about for yourself? Here's what you want to sit with. When was the last time you actually stepped out of execution mode and into decision mode? Not a weekend off. Not a holiday where you're still half tracking your phone and emails, but a real deliberate switch where you first intentionally create enough distance from the momentum of your business to evaluate it clearly and really thought about what are you still doing?

00:08:27:27 - 00:08:47:14
Itamar Marani
Not because it's right, but because momentum and all its powerful features is simply pulling you along and before you into that too quickly, which is natural. Be honest about what's stopping actually, cause it's not just strategic decisions. Yes, like when we closed programs, an ongoing support program, there was a financial hit. But there's also an emotional one too that needs to be understood.

00:08:47:16 - 00:09:11:18
Itamar Marani
You have to voluntarily trade the comfort of certainty that momentum provides for the discomfort of not knowing. You have to sit in the discomfort of ambiguity sometimes for a while, before the right answer starts to take shape. And that's the part that I think nobody talks about. Enough momentum feels good not just because it's productive, it feels good because it is certain there's a certain groove, and staying in it is easy.

00:09:11:21 - 00:09:29:08
Itamar Marani
Getting out requires you to look at yourself in the mirror and ask a harder question of am I actually willing to feel lost for a little bit in exchange for finding a better direction? And I think that's the real cost of this is not trading in certainty for the next couple of months in order to create a much bigger future for the years ahead.

00:09:29:11 - 00:09:37:13
Itamar Marani
And in my experience, it's always worth it. So again, I am very excited for what's ahead this next season, and I will see you guys in the next episode.