Phil Bohol is a founder, business mentor, and operator known for telling the truth most entrepreneurs avoid. In this episode of his mindset podcast, Phil speaks directly to business owners who are working hard, staying busy, and still losing.
This episode is for entrepreneurs who feel stuck despite long hours and constant effort. If your business isn’t growing, your stress is high, and you keep telling yourself it’s just “part of the process,” this business and entrepreneur podcast episode confronts the real issue head-on.
Phil breaks down a core reality. Most people aren’t failing because of mindset alone. They’re failing because what they’re doing is not enough, and more importantly, not the right work. He explains how many business owners hide behind activity, busy work, and false productivity while avoiding the actions that actually move the needle.
Using simple analogies, Phil shows how hesitation, fear, and self-doubt keep entrepreneurs from pulling the right levers in their business. Instead of making decisions, they stall. Instead of fixing root problems, they manage symptoms. They show up every day, tell themselves they’re working, then go home with nothing changed.
A major theme of the episode is identity. Phil explains how bringing personal emotions into business decisions creates chaos, while wearing the wrong “hat” at the wrong time damages both business and relationships. Business requires clarity, objectivity, and execution. When ego and feelings take over, progress stops.
Phil also addresses why motivation is overrated. Feeling good does not build a business. Brutal honesty does. Growth requires looking in the mirror, identifying avoidance, and committing to boring, repetitive work long before results appear. Most people won’t do that, which is why most businesses fail.
Throughout the episode, Phil reinforces a consistent principle from his broader work. Success comes from fixing the root, not performing for appearances. When you change how you operate, how you decide, and how you execute, results follow.
This episode reflects Phil Bohol’s broader philosophy around discipline, execution, and personal responsibility. It is not a motivational speech. It is a direct challenge to stop pretending, stop hiding behind effort, and start doing the work that actually matters.
Listen with the intention to reflect honestly, identify what you’re avoiding, and decide whether you’re willing to change how you operate if you truly want different results.
So lemme give it to you straight. The reason why you're losing in business is because what you're doing is not enough. I know you probably want to get motivation. I know that you think that this is a self-worth issue. I know that you think that it's something else that you're trying to work through to, to get the business right, but the reality is what you're doing is just not enough.
You, you're spending too much time worried about all the small things that don't matter, and because you spend all of your time and energy and, and the negativity of your life, you're not spending critical time on what's actually gonna move the needle forward. It's kind of like somebody that thinks they have a problem with debt.
You don't have a debt problem, you have an income problem. If you saved for the rest of your life to handle your debt by the end of your life, you're gonna be at what break even. So is that really the life that you want to focus on to get to, to live your life, to literally break even? Imagine if you could 10 x your business or 10 x your income, you got the debt, but you've 10 xd your revenues, your income.
How long would it actually take for you to wipe out your debt? Probably not your entire life. And what happens is a lot of business owners get stuck in this trap of like feeling really good about hustling inside of their business, but they just wear this like false armor. Right, like they, they were the title business owner.
They were the title entrepreneur, but they don't get to experience the fruit of their labor because they're spending so much time doing the damn labor versus doing what they probably created business for, which was for time freedom, financial freedom, freedoms that the normal life would never offer you only to build that in your own prison.
Kind of doesn't make any sense. So here's what you have to do. You have to go back to the basics of everything that you do in business, and then you need to increase your personal development personally. Here's what I mean by that. Business is simple when it comes to growth. There's different levers you have to pull, and by pulling those levers, your business will go, will grow, will scale, will tone down, will stabilize those levers will do that for you.
The thing that causes business owners and entrepreneurs to fail is when the person who should be pulling the levers starts to second guess themselves. Why do they do this? Well, because last time I was supposed to pool this lever. I accidentally pushed it, and that caused a problem. And because of that big problem I had to deal with, now when it's time for me to make a decision on what, what to do with the next lever, I hesitate.
And because I hesitate something bad happens and because something bad happens, then I tell myself, see, that's why I didn't even try. And then by continuing that cycle, you don't really do anything in your business, but you keep showing up to these levers every day. You show up. Hey babe, I'm gonna go to work.
I'm gonna go handle business today. You walk up to the levers, you hesitate for the whole day, and then you go home doing nothing. But you tell your wife, you, you show the family. I've been working all day. I've been away. So I've been working. But you haven't been, 'cause you're not pulling the levers, you're not actually doing the things because you're afraid and that's why you're losing.
And that's just the truth. And anybody else that's trying to make you feel good about what you're not doing, they're not actually being helpful for you. See, when people work with me as a me, as their business mentor, as their coach, I don't tell them what they want to hear. I tell them what they need to hear, especially when they need to hear the brutal truth.
Because anybody else that spends the time to make you feel good will make you feel good. Your business will still fail. You'll still be away from your family. You'll still have all the stressors that you've always had, but you'll feel good for the moment because somebody acknowledges your feelings.
Feelings have no place in business. The only time feelings should be in business and when, when it's purpose driven, when you're motivated, when you're inspired to help and serve the people you're supposed to help and serve through your business, because that's kind of the point of business. But aside from that, when you start making business decisions based on your personal self, right?
I teach my guys, there's different hats that you wear in business. You have your personal hat, you have your business owner hat. If you're supposed to be wearing your business owner hat and you're wearing your personal hat and you're bringing your personal feelings into business, that's the reason why your business is starting to fail and why you start wearing your business hat in personal time, and then you start butting heads with your wife.
You see what I mean? You don't know even what levers to pull and push. You don't know what hats to wear. You don't know. And instead of figuring it out, which is the work, you'd rather spend time feeling sorry for yourself. You'd rather spend time on all of the external things, the busy work that doesn't actually move the needle forward.
Because if it did, it would have Biden now. Right? Wouldn't it have. So you have to start having a brutal, honest conversation with yourself and acknowledge you're not doing the work, you're just pretending you are. So you can say you are. So you can fail, and then you can then reaffirm to yourself and everybody else who asks you, business is hard, man.
And then at some point that turns into delusion where you start to tell yourself, well, you know, some people don't make it to success for a long time. I just have to keep going. And it's like, I guess. I guess if, if you're good with losing all that time, I guess, man, see, as a business coach, I don't try to get people to want to succeed.
If you don't have that, that edge, that, that thing in you, that drives you to want to be the most successful version of you, there's nobody out there that can teach you that. You really got it or you don't. And when I say you got it, that doesn't mean you're successful with it. That doesn't mean you've not learned how to cultivate it yet.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you have the clay that we can mold into something great. Some people really just don't have the clay and those people lie to themselves and, and they try to come up with all the excuses that I'm just trying to get this other thing done. I'm trying not to have shiny object syndrome.
I'm trying to focus on one thing. I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to just do this other thing that's not successful and I don't have any results to show for it, but I know better than you, so I'm gonna go do it that way. Good luck. Stay losing. There's a reason why there's a 1% and a 99%. There's gotta be a 99%.
You see what I mean? Like when, when most businesses will fail in two to three years, or at three to five years, people have to lose for the winners to stand out. So keep doing what you're doing, but if you don't wanna lose and you're tired of losing, you have to change. You have to shift from focusing, focusing on all these business decisions you think you need to make, and you need to instead hold up the mirror to yourself and ask, what am I not doing?
And why am I not doing it? What are my belief systems? What do I gotta change in my operating system? What do I gotta change in my identity so I can go all in and play offense on what I'm trying to do? See, until you can have these brutal conversations within yourself, you can do and try and waste as much time trying to fix all these business things, but the holes are still there.
You're not plugging in the holes. It's kind of like this, right? Imagine somebody in a boat and there's water coming in the boat, and what they do is they grab whatever they can and they just start flicking all the water outside of the boat. And they're just like, I'm, it's working. There's less water now, but more water comes in and they're like, I'm gonna work double time now.
Now I'm gonna get all these other people to help me take all this water outta the boat. You know what I would've done at that point? I would've found the hole. Plug the hole, and then after the, the hole is plugged. Then take out the water. Why? Because once the root is addressed, nothing else is gonna happen after that.
But most people don't want to address the root cause because. Putting all the water out, even though they haven't plugged in the holes, makes them feel good, makes them feel like they're working. They're not used to switching from survival mode to abundance. They're not used to understanding that you have to change how you view yourself and how you operate in this life to have something you've never had before.
Because if you act and operate the same as you've always been, you're gonna continue to have what you've always had. That's just the truth, and that's why most people will continue to lose, and it's really not that sad. You know, I feel for these people's families, I feel bad for the situations that they allow in their household, but I don't feel sad about it because if you wanted it bad enough, you would drop that ego and pride, seek the guidance, make the investments into yourself.
You'd have done all the things that all of us that have gotten to a certain level have done and sacrifices and invested into, and take the risk on. Which is ourselves. So what makes you think that you're any different from us? What makes you think that you get to be the one person, the anomaly in this life that just gets to go around what everybody else has to do.
And then on top of that, it's not just investing into the knowledge, it's also implementation execution. It is the work that you avoid. You know, let's say you have to door knock. Let's say that you have to, to learn marketing, to apply marketing. Let's say that you have to fix your operations. Let's say that you just have to fix every fucking thing in your business.
It takes somebody that has hyper focus in, in their strategy and in their battle plans to strategically start to eliminate all of the bottlenecks of themselves and in their business. And that's the boring work that nobody sees that leads to results. But people don't like the boring work. But just like I tell all of my guys that start crushing in business, the boring work is where everything grows.
That's the the watering of of, of the, of the ground that that's nurturing the seed, that's making sure that there's enough sunlight. It's all that boring stuff. It's, it is not the it growing into this vegetable or plant that you get to pull out and, and it looks super cool 'cause you get to see it happening and then turn it into a meal.
That's what most people want. They want the end state end result, but it's the watering, it's the love, it's the attention, it's the care. It's the mundane. It's the same old, same old, same old for a long time without ever seeing the fruits of your labor yet until it's time. That's how you go from loser to winner.
And most people will not. And I say most people will not do what it takes to do the boring work, to change their life because they want immediate gratification. They want to feel like the man right now. They want to feel like they got it all going on right now. They want to feel right, get everybody's attention.
Hey, look at me. I'm winning right now. They want that, but behind the scenes, they're stressed out. Why? Why do that to yourself? That's not why you built a business. You didn't build business for clout. So why do you act that way? This is the real, raw, brutal, honest truth that you gotta start speaking to yourself, look in the mirror and have this conversation.
Otherwise, I'll be your mirror. And as always, like share, subscribe to all channels. Stay plugged into what I'm talking about, reframe your mentality. If this hits you, let me know. I'll make more of it. I'll tell you more things that I've done personally myself to break through a lot of the things I had to break through to come from the bottom to get to where I'm at today, but until that ego and pride goes away, you're gonna be stuck and you will lose.
See you on the next one.