Bite Off More Than You Can Chew (You'll Figure Out How to Chew Later)
Business skills work exactly like the bench press — everyone forgets that outside the gym.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 88%
Banayan learned this from his mentor Elliott Bisnow, and notes the best lessons are often the ones never explicitly stated. The advice was never the comfortable half — 'bite off more than you can chew' — it was the full version: you'll figure out how to chew later. Underneath it is a claim about capability: people are more capable than they give themselves credit for. Banayan makes it concrete with a fitness analogy. Ask ten people how to get from a 50lb to a 150lb bench press and nine will describe progressive overload including the deload after a tear. Ask ten people how to 10x a business and nine have no idea what to say. But it works the same way — sales, strategy, pitching, storytelling and BD are all learnable. Business is just less legible than the gym.
Origin
Learned implicitly from Elliott Bisnow, one of Banayan's early mentors — who was reachable precisely because nobody knew who he was at the time. Banayan calls it one of the best pieces of advice he's ever received.
Core principles
- 01People are more capable than they give themselves credit for.
- 02Committing before you're ready is how you give yourself the credit you deserve.
- 03Every entrepreneurial skill — sales, strategy, pitching, storytelling, BD — is learnable.
- 04Business growth follows the same progressive-overload logic as strength training.
- 05The reason business feels different is opacity, not difficulty.
- 06The 'you'll figure it out' part is hard, painful, and makes you want to cry — that's normal, not evidence of failure.
How to run it
- 1
Take the bite
Commit to something a level beyond your proven ability — a bigger client, a bigger stage, a bigger raise — before you know how you'll deliver it.
Watch out The commitment must be real and public enough that you can't quietly back out.
- 2
Run the gym translation
Ask what the 50-to-150 path looks like for this specific goal. Force the business jump into the same explicit progression you'd naturally apply to a bench press.
Pro tip The translation is the whole trick — business is learnable, it's just harder to see the increments.
- 3
Name the intermediate loads
Write the 55, 60, 65 of your goal. If the business version of a rep isn't obvious, that's the gap to research, not evidence the goal is impossible.
- 4
Identify the learnable skills
List which of sales, strategy, pitching, storytelling, marketing and BD the jump actually demands. Each one is a trainable skill, not a personality trait.
Watch out 'I tried it once and I don't have it' is the exact failure mode. Nobody bench presses 150 on the first attempt.
- 5
Deload after a tear
When something breaks, drop back a step and work up again — precisely what everyone does instinctively in the gym and almost nobody does in business.
- 6
Expect it to hurt
Banayan is explicit: it's hard, it's painful, it's uncomfortable, you want to cry. That's the cost of the bite, not a sign you bit wrong.
In the wild
Banayan's test: pull ten random people off the street and ask how to go from a 50lb to a 150lb bench press by year end. Nine out of ten describe the whole progression, including tearing a muscle and dropping back to 55. Ask the same ten how to grow a business from one size to another and nine have no idea what to say.
→ The gap is legibility, not difficulty — the mechanics are identical, which means every business skill is as trainable as a lift.
Common mistakes
Quoting only half the advice
Banayan is emphatic that Elliott didn't say 'bite off more than you can chew' as if it were easy and fun. The load-bearing half is 'you'll figure out how to chew later' — and that part is painful.
Treating skills as innate
People try sales or storytelling once, fail, and decide they either 'got it or they don't got it'. Nobody applies that logic to a bench press, and it's just as wrong in business.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and operators facing a step-change opportunity they feel unqualified for.
Not ideal for
Anyone in a domain where under-qualified failure is catastrophic or irreversible rather than merely painful.
From the transcript
“this idea of bite off more than you can chew you'll figure out how to chew later is essentially giving yourself the credit you deserve…”
“all these skills that we need in entrepreneurship whether it's sales strategy pitching storytelling business development are all learnable except when you go to the…”
From the episode
Alex Banayan: Unlocking The Third Door To Your Success
Alex Banayan