Success Creates Deficits

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum, so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution.

Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we're the minority, the few, who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real.

We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Success creates deficits. When an entrepreneur tells me they don't have any issues or they say, "No, everything's going fine. No, we're fantastic." And they can't point out where the current deficits in their business or their life are, I feel nervous for them. Because here's what I really believe. I think they are either one, not being transparent. They're doing the whole fake it til you make it thing, so they're doomed. Two, they're not growing as an entrepreneur, because when we're growing, that's when we feel those deficits. That's when we feel those needs. And you're either growing or you're going away, especially if you have a team and a business. Or three, they're in some stage of denial. Some sort of denial where they're not admitting what's really going on.

Because here's the reality about creating success in our lives. Success will create deficits. It's a fact. It's like gravity. It's like physics. It's mathematics. As you create a higher level of success, your business will always need something. As you create a higher level of sex... succe... sex, well that, too. Of success. You will always find a place where you create a deficit, a vulnerability, a feeling of something that needs to happen. This is just how it works when we're growing a business, and here's one of the challenges out there.

In the world of marketing to entrepreneurs, there's a lot of people telling you that they can help you do it with no problems. There's a lot of people telling you they can help you make your company easier to grow. There's a lot of people telling you that you can grow a multi-million dollar organization and have it be a self-managing company where you don't really have to do that much. And the fact is, that none of that's real. It's all crap, and I'm happy to call it out. And I will tell you that's not how large organizations are grown. That's not how entrepreneurs build businesses. It makes great marketing copy, but for the most part, all that stuff is BS, and anyone who tells you that you can run a business problem free or anyone who tells you you can run a business issue free, where you'll never have deficits, just doesn't understand how a business grows.

Let me just share with you very clearly and factually, here's how it works. When you finally figure out who your market is and what you wanna sell 'em, well then you have a deficit. You now need to get some leads. You need lead generation, so the biggest deficit you have is going out and figuring out how to get more people to come towards you, how to get more people to know who you are. To see your stuff. That is a deficit. Success will create that deficit.

See, that early success of selling a couple products. Now, you need leads. But here's what happens. Let's say you get a lot of leads coming in. Well now, you need to leverage your sales conversion model. Whatever you were doing to sell before, as soon as your lead count goes up, now you're gonna have way too many leads, so now you have to figure out either how to convert more efficiently in an automated system, or you start hiring sales people because you have leads that may be... that aren't getting a service because now you started generating leads.

Well, if your sales team does really well, or the sales person you bring in does really well, well now you're going to have to immediately start building a much bigger team. And show them how to scale consistent delivery because as soon as you leverage sales, now you have to have systems and processes in place to deliver at a higher level, and then once you start scaling delivery, which allows you to go back to the beginning and do more lead generation, more sales, more delivery, well then you have to scale the team around that delivery process, so it stays consistent, so each customer or each client gets the same experience. And then once you scale that team to consistently delivery, you now have to start scaling leadership systems and duplicate decision making over a much larger population, because now you don't just have a team, you have a team that has teams.

You have a leadership team with team underneath them. Then, once you have that leadership team with team underneath them, now you have a much larger organization, so you need not just scalable leadership systems, you need scalable investment management and tracking systems. You need to be able to run that organization remote control. You're getting up in the tens of millions. So see, that's just the life cycle of growing a business, when you look at the biggest need of a business owner at anytime. So each time you transition from one of these, you're going to create a deficit somewhere.

Let's say you do leverage sales, well then you have... heres, it's funny. I coach million dollar plus business owners, and whenever one of them coming into the program, you know I always ask them about the five core functions of their business. Lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, retention, resell, and upsell. We talk about the five core functions of the business constantly, and whenever one of my client says something like, "Oh, well Alex, lead generation will never be an issue," I always tell them, "You've just doomed yourself. Lead generation will now be a massive issue very soon."

And it just recently happened to one of my clients. They had said, "Lead generation will never be an issue," on the way in, and then we were able to build out a sales process. Or they were able to build out a sales process, write out a really good job description for a salesperson, bring in a salesperson, have that person start converting like crazy, and guess what, now they need more leads. And as soon as they get more leads, they're gonna need a second salesperson because the salesperson they have today is almost fully utilized, but then as soon as they crank up the leads, they're gonna now have an excess again. And so, success will always create a deficit.

And here's the challenge, another challenge, partially brought on by marketing and partially brought on by just how some entrepreneurs think. It's that we're all always trying to perfect the system. I want you to understand something. Any quest for perfection will create the biggest constraint in your business and your life that you have. Disavow any thought or theory around perfecting anything. You wanna have a business that is adaptable. You wanna have a business that can wrap around issues. You wanna have a team that trusts each other, that communicates, that communicates to you, that tells you when there's an issue, that tells you when there's a deficit because since you are always creating them in a fast growth company, you wanna make sure that your team is open and honest and transparent about sharing them. Because that's exactly how you grow your business.

There's a point where you get your business into momentum, and the best way to grow it is to look for the deficits and fill in. The best way to grow it is to start looking at what actually needs your attention, and go correct those things. And the best way to grow it is to understand what deficit may be developed next based on where one of your strengths is today.

But the fact is that there is no such thing as a business or an entrepreneur that doesn't have an issue. That's why they make me so nervous. That's why I have such a hard time being around people who won't just share what's really going on. Because here's the mindset I think all of us need to adopt. We have to go through this tectonic shift as entrepreneurs because here's the challenge I think that a lot of us have. We go to events. We talk to people. We ask for advice, but we do it without being fully transparent about what's going on. So many of us are afraid to tell the person who's listening what's really happening for us, how bad things really are, where we're really feeling challenged, how long it's been, how bad it's been, how we're feeling about it. 'Cause when we're actually sharing that stuff, it's like almost immediately we get a solution, and it just makes sense because it's like the first time you're telling the truth about something, and now someone can actually help you where you need it. So the shift I want us to all consider is that the more transparent we are with each other, the more we can help each other, the more help we'll get, and the more we all go forward faster together.

And this little mantra, "Success creates deficits," is something I think about all the time. I actually say this to myself. I'll get up in the morning, and I'll feel uncomfortable. I'll feel anxious. And this is one of those ways that you can make entrepreneurial anxiety go away. I'll actually say to myself over and over, "Success creates deficits." And I'll think, "Where is it? Where is it that I'm uncomfortable? Why is it I'm feeling this way? Where is it in my business that I feel that deficit?" And it's crazy because if I think about it for long enough, I'll start realizing where I'm uncomfortable in the business, and I'll go start taking action on that, and that feeling of anxiety will go away.

See, it's natural for us to have issues. It's natural for us to have challenges. In fact, if you're growing a fast growth business, you're going to have a lot of issues, and you should be proud of them. Because, that's what I coach, fast-growth, hyper-growth businesses. That's what our high end mastermind is all about. It's taking entrepreneurs who have created a massive opportunity and then helping them build a fast-growth, hyper-growth business around them. Let's make it fast. Let's make it reliable. Let's put the right structure and organization in place, so that it becomes bulletproof, and let's make it grow like crazy.

But here's what I can tell you about coaching that group. They are constantly creating issues for themselves. Constantly. They will generate so many leads, they have to hire more salespeople. They get more salespeople, and then they have to build an operational system to deliver. I have a client who's hired six, I think maybe eight, customer service reps in the past couple of months because they're adding clients by the bucketload.

See, success creates deficits, and we should all be more comfortable sharing them because here's the new paradigm I want you to consider adopting. When you share the challenges in your business, you're just proving that you run a growth company. When you tell people what's really going on and what's wrong in your business, you're just showing them that you're one of those entrepreneurs that's growing and moving in a direction. And when you tell people what's really happening, and there are issues in your company, you're an entrepreneur who understands your business, who knows your company, and who isn't going to let their ego get in the way of finding a result or get in the way of finding a solution. Getting to a result.

So, for all of us, I think that adopting the mindset of being transparent and telling people what's really going on, because when we are, that's when we get help. It's difficult, but if we think about it, and we think about it in this way that success creates deficit, and only those entrepreneurs that are growing are creating those deficits, and the ones that are growing the fastest are the ones who are creating them at the fastest pace, then I think it makes it easier for us to be able to share what's really happening.

One last thing, you know it's funny, as I was talking, I was just thinking. Even when things get better for one of my clients, even when things get easier, even when they're not feeling any issues from the business, even when they're not feeling any challenges, I just recently got a boxer message from Molly Keyser, who runs Boudie Shorts. She runs the certification for Boudoir photographers, the fastest growing one in the country right now. Molly left me a message saying, "Hey, Alex. Things are going really well. The team's in place. Everybody knows their role, but I'm just feeling like it's gotten easy, and I'm a little uneasy 'cause I had a little extra time this week, and I just wanna know does everybody else feel this way?" And I get that message from my clients all the time. Molly's only the most recent. So, isn't it bizarre that even when we create so much success in our lives or in our business and so much momentum that things get easier for us, success for entrepreneurs still feel a deficit. Success creates deficit for us in 100% of cases.

I remember when Cadey and I figured out that we had gotten to the level of net worth where we can no longer manage our money on our own. We had to go out and get help to actually manage the money that we had in the world. We had to get advice and an entire legal structure just to manage and protect and take care of the net worth that we created. So even in just creating a massive stack of cash, we created a deficit we had to go out and cure by hiring Elizabeth Morgan, who's one of the most amazing asset protection attorneys in the world, literally in the world, to create us a structure so that we're safe. But we had created such a high level of net worth, we had to create a structure that was multiple six figures to put together... or maybe it was, yeah it was around six figures to put together but costs us eight figures, or sorry, it's six figures to put together and cost us five figures a year to maintain just to make sure our net worth was safe, and our equity was safe.

Even in just creating cash, you create a deficit that you have to go out and cure. So, for all of us, we should be proud of the challenges we're creating in our business. We should be proud of the challenges we're experiencing in our lives because they are vivid proof of the fact that we are growing, creating momentum, and making things happen. If you haven't yet, do me a favor. Go to getthirstynow.com. I've been on this for a long time. With every one of my high-end clients who come into our coaching program for million dollar plus businesses, the first protocol I put them through is our ten day natural thirst challenge. We show people the structure, the systems, and everything else that they need to run their business, but I start with the entrepreneur first. This is one of those keystone habits that fixes, or that improves everything. When you are fully hydrated, literally everything in your life gets easier. Getthirstynow.com.