Momentum Podcast: 209

Solve Someone's Problem

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Entrepreneurial anxiety is real. The faster we come to terms with it, the faster we can do something about it. So where does entrepreneurial anxiety come from? It comes from people like you and I wanting to be in momentum, make progress, get things done, and not being able to. If we lean in and embrace the anxiety, it will help us move forward.move the business forward. You also need to recognize and eliminate where you are uncomfortable. Don’t deny the anxiety. It only makes it worse. 

Full Audio Transcript

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 are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future, and instead of 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 of the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Solve someone's problem. This week is Paleo f(x), which is one of my favorite events. I really enjoy going there. There's a lot of people who have really cutting-edge health stuff, there's cutting edge health speakers and tons of the vendors in the paleo movement. You can meet them up close and personal. It's a great event for me because a lot of people who are selling in the paleo movement are our perfect avatar, so I love going to Paleo f(x).

Yesterday was an event that they have called Health Entrepreneurs f(x), and that's an event where health entrepreneurs can come and do round tables and get questions answered. I was there around helping people grow their business. There's this consistent issue when I talk to every level of entrepreneur in that they are missing this fundamental principle of solving someone's problem.

Here's what I mean by that. I mean that your business shouldn't just have a great product because businesses that have a great product have to talk about their great product to everyone and hope that the right person sees it. Those businesses are really hard to get clients for, but when you solve someones problem, when you have a clear avatar, a niche, someone who you know, like when you walk into a room and you can find your client and you know what pain points they have, so you know what problem you solve, you show them what you do to solve it and your products, you will have people coming to you because when you solve someone's problem, that is where people are willing to invest.

Here's the challenge that happens so often, and this is why I bring this up. Yesterday, there was a lot of different people that were at Health Entrepreneurs f(x), and I normally deal with entrepreneurs that are over about a million dollars a year, and then I do a Q&A with entrepreneurs that are over $300,000 a year. I don't spend a lot of time with startup entrepreneurs, but one of the biggest challenges that I see at all different levels, but specifically at startup entrepreneur is that entrepreneurs get caught up in a product or something that they want to do and they don't think about whose problem are they solving.

Yesterday, I talked to a really nice woman who told me what her issue was. She said, "I need help because I have a mastermind coming up in a couple of months, and I have a ton of really high-level speakers that are going to be there, but I've only sold six tickets." I said, "Well, tell me what problem does your mastermind solve," and there was no explanation. Here's the challenge for that. It's not ... When I said, "What problem does your mastermind solve?" she said, "Well, I have all these people in one place, and if you have a challenge with your health, they're going to talk about having challenges with your health and optimizing and feeling better."

Here's the problem that someone has to make the decision to spend money with you, get on a plane, fly across the country, or drive down the street, spend time with you in order to invest the time that they have on an outcome. If there's not a clear outcome, that means the only people you sign up for most events are the people who see someone who's going to be there and they say, "It's worth the price of admission to see that person."

It's because so often these events where there is no avatar, here's what you're counting on. The person who's doing it is counting on the fact that they have a massive list and they can sell a ton, but if you don't have a massive list, and you're not solving someone's problem, it's hard to be heard. Here's the issue. A lot of people look at other events out there, and they say, "Well, yeah, there's these general events." Well, if you look at any general event that's doing well, it typically started as a very niche event that had very few people involved and just catered to a small tribe and really became important to that tribe. The people over time then became more and more important and solved their problems, and then that tribe grew to where the event looked like it was a lot more mainstream, and it's just because it's catering to a bigger tribe.

But when you first start, if you aren't solving someone's problem, you have the responsibility to go try and talk to everyone. It's brutal. Here's how you make sure you're solving someone's problem: You have to get clear on who you're talking to.

Last night, when I asked that woman whose problem are you solving, she didn't have an answer. She just wanted to talk about how great her event was going to be and how much she was going to deliver and how important her speakers were and how it would be very hard for anyone else to assemble these people the way that she did. I am 100% certain all of those things are true, but not one of them turns people into a buyer.

What turns people into a buyer is when you've identified that they have a problem and you can clearly show them exactly what the solution is and you can show them how you can help them move forward, create momentum because you know their problem better than anyone else. The more focused you are, the easier this is because here's what happens: If you're running a business and you're solving someone's problem, then you start having the same conversation with the same tribe over and over and over again. If you have a conversation with that tribe over and over again, and you put feedback mechanisms in place, you'll hear that tribe, this movement that you're growing, the people that are buying from you.

You let them give you feedback. You ask them for feedback. You have them rank how they felt about the experiences that they've had with you so that you understand what's happening, and what will happen is you will clarify even greater what your avatar wants and how they want it, and if you are solving someone's problem, you begin to build the entire business around solving someone's problem instead of around a product.

I can tell you, I've done both, and I've been really transparent for a few years, man, I forgot this. I've trained this stuff for years. I've known it for decades. You have to solve a problem or else you're screaming down a hallway and you're hoping for attention. I completely forgot what it was to solve someone's problem, and it wasn't until about a year ago when I started working with million dollar-plus entrepreneurs.

Here's what happened. I got clear on it was a million dollar-plus entrepreneur that I wanted to work with, and I went out, and I talked to over a hundred million dollar-plus entrepreneurs. I had interviews with them. I asked them what was going on for them, what were their frustrations, where did they feel like they needed help. I asked them things like, really important questions like what type of coaching have you paid for, what would you pay for, what are you looking for?

Over time, I figured out what that person was looking for, and I heard from all of them, "Well, I don't have a lot of time," and the million dollar-plus avatar, here's what I heard from them is, "I don't have a lot of time, and I really need help applying things fast, and I need a system where I can grow this business without feeling overwhelmed all the time. I don't know what to do on a daily basis and what to do next." Our clients, 100% of them, is feeling like they're completely and totally overwhelmed.

What our system does is it doesn't just show them how to put a communication system in their business fast so that everyone knows where they're going. It doesn't just show them how to do forward planning in a way where the team can understand where the company's going so they can anticipate the next moves. It doesn't just show them the right measurements, the right metrics, the way to track them over time so that your team has a scoreboard and they're successful.

What it does is it delivers in a way that is right for our avatar. See, the videos that we have in our platform, we don't have hour-long videos. The average video on our platform's probably four to six minutes. We have some that are short as a minute and a half. We have some that are as long as 12 minutes, but most of our videos are four to six minutes because I'm trying to nail the concept as fast as I can because I'm talking to entrepreneurs that don't have time. In a million dollars-plus, there is no time, so not only are we solving the problem with the content we provide, the product, we're solving the problem with the delivery method we provide, the service. If you start to solve someone's problem, you start building around that avatar, around that person, around that niche that you're building, that's where you will explode your business because if you are having trouble growing from any level, ask yourself whose problem you are solving because here's what I know.

When I go to an event like Paleo f(x), if I meet an entrepreneur who's over a million dollars who knows that they have more opportunity than what they can address right now, who has the awareness that they need an infrastructure around them, a bigger team, a better communication system, they know that there is something missing, and they're committed to making it work, and they're willing to change behavior, then I know I'm talking to somebody that we can absolutely help. If I run into that person when I'm in an event like this, it makes it really easy for me to know who to talk to.

Yesterday, when we were at Health Entrepreneurs f(x), I did a couple of round tables. I first qualified the table and find out who's where because then I know who I should be talking to later and who should really hear from us because when you're 300,000 or more, that's when we start solving someone's problem.

If you don't have that type of clarity around whose problem you solve, and your business isn't growing as fast as you want it to be, you probably have an issue because your avatar isn't hearing you, because today, the number of people who want to go to an event so they can improve their health and hear a whole bunch of stuff from a whole bunch of people in the different ways is very few. That's not very exciting. Today, the number of people who are looking to just go somewhere because it's going to be a good experience, that's not a very high number, but the number of people who are looking to solve a problem is massive.

Now, I'm not saying you can't do it the other way, but in my experience, the percentage of success for someone who isn't solving a specific population's product is incredibly low. The percentage of success for those entrepreneurs who have a clear avatar, who they can identify, who they can walk in and pick out of a room with pain points and problems that they solve and a process that they can deliver repeatedly to solve that or a product or a system or whatever it is that makes that pain point go away, those are the entrepreneurs that over time grow the fastest growing businesses at the highest margins and have the most fun because when you are solving someone's problem, your entire life gets easier over time because your tribe, your following will help you grow, and they will believe in you in a way that will support your organization getting to the next level.

That's what it takes, is solving a problem because that is what gets you loyalty. That is what gets people to stay with you. That's what gets people to make certain that they are continuing to learn from you is if you've solved their problem and you continue to do that, you will always have a group of people that will buy your product, buy your service, sign up for your coaching, whatever it is you do, because when you're solving someone's problem, you can be heard, and when you're solving the same problem for the same types of people, they will find you.

If you haven't yet, go to the billionairecode.com, answer a few questions for us, and we will give you the Billionaire Code framework. If right now you're sitting there and thinking, "Whose problem do I solve?" the billionaire code is the exact outline, the framework that I use to determine where someone is in their entrepreneurial path so that I can understand how I'm addressing or working with them.

If you work with entrepreneurs or people who are getting into business or people who are self-employed or multilevel marketing or any of those things, and you want to know whose problem you solve, the Billionaire Code will help you very quickly identify what level they're at and what they need next so that you can solve someone's problem. Go to billionairecode.com.

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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