Momentum Podcast: 242

Fake Leaders Always Fail

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

So many times as entrepreneurs, we hire people to lead certain parts of our business but we don’t actually allow them to take the lead. We create fake leaders, and that’s a certain way to have them fail. 

We want to understand everything that’s happening along the way, we don’t know how to pull back and let go. Here’s a massive mind shift for you, the less you do, the more successful your company will be when it’s up and running. Give your team members more responsibilities and they will be more invested in the outcomes.

Full Audio Transcript

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trail blazers, 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 re-write 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 just day dreaming 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.

Fake leaders will always fail. This probably isn't what you think it is. In fact, by the title, I think a lot of people will assume that what I'm talking about is leaders, people who are in leadership roles, who want to lead in the world and aren't doing it the right way. That is definitely a place where fake leaders will fail. If you are a thought leader, a speaker, an expert, a entrepreneur of any kind, and you are trying to lead in a category where you haven't achieved significant success yourself, or if you're trying to get people an outcome you've never had yourself, that's a terrible way to lead.

However, that's not what this podcast is about. This is about something much more important and also something much more damaging to your business if you allow it to be. See, this podcast is about how so many times as entrepreneurs, we hire people to lead parts of our business, we hire people to manage parts of our business, but we don't actually allow them to lead. They become fake leaders.

Here's what that looks like. We hire someone and we say, "Hey, you're in charge of sales," or "You're in charge of customer service," or you're in charge of whatever it is, and then we tell them everything to do. One of the biggest challenges that we have as entrepreneurs is we want to know how things are going to be done, when they're going to be done, what it's going to look like, how it's going to be finished. We want to understand what's happening along the way, and here's the issue we have, every single one of us. In order to successfully start a business, what do you have to do? Everything. That's the fact. Unless it's you and your wife or you and a partner, and then in that case you both have to do everything.

When we start our business, as entrepreneurs, we literally do everything. We lead generate. We find new people to talk to. We close the deals. We deliver the deals. We make the product go out. We do the marketing. We do everything. As time goes on, the success we experience in our business becomes hardwired, psychologically programmed, triggered by doing everything. We go along, we do everything and we have success. Then we don't know how to pull back and stop doing everything.

I want to help you with that today. Because here's the challenge for us. Because we've always done everything, we have a hard time separating the fact that we can be successful without doing everything. In fact, here's a major leap I want to encourage you to make. Here's a massive thought process or shift in thought processes I want to offer you, and that is the less you do, the more successful you will be once your company is up and running. Now that doesn't work at the beginning. If you do it right out of the gate, you're just not going to do anything. But once you have your business up and running, once things are going forward, once you start building your team, it is time for you to focus on doing less.

This morning I had the privilege, like really, the sincere privilege of going downtown here in Austin to the Jim Lord Summit for Gym Launch, Alex and Leila Hormozi and I walked by Alex's sister Mimi. I said, "Mimi, how is the event going for you?" There are 500 people there. There are a whole team. People from the around the world, huge hotel room, tons of AV people. We're talking a major production here. Mimi turned to me and she said, "It's so weird, Alex. I just don't have that much to do." That is exactly how it should be for a COO of a $30 million dollar company that is exploding because Mimi is doing the right thing.

Here's what I mean by that. Instead of installing fake leadership in Gym Launch and in the companies I worked with, we find people who actually lead, who takeover departments, who create outcomes, who make things happen. Here's the fact. If you want your leadership to be responsible, give them responsibility. Here's what that means. You offload the outcomes for a department and then you let them do it their way. Now, that doesn't mean you close your eyes, you walk away, you pray for the best, you cross your fingers. None of that crap. But you tell them exactly what you're looking for. What is the outcome you want? What's the result you want? Then you allow the person who you've hired to create the process. You allow that person the responsibility so that you can grow and they can grow because when you offload outcomes, when you say, "Here's the result I want. I want you to get us there." Now, you don't have to worry about it anymore.

Here's why that's so critical. There are five currencies that create our success as an entrepreneur. Cash and time are the first two, and those are the ones that we talk about. Those are the ones that we measured. Those are the ones that we're aware of. But effort, energy and focus, the other three, are the ones where we will spread ourselves thin, where we will hurt ourselves, where we won't even pay attention, where we won't even realize we have an issue that we're putting out too much effort, burning too much energy and focusing on too many different things.

By allowing a leader to actually take responsibility by offloading that responsibility, they can grow. You regain those currencies and everything goes forward exponentially faster. If your company's plateaued, if you're not growing, if you brought people in and the team isn't doing what you want it to, if you don't feel like you're getting the help you need, the support you need, if you don't feel like it's gotten easier for you, then this might be the issue and I don't want you to beat yourself up. I don't want you to sit there and think, "Man, am I doing this? How dumb. How silly. Why am I doing this? Why am I hiring people without letting them help me?" I want you to know that near 100% of entrepreneurs go through this phase of bringing people in and using them as process, bringing people in and not actually turning over the reins or the responsibility.

Here's how you do this. If you've been listening to me and you're thinking, "Oh, crap. He's right. I've got fake leaders. I've brought in people. I told them they're in charge. They aren't really in charge. I'm telling them what to do. I'm watching too much. I'm not allowing them to process." Here is a simple way to go about this. First, give every leader you have on your team clear outcomes. What is the result you want, the destination, the outcome? Tell them exactly what it is. That's step one. If they know where they are going, they have a much better chance of getting there. If they don't know where they're going, you are relying on your business to get ... You're relying to get lucky in your business.

Let's be honest. I had trouble getting lucky when I was single. I don't trust luck in my business. I'm of course kind of kidding. Not really. I was a tragedy when I was single. I don't rely on luck anywhere. I want process and systems. I give people clear outcomes.

The second part of getting someone to be responsible is not just clear outcomes but clear accountability. What are they responsible for and what are the other leaders around them responsible for?

Then the third one is give them clear scoreboards. If you do this, here's what happens. If each person on your team has a clear outcome, clear accountability, they know what they're doing and what the other person is doing and they have clear scoreboards, you will create the magic of lateral pressure. That means the people on your team will push each other. The system that surrounds your team will push everyone on the team to show up and perform at the highest level and you as the person who's running the organization is no longer seen as the "boss." You're seen as the head coach. You're seen as the person who relieves pressure. You're seen as the person who they can go to for help.

If you want your company to explode, this is how it works. Find good people. Give them massive responsibility and coach their success along the way. Give up trying to control everything. Give up trying to understand everything. Give up trying to put together every process in your business and making it perfect. Hire intelligent people who care, who are true believers and excited about your cause, and if you put this process in place of clear outcomes, accountability and scoreboards, those true believers will kill for you and all you do is make sure you're in the right targeted interactions. The team knows where they're going. They're getting updates within a system so that they can rely on it and then you stand on the sidelines and coach and help and support and encourage and let your team know how amazing they are.

Make sure that if there's a resource or an issue or a stumbling block that they run into or something that they need, you jump in and solve it for them because once your team has assumed the mantle of responsibility and they are getting things done for you, your job is to remove friction for them and make it even easier because when that happens, we are no longer relying on your productivity to grow your team. We're relying on everyone's productivity to grow your team and that is exponentially more powerful than any one of us can be on our own.

Let's be real. We are evolutionary hunters. We are entrepreneurial personality types. We are hardwired different than the rest of the world. We learn hardly anything standing still, and in reality, we learn barely anything when we are alone so build your team. Bring in the people around you to help you accomplish your greatest destination. Make the contributions that you can together. Help as many people as you possibly can and give your team members responsibility. They will be more vested in the outcomes. They will be more excited about your doing and you will not have fake leaders in your organization because when somebody is put into a management or leadership position and they're not empowered to truly take over that position, you can tell right away how much pain that person is in.

I don't want that to happen in your company. I don't want that to happen around you, and I don't want you to feel those negative feelings from the people who are trying to help you build your business. Give people responsibility and they will be responsible. Coach success along the way and you will not lose. Let the people around you take over the departments you've given them and let them find the way and you help them know how. This is the fastest way to grow a business and the fastest way to grow as an entrepreneur because when we build a team and we help the people around us and together we go out and we help the clients that we are working with, we help the avatar in the market that we want to help, we create the movement that we are trying to create. We find the people who care as much as we do. We build the following, get the momentum and go out. When we do these things, we are absolutely capable of changing the world. Don't ever doubt it.

Fake leaders always fail. But if you do things right, you and your team's success is exponentially more likely to occur when you allow the people around you to help you in the way that you hired them to do so. I'm excited for you. Fake leaders will always fail but those who are allowed to lead and supported in the right way will create massive momentum for you and far more than you can create on your own.

If you're ready to build your team and you're ready to go fast, you've created the opportunity, you know there's more out there for you, you could be making a greater contribution, it's simple. Go to billionairecode.com. Answer some questions and my team and I will get back to you or you can set up a call with a member of my team. We have membership programs for businesses anywhere from $300,000 a year and up and let us help you get into one of our memberships, go from 300,000 to a million, a million to 10 million and then 10 million and beyond because the path to entrepreneurial success has been solved. We have cracked the code on how you do this. If you have an opportunity that's greater than what you're taking advantage of today, you owe it to yourself. You owe this to the market and you owe it to all of us to go to billionairecode.com. Answer a few questions and let's get you started you on the road to massive momentum.

Thank You For Listening!

I am truly grateful that you have chosen to spend your time listening to me and my podcast.

Please feel free to reach out if you have a question or feedback via our Contact Us page.

Please leave me a review on iTunes and share my podcast with your friends and family.

With gratitude,

Alex

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