Company Update And An Ask

Alex Charfen: This is a podcast update that's been coming for a long time. My team's been telling me people have wanted it. My friends of mine have been telling me people have wanted it, and I've even gotten this feedback at events, that people want us to do a podcast, every once in a while, just updating where we are in our business and sharing our growth. That's what you're about to hear.

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 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 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.

I haven't done this before. I haven't actually just done a full podcast, letting people know where we are as a company and letting you know, letting ... You listen to me every day. I want you to know where we are as an organization, and what we're working on and what's going on for us, because here's what's interesting. I'll share in just a minute and give you details, but in a lot of ways, not only am I coaching the stuff that we do, I actually live the stuff that we coach. Not only are we helping businesses grow incredibly fast and make just incredible changes in the world, but we're doing the same thing ourselves.

I'd love to give you just a quick update on where we are as a company, where we are as a team, and where I'm focused. I'm always telling people to ask for help. On this podcast, I'm going to ask for your help. I don't do it often, but if you are willing to help me, I would really appreciate it.

So let me give you a quick update on where we are as a business. In July of last year, Cadey and I effectively shut down a business we had owned since 2007. It was called Charfen Institute. We are super-creative, so we opened a new business called Charfen. But the reason we closed down Charfen Institute is we had ... It was actually Charfen Institute, but it was originally called the Distressed Property Institute. It's the business that Cadey and I started in 2008, where we did the Certified Distressed Property Expert designation. We decided that we wanted to just close that business. We had done a lot of different things with it, there was a long history with it, and it just made more sense for us to cut it off and start new and have a new beginning, and do something completely new.

What had happened with that business was it was part real estate, it was part coaching, it was part of a lot of different stuff, and so in July of last year, we started over from literally zero. We didn't have any coaching clients, we didn't really have any new products. We decided we knew that we were in a space where we're going to start creating new stuff, so that's what we did. So in July of last year, we introduced what is now our Billionaire Code coaching products. The first one we introduced was our high-level Grow & Scale mastermind, and then a few months ago, we introduced our Billionaire Code Accelerator, which is a $2,000 a month product.

To give you an update, from July of last year until July, August, September of this year, we got to a $2 million recurring revenue run rate, and an overall run rate of about $2.5 million a year. Pretty explosive growth for the first year out of the gate. We felt really good about it. We're excited about it. It'll make it hard for the Inc. 500 list, because actually the lower your first year is, the easier it is. But we expect to grow like crazy.

And here's where we are right now as a business. Our high-level Grow & Scale mastermind has been incredible. We have some of the most game-changing entrepreneurs in the world in that group, but we've stopped selling directly into it. In fact, we created a product called the Billionaire Code Accelerator. It's a $2,000 a month product, and that is where a ton of our team's focus is going. In fact, what we recently did was pulled all of our advertising. We pulled all of our outward-facing communication that we paid for. We're still doing organic, but we pulled a lot back, because my team is spending November and December revamping our content, our delivery systems, how we communicate with our clients, how our clients are onboarded, and really all of our operations, because we want to put hundreds and then thousands of people through the Billionaire Code Accelerator.

Here's why. There are tens of millions of businesses out there that need our help, and here's who we're targeting with the Billionaire Code Accelerator. It's anyone who's done over about $25,000 in a month, and up to, we just onboarded a client that is a $14 million a year business. Everybody's going through our accelerator program, because we're teaching three things that are fundamental to business growth. One is creating a strategic plan, a forward-looking strategy that you can communicate to your team and that you and your team can win with.

The second one is a communications cadence, a system for communications so that your meetings are the same, so that your communication is the same, so that your team has ultimate stability and hand-in-hand with ultimate stability, ultimate confidence. And then three, we show entrepreneurs how to build the infrastructure around them, systematically, day-by-day, of people and process that make it so you can do more of what you do well.

That program has been changing entrepreneurs' lives, literally, in just a few months. I mean, some of the testimonials we have coming out of that group are crazy. As one example I'm super-proud of, Rachel Peterson recently joined our group. She hasn't even been on her coaching call yet, and she already made a post about how she's doubled her business, only having implemented part of our stuff. It's amazing to listen to entrepreneurs winning like this.

In fact, another person who's in our group, Emily [Hersch], started with us about a year ago. She had 14 members, was doing everything herself, under a million dollars in revenue. Today, her business is at about $2.5 million run rate, she has over 20 team members, she's handling Facebook ads and launches for some of the biggest names in the game, like Marie Forleo and other people at the very highest label, Peng Jun, and a whole bunch of other people, and she's running on our systems and her business is exploding.

So we decided we're going to go all-in on these systems, on showing people our cadence, our communication system, our forward-planning system, and how to hire the right people and build a game-changing team around you. That's where we are as a business. Next year, we expect to go from where we are now to multiples of where we are now, because as we tighten up our delivery systems, as we tighten up our onboarding, then we're going to stand on the gas for marketing, and I think we're going to see an explosive year next year, and I can't wait to share it with you.

Quick update on the podcast. We're still doing really well with the podcast, but Libsyn changed something about their download algorithm, so instead of 130,000 or 140,000 downloads a month, we're now at like 70,000 or 80,000 downloads a months, so we have seen a drop in downloads, but still getting a lot of really good activity from the podcast. So that's been incredibly exciting as well.

Here's my next year of my life. We're going to be focused on the Billionaire Code coaching groups, and we're also going to be publishing a book that I've wanted to publish forever, called Momentum. We have the Entrepreneurial Personality Type book already. The next goal with that book, if you go to freemomentumbook.com. You can get a copy of it for free, and what we're going to do is get that book on Amazon, get it into bookstores, and then we are working in earnest on our book called Momentum, and we are really pumped about it.

The Momentum book is going to be new, completely different. There hasn't been a book written like this before. It's going to go through not just the entrepreneurial personality type, but what are the keystone habits that help us, as entrepreneurs, create massive momentum. And again, keystone habits are the habits that create momentum everywhere, do not create constraint anywhere, and help you move forward, like hydration. Hydration only helps you. There's nothing about hydration that's going to hold you back.

I'm going to go through a ton of other keystone habits that we've discovered in our coaching programs and over 25 years of working with high-producing individuals with entrepreneurs running six-figure, seven-figure, eight-figure, even nine- and ten-figure businesses, and so I'm super-excited to share that with everybody. I am thrilled to be able to start working on that and get it out. I've got a manuscript. I'm actually standing in front of it. It's a 96-page manuscript on 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper that I want to go through, that I'm going to go through and then we're going to put it together for you guys. I'll keep everybody posted on when that's coming out.

And then here's my ask. I'm asking for help. I don't do this a lot on podcasts, but here is the request that I have. One is, if you're a podcast listener, I don't know what happened to our numbers, but it's been super-demoralizing for our team, because for a year, we built up the podcast, built up the podcast. We got to 140,000 downloads, Libsyn changed their algorithm, and overnight, we went from 130,000, 140,000 down to 80,000 or 60,000 in a month. One ask is that you subscribe to the podcast, make sure it's auto-downloading, and then do me a favor, tell at least three people about this podcast. Help us get our numbers back. They are bumming us out. Our whole team's like, "Man, why can't we get the podcast back to where it was?" If you'd be willing to help me, I would truly appreciate it.

Another thing you can do is first, subscribe, second, tell some people about it. Make a post online about the podcast. Tag me. I would love to see it, and I will make sure I comment on it and make sure that we have a discussion and that you know that I've seen it for sure. If you're willing to do that, I would appreciate it so much. That would be huge. And then one last thing is if you would be willing to go leave us a review for the podcast, if you're in iTunes and you just go to Leave a Review, I read every single one of those. I often pull them down and read them to my team, and so we would love to get this thing built back up. That's my big ask, is to get the podcast back to where it was and get the podcast back to the numbers we were hitting before. If you'd be willing to help us with that, by doing those things, that would be absolutely huge.

Let's see. I think that's it. I really appreciate your help. I appreciate you being a listener. I appreciate you being here every day for the podcast, and I hope you enjoy this business update, because even though we help other people grow their businesses, even though we help other entrepreneurs grow their teams, for us right now, there is a lot that we're working on. Not only am I coaching the stuff that we put out there, I'm also helping entrepreneurs, or sorry, I'm also helping our business, our team, do the exact same thing. We use every one of our systems to grow our business, we use every one of our strategies to grow our business, so it's actually been really interesting to be in the growth process with our clients at the same time. I'm really excited for the year to come and appreciate you more than I can possibly express.

Thanks for being a listener, and do me a favor again. Subscribe to the podcast, make a post online, tag some people who should be listening to it, recommend it to three friends, and then if you'd be willing to leave a comment on iTunes, I would appreciate it. We put out, I think this is the 368th podcast, so if you've listened to any of them and would be willing to share your reactions on iTunes, I would truly, 100%, absolutely appreciate it. Thank you.