Survive Blindsides

So many people think that having a team is complication, that it creates exposure. The reality is the opposite. Here's a fact about being an entrepreneur. You will get blindsided, you have to develop a team around you so you can survive blind sides and not just survive, but even continue to build your business when something happens.

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 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.

As an entrepreneur, there is a certainty that you have to accept that things are going to happen. You're going to experience challenges. Life will happen, as Cadey likes to say, and this is an exciting episode of our podcast because we recently did go through a massive blind side. Cadey is feeling much better now and she's actually joining me to share with you how you can survive blind sides and even in the middle of chaos, your business can thrive. Cadey, I'm excited to have you on this one.

Cadey: I'm excited to be here.

Alex Charfen: So let's just really quick, you went down for how long and like, this was the longest period you've ever been, like not productive. I think it certainly since I've known you, yeah.

Cadey: Yeah, for sure. And let's just say if Netflix and napping were a job, I would have been crushing it. And so I went to the hospital, I have had, I stayed in the hospital for five days because I had a blood infection and had an emergency surgery and then a followup surgery a couple of weeks later. And I am here to talk about it. So, and what's great about that is that we had a tremendous amount of support around us and in order to make sure our clients were still taken care of, and our business was still thriving, and our team still had the support that they needed. And you know, I could be literally in bed, and you could be working at, you know, such less capacity than you normally would be and all it kind of still kind of went off without a hitch.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. I mean, this is why this is such an important topic because the highest exposure you're going to have as an entrepreneur, period, is when you are a solopreneur. And be careful about following anyone or talking to anyone or learning from anyone who says anything different than that. Because, here's what that person is actually expressing. What they're expressing is they don't know how to get support. They don't know how to get help, because anyone who says, "You don't want to have a team, you don't want to have people around you," here's what they're encouraging you to do is expose yourself like crazy because if you don't have support, if Cadey and I didn't have support, here's what did happen in the past month. I had to go down to probably a 30% capacity and Cadey went down to probably 5% capacity and you know, and 5% may be generous.

There's certain things that Cadey does like, you know, some financial stuff that she does, some operational things that she does, but it was maybe one hour a week or less. And that's real, that's legit.

Cadey: That is legitimately-

Alex Charfen: Which, you know, it's shocking to even say that. And here's what happened in the last month. So in the last month, we had our sales go up, we radically improved our delivery systems. We had the largest event we've ever had since we started Billionaire Code events. And we got probably the best feedback we've ever gotten, and that was with me working at 30% capacity and you not working nearly at all.

Cadey: And here's the other kicker, is that we hired two team members and they've been fully onboarded and trained while I was in bed and Alex was working at probably 30% capacity, because he's been hanging out with the kids and doing stuff that I would normally have done.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. And so here's the reality of being an entrepreneur, people and unfortunately a lot of coaches see teams as complication. But here's the reality, a team equals freedom. When you have a team and something happens, you go down, you know, you want to take time off. I've been on vacation with the kids for the last week, the kids get screen time so I use my screen time to record podcasts and videos and stuff. So I've been on vacation. I work an hour a day or an hour and a half a day when they get a little extra screen time. But teams create freedom and so I've been able to take a week off and hang out with the kids after we went through this. You know, most entrepreneurs if you had, had to take a month at 30% capacity and if you know, the partner you run the business with, your wife, it goes down to nothing, you'd be working a heck of a lot. I actually took time off.

And here's something I want you to understand, the laptop lifestyle is absolutely possible with a team. I think too many people conflate and combine, you know, you have to have no, if you want to go have freedom and travel the world and do whatever you want to do, then you shouldn't have a team. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, you can do both.

Cadey: For sure. And I think the exposure and the flip side if we wouldn't have had a team, is that we could have potentially had to cancel our event. And we had clients coming in from not just the United States but all over the world. And so we would have let our team down, we would have definitely lost revenue and we wouldn't have grown our team, we wouldn't have grown our rep, we wouldn't have grown our sales and we wouldn't have, you know, we would've let clients down. And then also I think what is potential for entrepreneurs and EPTs to do is even though doctors were telling me you need to be on bed rest, you don't need to be doing anything. You know, most entrepreneurs would barrel through-

Alex Charfen: Yeah.

Cadey: And you know, work at a higher capacity than they should have been and then I wouldn't have healed properly. And you know, I can say that I've actually done stuff like that in the past, and it's actually hindered my health, and it's hindered our growth, and it actually hurts you in the long run.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. So here's why this is so important, life happens to all of us. The highest exposure you have is when you don't have a team. And I don't care, you know, I've had people tell me how much they make, like as an answer to that advice. They'll say, "Oh, but I make $20,000 a day or $50,000 a day." And here's the reality, it doesn't matter if you make $10 an hour or $10,000 an hour, if you're working as a solopreneur you have equal exposure. And so that's one of the things I will not allow myself to do is have all of the responsibility for delivery because we, when I say the laptop lifestyle is possible, we've got it to the point where Cadey and I can literally take computers with us, go anywhere in the world we want and get our working hours down to an absolute minimum when we need to, if we need to.

And that's what we did. And then we can come back and dive back in and you know, get what we need to get done. The other thing you said before we jumped on is no one is good at everything.

Cadey: Nobody's good at everything. And I know that, you know, as an entrepreneur, I've done it in the past. I know that you've done it also, where we've continuously done things that were not good at, that frustrate us that, you know, decrease our momentum. And when you're doing that, you're just deleveraging yourself. And so it's better to outsource those things and outsource them early.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, no doubt. And the other thing is when you're trying to do everything you are, there's no question you are doing things where you are swimming up hill. And then the last reason why this is really important is you're not going to stop. If you, you're not going to stop wanting to do more, make a bigger impact, wanting to create bigger outcomes, to make more things happen. And if you're trying to do it all on your own, there is a point where the momentum you can develop on your own will not be enough. Recognize that point, because here's what too many entrepreneurs do. They get to that point and then they go looking for why and they start doing things on the side and they start committing to other things. The reality is, if you start building a team and you're scaling your business, it will take your focus and put you in momentum.

Cadey: 100%. I think, you know, on the flip side we had talked about when I was pregnant with Reagan and I was a new entrepreneur, I was a real estate agent and you know, I was nervous to lead people. I was scared to ask for help, I was terrible at it. And I was nine months pregnant, I was in labor, I had two deals that were closing and I went into labor early and I was literally on calls working my clients through closing their transactions on really one of the most important transactions that most people invested in their entire life in a home. And here I am taking calls in between contractions, because I was under leveraged and I didn't have a team and it was just because of my own like self limiting thoughts. And you know, I felt exposed and I felt vulnerable and I didn't know that people, I didn't believe that people could do the things that I was doing in the way that I was. And those were just lies and kind of stories that I was wrapped up in and telling myself.

And so, you know, the perspective of what has happened this month versus what was happening, you know, 12 years ago in my business was something that ... Well, the reason why I talked to Alex and why I thought that this podcast was really important because, you know, we do have stories that are very drastically different from, you know, where we were 12 years ago and where we are today.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, I know. You know, and we were just talking about this before we hit record. You know, there was a point too where I had a massive organization in my twenties and when I got rid of it, I sold myself on like I don't want help. I don't want to have to deal with people, I don't want to have to do it, you know, I'm going to do as much as I can myself so it will be less complicated this time. That lasted like two months and then I was, I remember thinking this is crazy. I can't imagine how anybody does this. When I got into business early, I was overwhelmed. I had to get a team. I think, you know, more entrepreneurs should overwhelm themselves so they have to get a team because you will start growing more as a person. So here's what you need to know, first, build the team earlier than you think. I think way too many entrepreneurs go to the point where they must build a team, it's too late, isn't it?

Cadey: 100% and if you're scared to get, you know, help in your business, get help at your house. You start there. It's much easier to outsource the laundry than it is to outsource items in your business, and that's really good practice and you're going to get some of your time back.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, no question. The second thing is, what you need to know is its hard for all of us to ask for help. So if you're thinking, "Oh, it's so hard to ask for help, I don't know how, it's hard to get help." It's true, it is. Do it anyway because you're not going to do it all yourself. You're never going to get to the place where you really want all by yourself and learn how to ask for help. It feels vulnerable, but being on your own is way more vulnerable.

Cadey: You're 100% more exposed for sure.

Alex Charfen: And then the last one is, here's something you really need to think about. Are your coaches, mentors, the people who you are learning from, are they where you want to be? Do they have teams? Do they have an organization around them? Are they growing an enterprise, a business? You know, if you're looking to really grow a company, if you want to have a team around you, learn from people who do and it's dangerous not to. Because if you're learning from someone who's out there on their own, here's what you need to understand goes into every equation that they go through before they teach. They're asking themselves, how do I get this done by myself? How do I get this done without a team? How do I get this done without training infrastructure? So their solutions may seem magical in the present, but if they're not building a team and growing an enterprise, and going through what it takes to do those things, they're not growing as much as you can as an entrepreneur. And it's dangerous to learn from people who are not growing as entrepreneurs.

Cadey: Yeah. If you're being mentored or you have a coach or a consultant that you're working with and you don't look at them and go, you know what? Two years from now or five years from now, or three years from now, or however long you want to be where they are, then you might be in the wrong room.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, for sure. For sure. So here's the results we actually had. So I want you to know this. So the results we had, Cadey went down for a month, the longest we've ever had to deal with anything like that. And the result we had was, one, our event revenue went up, right? Oh, sorry, we pulled off our event, our revenue went up, and we continued to add more clients. And I had the time that I needed to spend with the girls. I had time that I needed to do what I need to do for Cadey. And Cadey was able to make a full recovery.

So if you're listening to this podcast, and you're thinking, you know what? I want that, I want the security of a team. I want the security of having people around me who can help once things happen, I want to know that it's not just me who's 100% exposed, go to billionairecode.com, answer a few questions with my team. You'll jump on a call with one of us, and we will explain to you how we're helping entrepreneurs around the world offload where they're uncomfortable and have a team help them where they should and get their strengths supported and, sorry, their strengths protected so that, that's where they live. That's where they work and they get support everywhere else. Go to billionairecode.com, don't wait, you don't have to do this on your own.