Momentum Podcast: 500

Episode 500!

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Today's podcast is an exciting milestone for us; we've officially hit 500 episodes! I want to share with you the lessons I've learned, the insights I've gained, and what's come out of doing 500 Momentum Podcasts.

The idea to start this podcast happened back in 2017 when I joined Russell Brunson's inner circle. During our mastermind, Russel pulled me aside and said if I did a podcast, he would listen to me every day. He told me to start sharing what I knew, and people would start listening to it. I sat there and thought if Russell said I should do it, I will!

I have to admit; in the beginning, I had a bad case of imposter syndrome.

Recording that first episode was on my to-do list forever, and it took me a long time to commit to recording the first one. Eventually, I hit record, and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

This podcast has changed our business more than any single thing we've done. In just two years, the Momentum Podcast has hit 500 episodes with over 1.5 million downloads! 

Thank you for being a listener and making this possible, we couldn't do it without you!

Full Audio Transcript

This episode of the Momentum podcast is going to be a little bit different. This is my 500th episode.

I didn't ever consider when I started this that I would ever hit 500 podcast episodes, and I want to share with you the lessons I've learned, the insights I've gained, and what has come out of doing 500 Momentum podcasts.

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.

It is absolutely crazy to think that we have 500 podcast episodes for the Momentum podcast. You know, if you haven't heard the story of how this started in July of 2017, I went ... actually, before that, we joined Russell Brunson's inner circle, and in July Russell invited me and my family out to a place called Pirate's Cove in Las Vegas. And I went to a multi-day mastermind with just some of the most incredible people I've ever met in my life. In fact, most of them are either clients of mine now or friends of mine now. Actually, all of them are friends or clients now, and just amazing human beings. And such an incredible week that we spent there, learning and understanding and getting insights on our business.

In one of those insights, Russell Brunson pulled me aside and he said, with the sincerity and seriousness and earnestness that only Russell can have, he said, "You know, hey man, I would listen to you every day if you did a podcast. If you were willing to put a podcast out there, I'd listen to it, and I know other people would listen to it. I really think if you went back and you did a podcast with where it was just you, don't do interviews, you know enough, just share what you know, and people will listen to it".

And I remember thinking, "Well, if Russell says I should do this, I will." It took me so long to record the first episode. I had it on my to-do list for three days. The feeling of imposter syndrome that I had before I recorded the first episode of this podcast was over the top, and then, finally, finally I recorded episode number one, my origin story. You can go listen to it if you want. I think it was only six or seven minutes long. And it was like this massive relief and then this instant, "Oh, my gosh, am I going to do that every single day?" Well, we started the podcast with only releasing a few times or a couple times a week. Then, we increased it to five times a week, and now we're at four times a week.

It's been absolutely incredible. I think it's changed our business more than any single thing that we've done. The podcast has changed the business for the better. I think it's changed me as a business person for the better. So, first, the podcast has become a major driver to our business. It's been a major driver to people understanding who we are, to understanding what we're doing. You know, here's what it's really like. It's like, every single day, I have an opportunity to do a keynote presentation for 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes, to up to 4,000 people a day. Since we started this, we've had one point we've had over one and a half million ... million ... downloads. One and a half million downloads is so overwhelming. That's incredible.

But, that means that over the course of the past couple of years, one and a half million times, somebody's listened to or at least downloaded one of our podcast episodes, and it just blows me away what a massive effect it's had on our business. Let me share just some of the impact and the change that we've seen.

Number one, first and foremost, it has helped me solidify our message more than I think anything I've ever done. You know, every single day I have to get up, or now that I'm batching it, once or twice a week, I have to get up and record episodes of our content directed straight at you, at our client, and I call everybody our client who listens to our podcast. Some of you haven't spent money yet, but I look at you as our client, your pain and time and attention, and everyday I get to get up in the morning, or once I batch, I get to have this conversation with people who are willing to give us their time and attention, and I get to help you move forward. And every day, that's giving me this opportunity to look at our content in a new way, to look at what I'm doing in a new way, to look at the lessons I'm learning in a different way, and share them with this audience that has become so loyal and shows up every day to listen. So, that has been an incredible benefit to our business.

And I would say it's just been a benefit to me as an author, as a speaker, as a business person. Doing a podcast this many times, even 500 podcasts in two years has been this forging process of getting hyper-clear on our message and understanding intimately who I'm talking to and really knowing our clients.

And so, number two, another major, major outcome of this podcast is that a lot of the times when we get on sales calls with people and when we are talking to new potential clients, it's crazy, but what will happen a lot of the time is they will start using our language back with us. Our clients are literally coming in pre-sold. I've been on sales calls where ... the most unique sales call I was on was about a year and a few months ago. I don't do sales calls anymore. We have a team now for that. But, back when I was doing the sales calls, the weirdest call I was ever on, I got on, and I haven't asked permission to share this, so I won't use her name, but the business owner who jumped on, we talked for a couple minutes. I built some rapport, and I said, hey, do you mind if I jump into my process? And she's like, "Oh, absolutely. I want you to know we're going to join your program. I've listened to enough of the podcast to know that we should be in it, but I really want to see how you sell it." And I remember thinking, if that's not the absolute most massive argument for doing a podcast, I don't know what is. It blew me away.

Another place where we've had just massive, massive effect is on hiring. We don't really have a challenge with hiring anymore. The podcast is literally pre-training and indoctrinating and having people join our movement who eventually come and join our team. And I think every person we've hired recently has listened to a ton of the podcast episodes. In fact, I just had a interview this week with Luke, who is joining our team as a new coach, and he was using our language back so much in our interview with him, and when we tested him in coaching, and when we put him through some of the questioning that we did, that we absolutely laughed about it. We thought, you know, he could've been trained already. He answered the questions like he'd already gone through our training. And that is all due to him listening to the podcast.

So, if you as an entrepreneur are willing to put your best information out there and build an audience, the benefit to you will be overwhelming. And for us it was almost immediate. So, let me share with you some of the way that I've done this. Like, what you need to know. If you're going to do a podcast, I'll share with you the way that I've put this together.

Number one, every day I treat this like a conversation with our client, and I sit down and I get centered, and I think of myself having a one-on-one coaching conversation with somebody. What would I actually tell our real clients? What would I share with people who have paid us money? What's the best and most complete and total advice I can give in this situation, and hold nothing back? And that's what I've done every single day, and tried to make an effect with every podcast. I want to change behavior every time I light this up and share with somebody.

The second thing is, on our podcast, I share the same advice we give our clients. I don't say, "Oh, we tell our clients other things. You have to join our program." I just share it right out there. I'll share what our clients hear, I'll share what the people who pay us money would get as coaching. In fact, a lot of cases I'm recording podcasts based on clients' questions, and then my team sending that client the question. So a lot of times you're listening to the exact feedback that our clients in our high-end programs get, and we wouldn't have any other way, because again, this is an audience that we feel pays us with time and attention.

I don't think a lot of people look at it that way, and I think that's a mistake. Because if you look at the people who are consuming your free content in the world as clientele who are paying you in time and attention, you'll put out the best stuff. You'll worry about your retention numbers. You'll look at how many people you're actually serving in that way. And that has created a massive influx of business for us. In fact, a lot of people have come to us referred by somebody who listens to our podcast that is not a business owner, that maybe is a starting up entrepreneur and maybe works in an entrepreneurial business or believes they're an entrepreneurial personality type. So that has created an intensity with which people come towards us because we give the real advice. In fact, in the archived podcasts, the first 50 to 100 podcasts, a lot of those come out of a product we used to sell live for $3,000. Like that was the exact verbiage, exact content that I would use in a live event to help people overcome limiting beliefs and to help people get out of their own way and create as much momentum as possible. So, we put our best content on this podcast.

And then, here's another thing that you should know if you're thinking about doing this, if you've ever considered it. Our podcast is leveraged like crazy. I record this podcast and then, here's what my team does. It gets turned into articles, emails for our list, blog posts, social media posts, even more. Sometimes we create entire e-books out of a series of podcast episodes. In fact, if you go back to episodes 180 to 200, I actually recorded 20 episodes around the Billionaire Code. You know, our matrix of the levels you go through to become a hundred million dollar entrepreneur and that is being turned into a book. So, this podcast isn't just "record once and put it out." We get a ton of leverage and a ton out of this.

And so, if I had to think about or I had to share what the biggest outcome has been from creating the Momentum podcast is that this is the most ongoing and connected communication we have with our international movement. By using the leverage that iTunes and all of the podcast distribution systems give you, we've gotten a massive audience that I don't know there's any other way we would gotten it, and we know that people listen to the podcast daily. In fact, we have people tell us all the time, "I listen every day," and if there's ever been a time where we had a technical issue or something happened with me and we weren't able to put out a podcast episode, we hear about it.

So, we know people really care. And I think that has been one of the most compelling dynamics of doing this, is that every business is a social movement. And what I'm able to do on a daily basis is make the argument for our social movement. I can advocate for entrepreneurs, I can defend entrepreneurs against the people who are attacking them. I can define and unify our movement. I can show the plan that we have. I provide a plan.

You know, we have a matrix for creating the movement. It's, define and unify who you want to serve, provide a plan that's simple that everybody understands, defend your movement louder than anybody else, and advocate for your movement louder than anybody else. And the podcast has given me a platform to do that every day, four days a week, to create this movement and to keep it vital and alive and growing.

And so, I want to thank you for being a podcast listener and thank you for listening to the Momentum podcast. 500 episodes is huge. I can't imagine where we're going to be at a thousand and I just, I appreciate you and everybody else who listens.

And I'll just share one insight with you. If you ever decide to do a podcast, I want you to know that that feeling of imposter syndrome that I had the first day where I could barely get it done? It goes down over time, but not that much. In fact, there are weeks where I still face resistance every time I hit record on the podcast. And you know, it might go down over time, but there's still days where I hit record and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "No one's going to listen to this episode." So, if you ever decided to do this and put yourself out there this way, and you face massive resistance, and you can feel the strength of resistance pushing against you and making it more difficult for you to actually go through, here's what I want you to know: We all feel it. We've all been there. We've all felt like the impostor. But this is one of the single most powerful things I've ever done in my business. So, if you've ever thought of doing it, just hit record every day. Start talking and it'll work itself out. I know it has for me.

Thanks for being a podcast listener, and if you are willing, when you finish this episode, go to iTunes and leave us a review. My team reads the reviews, we share them in our huddle. We haven't gotten one in a few, maybe a week or two. And if you're willing to just leave us a review, let us know what you think of the podcast, I would really appreciate it. And thanks again for being a listener. Share this with your friends. Help us build this audience. Help us build this movement of entrepreneurs who are creating momentum and changing the world.

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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