Momentum Podcast: 538

Part 2: The Podcast Takeover

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

The Momentum Podcast has officially had a podcast takeover. Our Business Growth Strategist, Jeremy, decided he wanted to play me for a day and switch the roles up. Welcome to the second half of this two-part series. In this episode, Jeremy interviews me and digs a little deeper into what we’ve already shared in part 1. Tuned in for a conversation on: 

 -Where I get my inspiration from

-A few of my favorite books

-EMDR therapy 

-The coaching I receive 

-How putting processes in my life early on made everything more clear

-And more

Full Audio Transcript

Jeremy: Hey everybody, this is Jeremy checking back in day two, Momentum podcast takeover. Today we're going to get into a little more specifics around inspiration and how Alex even innovates and where he gets it from, where he goes to find it, and how he's literally changing the industry of industries.

Alex Charfen: 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.

Jeremy: So you talked about, you know, we've talked about we're changing a lot of what's happening in front-

Alex Charfen: I didn't answer the second part of your question.

Jeremy: Go yeah.

Alex Charfen: Where do I go for...

Jeremy: Yeah.

Alex Charfen: What was it? Where do I go for inspiration?

Jeremy: Yeah. Inspiration. But specifically in growing and scaling companies, right? Because you do things so differently. Your framework seemed to be so different. Like where do you go that you're like, okay, this, it resonates, it's in alignment. I don't know. Like is there anything where you're like, "Okay, this is valuable for me in the system that we teach"?

Alex Charfen: Wow. So, there's a few authors that I really like. I read a lot of books. There's a few authors that I think have written really formative books about business that are just like everybody should read. You know, I think The Goal is one that I read and I reread. So I've read a ton of books. Like I've read... I'm an obsessive reader. When I was a kid I wanted to read the library and in grade school I did, I got a big chunk of it done, like a very big chunk of it done and in order like book by book. And so I'm a little weird like that. And so I love Peter Drucker. I think I can go back to Drucker's books over and over again. I get something different out of them.

I go back to The Goal, I get something different out of it. As my business grows or changes or shifts, I get something different. And then I really like Patrick Lencioni's books. I think that they're fables, they're stories but as an entrepreneur the stories insert lessons into your mind in a different way, just like The Goal does. And so those were books that I reread all the time. I read Drucker, I read Lensioni, I read The Goal, and then where I go for grown scale inspiration, you know, I've read so much about business, I've spent so much time in business masterminds. I actually go out of the world of business to try and figure out like different ways of thinking that I can bring back to the world of business. So I watch a ton of documentaries. I read a lot. I like to study things like design and culture and how things are formed to how things are put together and it inspires a lot of what we have in our business. I read a ton.

Jeremy: That's awesome. That's awesome.

Alex Charfen: I think it would be near fraudulent to be a coach and not be in a coaching program. And so I get coaching, I have a ton of coaching. So, you know, I do EMDR therapy, which I look at as a type of coaching because it's an offload and pressure release. You know, I work on and off with a personal coach who coaches me on like what I'm going through and what is coming up for me. I'm in Taki Moore's coaching program with some of the best coaches in the world, you know, 400 or 500 people around the world that are all doing the same thing. And it's a really intense coaching program.

And I also go to Giovanni Marsico's group Archangel, which is a content and kind of a coaching program, but it's also a huge network that's really good for us. And I'm part of Russell Brunson's Inner Circle. So when you look at the amount of coaching and amount of input that I get, you know and here's what's really special about each one of those groups is that they are really well run, well curated groups where there's a discussion around revenue and there's a discussion around real problems that add to my ability and understanding of coaching. And what, you know, entrepreneurs need to grow in scale. So these days, Jeremy, it's interesting, the more knowledge I get to help our company, the more knowledge I get to help our clients and vice versa. So, you know, it's like I've loved the business since I was a little kid. I read business books for fun and it's crazy to be in a world where I can go out and learn about business and it's what I do for a living.

Jeremy: I love it. That's awesome. Thanks. That's amazing. You talked about trusting, trusting the system and trusting the infrastructure, the things that we've put in place, the things that we teach other entrepreneurs how to do. And I know, again, being a passenger in this with everybody on the team, I'm coming from this environment where I wasn't exposed to any of this. I'd been in so many different companies and jobs at various roles and sizes. No one was doing this the way we are. And so I find myself as like, how do we continue to trust this process? Especially entrepreneurs coming in because if you trust it, just like you said, the outcome is there. But it's almost like we've been conditioned that this is how business should be a certain way and no, that's not right and we shouldn't share these things. And it's like we do think so counterintuitively and it works. It actually works in businesses, they move super fast and everyone that's a part of it is enjoying that ride. And so how do you find that people are able to really start to bridge that trust and start to trust what they're getting into? Maybe this is more for our customers or our clients, but I think that's a big piece is actually continuing to trust it.

Alex Charfen: Huh. So maybe I can give you my journey on this and make it easier. I think like through sharing how I learned how to trust process, I think maybe that'll help anybody out there learn how to trust process. Because here's something interesting for us as entrepreneurs, we fight process. We fight it like crazy. Like, we don't want to do the same thing twice. You know? And some of us do, like some of us will go on the same walk every day or the same run every day or stuff like that. But like we do not like to be told what to do. We don't like a process to tell us what to do. Like entrepreneurs say things like, "I don't want to see the same meeting on my calendar every week." Think about that. It's like I don't want any stability in time. I don't want anyone around me to have stability in time. And I'm going to tell you that affirmatively. Like it's an okay thing to say. Like when you see that perspective, doesn't it sound nuts to say stuff like that?

Jeremy: Yes.

Alex Charfen: And at the same time, this person is someone who's saying, "Well, I want to build a team, build a business. I want to have a group of people trust me, but I don't want to have the same meeting on my calendar twice a week or once a week." And by the way I was that guy when I was younger, I was the guy who wouldn't show up to team meetings and I was the owner of the company. I was a guy who I would set a meeting and it would be 12:15 and the meeting would be at 13:00 and I would cancel it. And say that I had something else to do, I would like not show up. I would show up and then totally distract the meeting for what it was about.

Like, outside of a process, I'm not very good with people. I'm not good with pressure situations, like meetings. I don't think any of us really are, I mean there are some people out there who are, but I would say the vast majority of us aren't. And so for me, putting process in place early on it was like, wow, things got clear really fast. You know, I was a very young business owner and I was managing businesses for anywhere from 12 to 25 clients at a time, depending on what our load was. So I had to have a process. Otherwise it was like get up every day and unbury yourself in it. And I was still even within processes, just getting up every day and I'm burying myself, but you start to realize that as a business owner today, if you trust the process, the process is what really creates trust.

If you show up every time at the same time, every week, your team starts to trust you because you're there every time, if you communicate in the same way every week, your team hears you because you're communicating in the same way and they can anticipate what's coming and they know what they're getting is updates. And so the more that I leaned into process, again, the more incompetent I looked. Sorry, the less incompetent I looked. Right? The more competent I actually looked because I was working in this routine.

And so for me it took two decades to admit that process was important, even though I had them all over my lives and I had a morning routine since I was like 13. And so I've been driving processes my whole life, but I'm like, "Oh no, I don't need process." You know? And I think a lot of us are the same way. And so going through all of that and then seeing the results of when I had process in place, the team seemed to implicitly trust me. When I didn't, they implicitly distrusted me. When I communicated the same way, they consistently heard me, when I didn't, they didn't care. And so, I started on a quest to say like, "What process actually works?" Now at the same time, I don't trust bloated processes. They make me nervous, they frustrate me. If I'm going through a process like at a doctor's office for check-in, and I can tell that one part of the process like is totally fake and doesn't even get used anymore. You know what I'm talking about?

Jeremy: Yeah, of course.

Alex Charfen: Like, in every process. You can tell that I'm always like, "I want to protest this whole thing because you guys [inaudible 00:10:18]" you know? So for me it was about creating processes that was minimum effective dose. I never wanted to feel like I was working for the process. I always wanted to feel like the outcome was most important and the process supported it. And so that's really, if you look at like, that's my journey of trusting a process is I realized if I have the minimum amount of process, I get the maximum results in the easiest way for me.

Jeremy: I love it. I love it. Well I think you're going to go down as the godfather of growth and scale. I'm just going to say it, [inaudible 00:10:50], Eli, I mean I know these guys you speak of and I know many listeners probably know a lot of these thought leaders, but truly Alex, like I've been closely watching people that... High visionary folks and high performers all over the world. And some of them I've gotten the chance to work with closely and it never ceases to amaze me what we get to do every single day in this organization because we get to trust this thing literally every day. It's not theory, it's not just make-believe. We actually get to do this thing and man, it's beautiful to begin to condition and train myself now in a total new way of thinking, a total new way of being with myself and a team and our clients. And so it's changed the whole career game period for anybody that wants to work in a company like ours or companies like the ones we help. So I'm blown away. Yeah. Thank you so much. This has been so, so amazing.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, this was a lot of fun, Jeremy. I appreciate it man, and thanks for being here. I appreciate you interviewing. This was a lot of fun. In fact, sometimes it's hard to record podcast after podcast without somebody there, so I appreciate it. We'll probably do this again and thanks for listening. And if you're looking to grow and scale your business, you can go to a new page on our website that I was just given today and it's awesome. In fact, there's a free report there called, the five reasons why companies that should scale don't scale. And we will give you exactly what those reasons are and how you can correct that in your business. And you can go to charfen.com/resources and download it. charfen.com/resources and there's some other good stuff there as well.

Jeremy: That's awesome. And also on that note, Alex, I literally spoke to an entrepreneur today, entrepreneur in Canada who read that report. Him and his brother, co-own a restaurant in Canada, and they said it was that report that just opened it up for them. They're like, "Oh my gosh, this is us. This is literally us." So that report people, go download that and read the report. If you're running a business, if you're growing a business or thinking about it, I promise you this PDF will not waste your time.

Alex Charfen: charfen.com/resources.

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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