Momentum Podcast: 733

Transitioning From Work to Play With Your Team (With Ticora Davis)

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

The most important investment you can make in your business is with the people who choose to work with you every day.

Alex Charfen, a business growth coach who helps entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses, gives practical, tangible, and actionable tips that you can implement into your business right now.

At a recent Charfen Summit, one of our members, Ticora Davis, the CEO of The Creator's Lawfirm, shared with our membership how she realized that she had created a negative work environment through the example she set. This led her to create an office shutdown process that helps her team understand that they do not need to work overtime, and they can transition from work to play together and spend time with their families.

Your business has the potential to change the world, and the only way to see that potential become a reality is to implement a strategic plan. If you're ready to learn more, go to predictableplanningsystem.com to get started.

Our entrepreneurial journey doesn't end here! Be sure to check out our Facebook Community filled with entrepreneurs just like you who are getting into momentum and building world-changing empires charfen.com/community

If you are an entrepreneur who is listening in and you can relate, then be sure and head over to momentumplanner.com/mps and gain access to one of the most requested business tools to grow and scale your business in any market condition, even in this one.

Full Audio Transcript

This is the Momentum podcast

As an entrepreneur, one of the most important investments you can make is with the team that invests their time, effort, energy and focus with you every single day, protecting your team is one of the most important things that you can do as an entrepreneur. In this special episode of the Momentum podcast, we're bringing you a clip from a recent Charfen summit where one of our members, Tokura Davis, the CEO of the creators law firm, gave a presentation on how she came to the realization that she was creating an unhealthy expectation with her team that they needed to work overtime because she worked overtime through this unintentional example that she was setting. Her team was getting burned out, frustrated and feeling out of momentum. And so Takura had an incredible idea. I won't spoil it for you, but she created a process for helping her team transition from work, play every single day. I hope you enjoy.

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. With that, I want to bring to Cora Davidson to talk about how to transition from the work day to play and do her 10 minute presentation to Cora. Thank you so much for volunteering to do this. We've all been waiting for it. And with that, let's bring you on.

Hello, everybody, so excited to be here today and you guys are awesome. I'm going to say let's go, let's go. So today I am tasked with discussing the office shut down routine, transitioning from work to play with your team. So I'm Takura Davis. I'm the founder and CEO of the creator's law firm. We do all sorts of business law stuff. Our team is trademarks and IP law and over the past year. So you almost a year in August, I went from a team of two to a team of nine at large. In part that has been definitely because of the Charfen program and the infrastructure that we put in place. Our client centric mission is we help legacy driven entrepreneurs who are pioneers in their industries and thriving in their purpose. We help them by providing culturally relevant legal services that empower them with the tools needed to protect their products, programs and profits. The change we make is giving our clients the protection and legal support they need to grow their business with peace of mind. And we will know we are successful when we when legacy driven entrepreneurs are hiring us as the go to law firm for all inclusive legal business protection worldwide, all of our employees are debt free and we are recognized as the best place to work in Charlotte, North Carolina.

That always gets me excited when I say that our core tenets I want to share them. Just an overview of them is that we empower our clients to culturally relevant legal representation, correct the process, not the person allowed. At Charfen program, we make data driven decisions that deliver results and we we create, innovate and simplify and we take ownership minded actions. When I first began to look at the content within Charfen around the the core tenets, one of the things that I did and one of the things that Alex said was true, these are behavioral. And so I wanted to make sure that these were actually behaviors and actions that we adopted. And so it really made me had that at the forefront of my mind when we whenever I do anything in terms of leadership. And so I began to notice this problem with my team. What we do is we work Monday through Thursday from eight thirty am to six thirty pm, and then on Fridays we take a half day. So from eight thirty to twelve thirty is still a 40 hour work week. And my team was able to kind of get into the weekend a little bit longer, but I consistently saw that they were making comments on CELAC at eight thirty pm, sometimes nine pm.

And then I would have to say, what are you doing online? Log off. So these were some of the problems that I began to pick up along the way. The team was consistently working outside of normal business hours as an attorney. That's bad because overtime loss. So that was definitely something I was thinking about. Internal communications were being sent after hours and on the weekend I began to notice that my team was restless. There was an atmosphere of anxiety hovering over my team and there was increased pressure and noise. And so it was really, really, really, really bothering me. And so when I come back to that, as I looked at my org chart with me being at the top, I had my operations director, my head of legal. We have our paralegals underneath our head of legal. We have executive assistants and legal assistants beneath everyone. Each person within beat the pedigree. I call it a pedigree because I'm a I have a biology degree. So it reminds me of those darn genetic charts that I used to do. But anyway, this this org structure chart, I began to notice, like each person at every single level was working over time.

They were doing more. They were stressed. And the thing that was happening was I was setting the example as a CEO, being the workaholic. The reason why I saw that people were on slack at eight thirty PM was because I was on it, too. I was the one who was sending these messages. And so what happened was they thought, oh, I need to do that too. If she's up working, I need to be working as well. And so what? When I looked at our core, I said, Are you as the CEO behaving in a way that sets the example? And so I looked at our two two tenets and I said, OK, I'm not. And so one, I said, OK, what can I do to correct the process and not the person, which, of course, again, language that we got from Charfen. So when there is an issue in our company, we focus on correcting the processes involved, not the person with clear outcomes, resources and support. Our team creates momentum and success and then taking ownership minded actions. This means that we adopt the spirit of excellence, rise to the occasion and never settle. We act boldly on behalf of the entire. Your company, beyond just our own team and individual roles, we are eager to own our projects and adopt a proactive mindset, anticipating company and client needs. And so I began to anticipate what will actually help.

How can I set the example? What can I do? What is the solution? Then I did a little bit of research because I'm a lawyer. That's what we do. And so according to the Motley Fool, in nineteen eighty, the average worker clocked thirty eight point one hours per week and that was when they were working forty three weeks per year, around sixteen hundred hours annually. According to the latest data in twenty fifteen, the average employee works thirty eight point seven hours per week. And you may be saying, OK, well, that's just point six hours more or six hours more.

However, there's an increase of forty six point eight weeks per year. So that means that an estimated 40 percent of US employees are regularly working more than 50 hours per week and 20 percent are working more than 60 hours per week. I can tell you right now, I probably was in the 60, sometimes 80 hours per week range. I was working sometimes 14 to 16 hours per week. And I have two little babies. And so I would wake up early. And on average, probably for the past five years or so, I'm getting like forty five hours of sleep per night. And I've just said this is what it is, is how it's got to be. I'm a young mom, have young kids. This is how it's going to be. It doesn't have to be that way. What was contributing to this, though, is that I was not basically making a very strong transition from work to home. And so my concerns begin to grow because I knew that if I didn't solve this problem, team morale would be low. We would experience brain fog and fatigue. The atmosphere of anxiety would really increase. There wouldn't be a work life balance and there would be no clear transition between work and play or work and home life. And so I said, OK, what is the solution? I'm going to implement an office shut down routine to encourage self care for my employees.

I had office shut down on the calendar at 6:00 pm every night, but these ladies would not sit nothing down. And so I said, I have to show them what I mean. I'm going to show them what it means to actually shut down this office. I'm going to be example of my own content and I'm going to embody this for them because pre pandemic world, what would happen is when you would leave the office and your commute home, that would be the transition. That would be the time where your mind would say, OK, mind, you're not at work anymore. Now you're going home. As we are working from home, there is no transition there. We have to manufacture the transition from work to play work to home. And so the office shut down routine is what we do. And so in our office shut down, we do a variety of things. We did clutter our workspace and we set it so that when I come back, I used to walk by this desk and I would look at it like, oh God, I've got to go back and work there. I'd have like crackers and all stuff and little chips and these bags, like nobody wants to go back into a cluttered work environment. So during the office shutdown routine, we're not working or we're trying to relieve the stress or kind of transition from work to play. It's like, hey, let's clean up our work environments. Let's reset it. Let's I have this water bottle here. I'm going to refill it so that when I come back to work in the morning, I have water ready for me. I'm going to prepare that next day. Hydration. I'm going to say any final emails that have to be spent today. Y'all, listen, I can guarantee you that you cracking an email to 11:00 p.m. Nobody's going to read it until the next day anyway.

So there's no need to really hustle and say, gosh, I have to get this work done. The work will be there. So any type of final emails that have to be sent out, go ahead and do that. But don't be don't worry that you have so many things that are unchecked or your to do list. I would review the to do list items and move in complete tasks to the next day. In my moments and planner, I would complete that momentum planner review the weekly. What are we excuse me. We review the weekly waterfall, our commitments, we talk about our wins and uncomfortable areas. So we have this discussion as a team like, hey, where did you win today, Caitlin? Where did you win? Did they look OK? Where did you win? Did they actually? And so we're able to actually share our wins. As an entrepreneur, I have not done a good job of celebrating my successes. I move on from one thing to the next very quickly, and then it's a fog of what I did accomplish. And so taking a moment to pause and say, you know what, I completed my top three for today or I got to this one thing that I really need to do and being able to share that, have your team say, hey, I'm proud of you, you're doing a great job. We don't we do not caught being awesome. We do caught being smart because my tag line is we help you protect your smarts.

It also goes back to one of our core tenets of creating, innovating and simplifying something smart today. Was it that you were able to capture something for a client, you were able to solve a problem without bothering the CEO? What was that? And we celebrated set in your top three for the next day. And I love one of my one of the two top two things that I love is what is your evening intention? So my team will say I'm going to go to trivia tonight. You know, I'm going to take my dogs for a walk. So they're sharing with me what they intend to do. And this has to be personal. It's not work like what is your evening intention for yourself or your family and them saying it out audibly writing it down actually makes it happen. And then we have a new person every single week run the evening or the office shut down. So we all get to come back together as a team and we get to celebrate with each other. And so basically each of us is a different day for the week. So I'm D.J., sweetie.

That's my name. And everybody has their own, like little baby. And so I just want to show you, like, a little this is the great she's one of our paralegals. So this is just a short list of 30 second clip of her leading the office, shut down 14. More sweet tunes coming up from Kate, the great play, but the film is upbeat by This is Nice Monday. Today it's Monday. So we're going to move on up. All right. Oh, all right. So yes. So that was just a little tiny clip. So this is what happens. So basically, we'll say, hey, you got any questions for me? OK, I answer the questions and then she's like, all right, I'm going to play a song. So it's like a five minutes or three to five minute song. And so during that song, we're cleaning up, we're sending out those emails. We're doing those things right in between songs. And so we get to hear anywhere from three to five songs every time. Let's go. All right, so the outcome what has happened as a result of this is we've reduced pressure in ways. We have team members that are less tired, less stressed, they're more motivated. We have a closer team. Bond is the highlight of our day because we get to come back together as a team and see each other.

We're working in this virtual environment. We're not in office together. We don't get to see people. But being able to come back and say, hey, how are you doing that? That feels great. Also, there's a concept from Dr. Neal, your he created a drug, wrote a book called The Now Habit. It's a book about procrastination. I do not know why he wrote a book about procrastination and literally took three years to read it because I procrastinated. But that's neither here nor there. I learned about this concept called guilt free play. And basically he's saying what happens with people who are recovering procrastinators when you're in the midst of procrastination, you literally feel guilty about doing something for yourself because you begin to think about all the things that you haven't done. And so guilt free play is saying, hey, I'm going to go have a great time, I'm going to do this and that if you don't have any guilt about it, because it's something that we are creating and we're saying this is what we're supposed to do. We've created this culture of guilt free play and we also have more time with friends. And I asked my team, I said, hey, and your words, what have been the benefits of the office shutdown routine for you? Victoria says, A benefit for me is that we were able to transition into a period of relaxation and or family time without the weight of work lingering on our shoulders. The says it makes me feel accountable to log off one time transition and not worry about personal times.

I have to make sure I'm not working because when I work, literally they are feeling guilty because I'm still working right, she said. Her work hours went from about fifty to fifty five hours per week to about forty five hours per week, so we still got to work on the volume below 40. She also thinks it makes the team connect with each other more at the end of the day, which she really enjoys. Janay loves that there's team bonding. Marissa's being able to relax and bond with everyone before logging off is a benefit to me. Actually says it reinforces our value as individuals and people, not just our role within the company. The Of says, of course, I love the music aspects. And finally, Ashley says it also provides her with a forced boundary. Work time is over. It is time to play, allows me to set an intention for my personal time, just like I do for my work time during the week. And so I hope that you guys are able to implement this. We have it as an agenda. So we know, hey, we're starting it this time. Here's what's happening. And that's what helps to keep us on track so that anybody can come in and run the office, shut down routine while following that agenda. And we really, really, really try to say, all right, hey, six thirty is time or it's twelve, thirty is time to go. And so that has been awesome. This is not that cool that you imagine, but it is some of my team together. So that's my information. If y'all want to follow us on IG, we have a really cool a real today at Creators law firm back home. So yeah, I hope and pray that this was really super powerful and for you guys and I hope it encourages you all if you're facing a similar issue to really look at the victims and look at everything that we're learning and become creative and innovative yourself so you can help your team transition from work to play.

Hey there, this is Eddie Kurk with Alex Charfen team, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Momentum podcast. Listen, if you're ready to take the next step, if you're ready to understand the systems and processes and frameworks that we teach entrepreneurs to grow and scale their business with confidence, we're ready to help you. If you go to billionaire Koch Dotcom right now, you can get on a call with a member of our coaching team and find out which one of our coaching programs best fit the needs of your business. Right now, we know that when you are clear on where you're going and you're excited about the outcome, you will put the accelerator pedal to the floor and you won't let up. Let us help you get into momentum, grow and scale your business and make the impact that you've always known. You should go to billionaire coach Dotcom right now to get started. We'll see you there. "

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