It Isn't Easy But It
Is Worth It With Molly Keyser

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 defied 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 entrepreneurs when something's really important to us we just go get it done. We make it happen. In fact, when we're working on smaller issues in our lives, when we're learning easier things, when we're learning beginning tactics we can just crush through them and go fast and that early momentum makes us feel like we're making huge accomplishments and strides because we are. But in this episode it isn't easy, but it's worth it. I want to point that growing a team, scaling a business is a massive undertaking for people like us that is different from anything that we've done prior. If you've never built a team before, if you've never scaled a business then I want you to know that it is one of the most difficult things we do in our lives because when we're working on our own we're responsible for ourselves. For what we do, for what we put out there and we can contain it. We can understand it. We know what's happening.

But the second you start growing a business and put people in place to help you and start getting leverage the variables go up exponentially on a daily basis. The amount of things that could go wrong go up exponentially every time you bring someone in. And what may be the most difficult part for us as entrepreneurs is that as we grow our team, as we build leverage, as we bring more people in we don't know everything that's going on. We can no longer understand exactly what every person's doing. In fact we might not know every person on our team eventually. Think of how weird that feels. I can't tell you how odd it was for me when I walked into my building one day and there was two people standing by the copier and I went and asked someone who they were and I was informed that they had been working with us for about a week. It was always a weird feeling when that happened, but as entrepreneurs that's exactly how it is.

And Molly [Keyser 00:03:03] along with her husband Aaron [Silvernale 00:03:05] are growing an amazing business teaching photographers how to make more money by specializing and doing boudoir photography. It sounds like the craziest little niche and how could you even build a business out of that, but Aaron and Molly aren't just building a business they're building a movement. They're showing photographers how to make more money. Make women feel and showing them how to help women feel beautiful and attractive and make amazing photography and have an incredible experience and feel protected and supported throughout the entire thing. And for the people who have chosen to work with them, for the photographers who have chosen to work with them, it is a game changer. And here's what's so interesting. Molly built a team because she had to.

Molly built a team because she was creating more demand then she could possibly fill on her own. And who she built a team without really any processes or systems and that in and of it itself is incredibly impressive, but here's what's even more impressive. The way that she describes putting process in place and the way she describes working with her team and having the right meetings because she has this awareness level and this understanding level that as she shifted the small things in her business the amount of leverage she had went up exponentially and when you start building a team it's not easy and it's not fast. And for those of us who are used to picking up a learning program or buying an online program understanding it, figuring it out, putting it in place, making it happen within a few days. It just doesn't happen that way to build a team.

It's more methodical, there's more process involved and more time involved. But as you'll see from listening to Molly if you're willing to lean in and put in the time, put the process in place you will build a team in a dynamic way that will protect and support you and everything you want to create in the world. Here's Molly Keyser.

Molly K.: Hello. I am Molly Keyser. I'm an entrepreneur and I live in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And I joined Grow & Scale with Alex Charfen and before I met Alex, oh my gosh, a lot of chaos in our business. Basically, we ... We've been in business for a few years now, but this past year we grew really really quickly and in the past I learned from other sources how to correctly do project management. How to correctly hire people all of that stuff, but even when I did it, what I thought was the correct way, I had a lot of employees that had to be fired. A lot of people quitting. There was a lot of drama in the company at all times. I was saying what I wanted to get done in a project and then it would come out totally wrong. Kind of like banana phone or whatever that telephone, that game is. Where you pass it on and pass it on by the time it's done it's a completely different word. That's what my business was like and I reached out to Alex because he's definitely an expert in this space.

I absolutely love all the content he puts out, especially his podcast and all of his courses. I was in the Momentum master class as well it was phenomenal. And basically I knew that my husband and I, Aaron, he is an owner in the company with me. And I knew that we need to do this because he had just joined on a few months into this year and he didn't even really understand what his job was and I'm like, "Man if you don't understand what your job is I can't imagine how our employees in our company feel," because there wasn't really any structure. Nothing was really put into place very well. We weren't even doing meetings at all. Like I had never even met with most of the people on our team.

So I knew that we needed Grow & Scale so I dove right in and I'm definitely not going to say that it's been easy because this is going to require a lot of your time. It's not something that you can just get done over night. It's not like a course you can just dive in and get done overnight, but I truly feel like the programs that are the hardest work is going to produce the best result for you and we've been in Grow & Scale now for a little bit over a month and even in that months time we jumped right in. We're like, "Oh we're going to do this." Because like I said most courses I jump in and I'm like do it over night, right? And this is different. This is your growing and scaling your entire company. And it's just been insane like the amount of growth that we've seen in just a small amount of time within our team. We're now doing meetings. We now have a training center. Like people actually know what their job role is. You know my husband actually knows what his job role is.

I know how to offload all the pressure and noise inside of my head. I know how to actually ask for help within my team. We know how to actually run meetings. We now have a planning system so we can plan out our year and not only see big profits, but see growth in other areas as well in terms of our customer base and what we actually want to achieve in our company in a much larger way than just making more money. Right? And you know like I said we're only a month in and it's already been incredible so I can't imagine where we're going to be a year from now. It's actually kind of crazy to think of so it's definitely ... Like owning a business has definitely been a rollercoaster for me. Trying to do the project management in the way that I thought it had to be done and it feels good to meet someone like Alex who has so much experience with this growing multi-million dollar companies and growing big teams.

I know he's mentioned like 100 person teams, things like that, and I wouldn't want to learn that from anyone else. I definitely want to learn it from someone who actually has experience growing big companies and big teams. And so we're so glad that we've joined not only to be able to get help from Alex, but everyone in the program as well has been extremely helpful. It's truly like coming into a family of people who actually understand you and are growing and scaling their businesses at the same time. So it's been an incredible month and we look forward to the rest of the year as well. And we just want to say thank you so much to Alex and everyone in Grow & Scale. We love you.

Speaker 1: As you heard from Molly it isn't easy, but it's worth it. And as you start to put process in place, as you start to communicate with your team, as you have the right types of meetings there's a reason why meetings suck. Just don't have those types of meetings. Have targeted interactions where your people know what's going on. They understand what's happening. They have, not only the right to win, but they're almost guaranteed to win because they've been prepared. They know what's coming. They know exactly what's expected of them and everything in your business will change. I love working with Molly and Aaron because they are motivating entrepreneurs who are helping other people grow businesses make a massive difference and feel successful. And in the process they're showing each other just how talented and capable they are.

If you haven't yet, download a copy of the Entrepreneurial Personality, or sorry, get a copy of the Entrepreneurial Personality Type book. You can go to freemomentumbook.com, freemomentumbook.com. If you haven't read it yet that book may tell you more about yourself than anyone ever has.