Get Your Team Out
In Front Of You

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot diggers, 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's 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 hunter. Clearly, the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Get your team out in front of you. I recently got a message from Natalie [Hodson 00:01:11], one of my absolutely amazing clients, and she recently launched her Modern Mom Lifestyle program, and it's going incredibly well. I said to her, "Natalie, this is awesome. Congratulations, this is what you should be. This is the right program for your tribe," and she left me a message back and said, "Thank you, but there's no way I could do this without this incredible group of ladies behind me, working with me, and helping me move forward, and helping me get this done," and she was talking about her team.

And I think a lot of coaches would leave it at that, but I left her a message back, and I said, "Natalie, you're right. You couldn't do it without this team of ladies behind you, but as we transition to a forward looking planning system, as we transition to you letting the team know where you're going, we're gonna get that team out in front of you.

Imagine how much more you could do if you thought of your team as out in front of you, if your team was actually out in front of you, if they were leading the way to the destination rather than you feeling like they were supporting you from the behind.

And this is a metaphor, because we all know the teams not standing in front or behind, but the fact is that if your team doesn't know where you're going, they are always behind you. And the vast majority of entrepreneurs look at their company and they think, "Why am I pulling this thing uphill? Why am I pushing as hard as I am? Why do I feel like I'm doing everything, even though I have a team?" And for more entrepreneurs, hiring a team doesn't really offload much. It actually, for a lot of people, makes it feel like there's more work. It makes them feel like there's more pressure. Now you're doing everything you used to do, and you're hiring, and you're trying to work with this team.

But here's the way that you can change that permanently, if you put a forward planning structure into your business where you're willing to say where you're going, start calling your shots, showing the members of your team where you're going, what they're accountable for, and how you're measuring success along the way. Those three things are exactly what you need so a team can get out in front and lead the way, because as entrepreneurs what we should be doing is stating the direction. We should be showing people the oppurtunity. We should be showing our team where we want to go, and then have them help us create the plan as to how we get there.

And what happens is, we give our team the ability to anticipate where we're going next, and they get out in front of us. Because here's what I want every entrepreneur to have, a team where you can get up, call your shots, tell them where you're going, get consensus, and then have them lead the way there.

When you look at world changing organizations, the media, the press, the way we look at companies is, "Let's look at the entrepreneur," that single person that's doing everything. And the fact is, every world changing organization in history had an incredibly dynamic team led by an entrepreneur who had the ability to get the team out in front.

My cousin, Eric Bower, who's one of the smartest individuals I've ever met in my life. He's a little intimidating to have as a cousin. He really is brilliant, and works at Apple. He manages a cross functioning team of over 50 people. He was responsible for some of the most advance features ... Or, not responsible for, but managed the process of something, something, the most advance features on the iPhone, including the new button that really isn't a button. It makes you believe it's a button, but when you turn it off it goes dead. That was Eric, and he works at Apple.

And to give you an idea of what I mean by getting your team out in front of you, Eric's working on projects. He already understands his plan through 2020. That company has projected forward over three years, where they're going, how they're doing it into 2021, I think now, where they're going, how they're doing it, and what the team has to accomplish.

So, literally, the entire team is out in front chasing down outcomes making sure that everything happens on time, so that Apple can hit their product releases. See, with a world changing organization like Apple, you can't do things at the last minute. You can't change things overnight. You have go and create plans, assemble the technology, assemble the partners, assemble the team, so that every happens as it should. In the average entrepreneurial company you ask somebody what they're doing in three and they'll say, "Probably trying to survive," because they don't know.

And I'm not saying that we all have to put plans out that forward looking, because that's difficult for entrepreneurial companies. In fact, for you, if you are a smaller organization under 20 or 30 million dollars, putting out a plan for more than one year at time probably doesn't make sense. But, if you don't have a forward looking plan, if your team doesn't know where you're going, they don't understand the accountability of what they're responsible for, and they don't know how you're measuring success, you will always feel like you are carrying your team along. You will always feel like you are strapping your company on in the morning, and pulling it forward, and you will always feel like you're doing way too much, because until you give the people around the ability to anticipate what you want, and what you need, because they know where you're going, they can't, and they will forever be trying to figure out what is happening, and what's going on.

And this is where entrepreneurs get into to trouble with teams. This is where we start saying this like, "Managing a team is so difficult. I wish I could just go back to doing it all myself," or, "Having these people is so much harder than when I was alone," or, "Why don't I just go back to whatever size I was when I could do it alone, and not have to have anybody else involved," and all of these thoughts are incredibly limiting for people like us. They get us stuck. They hold us in place, and they stop us from creating the momentum we want, because as entrepreneurs we learn very little standing still, and almost nothing alone.

We need to get into momentum, start going forward, and build a team or join a team, so that we feel the contribution of the people around us. We have the leverage of people protecting and supporting us where we are not strong, so that we can do the same for them. And then, we can create massive outcomes in the world, because together we do far more than we can do individually.

And when you create a team, and you bring the right people in, and you hire true believers who believe in you and who you are, the product and what it does, and your customers and the outcomes they create in the world, you will change your entire organization, and when you show that true believer where you're going you give them a project of what's going to happen, what outcome you want, what they're role is and they're responsibility is, and what you're measuring to see if they're successful, you find that true believers rise to the occasion and do more than you ever thought possible ... then you ever thought your team would do.

Now on the contrary, if you bring in true believers, and you have the incredible fortune to find people who feel that way about you, your company, your products, your clients, and they don't know where you're going, and they're not giving that forward looking planning, and they can't anticipate what's happening next, true believers will burn out faster than any other type of person because a true believer wants to do well. A true believer is at your organization to help your clients. That's just as important to them as the money you're making. A true believer wants to change things, and they want to make what you're doing in the world happen. And when they can't, it will wear on them, break them down, and you will take somebody who can make a massive contribution to your team, and you'll start getting frustrated with them.

I hear it all the time from entrepreneurs. "I have an assistant. She was really good at the beginning, and now she's frustrating me." "I have a new sales manager. He was really great at the very beginning, and now I really don't like being around him." "I have a team, and I used to really like them, but in the past three months I've just gotten increasingly frustrated with all 'Go a minutes', and interruptions, and the questions."

Well, in all of those cases when you give someone a forward looking plan you allow them to truly innovate with you, to chase down outcomes with you, to anticipate what's needed next. True believers will change the complexion of your business. They will help you grow it faster than you ever could on your own, and you will move forward with massive momentum.

So, if you're in that place where you're ready to change your business completely, if you've already created the oppurtunity and you know there's more there, and you're leaving more on the table, creating a forward looking planning system will change everything in your organization, align your team, show you what outcomes you can truly create, and give you the confidence to call your shots, create bigger outcomes, and do even more.

That's exactly what Natalie's doing. She is changing the world, in my opinion. It's amazing what products she's put out there, the way she presents herself, the way that she gives moms the license to say, "I'm gonna take care of myself. I'm going to create momentum for myself. I am important," is brilliant. And the fact that now she has for a long time had a team of true believers around her, but now they're seeing the forward looking plan. They're understanding where she's going. They can see exactly the effect that intended in the world, and it's just going to get bigger.

If you're ready for the same types of outcomes to change your entire business, to align with your team like you never though possible, and to start calling your shots and have your team lead the way in getting there, get in touch with us. I'm ready to help you grow your business. If you're a million dollars or more right now, or you've had an 83 thousand dollar plus month you qualify to talk to us about our grow and scale program, and I'd love to connect with you.

Contact our office, reach out, and I look forward to talking to you. Thanks for being here. I'll see you again tomorrow.