Starter

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.

Starter is the level above Seeker on the Billionaire Code. The Seeker has sales of 0 to 40 thousand, the Starter is 40 to 100 thousand. It's that huge world of entrepreneurs looking at six figures as an outcome. It's also that huge world of entrepreneurs that have a business and are looking at starting something else. You're under that $100 thousand in what you want to do.

Starters are 6 million in the U.S., Seekers are 16. So out of the 29 million businesses in the United States, 22 million of them are under $100 thousand. So if you've done more, congratulations, you're above most. If you're under that, understand you are not alone. And while your primary focus in Seeker was self identity and market clarity, understanding who you want to serve, in Starter it's a consistent deliverable and avatar clarity. See, when you have clarity around a market, like you want to serve entrepreneurs, that will move you forward. You will understand some things. But then you have to start looking for, who exactly is your avatar? Who's the person, who's that group that when you walk into a room, within a minute you can pick off everyone who is your client?

And the challenge for a lot of people who get into this level of Starter, they get to the 40 to 100 thousand where you have to define that avatar, is they leave it far too broad, to the point where you're just making noise. Whenever somebody tells me something like, "Oh, well, I want to work with entrepreneurs," I tell them, "Good luck." You can't. There's no way to just go out and attract all entrepreneurs, and you don't have a deliverable for all entrepreneurs. There's nine levels of the Billionaire Code. You're deliverable isn't going to work for all of them, and it's not who you're going to attract. Who is it that consistently comes to you? And if you don't figure this out, you will revisit the fallback question over and over in this level.

In the first level it was, "How do I stop pressure and noise?" You know as a Seeker, it's loud. As a Starter, the question's, "What is wrong with me?" because you start actually making real money in what you're trying to do, but you can't figure out how to make it scale, how to make it grow, how to get past that 40 to 100. Now there's, these days, there's entrepreneurs who just blow through these levels. Like a lot of people who are on click funnels ... I just got to speak at Russell's convention. A lot of people on click funnels, they do Seeker and Starter in like a month, but if you're stuck it's because you don't have that consistent deliverable to a consistent avatar that you can pick off walking into a room.

And you have to remember here too, is that as a Starter, you have a ... your team is probably just you. Like sometimes there's partnerships that are Starters, that are down at this level, but most of the time it's just you, so you have to be very careful about how much you commit to and how much you do. When it comes to your movement, as a Seeker you identify who your movement is, and as a Starter you define your movement, and we define a movement in four different ways, and the four bases for a movement is, number one, you define and unify who you serve. So if you go out and say, "Entrepreneurs," that's really tough, but if you say, "I serve visionary entrepreneurs who can't turn it off," I talk to a very specific group of people in an audience, especially if I'm in a mixed audience.

And so that's that first part of your movement. You define it by defining and unifying your movement. You tell them ... You figure out who they are and you tell them you're the person leading that movement. For me, today, it's entrepreneurs who are scaling a business, who are over a million dollars, and we are showing them how to grow that business, and so the first part of a movement is you define and unify.

The second part of the movement is you provide a plan, so you tell that movement how you can help them grow. So for us, it's you put in a consistent communication cadence in your business, and you create consistent processes around everything you do, and we show businesses how to do that in a way where it doesn't slow things down. And then you define ... or, sorry, then you advocate for and defend your market. When you're clarifying that movement, when you're defining that movement, now you go out and you defend that movement against anything that's attacking them. Like for me, I go out and I talk all the time about how entrepreneurs are in unhealthy coaching relationships because they're working with coaches that have created marketing that says that they're the person they need to talk to, but coaches who haven't even produced the result that they're promising for themselves. And so I defend people against that, and then I advocate for entrepreneurs.

To me, and this is what I share openly every time I speak, entrepreneurs are the only consistent source of positive human evolution, and we always will be. You hear it every time you hear the podcast. And so I advocate for my movement, and so as a Starter, you have to get into that place where you define the movement, because that's how your business will grow. So you define and unify. You provide a plan. Then you defend your movement against the attacks they're under, because every movement, every clientele is under attack.

If you have a retail product, then you are saving them from the other products that are not as good as yours. If you have a service, you are saving them from the other services that take advantage of them. If you are a coach like I am, you're saving them from the other coaches who aren't as good as you, and you better believe in what you're doing at that level, when you're a Starter. Because if you're stuck under that hundred thousand mark, it's probably because you haven't done this.

Your biggest need as a Starter is market and avatar clarity. Who is that person that you can consistently sell to, and to graduate Starter you consistently monetize your product or service. And here's the challenge for a lot of Starters. If you're not stuck because you don't understand your movement, here's what happens. A lot of people in this area, they figure out who they want to serve, they know the avatar, but then if you're stuck, it's because maybe you're doing too much. You have too many things going on. There's too many variations. A lot of Starter businesses look like Afghan bazaars. They might be making $75 thousand a year, but they're charging everybody differently. They're billing everyone different. They're doing contract work. They're doing some work at one rate, some work at another rate. They're creating a consistent result, or they wouldn't get into the higher levels of 60, 70, 80 thousand.

If you're in this place, start asking yourself, what can you do consistently over and over again that takes less of your time but provides a high level of value? Start looking at what you're doing that people really get momentum from, and ask yourself how you can monetize that or repeat it over and over again with less of your time, because ... And start asking yourself, how do you dramatically simplify your deliverable? Because your next step, when you get over $100 thousand, is that you're going to have to start scaling the delivery of your deliverable, you're going to have to start scaling your product, you're going to have to start selling more of it, delivering more of it, and here's the challenge. Starters, because you're doing literally almost everything, you can't really afford that much help, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, and the more complex your product is, the more mistakes you will make. The more mistakes in delivery, the more mistakes in marketing, the more mistakes and attracting the avatar. So drag the complexity out of what you're doing.

If you're going into a new market, consider selling one product to start. There are some insane examples of companies who have limited themselves to one product until they had market penetration that allowed them to bring in new products at a rate where it was crazy, but look at Red Bull. Red Bull started with one product. Now they have multiple SKUs everywhere, but they started with one product and a single avatar. They went to after the extreme athlete to start. Now they go after all kinds. Red Bull's advertised in American Way magazine. They're going after the Business Traveler now. They're going after everyone because they're a multi-billion dollar company, but right now, at Starter, you have to start with one product that you can consistently deliver, because scaling a business is complicated. And now, from this point forward, you're going to be doing two things in the world: scaling your business, and scaling how much of your product or service you deliver, and you must assume both roles. There's no other way to get through this.

I show people how to do it with a minimum of time, with minimum effective dose, and in a way that they have a lot of time left to grow the business, do what they want, to have their lives, but there's no other way to do it besides you, at this point, doing everything and growing the business and scaling ... growing the company and scaling the business at the same time ... or, sorry, increasing your deliverable, how much you deliver, and scaling and growing your business at the same time. That means moving forward you're going to have to start looking at using contractors and hiring a team and increasing the ... It becomes increasingly difficult to deliver a product when it's a team and not just an individual, and if you make it too confusing right now, you will always have this thought in the back of your mind as you move forward, "Why don't I just go back to doing it all myself?"

Because the people who think that every day in their business ... And if you're thinking that right now, I want you to look around your business and ask yourself, "Is it way too complex? Is there too many different products? Is there too many different SKUs?" The fact is, in the real world, 20% of products in almost every company equate for 80% of the profit, and if you want to see the companies that have exploded, they have created a consistent deliverable for a very tight avatar. Not broad at all, for a very clear, very tight avatar.

The one that we work with, to give you more details on exactly who we work with, we work with ... It's not just million dollar plus CEOs. We go out looking for million dollar plus CEOs, and founders and companies, entrepreneurs who've done it themselves. We look for companies with high margin, because we know we can help high margin companies grow really, really fast because there's resources available, and we're looking for entrepreneurs that they want to do anything it takes to grow their business, that are committed to growing it, that are on a mission, that feel like they're changing the world, that know they're changing the world, that will prove it to you when you're on the phone with them, and the reason is because they understand their avatar like crazy and they know exactly who it is and they cater to that avatar. They know the effect that they make for them, and they are insanely focused.

And the challenge for far too many Starters is they dilute the focus in one of two ways. It's either far too complex a product offering or far too broad an avatar, and you just get stuck here, and that question, "What is wrong with me?" will bang you in the head every day. I know. I've been there.

To be candid, I don't have to run a business. There's other ways that Cadey and I make money. I don't have to run this business. We have other businesses. We have investments, we have a passive income, we have percentages of other people's businesses, so that was one of the reasons why I had the luxury to pivot avatars. But for years I was talking to the entrepreneurial personality type, which they listened, but they didn't buy a lot because it was such a broad audience. It was hard to say, "Here's exactly what I help with," so I had thousands of people following me, but very few people buying anything. And even though we didn't have a clear outcome or a clear deliverable, I was still doing a ton of consulting, and when we did events, people would show up but nothing was consistent.

And then as soon as I ... Earlier in the year, working with Russell Brunson, clarified my avatar to be exactly who I've told you. We have 30 people in a high-end mastermind, and we don't have any type of sales letter, anything, so ... And not 30 people, 30 companies. Well over 30 people, but we did that because our avatar is so clear, and that's what I do. I mean, I do this, I help other companies do this, and I missed it for myself.

So if you've been successful before and in the thing you really want to do, you're stuck in this 40 to 100K, take it from someone who's hyper-focused on ... or not, sorry, not hyper-focused ... hyper-clear on how I got stuck here. It's because I didn't have a consistent deliverable to a tight avatar. It was way too broad, and I wasn't solving a specific pain they had. Today we solve the pain of entrepreneurs having way too much opportunity without the infrastructure in their business, so that they can go out and have the effect that they can have right now. They know they have more opportunity. They know there's more out there. They know they're leaving money on the table, and it's frustrating. Because I know that avatar so well, that's why we're doing so well, and we're consistently monetizing our product or service. That's what you do to graduate Starter.

And if you're a Starter who wants to go forward, start asking yourself, "Is my avatar to broad?" Start looking at who you're really talking to and who you really want to work with. Start asking yourself, is there a consistency, is there a commonality with the people who you really want to help, and you will find that if you tighten up that avatar and simplify your product offering, that's how you get out of Starter, and when you do, I'm excited for you. Because the next time I shared about the Billionaire Code, I'll be talking about promoter, 100 to 300 thousand, one of the most exciting levels for entrepreneurs, but also one of the levels where so many people flame out. I look forward to sharing that with you next time.

And if you haven't yet, if you want to get all the levels of the Billionaire Code and check out the details, maybe even follow along with the workbook, go to billionairecode.com. We'll ask you a few questions, we'll let you know what level of the Billionaire Code you're in, and give you a full results package that includes information on every level of the Billionaire Code so that you can see where you're going, where you are now, what you should be focused on, and what you're going to be doing next so you can start building that into your business now. Go to billionairecode.com. Know the Code.