Own Your Avatar

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.

Own your avatar.

In the last two billionaire code sections I shared seeker and starter seeker is that zero to 40,000. Starters, that 40 to 100,000, and 22 million out of 29 million businesses in the United States. To get through seeker and starter, you have to understand who you want to serve, and then get a consistent, deliverable, and avatar clarity. That is one of the places where if you as an entrepreneur lean in, the companies who go stratospheric, the companies who go from six figures to seven and then to eight, the companies who become unicorns, the companies who change things, the companies who leave a massive dent in the universe, own their avatar. They don't just figure out an avatar. They don't just go and sell to an avatar. They set out to own their avatar.

This is not that easy. See, good businesses have an avatar. But world changing businesses own an avatar.Because not everyone can do it. This means you go out and you take all the oxygen away from anyone else talking to your avatar. You are the only person they hear. You are the go to person, product, or service for what you do for your avatar. If you do this, this is how companies literally just explode

. I know, because I have this unique view of organizations. Let me share with you where it comes from so you understand why I tell you what I tell you with the level of certainty that I have.

I've been privileged with this crazy work history where as a consultant I worked with massive multinational, multibillion dollar organizations like Wal-Mart, Samborn's, a Carlos and Slim Organization in Mexico, with Tech Data in Tampa, with Ingram Micro. Huge, huge companies. I worked directly with, I represented and had clients like Fuji and Microsoft and Belkin and Targis. I worked with massive companies like Fuji that were established when I got there. I worked with companies like Targis that, that I've watched grow from tens of millions to 10 figures in sales. I worked with small companies like Tiger Direct that when I started with them they were tiny, and then they grew to this massive organization. So I've seen companies grow. And I worked with startups, companies that went from literally nothing like SanDisk to a multibillion dollar organization in the time that we were working with them.

That view of companies has clarified things that you must do. And I've also taken five different organizations to over 10 million, and one to over 250 million. And when you look at those numbers, there's not a lot of entrepreneurs who have done that. I share that with you because I want you to understand. When I share something with you like this strategy, own your avatar, this is what decides who stays in business and who doesn't. And I can tell you story after story to prove it. One that I have right now, and I know they come up all the time, but it's so hard not to use them, and especially for this example, is Alex and Layla Hormozi, who run Gym Launch.

If you haven't heard about them before, Gym Launch is a company that helps gym owners get members into their gyms and basically takes gym owners who mostly ... Most gym owners in the United States, most small gym owners, are starving. They're not paying their bills. They're sleeping on the gym floor. They're having trouble making their mortgage payments. They've missed payments. Alex and Layla take them from that status to making tens of thousands of dollars in weeks. Not months, not years, weeks. In fact, they at one point had a program where they would finance it for you, so you would pay your first $1,000, but then by the time you needed to make your second payment, they wouldn't show you how to make money before that. Because it's that good of a program.

They own their avatar to the point where they have exploded. They've grown an eight figure business in 10 months. But - now this is crazy - they have other gym, franchise organizations and membership organizations turning their membership over to them. Here's why. Alex Hormozi and Layla know the struggling gym owner better than anyone on the planet today. They own that avatar. Alex was a struggling gym owner. He slept on the floor of his gym. He had to figure this all out for himself. And every single day he obsesses over that avatar. He thinks about how he can help them, how he can make them better. It's a constant dedication for him to own his avatar. And that's how you create an eight figure company in 10 months. Because you know that person better than anyone out there and you're delivering exactly what they need. That's what Alex is doing.

The first step to owning your avatar ... And by the way, if you're at any level of the billionaire code, if you're above the 100,000, maybe you're in promoter, which is what we'll do next, 100,000 to 300,000, or maybe you're higher, but at any level, if you start feeling stuck, you have to ask yourself, do I own my avatar? Because companies who own their avatar don't get stuck. They take off like rockets. I know. I've owned them all my life.

The first thing that you need to do is define who you want to work with and write it down. You need to define your avatar. You need to be able to pick them out of a crowd. You have to ask yourself is what you're writing down specific enough?

I want you to hear why this is so important. The clarity of your avatar equals the speed your movement will grow. I'm going to say it again. The clarity of your avatar will create the speed with which your movement will grow. So if your avatar's unclear, if it's too broad, if you can't pick them out of a crowd, if you don't know who they are, if you're trying to help everyone, if you're trying to help to broad a group, if you're trying to help entrepreneurs, if you're trying to empower women, if you're trying to help homeowners, if you're trying to help realtors, you are dead. You're dead. You're not going to be able to do it, because you have to have a specific avatar.

When Cadey and I went bankrupt in 2007 and we built the Certified Distressed Property Expert, she was a real estate agent. I wasn't. And I knew I had to own an avatar in the real estate industry. But not all real estate agents. I couldn't, because there was a million. I had to figure out who I was talking to. So we did interviews and we figured out ... I did extensive interviews with real estate agents. I interviewed over 100 agents to write that product. and I asked them the questions I'll share with you in a minute. But when I talked to them, I found out that the person who really cared about short sales was the more experienced agent who was already making money, who had sold a lot of people homes, and was now getting phone calls. We were really early to the market. It was 2008.

he first realtors to really feel a sense of urgency were the ones who were doing well. The first realtors to feel a sense of urgency around the market were the ones who had sold a lot and were scared of the phone calls. They didn't have answers. They didn't know what to say. So we started marketing directly to that realtor. We used a more sophisticated language then they use for entry level real estate agents. I started calling them out in our marketing and when I spoke in public. I started talking to that person directly. We also found out that it was the realtors who were more interested in working with us were the ones who felt a sensitivity to their clients, a dedication to their clients. The ones who talked about those things, the ones who used it in their marketing So we started talking about those things. Are you dedicated to your clients? Are you the agent who really cares about the client more than the transaction?

Because you know what, there's some agents who said that market is just dumb. And we didn't want them. We didn't want them because we knew that if they were going to work with us, they needed to do more than the average agent, so we started marketing directly to the person that we wanted. The agent we wanted. We narrowed it down. We owned that avatar.

If you want to own your avatar, after you write it down, then the second step is to go out and do avatar interviews. Now, these are interviews where you sit ... First you figure out who you're going to talk to. You narrow the age group down. You narrow down ... Today, for me, I work with million dollar plus entrepreneurs. They're million dollar plus entrepreneurs that created far more opportunity than they have the infrastructure to fulfill. They know they're leaving money on the table. They want to build a team around them. They want to do it right, become a better leader. They know that they can build something that probably could hit 10 figures, might even be able to go far beyond that, and they want to make a massive change in the world. That's who I work with.

In order to get to the place where I am now, where I'm coaching these companies and coaching this avatar, working with people, doing exactly this, I talked to over a hundred entrepreneurs with million dollar plus companies. I asked tons of questions. And here's what you can do. In your interviews, ask, as it relates to what you do to the problem you plan on solving, how do they feel about it? What do they want? What solution do they want? What would the ideal solution be? Why are they frustrated with what they have now? Figure out and then ask probing questions. Like, what do you really want? What would it look like? And what you'll find is your avatars will tell you exactly what they want you to give them.

And then as it relates to them, find out what their biggest challenges are, their frustrations, the bottlenecks that they're feeling. Then ask them what type of solutions they think would work for them. And then they'll tell you exactly how you should sell to them. And you'll hear it in their language. They'll tell you how they want to be sold to. They'll tell you what's important to you.

In the avatar interviews, when I was in real estate, every single one of them told me one of the most important things to them was referral business. So in our marketing for CDP, we started talking about referral business as early as we could. In fact, we started surveying our members to see if they were referring business to each other, and then we started using those survey results by saying that if you are one of our agents, you would get an average of three referrals a quarter, because it was true. But we did that because I interviewed the avatars and I knew what was important to them.

As it relates to the solutions they've tried in what you do, ask them what products or services or coaching or what have they bought, what products have they bought? Did they order it? How did they get it? How much did they spend? And would they consider it a success and why? Your avatars will tell you exactly what they want, and then you will hear language over and over of exactly how you should sell to them.

When I was talking to million dollar plus business owners, here's what I found out. The thing that they felt most urgent about was time. They couldn't figure out how to make it all work. They couldn't figure out how to grow the team and grow the business at the same time. They were having far too hard a time transitioning from doing everything to getting help doing it, and they couldn't figure out how to get everybody going in the same direction.

I know we can help people. We do this every day. We can help people with that. And that's what I've been doing for over 20 years, almost 25. So we created that outcome and went out and shared it. And now we're in a place where when you go to an event like Funnel Hacking Live, not only do I get to speak, but I'm coaching four or five of the speakers who are onstage. And the two comma club X winners that did it in the fastest time ever in the history of click funnels. And man, they might be doing it faster than ever in the history of ever.

Alex and Layla are clients of ours because we own our avatar, and they're exactly what I just described. When you look at examples, other examples that I'm working with of owning your avatar, Jason Hull. He works with property managers and property management companies. When you look at what Jason does, he's so intense, he goes out there and he talks directly to an avatar within property management, the property manager who's different and who wants to do things different. Jason's not afraid to be himself, and he's aggressive on camera, and he calls himself a property management and growth hacker. He's this intense, intense guy. And his company is called, he markets under the name Door Grow. And he shows property managers how to go get more doors, how to get more business. And his company's exploding. He owns the avatar of that property manager. So much so -this is so interesting - another company actually made an entire marketing video that made fun of Jason. And so Jason ... They had to take it down because they receive so much blow back. But Jason got it and now he uses it all the time.

Sorry, I had to hyper hydrate there. That wasn't really hyper hydrating. I just had to take a drink. But Jason uses the video all the time. And the company that that was doing that was actually a bit larger than Jason. So he's out there making such waves that companies are creating marketing videos against him as parodies, and he's doing so well, it's blowing back on the company who made the parody.

That's how you own your avatar. And Jason, not a property manager. He's just talked to hundreds and hundreds of them, and he knows how to solve their problems better than anyone I've seen in the country. Certified distressed property expert, almost 50,000 units sold to real estate agents. Fastest growing designation in the history of real estate.

I wasn't a real estate agent. I just talked to over 100 of them. And then as we grew that product, I continued to talk to them. As I traveled around the country, we surveyed every single time we taught a class. Our members started telling us what we needed to tell them, and they would tell us where we need to do improve or what we were missing or what was new in the market. Because we continued to own our avatar by listening to them.

That's that's how you build your business. You set out and you own your avatar, and then you continue to listen to them, and you continue to modify and change around what they tell you they want.

If you want to see your company go through the roof, ask yourself the question, do I own my avatar? And if you don't, start asking yourself that question every single day. Because here's my assumption. A lot of you who are listening have been beyond starter level that we talked about. You're past, those six figures. And for those of you who aren't, there's nothing wrong with that, but for those of you who are, I want you to ask yourself, do you really own your avatar? Because if you don't, you're exposed to somebody coming along and taking them away from you.

Every company that serviced at gym owners in the United States has been completely caught off guard by the overwhelming entrance of Alex and Layla Hormozi, because those other companies sold to an avatar. Alex and Layla own the avatar.

If you're interested in understanding the billionaire code and what's coming next, take a minute and go to billionairecode.com and answer a few questions for us, and we'll show you exactly where you are on the billionaire code and give you a full summary of every single level. Let us show you how to stop wasting time, stop feeling like you've hit a plateau, and get to your next level as an entrepreneur, and even more importantly, understand what your next steps are after that.

Thanks for sharing this with me tonight. If you don't yet, dedicate yourself to owning your avatar, and you will create it company based around a social movement that will grow faster than you ever could imagine.