The Company Where No One Has To Work

Alex Charfen: As entrepreneurs, we want teams that execute fast, overcome obstacles, and get through anything, so that we can continue to build our dreams. The problem for most entrepreneurs is they don't know if their team is working hard enough. I want to show you how to build a company where no one feels like they're working.

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.

Instead of just day dreaming 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.

When you look at employing human beings in the world, businesses are getting it wrong. 87% of employees, team members worldwide, are being paid to fulfill a job in which they are not engaged. A very high percent of them are actually ... or a percentage of them ... are actually actively disengaged, which means they are damaging the company.

So 87% of people aren't fully checked into their jobs, they don't really care, they don't really see it as a place where they're going to create anything, they just go and punch a clock. That is why so many entrepreneurs today feel like they can't hire people, because we follow traditional models, traditional way of doing things, we read the wrong books, we put up the wrong systems in our business, we focus in the wrong place, and we end up with team members that are in this 87%.

I want you to always have team members that are actively engaged, excited about where you're going, in momentum, and crushing it for you. I haven't always known how to do all of this. This has taken me over 25 years to assemble. The content that I teach today has been in practice for 25 years, or over 25 years.

I've been a professional consultant for over 20 years, and well over 20 years, and the way to build a business as an entrepreneur where you are always excited to go to work, you never wonder if people are working hard enough, and everyone's excited to be there with you, is you build a company where they don't feel like they're working by doing the following.

So there's three major places. One, you build the company around yourself so that you work in your zone of genius. Two, you get the team that does what they love, and you make sure that you continue to support them in a way that they're excited about it, and then three, you get everyone in your business into momentum.

Let's start with build around yourself. So here's what you do as an entrepreneur. The problem with most ... what most entrepreneurs do, is they build a company thinking they need some traditional view of an organization based on what everybody else does. The way to build a company around yourself so that you're successful is to follow the steps in the Billionaire Code.

So first, you have to build systems and processes around what you do well, and then you have to build a team that can run those systems and processes around you, and then you have to scale that team. If you do those three things, build systems around what you do well, then train those systems to a team, then scale that team, you will grow your business as long as you're in a viable market and you're profitable.

That means that for you as an entrepreneur, you need a system in your business to consistently evaluate what you need, and then understand how to fulfill those needs without you doing it in the budget that you have, and that's what we train ... this entire system is what we train, but this is exactly how you first get yourself into momentum, because the average entrepreneur, and we know this from thousands of time studies that we've done, the average entrepreneur is working less than 10% of their time in their zone of genius, in where they could actually grow the business, in this strategic part of their zone of genius.

Here's the problem. There's a lot of entrepreneurs who are great at sales, but they're spending 90% of their time in sales, and they're not growing their business, so where is that strategic zone of genius? Very few are ever doing it, so that's why so many entrepreneurs don't grow their business.

Let's go from build around yourself to now, get a team doing what they love. In a company where everyone is doing what they love, and the entrepreneur's in momentum, and the team is in momentum, no one ever feels like they're working. I can tell you, this is how crazy, the crazy type of thing that happens in a business where no one feels like they're working.

This week on Monday, we were having one of our team meetings, and Hailey, my assistant, who's incredible, said, "Hey, just want to remind everybody it's a short week, so you're going to have to knock the stuff out on your weekly report early." And Carina, our designer, who is also probably the best designer I've ever been so lucky to work with, she's ... and I've worked with dozens ... and if you count as a consultant, I've worked with hundreds, and she is absolutely incredible. She said, "Excuse me."

Carina is Venezuelan, and she lives in Ireland. She said, "Excuse me. What do you mean we have a short week?" Hailey said, "Oh, it's Thanksgiving here in the United States, and we all have Thursday and Friday off." She said, "Oh, okay. But I'm in Ireland. I can work, right?" We all kind of laughed, and I said, "Yeah, Carina, you can absolutely work." She said, "Yeah, because I'm not going to just sit here and do nothing, we have projects to finish."

That's what happens in a company where everybody is doing what they love, because Carina's dream is to be a designer, and to be able to design the look and feel of a company, and to be given really good feedback, she wants good feedback, she actually asks for it, and because she's so talented, she has designed an entire product line for us.

I mean, we're selling merchandise now at charfenshop.com, and we have T-shirts, and mugs, and all kinds of stuff that she's put together. She's changed the look and feel of our company, look and feel of our resources. She's doing exactly what she wants to do. We make sure that we keep all the other stuff that isn't something Carina would be good at, she doesn't do those things. She does exactly what she wants to do.

The way that you do this in your business, the way that you get your team doing what they love, is first you recruit for it. When we recruited Carina, she loved designing. She actually was a referral from a friend of mine, Josh Latimer ... and thank you Josh again, a million times over. She's incredible. Carina's amazing. When we interviewed her, she said she loves designing, and her dream was to create the look and feel for a business, and make it all look the same, and really high quality. It was exactly what we wanted.

Then the third way you get your team doing what they love is you look for hidden talent. This week, I asked Rachel, who is one of our Australian team members, and Rachel Verde, and she's absolutely amazing. She's been writing our social media posts about the podcast, so whenever you see a post about the podcast, it's using a lot of the words that I use in the podcast, but Rachel's actually been doing the writing. I've been reading them, and I'm just impressed with her writing. I really like how she writes.

So this week, I asked her if she'd be willing to experiment with me and possibly start writing some nurture emails to our list, because if you're on our email list you know we are super inconsistent. We've been better in the last few weeks, but we're still really inconsistent. I asked her for help. She wrote a few emails, and they were just outstanding, like so well done. I'm so excited to work with her on it.

I think that that process of looking for hidden talent, and looking in your business, who has a hidden talent, like Rachel. I think she's going to develop into an incredible writer. I'm already kind of in trouble, because she works directly with [Isla], and she's Isla's assistant, and so I'm recruiting her out from under her, but that's what you do. That's how you find ... you get your team doing what they love. You find things that people are really good at, and then move them into doing more of it.

So first you build your business around yourself, so you're in momentum, and you get the protection that you need, and the support you need. You have strengths that should be protected. You should get support everywhere else. Then you get the team doing what they love, and then the last one is you get everyone in momentum.

See, when everyone in a business is in momentum, when everyone's excited, when everyone's radiating the energy of being on the hunt and pumped about it, and everyone has those momentum chemicals, the team actually becomes kind of addictive, and everybody gets into it, and that's why some companies have really intense cultures, like ours has a really intense culture. I kid around like Russell does, that the first four letters of culture are cult. How are you convincing the people in your company to think?

Here's what we do. We get everybody taking care of themselves. We talk about health all the time. We talk about hydration all the time. We have everyone using our momentum planner, and we make sure that in the business, we have clear outcomes. There is a spelled out, written strategic plan that the team has agreed to. We have accountability. There's a structure in place, and we know the roles everyone has.

In fact, we are updating all of this right now, because we've hit a number of team members where now we need to really update everyone's role, and make sure everything's clear, because when you have outcome accountability, so clarity around what you're doing, a clear outcome, and then transparency, some type of score board, that's how you stay in momentum. In our business we make sure there's score boards in every corner of the business. In fact, Cadey and I talked for an hour last night about some of the metrics that we're not getting in the business that we really want.

So when you look at growing your business, here's what I want you to know. When you grow it this way, you will actually find yourself coaching team members to take time off. When you grow a business in the traditional way, you don't put the right things in place, and you don't put the right systems in place, the right structure in place, and you don't get yourself and your team into momentum, as an entrepreneur, you will always be trying to motivate people, and you will always have that nagging feeling that people aren't doing enough. You don't really know everything that's going on. You don't understand if enough's happening.

When you build a team this way, you never wonder, because what you find is your team is constantly pushing each other to do better, to be stronger, to be better at what they do. That's the world I live in, and it's incredible. It's incredible, because today I think I'm coaching one of ... or not coaching, I'm leading one of the best teams I've ever had in my career, possibly the best, and it's so exciting because I watch the effect that my team's momentum has on each other, and I'm watching them not just perform like incredibly in their positions and do amazing things for our business, I'm also watching them grow and develop as human beings.

Every entrepreneur is in this for money, but take it from someone who's 46. As you accomplish more in your career, and as you move through your career, one of the things you will be proudest of is the effect you've had on the people who work with you. I've had I don't know how many dozen team members who have worked for us go on and start businesses, or become partners in companies, or go out and become successful entrepreneurs. I consider that a huge thing that I'm proud of.

As an entrepreneur, you will feel the same way, and if you take care of your team and you make sure everyone's in momentum, you're going to build a business faster that you ever thought possible. Get some structure in place, and everything will change. If you want to do this, if you want to do exactly what I said, build around yourself, get a team doing what they love, and have everyone in your business in momentum, then reach out to us, or just go to billionairecode.com/apply.

We are showing business owners how to do this every day, and we have companies in our coaching programs that have grown their businesses by double in less than the first year. We've had companies grow by much more than that, but we have a lot that are doubling in size, and doing more, achieving more, making a bigger impact, and having for the entrepreneur, a lot more options. If you're ready to grow the business that you have, and if you're ready to take the next step, go to billionairecode.com/apply, and let us help you build a company where no one has to work.