True Believers To Superfans

When you hire true believers, you will never have to motivate them. If you hire people who aren't true believers, you will never be able to motivate them enough.

Now, if you're lucky to go out, find, recruit, and hire a true believer, the last thing you ever want to do is turn them against you.

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. I'm 46 years old. So these days there's a lot about growing a team, running a business that I have systems, I have process, I have structure around and I've become very competent at. But early in my career, one of the things that happened over and over again was I would figure out certain parts of running a business but I wouldn't figure out the rest.

And there was a point where I figured out how to recruit true believers, the people who are all in, the ones who will do what you ask them to do, who show up early, who stay late, who are in it for the cause, they're excited about the growth of the business, they're excited about what you're doing. They're excited about the effect that you have and they are incredible. But over and over again I would hire true believers and I would lose them or even worse they would turn against me and then use their true believer status in the company that I had to confirmed, that I had built up for them and they would be the mutineers. Like the reason I know what a mutiny feels like in a company and how to get past it and what usually causes it is because I've had so many in my career and I built systems and process and structure around how to not let that happen again.

And one of the double edged swords of hiring true believers is that when you hire a true believer, if you don't show up in the right way, if you don't maintain that and improve that true believers status, think about that. You can't just maintain it. You have to improve the true believer status or you lose them. They get frustrated, they will turn against you. And I have had this happen in a dramatic way to me. I wish I could say it was only once, but it's not. I've made crazy mistakes in running a business, I didn't know a fraction of what I know today. I still make mistakes today and I have a system where I help other people grow businesses. Running a business, growing a business is one of the most difficult things you can ever commit to in your lifetime.

But once you start learning how to attract true believers, I want to make sure that you learn how to keep them. And here's something that happens in our coaching program all the time. I watch our clients attract true believers that are in it for the cause, excited about working with the company and since we coach Ceos and their operators, we coach husband and wife teams with their assistants or operators. We coach CEOs with their COOs, with their operators, with their executive assistants, depending on what size growth they're at. But we're always working with a CEO and an operator. And so we get to see a lot of true believers come into companies and over and over again we watch, not more than once, but usually the CEO learns, but we watch CEOs lose incredible true believers and I've watched it for most of my career and for a lot of my career, I didn't really understand what you could do to keep them because it looks random.

It didn't look clear. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't understand exactly what it was you could do to keep them because here's what happens when you hire really good people and they leave or you hire really good people and then they don't work out or you hire really good people and they're great at the beginning, but then they're not so great after over time. If you've been in any of those situations, then you know what it feels like. You feel exposed, you feel vulnerable. You feel like, "What's happened here? Why didn't this work out?" It's frustrating and it feels ... you create this whole future that you and that person are going to build together. When you hire someone, it's exciting. You're envisioning that future. You're creating the results in your mind and when you have to terminate them, you lose all of that.

When you redeploy them, it's terrible because you feel vulnerable and exposed and wonder if you're ever going to get the help you need. And if a true believer becomes a mutineer, they hurt you on the way out. It's challenging because if they're a true believer and the rest of the team knows that and they feel like they're frustrated with you. If you turn them against you, they will hurt you on the way out. And here's what happens. This is how you turn true believers against you, is they're not clear on what's going on. They feel like they've put in the effort, they put in the energy, they've done what they're supposed to do and they're not getting results and the business isn't growing so they're not winning. If they aren't winning, you have to understand something. If the true believers not winning, it's not about their job.

It's not about whether they're doing good for you or not. It's about the cause. It's about what you're all doing together. It's about you're not winning all together. And here's the fear for an entrepreneur. If you can't maintain true believers, the fear becomes is that you're not going to maintain your best people, the most strategic people, the people who can move you forward the fastest. So here's how you resolve this. Not only do you have to learn how to consistently recruit true believers, you have to learn how to build a true believer development system within your organization. And this is completely different than any other system in your company. But it is the most important system in your company. And if you do this right, it's also the system that will grow your business. It's the system that will make things predictable. It's a system that will allow you to grow your team in a scalable way, and it's the system that will allow your business to explode.

It also happens to be a true believer development system. And here's what it takes. So first, in order to have true believers feel confident about what's going on, they need to know where you're going. And true believers want to know that there's an outcome. They want to see a strategic plan. So if you know how to create a strategic plan in your business and present it to your team in a way they understand, you will maintain true believers. You will get them to be even more of the true believers that they are. That's first because here's ... and once you create a strategic plan, you have to create it in a way where you do not change direction all the time and change direction at the last minute. You have to start learning how to predict the future because true believers are in it for the cause and they will kill for you when something comes up, unless you're the something all the time. If there's a tight deadline because somebody else moved in, if there's something that happens in an event. If there's something that happens in the business where you need help. True believers will do whatever they can to help you, but you can't be the thing that is always causing that issue. So create a strategic plan and stopped changing direction on your team.

When you tell true believers where you're going and then you change direction, they lose confidence in you, they lose faith in you, they lose trust in you not as the CEO, but as the leader of the movement they've committed to. Team members do the same thing. But with true believers, it's even more dramatic. So create a strategic plan and stick to it. Second, communicate with your team within a system. We have what we call a cadence. We set up a calendar. We have the same meetings in the same way, and we repeat them through a process that feels safe, that feels predictable. Team members can anticipate what's coming. And so not only do they know what's going on and are they communicated with, but we create an extraordinarily safe place for team members to communicate with us. My good friend Takkie is here today and Takkie Moore who runs black belt coaching.

He's amazing. I'm actually a client of his and he comes to us every once in a while, my kids and his kids hanging out and so he's here today and he was talking about how on his team, sometimes it's difficult to facilitate communication because of cultural differences. We have the same cultural differences on my team, but we've created a system through which not only do people hear, but they also communicate in a system. And when there's communication within a system, people just communicate. And so you are able to hear from your entire team. You're able to react to what they need. You're able to communicate with them, they can communicate back with you when you communicate within a system. And then last, if you want to make sure you keep true believers, you develop true believers, you move them in the right direction, you need clear scoreboards throughout the business where everyone has perspective as to what's going on.

So have a system in the business where you know what the measurements are, what are you measuring, are you moving ahead? Are things going in the right directions? When you have projects, make sure you understand the milestones so you know if you're getting that project done and if you're moving towards getting the project done. So when you have those things, when you have a strategic plan, when you communicate within a system and you hear your team members, when you have clear scoreboard so everybody has perspective, true believers will feel safe and then you can add on top policies like a no gossip policy in our company, 100% no gossip policy. If you gossip, we have zero tolerance and for our no gossip policy, gossip is defined as talking to anyone about a problem who can't help you effect a change. Because if you're just telling people that you have problems in our company, you are distracting them

. You're taking their energy, your energy, we don't have it. And so true believers love policies like no gossip and anti discrimination. I tell everybody on the way in, hey, this is law. You can't discriminate, but here we're sensitive to it and we don't want anyone ever feeling less than who ... because of who they are or what religion they are or how they grew up or what language they've spoken or what gender they identify with or who they choose to be in a relationship with or anything else. If they're human beings and they're contributing, they're accepted here. We do not discriminate. Period. And true believers want no noise, so they respect no gossip and anti discrimination and here are the results. If you build a true believer development system, if you have the strategic plan, the communication system, the clear scoreboards, you protect it with a no gossip policy, anti discrimination policy. The results that you get is true believers actually get better over time. They do more and they become super fans. They respect you more, they defend you, they become advocates for you. They go out and they will help you recruit people. They will help you bring the right people to team. They will help you build your business and for every entrepreneur out there who has dreams of making their dent in the universe, my question for you is how big do you want it to be? Because if you want to make the impact you've always known you were capable of, you will not do it by yourself. And if you want to do it in a way that is rewarding and you can celebrate and are exciting and your entire life will shift in a different way, do it with true believers surrounding you.

Communicate within a system, give them a strategic plan, creates clear scoreboards and you will be blown away at what your team is capable of. These days, I show up to my weekly meetings, to my monthly meetings, to my daily huddles and I'm in awe of how amazing my team is. Haley and Melanie who help us run the team who help Cadey and I run the team and who help us manage our team members and run the cadence and operate the business and get what we can done in the short period of time. I've worked with both of them. I've seen them grow and develop and become even more extraordinary than they were when we first hired them. I didn't even know if that was possible. It's incredible what happens when true believers are given opportunity and a system that makes them feel safe.

You will be blown away by your team and it's not just them. I mean every time we're on a huddle or a weekly or a monthly meeting, every time someone in that targeted interaction makes me feel this sense of incredible pride. If it's not some one. The only exception is is when it's multiple people or the entire team because I'm so blown away by how truly incredible they are and how much they're doing and how excited they are and how they're helping me and Cadey achieve our dreams. If true believers are willing to commit to help you achieve your dreams, build a true believer development system, and you will see everything in your business change, it will feel easier for you and you'll be excited about how you're developing the human beings around you to be even more incredible than they are.

If you're ready to do this faster, if you want to do it with a system and a structure that's been proven to help companies grow like crazy, develop to believers and make a massive impact, go to billionairecode.com, fill out the short application there and we will give you an opportunity to set up a momentum session with a member of my team. On that session. We will go through your business with you and clarify where you are today, where it is you really want to be, and help you identify what's in the way for you and how you can get it out of the way. Create momentum and grow your business. Now, if you're ready to start growing faster, build a true believer development system and build a business that you're excited to run every day and proud of. Go to a billionairecode.com, fill out the application. We look forward to connecting with you.