Why I Don'T "Do Coffee"

In the past 24 hours I've been asked out to coffee or to get together with someone just to see if there's an opportunity four times. Years ago, I stopped casual connections without a point and my productivity and my success skyrocketed.

I want you to have the permission, and the reasons why you should stop doing coffee.

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.

Alex Charfen: 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.

Alex Charfen: I think this happens to all of us as entrepreneurs. You start creating a little bit of success, a little bit of attention and maybe some notoriety and become, you know, slightly well known. And what will happen is you will get unlimited, endless streams of requests for, hey, let's grab coffee, let's grab lunch, let's jump on a zoom call and see if we can collaborate. And in the past 24 hours, it's happened to me four times. And when I was younger, I used to just say yes. In fact, when somebody asks me for a coffee or said, "Hey, I'd like to get together. See what you're doing, see if there's an opportunity." I always felt like I would be missing something if I said no. I always felt like I was being rude if I said no and it took forever, but I learned that when I say no to going out to coffee with somebody, I'm saying yes to everything that I want to do.

Alex Charfen: So here's how this relates to what I do on a day to day basis and this is what, how I want you to think about this. The challenge with somebody else saying, "Hey, do you want to go out to coffee?" And then you going to see if there's an opportunity is this. If you don't have a strategic plan, a clear plan of where you are going, if you don't know what it takes to make you productive every day and you don't have clear outcomes in your business, here's what will happen. The request to go out to coffee will actually look attractive. It will be something where you think, "Yeah, I can do that, maybe there's an opportunity, we can figure something out there." The problem is if you have a strategic plan, if you know what it takes to keep your productive every day, if you have clear outcomes in your business that you are driving towards as an entrepreneur, the reality is coffee will be a distraction.

Alex Charfen: Going out with somebody to see if there might be an opportunity there is just not necessary. I get asked this question constantly and here's what I know, if you as an entrepreneur to yes to every time you go out to coffee, here's what's really happening. One, you're letting other people manage your time and quite frankly, manage your opportunity, because if you're bouncing from one coffee meeting to another to try and see if there's opportunity there, unless you're like an MLM, or insurance sales, or financial planning and every person you run into could potentially be a client, you're probably wasting your time. Because rarely does somebody just wake up one day and connect with you with a massive opportunity they have. So here's something I want you to understand, it's okay to say, "Hey, I'd love to get together with you. I really would like to understand why we're planning on getting together. Can you give me a subject matter for this meeting so that I can prioritize?" I get a lot of requests, that's what I do.

Alex Charfen: I want to know what they want to talk to me about. Why do we need to get together in advance of doing it? Because here's something I stopped doing a long time ago. I stopped looking for chance encounters and getting coffee to create my success, because what you're literally doing, if you're looking for chance encounters and getting coffee and people who happen to look you up on social media to help you find success, you are literally counting on getting lucky in order to grow your business and I don't grow my business through luck. I grow my business through a strategic plan, through understanding where my productivity, through clear outcomes. I don't like to get distracted. The other reason you want to be really careful here is that when you're not focused, when you don't know where you're going, when you don't have a clear plan, when you don't have clear productivity, going out to coffee actually feels productive.

Alex Charfen: You can actually trick yourself in to feeling like you've been productive. There's a coffee meeting on your calendar, there's space taken up in the day. You end up spending the time getting there, sitting down and having coffee with the person, talking, then leaving from that place, you actually put activity into it. You put time and in fact, you spend all five of your currencies, time, effort, energy, and focus in order to go have coffee with somebody. If you spend an hour total on the round trip, going to coffee, half hour, being there with them, half hour on the driving, you're now spending an hour on literally absolutely no expectation other than I'm going to connect with a person who I don't really know if they're going to be able to help me or not. And I know the fear, I've already mentioned it.

Alex Charfen: The fear is if you don't go to the coffee, are you missing out? Is there an opportunity there that is just going to be massive that you don't see and is there something that could come out of it that might change everything? Well, here's my answers for you If that's how you feel, good luck. Because, the number of times in my career where somebody has randomly contacted me, doesn't have an agenda, doesn't have a reason why we're getting together, wants to get together for coffee to see if there's something there and something massive has come out of it is zero. Like let's be very clear, it's never happened. When I was younger, I went on hundreds of these coffee dates. In fact, my calendar used to have them in, used to have these dates almost every week where I was going to meet somebody, or going to build a relationship, or going to do something. And the reality is rarely, rarely did it work.

Alex Charfen: It was like sifting through, you know, tons and tons of iron ore to get to the gold. Or tons of the silt to get to gold. You know, hundreds of coffee meetings and maybe there was three or four that meant something. It just started feeling like the most unproductive way to create my success. And so here's my, the epiphany that I finally had. Here's the shift that I found when it came to like going out to coffee, these chance encounters, letting other people manage my time, letting other people fill my calendar, was that I feel like I was missing out. However, when you make your strategic plan so good and so clear, and you understand that your accountability in it and your team and you are in momentum, coffee will never feel like you're missing out. It will feel like a distraction. You will run from it and this will help you create success.

Alex Charfen: So here's what I want you to think about the next time that somebody says, "Hey, do you want to do coffee?" If any part of your mind says, "Ooh, this might be a good opportunity." I don't think your strategic plan is strong enough. Think about that. If someone says, "Hey, let's do ..." I want you to go through a mental exercise right now. If somebody reached out to you and said, "Hey, I want to do coffee," how defensive are you of your productivity in your mind? How defensive are you of this strategic plan. How defensive are you of what you're already doing? Because when somebody asks me to go to coffee these days, I almost get irritated. I'm like, "What? How could you possibly be asking me to coffee without a point, without a clear plan, without a strategy? Like what are we going to accomplish?" So if coffee sounds like an opportunity, your strategic plan isn't strong enough.

Alex Charfen: I know that's a weird connection, but I'm telling you it's real. So consider that, you need a strategic plan. Another thing I want you to know is your time is your most valuable asset. When somebody calls you and says, "Hey, I'd love to take you to coffee." What they are saying is, "Hey, I'd like your most valuable asset for free or for the nominal price of a cup of coffee," which is basically free. Let's be honest. It doesn't matter where you go, it's not really worth it. The exchange isn't there. If you're counting on something coming out of the meeting, then there's possibilities, something there. But when this is random, when it's just somebody saying, hey, let's go to coffee, I would walk away from it. I would explain to them that your calendar is full, that you only take prioritized meetings and that you're really careful with your time.

Alex Charfen: I mean, here's what I tell people. I say, "My wife and I homeschool two kids. I have an international team that I manage remotely and we spend a lot of time together as a family. So I prioritize every minute of the day. What is the purpose of us getting together for coffee?" And most of the time that ends the request, because there was no purpose and people are fishing to see if there's an opportunity. I'm not going to let somebody else fish on my time, fish in my calendar, fish in my week. And then the last thing I want you to know about this is, this does not mean that you don't spend time with other people. I spent a ton of time with other people. I spend a ton of strategic, preplanned, intentional time with other people. And just the past couple of weeks, you know, a couple of weeks ago I got together with Emily Hershey for a whole day. We spent the day together, we went through stuff in her business, we went through stuff in my business. We set up a new marketing plan that we plan on putting it in place.

Alex Charfen: Just a few days ago, I was together with Taki Moore, we spent three days together, not coffee. I'm talking like 15 hours of looking at his business, looking at my business. The productivity that came out of it was ridiculous. Next week, Mike Dillard's coming over to my house, we're spending three hours together and not 15 or 20 minutes for coffee, three hours. Why? Because Mike's a freaking genius. He's incredible and he's going to help me look at some stuff in my business and I'm going to help him look in some stuff in his business and we're, you know what we're going to do? We're going to create strategic plans. So I'm not saying that you don't want to get together with people, by all means you absolutely do. But make it strategic, conscious connections with a point. There's an outcome, there's a reason that there's actually an exchange for both of you.

Alex Charfen: In all three cases, Taki, Emily and Mike, we're helping each other. There's an exchange there, it's not one of them just trying to get stuff from me and the results of, if you shift here, if you stop just jumping in and doing coffee, if you stop letting other people manage your time, here's the biggest thing that's going to come out of it, is that you're going to stay incredibly focused. But even more importantly, you don't get caught up in fake momentum. Fake momentum is terrible, fake momentum is having a full schedule, but not getting anything done. Fake momentum is having things to do every day, but not actually creating productivity. Fake momentum is feeling like you have a lot going on, but not actually seen anything grow, scale or change. Fake momentum is going to coffee with someone that you have no outcome with, you have no clue what you're going to do and you spend 30 minutes trying to see if there's some type of a connection when you could've just exchange that information before you left your office, or your house to go meet them. That is fake momentum.

Alex Charfen: Fake momentum will slow you down. Fake momentum actually takes away momentum, which is ironic. Fake momentum makes us feel challenged, it makes us feel like we're not moving forward as fast as we want to. Fake momentum actually makes us feel like we're doing a ton, but nothing's actually creating a result. I want you to stay as far away from fake momentum as you can because it is one of the most challenging feelings for an entrepreneur when we're doing stuff, when we think we're making progress, when we're trying to make progress and we don't. And oftentimes it's because we're spending our days and our weeks doing things like meeting people for random coffee meetings that don't really have a point or an outcome. If you're doing that as an entrepreneur, you're near guaranteed that your momentum is going to slip away and you're not going to create the productivity, the outcome, and the change you want in the world.

Alex Charfen: Create a strategic plan, organize your time, understand where your productivity is coming from, and don't let anyone else manage your outcomes, because if you make what you are doing important enough, you will not be distracted by anyone's request to take you out of momentum. If you're ready to create even more momentum and be among other entrepreneurs who are doing the same thing, check out my free Billionaire Code group on Facebook. There's a few billionaire code groups, it's just the one that says Billionaire Code and it's a free group. We'd love to have you join on the way in, there's three questions that you have to answer and here's the rule, you don't answer the questions you don't get in. We give away a ton of information in the Billionaire Code group.

Alex Charfen: It is a really incredible community of top notch entrepreneurs from around the world. Go to billionairecode.com, answer the three questions, oh sorry, not go in a co.com. Go to Billionaire Code on Facebook and answer the questions, and one of my team members will accept you and let you in. We're looking forward to having you in the group. Billionaire Code on Facebook and remember, stop letting other people manage your time, you don't have to do coffee.