Momentum Podcast: 552

Part 3: The True Purpose of a CEO

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

This episode is the third and final part of our client panel from The Billionaire Code Summit. If you missed the first two, make sure to go back and listen so this last section makes sense. In this episode, we wrap up the discussion with three amazing CEOs. Each of them is so different, yet has similar experiences when it comes to their businesses, and there’s an obvious reason.  

Tune in to discover the true purpose of a CEO and what it takes to become the leader your business needs. These entrepreneurs share with you what it took for them to step into the role of a visionary and the impact it made. As you will hear, this process led each of them to explosive growth and helped them become a stronger leader. Now, they are living life on their terms, and actually enjoying their businesses again.   

If you need help growing and scaling your businesses, building your team, or getting clear on where you want to go to scale your contribution, then head on over to https://billionairecode.com/apply-now. 

Full Audio Transcript

Jeremy: Hey everybody, it's Jeremy from Alex Charfen's team. In this episode, we're wrapping up a conversation Alex had just last week at our Billionaire Code Summit. If you missed the first two, you may want to go back and listen to those two episodes because it really sets up for this final piece of the panel, and it's just fascinating to hear these three CEOs talk about their businesses, and they're all different. It's amazing, and I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Alex Charfen: 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.

Speaker 3: So I know Wallace, and I don't know, maybe all of you guys, mentioned you were breaking records and things like that. And I think you guys have been in business for, maybe not Emily, but I think you guys have been in business for a really long time? I don't know?

Speaker 4: 40 years.

Speaker 3: Okay. Okay, it was you then. Okay, cool. So, and you were saying like, we're breaking records, it's the best we've ever been. So, mostly I'm just being nosy. Have you implement other things, and then you put the Charfen cadence in and it was way better? I'm just curious to know, did you try other methods?

Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I tried everything I could possibly think of. We tried 40 years' worth of bad ideas trying to make it work. And I'm biased, I would say I think this system would work for any company, but it for sure worked massively for us.

And I'm probably not unique in this way a lot that what I'm really excited about, I'm in business to make an impact on the world. I'm not in business to run operations of a business. That's kind of a necessary evil for me to be able to have that impact. And I think a lot of us as CEOs are in that same position. We're excited about the impact, not necessarily the step-by-step process.

And so having this format, this blueprint of architecture that could just lay over my business and make sure all those operational things needed to happen without me having to be a complete expert at that, allowed me to do what I actually do care about.

So nothing else worked anywhere near the way that this worked. And to that testament, we had been... In 40 years it took us 40 years to grow from $0 to $6.8 million. And we had been stagnant for 40-

Alex Charfen: 40.

Speaker 4: ... Four, zero, yeah. We had been-

Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing the truth.

Speaker 4: ... But we had been stagnant at... We came in here at a $6.8 million run rate and we'd been stagnant there for I think four years in a row. We hadn't moved at all and I was just like doing a little tinkering...

Speaker 3: What amount of time?

Speaker 4: So we're almost at 10 million. Basically we've increased by 33% in our run rate over the last little less than a year-and-a-half, which I mean, I'm patting myself on the back here, but I think it's like way freaking more impressive from an old stagnant business-

Alex Charfen: Heck, yeah.

Speaker 4: ... than some exciting new startup. So if it can relight the fire in a business that was very slow and lumbering and make it look like a startup in explosive growth, I think it can do that for any business.

Speaker 3: That's amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, for sure. Any other questions out here? Yeah, go ahead Shane. Shane: So you guys have told us about where you've come from and the transitions that you've had to make. What do you see in the future? Who do you have to become on the next major transition? What do you see coming?

Emily: I'll tell you next time.

Alex Charfen: Go ahead, Emily.

Emily: No, I think it's continue to work on yourself. That's how I see it. So I'll share, I just Voxed Alex last week. So I had a really stressful week because I had a team member get on. He was one of my key players and it was like, "I have to get noticed." Which would have freaked me out, send me into like not being able to sleep before and it was so weird. I Voxed Alex. I'm like, "It's the weirdest thing. I don't feel stressed out about this."

I feel like, "Yeah, it sucks." But it's like, it's just part of the game. Like, "Okay, we got to move onto the solution." And I can still, you know, start my workday and enjoy my evening and be fine with it. And that's only happened because I gave myself that space.

So I think continually creating that space and the future of like, I need to build a leadership team, so I have to continue to work on my leadership and build those skills so I can then teach my leadership team. That's how I see the next year, at least for me.

Daniel: Yeah. Same for me. Leadership team, the multiple layers of leadership. I want to be a better leader. We're at six million, now we're going to be at 10 million next year. And I know everything's going to just explode and fall apart like it did when we hit three. So I want to be prepared. So that's what I'm thinking about too.

Alex Charfen: Guys, just for perspective on Daniel's story, they had their strategic direction call in April. So that's the timeline we're talking about. So from April, this is the progress you're seeing. So those of you who are sitting here thinking like, "Oh, I'm going to get there in four years." Don't think that. Our stuff happens quarter by quarter. You give this two solid quarters, your entire life's going to be different.

Speaker 4: You know the answer to that, this sounds contrary, we're sort of sitting going, "Hey, us sitting in the office all the time is not what's important to growth." It makes us sound almost maybe a little unimportant, but the complete flip side of that is that the most important thing for growth and for what comes next is all relying on who I become.

So we are the spark and the catalyst of the growth of that company. And for me, where I'm thinking back to, Alex talked about what needs to happen at each layer of the billionaire code, right? Each level as you moved up, where you start with fixing your self habits, and you move to defining your avatar, and all these things. The way that I intend to continue improving myself is that even though we're sitting up here at our level of performance, I'm constantly revisiting.

And the piece of the cycle that I'm back around to now is I'm back to the the seeker level of going, "Okay, now how can I fix my personal habits? How, how can I get in and get and get my self care more dialed in and get my planning more dialed in?" All those personal habits because that will allow me to take the next step. And we'll look at our avatar again. And we just keep marching through those steps, and move up a notch. And march through the steps, and move up a notch.

Alex Charfen: Gosh, those are such good answers. Yeah, go ahead. This is going to have to be the last question with Emily.

Speaker 8: You mentioned that you obviously now each have more time to exist in your area of brilliance, so I'd love to hear you each describe really briefly, how would you describe what your brilliance is?

Alex Charfen: Yeah, that's good.

Emily: So it's always [crosstalk 00:08:14] to me. I don't know?

Speaker 4: I'm interested to hear. Ashlyn's going to answer for me.

Alex Charfen: Go ahead Ashlyn. Wait, let's get the microphone over here so we can hear it.

Speaker 4: I'll walk over there.

Ashlyn: I'm probably the only person in the business that gets taken advantage of this, but he's so brilliant in when it comes to nutrition, and health, and fitness, and wellness that nobody else can just step into that. Unless they have his degree and literally grew up in their parents' business, you can't replace that.

And so I get to pick that to help support my clients, but nobody else can do it but him. And when he's busy with other things it, we were drowning in that, because I couldn't pull him aside to help me with that. So it's made a huge difference there.

Alex Charfen: So it really is like that, that is, he is truly the visionary of the company from the a hundred thousand foot level and that's where he should be 100% of the time.

Ashlyn: Yeah.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 4: I thought she was going to say I was irresistibly handsome, but that's not what she said.

Emily: I'd say mine is like, I love leading. That's what I feel like I... I can figure out new ideas, and help people get to the next level, and see things differently than the average person could or employees in my company could. Obviously content creation, I'm the face of the company is a huge one, but I wouldn't say like, "Oh, that's my zone of genius. That's what I'm meant to do." I mean connecting with people, that I can do. But leading, I feel like I'm in my zone of genius when I'm leading my team and I'm taking us to the next level and I'm helping other people grow.

Alex Charfen: And again, just for perspective, Emily and I have been working together for, I think it's just at two years, right Emily? Maybe it's a little bit less, but when we started, again, this is a testament to how quickly Emily implements and does everything, the first call we ever had, she was like, "Okay, I'm going to work with you, but there's no way I'm going to build the team." That was the first thing she said.

So from the mentality of like, "I'm not doing this, there's no way." I cried when I did Emily's podcast because she said... On the podcast. I'm prompted. She's like, "I feel like my team's, my superpower." And I, we got off that podcast and I was emotional because I remember sitting with her and thinking, "You're so brilliant. Do not block yourself by saying I'm not going to build a team." And to have to go from that, to my team is my super power. Like every one of you has this opportunity. Go ahead Daniel.

Daniel: Zone of brilliance. You can? I'd like to hear your answer.

Speaker 10: Yeah. I think the same thing, the vision. We need you to focus on understanding our customers because you really understand them. Daniel, most of you, some of you know this really came from nothing and build this amazing thing and that's what it's what I think you're amazing at, that coming up was all these ideas and for the product, for our content, that's where we need you to focus and giving our team the inspiration and our customers the inspiration.

Alex Charfen: Wait, wait. Don't give the microphone back. I just want that last statement not to be lost. How important is it, and this is really crucial, how important is it that Daniel's not overwhelmed and not reactive, so that he can be present and inspire the team?

Speaker 10: Super important? Very important. I mean, we see that all the time. When you do... when you inspire us, and you give us direction, that's when we will grow.

Alex Charfen: Hmm.

Daniel: And even though I'm not always present in all the meetings and decisions, I'm thinking about it nonstop. I can't shut that off. But I mean, our business is weird because I've taken this dry thing about credit, but made it, made people, our customers are like, they're credit heroes. They're like superheroes. And they're changing lives and they're living this mission. And our mission is about changing their lives, their client's lives, our lives on our own team. And we're seeing all this happen. And I think maybe I cultivated that? And then I, yeah, I can channel our customers. I know what's in their head. I can... It's weird. So maybe that's my superpower? I don't know?

Alex Charfen: So awesome.

Daniel: Yeah.

Alex Charfen: Guys, thank you so much. What an amazing panel. Just so awesome.

Jeremy: Hey everybody. Thanks a lot for listening again. We always appreciate it. And look, if you'd like some help growing and scaling your businesses, help building your teams, help getting really clear on where you want to go to scale your contribution. Then head on over to billionairecode.com/apply-now. I'll say it again. It's billionairecode.com/apply-now. I'm looking forward to connecting with you. Thanks a lot.

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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