Part 3: The Three-Step Process to Create a Movement

Jeremy: Hey everybody. This is Jeremy. This is the third and final part of Alex's talk around turning your business into a real movement. In this episode, Alex starts to take questions from the audience and they get into things like, how do you really identify your niche? What do you do once you've identified your niche?

This episode will inspire you. This episode will definitely challenge you, and I think if you haven't heard the first two episodes, go back and check those out because they really set up the framework for this part of the dialogue.

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.

When you turn your mission into a movement, this is what happens and this is my prayer, my hope, my goal, my want for you. I want you to turn your business into a movement. I want you to turn your mission into a movement. Because movements grow on their own. Movements overcome, movements adapt, movements take marketing and supercharge it and movements change the world.

And I want you to grow your business to the point where you have an empire. Because people like you and I, we need a business around us. We need a business because it makes us feel whole. We need a business because the momentum that we create on our own is not enough. We need a business because we all know we are meant for more. We want to do more and be more and put more out there and leave more behind here. And I want you to grow your business because it's what we do as entrepreneurs.

I don't want you to just grow a team, I want you to build an empire, because when entrepreneurs build an empire, we go out and we change the world, and we make our greatest contribution.

When you make your greatest contribution, you leave your dent in the universe and you change the world. And it's my sincere belief that as entrepreneurs, we create the world, we make it new. We go out into the future, imagine a new reality, come back to the present and insist it becomes real. And I want you to be able to make that journey over and over again successfully, and make things happen in your life.

So this is how you create a movement, go out and make things happen and change the world. And like I said, this presentation, I'm open for questions. I want to answer any questions that anybody has, but I also want you to know, we're not selling anything today. However, if you're interested in understanding more about our services, if you're interested in understanding more about what we do, please go to billionairecode.com,and you fill out a few questions for my team and here's what you'll get.

If you go to billionairecode.com and I'm going to put it in the chat interface so that everybody has it, go to billionairecode.com and do the following. If you're ready to start growing your business, fill out the application and we will give you a book called Billionaire Code Decoded that has all the information from the billionaire code, and we'll show you exactly what you should do next.

Second, you'll be able to set up a call with a member of my team, whether it's now or later. If you're ready to talk to somebody, you should at least know what we have available.

And third, we will tell you exactly where you are on the billionaire code, so that you can start growing like crazy.

So now that we're through the presentation and anyone who's ready should go jump on billionairecode.com. I'm open for questions. Who has a question?

Let's see. Michelle says, "Can you please elaborate on defending end step please?" Yeah, absolutely, Michelle.

Here's some of the defend against. So Michelle, here's what you should do in order to defend against. Sit down and first get really clear on who your avatar is. Who is it that you're calling on? Who is that tribe within the crowd? And get clear on the niche.

Don't let it be too big. Too many entrepreneurs try and make it too big, too inclusive. Like I want to empower women, or I want to help entrepreneurs, or I want to help single parents. Those niches are way too huge. You've got to shrink it down, and then once you have it shrunk down, start asking yourself, "What am I going to defend against?

So let me tell you what I do. I work with business owners who grow teams who need a strategic plan and who want to build empires. So what do I defend against? I defend against people who don't like entrepreneurs. I defend against the attacks entrepreneurs are under.

I talk about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur. I talk about how we're judged, lied to and cheated. I talk about how 90% of us will be embezzled from. I talk about how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur in today's world. How lonely it is. How you need a tribe. How you need people around you. I defend against the conditions in the marketplace that are attacking entrepreneurs.

So Michelle, my question to you is, where are your clients under attack? Where is your tribe under attack? Every tribe is under attack. Every tribe. You have to determine what that is and then defend it like crazy. Michelle says, "If my tribe is women in midlife going through peri-menopause?" Your niche is too big. It's too big still.

Women in midlife going through perimenopause is a pharmaceutical commercial. That is everybody. That's a huge population. Give me another niche. Like what makes them different? It's women who are going through menopause that want to optimize. It's women who are going through perimenopause that don't want to go down. It's women who still want to get everything they can out of life.

Give me the tribe. Right now you're describing a crowd. I want to know who the tribe is.

The next question from Charles says, "What are the questions that you can ask yourself about finding the niche you're passionate about?

Oh, Charles, man. There is so many different questions you can ask yourself, but here's the key is ... I tell people once you've identified your niche, if you walk into a room of a 100 people, there should be two or three people there. Let me give you an example.

If I walk into the ClickFunnels, let's say I go to an event at ClickFunnels and then 100 people there, there's probably two or three who are really our clients in that population.

Because at ClickFunnels, it's just like the rest of the entrepreneurial world. The vast majority of people are under $100,000. There's some that are between one and three. A lot less are between three to a million, and a lot less are a million dollar plus.

So I walk into any room and usually it's a very small single digit percentage that is my client. The questions you should ask yourself are clarifying questions to drive you down to a single digit out of a 100, and then you know that you have the right clients.

So Charles, it's questions like, if you want to work with women in midlife, going through perimenopause, which ones? Because I don't think Michelle wants to work with all of them. Michelle, do you want to work with women in midlife going through perimenopause who've given up? Do you want to work with women in midlife going through perimenopause who don't care?

No, there's more there. So ask yourself the questions until you drive to a niche.

Diane says, "Alex, I love your approach, straight forward and no BS." Thanks Diane. I appreciate it. And then she says, "Great." Thank you.

Oh man, I have a question submitted to the Q&A box. I didn't even know there was a Q&A box. Check this out. Leave it to the adventure partners to throw me off. But I've got you guys.

So here's the answer. It says, "How far do we need to niche down? Our market was couples, not a niche, but then we shifted because most of the couples we encountered didn't want to work with each other, and now we went too broad. Should we talk more about how normal people with big ideas can create a business online in the sweet life? We're empowering people on the roadmap to create infrastructure of an online business. Thanks Alex."

So guys, here's what I think for the two of you. Be adventure partners, guys, you are niche. I've been following you online forever. Here's what you are. You are a happy entrepreneurial couple that's working together and traveling together.

How many people out there want to be you? Like that's the niche you should go after. It's entrepreneurial couples that want to travel, want to be together, want to create a life together. Not just work together but actually make things happen together. And want to do things like climb the pyramids and the ruins while at the same time they're selling stuff online. That's who you are.

So for me, I would go out and I would call on other couples who want to create a life together and work together. There's hundreds of thousands of them out there that have the seed planted in their brain and they need somebody like you to come along and open it up for them.

Let me know if that makes sense, Brian and Erin. But to me, that one's easy. You guys should just play off exactly who you are. You're so compelling and so interesting as a couple, I'm not even your avatar and I follow you guys because you're interesting and you're an attractive character. You're like the definition of attractive characters together.

Hannah says, "We have lost patients due to poor systems in place previously. Is there a way to recover those, or can we turn this into a positive?"

Absolutely. The way that you turn any client loss into a positive is you don't blame people, you blame the process and you go fix the heck out of the process. So Hannah, why did you lose those clients? The way you turn it into a positive, is you go put a process in place so that you never lose a client again for the same reason.

So absolutely. And we work with a lot of practices where the proper systems aren't in place to protect the patients. And then once they are, you'd be shocked at not only how often do patient counts go up, but do patients who've left the practice come back.

Tricia says, "My niche ID is women who are treating kids with an autoimmune disease. It is not easy to treat or diagnose and is not covered under insurance." Yeah, that's actually a pretty good niche, Tricia.

I think there's an easier way to talk about it. It's similar to my friends Hailey and Megan, who run MaxGen, which is a genetic testing company, and their niche was the autoimmune mom and the spectrum kid. I loved that one. The autoimmune mom and a spectrum kid. When they said that the first time, I was like, I know exactly what they're talking about. I know exactly who they're talking about. I've had that client. It makes it really easy to understand exactly who they're talking about.



So if you're saying, my niche is the mom who has a kid with a really difficult to diagnose autoimmune disease, I think that's a really strong niche, and it's not a crowd. That is a lot tighter, because when you look at moms with kids, or moms in general, that's a huge, huge amount.

Moms with kids who are sick, mom with kids who have an issue, a mom with kids who have not an immune disease, mom with kids who have an autoimmune disease that is cash pay and it's really hard and they're committed to solving it, that is a niche. I love that one, Michelle. Oh no wait, that was Tricia. Crush that.

Let's see. Michelle says ... Okay, this is good. See, now you're niching down. Michelle, who earlier had the comment about women in midlife going through peri-menopause, so now it's women in midlife, going through perimenopause, who don't want medicines, who want a holistic approach, who don't want surgeries and they don't want to feel broken and they know the next phase of life is dynamic. Hell no. So that's who they are, Michelle. That's a niche. Now I'm getting excited about what you're talking about.

Jodi says, "If you are not necessarily that passionate about the niche of people you are serving but are far down the road to developing the opportunity, do you see it through or bail?" Jodi, I would never see that through.

Sorry. I might be the coach that gets shot in the back of the head someday, but I would never see that through. Let's get serious guys. Starting a business is the hardest thing you're ever going to do. Successfully running a business, it's going to challenge you in ways you never thought you could be challenged. There will be days you wake up, open your eyes and want to go back to sleep.

Let's get real. Starting a business is not a hobby. It's an incredible undertaking. It's one of the most difficult pursuits in any lifetime. It's also one of the most spiritual and one of the most connecting. And if you don't care about the people you're serving, you are fooling yourself if you think you're going to be successful.

You should be obsessed with the people you're serving. You should be staying up late at night reading about them and wanting to know how to make things better, and wanting to know how to make their lives easier. And if you can't, if you're in a place where you can sleep if one of your clients is upset, then it's probably not the right niche.

And I might be exaggerating just a little bit, but not really. Not really. I'm not one of those guys who's going to be at you and say, "Oh, sure, it doesn't matter if you're down the road, Jodi, go make some money and then figure out another niche." No way. You either figure out how to fall in love with your clients, how to be passionate about them, how to understand them like nobody else, or you should give up. Here's why.

Energetically, they know you don't care. Let me be the first one to tell you. They know you don't care. You will struggle. You will have a hard time. You will face resistance. You will run into walls over and over again without understanding why. Here's why. Energetically, you don't care.

And in a business, if you're not passionately, overwhelmingly, completely and totally dedicated to the people that you're serving yet out and start again. Do it in a way that it's not going to kill you.

When I'm up in Boise and I hang out with Russell, when we're hanging out casually, we're talking about entrepreneurs. When we're in his gym, we're talking about entrepreneurs. When we're playing on the trampolines in his backyard, in between me watching him jump from trampoline to trampoline, we're talking about entrepreneurs.

Why? Because we wouldn't want to talk about anything else. If you're not passionate about the niche you're serving, you are swimming upstream. You're going uphill, you're making it harder, and you are fighting a battle you've already set out on a losing foot. You've to be passionate about who you're serving or it's just not going to work.

That's my opinion. There's other people that will tell you different, but those other people will probably try and sell you something too.

From Heidi, "My tribe is veterans that have chosen not to commit suicide and they're ready to develop into superheroes. I want a league of incredible men and women that will help me end veteran suicide once and for all."

So Heidi, that is a cause I am incredibly passionate about. Several times a year, I volunteer for American Dream university. I was just up at Fort Hood speaking to a large group of transitioning military and leadership. So I'm right there with you, but I want you to niche it down a little bit.

Because, having tribe of people who have chosen not to commit suicide is kind of a weird niche. I think maybe what you should look at is a tribe of veterans that have chosen to succeed, that have chosen to Excel, that have chosen to make life after service even better than life in service. That have chosen to make the next chapter of their life an accomplishment, an achievement and just as much of an honor as what they have done so far.

I think that would be a lot more compelling for veterans than being identified as those who have chosen not to commit suicide.

Caitlin says, "My niche is women who are experienced fitness goers, who want to spend less time working their abs. I have a seven minute ab program funnel. Is this too niched? The problem I'm solving is the amount of time they spend on their abs and at home gym."

Caitlin, I don't think it's too niche. In fact, I used to be involved in the infomercial business. I've sold tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff on TV, and there was a year where seven minute abs was actually the number one fitness commercial.

I think you should look into it. That might be a trademark statement because, the year after seven minute abs was the number one fitness commercial, six minute abs beat them out, it was just a minute faster. So I don't know that it's necessarily too niche, I just think it's probably a low cost product. That might be difficult because that seven minutes, six minute abs has been out there for decades.

Mitch says, "I helped two income families eliminate their Dave Ramsey style. Can you guess, I'm a financial advisor. I think it's too broad, but I don't know how to niche it down."

Mitch, you've just got to figure out what is it about the ... Here's here's what you should do, Mitch. Go sit down and write the list of the top 20 clients that you know and love, and you'll figure out who it is.

You're going to find that your clients have commonalities. Like, all of them have kids, or all of them are married, or all of them have come from a type of industry, or they all have the same mindset, or they're all Christian, or they're all Jewish.

Whatever it is for you, and whatever that niche is, wherever you start, you can expand beyond it. But drop it down to the point where when someone hears it, they say, "Oh man, that guy's talking directly to me."

When I walk into a room and I say, "Look, I work with entrepreneurs who can't turn it off, and don't know why anyone would want to. Those who want to make a contribution just as much as they want to make a living, and entrepreneurs who are committed to building a team, because they know they can create opportunity."

Honestly, I lose 80% of the room. They're sitting there like "I'm not building a team. I'm trying to figure out who my avatar is. What is he talking about? Who is he?"

The 20% hears it and attaches to me. When I walk off stage, at most events where I've spoken, I'm surrounded by a crowd. The last event where I spoke, they did tabletops and they literally came over to my table and told people they could not be at my table because the other speakers didn't have enough people at their table.

Why? Because I walked out and I told my tribe exactly who they were, why they needed to come see me. I defended against and I advocated for them and it's like a magnet. It will change your game guys.

Jeremy: Hey everybody. Thanks so much for listening this week. I know there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there. The fact that you have chosen to listen to Alex's podcast is amazing. We appreciate it.

If you'd like to get the show notes for this podcast episode or any podcast episode, head over to charfen.com.

If you're an entrepreneur, and you really looking for some support, you want to lower the pressure and noise to really begin to grow your movement and grow your business, head over to billionairecode.com/apply-now. That's billionairecode.com/apply-now.